Commodore Vitkin stood proud aboard his bridge, aboard his ship, the Battleship Mandate.

Here was a man of a naval upbringing, a dismissed Rear-Admiral who had lost his command in the political scandal following the unseating of Chief of State Fey'la, that had fallen through the cracks into a mercenary life. Within short years of his dishonorable discharge the aging man had been introduced to another by the name of Beff Pike and his Guild of Bounty Hunters. The rest, as they said, was history.

Vitkin knew every inch of his ship as well as a dancer might know her own anatomy, and in all due seriousness, he could feel her around him like an extension of his own self. His training had included a very special introduction to the force, one that honed the Duros already refined sense of spacial orientation to a fine edge. It was rumored that he could feel the void better then some of the most advanced sensors. Accordingly, President Pike had given him command of one of the Guilds largest and most impressive ships.

A ship that now hung in space in the rear shadow of a considerably larger cruiser with her cloak preventing detection. No more then a few thousand meters lay between the forward bow of the Mandate and the aft end of the Cruiser.

The interloper was a Retakk craft some 1,300 meters in length. She had entered the system some days ago and, had gone mostly unnoticed considering the strong ties between BHG's main command and the leader of the Swarm. However, when the Swarm cruiser had started attacking incoming convoys and ultimately destroying two freighters as well as two observation satellites at the edge of the system, the Mandate had been dispatched to investigate the situation.

For hours now, they had been monitoring the craft while remaining unseen under their cloak.

"Comm, has there been any change, what-so-ever?" The Duro Captain glanced over his shoulder at the junior officer at the Con. Like all of his kind, Vitkin's face betrayed no emotion at all.

The Swarm Cruiser had answered no hails for the past 24 hours and, to be honest, Vitkin had his doubts that they would respond now.

"No Sir. Nothing."

"Very well," the Duro nodded and turned towards his tactical officer. "Load all torpedo bays and, standby by to raise shields and charge the energy tubes."

"Instruct the Stealthrays to move up on our wings, beta formation. Stand-by our pilots in their fighters, I want them ready to deploy at a moments notice."

"Stand-by to Decloak on my mark."

Waiting but a few moments longer, Vitkin held but for the perfect moment.






Mandate - Mercenary Class Battleship (cloaked)
M1 Squadron - 12 TiE Phantom Starfighters (undeployed)
M2 Squadron - 12 TiE Phantom Starfighters (undeployed)
Stealth 027 - Stealthray Blastboat (cloaked)
Stealth 028 - Stealthray Blastboat (cloaked)
Stealth 029 - Stealthray Blastboat (cloaked)
Stealth 030 - Stealthray Blastboat (cloaked)



EDIT: It should be noted that this takes place at the same time as the Incursion thread between BHG and TAR.

Kargge waited with bated breath. The last communique from his illustrious leader, the Hive Imperius had been no more than seven days ago. His last orders were straight and to the point. Each of a handful of commanders were to be given control of a vessel, and with that ship they would attack the designated targets frequented by the traiterous K'taruuk.

General Kargge's designated target was a system named Mandalore. The information revealed to him through the traitor, Slimoor's interrogation was sketchy at the most. It took several of the Swarm's best astronomical scientist's, working overtime to extrapolate the coordinates of the world, and even then it took more than three days to locate and pinpoint it's exact whereabouts.

Once upon a time, Kargge once learned under K'taruuk, at one time, he was a valued pupil and fellow officer in combat, but now, in his eye's,the man he'd once looked up to had stabbed his own people in the back to satisfy his own greed and curiosity. He would pay for his heresy, all those serving under him would pay, including the inhabitants of this world.

Mandalore.

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Ancestral-class Carrier~Reletak
120 Retak Fighters (10squadrons)
{2 Squadrons on patrol, 9.5 Km away from the carrier}

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Vitkin watched on in anticipation as his battleship inched meters closer to the Swarm cruiser. He stood with his arms crossed neatly over his chest, standing before his command chair with one foot on the raised dais for said chair.

