Post by EmperorMyric on Mar 22, 2021 16:29:39 GMT
“Aim! Fire!” The honour guard commander’s voice was followed by the swift crack of rifle fire.
The memorial ceremony for the threshold incident was now wrapping up, the MC saying the last few words and dismissing all present. Thousands attended the ceremony in New Gatlinburg, which became a city in mourning, the usual bright advertisements boards were shut off in respect of the occasion as wells as road closures so as many people as possible could attend. But soon the sadness would turn to anger and everyone knew where it was going to be pointed at, the Alliance government. It was only a few days before the first protests starting forming, it started off as a few dozen then all the way up to a couple hundred people protesting against the governments decisions. Taking all the blame squarely upon themselves was Director Albert Tyldum and Grand Fleet Admiral Terrence Chesterton. They merely bided their time while they awaited the incoming storm from Alliance HQ. It was a week after the ceremony that Albert went to his office like he had been every day. Only when he entered this time the lights were on and someone was at his desk.
“Hey there Al, I’d say long time no sees but it seems your endeavour here requires a lot more of my attention then I’d like.” An all too familiar voice spoke calmly as the chair swivelled around to reveal Wes Johnson President of the Three Domains Alliance.
“Remember what I said last time Al how you were on your last legs? Well I’m glad to see you didn’t hear me out.” Wes’ voice grew with anger
“We’ve lost just about a whole fleet and with it two point two million men and women who had no idea what they were doing out there to start with. Care to explain to me what our fleets were doing out in the middle of nowhere Al.” Anger consumed his voice
“We got an emergency call out by our allies in the Dectrose Empire for military assistance. Then as you would have seen in the report, communications were cut off and…” Al was cut short
“We were called out to an area of dead space to support our allies, who seemed to have lied to us about the gravity of the situation and somehow convinced Emma, Gods rest her soul to attack. Meanwhile she sends us confirmation about an attack order received, which it didn’t. So someone lied to us and now 2.2 million are dead because of it, and I know exactly who it is Al, your pals in the Dectrose Empire.” Wes’ was furious he put his head into his hands for a moment before looking back up to Al.
“Al your fired, pack up your desk you have a flight home tomorrow at seven. Chesterton’s already been dealt with he’ll manage a logistics post back home out in the middle of nowhere for the rest of his career. We’ve got the candidates lined up already for the election of your old position and I’ll tell you there are a lot of promising choices. I know they’ll be able to get this mess fixed up that you’re leaving them.” Wes was calm now and spoke solemnly before he stood up and left the room.
Election time for any positon was a very turbulent time, constant PSAs, advertisements and straight up propaganda littered any and all means of communications, from interactive billboards to annoying pop up ads. In the running for the Director position were 8 people however only two really stood out: Louis Welkin and Samantha Rodgers, both were long time veterans of the war serving from the start but where they differed was where they served with Louis serving as a fleet captain and Samantha serving as a general in the army. Louis was on board with Albert’s idea of a peaceful Alliance and that expansion and militarisation should slow down as well as have more diplomatic concessions be made. He based his election campaign on establishing more alliances, non-aggression pacts and trade agreements as well as constituting a peace keeping force to help ensure stability in their corner of the Ancerious galaxy, he used the people’s hopes and dreams of an Alliance without war to get his votes. Samantha on the other hand was the opposite, having seen the direct results of the Alliances handiwork with the liberation and rebuilding of Nidel VII. She was advocating more aggressive policies of militarisation with a 5 point plan of a twelve fleet garrison and massive fortification networks of the Ancerious territories in response to the Threshold incident. Her campaign hinged on the fears and realisation that invasion was a possible outcome seeing as though an entire fleet went dark with only a single badly damaged ships returning from the fight. Given this was a short election period there was only about a month for all parties to run their election campaigns at the end of it the citizens voted and the results were in. 51.8% of votes went to Samantha Rodgers with Louis only gaining a mere 38.2%, it was a landslide victory for Samantha who was now the Director of the Ancerious Colonial Expedition (ACE). The inauguration ceremony took place a few days later in the central government building in New Gatlinburg. It was small and didn’t quite receive the attention from the media one would expect with only a brief mention on the nightly galactic news. Samantha was eager to get to work, she had a lot of people to talk to and a lot of planning to be done.
