Chapter 029: Clean Up

Short Range Weapons (SRWs) are an entire branch of shipbound artillery weapons, dedicated to causing an intense devastation on a distance less than 500 000 kilometres (with the 1 000 000 kilometres being the standard distance of regular artillery engagements).

These weapons are rarely used on the battlefield, resulting in many warships not bothering to equip them. However when their users manage to sneak up on their enemy in the Hyperspace, or otherwise crosses the 500 000 kilometres distance in shape good enough to fire them, even a single SRW makes an incredible difference.

The common denominator of all SRWs is massive firepower and the ability to (to some extent) ignore or pierce the particle shields, rendering the most important form of defense meaningless. Their list is relatively short, ranging from currently outdated magnetic mitrailleuse to the almost mythical Void Cannon voidtech.

The SRWs were first separated from normal artillery weapons during the War of Purity, when it became apparent to the Solar Commonwealth’s command that going for a short distance engagement is a good way of negating the transhuman technological superiority. Development of the first SRWs changed many desperate last stands of the Commonwealth Navy into battles of mutual annihilation.

Encyclopedia Galactica

Book 9, page 790

***

EGS Echo, Command Deck

22:51 17.07.2610 STT

Commander Lena Drathari

When the Echo knocked out the heavy cruiser, Commander Drathari sighed with relief. Her body might have been robotic and her mind a bunch of zeros and ones in the ship’s computer, but she was born a human. And she still reacted like a human.

Unlike their brief engagement with Hao Yunqi, this wasn’t a miracle. Just a well-executed battle with a successful gamble at the core. Still, Captain Keller’s ability to achieve victories both in conventional and unconventional ways was… almost unbelievable.

Most commanders she knew would either be defeated or wouldn’t risk a battle with the enemy having a battlecruiser without an equal or larger ship on their side. Yet, Keller somehow did it.

She looked from her position towards the captain’s seat… and she froze.

Captain Keller was almost pale. For a second she was about to sprint towards him, as her first thought was that he had a heart attack. But then she saw that he was still carefully observing the main screen as if nothing was happening.

Is he… afraid?

Battles were scary. There was not a single person aboard ships of both warring fleets who wasn’t afraid of dying in the battle. However, they were professionals - they knew how to ignore the fear.

Captain Keller was functional enough to command… but not functional enough to hide how afraid he was. For someone so experienced to react like that… it was like a complete reversal of himself from the battle against Hao Yunqi.

What’s going on with that man? A confident and genius tactician in one moment, and an absolute coward in the next. I just can’t understand him. How can he react like that after decades of being a warship officer?

The Hastati scored a kill, its artillery tearing apart a fleeing light cruiser. A few seconds later the Echo ripped one of the destroyers apart. The remaining Seekers’ destroyers scattered around. A bad choice, as each of them on its own, couldn’t defend themselves properly even against relatively small salvoes. Fifteen missiles annihilated one of them. The two remaining ships were destroyed by two more hurried and weak missile salvoes.

We lost one light cruiser and had another damaged. In exchange, we destroyed one battlecruiser, two light cruisers and four destroyers, while knocking out a heavy cruiser. This is such a wonderful change from all those bloody stalemates I read about in the Navy!

“All right, I guess that’s that.” Captain Keller said. Since he now had an entire fleet to oversee, he delegated his normal work to her. This made her into a temporary captain and him into a temporary rear admiral. She still wasn’t sure what to think about that. “We should send a boarding party to the destroyer that was knocked out by the nuclear warheads. The impact probably killed everyone aboard, so we have a fair chance of getting access to the ship’s database. Also, perhaps another group to that battlecruiser’s wreck.”

“What about the heavy cruiser?” Everything seemed to indicate an inertia dampener malfunction of catastrophic degree. Things like that happened, though much less often than other critical damages to the ship (like reactor hit).

The ship’s failsafes kicked in, shutting down acceleration. But the ship floated away with the movement speed it had prior to the hit. Both fleets decelerated to relatively low speed before the battle, so the floating cruiser wasn’t far away. But it was moving away.

“What about the timetable?” Keller asked. He seemed to have mostly shook his earlier panic off.

