We had been closing this whole time, my evasive actions focusing more on making me hard to target instead of opening distance, while the berzerker had been ploughing its way through space towards me the whole time.
This meant that when it opened fire with two of it's remaining beams they were actually on target, any inaccuracy from my jamming was obviated by just how close they were. In my head a pictured a cone of fire that they had been aiming at me, my jamming widened the cone, but now I was simply too 'deep' in said cone for them to miss.
On target did not mean that they were focused however, instead of drilling through a single part of my hull the beam played across it, scorching it's way across the armor plating, deforming it with heat and radiation, and making my maneuvering thrusters and sensor nodes fail and die with a string of warning surging into my head.
An explosion rocked the ship in slow motion, briefly knocking me out of my frame-jacked state.
Things started moving really fast, the drones jetted out of my drone bays, I belatedly tagged two of them as dog-drone and cat drone, as I dove down towards the rest of the fight. I triggered my turrets again, though all but one of the plasma packets missed as the berserker blasted by me. I took the moment to snap pictures of it. I could feel my auto-loaders working to bring new missiles to the bays but they weren't near ready.
I Jammed my mind back into a higher reference frame, and the disorientation phased me for a moment, before I began reasserting control.
I quickly set a script to control frame-jacking, as a diagnostic came back showing me that the disruption to my frame-jack resulted in the disruption of my evasive action, and I had lost most of the armor on the belly of the ship, and damaged the large fabricator. My script was to turn on frame jacking whenever a weapon was ready to be fired or from any number of alerts that could come up, while keeping me the rest of the time in normal time so that my evasive patterns would not be disrupted by it going offline. I watched as the plasma packets I had fired and missed made an about turn and flew past me towards the berzerker.
At about this moment the drones I had launched took up position on the damaged side of the berzerker. They began blasting super charged packets of plasma into it's innards of the enemy vessel, causing massive secondary explosions to fountain out of it's wounded side.
The enemy ship flipped once more, shedding wreckage as it did, and an alert dropped me into maximum frame jack. It was an intercept course, and I immediately began to evade.
This, however, put me into a stern chase with it... which allowed it to pour fire into my drives.
It didn't take long for one of them to flare out under the onslaught of coherent energy, and the enemy vessel lurched closer.
The drones took out one of it's remaining guns, but I had realised by now it was not going for a gun run, it was trying to ram into me, and with one of my drives down I didn't have the maneuverability to evade it.
Then a particle beam lanced into it's damaged side, and it's engines sputtered out. Without the constant correction of its engines I was able to get out of it's path, though it fired a parting gift from it's remaining beam before my sensors finally said it's power systems went offline... my drones kept hammering it's innards even after though.
My alerts had dropped me back into maximum frame-jack, so I sent an order to the drones to RTB, and received a response
NEGATIVE.
TARGET ACTIVE.
CONTINUING BOMBARDMENT.
I was puzzled by this response and looked deeper into my scans, the plasma bolts being rapid fired from the drones were moving swiftly even in my frame-jacked state, and I was watching as the explosions ate away at the innards of the berzerker.
I sent a request for more information to Hook while I vectored the ship towards the direction the laser that had saved me had come from.
In that direction I saw a ship somewhat smaller than me, or hook, but with a massive cannon that seemed to take up the entirety of the vessel aimed my way. It appeared to have had two smaller turrets on it, but those had been destroyed, and its thrusters were sputtering erratically.
My sensors helpfully charted the trajectory of it's main gun towards the hulk of the berserker that had been trying to kamikaze me.
“Well, if my drones think it's still alive, and the imperials think it's still alive...”
I started to track my turrets over to assist, when I noticed a discrepency in the jamming.
From far away it was impossible to discern 'concentrations' of the jamming, but with both myself and the drones as separate data points the broad swathes of jamming were condensing into a sphere, with varying concentrations...
And one of them was moving towards my 'savior' with intent.
I tracked my turrets over and fired, telling the turrets to blanket the most likely origin of the jamming, then cursing as the last projectile left the barrel when I realized I was aiming almost directly at the ship that had saved me, and that it must look like I was firing on it.
“Just have to hope they are feeling trusting.”
I dropped out of frame-jack and received a number of communications all at once. First of all, Hook had sent an info dump basically saying that Berzerker craft have phenomenal damage control, and if not entirely destroyed they will 'reanimate' for lack of a better word and go on a killing spree, even if that is just by turning themselves into a kinetic weapon aimed at population centers.
The next was a communication from my savior.
“C.O.G. Vessel, The imperium thanks you for your assistance but we need you tOH HELL WHAT ARE YOU DOING!”
The soundbyte was compressed in the first part, so the captain sounded like they were huffing helium as my plasma packets raced past it.
