Operation: Guadalcanal - The First Battle - Part One

Posted on Mon Mar 9th, 2020 @ 8:08am by Rear Admiral Carl "Thunderhead" Patterson & Division Admiral Thomas Lasky & Captain Mathis "Payload" Lasky & Department Master Chief Petty Officer Laneli "Gearbox" Lasky PhD & Brigadier General Jorge "Noble Six" Sinclair-Di'Tomasso

Mission: Mission 79: Sound Trumpets! Let Our bloody Colors Wave
Location: Various Locations - Goranar System
Timeline: 1000 hrs - Apr 12 2392

The reports from the scouts began to flood in, with all the flag officers of the Federation and Akurian fleet getting the information. With that, Nevanzi opened up a conference channel with Carl Patterson, Thomas "Payload" Lasky, Kumirae, and K'miras.

K'Miras was the one to report the enemy fleet composition. "Well, its a pretty standard Klingon fleet formation. Lots and lots of Birds of Prey, though most of them now look like the larger K'Vort models, not too many of the B'rel model birds of prey, looks to be about 1200 to 1500 of them scattered throughout the system. We are also looking at roughly 700 of the latest K'tinga models, still old though. Also roughly 500 Vorcha's and 300 Negh'vars."

Nevanzi nodded. "Eh, lots and lots of small ships, mostly just fodder, the only thing that comes close to even matching our destroyers is the Negh'vars."

K'Miras then added. "Well, the small ships aren't all they have. We also have picked up six of the new Vo'Quv Class Carriers and eleven Bortasque Class battleships. On top of that, we have picked up twenty-four Qang class light cruisers and sixteen Qu'Daj Class heavy cruisers."

Kumirae was well aware of all four of these classes, the Vo'Quv and Bortasque where both completely new designs, the Bortasque being tactically comparable to a Guardian and the Vo'Quv matching the Champion class. Both the Qang and the Qu'Daj, however, follow the typical Klingon practice of upscaling an existing design whenever they felt necessary, in this case, the Vor'Cha and Negh'Var, though a lot of the hull details were different. She finally added. "I take it this doesn't account for whatever forces may be cloaked."

K'Miras shook his head. "No this is from reports provided by the Gorn and what uncloaked ships we have managed to spot. I can practically guarantee you this isn't their full strength present in the system."

Payload was the first to respond over the com system. "Oh, I sincerely hope not. Otherwise, this will last about five minutes."

Patterson's response came in moments later. "Alright, someone might wanna contact the Gorn, let them know we're friendlies and to not start shooting at us... Just in case." he rumbled.

Lasky nodded his head, but nobody present could see him. "Indeed. We should prepare for any unexpected surprises the Klingons bring to this party."

An officer in K'miras command staff alerted him," The Klingons know we are here, looks like the Vo'Quvs are deploying their fighters, we have incoming."

"How many?" K'miras asked.

"Over 10,000," The officer reported. "They are good sized too, nearly the size of Akurian craft."

"Well, they're not wasting any time." came the dry wit of Thomas Lasky from the Heart of the Winter Bird.

Torilla Lasky smiled. "Our fighters are fully deployed." came her own response. "Shall we ask them to dinner?"

"Sure... Let's show these pests how we do things." Lasky responded.

K'miras analyzed their attack formation, and quickly deduced, most of these were fighters, intended to clear out his own fighters. So he issued out his orders to fighter units. "Alright, Our fighter units should pull back until they are within range of the long-range missile armaments on our warships, then we will attack their fighters with ours simultaneously."

Lasky smiled. "Works for me," he responded.

Patterson's voice cut into the channel. "Whats to stop them from bringing up more fighters..." there was a momentary pause. "Are their fighters manned?"

Nevanzi chimed in. "We will take far fewer losses to our own fighter units if we allow them to close with our ships to the point of where our warships can offer long-range missile support."

K'miras looked over the report then added. "Well I cannot tell if they are all manned or not, but given that these are Klingons. But yea, Nevanzi spelled it out for me, our fighters fighting theirs out there unsupported is a good way to incur unnecessary casualties. Plus it's unlikely that the Klingons are aware of the maximum range of our standard quantum missile or the akurian long range defensive missiles. But either way, with Klingons and their love of cloaking devices, we have to play cautious for the first little while, since we don't have a good picture of everything that is out there. and our EWAC Flyers won't be able to conduct an effective search as long as they have a lot of fighters running around."

Patterson's response was prompt. "Well, we can expect the Klingons to have some surprises of their own. They might have that warrior mentality but they aren't stupid. As much as some would think they are." he let out a soft sigh.

"Weapons range in two minutes." came Lasky's voice.

K'miras looked over the Klingon formation again. He didn't spot any obvious EWAC fighters in the enemy formation, however, cloaked ships could be serving in that role. he had that constant nagging feeling though, that he couldn't shake.

The Klingons surprisingly enough opened fired first, from a longer range than expected. However it was Akurian fighter craft that was out in front, and the ones targeted first. The large fighters quickly revealed their capability when they dumped a massive load of missiles all at once, more than enough to wipe out a very large chunk of the Akurian fighters. However, their inexperience in dealing with Akurian forces showed, otherwise they wouldn't have opened up with such a large volley. Immediately Akurian fighters went into full evasion mode, and seconds before the missiles hit, EW fighter activated their jammers and targeted fighters released a ton of decoys, causing more than 95% of the missiles to miss. The Akurian fighters unleashed their own volley of missiles and inflicted considerably more casualties.

The Klingons, for their credit, had a surprise of their own, that surprise came when HARM guided missiles found multiple Federation and Akurian EWAC craft.

Paterson watched the display with surprise. "They don't want us to see what else they have in stock."

Lasky added his own two cents. "So they can rely upon their cloaks... Mmm.." he paused. "Anyone else thinks they have cloak capable cruise missiles?"

Torilla Lasky turned. "That's not very subtle," she commented. "We'd see them before they launched their birds at us."