FYI: On hold, rewriting first chapters. Godspeed
Cooldude:
- Yeah, the RoF is closer to once or twice a second at the very most (maybe three if you push it overtime, at the risk of wearing out the barrel). The lack of gravity means that they can feed much more easily from belts/drums, although they periodically need to stop as the drums go dry and are switched out. Citadel ships also have broadside mass accelerators that work the same way btw
- It's pretty good! The long waiting times between updates, though...
- Fair; but the front doesn't have the turtleback deck, as opposed to human ships having their superstructure honeycombed through and through; Abyssal mass driver shells'd smash through (overmatching) in those cases. Human ships have honeycombed plating inside the hull as thick as the outside belts, basically forcing shells to go through the same armor belt thickness multiple times over, and while Citadel ships have quite thick and decent armoring, to boot, there's only double, sloped, thickness, to go through.
Abyssal mass driver shells break apart and cause brutal internal damage to the hull like how humanity does with MAC rounds and plasma jets, the internal damage would be more than enough to cause effective mission kills, especially on smaller ships, which lack the bulk to survive of larger ones. In further addition, shells careening through bulkheads (rather thin on Citadel designs) may result in loss of structural integrity, enough to cause catastrophic hull failure.
- Launch tubes; yeah, the Council may consider that as a viable concept, especially for carriers that aren't through-deck like human ones. Through-deck carriers have a single flight deck running the length and span of the hull, open at the sides, and an armored hangar deck underneath; the flight deck has catapults to launch the planes very quickly (50-70 depending on the ship), and the aircraft is serviced in the hangar underneath. Having launch tubes would require a seperate deck for launching aircraft alongside the deck reserved for landing, though, but I can see that work with Citadel carrier designs focusing on broadside hangar bays, as opposed to decks.
A 'battlecarrier' on the other hand is a bad idea; it's complement is too limited to do anything, and the guns also equally limited, resulting in a ship that does both but masters none. Although carriers can stand their ground in an emergency, buying enough time to retreat; having a 'carrier that can stand in a battleline' is redundant, and is a mission best fulfilled by two seperate platforms tailored specifically to the task.
TLDR, having a BB come with a few hangars to launch drones for projecting a combat air patrol is a good idea; but sticking BB caliber guns to fleet carriers isn't
- Sure; I'll check it out once I scrounge up the time to
- Apart from a lot of banged heads as ppl try to wrap their heads around the very concept itself a couple hundred years ago (and fairies handing them mallets to do so), I haven't really thought that one out fully, save perhaps a few allusions in earlier codex entries...so yeah, might as well do so, I guess
- Actually the 'dreadnought' in Alliance naval classification differs from true battlecruisers, even if operationally they fulfill more or less the same job.
Battlecruisers are basically battleships, but with the armoring of a heavy cruiser (14-16-inch guns but with only 8" belt at the most), capable of making 30+knots and meant to catch everything that they can catch and outrun anything that could outgun them; however, designers began tacking more armor to them, and better engines to battleships, until, they came up with what is known as a 'fast battleship', a ship with decent armor all around, BB-level firepower, and CC-level speed, effectively making battlecruisers moot. Such a ship is seen in both the ANA and KME, btw. While classified as battleships (BB), they are unofficially known as 'battleship 2nd-rate', have less armor and firepower than 1st rate BBs (330cm/360cm guns vs 380/410cm guns and armor), but are faster.
Dreadnoughts instead originated from the concept of the Alaska-class cruisers, and their armament of 305mm guns, which effectively led some to label them as 'dreadnoughts' (the caliber of the main battery pays homage to what they call 'true' dreadnoughts, guns of 12" caliber, while bigger guns, as in the Orion-class, became super-dreadnoughts), basically ships balanced with armor and firepower within the 300cm range all around, but with disproportionate engines for ludicrous speed, hence, 'dreadnoughts'.
Yeah, sure, I'll find a slot to tack CVLs to in a short while
- The fact that SmartSteel can be carted around, applied to breaches, and seal open compartments against vacuum is only going to make KME damage control all the more OP, hehe
- technically, they can, but they need specialist mounts to do that, as if they don't, they'd just sink into the ground, because they weigh like humans without their rigs, but with those on, they're as heavy as their metal selves...yeah, we'd need specialist mounts for the job, lol
'Wheeled' battle tanks aren't as smart as the films make them out to be but hear me out here (I'll explain later)
Also apologies for the lack of update last week, I was busy with my other projects to cook
Wrex loaded a shotblock into the open-topped magazine of his rifle before slamming the lid shut, watching as a Bofors crew load 40mm clips into the feed trays of their autocannons, in a method no different from his own rifle, surprisingly enough. The entire place was already abuzz with activity, troops rushing to man their vehicles and weapons, hauling crates of ammunition back and forth between weapon nests, other ammunition and supplies of all calibers and types being tossed through the air and caught as if everyone was playing football, but not with balls, but with huge, plastic and metal, crates. Shotblocks for loading into krogan-type weapons, catridges for human slugthrowers, rations, medical supplies, and BioFoam.
"...'bout a hundred advancing into this sector, plus god-knows how many inside those transports," Prinz Eugen said as she looked downrange through a pair of binoculars with one hand, the other on her rifle. "A dozen light tanks, Jesus knows how many transports...fuck, is that a battle tank? And they have...well, another dozen. We're fucked all right I guess."
Wrex looked at the enemy as the first vehicles began to crest the slopes whilst gunners centered the enemy within their sights, rotating transverse handles around to center the crosshairs onto their assigned targets. "I guess that's not good odds to be going against?"
"Yep, just like how my experience with the Abyssals went. Outnumbered 3:1 bare minimum in any combat situation I found myself in."
The battle tanks took up the front, wheels churning the dirt of Kohuria as their guns pointed themselves menancingly at the defenders, infantry and hovertanks fanning out around them to deter any flanking attack that might be thrown at them. The APCs stopped to disgorge their complements of troops, hidden behind the reverse slopes that prevented guns from firing effectively on them, visible only through the cameras that were left there to bug them, from the occasional drone, and the combined sensors of the battlenet, effectively tripling the enemy infantry count, and even as the first of the vehicles poked themselves over the slopes to bring themselves into view, over a hundred rifle barrels were levelled at them, sights centered on their respective targets.
