A history of the Long War, illustrated with graphics and maps.
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A Lonely Fortress: Campaigns of the Long War
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The Long War
Campaigns of the Long War
-The Long War
For over a hundred years, the United Star Commonwealth has fought ceaseless battles against the mysterious alien enemy they know only as the 'Devasids' in a terrible war of attrition, that has seen millions perish.
(The state of the front lines in the Sagittarius Arm theatre as of May 2769, three years before the start of the Juno Offensive)
The conflict, also known as the Devasid war, or the Xeno War, began in 2653 when what is now considered to be a classical advance scouting group of the Xeno-Agressor fleet encountered and destroyed the MSV Indus Wanderer exploration vessel with all hands, in the Bravo Tori system.
Bravo Tori III was the location of a corporate sponsored pioneer settlement that had been founded with authorization from the Ministry of Colonization in 2649, at the very edge of human settled space it relied on infrequent but scheduled resupply by the chartered survey shapes that were constantly probing the Commonwealth's frontier.
The MSV Indus Wanderer was one of these vessels, and had delivered shipments of machine parts and agricultural equipment to the settlement on Bravo Tori III whilst on it's outbound journey four months prior. On March 18th 2653 however the survey vessel was returning from its expedition into the deep periphery and had diverted from a direct course back to it's home port at Viridia, where many of the corporations involved in exploitation of the frontier maintained offices and service depots. This diversion was not entirely out of the ordinary as many survey crews ran sideline courier jobs for frontier settlements, typically carrying data packages and messages back to the Commonwealth interior.
It is unknown what precipitated the Xeno attack on the Bravo Tori system, and little information has survived of detailing the incident save a single distress call sent at maximum broadcast power from the Indus Wanderer's superluminal transmitter. Subsequent reconnaissance efforts by autonomous drones were undertaken long enough after the attack that accurate data of the event was impossible to gather. What is know that the MSV Indus Wanderer was destroyed, and the settlement on Bravo Tori III no longer exists. The fate of the vessel's crew and the pioneer teams, like so many who have fallen into Xeno hands, is unknown.
The distress signal reached the nearby Commonwealth outpost at Tau Deva within a matter of hours. This system was home to a temporary Commonwealth Star Navy installation dedicated to anti-piracy operations, deployed as part of the Ilyaseva administration's 'Frontier Security Initiative' of 2648 following corporate lobbying. Who blamed the increasing losses their survey and extraction operations were experiencing in the outer territories on heightened pirate activity. By this point the 76th Independent Patrol Squadron had been operating out of Tau Deva for sixteen months, using a Jamaica class prefabricated station that had been towed to the system via jump tug.
Tau Deva is a relatively unimpressive system, home to a fairly common gaseous super giant in close proximity to the red dwarf, and a few airless rocky words. The largest moon of Tau Deva II was home to a large hydrogen ice mining complex and fuel processing refinery that had been constructed by the Consolidated Resources corporation of Arcturus in anticipation of supplying future colonization efforts and industry in this sector. A large habitation dome had been erected on the surface to house the workforce.
Commodore Mohan Chabra received the Indus Wanderer's distress call early on March 19th, analysing what little data had been sent in the transmission, he came to the conclusion that Bravo Tori had been attacked by a pirate force, and ordered his command to mobilize to relieve the settlement. Such attacks though becoming increasingly rarer thanks to navy operations in the Leopard cluster where not unknown. Typically the assailants were motley assortments of renegades crewing retrofitted merchant ships, though some had been found using older model light warships that the previous owners insisted had been listed as surplus and properly disposed of. Though Their typical modus operandi was to seize an isolated settlement or vessel and hold it to ransom from it's corporate owners. They would be no match against the light cruiser and four destroyers that the Commodore had under his command at Tau Deva. Chabra ordered two of the destroyers to form up on his flagship, the USCS Merlin; an M class escort cruiser, and burn towards the jump shelf on a vector for Bravo Tori. This was a move calculated to deploy a show of overwhelming force against whilst still maintaining an adequate protective screen at Tau Deva VI to protect the refinery should the attack at Bravo Tori prove to have been an elaborate diversion.
The 76th Independent Patrol Squadron was composed of an additional cruiser, the older H class UCSC Highlander, and another two destroyers, all of which were missing from Tau Deva during these events, instead tasked with routine patrols of this region of the Frontier, and showing the flag at the handful of local independent worlds.
This absence would prove fortunate for those vessels, as when Commodore Chabra's task force was less than a light minute from reaching their departure envelope he received an urgent message from the Tau Deva outpost reporting that the installation's gravimetric sensor array had detected inbound mass shadows directly on his vector.
The Commodore immediately ordered an evasive retro burn, seeking to put his ships in a less compromising position should the vessels about to emerge into real space prove to be hostile. This last minute maneuver likely saved Chabra's command from prompt destruction, as eight ships of unknown design and origin transited in right on the edge of the jump shelf, far inside what Navy regulations permitted, even during combat operations.
Drive profiles and LIDAR returns subsequently recovered from emergency data recorders would allow later analysts to identify these intruders as a BRK class heavy corsair, accompanied by a pair of lighter CRD class corsairs and five KPS class scout/escorts.
The rapidity of the xeno engagement at Tau Deva has been extensively debated in naval intelligence circles since the beginning of the War, and though there are some who hold fast to the theory that it was part of a premeditated attack based on on long term observation of Commonwealth space by Devasid scout units, this has been refuted by the Office of Naval Reconnaissance. The prevailing explanation is instead that it was an opportunistic attack based on navigation data harvested from the wreck of the Indus Wanderer, which allowed the Xeno ships to trace the likely recipients of the distress signal and launch an attack at the nearest concentration of military forces. This conclusion is supported by the fact that a majority of subsequent attacks all took place in systems which the the MSV Indus Wanderer had visited, and would have had records of in it's navigational computer.
The following battle was heavily one sided in favour of the the unknown vessels. Though Commodore Chabra gave as good account of himself and his ships as could be expected under the circumstances, ultimately the invaders possessed the element of surprise and superior firepower. Quickly understanding the predicament, Chabra stood and fought even as his ships received horrific damage, buying time for the handful of civilian ships in the system at the time to warm up their drives and make a run for the jump shelf on a vector for Commonwealth space. He also ordered the personnel onboard the naval outpost to rig nuclear scuttling charges, determined that the aggressors would get their hands on as little material as possible.
