Admiral Michael Ward

Location: CWS Agincourt, Syracuse System, United Commonwealth of Colonies

“Attention on deck!” Several hundred people rose swiftly to their feet and assumed the position of attention.

“At ease. Relax everyone.” Admiral Michael Ward, commander of Third Fleet, entered the room and waved away the formalities.

It was after 1700 on Friday, so technically weekend leave had already started; but as all of the people in the conference room knew they were always on duty. It was more of a conference hall than a room. The ADM needed the space to accommodate all of the skippers from the battleships down to the gunboats as well as all of the Infantry command teams from the battalion level up. It added up to quite a few people. Just looking at the sheer size of the command teams present reminded the ADM just how massive the offensive he was in charge of really was.

It was something the ADM was used to. The Ward family had been fighting for the Commonwealth – and its predecessor the United States of America – for hundreds of years. They were as close to military royalty as you could get, and Michael was the current patriarch of the family. At two hundred and three years old he was one of the last officers still serving of an older generation, and he sure as hell was the only one in fleet command. When crews talked about “The Old Man” they were talking about him.

Despite his advanced age, he looked like he could be in his fifties or sixties. His hair was silver, which he kept in a professional high and tight. His green eyes were sharp and highlighted with the blue specks of first generation cellular rejuvenation therapy. He was two-hundred-and ten centimeters tall and was in great shape for a man of his considerable age. He was clean shaven, which only highlighted the lines on his face. Not a lot of them were laugh lines. He’d seen some shit.

He was a veteran of the Mid-World Wars: the wars that had plagued the Commonwealth and Eastern Block in the mid-to-late 23nd Century as their expansions butted against each other. Those had been the last real wars in the ADM’s opinion. Ever since then had been minor skirmishes where the fighters advanced into the ring, did a round or two, and then retreated to their corners for years or even decades.

He thought as he took the podium at the head of the hall. He hid the smirk.

“Welcome everyone to the last operations briefing before we step off on Operation Winter is Coming.” No one but the ADM got the reference.

he continued on.

“For operational security all leaves and passes are being executed as normal for this weekend. We are not going to the give the enemy two more days of advanced warning that we’re moving against them.” A large part of the Fleet’s course of action relied on surprise, and the ADM was determined to do everything in his power to achieve that.

“We will be Oscar-Mike no later than 0900 Monday morning. The formation is in your operations order. All traffic inbound and outbound will be halted at the Launcher. Phase One is designed to maximize the usefulness of the launcher. The farther we can get without using our exotic matter fuel supplies the better.” A star chart showed the planned two-day FTL trip that would take them nearly five hundred light years toward their objective. They would still be in Commonwealth territory when they emerged, but they would be in the ass end of nowhere. There wasn’t even a secret refueling depot that far out, much less a Blockie patrol. They would be as off the grid as an entire fleet could get.

The ADM detailed the movement, which after the initial jump would be weeks of smaller jumps designed to take a roundabout course to Yangon. The hundreds of thousands of sailors and infantry would be antsy during those weeks in transit so he made sure the commanders knew they needed to keep their people busy.

“Here is what we can expect when we enter Yangon.” The ADM finished the transit portion of the briefing and a detailed holo of Yangon System popped into existence. “Yangon has four planets. One is too close to the local star to be habitable, and doesn’t have anything but a mirror setup from the original system defense plans. Intel states that these haven’t been maintained for decades. However, we’re still going to fire some missiles and go for proximity kills to avoid getting hit by those petawatt-level energy blasts. The outer world is a gas giant with several small mining operations. They are a secondary objective that we’ll deal with if or when we have time.”

He zoomed in and focused on the second planet. “Yangon-2 is the larger of the two habitable planets. It is near-Earth in its environment and has a booming population. Current estimates have it around seven hundred million, but that is expected to grow due to these.” He pulled away from the planet to a spot in between the second and third planets. The holo showed three Alcubierre Launchers.

“This data is courtesy of a Naval Intelligence ship masquerading as a cargo hauler. The intel is a week old and will change between now and when we get there, but it gives us a starting point.” He zoomed back out. “We have three objectives.” The screen split into three sections highlighting three areas. “Yangon-2, Yangon-3, and the Launchers.”

“Captain Simpson will handle the nitty-gritty of capturing these three objectives while the Fleet is tasked with handling the system defenses. Those are three-fold. As I said before, we have the mirror system from the solar laser array. After that is the system defense force, which the last intel sweep showed sixteen battleships and twice as many cruisers. Last but not least are the fortresses. Each planet has one and the launchers have two rotating around them.”

Fortresses were one of the oldest forms of space defense, but had largely been replaced with defensive rings or in a few cases planetary shields. Like their earthbound counterparts, the massive battle-stations suffered from a key weakness: maneuverability. The hundred million ton globes packed a hell of a lot of firepower, but they couldn’t maneuver for shit. The two rotating around the Launchers would be more of a problem for Third Fleet, but the two tasked with handling the planet would be simpler to deal with.

