Chronicles of Sol: The Fall

Sali made her way down the corridor. The deck shook under her feet, and the dimly lit corridor felt ominous in the red light. Worse she had little idea what was going on, but it didn’t take a genius to know it wasn’t good. The shaking gave her a few ideas, but she really didn’t like not knowing. It just made this whole situation worse. Mainly since she couldn’t stop speculating about what was happening. It didn’t help that she was hopelessly lost. She couldn’t even stop and ask for directions since the corridor was just like the last completely deserted. It was made even weirder since she had found her way back to the main corridors. Normally there was always people rushing through these passages. Yet now they were deserted and empty.

The hall shook suddenly with enough force to make her stumble. Whatever that was must have hit the ship hard. There was a door nearby so she tried it. “Access denied” responded the computer after she palmed the panel. She sighed and bit back a curse. That fricking little message was irritatingly common. Every fucking door, every fucking one denied her access. It felt like the entire deck was restricted or something. Where was a lift, or maintenance tube when she needed one? If she could find something familiar she knew she had a chance to get somewhere safer. In fact, this might just be her chance to escape, if she could just find her way off this damn deck.

Again the deck shook, but not as hard as the last time. Sali glanced at the next door on the other side of the corridor from this one, and decided to try it as well. Palming the door panel, she was greeted with a beep, and then the sturdy metal door slid aside. A surge of endorphins rippled through her as she was met with success. Finally, a door that didn’t deny her access.

She slipped inside and felt a surge of disappointment. The room was somewhat familiar. She had seen another one, on a different deck. Countryman liked to take her to that one for his long chats with her. It wasn’t a lift, nor was it a maintenance tube. Sali had found herself in an observation lounge. Complete with chairs, tables, and an excellent view of sealed viewports. From the looks of it, the outer hatches had been sealed.

How the hell did this help her? Sighing she entered the room anyway. She noted it had two entry doors, and at the rear between them was a console overlooking the whole room, and the viewports. The room shook, and she bit down another curse. She decided to check out the console. It was probably useless, but who knows maybe she could find a map?

Unfortunately, the controls were in the alien script, and she couldn’t exactly read their language. There were a few prominent controls on the left-hand side of the console. So she tried the first one. It triggered a computerized response, but she only understood the first two words, ‘request denied.’ The rest might as well have been unintelligible gibberish for all the sense she could make of it. So she tried the second one. Suddenly a ring of light glowed around the far wall, a moment before it morphed into a holographic projection.

It was a starscape and at first it wasn’t much else. Until a pirate raider drifted into view. A moment later blue bolts pelted the small raider amidships. The bolts originated from just above her viewpoint. Shields flared, and buckled. Moments before the ship was reduced to a chunk of floating debris with more holes in it than a piece of insect-infested fruit. Then for good measure, a coherent blue energy beam raked the hull of the raider bisecting the stricken ship in an instant.

Before she could even blink at the destruction, a second raider appeared her torpedo tubes aglow. She fired. Bolts of orange-green death seemed to fly right at her. Just as they seemed to impact, she felt the whole room shake. It seemed she now knew for certain what the fuck was going on. It was a fucking battle!

The constant din of reports echoed through the bridge. As officers relayed critical combat information. Idly he noted a security alert on his console. He checked the alert, while giving his next order.

“Bring us about to bearing one zero seven, mark two eight. Increase speed to three quarters sublight. Return fire, secondary batteries.”

The Enterprise was currently engaged with several ships including the ‘raider’ flag. Although it was pretty obvious that this was no raider. It was too well equiped, and her crew was obviously more disciplined. A pirate group would have run by now. Instead they were still here. There was something more to this little distress call than things appeared at first glance.

He wasn’t too worried about the raiders though. Their weapons weren’t quite big enough to penetrate his armor. Although they did have powerful shields and good armor of their own, especially the larger ships. The flag was particularly noteworthy since she had shields that rivaled the outpost, and her armor was tritanium-erudite alloy. He already knew that erudite wasn’t easy to come by, and tritanium wasn’t cheap either. This left him with questions, but thinking about them now was not going to mean much.

A glance at the screens showed the small fry that had fired on them moving off, after taking a volley from his secondaries. It had sustained moderate damage and lost shields. Effectively knocking the raider destroyer out of the fight. He turned his focus to the flag.

The Enterprise and the Raider flag had been exchanging fire for the last few minutes. While he could have just used the electro-cannons, he was hiding that card up his sleeve. It wasn’t one that he wanted to display. Especially not while aiding an alien outpost. Besides this was a good test of the weapon’s upgrades. As such he was relying on mainly particle cannons, and beam weapon mounts. The torpedoes were useful, but they weren’t easily replaced. They had been focusing their fire on the raider’s port aft quarter. Something the raider had caught on about and was attempting to avoid getting hit there now.

The raider fired her thrusters, hard. Pushing her onto a new trajectory. He gave an order to stick with them, and waited. A moment or two, until his instincts told him it was time. “Main batteries, fire for effect, maximum yield.”

