Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => Arts & Talents => Topic started by: NGTM-1R on September 14, 2009, 01:13:46 pm
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Stuff from a campaign concept I'm toying with. Couple short (very short) stories for now. They were actually written in reverse order of appearance.
Come As You Are
No one was quite sure where they had come from, what with monitoring the supposedly collapsed jump nodes being a very low priority. They did not have the low-frequency emissions of Shivan engines, the rapid pulse rate of Terran sensors, the distinctive cometlike infrared albedo of Vasudan hulls. They were carefully monitored because experience had suggested to the Terran race that the universe was full of either difficult types or outright bastards, but left alone for the same reason. If they wanted to establish first contact, they could do it on their own terms.
First contact, as it turned out, involved the vaporizing of an Elysium transport full of civilians from ten klicks out and moving in towards the Lunar Orbital Shipyard. And because they were being watched, the destroyer Ares saw this and brought her main battery online at thirty kilometers out. The Bringer of War was not tolerating random violence today and expressed its displeasure by a thirty ton chunk of nickel-iron accelerated to relativistic velocity. The intruders found this argument very compelling, having had one of their cruisers gutted, and paused to rethink things.
They launched fighters and approached again. Ares and her cruiser screen were having none of this. They launched their own fighters and Ares fired a warning shot across the bow of the largest enemy ship. That provoked the now positively hostile intruders to open fire on the fighter screen and advance to engage the heavy ships.
It wasn’t much of a battle. They advanced directly into the guns of a Mars-class destroyer and three Diana-class railgun cruisers. The resulting hail of nickel-iron slugs destroyed both the overgrown cruisers in the formation and the others only escaped into subspace by the skin of their teeth. The screen’s Mod Leviathan and Mod Fenris ships never had a chance to engage.
But Sol was once again at war, only four years after being cut off.
Bringer of Mercy
They did not come silently in the night.
They visited Luna first, but there met Ares and her attendant cruisers. Ares made it very clear that their sort wasn’t welcome there, so they left again as quickly as they could. They visited L5, Home Station, and found it much more congenial to death and destruction, so they started spreading it. It fell to the Orion, the Trafalgar, to go Home’s rescue. The battle was brief; they weren’t willing to face a destroyer again after dealing with Ares the first time, not realizing that Trafalgar wasn’t quite the same calibur of destroyer.
The Orion was the harbinger of war to those it passed. It always would be, so long as they were planetbound. But here, today, as Trafalgar closed the crippled station and her cruiser escorts took up defensive posistions, the Orion would have a chance to show that it was not merely an engine of destruction. Home Station’s reactors were down, leaking dangerous radiation. Without power, no life support and no way to lock off dangerous fires consuming the station’s oxygen or leaking precious atmosphere. Many of her inhabitants were injured. The station’s hydroponics section was gone, blown clean off, and her supplies of fresh water mostly missing as well.
An Orion-class destroyer is a city of ten thousand in the sky, and brings with it all the services of a city whose work begins only when the shooting stops. Trafalgar’s damage-control teams deployed to fight the fires, groping through smoke-filled compartments to lock them off from the station’s air supply or extingush them manually if that wasn’t possible. They brought sealant gels and specialized motion detectors to locate and end the slow atmosphere leaks, field generators to limit the spread of radiation.
Her emergency medical staff accompanied the damage control crews, stabilizing the wounded where they had fallen, sometimes leaving one member behind to monitor them if they were in particularly bad condition and couldn’t be placed in a stasis bag, and setting radio beacons coded by urgency for followup teams from the regular crew to recover the wounded. The other medical types set up a receiving area for triage and treatment, well aware that the destroyer’s four surgical theaters and five hundred sickbay beds were going to be massively overwhelmed. It would be three days and four thousand nine hundred thirty-six people treated before any of them slept again. They lost only twelve patients, all of whom weren’t brought to surgery by a followup team in time. No one died after coming aboard Trafalgar.
Trafalgar’s engineers lead the damage-control teams in their struggle to the station’s damaged reactors, and directed their manual scramming. They worked to bring power to the station again, using their own destroyer’s massive engines, running casualty power lines over to the station, splicing it into the powergrid, hunting down damage and circuit breakers. They made plans to repair the station reactors, starting with the least-damaged Number 12. The galley staff made preparations to handle another forty-five thousand meals a day. Life Support worked out water rationing procedures to allow the destroyer to supply fresh water for the crew and the station’s inhabitants. The marine complement set themselves up to direct civilian traffic aboard the destroyer and ensure the maintance of law and order aboard the station.
A destroyer could never fully reverse its name and create on the same scale as it could destroy. But it could, at the least, preserve.
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Hasn't exactly presented a compelling threat or any narrative tension. Feels a bit like an excuse to play Humans Are Special.
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first story
Good
The opening creates mystery.
Suggestions
what did the ships look like?
drama could be introduced by introducing dialogue, maybe one side tried to get the other to identify themselves and increasing alarm as attempts fail.
did anything glow, pulse or thrum as the railguns fired e.g. "The Bringer of War was not tolerating random violence today and expressed its displeasure by launching a thirty ton chunk of nickel-iron accelerated to relativistic velocity from its main gun causing decks the vibrate throughout the ship".
Second story
Good
Atmosphere was better written into the story..
I like the last line it has a nice philosophical tone to it.
Suggestions
when describing the missing modules like the hydroponics maybe stating that it was blasted off in the fiery inferno of a capital beam cannon or missile.
To improve the atmosphere suggest the attack was sudden or was expected and dreaded.
excerpts from communication between containment workers or medical teams.
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Mrm, dunno if I'd agree with that critique. Particularly on the Web, spare prose is better than detail-heavy stuff. Adjectives are bloat, adverbs are a waste.
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:):yes:
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Hasn't exactly presented a compelling threat or any narrative tension. Feels a bit like an excuse to play Humans Are Special.
There's a reason why our unnamed opponents are sort of blundering into this. They're not meeting who they expected to meet.
Headdie: actually, if you want to know what they look like, this is fairly well planned-out in my head. The Diana-class cruisers are, for example, the Ticonderoga you can get off FSmods. The Mars-class is a particular modified Orion with twin flight decks and a spinal mount that I'm not sure is publically released. (Not the one with the gatling gun, though, that's just silly.) Also to be honest, I usually operate on the theory that FS spacecraft are not noisy in combat, or otherwise generally noticeable to the crew except for being at general quarters, unless taking damage. As for the stylistic stuff...meh. :P
Learning Curve
The Unknowns, as they had been officially dubbed, didn’t make any moves after that for three weeks. First Fleet started bringing the full fighter force out of war reserve status, reactivated the military portions of the Lunar and Martian shipyards, and stepped up patrols. Unescorted civilian shipping was cancelled. Minor concerns in the Kupier and Asteroid belts made themselves scarce. Sol held its breath.
It wasn’t to last. They were older than Terrans reckoned, stronger. They were simply comparing notes to the situation from last time, noticing differences, trying to account for them. In the end, their rationalizations would be flimsy by Terran standards, but apparently enough to satisfy them. They had come seeking war and war there would be. Sol would burn. Or so they proposed.
First Fleet identified both nodes exiting from Sol as hostile entry points, a situation which disturbed both civilian authorities and the Admiral deeply. Worse yet, efforts to recon the other end of the nodes failed. Terran subspace drives were still apparently not capable of passage through the nodes. This was to be a war with out possiblity of effective counterattack. Everyone knew that greatly decreased the possiblity of success.
The First Battle of Mars opened in what old hands of the Terran-Vasudan war thought an entirely too predictable fashion: an enemy destroyer arrived and immediately set about blowing apart any Diana-class cruisers in range before they could bring their spinal-mount railguns to bear. Scharnhorst escaped with her life by being out of range, but Duke of York was too close. The enemy wielded powerful magnetically bottled plasma streamer weapons, sharp constrast to the self-cohesive plasma technology Terran ships used. When the defensive batteries of the Martian Yards tried to respond, they discovered another unpleasant fact: the enemy’s ability to manipulate magnetic fields over long distances could also interfere with the firing of their railguns. At a stroke the most powerful weapons in the defending arsenal were useless.
