Dead Star Dockyards

"So we'll be a frontline unit?"

"More like the spearhead. We are the closest fleet to Uranus and Neptune at the moment. We are not expected to be fully committed to a confrontation, we don't have enough mass for that." The Admiral was fully prepared to answer all of Donovan's questions, it was common practice to explain plans in detail to an important officer in order to get a second perspective. Someone with less experience or different perspective on how operations are carried out could bring up a weakness or attack vector that hadn't yet been thought up.

Unlikely though that may be, given this was a plan directly from central command, there was always that chance.

"Isn't there the threat of being overrun?"

"In theory no, at least not if we're careful. Current intel says they haven't started mobilizing yet. As long as we stay out of range of the stations and avoid patrol fleet concentrations they shouldn't have the numbers to entrap us. Command hopes that we can use the advantage you provide to pick off a few of their regulars early and capitalize on it further once the primary task force comes through."

"Why don't we coordinate with the main fleet to deliver an Alpha strike?"

"Just as we have spies in the Oligarchies, they have spies on Earth and Mars. The instant Task Force Center leaves harbor, they will begin mobilizing. It looks like your assignment here was intentional. Any further questions?"

"Can I borrow your fleet to practice fire concentration and how long do I have to do so?"

The Admiral plugged a few numbers into a calculator, checking her orders for timetables. "Most I can offer is ten hours but it would have to be all at once, too taxing for a non-combat operation I think you would agree?"

"No. At the moment it is infinitely more important that I have more time to practice with them. If they get tired they can switch shifts. Tell them to treat it as a live combat exercise. I will give conditions as we go." Don was already thinking up a regimen to run the gunnery crews through.

Adirondack did not ask questions, only raised an eyebrow.

"Three days from now we will be passing by an asteroid cluster. It should stay within your required 35000 kilometer range for a good portion of that time. I would love to give you more time to shoot, but ammunition and energy are serious concerns for this type of operation. If possible please keep heavy weaponry usage sparse."

"I can do at least that much."

- - - - -

Back aboard the ship, Don was hard at work planning out a routine for the vessels he was to be the eyes and ears of. ARC provided specific ammunition estimates on a ship by ship basis, as well as requested information on each ship's strengths, weaknesses, and outstanding characteristics either good or bad. One of the turrets on the dreadnought had a bum autoloader apparently.

This planning process was tricky. He needed to assemble an itinerary in which he was providing information to every ship in the fleet without accident or leaving them without orders. With only a single carrier, deployable craft could not be expected to stay operational for the full ten hours. They would only have time for two mock runs, three if he pushed it.

"You're good at politics right ARC? Do you know how the Oligarchies work?"

"While I cannot claim to know much about art of politicking, I am familiar with the workings of the 132 independent government bodies outside of the inner ring. I believe they are collectively known as the Outer Oligarchies. Are these the Oligarchies you refer to?"

"Yes. I know our system, the constitutional republic, has issues maintaining cohesion with only four major planetary bodies. How do they maintain a system with that many members?"

"There is no system. Despite their being grouped together in most contexts, they are not legally or traditionally bound to each other. Any time they operate together is almost purely because they view military action against the Inner System as being a benefit."

"Really? How is that possible? Don't they stand to lose everything?"

"Not really. Despite our military superiority over them, surpassing their combined strength, it is hard to spare enough ships to actually deliver a finishing blow to any of them. If they manage to get so much as one ship capable of a nuclear strike in range of any civilian center, they win."

"I understand that is what the Planetary Defense Fleet is for. Why can't we just, I don't know, do the same? Nuke them back and eliminate the threat?"

"Public opinion of mass slaughter and the idea of being the first to commit such an atrocity since August 9th 1945 amongst the political and military command have removed that option from the table. Easy, yes. Effective, yes. But the ramifications of such an action don't allow it. The stations that their civilians are held on must be taken by ground troops."

"Ok so we have to land ground troops. Why haven't we been able to take any of them out still? We've been fighting for like 250 years at this point, surely we've had the chance to."

