[Fan Fiction] Looking forward to the Mirror (Completed)

[Krulle]

Indeed. This is a good chapter. Much action, yet short, reflecting the short and intense firefight.

The Umiak are good if they're able to push a full squad in within that short time.

Next time, if there is a next time, they will blanket the to be boarded space first, before entering....

[Grayhome]

Why I do declare! It's as if you were channeling the spirit of Dan Abbnet himself! Awesome chapter dragoongfa.

A tiny bit of constructive criticism, plasma flamers were described in GURPS as being extremely effective in boarding actions for precisely this sort of scenario. A three meter cone of plasma that washes out the boarding party's entrance and the room behind them, ignoring most cover and coating the entire boarding party in hawt hawt hawt plasma. In addition to that, the plasma flamer is not armor piercing, so it (probably) wont damage any of the ship's interior components like solid rounds will. It's just such a lovely tool, so delightfully efficient.

Flamers (TL9^) These weapons fire a low-velocity jet of high temperature plasma. Hydrogen fuel is fed into a magnetic containment chamber, heated and compressed to form a plasma, and then released as a continuous stream. Flamers are effective incendiary and terror weapons, with a role similar to that of the flamethrower. They’re also useful for disposing of vermin or microbot swarms. Flamers inflict burning damage, but not tight-beam burning damage.
Flamer Weapons
Assault Flamer(TL9^): This rifle-sized plasma weapon is often used by armored infantry involved in spaceship boarding actions and house-to-house fighting.
Hand Flamer (TL9^): This large pistol is used as a military sidearm or a terror weapon.
Heavy Flamer (TL9^): An energy-based flamethrower with a backpack power supply.
Semi-Portable Flamer (TL9^): Also called a tripod flamer, this heavy, semi-portable infantry weapon can be terrifying even to a fighter in heavy armor. A heavy flamer can be mounted on a tripod or carried by a soldier in powered battlesuit. They are also popular in combat engineering and urban assault vehicles.

[dragoongfa]

I considered the flamethrower at first for the reasons you mentioned, the problem however with these flamethrowers is the tech behind them and the very nature of the weapon itself.

The first reason I didn't use flamethrowers is that I don't think that humanity in the Outsider setting is able to manipulate plasma to that degree.

The second reason is that heavy weapons in general have the nasty habit of attracting enemy fire.

In the firefight the Umiak did hit several marines with their Blasters, which are portable particle beam weapons. The human armor took the hit without much harm but if the Umiak did the same thing the Humans did and increased the output of their weapons then the picture would be vastly different. Now how low was the setting of the Umiak Blasters?

Perhaps it was low enough to cause injury at someone wearing only a light form of airtight armor, perhaps it was set to non lethal, someone needs to ask the Umiak Hard-Troops about that but in the end the Umiak did hit the marines several times despite the beating they were getting while being on mostly open ground.

Now imagine who would be the priority target of all Umiak if such a plasma flamethrower was in use?

With the Human attitude of using weapons that ensure 1 hit - 1 kill then it would be no question that the Humans would rarely take fire magnets weapons with them, unless the situation called for them.

[Razor One]

I don't think that there would be any terrible technical hurdles for using plasma flamethrowers on an infantry scale versus boarding actions. All you really need is the requisite magnetics to contain the plasma and the power to generate it. Magnetics are easy if you have superconductors, and power consumption is the only real hurdle, which you can get around by lugging about the generator necessary for it or plugging in to the ships supply.

Plasma weapons in outsider, as I understand them, are only severely limited by range. On ship to ship scales they're completely useless, since they disperse rapidly. The plasma focus solves this problem, letting them hit from long range. Obviously that's not really a problem versus a boarding action.

If they're not using plasma flamethrowers on the ship, then it's more probable that the TCA generally don't them for the same reason modern flamethrowers aren't today; questionable effectiveness, limited use, and bad PR. If you need to hose down a bunch of soft targets, that's what flechettes are for. Harder targets get AP rounds. Really hard targets get AP explosive.

[Absalom]

Powered armor makes sense, but a lot of the Tau and Battletech stuff is significantly larger than a human frame: instead of those, robots & small vehicles make more sense for a confined space like the Bennet class.

