Space Battleship Agamemnon

by Calculonius

In another universe, a genius inventor born in future Japan would create the Space Battleship Yamato. In this universe, he was born in 1910 Britain. In 1927, HMS Agamemnon was sent to his family's scrapyard. He kept it and tinkered with it for fun for 60 years, resulting in the Space Battleship Agamemnon. This is the story of the Space Battleship Agamemnon and its crew.

36. Chapter 36

Chapter 36

Boz resolutely declared, "we'll go out to meet him."

Lisa replied, "You look as if you're about to say 'we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds'..."

He laughed, "Churchill was a great man and I'm flattered to be compared to him in any way. But seriously, if we fight Leviathan in or near Brockton Bay, there will be lots of collateral damage. There need not be any collateral damage if we're well out at sea when we fight him."

"If you stay near shore," Lisa countered, "You'll get support. When the Endbringer Sirens get sounded - which they should have been already - then hundreds of capes from all over will show up to fight it."

"Ah," countered Boz, "But I've seen, in your newspapers, accounts of what happens in such cases - the best the capes ever achieve is to drive off the Endbringer, and that usually costs them something like 25% casualties, not to mention all the damage to the city and its inhabitants. On the other hand, we have a way to kill the Endbringer, which already worked on The Simurgh. Our way need not cost any lives or damage. We'll set sail immediately so as to put as much distance as possible between us and land."

"I hate you sometimes," Lisa pouted, "I want to tell you that you're wrong, but you're not. I want to say 'to hell with logic, accept all the help you can', but...OK. Do it your way then. I'll be what help I can, but that's not much - Endbringers are usually a blind-spot for Thinkers like me. Send me back to Chicago. I can call in ideas from there just as well as from here, and it's under no risk. If I die at this point, then CAPES dies as an organization. That won't always be true, but right now it is. But first, there is a little help I can offer you right now.'

She took him over to the Dimensional Portal Console and pointed at an icon which looked like a genealogical tree half of which was solid lines and half dotted lines, all under a big circle and a small circle., "This icon is for switching to Dimensional Shunt mode. In that mode, instead of slowly making a big Dimensional Portal for your ship to go through, it very rapidly makes a small Dimensional Portal that works a lot like your Deflection Console. Instead of blocking incoming shots or missiles with a forcefield, like that console does, a Dimensional Shunt will block incoming shots or missiles with a portal to another dimension. Both consoles use the same kind of controls when blocking shots. This icon here," she pointed at something appearing to be a stylized representation of the classic game 'Pong', "sets either console into practice mode, so you can get familiar with how it works even when not being attacked."

"Thanks," Boz gave her a hug, "That could come in really useful. We need to get the Endbringer to another dimension before we can safely detonate it - trigger it into turning itself into a black hole - and that gives us another possible route to do so. Awesome."

"I'm glad I could help. By the way, your Deflection Console is currently set to trigger on only small fast things, like missiles and cannon shells. That's why Crawler got past it. Let me show you how to adjust it to get big slow things as well. This will work the same for both the Dimensional Shunt and for Deflection Console."

She spent a minute showing him what she knew.

Then she left through a portal to Chicago, promising to get the Endbringer sirens sounded, as they should already have been, to make help available.

Boz realized they had not yet sounded the Battle Stations alarm, and did so.

He used a nearby console to set the main screen in the command center to show the area that Lisa had said contained the oncoming Leviathan.

Then he headed out of the bridge and down to the command center.

His people were sharp. They'd seen where he set the main screen to, and had begun using various detection consoles to scan that area,figuring, correctly, that it had whatever the alert was about.

They'd found it too.

When Boz got there, the secondary screen on the left wall of the room showed an image of Leviathan swimming along underwater.

A reading below that said he was moving about 300 miles per hour.

