Chapter 55: Liberation of Karazak, Part 2

A Vainglorious could hold up to thirty thousand crew, depending on the configuration and staffing levels. Typically, they needed about ten thousand to maintain full functionality, with eight thousand as a bare minimum. So whatever the case, it was likely my four thousand marines were going to be outnumbered.

But outnumbered two-to-one was nothing much, even for my standard marines (which we were pretending to be). Hell, twenty to one wasn’t much either. The only real risk to individual marines was enemy armor, heavy support weapons, or anti-vehicle grade defense turrets, and even those were more annoyance than true threat.

But my marine units came with their own heavy weapons and armor. Because marines were transported by ship, each ship’s force had to be able to operate independently. Thus each squad, the unit size transported on a PB, had at least three heavily armored, quadrupedal SWAQs equipped to provide infantry-scale heavy weapons support.

Further, a squad rode in an APC called an AOAL (Armored Orbital Assault Lander, pronounced like “owl”). Capable of unassisted orbital drops, a hundred and thirty kph landspeed, shielded, and with an armored, stealth-supporting angular profile, these could easily pass for tanks with a turreted medium laser cannon and variable shell launcher as their main weapon. Four modular mounts, typically with pods of small fire-and-forget missiles, each capable of a seven shot volley with a single reload, and a pair of small anti-personnel ball-turrets rounded out their armament.

AOALs fit in the main corridors and cargo holds on most large ships (like cruisers), which were designed to be able to move heavy equipment when necessary. My MBT (Main Battle Tank) was basically just an AOAL without the crew compartment, instead carrying more armor, more shields, and a lot more weapons, including a heavy instead of medium cannon, adding a medium missile mod as well as a pair of independently targeting light mortars or automatic grenade launchers, and a trio of gatling laser turrets.

For the places my armor didn’t fit, I had SUAVs, Single User Assault Vehicles. SUAVS were the result of boarding and drop pod research. After we’d added shields, propulsion, and an exterior weapon to the pod, we were left with the question as to why not just use that as a vehicle, and no good reason not to. A vaguely tapered, dagger-shaped, heavily armored and shielded coffin that used repulsorlifts for transportation, SUAVs were about two and a half meters (eight feet) long and could manage four hundred kilometers per hour in a standard atmosphere.

They were highly modular, and came in many variants: general, heavy, artillery, fast, destroyer, anti-air, engineer, recon, swarm, etc. The general variant mounted a light laser cannon turret with coaxial repeating blaster, as well as a pod of seven small fire-and-forget missiles. Other variants traded for different armaments, extra armor and shielding, or improved engines and inertial cancellers for higher speed and dog-fighting capability. In general, SUAVs were small enough to get most places you could fit a couch, while still being fast and heavily enough armed and armored for their formations to serve the same role filled by attack helicopters in a twenty-first century military.

As part of their integrated heavy weapons and armor capability, a corvette would include two regular platoons, one tank platoon, and one SUAV platoon. Including the third regular platoon distributed in squads over the four PB escorts, that made a single marine company. They would typically also have an attached flight of four hyper-incapable medium strikecraft, and a scout squad equipped with stealth-optimized power-armor, both from the battalion’s marine air support squadron and scout platoon assets respectively.

The four corvettes and their respective PB escorts in a corvette detachment made up a battalion. Typically one of the companies would be equipped with FAALs, Fast Armored Assault Landers. Less armored that AOALs, but capable of speeds just short of mach 1, FAAL companies were designed to operate air-mobile for rapid strikes in difficult to reach areas.

Unfortunately, the advanced state of galactic technology made in-atmosphere supersonic craft highly dangerous. There were sensors that could detect the change to air caused by supersonic flight at ranges that extended past the horizon, and given the state of laser technology and interceptor missiles, anything travelling faster than that was basically just targeting practice for hostile anti-air.

Regiments, hosted on a frigate and its escorts, added another two regular battalions to those carried in the corvette escort detachment, as well as a support battalion consisting of a mix of four companies selected from armor, SUAV, or marine strikecraft squadrons. They also included a Special Boarding Unit (SBU) platoon specialized in combat boarding of operational ships, a much more difficult operation than boarding already disabled enemy vessels. Typically a frigate would also have an attached squad from the division’s Special Operations platoon, trained to operate independently, often with civilian equipment behind enemy lines, conducting reconnaissance, marking targets and potentially sabotaging defenses, capturing or eliminating high value targets.

Suffice to say, compared to shitty pirates, few of whom were true infantry combat specialists, most armed only with weak personal sidearms, I had no worries that my regiment could end up out-gunned inside the slaver cruiser.

