Phaethon system: TUSS Vigil's Command bridge

Screaming Vacuum breach alarms rang through the ships hull as the cruiser maneuvered through the void, on the ships engineering holodisplay various compartments glowed red, yellow, green, or a dead black indicating hull and compartment structural integrity as men and women rushed back and fourth throughout the bridge, trying to keep track of everything going on.

"BRACE FOR IMPACT" The damage controll officer screamed over the roar of battle surrounding him.

Vigil Shuddered under the hammer of the enemy battleships heavy plasma weapon, which tore a hundred meter long gash across the cruisers starboard flank.

"Damage report!" The Captain snapped to his damage controll officer.

"Point defense turrets six seven eight and eleven have been destroyed, secondary battery guns nine, ten, and fourteen appear to have been fused to the hull and are unable to rotate, and it looks like that last hit melted through almost a meter of armor. After punching through the shielding." They replied immidiately, indicating the stricken regions on the holographic display.

"Get a damage control team down to compartment eight, when they breach the hull then they will be in position to respond." Captain Bryan King ordered as he felt his wounded ship almost shudder in pain beneath his feet.

Captain King had served in the Terran Union navy for almost forty years, during his time he had been in many close scrapes, he had fought pirates and raiders, but he had never felt the ship beneath his feet scream in pain as Vigil seemed to be doing. He ran his hand across one of her railings and whispered something softly, almost gently beneath his breath. He knew that it was just a silly superstition, an ancient tale dating back to the wet navy's of yore that the ships themselves were alive, that they felt... and yet he couldn't shake the sense deep in the back of his mind that Vigil DID feel, that she was hurting, and more so, that she was enraged. Captain King looked up for a moment after his momentary revere and checked his holodisplay. What he saw made him smile. It wasn't anything that looked special. just a little string of numbers, results from a complex targeting algorythem. A firing solution.

"ALL GUNS BROUGHT TO BEAR UPON THE BATTLESHIP, SIR" Reported the weapons officer.

"well then," King said smiling savagely, "Double salvo the secondairies, full salvo on the primairy and missile tubes. Cordinate fire with the strike wings for simultanious impact, let's see if these fuckers can take the heat coming there way."

This time, when Vigil shook it was not a mild disturbance, no mere shake of her hull or trembling shudder as she took a plasma strike across her vulnerable drone bays. This time everyone not seated in a command chair who had not braced beforehand was sent sprawling as the full weight of the enraged V class cruiser's fire fell upon what was believed to be the enemies command ship.

Vigil's Primary battery was composed of four 406 millimeter triple gauss cannon turrets, each of which accelerated a slug composed of a cast ferric iron exterior casing covering a depleted uranium penetrator rod to fifteen percent of the speed of light, each of these rounds were accompanied by fire from her secondary battery of approximately fifty 125 millimeter quick firing guass cannons, of which she could currently bring approximately half of which to bear, as well as forty missile tubes categorized into four racks of ten tubes each. The result was a spectacle to behold as she flushed every single missile tube, struck with every last armed drone, and fired every single gun, all timed for a simultaneous impact. Ruk Command Cruiser: Jiva The Voidmaster was initially confident in his force when he had seen the number of ships emerging from demispace, He had laughed when the radiation readings from the vessels came up and revealed that the enemy was using fusion power plants. He had felt Jiva shake softly beneath his hind limbs as he grasped the railing with his manipulators as he sprung what he thought to be a perfectly timed ambush. The instant before her main plasma accelerator had fired at the enemy command vessel he had hummed in glee at the thought of eradicating the vessel that had been so impudent as to lead the charge into what was now rightfully Imperial space! To his shock however, when the weapon impacted upon the target's hull, It survived.

True it had not escaped unscathed, the craft had been mauled with a massive gash along her side that had to have been over two hundred meters long, explosions had racked the ships bays and dozens of secondary gun turrets had been fuzed to the hull or outright ripped off, but it had somehow survived a hit from an axial plasma accelerator of a Command cruiser.

The blow had certainly at least crippled the ship, and the Voidmaster was confident enough in his ability to claim victory here He simply had more ships, weapons, and crews to throw at them than they could stop if it came down to it, besides, its survival was probably miraculous good fortune on the enemies part.

Then, to his horror, the transmissions started.

Ruk ships were made on the assumption that nothing could endure the brunt of their firepower, and for this speed and damage output, they sacrificed everything. For their weight each and every Ruk ship packed more reactors and generators inside of them than any three ships of a similar class, their devastating plasma weaponry and superior numbers allowed them to smash through any defensive fleet that had ever attempted to oppose them, while stealth, firepower and surprise had allowed them to crush anything that attempted to breach into their space before it had managed to get its shields spun up.