"Designate the Cruiser, Mark One. Do we have the Stealth's in position?"

Behind him, in the dimness of the bridge, awash in the glow of red lighting, his tactical officer confirmed that the Blastboats were indeed in position.

With a reluctant word, Vitkin ordered his ships into motion.
"Mark."

For a moment that seemed to spawn an infinity, everything around him froze, as if this moment would determine the fates of he and all his men.

Then, in slow motion, his planned attack was carried out with razor precision, with many events seeming to happen at the very same moment.

First, their cloak dropped. With amazing speed, as the Mandalorian device was designed, Vitkin had revealed his ship to the enemy but, so swift was their arrival it was likely to stammer and amaze the enemy crew. Also, seemingly within the same second, a volley of 19 concussion type projectiles leapt forth from tubes hidden along the Mercenary's forward surfaces.

Large, high yield devices, the warheads drove forth on blue-green tails of ionized power. Inside of their preprogrammed onboard computers, directives called them together and, with synthetic driven intellects, they clustered together for impact. Within an error of 8.5 meters at most, they would all strike the same area directly above the enemy cruisers main engines.

Unseen, four of Vitkin's Stealthray Blastboats flew in close formation behind the missiles and, as the warheads dove low, they ran high. Still cruising under cloak, their rear-mounted bomb racks carried the deadly devices that made them so deadly. Even as they dropped, the craft themselves went unseen, the bombs seeming to appear from nowhere.

And yet only moments after this, two more things occurred: Vitkin's craft charged up her shields just as power from the cloak was being dumped, in massive amounts, into a jump-start of the main cluster of energy torpedo bays. Even before the static blue of her shields could come into full glow, 19 charged energy torpedos leapt from his ship, angrily seeking the cruiser that sat before them.

Then, in conformation of the attack, Vitkin's chief XO clipped of a quick comment to the affirmative.

"All away!"

Kargge's Command chiar was uprotted from its durasteel bindings on the floor and he was instantly sent shuddering across the floor, but not before his head clipped the edge of a command console, lacerating his forehead causing his crimson brown blood to spatter across the matte black deckplating.

His head, under an enslaught of ringing and muffled yells, the fallen General struggle to regain his composure and his footing. Clambering halfway onto a command console, he tore away the bludgeoned carcass of his operations officer and scanned his eyes across the tactical scanner assessment, breifly taking in the sensor data corrolated over the last few seconds before the attack before a yell bellowed from the bridge's tactical station.

"Sir we have more torpedoes incoming!" Cried the tactician.

"Shields!?" Growled Kargge in the vein hope that they would be up in time.


The nineteen energy torpedoes seered towards the carrier at tremendous velocity and all seemed destined to hit thier mark. As the torpedoes blazed onward, the blue hue from the ship's energy shield raising around the vessel from front to back. It's encapsulation of the ship seemed to last for an eternity, and just reached the rear of the vessel in time to weakly block nine of the torpedoes. The other ten careered through and struck the ass-end of the ship, and the explosion on the shields rocking the cruiser thoroughly.


Consoles shipwide erupted in sparks and inciendiary, including many on the bridge, causing a series of small fires to break out across the interior of the craft.

Kargge hobbled back to his feet just before the next set of eplosions sent him to the floor again with an uncerimonious thud.

"Report!?" He yelped.

"We have shields . . .but only partial protection on the backquarter, our generators took quite a beating. Weapon's are coming online now. We've lost our main engines. I still have manouvering thrusters and attitude control. Essentially we're a sitting duck."


Wiping the thick, brown blood from his forehead, he wrestled himself onto an unsteady footing and limped painfully to the fore of his bridge . . .

Barely a hint of a smile caressed the lips of the Commodore as his missiles and their torpedo counterparts struck home over, and over. The rear-end of the interloping cruiser did not look much worse for wear but, a seasoned naval captain, Vitkin knew better.

