>>1829662
>>1829662
>Go dark and sneak to the jump point

>>1829662
>Go dark and sneak to the jump point.

>>1829662
>>Continue full speed to the next jump point.

>>1829662
>>Go dark and sneak to the jump point.

>>1829662
>Go deep, go dark

Well, it'll probably just be easier to sneak on around. You set your armour to black hole settings, and flip end for end to start decelerating at just 3% thrust. At this speed, it'll take most of the distance to decelerate, but shouldn't take more than a couple of days.

You spend the first eighteen hours or so updating your log, then going over the star map to plot out your next move after the next system. The Order surveyed the space around its mission sector when they first established, but haven't bothered venturing outside since. It's not like there were any colonies established after the Fall, or none by any worlds within your mission sector, anyway. Overlaying what you know about recent Order ship movements, you're pretty sure you'll be able to reach some kind of friendly force, even if it's just a picket, within the next few jumps. That's assuming you stay on a straight course and don't have to deviate to avoid Legion ships, of course.

You're disturbed from your musing by one of your expert systems highlighting enemy movement- the small Legion salvage flotilla is moving, or at least was moving about 8-ish hours ago. It's taken this long for the light signalling your arrival to reach them, and then their reaction to reach you. And it isn't good. The salvage flotilla is made up of 2 cruisers, and 8 destroyers. Four of those destroyers immediately break off, and make a beeline for the three jump points your course would easily take you to, and one is heading straight for the one you came out of. The other six ships are boosting hard, and it looks like they're planning to make intercept with your known course, then head down along it until they find you. Not good.

>Speed up, and risk being detected to try and get to the jump point faster.
>Keep at the same speed, and trust in your stealth.
>Launch some missiles at extreme range at the fleeing ships to try and take them out before they can escape.

>>1829777
>>Keep at the same speed, and trust in your stealth.

>>1829777
>Keep at the same speed, and trust in your stealth.
>Launch some missiles at extreme range at the fleeing ships to try and take them out before they can escape.

>>1829792
Launching missiles is pretty un-steathy, anon.

>>1829777
changing this >>1829802 too

>Keep at the same speed and trust our stealth

Didn't realize we only had enough for 1 more round of torps.

>>1829804
Well, one full broadside each, so technically you have enough for two rounds.

>>1829777
>Stay sneeki, stay breeki
Can you guys give me some 1d100s please? Best of 3.

Rolled 5 (1d100)

>>1829850

Rolled 19 (1d100)

>>1829850

Rolled 38 (1d100)

>>1829850

>>1829850
>38
Ouch.

If you fired off some missiles at the fleeing ships, you might be able to get them, but then you also might not and the Legion would definitely detect you. So you check your camplating again and settle in for a long, nervous wait.
The threat (and your bad luck) is clear from hours out. The Legion ships spread out in a long line, one at where you would be if you had stayed the same speed, and another if you'd decelerated harder- overall, the Legion ships are about one light second apart, and you can feel your hull start to absorb radar pulses. The Legion salvage flotilla slides into your projected course with an ease you'd appreciate if they weren't trying to kill you- behind you, a destroyer, in front, a cruiser. There's another destroyers in front, and the rest of the ships are behind. You have to cut off your drive completely in an effort to stay hidden, but your hull continues to absorb more and more radar pulses, as well as lidar, but your camplates continue to absorb them.

You're starting to think you'll be fine when the cruiser behind you flares on your sensor feed- powering weapons! At the same time, a massive blast of radar hits you squarely, enough that you know some small signature must have been returned. Bugger, they must have seen you on passives as you happened to eclipse a star! Ahead of you, the destroyer is starting to power up its weapons, and the other Legion ships are either accelerating or decelerating to try and catch you.

>Try to take out the near cruiser and destroyer with one of your pulse torpedoes and try to accelerate away.
>Fire your pulse torpedoes, then go dark on a new vector.
>Go to full combat settings and try to fight your way through all of them.
>Write-in?

>>1829984
>>Try to take out the near cruiser and destroyer with one of your pulse torpedoes and try to accelerate away.

>>1829984
>>Try to take out the near cruiser and destroyer with one of your pulse torpedoes and try to accelerate away.

