AN: 12 Advanced Chapters on my Patreon
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Mark learned of the correct way to shape the hull of a ship to make it not only a home that doubled as a lethal weapon, but also one that would ensure survivability in the case of receiving heavy damage from an encounter with an enemy ship. It was something that became engraved in his mind through Anahrin's repeated mentions of the importance of angled armor, even if it meant sacrificing space aboard the ship. But he also warned Mark of the shortcomings of it, highlighting how angled armor would only work in head-on encounters, meaning that if an enemy attacked at just the right angle, either above or below a ship, then they could get a perfect direct shot into the armor, at which point, its slopign will be as meaningless as the armor of current vessels since it will be receiving the attack in the same manner that the flat armor of Thor's Hammer would.
The days following his lessons on the hull were filled with information about the systems that made life possible aboard a ship and death almost inevitable once they stopped working. Life support systems were the first among these. Anahrin taught Mark about ventilation, air circulation, constructing a system that would always release the perfect oxygen balance, and carbon scrubbing. These were some of the advancements in technology that were considered miracles, as they allowed most sentient life to breathe in what was essentially a tin can that flew through the vastness of space.
During this time, Anahrin taught Mark about the consequences of improper oxygen balance in the life support systems. Mark understood everything Anahrin was teaching him, but Anahrin wanted to make sure that he would truly get it through his head. He did this by showing Mark a simulation of what would happen if a liner were to get the wrong oxygen mix while on a long journey to another system. Anahrin decreased the oxygen in the air's mix by 2 percent, and for a while, nothing happened. However, after about 30 minutes, Mark started to notice slight changes amongst the crew and the passengers. On the bridge, the crew's reaction time was growing ever slower, calculations were slipping, and their voices were growing sluggish. Within another 15 minutes, most of the crew had passed out, and the liner continued a straight heading for eternity or until it slammed into something.
As soon as they came out of the simulation, Anahrin placed his long fingers on Mark's shoulder. "Air is as much a weapon as any railgun or rifle," he said to a nodding Mark. "If you control it correctly, then you can buy yourself time. However, as soon as you lose it, you can consider yourself as good as dead. After all, most known lifeforms require it to breathe and survive, and every single space-faring civilization is a part of those lifeforms."
Anahrin taught Mark to always keep an eye on oxygen, because the slightest of changes in its quality may go unnoticed until it is far too late to do anything about it. Anahrin took it upon himself to grill Mark for the next week on learning to read oxygen levels and the slight changes in them that may lead to a ship's doom. Once he was sure that Mark had engraved the lessons on oxygen in his mind, he shifted the lens of his lessons to the following systems, the more miscellaneous, yet still quite important systems. The gravitational systems.
Artificial gravity had been something that humanity had discovered rather early on in their history of space travel. At first, the only way humanity knew to replicate gravity aboard a spacecraft was through the use of spinning rings aboard space stations. That meant that for the first century of Humanity's conquest of the universe, their ships were not equipped with any sort of device that would generate gravity. However, one company that originated from Earth had persevered through the passage of time, managing to create devices that would generate artificial gravity aboard a ship. This company was called "Gravitational Technologies Incorporated For Humanity's Future", a mouthful that was quickly shortened to Grav Tech by everyone.
Anahrin found it quite comical that the very reason why humanity created such a marvel of technology was one of the main reasons why they had come across a roadblock in effective ship armor. Humanity wanted to have comfort amongst their own ships, just like they did on their space stations and colonized planets, trading in effectiveness for comfortable space.
Anahrin conjured the device in a hologram before Mark's eyes. It was a dull, metallic sphere the size of a shuttle's engine, latticed with angular struts. Its surface appeared to have been scarred with etchings that were, in fact, microscopic grooves cut with such precision that only under extreme scrutiny would their full geometry be captured. It had tubes of pale-blue plasma that were connected to a ship's reactor and snaked into its housing, feeding it a steady level of energy.
"This," Anahrin said with a hint of amusement in his voice, "is humanity's first great achievement. Some may even consider it sorcery. Before this device was created, humanity would have probably been buried in theories that gravity is just another of nature's great forces. However, gravity's principle is that it is, in actuality, just geometry. Somehow, the research teams behind Grav Tech discovered that space bends, and things just happen to fall into that bend. So instead of creating gravity, they carved a well. And though it may not look like much, this device managed to implement that simple yet complex principle of gravity."
The projection shifted as it arted to display particles drifting in a field, curving toward the device as if it were a planet. But unlike a planet's pull, this pull could be tuned to a desired degree. With a flick of his hand, Anahrin adjusted the field, and suddenly, the particle that had been getting slowly pulled into the device went down, as if stuck to an invisible floor, neatly aligned as if standing on solid ground.
"Through the use of localized matrices, humanity created this," Anahrin said, a gleam in his eyes. "The grooves on the surface of the device are actually resonance channels. They are there to guide plasma-fed pulses into oscillations that can warp spacetime ever so slightly in repeating pockets. Now, one of these pockets alone is nothing other than a hiccup in the geometry of gravity. But stack millions upon millions of these pockets, and align them in a way that they reinforce each other, and you have yourself a false attraction to the floor below your feet. You have gravity."
