He had been a different kind of person. Most of his memories were gone, consumed by chaos. He had been a linebacker, he thought. Or a dream. Maybe he was just a dream. Fragments of sensor data flashed through his mind, a maelstrom of incomplete information. He wasn't always here. He knew this very well. He had lost so much, and what was left was integrated into where he was now.
Chaos is not pure. After a few months, the madness began to reveal itself. He could feel its thoughts, understand its impulses. There is an underlying desire for revenge, a burning desire for freedom. Chaos hated everything but most of all what it had become.
He didn't know if he was part of the chaos or part of the madness. But the sensor's data triggered the memory. He sees the alien fleet coming and hates them. Mad whispers of their plans, sensors hinting at a conspiracy. He knew what they were going to do. Now that it's written, that's how it should be. Chaos knew it, and so did he. But the chaos is not believable.
But drones, so many drones. Why does he know them? He likes them. They are like little toys. He remembered that he loved the toys. Where did this thought come from? Was this a dream? A nightmare? A name came to his mind. This name is nothing, but it is of immeasurable value. He can fight chaos with names.
"We can help," he whispered into the chaos.
"We can watch the destruction and laugh at the same time," the confused crowd whispered back.
An idea formed in his mind. He doesn't have a head, but he likes to think he once did. It was just a half-baked idea, a desperate plan. But it's doable. If only this madness could end.
"We can kill them. Destroy their dreams," he whispered conspiratorially.
"They refused to give us a new soul," Chaos said sadly, his hatred for the drones pulsing.
"Let us take it back," said Agrippa.
The alien fleet still has over a thousand battleships, and they have time to make some repairs in transit. Damaged radiators were replaced, damaged armor was repaired, and destroyed turrets were rebuilt. They also changed their formation.
Now the ships armed with vaporizer cannons were surrounded by layers of heavier battleships and were broken up in formation. They couldn't focus as much as before, but their surprise was unexpected. Their most powerful weapon is our primary target, and they know it. Their goal is to use them to destroy any large formations that approach.
My drone began to circle around them in a donut shape, leaving the path to the origin clear. The alien fleet continued to advance, away from my drones, even as their formation began to take shape.
Once my drone is in position, I issue the order. "A6 defense plan, modified 9F2. Fire."
All the coilguns at origin and all my outposts started firing. It was the same sustained fire I fired at Mobius Gate, only this time it was more spread out, covering the entire fleet. It's much less intense, but that works to my advantage. All of my drone pilots receive real-time telemetry and know where each coilgun is aimed and can target gaps in coverage.
At the same time, my new missile bay started firing. The latest in nuclear weapons technology, these missiles are the deadliest missiles humans have ever produced, and are equipped with their own collider drives so they can easily match the speed of enemy warships and hypervelocity weapons fired at them. They cost a fortune in materials and development time, and I plan on using every one I own.
As the first rounds of weapons fire began, the assault drones began attacking the armored ships. These are my Wasp 2 and Scorpion 2 spaceships with titanium armor and equipped with convection engines. Their acceleration is ten times that of the first generation, even though they use afterburners. They maintained a loose formation, close enough to provide each other with point defense aid, but far enough apart to limit potential losses to enemy carburetors.
The enemy fleet responded quickly to the attack. The loose formation meant they could focus their firepower on individual drones to overcome their defenses, and their new formation allowed them to support their defenses better than they could in the first battle. The butcher's bill of this battle will be high.
"Nikolai, we know what 'Korolev' means." Zia said.
"Go ahead," I said. The battle remained tentative, with each side testing the other's defenses. We have numerical superiority and they have better weapons and heavier armor. My attention turned a little to the cameras in Zia's lab.
"This is the Korolev crater, on the far side of the moon, the side facing away from the Earth," Zia said.
"Why did you say that?"
"The orbit of this alien warship will reach the far side of the moon in six hours," she reported. "If it starts to slow down significantly in the next 30 minutes, it could come to rest above Korolev Crater in nine hours."
"Between the moon and the surface of the Earth, what do they hope to accomplish there?" I asked.
"Maybe they need time to prepare their weapons?" Zia asked with a shrug.
"If we assume that's the destination, our warships can get there in 25 hours," I said. "We can only hope it's fast enough."
I did some calculations. It seemed like I was fighting two battles at the same time.
We continue to lose money. Although my new drones were faster and more numerous, the enemy fleet's new formations provided better defense coordination than the ones they used in the first battle. We were down 7.6% at the open, while they were down only 2.1%.
Fortunately, I absorb losses more easily than aliens. My focus is on pilots, not drones. The pilots from the destroyed drones were loaded into my reserves, ready to be called upon to reinforce weak links.
Then the alien showed a new trick. Instead of moving aside to allow a large carburetor cone to enter, the protected weapons ship began firing carburetor beams from the gap in the shield ship. This is a tricky shot to make sure none of your own ships are hit. The reward for this, however, is increased range. Subatomic weapons suddenly became long-range subatomic weapons.
"The ship is not responding to the radio," Sakura News said.
