Chapter 31: The Ship who Cried Wolf

February 25^th, 2279

When the alarm came in, they were as ready as they could be. All blast doors went down, all crew were inside the citadel (only the much-suffering bots stationed outside), the gunports were opened, all systems set at max charge, all teeth clenched. The first step was observation. Soon, a massive object appeared on the passive scanners, and imminently, it became clear that RND had given the Maka information on the Rubicon, for the Maka was zig-zagging. A clear sign that she knew her opponent had mines, as most modern Senatorial vessels didn’t have mine chutes anymore, designed to fight in the battlewall. Sure, it could have been the AI itself coming up with the possibility that an unseen attacker would use such an unsavory weapon, but Perlas initiated the misleading cloaking field anyways. Otherwise, there wasn’t much to see they didn’t already know about a Sentir-class vessel, so they sent out the message that would start the 72 hours timer, which was the first nerve-wrecking moment, as the Maka instantly turned in their general direction. She had also received the GO, and correctly assumed (or known) the enemy ship would be coming from Kappa 3, although the Rubicon, as usual, didn’t arrive at the point they would in a direct line, as per Basil’s principal orders. Still, the Rubicon had to change course hard to stay outside effective scanner range of the Maka under cloak and fell into a distant pursuit course. It was time to stab the dragon and see what it would do.

The first test was simply firing a lone torpedo from out of range at the Maka. She simply changed course a little, let the projectile pass and scanned it thoroughly, receiving misleading information, as Basil had fired a much smaller, slower torpedo with a much weaker payload. The games had begun.

The second test was flyby by the Toucan under cloak. At almost exactly 0.34 clicks the Maka reacted and unleashed a hail of beam fire and small but quick and well-guided torpedoes on the Toucan, which immediately evaded, being on autopilot with full reverse engines already firing. It was narrowly missed and started fleeing, sub-light, it was much much faster than the Maka but the latter surprised everyone by simply using the quantum slipstream to jump to a point in front of the fleeing cloaked ship, the Toucan only surviving because Ivern remotely ordered it to do a hard turn and burn in a random opposite direction whilst the Maka was coming out of the jump still, losing a precious half-second and scanner distance to the cloaked target. As much as they were happy to see the Toucan survive, it was suspicious how quickly the Maka could charge up her quantum engines, with almost no warning given to an observer, she could jump half a second earlier than the Rubicon could, which seemed to be an advantage of the new D-10. There was a lot of sweat on the officer’s faces after this, but Boddins, watching from the medbay feed, was happy to see such a careful approach, as he had seen with Basil before. Maybe he would let him continue.

The third test was a bit riskier, as the Rubicon tried her first pass at the Maka at the maximum speed she could still fire off her payload and turn away from the hulking vessel in time without touching shields, as Ka’al’s plan was still considered insane, even though theoretically, the Rubicon could survive a ramming attempt at battle speed, just not the crew aboard her, as the dampening systems would be overcharged in milliseconds. The Rubicon having a larger cloaking field meant she was already detected at 0.5 clicks. As she was coming in hot, the Maka fired very accurate torpedoes and beams into the Rubicon’s launchers – or where she thought they would sit. Their suspicions had been confirmed, not only did the Maka know about the mines, she also knew where to fire into a cloaking field, way before her scanners could determine the real outlines of the flat vessel approaching her. Still, it was a beating they took, as the Maka soon corrected her salvos to a wider spread, landing lucky hits and more accurate hits the closer the Rubicon got. The Rubicon’s answer was a full 36-torpedo salvo into the front-third port shield of the Maka, which the Maka was unwilling to endure, surprising everyone. She just jumped forward a few clicks and immediately started turning to follow the attacker, which panicked and also went to jump speed, dropped a flash and changed course, losing the pursuer. Both ships learned very important lessons on each other in this instance: The Maka needed even less than half a second to charge up her jumpdrive (she had not shown her full potential against the small enemy), and the Rubicon was able to change course under cloak and within the slipstream by manipulating the quantum field ahead of her in relation to the one in her core without dropping out and back in, something other ships avoided for the strain it put on the hulls, which was of no concern to the Rubicon (something the AI now feverishly tried to calculate and account for). Also, the Maka’s shields had been hit by eight of the Rubicon’s heavy torpedoes but only degraded by around 22%, which meant that a single salvo of 36 would not always pierce her shields, even if she kept stationary against all sanity and even if she did that, there were no torpedoes left to do actual damage to the ship in a measure that would justify the risk. Damage to the Rubicon was minor, only the armor around the starboard ions had been hit several times, but taken it well.

