Kaarin Sanders sat on the bridge of the Imminent Misjump in the company of his fellow crewman, Mundy Krasnyj. He was, de facto, the Captain, even if the Imperial Interstellar Scout Service did not actually use such ranks – his seniority and skillset meant that he outranked his long-time friend and got to sit in the pilot's seat, the tiny starship having no dedicated command position.
The main viewport showed a steady blue, suggesting the factual case of being in jump space.
"It won't be long now," commented Mundy, leaning out of his seat in the nearby sensors station. The iris valve and door in between them were open, in a minor breach of protocol.
"Could be hours," replied Kaarin, swiveling on his chair. He was twirling his grey-flecked moustache boredly. "Did I tell you about the time when me and that paper-pusher from Records were sent to Rhylanor and the jump took eight days?"
"Twice!" Mundy chuckled. "If I recall correctly, he couldn't fit it into his schedule, and used some kind of accounting mumbo-jump in order to backwards – retroactively – define the jump to have taken seven days, in order to make the books show the right results?"
"It was more involved than that, but-"
Kaarin was interrupted by a sudden change of light colour, from the blue, to black.
"Jump complete to Tyr complete! Are we there, Mundy?"
Kaarin reached back and snapped on his vacc suit's helmet, as did Mundy in the other room. This was part of the regulations that no experienced spacer willingly broke.
"Binary star, spectral classes F and M... four gas giants... there's the starport beacon! We're in Tyr alright and – wait a moment, Captain, I'm picking up fusion bursts!"
Kaarin swore under his breath.
"Give me an overview, Mundy."
"Already on it."
Kaarin's HUD was sprinkled with symbols as sensor data came in. The system's giant blue primary and its tiny red companion in the far distance blazed into view, followed shortly by squares indicating the relatively miniscule gas giants in the outer system and the five other, terrestrial worlds. Tyr was indicated by a different colour, marking it as an inhabited planet, approximately a hundred and twenty diameters from the Imminent Misjump's current position.
Red cross-marks dotted the space between them and the main world, indicating recent radiation bursts.
"Who's doing the shooting?" Kaarin demanded.
"Don't know yet, Captain. I've got five jamming sources, putting them on your screen."
Rhomboid indicators showed up on the screen.
"This close to the planet, some of those have got to be the Tyrian System Defense Force," judged Kaarin. "Twenty years ago, they numbered two ancient SDBs and one converted freighter. See if you can't get a good look at them. I'm bringing us in."
"Aye, Captain."
ooo
Commodore Mebalti was not having a good day. Among the reasons for his displeasure was the poor-quality homegrown coffee he had to endure drinking in the unscheduled absence of a shipment of foodstuffs to the world, the definitely substandard nature of the "warship" that happened to be his flag vessel, and the scandal around his daughter's recent behaviour. But most of all, he was displeased by the presence of a hostile force in the system he was supposed to be protecting.
"Defend the Maccabeus! Prioritize point defense as designated," he finger-painted a region of space in the vicinity of the temporarily – he hoped – disabled defense boat.
The attackers had flown in from the outer system, presumably having jumped in around one of the gas giants, refueled and only now coming in to contest the control of the system. They didn't attack immediately, instead first offering the Tyrian SDF a chance to surrender. Naturally, Mebalti refused such an outrageous demand without even bothering to consult with the King. It would have been the end of his career, if he did such a thing, given the lack of obvious advantage the two small attacking ships appeared to have over his three defense vessels.
Something impacted the hull – or made parts of it explode – and the cargo bay lit up on the damage control diagram as losing air. Mebalti ground his teeth.
"Obvious" and "appeared" were the key words, however, and the attacking force knocked out the Maccabeus' M-drive in the opening salvo. The SDF duly returned fire, to no visible detriment of the enemy. Between the three of them, they had nine laser turrets, plus a bunch of obsolete nuclear missile launchers bought cheap from the Aslan some years ago. The opposition had a remarkable variety of weaponry – a couple of plasma cannons, a particle beam and some missile launchers to top it off. If this were Imperial space, those missiles would be almost guaranteed to be conventional, not nuclear, but as it happened, it was not Imperial space.
"New contact, commodore!" half-shouted his sensors officer. "On your screen. A hundred and fifty diameters out."
Mebalti looked.
"Imperial transponder?"
"Yes, sir! Identification as the IISS 'Imminent Misjump'."
"Who the hell names their ship that?" Mebalti wondered aloud, before returning to more salient matters. "The imperials have no love for us, but hail them anyway. They hate pirates more."
