Part 16: Mastif Patrol, Mastif System, Sol Sector (Story)
22nd December 2668, Mastif System, Sol SectorEpisode 2, Mission 2 - Mastif Patrol
The TCS Firekka picks up its final shipment of new fighters while sweeping the region for long-range Kilrathi fighters and privateers.
Pre-mission cutscenes:
No pre-mission cutscenes this time. Guess we're too busy avoiding Spoons or somesuch.
Three e-mails (and also another one of those notes to the writers which hasn't been removed, but I'm not going to put up any more of those).
Cougar's skill at stating the obvious with conviction has not atrophied in the months between the Guadalcanal Op and now:
IES Message - Received at 2117 hours GST on 2668.356 posted:
From: Capt. Theodore Murphy (TCSF, TCS Firekka)
To: Capt. William Bradshaw (TCSF, TCS Firekka)
Subject: Squealer
Marksman,
I think you may want to have a chat with Spoons, or this thing with Squealer is gonna be major trouble. Most of us Lionheart folks aren't too happy to fly with a guy that shot at us, but... well, look, you and Spoons have some real good reasons to take what Squealer did personally. Disputes within the wing aren't good for morale, though, you know that. At the very least, tell Spoons to be a little less talkative about all this.
Oh, and for what it's worth... if it happens that nobody wants to fly with Squealer - and I have a feeling it might come to that - put him on my wing. I've seen a lot over the years, and I think I understand Squealer's actions fairly well. Besides, from what I can see in his record, he's a good pilot. Defector or not, I'll fly with him any day.
Cougar
No losses in the last mission and the extra six Gladii mean we've got a pretty full flight deck:
IES Message - Received at 2231 hours GST on 2668.356 posted:
From: Chief Petty Officer Jean Henderson (TCN, TCS Firekka)
To: Capt. William Bradshaw (TCSF, TCS Firekka)
Subject: Latest flight deck status
Hey, Captain B.
Here's the latest data about the ships you've got available. Take good care of these now - apart from those remaining Rapiers, we probably won't get any replacements until we meet the fleet, and it seems like the cats are gonna try to make this trip more interesting than it oughta be.
Stilettos: 12
Gladii: 12
Rapiers: 14
Jean
Which is just as well, because there's a Kilrathi...uh, I'd call this a SAG in normal naval parlance, but "Space Action Group" is kind of redundant, and Kilrathi cruisers carry fighters anyway. It's a cruiser and two destroyers, anyway, and it's headed our way:
IES Message - Received at 0220 hours GST on 2668.357 posted:
From: Lt. Col. Wesley Denisof (TCIS Sector Command, Sol Station)
To: Commodore Hans Reismann (TCN, TCS Firekka)
CC: Capt. William Bradshaw (TCSF, TCS Firekka)
Subject: Intel Report: Enemy fleet movements
We have just received information regarding the Kilrathi cruiser group that broke through the Maginot System yesterday. Contact with this group was later lost in the Able System, but it has now been spotted again jumping into the Eddings System.
There are no active Confed forces in Eddings, so we have no way of tracking this group. Nonetheless, our analysts believe the cruisers are headed for Weslyn, presumably with the intention of outflanking the combined fleet. It may be that these ships were sent specifically to intercept the Firekka - the Kilrathi are undoubtedly aware of the locations of our remaining active carriers, and they certainly also know that Weslyn is on the shortest route from Perry to the Vega Sector. In any case, it must be assumed that some or all of these ships will attempt to block the Firekka's movements.
Our data regarding the group's composition is presumed incomplete. We know, nonetheless, that it includes at least the following vessels:
Fralthi cruiser, name unknown,
Ralatha destroyer, name unknown
Ralatha destroyer, name unknown
The group also includes at least one Kamekh corvette, and the exceptionally large number of fighters seen with this group leads us to believe that there may also be another cruiser in the group. An alternate possibility is that the Fralthi is in fact configured as a light carrier rather than a cruiser.
Note that due to transmission time lag, it is virtually certain that these ships have already left the Eddings System by the time this message reaches the Firekka.
Lt. Col. Wesley Denisof, TCIS
What the hell is going on?
