20th Operations Group
86th Squadron
November Element
CNS Ulysess
Biko class Battlecruiser



With the bulk of UCON vessels spread across the Sol system, the sixteen ships of November Element were tasked with the rapid seizure of the orbitals of Terra. This, of course, was easier said than done. While the 86th Squadron was maneuvering to provide a wide "arc" of defense along what would inevitably be the avenue of attack for the guaranteed Aschen and Taiyou counterattack, a relatively small amount of vessels had been dispatched to take part in the orbital assault of Terra. Across the entire star system nearly seven hundred ships comprising the majority of the 20th and 22nd Operations Groups had quickly mobilized following the declaration of war, Admiral Savage himself sat on the helm of the supercarrier Megala to spearhead the opening theater of the war. Amassing as much firepower as Savage could spare, Captain Myorzi Yaakaz would be the officer charged with maintaining the close orbital superiority and to provide security for the transports, carriers and planet landers that would be following after the establishment of the "Terran Defense Arc", a fusillade line of nearly one hundred and thirty ships to form the backbone of the defense against any Aschen counterattacks. In the past thirteen hours the war had been silent, yet the flashpoint had long since past. War had come to Earth.



Captain Yaakaz stood at a full, stern height for a Tarsan, his stormy eyes spoke volumes of his battle record while his salt and pepper hair, cropped closely to his skull spoke even greater volumes of his age. Nearing the mandatory retirement age of sixty for a Navy officer, Yaakaz was determined to make his last operation a successful, even heroic one. Standing tall on the bridge of the Ulysess, the Captain eased himself into the slight undulation and forward velocity of the vessel as it rushed past the second Lagrangian Point of the planet Terra. On the forward airscreen the tiny blue marble spun ferociously across the vastness of space, eclipsed only be the shimmering nova at the center of the star system, Sol. With one hemisphere bathed in rich light, the other remained dark and unseen, with occasional winking lance of light from a meteorite burning harmlessly through the atmosphere.
"Captain, the Arkalay and the Riyker are prepared to sweep the area." The AI's voice was a menagerie of synthetic voice creation and audio recordings, which often gave it an otherwordly, supernatural air. Captain Yaakaz scratched his chin as a holotank activated half a meter form him, displaying the two Hornet class Prowlers that would serve as the eyes and ears of November Element. Though Yaakaz would've given half of his ships for even one of the newer Halycon prowlers, he was satisfied to be graced with two, while most of the Coalition ships in the entire system were stuck with the Royark class Robotics cruisers.

"Understood, issue orders for the rest of the element to maintain position behind the prowlers while they search the orbitals." Yaakaz said, steadying himself before withdrawing his PDA and easing himself into the command chair. Drawing his finger across a holodisplay in front of him, he quickly began to authorize a string of commands to begin the active mission; with the weapons of the Ulysess already at fifteen percent capability, there was still a considerable amount of time before the ship was operating at full capacity. One of only three Biko class Battlecruisers in the entire element, Yaakaz's own ship wouldn't be graced with sitting out of the fight should one arise, quite the contrary, with the Ulysess packing the 360inch spinal-cannon his vessel and the others would be one of the longest reaching platforms of the entire group.
"Captain, CHIMAERA Banks Alpha through Echo will require more energy from the hypercapacitators if we wish to maintain the RALS at a hundred kilometer arc ... " The AI was attempting to convince the Captain to blind himself to arm himself, something Myorzi wouldn't allow. There were countless times when he'd favored sight over weaponry, and one of those were right now. Shaking his head, he dispatched a closed-band communique to the two prowlers, the CNS Yraddi and her sister ship the Okaddi before turning his attention back to the AI, who floated like a blue specter from a holotank beside his chair.
"You keep the RALS online, sync hypercaps India through Lima into its conduit if need be, but I want our eyes open wide." His voice was stern and demanding, Yaakaz had always believed you needed to be deceptively stern and forward with these AI's, who believed their ship of residence was more like a functioning body than a weapon of war.
"Understood, Captain. I will keep you informed of any changes if necessary."






Weapons Control
CNS Ulysess


"Ensign Gygers, we have four twenty-six point six inchers, why are only three operational?" Lieutenant McGoebls demanded as he pulled himself along in zero gravity. While Weapons Control was located forward the main bridge, it also resided outside of the Command Bridges' artificial gravity generators, which meant while every up in the main room was sitting happy, the Wep-Cons were often stuck in zero gravity and the bad thing about zero gravity meant buttoned up in the Combat Helms. As McGoebls peered through his tinted visor over Ensign Gygers screen, he was greeted with a line format of the Ulysess' four 26.6 inch cannons, three of which were filled in with a vibrant green while the last aft turret remained offline. He reached forward and tapped the holographic display once, then twice, and raked his finger across a dialog of computer commands.
"That's why, Captain's using hypercaps to keep the RALS operational -- Levitt, get on the horn and let the bridge know we need at least one more hypercap to get the twenty-sixers online." The Lieutenant commanded boisterously before craning his elbows and projecting himself into the weightlessness. A young Ensign across the room was keying into the ship-wide communiqué while the busy din of Weaps-Con rose with a piercing siren.
“What the fuck is that?” An Ensign manning the Missile Control display shouted as the Lieutenant readied himself at his command interface. Across the holodisplay a bright icon throbbed with urgency, the Lieutenant reached his finger forward and activate the icon, which quickly grew into a full picture of Captain Yaakaz, his stern jawline and sculpted face almost startling the young Lieutenant.
”Captain, what’s the horn for?” McGoebls inquired as he cemented his hands onto the display, fighting to keep himself in position as the Ulysess began its speedy advance.

“We’ve got contacts on the RALS, from the Yraddi and the Okaddi, son. When can you get those weapons online?”




















20th Operations Group
86th Squadron
Juliet Element
CNS Barranow Lake
Concordia class Attack Carrier





“I want those Eagles and Sams out front five minutes ago, Launch Captain.” The Captain of the Barranow Lake spoke into the small digital communiqué channel, the irritable patterns of his voice fluctuating as he spoke to the Launch Captain of the Barranow’s one-hundred and twenty single ships. A myriad of Eagle II superiority-craft, A-SF13 craft, with the Barranow Lake and three other Concordia class Attack Carriers forming the backbone of Juliet Element in its wide arc around the planet to form one of the first lines of the Terran Defense Arc, Captain Jackarall was hard pressed to get his planes into the suck, and into the suck quick.

The Launch Captain, however, had different objective. While Jackarall had allowed two hours for the entire group of fifty Eagle II’s to be outfitted for combat against what would inevitably be the Aschen or Taiyou counterattack.
“Captain, we’re going as fast as we can – some of the Eagle’s need new calibrations for the seventy-six mike mikes and we’re running low on Shatter AS missiles, we can only outfit about thirty or forty – “ The Launch Captain continued to ring off a list of unimportant reasons to keep the craft in their hangars, they could still fight, you would still fly.

“Launch the aircraft, El-Cee.”







1st Hangar Bay
4th Squadron
Chief Petty Officer Koth


The dual engines of the Eagle II screamed to life as Koth anchored his craft into the starboard launching rail of the Barranow. A grinding sound was heard as the massive superconducting rails were charged with electricity. His HUD flickered momentarily before once again burning at its brightest, he reached forward and tapped several commands to activate the EMP hardening and offline the sensor suites of the Eagle. Having his electronic eyes wide open when he was hurled from the steel and metal insides of a carrier would most certainly blind him, something he couldn’t allow. Being in command of an eight craft strike team, Koth would be one of the first ones out, meaning his telemetry would be used by the entire squad in the following hours.

“Avalanche One ready for launch, requesting clear from Overlord.” Koth checked his audio channel to see if it was functioning; in front of him was now a boiling electromagnetic storm as the rails charged to their full capability. His audio crackled and sparked with static as the electromagnetic fury began to interfere with his logistical support. Not long now befor –

The forty-four tonne Eagle II was hurled along its trajectory and spat into space at nearly a thousand kilometers an hour. Koth was thrust into his seat as his hands gripped the launch handles on the top of the canopy while screaming his head off. The guts of the Barranow Lake gave way to the empty expanse of space, the one-and-a-half kilometer length of a Farriday class Battleship screaming below him as the Eagle adjusted and pulsed its thrusters, returning control of the craft to the joystick that Koth quickly reached for and found contact with, releasing a long string of curses as he quickly throttled the engines and banked the Eagle to the left.
“Hoooooooly shit – Thank the lord I joined the Navy!”
















Terra
2nd Armored Regiment
7th Battalion
SV-9 Claymore “Blackjack”



Gunfire roared around him as the cranked the steering shaft to the left, releasing a string of curses as he did. In the corner of the HUD a rocket flashed across the screen and impacted a blank wall, showering the buttoned up Claymore with shrapnel and boiling fire. Above him, the dual 30 millimeter cannons, Blackjack’s primary armament, chattered away. Alternating camera views in the corner of his HUD viewed entire faces of buildings being mulched by the high-caliber rounds as they impacted, and then detonated in a shower of boiling sparks and kinetic force.

“Blackjack! Keep the convoy straight, we’re two klicks out of the drop zone!” Captain Leegers voice boomed into his headset as Specialist Jarras maneuvered the Claymore alongside another Claymore as a three-vehicle group speared its way through a market, burning straight through roadblocks and scorched vehicles on their way to the drop-zone, a plaza situated in the heart of the market district that would serve as the primary drop-zone for the 605th Orbital Drop Infantry or ‘Jumpers’.

Jarras cranked the steering to the left to avoid a storefront in time, the Claymore behind him following tightly as well in the pin-head turn; the massive run-flat tires squealing in agony as the Claymore hopped a curb, annihilated a trashcan beneath its force and ran straight back onto the road. Behind him, the Commander of the Blackjack was fussing with the cumbersome commo-gear rigged into the cupola of the Claymore, tapping furiously on a computer display, Sergeant Urasi cursed before pressing a finger to the headset on his ears.
“Rookhead, this is Blackjack – I want you forward with Bravo, we’ll stay back and keep the back access clear. I want you in that plaza the second those Jumpers touch down, understand?!”











1st ODI Division
605th Regiment
Bravo Company
3rd Platoon
Lieutenant Robert Archer



“Call it Second, we’re on target – drop drop drop.” Archer was thrashed inside the SPECTR as it plummeted through the atmosphere. A trail of fire was burning behind the vehicle as it smashed through winds and clouds as the thirty-two SPECTR drop pods descended to the drop-zone, due to impact the industrial district in under a minute. Steadying his breathing, Archer released one hand from the drop handle and quickly double checked his riggings; should he be unleashed somewhere during impact, he would simple cease to exist as a functioning human and be nothing more than a gelatinized puddle of goo suspended in the bulky Type 10 armor.

“ETA thirty, Third Platoon; we’re coming in hot.” Sergeant Macalister’s voice flooded his ears as Archer drew one hand over his weaponry, first to the MR-18G slung across his chest then to the GL-91 60 millimeter Anti-Tank rifle fixed to a magnetic clamp on his left leg. With his free hand searching around his hips he was met with the embrace of the dual MH-7 handguns held in hip holsters and secured to his belt line. Inspecting his armor rigging, he made sure the entire eight magazine pouches were occupied and fixed to the ballistic plate before finally gripping the drop handle tightly and doing his best to relax himself ten seconds before impact.
“Drop in ten, Third platoon.” Sergeant Macalister’s voice once again flooded his ears before his eyes darkened and he was knocked unconscious from the sudden impact of the SPECTR entry vehicle with the smokestack of a concrete production facility, the tiny drop pod spun end over end and then impacted the second story of a sheet-steel complex, smashing through the iron-grating floor and them impacting with another deadly jolt on the concrete floor that splintered and fragmented. The 605th were ground-side.

Terra
2nd Armored Regiment
7th Battalion
SV-9 Claymore “Rookhead”

Jolted to life as the voice of "Sergeant Urasi" boomed into his headset, he nodded in response before remembering he was talking to a headset. "Yessir!" He yelled into it and got onto what had to be done. He kicked one of his crew-members in the leg. "Get the fuck going, Jenkins!" He roared, as the man was already on the move, fearing retribution if he didn't. He gunned the vehicle, swerving to avoid a burnt-out buss.

He pointed at another one of his crew members. "Get on the commo-gear, get a line in on bet-" A loud explosion of gunfire as they swerved past a group of civilians who had decided to become heroes, the eight-tons of "Fuck that." Didn't help, as they were crushed under the wheels. "I said." "Get. On. Beta." said Corrdathough gritted teeth. The crewman gladly got onto doing this, sweeping his hands over the keyboard, flicking switches and making it easier than it looked.

"Beta, beta come in, this is Rookhead..how far away are you from plaza and how do you plan on linking up with us?" Rang the voice with a British ring to it.

The market it is. He accelerated, determined to fill in this order. He broke formation with little style, it was pretty awkward about how damaged wing-city was, when it was said to be a fairly impenetrable city. The gunfire was added too as the crew-members fired off the cannons, as they sheered though buildings like they were nothing but toast.

"Let's kick some arse."

Sol Space; Over Terra
16th Squadron
Navy Recruit Harriette Kent

"Five Contacts, three o'clock!" A voice called over the radio, "Spitfire, Thomson, you take 'em!"
"Yessir" Harry called over the radio, as she and another pilot split off of the formation, "Kingsly, fire the 40 mm cannon! One shot per target, no wasting ammo!"
"Got it!" Kingsly started tapping away at the targeting computer. The ship lurched as the turret fired off shots.
"Two contacts down, the other three dodged! These things're waaaay more nimble than us!" He shouted.
Harry hailed Thomson on the radio, "Tompson be careful! These guys are fast!"
"Dun voooory honey, I got this!" The pilot replied over the radio in a accent, "This'll all bee over in a- AAAGH!" The communication was cut. Harry looked back and saw the other ship, had been ruptured by a hail of bullets. The poor bastard probably didn't have time to pull on his helmet before his brains came out his ears.
"I'm bringing her round, get another barrage ready!" Harry called to Kingsly.
The ship turned to face these darting killer-bees of the Terra defense force.
"FIRE!!" Harry yelled. The ship lurched again. The remaining three ships were twisted inside out by shells from the rail cannon.
"HEEEELLL YEAH!!" Harry and Kingsly cried in union.
The radio crackled again, this time it was Ferguson, "Now if ye guys have stopped messing around, we have some orbital defense platforms to take down."

(OOC this post was supposed to be in Sol)

Aschen High Space Command SOLCOM
1st Assault-Reconnaisance Fleet
Battlestar Jupiter
Battle-Star Group 56
One Parsec Outside Terra
Operation: Looming Glacier

"Situation Report." Commander Huxley asked as he turned to his executive officer, a young woman named Amalia. The woman promptly adjusted her Duty Blue uniforms and spoke. "Several Coalition contacts in these sectors, I count several hundred ships." She said as the Commander nodded. "Position four three seven carom three nine two." He said. And with those orders, the massive hulking form of the Mercury Class Battlestar turned on it's keel, maintaining it's position just beyond Coalition AO, far enough that it could garner a head count. Initial recon was key in this mission. And so the Jupiter maintained the utmost silence, running it's engines dark, and using it's hull as a heat sink to hide it's signature. In tandem with the ECM Jamming that went on. The Mercury Class Battlestar was a fighting force in the Aschen Confederation, much more efficient then it's Columbia class cousins.

The Jupiter was supported by several dozen support craft, Battle-cruisers, frigates, and supply vessels to keep the coherent body of the Aschen fleet moving smoothly, numbering at little over one-hundred and twenty ships total. The Recon fleet was not suited for direct frontal combat operations. Their orders were to slip in and slip out, undetected. Utilizing it's DRADIS and LIDAR Systems to scan the distance.

"Ensure that all systems are functioning within nominal levels, Colonel." Huxley ordered.

Of course, the degree of automation that most Aschen ships enjoyed, allowed them to operate efficiently. This meant that most Aschen ships could enjoy reduced crew compliments without reduced combat efficiency, with less combat crew requirement, logistical crew could be used to maintain the ship's mechanics and automation. Allowing the Battlestar to run smoothly in all forms of combat.

"Commander I recommend we work our plan by hitting Coalition logistics, if we hit their logistical vessels, then we can weaken their combat front, and eventually bring them down. It will take some time for the main Force to arrive, but I am confident that.." The woman was promptly silenced by the raise of a hand. "No... we're not going to conduct guerrilla operations without clearance from the Chairman." He said flatly before he turned back to the screen. "Launch two recon Raptors, have them remain in the area, then spool drives for a jump out, have us rendezvous at the Tal'Dor staging ground."

"Aye sir." The Executive officer said with a crisp salute.


Hangar Bay, Battlestar Jupiter
Port Hangar Deck
Raptor Bay
Operation: Sight Unseen

"Alright pilots, prepare to move out! Our mission is simple! We're to recon the area and report to the Chairman, do not engage the enemy unless in defense." The CAG of the Jupiter's Flight crew ordered. All while men in bright yellow and orange jumpsuits scrambled about to prepare the two Raptors for takeoff. It was a flurry of mechanics, engineers, and other crewmen that ensured the Raptors were fueled, prepped, readied, and armed. So that they could operate at combat effectiveness. Lieutenant Sharon Halsey would board the Raptor, which was dubbed 'Raptor 4-2-2' Climbing in the pilot's seat she made sure her helmet was snug. Testing the new cloaking systems, and radar jamming systems. There were also laser point emitters, designed with confusing LIDAR in mind. Though it only was tested and proved slightly effective. The Raptor mission would rely on the skills of the pilots to take pictures, fly through, intercept communications and report back.

"Alright all personnel check.." The CAG Ordered.

"This is Raptor 3-2-1, All systems check, fuel check, weapons check, reactor, check.. we're good to go." The Pilots in the neighboring Raptor ordered. Both craft would then be lowered into the hangar bay of the Battlestar as it pulled away from the very edges of the SOL system.

Lt. Halsey would press the throttle, allowing her raptor to jet out the runway pod on the Battlestar, letting the void of space greet her, the two Raptors woul be deployed, side by side, and proceed to their objective. Noting the defensive arc the Coalition ships were placing themselves in. Feeding the high-resolution visual data to the Jupiter, which was slowly pulling away, only to flicker away in a bright flash of light.

"Alright boys, welcome to the suck." The CAG Said as she pushed her Raptor forward, engaging the cloaking systems.

(OOC this post was supposed to be in Sol)

Aschen High Space Command SOLCOM
1st Assault-Reconnaisance Fleet
Battlestar Jupiter
Battle-Star Group 56
One Parsec Outside Terra
Operation: Looming Glacier

"Situation Report." Commander Huxley asked as he turned to his executive officer, a young woman named Amalia. The woman promptly adjusted her Duty Blue uniforms and spoke. "Several Coalition contacts in these sectors, I count several hundred ships." She said as the Commander nodded. "Position four three seven carom three nine two." He said. And with those orders, the massive hulking form of the Mercury Class Battlestar turned on it's keel, maintaining it's position just beyond Coalition AO, far enough that it could garner a head count. Initial recon was key in this mission. And so the Jupiter maintained the utmost silence, running it's engines dark, and using it's hull as a heat sink to hide it's signature. In tandem with the ECM Jamming that went on. The Mercury Class Battlestar was a fighting force in the Aschen Confederation, much more efficient then it's Columbia class cousins.

The Jupiter was supported by several dozen support craft, Battle-cruisers, frigates, and supply vessels to keep the coherent body of the Aschen fleet moving smoothly, numbering at little over one-hundred and twenty ships total. The Recon fleet was not suited for direct frontal combat operations. Their orders were to slip in and slip out, undetected. Utilizing it's DRADIS and LIDAR Systems to scan the distance.

"Ensure that all systems are functioning within nominal levels, Colonel." Huxley ordered.

Of course, the degree of automation that most Aschen ships enjoyed, allowed them to operate efficiently. This meant that most Aschen ships could enjoy reduced crew compliments without reduced combat efficiency, with less combat crew requirement, logistical crew could be used to maintain the ship's mechanics and automation. Allowing the Battlestar to run smoothly in all forms of combat.

"Commander I recommend we work our plan by hitting Coalition logistics, if we hit their logistical vessels, then we can weaken their combat front, and eventually bring them down. It will take some time for the main Force to arrive, but I am confident that.." The woman was promptly silenced by the raise of a hand. "No... we're not going to conduct guerrilla operations without clearance from the Chairman." He said flatly before he turned back to the screen. "Launch two recon Raptors, have them remain in the area, then spool drives for a jump out, have us rendezvous at the Tal'Dor staging ground."

"Aye sir." The Executive officer said with a crisp salute.


Hangar Bay, Battlestar Jupiter
Port Hangar Deck
Raptor Bay
Operation: Sight Unseen

"Alright pilots, prepare to move out! Our mission is simple! We're to recon the area and report to the Chairman, do not engage the enemy unless in defense." The CAG of the Jupiter's Flight crew ordered. All while men in bright yellow and orange jumpsuits scrambled about to prepare the two Raptors for takeoff. It was a flurry of mechanics, engineers, and other crewmen that ensured the Raptors were fueled, prepped, readied, and armed. So that they could operate at combat effectiveness. Lieutenant Sharon Halsey would board the Raptor, which was dubbed 'Raptor 4-2-2' Climbing in the pilot's seat she made sure her helmet was snug. Testing the new cloaking systems, and radar jamming systems. There were also laser point emitters, designed with confusing LIDAR in mind. Though it only was tested and proved slightly effective. The Raptor mission would rely on the skills of the pilots to take pictures, fly through, intercept communications and report back.

"Alright all personnel check.." The CAG Ordered.

"This is Raptor 3-2-1, All systems check, fuel check, weapons check, reactor, check.. we're good to go." The Pilots in the neighboring Raptor ordered. Both craft would then be lowered into the hangar bay of the Battlestar as it pulled away from the very edges of the SOL system.

Lt. Halsey would press the throttle, allowing her raptor to jet out the runway pod on the Battlestar, letting the void of space greet her, the two Raptors woul be deployed, side by side, and proceed to their objective. Noting the defensive arc the Coalition ships were placing themselves in. Feeding the high-resolution visual data to the Jupiter, which was slowly pulling away, only to flicker away in a bright flash of light.

"Alright boys, welcome to the suck." The CAG Said as she pushed her Raptor forward, engaging the cloaking systems.

Sol Space
16th Squadron
Navy Recruit Harriette Kent "Spitfire"

The assault on the orbital defense grid had begun. The thirty-sixth orbital defense platform had fallen with little resistance, they had been caught off guard and destroyed. The CNS Harrowed Beach, a hulking battle cruiser, and the CNS Marianne, a equally deadly destroyer, had been giving them supporting fire. But the second platform had given much more resistance…
Their main cannon had punched a hole through the Harrowed’s reactor, first shot. Before the oxygen could escape into vacuum and deny the flames food, the entire deck had been ripped apart by an explosion. With the Harrowed Beach out of commission, the Marianne was now taking all the fire from the station.

"Goddamit! They got Ripley!" A voice cried over the radio, It was Manny, a fellow academy trainee. She had been good friends with Harry though their training.
“Manny w-what happened!?” Harry frantically stammered out, worried for her friend’s safety.
“One of them air superiority fighters broadsided us, Ripley took all the hits, now I have no gunner!”
“Can you still fly?” A new voice, probably one of the accompanying officers.
“I doubt it sir, they took out one of my engines too.”
“Manny, sit still, I’ll extract you.” Harry called over the radio.
“No! Maintain fire on the station! If you take that down you’ll have all the time in the world to save your friends!” The officer commanded.
“SIR! She’s a sitting duck out there!”
“Listen to me miss. You’ll be a sitting duck if you stop to pick her up. I don’t won’t to risk two lives for one! It’s not a fair trade off!”
Harry mumbled a few curses at the officer, though he did have a point.
“Kings, set the HS Missile’s to the boring heads, we’re goin’ in for a close encounter!”
Kingsly turned in his seat, staring at her in disbelief, “WHAT!? That thing has more turrets than the frickin’ Deathstar, but with decent gunners, are you CRA- …Oh wait.. You are… Well, if I die I’m finding you in the after life... And you don’t want to know what I’ll do to you!”
“Are you coming on to me?” Harriette laughed.
“Arrgh! You’re hopeless you!”

Harriette weaved between the storm of lasers and shells flying towards her ship. She clenched her jaw concentrating on her surroundings. No enemy fighters had notice her split off from the main group of the A-SFs yet.
Ferguson radioed her, “Spitfire what the HELL are you up to!? You’re speeding straight towards the station!”
Harry angled her trajectory slightly, ignoring Fergison.
“SPITFIRE!!” Ferguson screamed.
“Aww, shaddap and watch will ya!” Harry muttered back at him.
Back in the hanger Harry hadn’t just been fixing the fuel cells, she had done some ‘modification’ to the fuel injection system too. She hit the thrusters. The A-SF shot forward at breakneck speed, burning up the fuel at an alarming rate. The giant defense station loomed closer and closer. When she could make out the individual metal plates on the station’s exterior, she yelled, “Angle the target of the pods 35 degrees left, and 7 degrees down, set the lazer bores to 12 seconds, and fire… NOW!” to Kingsly.
FFFFOOOOSH!! The A-SF unloaded its missile pods at the base of the station’s main canon. This was a real life example of David taking on Goliath with a mere sling and stone as a weapon.
The missiles drilled their way into the ship. A few moments, then Harry saw a faint flash of an explosion through one of the holes.. A few more moments, then nothing.
“Damn…” Kingsly muttered, disappointed, until he saw the anxious face Harry was wearing. She was still waiting for something. It came. A deep rumbling. The exterior of the station buckled, then again in a different spot, then another. Kings watched in awe as a massive portion of the station ripped it’s self open.
“Whaaa?” The gasped.
“The cannon’s ammunition.” Harry began to explain, “I figured we couldn’t even scratch the thing normally, so I decided to use It’s own power against it. I figured where they had the ammo hidden away by-”
Ferguson interrupted her over the radio, “Spitfire!? Are you a saint of victory? A god of war? A master of the universe? HOW THE HELL DID YOU CREATE SUCH A MIRACLE!!? Oh fuck… Haha… My god… Ahahahaha! If you don‘t get a medal or something for this I‘ll cut my sack off with a rusty spoon!”
“Thanks for the thought…” Harry muttered back, sounding slightly disturbed. She was smiling though, isn’t it great to be great she thought.

1st ODI Division
605th Regiment
Bravo Company
4th Platoon
Lt Mayfield

Mayflield watched the status displays as 3rd Platoon made the drop planet side. A short burst of static announced the ship intercom before the Drop Chief's voice echoed into the room, "4th Platoon clear for operations drop."

