Apocalypse Redux

Story 5: Why humanity doesn't have dreadnoughts

Story 5: Why Humanity Doesn’t Have Dreadnoughts (Patrick Lerch)

2100, Milky Way, Core of an Unnamed Star

Anyone who saw him right now would think he was crazy. Either the regular, garden variety, mentally unstable, or actually homicidally insane, depending on how thoroughly they understood what he was doing.

Because right now he, Patrick Lerch, Doctor several times over in every thaumaturgical subject he could find, was trying to figure out how to make a star explode. Just to see if he could.

Of course, he wouldn’t actually take it that far, he’d just work to create a basic principle, demonstrate it worked, and figure out if it would still work scaled up, then never mention the whole thing to anyone to avoid the development of any apocalyptic WMDs. Because God only knew how many of those were already floating around out there.

Especially with how human-alien relations were at present.

First contact with the Koinians, both the actual meeting and the following “official” introduction, had gone about as well as could be expected.

Misunderstandings, idioms being taken as insults, a few idiots who only thought they were funny deciding to give gifts of glass beads or the Koinian historical equivalent, each convinced the other side would not get the implied insult … the usual nonsense that inevitably occurred when delegations consisted of more than just carefully chosen diplomats. Though even diplomats could, and did, fuck up.

Which could either be a good or bad thing, depending on your point of view. Good, because it meant that humanity wasn’t unique in having jackasses and shit-stirrers, bad because, well, this meant that there was likely an entire universe full of people like that out there.

Oh, and they’d also signed a pact that if either of them was exterminated by an alien species that wasn’t attacked first, that alien species was to be exterminated as well. A new kind of mutually assured destruction to forestall genocidal wars with other alien species, though Patrick doubted it would work as intended.

Especially considering how much weaker the Koinians were at the high end. Despite the name, “Worldbreakers” were not capable of shattering planets with ease, or at all, really, but they could make one hell of a mess of one. Basically, they were on the upper end of S-Ranker, if only direct attack power were what counted.

Patrick himself qualified as one, so did Amy, but Baily, Raul and Karl didn’t, despite the gap in their raw combat power not being particularly high. S-ranked Crafters especially were not considered in the Koinian ranking system.

However, even considering that, and counting crafters, the Koinians had barely three hundred compared to humanity’s nearly a thousand official S-Rankers. With comparable overall populations, mind you.

And humanity had almost two hundred what the Koinians would consider to be “Worldbreakers” to the aliens’ twenty-five.

The difference was currently the number one cause of migraines in sociologists and anthropologists in both species, though the answer was pretty obvious to Patrick.

On one hand, you had the Koinians, who, civil war aside, had basically used the [System] exactly as intended. Gain XP, get Levels, grow in power until you hit the Level cap, retire and do whatever made you happy.

On the other, you had a race of crazy monkeys who’d tried to steal fire from the gods and kept trying no matter how many times it burned them, forever unaware of the time-traveling guardian angel who made sure they were not reduced to ashes.

In other words, humanity had been as greedy as could be yet managed to keep the proceeds, including all the S-Rankers forged in the chaos it had unleashed upon itself.

However, the biggest difference was that, unlike humanity, its allies were still largely concentrated in the single star they’d accidentally locked themselves into. As such, they were exceedingly vulnerable to weapons like the one he was currently prototyping.

Ultimately, the basic principle of his “weapon” was, well, basic. Inspired by an old TV show of all things, actually, an idea that just happened to be practical.

There were a lot of different fictional superweapons out there, ranging from your planet-exploding laser beam superweapons which were “merely” wildly impractical to worldbreakers that functioned based on science that only existed in the minds of the author. Not that either was bad, they just didn’t have very many applications in the real world.

But this idea was simple, the manipulation of the stellar equilibrium.

Stars existed in a delicate state of balance between their own gravity holding them together and the force of the nuclear fusion reaction in their core pushing outwards.

If you could maintain the outward pressure while reducing the gravity restraining it, well, boom goes the star, and its solar system fries.

Patrick sighed and wiped some sweat from his brow. The core of a star was hot. Sure, he was easily surviving, but that wasn’t down to sheer bloody toughness or defensive spells, just some Aspect-based immunity [Skills]. And while they kept him alive, he wasn’t as comfortable as, say, Isaac with his love and affinity for fire would have been.

It was a simple plan he had. A bunch of metal rods, built to withstand the conditions at the heart of a star, forming a runic network that slowly but constantly reduced the gravity of the star until the whole stellar body popped like an overcooked sausage.

But the principle wasn’t enough, he needed to prove to himself that it was practical.

Strange as it was to say, this was his idea of fun. Others might have gotten bored, found it tedious, but he loved it … which was probably how most people saw each other’s hobbies.

