MagTech Suit Up

  Into The Darkness

  TOC

  They were all gathered in the virtual conference room trying to come up with a plan to destroy the Enemy Battle Platform. For the most part they were thinking they would send five Bashers out to destroy it with the Team, Ship, and the other three as standby at the edge of the solar system. They didn’t think they had any other play. But they still were not sure if it was a trap or not. Even if it was a trap they had to try, it was too big of a threat. The hard part was finding the weak points of the battle platform. They had plans of the original builder ships, and they showed where their command centers and reactors where, but the platform had been modified and hardened against attack. Ship had sent its drones onboard the platform to find out if they had blueprints for the design of the new changes. The drone downloaded all of the files from the system. They were all gathered in the conference room discussing the plan while Ships network analyzed the data from the platform. In preparation of telling them about the intel, Ship decided it was time to reveal the changes it had made to the drones. Before we continue I should tell you that I have made a few changes to the drones. I realized the need to be able to collect data from ships and other systems so I equipped the drones with a data probe that allows them to hack into any system within a configurable range of the drone, Ship informed them. Yes, well I can see were that would be useful, Michael said. Can we send one into the platform to gather intel, he asked. I have already done so and am scanning the data now for information pertinent to this mission, Ship informed them. Excellent, though you guys are making a habit of creating new tools for our missions and not telling anyone, Megan remarked, she was still a little miffed about not being part of the Basher design process.

  It seemed like a logical next step and I didn’t think anyone would object, Ship said, by way of explanation. Emma of course knew that she had helped Ship with the data probe months earlier. Ship reached out to her, Emma I am sorry for taking credit for your work, but I think you have seen the success our little side project has had, and I didn’t want to have to go into further detail with the rest of the team. I understand, she said, I had a feeling some of the intel that we had been getting might be coming from our side project. “Yes, it has benefited our cause greatly, but there are some that might not like the idea of using surveillance feeds from the alliance based on our relationship with that aspect of the Planetary Alliance. For now I would like to keep it between us and your mother”, Ship said. No problem Ship, it has done her a lot of good to feel useful again and I have enjoyed working with her, Emma replied. Besides if you need to tell them you will, I trust you, she said. Ship felt good about the friendship they had built and a little bad about not telling her everything.

  Ship broke off their discussion because the information they were looking for had been found, pardon me Emma I must speak to the entire team, it said. Ship addressed the whole group. I have found the plans that they used to modify the builder ship, it said, displaying them to the hollo-screen. “It looks like they have built an outer hull around the original ship with several added bays and weapons batteries. As well as the three launch platforms. Each of these platforms holds about thirty attack ships, that in combination with the weapons on that thing it would be almost unstoppable, in close range to a planet. The bad thing is the outer hull has been hardened and with the bays around the inner hull it would be almost impossible to hit the reactors with a torpedo strike, we may be able to get to the command and control but even that is going to be hard”, Ship informed them.

  What if we hit the surrounding ships and the launch platforms at the same time, then we just keep hitting the area around where the reactors should be until we punch through, David suggested. That will work to isolate the platform, now provided it is not a trap and they can’t detect us, we should be able to avoid the guns long enough to take them out, Michael said. I would also target the command and control, just to make sure the platform is destroyed, Ship added.

  “I think we should be able to have two Bashers concentrate on the platforms and the surrounding ships. At least sixteen torpedoes per platform spaced out along the entire thing with the small weapons hitting the individual ships in case any don’t get destroyed by the torpedoes. Then the other ship can hit the other ships around it, and redirect to the platforms if needed. At the same time we have two concentrating fire on the area over the reactor and the command and control. The other ship will start hitting the guns”, David suggested. “That should do it, and the first two ships can help with the guns as soon as the platforms are taken out. There shouldn’t be much left at that point but they should just send some in random areas along the outer hull just to be sure”, Michael agreed. I think if we hit it that hard it should go down, and hopefully the reactor will blow to help with the destruction, Ship said.

  Ok, let’s get the crews together and go over the plan and we will start designating targets based on the surveillance images, Michael said. The crews were brought into a virtual bullpen they had setup for mission briefings. For them this was the first time they had been told about the Enemy Battle Platform. It was a shock, but they were confident once they heard the plan. They had seen the Bashers in action and knew the destructive force of the torpedoes. There was no way the platform could survive that many hits no matter how hardened it was. Even if by some miracle they did not manage to punch through to the reactor they could take out all of the weapons and then just keep pounding it.

