"Ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred without a head."
-Εὐριπίδης (Euripiedes)
Forward Operating Base Maehara
Sigma-19 System
GMG Space
Sirius Sector
August 25, 825 AS
1803Z
ROLEX -0147 to OPERATION ATTENDANT
The sound of chatter dominated the briefing room on Maehara, everyone wondering what this surprise sortie was about. Jae-un was one of the first from Harpy Squadron to arrive, only to see Alexei out near the front of the room, preparing the systems for the briefing. The attire of the personnel of the room were partly consisting of black bodysuit armor, mainly based on the outdated hardware from the Seraphine's EVA suits - those donning them being part of the fighter squadron other than the Harpies that was planned to be deployed. The rest were mostly the crew of the Rathgrith and Skidbladnir, wearing your usual naval ship attire with armor underneath to protect them.
Jae-un stepped towards Alexei, only to tap him on the shoulder.
"I already told you, Iwase, Hanamura's finalising things, she'll be here to give the briefing when she gets here." He says, a bit irritated, mistaking Jae-un for a previous interloper.
"Alexei, it's Bride." She responds, a little irritated.
"Oh, sorry. What do you want? Kind of occupied here, Tovarisch." Alexei answers, focused on his work.
"I was wondering if you knew what the hell was going on? Why this sortie all of a sudden, without much if any warning?" Bride answers, curious as to the situation at hand. She looks around the large room, seeing about 70-90 men inside it, all chatting as they wait for the woman of the hour.
"All I know is it involves a sortie into Tohoku.. Insane as that is." He answers.
Jae-un is taken aback by this both verbally and visibly.
"Tohoku... as in.. Nomad Tohoku."
"No, Tohoku Prefecture on Kyushu, what the hell do you think, of course, 'Nomad Tohoku'." He responds, turning to her, his voice carrying a blend of sarcasm and concern.
"No need to get snippy with me, Jaji." she declares, irritated by his semi-hostile response, her hands forming fists in response, out of frustration.
"Sorry Jae-un. Just.. Blyat, why is it that she wants us there? Everyone knows Tohoku is a deathwish. I told her that about Major, but she didn't seem to listen the last time." He says, going back to his work.
"Hanamura's always been like that. It's just after that last time she learned her lesson. I hope." She responds, sighing.
"Please dear god don't tell me she's going to have us raid the Arch." Jae-un continues.
"Nyet. I don't think she's that foolhardy. Besides. I had heard her talking about a contact after I was able to catch her before heading to the CIC." He says to her, before standing up, after finishing up his work.
"That contact I bet, is giving head to the K'hara by now. How does she know this isn't a trap?" she says to Alexei, frustrated by the seemingly lacking amount of concern from her superior.
"I don't know. You should ask your sister. She's close to Hanamura.. close enough sometimes I think they probably both know the same things." He answers to Jae-un.
Mercury meanwhile, stands at attention in the Combat Information Center as Nodoka, Mieko, Elena and Cassiopeia walk through the door.
"We will need Gorgon most likely for this. If Mei is compromised, or if the Nomads or their infectees ambush us, We'll need a countermeasure we can use to run with." Nodoka says, only for Mieko to interject.
"Hanamura-sensei, you are aware of what happened last time with Gorgon, yes? It almost vegetated Elena-chan?"
"It's either we risk that or we suffer mass casualties due to having an outnumbered force. I'm expecting resistance on the way to Tohoku and resistance when we get there. We need to have some way to get Mei out of there, that or put her down if she's infected." Nodoka responds to her statement.
".. Very well then. We'll mount Gorgon to the Skidbladnir and use it in tandem with our conventional Electronic Warfare Suite aboard the ship. I shall notify Major Hawkins of this.. unless Elena-chan has any reservations. it is her hardware, after all." Mieko says, turning to Elena.
