Commander Shepard
JSSV Horizon, Horizon-class Exploration Frigate
UNSC Military Calendar: February 3, 2561

Commander Hannah Shepard sat in her captain's quarters next to the bridge of the first Joint Species Alliance ship, the first purpose-built exploration vessel in a hundred years, and the first ship commissioned with a multi-species crew in mind. It incorporated advancements from both species- the UNSC's new Mark XII Macedon slipspace drive, jointly-designed pulse lasers, a Musashi Heavy Industries ZPF-X3-F fusion reactor, you name it. Even if the Joint Species Alliance existed only on her ship as an effectively farcical organization and the Joint Species Space Vessel Horizon was effectively under UNSC FLEETCOM control, the venture was, arguably, a greater step forward for reconciliation and progress in human-alien relations than the limited joint-species access on Shanxi, and the greatest since, well, the end of the war.

She remembered the day she first saw the ship at the Reyes-McLees Shipyard at Mars, its graceful yet threatening form, various curved and sharp edges, and gleaming white armor that turned purple when the light hit it just so made it look like the start of a new era. Like hope, even. Talking to its lead designers, Samantha Cole and the sangheili Thyco 'Tegram had only reinforced those feelings. Its classic, boxy yet squat design mimicked the threatening queues found in the Strident heavy frigates yet it somehow looked dignified, refined, and independent. Hell of a lot nicer-looking than the first ship she was stationed on, the Everest, back in '41.

On the opposite side of her bed, the television was playing Humanity's News Network on mute. Text about miscellaneous, lesser news danced across the bottom of the screen- ...Singh calls the Mantle a farce; More ONI Blackgate documents leaked; Jiralhanae homeworld siege con... Talking heads giving a crude summary of the great war were superimposed over images of the tomb world of Harvest. Commander Shepard's attention was elsewhere as she looked at the video screen in front of her, the display alive with her children in daycare on the lone colony in the system, Shanxi.

"And that's Lobabo's favorite poem!" Jane exclaimed.

Hannah snapped out of her reverie. "Aw, is that right, honey?" Lobabo and Iyaga were a bonded mgalekgolo pair and, together with a retired human soldier and an old sangheili swordmaster, formed a daycare center that Shepard's children attended, near the outskirts of Shanxi's capital city. Lobabo himself rumbled a note of approval in the background. "Hey, could you get John on for me, honey?"

"Yes, mom." Jane turned and, at the top her lungs, yelled an ear-piercing "JOHN! Mom's on the phone!"

A distant "coming!" could be heard, followed by the stomping of a five year old's feet through a hallway.

"Thanks, baby," Hannah warmly smiled, "I wish I could be groundside with you. Listen, I'll talk to you soon, okay?" Shepard would have been tucking her daughter into bed had her ship's interferometer not detected what appeared to a gravitational wave coming from the artifact just inside of the kuiper belt of the Shanxi system yesterday. Now, her Horizon sat next to the ONI base built to examine the strange alien object, with its smooth, covenant-esque teardrop shape and curious floating rings, the commander at the ready to evacuate the researchers onboard.

"I'm not a baby!" Jane Shepard rebelliously turned to look at the doorway. The frown on the young girl's face just tore right into Hannah, though the sight of John barging through the doorway suitably offset that feeling.

"Of course you're a big girl now, but you'll always be my baby." Jane turned back at the camera and the slightest hint of a smile peeked through her frown. She climbed onto the back of her enormous daycare monitor as John's face took up the vid screen.

"Hey mom!"

"Hey John! How's it going?" his mother asked, a massive grin spreading across her face as she did so. John's energy, enthusiasm, and purity always brought Hannah happiness, especially after her husband passed away three years ago.

"Great!" John said, practically jumping as he did, "Gym master Ludomai," he made a series of karate poses as he began explaining, "said I'd be a great warrior one day and bring honor to my kaidon!"

"Yeah?" Hannah sat back and stymied a chuckle, though her massive smile betrayed her emotions entirely.

"Yeah! Him and I are training in our spare time!" John picked up an empty bottle of milk and made a thrusting motion with it as though it were a rapier. "Watch out, covies!"

"Sounds like pretty tough training!"

"Yeah! Hey mom, Mister Ludomai told me that a great warrior is pure of body and mind, but you smoke. How can you defend yourself if you're smoking?"

An alert popped up in the bottom left of the screen. Shit, what now? "Johnny," Hannah glanced down at the console below the screen with a look of exasperation before looking back, "the crew needs mommy. I'll have to talk to you later, okay, and we can talk about smoking then. For next time, your assignment is to think of a birthday present for yourself."

