Tales from the Service: The Commandant’s Eyes

2953-07-02 - Tales from the Service: The Commandant’s Eyes 

The Kodiak heavy armor-suit, which is only an armor-suit in the loosest of senses, has garnered a lot of public attention, especially since Marine public relations have focused on imagery of these behemoths fighting spindly black Incarnation scarecrows. Such duels are of course rare – I can only find record of three or four of them taking place, all on Montani under rather one-sided circumstances – but they are how the machines are being portrayed in the public eye. 

The propaganda that sells the Kodiak as an unstoppable battlefield titan is, as far as I can tell, for morale purposes. They are capable machines to be sure, but they were designed early in the conflict as a fast response unit to stabilize certain kinds of battlefield catastrophes, and they actually don’t seem to do well when they are left in the line for long periods due to their extreme maintenance needs.  

Why the Incarnation built an opposing unit of nearly the same size and of similar firepower is obscure. Naval Intelligence reports seem to indicate they assumed that Kodiaks would be massed in broad-scale breakthrough attacks and wanted their own fast response unit to break up such an assault and stiffen the infantry. Neither of the machines is particularly optimized for fighting the other in a fair meeting engagement, though perhaps in this the Cyclops has a slight advantage, being the later design. 

I don’t think these facts will impact the popularity of such duel-of-the-titans imagery, however.  

Garth Raimundo permitted the guard to lead him away from the Kodiak bays toward a squat prefab structure back near the main avenue. The smaller man was visibly trembling – he probably hadn’t had to do this before – so it would have been child’s play to disarm him and be off about his business, but there was no point taking even that small risk when there was in no particular hurry. The paperwork would be a matter of minutes, and then the chagrined guard would release him to continue his inspection, if somewhat less covertly. 

There were two other guards at their post, and both jumped up from lounging positions and grabbed for their carbines when Garth and his captor came into view. No doubt they had relaxed their vigil somewhat after Incarnation forces had been driven from Montani, even though many thousands of left-behind holdouts still roamed the outlands and a desperate, doomed rearguard force was still barricaded in the labyrinthine quarries and tunnels of the Btenda mines. 

“Let’s make this fast, please.” Garth turned his head toward the man with the carbine behind him without slowing his gait. “I really do have work to do.” 

“Around the Kodiak stands?” The guard prodded Garth with the butt of his gun. “Not damned likely.” 

Garth shrugged. “My ident card is in my right breast pocket. You will find I have access.” 

“Nobody but the operators and the brass have access.” The man shook his head. “Least of all someone in a too-clean dress uniform disguise.” 

Garth chuckled, making a mental note to report the probability that the 114th's uniform code was needlessly lax if these guards hadn’t seen a properly clean dress uniform to compare his to. “Run my ident, then critique my attire.” 

One of the other men scampered into the guardhouse and emerged with a portable digi-reader. Garth held perfectly still as the trio turned out all his pockets, predictably leaving the right breast pocket for very last. They found little besides the card and a few receipt-chits, of course; they didn’t even find his side-arm, a Liann Zhi micro-compact tucked into his left boot. He’d left nearly everything he’d brought with him in the groundcar. 

The reader chirped the moment it was run across Garth’s nearly-blank ident card, and the wielder frowned as it displayed an error code. “Bio-tagged card. He needs to be holding it for it to read.” 

Garth slowly held out one hand for his card, which was quickly placed on his palm and scanned again. This time the reader emitted a bright pinging noise, and Garth could see page after page of authorizations scroll over its small screen.  

“He’s got access.” 

“To what?” Garth’s captor leaned over his associate’s shoulder. 

“Looks like...” The other guard gulped and looked up at Garth. “Everything.” 

Garth arched one eyebrow. “Am I free to continue my duties, gentlemen?” 

The trio exchanged uneasy looks. “You really should, ah.” The third one stammered. “Come with us up to headquarters.” 