Surprisingly, Leviathan was more or less man-shaped, with two each of arms and legs, a torso, and a head. But there the resemblance stopped. He was 30 feet tall, not counting another 40 feet or so for his tail. His torso was sort-of bulbous and hunchbacked. And his face was all wrong, with three eyes on one side and one on another.

Boz had expected a more classical sea-serpent.

But he didn't let his surprise slow his response.

"Full speed thata-way he yelled, pointing at the right spot on the main screen.

"Thata-way?" Ron asked wryly.

"One," Boz held up a finger, "It's a light-hearted tension-breaker, and after sounding a red alert something like that is needed where possible."

"Two," Boz ticked off his points on upheld fingers, "The point was to get us moving immediately. We can fine-tune the exact direction in a moment with little cost, but time is of the essence here - we need to get as far from here as we can. Abe figured that out, like I knew he would, and we're already moving in the right general direction and getting up to speed."

"Three, I didn't know the precise vector yet, but did know the general direction. Since then, you all have found the target correctly, and with it, the precise vector is now known. And Abe is already adjusting to it, as he should. In any case, that's enough on that. Load the torpedo tubes with stealthed Confusion torpedoes and commence firing at our target," he pointed at Leviathan on the left-hand screen, "who is known locally as the Endbringer Leviathan."

As some got to work doing so, Ron asked, "Why are we headed towards the target? He's only 400 miles away - well within our range. And, as you are fond of pointing out, we're armed with guns, not knives: we have no need to get close to the target."

"Generally true, yes," Boz allowed, "But in this case, there are a couple special considerations."

"First," He held up a finger, "If we are within miles of land, there will be collateral damage. This guy is known to make localized tidal waves to wreck towns and undermine land-masses, and has sunk some into the sea by so doing. Since that can be avoided here, it should be."

Another finger went up, "Second, Our range is actually a complicated question in this case, since he is underwater. The guns, particle beams,positron beams, and all the topside lasers basically can't hit him. They'll hit the water, penetrate a short distance - not enough to hit him - and that's that. The blue-green lasers on the ship's bottom are meant for underwater use, but I think they only penetrate about 9 miles of water before dissipating too much to still be called a weapon. Our missiles are too fast for most underwater use. If fired while underwater, they hang together about a mile before friction tears them apart. If fired from above the water at an underwater target, they break up upon entering the water at the speed they travel. Grandpa did include, in the Replicator, a classical anti-submarine weapon called a hedgehog. We will be breaking out a number of those and using them, if it comes to that. But their range is only a couple hundred yards. Maybe we can extend that by loading some, as cluster munitions, into missiles designed for dispensing those. We'll definitely try that."

He held up a third finger, "Third, The last Endbringer we fought - The Simurgh - was absurdly dense and basically ignored damage. We can expect this one to be the same, and what we know from newspaper accounts tends to confirm that. What worked on the last one - mainly Confusion rounds - is our main hope for this one. Then, once it gets confused, keep it that way until we can send it through a Dimensional Portal. We want it in a nice empty dimension before we attack it's gravity control and let it's own mass turn it into a black hole. The dimensional portal we can make that's big enough for the ship only goes out 50 feet past the ship. So that's its range. Luckily the Teleportation Portal can also move things between dimensions, and we can start now in trying to trick him through one of those. We need to think up our best shot first, since our first attempt is the only one that will have surprise on its side. Leviathan is said to be very good at dodging things, and it's a sure bet that if we put an obvious door in front of him, he won't go through it, simply because you never do what your enemy wants you to do."

"Torpedoes away," Abe announced, then asked, "What is a hedgehog anyway?"

