Chronicles of Sol: The Fall

The station commander set aside the report. It had been a few hours since the attack. Long enough to take stock of things. The station had taken a fair amount of damage, but her docks were thankfully rather unscathed. Most of their ships in the system had also sustained damage. Of the four hundred and fifty-seven warships that had been in system at the time of the attack, nearly a hundred had been lost, but there were roughly eight hundred destroyed Cathamari ships still in the system. They had also captured a few disabled warships, and now had some prisoners to deal with. They were to be transported elsewhere, and were to be interrogated.

As for the Humans, their small fleet was now in geosynchronous orbit not too far from the station. All three of their ships had taken a fair amount of damage and were sporting fresh hull breaches. She suspected the damage looked worse than it actually was. Part of that assessment came from a conversation with Tika who was currently on the Enterprise, and apparently, she had taken a couple of military-issue plasma rifles with her. That was something they would like to have back, and was certainly not something they would have allowed the humans to have under normal circumstances. Not this soon into the relationship anyway. No point complaining about what had already been done however. If anything, this might be a good chance to see how their relationship might unfold.

In the meantime, she had other things to worry about. Things more important than a pair of rifles. Namely, she had a few meetings with civilian leaders, she had an investigation to conduct, and she needed to get started on repairs. Thankfully the homeworld was sending a relief force to Illeira, and it would be here in a few days. That force would contain fresh ships to replace their losses and reinforce the local garrison. Along with materials, and manpower to assist with restoring the outpost to full operational capacity. By far the best news she had was that thanks to the efforts of the local defense force, and the aid of the EFS Coto there had been no civilian casualties. Her sistership the Umikaze had helped get a cruiser out of the line of fire, and saved her crew as well. She had not noticed, but she had after licking her wounds jumped back into the battle. Rescuing several more stricken cruisers from the line of battle, and while she didn’t succeed she had attempted to stop the Cathamari freighter from escaping.

It might have been different if she had released the Enterprise after the shields failed, but she had not. As a result, the Cathamari had bombarded the ship to prevent her from engaging their freighter. The very same freighter that had delivered their strike force to the outpost, and got away. They were still taking inventory, but they already knew they made off with a number of items including at least one shield generator, and several plasma cannons. In fact if it wasn’t bolted down they took it, and even some things that were bolted down had been ripped right out of the walls. In fact, they had even cleaned out several of the station's armories.

They were going to have to chase after that freighter but at the moment they didn’t have any ships to send. Imperial Fleet Command had already been appraised, and they were sending five ships to chase after the freighter. The lead of that group was the IKS Rikar. She was somewhat familiar with that ship, it was a Warhammer Class heavy battleship, she was somewhat smaller than the EFS Enterprise. However she was much better protected and armed. The Rikar was 4233 meters long with three hundred and twenty-two decks, and a span of 2207 meters.

Her armament included twenty-eight heavy plasma beam arrays and eight plasma cannon banks. She also was armed with spatial torpedoes mounted fore and aft. Those weapons alone were respectable, but that didn’t cover her full armament. She also carried Ion Pulse cannons, two full banks of standard cannon, along with a dual spinal mounted Ion Pulse cannon.

Ion Pulse cannons fired an ionic particle pulse that wrecks havoc with shields and systems, not unlike the lightning weapon the human ships carried. Although based on somewhat different principles. Many races had some kind of weapon for disabling ships, and the Krall answer was the Ion Pulse Cannon. The spinal one, on the Warhammer class battleships however is what happens when the technology is taken a step forward. That massive cannon was designed not to disable ships, but to knock out planetary defenses, and that was something it did very well. The weapon could bring down planetary shields quickly, allowing for orbital bombardment, and the landing of troops in short order. It is worth noting that while designed for use against planetary shields, the cannon was effective against ships as well, especially other capital ships.

That armament alone was impressive, but to top it all off. Warhammer class battleships were some of the most heavily armored ships in the Imperium. The hull plating was layered and many meters thick. The outermost layer was Erudite-Tritanium alloy, followed by several layers of Tritanium plating. The hull itself was also reinforced to take a beating, and key sections featured internal plating, and secondary shields to protect them. The main shields were class V, able to take just about anything the Cathamari could through at them. If just one such battleship had been on station here, the attack would have gone very differently. The Station commander did not know when the ship would arrive, but when she did it would be good for morale. She hoped it got here sooner or later.

Countryman meanwhile was studying the latest reports to reach his own desk. Williams had survived, but not in one piece. The Marines had brought her back missing a few. Technically they could have brought her back missing more and she would have been fine. At the moment however, she was in the medical bay undergoing regenerative therapy, where her ability to cause trouble would be limited. Of course while he called it a medical bay it was more of a hospital. The medical bay ran from decks thirty-nine to forty-two and took up a fifth of the area available in each of those decks. As a result they had a medical bay able to treat thousands, effectively. He was glad they did because it gave them the capacity to provide health care for the fifty thousand plus people under his care. In addition to battlefield injury treatments. Given that she took a plasma bolt to the gut at some point, Williams would likely be in the nano-bath for a few days.

He was more concerned with the other reports. Most specifically the damage reports, and the repair estimates. The Umikaze had sustained just over one hundred and seventy hull breaches, she had lost main port engine, and sustained internal damage to several modules. Power was out of twelve decks, and she had lost several turrets during the engagement. Her superstructure was largely intact, and injuries aboard ship were thankfully rather light all things considered. No fatalities, but there were some injuries severe enough to require a nano-bath. By far his biggest concern were actually the hits she took to her port nacelle, while most of the damage was confined to her sub-engines there, she had lost one of her four warp engines. That was a precious piece of hardware not easily replaced. Building a new warp engine was no easy task, and that item alone would take days. They were not easy to build, and frankly required some materials that were hard to come by. At least they had what they needed on hand, and from the sound of it the drive wasn’t too badly slagged. They might be able to salvage something from it.

