The Arm Of Ageddon  

By Michael Chungkun Chen

Author Notes:  Please give feedback if you enjoyed or disliked the two-part techno-tale.  This is my first posted Ficlet, and any comments would be welcomed.  Join Enterprise1701_d’s yahoo group where I am active at, and read all his stories too.  Since the majority of this part refers to references from his stories.    

Arm-Ageddon, the heavy cruiser Ageddon plows through the sector at near light speeds to reach the front of the battle before the evil invading army breaks through. Only the Arm of Ageddon can save the Ulians now. The unspeakable power that the arm can generate, when bio energy is channeled through it, can destroy stars...

There are tales that the arm was drifting through space for eons before the birth of the first Ulians. When the first Ulian inter-stellar cruiser passed through the neighboring star, it detected massive energy readings. When the cruiser finally found the source, all that was there was a simple arm, severed at the elbow. The crew who witnessed it prayed the owner was at peace. When taken aboard to give it a proper burial, something weird happened. The first crewmember to come into contact with the arm did not wear any insulating barrier and got a nasty shock....

The arm fell to the floor and instantly burnt a hole through three decks before it became inert once more. The shipboard high bishop was summoned to examine and bless the arm. Upon figuring the potential use of the arm as a defensive weapon, they sent it to the scientists under heavy insulation to prevent another accident.

Over fifty years, the presence of the arm accelerated the study of bioelectric fields and bio based energy by magnitudes. Things like Mitochondric generators were built, able to generate hundreds of watts from a simple cup of sugar water. For larger energy needs they developed the ever so famous zero point cells. Though they are hard to produce because they need to be grown and cared for, and maintenance involves changing the electrolytes that it bathes in. They do have the ability to absorb energy from ZP fields around them and re-emit it as EM radiation, heavily concentrated in the infrared region. With all these bio-energy advancements, it only makes sense that other bio-related fields excelled.

The Ulians advanced their medical science to untold reaches. They were able to grow a complete new organ if they couldn't convince the damaged one to regenerate. They had learned that bio energy of specific frequencies induce cellular growth and regeneration. The Arm birthed a new age of civilization.

Their buildings were mostly organic, as they had found ways to stiffen new organic materials to become harder than titanium. With these organic building materials, they were able to graft new technologies right into the walls and ceilings. One major advantage was all the buildings had automatic climate control. The organic walls would insulate very well, and on top of that, there is a circulatory system within the walls that pumped fluids to provide the building with power, and a constant comfortable temperature. When damaged, the buildings would heal themselves.

Because the source of all these amazing changes came about from the Arm, they had mounted the arm on a statue. They had reverse engineered the genetic code within the arm to find the physical attributes of the owner and erected an organic life-sized statue of him. The arm was grafted on to the statue. The statue was organic like the Ulian's buildings, so they were able to direct certain amounts of bio-energy into the Arm. They had figured out which frequencies would generate blasts that would obliterate mountains, and which ones would just cause the Arm to glow mildly.

So over fifty years of relative peace, they had prosperity and worshiped the Fred-like statue with the glowing arm. Their religions incorporated Fred as martyr who lost his arm to protect the Ulians and allowed them to prosper. Though they didn't know the name of their martyr, they worshiped him all the same.

Then one day, word of their frontier colonies being taken over by a race of unsavory aliens reached the central government. The aliens had defenses unlike any other; none of their bio-plasma blasts would penetrate the shields of the alien ships. The only reason they had time to prepare was that the aliens’ weapons weren't as effective against the Ulians bio-hulls. Most of the energy blasts actually energized their Ulian hulls. None of the projectiles launched had enough kinetic energy to punch through the tough Ulian hull. It was a stale mate except for the fact that the aliens kept coming back.

They needed something to convince the aliens to stay away. They needed something that would blast through anything. They needed... The ARM.

So they took the first Warship that was created which happened to be one of their newest designs. The warship Ageddon had a central nervous system connected to their computer. Because of this they were able to connect the Arm to the ship, and control the bio energy sent to the arm. After a month to refit the ship to operate the Arm, they were now ready to head to the front lines and battle the never tiring aliens.

The Warship Ageddon left space dock, heading for the front lines....

Upon the control room in the Ageddon, the command staff sat at their various stations preparing for battle. They were less than an hour away from the last reported position of the aliens, and it was the first time they had taken this warship into battle. Though all the system had been thoroughly tested, this was basically the final ultimate test for the built in central nervous system of the ship. In theory the ship CNS would allow the ship to react faster, and evade weapon fire as soon as ship sensors detect it. The crew would control weapons, while the ship itself was in charge of most defensive aspects.

There were reactionary shields, which would activate around an area that would most likely be hit. These shields weren't left on for long periods because they were so powerful they prevented movement in the direction of the shields. The shields reflected all cosmic and quantum radiation along with matter. Of course shields of that magnitude drained energy so fast that the zero point cells circulating through the ship would not be enough to keep the shield on forever. Luckily the electrolytic fluids within the circulatory system stored enough energy to keep the shields on for half an hour continuously. And the self-healing hull itself was quite thick to prevent most weaponry from damaging it. Other than the Arm of Ageddon, there were impressive amounts of weaponry arrayed on the Ageddon.

The primary weapons were twenty-four independently energy lancers, able to operate in focus fire mode. They also carried one bio plasma launcher, which required biological waste matter to create the plasma. So they needed time to replenish the ammunition supply for that weapon. For close range skirmishes, the ship's hull generated acid, kept in special acid sacks, which could be sprayed in any direction from any of the numerous pores along the hull. The acid attack was primarily used against light fighters that swarmed around the ship.

So the crew checked over the weapons system and made sure everything was functional. It was only a matter of time before they reached the aliens....

The Ageddon dropped to sub light speeds as they approached the other Ulian ships regrouping in the Tegri system. The other ships were low on resources, but barely damaged. The aliens had not destroyed a single Ulian ship, but on the other hand, the Ulians haven't destroyed any alien ships either. Both sides were suffering zero casualties but have used up many resources to fight the war. The war had only started six months ago when the first lone Alien ship opened fire on an Ulian deep space explorer, and both ships retreated to inform their respective leaders. Since then, the Ulian's increased light and medium cruiser patrols in the eight sectors surrounding the colonies near the area of contact.

At first the Ulians only saw the alien ships once or twice a week; but as time passed, the aliens became increasingly frequent in their aggressive contacts. Every contact involved a few shots from the aliens, then the Ulians furiously trying to communicate their peaceful intentions before finally returning fire. The encounters were often random and had no strategic value until recently. The aliens began to show up with larger vessels escorted by a large contingent of fighter crafts. This is when the Ulians began to slowly retreat. They had evacuated all the outposts, and were left with colonies that were too large to move. Retreat was not an option anymore.

Luckily, the new warships are finally reaching the front lines, and the first one, the Ageddon, has an armed arm. Many have prayed that their saint, the One Armed, would convince these mysterious aliens to go away through the power of the Arm.

As the Ageddon arrived at the Biotic stations there was only one ship that was damaged badly that it needed some time in the regeneration port. The same technologies that healed the Ulians were also able to heal their ships. Most the damages in the fleet were minor scratches and scorch marks that would go away over time. The one in the regeneration port had a long gash along the top of the outer hull. The inner hall where the environment was contained seemed healthy and well. The general Ulian ships were all designed to be streamlined triangular disks. This shape provided amazing maneuvering capabilities; each corner on the triangle had omni-directional multi-axial field thrusters for maneuvering and sub light travel. Each corner also had omni-directional single plane hyper-drives.

