Eleventh Century Remnant wrote:
Things to bear in mind; have you ever looked at a picture of the Torpedo Sphere? The thing really does appear as if it was designed on the back of an envelope. Going by the numbers in the sourcebook it was first depicted in (and which basically served as the writers' bible for quite a lot of the EU) the thing suffers from an enormous amount of detail work being simply not done.
The thing isn't even shielded against ships 1/2th the mass, according to the book, and planets (or at least prepared ones) can far outgun those ships. I think that the design as presented is so horrible that I'm amazed that anyone looked at it and said yes, I want that, which someone must have, at some point.
To give some context, the sphere is 1,900 meters in diameter, making it as massive as an SSD if not more. In essence, it's trying to shield a vessel the volume of the SSD with shields roughly 1/4th as strong (assuming that the D values scale linearly).
For people without access to the sourcebook, here's a link to a (illegally) scanned copy: here. The sphere's figures are on page 56 of the PDF, and a scale comparison is on page 61.
It has no, I repeat, no listed point defence whatsoever; nothing at all. No anti fighter or anti torpedo defence, very solid hull and half way, good enough or a light destroyer, decent shielding. It does have an absolutely gargantuan vulnerability, the 'eye' of torpedo tubes, which makes that of dubious protective efficiency considering it would likely be pointed downwards.
I think that these are the most fundamental design mistakes made. The design is screaming for organic fighters and PD, especially as it was intended to attack Rebel worlds, who are known for having no fighters whatsoever. The design is vulnerable to both fighter and missile attack from any aspect (they can simply fly around to the eye), making the design bad in any realistic defense situation, except against the most minimally defended opponent.
We might have found a great role for the Lancer, though.
Unlike the Executor class, which was I'd say an eighty- five percent design success with only a few remaining serious flaws (for all the abysmal combat record, they are very fast and very, very well armed- it was quite hard to square how well they look with how poorly they turned out), the torpedo sphere does have that glaringly obvious terminal flaw, so much so that the most belief- beggaring thing about it is that they were ever built at all.
The design is so monumentally stupid that I'm really quite skeptical that it is anything like as it's depicted in the sourcebook. I'm essentially applying Simon_Jester's argument about the Lancer - someone must have at one point said yes, so there must be some reason for it to exist. As depicted here and in the sourcebook, it's so vulnerable that anyone should be able to notice that it'll work about as well as a cryogen factory in a star.
The torp sphere design must have been an extreme rush job, put into production before most of the draftsmanship had even been done, and the relatively enormous crew is there not so much to work the ship as to finish putting it together.
It may also have been built around another design, possibly a defensive station, and I find it even more likely that it was a retrofit for existing stations. It's the only way I can justify the defensive drawbacks and the scale of the thing.
If they were using normal standard- issue torpedoes, they probably wouldn't have been so volatile; the sphere uses special shield disruptor warheads, which I am taking the liberty of assuming haven't been through the same process of technical and procedural refinement and hardening over years of service as the standard antiship head. Slightly more likely to go boom.
This is the only way that one could justify the vulnerability of the system, but I have trouble putting it past the Imperial ordinance design people to not realize that using these torpedoes would make it extremely likely to be one-shotted. Again, the retrofit idea might make sense here - the ordinance packages were developed first, and the hull was found and fitted out separately.
I strongly suspect that in after years, received doctrine is going to be to turn blind side on to the enemy, swim out launches and steer the torpedoes on target, use the vast sensor surface of the thing for EW purposes and keep the most heavily armoured aspect towards the enemy.
This would only work if the defenders don't realize that the sphere is there, as the defender's own torpedoes can still reach the firing port in this configuration. The total lack of PD gives the defender's fighters and missiles essentially free reign over the surface of the sphere, and these are even easier to get than the planetary defence lasers that would be able to take the direct shot.
Here's the other problem with the idea:
Imperial Sourcebook wrote:
Surrounding these tubes are 10 heavy turbolaser batteries
This means that the only way the turbolasers have a shot is if the sphere is oriented, at least in part, so that the launchers are oriented in the direction of the threat. This is another thing that must be changed in refit.
The issue of shot travel time occurs, too; later built torpedo spheres, after the first handful of really only vaguely service ready prototypes, may depend in their primary job on that- by the time the target realises they've launched, they could have raised armoured shutters- that if they don't exist in prototype, damn' well should in later construction- and at least partially turned blind side on. (Means they must be predicting gaps in the shields several seconds ahead, though.)
I'd be amazed if any more than a few were made, there are other solutions that work better, and it's essentially a large, expensive, deathtrap that will only really serve to improve the morale of the enemy once it explodes spectacularly. The sourcebook makes a mention of there only being 6 at the time of in-universe writing. This could make sense, as 6 would make a reasonable LRIP run, and calmer heads may have prevailed after the deficiencies of the type were made manifest (such as there being 8 units originally).
Shutters would help, but they wouldn't solve the problem entirely. If the enemy has enough firepower to punch through the shields, I'd imagine that it wouldn't be that much harder to at least cripple the shutters, if not destroy them outright. I think the best way to do the refit would be to make smaller clusters distributed on the surface of the sphere.
A quick, cheap trick shot was not just the best way to kill the thing, it was almost the only way.
It depends on how the internal warhead storage was laid out. With the quality of design exhibited with the launchers, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the warhead storage was right underneath the skin.
How I would do it, if I was given the job; ditch the idea of a specialist platform entirely. Start with something like the TaggeCo Modular Taskforce Support Cruiser, and design a bombardment module composed- if possible- of three casaba- howitzer style versions of the shield disruptor warhead, giant ones, a network of deployable satellite sensors, and a relative handful of gun-mines like the Defender ion blockade mine. Never actually have to hazard the ship, it can jump in, lay and stand off to manage the sensor net.
The defenders can't see out much, either; the satellite sensors do the same job as the DR's on the sphere, chart and measure and identify weak points, the warheads are spaced around the planet, 120deg apart equatorial geostationary, covering it all, the nearest orients, fires and hopefully makes the gap that the gun- mines then exploit, blasting the generator, doing the same job for much less hazard. The defence could relatively easily be dismembered by a handful of strike fighters, but then with that weapons bay so could the torpedo sphere.
First, I would think it would be really difficult to make a reasonably inexpensive HTL satellite, or at least one that is any smaller than say, a light corvette. Any lesser gun makes it tempting and relatively easy to simply add a second (smaller) shield generator that comes online once the main goes down or once the hole opens.
The other problem is that this plan makes the requisite firepower needed to foil the attack much smaller. The sphere needs bombers or at least heavy fighters to kill it, as you need antiship missiles or swarms of anti-fighter missiles to kill it. In contrast, Z-95 laser plinking works great against the satellites, and even more planetary defence forces have those.
My solution is roughly similar to the torpedo sphere, but uses a different ship and your sensor strategy. What I would suggest is making a one-use torpedo attack module that fits in the ISDs dorsal fighter bay. Each missile is in a grid of one-use tubes, and is designed to minimize maintenance needs over the lifespan of the missile system. This module can be made substantially smaller than the one on the torpedo sphere, and is much easier to make and maintain.
The ISD is a much more defensible and maneuverable platform than the torpedo sphere, reducing the vulnerability of the module to fighter attack. It is also going to be easier to assemble a strike package using the module, as you only have to ship the missile module to the ship, rather than having to allocate one of six dedicated vessels. It even can provide the HTL firepower straight out-of-the box, further reducing marginal costs.
The drawback here is that the ISD can't provide the sensors needed to detect vulnerabilities. This would have to be filled, again, by sensor satellites, which are vulnerable to fighter attack. These satellites are cheap, however, much more so than the HTL satellites, and they're much easier to transport and lay in the face of planetary attacks.
In essence, I find it patently silly that anyone ever built the sphere at all, never mind used it. The only way I could justify it is that they were station conversions intended to be technology demonstrators that were pushed into active service. The canon is on your side (stupid weapons fit and all), so I'll admit that they were made, but I'd love to read a story about their design process.
OK, thinking about it, the idea that they were technology demonstrators pushed into service at least sort of explains it. I was, perhaps, overestimating the strength of the sphere's shielding, and picturing it in the context of an escorting battlefleet. The torpedo sphere is, despite appearances, not a Death Star; it is not fit to singlehandedly raze a planet, but rather to enable a conventional sector group to penetrate planetary shields which would otherwise require it to bring up a dreadnought.
If the Death Star is to planetary shields what bombard cannon were to castle walls in the early gunpowder era, the torpedo sphere is a medieval siege tower- seriously intended to do the job, but with a number of potential vulnerabilities and limited punch.
I think that in the completed and cleaned up version, the story might profit a bit from having some of this analysis put there during Olghaan's pre-battle planning, explaining why no, the torpedo sphere is not as powerful a combatant as its raw tonnage suggests, and needs to be a watchtower rather than just blowing Black Prince away with its planetcracking torpedo barrage.
I was in two minds for some time whether to go on or go back. As well as seriously considering ditching it and concentrating on alt- hist stuff I'm working on.
I hadn't actually read most of the comments until I came round to planning the next bit and I don't propose to speak to them now- only point out that there are separate levels of war, and a tactical victory may be sticking one's head into an operational noose; and some large bills are coming due.
First bit is actually a backtrack, that should be inserted somewhere in the planning stage;
Rewrite blue, from the planning stage;
'We have a unique opportunity with the Edrossaia. Have you had a chance to work her up? Explore what her systems and layout can actually do?' Olghaan asked the stunned looking commander. Normally a platform of that size would have demanded a more senior officer, one with perhaps a little more grasp.
Counting off, sublieutenant, junior, plain lieutenant, senior, lcdr, he had to have been promoted six times already to get to where he was. Nobody who made it even that far would be completely useless, unless the system itself was badly broken.
Lennart was alleging that it was, come to think of it. Who would sector put in charge of a theoretically tremendously powerful weapon, that actually required very careful handling to get actual results out of it? An expert?
There were hardly any experts yet. A torpedoman, perhaps, or someone who had worked on siege platforms before? They were new to the fleet- a handful of examples existed, based on what was actually a working module for a hypermatter production plant.
The module was large, intended to survive in close orbit about a black hole, and had a connection aperture- an enormous docking hatch that industrial pipework was supposed to run in and out of- that could be turned into the mounting point for a shield cracking weapons array, and had.
It showed it's ancestry, though, and the more Olghaan looked at it- he hoped commander whatwashisname, Sandor?- had done the same- the harder it became to think of the thing as a weapon of war.
It was unlikely to be a simple fight. Gambling for a cheap kill was tempting but not a feasible operation, the enemy was too cunning, too cagey for that. Their feathers would have to be plucked, options closed off one at a time. The initial gambit was looking less and less plausible.
Unless play the reverse gambit. It did have firepower- five hundred round salvos could make quite a mess; given the technicians on hand, a full volley run semi dirigible might be feasible- but the thing would not have EW superiority. A big eye without much combat ECM, too easy to stick a thumb in it.
It was a threat. The best move- and one that fitted the initial watchtower idea- was to use it, use the threat and the potential of its' fire, to deny Lennart his chosen killing ground. That would be the close orbital space around Veren Porphyr V, the moon- strewn, radiation- haunted tangle.
