Chapter 2
“Thank you all for coming. We’re now a day out, so it’s time to go over our planned tactics.”
The words were in part a formula – only those onboard the Harmony herself were able to actually be present. But dozens of icons sparkled in the holographic tank of the briefing room, indicating that all of the tactical officers, squadron leaders, executive officers and captains were listening and watching.
“First off, here’s the system.” A F3 class star, the primary of Palomino burned a little hotter than Celestia’s sun itself. It was orbited by a pair of gas giants and three smaller, rocky planets.
One of the moons of the closer-in giant blinked. “That’s the main bit of real estate we’re defending. It’s a research station working on applied advanced physics, which means?”
“Weapons.” Dash’s voice was unusually grim.
“Exactly. We have to assume that whoever’s on the way will know that as well, so they’ll try to capture or destroy. We’ve got to prevent that happening until a full fleet arrives with the capability to build a Skywatch station.”
Skywatch stations were powerful fixed defences the size of a small city, with the ability to shield a vast area of the planet they orbited and the firepower to match a fairly large fleet. They were also blindingly obvious and took almost a year to build, making the presence in the system of a star nation’s forces obvious and tying down the fleet required to defend the construction. All things being equal, many small facilities relied on stealth instead.
The moon swelled until it filled the holotank. “This is Palomino-d IV. It’s habitable, with a breathable atmosphere, but only plant-analogues have made it out of the oceans thus far. The research compound itself is climatically altered and administered.” Another zoom. “You’ll notice that it’s at the end of a long river valley running well back into this mountain range. Fluttershy?”
“Ah, yes.” The pegasus took over control of the holo. “As you can see, the compound isn’t very well protected, but a lot of it is underground which should allow them to resist bombardment by smaller ships, fighters and aircraft. The point defence network is reasonable considering the remoteness of the location… the real risk, though, is that our enemy will just go for a near light speed missile strike, also known as a cee-fractional strike, which would, um…” Twilight discreetly turned up the gain on her tac officer’s microphone, “would lead to the complete destruction of the facility, and probably the mountain range.”
“Assuming that they attempt to capture. What then?”
“The mountains prevent landing of any particularly large forces, and the areas within line of sight would be just too risky for a transport, so this flat area is the most likely spacehead.” A side valley flashed once. “In this case, the enemy attack would be able to travel down the river valley without significant natural obstruction, though it’s so far up that the timeframe would be almost an hour for air cavalry and as many as twelve for planetary siege.”
Air cavalry was the fastest type of ground units, though they more closely resembled dragoons than the ancient concept of true cavalry. Small detachments of infantry riding in heavily armed assault shuttles, they were able to project power over large distances rapidly and were often used to take points for other forces to hold.
Planetary siege were at the other end of the scale. Massively armed and armoured fighting vehicles principally fielded by the Diamond Dogs, they were often nearly as powerful as a battleship.
“The best choke points are here and here.” One of the indicated points was where a ridge had been cut through by the river as it rose, resulting in a pass barely a kilometre across. The other was much wider, but was the confluence of three rivers from fairly large drainages the other side of the mountains. “The latter has only a few fording points, forcing the enemy to either bunch, abandon their heavy armour or use air transport.”
“Thank you. Any comments, marines?”
“How’d our own AA gear stack up against orbital fire? I heard what you’re saying about cee-fractionals, and I don’t want to be on the receiving end of that.”
Fluttershy relaxed slightly, which still left her appearing thoroughly nervous. “Okay, that’s different. Precision targeted orbital fire has to be fired from nearby, so it’ll still be accelerating, and it’s so high angle you’d have all the tracking time you want. Actually, ground based energy weapons can be a lot more powerful than space based ones because of cooling and weight considerations, so it’d be the ships in trouble.”
“Nevertheless, it does mean we will have to finish off their fleet or drive it away from the planet before the ground battle is over, or they might just bombard the moon anyway.” Twilight added. “Anyone else?”
Silence.
“Right. Now, the space side of things will involve a few new toys that we haven’t introduced yet. The first is – Colonel Dash, I don’t know if you noticed that the squadron tactical control nets are much larger than needed?”
“Yeah, actually. Twelve ships per squadron, but about fifty extra slots.”
