[NGTM-1R]

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.

[Mongoose]

For want of a nail, a shoe was lost, et cetera?

[General Battuta]

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.

[NGTM-1R]

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.

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.

[NGTM-1R]

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.

[NGTM-1R]

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.

[Mongoose]

Any chance of a booze bribe changing your mind about making this into a campaign?

[NGTM-1R]

Any chance of a booze bribe changing your mind about making this into a campaign?

Considering I lack several necessary skills, no.

[Droid803]

There was a team of people interested in helping.

[FreeSpaceFreak]

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?

[NGTM-1R]

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!

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

Spoiler:

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.

[NGTM-1R]

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!

[NGTM-1R]

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.

[FreeSpaceFreak]

These must be The Destroyers of legend. There could be no other explanation.

O.O

*remark about Shivans*

[Mongoose]

Aw hell.

[General Battuta]

I still say it all seems a bit 'humans are special'. *grump*

[Thaeris]

I still say it all seems a bit 'humans are special'. *grump*

Damn straight we're special! 

[Mongoose]

Yeah, we invented BBCode!

[NGTM-1R]

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.

[NGTM-1R]

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.