Fortunately, the MSV Aquila Luna, one of the ships passing through the system, was a fast commercial courier on a corporate contract to ferry a VIP for a tour of the Tau Deva II-D facility. The commodore's last communication before the USCS Merlin was destroyed, was to requestion this ship for naval service and upload a copy of his sensor logs to it. He ordered the crew to make best speed for the Viridia Naval base, and attached the squadron's remaining two unengaged destroyers to ensure that they escaped. Both navy vessels were destroyed accomplishing this task, but the Aquila Luna got through.
The spacers of 76th Independent Cruiser Squadron are remembered as heroes by the Commonwealth Navy, and humanity at large for their sacrifice. It has been estimated by some fleet strategists that their actions saved at least a hundred million lives in the first year of the war, and it has even been suggested that without the advance warning delivered by the MSV Aquila Luna and other fleeing civilian vessels, that the entirety of Human space could have been threatened with attack should Viridia and other forward naval installations been attacked.
The Aquila Luna redlined it's drives and reached Viridia Naval Station in the Corvus-B System, within a mere four days. Though nearly wrecked, the conscripted spacers onboard the small ship had done their duty.
Viridia Naval Base was the newest such facility constructed for the Commonwealth Star Navy. It consisted of a complex of three co-orbital refit berths, a refuelling depot, and a purpose built habitat that held personnel accommodation, machine shops and command facilities for the station. It had been built during the early stages of Commonwealth colonisation in the Leopard and Kailash clusters, when tensions had been running high with several of the local independent states such as the Albion Rift Republic. Viridia, the planet which Viridia Naval Station was built in orbit of , was by that time already a thriving colony world and the Ministry of Colonisation intended it to be the future provincial capital of the new frontier sector that would encompass the Leopard and Kailash clusters, along with the Yubari Traverse. The security of a permanent Commonwealth Naval Station and heavy investment from the central government had lead to rapid development and large amount of regional trade routed through the system.
Garrisoning this valuable forward bastion of Commonwealth power was the Thirteenth Border Fleet under Rear Admiral Konstantin Muralenko. Comprised of only a single division of battlecruisers to provide heavy firepower, the bulk of the Thirteenth's strength was instead made up by older second line cruisers and long ranged escort ships, as befitted it's role in policing the colonial frontier. Which also meant that much of it's strength was split up in detached duty across the sector, as had been the case of the 76th Independent Patrol Squadron prior to it's destruction.
Initially the unscheduled arrival of the MSV Aquila Luna, which translated hot and deep, well inside the Viridia traffic control zone, was treated as a security threat rather than the bearer of an urgent warning that it claimed to be. Despite Captain Ryo Ye'un, the courier ship's master, desperate protestations that she was on Navy business with an important cargo, the vessel was intercepted and boarded by one of the frigates on picket duty. It was only when Captain Ryo showed the Lieutenant leading the boarding part Commodore Chabra's last transmission and sensor logs of the USCS Merlin being cored by an alien particle lance that her story was believed and the Aquila Luna was escorted directly to the station.
Rear Admiral Konstantin Muralenko initially dismissed the idea that invaders were of xeno origin and instead made the the determination that they must be Albianese Naval units turned privateer, or renegades from the failing Sevulai Secessionist Worlds raiding for supplies and material before departing to set up splinter colonies deeper into the frontier. Despite this error he was determined not to let any such affront to the honour of the Commonwealth Star Navy go unpunished and assembled a heavy task force to retake the Tau Deva system, centred on his flagship the Minotaur class battlecruiser USCS Gorgon and her sister ship USCS Harpy. Alongside the firepower of these capital ships were the I class heavy cruiser USCS Inchon, three M class escort cruisers and a full flotilla of destroyers. After studying as much of the Merlin's data as possible, and working double shifts to ready the the ships, many of which had been in rest rotation after patrol deployments, Taskforce Viridia translated out of the Corvus-B system on a direct vector for Tau Deva on March 24th 2653.
Five days later Muralenko's Taskforce translated into realspace in combat order with weapons hot. Unexpectedly they found the bulk of the aggressor force still in the system and almost paradoxically unprepared for their arrival. Whether the invaders had thought that Commodore Chabra's command had been the bulk of Commonwealth forces in the region, or that having easily despatched the 76thc Independent Patrol Squadron, that any further threats could be handled with similar ease, is unknown. Whatever the case Muralenko's sensor readouts showed him that two cruiser equivalents and four destroyers were currently in high orbit of Tau Deva II, seemingly picking over the debris of the destroyed Navy outpost and the wreckage of a CSN destroyer that later would turn out to have been the USCS Martel, one of the two destroyers that had given their lives helping the MSV Aquila Luna escape a week earlier.
The Second Battle of Tau Deva began with a volley of long range laserhead missiles which, thanks to the level of surprise achieved by the taskforce, managed to inflict several hits on the unknowns as they manoeuvred into a hasty combat formation. The enemy began an attempt to mount a defence of their newly captured territory, focusing their firepower on the twin battlecruisers that formed the centre of Muralenko's line, whilst maintaining distance. However harassing fire from divisions of destroyers that had spread out across the flanks of the engagement prevented them from gaining any sort of positional advantage, and once the heavy particle rifles onboard the Gorgon and Harpy found their range the commander of the aggressor vessels appeared to decide that the discretion was the better part of valour, and sought to disengage.
The smaller cruiser equivalent and two escorts were brought down by concentrated fire from the Commonwealth ships, and the larger BRK Heavy Corsair was hit heavily suffering an internal detonation. Despite this it managed to avoid destruction and along with it's two remaining consorts limped of the jump shelf just as Muralenko urged his ships on to try and close the noose around them. The engagement was however not entirely one sided, The USCS Gorgon suffered several hits from enemy particle fire, the USCS Maximillian was destroyed by a barrage of hyperveclocity missiles at short range, and two of the CSN destroyers were constructive losses from damage sustained.