"The issue is that for the most part they do not care for their civilian population. There is fear they would open civilian habitats to the vacuum of space should they be taken."

"All the more reason to nuke them in my mind."

"But the civilians are innocent."

"Are they? Don't they support the governments they work under?"

"No. For the most part they are akin to slaves. Rarely, if ever, do they achieve nutritional standards consistent with the guidelines suggested by our own health officials. Most of the governments do not subscribe to democratic elections either. From young ages they are forced to either be soldiers, or work in other forms of manual labor. They do not have the strength or power to resist."

"Hrrrm. That's an issue. So how does central plan to win?"

"My conjecture is a total dismantling of the Oligarchs' military. If they are left with no military power, they may be subject to riots and being overthrown. We will be key in this role. Make sure to capitalize on the advantages we provide before countermeasures are devised."

"That's what I'm trying to do right now. How long can one of the destroyers maintain a point defense screen before they overheat or run out of power."

"15 minutes on average. The older models are excluded from this number as their power systems have deteriorated somewhat."

The planning continued.

- - - - - 

"Good morning ladies and gentlemen!" Don's jubilant voice greeted his temporary subordinates. Morning and evening were irrelevant when the sun was always in sight, but it was a pleasantry that people used none the less. "I take it you all have read the admiral's orders?"

The signs of affirmation from all of the major craft began streaming in in the form of a check.

"Great. Just to clarify, I only have ten hours with you lot, I expect you to spend it as if we are entering live combat. You are going to receive a lot of firing coordinates that are normally outside of your range. Many of the escort craft are going to receive VERY specific information about some Incoming Fire Alerts. Treat every single piece of information you receive from me as if it was coming from your own sensor clusters and act accordingly."

Seeing some of the markers attached to the ships turn yellow to signify 'question' he continued. "Any questions you have are to be directed to either the fire control team aboard the Ranger or the specialists aboard the Calibration."

Many of the yellow circles turned to green checks in response. "Admiral Adirondack. Just as much as this is a systems and strategies test for the fleet it is a chance for you to get used to commanding a task force with the use of highly detailed information. In combat it is likely I will be at my wits end trying to position myself in a way to get as much detailed information as possible. You need to position the fleet. Do you understand?"

"I hear you loud and clear Beacon. Do you have any suggestions for fleet positioning? It seems like a planar formation won't be required."

Planar formations were when a fleet positioned them as close as possible to a plane in relation to each other. The biggest draw of this formation was that each ship could use the readings of the others to quicker form an effective firing solution. This had a massive drawback in that it made your fleet take up a much larger area of the enemy's firing sphere and made it easier to detect thanks to the sensor emissions.

"I think some sort of formation prioritizing the protection of the carrier would be optimal, such as a spherical or cone layout. Keep in mind this is the time to experiment though. That goes for you, too, sub-commanders."

The various 'wilco's and 'roger's' filtered in as Don and ARC got into position to give position data to the fleet. This time he had four large cruisers, a battleship and a dreadnought to play with. The dreadnought, aptly named Bunker, would remain tight to the carrier to act as a wall but could still bring its railguns to bear to any targets within five degrees of a perfect broadside.

That was the extent of turret's turning radius in any direction.

Considering this, it may be prudent to call them 'casemates' as opposed to turrets, but the terminology stuck.

As he sent the first target of many to the crew aboard the ships, he couldn't help but wonder why they thought it appropriate that only one person would be assigned this job. There was enough room in the cabin to accommodate a second operator without issue.

Something to bring up in the reports.

"Once you have a solution on target you are cleared to fire. Take it sequential for now so I can see how your fall of shot lines up."

After two minutes of charging the weapons and refining a firing line, Gunnery Captain Dodder's voice came through on the radio.

"This is Ranger, firing one."

The recently updated interface indicated that Ranger had indeed fired with the white exclamation point.

"One impact confirmed. Looks like the other rod nicked something on the approach."

"Give us something harder Beacon! We're only at 25 thousand."

