Chapter 10
Tarsas
Supply base gamma 9-573-PMW
The battle was more of a skirmish than a real fight. This soon turned out to be because the replicator home world had been destroyed causing Katie to recall most of the core powers and granted the fleet a moral boosting victory.
Already half of the supply shuttles were away and the armed cargo cruisers were for the most part doing the job of fire support.
Lorne: Jacobs, target the incoming wave of raiders and cover that shuttle.
Jacobs: yes sir!
Lorne: Mike, bring us into escort formation over the next wave of shuttles and cover them until they jump, oh and bring up an ammo counter.
Mike: why the ammo counter?
Lorne: because the moment we go dry I want to jump on out.
Mike: sir, yes sir!
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The battle went something like this.
The fifty X-304s moved in a rough and loose battle line with the intent of stopping the auroras in their tracks. The basestars had no weapons to speak of as they were carriers by design. The cargo cruisers moved in to cover the shuttles and fend off raiders. In the main battle the auroras were caught off guard on arrival and lost five ships before they realized what had happened. The humans had fought well, but the ancient designers had built the ships to take a beating. The humans had made hyper capable fighters and though limited in number such vessels proved to provide an extreme tactical edge as most ships were designed so that by the time they would be vulnerable to fighter attack they would likely be without shields and promptly destroyed. The fighters bypassed the shields and delivered a nuclear device to the ship before jumping out and getting away. Once again shields prove to be a great undoing of this age. In the dawn war ships were designed so that even one, or several for that matter, nuclear strikes would not completely destroy the ship and leave all aboard dead. The shields meant that armor was replaced with a completely bypassable defense; this is because the only true way to stop any attack is to use armor. Mass drivers dent it, missiles vaporize it, and beams cut through it. (A very important thing to remember is that only nukes, and anti-matter, work in space as all other explosives require the presence of air to "explode"). A mass driver is a gun, slingshot, or crossbow. Mass drivers in space work as railguns (magnetic coils used to accelerate a super dense magnetic round to over .8c). EnergyMass times C (the speed of light)2. ForceMass times speed, something big like say a semi truck moving at 80 the speed of light will go up like a nuke when it hits a planet's surface. Now think of a ball of iron coated, depleted uranium (depleted uranium is the stable isotope with the unstable isotope removed) and weighing in at 50 kilotons and fire that at a ship and you get major damage. The railguns on the deadalus and smaller more rapid fire versions of that which was just described. The fact is that at the speeds a rail gun sends the projectiles off at there is, a moderate chance, that the bullet will bypass the shield entirely. This is because a shield is an oscillating field of energy. The power turns on and of rapidly causing the effect of an impassable barrier. A beam weapon is basically a laser in its most basic form. A laser is simply a beam of light used to cut, burn, or drill through an object/target. As one can clearly see light clearly penetrates a force shield or the ships would be rendered invisible to each other. Plasma is more closely related to mass drivers than beams, but plasma just is to not dense to be a mass driver. As a matter fact plasma can not even be used as a weapon unless in bomb form because plasma forms at temperature hot enough to flash vaporize steel. In fact the very idea of a shield is pretty much moot, given that if someone were to fire a ray/beam of plasma at a ship the impact would seem to ignore the shields do to the oscillations. On another topic, space battles would be fought in a cross between navy destroy/aircraft carrier combat and air force fighter maneuvers. The fact is that a fighter pilot is best suited for space combat because he/she would already be trained to fight in a three dimensional space. (Review with questions). However a navy commander and crew would also be well suited for combat in space because of the fact that they always follow strategies and perform procedures by the book. Just because an air force pilot is best suited does not make navy crews inadequate. The most logical thing to do would be to train a new force from scratch.
Hyper space is a wormhole.
However it is possible to make a functioning conventional explosive using a sealed artillery shell that had air in side it would make an excellent shrapnel launching device, basically an anti-personnel shell. The explosion would be absorbed by the fact that space is a near vacuum. The atoms of the rapidly expanding gasses would try to fill the near vacuum by spreading out. I said near vacuum because there is, approximately, one atom of deuterium (hydrogen atom plus one neutron) per cubic meter. Fact is space abores a vacuum and also nothing sucks. A black hole pulls with intense gravity (the weakest and most abundant force in the known univers is gravity).
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In the fiery lights cargo hold/factory deck.
A couple hundred thousand ghost Special Forces units await the speech from the Commander.
Tallamee: in a few short days the enemy will launch a massive attack on this base and so we must be prepared. The idea is that they will come to make an example of us all. However the fleet will be gone and the base bombarded from orbit until it is just a smoking crater. Nothing left for them to fine except for dozens of stealth devices that will track the enemy to their main base and the anomaly that they guard. I am taking you with me to find someone who we will need for the attack. Xana will lead the fleet and try to rally all of the ships he can to the battle.
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A figure in a large empty room watches and speaks quietly
Figure: so admiral you have taken what is obviously bait. Yet you Tallamee seem to be leaving the system not trying to fight when you could take the upper hand. This is how you made fleet commander though so I will believe that you have a plan in store. Yet I feel the way that things are going and like in a game of pyramids you are maneuvering the pieces for the last strike, checkmate. But what will happen in the final battle, who will die and vanish, who will live, and why I am the audience to all of this.
A com comes to life on the wall.
Voice: the stealth field will wear off soon mam.
Figure: we must wait just a little more time before we go.
A small soldier runs in and says: we found a small room keyed to your mind. We can't access it.
Figure: upload its location to my neural link.
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In a small sealed room with no way out stood Tallamee. He looked at chair with a device that loads minds in the navigation and fire control main command processors and grants the user complete control of the ship. He sat and activated the chair. This was the gunnery and it lead to what is known to all as ship-space or gun-space.
Tallamee: unlock all gunneries within 5 light-years. And now to link them to me, once linked I can stop the ship or fly it remote from here.
Yoko: wow, this will be very useful in future battles.
Tallamee: well well well. What have we here?
Yoko: how did you get here on my ship?
Tallamee: I, am currently on my ship sounding battle stations and moving to engage your ship.
Yoko: but my ship is stealthed, you can't shoot what you cant see.
Tallamee: who said anything about shooting?
Yoko: well then what are we going to do.
Tallamee: as your superior, I have the power to do this.
Tallamee proceeded to take both the fiery lights and flaming avenger into hyperspace.
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The end
I apologize for my long tech rant, but shields simple are not even explainable. Have you ever tried to use an electrical field to stop a bullet, because a shield is basically an electrical field?
Review or pay dearly!!