Valhalla Rising

[MB52]

Prelude - Fate of the LNS_Ontario
"Battle Stations! Battle Stations, all hands to Battle Stations, this is not a drill, repeat....” Came over the ship's comm system.

“Now what? First The Order and now we are under attack again?” Jessica Porter stood up from her desk, and proceeded towards the bridge. She had been the second in command of the LNS Ontario for only two months now, but she already knew its layout by heart. As a recent graduate from West Point military academy, she was considered very young to have such a high position on the ship. Many of the ship's older officers looked down on her with disapproval at first, but after leading them to several victories, that had changed.

She took note of the confusion around her, to an outsider this would look like random people running in random directions, but the reality was, that everyone knew exactly where to be, even the new recruits. "Report!" she shouted before she had stepped fully onto the bridge.

"We have a Nomad battle group on an intercept course, sir!" replied Lieutenant Bertrand, the ship's tactical officer. "A Nomad battleship, two gunboat escorts and a handful of fighters".

Captain James Decker turned in his seat to face the view screen "Commander, relay a message to the LNS West Beach, and the LNS Riverside, tell them to focus their main guns on the Nomad battleship, while all the fighters focus on the gunboats"

"Aye, sir" replied Jessica, with no hesitation. The LNS Ontario was leading task force Delta on a routine patrol of the Alaska system. Task force Delta consisted of three cruisers, and two full fighter wings.

"The Nomad ships will enter weapon range in three minutes" reported Lieutenant Bertrand "Wait... damn, we have more enemy contacts, we’re picking up two other Nomad battle groups closing in on us from all directions!"

Captain Decker turned to his Tactical officer "What? How did they manage to surround us like this?"

"Captain, we are severely outgunned, we need to get out of here now..."

"I'm hesitant to agree with you Commander… order the other ships to regroup and power up their cruise engines, we need to make a run for it"

The young pilot turned, his face white "Sir, our cruise engines... they aren't responding, Chief McDuff and his engineering teams can't find the problem"

Jessica looked over the system scans carefully, noticing an odd detail "There's nothing wrong with the engines, this nebula we are passing through is disrupting our cruise engines… The Nomads set up a trap for us..."

Suddenly, the ship was rocked by a large explosion, as the Nomads began their attack.

"ALL SHIPS FIRE AT WILL!"

The battle raged on for over an hour, the combined fire of the three cruisers managed to destroy the first Nomad Battleship, but were overwhelmed when the other Nomads arrived. One by one the fighters were being destroyed; eventually the West Beach lost all engine power, and was quickly destroyed. Soon after the Riverside had a similar fate, only this time the destruction was caused by an engine core breach. All that remained now was the Ontario and a handful of fighters.

"Our hull is starting to buckle, engines are down, and weapons are failing" Reported an exhausted and clearly frightened ensign.

Captain Decker shouted into his communicator "Engineering, get me my weapons back, NOW!"

Jessica turned to the Captain "Captain, it’s hopeless, the ship is lost, we can still evacuate in ti---"

"You mean run away? Never, I wont lose this ship to them, get down to engineering, and find out what is taking so long"

"Captain, we need to run, this isn't worth losing our lives for, there is no way we can hope to win. If we escape now, we can at least hope to warn the Navy of the new tactics these Nomads are using."

Deep in thought for a moment Decker stood up" Commander sound the evacuation alarm, then report to the escape pods"

"ALL HANDS ABANDON SHIP, I REPEAT, ALL HANDS TO EMERGENCY ESCAPE PODS"

Just as the escape pods launched and cleared the ship, the LNS Ontario began to break apart. Through the window of her escape pod, Jessica watched in horror as the ship slowly broke into pieces, and then finally exploded. She closed her eyes to shield them from the light when....