Chapter 38
Kaiser shook his head, still a little stunned from the explosions on top of his turret.
While part of him was mad - very angry indeed - at the Merchants for what they'd done to his rockets and his beautiful super-tank, that part of him would have to wait it's turn.
A much bigger part of him was super-glad for very thick armor, which had kept the explosions strictly outside his tank.
Things were still somewhat confused, but so far, every coherent report had said his tank was still intact - except for the wrecked Nebelwerfer of course.
Crew in his main turret reported they were OK, the turret intact, and they were almost reloaded.
So did crew elsewhere, including on the top deck, where things had been most likely to get damaged.
He was glad he hadn't retracted the armor panel to get his mortars involved in the fight - they'd certainly have been wrecked if he had. And they'd have contributed their own explosions - as their ammunition went off - inside the tank. That could have been bad.
As it was, things looked absolutely horrible.
While every webcam had been blown off, which could have focused on, and displayed, the top of the Ratte, he still had video from his UAV's.
The UAV video showed mostly smoke, but through occasional gaps in that, he could see the nebelwerfer rocket launcher had been turned into so much charred, twisted, wreckage.
But he could also see that everything else - the turret, the top deck etc, were intact.
Well, probably - he may have lost some 20mm guns, but the 88mm, 150mm, and 280mm guns all looked OK and reported they were now ready to fire.
Kaiser again had the honor of firing first.
It was with great glee that he pushed the firing button.
His 280 mm gun spoke, and its 11-inch shell, this time, an AP shell, weighing 741 pounds, sped to it's target.
Kaiser had specially picked this target for it's thick armor. It looked like it was made by laying engine-blocks in a mold, sort of like bricks, then pouring in molten steel - spring steel if Kaiser was any judge - around them to fill in the spaces and hold it all together as one solid sheet of very think metal.
That sheet had been laid, at an angle, as the front armor plate of a tank that was somewhat bigger than the rest. The plate obviously weighed down that tank so it sagged noticeably.
That tank was an excellent target for demonstrating the magnificent power of the Ratte's main guns.
The original manuals that came with the 11-inch guns said they'd been tested and could penetrate 18 inches of slightly angled armor steel at 7000 meters, or 23 inches of armor steel at point-blank ranges.
Kaiser believed that, so it was with no surprise that he observed his shell hit the very thick front armor of his target, and pierce right through it like a hot knife through butter.
Then the shell exploded inside his target and knocked its turret askew.
That was satisfying
The second 280mm gun fired and it's 11 inch shell hit the side armor of one Merchant tank, penetrated all the way through that tank, out the other side, then in through the side armor of a second tank, exploding within that one and leaving both tanks destroyed and burning.
Kaiser was a bit jealous of the glory that shot would bring to its gunners.
The third 11-inch gun fired and it's AP shell went in one side of a small office building, through that building, then into and through the front armor of the Merchant tank which had been trying to take shelter behind the building.
That tank blew up, as it's own ammunition was set off by the detonating 11-inch shell.
Kaiser noted the third gun should be rewarded for team-play. They'd shot a target whose wreckage would now block the last escape route open to the Merchant tanks.
Other Merchant tanks had previously been immobilized by HE rounds, and they'd chosen those targets carefully so as to block avenues of escape.
Now the last such avenue had been sealed.
That was important so that Kaiser could slaughter them all, without any getting away.
His 5.9 inch guns got similar results to before, with one hitting it's target, and killing it in this case, and the other missing again.
Kaiser noted that he'd need to discipline that gunner.
The three 88mm guns that bore on the enemy fired too, getting two kills and a miss.
Kaiser then fired his BEC gun, for which he'd selected a different payload this time.
Many different substances could be turned into Bose-Einstein Condensates, and when they thawed and resumed a more normal state, they had whatever properties those substances normally had.
Glace had included a small variety of things her weapon could turn into BEC's. Among them, there were two different poisons, an acid, one labeled 'fuel-air bomb' and one labeled 'penetrator', which Kaiser had used the first time.
