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Post by EmperorMyric on Mar 22, 2021 14:48:20 GMT
Rubikon System: Rubikon II Capitol Space
"Oh you don't want to see everything." Laikos said in a soft, concerned tone. "Believe me, dear."
"My mind has been reborn a thousand times, sir Master General!" The volunteer yelled in a fit of zealous pride. "I have trained myself, sir, I have spent decades seeking and encountering horrors that would break any normal mind!" He clenched the armrests of the device's seat in exhilaration. "I have faced off with the Angktarian Phase Sphynxes, I have laid my hands upon the psychostalagmites of Loh-Ud, I have personally compiled the scans from the Ring of Rememberance after they drove every analytical AI into self-deletion!"
Each boast was louder than the last one, echoing in the halls of the command center. The hologram of the volunteer was the only source of light in the great hall, beamed from the panopticon's headquarters some thousands of kilometers away and observed by a multitude of hidden figures. Only Laikos' silhouette was visible, standing right next to the hologram that backlit him.
"I have fought to death with an Escher Sphere with nothing but a rib I ripped off my chest! I allowed the Htunian Chosen Ones to capture me just so I could face their worst tortures!" The volunteer's boasts were getting more and more broken up by fits of maniacal laughter as the Panopticon interface throne began activating. The skin on his forearms and back had been peeled open and pinned to the throne to maximize the ammount of nerves that could be used, giving him a gruesome, half-vivisected appearance. "I ventured into Kzhkyrnkk's Sentient Oceans without memory wiping just so I could be made to kill myself a hundred times! I infected myself wi-"
The AGA forces were coming. Laikos didn't have anywhere enough time to start listening to him so he interrupted the volunteer.
"Listen, I know. I read your CV too." Compared to the volunteer's psychotic fanatism, Laikos seemed rather nonchalant about the whole matter. "Those are all impressive achievements but it's not, you know, seeing everything. I'm not sure the forces of the Panopticon is the best place for you. Don't take it the wrong way, you can still have quite a kickass career with that. You could become a fortune teller or narrate documentaries for ABC."
I am ready! My mind no longer fears the impossible, it hungers for its presence! Witnessing the horrors that peek through the cracks in our wretched reality now sustains me as much as oxygen and food sustain the mindless masses! Do it, I implore you, Master General!"
"Oh dear." Laikos adjusted his aviator sunglasses that glowed with light reflected from the hologram. He then waved his hand to an unseen crowd. "Alright, run the startup through him."
The interface throne began turning on and glowing. The holographic emitter's psychoprotective censorship system instantly kicked in deleted large volumes of the interface throne to protect the audience in the command hall. What was left visible was the body of the volunteer, suddenly being surrounded by spiraling strings of energy like a visible magnetic field warping and overlapping into an outline of his nervous system. The volunteer's limbs began spasming and were kept in place by the heavy metallic restraints of the throne. Blood began circulating to the living headset that was attached to his head, making it come to life and slip hundreds of wriggling tendrils into his occular cavities, sliding around his eyeballs to implant themselves directly into his occular nerves.
"Yes.... yes!" The volunteer drooled with pleasure. "I see everything! I see everything, Master General! Yes! yes! yes!"
"You go get 'em, tiger." Laikos said with a tinge of sarcasm crossing his arms.
"It's glorious! Hail Inara! Hail Inara! YES, I SEE EVERY-" He instantly froze and went silent, the only noise he made was the loud breathing through his nose.
"Here we go." Laikos pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head.
"N-... no!" The volunteer's voice shrunk and his lips began trembling. "I... I see everything! No! I see everything!! No! No! I SEE EVERYTHING, NO! NO, PLEASE, NO, MAKE IT STOP, HELP ME!"
The screams that began coming through the holographic comms didn't sound like they were coming from a human. It sounded like an animal being skinned alive, the howls of a mind whose sentience had been instantly eroded into pure instinctive horror. He was struggling to free himself from the interface throne with inhuman strenght, tearing muscles and breaking bones in his body from the sheer force he was using but all he managed to do was rip open the surgical incisions in his skin while remaining attached.
"Sheesh. Can you make it stop?" He adressed the audience in the darkness then turned towards the screaming volunteer. "Ok, ok, it's going to take a couple minutes so here's a protip: Don't tell yourself it's all in your head, that only makes it worse when it starts talking and-"
"KILL ME! PLEASE KILL ME!" The volunteer managed to recover what was left of his ruined language centers to repeat those words over and over again. The headset was overflowing with the volunteer's tears and his nostrils began bleeding profusely.
"Yeah, exactly, see?" Laikos gestured in exhasperation. "You have to-... What I do is-... Liste-..." He was completely drowned out by the maniacal screaming. "St-Stop yelling in my ear, I'm trying to help y-... Stop yelling in my ear!"
Laikos lost his patience and swiped his arm down, telling the holographic emitters to mute his audio. The great hall was now back in complete silence befitting its near-complete darkness. The Master General of Rubikon II opened several minor interfaces around him to see what the EEG readings from such a mental slaughter looked like.
"Darling, why you do this?" Laikos asked with a sigh. "I know he was talking a bit too big but come on, couldn't you have taken him in at least for the duration of this battle?"
The reply that came from the distant Panopticon headquarters had to be censored by transcribing it from audio into text by psychoprotective AIs, which themselves were instantly erased once they had done their task. It was a simple string of text that glowed yellow at the level of Laiko's face.
'THE CREATURES ASK QUESTIONS WITH TERRIFYING ANSWERS'
"I know, dear, I know." The Master General shrugged. "But what can I do, tell them not to? They always think it's some kind of fortitude test and then as soon as they interface with you they ask the questions. Now it would also help if my fucking staff could do decent HR work." He turned towards the audience and adressed them with a sassy entonation while the now-muted volunteer fell into a spasmic seizure. "You know there's a difference between seeing weird stuff and seeing everything, right? I love y'all but sometimes you're the kind of people who mistakes sandpaper and toilet paper. Who approved that guy?"
"I did, sir." A calm voice came from the darkness.
"Shoot yourself." Laikos ordered and a single gunshot echoed through the room not a second later. The Master General finally turned the lights and strategic holograms back on, revealing the full extent of the command and control room as well as himself.
