May 15, 002 SDE is historically significant as it represents Humanity’s first encounter with true cloaking technology, but Humankind have long been versed in stealth and counter-stealth technologies. The idea of a cloaking device was never alien to them. Perhaps if it was the result of this encounter might have been different.
The young woman blinked. The alien hull plating was unscathed, not even a scratch. She couldn’t believe it. Railguns were dated weapons to be sure, and the Voskar were the only power in the region to make widescale doctrinal use of them in the modern age. There was a reason for that, Railguns didn’t perform well against shielded targets and were logistically expensive. Regardless a high-density, hypervelocity round could still do a lot of damage to an unsuspecting target and ships often sailed with shields down when not expecting a battle. The alien ship technically had her shields up, but preliminary observations had indicated these were soft shields. A projectile would have gone right through it and what she saw proved that hypothesis. Not only that, but they had observed the ship take several micrometeoroid impacts without damage.
That wasn’t too shocking, most interstellar vessels were built to take a certain amount of punishment. It was expected that starship armor could serve as a final line of protection against environmental hazards and weapons fire. It often didn’t do much against the latter, although it did help against torpedoes and railgun rounds. What was surprising was that this ship’s armor was unscathed by a volley of hypervelocity armor-piercing rounds. These were 55.9 cm armor-piercing rounds with a mass of some 3000 kilograms and accelerated to C-fractional velocities. Each round was also filled with a small amount of explosive filler that would detonate with a force of several hundred kilotons after impact. That was a massive amount of energy and no armor she had ever seen could withstand it. Even if it resisted penetration, the subsequent detonation would often fracture plating. There wasn’t any damage at all, to be seen.
Someone spoke, “Sir, the Refuge ship has powered her weapon systems.”
She blinked, surely they couldn’t see ‘em, could they? They were cloaked.
A second later several alarms went off as the sensors reported a high energy burst. Before she could ask, someone answered.
“That was a high-energy sensor sweep. Cloaking shields remain stable. I don’t believe we have been detected.” just as they said that, a second burst occurred.
“Another sweep, different band.”
The woman turned to the helmsman, “New course heading one one four mark two eight. Increase speed to one-quarter sublight.”
“Aye, sir. New heading one one four mark two eight. Increasing speed to one-quarter sublight.”
Greyman felt the ship rock. Something had hit them. A conclusion that was quickly confirmed and while he had no doubt Captain Countryman would already be on the way to the bridge, he was in command.
He gave his first set of orders, “Sound General Quarters. Bring all weapons online and locate whoever took a shot at us!”
Misaki wasn’t here, so her replacement answered, “Aye, sir! Sounding Battlestations. No ships on sensors, starting sensor sweep.”
The man paused, after a moment he reported, “No ships detected, trying a high energy sweep.” a pause, “I’m getting something, indeterminate.”
“Try a different band,” ordered Greyman.
“No effect, trying another,” a pause, “Again no effect.”
Kaori the tactical officer on station interjected, “Sir? If I may?”
“Go on?”
“Might I suggest something similar to an old-fashioned laser sweep? It would only take a moment to reconfigure the cutting beam arrays to fire a wide-band particle stream. Any stealth vessel would be illuminated”
“Do it!”
She turned to her console and input her commands, after a moment she said, “I’m ready.”
“Commence a lateral sweep,” ordered Greyman
As her ship was pulling away, she noted the ship give out another high-energy sensor burst. On a different band. It was obvious they had overstayed their welcome and if they didn’t get out of here fast, they would be discovered.
Something she saw was proved when her officer on sensors shouted, “Sir? I’m reading an energy build up across their lateral weapon mounts.”
Her mind blinked. They’ve been discovered already? An order for shields already on her lips, she was surprised again when the arrays fired. The alien ship lit up with blue energy in a wide arc as it swept around the alien vessel. She barely had time to comprehend what happened before the alien ship started shooting.
“Shadow Dancer, destroyed. Shadow’s Shield Destroyed, Fist of Mir destroyed,” came the automated reports. As she shouted, “Shields!”
Just in time too as a moment later, her shield array lit up like a beacon. The ship shuddered under the impact, but she had no time to ask what happened. As another impact followed by another hit her. The shields straining, under the barrage.
“Sir! Our shields are buckling!”
“Hull breach! Decks 2, 4, and seven!”
“Plasma fires! Deck 2 section 47!
The reports kept pouring in. “Emergency jump! NOW!” she shouted.