It's around now it'd be really useful to have a map. Unfortunately, the universe map that came with Prophecy was not really written with Fleet Action in mind, because the universe as described in it is too big to fit into an A3 pullout. Fortunately Standoff was written with the map in mind, so the movements of the Firekka at least make a certain amount of sense.
Anyway, let's start with the overall situation. The Terran fleet is a mess (Geoffrey Tolwyn is talking to Admiral Banbridge here, commander of Third Fleet, the TCN's main striking arm):
Fleet Action posted:
"And just how is the fleet?" Tolwyn asked.
"Four fleet carriers are still on line."
"Just four?"
"It's worse. Two of them are drydocked at the moment but it's claimed they can be brought back up to operational status within thirty days."
"What about the others?"
"In drydock, reactors pulled, crews on extended leave."
[...]
"Forty-eight percent of the rest of the ships in the fleet are still on line, the rest are skeleton crewed in reserve. Operationally we're losing our edge. Flight training time for the fighters has been cut by nearly half, even our main battle fleet ships still in active service, our heavy cruisers, are tied off with crews on leave. It'd take weeks, maybe a month to two months to even get one full Task Force Group organised and on-line."
As usual, this estimate turns out to be a bit pessimistic when faced with a war of annihilation, but things haven't improved much by the time Tolwyn's considering his deployment:
Fleet Action posted:
"Good lord, Geoff, if five of those things are coming at us that means we'll be facing upwards of fifteen hundred attack ships." Rear Admiral Allen Zitek growled from the back of the room, his speech computer making him sound almost robotic. Zitek had been badly burned years before leading a squadron against a Kilrathi carrier.
"Don't forget the Kilrathi also had a minimum of nineteen other standard carriers and at least twenty heavy cruisers that carried thirty fighters each. That comes to over three thousand seven hundred additional strike craft."
Fleet Action posted:
"What about logistical support, supplies and training from the Kilrathi view point?" Duke Grecko asked from the back of the room.
"That's the one hope [...] they were straining their system beyond the max to keep the war going and at the same time building this new fleet in secret. [...] My gut feeling is that they couldn't do both. The burst signal from Tarawa already indicated a thousand fighters transferred off ships that had been put into their inactive reserve. I'm certain we'll see their best shot from the new carriers, which will be fully loaded for combat. The rest of the fleet will be held in a secondary support role or open action on other fronts as diversions."
"That still would leave a minimum of fifteen hundred strike craft on five carriers coming straight at Earth, not to mention what looks like close to a hundred escort ships," Zitek replied. "And just how many fighters will we have to meet this?"
"We can have five carriers fully on line within two weeks, with forty-one escorts, carrying a total of six hundred and eighty-nine strike craft."
"Just five?"
"Actually, only two are on-line and fully operational at the moment."
He correctly divines Thrakhath's most likely approach, for all the good it will do him:
Fleet Action posted:
"The Kilrathi have three main lines of approach, all of which finally come in here," and he pointed to a blue-white star from which radiated a number of jump lines. "Here at Sirius and the jump point behind Sirius the shortest routes of jump lines come together and then from there straight back to Earth. By the shortest route, jump line alpha, it's ten jump points from Sirius to the frontier, and four back to Earth. [...] I propose to meet them in front of Sirius."
"Geoff, that abandons several hundred inhabited colonies further out, my own home of Planet Warsaw being one of them."
[...]
Geoff nodded grimly. It meant that millions in the outer worlds might die. He could only hope that those who could get out of the way would, heading to remote areas of their world to wait out the attack. At least most of the worlds were sparsely populated, with a lot of room to hide. It wasn't until Sirius was reached, inside the area never touched by the war, that the major inhabited regions were located.
So how does that affect us? Well, the Firekka's current mission is to join up with the Third Fleet gathering at Sirius. The Kilrathi cruiser group Intelligence is reporting is believed to be headed for Weslyn, likely to cut our advance off. Depending on how fast they're moving, how much we've been delayed by these skirmishes and picking up fighters, it's possible they might meet us on one or the other sides of the Mastiff-Weslyn jump point:
