Battle of Sol

by Lee Guo

  The human battlecruiser bounced from the massive onslaught. Like what had happened a month ago to human ships targeted by enemy TPCs, vast areas of the human ship’s forward hull demolecularized and exploded outward in a gush of component atoms.

  The human battlecruiser lingered for a bit, and then the enemy star fortress followed up with volleys after volleys of grazer beams that hit the human ship’s exposed internals. As a result, great numbers of the human ship’s internal power flows caught fire and created secondary explosions in a cascade of white-hot detonations that blew away its inner structure. It was neutralized.

  Sitting in his little cockpit, he stared at the enemy star fortress. Trevor bit his lip. How the hell was he and his wing gonna be able to go up against that?

  Shaking his head — he didn’t know, but he was Trevor ‘Sandy’ Gray, and nothing could scare him away from doing his job.

  He bit his lip again, and then shouted to his Wingmates through the Wing net. “All survivors of Alpha Wing, boost! Let’s hit that enemy fortress where it hurts — its tachyon pulse cannons. Are you ready to be famous?”

  Flag Bridge, Federation Battlecruiser Carpathia, above the wormhole exit

  Yamato was still in shock. How is this possible? What is that thing? And then, a moment later, he came out of it. A fortress. A damn fortress!

  “All units,” he shouted into the command net. “Fire at the enemy battlefortress that came out of the wormhole!”

  Immediately, his units complied. On the map, his forces stopped firing at the enemy’s capital ships and aimed at the enemy star fortress.

  Yamato saw thousands of plasma darts slam into the enemy battlefortress’s armor, peeling away point defense clusters and somewhat hacking at its ship-killer grazer mounts. Loads and loads of pulsar beams — emanating from his Pulsar-class battlecruiser and his star fortresses — crashed into the enemy fortress. Massive explosions cratered its outer hull… but once again, like many things that the Argonans made, the enemy fortress had kilometers of thick nanocarbon armor.

  Yamato wiped the sweat off his brow. Just how much punishment could this enemy star fortress take? He knew how much their Titans could take, and how much their minesweeper dreadnoughts and K-ships could take. But this star fortress?

  To find out, Yamato gazed at its schematics obtained through Carpathia’s advanced sensor suit.

  He looked at everything. Armor layered the fortress even more so than the enemy’s minesweeper dreadnoughts. Every one of its bulbous arms was surrounded with hundreds of meters of armor. Its center torso, the big mainframe containing its tachyon pulse cannons, was enshrouded by kilometers of armor. Worse, the fortress had… 260 ship-killer grazer mounts, three massive fortress-sized tachyon pulse cannons, and thousands of point defense laser cannons.

  This thing was a beast!

  Yamato sighed. All the more dissatisfying was the fact that humans had never thought it up. Yes, you could send a fortress through a wormhole. It was possible to equip a star fortress with weak drives so that it was mobile enough to go through — provided the wormhole was wide enough — so it could fight battles in which massive firepower and armor was needed to win, like a wormhole exit engagement.

  Damn. Kudos to the Argonans for their ingenuity. Why had humans never thought of it first? Disappointing.

  Yamato sulked some more, but then realized that while he was pondering how things came to be, that enemy fortress was firing back at his units!

  On the holomap, another human battlecruiser got crushed by the enemy star fortress’s weapons.

  Damn! What should he do? His battlecruisers and superdreadnoughts were meat for the slaying as long as they were within firing range of the fortress’s guns — especially its TPCs.

  He had only one idea. A moment later, he decided to go through with it. “All Artemises and Warhammers,” he said, “retreat out of range of the enemy fortress’s tachyon pulse cannons. Our Pulsar-equipped units, like our Pulsar battlecruisers and star fortresses, will do the damage to the enemy fortress. Our pulsar guns have enough range so that they can fire outside of the range of the enemy fortress’s TPCs.”

  “Yes, sir!” answered his frontline commanders.