Garth shrugged. “I don't think that’s necessary.” He outranked the regiment’s Colonel, at least technically, and hated to pull that rank on field officers who’d done far more to earn their position than he had. “You are welcome to report my presence.” 

“Hey!” The man with the reader suddenly scowled. “This ident card isn’t working. It doesn’t show your name or your holo. Who are we supposed to report we apprehended?” 

Garth shook his head. “It is functioning to spec. But the contents of your report isn’t my problem.” He loomed at each of them, one at a time, then reached out for the handful of items that they’d taken from his pockets. “And it wouldn’t have to be yours, either, if you decided not to report it.” 

At this, Garth’s original captor bridled. “It’s protocol to report anything unusual. You just want us to overlook-” 

“I was only making a suggestion to make both of our lives easier.” Garth turned and started back toward the line of docked Kodiak suits. “Do what you have to do.” 

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Tales from the Service: The Commandant’s Agent

2953-07-02 - Tales from the Service: The Commandant’s Agent 

Due to how far the battlespace is from the Core Worlds, and some rather visible capability gaps between certain kinds of Incarnation and Confederated equipment, most of the service personnel fighting this conflict have some sense that the people giving the orders and sending the equipment have a rather incomplete understanding of the situation in front of them. It turns out this isn’t really true, but it is excusable that the people actually risking their lives every day would come to this conclusion. 

Of all the services, the Confederated Marines are probably the most sensitive to this concern, both because it is the smallest service by personnel roster, and because it is the service most reliant on the morale of the rank and file to be effective. Marine troops that believe themselves to be sacrificial trigger pullers handed inferior equipment and sent to die by an aloof, incompetent command structure would not be capable of the defensive and offensive feats the Marines are known for.  

Obviously Commandant Calligaris, being the liaison between his service and the civilian government, must stay at Centauri, but his deputies regularly roam the battle area. Some of them do so openly, but others, like our submitter here who I am certain is not using his real name, prefer to operate more covertly, hoping to prevent the field units from curating what they see. 

When Garth Raimundo got off the transport, nobody was waiting to meet him. That in itself wasn’t too odd; his arrival on Montani was known only to a few, but it did earn him a few strange looks when the other various officers and specialists he’d ridden down with all had escorts waiting for them. 

Garth outranked all of them, but he didn’t like to show that. As a direct subordinate of the Commandant of the Confederated Marines, he held a nominal rank of brigadier general, but he wore, as usual, the tunic of a Marine junior officer with its name-plate and rank insignia disabled. His rank usually got in the way of his mission, and in any case, he hardly thought himself worthy of even a single general’s star. 

As the other passengers vanished into the dusty spaceport town, Garth spied an unattended groundcar with a Marine insignia on it parked near the landing pad. It had a second insignia – that of one of the battalions of 71st Brigade, which he knew from his briefing was in the process of re-embarking from the planet. They wouldn’t miss the vehicle; most likely they intended to leave it for the permanent FVDA garrison anyway.  

With a few commands and a high level access code broadcast from his wristcuff, Garth commandeered the vehicle. It started warming up as he crossed to it, glancing around to see if anyone else had noticed what he’d done. His codes would silence any questions, of course, but it was better if they weren’t asked at all. Fortunately, the only other people in view were a group of technicians struggling to replace a lighter’s turbofan; none of them were paying him any mind. 

The groundcar was of a sturdy but spartan model, like much equipment issued to the Marines anywhere near a front line. The suspension on its four large wheels proved rather rough, even for the dusty streets of Montani’s spaceport, and Garth worried for the survival of his teeth within minutes of leaving the pad behind. Fortunately, he didn’t have very far to go. The encampment of the 114th Special Regiment, one of the Kodiak equipped formations that had participated in the battle of Montani, was just outside the town. 

The abandoned industrial complex that had become the 114th's base of operations was surrounded by an impressive razorwire fence backed up by numerous sensor pylons. Marine outfits were hardly known for their field fortifications, since they tended not to stay on any one field particularly long, but armored and Kodiak units tended to be the exception, owing to the massive repair and refit needs of their equipment. These regiments tended to move around with three or four times the noncombatant personnel as a standard Marine heavy infantry unit, and thus were not nearly as capable of repositioning their bivouac. 

