Chronicles of Sol: The Fall

July 24th, 003 SDE:

The cruiser captain looked up from her desk, glancing at the swirls of hyperspace outside her viewport. It wasn’t much of a view right now, but it was pretty. She’d chosen these quarters for the view more than anything else. A nice lift would take her deeper into the ship to the bridge when needed, taking only a couple of minutes at the most to get there when she needed to be on the bridge in a hurry.

Her mind wasn’t much on the quarters however, but instead she was thinking once again about the rogue ship she was hunting. The Simple Devastation was a Toral vessel, much like her own, commanded by a Toral crew. No one was very pleased with the mission. The captain of the Devastation was a decorated and respected officer, and the ship in question had a long storied career. Honestly this mission cut deep and she could see that in the faces of every crewman and woman aboard her cruiser.

She was pretty familiar with her target too, having read its specs, career and the captain’s personnel file cover to cover more times than she would care to admit. Trying not to think about what she was really hunting. That she wasn’t hunting the ship and crew of a fellow Toralian.

Her mind drifted to the details of the Devastation once again as she stared at the swirling colors of hyperspace. The ship in question was first laid down roughly fifty years ago, and launched 47 years ago. The Devastation was built from the ground up as a battleship and intended for a service life of fifty years as was standard for capital ships in the fleet. Now that her service life was nearly up, the ship had been scheduled for a transfer into the reserve fleet in preparation for her final decommissioning in three years time. Only for reasons known only to her captain, she never reported to the reserve fleet as ordered, instead she was last seen on fleet monitoring stations as she departed Toral space, on course for Valorian territory.

The Devastation was a large powerful vessel, even accounting for her age, naturally there was some concern she might spark a war. While there were many who would welcome a war, especially with the rising tensions, there were concerns that made one not desired at this time.

The Simple Devastation was best described as a mobile fortress, measuring 4430 meters long with three hundred and twelve decks. Like many Toral designs, she was built with a layered design, allowing her to soak up phenomenal amounts of damage. The armor was much like her own, composed of alternating layers of ablative, NLM-223 nanocomposite alloys and spaced vacuum in an almost honeycomb-like structure, that provides an outstanding level of protection. No single layer of protection was able to stop modern plasma rounds and particle bolts. The idea behind modern armor was to instead present it with a thick layered structure that weakens and disperses each bolt.

On impact with the armor, a plasma round vaporizes a portion of ablative, which neutralizes a portion of the round. The remaining round slams into the nanocomposite, where it expends energy burning through, any remaining energy then passes through the insulated vacuum layer to hit a new layer of ablative which further weakens it. The more powerful the bolt, the more layers it will go through, but these layers drastically reduce the amount of damage any given round does to vital zones of a ship. Furthermore, rounds that would penetrate traditional armor and do heavy damage to a vital sector like the main engine room would instead be stopped by the plating. Naturally this kind of plating loses effectiveness in a prolonged engagement due to armor degradation and damaged plating would require replacement after every battle, but the benefits were believed to outweigh the costs, especially for capital ships

Capital ships, like the Devastation, were expensive investments to begin with, and anything that measurably improves survivability and ensures they make it back to port after a battle is considered a worthwhile investment. Of course the armor is merely a second line of defense, but even so the battleship Devastation features a main armor belt 60 meters thick. This is a remarkable bulwark of protection that keeps the main vitals of the ship safe in the event of shield failure, allowing the ship to keep fighting while the shields are reset or giving the ship more time to withdraw before critical damage could be inflicted.

The extended belt was much thinner however, a tradeoff made due to mass considerations and design requirements, the main thruster ports had exceptionally thin armor with only about five meters around the ports and a gap at the ports themselves. Turret armor also varied in thickness more out of necessity than anything else.

Most notably the battleship featured an armored bunker level near the center of the ship, which contained the CIC, primary fuel tanks, main reactor core and the primary computer banks, along with a few other critical systems. This all-important bunker zone was protected by an internal belt of armor twenty meters thick, with access controlled by armored blast doors. Secondary internal force shields were also in place to ensure the safety of this zone.

The Devastation featured some powerful shields as well, that had been updated over the years to remain competitive with twelve primary shield generators and twenty-four secondary generators providing a robust degree of protection. The ship’s energy screens were multilayered and capable of rapid regeneration. The barrier was rated against standard anti-capital ship weapons, nothing short of a concentrated barrage was going to get through. Defensively the ship was a beast.

