Battle of Sol Read online

  As for Yamato’s targeting plan, he would try to take down the enemy’s battle-damaged Titans first… if he could. He knew the enemy would keep their Titans in the rear of the enemy’s fleet, and use their massive offensive power when the opportunity came ‒ in which case, Yamato would target whichever capital ships in the enemy’s fleet he thought he could easily take down before that happened. The enemy’s superdreadnoughts had the same offensive power-to-defensive strength ratio as their battlecruisers. The enemy’s battlecruisers did less damage, but were weaker in armor.

  Cockpit, Fighter 004, outside Yorktown, Alpha Centauri System

  “All fighters, begin your second bombing run the moment the enemy fleet engages with our fleet, but not a second before! The Sector General says good luck and godspeed,” said Wing Commander Jerome Bottis in Trevor’s helmet speakers.

  Trevor sat in his cockpit seat, munching another chocolate ration bar, waiting. The truth was… his mind was still in a conundrum. He kept hearing his newly wedded wife’s words in his head: “If you keep risking your life like that, I’m divorcing you. I can’t take it!” she kept repeating.

  But… Trevor shook his head ‒ this would be against everything he was. A a risk taker. A dreamer. A gambler.

  He wasn’t cautious. He wasn’t a nit. He wasn’t…

  How could he be something he was not?

  Then, he decided. “Fuck it,” he whispered. “That’s not how I roll.”

  His gaze perused all the enemy icons on his map display. He began thinking up an outrageous plan to take down something big… like a superdreadnought ‒ or better ‒ in that enemy fleet.

  Bridge, Federation Starship Yorktown, above the wormhole to Sol, Alpha Centauri System

  4 minutes later…

  On the holomap, Yamato saw the Individual icons of each enemy ship inch closer. Their capital ships’ icons were larger compared to their destroyers and frigates. The entire enemy fleet was heading towards him at 0.2 c, with the superdreadnoughts and battlecruisers holding the front wall. Behind them were the two massive Titans, and behind all that were the frigates and destroyers that had previously operated as screening elements.

  Almost. Another minute.

  He gave a last minute glance at his own formation. His battlecruisers and superdreadnoughts aligned themselves perfectly with his stationary lasers, forming a big thick wall in front of his two pulsar guns.

  I hope this works. I hope I formulated the right plan.

  Yamato silently sat in his command chair and closed his eyes. He prayed to the star gods. Please, Artemis and Osiris, give victory to our great fleet. Let none of the enemy break through our lines and let few of our comrades fall to the enemy’s fire…

  When he opened his eyes again, he saw the distance between the two combatant fleets had already inched into weapon’s range. “All ships, open fire,” he said into the command line.

  **

  In the eternal battlefield above the human wormhole gate to Sol, the third and final phase of the 9th battle within Alpha Centauri began.

  Several events happened all at once.

  The enemy forward wall, comprising of their battlecruisers and superdreadnoughts, opened fire with their grazers on the human turrets. Thousands of beams of highly energized light slashed into the forward wall of humanity’s stationary laser turrets. The enemy’s forward wall did not fire on the human ships within humanity’s forward wall, mostly because at this point, the human ships were sliding sideways at maximum sliding speed, using their sliding drives to give themselves a defense advantage by making any enemy’s fire miss.

  The human ships on the human forward wall, on the other hand, had nothing to fire at except the enemy’s ships, so they targeted the enemy’s battlecruisers and superdreadnoughts with plasma cannons despite the fact that the enemy ships were also sliding sideways defensively.

  The human stationary laser cannons also fired, adding their megatons of destructive energy into the battle.

  At this point, the enemy’s Titans and the human pulsar guns did not fire, because neither opponents had anything to fire at within their weapons’ ranges.

  Immediately, units on both sides began falling. The first to fall were human stationary laser cannons A1, A3, A4, and D2, D3, D4. Enemy grazers smashed into their weak frontal armor and shields, wrecking their internals. Deadly energy seeped into the stationary turrets’ energy cores ‒ damaging them ‒ and they exploded in blasts of antimatter-matter annihilation.

