Tales from the Service: To Strafe a Sagittarian

2947-07-02 – Tales from the Service: To Strafe a Sagittarian 

Welcome to the first entry in Tales from the Service, the replacement feature for Tales from the Inbox for the duration of Sagittarian hostilities. 

Nojus and Koloman joined Sadie, Toal, and myself here at Håkøya yesterday, and we began our Naval Media Corps certification course. Interestingly enough, Toal told me that he went through this certification in order to embed during the Brushfire War, but hostilities ended before he could reach the conflict zone. Obviously, NMC needs to put him through the certification all over again; press rules for Brushfire were different than they are here. 

After our day of training today, we caught a shuttle to the cruiser Olek Mihaylov, where we were allowed to observe a battle drill to know what we were getting into. The efficiency of Navy professionals was quite impressive. After the drill, we ate in the officers’ mess, and Commander Cristian Gray of the ship’s attached gunship squadron proved quite a source of stories. Though Mihaylov has yet to encounter Sagittarians, Cdr. Gray’s five-boat squadron has only recently transferred onboard from the garrison station at Palmisano, where a Sagittarian cruiser-analogue made a rather spectacular raid on the orbital infrastructure, destroying a refinery station and killing thirty. Gray’s squadron suffered no losses, but he also assures me they did no real damage to the attacker.

His story (backed up by a formal report and a recording which I have since seen parts of) is interesting because it gives his personal account of what it is like to go head to head with the Sagittarians. His observation that their point defense weapons are not very effective against Navy strike ships is interesting, but so is his equal insistence that Navy strike weapons are totally ineffective against Sagittarian ships of the most well-known type.

The pre-launch ready klaxon wailed in Cristian’s ears, and he scanned the readouts in front of him for the final time. The ready indicators for Tamara’s and Angelos’s gunnery stations held steady and green; everything was as ready as it could be. 

Cristian flipped the last safety switch, and the hangar launch system took over, lifting the three spacers and Foxhound, their eighty-ton AG-36 Magpie gunship, to the catapult deck. One of the advantages of garrison duty was that a Naval field station always carried magnetic catapults for its squadrons; being fired from an over-sized missile launch rail was far more exhilarating than wobbling out of a too-small hangar with a tense set of thruster burns.  

As the lead ship of the squadron, Cristian always launched first. The readiness klaxon went silent, and was followed by the thud of the catapult clamps latching onto his boat and the steady tone of the launch warning. He put his head back in the crash-padded cockpit seat just in time to be crushed into the padding by eight gees of acceleration. In front of him, the square of empty space outside the hangar’s mouth yawned wide, then swallowed the Magpie. As soon as it had started, the acceleration was gone. 

“Launch complete.” Cristian engaged manual control and engaged the drive’s lesser acceleration. Behind him, the other four Magpies of his squadron launched one after another and formed up on his flanks. 

“Foxhound, target heading remains unchanged.” The young strike controller on the station sounded nervous, and Cristian didn’t blame her. It wasn’t every day a cruiser-sized alien ship blazed into a Frontier system on a high-speed pass. “Still heading for the refinery.” 

“Still no response?” Cristian put himself on an intercept course, watching the displays to make sure the other four gunships copied the maneuver. The garrison had been hailing the intruder for some time, without result, and could only interpret its behavior as hostile. 

“No response. Command authorization to fire if fired upon.” 

“Roger, Control.” Cristian flipped the levers to power Foxhound’s weapons. Behind him, the pilots of the other four gunships powered their own weapons. 

That the ship was of a kind with the aggressive wanderers seen across the Sagittarius Gap was only too clear from its hull profile and drive signature. There was no telling what sort of weaponry or defensive systems the ship employed; his flight might run into a curtain of fire at any moment. Even if they didn’t, five gunships wasn’t much of a threat to anything of cruiser size; all the weapons of all five Magpies would probably do little more than annoy the aggressor while it slagged local installations. They were, unfortunately, almost all the Navy had in Palmisano. 

As the distance closed, Cristian pulled up a wire-frame of the intruder. Ops on the station had done its best to highlight probable weapons emplacements and other identifiable features, but its sleek design was so alien that their notations remained little but guesswork. No Confederated Worlds vessel had yet exchanged fire with a Sagittarian cruiser-analogue and survived the ordeal. “Let’s do this at high rel-V.” He traced a line up one side of the wire-frame, following a cranny between two titanic plates of what were probably an armored outer hull. “Close to the hull as we can.” Flying close to the big ship was dangerous, but if the alien’s point defenses were anything like Terran systems, it would be less effective  

“They’ll shoot at us for sure if we get that close.” Lyuben, Cristian’s second in command, observed. 

