Somewhere near Kashyyyk, in a hidden testing range
Space distorted and ripped apart as four ships suddenly appeared near a floating Shadow Corvette. The ships were long with swept back wings; atop the vessels were smaller 'wings' that were also swept back.
The three ships moved in a V formation alongside the Shadow, their engines barely a blow and their figures a solid black against space, barely visible to the naked eye.
As the ships moved lazily through space, their figures distorted into a ghostly blur before completely vanishing from space. The only evidence they had been there was their engine signatures, which quickly dissipated in the coldness of space.
On board one such ship, a female captain watched the energy signatures of her squad's phase cloak. "Status?" she asked one of her officers.
"One hundred percent ma'am, everything is normal," an officer at weapons said as he quaried the other two ships. "Weapon's are on standby and systems are in place to mask our weapons signature, however, those tech heads did say that when we fire we'll briefly be seen for a few seconds," he said.
The captain nodded. "Most pilots won't be able to respond to those brief seconds, and even ai controlled firing systems won't be able to register us fast enough since we are using a phased cloak and 'not' a regular cloak. However, still, I want to develop some tactics in case we 'do' get sighted and targeted," she said.
She watched her ships energy count, it had dropped to seventy percent but hadn't gone any further. On the view screen she saw a clear view of space, thanks to the enhanced sensor systems they could see very clearly out into space with no hint of a distortion.
As they came upon their first trial, the captain couldn't help but wonder if the weapons would actually work under phase cloaked. "First target locked," her weapons officer said and turned in his chair. "Permission to fire ma'am?"
"Granted,"
Outside the ship, a beam of energy was focused on one of the straffers beam cannon, the energy continued to collect into until it was explosively shot out into a very thin beam of energy. This beam pierced space and intersected the target drone, splicing it in half and causing the two halves to separate.
The captain nodded. "Not bad, how adnormalities?"
"No ma'am, the phase cloaked worked perfectly. Seems the tech heads did a fine job tuning the cloak so that a weapon can be fired without disrupting the field any. Though Shadow one did tell us that we appeared in space for five seconds, then we disappeared again," said weapons.
She smiled at the fine engineering. "Ok, let's move on to the next trial," she said and her squad moved forward to a small debris field. The debris field was comprised of destroyed fighters and corvette's left over by the war some months ago that took place over Trandosha.
Each piece of debris had a thruster on it to simulate incoming munitions but also to make it appear that the ship was headed toward an object. "Start," she said and her flew forward of the formation, the other two Shatters peeled off and stared to fly into their testing fields.
Her ship dove under debris and flew past others, when a big piece of debris came before her she shouted an order and her ship was suddenly propelled onto a new course, easily avoiding the large piece of debris. "Let's try out weapons here shall we?" she smiled and her ship spun around. Beams of energy lanced across space and burned apart several pieces of debris, then she ordered for all four of the straffers to be fired.
When this happened, the ship's phase cloak momentarily failed and then reestablished itself after a few seconds. This caused the captain to realize something about the ships weapons. "Ok, so firing those four cannons at once will cause the phase cloak to fail briefly, I guess the massive energy drain needed to fire the weapons is the cause," she stated and barked an order for her ship to leave that training zone.
Once outside she reconnected with her squad and they headed to another training area; this one was different from the rest in that it had actual pilots in the fighters, commonly known as 'Retens' and a few frigates under the name of 'Crescents'
These ships were there purely to test the Shatters ability to avoid fire and detection while also attacking. On board her ship, the squad leader was curious how the test would turn out, "either we fail and this ships back to the drawing board, or we succeed," she muttered and gave the order to have her ships weapons changed to practice mode.
All three of her ships phase cloaked; the OPFOR fighters and frigates moved suddenly toward where they were and then dropped. Mock ups of missiles were fired at where they have been and released a high pitched sound that could be heard by the Shatters if they were within the simulated explosion radius.
She smiled when the missile flew past her ship and imitated their explosions well beyond any chance of damaging either her or her squad’s ships. She had flown alongside another Shatter with the past one being some distance above her.
"Let's scare the captain of the lead frigate shall we?" she grinned and gave the order for her ship to initiate a collision course with the lead frigate. Her helmsmen smiled as she brought the ship around and began to make a course for the frigate. The distance close fast, as they got closer they began to see more details of the frigate. Its single straffer cannon that was sweeping the area looking for targets, it's other turrets doing the same.
