Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1
Posted: 2010-11-16 05:31am
Recommended Listening
Sector Q10, Suspected Pirate Base
They had their location, and the trap was set. Commander Alrynchus' plan had gone off without anything even remotely resembling complication, and his taskforce had tracked the fighters their agent had sold to the base, suspected of itself being a pirate nest. With no warning, the pirates were completely unprepared. The light carrier receiving the fighters had just gotten them fueled, armed, and taken aboard. Other ships, including two light cruisers, and pairs of missile frigates and destroyers were being refueled on the station's docking pylons, five corvettes patiently waited in a neat little queue. The Ranoidean fleet had approached very slowly in hyperspace, off lane and using a nearby star cluster to avoid detection. By the time they were detected by the early warning net and the alarm sounded, the fleet had just enough time to get their crews--on shore leave aboard the station--scrambled back to their posts. The corvettes only just began to break from their queue and form up as a defensive screen when the Ranoidean fleet exited hyperspace.
Commander Alrynchus, aboard the Ambystoma Class Cruiser TSS Maculatum which was serving as his temporary flagship.
"Patch me in on all frequencies"
"Aye commander" said the Communications Officer, who's name he honestly did not remember. They were, afterall just introduced. He picked up the receiver when she nodded at him. They COULD use visual displays. On the other hand, why? Why the hell would you let your enemy see the layout of CIC? Besides, this was more energy efficient.
"This is Commander Alrynchus, Omega Fleet, Anti-Pirate Battlegroup Sigma, Technosocialist State of Ranoidea. We have intelligence implicating your space station and associated ships with initiating acts of piracy against both state and privately owned merchant vessels of the TSR, as well as attacking military vessels. You are hereby ordered to power down your weapon systems and engines, lower your shield grids, cease all other flight operations and prepare to be boarded. Your crews will be detained and your cargo-holds, data-banks, and personal effects searched. You will be detained until this search is complete, at which time you will either be released or remanded for a fair trial where you will be afforded all due process of law including presumption of innocence, the right to council, and the right to confront all evidence and witnesses against you. Resistance will be met by the destruction of your ships. Any prisoners taken from any resisting ship will be detained, telepathically scanned, and if guilty of piracy stripped naked and shoved out the nearest airlock. You have fifteen seconds to comply" He added the naked part.
He set down the receiver and turned back to the communication's officer.
"Rebroadcast that in INTERLAC and signal the Dendronastes to scramble fighters. DRADIS contacts?"
"DRADIS is picking up five corvettes, two missile frigates, a pair of destroyers, a light cruiser duet, in addition to a light carrier. Also, it appears that they will not be complying with our request. They are raising shields and powering weapons. I estimate one minute before the docked ships have cleared their moorings and are able to maneuver. Corvettes splitting into two groups. On centered at 5,5,0 absolute, the other at -5,5,0 absolute. Weapons configuration unknown."
"Sir, we have a firing solution"
"Open fire, all batteries, target missile frigates one and two." He then picked up the receiver and pressed a preset frequency. "Alpha Group, open fire on Corvette Group one with all weapons. Beta Group, do the same for Corvette group two. I want missile barrages time-on-target, first interceptors, with heavier ordinance on their heels. Gamma Group, target the space station."
"Sir, we have energy spikes from the Station, it looks like mass drivers."
"Randomized Evasion Protocol level 5" Upon saying this, the helmsman programmed in an algorithm to randomize thrust, vector, and timing of thrusters along each axis, serving to make the ships very difficult to target at range with slow firing mass drivers, unless you had other tricks up your sleeve.
...