Wrex's own weapon was fixated upon the enemy of his choice, another krogan, a blade fixed to the end of it like what many humans often had on their weapons, and as he zeroed in the target within his sights, the other humans doing the same...the report of the Pak 75s opening fire met his ears.
He pulled the trigger as the sound of gunfire filled the air.
Regarding Terminus armaments and ship classification types,
Allow me to summarize here: they're fcking deadly. Sure, the crew is less well-trained compared to us, their damage control is shit, their armor doesn't regenerate, but their guns are on par with ours, and so is their other armaments, and in general, ships. Provided crews of equal competence, they can match us in a straight one-to-one, and as far as the current state of affairs is going, that ratio will soon be fact and not paper, especially for the bigger warlords, with more cash to blow on training their forces.
Details are in the attached details; alongside the proper notes.
Prinz Eugen plunged her bayonet into the stomach of the offending batarian before twisting the blade inside his body, leaving him to fall to the ground, face contorted in an expression of pure agony in his death throes, before turning to the next target she needed to deal with, leaving him to bleed his life out on the ground, his internal organs spilling out onto the dirt below. Wrex's Bofors-style rifle barked out it's payload into the enemy infantry from directly behind her, the shotblock inside being broken apart into smaller pieces before getting accelerated to respectable speeds via mass-effect fields, producing brutal messes as the rounds smashed their way through kinetic barriers and armor like sledgehammers on stamped sheet metal, atypical to most krogan armaments; crude, yet brutally effective. A turian ate a shot to his chest and fell over backwards, the shot not quite going through his defenses, but still carrying enough kinetic energy nonetheless to pop open his kinetic barriers and smash his chestplate in, crushing the torso. The next one, a batarian, suffered an equally gruesome fate, the shoulder simply ceased to exist, in it's stead air, a falling arm missing it's upper half, and blood splurting out of the hole the shoulder-blade used to be, the batarian's face contorting in pain as he fell to the ground with a sickly twisting motion, hand flying to a shoulder that was no longer there.
Admiral Hipper's GK316 battle rifle cycled itself through each cartridge inside the 60-round magazine, single shots of 7.62x64mm rounds picking off hostiles virtually on the fly as she turned back and forth to let off seemingly random shots, but with each and every projectile fired finding a target with unnerving accuracy. A brass casing ejected as she fired a round into a krogan and turned to engage the other even as the round drilled through his helmet and detonated inside his skull, amidst curses from her fellow defenders as a few Panzergrenadiers had to cower to prevent the rounds from krogan mercenaries from popping open their shields like sledgehammers and smash them all to bloody pulp. A second brass casing ejected, and she fired on a turian—a squad leader, apparently—and drilled all the way through a bloody, royal blue hole into his stomach, one the size of a fist.
She ducked as grapeshot whizzed overhead to pepper the defenders behind her, but the Pak crews were already upon them, the anti-tank guns transversed into position to aim directly at the battle tanks with SAPHE loaded into the breech. A 75mm shell whizzed out of the barrel to smash onto the kinetic barriers of the leading battle tank and into the frontal armor, gouging out a nasty chunk of plating in the ablatives, even as a second shell found a home, the frontal armor, being much, much thicker than the hovertanks behind it, be capable of surviving a direct hit from a Pak 75, and penetrated, causing the tank to light up in flames as the internal ammunition stores and fuel tanks caught fire. The gun crews reloaded and transversed the guns around, sighted a second target, and focused their fire, two guns centered on a single target to, quite simply, bash the armor and kinetic barriers in to completely wreck the tank underneath. A third gun, overshooting it's target in the heat of battle, instead plunged into the midst of a group of enemy infantry, and while it wasn't an anti-infantry payload, the effects might as well be coming from one. It burrowed it's way into the ground before the G-forces set off the explosive payload within, and the resulting detonation rocked the ground into the air, creating a shower, a geyser, of dirt and mercenaries, even as Hipper turned to engage more targets, anti-tank guns rattling in the background.
A pair of Javelin missiles flew out of the defending trenches and nests as a Panzergrenadier hefted his launcher and sent both missiles downrange, two trails of missile exhaust lacing out to strike the hovertanks flanking the bigger battle tanks and screening them. Active protection systems locked on and lit them up with lasers and jammers in attempts to spoof or shoot them down, both succeeding and failing when a missile fell to the ground after lasers burned through it's guidance systems, and the other got spoofed enough to break the lock, but could not correct it's original course to chase after the ghost targets in time before it crashed into the real one, destroying it utterly. A second hovertank took a fresh paintjob to the fight as the infantry screening it got shredded by 85mm mortar shells dropped into the midst of their ranks, the kinetic barriers flashing more from the fleshy gore splattered on them than the impacts of enemy fire, before it in turn got wrecked as well when a Bofors crew decided to misuse their autocannons, four guns cranking away at the lighter hovering vehicle until the kinetic barriers collapsed under the onslaught, and the tank itself, shredded to ribbons.
An enemy drone flew overhead, lasers firing away at the human defenders underneath, flanked by it's fellow drones as streams of tracers from Rheinmetall AG, Bofors, and Oerlikon 50mm, 40mm, and 25mm autocannons lit them up, quad, twin, and triple autocannon mounts transversing to shoot them down and litter the sky in proximity-detonated airburst-tracer ammunition at a staggering rate, flakbursts filling up the sky to catch drones and smash them to a metallic pulp, which quickly fell and littered the battlefield with their mass. Ammunition drums and clips were fed into the guns to keep them going even as they chugged away at their ammunition supply, raining autocannon rounds into the skies at a steady pace as empty brass casings were ejected out of the rear, rolling around and about, littering the ground in the absence of cleaners to sweep them into trash cans. A scene straight from Midway ensured, drones weaving back and forth between shots as the guns shot them down one after the other. They were certainly effective at their assigned job of shooting down enemy drone swarms en masse, each round sure to meet a drone and send it to the ground below. But alas, they kept on coming, coming, and coming.
