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The Battle of Persephone was a conflict of the Secession War when the UNS Dharma ambushed the USS Lexington during operation of Mission 161.

Prelude[]

In June 19 2134 the ship USS Lexington escorted USS Jericho to Deneb Kaitos. However, despite the secrecy, the mission was compromised. The spy James Poole who was an officer on the Lexington trapped the ship with an anti-matter bomb and a transmission device; by the time the ships arrived to the system, UNS Dharma waited on the far side of Persephone with orders to attack and then board the vessels.

As Lexington was entering low orbit 400 kilometers above Persephone and initiated OMS to stabilize orbit, ATIs are calibrated for 320 kilometers. Jericho was 5000 meters behind and initiated the countdown for the planetary lander.

Mission 000

Tran and Dayna detecting a contact

Suddenly Jennifer Tran detected contacts, Gali-class battle drones, from the other side of the planet, accelerating at 100 gravities. Dayna ordered to sound general quarters and as 12 drones changed course to intercept, he ordered Paul Mandon to take the ship out of orbit to have more room. Railguns and pulse cannons were powered up.

Dharma

UNS Dharma approaching for an ambush

Dayna contacted Captain McCain and told her to abort the lander countdown and secure the ship closing up at 1000 meters from the Lexington. Its Close-In Combat System would protect the ship. He intended that if any of the drones make through our screen, and get in 10000 meters, he should begin ACM. Telemetry came from the drones and they realized it is a Geneva class heavy cruiser.

Battle[]

The attacking drones were engaged and destroyed by fleet defense units. There were 5 surviving UN drones, now decelerating and coming in range. Jericho was hit but suffered minor damage. The main target was the Lexington; alarms went off. General quarters-DefCon 4 and kicked away from Persephone in a standard 1g spin. It was hit by Gali-class battle drones and suffered heavy damage in engineering and breach on Deck 2. The back-up systems came on-line. Close-In Combat System was down. The attack lasted between 22:30:14 and 22:31:45.

The electronics in the external communications array were shorted out by a strike while the TCS dish was moving to acquire a new transmission. It was then locked in a useless position. Kimberly Falcon broadcast a distress message for anyone to re-transmit to the Alliance base on Erebus as soon as possible. She also sent a coded telemetry burst with mission data under "Paradox" encryption.

Realizing that there was no way out, captain Dayna hailed the UN vessel and offered complete and unconditional surrender. He proposed to evacuate the crew and that of Jericho using intership shuttles, and be treated as prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention.

Damage[]

Engineering module
critical condition caused by multiple enemy beam weapon and missile hits between 22:30:14 and 22:31:45. Primary power reactor coolant system suffered a criticality one fault. Control rods were jammed in a position that represent 75% of the reactor's operating capacity and the reactor could not be SCRAMed. Coolant should be restored to the core to bring the temperature down. Containment failure would result in the loss of the ship.
The reactor spaces were contaminated and expected theoretically a clean up crew to board and move through all compartments. The elevator shaft was blocked for security reasons.
Fusion pulsedrive engines
operating within acceptable parameters
Main computer system
Contact was lost at 22:31:22. DCS sensors detected a high intensity energy discharge around the main computer data cores, perhaps hitting the data core shielding after penetrating the hull. The energy transferred to the core systems rendered them inoperative and the backup systems did not trip as specified. The primary processor cores were taken off-line by an energy pulse and were badly damaged.
Local systems took over monitoring and control of autonomic functions at 22:31:23 which have been delegated to local nodes. Computer operates with the secondary processor cores. The main data stores were unaffected by the energy surge. Function was unimpaired but with no remaining backup system.
FTL, intra-system navigation subsystems, sensors, data stores
nominal
Tal-Seto Jump Drive
operational and standing by, but several million kms away from the nearest Tal-Seto jump point.
OMS
suffered minor damage during the battle but operational.
CICS
Sustained some damage and were down during the battle. Later it was active and standing by at 80% combat effectiveness.
Hull
An impact was detected at 22:45:07 and subsequent catastrophic decompression localized in stateroom 2B. A warning was issued to all personnel to evacuate Deck 2. Since the stateroom door is not designed as an airtight fitting it couldn't withstand the pressure differential between the corridor pressure and the vacuum in the stateroom and air was leaking around the door. At 22:50:10 all Deck 2 was placed under Damage Control Condition Zebra.
Communications
The TCS is inoperative due to a failure in one of the external subsystems. Two opto-electronic modules in the system bus of the TCS Transceiver Targeting and Control Mechanism were fused by an energy pulse. These modules were responsible for managing the interface between the ship's computer systems and the servo-actuators that physically align the transceiver with the TRB and track it.
All other communications systems are operating within acceptable parameters.
Other
Essential ship systems operating within acceptable parameters
Multiple criticality two and three faults which require attention once conditions have established. Most of the affected systems either have backups or are non-essential.

Aftermath[]

Commander Garrick accepted the surrender and ordered to deactivate the weapons systems and power out and gave 20 minutes to abandon ship.

As the bridge of the Lexington was evacuated, Tran scolded Dayna for surrendering. She offered to take out the Jericho themselves with the ship-to-ship missile and then put the Lexington on self-destruct so that the UN won't get their hands on anything or anybody that could give away this mission. Dayna then explained his desperate plan.

In the following 15 minutes, Tran took Randall down to the weapon's bay and pulled out a 500 kiloton thermo-nuclear warhead off to the ship-to-ship missile. She armed it with the TACON console set to detonate based on proximity, canceled off the mass of the Lexington and the intership shuttle and stored the damn thing in the compartment of the shuttle. When she was done she went to the main computer room and left a message to the sole survivor and a second one in the Wardroom.

Meanwhile, Dayna sounded the call to abandon ship, went to his stateroom and recorded a final log entry. He then isolated his 'subject', who was the same person he had requested on the beginning of the mission. Fearing that one of the crew would be a spy, he tried to maximize his chances of success by leaving just him aboard. He hit him and left him unconscious on Deck 2 with a crude note explaining the situation. He then returned to the bridge and recorded a personal audio message to his daughter, Melissa Dayna. Before evacuating, he put the ship back into a powered orbit.

Then all crew boarded the shuttles and were transferred to Dharma. Garrick noted one human life sign on board the Lexington to which Dayna excused that they had no time to search the ship for casualties. As they approached, the warhead detonated, annihilating the Dharma The primary processor cores were taken off-line by an energy pulse and were badly damaged.

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