25 February 4003The second planet of the Gliese 1 system was nearly-habitable, though with a 72% CO2 atmosphere it was unlikely to be a prime location for future terraforming unless it held particularly enticing mineral deposits. As was routine for such discoveries, the survey frigate
Adamant had proceeded in-system immediately to determine if this planet did in fact hold such TNE deposits. At 15:45 on 2 February, while still 3.5 million km out from the planet,
Adamant picked up an unknown contact on her passive scanners.
This contact was found to originate from the planet surface, with a very small thermal and EM signature likely indicating a small sensor outpost. This conclusion was further supported by the fact that
Adamant had apparently been detected on her approach, as almost immediately signatures from active sensors aboard two spaceborne contacts appeared on her EM scanner, designated “Genghis” and “Khan” after a mythical ancient emperor of pre-nuclear Duratus. Immediately, Captain Achlys Tartarus ordered the
Adamant to come to a full stop, intending to wait and see how the alien ships responded. After 14 minutes had passed, Captain Tartarus ordered a cautious approach to within 3 million km, reasoning that the lack of response from the unknown contacts could provide an opportunity to gather additional intel about their capabilities before returning to inform Legion high command of this finding. With no response after an additional fifteen minutes, the Captain ordered repeated steps of half a million km each towards the planet until some response was detected or else new intelligence could be obtained from passive scanners. At 2.5 million km distance from the planet, thermal scanners were able to resolve waste heat emissions from both contacts placing them at an estimated 18,000 tons of void displacement each.
As
Adamant approached to within 2 million km of the planet, her scanners suddenly registered the approach of forty-nine contacts traveling at 71,400 km/s, each estimated quite roughly at 2.8 tons void displacement. These were immediately taken as hostile weapons, and Captain Tartarus ordered an immediate hard-about and retreat to the entry jump point at full speed. Unfortunately,
Adamant was not quick enough to outrun what turned out to be a spread of missiles, and bore the full brunt of the enemy attack. Thankfully, the missiles were quite weak despite their intimidating speed, and only thirteen penetrated her armor to deal internal damage. Damage assessment indicated that while her main engine had escaped damage - thus allowing
Adamant to continue her hasty retreat - her gravity drive and both gravitational sensors had been taken offline in the attack. Captain Tartarus ordered immediate damage-control operations, prioritizing the gravity drive which would be necessary for
Adamant to escape from the system and inform the Legion high command about the new threat in the cosmos.
All this might have been in vain, as a second volley of deadly nuclear missiles appeared on
Adamant’s still-intact scanners. As the first volley had shredded her armor,
Adamant would be unable to withstand another full attack. Fortune, however, was with Captain Tartarus and her crew, as the enemy missiles stopped just short of
Adamant before suddenly disappearing from her scanners. Visual inspection indicated that the missiles had self-destructed harmlessly scarcely ten thousand km from her stern, with the officers aboard
Adamant concluding that they must have exhausted their fuel cells and reached the limit of their useful range.
Adamant would live to inform the Legion of the glorious battle to be had, much to the joy of her crew who would certainly be recognized on their return home as the first of a new breed of heroes of the Legion.
The enemy ships, of a race known for now as the Gliese 1 Aliens (in that great Legion creative tradition of naming things), were considered by the Legion crew to be orbital weapons stations of some sort with no self-propulsion, since they had not given chase as the
Adamant fled the system. It would however be impossible to determine which of these stations had fired the missiles, and the moment it would be assumed that the second station mounted a similar mass of energy or kinetic weapons. While there was no hard proof of this it was the most dangerous possibility and thus the one Legion battle planners decided to account for.
Adamant returned to the WX Ursae Majoris system on 26 March and immediately communicated an account of her experience via the jump point and traffic monitor network to the Legion high command on Duratus.
