Chương 161: Nova Wars - Chapter 132

[First Contact] [Dark Ages] [First] [Prev] [Next] [Wiki] Why? No, not because I could. Because I could is why I felt confident to try. No, I did what I did because you did what you did. Not just to me. But to everyone. Your arguments are compelling indeed. Now face the wall. - Dra. Falten Civil War Commodore Navelu'uee stood on the bridge, staring at the screens.

She could sit down into her chair or have it convert into the clamshell but had chosen to stand on the deck like the strange Terrans everyone referred to as "The Immortals" were doing. Commodore Navelu'uee had to admit, she was unsure why the High Lord Captain allowed beasts to be on the bridge. They were obviously animals, despite being the possession of one of the Immortals. Perhaps their standing as pets of an Immortal made it so that common sense had to be set aside.

During her long career she had found many circumstances where common sense or standard operating procedure had to be set aside due to rank or other realities. Of course, the fact that the Immortals were also the former disciples to the Digital Omnimessiah, a Terran religious figure, could weigh heavily on the decision. As for herself, Commodore Navelu'uee found she preferred the worship of the ancient savage gods of her hosts.

There was no stay away from violence, no submit to the will of others and certainly no forgive for what had been done to her. fifty years old... Commodore Navelu'uee shook herself slightly and looked at the main viewscreen. The viewscreen was showing the swirling eye-aching colors of Transit Space with a countdown timer hovering just in front of the viewscreen. Commodore Navelu'uee had found it was the little things that the Terrans did with their technology that made all the difference.

Things like ensure it was easy to read something from all angles, make sure that pathways were clearly marked and easy to navigate, that things were concise and easy to understand. Things that the Dra. Falten Empire didn't bother with. She moved over next to her seat, putting her hand on the back of it, imitating others. She could see that the Detainee was sitting in a chair, the only one not in an armored vac-suit.

She had her legs primly crossed at the knee, one hand resting on her upraised knee, the other holding a Treana'ad smoke-stick.

"Translation to realspace in 5... 4... 3..." Nav looked around. Everyone looked calm and she forced the butterflies in her stomach down. Reality flattened out, paint on glass, before Nav felt herself violently thrown forward and through the glass. She could see herself reflected a thousand thousand times, each time a little different from the others. At the far side she was a male digging ditches, closest to her the glass was blank. Reality re-established itself with a blurring streak.

"CONTACTS! MULTIPLE CONTACTS IN THE TETRA-TONNE RANGE!" one of the Terrans sang out.

"MULTIPLE MAR-GITE DRIVE SIGNATURES DETECTED! MANY MANY POINT SOURCES!" Nav reflexively reached for her implant link to make sure she wasn't in the middle of a sim. It was gratifying to see a few of the bridgecrew do the same.

"Red alert. Battle stations. All hands," the High Lord Captain rumbled, his deep voice calm and self-assured.

"Shield to maximum, break the geometry, get us some distance, helm. Sensors, get us a sweep on the system as well as ID those hostiles. Navigation, figure out where we are and system geometry."

"Aye-aye, sir!" rang out. Nav found herself moving to her chair, intending on forming a crash-couch. The Detainee just smiled a bare toothed smile.

"Pumping out atmosphere," someone said. Nav glanced twice at the Detainee as she got into her chair and buckled up. The Terran just sat there, smiling, wearing only a skirt and blouse cut so severe it looked like a military uniform. Up on the main screen the system came to light. Two planets in the green zone, one in the amber stellar-mass side, one on the amber side opposite. Two planets in the red zone. Five gas giants and two hypermassive gas gaints with sixty moons total. The planets were scattered around.

Two stellar masses, a yellow star orbiting a red star.

"No asteroid belt, comets, or other stellar debris. System has been cleared or resource extracted," a voice said.

"Point sources rising out of the gas giants. Many many point sources. Mar-gite drive signatures detected! Unknown drive signatures detected!" rang out. Nav grabbed the cord and pulled the plug-in to her hip. She was already plugged into her armor's infojack, so her chain just used the hip-jack instead of the plug for the back of the neck as if she wasn't armored.