"No can do Ranger. I have to stay within the maximum range of the heavy and light cruisers. Calibration, status update on the strike craft? I have a rock right here that needs jumping around."

"They are being cleared for launch right now. Is the escort cruiser close enough to refuel them reliably?"

"Should be. Hey! Are your guns for show? Why haven't any of you fired yet?"

There was an immediate response.

"This is ah, er, This is Reliable, firing one." The gunnery captain aboard the Ranger's sister ship did not have the same confidence as Dodder.

"Two impacts confirmed. Good shot."

Despite not being confident, the accuracy of the ship did not falter.

Soon after, the rest of the group began launching their rods.

"This is Dearth, firing one." An older large cruiser.

"This is Damper, firing one." A sister ship to the Dearth.

"This is Bunker, firing one." The dreadnought.

"This is Imitation, firing one." The battleship was last to the party.

Every turret had at least one hit on target, unthinkable for a first salvo at this range. This was on a target far smaller than a heavy cruiser as well.

ARC had done a phenomenal job with the target reporting and spatial calculation.

"On to the next one. You are going to coordinate your fire to make sure that all shots land within half a second of each other. You don't need to do a full broadside, a fourth of your facing firepower will do. Imitation, you only need to fire four. You are likely to have the most concerns with ammo going forward."

The dreadnought had a lot of space for ammunition given its size. The large cruisers sacrificed armor in order to keep costs down, meaning they had more space for rods. The battleship was expected to take hits, so it had a lot of armor, but it wasn't big enough to make up for the lack of ammunition.

This drawback was remedied somewhat by the fact that the paths by which ammunition was replenished were prioritized, but reloading the magazines during combat was dangerous.

It didn't help matters that there was not a supply group to supply new rods. One would join with the fleet a few days after first contact with the enemy, but until then the three hundred or so rods per turret would have to last.

With ARC now handling the majority of scouting, calculation, and target reporting, Donovan turned his attention away from the asteroid genocide.

Alongside his orders, he received a package of data that he had initially assumed to be details about the mission.

It wasn't.

The file name was labeled 'reading materials' so he could be forgiven for thinking that there was some top secret stuff in there, but no.

What it contained is exactly what was stated on the tin, reading materials.

He couldn't be sure, but from the size he inferred that every book recorded digitally must be contained in the file. Millions of entries, all of which could be fit in a data chip the size of his big toe.

A second file was transferred an hour into his evacuation from the hangar, titled 'visual entertainment'. Once again, full length movies and episodic productions galore filtered into the ship's data cores.

He thought it was weird, but fashioned it to be growth materials for ARC.

It was horrendously behind the curve when it came to references. Perhaps the egg-heads were trying something new to remedy that?

The last file, even larger than the previous two, was named 'Historical Record' and was filled with documents. Don, at this point well outside of the carrier, opened a few of them up out of curiosity. He was met with walls of text that made little sense to him as he read them.

This was definitely something for ARC. There was no way they could have expected Donovan to know what to do with this.

A final bit of information filtered in, a message. The details of his mission and, to his surprise, more information on some of the more obscure features of his ship, now to be referred to as Noah.

Some of the information governed the use of commands in regards to ARC, most of which were already covered in their training session. Other information covered the contents of Noah's armor, specifically the layering and how to use it to the greatest effect. There was some data regarding the use of his sensor arrays as weapons, though that was purely theoretical and would be less effective than some of the other tools at his disposal, notably the Cutters and the 30mm autocannons.

The most interesting tidbits by far were the details of ARC's damage control capabilities and the specifics of the railguns he has access to.

ARC had the capability to perform repairs through the use of nanodrones and manipulating the inertial dampener. Apparently, the reason ARC had not told Don about this was because "You didn't ask about my specific capabilities." and "This information was best left unmentioned as it would encourage reckless behavior."

It made a modicum of sense, but this made Don feel like there might be more that ARC was hiding. He had to consider the possibility that there could be things that even ARC was unaware of.

From their conversations, it was obvious that ARC was not 'raised' in the Noah. It was probably developed in some secret extraterrestrial lab, kept secret from just about everybody for fear of the outcry it would cause.

