Work Text:
Based on FTL: Faster Than Light, by Subset Games
The Little Ship That Could
The Human Empire. That’s what they called it. Or at least that’s what they called themselves. The squishy weird looking ‘new kids’ on the intergalactic yard. Humans had only just become a self-sustaining space faring civilisation.
On a scale which Humans themselves had philosophised, entitled the ‘Kardashev Scale’; they were barely a type 2 civilisation. That meant they had only just been able to control the available energy and resources within their home planetary system.
What a fascinating idea. “Home”. The rest of the intergalactic community didn’t really have that sort of concept, having long ago abandoned and forgotten their own version of the solar system.
The thing about Humans was that they always thought they had to be apart of something. Something bigger than them. Despite only having been introduced to the intergalactic theatre a mere few decades ago, they liked to think they were able to contribute something meaningful.
Of course, this was ridiculous. Humans were weak and malformed, which was every fault of their own, with majority of them refusing to commit to any sort of drastic genetic engineering either for themselves or their offspring.
“We can make do without the tentacles,” was a common response.
“Our current skeleton structure has worked well for us so far,” they often said.
Their technology was crude and fundamentally flawed in every aspect of engineering design. It was embarrassing really. But they insisted. And they kept insisting. After some time, the Federation finally relented and accepted Human ships and personnel into the ‘IFDF’, or the Intergalactic Federation Defence Fleet.
So here they were. Requesting to dock in the 17th sector of Gnoth X8, one of the many frontiers of the unending war with what we were calling the Lanius.
The Lanius were a civilisation older than time itself. Or that’s how the legends went anyway. As old as they allegedly were, they didn’t seem to exist on any records older than a few thousand Human years ago. By standards, they were younger than those Humans. In fact, the Lanius should’ve been considered the ‘new kid’ if it weren’t for the fact that their technology was vastly superior to anything the IFDF had, and that they were aggressively attacking and taking over Federation colonies and sovereign territory.
With the IFDF being overwhelmed constantly and countless innocent colonies being lost to Lanius imperialisation, it was paramount that space habitats like this one in the 17th sector of Gnoth X8 were always fully staffed and always on high alert.
An arcology was a mostly self-sustaining massive habitation structure. In this day and age of the Federation’s calendar, arcologies were space stations which could almost be considered artificial planets which could house military personnel plus their families and typically accommodated thousands. The habitat at the 17th was one such example.
Ancient space architecture and history lessons aside, the tiny human ship, which they proudly called the “Kestrel” received permission to dock in supply bay 6. It was actually a thinly veiled insult that the ship was only granted access to a supply dock because those were usually reserved for unloading what little supplies a self-sustaining mass habitation needed. Usually from shuttles that came from nearby planets. Supply bays were industrial in nature, housing very little amenities and certainly offered no luxury features what-so-ever.
However, the human crew didn’t seem to mind. In fact, the vessel control staff didn’t even think they realised it was an insult. The tiny, flimsy Human ship slowly manoeuvred towards the slightly outdated plug and clamp docking arrangement that the IFDF hadn’t gotten around to updating in a hundred years.
The Kestrel had just flown in from Sol-3, Earth as the humans called it. The spacecraft was one of the newest ships in the line of Human warship manufacturing.
“This is the Kestrel, she’s to be the pride of our fleet,” the representative told the very large panel of military top brass at an IFDF conference some years ago.
“We expect to be rolling out her Ke-13 model in the thousands soon. We are just finishing our shipyard orbital station above Neptune and we’ll have the new Ke-13’s division out and flying within the turn of the decade.”
A lot of the words the rep used didn’t really make sense to the panel as a lot of the concepts were Human things. But the military men did understand that the Humans were somehow proud of their pathetic ship. A few had laughed discretely. Or whatever their non-human biological equivalence of laughing was.
Nonetheless, the Kestrel had made the arduous trip from Home to the 17th using the FTL drive. The only technology that could be considered “technology” by the others in the Federation. Of course, it was the Federation themselves that had given Humans the knowledge of FTL travel upon their emergence into the intergalactic society.
The Human scientists at the research capital in Europa were still trying to figure out how some of the physics worked to allow Faster Than Light travel.
