Ascension Pt 1

The broken starship struck true, its bulk shattering the crystalline armour of the Jrahish warship as it drove deeper and deeper, it's flickering engines still struggle to push itself forward until with a flash of light both ships ceased to exist in nuclear fire.

Master of Fleets Garl shook his head and stifled the snarl he wanted to vocalize, but such an outburst would be childish and with effort he tamped down the frustrations that threatened to overcome him. A glance over his shoulder at his Captain of Intelligence, Gaon, was enough to communicate his displeasure, and the bridge grew silent as his underlings recognised the dangerous mood. All Jrash where large by galactic norm and standing over 3 meters tall they towered over most other races. Despite being thinner than most their bones were stronger than iron and their whipcord muscles made them able to crush stone. Garl however was larger than even most of his race, and his scales shone a pleasant semi-translucent blue instead of the normal dull red.

He turned back to his display, watching the two icons that denote both the ship he had just lost, and the human ship that had managed to destroy it turned orange. 'The Liaoning' it had been called. He glanced back, a little longer this time and debated challenging Gaon in the ships arena in his own head, but soon dismissed it. Eating family was ill-mannered and he could not afford to appear to seek scapegoats for what was an unmitigated tactical disaster. That the humans hadn't even been supposed to have interplanetary spacecraft yet was no excuse for the number of ships he had lost before he destroyed their small fleet, and trying to blame the Captain of Intelligence would be tantamount to admitting he had appointed his cousin in an act of favouritism, and not because he was skilled enough to merit the station.

An underling cleared its throat and stepped forward a half-pace, snapping him from his introspection. "Yes? Report," Garl muttered, tapping the armrest of his gunmetal throne at the center of his cruisers bridge and brought up a view of the planet.

The underling, a Chief of Stations, paused for a moment before giving his report, just long enough to be respectful. "All four human ships have been eliminated, no survivors have been collected. Destroyers Formahel and Fisran are likely to be unrecoverable, and the Cruiser Haghaie reports major propulsion and maneuvering damage and requests assistance."

"Send whatever ship is nearest and tell its Master that I will be happy to take any concerns he has in the Arena." Garl said mildly, flicking his clawed hand to indicate the Chief should leave him.

Four human ships was four more than the backwards planet should be able to field, and with the level of technology they boasted it should have been as one sided as a star colliding with a moon. It had seemed to be going perfectly, as his fleet exited R-Space on the systems gravitational boundary and begun their journey inward. They had destroyed two human stations orbiting the four planet out that didn't even try to fight back, and had been halfway to the Humans world when they detected the four ships. They looked as if trying to flee, heading towards the ringed Gas giant of the system, and he mentally reminded himself to sweep that planet for hidden facilities later. His ships had changed course immediately, and the Human vessels hadn't even reacted until it was far too late, turning back for their home in desperation. It made him chuckle still as he recalled their poor ship-handling, as even an infant could have calculated that his fleet would catch them far from the planet, their quaint nuclear propulsion nothing compared to his ships plasma drives. Even if they reached the planet, what then? Perhaps they would have simple abandoned ship to spend their last hours of freedom with loved ones.

He relaxed back as his mind turned to the planet, the first inhabited world he had taken. It would be a fine fiefdom for his clan, and he could not wait to taste the new meats available. It was counterproductive to consume many of the Humans themselves as these would form his new workforce, but they had several prey-livestock species that he would enjoy gorging on. His fleet was nearing the planet now, passing the lunar orbit barely a hundred thousand kilometers from the moon itself and he contemplated sending a repeat of his demand for unconditional surrender. The humans had a fractured society split into national groupings. This was one of the reasons he had believed his Master of Intelligences report, as from all he had read indicated they would be incapable of the levels of concert required to construct and fund any kind of navy. He supposed that some group or large 'country' had managed to work together long enough to construct the four ships he had destroyed after his unlamented Grandfather had fallen here. The Ex-Master of Ships name was still a curse, to be so foolish to allow such primitives to down his ship. Only the distress beacon that recorded his humiliating defeat and the self-destruction of his cruiser had returned instead of the anticipated news of victory.

"Master of Fleets!" His Master of Intelligence practically squealed in an incredibly undignified manner, and for a moment Garl considered challenging him anyway as he was once more disturbed before Goans wide eyed gestures to the main display convinced him to look. Dozens of ships were cresting the blue planets horizon, once hidden by its bulk.