Rubikon II was to the system what Rubikon itself was to Capitol as a whole. A place where the dangerously deranged elites were kept busy, except in this case it was those considered dangerously deranged even by the Brotherhood of The Great State; an asylum within an asylum. Boleon Laikos was the poster child of such a figure. Once a promising general with a credible shot at becoming a party elite, the Battle of Varandal against the Immortal Empire had ended all that and perpetually changed him. Nobody could tell what was up with him ever since, but whatever it was its main symptom was an almost narcotic fascination with his former enemy. The rest of the surviving commanders from Varandal had all banded together into revanchist political groups that attempted to block any and all diplomacy with the Immortal Empire, a lot of their most influential members even pushed for a war of revenge; they had all been purged ever since as Inara sought to make new friends for the coming war. Laikos, the sole surviving general, was the complete opposite and embraced the IE with fanatism that far surpassed Inara and eventually became the Immortal Empire's official planetary liason. He had been an useful tool to exterminate the rest of the "Varandal Generals" but in doing so he had amassed too much influence for Inara to simply disappear him so instead he was handed to the Brotherhood of the Great State. Inara believed Laikos was so out of his mind that he could be an effective disruptor of the Brotherhood and she was largely right. Keeping him in check had consumed enormous ammounts of the Brotherhood's time and resources.
He was now considered a madman even by Wilhelm Arcon, the man who underwent painful anaesthesia-less surgeries to laser-etch the million-volume Capitol Constitution in his skeleton. Laikos had lost his original body to IE flesh-eating locusts and his second body to a car bombing by the Varandal Generals. His third body was female, more specifically a cloned replica of Empress Inara modified to be taller and have larger breasts, a choice that not a single sentient being in the planet didn't know came from his demented friends at the Immortal Empire. He further accentuated the look with a large pair of aviator sunglasses.
"Alright, onto business now!" Laikos turned towards his command staff who sat in the gigantic room. The command and control hall resembled a state legislature in the way that the seatings were arranged; instead of the huge concentric colosseum that was Arcon's headquarters; Laikos headquarters had the staff arranged in two huge seating galleries that faced one another while he and his closest brass sat on a large echeloned podium that oversaw them. A smaller podium on the other end of the hall was where the liason headquarters of E Pluribus Axioma, Triarch and the Rangvald Cartel sat with their own numerous staff. In the huge open space in the middle of the room, the strategic hologram glowed with a representation of the entire planet's surface. "What have we got here?"
"We have identified three major deorbiting events going on, sir." His early warning chief of sensors replied, adding the orbital paths of AGA drop forces into the map. There was still a lot of uncertainty as to where they would land so the ballistic calculations could only show that the drop would happen somewhere in the Pythagoria region, a medium-sized industrial subcontinent. "One capital-size target is deorbiting and entering atmosphere alongside two significant drop armies. Re-entry burn expected to start in four hours."
"Welcome to the madhouse, darlings." Laikos looked at the re-entry trajectories with eagerness.
The Restevian ground assault on Rubikon II began with fire and thunder in the sky. The Restevian fleet's troop transports broke away as the heavy warships maintained their posture, heading towards the planet below through the expanding cloud of gas and plasma that the Soul of Vengeance had left behind in it's strike.
Those transports descended in trails of flame as they punched through the planetary atmosphere, launching sqaudrons of atmospheric fighters to cover their approach and take down any aircraft that Capitol put up to counter them. Aboard the transports were the men, women, tanks and machines of the 63rd Assault Army, a shock unit like many others deployed across Ancerious. They here, like in so many other battles through out the RSC's military history, were the hammer. They were to strike, to smash, to secure a foothold for the rest of their armies to land, and to force Capitol and it's allies upon the ground to focus upon them until the field armies coming behind them had landed and deployed.
Their objective was not the Yamanashi Zaibatsu Shipyard No. 40, but rather the towns to the east of it. Here, intel had stated that there was more room for the 63rd and it's forces to maneuver, and more ways for them to fight creatively when the inevitable counterstroke arrived. And so they burned for their LZ, and burned hard.
The atmospheric fighters and ground attack of the campaign Air Command burned in ahead, streaking in like howling demons as they approached, scanning for the enemy and stooping upon the APP forces where they could be found.
The IRS had their plan, and the RSC knew that the plan of the IRS was soon to be well underway. But the 63rd was here, and as the transports and dropships came in, the assault had begun.
Fire thundered in the heavens, it was always the way before an orbital assault, when invading a new world. Fitting Jaman thought, that when humanity used to battle each other in times of old that they thought the gods battled with fire in the heavens above them. Little did they know that in the future, men still fought on the ground of old, but their creations fought like gods in the voids of space to protect them.
The wreck of the RSS Indrayama was aligned perfectly, small tugs and other escorts guided the cruiser in to its final trajectory as guidance thrusters burned to compensate for atmopsheric micro deviations. The IRS assisting ships merely broke off as the cruiser fell, turning into a raging fireball of twisted metal, a final angry mausoleum for those who had died aboard the Indrayama. Jaman Naskar watched from the edge of a hangar bay, his troops surrounding him in a flurry of activity rushing to drop ships, drop pods and other ways to the planet surface. Already point accurate orbital fire was beginning to rain down onto key anti orbital positions and their target area to softed up resistance and keep the APP pinned, while attack craft were launching from all over the fleet ready to give covering fire to the dropping troops.
With the Indrayama targetted for one of the trenches in the Yamanashi Zaibatsu Shipyard No. 40 the IRS drop zones were on the edges of the trench, ready to send plunging fire into the forces below that survive and to secure a foothold inside the facility itself. It was a job for the 45th Expeditionary forces, and they relished to prove themselves a the chance of combat.
Pods rained, gunships screamed forward and falling ordnance and fighters roared towards the surface, the 45th was deploying, this time alongside the RSC 63rd. It would be an honour to fight alongside other AGA forces. Jaman had wished he had been the one commanding the efforts at Klendathu, the IRS proved itself then. But he smiled, they would prove themselves now.
Fitting. That the thunder and fire of the gods would fall to the mortal world, just like the tales of old.
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Post by EmperorMyric on Mar 22, 2021 14:48:32 GMT
Rubikon System: Rubikon II Capitol Space
"Target processing is still working on the contacts but we estimate the drop forces to be at least two full combined arms fronts each with integral air support. Estimated landing areas have now been reduced to northern Pythagoria." Laikos' lieutenant general informed. Not willing to risk his early warning sensors and the sophisticated radars used by his SAM air defense units, Laikos was having the targets tracked by passive infrared and optical telescopes from reconaissance units and high-altitude drones. The relatively thin atmosphere of Rubikon II gave units hidden in mountains or in the nightside an almost unobstructed view of the hundreds of thousands of contacts. Triangulation and ballistic calculations allowed the strategic command to plot the re-entry courses of every contact, though the nimble fighters of the AGA were less reliably tracked. "We have a clearer trajectory on the starship, it is now estimated to break up at an altitude of at least 30 kilometers and impact an area of approximately 250 square kilometers in the northeast sector of Shipyard No. 40, sir."
