The hive tore its way out of Enigma before the planetary garrison could stop it. Not that they had much chance to begin with. Even with the disproportionate power of the Hegemony’s core release cannon, this hive was built along the same lines as the last. It was made to cut its way through any and all opposition, but I can see some flaws in its design already.
It had far less resources at its disposal for construction than the Meer Colhara ship. This vessel was probably designed as a standard hive vessel until the Meer-Ulson realized that they’d need something else and they’ve had to make trade-offs. Its cooling systems are large and visible, accomplishing through size what they didn’t have the resources to manage through quality, which have created gaps in its ablative armour. The Meer-Ulson could only make enough room in the primary hull for a conversion core; the others required the tertiary hull structures. They’re more vulnerable to damage.
From my drones’ reports, this hive’s weapons are also closer to war-era loadouts than the specialized arsenal of the Meer Colhara ship. It’s worse at penetrating Calnian shields, but tonne-for-tonne it might carry more standard firepower. The other hive was a frontline carrier built around its conversion cores. This is a true dreadnought.
The hangars are smaller. My initial estimates suggest it has about half the complement the Meer Colhara hive did, but it’s a lot more aggressive in their deployment, creating two cordons of gunships around it; the first appears to be holding at the edge of the hive’s sensor range. Anything its sensor drones pick up, they’ll pounce on. The second perimeter is halfway between its missile envelope and its point-defence zone. They’re there to intercept anything trying to get through to energy range.
That’s a defensive deployment, and their course confirms it. They’re heading straight for the warp limit, right through open space and they’re accelerating hard. They see me fairly quickly. I can jam, sensors, disrupt targeting systems, fracture my emissions signature, disperse my thermal bloom, obfuscate my mass readings alongside a hundred more ways of confounding hostile tracking, shooting solutions and most forms of sensors. I can’t hide entirely. My reactor is simply too powerful for any form of shrouding systems to compensate for.
As soon as they notice me, they add a dozen more gravities’ thrust. They don’t know what I am, but they know I’m coming for them. The hive’s much larger than I am. Compared to the Meer Colhara ship, it’s about five to six times my size, but it has the same drive systems as its counterpart. It has far less mass to push, and it doesn’t have to fight its way through an orbital path choked with starships and wreckage. Even so, I can read the strain its engines are under from here. It can’t push itself as hard as I can.
I add more speed. It does the same, matching my acceleration curve thrust for thrust. Its commander knows the hive can’t evade me, but every time it accelerates, it buys itself more time. In the end, that single variable is what much of space combat comes down to. A finite resource that one side will run out of before the other, and the Meer-Ulson are willing to risk engine burnout to stretch the time between us as much as they can, weighing the potential consequences against the fact that I’m here and their sister ship is not.
I theorize, hypothesize, estimate and guess, creating a thousand different simulations. I’m faster. I can accelerate and decelerate harder than any crewed vessel. I’ve outrun Compact battlecruisers and pulled maneuvers that starships a tenth my size would struggle to complete without tearing themselves in half.
I’ll overtake the hive. That’s not the question. The important part, the only part of those equations is when. Yes. I can bring it into missile range forty minutes before it reaches the shift limit. Missiles alone won’t kill this thing, but then I’m not limited to them, am I?
One hundred and fifty million kilometers between us.
One hundred million.
Ninety.
Then, as a counter hits a certain mark, my equations line up. From deep within magazines large enough to swallow starships, a round nearly the size of a vessel is fed into the mass drivers that extend nearly my entire length. It locks into place. Final diagnostics confirm its systems are green. Engines, sensors, thrusters, proximity fuses. All good.
Power spikes through me like the giddy thrill of a young woman waiting to meet her lover. Electromagnetic catapults energize. A signal trickles from my mind to this system, one word.
+launch+