“Talk to me Riven.” Admiral Nar’Vala said as she looked down at the display of the solar system at her desk on the Bridge of IAV Rivendell.
A tiny avatar of Riven appeared on top of her desk, standing in the corner. “Twenty four Howron ships are coming out of faster than light travel directly on the ecliptic, they will arrive at our fictional base of operations in seven minutes.”
Tapping a few of the icons on the desk, Nar’Vala opened a communications line, “Monty, how are we looking on the ripple torpedoes?”
“They are on a direct intercept course at .691c. I’m holding off using the ripple drives until after the mines do their work. We only have eight of them, we need to make them count.” Monty said over the communications array in her earring,
Nodding to herself, the Admiral responded. “Sounds good Monty, I’ll leave that to you, I am checking in with my strike team now.”
Tapping a few more icons she connected herself to the other ships of her fleet. After the familiar but quite strange tone that called for the attention of all hands, she spoke, her words issuing through all three Alandran vessels. “Strike team alpha, today we take our first steps towards throwing off the shackles of our oppressors. Our Human allies have given us the tools and the training to make that happen. The Howron contingent of the fleet is heading directly for the decoy, be on top of your game today ladies, the fate of our species rests on what happens here today!”
Ending the broadcast she looked up from her desk to Captain Jan’Inar, “Captain, time to go dark, engage stealth protocol.”
“Aye Admiral.” Captain Jan’Inar confirmed from her command chair as she typed in the necessary commands into the armrest.
After relaying the command to Isengard and Valmar all three ships of strike force alpha started going dark, both figuratively and literally. All outside lighting turned off, inside lighting dimmed, all systems except life support shut down, all emissions ceased. To anything but the most determined active scan they were just offline equipment.
The probes sitting outside the Oort Cloud relayed real time data to Riven via string radio, she dared not allow any outgoing emission of any kind. She knew her sisters would also be passing on information to their respective bridge crews. Five minutes for an AI that ran in millisecond resolution was an eternity, she busied herself running ever more simulations as data trickled in from the probes.
After almost three and a half days of subjective time she watched as the fleet slowly came out of faster than light, they chose to exit one hundred and fifty kilometers from the ‘base’ at twenty two degrees off the ecliptic, only four degrees deviation from what Kara predicted. She watched impassively as the entire fleet launched tens of thousands of torpedoes at the decoy.
With a few commands into her holo-tank inside her personal VR the mine field was activated. Nearly ten thousand mark thirty seven mines came to life and began to search for targets, over half of them did indeed find what they were looking for. Those in range activated their fusion charges, forcing the unimaginable power of the small devices through the maser array into a tightly packed beam of microwave energy.
Those invisible beams of energy reached across the vacuum of space in less than a second to strike the closest vessels, boring holes through shields, armor, and finally the living hulls of the vessels. While the beams themselves were invisible, the holes that burned through the ships were not, twelve vessels immediately slewed out of formation, either dead in space, or rapidly dying.
Thousands of torch drives activated as the mines near the fleet rapidly moved, though they only had about a minute of propellant fuel, they could move very fast very quickly. A rolling mass of mines activated in staggered orders, three more Howron ships were punctured as hundreds of bomb pumped masers cut through them, causing them to shudder in space as armor melted and atmosphere leaked into space.
The probes in the Oort Cloud detected a bells inequality, probably a call to scatter the fleet. Sure enough, gravimetric fluctuations were starting around the surviving vessels. “Activate now!” She called out to Izzy and Valarie. All three ships dropped stealth protocol, fusion cores pushed to full power, shields activated, warheads dropped their safeties.
Admiral Nar’Vala blinked as the lights came to full brightness on the bridge, the view from her tiny desk monitor transferred to the fishbowl of the bridge.
RIPPLE DRIVE ENGAGING scrolled across the multitude of monitors wrapping around the bridge. The space in front of the ship rippled as though someone threw a stone into a calm pond, then the ship seemed to stretch as the star field ahead went from static, to moving, to a stream of light. All three ships of the strike force arrived three light seconds from the enemy fleet.
It was already decided that the organic crew could not react fast enough to make a difference in space combat. Doctrine stated the organic crew were to handle repairs and notify the AI crew of anything they may not notice, but otherwise, the battle would be fought by Riven, Izzy, and Valarie respectively.