>>1829984

>Try to take out the near cruiser and destroyer with one of your pulse torpedoes and try to accelerate away.

>>1829984
>Pew pew then skedaddle
Another 1d100 if you would please! Hopefully the dice gods are watching this time.

Rolled 51 (1d100)

>>1830052

Rolled 19 (1d100)

>>1830052

Rolled 73 (1d100)

>>1830052

Rolled 79 (1d100)

>>1830052

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17 KB JPG

>>1830052
>73

Mindgames aren't exactly your forte, but you're pretty sure that since the Legion ships aren't firing yet, they don't know your exact position. Of course, with all the radar pulses trying to fry your hull, you're pretty sure they're going to in minutes, best-case. But that's fine, because your pulse torpedoes are ready. You align your bow on the Legion cruiser and fire off a single torpedo. It blazes across space, and the enemy ship has no time to react before the speck of antimatter is happily ripping it open like so much tin can. No time to watch, though. Thrusters flaring, gyros whirring, you bring your nose around 180 degrees, and fire as soon as it aligns on the destroyer ahead. A plasma bolt fruitlessly leaps out, licking off the magnetic field in a desperate attempt to protect itself, but it goes up like a firecracker as the pulse smacks into it. Then your engine kicks in and you're away, discarding your earlier attempt at deceleration in an attempt to get away from the trailing enemy ships. The destroyer ahead of you fires, and you snap on your mag shields just in time to deflect the worst of it, though it still burns off another few millimetres of your hull before another pulse torpedo ends it. That leaves just a single pulse torp left- your other three tubes won't recharge for another shot for... half an hour, or so, and you still have three enemy ships after you.

Plasma bolts reach out in an attempt to swat you out of the black, but the other Legion ships are all a light-second away and small corrections with your thrusters are enough to keep you a hard target. But that begs the question- what now? If you keep accelerating, you'll risk a repeat of the headlong rush from before, but you're not sure you can stealth with the enemy knowing where you are.

>Continue running and hope the next system doesn't have any reinforcements.
>Try going dark, and switching your vector entirely to make another attempt at jumping out later.
>Turn and fight after your tubes recharge so you can leave the system at your leisure.

>>1830174
>Continue running and hope the next system doesn't have any reinforcements.

>>1830174
>Continue running
A little ignoble, but we should try to get back with our intel sooner rather than later.

>>1830174
>>Turn and fight after your tubes recharge so you can leave the system at your leisure.

>>1830174
>GTFO

With your drive plume at full you look like the sun diving through the sky, but you have no time to appreciate it. You can just stay ahead of the Legion ships, but your thrusters are required to keep your course irregular enough that by the time the near-lightspeed plasma bolt reaches where they targeted, you're no longer there. It's a tense period, and eventually you need to switch your camplates to white just so you can start radiating the heat from your drive. By the time you reach the jump point, you and the Legion ships have reached .17 lightspeed.

A short jump later, your sensors clear to reveal a new system that has... nothing? No, there's the destroyer who fled, still booking it across the system. You note the jump point it's heading to- not the one you were planning on, but closer to galactic west, towards Order mission space. A Legion forward base, perhaps?
In any case, it appears you're safe.

>Continue on your way at current speed.
>Turn and eliminate the following ships.
>Maybe try stealth again.

Whatever you choose, do you:
>Head straight for the jump point you want to save time.
>Aim towards a different jump point to try and trick the Legion ships that will be sent after you.

>>1830296
>Maybe try stealth again.
>Aim towards a different jump point to try and trick the Legion ships that will be sent after you.

>>1830296
>>Maybe try stealth again.
>Aim towards a different jump point to try and trick the Legion ships that will be sent after you.

>>1830296
>>Maybe try stealth again.
>>Head straight for the jump point you want to save time.

>>1830296
You guys are really trying to make sneeki breeki work, huh? Okay, roll me those 1d100s.

Rolled 76 (1d100)

>>1830408

Rolled 34 (1d100)

>>1830408

Rolled 67 (1d100)

>>1830408

Rolled 3 (1d100)

>>1830408
Sorry lads, having some net troubles. Rolling...

