And I Feel Fine: Book III: Thunderclap

[worktroll]

Looks back in the direction of Terra. "Death is coming for us all."

[Liam's Ghost]

Star Adder WarShip Stanislav N'Buta
Zenith Point, Csesztreg, Invasion Corridor 2


The girl stretched in bed luxuriously, beads of sweat dripping down her nude body. "Oh master," she said. "You are so forceful. What am I to do if you put a baby in me?"

IlKhan Garret Banachek tried to contain the revulsion at the thought of creating a freeborn spawn with this thing, concentrating instead on filling a water glass from a nearby sink. "I would assume you would be intelligent enough to dispose of it without me telling you." Still, her words triggered some sort of perverse curiosity, causing him to look back at her. "Is that even possible?"

The girl smiled seductively, arching her back to emphasize her breasts as one hand caressed her belly. "It is if you want it to be," she said.

"I do not," Banachek said forcefully before taking a drink of water, his revulsion once again rising. "Nor are you to breed with any other lovers you may have taken."

"Don't worry, dear master," the girl said as she plucked a datapad off the nightstand and began paging through it. "The others are far too stuffy for that. All except Grigori, maybe."

Banachek walked over and took the datapad from her, earning a pout. "SaKhan Spaatz has expressed interest?"

"He calls me a demon," the girl replied. "Those quaint little extra traditions of his, you know. All that human baggage his ancestors brought with them. He desperately hates me, but I can see behind that, he's curious. Oh the things he would do to me..."

That was something Banachek would have to keep an eye on. He had expected his Khans to be above the girl's influence. If what she was saying was at least partly true (and it usually was at least partly true) then the Cloud Cobra SaKhan, and the entire Supercluster's religious traditions, bore further watching.

"Is that why you have been stirring up trouble among their lower castes?" he asked. "Seeking to draw his interest?" Seduction was part of her game, even the Society renegades that had first found her had managed to understand that. She found a way to get under your skin, draw you in, and wrap you around her finger.

"I'm hurt," the girl replied with another pout. "I have nothing to do with that Yellow King nonsense. So dour, always grim, and I look terrible in yellow."

Banachek hadn't told her any of the details, certaintly not the talk of a Yellow King. But her ability to simply appear wherever she wished would allow her to learn that on her own. However her words betrayed more than overheard gossip. "But you know about it."

"Oh yes," she said. "We're old acquaintances. I would have assumed he was asleep right now, but the Big Splash seems to have stirred up some of my kind. That's the great thing about you humans, you're always so quick to do things without really understanding what you're doing. So fun!"

She'd mentioned this 'big splash' before, and context clues seemed to link it with whatever phenomenon had crippled their HPG communication. If it was somehow tied to entities like her, it raised more than a few troubling concerns. "This Yellow King, is he a threat?"

"It's never the leader that's the threat," the girl said. "It's the people who follow him. I don't know what he and his followers have been up to. Would you like me to go find out?"

Another clumsy attempt at manipulation. The girl hungered for knowledge and understanding about human culture and technology, and even the Society renegades had been smart enough to deny her. "Do you really believe I would say yes?"

The girl did not answer immediately, as a technician entered the IlKhan's cabin carrying a datachip. "The latest reports from the front, my Khan," he said as he handed it over. He said nothing about the girl in the IlKhan's bed, and if pressed he would probably say he couldn't recall anything about her. Just some nameless warrior the IlKhan had chosen to couple with, clearly nothing of consequence.

After the technician left, the girl spoke again. "I could do so much more for you, master, if you would simply let me."

Banachek ignored her and plugged the datachip into a portable holoviewer on the table, taking a moment to sit down and go through the results.

The girl took this moment to get out of the bed and cross over to him, peering over his shoulder in a way that pressed her breasts against his back. "Good news?"

"For the most part," he said. Of the twenty four worlds targeted, twenty three had fallen. Mellisia remained contested, with a Jade Falcon WarShip merrily bombarding their troops on the ground, but the Black Phoenix supercluster had sent another four WarShips to the system to clean up their mess. Even that was only a matter of time. And the enemy had yet to mount any notable response. "It seems their communications are as crippled as ours."

"I have no doubt," the girl said. "The way you try to splash around without understanding the movement of the water." She slipped her arms around him and nuzzled against his cheek.

"I suppose you could help us with that, as well," Banachek replied. His body was responding to her affections, and he wondered if she saw that as a victory over him.

"I could, maybe," she replied. "I can see what you try to do, but I don't understand how you do it. I would need to learn how it all works before I could help you make it better." She began nibbling on his ear. "But once I did, I could make it so much better. Your splashing around is all power, no finess. I could show you so much."

