To Hell and Back (Hellworlder pirates)

Ch 69 Into the Frying Pan Pt.II

Into the Frying Pan Pt.II

Astarte had been looking over some irregularities in the new reactor's output when the wave of distorted space hit their warp bubble and shunted them out of FTL. Since the Astaroth wasn't perfectly symmetrical they drifted away from the Cameo and had swung a little off course before their navigation computer realized they were back in relativistic speeds and kicked on their EM stabilizers and corrected their course. Just as a tight grouping of pulse cannon shots hit their shields, the shield bubble held for a second before the overwhelming fire power broke through and hit the Astaroth's port flank. Automated systems took over and the ship rose itself to condition four as claxons began to blear. The Cameo had been in the Astaroth's shadow and was spared any damage.

"Damage report!" Astarte roared over the alarms.

"Hull pressure is still holding in all compartments, no penetration." A bridge tech called.

"That's because they aimed their shots at our signal jammers and comm equipment. We're at half capacity on all E-war systems and comms are out." Kat reported.

Fuck! That meant they knew they were coming, and had planned this in advance. "Evasive maneuvers! Get us some fucking breathing room." Astarte ordered as she made her way back to her command chair. She felt the ship lurch forward and the pull of g-force tightly push her deeper into her chair. That wasn't right, inertial compensators should have nullified most of that. She watched as the ship's external cameras and sensors locked onto the unidentified enemies and began to piece things together. They were smaller ships, destroyer sized and smaller, about fifteen in total, more than that was hard to pin down since a lot of their radar equipment had been blown out. A short burst of info from Cameo's active sensors gave them a better picture.

"Eleven Kruhur destroyer class ships and four gunboats, calling up all previous combat data." Kat called out.

Astarte examined the situation at present, the field of spatial distortion was being generated by every one of those ships, and with their smaller size they could keep up with the Astaroth's sub-light speed, but not the Cameos. She could use her ship to defend the Cameo's retreat, once out of the distortion field they could escape and call for help. But against only a handful of Kruhur ships? A handful had kept them occupied during the attack on the Kruhur station when it was them and the Asmodeus, but they would have eventually won in the end. Smaller ships didn't have the power generation to keep up with the Astaroth, meaning they eventually would have won the fight. And besides, there was no one that could help them. Most of the Hellworld fleet was in dry dock, and the few still patrolling space were very far from the secured trade lanes into Sol. It was better to use the Cameo to fight off the attacking Kruhur.

The bridge doors opened, and Karega emerged breathless "what's going on?"

"Kruhur ambush" Astarte answered as she began to form a battle plan. "They were here waiting for us and knew which systems to hit."

Karega looked confused "That's not like them at all? The Kruhur usually target supply depots and ports, they don't lay ambushes."

"Just because they always do one thing one way doesn't mean they'll always do so. They're attacking now, and we're half blind." Astarte snapped, "Bring us around, order Cameo to our port side, we need to thin the herd and try and break their formation." She ordered.

"Is retreat an option?" Karega asked.

"No, they match us in sub-light speed, we wont be able to get away unless we make them run. And I'm not really inclined to let them escape." She said as the ship made a wide arcing turn and she was pushed to the side by g-force. There it was again; the inertial dampeners weren't doing their jobs? Was there an issue with the refit? "All guns focus on their leading edge; I want to split their formation down the middle."