by Kal Spriggs
But Ensign Elvis Medica hadn't gone the engineering track because he wanted to impress women. He had a fundamental interest in engineering problems, and as he studied the data, he gradually began to see it as just that: an engineering problem.
These unknown enemies had somehow shoehorned human technology into producing a shield to defend their ships. Not only that, but they'd further adjusted their shield parameters to defend better against the exotic particle beams that the Constellation mounted.
Exotic particles were odd things. They behaved in manners that normal matter didn't. Some of them lost mass as they accelerated, or moved away from opposite polarity magnetic fields, while others created fields of negative pressure or even negative mass.
The particles that the Constellation used for its energy weapons had properties that generated negative kinetic energy. They had that by having negative mass, a concept that made Elvis’s head hurt on the best of days. The impact of negative kinetic energy on any object with mass was to cause it to rapidly expand… but the enemy shields had no mass. It appeared that the enemy's shield system manipulated that property to diffuse the majority of that energy transfer.
The thing was, the beam generator couldn't generate entirely non-baryon particles of a single type. It produced mostly the type that generated negative kinetic energy, because that was the most destructive and most easily used type.
It could be modified to produce other types, however... and Ensign Medica thought he knew how. Even better, he thought those other types could potentially bypass the enemy's shields, or at least hit them much harder if they'd been modified.
Ensign Medica held down the call button until one of the medics finally showed up. "You know," she scowled, "we're on battle stations, we're about to attack the enemy formation. If you're just wanting a snack or something, I might have to hurt you."
"I need to get to fire control, now!" Ensign Medica snapped. "I know a way to modify the weapons, it could make all the difference!"
***
As the Constellation dropped towards the heart of the enemy ships, Daniel glanced at his XO. "You seem quiet."
"Just considering the low probability of success and even lower probabilities of survival," Commander Bowder said with a flat smile. Something flickered behind his eyes and for just a moment, he looked as if he wanted to say something else, but then he shrugged, "I want you to know, Captain, I respect you."
"Thank you," Daniel said. "You've been a fine officer."
"I--" The XO broke off as he listened to a message. "Let him try it." He looked back at Daniel. "Apparently Ensign Medica thinks he's found a way to modify our EPCs to be more effective against the enemy."
"Do we have time?" Daniel asked.
"He thinks so, I told fire control to let him try it," Commander Bowder said. He gave a grim smile, "What's the worst that can happen, after all?"
"Range in thirty seconds!" Forrest called out. He had already fired all but the last twelve of their Moljnirs, their accelerations dropped to their lowest settings in order to have them hit simultaneously with the other missile salvo and the Constellation's arrival at engagement range.
One of the hazards to this plan was that the missile tubes were pre-loaded, waiting only to fire. The missile tubes couldn't be protected as well as the ship's magazines and given the quantity of enemy firepower they were about to face, Daniel felt more than a little anxious. The hundred megaton antimatter warheads on each of the Moljnirs were as well-protected as they could be... but still a single hit in the wrong location could detonate one.
I really hope that Ensign Medica is done with his modifications, Daniel thought.
"Missile salvo overtaking us, we're in maximum engagement range for the EPCs,"
"Engage primary targets," Daniel said.
***
"Cover fire!" Alannis shouted as she dashed out of cover to grab a fallen Marine by his harness and pull him away from the line. She fired off the remainder of her magazine into the onrushing enemy as she did, barely aiming, merely trying to slow them as she sought to get the Marine back into shelter.
Two rounds struck her armor, and then a third one caught her on her hip. She bit out a scream as she felt the bullet slam into her. In an instant, she lost all strength in her legs and she fell back in agony.
She fumbled to reload as she saw the enemies advance on her. She had no more magazines left, she realized and she pulled her pistol out even as a shadowy form emerged from the smoke and chaos in front of her.
She froze as it rose above her. It was humanoid in appearance and no more than two meters in size, though glistening black armor shrouded it from head to toe, either part of its flesh or some kind of biomechaniod armor. There were no eyes or visor on its armored head, but she could see its head lower to stare at her all the same.
Alannis fired into it and the creature’s head exploded in a spray of ichor. The entire form collapse on her and she let out a scream of agony as the weight struck her wound. She saw movement behind the fallen creature and a dozen more just like it advanced through the gunfire.
Gritting her teeth against the pain, feeling tears and snot run down her face, Alannis leveled her pistol and took aim. She’d be damned if she didn’t die fighting.
***
Ensign Medica worked frantically on the generator. He had already modified the rear fire control generator, but that had only left him a minute to do the one in forward fire control. Needless to say, he’d been forced to take some short-cuts, which was why he really hoped that he didn’t screw this next part up.
From what he understood of the science, they created a non-baryonic particle stream, mostly made up of a gluon plasma, that the projectors then accelerated at the enemy. That gluon plasma contained negative mass and therefore generated negative kinetic energy upon impact, which on striking hull caused matter to rapidly expand, as even the constituent atoms ruptured and came apart.