“We have close to two hours.” If they stayed around for too long, the second fleet would catch up to them. The fast battleship was slow, but their armed supply ship wasn’t fast either. Faster than the fast battleship if you pushed it to the edge (especially now that it got rid of a lot of its supplies, making it slightly lighter), but it wasn’t a comfortably large difference.

“Send a team, have them check if they can get the ship under control. Innocent, you go with them.” The robot nodded and, knowing that the time was the essence, ran away from the bridge. “It would be a miracle to succeed, but if there’s someone aboard the ship that can give us that miracle, it’s Innocent.”

If it truly was an inertia dampener malfunction, the security system of the ship was going to be the main threat. Nothing organic survived such a disaster. Depending on how fast the ship was accelerating during the event - or if he was hit by MAW round that caused the inertia dampening to go off as a result of the impact - the results varied from 'everyone aboard is dead' to 'ceiling is red, walls are red, everything is red'.

“I suggest sending the Hastati and some starfighters of the Echo to assist in the boarding.” She added. Keller replied with a nod and issued the correct order.

A ship pretending to be knocked out only to destroy the boarding party en route to it was a common ploy. Starfighters were relatively expendable, and had just enough firepower to blow off any weapon system that tried to turn towards the shuttle. The Hastati was going to be there to blow the whole thing into pieces if the starfighters didn’t make it.

It was extremely surprising that Keller of all people didn’t think about that himself.

“What about the Republican station in the orbit?” She decided to guide him to making proper decisions again.

“Tell them that they have to disarm their weaponry and prepare for an inspection. If they do not comply, we’ll consider them supporters of the Truthseekers.” This meant that the station could be annihilated. Even if there were some civilians aboard, their death would no longer be considered a crime. Not with an exiled group such as the Seekers.

While harsh, it made perfect sense. Any station or incapacitated ship could stop a boarding operation indefinitely with little more than an empty bluff and some hostages. All they had to do was to wave a single weapon system around (enough to deter shuttles from landing) and warn the warships surrounding them that if their fighters get too close, they’ll kill the hostages.

An Explorers’ Guild captain who did that could still expect to be subject to a lengthy investigation during which he had to prove that what he did was necessary. And there were limits to the leniency, as nobody in the leadership of the Confederation was interested in having hundreds of civilians die because of a single rotten egg.

Here, with less than two or three hundreds of people on the station, most of them military personnel or technicians contracted by a regime that treated all its inhabitants as cogs in the machine, the amount of mewling should be limited.

One more necessary evil. At least it made all but the most fanatic enemies not consider taking hostages a viable tactic. Unless the Truthseekers put one or two Perfect aboard, they should surrender.

I just hope that they won’t try to play for time until the second fleet arrives.

A while later a haughty statement arrived from the station. They refused to surrender. The person on the screen was very obviously part of the Seekers’ personnel, as no inhabitant of the Republic could have access to such advanced implants (and none of them would display them openly). Before the fleet could react in the only remaining way, another message came.

This time it was from a local, who introduced himself as a representative of the republican personnel on the station. He offered to shut down the station’s weapons and the help of his compatriots in kicking the Seekers out. If, of course, the Guild’s ships would take them away from the system before the other fleet arrived.

“Great. Ask Colonel Nowak if she wants to take a gamble.” The Captain commented. He seemed to have calmed down finally. “Tell her to make it quick.”

***

EGS Echo, Command Deck

00:27 17.07.2610 STT

Commander Lena Drathari

“Well, I guess it’s time to leave this place.” Captain Keller announced. “Leave as in ‘run the fastest we can without overwhelming our inertia compensators’. When can we pick up the refugees from the Tavian station?”

Commander Drathari decided against commenting on the spectacle they got to see ten minutes ago. The message from the head of the Truthseekers’ garrison was made much sweeter when a sudden assault by Colonel Nowak’s marines overwhelmed the station’s bridge. Since the cameras were active and the attack interrupted said message, they all get to see Colonel Nowak caving the officer’s head with her power armor-enhanced punch.

Satisfying. So satisfying. That guy was an asshole.

The Truthseekers seemed to get slightly too complacent. The garrison on the station had no Perfects. Only a platoon of the Endless, the Truthseekers’ cloned cannon fodder. They were good - somewhere on the level of an average army trooper. But not good enough to repel a surprising assault of the marines let in by the Tavian personnel of the station. Of course - they probably wanted Echo to capture the station. For whatever reason.