Banachek pulled away, a little bit faster than perhaps he intended. "We will manage on our own," he said, chagrined at feeling just a little flustered. He needed to regain control, remind her why he was her master. "We both need a shower," he said. "Come."

She smiled and followed him.

[Giovanni Blasini]

Well...crap.  :o >:D

[Daryk]

Well, at least I've lost count of the number of entities running around now...  ::)

[Liam's Ghost]

THS Anshar
Furthest outskirts of the Hood System
Lyran Commonwealth

The ship was once again at silent running, after burning at two gravities for several hours while radiating every sensor system they had. It was a calculated risk, made more important as the flurry of jump signatures at the zenith point indicated something had happened. That burn and all those emissions had given off a long, bright signal. Not bright enough or close enough for the clan ships to pick up on, but the locals, with the kind of sensor network they'd need to really enforce a system wide quarantine, just might be able to.

The payoff, however, wouldn't come until a day later, and proved somewhat unexpected.

"Single emergence wave," the sensor operator reported. "Range ten thousand kilometers dead ahead..."

"Emergency burn, nose up ninety," Captain Emily Garson ordered, not even waiting for the rest of the information. At their current velocity they'd pass the target in less than fifteen seconds. If the contact was friendly, there wasn't a problem. If they weren't... Well, Emily already knew they couldn't maneuver fast enough.

When they passed without dying, Emily allowed herself to exhale. "Send to new contact: You have my compliments on the skill of your navigator, and my appreciation for not killing us just now." At their relative velocities, with so little time to react, it would have been as simple as scattering a cloud of mines in the Anshar's path.

The comm officer looked confused for a moment, perhaps not quite having put together the situation yet, but he complied with the order. "Response received, Quote: Compliments and gratitude received. The important part is that you know we could kill you and chose not to. You have entered a quarantined zone. Please identify yourself, kill momentum, and accept boarders, or the next ship will kill you."

"Acknowlege the message and send our identifier," Emily ordered. "Helm, bring us to zero velocity relative to the contact."

"That could have gone worse," Commander Stone pointed out.

"It should have gone better," Emily replied, consulting the sensor data they'd recovered as they'd passed. "It's a standard jumpship, not a gunboat. Means they can't free one up." She pulled up the optical images they'd obtained from their close pass. "They don't even have dropships attached. Nothing to pace us while we spend the next six hours slowing down. That means every gun they can scrape up is at the zenith point staring down that monster."

She gestured towards the holotable and the cluster of emergence waves it displayed around the zenith point. "And there's not enough of them to make a difference. Thinker! How's the drive looking?"

"The numbers look good," the deep thinker in the core said. "But we went way past parameters. We won't know for sure until we push the button."

"And we've got no way of knowing when to do it," Commander Stone pointed out. "We're too far out to know what's going on."

"The locals know where we are, who we are, and why we're here," Emily replied. "If the balloon goes ups, hopefully they'll be able to tell us where we can help."

-----

Gunboat HSDFS Joker
Zenith Point

"Transmission received from Sirius," the comm officer reported. "Quote: Unlocking of Special ordnance is not authorized. All ships are to take no hostile actions under any circumstances. If attacked, all ships are to make every effort to break contact and withdraw. This is a direct order from Prime Minister Duvalier."

Commander James Mahiro found it difficult to process those orders. On the one hand, he understood not taking hostile action. The gigantic WarShip that had dropped in on them was being positively peaceful, honoring their quarantine and even willing to accept screening. But that could change very quickly, and not even preparing for the eventuality, and even being told they weren't allowed to defend themselves... It was absolute lunacy.

"Request confirmation of these orders," he said. "Inform command that doing so will mean sacrificing militia lives should the Coyotes turn hostile." Their gunboats could withdraw. They still had a charge in their lithium fusion batteries. The conventional jumpships did not have LF batteries. Those ships and their attendant carriers and supply ships would be stranded here, faced with an enemy they could not defend themselves from.

It took a few moments for a message to come back. "High command confirms the order," he said. "Quote: The Prime Minister is pursuing a diplomatic solution to defuse the situation. All ships are instructed to honor the chain of command and follow their orders promptly."

A sense of grim doom seemed to come over the bridge with that communication. "Well," James said, "Here's hoping in the power of diplomacy."

[Liam's Ghost]

Coyote WarShip Ma'li
Zenith Point

If nothing else, SaKhan Erik Khufal would acknowledge that the spheroid screening teams were at least capable in their duties, having completed the task of screening the Ma'li's two thousand crew quickly and efficiently, using methods that were significantly less invasive than any the Clan had created during the Scouring.

And they were surprisingly free with their methodology, providing samples of the screening swabs and detailed information on their manufacture. The history behind the swabs, that they were originally developed by the Jade Falcons, seemed to take away some of the sting felt by Khufal's own scientists at the elegance of the solution, but to be outdone by a tainted Clan was little comfort relative to being outdone by barbarians.