Mod Fenris and Mod Leviathan ships scrambled to form up and engage, while all available fightercraft across the system were commited to deal with a number of enemy fighters estimated at over five hundred. Arriving via subspace jump from their home port at Europa came First Cruiser Squadron of four pre-Great War Jormungands, old but still dangerous as they pressed their attack against the enemy destroyer with their twin fusion mortars. A seemingly inexhaustible supply of enemy fightercraft threw themselves into fray, overwhelming Terran fighter defenses and forcing them to fall back on the cruiser screens. The new xaser “beamers” on the Mod Fenris and Mod Leviathan proved their worth despite their short range.
The First Battle of Mars was judged a tactical loss for Sol, but a strategic draw. Terran losses totalled three precious cruisers and forty-nine fighters. Their enemies suffered an unknown number of fighter casualities but believed to be at least triple, and one cruiser lost. The Mars Yards remained intact.
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I like this.
Short, to the point, and leaves you wanting more.
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I don't know, it's like mankind is one giant Mary Sue. I really did like the Night's Dawn/David Drake/Halo approach where the inexorable bad guys really get some stuff done.
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Yea of little faith. :P
Feelers
After the First Battle of Mars, early engagements were tentative and never involved more than a few cruisers, although the unknowns, dubbied “Fishies” by the rank and file for their aquatic-esque designs, tended to throw in many fighters for even the smallest battle. The Fishies could disrupt the firing of Terran railguns at a range of about twenty kilometers, but at the cost of being unable to fire their own heavy weapons when they closed. They could either drop the jamming and open fire, a situation likely to result in the destruction or crippling of both sides, or attempt a battle of manuver, trying to set up a situation where they could escape the arc of the railguns before dropping jamming, something their ships were not suited to. Terran commanders dubbed the phenomenon “suicide pact.”
The Mod Fenris and Mod Leviathan ships with their fusion mortars became the weapon of decision, displacing the Dianas from their customary role. They also proved to be vastly better at surviving amid the swarms of fighters the Fishies customarily threw into battle. The Dianas were the controlling influence, as most Fishie ships demonstrated massive firepower advantages over the Mod Fenris and Mod Leviathans. But their role was passive, a meance-in-being. They were a threat, not a promise.
Week five saw the first of the newly reactived bomber fleet commited to battle. Results were good at first, as the Fishies tended to throw all their fighters at Terran warships to make up for their main batteries being neutralized. Three Fishie cruisers were lost to cannily employed bomber wings brought into the action after the Fishie fighter screen was commited to offensive action. But the Fishies adapted within the week, simply adding in twice as many fighters.
The loss of the Mod Leviathan Black Prince and two wings of bombers during the evacuation of a Kuiper Belt installation to start week six set a new and worrying trend. Fishie fighter losses in the war so far were halfway to quadruple digits already, yet their fighter force showed no signs of strain. Fishie fighter recon and isolated assaults by fighter-only forces were in fact on the upswing.
Mars and Ares were the only weapons in the Terran arsenal to which the Fishies had no direct answer, with their ability to fire accurately from a range greater than the Fishies could jam their railguns. But they were always being shadowed and rarely had a chance to get off more than a couple of shots before a Fishie ship arrived in range to jam their weapons too. With their reliance on 0.5 meter railguns for antifighter protection, they were even more vunerable to the hordes of hostile fightercraft. The only good news was that the Fishies did not appear to field bombers.
People began to realize that the war was not going well.
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I like
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Damn, where do they keep getting all these fighters... They're worse than the Shivans!?
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Damn, where do they keep getting all these fighters... They're worse than the Shivans!?
plenty to shoot at at least lol
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Retrenchment
The first capture operation against a Fishie warship was an unmitigated disaster. It turned out that they were, in fact, “fishy”, being aquatic creatures, and their ships could be flooded. Very little else was learned, because the operation was interrupted by a vessel which exceeded superdestroyer size. Dubbed “Kraken”, it proceeded to Europa, and shrugging off all attacks directed at it, started to destroy surface installations. At great cost to fighter wings assigned to cover, an attack was pressed home against it by four wings of Ursa bombers. The successful destruction of the vessel’s orbit-to-surface weapons bought time to allow evacuation of Europa.
The existence of the Kraken, like that of the Lucifer, provoked a panic. The Outer Colonies were evacuated. The inner-system node was mined, an operation that the Fishies didn’t interfere with for no discernable reason. Confirmation that the Kraken was exiting the system prompted plans for a massive, do-or-die operation to mine the outer system node as well.
First Fleet waited for the next offensive throughout week ten while the mines for the operation were assembled. Week eleven opened with a massive fightercraft assault on Luna’s colonies. Every fighter and bomber that could be found was thrown into the defense, and Mars and Ares with their battlegroups tried to interdict the flow of enemy fightercraft to the surface. This single engagement saw the destruction of over a thousand Fishie fighters, but the defense was not wholly successful. Tycho City was mostly leveled, and millions were killed. It ended after 20 hours, when all Fishie fightercraft which were still active spontanously shut down and crashed.
The Battle of Luna proved what a number of people had already suspected: Fishie fighters were unmanned, drones capable of being remote controlled but usually operating autonomously. This explained a great deal about the cavalier way they were used. Worse yet, the whole battle had been unnecessary. While it was going on, Fishie ships were withdrawing through the outer-system node. The Battle of Luna ended when the last Fishie ship exited Sol.
The outer-system node was promptly mined as well to prevent a return. For the next six months, in the midst of the largest military buildup ever authorized, nothing happened. A mine-clearance warhead was detonated at the outer-system node by parties unknown then, prompting another brief panic before it was remined.
It has been two decades. Sol goes about its business, rather more heavily armed than before. Waiting.
(And now you have to wait six months or more to find out if I ever build the campaign. Mwhahahaha. :P)
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Bastard. :p
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Fishies?
Vasudans wuv fishies. :D
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Fishies?
Vasudans wuv fishies. :D
That was actually why I chose that moniker, I admit. :P
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Eh, screw it. Introductions to First Fleet.
Old Warriors
Surigao was a venerable ship, as were most of her class, the Jormungands. Thirty-eight years of active service to the GTA had seen her fight many enemies on many fronts. On her hull were painted the silhouettes of seven cruisers and more than a hundred fightercraft, most of them types that had not lasted in service as long as she. In a sense she had been denied her glories; she had seen only two years of frontline action. In another, she had served far better than most of her descendants. Two of the cruiser silhouettes were Shivan, an achievement not many of those upstart Fenris- or Leviathan-class ships could claim. Oh, sure, there were probably Dianas that could. They were like that, with their flashy heavy railguns and their assault specialization.
Let them be that way, then. Surigao was a cruiser’s cruiser. Do everything, assault, defense, escort. And do it well. The old hull was still more solid than her younger kin. Her weapons were young and strong, new xaser beamers to replace the old plasma emitters, new more powerful warheads for her fusion mortars. She was a dignified old lady, and more than a match for any of those young whippersnappers if handled well.
When the call came again, she would be ready.
Equipment Briefing: Jormungand-class Cruiser
The Jormungands are old, but solid, designs. They are durable and possess decent speed, twin fusion mortars forward, and a higher number of plasma emitters. However their hullform and internal arrangement was complex for the time, making them slow to build and difficult to repair, and they were expensive. Produced in their greatest numbers during the first three years of the Terran-Vasudan War, their design was modified and simplified for the Diana-class, and that design further simplified into the cheap, quick-building Fenris and Leviathan classes, making the Jormungands the ancestors of all existing Terran cruisers.
The Jormungands compiled distingushed war records, but had mostly been removed from frontline service by the sixth year of the Terran-Vasudan War. Their superior combat capablities were considered too valuable to simply throw away, however, so they were withdrawn to protect important rear areas. Twelve were stationed in Ross 128 and ten in Sol when the Great War broke out. Two of the Ross 128 cruisers survived to return to Sol, but both were later lost in the Fishie Incursion.
Currently six of these ships remain in active service. They have been upgraded with xaser beamers and enhanced warheads for their fusion mortars. They are deployed outsystem, covering the routes to and between the outer colonies, assisted by frequently-rotated Mod Fenris and Mod Leviathan ships. Four are homeported at Europa, two are based at Titan. Four others are maintained on Mars as war reserves.
