Re: Warning: an unknown ship is approaching Haven

[The Clans]

The Corps science ships continually update the trajectory of the moving ship, estimating landing areas and crash sites. They transmit their findings to the station in orbit in the form of a geographic map with circles drawn around the estimated impact zones and arrows radiating outward toward roads.

The combat ships continue to attack it from a distance. Any shuttles that manage to latch on to a Corps ship soon finds that its occupants are unable to fit in the tight and cramped hallways and maintenance tunnels that wind into fortified positions with crew ready to shoot disoriented boarders.

[Offizier Necro]

The space station, after silently FTL-communicating with the Herald, confirmed the information with the reptilians by transmitting it back to them. Seeing as his allies seemed to be getting more bold about information (from his perspective), and possibly held information out of his own reach, he finally rang up ground control and gave them the predicted landing areas and crash sites. However, he explicitly told them not to release this information to the public if possible. Upon being questioned about the strange request that he lacked the authority to make on planetbound entities, Addy told a half-truth that it was to avoid a senseless mass panic about a battle that was being won. In any case, planetbound forces began minor mobilization, setting up preliminary base camps to reach the fallen or landed alien scrap or crafts. More finalized locations would be set up as the arthropoids came closer and had more predictable landing/crash site.

Meanwhile, the Freeman navy was still attempting to finish off the remaining boarding ships that hadn't already died, scattered, or boarded the closer allies. However, they had again readjusted their new salvos' missiles' calibration so that half would home in on the shuttles and half were again homing in on the mothership. The missiles aimed at the mothership were this time fired near the rear, trying to damage the fuel lines, heat sinks, or any other important points of interest relating to the thrusters that could potentially be within the missiles' reach. The hope was to inhibit the mothership's movement back to a Haven-bound course by scaring it into disabling sections of thrusters for its own safety, but any extra damage from not disabling systems in time would be a convenient side bonus.

[Caspoi]

Most of the atting ships had been destroyed at this point although the rest still fought on, smaller areas were attacked by the worker caste which are better adapted to small tunnels. The main ship has lost it's left main engine yet still countinued on it's course, hoping to evade it's attackers.

[The Clans]

The smaller working castes that manage to make it to the vents find themselves hunted down by little soldiers with magnetic pistols, eager to get their first kills, their first alien kills, that lure the bugs in as live bait and then ambush them by popping out of hatches, around unseen corners, and from behind murder holes.

Unlike what the bugs may have thought, the Corps ships would not stop firing at the cruiser sized colony ship. Unless they wised up and realized they were dealing with another intelligent sapient race and tried to communicate by radio or psychic powers, or fully redirected itself away from Haven they would press the attack.

[Offizier Necro]

With the motherships's continuing course towards haven, the Freemen navy continued its volleys, now redirecting the mothership-bound missiles to loop to other rear thrusters in the same tactic since it worked the first time. They left any maneuvering thrusters or other thrusters in the front portions of the mothership intact, since crippling its ability to move was meant to defend Haven and the Crucible, even if negligent disregard for civilian casualties was taking place in the background. If the mothership decided to move and probably die elsewhere, that was good for the Freemen. If it simply was destroyed by piercing volleys of the reptilians' kinetic weapons while attempting to correct its course, that was satisfactory all the same. The humans had given up on mercy and empathy after the boarding attempt for what paradoxically seemed like rabid animals operating a complex feat of engineering.

[Caspoi]

At this Point there were hardly any boarding craft left and the hiveship itself had lost everal of it's Engines, it had not redirected it's course yet though, not that it would have had much luck doing so at this point.

[The Clans]

Noticing a lack of movement on the surface, the science ship in orbit transmits the projected crash vectors of the disabled ship to the surface below. They centralize the broadcast only to the projected affected regions. Being a collective species whether by nature or centuries of conditioning, they could not fathom any response other than hiding in fortified bunkers or an orderly evacuation by convoy or train.

