Three months after Operation Dagger, ZRI-2247:

He stared out at the wreckage on the screens. They had been here hours, and the sooner they left the happier he would be. Being in the middle of a giant ship graveyard was not exactly calming on the nerves. Especially when every single vessel clearly belonged to the same civilization, had clearly been sunk within hours of each other, and to top it all off they numbered in the thousands. Tens of thousands if you counted fighters and other light craft.

Finally, his science officer looked up from her console, “Sir, I have completed my analysis.”

“Great! What can you tell me?”

“Well beyond the obvious, not much more. What is interesting is that many of these hulls were destroyed by coherent particle beam weapons. I analyzed the signatures and they appear to be remarkably similar to the signatures found on those depleted worlds along the border.”

Listening he was getting a picture he did not like. Then she continued, “Others were destroyed by some kind of compressed plasma weapon. The damage patterns indicate compressed plasma penetrated the hull of some ships, and then detonated.”

“Compressed plasma? Are you sure?”

She nodded grimly, “Positive. The damage patterns are consistent with a plasma detonation, one hot enough to melt solid neutronium. That last capital ship we scanned, the one with the massive chunk missing from its upper hemisphere and penetrating nine-tenths of the way to the core, had solid neutronium bulkheads, and armor. It was melted through.”

He remembered that ship, preliminary scans indicated it was likely a force flagship. It had significantly fewer weapon mounts than comparable scanned vessels, heavier armor, indications of stronger shields, and a much more robust communications and sensor systems. Along with the remains of a fairly powerful central computer. Multiple damaged secondary computers had also been identified.

“So you are telling me that was done with compressed plasma weapons?”

Her expression told him that she was scared, “That was done with a single penetrating hit to the hull. The weapon detonated with a force of roughly 6700 Ieosas. Imagine that, a plasma detonation that powerful.” She shuddered.

He understood why his science officer reacted that way, weapons which were that powerful are practically unheard of. Hell, even weapons that could penetrate neutronium armor are rare. His ship didn’t even carry weapons like that. A weapon with that kind of yield would be devastating if it detonated on the surface of a planet. It would not blow it up, but it would put a good amount of material into orbit. The amount depended on where it exploded though. He was not sure the best case spot for it was, but the real danger would be the massive quakes such a detonation would cause.

He looked around, staring at the screens. The scope of the battle had been massive. Space was littered with drifting hulks, and yet not one could be found of the ships they had fought. That combined with recent information painted a picture he did not like. The race they were looking for was very advanced, and clearly ahead of them, especially in weapons. Evidently they had the numbers, defenses, and weaponry to annihilate this large fleet without loss. Either that or they were very thorough and quick about cleaning up their own losses. He already knew the battlefield was only a few short days old when they found it. Personally he hoped it was the second option. “I guess now we know why these aliens have been stripping worlds near our borders for materials. They are at war with these sphere building aliens.”

“That does seem to be a reasonable conclusion, but it is not the only possibility. Best not to jump to conclusions yet.”

He knew that, and so asked, “Is there anything else we can conclude?”

She gave the racial equivalent of a sigh, and said, “Not much. Without an intact data module, we can’t be certain what exactly occurred here. I did notice a few things. While not immediately apparent, it is now clear we were not the first to get to these wrecks. Any functioning technology has already been removed.” She paused and brought up some charts, “Our extensive scans have given us a model for what their ship classes looked like when they were whole. We have enough scans for a fairly complete picture. This picture allowed us to determine that a significant amount of debris remains unaccounted for. We are unable to account for nearly a fifth of the expected mass of this debris field. That led me to run a few more models, and I think the battle was not as one-sided as it looks.” She paused and brought up another series of models.

“I used a number of factors, but keep in mind that I can’t be certain. Based on debris spread, drift, and light recorded from probes, I was able to put together a decent picture. I also got us some fuzzy images of their opponents. This appears to have been a major engagement, and the other side accounted for an extra 15 to 25 percent of the debris. All of which is gone now.”

“Wait! We have an image of the aliens we are looking for?”

She nodded, and changed images on the screen, “As I said it is rather fuzzy.”

He looked at it, and had to agree it was a fuzzy image, “Do we have any better ones or can you clean it up?”

She gestured no, and then commented, “That is the cleaned-up version. As near as I can tell, these aliens must have some kind of cloaking technology. Makes their ships really hard to spot.” She pressed a button and the outline of the ship lit up, and he took a moment to better view it.

