Chronicles of Sol: The Fall

Near Telgros EFS Umikazi, Main Bridge; June 25, 003SDE; 0921 hours:

Drakes cursed as he watched the Valorian battleship jump away, just in time for his second volley of torpedoes to sail harmlessly into the void. Then he turned to tactical, “Shut them down.”

“Aye sir, sending the signal,” replied the young woman at the console, a moment later she said, “Torpedoes disarmed sir, ready for recovery.”

“Send out a recovery team,” then he glanced at the transport, “What’s their status?”

“Reactor is stable, they are still dead in the water, but the damage looks repairable,” replied the junior engineer by the sensors, “Based on what I am seeing, I figure they would be underway again in six, maybe seven hours.”

“Any more signs of Voskar ships?”

“Negative sir,” was the instant reply.

He sighed, “Run a few more scans of the transport. I want to know why the Voskar hit it.”

“Aye, sir.”

He stood up, and informed his first officer that she had the bridge before heading on below decks. A part of him was tempted to track down the Bountiful Treasure but at the moment it was more important to find out why the transport was attacked in the first place. With that in mind, he was going to personally interrogate the prisoners, it was time to find out what they knew. Drakes smiled, this was going to be interesting. It had been awhile since he last had to use those skills, not since his days as a security officer on the cruiser Warwick.

The Warwick was a cruiser in Earth’s space fleet, but the ship was decommissioned decades ago. He’d been assigned to the ship as a fresh-faced ensign. At the time the first colonial war was a recent memory, Earth was still recovering from the Third World War. While some industry had returned, Earth’s young navy lacked the ability to produce ships of their own. The Warwick was outsourced from Mars, a surplus cruiser from one of their yards, but she served the fledgling Earth navy well, as a patrol vessel and pirate hunter. Stepping into the lift, he chuckled a bit at the memory, he hadn’t thought of his first assignment in a long time.

EFS Enterprise; Conference room; 0930 hours:

Williams shifted in her seat, as the last officers settled into the Conference room for this meeting of the Council. Supplies were flowing from the surface and the fleet's coffers were starting to fill. Ground forces were preparing for a counterattack, and long-range sensors had picked up the Valorian fleet, given their position they were expected to arrive in three days. That left them with time to consider a course of action.

She leaned back as the meeting started and people started asking questions.

“I’m telling you the planet is too valuable,” said one of the officers, one she didn’t know that well. They were one of the commanders she hadn’t approached yet.

“What you want to hold it?” Laughed Evanov, “With what? Two divisions, a single heavy cruiser and two destroyers? Good luck, just don’t mind me over here, I’m just digging our graves.”

Williams sighed, “He’s right, if we were back at Earth with all those defenses, we could do it, but we don’t have a minefield or any weapons platforms deployed. That’s a big fleet out there.”

Countryman nodded, “Agreed, I have a couple of ideas for beating it, but I’d rather not waste the resources if we don’t have to.”

Williams felt a bit of bile in her stomach. That machine actually agreed with her, what was the world coming to?

Forrest interjected, “Might be easier to do some scorched earth. An extensive orbital bombardment would render the planet uninhabitable. Plenty of war crimes in that idea, but the Cathamari certainly didn’t have any qualms about doing that to us.”

Williams frowned, “Why not go a step further and destroy the planet? Ruri’s sat network did a good job of that.”

Ruri interjected, “The conditions aren’t right for that, but I do have a few ideas on how it could be done. It’s just a matter of scaling up the system.”

“We can do that?”

Ruri nodded, and accessed the projectors before pulling something up, “This is a modified version of the XXDP-23A, I reduced the length of the weapon, and reconfigured it to fire a resonance beam. Several changes were also made to the power control systems and particle feed so that it could fit on the Enterprise. The resulting weapon designated XXRDP-24A has been tested in simulations and is more or less a scaled-up version of directed resonance particle beams. When fired at a planet, the beam will start boring through the crust, and trigger localized seismic events which will quickly grow to a planetary scale as the beam grows closer to the core. Once penetration of the core has been achieved, these seismic events will start to regularly exceed a ten on the Richter scale. Naturally, the devastation of such megaquakes would be extraordinary, but in addition to quakes will be volcanic events. The scale and grandeur of which will only grow as we continue to fire into the core. Simulations show it will take about six hours to bore the planetary core of your average rocky world like Telgros, and from there another eighteen hours before the planet breaks up due to the severe stresses but total destruction is assured after a mere twelve hours. Any firing after that point merely hastens the inevitable demise of the targeted planet.”

Williams smiled, that sounded like the perfect weapon to use. “How long before we can use that?”

Ruri frowned, ‘It’s untested, not even built. We’d need to build it first.”

Countryman interjected, “As interesting as destroying an entire planet might be, I don’t think that is the right course of action. We already know the established powers frown on the development of such weapons. Extensive orbital bombardment seems to be the better plan.”

