NationStates Jolt Archive

It begins with a blip.

Upon first seeing it, any sensor tech worth his salt would be skeptical. After all, masses the size of small moons don't just up and go into hyperspace. It can't possibly be real.

But it is. A mass signature the size of Tethys, wrapped in massive layers of ECM jamming and hyperdrive emissions dense enough to make its exact composition impossible to determine. Alongside it flies a squadron of smaller masses - fifteen of them, perhaps the size of the very largest supercapital ships.

At their current speed and heading, they will intersect the edge of the Hypatian FTL interdiction field in four hours - a mere three days, in total, after the defeat of the allied forces at the exploding star. What the fleet will do when it gets there is anyone's guess.

Small probes have been popping up in and around the Hypatia system, taking brief microsecond snapshots before being atomized by the Gridfire defense network. Kara is likely doing recon on the system - the incoming masses have been observed making minute adjustments in course, aiming themselves to exit FTL as close to the ships stationed in Hypatia orbit as possible.

Interdiction could be attempted - there's still plenty of time to get equipment into position. None of it is rated for the moon-sized mass, though, and there's a chance that Hypatia's prmary interdiction field is the only thing that can stop it and its moon-scale FTL systems. Not to mention that any engagement outside Hypatia will lack the tactical advantage provided by Hypatia's gridfire systems.

The allies have four hours to decide their choice. Then...

...the fun will begin again.

Really, guys, I was thinking this would be more of a challenge. I suppose organics really are as sad and helpless as I thought they were. No big surprise there, though. I AM always right, after all.

The message arrives bounced through countless anonymizers and network relays. Even God would have a hard time untangling this untracable mess. But despite the message's indistinct origin, there's only one real person it could be from.

There had been quite a lot of unauthorized disturbances in the past few hours. Not just a crude fleet of pirate raiders, or even a explorer ship. Rather, something has been probing at the defenses of Hypatia.

<<Command, this is Probe Analyst-One-Two-Niner.>>

<Mindlink established, one-two-nine.>

<<Gridkill system has been used one-twenty nine times on successive objects. We are presently running a trace on their faster-than-light signature to try and figure out who's been sending these damn->>

Outpost stations, thousands orbiting Hypatia every tenth of an AU, entangled into the 'links of all the battleplates and superfortresses in-system, gave a rather interesting view of what had entered the system.

<Fleetmind vessels inbound. ETA, four hours.>

<<Guess you won't be needing me, then?>>

<Analyst, I advise you pack your bags, get in a shuttle, and head to a nearby worldgate. We may have to evac the planet.>

<<Hypatia's impregnable!>>

<I'd like to think so. However.. sorry, Analyst. I've gotta save all my circuits for calculations.>

Attention, Travellian and allied fleet personnel. We have Fleetmind vessels inbound, four hours. This is not a drill. Kindly take up battle stations. There are approximately fifteen supercapital vessels, along with something that's.. bigger. Data will be fed to your mass spectrographs immediately.

Three battleplates, two superfortresses, and an allied fleet. If you just counted the supercapitals, it was a pretty even battle. Once you put in the craft they were escorting, well - hell, even Watcher was worried.

How had she got those?

A second warning, then.

Any and all civilian craft, we are facing an incursion by the Fleetmind. At present levels, the consensus among Command is that any people capable of leaving the system should leave, through the nearest available worldgate. Any civilians or corporations presently engaged in the private ownership of military-grade starships, you will note that your ships have been commandeered for the purposes of this battle.

Four hours. Four hours was a long time, for many people. Four hours would, normally, give them enough time to call for help, if nothing else. However, with the worldgate network intact, well, it gave them instantaneous access to three different allies. Greal, Kostemetsia, and the Keluaun.

Watcher thought on this, and uploaded his opinion to Command.

Kill the Greali worldgate. They're useful, but, let's be realistic, they're engaged in other conflicts at present. And, in all honesty, they're the furthest away. Both the Keluaun and Kostemetsian worldgates, if captured, give Kara a few days advantage, at most. The Greali, however, are a long way spinward. Let's give them a chance, even if we fail here.

The opinion was agreed upon, and the worldgate sputtered and died, inbound ships would find no purchase there. If Kara made it to within an AU of the worldgate, they'd be forced to destroy it.

Next, Lopez. I want an opinion. Let's send out for some serious aid. The Kostemetsian Fleet is no doubt prepared to send something through, and even a shuttle at this point is worth a call. And a call to the Keluaun, too.