Even though the Crescent didn't have a bridge to fire 'into' she did know that they would be watching space looking for them. "Engage vector on my command," she said and raised her arm. The distance continue to close, closer and closer and closer, more details of the frigate became clear until finally she gave the order.
For a second time seemed to stop, then suddenly the ship went from looking at the frigate, to the blackness of space and flying past it's port side. The ghostly blur of their movement must've caught the frigates attention as its gunners fired widely at where the movement 'had' been and not in the direction that the ship appeared to be going.
"Make a not, when vector thrust is used to have ships change a course, that way there in case a ship's weapons are manned by people they'll have harder time judging where we are going," she stated and her second in command nodded.
She had her ship brought back around where they opened up simulated fire on the engine second, scoring two direct hits and causing the frigate to lose engine power. Then the ship lashed out at several fighters, also disabling them from the fight.
Then suddenly one of the frigates opened up with actual weapons fire, lasers and projectiles crossed space to where her last weapons fire was only to cleanly miss the corvette. "Huh, I guess the captain of that ship is curious to whether laser fire will harm us," she muttered.
"According to the tech boys, as long as they don't have a super laser inside that damn frigate, we are technically immune. Only concussion missiles and sonic mines could do us any harm," her second in command said and she nodded in response.
Her ship dove and spun through the energy fire, as she had hoped, the turbolaser blasts did no damage to the phase cloaked field though she was noticing a slight power irregularity each time a laser 'did' pass the field. She let out a sigh and brought her ships two straffers to bear and fired, disabling the frigates shields and getting a clean shot on the weapons systems, which they quickly disabled.
Within minute's most of the OPFOR ships were disabled and floating space, only engaging their engines in order to avoid crashing into one another. "Test complete," the squad leader smiled and looked at her second in command. "Tell those tech boys that they did a damn fine job, and I'm sure the Admiral will want a few more of these," she said and looked on another monitor, spying the Shadow corvette in the distance.
The corvette moved slowly moved toward her squad and relayed the results of the trial to her ship. She was satisfied, though knew that the real test would be in combat. "The real test will be to see how we fare in actual combat," she smiled and collapsed her hands together and looked up at the ceiling.
Space distorted and ripped apart as four ships suddenly appeared near a floating Shadow Corvette. The ships were long with swept back wings; atop the vessels were smaller 'wings' that were also swept back.
The three ships moved in a V formation alongside the Shadow, their engines barely a blow and their figures a solid black against space, barely visible to the naked eye.
As the ships moved lazily through space, their figures distorted into a ghostly blur before completely vanishing from space. The only evidence they had been there was their engine signatures, which quickly dissipated in the coldness of space.
On board one such ship, a female captain watched the energy signatures of her squad's phase cloak. "Status?" she asked one of her officers.
"One hundred percent ma'am, everything is normal," an officer at weapons said as he quaried the other two ships. "Weapon's are on standby and systems are in place to mask our weapons signature, however, those tech heads did say that when we fire we'll briefly be seen for a few seconds," he said.
The captain nodded. "Most pilots won't be able to respond to those brief seconds, and even ai controlled firing systems won't be able to register us fast enough since we are using a phased cloak and 'not' a regular cloak. However, still, I want to develop some tactics in case we 'do' get sighted and targeted," she said.
She watched her ships energy count, it had dropped to seventy percent but hadn't gone any further. On the view screen she saw a clear view of space, thanks to the enhanced sensor systems they could see very clearly out into space with no hint of a distortion.
As they came upon their first trial, the captain couldn't help but wonder if the weapons would actually work under phase cloaked. "First target locked," her weapons officer said and turned in his chair. "Permission to fire ma'am?"
"Granted,"
Outside the ship, a beam of energy was focused on one of the straffers beam cannon, the energy continued to collect into until it was explosively shot out into a very thin beam of energy. This beam pierced space and intersected the target drone, splicing it in half and causing the two halves to separate.
The captain nodded. "Not bad, how adnormalities?"
"No ma'am, the phase cloaked worked perfectly. Seems the tech heads did a fine job tuning the cloak so that a weapon can be fired without disrupting the field any. Though Shadow one did tell us that we appeared in space for five seconds, then we disappeared again," said weapons.