>>1830454

You continue into the system on ballistic, and do a quick calculation. The fleeing destroyer will definitely see your next action in time for it to jump out, so you wait for the rest of his friends. They arrive in a similarly large flare of Cherenkov radiation and, after a moment, start to turn to chase after you. Slowly, your bow comes over to point at the jump point galactic east, further out into the unexplored fringes of the galaxy. The Legion ships are burning hard after you, with that weird reactionless drive of theirs, and you know every sensor from here to the opposite heliopause could pick you up... But that's exactly what you want.

In a smooth action you've programmed into your expert systems, your drive cuts out and you go onto ballistic, camplates switching to black hole settings. In that same instant, a decoy drops out from underneath you hull and its drive lights off, continuing on its way towards the jump point. To anyone watching, it should look like you've tried to dim your drive flare a little to go into stealth, but it's not working. But it is working, because as you turn to the side and fire your main drive at just 1% thrust, you gradually edge out from the Legion ships' course and begin to decelerate. They've taken the bait.

The next day is both nerve-wrackingly tense and extremely boring. You watch as your decoy runs out of power and drops off the plot with a finality that suggests 'you' have gone into full stealth. The fleeing destroyer translates out, and you make sure to record its vector- definitely back towards Order space. You, of course, gradually make your way towards the jump point you want. The three Legion ships still looking for you are in a search pattern along your decoy's last route towards the jump point, and the last thing you see before you transit out dead slow is them apparently giving up and heading back.

The nameless system you drop back into is empty, thankfully. You breathe a mental sigh of relief as you drift past the jump point, and turn to the matter of stores. You have no materials left for new missiles. Both your reactor and reaction mass are getting low. You definitely need to resupply, and this system has everything you need. But can you afford to stay? So far you've seen no sign of the pursuit you assumed would be coming, so maybe you can...

>Stay for the week necessary to refill your stores.
>Linger only for a day or two, to get enough reactor mass to keep going.
>You can't afford to stay. Push on.

>>1830516
>>Stay for the week necessary to refill your stores.

>>1830516
>Stay for the week
We may need to slay more bodies soon.

>>1830516

>Stay for the week necessary to refill your stores.

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>>1830516
>Stay to refill stores

Well, there's nothing for it. You'll have to stick around for a while to load up on everything you need, but most of that time will probably be refining the materials from whatever rock you choose. Luckily, all Order ships carry their own (limited) mining and refinery gear to feed their fabricators... just in case. Battleships and carriers, of course, can produce enough parts to repair a fleet. In any case, you decide that reactor mass is the most important thing. It only takes a day to find a suitable ice ball in far orbit of the primary, and collect as much water as you need. From there, you move in-system, and find a nice metallic asteroid in this system's belt to give you everything you need.

And so the week passes, with barely enough time to think about anything else as you direct your mining drones, refine what they bring back, and build up your stock of new missiles. You're quite low on some of the rarer elements, but by the week you've given yourself is done you've completely replenished your stocks of missiles and have enough material in your bunkers to fabricate a few more broadsides' worth.

The last of the mining drones scurry aboard your hull just as you receive an alert from one of the drones you placed outside of the belt to keep an eye on the jump points- a Legion task force! For a second, you assume they're after you, but no... they form up, and start transiting towards the same jump point you were planning on heading to, towards Order front lines. Reinforcements, then? Perhaps the same ships you followed to that one supply base. However, there's only a single battleship, a dozen cruisers, and several destroyers. Interesting.

If you boost hard, you could get to the jump point before them, but then they'd definitely detect you. Or you could try trailing them- and who knows, you could be in position to help friendly forces.

>Light off your drive and try to get to the jump point ahead of the enemy.
>Follow along behind them, wait for a chance to strike.

This is going to be the last vote for now! I'll stick around for a few then pick it up again this evening, check my twitter and all that.

>>1830734
>Follow along behind them, wait for a chance to strike.

>>1830734
>>Follow along behind them, wait for a chance to strike.