"I hope you guys have insurance on that place. If they hit it I'm hitting it." He told the Rangvald representatives. "What about us? How's it looking?" Laikos asked, turning back to his own staff.
"Air defenses in northern Pythagoria are being suppressed by orbital bombardment. We lost every single early warning fixed installation so General Kanor has decided to take the whole sector grid offline and evacuated all remaining sites." The lieutenant general said. As the reconaissance forces were keeping their optics trained onto the transports, the many kinetic shells fired by the supporting ships from orbit were less reliably tracked and did not appear in the general projection. One by one, fixed anti-orbital installations and radars were simply disappearing with a blip with the majority destroyed being those covering the area in and around the enormous set of parallel trenches that housed the shipyard. "We have ordered all divisional and front-level air defense units into radio silence, if that's their landing area then we cannot lose them now. Joint Air Force Chiefs of Staff report 302 squadrons are within interception radius of the re-entry path, 75 of them for the burn phase."
"General Ynnyk, I need a sitrep of your air defense situation." Laikos turned to adress the EPA commander, who was so far away in the room they had to use holographic screens to communicate. For a mass of cybernetic children fused together into a worm-like creature measuring a couple dozen feet, Ynnyk had proven himself a capable commander.
"Anti-Orbital Forces report that all units in the hemisphere are within range of interception with hyperkinetic missiles. Our hypersonic TEMA kinetic missiles are-" He was abruptly interrupted.
"Boring." Laikos waved him off. "You take the enemy satellites. I need something spicier for the troops. Strategic Rocket Forces?"
The senior commander of the Capitol Strategic Rocket Forces took a second to reply, enough for those sitting around him to notice that he had a light smirk under his magnificent handlebar moustache. His boss was going to like what he had to say.
"33rd and 43rd Rocket Armies are within range of interception. We still have the neutron warheads loaded, Master General Laikos."
"YES!" Laikos clutched his head briefly then pointed at the general. "Holy shit, yes! This man earns his fucking medals, ladies and gentlemen. This man fucking earns them."
"We are standing by." The general replied with a complacent smile on his face, basking in the jealous looks from other members of the high command.
"Time a launch for when as much of the enemy force is the burn phase. If they're going to jam their own sensors then I'm not stopping them, am I right, fellas?" He made finger guns at the senior officers of the EPA Electronic Forces, who nodded in return. "Air force, cover those missiles and kill whatever tries to brake out of its burn or fly back up. Let's get this show on the road!"
Laikos suddenly raised his hands doing victory signs, which the cameras in the room detected as their cue to set off a line of fireworks behind his and his staff's podium. Nobody else had been informed that he had put fireworks in the command room, scaring the command staff out of their minds when they thought they were being shot at. Laikos lowered his hands to grab his crotch, which was the cue to get the room's PA systems to play the Capitol anthem. In a couple seconds the commotion had died down and the top brass of APP was hard at work.
Before reaching the many mobile ICBM launchers scattered across Rubikon II, the encrypted orders that came out of the command room were endlessly routed between different networks and civilian infrastructure to disguise the position of the headquarters. The order itself was not a text, video or message, it was a digital command that instantly and remotely made the launcher vehicles stop in their tracks, extend their stabilizing anchors and launch regardless of where they were as long as they had a clear path up. This caught quite a few of them in cities where the enormous blasts from their missiles' engine ignition demolished houses and vehicles in a wide radius; several unfortunate troopers around some of the vehicles were completely incinerated in the middle of bathroom breaks or naps. The missiles flew upwards for a couple hundred meters, discarded their booster stages then sharply made a break towards the killzone, flying in shallow paths so as to not be shot at by the ships. As soon as the launch had ended the vehicles ejected their now-empty launch tubes to lighten themselves and gave control back to their crews, who knew they had to leave the area as fast as possible. Launchers in the desert made a beeline for the nearest highways while launchers in cities evacuated towards the maze of underground tunnels, hastily followed by their supporting units and armed escort.
The bulk of the missiles were fired by Capitol with a single common goal. They were to race ahead until their ballistic path intercepted with the path of the AGA forces right in the middle of their re-entry burn, where their comms and sensors would be heavily jammed by their own plasma shrouds, effectively making the enemy forces inflict an electronic attack upon themselves. The 150 missiles were to break up in the zenith of their ballistic paths into 10 warheads and a decoy dispenser each. An additional 40 missiles, fired by EPA, contained only decoy dispensers and jammers while 10 were armed with powerful bomb-pumped lasers. The whole flight of missiles were directed by the optical reconaissance forces that tracked the enemy.
Under Arcon's orders and following the arrival of Annointed nanite clouds, the strategic rocket forces had hastily changed the warhead casings of their ICBMs to turn the strategic nukes into neutron bombs. They had not reverted since their initial launches and Laikon's staff found the ghastly weapons to the arriving human troops where they were the most vulnerable. Rather than attempt to hit the landing transports with kinetic missiles, the ICBMs would attempt to get within radius of as many transports as possible and detonate their multi-megaton warheads, showering every transport around them with repeated lethal doses of neutron radiation. The explosions would happen high enough in the atmosphere that the neutron radiation wouldn't reach Capitol's own cities and forces, or so did Laikos expect. It would be a gruesome fate for those closest to the nukes, but the Capitol commanders planned for there to be many more casualties than those who would die immediately; with the majority of those exposed calculated to have hours or even days of radiation sickness before death. With this Laikos hoped to immediately overwhelm the medical and decontamination units of the first wave and turn the men and women of the AGA into the walking dead.