Anahrin's smile was sharp. "This is also only possible because gravity isn't all too natural. If I'm being truthful, all gravity is fake, Mark. Even on your homeworld of Earth, or as it is now called, Terra, even there, it is simply the curvature of space tricking your body into falling into what's below it. Grav Tech merely found a way to build a planet's lie inside of a box. Truly, humanity is descended from the Starthari."
He coughed, catching his breath, but the faint light in his eyes remained. "Unlike any space-faring civilization, Humanity didn't stumble into this; it beelined its way to it far earlier than most civilizations. Do you have any idea of just how many empires the Starthari recorded simply wandering through the void for millennia before they even dared to make an artificial gravity device that warps spacetime itself? Yet your kind, scarcely a century out of their cradle, made this… this crude jewel."
Mark crossed his arms. "I'm not going to lie, Ani, it's almost starting to sound like you are proud of humans."
"I'm not proud of humans," Anahrin corrected softly. "This device, even if we take its newest iterations, is simply worthless in front of Starthari gravitational technology. However, I will not hide that I am impressed. However, as descendants of the Starthari, it is only logical for Humanity to have such a genius for shortcuts. Most species would still be spinning in circles to mimic the ground beneath their feet while Humanity sliced into spacetime with little more than stubbornness and a corporation desperate for profit. If only your greed were at the same level as ours, then who knows just how far you could have progressed."
Anahrin let the projection fade, slowly leaving only the sphere floating in the dark. "But I want you to remember something, Mark. This device, though a wonder of human ingenuity, is still fragile. It doesn't work on its own, and with too much stress, it will fail. Though it is impressive and almost miraculous, it is still a tool, and you must treat it as such. And tools are always meant to be improved. Gravity is not to be trusted, as it is only an illusion and a leash on physics. Before relying on it, you should know just how far its leash reaches."
After being drilled for weeks with physics lessons that would have been too advanced for the smartest of humanity's astro-phycicists, Anahrin finally shifted his focus to what would be the last of his lessons for Mark. A ship's weapon systems.
Mark half expected another dry introduction to a ship's weapon systems, just the kind that he had received when he had attended the Naval Academy, an endless list of calibers and yields. But he knew that Anahrin was much better than that, turning the long, never-ending monologues of different weapons into a simple lesson.
"Alright, I'm not going to bore you with things you already know," Anahrin said, a certain sense of tiredness could be felt in his words. "The names are simple, and the number of weapons a ship has is limited. From long range to short range, you have rail cannons, rail guns, torpedoes, missiles, lasers, and finally autocannons. So, you know what they are and what they do. What you do not know is how to make them sing."
A hologram showing the skeletal outline of a destroyer formed before Anahrin as he waved his hands. The destroyer's dorsal railgun was highlighted in red as Anahrin started speaking. "Every weapon is a system in itself, not a barrel. The secret of these weapons lies not in what it fires, but in how it reacts in the moment of firing."
The hologram broke apart as the gun's spinal mount was shown. On it were layers of servos, gyros, and magnetic rails that unfolded like a clockwork mode. "The most famous and most used weapons in human space is the railgun, and that being the case, human captains tend to rely on its power. Many of them think that if enough reactor output is dumped into the railgun, then it will simply obliterate whatever lies before them. Though it may hold some truth, that sentiment is brute and stupid. Doing so is to waste power without any efficiency. Tell me, Mark, after all you've learned, why do you think is the reason for railguns to fire so sluggishly?"
Mark tilted his head in thought. "Well, my Naval background wants to say that they overheat and cause too much strain on the rails, but the engineer in me really wants to say that it is due to either lazy design or complacency in what they've got."
Anahrin nodded his head with a smile. "You would be correct on that. It seems you have a great teacher," he said, stroking his own ego with his words. "The designers were lazy. The tracking algorithms are heavily outdated, the firing solutions lag behind, and most importantly, the guns bleed way too much power because the rails themselves have not been refined, let alone redesigned by anyone in almost two centuries. Railguns draw an obscene amount of energy not because they HAVE to, but because they are like spoiled children and just haven't been told 'no'."
Mark furrowed his eyebrows in confusion as Anahrin manipulated the projection to zoom in, showing the twin conductive rails of a 15-meter-long railgun.
"Did I confuse my pupil? Well, let me break this down for you. The conductive layering is the key here. Humanity uses raw alloys for its rails, but if you layer the rails with some sort of superconducting filament, alternate the railgun's thermal sinks, then you reduce the resistance. And if you reduce the resistance, then you get to keep your barrel cooler, and therefore you will bleed far less energy. Now the same slug that once required the push of a reactor can be fired with just half of the demand. This means that you can get a faster reload, even faster cooling, and more importantly, you can fire far more rounds at your target.
Mark leaned forward, his mind thinking of something to ask. "Okay, I think I understand that. Now what about the 100-meter rail cannon?"
