Chronicles of Sol: The Fall

Countryman studied the document before him, while he waited for news from the Coto. They had left to engage an interloper, along with a few fighters from the Enterprise. More than enough to destroy a single cruiser. Down below the refit on that cruiser they had captured was going very well, and they should be able to send it on its mission soon enough. At the moment he was free, so he figured he would catch up on some reports. At the moment he was looking at the more detailed version of the Ruri’s study on the Sega particle and the generator mechnaism. It was an interesting read, but there wasn’t all that much or real note. The Sega particle had some interesting properties, properties that not only helped harden a shield, but aided in its primary function of absorbing incoming energy and radiating it away harmlessly as light. Those same properties that were so useful in energy shields, did have a few other applications. Ruri had made note of those, and had a rather detailed theory on its applications for laser weaponry.

She had detailed out a full design, and proposal on the prototyping of a Sega based laser. Like other modern lasers, be they industrial or military her design was a high energy linked laser design, where several smaller laser generators were linked together to generate a high intensity photon stream. HELL type lasers were very easy to scale up, and were quite reliable. The design type could be applied to quite a few different beam generation schemes, and was able to produce beams of remarkable strength. This Sega based version if the figures she had calaculated held true would keep to that trend, in fact it would produce fairly powerful beams an order of magnitude greater than current generation beams. This would be quite useful, especially with energy webs. This was due to the defensive devices typically being laser based, rather than particle based. That was not however the only major application for a better laser, as they also had a number of industrial applications. They were often used in the creation of certain materials, some of which were hard to obtain by other means. In addition they had applications for refining certain materials as well. Not to mention their obvious uses in power generation, specifically in fusion generators. To be more specific, they were used to initiate the fusion core of certain reactor schemes, but once the core started the process was largely self-sustaining. This was due to the use of high intensity artificial gravity fields to compress the super-heated deuterium plasma created by the laser intiators. Those fields were often combined with electromagnetic containment fields, and the reactors heavily sheilded for obvious reasons.

He quickly approved her research proposal for a Sega based laser. While their resources were limited, he found it hard to find reasons not to look into this. Who knows, they might even find a few unexpected applications. That was the case with the research project that led to the accidental discovery of Rydium, and that led to numerous developments, such as their armor and their engines. Although part of that was due to Rydium’s relation with the Graviton particle. That particle is an interesting exotic particle, that is most well known for its gravitic properties. Its widely used in artificial gravity applications, but it is also a byproduct of the operation of pulse wave engines. Natural gravity, like that from a planet or star however is in fact not caused by the graviton particle, an interest discover that contradicts the theories that predicted the particle. Just one of the many little interesting characteristics of the particle. Although it was something they were still studying, as the particle wasn’t fully understood.

Setting that aside, he pulled up the next report. This one was not from Ruri’s lab, but one of the other scientists on the ship. She had been working on adapting the new high density energy cells that were developed for the electro cannon, for use in portable power packs. Mainly for the Archer series power pack used to power modern marine armor. To be more specific, she was working on the standard issue Sierra Three medium powered assault armor. More commonly refered to as the S-III. The S-III was a third generation powered armor system and highly reliable. There wasn’t much that could be improved. Not with current gen technology, the biggest limitation to it was actually power. There were any number of things they could do to enhance the suit’s abilities, but they all had a detrimental effect on the suit’s battery life. The obvious solution would be to pack a miniture reactor in the suit, but there were a number of roadblocks with that idea. They had run into problems with safely miniturizing the reactor, and generating sufficient output to power the suit. It was why, the suits were powered by high density Archer power packs.

According to her report, the young lady had succesfully adapted the newer generation cells to work in the older Archer-series format. The overall effect, according to her intial tests, was a dramatically increased battery life. In addition since the cells matched the older format, there was no need for extensive modifications to fit the new cells. Based on her preliminary results, the batteries lasted more than three times as long, as the old power pack. That potentially translated into days worth of extra power, especially since the suit could already operate for several days under ideal conditions between charges. Although in practice, it was often measured in hours. That got him thinking. If they really did last that long, they should also be able to deliever higher energy outputs for longer as well. If that was indeed the case, he glanced at the closet, perhaps the mark IV might not be such a pipe dream afterall.

