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Strategos (A Great Captain Roberts Tale!!) - Part 3 - A Light In The Black -
Chapter 24 - Over Grankum[]
Keeping each other on their Toes[]
”Ready yourself, Mina…
… because this will be your first live fire experience of being connected to an ATACs, and the exercises are not the same at all.” Billie Hoel extended the handshake.
The flood of sensor reports, unit status, fuel levels, ammunition counts, and current position status was still a little unsettling for Mina. So she was glad to have practiced this before the real thing, but Billie Hoel was right. Now that the enemy tracks were real and not simulated it took on a whole different flavor.
“Why do I taste raspberries?” Mina pondered before dismissing it.
“They’re running low level ECM.” Billie Hoel chuckled lightly.
“Not the time for a practical joke.” Mina Siegel groaned.
“Sorry, not sorry. Couldn’t resist sending over being jammed as the taste of fruit preserves, also called jam. But you are right, this is not the time. Fortunately it is low level so they probably have not detected us yet or their jamming would be a lot more unpleasant.”
“All ships deploy fighters. They are going to notice us any moment now. Set condition ZEBRA.”
The Drone and Manned fighters spread ahead of the Warships. It would not be long before the merge and the chaos of battle took over from careful planning.
Telemetry for firing solutions began filtering in. The Sons of Plunder were starting to sortie their own fighters now.
Mina felt as if the clock was crawling until effective weapons range.
‘Not long’ in this context would be about an hour before effective range.
Now, as an AI, that felt like even more of an eternity.
“Tea to pass the time? The enemy isn’t doing anything that really requires your undivided attention.”
“I had hoped it was just the sims that would be like this, but this is worse,” Mina grumbled.
“Finding out the waiting is even harder than when you were human when the stakes are real was inevitable. We AIs have developed little tricks to help us pass the time without getting distracted. Watch them. See how they are deploying their formations. You have the experience, now you have real time sensor data to help you formulate your strategy without having to wait for reports from your officers, so subtle little things that get lost in that flow are now available to you.”
“We need to shift to cut off an end run,” Mina ordered after studying the relayed data.
“Agreed. Adjusting course port three degrees positive z-axis two degrees. They should be away safely before the enemy gets to them now.”
The clock was moving a little mercifully faster now Mina found.
Welcome to Tuesday[]
"Digital datalink to the Flag…
…is good, Captain." Regina reported.
Larry nodded, "Excellent, my compliments to the Flag vessel." He seemed… a bit distracted.
"Is there an issue, sir?"
Larry Nichols frowned. "I don't like the way they're arraying," he said quietly. "Link me to the Flag vessel, Comms, and be quick about it. Tight-beam only."
"You're live, sir." the Comms officer said.
"Commodore Hoel, do you see the enemy's formation, over?" he asked.
<<"What about it?">>
"It's perfect for countering what we're trying to do. They know this playbook, or they've at least drilled in an operation like this before. Recommend shift to echelon formation Foster Three, and enhance our flank security or we're going to be getting fighter-bombers coming in on our asses, over."
<<"How do you know that?">>, Radioed back Hoel
"Because that's what I'd do," he said quietly. "If I were them, I'd pull the attackers into engagement with the Alpha Dogs and slide the quicker fighters into the flanks for a corral: divide and dismantle. They're going to do it because it's the only viable move. The man who trained me did the same thing to a Blakist force over New Avalon, but he didn't have half the assets we're facing."
<<“I think you’re quite correct. Adjusting formations and increasing spacing. Maybe we can sucker them into some overlapping fields of fire that way.”>>
"We'll need to," Larry mused. "Those Hammerheads… If they're not packing Alamos, it's because their CO doesn't know as much as their formation suggests."
<<“Good thing all us AIs have AMS mounts unlike our original configurations, then.”>>
"AMS runs out of ammo and gets spoofed. Recommend sending Flying Circus on interception duty, take the Hammerheads out of play, over." He was still looking troubled.
“Yes. The telemetry from the Fighters will allow our laser batteries and capital missile tubes to do a good deal of force balancing before they get too close for comfort.”
He tongued his helmet mic, "CAG, fighters out of the barn. I want escort formation three from the playbook, we're going to shift port seven points, negative z-axis."
Then he switched back to the command frequency: "I'm bringing the children out of the bus, we're thin on the z-axis negative, and that's where their next best move is, do you concur?"
“Yes. Adjusting position of Lucy to help provide fire support if you wind up needing it.”
"Welcome to Tuesday," he muttered. "Yo ho ho."