This required the missiles to reach their targets, however, and for such a thing to happen the support of the electronic and air forces was required. The former lend its help by activating a multitude of thousands of laser dazzlers along the path of the ICBMs, targeting the IRS satellites as well as the spaceships orbiting above to blind their optical and infrared sensors. The laser emitters included many requisitoned from civilian installations and were located largely on helipads atop buildings in the most densely populated areas, forcing AGA into targeting the cities were they to try and destroy them. The air force, on the meantime, sortied over 1500 fighters from requisitioned airfields and VTOL pads in cities as well as tunnels and aircraft shelters. The EPA, Triarch and Capitol aircraft flew high at full afterburner as soon as they cleared the cities, propelling themselves into ballistic paths much like the missiles. They aimed themselves to leave the atmosphere in suborbital flight and pass above the AGA forces to have clear lines of sight for missiles and laser weaponry. While the Capitol and Triarch aircraft were to then drop down and hunt down any survivors, the much faster EPA fighters were programmed to remain at high altitude, providing radar and communications jamming to make the battle even more hectic. The neutron bombs were expected to emit massive ammounts of radiation into all aircraft involved and so not a single one of the fighters cleared for sortie was manned.
All of this looked like a blinding lightshow over the strategic hologram in the command room, which became so layered it was incomprehensible to any but the cognitively and sensorially-enhanced generals that sat in the room. The paths for every unit and missile were plotted, optical jammers and their currently inactive backups as well as silent radars ready to activate were all signalled. Everything converged on the killzone where the ICBMs would fly into the formation of transport craft and the fighter squadrons would fly above it. Simulations were run at all complexity levels by EPA supercomputers, saturating the hologram even more much to Laikos' fascination.
"Ladies and gentlemen." He leaned into a microphone. "This is beautiful. Fuck it, I'm allowing masturbation until T minus one minute. Anyone who masturbates right now won't be dishonorably discharged, I promise. I kindly ask Commissar-General Raikona to allow this exception to official rules." Laikos then could see Raikona himself in a distant seat, wildly flailing his arms and mouthing 'NO. NO.' to him.
Once the generals had run out of orders to give, the waiting time began to see what would be the AGA response. Silence engulfed the hall, which was only broken by the occasional noises Laikos made when he detached the camera that overlooked his podium and pointing it at himself.
"Comms, give me a strategic channel to the Immortal Empire. Encrypt the shit out of it, they'll figure it out." He ordered.
"Yes, sir." His chief comms officer replied. "Beaming MESCOM to closest IE asset."
"Darlings, were are you?" He spoke into the camera then turned it towards the strategic hologram. "Look at what I've prepared for you. Look at this motherfucker, ain't I good? Look at all that food. Look at that tentacled plasma hellbeast you're elbow deep in. Then look back at the food. Not rocket science, right? Not much genetically, I know, just towelheads and slavs. But I know that you have been dying to test out all those nightmares you've got inside the vats, and this is the shooting gallery of the century. It's not going to be like Varandal, these guys aren't pushovers that only ever teach your genetic engineers that plasma fangs are enough. These guys are going to put up a fight, they're the evolutionary pressure you have been yearning for and I've got a big pile of them waiting to use their Darwinian chisel on your craziest creations and strenghten them into something that the gods themselves will look under the bed for!" He clutched the camera, contorting Inara's face into a mad grimace. He got louder and louder until he was outright yelling into the camera. "Come here you beautiful fucking bastards, come here while it's good so you and me can have the time of our lives and blow the roof off this motherfucker!"
The neutron radiation attack came out of nowhere with the transports descending through the atmosphere, and those closest to the blasts... well, they never knew what hit them, men and women dying from the radiation in such short time that some never even knew what happened. Among the others, the alarm went out rapidly that they were under attack and from nuclear weapons, shields going up rapidly for as much good as they would to in atmo-- or against neutron radiation. The transports barreled on for the LZ, carrying on bitterly and without pause despite the attack they'd just come under-- medical units across the board were notified to be prepped, and those farthest from the blasts were chalked up as perimeter units. There was little else that could be done.
And then came the drones. Their presence was noted quickly when a transport and the fighters around it exploded then two, then three, and like beasts arising from the fires of hell squadrons of Su-585s were breaking off from the formation to engage the enemy air attack. This led them right into the line of the laser missiles, and fighters began quickly dying to those. More squadrons were peeled off to attack those missiles, and with engines screaming, guns roaring and missiles beginning to fly the Restevian fighter cover went on the offensive to defend their transports and the fighters heading to groundside.
Fire support from the warships in orbit came immediately, the rods and missiles raining from on high to strike the enemy ICMB launchers on the move. But with the enemy laser dazzlers directed against them, the Restevian warships were unable to place their shots accurately, and many went wide. 'Going wide' was relative to a warship, but in this case it still wasn't good accuracy at all. The next volley would have to make up for it.
And speaking of groundside, it came up quick. The transports that had survived the drone assault and the neutron bombing burned hard and burned fast, reaching their foggy LZs with thunderous noise and hellish columns of flame as they landed. But the planned brute force assault of the 63rd was not destined to form right away, not with the bombing they'd been struck by. Those infantry and tank units able to move and fight right away were sent forth to form a perimeter, and to hold any enemy attacks while the medical units sorted out who could and couldn't be helped. They'd have to hold, and then the 63rd would go on the offensive. The field armies in orbit were counting on them to do that.
In total there were four divisions able to move and fight right away-- the lucky ones that hadn't been fucked hard by the neutron bombing. Three of motorized infantry and one of tanks, they were deployed out and into the open rapidly to make up a mobile force to beat back any APP counter-attacks. Those were sure to be coming.
The 6 divisions that had not been so lucky also deployed, but with their casualties and the medical units rushing between them they could not move nearly as fast and so they did not. Instead they set to work securing the neighboring cities they had landed in, creating fastnesses and bastions from which they could fight and hold when the enemy arrived-- and so that the sick and irradiated could be seen to.
And then, there was the Spetsnaz. They had reached the ground more or less intact, and so they went forth into the foggy morning. Their mission was very simple-- intercept, pin down, slow, sabotage and make life hell for APP units any and every way they could. This would buy time for the rest of the 63rd, and if the Spetsnaz could instill fear in the enemy with invisible strikes from invisible warriors all the better.
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And over it all, Marshal Grisha Kohskov watched. He was the commander of the Restevian ground forces for this invasion, and he had to admit, the Capitol commander was clever. Very clever. But Koshkov was a veteran of many battles such as this, and many times had he faced bad odds. He'd make the best of this situation-- the enemy bombing presented a challenge to overcome.
The Immortal Empire’s response to the enthusiastic request of Laikos was a simple interactive. Before him, on one of his many screens and with simple text the Immortal Empire asked him to ‘Please select an acceptable level of collateral damage’ coupled with a sliding scale that ran from ‘Minimal Civilian Infrastructure Losses’ all the way to ‘Planetary Devastation.’
In orbit spread among the three gathered fleets six ships stood out, arrow headed in shape and ranging between 10-11 km in length.
