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And Raise Your Head With Pride! Part 2
Posted By: Arthur Wellesly<arthur_wellesly@hotmail.com>
Date: 9 February 2003, 3:37 pm
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"Now, Colonel O'Keefe, if you would present the battle plan," Admiral Stevenson said in his usual cold voice.
"Yes, sir," O'Keefe said, standing up and walking over to the whiteboard. O'Keefe turned around to face the twenty men assembled at the Admiral's conference table and said, "Let me begin by addressing the concern which I have heard many of you have. You seem to think we cannot invade the planet with three carriers and two cruisers. If you presume that, then I thank you, for you would be more perceptive than I have given you credit for."
The officers at the table seemed quite taken aback by this little speech and they all looked at each other uncomfortably. Stevenson cracked a rare smile. "Our job here is not to conquer these planets but to soften them for a proper invasion. I'm sure you've all heard about Admiral Alcolado's little masquerade here. Obviously a full-scale assault is not yet possible. Allow me to explain our mission.
"We are going to insert a group of several hundred marines into Iskorosten and we are going to capture Latsek Slavonosh, the elected leader of the Abakum Colony. These marines will be inserted via Pelican drop offs. Any questions?"
"Yes, sir," said Major Bradley. "Why are were going to capture him? Why not just kill him by bombing him?"
"We plan to capture him and try to negotiate for him. If this fails we will execute him and transmit it universally using a subspace transmitter. This, we hope, will serve to dishearten the people and throw them into political chaos."
"What about his location, sir," asked Captain White. "How do we even know where he is?"
O'Keefe looked uncomfortable at this question, as if he were unsure of the answer. "We have spies on the surface, Captain. We're told he will be in Halu's House if the city was ever attacked. That's where you're going to grab him."
"Is Abakum intelligence aware of our position?" asked Captain Harper.
O'Keefe shook his head. "Our proximity to Yieles VI and the asteroid belt should keep us safe from detection by both planet sensors and by telescope. We're sitting in the dark."
O'Keefe waited briefly for any more questions, but, hearing none, he continued, "We will be sending in the bombers and fighters at 0900. Major Bradley, you will be in charge of the bombing squad and Captain Miller, you will be in command of the fighter squadron. Flight plans have already been uploaded to your individual ships. Good luck, gentlemen."
Admiral Stevenson rose up slowly from his chair and with him the rest of the officers in the room. "Your dismissed," he said to the men, and, with a prompt and unanimous salute, everybody emptied out of the room.
The old, pale admiral walked slowly and tiredly over to Major O'Keefe, his chief military advisor and good friend. "What do you think of the plan, O'Keefe?"
O'Keefe, a gruff, harsh man, did not disguise his opinion, even t his admiral. "I think it is a incredibly risky plan whose outcome is less than sure, sir. However, if it works," O'Keefe looked at Stevenson with a cocked eyebrow, "what fools will the Abakums look like."
Stevenson laughed out loud. "That's the idea, major, that's the idea." The battlegroup, though small, was impressive. The three carriers, the Indefatigable, the Washington, and the Galleon were all top-notch, modern carriers that spelled moving death for any target it was after. The Indefatigable and the Washington were both 425 meters long with eighteen decks. The Galleon was 475 meters long with twenty decks. They could all carry thousands of troops as well as over one hundred tanks and pelican dropships. The Indefatigable carried few troops or tanks, but instead housed 73 bombers and 35 fighters. All three carriers each weighed approximately 175,000 tons with state of the art fusion engines and with two and a half feet of solid titanium A battle plating.
The two Cruisers, the Montgomery and the Constellation were each Kelson-class cruisers and were both 280 meters in length with fourteen decks. They carried an impressive armament of 140 Falcon Missile pod bays on each side of the ship, as well as two nuclear warhead shafts per side. In addition to an impressive arsenal of modern weaponry, they both had three feet of titanium A battle plating with additional reinforced titanium buffers through the ship preventing it from breaking apart. They also had an additional two feet of battle plating surrounding the fusion reactor core. Both Cruisers could take a phenomenal amount of punishment without buckling. To top it all off, they both had 10 bombers and 12 fighters in their docking bay.