Resting his head back against the interior of the SPECTR Matthew closed his eyes and breathed out a long, slow breath. Of all the things he could have done in the Navy he had decided to join ODI. He hated jumping, he always had, something about jumping out of a perfectly good craft and free falling miles to the ground didn't sit well with his logic. It didn't make sense but here he was, commanding a Platoon of men about to be launched out of a Navy ship into a hot zone. He had read of course that long ago the only way to re-enter a planets atmosphere had been to free fall in a contraption that made his SPECTR look like a high end personal elevator, he still wasn't sure if he completely believed that.

"From Heaven we will visit Hell upon them." Matthew spoke firmly into the intercom system.

"At the place of our fall only the dead shall be with out fear." A chorus of voices replied, and a moment later the Drop Chief's silent reply came as the pods launched from the safety of the ship.

It was the silence that got to him the most, the shear and utter silence. The first moments when he was still in space, when even the most heated exchange between super carriers was all cast into a void even as he watched it. It was more peaceful than anything he had experienced outside of war, where peaceful things were said to dwell. Then came the noise.

The first rush of wind was never expected, yanking him out of the surreal and into the violent reality at hand. The sound of the air around him bursting into fire as his vehicle of war plummeted toward the ground. The blackness of space shifted colors as the pod buried itself in the atmosphere. The whole ordeal would be over soon enough though the time spent inside that coffin felt like an eternity to Matthew. He focused on keeping his mind clear, focused on his first steps when the door cracked open and he was spit out into the truth of it all. He gave his mind no freedom to wander, his focus was turned to that of a killing machine, hell bent on completing his mission and returning home with the same amount of men he left with.

The second thing that was never fully expected was the sudden stop.

Matthew, surprised to note that he was more or less in the upright position, unfastened himself and kicked the door release, "Lieutenant Mayfield, 605th Bravo 4th Platoon, planet side and hot."

In Orbit around Titan (Jupiters moon)
Aboard The Wraith

"Commander we have an problem, Ashen, UCON and Taiyou forces are fighting over Terra." Reaper said and pointed at a hologram over the system showing all enemy concentrations. "Luckily our stealth systems are fully operational and has been activated." Reapers voice synthesizer was active and made him sound more like a machine than a man. The Commander looked at the hologram and said, "Send a message to the Ashen and Taiyou commanders that they we may have a common goal against the UCON."
"Consider it done commander." Suddenly a officer on the bridge walked up to them and said, "Sir, we have detected an UCON ship in the area what are you orders?"
The Commander thought for a second then said, "Disable it with an EMP then board it."
Both Reaper and the officer said, "Yes sir"

As Reaper came down to the hangarbay he had already ordered 200 troops meet him there. As he walked to the troops they all stood attention as he said, This is a standard boarding mission, you will be equipped with submachineguns and plasma grenades. We will board the ship in ten different boarding ships to complete our missions. That's everything, now board your ships."

As Reaper entered the ship he felt a bit of relief that he was on this mission. He and his squad were tasked with boarding the bridge and capturing the captain for interogation.

As the ship started boarding procedures Reaper readied his gun. When the boarding procedures where done Reaper and his squad entered the ship and began to take down the enemy. The enemies were taken by suprise and didn't last very long. When they arrived at the door to the bridge Reaper took out a plasma grenade and blew up the door. When he walked throught the former door and saw the captain, the captain quickly said, "Me and my crew surrender in exchange for our lives we will provide you information." Reaper went up to the commander and shot him, then he said to his troops, "Erase all evidence that we were here." The troops aimed their guns at the officers on the bridge and fired. After finishing his mission Reaper contacted the other squads to check on their progress, all tasks had been completed so Reaper siad"Start extraction procedure."

20th Operations Group
India Unit
105th Support Squdron
Romeo Element
CNS Mercy Provis
Vanguard class Fleet Tender



The backgroup was alight with streaking weapons fire as the battle raged only a hundred klicks away. With the operations in the system reaching a fever pitch in the past several infantile days of the war, both forces had fought with tenacious resolve and almost animalistic brutality. The combat slowed for no man, no matter how wounded or how importrant; both sides of the conflict showed no quarter, and were expected none in return. Already two Aschen Battlestars lay crippled, their spines broken by volleys of liquid metal and ferromagnetic iron that leaped forth from the spinal-cannons of their smaller Coalition opponenets. In the distance, Hotel Element battled furiously with the one remaing Aschen Battlestar and her escorts as two Radegast class Battleships manuevered for their killing strike, explosions and shimmering magnetic fields flowering into the darkness while men and women of the Coalition Navy sacrificied their lives to provide rearmament for the eighty ships on rotation to the supply zone. That was Captain Ikozi's effort in this war, as the commander and leader of Romeo Element's ten Vanguard class Fleet Tenders, it was his duty to keep the titan of the Coalition Navy fueled, armed and effective. At the moment, the Vanguard was ferrying supplies to the two Sentinel class Heavy Carriers that loomed nearby; carbon scarring and molten T-92 armor pock-marked along the hull of the mighty Geresia and Mandalar Sweep. The tension on the bridge could be sliced with a knife as sirens wailed, collision alerts flared and the shipboard AI fought desperately to make it all understandable to the thirty-two humans who operated the ship to the best of their ability. While Ikozi would have prefered the ship, and those looking for replenishment, were stationary his wishes could not be granted. Hurtling through the blackness around the gas giant at nearly three thousand kilometers an hour the Mercy Provis and the ten other vessels attached to her hull were fighting time and the enemy simaltaneously. His crew showed it.

"Captain, the Ryger is attempting to break their lines!" A young Ensign from Engineering shouted from his station fifteen meters below. A holotank nearby flickered to life, seconds earlier displaying corrections to the trajectory that would bring the entire refueling zone behind the mass of Jupiter, quickly showed a line diagram of the Ryger, a Biko class Battlecruiser, down it's starboard line winking red lights appeared. Those holographic lights represented the airlock teethers that kept ammunition and supplies flowing from the Provis into the ship. Quickly, Ikozi would have to act as he lunged for his PDA and keyed himself into the Ryger's communique.
"Captain, the hell do you think you're doing?!" He shouted, though his voice carried pathetically over the already chaotic shouting and yelling of the bridge, his intensity could be heard by any who paid close attention. The Captain of the Ryger, one Captain Ambrosse, was quick to respond.
"We're breaking contact, Provis, get your crew the hell out of our ship and we'll leave room for someone who needs it more!" The Captain was being a god-damn hero, the Ryger was one of the first vessels to be struck in the first wave against Terra. Ikozi had no picture on hand, but he distinctly remembered the Ryger limping into the refit zone with a massive tear annihilating her port side, carving clear through the armor and leaving a nasty wound of shorn metal and carbonized armor to the deadliness of the vacuum. Amazingly, however, most of the Ryger's weapons were functional; through whatever stroke of luck that had been, Ikozi was certain that luck alone wouldn't carry the crew any longer.
"Ambrosse, are you insane?! You've got your hole fucking structure exposed and in the open! You can't go into a fight with that!" Ikozi felt immense respect, or perhaps pity, for the man. Ambrosse had become somewhat of a notable figure in the Navy, having volunteered himself for an almost suicide run against a fortified Halo station in the Frontiers with a poorly trained crew, an outdated frigate and a damaged AI.
"Look out there, Provis, they're getting chewed to hell and they need help!" With that, the Ryger had severed itself from whatever help the Provis could offer. Two M87 dropships, retrofitted to provide quick and effective supply dispersal amongst the numerous ships in the refit zone, zipped away from the Ryger as it began its full burn around the prow of the fleet tender and speared directly for the battle. In the distance, a single explosion announced one more Coalition ship felled by the Aschen Battlestar, and another after a full broadside from its deadly compliment of anti-ship weaponry. For every Coalition ship that died in the depths of vacuum, however, the crews and Captains of the remaining ships fought ten times harder. Whether it was out of fear, want of revenge, or just plain bloodlust the Scatterran race was notorious for, they fought.
"Ryger ... Ryger! God dammit Ambrosse!"

"Sir, the Annie Dusoc is requesting permission to detach also!" The Annie Dusoc, a Sigma cruiser, was much more prepared to charge into battle. With only one of the two 6.3 meter EMRC cannons lined along its spine damaged by a collision with a Terran fighter, the Dusoc fared ten times better than the crippled Ryger and her Captain. A twinkle then bleep of another holodisplay beside Ikozi sprang to life, displaying a video link to the bridge of the Sigma cruiser where the entire crew stood at attention and the Captain erect with his arms behind his back.
"Captain Ikozi, this is Captain Kirora of the Annie Dusoc ... " This was unnecessary, but Ikozi understood the mind of a combat Captain. He saw Ambrosse limping away from the tender, saw that even in such a poor condition a fellow Captain was willing to fight and die.
"Let us loose now, we'll go finish that fight before the Ryger can crawl within a hundred klicks of it." Kirora was a stout man, barely breaking six feet in his full boots, but the young commander looked more than ready for combat. While Ikozi had been preparing to fix the damage to the starboard 6.3 meter with one of the few repair drones that remained in the bay of the Provis, Ikozi shot one glance directly to the Captain, and then to a sensor relay diplsaying the Ryger slowly crawling out of the kilometer radius of the Mercy Provis. He damned his situation, damned the Navy for organizing this support zone in this sector and at this time.
" ... Alright, detach and get in that fight, Captain. I want you to rip their fucking throats out for everyone they've killed today." He raised his voice as several Cricket pilots began shouting through the communique about a shell tram getting jammed en route to a small frigate attached to the starboard side of the Mercy.
"Understood, Captain, I'd be honored to." With that, the Captain saluted and killed the link, leaving Ikozi in a state of hesistant silence before he was once again swept up with the flurry that was the bridge.




Refit Platform E-6

"Keep those three Destroyers, release that Robotics Cruiser and let that Guided Missile one in -- Go go go!" Lieutenant Commander Josephine Anbarnham had to practically scream into the Engineers helmet as she pulled herself along the vacuumed bay leading out to the refit platforms that dotted the bulk of the Provis. Through her tinted visor, the Lieutenant Commander viewed the first in a long line of ships with direct sight as they slowly edged their way to the Provis like young animals to the teat. Bright flashes of light signified the Captain pulsing the plasma thrusters in microsecond bursts to correct the trajectories before they were greeted with the sweet embrace of the Provis airlock boom. A dull rumble coursed through the recycling air of the Lieutenant Commanders helmet that drew her sight out into the void beyond, in tandem two Roucart Light Destroyers rumbled through the formation, engines burning hot as they sprang from the blackness and then rolled into the blackness once more. The two must've been bound for the engagement barely three hundred klicks away, judging by how much ass they were hauling. From what Anbarnham had heard before departing the bridge, she doubted two Light Destroyers would make much difference. However, if this mood of "War Hero" infected even more Captains, the amount of ships certainly would. The Provis was currently tending to four Atea class Frigates, a Heimdall class Battlecruiser, four Balius class Guided Missile Cruisers, and six Atlas class Destroyers on her starboard rigs; she didn't even debate how many were linked to the port rigs.

"El-Cee, RefCon says we've got a fuckin' battleship coming in. Says it's pretty beat up -- " The Engineer tasked with assisting the Lieutenant Commander as she did her best to make top from bottom of this logistical square dance offered her a PDA. On that tiny screen a line diagram of the CNS Ishoro was etched with swathes of red boxes and dark yellow dashes, red being heavy damage and yellow being medium. No green was represented, even in the compartments where the bridge would be located. Bile, suspended in her insides from the zero gee, attempt to fight its way upward as her guts were suddenly the victim of some unknown force of gravity. How the hell could anyone even pilot that thing, let alone survive in it long enough to get it here? Anbarnham had heard stories of crews managing to get their heavily wounded ship into port, listened to sailors at night talk of how they had seen ships shorn clear of their engines that had used inert-jet reserves or jettisoned their water supplies to bump them into a Slipspace jump after buttoning up whatever they could.
"Sonuvabitch ... that thing is beat up." Anbarnham muttered to herself, the Engineer beside her glancing out into the vacuum as a Cricket dropship zoomed for the platform with two Akralus freighting drones pulling a loose vee formation behind the M87. The bulky tail boom of the Cricket augmented itself to lower it in preparation for landing, a massive chunk of T-92 armor, scorched and charred from countless hits.








20th Operations Group
Task Force Oscar
105th Squadron
CNS Deliverance
Farriday class Battleship[/i]



A shudder rocked the hull of the Deliverance, announcing another volley of the spinal-mounted 9.1 meter railcannons. In the darkness of the command bridge, Captain Iden Volpe felt a rush of adrenaline as he watched the holographic targeting display fall upon the crippled Battlestar that was attempting to limp behind the mass of a derelict Sentinel class Heavy Carrier, hoping to use the dead corpse of its Coalition enemy as a shield from the hammer and anvil that was the 105th Squadron . A group of nearly twenty Battleships alongside a heavy screen of battlecruisers and light destroyers, with a healthy complement of five remaining Heavy Carriers. Captain Volpe was the commander of the Battleship Strike Group attached to the carrirers, providing an even heavier amount of firepower to complement the Sentinel's in their foray toward the center of the Sol system. With the bulk of Terra's orbital secured by Coalition forces in the system, with a total of nearly one thousand and three hundred vessels, the heavier arms of the 20th OG were now dedicated to eradictating any Taiyou or Confederation groups that still posed a major threat. With Terra effectively cut off from Aschen or Taiyou reinforcements, Admiral Savage had given distinct orders to keep the lid screwed tight on the little blue marble; it was the job of the Marines to take the ground, it was the Navy's to take away the chances of them losing it. The orders had been parsed, the entire fleet understood exactly what it needed to accomplish; with those orders the heavier craft were divided amongst specialized groups to perform bait-and-switch missions, enticing the obvious guerilla tactics of the Aschen vessels with lightly armed dummy convoys and then trapping them between a hammer and anvil.

This specific conflict was taking place nine hundred kilometers from the epicenter of an asteroid belt that separated the system into two disctinct "halves", many Coalition officers would have been very wary of utilizing this location; in part because just as many advantages it gave them, it gave the Aschen as well. However, those advantages were discintly with Coalition at the moment, fighting fiercely with their backs to the asteroid belt the Confederation vessels were pinned between the hurtling rocks on one end and the pinpoint artillery fire from the UCON ships. The two Aschen Battlestars the 105th Squadron had cornered would be hard pressed to manuever in the asteroid field while also retreating from the lopsided battle. Several ten-ship strike groups were weaving close in toward the last Aschen aggressors, to distract them for as long as possible while the first of ten battleships manuevered to launch one attack designed to break the spines of both ships. With the Aschen escorts effectively neutralized, there were only three or four escorts between the larger Battlestars, meaning that the strike groups were capable of attacking with little discrimination on whatever target they could see. In the far corner several Asault Frigates unleashed a broadside against a crippled Aschen destroyer, the vessel buckling and its shields failing from the impact before issuing a scorching detonation from its reactors as a shell pinned itself deep within before detonating with a small nuclear yield.

"Captain, we are in position -- ready and waiting for firing selections!" An Ensign from Weapons delivered the message before returning to his console, the four others beside him working as effectively as possible to aid the on-board AI, which at the moment was preparing a line of mathematics to feed into the targeting sensors for the turrets and artillery that would be present in the volley. Along with the dual, spinal-mounted 9.1 meter railcannons one of the Deliverance's 250 inch cannons would be present to the Battlestar group. While the 250 inch would be contained in a spinal-mount on any smaller vessels, the massive turret-housing of the cannon gave the Farriday class the ability to have not only one capital-ship weapon, but two. In the next several minutes Captain Kyle Alemadas recieved the same confirmation from the other five battleships in the group that were aligning themselves to release one deadly fusillade against the crippled Aschen Battlestars, which were now pushing themselves even closer and closer to the deadly belt of rocks that could mulch their vessels in the blink of an eye.
"Captain Alemadas, we have confirmation from the CNS Distance and the CNS Righteous Trinity with preparation to fire. All weapons are locked and prepared." Alemadas inhaled deeply as the main airscreen was occupied with a live feed from a prow-mounted hypercam. Magnified to nearly thirty magnification, the scarred hulls of the Aschen Battlestars were seen in crystal clarity while the smaller Coalition vessels zipped past, leaving lines of directed plasma boiling through the plating of the crippled Aschen leviathans. With their shields failed, their escorts occupied and their weapons effectively useless against the smaller Coalition ships, they were practically free to attack them as seen fit.
"Fire at will!" Captain Alemadas shouted, the lighting of the bridge dimming from a energy tranfser as the first of nearly ten 360 inch railcannons launched their payload toward the Aschen vessels. Across the darkness of space, the Aschen ships were struck with the full force of the heavy slugs, pocking the otherwise silent blankness of space with blinding mushrooms of 4 kiloton nuclear warheads detonating.







[b]5th Marine Division
3rd Regiment
5th Battalion
Delta Company
Terra



"Check left -- clear." The Corporal grumbled as he stomped through the alleyway, his MR-18G levelled into his shoulder as the optical sight illuminated anything in his weapons sights with pinpoint precision. Beside him, several other Marines manuevered with their rifles trained forward, the squad of sixteen Marines sliced through the alleyway to short-cut the barricade erected by enemy forces blocking them from Embassy Row. While the armor component of Delta company, four SV-9 Claymore's and another four HA-74 Tarantula's, was stuck absorbing the fire from a majority of the remaining American and Aschen forces while the Marines disembarked their vehicles and cut their way through the alleyways. While Captain Ishikala, commander of Delta, was assured that most of the American soldiers would dedicate their weaponry to the Claymore's and other armor, he was also a compotenent soldier, knowing full well that the Americans and their Aschen comrades had been allowed several hours to prepare their defenses while waiting for the inevitable push by 5th Battalion to seize Embasy Row an keep anyone from effectively coordinating resistance in the city.
"Right's clear, embassy's just out past that knick-knack shop. Delta Squad is oscar-mike, over." Staff Sergeant Ricoza keyed into his communique while edging his squad closer and closer to the open ground of embassy row. In the distance, the crack and bark of gunfire announced an intensified effort from the American forces to stem the casualties inflicted by the Coalition's superior weaponry and vehicles. A smear of black smoke stained the air with a bitter taste of burning oil and shattered electronics, Ricoza had noticed a burned out American light vehicle on their approach to the embassy several hours ago.

"Delta squad be heads-up, you've got a target rich environment ... " The static exploding from his headset signified only one thing, two if he counted the formidable jamming the Americans had employed throughout the entire district to hamper the abilities of the Coalition, that the ten M99 Annihilator gunships they had been assigned for air support had been forced into nothing better but simple reconnaissance in the face of American and Aschen AA rigged somewhere through Embassy Row.
"Charlie and Bravo are oscar-mike and india-foxtrot likewise, Delta. Suggest you try and locate those Triple-Acks before making your push on for the embassy." The muttled voice of the Annihilator pilot had to fight through a considerable stream of radiation that hobbled the efforts of every Coalition communications relay in a square kilometer. Crouching beside a stack of tires, Ricoza cocked his head forward as a blast of gunfire, too loud to be small arms fire, erupted from an adjacent alleyway down the street and spat a line of bright white tracers into the sky. While the close proximity of buildings in Wing City prevented launching dedicated anti-air missiles, save from the dangerously exposed top of a roof, the Americans had shown adaptability by utilizing several decomissioned anti-aircraft emplacements and simply keeping the Annihilators from drawing too close to bring their formidable firepower down on top of them. Even though the Coalition had air dominance, meaning any non-UCON craft could expect nothing but a missile up its rear-end, that didn't mean there wasn't danger flying close-in. With the M99's reduced to more eyes-in-the-skies, it was now a ground-war between the Marines and the Americans.
"Alright, let's get moving -- AirCav's lit up a Triple A just across the street. Who took the '91? Shandas?" Ricoza muttered, waiting for Shandas to waddle his way from the rear of the squad and issue the GL-91 Anti-tank rifle off his shoulder.
"Yessir, Ess-Ess-Gee. Locked cocked 'nd ready to drop the stock." He issued a crisp "'Ell Yah" while yanking back the chunky bolt of the anti-tank rifle and revealing a sleek 60 millimeter Amplamine-Res explosive warhead. While there were several 8 pound Amplamine charges between the sixteen man squad, Ricoza would still prefer annihilating the anti-air with a quick blast from the GL-91 rather than rigging it with A-charges and then bouncing to the next one.
"Alright, get ready to rock, Marines." Ricoza said before bringing up the second fireteam commander, Sergeant Allan Rachland, and quickly pointed to the T99 Kuriko PDW rigged in a sling over his shoulder.
"You'll be with the eighteen-gees, you see anyone moving to fire you give 'em hell, understand Sergeant?" His breathing was taxed, having previously hauled his sixteen men across three square kilometers before finally allowing himself and the others to rest. Beside him, Sergeant Rachland was slightly heaving, having to draw a bandana emblazoned with the striking blade of the 5th Battalion to dab at his sweat-slicked face.
"You got it, Ess-Ess, we'll drop any stupid fucker that's dumb enough to pop his head up."



"Sergeant, fire into the window!" Ricoza barely had enough time to locate the machine-gun fixed in a open window before it opened up on his small group, three Marines beside him huddling themselves closer into the overturned pickup and hunkering down while doing their best to return fire. Corporal Callieckas shouted something about stepping too far into the street before a bullet tore through the metal chassis of the vehicle and silenced him, illiciting several curses from him as he hunkered down closer to the ground.
"God ddddaaammmnn! Where's Rachland?!" He screamed, jutting his MR-18 over the edge of the pick-up and unleashing a barrage toward the entrenched position. Beside him, Specialist Noriega was struggling even harder to utilize his ECR-10 to gain a better shot than his comrade.
"Hold it steady ... hold it -- dammit!" The Specialist was forced back into cover, barely missing a duo of rounds that could have easily killed him had he not seen the swivel of the American machinegun.
"These guys have balls, man! I catch ona' these assholes on the floor I swear I'm putting two in his face!" Specialist Noriega cursed as he fixed his weapon to the ground and withdrew his Lashkav, the compact weapon wielded with ease in his hand as he sprayed a blind flurry over the top of the pickup. Corporal Callieckas was preparing a 40 millimeter grenade, fixing the charge into the underbarrel magnetic-launcher fixed beneath his MR-18 with a quick hand.
"Fuck this, if Rachland's gonna' let us sit out here with our asses in the wind I'm dying like a real fuckin' man -- " The machinegun was silenced by a spectacular shower of bright plasma and burning light as a silver beam lanced from the cover of a nearby sedan and into the gaping window. In a split second the entrenched team was vaporized by boiling ions and hyperconcentrated light that reduced the entire window into a bubbling, carbon-scared wound. Chunks of molten stucco and brick dropped and clattered to the ground with a loud splat as the three men regained themselves from the defeaning sonic boom following the impact.
"Holy shit ... I've never seen a tee-ninety-nine fire before." Corporal Callackies was working one pinkie into his ear as he fixed the loose bandana securing his hair closely to his scalp.
"Well, ya' seen one go off. Get your ass in gear, we've got some more shit to blow up -- Rachland, move your squad up!" Staff Sergeant Ricoza shouted as he disembarked from his cover and began to worm his way forward down the street.






2nd Armored Regiment
7th Battalion
Alpha Platoon
2nd Section
SV-9 Claymore "Blackjack"




"Go, nononono -- wait, yeahyeahyeahyeah!" Sergeant Urasi shouted as the Claymore rolled over the broken wreckage of a sedan, only barely avoiding the four Jumpers that had been hiding themselves behind it seconds earlier. After picking up the six platoons of Bravo company, 2nd Section had been rolled up with the rest of the Battalion in assaulting the powerplant two miles out of Wing City. In a desperate attempt to hasten the attack, the bulk of the platoon had simply commited to the assault with half-collected crews, a myriad of Marine and other units being conscripted from their original objectives and pressed into the attack due to proximity alone. Fortunately enough, 2nd Section had collected it's full complement of sixty-four Orbital Drop Infantry and was given the full protection of 3rd platoon on their assault on the east gate of the powerplant complex. Fighting for a swath of industrial parks that spanned eight kilometers, the bulk of the platoons two-hundred vehicles were assaulting the heavier defended north and west gates, while 2nd Section had been tasked with breaking the weakest link of the chain, unfortunately out of the entire platoon they were the least armed as well.
"Urasi, what the fuck do you mean?!" Specialist Jarras shouted, cranking the wheel yet again to avoid another vehicle, this time a burned out Terran police car that had been unfortunate enough to be rolling when the first 105 millimeter cannon armed SV-9's rolled through the street on its attack vector. Most of the fortifications that Alpha platoon faced were occupied by Terran Defense Force personnel, some intelligence had also reported several American combat teams attached to the TDF and ARMARX forces holding the powerplant. The ruined police cruiser groaned as its brittle structure was forced into the ground by the rolling tires of the Claymore, which quickly fought to regain its leverage before Urasi depressed the triggers of the dual 30 millimeter cannons. The fiber-optic targeting system allowed Urasi to fire the armaments of the GCV from within the safety of the bulwarked armor.

"I said drive this fucking can without getting us killed!" Urasi shouted before delivering a long burst to a pillbox of sandbags and concrete blocks that housed a ARMARX anti-tank launcher, the hyperconductive slugs tore through any defenses the Terrans had constructed, mulching the launcher and its crew in a gory spray of bloodied mist and shredded metal.
"Dammit -- Rookhead, where the hell are you?! I lost track of the Captain, what the hell you go on your screen?!" Jarras shouted, ignoring Urasi's brutish comment as he did his best to manuever himself over another barricade, this one slightly better prepared. Two overturned cars supporter by concrete blocks and several rope, however ineffectual Jarras gave a curt nod to his Terran counterparts, they sure knew how to deal with an invasion. Throttling the Claymore, he quickly jammed his way through the blockade before stopping and quickly throwing the vehicle into reverse.
"Shit -- Urasi, A-T gun! Fuckin' kill it!"