Fortunately, this was where the ADM excelled. He came from a crop of officers that valued the concept of closing to knife range to launch boarders and just slug it out with the enemy. Being able to engage in feints, complex maneuvers, and counter-intelligence sabotage were all well and good, but sometimes you just needed to stand toe-to-toe with the enemy and blast each other until only one was left standing. That’s what it was going to take to deal with the Launcher fortresses, and the ADM was the man for the job.

“The Launchers are the primary objective. With those offline it will take days instead of hours to get reinforcements.”

Losing the quantum-entanglement tech that allowed the Launchers to communicate across a galaxy, with no lag time, by messing with physics concepts the ADM didn’t understand was a system defender’s worst nightmare. The process was power intensive, couldn’t have any gravitational disruption, and was so damn expensive that Launchers were the only place you could realistically use the tech. Otherwise, it would have changed communications throughout the known galaxy. Still, what they did was incredibly important. They acted as homing beacons in a constantly moving universe so ships could travel through the Launcher network. Their impact on interstellar trade and travel was monumental, and that included military transportation, which was why it was so important to knock out the Launcher’s first.

“Once we take the launchers we’ll deal with Yangon-2, where the majority of the defensive forces will likely be stationed, and lastly we’ll take Yangon-3. Captain Simpson will detail the Infantry’s operation.”

Captain Simpson was a big man – like anyone with HI or special operations enhancements – and his Ranger tab was prominent on his CMUs. He was the commander of the 25th Infantry Division, which didn’t mean much for this operation. Only one brigade of soldiers under his current command were actually from his division. The rest were a mix and match of what could be transported to the staging area. The last three months had been spent in nearly continuous VR training to mesh the different command teams together and get some sort of working relationship going. The ADM had seen those results. They’d started out horrible and progressed to ok.

“Accurate numbers of defenders for the Launchers is impossible to know, but our own doctrine requires a minimum of one battalion. Taking that into consideration, First Brigade is going to be responsible for disabling those Launchers. Commanders should start focusing their training on those scenarios during the rest of our voyage.”

Of the reports the ADM had read, First BDE was the best, so he was glad they were going to be the ones to take the critical platforms.

“Yangon-2 has seven PDCs, and each will be hit with a brigade. Yangon-3 has another three PDC, and the remaining brigades will be tasked with seizing those objectives.” The details were sent to the commanders’ PADs so they could begin their own training.

“This is not going to be a walk in the park. We’re going to hit resistance the moment our boots hit the ground. The Fleet will provide overwatch, so that will help tremendously, but don’t get complacent. We will lose people out there. It’s our job to make sure they lose everything.”

The CAPT handed the floor back over to the ADM to wrap it up. It was a barebones initial assessment and allocation of resources that would be refined over time. They needed that flexibility because the intel would be five weeks old by the time they finally reached Yangon, and the situation could be completely different. They could end up in a fighting retreat all the way back to the nearest Commonwealth system. He didn’t think that would be the case, but a few extra squadrons of battleships passing through the Launchers or in system for training wasn’t out of the equation.

The ADM was a firm believer in the Dark God Murphy: what could go wrong would go wrong, and there was a lot that could go wrong when a fleet was so far from home.

Eve Berg

Location: CWS Agincourt, Syracuse System, United Commonwealth of Colonies

Corporal Eve Berg stood at attention with the rest of the Rangers while the LT briefed them. She paid close attention to what the officer was saying, but a lot of it didn’t mean much to her. The overall course of action was good to know, but what she wanted to do was dig down into the weeds into her part in all of this.

“Berg, I’m assigning you as assistant fire team leader under Sergeant Sullivan. You’ll be teamed up with the 2511th for the initial assault on one of the Launchers and be launching from Aggie.”

“Yes, Sir!” she yelled back with all the intrinsic motivation of a newly promoted E-4.

It was the lifestyle of a Ranger.

Hell, she’d been doing more shit since getting out of Ranger School than most spacers saw in years. She just hoped Aggie fared better than her other transports.

Her PAD vibrated in her pocket, but she didn’t dare take a look until after formation broke up. She was free until Monday, which was a rare move on the LT’s part, but she wasn’t going to argue it. She’d take the two days leave – her first leave since that weekend after Basic – and enjoy herself on Syracuse before they shipped out. This deployment was going to be a long one, and she didn’t know the next time she’d have any free time to herself.

When she checked her PAD any thought of free time went right out the window. A brisk email had been sent to her asking her to report immediately to a location on the surface of Syracuse. It was weird and out of the ordinary until she saw the signature block at the end of the message. That put it all into perspective.

Gwen L. Cunningham

Gunnery Sergeant, Infantry

NCOIC, A CO 2511th INF BN