-scene break-
The Eowyn-class vessel shifted slightly using a pairing of its Float system and the plasma thrusters located across its side. The thrusters were designed to adjust course in space, firing and vectoring according to minute aligned calculations made by the onboard avionics system. Below it the Earth was a pristine blue and green sphere.
"Counting inbound vessel vector two-five, mark position, altering course towards the beacon." The commander remarked, so far everything still seemed on schedule. He glanced at the last report that had come in this morning, "Remember the Europeans have heavy sea transports leaving Holland, command expects them south through the straits and into the Med,"
A junior officer perked up, "Are we still planning to link with the Torrent?" The Expanding Torrent was a Phalanx-class escort ship.
"Far as we've heard from command," The Commander acknowledged, "Captain estimates transist time to be another seventy two minutes," At which point they'd be slowing down long enough cruise into Light Dock and wait, "Torrent is transistioning from L2 after all, been on Condition orange for sixteen hours, Sims. Captain expects them to be tired, six hours of break for the primary crew of the Torrent, and then we'll transistion down to North Africa,"
The junior officer nodded, "What do you think they're shipping?" The mission briefing hadn't painted a particularly clear picture. They weren't even supposed to be in conflict with the Euros, so it didn't make sense to be transfering heavy strike Knightmares into allied North Africa. At the same time though sending two ships made sense. The Torrent was smaller, and equally stealthy as the larger ships, which was there that if things went sideways could provide support.
"Probably Knightmares parts, it, well," The new voice paused, "all of it is just a show the flag run, we'll pop down," Williams said jumping into the discussion, "show off in Alexandria, go kick back some beers with the locals for a weekend and then will go back to this boring void."
Many of those who'd left the Earth had thought that one day they'd return to Earth, that they were only resting long enough to regain their strength. For others though space was the next step for everyone, and moving forward into the future was the only way to keep mankind alive. In the blackness of the void there was an increasing idea of what was necessary. "And if it becomes more than that?"
"What are you saying?" He knew in a way what he meant, if things went sideways with anyone there was going to be a fight. Ian knew that much was unavoidable. There would be a conflict, no amount of dancing around it would allow it to be avoided indefinitely.
There was a flicker across the screen, which distracted away from the talking. "Lasing from Light Dock we're locking on to their beacon for final approach,"
The H-V platform, more commonly a Light Dock, was designed to accomadate multiple ships. Well hypothetically designed, you had at absolute most three ships, anything more and you ran an extreme security risk. Stealth in space was by no means perfect, thus most of the time the idea was to stay at the L2 point with the moon directly between the Earth and them.
The issue with stealth was two fold, heat, and visual stealth. Realistically neither were likely to lead to the ship being detected simply because there weren't many telescopes actually looking at the sky much less ones with the complicated computer processing power to identify visual distortion quickly enough. That would probably change over the next few years, especially as space travel was gradually developed by Europe, and the UFN.
"Receiving priority 3 update," that was the other problem with space travel, the lag between communication compared to being on Earth. Generally this wasn't really a problem, but even so things were kept fairly compartmentalized. That had actually become a bit of a problem. The Black Hand formations had been created primarily from selected elements Imperial Guard units, primarily chosen both for psychological, and ability related reasons. It had resulted in an internalized clique of fanatics, which was really the reason Jeremiah had been chosen to ride herd.
The computer screen flickered detailing the break down of the encoding procedure. Priority 3 memos weren't overly important, generally they were some other minor bit of news. In this particular case it was an upload related to movements carried out in the Pacific Area of Operations by the UFN Armed Forces.
"Malaca?" There was a snort, "Are they stupid?"
A couple of looks turned to the map, a lot of sea borne trade was dependent on that route, moving anything substantial into that region tended to draw attention of the wrong kind. "What are they moving?"
"Ikaruga-class, we're running the hull number now just in case," Another officer added, it wasn't likely there was anything special about the ship, but it was probably a good idea to still go over the ship's maintenance reports, "Some of the Chinese surface elements, probably a handful of submarine units."
Just one Ikaruga made this sound more like it was Chinese operation instead of a move under orders from Tokyo. That didn't make any sense either since China wanted a war about as much as the Emperor wanted to glass the planet. "We're not getting redirected are we?"
"Not at present one of the A-series is coming back to L2," That was the Largrangian point behind the moon, "on schedule tomorrow meaning we're short handed as it is." There were some nods. Even with the ability to fake thousands of deaths in a war against Europe, and the rest of the world hidings thousands of people in space was difficult There were only so many people you could have up here at once. It was why the cargo haulers were either unmanned, or minimally crewed.
A nod, "Yeah the next batch of high density metals." Mining space meant you didn't have to mine the earth, which meant you didn't have to threaten the enviroment with dangerous mining practices to get at valuable minerals. In other words it was a PR goldmine, pun intended. "Aren't they meant for the Empire's terrestrial space development initiative as opposed to another Eowyn-class."
"Thats right," There was some grumbling over this, principally because the Eowyn-class was large enough to make it ideal for transporting bulk material. "Logistics & Material have delayed the next two in the class for at least six months." Two more of the kilometer long battleships would have been nice for support in the event there was actually a problem on Earth.
-scene break-
Getting Schneziel out of Britannia had been a security nightmare, principally because it had meant both dodging around a snow storm, and wondering whether the Britannian Internal Security Forces were about to come swooping down on them. That had been one of the good things about Lelouch vi Britannia's reign, or bad if you were pro Empire.
As it happened when Lelouch had ascended the throne the OSI had thrown in by and large with the rebelling nobles. In the resulting conflict it had yieled the widespread destruction of their forces, and even most their structures. After Cornelia's ascension to the throne Military Intelligence had superseded the Civilian branches, which hadn't been taken well by surviving civilian elements. In short it meant Britannia's intelligence sector was rather deficent.
Touching down in Spain had been a bit of a relief for everyone involved. A lot of EU intelligence work in Britannia in this era was about working with otherwise questionable elements politically speaking. In this case the biggest help was libertine noblemen, or nobles who were otherwise opposed to Cornelia li Britannia.
The airport they had landed at was in Galicia. The two kilometer long run way had been more than enough to accomadate the mid size business class jet they'd flown in on. As it stood their superiors in the Joint European Special Forces Command were still playing the waiting game before calling this a success. The only reason they'd snatched Schneziel was because he was the kind of leader who who would have back ups of back ups of information.
Isenberg and his fellows were still milling around the new flatscreen televission with the news playing. So far it seemed the news hadn't caught word of their snatch and grab. No right now all the news was about Cornelia li Britannia, and her having asked Kallen Stadtfeld to be her Knight of Two. There was already speculation, from intelligence, Lelouch would try and one up Cornelia on that.
Arriane Stane nodded, "We'll take custody of him from here," She said as she too looked at the screen. It was showing the Britannian capital... and Imperial Guard elements in their gray dress uniforms. In the intervening years they had only slightly changed, but what was really impressive were the knightmares. "They're nuclear powered some kind of micro fusion engine. The reactor itself is probably very small,"
"What does that mean for fighting them?"
The woman in the buisness suit nodded, "It means that they probably produce a lot of spare heat when running. Generating excess heat to power movement, and weapons." It was why there was some concern over Lelouch's choice to use primarily energy weapons, even with the limits of carrying ammo guns or missiles wouldn't produce nearly as much heat. "There isn't a way of testing that from a far though," Still it was very likely that the problem with those knightmares was heat dissipation, which would have to be a major issue about operating in space.
"I'm curious about this too," Schneziel announced butting in. He deftly poked at the screen," I wasn't allowed much in the way of news, but I know this mark. This is the mark of the 103rd Volunteer Regiment Imperial Guard, largely troops drawn Area 13, they had been a part of forces involved in the attack against the Damocles."
One of them turned, "Are you going somewhere with this?"
Isenberg started, "Wait are you saying he reformed the regiment?" The regiments involved in the battle to take the Damocles had sustained horrible casualties, and many had been folded together into other regiments. In fact during the conflict this was done repeatedly, but the Battle for Damocles had been the single largest loss of volunteer regiments in one battle.
"He has to have," Because Nunnally vi Britannia had fired the missile that had wiped out nearly ninety percent of the regiment along with parts of other formations. Of course there was always the chance that this was just an honor guard from the regiment and it hadn't yet been reconstituted in full, but there was no telling.
The aerospace magnate nodded, "That could be a concern," She conceded, "But it is something for another setting, and other people to concern themselves with." Schneziel was clearly inclined to disagree with this. For him this really was one of the few bits of information that he was getting to see live play out in the last few years.
"I disagree, and" that was as far as he got before the screen flickered changing to a different scene catching Schneziel offguard. "So thats his new ship..." He muttered curiously, "yes it has to be Lelouch's doesn't it? Cornelia's are always so insistently so drearly gray." Not that he thought the matte black was that much of an improvement. Schneziel waved one hand dismissively as he continued watching the broadcast. White and orange was so much nicer to look at, and he certainly thought they made much more cheery parade displays.
He could already guess what the EU was after, after all he, and the Empire, had bankrolled the float system's development into a viable military technology. He'd always wondered whether Lelouch had found all the caches of data. It was unlikely, his brother had been occupied with world conquest. Lelouch's volunteer regiments had gone in with Gareth and Vincent II frames particularly in the Asian theater of the war. He wondered what Rakshata, and Llyod had to say about these new machines Lelouch had.
Stane checked her tablet, Operation Magique was already on schedule. If Schneziel could supply the data for the Damocles, or from the UFN then they could step up the plan. The existence of Magique had been on the books for years now, but even though nuclear weapons had been considered it hadn't been approved until recently
Not that Isenberg and his men knew anything about Magique, in a way they were expendable. In a way they were all expendable. The Euro Council was already engaging in detente oriented talks with Britannia. Talks that very much could endanger people with in Special Operations Command, but that was politics.
-scene break-
Lelouch sipped his tea as they waited. Joseph Black, one of Cornelia's civilian advisors, had been going on about the budget before this had cropped up and interupted them... at least they were undercutting part of that. Black's prattling had been more boring than he remembered administration to have been during his brief tenure, then again this wasn't a war time situation either. He flicked the screen changing it.
Kallen turned her head, grimacing, "So?" She demanded irritably looking back and forth to the other assembled rounds. The ones who were present here.
"The chance of someone attacking Princess Cornelia is unlikely," Her new partner remarked, "Its just we're short handed until Jeremiah gets back." Sommerfield remarked. He had a point Anya was off helping Gottwald down in the tip of southern Africa. So far, not that it'd been all that long either, there hadn't been any reports coming in.
Then there was also the fact that they hadn't seen hide or hair of Lelouch's knight of eleven despite Lelouch's offering to spare the Round's services for Cornelia's well being. There was no telling what all that was about either. "So we've got nothing?" She asked, and then glanced at Cornelia's back. It looked like they were going to be stuck in Pendragon for the moment then, fun.
Lelouch noticed the gesture, and there was reason for it. Cornelia had been distracted effectively the entire meeting. Examing of the situation, and what he knew presently gave him no clues, and as it was she wasn't particularly inclined to be forthcoming right now. As it was they were still reviewing details about developing situations in the Med, and in the Pacific. The situation with the Europeans was 'normal' for a given defintion of the word at least. "What do we know?" Why did this have to happen now, sure these stupid hawkish sentiments had had years to ferment into violent desire but had the spark already started the cook off... well that was the question, he supposed.
"Incoming reports peg the situation rather unfavorably," Lelouch made a distinctly irritated noise in response to the statement, he wasn't the only one with a notably distasteful vocal response to the opening, "Sattelite footage though allows us to more or less confirm the situation as it plays out in effectively real time."
In effect the present situation seemed to a problematic evolution of the last century of geopolitics, and how the world blocs had started. Britannia's victories in the 'New World' had meant the doom of the Spanish Empire. It had however meant that for a long time the Empire's growth had been focused on growing in the New World, and keeping the Europeans out of the Americas. In the far east though trade with China had been opened which had eventually lead to their own modernization and colonization drive. The first targets for these expansions were places were there were already existing Chinese Enclaves. That had been started more than a century ago, during the lull between Britannia and Europe.
"We're still reviewing the facts," Which meant nothing of substance, most likely, "But," Or not, "As it seems one of the local nationalist parties seems to have started some kind of riot in the local market, and there was some sporadic gunfire."
The screen flashed to show some shaky video footage, "No knightmares," That was at least a reasonable sign.
"not until the fire started, the Military had to intervene," Some variant of Burais... ancient by military standards, and older Gunrus were present. So they were not exactly the pinacle of military technology. "From what we understand most of their technology is from the Ascension War or before." The officer was saying as he continued.
Cornelia looked up abruptly, "Do they have any foreign suppliers for their armed forces?" She inquired. If there were it certainly wasn't Britannia or the EU, or China, so really it left Kyoto, or well India as the supplier. Certainly the Gunru's were probably remnants of the Chinese Colonization period and had been left when the Federation had dissolved. "Do we have a count on how many knightmares that might be able to field if the Chinese decide to engage?"
"Not enough," Lelouch grunted, "The Phillipines resisted heavily during the last war that those Burais and Gunru are functional at all is a small miracle in itself." Quezon had tried to hold out against Britannian regular army units after the battle for Damocles, but the recently independent republic hadn't been well suited to its own defense. That was just the reality of it, most of their native military capacity had been infantry conscripts under the Chinese. "I'm assuming the Chinese are using what Akatsukis?" He asked.
A nod, "Most likely, though how many is the question, and even then there maybe some Gekka MP types, or even Gunrus." Lelouch snorted and started rapidly pressing his touchscreen tablet computer. It was natural this kind of stupidity had to crop up.
"Diplomatic avenues are probably the only real option at this time, assuming I were inclined to intervene in this without prompting." Which he wasn't, this was going to entirely be Kaguya's problem... right after he made sure none of his people in China had anything to do with this. "in the mean time scheduling something with Kaguya is probably our primary interest here." He stood up, and that was going to be the problematic part. He'd have to write something up, and invite the national delegations to tea or something.
Cornelia exhaled, she'd originally been planning to try and broach the subject of Marianne with Lelouch during the meeting, but then this mess had cropped up. Her phone had been off when Nunnally had actually called. Lelouch had made sure to insist that everyone turn them off while his various experts were talking, and now she wasn't sure what to do. The most direct solution would be just to go up and demand to speak with Lelouch, and drag him off somewhere.
"So whats eating you?" Kallen asked, "I mean this can't be that bad, right?"
-scene break-
Tamaki swallowed, Lelouch had basically sent a dozen of his House Guard... or whatever they were called, to break up the fight, which you know would have been a good thing... excepting the situation.
Lelouch's knight of five's face was set into an angry, but silent snarl, one hand positioned on his service pistol. He'd wanted to drop a couple of Imperial Guard Frames around the yard, but the Emperor wouldn't have heard of it.
Minister Sharpe sighed, "Gentlemen I would suggest that we all retire for the day." He commented stepping down off the fountain he had seated himself on for Chairwoman Sumeragi's picnic luncheon. "I think we have all had quite enough excitement for the day," He certainly had, it wouldn't surprise him at all if Cornelia decided to send in her Glaston Knights to clear this whole affair up.
"I agree," Algren grunted finally letting his hand move away from his side arm, "Now I will arrange escorts for the individual, except you two," He grunted irritably at the Chinese delegations, my lord has," He reached into his great coat and pulled a pair of Regal Lion marked white envelopes, "sent these." He knew which was which, and presnted the invites to their respective recepients, "I shall send a driver around a half before six," The knight of the round turned and walked off, turning the corner and flicking open his cell phone, "Its done," He commented profoundly more calm. Playing the asshole helped maintain the facade after all.
Ogi stepped back, and out of Kaguya's way as she stepped forward. He wasn't quite sure which would have actually been worse Lelouch's men, or Cornelia's breaking this up. He had no illusions about the situation, it was why the UFN held summits in Tokyo. It was safer that way, easier to protect against things. Or at least that had been the idea when forming the UFN. He looked at Noboru, who nodded grimly. The only thing that could possibly be worse was having to deal with the insufferably smug European bastard... or Lelouch directly. "Back to the hotel we go,"
"Not much of a choice," Tamaki grunted, "still gotta wonder why Orange didn't do this? This kind of thing seems right up his alley of expertise." Breaking up riots and stuff, "We haven't even seen him," He commented as they all started moving to the car to head back to the hotel. "Isn't that kind of weird?"
They glanced around at the underside, and the frame to make sure there were no visible explosives even if such was unlikely. UFN procedure was to always have someone, ussually two people, with the car at all times for security. Kaguya sat back in the seat, "Are we still thinking he's discussing peacekeeping operations with the Euro high command?"
"Its as likely as anything else," Ogi grunted, "Or maybe he's in South America, Lelouch brought a bunch of engineers with him, half this stuff he's going on about is about space launch sites, and the preference on location," Well a lot of it they really did need mundane explanations from Rakhshata about the space transfer system.
A nod, "It is apparently easier to launch along or nearer to the equator," She responded, and Britannia certainly was not likely to be lacking for possible launch locations. So far of course the only sight Lelouch had detailed publically in Britannia was an existing Royal Air Force site already used to dealing with airships. Cornelia hadn't really said much about the situation.
The drive to the hotel was both long, and short in a way. If the summit hadn't been going on then it probably would have taken longer... on the other hand.
"I'm getting sick of those damned things floating around," Tamaki growled looking out the tinted window. The novelty of Lelouch's new warmachines had worn away fairly quickly. At first it had seemed like Tamaki was going to complain about not seeing the Round's no doubt customized frames, but the security threat posed a bit more pressing issue. "Still they kind of remind me of the Gareths,"
Lelouch's Aions were rather bulky designs, and at the same time lots of angles. Armor and shields as it went. Rakshata was speculating that the wing fixtures were some kind of ablating system tied to the heat sinks to dispell excess heat. The real issue though were the hadron weapons carried by the machines. In some of the scientific discourses Lelouch had gone on about how his Shinkiro had contributed greatly to evolving weapon designs as well.
Cornelia's Aggravains hadn't really been present, not since Lelouch had taken the throne at least, but at least they'd gotten to see the Gurren. "So what do we know about the rounds?"
"Kallen says there are two slots open right?"
Ogi looked at Noboru who nodded, "Yeah, Orange is Knight of One or whatever,"
"Thats not surprising at all," Kaguya interjected, "he really is a good choice, but Cornelia appointed two well three, which means we should attempt to compile a short list of who Lelouch might have appointed to the other slots."
It was just their luck that the hotel was crawling with the press already. Ogi groaned, he hated reporters especially after having known Diethard. He groaned and looked at Kaguya, "Did you plan on making a statement to the press," He really hoped she wasnt, but naturally she planned on it. As she put it the eyes of the world were on all of them right now. Now more than ever they really needed to present a unified front for peace.
-scene break-
Lelouch had been in the midst of a discussion with the Euro Council, at least when Cornelia had left the room. Cornelia had been trying to get a hold of Nunnally, she still hadn't told Lelouch cause he could wait damn it. Phone tag was not something she was used to have to deal with. Then again Lelouch seemed to have developed an irritational irritably to the devices.
Kallen was talking about trying to talk to Kaguya, but they still weren't even sure what Lelouch's endgame plan even was. Even with access to Lelouch's itenerary there wasn't much in the way it said.
Guildford in the meanwhile had taken his free time to go collect the older information they had. It was just a way to step back and look at everything from the beginning. "What are the chances of the Eurozone going nuclear quickly?"
"From intelligence available? Sixteen months is optimistic according to all evidence." One of Cornelia's Military Intelligence agents commented, "A crash development program based in French controlled Africa is as likely as any of the other possible sites."The other sites were German Africa, and potentially the eastern wastes in Russia. "Nothing in the scale of human history has been attempted like this," The end of World War III had brought a temporary lull in combat, and arms industry and without access to the personel of In Vogue, most of whom who had probably either been shot by Imperial Guard troops, or otherwise disappeared at the end of the war. "Einstein's initial notes from 2017, and some of the latter papers are pretty freely available, after In Vogue was founded though thats when the papers start getting scarce."
Kallen grimaced, "Yeah Lelouch is talking about a reasonable chance of deterence to prevent assaults against homelands," That was the excuse, Lelouch had gone so far as to make the claim that adding even a few more years of peace meant strengthening centralized authority over former regions. It was no wonder Ogi was expecting an invasion of Japan, with some of that kind of rhetoric, and some of the popular support locally in Japan too. "Is that really what we need right now?"
"Lelouch's entire goal seems to be completely breaking with the UFN's administration, and peacekeeping elements," Cornelia paused for a moment, "in essence maintaining only the elements which benefit the Empire," She shut the door behind them as they all finished marching in, "Its been clear that Europe was always more likely to rebuild quicker than China or Japan, especially after the war." After all the Chinese Federation had lost many of its territories drastically reducing its total GDP, and Europe had just had to rebuild. She hit the lights, and waited a couple seconds for the projector to boot up.
Guildford looked up as the display coalesced into the informative type readout of the world, "The information we have on the Eowyn-class," what the UFN called 'Alpha', "is presently limitted but we've seen no evidence of them being nuclear armed, certainly not with the weapons Lelouch was proposing as part of the deterence. Of course its entirely possible that Missiles are stationed aboard non ship space assets," That was what the RAF was classifying Damocles as a 'non ship space asset'. It was also the classification for the 2 kilometer torus station that Lelouch was proposing being constructed by Britannia, and her allies, as the first Imperial Colony in space. "There is speculation that Lelouch can't actually produce, in volume at least, sufficient numbers of munitions to rely on smart projectile weapons for en masse usage."
"Or," Kallen started irritably, "Lelouch decided he didn't want to bother with that, and decided he liked lasers best," She commented, and even if that had been true, it wasn't now. Not with Lelouch having access to Britannia's arms manufacturing capacity.
There was a pause, and then Guildford shrugged, "Its possible yes, but given he'd need to modify missile designs to work in space and we're not sure how effective those would be, it does seem more effective to rely on direct fire systems both for offense and defense." There was a diagram accompanying this, some variant of the standard Britannia anti surface missile, alongside its regular counter part. The regular counterpart was still the same model missile that had been used on Shikine-jima to try and take out Lelouch years earlier. "the regular design has been in production for decades now, but with the advent of capital-scale particle barriers..."
"They're worse than useless," Kallen grunted, "So what, does this have something to do with that pudding guy, did he come up with something new?" She wouldn't have doubted it, but then again there was only so much you could change on a missile.
Cornelia took over, "While a fight with Lelouch's forces is unlikely, the European frame development programs are likely to have similiar benefits eventually," She commented, "The idea is to use bigger warheads and closer range, with the early generation of knightmares anti armor missiles were fairly light, being simply modified anti tank missiles," And then all that went out the window with the advent of the Particle Shield, "Now those missiles are rapidly approaching obsolence against modern units," She meant the current model Vincents and the Aggravains in particular, and on the other side UFN New Days, and most likely whatever the Europeans were going to roll out.
"So -," Kallen breathed, taking a long pause to exhale, "we've got a problem, the Orange machine it had hadron weaponry but no shields." That seemed to fly in the face of, well the last half dozen years of knightmare advancements.
It took a minute to flip through and bring up the footage they did have of the Orange Italian Knightmare. Cornelia stared at the wall, and the display overlaid on it, "We think it may have still been incomplete or something, all of the information we have posits were on the cusp of another leap forward from technology. The frame encountered over the coast was clearly built with data from the original Tristain, which itself lacked shields as well." The ironic bit about this whole conversation was that these same concerns over technology were being echoed by Ogi in a conversation to his own staff.
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