The corvettes move in to close the distance, however being days away within their maximum combat range, they were in no position to nudge the battered ship off course. The troop transports in orbit, as sturdy as they were, would not be able to react in time. From analysis of the Freemen military vessels, they concluded that their allies' military ships were little more than glass cannons that would not be structurely sound enough to get into position and fire their thrusters to move it without crumpling the ships like an accordian. And so they do not transmit instructions to the Freemen. From here on out, the Corps merely watched

[Offizier Necro]

With the enemy defanged and crippled, the Freeman navy began focusing their missiles on the arbitrary locations the reptilian allies were focusing fire on. While this wouldn't do much damage in itself, they at least could help soften up the area so that the reptilians' slugs could penetrate better.

Meanwhile, the minority of people with televisions (let alone actively watching at a given time) in the affected areas were confused as to the weird map images being shown on their screens without any warning. Some dismissed it as interference from another channel or the military, but the more concerned people phoned into the stations to ask what was going on. The television stations lacked an idea as to what was going on, which lead them to contact the Freeman equivalent of the FCC. The communication bureau didn't know what was going on either, so they contacted the military to ask if they were accidentally responsible. The military apologized for the unwanted transmission, and this was then fed back down the chain to the stations who apologized to the viewers for the technical difficulties.

[Caspoi]

[Just to make sure that I interprited it correctly The Clans' ships have stopped firing, yes?]

The ship, at this point being little more than a giant piece of wreckage countinued it's course, the support ships were now all destroyed and it had no hope left of survival one way or another.

[The Clans]

(Yeah, they've ceased firingbsince it's so close to the planet. Sorry about that.)

The transmission goes from silence to a siren not unlike an angry buzzing of an emergency broadcast. It shifts to show sillouettes of the Freemen and Corps ships shooting missiles and pointed cylinders at the much larger bug ship above Haven, that then falls into a highlighted arc toward the planet. A photograph of the surface is then shown with cities and towns highlighted with multiple representations of the Herald filling them. The Heralds then file orderly out of the city along the roadways at a safe distance at which point the large bug ship gradually shrinks down until it covers the area of the projected crash site. The crash site and the landscape and cityscape around is is covered with orange and yellow flames as well as human skulls.

Once this plays through a couple times the screen divides into thirds with one third repeating the evacuation on a loop with a timer based on 10 counting down the minutes and hours in human numbers, the other showing the bug ship move in its projected crash arch while a counter ticks down in real time, while the last third shows a live feed of the actual ship and attacks made against it as it crashes toward Haven in real time with time ticking down.

[Offizier Necro]

((Oh, my bad. I thought the Yuxu were still firing away.))

The Freeman fleet keeps firing away despite their allies' cessation, and begin redirecting their bombardment efforts to the areas of the mothership facing Haven. The intention was to create weakspots in the alien hull that would make a freefall dangerous to the ships integrity. Possibly resulting, to the hope of the Herald and not the ignorant civilians on the ground, in the air resistance of the destroyed compartments making a parachute-like effect that would slow the descent of the ship and simultaneously put extreme amounts of pressure on the remaining ship that could compound with the previous extensive damage to rip apart the vessel in a brilliant scene of airborne destruction. The Herald had considered sending all of the ships to shove the mothership so that it would land in one designated area, but the missile ships were too far away to do so and the construction ship wouldn't be able to do much on its own, especially if the alien tentacles reappeared and ganged up on the lone civilian vessel.

