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IONCLAD: First Prelude
Posted By: Capo Rip<oscar.archer@adelaide.edu.au>
Date: 9 December 2003, 11:49 AM
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-Halo Ternion-
Reveille
1103 Hours, July 18, 2552 (Military Calendar)/
Former Slipspace Research Facility, Gamma Cephei Accretion Disk
For the average member of personnel, a hurrying Spartan was a singularly disorienting experience, and a hard one to get used to. Barely having registered the towering figure rounding into the end of the corridor, it would abruptly be weaving between the non-coms and technicians, before they could even freeze in surprise. In her massive armour this would lead to unavoidable death and injuries. Petty Officer First Class Sophia-111 merely brushed fatigues with the others, however, unconcerned by their reactions, acutely aware of her manoeuvring advantages.
She turned the final corner, skidded to a quick halt and keyed the laboratory door open.
"Doctor Benner!" The workspace was largely unlit, consisting of consoles and instrumentation which was mostly compacted and waiting on benches for stowage. Pale light glowed from a far corner of the lab. "Doctor, the slipspace probes have detected a Covenant destroyer on translight approach. The Captain has called the evacuation."
She rounded the curtained partition. The navy scientist was plugged into his work suite, reclined against a kind of padded bench, the circuits of his visualisation helmet and gloves tangled in insulated optic cables that snaked away in several directions, but the Spartan could divine little else about his activities. Flickering holograms spiralled into being in the vicinity of his head, hung like congregating ball lightnings, then whizzed away. His obscured face was angled away, but a desk-mounted visi-cam swung toward her as he said, "Sophia. I tell you, I've almost figured it out."
"Well, why don't you come out and explain it to me?"
"Right, yes, the emergency..." After a few seconds of strobing holographic echoes and intricate hand-waving, the helmet hissed and lifted itself off Benner's head. He stood, letting the manipulators dangle across the rig as the assembly powered down. His hair was an odd brown-grey, topping a slim but average build in a self-irradiating labsuit. Keen brown eyes blinked up at his visitor, adjusting themselves rapidly from direct imaging to reflected light.
Benner was not short, but the Spartan made it seem that way. Her muscle-bound bodywas that of a giant, towering a full two hundred and three centimetres, and dressed in the form-fitting MJOLNIR undersuit and pocket-covered fatigues. Her hair was a darker brown, boyishly short. Yet her back curved in femininely, her chest swelled out, and her face, rounded and smooth-boned, showed little of her forty-odd years. An M6D sat at her hip. Her black-lined, bright green eyes looked back into his.
When the project team had first been assembled nearly ten months ago, Doctor Benner had considered propositioning the soldier. His analytical brain had replied: Do you really think any man could satisfy a woman like her? Subsequently he had concluded that Spartans were not interested in intimacy in any case.
Not when they could be fighting.
"You see," he began, "the shielding was always going to be the most difficult system to apply." He collected the archive chips which ejected themselves from slots on the side of a cable nested processor box, secured them in the satchel slung on his shoulder. "The main principles are similar to the way Covenant weapons harness plasma so safely - I mean, without earthing millions of watts into every thing within throwing distance."
Sophia gently herded the doctor through the lab for the door. He noticed this, interrupting himself to issue instructions back into the room. "Turing, don't worry about any further calculations. Can you archive that preliminary data and upload it with you when you leave?"
The AI's soft voice replied from the scientist's work station. "This can be arranged. Transfer preparations will be completed in four-hundred eighty seconds." A tone signalled the end of voice interfacing for the construct.
The door sighed closed. Benner was getting back into his explanation. "Everything is operational except the shields," she said. "There wasn't an estimate I was aware of. We thought we might have to forego them."
"No no no, as I told your techies, they are trying to replicate a system that we haven't studied. My idea is to adapt one we are already investigating. They've been approaching the difference between personnel and ship shielding all wrong."
They made their way out and down the corridor. Non-coms hurried past, and Sophia insisted on picking up the pace. "It's the ionic equilibrium, really just a matter of scaling up the oscillators and regulators..."
The Spartan was no quantum mechanic, or even a chemonuclear synthetist like Benner, but she thought she understood the concept. The impending emergency distracted her, however, and she said, "Forgive me if that sounds a bit obvious."
Benner would have protested that observation except it was then that the corridor ended and they entered the hangar. A similar size to a starship's hangar, the floor was the only flat surface, with the rest remaining as the naked asteroidal rock from which it was carved.
It was a construction hangar. Overhead, filling the majority of the cavern, was the ship.
