Invasion By Betrayal

By Ron Lugge

Part Twelve

Then a Talon class ship, the largest beam ship in the Federation's fleet, fired its broadside at an extreme angle to the weakened shield segment. The force beams hit first, opening a slight crack in the shielding, wedging themselves in-between shield segments, and opening a gap. Then the plasma blasts hit, irradiating the entire section, and weakening the peripheral effects of the shielding, so that instead of having a small gap with minimal shield effects, there was a medium sized gap with no shield effects. Then the phasor blasts made it in. They were slightly distorted by the effects of the force beams, but they still pushed through the gap. They streaked across the leviathan's hull, underneath it's shielding, and impacted against a shield emitter. The beams sent of a shower of sparks as they hit, and the nearby armor sagged. However, the shield emitter didn't sag. Instead, it exploded with incredible force as weapon grade energy poured into it, instantly turning it into plasma. The force backtracked into the power grid, exactly as the designers had intended. However, instead of draining a portion of the enemy firepower impacting on the shields, this power surge caused burnouts across the entire segment of the ship. The shield for that sector fell, and most of the offensive weapons and sensor went offline. The entire point defense grid in that region went off line, and the bombers swiftly took advantage of that fact to launch a massive strike. Bomber after bomber closed in, accelerated at the hull, detached their bombs, and streaked off while their bomb continued in a straight-line course for the leviathan's hull. Soon, missiles and beams also started wearing away at the armor there. However, the twenty meter thick armor held, and held, and held, despite the best firepower they could bring to bear. They slowly wore away at it, but once the leviathan finished rolling ship they could no longer bring the planet's missiles to bear there.

Sufficient firepower to pulverize an entire planet's surface hammered into the breached shield, and still the leviathan lumbered onward. Always onward, straight for the planet. Blast after blast impacted on the armor, and still it held. Then, a wily captain reconfigured his force beams to try and pull instead of push. The armor visibly shifted, and lifted outward several meters. He passed on the info to JP-16-1, and the admiral swiftly ordered all force-beam equipped ships to make the same modification. Soon, the newly created tractor-beams pulled at the hull segment, and then with a swift, sudden movement a fifty-meter by fifty-meter segment rocketed from the hull. Beneath was a thin lair of sheet metal, nothing before the incoming firepower. Air started steaming out, and finally the leviathan lurched, shifting course. At long last, the leviathan did not head straight for the planet. The other two leviathans attempted to shift around and provide fire support to their wounded comrade, but the damage was too severe. Even more massive bursts of firepower flew into the chink in its armor, and suddenly the armor was the leviathan's own worst enemy. Explosion after explosion occurred inside the hull, and soon the inside of the leviathan was nothing more than a large amount of flotsam and junk floating around inside an armored shell. The leviathan's shields all collapsed, and its weapons, engines, and sensors stopped. It floated, dead in space. All the ships attacking it swiftly shifted target.

They now knew the leviathan's weak point, as the commander who had breached the shield had realized that extreme angles breached the shields. The only question was would they manage to bring down the other two before they reached the planet?

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