The Bastion shuddered under another impact, but her armor held. A moment later, a large chunk of wreckage blocked the angle of fire. Providing a brief, if partial reprieve from the assault. Kirk knew it wasn’t enough, but it would help a little. Especially since now was a perfect time for a little trick she had learned.

“Shut down all weapon banks, and divert the capacitors to the hull plating,” she barked.

Shutting down the weapons was risky, but the weapon bank capacitors stored massive amounts of energy. Shunting that energy to the AIF generators would allow for a rapid recovery of AIF integrity. Thereby extending how long her ship’s heavy armor could hold up under the current bombardment. This came at the cost of firepower though. All of her energy weapon batteries would be left starved for power until the reactors could recharge the capacitors. That would take a few minutes, but she could make do with torpedoes in the meantime. It would only take the reactors three minutes to recharge the capacitors to minimal levels with current energy allocations.

As green energy beams slammed into the wreckage, her crew rushed to carry out her orders. She closely watched the readings. The wreckage vaporized with each blast from the hostile Cylovan ships. She wasn’t too worried about the beams coming from the escorts though. What she was truly worried about was the four remaining dreadnoughts.

Before the wreckage broke apart, her engineering officer finally reported. “All weapon banks offline. Hull plating restored to fifty-three percent.”

She glanced at the screens. Reinforcements were roughly four minutes out, and her main weapons would be down for the next three. That was going to limit how much damage she could do in the meantime, but she did need to keep those ships busy. The longer they were busy, the better for the task force she was protecting. Although honestly her biggest worry was the four dreadnoughts. By now she was pretty sure that she could win any one-on-one engagement with the much larger Cylovan Dreadnoughts, but four of them were trouble. If they turned on the taskforce now, they could easily inflict heavy casualties in the short time remaining. Something they might do if the Cylovans determined that her threat level had dropped.

Kirk took in the tactical display, noting current ship positions. It was time to do something drastic. Ramming would qualify, but she didn’t think they could meet the energy requirements to do it safely. While never attempted in battle, simulations had already been conducted. Modulating the beam or radiation shields to produce an effect similar to the shield modulators on their torpedoes was possible, and would allow for shield penetration. Especially if contact coincided with a focused bombardment at the point of contact. If their AIF fields were focused triple front, and SIF fields overloaded to 120% of normal. The ship would be able to survive a relativistic impact with another vessel with minimal damage. The crew would be a different story, but she didn’t have the power reserves to protect the crew and ram a vessel in this manner.

She would have to do something else. Fortunately, she did have something in mind, but she needed to enter close to point-blank range to do it. Well, not actually point-blank, but close enough. This was also something never attempted before, but possible in theory. Warp fields were notorious for the fact that they created a bubble of highly distorted space around a ship. Any matter that attempted to cross the boundary of the field would be ripped apart. Rapidly reduced to dust-like specks with their velocities randomized in the process. It also made energy weapons highly inaccurate as the distorted space could also randomize the velocity of any beam passing through the field. Factors that further complicated targeting a ship traveling at warp. Between the speed of the ship and the field, it was a tricky proposition at the best of times. FTL inhibitors were therefore the prime choice.

Those inhibitors prevented the formation of a stable warp field, thereby preventing a ship from reaching warp velocities. An unstable field would collapse relatively quickly, but a warp field inhibitor by no means prevents a ship from forming a field. Normal safety protocols would however cancel it when a field is detected as unstable. Kirk was going to disable those, and attempt to generate an unstable warp field at close range. Being unstable the field would be far more dangerous than a stable one, but if she modified the ships handling protocols she could minimize the risks to her ship. The Cylovan one on the other hand would likely suffer major damage. There was a reason ships tended to keep a distance from each other before making the jump to warp. However, it was possible for ships in close proximity to merge their warp fields. Something that required a fair amount of communication between computers, and had a few advantages.

Kirk’s mind did not dwell on those, but instead focused on how to use a theory for decisive action. Already playing out in her mind the actions needed to close the distance to a dreadnought, and activate the warp engines. With the right protocols engaged an unstable field would engulf part of the dreadnought inflicting severe damage. If they were lucky it would also disrupt the ship’s shields. Leaving it open for a devastating torpedo barrage. Her targeting computers knew enough about Cylovan ships by now to ensure those hits did major damage. The ship losing shields wasn’t needed though. It would just be preferable, as it would increase the number of torpedoes that would reach the hull. For this to work, they needed as many hits to the hull as they could get. AMF torpedoes were powerful, but Cylovan ships were quite resilient.