A guard at the checkpoint frowned as he scanned Garth’s identity badge, probably looking for the rank identifier that was not present. “Are you expected, sir?” 

“The Old Man knows I’m coming.” Garth shrugged. The regimental commander did not in fact know he was coming today, but he’d certainly been told to expect the arrival of a representative from the commandant. 

The guard sighed, scanned the badge one more time for good measure, scrutinized his screen, then shrugged. “I’ve never seen that authorization code, but the system says you’re clear to proceed.” He pressed a button, and two swaths of razorwire slid apart in front of the groundcar. “Headquarters is in the main building, level three.” 

Garth didn’t go to the main building. The moment he was out of sight from the gate, he turned the groundcar into a narrow alley between two concrete structures and got out, heading toward a line of collapsible three-story cages which encased powered-down Kodiak suits. He hadn’t seen any of the machines in person since the live-fire exercises on Cactus back in ‘48. It wasn’t his main job on Montani, but it would be interesting to the Commandant to know about any unreported field modifications to these expensive titans. The regiments rarely if ever reported their gear modifications through proper channels, fearing that higher officers would order them to reverse the changes.  

This wasn’t an unfounded fear; too much added weight on a suit, or an armored vehicle, could burn out its power and motive systems in only a few days of combat. Garth, however, could raise the modifications with the original manufacturer; Kodiaks were still bespoke machines, with minor changes being made to production every few dozen units completed.  Perhaps something of the Marines’ under-the-table alterations could be included in production, reducing the chance of field units damaging their equipment with too many changes. 

Garth was pulling open his wristcuff screen in front of the first of the Kodiak refit cradles when a click and whine of capacitors behind him made him freeze. 

“Stop right there.” A nervous voice commanded. “What are you doing here?” 

Garth held his hands out away from his body and turned around slowly. The guard wasn’t a line Marine; he was one of the secondary troopers assigned to the regiment to guard its sprawling base. “Easy there. I have authorization.” 

“Sure you do.” The man waved his rail carbine. “Come with me.” 

Details

Tales from the Service: A Lifeline’s Shadows

2953-06-25 – Tales from the Service: A Lifeline’s Shadows 

There was a momentary silence in the room as Haversham settled back into his chair. All eyes were on Markward, who was looking down at his slate, making a note, as if what had been said was simply a supplementary note to add to his report.  Perhaps he thought this is what it was, but nobody else seemed to interpret it that way. 

“I concur with Captain Haversham.” Commander Dinah Weir finally spoke up. “We need data to prove to Command that this escort is insufficient. Even if we are forced to retire, our mission becomes one of gathering as much data as possible about the enemy force as we do.” 

“You concur-” Markward glanced up, eyes flashing in annoyance. Now, he seemed to understand what it was that had just been said, and he shot a glance at his flag captain. “We have enough data to show that this route has been blocked. Command needs nothing further.” 

“Orrie..." Weir shot Conrad Molnar a momentary sly look that, for a moment, he didn’t quite comprehend. "Can you give us the starmap and highlight all enemy activity?” 

The air over the table filled with glowing holographic motes. A loose net of about thirty of the represented stars soon glowed red, and tiny insets showed that more information was available on each one. The convoy’s position, just outside the jump limit of an anonymous dwarf-star system, appeared to the left of the red net, at the end of a meandering course through anonymous nowhere. The rendezvous location appeared far off to the right. It certainly looked, at first glance, like enemy forces had blocked the convoy’s advance, and were positioned to intercept any attempt to punch through to Force 73. 

Perhaps the map would have been convincing if Conrad were commanding one of the haulers, but his Bonaven Kovo, as the largest fast unit available to the convoy, had spent much of the operation supporting light forward scouting assets. He knew fairly well where vessels of Convoy 7380 had scouted for a path forward, and where they had not, and most of the red systems were places none of the ships under Markward’s command had gone. The only nearby system along the net’s expanse where scouts had actually been, another nameless dwarf system, didn’t have a red glow, because the scouting force had found it empty. 