This victory, though important for the tempo of the later war was by no means absolute, the Consolidated Resources plant on Tau Deva II-D had been razed by nuclear bombardment, with only a handful of survivors recovered from minor outlying platforms and vehicles. Even as Rear Admiral Murlaneko delivered his report on the encounter and engagement with Sagittarius theatre command, messages reached him that the outer colonies at Dromon and Erevan had been attacked by similar unknown aggressors. Investigation of the shattered wrecks of enemy ships provided little insight into their motives or aims, but it soon became quite clear that this was no raid by renegade human forces, and instead the worst case of first contact that the planners had accounted for. Muralenko would hold position at Tau Deva, requesting immediate reinforcements from Commonwealth Fleet Command. Though they would not arrive before the appearance of a fresh, and even larger group of alien raiders forced him to retreat. Subsequently the Tau Deva system changed hands several times via fleet battles between the Commonwealth Navy and what had become known as the Devasids. So named after the system they had first appeared in.
Since then, despite futile attempts at diplomacy, rapid escalation in the conflict occurred with repeated xeno attempts to penetrate the security cordon the Commonwealth Navy emplaced on the frontier with the new and strange threat. Though their true motives were unknown,. These Devasid raid-groups would unerringly strike toward human colony worlds when they were located. Settlements in systems that fell were invariably subjected to bombardment and survivors forces to go into hiding in the wilderness to avoid Devasid ground troops.
In the first years of the war this raiding behaviour was seen as somewhat as a nuisance, and political leadership in the core worlds felt confident in the Navy's ability to handle the situation despite the loss of a dozen frontier colonies. However this complacency was seriously challenged when the first fully fledged Xeno-Armada appeared in the Sagittarius theatre in 2660. Devasid capital ship equivalents were encountered for the first time at the battle of Savu, which ended in a decisive defeat for the Ninth Border Fleet, who were overwhelmed by significant numbers as the superb tactical void handling of their adversaries saw their formation's picked apart. This new paradigm saw Devasid heavy units actively seeking out Commonwealth Navy task forces to destroy them. In a series of rapid advances a significant part of the Commonwealth's frontier defences were savaged and forced to retreat, which culminated in the the Battle of Viridia and the destruction of the naval facilities in orbit. Now lacking their forward supply and refit base, the CSN was compelled to shorten it;ls line, abandoning a dozen world to alien depredation, with only hastily organized evacuations available as a life line to the civilian populations. Devasid offensives only continued and increased in intensity and Commonwealth admirals struggled to keep up with the tempo of combat operations as they rushed in what available fleet units they could from other theatres. What followed was a decade of steady retreat whilst taking heavy losses in almost futile attempts to hold the line. The most serious of the xeno breakthroughs, the disastrous Pegasus Drift Incursion, succeeded in forcing the the CSN to retreat from nearly a fifth of the Commonwealth's territory.
Subsequent counter attacks have regained almost all this space, and even managed to push further up the Sagittarius arm and take territory from the enemy that was lost in the first years of the conflict. By 2772 the war has long devolved into a stalemate, however recent radical reorganization of the commonwealth into a total war footing have enabled the CSN to mount it's largest offensive yet aimed at destroying the Xeno fleets and penetrating all the way to their main colony worlds.
-The Long War
For over a hundred years, the United Star Commonwealth has fought ceaseless battles against the mysterious alien enemy they know only as the 'Devasids' in a terrible war of attrition, that has seen millions perish.
(The state of the front lines in the Sagittarius Arm theatre as of May 2769, three years before the start of the Juno Offensive)
The conflict, also known as the Devasid war, or the Xeno War, began in 2653 when what is now considered to be a classical advance scouting group of the Xeno-Agressor fleet encountered and destroyed the MSV Indus Wanderer exploration vessel with all hands, in the Bravo Tori system.
Bravo Tori III was the location of a corporate sponsored pioneer settlement that had been founded with authorization from the Ministry of Colonization in 2649, at the very edge of human settled space it relied on infrequent but scheduled resupply by the chartered survey shapes that were constantly probing the Commonwealth's frontier.
The MSV Indus Wanderer was one of these vessels, and had delivered shipments of machine parts and agricultural equipment to the settlement on Bravo Tori III whilst on it's outbound journey four months prior. On March 18th 2653 however the survey vessel was returning from its expedition into the deep periphery and had diverted from a direct course back to it's home port at Viridia, where many of the corporations involved in exploitation of the frontier maintained offices and service depots. This diversion was not entirely out of the ordinary as many survey crews ran sideline courier jobs for frontier settlements, typically carrying data packages and messages back to the Commonwealth interior.
It is unknown what precipitated the Xeno attack on the Bravo Tori system, and little information has survived of detailing the incident save a single distress call sent at maximum broadcast power from the Indus Wanderer's superluminal transmitter. Subsequent reconnaissance efforts by autonomous drones were undertaken long enough after the attack that accurate data of the event was impossible to gather. What is know that the MSV Indus Wanderer was destroyed, and the settlement on Bravo Tori III no longer exists. The fate of the vessel's crew and the pioneer teams, like so many who have fallen into Xeno hands, is unknown.
The distress signal reached the nearby Commonwealth outpost at Tau Deva within a matter of hours. This system was home to a temporary Commonwealth Star Navy installation dedicated to anti-piracy operations, deployed as part of the Ilyaseva administration's 'Frontier Security Initiative' of 2648 following corporate lobbying. Who blamed the increasing losses their survey and extraction operations were experiencing in the outer territories on heightened pirate activity. By this point the 76th Independent Patrol Squadron had been operating out of Tau Deva for sixteen months, using a Jamaica class prefabricated station that had been towed to the system via jump tug.
Tau Deva is a relatively unimpressive system, home to a fairly common gaseous super giant in close proximity to the red dwarf, and a few airless rocky words. The largest moon of Tau Deva II was home to a large hydrogen ice mining complex and fuel processing refinery that had been constructed by the Consolidated Resources corporation of Arcturus in anticipation of supplying future colonization efforts and industry in this sector. A large habitation dome had been erected on the surface to house the workforce.