The Mark IV was something he had worked on personally. It was the next generation of powered assault armor, and featured a number of improvements. The most notable was the newer synthetic muscle fibres, which promised to double the users strength when compared to the previous generation, and triple their speed over last gen models. There were also a number of improvements made that improved the protection of the suit, making the wearer even harder to kill. Unfortunately, the project quickly ran into a massive roadblock. While all of the improvements made did in fact work as intended, they also required more power than could feasibly be provided by a portable power cell. As the suits drained their batteries far too quickly when tested in combat conditions. Whereas Mark III suits could last hours, the Mark IVs would last minutes. Mounting a larger power pack helped, but doing that also increased the weight of the armor, and made it bulkier. Mounting an internal reactor could have solved that, but it was something that was beyond current-gen technology.

In the end, they had shelved the mark IV project. The data was carefully archived, and the prototypes were placed in storage. There was naturally a plan to come back to the mark IV concept for implementation when power technology advanced sufficiently to power the suit. Several projects had in fact been started after the mark IV to develop a smaller micro-fusion reactor small enough to fit inside a suit of armor with a power output high enough to power it. None of those projects had succeeded, not yet anyway. Althought those projects did close the gap enough to produce the micro reactors used in ground vehicles such as the Raptor, so progress had been made.

Countryman made a note to stop by her lab, to see her demonstrate the new powerpack. He added a few notes about the potential of the new cells, and outlined a few projects that might be worth looking into if the cells really did work as she advertised. He had little doubt they would.

Suddenly a bell chimed, alerting him to someone outside his office wanting to speak with him. He tapped a key switching his monitor, to show the hall sensor feed. Seeing who it was, he opened the door, and allowed them in. Naturally, he was able to do that without even leaving his desk.

As the other man walked, in he said, “Greyman, what do you have to report?”

The man sighed, “That pirate vessel escaped. As for how we aren’t entirely sure.”

Countryman wanted to say that was surprising, but frankly it wasn’t. He glanced at the pad Greyman was holding, “Is that the Coto’s report?”

Greyman nodded, and handed it over. Countryman quickly transferred the data to his console, and look it over. It seemed the battle was about to end when the alien pirate cruiser simply vanished in a swirl of reddish light. It was almost reminiscent of a doorway opening in space, and swallowing the ship. He tapped a few keys, and brought up the sensor analysis which was far more interesting. He also noticed something real quickly. It helped that he had recently read a report that showed data on very similar waveforms. He pulled that up, and compared them side by side. The scale was very different obviously, but they had remarkably similar waveform signatures. He showed this to Greyman

His first officer blinked, then frowned. “Um, what am I looking at?”

“The comparison between the Coto’s sensor logs, and our own measurements of that subspace radio we acquired from the Krall. I would wager, what we are seeing was a large scale subspace window. In other words, they used something we theorized about over a hundred years ago, I think we just encountered a hyperdrive.”

“Hyperdrive? I’m not all that familiar with that drive concept.”

“I would imagine not.”

Greyman gave Countryman a look, “Should I feel insulted about this expected ignorance?”

Countryman laughed wryly, “Not really. Hyperdrive isn’t well known in modern parlance, although that was not the case two hundred years ago. As a concept, it already existed when I was born, but it never really went anywhere.” he paused, “Any way that doesn’t really matter. As for what hyperdrive is? The short answer is a drive that takes advantage of sub-spatial domains to achieve faster than light travel. Doing so allows ships to leave normal space entirely, and therefore they are no longer subject to the special rules of relativity. Warp drive on the other hand operates in normal space and achieves faster than light speeds through spatial folding. Making the two very different, and mutually exclusive concepts. We actually explored both before ultimately focusing our efforts on warp drive which we believed was more feasible. Evidently, both were, although the Krall with their Inversion drives proved that there were drive types out there that we never considered.”

“I see, but what are we going to do about this?”

Countryman sighed, “The only thing we can do. Double the patrols, and keep an eye out for any more interlopers. Deploy a net of gravity mines as well. They proved effective at disrupting Cathamari warp drives, and might do the same with these hyperdrives.”

Greyman nodded. Gravity mines were rather simple devices using artificial gravity technology to generate a strong gravity field. They were something they had devised after noticing that Cathamari ships didn’t really use warp speed near strong gravity sources like planets. They were often hidden in debris fields, and combined with more conventional mines. The combination had proven quite effective at stopping their ships cold. Hopefully hyperdrives would also prove vulnerable to the devices. Unfortunately they weren’t quite as disposable as they used to be, so he would have to recover them before they left the system. That FTL jammer that he bought back in Illieria would undoubtedly work against it, as the Krall he bought it from advertised it as effective against all ‘known’ FTL drives. He figured that meant all drives known to the Krall, and it did at least work against warp drives. They had already tested it, and found it had a range of about three astronomical units. Unfortunately, they couldn’t use it right now, since it was currently in pieces. They had taken the device apart so that they could study it. So the old solution of gravity mines was the only thing they could do right now.

February Third, 001 SDE 1730 hours:

Countryman shifted in his seat, as he felt the ship rumble. The last few weeks since the pirate encounter had been quiet. Other than Williams being up to her usual pain in the rear antics, he had nothing to worry about. The cruiser they had captured, had finished its refit, and was now being launched. In a moment he saw it on his screens, as it cleared the hull of the Enterprise. Her thruster ports lacked the normal glow, but that was largely since the original engines no longer existed. They had ripped them out in favor of their own technolgy. It gave the menacing ship a rather eerie quality. That was just one of the enhancements they had made.

They had upgraded the armor with their own alloys, and armoring techniques. Her shield grid was left in place providing her extra protection. As for her weapon systems, they had enhanced the cooling systems for her primary cannons, and made modifications to the focusing mechanisms. The result was a significant increase in rate of fire, and a modest increase in effective range. They had more than doubled the rate of fire in fact, while the range had been increased by about fifteen percent. It just went to show how crude, the Cathamari cooling solution had been, and as for the focusing mechanisms? That was just laziness, they could have been easily stronger with just a little more work. Increasing the sheer power of those cannons, however had proved to be something they could not do.

Not for a lack of trying, but the Cathamari had designed them for sheer power to begin with, and there wasn’t much that could be done to improve that. Aside from the obvious solution of simply making them bigger. That applied to many a weapon, the bigger it was the more power. The problem was they were already fairly large guns to begin with. Each cannon was supplied by a fairly large plasma chamber, and several very powerful plasma generators. The generators rapidly filled the chamber with a subcritical mass of superheated plasma. This was then forced into the acceleration chamber, where a concussive energy discharge was fired into the plasma mass. This forcibly compresses the plasma and accelerates it to an impressive 105,000,000 meters per second. Roughly a third of the speed of light. These compressed plasma bolts strike their targets with considerable force. Most targets couldn’t hope to survive a single volley. So increasing the power likely wasn’t needed. Especially since, the Cathamari shields, were not really able to withstand their own plasma cannons, their hulls even less so. Increasing the fire rate did provide an advantage since the weapon was rather slow to fire. Now it had a rate of fire competitive with most human ship to ship energy weapons.

They had considered adding a few of these weapons to their own armaments, and while certainly powerful, and a worthy addition. Their circumstances made adding them not exactly a benefit. Cathamari concussion cannons, had less range than particle cannons, were less accurate with slower bolt velocities, and most importantly were not energy efficient. They cost more than seven times as much energy per shot to fire. That was the big one, that high cost to fire played into why they were not going to use the alien weapons. They did however archive the research on them, in case it proved useful at a later date.

Her torpedoes on the other hand, while similar to her cannons differed in a few key aspects that made them difficult to improve. Honestly it looked like a rather uninspired and frankly stupid solution to a problem. The torpedoes generated the plasma, and accelerated it much the same way the cannons did. The key difference was that a shielded casing sat in the middle of the concentrated plasma. This device generated the containment field that kept the plasma contained and was responsible for guidance. It achieved course corrections by releasing small bits of plasma in controlled bursts to alter the direction of the torpedo. The inclusion of this device is what gave the Cathamari torpedoes their range, and guidance abilities. Yet it was also its greatest limitation. For obvious reasons, they got rid of that casing, and instead used projected spatial fields to guide the torpedo. This allowed them to greatly increase the yield of the torpedo by a factor of nine, and the projected fields were harder to interfere with when compared to electromagnetic fields. Although the range wasn’t as good as the Cathamari version. In any case, the would hit harder, and faster with the changed guidance mechanism.

As for the cruiser, they had replaced the entire command deck with bank after bank of computer cores. That was part of the automation process, that ship out there was fully automated now, and programmed with its mission. Including directives to neutralize any threat to its primary mission directives. For that mission, the cruiser was carrying an FTL drive-equiped probe that he had acquired from the Krall. It even had a subspace radio, which could be used to beam back images to the Enterprise. That was important, since he needed that data for physical confirmation of the Cathamair’s destruction. Something that would be virtually assured if the cruiser actually struck the planet. Afterall it was carrying enough antimatter explosives to vaporize a continent and everything else that entailed.

The ship maneuvered around several asteroid in the area, as he watched it. Just before it left the visual range of his sensors, there was a brief distortion and a flash of light. The cruiser had jumped to warp, he immediately glanced at his screens. The ship disappeared almost as soon as he spotted it on the long-range sensors. The vessel was rapidly gaining speed, and soon it would be tearing across space.