"Aye aye, Commander Mom!" John raised his right arm in salute.

"Good job, trooper. Dad would have been proud. Stay safe out there, and take care of your little sister for me." She stared at the screen for a bit as John waved and killed the conversation. Hannah pulled yet another comforting cylinder of tobacco out of her pocket, stuffed it into her mouth with that familiar, practiced motion, and opened the alert window. "What's wrong, Marco?" she asked as she moved a tarnished metallic lighter to the tip of her cigarette. She lit it with her left hand, her right blocking the non-existent wind out of sheer muscle memory.

The ship's onboard artificial intelligence, Marco Polo, popped into view. "Commander, the tuning fork is changing mass. It may be activating."

"What?" Hannah sprinted out of the room, the cabins doors opening with a smooth, mechanical hiss, her lighter in hand. She pulled right, immediately followed by another right to arrive the bridge. "What's the situation?" she asked as the doors opened, cigarette moving with her lips as she spoke.

"Shipmaster," her XO, a sangheili named Sorum'Varum, gave a traditional salute of his fist over his heart, "a signal was sent out from the artifact and its mass has been changing."

Hannah took a drag and exhaled. "Do we know why the sudden mass shift or anything about it?"

"We are blind, shipmaster."

Hannah filed that under the 'fuck ONI' category. They always knew more than they were letting on. "And Marco, what's the deal with the signal?"

A middle aged man in puffy garb appeared from the AI's holotable. "My commander," he began in a thick, venetian accent, "it was more of a pulse than a signal. I cannot make anything of it."

"I'm not taking any chances. Pull the teams off of that ONI base and take us to full combat alert, tac-con two. Arm the HORNET mines they left floating next the tuning fork." The lights changed from a clear white to a soft red as sirens and intercoms began broadcasting to the crew. On the display, the alien object's rings began turning, first slowly. "And make it fast." Hannah put the butt of the lit cigarette to her mouth and pulled as her mind raced through what this device could possibly do and how many of those possibilities ended with the death of everyone onboard. On one monitor, the rings kept spinning faster and faster. On the other, a pair of pelicans left the structure built around the fork.

Her curiosity was sated moments later. The space seemed to bend for a moment as a hulking column of Titanium-A appeared next to the teardrop-shaped artifact. Gashes and impact craters littered its armored form and, from those wounds, fire spewed forth.

"UNSC IFF," Marco chimed in. "It's the UNSC Everest, sir! We're getting a radio transmission, unencrypted."

Hannah stared at the displays in disbelief for a moment before responding. "Patch it through, Marco."

"This is Vice Admiral Preston Cole of the UNSC, onboard the UNSC Everest. We have a hostile alien fleet on our tail coming through that gate. Requesting immediate assistance. We have VIPs onboard and our slipspace drive is damaged."

Hundreds of contacts began popping up on sensors and made their way onto the tactical map. Corvettes, frigates, and a few moments after that, a pair of light cruisers. None of them had an IFF and none of them were of a known design.

"Marco, forward the transmission to Shanxi and FLEETCOM. Open an encrypted radio comm to the Everest. Bridge it with Shanxi's battlenet." She cleared her throat. "UNSC Everest, this the JSSV Horizon. Burn hard out of there- we have HORNETs in the area."

"Everest here. Ten-four," the distantly familiar voice of Vice Admiral Preston Cole responded.

"This is Rear Admiral Ryder of the Second Fleet, Battlegroup Omaha. Hang tight, Vice Admiral. Shepard, blow those mines and escort Cole. Follow him into his jump."


Rear Admiral Osborn Ryder
UNSC Lusus, Marathon-class cruiser
UNSC Military Calendar: February 3, 2561

"Follow him into his jump," Rear Admiral Ryder spoke into the holotable next to his chair. He turned to his first officer. "Get as many soldiers off of this ship and on the ground," then turned back to stare over the bridge. "Battle stations, everyone," he yelled out as his hands clapped together. "Tactical condition two throughout the fleet!" He paused for a moment to digest the words on the tip of his tongue. "I'm initiating Harvest Contingency."

The only thing worse than Winter Contingency was the Harvest Contingency. It was created in the aftermath of the opening salvos of the Human-Covenant War over a planet named Harvest, a breadbasket world with farms as far as the eye could see. The eponymous contingency, more a standard operating procedure, had simple goals. Immediately following the call, control of the entirety of the government is given to the military. Start with asset denial and intelligence gathering, no matter the cost. Then, once intelligence has been gathered, make a ruthless counterattack.

