#11 by Illogical Lemon

Nagahide held on tightly to the controls as another volley of fire hit their shields, causing them to drop even more. The situation wasn't looking good, as these Blood Dragon ships seemed to be in a completely different class to the ones he swatted practically every day. Worse still, the construction site's guns were conspicuously silent, apart from a solitary shot or two when a Dragon came too close to them. There was always the possibility that the mercenary's attack had damaged their turret control interface along with the power, but Nagahide believed that DSE were hoping for the Dragons to destroy them and ensure that their company secrets wouldn't be revealed. Nevertheless, he opened up communications to them again. Come in, CGCS! We need support out here, do you copy?

It was then that he saw three of the Dragon ships launching torpedoes at him. Quickly he brought the Kinjiru's rapid-firing defence turrets to bear on the incoming missiles, managing to strafe two of them down but wasn't quick enough to stop the third. He closed his eyes and braced for the impact, but to his surprise it sounded more distant than he had expected. He looked around, and saw that the torpedo hadn't been aimed at him – instead, it had gone through the gap that had been made when the Kinjiru had been forced forwards. It had hit White 2, dealing heavy damage to the ship. He cursed, and quickly reversed the ship to cover the gap and protect the vulnerable transport.

Bringing his guns to bear on an overeager Dragon that was flying directly at them, the pirate ship quickly fell to the overwhelming onslaught. However, it's debris continued at them, hitting the Kinjiru hard and overloading her shields. Nagahide flicked the switch to activate the shield batteries, which quickly brought them back online but only to a third of their maximum strength. Once again in his career, he found himself cursing whoever had designed the Dromedary line of ships for not giving them a battery capacity to match the powerful shields. Opening group comms to White wing, he ordered White 3 to transfer their batteries over to him, which was quickly done.

He risked a glance down at the scanners to see how many enemies remained, and was relieved to see that fighters were finally arriving from the Matsumoto to assist. Now we may have a chance, he thought to himself.