[X] "No! We will not under any circumstances use that foul thing."
[X] Athwart the flow, with the ships in a breaking line. Prow guns will target any asteroids coming near, and we'll rely on the Revenge's lances to them utterly. With this much radiation, who will notice?
-[X] Deploy support craft to try to deal with as many of the obstacles as possible more subtly than blowing them to bits. If Phi can tag the asteroids on a potential collision course far enough out, support craft can latch onto them and use their engine thrust to divert them. It doesn't take much force to change course enough to turn a possible hit into a clean miss when you're dealing with interplanetary distances.
Persuaded by the inherent cool factor of the phrase "crossing the space Alps," and trying to employ a creative way of using our support craft here to boost our chances of avoiding damage/being stealthy.
[X] "No! We will not under any circumstances use that foul thing."
[X] Athwart the flow, with the ships in a breaking line. Prow guns will target any asteroids coming near, and we'll rely on the Revenge's lances to them utterly. With this much radiation, who will notice?
-[X] Deploy support craft to try to deal with as many of the obstacles as possible more subtly than blowing them to bits. If Phi can tag the asteroids on a potential collision course far enough out, support craft can latch onto them and use their engine thrust to divert them. It doesn't take much force to change course enough to turn a possible hit into a clean miss when you're dealing with interplanetary distances.
[x] Athwart the flow, with the ships in a breaking line. Prow guns will target any asteroids coming near, and we'll rely on the Revenge's lances to them utterly. With this much radiation, who will notice?
-[X] Deploy support craft to try to deal with as many of the obstacles as possible more subtly than blowing them to bits. If Phi can tag the asteroids on a potential collision course far enough out, support craft can latch onto them and use their engine thrust to divert them. It doesn't take much force to change course enough to turn a possible hit into a clean miss when you're dealing with interplanetary distances.
[X] "No! We will not under any circumstances use that foul thing."
-[X] "Besides, it would be just like the faithless curs to have it lead into a trap of some sort."
[X] Stalk with the Tachyon in the lead, the Revenge behind, and the Colossus in the rear, with a CVP deployed for asteroids, mines and worse. Aim to navigate the clear space between asteroid swarms.
-[X]Deploy 5 support craft squadrons to scout ahead with fighter escort. Hopefully they can increase our effective sensor range without making it easier for the enemy to detect us.
[x] Athwart the flow, with the ships in a breaking line. Prow guns will target any asteroids coming near, and we'll rely on the Revenge's lances to them utterly. With this much radiation, who will notice?
Gonna need a piloting check from your lead ship - which is gonna be the Revenge, so you're using your crew quality + 10 from Em's finger guns + maneuverability at a penalty of -30.
Gonna need a gunnery check from your lead ship (still the Revenge) for each of her batteries, with a +50 from the support craft helping you. Reducing it only a few rocks makes it easier to shoot!
"Absolutely not," you say, immediately. All eyes snap to you, Em frowning.
"What's the matter, Tine?" he asks, sounding concerned.
"I have done reading on the Astronomicon - anything that creates it out here in this...debased form would be a dire threat to the Navigator's soul and sanity, and we cannot afford to lose them. Besides!" you say, stepping forward towards the central hololithic display sheet in the middle of the bridge. "I...have an idea." You grin, then point. "The asteroids move in bands - creating circular corridors...orbits!" You nod. "We can move in eliptic orbits, thus, to remain within the chains of those asteroids. Safe, slow, but also, obviously mined."
Em nods, stepping over to the hololith.
"But a straight course is infinitely easier to chart - the gas giant that Inequity orbits is the only thing other than the me and Ryia out there..." You jerk your thumb towards the vista plates and at the distant, bilious glare of the star and her black hole companion. This provokes a loud and lugubrious snort from your sister. "...that we can chart with any accuracy in the near future, yes?"
"Yes," Em says, clearly thinking. "But if we take a straight course, they won't need mines. There are enough asteroids and gravity shoals out there that our fleet will be dashed to ribbons."
You touched your nose, then lifted your hand up into the air. "You've never played Blind Man's Bluff with a metal rod approximately a meter in length before!"
"I...admit, I have not," you straightlaced husband says, frowning.
"See, blind man's bluff is dangerous because you're blindfolded, and the children aren't," you say, cheerfully. "But if you have a metal club..."
