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More aggressive target... New Earth

Interlude #3
New Vandenburg,
Taurian Concordat
14:00 27 January 2767

Joan Brandt entered the Commanding General’s cabin only after politely waiting for the guards outside to obtain permission but even so, the Admiral found the outer chamber darkened. Kerensky sat erectly upon a corner couch, eyes upon a holographic display in the centre of the room – projector cleverly worked into the Star League seal worked into the floor.

Before speaking a word, Kerensky returned her salute and gestured towards the door. “Hang your hat on the peg, Joan.”

With raised eyebrows, Brandt obeyed. Implicitly, by setting aside their uniform headgear, they were to have a less than formal conversation. It would take more than the fingers of one hand to count the number of times she’d seen Kerensky unbend like this – absent his few and furtive leaves of absence over the decades – but only just.

“I’m sure you’ve heard the rumours of news from Terra.”

“By way of Liao, yes.” She was referring to the planet, not just the House of that name. SLS Dreadnought had reached the ancestral home of the Great House that ruled the Capellan Confederation four days before with dire news: a coup d’etat against the Hegemony and warfare upon and above Terra itself. It was impossible to keep word like that from spreading.

Kerensky nodded and gestured sharply with a command wand, bringing up more images. “From other places too,” he said, indicating and then dismissing the globe of a slightly familiar world. “SLS Enterprise and a small escort reached Cartago late on the twenty-third and sent their own message.” He turned the image of a small girl held in the arms of a SLDF officer so that Brandt could see it clearly. “Our new First Lord presumptive is aboard her, now en route to New Avalon.”

“Amanda Cameron?” Brandt waited for the nod before concluding. “Safely out of the way, which is as much as can be hoped for… unless, is Davion implicated?”

“What? No, not at all. According to Admiral Mroczkiewicz there was a verbal statement by Lady Cameron to a Colonel Keeler and a recorded statement from the First Lord via Royal Security that John Davion is Lady Amanda’s designated guardian should they die before she’s of age.”

“Who then?”

Kerensky let the question hang a moment and then: “Amaris.”

“Stefan Amaris? That fat sack of… him? I thought he loved Richard like a son.”

“He’s an Amaris.” The old man’s voice was harsh. “They’re not known, historically, for letting family sentiment get in the way of their ambitions. I think we can assume he’s at least as well-equipped as the armies we’ve been fighting here. And all that was left in the Hegemony was a single Corps.”

“And the Caspars… I know you don’t like them but…”

Kerensky shook his head. “For the most part, they appear to have been neutralized. Mroczkiewicz says that only one command ship went active and while that let them eke out a temporary victory over Terra it wasn’t enough to hold on. They evacuated who they could – mostly from Geneva, but they got the Combine’s ambassador’s family out too.”

“Not the ambassador?” Brandt winced. “They’ll not like that.”

“He seems to have died fighting. I’m not sure how that will play with Takiro.” Kerensky sighed. “There are some signs that Amaris doesn’t have control of the SDS drones either, so it’s a more or less level playing field. And New Dallas is still in loyalist hands.”

The Admiral thought a moment and then nodded. “Titus Clay retired there, didn’t he? I recall he’d been elected to their… Congress?”

“Planetary Governor. And via self-promotion, now claiming to be Interim Director-General of the Terran Hegemony. It doesn’t have any legal standing, but it might serve I suppose. Their HPG is out of action but ships reached the League and elements of Eighth and Eleventh Armies are moving to reinforce him.”

“We’re going back then?”

“You are.” Now it was readiness reports backing up Kerensky’s words. “It’ll take weeks to pull our forces out of the Periphery and too many divisions are exhausted. Besides, we can’t leave the Republic itself out of our calculations. I’m forming an Army Group for you – Eighth and Eleventh, plus the Fifth and whatever we can piece back together out of First Army – two-thirds of their divisions were outside the Hegemony.”

“I understand. My orders?”

“Reinforce New Dallas and any other worlds that are holding out, within the limits of your resources. If you can reasonably liberate more worlds without stretching yourself, do so.” Kerensky paused. “And I want your assessment of Clay and… someone else. If they’re trustworthy, they’ll be assets. If not, we need them out of the way before they get entrenched.”

