Battle of Sol
Page 10
Then the third stage would happen. He felt certain at some point, the enemy would send through their base-killer missiles to destroy his fortresses. These gigantic missiles were the size of destroyers and were essentially kamikaze ships, equipped with super dense armor and had all available storage devoted to antimatter. The question was, though, when and how would these k-ships be used? Would the enemy send their k-ships after their capital ships or with their capital ships or before?
The fourth and final stage would be the enemy’s capital ships. These super invaluable ships would determine whether or not the enemy could hold the wormhole exit against all that remained of Yamato’s forces — all his ships, his turrets, any surviving fortresses, his remaining missiles, mines, and his fighter-bombers.
As he sat in his comfy couch, he flinched ‒ Oh, he forgot! During all these phases, the enemy would have an opportunity to send through their normal missiles — like the ones they had used during the 9th battle of Alpha Centauri. The question was, how many did they have, and when would they use them?
A burdening thought stirred in him. What truly unsettled him was the unknown — not just in terms of not knowing how the enemy would use things he knew they had but also things he didn’t know they had. What if the enemy had a new weapon? After all, in the month since the last battle, humanity had developed the mobile pulsar battlecruiser. The enemy could have easily developed a new weapon in that time ‒ with or without new technology ‒ or perhaps using preexisting technology. After all, in the last battle, the enemy had developed a new form of battlecruiser perfectly specialized for dealing with my fighters…
Yamato sighed. He would have to deal with them as they came. It was truly a sad state that he couldn’t see what was on the other side of the wormhole. A terrible thought indeed, that he didn’t know what the enemy had in surprise… if they had anything new at all. He could only base his expectations on what the enemy had done before…
Simulation Room, Federation Fleetcarrier Enterprise, Sol
In the hologram room of the carrier Enterprise, Trevor gazed at the mock battle being played out before him. Sitting at the center of the room, he watched commandingly as his greenies performed carefully drilled aerobatics against computer simulated opponents. Trevor smiled, nodded, and sometimes shouted to the swirling blue icons of each virtual human fighter controlled by his greenies dancing in the simulated battlefield in front of him.
“Very good, hotshot!” he said to one member. “Now try an epsilon B maneuver. Your stunt would work better if you keep your aft drive ring at 40% instead of 80%!”
“Yes, sir!”
As his eyes continued to scan the formation and tactics they used — the same tactics he taught them — and those they naturally internalized after hundreds of hours in simulated combat, he began to believe that his wing was shaping up to become a true threat to the Argonans when the time came. He approved of what every member did — they were becoming true professionals. Even though there were definitely some kinks; after hours of drills and combat practice, he was certain everyone would be able to hold up against the enemy.
However, he knew for a fact that the computer controlled enemies could not emulate the real enemy 100%. And there would always be flaws and chances for human error. To that end, some doubt remained in his mind. This very uncertainty hid underneath his bones, like an itch he could not scratch, and it made him want to train his greenies until they were too exhausted by the simulation-cockpits each of them sat in… only meters in front of him in the same room.
As much as Trevor didn’t want to admit, he was becoming ever so slightly a different person compared to what he was before he became Alpha Wing’s Wing Commander. The recklessness was fading. The willingness to gamble for the big reward was now in conflict with his desire to keep his command alive. At least, he thought, the desire to be the best was still there. The desire to take down something big and be respected — that, he knew, would always be a part of him.
Trevor wrestled with his thoughts. He could only hope that after all this training, his Wing mates were as good as they could possibly be without actually fighting the Argonans in real time combat. He could only hope he had done his best — had drilled them in all the ways he possibly could against a computer that was as close to the real thing as possible.
He had after all, trained them in all the aspects of fighter warfare that he knew how. He had taught them how to fly in various formations. How to uniformly scatter when targeted by an enemy battlecruiser’s flak cannons or point defense laser cluster. How to fly erratically when entering the point defense weapons envelope of an enemy ship… like he had done when he had engaged that Titan that made him famous. He had drilled his greenies until they had unconsciously internalized all the ways an enemy destroyer’s flak and laser targeting computer different from that of… say, a shark class battlecruiser’s. By now, each of them knew how the various capital ships within the enemy fleet differed in terms of anti-fighter armaments. He had even taught them where exactly in an enemy superdreadnought’s drive ring ought a fighter to drop its bombs into — where the armor was weakest. By now, everyone knew the armor layout of a Megastar class superdreadnought —
— Suddenly, a loud alarm rang throughout the simulation room. BLING… BLING… BLING…
… Followed by a voice through the ship intercom. “All personnel, this is the Captain. Enemy missiles detected through the wormhole exit. All fighter pilots to the hangar bays. Launch fighters immediately! This is not a drill. I repeat, all fighters launch! All other crews to combat stations! This is not a drill.”
With the click of a button, Trevor turned the training simulation off. Suddenly, every member of his wing came out of the simpits in front of him.
“Alright, boys and girls of Alpha Wing, let’s go!” shouted Trevor.
“Yes, sir!” they shouted back.
