House Trieste
Paolo Trieste watched the Deuffel ship as it vectored toward them. It was a Clipper class, meaning it was thin, agile, and meant more for speed than battle.
Battles in space were a different animal than dogfights in an atmosphere. Rule number one in space was to keep the long lines of your ship facing away from your enemy and bring all shield power to the bow, or front, of the ship. That gave your foe the least available target, and kept your main batteries facing in harm's way. Rule number two in space battles; refer to rule number one.
At the onset, both ships would get into optimal firing range, and then move laterally, forever keeping your nose facing towards your enemy, and then it was a war of attrition.
Loops, barrel roll, and keeping on your targets six were a thing of the past. All of those antiquated moves could easily get you killed, for it exposed too much area of your ship and its shields even for a critical few seconds.
With computer aided targeting, a weapons officer could make an opposing ship mincemeat in a matter of moments, and being on someone's tail doesn't afford you much help when your adversary can pivot one hundred and eighty degrees, bringing all of his guns and shields to face you. It wasn't pretty, and it wasn't romantic, it was war at its most efficient and most brutal, for there were few survivors.
For Paolo, the most disturbing part of this whole encounter was that he had never faced off in anger towards a real foe. Sure he had hundreds of hours in the simulator, but he had never done battle on a ship. In fact, the simulation software that he used had to be smuggled into where he had been exiled in the Imperial Palace.
The problem being was that the entire time he was a ward of the Emperor, he was a de facto prisoner, and the Imperial administrators in charge of his internment were not about to give him control of a warship.
This was to be his first real trial under fire, yet he wasn't nervous, just excited. One reason for his lack of nervousness was that this Deofol clipper was not following the status quo. For one thing, it was accelerating when tactics would dictate deceleration. At this rate, the clipper would be flying by him and in close proximity.
"Commander, we are being hailed by our Defense Department. Two of our Guard's gunships are in immediate pursuit of the Deofol clipper."
Paolo brought up the system map, and sure enough, there behind the speeding clipper were two green blobs denoting the gunships.
It became immediately evident that the Deofol weren't attacking them, instead, they were fleeing the gunships and using the Vincennes as a screen. It was an incredibly good tactic since the gunships couldn't fire on the clipper without risking hitting Paolo' s ship.
"Inform the gunships that we will be moving to their starboard. Mr. Como, and on my mark, rotate to port. Once we get a good angle, bring all cannons to bear on that clipper."
"Mr. Como. initiate sequence in five, four, three, two, Mark."
Paolo' s ship initially took several minutes to make the move, fighting inertia the whole time, and the Deofoll ship tried to adjust its flight pattern so as not to lose its advantage, but they were going too fast, and eventually the slightest angle, augmented by the gunships who also took a lateral tact, and the Deuffel gave up and tried to male a break for it, but when the cannons from the three ships hit, at three different angles, it's shields couldn't hold, and the ship was rent apart.
"Good shooting, Mr. Como" Paolo shouted, and a cry came up from the crew as the clipper was now shrouded from view from the smoke and light of the explosion. The crew was obviously happy, having succeeded in their first ever enemy engagement, but Paolo knew the clipper had little chance of escaping even if they hadn't been there to help intercept, and the reality was the gunships had done most of the damage.
How a Deofoll clipper had penetrated so far into their system, and how it was not discovered earlier by the Trieste' s outer defenses, was Paolo's immediate concern. He had no time for celebrations but he let the crew calm down before reminding them of their duties
The news of the Deofol ship's penetration into the system's "airspace," reached Trieste long before the Vincennes had time to land at the planet's starport. Paolo supervised the docking, and was the last to exit the ship, but he could see on his Troon that the media was abuzz with their "knee-jerk" speculations and innuendo.
The usual talking heads were stoking the public into a frenzy as they made conjectures about an imminent Doefol attack. It had gotten to the point that Paolo, and the captains of the two gunships, had been ordered before a Senate investigatory committee concerning the incident, and his father, the Duke, was scheduled to talk at a news conference later that night.
Even before the smoke had cleared from the Deofel ship, Paolo had recognized the incident's importance and had requested a recovery ship so that all the debris could be collected, inspected, and shipped to the starport. Paolo and the Vincennes were to rendezvous with the recovery ship, and he had sent the gunships back on patrol for fear of further Deofol incursions.
While he watched the recovery ship enter the scene and start its clean up, he had the presence of mind to send Genevieve a message, telling her that he and his crew were uninjured, but he doubted that he would be able to go riding with her that night.
Her immediate response was a mixture of disappointment and confusion stemming from her apparent ignorance of the whole incident. An incident that was causing panic throughout the system.
He had to laugh at his sister. She cared little for current events, and also the politics that impacted so profoundly upon her life, and cared more for the trivial incidentals that colored that life.
He was torn between his impulse to tell her the news, and his instincts to insulate her. He finally opted for the former rather than the later, realizing that her worrying was less contentious than her anger at being kept out of the loop.
"Commander Trieste?" Ensign Como interrupted Paolo' s thoughts and brought him back to his present responsibilities.
"Yes, Mr. Como?"
"The recovery ship is hailing us."
"Oh, sorry," Paolo said and connected to the message coming through from the ship's captain.
"Yes, captain?"
"Commander, I think you need to see this debris, or at least what we've been able to recover so far."
"Very good, captain. I'll make my inspection as soon as we dock with your ship."
"Yes, sir."
That was peculiar, Paolo thought. What the hell had the recovery ship found so soon?
When Paolo finally entered the hall where the Senate investigation was being held, he was startled by the all of the chaos. It was if war had broken out, and the enemy were upon them. That was how desperately the general public feared the Deofol. They were like a modern day Boogieman.
The Senators, in the mean time, were seated on the dais at the front of the hall grilling the two gunship captain's who were seated at a long table, but Paolo didn't have a chance to listen to their testimony, for as he walked further into the hall, he was immediately greeted by his father's people, and then shuffled into a private room.
There in the room, which was just the nondescript office of some bureaucrat, was his father, the Duke. It struck Paolo how everyone in the room seemed in panic mode, yet his father seemed in control, concerned but in control.
The Duke, on the other hand, didn't see his son at first, what with the hordes of assistants and advisors huddled around the old man, but when he did see his son he motioned for him to come over, and took him to a corner so as to talk in private.
"It's good to see you in one piece," said the Duke putting a hand on his son's shoulder as if to be physically assured of the boy's presence. "What happened out there?"
"Not sure. The ship was on us without warning and by then the gunships were already giving chase."
"It doesn't make sense. The Deofol haven't been seen in this quadrant in decades, and I've never in my life seen them in this system."
"It wasn't the Deofol. It was a decoy."
"Excuse me, that wasn't a Deofol ship out there?"
"Oh it was a Deofol ship all right, but it had to have a cloaking device. That is the only way it could have penetrated our defense grid."
"But the Deofol don't have that kind of technology, and besides they would never use it if they did. That's not their way."
"I said it was a Deofol ship. I didn't say the crew were Deofol. Initial examination of the crews remains, or what little we could recover, is that they were human."
