Chapter 38. Battered Foe.


    “Make that two missiles, I see a second one being fired from the station. Point defenses are active. Lani, see if you can help our point defense targeting accuracy,” Watkins ordered.


    “On it, we’re relatively close, but the missiles haven’t had any time to build up their velocity,” Lani replied.


    “Missile one away, I’m targeting their ship,” Watkins said, firing one of his missiles in response to the kobold attack. The feeling was a strange one as the door protecting the torpedo tube slid aside and the missile ignited. He could feel the weapon leave his ship yet he still maintained a thread of contact with it.


    “Just one?” Lani asked, noting that he hadn’t fired both weapons that were loaded.


    “Yes, they’re out of missiles, and if I can pull the rest of their teeth without doing too much damage, then we’ll have a windfall of salvage and perhaps some new schematics we can unlock. I’d rather not blow the ship to bits if I can help it, and I definitely don’t want to risk the station if my people might still be hidden aboard,” Watkins explained.


    The two kobold missiles had a lock on his vessel, and Watkins held off on any evasive maneuvers for the moment. To begin evasion early would do little to break the targeting lock on his ship, and it would degrade the accuracy of his point defense. Instead, he’d wait until the missiles were on their final approach before trying to avoid them.


    Pulses of laser fire reached out toward the incoming threat, but this time, he didn’t add the main battery fire to the point defense. Watkins wanted to save the surprise of his main batteries and use them to crush the opposition. With a bit of fine tuning on his ship positioning, he was able to bring all four point defense lasers on target. Lani was adding an estimated 5.243% improvement to his accuracy, and after only a few volleys the first missile was taken out.


    The second weapon followed the fate of its comrade a few seconds later. Neither had come anywhere close to his ship. His enemy hadn’t been idle either and the ship was pulling away from the station and turning to bring its single point defense laser on target. Another beam began to pulse out from underneath the boarding hatch where the station had hidden it behind some wreckage.


    It was an interesting bit of subterfuge, as a small panel was blasted into space to reveal the point defense laser. Unlike Watkins, they didn’t have the same processing power behind their point defense. To add to the kobold woes, they only had two weapons compared to the four that the Canon mounted. From the way they were engaging his single missile, Watkins could tell their point defenses weren’t linked, and the kobold ship and station were doing things independently of each other.


    That might not matter much with a single missile to defend against, but if there had been multiple threats, their ability to defend themselves would be weakened over what they could have accomplished with integrated defenses. Despite the limited defensive measures, the kobold station finally got a hit on Watkins’ missile, and he could feel his connection to the weapon sever at it was destroyed.


    “I won’t waste a second missile just yet, let them think we’re out and that we intend to slug it out with our point defense lasers,” Watkins said.


    He had the empty tube reloaded and made ready for another strike if they needed it. That left him with only one missile in the magazine. Their missile production was slow and labor intensive for his drones, and the next missile only had about half its components ready for assembly. It was unlikely that it would be ready until the fight was over.


    “Without a dedicated power supply, they’ll have a hard time detecting that you have two main guns with the sensor suite the ship and station are running,” Lani added. She was right, their sensors were quite a bit weaker than what Watkins had, and his were only level 1 right now. In the future, he could already see the possibility of substantial upgrades to not only the sensors, but the rest of his systems.


    “It’ll be a bit before we’re in range with our main guns, we should plan for a boarding action on the station. If we can, I’ll disable the kobold ship and let it drift until we’re ready for it, the station is our primary target,” Watkins said as he looked over his core’s limited data on boarding actions.


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    Lani sent him some additional data, but hers was limited as well. It seemed that the opening for his shuttle bay was a universal design and compatible with the makeshift boarding collar the kobolds had rigged to the station. If he could deal with the point defense gun the station mounted, the enemy had little they could do to prevent him from boarding.


    His core should have no problem overriding whatever electronic locks the kobolds would have on their boarding hatch, but if worse came to worse, he could have his drones cut through. There wasn’t much finesse when it came to boarding a hostile foe, you had to electronically hack, or physically cut your way inside, then throw your troops into the fight.


