Scolorusk's Gambit

Lord Scolorusk didn't wait to see what Embriex's approach intended. She ordered her ships forward into hurried close proximity the moment the fleet came into view, no hesitation in it. Embriex had wanted to be the aggressor herself; instead she found her escorts, Glisten and White Eyes, already committed to cutting off Scolorusk's lead ships before they could close the distance. The first exchange went to Embriex anyway. Her elite squadron drove hard for the carrier's flight decks, trying to blind Scolorusk's fighters before they ever left the hangar. "Furocity matched. Finally!"

The Broken Chains answered with what Scolorusk's carrier had built its reputation on: a defense screen thick with autoturrets and unmanned drones, swarming to disable anything that got too close. Embriex's fighters retreated from it bruised, and she said the only thing there was to say. "Damn. She's good." Scolorusk pressed the opening without gloating over it, redirecting her escort carriers to focus fire on Embriex's flagship shield projectors, testing the seams instead of the surface.

Embriex held the bridge through the rattling and answered in kind, throwing her elite squadron and reserve fighters back at the command carrier to blind it a second time while her own ships kept closing. It didn't land clean. Scolorusk's screen held, and Embriex changed tactics rather than repeat a failed one, bringing her battleship broadside to unload everything she had. "We're not done. We're broadsiding this over confident bitch." The shot went wide.

What came back answered for it. An energy screen soaked up most of what Embriex had left in her, the Broken Chains bombarding her command ship in the same breath while Embriex's own gunners finally found a seam of their own, opening hull breaches across Scolorusk's carrier even as it stayed mobile and turned for home. Neither side broke first. Both kept firing until the numbers stopped being close.

By the end it wasn't close. The Motherhood drifted on emergency power, fractured, hundreds of crew lost with it, and Embriex gave the only order left to give. "Abandon ship." Scolorusk didn't take a victory lap. She turned the Broken Chains toward the asteroid station at Brem Ect, hull breaches and all, already thinking past this fight to the next one waiting for her there. "Good, their command ship burns. Target their engines. Let them spin adrift as warning to their allies as we use them for target practice at a distance."