Floating in space in my Taranis class Interceptor, I watched the frigates of the incoming Amarrian strike group begin to weave their way though the asteroids as they approached us one hundred Kilometers away. I continued to refine the attack plan that was being transmitted to the rest of the squadron. As I put the last touches on the plan a nervous voice crackled over the comm interrupted my thoughts.
“Can we handle this?”
Looking down at the comm log I noticed this was Wolf Eleven, Miran Fallan. Miran was new to the squadron and this was his first combat op with us.
“I mean the battleships and battlecruiser we can handle,” he continued. “But those two interceptors will pick us off while we work on the big ships. Not to mention the support frigates and cruisers.”
I smiled to myself. It couldn’t be only two years ago that I was a nervous green rookie wondering if I would survive my first combat mission, could it?
“That’s why the battleships are not the initial target,” I replied. “Check your tactics overview. Also look at the formation those ships are using. Any veteran knows we have copies of all the Amarrian training texts and using formations straight out of an academy text is foolish.”
“Look at them, they can't even stop from rushing into battle without thinking first,” a rough voice snorted over the comm. “By the time those interceptors and frigates reach us, they will have out paced the battleships by a hundred kilometers!”
This was Wolf twelve, Makkan Marrian. Makkan is our burly mechanic who some say can rebuild a battleship with his bear hands but has no skill when it comes to tactics. Even he could see that this Amarrian force was not the most experienced.
Part of the cause of the Amarrian’s lack of restraint was they did not even know we were here. Thirty-six hours ago, Wolf 3, our electronics and communications expert, Darian Lorascan, was running a sensor test and noticed movement among the dust near the asteroid belt. Upon analyzing the disturbance, Darian decided that the source was not natural but likely a cloaked ship moving though the system. The pattern matched very closely with an Arbitrator class Cruiser, likely an Amarrian recon cruiser. Since this system was a contested system, and the cruiser almost certainly noticed the rich Crokite asteroids we had recently discovered, we expected an attack to occur very soon.
When we noticed the strike group enter the system, all of our haulers and all but three barges warped to a safe spot. The three remaining barges continued to mine the asteroids but what the Amarrian group failed to notice was the mining lasers were not pulling in any ore. We had replaced the lasers with tracer beams and the three ships were only shells. Their cargo was not valuable Crokite but my squad of twelve interceptors.
Two of the Ararrian ships were Crusader class Interceptors, these ships must have been equipped with microwarp drives because they had far outpaced the other ships and were almost within fifty kilometers of our position. Counting down as the closed in on us I waited until they were exactly fifty kilometers away and gave a single mental command.
“Execute.”
Four of our ships were Ares class interceptors, these ships were positioned so that their missile launchers had clearance to fire though the shell of the barge they were hiding in. The instant I gave my command eight missiles tore out of the barge shell and tracked towards the incoming interceptors. The incoming interceptors only twitched slightly in surprise and unwittingly closed within the range of the missiles just as the missiles burned out.
The first volley destroyed the shields on both interceptors who had closed within rail gun range. The middle barge blew open, clearing space for the Ares interceptors to open fire with rail guns and a second barrage of missiles.
Realizing they were in a trap, the incoming interceptors peeled off to retreat back to the rest of the strike group but before they could move out of range a third barrage of missiles destroyed their ships.
“Yee haa!!!”
Checking my logs I saw that Miran had recorded his first kill with one of the interceptors.
“Keep the chatter to a minimum during combat Wolf Eleven,” I said sternly. I try to keep a loose crew but not that loose.
“Sorry Sir,” said Miran, sounding embarrassed.
“Nice shot, I’m sure its only your first.”
“Thank you sir!”
Behind the expanding debris cloud was eight Punisher class frigates that were following the interceptors in. Believing they had their opponents outnumbered, the frigates began targeting our Ares interceptors. Just as the frigates were within fifteen kilometers and began to fire on our Ares interceptors I gave another mental command.