Admiral Ryder scanned the holo display of the system as sensor data poured in from the Horizon over the UNSC battle network, eyes darting back and forth trying to absorb the flurry of information presented. Enemy ships: final count stood at four hundred twenty five. His fleet counted at fourteen, all from Second Fleet, plus the Horizon made fifteen. The hundreds of HORNET nuclear mines around the artifact- gate?- would hopefully even the odds. The enemy fleet was mostly tightly clustered. Perfect.

And Shanxi itself? The planet, Ryder decided immediately, was less important than Vice Admiral Cole. Second fleet would most likely be done with its retrofits in a few weeks at most, plus planets were generally replacement, and people were generally expendable. Cole was not.

Besides, if the Everest was so badly damaged, it was extremely unlikely his roughshod fleet of ancient derelicts could hold off the enemy for any length of time; there were only a pair of operational orbital defense platforms over the main continent, and any attack path the aliens took would lead to them firing right onto the planet itself. No, his ships would be the delaying action.

The action was happening near a barren, atmosphere-less planetoid at the edge of the system. A wolfpack could warp on the far side of the planetoid and slingshot around it, giving them enormous amounts of speed on their initial attack pass. That would take about a minute at most. The brunt of the delaying fleet would warp in on an intercept course, moving right near the Everest and give Cole time.

Ryder's lone stealth corvette, commonly known as a "prowler," a single Sahara-class named the UNSC Dark Side of the Moon, would stay back and provide active intelligence to FLEETCOM. The Horizon was already off of the table, its shipborne pulse laser turrets severely punishing the enemy for haranguing the old Valiant-class heavy cruiser. His three Strident-class heavy frigates would form the wolfpack and harass the escort carriers and cruisers. Their speed, maneuverability, and shielding made them a natural choice for the role.

That left his ten older ships to take the brunt of the punishment for the delaying action: three Paris-class heavy frigates, a Charon-class light frigate, a Halberd-class destroyer, four Stalwart-class light frigates, and his personal ship, the Lusus, a Marathon-class cruiser.

Ryder's train of thought took about ten seconds, and barking his orders out across the 'net another twenty.

White orbs enveloped the ONI base, the alien artifact, and the enemy ships. The Horizon's sensors kept the fleet informed through the massive amounts of radiation: enemy fleet size down to a mere three hundred seventy four. Everest: still heavily damaged, but the fire abated for at least a moment. Horizon: shields dropping precipitously, but pulling troves of valuable data from the Everest through its half-functioning optical link.

Fifty seconds. Any marine still on the Lusus was coming along for the ride. Ryder's cruiser's Mark XI Macedon slipspace drive activated and flung him and his crew smoothly across the system, tunneling right through Shanxi's bulk, past an asteroid field, and right on a near-intercept course one hundred fifty kilometers away from the legendary Everest in the span of a fraction of a second.

The onscreen display smoothly shifted to accommodate the battlegroup's new position in space, bows facing the unknown hostiles. Ryder looked at the screen before barking an order. "Lusus, target on cruiser-one. All ships, primary weapons free." A display showing the magnetic accelerator cannons', or MAC for short, charge dropped by fifty percent as the first of two cannons launched a thousand-ton slug, then down to five percent as the second one followed suit. Fleet combat in the modern age was not the ponderously slow game of waiting for missiles to connect like in the 22nd and 23rd centuries. A single second after firing, the first shot connected left-of-center on the back of the alien cruiser-sized ship, sapping the shields and putting it into a rapid counter clockwise spin. The second bisected the center of the vessel, breaking it in half.

The alien fleet responded with a slight yet frighteningly rapid turn and opened fire on the human fleet. Additional fighters began to saturate the in-system view screen.

"All ships, hold fighters. Fire all nukes, plus a missile compliment." The conventional archer missiles would saturate enemy point-defense, whereas the nuclear weapons would get through, damaging the alien ships and annihilating most of the enemy fighter compliment, or so Ryder hoped.

As the missiles left their tubes, nearly the entirety of the alien fleet pulled a turn- while the angular rotation was small in distance traversed, it was brutally quick in rotational acceleration. What those alien ships lacked in durability, they made up for in maneuverability. Regardless, the opening volley had the desired effect: nearly every ship pulled off of the Everest and onto Ryder's battlegroup.

