No SV You Are the Forest
A Riot Quest
Turn 010 Event Interrupt 2 part 2
As the first wave of Katown missiles was launched, what should be an overwhelming alpha strike that cripples half of the defenders in the system, Senior Scientist Oragles sat back in his chair, exhausted, tail limp and ears flat.
The coolers in the research station were likely to be overloaded, and the filters would definitely need cleaning; a good thing that they had dedicated janitors.
It had taken his teams hours, working alongside the loaded-down Psychic Choir and a somehow overclocked Crystal Forest, to crack as many secrets of the Katown's missiles as they could, but they
had managed it with enough time to spare to actually
transmit the information to both divisions – well, not all of the data. The most important bits, the tools that would let them most completely spoof the missiles all on their own.
And as reports trickled back in, their own sensors better than those aboard warships due to simple lack of care for raw durability, Oragles saw it all working. The shields he had pioneered, the doctrine that had been implemented with them, the anti-missile defenses rapidly emplaced onto the battleships, and the last piece, the knowledge sent out to ensure that no, actually, the missiles would have a harder time just targeting Ingaba ships.
Instead of a complete wipe of their escorts, second division had more than half of them left.
"Good work, everybody. Take a short break. Nap, water, snack, whatever. Then we're shifting over to assisting the ECM penetration teams; the Forest's got something up its sleeves to want that data, and I really want to see it," Oragles said hoarsely, standing up to do exactly that. It would have to be a short nap, of course. Not that the Forest actually sleeves, but whatever. It was a metaphor.
…whatever else happened, the Choirs were getting a vacation after this, and he would absolutely start looking for a proper successor for himself, no matter that the treaty with the Forest was up for renegotiation in a few years.
It wasn't enough, this success with the missiles. But it was something, and the data would make it back to the rest of the Directorate, thereby ensuring that the rest of the Fleet was better prepared for similar onslaughts.
… at least the Dreadnought was slow. Big, yes. Lots of weapons, yes. High numbers of these missile pods? No, for reasons Oragles didn't bother to guess; he wasn't a soldier. Leave soldiering to the soldiers. Highly likely to have lots of armor, given the way it was sent through the wormhole first, yes – so he wasn't a soldier, he had soldiers
on staff, that was the point of a staff.
He could take fifteen minutes. A drink of water, a nap, and a visit to the facilities, yes in that order. The station could run itself without him looking over everybody's shoulders for a little while, it had managed that for years now, he could step away even in this emergency for a little bit.
*-*-*-*
"What in all the stars is that," Sensor Technician First Class Lohannu Folaka, of the KINS battleship
Wandering Hearts, asked rhetorically as he frowned at the plot before him. The Crystal Forest had been quiescent – a fact that he was certain every tactical officer in the fleet was thankful for, something that had been hoped when no aggressive movements had been made against it or the station in orbit of it.
"Technician Folaka, unless you have something relevant to say please remain silent."
"S-sorry Lieutenant! But, uh, please check me on the readings from the Crystal Forest? Scopes are getting odd readings from around it."
"Why are you doing checks on the Forest?"
"Because it's there?And we have scopes
not capable of looking at either Ingaba fleet."
"...good work, Technician. Let me load up the data you've got – it's bending the light around it somehow?"
"And fuzzing whatever gets through, and I think it's got a shield up."
The two of them looked at each other.
"Think we should try sending this up?"
"I mean, the shield was expected. Check to see if our probes caught anything interesting last time the missiles went through."
"Yes, sir!" Folaka responded, searching through their extensive database. Hopefully it had been loaded, it was mission-relevant data... there it was. Load the files, compare/contrast... "It seems as though the answer is 'yes, but not on this scale,' sir."
"So either it has figured something else out or its applying more power to something it could already do. No, I don't think we need to pass this up the chain – it sure is fascinating, though."
"Oh, this is interesting – the shield signatures measured from when the Forest was hit previously are similar to those now deployed by the Ingaba!"
"Now that
is worth passing up, even if it has already been caught by our bosses or someone else. Good work, Technician Folaka." the Lieutenant squinted. "I do think it's a good thing we didn't waste any missiles on the Forest, though. That... probably wouldn't have done much."
"Or riled it up."
"... do we know that it isn't?"
"...no, I don't think we do."
"What are you two whispering about over there?"
"C-commander! The shields used by the Ingaba seem to match, in general type, the shields used by the Crystal Forest, as far as our sensors can tell."
"It's good that we came in when we did, then. Good work Lieutenant, Technician."
"Thank-you sir!"
"Now get back to work."
"Yes Sir!"