“Ambush”
With a horrendous explosion the barge I was waiting in disintegrated. As soon as the debris was clear I punched the microwarp drive and leapt after the incoming frigates. Checking the scanners I saw our flight in perfect formation with the four Taranis interceptors of Wolf Pack I that I lead in diamond formation one kilometer above the diamond of the four Taranis interceptors of Wolf Pack II one kilometer below us with the four Ares interceptors of Wolf Pack III in line abreast formation following behind us and firing barrages at the incoming frigates.
Realizing that they were now outnumbered, the incoming frigates turned to flee back to the four Maller class cruisers just coming out of the asteroid belt. Unfortunately for them, the frigates were only equipped with afterburners and could not outrun us. As we entered firing range two frigates had already fallen victim to the missiles and railguns of the Ares interceptors following us.
“Break”
As soon as the command formed in my thoughts I peeled off and closed in on the left most frigate. When I came within range I opened up with my three blasters and watched as my wingman, Wolf Two, opened fire at the same instance. The frigate continued to flee back towards the cruisers but before we came within range of the cruiser, the frigate exploded. Checking the sensors I watched the other frigates explode under fire from my other ships in quick succession.
Pulling around, I aimed for the first incoming cruiser. The rest of Wolf Pack I followed loosely for maneuvering room as Wolf Pack II formed up off to our starboard. As I closed within five hundred meters I pulled my interceptor into a hard spiraling turn, beginning to orbit the cruiser so close I could note a couple bolts missing from an equipment panel. Just as my brain registered the missing bolts, four missiles from Wolf 9 and 10 impacted the cruisers shield's right where I was looking. I would have been blinded instantly if my ocular filters had not adjusted to block the light.
Taking my eyes off of the cruiser and focusing on my sensors, I began concentrating on maintaining my tight orbit while my turrets maintained fire. Using random bursts of micro warp drive to confuse the cruisers turrets I continued to orbit the cruiser only meters inside of the orbit of Wolf 2’s interceptor which flew in and out of my vision almost too fast to see. Occasional heavy laser blasts flashed past us as the battlecruiser and battleships tried to protect the cruisers but most of the incoming fire impacted on the asteroids that the larger ships had not yet maneuvered though.
As the cruiser’s hull began to crumble I pulled my ship away and fired the microwarp drive to escape the blast radius. As I pulled hard around, both of the first two cruisers exploded. Keeping my ship dodging erratically I flew in between the two remaining cruisers.
With the thudding of blaster coils filling my hearing, I flew a tight figure eight around the two cruisers, weaving in and out of the paths of the rest of my squadron. Blaster, railgun, missile and even some errant laser fire lit up the cruiser’s shields so bright that the cruisers were not even visible until their shields fell.
Shaking from sustained fire, the cruisers accelerated to full speed back towards the asteroid belts. Suddenly the port engine of one cruiser blew out, pitching the ship wildly into the second cruiser. The impact tore the second ship in half and both cruiser’s capacitors lost containment and blew the ships apart violently.
Having just made an inbound turn to fly in between the two cruisers, all I saw was a blinding flash of light too bright for my ocular filters to compensate for fully. Flying completely blind on instinct, I pulled hard around and commanded my ship to accelerate away as fast as possible.
As my sight began to clear I began to hope I had made it out when my ship was slammed hard over. With emergency alerts blaring I struggled to straighten my ship out and hold it together. As the spinning smoothed out I looked over the damage report and saw that the shields were completely overloaded but while significant damage was done to the armor, only a small amount of damage actually reached the hull.
“…thought that thing went right though him!”
“Captain, are you all right?”
“It looks like he stabilized it.”
As my mental world expanded outside of my ship again I started picking up the nervous chatter from my squadron. Rebooting my transmitter which had overloaded, I reassured them.
“I’m all right, everything is coming back on line now. Thanks for the quick repair work Makkan, you probably stopped my hull from splitting open.”
“Not a problem sir!”
Checking over the sensor readout as it came back on line I saw the situation had unfolded just as I hoped. The Prophecy class battlecruiser had turned around and was trying to work its way back though the dense asteroids. The Armageddon and Apocalypse class battleships had not entered the belt, realizing it would take too long to blast though.
