Back Home – The Dual War
by Warringer
Chapter 46
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"Slipstream Event! 1000 kilometers starboard above."
Korvettenkapitän Petersen rolled his eyes a sighed.
"Somehow I knew that this would happen," he muttered before giving orders." ID?"
"Currently not identified," Leutnant zur See (OF-1) Mainach noted." But I get wavefronts consistent with Q-2 technology. Most likely pirates."
Petersen snorted. He could have guessed. Following the explanations of the Shin'bi aboard his ship, he knew that the whole system was pretty much infested by pirates.
Suddenly the ship shook and the red alert started to blare very loudly. Petersen was now heavily reminded of the Doranian Raid on New Omelos and how his ship had been all but crippled there, but not without giving more than she had taken.
"Shields!" he ordered slightly louder than normal." Get me a targeting solution, SOFORT!"
"Direct hit," he heard directly after giving his orders." We lost gravitic fin five and got a hit on plasma two."
Petersen narrowed his eyes. He could figure that the pirates would want to take out his engines.
"Bring us about and closer to them. I want them to eat plasma."
The ship shook again.
"Direct hit. Shield down to fifty two percent. They are firing missiles."
Petersen didn't let himself being distracted from the the shouts coming from the Shin'bi or Von Bismark. He simply glared at the tactical display.
"Targeting solution for rail one and three."
"Fire."
Rail one and three were the two heavy railgun turrets on starboard and very able to target the pirate vessel that came from exactly that side, while the ship still turned about to present her bow and the dual Heavy Plasma Mortars to the pirate.
Petersen looked at the screen and two icons flashed as they showed that the turrets were firing. The heavy and fast 8 inch projectiles made their way towards the pirate ship that was on a direct course towards Mainz. The four missiles of the Pirate nearly had reached the GDI ship, but other than any of the other races in the galaxy, Mainz had a system unknown to the pirates.
The Interceptor system of the Pegasus had become active the second the red alarm had been sounded and independent radar and lidar systems were looking into the direct area around the ship. Five of the ten Interceptors had detected the missiles and tracked them since detection. As they came closer and closer the Mk III Interceptors opened fire. Streams of plasma bolts, fired by a low caliber gating style plasma bolter, were spat towards the missiles hitting them exactly where the AI of the Interceptor system had predicted them to be, detonating them in a spectacular display.
As the missiles exploded the pirates began to realize that this wasn't going to go as planned.
"Firing solution for Rail two and four."
"Fire."
The two other railgun turrets, now able to target the pirate began to join in, firing at the Pirate ship, steadily reducing its shield power with a continuous stream of projectiles impacting in the shield.
The ship shook at another direct hit, but the automatics of the turrets kept them steadily on target.
"Direct hit. Shields down to ten percent."
Petersen narrowed his eyes.
"Recycle the shield."
That was a tactic he had come up with just after the Raid on New Omelos and the knowledge that the armor, while only capable of taking so much, was as good as a shield and combined with the E-Web it was quite possible to survive long enough for the shield to recycle and get back online to full strength.
"Shield offline. Ten seconds."
"Firing solution for HP One and Two."
Petersen grinned.
"Let them think we needed to switch of the shields for them. Fire."
The dual Heavy Plasma Mortars that made up most of Mainz' bow powered up before spitting large plasma bolts at the pirate ship. They crossed the space between less fast than the railgun projectiles, but non the less impacted in the frontal sector of the pirates shield, taking the shield down rapidly.
"Solution for LPBPC One through four and LPC One through Four."
"Shields back online. One hundred percent. No hits."
Petersen snorted. Those pirates seemed to be pushovers in his opinion. The Doranians had been more of a challenge. With such a low rate of fire, he wondered how they even managed to get any other ship down.
"Fire."
Four light particle beam cannons and four light plasma pulse weapons fired and together with the railgun turrets they stuck the same spot the large plasma bolts had hit, taking out the shield before coring the entire pirate ship after punching through the weak and thin hull.
The reactor of the ship lost containment and reduced the ship to a rapidly expanding cloud of gas and debris.
Petersen shook his head.
"Weicheier..."
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Captain Miles Kantor sighed again. Here he was, yet again shoved around by the Pentagon and, by expansion, GDI Headquarters. He twitched slightly as he heard the loud droning of heavy construction equipment not far away in the same building and outside. He was actually surprised to find the room he was in now in such a 'complete' condition.
It had everything. A large movie screen with a high end beamer, connected to an up-to-date workstation. Several other up-to-date workstation all across the room. Several crates with soda bottles, mostly coke, a so called 'Senseo' coffee machine with a number of coffee pads and a water disperser standing in a corner.
He blinked as he looked at the large screen and the scene playing on it.