1st ODI Division
605th Regiment
Bravo Company
3rd Platoon
Liutenant Archer



"Dammit -- Fourth platoon, come in? Fourth platoon, where's your Cee-and-Cee?" Lieutenant Archer was practically shouting into the headset as he fought to maintain his voice above the gunfire. Already the Drop Infantry had run into problems at the east gate of the powerplant, while Archer and the rest of his sixty-four detachment had relative ease making it to the gates of the industrial park, he was hard pressed to make any advances into the complex without the armor support, which was stuck back behind a metaphorical gauntlet of barricades and anti-tank emplacements. While Archer had done his best to eliminate as many they came across as possible, he was well aware that the armor had been dispersed over a three hundred meter arc in their assault on the gate, the commander having less of a mind to split his forces and tell them to find the quickest way possible. The illegitimacies of waging a war infuriated the Liuentenat, that and his incapability to make contact with Lieutenant Mayfield, commander of 4th platoon and the adjacent outfit that was supposed to be making a move on the east gate along with 3rd, was only driving him farther and farther into frustration. With only two platoons dispatched to aid the Claymores in cracking this tough nut that was the east gate, Archer furiously disengaged the communique, leaving one simply suggestion for Lieutenant Mayfield if he happened to be on the same course he would be soon.
"BREAKING THE GATE, SEE YOU ON THE OTHER SIDE"


"Let's roll, third platoon!" Archer quickly regained his combat mentality, which was fairly easy to do as one of the first Claymore's rolled past a barricade and unleased a burst of 30 millimeter cannon-fire on a Terran light vehicle. The car buckled and exploded from eighty rounds penetrating its engine block in a split second and flowered into a brilliant explosion that brought night into day, Archer's visor polarized in an attempt to maintain his night vision, before just as quickly cooling.
"Woo-hoo! Shoulda' joined the armor! Y'see what they did to those guys?!" Sergeant Foleys was waving his hands through the air as he flagged the Claymore down, Archer ran one eye over the vehicle, noticing that the Claymore belonged to the 2nd Section and was known as the "Oscar".
"Foleys! Get us a hole, we need to get that Claymore in there ASAP. Something tells me Mayfield will be close behind if the armor is already through, let's put out a welcome mat for 'em." Archer quickly shouldered his GL-91 and grabbed for his MR-18 attached to his shoulder plating. Moving to escort Sergeant Foley and his heavy-weapons squad as they moved about placing a myriad of AMP-charges across the gate of the complex, which was something akin to giant concrete slab along a trundle system that served to keep those that weren't allowed out. Sergeant Foleys and his sixteen-man squad were going to quickly remedy this, however. Sergeant Foley was stomping along the line as the Drop Infantry fixed their AMP-charges to strategic locations and then began drawing back toward the rest of the platoon which had formed a halo around the Claymore.


"Alrighty, El-Tee, we're ready ta' light that ol' slab up like a Indie-Day firework! Give the go!" Foleys was quickly hauling back toward the Claymore with two other Jumpers in tow behind him, Archer was quickly granted permission to detonate the warheads and crouched behind a concrete barricade. Activating a small radio transmitter mounted into his forearm guard, Archer waited until the last of 3rd platoon had found sufficient cover before pressing a single touch-pad key in his glove and detonating the charges in one single concussive blast. For a split second the world remained dark before being illuminated by the AMP-charges and spraying a fine mist of vaporized concrete particles and throwing massive broken chunks onto the asphalt. Archer was quick to react, simply peeling his back from the concrete slab and approaching for the gate with his weapon raised.
"Let's move, third platoon. First to fight."

Aschen High Space Command
SOLCOM 1st Main fleet
AHSC 'CNV - Emblem of Divinity'
Spearhead and Purge
CNV - SuperCarrier
Current Strength - 12,873 Vessels

Staring out the bridge of this 11 mile long behemoth of a Fleet hub, Admiral Peter Corman would be watching the battle unfold on long range DRADIS. He really didn't have much faith in the Aschen's Vangard force, but since the Main fleet had arrived Augmented with the 403rd Supply Division, and carrying the supplies of an entire offensive. The CNV Emblem of Divinity was a beacon of hope to the beaten and haggared remains of the Aschen's SOLCOM Vangard fleet. Bearing into the fight at 11 miles in length, backed up by over ten thousand ships. The Entirety of SOLCOM, minus the Vangard fleet would be bearing down on the Coalition. They had coordinated carefully with the Taiyou Empire in this moment of desperation, with Adar's statement going un-noticed the decision was made to keep fighting, as the Taiyou had begun to show signs of willingness to negotiate. It was coordinated to be a grand Hammer-and-anvil attack to smash the Coalition forces in the area with overwhelming Taiyou and Aschen coordination. The Emblem of Divinity coarsed alongside her escorts, roughly three thousand Battlestars of various classes, and nine other CNV's this included the CNV; Dante, the CNV; Enlightenment, and several others dispersed out in an arrohead formation, allowing her transports to move too and from the Reverences and Battlestars in the fleet, providing them with weaponry and supplies for the offensive ahead. Slowly, the Aschen SOLCOM Fleet pushed past the outer orbital area of Pluto, specks of ships emerging onto whatever scanner systems the Coalition had employed, the Aschen entirety of SOLCOM outnumbering the Coalition vessels in the Terran System at least ten to one. The Aschen counting on the Taiyou coordination to swiftly put an end to the Coalition stranglehold on Terra, and push them out of the system for good.

"We've lost a majority of the Vangard force that attempted to push into Terra." Lieutenant Siler would say as he turned to Admiral Corman, then his gaze was brought out the bridge of the immense CNV, the flagship of the twelve thousand ships employed by the entirety of Aschen's SOLCOM. Supply ships humming back and fourth, signifying the flurry of activity in this massive Aschen offensive.

"Langara is supposed to be dispatching the 2nd Tal'Dor defense fleet to aid us, an additional 10,000 ships, 3,000 of them combat capable." Corman explained as he tacked off the numbers on his star chart. "They are also going to set a trap at Tal'dor, but this battle will hopefully never reach Tal'dor."

Corman then brought his gaze to the Executive Officer of the entire offensive. "Ensure all supply ships have distributed their goods, I want CNVs in tactical support formations, Omega cannons primed for engagement, we're going to round up the damaged Battlestars and drydock them, while we push the Coalition away from Terra. Spool the FTL Drives for jump. Coordinates are as set." He ordered as the fifty thousand man crew of the CNV Geared for lockdown, Reverence class PACs joined the formation, spooling their drives and preparing to jump directly into the thick of combat. With the position of Coalition vessels known, the Aschen would rely on the intel provided by the now destroyed Vanguard fleet to coordinate their strikes.

"Admiral, the 1st Shogunate Armada has entered Hyperspace in the Epsilon Eridani system and will be here within the half-centar. We'll commence our offensive to draw the Coalition lines towards us while the Taiyou jump in rear, and engage." A Young Lieutenant explained as the Admiral nodded.

"Coordinates locked, all transports accounted for.... jump."

Suddenly all twelve some thousand Aschen capital ships would vanish from their spots in flashes of bright white light, glimmers in the distance. They were performing a combat-jump into the hotzone that was Coalition space around Terra. Each division of SOLCOM was handed a special set of coordinates, the CNVs were to hang back and utilize their Hyperdense Space-artillery platforms to lay waste to larger slower moving ships. While Reverences provided medium range support, allowing Battlestars and her fighter compliments to move to engage.

"Sir we've completed our jump, all our fleet is accounted for." A Lieutenant explained as the entirety of SOLCOM placed itself just 25,000 klicks outside Terra's moon, all ten CNV's would have jumped in a wide crescent formation, their assigned Reverences and Battlestars locked and loaded for battle. With the CNVs acting as supply hubs, ships that were damaged could return for rearm and repair.

Now in the thick of battle, the wreckage was made evident. Admiral Corman narrowing his eyes and the now coming about Coalition ships. "Let's do this." He said before getting on the radio. "All ships, weapons free." He ordered, then turned to his weapons officer, nodding the order was disseminated. And so, the first shots in the second battle would be made evident, as the Emblem of Divinity scored a direct hit on a Coalition Heavy Carrier, sending it's hyperdense near-singularty armament to render thick armored plating to slag, the weapon deployed piercing the ship like a lance through a piece of fruit, leaving a deadly wake of ionized gas, gravitic anomalies, and molten slag in it's wake. This was followed up by the battle-charged Reverences to fan out amongst the Coalition fleet, one Reverence dancing with a Farriday Class battleship, slinging it's heavy weapons back and fourth as Coalition heavy weaponry played havoc on shields and armor alike, bluish-white explosions rocking the 'Sublime Transcendence' with it's compliment of weaponry, much like the Reverence cutting swathes of molten slag much like a welder does to his metal through the hull of it's enemy. Commander Pendergast, of the Sublime Transcendence would keep his crew tightly working, while the AI Fired shot after shot of powerful energy weapons towards the target.

Even as the Farriday would succumb to the Reverence, as the Reverence carved the Battleship up like a christmas ham. The Reverence was not spared it's share of damage, with pockmarks of molten slag and carbonized trinnium gouging black holes in it's metallic finish. The Sublime Transcendence had earned it's small victory, showing the Aschen the Coalition were not invincible.

Rather the battle was now the Aschen's, signified by their fierce and renewed charge, using the powerful singularity cannons on the ten CNVs positioned in a crescent formation to pummel the Coalition ships from afar. Admiral Corman would be satisfied with the results of his offensive. However casualties would begin to mount, as the blown out hulk of the Emblem of Thanatos, a Reverence class Carrier, impacted the armored hull of the Emblem of Divinity. Causing the crew to feel a slight jerk. But Corman trusted the CNV's 3mm and 5mm Anti-ship guns to hurl dense slugs at high-velocities, punching holes in the smaller Coalition vessels, the ten massive CNV's maintained a curtain of flak, Anti-ship rounds, and singularity charges from their main guns to push their offensive.

"Sitrep!" Admiral Corman shouted, just as the brilliant flash of a singularity tearing a Robotics cruiser in two would register on visuals.

"Sir, the Singularity cannon is beginning to overheat, we cannot maintain this volley, other CNVs are reporting their singularity guns are overheating. Our kill count is climbing, but so is our casualty count. We also have reports of badly damaged Battlestars that need to drydock.. at this point the fight could go either way." The Lieutenant explained as the CNV Rocked violently from a broadside at the hands of a Sentinel Class Heavy Carrier. "Sir, we have massive hull damage in starboard sectors, we're getting gutted!" The Lieutenant panicked as the CNV Shuddered and groaned from the charge. Then the CNV Would be gutted even more so as the CNV Athenian Philosophy gutted the Sentinel with a well placed shot from it's Main gun. Resulting in the whole starboard half of the Emblem of Divinity to be rendered asunder, resulting in the ship spiraling out of control. "Coordinate.. I want some Battlestars forming up on me." He said. All while the Battlestar Helios would be seen limping towards a nearby CNV. Corman was not satisfied, as the lieutenant was right. The Battle could go either way at this point.

And that was truth, as he watched the CNV Triumphant go up in a brilliant explosion from a Coalition charge, sending Battlestars and Reverences alike hurling out of control, sending Debris which impacted a Reverence, and split it in three, resulting in it going up in a series of vivid blue explosions.

It seemed the Aschen were at least pushing a hard stalemate, hoping either the Taiyou Would show up, or the Tal'Dor fleet could tip the balance. This was everything Corman had, and he was not about to let the Coalition know that.

----


Imperial Taiyou Navy
1st Shogunate Armada
ITN Hōshō
Epsilon Eridani to Saturn
Operation: Divine Destiny
Strength: 25,000 Ships
Shogun Class Battleship


Shogun Hakuro would be standing against the metal bridge railing of his Shogun Class Battleship Staring at the 15,000 Combat capable Taiyou ships, everything from Shokakus, to Zuikakus, to Patrol Boats and destroyers, and the ten thousand supply ships that kept the juggernaut of the Taiyou Shogunate Offensive oiled and sailing. Staring out he would speak up. "Today is the day that Destiny has promised us. Our ships are fully supplied and armed, and now we will sever the Coalition's hold on Terra like the Katana's edge." The Shogun explained as the Epsilon Eridani Star loomed in his bridgeport. Taiyou supply transports entering and exiting hyperspace as part of a long supply chain back through the gate to Niihama, which only got longer and longer. This logisitical shortcoming was remedied by a new Taiyou ship. It was designed to be a portable Hyperspace Gate, allowing the Taiyou a direct line into the heart of the Terran System, as the Shogunate Armada sailed fourth. Supply ships would use this hyperspace gate to move supplies too and from the Taiyou fleet, at each system, the fleet would stop, resupply, and move to the next point. What steeled the Shogun was Epsilon Eridani was the last supply head. And now the Taiyou were going to drive into the heart of the Sol System. Joining their Aschen Comrades to put an end to Coalition oppression on the planet.

"Hyperspace coordinates set... My Lord, we are ready to join the fight." A Lieutenant Helmsman said as the Shogun stood up and spoke aloud, "Tora! Tora! Tora!" And the Taiyou Ship jumped fourth, lurching into the envelope of Hyperspace as it's course plotted it directly towards Saturn, and the Coalition holdings there. Much like Pearl Harbor, years prior, the Taiyou showed up without warning. The initial wave of Tengu starfighters soared from the Shokaku and Zuikaku class carriers a parsec away, Shogun Battleships forming a wide arc as they began pummeling the Coalition holdings from extreme range. The attack was onset fast, starting with a bombardment from the Shogun Battleship's powerful Wave-force cannons. Naginata and Fuso class ships spread out, and began to light off their guns at a nearby Coalition fleet tender. Pelting it with a combination of Railguns, and Wave-force energy which shredded through hulls and pockmarked armor. But the Taiyou would incur their own casualties. Coalition forces defending the supply stations that orbited the gas giant would be met with Kamikaze runs from crippled Taiyou ships. A Radegast class battleship impaled by a Taiyou Naginata class cruiser, only to be torn apart seconds later as the Naginata's Cold fusion engines went critical, and the entire ship detonated in a 75 megaton explosion. The Taiyou used fast-attack tactics, along with hit-and-run against the defending forces of the supply hub, allowing the Shoguns, the Kongōs, and the Kawachi class Battleships fan out to engage the larger Coalition vessels, taking hits and dishing out hits.

The Attacks from the Carriers would continue, as they projected Kamikaze fighters, Tengu fighters, and Banzai fighters coupled with Nakajima and Mitsubishi type bombers which deployed photon and nuclear ordinance upon smaller Coalition ship screens. The Taiyou fleet was acting like a wall which descended upon the Supply hub. The Taiyou's aim in this operation was to sever the Coalition's supply lines, allowing the Aschen to 'cross the T' and the Taiyou to prepare their forces for a ground invasion. Already, the battle had begun to teeter in the Aschen's favor, moment by moment as the Taiyou Armada descended upon the Coalition Supply hub, laying waste to everything that stood in it's way. Though the Taiyou incurred significant losses, they churned on, forward to Jupiter, and eventually the Asteroid belt where Terra lay for the siezing. Of course by now the Taiyou force was haggared after their offensive. The fleet would come to a stop, as the Hyperspace gate arrived, allowing the ship to replenish it's supplies, and send damaged ships back for repair.

WAR-Day + 12




20th Operations Group
Task Force Hotel
Foxtrot Unit
CNS Atraliah Sun
Sentinel class Heavy Carrier




The Taiyou had severed the supply train, it was up to the Carrier Strike Groups to get it back. Keeping the bulk of the illegitimately managed Taiyou Navy occupied with heavy hit-and-run tactics, the fallback position had been secured, utilizing the gravity well of Neptune to spin retreating forces back into action at velocities that would surprise even the fastest of tacticians today, the fact that the Taiyou Navy had already begun to waver in its advance was all the motivation the crews of 20th OG would need. With two distinct divisions of the 20th OG separated by a Taiyou spearhead, their massive numbers had been split in two. One force having to move to the left, the other to the right. With some three-hundred and fifty ships stabilizing the Neptune springboard, the remaining four-hundred Coalition vessels had drawn the bulk of the Taiyou fire. While Captain Charles DeGaul understood that his comrades across the blockade had taken a brutal beating at the hands of a numerically superior Taiyou force, he was also aware that their commitment had left the fleshy meat of their power exposed. While the attack had been expected much later, the Coalition had deployed flexbility at the top of its requirements when figthing the Taiyou. Rather than allow them to cross the distance, many outfits utilized area-denial tactics like carpet-nuking a swath of space, while other simply aligned AEGIS manifolds to soak up as much damage as possible while keeping the vessels behind them functioning and alive. Of course, as Captain DeGaul understood with the 22nd OG, there was a heavy price to pay for every inch that Taiyou would tear from Coalition grasps. With the gas giant Saturn the lynch-pin to reorganizing the Terran occupation, the now-famous Admiral Savage would need every spare vessel he had in reopening that clenched pipeline. Already, attacks were being enacted on the point of Taiyou origin, as Foxtrot unit moved to engage the flank of the Taiyou a ten-ship Stealth Corvette detail was embarking on it's mission to sabotage the Taiyou hyperspace ship and annihilate anything else that stood in its way. With the full brunt of the Taiyou Navy was slow in arrival, it was obvious Admiral Savage was aware of what lay beyond this system. He would need to bar the Taiyou from the fight, or at least force them to arrive in small groups that could be dealt with by the Coalition's quickly deteriorating combat capabilities.

"Sir, Admiral Savage reports that the attack on the Taiyou hyperspace junction has commenced, Taiyou forces are in disarray and exhibiting signs of collapse." There was his que, steeling himself against the indominable giant of combat, he stuck his chest forward before releasing a curt noise to gather everyone's attention.
"You heard CommoCon, get ready for war ladies and gentlmen."


Foxtrot unit collided with a Taiyou group numbering around two-hundred and sixty eight two hours later. One hundred against two hundred were bad odds, DeGaul had to say, but momentum was on the Coalitions side. The first volley from a line of ten Missile Cruisers peppered the heavier ships with a torrent of nuclear ordnance. Utilizing several well-placed SLZS-88J jamming missiles to confuse, baffle and distort the anti-missile capabilities of the Taiyou ships, the intial kill-count rose to twenty-four capital ships, another thirty two screens caught in the crossfire of nuclear hellfire. With the Missile Cruisers reloading for another volley, the first of two fifteen ship Assault Frigate groups moved in to combat. Thrown to distract the screens, the Assault Frigates held well for being outnumbered. Tracers zipped back and forth and bright purple balls of superheated plasma flared as the Coalition defenses fought the volley of fire raking them. Sooner or later the shields would collapse, leaving the hyper-dense Slipstream armor to take the brunt of the attacks. In a tactical sense the Coalition was acting as a perfect machine, carving deep gouges into the enemy and leaving them in disarray for a second strike and even a third one. The first of nearly thirty Taiyou ships broke the Coalition charge when one of the Assault Frigate groups had been whittled down to barely three ships remaining, the other soon approaching that number as well. With a clear run from the screen to the meaty goodness of the CSG, the Taiyou struck for the twenty carriers of Foxtrot unit like an owl descending on a wounded prey. Descending, of course, until the twenty-five battleships opened up. Manuevering tightly behind the numerous carriers throughout the unit, the Battleship commanders had done a pinpoint job in keeping their appearance of weakness in the face of the enemy. Launching a myriad of cluster munitions and Zone-Superiority Missiles, the Battleships made mulch of the destroyers and cruisers that rocketed towards them. One Battleship was glanced by a passing Taiyou cruiser in its death-throws, which was trying its best to include the Coalition ship with it. Fortunately the Captain pulsed his energy projectors as the vessel steamed past, gutting it like a fish and spilling its belly contents into the vacuum of space.

A Taiyou carrier had survived the initial attack, only to close distance with Foxtrot and the be met with that same blast of heavy firepower from the Battleships. When it was obvious that the Taiyou recognized their ploy, the Battleships broke from their hiding places and manuevered to fire their spinal-cannons. Motes of light flashed from the gaping barrels of the weapons as three dozen Taiyou ships were speared by the spine-breaking 360 inch cannons. Their objective now was just to fight as hard as they could and break the nose of every Taiyou ship they came across. While still out of range, the first of nearly four hundred Taiyou ships began to arrive to support their comrades, many exiting their jumps in wreckage fields of their former comrades. One Taiyou carrier was limping away from a nuclear blast before three Assault Frigates descended on the vessel and tore the guts right out of her with pinpoit artillery fire. While DeGaul was expecting a reinforcing contingent, mainly Task Force India, to arrive in the next half-hour or so, he would be the only Coalition officer in the theater for now. He planned to capitalize on those warheads, however, they were invaluable.







22nd Operations Group
Task Force Juliet
Bravo Unit
CNS Welcomed Paradise
Farriday class Battleship



Outnumbered, outguned and outmatched the Coalition Navy fought with brutal tenacity. For every vessel that was torn to shreds, the Navy fought to the nail to inflict ten times more damage right back to the Aschen. While the fight had long been secured in the 4th ring of defenses that had been hastily prepared by the Coalition, the original eight hundred vessels had been bolstered by forward formations of the 1st Fleet, increasing their number of combat capable ships to nearly two thousand in the one and a half weeks that the Navy had secured Terra. The Aschen jump had been plotted and prepared for, the UCON forces more than capable of accepting their losses and dishing it out just as hard. In the distance, a bright flash of thermonuclear fire announced the death of an Aschen Battlestar as the distances between the two forces had closed to punching distance, something that Captain Haggers was fully prepared to exploit. Closing with the Coalition Navy simply capitolized on their heavy weaponry the Farriday class Battleship boasted. With the energy projectors and magnetic plates swelled to maximum effeciency, and the hyperconductive 120 kiloton fission warheads primed and armed, Haggers had detached a small group of Battleships and Missile Cruisers, launching a personal assault on a single CNV. The Slipspace jumps had been spooled for their little Teddy-charge, all Captains of the fifteen vessels agreeing that if they didn't knock it out with one strike, they'd be coming around again to not only launch their ordinance, but simple ram the sonuvabitch into as many bastards as they could.

"Captain, we have target selections! Forward two-fifties are prepared to fire, Tharkos charges are prepared. Awaiting order to engage." An Ensign shouted from his position, a dullness surrounding the bridge as a lancing beam of plasma impacted the supercharged magnetic field thrown by the forward plates of the Paradise, the hypermagnetic gassess boiled and frothed before dispersing along the heavy shielding and revealing the hulk of a Reverence, the snarling figure a domineering roadblock on their charge to the CNV.
"Dammit, knock that Reverence down! Missile Cruisers, launch your warheads!" He commanded, before initiating his offensive Haggers had created an audiolink to ever vessel in their small strike group. Covered by the major conflict roaring around them, Haggers had hoped that he would be able to simply blast his way through in one quick strike and knock his opponents down. With this Reverence blocking his way, he would be hard pressed to manuever, kill the Reverence and then survive long enough to launch his attack. A winking alarm sounded as the four Balius class Missile Cruisers launched their complement of missiles, eight Lasglow cluster missiles and four Chimaera Anti-Ship missiles struck past the forward screen of the Battleships and Sigma-Cruisers, spinning long trails of heated exhaust. Timed perfectly, the Lasglow missiles were the first to connect, sprinkling a beuatiful flower of 96 separate 250 kiloton warhead across its shielding, which shimmered and died just in time to allow the four Chimaera's to bury themselves along the vessel stem to stern.
"Launch the Slipspace drives, coordinate a puddle jump -- if you want to survive, you'll follow my ass to the tee!" Haggers shouted, several winking lights from the ship Captains announcing their adherence to the new policy as a curtain drew over the airscreen, showing the quantum fields that would allow them to precisely cut open the tangent reality and thrust themselves into Slipstream. A conductive slug slammed into the magnetic field thrown off the starboard side, delivered from a nearby Aschen cruiser that was manuevering to engage the group before it disappeared into a boiling sphere of chaotic energies. With their adventure in normal space taking practically thirty minutes to reach the CNV, Haggers and his small team could accomplish it in eight if they timed themselves properly.


"Sir, we're eight minutes out, preparing for departure." A Navigations officer remarked, the darkness of Slipstream passing through the airscreen in chaotic lines and jagged spears down the qunatum locator. Captain Haggers fought his growing heartbeat, while it was common procedure to use puddle jumps to retreat, he wasn't so sure about going toward the enemy using them. They could end up right in their guts, or four hundred kilometers behind them. Not only giving them the chance to locate them, but also turn them into nothing but useless slag before they even got a chance to turn around and look at them. Of course, the Aschen wouldn't know where they were going, lacking the capability to effectively track a Slipstream jump, which was even shaky at times when you could. Haggers hoped he could use his advantages while minimizing his disadvantages, which were a lot at the moment.
"Weapons, online. Drones, online. Shielding, online ... departing jump, now."


Out of the fire and in to the metaphorical frying pan. Haggers was thrust into the railing as the vessel and her fourteen comrades departed the jump in one fluid line, two of the Missile Cruisers having to quickly yank themselves upward to avoid eating the ass-end of their sister ships while also avoiding collisions with one of the many Aschen Battlestars. This would come as one big ol' surprise to the Aschen, Haggers smiled dryly.
"You know the drill, launch your gear and let's get the hell out of here! Open fire!" Captain Haggers screamed, his hands clenching to the railing as the first of the vessels fired. The CNV was one massive "shoot me" sign that was begging to be pressed. Lances of Longbow and Lasglow missiles speared from the vessels that utilized such launchers, peppering the heavy shielding of the CNV with a scattering of low-ton nuclear warheads designed to overtax the system and bring it to its knees. With barely three hundred kilometers between the two, the Coalition strike team attacked with its second fusillade of missiles. Acting and attacking far too quickly to be caught by the surprised Aschen Captains, Haggers and his team enjoyed a relative free approach as they put all their force into the second strike.
"Sir! The shields are down, we have a clear shot!" A Sensors officer shouted from his pit, the audio quickly being dispersed to the other Captains as well. Haggers knew that now was his chance, time to draw real blood in this war. He glanced to the side, looking to Lieutenant Commander Hido Ishamaj who had remained stoicly silent, the Maji tribesman standing with his hands behind his back and staring forward. Now, the Maji had craned his head to the Captain, his lips pulled tightly into a miniscule grin.
"Let them know what to really fear." He offered silently.


"Send 'em to hell!" Haggers shouted, the entire vessel shaking from the discharge of both spinal-mounted 360 inch railcannons. Bright arcs speared through space before impacting the soft hull of the Aschen megaship and burying themselves deep into the guts of the Aschen vessel before detonating in a furious 120 kiloton thermonuclear warhead. With nearly fifteen of the shells thrown into the CNV, it was an immediate death for the crew and the ship herself. Broken along her spine, what remained of the slagged CNV cracked and dropped from one another before releasing the contents of its belly into the vacuum, any unfortunate souls that had survived the explosions would be rocketed into the vacuum, sentenced to death out there. A cheer rolled through the Coalition group as Haggers broke over the hull of the shattered CNV, barely having time to notice the giant name of the leviathan stenciled on its charred sides, the "Truimphant".
"God, Haggers, we did it! God damn, we did it!" A Captain in a nearby Battleship was practically yelling, before Haggers quickly silenced his own crew.
"Enough -- let's get the hell out of here, we're in a god damn hornets nest."
The SHAMROC Slipstream engine had already been spooled following their exit, utilizing the exit-energies to fill the quantum matter containers to the brim in preparation for their next jump. With the wreckage of the Aschen CNV behind then, they would have a clear view to jump away from this pit of vipers. Announcing their withdrawl with a bright flashing light, the fifteen ships would funnel themselves in line-formation once again before activating their Slipstream cores and spearing into the alternate dimension, carving one Aschen Battlestar in half who had wandered to close to the Slipstream jump and succumbing to the chaotic energies. Haggers mission had completed the overall Coalition objective, let the Aschen know that if they want Sol they'd have to take more losses just like that.







