The torpedoes slammed into the side of the battleship. Multiple detonations rippled across its surface. Plates buckled, systems failed, but the ship survived the attack, albeit heavily damaged. She returned fire, targeting the damaged cruiser she had been engaging. The attack scored another direct hit, as the green beam intersected the hull just forward of the last impact and penetrated the armor. Piercing nearly fifty meters into the ship before internal plating stopped the beam. A second beam quickly followed, scoring another damaging hit on the Raven. Again showing a clear focus on the connection between the primary and secondary hulls.

Just as they were about to fire a third time, the Accentor opened fire with her beam arrays at full power. A volley of vibrant purple energy streams slammed into the battleship’s unshielded and damaged hull, one after the other. Plating buckled and melted under the barrage. The Cylovan ship however held under the punishing attack. Heavily scathed, with plasma venting into space and a number of systems knocked offline, it fired again. A third hit struck the Raven, causing main power to fail, briefly. Something the Cylovans tried to take advantage of. They followed up with a volley of conventional weapons fire. Scoring a number of surface hits, but by then auxiliary power had already kicked in. The damage was minimal and seconds later main power came back, as it was rerouted through auxiliary conduits to bypass damaged power transfer systems.

Meanwhile under the surface, while the two cruisers were duking it out with the Collective’s battleship. A scout was leading a squad down a corridor. She had found the connection they were looking for, and she was leading the hacker to the target location. There was a room just down this corridor that had a direct connection with the mainframe. Best of all the defending drones had been drawn elsewhere. This gave them an excellent opportunity to hack the mainframe.

A door opened ahead of them and two drones emerged. Before they made more than two steps into the hall, a short burst of blue energy slammed into each drone. Melting a neat cluster of holes in their frame. The drones crashed to the floor, and the group moved past them. They picked up the pace slightly, knowing that the defenders now knew they were here. More drones would be coming.

Thankfully they didn’t encounter any resistance on their way to the access node. They burst into the room unopposed and took down three drones defending the node in an instant. As the squad took up defensive positions, the scout showed the hacker the node. The hacker immediately went to work on cracking the Cylovan network.

The Collective observed the battle in orbit of its outpost at Draxus. The battle was not going well. Most of its destroyer escorts had already been destroyed, and it had not inflicted significant damage. Only one smaller engagement was of any note, the battle between its battleship, and two enemy cruisers. The battleship was still in the fight, but she was taking heavy damage. Half her weapon systems had been destroyed, along with most of the surface armor. Her main weapon was still functioning. The ship’s shields however, were a lost cause, as species 11247 had targeted and destroyed the generators. Its damage control drones would need to rebuild them to bring them back online.

As much as it had taken, it had also dished out. The first cruiser had taken some heavy surface damage, but internal damage remained largely unknown. Its shields were down though, and that was a sign it had damaged something. An angry barrage of particle beams, however, highlighted that the ship was far from dead. She was still fighting, and her weapons were hitting hard. Given the surface damage, it would have expected half the ship’s primary systems to be offline. The fact it was still fighting indicated either phenomenal internal resilience, high system redundancy, or as it calculated as most likely a combination of the last two probabilities.

It remained to be seen how much damage the cruiser could take, but a lesser vessel would have been disabled with that level of surface damage. Its own ships were fairly resilient as well, but it was already struggling to keep its warship fighting.

An alert turned its attention to one of 11247’s carriers. It was just outside of the maximum weapons range of its battleship, and several fighter waves were heading towards the battleship. The carrier’s defense squadron was also no longer being engaged. The floating wrecks of three cruisers and several destroyers were all that was left of the ships it had deployed to engage that carrier. The ships protecting the carrier weren’t unscathed, but it was only detecting minor surface damage. Internal damage was again largely unknown. Something about 11247’s ships prevented it from scanning the internals. Not the first time it had seen this kind of sensor shielding, but it had not yet figured out how to penetrate the sensor shielding that 11247 was using.

The fighters being sent towards its battleship was a concern. Like most of its ships, it was lacking in weapon mounts intended to engage light craft. The collective preferred to engage light craft with its own fighters. It ordered what fighters it could to reposition in order to protect its battleship. Already it was running simulations. A third of the incoming fighters were identified as the type known to carry anti-capital ship weapons, the others were escorts. If they made it through. They would inflict major damage to its already damaged battleship. With its shields down, and the surface armor so heavily damaged, there was nothing but the strained structural fields protecting its ship. It was lucky the cruisers seemed to be out of torpedoes. Although the two ships alone had dumped an impressive number of photons and compressed plasma warheads on its battleship. Several thousand photons and nearly a hundred compressed plasma each. Those plasma torpedoes had done the most damage, anything they hit was virtually destroyed. If it wasn’t for the fact that the battleship seventeen type had heavily reinforced internal bulkheads and structural fields it would have been destroyed already by those barrages. In fact, its standard battleship type thanks to the weak point its hangers represented would have been destroyed by the first volley to penetrate the shields.

