Chapter 028: Battle

Energy weapons (EW) are a direct counterpart to the magnetic weapons (the MAWs) on the field of shipboard artillery. Unlike the solid round-based MAWs, EWs are based on various types of lasers (or, in case of some exotechs, other types of rays).

There are four main levels of conventional EWs. The lowest level are the lasers themselves (which amplify the light in the visible spectrum). Then are the vasers (technically uvasers) which amplify the ultraviolet rays, rasers (roentgen rays) and extremely rare grasers (gamma rays). The cousins of these are the masers (which amplify the microwaves).

Each subsequent level massively improves the maximum achievable firepower while simultaneously increasing the energy necessary to power it up. The EWs don’t spend ammunition, but rather take their power from the ship’s energy network. This has a notable impact on rate of fire. As a result, lasers are used as point defense weapons, while rasers are the main EW artillery aboard cruisers and battleships. Manmade grasers are too large to fit aboard anything smaller than a dreadnought or a leviathan.

All modern warships have their surface covered in various types of thermoset ceramics that render them extremely resistant to EWs, unless the ray stays on target for long (unlikely, due to the evasive maneuvers). And even then, the inner armor layers are secured similarly. However when the enemy ship’s armor layers are decimated by the MAW or missile weapons, EWs become a perfect way of dealing a coup de grace, instantly (and explosively) melting the insides of the damaged ship.

Encyclopedia Galactica

Book 9, Page 245

***

EGS Echo, Crew Deck

14:20 15.07.2610 STT

Cadet Christopher Hall

The battle was decided the second Kivanna succeeded in casting the Aquire Undead spell. One of the three bone knights surrounding the necromancer changed sides, freeing Rukh from the need to tank in the middle of their first line.

With the necromancer drawn into a melee with Rukh and the converted bone knight, he was forced to flee. While two swordsmen were running after him, continuously trying to stab him and not giving him enough time to call more minions. Needless to say it didn't take long.

Unfortunately, Rukh decided to show his understanding of roleplay once again. Which happened soon after the last of the non-converted bone knights fell.

“You pitiful fools are fortunate I haven’t grown too tired of your presence, or else you’d have ended up as that necromancer’s next raw materials.” Rukh raised his sword above towards the ceiling. “I only suffer your presence because I’ve yet to meet anyone even close to my equal. With hope, that day will finally come. Though I doubt I will still be in your company when it happens.”

“All right, I’m done.” Christopher said, sheathing his sword. His voice was still trembling a bit. His fight with a bone knight was best summed up as ‘getting repeatedly slammed yet holding his ground’. “Exercise in democracy. Who wants to ban Rukh from roleplaying, raise your hands.” All members of the Recovery Team Eight other than Rukh raised their hands. “This rule comes into effect… immediately.”

“But… but…” Rukh broke as a result.

“Rukh, I get that you are using roleplaying as a way to interact with the world, but have some mercy on us!” Christopher decided to deal the coup de grace. “There’s so much cheese in your texts, France is about to accuse us of stealing their national heritage!” According to Tendrik, he was worse than an average Virtual.

“Grrr.” Rukh responded with a growl. But in the end, he conceded defeat. “All right.”

“Wait a second.” Tendrik broke the ensuing silence. “Did Rukh actually LISTEN to Christopher or am I hallucinating due to some ‘insanity’ debuff?” A second later, Tiriel hit him with her Restore Mind spell. Judging from the reaction speed, she was already planning to cast it on someone. Perhaps on herself. “Rukh, can you repeat what you just said?”

Once he received the response in the form of yet another growl, Tendrik made his final reply. “Nice. Now the second part of your answer, please.”

“I was there when it happened.” Tiriel said, interrupting Tendrik. Her voice and gesticulations made her sound like some RPG tavern patron who was narrating an important piece of lore to the protagonist. “I was there when Rukh issued a challenge to Christopher. A challenge most dire, dangerous and difficult. Christopher fought Rukh to a standstill, this tie becoming a source of newfound respect in the wolfman’s heart…”

She is an actress now? Cook, paramedic, enviro section worker, soldier, part time psychologist, Longest War champion, noblewoman… full of talents, that one. If she was even a bit of a dick about it instead of being an ever-helpful benevolent fairy, she would border on being a real life Mary Sue. Whoever was responsible for an attempt to recreate tolkienian elves in the real world deserves a medal. And a solid dropkick to the stomach.

