Starting Date: 8 May 2127
Military Actions
The Barricade Affair
The Barricade has arrived in Lalande 21185-A to discover the presence of intra-system jump gates. The system is rather large, with Lalande IX, the furthest planet, residing some 9.4 billion km from the sun, or twice the distance from the Sun to Pluto. It makes sense if there was a civilization present to have these jump gates - each covers one of the three farthest planets.
Once again, these gates are signs of intelligent life. Is this a false alarm, like the Procyon system? Or is there something actually present in this system?
To answer the pressing question, Admiral Owens orders Barricade to proceed slowly towards the third planet, moving slower than normal to mask her thermal signature. At her top speed - 2,400 km/sec - she would be at the third planet in just under 5 days. Owens orders her captain, Captain Holland, to proceed at 1,000 km/sec. It will take her 12 days to reach the third planet, and she is ordered to go in with active sensors on as a precaution.
Bastion, her sister ship, remains on the Sol side of the point. She is prepared to ferry across the two Stalker Mk. 1 ships in the frigate force if worst comes to worst. Hopefully there is no ‘worst comes to worst’.
The worst does come to worst and quicker than anyone thought. Barricade detects three thermal contacts at strength 1500 some 37.9 million km away - after having been in-system for two days. Holland, cautiously, approaches the three contacts who appear to be stationary and the Barricade slows speed to 750 km/sec. His goal is to move within 15 million km, which will allow him to use his active search sensors to get a better look.
Unfortunately for him, he has barely detected the ships when they accelerate to 7,500 km/sec - which is far faster than the Barricade can move. It will take him 11 hours to return to the jump point which is just under 100 mil km away. The contacts are 37.8 mil km away and will overtake him in just over two hours.
Unfortunately, the frigate and destroyer fleets are 20 hours out from the jump point - Admiral Owens never anticipated that possible hostile contacts would be so close in - and so Barricade essentially has to survive contact for at least 11 hours until she can make it back to the jump point.
Unfortunately, Barricade survives only 33 minutes. At just under 35 million km, the three bogeys launch a volley of 6 missiles. This is followed up by three more volleys less than 30 seconds later. Holland records what he can, keeping open comms with the Bastion. However, she cannot avoid the missiles and at 3:07 AM, less than an hour after she transits, the Barricade is destroyed. 48 survivors escape to the life pods - Captain Holland goes down with the ship - and the Naval HQ has to figure out how to rescue survivors in a potentially dangerous environment.
Meanwhile, in Sol, the Bastion waits for a possible encounter in the event that these bogeys decide to go through the jump point. She goes to full stealth, shutting down her engines, so as to make herself as difficult a target to spot as is possible. The destroyer and frigate fleets have increased to max speed, but at just under 2,100 km/sec there is no way they could outrun anything that comes through the point.
The frigate fleet arrives 19 hours later. The Battler and Boxer are detached to join the Bastion who will transit them through the jump point. Senior Officer Capt. Jacob Abbott’s first priority is to attempt to rescue the Barricade’s survivors if practical. Catapult delivers the ships and transits back to wait. Abbott knows that his ships may be on their own and that help may be difficult to receive.
Once his ships are through they set course for the last known position of the Barricade. He orders maximum speed, in large part because he wants to reach the wreckage before the lifepods exhaust their supplies of oxygen. He is approximately 9 hours away from the last estimated position.
Unfortunately, it does not appear that the enemy withdrew. Sensors pick them up only two hours after they have been heading towards the Barricade. Admiral Owens does not want to lose more ships - he orders the two to withdraw. Unfortunately, the ships are 15 million km away, and they detect the small fleet seconds later. Sensors estimate their size at 10,000 tons which is very impressive considering they are doing 3 times the speed of a ship half their size.
Abbott turns back for the jump point, which is two hours out. Unfortunately, the Lal will be on top of him in less than 30 minutes. The good news is that they are within his firing range, so he orders Boxer to lock weapons on the first ship and has Battler set her weapons to point defense, in the hopes that they can hold off the missiles that are inevitably coming.
The Lal have tricks up their sleeve, unfortunately. Sensors detect that they have active ECM aboard their ships, and fire control at 15m km cannot penetrate it. This will not be a detriment for long as they will soon be close enough for the fire control to overcome the ECM. Every minute, the enemy closes the range by 276k km.
15 minutes into the encounter, an active sensor is detected coming from the lead ship. The sensor has a strength reading of 11,025 and a resolution of 75. The Bastion transits back into the Lalande system, hoping to avoid becoming a possible casualty but also hoping to gather whatever additional sensor data they can before they transit back out again. Additionally, she is equipped with a passive thermal sensor which will give early warning - they hope - if missiles are launched.
Every minute passes in agony for Captain Abbot as his ships continue to flee the Lal, who continue to steadily gain. They are 90 minutes from the Bastion, but the Lal are down to 6 million km - 25 minutes away. At 1:06 they enter the active search sensor range of the Bastion, but the range has closed to 5.3 mil km. It is becoming increasingly clear that the Lal are closing in for a knife fight - they would have surely deployed missiles by now otherwise. The other possibility is that they are allowing the task force to escape, but if they were doing that they would have broken off the pursuit by now.
At 1:18 the Lal ships cross into the active sensor range of the Bastion. She can now see both forces rushing at her, the Lal covering ground far quicker than the frigates they are pursuing. It seems likely that she will record Captain Abbot’s last actions before jumping out with the data. It also seems likely that neither Abbot nor his command will make it.
At 1:25, at a distance of less than 125k km, the Lal open fire from all ships, 2 lasers from each ship but 2 extra from the third. The Boxer is shaken but her armor holds despite taking damage to one of her engines as well.
One minute later, the Boxer is destroyed. Captain Abbott manages to make it to a lifepod along with 24 other survivors. Less than sixty seconds later, Battler is destroyed. 23 survive and make it to the lifepods, but her captain - Commander Barlow - goes down with the ship. Neither ship was able to get a shot off in this time, which appears to have been due to a design flaw in the weapons system.
Bastion watches in horror at the scene unfolding before her. Her CO, Commander Burrows, orders her to deactivate active sensors and prepare to jump out. This is probably a good thing because the three ships are detected heading straight for her. One minute later, she has crossed back into the Sol system, bringing with her the recordings of her active sensors to be digested by Naval Intelligence.