Ten torpedoes were launched from each vessel mere milliseconds after the ripple drives disengaged and they found themselves in real space. Those thirty torpedoes screamed from their siloes at hundreds of g-forces on a direct course for the nine still operational Howron vessels. Four managed to slip into faster than light as the grouping found the remaining five ships.
Even with the auto-dimming of the bridge monitors from the nano-camera arrays all over the Rivendell, Admiral Nar’Vala had to squint as the thirty torpedoes found their marks, each guided by their respective ship AI’s with pinpoint accuracy. Staring down at her desk she saw that the four remaining Howron vessels were moving at 10c towards Alandra to meet up with the Ulraar fleet that was just now coming out of their version of faster than light travel.
The fireball was immense, and for a moment was brighter than the sun on the surface of Alandra. Each of the five ships received six torpedoes, which nearly all found their mark as what little point defense the vessels had were too overwhelmed by the sheer amount of targets the mine field gave them. Later high speed imagery from the ship’s cameras would show that all but two of the vessels simply imploded as the torpedoes cut through the armor and exploded within the vessels, but those last two must have hit something vital, causing a huge explosion that tore apart the vessels in a truly epic light show.
Riven sent a message to Monty, “Four made it out of the trap, intercept course for Alanadra, do your thing.”
Monty in her personal VR grinned, she was usually the happy go lucky type, but the loss of her ship, her crew, and the years of keeping the Howron away from her core gave her a visceral hatred for them that even she didn’t fully understand. She would enjoy this, although she would never say that to anyone, even Kelly. “Two lined up to each vessel offset by fifty meters. Ripple drives engaged!”
The four Howron vessels never saw the torpedoes coming. No, they literally never saw them coming, because by the time the photons of light from the eight ripple torpedoes that dropped into real space at .691c directly in front of them the cameras on the pine cone shaped ships did not have enough time to process what it was seeing before the first torpedo struck.
Even from the distance the strike force was from the vessels, which at that point was about fifty light seconds, the explosions lit up the bridge for a few seconds. It was as if they had watched four stars go nova at the same time. Which made a lot of sense, considering four multi-hundred million ton vessels traveling at 10c struck eight small dense eighty ton torpedoes traveling at .691c.
“Howron fleet destroyed.” Came the almost cold voice of Monty over the strike force communications. The bridge erupted in cheers, just as the strike force received a message from the Missive of Dissent. “A little help here would be nice.”
______________________________________
Alex rolled the cargo ship turned warship as more torpedoes roared towards them. “Kara, launch the new chaff torpedoes.”
“On it!” She whispered in his ear as he struggled to keep track of everything coming at them from his cockpit.
Another torpedo rocked the ship as the chaff torpedoes left their silos to intercept the next volley coming in from the three ships currently engaging them. “John, Luke, we have two that have peeled away from us and are heading directly for the planet. Stop them!” He shouted into the comms array as the Missive took another hit.
“Shields down to forty percent, those torpedoes are not chemically propelled, point defense is having a hard time knocking them out.” Kara whispered as Alex checked on the Alandran strike force.
“We’re on our own for the next two minutes until strike team alpha can ripple in.” Alex notified Kara as he launched a dozen torpedoes at the one smaller Ulraar craft that he had previously been targeting. The point defense system the Ulraar had was surprisingly good, the triangular shape of their vessels allowed them a large surface area to mount cannon to defend their ships. While their physical size was about the same as their own frigates, they were of course more limited in the firepower department than the Missive.
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The same could not be said for the larger cruiser sized variant that was acting as the flag ship of the Ulraar fleet. “Well crap, the big one just launched fighters.” Alex said to Kara as he weaved closer towards Alandra from deep orbit. The plan was simple, yet complex. Lure the fleet to high orbit in range of the planetary defense system, but not close enough for them to be in range of striking targets on the ground.
Some of that was guess work as to the range of their weapons, which they hoped they overestimated. The speed at which their torpedoes were coming was a testament to how much better they were than Howron technology.
The dozen torpedoes finally made their way to the damaged enemy frigate, sadly the excellent point defense combined with the small profile of the vessel worked against them. All but one torpedo was intercepted, causing the small triangular craft to shudder as the hafnium warhead detonated less than a kilometer from the ship, knocking out it’s shielding.
“Intercepting the two rogue units now.” Came a response from John. Doing a quick check in the mini holo-tank to his right he saw that they were indeed coming out of ripple space directly in front of the Ulraar frigates. Hopefully they had a nasty surprise for them.
