The merry-making lasted until supper-time and we are all a little jolly by that point. Shariah is the one who comes to collect us as todays dinner will be with all the heads for a sort of secondary meeting, and for fraternization. I am not required to attend but I will be going with good company. Shariah does give all three of us strange looks, especially between me and Uriel. I guess she thought we actually disliked each other.
We all laugh and make inside jokes the whole way to the science vessel galley. Shariah seems rather awkward the whole time, unsure of what to say. As a sort of social butterfly and a trained diplomat, she appears to be having issues with being completely lost in the conversation. She then asks,
"So... you all seem to know one another... how did that come to be? Military service?"
I shake my head and respond flatly,
"Nah, we all come from the same hometown."
Josef then responds,
"Actually we came from ze town, you came from ze woods mein friend!"
Uriel elbows me in the ribs knowingly and I laugh along and say with an overexaggerated twang,
"Okay! I'm a country bumkin!"
This gets a laugh from my two friends but Shariah remains neutral all things considered. We reach the dining area and as it turns out, the civilian vessels have far better rations, but this makes sense as their space doesn't have to be occupied by weapons, armor, and ammo, therefore they can afford to store better and more food, which is good especially considering who they have on board.
We sit at the long table and start enjoying our supper of sloppy joe and fries. Throughout the meal, there is quiet and calm conversation but I do notice Shariah staring at Uriel. While an untrained eye may think she is staring out of some sort of jealousy or other form of woman territoriality, this time it is a mix of amazement and disgust. Uriel, as dainty and unbothered as possible is slamming well over six portions of fries. One fry at a time in a quick but polite manner. I eat and can't finish my meal all the way and slide a partially eaten uncouth Joseph over to her, and in a quick blur of a knife and fork, it is gone. Then she pours some instant gravy on her fries and continues to eat in the quick manner she does.
Uriel is great at hiding her rather limited capacity for emotion, but there is one thing she cannot hide, her sheer and utter gluttony, in more than one way. Despite having an admittedly great figure, her capability to eat quadruple what I can is uncanny. I don't know how she keeps slim, but she never vomits up her meals, in fact, her gut sometimes gets a little pooched by the sheer volume consumed. She is self-conscious about it, but she can't help her genetics stop her from ever feeling truly satisfied. Luckily her genes do allow her to eat nearly anything biological for calories and with minimum side-effect. Not only this but she has something of a very sensitive palette meaning she can taste more than the average person meaning in her mass intake of food, she enjoys it more than everyone else.
So in her self-conscious state and ravenous hunger, she acts unbothered and keeps eating rather politely so as not to draw more attention than her eight plates do already. Apparently, the volume of calories does grant the advantage of a harder-working brain or something, I don't know the full details but her exact lineage was bred to be human computers and the high caloric intake was to fuel the smart head meat. I still don't understand fully as I am not a biologist and I do not truly care about her genetic shortcomings, all I know is like me, her gene line is banned from being replicated again, aside from standard reproduction. Apparently, it's a sort of hell she goes through.
With supper ended and Shriah greatly concerned for her fellow head of operations, especially after the small cake Uriel ate, we left and I traveled alone to the Catfish on my own as Shariah is being rehomed in the civilian vessel and after seeing those staterooms I can't say I blame her. By this point, I am sobering up and feel really tired, and a little upset my slightly tipsy state didn't last longer. I take one last check through all reports from all ships in my head and sit on my bed. I remove my hat and lie on my back still clothed and stare at the photo taped to my ceiling. The group of thirty people standing close, all but three faces marked out with black marker, and no one is in a military uniform.
I groan to myself annoyed about having a good memory despite being over sixty. I roll over to my side, stare at the UN flag, pick the small knife off of my nearby nightstand, and then throw it into the nearly irreplaceable memento. Unfortunately, the knife bounces off the metal wall behind it, leaving only a pin-prick in the flag. The knife clatters against the metal deck and I stare at the flag, feeling hollow...then hateful...