Well yes Absalom a lot of the before mentioned sci fi universe tech is considerably larger than the human frame. But a lot of it isn’t. I’ve already made my case that stairs, crawlspaces and ladders would pose a significant hurdle for such weapon systems. These ships were designed for multi-legged species, tracks are going to have hurdles to overcome.

I would never call those mechs, though. They're an exoskeleton, but the only place where I understand that to be counted as a mech is in Japan: everywhere else, an exoskeleton or powered armor are worn like a piece of clothing, while a mech is piloted as a vehicle. A Tau Stealth Suit would be powered armor, while a Tau Riptide Battlesuit is definitively a mech. The equivalent to a Stealth Suit would be practical on a starship, but for anything known to exist within Outsider a XV104 would definitively not be. The Tau themselves recognize this issue, as demonstrated by their Void Battlesuit.

I feel like your nitpicking.

I feel like you're taking excessive liberties. I have never encountered power armor being commonly referred to as a 'mech'. In Japan the word 'mech' is simply a contraction of 'mechanical', but it covers not just powered suits and giant war robots, but also motorcycles and other mechanical devices. Elsewhere, 'mech' is used to refer to robots that are piloted.

Particularly since any large areas are going to either be unenclosed space, or will likely have powered equipment (cranes & such) as part of the facilities. Anything that can compellingly be called a mech instead of powered armor just won't make sense onboard.

*shrug* I disagree with your opinion. As does GURPS and MOO, upon which this story has roots and which I draw upon as inspiration for my ideas.

Consider the 'terrain': you've got roughly human-sized (or maybe twice-human-sized, for the Umiak) corridors, presumably some larger corridors for large ship equipment to be refitted, and some mixture of elevators, ramps, stairs, and ladders. Elevators are constrained by space and little more. Ramps are constrained by the difference of angle between ramp and floor, and the presence or absence of turns part-way up, which will also be constraining on anything with legs. Stairs are essentially a type of ramp, so if the treads of a treaded vehicle are capable of handling the distance between individual stair-steps, then they can handle the staircase. This leaves ladders as the only certain difficulty: ladders cause problems for people too, so they're not likely to be favored anywhere that is:
1) intended to be accessible, and
2) not severely constrained for space.
So, if a mech (as opposed to powered armor) can fit, then it isn't likely to need to deal with ladders, and that takes out the one thing that might distinguish a mech from a tracked vehicle... except that there's no particular need for such a distinguishment. Read on.

One relevant note: if you have good-enough software, treads shaped to grab on to holds, and you mount your treads on a 'leg-like' active-shock system, then you can handle ladders much faster than any biped can. Cars out-race animals for good reason.

The human frame has many moving joints and a fairly high surface area, which actually means that this list of features will be better achieved by something shaped like a box than shaped like a marine.

A lot of the Battlesuits in the WAR 40k and Battletech universes are basically small boxes with arms and legs.

And Gears from Heavy Gear, but you'll need small cockpits to deal with ship-board corridors, and this will severely restrict the abilities of the pilot, at which point you have problems with the very same stairs & ladders that you were talking about earlier. Dreadnoughts & similar might be a decent augmentation to a Marine crew, but they wouldn't be a good option as the primary marine unit on a ship like the Bellarmine.

Outsider FTL isn't accurate enough for that. You need inch-accuracies, but Outsider FTL only has AU accuracies: completely different scales. Outsider tech has a much less chaotic tech-level than Star Trek.

Master of Orion, GURPS Ultratech and GURPS Psionics all do.

Which is nice, but no matter how much they inspired Outsider, they are not actually Outsider. And Arioch has quite specifically mentioned that Outsider FTL isn't as accurate as you would need.

Humans in Outsider are a developing power, you're thinking of an already hyper-advanced group like the humans in WH40k. The situation is completely different, and it's actually the Umiak (or more likely, Historians) that can achieve what you're suggesting that the humans could do.

See previous statement.

You don't quite seem to have gotten the thrust of this particular comment: the Umiak are more advanced, so if it's possible within Outsider then in a Human vs Umiak fight, it's the Umiak that will have the technology advantage. Humans won't surprise Umiak with teleporters, but instead the equivalent of IEDs.

Staircases can be dealt with somewhat straightforwardly, ladders are a little harder but should still be quite possible, and as long as the robot or whatever can fit they'll actually do better inside crawlspaes than humans or Umiak if they use treads or something. Though crawlspaces are presumably rare, unless they're used for maintenance access to the interior of large pieces of machinery.

