Chronicles of Sol: The Fall

Greyman shifted in his seat, as a Cathamari energy bolt slammed into the shields protecting the dock. If he had not seen it happen, he never would have known they had been shot at. That was one of the advantages of being docked at this moment. The Cathamari had brought in a full fleet. They had just suddenly swept into the area from behind one of Illieria’s three moons, and they outnumbered the defenders nearly seven to one. Not far from the outpost the Coto was currently engaged with several Cathamari cruisers, she was doing okay, and thankfully she was also being supported by a Krall destroyer.

As for the Umikaze, she had had the misfortune of being right in the path of the fleet when it appeared. As such, the Umikaze along with a couple of patrol cruisers that had been in the area had been among the first ships engaged. The Umikaze ended up taking several heavy hits. Nothing too crippling, but enough that her captain had been forced to withdraw. As such that ship was currently moving away from the station, and consequently the battle at Warp Two. Drakes reported that they had taken several hits to the main drives, and power transfer conduits. He estimated it would be a couple of hours before they were combat-ready again, and that didn’t even cover patching the ninety-seven hull breaches they took from Cathamari torpedoes.

As for the two patrol cruisers that had been with her, one of them had been destroyed in that brief bout. The other had been disabled, but captain Drakes had managed to pull her out of the fight, and the ship was still being towed by the damaged Umikaze out of the combat zone. It was in worse shape than the Umikaze as well. It had taken heavy damage after its shields collapsed, and it had lost all maneuvering power. Most of that cruiser’s weapons were also down. Apparently, that ship would need at least six hours to patch its primary systems up to the point that her battle-leader would feel comfortable taking the ship back into battle.

He glanced back to the ships firing on the station. A few beam batteries were firing back on those ships with some success. Enough that the smaller ships were wisely staying out of range, only the larger ships would brave the range of those starbase defense batteries. They had to given the shorter range of Cathamari plasma weapons. That also meant they were braving the range of the Enterprise’s guns. Not that it mattered, thanks to the Enterprise being inside the capital ship dock, she was protected by the station’s shields. They were really good shields as well, so they made up for the not being able to manuever. However those same shields more so than the dock itself prevented the Enterprise from firing on the Cathamari ships. They blocked weapons fire going both ways, the station’s weapons could fire unhindered, but his could not. Below he had Ruri working on the problem.

Suddenly she looked up, a smile on her face. “Got it!”

“You do? Great! What took you so long?”

She sighed, “Unlike the Cathamari, the Krall use a rotating band modulation for their shields. It complicated figuring out their exact shield configuration. Anyway, you can fire torpedoes now. We now have full shield penetration against Krall shields, at least for this station. I’ve already uploaded the new shield penetration algorithms to the targeting computers. I’m afraid the particle weapons won’t be so easy, however. Not without physical alterations to the emitters themselves.”

He nodded, “Torpedoes will do nicely.”

Greyman hadn’t expected anything more. He also knew a bit about how those weapons worked. The torpedoes used an adaptive modulated energy field, that allowed them to bypass energy shields, but only if they were correctly modulated. Each torpedo had a small microcomputer and onboard sensor array designed to determine key characteristics of a target’s shield. Allowing them to adapt, and bypass an energy shield, but it was still a bit of a best guess process. Those sensors were short range, and unable to fully analyze a targeted ship’s shields. That is why torpedoes were fired in volleys, and designed to communicate with each other. Allowing them to hit with a spread of their best guesses, and in most cases a third of the hits would strike the hull. Sometimes more, sometimes less.

The Enterprise had more powerful versions of the same dynamic energy sensors the torpedoes carried as part of her sensor array. Again they were short range, just a few hundred kilometers, and they rarely came into play during a battle. However, if they could get close enough for a complete scan, they would be able to determine the exact shield configuration of any target, vastly increasing shield penetration rates. Although getting into range for such a scan, was easier said then done, especially given modern combat ranges. As those sensors had a range of a few hundred kilometers, but the main guns on the Enterprise could accurately hull a target from tens of thousands of kilometers away, and the torpedoes had more than twice that range. Even more if it was a slow moving target such as a planet or starbase, although the torpedoes were by standard practice normally programmed to self destruct after traveling more than eight light-seconds.

Greyman shifted in his seat, and noted a ship closing on the starbase, in a perfect position for the forward launchers. He gave the order to fire. Seconds later, a full volley of glowing blue bolt shot out of the launchers, and sailed through the station shields, a brief flash of blue light marked each passage through the invisible defensive shield. It didn’t even flare in response the the torpedoes passing through, a sign that not a single one detonated against the shield. If it had they would have been rocked by their own weapons fire, and they might have even damaged the dock. Greyman smiled, although he had never doubted the result, not with a scientist of Ruri’s caliber doing the work.

The station commander stepped into central operations. When the meeting had adjourned, she and her two guards had headed back towards here to begin with. While Tika had stayed behind to talk with the Humans. Hopefully she was alright after the Cathamari boarded. She had been fine thanks to her guards. Still it had been an experience getting back to her post safely, she found the timing of this irksome, and suspect. It couldn’t have been a coincidence, could it? She doubted the humans had anything to do with it, but them attacking during a meeting with them? She could think of only one explanation, there was an agent here on the outpost helping them, and the moment she had a chance she was going to find that agent. Someone helped them launch this attack, and there was no way she was going to let this slight go unpunished.

