Battle of Lysis Deeps
Commodore Stark had arrived in the Lysis system in early 019M42 with a replacement fleet for admiral Enkvist’s battle group. Less experienced than the missing admiral, Stark was nonetheless eager to prove his worth in battle, and vindicate Enkvist’s controversial theories and tactics regarding the use of Viper class torpedo escorts.
At the same time, a portion of Tragean’s fleet had been replaced by warships of Warmaster Stahl, as the forces of chaos made use of the alignment of the Foramen Ignotum. The tau fleet under Swiftstar kept its distance, but with two chaos fleets now in the Lysis system, Commodore Stark decided to take action before Tragaen and Stahl could link up and make their strength in numbers tell against the imperial force on Hexis.
Stark set up his ambush in the deep space region of the system, hiding his viper class destroyers behind asteroid fields and forming JP his nova cannon cruisers around the battleship Kirov. Stahl meanwhile formed up his fleet line astern - traditional tactics for heavy gun battery equipped chaos cruisers. Stark would need boldness and luck to prevent the massed gun batteries from simply blasting away at his ships from long range.
Stark began the engagement with long range nova cannon fire, immediately crippling a carnage class cruiser and forcing it to disengage. More good nova cannon accuracy followed, damaging more of the chaos vessels. Now the imperial commander took an enormous risk, ordering his escorts all ahead full through the asteroids to deliver a devastating torpedo strike to the chaos line.
Few commanders would have ordered this move, as there was a high likelihood of the destroyers simply smashing themselves apart on the space rocks, but Stark had trained his captains in this manoeuvre. Even so, one of the Vipers failed to navigate amongst the spinning asteroids, the ship detonating spectacularly in the deep space debris. Unfortunately for Stahl, every single one of the remaining escorts completed the operation unscathed, and as planned, eleven Vipers unleashed a devastating wave of torpedoes, aided by more from Kirov, who had herself bludgeoned her way through the asteroids.
Stahl’s fleet had taken precautions against such a strike, launching fighters to intercept the torpedo waves, but the sheer amount of ordnance now heading towards his ships was overwhelming. Many of the hundred metre long projectiles were shot down, but the rest crashed into the chaos lines, destroying a hades class battlecruiser and another carnage class cruiser.
Having dealt the crippling blow, the battle risked becoming a rout. The remaining chaos vessels, with the daemonship Ghost of Rofocale now beginning to materialise in the imperial lines, focussed their gun batteries against the Kirov, but they lacked the firepower to do anything other than light damage against the imperial flagship. Worse still, the nova cannons of Vorskla and Seelow Heights continued their accurate bombardment, crippling the enemy flagship and another cruiser, while massed broadside fire crippled the chaos slaughter class that had closed the range to unleash its ferocious firepower.
At this point, barely an hour after the battle had begun, Stark was looking at an unprecedented victory. However, total annihilation of Stahl’s fleet was denied him, as the chaos vessels quickly disengaged under the cover of the debris from the furious action. Only the lead carnage class now remained, but her captain took the opportunity to exact a high price for Stark’s victory, charging into the lines of Viper destroyers and firing both broadsides at point blank range. Only one of Stark’s eleven destroyers survived the onslaught, and thousands of highly trained torpedo specialists were lost as a result.
With this final action the remaining chaos vessels disappeared into the blankness, the daemonship not even bothering to fully materialise seeing the rest of the fleet disengaging. The imperium had won a famous victory, and both sides now regrouped to count the cost.
Stahl’s fleet attempted to flee back to the Norsefire Empire, but the changing direction of the Foramen forced them instead to remain in the Hadron Expanse, retreating to Boltarean for repairs. Commodore Stark’s fleet remained intact, although the loss of so many escorts and their trained crews did cause some alarm in imperial circles, though with Stark’s win, the commodore was promoted admiral. More Vipers were allocated to the new admiral, although their crews and captains were not informed of the horrendous attrition rates of destroyers under Enkvist and Stark’s commands. Whether admiral Stark would continue to regard his escorts as expendable remained to be seen.
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