The most vulnerable point on the thing- it would keep light fire off, was more or less proof against light and medium turbolasers, but was not well enough shielded to face a heavy frigate or destroyer, or a well aimed heavy torpedo warhead- was the weapon complex. The launchers made it more effective to fire direct.
It was necessary to keep that facing away from the enemy, from a capital ship anyway- get the sphere into a position where they could take a straight, simple shot and they would indeed be able to make the kill; approach it from the wrong angle, likewise. So the obvious way for Lennart to try to dispose of the thing was fighters. So obvious that it put his fighters in a predictable position.
It would be necessary to move in quickly, to smother his fighter wing in TIEs, but not so quickly that it gave the game away- not have them there to begin with.
Worst case? Lennart tried to attack the thing directly, jump in and put a salvo of torpedoes, command guided, down the throat of the thing. It did not have as much as the close defence capabilities of a rotting bantha- nothing, nothing at all.
Point defence was a hell of a thing to miss out- so much so that it looked as if the initial batch were really just proof of concept vehicles that should not have been deployed at all, outside a training range anyway.
So thoroughly a single purpose platform that any use of it was looking interestingly difficult. It could kill, but only if the enemy was trying to come straight down its' throat, and it couldn't afford the first shot, not with the likely barrage of deception jamming making anything subtle too difficult.
Now, the renegade's case is starting to look pretty good. Hm. There was a defence option- warhead fratricide. Fire torpedoes at the incoming, that should be effective- wasteful, but better than the alternative. There were options, at least. ------------------------
Well, in theory they were.
In direct continuation,
That had not been anticipated. Not in detail, anyway. Somebody might be spectacularly unlucky and scoop one up directly, but the majority of the force should survive- it was obvious now they were going to be emerging into a minefield.
They had already assumed space was going to be thick with fighters, and had intended to create a nest of their own- overwhelm the dispersed heavy fighters of the renegade and hold the area as a pivot, and incidentally shield the now eliminated torpedo sphere. The fighter wings were already briefed to launch on emergence and expect action.
Shields and point defence on line as soon as may be, then- seconds away, now.
Of course; the renegade had the services of a fleet tender. There was much more than one warship's payload of drifting nasties. No torpedoes, strangely- disposal and information warfare teams would be moving to action, too, wrestling for control of the field.
Which was probably a low order positive result. Somebody thrashing through the metaphorical brush of a dense pack minefield wasn't acting as a hunter stalking their prey.
This would hurt the support craft, but it would only delay the capitals- so not a low order result at all. Lennart had a purpose for that time gained, and trying to deny it to him would draw more blood. Mine clearance was a difficult job to rush.
If it was done conventionally, of course. There was a simpler and more dirct route. 'Guns, I'm going to need flak burst fire, set up in as little time as we can. Ideally ready to shoot before any of our TIEs are in the blast area. Signal Falcata-'
The convergence beam laser armed destroyer already had the idea. Step down to a light, relatively low power beam and start hosing down the minefield, scribble it away with the ten heavy armoured claw emitters she boasted.
The sky was already starting to catch, bright flares of detonation beam mines throwing their spears of energy, ripples of beam fire from more conventional gun- mines, thrumming magnetic resonance transients as captor mines energised and threw their rounds.
Guess the strategy from the chosen target, and it was obvious- the destroyers weren't being targeted at all. Neither were most of the frigates- the active mines were ranging on the small craft. The eyes.
So where has he gone, where does he need to cut down- not eliminate, just cut down- our ability to spot and track? If he was going to run, if he was just going to run and no more, all of this was unnecessary. He's going to try to fight and win, and where- jumped, but not so fast and so clean our probes didn't get a look at him, and his fighter group.
Microjumps, all of them- the wobbles were obvious, they were here, somewhere in the system. Fighters are faint, they could be anywhere and won't have gone to the same place as their flag, short- jumping a fighter was enough hazard without trying to land in a place that had enough sensor fuzz to hide the emergence flare of a destroyer.
He wants us to split up in search of him, which is exactly what I would want my pursuers to do if I was being chased, and for the same reason- take them one by one. The data is getting patchier, we're losing the battle of the probes; his remotes are actively pursuing and killing mine, by an unlikely margin that says he's using at least old Separatist droid- war programming modules. A crime i itself, but at this point it must hardly matter to him.
The minefield is also a diversion. I need those corvettes as sensor and relay platforms, and that's what his fighters and gunships are going to do; anti- shipping strikes, hit my scouts, cut away the eyes of the squadron until I have no choice but to disperse the heavily gunned craft on sweeps, where he can take them one by one.
That's an extended action, not the quick cauterisation we need for political reasons. Tactically, elapsed time may work for either of us- if he's gambling on command friction, that I'll get tired and lose the plot first, he's older and less stable to begin with- but logistics works for me; going for a prolonged running fight may only be the lesser evil, compared to a stand up fight at five to one odds.
Is he only bluffing by trying to convince me he's willing to play a slow, extended game? A swoop and pounce like that on Edrossaia is not the act of a waiting man. He's not an impatient, erratic eccentric- would like to be mistaken for one, maybe- but he's not perfectly cold blooded. I could outwait him, or could if I dared give away the initiative. Hm.
The actual combat turned on the flak bursts Swiftsure put out. The trick was to launch the complicated matrix of energies known more simply than it deserved as a turbolaser bolt on a rising gradient of acceleration, so that it overtook, tumbled and burst on itself, splashing out a flare of energy. Things like doing it so that it burst at a specified range and in a specified blast pattern were extra.
Not all of Swiftsure's gunners were up to it- not all of Black Prince's were for that matter- but enough to carve zones out of the field of death, voids of safety that the small ships could flow into.
There were mistakes made- like the Bayonet light cruiser that skew- turned at full thrust into a pocket, didn't leave itself enough room to shed velocity, drifted out of the far edge and was peppered by a cluster of ion gun- mines that left it drifting helplessly into a cluster of seismics that left it shattered, bleeding burning air and starting to break up.
Not everyone could be saved. Enough gaps were blown to let most of them break free and survive, though- this operation was already costly and getting worse. Doing him in quietly wasn't going to happen.
For the next trick, Lennart thought, I shall- how is he reacting, what's Olghaan going to do next? Play the probabilities, he's basically a conventional man. Our probes are doing a good job of eating their probes, and they are probably thinking that they are being overcome by leftover separatist logics. Entirely home brewed, courtesy of the mouse droid collective.
Another worry for later. Which is only fair, considering the number of worries I don't have. Onsidering she's emerging from major surgery, the ship's handling beautifully. Fifteen thousand of the crew put ten million manhours into making sure she would, then we pulled it all together only just in time.
Terrible way to do a shakedown cruise, but it all seemed to be coming together, except the reason why. This is the lower deck we're talking about, though.
They're cynics as a rule- they know that their lords and masters are dubiously competent, backstabbing, devious, corrupt psychopaths who are constantly trying to get them killed. Don't need rebel propaganda for that.
Maybe there is something to this force nonsense after all, dammit- I can sense, smell, that they're behind me. Are all of his behind him? All on the one ship that actually counts, anyway. The next in line, Falcata- I want to stir them up, make them move, get them chasing me.
I'm not going to outwait him, and he knows it. He should be aware that he has to try and find me before I do- the fact that he's not says what, that he thinks I've nailed my colours to the antenna, made a conscious decision to fight it out here and now.
If I had rigged the environment to suit me as thoroughly as he thinks I had, then he might be right. Hold that one in reserve, though- there are enough computers over there, he should be figuring out where I've got to any moment now. Must be one of the shortest hyperjumps on record.
Where Black Prince had jumped to was simple; she had made a half orbit of the gas giant Veren Porphyr V, which as its name suggested had a distinctly purplish tint- some very odd atmospheric chemistry going on there. It was an almost ideal hiding place, though, down in the pressure and the storms.
The hoovies said you could do it with a nebula, but unless it was a star forming region with objects in the process of coalescence, it wouldn't be thick enough to block sight and sensors. Actually, around here- in Anoat sector, anyway- there were a couple, which was something to bear in mind for the later stages of the chase.
For the moment, a quick decelerate and drop down into the giant, beneath the crush depth of TIE bombers anyway, beneath the reach of the light into a layer of gigantic magnetic storms that sparked and shrieked enough to pass unseen amongst.
Above them there was light, too; some of it biological in origin. Wherever life could organise itself, it usually did- there was energy here, and in the gyres and jetstreams, the prevailing winds of the giant planet enough stability to come together and be, increase, multiply.
Between radiation belts, the tides of gases stirred by the moons and the fantastic, turbolaser- rivalling lightning caused by the currents of charged gas sliding against each other, they had an interesting world here.
Now was not the time to marvel at the glory of life, though; tactics now, exobiology later. Now was the time to measure and monitor, get their bearings in this environment, make contact with the probes and fighter groups in such away as did not betray them- the planet had magnetic storms all right, but not many subspace ones- slide through the turbulent deeps to the ambush position he had in mind.
One thing for sure- none of the small craft would be coming down after them. Even a destroyer's shields were getting a fair workout at this depth, some of the bolts would have blown a corvette in half. Actually, Lennart thought, there's an idea...
On Swiftsure, there was thinking being done too. They had a fuzzy look, through deceptive jamming, at Black Prince's energy profile during the jump. Enough to make out the basics, which were enough to weave hypotheses on- it was the ship's chief engineer that got it though.
A short, very steep spike- but the bleedoffs were missing. They hadn't left the gravity well; had they simply jumped round to the occluded side of the planet? Looked like it.
The probe web's thinning, but not that fast. We'd have noticed a secondary jump away. Which of the moons and stations are out of our field of view? He could be down on the planet itself of course- somewhere in a ninety thousand kilometre wide turbulent maelstrom of gas and semi- fluids, with a ship that had an experimental but looking highly effective so far camo scheme.
Balls, Olghaan thought. It fits. Did he do this on the spur of the moment or was it planned? How many more layers are there in his onion of death- how do we go about finding out? It's exactly the sort of job the scan matrix on the torpedo sphere would have been ideal for, damn it.
Tachyonic emissions are about the only thing that would distinguish them from the background in there; and unless he's lost the plot badly enough his own com scan officers aren't talking to him any more, he knows that. Subspace comms, not that daft- they are too easily trackable. He could have entanglement links out that we'd never notice, but only a finite supply of them.
He's got enough secondary reactors to run them in aux mode, and it's not as if tachyonics are all that precise- at best we could confirm if he's actually there or not. Until he starts generating for weapon power, anyway.
Our sensors are as good as his. Correction, Swiftsure's sensors are as good as his- he and we have an edge over most of the group. They can't go in there after him- he'd get the first shot off every time. Doing it ourselves would be going straight to the endgame without collecting any of the edge we had hoped to make up along the way. Damn, again.
We could pound the planet- but how much power could we really afford to spend on something that you could lose most coriform worlds in a thousand times over? Sound, not pound- drop enough warheads into it to get a reaction that exceeds background, get a definite track on him that way? We'd need to hit or at least near miss maybe a sixth of a cubic kilometre target, in more than a billion cubic kilometres.
