Chapter 020: Skirmish

Magnetic Acceleration Weaponry [abbreviated MAW] is the most common ship-based weapon system, using ferromagnetism to propel solid rounds made from iron polymer with speed approaching 0,15c. Even without a warhead, such rounds are capable of causing immense devastation through sheer kinetic energy.

Ships defend against MAW rounds in several ways. Evasive maneuvers are the simplest one - unlike energy weapons, the MAWs’ fire has sublight speed, which together with the seconds-long delay in observed enemy position limits anti-ship MAWs’ effective range to approximately one million kilometers.

Once the round finds the target, the next line of defense are shields. Particle shields are deployed in front of the ship and can intercept several MAW rounds before getting depleted. Once that happens, the ship can retreat or activate the magnetic shields, which can deflect an incoming projectile, offering a percentage change of completely no-selling the attack.

The last defense is the armor. From one (on destroyers) to three (on capital ships) armored shells, created from alternating layers of hyper-resistant composites, thermoset ceramics, and impact absorbers. Despite that, the sheer firepower of large caliber MAWs (counted in TNT kilotonnes) means that unless a ricochet happens, ships receiving direct hit will either be outright destroyed (if armor is pierced) or severely incapacitated and knocked out from the battle (if it’s not).

Encyclopedia Galactica

Book 9, page 456

***

“So. What do you want to talk about, Innocent?” The Captain said after a short while of thinking it over. “A diversion from the waiting might be nice.”

I’m digging my own grave with that, aren’t I? Innocent is probably the only person aboard the Echo who is better at mind games than me - and that’s without counting the meta-empathy. Needing diversion for the first time in our joint adventuring is tantamount to me admitting that there’s a problem.

“Answer: Two things.” Innocent replied calmly. “I want to talk about Christopher. And I want to inquire why you acted like you saw a ghost after seeing that Ghost.” If that was supposed to be a pun, then Captain Keller was too worried to find it funny.

“We can talk about Christopher, if you want.” It’s the safer option, after all. ‘Your opinion about him? I faintly remember you saying that you wanted to figure him out during your meeting and present me your findings.”

“Confirmation: That is correct.” Innocent was pretty open about his usage of meta-empathy to read the minds of everyone he met. “I’ve managed to achieve what I can describe as a general outline of who he is. “

“So… who is he?” The Captain interrupted the silence, which was starting to get irritatingly long.

“Answer: No one.” Before Captain Keller could voice his surprise for how diminutive that answer was, Innocent continued. “When it comes to the background, he is almost painfully plain. I’m starting to think that people were simpler in the 21st Century, at least judging from how often he perceives modern individuals as ‘eccentric’, ‘insane’, or ‘crazy’.”

“Is he honest with us?” That’s the most important thing to find out.

“Answer: Yes.” Innocent replied. “I failed to find even a trace of dishonesty, at least towards us. He seems to be a fairly straightforward person. It doesn’t mean he won’t start lying to us if he starts suspecting we are not fully honest with him… and if he decides that his meta-empathy is strong enough to counter mine. I also do not consider him a paragon of virtues, as I’m certain that he does lie from time to time. However, rarely for his own benefit.” This more or less confirmed the Captain's opinion. “We are yet to see him mess something up seriously, so it’s hard to say if he would lie to avoid responsibility.”

“So, in short, a decent guy.” Captain concluded. “Neither a villain nor a hero. Damn, isn’t that the type of people that people always take advantage of?”

“Refusing Statement: If this is a veiled suggestion to emotionally interface with Christopher’s ‘Gift’, then I must refuse.” Innocent quickly shot down the suggestion. “I heard what it did to Lieutenant Commander Athalia. And I have no intention of going through a similar, but much worse experience.”

“So, we know that Christopher’s honest with us, but we do not know anything about the motives of the possibly-Extradimensional ‘Guide’ of his, and we have no way of checking them out.” Captain concluded. “Sounds like a major pain. What about his backstory?”

“Answer: Uninteresting.” Captain sighed. “Lack of well-defined political and religious views. Tends to avoid both subjects. I assume that disillusionment for them is due to the volatile and highly hypocritical situation on both fields in his time of origin. His growing curiosity for both seems to be caused by his fascination with how ‘weird’ the future is, rather than a genuine search for beliefs to call his own.”

