Meerclaw's War: Second Log Entry

The respite offered us by the Lyrans' disengagement is put immediately to good use. We have done well locally, with the two enemy Destroyers that engaged our little carrier force having disappeared from our sensors. They did not explode, which means that our drone assault was enough to cripple them and force them into silent running to escape, but not enough to destroy them entirely. The same cannot be said of another pair of Destroyers that encountered the force of Sabre's fury; the Strike Carrier's full squadron combined with its own formidable weaponry to reduce the two enemy ships to dust. The Lyrans must have decided to leave due to the removal of four ships at the same moment.

We sweep our immediate area, and to our relief we manage to retrieve the intact cockpit escape pods of our two friends, Sr'esint and Prash. Like the fighters of all the major powers, our cockpits have in-built safety releases. When the shipboard computer detects massive incoming, it ejects the cockpit from the main body of the fighter, simultaneously jabbing the pilot with a sedative to keep him alive for a couple of days; during that time, recovery can be attempted. It's not quite suspended animation as such, but it is an effective way of conserving oxygen supplies. We are not callous; the lives of our precious volunteer pilots matter more to us than the fighters themselves. Attrition units can be replaced; highly trained and motivated pilots are harder to come by, and are one of our most precious resources. In fact, good reflexes can pre-empt the computer's decision to eject, and lives have been saved because of manual ejections in anticipation (especially) of Lyran ESG overruns.

Returning to our little Escort Carrier Seer allows us to witness the scenes from elsewhere in the battle zone. I discover that the aftermath of combat is more painful and exhausting in some ways than the fighting itself. The rush of adrenaline is over, and what remains is caring for the wounded and seeing with one's own eyes the devastation wrought on previously pristine ships. In our case, the Battlecruiser Pulsar is a gutted wreck, somehow still held together by its intact central warp engine. Its two other nacelles are shattered completely, and one can see right through its hull into space on the other side at several points. It transpires that the Pulsar had the misfortune to encounter a fully-charged Lyran Battlecruiser at close range. The word 'battlecruiser' is something of a misnomer when applied to the Lyrans. Basically, to make one they cut a Light Cruiser in two and place a large central component in between the two former catamaran hulls. The result is a nightmare that is much more powerful than our own battlecruisers. That thing approaches a dreadnought in size, and carries four ESGs. These caused the damage to the Pulsar, which lost a good sixty crew in the exchange.

Our other casualties include severe damage to the Light Cruiser Mystic, whose Captain R'nesint is a well-known firebrand. Watching the vidrecords in the debriefing, I see him charging the enemy fleet only to be hit by a hail of disruptor bolts. His voice can be heard shouting "What are you worried about? They haven't even crippled us!" as he smoothly orders his vessel to sideslip with its only remaining intact forward shield towards a Lyran Light Cruiser. His attack has already been dubbed 'the dance of the Mystic'.

The Sabre's fighter squadron fared far worse than our own, smaller contingent. Stationed in the centre of our fleet, the carrier group was able to destroy two enemy Destroyers completely, but the attack rendered the fighters vulnerable to a full ESG sweep by an enemy Heavy Cruiser. We lost seven of the twelve fighters; two to energy weapons and five to the ESGs because they were already damaged. Somehow, though, all seven pilots managed to eject in time, so none lost his life.

These are sobering thoughts. If the enemy had remained just a touch longer, much of our fleet would have been in trouble. It is almost certain that the Mystic would have been destroyed, along with a couple of nearby Frigates; the enemy was just too strong in that part of the battle. Our own fighter contingent was being lined up for an ESG run by a Light Cruiser, and that could only have ended badly. As it was, though, the Lyrans disengaged, probably as a pre-set plan.

Now all that remains is for us to return to the Battle Station for repairs. It should just about have enough materials on hand to repair the Mystic and rebuild most of the Pulsar. Fighters can also be replaced, and fortunately there are no casualties among the pilots themselves. 

But it could have been so much worse.