This time, Kaiser had selected 'fuel-air bomb' as the BEC he would launch, because, while his last shot was great, he wanted to try for more dramatic destruction.
He could see why Glace had said a railgun would be a better BEC launcher than a rifle. Railguns launched projectiles weighing several pounds, while rifle bullets weighed only a small fraction of an ounce.
He didn't know what the compression factor of a BEC was, or stated otherwise, how much it would expand when thawed. But even if it was like steam and expanded 1700 to 1, a rifle bullet just didn't give you much to start with. 1700 rifle bullets were, what, about the size of a shoe-box, he guessed, making his last shot something like a vigorous firecracker - fierce but small. Devastating if it went off within something, like a human body or car engine, but insignificant if it went off in an open space.
This time, he wanted more bang.
He fired at his target, and again imagined he heard a faint screech as the BEC penetrated it without leaving a hole. Then the tank he'd hit went through a very rapid sequence. First it got covered in frost, then that melted and flames spurted from the viewing slits, machine-gun ports, and other open spots or weak spots.
Then, a moment later, its ammunition cooked off and the whole tank blew up, tossing its turret 10 feet into the air to land again, upside-down, on the burning wreckage of the tank.
Kaiser's grin was quite large.
That made 12 enemy tanks killed out of the original 30, plus some damaged and immobilized.
He gave the order to fire at will, so that his guns would fire as soon as each were loaded, aimed, and ready, rather than waiting to fire as they had been.
And then he was reminded that he'd paid for the best targeting computers and software for his defensive lasers.
Dozens of rockets came from each of 3 different points, a couple miles south of him, aimed at his super-tank.
All three sources fired at once, but, as with all multiple rocket-launchers, they had to 'ripple' their shots, firing a few, then a few more, etc, rather than all at once, so they didn't interfere with each-other.
That gave his lasers time to work - the ones that could bear on the targets anyway.
Only the ones to the left of the tank, on the front of the tank, and the ones on top could bear on these targets.
And the ones on top turned out to be too covered in soot from the explosions of his own rockets, to be any use.
When they tried to fire, they discovered that if they fired now, they'd melt themselves. So they forbore, with plans to clean them later.
So it was that two lasers tried to shoot down 6 dozen rockets.
They were assisted by the twin 20mm cannons, which were primarily intended for anti-aircraft work, but might still knock down some missiles via their proximity fuses and the shrapnel they threw around.
In all, about half of the rockets got shot down.
Most of the other half hit the Ratte, and, for a time, things got very noisy inside.
But when the smoke cleared, they noted again that their thick armor had saved them from any real damage.
The three-inch wide rockets just didn't have enough explosive to hurt armor that thick.
He verified that by retracting the deck plate covering his 8 120mm mortars. That worked - he had been concerned it might have gotten warped - and he gave the order for the mortars to shoot at whatever had launched the rockets on them. They couldn't directly see the rocket-launchers, so the regular guns would have trouble shooting at them. But indirect fire like that is where mortars excelled.
As his mortars started firing, he grinned again, glad that the retracting deck plate had not been damaged.
That reminded Kaiser and he got to work growing more metal in places where the armor had been damaged by plasma hits. He used the video feed from the UAV's to guide his work.
While working, he idly noted the sound of his various guns and mortars firing, as well as the continued clanking and sizzling from enemy tank shells and plasma blasts hitting his Ratte.
As he worked, the rate at which his tank got hit kept declining.
His chief gunner cleared his throat, and when Kaiser looked up, he pointed to indicate Kaiser's gunnery console.
Kaiser looked at that, and saw that it indicated his 11- inch gun was already aimed and within seconds of being ready to fire.
He smiled and nodded his thanks, then fired his gun, destroying another enemy tank.
Then he fired his BEC launcher again - this time with a poison payload. That tank got covered in frost like usual, then a moment later all its hatches opened and its crew members tried crawling out, clutching at their throats. They didn't make it far before collapsing.
