chapter 137
The distance between us and the mothership kept shrinking. As time passed, the frequency of shots fired against the mothership increased. When we hit the 3000-kilometre mark, our ships truly started hammering it.
The data we were getting wasn’t from our own sensors, but from the fleet’s combined ones, so unfortunately, we couldn’t focus on the areas we were interested in. Still, the general data was good enough to get a rough estimate of how well it was going.
The news wasn’t good as this mothership’s armour was better than expected. At this distance, most targeted the main railgun, as that was the first target to take out. If we did take it out, we would have a lot more operational options. Other than that target, there wasn’t really anything you could hit from the front that would be crucial.
The only exceptions were the two ports that were actually glowing because of the laser fire. Those two battleships, however, couldn’t keep up the fire constantly, as they needed to hide behind the battle barge quite often. From the tactical display, we also saw that they had now switched their target, also focusing on the main railgun.
Not long after that, we received orders to start slowing down. We weren’t allowed to turn around and use our main engines, so the slowdown would be gradual, but everyone was capable enough to keep up with the battle barge’s slowing down.
Nervous energy permeated the command centre, as with every minute we were getting closer to that mothership, it could start spewing out its fighters.
“Why don’t you do it already?” I heard Sam say as he was keeping an eye out for any signs of fighters emerging.
The earlier it released its fighters, the better chance we had, as we would have a longer time to try to take them out with long-range weapons.
During all of this time, like clockwork, every 23 seconds, the mothership fired its main railgun. Currently, 67% of its shots missed, but that percentage was coming down the closer we got.
I was amazed that the battle barge’s shields were still up even after all this hammering. It was an amazingly defensive ship. At 2000 kilometres, the mothership’s secondary railguns started to fire. These were more accurate, but also a lot less powerful.
The length of the railgun was a huge determining factor in how massive of a projectile you could fire through it, and these ones were obviously a lot shorter than the main one.
These secondary ones, while some did target the battle barge, mostly tried to time their shots to fire at the battleships and battlecruisers that were hammering it.
The exchanges continued to grow more heated. The battleships could absorb those secondary railgun shots easily enough, but the battlecruisers weren’t that lucky, with one having to stop firing its railgun as its shields were compromised. It even took one hit into its armour.
When we reached the 1500-kilometre mark, it finally happened. The mothership bulk hid its actions for a bit, but soon, from underneath it, eight frigates emerged, quite similar in design to the mothership but obviously a lot smaller, only about 250 metres in length.
Once again, there were differences between each one. It seemed none of its ships were an exact copy of each other, supporting my idea of them being some sort of animal that evolved into this. As soon as they were clear of the mothership, almost all of the heavy hitters switched targets to those frigates.
Fortunately, we had good commanders, so they were focus-firing, and within the first eight volleys, one of the frigates broke apart from internal explosions as its armour was cracked apart by the combined might of the battleships.
That was still a lot of fire it managed to absorb, but it was important to get rid of these frigates, as they themselves had hundreds of thousands of fighters inside them. Which shouldn’t be possible, but was, and we knew exactly how. Inventory skills could be quite scary.
The mothership didn’t seem happy about it, because the next moment it opened up its ports and tens of thousands of fighters started to spew out. The early laser fire did manage to disable one of the front ports, but none of us actually knew if that mattered or if they could use other exits to launch all the fighters.
Momentarily the tactical display froze, as all of a sudden there were way too many targets. That problem was fixed a second later as the fighters were deprioritized so the tactical computers wouldn’t keep track of absolutely every vector of every fighter.
I wondered how well our own systems could have handled this moment, but we had more important things to do than worry about that.
The battle barge started dumping its railgun shots, hoping to finally disable that main railgun. The front of that armour was worse than the lunar surface, with some craters being easily ten metres deep from repeated hits.
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Yet the system that shielded that railgun opening, even after being hit multiple times, still worked. Pulling apart bent metal with relative ease. That design of hiding the railgun front behind an armored opening which itself was sunk deep into the ship itself gave it quite a bit of defensiveness, even if it was harder to aim.
After a rapid volley of nearly fifty shots that unfortunately did not achieve what it was meant to achieve, the battle barge started to roll. It was now presenting its belly, which should mean that it was giving up, but it turned out even its underarmour and shields were strong enough to stop the railgun shots from that mothership.
Up to this point, all of the frigates had trailed the battle barge in a tight column, but now, as the surface area of the battle barge’s shadow increased rapidly, we moved into a more conical shape with the tip pointing away from the mother ship.
We also now understand why the mothership launched all of its fighters. As they were flying towards us, the frigates and the mothership were now hidden behind the literally millions of fighters. While some lucky shots got through and still hit their targets, most hit a fighter or a couple, which made the shots miss their intended target.
It seemed that no one expected that to happen, as there was a bit of panic on the command line.
“We continue the plan. Everyone, get ready to launch your missiles.” The Baron’s voice silenced all.
It was a surprise to me when I learned that the commander of the battle barge was actually a Baron.
Our position was quite close to the battle barge, so we could easily see the damage. It seemed that some of the shots did partially manage to break through the shields, hitting the transparent dome, which didn’t seem to have any problem stopping this amount of damage.