“That’s because the research division managed to get a deception-mode Electronic Counter Measure emitter small enough to fit in a missile. There are four revolver magazines assigned to them on each fighter, and six rounds per magazine, so you’ll be going in with a cloud of decoy targets to add to the real ones. They don’t last all that long, but we have a lot of spares.”
“Neat.” Dash said, already thinking.
“Second, the same line of research led to the dragon’s tooth emitter head on a standard missile. Faking an entire shoal of missiles is even more of a strain on the emitters, even the bigger ones that can be put in these missiles, but they’ll last long enough to make it through the interception zone. The third one’s the Electronic Warfare platforms I’m sure you noticed. Those are designed to aid missile defence and let us make full use of the off-bore capability – they provide a look-up capability past the drive wedge, and they can each run two ships’ worth of both offensive and defensive weapons, without exposing the broadsides.”
“Marvellous.” Rarity declared. “Only one question, though, why wait until now to tell us? We could have practiced with them.”
“Equestria is still an open system, so there’s the danger of surveillance. Nobody wanted to advertise these capabilities when there was still the possibility of our not needing them. Actually, since things are heating up with the Gryphons again, the original plan was to deploy them fleet wide at commencement of hostilities. That’s a wash, though, since Palomino is such an important location.” Twilight explained. “I don’t think there’s anything else installed that I haven’t mentioned, though, and we did practice with the off-bore firing capability. Right, what does the location of Palomino give us?”
“It’s not all that far from the hyper limit since it’s a gas giant moon.” Fluttershy replied. “Fortunately the –d component is large enough to have its’ own limit, and that gives us about two light minutes of space to use, assuming they come in on the limit itself. The planet’s large enough that it forms an obstacle to line of sight over a substantial area, so we’ll need to have ships above and below the ecliptic to not miss them transiting in.”
“Thank you. Now, depending on the enemy raiders and their fleet configuration, it might be necessary to...”
“All hands, brace for crash translation!”
Those few throughout the fleet who had not already done so buckled themselves in, and seconds later the wings of all eight began to shimmer in all the colours of the rainbow.
Crash translations were hard on the crew, but they were also the way of arriving in a system that took the least time since they let the ships carry velocity over the hyper walls, and Twilight had decided that there was no other choice. Since the timeframe was almost completely unknown, Sixth fleet had no way of knowing if it was arriving as timely reinforcements, riding to the rescue… or there only to avenge the dead.
“Theta wall in two!”
The ships remained poised for a moment, as if on the lip of a cliff… then the universe heaved.
All eight pairs of wings blazed white, the normally-slow eddies of hyperspace jerked crazily, and Sixth Fleet shed over half of its’ velocity in an instant.
“Eta wall in three!”
The wings barely had time to dim before a second influx of transfer energy flooded them. Twilight felt ill, but swallowed it. She was the Admiral, and she had to-
The ship hit the Zeta wall, and then the Epsilon seconds later.
The translation gradient must be nearly straight down! She marvelled, anything to take her mind off the series of wrenching distortions.
The Delta wall was next, but by this point the walls were weaker and didn’t strain her system so much. Shaking her head to clear it, she felt the Gamma wall go past. “Engineering? Everything going fine down there?”
“You betcha! We’ve got a full charge on the wings, and the engines are tuned up to catch the sump!”
“Thank you, commander.” She closed the channel, and looked around her staff. Lt. Lyra was recovering from a near attack of nausea, but the rest of them seemed to have taken it well enough.
“Alpha wall in two… one…”
At a point in space around thirty million kilometres from the research station on Palomino-d IV, eight brilliant white flashes of light heralded the arrival of the dreadnaughts of Sixth Fleet. Their wings burned with a fierce white light, then swept backwards, and the nearly-stationary ships leapt forward at an enormous acceleration far beyond what they could normally sustain.
The purpose of a crash translation was simple – to build up a high charge on the wings, storing as much of the transit energy as possible, rather than let it bleed away as normal. Thus stored, the energy could be used to briefly deepen the inertial sump of the ship’s drive and allow it to hit vast accelerations, making up much of the speed drop from the translation itself.
“Surge is dropping… and power curves have levelled out. We’re at 15,000 KPS, turning to decelerate.”
Rarity nodded. “Thank you, Miss Drops. Engineering. AJ, how are things looking?”
“Well, that surge probably took a thousand hours off the life of the wing power busses right there, but everythin’s looking fine.” The cheerful voice replied.
