Defending the Star

I would have thought our shielding against gravity would have been enough, but from what little information I could get from Niracina before I had to focus on something else indicated that they had blasted us with something non-lethal to further break down our shields, we wouldn't be able to sacrifice them for additional speed anymore. The more immediate problem was that part of the gravitational force had been their jump, they had performed the very thing we needed them to but it had been so fast that we had been unable to capture it. Niracina transmitted this data to Evan, we hoped it reached him because shortly after it was sent our systems started to experience interference from the arrival of more Klatvix ships. They were still broadcasting interferences and so we were unable to jump, however we could navigate well enough and headed towards the closest star. They of course began firing at us, but as we were no longer draining energy from our shields we were able to withstand the attacks, though it was clearly putting some strain on Niracina. We were close enough to the star to start absorbing the ambient energy being emitted from it to boost our output, however with more ships on the way we wouldn't have very much chance to survive if we didn't reach the star first.

It was difficult to make upgrades to systems that were in use, and with only seconds to spend on each modification there was a lot of room for error. I was trying to redo our equations that allowed us to filter out gravity interference but if I modified the wrong part I would end up making us completely vulnerable. A lot of their attacks now were gravity based, they had been studying the black hole long enough to know much more about it than we did and each blast was like getting hit with a microscopic black hole, it wouldn't have been too bad but it sucked away energy from us each time. Luckily I was able to find something, not quite what I needed but it restored a bit of our communications and I had Evan's help in modifying the rest of the equation. Once that was active we were able to move a bit faster and actually reach the star, we didn't slow down but plunged into it, forcing them to stop attacking or risk destroying the star and all of them with it, this also gave us a massive energy boost. With this amount of energy available to us we were able to boost all of our systems and determine how many ships we were facing and where else they were going and coming from. We also were able to see that they were beginning to deploy some of the probes that created system shields, which we had to ensure didn't get through as our scans also showed that they had been modified.

With so many ships it was difficult to stop the probes, but with Ambri there helping the two of us managed. Evan was on his way on one of the other ships, we were going to have to change our tactic and hope that he could survive the attacks. It was clear that the Klatvix could detect his approach because a couple ships moved in his direction to intercept. With just the loss of those two it was easier to fight against their probes, it was unbelievable how many they had, wave after wave of them kept coming. A few more ships departed from our target area to come assist, we were hoping at least to get a few more distractions. Niracina was busy trying to overcome their systems and eventually had improved our shields enough to protect us from their normal attacks again, so when we left the star we would be in a much better position. Once that was done she began charging an energy blast, I wanted to ask what it was but she was distracted and I couldn't lose my focus on protecting the star. It wasn't until the blast was released that I realized what it was.