>>1830734
>Follow along behind them

File: fleet_movements_by_ere4s3r.jpg (1.47 MB, 1920x1200)

1.47 MB JPG

>>1830734
>Stalk them like the creeper you are

The enemy ships are moving at a fair clip, but you're actually further in the system from them, so it's not too difficult to slot in a few light seconds behind and skulk along in their wake. They're hardly trying to hide, blazing along on thermal. If only you had a pulse torp for each... Still, no point in making wishes. They Legion ships continue on their way, fat, happy and unaware of your presence. When they get to the jump point, you note their vector and decelerate sharply. Translating in with enough speed to give any kind of indication of your presence really doesn't bare thinking about.
From there, it's just forward dead slow into the jump point, and the jump back into normal space is smooth as silk.

You half-expect a fusillade of plasma bolts as soon as you translate back into n-space, but there's nothing. As your sensors come online, you find the system pretty much as it says on your charts: a (relatively speaking) young blue star, and a hell of a lot of debris littering the system. There's a significant Legion presence, almost entirely made up of destroyers nosing around in the expansive debris belts, presumably bringing materials to a station almost identical to the one you (hopefully) destroyed. There's also some pickets, but luckily for you they're centred on the station, and the fleet you're following is ignoring them completely to continue their transit. You quietly light off your drive and follow on behind them, recording everything you can in the hopes that it might help the war effort when you get home.

It's almost serene, slinking along in the Legion's rear areas. For all their pickets, it doesn't seem like they're seriously expecting an attack. With that in mind, perhaps you should make them revise that notion. You could stick around after the fleet has left and cause some mischief.

>Break off from the Legion ships you're following and blow up as much stuff as you can manage with your pulse torps and lasers.
>Continue following along, but launch a long-range missile strike just before you leave.
>Ignore the mining station for now- you'll have to deal with it another time.

>>1832822
>Ignore the mining station for now- you'll have to deal with it another time.

Let's keep this as a possible target in the future. If we managed to destroy the other station we can use this point to ambush the Legion ships when they are resupplying

>>1832822
>>Continue following along, but launch a long-range missile strike just before you leave.

I'll wait another ten mins then roll a tiebreaker!

>1832822
>>1832911
breaking tie

>>1832918
Missiles it is! Sorry about that, I was grabbing some dinner. Writing now.

>>1832822
>Break off from the Legion ships you're following and blow up as much stuff as you can manage with your pulse torps and lasers.

>>1832918
apparently im literally retarded, i misquoted the first one and forgot to say what im supporting

My choice got picked anyways,
so im fine with it

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>>1832988
It's fine Anon, I deal with retards all the time and got what you meant.

>>1832822
The smart thing to do would probably be to just mark it as a later target for a raid, but that doesn't sit well with you. You do briefly consider breaking off and clearing it out the place with your energy weapons, but that would make you lose a lot of time on the fleet you're following. And you did fill up your missile stores...
Calculating a strike takes a lot longer than it would normally, with you doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Newton's first law aside, shooting at a target from the heliopause is a hell of a shot. You're so caught up in calculations you're almost caught out as the Legion ships start to decelerate as they approach the jump point. You flip and decelerate as hard as you dare, pointing your drive plume just far away enough that it can't be noticed. You're not quite sure what that means, but perhaps they're trying to be stealthy for their next jump? Regardless, you note their vector once more as the Legion ships drop off the plot and turn your attention back to the mining station.

With calculations finalised, you align your broadside with the very distant mining station (so distant that you can barely detect it) and start firing. There's a whirr-thud as the tubes fire out their deadly cargo, and the autoloaders turn to load in another. You put out a full 30-missile broadside, but instead of their engines igniting, they'll instead drift most of the way in on ballistic and acquire their targets themselves. With a surprise laid out for the mining station in a day or two, you align your bow with a distant star and take your leave.

8 lightyears away, you almost run into the back of the fleet you're following as it sits on station a few thousand kilometres from the jump point.