“Alright. So… besides Clay who am I to evaluate.”

The holograms changed again, to the familiar shape of a Texas-class battleship. Brandt’s eyes narrowed as she picked out differences between this and other ships in the class that she was familiar with. “That’s the M-6 prototype. I thought it had been destroyed.”

“Apparently not.” Kerensky folded his arms. “It jumped in over Terra, shortly after the coup, apparently spoiling for a fight. Mroczkiewicz describes it as highly intelligent and independent – for a while they thought someone was aboard and talking to them.”

“Well someone must have been when they jumped in. The computers in Caspars don’t cope well with jumps.”

“Not this one, it seems.”

Brandt pursed her lips. “I can see why that would be suppressed. Caspars that can jump without losing their marbles would be very useful… and very threatening.”

“Well, either the Praetorian is more advanced or it’s behaviour is the result of that sort of brain damage.” The general shook his head. “It was singing during the battle – psychological warfare, it claims.”

Brandt shook her head. “A warship that sings. Now I have heard everything. Don’t worry, General. I’ll take a look at it, as well as Clay. And if either of them looks like trouble I’ll shut them down for you. Count on me.”

Figures Kerensky try to get rid of the assets and cause trouble. He should of hanged the Fat Man long ago.

Your mission should you decide to accept it...

Entry #22
Zenith Jump Point, Graham IV,
Terran Hegemony
08:00 7 February 2767

Graham IV was founded right from the beginning to be a major industrial centre. There are six major cities, each of which grew up around the factories of a different corporation. Two of them are major military contractors, so the planet is guarded by five massive Castles Brian, fortifications intended to keep the planet from falling entirely under foreign control, and a fairly significant number of M-5 and M-3 drones.

That hadn’t protected it against Amaris’ soldiers and I’m not proposing to let it stop me from liberating it. Of course, since I only have five brigades at my disposal… please excuse me, General McEvedy only has five brigades under his command: the three from his own 331st Division and two HAF brigades, one of tanks and the other of mechanised infantry. And that’s not a huge force to use as a planetary invasion force. Taking even one Castle Brian with a single division would be impressive under normal circumstances.

Of course, since unlike the troop transports I’ve used one of the SLDF’s recharge stations to come via Pollux they are… adequately escorted.

Pollux, it turned out, didn’t have any surviving SDS control centres. It had had plenty of Caspars though and between McTiernan and the various SLDF veterans serving on jumpships that operated from New Dallas, I’d been able to put together crews for as many as I could control.

We’re in the Graham IV system for about half a minute before my leading squadron of eight are under fire from twelve of their counterparts here, and the rest of the jump point defences are coming online.

I bring the rest of the Caspars into formation, piping targeting data from the leading squadron to their sister-ships, allowing us to fire with far greater accuracy than our range should allow.

Even so, five of the eight Caspars are burning wrecks – in one case, several chunks of wreckage – before we’ve smashed down the immediate response and there are thirty more hostile M-5s incoming and the pair of Pavise stations are launching Voidseekers and M-3 drones at an impressive rate.

I’m not too sentimental about the Caspars themselves, but the jump crews didn’t get off in time.

Thirty seconds after the other crews have taken to their shuttles, my little fleet go to double the usual sustained acceleration and start generating attack vectors upon the stations. It’s an interesting tactical challenge and in some ways like a game of chess: to win this fight, neither side has to destroy all their opponents, just the ‘king’. Without controls, the loser’s drones would be useless.

And just to balance things up, while I have twice as many drones in the fight, they have twice the command posts.

It seems entirely too fair to me, so I skew things back in the proper direction by aiming two of the intact squadrons directly at the massive space stations. Even battering them into fragments won’t stop a couple of megatons of metal from striking home unless they manage to divert those ships with massive firepower.

Massive firepower that won’t therefore be directed at me.

Yes, I’m using my fellow drones as expendable cannonfodder. No, I don’t feel particularly guilty about it.

I’m fairly sure that they’re not sapient. And if they were, they’d almost certainly want to do this, right?

They’re soldiers, made that way.

I don’t ‘keep telling myself that’ in some obsessively guilt-ridden way. It’s no more immoral than riding a horse to war, even before the day of the machinegun.