First up was the brief to the military and the introduction of the new grand fleet admiral for the Ancerious fleets, all the relevant military personnel had been gather in the auditorium for occasion. Daisuke Kira the new Grand Fleet admiral was the first to walk out and introduce himself.
“Greetings all, I want to first say I’m eager and ready to get started officially as the new Grand Fleet Admiral here in Ancerious, I would like to extend a special welcome to the newcomers in the fourth fleet and the reconstituted first fleet strike groups. I hope that we can all get along well and optimise your team work and truly be the well-oiled fighting force that I know we can be. Now onto our main show I’d like to bring out the new Director of the ACE, Samantha “Kill em all” Rodgers.” He stepped aside to allow Samantha to walk up to the microphone. The crowd was going crazy with applause and a hand full of army commander chanting her nick name.
“Alright, got a new director and a new battle plan. We’ve got a threat out here in our lovely corner of the galaxy and I don’t want to be caught with our pants down and have thousands die. So for starters we’re going to look inwards prioritise defences in the systems. We’ve got a limited fleet so we’ll be relying on those more so then usual, so we’ll be doubling up on what’s already been put out. After this and we bolster our numbers then we’ll look outwards to see what this threat is and to makes sure it isn’t going to threaten anyone ever again. Now while I’m here I got two special promotions to hand out this morning.” Samantha was stern and talked in her commanding voice to the audience. She then pulled from her pockets two sets of pins that denoted the ranks of field marshal and fleet admiral.
“Can I get General Burt Hashmon and Admiral Sara Switch up here for a moment?” She said more politely. Burt and Sara had been amongst the crowd but in different parts of the room they both exclaim ma’am and walked up to the front where they stood at attention after giving a salute.
“Sara I know nobody wants to fill the boots of their former commander this way but the operation you pulled at the UWA assault has been the talk of the town among the upper echelons, so it is with honour that I bestow upon you the rank of Fleet Admiral of the First ACE Fleet. Burt for the same operation and Vestahl attack I’m promoting you to Field Marshal of the first ACE army group which is having the rest of the forces being shipped in over the coming weeks.”
The crowd erupted into applause with Samantha saying a few last words before leaving to go to her office where the next meeting was. This one was slightly more important than the one she just left. She walked into the office pushing open the double doors as she kept walking over to her desk. Gathered in her office were the four diplomats and the new sub-director which was given to the runner up of the election Louis Welkin. Samantha thought it was an excellent idea to keep someone close who has such opposing points of view to her own.
“Well let’s get started then, I want to go through the Threshold incident again and again until we get to the bottom of it firstly our intel is either inaccurate or non-existent so get me a line on to the Dectrose I want to talk to them personally, and make sure they send someone in charge not a diplomat, there will be no middle man deniability here. Second I want threat assessments done on these Askander Pact and AURA blocs that have popped up. Thirdly lets can the MDP with the Anthenera, we don’t want to waste time defending a nation that kills civilians by the droves. Fourth on the list I want someone to stick their head into the UWA and see how they’re going after the rebellion is going, I sense an opportunity may present itself and lastly we are no longer accepting invites or requests to join alliances and power blocs. We don’t have any on paper and we want to keep it that way, we seem to lose more soldiers and sailors to friendlies then we do to the enemy.” She was again stern turning her gaze to the diplomats in the room as the talk went on. The diplomats took notes and received their data packet regarding their new instructions left leaving now only the Director and Sub-Director
“Sam I’ll be frank I didn’t expect this from you, I was expecting a more gung ho approach and I was expecting a war to be started somewhere by now.” Louis spoke softly
“In due time I’m sure” She chuckled in response before turning a more serious gaze towards Louis
Our biggest priority now is to figure out what happened at Threshold and bunker down in case something or someone got really pissed off at us, also combing the new shadow threat that has emerged a galactic stone’s throw away from us I’m not keen to send our children off to die. Now we’re gonna bunker down nice and cosy and we’re gonna redouble our efforts on the diplomatic stage.”
The door to her office quickly swung open with Grand Fleet Admiral Kira charged in. he had with him several tablets that he handed to Samantha and Louis.
