A chapter of The Serpent’s Garden! The Meer-Ulson hiveship has risen. It’s the culmination of thirty years of ‘fuck those guys’ research and planning and its proven that not a single day was wasted. The Calnians are being cut down like wheat, but they’re not going down easily or quietly. The hive will have to earn its escape, but if it does the entire galaxy will suffer for it. Nanil knows that and she’s desperate to stop it.
Below is a snippet from her plan to launch her squadron on a suicidal attack on the hive as the fleet’s last chance to stop it before it can get away, but Red One has a suggestion of her own.
For the full chapter, check out the link above and enjoy!
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The synth interrupted her rationale. “None of you are going to get through,” Red One said. “I’ve been analyzing the hive’s response. It knows what you are and it’s expecting this suicide run. It will cut your squadron to pieces before you get into firing range.”
“We have to try. We’re running out of time, Red One. I have to do this.”
There was a sound from the comm. It didn’t sound Calnian. Nanil wasn’t sure if it was distortion from the Meer-Ulson’s jamming or a noise made by the alien synth. “Your ships a less than a hundredth of that thing’s size,” she pointed out. “Are you sure about this?”
“A Defender’s Virtue’s conversion core might not be as big as the primary cores on other units,” Nanil said. That was an understatement. Her vessel could fit inside the reactor domes of something like a heavy explorer or host vessel with room to spare, “but our reactors are more efficient and can generate a higher output than almost anything else.” Border sentinels were the second generation of weaponized core release systems. Only a handful of designs in the IOP and certainly the FAD was comparable. Surveyors and explorers either didn’t run hot enough or they couldn’t focus enough of their reaction output into the cannon. Heavy explorers brute-forced their way to a solution, using larger cores and more powerful reactions. None of them could recover from a core release and trigger additional ignitions of similar power as quickly as a Defender’s Virtue could.
There were trade-offs; a heavy explorer’s sustained burst could last three times as long as a border sentinel’s, and their larger cores had more backups and more robust safeties. That was why all of Nanil’s vessels were slowly but steadily losing containment on their over-taxed reactors and the explorers – those still alive – were running much cooler, even as they pushed their own systems to the limits. “We won’t just damage it,” she promised. “We can kill it. We’ve taken out one of its secondary keels already. If we can get a clear shot at the primary structure, we can do even more.”
“You won’t get that shot,” Red One told the hierarch. “You won’t make it through.” A beat, then: “But I can. The range is too close for me to utilize my primary weapons, but I can cover your approach.”
Nanil blinked. “No,” she said immediately. “No, the hive vessel has core release cannon. We’re small and maneuverable; they can’t track us with those systems.” The hive had upgraded its weapons, but its sensors were still war era technology. Its countermeasures and targeting systems were still generations behind the Hegemony. The core release systems couldn’t lock onto something as small and fast as a border sentinel.
“Your core release systems are omnidirectional. Its aren’t. It can only fire them in its front arc.”
Nanil blinked, realization hitting her like a headbutt. Red One was right. The hive’s core release cannon were all aimed forward. Maybe. Maybe we could– “No,” she repeated, cutting her train of thought off. “It’s at least ten times your size and has plenty of secondary armaments.”
“They don’t matter,” the synth asserted.
“What? Of course they do-”
“Those guns are different from the weapons the Meer-Ulson used during the war, aren’t they? Narrow-focus, high penetration. They’re designed to breach shields. Your ships have impressive shields, but minimal armour. The Meer-Ulson built this hive to fight your navy,” another brief pause. “They didn’t design it to fight me.”
~
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