CrazedBureaucrat64: *facepalms*
Honestly, I was assuming this whole time that Fletcher was an Azur Lane fleetgirl, not KanColle...well let's just say for the record that she dyed her hair (been like 300 years since fleetgirls first started spawning, lol), and the real-world reason being that my memory is crap and somehow thought she didn't exist in KanColle. This has now been fixed, thank you.
Also, for the record, I often think of Alliance cruisers as their base, canon designs, but with the 'wings' being instead armored sections similar to the upper half of a Star Destroyer, a wedge and the whole ship itself much more heavily armored, because honestly, the canon design dosen't make much sense for a spatial warship. Exposed engines, weak wing roots, paper thin, exposed hull; take your pick; all of those are fatal for a spatial warship in any shape or form.
Their other ships, however, will be more similar to ships from Halo (frigates resembling rifles with engine and hangar pods) BSG (destroyers shaped like battlestars minus their pods) and their capital ships otherwise from several other franchises as well, for inspiration. Might make some concept pictures if I had the time, tho
THOMASPENZHORN11: The Alliance has 8 fleets as a fleet defends a cluster and they had 8 clusters;
and yeah, both fleets will be evenly matched in numbers, but given how slaver ships are crap even to Citadel ships, this fight is going to be an HFY lmaao
no; the batarians won't get their asses handed to them on their home front, not yet. They can still deny the whole fiasco as being the work of mercs in the Terminus (and be right). If the Alliance invaded them right then and there, it would be a violation of international law, unless they found hardball evidence that the attack was ordered directly from the Hegemony. Which, of course, they don't have
Interplanetary space, Theta Lyrae system, 26th July 2257 1220HRS Coordinated Universal Time
Kongō-class battleship SSV Kirishima
Empty space almost instantaneously erupted into sixteen hundred ripples of light laid out in a near-perfect grid before erupting in turn into well over a thousand plumes of foggy mist against the interplanetary void, disspitating to reveal battleship-gray behemoths shedding their outer layers of ice as they surged forwards, their antimatter torches leaving behind bright brilliant bluish glows and trails of radiation and plasma as they pushed their parent ships forwards. Their prescence had not been a large surprise for the alien attackers-now-turned-defenders, whose commander had at least a braincell for once and posted his fleet in a formation that could best defend itself against enemy attack, but while their numbers were roughly even, in terms of individual quality, not so. The enemy fleet was already turning to face them after the initial shock of the human battlegroup not coming from the relay as expected, but intimidation certainly did it's job well enough, if the communications chatter from Alliance electronic warfare specialists were tapping into were of any indication. It wasn't any other day that an entire armanda of ships no smaller than a cruiser at least (and many well within the size range of a dreadnought following their naval classification system) just showed up via some form of FTL other than a mass relay, at least to them. To any human strategist, it was Tuesday.
Kirishima was the third vessel to exit the void of the interdimensional slipstream, the ice shedding off her hull looking like a field of white debris left in her wake, the carriers Sōryū, Hakuryū, Toryū and Hiryū as well as three other battleships, Kasa, Aino, and Naka, all of them trailing close behind their flagship which was already leading the cavalry charge with engines pushing the battleship as fast as she can go without breaking the formation of the fleet. Her battery of 360cm MACs were already lining up with the enemy forces even as cruisers and destroyers dropped out of FTL in near-perfect synchronization and formation, gunnery crews and computers filtering through the information sent forth by both the primary flight computers as well as the targetic optics that were photographing and pinpointing the locations of individual enemy ships within the enemy fleet several light minutes away, compiling them together into firing solutions via neural uplinks as well as simple technology. Evidently, whoever commanding the enemy fleet had been extra smart for once and had chosen to dump eezo all over the place in hopes that it'll scramble the Alliance sensors the same way it did to them, and it worked, but the human optics were already on the problem and working out a rough firing solution the old fashioned way just like their to-go solution when fighting Abyssals with their ungodly electronic warfare systems and subsystems, aiming the guns at two points above and below their targets in the distance in a classic 'step-ladder' aiming method, bracketing shots around the targets and using the data collected to quickly work out a proper firing solution. That humanity's MACs fired their rounds as bright, glowing tracers in the void also helped, massively. The firing solutions were quickly aquired, and the ships waited for the optimum moment to open fire, each and every ship within formation and ready to unleash their firepower at a moment's notice, even as the ranges dropped even further and further.
Within the CDC of the battleship SSV Kirishima, a room full of consoles and workstations laid out in a style no different from a historic Mission Control center (whose base layout was still being used within many of HQ's command centers, especially the Air Arm), things were no different from the CIC, echoing with the cacophony expected for a flag command-and-control center as reports of friendlies coming online echoed across the intercom, alongside reports on enemy fleet composition and numbers. Chaos ensured across the flight decks of the four light carriers in the meantime as they all loosed their aircraft, each vessel launching their standard flight cycle for carrier operations, 2,400 fighters and dropships being launched from their hangars and catapults to join the fight lighting up the interplanetary void with their own engine glows as they did so with a vegeance, thousands upon thousands of small craft making their prescence known via the glow of engines and trails of exhaust, hell bent on doing their job and obliterating any enemy dumb enough to attack a human colony world. Which, as far as events would go, would be exactly what they would do.
The distance between both fleets grew shorter and shorter as the hostile fleet scrambled to engage, a thousand and a half facing down more or less roughly the same amount, but if the ONI intelligence reports were to be believed, the Alliance would still hold the undisputed advantage in firepower and armor, capable of pounding the inferior and smaller ships of the invaders into oblivion simply at will. That didn't mean that they were letting their guard down, however; after all, your weakest enemy might as well be your worst.
"RADATION LEVELS SPIKING!" Sensors called out as alarms blared all across the bridge of the dreadnought Wings of Glory as lights began to flash, causing the interior of the dreadnought's command center to erupt into chaos as crewmembers began to shout anything but consistient reports at each other, displays and consoles alike siezing up with ungodly amounts of contacts and data. "Fifty degrees left by fifteen degrees dorsal, distance six light-minutes!"
