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.

41. Chapter 41

Chapter 41

Victor was antsy and a bit worried.

He'd been on a video call with Kaiser, where Kaiser had been alternating between gloating that the battleship had sunk, and berating Victor that none of Victor's shells had even arrived before the battleship sunk.

Kaiser had been in the middle of chastising Victor for what he perceived as poor performance, when the call cut off unexpectedly.

Victor and his techs had tried to get it back, to no avail.

He was worried that Kaiser would see the dropped call as Victor's fault - or worse, see it as Victor being rebellious - and get that much angrier.

Having tried everything else to no avail, Victor had redirected a couple of his scout UAV's to go fly by Kaiser's Ratte and see if that would help him determine what was up.

Those UAV's should be arriving any second now.

Victor watched the video feed from them, as they flew past farms, open fields, and small forests.

And then there it was - the smoking wreck of Kaiser's Ratte, sitting in the middle of a grassy field.

To the Ratte's left side, and pointing towards it, there were two long, parallel, gouges in the soil, as if a giant plow had made a furrow hundreds of feet long, aiming to hit the tank but not quite managing it. Each furrow ended in a torn-up area, as if it had been dug up and then the dirt had been put back.

As he looked closer at the dead super-tank, he could see the damage seemed to be mostly from it's own ammunition cooking off internally.

The only cause he could find for that was three small entry holes in the Ratte's left side, towards the east.

Each hole was only about three inches across.

When the UAV got around the western side of the tank and showed that side, Victor could see that there were no exit holes, but about where they should have been, the armor bulged outwards a little over an area a few feet across, which suggested something moving ridiculously fast had pierced almost all the way through the tank.

Whatever it was, had obviously hit some ammo storage while passing through, setting it off, and dooming the Ratte.

For some reason, the Ratte looked like it had been electro-plated in tungsten, though it was a very slipshod job, with much, though not all, of the east side coated, and not much else.

Well, Victor sighed, Kaiser had been obsessed with how history would record the Rattes and everything about them. Now he'd go down in history as commanding the first Ratte destroyed in battle.

Victor wasn't sure if that would have pleased Kaiser or not.

-0-0-0-

Everybody on HMS Agamemnon had plenty to do, and the command center was full of busy people.

But there comes a subtle change in folks when they shift from the state of frantically trying to get caught up figuring out what's going on, to the state of busy, but no longer frantic.

Boz was not watching for that, himself, since he'd never pick up on it. He just wasn't that good at social cues.

So, by previous agreement, Ron was watching for that for him.

And when that moment came, and folks were no longer frantic, Ron gave Boz a pat on the shoulder, to pull his attention out of what he was doing.

Boz looked up from his damage reports, got a nod from Ron, returned it, then cleared his throat. "OK, folks, it's time to share what we know, and coordinate more. I'll start by mentioning that nobody died. Several went to the hospital with broken bones and the like, but the armor held over the critical areas where people were, and we have no funerals to attend."

A subdued cheer went up.

Simon looked up from conferring with Beth, and spoke, "A total of twenty one 11 inch shells either hit us or got deflected one way or another. Forty six 5.9 inch shells are in the same category - either hitting or being deflected. Add to that, one shot from an 800mm Schwerer Gustav, which got deflected just enough so it pierced the deck 3 feet from the edge, then right out the side of the ship a couple feet away. It didn't go off until it hit the sea floor."

"We really dodged a bullet there!" Boz commented.

"More like it dodged us, with a little help from Gravity Control." Ron quipped, lightening the mood just a touch.

Abe chimed in with, "Fifteen of the twenty one 11 inch shells hit us. Nine of those hit the main armor belt and failed to penetrate, though some made it partway through and two of those are lodged in our side armor. Those partial penetrations did something weird I haven't figured out yet."

"I can tell you that," Boz offered, "We have composite armor, as you know. And you know that some layers are conductive, and interspersed with non-conductive layers, forming capacitors, which the ship's fusion plants then charge with high voltage. The outer layers of that are low amperage and used like a taser by the security system. But the inner layers have high amperage and thus form electrically reactive armor. When a shell pierces enough layers, including the insulating layer between two high-amp layers, it closes the circuit, allowing the current to flow through that shell at the speed of electricity. The capacitor discharges and all the electricity it had stored - a great deal in our case - is channeled through the shell, which can cause all or part of the shell to vaporize. At minimum, the current flow significantly diffuses the energy of the incoming shell, so they - what's left of them - tend to stop, welded there."

"Neat," Abe commented dryly.

His friends knew he was often amused by understatement and preferred to use it when he remembered to do so..

Abe continued, "Three more of the 11 inch shells skipped off our armor, doing no real damage. One pierced the superstructure at the gun deck, taking out 2 particle beams and a laser. The last two penetrated the hull - both in spots where the main armor belt thins, one in the front and one in the rear. I believe both of those capacitor zones had already been discharged by previous hits too."

Boz, listening while looking at information on his own screen, confirmed, saying "Yes, that's right."

Abe continued, "The hit near the ship's bow - that's the front for you new folks - penetrated the armor, then a fresh water tank, then lodged in one of our water desalination machines, destroying it."

