NationStates Jolt Archive

Port Royale
A few dozen penguins watched from the edge of the massive harbour as roughly twenty vessels left in quick succesion, 6 Transport Ships and vessels from three destroyer squadrons, all under the command of the newly repaired Aircraft Carrier Eagle, the scars of her earlier actions totally invisible under a fresh coat of navy grey paint.
She passed the engineering plant of the Collingwood, where the massive warship sat in drydock, work crews still working to repair her massive damage, lowering massive armour plates and other components onto the hull of the massive vessel.
It was thus that 24 vessels set out to secure the Islands of New Zealand, or more correctly a foothold on the South Island that could be used to bring in massive ground reinforcements, that would be neccesary to the islands that had apparently fallen into chaos in recent times.
In the Maldives, another similarily sized fleet of nearly one hundred vessels set out from the enormous fortress for the province of Kerala on the South-Western Coast of India, to bring order to that area, and add another bulwark in the Confederate Plan to control the Indian Ocean.
Learning the lessons of a previous attempt to bring enlightenment to the globe, CAF Coastal and Bomber Command Aircraft were already ready to launch, fueled and armed in hardened shelters in Antarctica, Yemen and the Maldives, waiting to drop the hammer blow on any enemy concentrations that offered signifiant resistance.
And at still other airfields, 6 Divisions stood ready to take off, five for Kerala and the sixth for New Zealand, ready to assist in securing the territories once a beachheand with a landing strip (or in the case of paratrooper units) a flat field was secured.

NOTE: BOTH FORMATIONS HAVE:
15 Destroyers of various types
3 Captain class Destroyer Leader
6 Transports
1 Aircraft Carrier

Approaching New Zealand
Midshipwoman Lucy McLachlan waved to the crew chief on the deck of the carrier before returning her hands to the controls, she braced and then sighed as the steam catapult shot her Avenger forward and into the air above the Southern Ocean.
"Eagle Control, Red Four in the air, coming to heading 149 and setting minimum cruise"
"Roger, Eagle Control, Out"
From the decks of the tranports gathered protectively around the aircraft carrier came dozens of helicopters, heading off towards the south island of New Zealand, the Avengers forming up around them like Shephards of a Herd of Sheep, far above them, the fast fighter craft of the carrier's extra strong CAP orbitted.
The Captain of the Eagle had nearly lost his ship during its last outing in the open ocean, and he wasnt going to let it happen again.
"30 Minutes to the target LZ at Invercargil Airport"

In the warm Indian Ocean off of Kerala a similar formation of helicopters and attack aircraft launched from the Argus and proceeded towards there landing sites at the International Airport of the largest city in the province, Thiruvananthapuram. While in the the Maldives and in Antarctica, a mix of military transport aircraft and chartered civilian airliners taxied to the ends of runways and began the airlift that would bring in massive reinforcements to secure the two newest states in the Confederacy.


OOC:
I know this is an exceptionally short opening post, but I have to gauge opinion before bringing out a massive fleet operation

Inside of the Ministry of Intelligence, satellite data was being decoded and decrypted. Since the Austrailian situation had ended, the southern Pacific Ocean had taken on a sense of calm. On New Caledonia, where there was a massive, Layartebian military complex, seized from the days when the Macabees controlled the territory, careful attention was paid to both the west and the south. The Spizanian state remained a worldwide threat and the Empire had never been fully satisfied with the outcome of the Austrailian War. The allowing of the Spizanians to escape the situation with their surface fleet largely intact was counterproductive to the desires of the Empire. The Nazi state of the GAR had folded and fell apart underneath the dawn of war and dissipated into the winds of time, like so many before it.

Regardless of those facts, when the Spizanians set sail again, the Empire was concerned. What new targets would they go for now? Carefully, the Ministry of Intelligence had been watching and listening. Their course didn't have a predictable outcome and when ships left the Maldives, it was obvious that something was happening. This wasn't immediately recognized to be any sort of fake either, not like Operation Sunfall had been for the Empire at one time. Instantly, there were thousands of questions in the air. Were they going to New Caledonia? Were they going to Nauru? Were they moving on the rest of Austrailia? Were they moving against the Hawdawgians or someone else? It was a tense situation and a difficult scenario to overcome. Out of caution, the Imperial Layartebian Military, in the Pacific, immediately went to high alert and raised their Readiness Condition level to level 3.

It was a short lived alert though as it eventually became evident that the Spizanians were hitting New Zealand. Though still threatening, their move on New Zealand was a sort of relief for the military high command. Any attack by the Spizanians against the Layartebians would likely result in the largest ordinance throwing nightmare in Earth history. The Layartebians wouldn't have rested until there was little left of the Spizanian war machine on all parts of the world.

