Just One Ship
by iamcave76

The first time I saw U.T.S. Artemis, I was working as a sensor technician aboard a deep space station, Respite From Shadow. It floated at the intersection of more than a dozen major FTL lanes and had been one of the biggest shipping and transport hubs in the in sector. After the war broke out, it had become a field hospital, a strategic way-point, a refugee center and a refitting facility for the Imperium fleet and our allies. That was why Artemis had come to us, politely requesting permission to dock for repairs.


Artemis was a Kodiak-class destroyer, part of the small expeditionary force the humans had contributed to the war effort. All of the Imperium’s allies had sent forces, of course, but the show of support from the United Terran Fleet was noteworthy because it hadn’t actually been requested.


We were only a few months into the war at that point, and our fleet had already been reduced to a little more than half strength. The earliest battles were both vicious and costly. Our commanders were more accustomed to chasing smugglers than fighting in conventional battle, and they were too heavy-handed in their response. Sending fleets of our most heavily armed vessels to crush our enemies without gathering the necessary intelligence first was foolhardy, and almost half of our heavy cruisers were lost in the first two weeks. Three of our seven command carriers were gone by the end of the first month.


We were out-matched on nearly every front, and many people still say that it was our own fault. Those armchair historians who love to say that peace had made us complacent, prosperity had made us lazy, and that if we’d been ready than the war would’ve been over before it’d even begun. I’ll admit that years of peace hadn’t done the fleet many favors, but even Fleet Command’s most pessimistic fears couldn’t have predicted a full-on assault from multiple enemies across our entire border. Even if we’d been on full war footing from day one, we still would have been scrambling.


It didn’t take the Imperium’s leadership long to realize that a new strategy was called for. The remaining heavy cruisers - heavily-armed but slow - were re-deployed to defend the civilian colonies from attack. They were our shield. Their orders had been to hold back the enemy at all cost, and their crews can proudly take their place in history for the sacrifices they made to hold the line. What followed was nothing less than an all-out fight for survival and make no mistake - without the support of our allies we would have been doomed.


When you consider all that, the fact that we were willing to pass up assistance from a willing ally tells you a great deal about how the humans were regarded at the time. Their people were relative newcomers on the galactic scene. They’d only developed faster-than-light travel a generation earlier, so it had been deemed unreasonable to expect them to participate in warfare on an interstellar scale.


The humans been told as much, even been formally released from obligation by the Empress herself, but they’d come all the same. As their ambassador had said, “Humanity isn’t a fair-weather ally. You’ve got our back, and we’ve got yours.”


It was an admirable sentiment, but as I watched the human ship clumsily approach on one functioning engine, I can honestly say I wasn’t impressed. To me, she was the very definition of a first-gen FTL vessel, created by a race too eager to visit the stars to consider what they were getting themselves into. Even looking at her, it had seemed like the Terran Fleet was still a little too attached to the idea of seaborn warfare.


We were short on available space at the time. A farming colony about three parsecs core-ward had come under heavy bombardment earlier that week, and we were packed to the bulkheads with refugees. We still managed to find a place for her on one of the lower tiers, though, and even devoted a small maintenance crew to assist with repairs. The first round of technical checks only seemed to support my initial impressions.


The inspector’s first scans told them that the power systems aboard Artemis were embarrassingly inefficient. As near as we could tell, their reactors were only running at about 70% efficiency. For any Imperium fleet vessel - whether it was a ship of the line or a logistic support ship – running below 95% reactor efficiency was totally unacceptable. Anything less than 90% was considered cause for investigation.


She was painfully ugly to look at, too. Even if you ignored the pitted armor and plasma scorches that marred her hull, Artemis’ harsh, angular lines still presented a horrid sight next to the elegant form of an Imperium corvette. More concerningly, her side and aft armor were both absurdly light. The most heavily reinforced sections of the hull were at the bow and along the beam, as though her builders had been afraid she might run aground somewhere.


The interior compartments had fewer crew amenities than some ground-based simulators. The station’s junior communications officer once joked that the crew would have to wash together to keep the water reclamation systems in the green; I wish I could’ve seen the look on his face when he learned about the communal locker rooms. The humans argued that Artemis was a warship, not a luxury liner, and that creature comforts weren’t priorities aboard a human military vessel.


One of our reactor technicians actually had to be escorted off the vessel; he threw a fit when he learned Artemis still utilized some analog controls. One of the maintenance team leads had to be formally reprimanded after submitting a report suggesting Artemis be decommissioned and towed away for scrap.


We grudgingly admitted that she had some noteworthy capabilities - she’d obviously been built for speed, and even I could admit that her eyesore of a hull gave her an incredibly narrow scanner cross-section – but for the most part we rated her slightly below a garbage hauler. We kept that opinion to ourselves in public, especially when the human sailors were in earshot, but in private we all agreed that calling Artemis a warship was an insult to real warships everywhere.


It was three days after her arrival when the attack came. When the call to Action Stations came over the loudspeakers, more than a few personnel thought it was a joke, laughing as they leisurely reported to their posts. It wasn’t until multiple impacts shook the hull that they realized it was no drill.


A massive unrecognized contact had dropped out of FTL practically on top of us and immediately begun firing on the station. Some intermittent and confused transmissions identified the contact as a Ryll dreadnaught, but our receivers were being bombarded with distress cries from dozens of civilian ships desperately trying to escape the fire that rained down on us. Most were torn to pieces before they could jump to safety.