  The meeting broke up and everyone went off to get ready for the mission. The Bashers were coming and hell followed with them. Just as they were getting ready to load up on the ships, David had an idea. “Hey Ship, you know how we have the spell that converts our obstacles to oxygen when we dismiss them, and we have the exploding shards that change all the matter in the bubble into an explosive. What if we added a first phase to the torpedoes, have a bubble on the target area that turns everything into oxygen just before the shard hits? That would leave a hole in the armor and help weaken it, as well as leave some residual oxygen for the explosives to burn. It would work along the platform too, giving additional oxygen to burn the ships and the platform”, David said. Yes, I think that would work nicely, I am assuming you want at least a two foot bubble with an adjustable depth of center configuration, Ship asked. Yes, I doubt they have given that thing two foot thick armor plating, even if they have the bubble should weaken it enough, that the shard should be able to pierce it, David said. Ship created a retro-active flash upgrade that changed the interfaces on all the Bashers to use the new torpedo.

  Getting hit by one of the old torpedoes was bad enough, getting hit by one of these was guaranteed to pierce the hull and let the rest of the destruction in on you. What made it worse was on a thinner hull the bubble would breach the hull for a moment just before the shard hit, so everything would start to be sucked toward the breach and into the explosion as the shard turned into white phosphorous and paved the way for the explosives.

  Ship calculated that even five hundred milliseconds would cause the atmosphere and anything not bolted down to be drawn toward the breach, so it gave the impact that much of a delay. Which was about the distance away from the hull that the torpedoes usually appeared in space, before they were flung at the hull to build up their kinetic force. It did have to increase the distance slightly to allow for the time span, but that also increased the kinetic force which also increased their destructive capabilities. The end result was something that should be able to take out any ship or hull.

  Should we tell the others, Ship asked. No let it be a surprise when they see these things rip that battle platform to hell, David said. By now they were heading out the hanger doors and headed for the atmosphere. Are you listening to me Emma was saying as David finished his conversation with ship. What, oh yeah, sorry he said. Do I even want to know she asked, guessing he was up to something. It’s all good, he said, not wanting to spoil the surprise, the
y probably wouldn’t notice anyway, the delay was only half a second and it was going to be followed by a big explosion. They were flying all together to the point where Ship and the three Bashers would wait on standby. Because they could only fly as fast as Ship it took them two days to get to the edge of the solar system. They monitored the surveillance as they went, nothing had changed the five ships were in a defensive formation around the battle platform, but the attack ships were not manned and it didn’t look like they were expecting an attack.

  Ship reported that it looked like they were setting up a cloning operation on the platform. That kind of meant they were not expecting an attack. All the ships made it to the rendezvous point and they stopped to assess the situation before going forward. The captain reported that long range scanners were picking up plasma disruptions. He said that they probably thought that the attacking force was tracking their ships through their plasma trails, so they used disruptors to cover their trail. That might mean that they didn’t suspect the Telekinetic sensor, so they probably did not have one of their own. This was good news from a tactical point of view, but bad because it would make it hard to navigate through the disruption fields.

  The Bashers were equipped with the latest navigation equipment so it shouldn’t be that bad. Just to be sure, Emma did a quick scan of the web to see if there was anything that might make it easier, and found a few hardware and software updates in the latest research that would help eliminate the problem. A quick conference between Gordon, Her, and Ship and they had a flash upgrade for the Bashers and Ship. They decided they were as ready as they would ever be so the five Bashers headed for the platform to start the battle.

  Jully was piloting Basher One, and the others were flying in a wide formation around her, even though they were cloaked they didn’t fly too close, just in case they came under attack they would have room to maneuver. As they entered the disruption field the new updates filtered out the energy waves and registered them only as minor static on the instruments. About two hundred thousand miles past the edge of the solar system they started seeing clusters of cloaked mines, so they steered clear of them and continued toward the platform.