The listeners, not particularly feeling that loss, remained silent.

Abe went on, "The hit near the stern - that's the rear - penetrated the armor but started breaking up from having done so. So when it hit the next space - our ship's bowling alley, it turned the machinery running that into more shrapnel and wrecked the whole room."

"Aw!", from someone was accompanied by several other expressions of dismay.

The bowling alley was quite popular, and had been unique.

Boz's grandpa, Issac Fields, had liked bowling, but also wanted to spice it up some.

So while it could be configured as standard bowling lanes, it could also be configured to include elements from other sports.

It could curve the lanes, like a bobsled run, with one or more curves.

It could have ramps so the bowling ball had to jump a gap.

It could have a loop-de-loop.

And it could have obstacles: either immobile obstacles so you had to do bank shots like in mini-golf, or movable obstacles, usually other bowling balls, so you had to use one to move another, like in billiards or croquet.

Other movable obstacles were more like pinball or mini-golf.

Altogether, there were seemingly endless variations.

Abe nodded in agreement - he was one of those who really enjoyed their bowling alley and would miss it until it got repaired.

Then he concluded, "The single 800mm shell just clipped us a little, as Colonel Harry said earlier. Thirty three of the 5.9 inch shells hit us. The worst of those hits jammed a 9.2 inch gun turret, so it can't rotate. The other hits could not penetrate to anything behind serious armor, but they could and did wreck things like sensor dishes, lifeboats, the emitters for our obscurement cloud, our helicopter hangar - you get the idea. And no," he hastened to add, when he saw Beth's face, "none of them wrecked the bridge. Automatic shutters and luck saved your plants, Beth."

She smiled and a few chuckled.

"We got off lightly," Simon observed. "That 800mm shell alone could have sunk us. And apparently all their shells were guided, as well as stealthed. You don't get that kind of accuracy over fifty miles from your target without guidance."

"That's why I didn't even try sending deflected shells back to the sender," Ron offered, "The Deflection Console doesn't have all that computer-aided aiming goodness. So I can hit nearby things with it, but things many miles away are too hard. I could send shells in that direction, but who knows what they'd hit - it could be houses, gas-stations, malls or whatever. I also wish it could reset faster to deflect more shells. Too many got past it and hit our armor.""

"Hooray for composite armor, and reactive armor, and swift competent people with things like gravity fields and deflectors! You all did a great job," Boz said, "And it is because you did a great job that we're still here at all. There were at least 60 more shells in the air headed for us - we're not sure how many. And all but two of the capacitor banks are depleted, so most of our armor would not have been electrically reactive anymore. So all of your efforts contributed to us getting away more or less intact."

Everyone smiled.

"So what shot us?" asked Big Tom.

"That, I can answer," Boz replied. " In World War II, the Germans developed the Landkreuser P.1000 Ratte, and the Landkreuser P.1500 Monster. They designed them, then canceled them as impractical. Apparently, somebody updated the design and built them. We saw most of their offensive punch: 5.9 inch secondary guns and 11 inch primary guns, or an 800mm gun for the Monster. The pictures show they also have rockets, and a bunch of smaller defensive guns. One Ratte was by itself about halfway between Brockton Bay and Hartford Connecticut. Two more - one with a pair of smaller turrets instead of the one big turret - plus a Monster, were nearing Boston from the north west."

Simon added, "I targeted the latter group with missiles and torpedoes. The missiles will have arrived by now, but the slower torpedoes won't be there yet. The lone Ratte I shot at with the railgun: that turret got off two shots per gun, or 8 total, before we left. They were fairly hurried, and over 50 miles away, so we may not have hit even with computer assistance and help from the luck consoles. Too bad we don't know what the result was."

Beth spoke up, "We will know the results, once we get back - I instructed our orbiting shuttlecraft to focus sensors on the Rattes and film them."

"Thanks Beth," Boz said.

"So where does this leave us?" Colonel Harry asked.

Boz spoke, "The damage is being repaired as we speak. Some of it will take longer than others, but the holes will be patched really soon. The repair robots can take care of that with ease. And capacitors are being recharged as we can. Then we'll do to the enemy what they did to us - sudden massive attack from afar.".

He grinned in a predatory fashion

-0-0-0-

"Newport Rhode Island?" Simon asked, "Why there?"

"Simple," Boz said, "When the Rattes last engaged us,we were far to their north east. If we show up a few miles offshore from Newport Rhode Island, we'll be to the south, and a little bit west of the Ratte's last known position. So they'll be unlikely to be looking for threats there. And it's closer to them, so our shell flight times will be shorter, meaning the enemy will move less far - assuming they're moving - between the moment we pull the trigger, and the moment the shell arrives."

"Are you sure you want to go back?" Beth asked. "That last fight was pretty one-sided and we won't have any but the simplest repairs completed yet - pretty much just the armor."