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Hunter
Nagara and her sistership Helena were rivals. Apparently someone in the naming commission found it amusing to name pairs of Diana-class ships after historical ships that had fought each other. Their commissioning plaques of course bore the images and brief histories of the previous ships that had borne their names. A Fenris or a Leviathan, so far out of touch with its seagoing ancestors, might have a nature determined by the strongest personalities aboard. A destroyer, with so many crew and so many tasks, would always be a ship of its institutions and not one of personality. But a Diana, as purveyor of second most powerful “naval artillery” ever created, had a link somewhat more tangible. It was inevitable they would be rivals.
So Helena and Jintsu competed on everything. Not just exercise combat, the two had been completed after the Fishie Incursion, but readiness, damage-control drills, drive and railgun performance specs. It spilled over in a couple port-time brawls once before being clamped down on, like most paired Dianas. But like most, it was not clamped down too hard. They needed to keep their edge.
They were the tip of the spear, the sharp edge of the sword. The Jormungands and Fenrises and Leviathans would defend and support, the destroyers would lead, but the Dianas would do most of the heavy lifting, killing enemy warships with their railguns as designed. They had worked out a way to nullify the Fishies’ railgun jammers and they were confident in their ships. The railguns had changed little since the days of the Terran-Vasudan War and their time as the bane of Vasudan cruisers. The new xaser beamers to replace the plasma emitters, added after the class proved so vunerable during the Fishie Incursion, would protect them from swarming fightercraft while they brought their railguns to bear. Then it would be all be simple.
For today Helena and Jintsu only played at hunting, firing their big two-meter railguns at fake targets on a practice range, their backstop an uninhabited section of Io. Live targets were hard to come by, for now. But the time would come.
Equipment Briefing: Diana-class Cruiser
The Diana-class cruisers are the direct descendants of the prewar Jormungands and direct ancestors of the Fenris and Leviathan cruisers. Offensive-oriented stablemates to the all-around Jormungands, they outlasted them in production. The class is built around a pair of heavy two-meter spinal-mount railguns; the long acceleration barrels give the ship its long “snout” and one of its nicknames of “the Anteater”. Heavily compartmented and highly redundant, like the Jormungands, the class is well-suited to its offensive role of engaging enemy capital craft. Until the Vasudans designed the Typhon-class destroyers not a single ship in their arsenal was able to stand up to the Dianas, earning them their other nickname “Giant Slayers” for their ability to go toe to toe with Vasudan destroyers.
The class was mostly the victims of their own success in that regard. Of the 34 produced, by the time the Great War rolled around only 5 remained because the Vasudans knew just how dangerous they were and took pains to ensure their destruction. They served well in the Great War, doing much to build morale by proving the Shivan’s cruisers were not invincible, and providing the single most spectacular ship-to-ship engagement of the war when the GTC Thunderer faced off with the SD Oni in orbit of Ribos IV. A new production run was near to delivering another ten hulls to GTA service, but did not complete before the node collapse. The Fishie Incursion was their low point; four were lost, and none successfully fulfilled their design role of engaging and destroying an enemy cruiser or destroyer.
Twenty-four Dianas, the six survivors of the production run that was underway before the Lucifer’s death and another eighteen new construction, currently serve in First Fleet. Like the Jorumgands they have been upgraded with xaser beamers. Ten are based in the Martian shipyards covering the routes from there to the asteroid belt and outer colonies; the rest are homeported at Earth and Luna, covering the routes to the Inner Colonies. None are held as war reserves, but six more hulls are nearing completion.
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Pics or it didn't happen :nervous:
Nice stories, they remind me of (what I think is) real world navy spirit. The rivalry.
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Bastard. :p
Your six months are over!
It's not happening. Let's move on.
The Second Coming
xxx-Rho-xxx
FROM: CINC-First Fleet
TO: All Forces
Outer system node mine net is down. Fishie incursion, strength unknown, in progress. Readiness Condition One in effect.
All ships report to staging areas.
MESSAGE ENDS.
xxx-Rho-xxx
It began, as it usually does, with little things. A cruiser squadron attacked, a series of fighter engagements. Humanity had determined things would be different this time. So they were. Just not in the ways everyone had expected.
They called it “Operational Contingency Plan Snowbird”. First Fleet came in waves to assault the staging area that was set up at the outer system node, five ships at a time, Dianas all. They fired at maximum range and reentered subspace bound for their own staging point, Base Trojan near Jupiter. Every ten minutes brought a new wave. One could have literally set one’s watch by the constant assault. Their railguns gave them the ability; sustaining charge to the weapons was demanding enough to allow the quick drive recharges at Base Trojan, the capacitors provided the extra power storage to rejump immeditately if they only fired once. It wreaked havoc with the Fishie entry operation.
Fishie ships had always been slow. They depended on precise subspace jump placement and their seven-ten kilometer range for their weapons to come to grips with the enemy. Sol’s ships outreached them, though, and the last twenty years had given them plenty of time to devise a counter to the Fishie railgun-jammer. They did not try to kill ships, but to cripple them. The slow speed of Fishie ships made the mass entry they were attempting a slow operation, and the Dianas made it slower yet, until the area around the node grew clogged with unnavigable ships. Then it was time for the fighters to play their part.
The first fighter clash of the day came between a wing of Apollo Deltas from the 23rd “Hell and Glory” Space Superiority Squadron and a wing of what were recognized as Piranhas, the best of the Fishie fightercraft from the First Incursion. It was immediately clear something was wrong; the Fishies never sent a single fighter wing against a similar number of hostile ships. Worse yet, the engagment was drawn; 2 victories for the First Fleet fightercraft, 2 losses. Either the drones had gotten a lot better, or the drones were no longer drones.
Only two bomber wings completed their passes; most of them aborted their runs and went "defensive" to assist their escorting fighters in sharp fights. Numerous new contacts were logged in the remainder of the engagement. It was becoming obvious the Fishies had revamped their fightercraft arm to cover its old deficencies. Bombers were sighted, an unpleasant surprise in itself, new heavy fighters as well. The bomber attack had been only to clean up the field for a repeat; the numerous derelicts clogging the area around the node were judged a sufficent success, and the attack was called off.
Operational Contingency Plan Snowbird was judged a qualified success by First Fleet Command. They had delayed the enemy entry into the system and ensured it would take at least a week before the node was truly navigable again; more if they continued harassing attacks on less-tight timetable, which was intended. Time was bought to bring Sol to a war footing, to to recall reservists and veterans to the colors, to brings ships and fightercraft out of mothballs.
Meanwhile, radical adjustments to other plans were being hurriedly drawn up. First Fleet’s improvements in the last twenty years had been incremenetal, not revolutionary. The old ships still served, carrying new weapons usually, with new drives and new power sources. If the Fishies had learned much from the last encounter, and they evidently had, then there was great danger in the choices that had favored keeping Sol’s military strong over keeping it new.
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Little Things
There is more to any war then just the warriors.
The Diana-class railgun cruiser Belfast survived the Second Battle of Home Station because it had been built to an unnecessarily strong spec, in a small way. The Lunar Yards worker who had worked on Reactor Compartment Delta’s after bulkhead, Frame 401, had told his supervisor that the bulkhead passed the safety spec shock tests…but only just. The supervisor’s family had been on Europa during the First Incursion. They had gotten out alive because of the near-suicidal assault First Fleet had launched on the Kraken when it was bombarding the moon.
Put in a few more fasteners to join it to the third armor hull and fourth armor hull, the supervisor said. We should make sure our people are safe, the supervisor said.
Twenty months later, a Fishie concussive bomb penetrated Belfast’s first three armored hulls and detonated against the fourth hull three compartments aft of Reactor Compartment Delta. Two of the compartments ruptured, the bulkheads torn from their attachment points to the fourth hull. Frame 401 should have ruptured too. It didn’t, because four more fasteners were in place. The engineering crew picked themselves up, dealt with their shock-damaged electronics, and got the reactor on-line again. Belfast was able to escape into subspace despite having her capacitors drained from action.