Three of these vessels belonged to the church, the remainder to the military, it was aboard the lead military vessel TSS Shattered throne that general Visco made his war room, to those not capable of beholding souls it would seem as if the man sat alone in a bare room bereft of decoration and useful equipment, this how ever was far from the truth, strings of soul stuff and gentle waves of psionic energy pulse between thousands of smaller gestalts that were currently acting as the commanders staff, data, opinions and live feeds course through the meta concert as the six ships prepare to support the landing AGA forces.
"Ship group one sensors to active, i want to know when the anti orbital fire begins, sweep the planets surface and pay close attention to any signs of missile launches, the second you get a whiff level the area and everything around it collateral is acceptable to any extent."
Having received their orders the two ships among the D.N.A fleet begin active scanning, attempting to telepathically locate enemy troops while more mundane sensors search for anti orbital fire and missile launches.
"Ship group two you are to provide support to the RSC landing, prepare four divisions of mechanised infantry in case a more intimate response is required, meanwhile make yourself useful and join ship group one in scanning, i want you searching for SSM's and other fire support platforms, when you find it destroy it."
The pair of ships tasked to the RSC fleet add their own sensors to the mix, laser comms making the RSC aware that the vessels were on task for orbital support.
"ship group three you are to mirror ship group two's actions for the IRS"
Moving like a well oiled machine the IRS assigned war craft release their own laser band comms in order to make the IRS aware of their availability their own sensors now beginning to sweep around their landing zone.
"Happy hunting you glorious mother fuckers."
Visco mutters to the empty room.
The Indrayama, now a flaming meteor from the re-entry and its own internal damage finally reached its destination. The 4km cruiser smashed into one of the giant trenches of the shipyard, its sheer mass and bulk causing a titanic explosion, the heat of the blast alone melted the trenches walls and many hundreds of warehouses, massive cranes, transportation systems and even several unwitting Rangvald picket forces, all were vapourised in the sudden cataclysmic impact. The ship itself was gone, and the blast and overpressure alone scrapped nearly all the vessels under construction in the trench itself, blasting huge ship hulks off cradles and sending colossal engineering equipment soaring through the skies like childs toys picked up by a hurricane. The towering inferno was visible for hundreds of km around even through the morning fog and the shockwave had cleared a very wide berth of fog from the IRS landing zones.
The neutron weapons however had not been forseen. The detonations while mainly radiological weapons were still nuclear weapons and the sheer power of the shockwaves crushed and smashed many landing craft out of the sky with little effort plunging to their deaths with no chance to regain control of the craft despite the various pilots efforts if they were even still alive. The radition wave however was so powerful that it had exposed nearly 80,000 troops in the preliminary wave to varying levels of radiation, some died instantly their genetics blasted from their bodies as they simply shut down while others instantly began showing acute signs of vomiting and collapsing. For many they didnt even realise it but they were dead walking, the sheer dosage meant that the majority had days if not hours to live. Those who knew either tried to find medics on board their craft or merely sat knowing that they would die, for those who didnt realise it none of the IRS commanders would tell them. The attack still stood, those 80k troops would give their lives to the cause they were troops after all and the IRS would not waste.
Jaman himself oversaw the combat drop, the forces deployed along the edges of the trenches, making use of the fog free area causing by the massive explosion. The IRS quickly consolidated its position advancing slowly to ensure that anything nearby would be dealth with while they sent more forces in. Jaman ordered another 100k troops into the fray, they would backup the first wave and act as the main force once most of the radiation sufferers died or were rendered incapable. The units that were affected were ordered to rush forward, to capture and cover as much area as possible and to scout out the enemy those not knowing their condition were confused but followed orders while the forces fanned out.
The drones however found themselves quickly dealing with IRS interceptors in their thousands, launched from the orbiting fleet they quickly fell upon the drones using their height advantages to make boom and zoon straffing strikes, attempting to put themselves between the drones and the dropping forces. Meanwhile the IRS fleet, blinded by the lazer dazzlers attempted to use other means to assist their counter bombardment, aerial spotting craft, hacking attempts on low orbit Geo positioning and survelance satilites that hadnt been destroyed and the Annointeds own sensors in a desperate bid to try destroy the SSM forces along with other elements of enemy armies.
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Post by EmperorMyric on Mar 22, 2021 14:52:20 GMT
Rubikon System: Rubikon II Capitol Space
Upon making contact with the AGA air forces, the drone squadron suddenly turned tail and retreated as fast as it could after only the briefest of skirmishes. Capitol and Triarch aircraft retreated rapidly while EPA fighters simply continued their suborbital paths and passed above the formation of enemy craft fast enough to outrun the majority of their missiles. The slower but nimbler Capitol jets and their stealthier Triarch counterparts dove away to gain more speed towards the large equatorial urban centers of Rubikon II hoping to bait enemy aircraft away from the frontline and towards the land forces' concealed SAM positions. All in all the intermeshing of AGA and APP formations had been less a duel and more like a jousting match: a single fierce moment rather than a drawn out struggle. 150 smoldering wreckages from APP aircraft now littered the ground, scattered all over thousans of miles of desert beneath the re-entry path of the AGA transports. Now that neutron bombs weren't an issue, Capitol's next sorties of fresh aircraft could be directed by human pilots to fight the increasingly depleted AGA air forces.
The arrival of the AGA forces' first wave had landed them in a vast sprawl of urban and industrial development a few thousand miles north of the equator and close to the major city of Pythagoria. While the level of urbanization was next to nothing compared to the labyrinthine stacks of thousands of fused arcologies of the capital region, the area of operations was still relatively densely populated. The shipyard dominated the area of operations without a doubt. Not only was it massive - the largest planetary facility of its kind inf Capitol space - but the intensive industrial demand it created meant that almost every single one of the smaller cities was dedicated to covering its needs, be it additional energy, highly refined materials, computer parts, optoelectronic systems, decomissioning facilities or even just food and entertainment.
The IRS troops had landed in the far end of the shipyard, one of the few places that had been completely evacuated of any civilian presence. To say it was a ghost town was an understatement, not a single living soul could be seen as far as the curvature of the planet would allow. Unlike in the neighboring cities there had been no desperation, no screaming families jam-packed into every single outbound vehicle and no rioting once the airports ran out of shuttles. The Yamanashi Shipbuilding Corporation had shut down the shipyard well in advance of the invasion, having enough time even to clean up before their staf was evacuated and their workforce sent back to the residential area.