“No way. Christopher actually managed to score a hit on Rukh in CQC training?!” Ryan decided to say possibly the most hurtful thing possible. At least to Christopher.

“Yeah, right. Keep dreaming.” The fact that those were Tiriel’s words proved there were things more hurtful than Ryan’s words. “They tied in the eating contest over Colonel Nowak’s handmade cookies. Christopher ate three. Rukh ate three, but made a gross miscalculation and tried to eat the fourth one. Which ended with a dash towards the toilet.” Several of the onlookers started laughing. Including, to Christopher’s honest surprise, Kivanna. Though her laughter was the least loud of them all.

“Uhm, can we change the subject?” Nekia suddenly interjected. Christopher wasn’t sure if she wasn’t trying to defend him, in a way. “I think we all need some time to process what we heard. We slew Ankhar the Black, so we cleared the dungeon, right?”

Tendrik responded with a laugh. “Oh you poor, little, mistaken catgirl.” Tendrik, to Christopher’s surprise, must have installed some sort of acting skills program into his implants, as his over exaggerated theatrical moves were actually cohesive and fitting. “We are currently in the Dark Halls. Lieutenant Commander Innocent’s magnum opus of a dungeon. We slew merely the first out of seventy-seven mandatory bosses, without counting two hundred fifty-seven optional ones. All of them with detailed backstories and their own quests. To date, the most successful speedrun took more than six hundred hours of gameplay, though I suspect that Commander Drathari will try to challenge it.”

I would have said that people in the future need a hobby… if not for the fact that it supposedly IS Innocent’s hobby. So instead I’ll say that he has too much free time.

“Okay, I think it’s time to call it a day.” Christopher decided. “Unless… how far is the next boss?”

“Hmmm…” Tendrik made some mental calculations. “At least one and a half hours? We’ll need to do a lot of exploring and at least two minor sidequests before we manage to finish the next floor. We could try to find an optional side-boss on this floor of the dungeon, but Rotspin is supposedly a massive pain to deal with.”

“Yeah, then let’s get back to the quest giver, collect the reward for slaying Ankhar, and leave the game.” Christopher suggested.

“Do we haaave to?” Tendrik complained. He really loved the game. And the recent two days had been filled with extremely backbreaking work. They had no idea what sort of packages they were carrying and stacking the corridors with, but it was apparently important. “I’m going to have my first space battle in two days, let me forget about it for a while.”

“Cowards, all of you.” Rukh decided to step on the landmine.

“We should ask the Captain to load Rukh into one of the ship’s MAWs and launch him at the enemy fleet.” Ryan refused to leave the attack unanswered. Before Rukh could retort with something hyper aggressive, Tiriel managed to sneak in her opinion.

“Unfortunately, the Founding Charter of the Confederation of Mankind explicitly forbids usage of cognitohazards as weapons.” Tiriel decided to be brutal. “And combat deployment of something inducing madness and anger in other people with its audio output fulfills the definition of such a war crime.”

Rukh lunged towards Ryan and Tiriel, but Christopher jumped between them. To his surprise, he was joined a second later by Nekia.

“All right, stand down. All of you.” Christopher commanded emphatically, while trying to be impartial. “People react differently to combat, please don’t escalate cultural differences into unneeded arguments. Or at least don’t get physical about them.” He added while glaring Rukh down.

To his surprise, Rukh did stand down. Christopher decided to not try to push the wolfman’s unexpected compliance with his orders any further. Rather than trying to correct the trainee’s behaviour while he was obviously angry, he decided to change the subject.

“So… Do we leave the Gates of Infinity?” Christopher asked the group the question. The answer he got back was lots of stares. Soon they subsided and were replaced by nods and ‘yes’, though they lacked enthusiasm to back it up.

It was at this moment when Christopher noticed that Kivanna tried to say something. She resigned quickly, though according to the look on her face not because she decided against speaking. Her problems seemed to resurface again.

I hope I don’t mess this up. Here goes nothing.

