Jedi Master Drana watches the feeds from the Bargain and Steel Heart with her heart in her throat. The new UNSC ships are a marvelous sight against the blue-green backdrop of Myloth-IV, the largest gas giant in system. The new arrivals leave little doubt to their purpose in their design and absolutely bristle with weapons. The Seventh Pillar is almost as big as the Bismarck and is even more heavily armed though mercifully lacks the fighter component of the larger carrier. The escorts are fast and agile for their sizes and appear to be armed with the same magnetic accelerator cannons as the larger vessels though no doubt with weaker power.
But all that firepower could wreak havoc on her still weak fleet. The bridge of the Martyr is silent in anticipation of the first messages from the UNSC's now unified fleet, communications between the Bismarck and her comrades coming thick and heavy and heavily encrypted. Thankfully her reinforcements came with supplies of desperately needed ammunition filling her magazines to the bursting with fresh ammunition. The UNSC battlegroup forms up and accelerates back in system towards her fleet's anchorage around the Unbreakable. All the while the Force is uncertain as to which way it shall fall.
((-))
UNSC Bismarck
Captain Jones stares at the display in his wardroom and the faces imprinted there. The news shared by his fellow Captains is disturbing to say the least. That the damage to the Bismarck's drive created a micro-anomaly at the exact moment that the rest of the battlegroup jumped is…an astronomically small chance. Like trying to hit one particular dust mote with a bullet while traveling through a sandstorm at the speed of sound.
Captain Margaret Franks, the CO of the Pillar, is locked in thought. Her grey eyes are hazy as she processes the news that they have arrived in a different galaxy where a different war is being waged. The rest of the fleet's Captains are on the same line, their faces all conveying their shock and fear in different ways.
"I…don't know what to say Jones. What can we do to get home?"
"I don't know if we can get home ma'am. We're not on any of the charts, and we have no idea of how to even determine which galaxy we're in."
"What about this Republic? Surely they have some idea of how to get us home!"
"With what tech? They don't use Slipspace!" The arguments cascade one after the other questioning how they would get home, if they can get home.
And what they are willing to do to get there. In the end it takes their AIs coming to a consensus to decide. Blucher says it best of all.
"Any and all aid from the Republic is contingent on their good will and since we have no technology to offer them in return…well there is only one thing we can offer a nation that doesn't have our experience in war."
"Our blood."
((-))
"One, two, three!"
"Twenty-four!"
"One, two, three!"
"Twenty-five!" The regular cadence of Marines in the midst of a unit wide workout rings through the gym above the clanging weights and humming treadmills. Second platoon, Bravo-company works itself harder than ever before to regain their fighting trim. Standing guard duty on the Bismarck while their brothers and sisters fought on the station has lit a fire under their collective ass. NCOs drill their men all the harder pressing for higher and higher scores on the firing range and in the simulators. Officers confer with each other to create new tactics to deal with the new enemy and its capabilities. Briefings are given on the most common alien races that are known to hire themselves as mercenaries. And endless workouts to keep their minds focused on what matters, not what is now behind them and probably forever out of reach.
And off to the side are the Helljumpers of Fireteam Viking. Clad in their PT gear, complete with a SOEIV wreathed in flames, they work harder than the normal marines. Pushing their bodies to the limit to get them in fighting trim and to keep them occupied. Bored ODSTs cause problems when cooped up on a ship for as long as they have been. Sweat pores off their trim bodies sticking their shirts to their torsos and pooling under their straining limbs. Again, and again they work through the cycle of exercises that have been a part of their training program since the Helljumpers were first formed. Every exercise working multiple muscle groups to spread the improvement across their forms rather than overbulking in any one area.
Their strength exercises done they move to the treadmills unapologetically shoving over a squad of marines who bow off respectfully. The recent fighting has killed off the interservice rivalry for now. The competitiveness that would normally be thriving is muted in favor of simple workouts and combined drills in the small kill-house set aside for the marines. After the three marine companies cycle through the main gym come the pilots and naval ratings of the flight decks all needing to maintain a high level of fitness to perform their duties at the level they need to be able to perform at. They cycle through their own routines and end the cycles for most of the crew's coordinated physical training.