"Great," Boz relied, "Keep firing torpedoes as fast as they reload. Don't stop until this is all over. As for hedgehogs - WWII destroyers could locate submarines very well with their sonars, but they often lost them in the blind-spot just underneath the destroyer. Submarines, knowing that, would often make sudden maneuvers at that point, to try to stay lost. So the anti-sub forces came up with the hedgehog, which proved to be very effective. It was a four by six grid of 24 mortars - a special kind called a spigot mortar,but still a mortar - all firmly fastened to one shared base plate and pre-aimed so the 65 pound mortar bombs would splash down in a grid pattern spaced such that, wherever the sub was, at least one mortar bomb would hit it. They were fused to go off on impact, so they didn't need to correctly guess depths like they did for depth-charges. And one hit was enough to kill a sub. There's more to it than that, but that gives you the idea. We'll have those set up on deck, just in case. But mainly we'll load those mortar bombs - with confusion warheads - into cluster-munition-dispensing missiles, and so drop them in patterns over Leviathan. If we get even one hit, we're golden."

"And if we get him through a teleportation portal, we're also golden," Simon offered. "I see a good opportunity: a couple miles ahead of Leviathan's current position, and on a direct line between him and us, is one of those large dense clusters of small fish commonly called a 'bait ball'. They are so densely packed they obscure vision pretty well. And this one is at the stage where it is already surrounded by predators, so, while the fish in it will swim around frantically, the ball itself will hardly move. How about we put a portal just behind the bait ball just before Leviathan passes through it? He is not likely to bother dodging mere fish."

"Great idea," Boz replied, "See to it."

-0-0-0-

Kaiser was nearly giddy with excitement, though he was careful not to show it.

Everything had come together nicely, including this opportunity, and now it was time.

The stupid battleship in the bay had been attacked by no less than the Slaughterhouse Nine, and the Protectorate and PRT had not responded at all.

Whether that meant they were more corrupt and incompetent than usual, or possibly found themselves unable to muster a force, either way, it was just the opportunity Kaiser needed to get his next great adventure off to a great start.

Better still - the battleship had then left the bay, headed out to sea in a hurry.

Kaiser felt he was ready to take them on if needed, but even better that it was apparently not needed. Settling that grudge could wait until more important things were dealt with.

Kaiser had already given a rousing speech to his entire gang, gathered here, to his warehouses a few miles north of Brockton Bay, to participate. Then he had dismissed them to their starting points.

They'd had enough time to get there, so Kaiser activated his throat-mike radio and spoke the code phrase to begin, "Gentlemen, start your engines."

The deep rumbling of powerful engines began,both directly beneath Kaiser, and from several points nearby.

Moments later, the clanking of enormous tank tracks did likewise.

Kaiser stayed where he was and held on, as the vehicle he was standing on lurched into motion. He wanted to maintain this vantage point from which to observe, first hand, the magnificent and historic sight.

He'd done it. He'd built what many had said could not be built. And, come what may, the world would forever remember him for it.

He considered the super-tank beneath him, as it began crawling its way out of this warehouse and into the sunlight beyond, and towards its destiny.

It was a Landkreuser P. 1000 Ratte, model E.

It was originally designed in 1942, though never built.

Many had said it could not be built, nevermind the fact that, at 1000 tons, it was much smaller than the average naval destroyer.

And the Ratte design had been kept by devotees and tinkered with over the years. It had been improved as the general state of technology had improved.

And the technology had improved markedly - there were other large land vehicles in operation around the world, including a 360 ton dump truck, from which much had been learned about chassis, suspensions, transmissions, and shock-absorption as they applied to very large vehicles.

More had been learned about shock-absorption in the course of discovering how to 'earthquake-proof' large buildings.

That 360 ton dump truck got around using engines totaling 9200 horsepower.

Kaiser had twin 18000 horsepower locomotive engines in the 1000 ton tank beneath him. Officially, he'd only ordered 7 of those, but they'd 'cooked the books' a little there in order to hide a couple other scams running simultaneously - he did run a criminal gang after all. So he had more engines than the 'official' 7, and his super-tank was faster than the original Ratte model A would have been.

Models A through D had never been built, but here Kaiser was, standing atop a model E as it 'took its first steps'.