What he wants is for us to begin to do that, start a sweep- that he will use as an opportunity to pick another unit off, that his fighters can use to pick off some of the corvettes and frigates. The sphere would have been perfect for that, too- no wonder Lennart had taken such a dislike to it. I keep finding new uses for it now that it's gone- and all hands, something like seventy- seven thousand, with it.
Must regain the initiative. Must not do it by a rash move that gives too many opportunities away; he's not a hider, he's a hunter, a running- fighter, and he's trying to create opportunities to fight the way that suits him. How do we fake the beginning of a search, then...
The sphere would also have been perfect for saturation bombing the general volume Black Prince occupies in the hope of getting a reading off the shield scatter- although even with four thousand anticapital warheads per launch, you still might need a hell of a lot of salvoes to comb the entire region.
[I think the blue text is meant to be hard to read, Andras, in that you have to deliberately highlight it and call it to your attention to see it- it's a rewrite of an earlier scene, and one I don't think ECR is planning to actually back up and change.]
Quick update, because I may or may not be out of contact for the next ten days or so.
Stuff to sort out first; mobile devices I think default to low bandwidth- white background, dark text clearly visible. Actually I wasn't making a point, it's just the way it was written up- I sometimes code sections differently so I can tell which goes with which and what doesn't, it was typed in blue. Absent mindedness, actually.
How you can get from where he is to mary sue baffles me, I'm just dumbfounded by that, I don't get it at all. Haven't you noticed Lennart's life- his old life anyway- is collapsing? That he's in the position of a man having to swim up to the headwaters of shit creek without a canoe, never mind a paddle?
Everything he's worked for and tried to achieve has turned out to be hollow and pointless; there is no useful functional Empire waiting to emerge, not with Palpatine in charge, there is no other side to the dark valley, there is nothing to be gained in the service of tyranny except the misery of the innocent. His family- the one he started with anyway- are variously imprisoned, disgraced or about to enter on spectacular new career as a mass murderer.
Career wise, he and everyone tainted by association with him has no future, and will be lucky to have a present that does not end in the disintegration booth. Palpatine's signature isn't on the ops order, but it might as well be- the act of will came from the top, regardless of the poor fool left holding the bag.
There are gleams of light, but not large ones- all the "for" is gone, there's no point any more, the ship and crew are up to their neck in shit with their backs against the wall. And from this, you conjure mary sue?
Anyway,
The strike wing had been assembled at widely dispersed points in the outer system, light days out- beyond sublight detecton, too faint to be easily noticed in subspace, their mothership taking attention away from their emergence. They did have one major advantage over the defenders; the hyperspace scanner they had stolen so usefully, so conveniently long ago.
Apart from fitting into the ship's hyperspace energy envelope as the equivalent of a canard foreplane- which had done much to prevent them from being fried by their unfortunate experiment earlier- the thing could do a superconducting quantum interference diode rig's work from the tachyonic perspective. Extract- and transmit.
The fighters had a secure, untappable, undetectable link to their mother, the only real limit being Olghaan's ability to put two and two together and realise something like that was in play, once the fighters started moving and manoeuvring in ways that were obviously coordinated beyond the ability of detectable comms.
Black Prince was too deep in the planetary atmosphere to be reached- a turbolaser bolt would spend its' energy blowing holes in the increasingly dense atmosphere before it got down to the goo; superheat and blow holes in the atmosphere but that was about it. At least, that was what it said in the book that Lennart had thrown away.
'Guns, this looks like an atmospheric blooming problem- what's the historic solution? Is there a subtlety we can use?' Turbolasers tended to do it with brute force. Not going to work in a gas giant.
Swiftsure's gunnery officer thought about it for second, then answered in the affirmative by saying 'Recommend evasive weave, captain.'
A small expenditure of time and energy, not to be begrudged if it meant avoiding some very nasty surprises. 'Nav, set it up, inform the squadron, independent box evasion. How could it be done?' he asked the gunnery officer for an explanation.
Independent box meant that each ship had its' own zone within the battle group that it could manoeuvre evasively as it suited it within without further reference or need to avoid other units- the boxes obviously were set to not overlap, at least if the officer commanding had so much as the brains of a devaronian bollock weasel. Not that they always had.
'Burning a path through firing repeated bolts to blow a crater in the air, that a second shot then passes through, so forth- using a sequence of bolts to blast the air out of the way of the killing shot- can be done but it's wasteful. You could end up doing nothing more than making storms.
Firing something that can penetrate the atmosphere might work, meson or x- ray fire, but you can't get the energies of a modern turbo laser down into that.The most likely option is gravitic. Use an inverted tractor, a pressor beam, with turbolasers on the same firing circuit- have to be, for the pressure down there- evacuate tunnels in the atmosphere to fire down before each shot.'
'He can fire up out of the high pressure zone easier than we can fire down into it.' Olghaan stated.
'More energy would get to where it's needed, less dissipation of the pressor. He also has those experimental gravitic weapons which, if they work, can put a lot more energy into shifting the atmosphere.'
Have to hand it to the devious bastard, he chose his position well. Best we may be able to do is to attempt a barrage,using tractors and bloom- defeating bolt staging, whenever he takes a shot up- well at us. Hm. 'Would an interdictor be able to achieve anything in terms of clearing a path?'
The gunner blinked a couple of times, thinking through the logic of it; they did have a fair degree of power and control over it, even if you couldn't set one to blow instead of suck you should be able to use the multiple emitters to create a series of attraction points that pulled the atmosphere apart between them, created a void. Problem was that the target's reaction would be predictable, too.
'It'll give away their location; as soon as it's tried they'll shoot at the interdictor. It could be done, but it would only likely get results if we already had a good idea of their position. We're only likely to get one shot, per interdictor anyway.'
Hm. Square one and a half. What were the limiting factors on his position- how low could he go and how quietly could he move? Ion engines firing down there in that might be hard to pick up, the magnetic signature would be barely noticeable. The stream of near lightpspeed particles emitted would quickly smash off the soupy air, leaving a trail but one that would quickly fade to background.
The gravitic background, moons and tidal currents of gas, was turbulent enough that repulsor use would be more challenging and power hungry for a warship, difficult verging on impossible for a lesser vessel. He was detectable- at short range. How far down towards the metallic- hydrogen and carbon core of the planet could he go?
The limiting factor was probably the pressure curtain across the main docking bay. Everything else could seal but that, and while he probably had it uprated and it was designed to take a fair amount of abuse anyway- had to be rated to take the entire air contents of the bay under compensator failure- it was still lower than an armoured hull.
A bayless design- like the Tector class Ineffable- could run deeper, and manoeuvre more radically. At last an asymmetry in their favour.
The only purpose in my still being here is the stories and the people who come to read them. About all else, I no longer care.
Show, don't tell. I just don't think there has been a lot of palpable threat built up with the potential antagonists. I'm not walking back at all on the technical and logistical side of it - too many toys. Just my opinion. Take it or leave it, it's ultimately your story.
I think the problem is that we're in a period where ECR is, more or less, stuck writing up the order of battle and operational plans of the enemy, rather than having shoot-em-up action and rolling sheets of turbolaser green.
Now we have an obvious example of where drama might happen- Ineffable and Black Prince hunting each other through the lower atmosphere of a Jovian, vaguely reminding me of Kirk and Khan in the Mutara Nebula.
Hull 721 has always, to me, had a two-pronged literary purpose. One side of it is to serve as the action-filled adventures of Lennart and crew. The other is to serve as a way to comment on the technical possibilities of Star Wars, if we posit teraton-range energies and widespread droid intelligence and all of that- what are the limits of the possible, what can and cannot be done, how might these weapons and technologies be used by sensible people to achieve sensible goals?
The trick is to avoid turning the 'technical commentary' side of the story into pure exposition, which has been a challenge in Plot Arc the Second, because it's less of a straightforward beat-em-up than Plot Arc the First or Squelch of Empires.[/i]
Update, and politics. Some of what is happening behind the scenes in the second part.
It was not enough merely to drift and wait. The enemy- well, the opposition anyway, had limited time to work with; their chief objective was to get it done, get it over with, avoid scandal. Tactical time was neutral, operationally time worked for the Palpatinians, but politically, time was on the renegades' side. Time for questions to be asked, blunders to be made, tyranny to creak and sag.
Swiftsure might be making one now. The one thing I can be reasonably certain Olghaan won't do, Lennart thought, is play it simple. Straight, yes- certainly in the details, but not simple. Might go as far as a triple bluff. It looks as if that Tector, Ineffable, is going to come in after us; won't be hiding in the mists though, he's running main power, a detectable tachyonic trace that we can at least cue the rest of the sensors in from.
When it is the fly which says to the spider that it is coming into the trap, it would do for the spider to be somewhat suspicious. They must be aware that they're detectable, and will either start running a fusion burn soon or- we can be sure that the one thing he hasn't done is send another unsupported ship into harm's way, especially if it actually looks as if he has.
Could be a threshold game; that thing is there to draw a reaction from us- he knows I can't afford to pass up the chance to take a detached unit of his squadron; so how does he mean to protect the piece he's just advanced? He can't afford not to, not if he intends to keep the faith of the rest of the squadron.
He can't be relying just on my sense of tactical paranoia for protection, that's not enough- what does he think I'm doing down here, anyway? Has he done a deep enough analysis of us, of me, to realise that I've played to my weaknesses in coming here- and why? He won't have had a chance to do more than go through the general messages to spacers won't have the miners' inside data- which was mostly shredded by the storm commandos anyway.
Come to think of it I'd be happier with another exit route, but it will, a least, be a colourful explosion, although not necessarily in the visual spectrum this time. What do we have here? Ah.
'Shandon, is that what I think it is? At least one- Falcata- shutting down main power and setting up a fusion burn, coming down on emission control to cover Ineffable?'
'Right. We have the heavy armoured, heavily shielded one coming down visibly, spewing stray tachyons from her main reactor, trying to attract our attention because she can probably survive the first contact long enough to report back anyway, considering how much this soup is likely to inhibit weapons fire. Falcata's continuous beams might be very effective in this if they can burn through.'
'Not if we keep moving, keep forcing them to dig fresh holes in the soup.' Lennart said. 'Either they haven't realised they can push out their particle shield envelope for external streamlining or they aren't willing to admit they can until contact. We left a fairly impressive turbulence pattern, which should be enough of a clue for them to be getting on with- I want to lead them into danger, not lose them. Do we need to drop more of a hint?'
'They're moving in a descending spiral search around the drop point- six thousand kilometres back and twenty- four hundred up.Good neutrino mask work from Falcata, we might not have spotted her without a prior contact. Limited active work, I think they are scanning for the trail.'
'That and the probe droids we could and should have left behind...' Lennart said, thinking; bollocks. They might be able to guess from the fact that we didn't that we are relying on other means, and how long a jump is there from there to figuring out what? Not an easy deduction but anything given away is still too much.
'Can we redeem that mistake, is there any possibility of swimming a group back there no, they'd have to spend too long below their crush depth. Damn. He probably has figured out we're not genuinely trying to shake the trail, so we should at least have left a false trail to follow. Hm.'
Rythanor made it worse by informing him he had compounded his error. 'I thought of that, but it wouldn't have worked, the probes couldn't communicate with us by any means that wouldn't give us away anyway.' Didn't go into the technicalities of subspace transcievers and carrier waves, which was a partial relief.
