With 8 armed and ready ships off our bow I was thankful that our defenses were engaged and we were fully loaded and then space became hostile indeed. The swarm of missiles that issued forth from that fleet was something to be admired but I didn't have time to let those thoughts cross my mind so I ordered full reverse and then fire everything as we backed up at maximum acceleration. As the hail of missiles sought our lives I said "For what we are about to receive we are grateful for Valhalla awaits" my crew gave me a look but kept manning their posts our first railgun shot took on of the ships head on and turned them into so much floating scrap.
I'd ordered the crew to fire everything we had and more than a few of the 100+ missiles were taken out at extreme range by the combination of 20mm gun and laser fire from the point defenses we were still dealing with a little over 100 missiles but I wasn't keeping track there were too many coming for me to handle right now we were doomed but we weren't going down with out a fight. The seconds counting down we took one then another of their ships from the fight and as the missiles closed we took out ever more missiles though we were only taking out about 4 every volley of fire from the ship occasionally more but what is 4 out of 137 missiles not nearly enough to give us a chance to survive.
We had managed to back up far enough that we were starting to build up some impressive velocity but even so the missiles were faster and the ships that fired them had launched everything they had. Our guns started striking more missiles every second but as each second passed they grew ever closer and the ships that launched them were beginning to gain on us their cannons spitting fire and shells peppering our shields which were barely holding at this point. As the end approached we didn't let up as another enemy ship succumbed to our railgun fire but I had to shut down the railgun now or we wouldn't have the power for shields I hated that I hadn't installed a better reactor yet but we hadn't had any luck running missions in the last year and what jobs we did land were not exactly well paying.
We had killed 5 of the enemy ships 4 from our railgun and one simply because we were trying to hit the missiles lucky in a way but we had only taken out a fraction of the missiles but there were still enough to take us out incoming. We fought for every moment of time full reverse thrust had bought us 8 precious seconds to fire on the missiles but there were still 76 missiles just a few seconds away and our foes were gaining on us there were only 3 left but they were more than enough to mop up the carcass that would be left after the missiles got done with us. My chief engineer shouted in joy before yelling to me c: sir I've managed to increase shield durability by 16% and recharge rate by 9% it might help us resist the incoming missiles," it was certainly good but not nearly enough for us to survive so I asked a question "can we supercharge the shields some how" little did I know that what happened next would change the course of history.
My engineer came up with something truly unique he cobbled together a modification for our shield generator that boosted the resistance of the ships shields in record time he rigged a few wire and managed to boost our shields output by 70% meaning we were outputting a shield strength comparable to a cruiser class ship which is as we understood the physics of shields was impossible yet we were holding them nonetheless. Our shield emitters were strained under the energy load of holding up shields that were more powerful than they were rated for yet they held every tweek we had managed was strengthening our shields to the very limits of our imagination. With the physics we understood of shields they strengthed based on the energy level passed through the generator this typically meant that the larger the ship the stronger the shields but our engineer had managed to nearly double our shields strength without a corresponding increase of power.
As missiles closed on our position our point defenses went to point blank defense protocol and our cannons attempted to destroy as many missiles as they could I knew that they wouldn't succeed and yet over 80% of the missiles had been destroyed before impacting on my ship that still left 29 missiles to impact on the ship the first few impacted entirely on the shields doing no damage but then they started getting through. The first missile hit to the hull shook the ship a little the shields taking much of the damage out of it as the others began hitting over and over again shaking the ship like a dog with a bone.
damage taken throughout the ship was surprising light only the few articles not secured down taking any damage as they were flung around the crew however took more damage those who couldn't secure themselves were knocked out which was most of the crew however I had managed to secure myself in time and while I still was injured the fact I was still functional was what saved us. As I was on the bridge I had operational control of all of the ships systems and sp using my unbroken arm the other having broken during the hellacius beating we had just survived left handed I brought the ship around and fired a freshly charged railgun round at the lead enemy ship taking it out of the battle.
After taking out the lead enemy ship the others fled as if we had survived the onslaught we just received and were still firing they had no desire to continue the fight and so The Gray Shade legend began to grow the unkillable frigate was born the surviving pirates spread the story of how they fired 130 missiles on a lone frigate and it survived while killing all but 2 of their ships of the 8 arrayed against it and was still fighting at full power despite everything the pirates attempted. As we recoved from getting tossed around the ship like pin balls in a machine we realized that everyone was still alive with assorted broken bones but no deaths and a few concussions and then we inspected the hull expecting it to be barely be holding together we were amazed the hull had minor scorching but hadn't taken any damage.