Homestar Saga

Chapter 11: Suicide Run

The human employed the same tactics as before. Longfire and Troubleshooter whittled down the Klaath Frigates at a distance, while Gunzerker mulched the Corvettes. When the Corvettes were killed, the battlecruiser hit Frigates until the swarm of Fighters and Raiders came out to play. After pulverizing the small ships, Gunzerker focused fire on the Destroyers in the back of the Klaath fleet.

Yvian and Mims plied their guns as well, shooting at whatever ship the human's battlecruiser was targeting. Lady and The Encounter didn't have near the firepower of their heavy hitter's Rapid Artillery Arrays, but they still outperformed the beam weapons on their frigates. That was the trouble with beam weapons. They dealt very little damage compared to the vast amount of energy they consumed. They were mostly only good for swatting fighter class ships at long range.

The Klaath Destroyers closed the distance, pounding on The Gunzerker. It's shields, a mere twenty eight percent at the start of the fight, fell rapidly. The big cruiser managed to kill one of the Destroyers, but the remaining eight Frigates joined the fray. Their concentrated fire more than made up for the loss of one Destroyer's guns.

Yvian's pulse pounded as she watched Gunzerker's shields tick down. Eighteen percent. Fifteen percent. The second Destroyer exploded. Eleven percent. Nine. The cruiser was doing everything it could, using the best tactics available. It would not be enough. Six Frigates left. Shields at six percent.

There were two Frigates left when the shields fell. A second later, there was only one. One was enough. Beam weapons carved through The Gunzerker, furrowing trenches across its armored frame. Through the comms, she could hear Captain Mims issuing a string of curses as the big ship poured everything it had into silencing the last enemy. Several seconds passed as the Klaath beams bored into the cruiser, and the cruiser hammered on the Klaath. The Klaath broke first. Its shields shattered and its frame fell apart under the combined might of forty eight Rapid Artillery Arrays.

"Well," Mims said, "That was a little closer than I'd like."

"You think?" Yvian's heart was still pounding.

"Let's see what the damage is." Yvian scanned the battlecruiser so she could see what the human was seeing. "Shield generator took some damage. Three RAA turrets are offline. Engines... the engines. God damn it!" The human started cursing again. "They took out our motherfucking engines!"

"Shit." The Gunzerker was still in motion, but it wouldn't be able to accelerate or maneuver. "Do we have a way to fix it?"

"Not in time." Mims muttered a few more choice curses. "Repair drones are already on it, but it'll take at least two hours to get Gunzerker mobile again. We're gonna have to move forward on our own."

"That sounds..." How to put it? "Risky."

"It's Fucking Dangerous is what it is," Mims agreed. "But that portal's got to be shut down and we're the only ones close enough to do it. We don't have the forces to deal with the Klaath that are already here. Whatever's coming through that thing'll make the whole sector its bitch."

"Uh..." Lissa spoke up. "About that..."

"What?" Mims asked. Yvian focused sensors on the area in question. A river of Klaath Klusters spun a circle two hundred kilometers wide. Sixty Destroyers and tens of thousands of other ships patrolled the circle. Inside the circle was a dimensional rift. A portal.

"The good news is, we're dealing with Queenships instead of some new monster we've never seen before." Yvian focused the view further. A series of nine kilometer spheres connected to each other, forming a straight line sticking out of the portal. A spiral wrapped around the spheres, three kilometers high and a hundred meters thick. The top two hundred meters of the spiral's edge tapered, thinning down to resemble the edge of a blade. Three and a quarter spheres were sticking out of the portal. Seven more bladed shapes had made similar progress. "The bad news is, there's eight of them."