'I missed that, too? I am really not thinking enough moves ahead. We could track them by their subspace emissions, too- passively enough?'
'Not without enivronmental effects- it'll be patchy, incomplete, dependent on local resonances. Those we're mapping passively, but I think the miners were right; we're heading for one of the planet's weather factories. I'd be worried if I didn't know that was part of the plan.'
'Now I'm worried- you actually think there's a plan?' Lennart deadpanned. 'The goal is to extract maximum advantage from this phase of the operation, ideally kill his interdictors- the destroyers I'm not so worried about, we can take those in the usual way once we've set the scene for a running fight. Hm. Those local resonances- Ob, what are the chances of setting up a feedback loop with, say, Falcata's drives- digging a tar pit?'
'Not without spaciobatics that would take days to calculate, and gravity gravitates- we'd probably end up covered in tar ourselves, metaphorically speaking. With a gravitic warhead, something like a dry seismic, it might be worth trying, but we'd have to come a long way up to take a shot without the torpedo imploding.'
'The next thing we can sensibly do then is track and make ready to take their Interdictor cruisers. By the looks of it they're being sensible, staying low on the horizon not directly over the searchers- makes some sense, but we can't take shots based on predicted position anyway, that would be taking blindfire too far. Splitting up so there's at least one out of position for us to overrun on our way out? This could actually get to be fun. We're radiating in the tachyonic, of course, but fuzzy, indistinct.'
Rythanor had an idea. 'Depth. We're far enough down that we couldn't run on fusion, and they can work that out too.'
'We can create an expectation for them, bluff them into doing something predictable.' Brenn suggested. 'If they have any kind of trail to follow at all- we're running as silently as we can, but we should be more visible than that. Unless they're bluffing, pretending they don't see us. Considering what they should be capable of, that makes more sense.'
'They're trying to bluff us into moving by giving us what looks like an opportunity to sneak up on them? Cold blooded, and given what we've done already I would not appreciate being sent into their position. No, of course. We're relatively handicapped by this environment, they think.
We're beneath probe crush pressure, if we want to try to bluff them into surrender we'll have to communicate directly, give ourselves away. What would make him think we might be willing to do that after committing cold blooded sphericide?' Lennart asked the bridge team.
'Perhaps he has you down for a killer, not a murderer; or expects internal dissent. ' Brenn suggested.
'He may be right, even if it is only from me. This isn't a fight I particularly wanted to have, and we have to act with an eye to what comes next- it's distinctly possible that if we survive we might actually be taken seriously, have a chance to present our case. Provided we pay a blood price first, and it wouldn't do any good at all to tell Olghaan that, fratricide as a means of resolving differences of opinion makes perfect sense in the Empire he lives in, and I've always tried to avoid.
We have good prospects of being able to fight our way out of this- won't be easy, and let's face it we're already committed more out of sheer bloody instinct than anything else, but then what? Piracy, in a ship with an operating budget in the billions? The kriffing Alliance, who want to drag us back to square one to go through all of this bloody over again? Traditionalists, but do any of the old traditional names and numbers have any ability to change the course of events?
The New Order Party- you only have to look at the party almanac to realise what a puppet show it is, always was. Palpatine enjoys gladiatorial games- among politicians, at least, and among its' other functions as the operant arm of dictatorship, the new order party is the arena he built for his own amusement. There'll be no palace coups, not from that direction.
The Legitimists were always basically living in fairyland, and I'm aware how close my position has become to theirs- so much for all the public politics, all that matters really is the true behind the scenes faction fighting among the devotees of the dark side. One faction of which is currently trying to get us killed, and unfortunately the other faction couldn't really care less.
We might manage to fight our way out of this and stay alive, but as to making a difference, I have no kriffing idea. We're down here for time to think as much as anything else- figure out where the stang we go from here.'
On the flag bridge of the Executor, there was an incoming transmission- holonet, very high priority, but sent from a ship whose header and beacon identified her as HJ74DN32- the four pair string of a fleet auxilliary; a heavy repair ship in fact. Shouldn't have been able to access those channels at all. It became a little clearer when the personal originator decoded as Rear- Admiral Thrawn.
Ozzel was about to see to it when the dark presence interrupted him. Black confronted blue, then, over the holonet. Thrawn had minimal time for suavity- was forced to come as straight out with it as he could, which was not very. 'One of the ships attached to Death Squadron is of intelligence interest to a current operation I am running, and is being attacked as a renegade as we speak. I request-'
'That I save you from your mistakes and redeem your errors?' Vader said, with the liquid helium contempt for the very concept of redemption to be expected of the sith apprentice. He knew. Hardly necessary to look to the force, even, to discover what was going on- it was the one and only thing being trapped in the suit was a positive for. Inscrutability. Many were the plans and conspiracies that swirled around Imperial centre, and Vader made it a point never to worry about the ones he knew about.
They were amateurish- by Sith standards- and relatively easily spotted for the most part; the dismissal of the senate had not been a complete surprise, not to the well connected, and the jockeying for position in the new order that was ostensibly to replace it had been epic, and even for the Dark Lord almost entertaining.
Most of these bids for power declared themselves- his master was a greater seer and withinlooker than he, things would not have turned out as they did otherwise, but the bleak, burnt cynicism of a self- sacrificed soul had one advantage; it burnt off delusions. Believe in all beings as devious, treacherous, deceitful and false and at the very least, you will perceive clearly what deceit, falseness and hypocrisy there is to be had. Genuine goodness could still surprise him, but there was so very little of that to be found.
Certainly none of it in Rear- Admiral Thrawn. Palpatine approved of the Chiss (whose race and kind were not a secret to those who remembered the promising Separatist commander Sev'rance Tann, who had unfortunately been too sincere in her separatism to permit much life to), and he would probably go far- because he too was a man of great perception and no warm, humanitarian illusions.
Was still, however, lacking in the ruthless clarity to see that his vision was Newtonian; good enough descriptions for the everyday, gave the same answers as more accurate measure under normal conditions, but inadequate at the extremes of character, politics, power- at this level, certainly.
He may learn, given time. Herewith the first lesson; that the rules of the game change according to the players. Lesson zero- it's not a game- if he hadn't learned that by now he never would. 'Given that they have already declined to do your bidding, what end would you expect to serve by this?'
Thrawn was not fool enough to trade pious platitudes with the Dark Lord. In fact, Vader thought, he is not fool enough, period; a being less dureum- sure of their own wisdom would be wiser, more capable of learning from and avoiding reliving their mistakes. The death of the Jedi Order was historic proof of that, (and if only Anakin Skywalker had the sense to realise he was not very wise, he could have managed his ascent to the dark on something like his own terms- too late for him, but there were seeds of intellect in there worth passing on to his son.)
From the look of things, it would be Thrawn's fatal flaw, sooner or later. Probably an inevitable occupational disease of the Sith; increasingly, as the endgame aproaches, it is also Palpatine's- which is why it is possible to say that the endgame approaches. There is a little time while the navigation computers run; what will the overpromoted one use for his second argument?
So what, you obsolescent thug, is your agenda? Thrawn speculated of the image in the holotank. Dangerously late to bother to ask the question, because he had seemed so utterly preoccupied with the rebels- but wait. Vader seldom took part in the conspiracies of Coruscant, except for the occasional execution of the losers. That did not necessarily mean that he was ignorant of them, or innocent. Was he involved?
He had the subtlety of a charging rancor, an outsider in all the political games, a brooding, friendless, antisocial Force-obsessed monomaniac. It would be utterly false to his nature to be involved. Why was he so unconcerned about a threat to the Emperor and by extension the Empire? Or was it simply internal politics at work- he intended to take the credit, for this as well as the damage he intended to do to the Alliance? Ah, that might be how it was necessary to play this.
'He has evidence that could prove invaluable for the safeguarding of the Empire, which will be lost if the hunting pack succeed. You have the assets to intervene.' Not quite mentioning that the data dump Black Prince had sent just before the fight had kicked off had been so much nested sabotageware they were still in the infection phase; the crew of the tender had to be physically intimidated into getting to work, instead of simply shooting the computers and starting again.
The fact that he was calling from a fleet tender gave that away to the Dark Lord anyway. The jump to Hoth was ready- enough of this. 'Then you will attempt to persuade him to send you the data, on the grounds that you may be able to save him from me? We are on the trail of the Alliance- I have no more time for your side show.' Broke the connection.
That should set things up efficiently, Vader thought. Hethrir's conspirators will now believe that I am sufficiently obsessive about the rebels to overlook them, and they can now safely pursue and eliminate the Emperor's investigator. By doing so, they are doing my will and my bidding, without a word being said.
They are amusing and distracting Palpatine, distracting him from the one being in the universe who truly can destroy him- my son.
The only purpose in my still being here is the stories and the people who come to read them. About all else, I no longer care.
I like how this is now made to fit in with Vader's established plan to turn his son, recruit him, and overthrow Palpatine.
Thrawn will presumably have to respond by moving to protect himself against the conspiracy, but as far as I can tell this means Black Prince is on her own for the moment.
Anyway, good updates.
Could a re-enforced Tie-bomber missile/bomb storage unit be used as part of a floating mine?
Sure, it would need repulsors and thus somekinda reactor, in order not to sink to much, but that would also give it the power to use shields and off course, the sensors of a probedroid.
Why am I expecting a certain Tector to find itself being boarded from below, while it's on it's max crush deept?
Which then shows them were the target is, the one place they can't fire in that place, below.
Really, you think Lennart & Mirrannon won't have upgraded the hangerbays their armor by adding a few sliding plates made of hull armor or something similiar?
The technical bit first; for none of this is there actually time. It was a spur of the moment plan to dive deep into a superjovian's atmosphere- they're hovering not far off the 'hydrosphere', the metallic hydrogen layer, and the plan (insofar as there is one) is to use the planet's weather to work for them. Actually I didn't know this to begin with, but in a real gas giant the layer of extremely compressed hydrogen just above the metallisation(?) point is predicted to be translucent. Bugger. Oh well, prothium and tibanna gas contamination.
The technology can do it, but the tempo of the battle forbids. Apart from that they don't have any TIE bombers left, there was a clearout- some of the launchers and fire control gear got scavenged and included in the point defence grid, but most of it is gone, and the fighters are not down there exactly because they cannot (conveniently, anyway) operate at that depth.
A solid bay door for an Imprial class? No good reason why not- except I hadn't actually specified it, which goes to show you can't think of everything- wonderwhat the reason behind the original open bay was, anyway? Damage and malfunction to the hangar doors of th Venator class, a known weak point?
Well, I can see Lennart only closing any bay-doors when going into a hairy situation, like he is in now.
Besides, I thought part of the reason for the movement of the Tie berths was because a new reactor and fuel tank combo???
Would want some armor on-top of those bays when in a battle, since early batch ISD´s had the smaller bay connected to the bigger bay, if I remember things right.
Now what would happen if that reactor & fuel combo is hit?
One plate (moving either forwards or backwards), two that slide together or heavy duty blast doors, it are all options that could have been taken.
As long as they have made sure that Anikin´s(?) first kill (Episode One) can´t happen to them, because that would be just.......