Commodore Mohan Chabra received the Indus Wanderer's distress call early on March 19th, analysing what little data had been sent in the transmission, he came to the conclusion that Bravo Tori had been attacked by a pirate force, and ordered his command to mobilize to relieve the settlement. Such attacks though becoming increasingly rarer thanks to navy operations in the Leopard cluster where not unknown. Typically the assailants were motley assortments of renegades crewing retrofitted merchant ships, though some had been found using older model light warships that the previous owners insisted had been listed as surplus and properly disposed of. Though Their typical modus operandi was to seize an isolated settlement or vessel and hold it to ransom from it's corporate owners. They would be no match against the light cruiser and four destroyers that the Commodore had under his command at Tau Deva. Chabra ordered two of the destroyers to form up on his flagship, the USCS Merlin; an M class escort cruiser, and burn towards the jump shelf on a vector for Bravo Tori. This was a move calculated to deploy a show of overwhelming force against whilst still maintaining an adequate protective screen at Tau Deva VI to protect the refinery should the attack at Bravo Tori prove to have been an elaborate diversion.
The 76th Independent Patrol Squadron was composed of an additional cruiser, the older H class UCSC Highlander, and another two destroyers, all of which were missing from Tau Deva during these events, instead tasked with routine patrols of this region of the Frontier, and showing the flag at the handful of local independent worlds.
This absence would prove fortunate for those vessels, as when Commodore Chabra's task force was less than a light minute from reaching their departure envelope he received an urgent message from the Tau Deva outpost reporting that the installation's gravimetric sensor array had detected inbound mass shadows directly on his vector.
The Commodore immediately ordered an evasive retro burn, seeking to put his ships in a less compromising position should the vessels about to emerge into real space prove to be hostile. This last minute maneuver likely saved Chabra's command from prompt destruction, as eight ships of unknown design and origin transited in right on the edge of the jump shelf, far inside what Navy regulations permitted, even during combat operations.
Drive profiles and LIDAR returns subsequently recovered from emergency data recorders would allow later analysts to identify these intruders as a BRK class heavy corsair, accompanied by a pair of lighter CRD class corsairs and five KPS class scout/escorts.
The rapidity of the xeno engagement at Tau Deva has been extensively debated in naval intelligence circles since the beginning of the War, and though there are some who hold fast to the theory that it was part of a premeditated attack based on on long term observation of Commonwealth space by Devasid scout units, this has been refuted by the Office of Naval Reconnaissance. The prevailing explanation is instead that it was an opportunistic attack based on navigation data harvested from the wreck of the Indus Wanderer, which allowed the Xeno ships to trace the likely recipients of the distress signal and launch an attack at the nearest concentration of military forces. This conclusion is supported by the fact that a majority of subsequent attacks all took place in systems which the the MSV Indus Wanderer had visited, and would have had records of in it's navigational computer.
The following battle was heavily one sided in favour of the the unknown vessels. Though Commodore Chabra gave as good account of himself and his ships as could be expected under the circumstances, ultimately the invaders possessed the element of surprise and superior firepower. Quickly understanding the predicament, Chabra stood and fought even as his ships received horrific damage, buying time for the handful of civilian ships in the system at the time to warm up their drives and make a run for the jump shelf on a vector for Commonwealth space. He also ordered the personnel onboard the naval outpost to rig nuclear scuttling charges, determined that the aggressors would get their hands on as little material as possible.
Fortunately, the MSV Aquila Luna, one of the ships passing through the system, was a fast commercial courier on a corporate contract to ferry a VIP for a tour of the Tau Deva II-D facility. The commodore's last communication before the USCS Merlin was destroyed, was to requestion this ship for naval service and upload a copy of his sensor logs to it. He ordered the crew to make best speed for the Viridia Naval base, and attached the squadron's remaining two unengaged destroyers to ensure that they escaped. Both navy vessels were destroyed accomplishing this task, but the Aquila Luna got through.
The spacers of 76th Independent Cruiser Squadron are remembered as heroes by the Commonwealth Navy, and humanity at large for their sacrifice. It has been estimated by some fleet strategists that their actions saved at least a hundred million lives in the first year of the war, and it has even been suggested that without the advance warning delivered by the MSV Aquila Luna and other fleeing civilian vessels, that the entirety of Human space could have been threatened with attack should Viridia and other forward naval installations been attacked.
The Aquila Luna redlined it's drives and reached Viridia Naval Station in the Corvus-B System, within a mere four days. Though nearly wrecked, the conscripted spacers onboard the small ship had done their duty.
Viridia Naval Base was the newest such facility constructed for the Commonwealth Star Navy. It consisted of a complex of three co-orbital refit berths, a refuelling depot, and a purpose built habitat that held personnel accommodation, machine shops and command facilities for the station. It had been built during the early stages of Commonwealth colonisation in the Leopard and Kailash clusters, when tensions had been running high with several of the local independent states such as the Albion Rift Republic. Viridia, the planet which Viridia Naval Station was built in orbit of , was by that time already a thriving colony world and the Ministry of Colonisation intended it to be the future provincial capital of the new frontier sector that would encompass the Leopard and Kailash clusters, along with the Yubari Traverse. The security of a permanent Commonwealth Naval Station and heavy investment from the central government had lead to rapid development and large amount of regional trade routed through the system.
Garrisoning this valuable forward bastion of Commonwealth power was the Thirteenth Border Fleet under Rear Admiral Konstantin Muralenko. Comprised of only a single division of battlecruisers to provide heavy firepower, the bulk of the Thirteenth's strength was instead made up by older second line cruisers and long ranged escort ships, as befitted it's role in policing the colonial frontier. Which also meant that much of it's strength was split up in detached duty across the sector, as had been the case of the 76th Independent Patrol Squadron prior to it's destruction.
Initially the unscheduled arrival of the MSV Aquila Luna, which translated hot and deep, well inside the Viridia traffic control zone, was treated as a security threat rather than the bearer of an urgent warning that it claimed to be. Despite Captain Ryo Ye'un, the courier ship's master, desperate protestations that she was on Navy business with an important cargo, the vessel was intercepted and boarded by one of the frigates on picket duty. It was only when Captain Ryo showed the Lieutenant leading the boarding part Commodore Chabra's last transmission and sensor logs of the USCS Merlin being cored by an alien particle lance that her story was believed and the Aquila Luna was escorted directly to the station.