No they can't,

So easy you can do it at home. There are also robots that have been used by the military that do it with treads. Tanks are intended to be able to deal with stair-like obstacles, so this shouldn't be surprising. As long as the treads can reliably get an initial grip on the edge of a stair without breaking it, have enough motor power to pull themselves up, and have a long-enough wheel-base that they can reach the next step before they reach an angle that causes them to fall head-over-heals, they can climb stairs with no problem. Stairs are nothing but a steep ramp with level platforms spaced along it.

no they wouldn't be,

Here is a robot climbing a ladder. To climb the ladder, the robot first has to recognize that a ladder is present, and identify the parts that it can use to climb. Whatever designed the ladder, in order for it to be usable the ladder needs to have hand/foot/whatever holds spaced within a certain distance of each other (not regularly, just close enough together). Once your robot recognizes that such supports are present, it moves it's movement systems such that it can support itself with them. Hand and feet analogs are the most obvious choice, but if your treads include 'hooks' and are mounted on a sufficiently advanced active suspension, then treads can be used as well.

no they wouldn't. These vessels are designed for people who walk around on legs Absalom, tracked vehicles are going to encounter problems in such environments.

Do you even know what a crawlspace is? It's called a crawlspace because it's short enough that you have to crawl on your stomach or back instead of walking upright. And tread system capable of handling the obstructions in the crawlspace will be able to navigate it better than a human or Umiak, because the human and Umiak can't properly use their limbs to move in such a space, while a tread system will always be able to handle the obstructions that it's spec'ed for if it can actually fit in the available space.

If sentient caterpillars were a race under discussion then you might have some ammunition, but anything worthy of being called a crawlspace for a human or Umiak is going to cripple their natural movement capabilities.

But this short story occurs in space, so flight can either be achieved with relatively little energy, or is unneeded.

Absalom, this short story occurs on starships with artificial gravity. I don't understand your point.

My point is that if you're inside of a starship the size of a Bennet-class, then you do not in fact have a compelling need to fly while the artificial gravity is on: you're either outside of the ship, or you can use a grappling system to pull your vehicle up to the floor that you need it on.

I feel... nervous about this part to tell the truth, maybe I will come back to it later to flesh it out some more.

Reads like they just threw some toy troops in to assess the human's effectiveness. If they win then that's great, if they lose then no big loss. Either that, or someone goofed with the weapons settings.

[Argron]

Humanity Fuck Yeah! XD

[JQBogus]

There's a good chance this was just a probe by the Umiak to see what they were up against. What weapons do the defenders have? Do they have combat specialists? Are they really aliens, or is this a Loroi trick? Risking 32 Hardtroops may be a low price to get answers to these questions. If there is a second assault, it may not go so well for the humans.

[Grayhome]

Absalom, with respect I feel like your trolling. At several points you disagree with me seemingly to just to agree with me later on. Or disagree with a theory I presented just to restate that theory in slightly different words a paragraph later.

Dragoongfa the great thing about every marine having powered armor would be that every marine would be capable of wielding semi-portable sized weaponry. When you have one or two squads with flamers and only a few access points on the ship you can just sterilize those access points. If every marine had a battlesuit they could dual wield them.
Plasma flamers were listed in GURPS as upper TL 9, and I thought that was about were humanity was. However if you needed humanity to be lower than that for the sake of the story, or needed some technology to be accessed at higher TL's I can understand that. The marines most likely damaged a hell of a lot of heir ship in that firefight though. Like, a lot. Like, a lot of the ship's interior components would be totally destroyed in that 2+ mins of shooting.

Razor One the flechettes sounded interesting, could you post the entry for them? I assume they come from a non-GURPS system, I'd like to check that out.
That is a good point about PR, I had not thought of it. It would be far worse PR to have a TCA vessel and it's crew captured, tortured and experimented upon by hostile aliens due to them being poorly armed but I can see your point.

[Krulle]

Regarding damage: what good does a lost, because captured ship, do the mission?
So, deal with boarders to have the mission continue.
On top of that, I assume they can do field-repairs of everything punctured. They might not have the time, as the Umiak will power their weapons first...

