Task Force 24 was a formation that resulted from a competing idea to counter the Annihilator Clans.
The idea was four Pocket Warships that could pose a credible threat to Warships in a conventional battle would serve as a threat in being and screen. The popular choice for this was the
Castrum and
Castrum Cs now coming on line in greater numbers.
While these Pocket Warships kept the attention of the enemy, eight more nimble and frankly disposable Dropships would use the opening created by the screen and make themselves into giant missiles.
Nagasawas,
Isegrims, really anything that had a large thrust profile would work.
They had been ordered to move to the Kowloon system to supplement local forces.
“We can’t move the entire force, not fast enough.” Captain Ling Ch’in looked up from her displays. “We’re too far away without fusion batteries across our entire force.”
“What can we get there now?” Admiral Alexander Mehta studied the star chart of Kowloon.
“If we detach the four
Odyssey class vessels we have as an independent force, a single ram flotilla. According to the time table we have for the expected attack, we’d have to risk sending them in without a reserve charge for a jump back out to avoid enemy action.”
“We have our orders from Admiral Von Jankmon himself. Send First Flotilla. They have the most ideal composition. The rest of the Task Force will follow up as best as possible. Admiral Von Jankmon is also working on conscripting civilian ships to aid in our transit.”
“Even if he succeeds…”
“I know. If our intel is correct, we will be too late with the bulk of our force. We will have to hope the twelve Dropships we will be able to get there in time will be enough to avert a complete disaster.”
Four
Castrum Cs and Eight
Nagasawa class DropShips under the command of Captain Roberto Binetti transferred over to the selected JumpShips and began the journey to Kowloon.
***
Sylvia looked over the roster of ships and fighters available to her for the defense of her home.
It was a motley mix. As much as they tried to standardize designs for logistics and ease of maintenance, the competing priorities of different regions of the system demanded different solutions. And well, you also had to buy what was available at the time.
But it was a force that by her estimation would give any invader hell.
The arrival of First Flotilla, Task Force 24 was both good and bad.
She would love more time to properly incorporate them with local forces. Take time to get them to train together and improve coordination and cooperation. But since she didn’t have that, she’d make do with what she did have.
To his credit, Captain Roberto Binetti let Sylvia take charge of the defensive planning without complaint.
Captain Binetti surprised Sylvia a little with his only suggestion to her. To purposefully use his JumpShips as bait. By his reasoning, the Annihilators would not be able to resist the opportunity to capture four such valuable Jumpships. With the expected arrival time of the Annihilators, there would be little time to hide them. Their jump cores were still many days away from charging and likewise their batteries empty.
Sylvia didn’t like it, but it made a cold kind of sense. But she dismissed the idea. Better to take chances to dispatch tugs to tuck them away someplace reasonably safe while she could.
Two days later the jump signatures were reported.
Clan Cloud Cobra had come, almost exactly when predicted.
A
Conqueror Class Battlecruiser/Carrier and two
Volga Class Transports appeared at the Nadir, and at the Zenith was a quartet of
Lola IIIs and four
Monolith JumpShips that spilled out three dozen supporting DropShips.
Without the Duchess’ Corvettes available to her, Sylvia was at a disadvantage against the heavy iron. But she knew Kowloon and its system like they never would.
Sylvia dispatched forces to keep the
Lolas and their supporting DropShips tied down defending their
Monoliths but she knew she couldn’t force the issue against that force, at least not in such open space and she needed to wait for the Nadir force to make its move.
Choices and sacrifices had to be made.
After a few hours, the Nadir force made their jump. They made their choice. They had calculated a jump using a near-LaGrange point created by one of Boojum’s uninhabited moons and began moving towards Spider Moon.
The enemy had the advantage in numbers. The sheer number of fighters that poured out of the Warships and supporting DropShips was daunting.
The skirmishes began. Hit and fade attacks using the moons of the gas giant to provide gravity assists and cover allowed the defenders of Kowloon to come in from all angles.
Forces took losses, got rotated out for fresh units and the meat grinder continued.