There were other design changes too - many of them - but Kaiser's mind was yanked away from that as his tank emerged from its warehouse and the other super-tanks came into view, similarly exiting their own warehouses.

He wanted to shout for joy, though, for decorum's sake, he held it in.

Not just one Ratte, but five, were emerging from their warehouses!

And along with them, two other super-tanks besides - the Landkreuser P.1500 Monster, also Model E.

The city had been attacked by four Tiger tanks and one King-Tiger. Now Kaiser would attack with Five Rattes and two Monsters - all of them roughly five times the dimensions of mere Tiger tanks, and more than 15 times heavier, with correspondingly bigger guns. He would show them a real tank battle, indeed!

Each Ratte looked like a scaled-up Panther tank, 115 feet long, almost 50 feet wide, and almost 40 feet high, with armor up to 15 inches thick - thicker than most battleships!

The resemblance stopped there, since the Panther had only a singe long gun in it's turret, while the Ratte E had three. It used the same turret the Scharnhorst battlecruiser had used, as originally planned, except that it kept all three of the 280mm, aka 11-inch, guns rather than just two.

And those were not the only guns on it. Not by a long shot.

The original design had had 59 secondary guns - mostly 20mm and 30mm antiaircraft guns, plus a couple light antitank guns and a 5 inch secondary gun - and the new model had kept the same concept, yet updated the particulars.

This was a self-escorting fortress.

On top, at each corner of the tank's square-ish hull, there was a ball-turret containing an 88mm dual purpose Flak gun, suitable for shooting tanks or planes.

Along the top edges of each of the 4 sides, were 3 twin 20mm turrets.

And in front, on the glacis plate, where a Panther tank would have had the hull-mounted machinegun, there was instead a twin-mount turret with 150mm, aka 5.9 inch, guns - the original secondary armament of the Scharnhorst.

All of those had come from an old naval storage warehouse in Germany.

To all that, had been added some high-tech weapons from ToyBox - the Tinkers-for-hire.

BigRig, from ToyBox had been a tremendous help to Kaiser on this project, as had the cape called Krupp, who came from Germany to help.

Kaiser had wanted PyroTechnical from ToyBox as well, since he specialized in guns. But he had not been available. So Kaiser had had to settle for some off-the-shelf weapons made by PyroTechnical and available there at ToyBox for sale.

So each Ratte mounted one laser weapon in a ball-turret at midpoint along each side, plus two more of the same on top, for shooting down planes, missiles and whatnot. Each was plugged into the tank's sensors, had computer-aided targeting and aiming, and was gyroscopically-stabilized as well - in fact, all the super-tank's weapons were set up like that, for maximum accuracy.

Next to each laser, was mounted a small 'lightning gun', which could throw a 200 foot long bolt of lightning along the path of ionized air left by a laser shot. These were for use in case they encountered capes resistant to other attack forms.

There was enough energy stored in capacitors to fire each lightning gun once, before they'd have to recharge from the engines.

Then, on top of the main turret was mounted a Nebelwerfer multiple rocket-launcher. This one was 12 launch-rails wide, and stacked 4 tall, for 48 ready rockets, with each rocket being 15 centimeters wide.

Lastly, as far as major weapons, in the middle of the rear hull, a deck plate could retract, revealing 8 120mm mortar tubes in a room just below the deck. These could fire from safety within the tank, and arc their shots high before dropping them onto targets near or far.

For minor weapons, they had half a dozen each of machinegun turrets and flamethrowers near the tank's bottom, to keep the vulnerable underside clear of sneaky infantry.

Not that the undersides stinted on armor protection - the composite armor was 9 inches thick there. But tanks were generally vulnerable to infantry getting in close, and especially so with such a tall tank - the Ratte's guns were mostly 40 feet or so off the ground. So they'd included the machineguns and flamethrowers down low, to be safer.

