The Inferno Pt.III
The Astaroth accepted the Lucifer’s comms request, and Lucile let out a sigh as she saw Astarte’s stunned look. Lucile felt a pang in her heart as she saw her daughters haggard face. It was probably one of the few times she had ever felt an ounce of maternal instinct to protect her daughter. Even when her daughter had been nearly pummeled to death by Kazlum she hadn’t felt the way a mother should feel for her daughter. She had been worried and concerned for her, but in the way she would have been if the same thing had happened to Bell or Modius. She had been concerned for her as a fellow comrade in arms, not like a mother should be for her daughter. But now looking into Astarte’s tear-soaked cheeks and obvious distress Lucile felt something deep within her scarred heart break.
Her daughter straightened up and tried to compose herself “How did you know?”
Lucile cocked her head to the side, she didn’t need her to clarify what she meant. “We knew something had gone wrong when Cameo’s QC reported that they had perished, we rushed the repairs and made our way here.” When Johan had burst into her office with the news the Cameo had been destroyed and that there was no word from the Astaroth they had known that something had gone catastrophically wrong. Out of all the Hellworlder ships only Lucifer was space worthy at the moment, and even then they weren’t ready to charge headfirst into battle. “Found the remains of Cameo and followed the mess you caused all the way to that gas giant, we had to double back on ourselves when you led that Kruhur fleet right into a Union fleet, clever trick by the way. We lost you after that until this whole sector of space lit up like Chinese new year.”
Astarte nodded her head “Came just in time,” she said softly.
Lucile felt her throat choke up “I know, you did good, now let us handle it from here.” She said softly.
Aster nodded again and the screen went black, outside the Astaroth broke off its kamikaze run and pulled away from the behemoth Kruhur ship. The Astaroth looked like a giant had taken a sledgehammer to its hull, the port half of the conning tower was warped and melted, their were obvious holes cut into its hull, and all its pulse cannons had been obliterated. It was mark in favor of its incredibly thick armor that the explosion from the pulse cannons hadn’t cracked the whole ship open.
Lucile fixed her baleful gaze at the behemoth Kruhur ship that had stopped its flailing and had instead turned the gaze of that oversized pulse cannon on the Lucifer, but for whatever reason the Kruhur held off their attack. “Johan, ready the shield breaker, and double the pay load.” She calmly ordered as her crew began to run through all the minute tedious tasks that needed to be done every time they readied Lucifer’s primary weapon. Firing the shield breaker cannon put everyone on board at extreme risk every time it was fired, it would only take one miscalculation to kill them all.
“Chamber pressure is at zero point zero PSI”
“Opening the external hatch, no leaks detected.”
“Cooling is at optimal temps.”
“Firing rod is in place
“Neutron shield is at full, rad shielding is at full, heat shielding is at full, we’re ready for the payload.”
“Payload is in the chamber; we are ready to fire at you’re command.” Johan reported to her as her highly trained bridge crew executed their jobs with flawless accuracy. They had trained and drilled for hours and hours before they felt comfortable with attempting a live fire test if the Lucifers highly experimental weapon.
“We’re receiving a transmission from the Kruhur vessel.” Her comms officer reported.
Lucile quirked an eyebrow “On screen”
A large Kruhur male appeared on screen, its squashed crocodilian like face sent a small shiver of disgust down her spine. “You are interfering in our business; this is the only chance I will give you to turn around and leave. This matter is only between me and the Astaroth.” It growled in a harsh tone that belied an undercurrent of rage.
Lucile matched its cold reptilian glare with a raptors gaze of her own, “the Captain of the Astaroth is my daughter, you made this my business when you decided to target her.” She growled back.
Something within the Kruhur’s gaze shifted “Then let us exchange names and begin this battle anew.”
Lucille cocked her head to side, exchanging names seemed a very honorable thing to do, unfortunately for it she wasn’t feeling honorable “An interesting proposal, Johan, our rebuttal.” She said coldly.
