Posted by: RedKing
« on: November 19, 2011, 11:49:39 AM »Excerpted from First Victory: The Liberation of Tau Ceti. Interview with Colonel Jessie Benchoff, Commander 7th Heavy Regiment:
“So once the Navy cleared the system, UniCom wanted to take the facility intact. The Army has been expanding ever since the Great War, and so we knew that we could take whatever they dished out. A lot of us ground-pounders had been itching to see some action against the Wraiths, but we didn’t have a rock with them on it. Until Tau Ceti. The problem was, even once we knew they were on Ravana, even once we knew the area was reasonably safe to bring in the grunts, we just flat-out didn’t have the capability. Research Command did a crash program to develop the Saipan, based on the Mayflower colony ships. They uparmored them and put a couple of Goalkeepers on board. Lost some speed because of all the extra weight. And when they replaced the cryo lockers with bunks, they kept them about the same size. If you’ve never been on a Saipan, trust me…it’s not a real pleasant experience. Weeks of sleeping stacked in like firewood, broken up by PT and combat drills to keep us from going soft in the low-G. Hell, I don’t know…maybe it was intentional so that we’d want off the boat so bad we didn’t care what kind of environment we were deploying into.
As it was, my first few minutes on Ravana made me miss the boat. Ravana’s a hellworld like Venus, and in fact we spent most of 2063 doing combat training on Venus, practicing clear-and-hold with the automine complexes there. But Venus didn’t have two-point-three Gee’s of gravity. Our combat suits felt like those clunky suits of armor that knights used to wear. We set down on the darkside, because the dayside is over 700 degrees, and we knew the garrison was somewhere in the penumbral zone -- the part where it's always right about dawn or dusk. And UniCom didn’t want us landing too close because we didn’t know what kind of air defense they might have.
Second thing to hit you after the gravity is the pea soup atmosphere. CO2 with just a hint of sulphur dioxide. At times you felt you were walking through a cheesy movie set with lots of dry-ice fog. Took us two weeks to slog our way across the planet to the penumbral zone. Not much to tell about the actual battle. They were dug in pretty good, but their weapons weren’t much better than what we had at the end of the Great War. Slug-throwers mostly, which didn’t do crap on account of the high gravity. Our plasma rifles didn’t have the same problem. Unfortunately, they had a tendency to evaporate large portions of their target. The bio guys didn’t have much to go on by the time we were done. To be honest, it was kind of a letdown. Here the Wraiths had been this big scary monster for a quarter-century, and after years of training for the moment when we finally got to stare ‘em down, they folded like a deck of cards.
But then, I don’t personally – and let me stress that this is my personal opinion and in no way reflects the attitude or opinion of Unified Command – I don’t personally think that we saw anywhere near their best on Ravana. It was a listening post, and just like us they’re not gonna waste their best guys manning a listening post. Anyways, we finished the mop-up about 10 days after we started. Most of that was just due to having to be cautious since we didn’t know what their capabilities were or what kind of nasty surprises they might leave behind. Once we cleared and secured the facility, the Navy dropped off a team of techs and some supplies. Guess they’re gonna be posted there full-time, the poor bastards. At least they’ll have a nice bunker to sleep in.
Once we got home, we were just as big a heroes as the fleet had been when they cleared Tau Ceti the first time. Felt good to instill some pride in the ground corps again. And the recruits poured in, since folks didn’t need as high a degree of technical training as they do in the Navy. Heard they went and outfitted two or three whole divisions of volunteers.
A few months later, they announced that the construction of the jumpgates to Haven were complete, and 2nd Brigade was assigned the “honor” of posting there. I said screw that, I’ve had enough offworld time for a while. So when the ’65 rotation came up, I put in for a transfer to the 7th Heavy since they were staying here. It ain’t no reward to get stuck babysitting colonists all the way out in the Fourth Ring, even if Haven is supposed to be a nice place for a visit.
“So once the Navy cleared the system, UniCom wanted to take the facility intact. The Army has been expanding ever since the Great War, and so we knew that we could take whatever they dished out. A lot of us ground-pounders had been itching to see some action against the Wraiths, but we didn’t have a rock with them on it. Until Tau Ceti. The problem was, even once we knew they were on Ravana, even once we knew the area was reasonably safe to bring in the grunts, we just flat-out didn’t have the capability. Research Command did a crash program to develop the Saipan, based on the Mayflower colony ships. They uparmored them and put a couple of Goalkeepers on board. Lost some speed because of all the extra weight. And when they replaced the cryo lockers with bunks, they kept them about the same size. If you’ve never been on a Saipan, trust me…it’s not a real pleasant experience. Weeks of sleeping stacked in like firewood, broken up by PT and combat drills to keep us from going soft in the low-G. Hell, I don’t know…maybe it was intentional so that we’d want off the boat so bad we didn’t care what kind of environment we were deploying into.
As it was, my first few minutes on Ravana made me miss the boat. Ravana’s a hellworld like Venus, and in fact we spent most of 2063 doing combat training on Venus, practicing clear-and-hold with the automine complexes there. But Venus didn’t have two-point-three Gee’s of gravity. Our combat suits felt like those clunky suits of armor that knights used to wear. We set down on the darkside, because the dayside is over 700 degrees, and we knew the garrison was somewhere in the penumbral zone -- the part where it's always right about dawn or dusk. And UniCom didn’t want us landing too close because we didn’t know what kind of air defense they might have.
Second thing to hit you after the gravity is the pea soup atmosphere. CO2 with just a hint of sulphur dioxide. At times you felt you were walking through a cheesy movie set with lots of dry-ice fog. Took us two weeks to slog our way across the planet to the penumbral zone. Not much to tell about the actual battle. They were dug in pretty good, but their weapons weren’t much better than what we had at the end of the Great War. Slug-throwers mostly, which didn’t do crap on account of the high gravity. Our plasma rifles didn’t have the same problem. Unfortunately, they had a tendency to evaporate large portions of their target. The bio guys didn’t have much to go on by the time we were done. To be honest, it was kind of a letdown. Here the Wraiths had been this big scary monster for a quarter-century, and after years of training for the moment when we finally got to stare ‘em down, they folded like a deck of cards.
But then, I don’t personally – and let me stress that this is my personal opinion and in no way reflects the attitude or opinion of Unified Command – I don’t personally think that we saw anywhere near their best on Ravana. It was a listening post, and just like us they’re not gonna waste their best guys manning a listening post. Anyways, we finished the mop-up about 10 days after we started. Most of that was just due to having to be cautious since we didn’t know what their capabilities were or what kind of nasty surprises they might leave behind. Once we cleared and secured the facility, the Navy dropped off a team of techs and some supplies. Guess they’re gonna be posted there full-time, the poor bastards. At least they’ll have a nice bunker to sleep in.
Once we got home, we were just as big a heroes as the fleet had been when they cleared Tau Ceti the first time. Felt good to instill some pride in the ground corps again. And the recruits poured in, since folks didn’t need as high a degree of technical training as they do in the Navy. Heard they went and outfitted two or three whole divisions of volunteers.
A few months later, they announced that the construction of the jumpgates to Haven were complete, and 2nd Brigade was assigned the “honor” of posting there. I said screw that, I’ve had enough offworld time for a while. So when the ’65 rotation came up, I put in for a transfer to the 7th Heavy since they were staying here. It ain’t no reward to get stuck babysitting colonists all the way out in the Fourth Ring, even if Haven is supposed to be a nice place for a visit.