Raul, for example, spent his time traveling from inhabited planet to inhabited planet, adjusting or fixing the local biospheres, making it possible for cats to exist without obliterating the local small animal population.

Karl, meanwhile, had built himself a small exploration vessel which he treated like many a gearhead babied their car, and had gone exploring, as well as having as many crafters as possible help upgrade his ship.

Bailey and his husband were still back on Earth, getting involved in many charities and generally acting as though they’d actually aged all those years that had passed since the craziness of the Initialization, rather than looking exactly the same. It was sweet.

As for Amy, she’d found her soulmate in another member of the Round Table, a chaos gremlin of a [Rogue] called Jason, though most of the world knew the man as “the Ghost.” They were adorable together, though Patrick still avoided big far-right political gatherings because those might just spontaneously “happen” to devolve into an utter shitshow.

And Isaac had obviously gone flying off across the universe with Elena.

***

Hope Star System, same time

The star had been orbited by three planets since times immemorial, forever dancing through the black, until one day, a metal can full of little hairless monkeys had arrived, and called it Hope.

The planet nearest to the star, a barren rock scorched clean of anyhting that might eventually become life, became Fortune, planned site for mines and the workshops of alchemists and mages whose experiments were deemed too dangerous for other venues.

Next came Providence, a lush garden world that had become the new home of so many humans.

And finally, there was the great gas giant serendipity, which would supply fusion reactors in the coming centuries, assuming the colonists did not choose to stick with magic alone.

Or so things had been, until space tore in Providence’s wake, disgorging an entire armada of warships.

It took half an hour for the light from the emergence to reach the colony, but once it did, the calls for help were flung across the void in a matter of minutes.

***

Patrick was in the middle of messing around in the core of the star when a wave of mana washed past him. It was faint, beyond the vast majority of individuals to detect, even at the Level cap.

But then again, “most people” weren’t the most proficient manipulators of mana and spell-structures humanity had produced to date.

It was a form of FTL communications not linked to specific [Skills] which used magic to convert radio waves to mana, which could then be flung out into the universe.

The fantastical invention had also sparked a ludicrous amount of chaos and arguing in the scientific community, over whether or not the energy used by the system could be considered to by comprised of the hypothetical FTL particles known as “tachyons.”

On one hand, they did, in fact, go faster than light. On the other, well, they were entirely magical, rather than particles that fell under the domain of physics.

Yet at the same time, magic had been defined as the fifth fundamental force of the universe, which technically made it a part of physics as well, though at the same time, it was largely kept separate the same way chemistry and biology were even though, ultimately, all of science and technology ultimately derived from the laws of physics.

And … well, the whole thing didn’t really matter right at the moment.

No, Patrick had decoded the message and as much as he wanted to just stay here and keep doing what he had been, he was needed. Giving one final, longing, look at the raging nuclear furnace before him, he turned away and began his path towards the Hope system.

Gravity pulled him forward while space bent to allow him to move at incredible speeds without actually getting anywhere near light speed until he burst free from the star, then ripped open a portal to fling himself across the solar system and repeated that several times until he eventually reached a sufficient distance from the immense gravity well to activate [Alcubierre Bubble].

And the world was washed away by a flood of color, space ahead beginning to glow a brilliant blue. Twenty hours, that was how long it would take to get there. He just hoped he would be in time.

***

Interstellar Space, bridge of the battleship Krios

Intellectually, Captain Jayden Naiser knew that the universe didn’t hate him, it did not seek to screw him over, it did not actively time things to when they were the most inconvenient for him.

Emotionally, when shit like this happened, he couldn’t help but feel like someone had it out for him.

An emergency message, the worst kind of emergency message, just as he was about to take a drink of his coffee, hitting him with something he had to respond to immediately …

He just knew that if this moment made it into the history books, the giant brown stain down the front of his uniform would follow him to retirement and beyond. But for that to happen, they needed to survive what was to come.

First contact with an entirely new alien species, and it had come in the form of an armada appearing in the same system as an inhabited human planet. Even if everyone had no explicitly “bad” intentions, this situation was still going to be an absolute powderkeg.

And his little task force was the only available source of reinforcements for the forseeable future.

Granted, it had four heavy cruisers, eight destroyers, and was anchored by the battleship he commanded personally, so it wasn’t exactly weak, but it was hardly the kind of force he, or anyone else, would feel comfortable taking into combat against a mysterious alien force.

And the new-fangled artillery cruiser they had along for the ride would only really help if it lived up to the most optimistic projections, rather than the realistic ones.

It had been an interesting design idea, to build a larger vessel that could accommodate and power one hell of a spinal weapon while also being maneuverable enough to actually align said weapon on a given target. There was a reason that standard design principles called for everything bigger than a destroyer to have its guns mounted on turrets.