The gash on that Ulian ship had been caused by the latest battle where one of the alien's fighter's kamikazied onto the Ulian ship. The belly fin of the alien fighter dug along the top of the Ulian ship before the fighter broke apart from the stress. The sides of the gash were temporarily sealed off when the liquids in the circulatory system met with the coldness of space. So the ship was not badly damaged, as soon as the regeneration port promote enough cell growth on the hull, the seal would be absorbed and made part of the new hull.

Some messages and short orders were passed around between the fleet and the new warship. Soon the ships flanked the Ageddon as they headed for the fleet of aliens that recently engaged one of their patrols. Five Ulian heavy cruisers, and ten medium cruisers joined the Ageddon as it began its brief transit in hyperspace. Before the sixteen ships winked out of normal space, one can tell the lead ship in the middle was built for war. Compared to the single triangular disk of all the other cruisers, the warship was a double triangular disk connected together at certain points. All over the surface of the warship were weapon ports and emitter units for the shield.

The sixteen ships entered normal space with their weapons armed, and raced toward the patrol ships. It was evident that though no serious damage was taken by any of the ships, the Ulians were firing their sole bio-plasma weapons less and less often. Soon they wouldn't be able to fire at all until they refuel, or the crew provided more bio-waste.

Without hesitation the new battle fleet rushed toward the aliens with their bio-plasma weapons blazing. The alien fleet numbered at least fifty medium to heavy cruisers with a few scores of fighters. The fighters had been deployed as soon as the aliens saw the reinforcements.

As soon as the main fleet was close enough, the patrol joined the ranks near the back. The Ageddon was ahead of the other ships drawing all of the alien's fire. The alien fighters were still headed for the large warship.

The twenty-four energy lancers were independently controlled by twenty-four different Ulian crewmembers through a shipboard neural link. In their minds they could see the whole field of fire for the energy lancer they were operating. All they had to do was track the ship with their attention, and will the lancers to fire after they feel they had a motion lock. The central nervous system of the warship correlated the aim of each lancer to the focus of each controller crew. Because of the vast instinctual target tracking nature of most species, locating and shooting at targets were quite effective this way.

On the captain's orders, every controller willed their lancer to fire at the alien fighters they were targeting. Simultaneously twenty-four energy beams raced out and smacked the incoming alien fighters. None of the fighters were damaged. If it weren't for the energy shields all twenty-four fighters would have become debris.

Of the thirty-six alien fighters, twenty-four of them were hit; seven of them began to spin out of control, as the pilots of the fighters did not anticipate energy weapons. They had expected to see some Ulian bio-plasma which they could easily dodge, and then continue their straight path to the warship. The energy of the lancer blast was so large that it carried enough momentum to throw a few fighters off center and into a spin. Twelve of the pilots had not closed their eyes fast enough and were temporarily blind. One of the alien pilots was knocked unconscious as the deceleration exceeded his physiological tolerance. One of the blind pilots had the misfortune of having a spinning fighter in his flight path. The pilot that could see but in a spin desperately fought his controls to maneuver out of the path of his crewmate, unfortunately there was not enough time and the two collided in a spectacular display of plasma explosions.

The sixteen alien fighters that were still in complete control immediately began to maneuver evasively to elude the tracking lancers. One of the evading ships was blindsided by a blind-piloted ship, and both ships were damaged beyond recognition from the sub light collision. Soon the blinded pilots began to regain their vision. And joined their crewmates in evasive patterns. Slowly the remaining fighters that were spinning out of control finally regained the ability to fly. But these pilots were in no condition to fly; most of their controls were banged up along with themselves when their ships were spinning faster than a top.

So twenty-six alien fighters evasively flew towards the large warship. None of the energy lancers were able to lock on effectively to any of the alien fighters. Most the controllers were firing at will, and a few glanced the fighters they were aiming at. With the evasive actions, none of the shots after the initial blast were quite as effective.

As the small fighters raced towards the Ageddon, the cruisers were still trading shots. Despite the fact that none of the alien weaponry was able to breach the Ulian hulls, the warship was instinctively evading with a series of elegant loops, flips, corkscrews, and other fantastic maneuvers that can only be accomplished on an Ulian ship. The artificial gravity systems were heavily taxed as it kept the gravity within the ship as close to nominal as possible. But certain maneuvers had too much acceleration and the crew felt the jerks of the ship dancing around the alien armament. There were instances where the alien beam weapon hit the Ageddon, but those weapons energized the hull and provided additional energy for the ship to use amongst its systems. Had the blast been harmful, the reactionary shields would have come online for the duration of the blast. Those shields also had a draw back in which the ship would have limited maneuverability while the shields were active. As the alien fighters reached their effective firing range, they began to open fire a barrage of tiny projectiles. All of the sudden the Ageddon focused all its attention on these ships, for their projectiles stung. Not to the point where it would need to raise the shields, but enough to immediately open the acidic sprayers as soon as the captain authorized it.

The acid discharged all over the Ageddon was a special biological acid that ate through anything very quickly unless it was lined with thick layers of mucus. The sacs containing the acid and the lining to the sprayers had cells to generate mucus whenever it needed more. So the acid was constantly contained. The interesting part was that after the acid consumed the mucus, the by product was more of this biological acid, of course this process was quite slower than the rate the mucus lining was able to regenerate.

Another interesting property of this acid was that it created electro magnetic pulses whenever it was in contact with EM fields. This was the property that gave the scientist who discovered this acid an honorary protector of the Arm award, given out each year to the one scientist who makes such a breakthrough that anything short of this award would had been dishonoring the scientist and the Arm. In short, this acid when sprayed at a force shield would slowly disrupt the shield and allow the acid to reach the surface of whatever was generating the shield. And once that happens it was only a matter of time before the acid would eat through.

At first when the alien fighters flew through the fine mist of acid, the pilots ignored it and were not concerned. They were confident that their light shields, which were able to repel space debris impacting at near light speeds, would be able to repel mist quite easily.

It wasn't until the next time that they attempted to fire their shipboard rail guns that they started worrying. The high-energy rail slugs were tearing off pieces of the rail gun barrel. Soon, the internal workings of the rail gun were expose to the mist and the guns were not firing at all.

Suddenly the hull of the fighter craft seemed to start boiling off of the ship. That was when all twenty-six alien fighters promptly pulled away from the Ageddon and raced towards their carrier ships. Some of the alien pilots noticed pieces of their ships had already fallen off. Others actually stared at their cockpit covers as it dissolved. Luckily these alien pilots were all in zero pressure environment suits. Since the fighter crafts did not contain atmosphere due to the fact that the added mass would inhibit acceleration.

Most of the fighter pilots never reached further than a few thousand kilometers away from the Ulian warship before their fighters started to break up. Some had been smart and ejected before then, and were simply floating in space hundreds kilometers away from the remnants of their fighters. The ones who stayed in their ships hoping to make it back to their carriers weren't so lucky because before they could even reach halfway there, their thrusters broke off and shot ahead, while they were left with the antimatter engine core right underneath them. Though the amount of anti matter is very low, an explosion of that proximity would instantly vaporize those pilots. The six pilots that ejected far away enough was lucky to be alive with mere radiation burns.