"Detecting large gravitational disturbances and heat signatures!" Tactical reported across the bridge. "Confirm anomalies to be from ships, estimated ship count 1-6-0-0 vessels, multiple cruiser and dreadnought class contacts!"
"Enemy dreadnought count is at 1-9-2 vessels and increasing!" Sensors called out almost in horror as the systems tried their best—and failed—to compile all the data that was already flooding the systems, the sheer number of contacts overwhelming everything else. "Estimated cruiser class contact count is at 3-9-4 and increasing—Spirits, the warbook is going haywire!"
"What's going on here!?"
"Enemy cruisers are being reclassified as frigates, the warbook's arguing that the fleet ratios are wrong for them to be cruisers, Supreme Commander!" Tactical called across the bridge as even more—horrifying—data began to filter through. "Enemy dreadnought class contacts are being reclassified as cruisers! Hostile dreadnought class cruiser count is at 3-9-6 and increasing!"
"Keep it together!" Supreme Commander Sorlak Brab'babar ordered over the din of chaos that was now unfolding all over across the bridge of his dreadnought. "All ships, turn around and—"
"DREADNOUGHTS! Eight vessels, length 2-2-2-0, firepower estimated to be equivalent to that of the Destiny Ascension!" Tactical cut him off as more of the sensor data came through. "Enemy fleet count is 1-6-0-0, 8 dreadnoughts, 7-9-2 cruisers, 800 frigates! Large cruisers retaining designation and are not reclassified."
"Supreme Commander!" Comms called across the bridge as even more chaos began to unfold across both the bridge of the dreadnought as well as the ranks of the fleet. "A video transmission is being sent across to us by the enemy flagship! Video transmission, two-way. It's using our encoding, unencrypted, civilian-standard coding!"
"How did they learn our computer programming languages!?" Electronic Warfare shouted from his console as the information hit home yet again.
The bridge, other than the alarms, grew quiet, save perhaps the Supreme Commander. "Patch me through."
A few seconds elapsed as the large viewscreen in the center came to life, the feed projected onto one of the bridge windows that could polarize to serve as a screen. It came to life soon enough, projecting an image of what seemed to be a large control room of sorts, the bridge of the enemy flagship, if the context was to be trusted. It appeared to lack viewports of any kind whatsoever, instead, it was jam-packed with rows upon rows of consoles and workstations, all lined up neatly in a grid, while the room itself appeared to be wedged into the center of the ship as opposed to jutting out externally as compared to typical turian or batarian ship designs. The salarians made use of such a setup, apparently, and this species clearly had the mindset to do so, too. It was well-laid out and planned, with rows of consoles spaced far apart enough for passageways through each without interfering with the operators already present, and the rows of workstations were staggered atop each other as if the floor itself was sloped, which, in a sense, it was. It was almost turian in it's lack of proper decorations or greebles, the interior also dimly lit with a bluish tint mostly coming from the consoles. All of the workstations were crewed, as well as a single individual standing at an elevated platform abode the rest, clearly the commanding officer of the engineers' fleet, if her position was of any indication.
Apart from the pale yellow skin as opposed to bluish for asari, with the crests replaced by a mass of fine hairs, she looked no different from typical, normal asari, save perhaps for the hairstyle that was decorated with a neat ribbon and reached all the way down to waist level. She was dressed in what was clearly the engineers' uniforms for an officer of her rank, a white loose shirt with pins and some of the material folded down around the neck as decoration, a dark blue outer jacket with a portion of the material also folded down and neatly trimmed, a lower garment fastened around the waist and draping around the legs, and a pair of form-fitting leggings, similar to the lower half of an asari bodysuit, complimented by a pair of simple yet elaborate footwear. A pair of eyepieces, either a fashion device, a vision aid, or perhaps both, rested on her nose, leaving a pair of bluish eyes to stare at him through the lenses. She didn't seem happy, if his limited knowledge on asari body language was of any indication. If anything, she seemed far from it.
"Siv vis bellum, hiv vis bellum, Aare wir est, Haare wir est."
The Alliance fleet's opening volley lit up the night sky of Shanxi brighter than a million fireworks with their magneto-plasma accelerator cannons sending their payloads of magnetically-accelerated shells downrange, golden tracer streaks of plasma, a by-product of the guns themselves firing and discharging the plasma they used to accelerate the shells downrange for the sake of cooling and thus captured by the shells' magnetic fields charged onto them by the coils, alongside their accompaying muzzle flashes, propelling shells weighing on the order of magnitude of hundreds of tons to tens of hundreds of tons to speeds no slower than eight-tenths of the speed of light, bright golden tracer streaks crossing the multilightminute distance in between both fleets in minutes, as expected, and hammered into the enemy ships with both raw kinetic energy as well as shield-piercing ballistic cap. Many went wide of their mark as the eezo field obsecured significantly Alliance radar and left them unable to aquire a proper lock, but a combination of step-ladder aiming and Alliance optics technology with visible light beams acccelerated to well beyond FTL speeds via anti-gravity 'tunnels' meant that their second and third volleys were already on target as quickly as how they could aquire a firing solution when facing an Abyssal fleet with it's ludicrous electronic warfare capability. Ships went up in flames of reactors loosing containment with the physical reactors themselves gutted and the hulls themselves casually obliterated, fusing ferrous plasma boiling and vaporizing their way through kinetic barriers and ablative armor alike while mass effect drive cores got simply deleted from the map and left their stores of element zero spewing into space, obsecuring sensors on all sides as well as radar, but humanity, as expected, had their own means of dealing with the problem.