"Do you see that?" One of the Terrans, who Nav had been introduced to as "Menhit the Singer" AKA "Lieutenant General Menhit Chisisi", pointing at the screen. Nav found her voice pleasant.

"I see it," the one called Kalki stated.

"Atrekna, maybe? Rogue Speaker?" The Detainee just grinned, baring her teeth even as she somehow exhaled a stream of smoke into the vacuum of the bridge.

"Phasic power, and a lot of it," Menhit mused.

"Strange, it doesn't look Mantid or Atrekna."

"Drive signatures have steadied into twelve different classes," someone stated. Commodore Navelu'uee blinked her eyes, seeing where the drive points were coming from. The Mar-gite were around the gas giants, with more rising from the depths. The non-Mar-gite drive signatures were orbiting all of the planets. Some were breaking orbit, heading for the massive ship that was still out past the resonance zone.

"Mar-gite are maneuvering. High confidence they intend on engaging The Final Sight of Black Night at the Resonance Zone," someone else said.

"Then they will be disappointed," the Lord Captain said. He shifted slightly in his massive 'throne', staring at the viewscreen. He tapped the keypad.

"Move to that heading, one third sublight power."

"Aye, Captain, ahead one-third," helm called out.

"I want a short double-jump, here to here to here," the Lord Captain said. A line went from the ship's current position to in between the amber and green zone, away from the stellar masses. Then another line, at a tight angle, to just a few million kilometers from the furthest out green zone planet.

"Aye, sir. Crunching the numbers now," navigation stated.

"Excellent," the Lord Captain covered the keypad and then drummed his armored fingers on the cover.

"Tell the Knights Aesir to mount the drop pods. Give them a tight spread on that planet's main continent."

"Aye, sir." Nav appreciated the way the Terrans went from going in every direction at once to a near mono-maniacal focus. Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

"Mar-gite and unknown craft are accelerating," one of the sensor officers called out.

"They seek battle where they will find none," the Lord Captain mused. The Detainee just smiled, exhaling more smoke somehow. Nav decided she was not going to concern herself with whatever impossibilities that the Detainee decided to commit. Those were the Detainee's concerns, not an honest Dra. Falten such as herself's concern.

"Knights Aesir report ready for launch on your orders," Ground Control stated. The Lord Captain just nodded. Long minutes ticked by, the Mar-gite and the other ships moving slowly at first but gaining speed. Missile pods were launched, as were unmanned drones and recon vehicles. Decoy buoys and ECM jammers were deployed but kept on standby. The massive engines of the Deireadh an Domhain class war wagon moved it slowly forward at a stately pace, slowly moving up to. 25C and holding there.

Nav wondered if holding back on acceleration was to keep the enemy from knowing just how much thrust the massive ship could generate.

"More Mar-gite being generated by the gas giants," someone stated. The Lord Knight just nodded.

"Withing expectations and computations as well as previous encounters," the voice finished. The Mar-gite were up to. 65C and the other ships were all the way up to. 85C. Nav felt a slight flutter in her stomach as she realized there were dozens of the Tetra-Clusters, Giga-Clusters, and Petra-Clusters heading for The Final Sight of Black Night with the obvious intent on engaging it at close range.

"Getting in feed from drones now," the Unmanned Recon Vehicle officer stated.

"Section three." Nav had learned that Section Three was bottom left of a screen. Section one was upper right. Section Prime was the middle, and sections four through six were the right side. An easy system to learn.

"Standard anti-Mar-gite rounds are loaded. Awaiting fire order," the gunnery officer stated.

"Wait for it," was all the Lord Captain said. The clusters were up to. 75C and the other ships were up to. 9C. Even so, hours would pass before they would be in range of any weaponry that Commodore Navelu'uee had ever commanded. She looked forward to seeing if the Terran weaponry was just as effective in the real world as it was in sims.

"Mar-gite clusters are entering extreme range. Unidentified ships are entering medium bands of long range," the targeting officer said.