No point defense fire came from my savior, but seconds after they passed by the first two plasma projectiles exploded as lasers intercepted them, this gave both my sensors, and probably my savior's sensors, the ability to lock on to the incoming ship, another berzerker, though this one had all but a single turret destroyed.
My plasma packets stiched two lines up the berzerker attempting to flank the imperial vessel and it's turret went dead.
The imperial vessel struggled to get out of the way as I dumped two missiles into the new berzerker, letting my drones continue finishing off the first berzerker I had engaged.
Right as the two missiles impacted the disabled flanking berzerker I took a hit from a particle beam on my rear. Reorienting my perspetive I could see that the first berzerker had, in fact, repaired itself enough to roll and get a turret funcitonal in the few moments I had taken my eyes off it, and was shooting me even while my drones valiantly cored inside of it with plasma explosions.I was feeling something between exasperation and anxiety as I realised just how hard these things were to kill.
“Captain, I suggest you give me full control of the systems, with berzerker's you can never be too careful.” Hook asked, though his phrasing was... odd.
I forced myself into full frame-jack.
“What's up hook? The entire time I've known you you have cautioned against that, hell you even told me you have locks that prevent that. What changed?”
“Don't worry about the past, this is an emergency situation, you have never seen combat before, here is how to give me control.” Hook then sent me a long and complicated set of instructions that would allow it to take control of the ship... it included ordering my drones to physically alter systems to allow it direct access, completely bypassing me. My heart dropped into my stomach.
“Hook... this seems extreme, if you needed this why didn't you have me set this up ahead of time.”I asked, probing.
“That does not matter what matters is that you do it NOW!” That last now echoed in my mind and made my head swim. I could feel Hook trying to reach past me to other systems, but it couldn't unless I let it. Strangely... Hook wasn't stuttering or having any trouble speaking to me right now at full frame jack, despite me stretching all my systems to the limits and it having reduced computing capacity.
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“Back down Hook.”
“Give. Me. Control.” It didn't sound like Hook anymore. The voice sounded like gnashing teeth and gouging knives, and I could detect a signal from the Berzerker that was currently coring its way into my hull alongside the beam that was currently chewing it's way through my armor. It's energy weapon, in addition to melting my armor, was also transmitting a massive amount of information.
“What does it take to kill these things!” I muttered to myself, firing my one remaining engine and moving away from it. The imperial ship's main gun opened up on the first berzerker again, and it's turret once more went silent.
At the same time I dived into my codebase, and started cutting Hook off from the ship. I shut down the systems he could access one by one, rebooting them with changed security protocols to keep Hook from touching them, and checked my database for anything about this.
I immediately got an alert that was brought up by my search terms.
It said 'Signs of Berzerker infection. Initiate full delete and purge of all affected systems and restore from safe backups. Check all backups before reinstantiation.' There was even a link to a helpful Berzerker purge protocol.
I stopped for a moment, though it was more of a microsecond with the reference frame I was currently in.
“I'm sorry hook.” I said, as I initiated the berzerker purge protocol, and it helpfully let me select affected systems. I selected Hook's ID from the list, the ship automatically also selecting all systems Hook could have directly infected, and a purge started. I was startled as I realized several conduits around Hook's 'core' suddenly spiked int temperature, and I got a massive radiation spike form that section of the ship.
Hook let out a primal scream in my head, so loud it caused me actual pain and made me white out for a second, before it suddenly cut off. If I had control of my body I probably would have cried out.
My heart was hammering in my chest as I came to grips with what had just happened and how close I had come to losing everything. I had been trusting Hook too much, and if I had done what the infection had tried to get me to do... well I don't want to know what the berzerker would do to a captain of a ship it infected.
I sent to the imperial ship. “Watch out, it just tried to hack me, screen your comm signals!”
At this point I left the drones to finish killing the first berzerker and focused my efforts on destroying the flanking berzerker.
They didn't get another shot off, but it was still a slog, as I constantly ret-argeted my tracking plasma to specific points in the hulk that were showing signs of power and repair.
The first part of the engagement had seemed like it went by with lightning speed, but by the time the flanking berzerker's jamming field went down and I was sure it was dead nearly an hour had passed.
The imperial captain had tried off and on to contact me, but we had seperated enough that the jamming made communication difficult and we were focused on finishing off our respective targets.
I did a scan of the area and picked up the wrecks of four imperial vessels, three destroyers similar to the one that had assisted me, and one larger one that my systems helpfully identified as a 'dictator' class capital ship, in addition to the scattered remains of what had to have been at least one more berzerker.
The destroyers were identified as Baron class beam destroyers.
I opened comms in the finally dead space. It looked like my ally had finished his own berzerker off a few minutes ago, though as I watched it powered up it's main gun one last time and fired it down the bow of the berzerker, and the berzerker hull practically unzipped under the final onslaught, the last few sections of hull holding it together vaporizing and scattering the vessel into dozens of pieces.