The shots of 100cm and 130cm rounds from frigates and destroyers wreaked absolute havoc amongst the defending lines of so-called 'frigates' and 'cruisers', counting by Alliance standards as mere frigates, in the case of the latter, and corvettes, in the case of the latter; vessels too weak to be of any use in any actual fleet battle, little more than target practice in any of those situations. Plasma jets and ballistic jets gutted clean through barriers and hull alike in raw displays of heat and kinetic energy; ships left either as mutilated wrecks or masses of debris messily obliterated from the hulls of what once was a warship entirely. An angular, winged 'cruiser' took a round through it's starboard wing root and shredded it clean all the way through, leaving the cruiser to spiral downwards with a wing missing and a nasty gash left in the side where it used to be. Eezo and fuel trailed out from the rupture as fuel lines got destroyed, leaving the cruiser dead in the water as the engines that didn't get ripped off by the impact spluttered, flickered, and died. A second cruiser was not as lucky; a single MAC shot gutted it end-to-end as though as if it was batter, the plasma jet mushrooming out behind the inferior vessel and leaving a nebula of eezo and nuclear fuel to bloom out behind the floating wreckage, both lighting up the place like a light in the darkness bot also left an emmisive light that blinded all ships in the vicinity electronically as the cloud of eezo and radioactive nuclear fuel wreaked havoc upon the incoming sensor return signals, both confusing and demolishing firing solutions entirely while gunnery crews cursed in fustration. A 200cm shot from a Tōkyō-class heavy cruiser unceremoniously deleted a frigate from existence before a second slammed into an unlucky cruiser at random, gutting it stem to stern with enough kinetic energy to rival the main gun of a typical Council dreadnought, if not exceed it entirely. A glancing blow took the kinetic barriers off a cruiser just as it fired it's primary mass accelerator, the 100cm shell getting bounced off by the oblique angle of impact but still causing more than enough damage to leave the ship with a visible dent the size of a hangar bay. A cruiser fell prey to the sights of a Dresden-class light cruiser, two shots fired at the cruiser in a step-ladder aiming solution left one round to miss it's target, but the other, a 155cm shell weighing at six hundred tons propelled to .898 of c tearing clean through the kinetic barriers and armor at the front before the resulting plasma jet burst out at the rear, leaving the cruiser a grisly mess of twisted, mangled metal and a thick, dense cloud of eezo, nuclear fuel, and plasma from the shell to jam some sensor arrays within the enemy ranks. The enemy dreadnought took a 100cm shell glancing to the left, throwing up a shower of red-hot splinters as it grazed the kinetic barriers hard enough to take a sizeable chunk of armor with it, the g-forces heating the splinters to the point where they glowed due to sheer heat and friction within the molecues making up the armor material as they got ejected into deep space. Beside it, one of the flanking, escorting cruisers wasn't as lucky— the SSV Kirishima's main battery centered upon it and fired a ladder-aimed salvo, one shot missing but the other 360cm shield-and-armor-piercing kinetic-nuclear-fusion round weighing 5,700 tons at some .895 of c finding it's mark spot onto the bow of the enemy vessel, the projectile propelled to relavistic speeds impacting spot on and deleted the cruiser from existence as it did so, the shell continiuing on it's merry way beyond as the forces of impact transmuted to it proved insufficient to detonate the nuclear filler.
The batarian fleet didn't let the insult slide, however; moments before disaster struck the entire fleet had lit up the void with bluish mass accelerator fire of their own, blue eezo-propelled tracer streaks crossing the interplanetary void and lighting up the night sky like a volley of fireworks headed to end their lives in an explosive, bright, flashy end, almost like a battery of point-defense guns lighting up the night sky with more than enough tracer ammunition to replicate the Chinese New Year. Inferior or not, obsolete or not, they still were nevertheless enough to get their dirty work done, hammering into the Alliance ranks with less firepower and accuracy to optimal, but still sufficient. Shelds flared briliant shades of golden as they absorbed the impacts, projectiles flattening against them like a pack of angry hornets kamikazing themselves onto an attacker. The Alliance light and heavy cruisers—dreadnoughts, by batarian, and to a lesser extent, Citadel, standards—took the brunt of the blast, especially the Tōkyō-class heavy cruisers and Fuji-class heavy cruisers in the vanguard, almost every gun in the enemy fleet singling them out for punishment give or take as they happen to be amongst the most threatening ships within the Alliance ranks on the block. Their shields flared brilliant gold as their emitters tried to recalculate the barriers to consempate and adapt to the enemy fire incoming by the truckload and mitigate at least three-quarters of the incoming damage. They held, momentarily, but as more shots hit home, the barriers buckled, several shots making it through holes in the shielding before the computers caught on and redirected other emitters to cover the gap. Two Charon-class frigates went up in nuclear radiation and antimatter flames as no less than fifty ships within the batarian ranks singled them out for punishment; shredding them to bits via sheer volume of fire and left to mark their graves mangled, twisted wrecks of SmartSteel. Advanced technology or not, there was only so much that superiority could do, and brute force, given enough numbers, would still get the job done nonetheless. Still, many more took a beating and kept right on forwards, the Fuji-class heavy cruiser SSV Hatsuse taking no less than fifty cruiser-caliber mass accelerator shots and a dreadnought-caliber one to her broadside and frontal armor plating, leaving holes and gashes to mark where they hit but causing no further damage as the heavy cruiser's modular yet durable box honeycomb armor structure allowing her to simply shrug off the impacts, her SmartSteel armor plating regenerating away at the damage as if it was Tuesday. A Kara-class destroyer ate two rounds to her frontal armor after her shields got broken through, throwing a shower of orange-hot splinters as the round tore a nasty gash into the sloped, frontal armor, leaving a ragged hole to mark where it hit. A second destroyer took a round to her bow shields at an angle of impact oblique enough to make it bounce off, she simply cruised on forwards without even a second thought as her twin 130cm MACs fired, sending a pair of 300-ton shield-and-armor-piercing kinetic-nuclear-fusion rounds downrange at .097 of c to messily gut another cruiser in the batarian line of battle. The heavy cruiser SSV Asashi emerged forth from the barrage with no less than forty new holes punched into her broadsides and sloped 'wings' covering her engines section, but that was the fulll extent of the damage, as far as anyone was concerned. Her shields flared back to life, albiet at a reduced capacity as another shot hit home, and she answered the favor with a single 200cm KNF shell, gutting the offending cruiser stem to stern in one decisive blow.
