JadeGreen17
Chimeric Spirit
This story is based closely on a battle between me and one of my off site partners. Though I actually played the opposing side; I actually wrote this story from the perspective of his character; (with his permission, of course). The entire premise was based off the fact that we had done a really intricate RP about an alternate future earth making first contact with an alien civilization. While it was all very fun, things have mostly proceeded without too much major conflict and the both of us started to get a little antsy. We came up with the idea that we could pit the nations' militaries against one another in simulated combat within the setting of the RP, without ruining the world we had created with a pointless war.
I followed the story beats of the battle as closely as I could remember; (we did the whole battle a few weeks ago in a voice call, with the aide of a tactical map inside a google drawing which turned out to not be much use thanks to the fact it became apparent early on that this would just devolve into a war of attrition.) What made it interesting was that both of us ended up having very similar ambitions for a quick win which did not come to fruition, resulting in a prolonged grudge match between space ships. Probably the purest representation of "no plan survives contact with the enemy" that I've ever seen.
I followed the story beats of the battle as closely as I could remember; (we did the whole battle a few weeks ago in a voice call, with the aide of a tactical map inside a google drawing which turned out to not be much use thanks to the fact it became apparent early on that this would just devolve into a war of attrition.) What made it interesting was that both of us ended up having very similar ambitions for a quick win which did not come to fruition, resulting in a prolonged grudge match between space ships. Probably the purest representation of "no plan survives contact with the enemy" that I've ever seen.
Coal's Game
(2497 Words)
Coal walked onto the bridge of the American Supercarrier; all around him hundreds of crew sat at control stations, monitoring systems and quietly rabbling amongst one another in technical phrases. He adjusted the collar on his uniform and began to do his rounds of the bridge, meticulously confirming that the engines, life support, reactor, weapons, shields and all other systems onboard the ship were running smoothly, before taking his seat in the command chair. He pressed the PA button.
“Attention all crew, our intel tells the enemy will be arriving any moment now. I expect nothing but the best from you; each and every one of you are important and are essential to this victory, so do not let me down. All ship hands battle stations. Raise shields, launch all fighters in defensive formation delta.”
Coal turned his attention to his high resolution holographic display showing the ship in orbit above the planetoid. Four Russian warships assuming a tight defensive formation around the American super carrier as the fighters assumed formation; and a large translucent bluish-white bubble of energy began to envelope the fleet as the shield rose. The ships bore their home country’s flags as well as the flag of the UNE; or United Nations of Earth.
Off the starboard side of the northern axis of the fleet the enemy de-collapsed from subspace; seeming to expand from a minute point with a flash of ionized plasma and energy discharging into the space around them. The fleet was of a different composition than they had originally thought. The dominion flagship was large; at around three and a half times the length of the carrier; resembling vaguely, a steeply sloped pyramid with its weapons staggered along the cardinal axes. Their battlecruisers a smaller reinterpretation of this same frame; however there were only three battlecruisers, rather than four. In place of the fourth battlecruiser was a plethora of smaller ships with a sensor bunker off the bow.
“Fire the first salvo of missiles” He ordered to his crew. His first salvo; specially modified with advanced computer systems to bypass electronic countermeasure systems. This was important as millions of missiles; everything from tiny smart rounds to long-range nuclear torpedoes operated on a complex computer network sharing targeting data and preventing collisions. As soon as they fired they detected thousands of attacks. Cyberwarfare AI packets and malicious commands disguised as targeting data were identified; millions of extras appearing in the system.
The enemy seemed to quickly realize that their cyberattack was ineffective and resorted to physical countermeasures; firing off screens of their own missiles with flak warheads to intercept the incoming volley and, as they drew closer the laser refraction domes activated. Countless thousands of blinding cyan-blue beams shot from seemingly every corner of the enemy hull vaporizing the missiles by the millions, their priority targeting algorithms eliminated the larger missiles but countless smaller kinetic darts bypassed the ship’s shielding and crippled several key weapons emplacements before they could be used. Though the effect wasn’t as profound as he had imagined. Coal had hoped to seal this fight before it began; as the modification to the missiles making them immune to cyberwarfare had been a costly one; one which he could only afford to equip to his opening salvo. But the effect hadn’t been as profound as he had anticipated; he had hoped to cripple the enemy command ship outright. His brow furrowed in frustration.