Kaiser smiled another cruel smile, then got back to growing metal on his tank to repair damaged spots.
By the time he was done, the enemy tanks had all been destroyed.
Some had tried to flee, but could not get past the obstacles that other destroyed and damaged tanks had become. They'd been trapped there, and they all got destroyed there.
Kaiser looked over the scene to verify that.
Then he answered the call he'd been ignoring - well, mostly ignoring. He'd replied only with the equivalent of 'please hold'.
The call was from his other two battle-groups - each formed of a Ratte model E, a Ratte model F, and a Monster.
They were presently a few miles west of town, having just forded a river on their way to the next objectives: Washington DC for one, and, for the other, Concorde - a weapons depot - and then Boston.
Their routes would not be direct - they'd have to go out of their way a few times each to get to places where rivers could be forded, which information they'd gotten from an old map, then scouted and verified before starting out.
No bridge could support a Ratte, but most rivers had fords - places where they were wide and shallow and had good ground rather than mud. Military units throughout history had been using river fords when there were no bridges, which had been most of the time.
And Rattes, being tall, could ford in places where horse cavalry could not. They'd thought of some helpful tricks, like fording at an angle and heading slightly downstream, to better resist the current.
Kaiser's Ratte would get to try those tricks too, when they finished here and moved up to support the other groups.
What the other groups had been calling about and asking for, since the Merchant tanks were first sighted, was for permission to lob in a few shells to help.
They were well within range to do so - even without using the rocket-assisted extended-range shells.
But Kaiser had ignored them, wanting to reserve all the glory for himself.
-0-0-0-
"Who says a battleship doesn't make a good aircraft carrier?" Ron quipped.
"Actually, nobody," Boz started, "It's been done, and done well, several times: Akagi, Kaga, Shinano, Lexington, Saratoga - even Hyuga and Ise..."
Ron held up a hand to stop the lecture, "I stand corrected, sagacious one, but tell me all about it later - we're in a hurry just now."
Boz nodded and gave the order, "Commence."
Fifty aircraft and eighty PT boats started along the various approaches each would take in the choreographed attack they'd all make on Leviathan.
They'd thought of using mini-subs as well - they had both the British X-class and the German Seehund class in the Replicator. But Ron - the former scuba-dive instructor, who'd worked for a diving company that had mini-subs - was the only one other than Boz who knew how to 'drive' one, and they were both better employed elsewhere in this attack.
The mini-subs only had two torpedoes each, after all.
So while Duplicates of Boz, Abe, and 3 Old Codgers flew aircraft, Ron's 10 Duplicates would each be a torpedo-man on a PT boat, as would Simon's Duplicates and the Duplicates of 6 more Old Codgers - one full torpedo-man, plus five who'd been apprentices for all the runs they'd tried in the last 20 minutes or so.
Those runs had failed to hit Leviathan, who turned out to be resourceful as well as good at dodging.
But the torpedo runs had taught the apprentices the basics, and they all figured there was no harm in having them try.
In the first attack the 50 PT boats had made, they'd only launched about a quarter of their torpedoes before Leviathan figured out what was going on and had counter-attacked.
He'd made sudden waves to smash boats into other, nearby boats, destroying both.
He'd also made sudden water-spouts to toss boats into the air. They usually wrecked as they came down.
A normal military force would have responded to that by going defensive, trying to save their lives and boats.
But this force was entirely made of Replicated boats crewed by Duplicates.
They had no need for self-preservation.
So they concentrated on trying to fire more torpedoes before getting wrecked.
They managed to fire almost another quarter of their loadout before they were all wrecked, then dismissed.
Before that wave of 93 torpedoes even got to Leviathan, a second wave of PT boats was being Replicated - this time with longer-ranged torpedoes, in hopes that Leviathan's wave-generation power could be outranged.
They started leaving the ship's vicinity when only a few crews had yet been Duplicated for them. This was so some could move well off to the sides before approaching Leviathan, so their torpedoes could approach from multiple directions.