From twenty-one-thirty to twenty-two-forty hours there are few people using the facilities. The time that Captain Jones uses to train himself and work off the aggression boiling in his gut. Clad in only his Navy issued PT gear and a pair of boxing gloves he circles the heavy bag hanging in the corner of the gym. His feet dance lightly around it as he punishes the sack of sand with blows honed over his time as a boxer in his youth during college and high school before it. His years in the Navy haven't dulled his edge as he makes the heavy bag dance under his fists. Music ancient and absent from radio waves for generations in most parts of human space blares through the gym's speakers providing an ear bleeding tempo for his fists.
For an hour he has the gym to himself. He works the bag, the treadmill. A few of the pully machines. His mind blissfully empty of the reports and supply manifests he is expected to oversee to keep his massive ship and responsibility doing what it does best. Fight. Fight, and then relocate to fight somewhere else. The hours since the UNSC fleet merged together with the Republic formations have been occupied with planning. The defense of Myloth remains a priority but also remains a precarious position. Without knowing it they have created a salient three systems wide across the main hyper-route.
The other two systems were held against token assault forces and have secured their space with additional fixed defenses. Myloth is the more precarious position by far. Something has to be done to secure it until the next wave of ships and trained sailors arrive from the yards. Jones pauses in his battering of the bag, shoulders heaving for breath, and stares at the ship's seal painted across the far bulkhead. The history of the Bismarck is one of terror and disappointment. A sign of times changing when they were at their height. A battleship, king of the ocean, struck down by obsolete torpedo planes and a carrier that never met him eye-to-eye.
The Second World War was dominated by submarines and aircraft carriers killing the big gun navies of the world by never giving them the chance to fight back. Submarines sinking the ships carrying much needed supplies to the front lines and aircraft carriers ripping apart whole fleets with their long-range dive-bombers and torpedo-bombers. And then he has an epiphany. If they can't hold the Myloth system conventionally right now…then what if they make attacking the system, more costly than what it is worth? Any force build-up to take the system from any of the neighboring Separatist systems would need supply lines, and ships packed to the gills with more droids and ammunition and power cells to feed the ships.
Supply lines mean convoys of slow-moving cargo ships. Convoys need escorts to keep them safe during their acceleration and deceleration maneuvers at either end of their journey. While he can't catch them in hyperspace, Slipspace being slower and working in a different manner, he can intercept them from the shadows. All he needs are the routes…
"Blucher! Get me my uniform!"
((-))
"So, run this by me again: you want to take a quarter of my fleet and go raiding the Separatist supply lines, out of communication except for when you come back here for refueling and rearmament?"
"Yes."
"And you're basing this off of tactics used in a war almost six hundred years ago?"
"Yes."
"Will…will it work?"
"Maybe." The Jedi Master sighs on the other end of the line and pinches the bridge of her nose. Jones knows the dilemma facing her. The UNSC ships would be untraceable to the Separatists with their Slipspace capability; able to drop into their enemy's staging grounds, smash a few ships, and then jump out without any fear of pursuit. On the other hand, that gives away a major trump card that might be what is needed to keep Myloth secure.
"It'll be just the Bismarck, Unbroken, and Hornet. The Pillar, Claymore, Skyfall and Roundhouse Kick will remain here with the rest of the fleet. They should be more than enough to see off anything the Separatists can muster right now. No matter how many ships they might have they have to move those ships and that takes time; time the Republic can use to regroup and reinforce where it needs to and start really pushing. This war won't be won by attrition. Not when the enemy can rebuild their losses three times as fast as we can and they can win the public opinion fight too, they aren't fighting on their worlds after all."
"The Council is aware of this—"
"All due respect if your Council was as effective as you and the Republic want to believe then they wouldn't have let this fester: they'd have been hunting down everyone who thought of bringing war to your shores. Instead they meditated and thought of new ways to suppress emotions rather than learn to control them like adults. None of you have been through any military academies and none of you have experienced war like we have. If you actually want our aid, then for fuck's sake listen to what we say rather than dismiss it out of hand because the Council hasn't said it yet!" Jones snaps finally losing his temper. They've been debating their next move for hours.
Even after accepting their aid and expertise the Jedi refuses to make the hard choices: the ones that win wars. The reports that have been forwarded to the UNSC officers, both groundside and naval, paint a picture of a people who don't know what they're doing. Generals committing their troops to actions that cost them inordinate numbers of lives and tons of equipment that cannot be replaced quickly this early in the war. Stupid decisions that cost lives that should not have been lost. Commanders apathetic, not professional but apathetic, towards the lives of their men because they are clones.
