Just Like Magic of Old

by computerneek

Chapter 17

“Wing, is this it?”

“Should be, Princess. We’re talking about a group of asteroids tethered together, you can’t exactly mount engines on that.”

Short Flight nods sharply, muscles just as tense as the rest of her crew. Lunar Wing, her tactical officer and former captain of the Shadouette, had decrypted the archived database that had been acquired as part of the rescue of the Shadouette. In it, they’d found the coordinates at which they’d found the pirate haven a year prior- and now, they’re in hot pursuit. Well… as hot a pursuit as silent running can be. At the moment, the ship is drifting towards the spotted pirate haven, under zero acceleration.

“Got them,” Wing reports, sending a sensor feed to one of the many screens in front of Flight.

At a glance, it appears to be a perfectly ordinary group of asteroids- but, not only are asteroids not usually this close together, but the sensors are picking up disguised weapon mounts on the outside surfaces. She scowls. “I could have sworn there weren’t this many turrets when you came here.”

Wing nods grimly. “They must have upgraded. I wouldn’t be surprised if we were the first ship to escape their little hideout in a long time- they probably didn’t like that. Especially with how hard we hit them.”

Night Skies taps on her console a few times. “We have a fix on their ships yet?”

“Ahh… some of them. One dreadnought on the far side; more presently, there’s three battleships, three- no four- heavy cruisers, and… two light cruisers. That one looks like a captured freighter.” She glances up at them. “Last time we were here, most of their ships were docked on the inside, where we’ll have to actually enter the place to see them. On the other hoof, nothing they have will be able to catch up if we decide to rabbit.”

“How about us? Have we been spotted?” Flight asks.

“Doesn’t look like it, but our present trajectory will put us right through the middle of their main search zones. And… yeah. Given how much I’m seeing out here, I’d hesitate to go in without backup, even with a ship as well-armed as yours.” She scowls at her console. “When we were on the way out, they had a few ships pop up out of nowhere around the base. I’m not seeing any, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.”

“Hmm,” Flight mutters. “So… What if we just make some noise out here and rabbit it?”

“We could probably do that. Radar contact out here is getting pretty close to detection val-!” A buzzer interrupts her. “Lidar hit, we’re seen!”

“Combat Alert!” Flight snaps immediately- and all three reactors at the heart of her ship, two of NuCoils’ finest and the last the strange fruit of the engineers’ labors, start their spin-up to full combat power. Silent Running also runs them as low as possible, to minimize radiator emissions. A glance at the battle board at one far end of her wide console shows almost every single department flashing from ‘standby’ to ‘ready’ as a unit. All the rest- like Medical- were already ready.

“Wait the hull polarization until they start shooting,” Short orders, “And open long-range energy fire! Let’s see how many of these bastards we can catch with their hulls unpolarized, then get out of here before they can localize us!”

“Target locked,” Wing responds immediately. “Deploying artillery cannons. Plasma generators spinning up.”

Flight grins. Most plasma cannons, such as the ones mounted on all eight of her turreted weapons, are useless against a polarized hull. They usually work by rapidly heating the targeted vessel with superheated plasma against the hull, though exposed equipment- such as turret mounts, or a gravity drive that’s at least halfway through its maintenance cycle- can get shorted out and destroyed by it directly.

The massive, spinal artillery cannons her engineers had come up with, however, are a little different. Loaded with inductance coils and even a fusion chamber at the back, they launch a ball of what they called ‘solidified plasma’- which made no sense to her- at the enemy. A ball that would punch through most hull polarization, requiring a maximum polarization to destabilize them before impact- and even then, still expose the target to large quantities of superheated plasma. Should that ball make contact with the enemy vessel, though, her engineers assure her that anything smaller than a heavy cruiser would suffer crippling damage- and, possibly, blow apart.

Her ship isn’t big enough to mount regular artillery cannons, which launch nuclear munitions at the enemy with cee-fractional velocity; no, only superdreadnoughts can mount those.

“Good choice,” Skies nods- while also looking interestedly at the artillery readouts on her panel. This will be the first time the things see use, after all; they hadn’t been able to figure a way to test them on anything but deep space without doing a lot of damage to something. “We’ll probably want to keep our distance, too.”

Flight taps a couple keys, and the ship vibrates slightly around them. The Gravity Drive increases power a touch, to pull three gees- and her nuclear maneuvering thrusters (thinking about those things always manages to crack her up) providing another two. “There… I want to wait until we’re charging again before I increase power any further, if I can get away with it.” She gestures with one hoof towards the power readouts on her panel; the massive artillery cannons are drawing mostly from the reserves, and it’ll be a few minutes before the reactors spin up high enough to support them out of current generation. One of the problems with getting caught in silent running.

