by Martin HC
“Ma'am,” a sensor analyst interrupted.
“Yes, what is it?” she answered.
“Non combatants are approaching and will be moving past us shortly, we're also picking up an antimatter signature from the non combatant group.”
“Are you telling me someone there has an antimatter core, lieutenant?”
“It would appear so ma'am, yes”.
“Comms, get me Captain Hilden,” she demanded.
The captain appeared almost instantly on the holo display, despite the success of the continuing fight, there was a look of confusion across his face.
“Is everything alright, Captain?” she asked him.
“Yes ma'am, and that's the problem, the enemy is putting up a very weak fight, I expected them to at least try and bring their rail guns into play, but they don't seem interested in getting close enough to us.”
“We've discussed the same and agree.”
“Was there a reason you called, ma'am?” he asked, probing for the purpose of the check up.
“I'm transferring sensor data indicating one of the fleeing ships has an antimatter core, I need you to prioritise the capture of that vessel. It can't be a coincidence the Ferren fleet and that ship are both here together, we need them captured, alive.”
Despite this worded like an order, her demeanour and tone was that of a request, she had no place to order the diversion of fleet resources during a fight, she could try but it would still be at the discretion of the main battlegroup commander, SF one.
“During any other fleet battle I would naturally object but given how easily our enemy is falling, I don't see it being an issue ma'am,” he answered professionally. “You will have your ship.”
“Thank you, Captain,” she said gratefully.
A Bitter Win
After dispatching a full battlegroup to block off the fleeing non combatants and take the targeted vessel, Captain Hilden returned to his fight.
The fight raged on as expected, and very few of the enemy weapons made it through their defences. Although the missiles were of an older model, and displayed much weaker ECM capabilities than their Mergence cousins, the payloads delivered were just as barbarous. The Mergence ships that were hit, shook with pain. The armour didn't necessarily breach, but the concussive forces transmitted through the hulls still killed many inside.
Three cruisers and a frigate were now being cycled to the rear of the formations following strike damage, repairs would commence and the wounded treated.
He watched close up as the lances from various battleships cut across Ferren hulls, three struck one enemy battleship's hull together, two beams from the flanking group coming in from the right side and one punching it in the nose directly. They cut through its armour and into the internal structure of the ship, after burning clean out the other side, secondary explosions tore through the battleship before finally the ship's reactor blew, a blinding white light consumed everything.
Three more hunter frigates died under the onslaught of further missile strikes, the Ferren's abilities to counter them with ECM and point defence growing weaker with each death they suffered.
“Captain, we will be coming into enemy lance range shortly.”
“Slow our advance until we do, they will use them to augment their rail guns penetration abilities, lets keep the advantage as long as we can. Once they bring their rail guns into the game go full burn, when we're close enough we'll hit them with our pulse cannons.”
The Mergence pulse cannons were undisputedly the hardest hitting close range weapon of any force, an antimatter core powered the nasty weapons which greatly out performed the Ferren equivalents.
The Ferrens themselves would always try to close to mid range tactics, from here they would use their rail guns to smash up enemy armour through concussive damage, allowing beam weapons to penetrate deep inside their targets guts, then using the previously opened up wounds as access, missiles would follow to detonate inside the ships.
“Sir, the Ferren fleet is breaking off their attack and spooling up their star drives, they're going to run.”
“Then we will pursue them all the way,” he told his bridge staff. “Continue to fire on all banks and augment with missile salvoes, we won't get them all but those that survive won't come back.”
He looked around the bridge, his staff were professional, their vigour renewed in sending a message of death to the enemy, but it was short lived.
Hundreds of missiles burst out from the hunter fleet, every ship fired every missile they had, separating them into three groups. The first and smallest targeted the non combatant ships fleeing the scene, the other two were split up evenly, the second group heading for the Mergence flanking group, and the third making its way for the space station.
Captain Hilden's operations team told him this much and he took a few seconds to think before deciding.
“Dispatch battlegroups three and six to assist the flank group, the non combatants already have a battlegroup as cover, the rest of us will move to the station to provide point defence,” he dictated.
His team were doing as commanded, but there were no happy faces among them, he noticed as much and knew why, so chose to raise the subject early to ensure no problems later.
“Why do we have an issue with this people?” He asked the room.
There was hesitancy at first but then one person spoke up.