The crack in the Cloud Cobras forces Sylvia was hoping for wasn’t forming fast enough. Their formation was disciplined and they adjusted course and speed to throw off the usual tactics of throwing rocks at them from beyond normal combat ranges.
That just meant she had to adapt with them.
Then came the report from Hatter.
Somehow, the Cloud Cobras got an
Aegis right on top of the defenders there without being noticed until it was too late. The pasting it delivered to the surface settlements and infrastructure before it began a fighting retreat to join with the other forces of Clan Cloud Cobra was unwelcome, but the local defenders of Hatter were making it pay.
But in its own way, that was bad for Sylvia’s plan. The Hatters were now hell bent on taking down that
Aegis, no matter the cost and disregarding the part they were supposed to play in her plan until they made the enemy die.
Which they eventually did manage. The
Aegis, despite the new shielding system, was swarmed and overwhelmed by fighters dropping bombs and nukes right down its throat. But now they were out of position to swing in and hit the flanks of the
Conquerer and
Volgas before they got to Spider Moon.
The
Conqueror opened fire on the moon itself while the
Volgas stayed back to cover the larger ship from flank attacks.
That was when Captain Binetti made his move.
The plan they managed to come up with was out the window now, and he was improvising to make up for the loss of Hatter’s defenders in the current situation.
His flotilla came out of the mass shadow of Spider Moon and burned hard for the Cloud Cobra formation.
To their credit the Cloud Cobras reacted swiftly and started pouring fire into the dozen Dropships.
As tough as Binetti’s Dropships were, they could not withstand the fire of three major WarShips, supporting DropShips, and Aerospace Fighters for long, but they didn’t need to.
Two
Nagasawas managed to get through and smash into the
Conquerer which fell onto Spider Moon under the influence of the moon’s gravity.
The
Volgas narrowly avoided the same fate as they were in a higher orbit and under less gravitational influence. But without the larger vessel, and now more spread out, they were vulnerable long enough that the defenders had the advantage for a moment.
Forced to pull back, the Cloud Cobra
Volgas made for open space under pursuit until Sylvia had to issue the recall orders.
For the next few days, it was clear each side was at something of a stalemate. Without the cover of the moons and asteroids, the Cloud Cobras simply had too much advantage for the defenders to counter attack without taking horrific losses. But the longer the defenders waited, the more forces that would become freed up from the Zenith point skirmishes.
***
“My
Odyssey jumpships are almost charged. We could apply more pressure on their Zenith flotilla with an in system jump,” Captain Binetti offered.
“You’re down five
Nagasawas and a
Castrum. Plus, with no gravity or moons to pin them down, you’d be hard pressed to repeat your foolishness.”
“Foolish or not, our sacrifice brought down their biggest threat to us.”
“We’ll argue about that later. After we’ve won or when we meet again in hell.”
“Aff. But we both know with the losses sustained on all sides, we are not getting out of what is left of this fight without taking more risks.”
“Agreed, but my judgement is that their Zenith force is bait. Has to be. Would explain why they haven’t moved and like fools we were watching them. They managed to get an
Aegis past us somehow…” Sylvia pondered. “The bastards are clever. They watched us. They jumped it in, in advance, somewhere beyond our sensor nets or some mass shadow we weren’t monitoring properly and let it coast right into the orbit of Hatter without anyone noticing.”
“We must do something.”
“We will. Word has gotten out about Hatter and Spider Moon.”
“How bad?”
“Hatter isn’t so bad. Most everything there is deep enough they only hit what had to be on the surface to support the stuff below ground. But it still pissed them off. Spider Moon is worse. That much mass coming down, it collapsed part of the archive. Relax, they blame the Cloud Cobras, not you.”
“A small satisfaction.”
“How long until the rest of Task Force 24 arrives?” Sylvia rubbed the sleep from her eyes.
“Twelve days if nothing goes wrong and they push the cores to their limits.”
“Too long.”
“Aff. This fight will be decided by then.”
“Mum, jump signature detected. Near the Spider Moon-Boojum LaGrange point,” a comtech announced.
“Identify and standby for further orders.”