Kaiser had built his super-tanks of only the best, as far as metals were concerned. He'd included all the metals, no matter how rare, wherever they were best suited: Titanium or Tungsten or spring steel where they were needed or the best fit, etc. He'd even included Osmium - mainly for its high density - in one of the layers of the composite armor.

Two of Kaiser's 5 Ratte's were tentatively being called Model F, since there had not been enough 11-inch gun turrets to complete them. So they had each been modified with a pair of twin 5.9-inch gun turrets instead.

That left them some extra room inside, and they'd used that to give them a few platoons of infantry, carried inside like an armored personnel carrier.

Otherwise, they were the same as the Ratte Model E's.

The Landkreuser P.1500 Monster had originally been a very different design than the Ratte, but they had standardized them as much as they could.

Where the Ratte E resembled a Panther tank, the Monster E resembled a Jagdpanther tank-destroyer.

So the Model E's were now also 115 feet long, instead of the originally-planned 82 feet. It used the extra length to house extra engines - four total where the Ratte had two, in order to keep it's speed up despite it's heavier weight.

They were about as wide as the Ratte, but 10 feet shorter.

And instead of one turret housing three 11-inch guns, the Monsters had only one gun - the famous Schwerer Gustav 800mm gun, which fired a 7 ton projectile.

That gun was now supported, within the Landkreuser, by automated loading and aiming apparatus, so could manage a much higher rate of fire than historically.

Indeed, all their guns had such automation.

Otherwise, the Monsters were armed just as the Rattes were, to make them self-defending fortresses which needed no escort.

They would still have an escort - both of capes, and of regular troops - but it was good to not need it.

Kaiser's personal Ratte had one extra gun - a puny little thing mounted on the top front. Glace, of ToyBox, had made it, and offered it to a recent customer of hers, who had rejected it. So it had been on the shelf and available for sale.

And Kaiser had wanted something unusual for taking down any capes who might oppose him and also be immune to his other lasers, rockets, guns, etc. It was not like such immunity was common, but he wanted to be ready just in case.

So, while they'd pressured him to buy it, they hadn't had to, he'd have bought it anyway, since it was very different.

It was a 'BEC-launcher'. BEC stood for Bose-Einstein Condensate',which was a state that matter could get into when it got extremely cold. Cold alone didn't make something a BEC, but cold was a necessary pre-condition for making a BEC. A Bose-Einstein Condensate had been described as being, compared to regular matter, what a laser was to regular light. All the atoms in a BEC were compressed and packed together in perfect harmony with each-other, just as all the rays of light in a laser were. And just as a laser could sound pretty weak, if described as a light that was all in harmony as if perfectly focused, so too a BEC sounded pretty weak until you thought about it - which was probably why the intended customer had rejected it.

So, for the sale, ToyBox had made sure to be explicit - a BEC could penetrate anything with ease. Most of matter was empty space, and the BEC, with all its atoms in harmony like a lasers light was, could easily sail through the empty spaces in other matter, as if that other matter were not even there, though the BEC did still cause friction by passing through like that.

Of course, in doing so, it would heat up from friction, and quickly cease being a BEC, which included expanding again from a state that was, effectively, massively compressed. How fast it heated would depend on how fast it expanded, and determine whether that expansion would be more like a high-explosive, or a low-explosive. But it would be like an explosive either way.

Glace was perfectly suited for the weaponization of Bose-Einstein Condensates, since, apart from cold, she also specialized in stasis. So her BEC-launcher first froze the payload, and turned it into a BEC, then put it in stasis to store for later use.

She'd said it could be launched any way you liked, and that railguns would probably be best, but that she couldn't make railguns, so she'd just used a rifle.

Her apparatus, after freezing the BEC and putting it in stasis, loaded it into a rifle cartridge in place of the bullet, and held it in stasis until it left the weapon's barrel. Then the stasis would remain in place until the BEC bullet impacted something denser than air, whereupon the stasis would wink out, and the BEC would proceed along through whatever it encountered, heating up as it went until it suddenly expanded in a unique sort of freezing explosion. It didn't have to heat up much to cease being a BEC and expand rapidly, yet would still be quite cold - hundreds of degrees below zero.