The crew of one of the space stations must want to live more than those aboard the other one, since about half of the swarm of fighters coming at me divert towards the two ramming squadrons. The others are coming straight on at me with a formidable degree of focus.

After the previous issues I’ve had with hacking active drones, I’ve refined my approach. I also keep it simple, focusing on a single M-3 – specifically one that the Voidseekers are about to pass. I do have open command controls now, after all.

The fighters are almost past the drone when I bring it under control and there’s a very narrow window before the crew aboard its parent station realise that I’ve cut them off from the self-destruct system and resort to more direct means of getting rid of it. Long enough to take out more than a dozen of the Voidseekers. Rather a shame that the stations had almost three hundred at their disposal really.

My own Voidseekers engage the rest. To even things up I’m carrying two M-10 drones – automated Titan carriers - but that still leaves me only a few over sixty. My only advantages are that the division of the strike between myself and the ramming squadrons leave my drones outnumbered only two-to-one – and none of mine are slowing themselves down with nuclear missiles.

There had been an ample stock of Air-to-Air Missiles on New Dallas and they were much more useful in this situation. For the first time in this battle, I kick in to transmit a musical accompaniment. Just in case they didn’t know who I was.

That I am Winterborn.

Despite a rather impressive opening salvo, backed up by bracketing fire from my entire fleet, my fighters aren’t quite capable of stopping every one of the enemy drones from reaching firing range. I would have killed for an anti-missile system – something to suggest if I can get a refit at any point – but all I can do is grit figurative teeth and –

AAAAAAAAAAAAAH!  AAAAAAAAAAARGH!!  …  … . AAAAAAAAARRRRGGGGH!!!

- against my worst expectations to crash onwards out of the aftermath of three nuclear strikes. None, fortunately, had penetrated but my forward railgun turret and one of the Howdahs welded to me was gone.

So were twelve of sixteen Caspars I’d assigned to ram, with one squadron entirely wiped out. Of the other four, two peeled up and raked the station in passing while the other two plunged right in, followed by what was still thousands of tons of wreckage. The resultant explosions left fifteen half the enemy M-5s directionless, mostly the ones that had been engaging me.

With their own fighters gutted by trying to get at me, the remaining station rather quickly realised the scale of their predicament. It took only a single transmission from General McEvedy to persuade them to surrender. That gives me enough Caspars to replace my losses… if I hadn’t lost a Howdah. Ah well…

Oh yeah, one more thing about Graham IV.

It’s only one jump from Terra.

Fat man? My gauntlet just hit your face. I hope I broke your nose.

And so will whoever gets executed for this one...

Entry #23
Graham IV, High Orbit
Terran Hegemony
10:00 16 February 2767

From information gathered from the Pavise – along with some transmissions received from Graham IV – we pieced together the situation.

In some ways the news was better than anyone had expected. The planet had not entirely fallen into the hands of the Rim Worlds troops. Although three of the five Castles Brian had fallen easily in the first minutes of the Coup – giving them control of almost all of the local SDS systems – Fort Ball and Fort Baldwin were still in SLDF hands.

The flipside was that rather than attempt a more formal siege – which would have demanded a major troop commitment and a considerable length of time – the local Rim commander had pragmatically decided to use a more economical solution: repeated use of nuclear weapons against every entrance they traced.

Already the areas around the two Forts were going to be uninhabitable for centuries to come – and would likely glow slightly for that long – and even their massive structures would collapse if this continued.

Somehow I don’t think they’re going to stop just because we ask them nicely.

Unlike New Dallas, Graham IV has a large star with a correspondingly powerful gravity well. It’s taken us nine days to reach our destination, boosting at a standard one gravity. The M-5 drones from the Nadir jump point have made a faster run so there are a hundred and twenty of them waiting for me, supported by a mix of eleven Republican warships – except now they’re apparently part of the Amaris Empire Armed Forces – led by a single Sovetskii Soyuz that looks to have been captured, not copied. The rest are destroyers and corvettes.

I’ve got what is now a full set of Caspars for me – sixty-strong – and the 331st’s escorts can support me. Most of my Voidseekers were destroyed fighting for the jump point. These numbers are not favourable.