The batarian fleet then let off a hail mary salvo of torpedoes at the beleagured Alliance fleet, a mass coordinated volley of munitions aimed and concentrated at a single chunk of the flank of the Alliance forces, just as the Alliance fleet lit up the night with a massed, full-on, coordinated volley of missiles, Rapiers, Stoskis, and Long Lance disruptor torpedoes, both the 533cm and 610cm variant, completely obsecuring the ships that launched them from view in a thick cloud of missile exhaust and vaporized propellant, the thirty-thousand gigaton HAVOC tactical nuclear weapons carried onboard the MIRV payloads causing radiological alarms of incoming nuclear ordnance to go off all over the bridges of almost every ship in the enemy fleet while the Rapier missiles that were held in reserve were launched off to intercept the enemy's inbound torpedoes, at the same time; autocoil batteries and point-defense guns prepared to light up the entire area in airburst flak and proximity-fused beehive tracer. Even as eezo torpedoes and missile exhaust plasma trails crossed paths, and as another cruiser got messily gutted by a MAC shot while the occasional Alliance frigate got speared by massed fire and a lucky hit to the engine compartment, both fleets were already preparing to make their moves on each other. The carriers peeled off from the main fleet with a few heavy cruiser and main battle squandrons as escort, preparing to loose their air wings onto the planet below in support of the 501st Division below as well as landing a full four divisions of Marines onto the planet below. The first waves od missiles on both sides struck home at almost the same time, and they did so with a vegeance.
Rapier missiles tore vast swathes of destruction into the batarian ranks in raw displays of plasma fury, jets of plasma going straight clean through kinetic barriers and boiling through meters of ablative armor, tearing gaping holes into the sides of ships even as thousands upon thousands of guardian laser emitters rained ruby red beams of laser death into the sky, shooting down and boiling through the outer covers of missiles out of the sky by the thousands even as thousands more struck home, dozens of hits tearing cruisers to shreds or leaving them mangled wrecks and shreds of what was once ships and armor plating. The larger disruptor torpedoes, munitions meant to either blow apart a cruiser or a capital class vessel or a prowler hiding within the interdimensional void, made their way through the dense fields of fire persistiently in no part thanks to the engineers at Enoshima Heavy Industries. Bright golden soccer balls of pure energy and slipstream space portals enveloped scores of cruisers unlucky enough to be hit by the torpedoes, leaving ragged, open holes to mark where they hit, with entire chunks of ship being teleported to oblivion to the impacts of the weapons meant to blow apart an Abyssal battleship or carrier in only a few hits. A cruiser fell out of formation with a chunk of it's rear missing and the front pounded to all hell, but it was nothing compared to the unluckier cruiser to the left, which got double-teamed by a pair of torpedoes and emerged with it's bow and stern missing, before a 200cm shot deleted it from existence as it tried to get at the cruiser directly behind, but the wreckage happened to be in the way, but the shot still split the front of the trailing cruiser wide open like a flower nonetheless before the cruiser's mass effect drive core lost containment and engulfed the vessel in a fireball. Even worse for their victims would be the nuclear weapons that impacted shortly afterwards, the Stoski cruise missiles with their seven-round MIRV payloads split their protective outer casings wide open to reveal the HAVOC tactical nuclear weapons within, each warhead propelled ballistically to seven diffrent spots in a ring to deal the most amount of destruction possible before detonating, the thickly armored warheads, by design, doing so with as much violence and force as expected of a supernova.
Similarly to packing loose snow into a snowball, explosives within the HAVOC operated as a detonator, in generating a spherical implosive shockwave in a fashion no different from a plutonium-fission nuclear weapon, but instead of compressing plutonium onto a fissile to make it split, it compressed a lithium hydride filler within the fusion core upon itself with more than enough energy to trigger a nuclear fusion reaction within the hydrogen, the shockwave meeting the outer armored shell and getting redirected backwards yet again upon itself and fused the resulting helium upon itself with the force of it's own detonation, fusing it into carbon and oxygen, only for the shockwave to be redirected back upon itself yet again to repeat the cycle, fusing the nuclear fuel within it all the way up and down the element chain until iron was created from the constant, looping cycle, at which point, the combined pressure of all the nuclear reactions finally burst the outer protective armored shell with some thirty thousand gigatons of pure destructive force outwards as if a supernova had burst into existence out of nowehere, propelling outwards a dense, ferrous plasma with the ferocity and intensity of a supernova, blinding sensors and optics alike while boiling, vaporizingly hot plasma met ship and vaporized them in an instant, completely as mercilessly as a fission uranium nuclear warhead dropped onto Hiroshima vaporizing anything within ground zero. An unlucky cruiser found itself at a few dozen kilometers away from ground zero and was summarily deleted from existence, and each and every other vessel nearby either turned into boiling chunks of slag and molten metal from the sheer tempuratures that they were subject to within the span of less than a second, or were simply and completely vaporized outright vaporized by the plasma, the sheer brightness of it across all spectrums jamming communications as well as radar.
The interplanetary void lit up with blossoms of nuclear infernos as stars and supernovaes flashed and erupted into existence as if God himself had come down with a master touch to create new stars by sheer force of will alone, boiling cleanly through armor or vaporizing them outright if they were too close, engufing ships in nuclear infernos of a dying star, lighting up the night sky as brightly as if a thousand suns had come into existence. Furious white-hot plasma burned and boiled away at tens of billions of degrees centigrade, even as another alien cruiser got boiled to vapor in an instant before the cruiser's crew could even know what was going on, it's fate shared by another frigate that got atomized by the plasma, never to be seen again. A cruiser got lucky enough to be on the outer, extreme fringes of the blast but still ate a load of rapidly-cooling-but-still-very-hot-nonetheless plasma, boiling away entire swathes of armor in an instant and left the vessel limping away with it's entire broadside steaming and trailing vaporized, boiling metal. Still, as events proved, most ended up being more unlucky more than lucky, and as if to prove this, an entire swathe got cut out of the enemy fleet, leaving nothing but disspitating remmants of a nuclear inferno and the molten remmants of their victims for all to see.