Garls eyes went just as wide and the translucent eyelid of each eye flickered over in alarm for barely a moment as the almost infectious panic flowed through him. That the Humans had somehow managed to build this fleet without giving any indications of that potential had hammered down the last nail in Goans coffin, but the outdated designs, reliant on the bulky nuclear reactors, gas-propellent maneuvering and ballistic weapons were barely a match for the thirteen undamaged ships he commanded. Something niggled at his mind however, and he glanced back down at his personal display, rewinding battle reports until the four-ship fleet he had destroyed was visible once more.

Why had these ships been sent out alone? Surely any species capable of spaceflight knew that splitting up your vessels in the face of overwhelming power was insanity. Perhaps they thought to escape with some precious cargo? Perhaps their commanders merely panicked. If he was in their position, why would he send out this small, ineffectual group of ships on that course? All it accomplished was that his own fleet had made a small detour to destroy them. He coughed and straightened in his seat as his translucent eyelids went flickered madly again, and he had to take a moment to settle himself as the realisation struck him.

"Master! Explosions on the moon's surface!" His Chief of Survey declared, and the main display changed to show a grey landscape partially obscured with clouds of dust. Even as he watched more ejecta was thrown from the regolith as shaped explosives blew out a section of rock, and an emplacement as big as one of his destroyers emerged, turning to face his fleet like the others that had revealed themselves before it.

"The clever things drew us close enough to their moon for static defences to play a part in the battle." Goan said quietly, with an air of grudging respect that Garl found himself in sympathy with.

Admiral Williams smiled savagely despite the acceleration pressing him back into his command chair. The aliens had reacted perfectly, and the sacrifice of Commodore Sun and her flotilla would not be wasted. His own fleet of humanities first 'black sea' warships were accelerating hard at just under 30 gravities of constant acceleration, breaking from the geostationary orbit they'd been keeping as they headed towards the fleet approaching his planet. The Terra class had been a monumental undertaking that had only been possible to construct through the combined development and manufacturing of nearly every nation on Earth, and wouldn't have been possible without the gifts the previous invaders had unwittingly left.

The first ship to arrive from the stars had been greeted with celebration at first, until it's captain sent out a general broadcast explaining that it was here to enslave their race and claim the real estate of the sol system, and it had been a mixture of luck and poor judgment on the alien commanders part that had led to a narrow victory for Humanity. The invader had dropped into the atmosphere, boggling the mind of every scientist as it hung there and destroyed the city of Bayonne in France, before moving out across the Atlantic. Fire plans had been prepared and the world's largest missile strike had been carried out, with birds from twelve different countries overwhelming its active defences and bringing it down on the eastern coast of America near the city of Charleston. The renewed celebrations had been short lived when the crashed ship blew itself to pieces and irradiated half of the Eastern Seaboard.

In hindsight, expecting an intelligent enemy to hand over an intact example of interplanetary travel for them to reverse-engineer had been a ridiculously optimistic dream, but it hadn't all gone to waste. The ships builders had been thorough and nothing critical had survived the detonation, but what debris had survived was scrutinised closely until finally the joint R&D teams reported clues on the fabrication of room-temperature superconductors, stripped from the aliens air-scrubbers of all things. It had been a windfall that had almost changed human technology, especially the war-fighting kind, almost overnight.

It had been made clear by the vanquished invader that his demise would be avenged, and Earth had realised that to survive, a previously unheard of level of cooperation was going to be required. Fast-forward nearly twenty years and the first of the Terra class had been launched, the same ship he was aboard now, the Hood. Massing at around 1,350 tonnes they were still very basic designs, looking for all the world like a tangle of scaffolding and bolted-on weapon emplacements. The stern of each ship was split into three hull sections side by side, each mounting a large open gas-core nuclear rocket. These rockets also doubled as the ships main powerplant, a design choice that reduced weight but could cause performance issues under combat loads, as propulsion and armament competed for the energy budget available. Above and below the slightly larger central hull hung another pair of propellant tanks, these only clamped to the vessel so they could be swapped out for 'charged' tanks more quickly than they could be refueled. The three-hull design then merged into one, with docking booms stretching out port and starboard while the ship stretched on forward as a semi-open framework of girders and capacitors to a ring-amidship that mounted the vessels huge retractable solar arrays, and then forward again to the flattened hammerhead of the crew and main weapons section.

