39,230 / 50,000
Chapter 22: Needs more cowbell.
Tigra met with Shannon, Robert, Alex, and the senior staff on the Hillary a day later. He stated that They had tried a similar setup with the other wellsprings, but they could not channel enough energy to destroy a test target that he had created. He gave the staff and crew of the Hillary a choice: They could stay back in the interdiction zone and help defend their home, at the cost of having Robert, Shannon, and Alex transfer to the main battle fleet, or they could join the main battle fleet, and in turn Tigra would leave one of the Tigerean cruisers here. The senior staff discussed it privately for a few minutes, and came back: They wanted to put it to the crew. THis was announced, and in the space of two hours the crew had decided: They would be going to the front line, and to a possible doom.
The Hillary left to join the main battle fleet three days later, after getting full holds full of supplies and replacement parts and things. They met with the Fleet at a position in deep space, and learned that the Shivans had stopped in a very small system that neither the TIgereans nor the humans had decided was worth colonizing. There was a large star there, and the Battle group decided to try and take out the majority of the Shiavan fleet there. They jumped to a position outside the elliptic orbit of the lifeless chunks of rock in orbit. They found that the Shivans were using this small system as a base for building more ships. The four fighters left under a eavy escort, and setup to fire again. This time, they would be aiming at the massive factory complex that had taken up orbit around the star about 1 AU out. As usual, the Magi had come up with a few reinements to this technique, and Shannon had learned them by the time they were ready. With their target set, they setup the gate, created the framework, and Robert tapped the star again. The lance fired on the factory, and everyone was shocked as a translucent sheild bore the brunt of the plasma. They decided to move the endpoint of the gate, a very risky move, and fired again. This time, with the gate's endpoint overlapping the shield, the lance not only blasted the factory ship, but turned the asteroid that it was housed on into a small white hot lump of liquid. It was then that the escorts informed them that the were three capital ships heading their direction, and with large amounts of drones surrounding them. They were also sheilded as well. Alex closed the gate open, but requested that Robert keep tapped as long as possible. He then created a gate with one endpoint directly in front of the closest droneship, with the other endpoint in the center of the star. The explosion was incredible, and when everyone's visors cleared, Alex repeated the process for the next capital ship. Tigra did the same for the third, and Shannon set to work targeting the areas of drones that were left. With that done, they all fired their modified particle streamers at the area that had drones in it. The effect was interesting. About a third of the drones exploded from the unexpected strain of the gravitic cannon, and the rest drifted in th last direction they were going. They fired a normal streamer at one of the drifting drones, and saw that it flew apart like so much junk. Robert quipped, "I guess that worked nicely." Tigra was mildly amused. "Explain it then. What does this gravitic cannon do?" Robert nodded and thumbed the comm.
"OK. The micro fusion plant on each of the drones has an automatic shutdown trigger if it detects a gravitic anomoly outside of the drive. Basically, what we do is trick this senssor to think that the gravitic drive on the ship is damaged to the point where it would tear the drone apart. In a third of the cases, though, the drive actaully does malfunction, depending on what it's doing when our anomoly hits it. This if the failure that causes the drone to explode. Now, normally the drone would wait for ten seconds, and restart the drive using a stored backup battery to jumpstart the drive. However, this anomoly drains that backup source, which prevents the drone from restarting the micro fusion plant. I don't think that this would work on a larger ship, simply because they have a number of redundant sensors and power sources on each ship. And if a working droneship recovers the dead drones, it can easily recharge them and send them back out. This is why we can't really do it until after the droneship has been killed off."
Tigra broke in."I see. Is there a way we can develop a version that would work on the capital ships?" Shannon and Robert thought for a bit, and Shannon got on the comm. "Not that we currently know how. That would require us capturing a droneship intact, and figurong out how it works. But then if we did that, we could also figur out a better way of subverting their C&C command language." Tigra clicked back in. "Agreed. The fun part would be figuring out how to capture one. They don't appear to have any real way for us to board one, nor have we sucessfully tried. In any case, let's go help the rest of the fleet clean up the system, and we'll work on this afterwards."
Cleaning up the system took a few more days, as there were two or three more droneships inhiding throughout the system. They stumbled across a curiosity, though: When they went to attack the last droneship, they found that it was dead. There was no power, no drones, nothing. Curious, the Pacifica sent a drone to scan and examine the ship. It actually appeared to not be finished, as there were sections of the hull missing, along with a large portion of the computer core. What they did find, though, provided not only the answers to their questions, but more questions. The Shivan vessal had no provions for organic creatures- it was composed entirely of a computer the size of a Buzzsaw fighter, service, storage, and launching facilities for the 30,000 or so drones that each droneship carried, and a hell of a communications linkage. Even with the computer not wholly present, they discovered that the co-ordination and drone communications circuits were not only intact, but had a set of the C&C protocols built in. They found that there was a massiv primary plant that was used not only to drive the ship, but to provide a multitude of power taps for the launchers. There were also nearly a dozen smaller power plants scattered around the ship. The fleet looked around for the computer core, and eventually found it among the wreckage of the factory. There was only one question that remained: should they power it up and see what happened? Tigra's answer was to open a gate, and bring the R&D folks over to give it a look over and see what they wanted to do. This was the last foothold that the Shivans had in the area until their primary battle fleet rolled up, so they had some time to kill as that fleet was three months out even at light speed.
