Sub-Commander Falcata of the Romulan Star Empire
I am Falcata, dominella of the Romulan House of Meketo. As a youngling, I showed promise in the area of military skills, especially tactical and strategic analysis, so I was trained in the arts of starship combat. Our people have been preparing for years for war with the Federation, to keep ourselves free from economic domination by those interstellar vulture capitalists. Romulan space is vast, but sparsely populated; we need to buy ourselves time to take our manifest destiny to the stars.
Our fleets are composed of three generations of vessels. The oldest are our famous Eagle classes, old designs re-purposed for more modern combat. They have been showing their age in relation to the newer vessels produced by our neighbors; although many remain in service, they are no longer the mainstay they once were. Our relative isolation from galactic affairs has given us the opportunity to study the best offered by our rivals, especially the Federation. While we still rely on a combination of cloaking and plasma torpedoes, our shipyards have been busily producing a new generation of Hawk designs, including good carriers. Our erstwhile allies the Klingons have not quite learned this lesson themselves, and it is costing them dearly in their conflict with the Federation and their allies, races to Spinward of which we know relatively little. These Kzinti and Hydrans are well-known, however, for their employment of armadas of fighter craft, and even the Lyran friends of the Klingons are finding these hard to keep at bay in fleet engagements.
While our new designs are coming on stream, we have been leasing surplus Klingons vessels and refitting them with our own technology; these will serve as a suitable stop-gap while we ramp up production of our own, more capable vessels. In affect, this means we have three generations of ships available to us. The Hawk designs are of course superior, and production is mostly concentrating on those, supplemented by the occasional specialist craft. For example, the venerable first-generation War Eagle is still being produced in limited numbers, to be refitted as Maulers. This last is our specialist base-busting weapon, often described as a gigantic canon with a ship wrapped around it. We have traded this technology to the Klingons and, through them, the Lyrans, in return for the Klingon ships.
In common with many citizens of my generation, I have passed through our Academy training, and so I am currently assigned as First Officer of the Skyhawk Destroyer Falchion, with the rank of sub-commander. Romulan society has no time for wasteful customs such as gender divisions, so women like me are equally welcome in the military, perhaps even more so than the men. In any case, my CO is also a woman, Commander Eka, who is also recently assigned to this new Hawk-generation ship. The Skyhawk is an extremely capable craft, with excellent phaser and power capacity, as well as a large suite of tractor beams to help deal with the drone missiles so beloved of Federation fighters. Fortunately, our other main enemy, the large reptilian Gorn, are not so adept at fighter combat.
In concert with the other newly constructed ships, we are moved to the newly opened Federation Front as part of an enormous armada under the banner of the Home Fleet. Preliminary operations have seen our border forces take out several Federation Battle Stations, but that was just preparation for the main event. I know from my strategic studies that the Federation will have shifted most of their assets to contain the Klingon invasion, which has presented us with a unique opportunity to strike.
Our fleet heads for the main regional Federation base, coded Starbase Six. We know that they will already have started receiving reinforcements, but the sheer size of our attack should see us through. The destruction of this Starbase will be a major victory. The Falchion is ordered to take up station along with another Skyhawk Destroyer to protect an escort carrier, a variant of the Skyhawk that has eight fighters, have of them sporting Plasma-F launchers.
Our attack is impressive, but then so is the Federation defence. I was right about their reinforcements; their fleet is led by a huge new ship, one of the CVA-class of Dreadnought carriers that has been seen on the Klingon border. The Federation must have built a second one and rushed it here in anticipation of our attack. In the event, our ship takes part in two of the initial battles, being crippled by a salvo of overloaded photons from an enemy Command Cruiser.
As we drift towards the rear echelons, we have the leisure to watch the rest of this campaign unfold. The Federation fights tenaciously, and the attrition is staggering on both sides, most worryingly to ourselves. We lose count of the number of our ships destroyed or crippled, and eventually we see KR conversions and even some Eagle ships being fed into the fray. Sheer volume of numbers wins, though, as the Federation loses its Starbase and a Fleet Repair Dock; other casualties of note on their side include a Dreadnought and a Battle Tug crippled. For our part, I count at least eight Sparrowhawk cruisers crippled, not to mention everything else that has been damaged or destroyed. Our main casualties are a Superhawk-B Heavy Carrier crippled and the total destruction of the Condor fleet flagship. We retire to lick our wounds.
Comments
Post a Comment