A quad Bofors mount fell silent as a drone crashed into it, debris killing the troopers manning it and mangling all four barrels definitely well beyond all viable repair, even as Stormtroopers and Panzergrenadiers ducked and took cover from the lasers, machine guns, and rockets the drones sent downrange. A triple 25mm emplacement shot out three drones in rapid succession before one made a kamikaze run at it, destroying both in a shower of sparks, fires, and twisted, mangled metal. A Panzer IV turned to SPAA duty and fired it's 80mm gun into the sky, cleaving through dozens of drones in a single time-fused APHE shell before they could hit, even as the coaxial and roof-mounted machine guns pumped tracers into the skies, it's form protected, thankfully, by it's dug-in position. It ignored the turian-flaired battle tank in front of it, instead transversing it's gun around to clear out another sector of drones with the fast-firing main gun, 80mm flak shells bringing drones out of the sky en masse as the anti-infantry payloads tore through their cheap airframes like cardboard, turning them to scraps in instants, plummeting into the ground as more moved up to take their place.
Amidst all that, the infantry-to-infantry fighting brawled, anti-tank guns hammering away in the background to send a deluge of shells downrange that prevented enemy tanks from advancing directly to support the infantry lest they be blown to pieces, mortars sending their deadly payloads to blanket the area in a carpet of munitions arcing over the skies, their crews working at top pace to place fresh propellant and shell into the tubes and hit the triggers, sending fresh APHE into the air at the steady rate of three to five seconds to the mortar shell. Dug-in and well-prepared, the Paks sent their deadly firepower into the fronts of enemy tanks as they made themselves known, APHE shells careening into the enemy formations claiming dozens of lives in gory displays of flechette on flesh, the loaders slamming rounds into the breeches, the gunners aiming at the enemy, and the guns themselves, belching fire as they let off their payloads, destined to end their path on enemy armor or infantry, but either way, they proved deadly enough.
A crossfire from LMGs and GPMGs covered virtually all angles of attack and kept the enemy at bay, permitting the riflemen to focus on individual targets and pick them off as opposed to having to send bursts downrange on fully automatic and waste their ammunition, and the troopers capitalized on the chance to the maximum of it's potential. Headshots downed dozens by the minute as perhaps twice as many took rounds center mass, SAPHE rounds from assault and battle rifles piercing through shields via simple brute force before burrowing their way inside the body and detonated, bodies falling to the ground with geysers of flesh exploding from where the rounds hit. Enemy return fire came, and in spades, rifle rounds, SAWs, and autocannons, and they still found their bite, nonetheless. The pirates and slavers weren't going down without a fight, and a damn good one at that, too.
"Shit, Yang's down! Someone get him, he's hit!"
"Hostiles to our eleven, distance three hundred and thirty! Mortars, fire for effect!"
"Firing [thump], fire out!"
"Shit, counterbattery's getting intense! Hostile guns behind the enemy lines, bearing eleven and two! Someone take them out before they—"
"Pak down, Pak down! Hostiles getting closer, sector 11-A!"
"Watch for backblast Javelin up and firing!"
"Target destroyed—bloody hell! Take cover, drones coming in hot!"
"Requesting immediate fire mission on my mark! One stick, four items, I say again, one stick, four items! Fire for effect, I say again, fire for effect!"
It was chaos. Bullets, explosions, bloody gore splattered on the ground as BioFoam or MediGel was applied to wounds depending on the side in the battle, drones raining themselves onto the defenders amidst walls of autocannons raining tracers into the air. Bayonets came into use every here and there as the enemy advanced close enough for the usage of blades, amidst cover fire from their supporting units and suppressing fire from the defenders. Some sections of trench had begun to collapse with the fighting there degenerating into fierce hand-to-hand combat in classic examples of melee warfare. Bayonets, rifle clubs, shotguns, and submachine guns tore chunks of flesh out of both sides' wielders, pistols at point-blank range discharging their payloads to stop enemies dead in their tracks as their owners reloaded, taking aim afresh and firing again. Swords even outright came to play, omnitool flash-forged blades slashing back and forth as shields flared under impacts before they gave way, blades slicing through armor, BDUs, padding, flesh, and bone. Dozens fell by the minute, cut open in ways that would make surgeons retch, ranging from simple cuts and slices to dismemberment, mutilation, and being, well, shredded apart.
Admiral Hipper's battle rifle had been switched out a long time ago; the range was too close for that weapon to be of any use anymore. Her MP-4 submachine gun was barking instead, 5.5x30mm rounds being expelled at ludicrous rates of fire to drop hostiles in rapid, quick succession, one after the other. Eugen was still using her assault rifle, but now as a spear, club, and SMG, bursts of fully-automatic fire intermingling with thrusts with the bayonet and whacks to send enemies to the ground with the butt. Shotblocks broke apart into slugs and produced gory results as Wrex did more or less the same, his fellow krogan battle-brothers and their weapons swinging themselves back and forth in blurs of destruction either from slug, blade, or rear end, or in some cases, stomping. A shredder round left the barrel of a Spike Thrower to rip a batarian to shreds, dozens of splinters meant to tear apart thresher maws proving overkill against the light build of the batarian, and it showed. Wrex carried on, not bothering to look at the new paintjob that his armor now bore. A second shot took out a krogan next to him, one who had taken the path of slavers instead of the path of honor of his kind...that was grounds for execution, wouldn't it?
"Grenade! Stick out!" a Panzergrenadier shouted as he detached a stick grenade from his belt, armed it, and hurled it into the advancing mercenaries, flaring his shields to protect himself from the blast before it went off. A shower of eviscerated gore and flesh splattered itself upon those lucky enough to survive the blast moments later as the grenade sent a shower of fragments in all directions coupled with a deafening and powerful blast overpressure wave, and the enemy dispersed, momentarily, from the explosion.
A group of krogan charged up in a mad charge, shields flaring, even as a squad of Panzergrenadiers responded in kind, their own shields flaring and forming a phalanx, shields raised to absorb the krogan charge. A hail of SAPHE and buckshot rounds, alongside the odd fragmentation grenade, flew into the onrushing horde, shields flaring under impacts as the attackers pushed forward, heedless of the fire, and the defenders stood their ground, a pair of grenades tossed back and forth to keep the enemy off-balance.