Of course, there were two reasons for even allowing the spheroids aboard the Ma'li over the objections of his own officers. For one, the mere fact that they had not come across nothing but grave worlds at the resumption of their crusade indicated the Spheroids must be at least somewhat competent at controlling the spread of the Katyusha Plague (or Arluna Flu, he supposed). Khufal knew he could trust the spheroids' screeners simply because they were still alive.

The second reason was information. That girl, the Ilkhan's pet entity, had sent him here chasing the possibility of finding those who'd scoured the homeworlds, and what he had actually found was one of their most deadly weapons. He almost felt thankful.

"Thirteen Worlds," he said. "Ten in Lyran and three in Jade Falcon control."

The officers gathered around him (both in reality and virtually) still seemed to be struggling with the scope of what he was saying.

"Why would the Jade Falcons set foot on such tainted worlds?" Star Colonel Columbo, the commander of the Ma'li's aerogroup, asked.

The ship's chief medical officer chose to respond. "The three worlds taken by the Falcons have been without outbreaks for over two decades. As such the Falcons considered them safe enough to occupy, while still screening any traffic leaving them."

"The risk is too high," Star Colonel Columbo insisted. SaKhan Khufal did not disagree. The tainted Clans had apparently better luck in battling the Katyusha Plague, having faced it for longer than the Star Adders, but the affects of another uncontained outbreak could be catastrophic.

"The Falcons' folly will be dealt with," he said. "As will those who brought this disaster to both these worlds and the Homeworlds." The locals had claimed it was an accident, the mishandling of salvaged Star League technology, and they might even believe it to be true, but SaKhan considered it far more likely that the outbreak on Arluna had been a weapon test, a trial run before the plague was unleashed against the Homeworlds.

"But for now, we deal with the threat in front of us," he said. "Star Captain Wicks."

"I serve, my Khan," the commander of the Tracker replied via vidlink.

"You will carry the information we have gathered here," SaKhan Khufal said, "along with a record of my orders, to be delivered to the IlKhan. All available WarShips not currently engaged in combat operations are to be routed here for further directives. All other Coyote forces are to hold their current positions. The second offensive wave is suspended." He looked over to the holoimage of Star Commodore Clearwater, aboard the Stalker. "Star Commodore, you will execute a jump to the L1 jump point of Hood VII and destroy the command and control station, the naval base, and any vessels present."

If there was any shock among the officers at the Sakhan's orders, they didn't show it. As it should be, all of them would have known what would have to come next.

"In accordance with the standing order of IlKhan Hannibal Banachek," he said, "issued on August 7, 3092, I hereby declare a Trial of Annihilation on all settlements, outposts, and residents of the following star systems: Hood, Kowloon, Arluna, Jerangle, Inarcs, Jesenice, Chapultepec, Anembo, Mandaoaaru, Trentham, Kwangchowwang, Pangkalan, and Timehri, due to the presence of the Level 0 contagion known as the Plague of Katyusha. This trial is to begin immediately. All who attempt to interfere in this trial are likewise subject to Annihilation."

He looked over to his flag captain. "Take the ship to action stations," he ordered. "Once the Stalker and Tracker have jumped clear, engage the enemy at your own discretion." The flag captain nodded and left the room.

"My Khan," Star Colonel Columbo asked. "What of this so called Hegemony WarShip lurking in the outer system?"

SaKhan Khufal shook his head. "The greater threat is before us, so we can only hope they choose to interfere. If they do, I have a great many questions for them."

[Cannonshop]

who didn't see this one coming?

[DOC_Agren]

Science!  ;D

but did she Blind him with it

[Daryk]

who didn't see this one coming?

Me! Me!  :D

[Giovanni Blasini]

I see no way this could go badly.

[JA Baker]

Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Those who fail to learn correctly, why, they are simply doomed...

[Liam's Ghost]

HSDFS Joker

Contact C1, the ship they now knew was called the Tracker, was the first to move, boosting back above the proximity limit and soon after disappearing in a flash of infrared light.

"You sure this is a good idea?" the XO asked.

"They submitted to screenings," Commander Mahiro replied. "They're free to go." Whether or not it was a good idea, Mahiro couldn't say. The Coyotes hadn't returned control of the receiving station, nor even acknowledged a hint of remorse for their attacks. But their orders were clear. "We get a distance calculation from that jump?"

"The computer says just under thirty lights," the sensor officer reported.

"Log it and send it to Sirius," Commander Mahiro said. "Maybe we'll get lucky and pinpoint their staging area."

"Contact C2 is moving," the XO said. On the display the Stalker had begun aping its sister ship's movements, executing a short burn that would nudge it back above the proximity limit. Moments later, it too vanished from the scope.

