They've arrived - just the latest wave to hit Centauri - and we've picked right up where we left off with another series of painful mistakes.
We had managed to build a second defensive base before the enemy arrived, and our dwindling fleet of fighters was ready to help out, but I suspect that some of the drills we ran against colony ship attack fleets cost us here: In the drills, the idea was for our fighters to practice luring the enemy away from the planet, to buy time for the bases to do their work with their volleys of missile fire - but since the colony ships on their own posed very little threat to our bases, our fighters' first mission during the drills was to escape with their lives and ships intact, to be ready to help out when the real battle - this battle - came. Well-prepared as they were, the fleet did good work up to a point, diving away from the planet itself, toward the widest open spaces available to them - but then they faltered, recapitulating the drills too exactly: When the enemy closed, instead of trying to fly past them, dodging what fire they could and selling their lives dear, they turned back - not toward the colony of course, but not far enough away, staying out of the enemy's firing range instead of daring the Silicoids to fire on them and luring those ion cruisers even farther away. Finally, when nothing could prevent them from being caught and fired upon any longer, our fleet actually
retreated from combat, exactly as it had in the drills, failing to realize that the Mako's presence changed the stakes of the battle completely! They preserved their little ships - already becoming painfully obsolete - and we did manage to destroy both attackers, but half our defensive bases were destroyed because our fighters failed to lead the enemy away. The cost could have been a great deal worse, but the fighter pilots at Centauri nevertheless have a great deal for which to answer. We can't afford to keep taking losses this way. Which does raise the question of whether we have any choice.
This is the latest Sakkra fleet to appear in our scanner range: Experienced military analysts have examined its hyperspace signature carefully and report that it isn't consistent with those of previous fleets with known destinations, lying somewhere between the expected approach vectors for Primodius and Moro. Lacking an improved space scanner like theres that can pin down its real destination, this is the best we can do - which means we can't tell for sure if it's heading for their new Darrian colony or for our homeworld at Meklon, though if it departed Maalor, it must surely be one of the two. Its Banshee fighter-killers and another of the new Juggernaut cruisers are accompanied by a small fleet of fighters as well: So-called Daemons that none of our Sakkra specialists or scanning technicians can remember ever seeing before. Military historians consulted on the question couldn't trace the design definitively, but estimate its age at no older than a quarter century, and likely much newer: Very possibly new enough to mount their neutron-pellet weaponry. Meklon should be able to handle the nine in this fleet if it has any kind of answer for the new Juggernaut, but if built in numbers, they may represent a greater threat than we can handle with current technology. Of course we haven't been neglecting scientific resarch, in part for essentially this reason, but progress has been painfully slow, with resources constantly diverted in response to defensive emergencies. A few lone transports are crossing our space on our own behalf - people from overcrowded worlds seeking comparatively open spaces - and our Scope continues slowly on its way toward Ryoun, where a powerful Psilon fleet is gathering, but apart from that, everything passing through our scanners' range is a retreating or potentially-approaching enemy fleet. We would be more hopeful about the Psilons in orbit at Sakkra Darrian if not for their still-extent alliance, and about the small Sakkra fleet at presently-Klackon Moro had the Klackon invasion and conquest of that world from the Sakkra not long ago actually resulted in open war, but apparently even when conquering border worlds back and forth, these aliens are content to maintain relations with one another - so long as the other in question is not a machine.
