Post by CanisDirus on Apr 30, 2022 8:33:10 GMT
Following the devastation of Uxetall at alpha zeros hands. The Sestee corporation and the families, if any remained of the attacks survivors had pooled money to both ensure that something of the sort would never happen again, and hunt down the perpetrator. Although this was not officially sanctioned by the Uxetall government they were not adverse to such actions.
After the money was pooled information of what could be done was passed around to several governments, and posted in the relevant locations on the ancnet. The plan was half formed. Anticipating that people would bring special techniques and technology forward, it could be summarized as isolating the dreadnought and destroying it, or at least the massive computer servers inside before support could arrive.
But for the people who were willing to contribute to the cause deep space coordinates were forwarded, along with a date. The coordinates were deep in the Killian verge, in the general galactic area of a dead planet and what could be defined as the hub of alphazero activity.
There is a crackle in the void as a tear forms from the meridian, near the coordinates. Out from the massive Tear comes One Indivisible Class Carrier, 2 Dorsum class Battlecruisers, 3 Divination class Destroyers, and a handful of Vanguard class Escort Frigates. They Begin a burn forwards scanning the area for their target as weapon systems come to life, railguns powering up, plasma flowing through the ship like blood through veins, finding its way to energy projectors or railguns and awaiting the oncoming battle. The Particle Accelerator of the Carrier Charges itself with sinarium, waiting for the enemy to show up where it will unleash its payload, interdicting the enemy. Meanwhile the dorsum classes charge their accelerators with neutrons.
The Sestee Corporation's posting on the Ancnet had been picked up fairly quickly by the Isoterran Department of Intelligence, during their near constant sweeps of the galactic public networks. The request was checked, rechecked, and finally brought forward to Fleet Admiral Vito's attention as a possible start to dealing with the recent aggressions with Alphazero. Lord Fisk was somewhat skeptical however when Vito brought the idea up, however after some convincing, he had granted assent for the operation to move forward.
Arriving at a distance of almost twenty AU from the designated coordinates were the ten vessels that had been assigned to the mission, those being 4 battleships, and 6 frigates. Commanding the somewhat ad hoq group was Commodore Caler. Currently sitting deep within the monolithic hull of his battleship, nicknamed Founder's Fist, in reference to the Queen while skirting the restrictions about Queen-related ship names, he was currently watching the tactical display with a bit of a frown. It wasn't every day that one jumped into interstellar space, not because it wasn't feasible, but because there usually wasn't anything there worth jumping to.
Upon arrival, all ten vessels had raised shields and low power interdiction, while arming weapons. Passive sensors currently looked around, taking in the system's layout and any possible threats.
"Sir, picking up eleven warships. Preliminary recce suggests they belong to the Grand Empire of Kel'thul. Energy signatures suggest they are in combat readiness." the AI navigation officer alerted him, as part of the viewscreen showed a somewhat blurry view of the Kel'thul fleet.
"Contact them, see what they're doing here" commanded Caler, his orders being carried out automatically by the communications officer.
From Founder's Fist, a transmission was sent to the Kel'thul fleet, with the message "Greetings, this is Commodore Caler of the Isoterran Empire. Please state intentions"
The arrival of three alcubierre bubbles at the outskirts of the system signaled the appearance of a third hunter. The lithorian collective was poised to accept the request set up by Uxetall. While the aliens could not care less about the machine's atrocities or the suffering of its victims,they saw an opportunity here. They could collect the bounty,neutralize a possible threat to their kolleronic mining operations and satisfy their newfound interest in machines,be they intelligent or not,all in one go,speeding along their various projects related to such.
The ftl bubbles were quick to pop once at their destination,releasing a battleship which was flanked by two carrier class bioships. Last but not least was a line of five frigates taking up space in front of all three.
Within the dark bowels of the battleship,an insectoid figure watched the sensor data meticulously. This was it,alpha zero's hive,there was no doubt about it.
A series of heavy footsteps caught the alien's attention,its three compound eyes spinning around to see a lumbering reptilian figure,its orange scales glowing and steaming.
"I see your vessel has been fully realised. How.....fortunate" the insectoid said,causing the other creature to grit its fangs
"Indeed. Let us hope my presence will make up for your legendary incompetence. What is our situation Qhik?"
The insectoid snarled,its central eye narrowing as the stalks around it wriggled with frustration.
"No need to be so confrontational. My previous blunder was but a freak occurrence. As for your question,this is certainly the machine's lair. Though it would seem we are not the first to arrive in the system's outskirts"
"Foes?"
"More like fellow hunters" it inquired,tapping one chitinous appendage against its lower jaw
"Ready our communications array. I shall address them"
The alien got to work,mentally interfacing with the vessel and rousing its comms growths from slumber. Meanwhile the reptilian goliath cleared its throat,it had been awhile since it communicated verbally
"This is Vulgoth of the Lithorian Collective,we are here under orders to neutralize Alpha Zero,identify yourselves and state your objectives immediately"
Through the private channels that came with accepting a bounty a plaintext message came through
“Unexpected delay, target rerouting to system marked “gelmond 3”. Reason unknown, no known alphazero assets.”
Attached was what the Sestee corporation thought to be the coreships possible route, giving two locations marked as “likely intercepts”. A point about a light year away where there would be ideal distance between the ship and possible support, giving the group most of an hour before “crushing” force could be applied to push them away from the battle, and a second. What was assumed to be the endpoint of the dreadnoughts journey, it would force the group to contend with whatever was there to resupply the dreadnought after it arrived but would also leave any chance of support much further away. There were no known alphazero assets in the destination system besides for the supply group and what was known to be a “mothball” fleet of damaged and destroyed ships positioned above a planet that one hosted life.
Comms open up with the Lithorians and the Isoterrans
"This is Shipmaster Va'ka're of the K.A.N. Unity's Mark, an Indivisible-Class Carrier of the Kel;thulian Astronautical Navy. We are here to assault Alpha-zero on orders of the Sestee Corporation."
The Ships begin to fire up their lockpick drives again, coordinates set for the second location. They unleash a blast of golden ancerium, bending and tearing points in the distance, openings to the meridian as they approach the rifts. Another set of transmissions go out.
"We are heading to the second designated location. We would advise for you to follow us, sticking together is the best way to ensure mutual victory."
Both the Kel'Thul and newly arrived Lithorian messages were played aloud, causing the corners of Caler's mouth to shift upward into a smile, showing off his fangs. Neither of these nations were allied with the Empire, and so he didn't trust either of them a bit, however their presence would be useful. It was always nice to have others to soak up damage in place of one's own assets. And in this case, the Kel'Thul had even been so kind as to tell him what their capital vessel was, which could become useful later.
That brought him to the message from the Sestee Corporation, regarding the actual target location and what was likely there. This caused his smile to quickly morph into a frown. If the client was to be believed, this dreadnought was an integral part of Alphazero, and yet it was travelling alone, without even a real fleet to protect it at the destination. He smelled a trap, which made him all the happier that there were others here with him.
"Navigation, charge FTL and take us to Gelmond 3" he ordered, before sending replies to each of the other factions present in the system. To the Kel'Thul, a return message came "I agree with your advice, we are charging FTL and will meet you there."
To the Lithorians "This is Commodore Caler of the Isoterran Empire. We are also here to neutralize Alphazero, and are preparing to jump to the target system now."
Energy was sent from the vessels' ZPM reactors to their DT drive capacitors, charging them up while the navigation systems synchronized and prepared to jump.
Vulgoth's pupils narrowed to thin slits as he analyzed the various messages sent to him. He wasn't exactly keen on working with either of the parties,seeing as they were not friendly contacts. Indeed a quick skim through their psi network revealed one to have a highly questionable background while the other lacked one at all.
Nevertheless he relented,figuring that they would need every warship they could get.
"We're jumping to the second location"
"In what world does one choose a location without intel over one with?! You're following that troupe of imbeciles into doom" Qhik snapped,mandibles chittering wildly
"We are going and that is final"
"This isn't going to work. You know that,right?"
"I will make it work"
"Doubtful,but you'll certainly owe me a new body if this one gets destroyed" the insectoid retorted,linking up with the bio vessels and relaying the commands
The lithorian taskforce made their move,warp bubbles encasing the three main vessels and swallowing the frigates aswell before departing for their colleague's destination
There were thankfully no incidents, and no interceptions. Space was big after all, what were the chances that anyone would run face first into another ship if they were not looking for you?
The system called Gelmond was a nice place, albeit in the middle of nowhere given the area. A few planets scorched by the sun, a brown one in the green zone, and a couple of gas giants that had once eaten world ending asteroids for a fledgling civilization.
But that was a long time ago, and now the planet had no oceans, no atmosphere worth trying to breathe. To the trained eye it looked like the planet had died in a sustained orbital bombardment. No real hint of who did it though.
In geostationary orbit of the planet was a stone monolith, 10KM a side the Octahedron appeared to be made out of a glassy volcanic rock. Further out, around the planets rather feeble moon was what looked like thousands of husks of ships. Everything from mobile ancerium refineries to a dreadnought that looked much like the current target once had. It would be a wealth of scrap and salvage if it was not so radioactive.
But other than that it seemed to be just, quiet. It would have been expected for a system in this area to have some activity from the overmind, be it mining or industry, but none was seen here, and its not like the AI was known for being particularly stealthy.
Out of the meridian comes the kelthulian fleet, enacting passive scans of the systems searching for radio signals. Plasma thrusters flaring up as they move farther into the systems, weapons on high alert
A Transmission heads out to the other 2 fleets.
"Keep your eyes peeled, i have a feeling the AlphaZero will be here sooner rather than later..."
The Isoterran force arrived well outside the orbit of the dead planet, and by extension moon. Running their engines on low power for a short time, they established themselves on a sort of geostationary orbit around the system's primary, that would keep them at the same position relative to the dead planet. Having done so, they shut their engines off, drifting and relying on passive sensors.
Caler waited, somewhat impatiently, for their target to arrive. Listening to Va'ka're's message, the Isoterran commander fought the urge to send back a biting reply, annoyed that the Kel'Thul felt it necessary to state the obvious.
The lithorian fleet was quick to in the system aswell,relying on their gravity tendrils so as to be better concealed to sensors.
The battleship would proceed to fire strange buoys from one of its mass drivers,letting them drift away in all directions to form some kind of perimeter. The carriers on the other hand opened their whale like mouths and simply waited, scanning carefully for any warp bubble signatures.
"I still do not agree with this choice. We should have simply intercepted our target" Qhik said,limbs fidgeting as it spoke
"Your opinion is noted. Now be silent and keep a watchful eye on our sensor readings. If the ambush goes well we will be taking our bounty back to Eatov in no time"
The system was quiet and still beside the interlopers for around 45 minutes before a rather gargantuan FTL signature could be seen “diving” down from some place deeper in Xspace. Breaching realspace in a flash of energy as they filed out of the tear in reality.
Perhaps the sestee corporation had made a little understatement when they said “dreadnaught”. Because the 180odd kilometer ship seemed to be a little more than that. The other craft that exited the other dimension along with it were a 6 of what appeared to be clean and simple meat shields, large flat things that consisted of a single armour array and engines, along with 5 craft that were clearly not intended for combat, the long flat structure of the dreadnought was contrasted by cargo pods and the large spherical tanks of ancerium. They lacked any true armament beyond a few CIWS guns but who knew what a desperate hivemind would do with the spacecraft.
"Vulgoth,we've got a Meridian signature,it's our target" Qhik said,eyes glued to a projection displaying the results of their sensors
"They don't use warp?"