A sudden boom and shift in the Missive caught him off guard. “What the hell was that?” He asked to both no one and anyone who heard him.
“Unknown, but it appeared to originate from one of the fighter craft launched from the cruiser.” Kara whispered as the Missive lurched in space again.
Damage reports were coming in from aft and to port, two warsteel plates were buckled in, internal bulkheads were damaged. “Kara, whatever those are, they went right through our shields and buckled even warsteel.”
The Missive rocked once more as Kara whispered to Alex, “It appears to be a hyper velocity rail gun of some sort, the triangular shape of the vessel is used to house the main part of the gun. They appear to be trying to target our engines.”
Cursing, Alex continued to rotate the ship, starting to flip it on its axis. “Swap point defense to the fighters, we can take more torpedo hits, if they knock out our engines we’re done for.”
Suddenly the point defense masers swapped targets, finding the fighter craft far easier to hit than the dodging, weaving, corkscrewing torpedoes that could pull nearly a hundred gravities. Organic pilots can’t handle the kind of stress a targeting AI can, no matter what kind of inertial dampeners the ship has.
Dozens of pinpricks of light flared as the point defense masers poured hundreds of megawatts of power into beams millimeters in radius. Fighters melted in space as the energy from the maser met the vessel, converting mass into heat in fractions of a second.
Then the Missive rocked hard as two torpedoes found their way through as the point defense started targeting the fighters and ignored them. Shields dropped to zero as more warning klaxons sounded, one explosion hit amidships, buckling the warsteel armor and taking out two torpedo launchers. “Fuck!” Alex shouted as he launched the new chaff torpedoes from the aft silos.
Thirty six more enemy torpedoes were in route, he just launched his whole contingent of thirty two chaff torpedoes, he knew that wouldn’t be enough to stop them all, he watched as the auto-loader readout slowly spun, showing the next round of chaff torpedoes wouldn’t be ready before the current batch reached them.
Knowing what he was up against he changed the load out of the Missive to half chaff, half regular hafnium torpedoes. The plan called for the Missive to be the bait, to sit in the system out of stealth and slowly orbiting Alandra in a very high powered orbit. To the incoming fleet it would practically be like ringing the dinner bell. In practice, Alex thought his plan was pretty stupid now.
The incoming torpedoes were stopped one for one with the new chaff torpedoes, Kara tried to refocus point defense from the fighters that were staying just out of range to the torpedoes closing in, she did a decent job of it. Two exploded in small fireballs as the Missive shuddered under dual explosions, one forward, one aft.
“Shutting down engine number two, its cowling was shattered in that blast, we lost a chaff torpedo silo due to buckled warsteel armor.” Kara whispered in Alex’s ear.
Pressing down hard on the launch control button he sent thirty more torpedoes at the now heavily damaged enemy frigate, no point to splitting twelve torpedoes to each vessel now just as the missive bucked again from a relativistic railgun dart from one of the fighters.
“Ok, that’s getting really annoying, Kara, can we use the chaff torpedoes the way Riven did in the first fleet simulation? You know, offensively like she did on the reactor core?” Alex asked.
There was a slight pause before Kara answered, “You want to use the shotgun effect of the chaff torpedoes on the fighters?”
Alex nodded, knowing Kara could see him, “Exactly! How many of those little bastards did they launch?”
“Forty Eight total, although their current number in the fight is twenty one.” Kara answered immediately.
“Excellent, launching all thirty chaff tubes, take control of them and clear the sky for us.” Alex said as he continued to flip the ship end over end.
Stabbing down on the weapon group two button he watched his display as thirty chaff torpedoes left their launch silos, they immediately arched and curved in dozens of different directions, he hoped the fighters wouldn’t see this little trick coming, he wasn’t let down.
Twenty one torpedoes lined up in the general direction of the enemy fighter craft and detonated their fusion bomb payloads, all that energy was focused through a bomb pumped laser then through a beam splitter spreading it from one massive laser into hundreds of smaller ones in a thirty degree arch. If they knew what they were dealing with they might have been able to dodge the incoming attack, but this was something new, and they had no counter for it.
All twenty one enemy signatures disappeared as they were punctured by dozens of lasers in the megawatt range. The tiny craft simply could not repel firepower of that magnitude. Then his holo-tank lit up as the thirty torpedoes reached the damaged frigate, destroying it in an immense fireball.
