A FIGHT AFTER ALL
Alexander looked stunned the first seconds of Mudd's rant. He deactivated his holo projection.
Alexander’s disappearing hologram agitated Mudd even more. "Hiding now!? Who’s the real coward!"
Alexander sat in his command chair and urgently fiddled with his console in order to connect with Slyther. Slyther’s hologram appeared–his sinister smile was gone and in its place was a stoic expression.
"What happened?" Alexander asked urgently.
"I cannot ascertain the specifics, but it appears that elements of Mudd’s lower ranking team somehow surprised our agents–even though we took every precaution to prevent this scenario--in the ensuing struggle our agents were likely killed but possibly just subdued. In my judgment we have lost control of Mudd’s flagship and cannot hope to retake it."
"DAMMIT!", Alexander exclaimed. He banished Slyther’s hologram in a frustrated motion.
"Asymptote in 30 minutes. Power continues to grow." Fae-Dra interjected.
Alexander made an expression of agitation yet made no response. He was staring at the floor, his mind racing with anxiety as he tried to quickly construct a plan B. The avenues to many strategies were now closed… He had already hoodwinked his adversaries by leading them to believe he would surrender… His speech had been cut off right before he was going to inspire the Alliance men and women to join his banner–although he had the control codes they were not terribly useful without the loyalties of the flesh and blood assets. His fleet was significantly smaller and not prepared for a battle. Mudd’s ship was a massive capital ship that in order for the small Red Destiny to defeat would probably require a major blunder from Mudd.
Mudd was still yelling and threatening him. His weapons were powered up and a visible blue shield barrier was flickering around the entire ship.
It looked bad, yet Alexander had a history of quickly pivoting to new strategies when things didn’t go as planned. And a plan came to him. He stood and reactivated his Holoprojector. He showed complete confidence and zero fear as he interrupted Mudd’s rant. Mudd listened probably in the hopes that whatever Alexander said would make him MORE mad.
"Commander Mudd! I’m glad to see that you didn’t just hand over your fleet but instead decided to honor me with a worthy challenge. I graciously accept! I have made the claim that you are not worthy to lead the combined fleet and that my leadership would be more suitable. From a certain point of view this conflict doesn’t involve our fleets at all but is really a conflict between two men. So let’s treat it as such! I formally challenge you to a duel! I’ll even–"
Mudd had heard enough and interrupted: "Accepted!" His hologram disappeared and shortly after Alexander surmised that the discussion was over and deactivated his holoprojection as well.
This was a great development. Alexander's skill at melee combat was renowned whereas there was no record of Mudd ever engaging in a man-to-man skirmish. Alexander had relied on Mudd's anger to blunt his better judgement.
Alexander relaxed in his chair then suddenly was caught off guard by what he saw on the main viewscreen. A stream of energy cannon blasts from multiple origin points dotting Mudd’s ship and each stream would converge on The Red Destiny in a fraction of a second.
"FAE!", he alerted!
However, No surprise attack imaginable could catch Fae*Dra off guard. She used the exceed engine to nearly instantaneously zip to a position still in front of–but now 15 degrees away from the centerpoint–Mudd’s flagship and a moment later the streams converged on empty space.
The Exceed Engine is what gave the companion class ship its agility and agility was essential to fulfilling the companion class’s role. The Exceed Engine performs property shifting on the ship and all its contents. In an instant the Exceed Engine would reduce the mass of its ship to a micro fraction allowing for a substantial and nearly instant traversal when paired with a coordinated propulsion impulse. The engine could only be engaged for a fraction of a second then its effect would expire causing the ship to resume its pre exceed velocity in an instant. A major drawback to using exceed is that it also reduced the ship’s atomic cohesion when active which made the ship fragile to the point where collision with a microscopic particle would most likely result in the catastrophic destruction of the ship. Using Exceed required beyond exceptional piloting skill.
"I was challenging him to a face-to-face duel!" Alexander exclaimed to Fae-Dra who gave the complaint no mind.