For a moment they stared up at her. Then: "The crew is assembled," the nearby deck officer spoke, "engines have entered the warm-up cycle. Go get her ready, Ma'am."
Sophia flicked a salute down to him. Then they continued up to the entry ramp, into--
She was suspended by various access scaffolds and gravity fields roughly in the centre of the hangar. The expanses of armour plating glinted dark grey under multitudinous lamps. A similar shape as the delta of a Longsword fighter, but over fifteen times wider, with articulation joints running along half of each wing. The vessel was dominated by the pair of huge hulls, from the sides of which the wings swept out and back; they pierced out front, and a gaping dark mouth was set in the end of each. Between these a central hull formed a hump towards the aft and swept forward, and downward where the extensive view plating wrapped around the bridge, which extended out slightly below the rest of the structure.
The variable ramp lead ten or so metres up into the aft of the ship, between the baffles of the primary ventral engines. Sophia hurried inside with the scientist in tow, through the cargo bay and up the main corridor past the cabins. Just short of the forward bulkhead a navy officer stepped out of the bottom of a port stairwell and into the corridor. In her late twenties, she wore a light grey coverall of a flight officer. Her black hair was coiled at the nape of her neck.
She saw them immediately. "There you are, skip," she called. "Chief Harada has both engines humming on full standby and I could see no problems on my own inspection. Doctor," she nodded to Benner, and fell into step with them, though the passage was too narrow for three to walk abreast.
"Ensign Gillian," he acknowledged.
"Good thing the shakedown was scheduled today," remarked Sophia. They reached the bulkhead, which sighed across and allowed them onto the bridge. "I just hope the interface works the way it's meant to."
Before them was a sloping arrangement of seats and panels within a narrow horseshoe of walkway. The area was a lot smaller than a starship's bridge, and the wide viewport swept up above most of its length, an invisible ceiling, the long, hulking port and starboard hulls spearing forward directly above, and the hangar visible under them. Two chairs stood side-by-side on a platform to the rear, flanked by general consoles and facing a shared tactical screen. In front and beneath was another seat completely surrounded by stations and holoscreens; the Ensign climbed into this seat and brought up systems status and communications. Doctor Benner took one of the positions up the back.
There was a final seat, down in the very nose of the bridge. Sophia walked around Gillian's position and slid into the chair, which promptly extended further forward over the two metres of ventral viewport with a hiss of hydraulics. The seat moulded fluidly to her frame; from this position she had a clear view up, down and to either side. A faint wrap-around holoscreen activated, apparently floating just outside the windows, displaying ship's internal bearings and defense status of each hull section.
"Engaging artificial gravity," Gillian announced, deft fingers working her console. A split second of quasi-freefall, then down re-established itself. "Skip - Almagest on the horn."
A new holoscreen opened to one side. A bearded, kindly-featured old officer stood on a ship's bridge within. "So, Sophia, does it work?" he asked, smiling.
The Spartan knew Captain Ffrench's good mood was simply his careful reaction to imminent combat, but she smiled back. "We're about to find out, sir."
"Everyone's aboard. We've just cleared the main dock." He looked to the side, continuing, "Gibbs will send you our preliminary exit course, though we will probably have to engage." He was suddenly stern. "I don't think this is a scout; the enemy must know we're active in this system. They must not report back. We'll need to do our best, even with the Ionclad unfinished."
Ionclad. It was officially only the name of the Section Three project itself, working on the prototype of a new class of superheavy strike fightercraft. The best, hardest working materials scientists, engineers and shipyard crews had been drafted and corralled into a refitted asteroid research station, given carte blanche on every bit of reverse-engineered Covenant technology to date and anything else that could be even vaguely of any use, and a Spartan to pilot it. An entire destroyer, the Almagest, had been assigned to guard the project, underlining perhaps more than anything else its importance.
"Thank you, sir," said Sophia, "we'll see you soon."
The channel closed. "Hangar atmosphere has been evacuated," Gillian commented from behind. "manoeuvring engines on-line, skip. Ready when you are."
The Spartan willed her body to relax, breathing deeply, then rested her head back on its support. Her neck met the extendable interface plug, which connected effortlessly with her neural implant socket. She looked down at her fingers - manually activating the helm control systems - which abruptly disappeared.
