[Attack. All normal Turn Actions are Paused. Roll Dice for Garrison.]
I pause.
The world pauses.
Everything has stopped and my eyes are staring up at the sky to see that I am looking at what can only be called an enormous map of the space around my home.
[Enemy Raids. Attackers Rolled 4. Jump Detected, Aerospace Fight. Defending Force 1.0. Defending force LCAF Naval Group Centre, Unnamed Aerospace Combat Command. Do you commit your aerospace?]
Ummm.
Yes?
Why wouldn't I?
[You do not need to commit all of your aerospace to a battle.]
That's dumb.
I'm going to commit everything!
[Enemy Raid. Rolling for Garrison Table. Roll.]
Ah?
[Roll.]
Okay?
Roll I guess?
A single dice rolled in front of my eyeballs.
Oh.
Oh.
That's what it meant by roll.
[Roll Result: 4. Minor World Modification +1. Final Roll Result: 5. Permanent World Garrison: 3 Infantry Regiments, 3 Armour Regiments, 0 Battlemech Regiments.]
Ah?
Shit.
Oh no.
[Orders?]
Ah?
[Orders downloaded into brain.]
Aaaah.
Ah.
Fuck me is there a lot of orders.
Right.
So.
I know Slim. He's going to go on the offensive, the same with von Randt.
After all the talking we did, he was on the same wavelength as I was.
To defend all the time was to reduce yourself in morale.
Going on the offensive was to retake the initiative and to secure dominance over the eney and prove yourself their master.
Which meant that I knew what they were going to do.
Attack. I'm going on the Attack.
[Order confirmed. Attack Order issued to: 1x Infantry Regiment {1XP}, 1x Medium Battlemech Regiment {1XP}, 2x Aerospace Wing {0XP}. Defend Order Issued to: 3x Garrison Regiment {0XP}, 3x Armour Regiment {0XP}]
Ah.
That doesn't look good.
They're all unexperienced.
Ah… did I just send them all to die?
Fuck.
I'm the worst.
Wait, what did it mean attackers with an s?
+Break+
Wakako Zako shivered in her pressure suit.
The Lyran version she had been told was filled with pressure sensors to clamp down on her legs to keep her awake during high-g turns.
It was in her mind now as she sat in her Eagle. Her Eagle.
Haha, yes, she had an Eagle.
There had been enough of them for her, novice, newly trainer her to have one!
But.
Um.
Well, she had one.
Right.
Her.
Her who had barely been trained beyond 'this is your Eagle, this is how it moves, this is how it shoots.'
Right…
"Um… what are we doing here?" Muttered one of her Wing mates. There were 18 of them but she barely knew more than five of them.
She had barely gotten to know any of her squadron-mates let alone her Wing mates.
"We're waiting for the launch order." One of the others muttered.
"Why don't we go now?"
"Because we don't have the fuel to get there you idiot."
"But why are we waiting, won't they just get there ahead of us?"
The conversation continued and Wakako couldn't help but nod along.
They had a point.
Why weren't they out there zooming to the enemy and attacking them?
Seriously, it would be better than sitting here, waiting for orders, and just listening to people complaining.
She didn't even know who the enemy was, just a general alert, a scramble to get to her Eagle after putting on the pilot suit… and now nothing but waiting.
"Standby for briefing…"
+Break+
"Your orders Admiral are to keep those Jumpship yards intact at all costs! Nothing else matters!"
The voice of his Archon echoed in his ears as he looked at the throbbing display in front of him, the sound of his staff working away around him a nearly drowned out pleasant backdrop.
To his right his Commodore in charge of the defences was trying to get at least some of the in-production jumpships online and ready to repel attackers. At least the ones with their guns mounted.
To his left, the freshly trained, highly green staff of Duke Vu's house aerospace force was trying to, well, do something. Anything. But he was so far out of his depth it was ridiculous.
Fleet Admiral Chou, the highest ranked naval officer in the entirety of the Commonwealth felt his teeth clench.
After two Succession Wars, the Lyran Commonwealth Navy would finally have its own ships in enough numbers to be worth something.
To finally go back to the independence that they had from the Transport Division and the Army.
To finally be able to go back to having vessels to go forth and smash apart the enemy in the void instead of piloting glorified military dropships.
Tetersen would be the birth of the renewed Navy.
And now someone wanted to ruin all of that?
No, it wasn't just someone, it was multiple someones.
His eyes were hard as he glanced at the second set of figures blinking on the map.
These ones at least had emblems to match.
3rd Dieron Regulars.
12th Sun Zhang Academy Cadre.
Which meant that he was looking at what was essentially 2 Battlemech Regiments, 6 Aerospace Wings, 6 Armour Regiments, 10 Infantry Regiments, and 2 Artillery Battalions.
Whatever this first group in white was, they had coordinated their attack with the DCMS. Unfortunately for them, the vagaries of warfare had them jump first.
Which meant that he had a single window to operate in.
One chance to time this perfectly, hit the white fleet, then, shift and hit the Combine fleet.
That was his single chance.
"Point of no return past. White Fleet inbound at 1.5G Burn."
But.
But could he?
His main concern was the fact that he needed to protect the shipyards at all costs.
The ground invasion… while an issue, was less of one than 34 approaching dropships.
34 approaching dropships that hadn't flipped to reduce their velocity, aiming directly at the shipyards.
They were, in simple terms, going to kill themselves to reduce the shipyards.
He did not know exactly how capable the fortifications that had been built around the shipyards was. He was, in simple fact, not sure about much at all except his orders.
What exactly was the link between the White Fleet and the DCMS Fleet? One was fanatically suicidal, the other was no doubt here for a raid.