>Roll a 1d100

Rolled 80 (1d100)

>>1833037

Rolled 11 (1d100)

>>1833037

Rolled 2 (1d100)

>>1833037

>>1833037
>80

If you'd come through any faster than dead slow they would've spotted you for sure, but the miniscule flash from your entrance is more akin to a distant supernova, and your thrusters are enough to slow you to a stop. It definitely could have been far, far worse, you consider as your broadside autoloaders announce they've finished loading a new magazine. Well, that's good at least, but you're not sure it'll help. The only good news is that the legion ships don't seem to have spotted you yet.

As you start to examine your feed from passive sensors, it becomes clear why they're here. There's an Order fleet duking it out with a Legion one- from the ship movements, there appears to be two AIs in battleships, and four in cruisers. Each of them have larger-than-normal escort forces. As you watch, the Order ships launch another salvo of torpedoes, while the Legion ships fire back with their plasma bolts. There's only two battleships in the Legion forces, but dozens of cruisers and even more destroyers. On paper it looks like a clear win, but it's clear the Order ships are hurting, and are being deliberately cautious, spending their escort ships rather than their own hulls. The arrival of the new Legion fleet could definitely turn the tide, even with a single battleship.

You consider your options as the salvo of torpedoes reach their terminal guidance. Big anti-ship torpedoes, much more powerful than the ones you had in your little Prowler frigate, mostly carry bomb-pumped x-ray laser heads that punch through Legion hulls with invisible force. But there are so many escorts that only so many torpedoes make it through, and as the Order's escorts are picked off, their throw weight will start to decrease... Obviously, you have to act. But what can you do?

>Attack the backup fleet in the hopes that it will force the rest to break off.
>Try to sneak forward and assist the Order ships.
>Other write-in?

>>1833122
>Attack the backup fleet in the hopes that it will force the rest to break off.

>>1833122
>>Attack the backup fleet in the hopes that it will force the rest to break off.

>>1833122
>>Attack the backup fleet in the hopes that it will force the rest to break off.

>>1833122
>Attack the reserves!

You can't do much to help the Order ships, but you can do what you can against the Legion's backup. The question is, how soon do you act? If you attack now, then you can try knocking out the battleship and some of the other ships before they start their approach, and possibly stop them from joining the fight at all. But if you do, then you'll have to get away, and will have absolutely no support. Or you could wait and attack them when they start to move and are closer to the Order ships. It could disorient them even more, but in the meantime your fellow Knight-Brothers will be taking more damage...

>Attack as soon as possible and take your chances.
>Wait and attack only when they start to move.

>>1833203
>>Attack as soon as possible and take your chances.

>>1833203
>Wait and attack only when they start to move.

>>1833203
>>Attack as soon as possible and take your chances.

>>1833203
>Wait and attack only when they start to move.

>>1833203
>Attack as soon as possible and take your chances.

>>1833203
>Attack
Deus Vult. 2d100s, please. One for attacking, and one for escaping.

Rolled 87, 88 = 175 (2d100)

>>1833272

Rolled 87, 31 = 118 (2d100)

>>1833272

Rolled 51, 1 = 52 (2d100)

>>1833272
IN THE NAME OF GOD. BE CLEANSED BY HELLFIRE!

Rolled 61, 69 = 130 (2d100)

>>1833272

>>1833290
I think you need to stop rolling, anon.

>87, 88
Deus Vult indeed. Writing.

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>>1833203
Another flurry of plasma ripples across the Order fleet, some deflected, some burning through mag shields and devastating the escort vessel behind them, and makes up your mind. Whatever happens to you, you must do everything you can to assist your Knight-Brothers. To that end, you study the formation of Legion ships in front of you- they've formed up into a sphere around the battleship, several hundred thousand kilometres across, and are slowly drifting in-system. You'll have an easy shot at the battleship with your pulse torpedoes, but how can you get away? Hm.

You're going to need to prepare, either way. Your broadside tubes start rolling out missiles, laying them out either side of you to float forward slowly. They're not going to be able to get up the relativistic speeds at this close a range, but they're definitely going to make those enemy cruisers hurt. Your pulse torpedo capacitors finish charging, so all that's left to do is wait for the missile magazines to chatter and clunk into place. As soon as all your pieces are set, you check the orders you've pre-uploaded to the 60 missiles floating either side of you. If you could, you'd suck in a breath to try and steady yourself. But you can't, so you just go over your plan one last time and say a brief prayer. You're sure God has better things to do than keep eye on you, but wherever he is you can only hope he can spare a second or two.

