June 31
Professor Wilken has finally finished his research of Firecontrol Tracking Speed 4000 km/s and is immediately redirected to continue working an Electronic detection.
While the Federation doesn't rely on Em Sensors as it's main Scouting capability, the increase in receiver capability will increase the range of the active sensors by as much as 37%.
23rd July 31
5 Months after the official end of Hostilities, the 18th Engineer Brigade has again opened a vault Containing security robots.
Other than the first time, the robotic opponents act far less hostile, and the initial skirmishes can be seen more as a training maneuver than full scale combat.
28th July 31
The first Assault Assault Battalion, trapped by the Robots, managed to fight it's way out suffering only minor casualties. This proves to be a tremendous boost to the troops morale.
On Homeworld, it is decided to train A garrision Division to support the effort, in addition to the newly trained Replacement Battalions.
In the following days, the Federation Troops managed to deal several blows to the defenders, without taking any losses themselves.
Even the Xenology Specialists begin accumulating considerable combat experience by now.
Meanwhile, on the Homeworld, ecomy is breaking down again. Even the small strain of training two Garrision divisions and expanding the Civilian Ship Yard is too much for the fragile balance between production and income.
8th August 31
Even while the Hostilities are underway, the 19th opens another security vault.
Angry Robots spill out to help their brethren, only to run straight into a Federation attack. Both Robot Groups lose considerable strength, but their counterfire manages to wreck an Automated mine.
In light of the constant battle and civilian losses in the recent year, unrest on Relic is rising.
23rd August 31
The Hostilies are officially over again.
September 31
The 18th has discovered an abandoned Commercial Spaceport on Relic. This will greatly boost future trade with Homeworld.
After a period of recession, the economy is back on track, though still running with a mild deficit.
15th December 31
Discovery 001 jumps through the second unexplored Jump point in Tau Ceti and emerges in Shaka, a Level 6 nebula system containing a small M0-V Protostar surrounded by 5 Planets and a total of 15 moons. One of the Moons looks like a promising prospect for colonization, having acceptable gravity and a temperature that future terraforming could fix. The lack of Atmosphere is a letdown, though.
14th January 32
Yet again, the 15th stumbled upon a robotic threat in the ruins of relic. Archaeologists are starting to wonder if the planet is anything but a giant security Depot for whatever race lived here.
June 32
The First fleet, with a freshly built and trained HQ, the Fake as an Anti-Missile Shield, and 4 available Missile Cruisers, is beginning preparations to jump into Proxima Centauri and show the aliens who's the boss.
July 32
The Security Guards on Relic are proving to be resilient. It's been months of combat now, but on the bright side, theres no severe losses on the Federation side as well.
September 32
The First Fleet is on it's way to the jump point. Crew motivation is at an all time high; However, it will take another few months for the Fake to be in position. The ship isn't particularly fast.
October 32
On Relic, a Terraforming Installation and an ancient Genetics Lab are found.
This explains the small differences found over all different digsites so far that culture could not explain, like the small variety in atmospheres.
By now, Infrastructure is recovered faster than the two Brazzwells can ferry colonists.
The next months were rather peaceful, nothing really ever happened.
August 33
After painful 11 months, the Fake has finally made it to the jump point and enters Proxima Centauri.
One of the Ship designers is fired. It is decided that any follow up model, if one is ever created, will feature less armor and more Engines, so it can be used more flexible.
Following the Fake, the First fleet is given the order to jump into the system two weeks later and follow in the given distance.
---
But again, the terrible coordination proved to make things unnecessarily difficult.
Due to misjudging the distance from the jump point, despite the excruciatingly slow speed of the Fake, the First Fleet was just assembled behind the jump point when the Fake encountered the enemy.
They were obviously still waiting at the wrecks, proving to be an incredibly determined enemy.
Without weapons, it had no choice but to turn and run, but the enemy, moving at 6192km/s, had a speed advantage of over 5000km/s.
With no Dedicated Missile Sensors, it was blind to the enemy attack.