“Agreed,” replied Forrest, “Shall we call a vote?”

Greyman spoke up, “I do believe now is the time to vote, unless people want further discussion?”

“No, voting seems apt, I think we all understand the situation.”

Williams sighed but made her vote anyway. Voices cast theirs, the numbers were tallied and a course was decided. Sadly they weren’t going to destroy the planet, that would have been the best course in her mind, but it seemed it was not to be. As she left, she started thinking about how she could get that weapon’s development furthered. It would need testing and implementation, she didn’t agree with the machine, a weapon like that would make their enemies think twice. They needed to present a strong front, the alien scum weren’t to be trusted. It was bad enough that they had so many Valorians aboard.

1100 hours, VCS Bountiful Treasure:

Reidia watched the engineer pull out of the crawlspace, “So is it as bad as it looks?”

“Just about, they really knew where to hit us, knocked out just about every system on the ship.”

“How long before we are ready for combat?”

“I can get main power back in six hours, but the shields are another story, the main generators were slagged. We need a complete rebuild at a port, six weeks minimum.”

She slumped, “Damn it!” she took a breath, “Please tell me something good came out of this.”

“Well you are in luck there, we now know exactly how their torpedoes work. We were lucky, we got to watch it happen in high resolution thanks to the active scan we had running.”

“Oh? Excellent, how do we stop them?”

“Um, no idea.”

“You mean to tell me, you know how they are bypassing our shields, but still can’t stop them?”

She nodded, “I looked at the data, their torpedoes use a carefully calibrated electromagnetic energy field to bypass our shields in a method not dissimilar to how a carrier launches its fighters without dropping shields. Naturally this requires very precise sensor data, which their torpedoes get from specialized sensors. Worse, we just found out their torpedoes can network, sharing data. As a result a larger volley starts learning our shields faster and better than a smaller one. I think we can hamper the process, but they are still going to figure them out with enough torpedoes.”

Reida blinked, she’d never expected the shield piercers were so simple.

“Honestly we need a look at the alien sensors, with a better understanding of how they function, we might be able to figure out a more reliable way to blind them. Best way to stop this, or we redesign our shields from the ground up and give up on the ability to launch fighters with our shields up.”

June 27th, 1241 hours:

Kirk boarded the shuttle as she surveyed the port. They were pulling out, the Valorian fleet was expected to arrive in less than a day, and the fleet wanted to withdraw before they got here. So far her own division had performed remarkably, the local warehouses were empty and they had repelled several counter assaults.

Looking to her pilot, she nodded before settling into her seat, in a moment the ship started to rise. Joining the other dropships already rising into the sky, while X-1204s worked to patrol the area. Making sure the enemy didn’t sneak up on them while they were pulling out. It had been a clean organized withdrawal so far.

Suddenly she heard the whine of particle fire. Activating her display she took a look and relaxed. A valorian tank company had been caught moving in from the north and was being strafed by several gunboats, forcing them to slow down and defend themselves. Nothing that would impede the withdrawal.

Still she kept an eye on it as the withdrawal continued. There wasn’t much left on the ground though, just the remaining rearguard units that she had been with. They were soon cleared out as well and she was able to fully relax on the ride back to the Enterprise.

The landing was dull and she had to wait for the hanger to pressurize, but that was fine. It gave her time to gather her thoughts and fill out her after-action report. However, things changed quickly when she stepped off the shuttle and was greeted by a din of activity.

Catching a young fleet ensign she inquired, “What’s going on?”

“We are getting ready for a heavy orbital bombardment, the council has authorized a scorched earth bombardment.”

She blinked, “Seriously? We are wiping out all life on the planet?”

“Just about, I heard talk of avoiding the major population centers, give them time to pull out, but we were just ordered to move heavy warheads from the foundries to the torpedo bays.”

“How heavy?”

“Gigaton range,” said the ensign.”

Kirk whistled, “Damn, bringing out the big stuff. Don’t think much will be left then.”

“I think that’s the idea.”

“I better check in then.”

EFS Enterprise Main Bridge 1330 hours:

Countryman leaned back a little as Greymen informed him, “The bays are loaded, all cannons on standby.”

Misaki looked up from her console, “Umikaze has dropped out of warp and is rejoining formation.”

“Excellent, I look forward to reading his report.”

He took a moment after that, considering the weight of the moment before giving the final order, “Commence bombardment.”

The cannons opened up with a whine, the torpedo ports glowed slightly as they discharged the bombs they had been loaded with. Countryman watched as round after round slammed into he designated targets with devastating effect. Massive fireballs, lit up the surface of the planet as huge dust clouds erupted. Mixed in with flashes of light as particle bolts streamed into the surface rapid fire. One after another leaving only destruction in their wake.