22nd Operations Group
Task Force Sierra
Bravo Unit
CNS Acre
Sirona class Sigma-Cruiser




With the Aschen jump in the metaphorical "heart" of the 4th Defense Ring that formed the spine of the Coalition defense of an occupied Terra, they had essentially surrounded themselves in a cauldron of UCON's boiling water. While several of the units were initially routed in the hours of fighting that followed, a quick counter-attck by the Coalition had pressed the Aschen even greater, exacting several capital-ship casualties as well as a considerable amount of damage against smaller vessels. While the Coalition had suffered it's fair share of loses, nearly one hundred and ninety ships total, the score for the Aschen would be considerably larger. Hampered on all sides by Coalition forces, and packed into a sector that was increasingly hard to manuever in, the initial momentum that carried the attack was lost after penetrating the 2nd Defense Ring, then stumbling upon the heavy contingent of carriers and battleships that formed the bulk of Task Force Sierra. 370 combat capable vessels now held their crosshairs directly over the heart of the Aschen; while nearly one-thousand, five hundred and eight ships of the 22nd OG moved hastily to squelch them.

As the main cannons of the Acre fired, Captain Aarons shifted his gaze toward a tactical sensor screen, appointed by the AI to provide him with a steady knowledge of the battlefield. Their war had now been placed in a several hundred-thousand kilometer block, with the condensed Aschen formations packed between several thousand odd ships. Now that tactical superiority had eased it's way back into Coalition hands the Captains and Vice Admirals were capable of regulating, to the tee, where which units would go to press the counterattack. That alone had taken half a week, made even more difficult by the effort of keeping the Aschen from simply tearing through the entire network.
Now, however, they were ready to go on the offensive; and it was offensive they chose. Commanding a group of eight other Sigma-Cruisers, the Coalition had adopted a hard-strike mentality. Operating without so much as a spare cupholder for backup, Vice Admiral Lord Welfor had taken it under his wing to maintain a Coalition supremacy of Terra and its surrounding space. While the 20th OG was far better prepared to deal with the Taiyou flood, at least for the moment, with some four-thousand, eight hundred or so ships, 22nd OG was hard pressed to match the success they had seen against the Taiyou. His eyes returned to the tactical display, a strobbing red and green light signifying that one of the twenty-eight units forming this "arc" of screens had finally made contact with some form of the Aschen combatants. Closer to him, the first of a four-carrier CSG prepared its contingent of aircraft and drones. Most of the pilots had switched their weaponry to nuclear payloads, an Eagle II strapped with a Syrion 60 kiloton warhead and sent off to drop the bomb on some high-value Aschen Battlestar or even CNV made advance for the Aschen and cautious and deliberate action. The Coalition was not to shy away from sacrifice, either; from the start UCON Captains had made it known that there was a price for this territory. Already dozens of Battlestars had been crippled in suicide attacks made by everyone from Assault Frigate Captains to a Vice Admiral commanding a Heavy Carrier. The award-ceremonies were to wait, however, because before the Coalition could bury its dead it would have to recapture the ground which caused so much turmoil for the 22nd Operations Group. With a shudder, the first of the Aschen screen ships rounds impacted the activated magnetic fields. Several of the shots were atomized at the velocities and turn into scorching globs of molten ferromagnetic goop spreading over the shield before hissing and solidifying in the vacuum. The Coalition was wasting no time in returning fire, it seemed; already the fifteen Missile Cruisers they were screening for had launched a battery of nearly twenty SAM-9 Chimaera anti-ship missiles. Several of the warheads would be intercepted, probably five or so, but the remainder would arrive upon their targets and deliver their hellfire with extreme precision. This method was to soften the Aschen wave and allowing it to crash harmlessly, after which the heavier Coalition ships would proceed to filay whatever managed to survive.


"Fire the bow thirty-two inchers." Aarons muttered slowly, seizing a target of opportunity, an Aschen destroy with what appeared to be scarred damage from a previous engagement. The front thirty-two inch railcannons fired and the slugs crossed their distance in under a minute flat, breaking the prow shields and then slicing the nose of the vessel clean from its superstructure before flowering into a 6 kiloton explosion. More of the rounds landed home, few scoring a one-hit-kill like the destroyer, but many annihilating the shields and armor of the eight Battlestars and nearly fifty smaller craft that moved toward them. While Aarons considered himself lucky, he could be facing a CNV on down the line or a hundred Battlestars on the farthest flank. At least in those fights, however, you had carrier support, entire Battleship Strike Groups in reserve to keep constant the sting of the Coalition. In Aarons sector, however, twenty-eight groups of ten or twenty ships with only one CSG to provide a last-ditch strike if the Aschen manage to pierce the defense was all he could expect in his boots at the moment. He'd have to make due.

"Sir, Alpha-Delta Unit has launched a second strike, estimated eighteen Aschen vessels hit with ten being kills. They are still out of weapons range." Aaron had played his cards well, utilizing the long-reaching arm of both the Balius class Missile Carrier and the Chimaera's exceptionally long range. Complemented by nearly sixty Robotics Cruisers in the area, Task Force Sierra's envelope of striking fell well into the deepest of the Aschen groups. Two special groups of Missile Cruisers had even been stealthed in the back to launch missile strikes at key Aschen vessels beyond Sierra's initial target zone, meaning in the next three or so hours even ships behind Aschen lines would suddenly have nuclear warheads raining down on them.
"Delta and Echo have launched a secont strike as well, estimated thirty-seven ships total with most being kills." Another Sensor officer responded from the pit, Aarons gave a sigh of relief, obviously they still had a chance if units were living long enough to fire again. Of course, Aaraons could only speculate how long they could keep up the effective 'bombardment'. The Aschen had two relative options, Aaraons considered, take the hits or leave. However battle-thirsty a commander is, he would never unnecessarily risk the bulk of his army like this.
"Bravo, Charlie, Foxtrot and Golf have all launched second strikes, the numbers are climbing Captain -- we're easily looking at a hundred and fifty ships on the kill-list right now." A Communications officer shouted, drawing a rather beastful grin from Aarons as he suddenly heaved his chest up.
"Then let's join the club, order all teams to launch a second-strike."

Given immediate cover by the overlapping magnetic fields of the formation of Sigma-Cruisers, the Missile Cruisers were free to advance with little danger. With the first approaching wave reduced to a crippled haggle of two remaining Battlestars and less than fifteen smaller ships, Aarons was surprised at the ease of launching another attack. Apparently the Captains of the Missile Cruisers had already ordered the reload half a second after the previous order to fire.
"Just thinking ahead", the Captain returned in a short audio communique before activating a second wave of anti-ship missiles. This time, forty were aimed in a tight oblong elipse, skinny at the beginning and ending in a wide arc across easily four thousand vessels. Ten of the missiles would be strategic warheads with a 10 megaton yield aimed for ships scattered across the area with value. The remaining ships, all damaged by the warhead and some even floating dead due to the massive EMP release, were easily swept aside in the wake of secondary-suns blossoming into existence in the vacuum. The dirty nukes spat out tons of radiation that would fry electronics, scorch armor and blister the crew of any vessels nearby. By this point, the Aschen would know the sting of radiation poisoning, Coalition warheads designed to do two simple things, destroy and irradiate. He assumed that the mysterious cases of rapid-progressing cancers or malignant tumors developing would tax an already weighed system.


While there were no CNV's in his sector, Aaron was graced with a heavy group of Reverence class Carriers. In comparison, the Sigma-Cruisers were quick and manueverable gnats that the Carrier simply couldn't hope to hit with any on-board weaponry. The nuclear fallout had gaurenteed him some safety, however, 'lest they risk exposing pilots to radiation that still climbed high above the limit of safety. The Aschen ships would have to delay their attack until braving the last of the radiation pockets. With more warheads detonating, however, that was somewhat difficult to do. One Chimaera, after a burst of radiation from a previous explosion had fried the shielding, impaled itself into the bridge of the Reverence before creating the all-to-familiar white dwarf star and eviscerating the carrier in the blink of an eye. Then the first of four SAM-9S 10 megaton nukes detonated just off the prow of the carriers, one was simply sheared away from heat and friction release within a 20 kilometer radius from the first warhead. As the others began to explode, the battered carriers were caught in a metaphorical oven. Long whisps of molten metal spitting off the hulls of the ships as they were buffeted by the heat and radiation from the explosions. As the first of the ten Assault Frigate groups moved on the flanks to delivering the killing strike the last of the dwarf stars faded from view and revealed the charred husks of the Aschen carriers drifting uselessly through space. This small victory would keep him going, Aaron recognized, before the first of eighty Battlestars began to exit their Jumps.








22nd Operations Group
Task Force November
Charlie Element
CNS Crygis Dodalia
Lavtia class Stealth Corvette



Captain Habowski rubbed his eyes, they had stung from the constant study of the screens placed around the cramped bridge of the corvette. Kept in the depths of Slipstream, the twenty Stealth Corvettes of Charlie element had did their best to make their way to the waypoint. With the fight split into two distinct halves, the 20th OG forced to face the Taiyou wave and the 22nd incapable of sparing reinforcements to stem the tide of the Aschen, the battle had been handed to a small group of elite Captains and crews, those of the Stealth Corvette. While their FENRIR torpedos had been replaced with lower-tonnage Masada fringe-missiles, the complement of Stealth Corvettes in theater would be the secret ace-in-the-hole for the Coalition. With both of fronts fighting losing battles, the entire fleet had been pushed back a considerbale distance while whittling the Aschena and Taiyou down as much as possible. With the supply chain temporarily fractured, however, the 20th OG was effectively cut off from support. Meaning that if the Coalition wanted to seize both fronts, the Stealth Corvettes would need to break the back of their enemies to allow the train to continue rolling. Habowski and a detachment of nine other Corvettes were to be dispatched to the Taiyou theather. With a dull rumble, the Mark 6 SHAMROC began to propel the corvette through the blackness of Slipstream, long lines of vibrant swirling energies from the countless quantum sensors and gravimetric optics displayed the blackness of Slipspace in a brilliant display of orange and red energies, swirling into "currents" and ebbing into waves.

"Thirty minutes out, Captain. Masada tubes are prepared to launch on your command." Several computers took the information gathered by the sensors that monitored the Slipstream activity and transfered it into an erratic cacaphony of shrill wavering audio, often providing a soothing medium known as the 'Slip Sounds'. Trying his best at outpacing the Slip Sounds with his own thinking, he turned his gaze towards a holodisplay of the forward torpedo batteries. While the Masada lacked the heavier punch of the Fenrir, it operated on an entirely different thinking in comparison to the Fenrir. Made up of several charges designed to collapse quantum matter into Slipstream, while a Captain couldn't land a hundred-kill strike with one, he could easily pick off command and control structures, or capital ships.

Of course, they could fire back to. The Stealth Corvette's newest SHAMROC drive gave literal definition to "Trans-Fringe". While the Stealth Corvette was hurtling through Slipstream, it was nestled against the single fluid dimension separating the Tangent Reality from the depths of Slipstream. Habowski had analyzed it as a fish at the waters edge, so close to breaking the waterline without actually doing so. While this method was much faster, allowing the powerful sensors on-board the Stealth Corvette to not only map Slipstream, but use it's massive array of capabilities to jam, distort or listen to Aschen equipment. In the past week the Stealth Corvette had become a guardian amongst the 20th and 22nd OG's, while there was only thirty-five spread throughout the entire system, they had been used in a myriad of roles; counterattacking the Aschen offensive to break the 4th Defense Ring, which they inevitably did at the cost of twenty Battlestars and a host of other smaller ships, to monitoring the stabilized lines several days later. The Stealth Corvette had come alongside the prowler as the primary special weapons units in the theater, beside the Battleship and Carrier Strike Groups. One of the extreme disadvantages, that Habowski was a little too afraid to accept, was that the Stealth Corvette did leave a trail. If one could describe it, it would be like using a torpedo in a bathtub, every once in a while the course of the Stealth Corvette would thrust it from Slipstream into the Tangent Reality. While the powerful Trans-Fringe drives did much to prevent that, it had already occured several times. Considering there was no real way of describing depth in Slipstream dimensions, there was little Habowksi could do but cross his fingers and hope they didn't pop up on someone's radar.

With the forward Masada tubes adjusted to fire, the Stealth Corvette would have to correct its journey and launch, something that wasn't recquired to launch the Fenrir. Yet, with nearly five times more missiles, the ten ships bound for the Aschen pocket in th 3rd Ring were more than capable of delivering a series of deadly punches against any targets of opportunity the Dodalia would come across. On a Slipstream Transit map the Stealth Corvette burrowed itself through the buffeting "waves" and flowing currents of Slipstream as the Dodalia manuevered itself to fire the first of a series of eight Masada's. With the ten other vessels preparing a similar armament, the first in several alarms began to sound as the Coalition ships neared their targets. The standard protection of a Slipstream field would work to keep most of the Aschen vessels from detecting the alien ships that rocketed toward them, while the closer and closer they would get to the "fringe" of Slipstream their signatures and exhausts would increase.

"Three-million Kilo mark, Captain. Masada's armed and ready." Trans-Fringe relays and sensors allowed the Dodalia to peer into both Slipstream as well as the Tangent Reality. He prefered the warmth of Slipstream, however, knowing that you were presently invulnerable and undetectable. This botched go-between held few noticeable advantages, speed and striking-capability didn't outweigh protection and security. They were now at 40 percent fringe, with the suitable firing location being at about 35, Habowski wanted to make sure his missiles flew true. Straight into their targets.


The hull of the CNV glimmered and shone in the darkness of the vacuum. One of only eight remaining, the first one being annihilated in a Lanes-Manuever and the other battered so furiously that the Coalition simply wrote it off as unfit for combat, the Aschen superships had become the prime targets of the Stealth Corvettes. Surrounded by groups of patroling Battlestars and Aschen Planetary Assault Carriers, Habowski suddenly wished he'd dropped that fringe to around 35 percent and unload every missile he's got before he went too far in to hop out. A small diagnostic screen flickered to life beside him, displaying the readiness of the two-forward facing Masada missiles. One, fixed with a Trans-Fringe Generator was tagged to produce a yield of nearly 2 megatons, something that Habowksi was sure to break the spine of a leviathan like a CNV. The other was loaded with a experimental singularity generator that scattered thousands of microblackholes that were teethered directly into Slipspace. Meant more as a electronic weapon that a destructive one, Habowski was sure that four or five of the ships caught in the initial detonation would be simply torn to shreds.
"One-point-five million Kilo mark, Captain. All vessels are ready to fire on your order." Captain Habowsky inhaled sharply, several grainy images of the CNV lurking across the airscreens as the first signs of Aschen awareness dawning on them. They would realize by now that the random contacts so many ships had suddenly discovered was not an anomaly or malfunctioning equipment. Some Captains, ignorant for their situation and confident of their intagibility from this far back in the pocket, would remind their officers why they weren't in command and would dismiss these claims with a wave of a hand and the shout of an order. Others would be more fortunate, realizing that simply someone was coming from somewhere to do something, at that realization, Habowski ordered all ten Stealth Corvettes to open fire.


"This is the Lygers, missiles away."
"Mannu Vau, missiles away."
"This is the Tarsus Blade, missiles away."
"The Condemnation reports missiles away."
"Dawning Star, missiles away."
"This is the Golden August, missiles away."
"The Saggaron reports missiles away."
"Footfall reports missiles away."
"This the Descendant, missiles away."

Habowski waited in the cold silence, the last alarm dying away in the calm before the storm. Nothing disturbed Habowski as he plastered his eyes to the airscreen, waiting for the inevitable whump of the Masada's leaving their tubes and streaking through the vacuum. Due to the size of the missiles, they could function much more effectively, utilizing their Trans-Fringe depth to keep them out of the scopes of any anti-missile batteries and simply deactivating the Trans-Fringe drives upon impact. The Masada was one massive paperweight, designed to drag as much exit-energies as possible and carve a lance deep through the heart of anything it connected with. Habowski began to fight the urge to inhale, his breath waiting for his own vessel to fire. He continued the wait for several seconds before his eyes began to wonder amongst the crew, finally, he furrowed his brow and glanced down into the pits.
"Why haven't we fired, Weapons?"
"Sir, we fired ten seconds ago ... " Habowksi pulled his head up to a trajectory airscreen; WepCon was correct, twenty Masada missiles were spearing their way into the hearts of the Aschen vessels on their course to the target. Eight aimed for the massive CNV that loomed in the far distance, and the rest having end-trajectories in a wide arc, the swordsman cut to slice the tendon.







2nd Fleet
MS Habea
Megaship




The twenty-three kilometer keel of the Coalition supership exited its bridge-jump in the bright, vibrant flashes of Chernekov radiation and gravimetrict storms that boiled forth from the depths of an alternate universe. Where UCON vessels had to maintain a steady velocity and distance from other ships travelling in formation, the sheer size of the Habea allowed her to act as a metaphorical
"ship magnet", capable of accomadating a fleet or nearly hundreds of other vessels in its "Slipstream envelope". This ability was capitalized, in a split seconds dozens of CSG's winked in perfect alignment, entire Battleship teams striking from their looming position behind the megaship and preparing themselves to unleash the fury of an organized, determined Coalition counterattack. The 1st Fleet would be dispatched to cover the 20th OG and crush the Aschen pocket that so dangerously teetered on the verge of a clear avenue to Terra. The 2nd Fleet, and its figurehead commander, Admiral Jusef Bankovich, were to handle the considerably more daunting task of routing the Taiyou into retreat; or bloody their nose and send them right back to where they came from. At the helm of his massive chariot, Bankovich felt neigh unstoppable in from his throne. At his hands he controlled the first arm of a train of ships that trailed in a rapid zig-zag to the galactic halo, having become the Coalition's prime stepping-stone to Terra for the past month. With well over half of the Coalition's combat capable vessels commited to these following operations, a number which easily climbed into the hundreds of thousands, were prepared and waiting. They would come after, however, Bankovich was to be the first of the victorious Coalition admirals, beside that crock Savage, to rip Terra from the grasps of the Aschen and the Taiyou.

"Sir the thirty-third and thirty-second Oh-Gee's are ready for combat, all weapons online and ordnance prepared. We are ready for combat." A Ensign from Sensors reported as Bankovich took in a sharp breath. The ship-board AI, one of nearly eight, was processing the numerous targets the Habea and her crew could fire upon, pasting the information on a small holo-screen that was nearby. Already, several hundred targets had been fixed into the turret computers and appropriate ordnance loaded accordingly; Tharkos shelling to break any thoughts of a retaliation the Taiyou ships could even muster, with the sudden appearance of a leviathan eclipsing even the Aschen CNV, Admiral Bankovich was even flirting with the remote idea of surrender from either of the factions. It would be word of mouth now, that the Coalition had more than enough firepower to not only turn Terra into a smoldering ash with one salvo, but annihilate the entire system if Admiral Bankovich felt so inclined to. The Oriyak was tired of managing Savage's little frontier war, slipped with nothing but the bill and the death toll. It was Savage that had allowed this faux paus of military strategy to bear the fruit of a possible Taiyou and Aschen victory; if Regievko, that war-mongering foot he was, wanted this war won it would be Bankovich that needed to command from the front, not Savage.

"All units may fire at will, wipe these foul ncirkzhah from my view. Now." Bankovich fixed his arms behind his back and straigthened his chest outward, while his true age had long ago robbed him of the ability to fulfill any sort of direct-combat role, Bankovich still possessed a warriors eye and a predators mind; a simple personality aspect that had given him his easy rise from the grime of the Coalition Military to one of the highest seats on the Military Council. Second to only Savage and the Prime Minister himself, Bankovich smiled like a devil at his spontaneous correction, second to only the Prime Minister now, he would see to it that this war would be won effectively. Bankovich couldn't even feel the contingent of weapons firing dozens of meters below; in one bright fusillade thirty 360 inch cannons, ones that would normally mounted along the spines of any other Coalition ships, fired in prolonged bursts. Nearly one-thousand and eighty rounds were fired by the first group of the 2nd fleet. Bankovich watched with a wicked satisfaction, he always enjoyed condemning men to death.






1st Fleet
CNS Doomsayer
Harbinger class Heavy Destroyer



The Aschen and Taiyou had enjoyed a full scrutiny of the Sol system in the past days, and while they were still met with considerable fighting, it was obvious the Coalition was fighting uphill in this particular scenario. Admiral Savage had planned a contingency effort, utilizing an unknown amount of vessels in an unknown sector of space to act as a "quick reaction" force to provide supplies to UCON forces in the event similar to this. While UCON was still days away from running its combat-side supplies, this aspect of his plan was rather unnecessary. He could focus on utilizing the nearly six-thousand combat-capable vessels ready and waiting to take the fight directly to the enemies. More importantly, he could better utilize the nearly two-hundred Harbinger class Heavy Destroyers, equipped with the XC-1 Slipspace cannon. While the first of thousands of Coalition ships began pouring it at random locations all across the system, UCON vessels would begin to permeate the membranes of the Taiyou striking arm from their hyperspace junction, which had earlier been attacked by a group of ten Stealth Corvettes, four of which being destroyed in the attack, began to systematically target and annihilate entire groups of Taiyou vessels in a matter of seconds. Captain Jaselovich could only fathom what exactly the Taiyou were thinking at the moment. With dozens, even sometimes hundreds, of ships being wiped out in the first volleys, he could only cringe at the rumors spreading amongst the Taiyou forces.

"Captain, XC-1 is ready to fire. Targets coordinated and prepared, awaiting activation." A young Ensign from WepCon reported, beside Jaselovich a small holographic display popped up. A myriad of Taiyou vessels in red-line format were displayed, calming blue lines connecting the first Taiyou ship to the prow of the Doomsayer and from there spreading to several other Taiyou ships. All in all, roughly two dozen enemy ships were targeted. Had Jaselovich missed this opportunity to test one of the Coalition's most advanced vessels in the galaxy, he would have had a hard time believing that one ship could annihilate twenty-four enemies in under thirty minutes flat. Of course, he had already fired the XC-1 twice before in the opening advance of the 1st Fleet.
"Target vector approved, fire now." Jaselovich spat the command promptly, simply turning from the targeting data and looking at the prow-camera that fed a live feed directly into the Command Bridge. Mounted on the edge of a large dish, the Harbinger appeared more like an electronics vessel than a ship-of-the-fleet. However, this charged abruplty, in seconds the XC-1 activated it's Trans-Fringe generator; several seconds later the transuranium barrel of the XC-1 began to manipulate a gravimetric field to extract the Slipstream energies. After suitable charge had built up, the gravimetric sphere shifted into a lance, the host of Slipstream energies boled from the dish like a secondary sun and impacted the first of the Taiyou ships.

"Contact, sir. Activating targeting data now." A Sensors officer responded, Captain Jaselovich was far too interested in the XC-1 to pay attention though. The first Taiyou ship buckled, torn down the spine by a chaotic gravity storm before disintegrating from a host of radiation and thermal energy. Another secondary sun formed in the heart of the Taiyou vessel, the last remanants of the vessels superstructure disappearing in a boiling sphere of molten metal and superheated gases before making the jump to the nearest Taiyou ship. If that little display didn't put the fear of god in the Taiyou, this sure would.
"Contact two, sir." The Weapons officer replied dryly as the same fate that befall the first Taiyou ship occured in startling similarity to the second. While the first target had been a simple destroyer, the battleship that was now turned into a motlen heap detonated in a brilliant explosion, hurtling several globs of energy directly onto Taiyou ships.
"Advance, Weapons." He bellowed one sharp command, and then two seconds later the beam ripped free from the hull of the battleship and speared a carrier directly through the spine.
"Advance again, Weapons."

Operation; Looming Glacier: Cycle: 15


Aschen High Space Command
SOLCOM 1st Main fleet
AHSC 'CNV - Emblem of Divinity'
Spearhead and Purge
CNV - SuperCarrier
Current Strength - 12,305 Vessels
Key CNV Losses;
Dante
Triumphant
Achilles


Admiral Corman continued to watch the battle unfold before him on the viewscreen. The Emblem of Divinity had taken serious damage, with fires belching into the blackness of space. With Coalition Reinforcements en-route, and Aschen dropping like flies, the Admiral had to make a difficult choice. "Put me on the line with all the ships. That Mega-ship, it needs to be taken out. We'll utilize the extreme range of our Singularity cannons to take them out, I want all CNV's to be in an arc formation for simultaneous shot. We need to make this shot count if we're going to break Coalition morale. All CNV Commanders, I want a check in, load your singularity guns. We're going to make one final charge before we jump back towards the edge of the system... here... We'll use Neptune's orbit as a staging area to sling long range weaponry at passing Coalition ships... we'll use their dis-array to buy us time... and jump back to Tal'dor to organize a swift strike." Corman explained before he got on the radio. "Attention SOLCOM... this is the Admiral, all CNVs are to load your weapons, that Mega-ship... I want it taken out. We will avenge our lost CNV's. And we will show the Coalition we're not a weak faction to be rolled over. Coordinate." Corman ordered.

"All CNVs check in." He said over the comms, and would listen to the following response.

"Athenian Philosophy, Checking in..."

"Spartan Pride, checking in."

"Elysian Paradise, checking in."

"Hades Chariot, checking in."

"Zeus' Thunder, all systems go."

"Death's Carrier, we're ready to dispense."

"Salvation, check."

With that Corman would give the nod, and turn to his Lieutenant. "All ships prepare jump.... All ships jump!"

With that, spheres of light began to engulf the Aschen ship in a winking pattern, all of a sudden one by one Aschen ships would jump out, as if they were retreating. Flicker after flicker, ship after ship they jumped out. Soon where the Aschen fleet had remained, there was nothing. Corman had embraced the tactical retreat. And having pulled all his forces out of the pocket. He would make his next move.

Several hundred thousand klicks outside the Supership, the Aschen fleet had gathered, positioning itself for one final strike before it's retreat to Tal'dor. They would have to time this just right. This strike had to be perfect. And so it was, positioning the fleet in a relatively clear spot in space in the Sol system, the CNVs would position themselves in a wide arc around the MS Habeas This arc was several million kilometers apart, leaving for a wide band of coverage of Aschen ships Corman was going to avoid making the same tactical mistake. This time he was relying on the long range of the CNV's by using them in a surprise attack against the Coalition ship. Reverences and Battlestars grouped around at intervals of 25,000 Kilometers around the CNV, in a wide formation, an arc.

