Meerclaw's War, Second Helping.

 Spring Y169 sees Meerclaw's second experience of combat as a fighter pilot. He is the most junior of the six pilots assigned to the Escort Carrier Seer and currently holds the rank of Pilot, 1st Class. This is the part he plays in the combat at Battle Station No.2 on the Lyran border:

Meerclaw's Journal, 8.1.169

Our forces are spread relatively thinly across our border stations and planets because we expect to be facing the Klingons as well as the Lyrans. Our ship and its accompanying Escort Frigate remain with the main forces of the Count's Fleet. Count R'Rorash keeps his flag on the Strike Carrier Spectre, which has its own Escort Light Cruiser and Escort Frigate. The other ships here are the three Battlecruisers Quasar, Nova and the Pulsar, fully rebuilt after its previous run-in with a Lyran Battlecruiser. We also have the Light Cruiser Mystic and a supporting Scout Frigate. This is not a full fleet by any stretch, but we should be able to give a good account of ourselves in conjunction with the Battle Station and its complement of fighters.

The ready alarms go off as expected, and I head into the hangar bays of the Seer with the other pilots for Captain C'Nar's briefing. He begins with some news: "Reports are coming in of a double engagement at Battle Station 1. As you will be aware, some of our Count's forces have been sent there to delay any northern thrust by the Lyrans. Our contingent is led by Commodore C'Rorish on the Command Cruiser Star Cluster. He has fulfilled his orders to the letter, destroying and crippling several enemy vessels before having to retreat in the face of superior Lyran forces. The good news is that he even managed to evacuate the base personnel before blowing it with demolition charges."

C'Rorish must have done well indeed, I muse to myself. It would seem that he managed to keep the Lyrans at bay for quite a while before his force degraded to the point where the ships themselves would be in trouble. I am well aware, as indeed are we all, that strategy dictates we use the fixed installations as rallying points for an aggressive defensive posture. We also know that should the local situation deteriorate too much, standing orders are that the fleet moves out, effectively trading stations for Lyran vessels and that all-important commodity, time. I took the advanced courses in strategy at the Academy and this is exactly the case study on which I wrote my capstone dissertation. It would seem that I read the situation correctly: High Command is requiring some finesse from our field commanders in what is effectively a balancing act. The big question is, at what point should the defending fleet cut and run? Commodore C'Rorish not only managed this correctly, but was able to save the station's staff as well.

Captain C'Nar continues, "However, we do not expect our own situation to be so favourable. The leader of the fleet that probed towards us several months ago has been positively identified as the Red Claw himself, Duke R'resint, and it was his Battlecruiser that almost destroyed the Pulsar. All intelligence indicates that he will be coming back for more, this time with a bigger fleet. It has been decided that we will deploy as far to the south of Battle Station 2 as possible, together with the Light Cruiser Mystic and the Scout Frigate. The rest of the fleet, in other words all of the larger ships, will concentrate in and around the Battle Station itself. We will depart within the hour, and when we arrive on station I want two fighters on constant patrol."

As we ready ourselves, I find myself drifting into reverie again. Our force is much weaker than previously, and if the Red Claw arrives with even more ships... I hastily put off that line of thought. It is clear from our fleet's dispositions that Count R'rorash has placed our lighter ships as far out of harm's way as he can, keeping in mind a possible flanking move should it arise. The defence will depend on the CVS Group, the three Battlecruisers, and the station itself. The good thing about this is that it means all 24 of our main fighter force will be deployed together - that is a lot drone missile power in one area. 

As the lowest-ranking pilot, I am assigned to patrol no.3 together with my old friend Sr'esint, and as it happens, that is when the enemy fleet warps in, and really nasty it is too. There is no sign of the Red Claw's Battle cruiser; in its stead is a huge Battle Tug, accompanied by a Scout Destroyer. These two are uncomfortably close to our position, although even closer is a pair of Heavy Cruisers. The signatures of other cruiser-class ships show on my instruments, some of them concentrated to the front of our station, and more away off to the north. It looks as though the Lyrans have arrived with the most powerful fleet composition they possibly can, deployed into three groups. 

As our other fighters launch to join Sr'esint and myself, I realise the wisdom behind Captain C'Nar's patrol - two fewer to launch means our full Wing is ready more quickly than usual. I know that when the action begins, I will be too busy to worry about what is happening elsewhere. My attention will necessarily be focused on my own problems, and our force is outclassed. Two Heavy Cruisers and a Battle Tug! One of those ships could make dogmeat out of any one of ours - the Seer and the Mystic are the largest vessels we have in this location, and they are only Light Cruisers. The presence of our fighters should help dilute the enemy firepower, and the Scout Frigate will have orders to support our Escort Carrier with electronic warfare. The one thing we do have going for us, paradoxically, is our smaller size - if we can use our relative mobility to advantage, we could tie up the enemy assets in our part of the field, hopefully without taking too much in return damage ourselves. This will be a case of strive to survive.

What follows in our part of the battle is an almost textbook case of exactly that - skirmish warfare with starships. Our fighters take quite a bit of damage on the way in, before the enemy's attention is drawn to our ships themselves. This is exactly in accordance with tactical procedure in such circumstances; the tricky part is for the fighters to survive this first phase. We all take damage, myself included. I am hit by two separate medium range disruptors at the same time, and then by another. My fighter starts juddering - another like that will finish me off. I am, though, luckier than Prash from our First Flight, whose fighter is destroyed by a combination of disruptor and phaser fire. I can only pray that he was able to eject in time. 

We stay well out of effective point defence range of the two Lyran Heavy Cruisers, with whom we have our first exchange. Those things each have two ESG bubble guns, plus a powerful array of phasers and disruptors. There is no way that our force will be able to do much more than hurt the shielding on these - we just don't have enough drones to do any real damage. 

Fortunately, our ships arrive at the right moment to attract the enemy's attention away from our fighters, and a classic dancing engagement begins. This is important because the enemy Battle Tug turns in towards us with, I presume, the Red Claw himself on board. That thing sports eight disruptors, but fortunately is underpowered in terms of its phaser batteries - if we can stay outside effective range of its numerous but weak phaser-2s, we might just survive this. 

And indeed we do. My flight is ordered to annoy the Battle Tug, so we pirouette tantalisingly across the thing's front, while the Seer dances to suit, its shields flaring from disruptor impacts, but with no solid hits on the ship itself. Captain C'Nar is taking advantage of our Scout's support to reduce the number of disruptor hits he takes, and at least three shields on the Escort Carrier spark in response. Each comes close to dropping - just not quite. This must be really frustrating the Red Claw, because at one point he turns and unleashes everything he has against our Escort Frigate, although not including overloads because of the power demands. Lyran ships are superb designs, but it takes a lot energy for one this size to run all of its offensive systems - it even uses the inefficient phaser-2s on our frigate. It does not blow, but vanishes from our screens, crippled into silent running. Behind me, the Mystic emulates C'Nar's tactics, although less effectively due to the lack of Scout support. I think the Mystic loses at least two shields and takes internal damage, but not enough to inflict major damage.

Both of our main ships are forced to turn away from the enemy; our captains have played out their front shielding. Captain C'Nar takes advantage of the Battle Tug's momentary distraction with our Escort Frigate to order our fighters home. By some miracle, we still have five fighters of our original six, although all are showing signs of battle damage. We land safely, and our little force warps out to safety. 

I have somehow survived my second major battle.