- 2397 -
Well, it's happened, as many were dreading it would - many who advised developing weapons technology much more seriously than we ever have to date. The Psilon Starfighters that just arrived at Humidity090 are nothing special - just laser fighters barely upgraded from our own design by the addition of duralloy armor in place of our titanium - and the newer Seeker fighters at first glance may appear to be the same, equally incapable of penetrating our defensive bases shields: Both fighter groups retreated immediately, almost before our bases' battle scanner crews could identify the crucial difference that makes the Seekers deadly against our starfleet: Their class 4 deflector shields, two generations ahead of our state of the art, render the ships completely immune to our fighters' lasers and our bases' nuclear missiles alike. Even the heavy laser mounted by the Scope - and by no other spacecraft in the history of our fleet - would need to hit one of those little fighters an average of four times or more to destroy a single one of them. Aboard these fighters, in this engagement, that hardly mattered - but against the Star Blazer destroyers, it absolutely did. There were only two, and they were barely armed - just a single neutron blaster apiece, with a century-old targeting computer and no scanner, their shields and duralloy armor taking up most of the hull space - but a single neutron blaster is a very different weapon than a single laser, and even with just two of them aboard the entire slow-moving enemy fleet, they were able to slowly hammer away at Humidity's missile bases, blasting the first into fragments and then moving on to the second, shrugging off the return fire as though our nuclear missiles were garlands of flowers from the jungles below, and would have wrecked that one too if their energy stores hadn't expired finally, forcing them to fall back into hyperspace with the rest of the retreating fleet. We're scrambling to figure out a solution - any kind of solution - that might hold them off for longer and at lower cost, because we're well aware their Star Blazers can be produced en masse ... and even without that, there wasn't even time after the battle ended to configure our diode outputs to convey relief:
The colony and its last base have survived for now, but another pair of Star Blazers are coming, this time accompanied by even more shielded Seeker fighters, and two designs we've never yet encountered: A pair of Star Wings, of which all we know is that they're destroyer-class, and a single Star Blade: Like the Mako and Juggernauts and the Hydrae before them among others, the Psilon Star Blade is a full-sized heavy cruiser. In two years, our Scope will finally arrive at Ryoun, where this fleet was stationed last year, and scan whatever fleet it finds there. By an unfortunate coincidence, that's exactly when we'll learn what's on the two unfamiliar Psilon designs - thanks not to the Scope, but to the scanner at our missile base at Humidity090: If our veterans are reading the fleet's hyperspace signature correctly, they're on exactly the same vector that the just-retreated Psilon fleet was on two years ago today.
Two years before we find out what what's on that Star Blade cruiser, then - and to decide on a response without knowing what we're facing in any more detail than "too much to handle, almost certainly." The lab bots are working overtime trying to come up with more options, but it's far from guaranteed, and most of us are working on scraping together whatever defenses we can in hopes of fending off whatever the as-yet-unknown threats turn out to be. And as quickly as two years may pass with that threat before us, I haven't forgotten the other unknown cruiser closing in, and due to arrive even sooner.
- 2398 -
They're here, and our worst fears are realized - our worst fears with respect to the Sakkra, at least. The new Juggernaut cruisers are protected by state-of-the-lizard-art class-3 shields, with stabilized engines that let them outmaneuver everything in our fleet, and armed from stem to stern and gunwale to gunwale with neutron pellet weaponry. The only way these ships could be more deadly, given the state of Sakkra technology, would have been if they remembered to bother putting a battle computer on the things. Even as-is, the battle is going to be close, and I can't tell who's going to win. If we stand and fight, we'll certainly lose at least one base and our entire laser fighter fleet - already hopelessly out of date - but the colony ship's payload is still only a pair of ancient missiles loaded into a single tube, so its contribution to the fight will be minimal at best, and the Juggernaut
can be damaged, unlike the Psilon fleets; if luck and our crews' skills are with us, we may be able to defeat it in the end! Retreating might save the fighters for the scrap heap or to help distract the enemy in a future engagement, but the defensive command argues that the chance of victory is too important, the base that might survive too valuable; we have to take the risk. Their ships fly in, and we stall as long as we can, buying our nuclear missiles time to launch and detonate against their shields, perhaps half of them lost uselessly in space as the stabilized Juggernaut evades, the others barely scarring the armor, but making progress, slowly - slowly - until they close and force the engagement with our fighters, which heroically swoop past, returning fire, barely scratching their target, but contributing as they can, buying more time, giving their lives and their ships for the cause, holding on against the neutron pellet barrage. The last fighter burns, and our valiant Scout pilot tries to contribute too, any way it can, even just getting in the way, but it doesn't look good ... it doesn't look hopeful ... it doesn't look like, in the end, there's any meaningful chance. Their pellet cannons blast our first base apart, and we're falling behind even more, their armor pocked and charred and cratered, with hull breaches hastily sealed, but they're still intact, and our final base is in far worse shape than they are, fighting far less effectively. A terrible explosion, and it's gone, the Juggernaut cruiser sailing past overhead with the colony ship beside it, invincible Sakkra attack ships looming large - yet again - in our skies. We're still in touch with the rest of the Meklar, but they all seem so far away now - too far to help, though they're trying.