His orders were echoed, officers relayed information, and the guns fired. A barrage of vibrant purple energy shot forth into space with a vengeance. Normally it was blue, but the color shift was just a sign that the guns had been supercharged. Dense particle streams slammed into the raider flag’s aft port quarter. The weakened shield flared brightly and flickered. Moments before it collapsed. Letting the remaining bolts pepper the armored hull of the warship. Armor melted, and was scored by the barrage, but for the first time, an alien armor scheme actually survived a particle barrage.

No Cathamari armor had ever withstood his particle cannons, and that was without the upgrades. It didn’t fare as well as proper overlord armor, but it did hold. A ripple of surprise went through his bridge crew. He did not let that surprise shake him, “Target their primary distribution manifolds and fire.”

An instant later blue energy streams slammed into their hull, and punched through. Several precision strikes hit and penetrated in sequence, and the ship went dark as power was disrupted all over the ship. “Target disabled, sir. Shields, weapons, and engines all offline.”

“Good. Put the Coto on overwatch. Vent them, and then prepare to harvest that hull plating. I imagine it might be worth a look.”

“Aye, sir!”

The commander felt a bit of relief when she was informed that the shields were now at twenty percent of nominal strength. That wasn’t perfect, but they were no longer critical. It helped that the majority of the heavy-hitting raiders were now engaged with the three alien ships. Ships that were giving the raiders quite the fight. It was quite impressive, especially now that it was evident that the newcomer aliens were without shields. Their armor however was something special however.

She glanced at the screens and then had to look again. Only to confirm what she had seen. The alien flag was now solidly ignoring the remaining raiders. Several raider cruisers were disabled, and over half the smaller ships were scattered wrecks. The remainder continued to engage. Something the commander had to wonder about. At this point, it was obvious that they were outmatched. Hell, it was so obvious that the alien flag felt comfortable enough to be conducting a salvage operation in the middle of a battle.

On the screens, she watched as steady blue energy streams burned through the raider’s hull plating at a modest clip. Projectors peppered her hull plating with low-impact projectiles, that simply adhered to the hull, and moments later a series of towing beams would be used to lift the plates away. Pulling them towards a hangar bay, that would open quickly to admit the salvage, and close before anyone could take advantage. It was an efficient process, that was rapidly disassembling the raider.

A destroyer did attempt, several torpedos slamming uselessly into the recently sealed doors. Before the destroyer could get out of range both the alien flag, and one of her destroyers ripped her apart with accurate particle weapons strikes. Several hits struck the poor destroyer amidships, penetrated meters into the hull, and disrupted primary containment. Antimatter leaked, and the ship went up in a glorious fireball with the intensity of a small sun. A glorious mix of orange, blue, red, and even green light flared around the dying ship. When it cleared half the ship had been vaporized the rest was nothing more than shredded and scorched debris. Debris that was promptly targeted, and collected by the alien flag.

She glanced at her science officer, who without needing prompting informed her, “I’m afraid there isn’t much I can say. Their hull is shielded somehow against sensors.”

The commander chuckled, “Knowing you, that didn’t stop you. What did you find?”

“I was able to get a surface level scan of their armor. A somewhat fuzzy surface-level scan mind you. Its composed of a previously unknown titanium-based alloy.”

“Titanium? Not the most common choice for ship armor,” she commented. As she recalled what she knew about shipbuilding materials. One of the earliest materials looked at was Titanium due to its excellent material properties and relatively low weight. Its still popular in several applications, and even shipbuilding, but not often used as armor. Duranium was actually the most common pick for armor. As its properties were more desirable, it weighed about the same, and it was reasonably easy to produce.

“True. Anyway to answer your real question I don’t think they have much reason to be worried about the Raiders. Especially seeing as the raider weapons have been unable to pierce that plating of theirs.”

“I see. In case they don’t turn out to be friendly do you think any of our weapons could pierce their armor?”

“Our pulse cannons certainly don’t stand a chance, but the Concussion cannons do.”

She filed that mentally. The commander was familiar with the weapon. They were large bulky power-hungry devices often only found on outposts, starbases, and the like. Although it wasn’t impossible to mount one on a ship, but only large capital ships would have both the volume and power capacity for a concussion cannon. Her outpost had four of the weapons. Class IIs as she recalled. The weapon as she recalled fired an extremely powerful concussive blast of exotic energy generated by intense spatial flux. Smaller vessels were often ripped apart by the force of the concussion blast. Larger vessels fared better, but that was only while their shields were up. Once they went down the weapon would rip them apart in very short order.

Facts the raiders had been aware of as well. Her outpost originally carried four of the powerful cannons, but three of them were offline. Disabled by concentrated fire from raider plasma mortars, and ion barrages. The only operational one wasn’t even facing the bulk of the battle.

She turned to a passing engineer, “I want the work crews to concentrate on the main cannons. Just in case we need them.”

The engineer nodded, and rushed off to inform the chief about the order. She turned her gaze back to the battle. It had moved away from her station giving her a bit of a reprieve. This time she noted several raider ships breaking off in groups. It seemed they were retreating. The aliens did not pursue, and moments later the remaining raiders made the jump to warp speed.