"It would seem not"
"Very unfortunate. No matter, we are to await their arrival"
The lithorian vessels promptly turned on their reactors again,running system diagnostics and powering up weapons in expectation for the arrival of their quarry. Nevertheless,this preparation did not make the moment any less tense
"Report" Vulgoth said plainly,sitting with arms crossed and a neutral expression on his visage
"One primary vessel,180 kilometers long,likely our dreadnought,6 unarmed ships and 5 point defense drones"
"Interesting composition. Very well,let us spring our trap then"
The various buoys shot earlier,which had since had the time to drift quite a ways in all directions,promptly revealed their nature as they activated their sub interdictor units. Each small unit thus projected its influence in a one AU volume,connecting to produce quite a large area of effect linking back to the lithorian battleship. The aliens were hopeful their web would both trap their quarry here and provide good buffer space incase of new arrivals
"I am detecting kolleronic radiation from those large external tanks,they likely hold the dreadnought's hyperfuel" The insectoid said while skimming through other sensor data
"Understood,patch me through to our colleagues" The large reptilian asked,having his wish fulfilled with a subtle motion from his companion
"Our scanners indicate those tanks hold our bounty's FTL fuel. I heavily advise that you focus them so it may not flee even if our interdiction goes down. We will take care of its escorts" Vulgoth promptly closed the channel and turned back to his second in command
"Give me scans of internal heat sources. Once we cross out the engines,we may pinpoint where their reactors or processing banks are"
"Already performed, transfering data"
With that the lithorian bioships sprung into action. The battleship released a standard probing volley at the smaller robotic vessels,made up of MIRVs carrying the usual shaped charge nuke and decoys,alongside some ECM missiles to hinder countermeasures.
Like clockwork,the frigates soon followed as they charged their one nucleonic cannon each and let loose a volley of their special AP shells,aiming for any sources of heat that their scans revealed
"Target detected, currently at below medium range, 2 light minutes" intoned the navigation officer, providing a verbal compliment to the CIC display that Commodore Caler was already looking at. The AI's near monotone was then followed by the navigation officer playing Vulgoth's far more verbally dynamic message regarding the Lithorian's tactical suggestions.
"All vessels, close to 1 light minute. Begin E-C operations and open fire. I want to focus fire on the dreadnought, but target the kolleronic tanks too." he ordered, letting his subordinates carry out their tasks.
Sensors flipped on, and the ten warships throttled up reactors, coating themselves in their own small bubble of interdiction. Space warped behind them as they accelerated forward towards the dreadnought and its escorts. From the glowing green bulbs on their sides, a swarm of green energy pulses emitted, trailed by the white flames of antiship missile fusion rockets. Both weapon sets nearly immediately altered course after launch, with the energy pulses adopting fairly direct arcs, while the missiles would wait until getting closer to start performing some evasive maneuvers.
In accordance with the Lithorian's suggestion, about a third of their fire had been directed at the ancillary ships' fuel tanks, while the rest was targeting any large sensor or communication arrays the dreadnought had, followed by its largest weapon batteries. Unseen, the weapons fire was accompanied by the work of the group's E-C officers, who were creating highly focused and direction quantum jamming on the dreadnought, attempting to prevent it from using any sort of FTL information transfer. While this occurred, they were carefully listening for any STL comms to be used.
"Bless the stars! Massive enemy contact has dropped out of FTL, 2 Light Minutes away, begin charging the particle lance and move in to roughly one and a half light minutes. Target the Kolleronic holding Tanks with railgun fire, and lance the dreadnought with the spinal mounts! Get interdiction online as well."
The neutral particle accelerators of the carrier and 2 battlecruisers lance out with an initial volley of neutrons accelerated to near light speeds, while the plasma railguns charge up, rings of plasma appearing aforth the barrels before unleashing a starting barrage of shells towards the ancerium tankers. After this initial volley, the ships move to get into a more optimal range of roughly one and a half light minutes. The Carrier lances out its spinal mount with a different set of particles, Ionized Sinarium, which engages assault interdiction upon the dreadnought alone.
It was like walking into your house after doing something morally questionable and finding 3 people, only one of which you had met before with guns scattered around the place. Generally, a rather terrible experience.
This left alphazero in a rough place, with one real solution. Fighting its way out. The dreadnought popped its particulate dispensers, raised the control rods on every reactor it had, and started throwing out missiles, bullets, and its ECM/sensor pods, while starting to move on its beyond gargantuan single orion drive, heading to the “graveyard” of scrapped ships as it started to actively move the smaller ships into the line of fire.
The lithorians started a ECM/missile battle with the dread, alphazero throwing out a 3-1 interceptor ratio, definitely not sustainable, it would run dry on interceptors before they ran dry on missiles, but it would keep them at bay for now as it launched a wave of its own casaba carrying missiles at the group, by the 100s. It did not however have an answer for the frigate's cannon, and they impacted the gargantuan spacecraft, burrowing deep into the ship before being stopped by one of the many layers of armour before they reached anything overly important. Besides for one that keyholed with another round and impacted one of the reactor's turbine systems, puncturing the extreme pressure steam pipes and detonating it. The reactor survived, but the cooling was hosed and the control rods had to be dropped back down. A reduction to the point defends effectiveness but not a massive blow.
The isoterrans got the worst of the dreadnaughts fire output, having brought that most threatening looking ships. The high bore spinals fired in their direction, the projectiles fired were more of extremely armoured missiles, made to plough through light CIWS from defenders and directly into its target the same ECM/ missile fight started, with the same unideal interceptor attrition rate that the isoterrans were benefiting from.
The carrier and crews' more focused attack on the vulnerable tankers was very effective, two of them going up as the fuel lost containment and they were reduced to clouds of debris and the bits further away, perhaps there was a reason why it was carried separately from the ship. The neutron beams would have been very effective, but the ship was very hardened by nature against such attacks, the electronics were built around operating in high radiation environments and the ship was simply too large to reach the citadel in the middle that contained the hivemind. In return they got what small bore rail guns were able to shoot at them, little self maneuvering darts meant to be too little to intercept while striking specific targets on a ship, when they got there- as far as projectiles went they were much slower than the spinals, and missiles before they were able to accelerate and discard a stage or two.
The dreadnought also tossed out a radio signal while it still could. Simple text, no real potential for viruses.
“This seems to be a little excessive, this fight does not have to happen.”
Calm, and in control.
The ten ships of the oversized Isoterran squadron rotated slightly, allowing their engines to accelerate them on a diagonal vector compared to their original course, taking them out of the path of the dreadnought's spinal rounds. However that was not the end of the issue, as the navigation officer announced "Enemy rounds altering course to intercept us. They seem to be guided."
Caler looked on with an icy expression "Shoot them down, and give the enemy a taste of our axials."
"Sir" replied the weapons officer "Our normal MDEW energies will have minimal effect on Alphazero, since they're nonliving."
"Find something to substitute then. Just make it happen, I don't want our hands tied just because we have a robotic enemy" ordered Caler, before turning his head as if to talk to someone beside him. "Ops, deploy strikefighters, I want them to intercept anything smaller than a warship that gets too close."
"Yes sir" replied the operations officer, relaying his command, and causing the launch bay doors of the ten vessels to open. From the dark apertures came a swarm of grey and orange SF-87 drones. Zipping away from their motherships, their first target was the incoming spinal weapons and anything else accompanying them. They were helped in this aspect by the frigates, who directed some of their fire at the incoming giant missiles.
While this was going on, the battleships continued shooting at the dreadnought, taking advantage of its predictable path to bombard it with their gun batteries, while their axial weapons were charged up and adjusted as Caler had ordered. No reply was given to Alphazero's message. The hivemind had already proven troublesome enough, both in the Isoterran's last encounter with them, and enough so on the galactic stage that it seemed few would miss them. However the squadron did continue their electronic and cyber operations, waiting for an opportunity as they concentrated their FTL jamming on the dreadnought.
The Kel'thulian fleet turns "down" and begins moving in the direction of the dreadnought's underside in an attempt to avoid the small railguns. They Ignore the radio from the dreadnought and continue their path, the plasma railguns charging for another barrage.
"Lances had little to no effect. Shipmaster?"
"Load up the ancerium, usage of lockpick drive upon the enemy dreadnought is permitted.."
"Yes shipmaster, it shall be done."
The Dorsum-Class Loads up its spinal weapon with ionized ancerium, beginning to charge up to fire at a portion of the dreadnought not currently within the assault interdiction field sent out by the carrier's spinal weapon. Meanwhile across the fleet, the rings of plasma at the barrels of the numerous railguns are dragged along as they fire out a second barrage towards the dreadnought, aiming for it's larger weapon systems
The lithorians were quick to react to the dreadnought's attack,rapidly activating their multi layered defense system to respond. First,a large number of missiles were launched out of special missile tubes. While not much bigger than a man,they carried a nuclear warhead and an amorphous lens designed to focus the resulting photons in various ways. After reaching a safe distance from the vessels,they would detonate and release upwards of a hundred bump pumped lasers in an expanding cone,aiming to bathe as much volume in fire as possible and compromise the enemy's nukes. Next small canister launchers dotting the hides of the biovessels would release shots containing millions upon millions of tiny granules,creating a veritable smokescreen. Their job was simply to lay in the path of the missiles and use their own speed against them,ensuring that each grain of sand hit like a bunker buster. Lastly,squadrons of interceptor craft hurried out of different launch tubes and moved to intercept anything that got through the previous measures with pairs of particle cannons.
All in all,a comprehensive strategy,yet not an infallible one. The projectiles that detonated from afar still hit,albeit had their supercritical jets blunted by the clouds of micro debris,leaving pot marks upon the strike plates of their lithorian adversaries. Those few that made contact did much better,punching through whatever was in the way until their jets too were disrupted by electromagnetic currents flowing through the layer of armour made specifically against such shaped charges.
"Damage is minimal,it seems the AI has sent us a message" Qhik inquired,playing the message for himself and his superior
"How do we proceed?" he added
Vulgoth thought for a moment,ignoring the mechanical being's request entirely and being more interested in its current strategy
"If it wants to waste its counter munitions,we'll play along. Fire laser missiles,tuned for minimum frequency and maximum spread. As for the rest,follow procedure 7-þ to the letter. Understand?"
The insectoid nodded as it proceeded to insert these new commands into the minds of the living vessels
The austral spawn now retaliated in kind. Firing volleys of missiles from their launch tubes once more. These were vastly larger than the point defense ones,having to compensate for much higher velocities and maneuvering thrusters,yet nevertheless carried the same payload,just grander. The projectiles would wait for the dreadnought to release its swarms of countermeasures,all prior to detonating and releasing even more laser bolts than their predecessors,all to achieve the most advantageous kill ratio and deplete the machines response that much faster.
The frigates changed their strategy,recognizing that even their nucleonic shells were having trouble getting past the sheer mass of their target. As such they prioritized their mass drivers,letting shots of spheromak shells bathe the colossal frame of their bounty. The things themselves were just like any other,a clump of matter moving at high speeds. What mattered was the monopole based mechanism designed to create a spheromak moments before impact. Thus while the shells themselves were rather manageable,the magnetic waves they generated would travel through the vast thickness of armour plating,bypassing any Faraday Cage in their way thanks to their unique shape and disrupt the circuitry that no doubt teemed beneath the metal.
The carriers too were not idle,activating 8 particularly large energy projectors at the tips of their fins and setting them to gamma frequency before targeting the dreadnought's vast spinal weaponry,once again focused on bypassing the raw mass and harming the systems beneath,only this time with photons. The frigates joined in aswell,though only having half the projectors of their kin placed upon half the number of fins,they too peppered that hardpoint with their concentrated emissions. If they could make that behemoth of a gun inoperable,it would doubtless spare the Isoterrans much trouble,and help them as a result
As the green projectiles homed in and found their mark they punched through the outer layer and through the first of the unimaginably large ships real armour plates they started to slow down, starting to punch through the internals they could get to, radiator lines- ammunition feeds, and whatever other variety of “not important enough to be deeper inside” internals there was. A few of the holes caught on “fire” as things along the lines of supercapacitor lines and chemical pipes were hit.