Those thoughts halted when she noticed the screens. A display showed capital dock four, and a Cathamari battleship on attack vector towards the dock. Suddenly the Human ship, the Enterprise fired. Glowing blue bolts sailed into space. Her first thought was utter disbelief. She couldn’t believe they would be so stupid as to fire while inside the shield perimeter. However what happened next was mystifing. The blue bolts hit the shield perimeter. The glowing bolts briefly flared brighter, but that was all that marked their passage through the shield perimeter. The shields didn’t even flare, and the bolts sailed towards the battleship unhindered by the shield.

Seconds later they reached the battleships, and a massive flash of light and flaring shields marked them striking the battleship. When the screens cleared it revealed that the ship ahd taken damage. Her shields were flickering, and scorching marred her hull along with several new hull breaches. It opened fire, unleashing its own volley of heavy plasma fire, indicating that while damaged the ship was very much still a threat.

An instant later the ship, thrusted hard to move away from the station. While the Enterprise fired again, glowing blue bolts sailed from her hull. Passed right through the station shields, and on towards that wounded battleship. She noticed a clear attempt at evasive maneuvers, but the bolts tracked the ship, and struck her. A glorious fireball marked her demise, and left behind twisted wreckage.

Somewhat stupified, she turned to one of the sensor officers on duty. It was one of the privileges of their command structure. She could let the men fight, and they can analze the mysteries their opponents bring to the field, or in this case their ally. Before she could really voice the question the sensor officer told her, “I’m not entirely sure.”

“You mean you don’t know how they are passing through our shields?”

“No, that part is easy. I know exactly how it is passing through. I just don’t know how that is possible.”

She frowned, “Care to enlighten me?”

The sensor officer glance to the screen, and brought up the sensor data. “Their torpedoes are using a modulated energy field to pass through our shields, and its also why their torpedoes glow. The baffling part is how they are passing through our shields. Somehow they are able to match the modulation of our shields, exactly, and I have no idea how they are doing that.”

That she understood, the Krall were well aware of how a correctly modulated energy field could allow a projectile to pass through a shield. The same could be done with most energy weapons. This principle was even exploited, allowing the station to fire its main weapons without dropping shields, and it would even allow them to launch shuttles, fighters, and even docked vessels while the shields were up. However that was only possible because the computer was telling the ships, or weapons in question what they needed to know to pass through. That information required constant communication since the shields were on a rotating modulation to prevent an enemy from doing exactly the same thing. Still it brought to mind an idea of how they might be doing it.

“Do they have an active data connnection with our main computer?”

The sensor officer shook her head. “No, I checked. We aren’t actively exchanging data with them.”

That was concerning. The Humans may be their allies, but if one race could find a way to penetrate their shields like this, perhaps another more hostile one could as well. In a way, she was grateful that the humans had revealed a vulnerability in their current defense systems. Now she just had to figure out how they were doing it. That way they could guard against it in the future, at the moment, she didn’t need to do anything about it. If anything stopping them would prove harmful, and in more ways than one.

“I see.” she then leaned over the sensor display. She noted that the Humans seemed to have a fair number of torpedoes to expend, and could reload those launchers quite quickly. She had quite a few launchers mounted fore and aft. She had twenty forward launchers and a dozen aft. All of them were triple-tubed. Each individual tube seemed to fire a volley of five torpedoes every six seconds. That meant their forward launchers could put three hundred torpedoes in the void with each volley. In a minute, they could fire three thousand shield penetrating photons. That was quite impressive, and she had to wonder about their torpedo bays. As they were putting a lot of torps in the void. In fact, they had already been firing for over a minute, and sunk several Cathamari battleships, a couple of cruisers, and even hit a few destroyers that were outside the station’s main gun batteries. She wasn’t sure about the effective range of those weapons, but it seemed that they could track and hit targets up to about a third of light second out, perhaps more depending on how much maneuvering was required. Not to mention they were fast, very fast traveling at just under .7c. Few ships could outrun them, and it would be hard to outmaneuver them even with their rather limited guidance thrusters. Not that they needed much in space, a small nudge meant alot.

Then she turned her attention more closely to the readings of the Enterprise. The first thing she noted was the armored weapon ports, hidden below the main belt of the armor. Her gaze was soon drawn to a number of armored turrets, that didn’t mount particle weapons, but instead contained tubes not entirely dissimilar to the launcher ports currently hurling torpedoes at Cathamari ships. She pointed them out.

“I think those are short-range missile launchers, notice the clear lack of a catapult? They aren’t meant to accelerate large missiles to C-Fractional Velocities. They are clearly designed for smaller warheads and a smaller overall missile. Based on readings from their torps, and the launchers we can make a few estimates. Given what space would be needed for propulsion, fuel and guidance, anything they put in those tubes would not only have a limited range, but would be ineffective against capital ships. They are likely intended for engaging hostile starfighters, and corvettes.”