The ships armament consisted of a dorsal and ventral turret each sporting a pair of 100mm railguns, one of the newer favoured weapons of Humanity for space warfare now, each barrel capable of firing a 2.7kg dart at a little under 43,500m/s, just as fast as the automatic loaders could push shells onto the rails, at least until the capacitors ran dry. Each of the Terra class was also studded with box-launchers added almost as an afterthought, seven down each flank. Up until very recently they had contained a converted anti-ship missile refitted for use in space with the addition of bulky looking tanks of reaction-propellant and the thrusters it would need to adjust its course in a vacuum. Now they had a purpose built 350mm solid-rocket powered missile with a shaped-charge warhead that massed just under a tonne. Each of the ships also mounted eight defensive turrets, four loaded with small but agile anti-ballistic missiles and four sporting 40mm chainguns.

The main bite of hips ships however, was the 150mm railgun built into the core of each vessels spine. Two-thirds as long as the whole of the ship, this railgun could accelerate a 4.5kg slug up to 250,000m/s, nearly 0.01% the speed of light. His fleet didn't mount any armour because as of yet they hadn't devised any that could take a hit from a weapon like that, and he hoped these aliens couldn't either. The only downside was that the thing took so much power that it wasn't feasible to recharge the capacitors using the engines during battle. The next class of ships, tentatively named the 'Lunar' class would fix that by mounting a second dedicated nuclear reactor, as well as a centrifuge ring for crew habitation. That would add a lot more mass than he was comfortable with however and he wasn't sure the trade-off in maneuverability was worth it.

"Sir, Lunar battery Charlie Two has engaged the enemy fleet, first impacts in 80 seconds, we have orders to engage at our convenience." His communications lieutenant interrupted his thoughts, and he gave her a nod.

"Good, give me fleet-wide. Hood to Bulwark Fleet, all ships may engage at your own discretion. Maneuvers at will, and remember your training. This is the exact scenario we drilled and we are going to give these arrogant bastards a lesson in being predictable." He nodded again, signaling the end of his message and leant back. Spacial warfare tactics were still a brand new art, and despite the incredible amounts of theory he had to go on, it was mostly still educated guesswork. For now however there wasn't much he could do. Human ships were just not advanced enough yet to respond to changes in tactics quickly enough to matter, and once he'd set up the engagement, all he could really do was trust in his captains to remember everything he'd drilled into them.

"Impact sir, hits on target marked Charlie Two, it's no longer maneuvering. Enemy fleet is returning fire on the Lunar bases."

He nodded again in response, giving a quick thought to the men and women manning those rail gun emplacements. They were what Humanity was counting on to make this fight winnable and it looked good so far. The Alien fleet had three distinctive types of ship as far as they could tell, and they'd been marked Alpha to Charlie, smallest to largest. If his displays were to be believed that meant one of the two largest enemy vessels was already out of the fight.

His display flashed again and he gave a grim smile as his own warships began to fire, engines flaring brighter for a few moments to offset the recoil of the 150mm spinal railguns, and he tracked their progress across the huge distance. Charlie Two had broken cover a lot more early than planned, but they had no idea how good the alien sensors were, and the bases commander had obviously decided that it was now or never. At these distances his rounds would take almost ten minutes to find the enemy fleet, but so far they'd shown no sign of independent maneuvering, even under fire from the heavy lunar railguns and he was hopeful of at least some hits. Starting the engagement at this range also meant his ships would have time to partially charge their railgun capacitors before they had to give priority to maneuvering, at ranges were the turreted guns would be of more use anyway.

A video feed relayed from a Telescope Satellite suddenly whited out, and he glanced across at the Lieutenant again.

"Target Bravo Four is gone sir." He turned back to his display as it updated, the destroyed vessel greying out and going stationary. It was interesting that it had exploded like that. None of his ships had anything that would cause such a detonation except by purposefully shutting down the magnetic containment on their Nuclear Engines, as the Liaoning had done. It didn't matter, it wasn't immediately useful information and the experts would have a field day looking over its implications. He had an engagement to win, and with first and second blood going to the defenders, he was cautiously optimistic.

Submitted December 13, 2018 at 03:14PM by Glayn https://ift.tt/2SJhZuj