Her lieutenant gave the Kruhur a wolfish grin “Fire!” he ordered, and the world went bright white as the shield breaker cannon opened fire.
The Union invasion of earth had changed the course of human history irrevocably in many ways, the most profound of which was the introduction of technology millennia ahead of their own. Technology that was so far ahead of them that they had trouble understanding how much of it worked. The most they could do was take the widely known facts of these weapons and create the some of the deadliest warships of their size and tonnage that the galaxy had ever seen, but even then they were working with forces that they didn’t fully understand.
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They could install a pulse cannon, repair a pulse cannon, and even fire it in anger with a full understanding of what those powerful beams would do to an enemy ship. But when it came down to understanding how it functioned they were operating under the bare minimum of facts. Terrans didn’t even know what ‘pulse’ in pulse cannon meant. It was the same with their shield bubble emitters, their rail guns, the scanners, and even the FTL warp emitters. Everything they had to rely on a daily basis was a mystery to them, but that wasn’t the case with the shield breaker cannon, because it was a purely Terran invention.
Most sentient species had discovered the power of the atom on their way to the stars, most even had a working theory for how to weaponize them. But unlike humanity the rest of the galaxy hadn’t been insane enough to develop and test WMD’s like atom bombs on their own home worlds. Even the Torweni who were remarkably similar to humans hadn’t been insane enough to drop atom bombs on their own world, their analogue for WWII, the sun god’s war, had happened before any atomic theory was robust enough to begin refining uranium for a bomb. That’s not to say the galaxy didn’t understand what the effects of a nuclear bomb would be, many had invested a great amount of time theoretically figuring out what the effects would be to help advance the ban of nuclear weapons tests on their own worlds.
The same wasn’t true of humanity, not only did they build a bomb, but they detonated over 2000 before total nuclear disarmament. So it wouldn’t be a stretch to claim that only humanity had an expertise in the effects of live nuclear tests. It was this expertise that had driven the first prototypes for what would become the shield breaker cannon, project Excalibur. A nuclear defense project pursued by the United States in the 1980’s, the original plan had been to use a unique property of nuclear weapons to create a bomb powered x-ray laser to shoot down Russian ICBMs. The project was met with many snags that remained classified until the Union forced the United States to dissolve at the end of the 21st century. With the declassified data of project Excalibur and the incredibly advanced tech introduced by the Union the Hellworlders once again began to pursue a bomb powered x-ray laser.
This was why they called her ship Lucifer the Undaunted, because every time they fired their primary weapon they put all their lives on the line. And when one regularly put their lives on the line just to fire their primary weapon a lot of normally reckless actions seemed mundane in comparison, they couldn’t really do anything riskier than what they already did on a regular basis.
It was not only a weapon that humanity had the expertise to develop, but it was likely a weapon only humanity would use. Because no other species was both stupid enough to detonate a nuclear bomb within their ship, or insane enough to do it on a regular basis knowing full well the consequences of failure.
This was the Hellworlder’s trump card, their solution for facing the superior fire power of Union battleships. Because as great as the Archdevil class cruisers were, they would never be able to match up to the overwhelming armor, shielding, and fire power of battleships. Its existence and secrecy was their greatest advantage, and keeping that secret was on the utmost importance. It was why they had decided to hold off on using it during the Battle for the Confederacy unless the Igrathoth entered the fray. But here, in the middle of nowhere space, against a single ship of voidlings, it was open season.
The payload that had been remotely loaded into the vacuum chamber went critical, without any air to create a shockwave the only output of the critical chain reaction was immense heat, radiation, and x-rays. The neutron and radiation shielding protected the crew from the deadly dose of radiation that would have liquefied the guts of everyone onboard, and the chamber and barrel were coated in the same radiation shielding used in all fusion reactors that prevented the chamber from becoming irradiated. The power of the bomb then hit the only non-shielded substance in the chamber, a zinc alloy rod. The rod then vaporized into plasma and emitted x-rays. Reflective panels within the long barrel redirected and focused the powerful x-rays and harnessed their power into a shot gun blast of light and energy. The viewing screens in the bridge went white before automatically darkening to show them a black and white silhouette of the Kruhur behemoth ship being hit by the full force of their wrath.