*-*-*-*
The Forest, for all that it was a singular entity, was comprised of many smaller pieces. Some of them were focused on the Ingaba Research Base, or on the Katown Fleet, preparing for the likely-oncoming battle as best they could, whether it meant defense, offense or simply gathering resources.
One of them was wandering around in its own crown, too busy looking for something that had gone to sleep to bother with anything else.
… it might have tilted the odds a little bit here or there if it had focused otherwise, but so it goes.
A select group of Trees were focused on a psychic presence, there-and-yet-not there, overlaying the Forest in some interesting manner.
It had taken some time to gather sufficient energies to actually
reach this presence. There was something in the way, somehow, in a way that simply was not with any psychic the Forest had dealt with. Not with Yaranae Yllarat, not with the Ingaba psychics, nothing.
Not even the Trees reaching out to the Katown to soothe them were inconvenienced in any way other than by distance, which wasn't as much of a problem as it would be for anything constrained to mere light speed.
This, on the other hand, was quite peculiar.
Still, the Forest managed to cross the divide between itself and the strange presence, eventually. It couldn't decide on the word-thoughts to use, so eventually it asked a greeting.
"Hello?"
There, that would have to do.
*-*-*-*
Solar-Winds-Distant blinked from her position aboard her ship, the tiny little scout vessel not yet worthy of a distinct name among the Star-Void Wanderers. She was the captain and sole crew member of the vessel, which hung on the other side of the Veil, witnessing as their ancient enemies assaulted another species.
Not, fortunately, that species' home system, no. Just a distant territory, if one reasonably defended and supported.
But still, she blinked.
Psychic contact by the strange forest had
not been anticipated. The sensitivity to detect her presence from the other side of the Veil was unprecedented. The rest of it wasn't.
It was a hive mind of some sort, which was common enough. It was psychic, which was also reasonably common – the Clairvoyants were hardly the only non-affiliated psychic organization, just the most noted one. None of their representatives were present here, either, so ha.
Suck on it.
That's right, you
aren't perfect. The Wanderers' latest stealth techniques were clearly capable of hiding from some forms of future sight!
Or it was considered a better outcome that they not be present. One or the other. Solar-Winds-Distant knew which she preferred, of course, but that stealth technologies might need to be included in scout ships like hers was less than ideal.
If somehow just that set of devices could be included, it would raise the price, but the reason they
hadn't been included was because no, actually, there was rather a lot of reworking to be done to include said stealth devices.
Accounting and logistics sucked. She much preferred being a scout.
"
Uh, hello?" the Forest asked again, and Solar-Winds-Distant scrambled to get the equipment she needed to talk to such a being ready.
She had been busy compiling reports to be sent off later, but this? Sure, okay, fine, whatever, it isn't like she wasn't suddenly completely out of her depth here, or anything!
"Ah, hello there! Sorry for the delay," she chattered, "but I'm really,
really not prepared for this. I'm a scout, not a diplomat. Haven't needed one of those since before the rat-bastard scumbags of the Katown decided to slaughter our first and last attempt at a peace treaty, after they burned one of our nest-worlds in the void-between-stars. They might've forgotten that time by now, they're much weaker than they used to be, but it isn't like they've stopped or anything, so here I am, keeping an eye on this latest wormhole of theirs. This system has hyperlanes, yes, a problem for us -"
"Who is this 'us' and 'we'?" the Forest asked, and Solar-Winds-Distant allowed herself to wince physically.
"Right, sorry, not a diplomat, first contact anyway. Right. I'm a scout for the Star-Void Wanderers, and we've been fighting the Katown for along,
long time. The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy, nothing more... I will include headers in my reports that first contact has been made."
This, she knew, would suck. What good was a scout that
got caught? Ugh. Bleh. She'd be lucky to merely be drummed out of the service without ceremony.
That was for later. She had reports to write, and the Katown and Ingaba fleets were readying their weapons once more.
*-*-*-*
Flight Commander Ohunna Boteku waited patiently at the launch catapults of the KINS
Fruitful Partnership, a carrier, for the orders to sortie.
Carriers had an interesting place in void warfare, deploying parasite vessels that could do anything from ensure 'space superiority' in the same way that aircraft still seek to assert 'air superiority' to bombing runs and boarding assaults.
It generally depended upon the foe as to whether or not they were remotely useful. However, a faction without access to shields, that relied upon thrusters for movement, and didn't seem to have strikecraft of their own were a perfect opponent, in Ohunna's opinion.
"Flight Commander, the order is given. Launch all wings. Do check your flight-plans, you are to be advancing 'over' and 'under' the initial volleys; no friendly fire incidents today, we can't afford them."
The expected, then.
"Launching, Flight Controller."
"Good hunting, Commander."
The acceleration slammed him into his seat, the newly devised inertial compensators whining as the catapult peaked, the carrier turned to precisely the right direction to place him and his wings where they should be.