Alpha and Beta groups each consisted of a pair of missile frigates a destroyer, and two corvettes. They all turned broadside to the organizing corvette groups and opened fire. At these ranges however, it was possible for enemy ships to accelerate along random vectors for random periods of time and evade the lethal rain of high-velocity tungsten. The station by sheer chance took a few scattered hits to its shields, but the lighter weapons were insufficient to penetrate. During this time the corvettes were able to open fire with their primary battery. Bolts of plasma thudded with heavy impact against the shields of the destroyers Chrysoscelis and Versicolor, slightly damaging their port-side Phaser arrays. The missile frigates Ocellatus and Achalensis were also hit--lightly shielded but took fewer hits and suffered no significant damage.
It took about fifteen seconds for the missile tubes to be loaded with warheads and to program the time-on-target algorithm into the targeting computers, then every ship launched ceased their gunfire to avoid hitting their own missiles and launched a salvo. First the slowest anti-ship missiles left the tubes and accelerated toward their targets, then the multipurpose chassis launched, followed closely by the interceptors. The interceptors were by far the most numerous and had the largest drive signatures. They would serve to decoy point defense fire away from the larger and more damaging projectiles.
It was at this moment that the secondary battery of the pirate corvettes was revealed. Phaser arrays arranged in panels along the hull. They struck out with lethal accuracy, decimating the buzzing cloud of interceptor missiles and scoring hits on both the general purpose and anti-ship munitions. The missile strike was not however, completely fruitless. Each of the lead corvettes took hits from the general purpose missiles, as they initiated their nuclear reactions and sent the cone shaped blast wave to wash against their shields, not penetrating the shields but causing significant bleedthrough damage to the outer hull, the intense radiant heat welding fragile sensor arrays to the hull and knocking out easily damaged Phaser emitters. Then the anti-ship missiles came. Only sixteen were launched, of which four made it through. Rather than impacting on the shield surface facing the missile barrage, and thus where shield power would be diverted, they sailed past their targets for mere milliseconds before firing a pair of maneuvering thrusters, spinning around on their axis and initiating a shape charged thermonuclear reaction. They completely obliterated the shield grids on two of the five corvettes, and welded weapon mounts to the hull on another through the shield.
At the same time, the Mass-Driver shells from Gama Group, consisting of the Destroyers Arborea and Cinerea, as well as the Corvette Histrionicus and Strike Cruiser Dendronastes were coasting through space, alongside those fired by the Maculatum. Those would arrive second though. The first salvo from the much higher velocity Heavy Mass Driver shells from the Maculatum and Dendronastes were getting close to their targets... just a few more seconds...
...
"Commander, the shields on Corvette's one and three are down, Corvette four has taken moderate bleedthrough damage to her outer hull and cannot rotate its aft dorsal plasma turrets. No hits scored with the mass drivers. The Chrysoscelis reports twenty five percent damage to port side Phasers, the Versicolor fifteen."
"Do Alpha and Beta groups report sufficient data?"
"They do"
"Signal them to Initiate Bayesian Targeting Protocol."
...
The smaller ships did as they were told, and in a matter of seconds, rather than saturating the volume occupied by enemy corvettes, Alpha and Betta groups began rapidly shifting from one area in the spatial grid occupied by their targets to the next, the computer system had enough data to predict the most likely areas the corvettes would occupy within the space defined by their evasive pattern. Then it ran its targeting algorithm. Each battery with its fast reacting turrets shifted mere milliradians per second to target the volumes most likely to be occupied by an evading enemy ship, it cycled through the most probable areas, and then ran through the sequence again, and again before the crews of the Corvette's could react and change their evasive patterns. Not that they would know, until it was too late.
A great many shots ran wild, however, it was highly statistically improbable that no bursts would hit. One of the unshielded corvettes took a raking shot against its entire port side. The shells penetrated the first armor belt before the slug deformed enough for antimatter containment to drop and the ship blew apart into a combination of debris and ionized gasses. The other unshielded ship was a bit more fortunate and took a single round to the aft engines. The resulting annihilation reaction fragmented the engine and secondary explosions and spalling damage caused the reactor core to failsafe and shut down. The remaining crew-- the ones not cooked alive by the sudden intense burst of gamma radiation--abandoned ship.
