Chronicles of Sol: The Fall

Tika made her way down the corridor. Moments ago she had been informed that the were ready to make their final jump to the system of Cantra. They already knew that the Cathamari dreadnought the Grand Warlords Throne was in the system. Long-range scans had not been able to confirm it, but other intel assets indicated the ship should have arrived hours before. With any luck they were in a shipyard right now undergoing the installation of those final components. It would make destroying the ship much easier. Even if it would lead to a possible diplomatic incident but she felt an incident would be preferable to allowing this ship to be completed.

With those thoughts in mind, she passed the blast door and guards the protected the bridge. Joining her officers on the bridge, she was just in time for the familiar gut-wrenching feel of a jump.

Almost immediately alarms rang out as they found themselves surrounded by ships shooting at each other. The moment she saw that, she shouted out, “SHIELDS!”

Someone complied and the familiar protect screens energies. Just moments before someone took a potshot at them. A barrage of red pulses of deadly plasma washed over the screens to little effect. As the Valorian cruiser zipped by their position. Only for a red-orange plasma beam to strike them amidships. The stream of deadly energy overwhelmed their shields at a localized point and punched through. Tearing into the vulnerable interior.

She blinked. Why was a Valorian ship shooting at them? They hadn’t fired on anyone, yet. Not to mention they had treaties with the Valorians. Then her gaze turned out to the raging battlefield. It was chaos, with the smoldering wrecks of countless ships floating amid deadly combat between numerous Cathamari and Valorian ships. Although it was hard to say who was fighting who. As everyone was fighting everyone else. However she soon noted one region a little different from the other.

Just as an officer told her, “I’ve located the Grand Warlord’s Throne. Approximately 250,000 Metrasi from our current position. She appears to be heavily engaged with several other ships including the EFS Enterprise.”

She turned to her sensor officer, “Status of the Enterprise?”

“She is taking heavy fire from multiple sources including the Throne. Her hull plating appears to be holding, but I am reading severe fluctuations in her armor integrity field. I’m not sure how much more punishment she can take.”

Her battle-leader interjected, “Likely quite a bit more. Assuming I understand how their system works. Regardless their presence here is actually good for us.”

Tika turned to him, “It is?”

He smiled, “I took a look at their weapons when I had the chance. Those particle cannons aren’t very effective against shields, but they tear through armor like nothing else. We get the shields on that dreadnought down and the Enterprise will be able to finish them real quick.” He paused and turned to the sensor officer, “How is her weapons array looking?”

The sensor officer took a moment to look them over, “Her torpedo bays are heavily depleted. She only has a few hundred left. Main weapon banks are reading below twenty percent, and her fuel reserves are sitting around seventy percent.”

Tika glanced to her battle-leader. Who nodded, “Not ideal, but from the sound of it they should have enough juice left to do some serious damage. After they crack that armor a few spatial torpedoes should do the trick.”

With that he moved off. Already barking orders to direct them in battle. Evidently he had everything he needed from them to enact a plan. She turned to her sensor officer. “How does that sound?”

“His plan? Well Trakas isn’t wrong, their weapons are quite good at cracking armor. I took a look at their weaponry when I was on their ship. Their weapon use a focused stream of charged particles to inflict damage, although not a pure stream. They use a mix of several types, often heavier particles including both protons and neutrons. More interestingly is that there is a small concentration of gravitons mixed into the stream which I think is a byproduct of their cooling system. The rest of the mix are basic elementary particles nothing that exotic. The high concentrations and the intense charge of the stream does weaken targeted matter. Not like a disruptor would but not dissimilar either. Even with that energy field reinforcing their hull, those beams would do quite bit of damage in short order.”

She nodded, “I see and that will let us fire some spatial torpedoes into the hull where they stand a chance of actually inflicting meaningful damage.”

Tika wasn’t wrong about that. She and her battle-leader had been discussing this point a fair amount recently. The Throne was one tough warship. Powerful shields, reinforced plating, and powerful weapons. Spatial torpedoes would do a fair amount of damage, but she just didn’t have enough to ensure a kill. It sounded like the Enterprise would have just the kind of punch to help finish that behemoth. After they got the shields down. It seemed the Enterprise didn’t have an answer for those.

The ship shuddered as another volley of heavy concussion fire from the dreadnought raked over their hull. The battle had been raging for a few hours. It was perhaps about time that they left but Countryman had spotted the approaching Krall drive signature. They were rather easy to spot when you knew what to look for. If he hadn’t spotted that he would have broke combat hours ago and rejoined his escorts. Both the Coto and Umikaze had already made it out of the system.

