ONI/SEC1/Ignas-Report 327

Timestamp:25/08/2616 Author: CODENAME:XENOS/ Captain *CLASSIFIED*/ UNSC Ignas (Athena-class Prowler) Recipient: CODENAME:SLAZENGER/Relay to ONICOM/Relay to HIGHCOM Subject: Initial probe Location: Grid ref/278 alpha 49/Omega Epsilon System/three hours from Linna

The Fleet is heading in system, and fast, so I only have a short time to record and send this information before all hell breaks loose. However, once the fleets engage, it will provide ample more data on them. In the menatime, I will send attached data on what I have seen so far. Something is worrying me about this...

-Sub Report 1-

The first ship appears to be similar in size and tonnage to a frigate but its role seems to differ highly. Its made for protecting larger vessels with ample amounts of what appears to constitue as flak. The vessel is nippy however and can move to where it is needed fast.

-Sub Report 2-

I scanned thet ship these 'frigates' were protecting and got pretty worried. Its a carrier alright. Its only armed with flak batteries for defending itself but its payload is... impressive. The majority of the internal deck is devoted to keeping hundrends, maybe thousands of fighters, all stored in launching racks. Two were out on patrol from it and the ship got a good scan of them.

-Sub Report 3-

The fighters appear to be entirely unmanned. No cockpit visible, just studded with cameras, or what appear to be optical sensors at least. The thing is not produced by our level of science, it is clear. It has a drive 1/3 the size of that on a Katana but can produce similar speeds. Its armament is what gets me. Definatly some kind of laser but they are mounted on four... tentacles(?). These can somehow direct energy. CODENAME:RASMUS thinks it might be some kind of fibre optic cabling that transmits the laser beam. Its nothing akin to ours, it shoots short 'blasts' in high volume. This warrents further investigation.

-Sub Report 4-

We saw it. It was just a glance but we saw it. Our scan came back from it and I almost wept. It is confirmed, its almost twenty klicks long. How can we fight that?! The monster is studded with what appear to be weapon bays of every kind. The thing is also armed with an array of beam weapons, similar to the fighter in report 2, though on a much larger scale. It dissapeared around the other side of the planet before we could get any more detailed results.

-Sub Report 5-

The details of the deep impact scans are back and things just go from bad to worse. While yes, the details show they infact have no shielding of any sorts, the report on their hulls is the answer to why. The armour is made of a deep honeycomb alloy, utlising a skin of what the scan reads as may be tungsten-titanium composites but is inconclusive. For now we're code naming it adamantium. There was one similarity it picked up to on the UNSC database, a 60 year old scan of the flagship of the Prophet of Truth, during the last days of the Covvie War. Back to the armour, it is held in check by honeycombed layers of titanium and a steel composite, much like the old Halcyon class or the modern Victoria or Baal class, though much more advance in design. No expense has been made here. ~I suspect it would be extremely resistant to our impact based weapons, though forged fragment and HEAT type weapons may be effective and penetrating its armour.

So far I have seen four weapon systems in action, I'm sending you the details on all four, along with base codenames.

Pulse Cannons: These appear, at their base, a more advance version of Pulse laser technology used by the Covenant and Sangheili. Its most definatly more advance as the 'charge time' is bnear enough zero. They use these as a sort of CIWS, with several in a rotary barrel. This is where they truely differ. They spit out highly unstable energy blasts. On inspection these either cause a energy burst on impact or burst after a period in space without contact, a sort of proximity fuse as their magnetic field holding them together disintergrates. Some fighters are also armed with these, though theirs seem to maintain thier magnetic field until impact. These weapons burn holes in armour with ease, resulting damage to whatever they hit.

Laser Cannon: These differ wholey from our own lasers in that, as formentioned above, they release sharp, quick volleys of 'blasts'. These are usually monunted on their larger fighters and as a ship to ship pounding weapon. Information is not readily availible due to heavy magnetic shielding.

Lance: I gave this name in similarity to the lance weapons that are primarily on the Plainsfierian, Vorenus and Sangheili warships, in that they spout a beam of directed plasma. However, rather than simply being a burst of plasma funneled into a magnetic tunnel for short but powerful beams, they are more similar to our own experimental plasma technology, in that it uses a set of magnetic coils to direct the plasma and a low intesity laser that ignites it but also acts as an extender of the magnetic tunnel. This weapon has much heavier, sustained fire though apparently a longer recharging or reloading period, along with a cool down time.

Interdictor Launcher: I've used this to refer to a number of systems that fire a missile of varying sizes that fires varying payloads of missiles all united by their guidance technology. They use some kind of electromagnetic optical guidance with an advance logic operator. The missile can judge what are decoys, defences and the bgest angle of attack, while being highly agile though the use of four vectored thrust boosters and one main high impulse booster. Our saving grace is that its not fast enough to dodge point defence batteries and thankfully, our DECEPTION countermeasures also deal with EM, along with RADAR and thermal.

I'm pulling back now but after the fleet arrives i'm going to drop ONI Recon 307 to the surface. They will relay their reports to me.

-END REPORT-