The fifth corvette managed to narrowly dodge a long string of high velocity death by less than fifty meters, but caught a stray shell to the shields, which absorbed the impact. The statistics gods smiled upon the other two, being nowhere near the line of fire.
...
"Commander, Corvette one is irradiated scrap metal, corvette three is dead in space, I am detecting no drive or reactor signatures. The corvettes are accelerating at what I can only imagine is flank speed, trying to flank us. Corvette four, bearing -9,-7,0. Two and Five, 10,-11,0. Fire from the Corvettes is concentrating on the Flavovittatus which is reporting shielding at seventy five percent and dropping. No system damage. Frigates have broken free of docking clamps. New DRADIS contacts, salvo of... 600 enemy missiles from the Station and Missile Frigates!"
The fighters were still forming up, and would not be available for another minute, that left the fleet without its first line of defense.
As fast as his slimy hands could move, Commander Alrynchus picked up the receiver and pounded the frequency preset.
"All Fleet Units, inbound missile storm, Flakwall Flakwall Flakwall."
...
The missile frigates, still desperately getting the last of their crews into combat stations released their docking clamps and fired off a full salvo of missiles...right as the first salvo from the Maculatum's Heavy Mass Drivers made contact. The first ship was in the broad scheme of things very lucky. At this distance, with the bobbing and weaving the Maculatum was doing to avoid incoming fire, only twenty six percent of her shells were on target. Still, out of 120 shells in the last minute, that still left 31 high yield shells. The shields on a missile frigate were no match for sustained fire from a cruiser. After a dozen or so blinding flashes her shields collapsed, and after another one or two so did the chances of a single one of her crew being left alive.
The second frigate was not even that lucky, and took eighty six percent of inbound shells. She lasted an even shorter amount of time, though there were the same number of blinding flashes of light across the electromagnetic spectrum as plasma fragmented her hull.
That still left a space station, a number of combat craft, and a storm of hundreds of missiles to deal with.
Sector Q10, Suspected Pirate Base
They had their location, and the trap was set. Commander Alrynchus' plan had gone off without anything even remotely resembling complication, and his taskforce had tracked the fighters their agent had sold to the base, suspected of itself being a pirate nest. With no warning, the pirates were completely unprepared. The light carrier receiving the fighters had just gotten them fueled, armed, and taken aboard. Other ships, including two light cruisers, and pairs of missile frigates and destroyers were being refueled on the station's docking pylons, five corvettes patiently waited in a neat little queue. The Ranoidean fleet had approached very slowly in hyperspace, off lane and using a nearby star cluster to avoid detection. By the time they were detected by the early warning net and the alarm sounded, the fleet had just enough time to get their crews--on shore leave aboard the station--scrambled back to their posts. The corvettes only just began to break from their queue and form up as a defensive screen when the Ranoidean fleet exited hyperspace.
Commander Alrynchus, aboard the Ambystoma Class Cruiser TSS Maculatum which was serving as his temporary flagship.
"Patch me in on all frequencies"
"Aye commander" said the Communications Officer, who's name he honestly did not remember. They were, afterall just introduced. He picked up the receiver when she nodded at him. They COULD use visual displays. On the other hand, why? Why the hell would you let your enemy see the layout of CIC? Besides, this was more energy efficient.
"This is Commander Alrynchus, Omega Fleet, Anti-Pirate Battlegroup Sigma, Technosocialist State of Ranoidea. We have intelligence implicating your space station and associated ships with initiating acts of piracy against both state and privately owned merchant vessels of the TSR, as well as attacking military vessels. You are hereby ordered to power down your weapon systems and engines, lower your shield grids, cease all other flight operations and prepare to be boarded. Your crews will be detained and your cargo-holds, data-banks, and personal effects searched. You will be detained until this search is complete, at which time you will either be released or remanded for a fair trial where you will be afforded all due process of law including presumption of innocence, the right to council, and the right to confront all evidence and witnesses against you. Resistance will be met by the destruction of your ships. Any prisoners taken from any resisting ship will be detained, telepathically scanned, and if guilty of piracy stripped naked and shoved out the nearest airlock. You have fifteen seconds to comply" He added the naked part.