“Why are putting our lives on the line for pirates and cartels, sir?”
Being questioned during open combat was something that could get a person stripped of rank, imprisoned if they weren't careful, but the concern was warranted and so he answered.
“Those non combatants aren't pirates, they're civilians, living outside the borders of our space, and yes there are criminals on that station, but there are also over three million good people, who's only crime was being born outside of our territories, hardworking people with families and children,” he paused to look around the room. “I will not go to sleep at the end of this day having let them be slaughtered, not when I have the power to prevent it.”
Hilden didn't ask for a whose with me moment, he didn't try to rally them to his cause or to dictate morals further, he said what he was going to say and continued with his mission.
“Time until missiles reach our point defence,” he demanded to know, staring at the man who questioned him, who turned back to his station seemingly swayed by his moral vigilance.
“Group one non combatants, one minute, group two flank, seventy five seconds, and group three the station, forty five seconds,” he was told, there was no denying the crews resolve, they were on board with him now.
“What is the status of the target ship?” He asked.
“We have her, she's been boarded and the crew has been taking into custody, and sir, we've confirmed it's our objective ship, the Ophelia.”
With that little trophy to earn him bonus points, he nodded and refocussed his attention to the matter in hand.
“We can't defend the entire station, although most of it is uninhabited, so protect these points here, and the loss of life will be minimal,” he told his team, indicating to areas of the station's hull, from where the non combatants were still fleeing.
They did their duty, like the well trained and oiled machine that they were. In the resulting bombardment many missiles made it passed them to detonate against the station's hull, lighting it up with a blinding brilliance.
Eleven non combatants were killed as nuclear fire turned their weak and unarmoured hulls to slag heaps, the single defending battlegroup was unable to fend off every deadly payload and lost two of their own frigates.
Finally, the flanking group were left to throw their all at the Ferren's last gift, anti-missile missiles and point defence lasers in tune with powerful ECM suites were used to stunning effect. In a last ditch effort they fired their own nuclear plasma tipped warheads towards the missile swarm, detonating them early to catch those making it through, but it wasn't enough in
the end.
Two battleships were torn apart, taking eleven direct strikes between causing their cores to breach, creating nuclear infernos consuming their very existence, a further four frigates and a combat cruiser died in a manner much the same as the battleships.
Y'Riell looked on as each ship under her charge died, and a little of her went with them. It was a gut wrenching and soul crushing feeling to know that tens of thousands of fleet personnel under her command had just been killed.
“Captain Hilden, can we catch them before they escape?” She almost shouted, anger coursing through her.
“No ma'am, their missile's worked as a shield to keep us in place while they ran, they're completely outside our range now and we won't catch them before they spin up their star drives.”
In total they destroyed thirteen hunter ships, mostly battleships, but the enemy took nine of her own ships down while making their exit. Today was a victory which tasted like bitter defeat.
“Damn those cowards, while we took our losses defending that monstrosity of a station, they ran away,” there was still a lot of anger in her voice. She looked to the captain's image on the holo display, and deflated slightly. “That was not an attack on you, Captain. Three million civilians are still alive on that station, you are a hero for this today.”
“Thank you, but it's those that died who deserve the praise, not myself. If you'll excuse me, I have to arrange the transfer of our detainees to the flagship's interrogation suites, you will be informed as soon as they have arrived.”
“Of course Captain.”
“One more thing ma'am, I thought it prudent to report it myself. Warning shots were fired at the Ophelia and two struck her prow, low power to ensure the ship and crew remained intact. The beams deflected themselves from her armour, leaving only surface scarring.”
“That's in line with Ferren armour, thank you for the information, Captain,” she answered, cutting the line.
A Game of Cat and Mouse
“What do we have access to?” the senior tech enquired, entering the bridge with a tablet in hand and looking down her nose at him.
“Everything apparently, star maps, hold reports, previous chart plots and so on, but I think it's a false front... there's nothing of real use so far. I did find a second layer of data though which I believe is the real memory, but our invasion equipment can't break the firewall wirelessly.”
“We have the best gear, I've never known anything to stand against our hacking tech.”
“I'm aware, but each time I try to access anything deeper I get a...,” the junior tech hit a key on his wireless display unit.
“I'm sorry, information access denied, administrator permissions required,” Serena spoke from over his right shoulder.
