Valiant Defender's Home Base
Merton, Free Worlds League
21st October, 3013
It was nearly a year and a half into our five year deployment and everything was going well, all nice and quiet. I was with the Low-Brow Good Time and the jump infantry battalion and their attendant VTOL companies along with the Gabriel company on Merton, enjoying the Ripper crews and their paybacks on the grunts whenever they got a bit too… not chauvinistic, that's not right, but overly masculine with them. Those ladies were tough and could take more G's than most of the jumpers could, resulting in several amusing incidents that were never quite recorded properly but saw the compartments being hosed out a few times.
I think I surprised them with the way I stood up to it the one time they tried it when I was on board. Not that I was the target, I'd just picked the wrong one to jump onto for the exercise.
Overall we hadn't had to deal with any pirate attacks beyond a couple of space skirmishes – Jessica had apparently just missed the same pirate crew several times but managed to wing a couple of their fighters from range as they loitered in some dead systems. None of the planets we were responsible for had suffered a raid, at least. We'd managed that successfully.
Dawson, Paau and Hendrik and myself were running through a number of sandtable exercises, mostly for my benefit, practicing various theoretical tactical manoeuvres from squad based right through to the whole battalion. Joshua had the actual troops out preparing gauntlets for each other for PT, the losing company of the challenge (the ones who got the worst times) would be buying the winners their beer for the pre-launch "weekend" we had coming up in a few days. The Breaks was due to arrive within the week and we'd be heading out to join it after our downtime, with Leo and his tankers coming back on the Breaks from exercises on Aylmer to take up the garrison. Jaye and the Mech battalion were on Sierra for another three weeks with Fourth Squadron, the Breakswould be picking them up and returning them to Merton for their own break shortly.
No idea where Jessica actually was with the Roam and her two dropships. Her last report, via the HPG at Sierra almost six weeks ago, had her hopping empty systems trying to find more signs of pirate activity and bases. She was convinced that at least one band had a forward operating base in one of said empty systems, somewhere they could securely charge jumpships and tranship cargo taken in raids. The records of uninhabited systems were kind of bare for the area, except for the former settled systems of Eion and Calchedon, so we were building some good navigaton information up about them even if we kept missing the pirates themselves. I'd told her to deploy the Observatory's either way anyways.
Hendrik was just finishing up explaining how my brainstorm on the latest exercise would have either worked brilliantly or gotten everyone killed for no benefit when one of the Gabriel drivers slammed into the room, clearly out of breath and waving a bit of paper around.
Now, this was more than a touch concerning. Sun-Young had been running her company on exercises around the capital and its environs all week, roaming between there, our base and the spaceport itself. Also, the driver hadn't "played the trumpet" as he came in – a so-called tradition they'd gleefully seized on when I happened to mention it to them about the history of their rides.
"Whoa, Bracken, calm the hell down. What's got you in such a rush?" I asked him as I straightened up from leaning over the table. Bracken kept waving the bit of paper around, desperately trying to gain his breath as he walked over and handed it to me. What the hell had he been doing to make him so short of breath? Oh, yeah. Minor allergy he had to something in Merton's ecosystem, kind of triggered an minor asthma-like effect in him sometimes, usually only affected him when he was pretty worked up. Allergies were still a bitch in the thirty first century. I took the paper off him and began to read aloud.
"Major McIntyre found something. Full report waiting at Comstar compound. Get here ASAP – Lieutenant Commander Kwon." Huh. Why wouldn't she have just radioed this in, why send a messenger? "Did she say anything to you about why she didn't comm this to me, Defender Sternshard?"
He'd managed a couple of deep clear breaths by this point and came to a loose attention stance. "No sir, she just told me to haul ass here and bring you back there. Whatever it was it seemed important sir, she did call the rest of the company to the HPG compound before I even left there."
Something important enough to send a courier but not so urgent to radio it in. Curious. I shared some glances with the three officers with me before I nodded. "Okay, Dawson, get everyone set for ready-hour deployment. I'll get Sternshard to take me to the compound and figure out what's going on but I want everything prepped and ready if it's something that's gonna hit us here. Bracken, come on, I'll just go grab my jacket from my quarters then we'll head out." Salutes all round and we broke up, Dawson getting Pauu and Hendrik to join their companies and get them heading back to barracks while Bracken trailed along behind me.