“If they step on the accelerator in… seven minutes? The distance between us is negligible.” She answered. “The strike teams sent to the battlecruiser and destroyer wreck returned already. Their heavy cruiser is under Lieutenant Commander Innocent’s control, it is steadily accelerating to match up to us. “Taking control over the heavy cruiser computer network - especially one of the Truthseekers - so quickly had to make for a rather fascinating tale. Innocent got its main computer under control, fixed the malfunction of the inertia dampeners and (just in case) liquidated all weapon systems before joining the fleet.”

One or more of them suddenly firing at the Echo due to some well hidden line in its code would ruin everyone’s day. They needed time to reinstall weaponry, while making sure that the Truthseekers hadn’t left any surprises in the system. Weeks, most likely. In the meantime the cruiser could only be used as an improvised transport vessel.

“Great, proceed with our daring escape..” The Captain answered. “Now… I believe it’s about time we get the reports from the other ship. I’m especially interested in the situation on the Agreement.”

So, I guess I’m back to being the first officer. That was an interesting experience. Thus far I only got to command one ship. The Spark was a nice ship, but it was only a destroyer. And it was mostly patrol work, so fighting was almost unheard of.

“Significant casualties to crew. The round bounced off, but... well, I suspect that whatever corporation built it tried to cut corners with everything not considered 'crucial'." She replied. "So while the armor hold off, there are some serious damages to the general hull structure due to impact. The ship probably shouldn't engage anything heavier than a destroyer in combat without a visit to the shipyard."

“So, we lost one and a half light cruisers.” The Captain said. Commander Drathari agreed with his assessment. “More than I hoped, less than I feared. Supplies?”

Why is he asking me these questions? He could check the data himself.

“Once we unload some of the Hercules’ supplies, we should be ok with at least one more regular engagement.” Then the lack of the friendly port in the vicinity was going to take its toll on them. “However, that’s about all. After one battle we’ll run out of ammunition and fuel for the evasive thrusters.” The supply ship could just produce necessary things - if they didn't kill all of Hercules engineers, and weren't on the run. Spending a while in some asteroid belt wasn't an option.

“Thankfully, it’s not like we can survive an engagement with the other fleet. So a lack of supplies after a battle is the least of our worries.” Commander Drathari felt a sudden urge to throw something at the captain. “Call off the combat alert, we return to normal functioning. By the way, there’s something I’d like to ask you about.”

“Oh? What is it about, Captain?” He suddenly seemed to be back in his relatively normal behaviour. So she could expect the unexpected.

“Would you like to become the Captain of our new acquisition?” This was about as unexpected as unexpected could go. She would stare at him with empty eyes, but she programmed her Doll to not make her display a surprise of this magnitude. The program overrode her reaction and made her look calm.

“That’s… unexpected.” She said. Calm and collected on the outside. Certainly not as much on the inside. “What’s the catch?”

“Well, I’m not giving out ships for free, you know.” She wasn’t surprised.

The best she hoped at the end of her training was some dilapidated light cruiser, whose maintenance would cost her half of the income. Here she was facing a prospect of getting a cutting-edge heavy cruiser. More than cutting-edge, in fact - the Truthseekers’ technology was low grade exotech in its entirety.

The list of ‘payments’ she considered to be too much for her was rather short.

“I’m starting to think that you are imagining something rather horrible.” He said, pulling her out of her thoughts. He chuckled seeing her face. “No, I did not mean you paying back for the ship in the bedroom, who do you take me for?” She made sure not to sigh with relief. Especially as she would probably agree to that.

It’s not like it was her body. Her real body was in the ‘Artificial’ Reality. She treated the doll and her entire life in the ‘real world’ like the natives considered their avatars in virtual games. Still, it was a bit of a relief.

Mostly because he would lose a lot in her eyes if he tried that. And by a lot she meant ‘almost his entire worth as a human being’. He would still be a wonderful tactician, but also trash as a person.

“It’s all about your performance as an executive officer during your training with me.” Keller continued. “You are doing mighty fine thus far. If we manage to get out of the current mess with some surplus ships, I’d have to be a total bastard not to give you a ship, for as long as you pass.” This did make sense. “Although, it probably won’t be our new acquisition. I’d gladly take that one for myself, if we manage to keep it.”