"True, but several important things are different now," Boz replied. "First, we;ll keep moving, and that will make it easier to escape across dimensions if needed. It also makes us harder to hit. Second, we'll have our forcefield working. It's not a rigid forcefield like the Protectorate had on their oil-rig: where it stops everything until it overloads and goes down. Instead, our forcefield allows attacks, which are above certain levels of power, to get through it, but only after reducing their power significantly. That works together very well with our armor, which generally has no trouble stopping such weakened attacks. I doubt that the Ratte's 5.9 inch guns can get through our forcefield at all. The 11 inch shells can, but with power so much reduced that I imagine you could stand on deck in a Kevlar vest and take one to the chest and be just fine, Not,"

And here he turned to look Abe directly in the eye, "Not, that I recommend that at all! It may be a thrill to some, but is not worth the risk!"

Abe just grinned.

Boz continued, "Third, while we won't have our infrared sensors online again yet, Ron thought of an interesting workaround for that. We'll have two King Tiger tanks Replicated, with one sitting on deck near the bow and the other near the stern. They have their own radar and infrared sensors, which we can add in to the ship's overall sensor picture so our defenses can use that for targeting information as well. But they also have defensive lasers and particle beams, plus deflectors, all of which could help our overall defense. Lastly, this time will be different because we'll be shooting back. We haven't bothered with guided shells before, since the targets were so close we didn't need them. but we'll use them now. They say that the best defense is a good offense, and there is a lot of truth to that. Every shell they don't fire is one we don't have to defend against. And they will stop firing once we wreck them." He grinned, and nodded to Ron.

Ron took over, "When the 5 minute countdown goes off," he indicated a timer counting down on his screen, "We'll hop back to Dimension 29 and arrive just south of Rhode Island, as he said. The ship will be pointing at the midpoint between the two enemy groups, which will allow the port guns to fire at one and the starboard guns to fire at the other. We'll fire the missiles first, then the 9.2 inchers, followed by the 12 inchers, with the railguns last, so it will all arrive at the same time. And, if we've calculated it right, that time will also be at the same time the torpedoes, fired by Simon before we left, arrive. They move very slowly compared to the rest. All of that arriving at once, probably unexpectedly, should leave the enemy in, shall we say, a very uncomfortable situation. Any questions?"

"Are you sure we don't need infrared and sonar. We use them all the time and are weaker without them. And without the obscuring mist cloud, they can locate us and shoot back." Beth asked.

Boz answered, "You are right, they are useful, and I too would be more comfortable going into battle if they were working. But nobody ever got everything they wanted. And I also want to be sure to find the guys that shot us. They are mobile, and the longer we wait, the further they will travel, making it ever harder to be sure we found them. Also, we have other sensors that should, now that we're thinking of them that way and practicing, be able to cover the need."

The timer pinged.

Ron, wearing the headset from the Illusion Console, got a look of concentration on his face and the few monitors showing what the ship looked like from the outside, changed. The ship had been a simple gray above the waterline with red below that, as is common for ships.

Now, it appeared to be painted in the gray camouflage scheme some ships had used at war. It had sharp contrasts and angled lines in black, white, and several shades of gray, all working together to make it very hard to determine where the ships front, back, turrets etc started and ended.

Ron grinned, "There wasn't time to re-paint the ship, so they may think this is a second battleship. Plus I always liked this color scheme."

Boz nodded and said "Showtime. Iggy, and Abe, take us in."

Iggy made a portal and Abe sailed them through it, arriving on Earth-Bet a few miles southwest of Newport Rhode Island.

Seconds later, Beth announced, "Orbiting shuttlecraft have confirmed the targets' locations. The information has been fed to the targeting computers."

The main screen updated, showing a map with Agamemnon's location, and the two target locations.

Simon announced, "Missiles away."

"Captain, target one appears to have been destroyed," Beth announced, then showed an image of the smoking wreck of a Ratte on screen 2 which formed the command center's left-hand wall.

"I'm trying to rewind to find the moment it happened."

"Good," Boz commented. "Do that. In the meantime, we'll still fire at it as planned, in case it is just damaged. Our shells have about 30 miles to travel before impact, and that gives us about a minute in which we can still dismiss them if we need to."

All their various sensor consoles were manned, and the people at them remained busy while the gunners fired their various weapons.

Soon enough, Beth announced, "I have it," then displayed on screen 3, the right-hand wall of the command center, a short video clip.

It was just 4 seconds of real-time, which Beth showed down to one-third speed to make it more understandable.

It showed a lone Ratte just getting moving after having sat still to fire, which was obvious since it's guns were still smoking.

Then four blurs of motion, each trailing clouds of fire, came in from the east towards the Ratte.

Two of them fell short of the Ratte and plowed long furrows in the ground near it. The furrows ended in small areas of disturbed dirt where the shots' remaining energy had been spent, once they slowed down enough.

The other two blurs got shot by lasers briefly, then hit by bolts of lightning originating from the same sources.

The bolts of lightning caused something resembling fireballs to consume the blurs.

Then four more blurs came in, with one more getting hit by lightning and the other three punching small holes in the side of the Ratte and resulting, moments later, in several explosions within the Ratte.