And personally, if you're afraid of being boarded, and the shuttle bay being a "standard" point of entry, then why not permanently install a defensive flame/plasma thrower with an manual control near the "roof" of the bay, to fry the bugs from above? No need to worry about weight/handling that way. Not usable for different entry locations, but then any boarder never knows what awaits him in such a first-contact boarding situation.
If the Humans were as small as the Tanuki (1m), and the boarders were Lurs (6m, see same source, or also this source), the Lurs would have a problem anyway moving around within the boarded ship...
It may well be that the boarders sent are sent with a "they cannot capture that ship" anyway, due to such a situation alone. I imagine the Umiak having a problem squeezing through the hallways of a Tanuki ship... The boarding would not be efficient anyway.

I'm curious to find out if the Umiak still think the Human ship is the origin of the lifesigns...

reason for edit: corrected url-tags

[dragoongfa]

@ Grayhome

The chief problem with the battlesuits you are describing is how expensive and niche they are.

The problem with battlesuits as they are imagined is their size and the way their armor will have to be spread in order to properly protect both its pilot and the electronic equipment. If the battlesuit is to do everything that you are describing then it will be bogged down by sheer weight and its price will be forbidding with everything that it carries. If one battlesuit costs more than ten infantry men who combined have better survivability (through a combination of personal armor, camouflage and proper positioning) and greater firepower (due to numbers and specialists) then no one will ever buy a battlesuit.

Now for flamethrowers; I hate to point out the obvious but flamethrowers in space have one very real problem:

Vacuum. If one expects to fight a boarding operation on a ship then standard flamethrowers are a no go, the fuel will ignite in vacuum but when it burns up its own oxygen then the fire dies out in a second or two; not much use when their opponents are armored. If the fire is sustained then one may cook an armored marine but that is slow and a slow killing, flashy weapon is the weapon of someone who is a priority target.

Plasma flamethrowers on the other had rely on plasma, hotter, quicker and not so reliant of oxygen to do damage. I pondered putting these in as a specialist weapon (rule of cool) but the problem is if humanity in the Outsider has the necessary tech (unknown since modified GURPS) and if they would field such a weapon at the first place.

Flamethrowers of the kind you are describing are an very minor niche in the setting as I have imagined it. The TCA may have done a few dozen boarding operations (some being outright slaughters due to firepower and armor disparity) but these boarding operations are very rare and the Marines are mostly the ground fighting force of the TCA. Ground warfare with this type of troops is long ranged and involves heavy use of ECM in order to spoof smart targeting and munitions. Mass drivers/Railguns will have ridiculous ranges compared to modern weapons, an effective range of a couple of kilometers will certainly be standard for the MD-45 that the marines are using (depending on the weapon's selected output).

A plasma flamethrower could be of use in close quarters combat but the problem with that kind of combat are collateral civilian casualties. Most of the TCA's engagements are against terrorists, rogues and criminals in areas or ships with civilian presence. The last thing the TCA wants is for 9 o'clock news to show footage of civilians being burned to a crisp by plasma flamethrowers.

So in essence you will have two problems with plasma flamethrowers; first is the range and the fact that one has to normally wade at least two kilometers under fire to get close enough to use it and second everywhere that the TCA may end up using the flamethrowers will probably have civilians nearby.

So in the grand scheme of things would the TCA, which is primarily a militarized police force, procure plasma flamethrowers if they have the necessary tech?

Probably not with a certainty of around 99%

As for the damage that the shuttle bay suffered, when something regularly lands and takes off then the whole area is designed to take some abuse in case of an accident. This ain't a normal kind of abuse however but provided no one starts shooting in more sensitive areas of the ship then Matveyev has gotten off easy, so far.

@Krulle

You don't want that kind of defense system where cargo shuttles regularly land and take off, for obvious reasons.

EDIT: Typo

[endeavor]

The TCA may have done a few dozen boarding operations (some being outright slaughters due to firepower and armor disparity) but these boarding operations are very rare and the Marines are mostly the ground fighting force of the TCA. Ground warfare with this type of troops is long ranged and involves heavy use of ECM in order to spoof smart targeting and munitions. Mass drivers/Railguns will have ridiculous ranges compared to modern weapons, an effective range of a couple of kilometers will certainly be standard for the MD-45 that the marines are using (depending on the weapon's selected output).