“Let’s get started then, I know this is what you have been waiting for but classified means classified. Alright going over the timeline of events on the day at 1400 local time the Dectrose send an emergency call for help. 1420 the First fleet is mobilised with three out of five strike groups. 1450 the fleet arrives at the locations known as the black threshold. 1520 alert status is stood down and fleet is confirmed RTB. 1545 attack orders are confirmed from first fleet, all communications are sent to get the fleet to RTB. After this communications become unreliable and contact is lost with the fleet. At 2130 the TDASV Alex Pope returns to Anderson heavily damaged.” Daisuke spoke solemnly as he read out the time line.
“The crew has a recollection of the event and the sensor data correlates to what they said. After we lost contact the fleet attacked a nation known as the Autayan Imperium which is a member of the Askander Pact. During this attack the Dectrose had a mutiny on board their ships and Juliana dispatched marines to assist in the matter. We have no further information on that. After this they were attacked from the rear by an unknown force that forced them to retreat into one of the corridors of the labyrinth.” The other two were dumbfounded by what he meant so he displayed a map of the sensor data to show that battle field.
“After this the fleet had organised a retreat and a hit run attack on this Immortal Empire but something happened and they suddenly went into full attack against them. The fleet was systematically wiped out as a result.” He pressed a button and the map disappeared
“So how did the John Pope survive this ordeal?” Samantha asked
“Unknown, we can’t explain it. By all accounts they should have been destroyed and were destroyed as far as anyone knows. The crew are being treated for their injuries and have been issued a gag order. They’ll receive promotions and be sent to all corners of the Alliance where they’ll either finish their term or continue their careers. OSS will be keeping an eye on them though for as long as they live.”
“So OSS is involved already?” Louis rebuked
“Yep, they went over the ship countless times to make sure the data wasn’t tampered with.”
“Hmm, how do we know OSS didn’t tamper with the data?”
“We’ll have to take their word for it and assume their boss isn’t trying to start a war.” Daisuke looked at his watched noticing that he was late
“Well, I’ve got to get this next flight to Anderson so I’ll be off call me if you have any questions.”
Samantha and Louis mulled over what they had just been told in detail. The public was made aware of the massive fleet loss but were fed a story of some unknown force absolutely defeating the fleet. But this was all very interesting indeed with this new information coming to light it was apparent that multiple factions would be coming to knock on the Alliance’s door.
“Louis, I want the fortification plans fast tracked focus all our efforts on that for the time being and then I want our fleets locked down they don’t leave without my approval. We’ve got a hell of a mess to clean up here.”
The memorial ceremony for the threshold incident was now wrapping up, the MC saying the last few words and dismissing all present. Thousands attended the ceremony in New Gatlinburg, which became a city in mourning, the usual bright advertisements boards were shut off in respect of the occasion as wells as road closures so as many people as possible could attend. But soon the sadness would turn to anger and everyone knew where it was going to be pointed at, the Alliance government. It was only a few days before the first protests starting forming, it started off as a few dozen then all the way up to a couple hundred people protesting against the governments decisions. Taking all the blame squarely upon themselves was Director Albert Tyldum and Grand Fleet Admiral Terrence Chesterton. They merely bided their time while they awaited the incoming storm from Alliance HQ. It was a week after the ceremony that Albert went to his office like he had been every day. Only when he entered this time the lights were on and someone was at his desk.
“Hey there Al, I’d say long time no sees but it seems your endeavour here requires a lot more of my attention then I’d like.” An all too familiar voice spoke calmly as the chair swivelled around to reveal Wes Johnson President of the Three Domains Alliance.
“Remember what I said last time Al how you were on your last legs? Well I’m glad to see you didn’t hear me out.” Wes’ voice grew with anger
“We’ve lost just about a whole fleet and with it two point two million men and women who had no idea what they were doing out there to start with. Care to explain to me what our fleets were doing out in the middle of nowhere Al.” Anger consumed his voice
“We got an emergency call out by our allies in the Dectrose Empire for military assistance. Then as you would have seen in the report, communications were cut off and…” Al was cut short
“We were called out to an area of dead space to support our allies, who seemed to have lied to us about the gravity of the situation and somehow convinced Emma, Gods rest her soul to attack. Meanwhile she sends us confirmation about an attack order received, which it didn’t. So someone lied to us and now 2.2 million are dead because of it, and I know exactly who it is Al, your pals in the Dectrose Empire.” Wes’ was furious he put his head into his hands for a moment before looking back up to Al.
