Blood Impulse

Part 23.1 - REINFORCEMENTS

Wilkerson Sector, Battleship Singularity

For an instant, the ships slid by in silence, the Singularity a void-like reflection of the Anaphora. Darker in color and harsher in angles, the Singularity's torn bow was a stark comparison to the Anaphora's flawless gray.

Magnetic tethers began to fly, and silver boarding pods skated along them, aiming for the gaps in the Singularity's damaged armor, filled with armed Marines eager for a fight.

The Anaphora, below, didn't bother sending personnel. The moment she had a firing solution, she emptied a full broadside into the Singularity's back. The domes of the old battleship's main battery guns shunted the rounds aside, leaving them to pound into the nearby armor. Minor explosions and flickering electrical surges littered the area, some reward for the effort, but that was the difference between a ship built to control territory and a ship built to win a war: for the Anaphora, one broadside wasn't enough.

For the Singularity, it was.

With a flash, her massive guns fired. Their numbers were less than half that of the Anaphora's, but they were far larger. The rounds punched straight through the Anaphora's armor, shredding apart the gun deck. Main battery guns were sheared from their mounts, barrels severed and left to drift by the swelling explosions. The mere impact was enough to shove the Anaphora downward, her hull and several inner decks opened to the void. Air pulled the wires and rubble out into the vacuum, sending it flying towards the Singularity as she burned by.

However, even without her main battery, the firing field of the Anaphora's turrets rendered her a threat, so exchanging broadsides at close range had never been the point of this maneuver. It was near-impossible to disable all of a battleship's weapons. The engines were a far more viable target.

"Missiles away," Gaffigan confirmed. Launching a swarm of missiles at such close range, there was no hope of interception.

The two smaller Keeper-class ships didn't even try to help. They left the Anaphora to her fate as the Singularity's missiles struck directly on the engines, lighting a brilliant orange fireball. The damage enough to ignite the fuel in the engines, the explosion turned blinding, the violence of it muted in the silence of the void.

When it faded, the aft half of the Anaphora had simply been blown apart, the tangled wreckage spinning endlessly onward. Again, as only a computer could command, the enemy didn't even falter with the loss of another lead ship. They logically, instantly, concentrated their fire on the Singularity's retreating form.

So, in CIC, the cheers of success were muted. There was no pause between the Anaphora's death and the continuation of the battle. Shuddering under enemy fire, the Singularity's power grid was surging and flickering, even as the secondaries were patched in to compensate for the damage. Aboard, they had fires, they had decompressions, and they had wounded.

"The Gargantia is dead ahead, sir." Jazmine confirmed, realizing the Admiral had pulled the battle away from the wreck, lest the Anaphora somehow survive. If she had, then, without her engines, she would have been left well out of range, unable to fire on the away team's ships.

"Understood." As intended, the flip-burn had put them on course to pick up the away team and essentially sank Anaphora. Without engines, the ship was useless. But the cost... well, suffice it to say, the Singularity had taken a beating. If they were forced to engage the remaining three ships, walking away in completely repairable condition would be tricky, and the Admiral knew it.