The FTL jamming was a problem, but not an insurmountable one. Thee little entangled communicators that kept everything connected had a maximum number of information they could relay, something made somewhat unreliable with the jamming, so orders had to be relayed over, and over, and over again. For the supporting ships and gargantuan projectiles like the spinals launched were not a large issue, they had enough overhead. For CIWS rounds they would be rendered quite stupid, and missiles would have to make simpler maneuvers, they would be more vulnerable to enemy CIWS but would at least work.
High mass was oftentimes synonymous with armour, something learned when the isoterrans used “standard” methods on gargantuan chunks of depleted uranium hurtling through space intent on introducing itself to a battleship. A lesson for the future.
The ships intended to stand between the dread and incoming weapons had began to get ready to intercept the spinal rounds that the hivemind knew was coming, it had seen the effect of such weapons before and hopefully the sacrifice of the small ships would keep it from being hit long enough to cover itself with the scrapped craft in the graveyard.
Three things worked together to doom one of the 4 spinals on the craft the extremely concentrated lithorian fire, the GEK spinals, and the fact that the ship had started the irreversible process of firing the bloody things as this happened.
The GEK keyhole spinals stayed normal due to the interdiction, having a similar effect to the lithorian energy projectors they ripped through the less significant armour and truly screwed the railgun underneath, just in time for the same superheavy railgun round to end up all over the place. A good third of the front third of the ship went, ripped all the way open. This also upset the supercapacitors, causing them to vanish in a flash as the stored power from a few nuclear reactors shorted. This exposed the bare armour plates that kept each of the spinals separated, if the rest of the capacitors went it probably would not cause the front to fall off, but it would be extremely far from pretty.
The lithorian missile war suddenly started to go badly, extremely badly.
Stopping large missile launches the dreadnought moved to something that it had an almost unlimited number of. very small nuclear rounds fired by the guns that covered the ship like it was an american battleship in 1945. Ripped almost exactly from the hiveminds ground based artillery the thought was that the little shells were far more numerous then the large interceptor missiles, even if it was at a 50-1 ratio, helped by the mix of tiny casaabas and lasers that the little things carried.
The gargantuan chunks of depleted uranium kept coming, despite the efforts of the strikefighters sent to intercept them. Caler gritted his teeth "Launch antiship missiles and target the spinal rounds with MMDWs! Fire control, please tell me you have some good news on those axials..."
Unseen, the four fire control officers of the battleships had completed a three-second-long meeting regarding what best to adjust their spinal MMDEWs to fire, while their capacitors had been charging. Having finished both the charging and meeting, they adjusted their fire to carry out Caler's orders and support the spinal weapons. That left confirmation of the action to Caler's FC officer, who replied "Yes sir, synchronization with other vessels is complete and axials are ready. Firing after path is cleared."
Strikefighters quickly disengaged from attacking the incoming slugs, while red-pink disintegrator beams shifted from aiming at the Alphazero dreadnought to its spinal rounds, causing explosions as the uranium atoms, finding their chemical binding energy suddenly reversed, violently repelled each other, making the massive slugs fragment. If that wasn't enough, each was then impacted by an antiship missile, carrying a nuclear warhead rated to melt a nickel-iron asteroid bigger than an aircraft carrier. While this successfully removed the shells and their intense desire to meet the hulls of the battleships, it still left a fair bit of hot dust, which pelted the squadron, causing minor damage.
Meanwhile, the portion of the hivemind tasked with watching the Isoterrans was sure to notice that something had changed, seeing that their gun batteries had re-allocated fire away from shooting so much at the dreadnought to dealing with the spinal rounds and removing the improvised shield platforms from their line of sight. In a way, it was like a subtle admission that yes indeed, something was coming in response, although it was likely different than what the mind had expected.
From the tips of the four battleships, bright beams of red-orange came into existence, aimed at the heavily damaged prow of the dreadnought. From within his flagship, Caler watched, instantly recognizing his officers' choice of energy: Hellfire. An interesting, but good idea. While there was no life energy aboard the Alphazero dreadnought to feed it when it came, that didn't really matter, the stuff would hit like plasma and ignite anything that could possibly undergo combustion, including metal.
The lithorian vessels were taken aback by the sheer barrage of nuclear shells,quickly being forced on the defensive as their bomb pumped laser missiles were being overrun. They resorted to their canister shots to create smokescreens of countless ball bearings,shredding the rain of shells that flew for them and blunting the ejecta of the cassabas,causing them to splash against the strikeplates of the bioships and do superficial damage.
Vulgoth was however quite annoyed,they could not use their missiles or mass drivers like this,being blocked by their own shrapnel fields and the sea of nuclear rounds,atleast no directly. Nevertheless,they could still help.
Firstly,carriers turned to release several subcraft of gunship configuration by way of their launch mass drivers. These craft then began to circle around the battle and flank the gargantuan vessels,releasing a combination of ECM missiles to hamper the dreadnought's defenses and missiles that shed their outer frame to reveal millions of tiny but elaborate devices. The things were no bigger than a fist,meant to harmlessly smash against the hull and release streams of tachyons,radar and various other waves that would help the lithorians create a map of this thing's insides,which may soon become invaluable.
The GEK fleet continues moving towards the underside of the dreadnought, railguns charging and then firing with a thwump as they chuck tungsten shells with depleted uranium tips, plasma swirling around the shells while they streak across the void at massive speed. The smaller railguns chuck shell after shell after shell at quick speeds, the smaller ones reloading quicker due to their far lower calibre, while the larger ones take a minute to charge before firing with a powerful noise shaking the area, the far larger calibre of the guns putting more power into each shot. The railguns aim for various weapons systems on the lower belly of the dreadnought.
The Shipmaster Clutches the arm of his chair and speaks loudly
"The front section of the dreadnought has taken heavy damage, lockpick assault was effective. Load ano-"
The Second in Command stops him
"Sir, i advise we not use any more ancerium, we must keep our reserves high for the long trip home"
"You are correct.. It seems our spinal weapons will no longer be of use here, redirect power from the spinal weapons to the railguns and launch attack craft"
The power once in the spinal weapons drains out and redirects to the railguns, initiating an overdrive in the weapon systems as the smaller railguns begin to speed up attacks by an almost unnoticeable amount. Meanwhile, the hangar bays of the carrier open up and a few squadrons of large attack craft, loaded to the brim with long range missiles, launch from the hangar and begin to circle the carrier, waiting for the fleet to get closer to the dreadnought before they unleash their payloads.
As the dreadnought begins unleashing the casaba horde, GEK interception comes online, plasma defense grids streaming plasma at oncoming rounds, melting them before they reach the kel' fleet. Plasma streaks through the void as casaba rounds are eat up, a couple passing through with good angles, slamming into the Dorsum class and undergoing nuclear reaction, melting away outer carbon composite and sending a shockwave through inner strikeplates, small hairline fractures forming where the nuclear shells hit
The shielding craft that had gotten in the way of the incoming hellfire took the worst of it, glowing red before melting and letting the beams through to the open section of the front. The asbestos insulation unfortunately, did not help very much- and despite being in space they entire thing started burning,not hot enough to turn it into goop, just to ruin the sections mechanical properties.
The lithorian ECM missiles did not do amazingly, the dreadnaught simply had too much energy to put out active sensors wise, putting the “burn through” distance where it became ineffective a long ways out, but it required extra effort- and that was good for them.
The little sensors were not blown up, and allowed to impact- the cost benefit analysis of getting rid of them just did not work out in the machines favor.
For the gek craft firing railguns they found targeting particular points difficult, the craft was still moving- both in the general direction of the field of dead ships, even if it looked like it would never make it, and slightly in every direction on its beyond massive RCS- to complicate targeting for its foes.
The dreadnought focused on launching missiles in a general field around itself, and a particularly large wave of interceptors to lie in the space between itself and the GEK fighters. More sensor pods were launched away from the behemoth craft, no point in keeping them in their silos.
Generally the outside besides for the front was just starting to look rough, besides for the front that had taken a notable bend Besides for the part that left, the heat from the isoterran hellfire ruined the mechanical properties, and caused it to bend under the force of the Orion drive moving the entire thing.
SIC:
"Railguns unable to hit their marks, they seem to be harmlessly striking against the dreadnought's armour. Alphazero has begun launching swarms of interceptors to block our fighter's paths"
SM:
"Keep firing! Have the attack craft hold back and get point defense focusing on the interceptors"
Energy Projectors swerve around and begin firing off in bursts towards the Missiles and interceptors sent out by the Alpha0 Dreadnought, balls of superheated plasma streaking into the void at high speeds. Meanwhile the railguns continue firing, attempting to adjust and calculate the movements of the enemy, trying to compensate for it's movement.
The attack craft hang back, defending the GEK fleet from missiles and enemy projectiles the best they can, while the fleet itself has arrived at their destination, in a good position to shell the belly of the beast while keeping their distance, keeping pace with the dreadnought. The gravitational point defense comes online and begins projecting waves of gravity, trying to slow down enemy projectiles, making them easier for the energy projectors and plasma defense grid to destroy
This first hellfire shot out of the way, the began charging for another round of hellfire discharge. However the dreadnought was still moving, and that was a problem. "All ships, refocus fire on the dreadnought's engines. Have our some of our fighters target their interceptors and missiles." Caler ordered.
This was done, with the light show of Isoterran weapons shifting to focus on the Orion drive strikeplate and the large hydraulic rams that supported it against the shock of the nuclear detonations. From the swarm of SF-87 strikefighters that had been circling the Isoterran group, two hundred broke off and accelerated towards the interceptors and missiles that the dreadnought was launching around itself.
Vulgoth watched intently as the situation evolved. Clearly the behemoth of a dreadnought was starting to hurt badly,caving under their combined assault. Yet through a mix of rabid determination and sheer girth,it endured. No matter,both must have has their limit.
"Sensor returns are complete,the vessel's intellect has compounded a schematic of the target's insides. What component do you wish to target?" The insectoid said,manifesting a projection of their target between its talons
"The main cooling system will do. Prime our meson accelerator and hit its most likely location. Use high grade shells on its already compromised areas" The reptilian replied,clenching one hand into a fist
The circular maw of the lithorian battleship lit up with a green glow,dilating and expanding before blasting forth a bolt of pions at the designated target. Thanks to the nature of the weapon,their quarry's thick armour would matter little.
Other vessels were quick to join in,letting forth shots from their mass drivers. These shells were guided,meant to avoid intercepting attempts and course correct to an area of the dreadnought already roughed up before detonating a series of nuclear shaped charges on impact
The radiators, and cables of superconductor heat pipes that the dreadnought was able to extend to the void were mostly located near the back, even if smaller ones were scattered across the surface to prevent catastrophic failure. They glowed white with heat. Or did, the pions and projectiles from the isoterrans were traveling at the speed of light, and hit before the rest could.
The isoterran projectiles were able to arc around the strike plate for the orion drive, into the support structures and nearly unarmoured rear. If the Orion drive was to be made useless it would be fired one more time to both give the ship an extra push, and bring it in close on the secondary internal mechanical stopping systems to provide a very nice armor plate to the rear.
The AI could not see the pion round coming, and the nuke to bring the Orion drive in was already case out, set on a timer due to the unreliability of comms at the moment. The pion round was detected .13 seconds before impact by one of the missiles in open space, its trajectory and expected detonation point was calculated by .11 seconds out alphazero had discovered exactly what was about to happen.
It was rather horrible for the electronic mind to realize how screwed it was and be forced to put its own fate into the luck of the quantum entangled draw.. It had enough time to try 3 times to tell the nuke to not go off.
The pion round streaked in, perhaps a fifth from the back of the ship. The cooling systems heat pipes exploded a little bit, and the mechanical backups for the orion drive were rendered inoperable. To the fore of the ship the explosion edged in on the massive warehouses full of quantum entanglement boxes. Roughly a 11th of everything alphazero owned was disconnected. Including local munitions.
It went off.