  He watched his Artemises and Warhammers slowly pull away from the battle with the enemy fortress…

  With the human battlecruisers and superdreadnoughts speeding out of the maximum range of the enemy fortress’s tachyon pulse cannons, the enemy fortress reverted to the only option it saw as feasible — it turned its TPCs on the human star fortresses.

  It aimed its tachyon pulse cannons at the human star fortress Centauri’s Sorrow, which had earlier been weakened by an enemy K-ship strike that had depleted its shields by 50%, and the Argonan fortress fired.

  Three massive tachyon pulse waves emanated from the enemy star fortress and slammed into the human fortress.

  To the amazement and shock of the enemy, the human fortress Centauri’s Sorrow absorbed the tachyon pulse wave with its shields! In fact, instead of having the tachyon pulse wave go through the human fortress’s shields, the human fortress’s shields simply went down by 8%!

  In grim vengeance, the human star fortress trained its dual maxed-out pulsar guns on the enemy fortress and slammed beams after beams of 800 megaton laser blasts into the enemy fortress at a rate of twice per second per gun.

  A gigantic slugging match ensued.

  Wing Commander’s Cockpit, Fighter 001, attacking the enemy fortress, above the wormhole exit

  On Trevor’s cockpit map display, he saw all eight members of his Wing flying with him on all sides. He also saw other Wings from other human carriers flying on a parallel attack course towards the enemy star fortress.

  “Alright, flyboys,” he said on his private Wing net. “I want every one of our bombs timed perfectly so they hit the enemy’s tachyon pulse cannons right at the perfect moment. You’ve all analyzed and reviewed my bomb strike on the enemy Titan’s tachyon pulse cannons during the 9th battle of Alpha Centauri. You have to aim perfectly, right when that entire cannon is about to fire. We know through our immediate sensor logs that the star fortress’s TCPs fire every 6.08 seconds, so you have to make sure you hit it with your bombs at the end of every 6 seconds, right when the timer hits 0 — not more, not less. Is that clear, everyone? Program your bombs to maneuver and explode on cue right now.”

  “Yes, sir,” his minions replied on the net.

  “But what if we miss the opportunity to hit it right when it is firing?” said Rogue.

  “Then you hit it when it fires next time,” said Trevor.

  Trevor watched the alien star fortress as it got bigger on his viewing screen. We’re about to enter its point defense range. Better get everyone into erratic maneuvers. My god, that’s a lot of point defense lasers! “Alright everybody, begin dancing, now!”

  He watched as enemy laser beams sped past him from forward to back. At least the point defense fire is distributed among all our fighters from all our carriers.

  “I’m hit!” said Vance. “Shields down to 50%. Fuck! My forward gun is jammed!”

  “I’m hit, too!” said Hotshot. “Damn lasers splatted my ventral armor!”

  “Ahhhh!” cried Cowboy.

  “Cowboy?” said Hotshot.

  Trevor glanced at Cowboy’s health on his Wing status display. Cowboy’s fighter had turned black. Damn.

  For an entire half a minute, all he could do was listen to all the shouting on the Wing net. He prayed that he himself did not get hit, that his evasive maneuvers would give him enough luck. He believed that his dancing was very good, and he was right.

  Soon enough, his Wing almost entered weapon’s range of hitting the enemy fortress. It was almost time to release their bombs.

  “Alright, everyone!” announced Trevor. “The fortress is armed with three tachyon pulse cannons. Grim, Hotshot, and I will bomb the one at the bottom left. Vance and Brainiac will bomb bottom right. Rogue and Mirage will bomb the top cannon. Let’s do thi
s!”

  “Yes, sir!” they yelled back.

  Yes… let’s do this! Trevor double checked the programming on his bombs to make sure they would accelerate on target and explode at the right moment. Directly ahead of him, he saw, on his navigation monitor, the first of three of the fortress’s massive tachyon pulse arrays. It was huge, for a mounted ship-killer weapon — a massive dish that was 160 meters in diameter. Of course, at this distance, even something as large as TPC-dish was dwarfed by the massive bulbous size of the 8 kilometer-wide enemy fortress itself.

  “This is Sandy… bombs away!” he announced, as he pushed the button and saw all four of his ship-killer bombs head forward for the enemy dish — perfectly on cue.