Kaiser was looking forwards to using it.

But first, they would use the big guns. He called a halt, though so far they'd only traveled a hundred yards or so, to get clear of the warehouses, and signaled for fire plan Alpha on his mark.

Then he descended through the hatch in the broad metal deck at his feet, and went to the "commander's lounge" as his people were calling it.

It wasn't a lounge, though it was quite comfortable. It was a control center where the commander, driver, and chief gunner sat with their controls, several computers, communication systems, and sensor feeds. From here, he would direct his super-tanks.

While he descended, his tanks halted, and each adjusted heading slightly, to be in-line with their targets. Not that they needed to - the Ratte turrets could rotate a full 360 degrees, while even the monsters had 20 degrees of traverse in their huge guns.

They adjusted because that would minimize wear-and-tear, and, far more importantly, maximize accuracy. They all knew that Kaiser would want the best accuracy for the first shots fired.

He was obsessed with how history would record this, and 'firsts' usually got focused on for that.

Adjusting was easy, because both Rattes and Monsters had had modifications to the tread systems to make them more steerable and redundant in case of battle damage. Instead of one long track the length of the vehicle and powered by one drive wheel, there were now 6 shorter track systems from front to back, with small gaps in-between them. Each track system had its own drive wheel. And each set of tracks had its own suspension - to reduce or eliminate any problems from traversing uneven ground.

The next model of Ratte had been on the drawing boards, yet incomplete, when this project came up. That model had tentatively included steerable tracks - a design stolen from a patent in the US patent office. But that Ratte design had been incomplete, and, more importantly, those steerable tracks had never been tested, especially on a scale like this. So they did not build that, since the inevitable bugs had not yet been worked out.

The super-tanks were barely adjusted before Kaiser gave the order to fire.

He'd kept for himself the honor of being the first to fire, of course.

One by one, all three of the big 11-inch guns on Kaiser's tank spoke.

Within the tank's thick armor, the sound was muffled.

Outside, it would have been nearly deafening, which was why Kaiser had come inside first.

He'd wanted to view the firing first-hand, but settled for watching it on a monitor.

They did not know what,exactly, it would take to knock down the forcefield around the Protectorate's oil-rig. But they figured that three 11-inch shells should be enough, and then some.

Just after his Ratte 1 fired, Monster 1 did likewise, at the same target. It's 800mm 7-ton shell should pulverize the whole Protectorate building, eliminating them as a source of resistance to Kaiser's takeover.

Then Monster 2 fired its 7-ton shell at the PRT headquarters, to eliminate them as a source of resistance too.

Then the other Rattes fired their main guns,and all fired their secondary 5.9 inch guns at possible sources of resistance, including the National Guard armory, a secondary PRT building and armory across town from their headquarters, and, of course, the real opponents of the Empire - the other gangs.

Kaiser had been directed to seize political power over as much of the USA as he could, and he was setting out to do so.

First, he would consolidate his base - Brockton Bay. Then he would expand out to capture certain strategic capitols and arms depots, including Washington DC, after which it was predicted that the USA would give up, just as France typically had once Paris was taken.

They predicted that the people would flock to join their banner, once they'd started getting some success. It was partly for that reason that they'd be driving to their targets, instead of having been built nearer to them - the drive would give folks a chance to see them in action and be converted to the cause.

Kaiser signaled again and his tanks got moving once more, towards their destinations. They would reload on the move. They could fire on the move too, if needed, but for the opening shot they'd wanted perfect accuracy.

And soon, the UAV's he'd sent out ahead had verified, their shots had achieved perfect accuracy so far.

The PRT and Protectorate buildings, and others, had been flattened.

Kaiser didn't know who had been present in those buildings, or away, at the time they got hit.

But he knew that any survivors would at least be off-balance.