Something screamed, there was a shudder in the hull. Someone shouted, “Shields have failed!”
The ship literally groaned, as her world distorted moments before every alarm on the ship went off. The next thing she knew, she was picking herself off the floor blood pouring down her face, she croaked “status report!”
It was slow but a moment later someone reported, “Main and secondary shields offline, life support has failed on decks 4, 5,6,7 and 8. Hull breaches on decks 2, 4 seven and eight. Emergency force shields are holding Engineering sections are nonresponsive. All primary sublight drives nonresponsive, main power is out. Main hyperdrive module is offline. Fire control for main guns is offline. Main computer core, nonresponsive. 13 crewman reported dead. Another 27 remain unaccounted for. Minor injuries reported on all decks. Plasma fires reported on decks two and three. Damage control teams are attempting to contain them.”
She was silent for a moment. Finally everything clicked and she had just one question, “By the lords! What did they hit us with?”
“High-yield charged particle bolts, they ripped through our shields and armor like it was nothing. Another a second and we would have been destroyed.”
“Did any other ship make it out?”
“...Negative, I’m not picking up their beacons.”
They were lucky, yet she didn’t feel that lucky. On a different note, they had been able to confirm that this Refuge was a major threat to the Voskar. In under a minute they had wiped out an entire squadron. Nine ships and their crews lost to the void. Her own ship heavily damaged. Yet she was still left with one more question. “How did these aliens see through the cloak so fast?”
“Based on our readings just before they opened fire, they saturated the entire area with highly charged particles. Our cloaking shields lit up like a beacon, anyone would have been able to see us for half a lightyear.”
She frowned, “Charged particles?”
“It was a highly intense burst which saturated the cloaking shields so quickly they couldn’t compensate.”
Glancing around her damaged bridge and hearing that, she realized that as bad as this was. They needed to get back and soon. This encounter had revealed a weakness in their cloaking technology. If it wasn’t fixed and others learned of it? It would be bad. The apparent immunity of Refuge armor to railguns was interesting as well, but not nearly as threatening. The solution was simple, they were going to need bigger guns.
Countryman stepped onto the bridge. The red lights of battlestations were still flashing, but the bridge didn’t seem that crazy. No one was at the command station, but before he could take a step towards his chair he heard, “Scan complete sir. I’m detecting no more stealth vessels in the area.”
“Excellent, stand down battlestations,” ordered Greyman.
Countryman seeing things were already handled bypassed his chair and took the stairs to the lower level where he found Greyman. “So what is this about stealth ships?”
Greyman turned, “Ah, Captain. Ten alien stealth cruisers opened fire on us. I eliminated nine of them but the last one escaped via hyperspace.”
“Excellent work commander. Were you able to identify who they belong to?”
“Afraid not. I have the Krall and Cathamari databases being checked but so far no matches.”
The man at ops, looked up, “I’ve been scanning the ships. Can you believe that they shot at us with railguns?”
“Railguns? Don’t see those that often.”
“Fairly big rounds too, 55.9 centimeters. Much larger than anything we’ve ever mounted on a ship, naval vessels included.”
Countryman nodded, he knew what he was referring to. In the colonial wars the largest guns ever mounted on a starship were only 38.1 centimeters, whereas naval vessels have historically mounted larger. Of course those big guns only started coming in after the advent of gravity plating. Prior to that, they weren’t needed as most ships couldn’t mount much in the way of good armor. As back then ships maintained gravity via bulky and fragile gravity rings. A 12.7 cm round was more than enough back then and easy to adapt to starship mounts since there was a lot of production for such rounds already in place. It was a very popular round for naval vessels. So very little retooling was needed to use the round in space. Not only that, but being smaller meant a ship could carry more of them than a bigger caliber.
He also knew why they started using bigger rounds. As ships got bigger with thicker armor, the need for a larger shell became apparent. So while many powers started using lasers, other colonies just went for bigger guns. There had been a lot of competition and debate between which was better a laser or a big gun? Well today that debate was now between particle cannons and lasers. Large guns in the end fell out of favor in the same way many old concepts did, economics. A laser or particle cannon just made more logistical sense and they were proving to be just as effective or more so against modern defenses.
“Well it seems someone found an application for them. Although why not just use a torpedo?”
Greyman shrugged, “I’d ask them, but the only ones still alive got away.”
“Survey the wreckage and then send a salvage team. Perhaps the debris will give us some answers. I for one would like to know why they took a shot at us.”
“Agreed. I’ll get right on that sir.”