The two groups finally collided, krogan charging with shields raised, smashing into the Panzergrenadiers at the head, and the impact sent several of them reeling back a few meters. The humans stood their ground and dug their heels into the dirt, boots skidding through the mud, and they pushed back, rifle barrels and shotgun muzzles shoved into the gaps between the shields, firing, firing, firing, and firing. Blood splattered all over the place as blades plunged themselves into flesh, bullets burrowing their way into skin, the occasional shotgun blast or frag grenade blowing enemies apart and covering those nearby in gore. A krogan got his shield broken and ate a blast from a 40mm grenade launcher to the chest, a few others getting their shields smashed and sent flying as rifle-clubbed rifles bashed them to a pulp, bayonets plunged into their flesh, and shotgun blasts from up-close.
The fighting degenerated into chaos. Panzergrenadiers disappeared underneath dogpiles of krogan as their weapons flashed away, flash-forged blades slashing away at their opponents while submachine guns barked at muzzle-touching distance, flashes of argrav pushing their enemies away before they could strangle them to death and propelled them against the far wall. Others found themselves impaled on blades or shot to gory deaths, blood, flesh, and internal organs spilling out all over the ground, splattered over the armor of their adversaries, or on the walls of the trench, depending on how the killing blows were made. Shotblocks and lead exchanged paths at point-blank range, felling humans and krogan alike by the dozen, those of the Federation joining in on the human side while those from opposing clans took the other. Two krogans from Clan Urdnot and some random mercenary group got into the fight using battle-axes and Spike Throwers, the air filled with the clangs of metal on metal and the report of Spikers, even as human slugthrowers provided a BGM to the melody, brass casings littering the ground as assault rifles and submachine guns discharged on fully automatic.
Hipper emptied the magazine of her MP-4 into in quick succession two turians and an asari, before reloading her weapon and sprayed a third turian before he could shoot a Stormtrooper into oblivion, his shotgun at the same time launching a batarian the other way. Wrex, Eugen, and Nagor completed the pincer from their end as they wreaked havoc in a flurry of submachine guns, assault rifles, and bayonets, often with horrendus and gory results, blades going through flesh as projectiles simply tore them to shreds.
"Cover that sector!" a few machine gunners called out over the COM as they shifted their aim to open fire on the enemy forces beelining towards the hotly contested section of trench that was now silent as the defenders picked off the last of the attackers inside, aiming to overwhelm them before they could get the defenses back online and mount an organized resistance. A crossfire of light and general-purpose machine guns lit them up, followed by a few thumps as Javelin missiles were launched at the tanks covering them, sending all three vehicles up in flames and painting the ground with fresh bloody gore from multiple species on the ground, flowing in little rivers back and forth and soaking into the dirt below.
"Panzer, Panzer! Eight of them coming in hot!"
The COM chatter proved no more than controlled chaos as several more enemy battle and light tanks rolled out into the open amidst a hailstorm of suppressing fire, shots pinging all off their kinetic barriers as the Panzer IVs transversed their turrets around to face the threat, a furious gunnery duel ensuring as tank battled tank, mass accelerator rounds sent one way being exchanged with cannon shells from smoothbores sent the other. A Panzer IV went out of the fight as rounds smashed through the turret armoring and destroyed the ammunition storage racks within, sending the turret flying into the air like a spinning bottle top, the crew thankfully protected from the blast by the internal crew compartmentalization even as the turret ring directly behind them turned into a geyser of fire. At the same time, two enemy hovertanks and a battle tank also equally got taken out of the fight, the lighter vehicles knocked out by fire from anti-tank guns in the area whilst a lucky round smashed into the turret ring of the larger vehicle, penetrated through, and detonated inside the hull, cooking the crew inside, torching the fuel cells, and in general, turning the vehicle into an oven, flames pouring out of every nook and cranny that was present to behold.
"Grenade! Frag out!"
"Someone get AT on those things, they're ripping through out defenses!"
"Target destroyed! Engaging next—Shit, grapeshot! Brace for impact!"
"Javelin up and firing, watch for backblast!"
"Fire mission, fire mission! We need immediate counterbattery fire on those guns ASAP!"
"All available field guns focus on sector D42!"
"Dronestrike incoming! They're slipping in through the flak!"
"Breach, breach, breach! Fix bayonets, prep for close-quarters combat!"
"This is missile artillery, we're ripple-firing all tubes!"
A series of screeches, rumbles, and explosions could be heard as the 88mm rockets fell all over the place, screeching and wailing like Stuka sirens moments before impact before they did so with a vengeance of a thousand goddesses as phosum warheads coated the area in flames, burning, spreading incendiary material burning to ashes anything and anyone unlucky enough to be caught in it...
"Counterattack! Panzer vor!"
The krogan dreadnought TDV Kralos shuddered as the open gunports lit up in a broadside no different from a typical ship of the line in the late 16th to early 19th century, a 55-gun broadside being cracked off at an enemy 2nd-generation cruiser as all 45 forward mass drivers of varying calibers and sizes fired as well, a full barrage of slugs and finely-guided proton beams from the torpedo silos guided towards the target via mass-effect fields to slam into the latter's armor, ionizing the armoring material and sending a burst of radiation into the interior of the vessel, static discharges wreaking havoc on the power grid as they bursted open power conduits and triggered fires to be fueled by escaping air. Amidships hits from the broadside mass drivers wrecked the broadside armaments, hits to the bow started extra fires and radiological damage, and the engine block also ate it's own fair share, blowing four out of six engines from static discharges overloading the power boxes, going off in displays of raw static and nuclear plasma, the remaining two engines flickering and then dying as the shipboard reactor began to melt down, it's cooling lines gone to the void and causing it to very quickly run itself dry of coolant, leading to a catastrophic runaway nuclear overheating run.