"Commerce Primary Ignition."
"Fire."
That was followed by the Death Star blowing up Alderaan.
"Rewind that," he heard one of the people standing in front of the screen.
"Commerce Primary Ignition."
"Stop."
Kantor groaned.
Not wanting to disturb the Warsies at the screen, he turned to the rest of the room, where others were working on other things. He walked over to another group standing around one of the workstations.
"How about we add second reactor? Should give it a longer range and..."
"Don't you think that might be overkill? The Flying Crowbar was never really tested and with a nuclear ramjet, if could go on for years for all we know..."
"How about additional speed? With the new alloys we could make it survive Mach 10 plus speeds. Makes it much harder to intercept from orbit. And it wouldn't need to carry nukes with it. The supersonic wake in low level flight and TWO reactors are doing all the damage..."
Kantor took a step back. Those people had dug out the plans for 'Project Pluto' and the SLAM, Supersonic Low Altitude Missile, from the sixties and were on their way to make it a HyperSLAM, Hyper Sonic Low Altitude Missile.
Maybe another workstation...
"Could work... We could modify a slipstream drive to let an object leave at relativistic speeds. Attach it to an asteroid and you got a planet killer."
A look to the side...
"... Gray Goo..."
"... Upscale a gravitic bomb to get a Buster Machine III..."
He stumbled back towards the door, not turning around as he opened the door and left the room. Closing the door behind him he closed his eyes and exhaled.
He should have known it. 'Project Doomsday' was such a fitting description for all this.
"Guys!" he could hear from inside the room." Barricade came up with Assimovs Electron Pump!"
Even worse, they had found the Doomsday thread of Psychosama on SpaceBattles...
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Reconnaissance. One of the basics of modern Earth Combat Doctrine. Even in the newly opened interstellar age, reconnaissance was to one of the cornerstones of naval space warfare. The generals of the Pentagon and later the GDI had realized very early that Earth needed to know what was going on in space if they wanted to mount a good defense for Earth and on extension for Vega and now New Omelos.
In November 2003 the Jet Propulsion Laboratory had come up with a cheap and easy to build reconnaissance network satellite and called the satellite 'Eye of the Beholder'. Most of the satellite could be build with of the shelf systems, while the rest would need the help of Nathan or the industrial capacity of the Regula Mobile shipyards.
Later the combined effort of all GDI nations and a newly build factory specially for building these satellites in Detroit, made it possible to build five of these satellites in a day, the more advanced parts coming straight from some industrial over capacity of the Mobile Shipyards.
So Earth had access to a cheap standardized reconnaissance satellite that could be build and deployed in large quantities allowing Earth and GDI to cover a good amount of space. In a smaller version of the Technology Transfer Treaty with the Ferrons, the Defense Network Treaty, the GDI exchanged the plans for the 'Eye of the Beholder' satellite for the plans and a number of complete Ferron Defense Satellites. Another part of the Defense Network Treaty was that both the Feron Kingdom as well as the GDI had complete access to a Reconnaissance Network that would have to be build in the Corian Expanse.
So ever since the dawn of the year 2004, GDI and the Ferron Navy were seeding the 'Eye of the Beholder' satellites they had build and slowly covered every light years with them. Now three hundred of these satellites were floating in deep space, orbiting around stars, their large solar panels, each the size of a football field, powering them for decades to come, while their passive sensory systems covered several dozen lightmonth around the satellite itself.
One of these satellites was G-039, orbiting the star known as Lalande 21185. The extremely low level AI system of the satellite didn't really know anything like boredom as its sensors listened and looked out into empty space, while some of the scientific experiments that had been integrated into it were running.
Its not-quite electronic 'boredom' was interrupted as a red flag came from one of its sensors. A short peek into the sensory logs in question let the low level AI know that an artificial quantum even had happened, small it might be, but it was there. With a light electronic equivalent of triumph, it immediately send a burst transmission towards its mission control at Earth, including a full log from the sensor before it began to direct some of its passive sensors at the point in space where the event had happed, while it waited for a reaction coming from Earth.
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Commander Nakaral sneered as he thought about his orders. Here he was, the commander of a proud new Quantum 2 Cruiser of the Doranian Protectorate, and he had been ordered by a filthy hybrid to act like a Centauri.
He didn't like Senkal one bit, but he had to say that he liked his orders at least a little bit, even if it meant to act like a Centauri.
He glared at the station of the sensory technician for a moment, his eyes going over the holographic displays that relayed passive sensory data coming from about twelve years distance, the center of the Corian Expanse.
Alone the thought of the system that was situated there made him sneer again. To think that two whole fleets had been defeated there, by a race that was barely in space. It was unbelievable that it had happened, but it had non the less.
