chapter 85
“Red alert, red alert!”
“Unknown hostile vessels detected!”
Immediately on the command bridge, the view of the asteroids we were mining for some raw resources changed to a more tactical view as the approaching spaceships were detected.
“Everyone, get to battle stations!” I yelled and did so myself as well.
“Of course, there were going to be pirates. There is never an empty asteroid field,” Dean commented to Sam as they rushed to their station.
“I refuse to believe you. There is an empty asteroid field. There is just too much space. And you don’t know if they’re pirates, they could be marauders or even reapers.” As Sam said this, Dean looked towards Sam, seemingly questioning if his brother was an idiot.
“Reapers? You really think those out there are people who hunt other people so they can eat them?”
“Well… maybe not that.”
“Stop the chatter, let’s get serious,” I said to them. Still, it was nice to see them more open and more comfortable just communicating. They told me that most of the time they weren’t allowed to do so back with their previous bond holders.
“FH, are they behaving?”
“Some of them are a bit afraid. I still feel like they’re not ready for this yet, but none of them seems to be neglecting their duties because of it. Already we are getting better sensor data than we were before. That cluster of AI’s is just getting really too good at their job.”
“Excellent.” But that was all the talk we could have. I watched the numbers change as every system went into battle readiness.
Power consumption went up by at least 200%. That meant for a few moments we were using up our stored energy that was inside the power core held by the nano machines. Then the power production spiked as new fusion reactions were activated to meet the new demands.
As power coursed through the entire ship, the shields hardened and changed configurations to match the currently detected enemies’ positions. The main engines were brought to full readiness so we could use them at a moment’s notice.
The side engines activated as well, their AIs operating their bodies so that they could help manoeuvre the ship if needed.
Raising them was quite interesting, as we did them at the same time and made them to be identical twins, with the only difference being that one rotated its propeller clockwise while the other counterclockwise.
On my station I changed some of the screens to start showing the inside view of the different floors to see how things were progressing there.
All drones had stopped what they were doing, and were now securing down everything that was loose. Then going into a secure battle station of their own where they could be held so they wouldn’t fly about damaging themselves or anything else during high-G manoeuvres.
As everyone got to their places for battle, the walls of the third floor slammed down. Overall, the ship went into a lockdown with anti-personnel turrets popping out everywhere.
Outside, none of the weapon emplacements rose up; they were still behind their secure housing. Although they all went through readiness checks. They seemed to eagerly wait for every update their sisters and brothers uploaded about the current situation, especially the turrets, who constantly looked up the current location of the enemy.
Unfortunately, there was no escaping this situation as the five enemy ships were now fully visible, popping out from behind an asteroid. They most likely used them as cover to get so close.
“I need more data on the ships,” I said out loud, and now that we had a direct line of sight, more and more data started to populate the screen: estimated thicknesses of the enemy ships’ armour, what their overall size and dimensions were, and of course what weapons they held.
Everything came in so fast, with seemingly quite precise predictions. With every passing moment, those predictions narrowed down. A perfect example is the length of the larger ship. Before, the estimate was between 350 and 400 metres, but now it was just down to 360 to 370.
Like this, we were getting more and more accurate data, but of course some thing still remained unclear. Their weapons started to be confirmed. Two of the ships had inbuilt railguns, and not a moment later we felt two impacts as the ship jolted.
Immediately I looked at the shields to see two of them reporting hits, with the heat built up jumping to about 18% for both of them. Already they were cooling down; just a moment later they were already at 17%. Those were some heavy hits.
“That's impressive,” Sam commented.
“Yeah, I would say so. The sensors managed to pick up incoming railguns and get that information to the shield generators that were going to be impacted. At that small instant they managed to change their angle just a bit to better reflect the incoming shots,” Dean explained.
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“You’re right, that’s actually the thing I should be impressed by.”
“Evasive manoeuvres!” I yelled as I realised we still hadn’t moved from our original position. “We should have already been doing so. Sam, make a note of it.”
The next two shots that came our way missed. The ship oriented now to be at the perfect angle against our opponents, with the railguns’ AI already asking permission to fire as we were now orientated towards the enemy and it could finally fire.
“Cluster heads and FH, you should already be thinking about tactical solutions, and target should already be picked.”
They had gotten a bit too carried away about running the ship and not thinking about how and when we should engage, or if we should even try to run away.
Through my bond I could tap into their internal communication lines to see their incredibly high-speed chatter going around. We dodged another set of railgun rounds that seemed to fire every six seconds. Looking at the information list about the enemy ships, that piece of information was already added. Those AIs really were doing an excellent job.
This tactical solution was taking a bit too long. “If you don't have a clear target in mind, just choose one. We’re wasting too much time. Target the 4th ship, the one that seems to be built for missile combat.”
The ship almost instantly moved, stopping our erratic movement, everyone working together to get the best targeting solution for the railgun.
Then it fired.
The whole ship vibrated and there was a weird shock as the ship sort of moved backwards and then forwards a bit. It was a really weird feeling, like simultaneously being pushed and pulled at the same time.
It took the railgun shot about eleven seconds to reach target. As they were so close. The results were spectacular. We were aiming for the enemy ship’s power core. As it was only 120 metres in length, it shouldn't have much defensiveness, and the resulting explosions that ripped the ship into multiple pieces were oddly satisfying to see.
The response from the enemy ships was immediate, as they now moved to a standard fleet configuration, with their largest being in front to take the hit from our railgun.
I think we would win in a slug match between our railguns, as we seemed to have a more powerful one than even that cruiser had. Unfortunately, they were racing towards us, most likely trying to get into missile range. Good thing we took out a lot of their missiles with our first shot by destroying that ship.