Meanwhile, the small amount of people with televisions grow increasingly concerned at the random interference that keeps blurring half-way into what they're trying to watch. The television stations served more land area than would be destroyed, leading to increasing confusion for the areas of potential devastation since some parts of stations' demographic were receiving interference while others weren't. Some viewers could make out the Herald's face and figured this was some kind of navy broadcast, while others grew tired of their channels clearly getting blurred together with an irrelevant broadcast and simply shut off their television sets. Due to the Herald being a proponent and sponsor of viewing Terran media, many assumed that this was some weird movie that was getting broadcasted on the wrong channel. The red-and-orange explosions being just a messy blur of grey didn't help get the message across either, especially since the broadcasted resolution wasn't matching people's television sets and further distorted their received images. There were numerous problems resulting in the attempts of warning resulting in not nearly as many people evacuating as intended, especially with the populace's current ignorance as to what the alien ships looked like before the mysterious broadcast. The people who correctly guessed that this was a warning for interstellar destruction usually called their local police stations to confirm that the end was nigh, but since the police weren't informed about the situation it resulted in the police incorrectly reassuring that nothing is going on and that it's probably just some interference from a TV station in the next county or something. A rare few packed up their cars to stay with a relative in another town for a few days "just in case", but this level of precaution (not to mention the wealth to randomly abandon jobs and obligations at the drop of a ship hat) was to be found in only a percent of the minority of Freemen who had televisions. The result was not much of a notable difference in traffic in the normal hustle-and-bustle of (sub)urban life and the usual lack thereof in rural areas.

[Caspoi]

The relative amount of peace that had turned up, apart from missiles hitting the nose, allowed the swarmlings onboard, the living ones that is to say, to make some rudimentary repairs of the ship. This was still little more than putting metal on the holes so that no more air would slip out but still.

[The Clans]

(I don't have anything more tonsay and I don't know if Necro does either.)

[Caspoi]

[I certainly don't, right now I am just waiting for the ship to shatter into a million bits]

[The Clans]

(You're the one that's in charge of that happening. I don't know why you're waiting.)

[Caspoi]

[Right now the ship is practically dead as well as immobile but it is not destroyed as you have stopped firing uppon it and it is Three more days left Before it crashes onto the planet. In this situation there is not much that I can do.]

[The Clans]

(Well you know Necro is going to keep firing missiles. Decide if it blows up or time skip to a crash. You're the one with all the power here. We can only say what we do, we can't say your ship blows up. That's for you to decide.)

[Caspoi]

[Well, I don't imagine that his missiles would do all that much damage to a ship whose greatest defense is it's size as they would mostly do surface damage unlike the more penetrating kinetik shots. Also from what I have gathered most of the damage has been to the sides and rear of the ship and Necro is firing on the nose. Unless he wants to do something in the meantime we might as well timeskip to when it actually crashes, although he should do something in the meantime to slow it down or most preferable redirect it's course as if a ship of that size and speed would crash down onto the planet it would be a downright cataclysmic event]

[The Clans]

(Oh, he knows.)

[Caspoi]

[If I am allowed to give a recomendation Necro should fire at the holes in the middle of the ship, explosions inside an already extremely unstable structure should be enough to rip it in two, as well as kill nearly all of the swarmlings onboard and thus make the ship safe to approach.]

[The Clans]

(We just want this thread to end.)

[Caspoi]

[Yes but if the ship is destroyed then it can be safely redirected, making it all come to an end]

[Offizier Necro]

((Sorry, wisdom teeth got cut out today and my mouth is having a little trouble clotting. I'm back now, but if there's more tomorrow I can't promise I'll be posting right when I wake up since sleeping tonight while sitting upright will be tricky, especially since I can't sleep on my side like usual. In any case, thanks for the info.))

Once the mothership's nose had been bombarded and had its aerodynamics impeded, the Freeman navy switched its missile payloads and targeted area. The new bullseye for the homing missiles was the "belly of the beast", the open wounds of the mothership that the piercing kinetic slugs had made. While the Freeman missiles couldn't penetrate very deep, they could at least do some severe damage to what they could reach. In this case, what they could reach was the vital innards.