The old fort we'd been given responsibility for was about thirty kilometres out from the capital and its spaceport, with the Comstar HPG compound on the other side of that city – probably close to forty kilometres away. It was on a slight rise above the surrounding terrain but the whole area was generally flat, nothing too high, with the road network around the city being pretty good too. Not really good enough to do the Gabriel's top speed of two hundred and forty three km/h outside of combat conditions, but we'd still get there in about twenty minutes from the time I squished myself into the tiny passenger seat and Bracken floored it out of there.
Man was I glad to be able to hop out when we got to where the rest of the company of hovercraft were assembled in the carpark across from the compound. I'd been worried he'd make up for not doing the trumpet back at base but I was pretty sure he knew I'd dock his pay if he did it while I was in here with him – it made the whole thing shake something fierce. The company preceptor pointed me towards the compound before I'd even finished stretching, telling me that Kwon was inside waiting for me.
An acolyte was lurking in the foyer waiting for me, beckoning me to follow him right away, leading me from the public areas and into the meeting room Sun-Young was sitting in. She sprang to her feet with a salute, before pushing a file at me before I'd had a chance to return it. "Here you go Damon, sir, urgent report from Major McIntyre. Figured you'd want to make an urgent reply so I didn't send it to the base straight away." I raised an eyebrow at her as I returned her salute finally before I sat down to read. And what a story it was.
Jessica had found the pirate base. She wasn't sure what it was exactly still, but when she jumped into one of the systems between Sierra and Dalcour she'd arrived almost right on top of two pirate jumpships, a Merchantand a Tramp along with a single Leopard dropship acting as a guard. The pirate dropship had moved to attack straight away but my pilots had earned their pay, scrambling into space and quickly disabling it as well as the two Stingrays it had deployed. They'd lost a fair amount of armour though, one of the gunners on the pirate dropship had been pretty good with his missiles, but being veterans they'd rotated in and out of attack range. The Honesty had gone after the Tramp directly while the two Observatory's took half the marines to the Merchant. The crews on board hadn't put up a fight – it seemed like they hadn't been ready at all for someone to drop in on top of them like what happened.
The pirate fighters were retrieved as well as the Leopardwhen a number of dropships were spotted beginning the long burn for the jump points from in system. It wasn't certain what exactly they were deploying from, since it was hidden in a combined ring/moon system of a Jovian type, but it looked more like a space station of some kind rather than the surface of a moon or asteroid. They were only a few days' burn away. It was also a significantly larger force – at least six dropships of different types.
Having secured the salvage and transferred prize crews onto the jumpships, Jessica ordered a jump out. The captured jumpers were only a day short of full charge anyway, but the Roam wasn't anywhere near ready – it would have to hot-charge. Always a risky option. But it worked and twenty four hours later all three jumpships departed the system back for Dalcour, though the Roamhad burnt up a significant amount of fuel with the hot-charge.
For the time being, Jessica would be remaining in Dalcour with the dropships and pirate vessels, making sure none of them got any ideas but she wanted reinforcements – she was sending the Roam to pick up Whole Lotta Metal and Fourth Squadron, preferably without Jaye and his mechwarriors. She wanted me to bring both Best Policy and Pretty Floral Bonnet to Dalcour directly with the Breaks, hopefully in time to pick up Metal as well and take all but Low-Brow Good Timeand Roam to the pirate system. Four squadrons of fighters plus five combat dropships should be more than enough to handle whatever presence was actually in the system.
It seemed like a good plan to me. I looked up from the report at Sun-Young, still seated across the table from me. "Well, good news it is. Looks like we'll be heading out on schedule, but you'll probably be late getting to Sackville." Definitely news worth keeping off the airwaves, you never knew who was listening.
I sent Sun-Young outside to wait with her company and called in the acolyte who was still waiting outside the room. I had to send a couple of messages off to confirm Jessica's orders as well as direct Jaye to remain on Sierra even with his dropship departing. Then it was a message to the Mercenary Review Board and the League goverment – time to get the paperwork on the salvage rolling. The chances were low of actually getting it but I definitely wanted one of those jumpships for myself, not necessarily for the unit but to revamp the old transport company as a sideline.
