Chapter 29: Battle of Gilmer

UFP HC11 Woe,

In the tense moments before the battle, Jim looked around the bridge. The set up was different on the Woe than on the other ships. He briefly let his mind wander on that subject. Then it occurred to him that he had a command chair instead of the couch he was used to. Helm, Combat Control and Sensors sat in front of him, with Engineering and Com, behind. Acting First Officer and Captain Elect Donna, was sitting on the command couch behind him looking very nervous. He then realized that they might have added the chair just for him. He hoped that was not the case.

The Gray Fleet

The Gray fleet dropped out of hyperspace, each using their own exit point. They did this, so as to arrive at their own predetermined formations for the attack. The positioning was perfect. They only had to correct so that the Long-noses could begin their turn to orient themselves, for their first shot at Gilmer and the gate. The planet destroyer designated to take the shot at Gilmer also had to align itself to the target planet, before it could began its fire control calculations. It wasn't a perfect process, too many variables. That was the reason for the other Long-nose craft. They would soften up the planets crust, making sure the deep explosion did not get contained under the surface of the planet.

Gray Leader smiled at his fortune when his fleet exited hyperspace.

'Good, ' he thought, 'none of the federation ships are here to get in the way of the attack.'

He ordered the attack to proceed. His triumphant voice dripped with anticipation of an easy kill.

Then the unthinkable happened.

The command ship's Sensor Officer yelled out, "Large numbers of human ships approaching from are rear. Intercept in 1 cycle!"

His fleet had walked into an ambush. Leader cursed the humans! It was such treachery, such deceit. He loathed them so much, and yet he couldn't have told anyone why. Leader was furious, and ordered a warning sent out.

Carl & Paul had directed the twenty Defiant class ships from both carriers to target the Long-nose spacecraft, first. They represented the biggest threat to Gilmer, and he wanted them out of commission at the start. After issuing the attack order, Carl then followed them into battle hoping to find 'targets of opportunity', himself.

The ten Enterprise class ships went for the Planet Destroyers, with the ten Flowsman class ships headed for the huge command ship and the other flagship class ships.

The UFP Whisper, Defiant Class Ship.

Nicknamed "The Whisper" by its crew. The six-man ship became the first ship to have its weapon's make contact with the enemy. The Whisper's phasers fired a continuous beam, its twin 202cm phaser array raking a Long-nose craft from stern all the way to the bow. The powerful assault knocked the Long-nose completely off course from its target planet. However, its shields held for this portion of the attack, barely. Its shields were reduced in strength to a mere 40 percent of their optimum capability. One thing was sure, they would not hold against the Whisper's second run.

The Whisper was banking to set up for it second run, when a nearby flagship opened up on it with their partial beams. The heavy particle beam weapons slammed into the Whisper's shields and literally knocking the ship sideways. The shields held, though, and the Whisper took a moment to loose two photons at the Long-nose craft. They were centered right down the middle of the rail gun, and quickly covered its mile and a half length, before detonating in the unprotected projectile loading bay. It was the Whisper's lucky day. The photons not only disabled the ship, but detonated the anti-matter projectiles located there. The Long nose blew apart in a brilliant flash a moment later. Having no other Long-nose in its immediate vicinity, the Whisper turned its attention to the Flagship that was firing at it.

The Flagship could not believe that with all their weapons, they had not destroyed the little craft. The Flagship's crewmembers were not amused when the Whisper opened up on them, and their shield lost twenty percent of its power. Then they saw two photons heading strait for their bridge.

Then the unbelievable happened. The Whisper suffered a total shut down of all systems. Although undamaged, it went dead in space. The six-man crew had no explanation of why it had happened. A cycle later, they were trying to figure out why they were still alive, while they fixed their ship.

