Week 9 - Mopping up a Grey Mess

"Sir!" Lanaedra called as she walked into the office.

"Yes?" Damien replied, looking up from his desk.

"We... I didn't know you were working on anything," she said. "What is it?"

"Oh this? This is nothing. What do you need, Lanae?"

Lanaedra stared for a few seconds before she continued. "We received a transmission. It's from the Gunrunners of Volans. It appears as though there's a Fleet of Fate ship near their space, and there's a Grey fleet en route to attempt to destroy it."

"And? If they want to blow each other up, let them," he stated, looking back down at the papers on his desk.

Lanaedra sighed. "You could let me finish. According to the transmission, if the Grey fleet should fail, they'll begin a systematic destruction of all stars in that area, wiping out life on a massive scale."

Damien looked back up. "Oh. Well, that makes a bit of a difference. So, basically, they want to help the Grey?"

"Well, that's how i understand it, sir."

"Ok. Send the fighters. There aren't alot of them, but they may be of some assistance. They are to send a message to the Grey and let them know of our cooperation. After which, they are to stop by wherever the Gunrunners are, and inform them of our intentions. We need the Grey to win this battle, or they'll wipe out all life in that area."

"Yes, sir. We'll leave immediately," she said as she turned to leave.

"Wait, wait, 'we'?"

She stopped, and turned back. "Well, yes. I'll be leading the fleet, right?"

Damien chuckled. He stood up, walked around the desk, and put an arm around his friend's shoulders as they left the office. "No. Not this time. Send Captain Hanindara. He'll do fine. Sorry, Lanae, but i have something else i may need you for, and i need you here for it."

Captain Hanindara's fleet began preparations to leave to aid the Grey. On the other side of the Polar Expanse, the EEF was also ramping up into a battleready stance.

As soon as the distress call from the Gunrunners of Volans had come in Jeremiah called a meeting of the all the senior naval staff. The briefing was going about as well as he'd expected it would.
"Sir, let me get this straight. We have no idea of their real capabilities. What we do know is based on our knowledge of The Unity and guesses. Its very likely that they can predict whatever moves we make form the moment the fight starts and even if we out number them its very likely they will have a firepower advantage." Said Admiral Hutchin ticking each point off on a finger.

"Yes Mary, that about sums it up." Replied Jeremiah. "And here I thought this was going to be tough." She chuckled but no one else in the room shared in the humor. Jeremiah allowed himself a smirk. "If it was always easy they wouldn't pay us so well. I know this looks bad, maybe even impossible but keep in mind that we don't have to beat them ourselves we just have to help make sure that when its over the grey win. Otherwise they're going to kill the Volans cluster one star at a time. We don't need to win, just keep them distracted and off balance. How do we do that?"

"If they're Unity or were. Our anti-nanite missiles should have a pretty serious effect on them. Maybe the uplink jammers to." Suggested Vice-Admiral Miles Parker. "And we could use facade to mask our ships, make drones look like capital ships and vice versa and have them switch around the disguise and keep up a series of micro shadow jumps. And we can do a version of that trick we used on the IR interceptors. When we put the Shadow Drives on the asteroids and had them jump around randomly."

"Some ships could attack through energy bridges, we could use Detours to bounce them around and confuse the targets." Chimed in Captain Milly Thatcher. Jeremiah nodded.
"Alright here's what I think we should do..

The fleet will enter Volans broadcasting its intentions to the Grey and any allied craft. The task force will consist of the following ships as well as 30 to 40 varying sized chunks of space junk fitted with Leyas shadow drives.

4 City of the God class ships. 5 Kalino class missile frigates. 6 Dusk class Destroyers. 50 Missile pod drones 25 Fireship drones (upgraded drone AIs). All ships and drones will be carrying Facade artifacts which will continually make them appear to be a different class and type of ship. All ships will also stay on the move as much as possible using micro jumps around the battle space as will the drones and pieces of space junk in an attempt to confuse enemy targeting. The Kalinos and missile pods will keep up as constant a barrage of anti-nanite and anti-ship missiles as possible. The Destroyers will scatter about the battle space and take attacks of opportunity all the while using Uplink Jammers. The Fireships which will have one or two Asteroids each slaved to themselves and will attempt to work their way close enough for a ramming attack they will also try to use their asteroids when they do ram. 10 of them will carry anti-nanites, 13 of them will carry anti-ship payloads and the last 2 will carry nukes to be used as a last resort these last two will remain with the CoG ships until its time to use them and will jump as close to the FoF ship as possible if and when they do attack. The City of the Gods class ships will remain on the plane of Awareness and fire their Domebusters through Energy Bridges opened by adepts with the fleet in Volans space. Each ship will have its own energy bridge to fire through the bridges will be moved and no two shots will come from the same direction or bridge."

The plan was a good one. But plans rarely survive contact with the enemy.

Captain Hanindara's fleet was already there when a huge EEF Fleet joined him. Darting between them were the Aegis and Stilleto Starfighters of Blackheart Security.
On any other day it would be considered a conquering starforce, but against the thousands of drones of an FoF battallion the outcome was less sure.

G.A.S.T. sat in the modified cockpit of a Machete Bomber. He was flying in formation with a wing of 20 Machetes supported by 30 Stilletos.

He radioed in to talk with allied forces knowing full well the FoF probably listened in.

"Allied forces of the Heroic Fleet and the Grey, I am Grand Admiral Sessoren Thei'Gann.
My Starfighters are few but they are dedicated to helping you defeat the Fleets of fate.
My forces will act as your spotters, just keep them alive and they will lead to hidden FoF forces."