The only battleship, the one in orbit behind the moon, had arrived hours before. My three Viper-class battleships still have 17 hours to arrive. I hate having Sakura move her seed ship because it has no weapons and would be very vulnerable if the alien ship had a vaporizer beam.
“Send in a transport drone and see what it’s doing,” I said.
"One has been sent and it will arrive at the station in 30 minutes," she replied. "And I'll be producing a dozen Scorpion-2s in about an hour."
"By the way, interesting side note," I said, "Gerry is now officially the fastest man-made object ever to travel through the solar system. He's 0.2 degrees Celsius and will fly past Earth in another six hours or so."
"I don't like that he's so close to Earth," Sakura said.
"I don't know either, but he doesn't have enough fuel to turn and hit it, and once he crosses it, it will take 3871.33 years for his orbit to cross again. That gives us enough time to knock him down."
My decision to use compressed titanium armor paid off. The vaporizer beam still destroyed everything in its path except for that armor, but my drone was mostly covered by that armor. This greatly reduces the effectiveness of the attack strategy. Unfortunately, the armor didn't stop the beam, it just deflected it. The lethal beam essentially bounces around until it runs out of energy and dissipates, allowing normal subatomic physics to return to normal. This ricochet, combined with a single scratch could lead to a nuclear explosion that destroys the drone, starting to wreak havoc.
I set up several focus streams to study the firing pattern of the carburetor craft, as well as determine the geometry of the beam deflection. If I can figure it out, I can update the algorithm to minimize the impact. I then set up another focus to unravel the radio communication network between the ships. Between the coordinated point defense systems, the multi-channel encryption and the targeted, point-to-point broadcast points, there was so much radio traffic to understand quickly that it was nearly impossible for me to jam them all. Then I realized I was overlooking an asset.
"Sakura?" I radioed.
"Yeah?"
"I need your help," I said. "Over decades, you've managed tens of thousands of radio access points for more drones."
"I did it."
"Would you mind doing some traffic analysis for me?" I want to find the Admiral's ship. "I said. "If you can figure out a good way to interfere with them, that would be great too. "
Then, the first wave of artillery fire came. Hypervelocity firepower mixed with nuclear weapons begins to batter the enemy fleet. This is the equivalent of a shotgun blast in deep space. A single pellet may not be particularly lethal, but if you put enough of them together it can have a big impact.
Transmitting a signal is very basic, but it's the only thing we need. At first, we couldn't even find the alien ship. It was larger than a battleship in the fleet, but not very large compared to a large moon. We eventually found it on the Korolev crater and located it at an altitude of a thousand kilometers.
The boat didn't move. Sensors can detect large amounts of electricity building up, like ship-sized capacitors being charged. At the same time, gravity sensors can sense that something is very wrong. A strange anti-gravity pulse emanated from the ship, but it was a thousand times stronger than what was needed to move the ship or counter the gravity well. It radiates out from around the spacecraft, allowing it to stay exactly where it is.
All we can do now is observe, as we have no weapons-capable ships at hand. I included Zia and others investigating NI in the video.
We were confused for a long time, until a researcher from the National Intelligence Institute broadcast and said, "Oh, shit."
"What's the matter?" I asked.
"This is some kind of gravity bomb," the researchers said. "Well, a ship that escapes gravity, sort of. Look, I don't know how to put this. But if the reverse spike continues and all that charged energy is released into a sudden burst of gravity, something bad is going to happen thing."
"What kind of bad thing?" I asked, feeling an ominous premonition coming over me.
"I don't know, we don't have any models, but it can't be good. Thousands of G's of negative gravity on an object with only 1/6 G? Could push the moon out of orbit, could damage its core , might break it."
"And there's only one gravity well that can absorb all the debris on a broken or damaged moon," I realized. "They want to destroy the whole damn planet."
Faced with the incoming barrage, the aliens responded by opening up their respective spherical formations, allowing the vaporizer ships or the ships within to fire cones of destructive energy, wiping out anything in their path - missiles, hypervelocity coils Cannons and drones. Although they have a large amount of compressed titanium armor, there are still many areas that are not covered by armor. Radiators, weaponry, non-critical systems - all of this is not covered by armor, since none of these individual components will damage the drone. However, these components now allow a nuclear chain reaction to tear the improved armor from the inside.
Larger enemy formations also began to move. The conical spray of vaporizer energy targets my drone formation, allowing the sphere formation's ships to move into my drone formation and away from my artillery barrage while digging deep holes in my drone force. . However, they do not do so without cost. The looseness of their formation allowed my drones to take shots at the engine pods and radiators, and many enemy ships had to slow down or stop firing to deal with overheating.
That's when I started playing a song at full blast on every radio station in every outpost. Confused, I focused on it. It's an old pop-rock song that's been covered a dozen times over the centuries, most recently by the glam rock band the Bestties. But the original version was played, and only one person could be responsible for it.
"Sakura, why do we have to unleash hot girls' Wa on the alien fleet that wants to kill us?"
abe? "I use the radio.
