The tactical display showed the approaching Chroniech fleet along with a list of the suspected types of ships it contained. As Chomach’s eyes ran down the list he began to get worried. Not only did the Chroniech have more ships than expected but a significant number of them were very large and heavily armed.
Fleet command had hoped to create fleets of at least double the size of any expected Chroniech fleets. Chomach’s fleet of 58 ships plus the
Rin’Bak
still outnumbered their opponent but, excluding the
Rin’Bak,
the Chroniech fleet out-massed his by a considerable margin.
Manipulating his controls, Chomach zoomed out to show a larger view of the local area of space. A blue line appeared indicating the projected course of the Chroniech. It intersected with the Proquindabo system, one of the few places where the Lamaltan race could live openly. They required a rare, frigid atmosphere of ammonia and methane. The single inhabited planet boasted a population of nearly 5.6 billion.
Chomach’s major worry, other than the fact that he was most likely seriously outgunned, was that the Chroniech would avoid engaging his own fleet and proceed directly to their target. The eight Mispha class interceptors were there to prevent that from happening. They were positioned to force engagement if needed.
The Chroniech Fleet Commander, however, apparently had decided to take on the Alliance fleet. They dropped out of stardrive well before they needed to and simply waited. The Alliance popped into normal space one million kilometers from the waiting Chroniech and spent a few minutes matching velocities in preparation for combat.
While they were maneuvering, Chomach sent the standard warning message and received the standard Chroniech reply – silence. The Chroniech fleet had arranged itself into a typical hemispherical formation. This provided their ships with a wide range of fire and allowed many ships to target the same point if desired.
Chomach noticed that a single Chroniech ship had positioned itself away from the main battle group. Touching the virtual representation of the ship brought up all the currently known statistics. From what he could see it appeared to be a command ship of some type.
The Alliance fleet arranged itself into groups of roughly six ships each. The groups were positioned along an arc that would pass within weapons range of one side of the Chroniech battle fleet. The theory was that each group would be assigned a single Chroniech ship, quickly overpower that ship’s shields with their combined firepower, then move on to the next target. Targeting was controlled by a designated master computer. The
Rin’Bak’s
tactical computer acted as the overall tactical command computer.
Both fleets waited until they were well within optimum weapons range. The Chroniech, having the larger range, opened fire first. Due to the initial relative speed of the two fleets the Alliance opened fire twenty seconds later. But by then Chomach knew they were in serious trouble.
Two Chroniech ships had targeted the Human battleship
Texas
. “Shield loading at 81%,” the tactical station reported. “No leakage at this time.” Everyone on the bridge realized that things were going to get worse the closer they got. A shield loading of 81% at this range meant the Chroniech weapons were considerably better than their own.
Red alarm lights suddenly sprang into existence and an auxiliary monitor on the engineering station instantly displayed an area of the ship. “Hull breach, deck 31 frame 112!” announced the person at the engineering station.
A second later the tactical station reported, “Main battery two destroyed. A single weapon has penetrated our shield.”
“Roll the ship!” the Captain ordered. This was done in an attempt to dissipate the weapon’s energy across the ship’s armor. “Science, what are we dealing with?”
“Some type of extremely narrow beam packing the power of a primary battery,” the science station replied. “It has an energy density capable of locally overloading our shield.”
The seemingly unstoppable Chroniech weapon wandered over the surface of the
Texas
seeking out the vulnerable external protuberances of the ship’s armament. It left a path of destruction wherever it passed. The battleship’s resilient armor was able to resist it for a few seconds but not much longer.
Even though the beam itself was only half a centimeter in diameter the destruction it caused was incredible. The sole purpose of the weapon, however, was to seek out and render useless as many weapons as possible. Even though the
Texas
tried to alter its orientation, the beam continued its relentless search for things to destroy.
The Captain watched in desperation as the damage caused by the Chroniech beam continued to spread. It revealed itself on the damage control screen as a slowly spreading red plague. The tactical station kept up a steady litany of the beam’s effect. “Missile tube three damaged… CIWS mount six destroyed… Main battery one damaged.”
In addition to the loss of external weapon mounts the beam was burning through the armor plating in places where it paused long enough to do so. Several compartments had lost pressure and internal damage was being reported. In one instance, an occupied compartment was penetrated. Before the air in the room had had a chance to escape into space it had been heated to several hundred degrees. The three crewmen inside were incinerated.
The beam then encountered one of the
Texas’
sledgehammers. It had recently fired off its first volley and was in the process of recharging when the Chroniech weapon struck. The beam sliced through the end of the barrel releasing the partially created soliton. Free of its electromagnetic confinement, the crackling ball of energy came into contact with the gun’s structural support disturbing the soliton’s magnetic structure.
The battleship’s sledgehammers were incredibly powerful weapons. Even at 40% charge the soliton contained an enormous amount of energy. The sledgehammer struck the armored hull of the
Texas
and performed it function – destruction. Matter and antimatter came into contact with each other and added their annihilation energy to what was being released by the soliton’s magnetic field.
The armor plating exploded both outward into space and inward into the ship. Superheated air mixed with molten steel and other materials heated to plasma temperatures roared into the interior of the ship. Bulkheads and deck plating ruptured and exploded inwards. A wave of pressure moved down the passageways causing destruction as it went. Four people died without even knowing they had died.
The burst of radiation released from the matter/antimatter annihilation traveled a bit further. Five more people would be dead from radiation exposure in less than a day. But they did not have to wait that long. The Chroniech had noted the heavy loading on the shields of the
Texas
and targeted two more weapons toward it.
Overloaded and unable to deflect any additional energy the shields leaked. The armor plating of the ship glowed red then quickly turned to white in five separate places. In rapid succession five Chroniech beams burned through the doomed ship. Secondary explosions from weapon magazines, fuel tanks, and shorted power accumulators reduced the once mighty warship to complete junk allowing the Chroniech to turn their weapons on another target.
As the damage reports began to stream in Chomach sat in shock as the analysis of the Chroniech weapons appeared on a virtual screen. It quickly became clear that the shield penetrator’s primary purpose was to render the target ship incapable of fighting back. This effectively removed the ship from the battle allowing the Chroniech to deal with it later.
The Chroniech had also demonstrated another unique capability of their weapons. As soon as the distance between the two opposing fleets had closed enough both fleets had opened fire with their sledgehammers. The technical name for this weapon was a particle pumped magnetic soliton vortex. Inside the throat of the weapon a quasi-stable rotating electromagnetic vortex known as a soliton was created. It was charged with counter-rotating streams of protons and anti-protons. Launched electromagnetically at nearly 15% the speed of light they were highly destructive.
The Alliance had always considered the sledgehammer to be a weapon that could not be intercepted and the battle strategy counted on it. The Chroniech proved them wrong. The Alliance watched in utter amazement as over half of the 253 sledgehammers that had been fired were intercepted.
The Chroniech had built smaller versions of the sledgehammers and were using them to intercept the ones fired by the Alliance. The smaller weapons did not utilize a particle stream but, instead, consisted of a bare magnetic vortex. When soliton met soliton the two magnetic fields interfered with each other resulting in the destruction of both. The accuracy and reaction time of the Chroniech targeting systems had to be phenomenal in order to pull of this feat.
Space battles, especially those between large fleets, were normally conducted under the guidance of the fleet’s tactical computers. Targets were assigned and weapons fired with microsecond precision. Tactical decisions were evaluated and revised using complex algorithms that adjusted themselves to the battle conditions as they changed from millisecond to millisecond. The biological entities within the ships simply watched as the battle unfolded.
Chomach watched the battle’s progress as if he was a god-like entity floating in space. The virtual reality world created by his helmet gave him the ability to see everything and be almost anywhere instantly. There was very little, however, that he could do to halt the destruction of his forces. The battle had been going on for just over five minutes and he had already lost over half his ships.
