Doom Star: Book 03 - Battle Pod by Vaughn Heppner

Author:Vaughn Heppner
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Published: 2010-10-05T04:00:00+00:00

-14-

The moon Phobos was a fortress, the best circling Mars. Six months ago, the Highborn had taken it with battleoids. Otherwise, it would have given the Doom Star trouble. It had merculite missiles and heavy laser batteries dug deep into the moon’s surface like gigantic pillboxes. Before the Highborn had left six months ago, they’d given the moon to the Planetary Union, along with the other surviving orbital stations.

The key to Phobos were the giant fusion plants that powered the lasers. Those fusion plants were deep in the moon that was about 27 kilometers in diameter. A Doom Star was over a kilometer sphere, a gigantic space vessel. The Martian moon had greater mass than any Doom Star, although it was not as lavishly armored. Phobos’ armor was its mass.

The name Phobos meant ‘fear.’ In ancient times, Fear had been a companion of Mars, the Roman god of war. Deimos meant ‘panic,’ another of Mars’ companions.

The range of a laser depended on several factors. One of them was the size of the focusing systems. All beams of light lost coherence over distance. A common flashlight lost its brilliance because of diffusion or the spreading of its light. A laser beam was no different. Its light was more tightly focused and that was the source of its dreadful power. Therefore, a long-range beam needed to start with a large diameter focusing system. The larger the diameter, the bigger the beam one could use. The bigger the beam, the longer it took for the beam’s light to diffuse into uselessness. The second factor for long-range beams was power. Power needed a source. A small orbital fighter lacked a power plant to supply it with a battle-worthy laser. That’s why orbitals used cannons and missiles. A SU Battleship was big. That size allowed it massive fusion engines. Those engines supplied its laser batteries with enough power for long-range beams.

One of the reasons the Doom Stars were so deadly, was that their lasers could fire farther than any SU warship. The experimental beamship Bangladesh had trumped the Doom Stars in range and therefore had been superior in many ways.

The heavy lasers embedded on Phobos were of Doom Star range and power. That made Phobos a dangerous fortress to tackle. Unfortunately, the Highborn battleoids had not been able to storm Phobos six months ago fast enough. Knowing they were losing the moon, the SU defenders had destroyed many of the key components for the heavy lasers. Day and night, Martian Unionists labored intensely to fix the lasers. Two lasers were operational and a third was weeks away from being ready.

If those two lasers had been ready when the SU Battlefleet began to gather at far orbit, Chavez likely would have ordered strikes against the individual spaceships. Those two laser cannons were ready now and the fusion plants were online. They targeted SU Battleships over 350,000 kilometers away, but held their fire.

Almost two days ago, an aerosol cloud had begun forming before the massed Social Unity Fleet.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.