Against the enemy shields, however, there was no matter with which to interact. The enemy shields could therefore entirely negate that impact, deflecting the entirety of the particle beam.
The tiny minority of Bose-Einstein condensate brought along by the beam, however, was another matter entirely. It was created as a byproduct, bosons created in the generation of the non-baryonic material.
Those particles had almost the opposite effect of the gluon plasma, and when they hit the enemy shields, they condensed into an implosion, explosion process that released a great deal of energy. Even better, the enemy's modifications to their shields should actually make them more susceptible to these particles.
Ensign Medica waved at the weapon's tech, "You, there! Spurlock, pull that piece!"
"Sir," Tech Spurlock said, "the manual says to never pull the regulator. It could cause the generator to explode."
"We don't have time for me to explain it all," Ensign Medica snapped. "If you don't pull that regulator, now, while I calibrate the flow by hand, then we might as well be throwing eggs at the enemy for all the good it will do. Pull that regulator now!"
To his credit, Spurlock didn't hesitate, he yanked the regulator even as Ensign Medica adjusted the particle stream generation by hand.
It wasn't designed for this. The regulator did prevent damage to the generator since the boson particles acted in a very different fashion from the standard stream... but for their purposes, the equipment should work... at least for a few shots.
***
The stream of exotic particles that lanced out from the Constellation's main batteries wasn't nearly as precise as it normally would have been. The boson particle condensate was actually rather diffuse.
As a result, Lieutenant Perkins' shots weren't grouped as well as they could have been, but the enemy helped by tightening their formation... and the very upgrades to their shields that should have deflected the exotic particles not only made them more susceptible to the modified beam, it actually attracted them.
Those shots hit the shields with devastat
ing force and the targeted corvettes simply vanished as the modified particle streams ripped through the enemy's shield systems to then tear through the hulls. The two corvettes vanished and Forrest gave a whoop as he switched targets, this time splitting his fire between multiple ships.
He managed a second set of shots as they closed the distance. This time the cruiser's heavy exotic particle beams ripped through the corvettes, smashing aside the small vessel's shields and gutting the craft with each hit.
The enemy formation didn't break, but the sudden destruction of their forward vessels through them into confusion as ships jinked to avoid debris and explosions.
And then the wave of missiles came in on the enemy formation.
***
With the sudden losses to his forward vessels, Hunter saw no choice but to put everything he had into defending against the missile swarm. The hated human cruiser continued to kill his ships with their modified weapons but the missiles could do far more damage if he didn't stop them all.
Focus fire on the missiles, he sent to his ships, engage with all weapons, even the damaged ones.
The missile swarm came in and the enemy cruiser fired a third time, but his ships opened up in turn. They focused on the missiles as ordered and he felt an almost-physical pain as three of his corvettes and one of his frigates vanished, immolated by their own weapons... but their fire swept every single enemy missile out of space. He felt a grim satisfaction as the detonations of the antimatter warheads of the humans faded... until he saw the enemy cruiser launch twelve more missiles.
Foolish, he thought as he sensed those launches, fired in rapid sequence. The big, heavy missiles were built for endurance, not speed. They couldn't cover the distance and he only needed forty-five seconds for his lead ships to be able to fire.
I have you, he thought.
Then the missile drives went active and horror replaced all other emotions.
***
Forrest hadn't missed how one of the enemy destroyers had dropped back in the enemy formation after his missile attack. He had pegged that one as the probable enemy command ship and tagged it for two of his Moljnirs in the follow-on attack.
The Moljnirs were bastardized weapons. They'd been developed for a very specific target situation and like most of the Constellation's systems, they were crafted out of a strange mix of Ghornath, Nova Roman, and Dreyfus Fleet technology. They were outwardly very similar to the standard Mark V’s, save for the fact that their drives had been ratcheted up for maximum acceleration. The huge antimatter warheads remained the same, but the missiles could achieve an acceleration of four hundred kilometers per second squared. From the time that the first four launched to the last four, the twelve missiles only needed thirty seconds to cross the distance to the enemy formation... and Forrest had picked the targets very carefully.
"Got you," Forrest smirked as those twelve missiles lanced out, faster than he could see, at their final trajectory traveling faster than the human brain could really comprehend.
***
Hunter saw the missiles coming in and in that heartbeat, he saw the doom of his fleet. He didn't have time to fire, his ships could try to evade but the human fire had already thrown them into confusion and the detonations of those warheads within his tight formation would shatter his ships' cohesion.
I have lost, he realized with shock.
Orders? One of his lieutenants asked.
Flee, Hunter sent, to all his ships, flee for your lives.
And then two Moljnir warheads detonated in close proximity to his ship, vaporizing it and wiping away every trace of his existence in two hundred megatons of nuclear fire.
***
The blackness that enveloped Chuni seemed to eat its way into her mind. At first she recoiled from the cold, alien thoughts, drawing deeper and deeper into herself... until there was nowhere left to go.
She could feel it, burning its way through her, an icy, black fire that sifted through her memories, her decisions, and seemed to devour every bit of her like a hungry scavenger, picking the meat from the bones of her very existence.