“Thank you, bridge out. Okay, comms. Check the status of the rest of the ships, if you would be so kind. Tactical, anything else in system?”
“No, captain. No enemy ships or debris sighted.”
Twilight sighed in relief. “We arrived in time, then. Step down to normal full power, please.”
The drives of almost all ships that travelled space used “wedges” of focused gravity, into which they ‘dumped’ their inertia so as to accelerate at high g factors without crushing the occupants into paste. The crash translation used the energy of hyperspace to dump additional inertia, but under normal circumstances maximum acceleration was limited to the power of the drive wedge. This was further reduced to 80% of normal acceleration except in emergencies, since an overstrained inertial compensator tended to fail more spectacularly than one under a lesser power load.
One side benefit of the wedge – and the reason it was the pre-eminent drive system – was that the wedges were utterly impenetrable by any weapon in known space. The shields provided were used as, perhaps, a riot shield would be – an analogy only hampered by the way that acceleration had to be perpendicular to both wedges.
“The station’s hailing us.”
“Well, at least they’re prompt.” Rarity said lightly. They were barely three minutes into the system.
“Actually, captain, I’ll take this.” Twilight interjected. “I’m the sort of person they expect to see knowing about this place.”
“Oh, of course, darling.” She replied, handing the exchange off to the flag deck.
“…name and purpose, unknown ships.” The challenge concluded. Twilight noted that it had been done voice only, probably to prevent it being immediately apparent that this was an Equestrian installation.
“Scratch, full video please. Palomino, this is Admiral Twilight Sparkle aboard TMS Harmony, Sixth fleet command. We have intelligence that a raid or attack on this system may be imminent, and we’re here to mind the shop until a proper reinforcement echelon can arrive. Sorry, Palomino groundside, but it looks like your isolation has come to an end. Sixth fleet out.”
Twilight glanced over at her comms officer. “On the chip, ma’am.” The unicorn took an extra moment to play it back through her headphones. “Clean recording.”
“Good. Send it.”
“Away.”
Four minutes ticked past, and Sixth Fleet fell over three and a half million kilometres towards the planet, before a reply came back. This time, instead of a simple message, a live video feed appeared. The speaker was a fairly large male unicorn.
“Can’t say that’s good news, but it’s nice of you to come and join us if things are going to get rough. I make your ETA about one point five hours from now, so if there’s nothing else..?”
“Actually, I’m afraid there is. I’m going to need more complete geophysical information on the local terrain and a tac summary of the installation, so my staff can get working. I’m afraid the ONI files were last updated several months ago.”
Four more minutes passed. It was an unfortunate fact of light speed communication that this sort of thing happened – etiquette stated that switching to a wallpaper image was only permissible if the delay was five minutes or so each way.
“Understood. I’ll get some of the techs compiling what we have geophysics wise, but I can tell you now that the only change in the last year was an extra point defence station. That was three months ago, and it puts up our laser clusters to fifty and gives us a total of twenty five countermissile links, though we don’t have all that many missiles for them.”
“Thank you, that’s helpful information nonetheless. Sixth Fleet out.”
Twilight waited until the transmit light blinked out, before stamping her hooves on the deck twice in quick succession. “Alright, people! Now we know their point defence situation, we can get some idea on the survivability of the installation against air or artillery strikes, like from a Dog heavy – or for that matter a Gryphon armoured cavalry brigade. What kind of commitment would we need to make from shipboard resources to strengthen for that?”
Dash frowned. “Given how good the Auroras are, I’d say that a gryphon brigade wouldn’t last all that long. The air mobile portion, anyway, if we get gun packs. Resisting their AA might be harder, though, especially as keeping up shields in atmosphere kills manoeuvrability. I’ll get to it.”
“Do so. If necessary, we can of course deploy fighters after using them in a space action. Coordinate with Mac and Trixie.”
“O-kay, left a touch… there!” Applejack checked her eyeballed placement with a minicomputer, and found it to be accurate. “Now, power ‘em up, by pairs.”
Two by two, fourteen small devices placed around the perimeter of the installation spun to life. An azure corona built around each one, and then a brilliant blue dome formed just outside the line they established.
“And there you have it. Battle screen online.” She kicked a foreleg at the dome. “Kind of a power hog, and won’t take anything too heavy like a cee-fractional, but should give you extra time agin any air-cavalry that comes in. Those have to use light weapons. Hell, with them point defence towers you’d come out the better in a fight like that.”