However, building a ship based on the idea should probably have waited another decade or so.

Though ultimately, it had been lucky that it had, in fact, been built, as its shakedown cruise was the only reason for them to be this far out in the Wilds, the area so far beyond humanity’s heartlands that it was almost completely beyond the trade networks and other kinds of support, putting a much greater burden on individuals to create, rather than being able to rely on crafted items from Earth and the like.

Magic over technology, adversity over comfort, boundary-pushing instead of leisure… all by design. Though that same distance made this whole affair about as inconvenient as it could possibly be.

Naiser swallowed whatever coffee hadn’t either gone down the wrong pipe or wound up on his uniform, then started barking orders.

“Inform all ships, they are to immediately change course to the Hope system, the crew is review first contact protocols along the way. And send a priority message to fleet HQ, tell them we need reinforcements and diplomats ASAP.”

Thankfully, calling back home was easy for them, thanks to their quantum entanglement communicators, which were really nothing of the sort, actually being the result of a magical ritual based around the principle of quantum entanglement, of two particles, or objects, in this case, being connected regardless of physical distance, changes to one affecting the other, allowing them to be used for interstellar communications.

Though their use was limited due to the expense of manufacturing, as well as the inherently point-to-point nature of the connection. And with how far the nearest naval base was from here, one that was entirely lacking in capital ships too boot, there was no chance of meaningful reinforcements in a short enough period of time that it would actually change things.

The universe vanished in a blaze of blue light as Naiser wrapped the Krios in an [Alcubierre Bubble] and began to send the ship rocketing across the universe while he too began to look at the first contact protocols. Which, mind you, he did know, it was just that it had been a bit since he’d last read them, and there existed only a tiny handful of people who’d ever actually used them. Things like that had a frustrating habit of slowly sliding out of one’s memory, regardless of how important they might have been.

Based on the last transmission, the alien fleet wasn’t going to reach the planet unless they whipped out some ridiculously powerful engines, or an in-system microjump with whatever had landed them in Hope in the first place, because it had decidedly not been an Alcubierre Drive.

But Naiser’s task force would take twenty hours to reach the star system. A lot could happen in that time …

***

Twenty hours later, the universe around the Krios went black once again as they emerged into normal space deep inside the Hope system.

“Aliens are still on the outskirts of the system, twenty escorts of varying sizes, four battleship-equivalents with power readings that make absolutely no sense, and … Jesus, Mary and Joseph, what the fuck is that?”

“Language,” Naiser barked at the officer on sensors while checking the feed himself. And the massive starship that sat in the center of the flotilla. A five-kilometer-long rounded cone, little over three kilometers wide at the base … the largest true warship humanity had ever built was the one Naiser was commanding from, a 1.2-kilometer-long titan-class battleship.

“Can someone double-check the size on that thing?” he asked, half in shock himself. “And compare the power readings to a monitor.”

That was the only thing that even remotely made sense, wasn’t it?

Monitors used to be costal, or rather, system-defense vessels designed to carry heavy weapons at the expense of things like deployment range. Buy or build a small ship, stick a battleship-grade gun on it, knowing that in any confrontation with a real battleship, a comparative lack of armor would spell an original monitor’s demise.

Which was why a new kind of monitor had been built, one intended to be created swiftly, without requiring expensive [System] materials or powerful crafting [Skills]. Instead, one took a sufficiently large asteroid, used geokinesis [Skills] to fix fault lines and the like, then filled it with power generators and crew quarters while covering the outside with guns and sensors.

The end result was a ship comparable in size to what they were seeing out there, but could barely match a properly built battleship in combat.

Which would explain why there was a vessel like that out there … because why the hell else would you build something like that? As it was, all it could be was a big target.

Yet even with all that going on, the first contact protocol was already being executed flawlessly, language packets broadcast, primers on the basis of the assumption that all sapient races, not just humans and Koinians, had access to [Omniglot].

There were also banners containing the same information that had now been unfurled to cover parts of the Krios outside, and on top of that, lights flashing the sequence for pi, in case mathematics wound up being the only things that they could all agree upon, and a lot more things besides … it was the ultimate “throw spitballs at the wall and see what sticks” move, but it was the only thing they had.

Even the best [Diplomats] stumbled a little when meeting entirely alien minds for the very first time.

Ultimately, however, all their efforts at creating a peaceful solution wound up being entirely for naught.

It might have been the fact that task force Krios had emerged between the alien fleet and their destination, the local inhabited planet, they might have appeared too close in general, or perhaps peace had never been an option … in the end, what exactly had set the aliens off would only matter once the fighting died down.

