Now, at long last...
===
It is 0300 hours. The sky is still dark, filled with clouds and the faint light of stars. All is quiet in the outskirts, save the chirping of wildlife and the whoosh of wind.
But soon, that peace shatters.
For Neo-Seattle, it starts with an alarm.
A routine sensor sweep has caught a pair of large, radioactive signatures just over a dozen kilometres to the west! Their identities are unknown, but they're certainly new arrivals!
<ALERT! MULTIPLE HIGH-ENERGY SIGNATURES DETECTED!>
<LOCATION: WESTERN SECTORS>
A moment later, a flurry of other alerts sound off throughout the command centre, coming from several places at once! Internal security has found a group of seemingly civilian individuals near the Shatterdome, armed with explosives and other tools of sabotage! They've been detained, but there's no telling if anything's been planted yet-- any deployments are going to need to be held back while they check for anything in the area.
Meanwhile, one Perimeter patrol group has found what appear to be incoming units-- followed shortly after by another group on the opposite side of the city! Composition of these forces are unknown, but they seems to be a mix of aerial types and surface-bound types, they're not responding to commands, and they're incredibly close to the city!
You are under attack! Enemy forces appear to be incoming from the Northwestern and Southeastern Sectors, and both groups are only about 40 units away!
The high-energy signatures are located out by Bainbridge Island, about 14 kilometres away. Their readings are consistent with nuclear power reactors, but seem to be in the process of startup.
Due to catching the attacker's saboteurs before they could inflict damage, Neo-Seattle is delayed from deploying for only 1 round! Defensive Augments may ignore this delay.
===
For Everett, however, the wake-up call is far more
violent.
A series of detonations split the quiet of the night, as hidden explosives rip through transmission towers, hanger doors, and power lines! A third of the city is knocked dark, while fires rage across the docks and airfield! Emergency Response and Self-Defense Force members are immediately forced into action, trying to battle the flames and quell the disaster before it spreads any further.
Nobody notices the figures sneaking away from the smoldering destruction, their work now complete.
Sabotage:
(
4)
Astonishingly, however, the sensor web remains functional-- and a brand new alarm goes off, setting the city's leaders on edge. Something familiar-- not to Everett, but the Protectorate as a whole-- is coming.
<ALERT! BREACH ACTIVITY DETECTED!>
<LOCATION: NORTHERN SECTOR>
<SIGNATURE NOT WITHIN PARAMETERS OF SERIZAWA SCALE.>
<EMISSION READINGS ANALYZED. IDENTIFICATION: SUPERCELL EXHAUST>
Even as the members of the conventional force and jaeger operations are delayed by the sabotage, order tries to reassert itself, and those who guard the Perimeter rush to high alert. Just in time, too, because the Supercell's not the
only thing incoming.
A group of boat-sized units are approaching rapidly from the bay, while another of ground-based units are coming in from the south! Due to how the scanners are calibrated, neither were picked up until the patrol teams found them, and they're already close to the city!
You are under attack! Currently, enemy forces appear to be incoming from the Western and Southern Sectors, and both groups are only about 35 units away!
The signature with the Supercell reactor is located 12.5 kilometres north of Everett, but isn't moving. The radiation profile is similar to that of a standard Mark VI Supercell on a low output setting, though the reactor's shielding seems substandard. The actual signature is extremely heavy and dense, with a bipedal silhouette and high concentration of metals.
Due to the attacker's sabotage, Everett is delayed from deploying its units for 4 rounds! Defensive Augments may ignore this delay.
===
Make your move. Combat starts now.
Oh for f*ck's sake. Kaiju cultists? I'm guessing Kaiju cultists. Can't think of anyone else likely to be sabotaging two of the strongest settlements around. But then, I'm assuming people are smart enough to realize how much of a knife's-edge human survival is on right now, and thus won't try and do the whole internal squabble sh*t.
Current attack vectors:
Neo-Seattle:
Attack from Northwest (Naval Attack)
Attack from Southwest (Land Attack)
High Energy Readings - Bainbridge Island (140 units West)
Everett:
Attack from West (Naval Attack)
Attack from South (Ground Attack)
OFFKRAUN Jaeger (125 units North)
Conclusion:
These people know us/have been planning this for a while.
The attack vectors don't make sense otherwise; without an effective means of transportation it appears as though they've snuck their main force past Whidbey Island, and then seperated into two groups: Naval attack force, land attack force, and Jaeger-class units.
