Battle Reports.....ever been done here?

[Starhawk]

I dunno if you guys have ever done a battle report kind or just jumped right into full game stories but since the demo doesn't make a very good story I'll just give you a "battle report"


It was 2403.5 and Icara had been at war with a brutal warrior race known as the Jreanor for two years. During this time there had been only a few skirmishes between the Imperial Navy and the Jreanor fleet and the Imperials had won all of them with minimal casualties. The people of Icara felt safe, they had a 100 ship navy and 32 of these ships were blockading the only way the Jreanor could use to get into Icaran Space, and the rest of the Navy was guarding all the warp points around Icaran space. Little did the people of Icara know that their sense of security was about to be shattered in the most brutal of ways...

This is the story of the battle of the Eshrik VI moons and the tale of a great deed of evil and another great deed of sacrifice and honor.
The Ehrik system was far from Jreanor space and the two systems next to it had been scouted and charted almost three years ago and had been discovered to be empty of other races, in fact plans had been underway for some time to colonize it but with an offensive planned against the Jreanor all factories and shipyards in Icara were producing military craft and weapons of war so the plans for colonization were put on hold and three Imperial Cruisers were placed on blockade duty at the warp point.

A tragic mistake that the Imperial command did however was not to assign a cloak detecting vessel because they thought it would be too expensive and wastefull in such a secure system. One month before the battle occured the warp point at the Eshrik system opened mysteriously and closed again in a matter of seconds with nothing coming out the other end. Captain Reynolds aboard the Sierra class cruiser Washington reported to the command that he believed there was something wrong with the situation and did not fall for the command's party line that it was simply an anomaly of the warp point. Reynolds was almost begging command to allow him to proceed at full thrust to the nearest colony of Eshrik VI to protect the 42 million citizens on that world but he was turned down by command.
A month later as Reynolds paced the deck of his flagship he hailed the captains of the two devestator class cruisers that were with him on blockade duty. The three of them had been ordered to run continuious scans on the "anomoly" that had opened the wormhole a month before and since that day all they had been doing was running scans and tests and calculations and doing experiments, all of which bored the military captains and their crews. The part that made all this nonsense worse was the fact that the scans revealed nothing but the normal warp point activities and space dust.
As the captains talked almost simultaniously their XO's comned them...the reports were just now coming in and the news was not good, the Eshrik VI colony had been nuked and there appeared to be no survivors all Icaran naval units in system were to proceed at top speed to the remnents of the colony and investigate the situation.
As the cruiser squadron approached more reports came in, 41 million confirmed dead and another million missing and presumed dead, the colony had been attacked by 4 cruisers of unknown design and any shuttle or transport trying to escape the colony had been shot down as the aliens bombed the planets surface with an unknown form of energy weapons. There were 4 other colonies in system with a total of 850 million citizens and another Icaran world with over two billion people laying in the opposite edge of the system and if they were to be protected the squadron would have to destroy the alien ships while they still attacked the Eshrik VI colony. The squadron took a month at top speed to arrive and during that month the news had only become worse it was now confirmed that all Icarans on the colony were dead and that the enemy did indeed outnumber their cruisers 4 to 3.