The Legion high command immediately began to plot their assault. While the very fast missiles of the Gliese 1 Aliens suggested a moderate technological advantage, the Duranium Legion Navy could easily have the advantage of overwhelming numbers against a mere two orbital stations, and the oversized sensor arrays of the
Bellerophon-class frigates would offer insurance against the possibility of enemy reinforcements. Meanwhile, based on the observed performance of the enemy missiles in “battle”, Legion analysts estimated that two destroyer squadrons would be more than enough to provide complete point defense for a powerful cruiser squadron. The primary concern, then, would be the risk of leaving Duratus only lightly-defended against an alien flank attack if too large a force were sent. In the end, it was determined to send the First Fleet, currently idle in Duratus orbit, to launch the assault, followed by a small auxiliary train to provide post-battle refueling and resupply as well as transport capacity for a detached infantry battalion which could secure the planetside facilities. The Second Fleet, currently undergoing training exercises, would be called up to full active duty to form a planetary defense force in the meantime. This plan was quickly rubber-stamped through the high command offices and put into motion, and by 10 April the First Fleet had arrived in the Gliese 1 system, ready for battle.
First FleetCaptain Niobe Chryson commanding
3x Defiant class Light Cruiser:
Defiant, Denouement, Devastator6x Charybdis class Destroyer:
Carronade, Centurion, Chainsaw, Charon, Charybdis, Conqueror2x Furious class Jump Destroyer:
Fade To Black, Furious2x Bellerophon class Frigate:
Battleaxe, Bellerophon3x R-56 class Recon Fighter
First Fleet ReserveCaptain Astraeus Valerii commanding
1x Grand Cross class Light Jump Cruiser:
Grand Cross1x Excelsior class Jump Frigate:
Excelsior1x Bellerophon class Frigate:
Barbette1x R-56 class Recon Fighter
Shortly after midnight, Duratus time, on 19 April, First Fleet arrived on station 50 million km from the second planet of Gliese 1. Having left a small detachment at the jump point consisting of the light jump cruiser
Grand Cross and two frigates which were excess for the mission parameters, the First Fleet was under the nominal command of Captain Niobe Chryson aboard the light cruiser
Devastator for this mission. The Captain ordered
Bellerophon to activate her active sensing arrays, knowing that the two station classes would almost certainly be detectable at this range by the frigate’s powerful sensors. This was shown to be correct, and the follow-up order was given for the fleet to close to 5 million km to form up for the attack run. However, at 14 million km out from the planet,
Bellerophon reported a ground force signature of nearly 10,000 tons which had not been previously detected by
Adamant, and was certainly in excess of what a simple sensor outpost should be defended by. While suspicious, Captain Chryson saw no reason to abandon glorious battle based on a few thousand tons of ground formations, and ordered First Fleet to press onwards. At 02:35 the final attack run commenced.
As First Fleet approached 2 million km distance from the planet, the first wave of missiles was launched from the alien stations, although it still proved impossible to determine which station was firing them at this distance. Subsequent missile launches occurred at ten-second increments, and Captain Chryson ordered the
Defiant-class cruisers to hold their fire and allow the destroyers to carry out the point defense work. As the first volley arrived on-target, the expectations of Legion battle planners were shockingly frustrated, as the destroyer point defense only achieved a 50% kill rate against the enemy missiles. The destroyer
Charybdis suffered twenty-four hits, all of which fortunately failed to penetrate her armor. While heads were certain to roll at Legion high command for this grave miscalculation, First Fleet officers noted that even with a 50% success rate the fleet should be able to reach railgun range mostly intact, perhaps even with no losses if the enemy had decided to spread their fire among multiple vessels of First Fleet. Even so, Captain Chryson ordered the cruisers to contribute to the point defense fire until the fleet was nearly in range of the alien stations.