The naval attack force split into two groups to hit both cities.
The land attack force landed at Lynnwood and split into the groups attacking the cities. Infiltrators infiltrated the city (note: by infiltration description, human force). The Neo-Seattle attack force went around to around Kent-Renton, while the Everett attackers hung around Lynnwood; from there, they moved until the time was right.
I'm honestly not seeing what about that makes you think they know use that well, beyond that they managed to make it to our Shatterdomes. Shatterdomes are easy to target, since they're so damn big, and the location can be gained by asking anyone on the street.
Honestly, this entire thing screams "amateur" to me. This simultaneous assault crap is a pretty common arm-chair strategist mistake. Coordinating separate forces, even with modern communication tech, is
hard. And doing it like this is not the best way to do it. If you're going to split your forces and risk getting defeated because you didn't concentrate them, you wait until the other side has actually
committed theirs to pull your ambush. Were I leading the other side, I'd have the land guys (and possibly the Jaegers) wait until we moved to take on the naval side,
then make their move. Probably with a focus on hitting the Space Needle and the Everett command area.
Right now, though, they're courting a defeat-in-detail, if we don't play along and split up our forces, or only work to delay on all but one of the fronts. We hammer each of their forces in turn with most of ours, and they're up sh*t creek without a paddle.
Mmm. I think Fyrstorm'd like some more specificity.
[x]Plan Huge Dudes. With Guns. Gundudes.
-[x]Pending further battlefield information, deployment is as follows:
--[x] Bainbridge
---[x] Phenom Sable, Meganeura, 3 non-Elite Banshees
--[x] Neo-Seattle
---[x] Priority Northwest Navy, then Southeast Ground
---[x] Jagdhund, all other assets, 5 units from DP
---[x] Railguns split 3 to Northwest, 1 to Southeast
--[x] Everett
---[x] All units follow Tacit Ronin mauling the Navy, then the land, then OFFKRAUN Jaeger
I am actually kinda surprised. This is...just about what I'd suggest. Like, tactically speaking, keeping our forces concentrated is
exactly the course of action you'd use to counter this, and you guys figured that out without any discussion. Seriously, way back, when I said you guy think along the lines of military tactics and strategy without realizing that you're doing it, this is the sort of thing I mean.
Honestly, I'd potentially consider splitting them up a touch more, just to maybe delay and soften up some of the forces while we hammer the current target, but that's an arguable decision anyway.
The plan is solid, but I think we should keep the Jaegers in reserve until we get a better idea of the number and composition of the enemy forces, and possibly until the K-scale units start moving. This way we can respond to any surprises they show and decide where our really heavy firepower would be best deployed. Plus, Phenom isn't going to fare well when fighting alone against two Nuclear-powered units, meaning they can be anywhere between Mark I and Mark III, but we might need Jagdhund's extra firepower to thing the number of Cat 0/Conventional units.
Phenom should be able to at least keep them busy for a while, though. Long enough to potentially smash the other forces. If he really needs reinforcements, we can probably get them to him. Reserve forces can be useful, though.
I'm expecting an OFFKRAUN Jaeger for Seattle too, otherwise this force distribution seems a bit odd. I want to prep the Skadi for deployment.
*continues to fume at whoever this is*
I'm guessing that's the source of the radiation at Bainbridge. Someone might have raided that other Jaeger graveyard, or possibly one of the cities that had their Jaeger returned to them (IIRC, that was a thing). Or they just repurposed existing reactors of some sort and made their own. Not really too sure.
So... temp strikes on the enemy Jaegers maybe? I mean, if we can disable them (and they don't have some sort of lolnope self-destruct system) then we can steal them for ourselves, and temp strikes should reduce the recommissioning bill.
As a side bonus, if the Jaegers aren't AI then we should be able to interrogate the pilots to find out what the hell they're so pissed off at us about, how they managed to get so much info on us, and how they got their hands on functional Jaegers. Assuming we can't get all that info out of the saboteurs, that is.
We've successfully taken on 3 Blade-Class, one of which was Cat V, two regular Cat Vs, the Wrecking Crew, and more Cat IVs than I care to count. I think I can say with reasonable certainty they don't actually know what they just f*cked with. They wouldn't be coming at us with crappily shielded hardware if they did. Either they seriously misjudged our strength, have more guts than brains, and/or their strategist is the kind who hasn't heard of Murphy, and was relying on the sabotage to work out.
