Talk:Enceladus Aerospace Fleet/@comment-10700122-20150123205057/@comment-11135771-20150124023440

OOC: @AP: Okay. Also, it's TEO? The EAF was probably one of the ones who would've been more inclined to help them. Oh well, missed opportunity.

@CaptMCDerpington: Of course. Just have your character speak up in the control center (or on their ship, or whatever) after this post.

IC: Having had their ship-to-ship communications arrays destroyed, the crews of the crippled vessels were unable to organize any kind of plan between them.

The crew of one of the Goshawk IIs scrambled to get what weapons they had available upon receiving the transmission, the ~800 naval personnel gathering into small groups in the most defensible areas of the ship, with around a quarter of them gathered in the shuttle bay with sidearms and a handful of rifles aimed at the doors from behind makeshift barricades made from whatever was in the bay.

On the second Goshawk II, around half the crew opted to surrender, while the rest took up defensive positions similarly to those of the first ship. The third warship's captain brought all crew to battle stations, and waited until the dropships were about to arrive. When they closed to within a few dozen metres, the ship activated its sublight engines and accelerated forward, ramming into the dropships and shattering them against its hull. Meanwhile, it opened fire on the unidentified fleet with all weapons, also launching a handful of MCMs backwards over the asteroid cluster and then detonating them as a warning to the approaching Mantis II.

Aboard the Condor, a few of the crew wanted to surrender but were ordered to help defend under threat of being shot. Being a heavy transport ship, the bay of the Condor was very large, and around a thousand of its complement of ~1400 crew were able to set up inside it while the others fortified various other key positions. Since Condors were more likely targets for pirates than warships were, the crew had more handheld weaponry available to them, with around 50 particle beam rifles, 350 conventional rifles, and standard sidearms for the rest. A small team of engineers also headed to the reactor core as a last resort in case their defense failed, quickly flipping off failsafes on the ship's antimatter reactor and getting ready to puncture the containment if the enemy broke through.

Further back, the approaching Mantis II caught sight of the MCMs fired by the third Goshawk and stopped before clearing the asteroids. It attempted to contact the other ships, but their destroyed communications arrays could neither receive nor send more than static in reply. A single Aurora fighter was launched to investigate, and with its stealth systems active, it flew through the asteroid cluster to get a look.

{I'm just about to clear the asteroid field... Oh.}

There was silence on the line for a moment.

{Captain... our ships have been crippled by a large enemy fleet. Goshawk 3 is engaging, but doesn't look to stand a chance against that many. I'm sending you video, over.}

The fighter was called back shortly, and the Mantis warped back to base as soon as it docked to contact the base.

{Control, we have a situation. A large hostile fleet just showed up, the distress beacon must have been a trap. The ships you sent to investigate are crippled and being boarded. Sending you video taken by one of our fighters.}

From the control center, orders were quickly given out, and a large group of ships prepared to launch, hangars opening to release them from their bays in the planetoid's surface. Within several minutes, a fleet of thirty Goshawk IIs, ten Mantis IIs, six Tranquility IIs, and four Ashfalls lifted off and got ready to jump to warp.

OOC: Note that the crews take some time to get on board their ships and to their battle stations, so whatever goes on in the next post should be only about the boardings since the fleet won't have arrived yet.