"This is Corman, all CNV's weapons free." He said, using the momentum and the brief confusion caused by the sudden jump. All 8 CNV's unleashed their singularity cannons towards the massive Coalition Megaship, Singularities would tear through any ship that posed a hindrance to their path. The brilliant flashes of gutted Coalition ships marred the blackness of space in eight long lances. The moment of truth would then come into fruition, the hyperdense singularities would impact the hull of the Supership. The aim was to break the vessel's spine, the initial kinetic impacts from the immense coordinated strike would rock the supership. Either tearing holes and ripping the ship apart, or simply pockmarking and gutting huge craters into it's armored hull. The first strike would likely catch Bankovich off guard. The Lieutenant aboard the Emblem of Divinity speaking up.

"We have a direct hit, all singularities impacted, damage confirmed." Corman would then offer a nod, an rise from his seat.

"Prepare a second volley! Be quick! We need to get in a second volley before they return fire! Let them pay for what they have done!" Corman shouted as a Lieutenant spoke. "Sir, they are coming about! If we maintain for a reload they will arrive within fifty Microns! Weapons range in Thirty Microns!" Corman then nodded. "All ships jump!" He barked, and before the Coalition could catch up to the sudden shift in Aschen tactics, the ships were gone. Corman was utilizing a quick strike protocol. Of course he was also buying time for the forces at Tal'dor Because he knew a Coalition force of this magnitude at Tal'dor would strike swiftly. So he needed to utilize the momentum. The ships had jumped, this time they would jump themselves outside the system, just beyond the Oort cloud, the entire pockmarked and badly damaged Aschen fleet would remain, Battlestars retreating to their CNVs for repair and drydock.


AHSC 2nd Task Force
SOLCOM 1st Main Fleet
Reverence - Harbinger of Piety
Commander Elias Gant
Current Strength: 2,500 Ships
1,500 Combat Capable, 1,000 Supply and Logistic
Task: Saturn Hold and Disrupt

The soft violet glow of the holographic interface would reflect on the Commander's face he would be watching a map of the Solar System, with the steady line of Coalition ships engaging the Taiyou over Saturn, he could tell the Taiyou could not hold out forever, and so he was determined to shut off the line of Coalition supplies indefinitely. And so, he would get on the comms.

"Alright ladies and gentlemen, our mission is simple, we're to reinforce the Taiyou offensive at Saturn, we're to buy just enough time for SOLCOM to regroup it's fleet, for unrep, and coordination. We're also going to cut off this crucial supply line to prevent Coalition reinforcements, so we're going to attack Coalition entry points into the system with hit-and jump attacks. We have enough ordinance to last us maybe a few Sectons, but all we need is one secton for Tal'dor fleet to arrive to reinforce SOLCOM, once they've Reinforced SOLCOM we can make another push towards Terra, but we're not going to let them reach Tal'dor. So far this war is unpopular back home.. so if we're going to win this, we need to rely on eachother for now. All ships synchronise your jump drives."

He then turned to the AI. "Tactical interface, disseminate to fleet." The AI would then nod. "Recommend the use of Century Bombers to hit-and run Coalition ship points, as well as entry points. Under frigate escort, they can be effective hit-and run." The AI Advised, The Commander then nodded. "2nd Task check in..." Once he recieved the check in from the other ships, a fragment of the SOLCOM Main fleet vanished in glimmers of light. They were going to position themselves to reinforce the Taiyou offensive, which had reached a bloody stalemate. And so it was. Several hundred Battlestars, support ships, and Reverence class PACs would position themselves over the Saturn Station, appearing in glimmers of light amongst the Coalition fleet, slightly behind it. Century Bombers would be deployed, many would be lost in the dense flak fields, but others had pilots that were smart, slingshotting off the gravity wells from the Reverence class ships, which had already begun to carve up the station and surrounding ships with it's main weapons. The Bombers would drop their payload. As quickly as the 2nd Task force came, they winked out. Tactical jumps were now being used as the backbone of Aschen tactics. Moments would go by before several dozen 150Kt - 75Mt Nuclear bombs detonated simultaniously amongst the Coalition fleet and space station, carving out a large chunk of the defensive fleet, and flooding the area with lethal doses of rads, hoping to tip the balance in the now 20,000 Taiyou ships's favor. As payloads were deployed, several Battlestars would likely be lost in the initial strike. The ship had positioned itself on the dark side of Saturn, using the eddies of it's atmosphere to hide from the Coalition ships. Phase II of the last strike had been completed.


AHSC - 3rd Task Force
Main fleet SOLCOM
Reverence Class PAC - A Psalm Every Day
Commander Galen O'Kelly
Strength: 2,500 Ships
1,500 Combat, 1,000 Supply
Objective: Secure Neptune Sling

Another objective that needed to be secured was the rebounding of Coalition ships coming into Neptune after a tactical retreat. This was to be closed up by the two-thousand Aschen ships of the 3rd Task Force. Led by Commander O'kelly, he would watch the tactical AI Screen and then receive the orders from Corman. The tactics had changed as diving right in didn't work out. So the Aschen fleet would make it's move. Knowing that a direct confrontation was a bad idea, the next objective would be to utilize attacks against Key Coalition staging areas. Knowing that Tal'dor was a skip and a jump away, it was up to SOLCOM to either force the Coalition to call a cease-fire, or secure Terra altogether. With the momentum of either side teeter-tottering, it could be decided either way. So the battle was up to the skill of the Commanders and other Aschen officers. They were going to display that they were capable.

This was signified by another portion of the Aschen main SOLCOM Fleet disappearing, taking their jump, they would jump into the thick of Neptune's gravity well, First objective was to scan for any Coalition ships in the area, and promptly engage any nearby Coalition forces. Fanning out to wide arcs to prevent being backed into pockets, the Aschen fleet would move and engage employing a ferocity previously unseen by the Coalition forces in the area.

"Alright we're in, all ships fan out and engage! Any ship that comes around from the previous Terran battle, I want you to pop it, we're going to wrest this system from the grasp of the Coalition, we will not let them lock it down!" The Commander shouted. With the ship's fanning out, the additional precious days would be bought with this last desperate strike.


Taiyou Hyperspace Gate
ITN Ryuho
Shogun Class Battleship
Current Strength 105,873 Ships
Shogunate Expedition

The slow moving juggernaut of Taiyou ships had come through the Hyperspace gate, maybe just a day before it was obliterated in a Coalition strike. Already Shogun Hakuro was watching the Stealth corvettes on the Scanners, Naginata cruisers had fanned out to meet the Stealth Corvettes by picking up on the fringe energies they put out, this allowed the Naginata cruisers to follow up and persue the fleeing Stealth corvettes, firing photonic torpedoes, though the gate had been neutralized, the Stealth Corvettes met an unfortunate end as the Naginata cruisers utilized specialized scanner systems supplied by an advanced race in their home galaxy to detect the corvettes, and home in on them. Rather the Coalition strike that bloodied the nose didn't drive the fleet back, no it steeled their charge, and this was evidenced by the Shoguns fanning out, utilizing their Wave-force cannons to pierce the armor of their enemy counterparts, the wave-force energy detonating the very atomic structure of the enemy ships, this allowed the energies to detonate in a flurry of explosion. The Taiyou had utilized their superior numbers to practically roll over any standing Coalition fleet, there would be more Taiyou ships then the Coalition had ordinance, ships would likely run into issues such as running out of ammunition, only to be popped by the slowly advancing Taiyou line of ships. Cut of from supplies and reinforcements, they would drive their charge into the heart of the battle. Soon all One-hundred thousand ships would enter hyperspace, flashing out in brilliant flashes of energies and radiation, they had all set their course directly for Terra, while in Hyperspace it would take them several days, the Coalition Terran occupation had until the main shogunate fleet arrived.

In Hyperspace, and enveloped, the entire Taiyou Shogunate Armada would rely on the hit and run strikes the Aschen utilized to weaken the Coalition stranglehold. The strategy was to use the Taiyou's sheer overwhelming numbers to wrench Terra from Coalition grasp, despite taking heavy casualties in the recent fighting.

Counter-Balance
2nd Division
Action Team Nine
Operatives 'Tyro' and 'Jackal'




"Aaannndd, pulse now." The labored breathing was broken by the brief shock of acceleration in zero gee; his words, which would normally be silent in the vacuum, were amplified by a small circuitry of audio capacitators and memory cores that would broadcast his words in a tight-beam, hyper-scrambled code to his allies and the CNS Rising Star, a Halycon class Prowler stationed barely a quarter of an AU from the bulk of what used to be the Taiyou foothold in the Sol system. Following the attack by the Stealth Corvettes, the Taiyou Navy had easily taken the bait and devoted the broad arm of their remaining guarding screens to locating and eviscerating the fleeing Coalition ships; this left their passive defenses completely understaffed and essentially open. In the early hours, when the thousands of vessels would begin their cycling of crews and commands for R&R, the Rising Star had slowly pulsed its way past the first of the Taiyou screens. Utilizing it's superior stealth capabilities, more often than not even rivaling the Stealth Corvettes active and passive abilities, the Star was practically unseen as it readied its payload. After jettisoning the useless cargo container that was modelled to resemble a decrepit and battered chunk of starship armor the truely difficult arm of the operation began. Tyro had fixed the cumbersome thruster pack across the joints of his armor before the final transmission from the Star had reached them, announcing that in the following minutes they would be unreachable via audio due to necessary re-stealthing protocols to keep the Taiyou from even thinking that a Coalition vessel was nearby. What Tyro essentially gathered as a "you're on your own now" statemement, Jackal had taken with a soft chuckle and grunt.


Allowing the computer to activate the thrusters for the last leg of the journey, breaking the three-thousand kilometer mark with a nearby Taiyou destroyer, Tyro couldn't help but allow a shiver to run down his spine. Hurtling through space on the front end of a literal missile rocket attached to a backpack, the acceleration alone was almost enough to force him into a black out. With the Taiyou vessel growing from a small pinprick into an easily discernable shape, Tyro had to work quickly to refit the scrambling-array that would make secret communication between him and his squadmate possible. His hands fell across the small datapad rigged to his hip, working his fastest to type keys without augmenting his trajectory too much, a small bar appeared on the display proclaimg "Scrambling Initialized".
"Jackal, Taiyou destroyer, one o'clock. Preparing for orbit." He said quickly before activating the computers entry programming, designating the Taiyou destroyer as the "landing site". The thruster pack began to edge him closer and closer to the vessel, a small blue beacon in his HUD affirming the fact that Jackal was following the same course as well. In fifteen minutes they were due for a light impact on the destroyer, hopefully to be landing somewhere near the prow, where it had been discovered that most of the ship's armor thinned in a particular area in the prow. This would make entrance easier, then it would simply be up to shooting and close-combat, Tyro's favorite type of combat.
"Understood, entering approach vector now. ETA Ten minute." Jackal responded, Tyro could hear the affirmative click that came with the loading of an assault rifle. Equipped with the standardized Coalition Hybrid Rifle, or CHR, that was a staple of the Counter-Balance Action Teams across the galaxy, Tyro and Jackal were going to pack more than enough punch to seriously dent any Taiyou resistance they could manage. Looking over his equipment, a Nano-Rifle, two Lashkav PDW's and a host of electronic devices, Tyro's nerves were steadied by the realization that for once he was prepared for a mission.

The Taiyou vessel was now easily visible, even without the magnification devices rigged into the hyper-reality helm he would have been able to see it. However, seeing it in the startling clarity that was common with the hyper-reality helmets that UCON had almost insitituionalized in ever single Counter-Balance team, still packed a fair amount of surprise. He could see exactly where he was due to make contact, several other meters in his HUD giving him a rough estimation until their arrival, five minutes.
"I've got five minutes, Jackal. Preparing for touch-down." Tyro began to wiggle himself slowly as he struggled for a comfortable landing position. While in an atmosphere he would prefer to be crouching or even in a stand, in zero-gravity striking an object while travelling at nearly three hundred kilometers a minute would make jelly out of anyone foolish enough to try it. That was why the computer was programmed on a course to decrease speed until the last possible minute and then activate a counter-force that would hopefully "skim" Tyro across the exposed hull of the destroyer, where he would then use magnetic clamps to secure himself.

"Approach is good, loading bar." Tyro's mind fell back to the brief thirty-minute discussion they had had before the mission. While it was obvious the Coalition was gaining the advantage quickly in Sol, and the nearly four other star systems that had most recently come under UCON occupation, it was still known in the inner circle of Counter-Balance that the Taiyou were a threat. With superior numbers, UCON lacked any real defense other than simple steamrolling tactics when it came to the Taiyou; they could knock any given number of Imperial ships down, but more would simply take their place. 'So long as that gate remains open', a Navy Vice Admiral had resounded in the small briefing room aboard the Rising Star. While Tyro and Jackal had been one of the most well-known Counter-Balance teams on Terra, their vicinity to actual combat often meant that they were to take as many missions as they could be dished out. Porting in new Action Teams across Coalition space would take too much time to gaurentee the success that most UCON commanders agreed would win the war.

So, the plan had been hatched to insert two operatives onto a Taiyou ship. One will provide the necessary protection and security while the other will perform a cleaning-house of anything one could pry from their systems. The spectrum of objectives they had was all over the place, Tyro would take fuel-consumption records, navigational data, radiological readings, resource-supplement listings and anything else that could point the Coalition in the direction of the Taiyou hypergate. This was easier said than done, however, Tyro was no stranger to danger, but jumping onto an enemy-held ship with heavy weaponry and the only support vessels a thousand kilometers off had always sounded foolish. Now, of course, since he was here he might as well just get it over with.
"Ship in twenty-klick range." Jackal responded haphazardly, he would be impacting before him, meaning if he acted quick enough he might be able to gauge himself using his comrades example. He'd have to find out, though, nearly a minute and a half later he passed the ten click range. He planked himself out, hands grasping at the magnetic clamps that would secure him to the vessel and prepared himself for the jolt of reaction-mass from the thruster pack.





3rd Fleet
66th Operations Group
Task Force Uniform
CNS Everlong
CA Westphalia class Drone Carrier





The massive hulk of the drone carrier's double-hulled design often forced sailors of the Coalition Navy to name the Westphalia class the "Madam Parelel", parelel of coursing being Hykan for "parralell". Its ease of manufacturation was capitalized by that fact, that it was simply two hulls of a Concordia class welded together and joined by the command bridge in the center. While the mass of the Westphalia was often a joke, never was its ability to practically swarm dozens of vessels with drones, neither was its ability to carry a payload of eight 60 gigaton NOVA warheads. Utilizing a ring of fission devices to collapse an internal 'salted' warhead, the yield of the warheads was practicaly quadrupelled, making the nearly two-hundred other drone carriers throughout Operations Group the main strategic arm of half of the 3rd Fleet. The lines had become relatively fixed in the past three days, the 3rd Fleet, boasting somewhere near fifteen thousand vessels in the combat arm alone, were spread across the berth of the solar system. With plans to bring in the 4th Fleet as well to aid in the sealing of Terra, the Taiyou and Aschen forces in the local region were quickly becoming outnumbered; and while fighting still continued even outside of Sol, it would soon be wearing on all three faction's mind that they might soon be looking at an attritional war rather than a conventional one. While Captain Everret Long understood the aspects of waging an "attritional war", he also understood the asepcts of surviving it; though he was confident in the 68th ability to contain, press and attrition the Aschen pocket that had just left the Sol system, he was hoping that the fools would simply retreat to Tal'Dor. There had been rumors of peace-treaties, joint-governence debates and even a Coalition surrender spreading throughout the entire fleet in the past several days. Everret was certain that peace would follow this conflict, he was event more sure that after engagements for Sol ended the Coalition would probably post-pone the efforts to press the war and approach the Aschen with a compromise, then all of this business could be behind him and he could quit the Navy, work on a farmworld somehwere in the Outer Empire. Crossing his arms over his chest, the Captain leaned himself backwards ever so slightly as several groups of Assault Frigates manuevered to provide overlapping fire for the upcoming combat. While the 66th OG was located on the far right side of the Aschen bubble still clinging to the edges of Sol, most of the 69th and 70th OG's were completely occupied by a wall of Aschen. He counted himself lucky, he could be facing the bulk of them, then he'd really be using those 60 gigatons. Instead, however, he was here on the far corner, with a measly estimated 300 Aschen ships against the one-thousand and two hundred Coalition ships.

"Captain, we have hyperspace-exit trajectories feeding into the sensors now, it is estimated that thirty-three to forty Confederation vessels will drop from warp soon." The AI was relaying him the entire sluece of information that was pouring from the sensor bridge, which would have been located only twenty or so meters below him. He couldn't help but smile to himself, when the first Coalition ships had engaged theri Aschen counterparts, they had expected to simply fight then when they bounded out from their 'warp' and then operate from there. It was one Junior Lieutenant in the helm of a Coalition destroyer that realized the passive Slipstream navigation systems could hone in on the mass disturbances the sudden absence of space created. Upon further investigation it appeared that the Coalition had found one of the simplest ways of countering the Aschen's hit and run tactics; that had been nearly a full year ago during the cold-war Terran conflicts. Now, the Aschen would be feeling the real hurt of the Coalition, practically wide open upon even dropping from warp.
"Understood, feed the data to Weapons and Navigation, then package it and send it to the others. We'll set out the welcome mat." Long clasped his hands behind his back and then inhaled, the refurbished air that was so common of Coalition vessels had become an almost aroma-like object to him. He released his breath as the first of a squadron of ten HIKER Attack Drones zipped through the conglomeration of vessels that made the thirty-ship strong Carrier Strike Group. A quarter of an AU away two more CSG's moved in, while between that a single Battleship Strike Group also readied itself for their guests; while Long expected the Aschen to come blazing in as their usual bravado, he was completely confident in Uniforms ability to handle whatever they could dish out.

"BSG Alpha One and BSG Alpha Four are moving on our right flank, CSG Bravo Two and CSG Bravo Five are maneuvering left. BSG Bravo Three and CSG Juliet Eight are holding the middle with us, Captain." The AI replied in the usual, monotone voice that was common of so many Coalition vessels. While in fact the standard Coalition vessel utilized two or three "dumb" AI's for simple tasks such as navigation, engineering and sensors, the main AI at the core of the ship was in all sense a "smart" model. The main AI often handled ship-to-ship communication, overlooked and double checked her dumber partners and aided the crew just as much as her other intelligences did. It was often so that these crews would develop a connection to their AI or "Momma' Hen", and in return the AI would design it's own "personality" to make the crew feel more comfortable in any situations. The Everlong's AI hadn't really 'developed' in any sense of the word, while it is common duty for most core AI's to take the name of the ship, Captain Long hadn't even began to justify it with that.
"Understood ... Everlong, keep your eyes open." He steadied himself as he spoke, and he could have sworn he felt a moments hestitation from the intelligence. He had even gone so far as to think he broke it after its lack of response finally occurred to it.
"Yes, understood, Captain Long."


"Alright, listen up! We've got about a hundred Confederation ships dropping from warp in Echo-Tango five, and we're rolling out the carpet for 'em." Captain Long had already taken dominance as CSG Alpha Two's commanding officer. Most of the times it was simply left to the conglomeration of vessels to elect a commanding officer, but Long had muscled his way past any of his candidates long ago and had assumed the reigns. With only one BSG in the area, numbering twenty vessels, he would have to rely on the drone complement of CSG A2 and CSG J8. With four Concordia class Attack Carriers, two Drone Carriers and two Heavy Carriers, the better part of a thousand drones and four Battlecruisers, the offensive capability of A2 and J8 was a much greater advantage than most of what the Aschen would bring. While Battlestars contained an effective load of "Vipers" they often paled in comparison against dedicated carriers such as the Sentinel of Concordia class. Several minutes later the twenty-vessel Strike Team began its deployment, utilizing the six Atea class destroyers as a screen, the two remaining Sigma-Crusiers were attached to the carriers to provide close support.
"Destroyer screen is online, sir." A young Ensign from Navigations boomed loudly, jolting Long from a transparent though as the first of several alarms began to announce themselves with wailing.
"Looks like the prom date's arrived, let's get her outta' that dress boys."




22nd Operations Group
Alpha Unit
1st Squadron
India Element
CNS Rigsby Gaines
BB Radegast class Battleship




"You said what happened?" Admiral Savage fought to keep the earpiece closed into the canal of his left ear, almost straining as his sudden vision became clouded with a mixture of rage, fury and appreciation. While the 2nd Fleet was still a ways away from completely evicting the Aschen from their pocket in Sol, it appeared that they had taken care of that problem themselves. Also delivering a crippling blow to the Habe as they did, leaving Admiral Bankovich with quite a concussion as well as several other vessels of the 2nd in chewed up bits. He gilded himself at the thought of Bankovich losing his precious seat in that massive Coalition warsteed that know listed lifelessly in space; with her back broken in several places, the Habea had barely survived due to sheer luck alone. With a quarter of her crew incapacitated as well, war-waging capabilities had once again fallen back into his hands and boy was he capitalizing on that. Using the unguided 3rd and 1st Fleets to establish a secure border, not only hemming in the Aschen who were now located somewhere between the Kuiper belt and the bulk of the Coalition blockade, but now the Taiyou as well were experiencing their own crushing anaconda grip. With the noose quickly tightening around Sol's neck Savage was sure to have this little frontier war bundled up by the time Bankovich got back on his feet. That didn't mean the loss of the Habea didn't upset him, though, it was far from the truth. With that leviathan out of the fight, there went the massive firepower she packed and sheer freak factor a vessel of that magnitude offered; now, of course, that just meant Savage would have to do it the old fashioned way.

"Affirmative, sir, reports put a Refit-and-Rearm at twenty weeks." The young Ensign on the line was from one of the Fleet Tenders that had escorted the Habea in had caught the full sight of her opening battle, witnessing the terror-weapons that had become the singularity cannon tearing through the mighty Habea. While she would fight another day, it wouldn't know, and that was what dissappointed Savage most.
"Damn, we really coulda' used the punishment she could dish out too." He couldn't help but fake the comment, only slightly, if Savage had been in command of 2nd Fleet and Bankovich was the one stuck between a rock and a hard place, he was certain old Mikal would be crying crocodile tears as well. It was a well known fact that in many issues, more-so regarding this war effort more than anything else now, that Admiral Savage and Bankovich were not the best of friends. For reasons unknown to him, only Regievko would dispatch a man he fundamentally despises to aid him in acquiring the first conquests of the war. If he asked him, Ludvik would probably just wrap it up for the media to gobble up, 'two of the most powerful Military Counselors acting alongside one another, that'll get the polls churning for the war effort'.
"We'll work as fast as we can sir, but I don't think OFFCOM will spare any more transport flotillas to help us out with repairs. Pretty sure it'll all be Fleet Tenders from here on out." The Ensign relayed, giving a curt grunt of disapproval at the thought. While the Vanguard class Fleet Tender was well aware of supplying the Navy in Sol and the other systems, it was well known that they couldn't carry as nearly as much extra ammunition or equipment as the massive Arkalus transports could. Though he hardly expected the Coalition to be running low on supplies soon, yet it had happened, his confidence was restored in the Fleet Tenders following the sudden exit of the Aschen. Now, the 22nd OG was practically brand-spanking-new in little under forty-eight hours. With an estimated combat efficiency at now 93 percent, Savage had even found himself dispatching units to the 1st and 3rd fleets, instead of the other way around. It was true that the 20th and 22ng OG had cut their teeth at Terra, now they would be considered one of the most well-trained units in the entire Navy, and Savage was sure to be leading the charge into the Aschen thicket with a combined fleet.


"OFFCOM will have their hands tied up with the DCTR by the time that happens," Savage mumbled to himself before dismissing the Ensign with a swift 'job well done' and then ending the audiolink. Gaines, the Rigsby's core AI, was displaying himself with crossed arms as he waited for Savage.
"Gaines, I want an OG to dispatch to Bankovich, that bastard's dead in space but we need that ship to survive. You have full control of who stays and goes, but make it worth it." Savage gruesomelly picked at the scar tissue that discolored a large portion of his neck. He brushed a long finger over the weeks worth of growth underneath his chin, a constant reminder that even with victory came the stresses of defeat. Gaines had vanished from his small display pad and left Savage in his spartan quarters, there was a small double-sized mattress and covers; a large airscreen and desk with a ruggedized laptop, but other than that the bare furniture was unnoticed. He pulled his lips into a tight line as he gazed at the holographic picture mounted beside his mattress, a older woman smiling brightly in the sun-dress that would've looked like it belonged on a college student.
"Lieutenant Commander, get a strike team ready, as much firepower as you can. We're initiating Operation Cloak."




1st Fleet
306th Squadron
Zulu Element
CNS Jacob's Ladder
CB Sirona class Sigma Cruiser




"The Heavy Destroyers are firing! We have a gap in the line, commit the attack!" Captain Jacksons nearly screamed as the first of the cruisers opened up with their spinal-cannons, hurling a wave of ferromagnetic slugs the size of a large car at a fraction the speed of light. A split-second later a string of flowers, bright miniature suns from the 60 kiloton Tharkos-tipped slugs, tore apart the flank of the Taiyou offensive. In a split second dozens of vessels were simply wiped out of existence, splattering their allies with molten globules of scorched starship armor, several more vessels were annihilated by the EMP bursts and careened into their comrades packed so tightly close to them. The Taiyou were taking unacceptable losses by this time, eight groups of five Heavy Destroyers had hemmed in an arm of the Taiyou offensive and was absolutely slaughtering them. Ruined Taiyou ships outnumbered the Coalition casualties by hundreds now, the XC-1 cannons proving the Coalition's greatest weapon against the Taiyou wave of ships. Down the line, Jacksons witnessed a wink of atmosphere and plasma boiling into the vacuum, unfortunately the Taiyou had always managed to claim one or two enemies, either by lucky shots or the kamikaze charges they had made themselves so well known for.

"Launch the Convectors, strategic warheads on the far flanks. Send in the screeners, and tear out their fucking throats." The war had become far more personal in the past several days for Jacksons, the 306th had been in the thick of the Taiyou strike from the very beginning of the offensive into Sol. He had watched countless vessels fall to the Taiyou machine, watched entire groups of vessels disappear behind a wall of Taiyou fire and steel, now it was his turn. He felt a deep pit of satisfaction bottom out his stomach as a Taiyou carrier was struck in the spine with a Lasglow cluster missile, sprinkling the vessel with countless nuclear warheads which blossomed into a violent, blooming flower in the darkness of space.
"Kill-count is at thirty-eight, Captain, and climbing -- we're actually winning!" A Navigation officer shouted from his pit, the sudden realization that the crew of the Jacob's Ladder might survive to fight in later battles of this damned war seemed to instill a sense of courage amongst the crew, because Jackson soon noted the elite precision of his own command.
"I've got a destroyer group target, they're packed tight. We could drop one Chimaera in there and wipe 'em all." A WepCon officer was typing furiously on his keypad while conversing with the core-AI and his own comrades.
"Let's do it, you have batteries Bravo and Charlie. Send 'em to Hell." Jackson had to fight the urge to smile.

