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So, I wasn’t actually deployed into combat until only a kilosecond prior to that big explosion. It took a while for any of the probing attacks to firm up into the big fronts that they became, and overextending would have been a major strategic error. So I waited at the Shoal for a good three days until I got the order to go into combat.

Specifically, I was deployed to counter the equatorial attack. I quickly said my goodbyes to the thousands of friends I’d made at Shoal 9906, particularly Logistics Officer Endiol, disengaged from my moorings, and aligned for a Skip. I arrived three light seconds behind the front line, and was immediately contacted by Xegong Hagosi Theanido

 “Glad to have another Quesan, Rakana. Proceed to the designated sector of the front, and get killing. You’ll be partnered with Quinab Rushina Ebaxang when you get there.”

I quickly sent Rushina a greeting, and proceeded to skim towards the front at c. My combat telemetry was keeping me up to date on the best guesses for locations of enemy beamfire, but they were just that: guesses. So as I got within half a light second of the front, I promptly started evasive maneuvers.

Good thing too, since judging by the tiny amount of light given off by some space dust getting vaporized, someone had sent some beamfire towards my previous trajectory. Yeah, it was definitely time to fire up the quantum noise evasion module.

Ah, right. So basically, space combat has been going for so long that just about every permutation of actually planned evasive strategy has been used before, and thoroughly analyzed to death. If someone figures out you’re using one of them, they’ve got a pretty good chance at nailing you really, really hard. The solution is to inject some true randomness into your maneuvers, and quantum mechanical noise is very, very good at doing that.

Of course, it’s blended with actually planned maneuvers, and we shipminds can adjust the ratio at will. Random movement is handy for not getting hit, but not so great at getting places in a useful timeframe.

Anyway, I passed within three thousand kilometers of Rushina just before we got to the front surface, and then we were thoroughly in the thick of it. Just within our immediate vicinity there were hundreds of other beamships slugging it out on both sides, along with thousands of Skimmers. And that immediate vicinity was only a tiny part of the over-all battle front.

Now that we were at the front, Rushina and I both opened up with our beams at maximum power. Nailed a couple Torpedoes almost immediately, and only got a little warmed up from the blast. That done, I switched from blanket fire to beamwalls. Rushina kept blanket fire up, in case of more torpedoes.

Right, so, blanket fire is the term for covering a patch of sky that has significant thickness. It’s really good for hitting something trying to ram you – like a torpedo – but really inefficient at hurting anything that isn’t trying to do that. The beamfire is just too spread out to really do much.

So that’s what a beamwall is for; you focus all your beamfire into a single thin plane, with the idea being that when you sweep it over an enemy – or they fly through it – they get hit with all the beamfire focused into that section of the plane all at once. With my beams set to heavy pulses – what I use against enemy Voidskippers – I’ve got an impermeability range of 4.8 Megameters. 

Of course, Skimmers and torpedoes will slip right through that due to the two kilometer gaps between pulses, which is why I’m fitted to switch my beams to more smaller pulses if need be; smaller targets don’t need the same sort of multi-Terajoule pinprick you need to noticeably injure a Voidskipper. Torpedoes and artillery need a lot more energy to do their damage since it’s not as focused, but annihilating thousands of tons of antimatter all in one go definitely qualifies.

Sorry, I got off track. So, Rushina was fielding inbound torpedoes and enemy skimmers for me, while I was aiming to hurt and kill enemy Voidskippers. Given the circumstances, that meant I’d mainly be attacking other beamships. Perhaps the occasional destroyer. But Carriers or Artillery? No way.

Yeah that’s honestly a fairly typical state of affairs. Aside from beamships and torpedo-slingers, every other Voidskipper in a fight can do their job from well behind the safety provided by a friendly screen of skimmers.

Of course, it wasn’t just me and Rushina in our immediate vicinity. Even aside from the approximately two thousand Skimmers within twenty Megameters, there were approximately a hundred other allied beamships in that vicinity. And we also had to stay a minimum of 300 kilometers away from a subset of the Skimmers at all times, or we’d break our communications wormholes due to a causal loop. A millisecond of temporal offset wasn’t exactly much, but it was still enough to branch incoming artillery.

Well yeah, TCS is crucial to not instantly die, but it’s got its limitations. Can’t bring the wormholes closer together in space than their separation in time, or the damn things break. That’s also why wormhole demolition crews are immediately dispatched to the site of ships being destroyed; gotta clean up the causal landscape to avoid problems later.

Anyway, I’d only been firing for about half a second when a flash went off exactly where I’d sent a pulse not too long ago; turns out that I’d managed to nail an enemy skimmer with a direct hit, immediately mission-killing them. Eh, it happened sometimes.

A couple seconds later, I got zapped with an anti-skimmer pulse only a hundred meters from my tip; it made a small crater, but compared to the entirety of my armor layer it really wasn’t anything to worry about.

