“At this range?” the Captain replied, surprised they were fighting for survival at such an early stage of the battle. “Analysis.”
The science station read the data off her screen without turning around. “It’s an FTL enhanced energy weapon.”
There wasn’t much that the Captain or the crew could do. The shield loading rapidly climbed as the two forces moved closer. In less than a minute the Omel battleship was seriously crippled and no longer a threat. Instead of leaving the ship for dead, the Chroniech swept the beam across the entire length of the hull nearly slicing it in two. Secondary explosions rocked the now lifeless ship.
The Lamaltan assault platforms had not abandoned the rest of the fleet. Instead of retreating, they performed a fast 180 degree turn and headed back toward the Chroniech fleet. Still under stardrive, the Lamaltan ships went through the widely spaced fleet in the blink of an eye. This was such an unexpected maneuver and occurred so rapidly that the Chroniech never had a chance to even attempt to intercept them.
The Lamaltan’s abruptly dropped out of stardrive on the other side of the fleet, powered up their mass drivers and pushed the guns to overload condition. They managed to get off eight volleys before the pursuing super destroyers caught up to them and eliminated them as a threat. The assault platforms had managed to destroy three more heavy cruisers and had slightly damaged another.
The Alliance fleet was losing ships at an alarming rate and they were having minimal effect on the Chroniech. The Chroniech super weapon could blow through an Alliance shield almost instantly allowing them to destroy a ship with a single shot. The Alliance, on the other hand, had to concentrate the firepower of several ships to take out a large Chroniech warship.
Five Tholtaran heavy battlecruisers, however, had been recently upgraded by the Kyrra and were protected by Kyrra shields and armed with Kyrra weapons. The Chroniech quickly learned to respect these ships. The Kyrra-built shields were equal in defensive ability to the best Chroniech shield and could withstand the impact of a single Chroniech super weapon even at close range.
Each of the Tholtaran battlecruisers was armed with a single Kyrra FTL enhanced energy cannon. These guns, as with all ultra-high power weapons consisted of multiple beam emitters. A single emitter would have destroyed itself if subjected to the energy levels necessary to generate the final output beam. Instead, multiple beams were carefully tuned and combined, often using a force field lens, to produce the final beam. To build a bigger gun, you added more emitters – up to a point.
Each beam emitter had to be precisely tuned and phase locked with all the others. If any emitter fell out of synchronization with the rest, the power of the output beam was reduced due to a loss of coherence. The more emitters a weapon possessed, the harder it was to keep them all in perfect alignment. The secret to building ever more powerful weapons lay in the ability to build more powerful emitters and to synchronize more of them.
The FTL enhanced super weapons, however, took things to an even higher level of sophistication. The beam of the super weapon was encased in an FTL burst field. Similar in composition to the FTL fields used to transmit messages, the field utilized by the super weapon boosted the weapon’s speed to 200 times the speed of light giving it a far greater range than a standard weapon. The FTL field had to be precisely synchronized with the beam’s resonant frequency.
Because the beams were encased inside a miniature FTL field, the weapon only partially existed in normal space. This gave the FTL enhanced beam the unique ability to penetrate a standard shield as if it did not exist. The interaction between the shield's field structure and the weapon did result in a power loss but enough energy made it through to cause serious damage. Kyrra and Chroniech shields had a field structure that significantly reduced this punch-through of FTL enhanced weapons.
Seeing the Chroniech master battleships as the most serious threat, the Alliance tactical computer made the decision to make these ships its top priority. Three Kyrra modified Tholtaran battlecruisers maneuvered to obtain a weapons lock on a single Chroniech master battleship. The instant they were within range all three opened fire with all available weapons. The master battleship didn’t have a chance.
Two of the Kyrra weapons would have been sufficient to fully load the master battleship’s shield – three ensured its destruction. All three beams struck the shield and one third of their energy made it to the ship’s hull. It took three seconds for the beams to bore through the armor and into the meat of their target. Once through the hull the beams happily devoured flesh and equipment. One found a missile magazine causing an explosion that blew a huge crater in the side of the gigantic ship.