"If it's on the Corvo it shouldn't be as bad, I made some adjustments to the emitters so it shouldn't have the resonance hiccup that happened. Luckily that ship has so much extra power output that it shouldn't have the weapons malfunctions that can happen." Elena says, checking her data pad for references. "Also, with it being Tohoku it should be fine. Considering that more often than not, it's Wild. Not the Nomads proper. It's not like going into a Nomad hive hoping to do anything, that said. I recommend a small group. One maybe two snub escorts. Anything bigger might draw unwanted attention from more then just the Wild after all."
Cassiopeia looks to Nodoka, trying to read her expression. "You still haven't said why we need to sortie there of all places. It's... Noble I suppose, but if this is a Nomad hunt there are much better places to do it."
Hawkins, the current captain of the Skidbladnir arrives soon after they are seated. "So... What's the emergency about? Need a system scan or something?" he says taking a seat opposite to Nodoka and the R&D team. "Well... More like we're putting a highly experimental theta wave radiation emitter on the Skidbladnir and chucking you into Tohoku to do something." "What?" "Yeah I'll be honest even I'm confused why there's a sortie in store for that system." Elena says shrugging. Leaving Alex's mouth hanging open.
Nodoka sits down at a terminal opposite Hawkins, the CIC somewhat busy, but not enough to make it difficult to have a discussion. "Our contact in the Blood Dragons fled a few hours ago. Apparently people were starting to put two and two together about how Ouroboros was starting to have Blood Dragon defectors pop up here and there over the past few months. She was disabled by a KNF Patrol and subsequently ended up drifting into the Izu Planetary Fragment field. It's not far from our injection point of the Okinawa wormhole. We are planning on sending a large expeditionary team, mainly Harpy Squadron, Honya as acting CO, the 7th Fighter Squadron, and the OCS Skidbladnir and Rathgrith II. Now, given your advice, we'll be probably having it split up into two groups once we hit Tohoku - A SAR unit consisting of Harpy Squadron and the Skidbladnir, and a BARCAP guarding the Jump Hole in Okinawa. It's close to that BD installation, Sendai, but Rathgrith's onboard EW and the scanner-weakening properties of the cloud should maintain some semblance of security for our exfil." She says to Elena and Hawkins, explaining the situation at hand.
Meanwhile, in the briefing room, Jae-un sits at one of the tables, bored out of her mind. "God. what's taking her so long.. And where's Mark?
Alex starts rubbing his brow. "Well... At least it's near the jump hole... Should be a quick in and out, honestly? I suggest a group of three ships going into Tohoku, snub craft. Small, hard to detect. Light's are preferred... Find the ship, get her pod, hotfoot it back into safe space. The Skidbladnir too big, it's jump signature would be picked up by the Sado instantly. Possibly the Arch as well. Last thing we need is Wild and Naval forces ships charging at us while we try to find a needle in a haystack." He says running through the information he knows about the system in his head. "We can't send in too many ships, but at the same time can't just dispatch a single fighter. That'd be sending a man to death. Three works.
The Harpies enter the briefing room, the time taken up by their mass approach to Maehara. Mark waves at Bride when they pile into the room.
"We'll need a ship to transport Mei, and we can't take risks if she's infected. There was an incident where a infectee was accidentally tractored in by Jae-un and almost compromised her by busting out of his escape pod. At least with Skidbladnir if she's infected we can have guards at the ready and not be up shit creek if she tries to break out. Besides, like I said, we're expecting resistance on the way there. What's stopping them from phoning up Sado and alerting them that we might be coming their way with a High-yield warhead or something the moment they see us on a approach vector to the jump hole? Keep in mind, The war with Rheinland has the KNF and GMG on edge so systems like Okinawa and 59 are heavily guarded. i have a contact in the GMG that might be able to tell me when their patrols hit up that neck of Okinawa, but whether or not that intel includes KNF joint patrols, Is unknown. All in all, sending Skidbladnir in with the onboard EW equipment to mask the jump signature and jam radar returns in the cloud. If pulled off right, neither the Infectees or KNF will know we're there, even if the KNF are alerted beforehand. They'll assume we've entered a phase-misaligned jumphole or screwed off back to our home plate. At least until they send patrols into the cloud to be intercepted by our BARCAP." Nodoka says to him.