The problem isn't in power requirements alone. It's also in targeting. As far as I remember, early 20th century military rifles were effective up to several kilometers, and early Lee-Enfields, for example, were equipped with a volley sight to use that. That means that the bullet had enough power to kill a (unarmored - it's 1900s we are talking about) soldier, provided it hit him. And hitting someone at 2 km was a tricky part, so to go to such ranges you had a lot of people firing on a big and soft target, such as another lot of people. It turned out to be pretty inefficient, so such tasks were given to artillery.

To put it slightly differently, you need a sniper to hit a distant target. If the bullet is a simple slug with no in-flight correction capability, then you need a lot of specialized equipment to make that shot possible. That includes a rangefinder, a meteo-station and a stable firing position at least, with the latter being most important. After you have it, it probably helps to have a ballistic computer to factor all these things in. The armor you described might (just might) solve some of these problems, provided it isn't switched out by ECM. If it is switched out, such long-range shots start to require a lot of skill and a lot of time to prepare, making them less attractive. Sometimes all you can do is try to close and land a close-range hit.

If the bullets have some in-flight correction, then the requirements for initial positioning can be lightened. But then, in your setting, it's ECM's job to prevent that.

[dragoongfa]

The chief benefit with railguns and mass drivers is ballistics, or to put it simpler the simplification of ballistics.

A bullet from a Lee Enfield rifle takes a handful of seconds to reach its maximum range and it arcs, the speed of a railgun projectile however is such that the distance is covered at less than a second and with a far smaller arc. The armor does aid in the aiming of the weapon and it does upload trajectory corrections for smart munitions (the SHEAP -Smart High Explosive Armor Piercing - and HEX - High EXplosive- rounds do have that ability, the SHEAPs being weaker, its correcting ability is mostly used for long range exchanges, the HEX is more like a seeking bullet but slower and thus for closer ranges but with a significantly bigger explosion when compared to a SHEAP).

With such projectile speed it is very easy to accurately fire at targets at such ranges with machine aid, the problem then becomes one of defenses. Armor is weak against a high velocity round or high explosive armor piercing but you want armor in order to avoid artillery casualties. So in addition to the armor one also carries various decoys and ECM tricks in order to spoof the targeting of the opposing forces. The marines rely heavily on electronic signatures and infrared sensors for targeting, with visual targeting taking a back seat because of classic camouflage. All things considered one has to rely on numerous scattered sensors, providing numerous POVs and readings in order to give accurate targeting solutions on the armors and the smart munitions in order to bypass the ECM and hit the intended targets. One could of course blanket everything with heavy ECM that shuts down the electronics in the area but that has its own risks. All in all, in an average exchange between Armored Shock Troops at such ranges, the odds of hitting or missing are reliant on a combination ECM, ECCM, positioning and firepower; with the classic aiming skill taking a back seat.

If the firefight in the story was a long range exchange then the marines would have trouble hitting the Umiak who also have some short of visual ECM in addition to more sophisticated decoys and somewhat stronger armor.

[Sweforce]

Deadlines are for sissies, ask our eminent Arioch . I hope there isn't a serious problem since this is good stuff.

[dragoongfa]

Chapter 12, part 2


Only 90 seconds left… He thought as he glanced to the timer that was projected on his space suit’s visor, hoping that time would go just a little bit faster if he glanced at the time every so often.

He couldn't even predict the outcome of what would unfold once those 90 seconds were up; he hoped that their trick would be enough to destroy the Umiak ship, who wouldn’t hope for that?
That was the only way for them to still be alive after all was said and done but nevertheless, he had to prepare himself in the case of failure. He had to, he was the captain of Matveyev and he had to be the one that would push the button which would detonate the two remaining fusion missiles, the ensuing explosion ensuring the ship’s instant destruction, the instant death of everyone on it and the slow, suffocating death of the remaining away teams, the shuttle’s crew and quite possibly the death of commander Summers and his team as well.

75 seconds… The feeling of impotence that encompassed his whole being made his anxiety worse, he was just sitting there, on the captain’s chair watching the view in the complete silence that only existed in complete vacuum. For a change he longed to hear the usual sounds of Matveyev’s bridge and his crew’s banter; he couldn’t even talk with the ones on the bridge due to the Umiak jamming which forced everyone to communicate with hand signals or by touching their visors together while talking loudly.