Simon pointed out, "Those were my railgun shots - I fired all four barrels, twice, and that's what we saw arrive - blurs of motion accompanied by flames from the friction of their very-speedy flight. Apparently the enemy have some lightning thingy that can vaporize them. See the clouds of steel-gray metal moving out of the fireballs along the same paths, then moving onto and coating the Ratte? That'd be the Tungsten the railgun penetrators are made of. One lightning bolt came from this laser on the Ratte's side, and two more came from the two lasers here on top. Apparently, they can only fire once each or the other shots would have been zapped too."

"Agree," Boz commented, then added, "Dismiss the shells we have on their way there now. I think we can learn things by examining the wreck, but that'll be harder if we tear it up even more. It is obviously dead. Don't dismiss anything headed towards target group 2 though - they're still obviously live." he gestured towards the screen, where three Landkreusers, scorched and damaged but clearly still functional, were driving along a country road, leaving a churned-up strip of rough ground, studded with asphalt chunks, behind them where the road had been.

Beth set screen 3 to loop the clip of the railgun hits 4 times, so folks could learn from it what they could. Then she set screen 4, the room's ceiling, to show the other clip she'd just found.

She didn't hit play until she announced, "on the ceiling is the clip showing our missile attack getting shot down. None of our missiles even got close."

It was as she'd described it. The three Landkreusers in group 2 had had no trouble shooting down 12 missiles with their lasers.

Screen 2 had dropped the still image of the lone Ratte which had been destroyed, and was currently showing a live video of target group 2: three Landkreusers advancing to the south in a V formation with the Monster in the lead, the Ratte with two smaller turrets to it's right-rear, and the Ratte with one big triple turret to its left-rear.

Suddenly, that group all turned together to the east and stopped. All their guns and turrets started aiming to the east.

"I think they've spotted the shells we fired at them and are getting ready to repay the favor," Ron commented.

"Agree," Boz said, "Launch the aircraft now - no point in holding them back any longer now that the enemy have seen us."

A couple Old Codgers got busy at their consoles and 20 Komets flown by Duplicates of Abe and Boz went through a teleportation portal to get high over the enemy. Following them, 20 A1J Skyraiders, flown by Duplicates of Weedy and Scrappy, followed the same way. They had not flown Komets before and were not comfortable learning it under fire.

Boz didn't think the planes would get past the enemy air defenses, but the others wanted to try, and the attempt cost them nothing.

Boz, still watching the Landkreusers, commented, "It looks like our shells will arrive before their big guns finish aiming at us."

And it was so.

The speedy railgun shots were the first to arrive, appearing as four blurs of motion trailed by flames from their friction with the air.

They headed for the right-most Ratte - the one with two small turrets - but didn't make it all the way to the target.

200 feet from their target, lightning bolts leapt out from 4 laser turrets on the target - one front, one left-side, and two on top - and zapped the railgun slugs, vaporizing them.

The resultant clouds of Tungsten coasted slowly over the Ratte and coated it like a bad paint job.

That was over so quickly as to seem like a separate and distinct attack.

Yet it all happened just a fraction of a second before the big cannon shells also arrived.

The other two Landkreusers in the group were each targeted by two 9.2 inch shells, and two 12 inch shells.

When they got to within 200 feet of their targets, all eight of those shells got hit by lightning bolts emanating from the Landkreusers' laser turrets.

Then the laser turrets quickly shot down all 12 of Agamemnon's missiles.

The four 9.2 inch shells all exploded when hit by the lightning. They had been HESH shells, which stands for High Explosive Squash Head, and is a kind of anti-armor round.

Since 9.2 inch armor-piercing rounds had little to no chance of penetrating a Ratte's armor, Boz had directed that HESH rounds be used instead. Those used a type of explosive that was moldable, and conformed to the surface of whatever it hit, like a thrown ball of mud would. Then, as soon as it had conformed, it exploded. The surface contact gained by conforming caused a lot of the explosive force to be transmitted as shockwaves through the armor.

Those shockwaves, when they reached the inside face of the armor, tended to cause spalling, which meant that many small bits of the armor sheared off and flew around just like shrapnel, causing damage to people and equipment.

So HESH rounds didn't even try to penetrate the target's armor directly, yet could defeat that target anyway.

However, in this case, all that explosive in the HESH warhead just made it easy for the lightning bolt to detonate the HESH rounds at a safe distance, resulting in the Rattes receiving no damage from that source.

The four 12 inch shells were standard AP - Armor Piercing - rounds. They got hit by lightning too, but AP shells contain little explosive, deep inside them, and the massive shells were too big for the artificial lightning bolts to be able to vaporize much of their mass.

So the 12 inch shells, still over 90% un-vaporized, hit the Landkreusers.

One ricocheted off the Monster three feet to the right of the main gun.

One ricocheted off the side armor of the Ratte.

One sunk itself partway into the front armor of the Monster.

And the last one hit the forwards 5.9 inch gun turret on the Ratte, penetrating its armor and exploding inside, wrecking that turret.

Then the Landkreusers fired back.

One 800mm shell,three 11 inch shells, and ten 5.9 inch shells left the guns of the super-tanks headed for HMS Agamemnon.