"That was a short jump," Commander Mahiro noted. "What's the distance?"

"Too short to resolve," the sensor officer reported. Under about half a light's distance, the uncertainty in the IR Flash calculation started growing, though it was still pretty manageable for smaller ships, unless it was a very very short jump.

"He's still in the system," Commander Mahiro concluded.

"Looking for C3 maybe?" the XO suggested.

"If he is, he's probably in the wrong spot." Mahiro replied. The location data the Hegemony vessel had appended to its HPG message was nowhere near where the ship actually was, according to their own observation data. Command's read was that was intentional, to try to bait the enemy to the middle of nowhere and stranding them with a dry core. Useful if it worked, but it didn't sit right with Mahiro. It was a plan that depended on the enemy being rank amateurs. He couldn't help but wonder if there was more to it than that.

"Emergency message from Sirius," the Comm officer announced excitedly. "Contact C2 is attacking the station!"

"Active fire control from Contact C4!" the sensor officer practically shouted. "We're being targeted, dropships and fighters inbound!"

No time for speculating, then. Commander Mahiro quickly switched to the general channel. "All, ships, scatter!" he ordered. They'd worked out various plans in advance for what to do if it came to blows. The only one their orders allowed now was to run, every ship that was able to maneuver would scatter in every possible direction, to give the enemy too many targets to chase down at once and maximize the survivors.

It would mean sacrificing the jumpships, however. They simply didn't have the thrust capacity to run. Their orders were to surrender once they were targeted, and as the enemy WarShip's screen of assault ships descended on them, that was what they began to do.

And the Coyote dropships ignored the surrenders, tearing into the ships with all the firepower they could bring to bear.

"Oh hell," Commander Mahiro said as ships were destroyed one after another. Their own dropships, breaking their orders, began swinging around to engage the clan attackers, but they had too much momentum built up, there was no way they'd be able to intervene in time.

Escape pods began launching from the doomed jumpships, and the clan vessels began targeting them as well. The order to bring the squadron around to intervene was almost out of Mahiro's mouth when a communication from the Providence came through.

"Commander Mahiro," Commander Simms of the Providence said, "I regret to inform you that we violated the hell out of high command's orders. Suggest you get to Sirius to report our transgressions while you can. Execute!"

For an instant, the Providence appeared to occupy two points on the tactical display at once as it executed a jump that left it at the absolute minimum distance possible from the Coyote Leviathan.

The Providence's transmission was still going, the squeal of static from the jump slowly fading back into discernible voices just in time to hear Commander Simms give the order to fire, and for maximum acceleration.

The sensors wouldn't pick out the missiles that zipped across the narrow gap between the Providence and the enemy battleship faster than the Leviathan's own point defense systems could even track, but the flashes from six five kiloton warheads detonating against its hull was particularly hard to miss.

Out of the sensor blinding flash, the Providence emerged, burning in the opposite direction of the enemy's path of travel at two and a half gravities.

Unfortunately the Leviathan seemed to have survived its brush with nuclear fire and continued on its course, its aft batteries reaching out at the fleeing gunboat.

"Damn," Commander Simms said. "I thought we just might get away with that. Told them we needed more punch on these warheads." The transmission briefly cut out as the Providence was hammered by weapons fire. "...you still doing here? Get to Sirius! You can't help us here!"

The transmission was lost again as secondary explosions ripped through the Providence. For a moment, Mahiro was numb, just watching the disaster unfolding around him. But only for a moment.

"Cyclone!" he called out over the tactical network. "Jump to Sirius. We're right behind you. Navigation. Execute when ready!"

[Daryk]

Well... they tried...  :-\

[Sabelkatten]

My biggest complaint about CBT space battles: Nukes shouldn't be your last resort - it's your FIRST resort! >:(

(Personal rule: Intensity of space battle = Nukes/second. <1 isn't a battle... ^-^ )

[Liam's Ghost]

THS Anshar

The jump felt rougher than normal, but Captain Garson couldn't say for certain if that was because there had been an actual problem, or if she'd just been expecting one.

Still, they seemed to make it in one piece, popping back into reality at the edge of Hood VII's L1 jump point. The crew wasn't reporting any damage, or at least no damage sustained by the Anshar.

"Multiple contacts," the sensor officer said. "Sending to the main table."

The area around them resolved on the holotable, showing a collection of stations, one of which was tumbling out of control, a pitiful defending force of a couple aerofighter, and one Fredasa and its attendant fighters ripping into them.

"Gun crews," Captain Garson ordered. "Light up that corvette, fire at will!" They were at the edge of effective weapons range. To kill that son of a bitch, they'd have to get closer. And Captain Garson fully intended to kill that son of a bitch. "Detach dropships, launch fighters, orders are to protect the facility. Helm, once they're clear, give me an intercept course, two point five gravities."