"Aye, sir!"
ooo
The Imminent Misjump burned towards Tyr at four gravities, the maximum its M-drive could pull without doing very unpleasant things to the crew.
"Captain, I'm picking up a transmission, but with the jamming and the rads, I can't make out what they're saying," Mandy said over comms. Given a combat situation, it was wise to close the compartment doors, so they did.
"Which one are we getting the transmission from?" Kaarin demanded, staring at their vectors on the HUD. Mandy remotely indicated the salient vessel. "They're coming from inside the hundred diameter limit – all three of those, except this one that seems to be drifting. Those are almost certainly the Tyrian force, meaning the others are the unknown hostile force. Buckle up for combat, Mandy."
A silent moment passed.
"But is it wise to get involved, Captain?" asked the junior Scout.
Kaarin snorted.
"How could I not? This is my homeworld, and those are my people getting killed, and I'll be damned if I didn't get involved if this were the Emperor's personal retinue on the assault – you get me?" he said, in a tone that suggested gritted teeth.
"Aye, sir, buckling up. Am I supposed to lodge a protest about your, um, questionable, hypothetical loyalties?"
Kaarin performed an ancient ritual of exasperation, his hand prevented from reaching his face only by the vacc suit's plastiglass visor.
"Oh, hell with it, just start the jammers before someone locks on us. And open a channel on broadcast, I want to talk at them."
ooo
The human's voice rang clear on the bridge of the mercenary ship, 'Sponsored Destruction':
"Attention Tyrian System Defense Force, attention unidentified hostile vessels! This is Captain Kaarin Sanders of the Imperial Interstellar Scout Ship, 'Imminent Misjump'. On the presumption of the legitimacy of the local government, I am hereby coming to the aid of the defending force. If I am mistaken in my assessment of the situation, you are advised to clarify as soon as possible, to prevent needless loss of life. If I my assessment is accurate, the hostile force is advised to turn around to the hundred diameter limit and leave before they are destroyed. Repeat! Attention..."
"Who the hell names their ship something like the 'Imminent Misjump'?" Captain Ammvarr Harr asked nobody in particular – in remarkably good Anglic, considering his non-human vocal chords – scratching his furry scalp under his trademark fancy tricorn hat.
"The IISS, apparently," answered his XO.
"Screw 'em, we'll take care of them when we're done with the Tyrians," Harr shrugged. "It's just one of those Type S hundred-tonners. They can't do us shit. Ready another salvo!"
ooo
In comparison with even minor skirmishes in the last five Zhodani-Imperial frontier wars, this confrontation was barely a blip. On the other hand, larger battles were very uncommon among the independent systems, which rarely could boast more than a handful of ships in their navies, should they have a space force in the first place.
On the defending side, two heavily armoured system defense boats – obsolete by standards of the neighbouring great powers, but in principle able to hit above their dainty hundred displacement ton weight, given no need to allocate extra fuel and engine space for jump travel – and one converted, uparmoured three hundred displacement ton freighter serving as the flagship. Joining them from the other side of the enemy – a modified Type S Scout.
On the attacking side, one two-hundred displacement ton frigate – armed with a particle beam bay weapon, highly surprising on a ship that small – and a converted mining ship based on the same architecture as the Type S Scouts.
The altercation was taking place near the hundred diameter limit – an arbitrary safety zone within which it was considered unsafe to utilize the jump drives, on pain of the planetary mass' gravitational influence affecting the J-drive's delicate functioning and risking losing the ship with all hands – since the attackers sensibly did not want to commit to staying in the system without the possibility of leaving in an emergency, and the defenders equally sensibly not wanting to risk losing their orbital facilities or exposing their planet to missile bombardment, especially against a foe which seemed weaker than them.
ooo
"How are we doing on that sensor lock, Mandy?"
"Captain, at this range, we can barely make out where they are, much less break through their jamming and establish any sensor locks," replied the junior Scout. "You're going to have to aim manually, sir."
"I guess it's better than just sitting here doing nothing. Take over helm, Mandy, I'm going to give them some appreciation of Imperial beam technology."
"Aye, aye, Captain."
ooo
"Commodore, the Maccabeus' M-drive is online, but the engineer says it's just a patch job that'll fail sooner rather than later," Mebalti's comms officer reported.
"Good-!" he tried to say something more, but a sudden barrage from the enemy flagship and resulting hits and decompression sirens blaring distracted him momentarily. "Damage report!"
"Hit in the port fuel tanks, sir," another officer, one in charge of disseminating such information, supplied helpfully. "Hull breach on deck two, sending damage control team."
"What are our new friends doing?" Mebalti asked.