Scanning my ship status I saw all green lights and my armor was now fully repaired but shields were only starting to come back up. Keying the comm I called out orders.
“All ships form up in a line with me between you and the battlecruiser so it has less targets. When we enter the asteroid belt, break up and engage the battlecruiser. Keep as many asteroids as you can between your ship and him so we don’t take much damage, just make sure to keep within rage of your energy neutralizers.”
After hearing acknowledgments from the other pilots I ran my main engines up to full power. Heading for the asteroid belt I carefully kept the largest asteroid I could find in between my ship and the battlecruiser.
Entering the asteroid belt I continued to close on the battlecruiser flying from one asteroid to another. Using my rear sensors I watched my squadron as ships randomly popped up from behind asteroids and zipped to the next nearest one. Miran often flew to an asteroid that was slightly out of the way but as we closed on our target he continued to improve.
I opened fire with everything I had upon reaching blaster range of the battlecruiser. Keeping asteroids between my ship and the battlecruisers turrets I leapt from asteroid to asteroid using careful bursts of microwarp drive. I knew that the slightest mistake would send me crashing head on into the large boulders. Even though the Amarrian ship could not fire around the asteroids to hit me, some part of the large ship was always in sight of my turrets.
The combined firepower of the squadron chewed away at the battlecruiser’s shields but our small weapons could do very little damage before the ship would repair it. Then the continuous stream of return fire flickered and ceased, followed by noticeable damage starting to appear in the Amarrian armor. The effect of our twelve small energy vampires had drained the battlecruiser’s capacitor completely. Before the large ship could reach the edge of the asteroids, the hull twisted as the engines that were still propelling the ship tore its weakened hull apart. The death of the elegant battlecruiser was a quiet one as the ships massive engines merely shut down instead of exploding, leaving the twisted hull floating in space.
When the Amarrians realized they would not be covering their battlecruiser, the Apocalypse pulled back to use its beam lasers at a better range while the Armageddon continued firing from close range to the asteroid belt. The new position of the battleships actually worked good for us. I keyed the comm and told the squadron the next stage.
“Focus on the Armageddon. Close in fast and orbit close to evade as much return fire as possible. Not all of those shots look like heavy lasers and the smaller ones might get some lucky shots in. If you take damage, retreat to the asteroids to repair and the head back in.
“This ship is likely to get a few shots in on our approach. We approach in a line similar to our approach on the battlecruiser but this time weave randomly around by a few hundred meters to confuse their targeting computers.
“Let’s head in”
With that command I located a hole all the was though the asteroid belt and ignited my microwarp drive. Asteroids flashed by close enough to touch and then I was though.
Almost as soon as I exited the belt, laser blasts flashed by nearly as close as the asteroids had been. Following my own command I began weaving my ship back and forth so violently it seemed that I could feel the fluid in my pod sloshing. I only saw my squadron take a few light glances before we reached the Armageddon and swarmed around it.
Damage to the massive battleship’s shields was happening much slower than it had with the battlecruiser but it was loosing shields faster than the could regenerate them. Long range shots came sporadically from the Apocalypse. These laser shots tended to impact the shields of their own battleship rather than our ships as the confident Amarrian gunners tried picking flies off of the elephants back.
The attack on the battleship had become almost boring. Seconds of orbiting and firing turned into minutes as every so often one of my squadron peeled off to rest in the asteroid belt and repair. Then the last of the Armageddon’s shields flickered and died.
The Apocalypse ceased firing to avoid hitting their own ship with its shields down. I had just pulled in behind Makkan’s ship, preparing to break off in an attempt to pull away the turret that was almost tracking him, when my gut turned to ice as I saw that familiar blue glow. Makkan’s ship stopped as if it had hit a brick wall and I pulled hard over barely missing his ship. The Armageddon had a webifier but held back on using it until now.
“Makkan, head for the asteroids as fast as you can!” I shouted into the comm. “All repair ships, help Makkan keep that ship in one piece! All other ships, swarm around Makkan, try to get their turrets to follow you instead!”