He set down the receiver and turned back to the communication's officer.
"Rebroadcast that in INTERLAC and signal the Dendronastes to scramble fighters. DRADIS contacts?"
"DRADIS is picking up five corvettes, two missile frigates, a pair of destroyers, a light cruiser duet, in addition to a light carrier. Also, it appears that they will not be complying with our request. They are raising shields and powering weapons. I estimate one minute before the docked ships have cleared their moorings and are able to maneuver. Corvettes splitting into two groups. On centered at 5,5,0 absolute, the other at -5,5,0 absolute. Weapons configuration unknown."
"Sir, we have a firing solution"
"Open fire, all batteries, target missile frigates one and two." He then picked up the receiver and pressed a preset frequency. "Alpha Group, open fire on Corvette Group one with all weapons. Beta Group, do the same for Corvette group two. I want missile barrages time-on-target, first interceptors, with heavier ordinance on their heels. Gamma Group, target the space station."
"Sir, we have energy spikes from the Station, it looks like mass drivers."
"Randomized Evasion Protocol level 5" Upon saying this, the helmsman programmed in an algorithm to randomize thrust, vector, and timing of thrusters along each axis, serving to make the ships very difficult to target at range with slow firing mass drivers, unless you had other tricks up your sleeve.
...
Alpha and Beta groups each consisted of a pair of missile frigates a destroyer, and two corvettes. They all turned broadside to the organizing corvette groups and opened fire. At these ranges however, it was possible for enemy ships to accelerate along random vectors for random periods of time and evade the lethal rain of high-velocity tungsten. The station by sheer chance took a few scattered hits to its shields, but the lighter weapons were insufficient to penetrate. During this time the corvettes were able to open fire with their primary battery. Bolts of plasma thudded with heavy impact against the shields of the destroyers Chrysoscelis and Versicolor, slightly damaging their port-side Phaser arrays. The missile frigates Ocellatus and Achalensis were also hit--lightly shielded but took fewer hits and suffered no significant damage.
It took about fifteen seconds for the missile tubes to be loaded with warheads and to program the time-on-target algorithm into the targeting computers, then every ship launched ceased their gunfire to avoid hitting their own missiles and launched a salvo. First the slowest anti-ship missiles left the tubes and accelerated toward their targets, then the multipurpose chassis launched, followed closely by the interceptors. The interceptors were by far the most numerous and had the largest drive signatures. They would serve to decoy point defense fire away from the larger and more damaging projectiles.
It was at this moment that the secondary battery of the pirate corvettes was revealed. Phaser arrays arranged in panels along the hull. They struck out with lethal accuracy, decimating the buzzing cloud of interceptor missiles and scoring hits on both the general purpose and anti-ship munitions. The missile strike was not however, completely fruitless. Each of the lead corvettes took hits from the general purpose missiles, as they initiated their nuclear reactions and sent the cone shaped blast wave to wash against their shields, not penetrating the shields but causing significant bleedthrough damage to the outer hull, the intense radiant heat welding fragile sensor arrays to the hull and knocking out easily damaged Phaser emitters. Then the anti-ship missiles came. Only sixteen were launched, of which four made it through. Rather than impacting on the shield surface facing the missile barrage, and thus where shield power would be diverted, they sailed past their targets for mere milliseconds before firing a pair of maneuvering thrusters, spinning around on their axis and initiating a shape charged thermonuclear reaction. They completely obliterated the shield grids on two of the five corvettes, and welded weapon mounts to the hull on another through the shield.
