Being isolated for extended periods of time cannot be considered beneficial to one's mental wellbeing, and while Don was certainly isolated from human contact, he was not alone. ARC was proving itself to be an incredibly entertaining partner.
A good reason for this was ARC being knowledgeable about everything, yet not understanding the intricacies enough to to be considered an expert. It reasoned as such that there would never be a lack of things to talk about, even if certain topics died off fairly quickly.
Unfortunately, many questions have definite answers that ARC need only search for to find the answers.
However discussions over topics such as philosophy, government, history, tactics, and pretty much any subject that discussed not whether or not something is correct, but which option or process is the 'most right' or 'least wrong' could last for hours.
This phenomenon was especially noticeable when it was Don who was the uneducated one, as he would have to learn about the topic pretty much from scratch and form many of his own opinions over time. He did not have the information gathering or processing abilities that ARC had.
In spite of this shared curiosity and debate over the 'what-ifs' of the universe and society, what both parties found more amusing was a little hobby that ARC had picked up in response to one of their previous conversations over the topic of video games.
"All targets down. The way the enemy craft maneuver has gotten much smoother since you started. Very well done."
To stave off some of the physical boredom it had detected in Donovan, ARC had taken the liberty to develop a sort of combat simulation in the form of a video game.
The first iteration was terrible if Donovan had to be completely honest. Hit detection on everything did not match what was displayed and the way that the artificial craft maneuvered made them impossible to hit, their velocities rapidly changing as though they were not subject to inertia.
The next few generations were much better. Collision worked, hit detection was phenomenal if not perfect, movement felt much better for the pilot's ship, even environmental hazards like dust clouds found their way into ARC's simulations.
However the movement of enemy craft simply did not entertain Don. The primary reason for this was that they were now too easy to hit.
"Your suggestion to shunt some of my processing power and dedicate it towards learning to pilot a ship was essential."
That was the solution that Don had suggested. It was the equivalent of having somebody dedicate half of their body to fighting the other half until one of the two sides was forced to capitulate.
It really just meant that ARC had to split itself in two and fight itself in its own simulated space so as to better understand how to not only fly, but also fight. No harm other than a slightly increased power draw was done. ARC couldn't really die from something like this, and it was forbidden from killing anyway.
"I will attempt to use this problem solving skill in predictive combat simulations. Being in command of both sides while remaining unaware of what is happening on the other will give a more accurate idea of what could happen in the opening acts of a conflict."
"I thought you were no good at tactics?"
"I feel I can accurately simulate what a human commander might do when faced with a situation such as this. I will be operating under the assumption that more precise knowledge of what an enemy might do will ultimately save lives. I will not be issuing the orders that result in someone's death after all."
"So it isn't restricted by your directives." Don was actually quite worried about how much ARC was beginning to bend both his thought process and the rules so as to do things it might not have been able to do before.
Tactical analysis was just one such subject ARC was experimenting with. Had Don done something to precipitate such a change in ARC's reasoning process? Had he ever done anything while training or talking that suggested that twisting the rules to fit your goal was acceptable?
He was actually worried about this. He may trust ARC but the threat of another Skinnik was horrifying.
The blinking that indicated a message from the Admiral ended their simulation session.
'This command order is to be followed to the letter as closely as possible.
Entering hostile zone in 200 minutes. Refuel and rearm with what you need in that amount of time. The bow hangar will be kept closed as much as is feasible while in enemy territory, so you will need to exit before then. All future orders will be sent through the proper encoded channels.
Command has inferred that instead of returning to the inner ring to regroup after striking a fleet at anchorage, we will instead be cruising towards the limits of the solar system. They will either have to chase us and leave their backs open to the main fleet or work to halt the main fleet and leave their stations exposed to our raiding.
In either situation we are guaranteed to have a long and drawn out campaign. It is tantamount that you of all people are in prime condition to guide incoming fire. Rest is your highest priority until further notice.
I am issuing a top priority command to all forces that consumption of intoxicants while on duty is prohibited until a time I see fit for it to continue. While I have no doubt that you will not partake in such activities, duty requires I inform you of this decision as you are an independently operating craft.
Fast flying - Admiral Adirondack.'
A fully fleshed out fleet order.
This was his second time receiving one, his first being notice of his assignment. The only real differentiating factor that separates the fleet order from the fleet command is that the order is formatted in the same way as a letter, while a command tends to be a few sentences.
Disobeying a fleet command might mean a slap on the wrist or some time in the brig at worst.
Disobeying a fleet order could get you executed.
Donovan did not think he would be having any problems being executed for now, even though he would have preferred to stay within the bosom of the carrier, but he had to admit that having a carrier to return to was far more important.
