DARKSTAR CAMPAIGN UPDATE: DUCHESS ANNABEL’S WAR IS OVER

The Oriskany, her port bow engulfed in a sheet of flame, continues to plummet past the Koloslavo.  Both ships are really in trouble here.  Oriskany’s enhanced engines fire full power and start to turn her again to port, but her speed is nearly out of control and she’s just lost some of her maneuvering thrusters.  This is a very bad time to lose the ability to turn.  The Koloslavo, meanwhile, with damaged engines, struggles to push her 168,000-ton bulk up out of the gas giant’s gravity.

The Koloslavo pours more power through her smoldering ion engines, executing a groaning s-turn to try an turn her exposed, unshielded fantail away from Oriskany.  The maneuver actually works, Oriskany is moving so fast, in such a dangerous direction, and with such damaged maneuvering thrusters, that she can only decelerate and make a slight turn to port, which still puts her on a course deeper into Nazarovo’s crushing gravity and with her stern facing directly toward Koloslavo’s full broadside (although at a range of 2,200 km, thankfully).  More rail guns and plasma slams into Oriskany, actually damaging her portside engines.  Yet again, Koloslavo’s gunners are on the money (scoring solid hits even with damaged sensors).

For a heartbeat, there’s a very real possibility that Oriskany could meet her end here at Nazarovo.  With her engines hit, there’s the danger of her losing power, a death sentence given her speed and vector … 2,500 km deep in the gas giant’s atmosphere.  Russian-made torpedoes also come in, and Oriskany loses more mass drivers, another shield …

Yet the “Lady O’s”  legendary luck holds out.  Her engineers maintain power.  An instant later, the last three torpedoes that were launched from her port side tubes (an instant before they were blown out of the ship’s hull) strike the Koloslavo’s unshielded stern.  Yet just as Koloslavo’s main armament gunners are dead-eyes, her mass driver gunners seem to be cross-eyed.  No torpedoes are shot down, and all three American warheads hit.

The battle is decided right there.  The torpedoes detonate in Koloslavo’s sensors, aft cargo bays, portside engines, and starboard reactors.  For a razor-edge moment, whether or not the ship loses power could really go either way, but again luck holds with the Oriskany and the Koloslavo goes dark.

In that moment, the massive ship is doomed.  Only moving at 12 kps, and still 900 kilometers in the atmosphere at too shallow of an ascent angle, she does not have the escape velocity or vector to break free.

The Oriskany, meanwhile, with two sensors arrays down, half her torpedoes gone, two 40mm mass driver turrets gone, two shields down, and streaming a sheet of fire fed by escaping atmosphere, heaves against her damaged engines and maneuvering thrusters to pull up and away from the Nazarovo abyss.  She isn’t free yet, she has to power up through 2,500 km of storm clouds and lightning, with the planet’s unforgiving gravity pulling down on her all the way.

Meanwhile, Koloslavo has already lost that battle.  Cutters, launches, and escape pods are soon streaming out of her stricken hull, her trajectory quickly slowing and arcing downward.

Two more minutes and Oriskany is almost clear.  One last bolt of storm cloud lightning hits her starboard bow, coring through the armor and venting her starboard cargo bay.  Finally she erupts free from Nazarovo, battered and scorched from stem to stern, trailing wreckage and flame, missing jagged slabs of armor plating, weapons, sensors, mass drivers, and maneuvering thrusters.  But she’s made it.

The Koloslavo, meanwhile, has finally been halted, now sucked inexorably downward to her grave.  Her crew has a full five minutes to abandon ship, so crew losses are actually surprisingly light (she carries 749 crew and 72 marines, most of which survive the day).  But for the proud ship herself there is just no escape.  She’s falling at over 18 kps when what’s left of her hull finally caves in, the wreckage vaporized in the unbelievable heat and pressure deep in the bowels of the Nazarovo gas giant some time later.

As for the Oriskany, she’ll need two days to limp back to Hokkaido’s Flower, and 28 days in dry dock to weld her charred, pitted, and perforated hull back together.  Fortunately, ships like the Princeton, Valley Forge, Takakawa, and Spokane are soon ready to take the place of the  Oriskany–Kikasa battlegroup in the “Hei-Novo” system (Xi Scorpio A/B), so the Pacific Alliance can continue to apply pressure toward peace talks with the Khitan-Tunguska Free State.

RESULT: Minor Pacific Alliance Victory