Reflecting the vulnerability of the mothership, the newer missiles fired were loaded with a payload that wasn't thermite-mix. Instead, these were the corrosive missiles mentioned earlier. This was a chemical that put the "melt through everything" acid of fictional alien blood to shame, and was fairly flashy to boot. Worse yet, this was a real chemical that was capable of being produced by relatively primitive humans. Chlorine trifluoride. Not only does chlorine trifluoride melt through many metals with rapid and dangerous ease, including many metals, they were also capable of other awe-inspiring feats. This included breaking apart metal oxides into oxygen and corroded metal, and metal oxides are commonly found as a thin film of oxidized metal, such as rust on steel, green on copper, or the even more common and subtle layer of oxidized metal on aluminum and uranium. Chlorine trifluoride can additionally ignite fires with seemingly fireproof items, such as glass. To only make matters worse, common methods of suppressing fire such as sand and water react explosively with chlorine trifluoride, so attempting to use fire sprinklers or chemical sprays containing water will result in explosions rather than safety. Given how comically acidic the chemical is and how it reacts so violently with water, it hardly needs mentioning that this is a chemical that is not safe for exposure to life forms, especially ones with water in their cells. In other words, all life. In fact, upon reacting with water, it creates hydrofluoric and hydrochloric acid, both of which are very deadly. These acids especially attack nerves and bones, with humans absorbing it through their skin and suffering lethal burns on the insides of their bodies. The fact that chlorine trifluoride is so busy violently reacting with everything else also means that any hydrochloric and hydrofluoric acid formed will likely be sprayed around into superheated vapor for anything nearby to suffer the agonizing consequences of is only insult to injury at that point.

In short, the Freeman vessels injected exploding missiles of super-acid that burn or explode nigh-everything, supply oxygen and fluorine to fuel their own fires, and the fact it makes water explode into bone-melting acid is merely a bonus style point. A coup de grâce knowingly left as inhumane as the fate received by the victims of the arthrpoids' boarding attacks on the construction ship.

[Caspoi]

At this Point the metal structure that was holding the ship together was collapsing, more explosions, more acid softening the metal, all contributed to it. These "bones" were what supported the ship, as such they were under enormous strain, something that they could no longer keep up with. They were ripped apart by the very movement of the ship, splitting into two. By now few of the aliens supporting the ship were alive, making it truly a dead hulk.

[Offizier Necro]

Since the innards of the ship had been bombarded with a comically overkill chemical and ripped in half, it was guessed that many of the functions and operators of the alien mothership had been destroyed or otherwise disabled. One half was vaguely on a collision course near farmland, while the other seemed to be heading towards a new suburb on the peripheral of an industrial city. Given the information at hand, the order was finally given for the construction ship to risk adjusting the collision course of the (sub)urban half. The main risk in mind was the possibility of the tentacles returning, but that was a gamble the navy was currently willing to take. It was either a certainty of innocent town deaths or the possibility of volunteer naval deaths. The choice was obvious to the majority of the navy, but less so to the scheming and slightly-delusional Herald. In any case, the construction ship thrusted towards the targeted half of the hulk and carefully tried to adjust its speed with the target, additionally disabling its own artificial gravity and bolting the previously-spinning interior hull into place so that its structural integrity for the task was up to par. The plan was to then attempt to thrust thoroughly and nudge the chunk off course into a mountain. The deaths of a few dozen people in an off-season mountain resort were petty compared to the thousands if not millions of deaths and incalculable infrastructural damage if it were to crash in a populated area.

All the while, the military vessels skulking in the distance had ceased fire temporarily, but kept their missile tubes loaded and ready to resume firing. In contrast to the thorough (if abstract) communication and cooperation the Herald had been engaging in with the reptilians earlier, in the comparative radio silence he had entered a sort of tunnel vision and almost forgot about the allied aliens that could likely do a better job at adjusting the hulk's course than his lone industrial vessel.

[Caspoi]

[As the ship is dead I have no more say in this, you may end it as you wish]

[The Clans]

The science ship in orbit continues its broadcast, showing the two new landing zones from the split apart ship, adusted in real time with every minor movement of the construction ship, and adjusts the range of its broadcast accordingly to the affected areas.