I remember the way the lights flickered as incoming fire chewed away at the station’s armor and the vibration of our weapons systems through the deck plating. The point-defense turrets were doing what they could to intercept inbound missiles while our few anti-ship batteries tried to inflict whatever damage they could on our attacker, but the sheer amount of debris that surrounded the station had reduced the targeting arrays into a mess of blind spots. When fleet command had refit the station for military operations, priority had been placed on logistics and fleet support systems. We simply weren’t equipped for this kind of fight.


The station’s defense was the responsibility of the half-dozen gunships that patrolled the perimeter. Those ships responded almost instantly but had stopped transmitting only a few seconds later. We were practically helpless without their protection, and now I was watching their shattered hulls burn in space.


A feeling of crushing hopelessness hung in the air of the operations centre as the crew watched the massive dreadnaught bear down on us like a hungry predator. Some wept in despair, others just stared dumbly out the main viewports. Though I’m proud to say I was one of the few to remain at their post, even I couldn’t see a way to survive the attack. All I could do was direct any departing vessels onto clear outbound flight paths and hope they were fast enough to avoid the dreadnaught’s fire.


The humans, as it turned out, weren’t about to give in to despair. The station’s hull had shielded Artemis from incoming fire, and the battle was still less than a minute old when she fired up her drive reactors, rumbling like a caged animal in her berth. She ignited her main engines a heartbeat later, transmitting a single message as she leaped away from the docking arm.


“Save everyone you can.” They told us, right before communications went out. “We’ll hold them off.”


At first, I couldn’t imagine what the humans hoped to accomplish. The enemy vessel was enormous, heavily armed and firmly held the high ground. They were eight times the size of Artemis, I thought, and stronger than she could ever hope to defeat. Then the mystery of Artemis’ wasted reactor output was answered out as she unleashed a truly breathtaking display of military firepower. Multiple point-defense batteries came to life, filling the space around her with micro-kinetic projectiles that easily shredded the incoming Ryll torpedoes. Rows of launch tubes opened up along her sides, letting loose swarms of maneuverable torpedoes that seemed to slip right past the Ryll ship’s defensive guns.


Most devastating were the pair of magnetic accelerator cannons that had risen from her fore and aft hull. Each cannon tore into the dreadnaught’s hull with an unyielding barrage of high-velocity shells, smoothly tracking their targets as Artemis moved to dodge incoming fire. She’d seemed puny when I first saw her, and still did next to an hundred-thousand-ton dreadnaught, but her size made her swift. Try as they might, the Ryll simply couldn’t maintain a steady firing solution on the nimble vessel.


Watching the battle in astonishment, I suddenly understood just how wrong I’d been about Artemis - how wrong we had all been - and now my shame fought with my sense of awe as I watched the small warship fight with the fury of an Imperium battlecruiser.


The dreadnaught’s attention was focused solely on Artemis as the two vessels traded blows, and we took full advantage of the reduced incoming fire. One by one, every ship still connected to the station was being loaded to capacity and launched the instant they received clearance. Soon, all the large transports were gone and we were down to the last available options. Trade vessels, courier ships, and a couple of private yachts. Even cargo haulers, if their holds were pressurized. We’d filled every vessel we had before it launched, all the while knowing we couldn’t save everyone. Even after the last ship had left, packed bulkhead to bulkhead with refugees, there were still thousands of beings still aboard. With nowhere left to run, I’d accepted that those might be my final moments.


If I was to die, I could think of no greater memory to carry into the Hereafter than the sight of Artemis fighting for our survival.


Despite her ferocity, though, she couldn’t hold out forever. Too soon, her fire began petering out as her ammunition reserves ran dry. Rather the strike Artemis down, though, the Ryll seemed to decide she was no longer a threat. Arrogantly, almost disdainfully, the dreadnaught turned away from the smaller ship. Moving closer to the helpless station, it brought its main cannons to bear. Each of the guns was almost a quarter of the Ryll ship’s length, too slow to use against smaller vessels but more than capable of obliterating us in a single volley.


As those massive cannons zeroed in on us, I felt as though the deck was falling away beneath my feet. My vision was fixated on the approaching dreadnaught, so much so that I almost didn’t notice when Artemis turned to face our attacker, brought her engines to full power, and charged. What I learned that day – what our enemies would painfully learn again and again - was that humans are never deadlier than when you’ve threatened those they’ve sworn to protect.


The Ryll, seeming to take notice of the destroyer once again, unleashed everything they had at her. Though anti-ship torpedoes clawed at her already weakened dorsal armor, breaching the hull and exposing entire decks to the vacuum of space, she was unstoppable; her heart was protected by the heavily-reinforced bow plating we’d all dismissed so readily. Her massive engines blazed as she closed the distance, pouring more and more speed into her 12-thousand-ton hull.


By the time they understood her intent she was too close for them to attempt evasive maneuvers. Artemis was at flank speed when her unbreakable bow pierced their hull and snapped the dreadnaught’s back. I remember scanning Artemis, hoping that some of her crew may have survived. Though I couldn’t discern any life signs through the debris field I did pick up a major gravity spike; someone or something was redirecting her onboard power, devoting what little output the reactors still had to spinning up an unexpectedly powerful FTL drive.


I wasn’t the only one to notice the increased energy output. Watching from the station, it was like I could feel the Ryll’s fear as dozens of smaller ships began pouring from their launch bays. When Artemis’ core reached critical mass a few seconds later, there was a pause. Just for a moment, as if she wanted those Ryll cowards to believe they might actually get away. Then she ended it. Firing her FTL drive without field containment, she ripped a hole in the skin of the universe and personally dragged her enemies into hell.


They'd been eight times the size of Artemis, and from the moment she'd bared her teeth they never stood a chance.

--END—