Two months later
The research had gone off better then anyone had hoped. Not only did they have a way to disrupte the Shivan's communications links, but they now had a way to subvert and take control of the drone ships. They also discovered data in the computer core that explained more fully what the Shivans were after, how they intended to get it, and how to essentially re-build the fleet with as little as a capital ship and fifty drones. The Shivan Hive-mind had prepared for almost every contingency. What the Tigereans and Humans had that the Hive-Mind had not counted on was Magic and the ability to innovate in a very short time. The captured computer core had information on all the non-magical attacks that had occured, and possible routes to deflect or offset several of the attacks, including the plasma lance. It still have no idea how to handle the gates, as they were a purely magical means that the Shivan hive could not comprehend the inner workings of. Hence, while their shields could easily either absorb or deflect a giant jet of stellar plasma, opening a gate just inside the shield would offset the shield entirely. And the idea of opening a gate with one endpoint in a star was a complete unknown.
Robert and Shannon assisted a bit with the research, but for the large part life had returned to normal for the two of them. Shannon went back to Repair, Robert kept on flying, although he did keep the training pod, as the training fighter received a new Mark 7 training pod at the last re-supply. Robert had surprised people a month ago when he walked from his cabin up to the Mess in bear form, although he was wearing clothing as he shifted back up to human in order to collect his breakfast. Shannon, for the large part, kept her abilities to her self as even among the magi, tantric magic was a bit of a rarity. The Hillary had been tasked with protecting the R&D effort, and later the Alliance buildup of their own flavor of droneships. The first run of ten Alliance droneships had just finished shakedown when the first reports of the Main Shivan fleet came trickling through. This small R&D post had been selected as the Shivan's beachhead from which to base the remainder of the attacks from, isolated as it was. They would have a shot at the ship that held the hive-mind itself, and people were eager to have a go at destroying it.
(1679/1667)
Tigra met with Shannon, Robert, Alex, and the senior staff on the Hillary a day later. He stated that They had tried a similar setup with the other wellsprings, but they could not channel enough energy to destroy a test target that he had created. He gave the staff and crew of the Hillary a choice: They could stay back in the interdiction zone and help defend their home, at the cost of having Robert, Shannon, and Alex transfer to the main battle fleet, or they could join the main battle fleet, and in turn Tigra would leave one of the Tigerean cruisers here. The senior staff discussed it privately for a few minutes, and came back: They wanted to put it to the crew. THis was announced, and in the space of two hours the crew had decided: They would be going to the front line, and to a possible doom.
The Hillary left to join the main battle fleet three days later, after getting full holds full of supplies and replacement parts and things. They met with the Fleet at a position in deep space, and learned that the Shivans had stopped in a very small system that neither the TIgereans nor the humans had decided was worth colonizing. There was a large star there, and the Battle group decided to try and take out the majority of the Shiavan fleet there. They jumped to a position outside the elliptic orbit of the lifeless chunks of rock in orbit. They found that the Shivans were using this small system as a base for building more ships. The four fighters left under a eavy escort, and setup to fire again. This time, they would be aiming at the massive factory complex that had taken up orbit around the star about 1 AU out. As usual, the Magi had come up with a few reinements to this technique, and Shannon had learned them by the time they were ready. With their target set, they setup the gate, created the framework, and Robert tapped the star again. The lance fired on the factory, and everyone was shocked as a translucent sheild bore the brunt of the plasma. They decided to move the endpoint of the gate, a very risky move, and fired again. This time, with the gate's endpoint overlapping the shield, the lance not only blasted the factory ship, but turned the asteroid that it was housed on into a small white hot lump of liquid. It was then that the escorts informed them that the were three capital ships heading their direction, and with large amounts of drones surrounding them. They were also sheilded as well. Alex closed the gate open, but requested that Robert keep tapped as long as possible. He then created a gate with one endpoint directly in front of the closest droneship, with the other endpoint in the center of the star. The explosion was incredible, and when everyone's visors cleared, Alex repeated the process for the next capital ship. Tigra did the same for the third, and Shannon set to work targeting the areas of drones that were left. With that done, they all fired their modified particle streamers at the area that had drones in it. The effect was interesting. About a third of the drones exploded from the unexpected strain of the gravitic cannon, and the rest drifted in th last direction they were going. They fired a normal streamer at one of the drifting drones, and saw that it flew apart like so much junk. Robert quipped, "I guess that worked nicely." Tigra was mildly amused. "Explain it then. What does this gravitic cannon do?" Robert nodded and thumbed the comm.
