NationStates Jolt Archive

Anikar, Empress of the Arizona Novanian empire, listened as her advisors attempted to explain the situation, once again. They'd been at it for a while now, and making heads or tales of this twisted web of loyalties was difficult. Finally, she spoke:

"Silence. From what I can make of this, Allanea, our ally through both the Prussian Empire and the ESUS, has been attacked?"

"Quite brutally, yes," replied the nervous and tired looking advisor.

"Allanea, consequently, wishes us to counter-attack this... Hogsweat," she said, making a face, "one of the 'enemy' belligerents,"

"Indubitably, my liege."

Anikar sighed. The situation was not to her liking. It was the politics the Allaneans usually seemed to engage in - a twisted morass of alliances and nations which would have made the dealings behind the Terran World Wars look plain-cut and simple in comparison. She hated dealing with this sort of thing. She turned and looked at another advisor.

"The forces of Hogsweat - what are their strength, and numbers? Bah, for that matter, where the hell are they?"

The advisor rattled off: "Forwarded Allanean intelligence indicates that their current assets include around thirty vessels, the largest of which are about three-hundred and fifty meters in length. Some of them appear to be armed with MAC cannons, but we know nothing else of their offensive, defensive, or tactical capabilities at this time. They appear to be located on Earth in a region of the Pacific called 'Haven.'"

Anikar considered the information for a while, then said: "Contact Admiral Ultan and tell him to split off a battlegroup from Third Fleet - a Neodämmerung battleship, a Vanguard cruiser, a Jormungand drone carrier, and a dozen Hughies and dispatch them forthwith. Also, make it clear to the Allanean embassy that if we are dogpiled by a bunch of the Terran peoples, I will be most displeased."

Within hours, the battlegroup was split off from Third Fleet and cruised in convoy to the stargate in orbit over the homeworld. The location of Earth was dialed in, and they waited til traffic on the Sol end cleared up, and went through. Once through the other side, the commander of the task force sent a message to the Hogsweat forces attacking Allanea:

Hogsweat forces: we have detected belligerent action on your part toward the sovereign state of Allanea, a long-time ally of the Arizonan empire. We demand your immediate, unconditional surrender to the Allanea and for reparations to them for your actions.

OCC: Stargats as I recall can only send though things no bigger then a puddle-jumper or a wraith dart, so your saying that you "Built" larger stargates??? Seams a bit off.

OOC: They're orbital stargates (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=334767), constructed by Northrop-Grumman. It's big enough.

OCC: Ok thanks for the info.

Here we go! Chase ‘em, boys, chase them!

The Allaneans moved in to supplement the Arizonan forces. They weren’t many. Eight of the Bulwark II class battlecruisers, the three Porcupines that returned from New-Haven, and the CSS Miriel nos Feanor. Each of them chose a Hogsweatian ship and got ready to their response to the Arizonan ultimatum.

"Arms..target that ship, the CSS Miriel Nos Feanor. Set firing solutions from all our destroyers onto that ship too..prepare nuclear missiles and set the fleet to do the same. Full power to the MACs. let's give em hell"

###ATTENTION; The Hogsweatian Fleet refuses to surrender to the a bunch of corrupt, fascist dogs, behind big guns. We'll fight to the last before any of our ships bring up the white flag to one of your kind. SIGNALEND###

Rayes solemnly signed his fleets death warrant. They stood no chance, each ship was tiny in comparison, although they were quite heavily armoured. But by hell, he'd make sure that he took that big sonofabitch down before he died. And maybe a battlecruiser or two. "Arms, do you have a firing solution for our guns?"

"Yes, sir! In the name of our motherland, we're ready to fire. we're getting green lights from the entire fleet. It seems they want to fight too."

"Then let's do this thing. Fire MAC cannons..NOW."

The ship shuddered as the UKCS Hood launched all three of it's supercavitating magnetically accelerated 1450mm tungsten rods directly toward the CSS Miriel Nos Feanor, as the rest of the fleet followed suit with their 750mm MAC's. In total, the first volley let loose a devastating hail of 27 of the smaller, destroyer 750mm MACannons, and the three superMACs that the Hood had launched.

Rayes watched as the rods soared towards the ship, immediately he demanded
"Ensign, give me 110% to the engines, dead ahead into the Allanean fleet. Guns, strength of our cannons?"

