Of Command and Tactical Decisions
SLS Abyss, Briefing 1 as command operations suite
Date: Misjump +1, Local Date: February 24, 2531 UNSC Military Calendar
0400 Shipboard time, Estimated 1000 Surface time
Colonel Watkin stood over the holotable in Briefing 1 as he studied the map data that was being updated as the SLDF reconnaissance drones flew across the surrounding area. A series of white unit markers spread across the surface of the map to mark the positions of SLDF units, mixed in with dark green markers to indicate the positions of the UNSC forces. Unlike the meeting the previous night, today he was fully dressed in his Mechwarrior Battle Uniform, with his neurohelmet hanging from his belt.
He had made the decision to hold Knight Lance in reserve today, both to spread out the use of the machines and to give some of the newer pilots a chance to gain experience fighting infantry-like enemies. Tiger Lance was out on the front again today, because they were his best anti-infantry mechs, though he had also deployed all of the Light mechs, and most of the mediums aboard the Abyss. That left him with two lances of heavy mechs and a lance of mediums to use as a reaction force if someone needed bailing out.
The Hecate 3, a Union class dropship, nominally operating under the command of Dancer (the ship's captain having suffered a stroke at the revelation of the parasitic infection) had deployed all of its mechs, including the Regiment's artillery lance. Every so often, the Regiment's Helepolis HEP-3H Mechs would fire artillery strikes in support of friendly infantry as the groups called in sightings of Parasite concentrations. Colonel Watkin was considering calling down the Sword Beach as well, to bring down the last of the Regiment, as well as providing a larger reserve force.
The Colonel's eyes focused in on the special star-and-flag icon that was being used to identify the transponders of the UNSC's SPARTAN-II Red Team. They were making their way towards a signal source that had been detected by an orbital scan performed by the three Caspar Drone Warships, who were staying on station to provide orbital artillery support if needed. Meanwhile, the SLS Terra and the DCS Oshika were holding position at their original emergence points, while the FSS Red Robin and the remaining destroyer screen were shepherding the rest of the jump train towards the system's Zenith Jump point, far out of the way of any other potential ship traffic from the alien "Covenant" that was at war with the UNSC. That would keep them safe in the case of the Covenant ship making a run for it or calling for reinforcements.
He brought his focus back to the Spartan's icons just in time to watch as the Warthog they were riding drove over a ridge to reveal a large concentration of hostile Parasite buildup, fed to the tactical network by way of a special sensor mounted to the roll cage of their Warthog. He watched their vehicle swerve, then the icons flared an angry orange as the sensor reported a crash, and he watched the Spartans separate from the Warthog as the crashing vehicle rolled or slid down the hill.
The radio crackled to life and the communications technician responsible for monitoring the UNSC frequencies reported in. "Colonel, Spartan Red Team are reporting they're within a hundred meters of the signal's point of origin, but all they can see is more of the Parasite. Forge is gathering a group to go reinforce them now. Any orders?"
"Task Grayfox Lance with assisting them," Jason ordered. "Knight Lance is to stand up to Ready 5."(1) He touched a pair of controls, and then entered a keycode. "Comms, I need two empty Leopards from the fleet train down groundside. We may require rapid redeployment capability." He grabbed his neurohelmet from where it rested on his belt and put it on over his head. "Operations, link the data feeds to my Mech. I'm going to be commanding from there for the time being."
A chorus of affirmatives answered him, and Colonel Watkin strode out the door and hurried down the ship to the mechbay.
SLS Abyss, Mechbay
Colonel Watkin settled into the cockpit of his mech as the systems came online around him. The holographic projectors of his ARES Cockpit warmed to life around him with a hum, projecting the battlespace within his cockpit. Jason looked carefully at reinforcements that were just now departing. There appeared to be a large cluster of vehicles, including UNSC Scorpion tanks and Warthogs, accompanied by the UNSC Hornet attack VTOLs.
He turned his attention back to the defensive lines around the base as another wave of sickly green approached, representing the Parasite. "Attack wave inbound from the SouthEast," he warned the tank platoon holding there. The infantry would already have their machine gunners on ready watch, and the rotation of the tank's turrets would alert any not already watching.
Jason watched with satisfaction as patches of the sickly green were eaten away as the parasite was killed, and with distaste and sympathy when the green icons breached a pair of the defensive trenches manned by UNSC marines. These trenches were swiftly doused with fire from the UNSC's rather interesting flame mortars. This parasite was a truly insidious thing, and he would be glad to finally be able to sterilize the surface with orbital fire, to cleanse this thing from the face of existence.
He shuddered at the reminder of the footage from the front lines, where the mutated forms of alien soldiers had opened fire on his own men with the guns these poor people had used in life. There was no worse end than for your body and skills to be used against your fellows. He silently swore to see this infection removed, and considered the feasibility of having a monument built to remember those lost.
Colonel Watkin drew up a new defensive line on the holographic map, and ordered his attached infantry to advance to the new positions at the West edge of the mesa that the combined firebase had been set up on. He then marked new positions for the supporting tanks to reposition to so that they could shoot down the hill, and thus take advantage of their greater range. The Von Luckner heavy tank (Star League Royal variant) carried a pair of LB 10-X Autocannons, complete with cluster ammunition, a coaxial small pulse laser, and several missile packs. The standard variant, the VNL-K65N, carried an impressive Class 20 Autocannon, along with a coaxial machine gun, several missile packs, and a front mounted flamer. These were some of the same tanks that had escaped Terra with him when they pulled Amanda and Elise Cameron from the clutches of the Amaris Coup.
The Colonel had full confidence in these men, under the command of Captain Rivers, who had led them as a Master Sergeant during the coup. With Major Jones' infantry supporting the tankers, they had the Southern flank held strong. The parasite was persistent, but hardly insurmountable given proper preparation. However, the UNSC was very clearly in need of additional support to the east, as they were having issues dealing with the pods climbing the cliff walls of the mesa on that side.
He scanned the field for concentrations he could redeploy, but found himself short of Elite and Veteran units that he could trust on their own. He quickly tasked a firemission for any available artillery to strike the eastern approaches and thin out the swarming enemy. His call for fire was answered by a pair of deep reverberating thumps that he felt throughout the Mechbay. Captain Larsen had apparently chosen to fire on the target with the Abyss' own Arrow IV artillery missiles. A short moment later, time for the missiles to travel up from the nose of the Colossus class dropship and back down onto their targets, a circle 90 meters across disappeared from the enemy formation on the tactical display.
"Colonel, report in from Grayfox Lance," one of his aides called out on the dropship's internal comm net. "They've taken down a large biological structure or colony organism. It apparently also weakened whatever large creature the Spartans encountered." A pause followed, before the aide came back over the comm net, "They've uploaded additional coordinates for more of the colony things they saw on their way in."
The Colonel considered the information, observing as the coordinates were uploaded to the tactical network. Finally, he spoke, "Request for orbital fire on the two targets farthest out from the creature. Let's make this quick."
Almost a minute elapsed before the aide passed a communications line back to the Colonel. "Target coordinates received," the artificial voice coming over his speakers had a soothing feminine tone to it. "Final authorization required for bombardment."(2)
"This is Paladin," he spoke calmly. "Authorization November- Whiskey- Tango- Five- Papa- Romeo- Delta- Juliet- Two- Uniform- Four- Delta. Authorized for Naval Laser strikes. Two targets, one per ship. Final fire authorization granted. Fire for effect."
Jason quickly flicked open the radio channel for commands to all units groundside. "Priority alert! Orbital strikes inbound! Flash warning, minimum safe distance 300 meters." He then rattled off the hex coordinates for the two strikes, and repeated his alert message once before flicking closed his broadcast.
Even from within the armored hull of the Abyss, and over 5 miles from the strike, Jason felt the orbital strike with his entire body as it caused the dropship to vibrate. The neurohelmet gave him the sensation of standing on a shaker plate, and he spread his legs a bit further to keep his balance, and the neurohelmet connection meant Stormwing copied his actions.
"Everything alright in there, Mechwarrior?" a technician hailed him from the catwalk at the front of the cradle.
"Everything's fine," he said on the local hangar net. "I wasn't expecting quite so much shaking. Caught me a little off guard." They shared a chuckle and the hangar tech waved an all clear in response.
His comms panel lit up with incoming messages. "This is Paladin," he answered the first one.
"Paladin, TQF 157-M5F reporting targets destroyed. Awaiting further calls," the soft artificial voice of one of the Caspars overhead informed him.
"Acknowledged, Tiku. Standby for further targets, Paladin out."
He toggled to the next message in the queue. "Paladin receiving."
"Sir, UNSC band traffic reports that the transponder signal they were following has disappeared, possibly due to jamming," the Communications Technician informed him.
"Understood. Flag the sites of all of those organisms for further orbital fire once we're out of this area. I'm not going to take any chances after we saw those things reanimate bodies last night." Jason paused briefly, thinking of any further orders that might be needed. When he came up with nothing, he blinked and checked the holographic map. Even the parasite's endless waves seemed to have been turned by the might of the SLDF's orbital assets. The latest wave of sickly green blobs was moving away from the base's defensive lines. It was the first time he had ever seen the parasite retreat.
"Nothing further from me, I'll update you if I need anything, Comms. Paladin Out." He signed off the comm net and turned his attention back to the tactical situation at hand.
UNSC Spirit of Fire, Bridge
Captain Cutter looked up from the tactical display to the hologram of his ship's AI. "Serina, what exactly was that?"
"All appearances indicate some form of Gamma ray emission similar to the gamma and free electron lasers we've seen on the ground," the AI said, curiosity evident in her tone. "Simply scaled up, by quite a bit. The Covenant glassing weapons we have on record are significantly more powerful, but that strike was far more precise. And with far less energy bleed, they are likely more efficient as weapons. I imagine they could be fired significantly more often than most of the Covenant's weapons, in fact."
The Captain's brow furrowed in thought. The destruction was similar in scale to a small MAC round, and with the added benefit of a lack of reliance on logistics, many of the technologies that the SLDF could bring to the table had the potential to change the game entirely for the UNSC. "Serina, include a note in your report. HIGHCOM needs to make sure ONI doesn't get up to their usual tricks with these people. They're liable to make our lives difficult if ONI gets a case of sticky fingers. Or worse."
"Of course, Sir." The AI was silent for several minutes, then spoke up again. "Captain, when the large creature died, I picked up a new signal just east of here."
"Set a nav marker, take us over the signal. Get Forge back up here, on the double."
"Aye, Captain."
SLS Huntress, SLDF Leopard-Class Rapid Redeployment Dropship (RRD)
1102 Ship time, 1702 Estimated Local time
Surface of Unknown Planet
"So we've got some pretty interesting structures nearby," Lieutenant Alice Stone said. "Looks like some sort of pylon, but it's not doing anything, so I couldn't even guess at what they're for."
"Well, I guess we can leave them for a scientific investigation later, after we clear out the local infected flier dens. That was a fairly large swarm that took down our drone," Colonel Watkin looked up at the Lieutenant, who's shock of bright red hair hid her rank insignia on her collar. "Spirit's finalizing a location on their wayward professor, I'd like you to brief your men in preparation for a rescue deployment. I'll be ordering Huntress in as the tip of the spear once we find her. It'll be a combat drop, then Huntress will circle around for pickup and boost out."
"Aye, Sir. I'll get the men briefed," The Lieutenant saluted and stepped off the command deck and started towards the Infantry Bays that had replaced the ASF bays on this particular Leopard Variant.
"Colonel, incoming call for you from the Terra," the Huntress' captain, Lenora Remis, informed him. "You can take it in my quarters, it sounded private."
"Thank you, Captain," he nodded and strode over to the small cabin sectioned off right next to the Leopard's command deck. The terminal turned on almost as soon as he sat down in the rather luxurious chair the Captain had somehow acquired.
"Jason, how are you?" his wife Suzumi asked, her soft smile shining at him from the screen. At her shoulder was their four year-old son, Shinobu, whose curious blue eyes watched him through the screen.
"I am well, dearheart," he answered her with a smile of his own. "How did Shinobu do with Amanda today? Any issues?"
"No issues today, thankfully," her answer spoke of much suffering and love that they had shared these past years. "The two of them were mostly quiet, and the lessons went well today, though Elise is under enough stress that she has Amanda staying with us today. She's starting to understand her mother's stress levels finally, so it's easier to get her away when Elise needs time to herself. The Samurai have been quite helpful there, in fact." Her voice turned up at that, and the relief she felt was visible through the video link. "How's the situation on the ground? I heard the report about the orbital strikes, but not much else."
"I deployed during our initial landing to help recover some high value vehicles our neighbors lost. I was the one who ordered the strikes on some of the parasitic organisms we've been fighting on the ground. I was aboard the Abyss at the time, so I wasn't anywhere near where the strikes came down. Then I had the Caspars saturation strike the area after we relocated, to clear out whatever remained in that area. If we can, this planet would make an ideal place to set up an outpost at the very least."
"So we really are out of the Sphere?" Suzumi asked, her face outwardly calm. "I'd heard that astrogation thought they'd identified our location, but the rumors…"
Jason nodded in sympathy. "We're in the Korinth System. But there's an extra planet here that doesn't exist in the Sphere. We're orbiting that planet now. We also have definite signs of hyper advanced alien life here, unlike in the Sphere, and some of these signs are definitely not from anything either us or our new neighbors have met before."
"Should I tell Elise?" she asked. He knew she meant it as a kindness, because he had often been busy and away from the ship the past few years, and the fastest way to pass information back to the Lady Regent quietly had been through her.
"If the situation changes and I'm not back up tonight, then yes," he told her. "I'll put together a report to send up soon, if we haven't located what we're looking for before I've put that together." A commotion outside caught his attention, and he kissed his fingers and pressed them against the screen. "I love you both, but I have to go now. I'll see you soon."
"I love you too, my darling," Suzumi said in her native Japanese. She mirrored his gesture, before closing the connection.
He stepped over to the door, and he opened it to chaos on the command deck. "Report!" he barked, calling silence to the deck for a moment.
"Spirit got caught in something and it's pulling her into an opening in the planet," the Huntress' communications officer said. "Bringing visuals up now."
The Spirit of Fire was angled down towards the surface of the planet, bow pointed towards a section of the ocean that had quite literally split open.
"Get me a full deep scan, on the double!" he ordered. "Find out where that goes!"
"Sir," the communications officer spoke up over the noise of the command deck, "The UNSC is recalling their ground forces, but there's several groups that appear to have been mostly cut off by infected bioforms."
"Order our fighters into the air," the Colonel made a snap decision. "They can help clear a path."
After several minutes of hurried activity on the command deck, the report he'd been waiting for came back. "Sir, scans report a massive, contiguous artificial structure going through the planet's crust. There's a massive void space on the inside, and scans can't get any returns beyond that. At the minimum, there's a really big artificial cavern, big enough for even the Spirit there to maneuver."
Author's Afterword:
This chapter shows both the perspective of a commander on a strategic level, with the use of extended support assets like orbital support and calling up additional units from their available reserves, and a tactical level, where they must make use of more limited assets available to them. Many of you will be familiar with the phrase "Professionals discuss Logistics". There are no logistics to be had in this campaign, as neither side has the ability to call up additional logistical elements beyond what they brought with them.
On the side of the SLDF, this is because they are well and truly separated from their own centers of production, and will have to settle and rebuild their supply capabilities, including industry and agriculture.
On the side of the UNSC, they are out of range of any response that they don't go and get themselves, which would involve leaving the battle and a lengthy trip back to their home systems, then time to gather additional resources, and again time to return. It would be several months at best before they could return with anything. This is before we go into the various inconsistencies in Halo's own lore. Seriously, why is it so hard to cross check things for AAA writers? It's more likely that they just don't care about any consistency.
This unfortunately means yet more math for Jake. Thankfully, there's a bit more deets on some of the stuff we'll be dealing with later, so hopefully there'll be less unnecessary math interrupts to the writing.
Co-writer's Afterword:
This chapter was an absolute bitch to get right. The reason; lore, mathematics, and physics…
If you've ever had to do mathematics on thermal or kinetic energy transfer, you'll know just HOW much of a pain in the rear it is to calculate. Ballistics and terminal velocities are, Tedious to calculate alone, but when you throw in thermal energy transfers, it gets migraine inducing.
Short version, if you even hear of something like orbital strikes near you, Be somewhere else! This was a pure laser strike, and it's terrifying. Anything alive within 100 feet of the impact point is dead from pure thermal energy transfer alone. If kinetics had been used, the entire area would have been dead from the shockwave in a 4km radius. To summarize, orbital strikes are Nightmare Fuel. Be glad they don't exist in real life yet.
Another thing is just how much research and planning we have to go through for each aspect of the story. Research and referencing can be tedious, often having to compare real world equivalents to canon lore. A single chapter can have dozens of hours of planning and research. One of the biggest problems is that many weapons in Battletech have never had Canon stats other than weight and in-game damage, which makes calculating real world physics difficult.
The other issue is variants of established weapons in lore. For example, the AC5 can range from 75mm to 120mm in bore, and the shells have wildly different velocities and weights. Some of the AC5's are able to fire in 3 round bursts, while others have a single round that can reload very quickly, and some have a longer reload, but can fire at longer ranges. Each mech has to be researched individually to find out just what it carries. This generates a LOT of data to keep track of. We're currently having to use several different sets of data and keep track of all of it to prevent inconsistencies.
Tangent Warning! (In response to comments and feedback from the previous chapter)
And the worst part, Halo has conflicting lore. In Halo Wars, Spirit of Fire is chasing a 'Covenant vessel'. Spirit gets to Trove in 13 days. In Halo: Smoke and Shadow, Ace of Spades, a human salvage ship, makes the same trip in similar timeframes, (less than 3 weeks) despite the theory of the slipspace wake effect. (Slower ship can follow a faster ship at similar speeds) In lore, the Korinth Prior system is in the Cygnus arm of the galaxy (according to Halo Warfleet, the only locational source for the system and dubious according to Nightwing), which is between 20,000 to 26,000 light years away.
The problem being, the Ace of Spades isn't taking advantage of a slipspace wake, is using a similar type of drive, and DOESN'T take significantly longer. Second problem, according to lore, not even the Covenant can do speeds like that. Which leads to the conclusion that the data must be wrong.
Further, the Covenant destroyer, Proclamations Tithe, is bigger than the Spirit. And yet is never seen until the spirit is inside the planet. That class of destroyer doesn't appear to have stealth fields, so the Spirit would have seen it above Arcadia.
So, by process of elimination, the Spirit didn't see the Tithe above Arcadia because it wasn't there. Which means something stealth capable, and FTL capable. Spirit class dropships like what we see the Arbiter use to escape aren't FTL capable on their own. Which means a larger, stealth capable ship is needed to pick up the dropship and escape. This leaves the aptly named 'Stealth Ship' (I know, VERY creative naming), or the 'Intrusion Corvette' (once again, such creative naming…). Which could be the same ship class, the lore isn't very clear on either. Both are stealth and FTL capable, but neither is very big, maybe capable of carrying a couple of dropships.
Therefore we must assume that 13 days is the speed at which the journey could be accomplished by a human drive. Or a significantly slower Covenant drive, at far less than 900 Light Years per Day (LY/D). As human ships have a max stated speed at that time of less than 10 LY/D, we are forced to work with the data available to us, and look for what the numbers give us. Which is approximately 120 - 150 light years. 300 light years tops.
And finally, in a cutscene from Halo Wars, we see Anders signal aboard the Covenant vessel moving away from Arcadia, and are told that it has "gone to light speed". Serina claims that she can only track it a 'few more seconds'. The ship signal is moving FAR too slow to be at a speed of 900 LY/D in the cutscene. Even IF this is just a visual representation, this is far too slow if Serena is able to track it. Signals and the speed of light don't work that way!
In Conclusion: Though it pains us both to contradict lore, we must assume that the lore is wrong in this specific case. We have also discovered that some of the Post Bungie lore was made up on the fly for story writers convenience. There are also DOZENS of writers that aren't always coordinating with each other.
Tangent Warning Over…
As they say though, the show must go on. Despite my many headaches… I swear the math I do for you guys so you can have an entertaining, and mostly scientifically accurate story, is going to drive me to drink… I had to do ORBITAL BURN CALCULATIONS! And Re-entry Burnoff rates! AND WE DIDN'T EVEN USE THE LATTER! (Nightwing: Sorry)
Glossary of Terms:
(1): Ready / Ready 5:
A military term with reference to a standby positioning. Ready 5 means that an individual or unit must be no more than 5 minutes from the ability to deploy onto the field in response to a need for additional units. 'Ready 5' is generally pilot in the aircraft, the aircraft on the tarmac, engines running. Other common Ready intervals are 1/3/10. Most commonly used for aircraft because of their speed. Note that this is not the speed that they must be able to arrive, but their ability to deploy.
(2): Final Authorization:
A safety in most militaries, final launch authorization, or final authorization of fire; is used by a commander as a necessary safety step in the process for calling destructive support fire, or in this example, orbital support fire. This is both to prevent abuse of weapon capability, and to prevent friendly losses due to missed shots, bad targeting data, or friendly troops being too close to the target.
With orbital support fire, this is a much more important step, as the result of orbital strikes is considered akin to nuclear weapons in potential. While nuclear weapons may be significantly more destructive in most scenarios, orbital fire is often far less limited in the number of shots that can be used.