Chapter Nine
Supreme Commander Romanov
Base Theta, Tarsonis
1050 Hours Local
I was discussing the battle plans for our attack to liberate Korhal and the Terran Dominion to the troops that would be taking part in the massive operation. The attack would go down in three phases, each codenamed; Operation Python, Cobra and Manta. Manta would strike first, comprising of the First and Second PLA Infantry battalion, and the 56th, and 61st PLA Tank divisions. Their mission was to take out the Anti-Aircraft defences around the city and take down the defenders.
Python would attack next, comprising of several fighter wings including Gualt, Gelb, Mobius, Razgriz, Schnee and Galm. Their mission was to mostly establish air superiority over the city of Korhal and help to liberate the city by providing Close-Air Support (or CAS) to the ground forces.
Cobra would be the last phase of the plan, and possibly the most important. Cobra would be comprised of the 4th Fleet Spetsnaz Brigade, and the 172nd Chrono Corps. These were Special Forces that would move in and take the 'Emperor' himself. Once inside his palace, the Spetsnaz would distract the internal defences while the Chrono Troops made there way up to his office, and executed him. Once the defenders saw that their leader was dead, they would give up resisting and cooperate with us.
All the forces involved in the operation understood the battle plan, and they were ready and willing to do it. I wished them all the best of luck, and then went into the Command Center where I could see everything that went on via satellite uplink. Once I was inside, I checked my watch; almost 1130 Hours. Operation Manta was scheduled to take place at exactly 1200 Hours, but there were a fair amount of combat preparations to do before anybody could relax.
The aircraft from Schnee Squadron would be taking off from an airbase as well, simply because there wasn't a body of water large enough to house a Nimitz-Class Supercarrier. Shcnee Squadron would be the last squadron that would be launched because all the other squadrons had larger fuel reserves so they could remain airborne for a few minutes, take a quick refill at a tanker aircraft, and then begin the mission once all the aircraft were airborne.
Captain Felix Graff
Above Korhal, Tarsonis
1200 Hours Local
Operation Manta hit so hard and so unexpectedly that only the handfuls of people on watch were able to respond, but those few were quickly overrun by the first strike wave. Manta was successful, and now it was time to begin Python. I dove in on the city, afterburners blazing side-by-side with Gelb 1 shooting missiles off at just about anything military. Now the air raid sirens were going off, but the defenders were still too slow, our planes too fast to hope to shoot us all down.
Schnee Squadron was providing top cover along with Galm and Gualt, while Mobius Squadron and Razgriz were attacking the ground facilities like we were doing. Not the pattern that I would use for the mission, but then again, I wasn't in charge of the strike, so I had no authority to question the orders. I took a quick glance at my radar, and saw that several enemy fighters were closing in on our position.
"Gelb 1," I said. "I see several enemy fighters inbound and closing rapidly. Request permission to detach from formation."
"Roger that, Gelb 2." Came the reply a few seconds later. "Go take care of them."
I broke from formation, and launched four XLAAs at the approaching fighters, although there were too many of them to hope for a clean sweep. Unless I somehow caught two or more of the bandits in the same fireball, but the chances of that happening are remote. The missiles blasted away and steered straight towards the incoming enemies. They were closer now and after squinting my eyes to confirm them, I identified them as the standard Wraith Fighters.
The lead missile hit the first enemy fighter who then exploded in a black-and-orange fireball, leaving no chance for an ejection. The other fighters started to manoeuvre, but my missile's aim was perfect. Three more of the fighters died in fireballs, two of them trailing fire and then exploding when they crashed into a nearby building. The remaining fighters began to cloak, but I kept firing at them because although they disappeared from sight, they still showed up on my radar, and my heat-seeking missiles loved their hot engine exhaust.
Tailing one of the enemy enemies now, I begun to go up close, wanting to get a gun kill instead of a missile kill. The radar lock-on was still activated, but that was to simply help me track him. After a while, I found that perfect kill position of slightly above and behind him and from less then 900 feet away, i mashed the firing control button for the gun, and it instantly screamed white death at 4000 rounds per minute. For a moment, the enemy craft seemed to absorb those globes of light, then its cloaking fell away and it exploded in a fireball a few seconds later.
Smiling to myself as I rode through the fireball, I knew I was going to get a medal once I got back. That was my 50th kill with my guns, so I would be getting the Sharpshooter award. Now Mobius and Razgriz Squadrons were coming in to help, and they both let off salvos of missiles.
To say that it would have been hard to evade all those missiles would be an understatement. With Mobius and Razgriz Squadrons, it was nearly impossible to evade all those shots, and at least ten more planes died in fiery eruptions. That was when things started to get hard because over the horizon, our radars showed twelve massive blobs on them. There was only one thing that could ever be that massive: the Leviathan-Class Battlecurisers.
As soon as the AWACS relayed the orders to us, we were off to engage the new targets. I let the other three squadrons know about these monsters, and soon, we were all of flying as one big formation armed to take down these things. As soon as we got within range, everybody who had them fired their Long-Range missiles at the approaching threats. They were so huge that even from over 120 miles away, they were still visible and slowly getting larger.