We couldn’t turn around and escape. Even if our backside was plenty defended, we couldn’t return fire. Before I could say it, the side engines started up as FH gave them the command to move us backwards as fast as possible.
It was excellent to see this. While I suspect in most battles I will be the commander, it would be best if this ship could fight without my input and do so well.
Perhaps in time they would become even better than I would be, but I hope that was a long way off as I wanted to improve myself as well. So it’s going to be a race between the two of us to see who should be in command during situations like this.
It takes about 5 seconds to load and recharge the railgun, although that time will increase over time as we need to start charging the capacitors. That could dump about 10 shots worth of energy every 5 seconds when they were fully charged. Afterwards the length between each shot was going to increase, not by too much, but it would still be noticeable.
The heat was another problem, as we were already producing quite a lot. Everything was still manageable. We weren’t even building up heat in our heat sinks, as we were managing to actively keep everything cool.
The next shot hit the main ship of the enemies, but their shields seemed to be good enough to block it. Although our sensors did manage to pick up a lingering heat signature near that location. So they couldn't take too many shots, that was good, but finally a number showed up that was unfortunately quite low.
The estimation for our victory was finally given, and currently it’s only at 15%. That was not good. Then an alert sounded as the enemy ships passed an imaginary line. They had finally gotten close enough for optimal range for missile combat.
From behind the enemy’s main ship hundreds of missiles popped out and started to move towards us, ever accelerating.
“Launch missiles.” Moments later, missiles started to be launched, although our complement most definitely wasn’t as big as theirs. When those missiles got close enough, we would also be launching our anti-missiles.
We took two railgun shots, but they barely did anything, as our shields had an opportunity to perfectly angle against them. We were now reading over 600 missiles heading towards us, which was way too many.
A freak situation happened as our next railgun shot actually destroyed one of their missiles before hitting the ship, almost hitting the same location as before, but it seemed that our aim was a bit off, as a different spot heated up on the ship, indicating that a different shield generator took that hit.
Everything was now happening quite fast as we were getting closer and closer to each other. While we were still trying to back off, our side engine just couldn’t match their mains.
This was not looking good. The enemy ships had just sneaked way too close. We continued the slugging match.
Two of our shots later we seemed to have managed to destroy one of their shield generators, as the third shot hit their armour. It managed to stop it, but now they angled their ship differently, so we needed to once again try to get through their shields before we could do any real damage.
We were now rapidly deploying anti-missiles. Our turrets popped out, with the larger ones having loaded buckshot, while the smaller ones were getting targeting solutions and distributing which targets they were going after.
The ship vibrated with every shot as we opened up against the huge amount of missiles that were now getting quite close. The enemy ship didn’t stop firing its railguns, so every so often our turrets needed to stop firing as the shields needed to be re-engaged. That wasn’t as smooth as I wanted it to be, but this was still early in their development, so that was to be expected.
We did an excellent job, taking care of more of the missiles than I expected, but there were some mishaps as the turrets sometimes shot our own shields.
Perhaps if that didn't happen we could have taken care of all the missiles approaching, but right now we only managed to take out about 95%. The thing was that in the game of missile combat, just a few could be enough.
Our shields registered the hits with multiple of them going offline. Our enemy didn’t waste that opportunity, as their railgun shots carved into our armour. We managed to stop them for this time. We did the same as they did and reangled, but now every shot that hit with their railguns really pushed our shields.
The problem was that that salvo of missiles had risen our overall heat by quite a lot. We were doing everything we could to manage it, even actively dumping it, but space combat came down to two options: either you overwhelmed your enemy or you win by generating less heat than them. We were unfortunately losing that, as none of our missiles hit. We simply didn’t have enough of them to deal with four ships and their point defences.
Our ship was now close enough that we could open up and actively do damage with weapons other than huge railguns. They were moving a lot faster than us, so they were going to pass us by quite quickly.
What followed was almost a 30-second exchange where the turrets could barely keep up with the movement speed of the ships. We should have accelerated with our main engines. That would have cut down the amount of time we would have been so close by.
The heat was now a true problem, even though we survived that exchange. We focused on the main ship, which might have been the wrong choice as we did not do enough damage, but none of this really mattered as the chance for our victory had dropped from 15% to 0.1%. I wonder why it wasn’t 0.
There was no point in flipping our ship around, our front end was pretty damaged. “Full acceleration, let's try to escape.”
The main engines kicked in, quickly bringing us to almost 20 G’s of acceleration, but it didn’t stop there. It continued to push until we approached our maximum of 42 G of acceleration. Damn, that was tough to handle. Most would have already been dead as we continued to burn at this rate.
Then the enemy ships flipped around and started decelerating, but it would take them a bit of time to finally start moving towards us again. Unfortunately, their railguns could still fire. We tried our best, but a lot of our manoeuvring thrusters were destroyed during the exchange. We should have closed them up just before that exchange.
Because of this, they could comfortably fire and hit near our main engine. Everyone tried their best, but after six volleys they breached our hull. The entire command bridge turned black.
“Well done, everyone. Yes, we lost, but this simulation that Lola set up was specifically meant for us to lose. Enemies were simply too close. We have a lot to go over, as we made a lot of mistakes, but that's why we're doing these simulations.”
A moment later, Lola emerged from the server room.
“Well done. How did you manage to get the first railgun shots to feel so real?” Sam asked her.
“That’s easy, I just made a few explosives.”
We all looked at her a bit shocked.
“Excellent idea. It’s good to have some practical experience. This empty space we are currently in isn’t the best place to train, but as we can see, going into an asteroid belt is most likely a bad decision, especially going to such a dense cluster of asteroids,” Dean said while seeming thoroughly impressed by what Lola managed to pull off as all of it felt so real.
“Let's start going over everything to see where we can improve,” I said, starting from before the beginning of the fight to see what we could have done differently.