Then, there followed a pause, where the Maka returned to her course, happily zig-zagging around and Basil returned to his quarters, slightly worried about his prospects and scheming to get rid of Boddins, as it was not very likely to claim victory without insane risks.

Boddins immediately became a problem after finding out Basil’s next order, which was directed at Nocks. She was supposed to get as many neutral ships into the vicinity as possible. That was done by offering a tax-free trade line for a week that passed through the AOO of both ships, by going to the pirate lines and telling them about it, and by inviting many scavengers to take apart a juicy wreck that was said to have been discovered. They also faked the start of an illegal race – many of such races between youngsters going on – where the fastest ship around a set course of buoys would win the slowest ship. These races were illegal simply due to the high occurrence of pirate attacks or participants opening fire on each other, Ton being a regular organizer of such races, having once more been recruited by Basil under the promise of a – this time maybe real – juicy wreck to plunder, if the Rubicon won. Ton was hiding his ships in nearby systems, waiting for orders or the joy of seeing Basil die for his arrogance.

In short, the general area was slowly crowded with more and more ships, the Rubicon sending out lie after lie to get them there. Boddins protested at using civilians and criminals as a distraction, but Basil argued they were just there to prevent the mimic from being too obvious, for if only one ship suddenly appeared sending for help, the Maka would surely figure out it had to be the stealthy attacker.

The fourth test, by now less of a test and already a real attempt at dealing and risking damage (Basil simply called them “tests” for as long as possible to keep his naysayers at bay), came after the area was populated with a lot of very different ships looking for very different things. The pirates were careful though, pretending to be freighters, as they were very much out in the open and also suspicious of the number of vessels and the heavy cruiser patrolling the area in strange fashion. The Rubicon left the immediate scanning area and came back as a rusty old and very wide freighter. Old Rusty traversed the AOO for a while, before belching out a lot of radiation from the port engine and signaling SOS, turning on its own axis at a standstill, creating an irradiated disc around the freighter. The other ships, as had been predicted by Basil, were very weary of pirates, as this was a usual trap. The Maka feared no such thing and closed in. Now, the AI was considering the safest angle of approach, it was surely not the irradiated area, as this would interfere with the scanners for too long, possibly missing a mimic or a cloaked mine. She decided to appear above the freighter, offering to send maintenance drones but then immediately rescinded that offer upon closer scans of the freighter, which turned out to be the Rubicon looking up to her, ready to fire. The Maka, finding itself in a manageable situation that was however created by the enemy and therefore offered unknown variables, chose to jump again, which Basil had seen coming, as the Maka jumped right into a hastily repositioned minefield swooping up from the mimic’s limits, hence why they chose such a wide freighter. The minefield, however, was only partly in place in her course, since she had detected the mimic quickly by avoiding the spreading radiation. Basil had been a tad too optimistic. Still, her frontal shields took a beating as she jumped through some of the mines, but nonetheless, she stopped soon after, turned broadside, closing back in on the Rubicon. To the AI’s great surprise, the Rubicon had – instead of running again after being discovered – used the time the Maka was blind whilst jumping into the slipstream to come about hard, decloak, and point itself at the Maka’s bow, accelerating at her usual, unimpressive rate. As the two ships closed in, almost at effective range, the Rubicon did the shortest jump her quantum engines would allow her and reappeared right next to the incoming port front quarter turned towards her for the broadside attack. The resulting exchange of fire into the weakened forward shields of the Maka resulted in one penetration that took out the heavy beams – the long-range weapons – but it took the Rubicon painfully long to turn away enough to jump out, constantly being hit by an insane barrage, losing half her lower beams and two launchers. Interestingly, the Maka didn’t pursue, as it seemed that her long-range scanners – which could not be anywhere but in the front of a vessel for practical reasons – were at least temporarily out of commission, unable to track the jumping Rubicon returning to cloak, the scanners having been Basil’s actual target, unbeknownst to his crew.