The beginning of the enemy onslaught.The optimistic assessment proved true, as the second wave saw seventeen missiles impact the destroyer
Carronade, proving that the enemy had unwisely divided his fire. Seeing this, the fleet eagerly pressed onwards in the face of enemy fire, however after a third wave of missiles impacted a third destroyer,
Conqueror, it soon became apparent that the enemy strategy was in fact to cycle their fire between only a few ships at a time. As
Charybdis,
Carronade, and
Conqueror continued to take heavy armor damage from successive waves of enemy missiles, the commanders of First Fleet began to realize that the constant cycling between three targets would eventually result in critical damage. Sure enough, the thirteenth wave of missiles succeeded in penetrating
Charybdis with two missiles out of twenty-one total hits. In a stroke of sheer misfortune, the bridge aboard
Charybdis was eviscerated by one of the blasts, instantly killing Commander Ceraon Echetus and four other bridge crewmen. With First Fleet still 1,350,000 km distant from their targets, the likelihood of further casualties was now understood to be quite high.
Regardless of any momentary pause she may have felt about the risks, Captain Niobe Chryson ordered her fleet to stand firm in the face of enemy fire and press on. Waves of missiles continued to impact the destroyers of First Fleet, though now the enemy gunners were only focusing their fire on the two most vulnerable destroyers,
Carronade and
Charybdis. A minute later, a particularly devastating volley scored five penetrations against
Carronade, taking out one of the destroyer’s engines and assuredly dooming it as it dropped out of the fleet formation. Nevertheless, Commander Scylla Chalcon ordered her crew to bravely press onward, hoping to be of what service she might before her ship inevitably was destroyed. The next volley impacted
Charybdis again, scoring eight penetrating hits but fortunately dealing no damage to her engines. Finally, the twentieth volley of the battle fatally struck
Carronade, destroying her remaining engine and sparking a cataclysmic secondary explosion that vaporized the ship; while about one-third of the crew managed to escape in the ship’s lifepods, Commander Scylla Chalcon was not among the survivors having nobly given her life to evacuate as many of her crew as possible. The sacrifice of
Carronade was not in vain, as by now First Fleet had closed the range to within one million km of the hostile forces.
The next wave of missiles again impacted
Charybdis dealing thirteen penetrating hits, knocking out one of her engines and causing her to drop out of formation. All aboard knew their fate, and while the following volley of missiles instead impacted
Conqueror (scoring thirty-three hits including two penetrating, underscoring the reduced point defense capability of First Fleet), the following wave struck
Charybdis directly on her engine sections and she disintegrated in another massive fireball. Subcommander Maya Argestes escaped the destruction of the ship she had briefly commanded, although with only a quarter of her crew surviving she would be marked with dishonor over her decision to save herself instead of evacuating more of her crew. Meanwhile,
Conqueror had also lost an engine and fallen out of formation. Incredibly, the next wave of missiles failed to destroy her despite twenty penetrating hits, allowing her to perform a distinguished service by absorbing another wave of missiles which would otherwise have been fired at one of her yet-undamaged comrades. Ten seconds later,
Conqueror too was reduced to plasma and scrap, although both her commander and executive officer had cravenly abandoned their posts instead of staying behind to save their crew members.
The remaining ships of First Fleet continued their charge, with the next volley impacting the destroyer
Centurion twenty-four times; as she was yet undamaged, she suffered only hits on her armor. However, by now the range had been closed sufficiently that the enemy gunners could see the results of their work before firing another salvo, thus their strategy had shifted to fully-focused fire and
Centurion would be the subject of the next several waves, eventually knocking out her engines and causing her to drop out of formation. The next volley sealed her fate along with that of her entire command staff. By now, the remnant of First Fleet was half a million km from their targets, less than a minute and a half from firing range. At this point, the alien gunners changed their tactics; the next wave of missiles impacted the light cruiser
Defiant rather than any of the remaining destroyers - potentially a fatal mistake for the enemy, as her six layers of composite armor would prove challenging for the alien missiles to penetrate.