"OK. The micro fusion plant on each of the drones has an automatic shutdown trigger if it detects a gravitic anomoly outside of the drive. Basically, what we do is trick this senssor to think that the gravitic drive on the ship is damaged to the point where it would tear the drone apart. In a third of the cases, though, the drive actaully does malfunction, depending on what it's doing when our anomoly hits it. This if the failure that causes the drone to explode. Now, normally the drone would wait for ten seconds, and restart the drive using a stored backup battery to jumpstart the drive. However, this anomoly drains that backup source, which prevents the drone from restarting the micro fusion plant. I don't think that this would work on a larger ship, simply because they have a number of redundant sensors and power sources on each ship. And if a working droneship recovers the dead drones, it can easily recharge them and send them back out. This is why we can't really do it until after the droneship has been killed off."
Tigra broke in."I see. Is there a way we can develop a version that would work on the capital ships?" Shannon and Robert thought for a bit, and Shannon got on the comm. "Not that we currently know how. That would require us capturing a droneship intact, and figurong out how it works. But then if we did that, we could also figur out a better way of subverting their C&C command language." Tigra clicked back in. "Agreed. The fun part would be figuring out how to capture one. They don't appear to have any real way for us to board one, nor have we sucessfully tried. In any case, let's go help the rest of the fleet clean up the system, and we'll work on this afterwards."
Cleaning up the system took a few more days, as there were two or three more droneships inhiding throughout the system. They stumbled across a curiosity, though: When they went to attack the last droneship, they found that it was dead. There was no power, no drones, nothing. Curious, the Pacifica sent a drone to scan and examine the ship. It actually appeared to not be finished, as there were sections of the hull missing, along with a large portion of the computer core. What they did find, though, provided not only the answers to their questions, but more questions. The Shivan vessal had no provions for organic creatures- it was composed entirely of a computer the size of a Buzzsaw fighter, service, storage, and launching facilities for the 30,000 or so drones that each droneship carried, and a hell of a communications linkage. Even with the computer not wholly present, they discovered that the co-ordination and drone communications circuits were not only intact, but had a set of the C&C protocols built in. They found that there was a massiv primary plant that was used not only to drive the ship, but to provide a multitude of power taps for the launchers. There were also nearly a dozen smaller power plants scattered around the ship. The fleet looked around for the computer core, and eventually found it among the wreckage of the factory. There was only one question that remained: should they power it up and see what happened? Tigra's answer was to open a gate, and bring the R&D folks over to give it a look over and see what they wanted to do. This was the last foothold that the Shivans had in the area until their primary battle fleet rolled up, so they had some time to kill as that fleet was three months out even at light speed.
Two months later
The research had gone off better then anyone had hoped. Not only did they have a way to disrupte the Shivan's communications links, but they now had a way to subvert and take control of the drone ships. They also discovered data in the computer core that explained more fully what the Shivans were after, how they intended to get it, and how to essentially re-build the fleet with as little as a capital ship and fifty drones. The Shivan Hive-mind had prepared for almost every contingency. What the Tigereans and Humans had that the Hive-Mind had not counted on was Magic and the ability to innovate in a very short time. The captured computer core had information on all the non-magical attacks that had occured, and possible routes to deflect or offset several of the attacks, including the plasma lance. It still have no idea how to handle the gates, as they were a purely magical means that the Shivan hive could not comprehend the inner workings of. Hence, while their shields could easily either absorb or deflect a giant jet of stellar plasma, opening a gate just inside the shield would offset the shield entirely. And the idea of opening a gate with one endpoint in a star was a complete unknown.
Robert and Shannon assisted a bit with the research, but for the large part life had returned to normal for the two of them. Shannon went back to Repair, Robert kept on flying, although he did keep the training pod, as the training fighter received a new Mark 7 training pod at the last re-supply. Robert had surprised people a month ago when he walked from his cabin up to the Mess in bear form, although he was wearing clothing as he shifted back up to human in order to collect his breakfast. Shannon, for the large part, kept her abilities to her self as even among the magi, tantric magic was a bit of a rarity. The Hillary had been tasked with protecting the R&D effort, and later the Alliance buildup of their own flavor of droneships. The first run of ten Alliance droneships had just finished shakedown when the first reports of the Main Shivan fleet came trickling through. This small R&D post had been selected as the Shivan's beachhead from which to base the remainder of the attacks from, isolated as it was. They would have a shot at the ship that held the hive-mind itself, and people were eager to have a go at destroying it.
(1679/1667)