Concentration 3

The vibrations are not only intended to crack the ceramic.

Lots of other things, delicate things, human body shaped things, did not like being shaken by a force approaching a fraction of the speed of a light.

Maximization of the vibrations served to make the term 'shaken up' a reality. If done properly, 'shaken up' into a smoothie.

The bigger ships and their length gave them a rather large degree of flexibility if comparing end to end. Most maxed out at flexing a few tens of meters before snapping. It was the rigidity of the metal and ceramic that made this limited flexibility lethal.

Flexing back with extreme force, just a few meters of 'flex' at the extremities is enough distance to turn any and all crew into a flat paste as it swings back and forth. Their bodies, hitting the walls of the narrow halls of their ship would make impact at close to 100 meters a second, almost a third of the speed of sound.

Of course, there were systems in place focused on mitigating these factors.

Tanks filled with a high density limited toxicity liquid, usually Mercury, complemented with a high density inert and non-toxic gas, usually Xenon, were installed in most ships as countermeasures to vibration.

Shocks in between the armor plating and the internal casing, as well as placed in various other 'vibration sensitive' locations served to mitigate damage to anything vital.

The inertial dampeners had a small effect, not much.

Some ships had small auxiliary motors that vibrated in opposition to the imparted motion.

The half second allotted to hitting a target served as a time period where one could reasonably expect these countermeasures to not yet take effect.

The liquid/gas chambers only started damping vibration after the ship started to vibrate. Before this point the liquid is pressed to the side of the tank and acts similarly to a solid.

The shocks are limited in the amount of stress they can take. If enough pressure is applied in a short period of time, the shocks can be damaged if not outright destroyed.

The inertial dampeners acted immediately, but they had limited effect as previously mentioned.

The auxiliary motors, not very effective to begin with, needed time to read a vibration and get up to speed before they had an effect. The time depended heavily on the equipment's quality, but half a second would be short enough to fit under its activation time.

Under the most extreme vibration, sensor pylons would be rendered inoperable, electronic systems would have their wires severed, weapons might end up with bent barrels or made uncalibrated. Catastrophic events such as a detonation of internal weaponry or a crack in the casing of one of the reactor cores could happen.

The 'ideal' type of internal damage was, of course, the damage done to the humans inside.

Bent sensor pylons precluded a withdrawal from the field. Severed wires might leave a ship adrift, but it would mean it will no longer be emitting detectable signals. Bent weapons would, similar to bent pylons, end up in a retreating enemy. All of these things would act to preserve your own ships from enemy fire, but delay the sinking of an enemy's.

Internal explosions, magazine detonations as they are called more formally, or a reactor breakdown might qualify as sinking a ship, but the resulting heat and radiation emissions would be perfect cover for other ships. This meant that despite the devastation, it was more dangerous for your own fleet if an enemy blew up than if one of your own did.

Only a complete or near complete killing of the crew would signify an 'optimal' sinking. Perforation of the habitable sections with shrapnel and rod to expose them to the vacuum was a good way. Cracking internal seals through vibration, shattering armor with repeated impacts, overheating crew compartments through use of long range thermal lasers, concussing crew members with an impact close to their work space, all viable ways of achieving that goal.

All of these most easily achieved with concentrated fire.

All of these effects left unexploited due to the nigh impossibility of the task.

Don sought to change that, but he had mere hours and limited ammunition to do so with.

He had quite a few asteroids though.

Quite a few was rather rapidly turning to not very much. They were TOO accurate now. Every salvo from their combined fire effectively vaporized one of the previously thought endless space rocks.

They had gotten better, but they didn't have it down quite yet. They were sitting at roughly a second between first and last impact on average, more than enough time for the corpse of an asteroid to disperse under the armor shattering firepower.

Sick of it, ARC proposed a solution. Text appeared in the bottom left of his current field of vision, Donovan had just finished sending a simulated order of incoming strike craft from a different position.

'May I request you to ask for the specific characteristics of each ship's weapon systems? I wish to see if it is possible to write an executable script that will synchronize fire.'

Don thought it a good idea. Interrupting the firing practice of the ship captains, he opened his comms. "Stop firing for now. My partner has an idea."

"Hit us Beacon. This shit is harder than we thought it would be." Dodder's voice was tired, but still enthusiastic. His general sentiment was shared amongst the others, they were getting tired of the failure every three minutes.

"If you could, send me, us, the firing characteristics of your railguns. I have someone onboard who wants to see if it would be possible to write some sort of program to synchronize fire. I don't think it'll be required, but the input/output delay for your systems might help."

"I don't think that is information we are authorized to divulge." One of the voices objected.

"All I'm asking for is charge times, time it takes to reach maximum velocity, maximum velocity, and maybe the variation in those quantities. Not exactly vital."

"This is Admiral Adirondack, checking in. Beacon's rank and the current situation provide him with clearance to both request and receive information on military weaponry short of the blueprints themselves. We are the ones provoking this time. We aren't in a position to be raising a fuss about the divulsion of information when doing so will potentially increase survivability and success."

"Understood. Beacon, prepare to receive a data packet in the next ten minutes. Encryption codes are standard."