Don also had to consider the fact that there might be some funky stuff with conflicting orders and protocols. Maybe something like ARC was told to not divulge certain information in spite of Don having the proper clearance level.

Didn't matter though, Don was not familiar with the protocol that a non-organic would have to follow. He didn't plan on gaining experience with this field of study either.

Just flying his big black brick was enough for him.

Shoving his unspoken queries aside, he swiped to the offensive armaments section.

"JG-C Mod 217/2-X. Quite the mouthful, eh?"

ARC was unresponsive, probably too occupied with the chaos outside to answer him.

JG stood for Jump-Gun, the official name of the weapon class. The -C stood for Capital class, the largest available. Mod 217, model number 217, the /2 denoted it was in a twin arrangement, by far the most common. The X then must stand for experimental.

At this point the magic that they were the very largest kinetic weapons available to a vessel had long since worn off. He had fired them a few times during his test runs, and they were honestly kinda disappointing.

They eviscerated the asteroids he shot at, that much is not to be mistaken.

He just felt that everything else about them was a bit of a let-down. There was no heat glow on the hull, everything was internalized and the heatsink was absolutely phenomenal. There was no *click* or *chunk* as the rod left his ship. No whir of an autoloader moving the next rod into the tube. No static buzz from the EM radiation on his comms.

There wasn't even plasma chaff from the rod being torn apart as it accelerated!

The most exciting thing was the huge push from the Noah lurching back, something about Newton's laws of motion. Even that wasn't going to be as exciting anymore as ARC had told him it had figured out a way to further increase the effectiveness of the inertial dampener.

The crazy computer was actually going to remove the internal atmosphere from the dampener's zone of influence. Well, all the internal atmosphere except where he was sitting.

'Mighty considerate that one.' Don raised an eyebrow at one of the light fixtures. ARC didn't have anything resembling a face, but the lights would occasionally change color when conversing as an auxiliary to ARC's tone. It was a neat trick.

He buried his nose in his tablet.

Model 217. Don't the newest ships use Model 209's? Most of the fleet are still on either the 205's and 199's. Some of the older ships might even be on backlog with the 192's, an ancient design at this point.

There really wasn't much difference between them, they all launched heavy shit at imperceivably high velocities. The older ones just got hotter faster, wasted more energy, were bigger, and had some issues hitting targets at their maximum range.

What possessed the designers to put a two generation jump in weapon design on a ship which was meant for recon. Surely there would be a better use for the space.

At the same time as he was thinking that, Don had already decided that he didn't care.

He had permission to fire the most powerful railguns available to the navy.

What more could he ask for?

Thinking about the railguns, he silently went over what damage they were intended to cause and how best to use these aspects in practice.

He recalled that one of the most damaging factors, aside from the penetrative and post-penetrative qualities, were the vibrations induced by the impact.

As far as he could remember, the vibrations could cause more damage than just shaking the hull apart, though that was what happened most of the time. Lots of other things, delicate things, human body shaped things, did not like being shaken with lots of force.

Proper aiming and timing for the purpose of maximization of the vibrations could incapacitate a vessel without ever piercing the hull.

The bigger ships and their length gave them a rather large degree of flexibility if comparing end to end. Most could be bent elastically by a few meters before snapping. It was the rigidity of the metal and ceramic that made this limited flexibility lethal.

Flexing back with extreme force, just a few meters of 'flex' at the extremities is enough distance to turn any and all organic matter into a flat paste as it swings back and forth. Their bodies, hitting the walls of the narrow halls of their ship would make impact at close to 100 meters a second, almost a third of the speed of sound.

Of course, there were systems in place focused on mitigating these factors.

Tanks filled with a high density limited toxicity liquid, usually Mercury, complemented with a high density inert and non-toxic gas, usually Xenon, were installed in most ships as countermeasures to vibration.

Shocks in between the armor plating and the internal casing, as well as placed in various other 'vibration sensitive' locations served to mitigate damage to anything vital.