Because right now, every single vessel in the alien fleet was belching out missiles, and now it was clear, that big sumbitch was no monitor. No, that was the biggest goddamn battleship in the known universe, literally.

[Tactical Analysis] devoured the new information in an instant, immediately using it to go down entirely new paths of thought. Mainly, how their weapons matched up.

The enemy, and they were very clearly an enemy, put a heavier focus on missile armament, though the launchers were unevenly distributed between the different classes. Smaller warships had the greatest number relative to their size, while what he’d previously thought to be battleships seemed to be almost entirely lacking a missile armament, and the big sucker lay somewhere between the extremes.

Also, the missiles varied in size, with larger ships firing commensurably larger weapons, which was the exact opposite of what both human tactical doctrine called for. Koinian too, for that matter, though their spacegoing warship production was still in its infancy.

Yes, capital ships had the space to use and fire larger and faster missiles, however, those advantages would likely have a minimal impact as when it came to missiles, an overwhelming salvo was needed to ensure at least some hits landed. Faster weapons that would swiftly outpace their fellows, become the only targets and swiftly destroyed.

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Missiles also fell into the same category as railgun rounds, easy to dodge or otherwise preventing from impacting, but when they did hit, the damage was harder to mitigate, which meant that they were primarily used to crack open an enemy’s anti-energy weapon defenses, rather than to deliver a killing blow directly.

The aliens clearly disagreed. They might be interceptable, but they were also fantastic standoff weapons and had the highest chance of destroying an enemy before they could shoot back out of all weapons systems. Practical weapons systems, at least.

But something had to be taking up the empty space in the capital ships. Supplies? Fighter craft? Construction bays?

No, these ships had the wrong layout and power curves for carriers or auxiliaries, they could easily be identified as warships even disregarding the fact that they had, in fact, already opened fire on them.

What meant what? Energy weapons, perhaps heavy spinally mounted lasers or particle beams … though there was a reason capital ships never had them because it was too hard to align the entire ship on target.

Or perhaps a large mass of kinetic weaponry, capable of putting enough rounds into space to ensure at least some hits … though those would likely have already opened fire if that were true. The effective range of kinetics might be limited due to the possibility of the target dodging, but other than that, the projectiles could keep going until they hit something.

Naiser immediately began to direct the task force’s point defense, filling the space between the two fleets with flashes of energy as rapid-cycle lasers fired multiple times every second, beginning to rip apart the incoming salvo … it wouldn’t be enough. Not if this remained a battle of technology vs. technology.

[Prismatic Warp] triggered a split-second before all of the Krios’s heavy lasers opened fire, the coherent light splitting up into hundreds of separate beams that were immediately directed to strike nearly every remaining weapon at once.

Already using up a cooldown [Skill] was bad. Individual fighters could keep going based on normal active [Skills], but when it came to military command, whoever ran out of battlefield-shaping abilities first, lost.

Though this was perhaps something he could take advantage of?

“Open fire with all missile launchers, concentrate on the battleships, then fire railguns immediately after, one salvo on the super battleship, dispersion pattern 17,” Naiser ordered.

With any luck, between the light show of [Prismatic Warp] combined with the human’s own missile launch would hide the kinetic projectiles, or at least cause some of them to be missed, allowing them to strike the largest enemy vessel, which outmassed his entire fleet by a significant margin all on its own.

Hostile, or at least unreasonably aggressive aliens with a direct shot at a human colony … doing anything other than striking back was unacceptable. Even if the most likely outcome was his death.

***

Unfortunately, Patrick was no longer receiving any updates, the people involved had clearly switched to the far shorter ranged “Magidio,” which actually worked instantaneously, compared to the previously used “Ratatoskr” system, named after the mythological squirrel that carried messages up and down Yggdrasil due to its combination of ludicrous range and slow rate of transmission.

Sadly, while he was more than capable of decoding Ratatoskr signals as long as he sensed them, the sheer amount of energy needed to send a reply would have just about cleaned him out, and he still needed his mana to fly.

Normally, this would be where he would have brought out the FTL pod for a little comfort, but he did not even bother to do so this time, instead, he simply pulled out his grimoire and began preparing spells meant to work against warships. Both the ones he’d already designed, and new ones to work against the superbattleship the latest call for help had announced.

Time flew like nothing else, until suddenly, Patrick’s navigation [Skill] informed him of the fact that he was at his destination. Whoops.

With a thought, he tore the bubble of warped space that surrounded him to piece and emerged into realspace … only to come face-to-face with a vision of hell, with human starship burning while a titanic alien vessel unleashed beams that could vaporize most [Raid Bosses] in a single hit.