“Al your fired, pack up your desk you have a flight home tomorrow at seven. Chesterton’s already been dealt with he’ll manage a logistics post back home out in the middle of nowhere for the rest of his career. We’ve got the candidates lined up already for the election of your old position and I’ll tell you there are a lot of promising choices. I know they’ll be able to get this mess fixed up that you’re leaving them.” Wes was calm now and spoke solemnly before he stood up and left the room.
Election time for any positon was a very turbulent time, constant PSAs, advertisements and straight up propaganda littered any and all means of communications, from interactive billboards to annoying pop up ads. In the running for the Director position were 8 people however only two really stood out: Louis Welkin and Samantha Rodgers, both were long time veterans of the war serving from the start but where they differed was where they served with Louis serving as a fleet captain and Samantha serving as a general in the army. Louis was on board with Albert’s idea of a peaceful Alliance and that expansion and militarisation should slow down as well as have more diplomatic concessions be made. He based his election campaign on establishing more alliances, non-aggression pacts and trade agreements as well as constituting a peace keeping force to help ensure stability in their corner of the Ancerious galaxy, he used the people’s hopes and dreams of an Alliance without war to get his votes. Samantha on the other hand was the opposite, having seen the direct results of the Alliances handiwork with the liberation and rebuilding of Nidel VII. She was advocating more aggressive policies of militarisation with a 5 point plan of a twelve fleet garrison and massive fortification networks of the Ancerious territories in response to the Threshold incident. Her campaign hinged on the fears and realisation that invasion was a possible outcome seeing as though an entire fleet went dark with only a single badly damaged ships returning from the fight. Given this was a short election period there was only about a month for all parties to run their election campaigns at the end of it the citizens voted and the results were in. 51.8% of votes went to Samantha Rodgers with Louis only gaining a mere 38.2%, it was a landslide victory for Samantha who was now the Director of the Ancerious Colonial Expedition (ACE). The inauguration ceremony took place a few days later in the central government building in New Gatlinburg. It was small and didn’t quite receive the attention from the media one would expect with only a brief mention on the nightly galactic news. Samantha was eager to get to work, she had a lot of people to talk to and a lot of planning to be done.
First up was the brief to the military and the introduction of the new grand fleet admiral for the Ancerious fleets, all the relevant military personnel had been gather in the auditorium for occasion. Daisuke Kira the new Grand Fleet admiral was the first to walk out and introduce himself.
“Greetings all, I want to first say I’m eager and ready to get started officially as the new Grand Fleet Admiral here in Ancerious, I would like to extend a special welcome to the newcomers in the fourth fleet and the reconstituted first fleet strike groups. I hope that we can all get along well and optimise your team work and truly be the well-oiled fighting force that I know we can be. Now onto our main show I’d like to bring out the new Director of the ACE, Samantha “Kill em all” Rodgers.” He stepped aside to allow Samantha to walk up to the microphone. The crowd was going crazy with applause and a hand full of army commander chanting her nick name.
“Alright, got a new director and a new battle plan. We’ve got a threat out here in our lovely corner of the galaxy and I don’t want to be caught with our pants down and have thousands die. So for starters we’re going to look inwards prioritise defences in the systems. We’ve got a limited fleet so we’ll be relying on those more so then usual, so we’ll be doubling up on what’s already been put out. After this and we bolster our numbers then we’ll look outwards to see what this threat is and to makes sure it isn’t going to threaten anyone ever again. Now while I’m here I got two special promotions to hand out this morning.” Samantha was stern and talked in her commanding voice to the audience. She then pulled from her pockets two sets of pins that denoted the ranks of field marshal and fleet admiral.
“Can I get General Burt Hashmon and Admiral Sara Switch up here for a moment?” She said more politely. Burt and Sara had been amongst the crowd but in different parts of the room they both exclaim ma’am and walked up to the front where they stood at attention after giving a salute.
“Sara I know nobody wants to fill the boots of their former commander this way but the operation you pulled at the UWA assault has been the talk of the town among the upper echelons, so it is with honour that I bestow upon you the rank of Fleet Admiral of the First ACE Fleet. Burt for the same operation and Vestahl attack I’m promoting you to Field Marshal of the first ACE army group which is having the rest of the forces being shipped in over the coming weeks.”
The crowd erupted into applause with Samantha saying a few last words before leaving to go to her office where the next meeting was. This one was slightly more important than the one she just left. She walked into the office pushing open the double doors as she kept walking over to her desk. Gathered in her office were the four diplomats and the new sub-director which was given to the runner up of the election Louis Welkin. Samantha thought it was an excellent idea to keep someone close who has such opposing points of view to her own.