After a successful docking, the crew of the Kestrel stretched their legs for a bit (a practice which was unnecessary for most other species in the Fed) and got to work, checking and rechecking systems on their ship, opening up panels and plugging in cables (yet some more unnecessary activities). Hard at work, the Humans ignored other Federation crew members in the bay staring, whispering and laughing, not-very-subtly.
They knew it was going to be like this, and they knew it was going to be like this for a long while. Afterall, it wasn’t too long ago that Humans had interacted amongst themselves in a similar fashion, judging and separating people based on how they looked, what knowledge they had, where they had come from…
Or how “advanced” their civilisation was.
The Human crew had been away from their homes an extremely long time. Even with faster than light capabilities, some fundamental physics laws such as Distance = Velocity x Time were unshakeable pillars of the universe. They still required time to travel from point A to point B. Luckily, the laws of special relativity apparently no longer applied when an object travels faster than light so the crew would be able to return to Earth in time to watch their children grow old. They weren’t sure exactly what the laws of any relativity were once speeds were faster than light. That was still being studied by the researchers at Europa.
Despite this, the Kestrel’s tour into the 17th sector would take significant years off from the lives of the crew. Time dilation or not, the mission would be an unavoidably long one.
They knew this. They knew the cost of their tour. But as the ancient pointy-eared Human spacefarer once said, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” The Humans were here to fight. To support the Federation. To protect their home. They gave a massive piece of their lives away to serve a cause greater than their own.
And yet, the Kestrel had been grounded in supply bay 6 for who-knows-how-many solar rotations. Day by day, the human crew watched from the dingy bay as hundreds of Federation ships rotated in and out of the main bays. Continuous lines of ships propelled themselves into formation and sortied into fleets from other sectors. Magnificent works of interstellar engineering organised themselves into breathtaking parades of glittering lights and thundering engines. The Humans knew you couldn’t hear sounds in space, but they could almost feel the resplendent rumbling of the hulking vessels reverberating through their bones.
But the Kestrel remained docked. Forgotten.
Every day, the number of ships going out grew while the number of ships coming back became smaller and smaller.
Vessel control gave no indication of any intention to ever send the Kestrel out. So they waited. And waited. And waited. And waited more, while the number of off-duty ships at the 17th dwindled.
Then without warning, it happened, alarms blared, and station staff shouted. No one at the moment knew for sure how it happened, but a Glasser class Lanius destroyer had just appeared from nowhere! As if reality itself cracked and admitted the destroyer into existence.
There had been rumours of Lanius warp technology which allowed their ships that produced enough power to travel great distances without the need of any velocity or time. It broke the laws of physics much like how FTL tech did. Of course, those rumours were now obviously no longer just rumours as a Lanius destroyer had just warped into existence, completely engulfing the relatively small space habitat in shadow.
Glasser class destroyers were called what they were because of what they did. They were known to cook entire planets so thoroughly while blasting their atmosphere away that when the colossal destroyer was done, the surface of the planet is left as a barren, reflective, wasteland of supercooled glass and melted rock.
The Glasser was gigantic in comparison to the 17th sector arcology, and much more so than any of the insignificant number of ships it may have housed. They stood no chance.
The entire sector was as good as lost. Evacuation plans were hastily initiated but efforts to carry them out were half hearted. Everyone knew no one survived a Lanius destroyer without help from the IFDF battle fleet. Escaping from a Glasser class was even more unthinkable. It was impossible. Another law of the universe which seemed to be true.
Evidently, the Lanius had anticipated that the fleet command would send more ships from the frontline stations into direct combat, leaving the 17th unprotected. Once the station was defenceless, a destroyer could warp in and obliterate the arcology before warping back out, crippling the 17th sector defences. A tactic which was unanticipated by the Federation as they laughed off any existence of warp technology.
As the arcology struggled to evacuate to the escape vessels, the remaining standby ships were rushed out of the bays in a futile attempt to delay the inevitable. Vessel control sent all available ships from the main bays to engage the threat, flight commanders took control of a few ships each and arranged into less than ten measly battle formations. Barely enough to combat a medium non-destroyer Lanius starship, it was a joke to expect the squadron of ten formations to even look at the Glasser, let alone stand in its way.