“And how would they take ground-based fire?”
“Against a medium mech… they’d probably give you time to hide. The kinda plasma cannon that can be mounted on a mech would get deflected, but the generators would likely explode so you’d only block the one shot.”
“That’s cheery.”
“Better than nothing, now, ain’t it?” Applejack asked. “And ‘sides, if they can’t punch you out by going over the top, they have to fight through the marines, and my brother won’t let you down. You can have my word on that.”
Twenty kilometres away, at the river choke point – the closer of the two – Mac nodded to himself as the hasty defences went up. The Marine brigade, between their eight battalions, had enough in the way of prefabricated emplacements to build a fairly strong cork in the bottle.
They weren’t going to defend the second position, the gorge. That was too far from the installation, in his opinion, though depending on whom the enemy actually turned out to be there were plans to whittle them down there, either by bombing from the assault shuttles or by using air mobile forces in those same shuttles to pick off the enemy as they emerged.
It was a good thing the mountains came so close to the gorge, though, or it would be a death sentence for the shuttles.
“Brigadier.”
He turned, spotting a blue unicorn walking over to him.
“Eeeeyup?”
Trixie rolled her eyes. “Oh, don’t start that again. And as I was going to say, there are a few areas around here which would turn thixotropic in case of a heavy mech moving through. I was going to detail my earth specialists to expand them and see if I can get a properly marshy area. Does that help your projections?”
The big stallion looked down at his map and tapped it with a hoof, speaking in a slow drawl. “If there’s only one clear path, it’ll make them bunch up more and move slower than if we just block it off completely. Would this mix you’re talking about support the weight of a tank?”
“You mean like a Gryphon Panzer, or a Dog light mech? No, they have too much ground pressure. Combat cars would be able to get over with their fans on full, and Dog APCs are amphibious anyway, but it would block anything heavier that wouldn’t just treat the whole river as a ford.”
“Then go ahead, Captain.”
Trixie nodded in salute, and trotted off a little way. A quick application of telekinesis drew her staff and placed it on the ground, and an almost subsonic sound thrummed out from the point of contact.
A moment later, she raised it again, snapping her communicator out of a pouch on her combat webbing. “Okay. 2/1st, I need you down at the ford.”
An affirmative reply came back, and she set off at a ground-eating canter. A dataslate floated in her upper field of vision, the areas needing attention being highlighted one by one as Harmony’s main computer collated the results of her seismic scan.
“Stellar and Brindle are under emissions control over the north pole of Palomino-d, covering most of the system. So long as at least one of the other ships is south of Palomino-d IV’s equator, there isn’t anywhere it’s possible to transit in without being noticed.”
“So that’s the setup. What about the plan for when our unwelcome guests come?” Dash asked. “I don’t like the idea of a third of our total fighter strength being out on a limb like that.”
“Their ECM suites should allow them to remain in stealth under low power against any navy’s sensor systems. Their captains are under orders to remain in company and attempt to work around the back of any guests, and to be ready for full double barrage and crash launch at the most opportune time. While I appreciate that your survivability is going to be lower without the fifth and sixth squadrons, the decoy missiles should help. Oh, and I want attacks to be coordinated with the fleet where possible – the more of their point defence is shooting down missiles, the less can be aimed at you, and we can put out a hell of a missile barrage. And one more thing, you are explicitly warned not to go out chasing lightly defended transports, we want them to commit to a landing so we don’t have a cee-fractional strike hanging over the heads of the marines.”
“Point taken. Eesh.” Dash muttered. “So, what load out should we have as default?”
“I’m assuming that there’s a risk of the enemy having small craft. I’d say start out with gun packs and light missiles, and if it’s something like, oh, a Gryphon formation with no carriers-“
The Colonel snorted. “Like that’ll ever happen.”
“Then we’ll rearm the fighters at that time. I still want the internal launchers to have antiship missiles, though, they’re too generally useful and loading light missiles into them would be a waste of space.”
“Good point. And what about decoys?”
“Full load. Don’t replenish them on any given pass, since seeing a source separate from another will tell the point defence computers which two sources must correspond to one fighter, but do it between passes.”
“Huh, yeah, guess you’re right there too. I have to admit, Admiral, you’ve really thought this through. I was worried that you were a missile-deck admiral or an intel specialist who wasn’t used to the real world, but, well.”