"So, Commander, what are we looking at?" his wingman asked, jocularly, as if he hadn't already known.
"Case Primus, Lieutenant," Ohunna told his entire flight, all one hundred strikecraft of it. "We burn in, add the weight of our pylons to the first volley, zoom past, turn and fire again from their backs."
Five other carriers were launching their strikecraft, hundreds of Shrike fighter-bombers joining his as they streaked towards the Ingaba's detached fleet.
It would take time to get there, even with the initial boost granted by the launch catapults. Nobody could maintain peak alertness and awareness during these times, so it simply wasn't enforced.
The rule of the day was, of course, gossip.
"So, Commander, I heard you and Flight Controller Dilonnu Ahboku have a bet riding on today?"
"That is news to me," Ohunna replied dryly.
"Yeah, if you score more kills than anybody else, she'll take you out on a date!"
"Well that's unfortunate for whomever bought into that," Ohunna laughed. "The Ingaba don't seem to use strikecraft, and their ships are fairly tough, so any kills are going to be squadron or wing-wide."
"DAMMIT!"
"Hahaha, you got
got, Lieutenant!"
"Shut it!"
"First volley is launching soon. Take a look, yeah?"
"Look at what, blips on our screens? There's basically nothing for the good-ol' eye to even see!"
"No, no, the
Impeccable Taste is firing!"
There was a brief pause on the squadron's comm channel. That was something worth watching. There was no single 'main gun' aboard the
Impeccable Taste, given its role in breaching wormholes. Instead, there were a lot of massive turrets carrying weapons that were frequently used as spinal weapons on battleships.
Admittedly those Battleships were not present here, which in retrospect might not have been the wisest choice, but Ohunna was just a Flight Commander, not an Admiral. There was surely a reason for that choice.
"It's still just going to be tiny streaks of light on our screens at this range, you realize? Maybe if we were closer it would look better, but nah, it's still just going to be streaks of light slowly catching up to and then passing us."
"Wait, weren't we supposed to hit with the first wave?"
"No. There is a volley set for our arrival, but it won't launch until we're closer. Get your heads into the game, people."
"Nah, not yet. Rather be at peak performance when we need to dodge point-defense."
"It did appear that their point-defense was more effective against the missile volley than expected. Will that be a problem for us, do you think?"
"Eh, could be?"
"Nah, not really," Ohunna interjected, lounging back just a little – not that anybody else would notice, but
he certainly felt a smidge better. "We've been flinging missiles through the wormhole for a little while now, only makes sense that they'd try to adapt to them. The surprising thing is that they
succeeded, not that they tried."
"Wait, really? Why'd we do that?"
"We had probes over here to analyze their responses – we poked them with the stick from a very safe distance before we started looking for it. The risk of exactly this was probably considered to be worth it."
"Hmm..."
"Right, I'm taking a nap. Alarm's set for when we get closer. Don't do anything that would need me to wake up for first, hmm?"
"Yessir!" his flight chorused.
Time passed. Ohunna's alarm went off when the data from the previous waves of weapons fire came back.
"Damn, those guys are good, but why are they targeting our escorts? Do they not see
us? Are they not concerned with the bigger ships?" That was the Commander of the third wing, what was his name again... he would know it if only he could see the man's face, dammit.
"It looks like they're whittling away our defenders, and yes, they are good. Most of their ships are still up and running – I'm glad we caught them separated, this would be so much worse otherwise."
"It doesn't look like they've managed to crack our ECM," Ohunna answered. "So it's just that much easier to knock one of our escorts out of the fight. Every ship they heavily damage is at least one additional ship of a similar size that is not on the front lines or not being built."
"And the shields on
their escorts make them that much better than ours."
"And we don't know their actual industrial capacity. We do know this fleet was heavily reinforced relatively recently, but we don't know how much of a commitment it actually is. We know they have other fronts to worry about, but they aren't actually at war with anybody but us... and this is a nexus, a major junction of hyperlanes. We don't actually
know who else is out there, yet, but out there they are."
"Right, next full volley should have been launched by now. Last-second prayers, hopes, and dreams, everybody!"
"FOR MOMMY~!"
"Seriously, Fammu Labatu?" Oh, that guy.
"You
know it!" Yeah, it was that guy. There was one in every wing, Ohunna swore it was true. Some guy you'd think was too busy mooning after
someone, in this case the Fleet Admiral – he even had a pinup of her on his strikecraft – to be any good as a pilot, but no, they just never died.
"This is why you'll never be promoted to squadron leader, forget anything higher than that!"
