The following is the sequel to 'Tradition'. Set five years after the 'Trial', Lieutenant Commander Valerie Andriano is part of a mixed Libertarian, Bretonian, Kusari and Rheinland attack on the Outcast's home-world; 'Malta'.
And trust me; there'll be many more in game characters in this one.
I do not own Freelancer. Microsoft or digital anvil or someone else does.
War
By Richamithrad the Pedantic
Chapter one: On approach
Captain Von Claussen sat back in his command chair and surveyed his surroundings with a grin of satisfaction. It had been little under five years since the Bundschuh had managed to topple the previous corrupt government and assume power, and the evidence of change was all around. Much of the Rheinland fleet had been re-built. The economic turmoil that had plagued them for so long was soon to be a grim memory, and a sense of strength and trust was gradually returning to the people of Rheinland.
"We shall arrive at the Cambridge system jump gate in roughly ten minutes Captain." Said Lieutenant Olga Zierling, cutting Von Claussen off in his train of thought.
"Thank you Lieutenant, he replied.
The RNS Shiller, (Von Claussen's flagship), as well as the task force under his command, was a testament to the Rheinland's reconstruction. The disastrous war with the GMG; and the even more disastrous war with the Nomads had all but crippled Rheinland. It had not been easy to accumulate the money to re-build. The 'Hudson' system was surrendered to Liberty and almost a dozen new trade routes had to be opened. For the most part however, it appeared that the metaphorical storm had been weathered.
"Captain", said Lieutenant Laurence Dauman, the Schiller's tactical officer, "I'm getting a new group of signals; it looks like four Bretonian 'Crusader' class heavy fighters sir, they're moving towards us."
"Probably our welcoming committee, hail the lead fighter."
"Aye sir."
In the corner of the view screen. The image of a Bretonian armed forces pilot appeared. The image looked distorted, as per usual, but the message was clear enough.
"Rheinland task force, this is Lieutenant Fredrick Shelton, I've been ordered to escort you to the rest of the fleet."
"Thank you Lieutenant," began Von Claussen, "after you."
"Of course captain, Shelton out."
The image disappeared and the small Rheinland fleet began to follow the Bretonian fighters.
"Look out delta three, pull up!"
The Libertarian pilot was too slow acknowledging Valerie Andriano's message and consequently took several hits to their rear shields before finally pulling up and managing to shake the Xeno pursuing her.
"Idiot" muttered Valerie to herself as she swooped downwards in her own fighter and lined an enemy vessel up in her sights. The Xeno made a feeble attempt at evasive manoeuvres, which Valerie matched effortlessly, when the red crosshair appeared on her HUD, thus confirming that she was in firing range, she fired at the enemy ship that was incinerated soon after.
Delta two, which was piloted by Ensign Leonard Alvarez, was fortunate enough to find himself behind the second Xeno fighter, the fire from his ship smashed through the enemy's shields are tore his left wing from the rest of the ship. The Xeno was then destroyed by a 'Seeker' missile as it attempted to flee.
"Alright people," said Valerie with a hint of pride in her voice, "that's all of them. Return to formation."
As the other ships flew towards her position, Valerie decided that some constructive criticism was in order, partly to help improve the young pilot's abilities, partly to ensure that they didn't let success go to their heads.
"Mr. Alvarez, you probably could have destroyed that Xeno without wasting a missile."
"I know ma'am", came the response, "I can't resist it though, seeing the pirates run whilst one of my missiles quickly catches up to them and blasts them to pieces, beautiful stuff."
Against her will, Valerie smiled at this statement. Fortunately however, this was concealed by her flight helmet.
"It's your choice Ensign, but those missiles come out of your salary, so I would advise against sacrificing business for beauty too often."
"I'll keep that in mind ma'am."
"Right," said Valerie with renewed zeal in her voice, "we've wasted enough time here. Let's head back to the Missouri."
All three of the ships began to head back to Norfolk shipyards, where the Missouri was still currently stationed. Within the hour they would be setting course for the Cambridge system, and from there, they would have to travel deep into the unknown dangers of Sirius to the planet known as 'Malta'. Home to the Outcasts and their Cardamine. The next few days would either see the final destruction of this threat, or the destruction of the houses' invasion fleet.
Valerie, although she revealed nothing in her facial expressions and tone of voice, was frightened at the idea of taking on the Outcasts in their home system. The Outcasts were no pushovers, the cardamine, along with keeping them alive, had the annoying side effect of enhancing their reflexes and combat abilities. This was not going to be easy.
On the bridge of the KNS Nozawa, all was relatively quiet. Kusari had only been willing to donate a single ship to the attack on the Outcasts. Partly because the Outcasts rarely bothered them, but mainly because of the ever increasing cautiousness and paranoia of Kusari's leader, Shogun Murakami.
Kusari had taken a pasting during the short, Nomad inspired, war with Rheinland. All but two of their warships had been destroyed, and most of their fighters had fallen to Rheinland or Nomad guns.
Every cloud has a silver lining however. With the weakened state of the military, the Blood Dragons and their political allies had managed to seize power from the corrupt Edo shogunate. The equally corrupt 'Samura Heavy Industries' was destroyed shortly thereafter.
After the grim necessities of revolutions. Kusari had begun to re-build its military. In five short years, they had almost doubled the size of their pre Nomad war strength. This new fleet however was dedicated to vehemently guarding Kusari's systems. After the last crippling defeat it suffered, Kusari was unwilling to allow anything even remotely similar to happen again.