    This meant the enemy had the advantage of time to prepare for the assault. He supposed, if the kobolds were suicidal, they could pack some explosives just inside the boarding hatch and try to damage his ship by detonating them when he tried to board. Watkins’ scanners would detect any massive amounts of explosive materials the kobold pirates might possess, negating that threat. This was going to be a brawl, and he was curious how his halfling crew were going to do in real fight.


    That also brought up the fact that he was limited on troops. After completing the bow of his vessel, Watkins’ command limit had jumped to 30. He had filled the empty slots, but now, he had a greater need for MOBS to board the enemy station. Ordering some of the drones to be reprocessed, Watkins began building more halfling shipmates. The new ratio would be 12 drones, and 18 halflings.


    With the limited amount of livable space on the station, and their need to crew their vessel, Watkins estimated the enemy forces to number somewhere around a dozen. The kobold ship would have likely at least double that number, but they could be dealt with separately. From the data he had access to in his core, Watkins could see the recommendation was for a boarding action to only be attempted with a 3 to 1 advantage in numbers over the defenders.


    In this type of fight, the defenders held the advantage of knowing the terrain and having the chance to prepare the battlefield ahead of time. There would likely be in covered fighting positions, and perhaps even have some deadly traps to slow him down. Added to that was the problem of his limited firepower. The level zero weapons and gear weren’t all that impressive, and with only a couple of shots for each plasma rifle, he wasn’t going to win a shootout.


    Despite all the disadvantages stacked against him, Watkins had one advantage that his opponent didn’t possess, the ability to replace his losses. He could just have new reinforcements printed up in the fabricator. If his first attack wasn’t successful, it was only a matter of time before he had another full group of 18 halfling shipmates to continue the fight.


    His foes were only going to get weaker with each casualty, while replacing losses only cost him some biomass, a bit of salvage, and the time needed to build them. There was the possibility that the kobolds could beat his first boarding party and decide to counterattack, but if he left a couple halflings behind to guard the shuttle bay on his ship, it might dissuade the kobolds from getting any ideas about counter boarding.


    If the enemy did manage to counterattack, he was confident that the time it would take the kobolds to cut through his interior hatches and reach his core, Watkins would have more than enough defenders. If the worst happened, he could always throw some of his drones into the fight to slow down the kobolds. The drones weren’t exactly efficient combatants, but they could do some damage if they got up close and personal with a kobold.


    Before any boarding actions could commence, he had to win the space battle. The kobold ship had pulled well away from the station but remained close enough that the two of them could cover each other with their point defense guns. Looking the two over, he confirmed that the ship would be the first target for his main guns. His weapons greatly outranged the kobold point defense lasers, and he adjusted his course to keep out of the enemy weapons range.


    Targeting the kobold ship’s single weapon, Watkins fired his main guns as they came to bear on the target. His first volley wasn’t what he had hoped for, but one of the beams grazed the side of the kobold ship. Shield energy flickered under the assault, easily shrugging off the glancing blow.


    His next two shots were a bit better, and both slammed into the bow of the kobold ship, which was just now beginning to react by starting evasive maneuvers. Kobold shields flickered again but held up to twin strikes. Only one shot hit on the third volley, and he watched the shields flicker and die. The tail end of the beam cut into the thinly armored deck of the kobold ship.


    He hammered them again, and one shot finally managed to find and melt the kobold point defense laser. The other shot penetrated the bow, and Watkins could detect atmosphere venting out of the hull breach. He worked his way around the kobold ship, easily punching holes in it, and in the trio of cargo containers mounted to the vessel. He also destroyed any maneuver thrusters that his sensors could locate, leaving the ship little chance of avoiding his attacks.


    Eventually, Watkins’ maneuvers gave him an angle on the kobold’s main drive, which he took out with two more volleys of main gun fire. A single maneuver thruster lit up and was quickly taken down. The kobold ship was dead in the water and unable to fight, he could ignore it for the time being.


    Now he had to take on the station and see what awaited him and Lani inside.