The inertial stabilizer the new Juggernaut used - one of the reasons it survived long enough to pulverise our defenses, and the reason it was able to close so quickly - is closely related to a secret project our own propulsion engineers have been pursuing for decades, mostly at Meklon and Endoria, and research has finally finished at last: Too little, I fear, and too late. If we could hold our own against our trifold enemies while still supporting the research budget needed, I might be hopeful about the prospect of advanced Sub-Light Drives that would allow rapid response fleets to jump between our core stars with even a single year's warning ... but there's so much we need, we're so far behind, and the prospects here under the Juggernaut's guns are so bleak that I can barely muster any enthusiasm about them. I won't even discuss the option to research Dotomite fuel crystals instead; we couldn't possibly afford it, and all it would help us do would be to attempt to slowly fly to far-too-well-defended planets far beyond our realistic reach. I know they're trying to help, and other projects are in the works - though it may be argued we should have emphasized different ones instead - but it just isn't easy to see hope ahead when...
...
this is happening. There goes another tremor, and I think I can hear the distant thunder of a secondary explosion even through my shelter's walls. Confused reports are coming in: Pieces of Meklar machine parts littering the streets, blasted apart when Sakkra neutron pellet fire blew up yet another power plant or manufacturing center. In all, if the reports are true, they've destroyed five factory cities just since the battle ended, and a million more Meklar have lost their lives, added to the terrible toll already taken here by this ruinous, long-running war. Reports from Meklon suggest everyone is in a panic - over this latest attack, and over the Psilon fleet - and our diplomatic corps, like the rest of us, is growing desperate ... but they can't possibly be as desperate as we are here!
...Or perhaps I spoke too soon. It seems that the need for faster defense fleets was apparent to somebody - though whoever it was apparently neglected to remember that such ships do little good unless they're
armed with something - and we all know all too well that our home-grown Sub-Light Drives will take too long to complete. Even so, even with no alternatives - the Bulrathi apparently offered nothing in trade but an aging relic of a jammer for our best waste reduction technology, and we would have taken that too no doubt if it wouldn't have increased the cost of defensive bases we still need desperately, without contributing anything since our enemies all seem to be relying on unjammable beams - this must be an act of complete desperation: In exchange for Nuclear Engines that can't be safely mounted on transports, useful at this stage - with the entire galaxy colonized for all intents and purposes - only for speeding our combat fleets in response to the constant emergencies, we taught the Klackons, already the most-productive, fastest-growing faction in the galaxy, to build out and control half again as many factories on their worlds as they ever could before. There's a real danger at this rate that they could accelerate out ahead of everyone else and completely take over the galaxy - but apparently the Meklar leadership felt we had no choice.
This is what we got for potentially acting as queen-makers and putting the future into Kaxal's mandibles: The Flicker 2.0 is - still! - armed with nothing but a laser, barely capable of scratching a Juggernaut's paint and utterly useless against a Seeker or Star Blazer, still has no shield, and with no on-board targeting computer, even its tiny laser pinpricks won't be able to hit anything with any significant maneuverability. What it has - and all it has - is speed. Its nuclear engines will shave at least a year off of interstellar transit times even among our core stars, and make it possible at last for fleets at Primodius and Centauri to reinforce each other fast enough to matter, while the extra boost they add to its maneuverability will enable it to dodge enemy attacks far more effectively: Even in a straight shooting match, they'll double its expected survival time against ships like the Mako, Star Blazer, Juggernaut, and Dragon, but other effects are even more significant: Simply by maneuvering faster, a Flicker can choose the time, place, and manner of engagement much more effectively than any ship we've ever built, and significantly more so than even a stabilized retro fighter could. In hopeless-seeming battles like the ones we've been fighting lately - and like those we're most likely to face for the foreseeable future - all these advantages will be vital to our chances of survival ... if any.
- 2399 -
The Psilons have a surprise in store for us at Humidity090: Their ships appear to have multiplied in space! Presumably a second fleet - a Colony Ship, a third Star Wing destroyer, and a second Sar Blade cruiser - left Ryoun as soon as the one we saw was en route, and presumably unlike one or more of the other Psilon fleets that just arrived, those three designs are all built with nuclear engines, trailing the previously-visible fleet by just enough for it to conceal their hyperspacial signature, so they could arrive at the same moment without being seen until it was too late to respond. Thankfully, we had done all the responding we could anyway, trying to fend off the smaller but still-unknown and potentially deady fleet.
Of course, it isn't unknown any longer, thanks to the colony's scanning array.
