Homeworld Conflict

by Lily Lain

...And War's Crushing Tides

Group three has encountered the enemy units.
The nearby Probe has stopped responding, it had been destroyed.

“Give me the direct feed.”

Ten Cloaked Fighters, now with their cloaks off, were flying in a claw formation. Now at the backmost end were the Drone Frigates and the Support Frigate, both protected by the Spectres and supporting them in a strange, mechanical symbiosis.

Both the Support and Drone Frigates were quite alike in design. They both had the cuboidal body, at one of its ends a semicircle of the command bridge was placed. From the main body, extended downward from the back of the ship were the generators, and in front respectively a hemisphere that helped steer the drones around the Drone Frigate, and the output of the Repair Beam of the Support Frigate.

While most of the spare room in Drone Frigate was occupied by, well, drones. The Support Frigate had to sacrifice a lot of its crew space for engineering bays, spare pilot quarters, and docking bays.

“The figures were incorrect, Fleet Command. There are over twenty enemy units,” reported one of the Spectre pilots in a strangely calm voice.

“Twenty-three,” responded Fleet Command. “The Probe was destroyed before more units arrived. We can see no more approaching at the radar, though. This is all you’re going to face thus far.”

The Spectres darted left and right as the Corvettes approached, leaving the bigger Frigates exposed. As was expected, the Corvettes split up evenly to engage all targets.

“Spectres, evasive manoeuvres. Drone Frigates, launch the drones. Support Frigate, remain behind the Drone Frigates. Prepare the Repair Beam.”

Out of each of the Drone Frigates came out a swarm of twenty-four drones that were all steered by their respective hivemind. It would be alien, frightening even, for an unwary passerby to see all these drones trained on a single enemy ship as if they were one entity, as if their sole purpose was the hunger for scrapped metal and burned circuits.

The Spectre formations broke, each darting in their respective direction, with only ship computers stopping them from crashing against each other or the enemy, where mortal minds would fail to comply.

Every once in a while a salve would be fired at one of the hemispheres. Either it crashed mightily against the blue shielding, making it waver, or it shattered both the shield and the hemisphere. But if the fire wasn’t concentrated, it merely formed small ripples, doing no more harm than rain would to the ocean.

The Drone Frigates, despite their strong hull, were suffering hit after hit. The Support Frigate had its repair beam directed at the other ships, desperately scrambling whatever pieces of metal could be melded back into their hull. It wasn’t spared though. Multiple distilled light missiles had impacted it, sending some of its Fighter landing pods down onto the ground below.

Drones unable to focus on targets.
Drone Frigates are easily rendered inefficient.

The pilots couldn’t agree more as all the Frigates were nearly falling apart at that point.

The agile Spectres fared better, though. They moved into tighter formations and focused to take the enemy ships down one-by-one, and one-by-one, the hemispheres shattered into tiny, reflective pieces, leaving their horrified pilots to flee to safety. One-by-one, the Corvettes ran from the battlefield.

“Spectres, relieve the Drone Frigates. How far away from the battlefield is group three?”

Two kilometres south.
Suggested separation of the Interceptors to aid on the battlefield.
They should arrive in five minutes.

“Keep the Interceptors in place. We can’t risk the Ion Beam Frigates. Drone Frigates, what’s your status?”

“Ma’am, this is Hivemind. We’re picking ‘em off, but the damage is high. Some of the drones are downed, and some we don’t have the capability to control. We can’t make replacements right now. Crew down to sixty percent. Overlord lost contact, but is still intact.”

“Will you hold on until the end of the battle?”

“Yes, ma’am. But we won’t make another one.”

15 enemy Corvettes remaining.

12 enemy Corvettes remaining.

10 enemy Corvettes remaining.

“Give me the status report.”

Overlord is operational. The drones are being reassembled, the contact is back online. Half of the crew is down, but it can function. The hull is being repaired by the Support Frigate.

Hivemind is operational. The drones are being reassembled and the electronics repaired. 40% of the crew is down, but it can function. The hull will be repaired by the Support Frigate.