Helicopters hovered over the landing field for only a few seconds, just long enough for the infantry carried inside to jump and roll out of the vibrating craft into the long grass of the landing field, fanning out immediately to secure the glade in which the lead batallions were putting down, the helicopter then lifted rapidly into the sky, preparing to return to the carrier.
Within an hour, the area would be secure enough to start landing fixed wing aircraft, but before then, nearly twelve battalions would be ashore in New Zealand and eight ashore in Kerala province, bringing the liberation of a people in chaos even closer to fruition

The Empire was not about to kid itself. The expansion of the Spizanians was a threat to the world and the Empire wholly opposed not only the idea of Spizanian expansion but the state itself. Ever since the Pacific War some years back, when nuclear weapons were exchanged resulting in massive damage to a Cottish naval group and several islands in the Pacific Ocean, the Empire has viewed the Spizanians with contempt. Despite this, the Spizanian nation had yet to actually make a move against the Empire itself, whether directly or indirectly. As such, the Empire made no moves either and simply watched and waited, much like their Spizanian counterparts probably did. The Empire's sphere of influence was nowhere near the Spizanian state or its expansion, which left the Empire in a position of low concern. Despite their warlike tendencies, the Spizanians did not actually threaten the Empire yet and despite the few outposts in the Pacific Ocean and Indian Ocean, the Empire was seemingly not on the Spizanian's radar screen. This made for a truce, in essence, between the two vast nations. Both equally capable of reducing the other to complete dust, they seemingly got along fine, despite the complete lack of diplomatic relations. While the Spizanians had threatened and come to blows with allies of the Empire that was as far as it went. The Empire would continue to watch though, making assessments on the Spizanians if it came, one day, to blows.

Somewhere in the Southern Ocean
Captain Charles Dodsworth looked over the bow of the Invincible, the newest capital ship in the fleet, to a view of a beautiful blue morning sky and a relatively calm sea, however only eight hours earlier the ship had been in a raging storm, mountainous waves breaking over the ships flared bow and crashing down on the forward missile decks, which contained the VLS that held the ships never tested and incredibly secret new Surface to Air Missile system.
The day when that system would finally see the light of the Pacific Dawn, now that the inevitable observers in space would have a good enough view to take very nice pictures of the missile testing. Charles turned his eyes to the blue sky and silently wished the observers a good days spying, and imagining the face of the first senior naval analyst to see what was about to occur.
He then turned around and walked out onto the bridgewing, stepping through the hatch to a gentle ocean-breeze, the elevated posistion providing a brilliant view of a nearly unbroken horizon, the only other ships in sight being a pair of brand new A-class destroyers, one of them towing an old rusty cruiser that had been selected as the target for todays exercise.
One of the ships stewards appeared behind him, holding a steam cup of fresh tea, "Captain, here is the tea you wanted"
Charles turned around and gratefully accepted the nearly scolding hot mug of tea and nodded to the steward, "Jenkins, dont suppose we have any bacon sandwiches in the wardroom do we?"
"No Sir, but Il see about what I can do"
The Steward turned and walked back onto the bridge and walked out of sight, while the Captain took one last look out at the ocean, drank a gulp of the hot tea and followed him back onto the bridge.
"Time?" he asked the Officer of the Watch, who stood beside the conn console and periodically scanned the horizon with a big pair of binoculars, a nervous habit that he had picked up some time before the Captain and he had come aboard just in time for the sea trials of this nearly-600 metre beast.
"0900 Hours Sir, Exercise Begins in two minutes"
"Very Well, Conn, hold us on this heading at current speed"
"Aye Sir"
"Engineering, give me revolutions for flank speed and pump it into the turbogenerators"
"Radar, give me max radar output"
"Aye"

The ship outwardly appeared to continue simply as it had before, but a very careful observer would notice a slgiht haze had appeared over the ships two funnels as the oil fired superheater component of the ships CONAS power plant came up to full service temperature and supplied the ships triple expansion steam turbines with massive additional power, but this power was not passed to the propellor system, but to the ships turbogenerator system, which then passed the power to the enormous radar array mounted behind and above the ships superstructure.

"Now that is probably tripping some alarms on some spy sattelites" mused the radar bridge operator, to the amusement of the rest of the bridge crew. The Captain leaned forward and depressed the com module built into the side of the conn console, "All Hands, Battle Stations Missile, Battle Stations Missile", for a handful of heartbeats nothing happened, but then the ships address system began to sound action stations.
Everyone in the bridge started towards the rear access points except for the captain, who decided hed like to watch this for himself, his crew were the best in the fleet, he had no reason to doubt them.