"What do you think, Commodore Navelu'uee, should we open fire yet or hold off to see what kind of firepower they can bring to bear at this range?" the Lord Captain asked. Commodore Navelu'uee blinked several times in surprise that she was being consulted. She cleared her throat and sat up straighter.

"Caution suggests that opening fire now, possibly destroying the enemy before they can engage, will prevent damage to the vessel as well as cut down on any casualties. With the Final Sight of Black Night being on extended solo-duty, avoiding damage and casualties should be considered high priority," Nav said. She held up one hand to show she wasn't done speaking as she took a quick sip off of her drinking tube. The Countess Crey Lemon-Lime Blast tasted good and cut through the gummy feeling in her mouth.

"On the other hand, data gained now, while we are fresh and undamaged, with geometry on our side and the ability to withdraw if necessary, may be the intelligence that wins battles at later dates that may be lost without that vital data," she finished.

"If I made the decision to fire now, I would concentrate on the unknown ship types, holding back the anti-Mar-gite munitions until the Mar-gite reach optimal range." The Lord Captain nodded.

"An excellent and fast summation of the situation. What would you recommend at this time?"

"Fire when ready," Nav said. She sat back slightly, knowing that it would signify she made her decision.

"You heard the order. Fire when ready," the Lord Captain said.

"Targeting priority by tonnage, lets see what the enemy's heavyweights have for self-protection." Nav leaned forward as the screen-in-screen came on for the upper right. The non-Mar-gite cluster ships were being sorted according to amount of mass they had as well as the stress the engines put on the fabric of space-time. Some of the ships were large, the size of the Final Sight of Black Night was.

"Visuals available," the sensor technician said. Nav checked her controls and saw where she could access the visuals pulled in by the drones and probes. She activated it and began paging through the ships. They were actively strange. Multiple hexagon rings stacked up, with the engines in the middle of the empty hexagon's empty area, but then the long connectors at each corner of the hexagon were apparently also an engine.

Then there was what looked like a seed from a melon or fruit, the wide end apparently where the engine was located. A third type looked like a large block with a curved front that had small long rectangular blocks with curved fronts on either side, connected by arching sections. They all looked strange to Nav's eyes. In the middle of each of the six clusters of non-Mar-gite cluster ships were two that were shiny, like liquid chrome, and shaped like teardrops, the narrow end apparently where the engine was located.

"There you are," came an intense whisper.

"You can't hide from me forever." It took Nav a moment to realize the Detainee had spoken. She didn't bother to wonder how she could hear the Detainee speaking in vacuum.

"Someone you were expecting to see?" the Lord Captain asked.

"Suspected, not expected," the Detainee said softly. She took a drag of her cigarette, the coal burning almost white hot for a moment.

"Let's see if they're just like everyone else humanity has run into."

"Hmm," the Lord Captain just leaned back in his chair.

"All bogeys have passed first and second pod shell," Nav heard.

"Fire first and second pod shell," the Lord Captain ordered.

"Wait ninety seconds and fire shells three and five."

"Aye, sir," the command was said almost in a bored tone. Nav felt herself tense. In space, the stealthed missile pods used the last of their compressed gas thrusters to reorient, checked their telemetry, and blew their shells off. Targets flooded the systems and the slaving warbois aboard the missile targeting systems all began to howl with bloodlust, jump up and down, and claw against the targeting systems in eagerness. Each pod was loaded with tesseract magazines, ready to reload the launchers multiple times.

Even the C+ cannon had a tesseract magazine attached, allowing it to strike repeatedly before the entire thing would invert into a C++ rounds, lead by a wave-form that contained a howling feral warboi in the lead 'code' of the waveform. There were literally thousands of missile pods in each of the two 'shells' past the bogeys, tens of thousands in the 'inner shells' closer to the Black Night. The creation engines allowing the Black Night to produce pod after pod without concerns.

The pods, still using passive systems, opened fire. For the Mar-gite's synthetic 'masters', one second space was empty, the next second it was full of missiles and electronic warfare warbois clawing at firewalls and security systems. Thousands of points suddenly vomited up hundreds of missiles, then 4. 3 seconds later repeated it, for ten launches total. Before the second launch occurred the C+ rounds began hitting, bypassing the battlescreens to hit deep inside the ships.