“As I have been saying, we are at quite a disadvantage.” Markward gestured to the plot dismissively. “Most of these positions lack significant forces; they are picket stations trying to make contact with us for a fast pursuit force to intercept.” 

Conrad realized then what Weir’s sly look meant, and cleared his throat. It was time to play his part. “Admiral, this map shows an enemy force in the Urbrecht system. You ordered the  scout mission to Urbrecht suspended. Where is this data coming from?” 

“I scrapped the Urbrecht sweep because the chances of being detected were too high, Captain Molnar.” Markward glared at Conrad. “It is an ideal location for an enemy listening post. Based on other enemy locations, I don’t need it scouted to know we’ll find enemies there.” 

Conrad nodded. “So may I refine our data further?” 

Markward gestured toward the plot vaguely and made a show of reading something on his slate. 

Conrad glanced over at Weir with a slight shrug, then looked up at the overheads. “Orrie, can you show us just the positions confirmed through any sort of direct data?” 

“I’m sorry, Captain.” The perky voice assistant sounded crestfallen. “That request violates a high level data restriction.” 

Conrad raised his eyebrows theatrically, for the benefit of the hauler skippers and other more junior officers present. “Admiral?” 

Markward shrugged without looking up. “Problem, Captain?” 

Conrad stared at the rear admiral for several seconds, but evidently this was all he was going to get out of the man. Clearly, he was not going to lift his asinine data restrictions, even if it was to conduct a proper council of war.  

A few muttered voices broke the brief silence, but none of them spoke up.  

Conrad knew he needed to push the matter further, if this council was going to overrule Markward’s paranoia. He keyed his earpiece to transmit back to Kovo. “Bonnie, can you build a star plot of the locations of all data this force has identified as possible or positive enemy activity?” 

“On it... Done.” Bonnie’s sharp, crisp voice came back with only a slight delay due to the distance between the two ships. “Orrie has made your nearest holo-projector available to me. Would you like to see it now?” 

Markward looked up at this, scowling. For a moment, it looked like he was going to jump up and belay the order, but evidently even he knew that would sink his cause in the eyes of all his subordinates. 

“Please.” Conrad nodded, though obviously Bonnie couldn’t see the gesture. 

A moment later the star plot changed. Instead of a neat net of red indicators, there now were only two bright orange motes and a single red one far back along the convoy’s track, indicating the site of the enemy comms traffic that hard started their whole mad flight and the two ambiguous signal intercepts from shortly afterward. There was nothing now between Convoy 7380 and its intended rendezvous except a field of largely nameless stars. 

“Well then.” Weir jumped in before Markward found his voice. She probably knew almost as well as Conrad himself how little the admiral’s assumptions were based on, but she pretended to be surprised all the same. “May I ask, Admiral, what exactly we’re running from?” 

Admiral Markward submitted his retirement shortly after the ships of Convoy 7380 returned to Sagittarius Gate. He is, to my knowledge, no longer in Sagittarius or under Seventh Fleet command. I have no knowledge of his career save what little can be gleaned from public documents, but it seems that prior to the events described he was a competent and sensible officer; It seems the stress of a more forward command than previously given him overcame him. 

As I have hinted before, the convoy did eventually make contact with Force 73 and provide that squadron with a few much-needed supplies. 

Details

Tales from the Service: A Lifeline in the Balance

2953-06-18 – Tales from the Service: A Lifeline in the Balance 

Obviously, stress on field commanders is a constant problem in wartime, and in no place is it higher than in detached commands far outside easy communication range with their superiors. Battles, campaigns, even the course of the whole war might hinge on the decision of a junior admiral or even a captain on a forward mission, and most of the men and women in these postings know it. 

The pressure, I am sorry to say, gets the better of some of them, sometimes. Stress will make lunatics of us all, given enough time. 

