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It took you only a second or so to decide on what to do next. The navy man in you demanded to join the rest of the pack in it's MAC barrage to take out the last cruiser as soon as possible. But it was quickly smacked down by your rational mind, which reminded you of all the reasons why that would be a stupid idea. From the simple fact that drawing power away from your EW suite would probably kill your plans for the other cruiser, to the fact that the interference from charging the gun could have an effect on your jammers.
That left you with only one real option, and you keyed the fleet command frequency again with your decision. “Longinus to all vessels, we can’t cycle our gun, so you’ll be down a gun for now. We’ll handle the fighters and leave the cruiser up to you.”
“Understood, we’re set for co-operative engagement, pull any extra missiles from us as needed. Galaxy, Achilles, if either of you could task your AI to assist the Longinus that would be appreciated.” Commander Trafford replied, delegating the task to you without any issues or back-sass.
“Achilles confirms, setting JD on it.” Commander Buckwood volunteered, just as a series of windows on your weapons operator’s screen confirmed the incoming handshake protocol from the visiting AI.
“Weapons, coordinate with the Achilles’ AI and wipe out those fighters!” You ordered as the lieutenant took to his task. He quickly accepted the AI’s help and assigning groups of missiles to clusters of enemy fighters, and letting the AI handle the missiles on an individual basis.
All across the flotilla, missile silo doors cracked open, revealing the smallest ship-mounted missiles in the fleet. The Streak missile system had originally been designed in response to the growing number of missile-armed warships falling into innie hands, ranging from smaller corvettes like the Akita and Osa, up to larger destroyers and more. It distilled hundreds of years worth of concentrated development of both terrestrial surface-to-air and light space-based missiles into a missile that could turn at speeds that would turn a human pilot to jelly, and packing enough explosive mass to turn a longsword to scrap. And as one, the four destroyers of DESRON-35’s third flotilla ripple-fired almost two hundred of the little buggers into the void.
So to say that the covenant fighters were in for a bad time was an understatement.
120 contacts, all fighter-grade craft with superb maneuverability as far as manned craft went. The covenant CAG boss -or whatever their head of fighter operations was- had been smart, and had mixed in some assets with electronic warfare packages to help counter incoming missile attacks. And his aviators were well-drilled, breaking up into multiple groups and burning perpendicular to the intercept vector to force the missiles to burn maneuvering fuel to try and catch them. With each cluster grouped around a single EW craft to increase their chances of survival.
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