The looming Ulian battleship deftly darted past those aliens allowing the other ships to collect the prisoners. With no more fighters for the energy lancers to shoot at, the captain commanded the controllers to coordinate and target a focused location of the lead ship. Perhaps the concentrated blast of twenty-four lancers would be able to drill through the energy shields of those aliens.

The lancers all focused its beams on the weapon's array of the alien's lead vessel. The searing white spears of light all impacted on top of one another. A field of solid energy shimmered where the beams met. Again the Ageddon fired, and again the alien shields shimmered, though this time it shimmered longer. The lancers seemed to be working much better than the bio plasma launchers.

Rapidly all the alien ships began to aggressively fire their beam weaponry at the Ulian warship. The Ageddon dodged most but some impacted leaving minor scorches. The energy from the attacks was converted to power the lancers for the return attack. Had the hull been able to convert all of the enemy blasts with full efficiency, it would not have bothered with dodging; but the hull would overload if too much energy was pumped in at once.

Somewhere within the exchange of weapons fire, the alien cruiser ships opened fire with their heavy mounted rail guns. This was the first time the Ulians seen the larger ships fire projectile based weaponry. Most of the rail gun slugs missed the evading Ulian craft, as the Ageddon lanced back at the exact same spot on the same ship hoping to break through it's shields. One fortunate slug was lucky, it found its way to the large Ulian warship. These slugs were much larger and fired at a higher velocity than the ones the fighters possessed. They held enough kinetic energy to punch straight through the outer hull of the Ageddon and embedded itself into the surface of the inner hull. The central nervous system of the large warship was aflame with signals. The ship itself was near sentient, and it had felt pain. It had redoubled its efforts to dodge those slugs, ignoring the beam weaponry completely.

The hole had already sealed up from the electrolytic fluid solidifying once exposed to space, but the pain was still there. Soon the ship began to utilize its shields to deflect the high-energy slugs. As it did so, the Ulian warship slowed down ever so slightly caused by the shield's increased drag effect through the differing fields filling the vacuum of space. More and more of the projectiles threatened the ship; more and more often the shields were raised. Soon the Ageddon had its shields active continuously while maneuvering as fast as it can with shields on.

So far the shields on the alien lead ship appeared to be weakened a lot from constant focus fire by the lancers. The captain decided to drill through at least one alien ship before the end of this battle. Upon ordering continuous mode on the lancers, the Ageddon opened up all twenty-four lancers and kept poking at one spot on the alien shields. Despite the Ulian warship continuing to maneuver out of the projectiles way, it had kept an accurate lock on the weak part of the alien shield. Ageddon's shields were holding steady, it had much power left for continuous operation stored up. But the captain knew that a long drawn out battle might end up leaving his ship with more holes than a net.

When the shield on the alien lead ship began to waver, the other alien ships renewed their efforts to obliterate the Ulian warship. They began to copy the Ageddon and focused their fire at one spot on the shields. Soon the Ulian captain noticed that the energy reserves left was draining more rapidly than he expected. Because of the continuous use of the lancers along with the shields and the focused enemy fire, the ship would only have enough energy stored to keep this up for fifteen minutes.

Now it was a battle to see whose shields could last longer. The other ships in the Ulian fleet had been firing heavily upon the alien fleet, but the bio-plasma was ineffective. The aliens had already ignored it, while concentrating on the actual threat of the warship.

The captain wanted to keep the Arm hidden in the nose of the Ageddon a secret, for only Ageddon had the Arm as a weapon. This was as much of a test of the new Warships as it was a battle to survive. The Arm would be a last resort. Three whole minutes past as the continuous lancers start to sink further towards the alien craft.

The closer the lancers got to the lead alien ships hull, the less that ship did. It had stopped firing its weapons opting to divert all power to the shields. And it no longer maneuvered in order to diver power from there too. Life support was at minimal, and the lights in the ship were off except for console illumination. Within the ship, various crew were busy strip-mining their hand held weapons to feed the battery charge into the ship. Generators were outputting at 110%, thermal output was near critical. The lead ship had no hope of retreat; there was no more power to complete such a task.

The lancers inched toward the hull surface, only just touching. Then within an instant, a bright flash erupted from the breach the lancers caused, and the lead ship simply stopped operating. Plasma spewed out of the rupture caused by the lancers, and reacted as the two merged. One sole shuttle detached from the lead alien ship and retreated away at high speeds along with the rest of the alien fleet. The plasma-lancer explosion was not very destructive, but it created enough high-energy radiation to actually push the Ageddon back because of its shields. The Ageddon finally stopped lancing the abandoned ship.

The lancers from the Ulian warship had ruptured one of the main energy plasma system conduits, and all the power that the generators on the alien ship were producing was now readily leaking into space. The ship still held some aliens but their power supply was rapidly diminishing due to the large hole in the hull.

Quickly a tracking scout vessel was dispatched to find where the aliens were retreating. The rest of the ships began to scan through the sector to locate aliens drifting in space and to salvage the alien ship. There was much to learn about the aliens, and since they refuse to be peaceful, and share information, or at least make contact before declaring war, the Ulians will just learn what they could from their first successful battle.

When the first aliens were brought aboard after the first battle, all they could determine was that they shared the humanoid shape with the Ulians. The alien zero pressure environment suits totally obscured any features other than the major limbs they possessed. None of the known translation systems would work on the snapping, popping language that the aliens used. The aliens that were alive still were all gathered into one of the larger cruisers and placed in holding cells. The dead bodies were sent to the labs for research.

As soon as the plasma leak had petered out from the alien ship, Ulian space troops were sent aboard to secure the large vessel. The space troops were outfitted with the Ulian version of zero pressure environment suits. The Ulian version were simple yet functional; the outside surface was basically a sister material to what they use for the outer hull of Ulian spacecrafts. This version was flexible but retained many of the properties of the hull. The zero pressure environmental suits had thermal-regulation, radiation shielding, and maintained internal pressure to a comfortable level. Most damages were usually healed by itself within a day in regenerative storage. The impact protection offered by the zero pressure environmental suits were a fraction of what the ships hulls gave, but it was still quite high; designed to withstand high velocity space debris, it is very rare for projectiles within an atmosphere to be able to puncture the suits. These zero pressure suits double nicely as combat armor, large explosions and blunt trauma were pretty much the only things Ulian space troops had to worry about from other troops.

The zero pressure suits also had atmosphere regulation adaptors. A small package can be attached to the waist of the suit and it would recycle the atmosphere within. For extra-vehicular activities, there were thrust packs that can be strapped to the back like a backpack. These packs contained trace amounts of zero point cells. Given enough time the packs would be able to regenerate more power. Usually most users never actually see when a thrust pack runs out of power for they store enough energy for a day of usage.

The Ulian troops carried both the thrust packs and atmosphere recyclers because the alien vessel no longer supported gravity, and the atmosphere was not comfortable for Ulians. But once aboard, the Ulian troops did not have anything to worry about. None of the aliens left were alive, the last shuttle that launched before the aliens left must have contained all the survivors. The dead aliens littered the floor. Most of the aliens had died when the plasma conduit ruptured causing devices all over the ship to overload. Others were in sections that were decompressed suddenly when the hull was breached.