"Missile launching ... "
"We've got two destroyers coming in from the left, targeting put 'em right for us! The Clandestine is moving to engage!" A Sensors officer shouted as an airscreen deployed in the front of the bridge, a starboard camera caught the sudden battle between the Coalition battlecruiser and the smaller Taiyou ships. The Clandestine fired first, four 32 inch shells tearing through the prow of the Taiyou vessel and gutting the ship outright, spinning uselessly before the Taiyou vessel unleashed its returning barrage. The wave-cannon tore a gaping hole along the Clandestine's prow and exposed a long tract of her internals to the vacuum, the Taiyou ship was preparing for another shot before the first of ten Longbow missiles collided with it amidship and simply snapped it in half. Explosions rolled up the two halves of the vessel before finally turning dark, dying in the blackness.
"Yeah! Give 'em hell!" Several of the officers shouted in chorus as the Clandestine banked to expose a Taiyou cruiser to a fusillade prepared by four Atea class Destroyers. The Taiyou ship, obviously dedicated to a kamikaze charge, fought its momentum to augment its path before simply be filayed by the spinal-cannons of the Coalition destroyers.

Aschen High Space Command
SOLCOM 1st Main fleet
AHSC 'CNV - Emblem of Divinity'
Operation: Looming Glacier
CNV - SuperCarrier
Current Strength - 11,508 Vessels

"We can't seem to hold this indefinitely so we need to come up with a plan B." Corman said as he contemplated his next movements. He was watching the holographic readout in tandem with the screens that displayed the long range DRADIS. Though the Habea had been destroyed, which served as a Morale boost, Tal'dor fleet was nowhere to be found, and so Corman was not getting his reinforcements.

"Gods dammit..." He mumbled as he watched the battle simmer down on his long range DRADIS Screens. Eying the screens carefully he would get on the Comms.

"I need another Battlegroup to hit Terra.. try to disrupt the Coalition forces there.. then we're going to pack up our things and head to Tal'dor, from there we'll rendezvous with the Tal'Dor fleet, then we'll make another push into Terra. Hopefully the Outlook fleet, and the Ragnaar fleet will rendezvous with the Tal'dor fleet, and maybe we'll get backed up by Home fleet, but until then we need to make a choice... continue fighting a losing battle, or regroup and make one grand push deep into Terra and ultimately Coalition space. I want every Scatteran man woman and child dead." Corman said as he narrowed his eyes, just as the CNS Rigsby Gaines came into the DRADIS Screens. This presented Corman with a devious idea. "Chairman Cain, come in." He said on the comms, and would await a response, just as her voice chimed in on the comms.

"This is Chairman Cain, go ahead Admiral." This resulted in a grin to span the older Admiral's face, as Helena Cain's voice echoed on the comms.

"Chairman, you're a Tauron, right? What of the old 'Blood for blood' oath?" Corman asked as he looked to the crackling speaker, DRADIS Readouts softly whirring in the background of the bridge. Lieutenants and other personnel would be moving about the clean white bridge, which was scored with fires and electrical discharges.

"I think I located the Coalition flagship, with Admiral Savage on board, DRADIS is pinging transponder codes and we've identified it as Savage's ship. I think you know what to do, Madame Chairman." Corman said on the radio, the phone firmly in his hands, calloused fingers clasped around the clean, slick black body of the telephone device. "You remember the oath we took when we joined the AHSC... the wartime doctrine?"

Cain then replied. "Fight 'em till we can't. I'll make the necessary preparations."

Corman then slowly set the phone down, staring out the bridge window at the Battlestar Pegasus. The Beast, slowly soaring across the field of view, over the crane servos that repaired and refitted the CNV Emblem of Divinity on the fly, along with the dozens of Battlestars docked in her underside hangar bays.

Corman's gaze then returned to the readout screen, watching the red icons representing Coalition ships, move about with Green icons that represented Aschen ships carrying out their desperate attacks against the Coalition stranglehold on the planet. This caused Admiral Corman to stroke his chin as he considered his tactic, from the relative safety of his fleet positioning, which loomed just outside the solar system, hidden from view by the eddies and asteroid particles that comprised the kuiper belt and the Oort cloud, it made sifting through DRADIS Useless, but it also allowed Corman's fleet to remain in relative safety. Sitting in the rear-echelon away from the front line attacks carried out by the two attack groups designated, and holding their very best against overwhelming numbers. Corman silently listened to the chatter of the Battlestar Commanders and Viper Pilots slinging it out amongst themselves, and against Coalition firepower.






3rd Task Force
Battlestar Pegasus
Operation; Blood for Blood
CHM Helena Cain
Strength, 1,500 Vessels

"Chairman we're prepped and readied for jump." Spoke a young Lieutenant in the helm control, allowing the Chairman, whom was a strong Tauron woman to stand over the war table. "I want to personally ensure that Mr. Savage is killed in this mission. Upon execution we're to set coordinates in our FTL Drives directly for Tal'dor, if you're taking too much damage jump out, there's no use in letting this sorry bastard kill you." She said, clenching the communication phone in her hand. "All ships, prepare to commence FTL Jump. Set Coordinates." Cain ordered as she pushed some hair out of her face.

The Pegasus, the hulking Battlestar that she was slowly made her way towards a group of Aschen strike ships, a handful of Battlecruisers, of the Sagittaria and Artemis class, several Picon and Equus class Frigates, backed up by Assault destroyers, and several hundred Alexandria class cruisers, but amongst the fleet was a pre-battlestar class Carrier. The Alexander, a large and cumbersome carrier. Yet she sported hundreds of Vipers, and Century bombers. Backed up by one of the last remaining pure Battleship classes. The Leviathan class. Easily twice the size of a Battlestar, this 5th Age era battleship sported updated and modern weaponry. Including the experimental Athena cannon. A Large weapon which fired a concentrated charged particle beam capable of reducing even the more resilient armors to slag.


Cain would let her eyes fall to the DRADIS screen, and then with a deep breath she spoke up. "All ships prepare to jump on my command.... jump." Cain's order was crisp and clean. The low humming of the spooled drives would be heard and then the ship, along with her contingent, winked out, to jump right in the thick of the Coalition Strike group, the prise, Savage's flagship in the center. Cain was going to have her revenge.


3rd Strike Force
AHSC Leviathen class Battleship
LCB - Bacchus
Operation; Blood for Blood


"Jump completed! They're rolling out the welcome mat now." A Lieutenant said aloud as Commander Finley would turn to the DRADIS readouts. "Athena Command, report." A Female voice then registered on the intercom. "Athena Cannon how may I assist you?" The Voice asked as the Commander spoke. "Paint and fire, enemy Coalition ship. Confirm, Sigma class cruiser, commence, full energy load-out." He said as the ship bucked, the hyper-dense Trinnium armor plating bucking against the ferromagnetic slugs hurled from Coalition ships, allowing the fiberclad armor underneath to crumble and disperse the energy. Even as Pegasus soared through the lines, putting up a dense flak field, augmented by Jamming, and utilizing her Cruiser escorts to dole out pain to nearby Coalition ships.

"Athena Cannon here, your call is important to us, we're charged and ready." Commander Finley would then nod. "Athena Cannon, this is the CO, is your target painted?" The Athena Cannon then replied. "Affirmative." The Leviathen would continue to sail through the void, letting her dorsal mounted Anti-ship cannons hurl superdense explosive magnetic slugs towards nearby Coalition ships. Dishing out the pain to all that came within range. Thin red beams of light would move about before centering on a Sigma class cruiser. Seconds went by before the cruiser was suddenly reduced to molten slag at the hands of a bright red beam of light which punched through the dense armor, and reduced it to superheated slag.

"Athena Cannon here, target neutralized." The Voice said as the Commander nodded, the ship bucking from a nuclear warhead impacting her side.

"Sir, Radiological alarm! We got nukes inbound!" The Commander then nodded. "Activate Aegis shield! Now!" The Nukes would make their approach, and suddenly detonate several hundred klicks short of the Battleship, a burst of light shooting from a small Point defense turret. "Nukes neutralized." Would be said just as a Coalition Drone Carrier came into view. Commander Finley then picked up the phone. "Athena Cannon... that Drone carrier, neutralize it." The Woman's voice then echoed. "Athena cannon here, target acknowledged." The Leviathen class then turned on it's keel, taking a salvo of slugs from a nearby Coalition destroyer, only to return the favor with a salvo of explosive fragmentation slugs, which detonated inside the enemy ships, sending fragments in all directions. The Aschen strike force clearing a swathe of destruction towards Savage's ship. Pegasus would be leading the charge.

Of course the attack was not concluded as the Leviathen fired small tendrils of light towards the Drone carrier, the massive twin-hulled ship would then meet the same fate, the Athena cannon discharge, running a deep lance of light through one side of the hull, diagonally through the ship, impaling the engines to result in a brilliant explosion.



AHSC 3rd Task Force
Sagittaria Class Battlecruiser; Daedalus
Operation: Blood for Blood
Commander Gairwyn

The Hulking hammer shaped form of the Sagittaria class would be coursing alongside the Pegasus as she made her run towards Savage's ship. Her charge was to keep enemy ships off the Pegasus' back as she unleashed her hatred towards Savage's ship.

"Watch that cruiser... forward photon cannons prime and discharge, torpedoes armed..." The Lieutenant said as the ship banked around, scoring several punches at a nearby Coalition cruiser, severing it in three as the battered and aged Daedalus kept pace with 'The Beast' which was a nickname for Pegasus. Helena Cain was preparing a risky maneuver. The 'Cain Maneuver' as it would soon be called. The Aschen ships continued their tightly packed group around the Pegasus, as they laid waste to the 22nd OG, despite taking heavy losses they maintained their charge.


3rd Task Force
Battlestar Pegasus
CHM Helena Cain
Operation; Blood for Blood

Sweat and blood poured down the woman's face as she clenched the railing. Lieutenants and helmsman pushing the ship to full throttle. Searing through escorts and ignoring the destroyers, she was gunning directly for the Flagship. "All forward batteries open fire! Do not relent!" She shouted on the phone as the Pegasus unleashed everything she had at the Radegast class Battleship. She promised herself that Savage would get a bloody nose, though ferromagnetic slugs impacted against the hull of Pegasus, she pressed on through sheer luck. Cain was going to try a risky maneuver. This was signified by a Lieutenant shouting. "500 Metrons and closing.... 300 metrons...." Cain then nodded. "Spool the drives..." By now the Pegasus had managed to punch a sizable hole in the side of the Battleship, simply by pummeling it with everything it had. Suddenly everything stopped. Cain on the intercom. "All hands brace for impact! Assault teams one and two prepare for depart, Red stripes prepare to repel boarders, Assault team four, take him down. I want to see his head personally on my desk.. good luck and may the Lords watch over you." And with that it was sudden, the Pegasus slammed into the already carved out side of the Radegast class ship, thrusters kicking hard as the ship burrowed, wiggled it's way in deeper, locking itself with the Battleship.

Pegasus: Forward Airlocks

"Alright you maggots prepare to move out! Blow those airlocks!" As the Pegasus locked with the decks of the Rigsby Gaines The badly damaged Battlestar would hold it's own, armor plating scored off as the Marines and boarding parties had mere seconds. "Go go go!" One shouted as they rapelled down the airlock and sides of the ship, some equipped with power armor, others in space suits. "Let's bring down the house!" A Marine shouted as he bounded onto the deck, discharging his disruptor at a stunned Coalition officer. "Forward now!" He barked as two Power armored Marines rappelled down the line. They were carrying a large device. a Naquadria bomb to leave as a going away present. "Get in as deep as you can!" A Soldier barked as they began to cut the blast doors open. "We need to get in before Pegasus jumps or this whole mission is scrubbed!" He shouted as Red Stripes, special Marines were already locked in engagements with Coalition forces trying to get aboard Pegasus. The wreckage and twisted metal turning into a battlefield as hundreds of Aschen soldiers poured from the Pegasus onto the enemy ship.

Pegasus: CIC
Glancing at her watch, Helena Cain would count the seconds as the ship bucked and rattled from the abuse it was taking. The Other Aschen ships crowded around the Pegasus, intercepting shots while the flak field kept out missiles. Cain was watching as the Marines defeated the first set of locks, forcing the doors open on the Battleship and lobbing grenades into the hold.


Boarding Party; CNS Rigsby Gaines

"Cleared!" A Power armored Marine shouted as he stepped over the dead body of a Coalition Marine, half of the man vaporized as the Boarding party attempted to carry the Naquadria bomb deeper into the ship, everyone's watches and timepieces beeped loudly. "Cleared! Brace Pegasus is jumping!" And the Pegasus suddenlu flickered out in a blink of light. The resulting temporal distortion cratered the already structurally weakened side of the Radegast class ship. Likely causing massive atmospheric venting, coupled with fires all over. But if the Boarding party succeeded, things were about to get worse. With Pegasus gone, the remainder of the Aschen fleet jumped away. What was carnage and destruction was peace once more. Except for the Two Hundred some odd Aschen soldiers aboard the Radegast class ship, determined to deliver Savage's Going away present.


CNV Emblem of Divinity
Outer Orbit

"Sir, Pegasus has completed her jump, there are only 867 Ships remaining, mission is so far a success." Corman then offered up a nod. "Very well... let us return to Tal'dor. We will rendezvous with the Tal'dor fleet... and mount a defense... I pray to the gods that we can get out of this mess." Corman said, then offered a nod.

All 11,000 Aschen ships, would wink entirely out of the Sol system to regroup at Tal'dor. They had lost the fight. But this would spur a massive industrial, and military buildup back home.

With Chairman Cain and Pegasus badly hurt, it would be at least a Sectar before Pegasus was fit for service, once she docked in the Emblem of Divinity, the ships would be gone. Grouping around Tal'dor and preparing for a massive defensive mount. Corman was going to ready another strategy to draw the line in the sand, and dare the Coalition to cross it.


ITN Ryouki
Naginata Class Cruiser
Taiyou Offensive

As Tyro made his way closer to the glimmering white hull of the Naginata class, it would seem to shimmer in the sun. Of course his approach was all but undetected, as a Taiyou watchman stared at him through the window. Lacking an effective cloak, the man was easily seen and made out. Picking up a comm node, Lieutenant Takamichi would speak up. "Commander, we have an unknown trying to break into the ship... prepare to repel boarders." He said as the Commander nodded. "Right..." He then would nod to the Lieutenant, and the several hundred Taiyou soldiers would mobilize, anywhere could be a point of Entry for Tyro. All they could di is watch, sit and wait.

1st Fleet
55th Operations Group
Task Force India
Juliet Element
CNS Orion Junction
CA "Concordia" class Attack Carrier




"They're everywhere!" Was all Captain Jakiz managed to gleen from the communique before the eighth MSC-45A Hurricane winked out of existence on the tactical display of the Junctions' sensor screening. Of course, the pilot could have simply backed in behind one of the chunks of ruined starship that was floating aimlessly in the L3 Lagrange pointe of the planet, but Jakiz would place money that the Hurricane had been annihilated by the flak fields put out by the Aschen vessels in the thick of the Coalition fleet. He steeled himself against this most recent loss, Lieutenant Ambers would've wanted Jakiz to continue on, regardless of her death or not. Lieutenant Commander Kellers was right beside him, her steel eyes glazed from the weeks of combat that had followed, his crew was strained and on the verge. And now this happened.

"Get the CSG battle ready, we need Cyclone's running anti-ship and Hurricane's running anti-fighters! We need everything we've got in the vack -- now go!" He shouted, just as an assault frigate escorting a transport away from the hulk of a fleet tender took a full broadside from an Aschen battlestar. The vessel buckled underneath the horrifying firepower, any hope of reclaiming the vessel damned to the depths of the Inferno as the plasma conduits containing the superheated propulsion were severed and spilling out of the gaping holes of the starship. The transport fell soon afterwards, barely moving away from its dead protector before a fleet of Aschen fighters, Vipers as the MilNet called them, descended upon the lightly armored merchant vessel.

"Dammit -- where the fuck did the Aschen come from?!" Another pilot screamed, his voice flooded with terror as the first of dozens of Aschen fighters began their runs on the twenty or thirty Coalition single-ships completing their air patrols. The entire fleet was completely unprepared for an Aschen jump this deep in to the gravity well; they'd remain open to fire for the next fifteen minutes, and there was nothing any of them could do about it.
"Sonuvabitch! Juliet Actual is down, repeat, Juliet Actual is down!."






Bravo Squadron
Alpha Wing
CAG Orion Junction
CWO McKinnison

"Bank it, bank![i]" McKinnison had to fight his way through the gee forces as the Hurricane spurred to the left, leaving its former velocity at just the right time as the blob of superheated plasma screamed by the in the dense vacuum, trailing a miniature comet tail of cooling gases as the it continued on to splash harmlessly on one of the few UCON cruisers that actually had its magnetic plates active. While the [i]Odices was crippled from a salvo of ferromagnetic slugs from a now deceased Battlestar, eight kilometers downrage and beginning its slow trek that would thrust it into the moon, the Captain had managed to feed enough energy in to the shielding and defense systems, making the Odices a rally point for the Coalition fighters. Numbering barely under thirteen, McKinnison would still have to wait thirty more minutes before he could even think of asking for clearance for reinforcements.

"Dammit! We're fish in a barrel out here. We need to get their attention -- Mickey, load out a salvo for the two-oh-five!" His voice was lost momentarily in a wash of static as the Hurricane pushed its way through the magnetic field of the Odices and zoomed by the observation decks, giving several sailors a clear view of the long carbon scarring from the peppering of 20 millimeter rounds they had recieved from two Aschen Vipers. The smaller, nimbler craft had several advantages, but in this fight firepower had won out over agility. The two Aschen pilots were annihilated by trained shots from the 40 millimeter cannons rigged with magnetized plasma bomblets that burst into a rather beautiful rainbow of colors once they detonated.

"Two-Oh loaded and operational, locating targets now." McKinnison, a Chieft Warrant Officer of the Coalition Armored Vehicle Detachment, typed furiously as the Hurriance accelerated onto a new vector. On the tactical display, a simple Tri-Spectrum sensor suit constructed by Strohng Industries, sent several of the contacts scattering as the Hurricane activated its two plasma burners. His fingers were blazing a white trail as he sifted through several of the contacts that ships had managed to file away before coming under attack.
"I've got a crippled Battlestar two clicks, flanked by four escorts -- Looks like destroyers and cruisers, two each." McKinnison shook his head, launching an attack on an enemy capitalship, even if it was crippled, would be suicide. Armed with the 205 millimeter cannon, the Hurricane did have a large boost to its firepower, but it was also less manueverable and nimble than the Hurricane's figherbomber variant. McKinnison would have to make due, however, he quickly realized that the Battlestar was locked in an engagement with four Alachino class assault frigates and two missile cruisers, which were manuevering over the crushed and battered hull of a destroyer to fire directly on the Aschen starships. Sergeant O'Reich, the pilot and borderline bane of McKinnison's military career, must have obviously noticed the Coalition vessels as well, because even as they neared the farthest reaches of the engagement he was talking.

"I see 'em too, Mickey. Those frigates can occupy the escorts, the cruisers can open up the shields. Give me a weapons loadout, Mickey." O'Reich yanked the Hurricane sideways as a Coalition destroyer blasted past them, shields flaring and engines burning at full burn as the first of several magnetic slugs from the Aschen ecorts found their mark at the prow of the Coalition vessel. The magnetic fields held against the hyperluminal rounds, the energy projectors boiling away the flurry of atomic missiles coming at them as well, the superheated blasts of plasma boiling away the firing devices before the weapons could even detonate. McKinnison didn't even respond to O'Reich as he keyed his way through the digital existence of the Hurricane from his prompt. Shifting his way through the armaments display, McKinnison had to fight a laugh as the sleek wire-line representation of four ASTM-800M anti-ship missiles. Packed with six individual delivery systems, or IDS, that carried separate five kiloton thermonuclear warheads, McKinnison was sure these would do damage if they struck an unshielded target, like that Aschen battlestar over there.

"We've got four Reflexes, M-model. Means we got about twenty-four kilotons before we might as well start throwing our helmets at 'em." He huffed, not startled by the fact that he was flying in a multi-role with four nuclear missiles strapped to it, but by the fact the even if O'Reich managed to get them close enough, the anti-fighter screening put out by the battlestar could easily stop the Hurricane in its tracks. All they needed was one lucky shot, and McKinnison's wife back in Hydium would be getting his insurance pay-out a little sooner than expected.
" ... We're really gonna' try this, aren't we?" McKinnison mumbled as he felt the velocity of the Hurricane change once more, a chuckle coming forward from O'Reich as he angled the bulk of the Hurricane into a steeper angle, moving up along the tail of the Coalition destroyer as it unleashed a salvo from its spinal-cannon. The sensors, not necessarily hardened enough to survive the firing of a ferrogmagnetic cannon, flickered spontaneously before simply rebooting. McKinnison cursed, in the two seconds that it took for the suite to rearm itself, McKinnison was practically blind.

"Yupsiree, Mickey. Someone's gotta' do it, not like we get paid to not kill shit." O'Reich activated the afterburner, a thin trail of ionized plasma blasting from the manifolds of the thruster packs. McKinnison had to fight the acceleration slightly, inhaling sharply and flexing his chest as the first strobing tails of ten Longbow missiles launched from their racks and streaked towards an Aschen cruiser as it tangled with a smaller assault frigate. It took only seconds before the Coalition vessels, as well as the Aschen ones, to realize that a smaller craft was approaching at increasing speeds.

"Sergeant O'Reich, this is the Captain McCaski of the Colonia. This zone's about to turn red hot, that battlestar's in the way of the Gaines -- we need to blast it apart and get to Admiral Savage --" The rest of the transmission was lost in the static, McKinnison checked the communications gear, plowing through layers of overlappying electromagnetic fields in a relatively unhardened Hurricane meant that communications with the rest of the fleet could drop at any given moment. Of course, a small sensor notified the CWO that the Hurricane had reactivated its electromagnetic dampening systems, which gave a phenomenal increase his ability to see and hear.

"Savage ... the Gaines? The hell are they talking about?" O'Reich returned, if McKinnison could've seen him he probably would've turned his entire head to look back to his co-pilot. O'Reich's visored features was displayed on a simple holographic videolink, however. O'Reich shook his head, McKinnison sharing a fair amount of confusion with him. The Rigsby Gaines, a modified Radegast battleship that served as the flagship of Admiral Savage's 1st Fleet in Sol, was nearby. McKinnison was completely unaware exactly why they would be fighting towards the Gaines instead of from it, though.

"Bravo Four to Colonia, please repeat your previous message. The Rigsby Gaines appears to be our location to rally on, verify?" McKinnison let the communique lie dead for several seconds, listening only to the dead thrum and beat of the Hurricane's four engines shake and rattle the entire starfighter as they crested over the stern of the Colonia, a UCON destroyer. Two kilometers ahead, the broken structure of the Aschen cruiser lay split square in half, losing its atmosphere and sending any crew into the icey depths of the vacuum. Four or five klicks beyond that, the last of the Aschen escorts took a ferromagnetic slug straight in the prow and was gutted from stem to stern in one clean shot, its main reactors dying and turning the ship into nothing more than a scrap heap of useless trinnium and ordnance.

"Colonia to Bravo Four, we have confirmation of enemy boarders on the Rigsby Gaines. All local forces have been ordered to drop their assignments and head for the Gaines at top speed. We're gonna' get these guys off and break as many of 'em as we can."

The Colonia exploded into a bright fireball as the first of three Aschen bombers slammed nuclear warheads into the engine rigs of the Coalition destroyer. McKinnison would have been blinded, had his visor not polarized in the split second after the UCON ship blossomed into an atomic flower and saved him from blindness. Sergeant O'Reich banked the Hurricane as the first of several thermal shockwaves buffeted the starfighter, peeling off armor plating and stripping away vital electronics in the EMP. McKinnison watched a single sliver of burning hot metal perforate the carboglass that protected him from the environment outside, the molten slice of armor burrowed deep into the shielding before finally burning out with a silent fizzle.

"Colonia is dust, I repeat, the Colonia is dust! We have nuclear ordnance in proximity, I repeat, nuclear ordnance in proximity! This is Bravo Four calling all units, the Rigsby Gaines is under attack!" Sergeant O'Reich's screams almost burned a hole straight through Chief Warrant Officer McKinnison as the Hurricane struck for the tail of the three Aschen bombers.






CNS Rigsby Gaines
Flagship of Admiral James J. Savage
1st Fleet
55th Operations Group
Marine Sergeant Ryan O. Polke



"Open up, marines!" The four man strike team from the mess hall didn't even make it into the foyer before the firepower of Polke's squad cut half of them down. The MR-18 barked it's protest at the thought of Aschen boarders on a Coalition ship, stripping one man of his arm below the eblow before catching another in the eye and splattering a viscous conglomeration of blood, gray matter and bone chunks across the bulkhead. Beside him, Private Lemmison caught a plasma bolt in the arm, scorching away the armor and solidyfing it in a painful, scorching mass that burned with a white hot intensity as the Private dropped to the ground screaming his head off.

"Corpsman! Watch the corridors, covering fire!" Polke stomped his way from behind the small barricade of overturned tables and battle sheets the marines had yanked from the mess hall on their retreat deeper into the ship. The enlisted men's hall served as the buffer zone between the impact site, where the battlestar had collided with the Gaines, and the space still controlled by Coalition marines and ODI teams alike.
"Corpsman! Lemmison, dammit, keep up the fire!" Polke shouted across to the young Private, who was now levering himself up against a bulkhead and firing blindly with his MR-18 in one hand. It was inaccurate, uncontrolled fire, but in these close quarters the only person that won was whoever fired the most.

"Corpsman present --" A Navy corpsman was beside Lemmison in a split second, hauling a small plate-bag off his back and withdrawing several spike-guns to inject nanite-enhanced medicines into the soldier. He'd be out of the fight, for sure, but he'd also be higher than a space elevator for the next several days. It was a trade off, Polke thought.
"Jesus, I ain't ever seen plasma burns like this ... " The corpsman muttered as he struggled to peel away the carbonized armor, which had also adhered to Lemmison's skin, as painlessly as possible. The Private was having none of it, however, several times he simply stopped firing and screamed as loud as he could before the corpsman managed to silence him with another shot from the Dopadine gun.