Another pause followed, the first 24 hours of the test running out, with the Rubicon losing a third of her forward firepower and many beams and the Maka losing her heavy beams, some bowward structural integrity and the aforementioned scanners in the front, which meant the obvious angle of attack now lay at the bow of the heavy cruiser, although unlikely to contain the CPU core. Both ships were aware of this, so the Maka increased her forward shields to maximum, redirecting every shield generator a bit forward, leaving a weak point in the rear.

On the Rubicon, apart from trying to repair her damage in the field, a debate was now raging if the weak point in the rear was a trap or just a necessity. Basil decided it was a trap but worth going for, getting him into another discussion with first Nasz who wanted to count this as a nil-nil and give up and then Boddins seeing the increasing exchange of deadly fire. Interestingly, Nasz had gotten her sidearm from her ready room, since Basil was clearly out for blood, increasing the fight to an inevitable climax.

The fifth attempt followed a few hours later, with some repairs done to the Rubicon, even one launcher back up, meaning she could dish out almost the same damage as before. They largely followed Mellir’s plan and detonated a full 12 radiation mines, dropping them around the Maka’s course under cloak, out of short scanning range and therefore clear sight, quickly swinging to the rear of the enemy vessel as the radiation spread in the general area. The Maka chose not to jump out, which should have been a warning to Basil, who still risked the run. The Maka’s ion stream indeed was distorted and the Rubicon was sneaking up to fire into the weakened spot of the shields, until the Maka overcharged her ion engines, peppering the front of the Rubicon with radiation, making her clearly visible on the scanners and almost overheating the front equipment. The Rubicon was caught in a bad spot, as the Maka quickly turned to starboard, blocking the Rubicon’s jump route and opened a broadside at the close enemy, the Rubicon finally turning to jump out, but only after receiving crippling hits to a further three launchers and some upper beams.

Again, the Rubicon retreated for repairs and a frustrated Basil hid in his quarters, unavailable to the crew.

The sixth attempt was a modified version of Perlas plan, since they only had 2 launchers left, it took them several hours to generate and prepare a full salvo of 45 torpedoes, 39 of them now following close to the Rubicon’s hull within the cloaking field. Another few radiation mines were dropped but the Rubicon didn’t use the distorted ion stream of her opponent this time, she came in frontal and launched all 45 projectiles against the reinforced shields, achieving two penetrations with torpedoes that were launched a fraction of a second later, set to penetrate the already weakened decks and explode as far into the Maka as possible. The problem now lay in turning and having to pass the Maka whilst trying to jump, wherein the Rubicon lost her final launchers and the rest of the beams to the accurate fire of the broadside she was passing at very close range, even receiving some hits to both the ion engines as well as the quantum plates. The Rubicon was now without weaponry.

Legally, the fight was over but in the fraction of a moment before the Rubicon managed to jump out against the direction the Maka was facing (with good prospects of escaping even if she had switched to other scanners or repaired some), the Maka kept firing after destroying all weaponry, aiming for the position of the core of the Rubicon, deep withing the ship, in a clear attempt at destroying the vessel after burning through the armor. There was no doubt anymore, her orders had never included letting the Rubicon escape.

The damage to the Rubicon was intense, several internal systems had ruptured, several crew members injured and only one of the launchers looked like it could be repaired in time, plus the port ion engine was damaged and running rougher, making them a clearer target even under cloak.

Nasz decided to pull the plug. She got up from her tactical workstation, hand on her sidearm and approached Basil, who knew exactly what was coming.

- Captain, we’re out of the game. Also, the Maka didn’t cease fire after we were disarmed. She’s gone nuts or your fears were justified. As XO, it is my duty to stop you when your actions are a clear danger to the crew. Please accompany me to doctor Boddins for an evaluation of your capacity to lead.