Rear Admiral Konstantin Muralenko initially dismissed the idea that invaders were of xeno origin and instead made the the determination that they must be Albianese Naval units turned privateer, or renegades from the failing Sevulai Secessionist Worlds raiding for supplies and material before departing to set up splinter colonies deeper into the frontier. Despite this error he was determined not to let any such affront to the honour of the Commonwealth Star Navy go unpunished and assembled a heavy task force to retake the Tau Deva system, centred on his flagship the Minotaur class battlecruiser USCS Gorgon and her sister ship USCS Harpy. Alongside the firepower of these capital ships were the I class heavy cruiser USCS Inchon, three M class escort cruisers and a full flotilla of destroyers. After studying as much of the Merlin's data as possible, and working double shifts to ready the the ships, many of which had been in rest rotation after patrol deployments, Taskforce Viridia translated out of the Corvus-B system on a direct vector for Tau Deva on March 24th 2653.
Five days later Muralenko's Taskforce translated into realspace in combat order with weapons hot. Unexpectedly they found the bulk of the aggressor force still in the system and almost paradoxically unprepared for their arrival. Whether the invaders had thought that Commodore Chabra's command had been the bulk of Commonwealth forces in the region, or that having easily despatched the 76thc Independent Patrol Squadron, that any further threats could be handled with similar ease, is unknown. Whatever the case Muralenko's sensor readouts showed him that two cruiser equivalents and four destroyers were currently in high orbit of Tau Deva II, seemingly picking over the debris of the destroyed Navy outpost and the wreckage of a CSN destroyer that later would turn out to have been the USCS Martel, one of the two destroyers that had given their lives helping the MSV Aquila Luna escape a week earlier.
The Second Battle of Tau Deva began with a volley of long range laserhead missiles which, thanks to the level of surprise achieved by the taskforce, managed to inflict several hits on the unknowns as they manoeuvred into a hasty combat formation. The enemy began an attempt to mount a defence of their newly captured territory, focusing their firepower on the twin battlecruisers that formed the centre of Muralenko's line, whilst maintaining distance. However harassing fire from divisions of destroyers that had spread out across the flanks of the engagement prevented them from gaining any sort of positional advantage, and once the heavy particle rifles onboard the Gorgon and Harpy found their range the commander of the aggressor vessels appeared to decide that the discretion was the better part of valour, and sought to disengage.
The smaller cruiser equivalent and two escorts were brought down by concentrated fire from the Commonwealth ships, and the larger BRK Heavy Corsair was hit heavily suffering an internal detonation. Despite this it managed to avoid destruction and along with it's two remaining consorts limped of the jump shelf just as Muralenko urged his ships on to try and close the noose around them. The engagement was however not entirely one sided, The USCS Gorgon suffered several hits from enemy particle fire, the USCS Maximillian was destroyed by a barrage of hyperveclocity missiles at short range, and two of the CSN destroyers were constructive losses from damage sustained.
This victory, though important for the tempo of the later war was by no means absolute, the Consolidated Resources plant on Tau Deva II-D had been razed by nuclear bombardment, with only a handful of survivors recovered from minor outlying platforms and vehicles. Even as Rear Admiral Murlaneko delivered his report on the encounter and engagement with Sagittarius theatre command, messages reached him that the outer colonies at Dromon and Erevan had been attacked by similar unknown aggressors. Investigation of the shattered wrecks of enemy ships provided little insight into their motives or aims, but it soon became quite clear that this was no raid by renegade human forces, and instead the worst case of first contact that the planners had accounted for. Muralenko would hold position at Tau Deva, requesting immediate reinforcements from Commonwealth Fleet Command. Though they would not arrive before the appearance of a fresh, and even larger group of alien raiders forced him to retreat. Subsequently the Tau Deva system changed hands several times via fleet battles between the Commonwealth Navy and what had become known as the Devasids. So named after the system they had first appeared in.
Since then, despite futile attempts at diplomacy, rapid escalation in the conflict occurred with repeated xeno attempts to penetrate the security cordon the Commonwealth Navy emplaced on the frontier with the new and strange threat. Though their true motives were unknown,. These Devasid raid-groups would unerringly strike toward human colony worlds when they were located. Settlements in systems that fell were invariably subjected to bombardment and survivors forces to go into hiding in the wilderness to avoid Devasid ground troops.
In the first years of the war this raiding behaviour was seen as somewhat as a nuisance, and political leadership in the core worlds felt confident in the Navy's ability to handle the situation despite the loss of a dozen frontier colonies. However this complacency was seriously challenged when the first fully fledged Xeno-Armada appeared in the Sagittarius theatre in 2660. Devasid capital ship equivalents were encountered for the first time at the battle of Savu, which ended in a decisive defeat for the Ninth Border Fleet, who were overwhelmed by significant numbers as the superb tactical void handling of their adversaries saw their formation's picked apart. This new paradigm saw Devasid heavy units actively seeking out Commonwealth Navy task forces to destroy them. In a series of rapid advances a significant part of the Commonwealth's frontier defences were savaged and forced to retreat, which culminated in the the Battle of Viridia and the destruction of the naval facilities in orbit. Now lacking their forward supply and refit base, the CSN was compelled to shorten it;ls line, abandoning a dozen world to alien depredation, with only hastily organized evacuations available as a life line to the civilian populations. Devasid offensives only continued and increased in intensity and Commonwealth admirals struggled to keep up with the tempo of combat operations as they rushed in what available fleet units they could from other theatres. What followed was a decade of steady retreat whilst taking heavy losses in almost futile attempts to hold the line. The most serious of the xeno breakthroughs, the disastrous Pegasus Drift Incursion, succeeded in forcing the the CSN to retreat from nearly a fifth of the Commonwealth's territory.
Subsequent counter attacks have regained almost all this space, and even managed to push further up the Sagittarius arm and take territory from the enemy that was lost in the first years of the conflict. By 2772 the war has long devolved into a stalemate, however recent radical reorganization of the commonwealth into a total war footing have enabled the CSN to mount it's largest offensive yet aimed at destroying the Xeno fleets and penetrating all the way to their main colony worlds.
