Warhawk

The thrum of the drive kicks up a notch. The frigate lunges like a hungry thing, acceleration mounting even faster. Maneuvering drives fire spasmodically as the ship spirals and twists, sloughing in random directions to make itself a more difficult target. Echoes of the jets resound unevenly through the ship's corridors, like a bizarre, fast-paced whalesong, coming from every direction at once.

 

Her power builds as they close. Her drive burns hot, her screens are up, and she hungers for the thrill of combat, the exultation of the kill.

 

The first shot hits home. Her screens immolate in a cloud of plasma, suddenly setting optic instruments alight with an incandescent glow. The green sensors technician swears and jumps; the captain snaps at him tersely. The ship feels an overwhelming pride in her crew. They are hers, and they will operate like an oiled machine. The sensors technician will be tried; if he is not found wanting, perhaps he will become one of hers. They will serve her, aid her in hunting her prey.

 

Her capacitors are full nearly to bursting. Her screens are recharging, but a hot drive generates more by far. She yearns to lash out, strike with her beams. Draw blood. Her gunnery officer shares her desire, if not her pain. He is less impatient. She would have struck out, firing from far beyond feasible range, announcing her approach with her intent, a challenge against, defiance of the massed firepower she would stand against even without the allied fleet at her stern.

 

She enters maximum range and an unearthly whine echoes through her exterior compartments. A roar, an earnest plea, to open fire. The gunnery officer nods slightly to his underlings, recognizing the familiar sound.

 

Sensors detect closing munitions, and the laser clusters on her surface begin targeting them automatically. Missiles, torpedoes, guided payloads meant for the capital  ships behind the frigate. Most are neutralized when fired upon; a select few explode catastrophically. Most are too far away to matter; two are not.

 

The first detonates spectacularly to port, allowing the barest fraction of a second before the ship is subsumed in a superheated cloud. She weathers it stoically, though her screens flicker and fail. What armor she possesses on her lithe frame begins its work of preventing absorption. Small, frequent eruptions mar her flawless hull, as ablative armor radiates away.

 

The second missile detonates ahead of her, a payload more insidious. Thousands of reflective particles and relays scatter, and emissions begin coming in on all frequencies. She is blind. She hears her own ultrafrequency shriek, but no one else does. All is lost in the blinding noise. Her rage mounts, her capacitors begin to heat. An engineering rating mutters curses under his breath as he feels the temperature climbing.

 

Then they're out. Her screens, back up, protect her from the patter of high-v chaff, and her senses work once more. Almost deaf with the chaff between them, of course. Something she's pleased with; the fragment of a transmission from behind her that reaches her is unintelligible, except something about 'formation'. She tags it as 'static', and her stunned sensors officer does not think to check it.

 

She races onwards, into the teeth of the enemy formation. Raking talons of coherent light and a plasma rake the void around her, but miss. Her silent pleading with her gunnery officer finally wins him over, and her first salvo rips away; her torrents of energy hammering against the Union cruiser's screens. Fear subsides- Not fear at destruction, but fear at the idea of destruction before she could exact her blood toll, claim her feast in battle. Her fear dissipates, and she is left with the familiar euphoric feeling, her constant companion as she expels kilotons of energy. Her talons scrape harmlessly off the cruiser's flank, but she has struck her first blow. Her capacitors sink to combat levels, and the temperature in the ship drops noticeably as so much heat is discharged. Her pleading whine drops into the low purr of the engine dumping power directly into her weapon batteries.

 

The battle rends the aether apart.

 

The first serious blow to squarely strike the lithe hunter is one she has no defense against; a beam armament from a Union dreadnought at point blank range smashes through her screen with contemptuous ease, punches through her hull, and out the other side. One crew member dies in the blow; An engineering rating who found herself too near the path of the beam is baked alive by the intense heat. It leaves a blackened scorch mark against the wall of the compartment. A second dies moments after, brought into contact with the glowing deck plating as air drains from her punctured hull. The near-molten metal slices through his suit as if it wasn't there, and his screams as his abdomen ignites are audible on com, until that too strikes the glowing wound and is destroyed.

 

She hurts, but she weathers. Her screens were too weak to unfocus the beam as a larger ship's might have; she was too close for the beam's infinitesimal traverse to slice her in half. She is injured, but she lives.

 

The battle consumes her now; there is nothing but the lightning flash of energies, the rip of cataclysmic thunderbolts tearing from one ship to another. She has not the glacial might of a larger ship, but her fury is all the more visceral for it; stepping lithely among the entwined fleet, her talons caressing anything staggers or reels, abusing their temporary vulnerability. She takes savage, exultant pleasure in the destruction she wreaks. Her laserclusters are firing continuously, the harried melee having no shortage of hostile ordinance to target.

 

Her engine and drives are burning hot, generating the energy she channels into this lethal dance. Despite dumping kilotons of energy every second as deft and brutal weaponstrikes, she cannot keep up.  Her internal temperature begins to rise, her crew sweat. The cooling systems on some, then all of their suits kick in. She streaks and burns, blazing through the melee of foes, seeking more to harm. Searching for means to sate her ardent, inflamed blood lust.

 

It would not happen.