“Interesting. A point defense missile array...” she trailed off as she noticed something else. She pointed it out and said, “What are those?”

The sensor officer frowned, then her eyes widened. Widening more a moment later as she focused on scanning them. “Dynamic energy sensors. Really good ones, by the look of it, and they seem focused on our shield grids right now.”

She blinked. Her attention had been drawn to them at first because they seemed oddly active, but now she was giving them a closer look. They were part of a distributed sensor array, the ship had several primary and secondary sensor clusters. In fact small armored sensor clusters were everywhere on the hull. Every single cluster contained a mix of different sensors spatial, optical, dynamic energy scanners, thermal, and more. Many of them were quite sophisticated and much better than you would expect from a warship. In fact this same sensor array wouldn’t look too out of place on a science ship.

Before she could think much of that, the sensor officer said, “I think I have figured it out.”

“What did you figure out?”

“Those sensors, are how they are getting torpedoes through our shields. They are using them to determine our exact shield configuration, and keep up with our rotating modulation.”

She blinked. It turned out to be a remarkably simple answer. If somewhat unusual, most warships didn’t have sensors capable of that. The solution was obvious, but not one to implement right away. Her attention turned back to the battle, her curiosity satisfied.

The Enterprise was still hurling torpedoes at any ship unfortunate enough to wander into range often with deadly effect. Those photons while not as powerful as a spatial or plasma warhead were very effective, especially if they scored a hull penetrating hit. Even if that hit didn’t destroy the ship, a single hull penetrating hit often left the crew either dead or severally debilitated. Not suprising given that the photon burst of the detonation unleashed a massive number of gamma rays.

Elsewhere her one destroyer had dropped out of warp and appeared to be rendering aid to that patrol cruiser she towed out of the battle zone. At the moment neither ship would be of much help given their battle damage. As for the other destroyer, the Coto that ship was taking advantage of her mobility to protect several civilian ships caught in the battle zone. She was not alone in that effort, but her powerful sublight drives allowed her to move to trouble spots more quickly than their own escort ships. It helped that the Cathamari suffered from terribly inefficient engine layouts, that relied more on brute force than anything else.

Her gaze watched the plots, as the Human destroyer swept in from above on a cruiser moving to attack a large freighter. She came in fast, closing to knife range in an instant, and unleashed some kind of charged plasma pulse. It manifested itself as a bolt of lightning, that struck the shields of the cruiser. A second soon followed disrupting systems across the hull, moments before she raked the hull with a sustained particle beam. Compartments ruptured and vented into space. While her internals were cooked, and the armor vaporized. In seconds the cruiser was nothing more than a lifeless wreck, and the destroyer was vectoring away at high speed towards another destroyer that was entering a position to threaten a transport.

The Cathamari destroyer got into position first, and fired. Several high-intensity plasma pulses headed right for the transport, even with its shields up she knew that transport could never withstand a direct hit. It wasn’t designed with that in mind. The shields simply weren’t strong enough, and the hull wasn’t heavily armored either.

She watched helpless as several hundred people faced imminent death. The Coto was coming from the opposite side of the transport, and passed over it. Her vector brought her between the Cathamari plasma torpedoes and the transport. Suddenly she slowed massively, as the torpedoes were now sailing right towards the Human destroyer. What happened next was a bit of surprise. A grid of blue beams manifested around the Coto in a bubble, concentrating between the torpedoes and her hull. There was quite the gap between her hull, the grid, but the reason for that became apparent quickly.

The torpedoes struck the grid, as it rapidly altered itself for maximum interception, while particle flak was emitted from projectors on the hull. When the plasma torps hit it moments later most of them detonated when their integrity was disrupted. The resulting shockwaves shook the ship, but a few did get through. Striking the armored hull of the destroyer with minimal effect.

Her sensor officer let out a sigh of relief, and then commented, “I guess that explains their odd point defense setup, even explains a few of those armored emitter ports on the hull.”

She nodded, and watched as the Coto, quickly moved to engage the Cathamari destroyer now that her torpedoes had been dealt with. The ship moved towards the destroyer with a very aggressive posture and unleashed a heavy payload of torpedoes on the destroyer. Then she vectored away, as if the target was already dead. Her course taking her to another area, where another transport was under threat. Her escorts being overwhelmed by the number of attacking Cathamari ships.

As it turned out, that destroyer was indeed dead. Her attempts at evasion proved fruitless, and the majority of the torpedoes slammed into her stern penetrating the shields. The ship went up in a massive fireball, that soon cleared to reveal the mangled remains of what had once been a proud destroyer. Now the rear section was nothing more than bits of charred metal. While the forward section was twisted but vaguely recognizable. Also heavily charred. That one Human ship seemed quite lethal.

It seemed the battle in space was going well. So she turned her attention to the security monitors, to see how things were going inside the station. Only before she could the station shook, she had to steady herself, while shouts of alarm resounded. It seemed something had happened, and it took her only moments to find out what. When she did, she felt pale.