"Vampires inbound, engaging with Rapier pods one though seven," Tactical called out from across the CIC over the intercommunications system as the SSV Kirishima rumbled from her powerful engines pushing her at a steady two hundred Gs of force, her powerful inertial dampeners killing the forces that would have otherwise splattered everyone onto the bulkheads and walls like molecue thick paste and jam in an instant to a dull rumble.
"Comfirm engage, batteries release, Rapier pods one through seven," the weapons control officer reported, confirming the order. "Batteries launching, pods one through seven."
"Engaging enemy contact FF-177, step-ladder ranging, mount 3-6-0."
"Rapiers engaged and succesfully intercepted all inbound vampires. Radar is currently jammed and blinded in area by an eezo field, most likely enemy vampire's fuel or payload. Time until the field disspitates, one minute, forty seconds."
"Direct hit, mount 3-6-0, one impact. Hostile ship FF-177 confirmed destroyed, mount 3-6-0 reloading, time to reaquire: twenty seconds, mark."
Captain Tsurugi Akari merely nodded as she ran a hand through her undyed jet-black hair, her golden brown irises constantly relaying data from the tactical display to her brain, staring out from behind a U-shaped monocle as live updates on anything within a dozen light-years presented themselves on the holotable. There wasn't anything out of the ordinary that she could see, but still...
She closed her eyes for a moment, placing her mind in an imaginative simulation mode, placing herself in the shoes of the enemy commander and thinking what she would do if she was him (or her). What did she have at her disposal, and what use would she put them to to deal the most damage? A dozen different uses and battleplans emerged in her mind, and she wargamed herself through all of them, each with their own outcomes and risks, she carefully weighed them against each other all in her head, before arriving at her solution—one that she most certainly didn't like, in fact.
"Weapons Control!" She ordered, snapping out of it instantly. "Redirect all autocoil batteries and point-defense guns to aim at the eezo cloud; Senors, point all of your optics and secondary radar arrays at it as well. Constant aim, live feed. Do it quick, our lives may depend on it!"
The sensor operator and weapos control officers complied and brought up a myriad of data on their respective consoles. "Auxillary phased arrays and optics brought to bear on target. What are you looking for?"
"Fighters," Akari responded. "That eezo cloud is blotting out most of our sensor capabilities and forcing us to rely on step-ladder aiming for out engagement solutions on our main batteries, if I were they I would've had my fighters trailing in the wake of whatever type of oversize missile or torpedo they're using, taking advantage of the eezo fields that those thigns spew when they get intercepted to essentially cloak the until they get in close enough to spear us with a bunch of their oversize torpedoes at near point-blank range. Those things may not be numerous or fast, but they make up for it in raw firepower, and I won't be the one to be able to say exactly how much explosive filler do they put into those things."
Sensors immediately nodded s he brought up another icon. "Negative contact on phased arrays due to interference blotting out the return signals, but optics spot multiple small craft inbount, estimate 3-5-7 small craft headed inbound for out flank. Triangulating heading from images taken at intervals...heading 2-7-0, speed 0-7-5 of c...they're headed for the Delaware, Captain."
The skies around the Aurora-class heavy cruiser SSV Delaware lit up with enough flak and tracer ammunition to make the Chinese New Year seem like a joke in comparison, 50cm autocoils dumping downrange proximity-fused flak rounds while 57mm tracers lit up the sky with thousands upon thousands of miniature flakbursts to create a dense field of flak around the heavy cruiser as if it was a scene taken straight from Battlestar Galactica, the dense field of anti-aircraft fire more or less making it an absolute nightmare for any pilot trying to make it across to finish his attack run.
Three hundred and fifty-seven fighters—each the size of a small airliner from the era of the 21st century— threw themselves into spirals and circles in no part thanks to the mass effect drive cores built into the, trying their best to maneuver their way through the flak field; a job that was made vastly easier for them by both the cloud of eezo interfering with sensors and forcing Alliance targeting computers to rely on optics for the time being, as well as an entire section of the batarian fleet focusing their fire onto the Delaware and her escorts, either pounding them into oblivion via massed fire or driving and luring them out of position, leaving the heavy cruiser vunlerable to attack. But she was vunlerable, not defensless, as events proved.
Despite this, however, the point-defenses of an Aurora-class heavy cruiser were still nevertheless extremely dangerous and formidable, 50cm flak fire and 57mm tracer airburst rounds forming a dense field of anti-air fire around the vessel, orange tracers lighting up the void with more than enough tracers to make it look like a July 4th fireworks show whilist flak fire lit up the expanse with more than enough flakbursts to replicate the Chinese New Year, a few unlucky stragglers falling victim to a flackburst each at random from either 50cm autocoils or massed 57mm fire, but taking maximum advantage of the cloud of eezo hampering the Alliance sensors and forcing them to rely on optics to aim their autocoil batteries, they pressed onward, like dive or torpedo bombers making their way through a field of 40mm Bofors autocannon tracer fire. One took a few 57mm flechettes and began to trail leaking fuel, continiuing to rumble onwards like a goddess of vegeance towards it's target, hell bent on sending the heavy cruiser ahead to becoming torpedo fodder. Flakbursts blossomed, tracers flew, and fighters surged forwards, all in a scene looking as if it was something cut straight from Midway. A vanguard of fighters, roughly a hundred and seventy fighters, all launched their torpedoes towards the cruisers and pulled away, leaving the others to chill in the wake of the already launched munitions, the enemy commanding officer having clearly pulled a smart rodeo for once and ordering a vanguard of torpedoes to act as a screen for the other incoming fighters. The point-defenses immediately swung to and engaged the incoming torpedoes with dense, concentrated fire, 57mm rounds at a combined nine thousand rounds a minute per turret as they tracked the incoming munitions with their fire control systems, raining proximity-fused airburst tracer rounds onto the incoming torpedoes, direct hits taking what amounted to a blender to the munitions while near misses showered them in anti-aircraft flechette.
