Palora, inactivist de partid
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From: here, dreaming of elsewhere
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A flash and small shuttered, then another, almost unnoticeable in the rush of it all, but definitely there. "Trajectory erratic, hits are unlikely" reported the gunner. "Keep at it" responded the captain "we might get lucky" he chuckled as he considered the odds.
The two ships raced across space, zig and zagging as only assault ships could, in their dance of death and destruction, pushing the ships and crews to braking point.
"Missiles?" demanded the captain just as a bright flash of light illuminated the interior, the interception had been close, too close. As shrapnel bounced of the main window, he shuddered, the odds for a cannon hit were slightly better for the enemy, but not by much, but it had almost happened; in the vastness of space an unguided piece of metal had ignored the maneuvers, the interceptors and had almost taken out the bridge.
"MISSILES!?" He shouted, realising that he wasn't the only thinking about what had happened, and there was hardly time for that.
"We've got a lock!" the specialist hurriedly replied.
"Sparrows!"
From all along the circumference of the ship, dozens of tiny missiles darted towards the enemy. The interceptors did their best, but there were too many, too fast, too agile. Explosions lit up the back of the ship, but it didn't seem to notice. Even so the sparrows had done their job.
"Direct hit! Rear interceptors down" reported the missile specialist, obviously happy with the result.
"Good man" acknowledged the captain "Fire Hawks!" "Hawks away!"
From each side of the assault ship a large missile was ejected away from the ship, they fell a bit behind as they reoriented towards their target before engaging their main booster and overtaking their carrier. Unlike the sparrows, the hawks didn't evade, nor could they have done that as big as they were, as such one of them was shoot down when the enemy ship shifted it's trajectory to bring the forward interceptors to bare, even so it was too little to late, it's companion impacted on the side and detonated. For a few seconds the resulting cloud of debris concealed the fate of the enemy ship, until the mangled front half of it emerged slowly spinning, thrusters still trying to respond to their final commands.
"The captain sighted heavily as the sound of the explosions was created by the audio systems"
"New Contact at 3-3, on an intercept course, we're being locked" reported the sensor operator for that side.
"CHAFF! Helm, tur.." The captains last words were cut short, the audio system manage to produce the sounds almost as they were happening. As the ship broke apart under the impact it scattered debris, metal and flesh, among the stars.
Aboard the Enkidu the impact of the railgun was reported, the battle was winding down and there was no need for it or the other assault ships to return to the main wall, the cruisers could handle the remaining stragglers. The United Earth Empire had won again. With the exception of the flanking assault ships, the 2nd fleet had taken few losses, no capital ship destroyed, a paper tiger indeed. Within the next hour victory would be declared, it was now time for the ground invasion to begin, but with no enemy capital ships left, the Guard could handle the clearing of orbital installations as well as the support for the ground pounders. A line fleet had more important duties to attend to.
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