At first, the ad-hoc council of war went slowly. Admiral Markward instructed one of his aides to lay out a quick summary of the convoy’s situation for the benefit of the hauler skippers and the few others who had been detached when various things had happened, and then the admiral himself laid out his proposed course of action and a few of the advantages and disadvantages as he saw it.  

There were few questions; most of the officers present were hesitant to speak up, even when the obvious result of this course – namely, the failure to deliver supplies to Force 73 – was not mentioned among the drawbacks. Markward’s analysis focused on getting his force back to port safely at all costs, just as Captain Conrad Molnar had expected it would.  

Commander Weir broke the uneasy silence that fell after Markward was done talking. “Isn’t this course against our orders, sir?” She gestured to the aide controlling the holo-projector, who nodded and called up the orders matrix. “Seventh Fleet told us to make every effort to link up with Bosch.” 

“Every effort does not mean suicide, Commander.” Markward emphasized the young officer’s rank to an extreme degree that made the bile rise in Conrad’s throat; only a rear-echelon careerist like the admiral would think a full captain at the helm of a large transport was higher on the Navy pecking order than the more junior skipper of a brand-new fast destroyer. Other than the flag captain and Conrad himself, Dinah Weir was likely the most militarily significant subordinate the admiral had. 

“Taking a random-walk until the second rendezvous window is hardly suicidal, Admiral.” Conrad looked up toward the overheads. “Is the asssitant active in this compartment?” 

A bright, feminine voice answered instantly. “Absolutely, Captain Molnar. You can call me Orrie.” 

Conrad rolled his eyes; he could already tell he disliked Gray Oriolus’s assistant personality configuration. Even the more reserved tone of Bonnie, the assistant on his own Bonaven Kovo, was sometimes too chatty for his tastes. “Can you estimate the odds of an encounter if we random-walk through deep space to the second rendezvous, making only the minimum number of harvesting stops in star systems?” 

“Only very loosely, if that’s all right.” 

“Take your best shot.” Conrad looked across the table at Admiral Markward. Asking the computer system to do this analysis should have been the job of the admiral and his staff, but if they’d done this, none of the results had been shared in their summary. Markward, for his part, looked unperturbed; perhaps he had done this already as he should have, and the results favored his perspective. 

“Based on the Admiral’s current op-for predictive map, the chance of an encounter is thirty-one percent.” Orrie took over the display to show a few charts. “Modeling suggests the most likely encounter profile is a skirmish with forward scouts, followed by a converging attack from multiple enemy squadrons if we can’t lose them.” Now the display became a fast-moving tactical plot, showing three groups of four Incarnation heavy cruisers converging on the huddled symbols representing Convoy 7380. Against that firepower, obviously, an escort force with only a single heavy cruiser and two light cruisers could do nothing. 

“So perhaps one chance in three of being found by scouts, one in six of being wiped out.” Conrad nodded. Markward had absolutely done this before, and the system was using some of his parameters, otherwise, the chance of interception couldn’t possibly be scored above five percent. There was, after all, still no conclusive proof the enemy was on the convoy’s tail at all. “That’s better odds than most of our ships would have of coming out of a full-scale battle intact.” 

“But this is a supply force, Captain Molnar.” Admiral Markward lowered his voice until it was almost a hiss. “A logistics operation. One in six convoys lost on this route would be unacceptable to the fleet.” 

“So would Force 73 being laid up for lack of supplies.” Weir chimed in. “The stores our haulers are carrying won’t do anyone any good back at Sagittarius Gate.” 

“The fleet will turn the supplies around and send them back with a proper escort.” Markward shrugged and folded his arms. “The sooner we get back, the sooner that will happen.” 

“With all due respect, Admiral...” This was a new voice; Captain Haversham of Gray Oriolus, Markward’s flag captain, had finally chimed in. “We have no hard evidence that this escort force is insufficient. If we could at least sight our pursuers, it would help identify what the next convoy will be up against.” 

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