[Azatol]

The Second Battle of Calatius Homeworld, Part 2

Vader redirected the fleet's focus, telling them to focus on destroying each ships weapons before moving on. The fleet had a clear firepower advantage over the Collective, they may not have had the bigger guns, but they had more. Also the laser fire was more damaging than Collective cannonry fire, since research into lasers was a priority in the empire.

With the remaining rear elements of the Imperial Fleet finally arriving, Vader used all the firepower he had turning one ship after another into merely a weaponless shell. The Anterab class ships were especially dominant, able to almost destroy an entire frigate in one weapons firing suite.

The Local Archivist processed all this information, he now guessed that the Collective would need around sixty frigate warships to take down such a well armed fleet. Along with them, almost 20 refueling ships would be needed, as well as two or three troop transports. He continued processing data from the battle.

The Battle turning his way, Vader ordered the fleet to fire and then retreat as a precaution against ramming. The Empire destroyed six more ships in a matter of minutes, routing the collective.

The Refuelers of the Collective began moving forward and forming up for ramming duty, while concentrated fire from the warships was sufficient to cripple one enemy ship. Another barrage of missiles were launched by the collective as well, but missile warfare was slowly dying and direct fire weapons dominating on the battlefield.

The right flank of Vader's fleet engaged the second 3B3, which among the Collective ships, was the only one armed as well as the imperial ships, with six cannons to the Adz II's seven lasers. It was destroyed by the combined fire of five ships. The Anterab, on the other hand, carried NINE lasers.

The battle had so far been more civilized than previous ones, as ships with weapons left fired them instead, and the other ships had no engines either. It was doubtful whether the refueling ships of the Collective would get in range for ramming before being destroyed.

The collective corralled what few warships were remaining, ramming those who could move but did not have significant firepower left, and firing with the others. Their fleet was surrounded on three sides, but then the Collective never retreated anyway, better to ram and rebuild, they figured.

The secondary fire control centers of the Anterab light cruisers proved handy as these ships devastated everything left of the Collective warships, leaving only the troop transports and refuelers remaining.

The Anterab's were set up as forward picket for these repurposed ramming ships, to destroy them before they came in range, and retreat as needed to wipe them out. They did their job well, proving them to be the best ships in the sector.

The effective result of the battle was, on the imperial side, the damaging of five ships, and the loss of none. The five ships varied in damage from lots to hardly any. On the AI Alliance side, the entire collection of warships from both sides was destroyed in an incredibly futile attempt at defeating the Empire.

Palpatine laughed like a sith would on such a victorious occassion, while Vader still felt something, somewhere that was just barely breaking into the force somehow, despite the fact that only Palpatine and himself should be adepts in it at this time. It was like an almost silent whisper, but he could hear it, and it irritated him as to where this could be happening.

Since the local archivist was destroyed, the one back home took up the task of analyzing the results of the battle, as did the Initiative. It was decided that since the Initiative could field the biggest ships around, they must build a strong fleet as well. Only a vast endless supply of Collective warships, and a reasonably large number of Heavy Cruisers from the Initiative would be able to strike the finishing blow. The Initiative was tasked with leading the way forward the next time, for now they had to prepare their defenses, and watch the pendulum swing around again.

The Collective reported they were now able to build Destroyers and would make that the main hull of their next main warship. The Omega, their new Destroyer design, was changed, the missiles were dropped, and the missile defense halved.