“Then shoot back. They don’t pay us extra to bring ordinance back to the station.” The more annoying the squadron was, the better; they might even be sufficiently nettlesome to save most of the civilian orbital industry. 

“Aye, Commander.” 

“Foxhound, be advised.” The controller’s excitable voice returned as the big, blue-grey hull of the intruder began to loom large ahead. “Thermal signature suggests possible weapons fire. No scatter cone.” 

“Understood, Control.” Cristian immediately adjusted his heading, and the rest of the squadron followed, avoiding whatever might have been fired into their path. No scatter cone meant that whatever the ship had done, it hadn’t fired railguns, as a Terran ship would do to dissuade incoming strike launches. “Let me know if you can confirm that.” 

Confirmation came moments later when one of the orbital tugs around the refinery exploded, its death-fire blooming silently over the limb of the planet below. “They’re shooting.” Cristian knew most of the tugs were remotely operated, but they were still expensive machines. “That got on target fast.” 

“Some sort of energy beam.” The strike controller confirmed. “Light speed time to target, but it probably took several seconds to punch through the hull.” 

“Time to target, forty seconds. Watch your hull sensors.” There was no hope of dodging an energy weapon at such close ranges, but if it took even half a second to burn through a hull, the agile gunships could roll out of the beam before suffering serious damage. 

The Sagittarian filled the forward viewscreen now, and Cristian picked out the canyon-like hollow which he meant to follow on his run. No lights glowed out from the shadowed parts of the ship, and the part of its hull in the light seemed to glow with elfin light, as if it was a construct of magic rather than engineering. 
 
“Beam just grazed me, lead.” Blondie, one of the other pilots, sounded shaken as her Magpie spiraled briefly out of formation, then slowly worked its way back into position. “Minor damage.” 

Cristian opened his comms to reply, but a shrieking sensor alert encouraged him to pull out of the path of another beam before it could fry Foxhound. A salvo of blue-white projectiles erupted from the invader’s hull, fired toward the refinery. He did his best not to focus on the lives of the refinery crew. “Twenty seconds. Guns free.” 

Behind him, Cristian felt more than heard the gun emplacements on the gunship’s port and starboard flanks spin into position, facing toward where the Sagittarian’s hull would shortly be. Tamara and Angelos would be disciplined and shoot only at things that looked vulnerable, but the greenhorn gunners on Blondie’s and Elcin’s rigs would probably unload their ordinance more randomly. 

“Ten seconds.” Again, he wheeled out of an energy beam, watching the squadron briefly scatter in all directions on the monitors. 

He’d meant to do a five-second countdown to weapons range, but a series of chasing beams kept him busy until he dove into the canyon between the titanic armor sections on the Sagittarian ship’s hull. The chatter of railshot and the bass thunder of plasma cannon from the gunners’ positions competed for the right to deafen Cristian first, with the intermittent shriek of hull sensor alarms indicating where various beam emplacements briefly found him. 

The bow to stern run lasted only three seconds, and Cristian wheeled Foxhound around for a second in time to see the refinery station, spouting fire and debris, break in half. The Sagittarian hadn’t slowed to enter orbit; its velocity was already carrying it away from the planet. There was no sign of damage from the ordinance his squadron had unloaded. “Dammit.” 

“Foxhound, it’s control. They’re leaving. Break off pursuit and perform search and rescue.” 

“Control-” 

“Priority order, Commander.” This time, it wasn’t the nervous strike controller’s voice, but the stern bark of the garrison commander. “Civilian lives are at stake. Pick up survivors from the refinery.” 

Cristian ground his teeth. He knew his squadron hadn’t done any real damage to the cruiser with only one pass – but he also knew there was little chance of doing more with a second. “Roger, control. Search and rescue.” 

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Editor's Loudspeaker: Well, Then.

2947-06-26 - Editor's Loudspeaker: Well, Then.

Today's announcement surprised even me.

I never even put in a request to participate in the embed coverage. I sent a message back to Centauri to check if there was a mistake, and they assured me there wasn't. They also told me that Nojus Brand will arrive here at Håkøya by the end of the week, and we'll proceed together to Maribel to report to the Fifth Fleet's headquarters.

I would say something about it, but I'm still in shock. Of all the people the studio could pick to send out with the fleet, they picked me? To go to war?

I'm not a member of the faith myself, but any of you who are, start praying for Nojus, myself, and the rest of the team. Even nestled in the heart of the fleet, even though the Fifth Fleet will probably be overwhelming firepower against these Sagittarian raiders, we won't be entirely out of danger.

I can only say I'm a bit terrified, but I'll do my best. I hope that's enough.