The torpedoes were destroyed easily enough, they left a sizeable cloud of eezo that massively and royally fucked up the sensor return data on the region, massively hampering the performance of the PDWS and autocoil batteries much to the annoyance and respect of the Alliance commanding officers and crew, shots going far wide of their mark as the optics fed live data onto the fire control systems, the hell the aiming mechanisims were going through, jittering multi-ton turrets back and forth while their fire control systems struggled to agree on velocity, speed, heading, and firing solution causing entire sprays and rains of tracers to rain into the skies to little effect, the torpedoes within the eezo field inching closer and closer while their cover allowed the fighter/bombers that had launched them to scram, munitions incoming by the truckload meeting rainstorms of suppressing fire from the PDWS and autocoils alike as they attempted to shred the incoming ordnance...
Whatever these missiles or torpedoes or whatever lacked in numbers they clearly made up for it in raw payload and durability, while a direct hit or near miss from a flakburst or a Rapier was more than enough to down one in a raw display of flame and explosions, but in the scale of the thousands, the differences would more than make up. Fifteen hundred became fourteen within the span of a few seconds, and the numbers were dropping at a similarly breakneck pace, but given the sheer proximity of conflict a few would be sure to slip by, the sheer amount of oversized munitions overwhelming the point-defenses through proximity. A torpedo closed in closer past the killzone, followed by another, and then another, the wave of munitions becoming closer and closer as the point-defense weapon systems and autocoil batteries struggled to hold them at bay, with the Rapier pods down for reloading effectively taking three-quarters of their AAA capability out of the fight, impact was inevitable. But the more they managed to shoot down, the better, and everyone knew it.
A single torpedo made it past the flakfield and impacted square on the cruiser's starboard shields, tidal forces exerted by the mass effect fields skewering in all directions from a mass effect drive core getting smashed to bits pressing against the shields and causing them to flare, the shield modulation systems barely able to consempate before a second torpedo hit and strained it even further. Fifty torpedoes snuck past the flak screen and impacted against the shields like a goddess of ice and fire, causing them to momentarily flare and buckle, but that was more than enough for another fifty torpedoes to sneak past the flak screen and make it through past the buckling, holed shields, impacting squarely against the cruiser's thick armor plating. Explosions rippled across the hull as secondary explosions rocked across the length of the ship, internal compartments cracking and breaching, with multiple sections venting oxygen into space, fires breaking out as a result of the torpedoes penetrating deep enough into the superstructure and hitting vital areas such as ammo bunkers, reactor cooling lines, and engineering spaces, with the resulting damage and secondary explosions and shrapnel ripping the entire area apart like a blender. Internal bulkheads slammed shut, compartmentalizing the affected areas and preventing the damage from spreading throughout the rest of the ship, but the damage was done. The Delaware was bleeding atmosphere and fire, with the bridge reporting a large number of casualties as a result of the damage suffered and damage control teams scrambling to try and get everything under control, the Delaware reduced to limping along at half speed at best due to the damage sustained. She was still combat capable, but she was still nevertheless heavily damaged and limping along, and the batarians knew it. And so did the Alliance commanders.
SSV Delaware, however, was far from being out of the fight, her internal honeycomb armor structure holding up exceptionally to the punishment dealt to her, which was well within the amount of damage that a heavy cruiser could take before going down. Large, gaping breaches, holes too large to be effectively repaired were sealed off via bulkheads and energy barriers to seal the atmosphere in against the vaccumn of space, damage control teams racing across the ship to try and get everything under control, engineers rushing to try and fix damaged electronics and power conduits, while gun crews remained at their stations and kept fighting despite the damage sustained, SmartSteel plating regenerating away at the damage with relative ease at the sections that were deemed best to be repaired. She was wounded, no doubt, but still fighting, and as if to hammer her point home, her 200cm cannons deleted another unfortunate batarian frigate from the battlefield with a pair of ladder-aimed magneto-plasma accelerated SAP-KNF rounds weighing some fifteen hundred tons to .897 of c, the first shell missing but the second shell gutting the vessel from stem to stern with the sheer kinetic energy transferred into the vessel from the hit, turning the interior of the vessel into a solid mass of molten metal from the sheer heat generated by the hit before the second shell detonated the mass effect drive core aboard the vessel, blowing the vessel into oblivion and adding yet another casualty to the list of dead batarian ships.
A frigate got clipped by a 100cm shot that messily ripped off it's port-side 'wing' and left it drifting out of formation with an entire chuk of it's broadside missing, while another took a 130cm round dead center that gutted it bow to stern and sent a spray of residue from the ship's innards getting spewed inside out like someone vomiting his guts out, looking as if the wreckage of the former vessel was a garguantuan aerosol paint can. Another cruiser within the Alliance ranks ate a shot from the enemy dreadnought, shields flaring in response to the sudden impacts just as her 40cm autocoils engaged an enemy cruiser at random some forty-five degrees off her portside and shredded it almost to ribbons, just before the turrets shifted aim thirty degrees to the right and pounded a frigate to oblivion like garlic inside a mashing bowl, a painful reminder to the aliens that flank-attacks had their counters. Two destroyers ganged up on an enemy cruiser flight with rapid, deadly ten-inch autocoil fire on a converging crossfire returned by fire from broadside mass accelerators, sheld-piercing ammunition crossing paths at relavistic speeds with metal splinters propelled by eezo fields to also similarly fast speeds sent in the other direction, crossing paths and hammering into each other almost like a pair of Star Destroyers slugging it out with turbolaser fire. Streaks of blue and golden tracers lit up the void like a meteor shower in the night sky, shells cashed through multiple decks and splinters caused whole sections of armor to cave in, destroyers and cruisers locked in an amplexus ignis as a steady hailstorm of blue and golden tracers flew between both sides towards each other, almost like two anti-aircraft batteries shooting at each other with their light and medium autocannons. Something had to give, that was clear to both sides, the destroyers had a slight advantage in rate of fire, one that was barely enough to let them come out on top. 25cm rounds punched clean through the armor plating on the cruisers of the enemy and ripped their spaceframes to shredded bits and pieces of twisted metal just as broadside mass accelerator fire breached and shredded the broadside armor belts of the destroyers, leaving both of them with gaping, ripped holes into their broadsides as they limped away from the sites of the battle to screen their fellow cruisers.