"Peace Captain, there is no need to be angry. Control your emotions." Jones bites back his instinctual response to that. Something along the lines of 'oh like you living automatons do? You're trying to act like droids you self-centered hypocritical idiot!'
Professionalism gained through his career of living through ass-chewings and idiots who blame him for their mistakes suppresses that reaction. Though just barely.
"Ma'am if we do not launch spoiling attacks then the enemy will take Myloth. There is no doubt about that. Maybe we can see off the next attack with luck and skill, but there will be another one and another after that. We cannot sit here and let them dictate the terms of the next engagement. They have the numbers, the manufacturing capability, and the better ships for now. Until the Republic can get on a wartime footing, we're on the back foot. We need to do this while our intel is still current."
"Have your fellow Captains agreed to this course of action? I will not allow rash, ill-thought actions to doom this defense and the men of my fleet. What if you disappear and the enemy attacks?"
((-))
It took another three hours of arguing, bringing in every Clone officer and even the captain of the remaining SDF ship before the operation was green lit. The raiding squadron consisting of the mighty Bismarck and two Stalwart-class light frigates, Unbroken and Hornet, depart from Myloth as soon as the plans are drawn up. Blucher's processing power was entirely devoted to calculating jump coordinates, setting predetermined rendezvous, linking into the holo-net and spying on the CIS fleets that they will have to avoid or destroy, and over all coordination while the humans do their own planning based on the information that he provides them. There are three major staging areas on this front.
One, the closest, is utterly out of the question. A major fleet is gathered there strictly because of the supply stockpiles located there. The fifty Munificents and twelve Lucrehulks would take offence at the sight of just three ships taking pot-shots at their charges and no one in the UNSC fleet is keen on slinging MAC rounds at civilian targets. Clever bastards put their depots and fuel supplies over or in civilian centers making any sort of bombardment costly in civilian lives.
The next closest is lighter on defenses and just might be viable…but the third has Jones and his fellow Captains salivating. Umbra-IX is a small, dark moon with a small mining colony erected to harvest the tough ores that occur naturally within the moon's crust. The veins of ore are harvested, shipped off, and processed into starship grade plating or some of the toughest personal armor in the galaxy for those who still wear such things. The CIS planted a mobile docking facility there along with a permanent garrison of ten Munificents. The docking facility would cost a fortune to replace, enough to construct a hundred capital ships and keep them supplied with ammunition to fight a protracted campaign. A lightly defended position behind enemy lines with all the other ships being too far off to support them.
Something to make the enemy think and redistribute their forces. A kick in the pants that will throw them into confusion for a while, at least long enough to do some serious damage in other areas while they try and adjust. A blow to make even Lord Hood proud.
((-))
Umbra-IX, Twelve Days Later
The Bismarck and her escorts defy the laws of physics, clawing their way free of the higher dimensions and back into the grips of reality. The Slipspace portals snap shut with a burst of radiation, each portal spread tens of thousand of kilometers distant. Captain Jones watches his two escorts accelerate to join the Bismarck on her own ballistic course. The slow collection of data is fed into her systems. The very edge of the solar system becomes visible after a half of an hour of scanning. Various asteroids and clouds of dust fouling the initial readings before subsequent scans clear the interference. It takes two days of drifting to receive their first returns on the Separatist fleet.
The expected ten Munificents are in their defensive positions around the station, a trio of large mining ships with their hulls fully laden with valuable ores laboring to reach their own jump points…and the station itself. Sitting so exposed and vulnerable.
"Status of MAC charge."
"Eighty percent. Fully charged in ten. Coilguns are loaded and charged, Archer tubes hot, Bident tubes hot. Ready squadrons are prepared for fast launch. Green across the board sir."
Jones scans the display noting the enemy's positions, the way that their guns are pointing, considering their speed and maneuverability should he have to duke it out with their fleet. Unbroken and Hornet both possess similar main guns to the Bismarck, though due to smaller reactors they have a reduced fire rate. The Stalwart's main gun can put a round out every one-hundred and twenty seconds, the Bismarck and all other Epoch-class heavy carriers can fire every ninety seconds. The immense firepower afforded to him with such a fire-rate must be properly levered or the Munificents will tear his squadron apart with their own guns.