Nausea, imbalance, unfamiliar proportions. Sophia reeled mentally but began fighting off the disorientation. Her hand was still there, now that she concentrated on seeing it, and the bridge and the hangar outside. But her mind was also receiving the precise digital data, via her implant, that told her where every part of the ship was, the stresses they were under (nominal), and their proximity to outside objects (no impact imminent). She could still feel the multifrequency hum of the ship's power through her seat and hear it with her ears, but was also now aware of the power generator and its steady output, and could all but see the advanced twin-torus main engines as they idled, ready to burst into action like a sprinter waiting for the gunshot.
It was similar to wearing MJOLNIR, and to the simulations and preliminary tests of the newly developed piloting system. But it was the power; the size and scale and the feeling of the finely harnessed, explosive power possessed by the ship that made the difference.
"Release docking systems," she said, her voice sounding detached, a very small part of a now much larger whole. She took hold of the weapon grips mounted on her armrests.
"And we are clear," Gillian spoke after a moment. "Doors're open. She's all yours, skip."
Sophia furrowed her brow, concentrating, and by pure action of will channelled power to the directional submotors. She was struck by the strong impression of blood pumping down arteries following removal of a cuff.
Ionclad floated out of the floodlit, cavernous hangar, accelerating steadily into the wide space between the asteroid and its neighbour. There - a hard white star of fusion drive, "Almagest" printed beside it on the holoscreen, along with distance and bearing. There was also something else: the ghost of a slightly curved line, leading from Ionclad's prow and tapering off into the distance. Sophia noticed that it, the plotted escape course, was there even with her eyes closed, as was a precise knowledge of the destroyer's position. Just then, a new vector appeared in the "distance".
"Covenant destroyer has exited slipspace eleven million kilometres from our position," the Ensign announced.
Sophia opened her eyes and glanced at the holographic tactical indicator. "Release safeties on all weapons," she ordered. "Stand by for main burn." Gingerly, she brought the engines up to and across the operating threshold, and felt them almost beating like a massive heart as their energy was released into the propulsion system.
A small rear view showed the research facility falling away. The distance reading on Almagest decreased faster and faster. The enemy tag hovered nearby for another second, then vanished.
"Enemy has re-entered--" Gillian's words were cut short as space immediately above Ionclad's bridge seethed with violent green vortices, rapidly giving way to the pearlescent hull of the Covenant vessel.
"Holy shit!" Benner yelped.
"Hang on!" Sophia shouted. With her mind suddenly cleared of all hesitation by the prospect of combat, she willed the ship forward, and she felt it respond with the speed of thought.
Ionclad shot away from beneath the looming destroyer, which was over one hundred times as long, and, now fully materialised, began turning ponderously. The human ship angled "upwards", accelerating above the enemy's dorsal surface.
"Incoming," cautioned Gillian. "MAC rounds from the Almagest."
A pair of yellow-white points, distance indicators blurring towards zero, peaked into the bridge briefly as Sophia rolled Ionclad out of her relative ascent. The Covenant were already under power, and within a few seconds one MAC round had overshot, racing into the void at the head of a hot, bright metal vapour trail. The other struck a glancing blow over the top of the destroyer's stern and its shields flared brightly, but held, dimming once more to invisibility. Motes of blue light began flickering over its hull.
Sophia's reflexes had already thrown Ionclad into a series of randomised manoeuvres as Gillian called out, "Pulse lasers! I'm picking up targeting beams, skip!"
"They should have trouble with a craft this small and manoeuvreable," muttered the Doctor. "That was the theory, anyway..."
The Spartan, teeth gritted, levelled the ship out and put on a hundred percent burn to quickly put some distance between them and the Covenant. All unfamiliarity with the helm system was now forgotten: it was exactly like wearing a new type of MJOLNIR.
"They're pursuing, skip."
"It's a lot faster than any destroyer I've seen," added Benner.
"Right," said Sophia. "Let's show them who they're dealing with. Load the microMACs. Heavy rounds." She kicked in the retrothrusters then came about one hundred eighty degrees, accelerating; she mentally called up weapons status - main gun capacitors charging at twelve percent per second. Beautiful, she thought.
The Covenant ship's vector now ran perpendicular to that of Ionclad, towards the Almagest's position, but a barrage of pulse laser fire began as soon as the strikecraft came in range. Sophia dipped the prow, weaving, drawing the imprecise fire off the vector she wanted. The target loomed large through the veiwport before the Spartan put her ship into a tight tumble, veered back up then slammed on the overdrive. Ionclad hurtled straight at the destroyer with her engines' EM fields momentarily overlapping, constructively interfering and nearly doubling the total output; Sophia, Gillian and Benner began shaking in their seats.
MAC capacitors fully charged, gravity compensators ready, target locked. Sophia smirked and squeezed the firing switch. She was nearly flung out of her chair.
