Posted by: SteveAlt
« on: February 08, 2009, 01:21:11 PM »
Revenge rescued three hundred survivors from the alien wreck, giving the Commonwealth their first look at the race responsible for the massacre on New London. They were remarkably humanoid in general form but their appearance had far more in common with lizards than humans. With a heavily muscled, green-scaled body, vicious claws and an oversize, elongated head dominated by a gaping tooth-filled maw, they were an intimidating sight. They could hardly look less like Angels. With no way to communicate, the marines on board Revenge herded them at the point of a gun into makeshift secure accommodation, carefully staying out of reach of the snarling, hissing aliens.
At 02:00 on the 6th May, thirty hours after Yaguar lost contact with the group of three Angel cruisers, she found them again, still on the same heading for the Budapest jump point. She set her own course for the jump point and matched speed with the alien ships. Hours became days as the First Striking Force, Yuri Gagarin and her escorts, Revenge, Yaguar and the Angel warships all continued toward the jump point on parallel courses. The main body of the First Striking Force was forty-nine million kilometres from the alien destroyer and eighty-six million from the cruisers while the small task group commanded by Rear Admiral Armas was over two hundred million kilometres astern.
While the First Striking Force was chasing the Angels to the Budapest jump point, life continued in the rest of the Commonwealth. Conscious of the need for a stand-off recon capability, the Fleet Admirals had ordered the creation of a new passive recon drone capable of being fired by regular warships. The SR-N-1 Raven was the result. With a range of over two hundred million kilometres, it could be launched at a planet or a jump point from a safe distance. Due to the very limited sensitivity of the onboard sensors, it could only be used for point reconnaissance rather than monitoring a large area. Production of a small number of Ravens began at Eden and Xiamen-Kan.
SR-N-1 Raven Recon Drone
Missile Size: 4 MSP (0.2 HS) Warhead: 0 Armour: 0 Manoeuvre Rating: 10
Speed: 3000 km/s Endurance: 1146 minutes Range: 206.3m km
Thermal Sensor Strength: 0.15 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 150,000 km
EM Sensor Strength: 0.15 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 150,000 km
Cost Per Missile: 0.5
Materials Required: 0.3x Uridium Fuel x6875
Development Cost for Project: 50RP
By May 11th, eight days after the destruction of New London, the First Striking Force was almost three billion kilometres from the planet and edging slowly closer to the remaining Angel ships. The alien destroyer was within forty million kilometres so Rear Admiral Scott ordered his three battlecruisers to fire a single volley of thirty SS-N-3 Scarabs. Forty-five minutes later, eighteen missiles intercepted their target and the destroyer exploded. The Revenge, still two hundred million kilometres astern, was directed to pick up Angel survivors. Twelve hours later, she rescued one hundred and ten more lizards then resumed her course for the Budapest jump point.
On May 15th, the First Striking Force moved within active sensor range of the three Angel cruisers, allowing Yaguar, which had been monitoring the alien warships, to break off her own approach to the jump point. The specialised corvette engines used fuel at ten times the rate of normal spacecraft engines, which limited their range. She was desperately short of fuel so Rear Admiral Scott ordered her to rendezvous with Revenge and take on enough fuel to make it back to the Sol jump point, six billion kilometres away.
[attachment=1:o1zvgalb]LondonMay16th.GIF[/attachment:o1zvgalb]
[attachment=2:o1zvgalb]Closeup.GIF[/attachment:o1zvgalb]
Two days later, with the Angel cruisers just seven hundred million kilometres from the Budapest jump point and the First Striking Force fifty-four million kilometres astern and closing very slowly, the Fleet Admirals realised they had made a terrible mistake. There was no jump gate on the Budapest jump point and the First Striking Force had no jump ship. Everyone had assumed the battle would take place within the London system so the valuable Fleet Support Vessel Aconcagua had remained in Sparta orbit. If the Angel warships made it through the jump point, the Commonwealth fleet could not pursue. Aconcagua and the Vittorio Veneto II class jump cruiser Andrea Doria were immediately dispatched to London but they would not arrive at the Budapest jump point for four weeks.