Still this battle had been quite informative. The Valorian cruisers were interesting foes. They had weak weapons, but fairly strong shields. Those shields could take a lot of punishment but he had found that they were not that hard to deal with. Fighting them was like fighting another human ship back in the Third Colonial War and the same stratagems worked against them. He could either fight them off in a torpedo duel which was very effective as torpedoes could bypass their shields inflicting heavy damage to the hull or he could hit them with sustained beam fire. The second option took longer but it was harder to defend against, at least with human ships. Valorian vessels seemed to lack dedicated missile protection of any kind which made them very vulnerable to torpedoes. More so than any human ship. He figured that may change with time.

The Cathamari ships in the system weren’t much different. They had tougher, armored hulls, but they were slow with weak shields. Those hulls could take a few hits from torpedoes and they did have some point defenses. Mostly larger ships as smaller ones tended to forgo light weapon mounts in favor of more heavy plasma guns. Regardless they remained vulnerable to sustained beam fire, but they could also be overwhelmed with heavy particle barrages.

It was the damn dreadnought that was the problem. It had all the typical strengths of Cathamari ships. A well-armored hull, and powerful weapons, but it combined them with an extremely strong shield. Nothing he had thrown at it did anything meaningful. Torpedoes were either destroyed by its numerous light guns, intercepted by the shield, or detonated with little effect on its armored hull. He wasted far too many trying to disable its shields but failed to inflict any meaningful damage to the shield grid. He had considered deploying fighters, but he rejected the idea. He just didn’t have enough to justify the risk and he needed far more torpedoes than he had.

Worse that shield was just too strong, his cannons weren’t having any effect. If he could close and use the Electro Cannons they might be able to get through. Unfortunately at that range, the dreadnought's main guns would shred his armor. As such they were in a bit of a stalemate. Neither he nor his foe could meaningfully damage the other. Although his hull plating was slowly draining thanks to all the extra ships shooting at him.

Greyman spoke up, “Looks like our friends have shown up.”

Countryman glanced at the sensors, “Ah, the Teketh. I see they fixed her engines.”

Shifting he turned towards the forward screen before giving the order to hail them.

Tika’s familiar face appeared on his screen a moment later. She spoke up, “You seem to be in some trouble.”

He chuckled, “Just a bit of a stalemate, but it would be nice if you could do me a little favor.”

“Favor?”

He tapped a few keys on his console, “I’m sending you our tactical readouts of that dreadnought. If you could do something about those shields we would very much appreciate it.”

Hopefully, before they breach our hull, he thought. He may have exaggerated a bit when he called it a stalemate. They weren’t exactly evenly matched. He was at a disadvantage. One far larger than he let on. By all rights that dreadnought should have destroyed them ages ago. He had seen the power of those torpedoes it carried. They were far more powerful than the Cathamari standard. A single hit would have ruptured their hull. Thankfully none had hit yet, but that was more due to him than anything else. He had been using the pulse detonation drive to strategically avoid torpedo volleys, especially from that dreadnought. Of course those torpedoes were fairly fast, so reacting to a launch required a computer to do it. In this case, he had plugged himself into the ship’s mainframe to boost reaction times and manipulate the jumps to be more advantageous than just programming the computer to do it for them. He was a computer too, sort of. It was more apt to say that a good chunk of his brain was a computer.

He closed the channel, just as the Cathamari fired a number of those torpedoes at him. With a thought, he adjusted the inertial dampers, charged the drive and jumped. This time moving them near an annoying cruiser. Kaori responded immediately to its presence and opened fire on it. It shields already weakened from a previous duel buckled under the barrage. The ship was perforated and vented to space moments later. Remaining life signs blinked out rapidly between the radiation and the lack of atmosphere they had no chance. The wreck taken care of they refocused on the dreadnought. Giving it something to think about, even if it wasn’t much.

Then the Teketh swept in moments later. Her orange-red plasma beams firing with deadly precision. Striking weak points in the armor he had identified for them and punching through those shields with sheer power. The first few hits appeared to do nothing, at least visually they didn’t. Sensors told a different story. Emitters near each blast overheated and shut down. The primitive imitation AIF system the Cathamari were using drained rapidly with each hit. In moments the impacts began to add up. The plating started to melt and the shield started flickering.

Countryman glanced at Kaori, “Rearm all tubes with AP warheads.”

“Aye sir! Rearming all tubes.”