63 seconds… He remembered back when he was finally promoted to Captain and was given command of the Matveyev. The ship named after that old coot who made the lives of academy cadets miserable until a decade ago. A cold, calculating Russian if ever there was one; an unbending stickler for rules who didn’t make any waves and always brought in results.
The joke went that if life on the Matveyev was to be tolerable then the captain should at least be able to take a joke. What better joke than to give the ship to someone who was also had a reputation of being a stickler for rules, didn’t like to make waves and brought in results; whose name also happened to mean 'funny George'?

Smiling he reached for his ship’s decorative patch on his right shoulder, forgetting for a moment that he was still wearing a space suit.

“Looking forward…” He whispered his ship’s motto to himself before checking the time again.

55 seconds… Perhaps the impotence he felt was what screwed with his time perception. He knew that the marines were fighting for their lives, all of their lives but he couldn’t even get a simple status report due to the jamming and the Umiak malware. He wondered for a moment if Allerberger and his men also wished for time to pass just a little bit faster but then his thoughts went to the others.

Half of his crew were off the ship waiting to see if the trap they had prepared would be successfully sprung or if they would be left to suffocate there. Could it be that the five that had already died be the lucky ones? He shook his head at that and checked the time again.

42 seconds left… He unconsciously stood up and walked towards the port side of the bridge, whose windows had a good view of the Umiak ship a couple of dozen kilometers away. The Umiak ship was a little more than twice Matveyev’s length and was at least four times as massive; the Loroi historic records that he read classified these ships as Heavy class. There were many variants of these ships, serving many different roles and purposes but all of them had a few things in common, their defenses being the most obvious one. With what he had read in mind it was obvious that there was only one way for them to take such a ship out with what they had available, it was a long shot but even that long shot was better than any of the two alternatives open to them.

20 seconds… It was only then that he realized how much of a fool he was for standing at the window instead of using his console to watch everything with a video feed.

15 seconds… No one could see them from where they all stood but the Umiak certainly did as their ship quickly turned to face the two rapidly approaching fusion torpedoes. They had been launched by the shuttle team at their maximum range and had been accelerating at 12Gs for almost 5 minute, while having a pre planned flight path that would bring them to the immediate vicinity of Matveyev.

The two torpedoes had remained unnoticed up to that point by using the cover of the large asteroids but now their final approach quickly brought them into the small opening that Matveyev used as a hiding place while preparing its trap. The two torpedoes were about to run out of fuel and they didn’t have any specific targeting data to begin with but the Umiak had no way of knowing that. The entire plan hinged on the Umiak reacting in the only reasonable manner when choosing between fight or flight.

The Umiak saw two torpedoes aimed at their general direction, it would be safe for them to assume that their unorthodox trajectory was aimed to avoid both incoming fire and the smaller asteroids that littered the opening between the far bigger ones. They didn’t know the torpedoes capabilities or payload and thus didn’t know how much damage they would to their ship if they hit it.

Flight was not a choice under these circumstances, even if their ship had an acceleration rate an order of magnitude better than the torpedoes in question they couldn’t surpass their speed in the limited amount of time they had left and they couldn’t risk the multiple high speed collisions with the small asteroids all around them.

The only logical solution was to fight. Shooting down the torpedoes was the safest approach, given the choice any sane captain would choose to shoot down two unknown torpedoes with unknown destructive potential than have them hit their ship, no matter the confidence one may have to their ship’s armor rating.

It was obvious that the Umiak captain chose the sensible approach as he pivoted his ship in seconds, facing the two torpedoes with the heavily armed bow of his ship before firing. The Umiak ship sported six of the heavy plasma weapons that obliterated a small asteroid and the away team that was hiding behind it in one hit. The Loroi records classified these weapons as a plasma focus, which for them was a deadly short range weapon that still far outstripped most of the weapons mounted on TCA ships on all categories.

The Umiak didn’t take any chances and fired all six of their plasma focus, three at each torpedoes, and he almost cheered at the sight. The two torpedoes were destroyed instantly from the barrage but the five remaining away teams were waiting for that exact moment to fire their own torpedoes. Five fully fueled fusion torpedoes arched from their hiding places with an acceleration of 12Gs, their trajectories taking them straight into the Umiak warship.