The SS-N-3 Scarabs on board the battlecruisers had a range of sixty million kilometres, or fifty-two minutes at 19,200 km/s. Taking into account that the Angel cruisers were moving at 4480 km/s and the Scarabs would have to overhaul them, the effective speed was reduced to 14,720 km/s, giving them an effective maximum range of forty-six million kilometres. The Angel cruisers vanished into Budapest at 23:30 on May 18th, still fifty million kilometres ahead of the chasing Commonwealth battlecruisers. The First Striking Force came to a halt at forty-eight million kilometres and waited for its detached units to rejoin.
[attachment=0:o1zvgalb]escape.GIF[/attachment:o1zvgalb]
The Angel raid into London had been extremely costly for the Commonwealth. As well as twenty-three million dead, Commonwealth material losses included a space station with two 14,000 ton capacity slipways, one hundred mines, fifty maintenance facilities, three deep space tracking stations, an Arleigh Burke V class destroyer and a Sentinel class Missile Defence Base. Due to radiation and atmospheric dust caused by the bombardment, New London had dropped out of the ideal habitable range. In addition, an amount of ordnance equal to six months production by the factories on Eden was either expended or destroyed, including:
60x SS-N-3 Scarab
96x SS-N-2 Sunburn
301x SA-N-2 Gauntlet
1145x SA-N-1 Grail
192x Trident ASM
1096x Dagger AMM
Angel losses in the battle were one 12,500 cruiser and a 6250 ton destroyer, as well as minor damage to three more cruisers, although if the First Striking Force had arrived an hour sooner or had jump ship support, the other three cruisers would very likely have been destroyed. The corvettes had proven their worth as system defence ships, despite the fact that the lack of modern missiles had robbed them of much of their potential effectiveness. Only thirteen Molniyas and six Molniya-S were in service, although new construction was underway in the Xiamen-Kan shipyards. Even so, without missiles they were no use and missile production continued to be a major issue. The populations of the other colony worlds were terrified by the fate of New London and demanded far more protection than was currently assigned. On May 19th 2047, the deployments of the military forces of the Commonwealth on a system by system basis were as follows:
Washington
Populated World: Sparta
9x Arleigh Burke V DD
3x Sentinel MDB
1x Molniya-S CT
Xia
Populated World: Xiamen-Kan
4x Peter the Great II BC
3x Scharnhorst CA
6x Tribal III CLE
4x Nagato DD
8x Trafalgar III DE
3x Arleigh Burke V DD
3x Molniya CT
3x Molniya-S CT
Sol
Populated World: Mars
2x Arleigh Burke IV DD (London JP)
5x Molniya CT (London JP)
3x Guardian PDC (400 Sabre ASM)
New York
Populated Worlds: Eden, New York IV
1x Arleigh Burke V DD
2x Sentinel MDB
5x Molniya CT
1x Molniya-S CT
Lisbon
Populated World: Lisbon V
1x Arleigh Burke V DD
1x Sentinel MDB
Hannover
Populated World: Hannover-B II
2x Sentinel MDB
London
Populated World: None
4x Peter the Great II BC
6x Tribal III CLE
8x Trafalgar III DE
1x Molniya-S CT
Given the events in London it was obvious that defences were generally too light, especially for certain key worlds such as Mars. Unfortunately, the only immediate way to increase that protection was to disperse units of the two Striking Forces and that would completely sacrifice the initiative to the Angels and to the alien race in Zagorsk. In the short-term, production of Molniya class corvettes would be increased in the hope that enough missiles would be available to arm them. In the longer term, a warship that did not rely on missiles was desperately needed. Regrettably, the Commonwealth was bereft of any senior officers with expertise in energy weapons so the railgun was the best option as a primary non-missile weapon. A host of supporting technologies was required however, including beam fire control and capacitor recharge so development of such a warship would be neither quick nor easy. Sparta was in the midst of developing Stellarator Fusion Reactor technology as a pre-requisite to a new and more powerful drive so any weapon development would fall on the small research colony on New York IV, which had just six research facilities.
