OOC: I choose to make them move first.
The Sanctum moves 8 more hexes into the atmosphere and drops a tactical nuclear weapon on the mining outpost. The outpost is instantly vaporized.
The Azlanti Harrier drifts forward, its pilot busy locking weapons.
The Gardathir fighter rockets forward, prepared to assist the Revenge, while the Runeflayer keeps on the Harrier.
Revenge's Move. Staying on the Sanctum?
Isis takes advantage of the enemy's slow speed to keep on their tail while being fully evasive. Since the Sanctum moved 8 and half speed for the Revenge is normally 6, we end up still on their tail but with two hexes between us.
"Greater Evade" should add +4 to AC and TL. DC is 18, roll is
Gunnery Phase. Gunners are at +2 from Quinn's Encourage, and have an extended Crit range thanks to Esh's computing.
The gunner focused on whichever vessel was closest, hoping it would improve his aim.
Sharlavaka's shot tears into the rear of the ship.
"Haaar! Excellent shot, but lizardy compadre!" Shouts the Dwarven gunner, as he also throws shots into the damaged aft section of the Sanctum.
The Gardathir fighter flies lower into the atmosphere and fires a torpedo at the damaged sanctum:
The Runeflayer fires at the Azlanti fighter.
The Azlanti Harrier fires on the Revenge; it's a clean miss.
The Sanctum fires no weapons this turn.
Top of Round; Engineering Phase
"Finally! Damned thing!" Otis shouts, thumping the electromagnetic resonator.
"Shields increased 8.75%, captain!
Helm Phase
Holding on Initiative
OOC: Sorry I haven't kept up. Initiative
Helm Phase:
Sanctum:
Harriers:
Runeflayer:
Gardathir Fighter:
The Sanctum wins initiative, and drives on toward the habitated zone.
Revenge's Initiative
Act now or force the others to move first?
OOC: Others first I guess.
The Azlanti fighter moves into position to attack the Revenge, but the Runeflayer stays on her.
The Gardathir fighter takes off after the Sanctum to try to take it down before it can attack the city.
Movement, Captain's action (potentially), Science officer action.
Isis moves the Revenge 8 squares to be directly behind the Sanctum.
She Evades for +2 AC and TL, DC 18,
Let's move on to gunnery phase
The Sanctum launches a powerful air to ground missile at the city from a heretofore unseen bottom bay. The missile destroys all buildings outside the forcefield, vaporizing much of the ice outside the city.
Sharlavaka
Sharalavaka clicks as the attack lands against the city, but continues to focus his attacks on the remaining fighter. Until it was dead or he got new orders he would continue to do so.
The Dwarven gunner fires the secondary weapon...
Sharlavaka's attack causes massive damage to the hindsection of the ship. The gunner's attack widens that even more.
The Runeflayer fires, destroying the last Harrier.
With the massive damage caused to the Sanctum, the Gardathir fighter pilot flies in and fires a torpedo into the exposed, damaged section.
Unfortunately, the torpedo goes wide.
Top of Round; Engineering Phase
As Otis prepares to try to amp up the weapons, a plasma injector unexpectedly goes bad, and the engineer screams in pain!
"Auuurgh!"
"Engineering! Otis, do you read?"
There is no response.
"Captain, I'm on my way to engineering!"
Helm Phase
Initiative, please.
Sanctum:
Runeflayer:
Gardathir Fighter:
Revenge initiative, with a node bonus:
The Sanctum moves first. It closes in on Vul Faldihr.
Does Revenge move next or let the other two Gardathir ships act first?
OOC: Wait til Gardathir.
It seems Isis can move the Revenge into the same hex as "GF". Since they're friendly ships and hexes represent a large volume of space, IMHO nothing bad happens. (Rando, if I'm wrong put us directly behind "GF". Isis attempts a Greater Evade for +4 AC and TL, DC 18,
Technically...
"Unless otherwise specified, each ship occupies 1 hex, regardless of its size."
But I'll allow it until it becomes a problem.
"What?" The elf scowls, as the human ceases his responses. "What in Calistria's name is going on down there? Hrn..."
The elf tries to readjust the ship's sensors, but fails to load the program.
Gunnery Phase
The Sanctum gets another shot in, and all hell breaks loose. The shield around the city falls, and the water from the destroyed glaciers slams into the city streets; however, most of the buildings remain intact. Another blast like that will destroy the city.
Sharlavaka's action.
With the final fighter dead, Sharlavaka finally turned his weapon on the attacking ship and opened up on it. Given how vital the shot was he focused on the target, studying it for any potential weaknesses within its build or the damage already inflicted in the hopes that he would find something vital enough to stop it firing again, but he had only moment to judge his shot before he pulled the trigger.
Sharlavaka's shot hits a crucial intact for the force resonance generator, which sends a pulse directly into the engine room. The explosion is brilliant as the large Azlanti ship shatters into a million pieces!
The debris raining down does some property damage on the edge of the city, but that's nothing compared to what would have happened if they'd gotten one more of those bombs out.
Within a few minutes, the Gardathir all-clear signal is transmitted over the comm systems of all defensive forces. The combat platforms held off a large portion of the invading force, allowing the small hodge-podge defensive force, including the Revenge and the Rune Flayer, to stave off the remaining invading ships. Zothune is safe (for now).
Level up!
Sharlavaka nodded, once, as the priority target went down in flames. With the battle won, for now, he rose the gunners position and headed down to Engineering to find out what had happened to Otis. He hoped it was boarders rather than mechanical failure. They were more fun.
Sharlavaka found Otis in the Med Lab, on a bench huddled between Esh's experiments and Isis' fermentation equipment.
He was looking into Irina's eyes, their faces inches apart. As if startled out of a dream, he suddenly looked up at the bipedal lizard.
"Oh! Hey, there Sharlavaka!" Irina had put a healing sleeve over the older man's arm, a scanner resting in her hand, un-monitored.
Irina turned quickly, cleared her through, and turned her attention back to the med-scanner.
"Oh, hey. Don't worry, he's fine. A little flesh burned off, but other than that, not worse for wear."
"I assume by your presence here we won?"
As the battle finally started to wind down, Esh through his digital ghost into the non-sapient parts of Revenge's computer network in irser to check up on various systems. Anything that may have been damaged in the firefight were catalogued for later repairs, but for not it seems as though things wrere largely in tact overall. Less could be said about the city and the lives lost, but if he was honest, the only reason why the Elf even cared for that was because it left a poor overall mark on this mission's grading.
"Captain," He spoke up after a momment. "I'm requesting permission to travel down to the planet and find out just how those dimwitted dwarves managed to blow their shields."
"Mostly. City took some hits. Hopefully, limited casualties if civilians in shelters." Sharlavaka made an irritated clicking noise. "Too close. Another hit would have been..." The Vesk considered. "Bad."
He glanced at Otis' arm. "Looks unpleasant. Need help in Engine Room while the epidermis recovers?"
"Eh, couldn't hurt," Otis concedes.
Sharlavaka tilted his head. This was one of those cultural differences that he always struggled with. There were lots of ways it could hurt. He could make a mistake and blow up something, for example, or spill something volatile and corrosive. But pointing these things out was apparently not how humans operated, so after a moment Sharlavaka nodded.
"Ship status?"