Support Frigate low on hull integrity, two landing pods destroyed. Will repair itself.

Four Spectres are being repaired by the Support Frigate. Five of them are down.

Three enemy ships are fleeing.

“Send proximity detectors after the fleeing ships. I want to know where they’re going.”

Sending nearby proximity detectors at maximum detection range after the enemy starships.

5 enemy Corvettes remaining.

Group four, multiple targets approaching at your radar.

“Sajuuk, let these be birds,” muttered an Ion Cannon Frigate pilot.

15 targets in range.
19 targets in range.
26 targets in range in total.

Group three is still engaging the enemy units.

“Group four, move as fast as possible toward group three. Full power to the engines. Evade the enemy ships until rejoined.”

Calculations prove the battle is impossible to win without major losses.

“Move additional Interceptors and Spectres there. All we have!”

Grouping Interceptors.
Interceptors en route.
Grouping Cloaked Fighters.
Cloaked Fighters—

Multiple enemy units approaching the Griffin Capital.
Detecting over 2 351 enemy ground units massively moving toward the Capital.
Detecting over 43 enemy starships. Number rising.

“Begin mass Cloaked Fighter production. Send the Missile Destroyers toward the Griffin Capital.”

Inhibitor no longer functional against the enemy starships.

Multiple Fighters down.
Casualties increasing.
More enemy units incoming.

There was only silence for a moment as the Fleet waited for orders.

“Place a Heavy Cruiser and three Ion Cannon Frigates over the Equine capital,” said Fleet Command.

Fleet Intelligence didn’t object.

“Place an Ion Cannon Frigate over every major Equine and Griffin city. Keep them out of enemy reach with Cloaked Fighters and Interceptors.”

Silence persisted.

“Move all of our remaining interceptors with them for escort.”

Executing orders.

“Fire off every Ion Cannon Frigate that the enemy manages to get closer to.”

Understood.

A single Ion Cannon Frigate is capable of turning each of these cities—

“Execute the order.”

Proceeding.

Comments

[SurpriseKitty]

More?

[Lily Lain]

7567975

Not today. But I'm posting the whole story this time, so stay tuned for updates (it gets real fun at the end, heh).

7561803

Fleet had its reasons for acting as it did, but you're right, it doesn't excuse their actions. I never wanted to write the story giving a clear view of who is "the antagonist", which is why the readers often take either side, and that's what I intended.

I'm also very glad to see both of you back. I thought I'd lost 90% of my audience with the hiatus, but apparently there is still that 10%

[Starcat5]

7568058
To be fair, this fic was on my Read Later pile until the hiatus was over. That fact wasn't intentional on my part, simply odd timing on my part.

[Taltharius]

Ah, Drone Frigates...

The inherent weakness of its design is what led Kiith Somtaaw to develop the Hive Frigate, during the Beast War. Instead of numbers, the Hive Frigate uses a smaller number of agile, fighter-like 'Swarmer' drones (the name comes from the fact that, in the attempts to produce a superior combat drone, Somtaaw engineers observed combat footage of the Kadeshi Swarmer, and used it as a base for the final design of the Swarmer-class Attack Drone).

Due to the space saved by reducing the number of drones, the Hive Frigate was able to be equipped with two medium Mass Driver weapons, fixed in a forward facing position (they would later be upgraded to Energy Cannons, during the Beast War). Thus, unlike its predecessor, the Hive Frigate isn't rendered totally helpless if its drones are destroyed.

[Advent Link]

7568058 mwuhahahaha! You underestimate my love for reading and my bull headed tenacity.

In all seriousness though, glad you're back.

[Lily Lain]

7568880 7568260

I'm making sure you all get the full story this time. Thank all of you guys ^^

7568337

Yeah, I personally never trusted swarmers in-game. The idea here was that the drones had a decent range of operation, and could focus their fire on a single point, while dodging the slow-flying missiles. Thing is, the Griffin corvettes were fast enough to charge the swarmers themselves and blow them to pieces.

Oh, and sorry for the lack of a chapter yesterday. I figured I wanted to write it down after getting some sleep, but "some sleep" ended up 18h