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Operation Carpathia- Part 1
Operation Carpathia- Part 1
In 2769, the hundred and sixteenth year of the long war, and forty-three years after the relief of the Second Siege of Samarkhand, the conflict between humanity and the alien forces known only as the 'Devasids' in the upper reaches of the Sagittarius arm had become an almost static war of attrition. Combat operations were entirely different in character from the first terrifying decades when it had seemed that the Xeno-Armadas were on the verge of breaking through to Humanity's core worlds.
The final victory at Samarkhand and Fleet Admiral Georgy Barbosa's successful defence of the Ingram Traverse had marked a turning point, after which strategic momentum had definitely swung back in the Commonwealth's favour, allowing Human forces to go on the offensive for the first time in half a century.
However the slight numerical superiority of Devasid fleets, and the tactical aptitude with which they were handled by alien commanders, meant that such advances were slow grinding affairs. It had taken a decade after Samarkhand to force the Daedalus Gap, and the battles to reclaim the Mariana Cluster and Pegasus Drift had only been won by the sacrifice of millions of human soldiers and hundreds of burnt out ships.
The significant issue was the same problem that had plagued Commonwealth strategists since the beginning of the conflict. Compared to the distances being covered the strategic mobility of fleets was limited. This had been viciously exploited by the Devasids during their initial advances, when they had possessed sufficient numbers to allow them to attack and conquer systems across a broad front before Human reinforcements could respond. When the the xeno-armadas had been reduced in strength by decades of attrition, and the slow but steady industrial mobilization of the core worlds was placing ever more hulls into the frontline, this inequality had disappeared resulting in the stalemate at Samarkand, and at other key redoubt worlds along the McGriffin Line. However now equally matched Human forces faced the same issues that had stalled their alien adversaries. When attacking into this heavily defended frontier it was difficult to exploit success, as even though hyperlight relays and fast couriers could get news of openings back to reserve fleet groups rapidly, the slow FTL speed of those heavy units meant by the time they entered the combat zone, enemy reinforcements had often nullified the opportunity for breakthrough. This left commanders with the choice of a fighting a hard battle against evenly matched forces or retreating to preserve their formations.
Though some success had been achieved by committing all forces in an offensive operation to the initial push, in a bid to overwhelm defenders in the first engagement, it quickly became clear that this was a preposition too risky for command to bear. Enemy reconnaissance efforts were just as sophisticated as humanity's and when they observed such forces being committed, they were quick to exploit any opening's left ions he defensive line with their own counter-attacks into the lightly secured staging areas and logistics hubs, or on areas of the line that had been thinned to permit such massive force to be concentrated in the first place. After the near disaster of the third battle of Gamma Corina that almost saw the Commonwealth's gains in the Pegasus Drift lost for a second time, such reckless endeavours were prohibited.
The last offensive operations to take the Julian and Vallejo clusters against increasingly determined Devasid resistance had convinced Joint Forces Command to halt any further advances in 2748, hesitant to overextend in the face of an alien counter-attack that they feared must be massing. However such a blow never fell, and the front stabilized into a prolonged period of consolidation, interspersed as it was with frequent raiding actions undertaken by both sides.
It was during this time that the complete reorganisation of the Commonwealth's society and economy to a total war footing, first begun in 2725 after the Admiral's Revolt, began to come to fruition. The worlds that had volunteered themselves to the Selected Conscription program implemented under the 2728 Universal Defence Procurement Act had by this point been transformed into dedicated training camps that were producing whole armies ready to be deployed to the front, and crews for the new ships that were now coming off the slips in a seemingly endless stream. This wholly focused application of the Commonwealth's industrial and human resources to the needs of the war effort, together with the introduction of the next generation in advanced stringdrives is what allowed Commonwealth Joint Forces Command to plan for the next stage in the war.
Not content to slowly grind the enemy back system by system, planners instead wanted to use the Navy's new strategic mobility to rapidly apply overwhelming force at focused locations of the front in a bid to create openings that could be quickly exploited to isolate and destroy Devasid fleet units in place. To this end they devised a sweeping set of offensives under the codename plan 'Pericles' whose authors hoped would see the last of the Commonwealth's occupied worlds reclaimed, and the alien menace driven back into the wilds of frontier space. However such ambitious and innovative tactics would not be approved by a leadership that through painful experience had grown sceptical of such claims, and was doubtful of apparent 'miraculous' war winning strategies. Before the carefully husbanded ships and armies of the Commonwealth could be committed to such endeavour they would require a proof of concept.
The Naval Planning Directorate identified several key regions in both the Sagittarius and Orion fronts where such a demonstration could practiced, with the possibilities of gaining significantly advantageous positions should success be achieved. Initially an effort to open the Medan cluster was heavily favoured, with an eye to pushing through to the Durant Abyss with follow up campaigns. However what finally settled it on the Albion Rift region was unexpected regained contact with stay behind forces on the border worlds of the former Albion Rift Republic.
The Republic had been an independent polity with somewhat cold relations with the United Star Commonwealth prior to the start of the Long War. The Albianese were descendants of factions within the old Federacy of Sol that had dissented the order to stand down during the events that lead to that state's dissolution, and the formation of the Commonwealth. As such co-operation and co-ordination with them during the early years of the war had been highly limited, and though they maintained a large military in comparison to the their population base, they had been unable to stand against armadas of Devasid capital ships once the Yubari Traverse was over-run in 2680. Though the Albianese fought tenaciously, and their pleas for assistance were answered by Commonwealth units, it was too little too late. The Republic's fate was sealed when the notorious Xeno-Armada 11 broke through the defences of their capital world of Gresham in 2682. Remnant Republican military units joined up with their new Commonwealth allies to mount rearguard actions on the border worlds of Orinoco and San Luis, but heavy pressure across the Sagittarius front meant that sufficient resources to hold these positions were never available. It is considered that this failure to properly establish the Albion Rift Republic as a bulwark against Devasid advances earlier in the conflict greatly contributed to the Commonwealth's failure to hold the Muralenko line and the subsequent disasters that lead to humanity's retreat across the Daedalus gap.
Later in 2765 a raiding group of the CSN's 48th Heavy Cruiser Squadron had pushed across the Albion Rift to harass enemy logistics movements through uninhabited systems in the old Republic. Whilst this effort was dubiously successful, with only one minor convoy intercepted, and the group forced to disengage with losses in the face of a division Devasid Heavy Corsairs, their retreat took them through the outer system of San Luis, where as they lay low, recharging their drives amongst the icy planetoids of the system periphery, they unexpectedly received an inbound comms laser burst.