Yet it was a question of could they, not would they.
Seeing the ships fly out to fight the Glasser, the hundreds of evacuating civilian personnel gained a small spark of hope, and the race to their designated escape vessels began with vigour.
Meanwhile, the Kestrel, having not been contacted by vessel control to sortie, remained dutifully inside its supply bay, either forgotten or ignored.
Outside of the radiation shielding walls of the arcology, the defence ships approached the Glasser from multiple angles, trying to give the Lanius gunmen some difficulty in where to focus their fire. The white and orange colours of the Federation ships flashed against the sizzling yellow of Lanius ion canons, designed to stun both crew and electronics.
If an ion charge made contact with a ship, the nearest electronics and living beings would be fried. Luckily, they were relatively slow and didn’t accelerate. But they were only also the precursor of any attack.
After multiple brief explosions of light, missile pods on the Glasser’s bow unleashed hundreds of explosive projectiles upon the Federation. Unlike ion charges, missiles were designed to accelerate to high speeds, seek out a target and rip a hole in it without mercy.
Point defence canons blazed wildly at the missiles in vain as they zeroed in onto their targets. Frantic chatter and pure panic could be heard over the electromagnetic comms (also known as the radio, but that was a Human word). Mere seconds later and more than half of the defending fleet were nothing but more space debris and frozen bodies.
A number of missiles had impacted upon the station itself, causing massive breaches in the hull which emptied any unsealed rooms of anything that wasn’t bolted down, including the crew.
The moral and newfound hope of the escaping inhabitants of the 17th quickly plummeted as their notions of making it out alive were swiftly dashed by the chaos and destruction a single salvo of missiles the destroyer had let loose.
Suddenly there was abrupt static then a wide-range broadcast across all channels.
“Continue evacuating. We’ll hold them off.”
It was the Kestrel. The little useless lifeboat of a spaceship that probably rattled violently while accelerating. If it weren’t for the seriousness of the situation, vessel control and anyone else that picked up the transmission would’ve laughed. The Lanius actually did laugh.
The control staff glanced at each other in confusion. Was this some sort of practical joke? Maybe this was what Humans talked about when they mentioned dying with honour? Famous last words?
The crew aboard the Kestrel uncoupled themselves from supply bay 6 and thrusted their way slowly into open space. With a clunk and a whirr, the primitive Human weapons were powered and charging.
By this time, most of the defending fleet remaining had been decimated. A scarce one-tenth of the original sortie of ships were still limping around, determinedly trying to ward off the Glasser before its enormous planet-melting weapon of doom was fully charged and aimed at the station. The evacuation was slow. Too slow.
The brave, or foolish, Human craft lazily drifted closer to the colossal warship, encroaching upon their effective range. Sadly, the weapons range of the Kestrel paled in comparison to what the Glasser possessed, and they were already inside of the behemoth destroyer’s sights.
Before the Humans could even think about locking their weapons on, the destroyer fired a stingy salvo of unguided ballistics towards the Kestrel. The little ship had clearly been underestimated. Known formally as “Flak Cannons”, unguided ballistics were a random spread of initially propelled physical projectiles towards a target, usually for blasting targets which didn’t have engines or otherwise had trouble dodging.
The Human engineered ship shuddered as its stellar engines flared into higher gear, skipping nimbly away from the spread of flak projectiles.
Surprised, the Lanius re-aimed, and fired two additional spreads of flak towards the now accelerating Human craft. Anticipating this, the Kestrel had already accelerated out of the potential hit zone of the new projectiles.
Now travelling at faster and faster relative speeds, the Kestrel attempted to spiral closer and closer to the Glasser. The control staff back inside the arcology were astounded by the naïve courage displayed by the Human crew. But as the Glasser started focusing more and more weapon systems onto the Kestrel, the Kestrel continued dodging more and more shots fired.
It became obvious that the Kestrel was perhaps more than what she seemed.
Frustrated, the Lanius brought all broadside weapons to bear upon the craft. It looked like their targeting systems had a hard time trying to get an accurate lead on the Kestrel as it constantly weaved its way through waves of deadly lasers, explosive payloads and ultrasonic speeding chunks of metal.