The Bismarck can weather their weapons due to her two-meters of Titanium-A battle plate and expansive compartmentalization that contains the damage to the local area only. The frigates lack this capability. The only areas possessing more than thirty-centimeters of armor are the gun-bridge boom and the reactor to save on weight and allow for a more powerful ground component as opposed to the Paris-class heavy frigate. More than worth it in the numbers that they are normally deployed in…but not here. Not when the hope of resupply and reinforcement is so small as to be impossible to spot. That they are here at all instead of set to drift in Slipspace until they end up dead or worse, fused to their ships or any of the other thousands of horror stories that are made up of Slipspace.
Yes. He is thankful to have more ships with him but very conscious of how much those ships are worth in terms of warfighting ability, and the men onboard. It doesn't take too long to realize what his best course of action is considering their objective and the squadron's capabilities. The superior range of his ships' projectile weapons gives them an edge in an attacking scenario especially one where the enemy is fixed in place; static and unable to leave their charge unprotected. Turbolasers all fire at roughly the same velocity with some variation depending on the amount of power contained within each individual bolt and the quality of the acceleration coils within the weapon's barrel.
A self-maintaining magnetic containment field is no small matter to keep stable over long distances. The various particles and micro-meteors that occupy the space between two ships would prove a slight deterrent to a field's integrity as ever impact would weaken it somewhat, more so in areas with more dense fields of gases and iron-nickel dust clouds. A MAC slug has no such problems. A solid piece of tungsten-carbide or depleted Uranium the size of a car accelerated to a respectable fraction of the speed of light is subject only to the laws of physics. An object in motion stays in motion.
Jones takes in the design of the station and takes note of each potential weapon emplacement and weak point that his guns might be able to exploit. Looking similar to a peanut, the supply station has two club ends and a pinched central section. Docking berths line the central section like hairs on a fly, tiny point-defense lasers meant to fend off fighters and meteor strikes dot the surface. Nothing too threatening without its escorts, and the records strongly indicate that it still mounts civilian grade shields, much weaker and inefficient compared to military grade products but still enough to give Archer missiles issues in piercing. Luck and overwhelming numbers are needed for the conventional warheads to cause any significant damage to a shielded vessel meaning that several pods have to impact one ship at roughly the same time in order to overwhelm their weaker emitters.
Missiles that are hard to replace in an extended operation. Keeping his fighters in the hangar keeps them safer for now than if they had been in void and exposed to enemy fire without the heavy armament and weapons of the Bismarck, once the last Longsword is destroyed that's it. There are no replacements from the UNSC en-route that could be relied on. There are no replacement crews on the roster or replacement planes. Barely enough replacement parts to keep them operating for the foreseeable future. But plenty of fuel and ammunition to keep fighting.
"Fire first salvo on my mark, all ships target the central section of the station. MAC and coilguns only. Mark!"
Three MAC slugs leap free of their former homes igniting trails of particles with the speed and friction of their passage, and hot on their heels are a total of six smaller slugs from the Mk-15s of the Bismarck. Jones watches coldly as the defending fleet reacts to the sudden threat. One manages to get in the way of the Unbroken's MAC and three of the smaller slugs. The MAC slams home, popping the shield and buckling armor plating beneath it. The three smaller slugs of the Mk-15s plunge deep into the alien ship's superstructure rupturing power supplies to the starboard and bow batteries. Great gouts of flame erupt from the damaged sections before the void of space chokes them. The rest of the salvo slams home in the station. The station is not built for such extremes, its structure unarmored and arranged to better hold and transport supplies.
Not absorb the massive kinetic force of UNSC MACs or resist the ripple effect torturing its understrength frame. The MAC rounds punch through the central spine popping the shield and shattering the central structural hexagon where they strike. The metal ripples destroying supports that would have served to keep the station together. It is nearly torn apart in the first impact, the three rounds from the Mk-15 that rip into the remaining section causes the station to separate under the weight of its own frame. The violent jerk and twist shears through the halls and spans keeping it together. The two halves now separated from each other drift away slowly while their escorts charge forward to attempt to intercept the raiders recharging their weapons.
"That kicked the hornet's nest. All ships will fire Archer salvo on these four ships, I want one Bident on each. Make it happen Guns."
"All hands brace for evasive maneuvers!" Blucher shouts an instant before the Bismarck lurches to the side throwing men and women off balance. The hull groans with the sudden strength for a moment. Beyond the titanium hulls of the UNSC ships a storm of angry crimson bolts flies past. Each enough to cripple one of the Stalwarts with a single hit. It forces the squadron to continue to maneuver to avoid incoming fire and makes obtaining a firing solution that much harder.
