Quoted By:
Several Munificents and as many Hardcells as can be spared come about at your order, massing their ion cannons and missiles against the <span class="mu-i">High Gravity Empress</span> as the larger, less maneuverable warship continues its ponderous retreat towards its own lines. Seeing this, <span class="mu-i">Bountiful</span>’s captain takes advantage of the heightened pressure on battlecruiser, redirecting power from his ship’s guns and shields and into its engines, granting the ship a slightly less sluggish pace in its advance. <span class="mu-i">Longest Haul</span> is unable to do the same, her position closer to the flank forcing her to keep her shields up, lest the enemy Acclamators see an opening.
Even after being locked in a gunnery duel for so long against your Lucrehulks, the old battlecruiser’s shields prove to be stronger than the (similarly old) Golan SpaceGuns’ shields. They hold up for several minutes under the sustained ion barrage, all while Republic starfighters able to slip through the front line harass your destroyers and pickets with strafing torpedo runs. Fortunately, <span class="mu-i">High Gravity Empress</span>’s starboard aft shields finally break under the combined ion and turbolaser fire, allowing <span class="mu-i">Longest Haul</span> and <span class="mu-i">Bountiful</span> to tear open a hundred-meter fissure in the battlecruiser’s hull.
Though the shields quickly shimmer back into being, they’re too late to prevent not only a barrage of heavy turbolaser shots from slipping through, but also several missiles launched by savvy Hardcell captains who were able to read the failing shields better than even the battlecruiser’s own crew. Though the turbolasers do inflict heavy structural damage, something about the corvette-class missiles slipping through that hull damage causes <span class="mu-i">High Gravity Empress</span> to shudder violently. The great old ship almost bucks in the void, the lights on her bridge winking out for a moment, before going still and resuming her course to the Republic lines with more haste than before. Curiously, she only trades a few parting shots with <span class="mu-i">Longest Haul</span>, evidently choosing to dedicate reactor power to her engines and shields over her guns.