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The ship was a big one. Both to minimize the risk of any panicking pirates from managing some serious mischief (such as engineering a reactor containment breach or the like), and just as part of good practices, we needed to hit multiple zones at the same time.

SBU, the boarding platoon, took the command deck. They had specialized gear that allowed entry without causing decompression. The pirate leadership was on that deck, and I wanted them alive to give up their money and contacts. Four squads, all equipped to board and non-lethally subdue, made quick work of the limited resistance. The SWAQ troopers’ flamethrowers torched their guards, and the pirates were remarkably obedient afterwards.

Near the command deck, but above and behind it slightly were the personnel access and emergency escape pods. Three of the FAAL companies, supported by two companies of SUAV for that extra armored punch went in through there, quickly taking control of the hallways and junctions near the crew quarters. Personal slaves were kept in quarters, so this unit ended up rescuing a lot of suddenly very happy sapients. Since the pirates were at battle stations they faced little resistance. With that zone secure, they then pushed into the engineering, sensors and weapons control compartments.

This was the unit that I went in with. And it was, honestly, a lot of fun. Inside my powered armor, there weren’t any of the smells of combat that I’d gotten used to on Westeros. Instead, it was almost like a really advanced VR experience of one of those arcade shooter games. Watching through the HUD, with all the information overlays, stomping around in the armor, blasting away with my heavy blaster (set to stun) as various enemies burst out of cover, dumping flashbangs or concussion grenades as needed to pacify holdouts…

It was a lot more fun than racing about King’s Landing while being hunted by the Mountain, that was for sure.

Eventually, we linked up with the two battalions which had entered through the main flight decks, one battalion on either side of the ship. The riskiest part of their operation had been getting in the flight decks themselves, since internal turrets and armored vehicles were often used to secure those zones. Luckily the ion cannon had knocked most of them out, and a Marine Aerospace Strike Squadron had come in ahead of the troop transports to blow the shit out of anything that remained functional. After seizing the flight decks, those marines then secured the main cargo holds.

Meanwhile, corvette based companies hit each of the two midship docking ports, conveniently close to the reserve power generators, and the power core via the engineering access behind the docking ports.

Although a few pirates managed to hide out inside cupboards, crawlspaces, and other out-of-the-way areas until we could root them out, we’d taken control of the ship in an astonishingly short period of time. Honestly, it was unfair. My forces were so much better trained, armed, and most importantly armored that it wouldn’t have been a fight had I used regular forces. Using my superhuman, heavily enchanted personal guard was just overkill. A squad could have managed in a few hours, and even then I’d only need to send that many to make sure no one managed to escape off the ship. Sealed in, I had no doubt a single one of my marines could have wiped out the defenders.

But it all made for a fantastic propaganda video.

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The holovid began playing. A man, famous enough that you might recognize the face and voice, but not so much that you knew their name at first glance, began speaking while scenes of combat flashed in the background.

“We live in a peaceful galaxy,” he said seriously. “But keeping that peace is one of the most violent jobs imaginable. We can watch reports on the news-sites, but only those who were there know what it was really like. This series is based on their stories and documentary footage. This is The Liberation of Karazak.”

The image faded to black.

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The rest of the invasion went similarly. Habitats, shipyards, and bases in orbit were boarded and seized. Asteroid mining operations actually experienced widespread slave revolts as the news of our attack leaked. They were doing pretty well for themselves when assistance arrived to clean up any remaining pirates. Camps and towns on the ground experienced orbital drop assaults.

By the end of the day, the Central Coordinating Committee of the Karazak Slaver’s Cooperative and Clan Pr’ollerg of the Slaver’s Syndicate were in custody. By the end of the week, they were under trial.

We carefully followed the law and best practices with regards to how they were tried, using five person tribunals consisting of a pair from my Gangari Security Directorate forces who had completed basic legal training and three local citizens, with advice from legal droids. But the recently freed slaves sitting on their tribunals weren’t feeling particularly merciful. Most of the slavers were sentenced to full interrogation followed by execution.

It was big news galactically. Partially because we got all the ledgers. All the crooked contacts, bent cops, informants in transit control agencies, corrupt military patrol officers, and political friends. All the eventual purchasers. A full (or as full as possible) list of who was taken from where.

Planetary governments fell. Hells, sector governments fell. And all while several seasons of The Liberation of Karazak played to a suddenly fascinated galaxy.

Suffice to say, we’d achieved the objective.

Gangari Security Directorate was on the map.