  About an hour after they had started seeing the mines they starting picking up the Dark Planet on their long range scans, they arced away from the Planet and did not return to a heading that would intersect with the platform until they were no longer picking up the Planet on their scans. This far into enemy territory it was better to be safe than sorry. An hour later they were picking up the platform, they slowed their approach and took up positions a few thousand miles out, and slowly started closing in. When they were close enough that they could see the platform on their screens and load their preplanned designations they waited.

  There was no reaction to their presence, so they contacted the Ship to let them know they were in position and ready to launch the attack. David responded, that they were a go for launch, and the battle began. Basher One opened fire on the platforms which were approximately six hundred feet long, they put a torpedo every forty feet along the whole length of all three platforms and the smaller weapons targeted each of the cockpits of the attack ships. At the same time Basher Two opened fire on the ships around the battle platform, two torpedoes to each ship. Basher Three started firing on the area the reactor should be, and Basher four fired on the command and control. Basher Five started firing on the gun batteries, one torpedo for each battery of guns facing them.

  A second later Basher One fired more torpedoes in between the spots they had hit with the first rounds, and Basher two did the same thing slightly offset from the earlier rounds. The platforms were nothing but crumbling pieces of debris mixed with pieces of the attack ships. So they switched position and started taking out the gun batteries on the other side of the ship. Basher Three and Four were still firing on the areas of the ship that should have the reactor and command and control, all that was left was a big gaping hole were the command and control had been, and the reactor was starting to explode making the huge pieces of the hull that remained around it blow outward. Basher five was now just randomly attacking what was left of the battle platform. Wherever there was something that looked intact it was hitting it with torpedoes, all the Bashers started doing the same thing until there was nothing but a debris field where the battle platform used to be.

  They broke off the attack, and turned around and started heading back to the rendezvous point. They didn’t want to risk waiting around just in case they had been detected and there was a fleet of ships on the way to take them out. On the way back Basher One contacted Ship to let them know that the mission was a success. Gamma Faction was going to be really angry, when they saw what was left of their battle platform. Jully asked if they had done something to the torpedoes because they seemed to be even more destructive than before. David told her and the rest of the team that he and Ship had made a slight improvement to the original design. He went on to explain to everybody what the change was, everyone agreed that it would make them more effective, and that they seemed to have proven it during this operation. Of course Megan was a little upset, she gave David an icy look that said, yet another design I was left out of. Based on their relationship she was hoping he would include her more in the design process. She may not be as good as Emma was at it, but at least he could include her.

  Jully told them that based on what they had seen during the battle, that even the battle armor of the battle platform didn’t stand a chance against them. She said from what they saw the plate armor was about a foot and half thick, so the torpedoes were going right through it. They were actually going through to the inner hull before lodging into it, and then going through the cascade explosions. The holes were splintering and cracking big chunks of the outer hull outward, following a big flash inside the ship as the last of the oxygen burned off. The whole thing looked like giant bullet holes shot from the inside of the ship. Yeah, we are analyzing your battle feed now and we see what you mean, Michael said. I wouldn’t want to be in there when it happened, he added. Oh, hell no, Jully said, I thought the other torpedoes were bad these are just plain evil. I like it, makes us that much more effective, she said, with a slightly evil laugh.

  On the way back they encountered two ships deploying the mines, they simply used the small weapon to set off one of the mines that set off a chain reaction destroyed the two ships. They hit their command and control centers with torpedoes just to be sure, but when someone came to investigate it would look like the mines had done all the damage. The Enemy was on the ropes but not out yet. They had destroyed several of the bases and now the battle platform and most of their ships. They knew they would have to attack the Dark Planet soon, if they wanted to finish them off. But for now the mission was over, and they needed to regroup and plan their next move.

  A couple hours later they were at the rendezvous point, they had a virtual meeting and decided they really didn’t have any reason to stay in the area so they returned to home base. The mission was a success so now they had to wait again to see what the Enemies next move would be. The Bashers had proven themselves yet again, and their battle tactics were being proven effective as well. The Bashers were just one more piece of the Red Team RT’s arsenal of using technology aided by telekinetic energy to dominate a battle. The Bashers functioned as extensions of the suits. The suits functioned as extensions to the augmentation and the augmentation was just an aid to help channel telekinetic energy of the person inside the suit. Without the telekinetic energy to power them they all would be useless, and without the tactics to take advantage of the combination of the two, they would have failed.