Makkan’s ship began to shudder under laser impacts so intense that the repair ships flying near him could barely keep up with the damage being done. Fortunately the ship Makkan was flying was equipped with an afterburner so he could gain a little speed without burning out his capacitor. Flying using his head, Makkan kept the Armageddon between himself and the Apocalypse so he would only deal with fire from one ship and the rest of my squadron flitted around behind him, confusing the tracking of the Armageddon’s turrets. Thinking furiously I tried to come up with a counter to the webifier that didn’t involve sacrificing ships.
Then I realized the captain of the Armageddon was using a different tactic than I expected and barked out a new strategy.
“Repair ships, continue to escort Makkan to the asteroids. All other ships, resume your attack on the Armageddon.”
All but one of the Armageddon’s turrets had stopped trying to track Makkan’s ship and had resumed firing on the rest of us. The Amarrian Captain must have decided that only one turret was necessary to deal with a webbed interceptor. Taking advantage of this I resumed the attack on the massive battleship but our weapons could hardly put a dent in the ships armor before it was repaired. Not knowing how soon the Amarr captain would notice he was wasting his webifier, I could not wait for the ships capacitor drained away.
Then a new piece of fortune was handed to me. As Makkan reached an asteroid to hide behind, the battleship continued to web his ship and fire at it. Unfortunately for the Amarrian the firepower was only being absorbed by the asteroid. Even after it was obvious that continued fire would not shatter the asteroid any time soon the turret continued to pound it. It seemed that when we resumed our assault the Armageddon’s captain had stopped focusing on Makkan’s ship and allowed his computer to take over the attack. Realizing we had been given a window of opportunity I tried to use it.
“Makkan, stay under cover. All other ships, target the first port turret. Full fire power.”
The full fire of eleven interceptors blew a small gash in the armor around Armageddon’s turret but the gash was almost healed in seconds. The second barrage enlarged the hole which continued growing with each hit. Just as it seemed a path to the hull may be forming, the hole began closing as more and more nanobots focused their effort on this one location.
Then the turret exploded into space as a missile punctured the hull. The gaping hole in the hull began to close but it did so slowly with a majority of the repair nanobots taken with the turret. We now had a pathway inside the ship.
Risking destruction at the still working turrets I hovered just outside the gaping wound and poured fire into the ship. Every rocket and hybrid charge fired into the massive ship resulted in echoing explosions that blew patches of armor off the ship from the inside but the battleship’s turrets did not stop firing. Then all of the Amarr turret’s fire flickered and resumed.
“Pull back! Pull Back!” I shouted over the comm, knowing what was coming.
Dumping all of my ship's power into its microwarp drive I fled from the battleship. Behind us the return fire completely ceased and a second later the battlecruiser’s mammoth capacitor vaporized the engine compartment of the Armageddon while flinging its bow tumbling in the direction of the Apocalypse battleship. The Apocalypse ceased firing as the remains its fellow battleship tumbled past then slowly resumed firing at out ships.
Why the Apocalypse did not warp out right there to summon reinforcements I cannot understand. Perhaps it is true what they say about Armarrian arrogance or the commander feared for his life over failure and was willing to risk his crew over this attack. Regardless of the reason, we still had one more battleship firing on us and this one could hit us over the entire range of our hundred kilometer approach.
“Begin a spiral approach on the Appocalypse,” I signaled over the comm. “All ships try to stay within range of your Pack’s repair ship but don’t let those big guns track you. Repair ships call out if you are getting overwhelmed.”
I received acknowledgments from all ships in my squadron and then began to approach the battleship. As with the previous approaches, it was not a smooth one but weaved back and forth though the other ships flight paths. Checking the squadron’s statistics I saw that all of the ships had lost their shields but the repair ships were keeping armor damage at a reasonable rate. My own ship dropped below fifty percent armor once before Wolf 4 gave me a quick repair.
“This is Eight, I can’t keep up with the damage to Wolf Six, please help”
“This is Twelve, on my way.”
