Selia was standing outside the room in the corridor trying to sort out her feelings and thoughts. She wasn’t sure how it happened, but she had been roped into giving the fleet officers a briefing on Cylovan ship types and variants. The room she was standing outside of was a large briefing and conference room on deck three. It had enough seating for the officers and a large podium. Behind the podium was a large screen and several projectors were installed in the room to project images above the podium. Finally she just reached for the control and entered. The briefing hadn’t started yet, so she took her seat and waited for the meeting to begin. Someone had taken her tentacles into account and altered a seat for her to be more comfortable.

Countryman walked in a couple minutes after she sat down and began the meeting. The projectors turned on and displayed the image of the damaged Cylovan cruiser.

“Today’s briefing covers a new tactical mission. Our primary objective is to be capture the ship shown here. These Cylovans appear to be a significant threat to the fleet, so this is primarily an information gathering mission. We need that cruiser to gather more information on their technology and more importantly their motives. Now Selia if you will, brief the officers on Cylovan ships,” said Countryman.

Selia got up and took up the spot at the seat and pressed the button to shift holo slides. A moment later the image of a Cylovan fighter was projected instead of the damaged cruiser. “The Cylovans rely heavily small fighters in combat. This is the swarmer, the mainstay fighter of the Cylovan navy. A perfect sphere with a diameter of six meters, and extremely fast and maneuverable. Each fighter is armed with two Light Disruption Rays. These ships are not much of a threat on their own, but in numbers they can bring down even mighty battleships. These fighters have a larger cousin called the Heavy Swarmer that is virtually identical, but carries heavier guns and thicker armor,” said Selia as she changed the image to show the Heavy Swarmer.

“You won’t have to worry about the larger cousin fighter. This type of cruiser doesn’t carry them. The cruiser itself, is a type three cruiser. I know that doesn’t mean much to you, but the cruiser three is often employed as a flagship leading their smaller attack fleets. The type three has a diameter of 4800 meters, and has an outer shell of neutronium laced duranium plating two hundred of your meters thick. The ship is equipped with a standard class one cylovan warp drive, and the less versatile class one hyperwarp drive. The ship doesn’t have the power plant for the more powerful and useful class twos. For reference a class one can only open a conduit for travel between two points, while the class two can generate new ones. The ship is heavily protected by four main Adaptive Ion shield generators. Ion based energy shielding is remarkably strong and can cycle quickly, allowing the ship to soak up phenomenal amounts of damage. These shields are the ships first line of defense. Here along the equatorial band of the sphere are the hangar bays. Eight bay doors evenly spaced, and optimized for combat carrier operations. Her massive internal hangars can house a total of 4800 fighter craft. The ship has twenty four disruption beam arrays for ship to ship combat. Be careful of their disruptors, unlike traditional versions theirs are designed to remodulate in order to maximise effectiveness against their target,” said Selia.

“What kind of yield can we expect from that cruisers guns?” asked one officer.

“What is their range, and how often do they cycle?” asked another before she could answer.

“They have a cycle of 32 seconds, a two second recharge and can fire a sustained beam for thirty seconds. They have a fairly high yield. It is primarily an anti hull weapon and direct hits to the hull do massive amounts of damage, but it is only moderately effective against shields. Which is why all Cylovan ships carry a shield disruptor, which fires an energy beam that drains shields. The shield disrupter is part of their beam array, and modulates the beam for anti-shield, but makes it completely ineffective against hull and armor. The cruisers beam weapons have an effective range of seventy five thousand kilometers. Larger ships can support more powerful beam cannons with even greater range and power,” said Selia.

“A shield disruptor, I didn’t encounter it during my engagement with the cruiser, but then again we don’t use shields. While those Mydori use fairly powerful deflectors instead of shields,” said TR-108 who as a ship captain was attending the meeting.