But now the Indefatigable was empty. The loading bays of both the Montgomery and the Constellation were similarly vacant. For all 93 bombers and 59 fighters had gone on an air assault on Abakum.
The LOBs (low orbit bombers) and LOFs (low orbit fighters) were practical quick strike spacecraft that could inflict the maximum amount of damage in the smallest amount of time. What they did was they got into orbit around the planet at a very high altitude to stay of out anti-aircraft range, and then, when they were over their target, they could drop to a low orbit and hit their targets with pinpoint accuracy and speed out before AA can even get a lock on them. The plan was to take out all of the SAM sites and land based airports so as to clear the way for pelican insertion. It was a good plan but it all relied on surprise, because if the Abakum could deploy their fighters, they would greatly outnumber the attack force and the assault would be a disaster.
"We're fifty-five million kilometers from Abakum, Captain Miller," Major Bradley said to the fighter squadron leader. "ETA twenty minutes."
"Acknowledged red leader," Miller responded.
The 152 spacecraft sped towards the distant blue dot in a tight formation with the bombers in the middle and the fighters forming a circle all around them. They flew past asteroids and space dust, gas anomalies and small stray rocks. Miller looked at all this through his starboard window as he continued on past it. The Captain had one small tactical nuke in his arsenal, as did two other fighters and all of the bombers. It would be so easy to end the threat to them for good by just pressing one button, but FLEETCOM had forbidden the use of nuclear weapons on either Ionius or Abakum. They would have to do this the hard way.
"Target in sight," Bradley said after about twenty minutes. All eyes in the strike force turned to look at the planet. It looked extraordinarily like Earth, except its oceans took up much more of the surface and its waters looked slightly greener. "All right, red team, turn on auto-pilot mode." Pictures of Iskorosten were taken using an onboard telescope from the Washington had given Admiral Stevenson and the other senior officers a good idea of the layout of the city and all its primary targets. Thus a predetermined flight plan had already been made for the bombers. The pilots were there simply to act as a backup should disaster strike. "Okay, red squad, let's move in."
Simultaneously all the bombers took a steep dive towards the planet and level off suddenly at high orbit. The fighters, who had no flight plan, followed in kind manually.
This was now the most dangerous part of the mission. For two minutes the strike force would have to remain very close to the planet and wait for the orbital spin to line up with the projected flight path. If they were detected prematurely everything would go to hell.
"You got anything, Miller?" Bradley asked, looking at his own radar.
"No fighters moving above the surface in the vicinity," Miller said. Then, abandoning his sensors, he looked through his enhanced visual optic telescope, scanning the surface with his own eye to see if there was any unusual movement. He saw nothing. "Nah, I can't see shit."
"Ready yourselves, men," Bradley said. "We're diving in ten seconds."
It seemed liked no time at all when suddenly the LOBs descended into lower orbit. The LOFs sped up to keep with them.
In just five seconds the low orbit bombers were in low orbit and they dropped their payload: an eight meter long, 12 ton Nimitz bomb. In less than one second after the bomb was dropped, they turned up and sped up into vacuum.
The Nimitz bombs were not actually one bomb. Instead, the eight-meter long casing housed almost 100 smaller remote guided missiles that tracked individual targets once the casing exploded at an elevation of 20 kilometers. Thus about 100 bombers actually dropped nearly 10,000 bombs.
As soon as the bombers were out of low orbit, the fighters followed with them. "I got a missile on my tail!" one man yelled. The man, a lieutenant Peterson, hurriedly let off a flare, but it was useless; the AA missile struck his ship's hull and it burst into flame. AA missiles hit two more bombers, but no more were able to lock on.
Miller looked through his telescope down to the surface in case any fighters were following him, but instead he saw thousands of small explosions all over the city. "Good work, Alpha team!" Miller said over the COM system. "We'll give O'Keefe something to be proud about!"
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