The aliens were unusual if nothing else, their skins were pale and glistened like it was wet. It explained why the aliens kept their atmosphere at 90% humidity. The aliens shared many amphibian qualities, though they stood upright on their two legs and looked very humanoid. Their heads were oversized when compared with their bodies, and their legs were much larger than their arms.

As the Ulian troops stormed into the alien ship, section by section were quickly cleared of any possible threats. Within an hour the whole alien ship was secured for the engineers and scientists to examine the alien technology.

A few more hours past before any conclusive results came in about the technology of the captured alien ship. The Ulians were feeling foolish because they had been attempting to breach plasma based shields with plasma weapons. Though with enough time and plasma the Ulians would have been able to wear down the alien shielding, normal Ulian ships just didn’t carry enough resources to accomplish it. Against most projectile weapons, the plasma shield would burn the matter turning it into plasma, and the plasma currents would redirect the kinetic energy. Enough cold matter and the shield would collapse. Energy beams on the other hand are scattered by the dense plasma surrounding the ship. When enough energy bombards the shield, the plasma flow could be disrupted enough to let the focused energy beams through, which is what happened with the lancers aboard the Ageddon. However with plasma weaponry, usually the destructive force lay neither in it’s kinetic energy or it’s focused nature. When a slow globe of plasma connects with the rest of the plasma shield, it simply merges and follows the plasma currents.

The translators were starting to be able to translate words and phrases from the aliens. But other than the phrases of “you are unpure”, “die”, or “death will greet you”, the aliens were unwilling to talk. The xenobiologists had a field day examining the alien corpses; they found more and more similarities linking the aliens with amphibians. So much so that they had started to call the aliens Amphians. And like most pieces of gossip, this name quickly spread. Soon everyone called the aliens Amphians.

Around the same time, the reports from the scout came in. They have followed the alien fleet to their staging area. While still under chameleon fields, the scout were quietly observing the Amphian fleet and sending back reports. Unfortunately it looked like the aliens were staging yet another attack, this time with an even more massive fleet. 

The Ulian fleets were pretty ineffective against the Amphian shields. There was no way that the Ulian fleet commander would allow the Ageddon to go to the Amphian staging sector alone. Unfortunately there was no time for the Ulians to build a whole fleet of warships; so they did the best that they could, given the short time they had. One of the engineers came up with the idea of mounting the largest personal anti vehicle weapons outside of the ship. Of course personal weapons were not large enough to generate an effective plasma yield, so they were energy-based instead. The pulse rifles were not as strong as bio-plasma launchers, but against a plasma shield, the pulse rifles were definitely a better choice.

The adaptation of the personal weapons to operate as a ship-based version was not difficult. They had a multitude of these pulse rifles; they just had to adapt the rifles to accept energy input from the hulls circulatory system. The pulse rifles already were linked to ship board controls, which could restrict, or activate the rifle firing sequence. After that they just needed to mount these onto the hull and shield them to make them able to take a beating from enemy fire. A quick hack of the battery systems, some circulatory conduits, extra hull armor plating, some surgical tools, a hand held regenerator, and a few protocol bypasses; and the Ulians were well on their way to mounting semi-effective weaponry against the Amphians.

Those modifications took nearly six hours, which was enough time for the Ageddon to recharge their energy systems. Of course while the ships were recharging, and the engineers were refitting, and the command crew were analyzing the battle strategies. New tactical maneuvers and approach patterns were developed in light of the last battle.

The weapon technology that the Amphian used was quite amazing. The Ulians discovered many things from the lone Amphian vessel. Of course having the vessel largely intact save for the lack of power, and a minor breach enabled them to find all the equipment in perfect working condition.

The Amphian’s excelled in magnetic technology. This allowed them to have a fine control over many things, which includes plasma. This explained their unique shielding system. The Ulians have yet to figure out the physics behind the primary weapons system for it was a magnetic beam weapon, but from their knowledge on magnetic fields, the beam weapon would have a devastating effect when it struck metallic surfaces. Basically anything that would conduct electricity, or was susceptible to magnetic fields would experience great damage.

The magnetic beam weapons caused two types of damage. First the magnetic beam would impart such a large magnetic force once it hit. This force would either attract the surrounding ferrous material, or repel it depending on the magnetic polarization the weapon was set to. So whole ships could be collapsed or blown apart just from the magnetic force. The secondary damage comes from the electrical effects of the magnetic beams. The beams would induce a gigantic current that would superheat the section of metal that the beam hits. Nearby electrical systems would also be fried, as the beam would cause enough electrical eddy currents to melt circuitry. This weapon is basically a much stronger version of an EMP weapon, which triggers at long ranges.

Luckily for the Ulians, their hulls were completely organic. They had stopped using metals in most of their structures, vessels, devices, and circuitry. The only metals they used were in tools designed to detect or create magnetic or electric pulses, and even those were mostly composed of organic structures. All of the older buildings and vessels still had remnants of metal and cement and other inorganic materials, but none of the ships the Ulians took to battle were archaic. So when the Amphian beam weapons hit the Ulian hulls, most of them experienced slight burns from the little electricity the beams were able to affect on the organic hull.

The secondary weapons of the Amphians were a study by itself. It was simply a very efficiently made rail gun. It was more complex than two single rails with two anti-parallel currents generating a magnetic field, and having an armature conduct current perpendicular to the to the magnetic field in order to experience a force perpendicular to the current and magnetic field. The Amphian rail gun consisted of thousands of thin metal wafers alternately stacked with electrically insulating and thermally conductive cooling sheets arranged in a 45-degree arc on opposite sides of the barrel. Each wafer was very thin and had a matching wafer on the other side of the barrel. Each pair of opposing wafers was connected to a circuit much like traditional rail guns. The armature used to wrap the projectile in order to propel it was similarly constructed with thousands of wafers all rotated slightly so it would align with the wafers in the gun. What this accomplished was allow the Amphians to drive a tremendous amount of current into the rail gun without melting the rails.

The whole system was super cooled by space itself, allowing the materials that the weapon was made from to reach its superconductive state. This also allowed the weapon to produce minimal heat when firing. The only place that generated heat was from the friction between the armature and the rails. Even the friction was reduced with the lubricating qualities of the armature itself. As particles of the armature wore off against the rails, the particles would act as super small bearings for this and future projectiles.

Once the armature was out of the rail gun, it continued towards the target. Unlike traditional rail guns where the armature would separate and fall off or vaporize inside the firing chamber, the Amphian armatures were permanently attached to the projectile and experience no vaporization effects. This allowed the slugs to be even more massive. The depleted uranium core of the main projectile provided a lot of hard mass adding to its penetrating power. When it impacts on hulls, the depleted uranium slug is driven through the hull by the large armature casing surrounding the rear of the projectile. As the armature reaches the hull, most of the kinetic energy would already be transferred to the depleted uranium round. The depleted uranium part would already be pretty deep if not completely through the hull, while the remaining kinetic energy would deform the armature against the hull; this allows the uranium slug to be released from the armature.

The rounds were fired at half the speed of light, the high current low voltage transformers allowed the Amphians to supply the guns with enough current to drive those projectiles to half the speed of light. This made a very effective penetration system, and it was the reason why that slug was able to so easily penetrate all the way in and embed itself into the secondary hull of the Ageddon.

