To Hell and Back (Hellworlder pirates)

Ch43 Battle for the Confederacy Pt.III

Battle for the Confederacy Pt.III

The Asmodeus shook violently from the latest blast to pierce through their shields, and Modius felt his heart drop when the hull-breach alarm went off.

"Damage report!" he growled as another blast shook the ship.

"Hull breach on sub-deck 4, the entire compartment depressurized. Pressure doors dropped just in time to prevent any further loss. We're receiving reports of five to six confirmed casualties, with three more unconfirmed. The belt feed to system for the number 8 and 9 rail gun mounts were destroyed, once those guns expend their magazine their done." His bridge talker, Aibus, reported.

Mobius took in the deep breath and slowly let it out, 5-9 dead sailors and the loss of two guns were certainly bad, but not as bad as it could have been. If that blast had hit closer to the bow then they could have hit their entire port side missile loaders, or if it had hit closer astern then they might start venting coolant. It was bad, but not the worst possible outcome.

Modius gritted his teeth as he swayed to the left as the fleet made another hard port maneuver, the poor inertial dampeners already overtaxed from all the high-g maneuvers they had to perform to escape the tides of enemy ships. Without those ingenious inertial dampeners he and his crew might have passed out after their first hard turn. But now they were failing to absorb all the kinetic energy from each turn, and if they continued to tax them this hard then they would soon start to feel the dangerous effects of high-g maneuvers. And unlike the other three archdevil ships Modius had to take into account that Torweni and Terrans had different tolerances despite the strikingly similar physiology.

He felt incredibly frustrated with the whole battle around him, here he was piloting one of the fastest, strongest, and deadliest ships on the battlefield, a ship that outclassed anything his people had even begun to imagine, and they were being pushed to their limits by the shear number of enemy combatants. Numbers will always make up for incompetence and inferior ships, so long as you have enough of them. In a straight up fight with a ship of comparable tonnage Asmodeus would win every time, in a fleet-on-fleet engagement of equal numbers the Hellworlders would almost certainly always win. Hell, even facing an opponent who outnumbered them five times over they could still win. But right now the second fleet was facing an opponent nearly 15 times larger than them, and that's not including the swarms of gunboats that kept arriving through the narrow corridor of unimpeded space Kazlum had opened up for the Kruhur.

At first they were able to easily target the larger enemy ships and throw their ranks into disorder, but now wedged in between two separate Kruhur/Aunviry fleets they were having a tough time striking any blows that could disorientate the enemy and relieve some of the pressure on the fleet. And as the battle drew on the Kruhur began to develop new tactics for dealing with the heavy blows Astaroth and Asmodeus were dealing. They would position several smaller destroyer class ships in front of their heavy hitters until they were ready to fire, then the destroyers would open up and allow the Kruhur cruisers to fire directly at the archdevil cruisers. If it had only been the one fleet employing this tacit then they could potentially time their own shots for whenever the enemy destroyers opened up, but they also had to contend with another fleet on their other flank doing the same thing. Worse yet was that whenever they did get a clear shot the enemy would just order a gunboat to fly in and intercept any missiles sent their way with their own bodies.

Modius was stunned at first when he saw the suicidal tactic work, who would willing give up their own lives to take on a missile? Were the Kruhur that loyal to their commanders? Every report he had read on Kruhur psychology insisted that these were inherently selfish and cruel creatures, and even if they were fanatically loyal to their commanders there should at least be one or two who hesitated enough for one of their missiles to get through.