Shells of iron-uranium speared blindingly out of the ends of Ionclad's twin hulls, streaking down onto the Covenant vessel. They impacted astern, near the previous hit. The flaring shields writhed and sputtered, then dimmed; the enemy hull was now ash black. The pulse lasers had ceased.
Sophia had thrown Ionclad back into evasive manoeuvres, pulling up from the attacking dive and flashing past the destroyer. The vibrations eased as the engines returned to one hundred percent power.
"Right, we need harnesses on these seats," groaned the Ensign, lifting her head out of her main holoscreen.
"This is great," Benner exclaimed. "The hotter you run the engines, the faster the capacitors recharge. She's already exceeded theoretical specifications by seven percent!"
"Sophia," Gillian called, "looks like you've got the hang of-- oh shit!" she gulped. "Massive energy spike at the destroyer's position."
In the rear-view holo, the Covenant ship was moving visibly against the hard, starry background of space, its lateral lines blazing a fluid red. The glaring energy burst forth into a sizzling torpedo, and streaked towards the Ionclad. The human vessel's exhausts flared up once again.
"This would be an ideal test for the prototype's shield systems," said Benner. "Please remember, though, that we don't have any. If that plasma gets within half a kilometre of us the hull will melt from the radiant energy alone."
"I remember, Doctor," Sophia growled, sending Ionclad into a shallow climb.
"Just making sure."
The plasma's path curved, closing distance with its target. Ionclad reduced acceleration and veered to starboard. Proximity alerts sang within the bridge.
"Reload the MACs, multiple splinter rounds," said Sophia. She guided the ship in its soaring curve for another long moment, then diverted full power to manoeuvring, spinning around and beginning another rapid dive towards the destroyer. Within seconds the blood red mass of plasma had shot widely past; the warning whine ceased.
"Shells loaded, skip. Capacitors are hot!"
Sophia fired the microMACs and a machinegun repetition of thuds jarred through Ionclad's superstructure. The projectiles were covering much more distance this time and she briefly thought she could see the lined-up, white-hot metal shells, three apiece within the sizzling trails of vapour.
The destroyer was drawing relatively close to the Almagest, which had accelerated to a decent clip then rotated to point her bow at her pursuer. The MAC rounds met the Covenant shields across its central axis in a concussion of pyrotechnics; the layer of force flickered out and small explosions dotted that area of hull.
Sophia pushed the engines a bit further, checked the capacitors: fifty-eight percent and climbing visibly. "We've got 'em now! Reload!" She threw Ionclad into the beginning of a series of banks and dips as she entered pulse laser range. She was suddenly flattened into her seat; there was series of thumps and the bridge lurched. A damage siren sounded.
"Pulse laser!" shouted Gillian. "Lucky leading shots, damage to port wing armour and MAC muzzle. Recommend we don't fire the main guns, skip!"
"Bastard," hissed the Spartan, trying to further randomise her minor course changes. She was unwilling to pull out of the approach. "Deploy A and C missile pods," she ordered, and mentally targeted the shield breach on the rapidly enlarging destroyer. A flashing, holographic crosshair hovered over the ship; Sophia fired.
Archer missiles spat rapidly forwards from the angled pods under the wing bases, and Ionclad pulled up, drawing the point-defence fire away from their trajectories. As the missiles closed with the Covenant ship it started ponderously turning, facing sideways to the UNSC destroyer, and many did not get past its remaining shields, but a few bloomed against the blackened, scarred hull, briefly igniting several geysers of venting atmosphere. The huge vessel was unperturbed, however, and new swirls of red energy began collecting across its leading edge.
The Almagest, after a moment, responded with a MAC volley; two superdense ferrous shells lanced across the narrowing gulf of vacuum, blasting into the destroyer's remaining central shields which strobed violently and fell. Hull material shattered from the ship in a glittering cloud and secondary explosions snaked over the dorsal surface, yet it held its course, and the sizzling light continued to coalesce along its lateral lines.
"The Almagest can't possibly evade at this range!" Gillian said in alarm.
"Hold on, everyone," Sophia announced in reply, and pushed power into the ventral motors. Ionclad soared into a tight loop-the-loop and accelerated towards the alien vessel on its most recently damaged side.
"Load starboard gun! Three light rounds, and prepare another three," she told the Ensign. She pointed Ionclad straight at the edge of the destroyer, where the red-white plasma seethed and concentrated. "Over-ride safeties and transfer port gun capacitance to starboard on my order. Set gravity compensators to maximum."
