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Chapter 14
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Part 1
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14 January 2011
MFNW "Vendetta"
Acclamator MK 3 Assault Ship
the far side of the Moon
"Commander on deck!" The Company's most senior NCO shouted in a voice that echoed throughout the large primary hangar of the Assault Ship despite the heavy buzz of working machinery.
"As you were." Commander Kole Ordo shouted as loud, thanks to his artificial voice box. He lost the real one soon after the start of the Black Rebellion when a crazed droid did it's best to take off his head. Thanks to the quick thinking of a combat medic, and the Republic military R&D, he was back in action right in time for the war to turn in complete and utter hell.
If it wasn't for the fact that he met his future wife in the middle of the fighting, Kole would have concluded that joining the fledgling Freehold Military after Mandalore himself lifted the Siege of their homeworld, was a terrible decision, no matter how hotly he wanted to get even with the Seppies who burned his Clan's ancestral home and nearly killed his daughter multiple times during their bloody invasion.
Ordo pushed those thoughts back and looked over his new command. This was his first assignment after a long R&R period following the war, which allowed him to spent some quality time with his wife and begin getting his small but honored Clan back on the rails to recovery. The fact that Mandalore remembered him and their brief history, turned out to be a double-edged sword. The may-be friendship and respect they had for each other did payout and Clan Ordo's land got priority for the recovery and terraforming efforts still busy trying to erase the scars of the war from Mandalore's surface.
Yet, Kole's combat record and the fact Mandalore believed he could trust him within reason, led to this – the Clan Leader found himself in charge of a Shock Trooper battalion and on his way to execute the first Orbital Drop Assault on a planet in a different dimension. This was a great opportunity, and a great way to get yourself killed too, especially for someone who was sure he had expended all his luck as far back as Fondor, which was pure hell for everyone involved.
The Commander pushed those thoughts to the back of his mind and looked at the neat rolls of troopers in front of him.
"Unsurprisingly, we've got a special assignment and it is to clean up after someone kriffed up by the numbers. For a change, those who did it, and in a spectacular fashion too, aren't our people. For the time being, we aren't supposed to reinforce the Mandalorian Knights' positions planet-side. Instead, we're to assault the compromised compound of an advanced droid, which had been neutralized by the locals and who have full control of the base's defense systems. Because we're Shock Troopers and thus lucky like that, we're about to drop on perhaps the most well-defended place on the planet. Obviously, it would be too easy otherwise, so we'll be assaulting a place defended by weapons that have no business existing on a world with Earth Bet's technological level and some might at least, in theory, be potent enough to give the Vendetta a run for her money."
As it was his nature, Kole gave it to his people straight. Predictably, no one even twitched – they were veterans from dropping either on droid controlled worlds in order to reach planetary shield generators and disable them or on planets assaulted by the murderous machines, where they had to form a thin, vulnerable line between gruesome death and countless fleeing civilians.
Something like this? A conventional assault against more or less conventional defenses? It was a nice change of pace.
"The good news is that for once we've got inside information. Our people on the ground are in contact with a friend of the neutralized droid, who has been to the compound in question multiple times and is partially familiar with its layout and defenses. Further, just before we drop, an infiltration unit made by Mandalorian Knights, some locals, and Mandalore's Apprentice will attempt to disable the compound's shields and thus allow us to drop right inside."
Ordo paused for a moment, giving his people time to digest his words and called up a reconnaissance droid feed of the compound in question, zoomed in and began pointing places of interest, especially those which should be left as intact as possible and those, which could be gleefully reduced to smoking craters.
"Plan Arubesh is as follows – in case that either very light Ion Cannon bombardment could knock out the shields or the Infiltration team succeeds, we drop straight in, cause havoc, track down the so-called Dragonslayers and if feasible take them alive, if not, we blow them up. They're the first primary target, the second is locating and securing the Droid Dragon's data-core, which should be a reasonably large server complex given the locals' level of technology. So watch your fire, keep the use of Ion munition to a minimum inside." Kole continued. "If the quick and dirty solution doesn't pan out, the Vendetta will land just out of sight of the compound, disembark Second Armored Division and they'll use their SPHA's to locally overload the shields and storm the place. That's plan Besh. If it comes to that, we'll land just outside the compound and contain any Droid units the terrorists attempt to unleash, do our best to detain them if they attempt to make a breakout."
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When a nine hundred meters long, dagger-shaped construct slams into the atmosphere at a steep angle and punches through like a stiletto slipping through a chink in armor, it tends to be spectacular. It's even more so, when said ship suddenly decelerates, yet continues its controlled descent, leaving a trail of plasma and burning gases in its wake. The Vendetta entered Earth Bet's atmosphere just west of Northern Alaska, made a tiny adjustment to her course, and headed inland, flying across Canada in a pyrotechnic display that no one who wasn't blind, deaf and dumb, could miss.
