Battle of Ptia
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Current revision as of 06:16, 22 November 2006
The Battle of Ptia was the last major battle fought in the Imperial attack on Micras during the Eve of Destruction. The mighty Imperial battlecruiser Revengence attempted to annihilate the city of Ptia as it had done to every other major city of the Triad alliance.
Events leading up to the battle
The Eve of Destruction war was going very poorly for the Triad alliance. Although many Imperial cruisers had been destroyed in combat, the awesome shields of the Revengence were completely invulnerable by any weapon the Triad could find. The human country of Jiden had been the first to be destroyed by the battlecruiser and the elven kingdom of Elvia fell shortly afterward. The micron first, second, and fourth fleets had gathered to project the micron capital of Sanarian, however, despite major damage done to the rest of the Imperial’s armada, again the Revengence destroyed ship after ship until the battered remains of the fleet were forced to retreat and the city destroyed.
Most of the surviving military forces retreated to Ptia, which, for some reason had not been attacked. Several speculated that the Imperials were using very old maps of Micras and simply did not see Ptia has a major military target. However eventually the secret came out and the Revengence’s armada began to advance on Ptia.
A desperate plan
The fifth fleet and the remains of the other ships that had been reorganized into the ninth fleet awaited the Imperials at Ptia, but the mood was grim. Without a way to stop the Revengence there seemed to be no way to save the city. Many of the civilians began to blindly flee north.
Finally a weakness in the Revengence’s shields was found; every time a large detonation impacted the shield, it would go down for a very brief time where the impact had struck and anything could get through. The microns planned timed strikes against the shields but realized that even if they could get an explosion through to the hull it would not do enough damage quickly enough to severely damage the battlecruiser before it wiped out the defenders. It was decided that actual operatives would need to break through the shield on the ship and deactivate it from the inside. War heroes Tar'Mul Cal'Alm and Sai'Kar Lum'Eth volunteered to crash a shuttle into the shield, repel through to the hull, and attempt to deactivate the shield. No one gave them any chance of success.
The Battle of Ptia
Eventually the Revengence arrived over the sea surrounding Ptia. The city’s long-range batteries pounded the cruiser’s shields. As usual they could not breach them but they forced the craft to keep most of its power diverted away from its weaponry or engine systems. Nevertheless its guns were strong enough to rip through the shielding on the micron cruisers and they began to fall.
When the flagship of the fifth fleet had been destroyed, Kel'Len, a promising young officer, declared herself Star Admiral of the fifth fleet and her ship, the Defiance, as its flagship. She then closed ranks and activated all her shields on the front, overlapping the shields of many ships while leaving them exposed from the side or rear. This significantly increased their resistance to the firepower of the Revengence, effectively creating a shield wall that it could not quickly penetrate. The ninth fleet covered the flanks and rear of the fifth.
The battle turned into a stalemate. The micron forces still could not break the shields of the Revengence. The Imperials could not break the shields of the fifth fleet with most of their power being used in their own shielding systems and all attempts to attack the ships from the rear failed.
After some time the Revengence attempted to ram the Defiance physically. The bluff succeeded; the fifth fleet had to disperse and their overlapping shields fell. But before the Revengence could tear the micron cruisers apart their own shielding system suffered a caphastropic failure. The sabotage mission had succeeded. With its shields down the batteries of Ptia and the surviving ships pounded on the battlecruiser until it was forced to limp into space.