What I had feared was happening. This Amarr commander was smarter than the previous ones. When he saw that he could not take my entire squadron out at the same time he focused his fire on one of our ships.
“Four this is Eight, we need additional help”
“This is One, all ships converge on five, try to confuse the Apocalypse’s turrets.”
“This is Five, my armor is down to twenty percent and falling… its gone, hull at seventy percent!”
I was preparing to signal the mining flight waiting at the safe spot to send a shuttle for pod pickup when Five sent another transmission.
“Armor back up to twenty percent and climbing, they’ve stopped tracking me.”
“All ships target the Apocalypse and fire at will,” I signaled. We had closed inside of the range the battleship’s turrets could track us.
As we began strafing runs on the battleship’s shields the Apocalypse accelerated to full speed and began maneuvering. The massive ship was trying to shake us off to a range where its turrets could hit us but it could not maneuver fast enough. The shields continued to slowly drop and finally failed. Our fire began blowing large holes in the ships armor which did not repair. It seemed the ship was fitted for long range attacks but had no defenses.
The armor continued to degrade and we began doing damage to the hull when all systems on the battle ship began to flicker on and off. Suddenly the ship veered so wildly it seemed to twist the hull and knocked two of my squadron tumbling off into the distance before hanging silently in space like a dead ship. Then the ship ran up to full speed and oriented itself with the next asteroid belt. I wondered if the crew had mutinied to save their lives but engaging the warp drives on this heavily damaged ship caused a catastrophic failure. The massive battleship did not reach its destination but became a luminescent comment spread from our position to the belt it had been trying to reach.
* * *
Sitting in the observation deck of the massive Nyx carrier, I gazed at the two Navy Megathron class Battleships and one Dominix class Battleship that floated a kilometer away. After our battle report reached the fleet, our Carrier Strike Group had been sent to cover the completion of the mining operation. The ten navy megathrons offered to us by the mining corporation were too good pass up.
Starring at the streak of color behind the ships, I wondered if future generations would know the beautiful comet like feature between two of the system’s asteroid belts was partially made from the bodies of hundreds of Amarrian crew men.
“Sir!”
Startled out of my reverie, I looked up to see Miran standing at attention with his left arm in a sling.
“At ease Lieutenant, how are you feeling?”
“Good sir,” said Miran who looking down at his arm. “The doctors say my arm's all healed up. I just need to keep it in a sling for the rest of the day while it stabilizes from the healing tank.”
Miran fidgeted while I gazed out then window then spoke.
“Permission to speak freely sir?”
“On the observation deck we leave rank behind,” I said waving Miran to the seat next to me. “You always have permission to speak freely here.”
“Sir, I don't understand how you knew what to do to win that battle,” Miran said as he sat down. “It seemed that we won due to luck.”
“Tactics can only determine a part of a space battle,” I smiled as I turned to face him. “The winning commander is often not the one who deploys his troops the best but the one who makes the most of his opponent's mistakes and misfortunes. We won today because we had better pilots and better luck. We were outnumbered but not by a suicidal amount.”
“So out thinking your opponent is not just knowing his next move like in chess, it is also dealing with the unexpected faster than your opponent?”
“Exactly,” I nodded. “When fighting one on one, tactics are everything. Most of our battles are not fought one on one but in fleet combat. In fleet combat, there are so many ships that the human mind cannot account for all variables. This makes it important to recognize when you are handed a piece of luck and make use of it before your opponent can take that advantage away from you.
“You showed good instinct today. If you build upon what you learned, you will be commanding a squadron of your own one day.”
Miran smiled and blushed slightly but said nothing.
Looking back though the windows of the observation deck I realized the future of my squadron was guaranteed if I could teach the young pilots like the one sitting beside well enough so they could survive until they knew enough to teach the next generation.
My name is Drethron Tolar. I command the Second Interceptor Squadron of the Third Carrier Strike Group of the First Fleet of the Gallente Federation, trained by the legendary Viper Squadron in small ship tactics. I command the most dangerous interceptor squadron in the galaxy, the Wolf Pack.