The octagonal, multi-tiered brick with cowlings that was SMS Admiral Lütjens, still sporting the fresh scars from the freshly-occured fighting that was being patched over by the damage control teams, let rip with her 200cm MACs in a coordinated salvo alongside the other ships in her squadron, fifty-five shells of varying calibers sent across the void at .895—.898 of c as bright, golden tracers on coincidence or stereoscopic rangefinders, headed for a detachment of enemy ships in the distance, and especially, the two heavy cruisers in the center. They sighted the volley, thrusters firing wildly as they turned to evade the rounds, but volume of fire had it's perks, and the ships had accounted for the most likely course changes that can be made to go evasive that the Terminus ships could make. A dozen bracketed shots struck the leading heavy cruisers and managed to penetrate the shielding, smashing through all five layers of Collector-based kinetic barriers to put a nasty gash into the armor, taking down a full sector of energized protection in the process as other sectors were redirected over to cover the gap. TDV Kralos's mass drivers managed to clip the barriers again, the lower-caliber rounds bouncing off, but the dreadnought's mismatched array of mass drivers of all calibers possible on the bow (in a style no different from a pre-dreadnought battleship) managed to do the job in nonetheless, popping open the kinetic barriers like a can from smaller-caliber hits as well as wrecking a quarter of it's escorts, several other heavy and light frigates emerging severely damaged and in no condition to fight.
The slavers fired back nonetheless, shield-penetrating hits wrecking half a dozen destroyers outright and putting into SMS Admiral Raeder eight fresh holes from mass-effect fields blending and crushing SmartSteel, leaving open, gaping holes that damage control teams scrambled to patch, bulkheads sealing the affected compartments against vacuum even as emergency repairs were enacted. Microtorpedoes followed, the shields rippling as dozens of impacts found homes amidst autocoil and CIWS fire, the larger torpedoes tearing fresh gashes into the hull from shield-penetrating mass-effect fields even as the shields struggled to hold them back, and failed. Admiral Raeder shuddered from the blows as she advanced forth, engines spewing blue exhaust as she did so, MACs rumbling to deliver her reply across the void afresh, Hydra missiles and a spread of 533cm torpedoes trailing close behind.
Munitions exchanged paths, point-defenses on both sides lighting them up in walls of defensive fire. A ripple of torpedoes, micro and standard, struck the frigates Sachsen, Mare Europa, and Mädchen on their shields moments before their torpedo silos opened up proper, a spread of eight 610cm corrosive warhead torpedoes propelled by the tube-launchers trailing out at a quarter of the speed of light, letting them cruise in on their ballistic courses undetected in no part thanks to the stealth coating they employed until the range drew to close enough. Torque-flywheels kicked in once they did so to pivot themselves around and line up with their respective targets as the inertial guidance decided to hand over it's job to the terminal systems, making last-minute adjustments to their aim using the optical sights before allowing for the fusion torches to take over and propel them the rest of their way home. What essentially amounted to a glorified nuke detonation propelled the cigar-shaped munitions straight towards their targets, ludicrous acceleration ratios bringing them up to close to the speed of light before impact, GUARDIAN lasers lighting them up the moment they began to do so and light up on their sensor displays, but it was already too late to intercept them all. A series of glowing, pulsating soccer balls materialized as the penetrator caps crumpled, pushing the munitions within through the protective layers of the kinetic barriers before they burst into the distinctive spheres of energy, eating chunks of ship and teleporting them to oblivion to make it look like a giant cosmic dragon had decided to take a few bites out of them.
Unwilling to risk their damaged ships in a melee, the human ships broke off to regroup, making a slow burn and veering off to starboard, taking a course that would see them slingshot around the gas giant some distance away and come back two hours later, a course that would also see them go directly through an enemy formation in a classic drive-by shooting maneuver, leaving the krogan dreadnought with it's escort of a few destroyer formations to carry on the fight. The slaver ships, seeing that continuing the fight would also be futile, mirrored the maneuver, veering to port on a tack that would see them in a position to skirt the main battleline within the protective sector of the planet's remaining orbital defense platforms under their control, trading a few broadsides with the krogan ships all the while as a parting gift. They slipped out of firing range moments later, disengaging to lick their wounds...
Meanwhile, at the main battleline, things weren't going so well.
"It's fucking Jutland all over again," Hilda cursed as SMS Königsberg shuddered again from dreadnought-caliber mass accelerator rounds smashing into her armor belt, smashing open to vacuum a dozen compartments that sent automated and human damage control scrambling to contain, bulkheads sealing against the holes to prevent loss of atmosphere via explosive decompression. Her main battery fired again shortly afterwards, discharging away a volley of 330cm MAC rounds into the skies, destined to gut the badly damaged light cruiser locked within the sights, but that didn't do much to the reality of the situation, even as Königsberg rattled again from a fresh round impacting against three-point-five meters of very much angled armor and bounced off, gouging out a nasty chunk of armor in the process and leaving on the plating a glowing hot gash to mark where the round had hit.
"SMS Seydlitz reports heavy damage, disengaging for emergency repairs," the report from the communications director served nothing but to hammer in the gravity of the situation even further, even as an enemy frigate detachment vanished along with two heavy cruisers after bracketing MAC fire and plasma torpedoes got to them, reducing them to boiled slag and pounded scrap metal in short order.
The Kohuria front had turned into nothing short of a clusterfuck brawl, with enemy ships having bum-rushed their way in on one-way trips to the surface to land troops and relieve the ground garrisons, supported by painstakingly accurate orbital bombardment from afar, ships emerging from FTL masking themselves by the natural interference from the gas giant two orbits out to send volleys of ground bombardment cluster munitions on courses that slingshotted them around the host star before finding home on the ground. Their main fleet then jumped in force a short while later after the first payloads began to fall, maneuvering in to assist the remnants of the orbital defense grid and actually managed to reclaim an entire sector of the planet's orbit, landing even more troops down to solidify their claim over the region and began a general offensive towards the spaceports funnelling the slaves offworld, intent on taking them and the personnel within for themselves. Even if the krogan present could stand their ground pretty well against the enemy, there was only so much bulk and dakka could do, after all.
The remnants of the orbital defense grid, now bolstered by fresh reinforcements, meant that directly attacking them with orbital bombardment was impractical, even human AEGIS had it's limits. Detachments swung back and forth on all sorts of wacky courses courtesy of Einstein and Newton, drive-by runs erupting all across the system in a classic game of interplanetary cat-and-mouse, hide-and-seek, or tag, whatever floated one's boat. A frigate wolfpack fell prey to groups of slaver heavy frigates this way, outgunning them and firing from advantageous positions to rip them to shreds well before they could properly mount an effective resistance, much less counterattack.