But like I said, I kinda expect there to be a hidden, inactive, Supercell Jaeger near Seattle.
I think that's expecting far too much from them. If they were going that route, they shouldn't have revealed any Jaegers
at all. Or at least should have had them group up with the naval units, and waited to reveal the ground units.
Anyway aside from this, this seems like a prodigious force investment. Let's just start with listing what we have on hand and then I'll make my point.
One confirmed K-Scale unit, with sensors indicating that its power source is quite similar to KRAUN platforms but more primitive. This indicates what is likely to be active development from some kind of interaction with KRAUN(be it observation, infiltration, combat or trade), OR, that Supercell configurations have a generally similar exhaust just by nature of being a Supercell, but this Supercell is more primitive than KRAUN's.
Two possible K-Scale nuclear powered units. From our own knowledge such developments are strenuous, and also the devices themselves expensive.
An assortment, unknown number, of naval, airforce, and land based military units. We don't know how large the total assessment is, but it is enough that, through whatever calculus they made, our opponents were willing to split their forces to attack both of our cities. That willingness speaks to some sense they can accomplish something.
Or crappy strategists. You can have good tech without having the brains to use it properly. But yes, it's a pretty big force investment. But it could be anything from a band of raiders who got lucky and scored some good tech, to a displaced military force that's getting desperate.
Like hYGP noted, they also seem to have pretty solid intelligence on us. This speaks to planning, which assumes reasonable actors of some variety.
You really don't need solid intel to sabotage like they did. It just takes a bit of time and effort, and we probably haven't had the best of security. We haven't had to worry about this sort of crap until now.
Unless the invading forces are led by a
deeply traumatized nine-year-old girl in desperate need of soup and a blanket under the mistaken belief that defeating/destroying/assimilating us will FINALLY get her mentally ill mother to love her again, or something equally over-the-top sympathetic?
Fuck 'em. For all that we have our issues with DJINN, we haven't yet come to blows with them (unless they're secretly the masterminds behind this operation), and it can more-or-less be agreed AFAIK that the Kaiju are a greater/more important mutual threat.
For humans to be attacking fellow humans, post Tod der Jeager? They're guaranteed the number 2 spot on our shitlist, second only to the Kaiju.
Agreed. This sh*t doesn't fly without
serious reasons behind it.
A couple things occurred to me after my last post, both of them related to our enemies.
First: These guys may possibly be working off of out-of-date intel, since we only switched Jaegers this week. Which would mean that Tacit's up against something intended to fight PHENOM (which means either "fast enough to stay out of reach, possibly with heavy reliance on ranged weapons" or "strong enough to contend with Phenom, at the expense of all other stats"). Either way, Tacit's probably gonna have a much easier time than Phenom would (assuming, of course, this possibility is actually true).
Second: My paranoia tells me there is a non-zero likelihood that we're under attack by a faction that's been compromised by the Kaiju Masters. I kinda hope this isn't the case, but I'm not ruling it out until it's rendered impossible (because paranoia).
I mean...that might explain the terrible planning. On the other hand, the Kaiju Masters are, even when acting via proxy, prone to using bio-tech in some way. And we're not picking any of that up. I guess we could see about trying to use the Neural Disruptors on them, though.
Honestly, there's something that just feels wrong about this; whoever's doing this somehow knows where to hit our sensor grid but doesn't really try to hit our command staff???
If I had to place my bets, I'd guess this force is actually acting on behalf of another force who's given them noticably incomplete information; as if they're the Muscle to someone else's Intelligence.
Which means that we need to establish our own Janitorial Division to see what we can do about this...Intelligence.
(incidentally, I think Drift techniques can be used to enhance interrogation techniques)
I repeat: finding Shatterdomes, transmission lines and hanger doors really doesn't take much. You could probably ask just about anyone on the street to direct you to the right spot, if you can't see it already. It's not like we've hidden them. From there, it's just watching the patrols and figuring out when to make your move. Again, not that complex. Difficult, yes, but that's what you train your infiltrators for. They targeted obvious and easily recognizable infrastructure.
Now, sabotaging our Command Center? That's trickier, because we probably get a lot of traffic in and out of the Space Needle, and we know who's supposed to be there. Command Centers are also much less obviously important. Where should you set a bomb to destroy the Space Needle, or even just cause a problem? That's not so obvious.
[x] Plan Huge Dudes. With Guns. Gundudes. v3