A new volley of bolts fired aimed towards The Red Destiny’s new position and like before Fae-Dra elegantly used Exceed to dodge.
Alexander accepted the situation and shifted back to strategizing mode.
His first action was to send a hasty communiqué to his fleet not to interfere in the battle. As a matter of fact he made the communiqué public so that the Alliance fleet would see his command as well. He knew that a total fleet engagement wouldn’t be good for anyone.
"Dammit, Pete, Now I need you...", He hastily summoned his lower Tactical Engineering staff and issued quick commands, "Find me a way to win this fast.", then shut down the channel. The scenario was dire. Although The Red Destiny could easily perforate all twenty decks of Mudd's flagship, getting through the shields and energized armor WAS a problem.
Alexander issued his first attack order to Fae-Dra: "Sap him." Sapping was a strategy companion classes used in order to weaken a powerful defencive shield.
Fae-Dra immediately complied. She used exceed to close range with the shield to mere centimeters; she then activated The Red Destiny’s Razon shields and boosted directly into the thick shield barrier. The Red Destiny was deflected but not harmed and the total power of Mudd’s shield had been drained. Immediately after deflection Fae-Dra used exceed to put a safe distance between the two ships.
The Razon Shields hovered mere millimeters away from the hull plating of The Red Destiny and wrapped the ship in a bright yellow glow. razons were not defensive in nature but instead reinforced the strength of the material they flowed over and annihilated a fraction of a millimeter of any materials they grazed. The Razon Shields were employed in two attack variants called Shearing or Sapping depending upon if material or energy was the target. The maneuver was the linchpin of the companion class’s most common attack: it would literally slice through its adversary’s equipment, shearing through its materials and exiting on the other side.
When attacking an enemy object with a reflective shield the Razons would sap the shield barrier’s power forcing the enemy to replenish the loss with a non-trivial quantity of energy. The sapping technique when repeated many times would eventually cause the object to exhaust its usable power to the point that it couldn’t maintain its shields and then the companion ship would finish the job with a Shearing attack.
Mudd replenished his shield’s loss as expected. And he continued to wildly lob cannon blasts at The Red Destiny only for them to be dodged by Fae*Dra’s piloting.
At least Mudd seemed to agree that all out fleet war was inappropriate as he ordered his auxiliary capital ships to surround the battle zone and emit barrier shields which contained his erratic cannon blasts. Well, it might have been a precaution to prevent collateral damage, or it could have been to eliminate any chance of The Red Destiny’s escape.
"After Image", Alexander instructed Fae.
The After Image technique created 32 very precise holographic representations of The Red Destiny surrounding Mudd’s battleship. Fae-Dra used exceed to rapidly replace a random hologram with the real Red Destiny. And in a fraction of a second she would linger then exceed again to another random hologram. Additionally, she would shuffle the image positions in a random pattern. Mudd's crew could not get a reliable firing solution as each image was either a hologram or The Red Destiny’s momentary location.
Fae*Dra maintained a fury of after image leaps mixed with sapping attacks. The technique was working and Alexander could detect severe taxation on Mudd’s available power--but Alexander was already behind schedule with no telling how long the sapping would take. The Red Destiny's computer made the initial estimate: It would take 4 hours to sap the shields. He wanted fifteen minutes for the next phase of his plan.
"Asymptote in 25 minutes." Fae-Dra calmly asserted. Her present challenge did not cause her to break a sweat it seemed.
Alexander opened a hologram that displayed a searchable schematic of Mudd’s flagship. He studied it very intently. "Where is Pete when you need him..." He lamented. Then a new long shot came to mind: "computer, find an open a direct channel to Tactical Engineer Lester Mann." He said so with desperate reluctance. He thought the prospects of getting his half brother's help to be dubious and returned his complete concentration to finding a weakness in Mudd’s ship. Fae-Dra continued her dodges and attacks showing no signs of fatigue. Mudd tried a variety of techniques to get a lock or in some way to damage The Red Destiny but nothing came close to landing a hit. Alexander's demeanor became increasingly agitated.