Together, they rushed to the hangar bay. He didn’t even get a chance to give a prep speech before each of them entered their respective cockpits inside their respective birds.
It seemed all the practice was about to be put to the test.
Flag Bridge, Federation Battlecruiser Carpathia, above the wormhole exit, Sol
“What do we got?” asked Yamato upon arriving on the bridge.
“Several missile clusters, sir,” said Captain Rogers. “Certainly something different for once than their normal probe pushes.”
Yamato yawned. The alarm had woken him up from a dream. He gazed at his surroundings and for a moment compared it to his old flag bridge on board the Yorktown in his memory.
For one, this command room was larger. It had far more people, more holograms and more displays.
Secondly, the ceiling was higher, and the admiral’s alcove was several meters elevated above everything else. From there, he could overlook the going-ons of the entire flag bridge.
Thirdly, the central holomap was twice as large and much more sophisticated. Through it, he could see the new enemy missiles appearing at this very moment on top of the wormhole exit. He saw their size — much smaller than normal missiles — their speed — 0.8 c — and the estimated payload — around 1-2 megatons of TNT. He also saw the armor and layout of the missiles, a courtesy of Carpathia’s more advanced sensor suit.
“All ships, fire,” ordered Yamato into the fleet’s command net. It was a redundant command, because he knew every ship within range would be already firing on the outgoing enemy missiles, as long as the firing path didn’t connect with any of the human mines spread out in a pattern around the exit.
Yamato gazed at the holomap again, and saw to his satisfaction as human point defense cannons and beams tore into the emerging missiles — but! — to his dissatisfaction, there was no end to the stream of minesweeper missiles. They poured out of the 8 kilometer-wide opening that was the wormhole exit.
At this rate, we won’t be able to stop them from hitting our mines.
And that was exactly what happened. The first 10,000 en
emy minimissiles were annihilated, but the 10,000 after that succeeded in hammering into some of the human mines. 200, no, 300 wormhole exit mines exploded — along with 500 megatons of destructive energy per mine — to the hail of these small 4-meter-long minimissiles. And as time passed, the next 10,000 and the 10,000 after that hammered into even more mines as human point defense computers were overwhelmed with targets.
The outpour of minimissiles continued endlessly as the fifth and the sixth batch of minesweeping SADAMs came out of the wormhole, and Yamato was forced into being awed at how much of the alien empire’s industry had devoted to that end.
At least, he thought, the wait was over. There was no way the enemy would simply send out minesweeping missiles by themselves. The only reason for doing this was to lay a path for the enemy to send out their ships, and whatever surprises they had in store in their effort to take control of the system. They were committed.
**
More and more Argonan minimissiles poured out of the wormhole in their hunt for human mines. They were fired on from every direction, even from behind the wormhole exit. Human ships lit the space around the exit with unending volleys of point defense laser beams and flak autocannon explosive rounds. Wave after wave of 4-meter long missiles were destroyed, but like their predecessors before, more and more kept on coming.
Hundreds of missiles survived to tear into the mines surrounding the wormhole exit, obliterating them with gigantic flashes of antimatter-matter annihilation. The mines that prematurely detonated too, added their much larger explosions to the overall firework display.
It was chaos. It was order. It was the dance of two powerful space-faring species in mutual whole-scale war.
It was only the beginning.
The first 100,000 minimissiles succeeded in killing 2400~ mines that surrounded the wormhole exit.
The next 100,000 minimissiles destroyed 3000~ mines.
And the one after that…
Flag Bridge, Federation Battlecruiser Carpathia, above the wormhole exit, Sol
20 minutes later…
The endless minimissile waves finally stopped, Yamato realized. He sighed in relief. But they had done their damage.
He eyed the disaster before him. His minefield had gone from a 100% saturation down to a 43% saturation.
Terrible! Yamato bit his lip.
He had lost over 8,300 mines! Added to the fact that each of those mines had 500 megatons of explosive energy, and it could only mean one thing… that it would be much easier sailing for the enemy ships that would soon come out of the wormhole. Worse, it also meant that he would have less ammunition to take down the enemy’s k-ships when they attacked.
And even worse… the enemy knew this. The more mines that were taken out, the more likely the enemy would commit to a full on k-ship assault on his fortresses.
He switched his attention to his two sphere-shaped star fortresses above and below the wormhole exit. These human arsenals of destruction had suffered no damage to the enemy’s mini-missile waves, but that was because they weren’t supposed to. The minimissiles’ target were the mines.
As he further scanned the readout of the two human fortresses, he could see that their shields were at 100%. The star fortresses carried six mark 10 shield generators, which meant that they could withstand a lot of damage before the enemy could even touch their armor. Yamato felt instant relief and reassurance upon simply gazing at them. Each of the two carried over 100 fortress-sized plasma cannon mounts and two fully maxed out pulsar guns per.
That was a hell of a lot of firepower.
The only bad thing, was that they were immobile. But because they were immobile, they had extra room to store extra shield generators and power cores… enough to power all that weaponry and shields. Additionally, since they had no drive rings to power, there was extra space to devote to internal and external armor.