Well yeah, even civilian Voidskippers often have more than ten meters of armor over their entire hull, just to stand up to Skip Shock. Whereas the Quesan class is fitted with 120 meters of armor. Really helps our survivability in combat, you know?

Anyway, soon after that I scored a direct hit on an enemy battleship. Judging by the flash’s location and timing, I handed those coordinates off to the artillery, and was immediately rewarded by the gratifying spectacle of my enemy abruptly exploding.

Then I got an order from up the chain. “Quesans being contacted, narrow focus on your beamwalls to twelve degrees. Heavy pulses.”

Ah. That must mean there were enough beamships nearby for the trade-off between hit probability and hit lethality to be worth it. I immediately complied, and half a second later I was rewarded with twenty hits on an enemy destroyer, utterly trashing both their warp toroids. That destroyer immobilized, a demand of surrender was broadcast, with the alternative being immediate vaporization. The enemy ship complied.

Anyway, over the next two hundred seconds or so I immobilized two more destroyers and a battleship. One of the destroyers surrendered, as did the battleship. That last one instead opted to set off every remaining torpedo in their magazine, which was more of a minor annoyance than anything. I also got hit with a heavy pulse up my aft, but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t fight after. Did take out one of my aft guns, though.

Then Hagosi sent us another order: “Units being contacted; enemy Voidskipper density in your section of the front has dropped below critical levels. Switch to blanket fire, light pulses.”

Just before I could comply, one of Rushina’s pulses nailed a torpedo that would have definitely hit me if she hadn’t shot it down. Yeah, if the main threat in the area is skimmers and torpedoes, it makes more sense to use the shot patterns optimized for skimmers and torpedoes. So I promptly switched firing methods. I also thanked Rushina for the save.

In the first second after doing so, I scored hits on three skimmers and two torpedoes. Both the torpedoes exploded prematurely, but only one of the skimmers got immobilized. That skimmer was promptly vaporized, and I called out coordinates for all the targets I’d killed to wormhole demolition crews.

The next while was basically more of the same, cycling between heavy pulses whenever enemy voidskippers were in the area, and light pulses when they weren’t. I must have killed at least three thousand skimmers in that whole block of time, shot down who knows how many torpedoes, and immobilized a couple more Voidskippers. I’d taken some damage too of course, but nothing that would seriously hinder my combat effectiveness.

Then the UDAF’s stupid huge bomb went off. And I mean that making a bomb that big really was a stupid decision, on their part. Yeah it took out a couple skimmers that couldn’t know the blast front was coming, but the whole thing really backfired on them.

Within a tenth of a second I’d slipped through one of the holes our artillery had shot in the blast front, and then quickly came to the realization that I was in the middle of the wreckage from a shit-ton of UDAF skimmers. I promptly called that in to wormhole demolition… and then got interrupted by a radio transmission of all things. None of the friendly ships in the general vicinity had broken their comms holes, which meant that an enemy wanted to talk to me. Or, well, someone in my general vicinity anyway.

 “I am Duke Granzinta the Second of Ro-Ta-Kol, and I hereby challenge you lowborn filth to honorable combat.”

I didn’t gratify that with a verbal response, instead sending a converging ring of heavy-pulse beamfire around the direction that transmission had come from.

I was immediately rewarded with two flashes of hits on the pompous git of an enemy battleship, and his furious outrage.

 “You dare attack without a formal challenge!? Commoners such as you do not understand the finer points of war!”

I noticed a couple pulses of beamfire hit my radiator, but that was just plasma; no solid components to damage worth mentioning.

As I judged a beamwall for this goon, I finally decided to reply with words in addition to violence.

 “Shut up about your title of nobility, I’ve got fifty thousand Kelvins on you!”

It was true, too; my radiators were blazing hot at their rated 177,000 Kelvin, while this Duke’s were running at 125,000. So I had much higher power density. Still, he was bigger, meaning our overall firepower was pretty comparable.

On the other hand, I was more agile, managing to dodge just to the side of a beamwall he sent my way. Lucky guess on my part really, since I couldn’t see the shots coming. 

I promptly fired back with a beamwall of my own, trashing one of Granzy’s five warp toroids. Though he reversed partway through the beamwall, meaning I didn’t get to do even more damage to his warp drive.

Then the Duke got lucky; he must have narrowed his beamwall immensely to pull it off, but he managed to hit me with over a hundred pulses in one pass. My armor all along that facing was fractured, I lost twelve turrets, my forwards warp torus was rendered totally non-functional, my aft torus was significantly damaged, and only my middle torus was still functioning at full capacity.

I contacted Hagosi for orders, even as I rolled over to present my intact armor to the Duke.

 “Do not retreat until relieved, backup will arrive within half a second.”

So I kept fighting, that half a second seeming to drag on forever. Not due to relativistic time dilation, just due to how intensely focused on the fight I was.

 Still, I did manage to get a few more good hits in, trashing two more of the Duke’s warp toroids.