***

Thirty minutes earlier

As the human missiles closed in, the enemy formation came apart, the “battleships” that clearly served an entirely different purpose than their human equivalent moving forward to shield the smaller ships that were supposed to be escorting them … had this been a human formation. And then, they began to spew out more point defense fire nearly double of what the Krios could put out despite actually being slightly smaller, rapidly ripping them apart.

“Execute chaff protocol,” Naiser ordered with a sigh. Their missiles obviously weren’t going to land, blowing a few to cover the rest in the vain hope that it would allow at least some to land.

Because while they might be more than capable of blinding technological sensors, the [Skills] behind them were much harder to fool.

Even so, the missiles were still the biggest, baddest, most obvious threat and the sacrifice of a few did little to change that perception. And when the numerous railgun rounds were noticed, it was far too late.

A single, unfortunate, destroyer-sized ship shattered as it took one of the Krios’ rounds on the nose and went spinning like a top, shedding metallic debris like a demented sprinkler. It actually had noticed the threat, but evading the projectile that had caught its notice had brought it straight into the path of a second, the one that had obliterated it.

As for the super battleship, while it might not quite deserve the title of “flying pig,” it still made the Krios look like a ballerina in comparison. And the kinetic projectiles were already too close … except when a wave of energy swept through space before the alien ship from “left to right,” insofar that those terms applied in space, all the projectiles were sent flying off into the emptiness of the interstellar void.

Shit.

Not only was there no way in hell they could get any reasonable amount of missiles through that screen of “battleships,” the trick with the railgun darts was unlikely to work twice.

So, what was the alien tactical doctrine? How did it work, and how could it be exploited?

Smaller ships as missile platforms, battleship-scale vessels to fulfill the function of human escorts … and he still had no idea what the big bastard was for.

Once again, he could see the idea behind it, designed by an alien mind or not, they all played by the same rules, but he did not agree with their logic at all.

If your fighting style was primarily based around missiles, then using a whole lot of small craft to fire them from made a lot of sense, because they were faster and easier to build, allowing them to fire more missiles at a long range.

However, smaller ships were also easier to destroy, so they were … escorted by battleships capable of not only unleashing truly ludicrous amounts of point defense fire but also enduring a significant amount of punishment before they stopped being able to fulfill their duty.

So far, so logical.

Yet there was a reason why escorts were usually small ships, they had a lot of surface area relative to their mass and volume, allowing them to mount a lot of defensive weaponry.

Also, escort ships tended to take a lot of damage unless the enemy managed to bypass them entirely to strike at whatever the escorts were protecting, which was why they were meant to be easier to replace than whatever was behind them.

No human would ever conceive of a fleet like that.

If a missile-heavy approach was called for, then the demand would be met by destroyers and light cruisers escorting arsenal ships, which were essentially just a reactor, engines, and small crew quarters, with nearly three quarters of the vessel consisting of either missile launchers or munitions storage for said launchers.

The UEN didn’t have many arsenal ships, however, they were the very embodiment of throwing money at a problem since you could build half a cruiser for the cost of a single reload and speaking of reloading, only a full fleet base had the munitions on hand to rearm a ship like that.

So, how could he exploit the enemy doctrine … and even if it could it be exploited, was it possible to do while as badly outmassed as he currently was?

“Tactical, can you detect any sign of mirrored armor or magnetic fields?” Naiser asked. It wouldn’t be easily detectable at the present range, but if the enemy preferred to rely on missiles, how much focus had been put on defending against energy weapons?

“Mirrored armor is present,” the Lieutenant replied. “The cooling enchantment is a variant of what we use, but seems to fulfill the same function. There are no detectable magnetic fields, however, their tactical doctrine might call for them to be inactive until needed, we’re nowhere near particle beam range yet.”

That, once again, both made sense and never would have been done by humans, the power drain was too low to be a concern in the face of a potential sneak attack.

Was their lack down to a, well, alien mindset, or did the enemy only use lasers and therefore didn’t defend themselves against particle beams?

If they ever got close enough to use energy weapons, they might be able to seriously maul the enemy.

“Prioritize the escorts with missiles, use kinetics to force the battleships out of formation, maintain fire until reaching thirty-five percent munitions stores,” Naiser ordered. If they actually had an advantage in an energy-weapon duel, being able to peel open the enemy armor using the particle beams while their own would deflect and disperse enemy lasers, that might be their way to win, but they needed to survive until they were close enough to use them.

Which meant reducing the volume of enemy missiles, which, in turn, required them to knock out the small enemy crafts, aided by their railguns. Because while they were unlikely to hit at this range, merely forcing an enemy to move was still well within their capability.

The tactic was entirely ignoring the superbattleship and whatever surprises it held, but it wasn’t like staying at extreme ranges until the missiles tore them to shreds was a viable way to play this.