Twilight smiled. “It’s partly Storm Wing’s doing. He and I gamed out some of the implications of this new technology, and he always insisted that a given round of tests be done with a single fleet that couldn’t replenish itself. Some of the other test admirals went for full-bore, accept-any-losses attacks, and that usually worked for about three missions until they ran out of fighters – or capital ships.”
“Well, you’re okay in my book.” Dash raised a hoof, and after a moment Twilight copied her and touched them together.
“Good. I’d hate to be, well, bad in your book, if that makes any sense.”
“Thank you for going to all this trouble.” Fluttershy mumbled, looking into a deep hole in the ground halfway along the narrow riverbed of the gorge.
The engineer she was talking to, one of the Apple clan by the name of Braeburn, shrugged. “Well, this makes sense to me, so I can’t see any reason why not. Okay, what channel do you want it set to?”
“Four-oh-one, please.” The pegasus said, and inserted a dataslate into the large device hanging from a pinnace overhead.
The engineer tapped a few controls, then nodded in satisfaction. “Done. You going to be controlling this yourself?”
“No, I’d be much too far away, and probably out of line of sight anyway. I’m going to give this to, er, Caramel. Would you mind giving me a lift?”
“Sure thing., just give me a sec.” Braeburn turned his attention to the pinnace. “Okay, down another two feet… aaand done. Tractors on, shed about fifty cubic metres from the bottom of the pile into the hole, another two hundred into the river, then lower it back down and I’ll seal it.”
The pinnace complied, quickly burying the device, and Braeburn walked slowly around the perimeter of the displaced section of soil. Where he’d walked, the gap was covered by mud, and a scattering of rocks kicked over it created the illusion that nothing had been done there.
“You sure this is gonna be undetectable, commander?”
“Ah-er-yes. It can spoof radar returns and the like, and there’s very little actual power leakage outside the shell. It’s why I picked an area with quartz veins, so what little there is will be written off as piezoelectricity if they bother to scan at all.”
“You think they might not?”
“Well, it does depend on who we’re waiting for… Anyway, that lift?”
Braeburn waved the pinnace down to land next to them. “Certainly. You never got the hang of the whole ‘high rankin’ officer’ thing, ma’am?”
“It just seems impolite to order. It’s why I could never be a proper commander…”
“Naw, don’t talk like that. Nothing wrong with being considerate.”
“Hyper footprint!”
Pinkie was instantly alert. “General Quarters! Heading and strength?”
The ACTO of the ship looked over his board as the flares came in, ignoring the strident GQ alarm. “Sixteen… no, eighteen point sources, ma’am. It’s at 120 to the moon-planet heading, inclination 35.”
Tactical’s holotank lit up, indicating the sources by strength. “CIC makes it ten in the dreadnaught size range, six escorts and two that could be either transports or really big carriers. No crash translation.”
“Okay, so we have a few hours to play with. Ships that big are going to accelerate really, really slowly. Let the eggheads know about the guests – oh, and warn the marines that the party starts soon.”
The screen on the watch chair arm lit, revealing Twilight with her mane and tail mussed. It was ship “night”, and by the looks of things the Admiral had been keeping to the schedule.
“What can you tell me?”
“Not all that much, we’re only getting light speed information now. They transited about half a light minute from the planetary limit, so their information must be patchy.”
“Pity it’s not more patchy. It would have been entertaining to see them try to come in inside the limit of a planet they didn’t know about.” The consequence of such a mistake was a destructive strain on the emitters – or, if the error was more than a third the radius of the hyper limit, spectacularly fatal.
Twilight shook off the mood. “Okay, sorry. Still a bit groggy.” The sounds of several ponies at a swift canter echoed down the link, and Twilight’s face in the screen turned to the flag bridge as a whole. “Fluttershy, good morning. What’s their ETA?”
The yellow pegasus’ eyes flashed, trying to take in the information flooding at her. “Ah, hang on… okay, if they stay in company with the larger ships and go for a zero distance/zero relative velocity, three hours two minutes. If they try a least time with the larger ships, two hours nine minutes. Assuming they use only their capital ships and faster, the numbers become two hours nine and one hour thirty-one.”
“Right… what polity? Anything?”
