The World of The Gunny

The Wasted World of Gunnery Sergeant DeShane
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 Post subject: Numerian Bug WAR
PostPosted: 03 Jan 2009 02:02 
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The Numerian fleet commander, Sanshen d'Taneram, had had to cede the previous system of Halcion to the aliens and he was not happy about it. He had had little choice as his small fleet had been out numbered almost twenty to one. Sanshen had tried to hurt the aliens by swarming their pursuing ships with wave after wave of missile fire. He had killed, maimed, or merely severely damaged almost 30 of the alien ships ranging from destroyer sized to a few the size of his cruiser and had spent nearly every missile he had doing it.

The alien return fire was in the same form as the Numerian attack had been, in multiple waves of missile fire. The alien missiles seemed surprisingly vulnerable to ECM, or maybe just had a poor targeting acquisition package. Only a total of three of the alien missiles from all the waves had come through the defense zones. They had each impacted on different cruisers inflicting little harm. The analysis had shown that the alien’s missiles just did not carry very heavy warheads. That did not mean that they were not a threat as enough pinpricks could kill anything.

Once Sanshen was out of missiles he had run for the Wareen system Gateway with all the speed at his disposal and had slowly outdistanced his pursuers. He had not headed for the other Gateway as it led to the Tamarain system. It was heavily industrialized and currently undefended as he had its small force of defenders here with him. By the time the aliens found the Gateway, he hoped a response fleet from Darin Station would be there to defend Tamarain. Even better would be the Home Fleet from Numeria as it was only sixteen days away, but he did not expect the aliens to take that long to find the other gate.

Once passed through he had plotted a course towards the next Gateway while letting his two colliers reload his ships. Sanshen let them continue on towards the next Gate while he returned to provide a defense when the aliens decided to force their way into the system. The munitions ships carried his extra personnel and every bit of data he had acquired during a two hour missile fight with the aliens.

There had also been a piracy patrol insystem and it had joined him within hours of his taking up guard duties. It had added three precious destroyers and an escort carrier to his numbers. The patrol had been a pleasant surprise.

His force lay eight light seconds out from the Gate. Seven cruisers of various types, eight destroyers, two anti-missile frigates, and three escort carriers with 24 fighters each was a motley force to contest any transit of the leviathans on the other side. Oddly enough, his most destructive units were his four Landur class destroyers. They were designed as point blank sluggers with two heavy anti-matter cannon and able to launch three swarms of fast short range ship killers in rapid succession. Their missiles could also be launched in singles to thicken the task forces point defense. His cruisers were either 'balanced' designs or 'raider' designs. Raiders carried almost no anti-capital ship laser cannon at all. Instead the space was taken up by larger missile magazines and increased point defenses. Come to think of it, only the older Albion class light cruisers carried a single capital ship grazer anymore and the grazers were being phased out in the refits with an increased ECM suite.

The nearest Fleet Base was Darin Station, but it was two jumps away on the other side of the lines. The next nearest base was Havilin d'Saurin Station, the home station of 2nd Fleet. That was about eleven jumps away and a little over two weeks travel by courier or scout destroyer. Maybe twenty-four days for the remaining battle line. Until then all he would be getting small anti-pirate task forces joining him. They would help, but individually would not bring much to the fight.

The best he could hope for were additional heavy units in transit to and from assignments. The battle cruiser Thourgrym d'Orly was a good example. She was already enroute to Numeria with a USSA diplomat onboard for talks about what to do about the alien threat. The Americans and Romans had already been invaded by the Aetheri and most of 2nd Fleet was already enroute to help the USSA and had been for the better part of three weeks now. That made it one and a half months away so it was not available for immediate support. He grimaced. The only really bright side were the Fortresses on Wareen IV, or Havlene by the locals. It was a training ground for Numerian ground units and had a space based defense equivalent to a Fleet Base, but much of it was ground based. Landarosian Gaiven d'Orly , the planetary commander, had allowed Sanshen to pull mines from storage.

Sanshen reflected that he would have been more grateful if the crates had not been dated from the Deneven war. But any mine was better than none and the two cargo ships had been dropping them off for the past day all around the Gateway. Included amongst them had been the first run of bomb pumped laser mines from, again, the Deneven war. His own engineer had said that maybe 60 or 70% could be counted on to actually fire. The rest would just make pretty balls of fire.

It was frustrating. If he had a full battle squadron of battle cruisers like the Thourgrym he would seriously think about opposing the aliens in laser ranges at the gate. The Thourgrym, like most Numerian capital ships, had turreted anti-matter projector cannon. Only a Roman spinal laser could compare to it in shear destructive power and the Thourgrym had two of them. She mounted laser turrets as well for point defense and pin point killing, but her sword was her anti-matter projectors. She was death to anything within her reach, but her reach was limited. She was designed to work with escort ships and others of her kind for interlocking point defense and to cover each other’s backs. She was not a solo ship and was not considered a balanced design. She carried not one missile battery save for her point defense missiles that could also be used on attacking fighters. In short, she was vulnerable to long ranged attacks like missiles and, oddly, the Roman Spinal Laser.


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