--Duncan

 

(NOTE: I know Nojus will do his best too, but I doubt he's scared of any of this. Compared to his average week, this little Naval dust-up is probably more like a vacation.)

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Notice: Cosmic Background Coverage of the Sagittarius War

2947-06-26 - Notice: Cosmic Background Coverage of the Sagittarius War

With Admiral Tosi's announcement that the Navy considers the Sagittarius Frontier to be a theatre of war and a declaration of war aims working its way through Confederated Parliament, Cosmic Background Studios has decided to accept an Admiralty offer of embedded reporting with the Fifth Fleet.

The obvious choice to lead the embed is our own Sovanna Rostami, but she has recently experienced a medical scare which makes us all hesitant to ship her off with the Navy into a war zone. Other notable personalities both inside and outside our organization have come forward to volunteer for this role, making our final decision a very challenging one.

While we will continue to provide variety entertainment on our vidcast episodes, we will be replacing some of our content with war coverage for the duration of hostilities. On the vidcast episodes, we will be replacing the Mercenary Logs and Accidental Legend feature segments with update segments recorded by our team with the Fifth Fleet. The weekly Tales from the Inbox text feed series will be on hold for the duration of hostilities, to be replaced with a compelling story culled from the fleet's records. Obviously, we will be working with Naval Intelligence to make sure no secret information is released.

As the loss of Tales from the Inbox might indicate to most of you, we have decided that Duncan Chaudhri will lead the embed team, as he is nearer to the Fifth Fleet's current headquarters than any of our other leading personalities. He won't, of course, be handling this big job alone - datasphere legend and veteran explorer Nojus Brand has agreed to work on contract as Duncan's partner for the duration of the embed assignment. Their support team behind the scenes will be composed of Sadie Leclerc, Koloman Gotti, and Toal Yoxall, three experienced multimedia techs who have been working with us in various behind the scenes roles for some time.

We're excited to see the reporting this team can bring to Cosmic Background.

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Tales from the Inbox: Red Carpet for Reachers

2947-06-25 – Tales from the Inbox: Red Carpet for Reachers

I am told that a decision about Cosmic Background’s War Correspondent role has been made and that an announcement is expected in the next few days. That is all the information I have; evidently the techs have already prepped a text feed announcement and a segment to insert into one of the vidcast episodes that will be released in the next few days. 

Despite the electrifying news last week, there is no news on the war situation worth remarking on here. As far as I’m concerned, that’s good; leave the war-reporting job to the professionals. 

Today’s entry features an alleged sighting of a rare sapient indeed; though I have been sent several accounts of this species since the beginning of this text feed series, none of them have been credible enough or specific enough to publish. This account is well documented, though oddly enough none of the documentation sent my way has been published anywhere else on the datasphere. 

As usual for their kind, the visit was peaceful, but my source redacted all information relating to their appearance on the ground and about what they actually wanted out of a visit to a remote Terran colony. He would not say why. Perhaps at a later date this information will become available.

Raju blinked his eyes and stared at the screen. The orbital telsat network had finally locked onto the ship just entering orbit after inexplicable amounts of trouble doing so, and now he had a clear picture of the company to expect. He knew exactly what he was looking at; he didn’t know how it was possible. The glittering curves and fluted spines of the ship, more at home in a primordial sea than in the interplanetary firmament, could only be one thing. 

“Sohvi!” Raju’s shout echoed oddly in the underground spaceport control room. On a colony barely one T-year old, the term “spaceport” remained aspirational at best, but a full orbital telemetry network had been installed before the first human had set foot on Harvey’s Penury. “I’ve got ID on the visitor. Call the boss down here.” 

“Trouble?” Sohvi emerged from the alcove housing the control room’s beverage synthesizer machine and hurried to one of the other two consoles to place a call. 

“Could be.” Raju could have done it himself, but that would require taking his eyes off the intruder. He had been hoping for a quiet shift on spaceport watch duty as a break from endless days of tending gene-tweaked crops and repairing an endless series of minor equipment failures. This was, in fact, the planet’s first unscheduled visitor in its colonial history. 

As his associate hurriedly sent a high-priority alert to the colony’s leader, Raju got more of the telsats to focus on the ship to improve the quality of the image, as if expecting the distinctive, organic shape of its hull to be replaced by the boxy outline of a light hauler with enough imaging resolution. He couldn’t bring himself to tell Sohvi what it was; if he said it out loud, or even thought it too forcefully, it might break the spell. 

“Stars around. Reachers!” Sohvi’s voice over Raju’s shoulder made him jump and dispelled the magic of the moment all at once. Still, after he settled back down into his chair, the ship was still there. She had said it, and it was true. The vessel now settling into orbit was undoubtedly of Reacher design. 