Battlegroup Omaha's missile swarm began its main burns simultaneously as a precipitous volley of enemy fire began pouring down on the vastly outnumbered UNSC fleet. Every two to three seconds, each ship fired again, counteracting their battlegroup-ward acceleration with the reversely-directioned momentum shift of firing of their cannons.

The missile volley still had the desired effect; over two dozen nuclear detonations popped up across the scanners turning twenty five corvettes, a pair of frigates, and a few hundred fighters into space dust. Green orbital lines from the three frigate wolfpack began wrapping around the planet, intercept course moving into the enemy fleet as their engines fired at full-ahead. Forty seconds until arrival.

Many of the advancing red dots on the tactical map disappeared as the white flashes enveloping them dissipated, potentially saving countless human lives in the future. "Now," Ryder responded, "launch all fighters." About hundred GA-TL1 Longsword heavy interceptors and F-41 Broadsword strike fighters poured out of the human ships at the admiral's command.

Ryder's ship was shaking with the pitter-patter of impacts from the kinetic rounds. Both the battlenet and bridge personnel were yelling about damage, though the ol' warhorse was standing up better than other ships in the group. "The Tahoma just ate it!" yelled someone.

"Doesn't matter," Ryder bore into the officer, "how are the MAC charges?"

"Back to forty percent!"

"Good," Ryder calmly said as he looked back to the holographic display of the system, "Fire another shot. Any target." Green dots- his wolfpack- raced around the dull gray side of the Shanxi 7a. They'd be here in twenty seconds.

"Firing! Direct hit, frigate, vaporized the fucker!" yelled out the sensor officer.

"Alright, everyone, keep up fire at forty percent MAC charge. Fire at will."

"Sir," paused a comms officer, "all other ships are reporting that their cannons are ineffective at these ranges! Opposing ships' evasive maneuvers are too fast!"

Rear Admiral Ryder didn't lift his head to acknowledge the officer, but responded with an order. "Keep the Paris-class heavies as a screen. Move all other ships into knife-fight range." Green dots responded by moving to his command towards the field of red. Another of the Stalwart-class escort frigates vanished as a shot breached its reactor.

"This is Wolfpack Alpha lead!" Five more seconds. "Prepping for initial run! Wolfpack beta, swap stragglers off of our six!"

The lone Stalwart-class frigate and Halberd-class destroy raced into the center of the fleet, missiles and point defense firing with abandon. As the lone destroyer, the UNSC Widening Gyre, charged headlong into the maw of the enemy fleet, it rammed a small corvette that was too busy firing on the thick, sloped armor of the Halberd-class and turned the two hundred meters long turian vessel into debris on the proverbial windshield.

Three Strident-class green dots tore across the northern pole of the small, atmosphere-less moon at a prodigious rate. Each fired three four hundred ton projectiles from its forward-facing heavy coils to counteract their blistering orbital momentum. Two of the nine hit, both on alien corvettes that were too busy firing on the Lusus, annihilating both of them, as the friendly UNSC frigates pulled a high-G turn into the core formation of the fleet, their energy shielding glowing brightly with projectile and laser fire. The wolfpack had arrived.

Opposing corvettes and frigates disengaged from the frenzied fire pouring on the Lusus and formed their own counter-wolfpacks. The Widening Gyre and the two remaining Stalwart-class frigates, the UNSC Red Light and the UNSC Difference of Opinion, fired their maneuvering thrusters in preparation for the flyby. Three shots fired, three ships destroyed. High-velocity debris from the lead corvette crashed into another corvette on its wing, breaking its shields and damaging its anterior-starboard thrusters.

One minute, fifteen seconds into the battle, the enemy countered with maneuvers of its own. A flanking force of seven corvettes warped nearly behind the Lusus, above and past her eight-o-clock, and her escorts before doing an extreme about-face and began peppering the vulnerable engine cowlings of the screening fleet. Longswords packs moved to intercept them, but the maneuver was successful. The engines of the large, human cruiser were damaged to the point that firing the main gun would cause too much reverse thrust to maintain a stable orbit. Too much reverse thrust to keep the ship aimed correctly in general.

"Cole," Osborn leaned over to the comm port next to him, "how much time?"

"One more minute, Ryder," he promptly responded.

Sirens and klaxons in the bridge were blaring. "Hangar bay 2b critical," blinked one monitor in a bright, red font on a black background. Another displayed the damaged point defense weapons- thirty four of forty M910s damaged, twenty seven fully disabled. "Engines at sixty seven percent efficiency," one out-of-place monitor calmly stated with no bright or flashy lights. Another shot, this one right down the barrel of his first MAC. It damaged both firing mechanisms.