It was an amazing feat, seeing the Kestrel’s diminutive form elegantly dashing through pinhole gaps in the enemy’s barrage. Thanks to the absence of heavy weaponry or clunky features, the Kestrel had significantly less mass than any of the other vessels on the fleet. Thus, allowing its tiny engines to quickly change the velocity of the ship with ease and graceful agility.
The gargantuan Lanius craft was finally within the reaches of the Human’s own weaponry. Those in the station that weren’t madly scrambling for the evacuation ships watched, enraptured, as the Kestrel opened fire with its own battery while still smoothly dodging the destroyer’s onslaught.
By now, the Lanius had been thoroughly flummoxed by the Human ship’s ability to manoeuvre around and negotiate the constant stream of death flying towards it. Completely ignoring the scarce remains of the original defending Federation ships, the destroyer focused its entire broadside battery onto the tiny Kestrel. It was to any observer’s continued amazement that the Kestrel remained untouched by enemy fire and continued shooting back.
Unfortunately, with the weak and underdeveloped tech that the Humans possessed, the Kestrel’s lasers might as well have been peashooters against the fuselage of the Glasser.
They needed a new strategy, and fast, before the Lanius finally got a lucky shot and disabled the Kestrel. The little ship was small enough that a single hit from any one of the Glasser’s main weapons was enough to tear the ship into a donut.
Then, suddenly, the tiny vessel turned towards the Glasser. Everyone watching watched in abject shock and horror as the Kestrel seemed to be preparing a ram against what would’ve been an unmovable object. Without warning, a single hull breaching missile separated from the form of the Kestrel, speeding towards the Lanius terror.
Unlike the Human craft, the Glasser had absolutely no hope of evading, so instead, all point defence canons immediately swivelled to intercept the incoming explosive. Within seconds, the missile had been shredded so thoroughly the armour piercing payload didn’t even get a chance to explode.
The Lanius smiled smugly (or whatever aliens did instead?) as they tried to imagine what foolish goal the Humans tried to achieve when they fired a single missile at the mammoth destroyer.
Those smiles were almost instantly wiped when they realised the Kestrel was no longer showing up on their scanners. Had the Humans secretly mastered cloaking technology?
No. Of course not.
To everyone outside of the Lanius warship, it was obvious as to what had really happened. The Kestrel had used the distraction of the missile to discretely slip behind the effective range of all weapons and scanners of the destroyer. It was hugging the hull of the Glasser!
But with their weapons ineffective at long range and their luck running thin, there was only one thing to do once they had reached this point.
The Kestrel detonated her ordnance magazine.
The explosion melted and ruptured the hull of the Glasser, sending shockwaves throughout the hulking destroyer. The resulting damage and chaos aboard the massive warship crippled it and distracted the crew long enough for the leftover ships in the initial defending force to launch multiple successful strikes against the destroyer.
On the other hand, the Kestrel had been completely obliterated. Whatever tiny fragments that were left from the explosion of the ship’s magazine were quickly scattered into the vast vacuum of space.
The damage dealt against the Lanius starship either disabled their warp drive or prevented a safe warping. Whatever it was, they decided it was better to face the freshly renewed vigour and bloodthirst of the Federation ships at the 17th Sector of Gnoth X8.
However, it became painfully obvious that the Glasser was no longer in any fighting shape. Thanks to the massive blow dealt by the valiant crew aboard the Kestrel, the Lanius craft was mopped up with the remaining defence ships with minimal loss.
Evacuation procedures stopped as the threat of the Glasser class destroyer imploded as its hull yielded to the combined damage it had taken. No cheering took place within the flight decks and control rooms. The crew of the defence ships and vessel control took to silence in respect to the Humans who had given their lives to protect those who had mocked and shunned them for their differences.
Hundreds of civilian lives had been saved that day. And billions more, by protecting and upholding the battlefront that the 17th sector arcology supported.
The 17th Sector stood up to the Lanius Glasser and achieved what could not have been achieved by many others. Except for
The little ship that could.
Later references to this day were known as the Battle of the 17th Sector.
It was the day humanity became accepted amongst the stars.
~ End ~