“Sun Shot to break the cloak. Let’s get a look at our opponent.”

My Nimbus discharged, and Paten raged out at the target a thousand miles ahead of us and closing.

They were probably not happy when he hit them dead center again... and the Sun Shot fractured across their holographic cloaking field and tore it open.

The sky began to light up with needle beamers and rapid-fire scythe bursters.

“Yeah, that’s a drow ship,” I announced to nobody in particular, as I danced through the attacks, and Faith scoffed as the space-slicing ammunition slid past or bounced off the hull impotently.

Bleeps announced the coming of a whole lot of Darkwasps to the fight.

“Oh, fire at will,” I snorted, and hit a button.

From the side stanchions of the hull, which looked like either structural placements or loading doors, the armor plates rotated open, and the second set of turret guns rose into position, working off the primary Turrets through Main Gauche.

An enemy coming from directly above or below would only be vulnerable to one turret, which was clearly unacceptable on a high-end MF Gunboat. The side turrets meant that at least three guns could hit in any direction at all times, and if a foe approached from behind, four could lock on, making it almost as dangerous as getting in front of the main guns up front.

It was probably the first time they were seeing this, although it had been on the agenda of the Ranthas for some time. The new MFs coming off the lines all had them, and the older ones were getting slowly retrofitted. The non-Rantha ones would require extra gunners for them, of course, but that hardly dampened the enthusiasm of the crews manning them, who wanted nothing more than to plug in their psicrystals and Foci and get right to the fight.

Just like me!

Fighting an MF with Distance and Accuracy on its guns isn’t generally the smartest choice for your lightly armored evasive-reliant starfighters. Sure, sure, they were launching missiles, which were going crazily in all directions as the raging static Chalice was putting out fucked with their guidance systems... and I was guiding the secondary point defenses that were picking off any that got too close.

Four of the Darkwasps were swatted before they got within a hundred miles by uncannily accurate saber beams, cut apart and blowing apart violently. The squadrons promptly panicked and broke formation to come at me from all angles, which only brought all four turrets into play.

Their holoscreen concealment didn’t work against Seeking at all, and crimson-chased streams of gluon-cutting energy sliced out from the central gun, while the quark bursters began to cycle and prepare some hot rotating loads of explosive fire. TL 20 Fire-based weapon tech actually works pretty damn well against the Elvar, so why not use it?

Oh, and Chalice was definitely singing and broadcasting as we charged in on the destroyer, guns literally blazing in all directions.

The problem capital ships have with fighters is breaching the shields, naturally enough. From a totally serious standpoint, why have a manned ship instead of a drone or programmed AI?

Well, because people tend to endure PECM and spatial asshattery much better than electronics do, even Beacon Tech.

The assault on electronics of launched weapons starts almost a million miles away from a larger capital ship, and it accumulates very quickly. Long-range torpedo and missile attacks have almost no chance of hitting a properly Shielded target, warded about with that PECM field just fratzing the crap out of all guidance control and targeting systems.

Humans, well, just stick a plumbum-lined helmet on them, use pseudo-mechanical control systems, and it’s not an issue.

Using your shields to slip through opposing shields is a thing, and always has been. Shields are programmed to put a lot of power into opposing high-energy attacks. Starfighters are, relatively speaking, low-energy attacks, and furthermore can align themselves with shield harmonics, and basically flit right through them if the pilot is good. Technically, they can’t carry the firepower of a larger ship, as the more energetic munitions are not something that can be Compressed readily... but they can get inside the shields and apply some point-blank, precise damage, and the only thing you have to fight them with is some point defenses, drones, chaff, mines, and other starfighters.

Static point defenses naturally make great targets, and even if shielded, they aren’t on the level of the main ship. A breacher round plus follow-up makes short work of them in the second or two the shield is resetting. Chaff will totally fry electronic mapping, as opposing systems fight it out, but the Mark I eyeball just has to look past it all and keep the target in sight. Mine-clouds of hungry nanites and molmechs are easily dealt with by energy pulses that fry them, as the little things can’t deal with energy spikes at all, and the same kind of pulsed fields can pre-detonate mines and clear paths for the fighters via clouds of exploding fusion energy.

Of course, you have to be quick, and not take anything resembling sustained fire from the point defenses. Happily, those things tend to be fairly large and can’t move quickly, so they don’t get very long to track you, and opposing ECM means the live gunner is the most reliable way to hit something now. Rotary barrels trying to use sensor tracking to auto-snuff piloted ships with rapid-fire tended to miss horribly; unmanned point defenses are only good for shooting unmanned incoming, and static gunner positions on capital ships were often death sentences, manned by barely-trained soldiers expected to get their position shot out, and another modular turret slapped in place after the battle.

Even the Elvar thought this way, but they didn’t have gunboats. They had their supermanuverable light fighters with their holocloaks and light shields, and they had capital ships carrying them. Gunboats with multiple turrets, speed, maneuverability, and thick hulls, forming moving fire platforms, were just not what they were used to dealing with.