Now, what mattered next was what the enemy would bring out of the wormhole exit in the second phase of their breakout battle. Yamato knew the obvious answer — screening destroyers. The most obvious course of action for the enemy commander would be to bring small screening ships that could destroy the remainder of Yamato’s mines — or at least diminish them. He had seen the enemy do this exact type of maneuver in past wormhole exit battles in various systems prior to Sol.
Yamato dug into his memory. Usually, these well-equipped mine-killing screening destroyers would shoot past the exit and fire at any mines that blocked their way. They were short-lived however, because these enemy destroyers would be shot upon by whatever human capital ships guarded the exit. Being that they were destroyers and not capital ships themselves, their armor would not be able to withstand much punishment — but they would normally accomplish their objective, which was to take down a lot of mines before they themselves fell.
Of course, the enemy had never encountered a wormhole exit as defended as this one. With not one but two human star fortresses defending the exit — and numerous stationary laser turrets — Yamato felt certain that if the enemy decided to take this route, the enemy’s screening destroyers would meet a quick end, probably before they took out many of Yamato’s mines. Besides, he had his fleet to shoot at whatever came out as well — not to mention his fighters and normal missiles.
Wing Commander’s Cockpit, Fighter 001, above Sol’s wormhole exit
Trevor glanced through his cockpit’s map display and saw his greenies aligned in a flat sheet around him. They were all huddled together at a point above the wormhole exit, out of firing range of whatever came through that gate. They were waiting for the order to attack; but more so, they were waiting to see what would come out of the exit.
Trevor couldn’t help feeling nervous. This was his first time being a wing commander in battle. He was anxious to see how well his wing and its greenies performed.
For a moment, all he wanted to do was to wait for whatever came out. But then he reminded himself that he was Wing Commander, and he had a responsibility to all his members. He decided to make a last minute prep talk to his wing.
He pressed a button that enabled him to speak on the wing net. “This is Trevor Gray to all members of Alpha Wing. Soon all our training will be tested to the max. Whatever happens, know this — whatever comes out of that gate, whatever target we’re ordered to attack, remember what I taught you! Remember all the skills you’ve learned these past weeks and your chances of staying alive will be high! And if you happen to survive, and happen to get within bombing range of an enemy ship, remember to take out something big! That is all!”
For a second, no one said anything, but it was Hotshot who spoke first, “Put all your money on me, guys,” she said. “I’ll be the first one to take out a superdreadnought. You all watch!”
“Fat chance,” interrupted Rogue. “Place your money on me! I’ll be the first in the Wing to win an Iron Star, just like Sandy.”
As more greenies started speaking… about their future accomplishments, Trevor sat silently in his cockpit, shaking his head and grinning. What had he done to these people? They all wanted to be like him, yet precisely because of this, they were more likely to die in the coming battles. Is this what he had been like when he was just a simple pilot in command of only one bird? Did he sound just as reckless and ambitious as they did now?
He felt proud of them, and despite the fact, there was an absolute certainty that some of them would die — that was the case in every battle — he couldn’t help feeling proud. Knowing this, his nervousness dissipated. Whatever would happen would happen. It was a simple matter of chance and he knew everything he taught them would be put into effect. Now, it was their instincts that would run their course.
The good thing, thought Trevor as he relaxed, was that he had given them as high a chance of survival — and of taking out something important — as he could. Now, everything would naturally play out.
He gazed at the wormhole exit, waiting for whatever objects to come out. The dye was cast.
Flag Bridge, Federation Battlecruiser Carpathia, above the wormhole exit, Sol
Yamato anxiously watched the wormhole exit through his holographic map display. All was silent. Minutes passed, and all Yamato could think about was… whether the enemy would commit to a screening destroyer attack against all his forces? He knew he was ready for such an advance, and he hoped the enemy would do what they always did, except this time they were facing the greatest concentration of fire in the whole war.
More minutes passed, and then he heard someone below yell, “Look at that! Something is coming out!”
Yamato zoomed in on the wormhole exit so he could see the 8 kilometer tear in space as if he was right above it and not because his sensor probes were right there.
He saw the sphere-shaped thing as it moved out of the exit. It was so long that it took seconds for its entire body to traverse the gateway, even at the speed it was going.
It was two kilometers wide and two kilometers long. It was massive. It was almost the size of their superdreadnoughts in length, but had far more width and height.
What the hell is that?
“Sensors!” yelled Yamato. “Put all our sensors on that thing! I want to see what it’s made of!”
“Yes, sir,” said the sensor lieutenant.
As he watched the spheroid hologram move, soon all sorts of data about it started appearing. Mass: 33 megatons. Yamato gasped as he saw what its internal structure was composed of. 80% of it was carbon nanofiber and meta-metals! This thing was just a massive lump of armor! As his eyes examined its body, he could see on the surface of its massive hull… thousands of point defense laser blisters. Immediately, those point defense laser mounts began shooting — at his mines!