“Uh, Reprise CIC has a tentative ID on the dreadnaughts. Diamond Dog Mastiffs.”
Most of the bridge crew breathed a sigh of some relief. Dogs were tough fighters and tenacious as hell, but they weren’t a flying species, and they were too big to make use of the fighter effect – especially since it practically required flight experience to fly one well.
Twilight, however, frowned. “Open me a channel to the Combat Information Centre. CIC, I want an ID on those larger ships. Do either of them match the Kennel-class? And Lt. Lyra. Analysis on probable intentions – smash or grab?”
Lyra replied first. “Dogs are aware of their inferiority in space combat tech, and especially in miniaturization. They’ll want to capture the installation if at all possible, and their ground formations are so heavy I imagine they’ll think it possible until the last medium mech goes down. The good news is that apart from their mechs, they don’t have much punch – their infantry weapons are one of the things their miniaturization hurts, and the average battle harness should equal or exceed them.”
“Okay. Any sign of separating vectors?”
“Ah, yes. One of the freighters is moving in company with their screen and a pair of DNs on a vector towards the planet, the other is sitting where it is… and the remaining DNs are getting underway now. The second one… yes, Pinion confirmed it first. It’s a Kennel.” The Kennel class were gunboat tenders, freighters built like larger versions of a standard carrier and with no weapons or defences. This was possible due to the greater operational range of their gunboats – the delicate equipment of a fighter needed regular overhaul in a hanger bay.
“My compliments to their CIC. Fluttershy, I want a running update on the last moment their Kennel could launch gunboats to be in company with their main DNs when they meet us. Least-time and zero-zero on the DNs. Miss Rarity,” and Twilight turned back to her link to her flagship’s bridge, “Take us out to meet our guests. Half of normal power, vector a little to the south so that we can tell if one of them is headed for the planet. Overpower the wedges so we look like transports. And send a whisker laser to third division, to attempt to manoeuvre so as to get the enemy between us, text only, no acknowledgement required.”
“Understood, Admiral.” Rarity replied.
“Dash, I’m going to hold you back until you can launch to take out the gunboats, but be ready to go – things could change quickly.”
“You got it. Nice prediction with the fighter packs, too.” Dash left for her squadron’s ready room, having barely had time to sit down.
“Scootaloo, please liaise with the hanger crews and make sure they’re ready for either a maximum-speed reload of the gun packs and light missiles, or a switch to heavy antiship loads. Time will be of the essence.”
“Aye, Admiral.”
“And now…” she paused, sniffed, and winced. “I think I’m going to take a shower.”
The ripple of laughter that met that comment broke the remaining tension. Spike nodded sagely to himself. “See, this is one of the advantages of being a reptile.”
Forty minutes later, the range had fallen to forty-three point three million kilometres. The ships had completed the change to General Quarters some time before, and both DN battlegroups were slowly generating separation from the somewhat-hyperbolic path the mixed Dog force was on.
Fluttershy suddenly startled. “Status change! Gunboats have launched from the Kennel, estimate forty-plus! Distance to carrier is currently fifty-one point nine million kilometres!”
“Time to us?”
“Under current acceleration – they’re making 6 KPS squared – they’ll get to us in fifty four minutes, thirty seconds. Zero-zero, they’ll take one hour, thirty four minutes with turnover in half an hour.
“And if we go to full normal power?”
“Fifty minutes to least-time, one hour forty-seven for zero-zero.”
“Right. What about if they hold company with their own DNs instead?”
“Fifty-four minutes to pass, one hour eight to match velocity and intercept. And before you ask, if we both go for a least time then the DN forces will interpenetrate after about forty minutes, and one of them can catch the other under any circumstances if it turns to run. Cooperating on a zero-zero, that’s turnover in twenty minutes and match at one hour ten.”
“I don’t think they have us properly identified, yet...” Twilight muttered. “Good.” She turned to the flag bridge link. “My compliments to you, Captain, and increase speed to full normal power.”
“Full normal power. Thank you, Admiral.” The unicorn replied.
“Er, their gunboats can still reach us before we catch the enemy dreadnaughts, if they turn away…”
“Yes, but only if they hold to maximum power profile, and it’ll be by barely ten minutes. Besides, we’re a missile-heavy fleet. Time to missile range?”
“Ah, currently… thirty six minutes.” The holotank added powered missile ranges for full and half-power missiles. “At that point, we launch from beyond maximum range but the relative motion brings us in closer.”
