Graviton Beam

Name: Graviton Beam Species: Jovian Technology: Graviton Weapon

Background

The Graviton Beam is the favored weapon of the Jovians and is deployed on all of their main categories of warship. Even the lighter Jovian ships can mount several Gravitons Beams, and the heavier ships maintain many more. The Frigate mounts a minimum of four Graviton Beams. Even a relatively light warship with a medium power Graviton Beam system can easily destroy and unshielded vessel many times larger.

Like all Graviton Weapons (excluding the Graviton Rail Gun), Graviton Beams utilize a stream of Gravitons , mass-less particles , traveling close to the speed of light. It accelerates the particles into a target and if it is unshielded, can destroy it without difficulty. Even United Earth ships with thick plated armour capable of repelling a sustained attack from conventional cannons and armour penetrating missiles, is unable to withstand an attack made from a Graviton capable warship.

During the initial invasion of Mars, Graviton Weapons were used with deadly effect to destroy much of the United Earths warships before they were able to retreat.

Graviton Weapons require a substantial power supply to operate and are not mounted on the lighter Jovian robots, which instead are armed with semi-guided rockets, and conventional cannons.

The Graviton Beam

Jovian warships generate high velocity Gravitons using the energy from their Phase Transition engines and concentrate them into a single beam (one beam is created for every cannon fired from the ship), this beam is focused and further accelerated in the cannon, exiting at just below the speed of light. Trying to deflect or absorb the impact of a Graviton Beam (as most varieties of plate armour are designed to do) is ineffective and can actually aid in the penetration of the armor plate. 

Gravitons have almost no mass or physical presence, and are capable of passing through low density matter, often, the mere act of passing through an object can destroy it if the concentration of Gravitons is sufficient. As the Gravitons pass through an object some energy is transferred from the Graviton into the object, when this energy builds inside something it becomes explosively charged (highly volatile) and tears the molecular structure of the object asunder.

Conventional armor is designed to absorb or deflect kinetic energy or to shield against heat energy, this is effective against pulse lasers that burn through their targets and against missiles and canons that use explosive and kinetic energy to penetrate armor, None of these methods are effective against Graviton Weapons which are sustained energy beams. Even armor capable of withstanding the initial strike from the beam will be quickly eroded as its surface becomes charged with transferred energy and is destroyed.

Even when fired on with conventional weapons, the energy transferred into the armour from the force of impact (including heat energy generated by the impact, and pressure created when the the armour is hit) will alter its molecular structure, making it far weaker against subsequent attacks, with a graviton beam, this subsequent attack is instantaneous.

The next method of penetration is the extremely fine nature of the graviton, it is able to pass between the molecular bonds of the armour, cutting some of them on impact and charging others with energy as the pass through, but not impacting sufficient bonds to be deflected. This enables a graviton beam to literally slice through armour and destroy it from the inside.

A warship armed with a Distortion Field can take sustained fire from Graviton Weapons because its shields redirect the energy from the beam rather than trying to absorb the impact. Far less energy is transferred from the beam into the targets shields and no molecular changes are made by the impact. This enables the ship to survive fire that would destroy most other warships. The Nadesico showed during several battles that its shields were able to take sustained fire from dozens of Graviton Beams.