  At the same time, the Argonan superdreadnought Light of Eternal Harmony also sustained heavy human plasma fire into its forward hull ‒ despite the fact that it was sliding sideways in an attempt to avoid the human plasma darts. Eventually, enough human plasma jammed into its internals that it lost its main drive controls, at which point it became stationary. Once it lost its defensive mobility, further concentrated fire from human warships of the human forward wall turned it into a wreck. A final detonation of its main power chamber sealed the Argonan ship’s fate.

  By the time a minute had already passed into the ship-to-ship battle, 20 human laser turrets fell compared to 3 Argonan battlecruisers and 1 Argonan superdreadnought.

  At this point, there were 36 operational Argonan battlecruisers still in the fight, along with 10 Argonan superdreadnoughts and 2 titans.

  As for the human forces, the humans still had operational 29 battlecruisers, 8 superdreadnoughts, 40 laser turrets, and 2 pulsar guns.

  Bridge, Federation Starship Yorktown, above the wormhole to Sol, Alpha Centauri System

  It was a good trade off. Better than he could hope for, Sector General Yamato concluded. Trading 20 stationary laser turrets for 4 enemy capital ships was not bad at all.

  And the best thing was, he still had his 10 battlecarriers and around 600 fighter-bombers to add their damage payload into the battle.

  He eyed the unit icons of his fighters on the holomap as they traversed the short distance towards their targets. The enemy fleet would soon be wrecked with bombs from his fighters. He estimated that he might cripple 6 or more capital ships this way. And even better, since the enemy fleet was not aligned into anti-fighter formation, he didn’t have to worry about any of his fighters dying to the enemy’s destroyer and frigate screens.

  But all was not well. Although he hadn’t lost any capital ships yet, he knew that the moment he lost his remaining turrets, he would begin losing his ships. And since only 60% of his capital ships had their shields functioning ‒ and those that had their shield function were only operating at a fraction of their full saturation ‒ when the enemy did begin firing at his capital ships, he knew that his capital ships would began dying at a quick pace.

  Then… as he continued scanning the enemy fleet, he suddenly paused and an odd premonition struck him. Even worse… and this was the real headache… Yamato sighed while massaging his forehead, the enemy’s Titans had not inserted their firepower into the battle. True, the same could be said for his pulsar guns, but Yamato was very hesitant about what would happen when the enemy’s tachyon pulse cannons began attacking.

  Suddenly, he had a very bad feeling for what was to come. It was so bad that he felt a sick feeling in his gut, and no matter what he did, he couldn’t shake it off.

  He stared at the holomap, watching as the battle played out to its next phase…

  **

  As more time passed, the walls of the two combatant fleets intertwined so that the rear-most units of both sides could also fire at their opponents.

  The enemy’s superdreadnoughts and battlecruisers continued firing on the remaining human stationary turrets, while they themselves absorbed the counter fire from those same human laser turrets as well as the human capital ships.

  However, conditions for the human fleet took a turn for the worse. The enemy’s Titans also gained range on the human units ‒ due to both combatant forces meshing their lines together to the point where the enemy’s Titans, previously loitering in the back of the enemy fleet’s fo
rmation, had also gained weapon’s range on the human capital ships as well as the human stationary turrets. The Titans aimed at the human turrets first.

  The Titans fired their hypervelocity tachyon pulse cannons, churning out deadly tachyon pulses that moved at 4 times the speed of light. Any human turret that got hit by such a pulse had their armor demolecularized. Worse, the human stationary turrets’ shields could not block them.

  It was utter devastation. The human stationary laser turrets had their armor blown off. The tachyon pulses turned everything it touched into a mass of component atoms ‒ the process of which released extreme amounts of energy. But it was not the sudden energy that was the problem ‒ the very structure of each target suddenly lost cohesion. In the case of the stationary human laser turrets, they were utterly broken apart. Any ensuing antimatter detonation from each turrets’ power core was simply an extra addition to its whole scale destruction.

  So powerful were these tachyon pulses from the Titans, that… within a minute, there were no functional turrets left, and the only thing that defended the Wormhole gate was the human warships and the two pulsar guns…

  40 defensive laser turrets were destroyed within a minute.