If this were an ordinary giant, like a billion others, it would have been useful but not essential. A fleet tanker could use one of her reactor globes in induction-secondary mode, suck hydrogen from the giant to sustain a fusion burn and run the supraluminal curves in reverse, trap tachyons, infuse the energy of the fast-thermonuclear reaction into them and squirt them back into the fuel torii; wilderness recharging.
Rumour had it that at least one attempt to persuade a streamlined, hardened warship reactor to do the same had ended in disaster- or possibly in fatal confusion as to what the curved- space `valves` were supposed to be doing, which had resulted in one of the fuel loops rupturing and flooding a thousand seconds' worth of fuel into the reactor at once.
It was still a fair few orders of magnitude short of an internal supernova, but it was still too much- a dreadnaught's power system might be able to contain a shock of that magnitude long enough to scram cleanly, but Battle Lance's hadn't. Most warships sacrificed options like that for reliable simplicity (insofar as the term applied at these levels of energy and complexity)- for good reason, if the experiment was anything to go by.
There was a half way house though- in this lightning- strewn magnetic hell, a straightforward fusion burn in the style of the much smaller powerplants in common freighter use would go relatively unnoticed. A ship's main reactor might not be safe trying to self recharge, but it could jury rig a fusion vessel well enough to burn a few gigatons' worth of power a second-
enough for non combat manoeuvre and running shields even in this dense, turbulent soup far too hot for mere fire. No tachyonic emissions, which would shine through clear and undisturbed by what lay below the light barrier. Stealth, of a sort.
Black Prince was too deep and running too hot for that- manoeuvring at a small fraction of her full power, which gave off enough of a trail of superfast, de- energised tachyons that Falcata and Ineffable should be able to pick up on, that should lead them to the general area- not very precisely. They were coming in quiet, hoping to sneak up on the renegade destroyer, identify and engage before she could pick up on them.
Why Swiftsure had let them, ordered them, to do this was passing worrisome. Olghaan knew that Black Prince was an unofficial, scavenged ELINT conversion; his ship had the proper bits- but had been hard used enough to spoil their efficiency just a little. Sensor/survey gear fitted best on ships without much wear and damage, without odd scars that created unwanted, asymmetric self noise. He knew that they had that edge- so why was he willing to expose his cohorts to it?
Avoid Black Prince's sensor/ECM edge in open combat, by fighting in a plasma sewer? Some edge, against five ships of similar class. Maybe they could win, but would be chancy and strenuous enough to make it worth evening the odds a little first.
Was he doing it for political pressure reasons- simply because he couldn't afford to wait long enough for Lennart to do something stupid, for fear that something political would happen first?
Most of his frigates could generate enough power to hold shield integrity against conditions even down here; why was he not hazarding them to scout- the destroyers were his killing pieces, using them to find the enemy gave a fatally high chance of Black Prince getting the first shot off.
Brenn had the idea too. ' Skipper- this pattern they seem to be on, I think they're trying to spook us, not to find us.'
Lennart nodded. 'He knows we have better sensor capability than they do, but not yet how much better. He wants us to catch a smell of them at long range, for this anyway, and- then what? Move to engage?
Hm. Sensor range is actually more than gun effective range, a salvo into this- too like a fluid to be called atmosphere really- would produce instant greenout with most weapons, most ships- we might be able to cope with it, as would Falcata, but many on one ought to work really well. We've accepted that disadvantage because I have a trick in mind that I think you've figured out, but why has he only sent two ships, and the wrong two at that?'
Wathavrah took a guess at the answer, noticing Brenn bent over a weather map. 'Not to win. Their chance is real, but not enough to make this a good risk. If they're not here to outshoot us, they're here to make us think they're at hazard, invite us to try for them, at which point they...'
'Triple bluff.' Brenn suggested. 'Their arses really are hanging out in the breeze, their defence is the fact that he thinks we wouldn't be gullible enough to assume he actually was being that dumb?
They really are the bait we're expected to snap on- we'd ignore a corvette and kill a frigate too quickly for it to report; they should survive long enough to evade, be tricky enough targets to make us commit- and then, interdictors.'
'He doesn't know what the weather systems down here might do- so that makes sense, he doesn't know how this world is going to react to being kicked.' Lennart said, then- knowing his own mind but wanting to sound his team's- asked 'Do we then play for kills, or tangle them for time and strike at Swiftsure directly, en passat? Opinions?'
'Most people in that position,' Olghaan was thinking out loud to his executive officer, 'are fools; they are in that position precisely because they have done something foolish. Tactically speaking our opponent is proving himself to be anything but.
He's scented the bait, and now he's moving slowly because he wants to feel out the limits of the trap. He's run for his lair, we've gone in after him, he has to move- and it has to be other than what he thinks our plan is.
The drones that coordinated that damned ramship must have told him what we have; he knows there are interdictors, is he unconventional enough to suspect we'd be ready to pull the planet's atmosphere to bits to get at him? What would the obvious countermove be?'
Swiftsure's executive officer thought about it for a moment.'Begin the action- start stalking Ineffable and Falcata- but once the distortions start to build, launch a full spread of decoys, make the situation more random with her own tractors and what active jamming they can call up, try to add to and escape in the confusion. That might be when we see their fighter wing make an appearance.'
'So we're not going to know if he has or if he hasn't until we see the way he reacts.' A facet of the larger problem came back to call for attention. 'He was aware of our approach; the ambush was proof of that. He could have gone anywhere, including running for deep space. In there hovering off the core of a narrowly failed star is where he chose to go-'
'Kriffit- hovering off the core of a near brown dwarf, skipper? That's-'
'Squadron, interdictors- now. Negative set, lighten it. Other units break orbit, fighters scatter.' No need to order shields up, all were already. If the three remaining interdictors understood and acted quickly enough to drop their gravity wells on the planet set to repulse rather than attract, they could stop that madman creating a small nova; lighten the world, rarefy, reduce density- stop the jovequake and fusion burn they had just realised Lennart had in mind. 'Ineffable, Falcata- get out, get out, get out.'
On Black Prince, they detected the gravity waves, destructively interfering with the planet's own and allowing other forces to become dominant. They had been planning a planetquake, a storm- not an attempt at stellar evolution. Which was actually a missed trick, Lennart realised.
'He's trying to cut and run, they think we're going for fusion? Mad. We're not monolith shaped, for a start. Drop the pattern- deflectors double aft- fighters fifty seconds then in- torps, Ineffable, soon as we clear crush- helm, ride the shockwave up, as we set for.'
It wasn't going to be hard. This world burbled maniacally beneath them, hot and wild and turbulent; would take little to get a spasm out of, a planetquake that would set the liquid layer of the metallic hydrogen splashing and sloshing, producing surges of hypervelocity, almost solid wind and electromagnetic flux- concussion missiles and ion cannon weren't even in the running. A lighter ship- or a large ship far down in the maelstrom with her shields breached- could easily be paralysed and crushed.
A large ship caught in the birth of a star would not survive the experience. Lennart's intention had been a storm, not a stellar ignition; Olghaan had thought further beyond the limits of the possible than he had, for once. He was learning, a bad sign. It was too late to catch the enemy in the flow, but not too late for the magnetic chaos to cover their own escape.
Maybe, but on the other hand, it makes him more paranoid then needed.
Which means that certain by the book moves are more likely to slip true, afteral, that has to be a decoy, he's way to sneaky to pull text-book move out of his coat.
So what is he planning???
Basicaly he might forget to look at what is in his face, since he would be fearing the shadows.
It was the first time Alrika had actually met the rear admiral who had been responsible for her capture and captivity. She knew perfectly well who he was, there couldn't be that many blue skinned rear admirals around the place. Unless he had a clone- but that was just daft.
She had very little good will towards him; stone faced as he was, expression in those red eyes almost impossible to read, what he wanted to do with her was impossible to tell. Even after he told her, she still wouldn't know.
She had been put to the question, of course, but her interrogation had been conducted almost gently, in slow motion; as if none of it was particularly time critical. Under truth drugs, or at least the complicated disinhibitors that went popularly by such a term, she had of course talked. Couldn't not have.
'Do you really think you needed to announce to me in person that I was going to be executed?' May as well go down snarking, for all the good it was likely to do.
'Your confidence in your own demise may be misplaced; it is not entirely inevitable. Your brother has tried to have us all killed rather sooner than that, and it is possible that intelligent action on your part may be able to purchase your life.' Thrawn said, remembering the interrogation recordings, aiming his pitch for someone who was only almost as intelligent as she thought she was. She would reason a fair amount of it out anyway, and he could not afford to have her reason impaired for this- unfortunately.
'You had a plan to use me against him- why you took your time sweating me. How much of that have you put to use- have you even tried yet to destroy the corellian underground? How much of that, too, were you intending to use as a lever over him?'
Thrawn pretended exasperation. She was good but not quite good enough, picked up on the exasperation but not the pretence. He thought. 'I appear to have underestimated the extent to which he chooses to misunderstand how things work; over- rated his willingness to function as a rational actor. I set traps for him, and acquired levers, that should have been enough to persuade him to do what in the last analysis would only have been of benefit.'
'So, as you say, he reacted by trying to have you killed. ' She said. On the face if it it was believable enough- but he was a trickster, this one, a sober sided stone faced trickster, which made it all the harder to see his devious moves coming.
'Present tense. Is trying. There are certain things- you do not need to know- that he was in a position to discover for me. Certain things were held before him as incentives to that happy conclusion- including your freedom if he should have the sense to ask for it. He opted to react like a maddened animal rather than a rational being.' Which was no surprise to her at all.
There was a deep layer of resentment under there that had come out in interrogation; she considered her brother had destroyed her life. Wide, wide open, as long as it was not overplayed. She also still felt that she was in his shadow; something that a child could exploit.
That her brother would do something insane was no surprise at all to Alrika, but at least some of her logical faculties were functioning. 'You went outside proper- you didn't behave like a good fascist should. Outside proper channels; secret, illegitimate personal deals- he decided you were too unpredictable to trust, didn't he? How is he trying to kill you, and what in space do you expect me to do about it?'
Which of the plans he had would be activated depended on exactly how she reacted. There were several, of increasing- what a shame that drasticness was such an abomination of a neologism. Radicality? Yes.
'You must know something of spaceships, yes? Have you noticed that we are on emergency power? That your interrogation was halted because none of the recording machines, including the droids, have functioning brains?'
In fact, he had it all down anyway, but let her think otherwise. Let her think there was a chance. He could see the gears in her head turning. 'I'm not a computer engineer; I'm a manager. I could do a better job than the people you have organising whatever kind of recovery program you have, but you wouldn't trust me to do it and your people wouldn't take my instructions.'
'So the only thing that I could possibly need you to do for me that I could not do better for myself is...' he left her to fill in the blank.
Which, naturally, she chose to do anything but. 'I'd need more proof of your intentions if you want to be helped to defect.'
Looking stern and severe was his default state; that got him, she realised, dropped him back to neutral. Or at least appeared to- he must have been expecting something of the sort, but why did he seem to react so badly to it?
Or was he expecting something of the sort, an inevitable move, a necessary gambit- on the way to what? He was not a rebel, not in his soul or anywhere that could be conveniently reached by the currents of expediency.