He wanted to go there and show what his new Cruiser could do, but his orders didn't allow that. He was to remain here and look for any thing these damned apes would do.
He chuckled. What he did now wasn't something those apes would think of. No, there couldn't be as sneaky as he was, even if his orders came from that damned hybrid.
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Lieutant Commander Christine Rendino, USN, raised her eyebrow she went over the information they had received not too long ago from G-039 and two other 'Eye of the Beholder' satellites, G-021 and G-044.
"Doranians you say," she asked.
Sergeant Kumar, Indian Navy, had given her the files on the data and was standing in front of her desk in the Naval Intelligence Center on Shabazza.
"The Quantum profiles match," he answered." But its too small... It looks more like a single ship than a large invasion or even a raiding force."
Christine leaned back. The whole thing was out of character for the Doranians. But than again it would have been out of character for most races in the galaxy. However it wouldn't be out of place for the humans from Earth.
She breathed in and chuckled slightly. Could it be that the Doranians were learning?
Sure it wouldn't be more easy for Earth if the Doranians were learning about 'tactics' and 'subtlety', but than again Earth was a step ahead at this moment. Mostly because the 'Eye of the Beholder' coverage towards the Narn Regime and the Doranian Protectorate was complete and no ship, not even one in Slipstream would slip through the network.
"It seems that the Doranians could try their hands at spying," she noted dryly." Get me the sensory logs of the other 'Beholders' in the area. I want to know where they came from. And order G-039 to keep an eye on our little spy."
"Aye aye, ma'am."
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Tenchi groaned. He could live with Battle Leader Hak'ey and he could put up with Seto and her companions if he really eeded to, but this was a little too much.
He was tempted to get to Earth and storm straight into the office of Admiral Jackson to give him a piece of his mind.
He sighed again as he looked at the three people in front of him, one of them carrying a professional camera, while the second carried sound equipment and the third was the actual problem.
"Lyta Alexander, CNN," the woman introduced herself.
Tenchi had dealt with ISN reporters several times, even another embedded reporter, so he was able to keep himself in check and shake the womans hand and actually be friendly to her. But he knew that she knew that he was forcing the smile and the friendly act.
"Commodore Tenchi Masaki," he said ad shook her hand." A pleasure."
Lyta raised an eyebrow as she looked towards Setsuna and the two Avatars of Dark Knight that were standing behind him.
"Surrounding yourself with beautiful women I see..."
Tenchi had more than enough control not to blush even slightly at the comment as he half turned, giving Lyta a smile.
"I do my best to keep away from them, but it seems that I attract them."
Lyta didn't have the control he had and so she blushed slightly at the compliment that wasn't really directed at her, even through she was an attractive woman, a virtual copy of the Lyta Alexander who used to be the telephat on Babylon 5.
"This are Setsuna, my Second in Command, D and K, the avatars of Dark Knight."
Lyta blinked.
"Avatars?"
"We are the embodiments of Dark Knights Intelligence," D helped her out." Through we have our own personalities and preferences."
With that both avatars snug closer to their respective 'lovers'.
"And sometimes a pain in the ass," was the comment of Dark Knight herself coming from around them, while a display showed a rather normal woman.
Both avatars gave the redeye to the display, while Tenchi rolled his eyes.
"Welcome aboard, Miss Alexander."
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Alina couldn't help but stare at she flipped through the quantum channels. It was something of a ritual for her ever since she had gotten enough freedom in 'her masters' cabin to actually do so. A good number of channels were news, heavily laden with propaganda, while others were showing actual soap operas and the like. One of the news channels had been the Doranian News Agency, but she knew that those news were tightly controlled by the government of the Protectorate, not very unlike the news of the Soviet Union of old.
Now there was a new news channel or rather two of them and that was causing her to stare at the screen.
CNN Intergalactic and BBC. Earth based channels that were now broadcasting into the galaxy on rather exotic parts of the civil spectrum.
And it showed that Earth was indeed coming onto the galactic stage. At the moment CNN was showing ads, or rather a recruitment ad for the US Armed Forces, using footage that seemed to be genuine. She remembered the large Hollywood sign to be from Los Angeles and saw how human soldiers were fighting Doranian Power Armored troops. How A-10 dropped bombs on troop concentrations or an Apache fired a missile at a Heavy Powered Armor.
That was followed by a news broadcast, titled 'The Doranian War'. The entire thing was covered by positive propaganda about the so called GDI, its fleet and operations that were currently going on.
She could feel how tears welled up in her eyes and began to roll over her muzzle.
If Earth had survived a Doranian Invasion and had a fleet, she could hope for freedom.
As she heard the door going behind her, she switched off the channel, hoping that Senkal nor any other Doranian would ever discover CNN or BBC. If they did, it could be a great problem for Earth.