She sighed. This wasn't right. This wasn't an invasion. The jumpship that had briefed them had made it clear. No signs of troops, reports from the station and the jump point indicated the clanners were just exterminating whatever they could reach. Not trying to seize anything, and Captain Garson had a horrible feeling she could guess why.

"Thinker," she said, "good job on the jump, we may actually be able to save some of them."

"Aye sir," the deep thinker replied, deadly serious. She'd pushed a twenty hour charge into the jump core without blowing the whole thing up, then plotted a jump as close as  possible to Sirius, barely forty meters from the edge of the jump point, in what was probably record time. She'd earned her pay today.

"Two emergence waves, dead aft," the sensor officer reported. "Fifty thousand tons, intrasystem distance."

Probably local gunboats, Captain Garson reasoned, but just in case. "Confirm their identity. If they're friendly, send identifiers, if they're hostile, send them to hell."

Her crew offered their acknowledgements.

-----

HSDFS Joker

"Indentifiers received," the comm officer reported. "THS Anshar."

Only a formality, really. The HSDF had already managed to get eyes on the vessel, and there was hopefully nothing else in the system that matched its unique outline. "They say what they're doing here?" Commander Mahiro asked.

"Aye sir," the Comm officer said. "Quote: We were ordered to report here for screening, found the station under attack, and moved to defend it in accordance with mutual defense and protection treaties signed in 2581. We hope to apologize for any inconvenience this causes by killing the everloving ****** out of your enemies." The officer looked a little sheepish. "Her exact words, sir."

Colorful language aside, Commander Mahiro could also hear the subtext. The jumpship Venturer had been sent out to make contact with the Anshar. It didn't normally have a black box, but Sirius had had one stripped out of one of the gunboats in overhaul, so it would have been monitoring the situation. Telling a ship to go to another location to be screened wasn't normally done, but it wasn't strictly prohibited.

So very likely the Venturer had told them what was going on and asked them to help, and they took just enough time to make up an alibi that might hold up in court.

"It'll do for now," Commander Mahiro said. "Helm, follow her in, best speed. Comms, inform high command that due to the enemy indiscriminately slaughtering defenseless HSDF personnel, I intend to violate the hell out of their standing orders."

[Liam's Ghost]

Well... they tried...  :-\

It would have worked too, against almost any other warship.

EDIT: Bleh, this is not actually true on further reflection. Five kiloton warheads simply aren't reliable ship killers. You'd still need at least one penetrating hit to kill most ships, and two to take out a Leviathan.

[BATTLEMASTER]

A Coyote Leviathan Prime might be indestructible if it has the same equipment the Ancestral Home had.  But I wonder:  Will it be enough to kill Cthulu?

[Liam's Ghost]

A Coyote Leviathan Prime might be indestructible if it has the same equipment the Ancestral Home had.  But I wonder:  Will it be enough to kill Cthulu?

Nope.  ;D

[Liam's Ghost]

Coyote WarShip Stalker

Warning alarms sounded as the enemy WarShip found the range. The enemy's weapons were firing at full dispersion, sending out a wide curtain of fire that sacrificed concentration simply to improve the chance that something would hit, but it would be more than enough to kill the already battered Stalker if they allowed it to continue.

"Helm," Star Commodore Clearwater ordered. "Four gravities, open the range as much as you can." It was a calcuated risk, measuring the endurance of his crew against the enemy. A human body could function in up to three gravities for extended periods, but the closer you got to that threshold, it became less a question of actually functioning and more of simply enduring. Going beyond three gravities was possible, but only for short periods of time. The aerospace phenotypes among the crew would endure the best, the lower castes and some elementals would suffer the worse. If pushed long enough, he would be literally trading the lives of crewmen for speed. Hopefully that would not be necessary, they only needed to get some distance...

-----

THS Anshar

"He's running," Captain Garson said. "How cute. Helm, gun crews, do not let up. Fighter wings, run him down." She couldn't really fault the enemy's decision. Faced with an opponent many many times its size, using all that thrust to get clear was probably his best option. It'd be hell for his crew, though, and it wasn't even going to save him, with the Anshar's fighter wings closing in.

"HSDF gunboats," she called out. "Recommend you focus on search and rescue while we run this guy down. I get the feeling we're gonna need to be ready to move again very soon." That Leviathan at the jump point possibly still had a charge in its LF battery. They didn't think the enemy had working HPGs, but even then, they were still close enough that the Leviathan might still detect the Anshar's emergence wave in a bit under two hours. Best to wrap things up quickly.

-----

HSDFS Joker

Commander Mahiro felt a sting of resentment, though he wasn't sure if it was because the Anshar was assuming a leading role, or if it was because they were denying the HSDF the chance to fight their own battle.