Thunder & Lightning

Two of Defiant class ships engaged the second Long-nose, together. The Lightning and the Thunder each raked the Long-nose from stern to bow with continues phaser fire as they passed to the front of the ship. The Long-nose lost its rear shield to the attack, and with that went seventy-five percent of the power to its main rail gun. It was in the process of firing on the jump gate when the attack started. By the time the projectile left the Long-nose it was only moving at 50,000fps. It was still on target towards the jump gate, however. The projectile was only moving at one twentieth of its normal speed. In fact, it would take the projectile two and a half cycles to reach its target at this speed, yet it was still more than enough to take out the gate.

The Thunder and lightning rolled into a precision bank readying to loose their twin photons at the seemingly intact Long-nose spacecraft. Moments after loosing their photons at the target, they drew fire from one of the Mother ships. It was more a nuisance than anything, but the crews were pissed off enough to shift their fire. Two sets of twin 202cm phaser fire reached out to the same point on the Mother ship. They bore a hole in the shields and entered the bridge killing all the Grays there. Their bodies erupted from the huge hole suddenly punched into the hull. The Thunder ripped off two photons towards the flagship. Lightning was about to do the same.

Then nothing. Both the Thunder and lightening just stop functioning, right there. They had no warning, and worse, no idea what had happened.

The Gray Flagship was not so lucky. It lost power as well, just before the photons struck the damaged bridge section of the ship. Without any shielding to oppose them, the photons took out what remained of the bridge, the crew quarters, and eighty percent of the ship's diameter.

Ramrod

A fourth Defiant class ship named the Ramrod ended up with a Mother ship in its path. The Ramrod fired its twin photon array, and followed up with its phases as it bore in behind the photons. The 'cubs' were still in their holding dock when the photons slammed into the rear of the ship, knocking the shields down to twenty percent. Then the phaser strikes arrived in the same place as the photons. The crew of the Ramrod had their phasers set to continuous fire as they closed on the Mother ship. The double whammy combination collapsed the Mother ship's shields. Then the phasers started to work their way inside the ship blowing apart the hull, bulkheads, and even a Gray crewmember that was in the beam's path.

The Ramrod was still closing with the Mother ship when it erupted into a diffusing plasma cloud. It was too late to pull up so the small ship plowed though it. The crew watched as the ship vibrated under their feet. Shields at 90 %, 80, 70, 60... finally it stopping decreasing at twenty-two percent, when their ship passed though the other side of the explosion. Their ship was singed, but still intact.

As they searched for their original target and waited for the shield to recover their charge. They lost all power to their systems. The crew had no idea why. But they did get a glimpse of a large explosion of to their left before losing their power.

The Lou Ann

The Defiant class ship the 'Lou Ann' (named for the judge from Hector IV) bore in on the first Planet Destroyer, mistaking it for a standard Long-nose. It fired its twin photon tubes twice, before switching to phasers. The four photons struck the rear engine compartment collapsing the shields and doing enough damage on their own to disable the ship's engines. Then the phaser fire started to slice through the ship, destroying everything in its path. One beam even struck the main projectile in the loading bay.

Inside of the weapon, the projectile's stasis fields collapsed, releasing the safeties on the anti-matter nuke. It was not suppose to work this way. It was a 'one in a hundred billion' shot. As the stasis field collapsed from the phaser fire, the pyro charges detonated in unison. It wasn't a perfect collapse. The anti-matter bomb barely achieved critical anti-mass. It was enough to produce an anti-matter reaction equivalent to 100-kiloton explosion. That, however, was only the yield of the bomb itself. The anti-matter spread out at light speed, seeking normal matter to react against. It found all it needed before it even reached the outer hull of the Planet Destroyer. The resulting explosion was the size of a small sun. The resulting plasma bubble raced out to claim its second victim, the 'Lou Ann'. The crew never knew what happened, because in 'less than two shakes' every atom in of the ship was vaporized. The plasma explosion reached out farther, taking out its third and forth victims, two Gray flagships. The bubble extended even further, engulfing another battling Long-nose and Defiant pair. It also clamed one more Long-nose and the 'Dojo', another Defiant class ship, before the plasma reached maximum effective range, and began to disperse.