“For yourself? What about the Echo?” Was Keller trying to amass himself a small fleet? If he repaired the current ships and trained their crew properly, he had enough firepower to topple a government of some small, subsector protectorate.

He shrugged. “Lena, my dear, don’t get overly attached to ships.” She tended to get very attached to them. She loved her Spark. “Sure, treat them nice and they’ll treat you nice in exchange. But don’t get attached. The Seekers tech is much better, and so is the survival chance of all the nasty shit that life throws at us, Guild’s officers. I still do miss my old Halberde sometimes, though.” She made a mental note to try to find out more about that ship. It was curiously absent from Keller’s ‘official’ records she read before joining the crew.

Being a Virtual had its perks. It took her few seconds to run a query through the ship’s database and briefly read through the data available to her now.

EGS Halberde. Baltimore-Class light cruiser from the United States. Crew: 279. Destroyed in combat against a heavy cruiser of the TERROR BLACK [her security clearance wasn’t high enough to decode the cryptonym] in 2587. Six survivors, all discharged or left the Guild in the aftermath. Two of them rejoined it years later: Commander Alexander Keller and Enlisted 1st Class Tiaa Sistonen.

A light cruiser under Keller’s command getting cornered by a heavy cruiser? Either TERROR BLACK was a threat on the level of TERROR CYAN, or Keller wasn’t such a genius tactician back then.

He probably was a genius tactician back then. Or at least more dangerous in close quarters than he appeared to be. One of the few uncensored bits of the report said that the survivors returned to civilization aboard the enemy heavy cruiser they captured.

She suddenly remembered the firefight on the Echo’s bridge, when Keller surprised and killed the marine. He was calm, focused, and almost relaxed while doing so. With her Doll (being slightly above normal human reaction speed and strength) and her training she was above average when it came to combat skills for ‘normal’ crew members of the Navy. Yet she managed to kill a marine only by quite literally respawning right behind him.

Was the Halberde's demise caused by the Hao Yunqi-style maneuver gone wrong? She decided to try to dig for the answer. Tiaa Sistonen didn’t seem to be a person that would get talkative, but the chances of getting some knowledge out of her was larger than in the case of the Captain Enigma himself.

“Well, I guess I’ll go then.” The Captain added. “End this shift for me.”

She decided to wordstab him one last time. A small payback for what he made her consider with his ‘what would you do for such a ship’ talk. But also a small probe of his current mindset, clearly shaken but she wasn’t sure why.

“By the way, Captain.” He stopped and turned his head towards her. “What was really the reason behind you being shocked by that ghost frigate?”

His face was a mix of emotions she wasn’t sure how to interpret. “Well, let’s just say that Christopher's angels are rather frightening.” He said finally. “Seeing a ghost of my past has really made me understand my role to play.” Then he left. She decided that she knew more before she asked that question.

***

EGS Echo, Crew Deck

06:24 17.07.2610 STT

Cadet Christopher Hall

A squad of infantry managed to flank the heavy troopers. While woefully lacking in heavy weaponry, their rain of fire was still enough to fell a few heavies and interrupt the assault.

“Are you willing to concede defeat?” Tendrik grinned at Rukh, who answered with an irritated growl.

Christopher chuckled. A few more minutes and his tanks would roll through both of his opponents. He was more than content to watch his two opponents fighting for a barely important checkpoint.

The living quarters of the recovery team were quite rich in entertainment. This included the option to use the screen (which was very, very large) as a board for a tabletop wargame. The screen could be moved around and was currently placed in the middle of the room, with the display facing the ceiling. Rukh, Tendrik, and Christopher stood around it, observing the battle, and with a specialized UI overlay censoring parts of the map their side wasn’t aware of to simulate the fog of war.

How smart it was to place that deep recon squad there, huh? Now I can watch an entire company of mechanized infantry with several tanks hiding right behind that hill and ready to roll through them both only when I get bored of watching that two butcher each other. Just. As. Planned.

“I’m going to master this game. And then I’m going to show you your place.” Rukh half spoke, half growled. His intense competitiveness in any field even remotely connected to the military never changed.