The Umiak warship reacted the instant it saw them, darting ahead with an unbelievable 25Gs of acceleration, not paying any heed to the multiple of small asteroids that struck it and dented its bow armor while hindering its acceleration with every hit.

In an ideal situation the away teams would have used their EVA thrusters to maneuver the small asteroids they used as cover in a way that they would catch the Umiak ship between them from multiple angles while getting as close to the Umiak ship as possible. Matveyev however didn’t have enough EVA thruster units to do that and even if they did the Umiak would surely become suspicious if some sizeable asteroids moved erratically on their own, unlike their other heavily magnetized siblings that caused some trouble to Matveyev when they were attracted to it. They had to use the natural movement of the asteroids as they were attracted to a passing ship as cover, pivoting and turning them ever so slightly to cover themselves and the single torpedo that was in their care. No one knew what made the asteroid that one of the away teams used to move straight towards the Umiak ship, perhaps it was a mistake by the away team, or perhaps the asteroid was somehow attracted to the defensive screens that the Umiak used for defense against particle and plasma weaponry. Whatever the case, five good men and women died the instant the Umiak destroyed that asteroid in order to avoid having it collide with their ship

Even with one team gone there were still 5 more torpedoes aimed straight for the Umiak ship. One of them came from right below the Umiak ship and was too close to turn when they accelerated forward with everything it had, the torpedo passing harmlessly behind them before wrecking itself when it collided with a small asteroid that it couldn’t see until the very last moment.

Two other torpedoes were at a stern chase with the Umiak ship, their firing positions damning them to futilely follow in the wake of a ship which had two times their own acceleration. The remaining two torpedoes however had the interception down almost perfectly. Coming from above and below their trajectories brought them right into the flight path of the accelerating ship, their targeting computers locked into it and drove them home. Their full hydrogen tanks were instantly converted into a directed thermonuclear blast at the moment of impact and two blinding flashes forced the windows of the bridge to instantly dim in order to protect the eyes of the crew watching out.

Cheering instantly filled captain Asteios's helmet as the jamming ceased and he couldn’t stop himself from joining in for a few moments before the here and now drove him back into his senses.

“Grant, I want the comm. and navigations systems purged the moment we confirm the status of the away team and the destruction of the Umiak ship and shuttles” He barked as he himself rushed to his seat.

“Yes sir!.” The sensors officer replied.

7 seconds late… He thought as he sat down and checked his console.

“Sir, the Umiak shuttles are running!” Lieutenant Grant reported.

“Not for long.” He muttered as he brought up the interface for the laser turret and tagged all four shuttles as targets. He then rotated and pivoted the ship accordingly in order to offer the best field of fire to the laser turret before ordering the automated system to take care of the rest. The twin linked laser turret quickly went into work and destroyed a shuttle with its first shot, followed by another a mere 30 seconds later. The two remaining shuttles went into evasive maneuvers but they were too close and they too would be gone in less than a minute.

“Umiak heavy is no longer under acceleration and… confirmed Umiak heavy is drifting on momentum alone with the two remaining torpedoes closing in rapidly… confirmed two more hits on Umiak heavy and… the damn bastard is still in one piece!” Lieutenant Grant reported again.

“Tough bastard…” Captain Asteios commented as he examined the visual feed from the Umiak ship. Its aft section where its engines had been was completely torn apart from the explosions but the rest of the ship was still seemingly intact, with one huge dent on its bow armor that was certainly caused by a single torpedo hit. He quickly checked its expected trajectory and saw that the wreck was on a direct crash course with one of the big asteroid that surrounded them. “Good riddance.”

“Captain Asteios, I am implementing a full lock down on all decks effective immediately.” Marine Lieutenant Allerberger reported through their suit’s comm. systems.

“Come again?”

“We have multiple Umiak marines on all decks.” The marine replied dryly.

“They got past you?”

“Negative, the breach at the shuttle bay has been secured but it was a feint. I got an unknown number of hostiles with some short of optic camouflage running loose throughout the ship, I got no other choice but to lock everything down as we clear them out compartment by compartment.”

“Damn, keep me posted…” He quickly brought up a video feed from the shuttle bay and winced at the damage he saw. “And for fucks shake show some restraint while clearing them out, the shuttle bay may be able to take some damage but not the rest of the ship.”

