The enemy battleship had a respectable amount of firepower on its own, but without support, there was no way it could get through even a single ship’s shields before its own were depleted by the focus fire of multiple capital ships converging on it. The third Rothian cruiser joined the Valkyrie and the other Human ships in overwhelming their foe. With all of their fire combined, it did not take more than another barrage to tear the battleship to pieces. The enemy carrier, meanwhile, had found no safety behind the asteroid it had gone to for cover. It launched as many strike craft as it could as quickly as possible, but the carrier’s fate was sealed by volleys of superheated plasma from the first two Rothian cruisers. Fighters and bombers could be dangerous even to capital ships when utilized properly, but the enemy fighters that had been launched so far had no ship support nearby. Rather than throw them pointlessly at the allied battle group, the enemy instead gave the order for their fighters to disengage and retreat back through the asteroid field to their own lines so they could still utilize them later in the fight. Rothian fighters pursued them some distance and destroyed a portion of them, but they too did not want to push their fighters too far beyond the support of their motherships. 

The initial strike had been undeniably effective, but the majority of the hostile fleet still remained. The planetoid had built up incredible momentum and was unquestionably effective in close quarters, but the enemy was quick to adapt. The Tindrel’s current targets were at long range, so they had much more time to evade than the initial group. Rather than move together, however, any ship within the planetoid’s projected path scattered in all directions, often weaving between asteroids to make a direct pursuit path more difficult. It was unlikely that any individual ship could escape the Tindrel, but with intelligent maneuvering, the enemy could guarantee that the massive planetoid could only chase, at most, a single ship at a time. All the while, every other ship in the fleet was unpressured and free to engage at long range. The pelting of ranged weapons fire was a constant against the planetoid’s shields, and it was far from efficient for them to have to chase down every hostile ship individually. 

While they had secured a position within the asteroid field, there was a question of what to do next for the rest of the battle group. The Tindrel were taking plenty of initiative to act with their own ships, but beyond being told to “attack”, there had been no orders for the rest of them. The Rothian cruisers formed up, positioned their strike craft defensively to intercept incoming munitions, and returned fire. They certainly had the range to engage any ship in the asteroid field, but there was still no coherent direction for allied forces. They did not know what targets the Tindrel would engage next, and therefore which targets would be most effective to focus fire, nor how to position tactically to take advantage of whatever they were going to do next. There were certainly protocols the Rothian captains could follow to quickly establish a firm chain of command to begin giving those orders, but that was not the purpose of this exercise. The Tindrel commander was not incapacitated; therefore, they needed to try to follow their direction. One of the Rothian captains opened the fleet’s comm channel to request those orders. 

[hr]

“Well, if we do everything right, the Morgrawalai will never know we were here.” Marae remarked, though her voice trailed off as she started to focus more on the console in front of her, and the data that was pouring in. 

Vreta watched the screens as well, though with less of a focused eye than the scientists analyzing the data. “Hopefully so. We just need to be prepared if things don’t quite go to plan. If this object is buried as deep as the Navigator was, it will take a whole excavation team to extract it. Of course, if it isn’t, then the natives may have already discovered it. About how ‘primitive’ are these primitives? I know they are pre-spaceflight, but are they at the point of using livestock, wagons, and iron swords, or are we talking cars, biplanes, and gunpowder?”