-0-0-0-

Things were getting a little tense in the command center of the HMS Agamemnon.

They'd been sailing at top speed, nearly 63 mph, towards Leviathan for half an hour and, so far, that monster had dodged everything they'd tried.

Leviathan seemed to know the exact location, speed, and heading, of every hedgehog bomb dropped from above, and every torpedo, no matter how stealthy it was.

Worse yet, the monster also knew, somehow, where they put teleportation portals, no matter how well-hidden. The moment the first had appeared behind a 'bait-ball' dense group of fish, Leviathan had changed course slightly to avoid it.

And he'd done the same with the next one, despite it being hidden in a kelp field.

And so on - again and again, he'd dodged them, even when illusions hid them.

He'd also changed course to match the HMS Agamemnon every time the battleship had tried maneuvering - unless they changed course too drastically or started flying. In those cases, Leviathan reverted to heading straight for Brockton Bay.

Lisa had passed on, through Beth, her evaluation that Leviathan instantly knew everything in contact with the water near him.

And she figured that he'd come for the battleship, but would settle for Brockton Bay if the battleship got too elusive.

That would explain his behavior.

But it didn't make him any easier to hit.

Leviathan apparently could not sense telekinesis, but the best they'd been able to achieve there was to grab him briefly, once. After that, he'd used his control over his own gravity to make himself too heavy for the ship's telekinesis to affect him.

That did at least make it harder for him to dodge things, since it gave him more inertia. But though it was clearly harder, yet he was still succeeding in dodging.

So that was the ship's current approach to things - make it harder and harder for Leviathan to dodge until, hopefully, he failed, once.

They figured that, if he failed once, then by the time the stunning effect of that Confusion round wore off, they'd have hit him with another one and thus be able to keep him stunned indefinitely.

So they were massing their attacks, such as firing all their torpedoes at once instead of a steady stream of one-at-a-time.

Then they timed groups of torpedoes to arrive at the same time that groups of missiles arrived and dropped hedgehog bombs from above.

The first time they'd done that, it had apparently caught Leviathan off-guard, unprepared to dodge that many things from that many directions. So he'd 'porpoised' - leaping out of the water briefly ;like a porpoise could. That had evaded that mass of torpedoes and bombs & then he'd swum on.

When they'd tried the same again, he'd been able to dodge without porpoising, which was too bad, since, the first time, the positron beams had been unprepared to shoot him and had fired just a moment too late. But after that, they'd been ready to shoot and try to stun him.

The lasers were ready too, set up with wide beams to try to blind him, to hopefully make dodging harder for him.

So, since Leviathan had apparently adapted to that level of threat, and figured out how to dodge it, Agamemnon was working up a bigger threat.

They'd checked around and only Ron, Simon, Abe, Boz, and one of the old codgers knew how to aim and fire torpedoes. Many knew how to drive small boats, so the skill with torpedoes was the limiting factor.

So it was that each of their 'torpedo-men' got ten Duplicates made, then walked out onto deck where waiting repair robots used telekinesis to 'toss' them quickly out onto 50 waiting PT boats that had just been Replicated.

Fifty drivers got similarly tossed to soft landings on the PT boats, as well as 50 'trainees' to watch and learn how to use torpedoes.

Soon those boats sped off towards Leviathan.

These PT boats were typical of the US WWII Patrol Torpedo boats, and came with a variety of small cannons and machineguns. More importantly, they each came with 4 torpedoes, and they were using more modern, guided torpedoes, that weren't available in WWII.

They didn't bother fully crewing the boats - for this, they just needed a driver to get them closer to Leviathan,and a torpedo man to aim and fire, plus a trainee to learn from him and work towards becoming 'torpedo men' themselves.

They hoped that, by firing all 200 of these torpedoes more or less all at once, in addition to maintaining the existing torpedo and hedgehog cluster-bombing attacks, they might overwhelm Leviathan and get a hit.