  “Bombs away!” his wingmates followed on the net.

  On his battle map display, he saw all of his Wing’s short range missiles head towards each of the three enemy TPCs. Man, if this works, we’ll be lauded as heroes! And the enemy will be labeled as morons for equipping their largest assets with TPCs when we humans know they can be countered easily.

  He watched as his Wing’s bombs inched forward… and forward… and then simultaneously exploded right on the shields protecting all three tachyon pulse cannons. Massive multi-megaton explosions blinked on top of each TPC… but moments later the dishes were still there and perfectly functioning. In perfect condition.

  What. The. Fuck.

  “What the hell?” yelled Hotshot. “Did I see shield splatter? Where did they get shields to defend their TPCs with?”

  “From us, dumbass!” said Rogue. “They took that from all the tech we left as wreckages on the battlefield of Alpha Centauri!”

  Trevor shook his head. He couldn’t believe it himself, but it was true — the enemy had adapted to his perfectly-timed striking tactic that usually took out an enemy Titan’s TPCs by creating shields that perfectly fit around that area. As far as he knew, the shields only extended around the fortress’s TPCs. Apparently, they didn’t need shields around all the other areas of that star fortress — fortress armor was already sufficient.

  Whatever. He wanted to slam his fists on his cockpit’s instruments but he resisted.

  He gazed at the battlefield some more, and knew his wing wouldn’t be able to do any more damage to that star fortress. “Alright boys, stop shooting the shields of those TPCs with your fighters’ guns — our guns are not doing anything — and let’s get out of here. We can’t do any more real damage to that fortress. Get out alive, everyone. That’s an order. We’ll try a different tactic when we have reloaded ourselves with new bombs.”

  … Except he didn’t know what other tactics to try.

  Flag Bridge, Federation Battlecruiser Carpathia, above the wormhole exit

  Harvey Yamato smacked his palms on his armrest. He then gazed at the holographic projection of the enemy fortress with deep contemplation. The enemy has launched a surprise on us as well! Their greatest weapons have our shields!

  So… how in the star gods will we neutralize that massive enemy star fortress, or… do we give up the exit?

  No! We have two functioning star fortresses at this very moment. 5000 humans are on each of those fortresses! It’s much too early to do that, especially with all those people. If we can stop the enemy here, then we must attempt to do so as long as there’s a possibility.

  But what possibility is there? How do we prevent that star fortress from blowing away everything we have???

  He searched his mind, and found only one solution. As far as he knew, it wasn’t good enough. That solution was to tear off the armor of the fortress with continuous fire.

  Do we have enough firepower to do that — like with the minesweeper dreadnoughts?

  Use overwhelming fire, again, said a voice in his head. It’ll be like with the enemy minesweeper dreadnoughts. We’ll launch attack after attack on that fortress until its armor finally blows off!

  But something told him that there was just too much armor to completely remove…

  No… he concluded, that answer is not good enough. There’s kilometers of armor on all sides on that fortress. By the time we tear off all that armor, it’ll have pummeled our fortresses to death. Not to mention it’ll have soaked up our fire while new enemy units can come out of that wormhole unmolested.

  So… what is the damn solution?

  For many seconds, he sat there clueless.

  He didn’t know.

  He simply watched the battle between the fortresses unfold before him. Both his fortresses and his pulsar battlecruisers smacked the enemy fortress with pulsar beams and plasma bolts. The enemy fortress fired grazers and tachyon pulses at his shield-damaged fortress Centauri’s Sorrow. The entire enemy fleet also attempted to overwhelm the fortress Centauri’s Sorrow with their firepower.

  He eyed the monitor that showed the shields of his two fortresses.

  The Helvon’s Vengeance’s shields were at 80%. The enemy neglected that fortress altogether. Instead, they concentrated their firepower on the other human fortress, the Centauri’s Sorrow, and its shields were falling rapidly.

  22%.

  21%.