Either way, it was only momentary. "Acknowledged, Anshar," he signaled. They were right. Time was short, and they needed to make the best use they could of it. "Boat bay, launch shuttlecraft and start recovery operations. Comms, send to the Cyclone to do the same, then coordinate with Sirius. We've got an hour and a half before we and everything we can carry out of here need to be gone."

It was a few moments of back and forth before the comm officer had a report, and it was better than Mahiro had feared.

"Sirius acknowledges," the comm officer reported. "They're in the process of fueling the Scoundrel and Serenity and loading stores and personnel. They say thirty minutes."

The Scoundrel and the Serenity were the two gunboats that had been undergoing overhaul at the base when the first enemy ships had arrived. Getting them both even remotely mobile had to have been a herculean achievement. "Are they combat capable?"

Another pause as the comm officer passed on the message. "Station says absolutely not. They say if they have the time they'll throw some parts aboard and install them as we move, but for now they can hold air and accelerate, and not much else."

"It'll do," Commander Mahiro said. "Concentrate on base personnel above all else. I don't think we'll be able to come back."

-----

Coyote WarShip Stalker

It had been the right call, Star Commodore Clearwater judged. The best possible plan. The enemy WarShip clearly couldn't keep up. They could have simply outrun her. They could even ease off on some of this punishing acceleration and still keep ahead of her.

But not her fighters. Another thing the Black Phoenix captain hadn't bothered to mention, this Terran WarShip carried a large complement of aerofighters, with short cluster of them swiftly eating up the distance to the Stalker.

If he'd had more distance, more time, even just a more robust ship, they might have still made it. Fighters had limited fuel reserves. They might have been able to outlast them. But that wasn't going to happen today.

"All batteries," he ordered. "Engage at will." A futile gesture, just like keeping up the four gravity burn would be. But it might claim a few fighters, burn up just a bit more of the enemy's fuel reserves.

He looked around at the bridge crew, all of whom had grasped the situation they were in.

"Whatever comes," he said. "None may say we did not fight to our last."

-----

THS Anshar

It wasn't a clean victory, but in the end the result was inevitable, and within a few minutes of their aerofighters coming into range, the Fredasa was a drifting wreck.

"Launch assault teams," Captain Garson ordered. "I want prisoners. Helm, once the boats are clear take us to the Station. Let's see if we can lend a hand."

She nodded to her executive officer. "You have the con." She waited until the Anshar had ceased accelerating to launch boats before disconnecting from her acceleration chair.

On her way off the bridge, a junior officer stopped her. The young ensign was brand new to the service, on her first tour, and it showed. "Ma'am," she said, her look a mixture of guilt and uncertainty. "They came here looking for us. If they hadn't. I mean, if we hadn't..."

"They still would have come here," Captain Garson replied. "Eventually. And they would have done the same thing. The difference is we're here to help stop them from doing worse. This isn't our fault." She reckoned it wasn't really a lie.

She made her way to the washroom and confirmed she was alone before she let her own guilt override the anger she'd felt. Because it had been their fault, not this specific moment, but the fact that it could have happened.

Because they'd failed. They'd had a chance to make sure the clans could never threaten humanity again, and they'd taken the easy way. And they'd failed.

"This time," she said softly. "We do it right. This time we make sure."

[Daryk]

It'll be interesting if there are any survivors...

[Giovanni Blasini]

Welp, now we know who hit the Homeworld Clans.

[Liam's Ghost]

HSDFS Lightning
Outbound from the Zenith point

"Updated orders from High Command," Lieutenant Commander Lee told him. "All units are to avoid confrontation where possible, however vessels are authorized to defend themselves if necessary."

Captain Sommersville chuckled darkly at the message, immediately wincing from the pain. Despite his extensive injuries, he'd accepted only a mild dose of pain killers to keep his mind clear. Something he frequently regretted. "We have the right for self defense," he said. "Damn generous of them."

The Lightning was far from combat capable. The damage from the prior battle at the jump point had wrecked the CIC, crippled the primary sensor array, and badly compromised the hull, as well as killing or wounding most of the ship's crew. Self defense wasn't really an option if that great big bastard at the jump point caught up with them.

Luckily, they'd had a healthy head start, and a thirty eight million kilometer lead on them. Less lucky, the Leviathan wasn't even going after them. Reports from the network had it heading straight towards Hood IV.

High Command assumed that the enemy's intention was to blockade the planet, maybe in an attempt to enforce their own sort of quarantine. The Prime Minister had reportedly decided that this was an acceptable outcome if it prevented further conflict or loss of life.