He was already fully loaded, and he had no need for fuel, so he had three hours and some change to burn. Restrictions on leaving the Noah had been relaxed at this time, so he wondered if he might be able to cash in on that bucket of ice cream the crew of the Ranger had promised him. He didn't have a place to store it, but it would be the tastiest thing he ate for a long time.
Could he eat it all in one sitting?
- - - - -
172 hours.
Don did not fashion himself to be a particularly social creature, but not having contact for this long was a serious draw on him. ARC was good company and all, but it lacked something he didn't realize he needed.
A face.
ARC had everything that made someone proficient socially, except for the corporeal form.
Certain things he had never noticed about how he communicated and interacted with others were beginning to cause him problems. Not being able to give a high five when excited, a quick rap on the shoulder after a crude joke, a pat on the back after a job well done, none of these were possible without a body.
Luckily this shiny new objective folder was going to give him something interesting to do.
Fairly exciting too.
A rapid strike on the capital ships moored at the docks of Uranus. A declaration of war had been delivered and reciprocated mere hours ago, so they qualify as valid military targets, but that means they'll probably be crewed and at least somewhat ready to fight.
They definitely won't be expecting a strike group with the capability to fire accurately beyond twice their own firing range to come screaming past with the momentum of nearly a day of acceleration.
That might sound like a lot, and certainly it was, but the relative speed of the orbiting moors with their flight path will mean they are only passing at a mere five times the speed of sound. They will only be in attack range for five hours and some change.
At an average of one salvo every three minutes, and five hours to unload tungsten, the big boys will only have 100 salvos to ruin as many hulls as possible.
Usually even small scale fleet engagements last eight hours.
Don was going to be departing an hour before the strike group gets within range, painting targets, designating threats, and generating target solutions for the incoming hulks using their predicted flight paths.
The strike and combat craft aboard the Calibration are to be launched 3 hours before the capital ships open up. They will get close to the debris belt and tear towards the dockyards, focusing their strikes on the less armored targets and repair facilities. They are only going to get one sortie off, so they will have to make it count.
It was likely that he was also going to need to provide a heads up for the incoming craft, lighting up weak links, threats, and high value target for them was going to be headache.
Most of that stuff could be left to ARC, this is what it was built for this after all. The real point of stress is going to be the missile storm that the majority of the lighter fleet elements were going to launch during the hours their firing lines used the least amount of fuel.
Despite being extraordinarily fast, the distance meant that they were going to be en route for nearly two hours before they reached the point defense screen if they were to preserve the amount of fuel needed to adjust flight paths.
As such, his jobs are as follows,
1. Direct high caliber fire to priority armored targets. Carriers first to ensure easy operational kills.
2. Direct strike craft to targets they will be effective against.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.
3. Direct an hour long missile barrage at targets not important enough to warrant the attention of the large railguns and too well defended to be damaged by the strike craft.
4. Accurately determine the degree of damage to enemy ships, as well as when to switch fire to keep it at it's most efficient.
5. Report the status of any fleeing enemy.
6. Mitigate friendly fire incidences.
7. Use the railguns onboard to finish off any targets not worthy of a concentrated salvo.
"Oh? Great. I've been given the jobs of a fire coordination group, strike director, ballistic computer, damage control officer, and assassin." Even with ARC's help, this was going to be a veritable hell. "Are we absolutely certain this is a one person job?"
"Even if it isn't, we are past the point of training a second pilot." ARC was once again painfully correct
It was painful to Donovan. Not anything physical. It was painful to him that a second pilot would solve literally all of his problems, and yet those rats at central (his opinion of them had degraded to this point) had determined that this was a job a single person would be capable of. There was ample space in the cabin for a second person to live, so why didn't he have a partner?
Even most fighters had two operators, one pilot, one countermeasures officer, as the jobs required to not die required so much attention to detail that it couldn't be reliably done by a single person.
Yet here he was, getting prepared to do the jobs of seven experienced officers and a computer. Granted, he had the help of a super-computer.
He wasn't happy, but orders are orders. Perhaps out of pity, he was given permission to eliminate injured targets with his railguns. He only had 20 shots, about an hour of continuous firing, but that was more than enough to rip apart a resilient cruiser or battleship.
Once again, Don found the futility in complaining. Once again, he shut up and strapped in.
The fleet at Uranus wasn't gonna sink itself.
- - - - -
"They really can't see us."
Don had maneuvered the Noah to an area orthogonal to the plane of expected fire vectors. If the fleet's line of travel was considered a line headed directly north with Uranus' rings being the plane of the map, then he was due east with the planet to the west.