“Yes, I know that political and religious views are the second most important thing to you after morality.” And sometimes it starts getting SLIGHTLY irritating. “But please, stop. It’s not what I was asking about. And you know it.”

“Angry Statement: It is important and you know it.” Innocent’s way of showing that he is angry was almost cute—for someone who didn’t get to see what happens when Innocent is really angry. Captain still remembered what happened during their visit to Plesja. “Only fools, madmen, and suicidal people aren’t interested in politics and religion. They care for neither their future nor the truth.”

Good Lord. He is a good person as a whole, but he gets absolutely irritating when he switches into his Fundamentalist Mode. And he does that too often for my taste.

“Innocent.” The Captain said quietly.

The priest decided to not continue his rant. Instead, he calmed down. “Answer: Nothing overly interesting.” Innocent was almost oddly insistent about Christopher’s lack of interesting features. “A student of history with decent but not overwhelming grades. Used to suffer from clinical depression, which probably contributed to his dislike for watching other people having problems. A physical worker doing various odd jobs, though for less than a year before moving into the future. He still lives with his parents and the rest of his family and seems to have good relations with them. As I said, nothing overly shocking.”

“All right.” It sounds like the perfect person to be manipulated by an Extradimensional who somehow figured out how humans work. “Something interesting, but not overly?”

“Answer: Two things.” Innocent replied. “First is that he is from the Mountain West of the United States.”

Ouch. That’s probably the worst place to be in the 2020s.

“The other thing is that you caused a notable discomfort to Christopher when you made him a petty officer.” Innocent continued. “When I asked him why he feels like that, he mentioned a lack of experience and some disaster in a videogame guild. This was the only case when he tried to lie to me. His emotion smelled of a long-suppressed trauma that might resurface under strain. Which you put him under.”

“Well, he will need to figure it out on his own.” I don’t have time to babysit him. Even if he has an Extradimensional accompanying him. “With your help, if he starts failing to cope. Anything else to mention?”

“Answer: No. But that was merely one meeting.” Innocent replied. “People don’t typically open to mindreading alien robot-priests so fast. Give me some time. Now… time for the second thing we were supposed to talk about…”

Great. Let’s hope he makes it brief.

“Statement: I have found that frigate in our records.” The Captain froze for a split second. Then his hand moved slightly, better positioning itself near the pistol. “Inquiry: Do I want to dig deeper into that? Because I must admit, this feels like the sort of knowledge that gets people… retired from the Explorer’s Guild.”

“No, Innocent.” Captain relaxed slightly. The worst-case scenario was avoided. Probably. At the very least the priest was willing to negotiate. “This is not something that you want to know.”

“Answer: How vexing.” Innocent was silent for a while. “Explanation: Knowing things can be addictive. When you are an expert at intelligence gathering and you make sure to know as much as you can, a gaping hole in the tapestry becomes painful. It’s already bad enough that for some reason you are the only baseline human I know that is utterly impenetrable for my meta-empathy. Now, this. It makes me wonder who you really are. Actually… are you sure you are not a robot pretending to be human? That would explain being empathy-proof.”

“You’re one to talk.” What is he playing at?

“Question: Is this secret in any way dangerous to the Echo and its crew?” There was a barely noticeable tremor as Innocent ramped up his monstrous telekinesis. Captain openly laid his hand on the holster of his gun. The pressure that the priest exerted on him made him feel like someone increased the gravity to at least several times the normal one. The floor around his seat began screeching under strain.

“No. Only to me.” The silent confrontation lasted for several seconds. Then the overbearing pressure of Innocent’s power faded away.

“Conclusion: Very well. I’m going to trust you.” The Captain looked at him with surprise on his face. “I have no reason to do otherwise based on your past acts. Though I do not like the fact that I can’t confirm this for sure with the meta-empathy. Because of that, I’m going to purge your secret from my memory banks… but I’m going to leave a copy. One that will be programmed to immediately return to my memory if I ever decide I can no longer trust you.” After a short period of silence, Innocent finished his message. “Then I’m going to tear the truth out of you, even if I’ll have to get Athalia to physically probe your brain.”