  Then the Titans aimed their tachyon pulse cannons at the human ships… and fired.

  Bridge, Federation Starship Yorktown, above the wormhole to Sol, Alpha Centauri System

  1 minute later…

  Yamato gritted his teeth as he watched another human battlecruiser ‒ this time, the Gettysburg ‒ disappear off the holomap. Its carbon-nanofibered hull, the strongest material in existence was broken into component atoms and its antimatter storage pods broken to the point where matter touched antimatter and its power core exploded. Two thousand spacers dead, just like that, also turned into component atoms like carbon and nitrogen. These were men and women with families and dreams ‒ worse yet, men and women with essential skills that were not easily replaceable during war, and 2,000 of them!

  It was the enemy’s Titan’s fault. He had seen those things work before. He knew how much damage they did. But he had simply not realized their destructive potential until they actually fired their TPCs, again.

  He had to destroy the enemy’s Titans! He had to, or else he would suffer the destruction of his entire battlewall ‒ his entire capital ship lineup!

  “All ships,” Yamato’s wavering voice announced on the fleet’s command line, “advance forward and target the two enemy Titans at the rear of their fleet’s formation. All fighters are to bomb the enemy’s Titans. We must not allow a single one of them to remain operational or we’ll lose the battle!”

  Cockpit, Fighter 004, in battle, Alpha Centauri System

  “All remaining fighters of Beta Wing with bombs,” said Jerome Bottis in Trevor’s helmet speakers, “launch bomb strikes on enemy Titans A1 and A2. Godspeed!”

  Perfect, thought Trevor Gray. My time to shine.

  Inside his cockpit, he manipulated his controls so that his fighter angled towards one of the enemy’s Titans far off in the distance ‒ about 300,000 kilometers away, a mere eyeblink of a distance. He could see it fire a burst of what’s-in-gods’-name-is-that at another human superdreadnought, and he saw the superdreadnought explode in a dazzling white-hot nuclear fireball.

  We’re being wrecked by those Titans… which gives me the opportunity of a lifetime. I wonder how fleet command will award me when I take one down.

  He aligned his fighter with the rest of his Wing, and revved his sliding drive to full in a simultaneous sudden acceleration to 0.5 c with the rest of his wing. He would fly in formation with his comrades… for now.

  **

  The enemy’s Titans added their fury into the battle, as did the humans’ pulsar guns.

  While ship after ship after human ship were annihilated by the enemy’s Titans, other ships within the human fleet also took on damage by the enemy’s superdreadnoughts and battlecruisers, at vast catastrophic losses ‒ now that the enemy fleet no longer needed to fire on any human stationary laser turrets.

  The human battlecruisers Fearless and Nimitz, in their effort to gain weapon’s range on the enemy’s Titans, both took enemy grazers hits from the enemy’s superdreadnoughts into their forward armor. The two human ships’ shields had already been crippled in the earlier phases with the enemy’s missile waves. As their armor was wrought with damage by enemy fire, and as more enemy grazers tore into their hulls, deadly energy blasted through into their inner compartments. Forward power flows were crippled, and soon both human ships appeared as hopeless wrecks, being unable to add their offensive firepower with the other human ships. While the Nimitz eventually exploded, the Fearless did not ‒ but it was unable to retreat, as its main drive rings were damaged.

  Meanwhile, the two human pulsar guns fired the moment some of the enemy’s capital ships entered range of the two pulsar guns’ main weapon envelope. At a rate of twice a second, each pulsar gun fired a 500 megaton burst of TNT equivalent in the form of gamma ray beams into anything it could come in contact with within its 200,000 kilometer maximum firing distance envelope. The pulsar guns took down enemy capital ships by blasting away their armor and then shredded their internal structure at a quick uneasy pace that made every Argonan tactician pause ‒ at almost the same speed in which human ships fell to the enemy Titans’ tachyon pulse cannons.

  And then… ships from the surviving human fleet closed the distance with the enemy’s Titans and, as soon as maximum plasma cannon range was reached, each human ship fired at the Titans in tandem with the bombing strikes from the human fighter wings.