For fifteen seconds the Alliance beams bored into the doomed battleship. The Captain tried to maneuver out of their path but the weapons lock was firm. One of the beams finally hit the shield generator and the battle was over. The secondary shield generator could not bring itself on line fast enough. After another five seconds the beams winked out leaving a smoking hulk in their wake. It did not self-destruct.
The Chroniech had taken a close look at the practice of destroying their disabled ships. The original purpose for including an automatically initiated self destruct was to prevent their advanced technology from falling into the hands of lesser advanced species. It had the distinct disadvantage of preventing the rescue of any survivors even if their fleet won the battle.
After a long review it was decided to disable the automatic self destruct system and, instead, to install tamper detectors on the more sensitive pieces of equipment which would result in their individual destruction if unauthorized tampering was detected. The self destruct system was still there and could be manually initiated if the Captain so ordered it.
A Chroniech master battleship turned its primary weapon on one of the Kyrra modified Tholtaran heavy battlecruisers and received a shock. Instead of blasting through the shield the awesome power of the super weapon was stopped cold. The Kyrra shield blazed with polytechnic discharges as the energy of the weapon was dissipated and reflected back into space. So much energy was concentrated into such a small area that energy was converted into matter resulting in an incredible display of glowing plasma.
The Chroniech battle computer, just as capable and just as fast as its Alliance counterpart, analyzed the results and called for a second super weapon to join the attack. Amazingly the shield remained solid even under the unimaginable amount of power that was being delivered into it. The Chroniech quickly added more firepower until the shield started to leak.
The incredible amount of energy being deflected back into space severely interfered with the Tholtaran’s short-range anti-missile targeting systems. Sensing the shield’s weakening, the Chroniech sent a salvo of ten shielded missiles toward the Tholtaran ship. Four of them were intercepted and destroyed – but it only took one. That single missile passed through the shield and detonated point-blank against the bare hull of the Tholtaran super battlecruiser. The six megaton warhead instantly vaporized a third of the ship and blew what was left into unrecognizable scrap.
The battle raged on for twenty minutes. When the last Alliance ship fell under the onslaught of Chroniech guns the fleet calmly turned their attention toward the planet. They left behind the remains of 167 Alliance warships. The Chroniech fleet had lost only 58 ships. The only thing between them and Tortanathut were 112 widely spaced defense stations.
Death
Captain Zatch sat in the pilot’s chair, his ship floating in space without propulsion, arguing with himself. His family was alive because of the actions of an enemy he had sworn to kill. Who would know or even care if he simply set honor aside and returned to his fleet. His hand reached out to set the course then withdrew as his stomach knotted up.
Chroniech society was remarkably stable and had been so during all of its recorded history. Crime was virtually unknown and was usually caused by the mentally unstable. Much of this stability could be attributed to the deeply seated sense of honor that had become woven into the very core of what was meant to be Chroniech. The word honor itself only weakly defined the system of checks and balances that drove the Chroniech people to behave the way they did.
The very thought of setting honor aside was mental torture to Zatch. It had taken a feat of mental strength to reach forward to set course back to his fleet but the mental pain quickly became physical. His stomach knotted up, his hands started to shake, and he felt as if every Chroniech on his home world knew what he was contemplating.
“This is insane!” he shouted at the controls. Shaking his fist at the window he vented his anger against a ship he could not possibly see, “Why couldn't you have been destroyed by that HK!”
Not long after Aruthra's last message he had received an update from the battle group sent to look for wreckage. Nothing had been found indicating that the Alliance ship had survived.
Early in the trip he had pulled up all available data on what he now knew to be the
Komodo Dragon
. It was an impressive ship. It had obviously been heavily upgraded by the Kyrra making it incredibly fast and heavily armed. He knew the name of the Captain at the time and had memorized the route it had taken through Chroniech space. The question now was how to find it.
