Chapter 564 Objects in Motion

Chapter 564 Objects in Motion

The fleets, despite being separated by light hours, simultaneously brought their gravity engines to full power and accelerated through the border of the solar system.

Aboard the TSF Proxima.

“Prepare for maneuvering,” Fleet Admiral of the Red Marco Bianchi ordered, then settled back in his chair, his job as the fleet admiral complete.

(Ed note: The full rank structure for the TSF will be posted in Discord, but for now just understand that there are two admiralty branches: red and green. Admirals of the red are line commanders; they command fleets in battle. Admirals of the green are administrative; they handle logistics, personnel, and command stationary assets like outposts and refit bases. https://discord.gg/5ba9m5DFKR )

The captain of the cityship echoed the fleet admiral’s command, but his job was just beginning.

The cityship he commanded was colossal, measuring a full forty kilometers in diameter. It almost had to be; not only was it a mothership capable of containing thousands of other ships, ranging from the kilometers-long drone tenders to the hundred-meter length of the humble corvettes, they were also space-capable cities. They were designed to land on planets and would instantly become full, if small, fortress cities to kickstart colonization.

And once Aron had earned enough SP to upgrade to wormhole FTL tech, they would also act as mobile wormhole generators.

So, all in all, the cityships were some of the most capable in the entire Terran Space Fleet, but they had one weakness: mobility. They could zip around in straight lines like no other, with the enormous reactor and capacitor banks pushing their gravity engines to insane levels of performance, but stopping on a dime and turning while in motion were both maneuvers they were simply not built for.

It was nobody’s fault but the laws of physics. The immense mass of the cityships would require much higher levels in materials science than Lab City had yet reached. Attempting high-speed maneuvers or rapid deceleration would simply tear the ships apart. It wasn’t so much that they were fragile, because they definitely were anything but flimsy, but because the shearing force applied to the ships during high-speed maneuvering was simply too overwhelming for even the best materials the researchers in Lab City had come up with to date.

“Point defenses released to automatic, Captain,” the weapons officer yelled over the din of conversation.

The captain’s expression grew stern. “Can the chatter, ladies and gentlemen. Do your jobs,” he growled.

The hum of conversation died down, people at the various stations on the bridge exchanging glances with each other.

Space was inherently dangerous, especially danger zones like nebulas and asteroid fields. And even though the autopilot was run by the ship’s AI, there was always a chance that a rogue asteroid or debris from two objects colliding nearby would impact the ship. Given the armor and redundancies built into each vessel, small impacts like that—even when dealing with the extreme speeds the ships were capable of reaching—wouldn’t be likely to cripple or destroy any of the heavier ships of the line in the TSF, but it could put them behind schedule as they would be forced to stop to repair the damage.

Yes, every ship in the TSF and TEF had shields, but hardware had limitations. Each impact on those shields would reduce the lifespan of the shield generators themselves, so in order to maintain the highest state of combat readiness they could, the shield generators wouldn’t be online during routine maneuvering. After all, why would they take the damage that could be avoided simply by slowing down to a reasonable acceleration and top speed?

Fleet Admiral Bianchi nodded approvingly. He came from a long line of sailors that stretched all the way back to when Italy was still a hodgepodge of city-states. His ancestors had salt in their veins and the sea in their hearts, having sailed ever since the glassmakers of Venice peddled their wares at the beginning of the Italian Renaissance. And that tradition had carried through the centuries, with a Bianchi at the helm of everything from coasters to the enormous cargo vessels in the empire’s merchant marine.

Now, a Bianchi had stepped out into the vastness of space to command an entire fleet on his own. The responsibility weighed heavily on the man’s shoulders, but the pride in his spine refused to let him bow under the weight and kept him standing firm on the shoulders of centuries-long tradition.

“Captain, you have the bridge. I’ll be in the flag bridge,” he said.

“Yes, Admiral. I have the bridge,” the captain replied, and the admiral left the bridge.

The captain turned his attention inward to the augmented reality display generated by his quantum microcomputer implant. The ship’s structure itself seemed to vanish, leaving him feeling like he was the one moving through space, not the ship he was on. He entered an almost meditative state as he gazed out into the vastness of the universe, awed and humbled by his insignificance in the face of the void.