PRIORITY BROADCAST
ENCRYPTION LEVEL: GREAT WAR
Recipients: Kostemetsia, Keluaun

Fleetmind incursion leaves us outgunned by a ratio of at least 2-1, best estimate. Includes entire allied fleets, Keluaun, Allanean, Solarii - our entire spaceborne navy. Gridkill and FTLi leaves us with possible advantages, but this is possibly the largest single fleet we've seen since the initial incursion of the entire Alpha Unit in the GFFA war.

Any units on standby near the Hypatian worldgates, this is a priority call. Rest assured, if we can't stop the Fleetmind here, every one of you are going to be next.

Acting Cohesion Commander,
Lopez

END TRANSMISSION




Awwww. You tol' me she was skeery, Watcher.

I di- wait. Why are you broadcasting out to that fleet?

The Victorian Architecture, only a superfortress, but a rather clever little creature, at that, spoke. Kara wouldn't hear Watcher, only her.

Sweetie, you're doing kinda badly, y'know? You've lost a battlegroup, and then you lost a whooole big Dyson Sphere. And, aw, heck, you've managed to scrape up a little fleet from somewhere, but let's be serious. You can just mosey on home, and we'll let you live for another ten minutes. Maybe even fifteen.

Victoria. What do you intend to do?

The open link ended, and Victoria talked to Watcher in private once more.

Well, for one thing. We have in-system transit gates large enough for almost anything, barring you old battleplates. I want to perform massive delaying actions at every single five-AU gate we have. She can't block transit gates, so we can slip in and out, giving us time to fight her, and fall back when it's needed.

Why?

Let's be serious, here. She probably has enough firepower to reduce poor Hypatia to a pile of rubble. Once she gets past Musumo-Sovotar, it's all over. We won't have enough ships to effectively stop her, and a bombardment of Hypatia means.. well, you know. We can't move planets.

So you want to take all non-supercapital vessels, and engage her at every oppurtunity, starting at 40 AU?

No, no. Let's be serious here. I don't want to engage her sans battleplates. That just means we'll get slaughtered. Rather, I want to force her to come to engage us. We'll take rudimentary losses, but let's be serious here. If she refuses to engage.. think of it this way. What do you get when you get a battle moon hit by a superfortress travelling at just a smidgeon below c?

Ah. I see. Either she fires at you to keep you out of range, and is forced to adjust accordingly, or you crack open her moon?

More-or-less. The longer we can delay her, the more info we can catch on those ships. We're going to take losses, but we can beat her.

I hope so.

Now. Let's see. Gridkill, gates every 5 AU, enough probes to overwhelm her fleet on their own, and an allied presence large enough to crush her fleet many times over. Provided we use it effectively, that is. Oh, and Watcher.

Yes?

Subordinate your functions to Lopez this battle. He doesn't want to ask you, but Kara knows how you fight. Quickly, decisively, and often with too little preparation. We'll use your data alongside his command, kay?

Fine.

They had time. At the very least, they'd have to discuss strategy with their allies.

<<OPENNODE: STRATEGY>>

Message: Enter entangled nodeconversation 11324, all military commanders, captains, and other tacticians who may be needed in this battle. This is going to be one hell of a defense we're gonna need to put up.

Also: Map of Kaisar System (http://i11.tinypic.com/6svu7ie.png), in which we are fighting. Note that the map only goes out 3 AU - to Musumo-Sovotar, whereas the FTLi, gate system, and probes extend out to 40 AU.

After the meeting gathered together by the Realm, the Kelauan had kept their Warfleet Warsong in the Hypatia system, where they had gathered and so when the call was sent, it was almost instantaneous. After all, they had been there during the entire attack by the probes, and the detection of a moon-sized mass and the escorts. This was going to be a rough battle and no mistake. Yarlong sat in his chair, gazing at the sensor data, trying to break through the jamming around the moon to find out what it was when Kasara appeared on the pad next to him.

"Sir?"

Yarlong turned and looked at her. <"Yes, what is it?>

She waved a hand and the transmission played on the main screen:

PRIORITY BROADCAST
ENCRYPTION LEVEL: GREAT WAR
Recipients: Kostemetsia, Keluaun

Fleetmind incursion leaves us outgunned by a ratio of at least 2-1, best estimate. Includes entire allied fleets, Keluaun, Allanean, Solarii - our entire spaceborne navy. Gridkill and FTLi leaves us with possible advantages, but this is possibly the largest single fleet we've seen since the initial incursion of the entire Alpha Unit in the GFFA war.

