When War Plan: Flowering Thorn had been proposed, its planners had considered everything they could think of. From being defeated, to Neon outmaneuvering them, secret weapons sharply raising the stakes of the operation, to Chaos making a resurgence in force, all those and more were taken into account.
All those plans and more were taken into consideration when Task Force Alpha jumped into Quintura Diablo and proceeded to show just why the weight of metal was oftentimes more important than numbers, especially against those who subscribed to the same idea. Though Neon fielded four Light Cruisers and sixteen Frigates shielded by ten Destroyers, the Libra-T and her sisters ensured that the Proofs and Words did not go into battle with anything less than a storm of metal that flayed ships apart. New fighters found themselves pitted against old-tested point defenses, and the latter gave before the weight and speed of metal thrown against it.
The battle was hard fought by both sides, make no mistake about that, but the conclusion came akin to the inevitable turn of gears and the march of glaciers: moment by moment, crack by crack, Admiral K-531 moving the fleet with a vengeance and a thirst for success.
And although all Proofs would suffer light damage and a Word would find itself out of count by the battle for the rest of the current phase of the operation, but not without the ability to still join the fleet to partake in its ability to aid its repairs, all other ships would find their damage nothing that would require them to sit out battles.
Yet.
Yet.
There was a massive complication.
One that couldn't have been foreseen. By anyone.
Not by K-531. Not by the war planners. Not by Choirs, the Kil'drabi, or even the Circinus Scouts operating deep within Neon.
One Dauntless Mk.1, the 'Burning Fist of Heroes,' two Falchions, the brother-ships 'Fang of Grabstein' and 'Oath of Grabstein,' and eight other ships, from Viper-Class Missile Destroyers to ordinary Cobras and a trio of Cobra Widowmakers...all flew the flag of surrender, signaling their desire to surrender themselves and their ships to the Glimmering Federation.
That alone would have been baffling to the collected capitancy and Admiral K-531, but the crowning piece of the entire situation was...an uprising.
Diablo Minor is currently experiencing a massive outbreak of terrorist activity and armed uprisings, hundreds of thousands seemingly taking to the streets to violently overthrow the local Imperial governance apparatus, with smaller scale risings happening on Diablo Major. And these bands of revolutionaries are calling upon the ships of the Glimmering Federation to deliver them from the grasp of Imperial Tyranny.
This was not planned.
(6-Hour Moratorium)
[] (What now?)