On the end of the month the Icaran squadron came into range of the enemy, the two Devestator class cruisers flanking Captain Reynalds' Sierra. As they approached the destroyed colony the crews of the three Imperial ships could easily see massive craters and devestated cities on the surface but more frightening then that they could see the four enemy cruisers coming right at them at full combat speed.
Scans showed that the three enemy cruisers had three unknown weapons on each and that their shields were equal to that of the Sierra class cruiser. The two Devestator class cruisers were often called the Heavy cruiser class as they had heavy armor and shields but only three Incinerator twin turrets, the Sierra was a cruiser in the style of a WWII English battlecruiser, it had three twin mounted Incinerator cannons and a ripper turret but it also had less armor and sheilds then a Devestator. The enemy seemed inferior as they had less guns then any Imperial cruiser and only the armor of a Sierra so Reynolds ordered his fleet right into the fight.
The enemy cruisers came into range of the Sovereign first so the cruiser gave it a broadside of her Incinerators and inflicted heavy damage on the enemy shields. The Washington and Nevada got locks at the same time and fired their own Incinerators into the enemy cruiser knocking out it's shields and crippling one of the unknown weapons. The three Imperials backed off to allow their weapons to recharge and received a volley of odd fire from the alien cruisers which splayed out accross the shields of the Sovereign. The second their guns recharged the three cruisers gave a broadside to the first enemy ship they had hit, it's reactor went up in a purple explosion that sent wreckage and bodies flying at great speed. The Sovereign and Nevada both had fully charged weapons as the Washington had dealt the final blow to the enemy cruiser. The two Devestator cruisers fired their incinerators into yet another enemy ship knocking out it's already damaged shields. The enemy stayed at max range and were only firing the one kind of their weapon in retaliation. This time though the shields of the Sovereign failed and her number 3 turret was knocked out by the enemy and her hull was scorched. The Washington then brought her Ripper beam turret into the fray as she crippled one of the enemy cruisers completely.
The enemy now only numbered two ships but they continued to close, the Sovereign was hit again but this time without her shields one of the enemy shots got lucky and crippled her remaining engines just before one of the enemy cruisers fired an odd weapon into the Sovereign crippling her systems and prevented her from firing her guns and left her drifting in space. The Nevada and Washington pulled together again and without realizing it left the Sovereign defensless against the aliens. With neither guns nor sheilds the lone Devestator was pummelled by the two enemy cruisers with yet another volley, this time though she had taken too much and in a brilliant flare she exploded and 1,000 Imperial spacers and officers died.
The enemy closed and another volley from their guns bounced off the shields of the Nevada who returned fire with her main guns, the Washington did likewise with all four of her gun turrets and brought down the shields of yet another enemy cruiser. Then it happened the enemy cruiser that was undamaged fired her third weapon mount and the Nevada simply shut down as if someone had flicked a switch.
The Washington pulled off of the engagement to recharge her guns and within moments the Nevada was a burning hulk in space and her escape pods were launching only to be shot down by the enemy cruisers. In revenge the Washington closed range and fired a devestating braodside into the shieldless enemy cruiser and crippled it outright. Sadly her own shields had been hit a few times in the firefight with the enemy cruisers and the return volley from the other cruiser brought her shields down.

As the two remaining ships fired into each other the Washington brought down the enemy ship's shields but she had lost her ripper beam and most of her engines by this point and the enemy had rapid firing weapons that continued to pound her. Reynolds sat in his command chair watching his young bridge crew struggle to bring the incinerator cannons back on-line faster then they could normally be but it was no good when they finally brought them back on line they only managed to knock out the enemy ships crippler weapon which was already rendered useless by it's previous attack. Reynolds was thrown from his command chair as the newest volley from the enemy destroyed his bridge. The forcefield generators had saved Reynolds and two or three other crewmen on the bridge but the rest were killed in the explosion or were sucked into space. As Reynolds lay on the deck bleeding his Last thoughts strayed to his wife and child on Icara and how they would think of him for allowing an enemy ship to escape his fleet and possibly destroy another colony, then all thought left him as he glimpsed two massive spheres of energy closing on his position and he calmly resigned to his own death...
The enemy cruiser did indeed attack another colony and another 7 million died but the Sector II fleet managed to catch up to it and the other two alien cruisers which had been crippled, in the end none of the enemy raiders made it back to their homes but 49 million civilians and 3,500 crewmen from the three cruisers had perished in the engagement. Nevada 1,000 dead, Sovereign 1,000 dead, Washington 1,500 dead including Captain Patrick Reynolds.
During the following months the enemy never got passed the blockade again, and in fact the Icarans went on the offensive with the Sierra mkIIs leading the way headed under the new Washington and her captain, Leanne Reynolds the wife of the previous Washington's captain. Icara will prevail against these enemies as her newest cruisers are invulnerable to the crippler weapons!!!


Hope you liked it.

[ December 20, 2003, 18:07: Message edited by: Starhawk ]