Bypassing armor, bypassing shield, bypassing fields. Crashing through decking, plating, support structures, and things that were pretty important to a starship's operations. To top it off, the shells were carrying kinetic energy levels that could only be registered with scientific annotations. The second launch happened only a half-second before the next salvo hit inside the ships.

Before the pods inverted and fired themselves along the focused gravitational track, over three quarters of the ships were destroyed, turned into spreading debris. Nav watched, part of her horrified, as the Mar-gite ships were reduced to wreckage in a handspan of minutes. And the Empress thinks that the Terrans will just fall into a heap the minute our ships cross the wall, she thought to herself. While it isn't magic, since I understand the concepts behind it, it might as well be magic to the fleet.

Bubble displacement universes are considered an easily avoidable side effect of high speed sublight engines, but the Terrans weaponized them into a place to stack more ammunition. She shook her head again. Sticks are all over the ground, easily gathered. To sharpen a stick requires nothing more than just gnawing at it with one's teeth. Yet, the majority of species in the universe will never understand how a spear is created as they swing their club.

They will marvel at how the spear is thrust, or thrown, and feel cheated somehow, Nav thought to herself. More of the Mar-gite ships were converted into spreading plasma and debris. A rock or a club is safe when set down. No child will run into the pointed end, nobody will get a splinter, blah blah blah. But those with rocks and an inability to throw them will die before those with spears and the ability to throw, she thought. She was unaware of just how well known her next thought was.

Terrans learned to throw a rock, leading to the domination of their planet and everything they came into contact with.

"This is my universe now," she suddenly heard the Detainee whisper in her ear. She turned to look and saw the Detainee staring at her, smiling, her eyes sparkling with malice and amusement. Nav went back to staring at the status board.

"Enemy ships are committed," tactical called out.

"Engage the jump," the Lord Captain ordered. The forward slam and reform just made Nav gulp a few times before taking a sip off of the fluid tube. The ship sat for a less than a breath than did a micro-jump through Transit Space.

"On the money! Two hundred-fifty thousand kilometers!" came the shout from the helmsman. The pinpoint astrogation had become normal to Nav over the last few days as she had slowly come to rely on it as she played kobimaru scenario after kobimaru scenario.

She had never thought she could learn so much about the limits of equipment, of people, and of herself by being beaten over and over until it became an almost deviant pleasure to see how hard she forced the opponent to work to win even when it was unwinnable for her. One scenario all she had managed to do was scratch the enemy's paint the first few times. She had jumped into the system without knowing that she would be outnumbered a hundred to one and outgunned by a laughable amount.

The fourth time she had forced herself to play the short scenario, she had laughed and giggled as she ordered her ships to fire all guns. At the cities on the surface of the planet. She had laughed out loud as her weapons wiped away billions of simulated people even as her own ships were destroyed.

"FUCK YOU AND YOUR CANOE!" she had shouted. Now she felt herself smile as the planet appeared on the large viewscreen.

"Launches from the surface of the planet. Mass drivers and grav drivers launching defensive missiles. Directed energy weapons from the satellite systems. Negative damage from the energy weapons, battlescreens holding. Many, many incoming missiles, battlescreens projected to hold," was reported from the tactical stations.

"Alert the Knights that they will," the Lord Captain started to say. The Detainee suddenly stood up, smoothly and easily, the hem of her skirt hiding her polished black shoes. The Detainee suddenly snapped her fingers, a loud sound even in vacuum. Everything went dark. The screen shut off, lights winked out, computers shut down, fans slowed and stopped. Nav's breathing was loud in her suddenly dead vac-suit. We're defenseless, she realized. There was a bright white flash that seemed to come from everywhere.

There was a second of darkness where Nav blinked her stunned eyes, trying to bring vision back. There was a staccato burst of more white flashes. Then darkness. How close are the missiles? Are the energy weapons firing? Nav wondered. There was another thunderous snap and everything came back on.

"Saved your life," the Detainee said, sitting back down.