To Sommersville, however, the Coyote's actions, their willingness to attack defenseless ships, and even casually destroy escape pods and lifeboats from those ships, suggested a much darker intent. And if he was right, and they did nothing, millions of lives could be in danger.

"Chief," he asked. With the CIC wrecked, control of the ship had been moved to the engineering section, Chief Howard's domain. "Can we get ahead of that thing?"

Chief Howard looked up from his datapad. "We're going nine hundred kilometers per second in kinda the wrong direction," he said. "But only kinda, so yeah, but it will take time. What are we supposed to do when we get there?"

"Not sure yet," Sommersville replied. "Lee, what's our munitions look like?"

"Forward guns are loaded," Lee said. "We only have a few missiles left, aside from the specials."

"Load the specials," Captain Sommersville said. "If we do this we're already breaking orders, and we'll need to go all in."

"You really want to fight that thing?" Chief Howard asked.

"No," Sommersville replied. "I want to hit it. We get ahead of it, make the biggest damn cloud of munitions we can, and put our faith in luck and physics." He looked around the engine room. "I can't order any of you to do this," he said. "Worst case scenario, we're all explaining ourselves a a court martial. Best case scenario, we might just scratch that thing's paint. But we're basically the only ship between it and nine hundred million people. So pass the word to the crew, and let me know what you decide."

[Daryk]

Phrased that way, any crew voting "no" would be worried about a court martial...

[JA Baker]

"Either I will be decorated, or I will be court-martialed. Fire!"
-Birger Eriksen, Drøbak Sound, 9th April 1940

[Liam's Ghost]

Prime Minister's Residence, Hood IV

"What have they done?"

Colonel Griffith wasn't sure how to handle the Prime Minister's outburst. "Sir, they were acting in self defense..."

"Against orders!" Prime Minister Duvalier shouted. "Throwing away lives and ships to perpetuate a fight they started!"

Colonel Griffith felt himself redden. "Sir, the Coyotes struck first."

Prime Minister Duvalier threw the tumbler in his hand, which exploded in a shower of crystal and bouron against the wall. "It doesn't ****** matter!" he shouted. "They were talking. We had things under control until Devon threw us into a war we can't win!"

"Sir, we had standing protocols..."

"Don't talk to me about those ****** protocols!" Prime Minister Duvalier screamed. "The HSDF and that halfbreed bitch on Kowloon have been milking the so called crisis for all its worth. The Flu hasn't been a serious threat in thirty years, but they insist we all have to live like prisoners and just trust them to protect us. It's nothing to do with safety, it's about power! It's about keeping us under their thumb."

Colonel Griffith didn't answer. This was Duvalier's party line, championed mostly by old nobility who held up the time before the quarantine as "the good days". Really more of a period of autocratic mismanagement and feudalistic corruption that had broken down into chaos when the population had started dying en-mass. Hood IV had eventually recovered, but it had also changed into something more democratic and (theoretically) egalitarian, but also at times chaotic and nowhere near as profitable to those in power.

In his private moments when perhaps he'd had a bit too much bourbon, Duvalier had been known to describe government as herding a mob of ignorants, and waxing nostalgically about a stable state guided by educated men without interference from the lower classes.

Colonel Griffith tried to stay out of politics as much as possible.

Duvalier dropped back into his chair with a sigh. "Can they stop this thing?" he asked.

"We..." Colonel Griffith hesitated. "We don't think so. Not with our current available forces."

"Yes, yes," Duvalier replied. "I'm sure the opposition party will have no problem blaming me for this. Not that they complained when Tharkad demanded half the HSDF for their own use."

"That..." Colonel Griffith hesitated again. "That isn't what I meant."

"I know," Duvalier said. "You want me to call for help. Maybe call the Queen Bitch of Kowloon and escalate things further. Let her sling some half megaton warheads around and then expect me to thank her."

He waved off any objection. "I'll do it, if I have to. God help me I'd break my tongue off in that frigid ***** if I had to. But we aren't there yet. If we show the Coyotes we aren't a threat to them, we'll be safe. They don't want the planet, they want the forces that keep attacking them. We keep our fighters on the ground, don't engage, they won't attack us. The HSDF made its own bed, they get to die in it."

[Cannonshop]

ohhh nice. nice.

[Daryk]

I'm hoping his residence is the first target of the orbital bombardment...

[BATTLEMASTER]

I'm hoping his residence is the first target of the orbital bombardment...

That would be pretty satisfying!

[Liam's Ghost]

THS Anshar

They found very few survivors from the wreck of the Fredasa. Techicial staff, all of them badly wounded, either through combat damage or by their own attempts at damage control while the ship was still accelerating at four gravities. The ship's warrior personnel were dead. Either killed in battle or by their own personnel afterward. The only survivors were those too injured to take their own lives and too isolated to have someone else do it for them

Of the few survivors recovered, fewer still were conscious, but still, it was enough for the Hegemony marines to get a story out of them.

