Battle Report
Battlefleet Gothic
Admiral Cochrane's Hunt
Turn Four
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Turn One Turn Two Turn Three Turn Four Turn Five |
Turn Seven Turn Eight Turn Nine Conclusion |
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Once again, the Glorious reloads its launch bays, but the Furious fails its reload orders. The fleet continues its, now familiar, movement - the carriers staying in their holding pattern and churning out bombers, while the remainder of the fleet makes its way to engage the enemy.
However, in the ordnance phase, the point that I had been dreading arrives, and while the Glorious releases its full compliment of four bomber wings, the rest of the wings - a total of 24! - detatches from the main ships and heads towards the Chaos line.
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With many apprehensive glances at the approaching wall of bombers, and a number of counts and recounts to make sure that there are, actually that many involved, the Chaos turn starts badly, with the one carrier failing to reload successfully.
Well, a faint heart never won a battle, and so I press on regardless. My fleet moves its maximum distance forwards and I trace lines from my Infidel squadron to judge the best angle for a torpoedo salvo. However, continuing my run of 'almost but not quite', the asteroid field blocks the line of fire and I am forced to hold off. This is doubly frustrating as the Infidels will be unlikely to get a clean salvo off with the advance group ahead and they are stuck at the back of my line due to a poor setup. Still, it does produce the first instance of Imperial doubt as Tim had not, up until that point, planned for me having torpedo capability. He starts to look a little worried and continuously eyes his carrier group.
The fleets are now closer, and just within range. Idolator squadron F fires off a closing weapons salvo at the approaching Cobra group, which fails to hit its mark at the extended range. Meanwhile, the two groups of attack craft power towards each other like breaking waves towards a beach.
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At some, unheard signal, the bomber wings regrouped and Johansons eyes were drawn to the observation window, but
there was no movement and no craft in sight. He looked back at the tactical display to see the many bomber icons flash once
as they checked in, and as one they peeled off and headed towards the enemy fleet. Johanson muttered a brief prayer to
the Emperor under his breath and caught the last few wings in the external monitors, jets of white hot exhaust
streaming from thrusters which struggled to push the weight of the bomber forward. On the tactical display, one of the Chaos icons flashed red as a squadron of ships fired weapon batteries, and there was an extended silence as all eyes stared at the display and waited for the report from Imperial ships on damage status. Thankfully, none arrived and slowly the officers on the bridge relaxed. The first attack of a battle marked a change in pace, and Johanson knew that events would speed up rapidly now. |
Date: 11/03/2002
Written by: CyberShadow