"Are you suggesting we ram our way through?" Sawyer asks.
"Not ram," you say, rolling your eyes. "We have hundreds of cutters and bumboats on the Colossus, they serve as the bar. Phi here can track any asteroid coming close and the support ships tow them out of the way. Less chances for us to be spied, and the few guns that have to fire will have fewer targets to deal with. And since we're moving in the asteroid clumps and the dust clouds, their void shields can take the radiation, so it's safer than deploying them in the clear spaces."
Ryia blinks, while Sayer frowns, and Em laughs.
"Crossing the Equatorial in the void, I love it," he says. "We can position the courier ships at the front edge of our formation, cling close to the asteroids, like-"
"The Rock War!" Jessie exclaims. "I fought rockhoppers for decades in a monitor - I remember exactly how they'd limpet to those."
"Limpet to the irons-" Em says, grinning at his first mate.
"Charge the silicates!" Jessie returns.
"And get the orbital gauge, the fog advantage, and hit their nadiers neat as you please!" Em slaps his palm on the top of the hololith. "Tine, you're a genius!"
"I have no idea what any of that means, but...thank you!" you say, giggling.
The fleet moves into formation almost immediately into a half chevron - the Tachyon was positioned between the Colossus and the movement of the asteroids to your starboard, and the Revenge took the front. This was eminently rational, as it gave the Tachyon free space with her torpedoes and her power ram, while the Revenge had the most dominating position with her long lances and her macrocannon broadsides, while securing the Colossus in the heart of your formation, where her flight decks could be protected and the nova cannon that perched upon her prow could be more easily fired underneath the Revenge and straight at any concentration of enemies ahead. This was all secondary to the fact that Junie and Zeph were both aboard, and Ryia, and you would rather die than see any harm befall them. You worried at that, chewing your knuckle as you watched the wings of heavy, lumbering, rectangular shaped bumboats took to the space, streaking by overhead and banking off towards their assigned duties, cutters zipping among them like knats.
Your poor dears...
Why had you brought them out here?
Because you missed them?
Selfish, selfish!
Em, seeing your thoughts despite being neither a psychic or trained in facial haruspex, walks to your side, murmuring. "I wish we could have found a safe place to leave Zeph, once it became clear we were heading here...but...Junie, at least, should see a true fleet action. I was her age at my first fleet action." He pauses. "Younger, actually."
This does not, somehow, make you more comfortable.
"That does not, somehow, make me more comfortable," you say, glaring at your husband. "If I were your mother, I'd have kept you at home until approximately now."
"You do know this means we'd have never met, yes?" Em asks, then chuckles. "Or that my sex life would be even more questionable than it already is."
You almost choke, gasping. "Em!" You laugh, despite yourself and Em looks deeply smug - at last, he's finally gotten you more flustered than you had gotten him. You mimed throwing a punch - while ahead of you, two of the bumboats, guided by Phi's monotone voice over the vox - fired their belly grapnels. Void-suit clad figures swarmed from them and onto the asteroids they had pitoned, and each bumboat crew worked to apply a rapidly spreading kind of intelligent tarpaulin. You could practically hear the happy humming of their machine spirits as they unfolded themselves around the jagged rocks that they were attaching to. Once they were done, the rocks were encased in a kind of sheet...and you saw why when the first flight of bumboats started to drag a heavy metallic asteroid up and away from the noses of your fleet. The stresses placed upon the asteroid caused a great fissure to crack across the chunk of metal and the asteroid split entirely in two...but rather than careening off wildly, they were able to carry the whole thing off and then...POP! The tarpaulin unfolded like a flower and dragged the floating void-crew back to their boats.
"They know their stuff!" you say, cheerfully.
"They damn well do," Jessie says, nodding as she drinks her rekaff and watches the show.
"Say, Jessie, can I ask...what is charging the silicates?" you ask. "I can figure out most of those, and Em's told me about the orbital gauge often enough, but I just don't get that one."
"Oh, simple, you put det charges on silicates and blow them apart," she says. "Either when an enemy ship is near, or when the asteroid is on an intersecting course - silicates fragment. At close range, they can overwhelm void shields, but at long range, the remaining chunks that are still in the same orbit as you just patter against you like light shrapnel, nothing to worry about."