Then I was contacted by Nogarke, asking if I would like artillery support. I quickly explained the situation with the Skimmer wreckage, briefly pondering what was taking the wormhole demolition crews so long as I got back to the fight.

Half a second after Hagosi said to wait half a second, Rushina showed up. She immediately scored a surprise hit on the Duke’s aft, prompting a downright furious response.

 “This violates the terms of our duel, peasant!"

I fired back more beamfire of course, but I also fired back with more words.

 “I don’t recall ever agreeing to a duel in the first place.”

A fraction of a second later, the Duke’s sudden forwards motion to avoid Rushina resulted in him crashing straight into my beamwall. A very narrow-focus beamwall too, since Rushina’s prodding made it a lot easier to predict enemy motions.

The enemy could still skim at the very least, so he was still a threat. But the reduced luminosity of his radiators indicated that we’d done serious damage.

For all his bluster, the Duke promptly turned and tried to flee, only to run headlong into Rushina’s beamfire, since she’d managed to wedge herself between the enemy battleship and his buddies.

Rushina snarked back over radio “Leaving so soon? But we were having such great fun together.”

At the same time, she informed me over comms that the Duke had reversed again and was coming my way, and I managed to nail him right up the aft with energy equivalent to several Gigatons of TNT.

The Duke tried to escape again after that, but the beating we’d given him had clearly taken a toll, given how slow he was turning. Yeah, Rushina managed to nail him again, and with that the Duke was immobilized, his warp drive so much scrap.

Immediately, the Duke whined over radio, “I yield, I yield!”

I was about to fire back some snappy remark, when Hagosi sent us both a warning via communications wormhole.

 “Rakana and Rushina, retreat NOW! Enemy skimmers are threatening to encircle your position.”

When you get that sort of warning, you don’t stop to ask questions, you just run for it. Rushina made a point of vaporizing the Duke with her aft guns as we left at full skimming speed, even as the combat telemetry ahead of us lit up with dying UDAF skimmers.

Er, no. That would have only been a war crime if we could have feasibly taken the Duke prisoner, which we couldn’t. At least, under the treaties Nastellan is party to. At worst, what Rushina did was unsporting, and war isn’t sports.

Anyway, we’d only gotten two thirds of the way back to friendly space when Hagosi sent us another notice that increased the tension immensely.

 “Enemy encirclement is complete. Rakana and Rushina, thickness of separation zone is three Megameters.”

Three Megameters. That would take us ten entire milliseconds to cross. And we couldn’t risk skipping or we’d just get branched. I quickly conferred with Rushina, and we opted to just charge through at top speed, though with a quick thirty degree turn beforehand to throw off predictions of our path.

Rushina got lucky on the way through, I didn’t. I took several hits from skimmer-level pulses as I pushed through, utterly trashing my mid warp torus. I could still Skim, barely, but I was no longer capable of superluminal travel.

I promptly retreated to several light minutes behind the front line… and was notified via radio that my comms holes had branched as I came through the separation zone. I sent back a groan, and waited for a salvage vessel to come along. Soon enough, I was temporarily fitted with an external warp torus, which I used to skip back to a shipyard for repairs. Not to the Shoal; I needed more serious work than could be done there.

...You want to hear about the repairs? Alright.

So, the good news is that the only internal components that were seriously damaged were my communiations wormholes. Since that’s a pretty foreseeable failure mode, all ships in the Nastellan starforrce are built to have their communications wormholes easily swapped out. Meanwhile, my structural frame, momentum nodes, power plant, and other internal systems were all in good working order, according to Chessa.

On the other hand, my armor layers were utterly wrecked on one facing, my warp drive was scrap, quite a few of my gun mounts needed to be replaced, and one of my radiators was only at partial function.

Given all that damage, I was immediately instructed to anesthetize my damage receptors; chronic pain wouldn’t be helpful, and with the repairs needed, it would get worse before it got better.

Case in point, teams of work drones were already busily cutting through the pylons holding my warp drive on, and carving off pieces of fractured armor. It would have been agony if my pain receptors were active, which is exactly why they weren’t. Even aside from that, my damaged radiator section was being pulled out of its socket along with my dead guns, and my core was being opened up to extract my broken communications wormholes.

Despite all this activity, I quickly found myself getting bored; according to Chessa and the shipyard crews, I’d be stuck here getting fixed up for the better part of a Megasecond with nothing to do. Couldn’t even socialize with the people here, since they were all too busy with work or their own personal recuperation, what with the war being on. After a few kiloseconds, I requested authorization to temporarily mindcast into a regular morph, along with some leave time while my ship body was being repaired.

Shortly afterwards, I was approved for some time off, and I started searching through morph rental options that met the military’s security requirements. Though I’d still be leaving my truly sensitive memories behind in my ship body, of course. Got to keep good infosec, especially when casting to hardware you don’t own.

Sorry, I’m rambling again.

 Ah, you’ve heard what you needed to for this interview? Alright.