Human Weaponry

Chapter 5: Ship to Ship

"The hangar is locked and secured! We can disengage dock!"

"Wait for the all-clear, we still have squads holding off boarders at hangar two and bulkhead 14."

"Bring systems for the primary railgun online, arm point defense, and open forward Ironhead missile pods."

I don't know how anyone could understand what they were supposed to do. The command crew was shouting orders to each other and their communications devices. It was all so hectic. They ran to and from various stations. I hope Sergeant Gerrick is okay, the sound of gunfire had slowed, but it had been a ruthless fight from what I had seen on the cameras. One of the humans here seemed to be a commanding officer of some sort, she sat in the middle of the bridge, overseeing everyone.

One of the command crew addressed her, "Captain, Bulkhead Charlie 14 reports they just took out the last of their boarding party, seven human casualties."

So she was the ship's captain, I assume that meant she was the highest in power here.

"Get a medic team to them, they're the furthest from the medbay. Are all systems still online?"

"Their second boarding craft detonated turret four's ammunition, we can't repair it here. Turrets one through three and five through eight are still operational."

"Very well, turn them to face forward, when we disengage dock we're going to attack the enemy frigate."

All the forward "turrets" as they called them moved to face the front of the ship, the ground shook as they all began turning. One human stood up quickly, he had heard something on his communications device. "Captain, Hangar Two is reporting that the last of the first boarding party has surrendered, four individuals, one badly injured. Five confirmed human casualties."

"Alright, see if the med bay can do anything about the injured one. Put the rest of them in the brig, under heavy guard. Disengage from the dock, hold on to your helmets, people."

The speakers came on again, ALERT: DISENGAGING FROM STATION DOCK IN 3... 2... 1..., I had sat down in a human seat in preparation, a bit small for me, but I was relieved that I did. The entire ship shook as it broke away, two humans fell over on the bridge. The captain looked at me with a look that I could only describe as concern, then she seemed to make up her mind about something.

"Re-engage 1g gravity generation, we need to be running at full efficiency."

Everything was immediately uncomfortable. I could still function, but so sluggish. Everything is so heavy. I strapped myself to the seat, something told me it was going to be hard to be standing soon.

The captain started barking orders again, "Engage inertial dampeners, then rear the ship around, we're going to try and hit them with the main cannon while we are out of their weapons range."

We began moving. The inertial dampeners definitely worked, we were turning fast. We moved forward, and went around the station so we were in between it and the enemy ship.

"Captain! Incoming projectiles, estimated time of impact, thirty seconds."

"How much do we have to move to avoid them?"

"Not much, but they'll strike the station if we do, and it's not shielded."

"Let them come then, run calculations for the main cannon."

A robotic voice came over the bridge speaker, TARGET LOCKED. FRIGATE CLASS. BEGINNING FIRING SOLUTION. ESTIMATED TIME TO IMPACT: TWO MINUTES.

The captain yelled, "Hold that order! Wait for the impact, we run the risk of hitting one of their projectiles with the main cannon."

ENEMY PROJECTILE IMPACT IN 5... 4... 3...

I clenched, and held on tightly to the small human chair. I could see others doing the same.

2... 1... IMPACT

I looked out the front window. It was incredibly loud, I watched as the projectiles impacted on the shielding, the shields held, but I felt like someone had thrown me. I had banged my head into the nearby table when we were hit.

"Fire when ready."

ALERT. BEGINNING PRIMARY RAILGUN FIRING SEQUENCE."

I thought that I would never experience anything more jarring than being in a ship as it got hit with projectiles while also being in twice my comfortable gravity. That was before I experienced the power of a human ship's main railgun. I made the mistake of looking toward the front of the ship when it fired. In an instant, I was blinded by the bright muzzle flash, and it was as if my entire skeleton was going to shake out of my skin. It was now that I learned how tough humans are. None of the crew or soldiers on the bridge with me seemed fazed by the shot.

My vision began coming back. There was now a visual representation of the enemy ship in the middle of the room. Presumably to see the damage done by the railgun. Although we would have about two minutes before the projectile hit or missed, even with how fast it is going.

I turned to a human sitting at a station next to me, "will they not detect the projectile before getting hit?"

He looked at me startled, he had been very focussed on whatever he was doing. "They might. It's moving incredibly fast and it's hard to detect, but we don't know what their scanning capabilities are."

It was a tense minute as we all watched the ship. Waiting. The hit was supposed to happen in less than twenty seconds. Evidently, the Floriacians saw it coming, as they began burning their main engines at full power. It was too late though, all that it served to do was make the shot hit the rear engines of the ship rather than the center.

I was here to learn about human small arms. Nothing I learned there could have prepared me for the destructive potential of human shipboard weapons. Had I not seen the small kinetic weapons earlier, I would have scoffed at the notion of a ship's primary armament being kinetic. There simply ceased to be a back portion of the enemy ship. It was completely removed by the railgun. Any shielding or armor it might have had was completely nullified.

"Captain, enemy frigate has been disabled."

"Right, good hit. Let's send out search and rescue teams."

Wait, what?