"I want at least two marines going with any team sent planetside. Communications, connect with the Shipmaster and request permission to park a drone in low orbit at minimum, or in a circling escort pattern over the team. I want eyes on them at all times. I do somewhat trust our galactic neighbors, but I prefer keeping my eyes on our boys and girls. "
My voice carries through the bridge and through radio to the civilian operation heads and Shariah. Planetside research teams are being gathered for the first expeditions onboard the civilian vessel which is now in low orbit of the planet below. Uriel, Josef, and Shariah sign off for their respective teams to have marine Escorts, except Jackson and his legal team. He claims that the rule of law and creating trust means having an armed escort is unneeded and offensive. I responded,
"You're fucking retarded, you're getting those marines and you're welcome to try and... well remove them from your shuttle."
This shut him up quickly, but I did get an anonymous message telling me how unprofessional I was. I send back my helmet cam from when my hand was cut off with full audio of my screams. There were no other messages. While it was a cultural misunderstanding it still makes sense to have an enhanced human to bail you out when shit goes south. Speaking of just in case I order the marines not to carry their standard rifle, while chambered in a caseless telescoped version of the old .408 Cheytac, which is plenty for all but the most armored of human opponents, I am not sure what this planet has in the way of wildlife, and considering these aliens are a multi-species empire you never know if they have a living tank or something. I order them to carry the "Mah Duce" M2A25E2 Super-heavy Rifle. Which is an M2 Browning heavy machine gun rechambered in a caseless telescoped 50bmg derivative the firing pin is replaced by an electronic ignition system and has polymer furniture built around it to look like a standard rifle, but bigger, and only marines can really use them and that's who they are built for. Now with modern chemical propellants and mostly tungsten construction of bullets they almost quadruple the pressure of the original bullet. Overall, a ship of Theseus problem but I mean, it's a classic.
Regardless the communications officer gets the okay from the aliens to have a drone escort after a short discussion. He sends me a text message about how our new friends feel a little insulted that we do not trust them enough yet, but they did concede as they too understood the need for caution when meeting new people. Also, The communications officer did make it known we are not making a display of force by bringing the marines, they are simply there as escorts, and as enforcers for the rule of law for our own people. They accepted this too as to hopefully discourage any other incidents like mine.
The carrier deploys four drones, one for each team, and is loaded with mainly ground attack missiles. I am fully confident any non-capitol ship air unit can be swatted rather easily by any of my capitol ships, but if any of those big vessels choose a I fight I have already given the order to run and have the science teams accept capture until negotiations can be achieved once more, and for the marines to start causing hell and to not allow capture at any cost for themselves.
With my security orders being followed I sit back down in my command seat and watch the screen as the shuttles head toward the planet below. Suddenly, I find myself rather lacking in tasks to take care of for the day. Nothing on any of the ships requires my attention and I really don't feel like having a random equipment inspection, as I had done one of those days earlier. I don't even have to ask for reports as the AI found on all the ships compiles everything mission-sensitive or otherwise important into nice little texts that are sent directly to the Catfish where the AI there summarizes the information and highlights things that both Naval doctrine and myself have designated as important. Of course, I can go through all of the reports but we are sorta just floating around in orbit and the biggest changes and slight course adjustments to avoid collisions or to maintain orbital status. Although some anomalies have been reported.
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Most of these reports are related to alien vessels and how they move. It was noted earlier that the ships are locked in space. They are not in a steady orbit but are not moving at all when idle. They aren't in geosynchronous orbit, they have a total velocity of zero in space. This is quite odd as there are no signs of thrust being emitted by the ships meaning something else is holding them in place. Not only this but the ships that come and go from the system for various reasons. Our best guess is commerce and other cargo hauls. We have figured out their engines run cold but produce an insane amount of thrust and an easily followable train of their special local radiation. I do like how the trails are very distinct and disperse measurably so tracking of their vessels is possible, and they have the radar cross sections of skyscraper buildings. The other strange thing is their FTL. Their ships just blink into reality after a burst of their radiation. This is observable, but so far all sensors cannot track this happening prior to it finishing meaning their FTL is pretty close to true teleportation or something. Maybe we can get ahold of it. I would love to see the Euro's faces when a battleship blinks above New Brussels and rains nuclear fire upon their little union building.