Naiser began to direct the fleet forward, settling for a course that would take them past the alien armada in case any of them made it past … wouldn’t it be funny if now, of all times, the aliens finally responded to the first contact package that was still being blasted across the void, even as people were dying left and right.

Missiles flashed through space atop pillars of flame, while electromagnets flung slabs of steel at enemy ships, carrying enough kinetic energy that just using them near inhabited planets qualified as a war crime.

The second enemy “escort” died a couple of minutes later, a tiny vessel smaller than even a destroyer utterly vaporized by a nuclear missile detonating less than a meter from its hull, followed by a third soon after, bracketed by multiple detonations that left it drifting lifelessly, venting atmosphere.

Though things didn’t remain rosy for long, as a missile slipped past the intricate web of lasers that guarded the human fleet, smashed into the destroyer Farragut, and detonated. It had been one of the big weapons, launched by the superbattleship, and when the short-lived star of nuclear fire vanished moments later, only half the ship still remained, a twisted, glowing, mass of irradiated metal.

“Get that battleship out of formation, separate it from the others,” Naiser ordered, redirecting the fleet’s kinetic weaponry after activating [Frozen Nebula] and dropping the zone of freezing gas onto the vessel, forcing the ship to leap forward to escape, then dodge to the side to avoid being hammered by railgun rounds.

Yet successfully surviving two “traps” was hardly a guarantee of continued survival.

As powerful as most battleship-sized vessels were, this particular ship had been designed to carry lighter, rapid-fire, lasers to intercept missiles, not the kinds of hard-hitting weapons that made, say, the Krios, so damn lethal.

And this one, in particular, had just stumbled into range of the heaviest beams the battleship had, without having any defenses against particle beams.

The background hum of the Krios’ systems surged briefly as all sixteen of the heavy particle beam turrets dotted around the ship fired at once, lines of energy slashing through the void and ripping into the enemy “battleship” like a starving wolf.

Several beams struck different points on the enemy vessel, tearing through armor and into the structure below, while others instead raked across the hull, not focussing on any point long enough to penetrate the armor but being more than enough to obliterate countless sensors and weapons, starting the process of pulling the vessel’s teeth.

However, the biggest success was a trio of beams that hit just shy of the stern, once again punching through but these? They emerged out the other side, having passed through the engines.

A tremendous explosion shook the vessel, then it started drifting, only carried along by the maneuvering thrusters.

Of course, it was slowly coming into range to bring its own weapons to bear, heavily diffused lasers splashing off the hull of the closest destroyer, but the next salvo of particle beams from the Krios was joined by the guns of all four heavy cruisers, all focussing on destroying as many weapons as possible while the lasers were targetted at the existing breaches in the armor.

By the time the third salvo struck, only a tenth of the guns were still firing, and most of its other systems were down as well.

A fourth salvo wasn’t needed.

The new gap in the enemy point defense network was promptly exploited, missiles using the hulk of the destroyed “battleship” to cross most of the distance to the enemy before ever being targetted, then hammering into four separate missile ships and destroying them utterly.

It was at this point that the Howitzer fired its main gun for the first time, a powerful particle beam flashing down its length before exploding out of its bow, then it hammered into the largest surviving missile ship … which promptly exploded. A direct strike to the reactor, clearly.

The Krios suddenly shook, bringing Naiser back down to Earth, scanning the damage reports and immediately sealing multiple hull breaches with a layer of ice while a wave of [Cryospears] forced the nearest enemy ships to dodge. The spells were effectively concentrated rays of the concept of cold, supercooling and rendering brittle whatever they struck, to the point where even just the pressure of the atmosphere within a ship was enough to break hull armor … and usually did. If he managed to land any hits.

Because his own ship wasn’t the only one hit. The heavy cruiser Alégerie spun out of formation, its bow blown away by a missile strike, only to then take a second weapon to the now-exposed stern before her captain could regain control.

Three more times, missiles slammed into her and detonated, wiping the ship from existence.

And if it hadn’t been for the command and control network partially existing in the [System], amidst all the explosions, the deaths of the destroyers Laffey, Cossack, and Le Terrible would have gone almost unnoticed amidst the several dozen nuclear fireballs going off in the middle of the human formation.

Stealth or teleportation, how had those things gotten there?

Right now was precisely the wrong time go off on a tangent like that, but at the same time, if that trick was repeatable and they didn’t find out …

Five seconds later, the answer ceased to matter entirely as the front of the alien superbattleship opened up, a ring of eight separate holes surrounding a single even larger one irising open while space twisted and warped in front of the ship.

Spinal weapons on the biggest capital ship in the known universe should have been a truly terrible idea … except this vessel was firing them into a spatial warp that could redirect the beam however the ship’s captain or gunners wanted, making the normal difficulties with aiming capital ship spinal weaponry a moot point.