"It's like they're angry at us. Fire missiles, I want the coilguns on that lead frigate!" Jones barks and brings up a secondary plot, making a quick calculation and finding himself angry with the results. If his squadron flips around now and begins an acceleration burn to leave the system, then they might escape without taking any damage. Something that they desperately need if they wish to complete the mission within the parameters. One more MAC salvo would be enough to finish off the station if they get a clean hit. He comes to a surprisingly easy decision. He'll do both.
The two halves of the station are powered by a unique twin reactor design to save them the hassle of having to supply the power to the far ends of the station. It also makes it able to better survive an event such as it has experienced so far by not having one massive reactor to go critical. Meaning that there are two megaton nuclear bombs sitting just behind the defense fleet's formation. He had hoped that the stress of the station tearing itself apart would have finished it in a flash of blinding light and then he could jump out without having to trade shots with the Separatists. That plan went out the window.
"Fire missiles!"
((-))
Blucher's mind works at the speed of light consisting of billions of lines of code based on a donated brain's own thought process. To him the universe is a world of numbers and set values. Everything has a tangible value. Except when it doesn't
He, like every AI in UNSC service, is frustrated by the intangible. Being able to feel the right answer to a problem has regularly flummoxed the super intelligent AI's when their human counterparts do something that they never would have expected. It is greatly comforting to him to be able to predict his Captain's action. Without waiting for the Gunnery Officer to input the calculations or even select his weapon system, Blucher is done. Two more Bident missiles are primed in their silos, the doors sliding open with glacial slowness to his perception.
The triple barreled coilguns traverse to track their new targets. Capacitors humming like swarms of hornets just below the mounts themselves. Solid tungsten slugs loaded into their breeches and just awaiting the signal to fire. Both powerful weapons in their own right but hopelessly underpowered compared to the main gun that is already almost fully charged while the weaker reactors of the Stalwarts are just approaching fifty percent. A thrill of satisfaction runs down his spine as his Captain selects the predicted targets with the predicted weapon systems.
Blucher in real life had been an aggressive commander always on the attack and never letting something keep him down. Blucher the AI is a being of logic and a cold determination to see his ship and crew to victory no matter the cost. So, he links with the AIs of the Unbroken and Hornet, Freya and Nimitz respectively, and coordinates their Archer salvos. The four pods contributed by the smaller frigates burst free of their silos, a Bident missile following either one. The missile swarms home in on the second and third Munificents in the arrowhead formation the droid-ships adopt in the attack. Some are destroyed by point defense guns. A total of seven are intercepted by scrambled Vulture droids.
The remainder slam home in a storm of high-explosive force that overwhelms isolated shield nodes and rips holes in armor plating. The Munificents would still be mostly combat effective after the Archers were expended. But they were not the true thrust of the volley. That belongs to the Bident warheads that slipped through unmolested. The bomb pumped X-ray lasers are perfectly aimed drilling neat holes through layers of armor plating to rupture the primary magazines for both ships.
The coilguns fire targeting the lead ship. All six rounds slam into the shields of the frigate, weakening it to the point of near failure. Then the MAC fires. The massive hunk of tungsten cores the Munificent. A hole is opened in the formation; one that the second salvo of mixed missiles, fired behind the first, is swift to exploit. Fifty-two Archers slam themselves into the trailing Munificent distracting it for the Bidents to pass by. Too late the Separatists recognize the danger. The two warheads target the shattered station's reactors in short lived suns. Blucher experiences a burst of code that a human would interpret as elation and flips his ship around. Engines flaring and leaving a trail of superheated particles behind them as Separatist fire chases them into the nothing of space. Slipspace portals yawn wide and the UNSC ships power into them. Blucher has an eternity to bask in their success, observing the crew celebrate such an unmitigated success, before he becomes bored with it.
'This steel is my worth. The enemy is unable to break it,' he paraphrases in his personal cyber space with a burst of satisfaction. Only the Captain remains impassive in his command chair, swiping through ammunition reserves with the air of one who knows that the worst is to come. Blucher nods, knowing that he chose right.
((-))
A/N: What's up people! Got back from deployment right back into the hot and humid Guam air, was promptly kicked off of the Emory S. Land and moved right across the pier to the Frank Cable and now here I am! Whooo! Updates may or may not be resuming what with work schedule and everything but I will do my best to continue to write as best as I can. Peace!