Chuni couldn't fight it, there was nothing for her to fight, no substance, nothing that she could push at or leverage. It was like fighting mist or sand, the more she pushed at it, the more it slipped around her.
And then, at the very bottom of her mind, she finally planted her feet. No, she thought, I will not be consumed. People were counting on her, people were dying so that she could do this. She would not give up, she would not surrender.
The darkness surged forward, as if to test her resolve, but she drove every bit of her being into standing her ground. As it washed over her, she held firm and as the cold fire tried to burn her, instead, she seemed to ignite and burn it.
The darkness let out a shriek and in between one heartbeat and the next, it burned. It flared into a white-hot fire that burned through her. All at once she saw every memory, every decision, her petty flaws and the times where she had lived up to her legacy...
She saw Rastar for what he was, a good and noble warrior. She saw Alannis Giovanni as a fellow warrior and friend.
And that lens of fire turned outwards. She could sense everything aboard the station. The Enforcer Platform, a quiet voice informed her in her mind. With those words she understood its capabilities… and its purpose. The Protectors had built the Enforcer Platform for their own use, to regulate and defend the Sacred Stars. Yet they had left it as a legacy, a last means of protecting the race they had watched over for so long. Princess Hycar saw that it was left for her, for the last in the House of Annar... to defend her people.
She sensed the overwhelmed Marines and their impending doom... and she reached out with the power the Protectors had left for her.
In a heartbeat, the invaders were wiped away, incinerated by the defenses.
She reached out with her mind, then, feeling the enemy fleet, sensing their velocity and vector and she drew upon the same raw energy within the Enforcer Platform that had shattered Argolim.
Hycar could sense the missiles headed towards the enemy ships and she was not about to rob her allies of their kill, that would be a dishonor to them.
She could however loose her wrath upon the other invader ships. As the Constellation's fire and missiles smashed the heart out of the enemy formation, she tapped into a tiny spark of the energy contained within the Enforcer Platform... and the fleeing enemy ships were swept away, liked motes of dust in the way of a powerful storm.
***
Chapter XXII
The Throne of Kopal Pesh
New Ghornath Empire
January 4, 2409
Lieutenant Perkins picked his way through the wreckage as medics went to work on the Marine wounded. There were more survivors than he had initially feared, many of them buried under the remains of their foes.
It seemed their mysterious enemies had been so driven to stop Empress Hycar's ascension, they hadn't even delayed to finish the wounded.
They had hoped to learn more about the enemy, but so far even their remains offered little. On death, it seemed their armor released some powerful enzymes, liquifying the flesh within and the resulting mess of fluids had quickly begun to rot.
Whatever they were, they stink, he thought absently as the medic led him to his target.
"Ensign Giovanni," Forrest said, "I'm told you have refused to allow yourself to be evacuated."
"Not until they..." she shook her head, her eyes unfocused, "not until they get the rest of the platoon."
Forrest gave a look at the medic who rolled his eyes, "The worst of the wounded have already been evacuated, sir. We're doing what we can for her here, but..."
He didn't need to go on. Forrest had seen enough wounds, enough bad wounds, to know that Alannis wasn't going to last much longer without some serious medical attention. That was, after all, why Captain Beeson had sent him over.
"Alannis," Forrest said gently, "your Marines are good, it's time to take care of yourself.
The shuttle is waiting on you, the longer you stay here, the more risk you put your people in."
She blinked at him and then slowly she gave a nod, "Okay..."
The medics moved in and had her up and on one of their stretchers before she could change her mind. Forrest moved along with them as they pulled her back to the shuttle. "How's Gunny doing?" She asked.
"He'll live," Forrest said. Gunnery Sergeant Tam had taken several hits, but the tough Marine had stoicly walked aboard the shuttle under his own power.
"I got too many of them killed," Alannis muttered to herself.
"No," Forrest reached out and clasped her hand, "Don't you dare tell yourself that. You did a fantastic job. You held the enemy and Chuni... that is Empress Hycar... activated the station."
She didn't respond, but she held onto his hand. Forrest wasn't in any rush to pull it back. With how pale she looked from blood loss and how fragile she seemed, he felt very protective of her.
"Thank you," Alannis said after a long moment. "And thank you for being there after... after Ashtar died, too."
"Not a problem," Forrest said, feeling his throat close up a bit. She'd been through hell, and she was thanking him. He had seen what fighting like this was like. He still saw flashes of the fighting from the Dreyfus Coup in his nightmares. He knew exactly the kinds of demons that she had to face right now... and here she was trying to thank him.
As they went up the ramp for the shuttle, she craned her head, sensing something different.
"Cryosleep," Forrest said, "they moved the pods to the shuttle for the worst off of the wounded."
Her eyes went wide and she shook her head, "I don't want that!"
"Sorry, Ensign, I've no time for argumentative patients, I've had it up to hear with stubborn Marines," Lieutenant Wohlberg said as she jabbed Alannis in the neck with an autoinjector.