It was weird to see the different buildings like a small city on the surface of the battle barge, and there seemed to be a lot of Roman-styled colosseums. A weird choice for an elvish-run ship.
“Everyone, prepare yourselves, it is about to begin,” I announced to the entire ship.
While we, in the command centre, wouldn’t have any problems, as we could just sit tight, a lot of drones will need to start carrying ammunition from storage into the loading belts.
The calculus of how much ammunition would be consumed was staggering. As soon as humanity discovered ranged weapons, there has always been the problem of running out of ammunition and needing to supply it.
It started with spears, or perhaps even rocks, but the calculus was easy enough to figure out. You wanted as much ammunition as possible, but there was the problem of space and weight.
During the Hundred Years’ War, in one battle, the English could easily consume tens of thousands or perhaps even hundreds of thousands of arrows if the battle was big enough. When guns became widely used, you needed to supply millions of rounds during sustained combat.
The most famous battle rifle, the AK-47, had a magazine of 30 bullets. It had a fire rate of about 600 bullets a minute. If we don’t take reloading into account, you could use up 20 magazines in a minute.
Let’s say a magazine weighed about one kilogram—it was about 900 grams, I think—that would be an extra 20 kilograms the soldier needed to carry around to fire his weapon for a minute. That amount of magazines would also easily take up half a backpack.
Of course, in reality, it would last a lot longer, as you wouldn’t constantly be firing, and of course you needed to reload. The same went for us: if all of our turrets fired at maximum speed, at best we would have ammunition for about 10 minutes, but that didn’t take into account reloading and aiming.
The calculation was still easy enough to make: if we didn’t conserve ammunition and didn’t make every shot count, we could easily run out without doing any significant damage to the number of fighters coming our way.
Through my bond, I could feel the anticipation all the ships’ AIs had. They were ready to take as many of those fighters out as they possibly could.
“Launch all missiles,” came the command.
It was now our turn for our side’s tactical screen to be filled to the brim. It took a bit of time, but nearly 150,000 missiles were launched by the combined fleet, racing towards the fighters that were coming our way.
I also noticed that we had managed to take out four more enemy frigates, which meant that only three were left. Our side didn’t stop firing even though some of those railgun shots might hit our own missiles, but the chances of it were quite low.
We also had a rough estimate of how many enemy fighters there were. The number displayed seemed absolutely crazy: thirteen and a half million.
“Fuck us…” I heard someone say out loud, but I wasn’t sure if it was one of my crew members or if it came from the command line. It didn’t matter, because that summed up our situation perfectly.
Everything took so much goddamn time in space; it was simply too large. Our speed had slowed down quite a lot, so we were still about 1200 kilometres away. About halfway between our ships, the fighters and missiles met.
The fighters separated themselves a bit before the missiles hit, yet some of those missiles were quite powerful, easily taking out a few dozen with each hit, if not more. A rough estimate gave us 1.8 million fighters destroyed.
To my surprise, a second salvo of missiles was launched, this time only by the battle barge, all of the battleships, and a couple of battlecruisers, totalling about 300.
By the time those missiles reached the fighters, the last of the enemy frigates were also destroyed. It seemed that the command line was anxiously waiting for the results of this attack, which made me question what those missiles actually were.
That question was answered when the first one exploded. It took out a large section of the fighters, and rapidly, the other missiles exploded as well, all of them obviously being some sort of atomic weapons. When the dust cleared, so to say, and the sensors recalibrated, the results rose the morale of the entire fleet.
Those were some really powerful weapons, and they were spread out enough to take out a large portion of the enemy fighters. The number displayed dropped to about 5.8 million remaining. A single attack took out about half of them, but there were still millions left.
Each ship now loaded grapeshot-style ammunition into their railguns as every battleship and battlecruiser, along with a few frigates, focused their fire upon the incoming fighters, trying to take out as many of them as possible.
The good mood was broken a moment later as the mothership seemed angry about what had happened and decided to aim not at the battle barge, but at a battleship with its main railgun. The battleships had gotten too absorbed in trying to take out as many fighters as possible, so one of them took a straight-on hit.
That railgun shot penetrated its shield and punched through its armour, although it reduced its speed before being penetrated. Still, the front end of that battleship now spewed atmosphere, and there were some small secondary explosions.
It quickly got behind the battle barge’s shadow, but it was most likely now going to be nothing more than a point-defence platform like every other frigate. That sobered everyone up, as it seemed the mothership would try to let its fighters handle the battle barge while it focused on trying to keep the battleships at bay.
“Fighters approaching, everyone prepare!” the Baron said, cutting through all the chatter.
A large portion of the fighters surged towards the battle barge, trying to ram as deep into it as possible, but they weren’t stupid. Knowing well enough that only the fighters in the front would get a chance to attack the battle barge's belly, everyone else needing to swarm around it so they could attack its backside.
Our sensors picked up the first fighters as soon as they crested over the ridge of the battle barge. I could barely react in time to realise that our AI had already found targets and fed that information to the turrets, which aimed unerringly and fired as soon as they knew that their shots were going to hit.
The vibration of the first turret firing barely reached me, and a moment later, the ship was filled with the constant vibration of dozens of turrets firing.
"And so it begins."