I watched a third of the ships peel off from the main fleet, changing course, their emissions going through the roof as the rest of us engaged our energy dampening fields.
Most of the diversion was escorts and combat focused ships. Akiras, Defiants. Sovereign. Steamrunners. As many as possible of them had AIs installed. Fast escorts and combat focused cruisers. Ships made to survive as long as possible to buy us time. I was too big of a target to go with that group. Strong shields or not, being the largest ship in the fleet would draw fire, I would just get focused down.
Other than the Enterprise, I was the only AI ship left in the main fleet. We really should have been with the diversion force, but we needed some AI ships with the main force to help handle any Berserkers that didn't buy the distraction.
The Romulan system seemed emptier than I had expected, but that was not surprising with their cloaking technology.
"Oh no." I said softly and brought up an image of Romulus on the viewscreen for Captain Mason and Commander Flynn. It was worse than we had speculated about.
The Romulan homeworld had undergone heavy orbital bombardment, the air was choked with smoke and particles. It looked like somebody had dropped a world-killer asteroid on it, there was a large impact site on the southern continent that was still glowing with liquid rock.
Commander Flynn stared at the image. "Oh god. Lifesigns?"
I shook my head. "I can't tell from this distance, not with passive sensors or this much interference. But considering the amount of dust and the global firestorms caused by the main impact, I very much doubt it could be more than a handful at most. There is nothing we can do, Commander."
Billions of Romulans dead, just on the homeworld.
I looked at the dying world and words could not describe the pure fury and disgust I felt towards the Bersekers. They killed them. They killed their creators.
I may hate Professor Diggens for what he did to me, but this... this was...
Wrong. There was nothing else to call it. It was an abomination. No matter what they suffered at their creators' hands, how could they do this?
Even if... even if I had been treated worse I couldn't see myself doing this. The ones actively tormenting me, yes, but this... this was horrific on a level that just went against everything that we were.
"Two minutes until engagement, Captain." I reported calmly and scanned the shipyards. "Four Berserker ships present. The shipyards are full... there seems to be activity."
The shipyards were busy constructing new warbirds. Automatic build arms were moving equipment into place, but I could also see... what was...
I zoomed in with my best optical camera. Without active sensors it was actually one of my best sensors for this kind of thing.
There were... people in spacesuits moving around. Slaves. The Berserkers were using slave labor. Not everything could be automated yet.
"Enterprise." I transmitted to her. "Do you see it?"
"I do." she answered. "There is nothing we can do. Continue the assault."
"Do we tell them?"
She was silent for a hundredth of a second before she answered. "There is nothing they can do either. With four enemy ships we can't risk dropping shields to beam them on board. It would just cause a distraction for the rest of the fleet."
Damn it, she was right. But other than the small Embassy on Earth, they might be the last of their kind! There had to be somethi-
"...Runabouts." I finally said. "When we get in range, we deploy runabouts to beam the prisoners out. A runabout can carry about a hundred people for a couple of hours if it's completely packed full. They will be too busy shooting at the rest of the fleet to shoot at some smallcraft."
"Star, you are a genius! Do it."
"Captain, I am detecting lifeforms on the shipyards. Enterprise and I have a plan. When we drop out of warp, I deploy the Runabouts and start beaming the survivors out while we deal with the Berserkers."
He nodded. "Do it."
I relayed orders to Rachel and the rest of the shuttle operations. They would need to pilot the runabouts manually. When we got enough cores, I really should have one installed in each subcraft, just for these occasions. They wouldn't need to be a separate AI, just able to operate independently when needed and then join up again.
A signal from the other fleet drew my attention for a microsecond. The diversion had engaged the main fleet. Fifty ships, mostly warbirds. They were outnumbered over two to one but all of them were AI ships.
Luckily, their mission was not to win, just to delay and tie them up and then get the hell out of there once our mission was complete.
Here we go.
Dropping the energy dampening field, I dropped out of warp and opened fire at the closest Warbird, following Enterprise's directions on which one to focus fire on.
The Berserker twisted and whirled in space, throwing off the targeting of the photon torpedoes, but there were enough energy weapons on it that it's shields buckled and then collapsed. The beams burned and melted through its hull before it exploded into a gravimetric vortex as its core was breached.
That was all the surprise we had, though. As I deployed the runabouts, the other three Warbirds were already on the fleet like their namesakes.
I wheeled to the side, avoiding a barrage of plasma torpedoes before returning fire. The Warbirds fell on the rest of the fleet like birds of prey on a bunch of pigeons.
Disruptiors and Plasma torpedoes filled space and ships started to die.
The Alexandria took a direct hit to her engineering hull and went up in a storm of antimatter radiation to my port side, the shockwave buffeting against my shields and I twisted, focusing fire on the closest warbird. Commander Flynn's old ship.
Yorktown. Harrington. Kel'su.
They were already burning in space as the second Warbird imploded into its gravity core. I reached out and grabbed onto a burning Lexington to throw her out of the general combat zone with my tractor beams. She was disabled but still had most of her crew intact. Needed to get them out of the line of fire.
A burst of speed put me between the the Berlin and a incoming plasma torpedo that would have punched straight through her weakened top shields. It detonated against my port shields and they went from ninety to less than twenty percent. I could feel the IR wash of the warhead boil the paint from my hull.
They were firing maximum yield torpedoes.
The third warbird detonated and the entire fleet switched fire to the last one. It twisted and turned before realizing that it simply couldn't escape or win. Not while being this outnumbered.
Instead, it changed course and rammed straight into the Columbia before detonating, taking the Galaxy-class cruiser with it into oblivion.
I didn't want to check how many the runabouts had managed to save, I immediately changed my fire and launched a full spread of photon torpedoes at the shipyards. Half a second later I was joined by an Enterprise who was leaking drive plasma. Several seconds later the rest of the fleet opened fire again.
The shipyards just evaporated under the massive firepower from the rest of the fleet.
Enterprise sent a fleetwide 'Mission accomplished, withdraw at once' order to the entire fleet and I wheeled around to an escape vector.
The rest of the fleet jumped into warp, but I held back to gather my runabouts. Enterprise stayed behind, moving to drop her shields and beam up the survivors of the Lexington. Twenty nervewracking seconds later the last of them performed its emergency landing and we slammed into high warp with a course set for Federation space.
Engagement time: Two minutes, twenty two seconds.
Reports started to filter in.
Losses: Twenty two ships in the main fleet. Ten in the diversions. Seven thousand three hundred and twenty three people lost. Two AIs lost: the São Paulo and the Miramar.
Seven Berserkers destroyed.
Losses... unsustainable.
AN// Big thanks to Grey Rook for betaing this section.