Assuming the Krios or any of her escorts survived to report back, humanity would definitely be stealing that trick.

Normally, they’d have been vacuuming up every scrap of data they cold possibly collect and streaming the information to Earth via the FTL comms … if their quantum entanglement communicator hadn’t just been destroyed.

And then, the first salvo from the enemy energy weapons slammed home, all four remaining destroyers melting like a ice cream on a hot summer day, and the heavy cruiser Quincy exploded just like the enemy escort had after the heaviest weapon had ripped clean through her reactor.

Naiser glanced at the display showing the enemy vessel’s power curve, which was already spiking once more. The ship was about to fire again, and this time, its target would be the Krios. Even being a battleship with all the armor and heavy enchantments that implied, Naiser knew his ship would not survive.

***

Patrick flinched as he saw the massive warship about to obliterate the last human ships, but launched into an immediate offensive, [Fractal Mind] allowing him to do all he needed to do, simultaneously.

[Wavelength Nullifier] snapped up in an instant, a spell based on the light-bending properties of illusions that shunted away all light outside the standard human visible spectrum, which should block out energy weapons and any radars powerful enough to injure him, which could theoretically exist. Lasers that fired below even the ultra-violet wavelengths were equally possible, but unlikely, given how much better shorter-wavelengths like x- or gamma ray lasers were.

At the same time, a wave of energy washed out from him, [FTL Ping] allowing him to scan most of the star system without needing to use his [Aura].

[Portals] were preparing to spring into existence in all the various places he might want to emerge.

Much of his mind was chewing on a general analysis of the newcomers, including analyses of the writing he could detect with his [Aura].

And finally, [Reach Out] tore out across space, twisting it into a pretzel as Patrick extended his arm as though he wanted to pet a cute furry animal, not smack an alien superbattleship into next Tuesday. Doing this on a planet’s surface, in an atmosphere, would not have been possible. Even when directly affecting space itself, you were still somewhat hampered by the matter in or around the area of manipulation, not to mention all the things moving in and out of the spell, which likewise increased the difficulty.

Not to the point where it was impossible, however, casually compressing a slim tube of reality to the point where the length of a human arm could touch a starship three light seconds away simply wouldn’t have flown back on Earth. Nevermind doing so undetected.

Now, the aliens did have some defenses in place to ensure one couldn’t simply curse the ship from afar, but, well, they were rudimentary and Patrick was the [Archsage of Magic]. No one could ward their ships to a sufficient degree to keep him out, or even significantly delay him.

A simple, all-purpose, use of [Wardcracker] shattered the defenses like glass, then he hurled an instance of [Catalyze] into each reactor, causing them to suddenly surge in efficiency, well beyond what anyone had expected to happen or the reactor safeties were meant to handle. Even as emergency procedures started to vent superheated plasma, and engineering [Skills] surged to damage control mode, reactors began to melt while overflow buffers and capacitors detonated in showers of sparks and molten metal.

Patrick gave the ship a long look, making sure it wouldn’t come back to life due to the captain’s [Skills] or some kind of instantaneous repair ability, then turned his attention to the other enemy vessels, which were already starting to belch missiles at him. He let them, watching the approach of the numerous nuclear-armed missiles … and then teleported to the other side of the alien armada, unleashing half a dozen spells by the name of [Starbreaker], which sought out stars and other places where nuclear fusion took place.

Naturally, they went after all the nearby starships, automatically tracking them, and while the spells could likely not penetrate the vessels’ armor, it had to look utterly terrifying for the crews of those ships.

The nearest “regular” battleship immediately started burning straight towards Patrick, energy weapons beginning to glow.

Using the trajectory of multiple [Starbreakers], it was a simple matter of locating the reactor and activating [Void Break], the spell ripping open a hole in reality akin to an Einstein-Rosen bridge, also known as a wormhole, albeit one without a destination, instead dispersing the plasma in the space between dimensions. It’d re-emerge instantly, but be dispersed over such a massive area that for all practical intents and purposes, the insides of the reactor had been erased.

At the same time, a trio of escorts were destroyed by his [Starbreakers], their armor having proven too weak to withstand the spells.

In an instant, a panicked reaction to his appearance became a full-blown rout.

So he followed everything up with a thirteenfold cast a simple [Throw Voice] spell and, using his still-tenuous grasp of the alien language, made a declaration.

“I believe the words you’re looking for are: unconditional surrender.”

The aliens wouldn’t get the reference, and neither would most of the humans in attendance, but he did, and that was what mattered.

Also, the enemy fleet was so desperate to accept the offer that any and all discipline broke down in their rush to keep him from continuing his attack. Not that he could, the attack against the superbattleship had cost him most of his mana, and the follow-up had devoured much of the rest.