The inertial dampeners had a small effect, not much. Some ships had small auxiliary motors that vibrated in opposition to the imparted motion.

Conventional knowledge suggested that successive impacts made within half of a second of each other could defeat these systems by not giving them time to react.

The liquid/gas chambers only started damping vibration after the ship started to vibrate. Before this point the liquid is pressed to the side of the tank and acts similarly to a solid.

The shocks are limited in the amount of stress they can take. If enough pressure is applied in a short period of time, the shocks can be damaged if not outright destroyed.

The inertial dampeners acted immediately, but they had limited effect as previously mentioned.

The auxiliary motors, not very effective to begin with, needed time to read a vibration and get up to speed before they had an effect. The time depended heavily on the equipment's quality, but half a second would be short enough to fit under its activation time.

Under the most extreme vibration, sensor pylons would be rendered inoperable if they were in use, electronic systems could have their wires severed, weapons might end up with bent barrels or made uncalibrated. Catastrophic events such as a detonation of internal weaponry or a crack in the casing of one of the reactor cores could happen.

The 'ideal' type of internal damage was, of course, the damage done to the humans inside.

Bent sensor pylons precluded a withdrawal from the field. Severed wires might leave a ship adrift, but it would mean it will no longer be emitting detectable signals. Bent weapons would, similar to bent pylons, end up in a retreating enemy. All of these things would act to preserve your own ships from enemy fire, but delay the sinking of an enemy's.

Internal explosions, magazine detonations as they are called more formally, or a reactor breakdown might qualify as sinking a ship, but the resulting heat and radiation emissions would be perfect cover for other ships. This meant that despite the devastation, it was more dangerous for your own fleet if an enemy blew up than if one of your own did.

Only a complete or near complete killing of the crew would signify an 'optimal' sinking. Perforation of the habitable sections with shrapnel and rods to expose them to the vacuum was a good way. Cracking internal seals through vibration, shattering armor with repeated impacts, overheating crew compartments through use of long range thermal lasers, concussing crew members with an impact close to their work space, all viable ways of achieving that goal.

All of these most easily achieved with concentrated fire.

All of these effects left unexploited due to the nigh impossibility of the task.

Don sought to change that, but he had mere hours and limited ammunition to do so with.

He had quite a few asteroids though.

Quite a few was rather rapidly turning to not very much. They were TOO accurate now. Every salvo from their combined fire effectively vaporized one of the previously thought endless space rocks.

They had gotten better, but they didn't have it down quite yet. They were sitting at roughly a second between first and last impact on average, more than enough time for the corpse of an asteroid to disperse under the armor shattering firepower.

Sick of the imprecision of its organic partners, ARC proposed a solution. Text appeared in the bottom left of his current field of vision, just as Donovan had finished sending a simulated order of incoming strike craft from a different position.

'May I request you to ask for the specific characteristics of each ship's weapon systems? I wish to see if it is possible to write an executable script that will synchronize fire.'

Don thought it a good idea. Interrupting the firing practice of the ship captains, he opened his comms. "Stop firing for now. My partner has an idea."

"Hit us Beacon. This shit is harder than we thought it would be." Dodder's voice was tired, but still enthusiastic. His general sentiment was shared amongst the others, they were getting tired of the failure every three minutes.

"If you could send me, us, the firing characteristics of your railguns, that would be appreciated. I have someone onboard who wants to see if it would be possible to write some sort of program to synchronize fire. I don't think it'll be required, but the input/output delay for your systems might help."

"I don't think that is information we are authorized to divulge." One of the voices objected.

"All I'm asking for is charge times, time it takes to reach maximum velocity, maximum velocity, and maybe the variation in those quantities. Not exactly vital."

"This is Admiral Adirondack, checking in. Beacon's rank and the current situation provide him with clearance to both request and receive information on military weaponry short of the blueprints themselves. We are the ones provoking this time. We aren't in a position to be raising a fuss about the divulsion of information when doing so will potentially increase survivability and success."

"Understood. Beacon, prepare to receive a data packet in the next ten minutes. Encryption codes are standard."