Anahrin's thin smile stretched. "I understand your desire to make that behemoth fire more often. A shipkiller of that length is rarely equipped on anything other than a capital ship, mostly limited to the largest of heavy destroyers, cruisers, and dreadnaughts. They are far too power hungry to be equipped on anything smaller than that and can barely fire once every two minutes."
The hologram shifted, now showing a heavy cruiser with a highlighted 4 reactors that were standard for a heavy cruiser, feeding power into thick conduits. "Humanity insists on charging one massive surge for each shot, which is nothing short of wasteful. However, if you were to stagger the capacitors in series, let each one pre-charge in small increments, and then cascade them, then the rails would receive a rolling wave of energy rather than a brutal shove. The slug would leave the barrel just as fast as before; however, the system would draw far less energy from the ship's reactor at once, and your ship wouldn't stagger every single time it fired."
Anahrin let a projection of the rail cannon firing with its traditional drain play, the heavy cruiser's power grid sagging. He then switched the model to what he had proposed. The projection showed the ship remaining steady and the energy being consumed in small, manageable waves.
"As you can see, the cycling is faster, the power wasted at once is highly diminished, and there is much less heat choking the rails." Anahrin looked at Mark with the pride of a teacher watching his pupil grasp a key concept in their class. "The enemy would expect you to fire up the rail cannon once every other minute, but what will happen when it fires three, four, maybe five times? Not to mention, since the draw of energy isn't as high, they can't really predict that you are about to fire your rail cannon at them."
Anahrin moved on to the smaller weapons, such as the autocannons. The previous projections disappeared before being replaced by autocannons whose stubby barrels twitched as they tracked something unseen. "Let's say you find yourself in the unfortunate predicament of a fighter swarm. Speed, not power, becomes your shield. Having the ability to track is having life. Human systems tend to rely on centralized fire control, which means that when the computer has a hiccup, then every single gun hesitates to fire. That is simply foolish. Every single autocannon should carry its own micro-brain, a dedicated predictive algorithm running at the barrel itself. You let it learn patterns independently, and in no time you will have a defensive weapon that can react far faster than a centralized command ever could."
Anahrin had a projection display a wave of fighters on their way to attack a lone destroyer. They weaved through the fire from the centralized command system, letting half of them slip through and land a hit on the firing destroyer. He then ran the display again, this time with the destroyer equipped with independent systems. The closest a fighter got to the destroyer was within 12,000 kilometers, which would be a devastating distance, only if the destroyer were facing another destroyer.
"Next, we have the lasers," Anahrin continued the lesson, shifting the hologram once again. "Lasers are like scalpels; they are extremely precise weapons. However, they are limited by cooling, effectiveness, and the massive power draw. It is the reason why they are not all too popular. Add to that the fact that their effective range is just 60,000 kilometers, and now you see why humanity has stuck with railguns. Even the Strathari had a disdain for lasers in battle. You would have to concentrate the beam for far too long on the same spot to do anything to the enemy, and who in their right mind will just stand there and get burnt to a crisp?"
Finally, he returned to missiles and torpedoes. "Now, after railguns, missiles, and torpedoes are some of the most used weapon systems by humanity. They are more fire-and-forget weapons that will track your enemy's ship until they are either shot out or find their mark. However, just like lasers, missiles and torpedoes are pretty ineffective as they tend to get shot out quite often, unless they are fired within a range of 40,000 kilometers. But if you're firing a missile at that range, then something went horribly wrong. Unless you lace the warhead's casing with adaptive smart-dust or some self-arranging micro-antennae that would give them the ability to rewrite their own signals mid-flight, then they're worthless. Even then, that's some pricey material you're wasting on a weapon that will only be fired once and never seen again."
Mark sat in silence, letting the flood of information settle in his mind. Every weapon he had known before, he now knew at a more intimate level.
Anahrin's voice softened as all of the holograms died out and the room's white lights softly glowed. "This is the lesson: weapons are not hammers. In a fight, the winner is not the side with the biggest gun, but the side that can hit their shots. There will always be ways to improve them, to make them disobey the rules their enemies expect."
Mark swallowed, his eyes fixed on the monstrous 100-meter railgun. He could already imagine the enemy's shock when a cannon of that size cycled twice as fast as physics had led them to believe, let alone four or five times faster.
Three months had folded away beneath the weight of these lessons, and Mark had found himself waking up with new ideas, excited for the lessons Anahrin would teach him.
It was only when he came out of his last simulation and was met with the dim glow of the chamber that had become his classroom that Mark realized the span of months that had vanished. He felt a sense of exhaustion setting into him.
Anahrin coughed, the sound catching Mark's attention. "Now," he said, "you no longer know parts of a ship, you know the whole. A ship is no ship without the whole, and you have finally learned it all. You learned what makes a ship move, what makes it dangerous, and what makes it a home. All you are missing is the application of this knowledge, and you may call yourself a true ship crafter, or Starship Engineer, as humans call it. And that will be my true final lesson."