“You've had hours, have you tried a hard connect?”
“No, that was my next step but I wanted to run through all the basics first, what I can see though is interesting, she seems to be networked to everything.”
“Well that's good, these old AI's don't have the sophistication to beat a hard connect, so find the weakest firewall point and breach it, we'll gain access to everything from one terminal.”
“Yes, kind of odd though, networking the ship like this,” the tech said, unwrapping a wire from his kit bag and connecting it to his tablet.
“Just proves these backward morons are as clueless as they look, so hurry up and get on with it.”
“That's odd, my equipment glitched when I connected to the hard port.”
“I should warn you, further attempts to continue may put your equipment at risk,” it was an ominous warning, one that an AI had never given them before and left them both looking at her now, stupidly.
“Run the program, take down the firewalls.”
“Wait that can't be, we can't breach, they have some kind of antivirus that's taking control of my equipment, it just died, all of it, it even uploaded onto my wireless display and now I can't do anything.”
“I'm sorry, information access denied, administrator permissions required.”
“AI, how did you do that?”
“Do what?”
“What do you mean, what? How did you hack our equipment?”
“I'm sorry, information access denied, administrator permissions required.”
“AI, who's the administrator?
“I'm sorry, information access denied, administrator permissions required.”
“AI, is Captain Osthorpe the administrator?”
“I'm sorry, information access denied, administrator permissions required.”
“Oh come on,” the senior tech shouted.
“I think she's working under her own esteem, I think she's actively defending the ship from intrusion.”
“That's nonsense, even for these backwater scum, giving her that level of control would be suicide, at some point she would glitch, kill the crew by accident somehow.”
“I understand that, but just as I connected to the terminal with my equipment, there was a surge of activity, too fast for me to make sense of but only the AI is here, only she knew I was going to do it.”
“AI, specify your level of system control.”
“I'm sorry, information access denied, administrator permissions required.”
She kicked the consol's base in frustration, it would seem that if the AI was going to stand in the way, then she would have to remove it completely from the equation.
“Disable the AI,” she told her fellow tech specialist.
A pang of fear rose after she spoke in frustration, forgetting that their challenge stood listening to them just two short metres away. If the AI chose to defend itself now, and her system control was this widespread, she could kill them easily, they both turned and watched her, watching them.
The techs rallied again as it became apparent nothing was going to happen, “I have an idea.”
She knew a hard connect to attack the AI would only kill more minor equipment, but if she manually cut the AI's core connection to the ship, it would be removed from the system altogether. She wasn't going to say this out loud so just set about doing it, starting by removing the panels from the AI's core console.
The junior tech understanding her intentions went to work beside her, disconnecting connections from various areas under the console, his colleague brushed him off though.
“You'll just get in my way, I know what I'm doing.”
“I should warn you, further damage may put systems at risk, may I be of assistance to effect repairs?”
“You mean your systems, but don't worry about that, I'll soon have this fixed just how I need it.”
After fifteen minutes of unplugging, twisting, cutting and disconnecting, she continued to rummage around under the console. Carefully watching the android avatar of her opponent, the senior tech smiled when she found the final master connector she was looking for.
“I should warn you, further damage may put ship systems at risk, may I be of assistance to effect repairs?” Serena repeated.
“No, all I need you to do is go to sleep,” the senior tech answered with a cocky grin then pulled the master harness from its socket.
Serena remained as she was, her eyes froze in place, her hands dropped to her sides and her head cocked to the left slightly.
“And that is how to take down an AI,” the tech said, grinning to her colleague.
She thought herself amongst the best in her field, and her smug grin showed it all, but sadly for her ego it was short lived, she hadn't even noticed Serena's hands raising to re-clasp themselves in front of her stomach as the android smiled.
“Bridge thermostat controls disabled, re-routing control to secondary terminal.”
Her frustrated and deflated look said it all as her colleague sighed beside her.
“Congratulations, you disabled the thermostat.”
“All of that was for temp control, you were supposed to go to sleep,” she shouted at the android with its taunting smile.
�
��It didn't work,” Serena said.
“Of course not you stupid machine, can't you just go to sleep mode or something?”
“I'm sorry, administrator permissions required to activate AI sleep mode.”
“Oh you think this is funny, we've been at this for hours and you just make fun of us,” she complained.