by Doug Farren
Modern shields were specifically designed to spread any impact energy over the surface of the shield. They also had a small amount of spring to further absorb material impacts. This had rendered all but the highest energy KEWs ineffective. Since the high energy weapons were physically large and difficult to target they were no longer used in fleet combat but some races still employed them in the planetary bombardment role.
Working together, the ships fired all their rail guns at a single target area. Twenty-four KEWs sped off into space heading into the thickest part of the Chroniech fleet. Targeting a specific ship at 143,000 kilometers was nearly impossible so the Alliance was shooting blindly into the enemy fleet.
Four seconds later the KEWs slammed into the shield of the battle’s first victim. Nineteen KEWs hit the shield of a Chroniech light cruiser depositing 1,463 kilotons of kinetic energy into the ship’s shield. Three of them passed through the weakened shield and impacted the hull.
Kinetic energy weapons behave differently than weapons carrying an explosive warhead. This does not, however, mean they are less effective. Even though their speed had been greatly reduced by the passage through the shield the three slugs of iridium still carried more than enough energy to take out the cruiser.
Each slug blew a hole through the armor and deep into the ship creating a super-hot line of expanding plasma. The air surrounding this plasma was instantly heated to nearly 2,000 degrees. The pressure surge caused by this hot air blew entire compartments apart and incinerated everything for several meters in every direction. The hull plating blew outward expanding the entrance hole from a few centimeters to several meters.
Molten metal and shrapnel flew through passageways destroying everything in its path. One of the KEWs made a direct hit into a fully charged power accumulator causing it to explode with the force of a small atomic bomb. The entire front third of the ship seemed to swell as the internal pressure built up. Unable to contain the expanding gases created by the explosion the ship’s hull ruptured in multiple places spewing the contents of what was left of the ship into space.
“Cruiser AX-151 has been destroyed,” the command ship’s tactical officer reported to the Chroniech Fleet Commander.
“We are outside their known weapon's range,” the incredulous Commander replied. “What type of weapon was used?”
The officer scanned his displays and replied, “YV-776 has recorded a shield impact of an object traveling in excess of 10% light speed. They have sustained minor damage to their primary shield generator suspension. I believe they are using a kinetic energy weapon.”
“At this range they must be firing blindly. Move the fleet to within weapons range and find out which ships are the source. Target and destroy them.”
The gravitic mass drivers were capable of firing a slug once every 28 seconds. This limitation was imposed on them by the extreme power requirements and the ability to keep the field generators from melting. The guns were being pushed to their limits.
The second wave of KEWs slammed into the Chroniech fleet. Three of them simultaneously struck the shield of a super destroyer. The incredible kinetic energy delivered by those small iridium slugs literally ripped the shield generator from its supporting structure. The generator crashed into the nearby fusion reactor that powered it crushing the reactor’s power output cables. The short circuit overloaded the power accumulators causing one of them to explode.
Superheated plasma from the accumulator explosion burned its way into the ship’s interior destroying everything it touched and igniting secondary fires. The entire 615 kiloton mass of the super destroyer reverberated with the explosion. The secondary shield generator instantly sprang to life keeping the damaged ship protected.
“Super destroyer PR-832 hit by kinetic projectiles – primary shield generator destroyed. Heavy damage reported. Cruiser LZ-011 damaged and is without shield. Long range scans have identified six vessels as the source of the kinetic energy weapons. The ships are not advancing along with the rest of the Alliance fleet and are staying out of weapons range.”
The Chroniech commander considered his options. The new Alliance weapon was becoming an annoyance and had to be dealt with. “Dispatch three super destroyers to intercept and destroy the kinetic energy platforms.”
Three ships broke formation and headed toward the modified assault platforms. The intense gravitational fields from the gravitic guns interfered with the sublight drive of the unique ships causing them to move sluggishly. It also interfered with the ship’s ability to generate a good shield making it virtually defenseless while the guns were in operation.
Even if the guns had been powered down, the old ships were simply too slow to outrun the more advanced Chroniech warships. They kept firing up until the last possible moment. Just before the Chroniech came within weapons range the platforms powered down their guns and engaged their stardrive. Considering how old they were and the fact that their weapons could not be accurately targeted they had done very well.
A lot was starting to happen and the tactical officer continued his steady report to the Fleet Commander. “Cruiser AX-444 destroyed. The kinetic energy platforms have engaged their stardrive and are fleeing the area. We are now within weapons range of the main Alliance fleet. All weapons have commenced firing.”
Even though they had the technology to construct a virtual reality command center where the Fleet Commander could interact with the tactical information as if he was an omnipotent being, the Chroniech chose not to employ it. They preferred to be in personal contact with their fleet operations center and to receive verbal updates. The Fleet Commander did utilize a large holographic display to view the battle situation but he got most of his information from a specified tactical station.
As with the Alliance, the Chroniech utilized a tightly linked tactical data network. A central command and control computer interpreted the Fleet Commander’s general orders and created ship movement instructions as well as directing the targeting of the fleets main guns. Secondary weapons and the close in weapon systems (or CIWS) were under the control of the individual ships.