So- her head was full of fuzz; never been able to reel something like that off if it hadn't been a prepared response- what did he want, what could she do for him that he could not do for himself? .
'I could predict what my brother's going to do next, but that's not going to help until you get out of the state you're in now. '
Time to do a little more to win her trust. 'The cover story I had intended to employ, and believed he would have the sense to realize was a cover story, is that I am holding you hostage for his behaviour.
Our already poor working relationship would appear to deteriorate even further, meaning the ultramontanes we were both on the trail of, their movement is safe. In fact has a moment gifted to them that they can use to try to turn the situation.
Once you blundered into my hands it was the most reasonable option, but your brother managed an order of reflection less than I had believed he would. He did not, could not believe that I was simply playing the game of appearances.'
'You had me interrogated.'Alrika said indignantly.
'It would have looked extremely odd if I had not. Very little of what you gave us was completely unsuspected, but much had not yet been proven- and my time for reacting to it is strictly limited because of following up your brother's moves.'
'That would be supposed to be my incentive, then? Keep you so busy dealing with this you don't have time to hunt and kill my friends?'
'Consider that a fringe benefit of dealing with the problem your brother left to me.' the rear- admiral told her. In fact that aspect of the operation had long since been set in motion. 'More importantly- for the dedicated rebel- this business offers excellent opportunities for chaos among the highest echelons of the Empire.'
Most of whom are unworthy of their high positions, and any fratricide an up and coming being can encourage them to can only make room for more skilled operators; that being the payoff.
'Which in itself makes it all far too good to be true.' she said.
I must have a word with the interrogations section, the drugs they use these days wear off far too quickly, the alien rear- admiral thought. 'Then you are going to thoroughly dislike the part where it suits my tactical purposes that you escape.'
'What?'
'How else can you affect the situation? You are a senior rebel- it is moderately credible that you should be able to do so. I could give your molecules their independence but I doubt you're willing to go quite that far on a point of principle.'
'So why tell me? You could just have left the cell door open. Or a computer screwup-'
'I hauled you up here to gloat over you and possibly observe your subjection to, say, agonizing death type three; you spat in my face, I suffered a very peculiar xenoallergenic- hallucinogenic reaction to the breakdown products of the drugs still in your system that you exploited to escape, stealing the keys of my personal yacht.' he threw a set of ship's keys- circuit boards- to her. He wasn't very fond of it anyway, and it was the only thing still flyable.
'No, I'm not doing it. Not until you tell me why, and why you want me to have half the story.' she said, and it was an effort not to take them and run.
'Whoever chases after you will have to make up their own other half of the story to fill in the blank. Feel free to actually escape, it is not as if there will be much help waiting for you or much alliance left to rejoin, they are currently fleeing from Lord Vader.'
'I still don't believe a word of it. You're going to have me, what is it, shot trying to escape?'
'As if I need to worry about things like public relations and pretexts. If the wrong people find you they may certainly have you shot, but then it's up to you to avoid that, is it not?'
'You wouldn't be giving me even the vaguest chance if I could actually get free.' the last dying flare of skepticism.
'You are of very little use to me dead- in that state you would represent an .00004% saving in the running operations budget. However, a much more substantial reduction in annoyance; you could talk yourself into the incinerator if you felt the need.
Wringing you dry and letting you wander off into the outer darkness will, chiefly, force your brother to confront yet again, and in full view of his crew, how little his family mean to him. I don't expect he'll do anything to change that. Now go.'
Veren Porphyr V;
Both ships sent to hunt them were breaking for orbit themselves; this could be good. Ineffable, the Tector class heavy destroyer, was closer- and Lennart had another reason for trying for that ship en passant. Fighters made high speed in atmosphere, when they needed to, through streamlining more than brute force- streamlining accomplished by shaping the particle shields into a suitable aerodynamic form.
They could do it purely on raw thrust, but that tended to leave walls and waves of torn air behind them, and dump huge amounts of energy into the atmosphere that usually coalesced into storms. Lennart had better things to do with his ship's energy and other ways of starting a cyclone, they were manoeuvring under ion power and shield shape.
Falcata was a fighter bearing ship, they should think of that under sufficient stress- and from the tachyon surge in their main reactor, they had and were rigging for it. Ineffable might just eff around and cost herself crucial seconds that could be put to good use by the renegade destroyer hunting them, before they clued and defaulted to plan B. At the moment, they were moving on raw ion thrust, without field streamlining, tearing holes in the air behind them.
Their sensors were designed to function under shield flare, interlocked with the defensive energy walls to eliminate artifactual effects, avoid whiteout. Subspace and tachyonics should function without difficulty. If they were to be successfully predated on, the fault would have to lie in her crew.
Sneaking up on another warship was a fine thing to plan, but it depended on the people being approached- the potential victims- being exceptionally complacent and stupid. Lazy sensor designers, who only think in terms of what is normally feasible, the typical target instead of what could be done, communication beacons and nav transponders instead of physics;
lazy writers of official specifications, for whom the difference between a demanding target to aim for and a should be good enough most of the time was profit; lazy, stupid, corrupt, incompetent service- side bureaucrats, who believed the fighting services existed only for them to suck the blood of;
There were many reasons why a ship's sensors might not be as good as they could be, and most of them had to do with fools somewhere in the system. The Tector class destroyer Ineffable had suffered from many of them, but had also a crew who had been shot at often enough to start thinking of solutions to their problems.
They were also, thereby, a crew that knew the system had problems. Was there an opportunity there? Lennart decided that there was, that the difficulty of approach was worth it.
'I'm going to try and make a convert, here- that makes it harder for you, I want to take the shot then break contact.' He added to Brenn. 'Ob, I'll want one heavy- a flak burst just off the target's bow, make them fly through the fireball. Then await the moment.
Shandon, can you deliver a reduced version of the virus packet- knock out their weapons and hyper? On top of the actual evidence. And take out their long range comms, too.'
'Not unless we had it already prearranged- which we actually do. Option 443.' He added to his team, in the pit behind him.
'Good thinking, keep it up we're going to need all the form we can get.' Lots of other things he could have said- keep it up, you'll soon be back on form- but he was still fragile, after his vamping by Lystra Drayneen. Possibly too fragile for the normal backchat and banter which, as unmilitary as it is, Lennart thought, serves the vital function of keeping me sane. Working through the problem looks like the only way- all there's time for, anyway. 'Ob, diversionary fire.'
That meant mainly with the gravitics, prodding the planet and stirring it's storms, starting the extreme weather he had expected and intended to use as a battleground.
They're starting to scatter up there, he thought, in a way that indicates they think we are actually going to go much further- is this simply a panic reaction, how well worked out is their move- if they are selling us a dummy, they're leaving their forward force hopelessly exposed to do it.
They went too far earlier, offered us a bait that we really could have bitten off, realised it a little too late, and Olghaan will be kicking himself because he knows we've caught him in the middle of a false move- enough to make another? Has making a mistake rattled him into following it with another mistake? And how soon is he going to recover from it?
Swiftsure's bridge was a scene of controlled, disciplined tension, as usual. Olghaan's command style was more autocratic than Lennart's, debate and consult and reason happened before the action, during combat there simply was not time. Nothing killed a ship faster than command indecision.
Which made it hard for any of them to tell him that they had got it wrong. Not that he hadn't realised it himself. It is remotely physically possible, he was thinking, but how morally likely is it that he would self immolate in that fashion? He must have a way out.
If our interdictors are busy disrupting the planet's gravity well, it may take them a little time to reset- and even if they are fast enough, we could not afford to interdict anything while trying to flee a small nova.
This is his strategic escape, his method for deep space. Is this- was it always meant to be- a temporary station on a running fight, a position to be used and moved on from?Draw blood, run us ragged, and move to the next set piece?
We engaged with it- but how did he have time to plan it? He can't have been improvising- we can put together complex operations on short notice, like this one, by stitching together pieces and moves from existing plans.
What existing plan could there be for this? This is hardly the moment for library searching to find it. If he really is completely making it up as he went along, then he is a far more dangerous opponent than we have been led to believe.
It can't be done like that though, can it? I have basically fed him two destroyers, valuable warships, with invitations to defeat them in detail- supposed to be a holding force to pin him while the rest of the battle group moved to engage, looking at the handling of events their actual demise was all too likely.
It would take a little time for the planet to go, catch fusion fire- the threat had to be honoured though. Should have resorted to recon by fire, even without the torpedoes for sounding, could anything be done profitably now?
Would fire disrupt his plans art all- how did he actually plan to escape? Ah, of course, ride the column. Set the blast off, then use it as auxilliary propulsion, ride the blast of gravity- driven fusing hydrogen. Could be done- if he had that much faith in a ship not properly shaken down.
Which he must have, or he would never have taken it into the maelstrom in the first place- but again, how desperate was he? Heavy modifications and most if them untried, crew who had no business being fit for action, or anything less than a long holiday;
there was obviously an extent to which he wasn't bluffing- it was usually safe to assume (if it was ever, ever safe to assume anything) that most rebel operations were balloons, thin crusts of fire and force blown out by huge infusions of bravado, risk taking and deception- but however rebellious Black Prince's captain may at present be, he was not a rebel. He was a product of the old school.
Obviously the past isn't all it was cracked up to be- but how do I beat him at a game he's changing the rules to as he goes along? Not , in fact, by trying to beat him at his own game- that manifestly isn't working. The other problem is that my game has too many specific variants and gambits that he is falling through the cracks of.
How t stop him, or whether to let him run? That option did have an appeal to it- dispersing to intercept was clearly out. Don't give him a chance at a single ship engagement, but concentrating to meet him opens up lines of escape, that because of the gravitic disruptions to the planet I have to leave unguarded.
Is it worth pressing harder here, or withdraw, escape his trap without further loss and drive him on to his next prepared trap? No. I think I see it. 'Main force units to north polar holding point- ineffable and falcata to rejoin there. Pursuit force to south polar holding point.'
Creating an asymmetry for him to exploit, true, but a predictable one. One I know he is likely to take advantage of, and can quickly move against. 'Interdictors revert to normal ops mode, blanket the world, centrepoint procedure.'
He would try to smash through the lighter forces, the frigates and corvettes at the south pole, and the Interdictor that was with them; use the gravitic shadow of the world to escape from the second with the main force, which they could move to meet.
A thought; how does he still have sensor capability? If he is using subspace relays to sensor drones- that we haven't found- or small craft in the outsystem, probably- if he was at all prepared he would leave them loose rather than taking them into a place they couldn't be launched from- then he's hiding the relays well. Does he have it? I think so.
When was he going to run out of energy? I need to get him to cede the initiative, and offering a false advantage is how you do that. Just because it failed once- spectacularly- is no reason not to do it again, the past is a poor predictor of the future.
Hm. Those do sound like famous last words. 'Lennart was an instructor at Raithal, on the naval faculty, wasn't he? Did anyone study under him?' Asking the bridge crew.
Not what they were expecting at all, their skills were necessary, always, but their opinions seldom. They knew the usual format too. Moment of hesitation, before one of the junior tracking officers admitted that he had. 'They didn't want us spending too much time with him in case, bad habits might rub off. He was enemy and unconventional.'
Meaning that he taught red- team doctrine, the tactics and likely expedients of the enemy and of the improvising, blank- slate amateur, but it still fitted all too well.