Two hours and a phone call back to the base to cancel the ready-hour alert and I was done with my business at the HPG. I walked out of the compound to find most of the hovercraft were long gone, the command lance so to speak being the one remaining behind. "Kwon, it's time to go back to base. We've got some news to share with the folks back home."
We pretty much followed our previously prepared schedule for the next few days. The gauntlet competition had gone ahead, First Company narrowly beating the other two though the times were so close I ended up buying the beer for everyone, then we had packed onto our dropship and headed to rendezvous with the Breakswhen it was due to show up few days' time. People were slightly annoyed at missing out on the action, especially since the marines would be leading the way if we had to assault the potential pirate station, but they also were happy not to have to fight in vacuum. I promised the next time we found a pirate haven I'd make sure it was on a planetary surface and they'd get the chance to kick the doors down after the mechs finished blowing stuff up.
With the combination of travel and recharge time (the jumpship had arrived while we were still four days out from the jump point itself) it was eleven days before we jumped to meet up with the others. I remained on board the Breaks while the dropships all changed around – Honesty, Best Policy, High Haven, Whole Lotta Metaland Pretty Floral Bonnet connected here while Low-Brow Good Time headed over to the Roam to head to Sackville. The pirates had long since been brought down to the planet's surface and handed over to the authorities, with the Leopard carefully brought through the atmosphere with only minor bone-jarring shaking, according to the pilot that had taken it down. Finally, my marines had handed over control of the jumpships to the locals just a few days before I got there – apparently it had taken a fair amount of time to find some zero-g qualified troopers on the planet and a bit longer to actually cajole them into leaving the surface to act as guards.
The command centre on the Honesty was packed, the squadron leaders, the dropship captains and their seconds, the marine platoon leaders, everyone was there except for Ephraim or any of his crew. I'd secured myself a good position to watch the briefing but I had minimal input into it, in fact I think I knew the least about the situation since everyone else had been here for a couple of days and there had apparently been a lot of discussion going on. Jessica and Samira floated at the head of the table and with a gesture from them the lights dimmed and the holographic display flared to life, displaying a star system before Jessica began speaking.
"Alright people, here's the plan. We'll be jumping in at the Zenith point again, but a bit further out this time. Everyone will need to be ready for immediate deployment but we're hoping the pirates will assume that our follow up attack will come in from the Nadir point instead – it's honestly a fifty/fifty toss up. Some of you have been involved in helping us run the details on all this so you are aware of what exactly comes next but for the rest of you, we identified this gas giant-" the display focused in on the third gas giant as Samira hit a few buttons "-as the source for the rest of the pirate crews. Scan data indicated specifically, somewhere in this cluster-" again, it zoomed into a closer view of the planet's rings and moons "-of orbiters, that there is a significant chunk of metal which we believe to be a space station of some type."
Samira brought the map back out to the full system version, with a number of blinking lights showing as Jessica took a second to take a breath.
"We also managed to identify six potential dropship targets, three of which we didn't have good vision on but the others have been cautiously identified as a Union, Leopard and Fury. No idea on the specific types for the Union or the Leopard, so we could be seeing as many as eighteen ASFs from those two alone if they are carrier variants, but if they aren't it could be as little as four – if the Union is a Union and not a Danais or Trojan. Squadron leaders, you'll be given a number of plans to run through your pilots with that run through the gamut of potential number. For you dropships captains-" she paused to make eye contact with each of them for a second before continuing on "- the plan is fairly simple. Long range fire to support the fighters and try and minimise the damage you all take. The exact details will have to wait until we know the exact conditions in the system and locations of the pirates, but the general idea is for Honesty, Best Policy and High Haven to lead the way, Whole Lotta Metal to follow closely and Pretty Floral Bonnet to cover the rear and snipe with its' longer range weapons. Marines will take the Observatory's to perform boarding action as required, though we will likely just the Honesty itself to board the space station, keeping the two small craft to board and secure the dropships."
Samira had been flinging up supporting images and plans all throughout Jessica's speech, bringing it back to the system overview as she finished talking. I could tell the plans were well-made if a trifle barebones at the moment, due to Jessica wanting to hedge her bets a little I assumed.
"Any questions?" No one seemed to have anything to say, I guess because they'd been talking about this for a little while by now and were just rearing to go. Jessica nodded her head before looking to me. "Damon, anything?"
