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Sustained mining laser fire strips away three segments of ablative plating. A brace of kinetic impactors smashes against your ventral armor, splattering silver-white fragmentation debris across a field of oxide-red paint. A tense judder of momentum transfer carries through to the bridge, compensated immediately by the hum of reaction gyroscopes.
<Hits sustained. Minor hull damage, full report appended. Refreshing ablatives...>
<Confirming thirty seven degree rotation...>
The response from your bridge-crew is immediate and ingrained. Slowly, the Solstice rolls along her lengthwise axis, cycling away exposed hull for sections of untouched armor plating. The maneuver was probably unnecessary given the quality of opposition you were facing here, but neither you nor your crew were eager to take unnecessary risks. You had seen arrogance play out poorly too many times to legitimately consider indulging in it yourself.
Fortunately, the incoming salvage vessels fail show similar restraint. After enjoying an uncontested approach to your seemingly isolated carrier, they had become overeager - falling into a three pronged attack wave hastily assembled to overwhelm your modest PD suite. Some of the braver vessels begin cold-launching guided ordinance. Evidently, they hoped to land a decisive strike against your carrier before your own squadrons could finish off their lumbering mothership.
A fatal decision. It would end in your favor, of course, but recognizing this fact left you feeling more frustrated than satisfied. As far as traps went, this one was poor - obvious to anyone even marginally familiar with the types of accelerations that an ancillary-piloted crew could sustain. A baseline, void-born crew could survive forward thrust of two or three gees without advanced circulatory support. Your opposition was seemed totally unaware that your ancillary pilots could easily sustain ten times that amount for several hours.
In a smooth, almost choreographed motion, the majority of your attack squadrons execute a clinical flip-and-burn maneuver, pushing constant military thrust against their forward velocity vectors. It takes them less than five minutes to cut their approach and begin their interception course.