On June 13th in the Smolensk system, the Arleigh Burke V destroyer Forrest Sherman was on a mission to test the new recon drones. She moved within two hundred million kilometres of the Zagorsk jump point and launched a single SR-N-1 Raven. The drone took eighteen hours to cover the distance at 3000 km/s and found no sign of any alien ships. Whichever alien vessel had pursued Littorio toward the Zagorsk - Smolensk jump point had either left Smolensk or had moved somewhere else within the planetless system. Forrest Sherman headed for the Smolensk - Archangelsk jump point to carry out a second Raven launch.
Meanwhile, in London, the Fleet Support Vessel Aconcagua and the colliers Castletown and Ramsey had rendezvoused with the First Striking Force forty-eight million kilometres from the Budapest jump point. Andrea Doria was still en route, one billion kilometres away. All the battlecruisers were brought up to their full loadout of Scarabs, except for Tsar Alexander II which included four SS-N-2 Sunburns in its magazines, while three Tribals received a total of eight hundred SA-N-3 Gauntlets, partially replenishing the anti-missile missiles used in the last engagements. Castletown, which carried a further two hundred and seventy SS-N-2 Sunburns, remained with the fleet while Ramsey, her magazines empty, headed back to Sparta.
Andrea Doria arrived at the First Striking Force late on June 16th. Rear Admiral Scott detached two Tribal IIIs as escorts and sent her ahead to the Budapest jump point while the rest of his force moved to a point five million kilometres away. Close enough to the jump point to react quickly to any attack but far enough away to avoid any attack by beam-armed warships. At 01:49 on the 17th, Andrea Doria and her escorts jumped into Budapest. They arrived sixteen thousand kilometres from the jump point and the jump cruiser detected a single thermal contact on the jump point with a strength of 800. The Angel cruisers that had raided London had a thermal signature of 1120 so this was a different class of ship. All three Commonwealth had active sensors but they were still suffering from the effects of the jump and could remain inoperable for up to a minute.
Within a few seconds of the three Commonwealth ship jumping into the system, the contact at the jump point moved away at 4761 km/s. The two escorts were only armed with anti-missile missiles, which would have to be used in considerable numbers to harm a ship, and for the moment fire controls were as useless as active sensors. Commodore Valéria Mendoça, captain of the Tribal Shawnee and the senior officer of the small task group, ordered her ships to the jump point. The unknown ship continued moving away and showed no sign of firing on the Commonwealth force so she decided to hold position until active sensors were available. Forty-five seconds later Andrea Doria's Voskhod MR-800 came on line, revealing a new class of Angel ship with a size of 8400 tons. No other contacts were detected within fifty-seven million kilometres of the jump point. Leaving the two escorts in Budapest, Andrea Doria jumped into London, reported the situation and then transited back into Budapest.
Twenty minutes later, Aconcagua, Peter the Great and Tsar Alexander II jumped into Budapest. By this time the Angel ship that had been on the jump point was six million kilometres away. Aconcagua jumped back into London to bring the next two battlecruisers while Peter the Great and Tsar Alexander II waited for their fire control systems to recover from transit effects. Forty seconds later, they each fired ten SS-N-3 Scarabs at the fast retreating ship. The missiles took just eight minutes to reach their target, which immediately vanished from Commonwealth sensors, replaced by the beacons of life pods. This Angel ship was plainly less well protected than the cruisers that entered London. The destroyer Orion was dispatched to pick up any Angel survivors. In the meantime, Aconcagua and Andrea Doria escorted the rest of the First Striking Force into Budapest.