[img]https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/004/074/504/large/phelan-a-davion-invasion-by-wojtekfus-daowxsg-1.jpg?1480077581[/img]

[b]737th Battalion Forward Operating Base
Agdemnar[/b]

[i]My Darling Clarissa,

I pray this letter finds you well, my love. I fear I am fast losing hope here in the trenches. It is the thought of seeing you again one day that keeps my heart beating. The nights here are intolerably cold without the heat of your chaste heaving bosom-[/i]

The prefab module’s hatch swung open to admit one of Private Lyndon’s bunkmates and a draft of hot, dusty air. The Vit’azny corporal hurriedly covered the piece of paper he’d been writing on with one of his spare skinsuits and tried to look casual. The newly arrived Private Hicks gave him a curious look, but apparently thought nothing further of it and partially unzipped his skinsuit as he headed towards the module’s sonic shower. Lyndon turned his head slightly, his nostrils tightening in response to the odor that inevitably came off a human soldier who’d spent all day in the trenches.

Hicks had evidently been counting on that reaction; in an instant he snatched the piece of paper out from under Lyndon’s hand and danced back across the module and out of immediate reach. He scanned the letter’s opening lines, and a smirk grew across his face.

“Not one word, Hicks” Lyndon growled threateningly.
“One word wouldn’t cover this train wreck Lyndon, what the fuck IS this?? Is her name really Clarissa? [i]Chaste heaving bosom??[/i]” The smirk grew, and Hicks abruptly burst out laughing.
Lyndon seriously considered mauling the man, but the Sergeant would inevitably want to know why such a mauling had been necessary, which would have meant showing him the letter...so Lyndon sat in silence, head-tails twitching in mixed irritation and embarrassment as Hicks cackled away.

Eventually the human recovered from his mirth, sitting down on one of the 4 bunks and smirking at Lyndon. “You didn’t mention you had a girl back on Mandelabra,” he said in a light tone. “Clarissa…” he seemed to be testing the name out. “Sounds fancy. She a…”
“Citizen? Yes.”
Hicks nodded. “So that’s why you’re out here then,” his face growing more somber.
“Service guarantees citizenship,” Lyndon quoted the oft repeated mantra of the United Commonwealth Army. “Her family doesn’t have the money to pull me up, even if they were willing to. And no way she’ll tie herself down to Mandelabra for me, not to mention any kids we might have. So, service, citizenship, then we’ll see.”

Hicks nodded again. It was a common story in the army, common enough to be borderline depressing if one thought about it too carefully. “And the pen and paper? The old timey language?”
“She likes that sort of thing, alright? Shows it off to her friends”
The two were silent for a moment. Hicks didn’t bother saying what Lyndon already knew; there would be no mail sent home, not for a long time, if ever. The The 737th battalion was officially not on Agdemnar at all. The entire battalion was listed as AWOL back on Ursuli. The same was true of 8th fleet, in orbit under Admiral Maria Anisimova’s command in a ‘rogue operation’ that had been completely disavowed by the the Admiralty, by United Forces Command, and even by the Imperial Queen herself.

They were here on their ‘rogue operation’ to buy the Commonwealth time. To get a foot in the door at Agdemnar while the industrial behemoth of their homeland awoke. Two years, they’d been told, in a briefing for which there was no record. Two years at most, then the cavalry would come, one way or another. That still meant two years of fighting, bleeding and dying, without reinforcements, without relief, without hope. Citizenship was the light at the end of the tunnel for most of the boots on the ground. Dangled before them like bait; two years on Agdemnar instead of the usual twenty in the service. They just had to survive this planet for a little while longer…

The two soldiers were silent for a long while, until Hicks finally pulled out a memo pad. “Here,” he said to Lyndon, “I’ll help. You gotta seduce her my man. Don’t tell her about her ‘chaste heaving bosom’, make her tell you about it. There’s an art to-”

Hicks was interrupted by a wailing siren and a flashing orange light. The comm unit blared to life in the same moment. “Case Delta, repeat, Case Delta. All personnel to combat stations.”

The two of them were out the module’s hatch in a flash, clambering into the armored exoskeletons that awaited them in the outer module. A tech came rushing in from an adjacent module, unracking weapons and checking readouts on the exoskeletons. It was solid stuff, not as durable or powerful as proper shock trooper power armor, but significantly easier to get into and faster to power on, and the armor and shielding were good enough to keep the user alive most of the time. Hicks and Lyndon were out the door of the ‘airlock’ module within two minutes of the Case Delta. The trench they entered was packed with moving bodies, and the two soldiers joined the flow towards the perimeter.

Case Delta: orbital bombardment inbound. That would almost inevitably mean accompanying air attacks, and likely a charge across no-man’s land from the opposing trenches a kilometer or so in the distance. The zealots of the Ascendancy would almost certainly be repelled, but their fanaticism made them disregard their own well-being, and that made them dangerous.

Lyndon had just made it to the outer perimeter when the first wave of the bombardment crashed into the shield overhead, the resulting gravitic disturbances blurring the sky. In it’s current configuration, the shield could hold up almost indefinitely to bombardment, but the transfer energy still produced mild shockwaves and an ear-splitting racket. Lyndon gritted his teeth as the compressed air thumped into him and the sound assaulted his ears even through his helmet’s filters. He did his best to keep his rifle trained on no man’s land, peering down the sights and waiting for the first fanatics to charge.

The shriek of strikecraft entering the atmosphere caused Lyndon to look up; only for a moment, but when he returned his gaze to the Ascendancy lines, their soldiers were out of the trenches and charging across no man’s land. The timing on that was a clever new trick, a corner of Lyndon’s brain noted.

The overhead shield was a versatile thing. It’s standby configuration was completely impenetrable, but that same configuration would burn out the generator after all of 10 minutes of bombardment. It could also be ‘loosened’ to hold up better to orbital bombardment, but that configuration let slow moving objects pass through it with only minor resistance. Slow moving objects like, for example, a careful soldier, or a well piloted tank.

Lyndon’s rifle was configured for long range, high powered shots, and he vaguely noticed he was the first to open fire. A high pitched whine was the only sound his rifle made as it flung a tungsten dart over the barren ground at relativistic speeds. The dart slammed into an Ascendancy soldier, the kinetic energy knocking him back, but his shields held. But before he could recover, a second round cracked his shields. A final round blew his head apart.

Lyndon swept his rifle to the next target, which was considerably farther back. A veritable wall of tungsten darts and positron beams had erupted behind his first shot and mowed down the first few ranks of Ascendancy troops. But they pushed on, clambering over their own dead and crossing the empty, crater pitted field with alarming speed, propelled forwards by their armored exoskeletons.

The first armored vehicle came lumbering forward from the Ascendancy lines, but almost immediately the heavy positron emplacements behind Lyndon burnt it to ash. It was just the first of many, however.

The crush of soldiers came closer and closer. Lyndon decreased the power and upped the fire rate on his rifle as they did, until the darts flew from the muzzle in a continuous stream. They would break, he told himself. Fanatics or no, they would break, as they had a dozen times before. He just had to keep shooting.

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[img]https://i.imgur.com/WauIJ2l.jpg[/img]

[b]RCNS [i]Indefatigable[/i]
Orbiting the jovian moon [i]Cipeon[/i]
Agdemnar system[/b]

The harsh buzz of a priority comm request roused Maria Anisimovna from her sleep almost instantly, years of discipline and experience kicking her brain fully awake in seconds. She pressed the audio only acceptance key, blinking a few times to banish the fogginess from her eyes. “Anisimovna here,” she said crisply.

“Apologies for waking you Ma’am,” Aldona Giuseppe’s familiar voice said with rote formality. “Commodore Rekkavik requests your presence on Flag Bridge. He says FOB 737 reports Case Delta. He’s gone ahead and signaled all ships to spool FTL, and with your permission, will signal fleetwide battlestations.”

Anisimovna smothered a sigh. With all the times they’d been through this in the past year, she’d expect Rekkavik, her chief of staff, to know he could call fleetwide battlestations without her permission by now. At the very least, Giuseppe, as her chief adjutant, should’ve known to remind him of that, even if she was outside the chain of command.

But some formalities died hard. It wasn’t as if they’d lose any time; the fleet would need a good five minutes to spool FTL, and all her ships could go from general quarters to battlestations in under two minutes by now. That meant the thirty odd seconds her subordinates had wasted asking her permission didn’t actually matter. Still, she wished Rekkavik would display his usual initiative on this matter.

“Inform Commodore Rekkavik that he may indeed bring the fleet to battlestations. I’ll join him on Flag Bridge shortly,” Anisimovna said with appropriate formality, then cut the circuit. Alarm klaxons promptly blared throughout the ship, signalling the crew from general quarters (or combat-standby as it was sometimes called) to full battlestations. Anisimovna quickly slid into her skiv-suit and was out the door in seconds. Her quarters were conveniently located near flag bridge, meaning she was combat ready a scant thirty seconds after the signal to battlestations.

Flag bridge was frantically busy, but a civilian would never have thought so. Everything was done with flawless professionalism; there was no shouting, no scurrying aides, no great bustle, just officers and ratings looking intently at their displays, sharing and confirming information in crisp, calm voices, taking turns to slip away to don their skiv suits (less because of any sense of modesty and more to keep out of the way). Commodore Isodore Rekkavik and Captain Rammel Hildebrande were the only ones who stood when Anisimovna entered, and that was only so that they could join her at the base of the main holo-display. No one was going to waste time coming to attention while the ship was at battlestations, even for an Admiral.

Anisimovna looked up the display and frowned. Recon drones had just gotten into position, but there weren’t enough ships on the display. “Where are the rest of them?” she asked, her frown deepening. Hildebrande, as the ops officer, shook her head, her lips tight. “No sign of them. These Ascendancy ships warped in on the planetary limit just a few minutes ago and immediately commenced bombardment, before they even made it to orbit. They’ve settled in now, but we still can’t account for the rest of their ships.”
“Is it possible they’ve taken losses from someone else?” Rekkavik asked quietly. Not that he considered it likely, but good brainstorming meant discussing every possibility, no matter its likelihood.
Anisimovna shook her head. “There’s a good 40% fewer ships out there than last week’s engagement. Whoever’s in charge over there has amply demonstrated their competence every time we’ve engaged; I doubt they let someone else demolish 40% of their fleet in a week. No, the Ascendancy is up to something sneaky.” She absently noticed that the klaxon had stopped; the ship was fully combat ready at ninety four seconds, and Anisimovna made a note to congratulate Captain Faldiss on his crew’s superb response time.

“Well, are we going to try something sneaky in return, or keep things simple and play it safe?” Hildebrande tugged absently at one of her head-tails as she spoke, eyes combing the display and occasionally flicking up to the FTL countdown in one corner. Anisimovna crossed her arms and let her gaze sweep the flag bridge slowly. “I think just a dash of sneakiness is in order. We’ll go with ops plan Topolev.”

Anisimovna’s subordinates nodded, and all three of them returned to their sturdily constructed action stations as the FTL count wound its way down. Hildebrande quickly circulated the necessary orders to the fleet, and a number of small changes percolated their way out from [i]Indefatigable[/i] to the rest of 8th fleet. Topolev was a comparatively minor variation on the standby ops plan, so the adjustments were made quickly.

In one great flash, 8th fleet disappeared. At least, most of it did. Seconds later, they reappeared slightly off the mark at the edge of Agdemnar’s FTL limit. A number of ships overshot the mark and were awkwardly yanked out of FTL by the planet’s gravity, the excess energy from their crash transits creating large blind spots in most sensor systems, if only for a few moments. It was an uncharacteristically sloppy maneuver, but far from disastrous. 8th fleet’s chosen angle of approach into the planet’s interdiction zone aimed to press the Ascendancy ships against the planet, cutting off their most expedient escape route. This necessitated holding fire until closer ranges, as the Commonwealth ships would likely end up hitting their own ground base with the imprecise fire available to them at extreme range.

It was a fairly obvious maneuver, but certainly an appropriate response given 8th fleet’s numerical superiority. Still anyone who was familiar with Admiral Maria Anisimovna might have been...puzzled by her rather straightforward approach.

8th fleet was well into the interdiction zone (though at a relatively sedate speed given the need to recover from their sub-optimal FTL navigation) when the trap was sprung. The missing Ascendancy ships flashed out of FTL behind 8th fleet, carefully angled relative to the planet such that they could open fire at maximum range without fear of hitting their own soldiers, scant kilometers from the Commonwealth FOB on the surface. The bombarding ships began to turn to face 8th fleet, slowly pulling away from the planet. The situation was looking grim for Anisimovna’s forces, though a long way from hopeless. Her ships began to come about on a least time course out of the interdiction zone, shifting formation to respond to the new threat environment. At the low velocity her ships had been forced to approach the planet with, the course change was implemented quickly, and 8th fleet began to pull away from Agdemnar at a somewhat unusual escape vector. The fleet’s formation began to shift into a tighter defensive configuration, maneuvering much more precisely than one might have expected after observing their sloppy FTL navigation.

And then the decoy drones finally burned through their power reserves. Fully half of Anisimovna’s heavy units and a scattering of her screening ships disappeared from sensors, evidently having never been there at all, the launch of the impostor drones covered by the energy spikes from those crash FTL transits.

The Ascendancy ships had almost 7 full seconds to wonder where 8th fleet’s main hitting power was before it burst out of FTL precisely on the edge of the interdiction zone, directly astern of the second Ascendancy force, axial weapons and positron cannons blazing. Withering fire tore into the surprised Ascendancy ships, even as the original component of 8th fleet adjusted its angle to present broadsides to both Ascendancy forces, all batteries at maximum defensive fire.

The Ascendancy ships did not panic, surprised though they may have been. Their commander was a good one, as Anisimovna had observed. The ambusher force turned to engage the second component of 8th fleet, while the bombardment force maneuvered to join them at the edge of the interdiction zone, all the while maintaining their fire on 8th fleet’s first component, forcing Anisimovna’s ships to stay on the defensive.

The Vit’azny admiral herself watched it all unfold from [i]Indefatigable’s[/i] flag bridge. She was with the first component of her fleet, which was rapidly approaching a position where it would be able to merge with the rest of her heavy units. Those units were...not vulnerable, per se, but certainly less well protected than her original force. The steady rumble of railguns firing reverberated throughout [i]Indefatigable’s[/i] hull, setting a rhythm for Anisimovna’s thoughts. Her separate forces would consolidate before the Ascendancy could do the same, but not soon enough to provide a decisive advantage. It looked like they were headed for another close quarters brawl, but she didn’t want to commit her strike craft just yet. The bombardment had ceased, so her objective was accomplished, but she had to push the Ascendancy away from the planet so they wouldn’t go right back to it while her back was turned. At the same time, she had to conserve her forces, because the ships with her were all she had for the foreseeable future. And then of course, there was the ever-present specter of all those other ‘expeditionary forces’ and ‘science missions’ and ‘rogue fleets’ faffing about all over the system, any number of whom might try to exploit the situation, perhaps by hunting down her logistics ships, or waiting until she’d weakened herself against the Ascendancy before striking at her fleet directly.

Of course, the Ascendancy had to consider all those factors too. In essence, the clash of their fleets had bloodied the waters, and it would only be a matter of time before the sharks came closing in.

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[img]https://i.imgur.com/2HtsOoE.jpg?1[/img]

[b]The Blue Hall of the Imperial Palace
Brandenburg Old Quarter
Praetoria[/b]

The Blue Hall was not especially blue, nor particularly hall-ish. It was an old, low building in the heart of the Imperial Palace grounds, built of native stone with surprisingly large windows, considering it had been built long before the days of climate control. Blue and gold had long been the colours of the Royal House of Romanov, so the name illustrated that it functioned as a personal space for the Royal person of the reigning monarch, in contrast to the Imperial throne room that resided in the Scarlet Gallery. It may have seemed an over-elaborate and utterly pointless set of distinctions to an outsider, but Praetoria was a world where the little things mattered a great deal.

It was late summer in Praetoria’s southern hemisphere, and the ancient city of Brandenburg was enjoying the heat while it could. Praetoria’s average global temperature was a touch on the cool side as far as habitable worlds went, and Brandenburg was a little closer to the southern pole than many might have wanted. It’s inland climate was prone to extremes; long, cold winters, and short, intensely hot summers. The former made the city’s populace absolutely delight in the latter, no matter how uncomfortably hot it might get.

The Blue Hall possessed a glass enshrouded sunroom specifically built with the summer heat in mind. Large french doors on the room’s three outer walls let a warm breeze come dancing through, playfully tossing the light curtains to and fro. An especially tall Yanissan man idly paced the room, while a young Vit’azny woman in a plain white dress reclined on a well cushioned wicker divan, watching the imagery coming from two portable holo-projectors placed on the low table before her. One displayed the chambers of the Low House on Corinthene, where Lord Chancellor Metternich had just finished delivering a very somber speech on the perils facing the Commonwealth. Catherine, the Imperial Queen (for it was indeed she on the divan), wished yet again that Metternich could have been on Praetoria with her, but she knew why that was impossible. The head of her nation’s government had grown to become a close friend and father figure, filling the void left by the madness and eventual suicide of Catherine’s predecessor and biological father.

She and Metternich had discussed at length what must be done today, and all was unfolding according to plan. On the holo, the camera switched focus to the Speaker of the Low House as he rose and called the chamber to a vote. Of course, Metternich’s Crown Centrist party and it’s Progressive Conservative ally controlled between them a working majority in the Low House, but today’s vote was not to be whipped or controlled in any way. Every member in the House was to vote their conscious, as they felt best represented their constituents. The vote was not at all necessary, since this was a foreign policy affair and strictly the purview of Her Imperial Majesty’s Government, not a legislative matter that needed to be put before the house. This vote was more in the nature of a PR campaign; after all, if the democratically elected government of the Commonwealth voted to withdraw from the Treaty of Detente, the Imperial Queen and her Lord Chancellor would be derelict in their duties to not do so.

The Speaker was saying something, but Catherine had reduced the audio to a whisper; the sound quality was quite poor anyways, a necessary sacrifice needed to broadcast the vote live-ish across the Commonwealth. The Ashtar’s old PsiNET arrays could do much, but they were still limited. Praetoria and Corinthene were close neighbors (in interstellar terms), so the delay was no more than a few minutes. Out in the verge, they wouldn’t be seeing what Catherine saw for hours to come.

The Speaker concluded his remarks, looking around the chamber solemnly. The camera changed focus to overlook the entire chamber, and Catherine found herself holding her breath, even though she effectively knew the outcome. Indeed, half the reason the vote was happening was to serve as a vent for the growing resentment of the Detente’s limitations that was spreading throughout the Commonwealth. But there was always a chance…

And then the delegates of the Low House stood as one. Not every one of them, of course, unanimity was a foreign concept to any elected house, but the standing representatives dominated the scene. She let out her breath in a deep sigh of satisfaction as the speaker began calling out the names of each standing member, one by one. Technically their vote wasn’t counted until their name had been called, and that might take a while, but changing one’s vote mid way through the counting was political suicide, so that overwhelming majority wasn’t going to change.

“Goodness, it seems you and the Lord Chancellor were over-cautious,” the Yanissan said with a faintly smug tone.
Catherine gave him an exasperated look. “Martuf, considering how often you’re proven right, you take entirely too much satisfaction in being so.”
“All part of my charm, your Imperial Majesty,” Martuf replied with a fleeting smile. “In all seriousness however, this only buys us a little more time. We all did what we had to in order to survive the post-war Troubles, but Telemachus may have pushed the nationalist button a little too hard. I’m not saying he was wrong to do it, especially with what we knew at the time, but the message rather changed things didn’t it?”
Catherine nodded. “Supremacy through unity”, she quoted the oft repeated slogan. “Well, supremacy hardly means sharing the keys to the galaxy does it.”

And that was the problem. The fervent nationalism that had kept the Commonwealth intact now demanded that it seize Agdemnar and the treasures of the Ashtar for itself. Catherine and Metternich had recognized that growing pressure, and set up today’s vote to accommodate it, but the overwhelming number of standing representatives on the holo showed that they’d almost left it too late.

Of course, precious few of those representatives even knew of what was being displayed on Catherine’s other holo. If they had, they would have been even more fervent in their support.

[i]CSC Praetoria[/i]. The first Commonwealth Star Carrier. It’s alabaster hull glistened in the crystal clarity of vacuum, and it’s running lights twinkled like constellations. This imagery was [i]not[/i] live; it had been delivered by courier ship in encrypted and physically secure storage, so the launch Catherine was seeing now was actually several days old. It was also [i]Praetoria[/i]’s third time leaving her docking station out at Juno Station, but the previous occasions had been for engine tests and performance trials. Now, she was leaving it fully crewed and combat ready, and Catherine had felt it important that she see this moment, even if it wasn’t live.

Rumours of “hyper-dreadnoughts” had been circulating for years, rumors the Commonwealth had believed strongly enough to act on. To Catherine’s knowledge, [i]Praetoria[/i] was the first of these ships to launch, and she would most certainly not be the last.