Already sentenced to agonizing death by the tens of thousands by the neutron bombs, the soldiers of the IRS were expecting an immediate counterattack upon touchdown; an opportunity to go down in a blaze of glory for their nation as soon as the doors of their transports opened. Yet there was no AA fire or pillboxes immortalizing their names in the eyes of their fellow patriots. They were met by something much more tormenting and grimly reminding of their inevitable fates: the silence of a foggy graveyard. The fog was the densest inside the trenches as they trapped the moist morning air; towering forms lined these trenches gazing down upon the advancing troops. While upon reaching the first one by the troops saw they were enormous industrial mecha holding extendable cranes, it was hard to not see them as an assembled line of sword-wielding giants through the vagueness of the fog. The gray mist gave life to the colossal forms of the warriors who had died for the Republic before them, the ancestors, who the soldiers would soon be with. They had come to them in their final moments, giving them a faint reflection of the much higher purpose for which they had thrown their lives. They weren't there to speak or offer, they were there simply to witness and act as yet another omen of death; one different from the others, one about its dignity and honor. Death surrounded them on all sides during their advance along the deserted trench and only began to materialize once they approached its end. Mines detonated, sniper rifles cracked distantly and lone ATGMs streaked orange trails through the fog. But the men who had gone in the trench had come out as warriors, one with their fates in a state of limitless peace, sent off by their ancestors onto the lines of killing machines.
At the base of the trench was what could have been best described as a warehouse city, a vast expanse of container stacks and hangars that was, unlike the yards the IRS had passed by on their way along the trench, built up very vertically. The tallest structures were several control towers measuring miles in height from which the swarm of railway and flying cranes that handled the containers were coordinated. The millions of containers were arranged in echeloned pyramids or skyscraper-like piles requiring structural reinforcement, presenting the IRS with what was a mix between the hardest aspects of urban and mountain warfare. Defending the area was a taskforce of the innocuously-titled 'Self-Defense Force', known to those more aware of their purpose as the Enforcers of the Rangvald Cartel; the private military subcontracted by a coalition of corporations that included Yamanashi.
They had left behind a minefield, one not made of simple explosive devices but of a whole network of sophisticated fighting drones. There was almost no presence of Rangvald's armored forces, being overwhelmingly outnumbered by the enemy, the Enforcers avoided direct mechanized combat and instead turned the warehouse city into an ecosystem of machinery that waged merciless guerrilla warfare on the invaders. This militarized ecosystem spanned all sizes of drones, from insects that acted as EM-silent communications courriers to bipedal, quadrupedal and even squid-like machines that scurried and crawled with stunning ease over the maze of terrain, getting off single railgun shots to pin down enemy forces and make them cluster together, at which point seemingly random containers in the gigantic yard opened their doors to fire missiles at suppressed forces and vehicles. The missiles themselves were no less biological in their motion; rather than flying in simple parabolic paths, their flight resembled that of hummingbirds, allowing them to fly in the cracks between containers or even undeground sewer pipes to avoid interceptions. Wherever they walked the movements of the IRS forces were mapped out and followed by synthetic fungal growths hidden in ever crack and hard to reach place, which used pheromones to indetectably attract insect drones that would carry the data towards bigger drones or ATGM containers. Major underground tunnels had been flooded, blocking the mechanized forces of the IRS from passing but allowing their own drones to swim through like reptiles as well as allowing for a myriad of flying fish-like missiles to stalk the invaders.
"Holy shit, guys, your infomercial game is god-tier." Laikos said, his eyes wide open at the holographic display in front of him. In order to demonstrate how seamlessly the hive mind of their robotic armies could be integrated with existing APP communications networks, the Rangvald representatives gave Laikos and his staff a live feed from one of the squid-like creatures that stalked the darkness between containers. He had not been impressed at first but he quickly became fascinated with it once he saw that it was interactive and he could control the grenade launcher-equipped squid.
Its whole body was a continuous hydroskeleton, allowing it to squeeze through cracks or pipes less than ten inches wide, using static forces to stick to walls or ceilings. The only solid part of the drone was its grenade launcher, which had been made articulable and very compact to not hinder its movement. Guided by Laikos and positioning data fed to it by the insect drones, the machine emerged from a sewer as a mass of tentacles that instantly gripped the two nearest IRS troopers while the mouth spat out a cloud of firefly-like drones. The fireflies quickly swarmed around the troops, lighting up the area for a missile to turn a whole platoon into twisted gore.
"As you can see, Master General. we have managed to develop instant and cryptographically secure linking with the entire depth of standard APP protocols." The Rangvald representative told him from the other side of the hall. "We have developped the E2 system to serve as an alternative to bioweapons programs benefitting of lower cost, superior ease of manufacture and much more significant cross-compatibility with conventional force-"
"Oh boy." Laikos interrupted. The IRS soldiers in Laikos' tentacles had survived the blast, shielded from the shrapnel by the ballistic skin of the squid yet crushed into submission, unable to do anything but scream as Laikos pulled both of them simultaneously into a small sewage drain. "It's nice and all, but if you think this is an alternative to bioweapons then you've clearly never been in the same room as anyone from the Panopticon. Or ever heard of the Immortal Empire at all. They'd make good mall police though."
He made the squid come out of the drain to finish off any wounded that could still pose a threat as highlighted to him by the squid's HUD. The tentacles moved with such speed that they were a black blur amongst the smoke and fire, one that the soldiers could only see for a fraction of a second before they wrapped themselves along their limbs, pulling them apart or cracking their necks.
"By the way." Laikos gestured towards the screen. "I don't get the controls for the tentacles. I've been trying to shove them up a guy's ass this whole time but it just kills them in random ways."
"The tentacles are equipped with self-targeting systems that calculate the most effici-"
"Boring, shoot yourself." Laikos waved down to delete the hologram then turned back to his staff. A gunshot echoed in the room. "What's the sitrep on the other front?"
"Restevian forces have gone below the radar horizon, we are vectoring long-range reconaissance aircraft to carry out a flyby scan."