“Bogey identified as
Star Lord Class. Transponder coming in now as
MS Conwenna’s Courage. Message coming in,” the comtech answered.
We heard about Spider Moon and Hatter. Apologies for not being here in time to stop it. But we’re here now to lend what aid we can. More friends are coming. Ship’s Master Michel Engel Mahan.“Damn bastards nearly got blasted out of the sky for not calling ahead.” Syvia shook her head. “Get proper communications established. I’ll take all the help I can get.”
***
Star Captain Elena Eaker found herself the senior commander after the destruction of
CCCS Medusa’s Garden and the loss of Star Admiral Reginald Hobbes.
The losses in Dropships and Fighters in addition to two Warships was not the kind of situation she wanted to be in.
The report of a Jump signature at Spider Moon-Boojum had been confirmed to be enemy reinforcements.
“We should continue the attack, while we still can.” Star Captain Cassandra Kardaan was next most senior.
“Neg. We have bled enough. This has already been too costly of an attack. We will withdraw while we still can.” Elena knew that this would not be received well by the Khan or the ilKhan, but she had to think about future conflicts.
She could win, but the cost…
It was too much now in her estimation. Especially with the enemy pulling in reinforcements and they had none to call on.
“We will do the next best thing. Ballistic coasting trajectories, all missile batteries. Target the Shipyard and Kowloon itself. Set activation and terminal guidance to 108 kilometers from target. Sixty/forty split. Deplete the magazines and use of special munitions is authorized. Let them feel our parting wrath.” Elena spoke again after a moment of stunned silence from the rest of the Warriors around her.
***
Over the course of days, the true price began to add up.
Atomic fire seared the Ia Drang Plateau's richest croplands, an event not seen since the Rim Worlds conquest in the 26th century. A close hit near Vin Drin Lap triggered the eruption of the volcanic rift under Golden Lake, and broke a fracture line eastward, unleashing volcanic fire in the aftermath of searing nuclear flash.
New Saigon's swamplands were dried momentarily, then swamped in the Tsunami aftermath of that coastal detonation.
The massive pillar structure of the Star League's contribution to the Boojum yards, a virtual copy of Titan's massive auxiliary yard, broke. The O'Neill colony built to emulate Sol's massive structures smashed into spinning random fragments by multiple nuclear detonations.
This happened between days, and weeks after the actual battle had ended.
Many of the nukes burned up, their approach angle wrong, or deflected. But enough fell through, here and there. A system with two billion residents lost five hundred million in both immediate strikes, and weeks of aftermath.
Hundreds of billions of tons of infrastructure was likewise savaged.
"It could have been worse" just doesn't seem to cut it.
“Makes me wonder though… Why did they not launch such strikes to begin with? We were obviously ill prepared to stop them.” Binetti downed a microgravity tumbler full of local alcohol, something called ijero.
"They had the ability, but they didn't have the imagination before." Sylvia Cartwright's suit was dirty, she had spent this morning with recovery crew 176, digging out survivors on Spider Moon's south hemisphere. Dirty work, pulling debris and overburden off of the collapsed entry and setting up temporary airlocks.
“Perhaps. Perhaps there is another reason. But with their leader dead and their retreat, we are unlikely to learn it. All we can do now is pick up the pieces of our failures.”
“Casualty estimates are still piling up. They hit Hatter, and that's gon' be hell digging out, that close to the suns… I don't think you're going to have any more problems recruiting from the orbitals though."
“I am already being swamped with requests.”
***
Cambiano, in the Federated Suns, has always had a belter minority. A notoriously
pacifist community. February's attack on Kowloon, and the homeworlder Clans focusing effort on another spacer community was learned of here.
The Star League's recruiting officer on-world was sent here as an easy job, for an older man whose time was ticking down.
A few hundred here and there is most week's worth, even with the war. Half the time, he had to work with local officials to find conscripts that could be firmly acquired and sent to the training sites offworld.
It's fifteen hundred hours, and there are over a half million applicants sending requests to his office over tight-beam radio from Cambiano's outer system. Not all are even native to this system. A lot of them are whole flotilla groups of The Folk.
***
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