Honestly she felt a little outmatched, her ship was much newer, but smaller. That gave her an edge in maneuverability, but she didn’t have the firepower or armor to match the Devastation. However, her ship did have superior shields, rated to absorb 35% more energy before failing and requiring a reset. Being faster and better able to change direction, along with the stronger shields meant she had a few strategies she could try. Ironically, she’d recently destroyed a Valorian cruiser attempting to use the same book she was planning to use now. One her foe might be aware of, but she had no choice but to plan for this. While she had the Devestation’s command codes, she couldn’t be certain they had not been changed. If they had been changed, she would be forced into battle, if not she would be able to remotely order the battleship to lower her shields and power down her weapons.

Armament-wise, their ships were similarly equipped; it was just a difference in weapon counts. Mostly, her guns were individually stronger, since they were of newer design. Although that was more a sign of the Devastation’s age than anything else, the ship had been refitted a few times, with newer and better things, but she was running into the hard limits of her core systems. Her power grid simply couldn’t handle the latest versions of Particle Projectors in the same caliber she was originally given. While some futureproofing had been done, the ship was just outpaced and would require a complete systems overhaul to bring her into the new era. Sadly for the ship, unless a new war came around, that wasn’t likely. As it would be much easier to build a new ship from the ground up with the latest technology. It was why capital ships were typically retired when they reached the end of their fifty year planned lifespan, often being sent to the reserve fleet, then decommissioned where they would rest in mothballs for a few years before being stripped and sold.

A ship with the pedigree of the Devastation however was likely to join the ranks of the numerous decorated vessels at the Fleet Museum over the homeworld. Numerous mighty vessels from every age since the dawn of spaceflight were moored there, meticulously maintained so that they could be remembered for generations. She’d been there herself and it was truly an experience. Personally, she felt the Devastation belonged there, with her history she deserved to be remembered as an honorable ship with an honorable crew. Yet her current captain seems to have thought it best to taint the memory of such a storied vessel. Especially since she had served the fleet with distinction in not one, not two, but three separate major conflicts.

Her gaze turned back to the monitor displaying the schematics of the ship with her robustly armored split diamond hull shape, bristling with projector mounts and missile launchers. The ship carried one hundred forty-four heavy particle lance projectors, twenty-two hundred particle cannon turrets, nearly ten thousand close-in particle projectors for point defense, and nearly eighteen thousand integrated missile launcher cells. The ship also had four hundred heavy torpedo launchers along each broadside.

Her own ship was decidedly less impressive, with half the armor and significantly fewer guns, but she was only 1600 meters long, the Devastation was a much larger and heavier vessel so that was to be expected. Before she could think much more about that, there was a knock, followed by an officer walking in, “Ma’am you wanted me to inform you when we were nearing the jump point, we are now five minutes out.”

“Thank you, ensign,” she replied automatically.

Toral-Valorian Border; VCS Bountiful Treasure:

Reidia shifted in her seat as she reviewed the half-written draft of a report currently on her monitor. She’d retired to her office to get a head start on this while her crew worked. It wasn’t anything her first officer couldn’t handle. They had come out to this part of the border in response to a distress call, but by the time they had arrived the ship in question was nothing more than an expanding debris field. At the moment, her crew was involved mainly in rescue operations, as they searched the area for any survivors. The patrol cruiser may have been destroyed, but she did have time to launch her escape pods, the numerous beacons in the area made finding most of them easy, but a few had been damaged, complicating matters. Especially in cases where they had lost power or the comm system had been hit, leading to a failure of the beacon. Constant shuttle flights with active scans were being run in the area, as her crew worked tirelessly to recover the escape pods.

The buzzer at her door chimed suddenly, letting her know that someone was at the door. She hit the control at her desk, and an officer walked in. “Sorry to disturb you, ma’am, but we managed to recover the cruiser’s logs.”

She blinked, knowing they had not had much time to investigate the loss yet. “I take it they revealed something of interest?”

“Yes, we pulled the final sensor logs from the records. They were destroyed in battle by a Toral Marathon Class Heavy Cruiser.”

She frowned, “I’m not that familiar with the Marathons, but correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t that one of their newer ship classes?”

“It is. I checked the computers, the first sightings of the class were dated two years ago.”

She nodded along, as she idly recalled that she had received a report on it around that time as well. Typically sketchy and light on details, but that was normal for such a new vessel. Nothing that she would bother memorizing and now that she thought about it she hadn’t heard much of anything about the class since. This was notably the first time she heard of one being involved with a border skirmish as well, which did raise some questions in her mind.