The Coto on the other hand had also been engaged and sustained a fair amount of damage. Most of it was thankfully surface damage, so her repairs would be less extensive. She had sustained just under a hundred and twenty hull breaches. Along with some internal damage, and a few of her gun ports had been destroyed. Nothing truly vital had been damaged, and as a result, they estimated they could have the Coto fully repaired in about a day. Most of that repair time would be with repairing the damaged internal modules. Like her sistership, there were no fatalities but there were some injuries. Just those people unfortunate enough to be in those sections that were breached.

As for his own ship, the Enterprise. They had taken a fair amount of damage, and ended up expending a rather large amount of ordinance. His engines thankfully weren’t damaged, but his torpedo reserves were depleted to roughly twenty percent. They would need to replace those warheads. That wasn’t going to be easy since they were talking almost thirty eight thousand torpedoes, and photons required a very special casing material to function properly. The rest of the torpedo on the other hand was made of materials readily available. At least they were in a friendly enough port, he figured they may be able to acquire what they need here. Although if he had to, there were a number of disarmed mark-fives sitting in his cargobays. Enough to refill his torpedo bays, but those would be markedly less effective than the photons they had originally been armed with. If he could get that casing material he needed, it would however be a simply matter to convert those warheads into photon torpedoes.

At the moment, they just didn’t have any of it onboard. A fact that would complicate the rearming of his ships. Repairs on the other hand would be less of a problem. They had suffered extensive outer hull damage, but very little internal damage. They were going to have to replate large sections of the hull, but that wasn’t going to be too difficult. It would only take a couple of days, before they were repaired, and the two hundred something hull breaches they had taken to be patched. There was one turret that was going to need replacing, but all of the others were intact. Securing them had kept them safe from the bombardment. Honestly the most extensive repairs would be for the Umikaze, as both of their other ships could be fixed within hours while the Umikaze would require about a week to complete repairs.

Suddenly there was a knock on the door, and he placed the reports to the side, and bade the other person to enter his ready room. After a moment, Greyman walked in. His expression was rather neutral and gave away little about why he had bothered him, but Countryman could guess by his mannerism that it wasn’t more bad news or anything truly urgent.

Before he could prompt his first officer, Greyman informed him, “Sorry to bother you, but we have a Krall freighter parked off our port bow. It seems the local corporations are grateful for our assistance, they have offered to trade with us at a discounted rate. In addition they also offered to assist with our repairs.”

“Interesting. If they are offering it would be rude to refuse them. Some help would be appreciated, and there are some items I am looking to acquire. So we should at the least take a look at what they have.”

He had already reviewed what they had available to trade. They had quite a bit of Duranium but that stuff wasn’t of much use to them. True it was natively stronger than titanium, but it alloyed poorly with Rydium. As such, it made poor material for overlord type ship armor, and could not be enhanced anywhere near as much as titanium could be. That meant they had a large number of salvage cubes, many of which were still stowed in their makeshift cargo sled. They could likely sell those for a fair profit, and get much of what they needed. Salvage cubes weren’t the only things they had to sell. Their recent harvest had gone well, and they had plenty of food supplies. Including seed. They could trade some of that as well. While they did have some of the traditional luxury crops such as Martian Chocolate, they also had plenty of food crops such as corn, tomatoes, and potatoes. All of which could be sold at a premium if they had to, and they did have a fair surplus. Some of which was being processed into protein paste since it would keep better, and could be stored more easily as a paste.

He figured he could sell off some of that excess food for vital supplies they needed. Perhaps even fill a few of the shortages they were dealing with. Coffee for example was something they had a rather severe shortage for. It was one of those plants they didn’t manage to find seed for, and as such their only supply were now a dwindling cache of dried and ground coffee. Little surprise however that they only had dried coffee. It was one of those plants grown mainly on the homeworld. Mars had briefly tried to grow its own, but something about the soil made the coffee taste weird. At least according to every source he had spoken to. He didn’t drink the stuff so he simply took their word for it. Although he did note that Martian coffee was popular in certain circles, mainly as a luxury good. Unfortunately, they had none and were making due with what substitutes they had access to. Perhaps, the Krall had something that the people would be happier with.

With those thoughts in mind, he headed off to meet these merchants, and see what they had for sale. He was certainly interested in doing business with them. Countryman had a fair list of things he would like to acquire. Among those items was a sample of Erudite, a probe with faster than light drive or communications, a Krall FTL radio would be nice as well. He also needed a few star charts, preferably including the exact coordinates of the Cathamari homeworld, and maybe they even had a reasonably intact Cathamari cruiser. Although he would not get his hopes up for that. Then again there were a few wrecks here, so they just might. At the very least he wanted a nice isolated system where he could easily get his hands on one. He needed that cruiser for his plan, and this meeting would be where he could make it happen.

As it would turn out Countryman was actually able to get a fair amount of the items he wanted. While he didn’t get the cruiser, he did get the star charts he needed, and an idea of where he might be able to obtain one. More importantly, he got the probe he needed. It was the most vital item of the puzzle, and one they could not produce themselves. Ruri would no doubt be quite happy with the sample of Erudite he got her, it was not much, but enough to make a study.

Along with a fair number of useful supplies, all for the cost of some food, and a sizeable number of useless salvage cubes. For some reason, the Krall merchants had been particularly interested in corn. They bought it from him at a rate that made it look like a luxury food crop, more than ten times what it was normally worth. He made note of that little fact, perhaps corn was more valuable than they thought? Due to that apparent value, he had been able to trade it for all sorts of interesting trinkets some of which might have been less than legal on the civilian market.