The automated satellites had been hailing the incoming ship without reply since it had been detected hours before, but suddenly the board lit up. “They’re responding to traffic control.” Raju stared dumbly at the display, afraid to touch anything. 

Sohvi reached past him to engage the console’s speakers. “...Request permission, one lander, spaceport facility designated Harvey’s Penury, use of.” The monotone voice of the Reachers’ translation equipment sent a chill down Raju’s spine. He knew that perhaps two hundred Terrans in all of explored space had ever spoken to a Reacher. “Settlement response, Terran, awaiting.” 

“They want to land.” Raju summarized. The words their translator used made perfect sense individually, but organizing them into the structure of a human thought took some effort. “When the boss gets here, he-” 

“Finally get the bogie to respond to hail?” Dr. Shahrivar clomped into the command center, still wearing mud-caked boots and overalls. Tall, broad-shouldered, and silver-haired, the colony’s manager never hesitated to get his hands dirty on days when there wasn’t much managing to do. “Damn well better not be the-” The big man stopped short as soon as he got close enough to see Raju’s screen. “It can’t be.” 

“They want to land.” Sohvi stepped aside to let him take her place behind Raju’s chair. “They didn’t say what for.” 

Shahrivar’s short beard didn’t hide the way he clenched his jaw in thought as he stared at the feed. “How big is that ship?” 

Raju tapped the controls to retrieve an answer. “Eight hundred meters on the long axis.” The ship being somewhat platter-shaped, it probably outweighed most Confederated Navy cruisers. Nobody had ever exchanged weapons-fire with a Reacher and lived to tell about it, but the rare and retiring sapients possessed a reputation for superior technology. Even if they were lightly armed for their size, they could probably glass the colony site quite easily. “I think they said they wanted to land a launch.” 

“Nice of them to ask forgiveness, but we can hardly stop them, can we?” Shahrivar shook his head. “Sohvi, get back to the compound and get everyone into shelter.” 

Without a word, the young woman clattered up to ground level at a dead run. Raju turned his head to look at his boss, waiting for a similar instruction. 

“Don’t just sit there, son.” Shahrivar hurried into the sanitation stall adjoining the control room. “Get them a de-orbit track.” 

Raju blinked several times before returning his attention to the console, finger hovering over the key which would transmit a reply. Taking a deep breath, he pressed it. “Reacher vessel, this is control. Landing permission granted. Stand by for course telemetry.” 

As soon as he’d sent it, Raju winced; none of them had remembered the standard procedure of asking a visitor’s purpose. As he set up a de-orbit vector and course toward the grass-covered spaceport field, he wondered whether any answer they would have given would have meant anything to Terrans anyhow. 

Dr. Shahrivar emerged from the sanitary stall in only his smart-fabric jumpsuit, cleaned up and reconfigured for a somewhat more formal but less practical cut. “How long until they land?” 

A quick check back to the board revealed that the Reachers, after asking permission to land, had neither waited for Raju’s course data nor made any attempt to follow it once it had been sent. Their launch was already thundering into the upper atmosphere, spinning at so high a rate that it seemed intent not on landing but on drilling its way deep into the planet. It seemed impossible that the sapients inside could survive such gee forces, but there was a terrifying regularity to its plummet which suggested the craft was functioning perfectly. “If they bleed velocity to land safely, five minutes.” If they didn’t, the impact would obliterate the landing field entirely, and shower the rest of the colonial outpost with finely ground debris. Raju hoped they would land. If they didn’t, he had about forty seconds to make his peace with the universe. 

“Come on, then.” Dr. Shahrivar beckoned. “Let’s go meet them.” 

Raju stood and followed his superior up into the hard-edged afternoon sun, immediately picking up the fireball and smoke-trail of the incoming Reacher launch. Sure enough, its arrow-straight smoke-trail became a helix, then vanished altogether, leaving only a red-hot mote spinning toward the ground. “Hell of a ride that must be.” 

Shahrivar’s thoughtful grunt suggested his mind was elsewhere, so they watched the craft’s remaining descent in silence. The closer to the ground the ship got, the slower it fell, and the slower it spun. It was bigger than Raju had expected – thirty meters long at least – and the seashell aesthetics of its mothership were repeated in miniature on the lander, though without the spines or fluting. 

At last, the ship’s belly came to a gentle rest on the field a hundred meters away, still hot enough to set the nearest plant-life ablaze. 

As the seconds ticked past without any movement from the ship, Raju cleared his throat. “Have you ever met a Reacher before, boss?” 

“No.” Dr. Shahrivar turned toward Raju with a distant smile. “If they’re anything like what you see in the the archive footage, this is bound to be interesting.” 

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