To the surprise of the squadron's commodore this turned out to be from an old in system mining jack that had been converted into a gunboat using salvaged military composites and weapon systems. Claiming to be a vessel of the Albion Home Army, the crew of this erstwhile warship were soundly disappointed when it became apparent that the 48th's cruisers were not the vanguard of an incoming liberation fleet, however they did pass on a great deal of valuable intelligence. To the amazement of the both the Commonwealth crews, and later their superiors at JCOMWEST this 'Albion Home Army' appeared to be a functioning resistance movement to alien occupation of not just San Luis but other nearby worlds in the Former Albion Rift Republic. Founded primarily from a collection of former Rift Republic forces that refused to evacuate with the Commonwealth sixty years prior, and hardy asteroid belt miners, that they had merely survived all those decades being hunted by Devasid hunter killer groups was miraculous enough, but that they had also been actively fighting back and sabotaging Devasid logistics in the region was astounding.
(Dispositions of installations and mobile units in the San Luis system on 9th July 2765, when contact was reestablished with Albion Rift Republic remnant guerrilla forces.)
Moreover the Home Army brought news that significant civilian populations throughout the Republic still existed, though under Devasid control, and being employed as labour in harsh resource extraction operations.
News of a resistance movement operating in occupied space was a huge propaganda victory across the Commonwealth, and stories of the valiant guerrilla fighters striking back at the alien invaders gave hope to billions that others would be similarly holding out across the worlds still under Devasid thrall. Joint Forces Command wasted no time in exploiting this new strategic asset, and set up covert supply missions that would give new advanced weapons to the Albion Home Army in the hope that they could become a signifiant drain on the Alien's attentions and resources.
However the general populace and thus political leadership would not allow it to be left at that, it was not enough to merely sustain the valiant resistance fighters who had captured Humanity's imagination and hearts. The imperative was firm, they must be rescued.
So it was that the test case for the Pericles plan was reorganized to focus on the Albion Rift, in what would become known as Operation Carpathia.
Planners aimed to to distract the nearby Devasid fleet units with diversionary attacks across the Rift to Gustloff, Alpha Sidra and Toombs. Once deep reconnaissance assets confirmed that enough enemy strength had been committed towards that section of the front, two heavy strike fleets with accompanying ground assault elements would engage and destroy whatever forces were left within the Orinoco and San Luis systems. The intention was to hold these systems as bridgeheads for further action on the far side of the Albion Rift, but if necessary sufficient transport would be provided to evacuate both the Home Army and the indentured civilians back to Commonwealth space. Meanwhile the distraction force would use their new drives to consolidate into one group and then retreat in good order, hopefully outmanoeuvring the Devasid reactions forces that would be seeking to engage them.
On May 18th 2769 JCOMWEST sent the coded order 'Harlequin' to the forces that had been prepositioned along the border worlds of the Julian Cluster. Operation Carpathia was a go.
In 2769, the hundred and sixteenth year of the long war, and forty-three years after the relief of the Second Siege of Samarkhand, the conflict between humanity and the alien forces known only as the 'Devasids' in the upper reaches of the Sagittarius arm had become an almost static war of attrition. Combat operations were entirely different in character from the first terrifying decades when it had seemed that the Xeno-Armadas were on the verge of breaking through to Humanity's core worlds.
The final victory at Samarkhand and Fleet Admiral Georgy Barbosa's successful defence of the Ingram Traverse had marked a turning point, after which strategic momentum had definitely swung back in the Commonwealth's favour, allowing Human forces to go on the offensive for the first time in half a century.
However the slight numerical superiority of Devasid fleets, and the tactical aptitude with which they were handled by alien commanders, meant that such advances were slow grinding affairs. It had taken a decade after Samarkhand to force the Daedalus Gap, and the battles to reclaim the Mariana Cluster and Pegasus Drift had only been won by the sacrifice of millions of human soldiers and hundreds of burnt out ships.
The significant issue was the same problem that had plagued Commonwealth strategists since the beginning of the conflict. Compared to the distances being covered the strategic mobility of fleets was limited. This had been viciously exploited by the Devasids during their initial advances, when they had possessed sufficient numbers to allow them to attack and conquer systems across a broad front before Human reinforcements could respond. When the the xeno-armadas had been reduced in strength by decades of attrition, and the slow but steady industrial mobilization of the core worlds was placing ever more hulls into the frontline, this inequality had disappeared resulting in the stalemate at Samarkand, and at other key redoubt worlds along the McGriffin Line. However now equally matched Human forces faced the same issues that had stalled their alien adversaries. When attacking into this heavily defended frontier it was difficult to exploit success, as even though hyperlight relays and fast couriers could get news of openings back to reserve fleet groups rapidly, the slow FTL speed of those heavy units meant by the time they entered the combat zone, enemy reinforcements had often nullified the opportunity for breakthrough. This left commanders with the choice of a fighting a hard battle against evenly matched forces or retreating to preserve their formations.
Though some success had been achieved by committing all forces in an offensive operation to the initial push, in a bid to overwhelm defenders in the first engagement, it quickly became clear that this was a preposition too risky for command to bear. Enemy reconnaissance efforts were just as sophisticated as humanity's and when they observed such forces being committed, they were quick to exploit any opening's left ions he defensive line with their own counter-attacks into the lightly secured staging areas and logistics hubs, or on areas of the line that had been thinned to permit such massive force to be concentrated in the first place. After the near disaster of the third battle of Gamma Corina that almost saw the Commonwealth's gains in the Pegasus Drift lost for a second time, such reckless endeavours were prohibited.
The last offensive operations to take the Julian and Vallejo clusters against increasingly determined Devasid resistance had convinced Joint Forces Command to halt any further advances in 2748, hesitant to overextend in the face of an alien counter-attack that they feared must be massing. However such a blow never fell, and the front stabilized into a prolonged period of consolidation, interspersed as it was with frequent raiding actions undertaken by both sides.