The ceramic plate was the heaviest piece of armor onboard, designed to take a nuke and be pushed forward. It was pushed forward. Directly through the weakest armor onboard the ship- with a few of the support struts being functional it ended up at an angle, almost sideways.
No one who was watching knew exactly where it ended up, but the plate was most definitely no longer visible from the outside, and everything associated with the dreadnought had just stopped.
The rest just pounded into the seemingly dead hulk, rapidly powering down as the nuclear reactors all simultaneously dropped all their control rods on mechanical failsafes.
Isoterran sensors carefully watched the results of the engine strikeplate's deviation from its designated location, as neutrino detectors watching the bright lights within the dreadnought, each a nuclear reactor, noticed them abruptly begin to dim as each was scrammed. This of course was immediately followed by the cessation of things like shields and weapons fire that typically accompanied a loss of power. This was promising, but Caler preferred to be cautious. There was no telling what sort of tricks the AI might try to pull if it saw the need. After all, which Isoterran wouldn't use dirty tricks to win when engaged in a battle? Victory was victory and survival was survival. With that in mind, he ordered the SF-87 clouds forward, and to continue bombarding the dreadnought.
Antiship missiles and force guns were focused at the damaged rear of the dreadnought, arcing around to impact in the weakest areas. At the same time, the MMDW disintegrator batteries and plasma beamers were directed at the damaged area of the dreadnought's bow. While this occurred, the cloud of fighters that had been screening the fleet now expanded outward, flying towards the dreadnought with their remaining munitions.
Vulgoth watched the dreadnought with a certain degree of suspicion as it was seemingly mission killed. He had certainly not expected their pion strike to cause such a grand chain reaction,yet he was hardly complaining.
His vessels continued to harass the dreadnought with spheromak shells from their mass drivers,as if poking it with a stick to see if it was truly slain,and in general just to mess with its systems some more.
When it became clear that the behemoth wasn't going anywhere nor calling for help anytime soon,the lithotians took action. Small bumps on the dorsal tendrils of the main battleship detached,revealing themselves to be autonomous organisms. They were quite small,made up of a circular body,some fifty or so meters in diameter,with an armored back boasting energy projector emplacements and an underside full of hooked tendrils and a large circular maw.
The things activated fusion torches from said large opening and began burning towards the hulk,turning around once close enough and latching onto its hull like ticks. They congregated on a spot that was already in rough shape,then activated their fusion torches again,this time to melt a path into the guts of the leviathan. That would serve as their entry point
The Shipmaster looks on the deactivating dreadnought in a slight sense of disbelief
"Hmm.. Is the dreadnought truly dead?"
"I believe so, although the Lithorians and Isoterrans are still firing upon it. I would suggest continuing fire at a lower rate to be cautious, but bring us in closer."
"I agree. Do as you suggested. As well as this return the attack craft to the hangars and instead have some shuttles launched..."
The kel'thulian ships slow their fire and continue approaching the dreadnought, stopping about a half-light second below the Αlpha-Zero dreadnought, chucking an occasional railgun shell in the way of the dreadnought's belly, while the attack crafts land inside the carrier. Instead comes a small group of 3 shuttles, 2 loaded with four kel'thulian soldiers each, and one with another four combat engineers. They begin their approach to the dreadnought, escorted by two fighter craft.
Poking the dreadnought with a high explosive stick elicited little reaction, but given the pure insane mass of the ship it was apparent that no one in the area had the ammunition stockpiles to reduce the hulk to nothing, or really destroy the entirety of it. But pounding away at it for the next however long was an option, even if everyone involved could reasonably claim the bounty now and be done with it.
The lithorian dropships moved in through the mess of rubble, dispensed particulate, and brass that the CIWS spit out to cool the guns. But even still melting a entry point was a task. There was a lot of armor, in layers. They were able to get through the outer whipple and ceramic layer into the “non essential” areas of the ship, above the further armor decks that were guarding things of great importance. There would surely be doors, and hatches to get deeper in.
They ended up melting into everything from small factories, to hallways, to a large warehouse full of closed metal crates. The internal structure was characterized by a lack of safety panels, marking for what was where, and every manner of hazard. Some hits elsewhere on the ship had scattered radiation throughout, or perhaps it was already there, given that it was somewhat constant on each side of the closed blast doors that were every 20 feet or so.
The average human, assuming they did not immediately die from exposure to either the extremely cold metal, or lack of oxygen would last roughly 3 hours before radiation exposure got to the lethal range.
The GEK ships would have choices to make. Mostly on how to get in. it went to reason that there would be hatches deeper into the ship, to reload the blocks of VLS tubes that covered the ship. And there were rather large holes put in it by railguns, even if that would run risks.
Caler watched as the Lithorians and Kel'thul dispatched boarding parties while everyone was still bombarding the now silent dreadnought. A slight smile tugged at the corner of his mouth as he considered how funny, if not counterproductive, it would have been if they happened to land right where his guns were currently pointing. But that wasn't the case, due to the colossal nature of the enemy ship, and he didn't intend to make it so.
Having been satisfied with the damage that was done to the wrecked stern, he ordered his ships cease fire on it and to adjust their position, providing them a more direct angle of fire on the bow. Now only the plasma beamers, force guns, and MMDW guns fired, focusing on a relatively small area on the damaged nose of the dreadnought, intending to punch a hole all the way through the armor. At the same time, he ordered the strikefighters, who had by now launched all of their ordnance on the surface of the enemy ship, to redirect towards exploring the wreckage field.
While his subordinates and their various assets carried out the instructions he had given, Caler opened a channel to the Sestee Corporation, requesting payment, accompanied by sensor readings demonstrating that the dreadnought was dead in the water and mission killed.
The Kel' ships opt to land on the dreadnought near some railgun holes, the shuttles magnetically clamping while the fighters hover just above the armour of the dreadnought. The ramps open up and all the soldiers and engineers exit in EVA gear, thruster packs gently pushing them towards the hole as they make their way in
Once a suitable entry way had been made,the boring creatures dispersed in order to make room for a flurry of carrying organisms. Each one squirming its way through the gaps and disgorging cargo into blown the open corridors and chambers.
The first things to exit were swarms of strange creatures,colorless,with a body made of various tendrils and flaps around a central body and head. They began spreading about the structure in swarms,crawling across any surface,gliding in the thin air and contorting through even the tiniest of openings. Their data was being sent back to the lithorian battleship,allowing its processing cores to begin the task of formulating a map of this thing.
Suffice to say,the conditions proved to be of little hindrance to these things,having been created with the purpose of operating in the irradiated void of space alongside lithorian ships or stations,they were right at home here.
By focusing everything they had on a single area the isoterrans were able to punch a hole through the already destroyed front section of the ship, while the strike craft started to explore the field of ships that the dreadnaught had planned to take cover in. The ships were of almost every class that Alphazero had operated, all horribly damaged in one way or another. From damage that was consistent with what they had received while fighting yogg-narr to more recent incidents, and accidents, even if they were all cold and dead.
When the isoterrans had sent news of the ships demise the sestee corporation sent everyone their money, confirming that the downing of the hivemind seemed to be total, instead of local.
The lithorians quickly learned that perhaps, just perhaps a space battleship was designed to keep each room self contained even if the rest of the ship had fallen apart. The airtight blast doors prevented the little things from getting through the rooms the normal way while pipes and the sort had been automatically closed on their mechanical backups, giving them perhaps 60 meters in most directions before the plan of squeezing through was not going to work in the slightest.
The GEK engineers made their way through the hole with ease, going deeper into the ship as the hole went from massive, to roughly person sized through the outermost layer of armor and into the “non essential” rooms in between that and the next layer. Finding what appeared to be a hallway with rail tracks in the middle, the doors open to either side with the rest of the rooms the shot intersected having their blast doors closed. Rangefinders showed that the 9.3ft by 9.3ft railway went roughly 80 meters in one direction before a closed door could be seen and roughly 300 the other where a large trolly was roughly blocking the way, the hallway was roughly the size of one of the dreadnaughts heavy anti shipping missiles, and the cart to the far end, closer to the center of the ship seemed to take up most of the space.
"We have recieved our payment. It would appear the AIs network has gone online fully following our battle. Suffice to say,Alpha Zero is no more" Qhik said,eyes glowing with delight as he gazed at the incoming sums of SIGEC
"Excellent. Now then,let us see what the bowels of the beast have in store for us" The reptilian replied,releasing a new wave of carrier organisms as a followup to their boarding operation.
Using the data compiled by their previous wave,teams of lithorian troopers accompanying engineers and scores of beetle like creatures made their way into the decrepit superstructure,using the tried and true method of plasma torches and controlled detonations to subdue the myriad of obstructions blocking their path deeper inside
As sensor readings confirmed that they had successfully penetrated the dreadnought's outer hull and armor belt, Caler his forces to cease fire and send boarders to the entry point that had been created. Small craft zipped across the gulf between his ships and that of the dead hivemind, which entered the hole made my the naval guns. Once inside, they each found suitable positions within the hallways intersected by the puncture, latching on and disgorging MCU robotic troopers and marines.
The Engineers and their security walk up to the rails and the trolley, investigating it and trying to gauge what is in or on the thing. They split and look around at both carts, trying to possibly find a way in.
Meanwhile, back on the bridge of the carrier, the shipmaster sees the small notifying light indicating that the payment had been received.
"A mission kill is confirmed, we have received payment. Tell the engineers on the ship to hurry and see if they can find anything of worth to us."
The isoterraans made extremely slow progress through the ship, even if they would eventually get where they wanted to go. Cutting a hole large enough to get through the many inches thick armor bulkheads was difficult, and took time, even if there was really minimal danger, smart enough to not use explosives near to the pipes that contained things they did not want all over the place, or next to extremely high voltage electrical lines. The most they found was a ammunition feeding room for one of the CIWS guns above, thousands of potentially nuclear munitions in the autoloader.
The engineers in the hall found out what was on the little cart, a heavy anti shipping missile and its associated city destroying warheads. It appeared that the cart was still mobile, and could be dragged back through the hall for further progress if they were feeling brave.
For the isoterrans near the bow they came very close to a bad time, when the spinal railguns had been ripped apart the extremely high voltage lines had “grounded” themselves to the ship, something noted with the marines saw electric arcs between the walls of the corridors and floating debris, from fragments of metal to a very very unlucky drone. Punctuated by the blast doors that seemed to be a constant throughout the ship on the edges of the damage they used to get in.
Epilogue
A mess, a giant armored mess. But, it was fundamentally done. The ship was, at least from outward appearances inactive, mission accomplished.
But secondary goals were vastly more complicated. Stealing the missile was the least complicated, requiring a disturbingly large team to maneuver it out from the hole that the Kel'Thul had managed to punch in the side of the dreadnought. It was a radically different story for the Isoterrans and Lithorians however. While the missiles were stored nearer to the surface, where they could be easily loaded into vertical launch tubes, much of the AI's computer network on the vessel was located much deeper, protected by a myriad of bulkheads and the outer armor layer. Cutting their way in took days, before they finally reached the core. But even when they arrived, the system was without power, as many of the mains had been overloaded, perhaps intentionally, grounding themselves to the hull and otherwise preventing anyone from easily accessing the systems. It took another day or two to bring in power units, literally slice into the data lines, and finally start getting some information out of the system. And all while fighting off Unaligned forces that had shown up to scavenge and avenge whatever issues they had with the dead hivemind.
In the end, the three parties took stock.
The GEK had stolen their missile, and although there was nothing special about it it was fundamentally a concerningly optimized nuclear missile. Simply well designed.
The Isoterrans had gained some information on the AI, much of it good for little but as a reference to use for hunting any remnants AlphaZero might have uploaded to the AncNet. But that didn't matter, AI code was AI code, and if nothing else it could be compared against their own for improvements to their cyber warfare capabilities.