Even the DCMS did not have the Dropships to throw away like this.
Something was fishy, he did not have all the facts but he knew his orders.
Their plan then was simple.
Release their aerospace just before impact, have the aerospace run interference, hit the shipyards, then, no doubt, the aerospace would hit the shipyards as well. There was no turning back now for them, the point of no return had been past, either they adjust their angle of approach and slingshot around Tetersen or they hit the shipyards.
Dammit.
The Combine Fleet was going to have to be allowed to approach unmolested.
Whoever had planned this operation was devilishly fiendish.
"Initiate Plan White. We focus on the White Fleet before they reduce this shipyard to floating wreckage. Alert Hauptmann-General von Randt that the DCMS fleet will be approaching unmolested. I do not have the assets to contest." He ordered, hoping that he hadn't just doomed the Commmonwealth to the death of its greatest industrialist since the birth of the, well, the Commmonwealth with his actions.
+Break+
"Destroy the threat of the new Jumpship facilities to Holy Shroud. Do not return until your mission has been completed." The orders of Primus Takami
Precentor Martial Xenophon felt his mouth twitch.
"Log Entry. 2991, July, 1st. In following SLDF raid protocol, I fear that I have doomed this operation to a premature end. With Comstar's dominance of information technology in the 30th century, fearing that the Successor States can tap into our communications if foolish. Instead of moving in total silence, we could have maintained contact with Terra and been updated on the developing situation. The advanced technological assets in the region are several times what was reported when we left Terra. Our forces are insufficient to engage and destroy this concentration of heresy. Am directing all vessels to maximum thrust at the slipways for maximum damage. Will implement obscuration protocols now. End Log."
They could have been updated on the fact that the shipyard of 51, with a production time in the months if not years had been expanded to an additional 104 Jumpship Slipways, not even mentioning the Dropships and small craft.
Worse still, they had been upgraded with fortifications so dense and thick that his vessels with their PPCs, Autocannon, and Missiles wouldn't be able to do anything more than tickle them.
The nuclear warheads, numerous as they were couldn't penetrate.
That left a single option left if he were to carry out his orders.
"Destroy the threat of the new Jumpship facilities to Holy Shroud."
His orders were very very clear.
The mission of Blake was also clear.
His command was not going to survive this.
He would make sure of it to maintain the secrecy of Holy Shroud.
He just… wished that the First Division of the Comstar Guards could have had more of a role to play in Blakes Vision before they vanished into the void.
He sighed.
If they were raised again later, he hoped that these battle honours they earned today would be on their banner.
He had his orders, he was going to do as much damage as possible to the slipways and delay them as much as possible. The Blessed Order would need to make use of the time they spent rebuilding to build their own fleet to conclusively destroy it afterwards. He wasn't sure that this would work of course, if they could build 100 new slipways in a few months, what could they do while the Blessed Order reactivated the slipways around Jupiter and the other worlds of Terra to rebuild their fleet?
Worse, it meant that he had to order a maximum acceleration which would have them strike at Tetersen before the DCMS fleet that they had coincided their arrival with. One at the Zenith point, one at the Nadir. They would have struck together, one at the ground targets, one at the void based assets.
The Order had taken a risk intercepting those orders and timing his arrival, all of that for nought.
If only he had maintained his contact.
He shook his head, doubt was for the weak.
The presence of the ROM-ROM crew on his ship reinforced that.
He did not need to be shot just before his own suicide charge into the heresies against the Order.
His family would not be able to live with that shame.
He turned to the bridge crew who were being pressed back into their seats from the acceleration they were under.
"Send Log to the Jumpship Recluse, order the Jumpship fleet to return to Terra with all haste. All crews are to implement Order Obscuration now. Let no record of us being from the Blessed Order survive." He said, ignoring the choruses of affirmatives from his crew.
"Ready all ASFs to deploy. Interception and interference missions until we hit the slipways. Then they are to engage the enemy until the last rounds and end themselves well." He continued.
The heresies before him would be dealt a grievous blow this day.
+Break+
"Strike at the decadent Lyrans. Remind them of the Combine's fury. Retrieve their factories so that true warriors can utilise their wealth." So ordered the Coordinator, Hohiro Kurita.
Brigadier General Cheng Min leaned back on the command chair of the dropship he rode in.
His eyes tracked the holodisplay as it showed the unknown fleet that had arrived earlier than his own by hours.
Blasting away at maximum thrust to the orbitals he wondered why exactly they were so eager to throw their lives, and, more importantly, the valuable dropships away for so little gain.
He put the irrelevant thoughts out of his head.
"Our holds have been left empty in preparation for the bounty that you, my warriors will retrieve from this world. We have 12 days of food available. You will requisition more as needed. You will be successful this day for the Coordinator has blessed this operation with a poem.
Flowers of the special attack are falling
When the spring is leaving.
Gone with the spring
Are young boys like cherry blossoms.
Gone are the blossoms,
Leaving cherry trees only with leaves."
The command bridge clapped quietly, some crying at the beauty of the poem.
He pointedly did not look at the Kempeitai that stood ready to dispense military justice to any in the room that showed signs of disloyalty to the Coordinator.
The ISF sub-branch in charge of military discipline truly were those that could not be crossed.
"As for me, remember the dictum that guides us. Duty heavy as a mountain, death light as a feather."
There were cheers at that.
He grinned.
A good Kuritan soldier was never afraid to die.
And against these decadent Steiners? Ha, there was only victory. He could not imagine a universe where they could defend themselves against a true Kuritan onslaught, this was not Hesperus!
They were not bound to wait hand at foot at the border. This was a proper, true raid!
His men were invincible!