>>5589981Now comes the worst part of any military operation: hurry up and wait. You sit uncomfortably in your command seat, watching tensely as the minutes trickle by and the relative positions of your ordnance and that of the enemy update on the main screen. Your bridge crew continues to perform their tasks efficiently, occasionally calling out a report for your Ops officer to acknowledge or coordinate further action with.
The ship vibrates slightly beneath you as Cleo fires the manoeuvring jets evasively to ward off any further attempts to hit your ship with a well placed DEW beam.
Coen reports the progress of the forward torpedo torpedo bays as they restock their spent munitions from the ready magazine.
EoN keeps note of any changes to the TFA signals, noting an increase in the acceleration of the enemy vessel after five minutes have passed but no further weapon signatures as of yet.
After ten minutes have passed in agonisingly slowness, and yet simultaneously in but an eyeblink, there’s status change.
“Captain, the torpedo signature has just changed.” Your Science officer calls out, sounding almost offended that the readings dare deviate from her carefully culculated probability curves.
“Total count now reads as closer to sixteen torpedoes with 87% probability, and the signals are beginning to diverge.”
The main screen updates with the new data, the previously unified signal of 10 incoming munitions now reading as four distinct groups of four torps each, Not only have they seemingly multiplied, but the incoming groups are each splitting off in different vectors to avoid an intercept course with your counterbattery volley.
“They can’t have just multiplied!” Cleo gripes, helpless to do anything but watch and occasionally nudge your ship's own trajectory.
“It’s likely that the enemy included a number of dedicated electronic warfare weapons amongst their volley.” Your Tactical officer explains matter-of-factly, “They are most likely disguising single signatures as multiple and splitting the rest evenly so that we have four identical targets to choose from. It is likely that of the original ten torpedoes, two were E-War equipped and we now face two groups of four attack variants and two individual decoy variants.”
You frown at the display, calculating how best to respond. The enemy were cunning in their timing, you suppose you have to give them at least that. Due to light lag, you don’t have enough time for your optical sensors to see which of the real-time signatures are which and still get an update signal to your own torpedoes in time for them to intercept the correct ones. You’ll have to give the command now and hope you made the right choice. On the plus side, the enemy won't have time to respond either, so whatever you decide now will determine the final course of the interception.