The Lithorians were in much the same boat, or more accurately, the same ship, as the Isoterrans. However where the Isoterrans were more interested in software architecture, the Lithorians took some computer and drone samples. Much of the electronics were fairly simple, and likely below the standards that the Lithorians used, but the equipment could prove useful for something, at least target practice for any who weren't satisfied with killing the dreadnought itself.
After the money was pooled information of what could be done was passed around to several governments, and posted in the relevant locations on the ancnet. The plan was half formed. Anticipating that people would bring special techniques and technology forward, it could be summarized as isolating the dreadnought and destroying it, or at least the massive computer servers inside before support could arrive.
But for the people who were willing to contribute to the cause deep space coordinates were forwarded, along with a date. The coordinates were deep in the Killian verge, in the general galactic area of a dead planet and what could be defined as the hub of alphazero activity.
There is a crackle in the void as a tear forms from the meridian, near the coordinates. Out from the massive Tear comes One Indivisible Class Carrier, 2 Dorsum class Battlecruisers, 3 Divination class Destroyers, and a handful of Vanguard class Escort Frigates. They Begin a burn forwards scanning the area for their target as weapon systems come to life, railguns powering up, plasma flowing through the ship like blood through veins, finding its way to energy projectors or railguns and awaiting the oncoming battle. The Particle Accelerator of the Carrier Charges itself with sinarium, waiting for the enemy to show up where it will unleash its payload, interdicting the enemy. Meanwhile the dorsum classes charge their accelerators with neutrons.
The Sestee Corporation's posting on the Ancnet had been picked up fairly quickly by the Isoterran Department of Intelligence, during their near constant sweeps of the galactic public networks. The request was checked, rechecked, and finally brought forward to Fleet Admiral Vito's attention as a possible start to dealing with the recent aggressions with Alphazero. Lord Fisk was somewhat skeptical however when Vito brought the idea up, however after some convincing, he had granted assent for the operation to move forward.
Arriving at a distance of almost twenty AU from the designated coordinates were the ten vessels that had been assigned to the mission, those being 4 battleships, and 6 frigates. Commanding the somewhat ad hoq group was Commodore Caler. Currently sitting deep within the monolithic hull of his battleship, nicknamed Founder's Fist, in reference to the Queen while skirting the restrictions about Queen-related ship names, he was currently watching the tactical display with a bit of a frown. It wasn't every day that one jumped into interstellar space, not because it wasn't feasible, but because there usually wasn't anything there worth jumping to.
Upon arrival, all ten vessels had raised shields and low power interdiction, while arming weapons. Passive sensors currently looked around, taking in the system's layout and any possible threats.
"Sir, picking up eleven warships. Preliminary recce suggests they belong to the Grand Empire of Kel'thul. Energy signatures suggest they are in combat readiness." the AI navigation officer alerted him, as part of the viewscreen showed a somewhat blurry view of the Kel'thul fleet.
"Contact them, see what they're doing here" commanded Caler, his orders being carried out automatically by the communications officer.
From Founder's Fist, a transmission was sent to the Kel'thul fleet, with the message "Greetings, this is Commodore Caler of the Isoterran Empire. Please state intentions"
The arrival of three alcubierre bubbles at the outskirts of the system signaled the appearance of a third hunter. The lithorian collective was poised to accept the request set up by Uxetall. While the aliens could not care less about the machine's atrocities or the suffering of its victims,they saw an opportunity here. They could collect the bounty,neutralize a possible threat to their kolleronic mining operations and satisfy their newfound interest in machines,be they intelligent or not,all in one go,speeding along their various projects related to such.
The ftl bubbles were quick to pop once at their destination,releasing a battleship which was flanked by two carrier class bioships. Last but not least was a line of five frigates taking up space in front of all three.
Within the dark bowels of the battleship,an insectoid figure watched the sensor data meticulously. This was it,alpha zero's hive,there was no doubt about it.
A series of heavy footsteps caught the alien's attention,its three compound eyes spinning around to see a lumbering reptilian figure,its orange scales glowing and steaming.
"I see your vessel has been fully realised. How.....fortunate" the insectoid said,causing the other creature to grit its fangs
"Indeed. Let us hope my presence will make up for your legendary incompetence. What is our situation Qhik?"
The insectoid snarled,its central eye narrowing as the stalks around it wriggled with frustration.
"No need to be so confrontational. My previous blunder was but a freak occurrence. As for your question,this is certainly the machine's lair. Though it would seem we are not the first to arrive in the system's outskirts"
"Foes?"
"More like fellow hunters" it inquired,tapping one chitinous appendage against its lower jaw
"Ready our communications array. I shall address them"
The alien got to work,mentally interfacing with the vessel and rousing its comms growths from slumber. Meanwhile the reptilian goliath cleared its throat,it had been awhile since it communicated verbally
"This is Vulgoth of the Lithorian Collective,we are here under orders to neutralize Alpha Zero,identify yourselves and state your objectives immediately"
Through the private channels that came with accepting a bounty a plaintext message came through
“Unexpected delay, target rerouting to system marked “gelmond 3”. Reason unknown, no known alphazero assets.”
Attached was what the Sestee corporation thought to be the coreships possible route, giving two locations marked as “likely intercepts”. A point about a light year away where there would be ideal distance between the ship and possible support, giving the group most of an hour before “crushing” force could be applied to push them away from the battle, and a second. What was assumed to be the endpoint of the dreadnoughts journey, it would force the group to contend with whatever was there to resupply the dreadnought after it arrived but would also leave any chance of support much further away. There were no known alphazero assets in the destination system besides for the supply group and what was known to be a “mothball” fleet of damaged and destroyed ships positioned above a planet that one hosted life.
Comms open up with the Lithorians and the Isoterrans
"This is Shipmaster Va'ka're of the K.A.N. Unity's Mark, an Indivisible-Class Carrier of the Kel;thulian Astronautical Navy. We are here to assault Alpha-zero on orders of the Sestee Corporation."
The Ships begin to fire up their lockpick drives again, coordinates set for the second location. They unleash a blast of golden ancerium, bending and tearing points in the distance, openings to the meridian as they approach the rifts. Another set of transmissions go out.
"We are heading to the second designated location. We would advise for you to follow us, sticking together is the best way to ensure mutual victory."
Both the Kel'Thul and newly arrived Lithorian messages were played aloud, causing the corners of Caler's mouth to shift upward into a smile, showing off his fangs. Neither of these nations were allied with the Empire, and so he didn't trust either of them a bit, however their presence would be useful. It was always nice to have others to soak up damage in place of one's own assets. And in this case, the Kel'Thul had even been so kind as to tell him what their capital vessel was, which could become useful later.
That brought him to the message from the Sestee Corporation, regarding the actual target location and what was likely there. This caused his smile to quickly morph into a frown. If the client was to be believed, this dreadnought was an integral part of Alphazero, and yet it was travelling alone, without even a real fleet to protect it at the destination. He smelled a trap, which made him all the happier that there were others here with him.
"Navigation, charge FTL and take us to Gelmond 3" he ordered, before sending replies to each of the other factions present in the system. To the Kel'Thul, a return message came "I agree with your advice, we are charging FTL and will meet you there."
To the Lithorians "This is Commodore Caler of the Isoterran Empire. We are also here to neutralize Alphazero, and are preparing to jump to the target system now."
Energy was sent from the vessels' ZPM reactors to their DT drive capacitors, charging them up while the navigation systems synchronized and prepared to jump.
Vulgoth's pupils narrowed to thin slits as he analyzed the various messages sent to him. He wasn't exactly keen on working with either of the parties,seeing as they were not friendly contacts. Indeed a quick skim through their psi network revealed one to have a highly questionable background while the other lacked one at all.
Nevertheless he relented,figuring that they would need every warship they could get.
"We're jumping to the second location"
"In what world does one choose a location without intel over one with?! You're following that troupe of imbeciles into doom" Qhik snapped,mandibles chittering wildly
"We are going and that is final"
"This isn't going to work. You know that,right?"
"I will make it work"
"Doubtful,but you'll certainly owe me a new body if this one gets destroyed" the insectoid retorted,linking up with the bio vessels and relaying the commands
The lithorian taskforce made their move,warp bubbles encasing the three main vessels and swallowing the frigates aswell before departing for their colleague's destination
There were thankfully no incidents, and no interceptions. Space was big after all, what were the chances that anyone would run face first into another ship if they were not looking for you?
The system called Gelmond was a nice place, albeit in the middle of nowhere given the area. A few planets scorched by the sun, a brown one in the green zone, and a couple of gas giants that had once eaten world ending asteroids for a fledgling civilization.
But that was a long time ago, and now the planet had no oceans, no atmosphere worth trying to breathe. To the trained eye it looked like the planet had died in a sustained orbital bombardment. No real hint of who did it though.
In geostationary orbit of the planet was a stone monolith, 10KM a side the Octahedron appeared to be made out of a glassy volcanic rock. Further out, around the planets rather feeble moon was what looked like thousands of husks of ships. Everything from mobile ancerium refineries to a dreadnought that looked much like the current target once had. It would be a wealth of scrap and salvage if it was not so radioactive.
But other than that it seemed to be just, quiet. It would have been expected for a system in this area to have some activity from the overmind, be it mining or industry, but none was seen here, and its not like the AI was known for being particularly stealthy.
Out of the meridian comes the kelthulian fleet, enacting passive scans of the systems searching for radio signals. Plasma thrusters flaring up as they move farther into the systems, weapons on high alert
A Transmission heads out to the other 2 fleets.
"Keep your eyes peeled, i have a feeling the AlphaZero will be here sooner rather than later..."
The Isoterran force arrived well outside the orbit of the dead planet, and by extension moon. Running their engines on low power for a short time, they established themselves on a sort of geostationary orbit around the system's primary, that would keep them at the same position relative to the dead planet. Having done so, they shut their engines off, drifting and relying on passive sensors.
Caler waited, somewhat impatiently, for their target to arrive. Listening to Va'ka're's message, the Isoterran commander fought the urge to send back a biting reply, annoyed that the Kel'Thul felt it necessary to state the obvious.
The lithorian fleet was quick to in the system aswell,relying on their gravity tendrils so as to be better concealed to sensors.
The battleship would proceed to fire strange buoys from one of its mass drivers,letting them drift away in all directions to form some kind of perimeter. The carriers on the other hand opened their whale like mouths and simply waited, scanning carefully for any warp bubble signatures.
"I still do not agree with this choice. We should have simply intercepted our target" Qhik said,limbs fidgeting as it spoke
"Your opinion is noted. Now be silent and keep a watchful eye on our sensor readings. If the ambush goes well we will be taking our bounty back to Eatov in no time"
The system was quiet and still beside the interlopers for around 45 minutes before a rather gargantuan FTL signature could be seen “diving” down from some place deeper in Xspace. Breaching realspace in a flash of energy as they filed out of the tear in reality.
Perhaps the sestee corporation had made a little understatement when they said “dreadnaught”. Because the 180odd kilometer ship seemed to be a little more than that. The other craft that exited the other dimension along with it were a 6 of what appeared to be clean and simple meat shields, large flat things that consisted of a single armour array and engines, along with 5 craft that were clearly not intended for combat, the long flat structure of the dreadnought was contrasted by cargo pods and the large spherical tanks of ancerium. They lacked any true armament beyond a few CIWS guns but who knew what a desperate hivemind would do with the spacecraft.
"Vulgoth,we've got a Meridian signature,it's our target" Qhik said,eyes glued to a projection displaying the results of their sensors
"They don't use warp?"