The shield around the behemoth ship held up for only a second under their barrage before it broke under the combined power of a thousand high powered laser beams. With the shield out of their way there was nothing stopping those same lasers from touching down on the enemy’s hull. Tons of hull plating vaporized instantly within milliseconds and the remainder soon began to glow and melt, the force of the ionized hull flung the melted metal in all directions in a stunning display. Then without any warning a whole section of the Kruhur ship exploded as the lasers found an open pressurized cavity and ignited the very air within.
The force of the blast and the depressurizing interior pushed the ship to side and threw off their aim, so that when they fired that oversized pulse cannon it just barely missed the Lucifer. They didn’t give the Kruhur a chance to recover as mere seconds after the shield breaker hit a wave of harpoon missiles struck every joint section of behemoths wings. Nuclear warfare in space was a complicated affair, and with current technology seemed almost ineffective. All ships had shield generators which could fend off the blast of a conventional nuke, and neutron bombs were effectively useless since all spaceships were also equipped with radiation shielding to protect their crews. But once again humanity’s extensive testing came in handy when it came to designing the harpoon missile, or a close range casaba-howitzer. They shaped the energy of a nuclear device to form and launch a metallic projectile at insane speeds which was pointed at the enemy, which in this case was the joints on the behemoth ships wings.
Three of the targeted joints shattered into a thousand pieces, and the wings still full of kinetic energy but lacking in counterbalance swung around to strike the main hull of the Kruhur ship. The other joints were heavily damaged by the impact, and some became stuck in their current position.
Before the Lucifer could launch another volley of missiles the behemoth’s shield went back into place, but without its great turning ability it could no longer properly aim its main weapon. Lucile watched with pleasure as the crocodilian face of the Kruhur commander, who was still transmitting a visual feed as he hadn’t had time to cut the feed, went from angry to shocked in seconds.
“Pull away, retreat!” he roared to his subordinates off camera.
Lucile sneered “I don’t think so.” The Kruhur commander turned back to her, shocked to see she was still there “You came after my daughter, you came after my comrades, nothing less than your total annihilation will satisfy me. Johan, reload the shield breaker cannon, fire when ready.”
“Have you no honor, to destroy us in such an unseemly manner” the Kruhur raged.
She scoffed “Honor is dictated by powerful men like you, and is discarded whenever it becomes too burdensome. You didn’t seem to care about honor when you hunted down the Astaroth with an overwhelming fleet, you didn’t care for honor when you challenged her in a ship 50 times its mass. Don’t cry to me about honor, in life there is only strength, and right now I have the upper hand in strength. I will not listen to the merger cries of someone who is weaker than me.”
“Reloaded” Johan called.
Lucile looked the Kruhur commander in the eyes as she ordered his death, “Fire!”
The room around her went bright white again, and the ship shook a little from the recoil of the escaping plasma. The screens went dark, and Lucile caught a brief glimpse of the Kruhur commanders last moments before the signal cut out. She didn’t feel any sorrow for the cowardly creature who had hunted down her own flesh and blood, sorrow and empathy were the shackles of the weak, and she refused to ever be weak when facing her enemies. None of them will ever get a shred of mercy from her when she came for them.
“Ready Huginn and Muninn, there’s likely a lot of wounded sailors aboard the Astaroth. Send over some engineers to help aid in repairs, once we’re sure she wont explode on us lets get the hell out of here before that Union fleet investigates.” She said to Johan as they watched the Kruhur ship melt and explode. She knew that this ship was likely incredibly important to the Kruhur, and its destruction would send waves through their whole society. But Lucile couldn’t find it within herself to care about the consequences of her actions. She wanted to see the old order burn and plunge the whole galaxy into chaos, and this was just another domino in chain of unstoppable calamities. “And inform the Astaroth that I will also be aboard those dropships, I need to have words with Captain Astarte.”