"Status, please?" The 'please', he added just for effect. So long as he kept a cool and even head, so would his crew. Most humanoids lacked the ability to read the emtions of the Duro people, so for Vitkin, command came in his tone.

Equally as calm as his Commodore had asked, his XO responded in kind. "We are reading multiple impacts on their rear quarters. Shield status is unconfirmed, known to be unstable, however."

"Excellent," the Commodore seemed to take his time forumlating a reply but, again, this was simply for show. "Deploy our fighters under orders to immediatly cloak and hold in Beta Four formation. Reload our torpedo tubes and standby ready on the energy lauchers. As soon as all birds report as departed, raise our cloak."

Almost as an after-thought, he added, "Divert 30% power to our forward shield array and plot a vector assent along beta gamma six-four and engage post-cloak. Thank you."

He needed not utter commands for his Stealthrays, they knew their orders. Standby for a second run and hold for fighter counterparts to form up.



OOC:

Mandate - Mercenary Class Battleship (cloaking)
M1 Squadron - 12 TiE Phantom Starfighters (deployed/cloaking)
M2 Squadron - 12 TiE Phantom Starfighters (deployed/cloaking)
Stealth 027 - Stealthray Blastboat (cloaked)
Stealth 028 - Stealthray Blastboat (cloaked)
Stealth 029 - Stealthray Blastboat (cloaked)
Stealth 030 - Stealthray Blastboat (cloaked)

Wiping the blood and spattered sinew from his eye's, Kargge focused his crimson-covered eyeballs onto the pin-holed starfield just past the thin separation of transparisteel that lay in front of him. His gaze meandered across glittering jewels. He was searching.

"Where are you?" He muttered, pressing his talons into the glass.

He turned back towards his tattered bridge crew to adress them as the bridge fires began to fizzle out in a storm of extuingisher fog.

"This . . .enemy has the ability to render itself invisible to our sensors, which makes our job's harder.


Suggestions . . .?" He said, eying the remaining staff.

For a moment, noone spoke . . .their combined minds emptying little input onto the Hive . . .until one spoke out.

"Sir . . .we could vent our waste exhaust . . .?" He inquired, looking to Kargge for approval.

"Go on ensign."

"If we vent our waste engine plasma around us . . .we can ignite it with our turbolasers. We may take a little jolt, but it may reveal a shadow, something we can lock onto. Its risky, and inaccurate."


"and it's the only idea we have. Make it so." Order Kargge, turning his concentration back towards the black void outside.


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OOC
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Fighters now 6 km away from mothership.

Aboard his bridge, all was silent. Even the occasional ping or blip of a machine behind him seemed subdued, as if not wishing to disturb the still.

Soon enough, the silence was broken. It was Vitkin himself who spoke, "Where are they?"

A signal operator was the first to respond, "Six klicks and closing sir. They outnumber..."

Vitkin was quick to cut him off, "I am well aware of the battle assessments crewman."
"Order both squadrons to intercept the incoming fighters, I should like them to buy us as much time alone with the cruiser as possible."

Just as Vitkin had spoken, one of his forward console operators chimed in. "Stealth Lead reports bombs away."

While his fighters moved off, invisible to the sensor eye, Vitkin watched as, displayed on the main view-scree, a number of small round objects seemed to appear as if from no where. Moving on only their inertia, the bombs would make easy targets to stop but, they did not have to reach far. These were high yield devices meant to wash damage over an area, if not as potent others.

Even as they tumbled towards the cruiser, Vitkin uttered his next orders. "Full reverse engines please. Keep the Stealths on their pass patterns. Let us see if we cannot annoy them out of our space. Inform me the moment the enemy birds get past our starfighters, if you would. Oh, and do please stand-by shields and energy tubes."



Two Squadrons (24) Starfighters moving to Intercept (Phatoms)
Mandate - Full reverse to Hold at distance.
Stealthrays - Continuing ventral straffing runs.