In response to his captain's glare, the tracking officer added 'We never knew what to expect next, he always played by the exercise ROE- but always managed to make it look that if it had been real he'd have handed somebody their head.'
Not that that actually helps at all, Olghaan thought. He's confident in his own skills and the support of his crew, too confident maybe? Are they never surprised by him, what's it like for them trying to translate his will into action? Judging by his navigator, he's had long enough to mould them in his own image.
How do I get him to start making mistakes? The biggest one possible, landing himself in a position where the fleet is out to get him, he's already made...
The biggest mistake I can make is to start believing in his legend. On the other hand, the situation forbids me to play the long game, to hunt him and push him and wear him down. It's taken too long and cost too much already. Well, we have only a little time before the planet blows, so there's that.
He can't be hoping to ride it out, can he? Stay within and fight within the nova? It won't actually be that energetic. No, the background energy wash would cost him a lot of electronic warfare subtlety. Keep the pack together from now on, but that means giving him a chance at the smaller ships, the ones we need to hunt him.
He'll take it, he has to- anything else would be ineffective. That means we know what he's going to do next, and the small ships can scatter out of his way- once he takes the bait- and the main force move on him. Are there any alternatives he could choose that don't involve giving us an easy shot? Only a head on clash.
Now why am I seeing option four being used?
I'm sure Lennart had a reason for that storm and the fighters are still out there.
Almost like a chess game between two master players.
Andras- in theory they will, and in a moment's more thinking about it Olghaan will realise he can make that work for him. There are disadvantages to being a close knit body too, and Lennart- the rest of the command crew too- are not going to regard the small craft as, in accordance with Imperial tactical theory, expendable.
Individuals yes, attrition is inevitable- the accident rate alone would see to that (and I need to put a few more of those in), but groups, annihilation, no. He's not particularly good at sacrifice plays.
If they get into difficulty their parent ship almost certainly will attempt a rescue, and those light ships include everything from medium frigate on down- that covers assault ships and light carriers. Granted it's only TIEs and conventional small craft, STRs and Sentinels and Lambdas, but it's still potentially a lot of them- enough to cause difficulties.
I've generally been in a sour mood the last couple of months which is why the slow writing rate, and I do tend to be a bit of a Scrooge, but hopefully the next one will be a bit sooner.
Vianca, yes, he did have a reason for that storm- he could operate in it better than they could and expected them to come in after him, into a place where he had the advantage. Olghaan (not having detailed planetography to hand) did the right thing for the wrong reasons, and withdrew from the offered fight in the depths of the maelstrom. In time? Maybe. My grumpy self thanks you for the vote of confidence.
Wow! It's great to see the update. I recently reread the whole fic after taking a break for a couple years. First fic I've ever bothered to reread. Very enjoyable on the second read. Glad to see you're still plugging away at the story. Please keep it up, this is the most original & good fanfic out there that I've read.
I usually wait until I have a new post ready to generous comments like that; thank you, and-
There were many reasons why this ought not to work and leave them having to flange it, and a couple why it might actually fail. One of them was the things they had missed along the way. 'The light freighters, we moved too fast- things were coming apart too fast- to do anything with them. We could use a few operations boats, minelayers, probes, droid kamikazes. Anyone back there we can trust to get it set up?'
'Doubt it- Raesene's crew may be rebellious, but in entirely the wrong way. I thought about it, skipper, but there was just no time. We can't even bluff with the threat of them because I don't think he knows they were ever there.' Brenn said.
Lennart nodded, looked back into the main operation holodisplay. The crystal bowel, it was sometimes mockingly called, in reference to the entrail gazing nonsense so many of the Empire's dark side nutters came out with; many captains didn't even bother- how they maintained awareness was up to them, but the answer was usually "badly".
Fair bet the ship they were chasing had a better grasp than that. Odd how upside down things were; the fundamental reason for having officers at all was political, so the actual killers or at least the competent ones would do what the system that paid them and owned the ships wanted to do. Officers were supposed to come from the political class, the amicae imperii; beneficiaries and therefore defenders of the system.
When the system started eating them, though, that was when they tended to have second thoughts. That was what he was counting on. In technical war, be it fighters, sea surface dreadnought battleships, spacecraft, the officer class have to be the front line, because they're the ones with the educational background to know how all the fancy techno- bits work.
Mutineers almost never actually start on the lower deck. One in twenty, something like that. Withdrawals of labour, really, grumbles and complaints and rolling shambles from time to time, overreactions and inflamed allergic reactions of the system, but not real mutiny as a historian would understand it, not rejection of the state of things.
Endless, infinite possibilities of misbehaviour, certainly, but trying to change the world, change the system? The officer class. Especially when things aren't going well and the system is getting them killed.
Neither really allowed for people who were for the system, volunteers, willing crusaders. CompForce were as close as the Empire was ever likely to get, and they were brainwashed thugs who made raw clonetroopers look as if they were overflowing with tactical acumen. Normally the set up assumed that everyone hated it and didn't want to be there. Not what you wanted in an astronaut.
Ineffable' s crew were better than baseline, but still nowhere near the limits of the possible. They could spot a large, fast- moving source of stray tachyons; absurdly fast in this environment. Subspace, neutrino and basic electromagnetic would still be giving little but hash, though, and they would be trying to resolve and interpret, use one spectrum to filter and orient another.
There was a flash, a flicker of energy across Black Prince's shields; active sensor beam, against more primitive craft easily capable of being used as a weapon in its' own right. Trying to burn through the clutter.
'Jamming full, deceptive- defensive, helm-' what makes sense? He doesn't want to turn towards, with us on his quarter certainly doesn't want to turn stern on; he'll dovetail and roll, open arc without getting so close that it instantly becomes a rolling fight.
'Vector, port 70, curve starboard and climb sine .755 twelve seconds, starboard 65.' Should sidestep the defensive move. Would also take them out of line of sight of the turbulent core of the planet. Deception jamming should hold their attention for a little longer than it would take them to realise it. It would be interesting if it didn't.
Ineffable had a touch on them, a flash of firm contact in this howling, flesh- ripping gale; should be aware that their target had disappeared into the noise and confusion, and should be deciding now whether to keep up the active sweep, that could burn through jamming but would also give their own position away. If they thought they had been found anyway, they should.
Doctrine- and really, there's no good reason to have humans on board at all if all tactics are going to be by the book- said go active, illuminate. Aggression, behave like the domineering masters of space they were supposed to be, and subtlety be damned.
Unfortunately, without a massive overwhelming advantage, doctrine frequently got those who obeyed it too closely killed. Olghaan had thrown the book out of the window almost straight away, but then one of the improvisations he had resorted to had proved very unlucky indeed.
What would Ineffable's command team do? How did their reporting system work- could their command team see instantly the results of sensor sweeps, or did it have to be reported from hand to hand? They would fight for survival if nothing else, if they realised they had to.
We have a shooting solution, Lennart thought, and we're taking a risk by not using it- not going in for the kill. Picked this one as target because the handling convinced me that they weren't entirely brain dead.
Keep an eye on them, watch how they react- they know they have the enemy, us, close aboard. No real idea of course or speed. An undirected active pulse isn't going to beat the jamming- they'll get a diffraction pattern as a result.
Good practise would be to do that then group down to about a dozen arrays and narrow- beam the probable loci, but they may not have time, they can tell from the strength of the jamming that we're in knife fight range. All they have time to do really is guess where we're going to be and react accordingly.
If they think I don't have a good sensor picture of them- mirror logic but plausible- they'll turn to open gun arcs on the contact and go active. If they suspect I've been stalking them, they'll accelerate away, invert- present to where I would have been approaching their blind spot- and sweep there.
And their main engines are firing. We're still below the relative line of their bow, the reason we went up, against the clearer background, instead of the stealth approach they might have been expecting; should present with a firing solution before they can orient.
If we choose to revert to plan A and try to kill them all, to carry on as we have begun. That may be the most likely option but we should try to do better than that.
'Hack launch, one shot,' their reaction, picture worth a thousand words, draw with the laser chopsticks in the situation tank the course he wanted Black Prince to follow.
Shorthand and jargon were wonderful but that would have taken more than the split seconds available to explain. Sideslip, accelerate, flip end for end, nose down, then turn to starboard and roll slightly to port- out of their gun arc and in their blind spot.
Zoom out for a moment- don't get caught down among the details- where was Falcata? Moving towards, but minutes away yet- an eternity in a knife fight.
If Ineffable's command crew were too sensible to listen to the ravings of a renegade, and that was how it had to be. Nothing as burdensome as a wounded man- 'Ob, can we mostly ionise that ship, leave her in just enough danger to need rescuing by Falcata?'
'Yes,' the good news first, 'would it not be better politics to zap the one we haven't been preaching at?' The gunnery officer did suggest.
He's got a point, Lennart had to admit. That means I need to figure out how to break contact, though. Ineffable was moving well for a ship that didn't have small craft, Falcata closing fast, and I'm missing something. 'How well are ions actually going to work in this?'
'Like a bad electroplasma; burn big holes in the atmosphere, self pinching but- ' Wathavrah said, and then his brain caught up. Running too fast to make connections; of course they could be used to evacuate tunnels in the atmosphere for turbolaser bolts to pass down, the turbulence would be terrible but it was already so why not?
'But we have capital ion cannon and they don't. Right, just the demonstration burst as planned on this one.'
Ineffable found herself looking into a green sky as the flak burst went off over her bow, then her computer systems started screaming. A well designed system would have made it impossible to spike their data systems with destructive programming, but nobody really knew how to put together a well designed system these days- at least not one that could still do its' primary job.
There were too many external datalinks, too many backups- most of the connections between control nodes were hard line primary, with wireless damage control connections designed to switch in when primary net was lost.
Those secondaries and backups were easily infiltrated. There were also too many official back doors, Imperial intelligence and security needing ways to keep their ships under control.
Too many layers of too- absolute authority that it was politically suicidal to question, and who must have their way. Too many cases of being bound to the limited imagination of a specifying authority with poor critical thinking. Too much communication at the expense of integrity. Too many legacy systems still in use in a universe of rapidly growing threat.
Ineffable' s crew were painfully aware of this. They could do what any reasonably competent crew could, be aware of the problems, secure and defend them as well as they could and compile a playbook of useful moves for active defence and counterattack when it came to that. Which actually put them ahead of at least ninety percent of the Starfleet and ninety-nine percent of the arms of the state.
Talent, training, currency. One out of three doesn't beat a full house. Black Prince's crew had taken their data systems apart and rebuilt them from the ground up. They had been playing with intrusion and counterattack software for thousands of hours. Ineffable had a playbook, but they had a library.
The Tector did try, but too many channels of attack, too much too soon, too many feint attacks that suddenly blossomed into the real thing. Induction shielding, designed to hold off fighter ion cannon, never mind abnormal- channel signals? Subtle data washed out by the world of howling noise around them?
Same solution- active sensor fit modulated to send data. Elegant sufficiency wanted in the message, not the medium.
When they could get a clear signal through by other, more normal means, they did of course, but that was primary, and unavoidable.
Once in, all those secret back doors were opened. Renegades, obviously, did not care about illicit access. In fact, they never really had.