Next the Landkreusers' lasers fired upwards, accompanied by the 20mm and 88mm antiaircraft guns, quickly shooting down the 40 planes sent by Agamemnon.

Two of the Komets first managed to drop the 500 pound bombs they were carrying instead of rocket pods.

And three of the Skyraiders started dropping 1000 pound bombs. Each carried ten such bombs, but only 8 total got dropped before the planes were destroyed.

Then the falling bombs also got shot down.

Moments later, just a couple seconds after the previous 4 railgun slugs arrived, Agamemnon's second group of 4 railgun slugs arrived. The ship could fire those three times very rapidly using energy stored in capacitors, before slowing down to fire them as fast as the fusion generators could recharge them, which was roughly as fast as the other guns reloaded.

These slugs all headed for the same target the railgun had shot at before - the Ratte with two smaller main turrets.

The first two slugs got vaporized by lightning as before.

The next two both hit the Ratte's front armor, punching holes in it amid fountains of flaming confetti that, until recently, was armor.

The Ratte seemed to stagger a little.

But, whatever had happened inside the tank, as the railgun slugs flew through damaging things and turning other things into shrapnel, there was no outward evidence of it.

In a few more seconds, the third group of 4 railgun slugs also arrived. All four tore into the same Ratte that the previous railgun slugs had damaged.

Smoke and flame immediately gouted from every hatch, ventilation grille, vision slit, and gun port on the whole vehicle.

Then it sat completely still, with smoke still pouring out from every opening, and from every point, like hatches, that could be openings if 'persuaded' by explosive force.

"One more down, two to go," Boz commented, "But here comes their return fire. Everybody verify you are ready to receive."

Ron said, "Deflection Console is ready, and so are the deflectors run by my Duplicates in the King Tiger tanks on deck."

Abe reported, "The ship is moving nicely, and flight is engaged so we're ready to dodge in all 3 dimensions."

Iggy reported, "Dimensional portal is ready for rapid escape if needed, and Dimensional Shunt is ready for deflecting now."

Beth reported for her group, who were manning the sensors, "Every sensor - all the working ones - are watching for threats in whatever way they are suited for,"

Weedy, who was manning a copy of the Detect Chemicals Console, said, "I've found the trails - basically lines of propellant residues - from our torpedoes fired earlier by Simon. They'll be at the target soon - looks like they took the 'scenic route' and now are all aiming to hit the Monster. There are no propellant traces in the sky near us and our target but the expected ones."

Big Tom said, "I've got repair robots standing by just in case, and every spot still needing repairs has as many repair robots crowded around it as can fit."

"Have the ones outside hang on tight," Boz interjected, "our second volley is about to go out."

Big Tom gave orders to his robots, and seconds later the ship's guns were firing again.

Just after that, the screen showed the enemy firing again too.

"OK, back to the reports," Boz said.

Simon reported, "The antiair systems - mostly lasers and particle beams - are set to shoot at cannon shells in addition to the usual missiles and aircraft. They don't have the infrared sensors they usually use, but they are substituting a shorter ranged infrared from the tanks on deck. And they have the usual radar sensor data. In addition, they are getting feeds from the electric sensors, which show the small currents flowing in the incoming guided shells' sensors and processors. And they are getting sensor data from the gravity sensors, which show the enemy shells as heavy dense masses moving rapidly across the sky. That's about as much sensor data as they can assess, but we have others ready to swap in, such as dropping radar data for data about chemical-residue trails in the case they are using stealthed shells again."

Colonel Harry reported, "Gravity Control has a 100-foot wide zone of sideways gravity, at ten G's, above us as before. It...crap. Hold on a sec."

Boz looked over and saw smoke coming from the Gravity Control Console.

Big Tom was on top of things and two repair robots were already on their way over to that console.

"Looks like Gravity Control is down for now. So everybody stay sharp, as if everything depends on you, since, with surprises like this, it may." Boz commented.

Other Old Codgers reported that the Forcefield Console, Probability Control Console, and Order Console were all ready.

Then Agamemnon's second volley hit the enemy.

This time, the 12 inch shells arrived first, with two going to each of the two still-functioning Landkreusers.

All four shells got zapped by artificial lightning bolts, which vaporized the tips of the shells and somewhat reduced their ability to penetrate armor.

But all four shells did hit armor, with one ricocheting away and three sinking partway into armor and lodging there.

Then the two super-tanks each got hit by two 9.2 inch HESH rounds, which exploded on the surfaces they hit, scorching them and doing unknown amounts of damage inside.

The four railgun rounds arrived next, and all penetrated the front armor of the Ratte. Flames erupted from the holes they pierced, and then all hatches were blown open from the inside as its ammunition cooked off.

Finally, the tardy torpedoes arrived, apparently too stealthy for the enemy's sensors to track and shoot down.

All five of them hit the side armor of the Monster, blasting large gaping holes in the armor there, and starting fires inside, visible through the big ragged holes.

The enemy volley arrived next, giving Agamemnon's crew no time to assess the damage they'd dealt.

First the three 11 inch shells all got shot by lasers, then deflected - two by King Tiger tanks on the battleship's deck, and one by the ship's console..