The enemy began to retaliate; yet they seemed hesitant to attack the fleet directly. After all their shields had been raised and fully charged. Their first target was the anti-orbital gun stationed in an armored bunker on the planetoid they were defending. Unprotected from the fleet’s shield, it had been left an obvious target. The dominion battlecruisers unleashed their kinetic kill vehicles. Two impacted to the sides of the installation; detonating their digonium warheads deep beneath the planet’s crust; rocking the planetoid with thundering quakes. They had attempted to cave in the underground reactors and barracks on the planet; unsuccessful as the bunker had been reinforced against such strikes. The third shot, delayed by just a second fired as the railgun managed to come to bear on the battlecruiser. The fire control officer gave the order to fire; the railgun detonated and the bunker exploded from the inside out; a second blast occurring roughly halfway between the bunker and the enemy battlecruiser. A moment later several high yield blasts occurred off the zed axis of the dominion fleet. With the appropriate calibration of the sensors; they looked like miniature stars changing from blue dwarf to red giant and then fizzling out of existence in a fraction of a second; nothing but a thin wall of plasma buffeting the opposing fleet’s shields.
Admiral Coal looked confused, turning to one of his officers for confirmation. The high speed tracking camera revealed what had happened. Apparently; by an extremely unlikely coincidence; the two rounds had impacted at their hyper-accelerated speeds. The larger kill vehicle had carried through the nuclear railgun shell sending its payload off course and continued on; at least in part to travel down the barrel of the railgun and destroy it. But this was no time to marvel at the cosmic coincidence as the battlecruisers and the flagship opened fire on the shield projected around the orbiting fleet. Thousands of railgun rounds struck the shield each moment, each one a telephone pole sized tracer round vaporizing into a cloud of plasma upon striking the shield at hyper-accelerated velocities.
“Continue to return fire.” He ordered, seeing that his missile volleys were having an effect on the enemy ship. Though a vast majority would be destroyed by the enemy flak field or laser grid. This led to a ferocious two way exchange between the lead ships of the fleet. The enemy deployed their compliment of gunships; equipped with photon refractors to aid in the point defense screen, intensifying the already blinding discord of laser fire attempting to intercept the stream of missiles and smart rounds.
From his vantage point he could see a handful of computer consoles become disabled; switching from the multicolored displays to blue screens with white lines of text. Cyberwarfare AI had infiltrated their computer systems and were attempting to shut things down.
The Hacking game, at its highest level was the simple game of measures and countermeasures; and their enemy knew this better than anyone. Thousands of enemy AI had swarmed systems purpose-built to engage in cyber warfare they would launch millions of attacks each second. Coal had his own AI, however; by the name of S.C.H.A.P. which while singular had managed to quickly cut off the attacks, cancel the malicious commands of which there were several to be activated within microseconds for the detonation of missiles still in their tubes; reactor shutdown, and an FTL jump into the nearby planetoid. Earth’s AI deleted the invasive AI and rebooted the necessary systems. The only faulty command that had managed anything significant was to their fighter formation; of which a number of fighters had received a command to flood the fusion engines with fuel leading to a temporary shutdown.
With this information, S.C.H.A.P. was able to orchestrate a counteroffensive into the enemy system; managing to lag the targeting data of their laser grids for but a few seconds. To an ordinary person; this would appear unsuccessful, but the subsequent volley of missiles and smart rounds was far less impeded, allowing further damage to be dealt to the enemy flagship. But the mammoth dreadnought continued forward; unimpeded by the mounting damage. Blooms of smoke and debris were leaking off the ship from where rounds had struck, but a majority of the weapons emplacements were still operational. S.C.H.A.P grew overly ambitious and then attempted a direct counteroffensive; inserting a portion of his processing into one of the enemy support ships. Though he was able to retrieve a sizable data dump of the ship’s schematics and capabilities; it had come at a great cost. The onboard computer systems quickly retaliated against this offensive; and attacked the AI directly; corrupting his code and forcing him to power down as dedicated cyberwarfare analysts ran damage control on the AI. This gave the dominion fleet temporary reprieve from the onslaught of missiles. In under a minute, the AI had been cleared of his corruption and rebooted.
Coal’s brow furrowed as he sank into his command chair, a senior officer attempting to explain to him what was occurring in the meantime. The enemy, miraculously had far less computing power than them despite having a much larger flagship, but with AI wholly dedicated to computer hacking, they were more efficient with their resources, and did not have the vulnerability that theirs did. These AI programs his enemy utilized seemed wholly expendable; and each one was structured slightly differently, just enough such that they could not be taken out by a blanket attack. He zoned out for a minute; observing the shield energy meter on his master control console slowly drop. He had intended to avoid this; to avoid the prolonged broadside; to end the fight before it would begin. No doubt his enemy had intended to do the same; the data dump had revealed the enemy support ships were dedicated cyberwarfare ships. They, it seemed had not anticipated the use of AI by the UNE fleets.