Ensign Gillian's fingers danced over her consoles as she silently prayed for the conduits to hold under such strain.
No pulse lasers met them this time. The mass of collected energy throbbed along the side of the Covenant ship, nearly obscuring it from the Ionclad's crew's angle.
"Transfer now!" the Spartan shouted and hit the firing switch.
Within the portside capacitor, several raw megaamperes that were waiting to magnetise the tightly packed superconducting coils immediately forward were abruptly drawn across the ship to join the tail end of a similar amount of charge that was flowing onto another set of coils. The physical limit to the section length of the Ionclad's linear accelerators meant that even the lightest single MAC shell would normally attain less than half the hypervelocity needed to make it offensively effective, however the creative application of retro engineered gravity generation had provided this canon, along with its twin, with a compensatory gravatic shunt that fired in concert with the magnetic acceleration. As the first round flashed down the length of the canon hull, field recyclers soaked up the destabilising magnetism and injected it back into the coils; the second round promptly accelerated and shot after the first.
Within a single second six searing MAC rounds were careening through the void, connected by a single line of glowing metal particles. Thanks to the extra capacitance, the lead projectile travelled with over twice its normal momentum, with velocities lessening towards the back of the line. It smacked into the blazing pool of Covenant plasma, splashing it aside and mostly boiling away within the hell of heat, yet many tonnes still reached through to the hull and tore into the ship. The second, third then fourth rounds swiftly followed, rending deeper into the destroyer; the plasma, destabilising violently now, started funnelling back into the hole, eating up the atmosphere that was already trying to vent into space. The fifth MAC round disappeared inside, and after a heartbeat a cloud of fire and debris burst from the other side of the ship. It began to list and roll its belly upwards, and the final shell crashed into its formerly unblemished ventral surface.
Sophia had dipped the prow and passed beneath at minimum safe distance, giving them all a clear view through the viewport. The plasma was already gone, soaked back up by the destroyer's hull, leaving whole sections as blackened, charred shell. After another moment the ship exploded completely in a mist of blue fire.
Gillian and Benner burst into cheers, and the Spartan smiled briefly. She brought up the tracking on the first plasma torpedo: it was still big and hot, had made a wide turn and was rapidly gaining on them. The alert rang through the bridge again.
"Power down the guns, Ensign," instructed Sophia. "Give everything to the engines."
The drives steadily increased their output power, the exhaust searing white from between the baffles. They hit synergistic threshold, the overdrive once again kicking in and shaking the hull. Despite its climbing intensity, the exhaust glare began to pale before the alien plasma which had drawn within a kilometre.
Come on, Sophia said to the ship. Her urging translated through as a further slight rise in the throb of the engines, over-dilation of the fusion feeds, an extra kick of velocity.
The plasma drew no closer. The violent shaking levelled out into penetrating vibration. An internal audio channel opened and Sophia barely heard Chief Warrant Officer Harada bellow, "What are you trying to do the engines, skipper!?"
"Any second now," the Spartan whispered, unconcerned with being heard.
The plasma torpedo abruptly dimmed, becoming much more red than white. It started to fall behind. Sophia hit the lateral motors hard and Ionclad swept around tightly; the ball of fire turned slightly, feebly, and sailed past, dimming further. Eddies and motes snaked away from it as it gradually dissipated, spent. The Spartan cooled the engines down well below the one hundred percent mark and set course to rendezvous with the Almagest.
"Is that better, Chief?" she asked.
"Much. Please don't do that again."
Sophia closed the channel and said, "Ensign, get me the Almagest."
"They just called."
Captain Ffrench and his bridge reappeared. "I must admit," he said, "that little ship is more effective than I think anyone could have imagined. I don't think the Covies knew what hit them. The boys at Reach are going to fall over themselves."
"They'll have to wait for that, sir. We've still got a mission to complete, as if this ship needed any more testing."
"Indeed. In fact, we received new orders right in the middle of all that fun, Sophia. Another search and rescue, luckily not far from here. If you ask me, it sounds like someone pulled in a favour from your boss. I'll send the message and the new coordinates."
"Don't forget--" Doctor Benner began, but Sophia interrupted him.
"I haven't, Doctor." She let go of the weapon grips, deliberately relaxing in her padded chair. "First things first, sir: we need to stop by Chi Ceti. There's some very important equipment there that I'm personally quite eager to acquire. I have a feeling we'll need it."
"Of course, Spartan. We'll see you at the jump point. Almagest out."
To Be Continued
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