The Restevian forces had touched down several hundred miles away from their IRS counterparts, in a spread-out cluster of interconnected cities located in between three major population centers. Just like their IRS counterparts, there was no return fire in their LZs and they were able to quickly disembark their transports. Unlike the clean and deserted shipyard, what greeted them were cities ravaged by very fresh scars of chaos. The evacuations to the spaceports had completely broken down as every single citizen tried to make its way out at once; in a fit of desperation the civilians had left their motor vehicles behind once it seemed clear the gridlock wouldn't let them reach the spaceports in time, this made every single major highway out of the cities unusable. Once the spaceports had run out of shuttles and the shrapnel storm had set in, rioting began for space in bomb shelters and widespread looting had gotten completely out of control. When evacuation became impossible and the invasion loomed the civil defense paramilitaries and K forces of Capitol swept the cities, forcing the civilians back into their homes and shooting any rogue citizen on sight. Lacking numbers to pacify the huge numbers of civilians, the K force had instead rolled from city to city as fast as possible wildly firing machineguns into the air, herding citizens back inside buildings and tunnels with suppressive fire.
There were whole neighborhoods riddled with bullet holes where it almost seemed like a battle had already taken place. Many buildings were on fire and, without working emergency services, the otherwise easily gone fires were beginning to spread between buildings. Broken glass, debris, dust, trash, bodies and abandoned cars completely carpeted the streets to the point one could not see the asphalt. Abandoned ambulances and civil defense vehicles stuck in the traffic jams remained running, flashing their emergency lights into the eerie fog. Yet in the gaps between the devastation the Restevians could still see hints of the society that once lived there. It seemed completely contrary to what the Restevians had been briefed on the Brotherhood of the Great State. There were no gaudy golden museums or stratospheric statues signifying the grandeur of Capitol. In fact, it seemed to be a highly consumeristic society, with huge ammounts of private stores selling sophisticated gadgets. It was a strong enough sign for the Restevian staff that they were fighting in a special economic zone where the planetary government had liberalized the markets and created a private economy. This was, puzzlingly, almost the exact opposite of what the Brotherhood stood for: the supremacy of the state over any affair; a paradox that the Restevian commanders kept in mind.
While the streets were deserted, noce the Restevians began securing buildings they stumbled upon the hideouts of the vast majority of the population who had fearfully taken cover in the basements of their nondescript, concrete residential blocks. Yet in clearing so many buildings the Restevians began uncovering something. The streets were being watched. Cameras panned through the fog, following everything from every side. As soon as the Restevians began sweeping the streets and buildings they uncovered the tip of a vast iceberg of Capitol surveillance systems. What seemed like mere CCTVs in grocery stores, parking lots and hotels were actually not restricted their buildings but were instead sending all information to the Capitol state. The Brotherhood of the Great State saw through every camera, from CCTVs to the self-driving optics of cars, the smarth clothing or civilians, their gadgets or their bionic implantations. It was a vast snake whose head lied very far away from the front, hidden behind a network of firewalls and proxies pulled from the civilians themselves. Every citizen in the planet had been locked out of his personal devices, turning them by the hundreds of billions into processors for a cybersecurity network of unimaginable proportions.
For security reasons, this enormous surveillance system did not connect into Laikos' headquarters. Instead it connected to the General Office of the Rubikon Commissariat through a joint EPA-Capitol headquarter. A delegation of that headquarter was present in Laikos' huge staff, informing him of the estimate strenght and distribution of forces.
"40th Army cannot carry out its strategic objective, it's being blocked by Restevian forces." One of the staff members announced. "Eastern divisions are now cut off from the shipyard."
"Well, I guess everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face." Laikos remarked. "Scrap the strategic plan but keep each division's operational plan and tell them to carry out a conventional offensive westwards of Papaga. Nothing crazy, just follow standard operational plans and we take care of the rest. Echelon them into two lines, front echelon bypass first line of cities and let the rear echelon take them, intercept enemy forces where you can."
His staff members instantly began working on relaying the orders as Laikos turned to adress Comissar-General Raikona once again.
"Now I know you got your surveillance operation going but I wouldn't put all my eggs in that basket, do you agree?" He asked. "You're one of the smart ones, tell me how you already have a backup."
Raikona nodded. "The Commissariat is on site in all cities currently held by the Restevians, the General Office ordered civilian clothes and radio silence, they're standing by."
"Good." Laikos turned towards his plotting hologram while still adressing the Commissar-General. "Get some landlines and runners in case the main system goes down, they'll be the backup. I need comms to get a link between the General Office and the army headquarters of the 40th. If they get overloaded then go down to divisional headquarters."
"Processing order, sir." Another staffer replied punctually, allocating available servers to creating this link between the Commissariat and the Army around the city of Papaga.
"I want every medic and engineer of theirs in the mud." He ordered. Just for once he actually looked and gestured like Inara. His orders were stern, intimidating. "If they set up a field hospital, it gets destroyed. If they set up an ammo depot, it gets destroyed. If they set up a helipad, it gets destroyed. Don't let divisional forces take care of the ones that got poisoned, keep that burden on the platoon medics and they'll never make it out of the cities. Get every single SSM unit on the front coordinates from the Commissariat and cross-check for false leads. They're going to want to shoot them down so air force and independent SSM units should take that as an opportunity to suppress the shit out of their air defense."
Another Rangvald delegate informed Laikos that the estimated size of IRS units had been increased to at least eight divisions, outnumbering Cartel forces tenfold in the container city. A breakout was almost inevitable yet he had no forces anywhere near that place. Once the IRS forces broke through the intense Rangvald guerrilla gauntlet they would have an almost completely clear path to seize the entire shipyard if Capitol forces didn't move fast.
"And these guys are just breaking my balls." Laikos switched right back from resembling Inara to his usual self, pointing at the projection of IRS forces. "Now that the 40th is cut off we have nothing there. Look at that mess. Best we can do now is using the 15th Army to contain that shitshow and keep them suppressed. You heard me, give the 15th nuclear clearance."
Upon his order, the army chiefs of staff quickly began inputting their cryptographic keys, sending away the order for the higher headquarters to begin remotely arming the plethora of nuclear warheads of the Capitol 15th Army south of the shipyard, the largest.
"Get the airmobile divisions to give us a foothold in the northern Residential Sector of the shipyard." Laikos continued. "Try to stamp out any forces that break out of the container city but don't turn it into the fucking Alamo and fuck my whole plan up the ass. If things get too hot they should retreat downwards, I'd rather have a smaller chunk of the shipyard than nothing. If anyone tries flanking the container city in the open nuke them. Now..."