Then the 31.5 inch shell got deflected into another dimension, by Iggy using Dimensional Shunt.

Last, the ten 5.9 inch shells - all hit and weakened by the battleship's lasers and particle beams, just as the other shells had been - hit the ship's forcefield, which dropped their velocities to zero so they fell straight down into the ocean, nearly 50 feet away from Agamemnon.

Beth announced, "The consensus among the sensor operators is that all three Landkreusers in group 2 are dead."

A cheer went up.

"Wait for it," Boz admonished, "They still have another volley on the way to us. You all handled that last volley fine, just don't forget there's another yet to deal with."

Weedy spoke, "And there's something wrong with that second volley - it's more than twice as large as it should be. I'm checking."

"On it," Beth added.

"Abe," Boz said, "Step on it. There are six 11 inch shells and a 31.5 inch shell in that incoming group, arriving in just under a minute. We can only deflect four of the seven. I need you to impress me with your dodging."

"Roger, willco," Abe replied.

"Should we switch the forcefield to offensive mode?" asked the Old Codger sitting at the Forcefield Console.

"Hold off on that," Boz ordered, "While offensive mode would probably melt or blow up incoming shells as well as draining their velocity, it isn't tested yet, so it's possible that'd take down our forcefield entirely, if there's a bug. We need it working right now."

"Roger that."

"OK," Beth and Weedy said at the same time.

He nodded to her and she continued, "The extra shells in the second volley have trails leading back west to a second group of three Landkreusers, previously unknown to us, and composed of the same numbers and types as the one we just destroyed. The two groups must have been in communication with each-other, allowing the further group to fire a volley timed to hit us at the same time as the second volley from the first group."

The main screen now showed a marker where the new target group was located, near Hartford Connecticut, miles to the west of the battleship.

"Great job. Fire at the new targets please, as soon as you're aimed."

Boz hadn't had to say that, but wanted to anyway, to be orderly and clear.

His crew had anticipated the order and had already been rotating turrets and aiming.

Simon gleefully fired more missiles and torpedoes, even though the former were all but certain to be shot down, and the latter were unlikely to reach the target before the fight was over.

Boz took a moment to dismiss the shots still headed towards the dead Landkreusers, out of the same sense of orderliness.

Then Agamemnon's guns started firing again.

Boz ignored the booming of his ship's guns and spoke, "Ron, you have the most experience with deflecting incoming shots, so I want you to deflect that 800mm shell. I don't want there to be any chance of a situation where you and Iggy each say 'I thought you had it', since it could really wreck us if it hits."

"No can do Boz-Man..." Ron replied.

Boz cut him off and, assuming Ron's console was broken or something, and quickly ordered, "Iggy, you deflect it then."

"Neither of us can, Boz," Ron replied, grinning, "Because Abe dodged too well. That shell, and the rest of the volley it is with, won't come within fifteen hundred feet of this ship, and will therefore stay outside the range of our deflectors."

Boz lost the worried look he'd briefly worn, and turned to Abe, "Good job Abe, how'd you do it?"

"They're using guided shells, Abe began, "So I went up. We're currently 2000 feet high and climbing."

"What do you mean?" Beth asked.

Boz was nodding, and explained, "What it means is that each guided shell has it's own sensors for finding us, a small computer, and, more importantly in this case, some fins or stubby wings it can adjust to alter it's flight path. If it sees that it will miss the target to one side, it adjusts the fins, which then interact differently with the air it is passing through to steer the shell towards that side. It can similarly adjust for a longer flight by adjusting the stubby wings for more lift, or a shorter flight by reversing that. So left, right, long or short are easy for it, and the sooner it adjusts, the further it can go in those directions. But it is gliding, not using powered flight. It got it's initial thrust from being shot out of a cannon, then maybe a rocket-assist for extra range, but that will have expended it's fuel early in the flight. And after that it coasts on the energy it had, gliding towards the target. But because it is gliding, it can't gain altitude. So Abe went up."

Abe added, "Skydivers and hang-gliders can go up, if they catch a 'thermal' - an updraft of warm air. But they have much larger wing areas and low weight per wing area. Cannon shells have almost no wing area and high weight. They can't go up - not while gliding."

"So," Ron concluded, "the whole incoming volley will pass about 1500 feet below us, with no way to adjust and gain the altitude to hit us."

"So will the next volley," Weedy added from the Detect Chemicals Console, "I can see their trails adjusting for the shallowest glide they can get, to retain as much altitude as possible, but they'll still arrive well below us, even if we stop where we are. But the volley after that has just been fired very high indeed, to take our height into account."

"So we're completely safe for a couple volleys, during which time we may destroy them. But in case we don't, I'm curious to know what you plan to do next, Abe? You've already impressed me, can you keep it up, or do we go back to relying on deflectors and the forcefield?" Boz asked.