The grin on Alex’s face dropped as he saw the enemy fleet launch another twenty four torpedoes at the Missive. Looking down at his screens he saw the reloads for the chaff torpedo launchers wouldn’t be ready in time to stop them. Stabbing down on the weapon group one button he launched the thirty torpedoes that had just reloaded towards the other frigate sized vessel.
_______________________________
The IAV Eriador and IAV Aldburg dropped out of ripple space three hundred thousand kilometers away from the two Ulraar vessels. John spoke calmly over voice communication to Luke, “Firing weapon group one at target designate alpha.”
He was greeted with the same voice from Luke, “Firing weapon group one at target designate bravo.”
Watching the holo-tank he saw the twenty four combined torpedoes heading towards the fleet, Kara, Erin and Ally had just extrapolated that due to enemy warhead size, speed, and mass-less drive system this was nearly double the range they could reach with their own weapon systems. From previous experience, they expected one to two torpedoes to get through point defense, which would damage, but not disable the craft.
That wasn’t the point to the attack however. The point was to distract them from launching their torpedoes at the planet. It’s hard to ignore the ships firing on you for a target that is still to far away. “Erin, we’re closing in, any word from Monty on that miracle?” John asked.
Erin whispered in his ear, “She’s still running the numbers. Doesn’t look good though.”
John cursed to himself, the enemy splitting their fleet was the worst case scenario, splitting it again to attack the planet was even worse. In the simulations they only attempted this once, and the enemy still managed to wreck Alandra.
As they put themselves directly in line of the oncoming fleet the distance to close was coming up rapidly. Luke’s voice came through the communications, “Six torpedoes launched from each vessel, launching equal chaff.”
Watching the holo-tank their group of twenty four torpedoes passed the enemies twelve in flight. If this was an old movie some would have collided, but this was reality, and space was big, there was nearly no chance of something as small as torpedoes colliding over those distance. The holo-tank showed ten of his torpedoes were eliminated, two direct hits. Swiping the holo Luke was not so lucky, only one torpedo made it through.
“Turn and burn!” John shouted through the comms as his ship flipped end over end to ninety degrees in the up axis along the ecliptic and torch drives roared to life. This was a maneuver the Alandran crewed ships could never do, the g-forces placed on the vessel currently was ninety two, even with the best dampeners they could eliminate maybe ninety percent of that. Pushing over nine g’s for minutes on end would probably injure most of the biological crew, if not outright kill them.
Inside a VR environment you couldn’t really feel the ship shaking, but Kara and Alex had ensured that kind of feedback was there in both the Missive and their vessels. The cockpit rattled as though he were inside a shuttlecraft hitting the atmosphere at a very bad angle. Looking down and to the right at his holo-tank he saw that strike team alpha had split up to offer aid, IAV Rivendell was heading to his location while Isengard and Valmar were backing up the Missive, which according to his readouts was being battered by torpedoes.
Their maneuver would force the two ships to change direction away from Alandra and further out of torpedo range of the planet. The planetary defense system might be able to shoot them down, but one miss could equal millions dead. Sure enough, the triangular craft started turning towards them. His holo-tank showed the chaff torpedoes did their jobs, knocking out the incoming torpedoes.
Checking the load out on weapon group two showed only two chaff torpedoes left. Well, this was the scenario that sucked the worst. “Twelve more torpedoes launched from the enemy ships, seems they have six launchers per side, no idea on reloads.” Luke said over comms.
“Five second ripple, let’s get out of their range.” John said activating the ripple drive. Precious seconds ticked by as the capacitors fed power into the drive. After leaving stealth and getting to these two vessels five seconds of ripple was about all the capacitors had charge for. The fusion reactors would slowly recharge them, but after this, they would be stuck with the torch drives.
The wonderful ripple visual appeared in his cockpit display just as the stars leaped ahead for a moment, before they found themselves five light seconds from their original location. The torpedoes heading towards them far out of range. Then space seemed to shimmer around both Ulraar ships as they seemingly disappeared from their last location only to appear about seventy five thousand kilometers off their bows.
“Well shit. We hoped their FTL would take longer to charge than ours.” Erin whispered in John’s ear.
Looking down and to his right at the holo-tank he saw six missiles launched towards him and six more from the other vessel towards the Aldburg. Stabbing down on his weapon group two button he launched his last two chaff torpedoes. Hopefully they would take out two of the enemies, maybe point defense would help, but there was no way his or Luke’s ship could withstand four torpedoes.
Another higher pitched voice came across their comms, “Hey fellas, heard you needed a little backup?” Riven said.