The aging flag officer understood inevitability. He'd felt it countless times in the war as alien vessels glassed world after world, but this was different. He took a deep breath. "This is Rear Admiral Ryder," Harvest protocol be damned, "all non-critical personnel, abandon ship." They'd be prisoners of war, but at least they had a chance of living. "You have one minute."

Osborn looked down at the floor, that weathered, beaten floor that he'd stood atop of for three decades of nearly non-stop combat, and then looked up. His bridge officers were all at their posts, still doing their jobs- communicating information to each other, coordinating ship-wide action. Good, solid men and women. He'd gotten lucky.

"Alright, all ahead full. Prepare reactors for overload. Ram whatever ships you can." The magnitude of the acceleration pushed him back into his seat, his head cradled in that familiar faux leather-cladded seat. He looked at the holographic table. It looked like an endless sea of blue-green from that position, like the view from the beach apartment on Emerald Cove he once owned. "I want those Paris-class frigates to warp through the fleet and do an about-face."

"Yes sir, relaying orders!" yelled out his comm officer against the ferocity of the g-forces. He was a nice kid, that one, wedding in a few months.

The three large, green blips representing the screen of Paris-class frigates around the Lusus blinked across the sector map and deployed a volley of archer missiles at the rear of the enemy fleet. The Lusus herself continued her acceleration into the heart of the enemy fleet. Fire poured down upon it, further damaging the superstructure from its blunt-force as the moment the old man had been waiting for finally happened. Two green dots, the Everest and the Horizon, disappeared into the void.

"Open comms, all fleet." Rear Admiral Ryder began as his eyes were glued to the tactical map and his back to the seat from the acceleration of his ship. The damage was extensive, and his reactionless drive was just too badly damaged. Entering hyperspace might work, but exiting it would be deadly. There was only a single course of action left. "Men, it has been an honor. Initiate reactor overload, authorization code 07075-73573-OR. Fire all missiles at distant targets. Pass fire control to the Red Light."

"Neural leash challenge accepted," the ship's AI confirmed, "Reactor overload in 10." Ryder smiled. "9." Those bags under his eyes seemed heavier than ever, "8," but the sight of those vanishing red dots couldn't have been more beautiful. "7." He reached into his pocket, "6," and pulled out the picture of his family from before the war. "5." His brother looked so young, peaceful, and unconquerable. "4." His parents looked so wise and calm, like they'd be there forever. "3." His son, just three years old back then, was so full of life. "2." Ryder looked back to his crew with a moue in acceptance. "1." The comms officer smiled and gave a shrug in response.


Author's note:

Happy holidays, everyone! Before I start the physics lecture portion of the author's notes, I want to cover a couple of things:

Firstly, I want to extend a huge thanks to my beta readers Amy Grav and DragoLord19D. Y'all rock. They found a lot of mistakes that I missed on my quality check sessions, so thank you so, so much.

Secondly, as always, I love constructive criticism, questions, or just comments, so drop some off in the form of review! This was my first time writing a space battle, so I'm definitely looking for advice on how to do better. Likewise, if you have questions about how some kind of technology or physical effect works, I'll add it in as lengthy author's note lecture in some future chapter. If anyone asks what you're reading, just tell them you're studying.

And finally, a quick aside before we begin: my model for turian/quarian/dextro/levo incompatibility will be that certain proteins that are found in levo food are poisonous. There are examples of this in nature already, with toxins like verotoxin (found in cattle feces, among other places) interfering with protein production. This is definitely an area where my understanding leaves a lot to be desired, so if someone with some kind of degree in the field (Biology, Chemistry, Biochemistry, Medical Physics, Astrobiology, etc) is interested letting me ask questions, bounce ideas, and just generally being a scientific resource, pass me a PM.

In this chapter, we had actual fleet on fleet combat. Both sides employed railguns, coilguns, magnetic accelerator cannons, whatever you want to call them. Reality, scientific fiction, or plain old fantasy? If they're science fiction or reality, how do they work?

We begin with a simple, regular gun, like the kind your boisterous American uncle might own. When a bullet is fired in a gun, the gunpowder in the casing explodes and a wave of pressure from the compressed gasses imparts energy into both the bullet and the gun going in equal and opposite directions. That's why a gun "kicks," a phenomenon known as recoil.

At some point, adding more and more length to a gun barrel won't help speed up a bullet since the gasses will have imparted as much as energy as they could, at which point friction begins to take over to slow the bullet down.