Abe grinned, "I intend to show them why historical battles between battleships at long range often took hours, with very few hits occurring. It wasn't just because the sea is moving in three dimensions under your gun-platform. It was also because that platform is moving and can change directions. Flight time for shells depends on velocity and other factors, but, generally speaking, in the time it takes one ship's shells to fly 20 miles, it's target can move a third of a mile - over 1700 feet. The whole shooting match becomes a guessing game, with both sides trying to anticipate where the other will move to and shooting there, rather than where they are now. Guided shells take some of the fun out of that, but we'll 'give them a run for their money' and find out just how far their guided shells can adjust."

Boz got a thoughtful look on his face and said, "So, this fight is effectively over - we're faster and so can choose the range we fight at, and at long range we can likely dodge enough of what they fire at us so that our deflectors and forcefield can handle any that do show up where we are. Plus, they will eventually run out of guided shells and we never will, due to the Replicator."

"All true," Simon announced from the Teleportation Console, "And better still. Watch this!"

He hit a button and Screen 3 showed a teleportation portal open in front of two of Agamemnon's outgoing 12 inch shells.

"The portal's exit is shown on Screen 4," Simon pointed out, right as the shells went in the portal's vertically-oriented entrance.

Screen 4 showed a top down view of what they'd started calling "The Little Ratte" - the one with two smaller main turrets.

Simon had barely finished speaking when the shells came out the portal's horizontally-oriented exit, headed downwards, only 3 feet above the rear deck on top of The Little Ratte.

The big 12 inch shells, traveling straight downwards, had no trouble penetrating the thin armor there, which usually could only be hit at sharp angles and depended on that to make it adequate.

Somewhere deep within the Ratte, the shells exploded, and secondary explosions soon shook the super-tank, which belched smoke and fire from every orifice.

"Nice," Abe allowed.

"Now watch me do the same with our torpedoes!" Simon exclaimed.

"Hold off on that please," Boz asked.

"OK, but why?"

"Put simply, I want one," Boz smiled. "Those are legendary tanks that geeks - including myself - have been excited about for decades. In a fight for your life, you never hold back. But as Simon just demonstrated, we have this won, so we can afford to 'pull our punches' and try something else. I want to try to capture one or both."

Boz turned to Big Tom, "Tom, get a couple hundred robots ready on the rear deck. Make it mostly GP robots for the actual fighting within the Landkreusers once we get in. Include some combat robots with particle beams and plasma weapons to get us in, and some repair robots to try the Shape Matter power and see if that gets us in faster. We'll run them through a teleportation portal, all at once, as soon as they're ready."

"Our robots are tough," Simon pointed out, "But the enemy have enough 20mm guns to shred them all pretty quickly."

"That is why you're going to make the portal exit underneath The Big Ratte - the one whose main turret has three big guns - in-between it's treads. I can see some smaller turrets down there, but they don't look as big as the 20mm turrets, so our robots may be able to take what they can dish out. And the 20mm guns won't be able to hit them there - not even the 20mm guns firing from the other super-tank. If it works, we'll follow it up by doing the same thing to the Monster."

Colonel Harry stood up, "You're going to need someone there to direct the robots. Can I volunteer?"

Dozens of Old Codgers around the room added, "Me too", or words like it.

Boz smiled, "Duplicates only - no actual people, since it's going to be pretty dangerous. And I don't know that you'll be able to get within the Landkreusers in your DragonSuits. The shortest DragonSuit we captured is 9 feet tall and any rooms or hallways within the Ratte are not likely to be that big."

"Not so, mon Capitan," Ron piped up, "You were in the restroom when we fished it out of the bay, but we got one of the stealthed DragonSuits too. They're just 6 feet tall - no taller than the GP robots. They're still powered battlesuits - made all of carbon composites and such, but still good protection, plus jump jets and with hands capable of using normal personal weapons like rifles and pistols."

"OK," Boz nodded, "Replicate a bunch of those and everybody who wants the adrenaline rush can send as many Duplicates as they want."

Abe rushed out of the room to get Duplicated, followed by most of the Old Codgers.

They missed the arrival of the rest of Agamemnon's first volley at the target.

The Ratte and Monster were both sitting behind hills. The 4 railgun slugs hit those hills and plowed most of the way through them.

Seeing that, Boz commented, "They must have been in contact with the other group, and saw the main threat to them - the railguns - had a very flat trajectory. So they sat behind hills. But the hills will be no protection against the cannon shells, which are coming in at an angle from above."

And it was so.

The two remaining 12 inch shells both got zapped by artificial lightning from the Ratte, but continued on anyway and hit The Big Ratte in the front.

One sank into the front armor and lodged there.

The other hit the front of the big triple turret and ricocheted off after knocking that turret slightly askew, such that it appeared unable to rotate.

Weedy, back at the Detect Chemicals Console after getting Duplicated, commented, "There's a lot of Osmium in that armor - the most dense element there is, and very hard and resistant to heat as well. Good armor."

Boz nodded as the 9.2 inch shells all got detonated by artificial lightning bolts 200 feet away from their targets.

Weedy spoke again, "The enemy's volley that just flew by underneath us was unlike previous volleys: it had shells made entirely of Osmium. That would probably have penetrated our armor, if they'd hit. That's a profligate use of Osmium though - it's rare."

He looked at a screen, then added, "Only 50 parts per trillion in the Earth's crust. Makes gold look common by comparison."