“Kivanna, do you want to say something?” It startled her. Some of the other team members looking at her startled her more. But with Christopher's reassuring smile (and nothing but curiosity on the other faces) she fought through.

“Y-yes.” She took a deeper breath and steadied herself. “I thought that since this was the first boss we managed to slay, we should celebrate it. Make a joint photo to remember the moment, maybe?”

“That’s actually a great idea!” Christopher replied with a smile on his face. “We’ll wait a few months, then look at the pictures and make fun of what noobs we were.” Christopher could see Rukh moving towards the exit. The wolfman’s moves were sneaky, but not sneaky enough. ”Grab him before he escapes!”

***

EGS Echo, Command Deck

16:21 16.07.2610 STT

Commander Lena Drathari

Waiting for the battle to start was shockingly boring. In Hyperspace, enemies could emerge suddenly and surprisingly, as the eldritch nature of the dimension rendered visual and electromagnetic sensors useless. EM sensors were blinded by the high background temperature of the Hyperspace, and visual sensors caused cascade errors in programs used to analyze the sensor feed. Using humans or AIs instead was an even worse idea.

Both of those sensors excelled in Realspace. No matter how well insulated, ships were still much warmer than the background. And once you know someone’s general direction, using the visual sensor (a glorified telescope) lets you learn details. Unless someone was using particle shields. Or advanced optical camouflage.

In the end, you could see all enemy ships for days before engagement. In fact, if the enemy wanted to, avoiding engagements was easy. This changed space battles into glorified dance duels, with a chance to devolve into years-long stalemates with the weaker side evading the enemy forces yet keeping them occupied almost indefinitely, at the cost of straining their own logistics.

Unless you had a plan to outthink your opponent. But that could easily become a double-edged sword.

“Lena, talk to me.” The Captain got to the bridge first. She was sure that Innocent isn’t far behind.

“Pretty bad.” She replied. An understatement of the century. “Another Truthseekers fleet has just entered the system, from the Plesjan direction. According to preliminary identification, one fast battleship, four battlecruisers, six heavy cruisers, six light cruisers, twelve destroyers, three armed transport vessels and four large troop transports. Also the first fleet has just begun deccelerating.”

They barely started their escape towards the system with the Echelon-base. They were doing this fast enough to avoid the battle with the Echo, yet something has apparently changed. If Lena’s experience and tactical school had any worth, they were going for a missile skirmish.

A few missiles probably wouldn’t destroy any ship of the Echo’s little fleet. But if they managed to score some damages to the propulsion system, they might have slowed them down enough for the second fleet to catch up to them. Or at least force them to abandon a ship or two.

“Sweet mother of Jesus, that’s a lot of firepower.” The Captain actually looked puzzled, to her complete surprise. “I didn’t even know that they had battleships.” This made sense. The Seekers were a clandestine group. Battleships were all but clandestine.

A fast battleship was only half the size of the regular battleship - it was supposed to be a sword to the battleship’s shield. This meant less weaponry, and less potent defenses, although much faster speed. During larger battles this allowed squadrons of fast battleships to strike against exposed fragments of formations composed of normal battleships, dealing significant amounts of damage before escaping.

All of that really didn’t matter, though. A fast battleship was still ten times larger than a heavy cruiser.

One salvo would be enough. The battleship’s main weaponry included several heavy-calibre MAWs that would pulverize the Echo instantly on hit. In exchange, the Echo had no chance of surviving long enough to get into Godhammer range - and none of its remaining weapons was potent enough to seriously damage the battleship.

Of course, it also required a lot of logistical preparations to move it anywhere. The Seekers truly had to have the entire subsector in their hands to casually move such a monster around.

Innocent entered the bridge, and dashed towards his seat.

“They are moving.” Lena commented. The second fleet started accelerating. Strangely enough, they were trying to approach the Echo fleet from behind, on a long bow course.

Naturally, they started accelerating hours ago. But the light carrying their visuals reached the Echo only now. Light speed was painfully slow on such distances, but they had nothing faster than it within the star systems.

“Innocent, anything to add?” Keller asked the priest.