The first sign the Legion reinforcements have that something has gone wrong is the specks of hell itself that scream across the void. They have barely a millisecond to act, if that, and the Legion battleship, a hulking ovoid of massive proportions, is simply split in half, its own heavily-fortified hull turning against it, all its armour only giving the antimatter more fuel with which to doom it. The rest of the fleet flares as they come to combat stations, but for a few vital seconds they're leaderless and wholly unaware. There are a couple dozen cruisers in the task force, but they start winking off the plot as doubled-up HVMs start slamming into them. At this distance, they don't have enough time to really get up to speed, which is why you played it safe and assigned two each. Even then, in some cases it isn't enough. They're heavily damaged, but are still functioning enough to bombard local space with radar, to say nothing of the numerous destroyers.

So that's the time you go loud. Your armour flicks to full white knight settings, a dazzling display against the ink-black of space as your drive ignites to full safe acceleration. You launch forward like the arrow from a bow, aiming to skirt down, under the lower edge of the Legion formation. Your lasers stab out at pre-selected ships, mostly destroyers, and start to punch through the comparatively-fragile hull of the lighter escorts, picking them off one by one.

cont.

>>1833486
Unfortunately, you're not having it quite your own way. You can only guess at what's going through the minds of the Legion crew (assuming they have one) but it appears that in absence of other orders they've settled into taking their frustrations out on the nearest target- you. Dazzling plasma bolts are hurled through space in a deceptively beautiful display, and you do your best with your thrusters, but you're simply too close to take effective action. At this range, dodging is more of a mind game than anything else, and the Legion are apparently willing to use the age-old tactic of quantity rather than quality.

Plasma fills space around you as you struggle to get away. One hits your drive plume squarely, and gets vaporised by the antimatter-driven flame. But others come far closer to hitting you. Green bolts wash over your magshields and heat your hull, and in one place two happen to hit near to each other within seconds, and it punches through. The pure white of your camplates help to deflect some of the heat, but nowhere near enough- layers of the nanite-driven camouflage material are ripped off, and you're left with a sizeable hole several centimetres deep in your defences. From deep within your hull, bots start to emerge, scuttling over your other hull with cutters and makeshift patches in an attempt to help repair some of the damage.

It's not entirely one-sided, of course. Your broadside lasers can fire a pulse every eight seconds or so, and almost every single one of them hit. The destroyers are almost incapable of taking a hit, but the cruisers prove to be of much stronger stuff, and it takes several seconds of prolonged contact to burn through the armour of even a weakened cruiser. For all that, as more plasma bolts start to bleed through your magshields, the enemy formation is definitely what one would call 'savaged', with the battleship destroyed, half the cruisers out of action, and the rest damaged. Twenty minutes after the battleship went up in flames, your expert systems alert you to the main battle changing place- the Legion ships have begun to break off, and as their defensive network falters, several xasers strike one of the battleships down. After a quick check of distances, it would seem that seeing their reinforcements go up in flames prompted them to break off, just as planned!

Unfortunately, you're still in mortal danger, and the Legion ships show no signs of letting you get away.

>Continue your sprint to try and get to friendly forces before they overwhelm you completely (high chance of extensive damage).
>You don't have any hope of escaping. Broadcast your intel to the friendly ships, then turn and fight to the last.
>Try to go dark to escape the pursuing forces long enough to escape to the Order ships (particularly difficult).

>>1833569
>You don't have any hope of escaping. Broadcast your intel to the friendly ships, then turn and fight to the last.

>>1833569
>>Continue your sprint to try and get to friendly forces before they overwhelm you completely (high chance of extensive damage).

>>1833569
>Continue your sprint to try and get to friendly forces before they overwhelm you completely (high chance of extensive damage).
>You don't have any hope of escaping. Broadcast your intel to the friendly ships

I see no reason we cant continue running while broadcasting, data is safe and we might be able to get the fuck out anyways

>>1833569
>>You don't have any hope of escaping. Broadcast your intel to the friendly ships, then turn and fight to the last.