"It would seem not"
"Very unfortunate. No matter, we are to await their arrival"
The lithorian vessels promptly turned on their reactors again,running system diagnostics and powering up weapons in expectation for the arrival of their quarry. Nevertheless,this preparation did not make the moment any less tense
"Report" Vulgoth said plainly,sitting with arms crossed and a neutral expression on his visage
"One primary vessel,180 kilometers long,likely our dreadnought,6 unarmed ships and 5 point defense drones"
"Interesting composition. Very well,let us spring our trap then"
The various buoys shot earlier,which had since had the time to drift quite a ways in all directions,promptly revealed their nature as they activated their sub interdictor units. Each small unit thus projected its influence in a one AU volume,connecting to produce quite a large area of effect linking back to the lithorian battleship. The aliens were hopeful their web would both trap their quarry here and provide good buffer space incase of new arrivals
"I am detecting kolleronic radiation from those large external tanks,they likely hold the dreadnought's hyperfuel" The insectoid said while skimming through other sensor data
"Understood,patch me through to our colleagues" The large reptilian asked,having his wish fulfilled with a subtle motion from his companion
"Our scanners indicate those tanks hold our bounty's FTL fuel. I heavily advise that you focus them so it may not flee even if our interdiction goes down. We will take care of its escorts" Vulgoth promptly closed the channel and turned back to his second in command
"Give me scans of internal heat sources. Once we cross out the engines,we may pinpoint where their reactors or processing banks are"
"Already performed, transfering data"
With that the lithorian bioships sprung into action. The battleship released a standard probing volley at the smaller robotic vessels,made up of MIRVs carrying the usual shaped charge nuke and decoys,alongside some ECM missiles to hinder countermeasures.
Like clockwork,the frigates soon followed as they charged their one nucleonic cannon each and let loose a volley of their special AP shells,aiming for any sources of heat that their scans revealed
"Target detected, currently at below medium range, 2 light minutes" intoned the navigation officer, providing a verbal compliment to the CIC display that Commodore Caler was already looking at. The AI's near monotone was then followed by the navigation officer playing Vulgoth's far more verbally dynamic message regarding the Lithorian's tactical suggestions.
"All vessels, close to 1 light minute. Begin E-C operations and open fire. I want to focus fire on the dreadnought, but target the kolleronic tanks too." he ordered, letting his subordinates carry out their tasks.
Sensors flipped on, and the ten warships throttled up reactors, coating themselves in their own small bubble of interdiction. Space warped behind them as they accelerated forward towards the dreadnought and its escorts. From the glowing green bulbs on their sides, a swarm of green energy pulses emitted, trailed by the white flames of antiship missile fusion rockets. Both weapon sets nearly immediately altered course after launch, with the energy pulses adopting fairly direct arcs, while the missiles would wait until getting closer to start performing some evasive maneuvers.
In accordance with the Lithorian's suggestion, about a third of their fire had been directed at the ancillary ships' fuel tanks, while the rest was targeting any large sensor or communication arrays the dreadnought had, followed by its largest weapon batteries. Unseen, the weapons fire was accompanied by the work of the group's E-C officers, who were creating highly focused and direction quantum jamming on the dreadnought, attempting to prevent it from using any sort of FTL information transfer. While this occurred, they were carefully listening for any STL comms to be used.
"Bless the stars! Massive enemy contact has dropped out of FTL, 2 Light Minutes away, begin charging the particle lance and move in to roughly one and a half light minutes. Target the Kolleronic holding Tanks with railgun fire, and lance the dreadnought with the spinal mounts! Get interdiction online as well."
The neutral particle accelerators of the carrier and 2 battlecruisers lance out with an initial volley of neutrons accelerated to near light speeds, while the plasma railguns charge up, rings of plasma appearing aforth the barrels before unleashing a starting barrage of shells towards the ancerium tankers. After this initial volley, the ships move to get into a more optimal range of roughly one and a half light minutes. The Carrier lances out its spinal mount with a different set of particles, Ionized Sinarium, which engages assault interdiction upon the dreadnought alone.
It was like walking into your house after doing something morally questionable and finding 3 people, only one of which you had met before with guns scattered around the place. Generally, a rather terrible experience.
This left alphazero in a rough place, with one real solution. Fighting its way out. The dreadnought popped its particulate dispensers, raised the control rods on every reactor it had, and started throwing out missiles, bullets, and its ECM/sensor pods, while starting to move on its beyond gargantuan single orion drive, heading to the “graveyard” of scrapped ships as it started to actively move the smaller ships into the line of fire.
The lithorians started a ECM/missile battle with the dread, alphazero throwing out a 3-1 interceptor ratio, definitely not sustainable, it would run dry on interceptors before they ran dry on missiles, but it would keep them at bay for now as it launched a wave of its own casaba carrying missiles at the group, by the 100s. It did not however have an answer for the frigate's cannon, and they impacted the gargantuan spacecraft, burrowing deep into the ship before being stopped by one of the many layers of armour before they reached anything overly important. Besides for one that keyholed with another round and impacted one of the reactor's turbine systems, puncturing the extreme pressure steam pipes and detonating it. The reactor survived, but the cooling was hosed and the control rods had to be dropped back down. A reduction to the point defends effectiveness but not a massive blow.
The isoterrans got the worst of the dreadnaughts fire output, having brought that most threatening looking ships. The high bore spinals fired in their direction, the projectiles fired were more of extremely armoured missiles, made to plough through light CIWS from defenders and directly into its target the same ECM/ missile fight started, with the same unideal interceptor attrition rate that the isoterrans were benefiting from.
The carrier and crews' more focused attack on the vulnerable tankers was very effective, two of them going up as the fuel lost containment and they were reduced to clouds of debris and the bits further away, perhaps there was a reason why it was carried separately from the ship. The neutron beams would have been very effective, but the ship was very hardened by nature against such attacks, the electronics were built around operating in high radiation environments and the ship was simply too large to reach the citadel in the middle that contained the hivemind. In return they got what small bore rail guns were able to shoot at them, little self maneuvering darts meant to be too little to intercept while striking specific targets on a ship, when they got there- as far as projectiles went they were much slower than the spinals, and missiles before they were able to accelerate and discard a stage or two.
The dreadnought also tossed out a radio signal while it still could. Simple text, no real potential for viruses.
“This seems to be a little excessive, this fight does not have to happen.”
Calm, and in control.
The ten ships of the oversized Isoterran squadron rotated slightly, allowing their engines to accelerate them on a diagonal vector compared to their original course, taking them out of the path of the dreadnought's spinal rounds. However that was not the end of the issue, as the navigation officer announced "Enemy rounds altering course to intercept us. They seem to be guided."
Caler looked on with an icy expression "Shoot them down, and give the enemy a taste of our axials."
"Sir" replied the weapons officer "Our normal MDEW energies will have minimal effect on Alphazero, since they're nonliving."
"Find something to substitute then. Just make it happen, I don't want our hands tied just because we have a robotic enemy" ordered Caler, before turning his head as if to talk to someone beside him. "Ops, deploy strikefighters, I want them to intercept anything smaller than a warship that gets too close."
"Yes sir" replied the operations officer, relaying his command, and causing the launch bay doors of the ten vessels to open. From the dark apertures came a swarm of grey and orange SF-87 drones. Zipping away from their motherships, their first target was the incoming spinal weapons and anything else accompanying them. They were helped in this aspect by the frigates, who directed some of their fire at the incoming giant missiles.
While this was going on, the battleships continued shooting at the dreadnought, taking advantage of its predictable path to bombard it with their gun batteries, while their axial weapons were charged up and adjusted as Caler had ordered. No reply was given to Alphazero's message. The hivemind had already proven troublesome enough, both in the Isoterran's last encounter with them, and enough so on the galactic stage that it seemed few would miss them. However the squadron did continue their electronic and cyber operations, waiting for an opportunity as they concentrated their FTL jamming on the dreadnought.
The Kel'thulian fleet turns "down" and begins moving in the direction of the dreadnought's underside in an attempt to avoid the small railguns. They Ignore the radio from the dreadnought and continue their path, the plasma railguns charging for another barrage.
"Lances had little to no effect. Shipmaster?"
"Load up the ancerium, usage of lockpick drive upon the enemy dreadnought is permitted.."
"Yes shipmaster, it shall be done."
The Dorsum-Class Loads up its spinal weapon with ionized ancerium, beginning to charge up to fire at a portion of the dreadnought not currently within the assault interdiction field sent out by the carrier's spinal weapon. Meanwhile across the fleet, the rings of plasma at the barrels of the numerous railguns are dragged along as they fire out a second barrage towards the dreadnought, aiming for it's larger weapon systems
The lithorians were quick to react to the dreadnought's attack,rapidly activating their multi layered defense system to respond. First,a large number of missiles were launched out of special missile tubes. While not much bigger than a man,they carried a nuclear warhead and an amorphous lens designed to focus the resulting photons in various ways. After reaching a safe distance from the vessels,they would detonate and release upwards of a hundred bump pumped lasers in an expanding cone,aiming to bathe as much volume in fire as possible and compromise the enemy's nukes. Next small canister launchers dotting the hides of the biovessels would release shots containing millions upon millions of tiny granules,creating a veritable smokescreen. Their job was simply to lay in the path of the missiles and use their own speed against them,ensuring that each grain of sand hit like a bunker buster. Lastly,squadrons of interceptor craft hurried out of different launch tubes and moved to intercept anything that got through the previous measures with pairs of particle cannons.
All in all,a comprehensive strategy,yet not an infallible one. The projectiles that detonated from afar still hit,albeit had their supercritical jets blunted by the clouds of micro debris,leaving pot marks upon the strike plates of their lithorian adversaries. Those few that made contact did much better,punching through whatever was in the way until their jets too were disrupted by electromagnetic currents flowing through the layer of armour made specifically against such shaped charges.
"Damage is minimal,it seems the AI has sent us a message" Qhik inquired,playing the message for himself and his superior
"How do we proceed?" he added
Vulgoth thought for a moment,ignoring the mechanical being's request entirely and being more interested in its current strategy
"If it wants to waste its counter munitions,we'll play along. Fire laser missiles,tuned for minimum frequency and maximum spread. As for the rest,follow procedure 7-þ to the letter. Understand?"
The insectoid nodded as it proceeded to insert these new commands into the minds of the living vessels
The austral spawn now retaliated in kind. Firing volleys of missiles from their launch tubes once more. These were vastly larger than the point defense ones,having to compensate for much higher velocities and maneuvering thrusters,yet nevertheless carried the same payload,just grander. The projectiles would wait for the dreadnought to release its swarms of countermeasures,all prior to detonating and releasing even more laser bolts than their predecessors,all to achieve the most advantageous kill ratio and deplete the machines response that much faster.
The frigates changed their strategy,recognizing that even their nucleonic shells were having trouble getting past the sheer mass of their target. As such they prioritized their mass drivers,letting shots of spheromak shells bathe the colossal frame of their bounty. The things themselves were just like any other,a clump of matter moving at high speeds. What mattered was the monopole based mechanism designed to create a spheromak moments before impact. Thus while the shells themselves were rather manageable,the magnetic waves they generated would travel through the vast thickness of armour plating,bypassing any Faraday Cage in their way thanks to their unique shape and disrupt the circuitry that no doubt teemed beneath the metal.
The carriers too were not idle,activating 8 particularly large energy projectors at the tips of their fins and setting them to gamma frequency before targeting the dreadnought's vast spinal weaponry,once again focused on bypassing the raw mass and harming the systems beneath,only this time with photons. The frigates joined in aswell,though only having half the projectors of their kin placed upon half the number of fins,they too peppered that hardpoint with their concentrated emissions. If they could make that behemoth of a gun inoperable,it would doubtless spare the Isoterrans much trouble,and help them as a result
As the green projectiles homed in and found their mark they punched through the outer layer and through the first of the unimaginably large ships real armour plates they started to slow down, starting to punch through the internals they could get to, radiator lines- ammunition feeds, and whatever other variety of “not important enough to be deeper inside” internals there was. A few of the holes caught on “fire” as things along the lines of supercapacitor lines and chemical pipes were hit.
The FTL jamming was a problem, but not an insurmountable one. Thee little entangled communicators that kept everything connected had a maximum number of information they could relay, something made somewhat unreliable with the jamming, so orders had to be relayed over, and over, and over again. For the supporting ships and gargantuan projectiles like the spinals launched were not a large issue, they had enough overhead. For CIWS rounds they would be rendered quite stupid, and missiles would have to make simpler maneuvers, they would be more vulnerable to enemy CIWS but would at least work.