That SMS Von Der Tann had scored a direct hit on an enemy dreadnought and crippled it with one volley as the slaver vessel orbited the gas giant on the far end of the system from the other side of the system, using Newton and spotters to snipe the enemy vessel as it turned to pepper the planet and the KME fleet in orbit of it alongside the fact that the enemy vessel's kinetic barriers were not up courtesy of a few systems malfunctions from poorly maintained equipment to spear through the engine compartment, rendering it dead in the water, didn't really help things much save perhaps show to the slavers how good humans were at sniping.
It turned out to be a distraction, the bulk of the enemy fleet had emerged from FTL in an advantageous position (a flank) and managed to score a few early victories before scattering in the face of the heavy firepower once the Kaiserliche Marine regained their bearings and brought the guns of their heavy cruisers around to bear on the target; falling back to the relative safety of the remnants of the orbital defense grid while detachments played 3d Shogi in realtime, the bulk of both fleets avoiding direct contact and remained parked in their respective slots, before enough of their forces had arrived for them to commence a general offensive through both space and land. It had been grinding, brutal attrition ever since, and even though the wrecks of destroyed slaver ships seemed to indicate one thing, the smashed remnants of Würzburg AG's handiwork did naught but indicate the other.
A multi-tiered hexagon with a split down the middle, giving many the impression of a large skyscraper on it's side with an extra engine block glued on fired her main battery against the enemy, a pair of 1,500 ton shells propelled to .896 of the speed of light fusing themselves against the kinetic barriers of an enemy heavy cruiser and smashed them open, burrowing themselves deep into the citadel before the plasma jets burst through the other side of the ship and left it dead in the water, before her guns reloaded again and sent a second salvo bracketing against, and then nailing directly, onto a pirate dreadnought in the battleline, flattening themselves against the latter's kinetic barriers and causing them to flare. Her nameplate had been boiled off long ago, the breaches resealed with hastily applied SmartSteel plates applied to the gashes and closing off the affected compartments from the stars, smoke and fires still trailing out of some breaches still being placed under treatment by damage control, but her IFF transponder made her out as...SMS Hindenburg.
Hilda grimaced as the damage reports came home afresh with a fresh salvo from the enemy ships hitting home amongst the ranks of the joint fleet, shields flaring and rippling under the weapons fire as the krogan ships spat back their responses across the void, multicaliber mass driver rounds, numbering well within the dozens per ship, flung across space at close to the speed of light to pepper enemy ships with their sheer rate and volume of fire to make up for the individual weakness in each gun. Königsberg shuddered again, a volley of broadside mass accelerators striking her dorsal armor plating and exposing fresh compartments to vacuum, the offender being a dreadnought dueling it out with SMS Tirpitz, the latter delivering 380cm MAC shells massing 10,000 tons each to flatten themselves onto the dreadnought's kinetic barriers, leaving the 1st-rate battleship's shields to weather the storm the enemy's main battery kicked up. Autocoils and plasma torpedoes chugged away at the aforementioned dreadnought all the while, special credits to Würzburg AG and Blohm & Voss, sending rounds downrange at frenzied rates as turrets jittered back and forth, raining rapid-fire autocannon shells of various double-digit centimeter calibers downrange as fast as their ammunition drums could feasibly feed. The Redemption-class heavy cruiser TDV Arisen From Ruins let her bow twenty mass drivers rip with a ripple of muzzle flashes and shells fired into the void from her bow gunports, raking and riddling eight enemy frigates with dozens of holes combined to the engine blocks or broadsides, the shells overmatching against the armor to turn the angled impact paths against them and tear straight through their fragile hulls.
"Heavy cruisers Admiral Lütjens and Iserlohn requesting to withdraw and commence a slingshot course towards the gas giant to catch the enemy in a flank."
"Granted, deploy FrigPack 17 to go with them. DesDivs 9 through 13 are to pop flares to screen their maneuver."
The order was carried out swiftly as destroyer wings popped their chaff-style EW flare decoys, inspired heavily by their element zero counterparts in the Citadel navies, while both heavy cruisers and five frigates maneuvered away under the cover, engaging their afterburners for a short burst to accelerate them along on their projected course, one that would take them directly through the atmosphere on the gas giant in the distance, and use it's atmosphere to aerobrake their way around and line themselves up on an attack run at the flanks of the enemy fleet. Engines silent and dark for the sake of stealthy approaches, they sailed on, entrusting to Newton their course, and to another extent, their fate. Seven ships cruised on under inertia in the void that way, weapons loaded, capacitators charged, and FC systems ready to lock onto targets at a moment's notice.
Krogan ships were also taking their own fair share of damage, and dishing out disproportionate amounts of punishment in return. Resembling large flying axes or hammers with their blocky bows, handle-like rear sections, and dozens of frontal mass accelerators + slabs of thick vertical frontal armor, their heavy firepower being sent downrange in all calibers as the bow batteries fired, armament schemes being laid out in methods more comparable to pre-dreadnought battleships with their mismatched smaller guns alongside bigger ones scattered across the frontal plating. Missile racks and proton beams disgorged their contents at targets as they were acquired, proton bolts guided by mass-effect fields leaving their torpedo silos to chew through the hulls of enemy vessels through sheer volume of fire exactly as their designers had intended. Brawls ensured at all ranges as combinations of light to heavy firepower were dumped downrange, broadside guns sticking out of open gunports making th broadside engagements look like typical ship duels from the Age of Sail, complete with open gunport doors to complete the image. TDV Solemn Penance shredded a pirate (obsolete) cruiser outright with a 33-gun broadside that tore through the armoring and ripped open the internals to space like a can, just as her 40 bow guns fired onto an enemy light cruiser in the distance, peppered the kinetic barriers, popped them open, and tore the ship apart like what the pirates did to Lord Beckett's flagship in the sixth film of Pirates of the Caribbean.