She smiled at the fine engineering. "Ok, let's move on to the next trial," she said and her squad moved forward to a small debris field. The debris field was comprised of destroyed fighters and corvette's left over by the war some months ago that took place over Trandosha.
Each piece of debris had a thruster on it to simulate incoming munitions but also to make it appear that the ship was headed toward an object. "Start," she said and her flew forward of the formation, the other two Shatters peeled off and stared to fly into their testing fields.
Her ship dove under debris and flew past others, when a big piece of debris came before her she shouted an order and her ship was suddenly propelled onto a new course, easily avoiding the large piece of debris. "Let's try out weapons here shall we?" she smiled and her ship spun around. Beams of energy lanced across space and burned apart several pieces of debris, then she ordered for all four of the straffers to be fired.
When this happened, the ship's phase cloak momentarily failed and then reestablished itself after a few seconds. This caused the captain to realize something about the ships weapons. "Ok, so firing those four cannons at once will cause the phase cloak to fail briefly, I guess the massive energy drain needed to fire the weapons is the cause," she stated and barked an order for her ship to leave that training zone.
Once outside she reconnected with her squad and they headed to another training area; this one was different from the rest in that it had actual pilots in the fighters, commonly known as 'Retens' and a few frigates under the name of 'Crescents'
These ships were there purely to test the Shatters ability to avoid fire and detection while also attacking. On board her ship, the squad leader was curious how the test would turn out, "either we fail and this ships back to the drawing board, or we succeed," she muttered and gave the order to have her ships weapons changed to practice mode.
All three of her ships phase cloaked; the OPFOR fighters and frigates moved suddenly toward where they were and then dropped. Mock ups of missiles were fired at where they have been and released a high pitched sound that could be heard by the Shatters if they were within the simulated explosion radius.
She smiled when the missile flew past her ship and imitated their explosions well beyond any chance of damaging either her or her squad’s ships. She had flown alongside another Shatter with the past one being some distance above her.
"Let's scare the captain of the lead frigate shall we?" she grinned and gave the order for her ship to initiate a collision course with the lead frigate. Her helmsmen smiled as she brought the ship around and began to make a course for the frigate. The distance close fast, as they got closer they began to see more details of the frigate. Its single straffer cannon that was sweeping the area looking for targets, it's other turrets doing the same.
Even though the Crescent didn't have a bridge to fire 'into' she did know that they would be watching space looking for them. "Engage vector on my command," she said and raised her arm. The distance continue to close, closer and closer and closer, more details of the frigate became clear until finally she gave the order.
For a second time seemed to stop, then suddenly the ship went from looking at the frigate, to the blackness of space and flying past it's port side. The ghostly blur of their movement must've caught the frigates attention as its gunners fired widely at where the movement 'had' been and not in the direction that the ship appeared to be going.
"Make a not, when vector thrust is used to have ships change a course, that way there in case a ship's weapons are manned by people they'll have harder time judging where we are going," she stated and her second in command nodded.
She had her ship brought back around where they opened up simulated fire on the engine second, scoring two direct hits and causing the frigate to lose engine power. Then the ship lashed out at several fighters, also disabling them from the fight.
Then suddenly one of the frigates opened up with actual weapons fire, lasers and projectiles crossed space to where her last weapons fire was only to cleanly miss the corvette. "Huh, I guess the captain of that ship is curious to whether laser fire will harm us," she muttered.
"According to the tech boys, as long as they don't have a super laser inside that damn frigate, we are technically immune. Only concussion missiles and sonic mines could do us any harm," her second in command said and she nodded in response.
Her ship dove and spun through the energy fire, as she had hoped, the turbolaser blasts did no damage to the phase cloaked field though she was noticing a slight power irregularity each time a laser 'did' pass the field. She let out a sigh and brought her ships two straffers to bear and fired, disabling the frigates shields and getting a clean shot on the weapons systems, which they quickly disabled.
Within minute's most of the OPFOR ships were disabled and floating space, only engaging their engines in order to avoid crashing into one another. "Test complete," the squad leader smiled and looked at her second in command. "Tell those tech boys that they did a damn fine job, and I'm sure the Admiral will want a few more of these," she said and looked on another monitor, spying the Shadow corvette in the distance.
The corvette moved slowly moved toward her squad and relayed the results of the trial to her ship. She was satisfied, though knew that the real test would be in combat. "The real test will be to see how we fare in actual combat," she smiled and collapsed her hands together and looked up at the ceiling.