.png){kind=link}
Beyond Hope
- Chapter 27 - The shape of the Elephant[]
<<Previous Chapter - Return to Story Index - Next Chapter>>
"January 1, new year's of 3059, we finally found out for sure who was coming, and why. The Steel Vipers were here for Helena, and they weren't going to go away until they had the system, and her.
In a sense, it was like they'd finally had enough-or thought they did, anyway. Thing is, Kowloon was conquered once before, and it didn't go well for our people-it went so not well, that from Hatter to the Kuiper, there was only one response.
Never Surrender Again…"
-Ngo, Elizabeth, Duchess, Kowloon and margrave of the short-lived Mainstreet theater.
The Challenge to the Intruders[]
“Full broadcast in the clear please, Samantha.” Helena nodded Cameron. “Attention Forces of Clan Steel Viper. You have entered this system without permission during a time of war between our governments. I will give you this one chance to surrender now. You will not get a second.”
<<”Who dare has the audacity to demand the surrender of Clan Steel Viper? We are here on a mission to rescue First Lady Helena Cameron! You will be swept aside like the rest of her jailors!”>>
“Me? I AM Helena Cameron. The War Witch. If you really respect my title you’ll surrender now.”
<<”Lies! We will make you burn for your perfidy!”>>
Samantha suppressed a giggle as she parsed through the transponder leakage from the clan force.
“Oh, tell me they were not that dumb.” Helena asked.
.jpg){kind=link}
Potemkin Class Troop Cruiser
"CVT 201213. SLS Belleau Wood, it's the one whose audio channel claims to be named Ophidian." Samantha said in a tone of malicious relish, "They were that stupid-they brought the one Potemkin everyone in sixty light years would kill on general principles."
“Okay let’s see just how stupid they were. Jane, release the override codes we have for the Belleau Wood to Samantha’s station. Let’s see how many we can hit them with before they either figure out what we’re doing to them or figured out how to patch over.”
“It’s a shame the really fun ones will only work if you were actually over there.” Jane giggled.
Command Override[]
CSV Ophidian, Potemkin Class Troop Cruiser
Kowloon System - In bound, Federated Commonwealth (Lyran State)
January, 3059
At first, it seemed like nothing much was wrong.
During undocking, a half-dozen dropships failed to disengage when the release command was sent. Out of a 25 collar capacity, this is actually pretty significant, but manual overrides handled the problem and it was chalked up to poor maintenance by the Technician Caste.
Six dropships found their docking collars disengaging with the airlocks still open…on both sides.
That was when the CO2 alarms started kicking off ship-wide., but not everywhere all at once, sending repair and service teams from one end of the ship to the other looking for the fault, or source of excess CO2 build up that was tripping the alarms.
Said alarms repeatedly refused to be put into silent mode, or to remain there.
Somewhere in there ALL the toilets decided to ‘flush’ at the same time, without the one way safety valves engaging.
The string of minor faults were escalating in severity, if not frequency. Automatic purge valves in engineering, meant to prevent a cascade should one of the ship's fusion toruses get a fatal hit, vented Helium meant for cooling the core, into Primary Power Toruses 3, 6, and 9, effectively quenching and smothering those Fusion power units and requiring them to be purged and cleared for use before they could be reactivated.
A Fire alarm in officer's quarters resulted in an emergency purge of that deck. The atmosphere from the sleeping area making a temporary halo of vapor clouds around the massive, phallic warship.
"Targeting solution! They are Close and Closing!!"
“Destroy them!” Star Commodore Alexander Cochraine demanded.
The warship's main guns spoke…
And two Steel Viper Noruffs Assault DropShips exploded before someone bothered to look out the window.
"This is not…this is sabotage! We have been Hacked!!"
"Incoming from long range, RF, several hours old."
<<"Hey ho, what do you know,
I spy, with my little eye, something that begins with
'Deserter', though it might rhyme with 'traitor'. But the true term is 'Bandit',
As used in 'Bandit Kingdom', deserters with looted property come to steal
What isn't theirs.">>
Whoevers voice it was, was light, feminine, with a slight smoky undertone.