She was one of only three cruisers of the fifteen that had assembled to oppose the assault that did so. Home Station with its 350,000 inhabitants and the other twelve cruisers were lost, the brand new Mars-class destroyer Cydonia was badly damaged. It was the worst defeat in First Fleet’s history.
Belfast underwent emergency repairs at the Martian Orbital Yards and emerged in time for the Second Battle of Luna. She sought her vengence there, where her railgun destroyed a Fishie cruiser. But it also found a flaw in the armor of a Fishie destroyer and punched through to the ship’s flight deck, detonating its ready missile reloads. The destroyer fled. The Lunar Yards held.
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For want of a nail, a shoe was lost, et cetera?
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It's a competent story with good details, but it's not really giving me any reason to care about what happens. Which might mean I'm just not the target audience, of course. But worth pointing out, I thought.
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For want of a nail, a shoe was lost, et cetera?
For every ship's crewmember, there are thirty people who didn't ever serve aboard who made sure it got where it is to win the battle.
Conservatively. :P
It's a competent story with good details, but it's not really giving me any reason to care about what happens. Which might mean I'm just not the target audience, of course. But worth pointing out, I thought.
Well, I'm not writing it for anyone but myself at this point, so the problem is probably on this end.
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EDITTED FOR GREAT JUSTICE BECAUSE I'M AWAKE NOW.
Lazareus
Earth was lost.
The next Fishie entry operation was headed by a familiar foe, the Kraken. It took up posistion in low Earth orbit and there were not enough railguns in First Fleet to significantly dent that ship, let alone destroy it. The improved Fishie fighter forces saw off all attempts to attack with bombers. First Fleet had not been idle on new development for the last twenty years, they did have weapons that could stop Kraken. But the weapons were on Europa. There was no means to get them to the target in Earth orbit, and little reason to try. The weapons were designed to knock the ship out, not kill it, and an object of Kraken’s size falling out of the sky would be the dinosaurs all over again.
They might have chanced it anyways, had Kraken begun to bombard Earth. It did not. Instead, it served as the beginning of an invasion corridor to the planet, protecting transports headed to the surface. The Fishies started to clean out orbital stations and the ones at the Lagrange points while the invasion went off. First Fleet committed the Cydonia battlegroup to a stand at Home Station, but it failed and casualities were horrific. Ground forces on Earth went into hiding. Everyone knew Kraken could conduct orbital bombardments. There was no point in provoking it into doing so.
The Fishies then announced their victory, the first direct contact between humans and them, and demanded the rest of the Human race lay down their arms and surrender. They knew our langauge, somehow. We did not know theirs.
The civil governments of the Moon, Mars, and the Outer Colonies responded with variations on a theme: “Like hell.” First Fleet punctated this with repeated attacks on traffic at the outer system node and elsewhere. The Fishies decided to demonstrate their power at the Second Battle of the Lunar Yards.
Four Fishie destroyers, called Great Whites by humans. Twenty-five of their frigates, the Barracudas and the Groupers. Fifty-nine cruisers, Porcupinefish. First Fleet, in response, commited everything. All the remaining cruisers; ten Jormungands, the twenty-one Dianas, forty-three Mod Fenris, thirty-one Mod Leviathan. All four of the Mars-class destroyers that could still move and shoot: Mars, Ares, Hellas, Olympus. It was the single largest spaceborne engagement in history. The amount of destructive power expended was sufficent to have destroyed a dwarf planet outright.
One of the Fishie destroyers got away, as opposed to all four of the Terran craft. Ten of their frigates, three of their cruisers. They had held their posistion long after reason dictated it was untenable, thrown down their lives long after it was clear it would be to no purpose. The cost to First Fleet was the gutting of the Diana force, thirteen lost, twenty Mod Fenrises and a lone Jormungand gone as well, and four destroyers and forty-odd cruisers with varying degrees of damage.
The Fishies simply moved in three new destroyer battlegroups.
The writing on the wall said the war was over, and First Fleet had lost. They read it and so informed the civil governments. Mars surrendered. The Moon had to as well, as harassing attacks made its orbit untenable.
The Outer Colonies did not. They would go down swinging. First Fleet assembled at Base Trojan for the next phase.
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And now for something completely different. In format. This is actually a modified version a mission script I wrote when I still entertained hope of this being a real campaign.
The Return
Comms Transcript, GTD Messana, Operation Landfall.
Fully Italics are Messana transmissions.
“Fifty seconds. Tighten up. Fighters move up to your jump points.”
“Give a ready report by squadron.”
“Blue Lions, ready.”
“Avenging Angels are ready.”
“Suicide Kings ready.”
“Novas ready.”
“Raptors ready for jump.”
“Twenty seconds. Gate is active. Meson bomb is in transit.”
“Ten seconds. We have confirmed bomb detonation.”
“Five seconds. We’re go.”
“Jump.”
“Messana this is Actium. Multiple contacts, multiple vectors. Some of them read as Terran.”
“That’s a Diana-class. Blue Lions, Avenging Angels, move in, protect that ship!”
“Unknown ships, unknown ships, this is the GTC Black Prince. State your affiliation.”
“Black Prince, this is the GTD Messana. Recommend you clear our range.”
“Messana, we are unable to manuver and are preparing to abandon ship.”
“Copy Black Prince, hold tight. We’ll get you out of this.”
“Messana, Memphis is on station. Dispatching Steadfast and Vengence to assist the Diana. Gunnery control reports firing solution achieved.”
“All ships open fire.”
“Command this is Ertanax, break out the black paint, we've got a destroyer silhouette that needs adding!”
“Target is negated. Commencing full deck launch.”
“Contacts, multiple contacts, bearing two-zero-seven neg twenty-five range nine point five. Single destroyer battlegroup. Power spikes, power spikes, contacts are firing weapons!"
“All Messana fighters, move in at maximum burn and suppress those ships!”
“Malta is hit, Malta is hit. Ejecting flak magazines. Messana we’re going to have to pull out, we have multiple penetrations of the gun and engineering decks from port.”
“Actium here, first hull penetration in one area. No significant damage.”
“Messana this is Command, say your damage.”
“Portside weapons are down. We have two penetrations of the outermost hull armor but nothing serious. Actium is damaged but still able to engage. Malta reports numerous penetrations to critical systems and is withdrawing.”
“Sirona and Aquitaine are en route, close with those ships and engage.”
“Copy Command. All ships, all ships, closing course. We didn’t come all this way to get kicked out. Unengaged fighters move in.”
“Power spikes!”
“Fortune is hit! Her magazines just detonated!”
“Actium here. No penetration. Frontal weapons still operational. They have a lot of guns but they’re not much punch individually.”
“Raptors, Novas, we need those beams out of action now!”
“Sirona has arrived. Chimera, Stormhawk, with us. Invincible, Shigure, Dhonburi, move to screen the Diana. Charge forward beams for long-range fire and fire as you enter range.”
“Aquitaine has arrived. Commencing full deck launch.”
“Scratch one corvette, good shooting Sirona!”
“Enemy comms chatter just tripled. They’re spooling up subspace drives.”
“Aquitaine to all ships, I want at least one of those ships disabled before it jumps!”
“Roger. Chimera and Stormhawk, fire for the aft on a cruiser.”
“Copy, firing.”
“Firing.”
“Good hits, good hits…dammit it couldn’t take that kind of punishment.”
“Raptor Lead here, we have a cruiser out of it on the far side of their formation.”
“Good job Raptor Lead. Sit on him.”
“Enemy ships are jumping out.”
Engagement concluded.
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Any chance of a booze bribe changing your mind about making this into a campaign? :p
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Any chance of a booze bribe changing your mind about making this into a campaign? :p
Considering I lack several necessary skills, no.
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There was a team of people interested in helping.
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Hmm, this transcript is kinda hard to follow. The Sol-Terrans blew up the node with a Meson bomb, and they accidentally hit the GTVA-Terran Black Prince which was just transiting?
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There was a team of people interested in helping.
They failed to post when given access, nothing happened, and it's all dead now! Huzzah! :P
Hmm, this transcript is kinda hard to follow. The Sol-Terrans blew up the node with a Meson bomb, and they accidentally hit the GTVA-Terran Black Prince which was just transiting?