“Reply: Judging from the size of the troop transports and past combat reports, I estimate their ground forces to approximately fifty thousand Endless and four hundred Perfects.” If what she read about them was correct, it would take one-eighth of the Perfects to wipe out everything the Echo and its little fleet had. ”Plus a significant amount of combat vehicles, however I am unable to estimate their number.”

“And what does it tell us?” Keller asked. They obviously didn’t plan to have a ground battle against the incoming forces.

“Answer: This is the largest combat deployment of the Seekers in known history.” Innocent said. “It is most certainly their main force in the subsector. I actually believe that they might be improvising, although I do not know why.”

“Improvising?” Lena asked. “Why?” This came out of the blue. Even Captain Keller was looking at the priest with surprise written on his face.

“Answer: We just saw them shifting their plan.” Innocent said. “The original plan was for us to pursue the first fleet towards the location of the Echelon base. That’s why the first fleet was powerful enough to be potentially defeatable by us, yet not strong enough to have us leave it without engaging. It is also why it waited until we got closer before running away, as it gave a sense that we could catch it. Besides, there was also a chance that we would get inquisitive over why they remained there for so long.”

It made sense. She could easily imagine Keller reacting like that. Mostly because that was precisely his reaction.

“So now the plan has changed.” Lena said slowly. “The second fleet arrived, sent new orders to the first fleet on arrival, and that’s why it stopped its escape. But why? We didn’t do anything!”

“But Christopher did.” Keller announced. Lena stared at him.

“Christopher Hall? Why?” She didn’t remember him doing anything warranting a fleet movement of this magnitude. The Seekers could probably build a destroyer out of the money they spend on the battleship’s fuel expenditure during the trip. “What did he do?”

“He arrived, that was enough.” When she kept staring at him, he decided to be more generous with details. “Think about the chronology. They became aware of him in Carmotia. The local cell immediately attempted to assassinate him, despite it meaning that we became aware of the Seekers presence in the region. They couldn’t just call the whole operation off in an instant, they are still bound by the communication delay. The message about him being here had to get to their command center and be processed there. Then their new orders had to arrive to all of their task forces and infiltration cells within the subsector. This takes two to three months, depending on the original position of their command post.” He paused for a second, this was enough for Lena to interject. She knew what he meant at this point.

“We were still going through their old plan for a while, due to the delay.” She said, “Hence Hao Yunqi, whom they failed to call off, or decided not to. And their commander, whom I presume is aboard the fast battleship, has checked the old plan, found out where we should be according to the schedule, and went ahead to intercept us. Which happened right now.”

Either an incredible amount of luck on the Seekers’ part, or they knew exactly when and where the Echo and his group would be. Which would indicate that prior to them scrapping the entire operation the Echo was playing right according to their calculations.

“But why?” She still couldn’t understand why the Corporation would be so panicked about a single cadet, even a time-skipping one. Maybe if he was from the future, and knew about their plans, but from the past?

The Captain sent her a text message. She quickly scanned it. An AI/ARACHNE, its history, supposed religious revelation and the comparisons between that case and what happened to Cadet Hall.

“Oh dear.” She said in the end. “Looks like they made the connection too.” He nodded.

“They had a brush with Christopher’s angels, who apparently didn’t like them.” Captain added. “Angels successfully sabotaged their experiment, and killed a lot of Seekers’ personnel by inciting ARACHNE’s rebellion. Now the Corporation is doing something large right here and right now. Perhaps a repetition of that experiment. And they suddenly understood that the angels were intervening again. Their infiltrator tried to kill Hall thrice, while not trying to directly act against Echo as a whole. Without attacking the ship directly or sabotaging it, as it was just an alteration of the original plan, probably according to some anti-angel contingency plan. But when the news reached the Seekers’ regional command, they decided to throw the entire plan into the trash and focus on killing Hall, even if it meant killing us all.”

“So we got out of their plan’s comfort zone.” Lena commented. “What now?”

“Now we defeat their first fleet.” Keller said. “The second fleet will inevitably cut us off any other route but the one towards the Echelon base, so I presume that they are most concerned with us going sideways and avoiding whatever they cooked up for us in the Tyra system.”

It seemed that the battle was inevitable, in the end.