Even as the battle unfolded across all three dimensions of space, however, hidden away beneath the waves of the interdimensional slipstream, a single Winter-class prowler glided gently onwards towards her prey, lurking beneath the fighting above like a hunter patiently waiting for the perfect moment to spring his trap upon an unsuspecting prey. She idled onwards lazily, her powerful communications suite listening intently and eagerly for the 'go' code that would see her spring her own trap upon her prey like a hunter delivering a single shot that would end it's victim's life instantly, the prey completely oblivious to it's fate until the last possible instant. Her stealth systems were fully powered and active, her weapons ready and primed to engage her targets, and her crew tense and ready for action as they waited eagerly and anxiously for the order to unleash Hell upon the batarians above, the prowler waiting patiently and eagerly for the order to come.
Eventually, however, all things would come to an end, and her wait was of no exception, and with a single word spoken through the communications officer of the flagship SSV Kirishima, hull symbol BB-555, she at once sprung into action.
"Go."
Codex Entry: Humans — The Systems Alliance Naval Arm — First Contact War — Human naval doctrine
While humanity had knowledge of mass effect-equivalent technology for less than 200 years, while the turians had knowledge of such technology for millenia, while the asari for five, as a testament to the human feat of engineering, not do human ships are vastly superior to their Citadel counterparts, but also the way of combat. The humans mostly follow the Citadel's 'big-gun' doctrine of frigate, destroyer, light cruiser, heavy cruiser, battleship (or carrier), but such an arrangement was completely unheard of within citadel space, as all other races save the quarians follow in the standard lineup of frigate, cruiser, dreadnought. The human's knowledge of naval warfare in effect rewrote space combat as a whole, their inclusion of carriers, destroyers, as well as seperating cruisers into light and heavy categories were something completely unheard of before. The quarians were the only other species to include an 'oddball' class in their order of battle, the heavy cruiser, but quarian heavy cruisers have more in common with dreadnoughts than cruisers. The deployment of massed strikecraft attacks, while not a new idea within citadel space, was completely rewritten with the introduction of the carrier and micro-FTL drive to the battlefield, as well as new ways to counter it. In fact, humanity posesses the, by far, the best navy within the galaxy, with their innovative tactics constantly giving turian admirals fits, costing them untold amounts of mock training battles (as well as the international embarassment that followed) and untold payouts from betting shops from across citadel space.
The concept of a heavy cruiser to provide additional command-and-control facilities for a fleet—as well as additional firepower and to function as a squandron leader for missions that are either too minor to justify the deployment of a dreadnought (or ones where dreadnoughts aren't available) wasn't new to the citadel, either, for the quarians had employed such a class in their order of battle, but the lack of a 'middle-of-the-road' cruiser and instead the deployment of a light cruiser for screening and general-purpose duties, however, was completely unheard of, and so was the concept of the destroyer, a vessel larger than a frigate yet smaller than a cruiser for screening duties, allowing the frigates to concentrate on offensive torpedo runs.
Another intresting factor to count is the Alliance's base squandron deployment—while the Citadel relies on a base 4 for all squandrons, the Alliance instead opts for a base 5—3—1—3 ratio where 5 is for frigates, 3 is for destroyers and cruisers, 1 is for surface capital ships, and 3 is for carriers and other assorted non-surface combatants.
Intrestingly enough, despite the Alliance's dreadnoughts being referred to as 'battleships' by humans, the Alliance does, confusingly, maintain a 'dreadnought' classification, but their dreadnoughts (identified with the hull code of DNT) have more in common with cruisers than true dreadnoughts, a classic reversal of the quarian—heavy cruiser situation.
Human ships also had the advantage of being larger than their Council counterparts, allowing them to wield signifncantly more firepower than their adversaries in battle, having more efficient matter-antimatter annihilation reactors for greater power output (although they are larger and bulkier, thus requiring them to dedicate more of their ships to propulsion per volume percentage of a ship), better shielding and regenerating armor technology, superior fire-control and point-defenses, and non-relay-reliant FTL, allowing them to massively outgun Council fleets in battle unless the latter has a significant numbers advantage. Council frigates count by Alliance standards as mere police or modified civilian ships if factoring their inferior kinetic barriers compared to human adaptive shielding technology and a lack of regenerating hull armor to cut off hull breaches and seal off affected compartments for damage control, and most Citadel cruisers would count as mere orbital guard cutters equipped for counter-piracy operations; a single frigate within the Alliance and Imperial ranks could make mincemeat out of any cruiser in a straight one-to-one fight. Even the dreadnoughts—the most powerful warships ever seen within the galaxy—would only qualify as light cruisers or even destroyers by Alliance standards, with the Palaven-class dreadnoughts—one of the most powerful dreadnoughts the turians ever built—heavy cruisers, their single gun disadvantage offset by a significantly higher rate of fire and their inferior armor and kinetic barriers supplanted simply by brute strength of barriers and simple thickness of armor.
The sole exception to this was the Asari Republic's superdreadnought ARH Destiny Ascension, which was the equivalent of a human 2nd-rate battleship such as the Alliance's Kongō-class battleships or the Empire's Wuzburg-class battleships, armed with a single 2,000m mass accelerator with the firepower equivalent to the Alliance's 360cm/500 MACs installed on the Kongō-class vessels alongside three smaller guns equivalent to that of a turian 1st line dreadnought in firepower for a combined firepower roughly equal to human 2nd-rate battleships, but due to the design of asari warships, the Destiny Ascension would still be outgunned in a practical battle as it can only focus one out of four guns on any single target.