It was during this time that the complete reorganisation of the Commonwealth's society and economy to a total war footing, first begun in 2725 after the Admiral's Revolt, began to come to fruition. The worlds that had volunteered themselves to the Selected Conscription program implemented under the 2728 Universal Defence Procurement Act had by this point been transformed into dedicated training camps that were producing whole armies ready to be deployed to the front, and crews for the new ships that were now coming off the slips in a seemingly endless stream. This wholly focused application of the Commonwealth's industrial and human resources to the needs of the war effort, together with the introduction of the next generation in advanced stringdrives is what allowed Commonwealth Joint Forces Command to plan for the next stage in the war.
Not content to slowly grind the enemy back system by system, planners instead wanted to use the Navy's new strategic mobility to rapidly apply overwhelming force at focused locations of the front in a bid to create openings that could be quickly exploited to isolate and destroy Devasid fleet units in place. To this end they devised a sweeping set of offensives under the codename plan 'Pericles' whose authors hoped would see the last of the Commonwealth's occupied worlds reclaimed, and the alien menace driven back into the wilds of frontier space. However such ambitious and innovative tactics would not be approved by a leadership that through painful experience had grown sceptical of such claims, and was doubtful of apparent 'miraculous' war winning strategies. Before the carefully husbanded ships and armies of the Commonwealth could be committed to such endeavour they would require a proof of concept.
The Naval Planning Directorate identified several key regions in both the Sagittarius and Orion fronts where such a demonstration could practiced, with the possibilities of gaining significantly advantageous positions should success be achieved. Initially an effort to open the Medan cluster was heavily favoured, with an eye to pushing through to the Durant Abyss with follow up campaigns. However what finally settled it on the Albion Rift region was unexpected regained contact with stay behind forces on the border worlds of the former Albion Rift Republic.
The Republic had been an independent polity with somewhat cold relations with the United Star Commonwealth prior to the start of the Long War. The Albianese were descendants of factions within the old Federacy of Sol that had dissented the order to stand down during the events that lead to that state's dissolution, and the formation of the Commonwealth. As such co-operation and co-ordination with them during the early years of the war had been highly limited, and though they maintained a large military in comparison to the their population base, they had been unable to stand against armadas of Devasid capital ships once the Yubari Traverse was over-run in 2680. Though the Albianese fought tenaciously, and their pleas for assistance were answered by Commonwealth units, it was too little too late. The Republic's fate was sealed when the notorious Xeno-Armada 11 broke through the defences of their capital world of Gresham in 2682. Remnant Republican military units joined up with their new Commonwealth allies to mount rearguard actions on the border worlds of Orinoco and San Luis, but heavy pressure across the Sagittarius front meant that sufficient resources to hold these positions were never available. It is considered that this failure to properly establish the Albion Rift Republic as a bulwark against Devasid advances earlier in the conflict greatly contributed to the Commonwealth's failure to hold the Muralenko line and the subsequent disasters that lead to humanity's retreat across the Daedalus gap.
Later in 2765 a raiding group of the CSN's 48th Heavy Cruiser Squadron had pushed across the Albion Rift to harass enemy logistics movements through uninhabited systems in the old Republic. Whilst this effort was dubiously successful, with only one minor convoy intercepted, and the group forced to disengage with losses in the face of a division Devasid Heavy Corsairs, their retreat took them through the outer system of San Luis, where as they lay low, recharging their drives amongst the icy planetoids of the system periphery, they unexpectedly received an inbound comms laser burst.
To the surprise of the squadron's commodore this turned out to be from an old in system mining jack that had been converted into a gunboat using salvaged military composites and weapon systems. Claiming to be a vessel of the Albion Home Army, the crew of this erstwhile warship were soundly disappointed when it became apparent that the 48th's cruisers were not the vanguard of an incoming liberation fleet, however they did pass on a great deal of valuable intelligence. To the amazement of the both the Commonwealth crews, and later their superiors at JCOMWEST this 'Albion Home Army' appeared to be a functioning resistance movement to alien occupation of not just San Luis but other nearby worlds in the Former Albion Rift Republic. Founded primarily from a collection of former Rift Republic forces that refused to evacuate with the Commonwealth sixty years prior, and hardy asteroid belt miners, that they had merely survived all those decades being hunted by Devasid hunter killer groups was miraculous enough, but that they had also been actively fighting back and sabotaging Devasid logistics in the region was astounding.
(Dispositions of installations and mobile units in the San Luis system on 9th July 2765, when contact was reestablished with Albion Rift Republic remnant guerrilla forces.)
Moreover the Home Army brought news that significant civilian populations throughout the Republic still existed, though under Devasid control, and being employed as labour in harsh resource extraction operations.
News of a resistance movement operating in occupied space was a huge propaganda victory across the Commonwealth, and stories of the valiant guerrilla fighters striking back at the alien invaders gave hope to billions that others would be similarly holding out across the worlds still under Devasid thrall. Joint Forces Command wasted no time in exploiting this new strategic asset, and set up covert supply missions that would give new advanced weapons to the Albion Home Army in the hope that they could become a signifiant drain on the Alien's attentions and resources.
However the general populace and thus political leadership would not allow it to be left at that, it was not enough to merely sustain the valiant resistance fighters who had captured Humanity's imagination and hearts. The imperative was firm, they must be rescued.
So it was that the test case for the Pericles plan was reorganized to focus on the Albion Rift, in what would become known as Operation Carpathia.
Planners aimed to to distract the nearby Devasid fleet units with diversionary attacks across the Rift to Gustloff, Alpha Sidra and Toombs. Once deep reconnaissance assets confirmed that enough enemy strength had been committed towards that section of the front, two heavy strike fleets with accompanying ground assault elements would engage and destroy whatever forces were left within the Orinoco and San Luis systems. The intention was to hold these systems as bridgeheads for further action on the far side of the Albion Rift, but if necessary sufficient transport would be provided to evacuate both the Home Army and the indentured civilians back to Commonwealth space. Meanwhile the distraction force would use their new drives to consolidate into one group and then retreat in good order, hopefully outmanoeuvring the Devasid reactions forces that would be seeking to engage them.
On May 18th 2769 JCOMWEST sent the coded order 'Harlequin' to the forces that had been prepositioned along the border worlds of the Julian Cluster. Operation Carpathia was a go.