Which was absolutely fine by me. I had the tech edge, and I exploited it fully, as any good pirate-killer was wont to. I had the better ship, I was a better pilot, I had mentally ridden along with tens of thousands of hours of combat against drow ships, and this whole thing was like coming home.

Individuality in ship design among the Elvar basically came down to cosmetics. Artistic and individual, sure, but if an incoming soldier gets lost because your ship was off spec, you were stupid. So despite themselves, they used modular designs, trying to deviate from them where they could... but all the important places were still in the same important places, I knew where they all were, and the kids had been working out tactics against these kinds of ships for decades now.

I wasn’t proud, and happily used their tactics. Wasn’t any different from pulling knowledge off the Akasha as I matched up everything, plotted out all the intersecting vectors of fire, and had no problems whatsoever keeping up with the drow frigate moving at flank speed and spitting a wall of rapid-fire in my general direction as I danced around it.

My head-on profile wasn’t any worse than a fighter, and anything coming from top or bottom was risking three overlapping arcs of fire from my turrets both on the approach and the escape... and I could rotate to present a narrow profile, too. The level of teamwork required, or the absolute mental coordination, was another reason the drow couldn’t seem to develop anything this effective. The pilot was important, but the gunners were what kept you alive against the hawks in the sky.

I flew alongside the sail-winged ship trying to maneuver and foil me, matching rolls and turns without even noticing as I spiraled around it. My top turret was poking above the line of fire, firing a breacher and following it up with a railgun load whamwham that was blowing holes in their point defenses. Arcs of lightning were shredding nanite nets and corrosive fields ahead of me, and I was ignoring all the bursting chaff/nanite infections that were popping around me as I flew through them.

My port turret was snapping back and forth, up and down, one-two bunches of breachers and fusion eruptions taking out point defenses, main gun batteries, shield emitters, and drone launchers as Sun Shots cycled endlessly, preventing the automatic ablation through the laenwork hull from working so easily.

My bottom and starboard turrets were harvesting the Darkwasps trying to come at me through multiple angles, and occasionally one would wander into my forward guns and explode. My spiraling path around the frigate was marked by a trail of bright explosions, and when they didn’t have anything more convenient to shoot at, my guns blew lots of glittery holes in the support membranes of the sunsails, crippling the maneuverability and holofields of the ships... which, if any friendly capital ships showed up, they would definitely appreciate.

“Chaff Marker Heavy Spatial round up top, center and fire.”

It was only a guess, but my guesses tended to be pretty good. Paten loaded the round into his barrel between popping off two Wasps, and let it fly. Magical space slows down railgun rounds pretty quickly, but with the magic on them they were totally good for a thousand miles, and Seeking meant they tended to deviate towards a concealed target, instead of away.

There was a burst as the round hit a spatial fold, breached the membrane, and blew marking chaff through it all over what was beyond.

Took less than a half-second of painting the hull to realize there was a full Shadowmoth battleship up there behind a spatial fold, trying to get close to me and finish me off with overwhelming firepower.

Was it supposed to be waiting for an Elvar ship, too? I was amused, but now I had a definite sensor lock, and it couldn’t sneak up on me. I probably rattled the captain when I painted them out of nowhere, too.

Hey, blame your subordinates, sport. They formed a hard triangle pushing me towards your position, instead of a living one trying to adjust to my movements...

It took four ships to make an effective surround, minimum, and six was preferred. With three you basically had to roam a lot when trying to corral someone, and they hadn’t done that, confident I would take the easy escape and land right in the hunter’s net.

Elvar don’t like straight-up fights, always with the ambush and death-strikes, even if there’s a better option...

I was ripping this frigate apart. Only one of its Darkwasps were left, although more were winging in from the other ships to add some scrap to the void – whoops, nope, Host picked off the last one as it spun up from behind a sail to center me, and moved right into the Autobow’s sights as it did – and now I could devote three guns to maiming this thing, while spinning sideways with momentum for a moment around the front of the ship.

Yeah, them elf-types with their need for panoramic views. Technically the bridge was behind lots of shielding and stuff, possibly equipped with instant Gloom Portals or a detachable launcher to run away, run away!

They probably weren’t liking the Interdiction I was radiating up this close, and they were looking down my forward guns.

Anti-matter rounds are generally inCompressable, unless you are bored Ruk with time on your hands. You certainly couldn’t Compress the whole round, that required opposing techniques for normal and anti-matter, and would destabilize the whole thing and blow it to Hell and gone promptly. But, the Ruk did find an easy way to Compress the anti-matter itself, and then they mounted it ahead of a railgun load.

As for the normal matter? That was supplied by the mass of the load coming in behind, as the warhead flattened, the containment field was disrupted, and some variant of depleted uranium or Magno-lead or Gravity Iron plowed into the released anti-matter, and everything had puppy-kittens.

I walked three breacher rounds across the hull as I spun sideways on the same spot, and let loose the Ruk Load as they flared and streamed away on the shields. I could definitely imagine the drow on the bridge staring at me, barely registering the flare of the Sun Shot that was going to mess with the psionic ablation field meant to conduct the power of a hit throughout the hull, and the shell hit.