In the shadow of the events and chaos of Disclosure, the first Battlegroup is formed...
And sent straight into action!
“Fire!”
Captain Jones sat forward in his command seat, the heavy plastics crackling loudly as he moved, his restraints digging painfully into his shoulders, attempting to pull the eager Captain back into his seat.
The ship rocked, mildly, the motion swiftly noted by the internal sensors and navigational controls, logged and flagged for attention. Unwanted motion in combat would not be a good thing, it meant not only reduced control over the ship but this kind of seesawing motion met a pattern the intelligent software had stored in its databases that was associated with motion sickness, an impairment of crew efficiency.
“Fire Aye!”
Jones watched with eager eyes at the view revealed by the primary viewscreen, an asteroid shattering before his very eyes under the force of the four forward bow mounted Guass rifles.
He frowned, a stream of rounds had appeared to flash right past the asteroid, a clear miss, he turned to question Lieutenant Hayes, his tactical officer, but she was already speaking.
“Sir, computer indicates port outer may be misaligned, request permission to align”
“Granted, of course,” Jones turned back to the screen, leaning backwards in his seat, his eagerness slightly dispelled by the problem, minor though it was.
A red line appeared across the screen, pointing to the side of a large, regular almost rugby shaped asteroid, the computer overlaying onto the screen the path of the beam of light from the alignment laser fixed to the very tip of the ship on a fixed, unmoving mount.
Jones glanced upwards, his eyes following the large ships status display positioned just above the main viewer, lights blinking as thrusters fired, the helm carefully matching the asteroids course, slowing moving the laser closer towards the asteroid.
After five minutes of jockeying, the line of light finally intersected the asteroid and stayed pointing at its bulk. The reprehensive line on the screen blinked yellow then settled on green, the computer signalling it had accepted the target and was ready for alignment.
The effected gauss rifle fired, a single round, a highly expensive transmitter round used only when you needed to track the path of an object fired from the guns, the sheer bulk of its expense caused by the need to create electronics that would survive and function despite the extreme acceleration forced on the rounds by the gauss rifles.
Two lines appeared on the screen, a yellow line indicating the path the round should have taken, a red indicating the path actually followed, both were clearly separate. The weapon was misaligned.
“Bloody shipyards boys, too rushed to finish the job properly,”
Jones nodded at the muttered words from the helm, the short, slightly oriental looking officer sitting at the post had a point of sorts, but…
“Not the yardboys fault that everything has been hurried, they do the best they can with what they are given as will we Lieutenant Holst”
The reprimand in his words was mild, but Holst reacted to it none the less, turning back to his console with a slight blush.
Jones waited, he knew the computer was very carefully triple checking alignment calculations and preparing commands for the array of small motors and actuators which made minor adjustments on the gauss rifle in question.
Twenty seconds passed, then the weapon fired again, this time the asteroid was hit, the round pulverised on impact, leaving a visible pock mark on its surface but it was still a miss.
A further twenty seconds passed, then the rifle fired again. Clean hit, the yellow and red lines of the rounds expected and actual paths overlaying each other impeccably.
Jones nodded, “double check alignment, three rounds”
“Double check alignment, use three rounds aye sir,” Hayes responded, her fingers already dancing across her controls for the max sure test.
“And while you're at it, run two rounds through each battery, yard boys were supposed to have tested alignment already but if they missed one…” Jones grimaced, “pass word to the other new launch vessels too, just in case”
“Alignment check all batteries and alert fleet aye Captain,” Hayes responded again, sending a significant nod towards the Ops console and the dark skinned Sub-Lieutenant stationed there. It was Ops job to deal with transmissions after all.
Jones watched satisfied as all six gauss batteries tested clear, only the rear port battery needing some minor adjustment, the pulse laser batteries he ordered tested too, an event which Jones noted with quite some annoyance and with a definite intent to send a strongly worded message to Commodore Peters about. He knew they were rushed off their feet and overworked but getting two thirds of the pulse batteries misaligned could be fatal.
Then came the final test, the one he had been longing to try out ever since he had heard he would be getting one.
“Well children,” he grinned, clapping his hands together happily, like a boy set loose in the toy store, “let's run out Long Tom shall we?”
Long Tom was an Ion cannon, a weapon derived from Tollan technologies the survivors had grudgingly provided and assisted the Tau'ri in the development of after the rescue of the Tollan survivors during Enerina's escape to tau'ri space.
The weapon was by no means perfect, the version mounted upon his ship was twice as large as intended and drew some serious power to operate, but was, in theory the most devastating weapon in the Tau'ri armoury. In all bar one aspect it was still far inferior to the now destroyed Tollan made batteries; its only advantage was that unlike the Tollan versions, it had a certain amount of frequency variance. That meant the ancient trick of focusing all the energies of your shields on the specific frequency of the enemies weapons would not, in theory work against the Tau'ri built weapons as they had the Tollan. The result there had been the appearance of shields invulnerable to the weapons being used against them.
And the first unit mounted onto a warship had just been dubbed Long Tom by its Captain.
The ship shook, the computer logging every slight move of the ship, the path of the beam, its effectiveness, any bleed off and a million and one other details that might perhaps be useful in improving the designs of both ships and weapons even as Britannica's bridge crew dissolved in startled gasps and whoops of excitement as before their eyes, a single blast from the massive weapon tore their target asteroid in two.