The 93 torpedoes from PT boat wave 1 reached Leviathan at the same time as 5 more torpedoes fired from Agamemnon. Simultaneously, a dozen missiles, fired from Agamemnon, arrived overhead and started dropping patterns of Hedgehog bombs.
Each missile could carry a thousand pound payload, but the 65 pound Hedgehog bombs didn't fit perfectly into the compartment. So each missile could only carry and dispense 12 Hedgehog bombs.
They dispensed these in a pattern above where Leviathan would be, and tried to cover every spot he could dodge to.
This almost worked. Their coverage was dense enough that Leviathan again had to 'porpoise' - leaping out of the water to avoid letting any bombs or torpedoes hit him.
The positron guns were waiting, and all three fired - one directly at Leviathan, and one each to places he might be able to move to.
All three shots got blocked by sudden water-spouts.
The beams - which had been sparkling as they flew and occasionally annihilated an electron in the air they passed through - caused explosions as they hit the much more dense water and spent themselves annihilating electrons within that.
But those explosions just hit water.
Some lasers, fired to blind Leviathan, also got blocked by the water-spouts.
Leviathan splashed down into the ocean again, unharmed.
Wave two had again been 50 PT boats, but the boats were spaced out more, to make it much harder for a wave to knock one into another.
And they were approaching Leviathan from different directions, to complicate his dodging.
And they'd 'hotwired' their fire-controllers, so they could launch two torpedoes at once, instead of just one.
That would hinder aiming them, and make launching a bit more dangerous, but it was felt to be worth it.
In fact, the inaccuracy may help, by introducing a little more randomness and making it harder for Leviathan to predict where to dodge to.
Wave two did manage to fire all 200 of their torpedoes before the boats all got destroyed.
While they were at it, it had been found, on Agamemnon, that certain cruise missiles could carry Hedgehog bombs and dispense them cluster-bomb style, like they'd been doing. But they could also be programmed to fly to a waypoint, change directions, then fly to either another waypoint, or fly on to the target and attack it.
The cruise missiles were slower than the missiles they had been using, but they were already firing as fast as they could reload, so that didn't matter much. And this waypoint ability would allow them to have missiles from two or three launches arrive at the same time, and do it from different directions.
So it was that one wave of 12 cruise missiles - 6 launched from the underwater VLRS cells, which traveled through the water slowly for a hundred yards or so until they reached the surface, then popped up and sped up to fly through the air - plus 6 more from the topside VLRS cells, all flew on a long route including 2 waypoints before each dropping 12 Hedgehog bombs over Leviathan.
That first wave arrived over Leviathan at the same time as a second wave of cruise missiles, which had flown on a shorter, 1-waypoint, course, before it too dropped 144 Hedgehog bombs as part of a complicated pattern over Leviathan and places he could get to.
Still at the same time, a third wave of speedy missiles flew straight to Leviathan and dropped their 144 bombs as part of the pattern.
And all this arrived at the same time as did the 5 torpedoes from Agamemnon, and the PT boats' 198 torpedoes - two had hit and wrecked each-other during launch, yet had not been armed so had not detonated.
Leviathan didn't even try to dodge this complicated grid pattern of bombs and missiles.
Instead, he created a number of instant blocks of ice. These, he made in the way of, and blocking the path of, certain bombs and missiles.
Leviathan sailed through the dangerous 3-d grid of weapons, in a path that was completely clear, while the ice-blocked weapons hit the ice in their ways and detonated harmlessly.
In the meantime, it had been discovered that two Old Codgers could fly planes, and one more could fly helicopters.
They each, along with Boz and Abe, got 10 Duplicates, which got loaded into Replicated Douglas A-1J Skyraiders, which then taxied 10 feet or so across the deck and through a teleportation portal that took them to 10,000 feet, from which they could fall until they were up to flight speed, then fly to the attack.