Beam weapons reached out from both fleets testing each others defenses. The tactical computers, already primed with the known capabilities of their opponents, analyzed the results of the preliminary shots and updated their databases. The Chroniech were surprised to discover that several Alliance ships had had their primary guns upgraded.
The Alliance received a bigger surprise when the 15 new Prinara class Chroniech master battleships opened fire. At a distance of 68,000 kilometers all 15 master battleships took aim at a different Alliance ship with their primary weapon. In the past, at this range, all but the heaviest weapons could be deflected by most Alliance shields.
Aboard the Omel heavy battleship Ovithre, the tactical officer excitedly said, “Shield loading at 97%! Hull temperature is rising.”
“At this range?” the Captain replied, surprised they were fighting for survival at such an early stage of the battle. “Analysis.”
The science station read the data off her screen without turning around. “It’s an FTL enhanced energy weapon.”
There wasn’t much that the Captain or the crew could do. The shield loading rapidly climbed as the two forces moved closer. In less than a minute the Omel battleship was seriously crippled and no longer a threat. Instead of leaving the ship for dead, the Chroniech swept the beam across the entire length of the hull nearly slicing it in two. Secondary explosions rocked the now lifeless ship.
The Lamaltan assault platforms had not abandoned the rest of the fleet. Instead of retreating, they performed a fast 180 degree turn and headed back toward the Chroniech fleet. Still under stardrive, the Lamaltan ships went through the widely spaced fleet in the blink of an eye. This was such an unexpected maneuver and occurred so rapidly that the Chroniech never had a chance to even attempt to intercept them.
The Lamaltan’s abruptly dropped out of stardrive on the other side of the fleet, powered up their ma
ss drivers and pushed the guns to overload condition. They managed to get off eight volleys before the pursuing super destroyers caught up to them and eliminated them as a threat. The assault platforms had managed to destroy three more heavy cruisers and had slightly damaged another.
The Alliance fleet was losing ships at an alarming rate and they were having minimal effect on the Chroniech. The Chroniech super weapon could blow through an Alliance shield almost instantly allowing them to destroy a ship with a single shot. The Alliance, on the other hand, had to concentrate the firepower of several ships to take out a large Chroniech warship.
Five Tholtaran heavy battlecruisers, however, had been recently upgraded by the Kyrra and were protected by Kyrra shields and armed with Kyrra weapons. The Chroniech quickly learned to respect these ships. The Kyrra-built shields were equal in defensive ability to the best Chroniech shield and could withstand the impact of a single Chroniech super weapon even at close range.
Each of the Tholtaran battlecruisers was armed with a single Kyrra FTL enhanced energy cannon. These guns, as with all ultra-high power weapons consisted of multiple beam emitters. A single emitter would have destroyed itself if subjected to the energy levels necessary to generate the final output beam. Instead, multiple beams were carefully tuned and combined, often using a force field lens, to produce the final beam. To build a bigger gun, you added more emitters – up to a point.
Each beam emitter had to be precisely tuned and phase locked with all the others. If any emitter fell out of synchronization with the rest, the power of the output beam was reduced due to a loss of coherence. The more emitters a weapon possessed, the harder it was to keep them all in perfect alignment. The secret to building ever more powerful weapons lay in the ability to build more powerful emitters and to synchronize more of them.
The FTL enhanced super weapons, however, took things to an even higher level of sophistication. The beam of the super weapon was encased in an FTL burst field. Similar in composition to the FTL fields used to transmit messages, the field utilized by the super weapon boosted the weapon’s speed to 200 times the speed of light giving it a far greater range than a standard weapon. The FTL field had to be precisely synchronized with the beam’s resonant frequency.
Because the beams were encased inside a miniature FTL field, the weapon only partially existed in normal space. This gave the FTL enhanced beam the unique ability to penetrate a standard shield as if it did not exist. The interaction between the shield's field structure and the weapon did result in a power loss but enough energy made it through to cause serious damage. Kyrra and Chroniech shields had a field structure that significantly reduced this punch-through of FTL enhanced weapons.
Seeing the Chroniech master battleships as the most serious threat, the Alliance tactical computer made the decision to make these ships its top priority. Three Kyrra modified Tholtaran battlecruisers maneuvered to obtain a weapons lock on a single Chroniech master battleship. The instant they were within range all three opened fire with all available weapons. The master battleship didn’t have a chance.
Two of the Kyrra weapons would have been sufficient to fully load the master battleship’s shield – three ensured its destruction. All three beams struck the shield and one third of their energy made it to the ship’s hull. It took three seconds for the beams to bore through the armor and into the meat of their target. Once through the hull the beams happily devoured flesh and equipment. One found a missile magazine causing an explosion that blew a huge crater in the side of the gigantic ship.