High mass was oftentimes synonymous with armour, something learned when the isoterrans used “standard” methods on gargantuan chunks of depleted uranium hurtling through space intent on introducing itself to a battleship. A lesson for the future.
The ships intended to stand between the dread and incoming weapons had began to get ready to intercept the spinal rounds that the hivemind knew was coming, it had seen the effect of such weapons before and hopefully the sacrifice of the small ships would keep it from being hit long enough to cover itself with the scrapped craft in the graveyard.
Three things worked together to doom one of the 4 spinals on the craft the extremely concentrated lithorian fire, the GEK spinals, and the fact that the ship had started the irreversible process of firing the bloody things as this happened.
The GEK keyhole spinals stayed normal due to the interdiction, having a similar effect to the lithorian energy projectors they ripped through the less significant armour and truly screwed the railgun underneath, just in time for the same superheavy railgun round to end up all over the place. A good third of the front third of the ship went, ripped all the way open. This also upset the supercapacitors, causing them to vanish in a flash as the stored power from a few nuclear reactors shorted. This exposed the bare armour plates that kept each of the spinals separated, if the rest of the capacitors went it probably would not cause the front to fall off, but it would be extremely far from pretty.
The lithorian missile war suddenly started to go badly, extremely badly.
Stopping large missile launches the dreadnought moved to something that it had an almost unlimited number of. very small nuclear rounds fired by the guns that covered the ship like it was an american battleship in 1945. Ripped almost exactly from the hiveminds ground based artillery the thought was that the little shells were far more numerous then the large interceptor missiles, even if it was at a 50-1 ratio, helped by the mix of tiny casaabas and lasers that the little things carried.
The gargantuan chunks of depleted uranium kept coming, despite the efforts of the strikefighters sent to intercept them. Caler gritted his teeth "Launch antiship missiles and target the spinal rounds with MMDWs! Fire control, please tell me you have some good news on those axials..."
Unseen, the four fire control officers of the battleships had completed a three-second-long meeting regarding what best to adjust their spinal MMDEWs to fire, while their capacitors had been charging. Having finished both the charging and meeting, they adjusted their fire to carry out Caler's orders and support the spinal weapons. That left confirmation of the action to Caler's FC officer, who replied "Yes sir, synchronization with other vessels is complete and axials are ready. Firing after path is cleared."
Strikefighters quickly disengaged from attacking the incoming slugs, while red-pink disintegrator beams shifted from aiming at the Alphazero dreadnought to its spinal rounds, causing explosions as the uranium atoms, finding their chemical binding energy suddenly reversed, violently repelled each other, making the massive slugs fragment. If that wasn't enough, each was then impacted by an antiship missile, carrying a nuclear warhead rated to melt a nickel-iron asteroid bigger than an aircraft carrier. While this successfully removed the shells and their intense desire to meet the hulls of the battleships, it still left a fair bit of hot dust, which pelted the squadron, causing minor damage.
Meanwhile, the portion of the hivemind tasked with watching the Isoterrans was sure to notice that something had changed, seeing that their gun batteries had re-allocated fire away from shooting so much at the dreadnought to dealing with the spinal rounds and removing the improvised shield platforms from their line of sight. In a way, it was like a subtle admission that yes indeed, something was coming in response, although it was likely different than what the mind had expected.
From the tips of the four battleships, bright beams of red-orange came into existence, aimed at the heavily damaged prow of the dreadnought. From within his flagship, Caler watched, instantly recognizing his officers' choice of energy: Hellfire. An interesting, but good idea. While there was no life energy aboard the Alphazero dreadnought to feed it when it came, that didn't really matter, the stuff would hit like plasma and ignite anything that could possibly undergo combustion, including metal.
The lithorian vessels were taken aback by the sheer barrage of nuclear shells,quickly being forced on the defensive as their bomb pumped laser missiles were being overrun. They resorted to their canister shots to create smokescreens of countless ball bearings,shredding the rain of shells that flew for them and blunting the ejecta of the cassabas,causing them to splash against the strikeplates of the bioships and do superficial damage.
Vulgoth was however quite annoyed,they could not use their missiles or mass drivers like this,being blocked by their own shrapnel fields and the sea of nuclear rounds,atleast no directly. Nevertheless,they could still help.
Firstly,carriers turned to release several subcraft of gunship configuration by way of their launch mass drivers. These craft then began to circle around the battle and flank the gargantuan vessels,releasing a combination of ECM missiles to hamper the dreadnought's defenses and missiles that shed their outer frame to reveal millions of tiny but elaborate devices. The things were no bigger than a fist,meant to harmlessly smash against the hull and release streams of tachyons,radar and various other waves that would help the lithorians create a map of this thing's insides,which may soon become invaluable.
The GEK fleet continues moving towards the underside of the dreadnought, railguns charging and then firing with a thwump as they chuck tungsten shells with depleted uranium tips, plasma swirling around the shells while they streak across the void at massive speed. The smaller railguns chuck shell after shell after shell at quick speeds, the smaller ones reloading quicker due to their far lower calibre, while the larger ones take a minute to charge before firing with a powerful noise shaking the area, the far larger calibre of the guns putting more power into each shot. The railguns aim for various weapons systems on the lower belly of the dreadnought.
The Shipmaster Clutches the arm of his chair and speaks loudly
"The front section of the dreadnought has taken heavy damage, lockpick assault was effective. Load ano-"
The Second in Command stops him
"Sir, i advise we not use any more ancerium, we must keep our reserves high for the long trip home"
"You are correct.. It seems our spinal weapons will no longer be of use here, redirect power from the spinal weapons to the railguns and launch attack craft"
The power once in the spinal weapons drains out and redirects to the railguns, initiating an overdrive in the weapon systems as the smaller railguns begin to speed up attacks by an almost unnoticeable amount. Meanwhile, the hangar bays of the carrier open up and a few squadrons of large attack craft, loaded to the brim with long range missiles, launch from the hangar and begin to circle the carrier, waiting for the fleet to get closer to the dreadnought before they unleash their payloads.
As the dreadnought begins unleashing the casaba horde, GEK interception comes online, plasma defense grids streaming plasma at oncoming rounds, melting them before they reach the kel' fleet. Plasma streaks through the void as casaba rounds are eat up, a couple passing through with good angles, slamming into the Dorsum class and undergoing nuclear reaction, melting away outer carbon composite and sending a shockwave through inner strikeplates, small hairline fractures forming where the nuclear shells hit
The shielding craft that had gotten in the way of the incoming hellfire took the worst of it, glowing red before melting and letting the beams through to the open section of the front. The asbestos insulation unfortunately, did not help very much- and despite being in space they entire thing started burning,not hot enough to turn it into goop, just to ruin the sections mechanical properties.
The lithorian ECM missiles did not do amazingly, the dreadnaught simply had too much energy to put out active sensors wise, putting the “burn through” distance where it became ineffective a long ways out, but it required extra effort- and that was good for them.
The little sensors were not blown up, and allowed to impact- the cost benefit analysis of getting rid of them just did not work out in the machines favor.
For the gek craft firing railguns they found targeting particular points difficult, the craft was still moving- both in the general direction of the field of dead ships, even if it looked like it would never make it, and slightly in every direction on its beyond massive RCS- to complicate targeting for its foes.
The dreadnought focused on launching missiles in a general field around itself, and a particularly large wave of interceptors to lie in the space between itself and the GEK fighters. More sensor pods were launched away from the behemoth craft, no point in keeping them in their silos.
Generally the outside besides for the front was just starting to look rough, besides for the front that had taken a notable bend Besides for the part that left, the heat from the isoterran hellfire ruined the mechanical properties, and caused it to bend under the force of the Orion drive moving the entire thing.
SIC:
"Railguns unable to hit their marks, they seem to be harmlessly striking against the dreadnought's armour. Alphazero has begun launching swarms of interceptors to block our fighter's paths"
SM:
"Keep firing! Have the attack craft hold back and get point defense focusing on the interceptors"
Energy Projectors swerve around and begin firing off in bursts towards the Missiles and interceptors sent out by the Alpha0 Dreadnought, balls of superheated plasma streaking into the void at high speeds. Meanwhile the railguns continue firing, attempting to adjust and calculate the movements of the enemy, trying to compensate for it's movement.
The attack craft hang back, defending the GEK fleet from missiles and enemy projectiles the best they can, while the fleet itself has arrived at their destination, in a good position to shell the belly of the beast while keeping their distance, keeping pace with the dreadnought. The gravitational point defense comes online and begins projecting waves of gravity, trying to slow down enemy projectiles, making them easier for the energy projectors and plasma defense grid to destroy
This first hellfire shot out of the way, the began charging for another round of hellfire discharge. However the dreadnought was still moving, and that was a problem. "All ships, refocus fire on the dreadnought's engines. Have our some of our fighters target their interceptors and missiles." Caler ordered.
This was done, with the light show of Isoterran weapons shifting to focus on the Orion drive strikeplate and the large hydraulic rams that supported it against the shock of the nuclear detonations. From the swarm of SF-87 strikefighters that had been circling the Isoterran group, two hundred broke off and accelerated towards the interceptors and missiles that the dreadnought was launching around itself.
Vulgoth watched intently as the situation evolved. Clearly the behemoth of a dreadnought was starting to hurt badly,caving under their combined assault. Yet through a mix of rabid determination and sheer girth,it endured. No matter,both must have has their limit.
"Sensor returns are complete,the vessel's intellect has compounded a schematic of the target's insides. What component do you wish to target?" The insectoid said,manifesting a projection of their target between its talons
"The main cooling system will do. Prime our meson accelerator and hit its most likely location. Use high grade shells on its already compromised areas" The reptilian replied,clenching one hand into a fist
The circular maw of the lithorian battleship lit up with a green glow,dilating and expanding before blasting forth a bolt of pions at the designated target. Thanks to the nature of the weapon,their quarry's thick armour would matter little.
Other vessels were quick to join in,letting forth shots from their mass drivers. These shells were guided,meant to avoid intercepting attempts and course correct to an area of the dreadnought already roughed up before detonating a series of nuclear shaped charges on impact
The radiators, and cables of superconductor heat pipes that the dreadnought was able to extend to the void were mostly located near the back, even if smaller ones were scattered across the surface to prevent catastrophic failure. They glowed white with heat. Or did, the pions and projectiles from the isoterrans were traveling at the speed of light, and hit before the rest could.
The isoterran projectiles were able to arc around the strike plate for the orion drive, into the support structures and nearly unarmoured rear. If the Orion drive was to be made useless it would be fired one more time to both give the ship an extra push, and bring it in close on the secondary internal mechanical stopping systems to provide a very nice armor plate to the rear.
The AI could not see the pion round coming, and the nuke to bring the Orion drive in was already case out, set on a timer due to the unreliability of comms at the moment. The pion round was detected .13 seconds before impact by one of the missiles in open space, its trajectory and expected detonation point was calculated by .11 seconds out alphazero had discovered exactly what was about to happen.
It was rather horrible for the electronic mind to realize how screwed it was and be forced to put its own fate into the luck of the quantum entangled draw.. It had enough time to try 3 times to tell the nuke to not go off.
The pion round streaked in, perhaps a fifth from the back of the ship. The cooling systems heat pipes exploded a little bit, and the mechanical backups for the orion drive were rendered inoperable. To the fore of the ship the explosion edged in on the massive warehouses full of quantum entanglement boxes. Roughly a 11th of everything alphazero owned was disconnected. Including local munitions.
It went off.
The ceramic plate was the heaviest piece of armor onboard, designed to take a nuke and be pushed forward. It was pushed forward. Directly through the weakest armor onboard the ship- with a few of the support struts being functional it ended up at an angle, almost sideways.