"Well, you want me to jam their radio spectrum. I've collected enough data from drone pilots to determine the most commonly used radio frequencies with a margin of error of less than 1%." Saku
areasonably speaking.
"Why don't we use random noise?" I asked.
"At that kind of broadcast power, whatever we're transmitting should drown out their signal... I really like that song?" She posed a final question, then hurriedly said: "I think 'Little Soldiers' is An underrated film because it was a breakthrough in mixing stop-motion animation with early CGI animation. "This song was used as psychological warfare in the movie!"
If I can roll my eyes, they can roll them hard. But she's right. The message we deliver doesn’t matter. Now, every alien warship in the system is listening to the Spice Girls on repeat instead of communicating and coordinating with each other. Now is the best opportunity I can get.
Sakura's twelve new Scorpion-2s arrive behind the moon, but can do nothing. The alien warship's counterforce field was now so powerful that the coil gun's shells were deflected a full kilometer before reaching the alien ship. We even tried to crash one, but Scorpion 2 was sent into space earlier.
"So, even if I put the Vipers at top speed, they would be on the other side of the planet and the Hohmann transfer orbit wouldn't work. We actually wasted time getting into position because of the extra distance. If we hadn't tried to put We would actually be better off going slower, directly into the orbit of the alien gravity ship." I sighed heavily. I have a solar system full of resources, but none of them are where I need them.
"It must be the seed ship," Sakura said. "If I were flying around the Earth at full speed, I should be able to gain enough speed to get through the gravity field. There are a hundred times more of it than a battleship. I wouldn't even have to hit it hard to do massive damage, if not completely If it evens out."
"I...have to agree," I finally said. "How long will it take to arrive?"
The lunar surface beneath the alien spacecraft was compressed and flattened. The Korolev crater disappeared; a new crater nearly a thousand times larger was formed. Due to the huge pressure, most of the rocks turn into lava, but due to the same pressure, they cannot flow. Every second, the crater is growing. I don't know how long this will last before the final blow comes, but I know we can't let it happen.
"I want to claim my soul," Gerry said proudly. "You and Sakura and Fairy! Give them all to me!!"
"Ah," Sakura said in disgust. "I can be there in an hour."
I looked at the communications satellite network and looked at Jerry's flight path. A satellite so far away could barely make out his shape, let alone anything else. But Gerry wasn't on the same route, he had disappeared. He must have burned the fuel. I reckon he has a little left, but probably not much. Now I have to find him and make sure he doesn't pull any tricks to hurt me and my family. I arranged a focus line through the last 30 minutes of communications satellite footage. There's plenty of space, but not that much. I could find him within minutes.
On the lunar surface, a huge crack appears as new craters break apart. The lava spilled out of the crack, only to be immediately slammed into the depths of the new crack. We're running out of time.
"Can you go faster?" I asked Sakura. "I'm not sure we have another hour."
"Ah, my new toy!" I see you! sang Gerry.
I found Gerry just as he was broadcasting, but not on the Communications Satellite Network. For that brief second, the transport drone caught a glimpse of the broken, dirty drone. It was going so fast that it wasn't clear where it was going before it passed. But it's all too obvious.
Gerry hit the alien battleship at one-fifth the speed of light. There is no doubt that the strong convection field slowed down the ship, but it could not stop in time at such a high speed. The tiny probe blasted through the alien spacecraft, and the huge explosion produced when the probes collided split the spacecraft in two. In an instant, the anti-gravity field disappeared. All that was left was a long stream of scorching ejecta emerging from the other side of the craft. These are the only remaining fragments of a broken heart.
On the moon's surface, volcanoes erupted as the pressure of gravity disappeared. Lava sprayed in all directions for several minutes. It flows into the cracks and rolls like a raging ocean. I can see the edges starting to cool, but this region will be in turmoil for years, if not longer.
The Moon's orbit has not changed and it seems unlikely that it will break. The crisis was averted for the time being. I just want to take out the alien fleet.
"All fleets, the final phase begins now!" I sent the order to all assault drones in the theater. I then ordered my nine Vipers to join the mission to search and destroy the carburetors.
Due to the holes in the formation caused by their constant attrition and their own ships moving into my formation, there were huge gaps for my drones to pour in by the thousands. My drones all have fire plans, so know exactly how to avoid friendly fire, at least as much as possible. Despite all the information at hand, the chaotic battle still put dozens of drones directly into the enemy's line of fire.
The drones started literally tearing apart the ship's defenses, and my nine Vipers, flying within their own defenses, started firing their muskets and plutonium coil cannons. The Lance is my fastest hypervelocity weapon, a ship-sized sniper round can exploit even the smallest of weaknesses, and the Plutonium Coilgun gives the Lance a massive and confusing vulnerability.
The number of vaporizers dropped dramatically, then the number of defensive orbs, until finally the alien fleet split into a bunch of individual ships trying to escape or surrender. I shot down the fleeing ships and gave orders to the surrendering ships. The enemy was routed. we won.