Each Skyraider was loaded with one torpedo in the centerline hardpoint, and from each of its 14 other hardpoints - 7 on each wing - hung a cluster of 6 Hedgehog bombs.
Coming out in a continual stream, as they did, they each flew to different starting points, so they could attack Leviathan from several directions at once.
The Old Codger that could fly helicopters - call sign Bushy since, no matter how much he shaved, he still had some whiskers on his chin at any given time - chose to fly a Sikhorsky CH-54 Skycrane.
It could only go 150 mph, but it carried a lovely 25,000 pound payload.
This, they loaded with 15 crates, each holding 21 Hedgehog bombs in three rows of 7 launch-rails all fastened to one overhead 'base plate'. These crates were suspended from the helicopter by ropes: one for each crate.
The crate and rope assemblies weighed 300 pounds each, and, in all, put them really close to the CH-54's weight limit.
The Skycrane wasn't designed to drop bombs, but that was OK - they'd just dismiss the lowest crate, let the bombs that had been within it fall free, then dismiss the next-lowest crate and repeat, resulting in a more or less steady stream of 315 bombs falling from the helicopter.
As each crate was dismissed, that would also dismiss the parts of it which were holding the upper base plate to the lower base plate. The lower base plate would then be thrust downward, away from the upper base plate above it, by the force of a dozen, foot-long, springs decompressing in-between them. That would give initial momentum to the Hedgehog bombs - mounted to launch-rails fastened to the lower base plate - enabling their own fins to maintain the directions their launch-rails started them at.
Row one of launch rails was angled 5 degrees forwards, while row 2 was straight, and row three was angled 5 degrees backwards.
And in each row, the 7 bombs were angled left or right by 15 degrees, 10 degrees, 5 degrees, or zero degrees for the middle one.
This would all result in the 21 bombs hitting the ocean below in a grid-like pattern.
They planned to line up the helicopters in an arc, facing Leviathan and moving towards him, then start dropping bombs ahead of him with the timing worked out to keep dropping bombs continuously until just after he'd passed.
They may as well drop them all in one pass like that, since Leviathan was moving twice as fast as the Skycrane could, so they'd never catch up for a second pass.
As soon as he was in his helicopter, call sign Bushy instantly started chatting over the radio with the two Old Codgers - former Marine pilots - who were flying in Skyraiders.
Their call signs were Weedy - a tall thin man who liked gardening - and Scrappy, so named by his squadron-mates long ago, since his attitude was sometimes like that of Scrappy-Doo, the character from the Scooby-Doo TV show, who was disliked because of his aggressive, irrepressible attitude.
They started out, as was traditional for the three, complaining about how movies and TV shows got it wrong - pilots didn't get to choose their own call signs and so end up with impressive-sounding ones. Instead, they got names assigned by their squadron-mates & these were often very unflattering. These three were all comfortable with their call signs, and had used them voluntarily, even after leaving the service.
But many pilots they knew had hated their insulting call signs, and had ditched them as soon as possible.
Boz didn't mind the radio chatter, since, even with the radios busy, they could all still communicate just fine via the Communications Console.
He might still have asked them to cut it out and concentrate on the mission, but didn't want to provoke them into assigning him a call sign he didn't like - perhaps one suggesting being too picky or worried.
And, at the moment, Weedy - who had flown Skyraiders while in the Marines - was giving pointers on their use.
And just then, Lisa called.
"Sprich mit Boz-honey. Boz my dear, I'll keep this quick since I know you're busy. I figured out two more icons that could really help you in this fight." she said.
"Go on," he replied.
"Your Drain Console is currently set up as a field stretching all around the ship and extending out 50 feet, but it isn't limited to that. At the same time, it can select any target within 100 feet and drain their powers too. It's the icon that looks like an armored man on horseback with a spear - the spear is supposed to be a lance and suggest lancing this or that target with Drain. But," she continued, " I strongly suggest not using both at once just now. Specifically, turn off your 50 foot radius drain, since Leviathan is known to ram targets and pummel them, and you don't want him losing his gravity control and turning into a black hole - and taking you with him - when he tries."