He was currently sitting in what would conventionally be considered a 'kill zone'. His position was open to enemy fire from their entire broadsides, with no celestial bodies to use as cover. Normally this would be suicide at the range he was at, but they were none the wiser to his presence.
Plus, this position gave him the best sensor profiles of the dock. His angle was damn near a perfect 30 degrees off of their horizontal (long) dimension, so he had flat armor faces for his sensors to bounce off and they were further distinguished by the 'hole' that the dockyard made in the ring. There would be little to no false feedback from rocks in the vicinity.
There wouldn't be overlapping hulls either, so he could see everything.
Another reason this position was ideal was that once the chaos began, there would be no interference by friendly fire. The margins between the enemy docks were large enough that radiation clouds from direct hits and explosions would not reach the profile of the nearest ship.
"Do you think we could remain hidden even after we start firing?"
"Unlikely. The coating on the Noah only prevents detection from wavelength that are either internal to or make contact with it. The external magnetic field generated by the railguns will expose your position in a heartbeat."
"That's true. I suppose that level of energy would be impossible to disguise. Does that coating also apply to gravity fields?"
"No. Gravity is less of a wavelength or energy and more of a law. With our current level of technology these field can be manipulated, but never eliminated. I believe the relatively low mass of the Noah to be part of the design decision with this in mind."
"And how did you come to that conclusion?"
"Would you expect an object with the mass of slightly oversize corvette to have the firepower of a capital class railgun?"
No. In fact he hadn't believed it until he actually fired the damn things.
Don had long since been interested in the field of designing a ship. He had the know-how and he would soon have more than adequate field experience, he just never had the chance. He had a few mock-ups of hull designs and theoretical operational doctrines drawn up during his (limited) free time, but he was disappointed to find that hull design and doctrine was pretty much optimized.
There were only so many way to shrug off heavy weaponry, and large amounts of armor were all of them. You always needed the section expected to face the majority of fire to be heavily angled and have a LOT of mass, so that really limited the shapes available.
In the past, experiments were done with a hull shape reminiscent of the old film series 'Star Wars' imperial Star Destroyers, a wedge shape with all firepower facing forward. It was found to have a few major problems, some of the less serious ones being the exposed backside and inefficient use of volume, but perhaps the biggest problem was the thing couldn't fucking turn from an enemy to retreat.
It turns out putting the majority of the thrust facing backwards meant that you cold really only move forward, and if this area had ALL of your main thrusters then you could not afford to expose it to enemy fire. If you needed to disengage, you would need to turn around, exposing them to the enemy while ALSO completely putting the enemy in the blind spot of your own weapons.
Not really a smart design decision.
'Death Box,' and yes that is the proper name for the hull case layout, remains the dominant hull design.
Don could see some variation moored down there, a double angle casing on one of them, gentle sloping fore and aft on a few. There was actually a half-wedge amongst the Large Cruisers, a design that likely focused on closing the distance using the side with more thrusters.
One of the heavy cruisers was distinctly disc shaped, a design that while feasible in theory was absolute dogshit in practice. Having guns facing every direction was not useful if the enemy was only attacking from one direction. This was counteracted to some degree by slowly rotating the ship, but that was horrendously inaccurate at range.
"As I thought, Death Box is Best Box. A frame in the shape of a hexagonal prism is without equal when it comes to long range combat efficiency."
"What are you talking about?"
"Nothing much. I was just musing to myself over how we have effectively perfected the hull form of capital ships. Armor effectiveness to volume usage is simply unmatched with any other design."
"I see." ARC did not comment further, something that Don took as a sign of agreement. ARC did not find further elaboration on topics they were in agreement on to be productive, so it had an annoying habit of effectively ignoring conversation starters.
"ETA of the strike craft?"
"4 minutes until they enter quiet communications range. Ten minutes to transmit attack orders and designate danger zones."
He admired the design of the largest ships, and he was about to communicate with some one piloting his least favorite design that he found a grotesque fascination with.
The Domino Class Bomber Striker.
"Hey Beacon! How much of a shitstorm are we running into?" Blue Zero, Captain Thompson, greeted him on a secured line.
"They don't even know you're here. I'm not even picking up sensors radiation from their arrays. I'm willing to bet they hadn't even considered that they would be attacked here."
"That's what I'm talking about! Do you have addresses for us to mail our packages to?"
"Indeed I do. I'm already sending priority targets to each of the squadron leaders. Keep in mind that the central cluster will become a death trap once their point defense systems come online. Focus on the soft targets there and then move out, our friends above will have the clear to rain fire once you clear that area."
