Time for another snippet. I still suck at writing combat though.
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It may have been that, as mere destroyers, they lacked the power. It may have been, forewarned, Augusta had gained a extra moment to prepare for it. It may have simply been sheer luck.
Whatever it was, it had been just enough.
The air screamed as the massive weapon discharged, an instant after Augusta seemed to throw everything she had into her shield. Concentrated Gravitons meet the warped space-time of her Klein Field as waves of energy peeled off of both. Even through the energy barrier Richardson could feel the effects, sudden shifts between weightlessness and bone-crushing G's.
The beam petered out, leaving the Augusta smoking but intact. Her Klein Field flickered and died, the effort of stopping the attack seeming to have feedback into her other systems as smoke and sparks billowed from various sections of her hull. The strain seemed to have effected Augusta as well, the Mental Model's chest heaving like she had just ran a marathon, her head hung in exhaustion. Finally, she looked up at the still combined vessels, a dangerous glint in her eyes. "My turn."
Richardson had never seen what was usually referred to as an 'Alpha Strike', and the use of such a tactic by a Fog Fleet vessel was considered an extreme level of overkill. An attack from a single Fog weapon was usually enough to eliminate a human vessel, and there was little reason why a Fog Vessel would ever need to attack something that would require such firepower, such as a fellow Fog ship.
The analyst's had obviously never considered 'woman scorned' as a reason.
What could only be described as a ludicrous amount of ordnance poured from the Heavy Cruiser as what seemed like every single launch cell she had emptied itself, with every surviving energy turret joining in for good measure. An amount of kinetic, chemical, and electromagnetic energy likely measurable in the terajoules impacted the fused destroyers, blowing their shield out like a cheap candle before enveloping them in the white light of pseudo-nuclear annihilation. Three seconds later, the glow subsided and the offending ships had ceased to exist, along with the destroyer that had been stationed next to them.
"Vaporized?" Richardson stammered. "A Fog ship can... vaporize?"
"Oh, yeah," Augusta replied with a grin, "Absolutely." Of course, vaporizing a fog ship came with a price, it seemed. None of the launch cells were reloading it seemed, and the turrets were idling as steam curled off of the barrels. For the moment, Augusta had no weapon systems, and after taking that canon strike, no defenses. And two Destroyers still mostly functional to the aft. Augusta let out a resigned sigh as she watched the two ships close in. "Guess I overdid it."
Richardson began to wonder if anybody would ever figure out the bizarre circumstances of his death when he heard the last thing he had been expecting. "Is that...rock music?" As it grew louder, sure enough he began to make out the distinctive rifts of an electric guitar. It sounded as if somebody was playing heavy metal over an intercom system at extremely high volume.
Augusta let out a sigh. "She's misappropriating her psyops system again." The two destroyers were taking the new development with slightly less aplomb. Turrets began tracking around as one was hit by a salvo of missiles from somewhere in the opposite direction of the music. Turrets began tracking back around in the other direction, their route, previous bearing straight toward Augusta, now fracturing as the ships split up. Their attention split in two directions, neither was looking in the right direction as another ship broke the surface in between the two of them, mere yards away from either ship. Richardson scrambled to one of the binoculars to try and get a better look at whatever had just arrived. It looked like another Cruiser, with somebody lounging on the roof of the bridge. She was leaning back against sensor antenna, cowboy boots tapping along to the beat of the still playing music, arms folded behind her head as an impromptu pillow and...was she wearing a cowboy hat?
"Girls, girls," The figure stood up as she spoke, and it took Richardson a moment to realize that she had hijacked Augusta's intercom system. A sleeveless black top and brown vest left her arms completely exposed as well as her midriff, and the very short shorts left large swaths of skin her legs in view. The boots, he realized, might actually cover the most skin. "Do try to keep up."
Turrets sluiced around, splitting between the two targets, before unleashing bolts of plasma into the pair of Destroyers. The two ships let out metallic groans as both reeled, the Cruiser reversing rapidly as the two enemy ships finally started to return fire, their shots crashing into the sea or each other as they tried to keep up with their target. The cruiser came to a stop a couple of ship length's ahead of them, the destroyers slowing to a stop shortly afterward. Richardson watched on, dumbstruck. "What are they..."
"They're dead," the voice from before commented over the intercom again. "They just don't know it." As if on cue, a pair of explosions erupted from the Destroyers, both of which finally keeled over and, at long last, began to sink.
Richardson looked up from the binoculars and tried to compose a thought. "That," he finally managed after a couple of minutes. "Was the single most ridiculous thing I've seen. And that's saying something."
"Thanks!" The voice replied over the intercom. It was very chipper, and if it did in fact belong to their unknown savior, seemed to be enjoying herself quite a bit. The cruiser began to draw up next to them until the Mental model could leap down onto their deck. A mess of deep red hair poured down her back, brown eyes that seemed to glow and a cocky grin reinforcing his earlier thought that she was enjoying herself. She let out a whistle as she got a look at Augusta. "Damn, you look like crap."
"Thank you for showing up, Wichita." Augusta replied as she took a seat on the deck, leaning against one of the bulkheads. "But I can assure you I had it well enough in hand."
Wichita snorted. "Yeah, you totally had those Destroyers on the ropes. Hell of a light show all the way."
Richardson's brain finally caught up with current events. "Wait, you're Wichita? as in the USS Wichita?"
Wichita doffed her hat as she gave a dramatic bow. "The one and only...Well, sort of. The original got sold for scrap, so..." She blinked as she suddenly turned to look at Richardson properly. "Who are you?"
"Richardson, The Heavy Cruiser Wichita of Fog Fleet Task Force Crimson." Augusta introduced the Cruiser. "Wichita, Intelligence Specialist Third Class James Richardson of the United States Navy. Yes, He's human. I caught him just off their Defense barrier."
"Caught him?" Wichita echoed. "What, you fish now?"
"Well, he was sitting in the middle of the sea in a rowboat, he was somewhat hard to miss." Augusta chuckled before it turned into a hiss of pain. Richardson hadn't expected that.
"Yeah, well, you can tell me all about it after we get you patched up." Wichita knelled down to examine help her up. "Come on, lets get you inside somewhere. Do you're engines still work?"
Augusta nodded. "Still working at..thirty percent. Power core is still intact."
"Thank goodness." Wichita added before turning to Richardson. "Hey, human. Get over here and give me a hand." Off-guard, Richardson found himself obeying before he could give the matter any thought, draping one of Augusta's arms over his shoulder before he could thing to object.
"This is completely unnecessary," Augusta argued, even as Richardson could feel her letting the two of them take most of her weight.
"Shut it, Miss know-it-all." Wichita snapped back, before turning to Richardson. "And what are you doing here, anyway?"
"Like she said," Richardson nodded to Augusta as they headed inside the ship. "She basically kidnapped me. Though you don't seem that suspicious of me." Neither had Augusta, he recalled. Strange.
"Well, if Augusta hadn't bothered to kill you, you're probably at least mostly harmless." Wichita shrugged as they arrived in the same reading room he and Augusta had been sitting in earlier that day. "If she trust's you, then I can trust you." They settled her into one of the overstuffed chairs, Wichita turning to Richardson. "So, what's your story?"
"I thought we were waiting until she was repaired," Richardson said, going over the earlier conversation in his head.
"I said she could tell me after she got patched up," Wichita corrected, "You, on the other hand, seem to be perfectly fine."
Richardson sighed. "It's kind of a long story..."