I assumed the squadrons mentioned (to say nothing of where the one canonical appearance of the Messana is!) would make it clear that this was the
GTVA
entry to Sol. Since it is, only friendly ships are named since they don't yet have a name for the hostiles. The bomb was for the minefield. :P
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Kraken’s End
Eighteen years had gone into designing a weapon capable of knocking out Kraken. Knocking out because that was a simpler task than destroying the ship outright, and Sol’s scientists didn’t think they could create a weapon able to to outright destroy a ship of Kraken’s size in a single shot. When the first one was constructed on Europa, it was simply named “The Weapon”, a name delibrately harking back to the way the first atomic bomb had been referred to as “The Device”.
The Weapon massed roughly the same amount as an Ursa bomber, though it was only about two thirds the size. It was a gravitic generator, hardly a rare thing, but this particular one was radically different from most. Standard gravitic technology had deadended at trying to create or nullify better than about eight gees. It was a scaling problem; power requirements grew exponentially and eight gees was where things became no longer practical. Nine was the absolute limit. This was simply not enough to weaponize. It wasn’t going to be an effective means of killing ship crew, much less damaging the ship itself.
So Sol’s scientists had been forced to reinvent the wheel, but this generator could do just short of a hundred gees. Only for about two seconds before it destroyed itself, but that was more than enough to damage sensative ship components and reduce crew to chunky salsa. Falloff was rapid, but not so rapid that it was wise to be close the targeted ship; and The Weapon’s self-damaging induced destruction would generate a huge amount of EM radiation even by the standards of starships that regularly hurled nuclear weapons at each other, rendering nearby ships temporarily blind and deaf.
The falloff distance to a point that would be safe was about two kilometers. This meant it wasn’t practical to launch The Weapon close in, or escort it to the target and suppress enemy interceptors and turrets. That meant they would need more than one to ensure a hit, and it would need a fairly large drive system to deliever it to the target as rapidly as possible.
With the construction of the first missile body, three times as long as an Ursa bomber, and the second model completed, The Weapon became Weapon 1. The second was Weapon 2. In total, five were built to the original design. Weapon 6 was an improved model that only massed about three quarters as much as the previous version, resulting in improved performance on the missile. Weapon 7, Weapon 8, and Weapon 9 were under construction when the Second Fishie Incursion began.
Weapons 1-6 were readied for use, but Kraken went to Earth, not Europa. First Fleet lost the Battle of Home Station, and the war went badly. But they had a plan for that, too, because they were paid to plan for everything. That the Fishies knew human langauges made it easier. Kraken came to them in good time.
While the GTVA’s Operation Landfall played itself out at the inner system node near the Moon, Weapons 1-6 went active in their silos on Europa. Kraken was coming. Their purpose was near. Targeting information was fed to them, courses to their intercept points. Their guidance systems eagerly devoured the data. Then it was time to launch.
Kraken is coming over the horizon in thirty seconds. Weapons are away.
CruiseRon 1 is engaging Kraken. Ares battlegroup is ten seconds out.
Enemy fighter screen is moving to intercept the launch. Weapon 2 has lost guidance and safety detonated.
Weapon 5 intercepted. Kraken is powering main battery. Defensive batteries have opened fire.
Ares battlegroup dropping out of subspace. They are engaging. Second battlegroup arriving…friendly, Hellas battlegroup is engaging.
Weapon 4 and Weapon 6 have been intercepted.
Hit! We have a hit! Weapon 1 impacted, successful detonation!
All links are down. Sensors are nearly blind…wait one, we have a second successful detonation.
Cannot confirm status of Kraken at this time.
Comms back up. Hellas is confirming at least two detontations…Hellas reports Kraken is unpowered on a ballistic trajectory towards Jupiter!
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Entry
The GTVA had come to this war prepared. Alpha Centauri had seen Kraken’s orbital bombardment of Europa via telescopes infrared and radio only a few years after the fact, but the angling had been poor and no firm conclusions could be drawn; Something Bad had happened. Then, lost in the midst of the Second Shivan Invasion, telescopes in Delta Serpentis confirmed their worst fears; it had been a weapon. Orbit to surface, on a scale that made it doubtful it had been built in Sol.
In a sense, it was a godsend. The GTVA had been given the means to return. Now they had a reason. It took a mere year to construct a Knossos to home. Millions enlisted in the reserves, “contingent upon Sol” as they were known. A year was not much time to rebuild, but they did their best, and their best was very impressive.
To the table the GTVA brought the 5th Vasudan Battlegroup, 9th Fleet, and First Combined Battlegroup in the first wave. Confirmation of combat in Sol would bring more. The GTVA had long practiced being able to commit everything able to move and shoot in hopes of overwhelming a Shivan attack. It had actually worked in the Second Incursion, though not for long. They had innumerable veterans at that technique, and many others. First Fleet had lived under threat, and so was hardly sloppy; the GTVA had fought wars very recently, however. It was the difference between thinking and knowing.
The Fishies had done neither. GTVA craft blasted a destroyer to its component atoms and set about mauling another’s battlegroup in their first encounter. That the GTVA’s beams were outreached by their plasma streamers was of little consolation. First Fleet flew the fighters that had won the Great War, upgraded, but still old. The GTVA presented the Fishies with a panoply of highly advanced and refined fightercraft, scouting Pegasui to bull-like Ares, flown by veteran pilots. Second-generation corvettes; Aeolus cruisers; the new Sirona-class destroyers to complement the sister Hecates and old Orions.
It was all too much. But especially the utterly casual way that GTVA beam cannon mauled their ship’s hulls, that bespoke something else, something older; the thing they had come looking for in the first place, and not found. The one they assumed no longer existed.
They destroyed all who came near; they had destroyed the mighty Kraken itself. These must be The Destroyers of legend. There could be no other explanation.
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These must be The Destroyers of legend. There could be no other explanation.
O.O
*remark about Shivans*
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Aw hell. :p
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I still say it all seems a bit 'humans are special'. *grump*
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I still say it all seems a bit 'humans are special'. *grump*
Damn straight we're special! :P
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Yeah, we invented BBCode! :p
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I still say it all seems a bit 'humans are special'. *grump*
Technically, it should be "the GTVA is special". Half the forces commited to Operation Landfall were Vasudan or combined-service.
First Fleet intelligently exploited their superior posistion for the Second Entry (I refuse to have total idiots on either side here), got its ass kicked in a fair fight at Second of Home Station, and significantly outnumbered the Fishies in their victory at Second Luna but took casualities that would have crippled further war efforts. The only straight-up victory First Fleet's had to make them special was Kraken's End, which was twenty years in the making; they would have had to try to screw that up.
In a lot of ways, First Fleet is the GTVA's military if their first encounter with the Shivans had the Lucifer replaced by a Sathanas. They're ahead in some areas, anti-juggernaut technique being the main one. They're behind in others: their railguns have the power of GTVA or even Shivan beams but are significantly larger, significantly more power-intensive, and require a spinal mount thus limiting the flexiblity of the ship. First Fleet's xaser beamer antifighter weapons put them a bit ahead of the GTVA in antifighter defense, a response to the first Fishie invasion's huge number of fighters. This is mainly a function of the fact that the xaser beamer is smaller and lighter than an antifighter beam, lacking some of the range, but a much better refire rate and about a third of the lethality...on every mount.
The Fishies have the plasma streamer for a main gun. In its usually employed size it lacks the punch of a railgun, or a beam cannon, but it's smaller and uses a relatively low amount of power thus allowing many of them to be mounted. Their antifighter defenses are rapid-fire projectiles mainly for bomb interception and some missile batteries. Killing power in antifighter operations rests in their own fighters.
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Second Impression
First Fleet had been watching the Fishies orbiting Earth closely. They knew they must make every effort to prevent a bombardment, but the Fishie ships still in orbit continued to present a threat there, even with Kraken out of action.
They came from subspace, without warning. They were many, at least thirty, maybe forty, moving to set up an attack on the Fishie frigate currently covering east Asia. There were familiar elements to their designs, not all of them comforting; some resembled a Shivan design that had been sighted a couple times during the Great War. Most, however, were clearly Vasudan, the infrared albedio of their hulls, the signatures of their engines giving them away. They pressed home their attack with skill.