“I noticed, most races don’t go as far down the powered ship armor path as you did. So it will take them longer to adapt their weapons to counter your particular type of hull plating, but they are very good at finding ways to drain defenses quickly,” said Selia.

“Moving on then. The cruiser three we are targeting is located in a system, just nineteen lightyears from here. Which puts it well inside striking distance. For this mission we are splitting the fleet, the Enterprise and four of our escort cruisers along with two wings of Firebirds will jump to the system and engage the cruiser. We will enter the system on a stealth vector at warp six, and drop out of warp here just a few thousand kilometers from the fourth planet. The cruiser is here near the third planet conducting repairs. Our Firebirds will be the leading wave of our attack, and will close on the ship in a classic lancer assault formation at sublight. Their objective is to disable the shields,” said Countryman.

“Excuse me, lancer assault formation?” asked Selia curious.

“It is a classic space formation that we have used since the Second Colonial war, which for reference happened roughly a hundred and fifty years ago. Back then ships were getting faster and space tactics were evolving. The Lancer Formation is a double spear formation that excels at maximizing frontal firepower, while minimizing the fleets frontal profile.. It is often used by fast ships to punch holes through enemy lines,” said Countryman. Selia than told him that she understood and Countryman continued with the briefing.

“As soon as our Firebirds knockout the shield generators, the Enterprise and our four cruisers will warp into battle range. We will target and disable their primary systems,” said Countryman.

“That armor is two hundred meters thick and the shield generators are pretty deep in the superstructure can a firebird actually knock them out?” asked the commander of the SFS Battlehawk. The namesake ship of the Battlehawk class of cruisers. A young woman by the name of Shiro.

“We have run multiple simulations, the Firebird’s main guns actually have the best penetration of any weapon in the fleet against that armor. Unlike the heavy guns on a Battlehawk that failed to fully penetrate on impact, the Firebirds high power cannons can punch through the plating if we overcharge the cannons,” answered Countryman. The Firebirds were equipped with a supercharger for the main guns, that more than doubles the yield and fire rate of the cannons. Downside is that superchargers tend to cause overheating which means after using the superchargers, the guns would need time to cool before they could be fired again. The tech was not exactly new either having been in use since the third colonial war with ships like the EFS Yamato having been equipped with early versions of the device. Typically a supercharger would increase the yield and fire rate for sixty seconds, and then the guns would have to cool for the next five minutes. Making them very useful devices when you need that extra punch, but less valuable when you need a sustained fire rate. Which is why they are rarely if ever installed to point defense weapons, but almost always installed on heavy guns.

“If the Firebirds have such good chances, why are we risking our cruisers and the Enterprise?” asked another captain next to Shiro.

“Easy our cutting beams have shown to have the second best penetration against that armor, and are significantly more precise. Which will allow us to cut through the plating and disable their systems,” said Countryman answering the question. The rest of the brief was spent working out the final details of the coming engagement. Including going over the details of the boarding operation that would follow the disabling of the cruiser. Near the end Countryman gave the rest of the fleet not going on the mission to rendevouz with the Enterprise as soon as the carriers finished their shakedown cruises.

Eighteen hours after the briefing on the Enterprise. Stepping onto his bridge and relieve the watch officer the union captain approached the conn and asked, “Has any change happened with the cruiser?”

“None, sir. The enemy continues to hold position in orbit of the planet,” reported his tactical officer.

“I still can’t believe the amount of damage someone inflicted on that ship,” muttered his first officer just barely in earshot. He felt the same, sure they had managed to sink a few of those cruisers. However in every case it had required a large fleet of over a thousand ships to breakthrough those shields, and then a massive concentrated missile barrage to destroy one of those cruisers. He and his officers had read the report about the battle that damaged the ship. As a result he was aware that this damage came from a mere three ships, that didn’t need hours of bombardment to bring those shields down.