The attempts at cyberwarfare and brute-force jamming would swing back and fourth like a pendulum, slowly stagnating out. For a few moments, S.C.H.A.P. might be able to lag the refractor grid. The Dominion might attempt to retaliate, hijacking data streams and inserting malicious commands; causing missiles to crash into each other or detonate prematurely taking out their neighbors. Though as both sides became increasingly adapted the higher patterns innate to each others’ style of cyber warfare, these effects of these measures decayed.
For eight grueling minutes; the fighting continued. Wave after wave of smart munitions and nuclear missiles fed from the ships’ internal magazines were fired; though almost all of them were destroyed before ever impacting; a lucky few would make it through the layered defenses of the enemy fleet and eventually strike the dreadnoughts hull. The dreadnought continued to bear down on on the fleet, slowly closing the distance between them as it pelted the shield with an endless barrage of railgun fire. As crew ran about, shouting over the commotion that had developed on the bridge to relay orders, the shield’s energy reserves ticked away faster than the ships reactor could restore them. They were damaging the enemy ship in this prolonged war of attrition; that was for certain, they had crippled numerous weapons emplacements. But those that remained continued to fire; and analysis showed they were increasing with fire rate as more were disabled.
The blue-white solid energy wall began to buckle, the lights and consoles on the bridge momentarily flickering as the generator attempted to switch power; and then blinked out of existence as the dreadnoughts fire stream blasted through and began to eviscerate coal’s escorts. Over the comms, he heard the panicked orders of the Russian vice admiral, as railgun rounds ablated the ship’s heavy armor and quickly began to perforate inside the ship. The dreadnought seemed to slow its fire rate; diverting power to the aperture on the nose of the ship; it opened fire. The bluish-white beam completely skewered another escort from bow to stern. He ordered returned fire; firing casaba howitzers off the carriers’ main guns into the dreadnought. As the ship drew closer and deployed its compliment of fighters and, which swarmed forward with the gunship screen they had maintained throughout the engagement. The entire battle had devolved into a knife fight; all ships engaged within a few hundred kilometers of each other.
Coal’s fighters were his most formidable asset; this was a dedicated carrier after all. Though to call them fighters; he realized was something of a misnomer. American space fighters resembled atmospheric aircraft; but with extra provisions for maneuvering thrusters and long duration missions. The dominion however, opted for small, maneuverable short range interceptors manned by a single pilot suspended in a gel sphere. His fighters were of a far higher quality, and a far larger size; but when each one was forced to take on two or three dominion interceptors; the fight became far more even.
Railgun rounds shook the carrier. A beam of energy from the nose of the dreadnought; shunted off at an angle by the refractor pierced the hull of the carrier. Glancing at the monitor he saw the damage; it had been directly aimed at the command bridge; stopped short only by the hyper-dense armor surrounding it. He glanced around, crew had been knocked from their chairs by the blast, and monitors blinked out, flickered and rebooted.
When they did they showed a cacophony of chaos. Both fleets were now in a disarray, and all the larger ships on both sides had suffered major damage. The swarms of strike craft had spread themselves thin as to not be fodder for the larger ship’s point defense. Debris both large and small sprinkled amongst the void of space. Missiles, railgun impacts and fighters all visible as a thousand tiny pinpricks of light flashing like fireworks every second. Every frequency was a tangle of pilot chatter, static, and jamming signals; alternating between them every few seconds. Another blast rocked the ship, coal turning to a monitor that was still working to see a cohesive squad of boarding craft depart the enemy dreadnought. Recognizing what the enemy intended to do to his flagship; he ordered surrender.
Everything froze. Every monitor in the ship; every missile, ship, and railgun round, completely frozen in time. Explosions halted in their place such that one could theoretically walk around them examining the intricate detail of how the flames billowed in space. A broken conduit hanging above him had been emitting showers of sparks since just after the shield failure, sparks now hung in the air. A technician couldn’t help but circle around them, studying the position in the air.
The enemy ships blinked out of existence. Then the stars and planets. Then the debris. Then he too disappeared from existence, leaving a blank void. Arriving back at a briefing table in a wood paneled war room. The Russian vice admiral by his side. There was the clop of shoes and a woman stepped into the room. Her face was vaguely feline in appearance, her four arms folded neatly behind her back. She wore an intricate golden and bronze robe contrasting coal’s blue naval overcoat; with the dominion emblem in gold to her left breast.
“Well, well well.” She chuckled. “That simulation got a little out of hand, wouldn’t you say? Your shielding technology is very impressive.” She finished, bowing with respect.