“Stealth is nominal,” Wing announces suddenly- another drain on the reserves, but one that’ll make it painfully difficult for the enemy to localize her for effective return fire. “Decoys primed.” Fortunately, the decoys- powered by a miniature energy beam emitter and tethered to the mothership by the Gravity Drive- won’t actually burn power until they’re launched. “Ballistic munitions incoming- impact thirty-seven seconds, mark. Polarizing hull in thirty-three. Artillery nominal in six.”

Flight grins. A strongly polarized hull will deflect most attacks, such that only a direct hit will penetrate to the hull. And of course, simple ballistic projectiles- like bullets- will never get through a polarization field, unless fired from a ship that already has a very significant closing velocity.

Six seconds pass in relative silence.

“Firing artillery… now,” Wing snaps, and the ship twitches. The windshield polarizes instantly as what looks like four miniature stars- spread in a square, two above and two below- rocket out at the enemy. “Impact in two, one.”

Flight watches as all four energy artillery rounds slam into the unprotected side of the pirates’ dreadnought… then, hardly a second later, a secondary explosion splits the thing in half.

“Nice,” Skies grins predatorily. “Musta hit some of their nuclear munitions.” She scowls at her display. “But we do need to work on that sixty-second cycle time.”

“Stagger the artillery,” Flight orders. “One round every fifteen seconds. That should give us plenty of time to pick a new target for the next round if we reach annihilation- minimize wasted ammunition.” She scowls. “Not that it’s very limited to begin with, is it?” She glances at Skies.

Skies shakes her head. “We’ve got the fuel to fire that thing… fifty thousand times, at least. But that’ll also allow us to maximize the effectiveness of our fire, both before and after they get around to polarizing their hulls.”

“Vessels on approach!” Wing announces. “Two- no, three- on thruster power, detecting significant Grav Flux! Resetting artillery target priorities.”

Flight grins. Grav Flux, a byproduct of the startup of a Gravity Drive in need of servicing… and vulnerable to plasma fire. She glances at her console. “We’re accelerating away at five gees- they’ll think we’re civvies fleeing on maximum emergency thrust.” She scowls. “Until they figure out where the artillery is coming from.” She glances at her panel, then at Skies. “Would it be worthwhile to artificially generate Grav Flux?”

“To convince them we’re behind on our maintenance schedule?” Skies mutters, scowling at her panels. “... Probably not. It’d give us an advantage, certainly, but it’d burn way too much power. Our drive shouldn’t start making flux on its own unless we run it way past replacement, soo…”

Flight scowls. Grav Flux is, on a drive that generates it naturally, wasted energy- an extra startup cost. Conversely, the newer the drive, and less likely it is to generate the stuff on its own, the more power it takes to artificially generate Grav Flux. Most brand-new drives can’t generate it at all for at least a month, no matter how hard the skipper tries- but military drives are designed to be capable of it from day one, for the tactical advantage a well-powered ship can acquire by pretending to be undermaintained.

“Approaching vessels exiting asteroid shadows in one… Huh. Two missile frigates, and one… That is a lot of point defence for one ship, I doubt we can saturate it.”

Flight scowls. So much for the dozen missile launchers they’d installed on the top and bottom of her ship, and the hundreds of ‘swarmer’ missiles she’d acquired, specifically designed to saturate point defense solutions. “How might our point defense stand against the missile boats?”

“... Eh. I wouldn’t trust the computer to get them all, but we’ve got enough point defense turrets, in theory.”

She nods. “Alert all turret operators for point defense duty, then.”

“Roger. Yeah, we’ll handle those, no problem. Probably cost a lot of ammunition, though.”

Nod. “Targeting priority on the point defense ship, fire as many arty rounds as you need. Then we can take the other two with missiles.” She looks up at Skies. “If there’s one thing I’d like to avoid, it’s energy range.”

Skies nods. “Definitely- we don’t have the armor to stand up to any of that.”

“I wonder why they put so much point defense on one ship?” Flight asks.

On her comms panel, Star answers. “Probably means those rust buckets can’t take much of a hit, they think they’re playing it safe.”

She snorts. “And painting a target on their weakness while they’re at it.”

A buzzer at Wing’s panel. “What- Enemy behind us, energy range! Burning to emerge from cover!”