Moving on from my nearly war-criminal tendencies I study more of the reports on the alien vessels and go over all the optical data as well. I have noticed the ships are really poorly constructed, based on human metrics. Their average size is over a kilometer long which has the benefits of being a heavyweight with more area for armor and guns, but also a bigger target and requiring more Deta-V to turn and move. Utilizing chronography and radar pings we have determined their ship hulls are made from a mixture of rather poor quality steel and actual masonry. There are signs of exotic materials mixed into the composition but while tracking space debris which impacted something invisible 30 meters off of the hull of one of their ships, it is theorized they have some manner of force-feild or energy shield. This possibly doesn't bode well for us in a fight if it comes to that.
Regardless the locals seem to like Shariah and her diplomatic team so hopefully they can continue to keep good relations going. Sitting there, slowly growing bored I am pulled to attention by a small ping. I open the message and it's from Shariah who simply asks,
"Are the main guns of the Catfish ready to fire?"
I feel my stomach sink for a moment before calming down and I request clarification, but with an affirmative to the question. A few moments later she replies,
"The Shipmaster has requested a weapons demonstration, he will also be firing his main armament so it's fair. The target will be some asteroids in orbit around the local gas giant."
I send back an affirmative as a very vague destination is sent to me. I bark my orders to the pilots and order the rest of the fleet to maintain current headings. The USS Catfish comes to life as great plumes of solar flame trail behind the behemoth. We pull away from the rest of the fleet before activating the Alcubierre drive, changing the average acceleration of space around us to the speed of light, the stars stretching in front of us as reality is slightly warped and then we accelerate with standard sub-light engines and in less than twenty minutes we arrive near the designated meeting point. Once we return to a normal state of space there is a pause and then the gargantuan ship blinks into reality with a burst of radiation that causes a few warnings to blink onto screen for a moment. Immediately we are sent one of their odd communication links.
"Good morning Shipmaster Commodore!"
The jolly voice of the Shipmaster comes through and I can't help but crack a smile even though he can't see me. I return the greeting and then ask,
"So Shipmaster, are we doing so target practice?"
He laughs loudly and then replies,
"Yes, that is the case, my good sir. I will begin, as the host of this little adventure it is only fair. I do request you fire your main battery as I will be doing the same."
I give an affirmative and he tells me,
"I will be aiming for an asteroid that's about... 50 cubits across, it appears to be a largely nickel-iron one."
I say nothing a little confused about the target. While decent-sized and probably quite dense that isn't really a show of force. Maybe he is designating a target like that for a baseline since a nickel-iron asteroid is probably as close as one can get to steel armor in natural form. Not too dense, not too weak, and not too resistant. So maybe he is proving a point. I watch the big ship rotate to its side, facing a broadside cannon toward the small field of asteroids. I have external cameras highlight and track all asteroids of the size and composition the Shipmaster designated. It's close to a few hundred but manageable to track. I also focus multiple sensors on the large ship, hoping to get a good baseline of data for their weapons.
There is a notable uptick in the local radiation around the barrel of one of the 1-meter bore weapons, it looks as if the radiation is being drawn into the barrel. This continues for a while as lightning arcs off of the barrel and temperature increases. The Shipmaster communicates,
"I will not lie, as it is not honorable, but this is meant to be a humbling experience. To show you the absolute power of our mighty kingdom. I like you so please do not feel too disheartened when you learn of your weapon's ineffectiveness compared to ours. This is a full charge for this weapon so be amazed, not fearful as it shouldn't be used against you."
Then it fires. I expected the weapons to be some sort of massive railgun, instead, a focused beam of light is fired from the massive barrel, but it's not light as it moves much slower than luminal speed, relativistic yes, but not light speed. According to readings, it is almost nothing except the strange local radiation with intense heat and light being produced somehow. It strikes the asteroid and after a few seconds of burning the metallic rock, it then explodes. The beam immediately disappears as the AI goes about calculating the intensity of the blast that broke the asteroid apart.