The Nav Ensign nodded and the fleet zoomed forwards at top speed directly towards the Allaneans. "Sah, MACs are at 25% and charging steadily"

"Double that number Ensign, and sharpish. release safeties on our nukes and advance faster. Set us about to co-ordinates 1:12."

"Affirmative sir!"

The ships swung around, now the direction had changed and they were coming straight over the Allanean fleet diagonally. Rayes awaited their devastasting response...

The Miriel was equipped with heavy shields, such as could take the hits even of anti-planetary weapons - only a time or two, mind you, but the point is she could do that. When the Hogsweatian weapons hit her, she merely jerked - as if a human was flinching- and escaped, up, up and away through the athmosphere. The other ships engaged the Hogsweatian vessels - one Allanean ship, one Hogsweatian ship. And they danced the dance of death - with the complete silence of the stars as their music.

Admiral Kernsky watched as the Allanean ship managed to bear the fury of the assault - and survive, nearly unscathed. He had expected far more serious wounds for them. In any case...

"All ships - Hogsweat forces have rejected our terms. We are to destroy them to the last. All vessels engage, Jormungand, dispatch drones."

As one the Hughie gunships detached from the fleet and flew toward the Hogsweat vessels, raining hot plasma on their hulls. From its position, the battleship began lobbing massive MAC shells at them as well, leaving great white streaks across the void, intermingled with the poison green glow of plasma from her many turbolaser banks. The Vanguard cruiser lined up its main cannon with the largest Hogsweat vessel, all the while bombarding the group with Buster missiles. Finally, the Jormungand drones came screaming forth from the mechanized bowels of the carrier, hundreds of unthinking, linked, and deadly fighters, swarming towards the embattled Hogsweat fleet adding their own small weapons fire to the symphony of chaos poured forth by the larger ships.

Captain Mark Anthony was the commander of the Destroyer UKCS Edinburgh, a ship currently bearing down pretty damn close to an Allanean battlecruiser. She had already taken multiple hits, and her port armour was nearly all burnt off, the target of multiple laser hits and extreme damage from a HMACX shell. Her port engine was also out of order, and the Edinburgh was listing to starboard as her armour fizzled away, engines exploding as another laser hit took out her engines in a huge explosions.

"Ensign, backup thrusters! Drop us down onto that battlecruiser, ASAP.Do it now!"

It was desperate, but the backup thrusters worked and the ship propelled forwards, now bearing down straight on top of the battlecruiser.

"Arms, arm our ten nukes and release safeties. Launch on my word."

The Edinburgh took six laser hits to it's starboard, which was now bare to attack, and burnt off nearly half a metre of it's Titanium-B Composite armour, helping the ship right itself but not nearly as much as it should have been. Maybe the Allaneans would guess what was happening, but not before the four million tonne Edinburgh smashed onto the top of the Battlecruiser, ripping through it's shields and colliding into the hull, the weaker Edinburgh literally ripping apart.

"now!" Anthony cried, just as the Edinburgh smashed apart onto the hull of the battlecruiser, the heroic ramming action not so dense now that the ten nukes dropped and detonated inside the shielding layer of the Allanean battlecruiser. The explosion spread and completely shredded the Edinburgh, but it was yet to see the damage to the allanean battlecruiser...

The Hood shuddered as she took multiple MAC hits: however, although one pierced straight through her majestic form, she kept on going, turning to face an Allanean battlecruiser up close and firing at point blank range it's three superMACs, expecting a similar retalation as the next MAC round ripped into her lower hull, creaking off a huge part of the armoured hull. By some miracle, a MAC round came in and bounced off her armour, richocheting somewhere into space and leaving a huge dent. She was hit by yet another, ripping through her, as she let rip with all her archer missiles, (about the size of a tactical nuclear missile, but conventional) and launching ten of her fourty five megaton nuclear missiles at the Allanean ship. Surely, without shields, the Hood was commiting suicide as it got hit by another two MAC rounds, ripping her engines apart and bringing her lower hull off, as the back of the ship tore in two with the last MAC shell, the Hood falling down into orbit...