"Their Khan declared a trial of annihilation against the entire star system," Captain Garson explained to a virtual meetings of the various captains and senior officers of this ad hoc fleet they'd found themselves a part of. "They intend to kill every living thing here to make sure 21b can't spread again."

"Including their own?" Captain Fielding, the senior-most officer to be recovered from the station, asked.

"From what little we've been able to learn," Captain Garson replied, "they're afraid we'll use any survivors as a potential bioweapon vector. They believe 21b was specifically created to destroy them."

"But why?" Commander Mahiro of the Joker asked. "We've talked to them. We handed over all the historical information we have on the Arluna Flu."

"Obviously they didn't buy our story," Captain Fielding suggested. "It makes sense in a sort of twisted narcissistic way. Arluna Flu hits clan Trueborns particularly badly. Among the earlier generations, even those who survived were still contagious. It took the Clans years of work to create gene tweaks so that subsequent generations of trueborns wouldn't be walking bombs."

"Light reading, sir?" Commander Mahiro asked. To Garson it sounded a bit like mild surprise. Maybe Captain Fielding wasn't much for history.

Captain Fielding's holoimage looked a little uncomfortable. "I'll just say the quarantine debate got a lot less hypothetical," he replied, pretty much confirming Garson's suspicion. It was a bit reassuring really. Fielding was a man who realized his mistakes and moved to fix them.

"Even the Word of Blake wasn't stupid enough to use Arluna Flu as a weapon in the Inner Sphere," Doctor Graham, chief medical officer of Sirius station and now a guest aboard the Anshar said from his own seat at the table. "But the homeworlds were isolated by distance. It makes a sick sort of sense to use it there."

Captain Garson held her tongue. The HSDF personnel had already made the connection between the Word of Blake and the attack on the Homeworlds, and it wasn't strictly false. Even if she didn't have standing orders covering Operation FLAME, revealing the details wouldn't help anybody.

"The immediate concern is getting this information out," she said. "Our HPG can reach every world within fifty light years. But if they haven't heard from Tharkad, or Tharkad told our Director General to get stuffed, a message from a random ship claiming to be from the Hegemony isn't going to carry much weight."

"We'll pass everything you give us on to high command," Captain Fielding responded. "From there they can send it to other worlds."

"What if high command doesn't listen?" Commander Pulver of the Cylcone asked, to a sea of silence. "Let's face it, the Prime Minister has probably already named us mutineers. He's not going to trust anything we send him on general principle. We need to get the word out ourselves."

Captain Fielding looked simply out of his depth. "That violates our..."

"The boxes we have aren't great," Commander Mahiro said. "but they can do the job. Propagation rate is about fifteen lights a day, so the soonest we'll get help is a couple days."

"How many of those do you have?" Captain Garson asked. They'd been briefed on the so called fax machines. Every ship in the fleet even had one aboard as a backup, but they hadn't proven as reliable as hoped.

"Not as many as we like," Commander Mahiro replied. "Whatever did the blackout seems to affect most of them too. The newest, fastest ones don't work at all. These older designs are more reliable, but the manufacturer is having trouble turning out new ones. They say they're working on it."

Captain Garson heard a whisper in her ear. "We could probably correct their manufacturing problems," the deep thinker said over a private line. "With the data we have and samples of working models, we could probably have it up and running very quickly." Garson filed that away for future reference and turned her attention to Captain Fielding.

"It's your decision," she said. "You're the ranking HSDF officer on site."

Captain Fielding's look of uncertainty changed to desperation. "I was... I was just Commodore Devon's aide," he protested. "I got my rank because of my family. Not because of anything I did..."

"The universe doesn't pick who's right," Captain Garson replied. "It picks who's right here. If you aren't qualified, you can hand off command to a subordinate, but ultimately, this is your world. I can help, but it's up to you guys to decide how to protect it."

Captain Fielding was silent for a moment. "Commander Mahiro, Commander Pulver, Captain Garson," he said, doing his best to keep his voice from cracking. "Your thoughts?"

"We send every scrap of data we have to everywhere we can," Commander Mahiro said. "Then we get away from here and start recharging, start figuring out how to kill that thing."

"I concur," Commander Pulver replied.

"I concur," Captain Garson echoed. It wasn't much, but it was a start.

"Then that's what we're doing," Captain Fielding said. "Captain Garson, your ship will take the lead. The rest of the fleet will follow. While you're at it, send over every bit of information you have about the invaders."

She acknowledged the order and nodded to the communications officer. "You heard him."

[Daryk]

*snip*
"The universe doesn't pick who's right," Captain Garson replied. "It picks who's right here...
*snip*

I love this line...  8)