But hold on, what if there was some way to use a longer barrel to continue to speed the bullet up? By having a longer barrel and some way of pushing or pulling a bullet, the longer the barrel, the more you could push it. The more you pushed it, the faster it could go, meaning more kinetic energy and more damage.

The solution is electricity and magnetism. If we could make use of a current and the Lorentz force, we use the idea that electric and magnetic fields can exert force on a charge.

Enter the railgun. If we put two conducting wires around the outside of a specially designed gun barrel and ran current through them, a powerful magnetic field would be produced. This magnetic field then interacts with an already moving, magnetic projectile by exerting yet more force on it! Coilguns are actually a different design entirely and likely what both factions use, but the idea is similar enough that I won't talk about it in detail.

We're going to do some pretty simple math and physics here, but feel free to skip down a bit if you're averse to that kind of thing- I've included the conclusion below.

In the simplest model possible for a railgun, the formula for the force (F) exerted on the projectile is the strength of the magnetic field of the rails (B) times the current (I) and the length of the rails, i.e. the distance the projectile must travel (d) giving us the equation F=BId. We recall from high school that F is mass (m) times acceleration (a).

Let's look at what these variables mean for the workings of our railgun.

First off, mass (m). The heavier your projectile is, the slower your acceleration is. The slower your acceleration, the smaller your final velocity will be upon exiting the railgun.

Secondly, the longer your barrel is (d), the faster your projectile will hustle.

Then, we reach current (I) and magnetic field (B). In this railgun of ours, the magnetic field itself is dependent on current times a constant (B = c*I), so our acceleration is dependent on the current squared. In practical terms, better reactors give your gun more oomph.

What we're interested in is calculating the speed, or velocity (v) of the projectile at the time it would leave the barrel of the gun, and its energy (E), so we start by making a broad swathe of assumptions about how everything works- all of the constants to the right side of the force equation- B, I, and d do not vary with time or distance (also completely incorrect), and then we note that your velocity at time t is just acceleration over time: v = a*t + your initial velocity. Assuming the initial velocity of our projectile is 0 with respect to the spaceship, we get an equation that looks like this: v = BIdt/m.

But what about that t (time) standing over there? We can solve for t by noting that the bullet will traverse the length of the gun, d, in at^2. t = sqrt(d/a), then, so t = sqrt(m/BI). Remembering that our magnetic field strength, B, is itself proportional to our current, I, our final equation for v is v = dI/sqrt(m).

We're also interested in energy. v^2 is proportional to I^2d^2/m, so mv^2, or kinetic energy (approximately), is proportional to I^2d^2.

We've come up with a model, so let's play with it a bit. Given my simplistic approximations, let's say I wanted to quadruple the power of my gun by increasing energy by a factor of four. To do that, I'd have to double the length of my barrel or, since I^2 is similar to power (energy per unit time), quadruple the power output of my reactor. We can examine the effect visually by plotting y = x^2. You can just copy that into google and get a plot, actually, so I recommend it.

Since barrel length is such a determinant in energy output, it's no surprise that Citadel Council has stipulated that dreadnoughts are such terrifying weapons of war: railguns scale linearly with reactor output and quadratically with length! This is also why UNSC cruisers are so valuable and orbital defense platforms are the terrors of the skies.

What about bullet mass- what kind of effect does that have? We see in our velocity equation, v is proportional to 1/sqrt(m). Let's graph that: y = 1/sqrt(x). The smaller your mass is, the way higher your initial velocity is!

In the next chapter, we'll talk about bullet material, use these results to compare UNSC and Council gun efficacy, and introduce how the mystical, magical mass effect might work in concert with our railguns and coilguns. A few readers (huh, KorPA, A Reader, anotamous) had discussed the realism of the space guns presented in this story, so I hope to placate them all with the next chapter!

So back to question 1, reality, science fiction, or plain old fantasy?

The United States military is actively pursuing research in railguns. In fact, in their Dahlgren facility, a functional railgun is actively being worked on. You can find videos on youtube of it blowing stuff up. It's awesome. The problem with it, right now, is that the rails frequently burn out. From a pure, raw power perspective, it's very performant, but from a maintenance perspective, it's not really feasible right now. The rails actually burn out after only a few shots.

Additionally, people have suggested using railguns to ship durable goods like food, fuel, and water by shooting them into orbit and then landing them somewhere. Ideally, this would be cheaper than shipping those same goods by tanker, but so far nothing has panned out.

Final verdict: reality, but bordering on science fiction.