"Can't be sure, but it looks like they're burning full tilt and possibly firing beam weapons at the enemy, sir. They don't appear to have hit anything yet."
"They're too far away. They'd have to be very lucky to hit a capital ship."
"Correct, sir."
ooo
Kaarin swore. Five shots so far, no hits.
"Can this rowboat go any faster?!"
"No, sir! Not without disabling the safeties!"
"What are you waiting for then? We need to get closer!"
"Those safeties are there for our own protection, Captain! Uncompensated acceleration would kill us in short order."
A short pause elapsed. Kaarin made another missed pot-shot at the enemy flagship.
"How short an order?"
"Seconds to minutes, sir," Mandy said. He sounded a bit exasperated.
"People survive all the time on high-gravity planets. I've seen plenty of them! I've even walked on one. It wasn't pleasant, but tolerable."
"That's one extra gravity at best, most likely half of one, Captain. It won't help substantially here. Atd those people are adapted for those extra gravities, too!"
"Curse you, physics!" Kaarin waved a vacc suited fist impotently. "Can't you give us one more gravity? One gravity would definitely make a difference!"
Mandy sighed.
"On it, Captain."
ooo
"We got them!" announced Mebalti's sensors officer. "The smaller ship is venting to space! They're changing course to the jump limit!"
"Finally some good news!" the commodore clapped his hands. "Keep them firing, we're going to get through this bastard's armour eventually, and they don't appear to have point defenses at all."
ooo
"Where the hell are you going?!" Captain Harr bellowed into the comm microphone. With only their enemies' jamming to contend with, communication was possible. "Timmons! Get back here this instance!"
"Timmons is dead, this Locker, we got a direct missile hit to the bridge. We're nearly blind, retreating to the jump limit... sir!" came the answer.
"Coward! Turn around, fix your shit, and keep fighting!"
"What's that? kshh I couldn't hear that last kshh breaking up kshh"
"I'll have you flensed!"
Harr tossed the mic across the bridge, where it rebounded off a console. The nearby subordinates cowered against such an unexpected expression of vehemence. His bridge crew of three looked at him, unsure what to think, momentarily mentally disengaging from the fight.
"Focus fire control on the particle beam! Disable that damn dinky flagship of theirs! Before I have *YOU* flensed!"
"Aye, aye, Captain!"
ooo
"D-d-d-this is w-w-worse than I f-f-thought!" Kaarin said with considerable difficulty.
Mandy pressed a button on his console, moving as if he were dipped in molasses. Instantly, the enormous pressure ceased. Both he and Kaarin gasped the first free breath in the last ten minutes.
"Feels as though my back is on fire... what's the situation?" Kaarin turned his attention to the HUD, now that he was again able to think straight.
"Told you, Captain," wheezed Mandy. He unstrapped himself and wobbled over to the sensors console in the computer room. "One of the attacking ship looks like it's breaking off."
"What's the distance? Can we shoot with any accuracy yet?"
"Not really, Captain. Want to accelerate some more?"
The very idea filled Kaarin with dread.
"No. We'd be killing ourselves for no gain. I'm going to shoot at them some more as soon as I regain feeling in my fingers."
ooo
"We got them, Captain! Direct him to engineering! They're dead in space!"
Harr howled with excitement. This was almost as good as boarding and killing these pathetic yokels personally. The last minutes have been a high stakes hammering competition between two highly robust combatants. The enemy flagship took three hits to disable, and all three defending vessels concentrated fire on Harr's ship, and even the bonded superdense armour had been shot so many holes they looked like a Solomani dairy product. They lost some fuel, their M-drive took a solid hit, and the sensor clusters were decimated, but they held together.
"Ignore them, target the one we hit previously."
"Target acquired. Firing in one minute twenty seconds, Captain."
Hurr took off his hat and anxiously whirled it on a clawed finger. It was a tense span of time, during which the remaining two boats managed to get in a few more licks, largely inconsequentially.
"Hit amidships, Captain! Their ship is breaking up!"
"Excellent! Target the last one!"
If there was a lot of anything during ship-to-ship combat, it was waiting. The high-capacity, rapid-discharge capacitors needed to be charged from by the ship's reactor, and that took time. Missiles needed to be loaded into tubes, likewise. A good crew could fire each armanent approximately every five or six minutes. Hurr's somewhat eclectic medley of the criminally inclined tended towards the 'six' on that scale.
"Target acquired. Firing... Hit! They're not done for yet, Captain."
A feeble laser retaliation came from the system's last defender. Their beam weapons were apparently badly damaged, and barely made any hits against the hull.
"Should we offer them surrender, sir?" asked his comms officer. Hurr looked at him with annoyance.