Minutes passed, and reliable like a clockwork, the first enemy Anti-Missiles hit.
Still, after the initial waiting, it was a relief for Amber Thomas, the Commanding Officer of the fake, to see the damage reports.
The CiWS reported 7 hits, leaving 45 Strength one missiles to slam into the hull. The Fake would be able to endure another 50 salvos of this strength.
Of the next salvo, which measured only 26 Missiles, 11 were shot down, which left only 15 to hit the Armor. At this rate they would probably reach the jump point before being killed, but the aliens would continue to close, and it was to be expected they mounted beamweapons of sort.
Amber was now expecting a steady stream of 26 Missiles every 10 seconds, like it happened years ago.
But the aliens were more predictable than anyone had expected; after they had required only a half a salvo years ago to kill the first Backbone, they fired only two salvos, after which there was a break of several minutes before the next missiles appreared on thermal.
Some Officers quietly started to believe those ships were automated warships, like those told about in old history logs.
After another full salvo and a break, the enemy Valles Marineris Class dropped out of formation and turned around.
Directly after, the stream of missile Salvos cut off. It seemed, after just two waves, that the enemy had indeed run out of missiles.
Amber saw the enemy Missile Escort flying away with a bitter irony. If the first Scout Fleet would have survived just two more Salvos, they would have had a chance to maybe split up, and at some of them could have come home.
Still, the enemy wasn't about to surrender, and support was still a handy distance away.
It became appearent that the enemy would reach the fake way before the first fleet could relieve the ship, and they were likely to mount heavy beam weapons. Again, the low speed of Federation ships proved to be a terrible problem, and new engine technology was needed more than ever.
Despite the extremely heavy armor, it wasn't impossible the Fake would go down to enemy fire before it's crew died of boredom.
At 1149, the Fake was hit by 15 strength 3 hits from an unknown kinetic weapon.
From there on, the hits continued at a steady pace, 3 per second.
Slowly, the Fakes armor was grinded into the dirt.
At 1150, a good minute and a half after the first hits, the first hole in the armor let the hope of the crew on surviving the onslaught sink.
At least, unless several years ago, there was a recent chance the life pods would be picked up if they went down.
It took another 20 second before a third alien ship trailing a little behind, codenamed Cerberus Rupes 001, joined the fight and immediately made clear it was the real damage dealer of the three. With two strength nine hits at 140k kms it ripped through the armor and hit the Jump Drive, which survived the onslaught for no obvious reason.
Amber took preparations to evacuate the ship.
With half the armor torn down by deeply penetrating energy weapons, likely lasers, there was no chance they would ever reacht he rest of the fleet.
No reason to keep fighting.
While the Fake Evacuated, First Fleet HQ activated the Transponders to lead the Aliens away from the Lifepods.
Given how predictable they had acted before, there was no reason to expect them to show finesse now.
When the Fleet lost sensor contact with the enemy ships, the Anti-Missile Escorts and the Beam Destroyer moved into interception position in front of the HQ.
A few minutes later, the Transponders were deactivated again, and the Outreach's massive Fleet Scout Sensor went online, illuminating space at over 300 Million kilometers range.
Ten hours and 37 Minutes after the evacuation of the Fake The enemy ships appeared on the sensors again, still slightly out of formation.
It would still take a few minutes before the Argentinias could spit their defiance at the enemy, but everyone got ready for the great moment of revenge. At Homeworld, the Admiral was eagerly awaiting the test results for the Bastard MIRV they dug up a decade ago. Those missiles were strictly limited, with only a few left in storage, but this was a serious threat, and they didn't come here to turn around now.
The public wouldn't forgive him if this operation failed.
Another six hours later, at 0414, the enemy finally entered range of the Missile Launchers.
Everyone was on station, but the missiles didn't fly.
"Sir, we got a problem!"
"Are the missiles not working? Report!"
"No, Sir, but we can't get a lock! They have some heavy ECM. Our max range will be around 77 millions."
