Back Home – The Dual War
by Warringer
Chapter 47
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Petersen breathed in deep. Three hours had gone by since the first attempt to communicate with the Shin'bi vessels, followed by the pirate attack. The pirates had damaged his ship, but Mainz was still in the shape to fight. The battle damage was limited to the loss of one fin of the gravitic drive, one plasma drive unit and some damage of the hull armor in the engineering section. The sensors reported a loss of about 50 percent of armor thickness in the damaged sections. But nothing that couldn't be repaired by a week in dock.
Petersen was glad that Mainz and all other space ship designs that were used by GDI were highly modular.
"What is taking them so long to answer us?" he heard Von Bismark ask concerned.
Haruka, who was standing right next to him, snorted.
"They are communicating with each other and their home country," she said.
Petersen chuckled.
"I guess we would check in with our government too if we had such a pirate and slaver problem."
"Even than..." Bismark sighed." How come that you don't pick up any communication. Surely they are using radio."
"Could be laser link com," Mainach noted." If you aren't directly inside the laser beam you are not likely to pick it up. We are using laser links for the TacNet during battle situations."
Petersen sighed and looked back at the display that showed the two Shin'bi spaceships in a false color image, with an overlay of the IR image where they could see the blooms of the active laser point defense blasting micro meteoroids into stardust.
"Speak of the devil," Leutnant zur See (OF-1) Schürmann, the communications technician, noted dryly." It seems they are ready to talk to us. Audio only."
Petersen nodded.
"Put it through on the big speakers."
"Who are you?" was the first question coming over the speakers, spoken by a purposely male Shin'bi in the same accent the Shin'bi aboard Mainz had.
"I'm Korvettenkapitän Daniel Petersen. I am in command of the Raumflotten Cutter Mainz under the Global Defensive Initiative of the planet Terra."
Petersen had decided to use the latin name for Earth as it slowly began to replace 'Earth' in the media and even more slowly in the use of the GDI.
"What do you want?" was the next question, coming a few minutes after he had answered.
"We want to return several members of your people who have been rescued due to a lucky coincidence. We have saved them from slavery under the Doranians, with whom we are currently in a state of war."
There was a longer pause and the tension in the room nearly could be tasted.
"I want to talk to them," demanded the voice.
Petersen and just about everyone in the Command Center looked directly at Haruka and the other Shin'bi.
"You speak with Haruka of the Ichijinnokaze Clan," she just stated.
The tension raised some more as everyone waited for the answer.
"Tell me the name of the Clans founder, where he was born and what made him special."
Haruka breathed in deep, before she answered.
"Saitaku Yakuwara, born in Nagasaki during the reign of Emporess Genmei in Nippon."
At that moment just about everyone stared at her. Nippon was the same as Japan and it was very unlikely that Zaitaku had a city named Nagasaki, through it was possible.
"He wasn't Shin'bi. He brought my clan his way of life and sired twelve children of which five became the founders of five other clans."
Again there was a silence.
"Name the clans."
"The Yokokaze Clan, the Amakaze Clan, the Karakaze Clan, the Hageshiikaze Clan and the Matsukaze Clan."
"It was all correct," the voice said." You are speaking to Katai of the Yokokaze Clan, commander of the Kogatana. I believe that Hanshi Nataru was killed during your abduction?"
"Yes. But he died fighting."
"Good. May I speak to Korvettenkapitän Daniel Petersen?"
Petersen let out the breath he didn't remember holding.
"You can speak, Katai-san."
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"WHAT?"
Commander Nakaral was furious. He couldn't believe his ears as he stared at his sensory technician. Said technician had shrunk a little as his commander glared daggers at him.
"The entire fleet in that system is moving. Course vector indicates that they are leaving the system."
"The target!" Nakaral demanded, stepping closer to the technician, looking ready to rip his head off.
The technician looked as if he was about to soil himself at the imposing figure of his commander only amplified by the fact that the technician was smaller than the average Doranian.
"Magna Doran..."
Nakaral stopped in his tracks. His eyes widened and he stared at the technician for a moment before he stared at the sensory display behind the technician. Suddenly he turned around and began to yell orders.
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Lieutenant Commander Christine Rendino chuckled as she looked at the hologram that was floating in front of Admiral Dubinin, showing the face of Commodore Masaki. Both of her superior officers had shit eating grins parting their faces.
"It really wasn't needed that you use the entire Home Guard to escort us to the rim of the Expanse," Masaki said and Christine was trying very hard not to laugh out loud.
"Oh, it was a pleasure to do this, Commodore," Dubinin responded." It's not every day that GDI gets to support an hopeful ally."
"And the scouts you sent further out?"
"Just a sneak preview into one of the main Doranian systems, just a short peek at it nothing more."
Both shared a silent laugh.
"Anything else I might want to know before you return to Earth, Admiral?"
If possible the smiles of both men became wider and if the ears weren't there they would smile around their entire head.
"It seems that the Doranians have pulled a good number of ships from the Narn front. At least that is what the Beholders in behind enemy lines report."
"Well, lets hope for the Doranians that no one will tell the Narn. We will talk later, Admiral."
"Until later Commodore."
The sheer dryness of Masakis last comment was too much for Christine. She fell back into a chair and laughed like she had never laughed before in her entire life.
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Lady Seto was a little put of by the entire display that Tenchi had given her in the last hour since the entire Earth fleet had left the Solar system and crawled towards the edge of the Corian Expanse, while she knew that they could move much faster. The scouts they had send deep into Doranian space certainly did.