<<"This is a song request from Helena out by the Belts, to the Deserters of Kerensky.
It's a happy little tune, tap your feet and clap your hands to the New Saigon Girl's Chorus
Rendition of 'Elbar Toothpick', to be followed by 'Hanging the slaver on the bridge', courtesy of Chuck from Vin Drin Lap, and I'm your hostess, Elizabeth Ngo, spinning the tunes Twenty Four Seven here on all your stations. And for those into more visual mediums of entertainment, we have special presentations of Who Let Grandma Pilot the ‘Mech and a marathon of Anh’s Learning Adventures starting with lessons on learning how to count. It's all here, boys and girls on the 'Get off My Lawn Network!!’”>>
"The broadcasts…are repeating across entire frequency bands, Star Commodore! This is not a propaganda broadcast, it is Jamming."
“Find the source and get my ship in order!”
About then, the CIC lights went out, leaving only the light from the displays, and battery powered units, as if to emphasize his point. "Cut that noise off."
The sound of a girl's chorus singing about doing gruesome things to invaders was cut off. Briefly, only to resume, despite the frustration of the technical crew.
The holotank began shortly thereafter with what was widely considered a contender for worst holomovie ever with some of the really bad Immortal Warrior movies.
Organization of the Defenses[]
Command Center - Golden Lakes Region
Kowloon, Federated Commonwealth (Lyran State)
January, 3059
"The first step, is head-games." about a week ago, in the planning room. "The Clanners use an exotic pseudo-language on unencrypted channels, in a way it's just surrendering to the idea that you can only encrypt so much using equipment and software, so you have to send encrypted messages that were encrypted BEFORE you sent them." Pol Nguyen explained. "They still have the same frequency-hopping encryption scheme everyone else does,only slightly better, but there's a way around that, Samantha?"
"Flood the entire frequency band simultaneously. Frequency hopping does no good if the channel's already busy as hell. WE KNOW what bands they're using, because they've had no reason to change them up, and they've been using them the whole time while giving LIC and DMI fits."
"So how do we screw up their commo and frustrate them?" Elizabeth asked.
Arthur Steiner-Davion cleared his throat, "Dear…we have been building that deep space radiotelescope array for the university…and comms relay satellites are present near every body we can put them in order to help keep the Rockjacks in touch and coordinate Coast Guard patrols…It's a LOT of commsats, with a lot of power sources, and with the right plan we can keep them going simultaneously while running OUR communications through gaps."
"I know a few tricks we used from the Amaris War, that didn't get spread around." Helena contributed.
"Use 'em. We'll learn if the knowledge was passed down among the Deserters, or edited." Elizabeth-as-Margrave stated. "Arthur, sweetheart, is there any way we can use bounce from all that signal noise against them tactically?"
"You're wondering if anti-radiation missiles might be worth it. Given that AFFC bought a hell of a lot of SLDF pattern rounds that use that, aren't you?" he answered.
"Yeah." Elizabeth acknowledged.
"I wish I could say 'yes' but the answer is 'no'." he began to say…and then, he got a gleam in his eye. "Let me take a look at them, we might be able to do something with tuning and frequency isolation. No promises, and it might not be ready in time."
"Emergency codes, we've been drilling for an invasion situation since I took over here from Li." Wells said, "we've got black box transponders-the mark ones, at least, on the Ferry service boats, we can have them pulled back to storage in a few hours tops once the invaders actually show."
"Good." Elizabeth said, "You're not going to try to re-task them as defense units are you? Those things are unarmed and aside from some industrial reinforcements, unarmored."
"Wouldn't dream of it." Wells agreed just a little too readily.
"Enforce that." Liz told her, "We need the Ferry Service to keep the system economy going once this is over, or to help manage evacuations if it goes wrong. Keep those jump-ferries out of combat,even if you have to post guards to keep someone from trying a cowboy mission."