So let's talk targeting. First of all, the newest ships in the Psilon fleet must be the Star Wing destroyers with their basic battle computer, duralloy hull, and single heavy blast cannon apiece. Thankfully, the Psilons didn't quite have the miniaturization they needed to shield these beyond the class-2s that even we can build, nor even to improve their maneuverability, which means we can hit them effectively and even do some damage when we do - and vitally, that we'll have more time to return fire against them before they close into attack range. Of course the Star Blades are bigger threats - to our livelihoods and our lives, and to everything in the star system - but since we have literally nothing capable of penetrating their five-layered defensive shields, we're just going to have to absorb the damage they deal as best we can, avoiding their fire to minimize it, and hope thereby to cut down on casualties.
In service to that, we do have one big advantage: In spite of their nuclear engines, none of the newer Psilon ships were built with any form of maneuverability in mind, which is going to make it much easier for our missiles to hit them when and if it will do the slightest good. The Star Blades would be an exception if their shielding had visible weaknesses, since they were aparently built with ECM jammers on board to help thwart our missile fire, but as it is, the
number of ways they render our nuclear missiles irrelevant hardly matters as long as there's at least
one. The jammers - as usual, though not quite universally, on starships in space - is a relief to see, since those near-total wastes of design space might instead have been a better battle computer, more guns, or - perhaps worst of all - more maneuverability! As it is, our Flicker fighters can accelerate at three times the Star Blades' rate - and likewise three times the rate of anything else in the Psilon fleet - which helps immensely in avoiding fire from everything visible here: A critical factor since for all intents and purposes, our Flickers can't fight back. The best they can do, on the contrary, is to draw fire and try to survive.
Perhaps something more than that was possible after all, if our pilots had been a little more careful about staying away from the planet once they launched: After taking out the lightly-shielded but hard-hitting Star Wings and the completely-unshielded, laser-armed duralloy Starfighters, the bases had nothing useful to do except absorb hits and just hold on - the Psilon Colony Ships, armed with nothing but missiles, were quick to retreat - but they didn't have to absorb as many as they did! One base burned down completely under heavy blaster cannon fire because our pilots at first misunderstood the danger and later miscalculated, underestimating Psilon bloodlust. By that time, perhaps a seventh of our fighters had been lost, trapped as they sometimes must be by enemy maneuvering and long-range heavy weapon fire - thankfully highly inaccurate at that range. Here of course we can see them in the midst of an even-bigger mistake, having already failed to lure the Star Blazers and their neutron blasters away from the vulnerable plaet, flying too close to the Seeker wing in trying to overcorrect for the mistake, giving the Seekers an unnecessary chance to fire on them. Fortunately, with these numbers and the Seekres' hopeless targeting, the latter mistake was insignificant if a mistake at all, costing us only perhaps another fighter or two, and our pilots did get their act together in the end: After losing just six more - ten in all of the twenty-eight that began the fight - and without losing any further bases - they managed to hold out long enough for exhausted energy stores to force the Psilons to retreat! We've held Humidity - for now - against a vastly-superior fleet, and there's hope that when our next wing of Flickers arrives here at Primodius from Meklon next year, we'll be able to chase off the Juggernaut ... or even to defeat it outright, thanks to its sub-Psilon shielding, if we can finish a missile base in time to contribute to the fight! We just have to protect the base - and our fighters themselves - a little better than we did against the Psilon fleet last year.
It's a hope I can cling to from here on the surface, huddled in my shelter, while neutron pellet bursts and secondary explosions thunder through the air outside. We've already lost a million more Meklar this year, and five more of our factory-cities, with Sakkra transports already visible on our strategic maps streaming out into our part of space to reinforce Darrian and retake Moro from the Klackons ... and to take Primodius, here, from us. Klackon reinforcements likewise appear to be on the way, but I don't know their strength or their speed, and therefore how and when they'll affect the situation at Moro. The question is of critical importance because as long as the Klackons control the system, it's completely off-limits to us: Already at war with three other factions around the galaxy, we have no desire to provoke the wrath of a fourth - even one so xenophobic that decades of peace, trade, and our war against the Silicoids have failed to thaw their opinion of us beyond neutrality. If the Sakkra claim Moro again, we might attempt an invasion ourselves eventually, in hopes of reverse-engineering whatever technology the lizards bring in with them, even if it means evacuating the colony soon thereafter and permitting the Klackons to reclaim it - but while the Klackons hold it, we would rather let them keep it, though it's almost on top of our home star, than take any action against them.
