Rubik's Story Continues
My new ship, being the command vessel for a Frigate flotilla, is not considered important enough to need repairing while our logistics facilities are working flat out to get the heavier ships back into action. I fully understand the reasoning; our forces will need all of the decent ships they have for the attack on the Kzinti home systems.
This means all I can do is watch the vid screens as they tell the story of our attacks, in conjunction with our Lyran allies. I am curious to watch them in action, because I am not all that familiar with their ships. Although the fleets are given separate targets, footage of the Lyrans in action is also shown, and impressive they are too.
The upshot is that three of the main home planets of the big cats will be devoid of military installations for quite some time to come, although the price we have paid is high. The whole thing culminates in a grand battle at the approaches to the Kzinti home world. The redoubtable Admiral Ulorf leads from his C8 Dreadnought, but the attack comes to naught when his ship is crippled and he is wounded in action.
Our forces retire and the Kzinti make up a small amount of their lost territory. This, though, is the point at which High Command decides to take the war to the Federation. There are signs that the Flatheads are doing exactly what everyone thought they would do, gearing up to help the Kzinti. Rather than give them time to prepare properly, our forces launch a wave of pre-emptive strikes. Several Federation Battle Stations are destroyed, but one of their fleets intervenes and gives a smaller contingent of our ships a hard time.
Meanwhile, Ulorf leads an attack on the last remaining Kzinti Starbase, the one near the Federation border that we were ordered to leave alone. Our suspicions about the Federation are confirmed when one of their fleets makes a sudden appearance to thwart Ulorf's assault; if they were this ready to intercept they must have been just about to get involved anyway.
Ulorf retires, regroups and then leads another attack on the Marquis' Starbase. This time I am part of the fleet, the Axe Leader having finally been repaired. I am not in the forward echelons, though, and again I watch as a series of combats plays out in front of my eyes. There is a suitably glorious moment when Ulorf escorts a D6 Mauler towards the federation flagship, a fully outfitted Battle Tug. As the Mauler goes in, Ulorf turns off in his C8 to intercept a Kzinti Medium Cruiser squadron that has obviously been ordered to go for the Mauler. His ship is crippled and he himself is killed in action, a fitting end for a great Klingon warrior, especially as the Flathead Tug explodes in spectacular fashion. This is exactly the sort of thing they sing about in the sagas of our people; such an honorable sacrifice will go down in history.
We celebrate in an appropriately grand drinking spree, and the rather befuddled crews make another series of attacks, this time commanded ably - but not brilliantly - by the newly promoted Admiral Desod. He himself would be the first to admit that he is not of the same calibre as Ulorf, but he is a solid choice.
At this point my ship is called forward to the main line. In my first battle as Captain of the Axe Leader, my flotilla is paired with another F5 squadron on the starboard end of our line. We are ordered to deploy with the slightly smaller standard frigates in front, and they pay the price: one is destroyed, two crippled, and a fourth heavily damaged. Elsewhere, we also lose a D7C to heavy damage. In return, though, we inflict considerable harm, destroying a Medium Command Cruiser, crippling a Light Cruiser, and wiping out the final squadron of Kzinti fighters at the base. We warp out, replace our losses like for like, and get ready to come in again. We cannot keep replacing ships in quite this fashion for much longer, so any more losses will have to be made up by the inclusion of somewhat less capable ships, but we are hoping the Kzinti are in the same position - and we have more reserves. The Federation contingent has been steadily whittled down in the previous series of engagements, which pleases me no end. If one of their cruisers gets up close and personal, it can put out a serious amount of photon harm.
Having now recovered from our celebrations of the demise of Admiral Ulorf, we get down to business. This time our two Frigate flotillas are deployed side by side at the port end of our line, with the fleet set up in a relatively condensed formation. Sensors indicate that the Kzinti are reduced to using much smaller vessels to fill out their battle force, with six of their small Frigate-class ships present. They will have missile superiority, while our larger F5 ships have more powerful direct-fire weaponry.
This time, both sides really mean business. We close to mutual overload range and let fly. The small Kzinti Frigates are no match for our Disruptors, and five of the six are either heavily damaged or crippled very quickly. Our D6 Mauler soaks up the damage from the Starbase, pirhouetting beautifully to take hits across three shields, but is eventually crippled by a salvo from a Kzinti Battlecruiser squadron. One of the few remaining Federation ships is likewise crippled, as their Fast Cruiser falls victim to our D7 Wing. The final act of the battle plays itself out as the enemy flagship, a Fast Dreadnought, moves into close overload range with its Photon Torpedoes. This combines with the power of the Starbase to put a nasty series of dents in our C8 flagship and heavily damage one of our D7s, but with the Feds now out of Photons, our capital ship opens up and vaporizes the accompanying Federation Destroyer Scout. It is always satisfying to see a flathead go down. We leave at this point, confident that we are beginning to get the upper hand in attrition.
Even so, the next engagement does not go well for us. The Kzinti are throwing everything they have into a last-ditch defence, and their tenacity has to be admired. This time around, they use a CVS Strike Carrier and a Battlecruiser-class CVL in the cruiser role (no fighters left), and their escorts fill out their fleet's numbers. The problem this poses for us is the large number of drones these ships can produce, and our D7 Wing pays the price, with a D7 crippled, the D7C heavily damaged, and the second D7 destroyed, in return for a crippled enemy Battlecruiser and another of their Frigates destroyed. Our Frigate flotillas keep the Federation DNL Dreadnought occupied, but it has vast amounts of power and also manages to spread the grief over two shields; its Photons cripple one of our F5s. However, sensors tell us that the enemy now has only four ships in reserve. In we go again.
And this is the one that really tells. The Kzinti deployment is a little too spread out in comparison with ours, and our largest ships are able to close in and deliver a devastating oblique strike, including lots of drones from the C8 Dreadnought and D6D Drone Cruiser, on the enemy CVL group. One of its FKE escorts is destroyed, while the other and the carrier itself are both crippled. Our cruisers are also able to cripple a Battlecruiser and a Command Cruiser. We lose an F5 Frigate destroyed and another crippled, along with a D6 Battlecruiser. We warp out, but when we return there are no Kzinti ships left to defend the base; they must have evacuated as much of the staff as they could and then left due to the attrition. On the way in we lose another F5 and two E4 corvettes, but the base is no more. I am honoured to have been part of a fleet that has destroyed a major Kzinti installation.
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