The last known location of the
Komodo Dragon
had been in Chroniech space near the hyperdimensional border, but Zatch knew it would not remain there. The
Dragon
would be heading back to Alliance space – but where would it be going? Even if he knew the
Dragon’s
next destination, his ship was not fast enough to catch up to it. Getting within communications range of the ship without being attacked was also going to be a major problem.
The futility of his mission was beginning to weigh on him. Against astronomical odds he was going to have to avoid Alliance patrols while chasing an advanced Alliance warship through Alliance space and then somehow convince that ship to stop and talk to him without them firing on him first. The more he thought about it the more convinced he was of the impossibility of it all.
Thinking he had come to a decision, Zatch once again reached for the controls. His hand stopped halfway there as the image of his wives and children frozen to death in the vacuum of space appeared in his head. This would have been the result had the
Komodo Dragon
not stopped to render assistance. Why did they do that?
For a brief instant, an almost unthinkable thought appeared. It would have been easier on him if the
Dragon
had done what any Chroniech would have done – left his family to die. The thought horrified him and once again he withdrew his hands from the controls.
There had to be a solution to this problem. Perhaps he was going about this in the wrong way. Instead of trying to locate the
Komodo Dragon
, maybe there was a way to get the ship to come to him. The more he thought about it, the more he preferred the idea. Now all he needed to do was to figure out how to turn the idea into action.
* * * * *
The
Komodo Dragon
was roughly halfway to Almaranus when the emergency broadcast from Tortanathut arrived. Ken had been discussing how best to utilize the Kyrra warships with the executive officer when the call came in.
After listening to the message Commander Tobunga asked, “Shouldn’t we try to help them?”
“Helm, how far are we from Tortanathut?” Ken asked.
The helm made an inquiry on his console then replied, “Eighty-three light years.”
Ken did the quick math and remarked, “That’s over two days travel at maximum speed. Dragon, show tactical with details of ship movements near Tortanathut.”
In the central area of the bridge a holographic image appeared showing the Tortanathut star system. Two icons indicated the presence of reinforcement fleets traveling together. They were still at least a day away. “I don’t think we can get there in time to do much good,” he replied. “Besides, there are closer reinforcements already on the way.”
“How about sending the Kyrra? Their ships are much faster.”
“It would still take them almost two days to get there. I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do to help.”
“How can you say that?” Torbunga replied obviously becoming angry. “I’ve been to Tortanathut. There’s over six billion people on that planet. You can’t just let the Chroniech wipe them out!”
“I feel your pain Commander,” Ken replied in a calm voice. “But there is truly nothing we can do. There are over five hundred Chroniech ships in their attack fleet. Tortanathut has a little over 150 warships and probably that same number of defense stations. The Chroniech ships are better than ours meaning we are seriously outgunned.”
Torbunga bowed his head in acceptance. Ken's reasoning was sound and no matter how much he wanted to help, he knew he couldn't.
Ken sensed the frustration and the sadness from his XO. “We are at war,” he explained. “Tortanathut will not be the only heavily populated planet to fall – it is, however, the first and it will be remembered for that.”
* * * * *
The Tortanathut defense stations, like all such structures, were gigantic, heavily automated, and armed with the most powerful weapons possible. They were the last line of defense a planet had against an invasion force. They lacked any type of stardrive but did possess a sublight drive system that could slowly maneuver them to cover an attack.
The planetary governor had tried in vain to contact the Chroniech fleet. He even transmitted a surrender. The Chroniech replied with silence. Following the emergency broadcast from the military base many civilians had left the cities and were taking refuge in what they assumed would be secure locations.
Deep inside the heavily defended and fortified military command post, Fortiba had watched as the Chroniech vanquished the Alliance fleet. In the hopes that something good might come of the battle she had ordered all available sensor readings be forwarded in real time to sector command. In what was to be her final report she noted that the Chroniech weapons were incredibly powerful, especially those of the newest class of ship now approaching the base. She also noted that the mass drivers had been more effective than anticipated. Perhaps it was something that Sector Command could use to their advantage.