"Important safety tip, thanks Lisa," Boz replied, his face pale at what could have happened.
"Second," Lisa continued, "Your Gravity Control Console also has another feature. It's the icon that looks like a Roulette wheel, with the double-zero emphasized. To enable that icon, you must first set the X, Y, and Z axis controls to neutral, and the magnitude slider to zero. That zeroes gravity one way - by opposing the ambient force with an equal and opposite force, up to ten gravities in strength. But with those set, then the Roulette double-zero icon becomes possible to use. It zeroes gravity in a totally different way."
"OK," Boz prompted, "tell me about it."
"You know that matter and energy can be interchangeable in certain cases, right?"
"Sure," Boz replied, "For example, physicists have known for years that, by adding certain energies to a proton, they can get it to split into 3 parts: a neutron, a positron, and a neutrino. Then they can similarly add energy to that same neutron and get it to split into a proton, an electron, and an anti-neutrino. You can keep that cycle going as long as you keep adding energy. I think it has to do with the quarks they are all made up of."
"Great. Your grandfather found the Graviton particle - not just found it, but figured out some ways to manipulate it. His notes say that he can alter it's component quarks to turn a Graviton into a Neutrino, by changing the Up Quarks into Bottom Quarks, and the Charm Quarks into Down Quarks. He did this by adding specific energies in specific amounts that I haven't read about yet. He even said he could make the change reverse itself using a sort of quantum timer that's something like radioactive decay - that's how his disintegration ray works: a quark swap with timed self-reversal turns the electrons into something else with no charge: I'm not sure what yet. But the point is that Neutrinos are effectively inert, and the Gravity Control Console does this change to only Gravitons, but affects all Gravitons in its area - which can be chosen as any size up to a 100 foot radius sphere."
She trailed off.
Boz whispered, "neutron stars..."
"Yes," she cut him off, "certain things, like neutron stars and black holes have vast amounts of matter compressed into tiny areas, and what does that compression is gravity. Without it, they'd decompress so rapidly as to beggar the word 'explosion'. You turned The Simurgh into a black hole by suppressing some of her ability to control her own gravity, increasing that gravity by just a bit. She has to keep that gravity finely balanced. It has to be enough to compress all that matter - more than one galaxy's worth - into the size and shape of her body, yet not enough to compress itself into a black-hole."
An awed Boz whispered, "Zeroing Leviathan's gravity like that, so he has none at all, would basically be The Big Bang all over again. All that matter would expand outwards faster than the speed of light. They call that event The Singularity for a reason - it was so extraordinary that none of the usual rules of physics applied, not even the speed of light. I can't think how we'd stay safe through such an event."
Lisa imitated the voice of Mister Miyagi from the movie Karate Kid, as she quoted that character, "Best defense, not be there."
"Interesting...," Boz mused, "We could try being on one side of a dimensional portal, with Leviathan on the other side, and try operating through the portal to zero gravity on him without actually being there. It's worth a try."
"I'll look into it for you," Lisa chirped. "By the way, you'll need to submerge in the next mile or two, to defend yourself from Leviathan's wave attacks. Strong waves have been known to beat up even battleships before, doing enough damage they needed to seek drydock afterwards. And his waves are the strongest. But, while submerged, the impact of a wave is far more gradual and you'll tend to move with it rather than be damaged by it. That's why he wrecked your PT boats but not the torpedoes, which travel underwater. But submerging will severely hamper your ability to make and use more planes and boats. So make this one count! That is all for now. Go get him!"
The call ended, leaving Boz with a lot to think about.
But, despite distractions like that, Wave 3 formed up and began their approach.
It included all that Wave two had had, plus the additional PT boats, planes, and helicopters.
Leviathan was only eight miles from HMS Agamemnon at this point, so any potential wave 4 would have to be different, since there would not be time to do the same thing again, even if they didn't have to either submerge or fly, to avoid damage from waves.