"Oooh!" you say. "I thought you meant like cha-"
Your voice is lost in the roar of the lances. The four lance turrets that splay along the Revenge's dorsal deck fill the air with an hideous shrieking noise. The brilliance of their beams cuts across the deck, casting everything in the most stark black and white shadows, and when it fades, your left eye is winking with tears. You shake your head, then finished. "-charge like, charging in melee combat."
"Oh, no, no, no," Jessie says, shaking her head as one of the asteroids the bumboat had missed turned into a shimmering cloud of glowing vapor, lost among the glow of the system.
You shake your head and consider if you should take a shuttle over to the Colossus, to at least...check...
You pause.
There is a shape in the swirling, foggish mist of interstellar dust and tumbling asteroids. You think, for a second, you have just seen a small asteroid, but no, your logis implant has pegged it as too regular for a chunk, and there was no real twinkle from what you had seen. You brought the snapshot up into your short term memory buffer, looking at internally, then snatch your telescope from your hip. You put it to your eye, then play it along space, sweeping it past dust, swirling eddies of radiation, tumbling asteroids...then, there! THERE!
Your heart almost explodes with tension as you see it - the unmistakable shape of an Aquilla class shuttle, with her poor body painted a bright red, and daubed with a six pointed star, the hideous symbol of Chaos. Her left wing, though, is sputtering with smoke and...and...
Your eyes widen and you lower the scope, blinking, just...
Just processing what you had just seen.
For the ship was slowly creeping along without plasma thrusters, simply coasting, and dragging behind it a hull plating that had a void-suited figure maglocked to it, floating in the hideously boneless way of someone dead, dead, dead...and in his hand had been some small cylinder which had to have been a deep void marker spray, the kind used to indicate where repairs were needed on external plasma rigging, and he had used the entire thing to paint upon the hull a single, massive, golden aquilla - the symbol of the Imperium of Man.
"Castaways!" you call out. "Castaways!" You put your scope to your eyes, reading off the HUB as your sweaty fingers grip the wood lacquered instrument. "Four points off the prow, seventy eight points zenith! They're bleeding air, Em!"
"Dispatch a cutter!" Em speaks into his vox. "And four interceptors."
***
"He knew, any ship we ran into out here, if it was Chaos, we were dead, but if it was one of Ours, they had to know, so, the mad son of a bitch put on that leaky thing and crawled out onto that hull and..." Mr. Tavion McGragg says, shaking his head as he grips his cup of grog as if his life depended upon it. The rest of the thirty two people who had been crammed into every inch of that limping shuttlecraft were being treated by the medicae staff of the Revenge's brand new medicae deck. He winced as, in the middle of his story, Dr. Ventris strapped an arm brace full of burbling green unguents to his arm and yanked his grog away.
Mr. Tavion McGragg, shipmaster of the Jolly Jack, was Cadic in ethnicity and a voidsman by trade, and he looked it. HIs face was essentially the same shape as a half peeled pitatte, and his eyes were the same misshapen, mis-matched sizes, allowing him to give a serious squint at Dr. Ventris, and his voice rasped and growled as if he had been smoking cigarillos (cheap cigarillos) his entire life. "That's mine, doctor-"
"And you can have it back when you don't die of a complete imbalance in the choleric humors and bone cancer," Dr. Ventris snaps, then shouts. "Aquiline, make sure to pump each of these dogs with enough rad unguents that their babies will live to a hundred and two." She shook her head, then scowls at Em and you and Ryia. "That ship needed to be condemned before they took it through a solar flare."
"Oh, well-" Mr. McGragg grumbles, but is cut off by the Hospitaliar, Aquilline.
"Merci, doctor, even the children?"
"Especially the children!"
"But, doctor-"
"It's better they grow up stunty than they don't grow up at all, Aquilline!"
"But, doctor!" the Hospitaliar continues. "We have St. Phasmin's concoction, it-"
Dr. Ventris scowls. "We have...St..." She swings to glare at you. "See what I said about this medica deck! It's fully stocked, I can't keep track of all this medicine! You fucking mothering overbearing...cancers are good for a spacer, keeps them from...grumble..." She starts to stalk off to get the different medical concoction. As she stumps away, you notice she had left behind the grog. Slowly, McGragg starts to reach for it, but you snatch it away from him and he harrumphs.