“Well let’s get started then, I want to go through the Threshold incident again and again until we get to the bottom of it firstly our intel is either inaccurate or non-existent so get me a line on to the Dectrose I want to talk to them personally, and make sure they send someone in charge not a diplomat, there will be no middle man deniability here. Second I want threat assessments done on these Askander Pact and AURA blocs that have popped up. Thirdly lets can the MDP with the Anthenera, we don’t want to waste time defending a nation that kills civilians by the droves. Fourth on the list I want someone to stick their head into the UWA and see how they’re going after the rebellion is going, I sense an opportunity may present itself and lastly we are no longer accepting invites or requests to join alliances and power blocs. We don’t have any on paper and we want to keep it that way, we seem to lose more soldiers and sailors to friendlies then we do to the enemy.” She was again stern turning her gaze to the diplomats in the room as the talk went on. The diplomats took notes and received their data packet regarding their new instructions left leaving now only the Director and Sub-Director
“Sam I’ll be frank I didn’t expect this from you, I was expecting a more gung ho approach and I was expecting a war to be started somewhere by now.” Louis spoke softly
“In due time I’m sure” She chuckled in response before turning a more serious gaze towards Louis
Our biggest priority now is to figure out what happened at Threshold and bunker down in case something or someone got really pissed off at us, also combing the new shadow threat that has emerged a galactic stone’s throw away from us I’m not keen to send our children off to die. Now we’re gonna bunker down nice and cosy and we’re gonna redouble our efforts on the diplomatic stage.”
The door to her office quickly swung open with Grand Fleet Admiral Kira charged in. he had with him several tablets that he handed to Samantha and Louis.
“Let’s get started then, I know this is what you have been waiting for but classified means classified. Alright going over the timeline of events on the day at 1400 local time the Dectrose send an emergency call for help. 1420 the First fleet is mobilised with three out of five strike groups. 1450 the fleet arrives at the locations known as the black threshold. 1520 alert status is stood down and fleet is confirmed RTB. 1545 attack orders are confirmed from first fleet, all communications are sent to get the fleet to RTB. After this communications become unreliable and contact is lost with the fleet. At 2130 the TDASV Alex Pope returns to Anderson heavily damaged.” Daisuke spoke solemnly as he read out the time line.
“The crew has a recollection of the event and the sensor data correlates to what they said. After we lost contact the fleet attacked a nation known as the Autayan Imperium which is a member of the Askander Pact. During this attack the Dectrose had a mutiny on board their ships and Juliana dispatched marines to assist in the matter. We have no further information on that. After this they were attacked from the rear by an unknown force that forced them to retreat into one of the corridors of the labyrinth.” The other two were dumbfounded by what he meant so he displayed a map of the sensor data to show that battle field.
“After this the fleet had organised a retreat and a hit run attack on this Immortal Empire but something happened and they suddenly went into full attack against them. The fleet was systematically wiped out as a result.” He pressed a button and the map disappeared
“So how did the John Pope survive this ordeal?” Samantha asked
“Unknown, we can’t explain it. By all accounts they should have been destroyed and were destroyed as far as anyone knows. The crew are being treated for their injuries and have been issued a gag order. They’ll receive promotions and be sent to all corners of the Alliance where they’ll either finish their term or continue their careers. OSS will be keeping an eye on them though for as long as they live.”
“So OSS is involved already?” Louis rebuked
“Yep, they went over the ship countless times to make sure the data wasn’t tampered with.”
“Hmm, how do we know OSS didn’t tamper with the data?”
“We’ll have to take their word for it and assume their boss isn’t trying to start a war.” Daisuke looked at his watched noticing that he was late
“Well, I’ve got to get this next flight to Anderson so I’ll be off call me if you have any questions.”
Samantha and Louis mulled over what they had just been told in detail. The public was made aware of the massive fleet loss but were fed a story of some unknown force absolutely defeating the fleet. But this was all very interesting indeed with this new information coming to light it was apparent that multiple factions would be coming to knock on the Alliance’s door.
“Louis, I want the fortification plans fast tracked focus all our efforts on that for the time being and then I want our fleets locked down they don’t leave without my approval. We’ve got a hell of a mess to clean up here.”