Agamemnon's five torpedoes were approaching in a star-shaped pattern this time. Each was wire-guided - directed by gunners in the ship sending signals down miles of wire spooled out behind the torpedoes as they moved.
The gunners, this time, had directed their torpedoes to move in the shape of a five-pointed star, with Leviathan in the center of that star, and one torpedo straight above him, two more, slightly above him to his left and right, and the last two slightly below him to his left and right.
As Leviathan moved left or right, so did the star, aiming to keep him in the center.
And as he got closer to the torpedoes, they reduced the gaps in-between themselves, shrinking the star, with the aim that, as he passed through the center of the star, all five torpedoes would hit him.
But those weren't the only torpedoes approaching Leviathan.
The 80 PT boats had spread out in an arc running from Leviathan's left-front to his right-front, and all had fired.
Two blew up in firing accidents.
Three more got smashed by large chunks of ice the size of dishwashers, propelled by directed waves. Two of those got off a pair of torpedoes each before being destroyed.
More such chunks of ice formed, but the ship's lasers fired and melted them as fast as they formed.
And surface ice wasn't Leviathan's focus, so no further boats or torpedoes were lost that way.
So the PT boats had sent 304 torpedoes towards Leviathan.
And the forty A-1J Skyraiders each sent off another torpedo. They'd wanted to aim these at Leviathan's rear, but he moved five times faster than the torpedoes did, so any fired at him from behind would never catch up.
At the speed the monster was going, the Skyraiders themselves were not much faster than he was.
So these torpedoes came in from Leviathan's left-front and right-front.
And as the Skyraiders came, they were also dropping Hedgehog bombs: 3360 in all, laid in complicated patterns to form walls advancing from left and right, as well as a ceiling overhead.
It was also layered, so that if Leviathan dodged one, he'd still have another just behind it to dodge, and maybe another just behind that.
Similar walls of Hedgehog bombs were advancing towards Leviathan, laid by groups of 8 cruise missiles each, with one group coming from behind and the others from his right-rear, and left-rear.
These attacks were less intense, at only 96 bombs each, but they did the best they could.
Twelve more missiles headed straight towards Leviathan and dropped 144 bombs in a pattern over the monster, and over every place he could dodge to.
Lastly, the wall of Hedgehog bombs advancing towards Leviathan from his front, dropped by a line of 10 Skycranes arcing from his left-front to his right-front, contained a full 3150 bombs.
There was no place Leviathan could dodge to and not still be hit by at least 2 weapons - not unless he could shrink to a fraction of his current size.
So instead he created instant blocks of ice, as obstacles to block certain weapons as before.
In response, the 4 underwater blue-green lasers mounted in turrets on Agamemnon's bottom, fired, and started melting the ice blocks almost as fast as the monster could create them.
The ship's telekinesis joined in and moved blocks of ice out of the way, and also moved certain bombs that would have missed into the way, so they'd hit unless dodged or blocked.
This all complicated Leviathan's defense so much that he did something he had not previously done - he reversed course and ran backwards for a bit.
That alone would still have gotten him hit.
But he was still making sudden ice blocks and dodging for all he was worth.
He'd just passed safely by some weapons, and appeared to have completely defeated Wave 3, when some bombs that had passed underneath him suddenly flew upwards and into Leviathan's body, detonating there and stunning the monster.
Ron announced "Gotcha, punk!"
Beth announced, "Leviathan's thoughts flat-lined, but are starting to reboot, the same way The Simurgh's did."
"No problem," a grinning Ron announced, from where he was seated at the Gravity Control Console, "We've got this. I have more bombs to hit him with while someone puts a portal in front of him. Do that quick, by the way, while he is still coasting along on his own. Friction with the water is slowing him quickly and we know we can't get him through a portal by shoving him with telekinesis."
"Details, please," Boz asked, while Iggy worked on setting up a trans-dimensional teleportation portal as planned.