"Oh my god!" - the Edinburgh and the CSS Liberty where immediately gone, disappearing in a flash of fire, smoke, and shrapnel, falling in a single flaming ball into the Haven Straights. The CSS Justice tried to escape the Hood’s fire, but it was pointless. The MAC cannons have nabbed a cooling system - and the internal rooms of the Justice were filled immediately with radioactive, poisonous, and extremely cold fuel. The pilot and co-pilot of the monstrous vessel were killed immediately, and the ship went into a deadly spin, falling out of orbit and into waters to the north of Allanea. Some of the turrets were still firing, strafing the Hogsweatians as the ship went down.

Still, the Allaneans were fighting on. The Porcupines moved in betwen the Hogsweatian ships, spraying fire from their 400 anti-ship weapons each. While there were only three of them, the firepower they dealt out was absolutely amazing. The other ships simply chose a Hogsweati each and dealt it out.

It was surely a suicide mission, yet the four fighter wings of twenty four and two torpedo bomber wings of the same number dropped out of the carrier Formidable and dropped down onto the battlecruiser, risking their lives for the undaunting task ahead. For them, there was no defeat. There was no death. There was only the attack and the will to avenge the death of over 300 million Halladi innocents. Fighters dueled with their Allanean counterparts, dropping like flies but keeping them off the bombers; and now, the torpedo bombers would seek vengeance as they fell onto the battlecruiser, one by one getting picked off by CIWS until they came above the battlecruisers. The mini personal shields of the bombers held and flickered as they dropped through the shield layer onto the bridge: slaughtered by CIWS over half of the bombers dropped down, exploding taking their payloads with them, as the last twenty four each loosed their six eighty megaton torpedoes into the surface of the battlecruiser, then strafing with their 40mm autocannons before dropping down and exploding like their torpedoes did only seconds ago.

It was unfortunate that the UKCS Belfast and the UKCS Glasgow, only new to the conflict, had their armour torn off and the ships crashing down to the surface after only a short bombardment from two porcupines. Seeing the ships weaknesses, the Birmingham, before it too dropped, let off three MAC shells directly into the main cluster of weapons of the first porcupine. This was followed up by salvos from the Liverpool and the Manchester, respectively on either porcupine, before the UKCS York was hit by the full force of both porcupines, literally exploding in space. It was looking grim for the Hogsweatians- they had lost four destroyers and their capital ship? And for what? That, was the question that noone needed to answer: quite possibly because noone asked it. It became evident, as the next destroyer, the Southampton, was crippled, mortally wounded by a porcupine, that the battle was lost.
however, the Southampton let off it's entire armament in one go: three MAC shells, fourty eight missiles (as mentioned earlier), five 1000 megaton nuclear missiles, directly at an Allanean battlecruiser, followed up by the Liverpool and the Manchester's six MAC rounds, combined.

Admiral Kernsky cursed as he saw the Hogsweat vessels, little more than a few barely functioning thrusters and superstructure, take down the two Allanean ships by ramming. He switched to a channel for the Vanguard cruiser Defiant and said, "Is that H-MAC finished charging YET?"

"Almost there - one more minute!" was the reply.

Meanwhile, the Jormungand digisent was stretching its muscle too. The drones soon drew close to the Hogsweat ships, and the assault began. They didn't have a pilot, but were driven by the digisent ensconced within their carrier. When too crippled to continue fighting, they simply dived into the hull of whatever enemy ship was closest and detonated the gilium reactors - violently - turning what was a crippled fighter into a deadly guided missile. Now hundreds of them had reached the Hogsweat fleet, with hundreds more on the way, as the nasty thing about the Jormungand carriers, was that they were also factories.

Meanwhile, aboard the Defiant, the main H-MAC - 300 meters long, the huge central cannon the formidable Vanguard class was built around - finished charging. The ship seemed to pivot in position as it reaquired a target - many ships had ceased to exist by this point, so it just looked for the next best target. There was a slight pause, and then the MAC fired, unleashing one of the largest rounds produced by the Empire at the Hogsweat fleet.

If indeed the Allanean Porcupine A20-class would have had a main weapons cluster, perhaps the Hogsweatian arms would have done it some damage. The way it was really, the MAC cannons merely crashed their munitions against the powerful Xanthal-series shields. On the other hand, the battlecruisers were taking heavy damage - one taken down by a Hogsweatian kamikaze attack, another by combined Hogsweatian fire.