The Herald's tunnel vision is interrupted (if anyone bothers him) with a series of still shots of saluting fully armored soldiers, pilots in their flight suits outside of their shuttles and fighters, and deck officers dressed in their formal uniforms. As well as ship engineers, technicians, comms officers, and hordes of smaller members of their species wearing a mix of technician's safety gear and soldier's armor.

[Offizier Necro]

((Alrighty.))

The Herald's hyperfocus on the alien mothership was interrupted by getting yelled at by communication officers, who informed him about the arrival of several images from the reptilians. They were showing pictures of them saluting in more elaborate outfits than the fatigues from earlier, and many seemed to be wearing combat armor and what were assumed to be flashy officers' uniforms. Was this a declaration of war now that they had an opportunity to loot the ship, or was this just a "we did it!" message among battle brothers? The lack of updates or explosions from the space station seemed to imply that there weren't any hostilities going on, so it was probably some kind of martial celebration of victory. Or perhaps they were asking permission to land on Haven and cooperate in cleaning out and researching the bug menace? They didn't seem to be broadcasting maneuvers like they did on previous occasions, so it was probably just martial victory customs. Since the fighting was over for now, he ran down to his quarters and finally changed into the outfit he had wanted to greet them originally with. It was a Victorian-esque outfit that had dark purple feathers stuck in the hat, which was the reason why he hadn't switched to the outfit in the first place for initial fear that the aliens potentially being avians instead of reptilians. Addy subsequently sent a picture of himself in the outfit giving a Freeman salute back at the reptilian allies, as was done before in casual clothing after the pirate victory. It wasn't an actual military uniform, but there wasn't a standard issue uniform for the Herald's invented position due to it being intended as an excuse to just keep the Herald from ruining more things for people on Haven.

Afterwards, he sent an FTL communication to Haven informing them of the updated trajectory of the mothership halves, and also that the allied reptilians might be landing because he may have accidentally given them the go-ahead. Ground control sighed and just rolled with the Herald's shenanigans, telling the army to prepare for the landing sites and quietly evacuating the very few people in the way of the imminent death chunks. Once the farmers and resort workers were evacuated and the army was prepared for the inevitable landing, they simply waited. Nothing more to do than that.

Eventually, the hulking halves crash-landed on cue into a mountain and into some farmland, resulting in no deaths and only minor infrastructural damage. The hyper-reactive chlorine trifluoride had spent itself in the days between the crash landing and the detonation, so that wasn't of much concern. The main concern was the presence of any remaining arthropoids and if they contained any pathogens that could hurt humans or Haven's ecosystem. As such, any soldiers and researchers that boarded the ship did so in hazmat gear, despite its bulkiness. Any detected survivors were to have their locations noted and then cleared out with remote-guided bomb drones that would sacrifice themselves for the safety of their human operators. Once cleared of remaining hostiles, the humans began the long and careful process of examining and researching the massive artifacts.

Meanwhile, the Herald had a decent idea that he had before the crash landing which he successfully proposed to the government, which was to offer bounties on any alien scraps that landed elsewhere. This would result in a lot of Freeman citizens trying to pawn fraudulent artifacts, but a hierarchy of inspection solved that issue in an efficient manner. Despite the fraudsters, it would help instill a sense of adventure in the community since anyone could make a quick buck from helping advance research and humanity as a whole. Individual accomplishment towards a greater good.

[Caspoi]

[While I am not going to do anything I want to Point out that considering the speed the ship had been travelling at (not quite the 0.3 lightspeed it started with but still really fast) there would not be much left of it to research, mostly molten clumps strewn across a large area. And you need not fear any swarmlings being left alive, they all died either when the inner explosions happened, when the ship broke in multiple pieces, when the air run out, when it entered the atmosphere or when it crashed.]

[Offizier Necro]

((Well, I guess it'd just be researching scrap at that point, but it's still important data, even if it's only knowing the strength and chemical properties of the materials inside. Thanks for the info though, I mistakenly thought it was going much slower.))

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