It had taken Kirk mere seconds to go over all that data and formulate a plan. Just as the wreckage began to break up, a few beams began to strike her armored hull again. Thankfully with minimal effect. She gave the order for a course change. As the ship changed course, she glanced at the power display and waited as the distance numbers changed.

Beam after beam raked over the hull, but they did not return fire. With the beam weapons offline, every shot from the torpedo launchers counted double. She held off until the distance numbers were just right then she shouted, her orders for a second course change, and a pulse detonation.

Her helm acknowledged, and everyone else braced for a sudden rapid acceleration. As their new course took them on a near-collision course with one of the Cylovan dreadnoughts. The moment they slowed to normal cruising speed less than ten Kilometers from the dreadnought in question, she gave the order.

The Bastion suddenly generated an unstable warp field. With the hostile dreadnought inside the field it was suddenly exposed to a sudden spatial sheer. Her outer hull disintegrated, as spatial sheer gradients tore it apart. Her shields flickered and failed, moments before the Bastion’s warp field collapsed.

In the next moment, the Bastion fired a barrage of glowing blue bolts from her aft launchers. Thirty torpedoes slammed into the damaged dreadnought one after the other. Each one exploded with significant destructive force, and the ship was torn apart by the subsequent detonations. A sudden shockwave rippled out from the ship, and shook the Bastion.

Another volley of beams rippled over her hull, and someone shouted out, “Hull plating at 37%, captain.”

She didn’t like that, but then she glanced at her display. Their beam weapons were coming back online now. Kirk smirked. “Tactical, target the dreadnought bearing 147 mark 24, all batteries maximum firepower, continuous fire”

The officer at tactical followed her commands with glee in her expression. As that ship had also been hit by the shockwave of her sister ship exploding, and her shields were under fifty percent strength.

The hull of the Bastion lit up, as beam after beam of intense violet energy rippled from the hull. One after the other. The intense particle streams slammed into their target with deadly force. Her shields flared brightly as they tried to absorb the energy, but a portion of it penetrated. Tearing deep furrows into the alien hull. Systems failed. The shields held for a moment or two, but failed after too many emitters had been vaporized.

The beams tore deeper into the hull, shredding it. Vaporizing power conduits, drones and systems. One of the beams in the barrage must have hit something important, as secondary explosions started to light up the hull of the dreadnought. When the dust cleared there was nothing left but a cloud of debris.

“Target destroyed, Captain!” Kirk smiled, she managed to attract the attention of the entire Cylovan fleet. The task force was being ignored, and while her weapon banks were now overheating, Kirk knew the reinforcements were about to arrive.

Sure enough one of her officers reported, as the ship shuddered under the impact on another beam weapon hit, “Sir, multiple warp signatures detected. Our reinforcements have arrived.”

It seemed they were not the only ones to see the new arrivals. The Cylovans immediately began to retreat. Multiple Cylovan ships warped out, they had won the battle.

Deep space, three hours later:

The Collective scout ship came out of warp. They had detected a strange reading moments ago. It was probably nothing as this region of Collective space was known for spatial anomalies, but there was something odd about this particular reading. The ship began a full sensor scan of the area, and the scout ship detected something.

The ship focused its full sensors on an object about thirty thousand kilometers from its position. It was a ship, and not just any ship. The Collective recognized the energy signature and design. It was a light cruiser belonging to species 11257. The ship had taken heavy damage, but was intact.

A quick analysis of the sensor data indicated the ship had run afoul of a spatial rift. Inflicting severe damage to the outer hull, and quite a bit of internal damage as well. The normal shielding the species 11257 employed had failed, and the Collective had a clear sensor image of the ship, and could clearly scan the interior for the first time.

The scout ship directed a full scan of the ship, and began to beam all of the data it received back to the collective. Even as its sensors told it that ship’s main reactor was building to overload. The ship was clearly about to self-destruct. Any data the collective received however would be invaluable. Already more information had been obtained on 11257’s technology from this one scan than had been obtained in the last five years. Perhaps enough to devise effective weaponry against 11257.