The Litrinox-class drednoughts, entering service 8 years after the events of the Relay 314 Incident, would be considered the true battlefield equal to human battleships, measuring 2,000m long, armed with twin spinal mass accelerators, equipped with the brand-new adapting plasma kinetic barriers capable of stopping directed energy weapons as well as kinetic impacts, a set of prototype point-defense mass accelerators inspired by human CIWS, rapid-fire micro-torpedoes, and antimatter engines. The class is part of the turians' attempt to narrow the technological gap in between humanity and would be later followed by next-generation cruisers, frigates, as well as the turians' first ever carriers to be deployed in a battle, the Legiate-class.
Frigates: The greyhound of human fleets, frigates are designed for scouting, skirmishing, and patrol duty, and are the smallest combatant of human fleets. They lack the stamina nor the survivability to stand in a fleet battle, but make up for it with a heavy armament of missiles and torpedoes, designed for taking down enemy capital ships or thinning their escorts out for the fleet to concentrate on their heavy hitters. In a fleet battle, frigates will make extensive usage of in-system FTL jumps, zipping in and out of the battlefield to deliver their torpedoes against hostile targets and scramming before they could be intercepted, often timing their attacks with dreadnought groups for maximum effect. Their hull designation code is 'FF', with variations to demote variants of the type.
Destroyers: The backbone of human fleets, destroyers are meant for screening and escort duty, providing anti-fighter and anti-missile cover for cruisers, carriers, and capital ships during engagements. They are the smallest ships available in a battle to offer the survivability needed to properly stand in a fleet battle, and would often be seen screening cruiser formations against enemy attack, either from frigates or carrier-based aircraft. Their speed is not as good as frigates, but they are still fast enough nonetheless to keep up with a fleet and screen it from attacks. Their maneuverability is also supreme, allowing them to train their armaments onto enemy frigates at a moment's notice and intercept them before they could unleash their munitions. Their hull designation code is 'DD', with variations to demote variants of the type.
Light cruisers: The backbone of fleets, light cruisers are tasked with general-purpose duties such as screening, anti-fighter escort, escort duty, and leading squandrons. While lacking the punch of heavy cruisers and dreadnoughts, they are still more than enough to take down frigates in battle and to hunt down destroyers. They are versatile ships, able to fulfill multiple roles at once, and would often be found at the tip of formation spearheads, leading cruisers and capital ships into battle and fending off enemy assaults with their heavy armaments. Their role is roughly analogous to a squad rifleman in a fleet battle, laying down the bulk of the fire to destroy enemy targets or stop them dead in their tracks for long enough for the more specialized units to target and bring them down. Their hull designation code is 'CL', with variations to demote variants of the type.
Heavy cruisers: Heavy cruisers are the juggernauts of the fleet, possessing the same versatility of light cruisers as well as a heavier armament designed to deal with cruisers and frigates in battle, making them the ideal unit to use against enemy fleets. They are versatile ships, able to fulfill multiple roles at once, and would often be found at the tip of formation spearheads, leading cruisers and capital ships into battle and fending off enemy assaults with their heavy armaments. They are often deployed to hunt down smaller ships using their speed and maneuverability, or otherwise deployed in situations too insignificant to warrant the deployment of a battleship. Their hull designation code is 'CA', with variations to demote variants of the type.
Dreadnoughts: The oddball of a fleet, dreadnoughts rarely deploy alongside a fleet in a battle, instead, their design, which puts an emphasis on endurance and range over performance in a battle making them instead much better choices for commerce raiding in hunter-killer flights of four, sneaking behind enemy lines to deal devastating damage to enemy convoys alongside prowler formations for maximum effect. This makes dreadnoughts analogous to a sniper in a fleet battle, possessing the longest range and firing distances of all human ships, able to rain hellfire from beyond enemy visual range. Due to their reliance on endurance and range, dreadnoughts also lack the maneuverability needed to keep up with fleets, instead relying on staying behind friendly lines to lay down bombardments on enemy fleets and to support friendly advancements if they ever find themselves in a fleet battle. Their hull designation code is 'DNT', with variations to demote variants of the type.
*the Kaiserliche Marine equivalent is Schlactkreuzer (battlecruiser).
Battleships: The largest combatant of a human fleet, battleships are the mainstay of a fleet, possessing the punch needed to tear apart enemy fleets. They are analogous to a tank in a fleet battle, possessing the endurance to stand in a fleet battle and dish out punishment, but lack the maneuverability of other classes to properly weave through an engagement, instead relying simple firepower and armor to soak up damage like a sponge and make mincemeat of any oppoment unlucky enough to be locked within their sights. Their hull designation code is 'BB'.
Carriers: The oddball of a fleet, carriers are the pinnacle of strikecraft supremacy, possessing large air wings consisting of small craft and dropships for interdiction against enemy fleets and strike craft. While carriers lack the endurance nor the range of dreadnoughts to operate away from friendly lines, they are still more than capable of operating alongside a fleet and supporting it with their massive strikecraft wings and landing dropships and an entire division to spearhead a ground invasion as well as support it over extended periods of time. They are sometimes described as 'giant, floating rooftops' due to their design, reasoning that the most likely time where a carrier would be fired upon would be in a flanking assault, and thus sloping most of the armor in that direction. Despite that, however, in a fleet battle, carriers would still launch their fighters in their standard flight cycle formation and otherwise try to stay out of the fight, a job made massively easier by the fighters' limited ability to FTL jump between formations to engage the enemy in a style no different from a frigate. Their hull designation code is 'CV', with variations to demote variants of the type.
Prowlers: Hiding underneath real-space within the folds of the interdimesional slipstream, prowlers are stealth vessels used to perform reconnaisance, raid enemy shipping lanes, and to spy on enemy fleets. They are termed prowlers for one reason, and one reason only: the term 'submarine' is not appropriate for a space-going vessel, but they are exactly that; using the cover of the slipstream to spy on enemy formations, go raiding, and even, in some cases, land strike teams at high-value targets for either sabotage or subterfuge. Their hull designation code is 'SS', standing for 'Sub-Surface', with variations to demote variants of the type.
*the Kaiserliche Marine equivalent is Jagdschiff, which translates literally into 'hunting vessel'.
A/N:
next couple chapters should wrap up the FCW arc soon.