"SMS Li Mei Feng reporting critical damage and hull failure, abandoning ship, requesting backup for escape pods, battlecruisers Rache and Von Der Tann reporting heavy damage, breaking off for emergency repairs," the communications director reported grimly. "Two more destroyers gone: Hilda and Shang Li Be. Frigates Saschen and Ave Maria reporting heavy damage."
"Well, fuck. How's the krogan ships faring?"
"Warmaster Urdnot reports his ships are fighting well, but are getting picked off one-by one."
"Commodore Li's formation is taking heavy casualties and starting to collapse! Enemy ships are starting to overwhelm the flank and push through."
"Dispatch battleships Austerlitz and Baden along with their detachments to cover the gap, order a general—"
"Battleships Bradenburg and Tirpitz falling back under heavy pressure!"
"Fall back! Withdraw to Lagrange point L1 and regroup. Status of the evac group below?"
"Evac command reports we have another thirty minutes before the last transport departs."
"Tell the dudes commanding the ground teams to make it twenty. We're getting torn to bits up here!"
The skies above Kohuria pulsed with fire, KME ships fighting a steady retreat as their battered forms cut their engines and reversed for the rendezvous point, keeping their fire up even as they reversed instead of advanced, guns firing all the way to keep up the pressure on the enemy and cover for more badly damaged units to retreat. Ships with too heavy battle damage instead jumped to FTL for the Lagrange point and regrouped there, damage control teams rushing to seal breaches and bring them back to somewhat combat-ready status before the fight hit their position. Others in the meantime kept up a fierce fight, trying their utmost to keep the enemy at bay for as long as possible, the krogan ships following suit the KME vessels as MAC fire trailed out, immediately followed by mass drivers to smash the kinetic barriers and hulls of the enemy with salvoes of two or a few dozen shots, depending on the class and nationality. It was a fierce, grinding battle of attrition through and through, but while the combined forces of the Kaiserliche Marine/Tuchanka Federal Self-Defense Forces was maintaining a steady 2:1 kill-to-loss ratio...that meant jack shit when the enemy outnumbered them, well...3:1.
Not even the krogan ships were immune from destruction, if the numerous wrecks of what used to be the axe-like ships now floating in the void were of any indication. TDV Death Before Dishonor was shot to pieces as a testament to that, frontal engine block pounded to scrap by the combined firepower of three enemy dreadnoughts and half a dozen cruisers focusing their firepower all soley upon her. Destroyers Khargon, Hurkan, and Sudrax were left as spinning wrecks amongst the stars with their citadels breached and armor shredded into a million splinters, whole chunks of metal slagged into lumpy globs from ion torpedoes floating amongst plating breached by particle beams, residual radiological and static signatures still lingering enough to trigger Geiger counters and spectacular lighting displays, as events showed when two wrecks drifted close enough to each other for a lighting discharge to occur, flashes of light every here and there making themselves known in the debris field.
"It's all down to TF Bravo now, I guess," Hilda remarked blandly as she glanced at the detachment turning in from the other gas giant on the opposite end of the system, having slingshotted around it and came back to the fight on a course dictated by Newton and complex equations after breaking off for emergency repairs some four hours ago, patching their breaches all the while with patch kits applied to breaches, and damaged equipment repaired to make functional. Two ships, with their MACs damaged in the fighting, had their main battery restored to combat-ready status, the long housing for the guns sealed and patched against the elements, whilst the damaged coils were removed and replaced with spare ones to let the gun be able to start firing anew.
"Team Fortress Bravo," her XO commented. "Got a nice ring to it, eh?"
Hilda ignored her. "Graf Würzburg, prepare your aircraft for torpedo runs, we're doing a De Grasse Switch in coordination with Task Force Bravo."
"Roger, preparing air wing. Stand by."
"If there's anything a carrier could launch that could potentially devastate the enemy battleline over yonder," Commodore Liag, Fleet Deputy Officer, mumured, "It'd be the torpedo bombers. Even the Abyssals fear those at close range, let alone these guys."
The tactics director cut across the CDC. "TF Bravo is commencing attack."
Golden tracers lit up the void as MAC rounds smashed into the older, obsolete ships that had been the galactic state-of-the-art a decade ago only to be rendered obsolete the moment humanity made themselves known on the galactic stage and ripped them apart, hull, kinetic barriers, and armor all falling to the onslaught as human MACs and krogan mass drivers in quick succession tore apart ship after ship after ship. Shots landed on their mark amongst the older ships and their newer second-generation berthern without discriminating, some holding up against the onslaught while others getting torn apart to shreds, going up in flames as reactors caught fire, ammunition holds went off, or melted down, as reactor cooling lines were, well, deleted. Shells breached armor, internal armor, and then, citadel armor, plasma jets dispersing inside to deal internal damage that was only further aggravated by the internal atmosphere getting heated and explosively expanding. A heavy cruiser drifted out of formation as penetrating hits severed the cooling lines leading to the reactor and caused it to start melting down, while at the same time, another got summarily bisected as followup energy projectors cut through the drive core, the rear half's engines still active for long enough to propel it forwards for a bit before dying.
"Enemy attack from the right rear flank!" the report came as yet another frigate exploded under enemy fire. "16 human destroyers, 10 human frigates, 8 light, and 4 heavy cruisers. 8 krogan heavy cruisers, 8 light cruisers, 12 frigates, 6 destroyers!"
Pethe Both'bansar cursed underneath his breath. "All ships, turn around and clear the skies!"
"Your Excellency!" the fleet deputy said. "Maneuvering right now will only create chaos! I say we deploy our forces in an accelerating, slight turn to the right. That will see us turn upon the enemy's rear—"
"But we would be wiped out by then!" Pethe answered. "Turn around! We'll—"
"But Your Excellency! That is exactly what they are aiming for! To turn around is to directly fall into their trap and—"
"That's an order! Turn around now, or face my wrath! All ships, turn around!"
"Your Excellency..." the deputy murmured, a tone of resignation and despair evident.
"Shut up!" Pethe bellowed at his deputy officer.