It was a great show, it was very obvious, and it was little more than a distraction. On its approach to Earth, the Acclamator Assault Ship launched a battalion worth of Shock Troopers securely strapped in their pods, along with thousands of decoys, weapon platforms, and other aids meant to ensure enough of the crazies made it to the ground in relative safety.
With the Vendetta's hard deceleration, both before entering the atmosphere and afterward, to minimize the impact of her passage upon the locals, her cargo had more than enough time to leisurely hit the stratosphere in the wake of the heavier and faster decoys, correct their course and head for the target. Small, short-lived ECM and ECCEM units sang their siren song, bathing Dragon's compound with enough exotic and mundane radiation to make it's shield glow as it absorbed and deflected it. Old fashioned radar was jammed, lidar was blinded and thermal sensors saw tens of thousands of targets, most of them ghosts. Various tinkertech sensors had better luck, however, they lacked an AI to go through all the data, prioritize what might be real targets instead of the decoy shower coming fast straight at the defenses, so dormant sub-routines activated and the various defense emplacements went in automated mode, seeking to neutralize what they believed to be the greatest threats first.
Those were the largest energy sources approaching the base and a colorful mix of plasma, lasers, and rapid-fire railguns opened up, firing as fast as they could, any concerns about overheating forgotten. As it happens, the largest sources of power tended to be the ECM and ECCEM platforms, closely followed by jagged rolls of shield emitters falling just below them. Lasers beams were absorbed and occasionally deflected during glancing shots, plasma dissipated in burning halos, railgun-slugs crashed into defense fields and annihilated themselves, sometimes knocking the shield emitters off-course.
Yet, there were a lot of targets, and below them flew a shower of debris made to reflect and refract all known sensors, not to mention, they were supposed to absorb some of the expected punishment aimed at the orbital drop.
That was merely the opening stage. Shortly after coming under fire, over a hundred cylinders liberally spread throughout the dropping metal cloud accelerated at speeds that would have turned anything organic into compressed liquid and just before they would have hit the shield, they decelerated even faster, burning all equipment onboard and activated charges that blew up the containers, spreading thick silver smoke all over the compound. It blinded almost all available sensors, blocked good old fashioned vision, made most laser weaponry useless through refraction, and forces plasma to burn its way through, thus significantly reducing power and accuracy… if the weapon emplacements could see anything beyond the smoke cloud anyway.
The Shock Troopers were still two minutes out and the compound's shield was still up and fully operational.
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Part 2
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14 January 2011
Dragon's base
Canada
Earth Bet
For the first time, Saint wondered if he shouldn't have listened to his friends and insisted that they go after that US military base while activating Ascalon just before hitting it. Yet, Mags' arguments made sense – that way they would have ended up in the middle of hostile territory with forces converging on their position from all sides with a lot of ground to cover before they could get to safety. He had been ready to activate Ascalon then and there when an off-hand comment by Dobrynja changed his mind. Dragon had a base, a large, very well defended base, and through it, used to control all kinds of important facilities. Most importantly, she controlled the Birdcage from here, and with the damn AI gone, having access to its system would have been the best bet to get his mentor free.
It sounded like a great idea – with the backdoors installed by Dragon's creator, they could practically walk through the AI's defenses, take it out, take over and enjoy unparalleled protection and leverage while he had all the time necessary to do get Teacher out. That was a rough plan, a dangerous one, however, it was the closest thing to a win-win situation he could see given the circumstances. At any rate, with Dragon out of the picture, Earth was much safer now, that was for certain.
Saint was more than sure of it, especially now that he saw with his own eyes what the damn thing had been working on. When it went rogue, it would have been incredibly lethal – it already had a small army built with more on the way and it was only the restrains preventing it from controlling all those suits laying around, waiting.
No one dared to attack them immediately, which was great, their proclamation and exposing Dragon for what it was, helped too! From Dobrynja's observation of the internet, there were a lot of people who now saw through the AI's mask for what it was, even though not enough were happy about it. Didn't they see the truth? Didn't they understand how dangerous an unhinged Dragon out of control would be?
Perhaps it was the shock of the revelation, he kept telling himself, and his frustration bubbling over. Without the AI around, taking control and properly using its systems was proving problematic. On the security front, they were all right – a general lock-down command and putting the defenses on automated mode offered a nice security blanket, and even now Mags worked on getting as many suits online with basic automated commands to use either as expendable drones or through remote control. Dobrynja was busy watching the reactions caused by their takeover and overseeing the security systems, while Saint himself struggled to get into the Birdcage's systems and take control of the various containment facilities that Dragon oversaw until recently. Most of those went on standby mode, following pre-established procedures in case they no longer received instruction from Dragon, no matter the reason.
Right now, Saint had partial access to Dragon's assets observing the Machine Army, could see but not touch various quarantine sites, and the Birdcage itself? It was a digital fortress requiring access codes that were buried somewhere deep within the mess that were the servers that contained Dragon before Ascalon did its job.