"Roger that. Do you have a recommended strike path? Sounds like we have free reign."
"I'd say popping up to about 15 degrees above the ring and striking through the hole the dockyard makes is probably the most optimal path. You'll have uninterrupted shots coming in and you will only have to adjust your trajectory up a little bit to use the ring as cover."
Putting debris fields between you and enemy guns was a tried and true tactic for disengaging. The properties of 'shit in the way' had a way of blocking sensors and incoming fire, perfect for strike craft who were fresh out of ordinance.
"Got it. What should the fighters be doing?"
"What do they normally do?"
"The way they prefer to put it is loitering. They kinda swarm an area and shoot whatever comes inside of it." Static positioning tactics were not exactly suited to a strike mission.
"Just have them fire their missiles at some of the docks or something. I'm already having issues finding targets for the rest of you."
"Will comply, best of luck."
"Best of luck."
Go-time was mere minutes away, and finally Don found himself with some free time. He zoomed in his few external sights on Thomas's strike craft, wanting to see it in action.
The Domino Class of strike craft was something of a strange design. It departed from the standard aerodynamic hull-form of deployable craft, instead opting for a block shape that would more compactly fit within a carrier's hull.
With this came a host of issues that were naturally solved by the standard aerodynamic hull, including the increased sensor cross section and the effectiveness of armor facing towards targets. Having a flat 'face' made it vulnerable.
The Domino's designers solved this in a rather abstract way.
Most main thrusters were casemate with the hull, changing the direction of thrust by way of changing the orientation of the hull. The Domino did not conform to this design philosophy.
The primary thrusters were mounted on a rotating cylinder centered on the center of mass. When engaging into an attack run, the front of the ship tilts down to a 25 degree angle to the thruster's plane. The thruster, focused on the center of mass, doesn't produce any rotational issues, while the armor is now at a sufficient angle to induce ricochets in most small caliber fire from point defense systems.
This layout also allows for more ordinance as the now obscured underside is protected from direct fire.
The moniker 'Domino' originated in test trials when one of the damage analysts remarked that the blast pockmarks looked like the dots on a domino.
It stuck.
Now, he watched this rotating engine in action. As the jarringly boxy craft rapidly approached, they tilted into their strike mode, gaining a bit of altitude for the prime attack run.
Just as ARC had guaranteed, there was no response from the ships at dock. Not that this would have helped them at this point, the ships were mere moments away from unleashing their payloads.
His focus on the raiding party was interrupted by an non-stealth communication.
"This is Bunker, we have received notice of active attack runs and are almost within firing range. Open to fire at whatever you deem fit Beacon."
"Understood Bunker, target solutions inbound. Be prepared to fire, on my mark of course."
"Granted. What is the first course for tonight's meal?"
"I decided to start us off with something lighter, as an appetizer. It's a large cruiser, estimated to be of the area defense role. It is blocking the way of our wait staff, so I politely ask that you finish it off so they may leave you to dine in peace. I take it my payment of self propelled explosives will be adequate?"
That large cruiser at the end of the strike craft's path had all of the markings of one centered on point defense and area denial. The bombers could go around it of course, but that would reduce their forward momentum and leave the possibility of pursuit.
"We will be more than happy to take that burden off of your hands, we are a full party after all. Don't worry about the payment of fissile matter, its quality has been checked before hand and the delivery method is made to guarantee safe delivery. Would you mind taking a video of our delicious feast? We are unfortunately blindfolded as we have been told it enhances flavor, but we would love to bear witness to the fruits we are partaking in for later consumption."
Don scoffed at 'blindfolded.' That meant that they weren't even bothering to deploy their sensor arrays. Given ARC's accuracy with solution-crafting it made sense, but it still felt careless to not have some degree of a backup plan, even if they couldn't see anything at this range anyway.
Signaling ARC to begin recording he ordered a salvo on that cruiser, Thompson was beginning the strike on the opposite side, so they would be outside of the railgun's cone of potential error by the time 3 minutes had passed.
"I have started recording. Please sink your teeth into the provided appetizer, all at once if you'd please."
"Wilco, firing in three."
Seconds later, the full force of he task force's main battery ripped into the sleeping giant.
The result was mortifying.
ARC only counted 23 hits, yet the cruiser was nothing but a significantly above the average temperature hunk of metal.
Without a steep armor angle to fight against, the rods tore into the somewhat lightly armored hulk's hull. Each rod tore a ten degree cone straight through the ship.
The sensors showed it breaking up into thirds, with a sizable amount of it's original matter exiting the area at a rapid pace. A symbol of strong naval power was rendered unsalvageable in an instant.