The enemy force was small, that certain but something becoming alarmingly apparent was that they were remarkably resilient, horrifyingly so. Their ships hulls could sustain catastrophic damage and they Just. Kept. Going. Holes were smashed through them leaving massive segments exposed to empty space, beams of plasma opened dozens of internal compartments to the vacuum of space, guided plasma warheads struck weapons storage bays causing chain detonations, acellerators ripped off engines or destroyed primairy weapon turrets... and those stricken ships just kept coming. "they just won't die... why won't they die..." He muttered to himself in shock as he watched the battlefield reports roll in as the communications officer cordinated fleet movements, relaying his orders across the fleet and receiving reports. The reports he was getting now were not the ones he wanted.

"mayday mayday, this is Corvette Sanja, if anyone can hear us we've been broken down the keel-" One of the corvettes reported, both halfs of the ship slowly drifting apart from each other before an atomic warhead obliterated the communications array, cutting off the communications officer aboard.

"Missile Destroyer Shaikan Reporting in, all our missile pods have been expended, we've suffered heavy damage to our main reac-" The Shaikan's communications officer never got to finish his report either as a small star formed in space, the Shaikan's reactors detonating, leaving her broken lifeless husk floating through space.

He listened to the reports rolling in, ship after ship reported crippling damage from some form of kenetic strikes and then reports began to trickle in even further as a new weapon of the enemies was revealed.

"small swarm fighters! cover us, this is the Cruiser Kygo requesting assistance please, we're being picked apart, the point defense networks are being overwhelmed! there's just too many missiles!" The Voidmaster manuvered a pair of frigates to aid the battered cruiser, lending their point defense networks to bolster the cruiser's own. Unfortunately that left his Z axis slightly overextended something which those damnable swarm fighters exploited instantly.

"Radiation signatures! atomic warheads inbound HARD TO PORT!" ordered the Shipmaster, swinging the Command cruiser hard to port in an attempt to avoid some of the incoming fighters and the nuclear firestorm that they brought with them.

"VOIDMASTER, ENEMY HEAVY CRUISER IS MANEUVERING TO ENGAGE!" Reported one of the tactical officers as the ship swung to the side.

"ETA of the Main plasma accelerator Gunmaster?" The Shipmaster asked immidiately.

"five minutes sir." The officer replied cooly, "the main weapon's recharge rate could be increased if we diverted power to it but..."

"Understood gunmaster, Hold off on that idea however. We will need all the defenses we can for this... now gunmaster, let us give them a taste of celestial fire! You may fire when ready." The shipmaster said, glaring at the ship that had dared to challenge his own.

A Ruk Command cruiser was essentially a pocket battleship, armed with a 1,000 millimetre axial plasma accelerator, that beheamoth main gun served as its primary weapon. Even without this main weapon, Jiva was a monster in her own right boasting six twin plasma accelerator turrets, eighty Missile pods, and eighty secondary 100 millimetre plasma accelerator turrets, of which she could currently bring approximately sixty to bear at any one time in a broadside battle, however she was made for head on engagements where she could bring every single primary and secondary weapons system she had to bear simultaneously almost as well as forty of her tertiary gun turrets and crucially, all of the forty five point defense turrets for a ship almost nine hundred meters long.

Thus, when the Captain of the Jiva elected to, instead of fire immediately, bring the Jiva to bear head on with the Vigil, the Voidmaster thought nothing of it, it was standard firing protocol in order to bring as many guns to bear at once as possible, relying on her heavy shielding to protect her during the manuver. Instead of what the captain intended however, he unintentionally committed the cardinal sin of naval combat. He allowed the enemy to "cross his T". Instead of firing along the width of his ship in order to minimize damage, he allowed the Vigil to fire down his length instead, for while Jiva had her largest number of guns facing forward, it was there where she was most vulnerable as well.

Under most circimstances this would be a forgivable mistake to make, in fact it was one that would not even matter, as the command cruisers shields were heavy enough to shrug off the punishment that almost anything of a similar weight class could throw these were not however, most circumstances. For once, the command cruiser had encountered something that could in fact, punch hard enough to break through it's defensive shields.

The first things to impact upon Jiva's shields were the secondary battery shots, relatively low velocity and unsophisticated rounds forged of simple iron and lead, they none the less served to weaken the first layer of Jiva's defense for what came next. A wave of twenty cluster munitions missiles followed by twenty, 450 kiloton MWDS nuclear missiles.Working in tandem, the cluster munitions filled space with thousands of targets to distract the point defense networks before the nuclear weapons split, each MWDS (Multiple. Warhead. Delivery. System.) carried twelve 450 kiloton directed fusion warheads. The first dozen of these warheads struck ahead of the rest, then another wave, and another and another, each directing blasts of ravening fusion energy into the Jiva's shielding, which, by the skin of its teeth, and brute force of her reactors, held. Finally however came the ninth wave of atomic weapons, which finally managed to crack the Jiva's shields and blow out her shield generators.