***

Space combat is both fast… and very short. Seeing a singular engagement last for more than forty minutes was extremely rare, as every second of fighting ate through resources stored aboard ships. Artillery rounds, particle shield granulate, coolants keeping the weapons operational, fuel for thrusters used for evasive maneuvers. missiles - each of those resources was limited in number. There was a reason why most fleets were accompanied by supply ships.

The battle between the Echo and its small task force and the group of Truthseekers ships wasn’t much different… though it lasted for less than forty minutes.

The Truthseekers ships were orbiting the planet Senla-III. Ships rarely parked for long in places that weren’t planetary orbits, as such placement spared them from having to lose fuel on correcting their position from time to time.

The Explorer’s Guild ships approached the planet with a course suggesting that they planned to join the Seekers’ fleet. When the distance between the two fleets had shortened to one and a half million kilometers, the approaching force changed its course to one parallel to the fleet orbiting the Senla-III. A second later both sides launched missile salvoes.

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Missiles were always the first stage of space battles. Launched en masse, they were supposed to soften the enemy before artillery engagement, while also serving as a good probe for how technologically advanced the enemy ships were.

Both fleets were crewed by veterans who knew how to counter such attacks. The second the Explorer’s Guild ships changed their course, both sides altered their fleet formation by moving the destroyers to the front and heavier ships to the back. Destroyers lacked significant ship-to-ship weaponry, but were full of anti-missile launchers and point defense weapons.

Keller’s fleet missiles were massacred quickly. Led astray or detonated in the distance by Seekers’ electronic countermeasures, intercepted by anti-missiles, and finally shredded and melted by lasers and low-caliber MAWs. Very few of them managed to get past the Seekers’ destroyer line. His ships were technologically advanced for the Confederation of Mankind, but no match for Truthseekers technology.

To the surprise of the rear admiral in charge of the Truthseekers’ fleet, the massacre went both ways. The Guild’s ECMs proved almost supernaturally proficient in fooling the targeting computers of the Seekers’ missiles thanks to Innocent’s improvements. While the Guild’s anti-missiles and point defense were worse than those of their opponents (the destroyers especially were almost laughably outdated), the ECMs took out enough missiles to even the odds.

In the end, not even a single missile breached Keller’s destroyer line.

It took the commander of the Seekers’ forces several seconds to understand what just happened. And a few more to figure out how the Guild managed to achieve that. Twenty seconds after the results of the initial salvo became apparent the Seekers’ fleet broke from the orbit and began accelerating, trying to shorten the distance between them and their enemies, to give less time for the Guild’s ECMs and to enter artillery distance faster. Keller countered this by changing his course, too. Soon it became apparent that with their much worse technology, the Guild could only delay the inevitable - the Truthseekers’ ships were simply too fast.

Both sides continued to fire missile salvo after salvo. The Seekers to get a better read on the Guild’s ECMs before a final attack from a shorter distance. And Captain Keller’s forces, because they could actually score some kills before the final salvo.

Through desperate efforts of the Truthseekers’ crew, the first three missile salvoes were stopped in time. The fourth one came through. A nuclear warhead detonated right next to Alchemic, one of the Truthseekers’ destroyers. While the armor held against the impact, the ship’s outer hull on the detonation side was decimated.

While bad - as it eliminated close to half of the destroyer’s armaments, crippled its shields and killed seventy percent of its crew - it was only the beginning. With the hull shattered and the armor layer weakened by the impact, the ship was laid bare in front of another missile.

Its targeting computer detected a weakness in a ship in front of it. It immediately decided that trying to get closer wouldn’t improve the chances of destroying the target (as it was hard to rise 100% any further) but instead, it would raise the chances of it being destroyed by the enemy defenses. Hence, it detonated a hundred thousand kilometers away from the destroyer. However, unlike the first missile, it had an energy warhead instead of a nuclear one.

The entire missile was in an essence a miniaturized ultraviolet laser. Warships were well protected against energy weapons, but the nuclear warhead left a gaping hole in the Alchemic’s defenses. The energy warhead managed to maintain its beam for four seconds before the heat melted it down - but it was enough.

The beam hit the weakened armor layer - and melted its way through. Once it went through, it melted - in an explosive fashion - everything in front of it. The bridge, reactor room, ship’s hospital - all of it changed into liquid and evaporated together with everyone inside within four seconds.