Unfortunately, the much-reduced point defense capability of First Fleet saw a significantly-larger number of missiles from each wave impacting the armor of
Defiant, putting to question just how many waves she could actually sustain before suffering critical hits. Following waves continued to arrive every ten seconds as First Fleet approached its target, steadily working down the armor of
Defiant. Only three volleys later, she was buffeted by seven penetrating impacts which struck her engines and caused her to fall out of formation. The loss of a light cruiser would critically threaten the ability of First Fleet to bring sufficient firepower to bear against the enemy weapons platforms. The next wave scored nine penetrations, one of which took out her second engine and left her dead in space. The following volley once again failed to finish her off, giving her comrades another precious ten seconds to approach their targets. By this stage, Captain Chryson had reluctantly ordered the remaining cruisers to remove their railgun batteries from point defense duties, as they would need to be locked and loaded when the ragged First Fleet finally entered their own firing range. Ten seconds later, yet another wave of missiles failed to destroy
Defiant, who had by now certainly lived up to her name even in defeat.
Finally, a wave of enemy missiles proved sufficient to obliterate
Defiant in a hail of nuclear fire. However, the remaining cruisers of First Fleet were finally in range of the enemy and accordingly opened fire, landing twenty hits on the
Genghis station and dealing minimal damage to its armor. At this stage, the destroyers and frigates remaining were also ordered to cease point defense fire and begin targeting the enemy stations, particularly since the remaining ships were yet undamaged and one or two more missile volleys were unlikely to kill any of them - therefore, Captain Chryson reasoned, maximum offensive firepower was needed.
Immediately, Captain Chryson’s intuition was proven wrong, as the next missile volley targeted and destroyed the frigate
Bellerophon - along with energy weapons fire from the
Khan station. Furious at her mistake, the Captain ordered her fleet to withdraw to just past 40,000 km hoping that this would exceed the range of the
Khan’s short-ranged guns, ordering the short-ranged 102 mm railguns to resume point defense work. Nearly lost in this chaos was the fact that more than seventy hits had been landed in the
Genghis, only one of which had penetrated its armor. Five seconds later, with the fleet safely out of energy weapons range,
Devastator fired a salvo at the
Genghis, once again scoring only a single penetration. Simultaneously, the next wave of missiles impacted the frigate
Battleaxe; while Captain Chryson was certainly not thrilled by any of her vessels taking damage she was certainly grateful that enemy fire was not concentrated on her powerful light cruisers instead. The next salvo again struck
Battleaxe, which miraculously survived despite being penetrated by nearly half of the incident missiles.
The cruisers fired back.
Denouement landed four penetrations of the
Genghis, finally accomplishing more than a single damaging shot. Unfortunately,
Devastator was struck by fire control delays, and in the intervening time
Battleaxe was destroyed by another missile salvo. Five seconds later,
Devastator returned fire, exacting revenge by penetrating the
Genghis seven more times. The
Genghis launched another wave of missiles in response, but with only 40% of its launchers still operational it was clear that First Fleet was close to achieving a mission kill on the battle station. Only seven of these missiles struck the destroyer
Charon, all on the armor - a welcome turn of fortune.
The decimation of enemy missile launch capabilities provided a welcome respite for the beleaguered First Fleet.Having reloaded,
Denouement fired back once again, inflicting another nine penetrations upon the
Genghis. Five seconds later, an eerie calm overtook the sensor rooms of First Fleet, as no additional salvo launch was detected. As tired cheers went up on the bridges of the surviving vessels,
Devastator fired again, reducing the
Genghis missile defense station to mere hunks of orbital slag - in the heat of battle, it nearly escaped notice that no life pods were detected being ejected from the station, in retrospect a curious finding. With great relief, Captain Chryson ordered the two light cruisers to turn their fire on the helpless
Khan point defense base, and one hundred seconds later it too was reduced to a smoldering wreck by the gun batteries of the light cruiser
Denouement.
At 02:54, not twenty minutes after giving the order to begin the attack run, Captain Niobe Chryson ordered all of her guns to fall silent at last. The battle of Gliese 1 had been fought and won by the ships of the Duranium Legion, bringing great glory but at great cost. Nor was the work of battle yet completed, for there was still a ground assault to be mounted against the surface defenders of Gliese 1-A II.
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Shipbuilding1x Ars Magica class Survey Frigate:
Amalgam of the VoidResearchWealth Generation per Million TN Workers: 140