More Fishie ships arrived, responding to the damaged frigate’s cries for aid. It grew to a classic meeting engagement. More of the strange Vasudans arrived as well. Cruisers, frigates of their own, a destroyer…an old Typhon, launching Horus fighters. They lashed out with unfamilar but devestating weapons that looked similar to plasma streamers superficially, but did far more damage.
Many who commanded in First Vasudan Battlegroup, the Emperor’s Own, that day had spent their youth dreaming of laying waste to this world. Now they were the first of those come to save it. The GVD Hope itself was an old ship. She had been designed and built by those who wished nothing more than to see Earth burn. Their hopes were embodied in their work and her name, but their hopes were in vain. Hope had come to Sol to offer something different. Fate, her officers thought, had an interesting sense of humor.
At the Lunar Yards the Fishie battlegroup that had escaped the wrath of the Sirona and her attendant corvettes met the other element of the second wave, lead by the GVD Amenhopis and the GTD Ironsides. They escaped again, just barely, losing another corvette and a pair of cruisers. The remaining Fishie forces in Sol assembled at a rally point near Neptune. The wheels of their higher commands were already turning, preparing, to issue the orders that would withdraw them from Sol.
Those orders didn’t come fast enough. Fighters from Amenhopis, Memphis, and Hope harassed the rally point, dueling with Fishie fighters and frequently winning with their Taurets and the new Shus, running the remaining Fishie destroyer aersopace groups ragged. Ironsides and Aquitaine mounted heavy strikes against the cruiser screen in variation from the Vasudan harassing attacks once the Fishies stopped sending their fightercraft out to fight.
And then Sirona came, her battlegroup shoulder to shoulder with that of First Fleet’s Hellas, fighter support lent from every destroyer the GTVA had in Sol. And the Fishies fled rather than face them. The stampede out the outer-system node cost them several ship casualities disabled. One cruiser attempted to make use of the inner-system node…and found itself in Delta Serpentis, facing the third wave. It promptly self-destructed.
Many Fishie ground forces on Sol and Luna had been abandoned and must still be dealt with, but the heavy lifting of the Sol campaign was over.
Now for a counterattack.
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Heh, boo-ya :D
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Woo, get some! :p
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Cleanup and Recovery
There were at least five Fishie ships stranded in Sol; three cruisers and two corvettes. The GTVA kept the corvettes and a cruiser, bringing them back to Delta Serpentis. Also back to Delta Serpentis went most of the GTVA’s ships. Only Sirona and her battlegroup, reinforced by a couple of Vasudan corvettes and three cruisers, remained in Sol to reinforce First Fleet’s blockade efforts. Political concerns; the GTVA did not wish to appear to be exerting pressure on Sol now that the immediate threat was past. Sirona and her battlegroup would have returned as well, except First Fleet specifically requested their presence. Too many of its ships were in need of major refit and repair for them to hold the line alone if the Fishies launched another attack rapidly.
A counterattack had to be made. Sol could not accept having the Fishies on her doorstep ready to invade whenever they felt like it, and the GTVA needed a secure flank. GTVA planners were also keen to enforce a negotiated peace rather than current form of Fishie-Human relations; the Fishies could be a useful ally against the Shivans.
The problem was that the outer system node remained impassable, and there was good reason to believe a Knossos would actually cut off the connection to the Fishies. The Fishies had passed it, of course, and with several of their ships and crews in the hands of the First Fleet and Sol there was a good possiblity the mechanism would be figured out eventually.
But the counterattack needed to come swiftly. They had built up momentum here, and surprise. Faustus science cruisers from both groups clustered about the outer-system node, scanning. It registered, if it registered at all, as collapsed. But the Fishies had bridged it. Not with a Knossos either. Plans were made to build a Knossos anyways, just in case a way to traverse the node could not be found.
In the background, the politicians worked. The initial proposal was a modification of BETAC; Sol joined the GTVA, lock, stock, and barrel, with a degree of internal political autonomy much as the Vasudans had. The discussions went on.
Also in the background the engineers and the interrogator-linguists competed to see who could crack the secret of Fishie subspace drives first.
Liasion
On an otherwise ordinary day in Sol, where the Lunar and Martian Yards worked around the clock shifts to refit First Fleet’s ships and turn out new hulls, where many millions went about their business, safe in their knowledge that the Fishies had been repelled a second time, First Fleet appointed its first liasion officer to the GTVA, Commander Wilhem Halder. It was an event that changed everything.
Why? Who was Wilhem Halder?
An officer of German descent, twenty-nine, Halder had served in a variety of posts prior to the Second Invasion. His previous posistion had been as a Lieutenant Commander, gunnery officer aboard the Diana-class Richelieu until that ship’s destruction at the Second Battle of Luna. Senior surviving officer, he had written Richelieu’s last action report. His career speciality was weapons. Able, intelligent, but above all energetic, his temporary assignment to a headquarters staff posistion succeeded in annoying both him and many of the staff officers around him. So he was given a promotion and the liasion post for all the wrong reasons.
The overwhelming impression of the GTVA officers who encountered him was a man of endless energy and inquistive mind. Robert Petrarch expressed the opinion that Halder never actually slept. He liased well enough. He met personally with the captain and senior officers of every GTVA ship in Sol. He brought them up to date on the capablities of First Fleet’s ships, all of which save the Mars-class the GTA had once deployed. He learned everything the GTVA was willing to tell him about its own weapons, tactics, and doctrines, which was quite a bit. Halder traveled out of Sol, the first of her inhabitants to do so in a quarter-century, while heading the honor guard that accompanied the four Vasudan survivors of the operation that destroyed the Lucifer home…and took the opportunity to speak with senior Vasudan commanders and the Emperor.
And in noting the well-developed doctrine the GTVA had somehow acquired for dealing with ship’s of Kraken’s size, Halder learned of the Sathanas. In turn, he informed the GTVA that First Fleet had developed a weapon to deal with such craft. This simple exchange provided the catalyst for much in the way of politics.
But Halder did more than simply his job. He instilled the GTVA’s officers with confidence in First Fleet, in its energy and competence. He badgered his commanders into staging joint exercises and directed them on which of their units were most likely to impress the GTVA, into supplying emergency logistical needs for GTVA forces in Sol despite the drain on their own logistics.
The GTVA’s overall impression of First Fleet was of a capable, professional force, lacking the hardening that recent combat operations provided but well-trained and reasonably well-lead, still ready to fight if needed.
The truth was actually somewhat different. There were large numbers of reservists in First Fleet. Twenty years of peace, no matter how watchful, had allowed deadwood into the ranks and ratings that needed to be cleaned out. The war had helped with this, but there was still a lot of work to be done.
First Fleet’s fighter arm was a broken instrument. They had trained and prepared for the wrong threat, and needed to rebuild their tactics and doctrine from the ground up. Their destroyer aerospace groups had done their primary job, protect the destroyers, but they had taken a beating doing it, fifty percent casualities. The force overall was down by thirty-five percent, most of them reservists. Their only victory of the war was at Second Luna, the only place where the bombers had managed to do their job successfully, and that had been by massive numerical advantage. Confidence, in themselves, in their equipment, in their commanders, was low.
The Diana force was riding high. It always was. They were the weapon of decision, the flashing blade of the fleet. They had taken hard hits but they had expected to. They could point to their victories, Snowbird, Second Luna. They could even point to their defeats; the Fishies had recognized their ships, known their danger, and accorded them the respect they deserved. The other black-water sailors of First Fleet were mostly angry. They had served well. They knew they had, and yet they had lost.
Three months. First Fleet needed three months to reorganize, to retrain, to replace losses, patch up damaged ships and bolster disillusioned people. But the GTVA never knew, thanks to the tireless work of Wilhem Halder. And Sol and First Fleet pled their case from a posistion of strength.
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Wow, that guy sure is doing a good job there.
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Peephole
12th Recon Wing, Pegasus “Alpha Three”
Lieutenant Katherine Winters
Cockpit Recorder log for Operation Impression
Mission Clock Start
00:00:00 “Remember people, if this works correctly when we arrive you have to clear datum immeditately. They’ll see your jump flares. We’re fairly sure they’ll be unable to track our ships after that but regardless our gun and shield capacitors will be drained by the jump. Best guess on transit time is that it will take three and a half minutes. Check your interflight datalinks and engines and give a ready report when you’re onstation.”