`25T.
That is the calculated power of the blast before us. 25 tons of TNT equivalent power. If the Shipmaster isn't lying then that is pretty pitiful, well sorta. The weapon itself is insanely cool, a direct energy weapon, or maybe a radiation weapon, but whatever it is it is far better than all of our direct energy weapons. Unfortunately, it has the same capability as some secondary batteries in direct power. The standard non-nuclear anti-capitol ship round fired by the USS Catfish has its impact at a max of 125T, admittedly that is pushing it and will damage the barrel through intense magnetic force. The average is about what that big beam was at 25 tons of TNT. Devastating, but can be negated by good sloped armor and specialized construction. Since their weapon is direct energy, and at a manageable level I am certain the construction of the USS Catfish can easily handle multiple shots from those weapons, the thermal transfer being negated through ablation of external layers of armor. I decide not to fire a nuclear shell, instead I order a DT round or direct transfer round. A shell designed to not penetrate armor, but instead transfer a massive amount of kinetic energy usually utilized to shove enemy vessels out of orbit. These shells are made of super-dense materials that are rather soft, many are composed of large quantities of Neptunium and Platinum for high weight and the ability to "Squish" when hitting enemy vessels.
One of the Dorsal batteries comes to life at my order. Large magnets separate the ring of the turret from its housing by a millimeter allowing for frictionless traverse. The ammo feed system takes the special round, replacing one of the pre-loaded nuclear shells in the six-round drum behind the selected cannon. I target one of the asteroids the same size as the one he shot at and of the same composition. I have one of the CWIS guns fire a tracer into the asteroid so that the Shipmaster can see what I am firing upon. I say no words as the gunner takes aim. There is no charging sequence as that would be impractical, large banks of capacitors having already been filled and at the ready. I simply nod and the shot flies. Much slower than their weapon, but the impact is similar. There is only a slight flash when the shell strikes but the asteroid is blown apart by the earth-shattering impact. Calculations show our shot hit with a similar amount of power, but probably less since the shot was fired at standard speed rather than overcharging the barrels. Believed to be about 24T, maybe. When targeting things like asteroids its more akin to how you hit it rather than how hard you hit it, an armor-penetrating round could've easily shot through it if fired hard enough without transferring all the energy so my DT round was the best option for the demonstration. The Shipmaster asks me,
"Was that... your most powerful shot?"
I think for a moment before replying,
"Yes and no. That is the most powerful shot from that cannon alone, relying on nothing more than the force of the slug it fired. No specialty ammo was used."
There is a long pause and the Shipmaster asks meekly, and almost incredulously,
"Please show... the specialty ammo..."
I shrug and the great drum rotates behind the cannon and the shot is sent flying. A nuclear shell not even a megaton in size is sent out. It's a non-directed shell meaning it's a strategic warhead meant for explosive effect rather than penetration. Basically a nuclear HE shell. In a few seconds the round impacts and the asteroid, with a few others around it are blown to bits after a small flash. Nukes look strange going off in space, there isn't a fireball, just a single small flash and then nothing but radiation and depending on the situation a shockwave. In this moment it mostly hyper-accelerated bits of the asteroid that was impacted which did most of the effect on the others rather than a true shockwave which requires a medium to work. I made sure not to load a nuclear shrapnel shell as thousands of nuclear-accelerated tungsten hexagons would be quite unfortunate for any civilian vessels in the system who happen to be passing through.
There is a dead stillness in the air and I have to ask,
"Did the EMP knock communications somehow?"
The Shipmaster then stutters,
"No... no... I may have to report something back to the crown... tell me what is that weapon? What kind of magics did you use... or well any other terms you may have?"
I don't know how to respond but record the message for the smart people to deal with later. I then respond,
"No magic, it is simply the properties of the materials found within. It's called nuclear fusion, I'm sure your kind has something by a different name and is far greater than ours."
He simply responds in a near growl,
"We do not..."