And than there was the strange dialog with Admiral Dubinin. She could feel that they were up to something.
Ever since that conversation with Battle Leader Hak'ey and the rules Tenchi had layed down at that time, she was a bit wary if it she had done the right thing. Especially since she had thought that Tenchi would do whjat she said. But he wasn't going to do that. She wasn't really used to people who knew how to lead their people.
For a moment she shuddered at seeing the smile Tenchi wore after shutting down the communication with Dubinin.
Tenchi clapped his hands.
"Okay, people set course towards Konosac. And I'm pretty sure that you would like to know what this was all about."
Oh yes, Seto thought. Konosac was in a completely different direction than the course vector the fleet had gone while leaving the Corian Expanse. And there was that smile again.
"Well," Tenchi started," it seems that the Doranians were trying to spy at us. But several of our Beholders have spied the little spy."
Seto sweatdropped. Tenchi was behaving like a kid at this moment.
"And since we know it was there, we wanted to give them a show for their money and to play some cat and mouse. Just that we are the cats in this case. The spy hightailed towards Doranian space as soon as the scouts left the system and from the info we got from them, he stayed in front of the scouts and out of range of us and Home Guard."
Seto narrowed her eyes, wondering what came next.
"The last info dumps from Doranian controlled Narn space indicate that the Doranians have pulled about half of their fleet from all systems that are not directly on or near the front lines. The course vector of one fleet indicates that they are going after Earth, while the rest is going towards Magna Doran, the end of the course vector we used to leave the Expanse."
Now Seto saw what Tenchi was going to say.
"The Doranians are going to await a massive attack on Magna Doran, while attacking a supposedly defenseless Earth. That is going to allow us to strike deep into the Doranian controlled space while the Doranians are going to weaken themselves."
Tenchi made a pause. Seto was impressed. She was known to use unorthodox tactics and stategies, but this was something different. A chuckle let her turn towards Hak'ey, who was standing away from Seto and her companions.
"Now all we need to do is plan an attack on Kotok."
Another thing she wasn't used to. Tenchi would attack the Doranians behind their front lines? Just to attack one planet?
"Miller, I need a conference link to the commanders of the other ships while we are on our way towards Konosac."
"Aye, sir."
"Setsuna, you got the Con."
With that Tenchi left the bridge towards one of the briefing rooms. Seto followed him. She was going to find out what Tenchi was up to.
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Tenchi stood in the main fleet briefing rooms. It was mostly empty, but that changed fast as the holographic projectors began to work, creating full holographic representations of the commanders of the fleet and a star map between them.
Than Lady Seto, her people and Hak'ey entered the room. Tenchi frowned as he looked into their direction, but didn't comment.
The last hologram to appear was that of main line Dark Knight.
"Okay," Tenchi began." What do we know about Kotok since the invasion from the Doranians?"
Dark Knight cleared her throat.
"We know quite a bit," she said." Nautilus placed a Beholder into the out system a month ago and the spooks at Naval Intelligence were able to put the infos together to a coherent picture."
The holographic display of the star map changed showing Narn space as a blue body, while the Doranian controlled part was colored red.
"As you can see the Doranians have managed to take a quarter of Narn space, with about twenty major and about thirty minor colonies. And the most important for the whole invasion is Kotok."
The dot that represented Kotok flashed red, before zooming in, showing a simplified version of the system.
"The thing that makes Kotok interesting in the second planet. Its class M and a major colony of the Narn. And it used to be one of the most important trade worlds of the Narn until the Doranian invasion. That means a complete logistic infrastructure that fell into the Doranians hands, who are using now for their own logistics. That is the thing that makes Kotok the most important planet to the Doranians."
The other commanders and captains nodded.
"However, due to the kind of warfare that is used in the galaxy, and our little faint, Most of the fleet that protects Kotok has been pulled towards Magna Doran. At this moment our Beholder reads not much more than twenty Doranians Cruisers and five Dreadnoughts. And not much in the way of fixed orbital defenses."
Tenchi nodded. It seemed that most if not all races didn't really believe in damaging the enemies logistics, but rather in straight forward battles of dominion. But than again neither had mankind until the first World War, when German subs first began to attack transports en mass, while blockading used to be a good method to starve the enemy. Much like the races of the galaxy.
He chuckled slightly as he thought that blockading Earth wouldn't do much good as the homeworld of man was completely autark in just about every aspect of life.
"Do we have any data on Logistic complexes used by the Doranians," he heard Captain Williams, the commander of USS Potomac asked.
The third planet was zoomed in and than a surface map.
"While the Doranians appear to use most of the Narn logistics, we have found several space ports in the Southern Dessert, far away from any civilian population. They aren't in the Narn maps, so they have to be put up by the Doranians."
Tenchi walked closer to the display. There was already a plan forming in the back of his mind.
"I guess that we could take Kotok, but the question is... Can we keep Kotok? Or would the attack be a simple raid to destroy as much logistics as possible?"
There was a pause and a glance over to Seto gave him some insight into her thoughts. She may not show them like so many others, but being a good commanding officer, Tenchi knew how to read people. And Seto was very disturbed and anxious.
"Not very high. We'd need a large number of ships to hold Kotok on our own. And even with the Narn fleet holding Kotok would be a problem."
Tenchi nodded.
"Okay, I want you to create an orbital bombardment pattern, keep the civilian losses at a minimum. No civilians would be the absolute best."
Dark Knight nodded, while Tenchi addressed the rest of the commanders.
"This was just a short briefing, the actual planning of the operation will be done when we have meet up with the Narn fleet and Nautilus. Dismissed."