And this was where the illusion broke. Elizabeth was thinking about after the fighting, Aleksandr Kerensky never gave that phase a single thought, and neither did Amaris-Liz was simultaneously trying to plan for victory, and how to handle defeat.
"Hatter's gotten most of the Megatonnage range rockbreakers ready for transshipment, where are we delivering them?" Charmaine Jennings was the rep from the Hatter mining colony, the only other high-gee permanent settlement in the system that wasn't primarily military.
“Those should be our aces in the hole. Just in case they don’t take the bait.” Helena said.
"Rajah dat…but where?" Jennings asked. "Thing is, those represent a hell of a lot of heavy fissionable from the mines on Hatter, so where are you taking our big nukes?"
“Around the shipyards and the largest outer system population concentrations. We’ll use the kiloton stuff around Kowloon itself.”
"Mines, or do you want teller-stack bomb pumped X-ray lasers?" Charmaine asked, "because thanks to His Grace Mister Ngo-Steiner-Davion, we can build the Teller Stacks and it won't take forever to do it."
"Dear?"
"It's not even that hard to work it out, part of the results from the Bose-Einstein experiments had a side-effect of correcting Ed Teller's mistakes from the nineteen seventies. The loss is going to be around ninety percent, but when you're talking a power source measured in five megaton lots… Materials physics says that Hullmetal and anything with 'ferro-this or that' in the armor name is going to get very warm very fast and emit gamma as a result-it won't be for very LONG, but how long do you need it to be to disrupt optical computers and datalines, overload cooling systems, and maybe melt heat sinks?"
"Test it, we need to know what it does by Christmas. Charmaine, Arthur, Admiral Wells? Test it, get me answers on whether this is even a workable idea." The Margrave spoke. Helena could see the mask Elizabeth was using in her tone and mannerisms as clearly as if the girl had pulled up a pasteboard cutout and put it in front of her face.
This is why I can let her the rest of the way in. She understands.
"Mass drivers." Jane said, "I noticed several of the Rockjack combines have them, can they be weaponized?"
"In a few months we don't have, maybe." Liz shook her head, "The problem is keeping them tuned once you sling a load they're not rated for, too light and it rattles the structure and burns the conduction rails, too heavy and the load doesn't move."
“And the launch velocities would make them too inaccurate against a target able to maneuver in the slightest.”
"How about using them to encourage our guests to move?" Gerald Sithers, head of Sithers-Deen, asked, "Maneuver uses fuel, the harder maneuver also wears men out, if they think they have to dodge the whole way in…"
“Might work. Maybe. I know the SLDF was never able to get much mileage out of Mass Drivers when they tested them but it could be a variable they don’t expect.” Helena nodded.
"Does the Margrave have to point something out? Mass Drivers are Expensive and time consuming to rebuild. You start lobbing twenty ton packages at the invaders, they're going to send missiles and fighters, and those mass-drivers aren't mobile." Liz scowled, "I do not want to sacrifice spacers on fixed gun positions."
“Then that settles it, we’ll keep that on the back burner as another tool in case we fail.” Helena stated.
"Backup, to cover an evacuation maybe." Liz said, "if they're pulled into an orbom pose…"
"If they're pulled into an orbital bombardment, they can't maneuver!" Wells had a light in her eyes, "and unless they seriously improved sensor technology to see through the re-entry phase plasma that an Orbom by the book requires, they can't see it coming, but they can be seen."
Jane looked thoughtful, as if she were…well, she WAS going through SLDF records and tactics. "How did nobody see this before?"
“I’m not sure it is a case of not seeing it, just more of a case of not considering it a problem.”
"Or, someone saw it, and saw it doesn't work." Elizabeth scowled, "it's too obvious, somebody would've done it before if it worked."
There they go proving they really should be sisters again. Jane thought to herself.
"Test it?" Arthur asked. "Rabbit Moon's got a magnetic field, and atmosphere that's pretty closer to the Ionospheric region of Kowloon…"
"Put up a target, and test it. If it works, we'll use it, if it doesn't, then we know it doesn't work." Liz agreed.