"Did Honya go over the operation of the EW Suite with your Fire Control Officers?" Nodoka continues, asking if they're able to operate the system properly for their approach.
Jae-un moves to hug Mark. "I'm so happy to see you. How was the patrol? Anything new happen without me?" She says, curious about what all happened during her time on the station today.
"Don't worry, we can use the thing... More worried about heading out there in a ship like that, It's pretty much a sitting duck in combat..." Alex says standing up. Only for Elena to add to the discussion. "Why not just have a few Perseus emitters put in the snubs? Give my team about five minutes and I can have those things installed in a trio of fighters, it'll at least be enough power to tell if she's effected or not. After all the good thing about cargo holds is, you can empty the things if you have to."
Mark chuckles as she hugs and asks "Oh you know, same old same old. Still working on figuring out what all was screwed over when Cass secured the cultist doughnut. Damn thing is almost a lost cause with the amount of decks missing Life support, heating, power in general..." He says counting on his fingers. "What about you? Any news about what the hell is going on?"
"it's close to the jump hole, and Rathgrith will be right outside the hole. If we need backup, the Fighter Squadron and the Gunboat will be right on top of whatever comes to start a fight." Nodoka answers, before turning to Elena. "Doesn't the Perseus Emitter take up as much power as Gorgon? I didn't really expect you to continue development on it after what happened in Inverness."
"All I got out of Alexei is a sortie to Tohoku. I already don't like the sound of it. I mean, I like blasting squids, but goddamn - I'm not stupid to go and kick the hive like the Dragons did back in 800." Jae-un answers with some concern on her face.
Elena shakes her head in response "No, it used a considerable less amount of power. The Gorgon is literally a cluster of them set to make a space bound pulse instead of a single emitter set to give a constant stream of theta waves. At most you'd see a ten percent decrease of power to the weapons, and that's putting it on something really small."
"What do you mean Tohoku!? Has she gone nuts?" Mark says, now incredibly worried. Seline moves between them. "Easy there Marcus, not her fault. And... Christ above... Even if we had the Seraphine this wouldn't be an op I'd want to hold 'til much later down the line. Sure a group of snubs did it last time, but they no doubt learned from those mistakes." She says putting her hands in her pockets.
"Still, wouldn't that pulse be detected by the Infectees? If they pick that up, you'll have to run fast out of there before patrols pick you off." Nodoka says, before looking out at the tactical map at the front of the CIC, displaying the flight plan in detail.
"Their radar, which we were able to more or less analyse from probes sent in a week ago on a expeditionary sortie into Kusari, won't be able to pick us up in the field, even with the Skidbladnir, but think about it - They're bound to have adequate if not superior SIGINT hardware on the Sado and on that damned rock. They can't see in, but if the waves penetrate out, it'll compromise us to both the Wild and KNF. If we mount Gorgon inside the Cargo bay of the Skid, we can use a low energy pulse to test her before exfil, and the hull will retain the waves rather than them pulsing out. We're already going to get attention most likely from this, we shouldn't make any more noise than we absolutely need to."
Alexei moves to the group, irritated by Bride's spilling of sensitive information.
"I don't need you starting a riot here. I know you're concerned, and so am I, but have faith. I'm certain Nodoka isn't going to send us out on a suicide mission. Not this early in the game. And even then, I would be objecting to one outright unless it was a act of desperation."
Elena puts a hand to her face and let's out an exasperated sigh "Okay... Look, Perseus is an internal stream of Theta waves, Gorgon is an external pulse of them. One is confined to the hold of a ship, the other isn't. But this feels like talking to a brick wall so go ahead... Put the failed project on the noisy ass recon ship." She throws her hands into the air, hoping that she finally got through how her emitters work. All the while Alex looks at the two wondering how quickly he's going to die.
"Well it'd be nice to have some idea what her plan is, even if it's just what's in Tohoku other then death and tentacles." Mark says gaining assorted chuckles from the rest of the Harpies.
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