Starboard Torpedo Battery #21 USS Colombia
"Shield buster up!"
A I 14 foot long, 1 ½ foot wide torpedo emerges from a conveyor. Three men man handle it onto trolley embedded in the floor, and clamp it in. After it's pulled away from the armored doors of the conveyor, it is spun 90 degrees to line it up with the tube At the same time, a man with a device that looks something like a combination of a wrench and a bammer, inserts it into a small slot in the side of the torpedo, and twists it. All of the men wear light space suits, so that they battery can continue functioning even in the event of atmosphere loss.
"Timer set" he shouts backing away as the weapon is shoved into the tube and sealed.
"Vac it!"
A button is pushed, and the outer doors of the tube open and the torpedo is exposed to hard vacume.
Inside the battery,
"Target locked."
"Fire."
The entire battery turns slightly to bring its eight tubes to bear on a cruiser over a thousand miles away.
And all at once, eight torpedoes fire in sequence, first two to break the shields, second to to punch a hole in the hull, and the last four to penetrated to the core of the ship, where they explode with a force measured in megatons.
Then the cycle is repeated, eight times over.
Flight deck #2 Carrier USS John Barker
The sound of air being sucked out of an airlock as a pallet of ordinance rises out of the magazine deep in the bowls of the ship to be loaded onto one of the dozen different types of craft carried by the ship. It is accompanied by a man in a red space suit. He wheels the pallet to a waiting A194 Hell Bat fighter bomber
A man in purple pulls away a fuel line as he arrives, and another man in red comes to help load. All overseen by a man in brown.
Across the deck, a fighter limps back to the flight deck, crashing as it passes the threshold of the artificial gravity. Men in white and red rush to help the wounded bird, pulling the pilot and any remaining ordinance form the vehicle.
At the A194, the pilot emerges from a door in the hanger wall, having grabbed a quick cup of coffee and a bathroom break while his plane is prepped. The ordinance pallet is pulled away and sent back to the magazine for another load and the red shirts and purple shirts retreat, replaced by men in yellow in yellow and blue. A tractor is hooked up to the front of the plane, as the pilot climbs in and the final checks are made. When everything is deemed working it is pulled to a long rail in the floor. The front wheel is locked into place, the tractor goes back to fetch the next plane, and the final preparations for launch are made. The pilot gives the all clear, and this is echoed by a man in yellow. A second later, the plane is shot into space to complete it's mission, its wing passing only a foot over the head of the man in yellow.
As soon as the plane is out of sight, another returns from the void, landing with the assistance of cables laid on the deck It is pulled into position, and there is the sound of air being sucked out of an airlock as another pallet rises from the deep.
Author's notes- Ok, a very human centric chapter, what I wanted to do was give a good idea of what it is like to fight in the human navy. For reference, on the carrier, flight deck #1 in on top of the ship and flight deck #2 in on the bottom of the ship
An A194 looks a lot like a jet version of a P-38 Lightning, with more bombs and missiles and guns.
And I got the idea for the inside of the torpedo battery from combining the torpedo room of a submarine and the turret of a battleship.