Reidia wasn’t unfamiliar with Toral vessels. Their shields were nothing special, but they weren’t garbage either. Giving them a comfortable level of protection, that was somewhat competitive with what other nations could put forth. Toral ships were more notable for their armor scheme, it was one even her dismissive compatriots noted, but dissed as being a waste of money. While it did work, their layered armor schemes were not exactly cheap. The Toral had designed their plating with failure in mind. As a result losing a layer of plating wasn’t a big deal, since they had another behind it. This really helped Toral ships hang in during a prolonged slugging match, but afterwards they would need yard time to replace failed plating.

Toral ships were also notable for their weaponry. The Toral Particle Lance Projector was a potent mid range pseudo-beam weapon. The highly focused particle pulses it fired could tear through armor and punch through weaker forms of energy shielding. Each shot also drained a good portion of a shield’s integrity, as they weren’t easy to redirect or absorb. There was a lot of power behind each and every shot the weapon made. The Toral Pulse Missiles were also not to be underestimated and the Toral were also known to make use of a heavier version in the form of high-yield anti-ship torpedoes. While the pulse torpedo used fusion warheads instead of plasma or antimatter as was more common elsewhere, these guided projectiles mounted a potent if limited particle weapon that would fire just before the weapon got into range. This lance shot would serve to weaken the target’s shields or punch a hole in their armor, making the following detonation more damaging. Thankfully Toral vessels were somewhat slow, making it easier to outrun and outmaneuver them in battle.

That didn’t make her feel better about this. “I don’t like this. It’s unusual for such a new vessel to be anywhere close to the border. While things have been getting more tense lately, we aren’t at war.”

“I don’t either, sir. Something feels off here.”

“We have some questions to ask, then. Have any of the rescued officers been released from medical?”

“Two, sir. Just moments ago.”

“Bring them both to my office, now.”

“Aye, sir!”

Grid 118-23; July 24th, 003 SDE; 1555 hours:

The swirling colors on the forward screen were suddenly replaced with a field of stars and a few large space rocks. An officer looked up from her console, her tail swinging lazily, with two of her four hands still on the controls, “Captain, we are secure from hyperspace. Main shields are coming online now, we will have weapons shortly.”

“Excellent, full sensor scan. Any ships in the...”

“Contacts!” interrupted one of her officers.

“On main viewer!”

The screen shifted to display the familiar double diamond hull of the Simple Devastation, she’d seen the image enough times to recognize it on sight. With a second large vessel running alongside it, her numerous gunports aglow as she fired blue energy bolts into the battleship. Her racing mind quickly registered the distinctive alien hull with its black and silver paint job, large primary saucer, smaller half disk hull segment on the end of a tower angled back. Two massive underslung nacelles that swept towards the rear of the vessel and were connected to the hull by a pair of thick struts. A ship she’d heard about, every captain in the navy had. As her intelligence report crossed her desk mere hours after the incident at Cantra. It was the EFS Enterprise.

She quickly recalled the key details, the ship was a warp vessel. The choice of separated nacelles was unusual for a warship, and intel believed it meant she was built for speed. Warp engines were known to get quite hot, especially when going for high warp. However the ship was noted to be well armored, virtually nothing got through that plating and she had no discernable method of propulsion aside from her known warp capability. The ship was well armed, with rapid fire particle cannons, particle beam weapons, and torpedoes.

A discharge from the Simple Devastation slammed into the Enterprise breaking her line of thought. Her plating held, but even at the current resolution, she could tell it had taken damage. An officer elaborated on the battle, “The Devastation has lost shields, her armor appears to be holding, but its deteriorating rapidly. I’m reading multiple imminent failures.”

She nodded, even as she wondered, how the fuck this had happened. Just as an alien destroyer made herself known, coming around a rock she discharged a volley of glowing blue bolts. Recalling the report she knew they were photon torpedoes, but for a moment she wondered where the other one was, but that soon answered itself. When the second destroyer opened fire from below, discharging another volley of photons. Even at a glance she noticed despite the difference in launch times, they would impact the Devastation simultaneously. Her orders sprang to mind at that moment, she opened her mouth, “All hands, Battlestations! Open a channel, I’d like to speak to the commander of the Enterprise.”

As her officers sprang to work, she couldn’t help but consider the implications. Her gaze fell to the command codes, some part of her hoped they were still valid, even if she couldn’t use them just yet. Then the main screen flickered, changing to show a dim alien bridge. The captain cleared her throat.