In reality, the Starfighters were just a distraction. 500 Da'uhnb Mercs would be assigned to this battle. When able they will teleport into FoF docking bays and leave EMP bombs and plasma bombs.
If any FoF Motherships are disabled enough to allow a Da'uhnb to teleport in with an Energy Bridge Bomb going straight to the plane of life.

If it were up to G.A.S.T. not a single life would be lost, but it was rarely up to G.A.S.T. since the return of the Da'uhnb Queen.

Welder stood calmly aboard the bridge of the Dragon's Teeth mk 2. All was chaos about him but inside he just took everything in. Reports had been coming in from all planets under SUARM SPACE control of the infestation that had beset their citizens, the GELPORS and ECHINAE that had been sent to deal with the Angels of Destruction and their enormous diamond had been sucked down a wormhole, and now there were reports of The Fleets of Fate coming through. Communications officers argued over their headsets as they tried to find out what to do and where was their commander Mor'aye'ahn, tactical officers shouted orders to weapons stations to be ready in case the fleet was attacked, and Welder the head SUARM Engineer calmly sat down upon Mor'aye'ahn's chair.

The silence took a minute to spread as the organic crew that often surrounded the now absent commander processed what was going on. As they tried to think of something to say Welder pressed buttons on the armrest of the chair as he prepared to send a message to what was left of their fleet. It was often a technique used by Mor'aye'ahn to instill order over the comms as the synthetic baas voice of the robotic engineer spoke and was heard on every level of every ship. "I fully understand that there are levels of command, and I know that without Mor'aye'ahn's direct orders none will budge from it's position over the planet both out of loyalty to him and to the leaders of Fort Lendill who I am sure want eyes kept upon him at all times... but now is not the time for that. I am standing in for our beloved commander until he returns and I hand him his command back with a list of everything I want re-hauled on each of these ships."

There was no audible argument as he still had control of the comms "I believe we can trust our brothers and sisters who are on their planets to handle the E-Strain infection. SUARM are Soldiers from creation and all other colonists have had some measure of military training in defensive measures. Now we must aid the GREY who now attack the Fleets of Fate. All tactical officers prepare for battle and may Sysis-01 smile upon us all."

The forces of Fort Lendill mobilized.

V'tier and V'ntek heard the call from the Gunrunners of Volan as they were sitting in V'tier's office on the Honorbound playing Go. The twins rose in unison without speaking. V'tier to his bridge, and V'ntek to his own ship the Honorblade. The two heavy capital ships headed into Grey space, broadcasting their intentions and offers of aid.

They were met by a sprawling starforce of 1200 Starfighters and 100 Heavy Frigates all flying the colors of the Free Systems.

"To the Gunrunners of Volans, we of the Free Systems hear your pleas loud and clear. This mission may be nearly hopeless, but your plight is dire, and we will not stand by and watch your people get slaughtered by friend and foe without assisting as we can. We, of the Free Systems, will not stand idly by. This evil will not be allowed to perpetuate in this dimension, and we will do what we can to combat it. Today, we stand together, side by side, and fight for our lives."

Su had replied to the message to the sender of the message hours earlier. He then mobilized a tactical force, larger than any brought together by the Free Systems.

Three teams of 400 Stilettos, attached to 25 Colony Class Frigates, would form strike teams. Each Stiletto had a starship disabler cannon. There would then be, cloaked, 40 Tridents attached to each, as well as 20 Albatrosses with nanite artillery cannons. For each FoF ship that comes into play, one strike team of stilettos do a blitz run. Pure barrage and run style. There is an entry run of Frigates (5) that brings them to the "field", and on every other end of the run there are 5 more (each angle). On the field of battle, off the field of battle. The goal would be to shut down the ship in one run (i.e. one round). Once immobilized and unable to utilize their weapons/move, the tridents would unload their payloads in runs, then warp out of play. Albatrosses would then be used to use their cannons to unload on the warframes on the field (if and only if the mothership is immobalized. If not, Albatrosses do not come into play).

Hit and run, no extended dog fights. Different angles of run would be utilized and coordinated, using their superior speeds to pretty much beat out everyone else on the field. Also, prevents hacking if all ships are used quickly and leave immediately. No heavy capital ships, and all colony ships enter and exit the theatre of battle on far ends, as to avoid detection, friendly fire, and hacking.

But when they all arrived at the coordinates they found the battle already underway. The Grey had already suffered grevious losses and twenty Grey Survey ships were shattered discs. The Grey had also nearly won the battle. Their disablers and drones had countered the FoF Warframes and ten FoF Motherships were floating truly dead in space.

There was a hail of fire power from the allied fleet. 100 Domebusters and 4 Dual Domebusters salvoed like a firing squad and the remaining four FoF Motherships were blown apart. Then Anti-nanite missiles fired from the Kalinos disabled any hope of the FoF repairing themselves.

Allied Starfighters combed through the wreakage destroying any surviving warframes with extreme prejudice.

The following day, Grol Heimbourg, a known Gunrunner from Volans broadcast the following.

"The Grey have demanded our immediate action against the Fleets of Fate.
In light of this venture, on any battlefield where you face the Fleets of Fate, the Grey called Jim has promised to lead a fleet to our aid."

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All players involved in this mission gain the:

Sleeping Giant left Sleeping Award!- trade in this reward on the housekeeping thread to automatically repair any damaged ships or space stations.