...well, so much for that theory. It appears that Kaxal has decided in spite of all our overtures of friendship that the time has come for yet another war. This feels like the final death knell for the Meklar of this galaxy: Like the Psilons, the Klackon people are in a whole different category from our long-time Sakkra and Silicoid enemies - against whom we were struggling to defend ourselves already! If Moro were better-developed - and at least if we hadn't just recently shared our knowledge of advanced robotic controls with the Klackons, they might have been able to develop it more quickly - and Sakkra fleets and transports weren't already on the way to take it for themselves, we might have some hope of a desperation invasion at least catching us up somewhat in technology, but that isn't looking possible: We don't have the means of landing on Darrian, which is far too new to hold Sakkra secrets in any case, while Moro too is essentially a spud world bearing very little in the way of industry, Maalor and Cryslon are well-defended and far away, and even if Ryoun weren't serving as a muster point for deadly Psilon fleets, its few missile bases are so well protected behind advanced shields, armor, and ECM jamming systems that we could never break through them. Perhaps after all we
will find a way at one of these worlds or elsewhere - perhaps prospects will look rosier next year, when hopefully our Flicker fighters and a newly-completed missile base will be enough to repel the Sakkra in orbit today - but with explosions in the distance, trapped down here in my shelter whenever the Juggernaut passes overhead, it's difficult to believe in the possibility.
We do at least have a little more information about the enemy fleets: The Klackons are approaching our part of the galaxy with three separate fleets of Knight cruisers - single ships and a single pair, but with still-unknown and likely devastating armament - while two of their Ranger destroyers appear to be approaching Moro from some impossibly-distant star like Yarrow, out beyond Sakkra and Psilon space, close to the galactic rim. The Sakkra, apart from their Juggernaut and Colony Ship in orbit here and their ten gatling Banshees at Moro, are sending another Juggernaut, a Dragon, five more Banshees, and some nineteen Daemon fighters across our space in two groups, apparently bound for Darrian, Meklon, or both. We know a little more about their transports too, with 40 million lizards believed to be en route from Maalor for an attempt to conquer Moro, 28 million apparently making the long trip to Darrian from way down at Gienah ... and finally the 26 million more inbound to Primodius here, expected - to judge by past experience - to arrive in three years. I think - I
think - we can defeat this wave, as long as the fighter pilots from Meklon can keep the Juggernaut off our backs when they arrive next year, but that's going to be challenge enough even without any Klackons approaching to take their own shot at us, and without the Psilon fleet obviously bound for Humidity090, with another of their Star Blade cruisers, and fully one hundred and fifteen shielded Seeker fighters. It's going to take some fancy flying to survive these next attacks, and I have no idea what's going to come in after that. I hate being trapped down here on the surface, feeling helpless against all the constant enemy attacks ... but I'm well aware I may be on the front lines soon enough....
Klackon dominance is already showing, in spite of the limited time they've had to build new factories, together with a possible reason for their sudden and complete change in diplomatic stance toward us: It seems they allied themselves to the Psilons, and that Tachaon asked and received their contribution to his war effort practically in the same breath as agreeing. There still may be time to rein Kaxal in if anyone is ever inclined to stop them instead of leaving it to the two weakest - and likewise-mutually-warring - powers in the galaxy, but unless we're able to do something ourselves, it may be that no one else will until it's too late. We can't write off our own chances in spite of our dire straits - not yet, and not completely - and there may be something we can do even diplomatically, but if so, I fear we must do it soon! And of course that would be easier if we had made better investments, for instance in technology.
In spite of all the economic good it will surely do, I fear we've invested far too much in ecological restoration technology, with duralloy armor research still trailing far behind, and nothing - nothing at all - invested in more-immediately-crucial technology. The giant leap forward an improved space scanner would provide in military intelligence - including espionage - would be valuable enough given our researchers' excellence in the field, to say nothing of the miniaturization it would permit. Personal deflector shields would not only help us shrink down ships' shields that would help against Sakkra gatlings, but open more opportunities for conquests with fewer casualties. Most crucial of all, ion cannons would give us a weapon that at least stands a chance of penetrating Psilon shields ... and yet since selecting these projects, we have done nothing with any of them. Our resources have been committed in too many other directions, perhaps mostly unwisely, no matter how necessary it felt at the time. The new restoration techniques are expected to increase our effective annual output by 30% or more overnight when they're ready - and more if we continue to build more factories - but we'll need to survive a decade or more afterward - perhaps even much more - before that repays the investment we'll ultimately have made, with all our factories intact, and that has been looking more doubtful every day.
All we can do is try - and if we must go down, to go down fighting to the end, still seeking a path to survival, against all odds!
The Klackons moving against you (on top of everyone else) Is a big blow. And those tougher enemy shields leave you with very few options.