If the price of this was a strong military presence in the home systems, so be it. This was the current and unwavering attitude of Kusari's leaders at present. The reality was that it could have spared ten battleships without making much of an impact on the 'Home-fleet'.
"Entering the Cambridge system now sir," reported Lieutenant Reileen Li, "I'm reading a number of Bretonian fighters on the radar, they're hailing us."
"Our escorts no doubt." Replied Captain Takeshi Deme, "Let's hear what they have to say."
After a brief chat with the Bretonian escort fighters, the Nozawa began its flight towards the rest of the fleet.
LSF Commander Jun'ko Zane, (or Juni as she was known to friends,) sat impatiently in the briefing room chair. To her left, the even more impatient Captain Jason Daniels was reclining in his own chair.
The Rhienland captains were, for a reason that was known only to themselves, ten minutes late. Bored and irritated faces could be seen all about the room. The worst and most obvious one however belonged to Trent.
"What the hell's taking them so long?" He said quietly to Juni.
"You keep asking that, I don't know." Came the quiet, yet sharp response from Juni.
Trent fell silent; he had learned from personal experience that irritating Juni usually resulted in physical injury or some pestiferous, self righteous speech.
Instead, he cast his eyes over the assorted military officers from all but one of the houses. It was strange being seated at the same table as them. He was a freelancer, he was meant to be off in some backwater system shooting at Corsairs, not sitting around a table with people who were going to plan a full scale invasion.
He didn't regret what he did. The Outcasts were a threat that, in his and the majority of Sirius' opinion, had to be neutralised. It was a stroke of pure luck that he had been able to stumble across their home world. It had been a stroke of even greater luck that he had been able to get out of the system alive.
It was afterwards that the problems had really started for him; as soon as he was back in Liberty he flew straight to the Missouri and gave them the location of the Outcast's planet. Instead of giving him a metaphorical pat on the back however, they seduced him with an unreasonably high sum of money which he would receive upon the defeat of the Outcasts. Assuming of course they were defeated, or he survived. Neither of which he was overly confident about.
A faint hissing sound from the far end of the room caught everyone's attention. Three Rheinland captains stepped through.
'Finally.' Though Trent to himself, on closer examination however, he noticed something that nearly sent him to his feet in shock.
He saw the shocked look in Juni's eyes, which showed that she had noticed it too.
"Heir Von Claussen." Juni said quietly and disbelievingly.
Heir Von Claussen had been a top pilot for the Order during the days of the Nomad war. During the final battle when the hyper gate was opened however, he disappeared without a trace. Everyone in the Order believed that he had been killed, and until a few seconds ago, so did Trent and Juni.
Captain Von Claussen gave Trent and Juni a quick, equally surprised stare before turning his gaze to the empty seat before him and sitting down.
"Now that we're all here," said Captain Daniels, "let us begin. As you two months ago, the freelancer Edison Trent stumbled upon the home world of the pirate faction and notorious narcotic smugglers known as the Outcasts." There was some general nodding from most of the people who were seated.
"Since then, we have smuggled two LSF operatives onto Malta and gathered enough intelligence to carry out a full scale assault which we believe has a high probability of success."
There was less nodding this time. Many of those present had gone up against the Outcasts before, and had the scars to show for it. All of them knew that the Outcasts were no pushovers, and logic suggested that they would defend their homeland with their entire fleet.
"LSF Commander Jun'ko Zane will now go over the mission specifics." Daniels sat back down as Juni pushed herself out of her seat and walked over to the main display terminal.
"Thank you Captain," she cleared her throat, "the Outcast's home system lies in the far off system of Omicron Alpha. It is uncharted by any of the houses, and so we have limited information about the system save the location of the planet itself, and the location of the Omicron Theta jump hole that leads to the system.
We'll need to fight our way through Omega 5 and Omega 41, from there we..."
"Excuse me Commander," the voice that cut Juni off belonged to the Bretonian Captain Isabella O'Brian, "but how exactly do you hope to get a fleet through Omega 5? That system is a war zone between the Corsair's and the Red Hessians, if persistent attacks from them don't finish us off, then the minefields will."
"And even if we did get through," Captain Deme added, "the radiation in Omega 41 would gnaw away at our hulls and poison most if not all of our crew before we got out of the system. There has to be another way in."
General murmurs of agreement met these statements.
"Let her finish." Daniels half shouted. The surprised Captains fell silent.
"Thank you Captain," Juni said with a voice that revealed signs of irritation, "We're fairly confident that the Corsairs and Hessians won't attack us as long as we have all our fighters deployed as we move through the system. Even if they attacked us with everything they have, their losses would be too great, and our fighters and turrets can remove the mines without too much of a problem. As for Omega 41, our technicians will re-enforce our hulls before we leave, and we'll be taking on an extra supply of Nano-bots and radiation immunity capsules before we leave. Assuming all goes well, we shouldn't have a problem."
A silence lingered in the room for a few moments. They could cram as many safety precautions into the mission as possible and it still wouldn't re-assure many of the people in this room.
"Once we arrive in Omicron Alpha, we shall engage the Outcasts, who will be attacking with Sabre and Stiletto class heavy fighters. They will also have a planetary defence system which our operatives on the surface shall disable. Once their fleet has been obliterated, we will commence the landing of ground troops, who will begin destroying Cardamine production plants, occupying the cities and arresting war criminals."
Another silence filled the room as all this information sunk in. Fear was beginning to show on a number of faces, no one liked the idea of war, and the mission sounded too dangerous and foolhardy to be worth the benefits of its victory. Unfortunately for them however, their superiors disagreed.
"Any questions?" Asked Daniels.
To be continued.