The missiles closed in on the behemoths at speeds easily exceeding Mach eight, and finally slammed into them with enough force that despite the distance, one of the Battlecurisers that we had concentrated our missile fire on had shaken as though it had been slapped by a massive hand. We fired off another volley of missiles, and we kept waiting for them to come and engage us. It would be tough to dogfight these things, but not impossible. Their weapons stations could easily be destroyed, and if we shot them in the engine, we could easily bring them down.
IF we could get within range of them. Specs of these ships had indicated that they had the capability to fire a mini-nuclear device known as a 'Yammato Cannon' at extremely long ranges. After a while of pummelling them (and seeing a few of them go down) they got within range for us to attack with our normal missiles. But compared to our Long-Range missiles, our normal sidewinders were like mosquito bites to them.
Instead of attacking the Cruisers themselves, I went to try something smarter: attack their engines. Without those, they'd simply fall right out of the sky. The same tactic was used with the XB-0 and the Arkbird, so I had a feeling it'd work this time too. Getting behind the lead Battlecuriser, I fired straight into the four engines. Bracing myself for an explosion, the missiles sprinted the short distance to the engines, and promptly exploded. At first, I saw nothing, but then I saw explosions coming from the back of the ship and I realised that I must have hit some kind of vital weak point in the armour because it seem as though the ammo stores for the Yammato cannon were exploding!
The explosions consumed the wounded ship I had hit, and we all pulled hard to get out of the way of the flaming debris. Our fighters made it because of their high manoeuvrability and high speed, but the cruisers weren't so lucky. A final explosion, more powerful then anything that had come before it slammed the entire airspace with a brilliant flash. For a terrified instant, I wondered if I had set off some kind of nuclear weapon, but the AWACS calmed me down slightly.
"Wow! That was I direct hit! What an explosion! We can even see it from here! It looks as though the power plant for that thing had an uncontrolled reaction. No radiation that we can detect, but it seemed to have some nuclear proprieties."
I tapped the microphone twice, acknowledging the message, and I we went to engage the remaining cruisers. Now that we knew how to beat them, we could easily do it. Besides, we had time to do this. Operation Python was finished, and now it was the final stage of the mission, Cobra. Although, we still had to protect the ground forces from these things.
That was getting easier because there weren't many of them left. Only about three survived untouched from the explosions, four of them had gotten caught in the explosion, and were destroyed, while the rest were in varying degrees of damage some from light damage, others were damaged to the point where they were going to go down to the ground one way or another in the next thirty seconds.
Changing my tactics, I went for the bridge of the most unscarred ship I could find, and I blasted away at it with my missiles. Hopefully, that'd mess up their steering, weapons and just about everything else. My missiles hit, and they didn't seem to do much damage, but I heard alarm sounds over my radio and panicked radio chatter saying that they were crashing. I noticed that a few hanger bays onboard the ship was opening and I saw my opportunity. I got into position, and fired two QAAM missiles into the open bay.
Seconds later, there was an explosion and the majority of the hanger bay was engulfed in flames of furiously burning fuel and weapons. Wounded, the great ship began to fall towards the ground slowly at first, but it gradually picked up speed until it crashed with enough force to send several boulders that were visible from the air flying from the shockwave.
"Damn Brick!" First Lieutenant Elena Michaels said after seeing my performance. "Save some for the rest of us! It looks like you just trashed the whole Dominion army!"
"Hey Gelb 2," Mobius 1 said. "You're making lotta money today. Looks like drinks are on you when we get back."
After downing the rest of the ships, we all headed for home. Once we all landed, we all went to a pilot's bar where our Squadron Adjunct announced our kill records for the day. Despite the Battlecruiser's sheer size, I only got one kill for each of the ones I had shot down. Not that fair mind you, but what are you gonna do? Anyways, after seeing my kill record exceed Gelb 1's be three kills, I knew I was getting better.
I was congratulated by numerous pilots and other personnel that saw the attack from the ground. The attack on the capitol had goon exactly according to plan, the defenders had fled moments after the death of their leader and after Operation Cobra, the rest of the battle was anticlimax. Several modified Battlecurisers were also converging these ones equipped very similarly to the Protoss Carriers, but by the time they had come within range of the capitol, Stonehenge rounds were going off in the sky and those massive sitting ducks literally never had a chance. Their escorts turned back even before the massive ships collapsed onto the ground before exploding in a spectacular funeral pyre that rivalled that of the exploding Battlecurisers that we faced off against.
Prisoners were now being taken from those few soldiers who had tried to run instead of surrender and now our forces were on the way to overrunning the entire Dominion from the seat of power and government itself. Although only a handful of people resisted the change in government. In fact over 95 of the entire Dominions population according to Yuri were actually HAPPY with the change.
Although, there was one last lose end to tie up: the Zerg Overmind. Zeratul had earlier explained that to kill it, we'd need several Dark Templar to do it, as only their energies could truly harm the Zerg. Although we had picked up something troubling: a nearby Zerg Brood was gathering up its forces as if in preparation for an attack. The Arkbird had pounded the area earlier, but it seemed as though some of the forces had survived the blast, and the ones that did were like no other Zerg any of us had ever seen. It seemed as though they had some kind of evolved Ultralisk of some kind along with what looked to be giant spiders of some kind.
The planning for that mission would take place after we had recuperated our forces from this mission before we went onto this next one.