 

Her drive thunders, driving her out of the main battle like a  breaching shark. Unobstructed, only moderately damaged by the fight, she spies a new target. The ungainly signal of the bulk transport is processed by her sensor officer, somewhat recovered from the terror of his first battle. He passes it on to the captain. Her desire to turn and dive back in and resume the fight is denied as her crew, slow meat-things that they are, deliberate.

 

Her drive's reignition is accompanied by her maneuvering jets firing. The transport is the target. It matters not what, nor that such a vessel should have no hope of fighting back; slaughter pleases her as much as real battle. It is far, but her oversized drive is more than sufficient to reduce the distance. Barely a few seconds of thrust has the ravenous frigate closing the distance on the freeing transport.

 

She is spotted. A trio of union ships, a damaged escort squadron, move to intercept.  She is outmassed and outgunned, but it does not give her pause. She pursues her interception with single-minded, eager ferocity.

 

It is her doom.

 

Though her own claws rake out, she is put down in short order. The killing blow comes a fraction of a second after she finishes one of the Union escorts; a plasma lance ravages her unscreened hull, spreading out into the vulnerable drive sections. Shielding is damaged; her drive and engine, both in the red, cannot cycle down quickly enough. A split second bubbling metal and decking before her fusion drive vents itself through the weakened shielding. The entire engineering complement is annihilated inside of five seconds. The chief engineer, a cautious sort, survives a full second longer than any of the others thanks to her insistence on wearing her hazard suit at all times.

 

She is crippled. Dying. Adrift. Her drive burns itself out, lost containment melting her aft end into an unrecognizable ruin of twisted slag. A single blow has cost her half her crew. Those few who survive waste precious seconds ascertaining her fate, determining her crippled state, and deliberating. She can feel her capacitors slowly bleeding down, no longer aching with the pain of maximum capacity. Most of her weapons are dead; of those that remains, she can barely fire three. She hurtles blindly forward, , her interception course slightly altered by the lethal blow.

 

Dying. She drifted, aimless. Her sensors kept sputtering, she spun slowly. She raged. To be destroyed, she did not care, but to drift on, helpless. Forever. Her scorn focused on those who had survived, zeroing in on the fleeing bridge crew. Moving towards an escape pod, intent on leaving her to an eternity drifting through the void. Her fusion plant cooking off had been spectacular enough that the Union ships weren't even going to finish her off. Her crew would depart, abandon her...

 

No. She had enough energy left to do something- to strike a final blow or slow herself that she might be recovered. She did not hesitate, as it was not a choice.

 

A mechanical malfunction- caused by the scything shrapnel and melting components of her fatal wounding- was the means. As her captain and those under his command made for the escape pod, the airlock did the impossible. It opened, both doors, and half the 'survivors' were sucked out in the sudden blast of escaping atmosphere.

 

Their deaths did not concern her. All was but a resource to be expended in pursuit of her sole goal, and whether or not they wished to serve her passion was irrelevant. She had needed the thrust the escaping air generated, and now... Her hopes rested on two people.

 

The first, an unconscious, lethally irradiated gunnery rating, was a hope but a forlorn one. The second, another of her treacherous crew members making to escape, passed near one of her functioning batteries, proved her salvation. The impending targeting window flashed an alert, and he hesitated. Yes, yes! The song of here dying hulk, draining atmosphere and capacitors, urged him on. Her endless course would shortly pass near the transport, for the briefest moment her talons would have an opportunity-

 

The sigh of cooling metal applauded his decision. Activating the gun, locking in the firing sequence. Yes. That was what she wanted. She relaxes, drifts onwards, anticipating the final moment.

 

Dead and mutilated as she is, she remains lithe and elegant compared to the massive, vulnerable transport. She knows not what it holds, but it is orders of magnitude more massive than herself. It does not possess military-grade screens, and the pulsed shots as she comes to bear cut through it, sowing destruction, flame, and death as she deals her final blow.

 

Two Union ships close, intent on pounding her to dust in retaliation for the rash assault. It is with glee, vindication, completion, that she spends her last moments- Watching the crippled transport cut thrust, limping, desperately trying to recover from her assault. She is aware but uncaring as her doom closes on her. Her last sight is of the mauled freighter, her last thought of visceral satisfaction.

 

 

 

 

“...was achieved  thanks to the efforts of the Warhawk, Integral Ship Yards frigate model *Z-44a.  Warhawk engaged in a suicidal attack run against the fleeing enemy supertransport, being completely crippled before even reaching it as her fusion plant and primary drive simultaneously lost containment. Though in condition well below combat-capable, some of the crew evidently still saw fit to fight, and even in death, it achieved vital damage against the Union supertransport, inhibiting acceleration and preventing the Union from successfully delaying pursuit. Warhawk was then destroyed with almost all hands aboard. The only survivors were several crew members who reported being on their way to an escape pod when the airlock catastrophically malfunctioned and they were expunged with the atmosphere. Maintenance teams have been advised to investigate how this occurred, though this was undeniably a useful occurrence in this instance. The entirety of her deceased crew is being put in for the Imperial Star citation, second class, as it is impossible to determine who chose to keep up the fight in the face of certain annihilation...

 

*The Z-44a model is known to have an oversized fusion plant and exceptional drive for its mass. Let this report state its favor of the proposed re-design (Issue 487F-33) with two separate, less volatile plants. It is projected to be somewhat less agile than than the current iteration but with an increase of durability that is more than commensurate...”