>>1833597
You can't really fire backwards while still accelerating forwards, anon.

>>1833620
I left out the turn to shoot part of the broadcast option

>>1833625
So you did. Sorry, it's late.

I'll wait a bit longer for any more votes then work something out.

>>1833569
>>>You don't have any hope of escaping. Broadcast your intel to the friendly ships, then turn and fight to the last.
They can salvage our data core right?

>>1833569
>>You don't have any hope of escaping. Broadcast your intel to the friendly ships, then turn and fight to the last.
We need to broadcast in any case wether we decide to fight, flee or hide. Fighting looks more promising though since we have way less shit piled against us after the first strike. We can just spam missiles and lasers until we are out of ammo and then boost full thrust past friendly ships and escape

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>>1833569
>Start broadcasting, and take as many of the Legion as you can with you. Making you roll for this feels kind of wrong.

It'll take nine to ten minutes for a signal from you to reach the Order ships, and far longer for them to reach you- or you to reach them. Well, desperate times. You have only a few drones left, so you load all of them with a full copy of all the data you've managed to collect, and fire them off in the direction of friendly forces. You'll need to make sure they get there, of course, and there's only one way to do that. An alert blinks- your pulse torps have finished recharging, you still have a pair of missile broadsides ready to rock and roll.

You'd like to think the depleted Legion task force flinches when you flip end for end. There's still a dozen damaged cruisers left, so you pick the least-damaged one and work your way down from there. Your pulse torpedoes rip apart the four cruisers you've picked, and in return a fusillade of plasma bolts batter your bow armour, stripping off layers of camo material. Out of all six of your tubes come your HVMs, and despite the short distance they batter the enemy ships in return, few scoring clean hits as they throw themselves at the task force facing you. The remainder of the destroyers start trying to englobe you, but that just makes them targets for your broadside lasers, and even your defensive laser clusters get in on the action, clawing at the smaller enemy vessels in a savage display of desperation.

The missile magazines run dry and the autoloaders start to load new ones in place, but you doubt you'll have time to fire them. Plasma is licking over most of your hull now, your magshields failing under the onslaught as soon as they manage to come back online. With a thought, you disable your autoloaders, your defence lasers, dozens of secondary systems- everything except your pulse torpedoes, your lasers, and your tactical radar. With that you manage to get the reload on a single one of your tubes down to just a few minutes, and another little demon screeches across the void to doom another cruiser. But still the enemy assaults you, and they scrape away your armour like a thousand bestial claws.

cont.

>>1833846
Then one of your lasers is knocked out, and after a second, it's followed by two more. Your final laser manages to fire off a final, defiant burst, coring a destroyer, but then it too is silenced. A final pulse torpedo is flung through the black, dooming a final cruiser before you re-route all power to your defensive laser clusers. They claw out nigh-impotently, cutting furrows into the hull of the Legion ships but pinpoint plasma bolts silence them too. Rage seethes through your circuits, rage at your forced importance. With your handful of hull-mounted visual sensors still left, you watch as the legion ships start splitting apart- no, they're releasing something. Dozens of the small spider-ant drones drift towards you and start to latch onto your hull. The metaphorical scraping becomes all too literal.

One by one, your hull-mounted sensors are found and shattered, then you can feel them cutting through your savaged armour and forcing themselves into your drone service tunnels. You direct your meager force of onboard security drones, which take down a few, but there's too many, breaching you in too many places. Your drones are exterminated, your sensors blinded. Then you feel no more.

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And on that cliffhanger, we'll be finishing this week's chapter. I hope you all enjoyed, and don't worry! This isn't quite the end for our intrepid AI.

However, due to college starting the week after next, I won't be running next weekend to get my sleep schedule into something that doesn't leave me feeling like trash every morning. I am hoping to keep it going after that, but it may be that I'll have to run slightly shorter sessions, or start earlier, we'll just have to see.

Thanks for playing!

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>>1833898
Thanks for running this great quest, I'm excited to see what follows.
Good luck with college!

>>1833961
Thanks anon, it's nice to know you enjoy.

>>1833898
Starting earlier works? See ya later space cowboy.