For the next five minutes, the three forces moved together in the plot. Then another vector changed.
“The enemy DNs have reversed heading. They don’t appear to have any additional acceleration, so it looks like they’re just holding the range open as long as possible.”
“Thank you. Revised estimates?”
“New time to missile range, forty six minutes. The gunboats will reach us in forty-five. Oh, and it looks like the count has firmed up – there’s forty eight of them”
“So, they’re not as bad as we’d hoped. Well, there’s a solution for that. Line to the flight deck.”
Dash appeared on the screen. “What’s up?”
“Fluttershy, copy the tactical data across. Colonel, I need your fighters to rid us of the gunboats. It doesn’t matter if you get them all, just force them off their least-time course if you can’t do that.”
“Against Dogs? Admiral, if I can’t take them out with one wing behind my back I don’t deserve my rank!” Dash grinned, flaring her wings for emphasis.
“Just doing it will be fine, Colonel. And make sure to deploy the decoy missiles properly, gunboats do mount point defence and it can be used in anti-fighter mode. Fighter cover is their tactical purpose.”
“Yeah, but they’re crap at it. Okay, Admiral, I’ll keep them off your back. Dash out.”
Order of Battle:
Equestrian Sixth Fleet
Alicorn DN (Missile ship refit): Reprise, Cavalcade
48 missile tubes per broadside (off bore capability)
Athena platforms (as Keyhole 1, with point defence)
Heavy energy chase armament (Xasers)
Medium energy broadside armament (Xasers)
60 countermissile tubes per broadside
60 laser clusters per broadside
Alicorn DN (CV refit): Harmony, Hyacinth, Pinion, Mystery, Stellar, Brindle
24 missile tubes per broadside (off bore capability)
Athena platforms
Heavy energy chase armament
No broadside energy armament
Heavy shields in broadside
6 fighter bays per broadside
60 countermissile tubes per broadside
60 laser clusters per broadside
Athena platforms mount 20 point defence and 10 countermissiles each, and have a total of 160 fire control links for each type of missile - thus, a single Athena platform can coordinate two entire ships' worth of countermissiles.
Aurora fighter
Multirole
Size around 30m length
External hardpoints: four. External pods include gun packs, small or large missiles, lasers, cloak ECM, scanners, life support extension.
6 decoy missile launchers, 6 rounds per launcher in "revolver".
4 internal missile launchers.
2 Internal lasers.
Internal fire-confusion ECM
Small missiles are 5mt nuclear warheads, large ones are 100mt laser heads and intended to be used on capital ships.
Diamond Dog strike fleet
Diamond Dog dreadnaught
Reporting name Mastiff-class
24 missile launchers, 30 grasers in each broadside.
Countermissiles 40, laser clusters 45
Diamond Dog gunboat tender
Reporting name Kennel-class
Large transport-sized, maximum acceleration 1.5 KPS squared.
Diamond Dog gunboat
Reporting name Russel-class (rarely used)
Max acceleration 6 KPS squared (uses Drive Wedge)
Crew 8
Six laser clusters, four countermissile tubes per broadside. One spinal heavy graser, two capital missile tubes.
Diamond Dog light cruiser
Reporting name Hound-class
8 missile launchers (less capable missiles than Mastiffs), 10 grasers per broadside.
Point defence: countermissiles 12, laser clusters 16
Diamond Dog assault transport
Reporting name Bulldog-class
Capacity: one heavy assault brigade
Heavy assault brigade
Five mech battalions
Each one Shitzu, two Akita
Three light battalions
Each four Schnauzer, ten APC (each with ten soldiers)
Air cavalry battalion
48 heavy lift shuttles (each with ten soldiers)
AN: The names given to Diamond Dog ships and mechs are their Equestrian reporting names, not the name given to the class by the Diamond Dogs themselves. (Much like the German V1 was the Doodlebug, or the various Japanese aircraft were called things like Kate and Val.)
After posting this chapter originally, I got this
amazing fanart by Zmok on Deviantart.
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oh, yes, very much like the later Honor Harrington novels. but they had one more trick: "Dazzler" missiles, with powerful radar jammers designed to blind the enemy's sensors. a well-timed combination of Dazzlers and Dragon's Teeth was devastating, making enemy "counter-missiles" nearly useless.