MAC fire, mass driver rounds, and plasma beams ravaged the ships from a hundred and thirty five degrees to starboard as ships began to make the turn to engage the ambushers from behind, trying, and failing, to complete the maneuver in time as the massed fire of few dozen ships began to take their toll on the slaver fleet, which was already battered and broken from the prior fighting. Volleys of Hydra and Argus missiles found their mark and exploded, the latter carrying their distinct Hyperion nuclear payloads to devastating effect, nuclear fireballs engulfing vast chunks of space as smaller warheads impacted against kinetic barriers to bring them down, before hitting against armor and breaching through. Ships emerged with armoring boiled to slag or turned directly into slag themselves, or even outright vaporized, depending on the proximity to the detonation. It took too long for the ships to make the turn effectively, not to mention the chaos in the formation doing so caused, and many ships began reporting kinetic barrier failures before MAC and mass driver rounds thrashed them, tearing through armor and smashing open compartments to vacuum.
"Fools! Fools, the lot of them!" the deputy said, his voice aghast and tone disbelieving, as he watched the slaughter unfold before his eyes.
"It's taking too long to accelerate and complete the turn, Supreme Commander, multiple ships are already reporting kinetic barrier failures and hull damage, with many destroyed outright. Our fleet is taking heavy losses!" the operations director said, his tone one of dismay.
"They are fools, the lot of them!" the deputy shouted. "All those years I've served them, and this is how they repay me! Fools! Idiots! Morons!"
"Enemy ships have begun an attack run, they're closing in at 211, 163, 127, 144, 215, and 301."
"Prepare to—"
"Kinetic barriers have fallen!"
"Fire main batteries, destroy them before they destroy us!"
"Main battery is down, enemy fire has damaged the turrets and knocked out the capacitors. Repairs underway."
"Weapons, weapons, dammit! Weapons!"
Not even the dreadnought was spared from the destruction, glancing blows from 100cm shells took out two of six engines, clipped a few power boxes leading to the mass accelerator, and smashed open multiple compartments to vacuum, fires trailing out from the breaches in the hull even as bulkheads sealed shut against the damage, plasma torpedoes cutting through them to boil through meters of armor plating, vaporizing everything in their path be it armor, equipment, or personnel. The ship rocked violently from the impacts, sending anyone not in a chair tumbling to the ground, and even then, within the armored confines of the ship, the bridge viewscreens flickered, and then, died.
"Surveillance system showing damage! Unable to restore monitors!"
"Damage reports, give me the damage reports! And get the viewscreens online again!"
"Hull integrity at 43%, multiple compartments breached, casualties on decks 5 to 17 and 19 through 28. Affected compartment has been sealed off and evacuated. Kinetic barriers have fallen."
"Frigate and heavy cruisers have completed the maneuver and starting to return fire!"
A light cruiser took a MAC shot to the barriers and saw the round bounce off to the oblique angle of impact, completing the turn a short while later to light up the ambushers with mass accelerator fire, bluish tracer streaks illuminating the void as golden tracers spat back in return laced out to nail it on the bow, splashes of weapon impacts lighting up the protective kinetics as the rest of the fleet in turn completed their maneuvers and began shooting back, even as the human and krogan ambushers closed in, their fire increasing in intensity all the while. Blue and golden tracers exchanged paths as the KME and krogan vessels began taking fire, their fresh shields flashing and rippling under the impacts while autocoils fired away at inbound torpedo salvoes, point defense batteries chugging away at them and reducing the incoming torpedoes to glowing bursts of energy and metal, the remaining survivors finding home on their targets and exploding in bright blue and yellow flashes, chewing through armor and sending chunks of the stuff spinning off into the void.
"Release the bridge from it's armor," Pethe commanded. "I want to see with my own eyes and fight back."
A heavy cruiser not far off fired both bow mass accelerators at the enemy and took a pair of rounds to the kinetic barriers in return as the dreadnought's bridge lifted itself out of the hull, giving the Supreme Commander a better view of the battle. A pair of armor plates opened up to allow the bridge structure itself to lift out of the internal confines of the ship, the elevation mechanisms lifting up a large, angled pole that held the bridge itself on the end like a marshmallow on a skewer, a few dozen meters above the rest of the hull. The heavy cruiser's kinetic barriers flashed again, then died as MAC rounds slammed into the armor plating, penetrated deep within, and sent a dozen compartments and the entire engineering section to open vacuum as the vessel's reactor was vented to the void, a miniature star shining brightly for a brief instant as the mass effect field collapsed and the reaction halted, leaving behind only the ship's frame, drifting lifelessly.
"Exactly as intended," Hilda noted to herself. "Graf Würzburg, Task Force Bravo, immediate execute De Grasse Switch. Sink them."
"Fire the main guns!" Pethe roared. "Show them the true wrath of the—"
"The enemy has jumped to FTL—fighters are jumping in to take their place! Hundreds of them incoming at high speed!"
Pethe stopped. "What!?"
Point-defenses began to fire away as the fighters paused for the briefest of moments, and, having jumped in in perfect attack formation, entered their attack runs at top acceleration, their course being that of a pyramid with two groups to the sides and two to the top and bottom. Their onboard jamming nodes lit up pirate sensors and turned them into incomprehensible blobs of electronic interference, blinding the enemy, permitting Würzburg AG's handiwork to line up perfectly with their targets, launch off the rails their armaments, and scram, a volley of missiles equipped with ECM payloads and nuclear weapons sailing forth, each targeting a ship and unleashing their payload on the target.
Nuclear detonations blossomed as nuke met ship, shields flaring to stop the supernova-like fury, some succeeding, others failing. Armor melted, boiled, and vaporized away. Hulls buckled, bent, and warped under the thermal stress, whilst nuclear-induced radiation blotted out sensor returns, leaving only the visual spectacle and the electronic signatures that came with it. In the midst of the explosions, a few ships, with their kinetic barriers failing, their armor already heavily weakened, and their hulls already cracked, succumbed to the nuclear fury and exploded as the shockwaves tore through their innards, leaving only wreckage and the ghosts of their crews behind.
The time bought to the Tuchanka Federal Self-Defense Forces and the Kaiserliche Marine proved invaluble. Ships jumped away and regrouped at advantageous positions once more, reforming once broken and shattered battlelines into cohesive formations afresh. As damage control teams capitalized on the opportunity to patch up their ships back to combat-ready status once again, the pirate fleet turning in wide arcs to meet them once more...