Proving Your Worth, Part II
Posts: 4025
  • Posted On: Jul 23 2005 2:57am
In the Fallen system, several planets out, where a small asteriod belt is located....

The Imperial fleet dropped out of hyperspace near the asteriod belt. A lone Corsair class Starfighter had escaped, had been allowed to escape that is, the battle where the other pirate vessels had been annihilated, to where a homing beacon that had been attached to the vessel would lead a scratch Imperial force to the pirate's homebase. The force included the previous Ferro class Medium Cruiser Ferro, along with an aging Attack Sphere, and a newly comissioned Shinano class Fleet Carrier. Like the Ferro's battle above Falleen had been it's test of it's new ability, so here shall be the test of the auxiliary carrier Shinano. The Attack Sphere immediatly launched it's squadrons of TIE Devils, fast and manueverable TIE Starfighters, at the price of being small and with relativley weak weapons. But these vessels were well suited to dueling in asteriod fields. The squadrons immediatly took off into the field, where multipule vessels were located clustered around a single large asteriod. Other fighters were deployed from the Medium Cruiser and Auxiliary Carrier, consisting of TIE Fighters, and TIE Bombers, tasked with taking out the pirate's asteriod, along with a few Sentinel Shuttles. Explosions of light began as the fast little TIE Devils reached the site of the pirate's base, and began blasting the ship's clustered there, consisting mainly of transports, and captured ships.

Now the true capabilites of the Shinano class Carrier would come into play. As the TIE Devils were damaged, they would come around behind the carrier, then enter it through large rear open hangar doors. They came to rest against their assigned racks, and the mechanical arms went to work on the starfighters, replacing canisters of tibanna gas for the laser cannons, and making minor repairs when necessary. What ordinarily would have been a lengthy repair and refueling stay in the Attack Sphere was reduced to a mere couple of minutes before the fresh and hale starfighters re-emerged front the front hangar doors of the Shinano. They then streaked back into the asteriods in groups of two or three. Unsalvagble starfighters were stripped of still valuable materiels, and then the unusable parts were compacted into tight cubes and awaited transport by bulk freighter to a smelting plant. In the end of the battle, twenty one TIE Devils and three TIE Fighters were either destroyed, or declared total losses and smashed into scrap. A total of forty-eight TIE Devils, five TIE Fighters, and three TIE Bombers had been repaired, the longest repairs taking a total of four minutes. Most of these starfighters would not have been re-usable until sent to a shipyard for repairs, but thanks to the Shinano, this is no longer necessary. Again, like the Ferro class Medium Cruiser, the Shinano class Fleet Auxiliary Carrier had proven it's worth.