Of course one of the first things the repair crew of the Ageddon did was to extract the radioactive slug from the inner hull and run a regenerator over both set of hulls. Some of the biological material near the slug on the inner hull was damaged beyond regeneration. It had been exposed to the alpha particle radiation from the depleted uranium slugs for too long. This damaged section had to be surgically removed to prevent it from spreading like cancer in living cells.

Hundreds of repair personnel walked the outer hull in their zero pressure suits seeking embedded projectiles with a hand held radioactivity meter. Whenever one were found, they had to be dug out with a surgical laser, and then the area had to be regenerated with a hand regenerator. The rail slugs from the smaller fighters did not penetrate very deep, but they still contained enough radioactive material to pose a threat if left in the hull for a long duration.

The Ulian fleet had also received word on a second warship that came out of the space dock. They had finished installing the hyper drives on the prototype of the Ageddon. They had never intended for the prototype ship to be anything other than a testing platform for all the new systems they were building, so they built the prototype with everything except for the hyper drives. They had planned to use it to further test the ships’ central nervous system, but when the results of the first battle came in, they began to refit the prototype with some hyper drives they had on hand. They only had two spare, as they did not even start the construction on the second warship’s hull yet.

Fortunately the triangular shapes of the Ulian ships allowed for single, dual, and tri hyper drive configurations. So if a ship had one or even two damaged hyper drive, the last one would be able to pull the ship in single drive mode. Though this mode only gave 20% the speed compared to when they run in tri drive mode. With two hyper drives, the prototype warship would need to run in dual drive mode where the two drives would push the triangular ship from the back. This mode would only allow 60% of the maximum speed. With three drives, tri drive mode was available where two drives would push from the back, and one would pull from the front. Allowing the ship to orient so that one corner would lead in front.

The plan was simple, wait for the refitted prototype warship to join up with the fleet and move to the outskirts of the Amphian sector and set up an ambush point. Some stealth mines littered about the sector, and position the two fleets for a good crossfire. It would have been a simple battle, the mines would have dealt the most damage, and the Ulian fleet would pick off the stragglers.

The fates just didn’t want the Ulian to win so easily. Just as the Ulian prototype warship was entering hyperspace, the whole alien attack fleet was on the move. This time there were hundreds of times more ships. It seemed the Amphians did not take their defeat very well and were bent on invading the Ulians. The small scout vessel, the Martyr, trailed the invasion fleet of the Amphians. There were scanner echoes of a moon-sized ship among the invasion fleet. Perhaps this time the Ulian chewed a bit more off than they can swallow.

By the time the reports from the scout were in, the Ulians only had a little time to prepare before the Amphian fleet would be upon them. They could not safely mine up the sector they were in because it was too close to their colony, and had too much civilian space activity. At the top of the command chain, decisions were made, and word spread quickly to all jump to the next sector and set the mines up.

The whole Ulian fleet was swarming with activity to load as many mines as they could from the storage silos. And the engineers were still busy converting other weaponry into mines. Luckily they had finished adding energy rifles to every Ulian cruiser. Though these modifications made the Ulian ships look strange, for the triangular ships were covered with interesting ridges that basically housed the rifles. Some ships had thousands of little ridges lining every surface of the hull.

Rapidly the sector began to empty as groups of Ulian ships jumped out to the neighboring sector. The opposite appeared in the neighboring sector. As more and more Ulian ships jumped in, the sector was becoming filled with ships and activity. As each ship was dropping and arming their traditional mines along with their field made mines from explosive matter, or energy weapons.

The battle against time was on, if the Amphians won the race, the Ulians would surely be slaughtered. If the Ulians finish before the Amphians reach the sector, the mines would help the Ulian fight tremendously. If the Ulian prototype warship were able to reach the battle in time, Ageddon would be able to focus on using the Holy Arm to smite their enemies. All the Ulians could do at this point was to work diligently and to hope that time was on their side. Once inside hyperspace, it was hard to determine how fast someone else was moving. The Ulians haven’t yet developed higher dimensional sensors to track down velocity of another object in hyperspace, although they did know how long their own travels would take.

Meanwhile, within hyperspace, the Martyr was following the Amphian trail. Trying to stay far away enough to avoid detection, but close enough not to loose the trail. So far it had been an easy task for the Ulian scout ship. The sleek black triangular ship was cloaked using the latest Ulian technology. The chameleon fields consisted of radiation matching and redirection, sensors from all over the hull of the ship would gather the ambient readings while a processor would superimpose those readings onto the inverse of what the hull on the other side would reflect. Then resulting data is sent to the emitters on the opposite side of the hull and emitted. The result is an almost invisible ship, except for a little distortion because the processors would have taken to long to correct the radiation for the actual space the ship takes up.

To evade gravitational sensors, some of the chameleon field’s processors would use the artificial gravity generators to do the same thing as it does with the radiation. Fortunately space does not conduct sound for there is not enough matter to allow longitudinal pressure waves to travel. So the ships could not be detected through an audio sensor. Unless the ship rammed into another, it would be very difficult to detect the vessel.

So the Ulian scout ship had been tracking the Amphian fleets, which was quite simple considering the massive hyper drive energy signature left from the massive moon-sized Amphian battleship. The Martyr had maintained communication silence while in hyperspace; for their communications used an energy and frequency that was not natural to hyperspace, and it would have notified the Amphians of their presence. The crew was worried about the state of the main fleet. They had barely won the last battle, and now there was hundreds of times more enemy ships, and a large gigantic battleship against them. The hyper drive signatures were getting stronger and stronger.

Suddenly they came upon the whole Amphian fleet with the moon-sized battleship at the rear. Every Amphian ship was just drifting in hyperspace. The Ulian sensors did not detect any sign of battle or damage, yet none of the ships were doing anything. On top of that, every ship seemed to be generating a lot of energy with their engines. The strange scene was eerily fascinating as the scout vessel drifted next to the scene.

A momentary flare of a correctional thruster lit up hyperspace as the battle moon seemed to be aiming at something. Slowly the moon seemed to be getting into position as the other ships arranged themselves in a lattice structure around the moon.

Moments seemed like eternity as the quiet dance of ships around the moon continued. Abruptly, a large hyper hole back to normal space started to form. Almost as if someone threw a switch, every single Amphian ship engaged an energy beam toward the moon-sized battleship. Then a low rumble was heard within the organic Ulian scout vessel caused by the intense magnetic fields produced by something deep inside of the moon.

Things started happening so fast, that it appeared to be a blur to those who experienced it. First the Ulian at the sensor station noticed the Ageddeon to be three light minutes away straight through the hyper hole. Then the same Ulian noticed the Ageddeon was still busy deploying mines and had numerous crewmembers maneuvering around in space. At the same time a large magnetic wake washed over the Martyr, rocking it a little. The wake was strong enough to rock an organic ship. An instant later, a large projectile as large as the Ageddeon blasted out of the moon-sized ship’s cannon. The projectile was traveling about a third of the speed of light, but with that much mass, the Ageddeon was doomed.

Luckily there were nine minutes left before the projectile would impact, unfortunately there was a pulsar, which would mask the planet killer slug until it was it was too late for the Ageddeon to move out of the way. Quickly the Martyr followed the projectile out of hyperspace while trying to send a warning to the Ageddon. There was no use; the same pulsar was distorting the signal to the point that it seemed to be just background radiation to the crew of Ageddon. The scout vessel launched a communications probe to warn the Ageddon and the rest of the fleet, but it was barely passing the planet killer.