Any units on standby near the Hypatian worldgates, this is a priority call. Rest assured, if we can't stop the Fleetmind here, every one of you are going to be next.

Acting Cohesion Commander,
Lopez

END TRANSMISSION

Yarlong sighed. <"We knew this was coming. Have all ships prepare to jump to Hypatia and then form up along the Realm ships. Have the message forwarded to Command.">

"Aye, sir."

The A.I. sent the order and the message, and the 50 ship fleet turned as one and spatial disturbances flickered about their bows before they shot forth and almost as if they teleported, they appeared near Hypatia.

"Greetings to the Realm. Warlord Yarlong here. We have received your call and are ready to fight. We can only hope we'll be of more use this time than the fiasco of before." Yarlong leaned back and waited for a reply when Kasara appeared again, looking excited.

"Sir, sir!" He looked at her hard.

<"What IS it, Kasara? Spit it out!">

She jumped up and down on the pad. "The Praetor has ordered Warfleet Armageddon to go through the Worldgate to come to Hypatia. We're going to have Warlord D'kar with us, and he is to take command!" Yarlong relaxed. D'kar was a strong and smart warrior, and much more battle-hardened than him. He'd be better in command. And, soon enough, through the world gate, they came. Another Warfleet.

<"Sir, incoming message from the Devastator".> He nodded for it to be put through. A scarred face appeared, in Warbringer armor. D'kar was one of the few Warbringers who had chosen to lead the fight in space, instead of one the ground.

<"I see you have had trouble with this Kara, Yarlong.">

<"I was ill-suited to the task. D'kar.">

He waved a hand. <"Pah. You're just used to stable battles, and tactics. It's alright. Jaina will be able to take care of that. Just follow my orders and we'll do fine. Bring Warsong to the left flank of the entire fleet, and I'll take the right. I want to ensure they don't break.">

<"Yes, sir."> D'kar broke the connection, and turned to Jaina. She paused for a moment and then spoke.

"Incoming message, Warlord." He looked down and pressed a button, letting it scroll on his datapad.

<<OPENNODE: STRATEGY>>

Message: Enter entangled nodeconversation 11324, all military commanders, captains, and other tacticians who may be needed in this battle. This is going to be one hell of a defense we're gonna need to put up.

He quickly typed in the command into his computer and both Jaina and him entered the node.

DK: I have come, fellow allies, to the Realm with another Warfleet. The Praetor felt it was worth the risk, especially with Hypatia under attack.

J: That is Warlord D'kar above me, commander of Warfleet Armageddon and all Kelauan forces here in Hypatia. I am Jaina, the coordinating A.I. Now, lets get down to business and see if we can't ruin that bitch's day.

PRIORITY BROADCAST
ENCRYPTION LEVEL: GREAT WAR
Recipients: Kostemetsia, Keluaun

Fleetmind incursion leaves us outgunned by a ratio of at least 2-1, best estimate. Includes entire allied fleets, Keluaun, Allanean, Solarii - our entire spaceborne navy. Gridkill and FTLi leaves us with possible advantages, but this is possibly the largest single fleet we've seen since the initial incursion of the entire Alpha Unit in the GFFA war.

Any units on standby near the Hypatian worldgates, this is a priority call. Rest assured, if we can't stop the Fleetmind here, every one of you are going to be next.

Acting Cohesion Commander,
Lopez

END TRANSMISSION
The Sixth Fleet hadn't known it was coming. The captains of four hundred ships, give or take a few, reacted with absolute shock, blood pounding through veins as they absorbed the news. That big?

Fleet Admiral Samuel Peters, to his credit, stayed composed. Waiting a reasonable time for the captains to stave off heart attacks, he immediately gave an order. Within twenty minutes, all of the ships were assembled in a rough square formation, one of the newest Supercarriers sitting pretty in the middle, five hundred strikecraft onboard.

Finally, as the last main engine powered down, the customised worldgate powered up. A blue vortex formed across its ten-kilometre ring, gyrating and fluxing, waiting for the ships to make their way through. And so they did.

With a unified burst of thrusters that would have blinded anyone within three hundred thousand kloms, the ships disappeared into the wormhole like water down a drain, only to emerge seconds later on Kaisar's perimeter. FTL engines spun up, ready for short jumps.

[OOC: ATTENTION! I will make another IC post soon. Any new arrivals after it will be considered to be "late to the party"; i.e, arriving after the four hours are up and Kara's fleet have arrived.]

ETA: 15 seconds.