"Nothing from me Jessica. I'll be riding on Honesty the whole time, so I'll be looking at joining the boarding parties for the station. Apart from that, let's get this done and earn our princely salaries!" I got some weak cheers and chuckles from that, with everyone taking it as a dismissal and beginning to leave the room.
From there it was just more hurry up and wait, even for me, the nominal leader of the bunch. The jump drive needed to charge up after all.
The jump in went well. As far as could be determined there were no pirates waiting at either jump point so our dropships formed up and headed for where we thought the pirate base was. Since it was located in the outer reaches of the system it was about a four day ride away at 1G burn, which we kept to since it wasn't like we were in a rush. After a couple of days I was up and recovered, just in time for us to finally get a look at what the pirate station actually was.
"It's a Warship. A Newgrange-class Yardship to be exact." There was dead silence over the comms. The pirates still hadn't come out to meet us everyone was listening in to this conversation. "Heavily damaged, which it must be to look as bad as it does from this range just on optics. My guess would be a Star League ship, supporting one of their advances on the Rim Worlds during the Amaris War, or failing that a victim of the First Succession War since none of them survived that blood bath." I sighed before continuing.
"We can only assume for now that the majority of the weapon banks are destroyed and the sublight engines damaged, along with the KF-drive. The fact that it's still here and they haven't tried to move it argues for that." Assumptions like those could bite us in the butt hard, but several of the sensor techs had conferred extensively over the imagery we'd gotten from our long range scopes and it definitely looked like huge chunks of armour and the weapon bays were missing. Only two of the four grav-decks were moving, one of them sluggishly – it was probably generating barely a quarter of Earth normal gravity. "Jessica, update on attack plans?"
"We're adjusting courses to try and avoid any potential fire from the Warship, based on damage profiles from what we can see so far. For now the plan is to try and draw the pirate dropships out towards us, dealing with them before we send fighters in to sweep for weapons." A pause. "Fourth Squadron has volunteered to do a recon flyby if the pirates prove reluctant to attack, to determine the condition of the Warship from close range."
What was that term from Vietnam? Wild Weasel or Iron Hand flight? Deliberately exposing oneself to enemy fire to gain knowledge of their defensive installations and capabilities?
I wasn't paying them enough, if they volunteered for the space version of that. Space was a hell of a lot more unforgiving about being shot down.
"If the Warship proves to be defanged we'll readjust our burns and assault the area immediately. If any of the weapon bays are active the plan is to do a flyby with the dropships, out of range or firing arcs hopefully, while the fighters do a strafing run to destroy whatever emplacements are there."
"Damn straight we're doing a flyby, this thing is expensive!" Alexia interjected and the chat devolved into laughter for a second. I let it go and Jessica obviously agreed that we needed a short burst of levity to lighten everything up because she waited a few seconds before clearing her throat.
"Yes, Alexia, your dropship is expensive. It would make it very difficult to redeploy the Battlemechs if we didn't have it." That got a few laughs from the Outworlders, more from her dry tone than the actual words. Then she got serious again. "Plans have been forwarded to relevant tactical stations and to the pilots and we are currently at T+42 hours from target. Fighters will begin rotating launches at T+8 if the pirates don't go poking their noses out, otherwise within an hour of engagement time. Ladies and gentleman, for now I'm going to go get some sleep." People acknowledged and signed off, dispersing to get some rest or do whatever tasks were required at hand. I figured I'd go have a nap.
The hurry up and wait is real.
About roughly thirty hours later the pirates launched. I say roughly because I was asleep at the time and didn't wake up until a couple of hours afterwards. They were hard-burning in our direction, which meant that instead of being twelve hours out it was more like seven or eight, depending on how long they kept their thrust up for – a solid 2Gs. At least now we knew what we were up against - two Leopards, two Mules, a Union and a Fury. The surveillance team on the Bonnet began to intercept the pirate chatter, broke the encryption pretty easily and told us that yes, one of the Leopards was a carrier variant, but not the other and the Union was a Mech-carrier that still had its ASF cradles. So in addition to the six dropships we were looking at facing ten fighters.
Three decently armed combatants, one alright armed and two cargo ships with ten fighters versus three decently armed, one alright and one surprisingly heavily armed cargo ship with twenty four fighters. And it was practically a guarantee that we would have the superior quality to go with our numbers for the fighters too.