"Alright. Hold fire!"
It took another hour before the ships were finally in effective range.
The admiral wasn't reluctant to order the first strike.
With a small flash, the missiles 4 Bastards streaked away to show off their potential against Cerberus Rupes.
Seconds later, the rest of the Missile Launchers came into action, with Argentinia 001 and 002 targeting Abalos Undae and Formosa and Batavia targeting Tithonium Chasma.
The crews had trained for this moment for several years, and everything went flawlessly. Not a single order was delayed.
30 seconds later, another 40 Mainline ASMs followed the first 60 Missile Strike, to make sure there were no survivors.
Then the weapons fell to silence.
30 Minutes later, the Missiles vanished from the sensors. While the Fire officers obviously had never fired real missiles at real enemies, and forgot that the Mainline ASM had shorter range than the Bastards, the Bastards also disappeared, including their payload, without releasing it.
The Admiralty was rather disappointed, but that was what they got more Ammo for.
The enemy ships now being below 40 km range, the Crews opened fire again, and this time would likely hit.
This time, everything worked out. After 10 minutes, the Bastards dissolved into a massive payload, and the Mainline's homed in flawlessly.
Everyone was quietly staring at the monitors, no one was speaking, and the seconds were counting down for a felt eternity.
At 26000 km/s the missiles rained onto the unsuspecting aliens, and there were shouts of relief everywhere when the enemy ships sensor contacts were overshadowed by 24 strength 4 explosions.
The hit rate did indeed leave something to be desired, despite a calculated hit rate of 59%.
But just like the alien ships sailed into the onslaught, they sailed out of it, with no visible damage.
The next salvo came in just a half minute later, and again, the hit rate much to be desired. thirteen confirmed hits did just not do it, it seemed.
Yet, the Bastard Bomblets were still homing in, and the Admiral wanted to wait out the effect before ordering a follow up strike.
Still, given the powerful Beam Weaponry of the Proxima Aliens, he couldn't risk getting into melee with only one Beam Destroyer.
And the Bastard Salvo was all but disappointing. It was a joy to behold when the Cerberus Rupes disappeared in 20 strength 9 explosions, and when the dust dispersed, the ship was floating dead in space.
What was more important, though given the situation a little underappreciated, was the lack of sensor coverage from the aliens. The Cerberus seemed to have the only Long ranged Sensor, and without it's 140 Million km coverage, the enemy seemed to be blind, unless they had sensors so advanced the active and EM sensors on the Outreach couldn't detect them.
Another barrage of Mainline ASMs left the launchers, with the intention of not finding out first hand if the aliens still had sensors.
A minute later the Empty Bastard MIRVs hit the dead Cerberus. Two strength one hits were enough to destroy the dead ship.
The Admiral quietly cursed the missiles, for he would have liked to board an intact ship. Now he would have to wait for a design for a Scavenger, which in turn would first require a Jump Gate Builder.
He let the remaining two destroy just for the sake of it.
But for now, there were more urgent problems.
The next missile salvo achieved a stunning 75% hitratio, and the fourth was expected to show some results, but still, the enemy ships just continued to advance as if invincible, despite their assumed blindness. So far, not a single Missile was intercepted, despite the weapons assumed to be on the hostile ships seeming quite capable for the task.
The fleet fired fired another 100 missiles at the enemy. The closing ships were still 17 million kilometers away from each other, and the missile stocks were not to run out that soon.
While the missiles were closing in, the enemy ships came close enough to see one of them mounted a backup sensor.
While the range was comparably low, 17 millions were still good enough for their beam weapons.
It was in this fourth try that the enemy ships were finally critically hit.
After 28 strength 4 explosions, they both slowed down to 5161km/s, and a few seconds later to 2064km/s, and 40 missiles were still inbound.
After another 29 Explosions, a strength 6 secondary explosion split the Tithonium Chasma, and the Abalos Undea turned around and fled at 516km/s.
The Argentinias fired another salvo, they weren't about to grant them mercy yet.