Let me tell you a little about the Dyson-Gordon hyperspace shunt. It's very powerful in many respects. High-efficiency, high-output. You can move a lot of mass with a little bit of energy. It's resistant to outside disruption - it busts through weaker FTLi fields like they weren't even there.

But nobody uses it. Do you know why?

Because when it fails - and if you apply enough FTLi to it, it will fail - it fails hard. I'm talking national emergency here. You end up crashing back out into realspace at a good fraction of lightspeed - in pieces. Subatomic pieces, usually. To make matters worse, usually you get enough quantum fluctuation during the crash-out to cause spontaneous transmutation. You end up about 10% antimatter.

ETA 5 seconds.

So to summarize. This moon and set of asteroids here (of course I wouldn't use real ships for this!) are driven by Dyson-Gordon shunts, and they're currently about halfway into your - rather diffuse - FTLi field. I'm starting to see a few fluctuations in the drive field.

And guess what's directly between me and your precious little planet? That's right. Your fleet. So, guess what happens if I kick in my own little FTLi generator - without bothering to turn off the drive first?

ETA 1 second.

...

That's right. A few trillion tons of c-fractional fireball, with a little antimatter thrown in for that extra-special kick. Not quite the same as a stellar explosion, of course - but a great deal more concentrated.

Good luck cleaning up the mess. I'm headed to Mars.

******

A second sun blossoms in the skies of Hypatia.

"Two minutes."

"Hell. FTLi fields? Are we too extended?"

"Nothing, sir. We've got a message."

"Kara?"

"Nossir. The Victoria, sir."

"Patch me through to the main command console. I want to confer with Lopez and Watcher. They're meant to be co-ordinating this defense. I want to know their plans. I'm not sending Stuvesysant's battlegroup out without confirmation."

She's good.

I know that, Vicky. She beat me twice.

No, no, she's good. I'm running through scenarios in my mind. None of them make any sense. She can break our FTLi, but she's using Dyson-Gordon's. Her ships are going to die as soon as-.. Oh no.

A grim silence descends over the node. After a thousandth of a second - far more time than they have to waste, Watcher speaks.

Upload all personality data to FleetNet. We'll do as best we can. The Forge is inside the killzone for a blast of that magnitude. If it can get through her FTLi, we can retain most of our industrial capacity. Build new bodies.

And Hypatia itself?

The main defenses won't come up unless her FTLi goes down. The transposition fields are too delicate to operate under those sorts of conditions.

The fleet waits, morbidly. Tactical data is transmitted to the fleets of other nations, allowing them to escape - or at least get a head start on what is almost assuredly going to be a slaughter. Watcher drifts back to Hypatia, and his nodes, once filled with tactical data, begin uploading minds. FleetNet can contain, at most, fifty to a hundred million minds, depending on how much space it decides to give up.

ETA 1 second

Sensors go off the graph, as the moon explodes, and Kara's fleet leaves.

Yes!

Watcher, have you gone entirely mad?

Her fleet's left! Get Lopez to activate the transposition fields.

Transposition fields stop FTL! If we activate them, our allies are dead! And so are we!

A few fleets versus eight-point-nine billion lives, Victoria. Here. Let me make it easier for you.

<<Fleetwide transmission: Make your amends to whatever gods you may believe in. We are about to die.>>

Transposition fields are simple things. They won't operate under most FTLi fields, which is why they only flicker online after the ships in front of it are consumed in the explosion to come. However, they're teleporters. In effect, Kara's attack is going to pass over Hypatia, continuing as though the planet wasn't there. The fields are designed for c-frac attacks that a planet cannot possibly avoid, having no method of movement, but are widely regarded as useless in the case of an enemy fleet assault.

More importantly, any FTL drive activating within an AU or two will splutter and die. The choice, however, was easy. Preserve the Realm, or preserve the fleets of her allies. Militarily, the second choice is wiser. But Watcher is programmed to serve the Realm above all else, and so he has no real choice in the matter.

The fury unleashed above Hypatia does not obliterate the planet, though the ships of the Realm are hardly as lucky. The first to go is the Victorian Architecture, being closest to the explosion. Grav-shields aside, nothing can stop that sort of force for long - it takes her precisely one-fifteenth of a second to go under.

There are unintended consequences to this sort of thing. For instance, the emergency activation of a superfortress FTLi field, an automated response to the ship's inner organs being torn apart.

It takes less time than the wink of an eye, but it is enough. The transposition fields fail - for less than a second, and matter crashes into the ice-world. The world is large enough to resist the destruction, but the people who live on it are much more fragile.

There are not even eight billion corpses left behind to commemorate those who lived.