00:00:25 “Alpha 2 ready, ready.”
00:00:30 “Alpha 3 all ready.”
00:00:33 “Alpha 4 ready for jump.”
00:00:37 “Command, Phantoms are ready.”
00:00:44 “Alpha Wing, this is Admiral Petrarch. Operation is a go. Godspeed.”
00:01:05 “Jump.”
00:01:07 Subspace Entry
00:02:30 “Alpha 3, snap it up.”
00:04:36 Subspace Exit
00:04:37 “Phantoms scatter! Clear datum go go go!”
00:04:38 Afterburner sounds and heavy breathing; unidentified sizzling noise. (Postoperation note: sizzling is comms artifact; believed to a brush against the magnetic bottle of a plasma streamer.)
00:04:45 “Did they seriously just fire main batteries at the jump sig?”
00:04:50 “Comm discipline. Split as ordered.”
00:04:55 Subspace Entry
00:04:57 Subspace Exit
00:05:30 “Alpha 1 to flight, datalinks active.”
00:10:42 “Return to the node at a safe distance. Individual egress.”
00:10:53 Subspace Entry
00:10:56 Subspace Exit
00:12:30 “They don’t seem to want to let us leave. That’s a lot of fire.”
00:12:36 “It’s undirected.”
00:12:45 Loud bang. “****, that hit me!” (Postoperation note; grazing strike from a dumbfired Fishie kinetic impacter missile. Missile was actively scanning from launch and would have missed, but apparently obtained positive lock-on at under 50 meters. It was not able to achieve a proper intercept in the time left.)
00:12:50 “Alpha 3, abort! Reading you on passive, stealth compromised!”
00:12:59 “**** **** ****. Clearing datum.”
00:13:05 “Alpha 3, get through that node. Alpha 5, Alpha 6, abort egress. Weapons free on incoming fighters. Protect Alpha 3.”
00:13:10 “Aye-aye sir. Clubbing the seals.”
00:13:30 Lock-threat alarm. Missile alarm. Deploying countermeasures.
00:13:35 Lock-threat alarm. Fishie cannon impacts on shields.
00:13:37 Subspace Entry
00:17:08 Subspace Exit
Mission Clock End
(And in case you're curious what they were doing hanging around out there for ten minutes doing nothing...interferometry. A single fighter is not going to have the ability to reasonably scan a whole new system with accuracy, so they had to cheat somehow.)
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:):yes:
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Save The Future
It was on the surface of it a ridculous situation. But it happened; First Fleet sent four heavy lifters in the middle of the night to take back the Martian Aerospace Museum’s flyable wing of Valkyries. Similar scenes played out at other museums, at demonstration and reenactment groups, in private collections, at the great boneyards established at L5 as First Fleet scoured Sol for useable combat spaceframes. Or combat spaceframes that might be made useable. Or even ones that could be stripped for spare parts to make others useable.
The Valkyries were taken to Cydonia Aerospace Center, where they joined forty others designated as “repairable” and the forty-six that had been recovered from Mars or the outer system colonies and were considered “possibly repairable”. They shared the large hanger with twelve Angel scout fighters that had been rounded up from the Syria Planum boneyard and also judged possible to return to service. There they waited about a week. The Valkyrie had gone out of service ten years ago, and there were few people left in First Fleet who knew how to service them. Also being waited on was the reopening of the Cydonia factory that had used to build them, and the assessment of its machinery.
That problem was addressed in the same way. As the logistics branch scoured Sol for combat spacecraft, the personnel branch was recalling those who had flown and maintained those craft to service. Han-Ronald was presented with a government order to find its factory workers and recall them, whatever it took. There was an air of the surreal as the first group of former Valkyrie and Angel mechanics took the floor and started work.
One week later, the first of the Valkyries, spaceframe X90421, exited the hanger of the orbit-to-surface conveyor for transit to its new home, the destroyer Cydonia. 24 of its fellows joined it, most of them piloted by Great War veterans.
The situation replayed itself for every class of ship and fighter there was. The Great Scavanging, as it was nicknamed, returned over 250 fightercraft, four Fenris, two Jormugands, one Leviathan, and even the old Trafalgar to the colors in two months. The cultural cost of all this was the stripping of every other retired military spacecraft built after 2090. Museums denuded, demonstration teams destroyed, a cultural cost incalcuable.
First Fleet was destroying its past to field every possible weapon in the coming fight.
(With apologies to Stuart, who wrote a much better sequence along these lines for his excellent Armageddon??? (http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?t=118771))
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Good, someone realized the need for a true interceptor again. :D
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Good, someone realized the need for a true interceptor again. :D
Truth is, First Fleet doesn't actually deploy a design designated an interceptor. Squadrons the previously flew Valks or Angels (First Fleet never completed the changeover from the Angel, as units closer to the front were given priority) now fly Athena Block Gs as "heavy interceptors". They serve the same role, they're a little slower than the GTVA's interceptors, but they carry more ordnance and they can be called on to do other things. All in all from First Fleet's point of view it's been a fair trade.
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Round Two
The Meson Bomb deployment that proceded the GTVA’s breaching operation from out of Sol was a rude surprise to the Fishies, who had assumed the one used for entry to Sol had been sent solely for mine clearance. Most of the nearly one hundred fighters on blockade duty were instantly wiped out, many of the smaller ships in the force suffered damage that instantly incapacitated them, and even the two Great Whites leading the blockade lost most of their weapons facing the bomb.
Corvette Stormhawk led the charge, escorted and supported by full-squadron deployments of the 70th Blue Lions and 33rd Vengence. To counter the damaged pair of Great White destroyers began emptying their hangers while attempting axial rolls to bring undamaged weapons to bear. Stormhawk’s main battery gutted one of the damaged destroyers before it could complete its roll, and the Blue Lions engaged the other, distracting its attention and damaging its engines.
Now, however, fightercraft were turning up in large numbers. A mixed wave of fifty rushed Stormhawk as her sistership Chimera transited the node. The sixteen Tauret fighters of Vengence moved to intercept, and acquitted themselves well, but twenty hostile bombers broke through to make their runs against Stormhawk.
The corvette’s gunners opened up with their AAA beams, and the first three Fishie bombers to approach were cut to shreds. A storm of flak explosions claimed four more. Dedicated point-defense turrets unique to the Stormhawk’s class and the larger Sirona swung into action against inbound ordnance, filling space with their low-powered laser blasts. Despite the formidible multilayered defenses, ton for ton the best aboard a GTVA ship, the end result was unavoidable: Stormhawk was crushed under an avalanche of nuclear and antimatter warheads. She was the first GTVA warship lost to the Fishies.
Even as her sistership died, Chimera exchanged fire with the second Great White. At short range the numerous plasma streamers failed to penetrate the outermost armor hull’s half-meter of collapsed-core molybendum, but inflicted severe damage on exposed sensors and fire-control. Return fire from Chimera’s forward and starboard main battery mauled the Great White’s midships armament blisters and her portside main battery finished off a crippled Fishie cruiser.
A group of nearly thirty bombers approached Chimera, but the 214th Steadfast in their Shus hit them like a thunderbolt, destroying the attack’s cohesion. Lieutenant Ramses leading Delta wing hit a a six-ship formation of bombers literally, boring in on afterburner and forcing three of the Fishie pilots to break formation or be rammed. As he whipped around to gun the opposite trailer, he lit afterburners again and held his course until collision, bodily knocking the enemy bomber out of formation. Scattered, forced to attack piecemeal from multiple vectors, and hounded by Steadfast’s pilots, the Fishie bombers failed to penetrate the Chimera’s defenses.
Aeolus-class cruiser Shigure accompanied First Fleet’s Diana-class Suffren, supported by the Athena Gammas of the 42nd Reserve Squadron. There should have been a second Aeolus as well, named by curious coincidence Mogador, but the power surge to the drives for the new jump formation needed to reach NGC 7219 had popped safeties and the ship had never left Sol.