As for why he was here, it was to keep an eye on the ship. He knew the cruiser was likely aware of his presence here, but it was well known that the Cylovans ignored those they didn’t consider a threat or a target. His ship was to small to constitute a threat, and they had done nothing to make themselves look like a target. He was brought out of his thoughts when one of the officers suddenly shouted about the ships power signature spiking. He checked his own screens and watched as it suddenly raised shields and powered its weapons. A second later it fired an energy beam into nowhere. He didn’t see anything get hit and the beam dissipated into space without striking something. Then another beam fired into space with the same result, and he doubted this was just a weapons test. The Cylovans don’t just fire at nothing for no reason.

Turning to his science officer he ordered a high intensity scan for stealthed ships. A few seconds later the scan was completed and revealed nothing. Which meant that either A) the Cylovans were malfunctioning and shooting at nothing, or B) they were under attack by ships using a method of active stealth their sensors couldn’t penetrate. He was pretty sure it was the later over the former. He knew of stealth methods that his sensor wouldn’t be able to penetrate, but he had never heard of a Cylovan ship malfunction like this. His thoughts were confirmed a minute later when one of the stealthed ships opened fire. Blue lightning like bolts slammed into the Cylovan shields and within seconds they collapsed with a brilliant burst of light.

Then the entire fleet opened fire and making them visible to the Mydori sensors. High energy blue bolts slammed into the hull of the cruiser in rapid succession. Her hull plating fracturing and buckling where the bolts impacted the plating. The damaged plates were punched clean through and the bolts tore deep into the hull. The cruiser actively returned fire, and the birds of prey broke off in different directions. Several taking glancing blows from the cruiser, which was having difficulty getting a weapons lock on the heavily armed frigates.

The captain listened to the shouts of his crew as he observed, a battle between the Cylovans and an unfamiliar alien race. The ships looked similar in some aspects to the ships seen in the report he had read about a previous battle in which unfamiliar alien ships engaged the Cylovans. The very same ones he knew had been responsible for the cruisers damage in the first place.

“Incredible, if these readings say what I think they do, those frigates are outfitted with guns normally found on battleships!” exclaimed one officer.

“Stop gawking at the their guns,” shouted his first officer. While another was marveling about the alien armor. Then he heard one mention something about them targeting the cruisers shield generators.

“Wait are you certain they are targeting the shield generators?” asked the captain fully aware of how deep in the ship the generators were. Each generator being nearly a kilometer into the hull. Walking over the officer showed him the readings and said, “Quite certain, sir. They managed to hit and destroy two of them in that opening attack, with minimal damage to other systems.”

Staring at the readings he saw that the officer was right, they were clearly targeting the shield generators. On the screens, he watched the cruiser returning fire and failing to achieve significant hits. Unlike with their own fleets it wasn’t due to deflectors, but it looked like somehow they were evading a solid target lock, which combined with their high speed and excellent maneuverability made them almost impossible to hit. Then the alien attack craft formed up and made another run on the cruiser, by then it had already restored shields. However they knocked them out in the same fashion as before. Two of the frigates taking direct hits in the process, their hulls buckling but neither being destroyed. As they broke off from the engagement with clearly severe hull damage. The cruiser however had completely lost her shields from the run, the generators having been crippled in the attack run.

A couple second later five ships jumped into the engagement zone. One of which was massive enough to dwarf the Cylovan cruiser. Making it the largest ship he had ever seen in his short life. And his life was short, since the average lifespan for a male of his species was a mere forty one years, and that was thanks to modern medicines. Without those medicines his species doesn’t live all that long at all. On the flipside his kind mature quickly, reaching full maturity in just three years and are highly fertile.

Instantly the new ships opened fire with highly accurate blue particle beams. The beams had a remarkably long firing time and bored deep into the hull of the cruiser. Which began transferring power to the engines in an attempt to get out of the field. They were unable to go to warp however as the drive was being jammed. Over the course the next ten minutes he watched as they systematically disabled the ship. Then the alien capital ships closed on the cruiser and began launching assault shuttles to land troops on the cruiser.