***

22:21 17.07.2610 STT

Space combat is both fast… and very short. Seeing a singular engagement last for more than forty minutes was extremely rare, as every second of fighting ate through resources stored aboard ships. Artillery rounds, particle shield granulate, coolants keeping the weapons operational, fuel for thrusters used for evasive maneuvers, missiles - each of those resources was limited in number. There was a reason why most fleets were accompanied by supply ships.

The battle between the Echo and its small task force and the group of Truthseekers ships wasn’t much different… though it lasted for less than forty minutes.

The Truthseekers ships were back to the orbit of the planet of Lyria-III. Ships rarely parked for long in places that weren’t planetary orbits, as such placement spared them from having to lose fuel on correcting their position from time to time.

The Explorer’s Guild ships approached the planet. When the distance between the two fleets had shortened to one and a half million kilometers, the approaching force changed its course to one parallel to the fleet orbiting the Lyria-III. A second later both sides launched missile salvoes.

Missiles were always the first stage of space battles. Launched en masse, they were supposed to soften the enemy before artillery engagement, while also serving as a good probe for how technologically advanced the enemy ships were, in case this wasn’t apparent to both sides before the battle started.

Both fleets were crewed by veterans who knew how to counter such attacks. The second the Explorer’s Guild ships changed their course, both sides altered their fleet formation by moving the destroyers to the front and heavier ships to the back. Destroyers lacked significant ship-to-ship weaponry, but were full of anti-missile launchers and point defense weapons.

Keller’s fleet missiles were massacred quickly. Led astray or detonated in the distance by the Seekers’ electronic countermeasures, intercepted by anti-missiles, and finally shredded and melted by lasers and low-caliber MAWs. Very few of them managed to get past the Seekers’ destroyer line. His ships were technologically advanced for the Confederation of Mankind, but no match for Truthseekers technology.

To the surprise of the rear admiral in charge of the Truthseekers’ fleet, the massacre went both ways. The Guild’s ECMs proved almost supernaturally proficient in fooling the targeting computers of the Seekers’ missiles thanks to Innocent’s improvements. While the Guild’s anti-missiles and point defense were worse than those of their opponents (the destroyers especially were almost laughably outdated), the ECMs took out enough missiles to even the odds. In the end, not even a single missile breached Keller’s destroyer line.

It took the commander of the Seekers’ forces several seconds to understand what just happened. And a few more to figure out how the Guild managed to achieve that. Twenty seconds after the results of the initial salvo became apparent the Seekers’ fleet broke from the orbit and began accelerating, trying to shorten the distance between them and their enemies, to give less time for the Guild’s ECMs and to enter artillery distance faster. Keller countered this by changing his course, too. Soon it became apparent that with their much worse technology, the Guild could only delay the inevitable - the Truthseekers’ ships were simply too fast.

Both sides continued to fire missile salvo after salvo. The Seekers to get a better read on the Guild’s ECMs before a final attack from a shorter distance. And Captain Keller’s forces, because they could actually score some kills before the final salvo.

Through the desperate efforts of the Truthseekers’ crew, the first three missile salvoes were stopped in time. The fourth one came through. A nuclear warhead detonated right next to the Alchemic, one of the Truthseekers’ destroyers. While the armor held against the impact, the ship’s outer hull on the detonation side was decimated.

While bad - as it eliminated close to half of the destroyer’s armaments, crippled its shields and killed seventy percent of its crew - it was only the beginning. With the hull shattered and the armor layer weakened by the impact, the ship was laid bare in front of another missile. Its targeting computer detected a weakness in a ship in front of it.

It immediately decided that trying to get closer wouldn’t improve the chances of destroying the target (as it was hard to rise 100% any further) but instead, it would raise the chances of it being destroyed by the enemy defenses. Hence, it detonated a hundred thousand kilometers away from the destroyer. However, unlike the first missile, it had an energy warhead instead of a nuclear one.

The entire missile was in an essence a miniaturized ultraviolet laser. Warships were well protected against energy weapons, but the nuclear warhead left a gaping hole in the Alchemic’s defenses. The energy warhead managed to maintain its beam for four seconds before the heat melted it down - but it was enough.