"You were saying?" Em asks.
"Ah, yes. The Captain was always a madlad," McGragg says, shaking his head. "But it worked, I guess. So we owe him drinks once I'm finally hanged and shuffle off to the Throne, eh?"
"I don't know if you'll ever make it," Em says. "Because you were a man born to die in bed, it seems. But tell us, how on Terra did you get away from the pirates?"
"And get here in the first place?" you ask.
McGragg nods. "We was doing voidwhaling, three lightyears out from the Rain system, in the Chancer's Wink nebula. We'd bagged six of the buggers and rended them down. Ambergris, star diamonds, half an old frigate one had swallowed, we were in luck. Then, on translation back, we were hit by a warp storm, then fell right into a rift - dropped out here into the middle of a Emperor be damned fucking pirate flotilla!" His face goes red, then he sees you. "Pardon, m'lady."
"She swears more than you," Ryia says.
"Captain put out the guns, we exchanged three shots total - not volleys, shots - and then their main guns took out the mainsail and t'gallants neat as you please. We floundered two hours before their nippy little raiders hemmed us in, boarded us on both sides, and we had to strike." He sighs. "They shoved us into these ships - we got a good view of 'em from the shuttle ports...hideous...awful things..." His eyes look haunted. "Slave pens. With the...thousands of us..." He shakes his head. "Captain managed to make an escape, we lost near a hundred men fighting to the shuttle bay, and we fled."
You nod. "So, a main ship, two raiders, and this...slave freighter?"
"Oh, no, no, not at all," McGragg says. "The main ship...Vinny! Vinny, you have the best hand, knock the Lady a piece together!"
Vinny, a weedy youth with Khanic features and two armbands of unguents, both of different colors, draws in remarkable speed and alacrity what he had seen on the shuttle trip form the raider to the slavepen carrier and you whistle softly. The pirate flotilla has three raiders - "Iconoclasts, missile laid, ancient tactics, ancient" - arranged in a wolfpack around four transports - "See the dorsal railing, those are Jerichos, and...good Emperor, they have to have a hundred thousand, a hundred and fifty thousand, easily" -and at their head, leading the way...
"You vouch for this? You vouch, immediately?"
"By my soul, sir!" Vinny squeaks as Em holds up the drawing, his face ashen.
"Emperor above, she's the Manus Defiant," your husband says, his voice husky. "Ten thousand years ago she was a flagship of the fleet that broke the Night Lords' second naval detachment in the Heresy by remaining at range and pounding the traitors to rubble with the long lances..." His finger slides along the ship's drawing. "She was lost, at the end of the Heresy, in a warp storm, good Emperor, look what they did to her...but she has the same lances, the same cannon, the same engine spars..."
"How...can you recognize that?" Ryia asks. "A ten thousand year old ship?"
Em blinks. "I...studied it when I was young. She's a Repulsive - the best of the grand cruisers. She can mount twice the lances, twice the cannon, and still move as fast as a cruiser half her weight. A properly rigged Repulsive can run circles around battleships while putting the same amount of firepower into them. The only issue is they lack battleship armor, so if you use them like battleships, they tend to fold up when fired upon by other battleships. Speed and maneuver must be their armor."
You smile, unable to help yourself. "It's okay, you can admit it, she's very sexy."
"And she's escorting four hundred thousand slaves to Inequity," Ryia says, quietly. "And she's dead ahead."
--- What is your plan?
[ ] Rig a luffing jib for twenty four hours and slip by in the night.
[ ] Attack.
If Attack...what is your plan?
[ ] Write In
Tine makes a perception check, augmented by your enhanced senses: 6, giving her a 4 DOS!
The fleet makes a detection check: 72, 70 and 72! So, no!
Em rolls a 3 on his Legends check! Em is a nerd. We love Em.
I wonder if Iluryia's Demise can crawl up to the Defiant in stealth mode and put a bunch of torpedoes up her butt. Like what Iluryia did against the Admiral, before the Colossus was ours.
A repulsive ships with 135,000 souls...if such a term can be used for this benighted ship.
But the answer to "can we purify it" the answer is always yes, given time and efforts. