Tales from the Service: The Siege of Berkant

2947-09-17 – Tales from the Service: The Siege of Berkant 

I was expecting Saint-Lô to travel for many days before emerging at the edge of a destination system, but we made only three jumps – twenty-two hours total travel time. This being the case, and seeing that we were within only a few light-minutes of the local HyperCast relay station, I hurriedly cancelled the automatic-post story I’d prepared for our time in the dark. With the captain’s permission, I spent some time sitting as an observer in the Combat Information Center. 

The fact that the relay is still active is strange, but I’m not about to miss the opportunity to do what I came aboard this ship to do – namely, cover the war effort. You would think that an aggressor planning to stay in-system for a sustained assault would slag the thing to prevent Fifth Fleet high command from gaining intelligence about their actions in the clear, but the Incarnation left it alone for at least two full days. 

As the title of this feed item implies, our short trip took us to Berkant, a rather underpopulated but biologically fertile Frontier world which has graced this feed before, most notably as the site of several stories about Faye and Junia (not real names) and their odd xenosapient friend Sapphire. 

Captain Liao watched as the system resolved in his combat information center’s room-scale holo-display. In the middle, directly above the floor projector lens, the system’s white-dwarf primary shone brighter than the overhead lighting, with the faint dotted lines of the three planets’ orbits extending halfway to the outer walls of the vast compartment. The first planet of the system was a “hot Jupiter” hell-sphere of tortured clouds and burning cyclones, and the third a frozen ice-ball in a steeply elliptical orbit, but the second – the world Berkant from which the system derived its name – carried life, including two million citizens of the Confederated Worlds. 

Reports were still coming in from the situation around the life-bearing world, but Liao already could see the outlines of the situation. Sparkling shards of debris in three distinct rings had been identified around the planet, and he knew better than to hope that even one of them was the result of disaster befalling one of the five Tyrant cruisers which had been reported in the system. Other than a single aging destroyer and a mercenary strike carrier, Berkant had been defenseless when the Incarnation had showed up with plans to stay. 

“We are in contact with groundside system authority.” The comms chief’s voice carried into CIC though she was two hundred meters away at the forward communications annex. “Transmission delay, twenty-nine minutes one way. They confirm that Olvir Zdrakov was destroyed in orbit after a short exchange. The merc carrier launched its birds and then left orbit. They lost tracking on its drive signature a few hours later.” 

“Thank you, Commander.” Liao watched the hashed-blue “unknown” symbols on the asset board to his left switch to black. The two garrison ships were of dubious value to his force in any case, but the loss of perhaps one hundred twenty brave spacers still stung. “Sensors, where is Nate?” 

The sensor-systems chief had no answers, but he did his best. “Still putting the pieces together, Captain. Wherever they are, their drives are not burning.” 

Five cruisers – Nate's biggest attack force to date – didn't just vanish, and Liao knew they hadn’t had time since last being spotted in planetary orbit to reach the hyper limit. “Probably hiding in those debris rings. Any idea what those were?” 

“Planetside data payload reports them as Zdrakov, their main orbital station, and a hauler who had a very bad day. Most of the lesser infrastructure is still intact.” 

One hundred twenty was likely an underestimate as to the losses, then. Liao shook his head; the hauler and station had been defenseless. There had been no reason for the Incarnation cruisers to fire on them. “Time to planetary orbit?” 

“Fifty hours at full acceleration.” The navigator’s course already glowed on the display. 

Liao set his jaw and stared at the board, wondering where he’d put his ships, if he were in command of five fast, well-armed but poorly protected heavy cruisers. Without the sensor arrays on the station, the groundside spaceport couldn’t track the invaders – the enemy had almost thirty hours of free maneuver time during which the colonists on Berkant could detect their drive signatures, but not pinpoint their locations. Thirty hours was a long time; time enough for Nate to pick off every piece of orbital hardware, if destruction was their objective. 

“Re-entry fires on the planet.” The sensors station reported crisply. “Big chunks of the station, most likely.” 

Liao got the sense he was being watched, and not by the odd little datacast reporter shadowing him for the Berkant operation. “All ships, fit gunships for a system sweep and launch when ready.” Using the force’s fifty-odd strike gunships – a mix of Magpies and older Jackdaws – to sweep the system would reduce his offensive power, but he preferred to find the enemy before they got in close. Anyone who’d seen the intelligence reports about Incanration Tyrant cruisers knew they were apparently kittens in long-range slugfests, but fearsome combatants if their shorter-ranged energy weapons could be used up close. 

“Contact!” The defense-gunnery officer’s voice accompanied a new symbol on the board. “A flight of Coronachs just hot-started two thousand klicks ahead of Safira Sharma.” 

In the vastness of even a small planetary system like Berkant, two thousand kilometers was far closer than Liao was comfortable with. If the Tyrants had appeared at that range, the lead cruiser probably would never have known what hit it. 

“They knew we’d be coming from Maribel. Probably set them across all the probable inbound vectors in case we tried a cold approach.” Liao watched the symbols boost away on a perpendicular vector. Their pilots knew only too well that the vast force would never detach a fast warship to chase four little strike interceptors, and that Magpie gunships had no hope of catching them. “With any luck, Nate has his strike elements scattered all over the system.” Even as he said it, he knew better. Incarnation ships carried vast quantities of the tiny, agile Coronachs, each piloted by a cybernetically-tweaked counterhuman literally optimized for the job. Their commander would never disperse a significant percentage of that force on picket duty just before a battle. 

“Telescopes just made one Tyrant on station at the planetary L3.” The sensors officer almost crowed his success as the red symbol appeared on the board. 

Liao frowned. He’d just concluded that the enemy would be crazy to disperse his force. Why would one of the five cruisers operate by itself? “Just one?” 

“Confirmed, Captain. One Tyrant at Berkant Lagrange Three.” 

Captain Liao frowned. The lone cruiser was one of two things – it was either bait for a trap, or it was a challenge. Of the two, his bet was on it being a challenge. “Ignore the ship at L3. Course to planetary orbit.” 

Challenge or bait, Saint-Lô and her squadron would not be able to accept either for at least thirty hours. “Maintain alert status, but rotate crews every four hours. This is going to be a long haul.” 

Details

2947-09-16 – Editor's Loudspeaker: The Situation Develops

2947-09-16 – Editor's Loudspeaker: The Situation Develops 

Saint-Lô and its dozen-odd supporting frigates, destroyers, and light cruisers left Maribel space last night. I dispatched this news feed item several hours before departure from planetary orbit, setting it to go public after we’d reached the jump limit. Our destination is still secret, but I have heard rumors about a big raid under way in the Frontier. The Incarnation’s one to three ship raiding attacks on the Coreward Frontier have stretched the more mobile elements of the fleet, but such strikes can’t really do more than damage orbital infrastructure; most of the population and economic activity of the Frontier takes place on planetary surfaces. 

The Incarnation’s problem is simple: they seem to lack the heavy fleet units to field against the Fifth Fleet’s battlewagons, but they can’t stay long enough in any Confederated system to occupy or raze a colony without having heavy elements to at least delay the fleet. If they have committed a larger squadron to a single system, it’s likely that Saint-Lô appearing in-system with its supporting elements will be enough to scare them off. 

Still, I’ll admit I am not ready to experience this war from the tip of the spear. If you are of any of the faiths, keep this squadron in your prayers over the next few days. I have a feeling that we’ll need more than a few prayers before this mess works itself out. 

Details

Tales from the Service: Source Gabriel

2947-09-10 – Tales from the Service: Source Gabriel 

As some of you may know from my personal datasphere hub, a cousin of mine (the very cousin who first introduced me to Cosmic Background when I was still a student) was a crew tech aboard Reiter’s Kite, which went missing during a Silver Strand border patrol two weeks ago, and is as of yesterday presumed lost with all hands. 

Reiter’s Kite is the largest of several ships damaged or lost in the last month, as most of you well know, and my mourning is hardly unique or special. The Ladeonist insurgents attacking Navy patrols in the Strand sector have claimed the lives of almost one thousand Navy service personnel, though the Navy is giving at least as good as it’s getting in what many see as a secondary theater of the Frontier War. Unfortunately, this is not the case; Ladeonist terrorists, pirates, Rattanai imperialists, and other dangerous elements keep elements of two fleets almost constantly busy on the borders of the Reach, even in peace-time. Likely the Hegemony has a comparable amount of its navy assigned to this sort of duty on its own borders. 

I remind you all of this only to remind this audience that my extended family’s grief is neither special nor unique. I will not be taking time off covering the conflict to travel back to the Core Worlds for the memorial service, and do not wish this feed or its social media presence to focus on my (or any) personal tragedy. 

This week, we have another account provided by a semi-cooperative prisoner of war, this one housed here at Maribel in the prison ship Vibiana Kobe. While no Cosmic Background staff have talked with him, Nojus followed up with the source, a Naval Intelligence junior officer whose name we must unfortunately redact from this feed, who provided audio recordings of the interview from which it is drawn. The prisoner in question is known in Intelligence records only as Source Gabriel, and we will use his code-name here rather than his real name. Source Gabriel was captured by a mercenary outfit which engaged the enemy at Bitterweald, and he has given the Navy a large body of useful intelligence, including data about the capabilities of the Coronach strike interceptor used heavily by the Incarnation. 

The Coronach is the same interceptor which has been in this feed repeatedly misidentified as a drone; these tiny one-seat war-launches are far more maneuverable than the Navy’s workhorse Magpie gunship, but they are exceedingly fragile and carry only short-range energy cannons. 

His revelations about the hierarchy of the Incarnation’s military and their use of counterhuman tech to enhance their warfighting abilities, though general, has also been most helpful. For my part, I’m just happy he provided their names for some of their machines and systems; it makes my job a lot easier. 

He also gave some insight into the mindset of the foe; I must say it bears considerable resemblance to the beliefs of Ladeonism, at least as it first appeared shortly before the Terran-Rattanai War. 

Gabriel stood at attention next to his Coronach as Flight Leader Yasin conferred with the woman in red. According to the briefing-pulse, two pathetic strike carriers – converted haulers, really – were the only enemy force in the system, and the captain intended to wipe out both carriers while his own squadrons tore the defenders to pieces. 

Something had changed, however, and a new briefing-pulse had not been issued. As the eleven pilots watched Yasin stand motionless in the middle of the flight deck with the newcomer’s silver-traceried hand resting lightly on his temple, uneasy messages flickered invisibly on laser-link between one and the next. They had all seen the woman in red at least once before, and all found themselves unable to learn anything about her on the ship’s datasphere. The cruiser’s computer told them all that she did not exist, but she appeared with the captain often enough that her presence was certainly authorized. Even now, she stood in the launch hangar, in full view of perhaps a hundred security data monitors, without fear. 

Among the laser-linked messages crossing the hangar-deck, one meant for Gabriel struck his implants’ photosensors. “She’s an Immortal.” Tashi’s voice, synthesized from a text-only missive, trickled into his auditory nerves. “Did you see those traces just appear on her hand?” 

“So is the security chief. So what?” Gabriel sent back. The Incarnation’s chosen few had once seemed a sinister rarity, but their presence aboard ship had become a constant and even comforting reality since the war had begun. A few of them supposedly even mounted up with the Coronach squadrons, though none of Gabriel’s squadron-mates could be counted among the Most Fortunate Children. 

“What if she’s a Harmonizer?” Tashi’s voice carried no particular tone when synthesized from text, but Gabriel knew his friend was worried. Where Harmonizers struck, cancers were cut out of the Incarnation’s great body, and sometimes healthy tissue around the cancer also needed to be excised. “What if there’s a traitor aboard?” 

“A traitor? On this ship?” Gabriel remained still and stony-faced, but the idea was almost humorous. Who would be so catastrophically mad as to betray the cause of preserving humanity for all time, after taking an oath to carry that cause to the ends of the very universe? And if madness so wildly aberrant manifested itself among the personnel aboard a warship, how could it go undetected by security systems? 

Tashi didn’t respond before Flight Leader Yasin, released by the woman in red, staggered backward, then saluted smartly. A second later, a supplemental briefing-pulse unpacked itself into Gabriel’s memory systems. The mission had changed, but only slightly; the flight leader would mount up in a Coronach modified by the woman in red, in which he would pursue and capture particular target among the ramshackle combat launches currently attempting to intercept the ship. The rest of the flight would need to tackle the remaining enemy ships without their leader. 

“Flight, mount up.” Yasin barked the order out loud, as was traditional, and with a barked shout as one, the other eleven pilots in the flight turned on their heels and leapt into the waiting embrace of their tiny, deadly ships. Just before the Coronach’s pressure-cabin closed around him, Gabriel caught Tashi’s eye across the flight deck, and received one final message on laser-link. “Looks like you’re the Section One lead now.” 

As the clamshell cabin sealed itself, Gabriel received another briefing-pulse, opening wide the command signaling systems for a flight leader. Normally, he wouldn’t be field-promoted to flight leader unless Yasin was dead; this was a unique situation and a big responsibility. He had to make sure Tashi and Azurra made it out alive, because he would be answerable to Yasin if he lost any of them. It would be better, he knew, not to return at all, than to return without Tashi and Azurra. 

As the interceptor powered up, its hardlink connectors fixed themselves to his neckline implant jacks. In an instant, the pure darkness and silence of the cockpit suddenly vanished, replaced by the lights and sounds of the hangar outside. Instead of hands and feet, Gabriel felt the steady hum of the drive and the reassuring strength of the twin plasma lances. 

All around him, the other Coronachs, each clearly labeled in his camera-vision with its pilot, warmed up and tested their control interfaces. The last few tech-rigs trundled away, and Gabriel saw the modified Coronach just being hauled out of its enclosure. Its twin plasma lances were gone, replaced by the ill-fitting apparatus of a gravitic net. At a nod from the woman in red, Flight Leader Yasin climbed inside. 

“There are sixteen enemy strike ships, and eleven of us." Azurra observed over the Section One combat interlink. “What do you think about those odds?” 

Gabriel smiled, the sensations of tensing cheek-muscles clashing strangely with the feedback sensations of the Coronach’s systems. “These hired mercenaries are always weak. Make it fifty, then maybe we should worry.” 

Details

Tales from the Service: A Knife in the Dark

2947-09-03 – Tales from the Service: A Knife in the Dark

As you might imagine, learning that the enemy in this conflict is a Terran offshoot culture two weeks ago has led to a bit of civil unrest here on the Coreward Frontier. Most worlds have initiated a crackdown on counterhuman underground groups, believing them to be a vector of enemy infiltration. Up to this point, dubiously-legal counterhuman groups on Frontier worlds have been largely ignored or even tolerated – the culture out here seems to favor a “live and let live” approach to odd neighbors, even the worst degenerates.

On some worlds, I am even seeing reports that the crackdown has devolved into crude mob justice, which of course should be condemned. Almost all of the counterhumans on the Frontier are neither Ladeonist insurgents nor spies for the Sagittarian “Incarnation,” and extra-legal persecution is not an appropriate reaction.

I’ve seen many local datasphere commentators suggesting that the Yaxkin City blast yesterday (which I am still unable to find proper casualty figures or a suspected cause for as of this writing) is a result of lax security and a lack of war footing in the Core Worlds, and I fear that they have a point. Because of the asymmetric way this war is being fought, with the Navy fending off a series of increasingly sophisticated probes and raids in the Frontier, I doubt most of the population centers have increased their security. Perhaps this incident was not related to Incarnation efforts, but I fear it’s only a matter of time before the Incarnation finds a way to hurt populations in the Core Worlds.

Though the over-zealous populations of Frontier worlds likely are not chasing real enemy agents, I have no doubt such agents exist. In particular, I suspect Paz from Tales from the Service: A Stowaway Saboteur was an Incarnation agent – the focus on disabling mercenary patrol forces is at odds with usual Ladeonist behavior. I have been sent several other stories of odd agents sabotaging or infiltrating rear-echelon and mercenary forces in the same manner, and this week I received an account of one such agent attempting a similar feat on a Fifth Fleet cruiser on patrol near Margaux.

Rozalie U. crouched behind a pile of crated parts, listening to the soft pad of feet as someone crossed the maintenance bay beyond. As she checked the battery and magazine of her side-arm, Rozalie knew that despite all wartime security measures, Johan Origen had intruders aboard.

Rozalie had wandered down to her beloved maintenance bay after battling insomnia for four hours, determined to start her shift early by pulling the drive out of a Hookscale sensor-picket launch which had come down just before she’d clocked out the previous day. In theory, she would have had the bay to herself until the remainder of the first shift arrived; Origen had no third-shift strike maintenance crew.

At first, Rozalie had thought the intruder might be another insomnia-affected tech or officer, but a query on her wrist unit had dispelled that wishful thinking. According to the computer, there was nobody in the maintenance bay except Rozalie herself, which also accounted for the fact that the compartment remained at minimum illumination. Somehow, someone had boarded the ship and dodged the security systems, and she couldn’t speculate as to how.

Tapping out a quick, silent message to the third-shift security chief, Rozalie wondered how much damage the intruder could do in the minutes it would take to muster a proper response. The Hookscale picket and two gunships sat unguarded in the bay, and each would be called upon to take three brave Navy strike personnel out into the void the next time the captain called for a strike-craft sweep or Origen tangled with a Sagittarian raider. A skilled saboteur could render each a death-trap in ways it would take the maintenance personnel weeks to undo, if they discovered it at all.

Taking a deep breath, Rozalie peeked around her cover, and spotted a shadow moving between the fabricator work-benches and the boxy Hookscale picket. The possibilities were, she realized, far more dire than sabotaging the launches. The engine reactors of the craft in the bay had been bled dry of phased-matter fuel for safety, but the means to refuel one were lying all around. It would be a simple matter to turn one of the launches into a bomb, then instruct it to begin a pre-flight warm-up. The resulting explosion might not destroy Johan Origen outright, but it could easily cripple the cruiser and kill dozens.

Rozalie knew she couldn’t wait. Switching off her side-arm’s safety, she watched the shadow disappear behind the Hookscale, then crept out into the open middle of the bay.

A clatter and a clank told her she had been right – the intruder had removed the access cowling from the Hookscale’s dodgy drive system, just as she herself would have done to begin servicing it. The apparatus to pull the drive core out of the launch, however, remained inert.

As Rozalie crept closer, she heard the beeping and hissing of a phased-matter bottle being hooked up to the launch. Even a barely-fueled drive unit could create a terrific explosion if its containment vessel were to fail during warm-up, before the safety interlocks and scram system had engaged. Worse still, such a blast would flood nearby space with all manner of strange-particle and phased-particle emissions, condemning any initial survivors to an agonizing few hours of life as their cells misfired and eventually died. She couldn’t risk leaving the intruder to his own devices any longer. With a pair of long strides, she rounded the prow of the picket launch, bringing her gun up to point at the intruder.

Whoever he was, he moved fast. In a blur of motion, the figure leapt over the phased-matter bottle between them and sprung at Rozalie. Something gleamed wickedly in each of his hands as the white-hot gout of plasma from her coilgun reached out to meet him in mid-air.

“Hells, Lieutenant, you’re alive?”

Rozalie opened her eyes through the throbbing pain of a headache to see the third-shift head of security bending over her, a gun in his hand pointed half-heartedly at something. She was lying prone under the Hookscale’s nose antenna, with the smell of burning flesh and the beeping of weapons-fire alarms filling the maintenance bay. “He was fueling the-” She struggled to get up, only for the security chief to push her back down. “What happened?” A lump in her throat made her voice sound funny in her own ears.

“Better stay down. Medics are on the way.”

The burnt-flesh smell told Rozalie that her one shot had been accurate. A coil-gun rarely killed its victims, but the agonizing skin burns it inflicted usually took all the fight out of them. Apparently, the saboteur had overpowered her despite being hurt badly enough to fill the compartment with the smell of his cooked flesh. “Where is he?”

“Gone. We’re still looking for him.”

Rozalie tried to anyway, and the movement nearly cost her what consciousness she’d recovered. The pain was incredible; it was as if someone had wedged a knife between the bones of her neck. “How bad am I hurt?”

The look on the security officer’s face was enough for Rozalie to know her wounds were serious. “As long as you stay still, you’ll be fine.”

“How bad?” Rozalie lifted her hands and started patting her torso, looking for wounds she couldn’t feel. She found nothing on her groin, stomach, or chest, but a warm, wet feeling against the back of her head suggested blood pooling on the deck below her. When she tried to feel her neck and head, the security officer stopped her. “Don’t do that.” He forced her hands down onto her chest. “Leave it for the medics.”

Rozalie closed her eyes and focused on breathing slowly until a team of medics clattered into the bay and hurriredly set up their treatment kits at her side. The first one started dabbing around her throat with a clotting pad. “Stars around, what a mess. Get me-”

Rozalie opened her eyes to see three more concerned looks, like the one on the security officer. “How bad is it?”

Her voice caused the man to jump back in surprise. “Conscious? How-”

One of the other medics injected something into Rozalie’s arm, and immediately her body felt fuzzy and distant. “Must have missed the jugular by a millimeter. Leave it until we can get back to medical. Going to need…”

As her consciousness began to fade under the pressure of strong sedatives, Rozalie’s eyes fell shut. “Check… Make sure…” She tried to tell them to check the Hookscale picket, to verify that the saboteur had not completed his work, but the world slipped away too quickly.

Rozalie U. sent in this story from her bed in a Maribelan infirmary, to which she was transferred after an encounter with what can only be an Incarnation agent. She stumbled on the saboteur in the act and interrupted his activities, but barely survived the encounter. The saboteur was eventually cornered and killed after he injured two other personnel aboard Johan Origen. Oddly, he remained capable of fighting and great mobility despite being badly burned across his chest and face; I would guess that the implant use seen in all captured Incarnation personnel gives them some ability to ignore pain and physical injury, perhaps through the automatic application of pain-killers and stimulants.

Though Rozalie survived, she told me in her message that she expects a medical discharge; the damage to her cervical vertebrae will probably never fully heal. I hope her commander has recommended her actions to the Fifth Fleet’s board of merit; this support-department officer singlehandedly took on a deadly enemy agent armed only with a coilgun, and may have saved many of her crewmates from horrific death.

Details
  • You are here:  
  • Home