“Tell that to the bugs, sir.”

“Just don’t blow anything we can’t survive or return home without.” He hated pointing out the obvious but no one could ever be sure when Marines were in question.

“Yes, sir we know what to watch out for… any reports from the away teams?”

“Not yet, we are waiting for the shuttle to return in order to look for them and… secure a passage to the medical bay at the first opportunity, some of them are bound to be suffering from radiation sickness.”

“Yes, sir.” The marine acknowledged and closed the channel.

“Sir, unknown shuttle detected accelerating towards the Umiak wreck.” Lieutenant Grant reported.

“They had a fifth?” He quickly checked the video feed again. “No it’s green, it must be a Loroi one, they must have sent it to observe everything.”

Chapter 12, part 3: http://www.well-of-souls.com/forums/vie ... 347#p20347

[dragoongfa]

Deadlines are for sissies, ask our eminent Arioch . I hope there isn't a serious problem since this is good stuff.

My sister decided that it would be fun to commandeer my desktop to check facebook and then shut it down without checking if any of my work had been saved.

Let's say that there was yelling afterwards.

In any case. here is part 2 of chapter 12, a dozen hours or so later than I wanted.

EDIT: Before I forget, who here can form a picture about what the Umiak planned and how they went around to execute it?

[Grayhome]

Awesome chapter! I can't wait to see what the Loroi are up to. Sorry about the Facebook incident happens to us all.

[Krulle]

SpoilerShow

Chapter 12, part 2



75 seconds… The feeling of impotence that encompassed his whole being made his anxiety worse, he was just sitting there, on the captain’s chair watching the view in the complete silence that only existed in complete vacuum. For a change he longed to hear the usual sounds of Matveyev’s bridge

[...]

Half of his screw were off the ship waiting to see if the trap they had prepared would be successfully sprung or if they would be left to suffocate there. Could it be that the 5 that five that had already died be the lucky ones? He shook his head at that and checked the time again.

42 seconds left… With had he read in mind it was obvious [...] sentence unclear

[...]

Two other torpedoes were at a stern chase with the Umiak ship, [...] their trajectories brought them right into the flight path of the accelerating ships, [...]

20 seconds… It was only then that he realized how much of a fool he was for standing at the window instead of using his console to watch everything with a video feed.

With the malware and jamming I suspect the video feeds to be dead, otherwise audio would be available....


I would guess the Umiak tried to take the ship hostage (by planting bombs, stealing crucial elements), and then extorting information while hoping the Humans value their own, individual life more than the life of unknown others... They've surely found out that non-hive like life tends to value personal advantage and survival high enough to risk all of their planets future in such situations.
Or have physical access to all computers, stop jamming and get all information, espcially navigation, directly...

[Absalom]

20 seconds… It was only then that he realized how much of a fool he was for standing at the window instead of using his console to watch everything with a video feed.

With the malware and jamming I suspect the video feeds to be dead, otherwise audio would be available....

Probably, but not necessarily. You could always use a purely optical system if you felt the need (though I suspect the Bennet class would primarily have such things for aft and ventral angles, and maybe not at all).

[dragoongfa]

In space it's best to have passive sensors for simple use that don't need anti-ECM capabilities. Optical sensors that are able to form a simple picture from the full spectrum will be common on both civilian and military ships since they are straightforward and faster than radar like sensors. The problem will be in using them for targeting once the full EW abilities of warships are involved, then things get interesting.

I don't think that the Umiak went serious with the use of their ECM suite, didn't want to fry that treasure trove of information that are the human computer systems.

[peragrin]

rom the explosions

Your sister stole your F. I suggest you go get it back by yelling F.


Umiak strategy is simple multi prone attack. Stick X number of personal on the outside of the shuttle. The shuttle docks(by force if nesscary) and the inside troops attack.

The outside troops sneak in through secondary airlocks while your main force is bunkered where the shuttle has docked. Most races won't be expecting multiple attacks like that. This way even if you lose the shuttle bay you already have troops behind their "lines". Why do you think all the Loroi where instant space suits? It is so in case of docking They can all fight, and breathe in space if needed.

What gets me is both the bridge and main engineering should have a status board showing all airlocks status's across the ship in real time. Someone should have noticed the alarm that an airlock was in use, and been able to divert forces.