But they didn’t need to know that.

***

Eventually, reinforcements did arrive, an entire squadron of battleships accompanied by every arsenal ship the navy had, a half-squadron of battlecruisers, and twice as many escorts as would normally accompany a deployment like that, with an Admiral by the name of Ciara Hunt in command.

After that, “negotiations” went by pretty quickly and the truth of the matter was revealed.

The aliens, who referred to themselves as the Assai, had come to colonize the planet while unaware of the fact that it was already inhabited.

As for why they hadn’t retreated, it was simple. They couldn’t. Their FTL system was entirely different from humanity’s, rather than being an Aspect-powered Warp Drive, they used something called a “translight catapult,” which could transport a fleet nearly fifty light years in the blink of an eye while requiring a significant amount of infrastructure at the origin point.

Ideally, an Assai expeditionary force would just construct a new catapult in their new home, but that was hardly a fast process. So when Naiser’s fleet had appeared within missile range … an already deeply concerned fleet had utterly panicked.

The rest, sadly, was history, though the commander of the alien fleet had handed over the schematics for the catapult as a peace offering and the whole affair had, while not being entirely swept under the table, certainly been resolved to the point where humanity was unlikely to start a war with the Assai.

And the more bloodthirsty humans would hopefully be mollified by the fact that more Assai than humans had died.

Which just left him with one taks, deciphering how the translight catapult worked and explaining it to the admiral.

“Basically, it’s a … a wormhole. Sort of. Basically, you tear spacetime using magic, but instead of creating an exit to form a proper shortcut through the universe, you just hurl a ship in while stabilizing it using a highly complex set of enchantments that causes it sort, uh, get spat out into our dimension after a set ammount of time, if that makes sense?” Patrick explained.

“Yes, but also, absolutely not. Continue, please,” Hunt said.

“Have you ever seen a spatial magic destructions spell before?”

Hunt gave him a flat look. Right, she was one of the strongest spatial mages humanity had.

“That’s basically the offensive version of the translight catapult. Rip open spacetime, create an environment normal matter can’t function or even really exist in, and watch the other guy turn to soup, barring a high Fortitude or, again, specific protections.”

“Do you know enough to make it work?”

“Absolutely,” Patrick grinned, though he immediately wiped that expression of his face, replacing it with his best “your grant massively furthered our research but we failed to achieve the result you wanted” look. “But we’re not going to be able to improve upon it for quite some time, and neither are the Assai.”

“Why?”

“Because they … the discovery was an accident, stabilizing it took a huge ammount of effort and sacrifice and the fact that they stabilized it at all is a minor miracle. Actually improving on the process is several orders of magnitude more complex and until their science, or ours, for that matter, catches up to this discovery, I think I’d expect [Gamblers] to make more progress than anyone with a science or magic [Class].

“Imagine … let’s say we’re talking about something like the discovery of penicilin. You know, the lifesaving drug, the first antibiotic, the flagship of an entire spread of bacteria-killing substances.

“Alexander Flemming found it by accident when he was a little sloppy washing his lab equipment and realized that a fungus was exuding certain chemicals killing his bacteria. Now, he had all the science and equipment to follow up on this discovery.

“That kind of accident is basically what created the catapult technology, except in this case, Alexander Flemming is a caveman and penicillin is twenty-second century magitech.”

“So … no intergalactic warp gates?” Hunt sighed.

“No intergalactic warp gates,” Patrick confirmed. “But I do have a few ideas for basic improvements, streamlining and the like, I could make to the catapults, help goose a percent or two more efficiency out of them. So, do you know anyone in need of a world-class mage who has a lab not currently in use …”

As it turned out, the admiral did not have a lab. She could, however, build one, and was more than happy to do so, though Patrick only took up his new position once he was done with his experiments in blowing up stars. As it turned out, he could … though he stopped short of actually detonating any. That would just be wasteful.

***

Captain Naiser stared at the model hovering above the conference room’s table, a mockup of a human superbattleship his chief engineer had whipped up and was now asking for Naiser’s support in trying to get it turned into an actual vessel.

The chief takeaway from the battle had been that using spatial magic to redirect a capital ship’s spinal weaponry was a great idea, and that had already been added to all future designs while plans for a fleet-wide retrofit was already being planned … which would likely lead to a repeat of the Great Retrofit Clusterfuck of 2073, when a scientific advancement had necessitated changes in many ships, making a complete hash of planned deployments for the following half-decade.

However, a close second in terms of importance was the fact that it had hammered home the sheer vulnerability of modern warships, and the danger of giving S-Rankers, or anyone else at the Level Cap, for that matter, an obvious target.

Naiser’s reply came after a long, stunned, pause, and was to be entirely expected.

“No. Just … no.”