“Polarize the hull!” Flight snaps. “Missiles! Time to artillery!”

“Artillery ready in two-three seconds!”

“Rear enemy generating Grav Flux!”

“Rear turrets, plasma! Fire as it appears!” She looks at Skies. “Suggestions?”

Skies scowls at her panel. “I… I have a bad feeling about this. We need to get out of here.”

“Energy fire incoming from rear,” Wing barks, “near miss! Enemy point defense sufficient- plasma contact! … Enemy experiencing weapons cookoff.”

Flight watches on her panel as the ship attacking from behind is ripped apart by internal explosions. Then she heaves a sigh. “Their hull was unpolarized,” she states.

“Enemy hull polarization detected forward! Missile trace- Multiple missile trace! There must be two more pairs of missile boats we haven’t seen!”

She looks at the power readout… and winces. “Make this the final artillery volley, and make it count,” she orders. “We need the power for the engines.” They’ve already burned through so much power that, if she were to boost the Gravity Drive to full power now, they’d run out of power almost three full minutes before the reactors spin up high enough. Cutting the artillery out of the loop should reduce that to only a minute or so. “Star! Standby to initiate Distortion Drive cooldown on my Drive command!” Said ‘cooldown’ being to prime the superconductors, readying the thing for duty.

“Roger,” Star responds, before scrambling around his panel. “Standing by!”

“Enemy comms penetrated!” Blacklight, at the Electronics console, announces. “Two- no, three- dreadnoughts inbound around their base!” He hesitates briefly. “The trailing one has malfunctioning hull polarizers!”

“Spotted!” Wing announces. A seconds’ pause, then- “Artillery nominal!” The windshield blacks out, a single sun-like object flashing downrange. Three more seconds pass, through which the windshield fades back to transparent. “Forward missile boats exposed to missile fire, engaging!”

“Where are the other two groups?” Flight barks, completely ignoring how one of the distant ships visible through the windshield is now in fragments.

“I don’t know!”

“Target the dreadnoughts! Blacklight, info?”

“They’re still spinning up their reactors,” Blacklight states. “They’re waiting hull polarization until they get halfway through missile range- or we start shooting at them.”

She nods. “Spread the artillery fire, simultaneous!” As she does so, she twists the ship to face them, following the instructions Wing sent up to her panel. Thank Equus that, like traditional artillery, the engineers’ energy artillery also has a ridiculously long range.

The windshield blacks out.

The wait is almost six seconds this time.

“Hits confirmed!” Blacklight barks, even as Wing reports the arrival of the first wave of enemy missiles. “Two- no, three- dreadnoughts disabled! Two bridge hits, one reactor!”

“Deploying decoys!” Wing announces, as the first few missiles start getting into energy point defense range.

“Caution rear!” Blacklight announces. “Enemy is attempting an ambush!”

Flight curses under her breath, glaring at the power readouts. “Aww, hay with it.” She glances up, and yells, pulling wildly on the gyro controls. “Brace for acceleration!” She waits two seconds, and slams the main engines to maximum power.

The boot of the gods promptly slams into her back, as the ship accelerates at a full fifty gravities… with an apparent eight gees shipboard, since she didn’t increase power to the gravity drive. Then she carefully taps up the power on the Gravity Drive, until it just barely cancels out the inside acceleration, and watches the power readouts. Three, two, one… “Drive!”

“Distortion Drive cooldown initiated!” Star returns immediately. “Nominal in five-five seconds!”

“Missile contact on forward missile boats!” Wing announces. “Hits confirmed!”

“One- no, two enemy vessels crippled!” Blacklight announces, scrambling about her panel.

“More fighters- ambush confirmed!” Wing yells. “Carrier spotted!”

“Enemy missile net penetrated!” Blacklight calls. “Redesignating acquired missiles. Missile boats localized… and acquired!”

“Fire control merged!” Wing barks. “Firing on fighters!”

Flight blinks. “How long will that last?”

“Not long,” Skies answers. “But we should be able to steal a couple more salvoes before the pirates figure out what’s going on and force their systems into manual. Their fire will also desynchronize when they do that- be easier for us to kill.” She grins. “And if she’s managed that, you’ve got some impressive electronic warfare equipment. We’ve never been able to do that before.”

“I know I do,” Flight nods sharply, and looks at her panel. “How long to power exhaustion?”

“Ahh…” Skies looks at her own panel. “three-five seconds, mark.”

She winces. “Distortion nominal in two-five. Assuming all else is cut, how long can we run it?”

Skies winces. “Six seconds, or so.”