  Bridge, Federation Starship Yorktown, above the wormhole to Sol, Alpha Centauri System

  Yamato watched the holomap with agony. At least half the capital ships in his fleet had reached maximum plasma range on the Titans so they could fire on them. Yet, the Titans remained, unflinching, simply taking in the fire and absorbing the plasma dart punishment into their heavily armored hulls. He could see through the holomap that the enemy Titans’ armor on all sides raked with dotted holes, craters, and was covered with destroyed… charred supermetals; yet, once again, they remained. They were true monoliths, capable of withstanding innumerable volleys of plasma fire, much to Yamato’s chagrin.

  How the hell was he going to destroy them?

  Yamato stared at the holomap in total frustration. He was completely aware that, while all his capital ships were firing at the enemy Titans ‒ the enemy’s capital ships, including their Titans, were also firing at his fleet. Time and time again, he saw units within his fleet succumb to concentrated grazer beam hits. It did not take much for the enemy to destroy a shield depleted human capital ship, much less a human destroyer or frigate.

  On the holomap, he saw a human frigate take only one volley of enemy grazer beam fire from an enemy battlecruiser. The frigate exploded in a white hot detonation immediately. 160 human lives lost, just like that.

  He saw a human destroyer fire its point defense lasers into an enemy superdreadnought in a vain attempt to destroy some of the superdreadnought’s grazer mounts. The enemy superdreadnought simply turned to forward face his destroyer, and in less than ten seconds of continuous grazer beam fire, blasted it away into a debris field.

  He saw… Yamato shook his head… one of his superdreadnoughts, the Earl of Bridgewater, fire its capital-ship-sized plasma darts vehemently into an enemy Titan, only to succumb to the Titan’s counterfire when the much bigger ship charged its tachyon pulse cannons and fired, demolecularizing the human superdreadnought’s entire forward hull. Although the Earl of Bridgewater did not self-detonate immediately, follow-up grazer fire from the enemy’s capital ship contingents blew away its armorless innards and caused an antimatter-matter containment failure… and an ensuing detonation in its power core. 3000~ human lives gone within an eye blink.

  Yamato sighed. As hard as it was for him to accept, what had originally been a good idea ‒ an idea that might quickly eliminate the enemy’s units with gre
atest offensive power ‒ had turned into a nightmare. The enemy’s Titan’s armor was simply too strong. What he thought might have succumbed to his entire fleet’s plasma fire had now backfired. It was his fleet that was now being destroyed… and at too quick a pace.

  Soon, Yamato watched as his entire fleet of battlecruisers and superdreadnoughts attempted what seemed to be impossible ‒ they all fired their main plasma cannons futilely at the enemy’s Titans to no avail. The enemy Titans absorbed the vomit of plasma fire but did not die. In the back of Yamato’s head, he had already begun planning plan-two ‒ the withdrawal of all his remaining ships… before he lost his entire fleet.

  Cockpit, Fighter 004, in battle above the wormhole to Sol, Alpha Centauri System

  “Fire your bombs and get out of here!” yelled Jerome Bottis through Trevor’s speakers. “Don’t let those Titans take you out with their flak and point defense laser armaments!”

  “Wait,” said Trevor. “Our fighters wings have been bombing the Titans the whole evening. Not a single one of those bombs actually took them out. I… I only have four bombs. I gotta make these count!”

  “Sandy,” said Jerome Bottis’s voice, full with pent up rage, and probably frustration, “don’t tell me you’re about to try something risky and dangerous ‒ are you?”

  “I’m sorry, boss,” said Trevor. “I am what I am. You get the rest of the wing out of here. Let me do my stint. I got an idea, and it just might work.”

  There was silence on the other line. Then, finally, “Roger that, Sandy. Good luck and godspeed.”

  On his monitors, Trevor saw the entire battle as it played out before him. In fact, he was so close, he could almost see it with his naked eye. So much fire from the human ships poured down on those Titans, seemingly from every direction, yet the Titans held. They held, and they fired back.