The beam hit the weakened armor layer and melted its way through. Once it went through, it melted - in an explosive fashion - everything in front of it. The bridge, reactor room, ship’s hospital - all of it changed into liquid and evaporated together with everyone inside within four seconds.

The Alchemic changed into a vivisected ruin of a ship floating in the middle of the warfare. Its destruction - when counted from the moment of the nuclear warhead detonation - took twenty-three seconds.

Half a minute later the Witch - another destroyer - died when three nuclear warheads hit it in quick succession. Unlike the Alchemic, this ship’s citadel held. Unfortunately, the impact of the detonations killed everyone aboard the destroyer and decimated its outer sections so much that the wreck became irreparable.

In the end, the opening missile combat was the Truthseekers’ victory. Their final salvoes from a shorter distance were fruitless… but Keller’s fleet failed to crack through the enemy point defense to reach the cruisers behind. The death of two Truthseeker destroyers - and almost one hundred crew members - was nothing, as they were of no use in the artillery engagement.

As the distance between the two fleets shortened to one million kilometers and their missile storages were emptied, their formation changed. Destroyers quickly retreated to the back, leaving cruisers to face each other. With particle shields deployed and evasive maneuvers done constantly, they began shelling each other with their MAWs.

Keller’s fleet altered its course. They were no longer running away - instead, they started advancing towards the enemy. The commander of the Truthseekers force identified this as an attempt to enter the distance of short-range weapons to deal as much damage as possible before getting wiped out. Trusting in his fleet’s superior acceleration, he let them get closer. He planned to suddenly change his ship’s course right before the short-range weapons could become a danger, finishing the already decimated enemy.

The closer distance meant less of a delay, which meant that evasive maneuvers were less and less efficient. While the Seekers’ rear admiral fell for Feint Number Six, the approach was going to be bloody.

The first ship to have its particle shields depleted was the Nietzsche. Its desperate attempt to retreat was cut short by a capital ship-grade MAW round from the battlecruiser which crushed the Nietzsche - and the three hundred people aboard it - like a tin can. A few seconds later the Agreement was hit with a similar round, but it hit the ship’s prow armour in a way that made it bounce away - although even then, the ricochet carried enough impact to kill or incapacitate a large part of the crew.

As the incoming artillery rounds began slowly breaking the Hastati’s shield, the rear admiral of the Seekers began having doubts. A few seconds later he succeeded in deducing Keller’s plan. However, his order for the destroyers to return to the front and for his cruisers to retreat came too late, as the Echo’s fleet unleashed the Rocket Hammer.

Admiral Dunecki - later on, the first Emperor of the Visegrad Empire - was a gifted tactician. Who loved using missiles in various creative ways. His seven Feints were all about sneaking missiles into places where they shouldn’t be without the enemy noticing. Feint Number Six was one of the simplest yet most ingenious tricks.

Keller’s fleet had launched all their missiles - or at least that’s what the Truthseekers’ commanders thought. What they didn’t know was that all the enemy ships had their corridors and various already emptied storerooms filled with spare missiles. Or parts of them - most modern missiles could be easily dismantled and reassembled for easier storage.

While the battle raged, most of the Guild’s crews were busy moving the missile parts to the missile launchers - and reassembling them. While the Truthseekers fleet believed that the enemy was out of missiles, this belief was objectively incorrect. While they lacked missiles for one full salvo (and several missiles malfunctioned due to hurried reassembly), they still had a lot of them.

What’s more, the enemy was no longer in anti-missile formation, and the distance between the two sides of the battle shortened from one and a half million kilometers to slightly above five hundred thousand kilometers. This meant that the situation was perfect for the Rocket Hammer.

All the Guild’s ships launched their missiles towards a single target - the enemy command ship. As twenty-seven missiles reached the target and detonated, the Truthseekers’ battlecruiser ceased to exist.

Before the Truthseekers fleet managed to reorganize, Newton - its heavy cruiser - got hit by a MAW round from the Echo, which knocked out its inertia dampening network. Three seconds later the system failsafe shut down propulsion and send a mayday signal - but the three seconds of automatic evasive maneuvers was enough to kill everyone aboard. The battle changed into the Truthseeker’s rout - which quickly changed into a massacre.

The battle lasted for twenty-seven minutes. Almost four thousand six hundred people died.