A Fishie corvette exited subspace crossing Suffren’s bow, firing at Chimera with its forward plasma streamer array. Suffren’s gunners hulked the Barracuda with a single round, perfectly timed catch the Fishie ship in the reactor spaces. The bombers that had slain Stormhawk saw this and diverted course, but this time they were strung out, their munitions half-expended. And the Athenas were in the way, while the remaining twelve fighters of Vengence chased after them.
It was the hammer and the anvil. The Athenas each dumped a rack full of First Fleet’s premier fightercraft killer, the fire-and-forget Durandel. The Fishie bomber crews could go forward and die, or go back and die. To their credit, they held their course, racing missile impacts for a solid lock on Suffren. Only one of them made it, and his bombs were destroyed by Suffren’s defensive fire. He pressed in anyways, firing his guns though he was out of range, determined to sell himself dearly. Two of the Athenas pounced on his bomber and blew it to bits.
The remaining Fishie warships were just a few damaged cruisers and a corvette, shorn of fighter support. Those that could still move began jumping out. Those that could not started to abandon ship and flee the area as best they could.
To their surprise, the mixed GTVA/First Fleet force let them go.
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I'm really liking this. It reminds me a little bit of a the Discovery Channel, Battlefield type of narrative.
Keep it up!
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Fluff that was never used for a possible "ugly" model adapation.
GTB Nike
The Medusas of First Fleet were the only unmodified fightercraft in the inventory for the First Fishie incursion. Immediately after it ended First Fleet put out new specifications for a modification and upgrade of the Medusa, demanding improved speed, shields, and defensive armament.
Han-Ronald and Dynamic Metamer both responded, and both were awarded contracts for a prototype. Han-Ronald’s was designated Medusa Delta, while Dynamic Metamer’s was the Medusa Echo. The two designs radically diverged early on. Han-Ronald’s was a simple off-the-shelf upgrade using materials from their recent upgrades to the Ursa, while Dynamic Metamer attacked the problem at a more fundemental level.
When the two prototypes competed side-by-side, the Han-Ronald design was of lesser performance, but Dynamic Metamer’s was considerably more complex and expensive. Dynamic Metamer’s design was ultimately rejected as simply not practical for a relatively rapid fleet-wide upgrade.
But the Medusa Echo wasn’t dead yet. The prototype was kept in-house for testing purposes, and many concepts and materials were later used in the wildly successful Athena Gamma. The Echo itself, however, would later resurface when First Fleet began testing new weapons in 2350.
First Fleet was casting around for a suitable platform to test tactics for its second-generation antimatter bombs. Unlike the GTVA, First Fleet also included a proof-of-concept set of rapid-fire, unguided, heavy antimatter warheads intended to allow a fast bomber to close rapidly on an enemy warship and inflict severe damage in a single pass before withdrawing.
The prototype Medusa Echo, with its high speed, relatively spacious payload, and strong shields, provided an ideal platform to deploy such weapons. Dynamic Metamer was immediately awarded a contract for an improved version of the craft.
The final production version, designated Nike, mounts a pair of the turrets the Medusa Delta carries with their twinned Prometheus cannon. These serve as its main defense against enemy interception. Backing that up is a brand-new shield system and a triple-sized set of the original Medusa engines. The ship mounts no primary weapons, but has spare secondary space for antifighter missiles.
The primary purpose of the ship, and the pilot’s primary purpose in life once he straps in, is to deliever either 12 Lightning or 24 Breaker warheads to the target. Each type is loaded in “packs” of six into the two main secondary bays. Once a pilot has triggered a pack, it cannot be stopped from emptying.
The Lightning and Breaker are unguided, high-velocity rockets powered by a matter-antimatter reaction and packing an antimatter warhead. A complete loadout of twelve Lightnings will destroy a frigate or cripple a destroyer. Breakers are designed for use against cruiser-class ships; six Breakers are sufficent to cripple or destroy most cruisers.
The first operational trials, being conducted by 1st and 2nd Torpedo Squadrons, will begin within the month.
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Hmm, rapid-fire unguided bombs, just what the GTVA needs IMHO...
But, no primaries? :shaking:
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Hmm, rapid-fire unguided bombs, just what the GTVA needs IMHO...
But, no primaries? :shaking:
You're not in a bomber to fight fighters, son.
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Armageddon.
Been reading it for four hours now.
That story is quite possibly the BEST WORK OF FICTION I'VE READ SINCE THE DARK TOWER SERIES.
Thank you for bringing it into my life.
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Besides, who needs primaries when you an ping at em with your turrets.
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Thank you for bringing it into my life.
Anytime man. The story deserves to be read. :P
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Hmm, rapid-fire unguided bombs, just what the GTVA needs IMHO...
But, no primaries?
You're not in a bomber to fight fighters, son.
Well, I like to mount Maxims and shoot turrets during the approach, to clear the path for the bombs and my bomber...
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Well, I like to mount Maxims and shoot turrets during the approach, to clear the path for the bombs and my bomber...
The Nike's point is to afterburn in close, let rip a pack of Lightnings or Breakers, and then run the hell away. Enemy defense will have minimal chance to fire at you. (And, ingame, the Fishie ships would have lacked weapons as deadly as AAA beams or flak; in effect they were going to be armed with low-grade Morningstars, weapons designed to protect from conventional bombs and not conventional bombers.)
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Foreshadowing
Comms Transcript, GVCv Sopedu.
Begins 0923, Day 14 Operation Audacity.
“Tracking a Fishie ships squawking in the outer system . Coordinates sent. Further ships will be sent.”
“Understood. Sopedu outbound.”
“Command, we have a single destroyer and escorting fightercraft. First Fleet has a squadron on the scene.”
“Command, our escorting fighters are not here yet. Should we make our run?”
“Mars has had a catapult accident and is unable to launch the Stormlords. You’re your run Torpedo One.”
“Alpha, take the engines. Beta, left hanger. Gamma, right hanger. Delta, fighter suppression.”
“Vengence, engage the enemy fighter screen. Pull them off before First Fleet’s torpedo squadron engages.”
“That will leave you unprotected, Sopedu.”
“We can take care of ourselves, Vengence. Command, request additional fighter support.”
“Blue Lions and Novas are scrambling now. Mastaba and her escorting wing will arrive momentarily.”
“Mastaba entering engagment area. Moving to cover your keel, Sopedu.”
“Multiple subspace entries. Transports and a corvette. Corvette is moving to engage.”
“Torpedo One is thirty seconds to firing range…Christ! Break off, break off!”
“Multiple Fishie capitals reverting from subspace. Command, we need reinforcements.”
“Suffren and Hipper entering the engagement area. Railguns online.”
“Enemy bombers reverting from subspace off our bow at short range!”
“Mastaba, respond.”
“Command, Mastaba is down. No response on comms. I have no power signatures and she's leaking atmosphere."
"Suffren here, we just lost our railgun. Command, we need more fighters."
"Destroyer-class subspace exit detected. Configuration...Mars!"
"This is Mars to all ships. Survelliance is tracking multiple squadrons of Fishie fightercraft lifting off from NGC 7219 Four. Hurry it up or we’re going to have to leave this unfinished.”
"Blue Lions and Novas here, moving to covering positions."
"Hipper here, just lost our railgun, two enemy cruisers down. Torpedo One, your way should be clear for the moment."
"Torpedo One copies. Wing assignments as ordered. Make this fast people."
“Enemy transports docking with the destroyer…destroyer has just fired on the transports!”
“Suffren here, we have to pull out.”
“Another corvette just exited across the destroyer’s stern. Torpedo One?”
“This is Commander Ozawa. Commander Schofield is down. That frigate just ran down Alpha wing. Beta and Gamma are still on target. Launching.”
"Torpedo One reports attack complete. Enemy destroyer is unable to launch or recover fighters. Moving to you Mars."
“Multiple Fishie squadrons arriving in the battle area!”
“Did they just attack their own ships?”
“Focus on your own problems Hipper. We have multiple wings incoming. Blue Lions, if you’d assist.”
“Fishie ships are jumping out. Plotting vectors…they are not going to a central point.”
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Good! A bit confusing but then I guess it's probably supposed to be.
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Good! A bit confusing but then I guess it's probably supposed to be.
It's a mission script, without the visual portion it loses something. :(