Chapter 30: Battle of Gilmer II

UFP Annette

Annette had watched in horror as the explosion gobbled up ships. She hadn't minded seeing the Long-nose gobbled up, but the three Defiants had upset her stomach. She had just finished launching ten of the twelve Photons at two separate flagship. She had ordered continuous photon fire, however that stopped as the lights went out.

Annette didn't get to see the deaths of her victims. The two flag ships didn't have a chance in hell without their shields. The first Flagship took six photons and exploded in its own ball of expanding gas. The second took four photons and broke up into three sections.

Annette floated free from her chair, as did everyone else aboard her namesake. Now what, she wondered. She subconsciously knew what had happened. She just didn't know what to do about it. Well, that was what her crew was for.

The engineer called out, "System overload, resetting breakers. Total systems restart."

Everyone aboard waited through the tense cycles for power to be restored.

UFP Leah

'Hell, ' Leah thought, while passing two Long-noses to port, as she approached the flagship in front of her.

"Divide the photons. Four each, on each ship."

"Aye-aye," came the weapons officer's reply.

Leah watched as the photon's collapsed the shield of the three Gray ships before her. All three ships were badly damaged from the attack. Neither of the Long-nose craft would be able to fire their main rail guns. The Flagship, however, managed to get two of its particle accelerators to fire.

Leah watched as the beams bounced off her shields, then she ordered a second round to be fired at all the ships.

"Repeat fire, same as before," was her order.

The photons fired out. Just before Leah could see the deaths of the three ships, the lights went out.

"What happened?"

Her Chief Engineer said, "Catastrophic power failure, Ma'am."

"Well get it fixed."

"Working on it."

Leah briefly wished Jason had been onboard her ship at the moment.

The projectile fired from the Long-nose continued on its course, with but a minor adjustment when the concussion wave struck it from the death of the Planet Destroyer. It reached its target off center, clipping the edge of the gate's ring. The damage was significant as energy was transferred from projectile to gate. The gate responded by beginning a rapidly spinning rotation. Had the gate not been powered down, it could have corrected the spin in mere moments. However, it had lost all power. It started spinning like a top slamming the ring's crew outward and onto whatever outside wall was handy. The centrifugal force was more than any of them could bear. Their twenty-eight bodies were crushed onto the walls of the gate. Death was quick enough for them. At least no one suffered for long.

Gray Super Command Ship

Gray Leader was fuming mad.

'An ambush!' he thought, 'How dare they?'

He had started his rant when the explosion occurred. He watched in horror as Long-nose after Long-nose went up with the planet destroyer. Then darkness. His ship had lost all power. He knew what it was that caused it. It had to be the EMP wave from the anti-matter nuclear detonation. It had happened in testing when the Planet Destroyer had targeted a planetoid that was too small. In fear of it happening again, the engineers had 'bootstrapped' the system on many of the ships, so they could do a quicker restart of their systems. Leader had just ordered a system restart when the floor of his ship went out from underneath him. The ship had lurched forward, and he had tumbled back into the rear of his throne. The rest of the bridge crew was not so lucky. There were a few broken limbs, and two of the Grays were knocked unconscious.

"What was that he cried out?"

"Sir, I think the rear of the ship just exploded. It must have been those damnable balls of light the humans use."

His steely black eyes glassed over with thought, then he ordered, "Launch the bridge module."

The Super Command ship had the only ejectable self-powered mini-spacecraft module in the fleet. Basically a life pod on steroids, it had its own hyperspace generator. It was a long agonizing three cycles before the power came back on, and the escape craft jettisoned from the rest of the ship.

Leader looked back to see the rear of his pride and joy lit with plasma flames. He could even see the Flowsman to the rear. He surveyed the damage around his craft. He had lost at more than half his fleet, and it looked like fifty-seven of the Federations ships were still intact. He ordered that the fleet retreat home.

The coward ran, even before he got an acknowledgment from the ships capable of following. None of them got the message. All that survived were still dead in space, trying to restart their power systems.

Sue Lin had been on an intercept vector when the power died. She had seen the explosion stop just shy of her ship. Then the power went out. She hadn't even gotten a shot off, and now she was disabled in space.

She screamed out her frustration, "Get that power back on!"

She felt her body lose all weight even as the technicians began the restart process.

One by one, the ships recycled. Their power system came back on line. The Grays, looking around, saw their flagship in flames, with the Command Lifeboat gone. They concluded that they too, should retreat. One by one, they entered hyperspace and headed for home.

Had Gray Leader stuck around and keep his senses about him, things could have gone very differently for the Federation. The undamaged Gray ships could have had a 'turkey shoot', as the federation ships took much longer to restart.

Even the Planet Destroyer would have had time to fire at the planet. It chose not to, and ran after its fellows.

Eighteen of the Grays ships were too damaged to do anything, even after they restored power to their ships. Most no longer had enough control even to flee.

All in all, just twenty-three of the Gray ships made their getaway into hyperspace. None of the Long-noses escaped. And only one of the planet destroyers made it out.

The power on the UFP Woe came back on. Soon the view screen showed the carnage in space around him. Except for the Sensor Officer, everyone fell to the floor when the gravity was restored.

"Report!" Jim snapped as he attempted to move back to his chair.