Location: california system, 70k from magellan jumpgate.
"Sir? We have an armoured transport, from willard, hailing us. They wish to speak with you on the encoded command channel."The comm officer whispered into the general's ear.
She frowned before quickly standing up and striding into the captains ready room.
"What is the problem?."the general asked, after inputting the codes into a terminal.
"We have discovered a serious problem with the prototypes. The data suggests that...The transmission cut off abruptly. Then a junior officer opened the door and saluted hurriedly before saying:
"Sir! The guns have activated and are currently autoloading!"
"What?!"The general swore and rushed out onto the bridge as the guns finished loading and swung round. She easily found their target, the armoured transport from willard.
"Emergancy shutdown!"the general ordered.
The bridge crew responded immediately but it was too late, the transport disappeared under a salvo of energy shots.
Then the recharge systems kicked in, even as the turrets swung around towards the escorts.
"Open a channel to all the escorts."the comm officer nodded for the general to continue"We have no time for questions or explainations, just get out of here now!"
All the escorts started their cruise engines and they each swung towards a different direction, but the energy cannons fired again and enveloped a gunboat in flames, a shot from the forward gun hit the other gunboat and crippled it's weapon systems.
The escorts engines finally finished charging and started to thrust them forward. However more salvoes hit and destroyed both the damaged gunboats before they could get more then 1000m.
The remaining escorts, both of which were cruisers, hadn't been targeted yet, but they had still suffered damage from debris.
A missile salvo hit one of the fleeing cruisers in the engines and dropped it out of cruise speed, then the reactor overstressed and exploded.
The last cruiser, that had been running, turned back and unleased a massive blast from it's main gun at the cruiser, it fired again and again.
The massive amount of damage was rapidly draining the shield, then the cruiser fired an experimental anti-shield weapon and finally dropped the shield.
The dreadnought had stopped firing the energy cannons, because the crew had managed to sabotage the energy feed conduits systems, and it had been pounding the cruiser's bridge with it's main gun.
The lethal energies finally breached the hull and vaporised the cruiser bridge, it's main weapon control system and it's emergancy generator.
The result was a final shot from the main gun slamming into and crippling the dreadnought's engine.
The destruction of the emergancy generator caused a feed-back that fed into the main reactor, which channelled it into the engines.
They flared to full power in a fraction of the time they were built to handle and exploded.