Laikos leaned towards the strategic plotting hologram, zooming into the section that connected the city of Pythagoria with the southern residential sector of the shipyard, the one closest to the Capitol frontline. Over half of the 15th Army's strenght -as well as the sole EPA mechanized division in the entire area of operations- was scattered in the northermost tip of Pythagoria, a rusted wasteland of abandoned factories and refineries that provided adequate cover. To its west there was a decomissioning yard full of Mk.1-generation ships in various stages of dismantling and to the east were the gigantic solar farms that provided electricity to the city and shipyard. Both the solar farm and the decomissioning yard provided good cover that was nevertheless easy to maneuver through, but neither structure actually fully bridged the gap between Pythagoria and the shipyard. A critical 80 kilometer strip of wide open and almost completely flat terrain remained between the two objectives in which the 15th would have to advance if it wanted any hope of establishing a foothold in the shipyard before the IRS completely overran it. Laikos looked at this strip in ponderous silence.
"I'm not gonna lie, we got locked out of the ninja Sun Tzu shit right now and we're going to have to do this the hard way." Laikos announced. "We're going to have to throw everything at that gap. Keep the independent SAM divisions and every SSM and artillery unit on our side of the gap and have them cover the advance of the soldiers. Use whatever's left available of the 40th to intercept any enemy forces. Rest of the 15th is reserve. Who's the biggest threat?"
"IRS forces are too far away but we are aware that there is a division-strenght force of Restevians who touched down on the city of Ob, Commissariat is keeping track of them." A liason officer informed. "They are actually closer to the southern tip of the shipyard than we are. There might be a second force up north but it is unconfirmed."
"Then have every SSM unit of the 15th within range launch at them. I want those motherfuckers dead the second they come out of that city because if they actually manage to lock us of the shipyard we'll have half the 15th in the open and the airmobile units are going to get trapped north of them."
By now the hall was alive with the echoes of muttering generals relaying the many orders Laikos had given. They spread down the chain of command, a single sweeping order becoming a set of strategic objectives which then became millions of individual orders. Radio transmissions, laser communication beams, encrypted landlines, signal flares, whistles, continental-range low-frequency communications all lit up on the area of operations alongside a constellation of decoys, repeaters and false contact generators. It was like the awakening synapses of an enormous beast, the Capitol war machine.
Over the entire frontline, APCs were mounted, tanks rolled out, SAM units were mobilized and a tremendous volley of ballistic missiles began arching through the air, fired in sync by the entire front. The missiles targeted any force concentration or field hospital that the secret police spies and the surveillance systems could find, giving them precise aiming coordinates that allowed the SSM launchers to fire on the move while remaining on the highways for maximum mobility in shoot-and-scoot volleys of four missiles. Both sides of the battle were still beyond each other's standard artillery but long-range artillery soon began augmenting the SSM firings onto the Restevian-held cities. An initial frontline of 3 mechanized infantry divisions and a tank division launched their attacks from the city of Papaga in order to prevent the enemy from reaching the cities of Neftograd and Pepara while a backup force of 2 divisions readied themselves to seize the cities. Airmobile units from all attacking units were forward-deployed in order to gain a foothold before the Restevians did, racing as close to the surface as their terrain-tracking systems would allow, masking themselves behind terrain in every opportunity. The divisions involved remained spread out and made occasional hard turns to throw off orbital targeting at the cost of delaying their arrival to the city.
The central part of the front saw a much smaller advance, with only one division close enough to safely attempt to take one of the cities northeast of the solar farm. The few divisions in the center were too spread out to mount an effective attack by themselves so they remained put, defending the string of cities along the superhighway that connected Papaga with Pythagoria; however, they also began launching their long-range missiles at the Restevian-held cities. It was in Pythagoria where the most concentrated point of the APP counter-attack took place, an all-out advance to gain a foothold in the shipyard. Everything was committed to this attack as either the strike force, flank security or reserve. It was in the support of this attack that the strongest density of SSM fire took place with the entire western front unloading their ballistic missiles and high-powered artillery on the Restevians holding the city of Ob: the unit closest to the city. Rather than the surgical strikes of the rest of the front, the 15th Army went for saturation bombardment in order to keep the Restevian division from reaching the shipyard before they did. A total of 6 divisions were committed, leaving Pythagoria and racing to cross the no man's land as fast as possible to minimize their exposure.
The flank was held by a relatively small unit that nevertheless played a big role. In order to keep the entirety of IRS forces contained in the guerrilla gauntlet, high command called upon the 15th Army's lone superheavy tank brigade. To the west of Pythagoria there was relatively little urban development, it was an open desert were 40 behemoths of steel and ceramic could roam like moving fortresses so armored they were kept from sinking into softer ground by gravitic actuators. Within the autoloaders of these beasts was an arsenal of thermonuclear shells ready to be fired across the enormous distance that separated them from the container city in case any IRS force attempted to flank around it by crossing the other trenches. A smaller airborne attack was mounted on the shipyard by a force consisting of an EPA airmechanized infantry division and a smaller Capitol airborne regiment. In hopes of establishing a second line behind the Rangvald forces, APP attempted to forward-deploy them many hundreds of miles ahead of the frontline. Unlike the land units, the 80km gap was barely of worry for the much faster gunships and transports that flew along the ground, and used the shipyard residential areas as cover from Restevian units to their flank.
A triple air offensive of immense proportions was mounted to support this attack. In the east, the air forces flew a mix of air superiority and strike sorties to help the advancing divisions. In the west, at the contrary, the air force flew pure air support sorties, hoping to cover the critical gap as much as possible from enemy interdiction strike aircraft. The central front, which had not advanced, saw a different kind of air offensive: SEAD aircraft by the hundreds, flown out in coordination with the SSM launchers to strike at the Restevian air defense where it would be its most active and vulnerable. These were largely protected by jammer aircraft rather than fighter escorts as the commanders of Rubikon hoped to concentrate as much air superiority fighters over both offensives.
"Now we wait." Laikos stood up. "I'll be at my quarters trying to sort out the situation with the Panopticon. The rest of you keep looking for any pilots that haven't been evacuated. I don't want to do it myself, I can't go around micromanaging every little thing that happens, you know."
With the orders given, Laikos made his way out of the hall, delegating the operational execution of the offensive to his generals. Just as he made it out of the room his phone vibrated with an SMS sent by contact 'Daddy'. He opened it to see a sliding scale of collateral.
"Oh, you fucking tease." He said, pondering what level to tap into. "You know damn well the only good answer to you is absolute hellfire. But, man, just because I'm home alone don't mean you can go around shoving M80s in the toilets and fucking the dog. You'll get your collateral, just... not all over."
He set the scale to 50% and sent the message back. He hesitated for a bit then finally sent a second SMS 'It's complicated.'
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