At this point the Martyr had caught up with the gigantic projectile and was keeping slightly ahead. There was almost nothing the small Ulian vessel could do to slow or change the trajectory of the planet killer now. It was simply too much mass to move, no wonder the moon-sized battleship and all the Amphian cruisers were powering up for so long, the energy needed to drive the rails that launched this much mass would have been enormous.

The only thing the captain of the Martyr could think of was to use its bio-plasma weapon to disintegrate the large mass, hopefully into pieces small enough that a second blast of plasma could cause a course change. There just wasn’t enough time to get far ahead enough to meet the minimal recommended distance to use the bio-plasma weapon. But the captain had enough experience to know that they were far away enough to survive a shockwave from the plasma blast.

By now three minutes passed and there was six before the Ageddon would be pulverized. The bio-plasma weapons would need a minute to charge up to a high enough energy level to affect such a big mass. The crew said their prayers to the One Armed One, hoping for success. They all knew it was risky, and it was very possible they would be caught in the shock wave and be destroyed, but they had to try.

The minute passed by slowly as everyone waited for the indicator to flash ready. The moment the green light flashed, the weapon’s officer entered the minimum distance override and fired the large burst of plasma. Silently the plasma traversed the distance from the ship to the projectile that could destroy planets. The world seemed to move in slow motion as the plasma charge connected with the large projectile. The weapons officer fired the secondary blast incase they did not survive the first blast, and that’s when the world sped up again.

The first plasma blast superheated the depleted uranium, the armature used as the launching mechanism then vaporized because of the plasma, the depleted uranium began to crumble and break up into smaller pieces. The vaporized armature surrounded the uranium pieces and began to slowly react. By now the first blast of plasma had dispensed its energy into breaking up the planet killer.

Time seemed to slow down again as the second blast of plasma traveled to meet the smaller pieces of uranium. If the Martyr had not fired the second blast, the reaction between the armature vapor and the depleted uranium would have been enough to leave a sludge which the scout ship could have been able to slow with its gravity generators and field thrusters. Most of the mass would have been lost due to increased alpha radiation, which is already prevalent in depleted uranium. The interaction with the vaporized armature accelerated the decay process like a catalyst. It was probably designed as part of the projectile in order to do the most damage after impact.

But the sludge and uranium bits left over started to chain-react with the bio-plasma of the second blast. It was over before anyone even had time to realize what happened. One moment they were watching the second plasma blast race towards the leftover sludge, the next there was a tremendous nuclear explosion the size of a medium sized country. The Martyr was torn apart into bits and pieces, as some of it also continued the chain reaction.

The amount of matter left over was either soft enough, or slow enough that it wouldn’t have posed a threat to the Ageddon. The brave crewmembers of the Martyr gave their lives to protect their cause, to give the Ageddon a chance to defeat the Amphian fleet, and preserve Ulian space from the Amphians.

The Ulians still mining up the sector had no idea anything was wrong. The Ageddon sat quietly waiting for the crew to finish deploying the mines. Suddenly a warning message came through from a probe traveling slightly faster than a third the speed of light. The probe had gotten close enough that the signals sent were strong enough to overcome the static that was coming from the pulsar. The Ageddon quickly scanned for the large projectile that was further along the path of the probe. Nothing was detected on the sensors; the pulsar’s interference was just too strong.

Quickly, the Ageddon raced out to intercept and perhaps deflect the gigantic projectile from the minefield and the crew still setting it up. Within a minute, the Ageddon reached the probe and downloaded the entire databank held within; the databank was filled with logs, and reconnaissance information. From this location, the pulsars’ interference came from behind the Ageddon, and the warship was able to clearly scan along the path the probe came from.

They were all shocked when they found traces of the Martyr among particles of depleted uranium. Most of what they found was an inert sludge that was traveling about a quarter the speed of light. The sludge was only a minute away, and the reading they received already told the tale. The Ulian scout vessel had sacrificed itself in order to render the projectile ineffective.

There was still the problem that most of the sludge still racing towards the minefield they were setting up, would either trigger it, or would tear the crew members still there up to pieces. The zero pressure suits couldn’t withstand this much mass traveling at a quarter the speed of light. Luckily there was a way to slow or stop the incoming sludge. The Ageddon quickly flipped itself so that it presented the maximum profile to the onslaught of sludge. The triangular ship exposed the top of the hull to the sludge and activated its shields preparing to deflect quite a lot of mass. The gravitational generators also presented an inverse gravitational field to help slow down the sludge and reduce the stress on the shielding system.

The Ageddon became a triangular shield to protect one of the larger minefields and the crew that was there. The rushing sludge impacted the heavy shields of the Ageddon quickly. Most of the sludge bounced off the shield, but some of it were able to punch through. The shield emitters at the top of the ship were just not as strong as the sides; for the ship was designed to battle with one edge facing the enemy, giving them a small profile to shoot at. Luckily the shields were just strong enough to slow the matter that got past the shields to a speed of a mere hundred of kilometer or so per second. And the sludge was so soft that it just splattered against the hull. The Ageddon had started out at a complete standstill, but the amount of mass that had impacted with the ship and hull had started to push the ship back. By the time that the Ageddon finally neutralized the sludge and fragments of the Martyr, the Ageddon itself was traveling back at quite some speed. Using that speed to get back to pick up the rest of the crew who were at the minefield, the Ageddon flipped its orientation to match its direction of travel.

As soon as the Ageddon reached the minefield, the remaining crew was gathered up and the final alert was sounded. It would not be long before the Amphian invasion fleet would start attacking. Quickly reconnaissance data was passed around the fleet, and orders were issued to report to their ambush points. Before they could completely situate themselves, the Amphians burst out of hyperspace and started to fire randomly at targets. The initial volley of fire was amazingly accurate from just transitioning from hyperspace; it was as if the Amphians were able to target while in hyperspace. Fortunately, at that range, the Amphians only used gravity beam weaponry for the projectile weaponry lost accuracy due forces affecting the smaller projectiles in background radiation.

Almost instantly the Ulian fleet returned fire, it was a very intricate pattern that the bio-plasma made as it slowly traveled to meet the Amphian fleet. The pattern was to avoid the minefields, but it also had a secondary objective. The Amphian fleets maneuvered out of the way of the plasma and began to close their range to make use of their more effective rail weapons. The Ulian fleet had to drop their plan to pin the Amphians from the sides because they did not have enough time to divide. Quickly the Ageddon and the rest of the Ulian fleets dashed into their fray evading occasional beams from the Amphians. Apparently they were saving up their plasma for some reason. The Ulian fleet all had maps of the minefields, so they automatically avoided them. The Amphian fleet did not give any indication that they had detected the stealth mines; a large majority of the ships were heading right into the densest parts.

The Ageddon was close enough for the lancers to be effective and started to open fire on the closest ship. All of the cruisers were flying evasive patterns along a course towards the Amphian ships. The evasive patterns were truly random, for random thrust vectors were derived from a series of quantum boxes. Theses boxes basically held small amounts of radioactive particles that emitted alpha particles, and the detectors would count the number, direction, and velocity of these particles and generate random values with it. These random values would be converted into navigational changes, and added into the ship’s course.