“Since these are not purpose made mass drivers for combat situations it’ll be difficult to articulate their trajectories in a real combat scenario. So Arthur, make sure the target can actually maneuver. Even in orbital bombardment orientation a Warship will have some freedom to do so.” Helena added.
"Mister Sithers?" Arthur raised an eyebrow.
"We've got one we can have erected and a suitable target can be arranged. Figure by December 19 or 20th."
"IF it works,we hold it in reserve." Liz asserted, "the installations are too vulnerable, and as Helena pointed out, these are industrial equipment, not purpose built weapons."
"And if it does work?"
"Then I guess Sithers-Deen goes into the arms business, since it's your baby, sir." Liz said, "I'll leave working out HOW to make it work to you, Wells, and Helena, if the test does work."
"YOu don't have any ideas?"
"Wrap a dropship around one and use it to hammer fortified lines and battleships." Liz said automatically, "but that requires that it can actually hit something and that you can come up with a carrier that's big enough to handle the recoil without costing more than a cruiser."
"Not a warship?" Jane teased.
"Jane, the EMP from firing one of those would be hell on shielded systems, we're talking true Gauss effect here, railguns, not the coilguns the SLDF issued." Elizabeth began, accidentally revealing how deeply she'd once dived into weapons theory as a girl seeking ways to arm her world against Pirates. "So…no, I would not put that next to the brain of a good friend. I prefer you have all your marbles safely contained."
"Minefields."
"Not much use if they're static." Helena noted. "Can we do maneuvering mines?"
"And still disarm and collect them after? Sure. That's Age of War stuff." Wells said confidently, "The problem isn't whether they're doable, it's whether they're worth the effort to do. If we use a mobile delivery system we can maybe use them as a form of attack, but they're not going to be very useful for defense."
“We all know the burrows are independent minded enough to stick a bunch on their skiffs and shuttles to put in the face or up the engines of any Clanner force coming for their homes so we might as well use that mentality to our advantage.”
Elizabeth sighed, and Helena caught a mischievous look in her eye. "Helena, somewhere out there is a burrow or co-op, or wildcatter who needs a license for their very own ordnance. That makes me so, so very sad. We should make sure everyone off the surface can do what they must. Wouldn't you agree?"
“I do believe we’re on the same page, Elizabeth.” Helena smiled.
Liz turned to Wells. "Expedite it, Wells, everyone who's got an approval in the waiting queue, expedite approvals, I don't want a single burrow or wildcatter in thirty light years who can't make life hellish and short for the Clans of Kerensky should said clanners bother them. Margrave's Orders, backed by the Minister of Naval Affairs."
“Be sure to put my name first and do what you can to put the call on me. That way if we fail and somehow survive it’ll be on me and even if we win, it will be me Victor will have to chew out first.” Helena added.
Elizabeth sighed, "Now, for the ground phase. I've opened the stockpiles and activated third and fourth tiers for emergency service, that's teenagers and old people for those of you who aren't insane. I have no idea how well we'll do, but I'm also really, really hoping that this can be nipped in the bud in the orbitals before we have to find out. We've got evacuation drills going regularly in the major cities, along with cover drills, air raid drills, and civil defense preparations…"
[]
KCGS Elizabeth Cameron
Kowloon System, Federated Commonwealth (Lyran State)
January of 3059
The Steel Vipers were getting their shit together, and Helena could see that the overrides wouldn't work on the newer ships they'd brought-only the ex-SLDF vessels that were largely in 'improved but mostly the same' configurations.
"Now for the next phase." She mused.
.JPG){kind=link}
KCGS Elizabeth Cameron, M5 Casper Destroyer
She began highlighting identifiers for immediate 'special' attention-vessels that weren't vulnerable to the SLDF back-doors, because they'd been built without them.
"Samantha, advise Elizabeth we can stop the Nadir force, or the Zenith point force, but we can't stop both simultaneously."
"Yes, ma'am."
The battle plans had flex, because they'd have to. "We're not going to be able to stop all the landings, just one side or the other."
And I think I know which one we’ll be focusing on. Helen anticipated the reply.
