Nebo Station - Part 4

In the end the battle lasted a little over five hours for us. We fought hard but our ships were in no shape for a battle at that moment. We should have been having a complete re-fit at a space force orbital shipyard, not doing voyage repairs at an out of the way piece of supposedly safe empty space. I never found out if it was just luck that they attacked right then or if they had timed the attack somehow for when the ships would be in the worst possible condition for a fight. How they knew where we were was a question that bothered me for years afterward, but the answer to that question belongs to another part of the story.

Mothership class carriers never actually traveled alone, there were eight other capital ships traveling with the Durement Nebo along with the fighters and small freighter sized missile carrying Mosquito Boats we carried. Only the presence of those other ships kept us fighting as long as we did. We were down almost half our complement of fighters at that point in time, and three of our five assigned mosquito boats.

We took a lot of hits early in that battle. There just wasn't any way to avoid fifty incoming missiles from one direction, and twenty more plus the ships that were firing them coming at us from another. I know they didn't from the three other capital ships we lost in that battle, but the enemy seemed to be targeting the Durement Nebo almost exclusively. No matter where we turned, no matter what we tried, no matter how hard we fought, the enemy was always there pounding us.

A little over four hours into the battle we knew we were going to loose the ship! I remember looking over at the captain and seeing this look of such utter despair on his face and at that moment I knew. Up until then I had been too busy piloting to realize how bad a shape we were in.