"Contacts, 1.... now 10 Contacts, profile suggests Khans, inbound Mach 5 plus on mobile headings" came the slightly tinny voice from the speaker system on the conn console, in normal circumstances this would be a critical problem, but not aboard an I-class grand cruiser.
"This Is SAM control, release authorisation given, forward tubes 1 through 10 armed, standing by for missiles to enter range"
One of the benefits of the brand new super-high output radar on the I-class (the most powerful marine radar known to the CSN) was the fact that missiles were acquired and locked onto a long time before they entered range, the ship could have engaged with long range SL-N-5s immediately, but that was not the primary purpose of the exercise, so the ship waited.
"Target missiles reaching launch point! Firing Tubes 1 through 10, Arming 11 through 15"
The Captain watched as a massive fountain of fire and smoke rose from the forward VLS bank as 10 tubes discharged, cold gas pushing the missiles into the air before they ignited the rocket boosters attached to the tails of the ramjet driven missiles, sending them off towards the appointments with the Khans that the SAM control officer had booked.
The missiles soon dissapeared from sight, heading off in multiple directions from the ship, that continue to cruise at a sedate speed, flanked by the target barge and the two brand new tumblehome hulled destroyers, (which hadnt been seen in the open before, having been constructed in a covered dock and only just launching for sea trials before the commencement of this mission).
"Splash in 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2...."

The missile charged towards teh inbound Khan with a closing velocity somewhere in the vicinity of Mach 8, its radar detected the target was close enough to begin the final stage maneuvre and deployed its three countermeasures and veered off course in a maneuvre that was only made possible by the dry state electronics of the missile, the countermeasures continued forward and detonated as the proximity fuses on the devices detected the Starstreak-like interceptors deployed by the Khan in order to destroy the SAM, the missile continued forward on its discreet heading, passing close to the Khan in what would normally be a relatively close miss, however, a tiny fraction of a second later the massive continious rod warhead detonated, sending out several wires at massive velocities, one of which intersected the missile midbody as it passed the detonation site, the wire simply sliced the missile into two peices which then fell out of the sky.
Nine missiles died in this manner, either exploding when the wire intersected fuel lines and the line, or simply falling out of the sky partially or completely sliced into two or even three peices.
The tenth managed to destroy the inbound missile despite the counter-counter measures it employed and continued on its way, and was simply put out of its misery by a salvo of conventional SL-N-4s, as they did not want to waste another of the missiles, which were in relatively short supply due to its recent introduction and due to difficulties in the manufacturing process which were slowing down the ramping up of said production to high levels.

Infantry walked slowly thorugh the streets, turning slowly, the L1 battle rifles they carried held at a low guard, so as not to appear threatening, the landing field was secure, and now hundreds and thousands of infantry and vehicles were being unloaded by the near constant airlift that was visible as planes tracking across the skies above the city.
Suddenly a man stepped around a corner and levelled a battered and dirty looking AK series weapon at the first man in the column, a rifleman who had a GPMG slung across his elbows and who was chatting to the man opposite him on the far side of the street.
The rifleman turned and froze when he saw the man, there was a couple of cracks and the men collapsed backwards, the other men and women in the column unclipping rifles from straps and yelling as they brought them up to shoulder height.
Within two seconds, before the man could bring the rifle to bear on the second soldeir in the column, he had been riddled with over a dozen rounds and dropped slowly to the floor, being hit several more times on the way down, within a second of that the only sound was that of the gunshots echoing from distant hills and of brass casings pinging to the ground.
Medics attended to the soldier, who luckily had survived, the bullet had penetrated his Class IIIA issue body armour, but had missed his vital organs and had lodged in the back plate of the armour, unfortuntately it transpired that the assailant was dead before he even hit the ground.
Within fifteen minutes the platoon that had been on the spearhead had been rotated back to the airfield and a new one had resumed the advance of the column. Meanwhile the landing zone was a hive of activity, men setting up prefab structures, digging fortifications and filling sandbags, or marshalling the vast number of troops and supplies now being unloaded.

The Troops had secured the major cities of the South Island of New Zealand and the area surrounding the landing zone in India, the troops taking up posistions on street corners and swapping helmets for berets and forage caps as they assisted the somewhat demoralised local police regain control of the streets, meanwhile infantry and heavier mechanised troops continue to expand the area of control to include the countryside surrounding, apart from a few encounters with gun wielding lunatics leading to the deaths of a half dozen soldiers and the wounding of several more, things are progressing quietly and smoothly, the majority of the people welcoming the calm that gripped the city now that the Flag of New Zealand flew alongside that of the Confederacy in Wellington or alongside that of the state of Tamil Nadu in Pondicherry

Five Days Later

With the majority of the South Island secure, troops were moving into the North, repeating the same procedure as before, attempting to coopt the populace and avoid causing any bad feeling towards the Confederate soldiers, many of them part timers, such as storekeepers and the like, and could therefore converse in a friendly fashion with many of the locals about the facts of there respective careers.