  At least, he was glad humanity had a counter to the enemy’s TPCs. Yamato felt a slight relief. Both his pulsar class battlecruisers and his star fortresses had shields that could block the enemy’s tachyon pulses. He had to give credit to the fleet engineers for innovating the new shield generators.

  But what the hell is the solution? At this pace, that enemy star fortress will annihilate both our star fortresses — especially after our fortresses lose their shields — and have plenty of armor to spare against whatever else we send against that thing!

  He gazed at what he had on the holomap…

  … His fleet carriers were rearming his fighters after their bombing run on the enemy fortress. Maybe if he sent enough fighter bombs on those shielded TPCs, his fighters could finally hit the TPCs? That was worth a try when his fighters had rearmed.

  … His Artemis battlecruisers and Warhammer superdreadnoughts were currently out of range of the enemy fortress’s TPCs and grazers. Each plasma armed capital ship fired at whatever enemy capital ships were within range of their plasma weapons. At least they’re not sitting idle.

  … His five pulsar class battlecruisers fired on the enemy star fortress while staying outside the range of the fortress’s TPCs.

  … And his two star fortresses were in a slugging match with the enemy fortress and absorbing the fire from the enemy fleet.

  And his missiles…

  He had 38,000 missiles remaining. Should he aim them at the fortress? If the fortress can take the full blow from all 1200 of his remaining fighters’ 500-megaton bombs, what can 38,000 20-megaton-warheaded missiles do against the fortress? And that wasn’t discounting how many of those missiles would die to the enemy’s point defense. The actual amount that could strike the fortress would be somewhere around 8,000.

  No… he should use his remaining missiles to take down the enemy capital ships freely roaming and shooting anything they wanted while not being shot back.

  But main problem was the enemy star fortress!

  But if my missiles can’t do anything against the armor of enemy’s fortress, the only option is to use my missiles to take down a portion of their capital ship fleet… so we can lower the total amount of firepower they’re using to pummel the Centauri’s Sorrow. At least this way, our two star fortresses will last longer by receiving less damage, so that each can have a greater chance of killing that enemy fortress. It is all interconnected.

  He sat in that fleet commander’s seat, pondering. Should he? What if it’s a fatal mistake to use the missiles to shoot their capital ships instead of striking the enemy fortress? What if the correct decision is to wait a little bit longer to see the clear answer with his missiles? What if — he shook his head. He had to decide — now!

  “All remaining 38,000 missiles,” he said, pausing, hesitating, “activate sliding drive and attack the enemy capital ship fleet. I w
ill forward my targeting scheme to each missile group momentarily.”

  It was worth a try. He hoped it wasn’t a mistake.

  Above the wormhole exit, the remaining 38,000 human missiles activated — each powered their Yatimas Sliding Drives and instantaneously created a drive field that could accelerate each missile to 0.65 c. Targeting schemes from the human flagship was immediately delivered to the computer cores of each human missile, and the rest of the work was fully automated. Each missile plotted an intercept course on its assigned target, and sped inward, towards the enemy fleet outside the wormhole exit.

  The enemy fleet immediately detected the incoming missile attack and decided to form everything it had into anti missile formations. Enemy destroyers aligned in front of enemy capital ships, which also moved to align themselves in front of the enemy star fortress. But the enemy had failed to predict the human missile wave’s target — they wrongly assumed that because all the human fleet units had concentrated their firepower on the enemy star fortress, that the human missiles would also aim for that star fortress.

  It was a mistake that would devastate the enemy’s chances for a glorious victory — especially since… their capital ships were essential for the latter stages of the Battle of Sol, which would happen, if and when they won the wormhole exit engagement.

  All 38,000 human missiles dove at the enemy combatants above the wormhole. Enemy point defense beams and flak cannons from all the enemy’s ships opened fire, creating a wall of death for the human missiles trying to penetrate their way through. Each human ship-killer missile was well equipped with weak shields, and so it took more than one hit to take down each missiles. Nevertheless, thousands fell — their megatons of destructive energy exploded prematurely throughout the battlefield, doing nothing to the enemy fleet huddled within their walls of point defense fire because the explosions were too far away.