Elizabeth's reply over the secure net was short. >>>Your Plan Is Approved, go Fursnakes.<<<
“You heard her, Jane. Take us in.” Helena smiled. Jane’s engines came to life and the range counter to the first navigational marker for their approach started counting down.
Between Jane’s engines and the gravity assists they’d lined up they’d be crossing the forward ‘T’ of the Belleau Wood in four days at several thousand kilometers per second.
If their Dropships did decide to break away to try and force an intercept or chase, well they’d learn hard lessons in why the Caspars were such feared combatants despite being a fraction of the mass of something like a Texas or McKenna.
Helena and Jane had been shielded from any actual fighting as much as Kerensky could manage but the enemy also gets a vote in combat and they also paid attention to the forces around them. Learning all the lessons the SLDF and Rim Worlds Republic had to teach.
A Potemkin is fairly well designed as a troop transport/support vessel. Most of its firepower was in the sides and aft as most intercepts would happen after turn over. It was even rather reasonably armored.
So there was never any real expectation that this attack would destroy the Belleau Wood.
But what it would do, and it had no choice but to do, was turn. Which also brought a brief pause in its thrust.
The single broadsides each vessel lashed out at the other during the brief moment they were in range of each other certainly left the Potemkin the worse off in the engagement.
“You okay, Jane?” Helena asked.
“Yeah. They managed to chunk off some armor plate but nothing actually penetrated.” Jane answered.
“We pick up any hitchhikers?”
“You could say that.” Jane answered. “A pair of Noruff Class Assault Dropships have broken formation and are in pursuit.”
Of the 25 dropships the Clans had brought with the Belleau Wood four had been destroyed by Jane playing with their targeting system and getting them to fire on their own ships. Six were rendered combat ineffective thanks to not being properly locked down when they separated with airlock doors left open.
Helena watched the display impassively. The range counters between them and the Dropships were going down, but so was the counter to their next nav marker.
“I do believe it is time to clear our pursuers.” Helena said flatly as the range counter clicked over to indicate the Dropships were now in range of Jane’s aft batteries.
“Indeed it is.” Jane nodded.
With the precision that only a Caspar could provide the two Dropships were threats no more within just two minutes and that was only because Jane had to wait for her aft batteries to cycle to knock them both out.
“Jump point in five minutes.” Jane reported.
“Next phase line’s turn.” Helena nodded.
<<"Savashri, this is Khan Perigard Zalman of Clan Steel Viper to the forces holding Helena Cameron in the Kowloon System, we-">>
Elizabeth pressed the send-override key, "HI Perigard! I'm Duchess Elizabeth Ngo, I think you're familiar with my work? DID you bother to ask Lady Cameron, your theoretical Liege Lord if she needed a rescue?"
<<”You are without honor, why would we believe your lies. We will rescue her.”>>
Elizabeth Laughed, on the open channel, "When was the last time you upheld an Oath that wasn't in your own, personal best interest again? I keep my promises, Perry, even when it costs me, can you ever claim the same? I think not, I've read 'the way of the Clans' and you're as bad as your oath-breaking ancestors, so you can shut the ****** up about 'honor'. If you want Helena, she's kind of busy killing your companions at the Zenith point."
<<”She would not. We are her SLDF coming to save her.”>>
"No, you're a jumped up bandit kingdom with delusions of grandeur, Perry, and the looted knowledge of the Star League your ancestors abandoned to a five-sided civil war. Let me get it through your thick little inbred skull. She doesn't want anything to do with oathbreakers..and neither do I. But…you're here, and missiles are expensive, while scrap, thanks to your ancestors, is lucrative. Come and see for yourself, Kowloon upheld our oaths, your ancestors did not, we uphold ours still. Oh and be quick about it. Looks like Helena’s count of Dropships taken out of the fight is already up to a dozen. That’s just hers. It’ll be a bit before I get the update from the next line of defense. If you don’t want the number to go higher than it already will by being slow and stupid you know what you need to do."
