>>6343261>>6343600>>6343626>Battle: 19 vs 16The imperials attacked with everything they had in the area, and some outside reinforcements. Outside of abandoning other conflicts they had deemed your danger to the Empire to outstrip any utility that could be garnered from covert observation. You were outnumbered. The Civilians that were capable of fleeing had done so, with the remainder pulling towards the station for any hope of safety. Long range fire already incoming, most of it kinetic, your strike craft swarms would attempt to intercept, but the lasers were not optimal. Grachs and strike craft did not a fleet make. You would have been outnumbered, out ranged, and outgunned if not for 32 Chimeras jumping into proximity at once. It was a beautiful thing. Your crews had been training via an intranet simulators during their time hiding, and for the most part were familiar with the composition of the enemy forces, meanwhile the enemy radio chatter that could be captured indicated shock. They hadn't expected this.
Acting as a firing group the Chimeras used a portion their limited railgun capacity to meet the longer range threats, sending hyper-velocity rounds in response. After the first few enemy cruisers were cored out, the hostile group pushed forward to engage in mid and close range combat where your forces were at home.
>Knights: 14 Earlier a player rolled a 16 which unlocked a new inventory. That overdue item is now available, and you can assume it was in use. The new Heavy fighters were simply massive. Still capable of being put into carrier storage, but they were certainly not strike craft anymore. The two man crew were stored in a pod like coffin. Depending on the knight's preference, the machine may have a view of the outside world, or be entire supported by neural feeds or more primitive video feed. An alarm sounded, breaking the pilot's observation of the mechanics and engineers working. Battle!The machines were not even fully complete, there first test run would be trial by fire.
During those first chaotic moments, the heavy fighters were mixed in with strike craft and simply intercepting an unusually large swarm of torpedoes. Here an there a long range laser removed a craft from existence, but the real violence started when the enemy TILE fighters got into the mix. The unmanned craft were equipped with a modest particle beam and around improvements. A few heavies went down as their particle screens were overwhelmed, panicked and tactical jumps took them in to another fur ball. Quickly though, the pilots grew accustom to actual combat in their new craft and began trusting the strike craft to handle lesser problems.
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You looked out a view port, overlaid with holographic data. Small explosions blossomed like fireworks in the distance. It was likely this would be remembered as a significant battle in the war. The battle of Ex-Nihilo.