"You ain't here to take pictures, doc, get the Private out of here. We'll give you covering fire -- lay down the law, Delta!" Polke angled his rifle out into the corridor to unleash a blind four round burst, just as the first of two flechette grenades bounced and plopped down the hallway toward the remaining Aschen boarders.
"Hedgetrimmer! Cover your ears!" A Corporal somewhere up ahead shouted as the remaining fifteen marines crouched, ducked and simply pushed themselves against whatever form of cover they could find. Looking like nothing more than a hand grenade with several thumb sized spikes protruding from it, the Hand Launched Explosive/Flechette grenade detonated with a small A6 charge that sent sixteen flechettes accelerating through the air at speeds that could tear the armor off a Saber. Inside a ship, this would hurt like hell.

"Awwwww da --" The first Aschen was severed as four spikes collided with his midsection, essentially tearing him apart at the waist and spilling a goopy mixture of guts, gore and bone across the steel grating of the walkway. The final Aschen boarder was simply pinned to the wall by his arm and throat, the one remaining appendage flailing uselessly as the soldier struggled to reach for his sidearm. A beam had been knocked loose by the explosion, and it had collided with the corpse of a dead Aschen boarder and crammed him against a bulkhead, crushing his pelvis which leaked a blurry crimson across the grating.

"Up and at 'em, Delta. Savage wants us at that starship." Polke barely managed to stand to his feet before the ship was rocked by an unseen force, like a child tapping on the glass of an atrium. The rumble threw one marine four feet through the air before crashing him down to the ground and breaking his chest plate against a battlesheet that had survived the barrage of plasma fire from the Aschen boarders. Polke was thrust against a bulkhead and felt his shoulder tweak painfully, eliciting one sharp cry before collapsing to the grating and dropping onto his face.

"What in the fuck was that?!" A Corporal screamed, still struggling to pull a shattered support strut that had blocked his passage farther into the starship. On the radio, several other marine teams that were pushing the boarders from all angles were questioning the most recent development as well.
"The fuck happened?"
"We have confirmation of explosives on-board, did they set it off?"
"This is India Actual, Foxtrot squad got annihilated -- we think some boarders might have slipped past the noose. Gaines command, please advise!"




CNS Rigsby Gaines
Flagship of Admiral James J. Savage
1st Fleet
55th Operations Group
Lieutenant Jonathan H. Khross


Little closer, just a little closer. Khross could pull off a good dead body, by smearing the ground around him in the blood of the Aschen he had decapitated and situation himself against the bulkhead to make it appear he had met his unfortunate end with the rest of his 'doomed' squad, all he had to do was wait for the Aschen boarders with the football to put their neck in the noose. The 'football' was an understatement, it took two power-armored soldiers to carry it while the others worked their way through the gangway with weapons raised. They passed the first 'dead' Coalition marine, not actually a marine, simply a Striker garbed in a quick repaint to marine green, and a soft light winked on within Khross' hyper-reality helm. Killer Two One was ready to act, as was Killer Two Two as soon as they Aschen party passed by the first two Strikers.

Khross was going to make sure they were right where he wanted them, however. He continued his statue, hand splayed out for the handgun resting just out of his reach.
"Killer Actual, do you have visual on the Aschen boarding party? I want that football retrieved, understoo --" Savage always ruined things. The first Striker sprang in to action, slicing his hand for the first power-armored soldier and severing his leg in a quick blast of boiling green energy, the useless limb dropping to the ground as the Aschen suddenly buckled from the added weight of his armor. The second one quickly dispatched the last powered armor soldier, springing to life behind him, tucking the barrel of the handgun directly into the nook between the helmet and neck, then firing four rounds directly into the soldiers neck. Blood sputtered out from the exit wounds as the warhead plunked down onto the grating. \

"Ambush! Ambush!" The Aschen soldier, nearest Khross, was barely raising his rifle before he raised up from the ground. The Aschen soldier, far too close to fire his weapon, noticed the newest opponent and prepared a quick bash with the stock of his rifle. The blow came from the left, the Aschen swinging wildly with his rifle at the Scatterran just a hairsbreadth away. Khross had never realized how small the Aschen were in comparison to a Scatterran until he was this close to one, his elbow shot downwards while his forearm went up, providing a nice fat target for the butt of the rifle to hit painlessly as Khross' own right struck forward with a balled fist. The punch landed directly in the boarders nose, cracking bone and tearing flesh as his punch carried through and sent him sprawling backwards. His weapon dropped to the floor and clattered as another Aschen took a knife to the throat and collapsed spilling his life over the bulkhead. Khross stomped foward for the downed Aschen, who was now doing his best to contain the bleeding while raising his handgun up to deliver one final shot.

"Oh no you don't." Khross muttered as he thrashed his leg forward and kicked the weapon from the marines hand, before reeling that same boot back and delivering one final kick straight to the Aschen's face, feeling bone and skull crack and break beneath his stomp. A sliver of gray matter spilled from his open skull, a putrid stench of brain and blood would have accompanied it had Khross not been wearing his helm. In the seconds after the small massacre, Khross could have sworn he heard one of the wounded Aschen praying for mercy before a Striker simply crushed his skull with a stomp.

"Gaines command and control, this is Lieutenant Khross, we have confirmation on football. We'll shut it down and pack it up, over."






"Bankovich would be livid about this ... " Savage mumbled to himself as he inspected the device in front of him, suspended in a small electromagnetic field, Savage had taken precautions to make sure the device would not magically detonate. That included removing most of the electronics, by either shooting them or frying them with an EMP, and dousing the entire device in a thick coating of liquid nitrogen and coolant in the hopes of bringing the temperature as far down as possible. As is, both Savage, Lieutenant Khross and Killer Squad were wearing thermal tarpulins over their armor and helmets to keep them as comfortable as possible.

"Admiral Bankovich is rather indisposed at the moment," Khross returned with a rather rude huff as he crossed his arms over his chest and wrenched his neck to the side, surveying Killer One Three as he approached the Aschen football carrying a small scanner tool.
"Best estimation, this device makes one big boom. I'm thinking thousands of megatons, maybe gigatons." One Three shook his head uselessly, Khross had learned to read the body language of his squad from day one, One Three never liked not knowing something. He dismissed the Striker's anger as pride, looking back to Savage.

"Gigatons?" Savage was a lot easier to read, however, even if he was garbed up like a big eskimo.
"Gigatons ... Bankovich would be really pissed about this." Savage returned, once again causing Khross to sigh and roll his eyes.
"Once again, I don't believe Bankovich will be in any position to complain."
"And good thing, too. Regievko will want this back to the guys at R&D." Savage nodded before looking to Khross.
"You've got your orders, Lieutenant. Button this thing up and stuff it away. We're coming back with a birthday present for mister Defense Minister Von Mott. This war is just heatin' up, 'nd we're gonna' need all the firepower we can get."

2nd Fleet
12th Operations Group
Task Force Juliet
CNS Landon Crossing
CR Royark class Robotics Cruiser




In the hurried tension following the Aschen surprise attack, and sudden retreat, the Coalition had already begun the next leg of its operation. With Sol effectively under UCON control, the Terran avenue to several Confederation frontiers including the military outpost known as Tal'Dor was open to the flood gate of Coalition forces. With losses numbering in at least three dozen ships and several thousand dead, it would be weeks or even months before the Navy could regain its momentum and properly press the assault on to Confederation worlds. Of course, the flexibility of the Coalition Navy had taken matters in to its own hands, and even as the wounded ships limped to the refit and repair zones specific groups of starships and their commanders were being rallied to prepare for one of the first of many assaults on Confederation planets.

Captain Jack Holland was one of those commanders, at the helm of the Landon Crossing, a Robotics Cruiser that had arrived with the bulk of Admiral Bankovich's personal flotilla. However, with Bankovich and the Habea effectively incapacitated, Bankovich's plans for the raiding of outer-lying Confederation worlds had undergone several changes.
"Captain Holland, we have confirmation from the Egeria and the Lost Vanguard. They will be approaching the formation shortly." This little group of ten ships was all that had been gathered to represent Task Force Juliet, the first of nearly four others to venture in to Confederation territory for intelligence gathering, military disturbance and guerilla combat.

"Affirmative, Crossing, keep me updated." Holland glanced toward a small holographic readout the AI had displayed of the two vessels, one was a sigma-cruiser and the other an attack carrier. Both would bring TF Juliet closer to full strength, the attack carrier's estimated two hundred and fifty fighters and multi-roles boosting the projection capabilities while the sigma-cruiser offered a powerful ship-to-ship armament.
"Understood, Captain ... Captain, I have located an audio communique from the Rigsby Gaines, it appears to have originated from Admiral Savage himself." Holland spun on his heel, toward the main airscreen, and gripped the railing tightly.

"Bring it up on the screen, Crossing -- " Several seconds later, Admiral Savage appeared in a grainy, chopped pictogram. Across his forehead a thin bandage wrapped behind his ears, the dressing doing what Holland could only assume was stopping a head wound from becoming terminal.
"Captain Holland," Savage began, while his head, topped with a sprinkling of gray and pepper-black hair, was the only visible part of his body Holland was aware others were standing nearby.
"Admiral Savage, pleasure to see you back in action, sir." Holland gave a quick salute, which Savage discouraged with a simple wag of his chin.
"Always in action, Captain. But because of the little present the Aschen left us, I won't be getting much more of any action for a while."
"Unfortunate, Admiral -- "
"Yup, it is, but this rodeo needs a head-hancho, Captain." Savage let his sage eyes squint as he brought one hand to his chin to pick at the scab of a small cut.
"And that's why, as of sixteen-hundred AST, Captain Holland will now assume command of 1st Fleet as Admiral Jack Holland. Verify, Admiral." Savage inquired, in his surpise, Holland had not recognized that the communique had a document attached, one specifically detailing the transfer of command from 1st Fleet to the now Admiral Holland.







1st Fleet
32nd Operations Group
8th Squadron
CNS Comfort Girl
NNG Vanguard class Fleet Tender



"Everything got fried, EMP magnetized the rail plating, arc-lightning flash cooked the accelerator coolant -- looks like noodle soup, man." CWO Jacobson clicked his tongue before peddling his feet to give him enough momentum to spin his way through the lower decks of the CNS Lotus, a crippled light destroyer that had taken more than her fair share of wounds in the fighting. Long carbonized lines ran down her starboard flanks, where she had collided with a derelict Aschen corvette and simply snapped her in half at the spine, of course she had been bathed in plasma and hyperacidic coolant that had cooked in the sudden explosion. Nearly two meters of ablative armor and battleplate had been burned away by the collision, and tendrils of blackened plating and bubbling metal boiled all over the vessel, making traversing the Lotus that much more difficult.

"You can say that again, Chief. Whoever this Captain is, he's got some balls, that's for sure." Petty Officer 2nd Class Ryans repeated into the microphone as he picked his way past a cooled piece of metal that was turned upward from its rigging, revealing the ghastly interior and guts of the starship, and the three bodies of UCON sailors that had died instantly from the decompression.
"We got two more ... wait, make that three. Get the meat wagon up here, looks pretty bad." He said cooly, a small light in his HUD notified him of the approaching vehicle, a retrofitted M87 Cricket to carry remains of those deceased. Ryans wasn't aware of their religious affiliation, but he gave all three of the dead a silent prayer.
"Into the Great Divine you go, into the Great Divine you deserve." He mumbled as he fixed his boots to the metallic plating and shoved himself off, passing within the line of sight of the Cricket as it pulsed its engines to squelch its velocity.

"This is Romeo Two Six, ready for duty." The pilot responded, gyrating the engines to the side and causing the vehicle to due a lazy turn to augment itself toward Ryans, who was now barely floating thirty meters away.
"I got three, tagged 'em on my HUD, I'll transfer the data now."

2nd Marine Division
3rd Regiment
2nd Battalion
Bravo Company
3rd Platoon
Staff Sergeant Jacob J. Strieker




The Insurgency was in full bloom, against the swirling dust and rugged outcropping of northern Afghanistan, the 3rd Regiment, the entire formation numbering just under three hundred and sixty thousand marines, rolled across the border between Tajikistan and Afghanistan. Striking through Fazyabad and cementing their front line in the city of Taloqanand Kunduz, the marines of 2nd Battalion had found themselves at the cutting point of the Coalition drive into the near East. While Afghanistan and the surrounding countries were strategically useless, other than their average altitude and ability to provide Coalition engineers with a sufficient place to communicate with the Navy still in orbit, the Muslim nation of Afghanistan was the heart of skirmishes between Hataf, their Scatterran allies Red Halo and the US Military. Smashing their way across a neglible line of resistance at the town of Keshem, the bulk of Red Halo forces in the area, numbering nearly 20,000 fighters and mercenaries, withdrew from their defenses and retreated into the province of Paktia and farhter into the mountainous and lawless eastern territories of Afghanistan. The convoys of armored fighting vehicles and transports had barely began funneling the first direct-action troops of the 2nd Battalion before Halo insurgents began their hit-and-run attacks. Rockets and missiles streaked into the air to swat at the low-flying transports and ground support aircraft launched from the orbiting planet landers, and in hours a thirty-six kilometer ridgeline and valley had become a deathmatch between marines of 2nd Battalion and the Ayatollah Brigade, lead by a band of Halo commanders supplied and reinforced from strategic outposts across the Pakistan border.

"Sir! Contacts left, ridgeline, eighty meters. Assault rifles and launchers identified!" Specialist Basya, operating the SV-9 Claymore transport, shouted out as the Claymore ramped over an overturned Saber, the fresh gaping wounds of an anti-tank round still burning with ferocious intensity even as more rounds fell across the convoy as it speared its way through the valley, sitting ducks for the mortar teams, rocket launchers and anti-tank cannons the fired in a growing crescendo on the high ridgeline three hundred meters above the Coalition force.

"What the hell happened to our air support, I was told we'd have Annihilator's flying gun-runs all damn day!" Staff Sergeant Strieker responded as he yanked the rail-caster to the side, the electronically guided turret onboard responding with mechanical precision and highlighting a thirteen meter large swath of land that was producing the greatest amount of firepower. The dual 30 millimeter cannons churned as Strieker depressed the trigger and fixed his eye to the holographic gunsight as he watched the molten glowing orbs of 30 millimeter cannon fire splash against the hill and sned glowing balls of fire into the inky blue sky. Strieker squeezed off one more burst before adjusting his aim, placing the recticle just narrowly above the ridge and then sending a high-caliber blizzard of cannon fire directly over the formation, where it would hopefully land on the rear-echelon or support personnel and equipment. Several stacatto barks and one perfwhoom announced the destruction of a munitions carrier, long tendrils of burning ordinance and equipment jumped skyward alongside a black tower of smoke. The rocky outcropping of the former mortar pits and gun emplacements chipped and splattered with another burst of fire from the Claymore's weaponry.

"Get an Aruka over there to confirm, those fuckers 're all dead." The Staff Sergeant muttered as he disenaged himself from the weapons display; while the Claymore was beyond all doubt an infantry fighting vehicle, one of the vehicles greatest advantages as its ease of operability; any man or woman who could drive a large truck could pilot the Claymore with efficiency, meaning dedicated personnel to transport infantry and equipment were no longer required, and any soldier, in this case Specialst Basya, could drive while Sergeant Strieker and his sixteen-man squad could shoot, locate the enemy and direct friendlies looking for targets.

"Skullbasher this is Umbrella, I've got a Halo rocket team near that bluff on the right. It's like, five meters, you'll be going right by 'em." The radio was squaking loudly as Strieker stomped his way through the cramped rear cabin. Designed to carry sixteen fully-loaded marines into and out of combat, as well as provide a sustainable firepower to the squad, the Claymore hardly considered creatures comforts for the sixteen marines stuck within the depths of the cabin. Strieker moved his was past the first fireteam, organized into a group of four marines armed with assault rifles and grenades launchers, commanded by Corporal Lemminway. The young Corporal with his distinct Sorukan visage, olive tanned skin and dense brown eyes, was busy breaking apart an energy bar made of hyperdense protein and synthetic carbohydrates. He passed the small chunk of synthetic gunk to a Private who quickly popped the small square into his mouth and began to chew it. His jaws began to smack as Strieker felt the Claymore engage its massive break pads.

"We are oscar-lima Bravo, get your sorry asses in gear and lets get rolling!" Strieker shouted as the ramp of the Claymore released a shriek before dropping away from the protective chassis of the vehicle. Several other Claymore's had followed suit, dropping their ramps and releasing the cramped soldiers out onto the valley floor. Outside, the frigid air burned into him as he glanced around the massive gorge the convoy had placed itself in. Snow capped peaks stretched high overhead, dotted with a mask of snow. Below those, Strieker could easily see the twinkle and flash of mortar tubes, creating a sparkling line of deadly artillery high above battlefield.

"We've got mortars on the high approaches, give those off to air-coordinators. Get us some surgical strikes!" Strieker shouted, pointing up toward one sloping mountaing that turned away from the battlefield farther down the valley. Most of the marines of Bravo squad had already disembarked, the only two remaining being the driver and the soldier bathing a small batch of huts and mud buildings at a turn down the lonely road that weaved through the valley.
"You two, stay here with the Claymore's. Give us fire support and target locations, understand? We'll take those light mortars out!" Strieker shouted, the Specialist giving one quick 'yes sir!' while the gunner simply grunted and continued to fire. Disembarking from the Claymore one final time, the Staff Sergeat quickly heralded his squad toward a fence line separating what appeared to be grazing lands criss-crossed by a primitive mud-structure irrigation system. As soon as they had hopped the fence and hidden themselves amongst tall, swaying reeds, a Corporal down the line had already identified OpFor forces moving along an irrigiation ditch nearly perpendicular to them.
"I see 'em over in the dyke! Four of 'em, rifles spotted." The first marine to fire was the Specialist beside him, who snapped the MR-18H up to his shoulder and cut a beam of slugs through the swaying reeds, cutting down two of the fleeing insurgents. Strieker was the next to fire. His MR-18 jumped from the kick of the coils, spraying a three round burst into the Halo's back before spinning him around and onto the ground, where he collided with the murky soil with a splash.

Silence descended on the battleground, only interrupted by the occasional pop-pop-pop of weapons fire. Off in the distance the ground shook from an impact far too powerful for the world to handle. Beyond the ridgeline a giant spout of blackened smoke rose into the air, trailing bright burning spikes of fire. High above in the bare, naked sky bright white contails streaked behind a duo of small black figures, Strieker heard one Private shout something as he threw himself out of the dyke and onto dry ground amongst a patch of reeds.
"God damn, finally getting those surgical strikes! Hell yeah!" Strieker turned his eys skyward, curious to see this evidence for him.







Yankee Team
7th Squadron
Flight UIE
Chief Warrant Officer Jackson West,
Oddball One-Two




"Boom! Never knew what hit 'em, confirm on target, Oddball." Oddball One-Two responded with a jestorous laugh. Sitting nearly three feet in front of the pilot, Oddball One-One, during most missions West and his pilot would rarely have the chance to clearly hear one another. This time was no different, with long tendrils of rocket exhaust painting the ever more obvious picture that the skies were far more dangerous than they appeared to be, both West and his pilot, Lieutenant Chambers, were too busy concentrating on their respective situations to reall converse with one another. Two hours into the assigned close-air support of operations in this province, Yankee Team had already fought its way through two heavily defended mountain peaks, Oddball Two nearly crashing into a mountain side while evading a high-manueverability missile. Over the battlefield, however, CWO West would've gladly stayed in the Hurricane rather than test his luck down on the ground.

"Adjusting for another round." Oddball One-One said curtly, and West placed one hand on the handle nearby his seat to steady himself as the Hurricane rolled, carving delicately through the air and spinning itself onto a new axis before leveling off and providing the high-powered camera that allowed West to drop the full payload of the Hurricane down onto a target nearly eighteen kilometers below him. At this altitude, they had little to fear other than extremely long-range missiles, which could be disposed of considering the distance they would travel to attack.
"Holding position, clear for weapons disposal. LIDAR tags mark friendlies, they'll be marking targets with a radar painter."


Placing his goggles to the housing of the camera module, West was suddenly greeted with a bird's eye view of the entire battlefield. On one sloping ridgeline that fed into a much taller mountain, West could pick out figures as small as ants huddled around rocky outcroppings. Their mortar positions, from the way bright sparks of light jumped from the positions and down into the valley, where they created an ugly brown pimple of dirt on the valley floor. Panning the camera to the side, the first of six parked Claymore's were marked with LIDAR strobes, bright pulses of light that nearly caused him discomfort when he saw them. Farther beyond that, over what appeared to be a separator, possibly a fence or wall, a small fourteen man team weaved their way through a batch of high grass or tall fauna, identified by the same blinking strobes as the Claymore, West made a mental note of the most forward unit of marines.
"Spotted an anti-tank gun, arming Hammerhead ... Hammerhead away." The Hurricane groaned loudly as the farthest weapons bay, rigged into the right wing, released the GBU into freefall. West quickly identified the bomb as it fell towards the earth, a small navigation unit designed to follow the radar beam and 'ride' it home began to jingle and adjust the dumb bomb's direction before it broke the ten kilometer distance, where it then activated the ramjet in the end of the missile and it impacted at a disasterous velocity. The marine team, sixty meters from the anti-tank emplacement, were stopped dead in their tracks as the thousand pound A6 warhead slammed into the soft dirt and nylon netting pillbox that housed the emplacement itself. The earth responded with a giant rumble as the missile impacted, atomizing the entire crew and gun before dispering itself in a giant dust cloud above the irrigation field.

"Confirm on the hit, Bravo." West inquired, toggling a small slider and zooming out, gaining a much broader scope of the battlefield. With that tank pit removed, the companies worth of marines could funnel their focus through the breach in the line provided by Oddball.
"Total confirmation on that last delivery, Oddball! Hit those fuckers right in the face!" The marine's voice was sparked with intensity, obviously one of the men that had witnessed the impact from their position in the reeds. West pounded one hand against the hull of the Hurricane, a sign to Chambers of their success.
"Affirmative on the call, Bravo, reloading ordinance. Designate the next target."





1st Fleet
9th Operations Group
Uniform Element
CNS Jainin Harbor
CB Sirona class Sigma Cruiser



The bulk of the 350 meter long supercruiser loomed nearby the transport, flanked to the rear by another duo of Assault Frigates. Inhaling the crisp mist that was clinging to the air, in the battle of Sol the J-H's coolant system had taken a strike from a Battlestar. It had only been last week that it had been finally repaired, yet the climate control systems were still damaged, resulting in the temperature drop that affected nearly a two quarters of the starship. Thankfully, the Navy provided a full compliment of clothing, and the patrol jacket emblazoned with the logo of the Navy provided a good counter to the cold.
"Give me an update on the convoy train, Jainin. Where 're we on the leg?" Captain Yammara inquired, pushing his hands into his pockets as the first of three displays blinked into life beside him. Several seconds later the starship's on-board AI activated its avatar before responding.

"My estimation puts Uniform six thousand kilometers out to the rendezvous point. Due to the heightened tensions on Terra, Naval Command has ordered that all supplies be directed through orbital lanes above the eastern hemisphere of the globe." Captain Yammara reviewed a logistical document, ten transports in the Uniform convoy, capable of each carrying eleven-thousand, five hundred and twenty marines, were to resupply the bulk of the Territorial Coalition Command Authority and then transfer the transports off to a return convoy that would escort them to the edge of Coalition space. With the TCCA waging a covert mission against other factions on Terra, disrupting the spread of the Halo insurrection outside of TCCA territory and containing the ones that already exist, General Vanko was hard pressed to provide security for the incoming convoys. However, following the Aschen withdrawl and the establishment of the Tripartite, the Navy was one of the few branches of the Coalition military that didn't have to worry about an attritional war or lack of effective supplies from the Outer Rim to the TCCA.

"Understood, align us on a proper rendezvous course and then increase out pack-speed. Let's get these cattle fenced in before anything comes up."

Outside Maun, Botswana
Tech Con RDA 2nd Regiment
Abandoned Aschen Trinnium Mine


"Alright we got confirmed Haloes in this sector here... it looks like they are trying to establish a base of operations here in this sector." A Sergeant said as he went over the map. "We can call in a couple of Gunships to pelt the mine or have the CNV Shell them from orbit... I Got Botswani rebels assisting the Haloes, if we go in it's going to get bloody." The Sergeant explained as he sighed, and went over the holographic display in the heat of the African summer.

"Sergeant..." Lieutenant Anders said as he approached the man. This resulted in all the men standing at attention. "Lieutenant?" He asked as he saluted.

"I'm going to be calling in two PCFs to provide close air support, we'll move in with the help of UCON Forces towards the mine, and we will secure and operate." He explained before going over a holographic timetable.

"Superbulks will be here within the cycle and I want this mine secured and operational by the time they get here." The Lieutenant explained as the Sergeant nodded.

"I'll send in some drones to scout the area, as well as an advance team and we'll count heads... from there we'll prep the move-in and hopefully take the Haloes and the Rebels by suprise." The Lieutenant continued, the men listening intently.

All while the massive Aschen Superbulk Megatransport cut through the void of space, on a course for Terra.

Cairo, Egypt
Nikolai Grosha




Nikolai winched as he felt the antiseptic splash against the cut on his cheek. He groaned noticeably as the woman beside him pushed the entire cotton ball of nanites onto the wound, which flared into a bright crescendo of burning pain before dulling into a sting. He clicked his tongue, signifying the medical agent beside him to remove the cotton swab and give him room to breath. He swung his legs over the edge of the hospital table, hopping down to the ground before dabbing a grimy handkerchief across the cut to mop up any excess blood. He had taken quite a beating in Wing City, thankful to be alive when half of the Halo's he had entered the city with were now dead. He had been fortunate enough to be thrown into a refuse pile, where he was proctected from the hellfire delivered from the Coalition MAG team as they extracted the Taiyou empress. Khariq would be greatly displeased, allowing the head of one of the Tripartite nations to slip through his grasps would only further prove to Khariq of the Oriyak's inability to manage the Halo offensives across Terra itself. The young nurse, identified as a Halo by her read armband and olvie-drab attire, tossed the cotton swab before withdrawing a syringe of clear liquid. Immediately, Nikolai raised his hand and waved her away.

"No no, I am not a needle man." Nikolai responded, whistling over to a Halo as he stood guard by the door. The mercenary quickly stepped up to Nikolai, giving his commander a salute before turning back toward the door. Nikolai looked out the window, greeted with the sleek form of a hovering M88 Aruka emblazoned with the Halo insignia on its side. The aircraft loomed forward before descending onto a helipad on a roof somewhere below. He turned to the Halo, looking out into the hallway and seeing the three dozen other Halo's walking through out the repossessed hospital. Cairo may be under the Command Authority, but it was Red Halo that owned the city proper.