The image was fairly poor, and only a partial outline was seen. It was a still image of what looked to be a dark saucer-shaped ship firing a vibrant violet beam into the hull of a sphere-shaped destroyer. The glow the beam gave off from high-intensity particle vibrations generating the observed light which partially illuminated the ship, but not by much. The beam was not giving off as much light as you might expect from a beam that powerful. A sign that they were actually pretty good at keeping their energy streams contained. So while vibrant, the beam was pretty dim compared to other light sources, and energy weapons he had seen. The light was the visible manifestation of a phenomenon known as dissipation, or energy bleed. Most energy weapons suffer from it. After an energy weapon is fired, the energy of the shot starts to bleed off into space often as visible light. Weapon designers try to limit this with containment. Spatial fields are a common way of doing it because by slowing the dissipation rate of a shot, the power of the hit increases, and this also increases the range of the weapon. This also means you can learn a few things about a weapon by looking at the light it gives off. Also, it is important to note that while energy weapons don’t have the range of ballistic weapons, they tend to hit harder, fire at roughly equivalent rates, and the shot travels faster. Also, the shot interestingly enough is typically harder to spot before it hits a vessel. Not to mention not all energy weapons suffer from dissipation. Lasers were notorious for the fact that they did not, and tended to be invisible to the naked eye. Although there were cases for when they were visible. Lasers tended to diffuse, and eventually, they diffused to the point that they were harmless.

Lasers were the first energy weapons for most civilizations, and while their tendency to diffuse and not dissipate gave them greater range than most. They fell out of favor with the military for a reason. The advent of shields was the downfall of the laser. They just could not penetrate shields as effectively as other energy weapons. At least early lasers could not, but the second stone was the advent of spatial projectors. They allowed the shorter ranged but more powerful particle and plasma-based weapons to better compete with them in terms of range. As the tech improved the range advantage diminished, and they just could not keep up with the power of other weapons. Even today ballistics and lasers were the longest ranged direct fire weapons. Ballistics were too easily countered, and lasers just did not have enough stopping power to be competitive weapons. Suddenly a thought struck him. He rushed to the console and had it run a few simulations based on what they knew of that weapon.

The console took mere moments to finish the calculations, and display the results. He had thought the particle signature a little odd, and now he was looking at the proof. His science officer gasped when she saw the result. “Not a simple coherent particle weapon. It seems our friends completely did away with spatial projectors. This is a particle laser. I don’t know how, but they have lased the particle stream.”

She nodded, and said, “I’m not sure of the advantage of doing it. In theory, they have the range of lasers, but the stopping power of a particle stream. In practice, I have no idea. What I can conclude is that lasing the stream greatly increased the range beyond conventional particle weapons. At least with what data I have.”

He was interested in how they did it. Especially given the lack of the normal spatial markers in the particle signature. The ones that would indicate that a spatial projector had been used to keep the beam contained and focused on the target. The idea of a particle laser was something their scientists had been playing with for decades. An idea that had its merits, but a practical design had not been created. “Interesting, but it doesn’t look like we can learn more here.”

Turning to the helm, he ordered a course out of the field. A fact that should improve morale, as it was always discomforting to be in the middle of a massive ship graveyard.

Countryman set down the report. Apparently they had a visitor during their salvage operations of a recently destroyed Cylovan fleet. The largest they had sunk in this sector in a direct attack. They had targeted the fleet primarily because of one ship. A vessel that they had classified as a Cylovan Command Ship. They had been a little surprised when they first learned it existed, but when you thought about it, it made sense. A Cylovan Command Ship was effectively a powerful mobile processing node with numerous strategic applications. The importance of the nodes was likely why the ship was so heavily armored. The ship has shields more than three times the strength of a dreadnought, and pure neutronium armor nearly three kilometers thick.

Needless to say, it had not been easy to bring the ship down. The ship had been brought down after an hours-long engagement between the ship, and the carriers Matriarch, Queen, Kingdom, and Warlord. Supporting those cruisers were the heavy cruisers Phoenix, Arizona, Tokyo, London, Berlin, Accentor, Eagle, Harrier, Warbird, Voyager, and the Sword of Sparta. A number of destroyers and light cruisers had also participated. Needless to say, these ships were not able to make their attack unharassed, as Cylovan ships moved to protect their command ship.

The fighting had actually been quite heavy. During the battle, they had lost two of the four carriers engaged with the flagship. The Kingdom and the Warlord, Along with the heavy cruisers, London, Tokyo, and Berlin. Thankfully, a recent salvage report revealed that it was possible to rebuild the Warlord, London, and Berlin. Enough of their starframe had remained intact that only minor repairs would be needed to the frame, but almost every module on board needed to be replaced. The other two ships could not be rebuilt. They had been blown apart when their reactors lost containment, and it had been a pain to locate all the fragments. Their remains were best used for repairing other vessels.

He hoped the sacrifices had been worth it, but he had to wait to learn if it was. They were still analyzing the data on the modules they had managed to recover from the command ship. Modules that he hoped would contain vital intelligence on Cylovan movements and plans in this sector.