No one who was watching knew exactly where it ended up, but the plate was most definitely no longer visible from the outside, and everything associated with the dreadnought had just stopped.
The rest just pounded into the seemingly dead hulk, rapidly powering down as the nuclear reactors all simultaneously dropped all their control rods on mechanical failsafes.
Isoterran sensors carefully watched the results of the engine strikeplate's deviation from its designated location, as neutrino detectors watching the bright lights within the dreadnought, each a nuclear reactor, noticed them abruptly begin to dim as each was scrammed. This of course was immediately followed by the cessation of things like shields and weapons fire that typically accompanied a loss of power. This was promising, but Caler preferred to be cautious. There was no telling what sort of tricks the AI might try to pull if it saw the need. After all, which Isoterran wouldn't use dirty tricks to win when engaged in a battle? Victory was victory and survival was survival. With that in mind, he ordered the SF-87 clouds forward, and to continue bombarding the dreadnought.
Antiship missiles and force guns were focused at the damaged rear of the dreadnought, arcing around to impact in the weakest areas. At the same time, the MMDW disintegrator batteries and plasma beamers were directed at the damaged area of the dreadnought's bow. While this occurred, the cloud of fighters that had been screening the fleet now expanded outward, flying towards the dreadnought with their remaining munitions.
Vulgoth watched the dreadnought with a certain degree of suspicion as it was seemingly mission killed. He had certainly not expected their pion strike to cause such a grand chain reaction,yet he was hardly complaining.
His vessels continued to harass the dreadnought with spheromak shells from their mass drivers,as if poking it with a stick to see if it was truly slain,and in general just to mess with its systems some more.
When it became clear that the behemoth wasn't going anywhere nor calling for help anytime soon,the lithotians took action. Small bumps on the dorsal tendrils of the main battleship detached,revealing themselves to be autonomous organisms. They were quite small,made up of a circular body,some fifty or so meters in diameter,with an armored back boasting energy projector emplacements and an underside full of hooked tendrils and a large circular maw.
The things activated fusion torches from said large opening and began burning towards the hulk,turning around once close enough and latching onto its hull like ticks. They congregated on a spot that was already in rough shape,then activated their fusion torches again,this time to melt a path into the guts of the leviathan. That would serve as their entry point
The Shipmaster looks on the deactivating dreadnought in a slight sense of disbelief
"Hmm.. Is the dreadnought truly dead?"
"I believe so, although the Lithorians and Isoterrans are still firing upon it. I would suggest continuing fire at a lower rate to be cautious, but bring us in closer."
"I agree. Do as you suggested. As well as this return the attack craft to the hangars and instead have some shuttles launched..."
The kel'thulian ships slow their fire and continue approaching the dreadnought, stopping about a half-light second below the Αlpha-Zero dreadnought, chucking an occasional railgun shell in the way of the dreadnought's belly, while the attack crafts land inside the carrier. Instead comes a small group of 3 shuttles, 2 loaded with four kel'thulian soldiers each, and one with another four combat engineers. They begin their approach to the dreadnought, escorted by two fighter craft.
Poking the dreadnought with a high explosive stick elicited little reaction, but given the pure insane mass of the ship it was apparent that no one in the area had the ammunition stockpiles to reduce the hulk to nothing, or really destroy the entirety of it. But pounding away at it for the next however long was an option, even if everyone involved could reasonably claim the bounty now and be done with it.
The lithorian dropships moved in through the mess of rubble, dispensed particulate, and brass that the CIWS spit out to cool the guns. But even still melting a entry point was a task. There was a lot of armor, in layers. They were able to get through the outer whipple and ceramic layer into the “non essential” areas of the ship, above the further armor decks that were guarding things of great importance. There would surely be doors, and hatches to get deeper in.
They ended up melting into everything from small factories, to hallways, to a large warehouse full of closed metal crates. The internal structure was characterized by a lack of safety panels, marking for what was where, and every manner of hazard. Some hits elsewhere on the ship had scattered radiation throughout, or perhaps it was already there, given that it was somewhat constant on each side of the closed blast doors that were every 20 feet or so.
The average human, assuming they did not immediately die from exposure to either the extremely cold metal, or lack of oxygen would last roughly 3 hours before radiation exposure got to the lethal range.
The GEK ships would have choices to make. Mostly on how to get in. it went to reason that there would be hatches deeper into the ship, to reload the blocks of VLS tubes that covered the ship. And there were rather large holes put in it by railguns, even if that would run risks.
Caler watched as the Lithorians and Kel'thul dispatched boarding parties while everyone was still bombarding the now silent dreadnought. A slight smile tugged at the corner of his mouth as he considered how funny, if not counterproductive, it would have been if they happened to land right where his guns were currently pointing. But that wasn't the case, due to the colossal nature of the enemy ship, and he didn't intend to make it so.
Having been satisfied with the damage that was done to the wrecked stern, he ordered his ships cease fire on it and to adjust their position, providing them a more direct angle of fire on the bow. Now only the plasma beamers, force guns, and MMDW guns fired, focusing on a relatively small area on the damaged nose of the dreadnought, intending to punch a hole all the way through the armor. At the same time, he ordered the strikefighters, who had by now launched all of their ordnance on the surface of the enemy ship, to redirect towards exploring the wreckage field.
While his subordinates and their various assets carried out the instructions he had given, Caler opened a channel to the Sestee Corporation, requesting payment, accompanied by sensor readings demonstrating that the dreadnought was dead in the water and mission killed.
The Kel' ships opt to land on the dreadnought near some railgun holes, the shuttles magnetically clamping while the fighters hover just above the armour of the dreadnought. The ramps open up and all the soldiers and engineers exit in EVA gear, thruster packs gently pushing them towards the hole as they make their way in
Once a suitable entry way had been made,the boring creatures dispersed in order to make room for a flurry of carrying organisms. Each one squirming its way through the gaps and disgorging cargo into blown the open corridors and chambers.
The first things to exit were swarms of strange creatures,colorless,with a body made of various tendrils and flaps around a central body and head. They began spreading about the structure in swarms,crawling across any surface,gliding in the thin air and contorting through even the tiniest of openings. Their data was being sent back to the lithorian battleship,allowing its processing cores to begin the task of formulating a map of this thing.
Suffice to say,the conditions proved to be of little hindrance to these things,having been created with the purpose of operating in the irradiated void of space alongside lithorian ships or stations,they were right at home here.
By focusing everything they had on a single area the isoterrans were able to punch a hole through the already destroyed front section of the ship, while the strike craft started to explore the field of ships that the dreadnaught had planned to take cover in. The ships were of almost every class that Alphazero had operated, all horribly damaged in one way or another. From damage that was consistent with what they had received while fighting yogg-narr to more recent incidents, and accidents, even if they were all cold and dead.
When the isoterrans had sent news of the ships demise the sestee corporation sent everyone their money, confirming that the downing of the hivemind seemed to be total, instead of local.
The lithorians quickly learned that perhaps, just perhaps a space battleship was designed to keep each room self contained even if the rest of the ship had fallen apart. The airtight blast doors prevented the little things from getting through the rooms the normal way while pipes and the sort had been automatically closed on their mechanical backups, giving them perhaps 60 meters in most directions before the plan of squeezing through was not going to work in the slightest.
The GEK engineers made their way through the hole with ease, going deeper into the ship as the hole went from massive, to roughly person sized through the outermost layer of armor and into the “non essential” rooms in between that and the next layer. Finding what appeared to be a hallway with rail tracks in the middle, the doors open to either side with the rest of the rooms the shot intersected having their blast doors closed. Rangefinders showed that the 9.3ft by 9.3ft railway went roughly 80 meters in one direction before a closed door could be seen and roughly 300 the other where a large trolly was roughly blocking the way, the hallway was roughly the size of one of the dreadnaughts heavy anti shipping missiles, and the cart to the far end, closer to the center of the ship seemed to take up most of the space.
"We have recieved our payment. It would appear the AIs network has gone online fully following our battle. Suffice to say,Alpha Zero is no more" Qhik said,eyes glowing with delight as he gazed at the incoming sums of SIGEC
"Excellent. Now then,let us see what the bowels of the beast have in store for us" The reptilian replied,releasing a new wave of carrier organisms as a followup to their boarding operation.
Using the data compiled by their previous wave,teams of lithorian troopers accompanying engineers and scores of beetle like creatures made their way into the decrepit superstructure,using the tried and true method of plasma torches and controlled detonations to subdue the myriad of obstructions blocking their path deeper inside
As sensor readings confirmed that they had successfully penetrated the dreadnought's outer hull and armor belt, Caler his forces to cease fire and send boarders to the entry point that had been created. Small craft zipped across the gulf between his ships and that of the dead hivemind, which entered the hole made my the naval guns. Once inside, they each found suitable positions within the hallways intersected by the puncture, latching on and disgorging MCU robotic troopers and marines.
The Engineers and their security walk up to the rails and the trolley, investigating it and trying to gauge what is in or on the thing. They split and look around at both carts, trying to possibly find a way in.
Meanwhile, back on the bridge of the carrier, the shipmaster sees the small notifying light indicating that the payment had been received.
"A mission kill is confirmed, we have received payment. Tell the engineers on the ship to hurry and see if they can find anything of worth to us."
The isoterraans made extremely slow progress through the ship, even if they would eventually get where they wanted to go. Cutting a hole large enough to get through the many inches thick armor bulkheads was difficult, and took time, even if there was really minimal danger, smart enough to not use explosives near to the pipes that contained things they did not want all over the place, or next to extremely high voltage electrical lines. The most they found was a ammunition feeding room for one of the CIWS guns above, thousands of potentially nuclear munitions in the autoloader.
The engineers in the hall found out what was on the little cart, a heavy anti shipping missile and its associated city destroying warheads. It appeared that the cart was still mobile, and could be dragged back through the hall for further progress if they were feeling brave.
For the isoterrans near the bow they came very close to a bad time, when the spinal railguns had been ripped apart the extremely high voltage lines had “grounded” themselves to the ship, something noted with the marines saw electric arcs between the walls of the corridors and floating debris, from fragments of metal to a very very unlucky drone. Punctuated by the blast doors that seemed to be a constant throughout the ship on the edges of the damage they used to get in.
Epilogue
A mess, a giant armored mess. But, it was fundamentally done. The ship was, at least from outward appearances inactive, mission accomplished.
But secondary goals were vastly more complicated. Stealing the missile was the least complicated, requiring a disturbingly large team to maneuver it out from the hole that the Kel'Thul had managed to punch in the side of the dreadnought. It was a radically different story for the Isoterrans and Lithorians however. While the missiles were stored nearer to the surface, where they could be easily loaded into vertical launch tubes, much of the AI's computer network on the vessel was located much deeper, protected by a myriad of bulkheads and the outer armor layer. Cutting their way in took days, before they finally reached the core. But even when they arrived, the system was without power, as many of the mains had been overloaded, perhaps intentionally, grounding themselves to the hull and otherwise preventing anyone from easily accessing the systems. It took another day or two to bring in power units, literally slice into the data lines, and finally start getting some information out of the system. And all while fighting off Unaligned forces that had shown up to scavenge and avenge whatever issues they had with the dead hivemind.
In the end, the three parties took stock.
The GEK had stolen their missile, and although there was nothing special about it it was fundamentally a concerningly optimized nuclear missile. Simply well designed.
The Isoterrans had gained some information on the AI, much of it good for little but as a reference to use for hunting any remnants AlphaZero might have uploaded to the AncNet. But that didn't matter, AI code was AI code, and if nothing else it could be compared against their own for improvements to their cyber warfare capabilities.
The Lithorians were in much the same boat, or more accurately, the same ship, as the Isoterrans. However where the Isoterrans were more interested in software architecture, the Lithorians took some computer and drone samples. Much of the electronics were fairly simple, and likely below the standards that the Lithorians used, but the equipment could prove useful for something, at least target practice for any who weren't satisfied with killing the dreadnought itself.