The Alchemic changed into a vivisected ruin of a ship floating in the middle of the warfare. Its destruction - when counted from the moment of the nuclear warhead detonation - took twenty-three seconds.

Half a minute later the Witch - another destroyer - died when three nuclear warheads hit it in quick succession. Unlike the Alchemic, this ship’s citadel held. Unfortunately, the impact of the detonations killed everyone aboard the destroyer and decimated its outer sections so much that the wreck became irreparable.

In the end, the opening missile combat was the Truthseekers’ victory. Their final salvoes from a shorter distance were fruitless… but Keller’s fleet failed to crack through the enemy point defense to reach the cruisers behind. The death of two Truthseeker destroyers - and almost one hundred crew members - was nothing, as they were of no use in the artillery engagement.

As the distance between the two fleets shortened to one million kilometers and their missile storages were emptied, their formation changed. Destroyers quickly retreated to the back, leaving cruisers to face each other. With particle shields deployed and evasive maneuvers done constantly, they began shelling each other with their MAWs.

Keller’s fleet altered its course. They were no longer running away - instead, they started advancing towards the enemy. The commander of the Truthseekers force identified this as an attempt to enter the distance of short-range weapons to deal as much damage as possible before getting wiped out. Trusting in his fleet’s superior acceleration, he let them get closer. He planned to suddenly change his ship’s course right before the short-range weapons could become a danger, finishing the already decimated enemy.

The closer distance meant less of a delay, which meant that evasive maneuvers were less and less efficient. While the Seekers’ rear admiral fell for Feint Number Six, the approach was going to be bloody.

The first ship to have its particle shields depleted was Nietzsche. Its desperate attempt to retreat was cut short by a capital ship-grade MAW round from the battlecruiser which crushed the Nietzsche - and three hundred people aboard it - like a tin can. A few seconds later the Agreement was forced to liquidate its artillery, majority of sensors, and lots of its internal equipment into a particle shield granulate. This reinforced the shield, but also made the ship into a deadweight for the duration of the engagement.

As the incoming artillery rounds began slowly breaking the Hastati’s shield, the rear admiral of the Seekers began having doubts. A few seconds later he succeeded in deducing Keller’s plan. However, his order for the destroyers to return to the front and for his cruisers to retreat came too late, as the Echo’s fleet unleashed the Rocket Hammer.

Admiral Dunecki - later on, the first Emperor of the Visegrad Empire - was a gifted tactician. Who loved using missiles in various creative ways. His seven Feints were all about sneaking missiles into places where they shouldn’t be without the enemy noticing. Feint Number Six was one of the simplest yet most ingenious tricks.

Keller’s fleet had launched all their missiles - or at least that’s what the Truthseekers’ commanders thought. What they didn’t know was that all the enemy ships had their corridors and various already emptied storerooms filled with spare missiles. Or parts of them - most modern missiles could be easily dismantled and reassembled for easier storage.

While the battle raged, most of the Guild’s crews were busy moving the missile parts to the missile launchers - and reassembling them. While the Truthseekers fleet believed that the enemy was out of missiles, this belief was objectively incorrect. While they lacked missiles for one full salvo (and several missiles malfunctioned due to hurried reassembly), they still had a lot of them.

What’s more, the enemy was no longer in anti-missile formation, and the distance between the two sides of the battle shortened from one and a half million kilometers to slightly above five hundred thousand kilometers. This meant that the situation was perfect for the Rocket Hammer.

All Guild’s ships launched their missiles towards a single target - the enemy command ship. As twenty-seven missiles reached the target and detonated, the Truthseekers’ battlecruiser ceased to exist.

Before the Truthseekers fleet managed to reorganize, the Godhammer beam fired from four hundred seventy-five thousand kilometers away liquidated the enemy heavy cruiser. The remaining Seekers’ fleet began retreating, which quickly changed into a rout - and finally a massacre.

The battle lasted for twenty-seven minutes. Almost four thousand six hundred people died.

***

When the Echo destroyed the heavy cruiser, Commander Drathari sighed with relief. Her body might have been robotic and her mind a bunch of zeros and ones in the ship’s computer, but she was born a human. And she still reacted like a human.

Unlike their brief engagement with Hao Yunqi, this wasn’t a miracle. Just a well-executed battle with a successful gamble at the core. Still, Captain Keller’s ability to achieve victories both in conventional and unconventional ways was… almost unbelievable.