“Sorry about the delay, was focusing a little too much on not dying. This ship seems dead, Hopefully yours is as well?” I sent a message in the clear to the other vessel. I wasnt sure about the protocol for communication in this situation.
“This is Baron Hannity to C.O.G. Vessel designated...” He sighed. “Hook.”
“I swear I didn't choose the name” I replied, a little embarrassed”
“Well, regardless, thanks for the assist. Those three ships came out of nowhere and disabled the Duke Breccus, our command ship, and engaged us in a skirmish. It looks like I'm the only ship still functional.” The voice on the comm was a deep male baritone, and now that it was not full of the stress of battle I found it quite pleasant to listen to.
I scanned the battlescape. There were huge numbers of escape pods drifting around the area that I could now see with the jammers down.
“Looks like a lot of people survived at least... can't say much about the ships.” I transmitted
The other imperial vessels had been gutted, the larger ship, the Lord Breccus, had been nearly cut in half by beams. The other imperial vessels were in similar shape. All told, including the two Berzerkers we had killed, there were four of the hulked psychotic vessels. I warily eyed the fourth. It hadn't been disintegrated like the other two that I hadn't killed, and seeing how much destruction the one I had been pounding had taken, I wasn't sure about leaving that one un-scanned.
“Those things pack a helluva punch.” I added. Maneuvering my ship closer to the dead berzerker I had killed. I was feeling a little self conscious that my weapons didn't have the force to completely vaporize one of these ships like the imperial vessels... unless I wanted to dump some missiles into them I suppose. I was wary of using up more expendable supplies on a battle already won however.
“They sure do. No idea how they got so close without anyone detecting them.” Baron Hannity replied as I maneuvered to bring some of my undamaged sensors to bear.
“Yeah... I'm going to get close to one of them, try to scan them. See if I can figure that out.” I sent offhandedly.
“Remember the accords, don't mess with berzerker tech. We don't want to call down a whole fleet of them while we can barely defend ourselves.” Lord Hannity replied.
“I'll be careful. Fly safe Lord Hannity.” I replied. It felt too much like a dismissal to me, but I honestly did not want to keep talking to someone who might see me as an enemy at any moment. I was worried I might give something away that might force some kind of engagement.
I approached the first berzerker I had engaged, my drones were still swarming around it, not firing.
“Before we do this we should probably take a look at how much damage we took.
I brought up a readout of the ship.
Vessel Name:Hook
Propulsion:
1 CFD-111 Fusion Reactor(FUEL: 43%)
2 CFT-10 Fusion Torch Drive(1 DAMAGED, REPAIRS IN PROGRESS)
14 CFT-97 Fusion Torch Maneuver Thrusters(5 DAMAGED, REPAIRS IN PROGRESS)
4 CMDCGAMT-4 Auxillary Cold Gas Thrusters(1 DAMAGED, REPAIRS IN PROGRESS)
Primary Armament:
1 CPL-77 triple barrel tracking plasma projector
1 CPL-66 double barrel tracking plasma projector(DAMAGED, OPERABLE, MUST BE BROUGHT OFFLINE FOR REPAIRS)
Secondary Armament:
2 CSL-3 Missile Launchers1
Current warhead count:39(max 108) Heavy MIRV shaped plasma warheads
1 Missile Auto-fabricator(current production loadout: Heavy MIRV shaped plasma warheads)
Current missile fabrication limits:67(WARNING:RAW MATERIALS SHORTAGE)
1 CDL-2 Drone Bays:
Current drone count:5 CCD-14 plasma drones(max bandwidth limit's to 2 drones per bay)
Defensive equipment:
1x CEWJ-90 Radar Jammer
1x CEWD Laser Dazzler(DAMAGED, REPAIRS IN PROGRESS)
1x CEWODJ Omni-directional Radio Jammer
1x CEWCM Countermeasure Launcher(DAMAGED, REPAIRS IN PROGRESS)
Current Ordnance Count:
Chaff: 8
IR: 4
Active: 2
4 CPP Plasma Particle Shotgun Point Defense System
2 CPP Guided Plasma Munition Point Defense System
Utility equipment:
Autonomous repair drones(98/108, PLEASE TASK DRONE PRINTER FOR REPLENISHMENT )
Autonomous repair drone printer
1 CML 2 MINING BEAM
1x CTU Medical Unit
C.O.G. REPAIR MATRIX: 4 OF 4 NODES ONLINE.
CURRENT STATUS: REPAIRING OUTER HULL, RESTORING ARMOR, BRINGING ALL DRIVES ONLINE
4 CDS-SWR Radar Panels,
2 CDS-LWR Radar Antennae
1 CDS-RTR Radar