"I, do
not care!" Ohunna could readily picture the goofy grin the other pilot was currently wearing. Ugh. "Mommy's glorious -"
"Shut up, Labatu, we all know what you're interested in," Ohunna interrupted. "Get your heads in the game, everybody! The bet is between
ship flights... and it's about which flight loses the most. Naturally, I bet on those fluff-for-brains in the
Awaiting Paradise losing the most craft here. So don't you all disappoint me!"
There was a few moments of silence, then.
"Wait, aren't
we in the vanguard?"
"Of course we're in the vanguard. We're the
best, where else would we be put? We'll have that crucial few moments of surprise. Surprise that the following wings
won't have. So, yes. I think we'll make it through this first wave just fine. The return trip, or against the other little fleet? Not so much then, no."
"After we blow by them we'll be decelerating, which
will give their point defense more time to swing at us..."
"Set your automatics. Trust your instincts. And don't fly
between their ships. That point defense will kill us as easily as a missile, but it should only scratch the paint of their neighbors. Clear?"
"Yessir!"
"Very good. Settle in, now. It's almost time to reactivate our drives, give them a good, long
scare."
*-*-*-*
The Ingaba's Second Division was alert and aware. Their own sensors had detected the second set of drives flaring off from some of the battleships, and they had assumed a second set of missiles was incoming.
Said missiles had not materialized in the next waves of weapons fire, and they had promptly had other problems to worry about. A few weapons officers worried, a few captains were concerned, but there was little to do other than speculate and wait for the other claw to land.
Perhaps they were some kind of mine, missiles or bomb-pumped lasers? Or perhaps they were just like the other missiles, on a delay? The
division had already started to slow down, attempting to drag out the engagement, but it was not likely to be. Katown acceleration, even while keeping pace with that big-ass ship of theirs, was simply higher than theirs.
Vice-Admiral Angowa, flying his flag on the INS battleship
The Other Leaf, knew he was dead the instant that drives kicked off synchronously with the arrival of another properly coordinated Katown volley.
"Strikecraft,"he growled with a toss of his head, his ears flat against his head. "Orders to the fleet, relay immediately, point defense on high alert, incoming strikecraft, prepare for short-range missiles and energy weapons." It was, as far as he was concerned, a concerning new dimension of fleet warfare. The Ingaba, and their enemies, largely used strikecraft near the orbitals of planets, where it was easy for them to obtain cover and refuel, or in close defense of their starbases.
None of this insanity of hours-long trips at high accelerations in a tiny vehicle barely suitable for a single person, forget two or more. Oh, right. And the accelerations required to get them out this far, ahead of their other ships. That was also a problem.
Admiral Gonagles would see it quickly enough, and so would Fleet Admiral Monagles. There was no need to tell them, and yet he started taking his own notes and preparing to send them off. He had done what he could; now he would provide what he could for those who came after him.
Data poured into his screens, and he scrutinized it as best he could. Summaries came from underlings, and he analyzed those, too. Acceleration curves, when the strikecraft finished passing them by and weapons fire was still coming in. How quickly they slowed down to come back for another go. How much their weapons – missiles and heavy beams, as expected – harmed his ships. The missiles were launched first, at the front. Why was that? Was it easier for them to slow down with the heavy weapons spent, or was there another reason they weren't fired at their engines? Speculation, discard from reports.
A quick and easy comparison for the layperson, or the Minister of Defense, or the Director, was that of knife wounds. They
could quickly hit a vital point,
or they could merely shave off some armor, or they could miss entirely.
His crews had not performed optimally. This, a deep-space assault assisted by strikecraft, was not something that had been trained for, or considered. They did, however, do a decent job, taking out very nearly a quarter of all the strikecraft approaching... it likely would have been worse without the refits to the Battleships adding a bunch of point-defense clusters. This, too, was noted.
Everything he worked on so feverishly, all the data his subordinates compiled, every report sent in from the other flag officers and the captains of the division... all of it was collated, encrypted and sent off, tight-beams to the research station, to the first division, to the courier waiting by the hyperlane.
When the end came, his ship was not the last to go, nor was it the first. He moved for the escape pods, of course, but it was too late to leave, one last pair of hits leaving
The Other Leaf drifting through the void, escape pods joining the flowering hail as they left ruined ships.
There was nowhere for them to go in system. No planet to land on. No heavily fortified starbase to pick them up. Just the research base by the Crystal Forest.
*-*-*-*
Haah, well, this is merely a week or so later than I had wanted! I could probably rework the fighter-jock discourse a dozen times and not be happy with it, so here you are.
Anyway, say 'Hello' to the mysterious presence! You can ask her for immediate support in the next round. This may or may not amount to anything.
Next update will conclude this first round of combat and introduce another vote. I
think the next round will conclude combat and we can get back to the important things, like growing more trees.