"No. Why would we do that? Rob me of my fun, seeing them blown into space dust?"
"Sir, if we capture them, we'll get twenty-five percent as salvage from the Lord Admiral. That's a lot of money."
"I have expensive tastes," the Captain grinned at the human officer the way only Aslan and Vargr can.
Then the ship shook. Alarms blared. Artificial gravity suddenly failed.
"What the-"
"We've been hit! M-drive offline!"
"Told you to shoot the bastard!" Hurr fought to get his hat back into his hand and onto his vacc suited head, as it had drifted away in zero-g.
"It's not them! It's the scout!"
"What?! You told me they were too far out to be a threat!"
"They were, sir! They're ahead of projections! They shouldn't be this close if they've got a drive graded for four gravities!"
"Screw that, we've got power, shoot them!" screamed Harr in anger.
"We can't move to aim the particle beam in their direction!"
Harr's anger turned to frustration.
"Fix the drive! Fix the drive! Fix the drive before they another hit!"
"Damage control team en-route!"
ooo
"Captain, we must have hit their M-drive. They're drifting, but still have emissions. The last boat is still active, but I don't know for how long," Mandy reported. "If the enemy ship's got power, that particle beam of theirs is still a threat to them."
"But not to us?"
"I don't think so, sir. The emissions profile on that weapon indicates it's far too powerful for a turreted weapon. It's most likely a bay armanent. They won't be able to target it effectively at us without maneuvering, and they can't maneuver without their M-drive online or some other means of altering their heading."
"Do you think they've got thrusters?"
"No idea, sir."
"I'll just keep drilling them full of holes and hope for the best, then. Get me a sensor lock, will you?"
"Aye, sir!" said Mandy and left the bridge to reoccupy the computer room.
ooo
As it happened, the damage control team did get Harr's ship's M-drive back online, if only just barely. By the time they did it, however, they've received a solid hammering from both the incoming – but still distant – scout and the defense boat which moved out of the way of more shots. The whole ship was barely holding together, several crewmen were injured when the jump drive caught fire and exploded – but the power plant and the ship's primary weapon were still online and ready to be used.
"About face and give the Imperial bastard a taste of its own medicine. Fire when ready!"
ooo
Particle beams are deadly things. Not only are they a substantially more powerful anti-ship weapon than mere laser beams, the accelerated particles they use tend to decay, releasing a whole spectrum of nasty radiation. It was just bad luck that junior Scout Mandy Krasnyj happened to be outside of the reinforced bridge section of the Imminent Misjump when it received a glancing blow that probably would have torn the scoutship apart if it had impacted more squarely.
"Mandy! Mandy!" Kaarin screamed into the suit comm as he threw off the seat belt and hurried off the bridge amidst squeals of the fire alarm.
The computer room was on fire. Kaarin grabbed a nearby fire extinguisher and let loose inside of the small chamber.
"Mandy!" he continued shouting.
There it was, the tell-tale outline of a human body covered with soot and extinguisher foam. Kaarin snatched it up by the shoulders and dragged him into the bridge, closed the iris valve and hurriedly checked his comrade's suit's lifesigns indicator, removing the gunk that accumulated on the display. It read:
DEAD.
"You sons of whores are going to pay for this!" Kaarin screamed and sat back at the turret operator's console.
ooo
There are many ways to disable a starship. If its external sensor clusters are shot out, a ship is blind and cannot effectively fight anymore – repairs would have to be carried out by teams in EVA, which during a space battle can be a highly risky proposition. Alternatively, destruction of its drives means that a ship cannot maneuver – or cannot leave the system by jump travel in case the J-drive has been hit one too many times – but can often defend itself, if it has swivel turrets. Destroying the fuel tanks, which are commonly placed on the exterior of the ship, just under the armour and hull, is another popular way to kill a ship's ability to defend itself – without fuel, it can't power its fusion reactor, and therefore will run out of power in short order... unless it has a backup source of power.
There are approximately two ways to destroy a starship. The first one relies on hammering it so hard, and so repeatedly, that hull integrity eventually fails and the ship drifts apart in fragments, no longer being useful for anything but scrap.
This is what happened to Captain Harr's 'Thresher'. Having had one too many laser beam remove a critical part of the ship's structure, it simply broke up in four large pieces and many smaller ones.
Then, continued barrage from an enraged Scout showcased the second way a ship can go, setting off one of its few remaining nuclear missiles, drifting unprotected. A chance one in a million, against all the safeguards its designers put towards the munitions never exploding except when intended. It put an end to any chance of there being survivors in the wreckage.