Dobrynja witnessed the first thing to go wrong.
"Hey, boss, there's something funny happening to with the Internet. I'm seeing alerts from various bots and subroutines Dragon used… I'm pretty sure there's a war going on out there, with someone or something trying to take down or isolate parts of the net, while people are trying to stop it and causing as much damage themselves…" Dobrynja trailed off. "It looks that way anyway, I'm not sure I'm reading all the information right. Can I get Ascalon to run the feedback through it?"
"I still need it," Saint shouted back. Who cared about the internet? That was the government's job, wasn't it? At any rate, he was busy, damn it, he needed to get Teacher out, now!
A few minutes of blessed silence followed before Dobrynja began cursing in Russian.
"Boss, I'm getting all kinds of alerts, something big is approaching Earth and I'm getting automatic pings and information requests from all over the world. I'm trying to make heads and tail of this… and we might be getting intruders…"
"Fuck this. Mags, Dobrynja, suit up, get as much of those Dragon suits operational as you can, and make sure no one interrupts me!"
"Are you sure about that, Saint? We're done here, Dragon is gone and we've got a lot of its technical data to use or sell." Mags pointed out. "Perhaps we should use the defenses and whatever is happening outside as a cover to get out and lose any possible pursuit…"
"I need more time, we'll be all right, just make sure no one gets to the shields or generators!" Saint shouted back, becoming more and more frantic by the moment. It wasn't supposed to be like this, he needed more time, he needed to get Teacher out, now, damn it!
"Fuck it, Saint, I hope you know what you're doing. I've got all the defenses on automatic, they'll shoot at anything that tries to get in or out that isn't us." Dobrynja snapped and ran for his suit.
Mags stared imploringly at Saint for long moments, however, he didn't even notice, being too busy trying to crack the Birdcage's security and get his mentor out.
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secure bunker
White House
Washington DC
Earth Bet
President Hayes felt like banging his head on the table he sat on within the bunker. There was being heavy-handed, then there was this, which was a nice summary of how little regard the Mandalorians had for Earth and how small fish the United States and their allies were now. Even in the age of Parahumans, no one dared be this arrogant save the damn Endbringers, though those didn't communicate.
"This is Captain Marduk Fel, from the Mandalorian Freehold Navy Warship Vendetta. We're in the process of conducting military operations ordered by Mandalore Delkatar Veil. Any attempts to interfere with our duties by local PDF forces will be considered hostile actions and answered with lethal force. I say again…"
Whatever the Mandalorians used to transmit was monstrously powerful and blanketed all radio and TV frequencies in the northern hemisphere. Anyone with a radio or a TV on, often no matter what they were watching, got to see and hear the gutsy proclamation. That said proclamation was merely a confirmation of who held the biggest stick and thus was relevant as far as international relationship went, well that by itself was going to cause a nasty fallout.
"We've got landline links with various bases up north, some of them ours, other Canadian as part of our joint aerospace defense efforts. All sensors save for thermal are being jammed, the same is true for communications save for a handful of exotic tinkertech devices. That ship is blanketing everything for hundreds of miles around it with it's ECM, it's powerful and effective sir." An adjutant monitoring incoming communications reported.
"What is our answer, sir?"
"Keep our forces on standby, do not engage the aliens unless fired upon first. Keep our birds grounded or far away from that thing."
"Special packages?" General Grissom asked.
They had no illusions that attempting to shoot down something that big and almost certainly armored with conventional air to air or ground to air missiles would be effective. The only thing that might work would be nuclear or a few nasty tinkertech devices, however, in that case, the side-effects of such large ship crashing in North America would be bad… if they could bring it down in the first place. If not, the Mandalorians might respond in kind anyway, and even successfully shooting it down would be escalation no one sane wanted.
The ship itself was huge, covered in weapons and the ease with which it maneuvered told everyone paying attention all they needed to know about the technological disparity between Earth and the aliens. Even worse, with the portal connecting them with the Mandalorians leading straight to the alien capital world, it meant that any logistical issues that might give Earth a chance were almost certainly not in play if it came down to a shooting war.
"The orders are received and confirmed, sir. We just got confirmation from the Canadians that they're standing on alert, but won't conduct offensive actions as long as the Mandalorians aim only at Dragon's compound…" An unfamiliar voice announced.
"What about independent Parahumans trying their luck?" Costa-Brown inquired.
"Against something like this? Such a ship should be able to carry a whole division and from what we've seen so far, that thing looks meaner than anything we've seen on screen. The same goes for the Mandalorian forces we saw in action." General Grissom shook his head. "I'm almost pitying anyone fool enough of trying their luck." He looked at the Chief-Director with a deadpan expression. "We both know that the worst that could happen is that a Parahuman group gets lucky and provokes the aliens into escalating things even further."
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