Idly he noted that it had been a long time since any of those warheads had been used. The ship didn’t carry that many AP warheads since they weren’t often needed. Most powers relied heavily on shields and didn’t have anything close to decent armor. Obviously if they were going to be facing more dreadnoughts they would need a better armor penetrator on their shield-piercing torpedoes. Not impossible, but that did come with issues. He made a note to discuss it later. Already he had three people in mind for that committee.

Shelving the idea he focused on the battle. He was glad that he had kept a few AP warheads in stock. They were going to be quite useful soon enough. Unlike the other warheads, AP torpedoes had no shield penetration ability, but they were much better at penetrating armor. Thanks to the armor penetrator at the tip of an AP torpedo those warheads could penetrate even the tough armor of the Enterprise. Making them very effective weapons against armored foes, but they were useless against a shielded target. Well, mostly useless. As the war had demonstrated hit a target with enough warheads and her shields will go down. The Enterprise just didn’t have enough warheads for that.

The dreadnought started shifting its fire to the Krall in response to the attacks. Her deadly torpedo launchers lit up before spitting their deadly plasma warheads at the Teketh. The ship maneuvered to avoid them but a good number of them still found their mark. Washing over the shields. None of them got through, but Countryman had no doubt those warheads had an impact.

How much soon didn’t matter as the next set of beam strikes knocked out the dreadnought's starboard shields. Countryman smiled and gave the order.

Tika studied the screens. The dreadnought had some fairly good shields but they weren’t able to fully block the output of the Teketh’s plasma beam arrays. The armor was also holding up decently well. Thankfully the Enterprise had given them enough data to not only locate weak points in the armor but a beam modulation that would do serious damage to the energy fields protecting it. Given the obvious parallels between their own dispersion plating that was perhaps not that surprising. It would only be natural for them to recognize any failings in the design. She was glad they trusted her with the data, but she suspected their own armor shared none of these flaws.

Several direct hits scored the starboard side of the dreadnought. Her shields flickered and wide sections of her starboard shield grid failed. Redundancies would likely kick in shortly but for a brief moment they were vulnerable. Her gaze caught the glow of launcher ports from the Enterprise. Only for them to seemingly spit out... nothing. She studied the screens for a moment but didn’t see anything.

Then suddenly the dreadnought exploded. Numerous flashes of bright light washed over her hull. Plasma fires erupted and entire sections of plating disintegrated. As the dust cleared, it revealed the dreadnought was still there. Only with two hundred gaping holes in her side. Each one several meters wide. All of them located at key points in her shield grid.

Several beam arrays from the Enterprise fired cutting into the hull of the dreadnought as she glanced at her sensor officer. Who answered, “Those were photon warheads, but they didn’t have a shield penetrator on them. Its why they lacked the normal glow of the alien weapons.”

She glanced at the damage, “They did way more damage than I expected, given the previous hits the ship took from their warheads.”

“Obviously those were surface hits, these new ones were penetrating hits.”

Tika looked back at the damage. Now that the dreadnought was losing shields, it was melting under the fire from the Enterprise. Her weapons were tearing into that armor with lethal effectiveness. Unlike in previous instances, that dreadnoughts plating was absorbing some hits. She recalled the previous battle she had witnessed and back then their weapons had been going clean through the armor of Cathamari ships and deep into the hull. Often going out the other side or stopping deep inside the hull. Without fail each hit had inflicted serious damage to their target.

In contrast, this dreadnought was holding up much better. Some particle hits were actually being absorbed while others only penetrated a few compartments before being spent on an armored bulkhead. Regardless the sheer number of hits were adding up. Entire compartments were being shredded in seconds. As the sustained beams from the arrays sliced into the hull digging ever deeper. Towards sensitive compartments and vital systems. Having seen how the Humans dismantle their foes before she knew what they were doing. It was just happening far slower than it usually did. It gave her a much more visceral view of the terrifying prospect of having your ship sliced apart while you are in it.

Thankfully her battle leader decided to help speed up their demise. Several sudden flashes striking the wounded dreadnought precipitated space tearing in on itself. Intense spatial distortions rippled through the dreadnought. Twisting its very structure in bizarre ways as if it was nothing more than putty in a child’s hands. Particle bolts traveling into the hull were twisted weirdly within the affected zones to strike the ship’s twisted internals seemingly at random. Explosions rippled through the ship. In moments she was being torn apart as the devastating effects of a few spatial torpedoes spelled her doom. Her sheer size however meant that much of the ship was still intact after those torpedoes were spent. Still it was quite obvious the ship was now in her death throes as plasma and particle weapons streamed into her wounded hull.