Free Star Force: Backdoor (SF53) by Anal Backdoor Page B

then switched back over to gravity repulsion
and braked hard, bringing the full conglomerate in to what otherwise would have
been the Skarron’s prime kill zone. Cal-com kept his
conglomerate intact and fighting as a single mass as he signaled others to
start coming in, being the bait for his much larger trap.
    The conglomerate’s shields were considerable, but the
Skarrons had an idea of what it would take to get through them and they had
more than enough ships in the local area so they moved towards the big mass
rather than away and hammered it hard. It was a calculated risk for Cal-com,
but one that he had made before many times. As that large battle escalated and
he watched his shield strength consistently diminish, Skarrons ships were
literally being shredded by short range Dwio cascades that essentially threw hundreds
of them out like a fountain into the nearby ships.
    The Skarrons ignored the losses, going for the big
score and even circling ships around to the back side of the conglomerate to
keep it from jumping back out. Soon there was a sphere of enemy ships
encircling Cal-com and effectively pinning his ship in place unless he wanted
to risk a collision…but that’s exactly what he wanted. The Skarron fleet was so
close in that he was destroying a lot of it in the exchanges, but he needed it
close for the next part of his plan.
    With the press of a button the Voku commander
activated the conglomerate’s auxiliary IDF and extended it out as far as he could,
covering a spherical zone some 17 kilometers in radius and catching about
2/3rds of the Skarron fleet within it. It took an incredible energy expenditure
to do it and most of the weaponsfire on the conglomerate shut down to
compensate, with what energy they had left over going to recharging the
shields, though a few Dwio cascades were still firing.
    The IDF created a pocket of space around the
conglomerate where external inertia was attributed to the entire field as if it
was a single mass. This meant that any acceleration by the conglomerate would
drag all the ships within the field with it…but at the moment that wasn’t
possible, because the conglomerate’s gravity drives were also located within
that field. And because all external forces were applied to the field rather
than the contents, they had no gravity effect to push off of.
    Nor did the Skarron fleet, leaving them drifting on
their last known trajectories.
    A few moments after the IDF extended conglomerate
chunks began jumping in around it and disintegrating into smaller, faster
attack ships that began encircling the Skarron fleet in a much larger sphere.
Those ships outside the IDF began engaging the newly arrived ships immediately
while the others were stuck in limbo save for conventional thrust which the
Skarrons had little of. Those maneuvering engines were reserved for small scale
docking adjustments and not capable of true flight, throwing off gasses for
minimum thrust. Almost all maneuvering was accomplished by gravity drives, even
with the Skarrons not having binaries.
    With Cal-com’s conglomerate getting hit hard, the Voku
commander held position and the field until his trap was fully deployed then
shrank the IDF back down to the dimensions of his ship and the weaponsfire
returned…as did the Skarrons’ maneuvering capabilities, but by then there were
so many Voku ships inside and outside of them that they had no choice but to
fight and die, for there was little opportunity for escape.
    In order to preserve as much of his conglomerate as
possible Cal-com didn’t have it disengage until the shields finally went down.
With the exterior armor beginning to take hits he issued the warning to the
crew then began the split along predetermined patterns, for the many pieces of
the conglomerate could reconfigure into many ship analogs.
    Standing at his command pedestal, Cal-com watched as
force fields came up and bisected the oracle, separating the various command
crews and containing the