Three Chroniech ships in particular were giving the Alliance a great deal of trouble. Prior to the battle, Chomach had noticed the presence of the three large warships. They massed 615 kilotons and had an unusual power signature. All three ships had waited until the Alliance fleet had moved a bit closer before they opened fire.
Each of these super-heavy battleships mounted a single weapon of almost inconceivable power. When the analysis popped up in front of him Chomach’s stomach knotted up. It was a faster than light weapon powered by a matter/antimatter reactor. And it was doing an incredible amount of damage.
Even though the new weapon could sustain a beam for only four seconds and seemed to require nearly fifteen seconds to recharge it was devastating his fleet. As he watched, a Tholtaran heavy destroyer found itself impaled by one of these beams.
The destroyer’s shields had initially been loaded to only thirty percent. A brilliant blueish beam from hell crashed through the ship’s shield almost as if it wasn't even there. The ship’s armor barely put up a fight. It instantly glowed white then blew out into space in gigantic chunks. It took three seconds for the beam to bore clear through the ship scoring a clean hit on the shield generator.
As the beam winked out it left behind a ship that was now tearing itself apart from the inside. Superheated air mixed with molten steel and the vaporized molecular remnants of furniture, equipment, and crew raced down passageways and through ventilation ducts. Fuel tanks exploded. Power accumulators blew up. Electrical systems shorted and caused additional fires. Two beams from another Chroniech ship finished the job turning the destroyer into scrap.
The Alliance had not been without their own victories. Prior to the engagement, Chomach had taken what the Alliance knew of Chroniech shielding technology and increased it by twenty-five percent. He then doubled that number and used it as the minimum energy to be directed against a specific target. He programmed all this into the tactical computer and then set that computer to reevaluate the shielding abilities every five seconds and reassign targets as required.
When the Alliance first engaged the Chroniech the master tactical computer, using the parameters set by Chomach, had determined that it was able to attack ten enemy ships. The plan called for a massive, concentrated attack on each target lasting only long enough to destroy that ship’s ability to return fire. Since all long range beam weapons were externally mounted devices this tactic should have worked.
After five seconds of fire, the master tactical computer altered its strategy based on the newly discovered Chroniech anti-sledgehammer tactics and the fact that the Chroniech were eliminating Alliance weapons at an alarming rate. Weapons were redirected and seven ships were targeted. The shields of the selected targets leaked and soon seven Chroniech warships were without external weapons.
It had taken forty-five seconds to render seven Chroniech ships ineffective. In the meantime, the Chroniech had destroyed or disabled twelve Alliance ships and had reduced the effectiveness of several others. The master tactical computer made the appropriate calculations, selected four more targets, and almost as one the Alliance guns fired again.
By this time the
Rin’Bak
had joined the battle. Newly built and armed with the most advanced weapons possible the juggernaut was an impressive ship. It would barely fit inside a sphere fifteen kilometers in diameter. Juggernauts were built to bring the power and devastation of planetary scale weapons to anywhere they might be needed.
When the Tholtaran’s had decided to replace the juggernauts that had been lost they also took it as an opportunity to improve upon its design. The
Rin’Bak
was built in the form of a stellated dodecahedron. At the tip of each of the twelve points was a massive energy cannon backed by the full power output of six dedicated 4 gigawatt fusion reactors. Two super-sledgehammers and two secondary antimatter enhanced 1.5 gigawatt proton particle beam cannons were mounted farther down each spire.
All this massive firepower, however, came at a price. Juggernaut’s were slow both in normal space and under stardrive. It also meant that the Tholtarans had had to develop a revolutionary method of shielding a ship. A single shield generator would have been gigantic and would not have adequately protected the ship. The Tholtarans came up with the Alliance’s only multi-generator shielding system. In operation the shields were designed to interfere with each other.