"What is that a reference to, sir?" Regina asked.
"In today's terms, this is a major Fleet engagement, but back in the days you were built originally? This wasn't worth a paragraph to the historians. Just another Tuesday." he explained quietly.
In the distance, the flashes began.
Heavy Engagement[]
Billie Hoel…
…was now putting on a full display of what a Command Caspar with Dave Foster’s teachings added to the mix was capable of.
The lances of her Capital Lasers were slicing through enemy fighters with far more accuracy than should otherwise be possible. Her ready reserves of ppCapital missiles]] were rapidly depleting as well, but despite their fighter wing being outnumbered rather substantially, these factors were combining to quickly skew the numbers back in their favor.
The Assault Dropships of the Sons of Plunder were likewise feeling the effects of highly accurate Heavy Naval PPC fire.
There were still a lot of both fighters and Dropships and as such, covering each other was still taxing.
“Tough little bastards. But let’s see just how well you handle a concentrated barrage of three Heavy Naval PPCs.” Billie Hoel singled out the Titan Pocket WarShip variant.
So far the damage the Sons of Plunder were inflicting was sustainable armor damage but much more of this, and it would start adding up.
Billie Hoel did not like the math. They were winning according to her tactical algorithms but the fighter losses were adding up in addition to the armor damage.
She would have liked to call in Butler to make the fight more in their favor but the nearest jump point was now over an hour away even at hard burn. Which would leave Butler hanging vulnerable without support.
No. Better to call her in for clean up closer into the orbitals. I can win this with what I have thanks to Dave Foster.
The enemy was trying to use their thrust advantage to get their Assault Dropships in where they could attack the Kappa Galaxy's Fighter Carrier Dropships. This did mean getting within range of Billie, Mina, and Lucy’s heavy batteries that didn’t have difficulty tracking and hitting such large vessels. Add in the ATACs coordination and it was a butcher’s bill for the Sons of Plunder.
But a group of them seemed to decide they wanted to group up and use the others as a distraction to pop Tenebrous.
“Lucy, Larry needs your fire support. His Bonnie won’t be able to withstand that kind of combined firepower. Mina, you and me keep focusing on protecting Kappa’s Droppers.”
Lucy Heerman swung her nose around to give her port forward Heavy Naval PPC batteries an optimal firing solution. It was enough to shred one of the incoming Dropships.
But before she could cycle her HNPPCs to fire again as she continued to use her lasers on the fighters one of them managed to unload hard into the side of Tenebrous.
“Armor is still mostly intact but the sheer brunt of the impact knocked something loose. Larry’s hurt. Stand by.” Regina reported.
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Bonaventure Class Corvette in combat
Even depressurized, there's an issue when something the size of an Ironsides Aerospace fighter nose-dives into your hull. Metals and ceramics delaminate below the impact point, and sometimes, the non-resilient soft layers break free inward.
A sheet of shattered, age-decrystallized shipsteel broke free, a meter across, and silently crossed through CIC to embed itself in the inner hull, tearing through spall liners, and accomplishing the mathematically improbable.
"Reggie…I think I'm…hit?" Larry Nichols looked down, as a fountain of red began coming out. "Need a patch…" he said thickly. Then, "Oh shit."
Why can't I feel my legs?, Larry thought to himself
”Corpsman to CIC!!” yelled someone on nearby comms
The Medical teams were well trained, drilled, and really, with lesser injuries the response would be pretty good.
"Keep...[cough] fighting damn your eyes…" he mumbled and slurred, trying to speak, on the general channel, as they moved his body to his sea-cabin. Where pressure could be brought up and someone could do something about it before he died.
Raise the Black Flag![]
”No, no, no…
this is bad. Just stay with me a bit longer Larry.” Regina’s remote was attempting to keep Larry Nichols alive just a bit longer.
“We both know this is your boat now,” Larry coughed as a piece of the deck was sticking out of his midsection. "Beat the Drum, Reggie…keep…beating…the drum."
“Enough with that,” Regina leaned down to kiss him on the cheek.
She looked at another of her remotes that was placing an Aerofighter neurohelmet on Larry’s head.
“What damned fool thing are you trying to pull, Regina? Fight the ship or we'll lose more!”, Larry told her
“You’re right. I can’t save your biological life, but if you hold on just a bit longer. Well… it’ll suck but I am fairly sure I can save the important parts.” Regina told him.
“I’m not sure about this…” Corpsman Steff Yeats muttered darkly, trying to get another unit of UBS-22 universal blood supplement to stay in the body long enough to work.