Under normal circumstances, this would be highly inadvisable, but given that there are SLDF soldiers fighting down there, none of McEvedy’s staff have questioned the decision to press on.

The Rimjobs having control of the SDS network here was one of my worst case scenarios. Fortunately, not my absolute worst case scenario – that would have had them proficient in using it and the entire Rim… Imperial fleet here waiting on the far side of the planet.

I’m about ninety-five percent sure that that’s not the case.

The good news is that there aren’t all that many Voidseekers out there to fight back. Graham IV has six Pavise stations – two at each jump point and two in orbit – and a primary command centre on the surface (the back-up is in Fort Ball but not doing any one much good since its transmitters got taken out in the initial attacks). So only around five hundred or so drone fighters to worry about.

The better news is that since I can only manage sixty Caspars right now, that left me with a surplus of fifteen that I didn’t really need and certainly wasn’t going to leave lying around.

I’ve got just the song and cue up Iced Earth’s Declaration Day.

The transport flotilla and my squadrons open up on schedule and all fifteen of them plunge right through our formation. They were masked from the planet’s telescopes by our drive flares as we decelerated and although they on their way from the Zenith point well after we did, they were accelerating at three gravities for the eighteen hours, after which point they went silent which made them rather hard to detect at any great distance.

Space stations don’t really move around for all tactical purposes and I know exactly where their orbits are supposed to be. Frantic use of emergency thrusters intended only to stabilise the orbit can’t change it more than the rather more powerful engines of my Caspars can alter their trajectories and I’m still at a safe distance to cut my squadrons out of the net to briefly issue correction orders.

Even then I only hit with half the ten Caspars aimed at Pavise stations, which is perfectly satisfactory. Even one hit at this speed with that much tonnage is ample to obliterate them. As demonstrated since four Caspars cruise past the north polar station before the last one hits home.

All five missed ‘shots’ arc around Graham IV and slingshot off in the direction of the sun. A bit wasteful but they don’t have the fuel to slow down and anything else could turn them into traffic hazards.

The other five have another target. Given that planets don’t have reaction thrusters, good luck avoiding these, Rimjobs.

One of the five is aimed directly at the SDS control systems buried in the Fort Baxter Castle Brian. The other five are aimed at points surrounding it, at distances of no more than a kilometer. I’m fairly sure that the region’s geologically stable but five kinetic impacts, each over six hundred thousand tons, moving… well, very fast...

It doesn’t particularly surprise me when the site disappears beneath massive mushroom clouds. Nothing radioactive, but I wouldn’t want to be on the surface in that general area. Fortunately the nearest city is a couple of hundred kilometres away. I’m not too disappointed when the M-5s and M-3s and Voidseekers go to inactive though.

It really seems to upset the Imperial warships though.

In minutes – long enough that I’m just now about to segue from Declaration Day into Metallica’s Waste My Hate – the odds have shifted from two to one in their favour to their being outnumbered more than five to one.

“You know, you can surrender any time you like,” I offer between the songs.

All eleven ships fire up their drives, which doesn’t suggest surrender is likely. And when they do accelerate it’s not along any vector that would count as retreat.

They’re aiming themselves right at me, forming a ‘fist’ of five corvettes in the lead, followed by the destroyers and one cruiser. So far as I can tell, the lighter ships are playing shield for the heavier ones, buying time for them to get close to me. Interesting choice – tactically it would make more sense to try to punch through and engage the fragile (well, relatively) dropships that carry the 331st and the HAF soldiers. Strategically though…

Did I have a price on my head or something?

It was strategically sound, the odds didn’t favour the Imperial warships being able to threaten the dropship’s escorts even if they did manage to get through to me, but without the Caspars it would be impossible to hold Graham IV against a determined counter-attack.

Of course, even with what was now nearly half my armament disabled, I wasn’t what you might call a soft target and I was surrounded by a considerable amount of firepower to throw at the incoming ships. Voidseekers darted in as my Caspars shifted to outflank the enemy warships. One by one the corvettes died, then the destroyers. I gave the cruiser a coup de grace myself, one rippling broadside at extreme range. None of them ran.