Suddenly Mudd stopped all its attacks and his ship began to back away. Alexander was aware of the change yet did not break focus with his tactical hologram. He directed Fae-Dra to cease the After Image technique. He leaned in even further to the holographic schematics as if he thought that would make him more perceptive. "Common Tactical Engineers... Pete would have had something by now... and Lester... Lester..."
As Mudd backed up the capital ships providing the enclosing shield closed formation. The final strategy became clear: Mudd began charging up his main cannon. A ball of energy was coalescing right before Mudd’s ship.
Alexander noticed what was happening a little late. What he correctly surmised was that Mudd intended to fire a powerful and wide main cannon blast that would fill the entire shielded arena. Mudd’s capital ships would be fine behind their deflection shields but everything inside the battle arena would be obliterated.
Alexander was quick to pivot when conditions changed. Although the power core of The Red Destiny was now outputting many times more power than Mudd’s ship, none of his ship systems could handle that much power… well none of them except for the one that Alexander did not want to use.
Companion ship class ships rely on the exceed drive for defense and the Razon shields for offense, but it had one more exceptional ability, its trump card if you will. The Red Destiny had a main cannon of its own… and it was capable of accepting all of Tzo crystal’s energy output and even more. The drawback of the main cannon was that it consumed all of The Red Destiny’s energy which would cause the Tzo crystal reactor to completely shut down leaving Alexander and Fae-Dra vulnerable. The most important consideration when using a companion class’s main cannon was if the blast would be powerful enough to completely wipe out the enemy or if there were other assets in the fight that could defend the depleted ship until the battle was concluded.
In this case the conditions for using the Main Cannon were met. The Tzo crystal could create a blast that would overwhelm Mudd’s blast and cause the complete destruction of his ship. But Alexander didn’t want to use the cannon this way. First that cannon blast was for the Zell and second he dreaded the idea of killing his friend Pete who he convinced to surrender for his benefit only a few hours earlier.
He had to decide fast and since he hadn’t landed on any other options he really had no choice. “Prepare to fire the main cannon, Fae”, Alexander reluctantly said.
Fae-Dra activated many subsystems through-out the ship. The Red Destiny had to transform its shape before it could start the cannon build up and ultimate firing.
Alexander turned off his console holograms with heavy resignation. For the first time he observed the main viewscreen. He looked at Mudd's ship...and...He saw something! Alexander let out a hearty laugh and slapped his lap several times. “Cancel Main Cannon attack!” He said. And Fae-Dra reversed the process.
“I’m such an idiot… if I had only turned off the tactical readouts earlier!” Fae-Dra was uninterested in Alexander’s editorial mumbles.
“It seems our friend Mudd, in his haste to destroy us, forgot to close the hatch to the main hangar that he opened to invite us to our surrender. Well, I say at this point we accept his invitation and show up in his hangar without delay!” Alexander then gave Fae-Dra more specific instructions on what he had in mind. And Fae-Dra and their ship was ready.
Mudd’s main cannon finished its build up phase and dropped his ship’s shields just a moment before unleashing his attack. The Red Destiny seemed to make no effort to avoid its fate. The arena filled with blinding light. It lasted for several seconds then began to fade. And the audience saw… Nothing. And there was a great pause as the Ronins, the Alliance and every soul aboard the Arks slowly processed the conclusion of a long struggle and what it meant.
Mudd celebrated immediately. He restrained himself from a press release for a while to let the magnitude of the event sink in. The other capital ships solemnly deactivated their containment shields one by one. The conflict was over and now the arena had to be torn down.
Then an event too shocking to believe! The Bridge on top of Mudd’s ship burst open in a mighty explosion and from the exit wound a magnificent orange contrail grew. The contrail zipped around performing several sharp zigzags and then suddenly came to a complete stop. There floated in space The Red Destiny victorious and unharmed.
"Asymptote in 20 minutes."