Christopher still felt slightly surreal. Battle had barely ended, lots of people died, and yet they were just casually playing a game. Sure, it was a way of venting out the recent stress. Probably a better way than the one Ryan picked - he had scheduled a date for ‘after the battle’ with an Enlisted from one of the engineering teams.

Since she was from an APD country (a tiny bit laxer on such issues than the RPC’ countries), Christopher was almost certain that Ryan’s way of letting the stress leave his body included a lot of physical activity.

Part of Christopher envied the team’s engineer a lot.

“Good luck with that!” Tendrik managed to shake off his earlier wariness in Rukh’s presence. “I might suck in Longest War, but this game’s my strong po… wait, really?” Christopher’s tanks crossed the hill and began rolling down towards the forces of Tendrik and Rukh that were still engaged in all-out combat. They opened fire, taking full advantage of their position. Both the cyborg’s and the Variant’s support vehicles blew up one after another.

“Yep.” Christopher nodded, unable to stop his grin. “It’s a mystery why none of you had an idea to seize that hill.” The nearest enemy forces started breaking apart. Christopher’s tanks tore apart vehicles and heavy weapons positions that were placed to face the wrong direction. Infantry and APCs that followed the tanks were sweeping the survivors.

Rukh’s forces broke quickly, as Tendrik’s earlier maneuver already had them on their knees. The cyborg managed to muster one counterattack with his reserves, but Christopher expected that to happen. One quick flanking maneuver and Tendrik’s forces were in a total rout.

“Like… HOW?!” Tendrik scowled. “How do you keep doing that to me in every game other than Gates of Infinity?!” He didn’t add that, but in GoI his avatar was ten levels above Christopher, as the cyborg started playing earlier.

“Maybe I’m just naturally gifted?” He also played a certain popular tabletop wargame like a maniac for a while. This game was like a much more realistic and real-time strategy version of wargames of old. “Seriously though, how did both of you overlook that hill?!”

“I officially forbid you to complain about how Tiriel seems to be too good at everything.” Tendrik was bitter. “You are Tiriel’s equivalent in videogames. And that’s ATROCIOUS. Though at least in the Longest War she managed to defeat you.”

“Three times out of five, remember. It was a close defeat.” He was going to defeat her next time, he was sure of it. He also refused to buy her ‘well I did not play the game for long so my skills are slightly rusted’ bit - she was positively vicious in her gameplay.

“And you? You see this as insufferable too, right?” Tendrik said to Rukh. The wolfman shrugged.

“He was better than me. Complaining instead of trying to get better to return the favor is a loser’s attitude.” Christopher considered calling Lith to their quarters for a while because that was quite the third-degree burn.

“You…” Tendrik reacted with anger, but he quickly remembered that Rukh could twist him into a pretzel with his bare hands. “Guh. A rematch? Or we could do a campaign mission together. I’d like to see Christopher’s commanding skills from a different angle.”

“Why not. What about you, Rukh?” Christopher asked.

The wolfman nodded. Once he began opening to other members of the team, he turned out to be a rather interesting person. Very short-tempered and not talkative at all, but for as long as you knew how to handle him it was manageable.

“So, uhm, by the way... should we… I dunno… do something about Ryan?” Tendrik asked suddenly, bringing the talk to the unexpected and not very welcome (at least by Christopher) field of the engineer's surprising popularity about the women of Echo.

“Like what? Ask him for tips?” Rukh spoke concisely. And triggering an outburst of laughter in Tendrik and Christopher.

“Yeah, good point.” Tendrik commented. “We’re not exactly the most popular people aboard, right? I can understand myself and Rukh, but have no idea why Christopher counts in too.” Christopher refused to have the ‘I’m not bringing anyone back to the 21st century’ talk again. Also the fact that Tendrik seemed oblivious to the fact that Nekia had a crush on Christopher said a lot about his competence on this field.

“I didn’t see you trying, to begin with.” Christopher said.

The battle started. The mission they chose was the sixth mission of the campaign describing the Third Succession War. One of the planetary battles between the Provisional Governing Council and the Semann Government’s forces under Liberator’s direct command. Three piece flanking maneuver over some poor PGC’s sods.

Of course, the real battle started in the living quarters of the Echo’s Crew Deck. The worst type of battle ever - the talk about relationships.