Flight’s turn to wince again. “We’ll just have to hope five seconds is enough to give us a rabitting trajectory.” The engineers had managed to build her Distortion Drive such that it would take significantly less power than the Gravity Drive.

She looks up. “Enemy launchers on manual!” Blacklight announces. “Enemy missile net rebuilt on new encryption!”

“Battleship detected on right!” Wing calls. A second passes. “Optimal escape trajectory marked!”

Flight glances down at her panel, and adjusts her ship’s heading to match. Assuming the Distortion Drive gives her enormous accelerations, as is expected of it, her ship should approximately match that trajectory on the way out.

“Last decoy!” Wing announces- indicating that the last decoy they have aboard ship is getting deployed.

Flight blinks- she’s managed to go through six of her eight decoys, and simultaneously keep anything from hitting her ship! “Retract decoys on my mark!” She’d rather not leave any behind if she can help it.

She watches the time-to-distortion display tick down. And…

“Mark!”

“Decoys retracting! Enemy fire inbound!” A pause. “Decoys lande-!”

The Distortion Drive ready light comes on, and Flight’s hoof- already resting on the start button- depresses it.

Author's Note:

First off, this chapter is unique in that it was co-authored, rather than edited, by my editor, Gerandakis. I would never have been able to make an even mildly amusing action sequence of this length without his help.

Patreon, Discord, if interested.

And on that note, I might just launch a Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild fic/crossover at some point, with Linkle (female link) as the main character... I'm having way too much fun playing as her with a mod. No, there are no MLP mods, I checked.

Comments

[Venerable Ro]

Now that was a nasty kick in the teeth for some pirate baron, and managed without so much as a scratch too!

[Argentyros]

Had to show a lot of cards, but kicked those pirate scum quite nicely, for little to no non-monetary loss, assuming the energy problem doesn't cause any major issues.

[computerneek]

10167522
Yep! And you can bet they've got another one coming... Remember Admiral Timber Wolf last chapter, deciding to go after any pirates they see, to hay with the cost? Yeah... you can bet they were watching where she went, and started getting curious when she never emerged.

It's not a good thing (for the pirates) when an entire fleet gets curious about a ship disappearance.

Those events have been written out, but won't be appearing in the story, as Flight wasn't present (and the story is from her perspective), but they were written out explicitly so they could be referred to in cohesive manner at a later point in the story- various characters reflecting back on it, and so on. Possibly even perusal of combat records...

[Venerable Ro]

10167554

It's not a good thing (for the pirates) when an entire fleet gets curious about a ship disappearance.

[keybounce]

I had a little trouble following the combat this chapter.

First, a ship under no power and no acceleration will not necessarily be identified as a ship just because it got a LiDAR hit. At the same time, I can certainly understand the better safe than sorry approach.

“Solidified plasma” sounds like something a jedi would use.

I am very curious about the pirate tactics. The use of bullets (ballistic munitions) when we are told that that will not get through a polarized hull, when they can be detected more than 30 seconds away which is more than enough time to polarize a hull, seems very bad. Even worse, how in the hay can you justify a capital ship being caught with an unpolarized hull, and no combat air patrol fliers?

I’m also surprised at the time factor. We are talking a couple of dozen seconds, minimum, for the enemy weapons to reach us, but we can hit them in four seconds?

I am also curious, in this combat system, if a polarized hull is able to stop almost all incoming weapons fire, one, why would any ship not have a polarized hull as soon as an enemy was detected, and two, what is the expected way to take out another ship? For example, I’m actually used to ship combats that are based around firing energy weapons at another ship until it overheats.

Also, do the enemy ships have no decoys? Not once did our missiles or plasma shots miss.

In fact I’m realizing a major problem with this whole “don’t polarize our hulls until we see their missiles coming”. Energy weapons will arrive at the speed of light, and you won’t see them before they hit. So delaying your polarization is asking to be destroyed.

And then we’re running into multiple dreadnoughts, multiple missile gun ships, and if that wasn’t bad enough after taking care of those we are talking about carriers and deployed fighters.

I don’t care how ridiculously over powered one ship is; being able to inflict massive amounts of damage -- or really, anything more than one ship caught by surprise at that point, it’s just plain bad enemy tactics. If this is a competent group of pirates -- and with that much of a fleet this is more than just a random assortment of pirates
-- then there is no way this much combat incompetence is believable.

Seriously, this is a fleet. A battleship, multiple dreadnoughts, a carrier group, and a bunch of gun boats.

Where do pirates get a fleet like that?