Cylovan fighters engaged the advancing wing launched from the Dawn. Something the Refuge fleet had expected. The space superiority fighters, the Eagles, and the 1204s moved to fight them off, but a couple of squadrons hung back to protect the Sparrows from any fighters that broke from the main group. Instead of the normal payload of ten shield penetrating bombs, each Sparrow was carrying four of the larger more powerful AMF penetrator bombs. These were special AMF based warheads designed to produce a focused plasma stream on detonation. The stream was powerful and highly effective against capital ship armor. Although often overkill on smaller vessels. They were also more expensive than the already pricy standard AMF warheads. The fleet only had a small number of them, and the battleship was a perfect target for them. Just one solid hit would be enough to penetrate the core of the warship and take it out.

As the fighters engaged with the collective’s fighters, the refuge bombers slipped by. In the distance, the Raven was pulling away, while the Accentor covered her retreat. Vibrant blue and violet beams slammed into the battleship one after another. None of them doing much visible damage. Mostly since the hull was already scorched and pockmarked with wounds. There were countless hull breaches on all three ships as they continued to exchange heavy fire.

In the node room, the hacker had already made a connection, and the squad was now holding off drones as they tried to retake the room. Several more Refuge squads were making their way to the room to reinforce though, and they were making good progress. Resistance across the base had dropped sharply as soon as the hacker had plugged into the node. As the mainframe was redirecting its defenders to counter the new vulnerability. An expected reaction as the mainframe would recognize that defending itself was more important than holding ground.

The scout fired her rifle, and another drone dropped at the door. The scout having already targeted another. These drones were not much of a threat. Their personal shields weren’t strong enough to stop a phased particle stream, and they were rather lacking in armor. They were not the most impressive, but they sure had quantity. Another three had already appeared in the door to take the place of the one she shot. Not that it mattered much, since their disruptors were ineffective against standard personal infantry armor. Her armor might be a little more vulnerable given the emphasis on stealth, but she was in a good position at the rear of the defense and in cover. A bolt passed over her head, and she downed another with a solid shot. Over her shoulder, she called, “How’s the hacking going?”

“I just got past the eighth encryption layer. I’ll need a few more minutes. Keep them off me.”

“No pressure,” she called while firing another bolt, and then ducking. A bolt passed over her head seconds after she ducked. She popped back and fired two solid shots. It was rather hard to miss with so many targets many of them densely packed. Her shots downed two more drones, while a few more were dropped from shots fired by her squadmates. A wall of downed drones was already forming and slowing the attackers, but she could see a few being moved to open up the passage.

Meanwhile, in orbit, a bright flash was dominating the void. Moments ago the Sparrows had unleashed their payloads simultaneously on the Cylovan battleship. As the flash cleared, it revealed a scene of utter carnage. Where once a damaged but mighty battleship had been there was a field of debris. Massive chunks of twisted metal floated in the void. The ship had been split into nearly a hundred large fragments and thousands of smaller fragments.

A quick scan of the wreckage revealed no power signatures of any kind. It was safe to say the ship was dead, but it had proven to be far more resilient than any previously encountered Cylovan battleship. The Refuge marked it for salvage. They would need to study the debris to help identify any weaknesses in the design. Although they did have a few ideas. It seemed to have no hangars and lacked AA mounts. Two factors that would leave it vulnerable to fighters carrying anti-capital ship weaponry. Far more vulnerable than their standard battleship in fact.

Elsewhere the battle was winding down, and several Cylovan ships were attempting to retreat. Warp disruptors were preventing them from making an FTL jump, and they were not fast enough on sublight to clear the field and make the jump. It was only a matter of time before they too went down. Overall the fleet had done well, but a number of ships had taken damage. Most heavily damaged was the Raven, but the Horizon had also taken some damage of note. One of the Cylovan cruisers had managed to ram the carrier and inflicted some damage to a few hangars on her port side. That was the only damage the carrier had taken in the fight though. It would be easy to repair the damage, but until it was fixed no fighters could use those bays. The Raven however would need extensive yard time for repairs.