Jiva's point defense network managed to pick off sixty more of these atomic weapons, but that left seventy two 450 kiloton atomic warheads. Some of these warheads malfunctioned, others had been damaged by shrapnel from the cluster munitions, yet more simply missed, drifting off into space to become the ultimate navigational hazard. However, even with all of her good fortune, Jiva still rang like a bell when she was struck with the equivalent of eighteen megatons of TNT, and Vigil was far from done with her vengeance because directly after the atomics came what was intended to be the finishing blow. A full salvo from her main battery of sixteen inch guns.

Six of the twelve main gun rounds from Vigil's Triple turrets smashed straight through the cracked, scorched and in some areas broken, armor as though it was so much toilet paper. The slugs steel outer shells converted into a plasma wave upon impact, and due to simple Newtonian physics, outstripped the blazing depleted uranium dart at the heart of the shell as they blasted their way through her hull, before dying out, with its path cleared the Uranium core hurled even deeper into Jiva smashing through bulkheads, armories, and ammunition storage bays until it struck something that could withstand its force, in the case of shell number nine, this particular impediment was a secondary reactor wall, where it shattered into a million burning shards, igniting in a manor to a magnesium shotgun shell.

Jiva Screamed. She had managed to avoid two of the four triple turrets fire altogether due to a computing error and a software glitch in Vigil's ancient targeting hardware, but it really didn't matter all that much, the wound she had taken was mortal. Jiva was bleeding air, water, and other liquids, her interior was burning from over a dozen uranium fires and her crew complement had been decimated.

However, the Terrans were not having it all their own way either. the frigate Fortitude, had been cored out by a Ruk cruiser's main gun, her atmosphere ignited and set adrift with her entire crew complement being cremated alive inside of their ship, the Cruiser Veracity had barely survived the initial shot from the Jiva's main gun and her damage control crews were working overtime to keep her from tumbling off from the brink. The last of the cruisers, Violent had picked a fight with six enemy frigates and a light cruiser and was currently being pincered and battered from all sides by the far more nimble enemy ships, which were managing to dart in and out of her firing arcs, just a hair faster than the targeting computer could react in a lethal game of cat and mouse. Guided missile destroyer Whitman had a hole punched through her, and a dozen compartments were visible to vacuum, with vac armored repair crews working on the hull.

An hour after the battle was joined, Commodore Samada finally accepted something that he had intellectually known from the very beginning. There were just too many of the enemy ships. Not one of his ships was unbloodied or unblooded, all of them looked really as though they had been torn apart. Sheer attrition was going to wear him down soon, and if he made even one tiny little mistake... that would be the end. He flinched as Warhammer, the second of his two guided missile destroyers destroyers went black as one of the axial plasma beams from an enemy cruiser smashed its way through deck after deck, sublimating the steel and filling the air with toxic heavy metals, the air inside of her compartments was superheated to over a thousand degrees centigrade in a fraction of an instant, charring her crew alive as it punched into her fusion reactor core and out the back of the ship.

Still, the enemy ships were taking a lot longer to fire those plasma beams than before... perhaps they were being forced to scale the weapons power up...? he shook his head, with the effective loss of both of his destroyers, a pair of frigates and the near death of Veracity... he finally gave the order he had been dreading.

The surviving combat drones rammed themselves into enemy ships and detonated inbuilt directional shaped charges, punching holes in armor as a covering screen of atomic and cluster weapons were launched from every available ship, shield power was cut and the FTL drive capacitors were tapped and the jump drives activated.

The Humans had been forced to retreat. Voidmaster had been glad enough to hear about that, he remembered feeling Jiva's hull buckle and twist, smelling he burn, feeling her steel shriek as the atomics went off and then, hearing her scream... oh the scream... it would haunt him for the rest of his life.

It had taken approximately an hour for the rescue team to get the message from Jiva's command bridge that they were still alive. At first they hadn't believed it but Jiva had been a command cruiser, they were built almost as tough as a true battleship. Now however she was a twisted burned out hulk, it would take months to repair her in dry dock, if they even could. He would likely be returned to the Ruk Imperium, probably in chains however for his perceived incompetence. Fifty cycles of loyal service! this was what he got, oh well... there really was nothing he could do about it... A fifty year long career... wasted.

"Voidmaster there was-" one of his subordinates attempted to comfort the lamenting officer, only to be cut off.

"I lost almost thirty ships to these humans including my flagship, a COMMAND CRUISER. Do you know how expensive a command cruiser is Adjutant?"

"yes Voidmaster..." They replied, shrinking slightly, cowering in their corner unwilling to risk their superior's wrath again. The Voidmaster sat in silence in the empty command bridge and waited for either his oxygen to run out or the rescue team to arrive... he almost hoped it would be the former at this point.