For fifteen seconds the Alliance beams bored into the doomed battleship. The Captain tried to maneuver out of their path but the weapons lock was firm. One of the beams finally hit the shield generator and the battle was over. The secondary shield generator could not bring itself on line fast enough. After another five seconds the beams winked out leaving a smoking hulk in their wake. It did not self-destruct.
The Chroniech had taken a close look at the practice of destroying their disabled ships. The original purpose for including an automatically initiated self destruct was to prevent their advanced technology from falling into the hands of lesser advanced species. It had the distinct disadvantage of preventing the rescue of any survivors even if their fleet won the battle.
After a long review it was decided to disable the automatic self destruct system and, instead, to install tamper detectors on the more sensitive pieces of equipment which would result in their individual destruction if unauthorized tampering was detected. The self destruct system was still there and could be manually initiated if the Captain so ordered it.
A Chroniech master battleship turned its primary weapon on one of the Kyrra modified Tholtaran heavy battlecruisers and received a shock. Instead of blasting through the shield the awesome power of the super weapon was stopped cold. The Kyrra shield blazed with polytechnic discharges as the energy of the weapon was dissipated and reflected back into space. So much energy was concentrated into such a small area that energy was converted into matter resulting in an incredible display of glowing plasma.
The Chroniech battle computer, just as capable and just as fast as its Alliance counterpart, analyzed the results and called for a second super weapon to join the attack. Amazingly the shield remained solid even under the unimaginable amount of power that was being delivered into it. The Chroniech quickly added more firepower until the shield started to leak.
The incredible amount of energy being deflected back into space severely interfered with the Tholtaran’s short-range anti-missile targeting systems. Sensing the shield’s weakening, the Chroniech sent a salvo of ten shielded missiles toward the Tholtaran ship. Four of them were intercepted and destroyed – but it only took one. That single missile passed through the shield and detonated point-blank against the bare hull of the Tholtaran super battlecruiser. The six megaton warhead instantly vaporized a third of the ship and blew what was left into unrecognizable scrap.
The battle raged on for twenty minutes. When the last Alliance ship fell under the onslaught of Chroniech guns the fleet calmly turned their attention toward the planet. They left behind the remains of 167 Alliance warships. The Chroniech fleet had lost only 58 ships. The only thing between them and Tortanathut were 112 widely spaced defense stations.
Death
Captain Zatch sat in the pilot’s chair, his ship floating in space without propulsion, arguing with himself. His family was alive because of the actions of an enemy he had sworn to kill. Who would know or even care if he simply set honor aside and returned to his fleet. His hand reached out to set the course then withdrew as his stomach knotted up.
Chroniech society was remarkably stable and had been so during all of its recorded history. Crime was virtually unknown and was usually caused by the mentally unstable. Much of this stability could be attributed to the deeply seated sense of honor that had become woven into the very core of what was meant to be Chroniech. The word honor itself only weakly defined the system of checks and balances that drove the Chroniech people to behave the way they did.
The very thought of setting honor aside was mental torture to Zatch. It had taken a feat of mental strength to reach forward to set course back to his fleet but the mental pain quickly became physical. His stomach knotted up, his hands started to shake, and he felt as if every Chroniech on his home world knew what he was contemplating.
“This is insane!” he shouted at the controls. Shaking his fist at the window he vented his anger against a ship he could not possibly see, “Why couldn't you have been destroyed by that HK!”
Not long after Aruthra's last message he had received an update from the battle group sent to look for wreckage. Nothing had been found indicating that the Alliance ship had survived.
Early in the trip he had pulled up all available data on what he now knew to be the Komodo Dragon. It was an impressive ship. It had obviously been heavily upgraded by the Kyrra making it incredibly fast and heavily armed. He knew the name of the Captain at the time
and had memorized the route it had taken through Chroniech space. The question now was how to find it.
The last known location of the Komodo Dragon had been in Chroniech space near the hyperdimensional border, but Zatch knew it would not remain there. The Dragon would be heading back to Alliance space – but where would it be going? Even if he knew the Dragon’s next destination, his ship was not fast enough to catch up to it. Getting within communications range of the ship without being attacked was also going to be a major problem.
The futility of his mission was beginning to weigh on him. Against astronomical odds he was going to have to avoid Alliance patrols while chasing an advanced Alliance warship through Alliance space and then somehow convince that ship to stop and talk to him without them firing on him first. The more he thought about it the more convinced he was of the impossibility of it all.
Thinking he had come to a decision, Zatch once again reached for the controls. His hand stopped halfway there as the image of his wives and children frozen to death in the vacuum of space appeared in his head. This would have been the result had the Komodo Dragon not stopped to render assistance. Why did they do that?
For a brief instant, an almost unthinkable thought appeared. It would have been easier on him if the Dragon had done what any Chroniech would have done – left his family to die. The thought horrified him and once again he withdrew his hands from the controls.
There had to be a solution to this problem. Perhaps he was going about this in the wrong way. Instead of trying to locate the Komodo Dragon, maybe there was a way to get the ship to come to him. The more he thought about it, the more he preferred the idea. Now all he needed to do was to figure out how to turn the idea into action.