A couple of hours later and as soon as they were obviously committed to their approach Jessica ordered a vector change for our vessels, hopefully allowing us to open the range somewhat and keep it that way – I'd much prefer to keep lobbing long range fire and replace ammo stocks than to charge in, take fire and casualties and then have to do the repairs jobs later. The fighters all launched shortly after, followed by reports of the pirates fighters also launching – a mix of Cheetahs, Stingrays and Lucifers.
It almost hurt, to stay out of it. I really had no way to help out my pilots, beyond maybe taking a gunnery position but even then I'd likely be more of a hindrance taking over from the regular gunner. I watched from the command centre as my fighters formed up in between the pirates and the rest of the dropships. The pirates fighters seemed torn between racing ahead to meet us and remaining within the umbrella of their dropships guns so our two groups continued to converge somewhat.
Eventually missile range was reached and volleys began to fly out. Here our first advantage shone through brilliantly – our birds were all pretty factory fresh comparatively, with their electronics in perfect working order. The command links meant targeting data was shared easily, maybe not as well as a dedicated C3i linkup would have done but still well. Most of the first few waves were aimed at the Lucifers to try and spook the pirate pilots into surrendering their suicide sleds. Only one of them blew up and the other two damaged ones seemed to slow down their speed dramatically and begin manoeuvring for a return to their flight bays.
The remaining undamaged Lucifer hadn't returned fire with its own LRMs, a fact I only picked up on later, as well as a couple of the damaged/destroyed ones. Post-battle we found out that yes, they had had three of the LCF-R20 variants which didn't have the LRM rack. Jessica I think caught this pretty quickly and had the fighters throw their missiles at the Cheetahs and Stingrays, now almost in energy range – our energy range, not the Cheetahs, the Stingrays could just about reach us – while the dropships started targeting their opposite numbers. None of the pirates were focusing their fire, scattering missiles and beams across everything to little effect – I don't think some of their launchers and guns were working even before the battle seeing as how there didn't seem to be enough firepower coming our way.
As if realising that we weren't going to close completely unless we could avoid it the Cheetahs put on their insane bursts of speed to try and get into their own weapons range while the Stingrays tried to snipe with their PPCs. It didn't help too much – the Cheetahs managed to avoid the majority of the PPC fire that came their way but we still had a large number of 8cm lasers on our birds. Bit harder to outfly a coherent light beam than a particle stream. Only one of the three got into its own weapons range and got a hit on one of the Fourth squadron birds which had surged out to meet them before three beams turned it into a brief star. Plus the Stingray pilots seemed to be terrible shots and kept missing until the missiles convinced them to surrender.
Man I had good pilots. I really could not emphasize that enough.
It was getting louder, so to say, around the dropships. All the spheroids were rotating to bring fresh armour against the weapons firing on them while the aerodynes were spinning to do the same. There is a difference in the two moves, I assure you -couldn't actually tell you myself, it's something the crew told me once. Most of the pirate fire was now being directed at the larger targets and we were now close enough that it was a lot more accurate.
Both sides had manoeuvred to slow down and increase the time under each others guns and I think we came off the better. Again, due to actually following a concentrated firing plan and sticking with it. The two groups of ships passed each other, us hammering the Union and the Leopards as much as possible while they shot at whatever happened to wander in front of their guns. Hard burns to come to a complete stop were next, then new burns to build up approach speed.
Meanwhile the last Lucifer was long since gone – powered down and surrendered - and the fighter squadrons had all pushed away from the dropship battle only to come roaring around at the stopping pirates and slamming a wave of fire into them.
I honestly don't know what happened next but one of the Leopards, the carrier, blew the hell up all of a sudden. Hadrien, our star pilot and former Flying Nightmare (First AAA Air Wing) started yelling and screaming after he landed that'd he told her he could do it, the drinks were on her – not sure which her it was, though I applauded him on waiting to land to actually start boasting rather than over the comms. Battleroms showed later he'd somehow delivered a Golden BB round right into a sweet spot in the dropships engines with his PPCs and hey presto, no more dropship. At the time it was cause for a number of curses over the radio waves, both from my people and the pirates.