To an outsider it looked like ships in the Ulian fleet were all having seizures. Despite the unusual flight patterns, the method had been proven quite effective in evading enemy fire. There was only a ten percent chance of being hit, and the chance decreased if the enemy was actually trying to track and aim at the Ulians. Of course knowing the navigational corrections before they happened allowed the shipboard systems to automatically correct all readings so they would be stabilized and the crew would be able to control the various ship’s systems without getting a headache or getting motion sick.

Soon the first Amphian ships were plowing into the Ulian minefield. Hundreds of mines exploded as it encountered the plasma shields of the Amphian ships. Luckily the mines were based on kinetic energy and not plasma. Once the mines explode, it sent thousands of heavy ceramic fragments in all directions. This was very effective against the plasma shields, for the ceramic was made to hold together enough to create as much explosive pressure as possible within the mine. The plasma shield took a few seconds before it was able to completely consume the ceramic, and by that time the some of the fragments plowed through the plasma and struck the ships hull. The plasma shields did not supply very much resistance to kinetic weapons for most projectiles would have vaporized into plasma itself and be subjected to the strong magnetic fields used to control the plasma shield. The ceramic neither vaporized fast enough, nor slowed down from the magnetic field and most the fragments embedded into the hulls of the Amphian ships. A lot of fragments were able to puncture already damaged sites, and damage primary systems or decompress sections of the hull.

Most of the minefields contained thousands of mines each, and each ship triggered hundreds of them at a time. Of the three thousand or so Amphian ships, five hundred or so ships were incapacitated by the initial mine explosions. It had taken less than ten seconds; most of the Amphians were traveling too fast to stop before they trigged the minefields.

The Ulian cruisers launched off globs of plasma right before they engaged individual Amphian ships. The plasma weren’t fired at the Amphian ships, but just towards them; the plasma mostly hung there in space creating obstacles within the emptiness of space. It was then that the Ageddon began to effectively weave around the plasma balls and blast the Amphian ships at close range. Spots were carefully chosen for the weakest points; based on calculations of cosmic radiation and ship velocities, parts where the plasma was the thinnest were targeted.

The Amphian ships all targeted the Ageddon and opened fire with their rail cannons. Fortunately, most of the plasma littering the battlefield blocked the projectiles and consumed it before it even got close to the Ageddon. The Ulians basically used the Amphian plasma shielding ideology. Whatever projectiles didn’t pass close enough to plasma to be consumed was easily evaded by the random maneuvers the Ageddon executed. The Ageddon did not have to raise shields yet, and was able to maintain very high velocities and maneuverability. It was even deft enough to trick many of the Amphian ships into firing at their own. The Ageddon would hover slightly over a weak spot of a nearby Amphian ship, and then burst out as soon as another Amphian ship fired. Surprisingly Amphian weaponry actually weakened Amphian shields quite a lot.

The Ageddon was doing quite well, between dodging around clouds of plasma, and lancing weaken spots on Amphian ships, the Ageddon had not taken a single shot, and disabled or drove ships into minefields. Within two minutes, the Ageddon was able to render three Amphian crafts out of the battle. The rest of the Ulian fleets were not doing as well.

The other Ulian cruisers found they had to get real close to the Amphian ships in order for their rifles to affect the plasma shields. Large heavy and medium cruisers found themselves fighting a battle like a small fighter craft would. Constantly darting in and out all around the ships, firing sporadic shots all concentrated on the weakest part of the enemy shields. Luckily the high maneuverability of the Ulian triangular ships allowed them to accomplish that feat. The modified weapons were much more effective than the bio-plasma launchers, but it was just not designed to take down a space ship. Most of the Ulian ships were able to distract and keep the Amphian ships low on shields, but no other Ulians disabled any Amphian ships.

The Ageddon saw how the battle was going; they were just outnumbered. The other Ulian ships were only useful as distractions to draw fire away. Many were able to trick the other Amphians into shooting other Amphians too. It was just not enough. The captain of the ship had no choice by to open the forward compartment. It left a tiny port exposed on the ship, and endangered the most holy relic they had. It did not matter that the holy relic probably wouldn’t have received a single scratch from the combined assault of concentrated fire from all the ships in both the Ulian and Amphian fleets. Such a holy object must be cherished and protected, but the Ageddon had no choice. The forward compartment fully opened within a second to reveal a dark orifice on the heavy warship. Carefully the arm slowly emerged out of the dark hole. The fist was revealed first, and then the wrist, followed by the forearm. The whole Ulian fleet was silent as they continued to evade enemy fire and sent a small prayer to the One Armed at the same time. The Arm of Ageddon was fully extended and ready for use.

The Amphians didn’t really notice the small event; little did they know that they had just witnessed the unveiling of more power than they could ever hope to comprehend. As the Ageddon lined the arm up for a shot against the weak spot they were working on, the fist glowed an angry black glow, the intensity of light was blinding but it was dark and opaque at the same time. It confused all of the Amphians, as they were blinded by darkness. The Ulians knew of the effects the charge up had, and took precautions to not activate the sensors in the direction of the arm. For it would have burnt out the sensing units until it could be healed by the onboard systems. An intense short beam of dark energy lashed out from the first toward the Amphian ship, the plasma shields already weakened by the prior blasts from the Ageddon’s lancers, were blown away by the shockwave in front of the black energy blast. The energy easily tore through the thick hull of the Amphian ship like it was a bullet through vacuum. The large hole depressurized a main section of that ship and it was out of the battle for good, the only crew left alive in that Amphian ship were sealed up in whatever area they were in, and life support was rapidly failing.

The energy did not discharge however, and continued in a straight line. Right out through the other side of the Amphian hull, and towards a ship that was quite a distance off behind the lifeless ship. The other ship had not even encountered any Ulian fire yet, and had no chance to fire before the black energy brushed aside the plasma shields and tore through the hull. The energy beam had slowed down infinitesimally as it plowed through the bridge of the ship, and most of the propulsion systems. With no command crew, zero maneuverability, and major damages, this ship was also out of the battle. The black beam still raced with a mindless determination, luckily the beam was traveling through the thickest part of the Amphian fleets; eventually one of the alien ships should stop the dark energy.

Certain Amphian ships that were hit by the black beam only had some non vital systems hit and continued to fight, some ship had their shield generators knocked out, others were struck lifeless, and quite a few were dead in space. Many Amphian ships had attempted to stop the deadly beam by blasting both rail cannon and magnetic beams at it, but the rail slugs were just vaporized and the beams passed through the dark energy with no effect. After twenty-seven ships later, the dark blast finally reached its last ship.

The blast was still going ninety nine percent of how fast it had started out at, but the twenty-eighth Amphian ship had enough time to engage its engines and tried to move out of the path. Unfortunately it wasn’t fast enough and only accomplished to move the energy reactors into the line of the black blast. Once the blast encountered enough resistance from both the reactor shields, and the energy within the reactor itself, it finally was able to detonate. Neither race would be able to comprehend the scales the owner of the arm was battling at before the arm was severed and the owner grew a new one. A few hundred ships wouldn’t be enough to trigger the detonation of the blast; perhaps a planet or a star would have contained enough mass to cause the detonation. The energy generated by the reactor in it’s purest and most concentrated form right in the reactor was enough to interact with the dark energy. The twenty-eighth Amphian ship had no time before the dark explosion enveloped the ship. Unexpectedly the black explosion reached out and engulfed the ten neighboring Amphian ships in the heart of the Amphian fleet.