Most commanders she knew would either be defeated or wouldn’t risk a battle with the enemy having a battlecruiser without an equal or larger ship on their side. Yet, Keller somehow did it.

She looked from her position towards the captain’s seat… and she froze.

Captain Keller was almost pale. For a second she was about to sprint towards him, as her first thought was that he had a heart attack. But then she saw that he was still carefully observing the main screen as if nothing was happening.

Is he… afraid?

Battles were scary. There was not a single person aboard ships of both warring fleets who wasn’t afraid of dying in the battle. However, they were professionals - they knew how to ignore the fear.

Captain Keller was functional enough to command… but not functional enough to hide how afraid he was. For someone so experienced to react like that…

What’s going on with that man? A confident and genius tactician in one moment, and an absolute coward in the next. I just can’t understand him. How can he react like that after decades of being a warship officer?

The Hastati scored a kill, its artillery tearing apart a fleeing light cruiser. A few seconds later Echo ripped one of the destroyers apart. The remaining Seekers’ destroyers scattered around. Bad choice, as each of them on its own, couldn’t defend themselves properly even against relatively small salvoes. Fifteen missiles annihilated one of them. Two remaining ships were destroyed by two more hurried and weak missile salvoes.

We lost one light cruiser and had another one forced to go turtle. In exchange, we destroyed one battlecruiser, one heavy cruiser, two light cruisers, and four destroyers. This is such a wonderful change from all those bloody stalemates I read about in the Navy!

“All right, I guess that’s that.” Captain Keller said. Since he now had an entire fleet to oversee, he delegated his normal work to her. This made her into a temporary captain and him into temporary rear admiral. She still wasn’t sure how to think about that. “We should send a boarding party to the destroyer that was knocked out by the nuclear warheads. The impact probably killed everyone aboard, so we have a fair chance of getting access to the ship’s database. Now that I think about it, send another crew to that battlecruiser’s wreck.”

The fact that most of its citadel survived intact was a miracle. And a testament to how great the Seekers’ shipwrights were. This number of missiles would be enough to break a pocket battleship! The average battlecruiser would be changed into a cloud of broken parts.

“On it.” She began issuing orders. After half a minute she remembered something. “What about the Republican station on the orbit?”

“Tell them that they have to disarm their weaponry and prepare for an inspection. If they do not comply, we’ll consider them supporters of the Truthseekers.” This meant that the station could be annihilated. Even if there were some civilians aboard, their death would no longer be considered a crime. Not with an exiled group such as the Seekers.

While harsh, it made perfect sense. In normal circumstances, sneaking a boarding party wasn’t easy. You could never be sure that there are no weapon systems left. A single small MAW could massacre incoming shuttles easily. Any station or incapacitated ship could stop such a boarding operation indefinitely with little more than an empty bluff and some hostages.

An Explorers’ Guild captain who did that could still expect to be subject to a lengthy investigation during which he had to prove that what he did was necessary. And there were limits to the leniency, as nobody in the leadership of the Confederation was interested in having hundreds of civilians die because of a single rotten egg.

Here, with less than two or three hundreds of people on the station, most of them military personnel or technicians contracted by a regime that treated all its inhabitants as cogs in the machine, the amount of mewling should be limited.

One more necessary evil. At least it made all but the most fanatic enemies did not consider taking hostages as a viable tactic. Unless the Truthseekers put one or two Perfect aboard, they should surrender.

I just hope that they won’t try to play for time until the second fleet arrives.

A while later a haughty statement arrived from the station. They refused to surrender. The person on the screen was very obviously part of Seekers’ personnel, as no Tavian Republic inhabitant could have access to such advanced implants. Before the fleet could react in the only remaining way, another message came.

This time it was from a local, who introduced himself as a representative of the republican personnel on the station. He offered to shut down the station’s weapons and the help of his compatriots in kicking the Seekers out. If, of course, the Guild’s ships would take them away from the system before the other fleet arrives.

“Great. Ask Lieutenant Nowak if she wants to take a gamble.” Captain commented. He seemed to calm down finally. “Tell her to make it quick. We can’t wait for long, as in half an hour the other fleet will see what happened. We need to hurry.”

After all, with the enemy having a fast battleship, the battle has only just begun.