"Remind me to come back later and collect those from the sea floor," Boz said, "I'm sure there's ways we can use that.

"Sure," Weedy said, "The Osmium stands out like a glowing neon sign on this console, so finding them to grab with telekinesis will be easy."

"We're ready," Simon announced.

"Send in the troops," Boz ordered.

A teleportation portal opened to a point exactly underneath The Big Ratte, midway between its enormous treads.

The near end of the portal was on Agamemnon's rear deck, and had swarms of DragonSuits and robots standing by it.

The moment the portal opened, they swarmed through, ducking slightly since they were 6 feet tall and the bottom of the tank was 6 feet above the ground.

The moment the first one stepped through, small turrets on the belly of the Ratte started firing machineguns and flamethrowers at them.

The bullets bounced harmlessly off both DragonSuits and robots. And the flames did not hurt the invaders immediately, but could if allowed to continue.

So combat robots used their plasma weapons to take out all the turrets.

While they were doing that, others used particle beams to start cutting entrances in the armor which formed the bottom of the super-tank.

And repair robots started using the Shape Matter power to make the armor flow like wax, and form stairways down to the ground, leaving big open holes at the tops of those stairs.

Troops charged up those stairs while particle beams were still cutting.

Some ran into machinery - parts of suspensions, transmissions, and the like, and could go no further.

Further uses of Shape Matter moved those openings to try again.

Others got into hallways, maintenance access ways, and a gunnery room.

Then the fighting was on.

It was nasty, vicious, fighting at nearly hand-to-hand ranges.

the Nazis inside the tank gave no quarter and asked for none. They used ambushes, a wide variety of weapons, and even had some capes among them.

It was like trying to storm a warship - all metal corridors and cramped rooms, full of equipment, whose defenders knew every nook and cranny of the confusing warren of spaces and used everything to their advantage.

But losses meant nothing to the attackers,and many of them charged right back in with new Duplicates when previous copies had been killed and dismissed.

They had so many volunteers and robots that some were waiting in line for their turn at the tank's interior, despite having switched the portal to the Monster to send a force under it and take it at the same time.

Some impatient volunteers used their jump jets to fly up to the top of the Ratte to try to get into hatches there.

But that put them where the defensive 20mm guns could hit them. Those guns went at it with gusto and soon took down any flying attackers.

But more Duplicates tried it anyway - coming at the problem from every angle they could think of, rather than wait their turn to enter the tank from beneath.

After a while, some succeeded, but only because the attackers inside the tanks had reached the 20mm gunners and taken them out.

Capes within the super-tanks went down when hit by plasma guns, lasers, or particle beams, or even just regular bullets. They often took several robots or DragonSuits out before they went down, but they did go down.

Locked doors inside the Ratte and Monster were cut open by particle beams to continue the fighting.

They had a number of those - each Landkreuser was configured inside something like a naval vessel - with spartan crew accommodations somewhere in-between a WWII naval submarine, whose overall weight was very similar, and a WWII naval destroyer, whose overall interior space was similar.

Configuring them that way meant they were intended to be used continuously for days or weeks on end, like those sea-going vessels.

That, in turn, meant the designers of the Landkreusers had solved certain reliability and wear-and-tear problems, which lead to normal tanks being transported long distances by trucks or train, rather than transporting themselves.

These tanks certainly needed that ability to transport themselves, since no truck or train could move them.

It turned that the crew they accommodated was about 75 men, except The Little Ratte's, which had some infantry aboard as well. Those men were apparently picked, at least in part, for ideological zeal, since they fought hard and did not give up.

But in a few minutes it was all over.

Both remaining super-tanks were in the hands of Agamemnon's crew.

While the fighting had been going on, the Gravity Control Console had gotten fixed. Some insulation had melted - probably when they'd caused the white-hole explosion of Leviathan. Since that time, a short had been a possibility every time they'd used it.

With that in mind, they set repair robots to checking for such things on all their consoles and systems.

They'd also dismissed any shells they still had headed towards the Landkreusers, so as not to hit their own troops, or further damage the super-tanks.

They got several crew in DragonSuits looking over the captured tanks, with several more robots in and nearby to defend their prizes.

Then they went to the destroyed super-tanks, near and far, and cleared out any Nazis remaining in them too.

Each one got some crew exploring it and some robots guarding it.

When Simon asked Boz why, what use could they be, Boz responded, "When you have capacity, you will tend to find uses for it. I want to take them to Mars Colony, repair them, and then think of uses for them. We can shrink them down to about 9 feet long and take a couple on deck per trip. Three or four quick trips and we're done. That way nobody here can re-use them, and we have them available for whatever use comes to mind. I'd bet the Monster's gun could launch a satellite into Mars' orbit, since we have low gravity and no atmospheric resistance to speak of. And maybe they could be mobile exploration bases. Or defensive forts to discourage Earth from starting trouble. Or defensive space stations. At worst, they'd make wonderful monuments." he grinned.

Simon looked thoughtful,"We'll need schematics, and hopefully manuals for that..."

"Lisa." they both said.

So they called her.