The massive Amphian battle moon was at the back of the fleet, being the slowest ship. It had witnessed the unbelievable blast, and was still charging up it’s own energy blast. Without enough energy to fire its planet killer cannon, the moon had resorted to its secondary phased-energy blasters. These relied on the high-energy blasts to burn through the enemies instead of crumpling them with the magnetic blasts. It just had to get close enough to the Ageddon to destroy it.

The Ageddon was charging up for another blast of the Holy Arm. The Amphians had saw how effective the Ageddon truly was and had now redoubled all their efforts to fire upon the lone warship. The first blast had taken thirty-one ships out of the battle, and left seven slightly damaged. But there were still about two thousand five hundred Amphian ships firing at the general direction of the Ageddon. Even all the dodging and hiding behind the plasma blasts nearby Ulian ships would send to help shield the Ageddon, there were enough rail slugs that got through for the Ageddon to need to raise all shields. The Ageddon fired another blast from the Arm, but it had only taken down three ships before it impacted on the reactors of the fourth and blown up. Only two other ships were near enough for the blast to destroy. The Ageddon’s sensors were near blacked out from all the rail slugs, and magnetic blasts that kept impacting on its shields.

The maneuverability was reduced, and the limited sentience of the ship began to feel a new sensation. It was not happy; a new bundle of displeasure and unease grew in the bowels of the ship carried along the pathways of the central nervous system. The ship instantly cross-referenced all the data it had with the database on board, and words began to pop up. Anger. Frustration. Rage. The sensations reverberated through the ship and continued to build as it found it unable to maneuver out of the way from the attacks. Resorting on the defensive shields, the Ageddon felt like a captured animal. The inability to sense beyond the onslaught of rail slugs and magnetic beams generated an intense emotion. All this was starting to affect the Arm of Ageddon; the dark glow had changed to a dark flame that was growing larger and larger. None of the crew noticed this change, and they continued to charge the Arm weapon.

Upon the next blast of the weapon, no one knew what happened, one moment the Ageddon was under heavy fire, the next, there was no ships left in a forty-five degree cone in front of the ship. The blast was instantaneous, the dark flame energy from the fist blasted in a cone. Upon impact with the energy, the Amphian ships just simply vanished and ceased to exist anymore. Death had claimed them, ship and all.

The battle moon decided to fire at that instant. Though it was well out of the arc of the devastating blast, it had been close to the region where the ships just vanished. The sudden cessation of matter caused a spatial imbalance which shifted the dark moon just slightly so its shot was off. What had been an enveloping blast that would have disintegrated the Ageddon easily became a careless snipe at one of the rear triangular edges. The edge of the phased-energy blast cut through one of the main propulsion drives and tore the corner off completely. The amount of power within that blast easily overpowered through the shields and cut through the Ageddon almost as easily as the blasts from the Arm had gone through the Amphian ships.

Luckily that section contained the propulsion systems and was devoid of any personnel. The many closed doors and hatches that lead various locations from the ship into the propulsion system was locked down and sealed as the vacuum threatened the corridors. The Ageddon’s nervous system felt the shock of loosing one of its engines. Instantly the other two tried to compensate as the Ageddon dodged and fired back with lancers. The sub-light field thrusters were taken cleanly off along with the hyperspace drive. The Ageddon suffered a huge loss in maneuverability. Certain maneuvers were not possible to perform with only two available thrust vectors.

The injured ship needed to take out the large battle moon, for that ship by itself would be able to destroy the whole Ulian fleet. The conic blast from the Ageddon had taken out over one thousand two hundred Amphian ships. The Amphian had tried to disable the arm by all gathering in front of it and blasting at the Ageddon with everything they had. Thousands of fighters had launched in an attempt to kamikaze the arm and destroy it. The conic blast had taken them all by surprise. The ships that had survived were either escorting the battle moon, or distracting the other Ulian cruisers.

The ability to function with one, or two damaged and inoperable propulsion systems saved the Ageddon from being dead in space. Unfortunately, the two drives that remained was in the front and back. In order to maintain the most maneuverability the Ageddon had to fly with the damaged corner as the new front. This left the Arm of Ageddon pointing at the back right corner.

There was only one way to defeat the large moon. The Ageddon would have to fly in fast and furious and streak by the moon and break away at a sharp angle and blast the moon with a conic blast. A focused blast might not hit enough systems to disable the moon. The crew on Ageddon continued to charge the Arm with energy as it flew at maximum speed towards the gigantic ship. The whole time the battle moon was recharging the same phased-energy blaster in order to take a second shot. As the Ageddon streaked by at the maximum speed it could attain with only two drives, it executed a sharp two-dimensional hook, which was one of the few maneuvers it could still do. As soon as the Arm of Ageddon pointed towards the center of the large artificial moon, the blast was released. Fortunately for the Ageddon, the loss the ship experienced combined with the residual frustration had left the Arm of Ageddon worked up enough to blast another conic blast of mass destruction. Almost as soon as the energy washed over the Amphian ships, they were no more. The large battle moon was gone, and along with it a few hundred of the escort ships that were nearby.

Then the Ageddon turned and ran for the minefields. The shields were almost gone from the sustained energy usage and massive blast that damaged the ship. The Amphians, despite their losses saw the Ageddon turn tail and run as a good sign. The remaining Amphian escorts of the battle moon gave chase. The Ageddon would occasionally spin enough to point the Arm in the direction of one of the Amphian ships and fire low charge shots. These shots were able to dig into the center of the Amphian ships before exploding in a brilliant flash of dark energy. The Amphians still outnumbered the Ulians. The Ageddon led the Amphian ships around minefields; hoping one of them would be close enough to trigger the mines.

Suddenly one of the Amphian ships the Ageddon was shooting at exploded in between shots. Everyone tracked the lancers that destroyed the Amphian ship. It was the prototype warship; it had just exited a hyper hole and began to pick off the weakest ship. The instant an undamaged fully charged Ulian warship entered the fight, all the Amphians turned and hyper jumped out. Quite a few were destroyed by the Ulian at this time. The Amphians knew that they would not be able to match two ships of Ageddon’s power. What they didn’t know was that only Ageddon had the Arm. But the Ulians saw no need to share that little bit of information.

The battle was finally won, though both sides suffered massive damage and many casualties, the Ulians definitely dealt out more damage than they took. Though it was a long drawn out war, the two decisive battles pretty much ended the war right there and then. With a very small fleet left, the Amphians did not feel as aggressive as they had before. The warships, which were now named the Ageddon class ships, patrolled the boarders regularly. The Ageddon itself was docked for a month to regrow the hull section it lost, and new drive systems was built to replace the one that was blasted off. When the Ageddon returned to service, it was deemed the flagship and major upgrades and modifications were done to it over time. The technology they learned from the Amphians greatly augmented the offensive and defensive capabilities of the Ageddon. The Arm remained on the Ageddon and because of the purposeful confusion the Ageddon class ships had with the ship named Ageddon, the Amphians continued to believe that every Ageddon class ship had a powerful arm. Wild rumors spread by the Amphians to the other races also kept the hostile ones weary of engaging the Ulians in battle. The Amphians had nearly conquered this galaxy through political ties, direct invasion, or the control of supply lines to certain empires; the Ulians were the last major species that controlled a large portion of the galaxy. The Amphians were thoroughly taught to respect the Ulian might.