By now we'd taken a number of hits, mostly losing minor amounts of armour though a couple of shots had hit weapons bays and done more damage. The pirates were much worse off – one dropship destroyed, two (the Mules) leaking air and with a lot more weapons and armour destroyed along with no fighter cover remaining. My fighters were all returning to their bays, since it would probably take a couple of hours to slow down and speed back up again to bring us all back in to contact and it didn't seem like the pirates were going to try and run for the Breaks.
It seemed worth a shot to demand their surrender, so I broadcast a call doing so. No response on open channels though the techs on the Bonnet reported an increase in private chatter amongst the pirates. I waited ten minutes and called again and got a rude response from someone claiming to be the pirate leader which I won't repeat – while I may have technically been a bastard neither of my parents were farm animals so it wasn't very accurate.
Soon enough it was time for another pass. A couple of pirate gunners seemed to get their shit together and knocked out a few fighters – a couple of the Tomahawks and one of the Gothas were rendered unfit for combat though still flying, barely. A few other fighters were reporting weapons and armour problems and headed for their hangers. The two Mules had been reduced to wrecks, their engine outputs fluttering wildly, while the remaining pirate dropships were also showing much greater signs of damage. My guys seemed to have successfully spread the weapons fire they took over their ships – more reports of armour belt damage but no critical systems damaged. Our two formations split apart again and I figured I might as well ask them to surrender one last time.
The angry invective I got was interrupted by a gunshot before he could get halfway through his diatribe, so I was guessing at least some of the pirate crews didn't want to die in space. A rough voice agreed to surrender and that they would be shutting down shortly. Soon enough all five remaining dropships cut their engines after coming to a complete halt. That concluded the space fighting part of the engagement, time for retrieval and boarding actions.
"Major McIntyre, once you've docked take over retrieval duties, let's see if any of the pirate pilots and fighters are still intact and alive. Observatory One and Two, begin boarding operations on pirate dropships – take special care of the Mules, their fusion plants are looking mighty sketchy. Otherwise, Honesty is heading for the Warship and me with it." With the end of space combat operations I was back in technical command again, rather than letting Jessica take the lead. A delicate balance to walk but it seemed to be working so far.
"Copy that Colonel Karter. Commander La Sorsa, whichever element of your squadron that is in best condition is to escort Honesty to the Warship. Everyone else, begin retrieval and post-battle operations. Keep the guns on the pirates." There was that odd mix of fatigue, relief and satisfaction in her voice of an operation well done, so I left her to it. The crews and pilots would be well in hand and knew that now was the time to calm down and take our time sorting everything out.
According to the surveillance techs from the Bonnet the way some of the pirates had been talking about the Warship between themselves sounded like it definitely didn't have any weapons itself, but had a few more dropships that they hadn't brought along that still had some weapons. Since that wasn't confirmed I still got the fighters to blast ahead to confirm before the Honestyfinished its approach. Their report was a little weird.
Okay, so a Newgrange is a Yardship, meaning it's basically a mobile shipyard. It only has four docking collars even though it was one of the largest ships ever produced, even during the Star League. What it does have is a huge unpressurised dock in the middle of it with extensive cargo holds, along with over seventy two small craft hangars.
All four collars were still occupied, while as far as we could determine all the hangars were empty. Which meant that the six dropships we'd fought had been parked inside that dock somehow. I had to wonder how that worked exactly, it definitely wasn't anywhere in standard practice for the class. The three dropships all seemed damaged to one degree or another, which was obviously why they weren't used by the pirates – the worse off was an additional surprise, a Behemoth which took up two collars. It looked really shot up, but the surprise was that it was there in the first place. They were super rare and I was pretty certain they hadn't been in production until just after the Succession Wars technically began – like within a year or two of the start. How had it wound up out here, especially since our scans had identified a Cameron Star half-burnt off some hull plating on both the dropship and the Warship.
There was a Mule which didn't look standard and an Aqueduct which looked beat all to hell and back. Which was also worth a "what the hell was it doing out here looking like this?"
None of the guns were active or intact (or at least didn't take a shot at us) so our escort peeled off and headed back for the carriers before we'd even gotten close. Albi had the dropship slow down even more and just kind of slowly drift into the dock.
Then it was time to touch down. I was down below with the marines all suited up and ready to party. Let's see if this assault went to plan…