"Sure,: Rom agreed, "Almost everybody looks for threats two-dimensionally. Pilots look up too, but rarely look down, because descending is fast and a great way to attack, while climbing is slow and a poor way to attack. In diving school, we constantly had to remind folks to look down, because threats cam come from beneath you. In fact, if they do, they'll be moving faster than otherwise, since buoyancy and water-pressure can help them rise faster. Underwater, descending is slower than ascending. Leviathan, as a sea-creature, should have realized that. But, given his two-legged build, maybe he's a land-creature that happens to go to sea sometimes. Whatever. The point is, I could see he totally discounted threats beneath him. Partly that's because we always attacked him from the top or sides, never underneath. But still, after any bomb had descended below him, he totally discounted it as a threat, to the point where, in his dodging, he cut things close and passed really close to some bombs, as long as he was above them."
He shrugged, "So I moved to the Gravity Control Console, and, at the right time, reversed gravity below him in an area shaped like a hockey-puck 100 feet in radius and 20 feet thick, ending just underneath him. And it wasn't just reversed, it was set to ten gravities as well. So some bombs he had skimmed just above suddenly shot upwards at ten gravities and hit him. End of story."
He stood and took a bow sardonically.
About the same time, a portal opened just in front of a freshly-stunned Leviathan and he coasted through it, followed by three more Confusion bombs, timed to catch up to him every 5 seconds..
A moment later, HMS Agamemnon went through a similar portal, headed to Dimension 438 - the same dimension as the monster. They made sure to arrive several miles away from the monster, though it was hard to tell without any frames of reference.
Dimension 438 was nothing but empty space, devoid of any matter, just like Dimension 437 where they'd put The Simurgh before she became a black hole.
Lisa had previously called back and given her opinion that trying a white-hole detonation through a dimensional portal should be safe and effective.
While setting up 2 more portals Agamemnon fired several more Confusion rounds at Leviathan, who was coasting along inert in the void, to keep him offline.
They also launched 4 shuttlecraft, then those plus the ship moved to their positions.
All five went through a dimensional portal to Dimension 439, which was also empty void. That portal was as big as they could make it, with the Agamemnon positioned in the center and one shuttle at each corner, so their sensor recordings could benefit from parallax, and thereby provide more information.
The one-way portal from Dimension 439, where they were, to Dimension 438, where Leviathan was, had it's opening a few feet short of another portal - a one-way teleportation portal whose exit end was one mile from Leviathan, and 200,000 miles from it's entrance end.
Both portals were set to allow stuff to go through from Agamemnon towards Leviathan, but not to allow anything coming back, except specified maximum amounts of light, gravity, and the other things they had sensors to measure.
And they triple-checked that those amounts were within the safe limits of what they could withstand.
In a moment, they were double-checking that all else was ready.
With that verified as OK, they set all the sensors on the ship and the shuttles to record everything they could, at the highest rates they could.
Then they 'pulled the trigger' - or rather, they activated the double-zero on the gravity control console, with Leviathan as the target.
Everything instantly went white, as inconceivable amounts of energy, going faster than light normally could, sped out from the point where Leviathan had been.
Then the portal closed down.
That wasn't supposed to be possible - nothing on the other side was supposed to be able to affect it.
But the ship was otherwise unhurt, and they had good, if, brief sensor recordings.
So, just in case, they got repair robots looking at the Dimensional Portal Console and the Teleportation Console, to make sure no components were overloaded, burned out or similar, and no insulation was melted.
Then they looked over their recordings, to see if they could verify what, exactly, had happened.
They only had a few milliseconds of recordings, but they were set at a very high rate - like when a camera is running so fast it can catch half a dozen frames of a bullet passing through an apple.
So they hoped to find much interesting new scientific information in all that data.
Before the rest, they checked their 4 favorite consoles, and verified that, yes, when they'd hit the button, Leviathan had instantly flat-lined on the Detect Mind Console. He has also dropped to zero on Detect Hostile Intent, and had zero affinity for hurting others.
It was clear - Leviathan was dead.