At the same time, the Mass-Driver shells from Gama Group, consisting of the Destroyers Arborea and Cinerea, as well as the Corvette Histrionicus and Strike Cruiser Dendronastes were coasting through space, alongside those fired by the Maculatum. Those would arrive second though. The first salvo from the much higher velocity Heavy Mass Driver shells from the Maculatum and Dendronastes were getting close to their targets... just a few more seconds...
...
"Commander, the shields on Corvette's one and three are down, Corvette four has taken moderate bleedthrough damage to her outer hull and cannot rotate its aft dorsal plasma turrets. No hits scored with the mass drivers. The Chrysoscelis reports twenty five percent damage to port side Phasers, the Versicolor fifteen."
"Do Alpha and Beta groups report sufficient data?"
"They do"
"Signal them to Initiate Bayesian Targeting Protocol."
...
The smaller ships did as they were told, and in a matter of seconds, rather than saturating the volume occupied by enemy corvettes, Alpha and Betta groups began rapidly shifting from one area in the spatial grid occupied by their targets to the next, the computer system had enough data to predict the most likely areas the corvettes would occupy within the space defined by their evasive pattern. Then it ran its targeting algorithm. Each battery with its fast reacting turrets shifted mere milliradians per second to target the volumes most likely to be occupied by an evading enemy ship, it cycled through the most probable areas, and then ran through the sequence again, and again before the crews of the Corvette's could react and change their evasive patterns. Not that they would know, until it was too late.
A great many shots ran wild, however, it was highly statistically improbable that no bursts would hit. One of the unshielded corvettes took a raking shot against its entire port side. The shells penetrated the first armor belt before the slug deformed enough for antimatter containment to drop and the ship blew apart into a combination of debris and ionized gasses. The other unshielded ship was a bit more fortunate and took a single round to the aft engines. The resulting annihilation reaction fragmented the engine and secondary explosions and spalling damage caused the reactor core to failsafe and shut down. The remaining crew-- the ones not cooked alive by the sudden intense burst of gamma radiation--abandoned ship.
The fifth corvette managed to narrowly dodge a long string of high velocity death by less than fifty meters, but caught a stray shell to the shields, which absorbed the impact. The statistics gods smiled upon the other two, being nowhere near the line of fire.
...
"Commander, Corvette one is irradiated scrap metal, corvette three is dead in space, I am detecting no drive or reactor signatures. The corvettes are accelerating at what I can only imagine is flank speed, trying to flank us. Corvette four, bearing -9,-7,0. Two and Five, 10,-11,0. Fire from the Corvettes is concentrating on the Flavovittatus which is reporting shielding at seventy five percent and dropping. No system damage. Frigates have broken free of docking clamps. New DRADIS contacts, salvo of... 600 enemy missiles from the Station and Missile Frigates!"
The fighters were still forming up, and would not be available for another minute, that left the fleet without its first line of defense.
As fast as his slimy hands could move, Commander Alrynchus picked up the receiver and pounded the frequency preset.
"All Fleet Units, inbound missile storm, Flakwall Flakwall Flakwall."
...
The missile frigates, still desperately getting the last of their crews into combat stations released their docking clamps and fired off a full salvo of missiles...right as the first salvo from the Maculatum's Heavy Mass Drivers made contact. The first ship was in the broad scheme of things very lucky. At this distance, with the bobbing and weaving the Maculatum was doing to avoid incoming fire, only twenty six percent of her shells were on target. Still, out of 120 shells in the last minute, that still left 31 high yield shells. The shields on a missile frigate were no match for sustained fire from a cruiser. After a dozen or so blinding flashes her shields collapsed, and after another one or two so did the chances of a single one of her crew being left alive.
The second frigate was not even that lucky, and took eighty six percent of inbound shells. She lasted an even shorter amount of time, though there were the same number of blinding flashes of light across the electromagnetic spectrum as plasma fragmented her hull.
That still left a space station, a number of combat craft, and a storm of hundreds of missiles to deal with.