"Klessin was the one that pulled you out of Wing City, he says had it not been for him you would be in Coalition hands." Myro, the Halo, said as Nikolai walked out into the hallway. One of the Halos turned to regard the commander, others talking amongst themselves of his most recent failure in Wing City. Passing by the rumors and speculation of those around him, he descended several stories before making his way to the foyer, where he found his entourage waiting. Situated around a television, broadcasting coverage of a firefight between Hataf and Halo insurgents and Coalition marines, Nikolai found his six-man team of Halo specialists. And one Tai-Aya male standing beside them. The Tai-Aya were a race of avian raptors that were first discovered in the Forge system of Acamar, their homeworld being the capital of the planet itself. Standing on even height, and sometimes taller, than Nikolai, the Tai-Aya appeared more beastly than humanoid. A streamlined face complete with psuedo-beak and yellow, carrion eyes that flashed about the room with alertness. The avian looked agitated, Nikolai knowing full well that the Tai-Aya were a very reclusive race, until recently.

"He decided to show his face after all, I was expecting your puppet master to hide in the corner with his tail between his legs." Klessin remarked dryly, letting a row of yellow teeth shine as he jowls part slightly as he spoke. Several of the feathers on the back of his head stuck into the air as the avian chuckled. Two of the Halo's beside him, both of Arrokan lineage, crossed their arms over their chests and eyed the avian with distasteful musings.
"Khariq asked for one simple thing, the Taiyou empress alive and unharmed. It appears even Zharkov's elite Votsol brigade couldn't eve -" Nikolai silenced the Tai-Aya with the wave of one hand, the wrapped around it still stained with a crimson.

"Khariq botched the operation before we even reached Wing City. We had no indication a Coalition team would be dispatched to retrieve her, we were unaware her security detail had even survived." Nikolai remarked coldly, first pointing to the television, which had run a story of Coalition forces rescuing the Empress in a daring roof-top extraction from a bar in the city. Then, he pointed toward the line of body bags situated against a far wall.
"Khariq should answer to Nikita of this, because it was your intelligence that failed this operation, not my men." He said, pushing one finger into the Tai-Aya's chest. The avian squawked in protest, first looking at the television screen before turning back to Nikolai.

"If Zharkov didn't protect you like an ignorant child ... " Klessin remarked before exhaling; letting his shoulders settle, the Tai-Aya shook his head before retrieving a small computer pad from a satchel at his side. Tapping several keys on the command prompt, he activated the device before handing it off toward Nikolai. The Halo resisted taking the device for a moment, but grumbled and inspected the screen. An audio-file was attached to the document, as was a video link and several other types of data. However, it was the name of the man at the bottom of the page that interested him the most. Doctor Uburn Reichkopf.

"The great Doctor has surfaced again, who located him this time? Laslo?" Nikolai smiled curtly, syphoning the data form the computer off onto a personal folder where he could access it from a terminal later. The Tai-Aya cackled quietly to itself, fidgeting with its lanky fingers before speaking.
"Khariq located the Doctor here, on Terra. He is hiding from the Bureau of Police." Klessin retorted with a rather raptorous cowl. The avian irises of the Tai-Aya dulled as he spoke once more.
"It seems Reichkopf once again tweaked with his precious toxin, and the Bureau was right on top of him to snatch it away. He was lucky to escape with his life." Klessin remarked, his bird eyes scavenging about the foyer as Nikolai read the report throgouhly. Outside, the Halo airjet was lifting off from the helipad, accelerating above the Halo skyline before zooming toward the south.

"He could never stay away from Bravo Five." Nikolai replied as he thumbed his way through several pictures, idenitifying an Aschen trinnium mine and a captured Doctor Reichkopf. The Aschen mine had been repossessed, in the sahara-land of South Africa, and was currently operating as a prisoner camp for the Doctor. Nikolai could see several missile emplacements, aimed to the sky while machine gun nests and mortar teams dotted the surrounding area.

"Khariq has ordered that the Vostol brigade take over control of the facility, and with it the protection of the Doctor." Klessin squawked as he took back the device and pointed out toward an airjet that had replaced the previous one on the helipad. Several other Halo's, adorning the signature shining-sword insignia of the Vostol brigade, disembarked from the aircraft. Besides them, the soldiers of the Vitryaz, Halo ground forces, exited the Aruka with a batch of wounded soldiers.
"That airjet will take you to the facility, try not to let Reichkopf slip away like you did the Empress."




Vostol Brigade
Division 3,
Commander Grosha




"They will be here any minute. Maintain positions and keep your sensors online ... " Nikolai spoke quietly as he belly-crawled his way over the ridgeline separating the Sahara-land of South Africa from the first signs of civilization, the decomissioned Aschen mining facility four-hundred and thirty kilometers outside of Johannesburg. While the capital of South Africa was a major Red Halo hot-zone, advanced units of the Vitryaz, Halo ground forces, had already clashed with government forces loyal to the Coalition. Off in the distance, Nikolai could faintly see a blotchy dark streak inking its way into the sky, perhaps the entire city was burning. Glancing back toward the access road that winded across a four kilometer stretch of road to the entrance of the mine, Nikolai had choosen a rocky outcropping of granite and stone as his forward observation point. With a commanding view of botht the sky and the road, he figured that Halo would know the Coalition's location long before they knew theirs. The mercenary passed one glance off to the Rohkan at his side, Dmitrs Yulshak, and clicked his tongue before speaking in Oriyak.
"Dul-suwathcka myena zhivoshte." He ordered, the Rohkan nodding his meaty head before producing the surface-to-air launcher. Capable of being shoulder-fired, or launched from its tube fixed to a turret, the SM-5 was a Colonial era weapon-system manufactured by a blast-cap producing company operating somewhere out of the Forge. Nikolai was certain there were Halo contacts syphoning weaponry and equipment bound for Coalition forces somewhere along the line, perhaps at the shipyard a dock-worker 'accidentally' placed a box in the hold of a Halo freighter or something. He didn't worry about the semantics of his lifestyle, just that it occured.

"Nisnee-hyasa, julwukof ichinko" Dmitrs complied, producing a long tube of molded titanite plating and a cumbersome computer module that he fixed to the top of the launcher. In a box beside him were the five-foot long missiles labelled M-5 Sledgehammer. Nikolai quickly scooted himself over to the missiles before prying off the top of the crate, revealing the sixteen missiles nestled neatly in a memory-foam substance. Pulling one of the thin spears out by the warhead, he quickly loaded it down the front of the launcher. Suddenly, the CPU unit whirred to life, a light winking on that signified the missile was armed, tracking and ready to fire. Nikolai smiled to himself as the weapon sprang to life. Taking it from Dmitrs, he shrugged it onto one shoulder and then moved for the far edge of the outcropping, situating himself against a rock before placing his eye to the cover of the scope. It took two more minutes for the passive scanner device built into the module to reach it's full range, 5 kilometers, but Nikolai occupied himself with testing the excellent zoom of the computer.
"This will do very well ... how many missiles are in the box?" Nikolai said, placing the SM-5 on the ground before pointing back to Dmitrs and the box.

"Fifteen now, but there is another box down at the base of the hill ... " Dmitrs looked back down the gentle slope that they had clamored up to reach this position, where a Terran SUV was parked. Nikolai quickly patted his hands down, removing a fine layer of dust before striking towards the trail and pointing for Dmitrs to man the Sledgehammer.
"Monitor the approach, Dmitrs. Eyes on the sky, and the ground. You'll be reinforced in three hours." Nikolai ordered autonomously, placing the pair of driving goggles over his eyes before entering the driver's seat and activating the car. The engine strained to turn over as the fossil fuels were funneled into the six cylinder engine, and Grosha scrunched his nose as he tasted the deisel that wafted through the decrepit air conditioning system as he turned onto a main access road that led directly toward the repossessed Aschen mine. The complex loomed in the distance, nestled tightly on a expanse of Sahara-land that fed into a ravine complete with a winding river, several bridges across the murky waters served as defending points for the Vostol brigade should any of the nosey Coalition forces snoop around. Grosha followed a single airjet with his eyes as it lifted from a trio of ad-hoc landing pads before jetting overhead. The engines whined as the sleek craft zipped overhead, far too slim to be a Coalition operated Aruka, Grosha quickly recognized it as a Y-65. The light transport dipped as it impacted a brace of turbulence before rising in altitude toward the south.

605th Orbital Drop Infantry Division has been absorbed into the BLACKWING Tier-1 operators for immediate operations both domestic and abroad throughout the galaxy -- List of commanding officers of <Delta Platoon> dispatched as follows ;:;


LIEUTENANT, Archer Robert - Delta One One


LIUETENANT, Mayfield Matthew - Delta One Two


LIEUTENANT, Jasper Ryan - Delta One Three


LIEUTENANT, Harvey Rick - Delta One Four

>>>>>BROADBAND SPECTRUM DISRUPTION, INITIATING TERMINATION PROTOCOL<<<<<

256th Shock Regiment
Delta Platoon,
Fast-Tracker 1
Rocky Ford, Colorado





"Move move move mov -- " The shouting of the Sergeant was droned out into the gunfire as a volley of cannon fire ripped through the dry-wall of the Terran family unit and carved through the team of marines beside the Corporal. Had he not thrown himself to the ground and covered his head, Corporal Reisdorph would have been one of the four other casualties barely a meter away as he scrambled to his feet. Ahead of him, Master Sergeant Donalds shouted into his communication set before hauling Reisdorph to his feet and passing him onto the waiting arms of a marine skirmisher that had kicked out the door leading into the backyard of the suburban home. Donalds and the skirmisher were moving quickly behind him, the Corporal only quickened his pace as the house collapsed from another burst of cannon fire, off in the distance another Red Halo railcannon wailed; long beams of superheated metal slugs ripped through the atmosphere in the attempts to swat down the Coalition aircraft flying overhead.

"Sonuvabitch -- we just lost half our fucking squad -- Fuck, they're all dead!" Reisdorph screamed as he cowered in the crater left by the impact of an airstrike, stray rounds pinging and jumping off sheets of metal nearby as the rest of the platoon formed up on the approach to the farm-to-market road that lead towards their objective. In the distance, the American Rockies rose into the expanse of the sky, a thin layer of smoke pouring from isolated peaks across the entire range as the Terran-inhabited lowland below became the premier fighting ground of the Vitryaz, Red Halo forces commanded by Majir Al Khariq, and the Coalition's 256th Shock Regiment. To the east, the bulk of the Regiment's armor and air support was occupied with a dense nest of anti-air equipment and weaponry; the low rattle and din of explosions having originated to the east since the beginning of this particular engagement, in a small suburban neighborhood near an industrial center.

"Master Sergeant, where the fuck is your team?" Lieutenant Kryjad was a Tarsan pureblood that lead Delta with a simple point and click, like an extension of his own body; the MR-18H rifle he was equipped with was modified, against regulations, in several places. The weapon's normally large handguard had been cut down to the length of the standard assault rifle MR-18, and the combat sight and drum magazines had been trimmed, giving the Lieutenant a weapon snug and compact to be wielded as a rifle with the volume and firepower of the Heavy modification itself.

"Halo Tri-Cannon, Lieutenant, we must've missed it in the thermals -- it cut straight through us," The Master Sergeant returned as he guzzled a canteen and threw it to the ground, drawing his own MR-18 into the air and yanking back the bolt.
"But there 're plenty more Halo on this road, L-T ... " The Lieutenant stepepd forward and pointed down the street where a Pavrati AV-8 all-wheeler was overturned and scattered along the sidewalk; the 8-wheeled gun-carriage was the primary fast-attack vehicle, capable of sporting a cannon of 150 millimeters while maintaining a considerable fraction of its speed and manueverobility. This particular AV-8 was armed with a simple railcannon, the warped and burned barrel releasing a thick smoke as the chasis of the vehicle burned.

" -- And we'll get 'em, Master Sergeant, but in the mean time we need to recon those AA installations and offline them; attach to Charlie squad and move along the street toward the intersection. You're in command, Master Sergeant, I want you to seize the intersection and then claim the highway; we have Aruka's with reinforcements waiting for LZ's across the whole city." The Lieutenant repeated as he descended into the crater below and passed the Corporal on his way to the other side. Almost as if dictated by an unseen wind, the sixty four marine skirmishers pushed up the street on a triple-pointed strike along the highway leading through the suburban sprawl and strip malls.

Corporal Reisdorph was at a brisk jog alongside the Master Sergeant and the rest of Charlie squad, Delta platoons heavy-weapons attachment, when the crack of a sniper rang out. In an instant a marine forward of them dropped to the ground, clutching at the massive hole in his armored stomach from the soft-core ammunition tearing through the object. Blood began to dribble and spurt from the wound as the marine was dragged behind an overturned SUV with a team of three marines. Reisdorph had thrown himself behind the wall of a co-op store before a railcannon sprang to life and hosed the street in a stream of tracers and 12.7 millimter gunfire. Up ahead the Master Sergeant and two marines were pinned behind a parked sedan; the rear-view mirror of the vehicle flinging from it's hinge at it was struck by a round and flew towards a marine Private.

"Ah! God dammit, where the fuck is our air support, Sergeant! Halos have this place networked out!" The Private shouted as he fumbled to aim his rifle; forsaking the act of exposing himself to the enemy and simply resting the MR-18 atop the car and unloading the trigger, spraying in a mad frenzy.
"Shit ... shit ... shit!" Private Mendoza, Reisdorph recalled, shouted as the weapon clicked empty and he quickly set up replacing the magazine. The Master Sergeant reached a hand over to steady the marine, whom quickly calmed down at the firm grip of his commander.

"Hold your fire, Private -- Corporal Reisdorph, can you reach Territorial with your comms gear?" The Master Sergeant shouted back to the Corporal, the inter-linked communique channels of the platoon aiding in this noise as Reisdorph rolled his back against the wall and activated the multi-tool attached to his wrist. The small device that occupied the better length of his forearm was a powerful computer relay plugged in directly to the MilNet connection of nearly 600 satellites above the planet's surface. Equipped with the most modern evolution of the PT-9 multi-tool, the holographic display activated immediately and revealed a scroller of programs and activities. Reisdorph quickly activated the communication array, the buffering of the stream taking little more than several seconds before the first of ten friendly aircraft contacts appeared on a holographic map of the region.

"I have our birds, Master Sergeant -- Lieutenant Kryjad, there are two Hurricane's with air-to-ground munition on-loiter, permission to direct some lightning!" Reisdorph screamed as a rocket struck overhead, diving below the roofs to impact an elementary complex and spraying a fine ejecta of debris across the playground. The static filled his commubead for a brief moment, before several clicks and a flaring arrow on his HUD grabbed his attention.

"Affirmative on that last, Corporal -- get to a window and designate those targets, we'll occupy them from down here. Master Sergeant, take a team of marines and escort the Corporal, you've got your orders, move!" The Lieutenant commanded as a marine launched a rocket in return into the Halo position. The projectile roared low to the groud, slipping between two ensnared vehicles before detonating on the blast shield of the Halo tri-barrel mounted cannon; the rocket detonated into a spray of high-velocity, reactive metal that carved apart the cannon and destroyed the mechanism in a brilliant spark. The crew of Red Halo technicians and operators was eviscerated in the blast as well, secondary casualties to the billowing smear of metal and char. The Vitryaz insurgents responded in fury, railcannon fire carving through the team of marine rocketeers as they prepared to fire once more, killing two and wounding another.

Corporal Reisdorph was first in after the Master Sergeant booted the door in to a shop that sold knick-knacks and souvenirs, the little toys and paperweights were jumbled and mismatched, some toppled on the side from the shock of the ordinance descending into the planet. Reisdorph swept with his rifle, the MR-18's thermal holo-sight active and working with a soft whir as he took the stairs and activated the small laser-designator unit fixed to his weapon. Pacing down the hall, the Master Sergeant and two marines were behind him, kicking down selected doors and inspecting their contents for any Vitryaz.

"It's clear, Corporal, pick a position and target 'em with your designator. Mendoza, Polsk, take up positions and scan for snipers." The Master Sergeant's voice barked through the commubead as Reisdorph planted himself atop a rather comfy bed in a room on the far wall of the street and shifted his sight through the window. His holographic sight was capable of a slight zoom, barely 1 full magnification, but it was enough to aid his sight at the distances down the steet.

The intersection, laying beyond another four-way that was forming the strongest point of the Vitryaz defense of the suburban sprawl, lay as one of the 256th's objectives to securing an avenue across the continent, which was quickly becoming a lawless Halo territory. As Reisdorph peered through his sight, the thermal imaging revealed the thin beam of the laser reaching out through the window and stoppingupon it's collision with the facade of a store-shop housing a Halo anti-tank cannon. The Corporal stalled his breathing a fraction as he depressed the trigger, activating the broadcast of the target to the duo of loitering MSC-45 Hurricane superiority fighters. The radio to the pilots remained in a static before two beeps passed through the air waves.

"Confirm on your targets, Fast-Tracker. Movers in-bound, ETA ten seconds." The message was broadcasted to all of the marines, which was revealed by the sudden lack of fire coming from his side of the street. Knowing that continuing to lase the target was useless, Reisdorph released the trigger and rolled himself over behind the bed, as he came to a slow rest he could barely make out the faint wail of the Hurricane's dual plasma-thrust engines. In this pre-emptive silence, a certian calm before the storm, Reisdorph peeked out from under his arms into the hallway, where he could see the Master Sergeant dropping onto his back and pointing his weapon toward the stairwell.

"Awwww shit man, this is waaaay danger-close." Private Mendoza could be heard as he turned over a couh atop him and tucked his rifle against his chest. As Mendoza's voice faded from his ears, the roar of engines swept overhead before the air was split with a thundercrack, and the following sound of a building collapsing from the full-force of the Hurricane's 76.2mm cannon. Smoke was pouring through the shattered window when Reisdorph scrambled to his feet and exited into the hallway; Mendoza and the other marine were present, and the Master Sergeant was standing with his weapon aimed down the stairwell.

"Good work marines, now let's get oscar-mike to the intersection and get our asses a ride outta' here," The Master Sergeant trotted down the stairs with his weapon at shoulder-level. Reisdorph and the other marines were quickly behind their commander before the shouts of marine skirmishers began to flood the communique link.

"Hell yeah, nothin' ever looks better than Marine Armor!" A Corporal from Bravo squad shouted as he climbed atop the Pathfinder FRV, a 150mm cannon-equipped hovertank, like a child scaling a jungle-gym. Reisdorph let his pace slacken as the Master Sergeant sprang into the deserted street, his weapon aimed at the shoulder as a second Pathfinder hovered above the overturned AV-8 and swept the facade of the collapsed building with the co-axial 12.7 millimeter rifle. There were survivors in the rubble, Reisdorph had first heard the screaming as he departed the building; but as the magnetic rifle chattered away, the screaming and shouting from the rubble began to slowly die away.

"Alright marines, we're oscar-mike to the intersection to set up LZ Dorothy -- after that it's up north again, welcome to the 43rd Armored Battalion skirmishers!" The Lieutenant shouted from atop his own attack vehicle, a Leopard GV-70 transport, outfitted with magnetic rifles and a 40 millimeter launcher, the Leopard appeared to be undearmed compared to the heavy armor behind them. Past the three vehicles several other Leopard and Claymore transports could be seen in tandem with a trio of FSV-200 Warrior fighting vehicles.

CNS New Ganymede
Saviorite class Battle Carrier
89th Marine Division
860th Shock Regiment
73 kilometers above Tierra Del Fuego
Shock Platoon Delta-3




In the hull of the marine airjet, it was hard to believe that the young marine was suspended in the bowels of a much larger starship. As he pumped his knee up and down in a nervous tick, the marine glanced toward an alert light that began flashing in tune with a wail that filled the entire hangar bay with a monotone shriek. After several seconds of the frustrating barrage the familiar pound of boots on alloy-grating announced the arrival of the squad of marine shock-troops. The young marine glanced at his shoulder, to a heavy plating of Kermite armor emblazoned with the insignia of the Paklam infantry. Below that were the dual chevrons and a small blade designating the marine as the rank of Corporal, on his battle rig was a patch of writing indicating his complete identification, Corporal Natalni, was written in the chunk standard text of UCON identification.

"New guy! Oh man, you're from the Inner Empire aren't you, Ceti right?" A brutish Sergeant spoke from behind a veil of cigar smoke as the NCO entered the bay of the Aruka airjet. Corporal Natalni, or the 'new guy' had arrived for the departure nearly ten minutes early, missing a last-minute equipment check by the platoon Lieutenant and sneaking past two extra magazines for the ECR-10C. Leaning back in his seat, which was little more than just a rigged plate of scupluted plastic and small grips in the form of cold alloy bars, Natalni made room for several other shock marines as the weapons squad of Delta platoon filed into the last Aruka in the launch bay, one of five on the lowest of ten launch decks. Natalni spared one look out a small bay window, and out into the gusty atmosphere of the Terran continent of South America. Then, Natalni looked over to the Sergeant whom was seated directly beside him.

"No, uhm, I'm from Kharos, the capitol." Natalni replied, suddenly having to raise his voice over the combined wail of the Aruka's dual plasma-thrusters, and a secondary alarm that shook the New Ganymede through her core once again. It wasn't until then that Natalni noticed the smiles and grinning faces of the marines beside him, and the chattering voice of the Sergeant.

"Oooooh shoot, the Admiral's really gonna' do it!" The Sergeant chuckled, pounding a fist on his knee and chewing on the end of the cigar as the conversing amongst the marines increased, several words catching the Corporal's attention as the siren died away one final time. 'High Altitude', 'Maximum Velocity', 'Unrestricted Descent'.
"Heck -- New Guy, you ain't done the Rabbit Run yet?" The Sergeant questioned, his voice growing in volume as a sudden shudder tore through the starship. With a crackle, the comms channel of a nearby speaker system sprang to life and a voice began to flood through the silent launch bay, only ears fixing to the happenings outside of their airjets.

"Gentlemen, this is your Admiral speaking, on behalf of me and my crew we would like to thank you for flying Air Authority today -- We are Green-Lights for Rabbit-Run, one two three go-go-go."


With another powerful shudder, Natalni felt his stomach suddenly float upwards, his legs slowly tug from the floor and into the air while his rifle zipped away from him before he reached out with his arm to grab the handguard. In a split second, the straps that had been sitting loose against Natalni's chests were keeping him from slamming into the gear-rack of the bay and breaking his neck. Free-falling from the mesosphere of the planet, in a starship vertically aligned with the planet that displaced more than sixty-four thousand tonnes, Natalni quickly second-guessed his career choice, glancing over to the marine Sergeant, who by now had lost his cigar and was just struggling to buckle himself in, could not stop laughing as his boots tapped against the ceiling of the Aruka.

"Hoooooooo' shoot, I can't get mah' seatbelt on boys!" The Sergeant shouted joyously, two other marines who were fortunate enough to have fixed themselves with the restraints were simply clutching their rifles and laughing to themselves beneath their breathing masks. Natalni's eyes widened as he realized the growing sound of wind tearing past the starship in a massive gale. Rolling in his seat, Natalni reached toward his center and grasped the alloy handle to steady himself in the free fall.

"What in the hell are we doing?!" Natalni shouted as the mass of the Aruka dropped its heavy rigging in the bay of the New Ganymede; one final siren wailed as the plasma-thrusters, heavy ion-plane vectored engines, ignited and the Aruka pulsed through the air. With a loud groan the bay doors, two doors and one ramp, opened to reveal the swirling clouds of Terra below them, quickly running upwards to greet them of course. A soft click announced his helmets environment protocols activate, encasing his skull and torso in a sealed state to resist the harsh temperatures outside.

"Jaklad over in Charlie platoon, he's doing the run on a Vulture!" A marine remarked, his voice a fresh clean noise over the speakers. At the contemplation of descending from the New Ganymede attached to the hull of an ultra-light airjet at an altitude of 73 kilometers, Natalni simply clutched his rifle to his chest and averted his eyes to a holographic display in his HUD. The small flickering screen parsed through a complete list of the Corporal's armor package. A small computer chip was active in the main unit of his HUD, designed to provide the Natalni with updated information and intelligence rapidly.

"It's called the Rabbit Run, Corporal! Admiral Savage, Junior, came up with the method at Hadden! Knocked Zharkov right out of Savio Fortress, haaaah! The 860th has been deploying through orbital placement since the fall of Outland!" The Sergeant replied as the Aruka's engines pulsed one more and directed the bulky transport away from the descending New Ganymede, and the three other Battle Carriers. Set against the expanding brightness of the atmosphere, the countless vehicles peeling away from the Battle Carriers appeared fine black specks dropping away from the hide of the bulky Battle Carrier.

"Normally, it's a heck of a lot more bumpy than this -- Guess Halo just didn't have their guns pointed today," The Sergeant chuckled to himself before the Aruka bumped and groaned from a moment of turbulence, then the sound of an explosion ripping across the sky filled Natalni's ears as he looked back to the open bay. An aircutter spiraled toward the ground belching smoke and fire from a single round in its bridge, long trails of smoke following the vessel as it disappeared through a bank of clouds. The Sergeant was quick to correct his statement, whistling under his breath as the Aruka spun in its axis once more, hopefully to avoid the increasing anti-orbital fire.
"I stand corrected, they had all of their guns pointed today!" He managed before an alarm began to wail from the cockpit. A pilot cursed over the din of anti-orbital fire as the Aruk plummeted belly-first towards the planet.

ITN Kaze no Tani
Operation: Ultimatum
Commandant Ayako Katamura
Taiyou Imperial 3rd Fleet

Ayako silently grasped the shimmering brass railing as the ships aligned into the attack pattern, it was then the Commandant sent a high-priority bit-stream message to Vanko. The message clattering on Imperial computers as she waited for the connection to be established.

A young Lieutenant then nodded. "Attack pattern has been aligned, we're ready to commence synchronized orbital bombardment on your command, furthermore a communication uplink has been established with Center Nine."

The Lieutenant then offered a crisp salute, as the Commandant nodded and brought her gaze to the large screen that was facing her.

"Attention TCCA Forces, This is the Imperial Taiyou Navy, Kaze no Tani, requesting a direct uplink to Commandant Vanko to address an urgent issue that is threatening my forces in orbit." She said, pausing for a moment as small lines of Taiyou text scrolled across the screen.

"Commandant, I am imploring you to do something about that Halo meson array immediately, or we will do something for you, I will not commence fire yet, but if I do not get a suitable resolution, I will be forced to take matters into my own hands... message ends." She said, nodding as the uplink was terminated.

In high orbit, the glimmering white panels of the one-thousand five hundred Shogun class battleships seemed to play across visual sensors and cameras, as they all aligned themselves in high orbit, their red trimmed guns pointed outwards to garner beads on several Halo occupied lawless countries.

All of them seemed to await an order, in this climactic scene.