In the world of data, advantage follows initiative. Datawar even more so. It was not what they were expecting at all, not that the couple of seconds that slowed the response down by really mattered.
One of the first things to be cut out and replaced with convincing graphics was the flow monitor that measured which systems and subsystems were talking to each other. The defences were reacting blind.
Did react, even threw a couple of worms back, but in the last analysis they were fortunate in their enemy's choice of target. Communication systems dissolved into cloudy gibberish and gunners threw off helmets, deafened by screeching feedback and temporarily blinded by epilepsy- inducing visuals. The message borne on the back of the intrusion pinged into a thousand inboxes, as well as the main nav display.
'Falcata has a target locus now, and they can see that Ineffable's still there- this course.' Down into the rising turbulence, S-turn then U- turn, remaining near the compromised Tector and in striking distance of anything that came to rescue her. The command team looked underwhelmed by it; too predictable? It was classic pirate tactics, and most of the starfleet saw what action they had against pirates.
The local lifeforms were scattering, not much surprise there. They have more sense than we do when it comes to multi teraton explosions. To be adapted to this at all they must channel fantastic quantities of energy, for a living thing anyway; are they electromagnetically based?
Creatures of the lower reaches, we weren't even thinking of their welfare when we decided to spark a storm. How intelligent?
We certainly haven't been making friends and influencing beings, anyway- they would have a perfect right to hate us. More so than the existing galactic rich and influential we're offending with our defiance? More right, but as little cause. They should survive, and good luck to them.
Ineffable was reacting to having her weapon systems control logic reduced to garbled nonsense by trying anyway and hoping for the best; they could track the departing renegade destroyer, the active sensor pulses she had been lashed with were a fair clue, but the turrets locked up and targeting displays went to snowy static before they could get rounds off.
KDY had built a small group of variant designs for the Clone Wars that had the appearance of black comedy about them, they looked like something out of the early steel age with rows of single cartridge fed light- medium guns on individual pivots, appearing akin to an ancient gundeck;
insofar as there was a point to it at all other than romanticism so misplaced among the stars it practically achieved surrealism, it was resistance against ionization and electronic intrusion. Isolatable from the ship's vulnerable central fire control and power distribution systems, they could continue to fight after the rest of the ship was rendered helpless- a last line of defence.
Ineffable didn't have any. There were a couple of shots fired, mostly wild- two light turbo laser hits from sheer luck. Down into the turmoil then, roiling and boiling out of control, lightning flickering and crackling around them as masses of charged atmosphere collided.
Was that too vulnerable? Olghaan would be expecting them to run for the surface. Falcata wouldn't, shouldn't have time for a proper sweep if she was going to be able to pull off any kind of rescue.
They were still far below crush depth for any recon drone or flight. What Falcata should do is come in on a two hundred and seventy degree sweep, active; the three quarters spiral around the damaged ship should give them a reasonable expectation of clear space for a sensor radius around. The worm should have corroded Ineffable's sensors to the point that she could not hold the lock and cue Falcata in.
Olghaan would be in contact with them anyway- subspace sidebands showed traffic, but he couldn't afford to abandon any of his ships, not now. When he starts overmanaging and giving useless orders we'll know he's rattled, but I doubt it'll be yet.
Has to know that Ineffable had dropped out of the com net, probably querying that. Falcata knows that we've shot up Ineffable, and it's not much further a surmise that we're doing the classic pirate thing of waiting to ambush the rescuer.
Which we are, except the plan is to hit Falcata and leave Ineffable to rescue her. They would manoeuvre back to back, cover each other's closed fire arcs- all well and good in theory but this time, unless they managed to clear the virus much faster than any reasonable expectation suggested, that still left a huge blind spot. Exploitable? Depended how sharp Falcata was.
Ineffable had been good enough to react and return fire, to launch intrusion worms of her own, by having security difficult enough to gnaw through that the viral package they had sent could not afford to be very contagious, and he had missed something in not ordering it so; their performance was still well ahead of most line destroyers. Bright enough to think critically about what they served, and why? Hopefully.
Helm was following the loose general course he had given them, weaving through the clouds with a stress map of the ship's shielding open before them, turning and weaving to spare the hot spots, easing their way through the turbulence. Even at this depth and pressure the air, denser than many an ocean- than many oceans piled on top one another- flowed fast and wild.
No, especially: this was one of the weather factories of the world, a soft spot, a hot spot- one that their own gravitic prodding was starting to get to erupt around them.
You could lose an HTL shot in this, the main engines' ion flares were merely stirring the mix, not showing forth. You could lose a ship, if her beacon and comms and sensors were out. Or mistake one ship for another.
'Do you know what this place needs?' Lennart asked, looking out at the torrent of clouds through the holographic overlay of the main display space.
Brenn glanced out the window, then asked 'Hawkmen?' Waited a moment then added 'We made no serious plans to use, or for that matter to avoid obliterating, the local life.
We're boiling up a huge slice of the lower atmosphere that is going to change things, masses of thick high temperature and pressure chemistry, and depending on how fragile the organisms in the way of it are, that could either feed them or fry them.'
'Considering what we encountered where, I think the large mobile forms of the depths, those mantas, are the most intelligent of the bunch.' Lennart said. 'Pity any poor hawkman who tried to take a footbow to one of those; they're bioluminescent in the ultraviolet as well. I think they burn off their parasites, but I do wonder what else might threaten things like that enough to make them need intelligence.
I don't think we should try to communicate with them though- except perhaps to warn them off. We have nothing to offer them that could be worth the risk we'd pose- we are posing- to them. We didn't really go into this worrying about them at all, did we?'
'They could take LTL fire without much hurt, but we're not going to be slinging around LTL shot. They're competent at using the clouds for cover, and if we're going to attribute intelligence to them at all, I think they're actually enjoying the turbulence. Some of them appear to be surfing.' Brenn said.
'Any possibility of Falcata's using them as cover, or attempting to? Can't hide the high end emissions, but might they expect to gain tactically by concealment- for that matter how would they get one of them to stand still long enough?' Lennart could tell there were possibilities associated with those things, if they could be communicated with. Not his to use, though.
Rythanor fielded that. 'They're fast and agile enough that it would be an operation in its' own right, if tachyonics and subspace are accurate one Falcata's crew know they don't have time and energy for.
We've got the camouflage, they're getting closer to us than they are to either of the white paint jobs; I think they're trying to circle us at the limits of their own sensor capability.'
'We have a ring of them around us, and Falcata won't be all that slow on the uptake. If the flock shadowing her has fallen back to the limit of her active sensor pulses and a group of them wanders into ping range, hm. I wonder if they're paying that much attention?'
Rythanor reported that, indeed, they must have been. 'The target has reverted to passive sensors, they've secured active sweeping. Securing to emission control and,' they can't have done something that daft, they have, why? Report now, interpret later. 'Shut down ion engines?'
Brenn winced, thinking how difficult it would be trying to navigate on repulsors in the midst of a two thousand kilometre an hour, thousand ton per square centimetre wind; thinking about how it could be done, and which way the wind was blowing.
Lennart came to his own conclusions. 'Clever, if desperate. They're committed to a covert, aerodynamic approach, they know we're waiting in ambush and think the extra time and stress of coming in the hard way would give them a worthwhile chance of getting the first shot off. They've got over the shock of the first clash and they're starting to think.'
He waited a second, judging the mood, then added 'All that about a noble adversary, worthy foeman, opponent worthy of our durasteel, you know perfectly well it's all just grandstanding, morale building bullshit. I'd prefer to be fighting an idiot.'
There was another battle to be fought, one of speeding small craft in open space. Olghaan had set an obvious trap that still made more sense to go for than to let alone. The small ships, the eyes that could seek and find him if he ran, that were within the capability of his strike wing to eliminate, had been sent to group up together.
In practice, between them they carried enough fighters to make that prohibitively expensive and anybody who could read an order of battle would be able to work that out.
From there it became a shell game. Given the obviousness of it, which of the other possible courses of action was the real trap? To attack the small craft directly, in a predictable place at a particular time?
The first requirement was to kill the interdictors, then they would have manoeuvre and fighter advantage- the enemy could not afford to deploy fighters at would take so long to ready and to retrieve.
Now launching the wing against the three destroyers still together at the north pole of the planet, what was under that shell? Couldn't not have thought of it, unless there simply wasn't time.
People did do stupid things in war, he easiest way to make them do so was to push them and harass them and run them ragged until they lost their grip on the situation and were no longer able to think clearly.
It's happening to me already and I haven't even been shot at yet, Group Captain Shulmar thought. This isn't new to me, I watched old man Olleyri do this how many times? Maybe you have to have the arrogance of a fighter pilot to find it easy to order beings into combat.
Granted that supreme self confidence, though, the fact of having to make the decision becomes so much less troublesome that you hardly have to stress it at all, which means that there are more brain cycles available to use on the actual choice, which makes it more likely to be a better one; which is how the arrogance justifies itself and feeds itself.
So, assuming absolute self confidence, what's the right tactical option? They simply haven't had time to optimise their loadouts, pack the small ships with bombers waiting for Black Prince and the capital ships with fighters waiting for us. They haven't deployed fighter screens either. Expecting to have to run.
Hm. They started with four Interdictor cruisers, they're down to three, one accompanying the destroyers, two with the small ships- an invitation to attack.
Until those things are gone, we're committed, any jump we make in, we're not getting out until they're dead. Is there an element that can be deployed and fly its' way out of trouble, enough of a combat edge- of course there is, the Avengers.
How few of them would constitute a bait that they would rise to, be enough to spring the ambush? Guess that most of their fighter commanders are above average, but not massively so; Swiftsure herself is the dangerous one there.
Getting fancy with the capital ships, especially ones that can fill the sky with green fire, is the bad option. Unless...
'People, this is the plan. Our faster fighters are going to jump in as close as possible to the two south pole Interdictors for a high speed, minimum warning torpedo run. It is an obvious move which they will be expecting, and I think we can make that work against them. Damage them badly enough and jumping out will work, failing that run.
I expect the strike to be met by a storm of badly aimed fire. The destroyers are more dangerous, which is why we conduct hit and run attacks, microjumping in and out on the frigates and corvettes, until the destroyers and the Interdictor with them move to cover the small ships group. At which point we attempt to kill that, too.
With them gone we have strategic mobility and the initiative is ours. Now this is more of an operational concept, vague as stang and set in gelatin, but they should have a fighter screen out and they don't, so their ambush is a lot less solid than they think it is, and we can take it apart. Anybody got anything to add?'
The only purpose in my still being here is the stories and the people who come to read them. About all else, I no longer care.
Oh anyway as this is my first time reviewing your work, I just want to say good job. Between making sense of canon and your new ideas, you've really managed to bring SW back to life for me. Hope to see more of this story soon.
When you force a nation to choose between Russia Imperialism and American Hegemony, they choose the McDonald's and Coke every time.
since the comment storm most of which I missed, I have got much worse at replying to comments, and there are days when this feels like a chore, something I have to do for the sake of completeness and closure, much more than something I actually want to do. On days like that, comments like this keep me going.
Well, the 128-to-one views:posts ratio should tell you you have a reader base out there; we are interested and we do definitely want to see what you have Black Prince and her enemies dance through next.