<<"This is not over, surat.">>
"You're right, Helena hasn't finished kicking you until you stop moving yet, she's got a lot of anger to work through-they left her behind. I imagine she'll feel better as soon as she's made her point clear…as for me?" Elizabeth laughed, "I'm having a nice time cruising in a really neat boat, and I know battlemechs don't swim." to the holocam, Liz lifted a frosted glass with fruits hanging from it and a straw. "Weather's nice here this winter. Very tropical in the northern hemisphere. We're ready for you. Even got the fruity drinks and cheesy music."
<<”I will ravage your pathetic upstart world until you have the courage to face me like a Warrior should.”>>
"Kommen ze, Perry, bring it with all your dirtbag Rim Worlds friends. This is Kowloon, you won't be leaving."
<<”Now your world will burn for such insolence!”>>
"Awww, and I was trying so hard to be nice..." she made a rude gesture, "Come get some, Perry, if you have the balls." She could see he was losing whatever reasoning he had.
Angry people do stupid things.
She glanced at the Sub's RTO.
The RTO gave her a confirmation nod. The enemy formation had shifted their approach to angle for the Western Ocean.
Well either he's not completely stupid, or his detection people aren't.
The light delay of the report of Helena’s second phase line of defense now expired.
It was more of a butcher’s bill this time but that was expected but they had now caused the Belleau Wood and its attendant Dropships to have to periodically stop thrusting to put out an active CAP and rotate it. Even a Clan force would be exhausted by the time they hit Helena’s third line and that wasn’t even the planet itself.
"Hope you brought your waders, Perry." she said, and cut the link.
"Well, their leader's bringing us a warship, do we have enough to drop it? Or have I just gotten us all killed for a brief satisfaction?"
"We'll find out." Chuck Vanh told her, "I told Tieger to keep you submerged near the Midnight Rift, that's a drop of ten more kilometers to the seabed, but at minus two kay, you should be safe from his main guns-the water will absorb and disperse energy weapons and I doubt that Nightlord's engineers even bothered to read up on depth charges."
"Don't make bets like that, or they'll turn up with a whole suite of antisubmarine stuff." Liz told him, "we've got hours before they reach orbit, get back to the Valley and get the Ranchers into the highlands."
"Yes your grace. Not like kicking out Stoney's people…"
"No. It's really not. I wish Evelynn was here, and not on the Combine front." she sighed, "I feel like I missed a key detail and I don't know what. Get going Chuck, if we end up with a succession crisis here, I need you to keep things running until it's sorted out."
"I know." he climbed out the aft hatch and boarded a hovering chopper, as U-One's nuclear steam plant pushed the boilers to high.
The constant hit and run attacks by what Dropships and ASF Helena had managed to muster to form the second defensive phase line had taken a lot of losses but had done their job slowing and exhausting the Clan force.
Now it was time for the third line.
"Khon Tien control reports the enemy flagship's closing on Kowloon orbit. They're following your plan, Ma'am." Bianh Vu Dao was permanent party on the Elizabeth Cameron now, but Helena could hear the strain in her voice at the news.
“Then it’s time to finish off the Belleau Wood so we can get into position and close the door behind that Nightlord.” Helena nodded.
“Wish we had more time to fix more of the missing armor plate but we’ll make do.” Jane nodded.
“Let’s make it count then. Load the special munitions.” Helena commanded.
"Fishies to launch position."
"Fishies?"
"In ancient wet-navies, they termed their anti-shipping torpedoes 'fish'. Guided nukes fill the same role so…" “Shame we won’t be able to make them glow in the dark with what we have.” Jane shook her head.
"They'll glow." Pol commented, "just…not for very long, but it will be very bright. Might say we're going to make their little lights shine."
“Support forces signal their ready Admiral.” Samantha reported.
“Let’s find out how good their sunscreen is then. All ships and fighters begin phase three. We don’t stop this time until they’re dead or we’re dead.” Helena commanded.
<<Previous Chapter - Return to Story Index - Next Chapter>>
[[Category:Beyond Hope Chapters|27]