“I know. I wish I had more time to convince you and do this correctly, but I can’t do that to Stacey or Amanda. Larry doesn’t have the time. They’ll probably hate me for not getting his consent and he probably will too, but I’d rather that than lose him completely.” Regina hooked the helmet to her system.
Then she started the imprinting.
Larry Nichols body thrashed as if in agony, the current simulating life through tetanic convulsions, but the soul had already gone.
"Do I call TOD Ma'am?" Yeats asked, looking at the AI's remotes with something like grief.
“Yes. Damn it.” Regina punched the deck.
<Regina, we’re going to have to talk about this when we get back to port. In fact I’m calling Butler now so I can detach you.> Billie Hoel reached out.
<I know. I had to try.> Regina communicated cybernetically.
<How much of him did you get?> Billie asked.
<Not enough to be forgiven. Just some memories and his pain. Pain that I made worse. I don’t know how I’m going to make up for that.> Regina answered
<For what it is worth our Doctors agree that there was no saving him based off the available data.> answered Billie
<It won’t matter to them. I crossed a line.> said Regina
<Stay strong, Regina. You have a crew that needs you still.> Billie firmly told her.
"He said beat the drum!" Yeats noted. "I know this story-Admiral Yi's last words to his officers on the day he died, beat the drum, keep fighting."
“So we will until the last possible moment, but Billie is right! People are going to have questions about what I did here.”
"Ma'am…who cares? You tried to save him when we couldn't get him to sick bay. That's what's going on my report," the young woman stated. "You tried an experiment to stimulate neural activity because he was flatlined, but for the moment, you still have orders and we can pay these ****** back for what they did. Raise the Black Flag! No Quarter, do it for him. Beat the Drum!"
“We will accept surrenders. The Sons of Plunder need to know they have an option other than fighting to the last. But for those that don’t, or try to use it to gain an advantage, we’ll be merciless.”
The bitter taste of Victory[]
The Battle of Grankum, already a fairly straight-forward killing contest, ramped up a few thousand percent as word spread.
There was a rage among the Outworlder crewmen-Larry Nichols was a legend, one of theirs.
The desire for revenge spread, and his last words also got out.
“Beat the Drum, keep fighting!”
“Her Ladyship has demanded we accept surrenders. The enemy must know it is an option. So we will follow that order to the letter. If no vessels issue a surrender they are to be destroyed or, if possible, boarded and crew eliminated. Special Munitions are authorized.” Billie Hoel announced to the fleet.
There comes a moment in every battle, where the outcome is no longer in doubt. This is usually termed "the turning point" or the "moment of decision" by theorists sitting in comfortable armchairs. Professionals sometimes term it 'culmination'.
The Aerospace phase of the Liberation of Grankum reached culmination at 04:45 on the 5th of June 3119.
It would take until noon the next day for the last survivors of the force garrisoned here by the Sons of Plunder to be eliminated, but they were already defeated.
Tessa Snow Raven's Protomech finished off the last crew on the last station at noon, sparing only a handful who had the sense to surrender without firing, or who did not have weapons and did not try to pick them up. "Send to the Flag, we have secured the orbitals, the invasion forces are now clear to begin landings."
Multinational troops led by Clan Snow Raven began arriving at the jump points aboard their transports, Alpha and Kappa Galaxy in the lead, for the liberation of Grankum, and the true beginning of war against the false Star League and Sons of Plunder.
Chapter Note from the Author[]
- Struggles of the Chapter
- sleeplessness... I regret that I will not be detailing the multinational landings to liberate Grankum from the "Star League" forces of the Sons of Plunder.
This is because I don't want to do it. page after page of mud-stomping by Clan and allied forces isn't a story for The Great! Captain!! Roberts!!!
at least, not until the climax of the series.
But...if you want to, you can just imagine two full Galaxies of Clan ground troops, supported by multiple Clusters of airpower, supplemented by allied Inner sphere infantry from two nations (and supporting, less capable, combat units) coming down hard on a Star League Combined Arms Brigade that has to devote 30% of its manpower to keeping the Slaves from running away or revolting.
Your music selection can include;
Iron Maiden; The Longest Day
Sabaton: Primo Victoria
Iced Earth: Clear the Way, Gettysburg
and for the aftermath;
Rush: Red Sector A
For the bold among you who write your own fan-created scenarios or are somehow inspired to run a campaign based on this fan-setting, I recommend those songs for working up your Mechwarrior ground campaigns. Just put them on continuous repeat until you've hammered it all out for your friends and players.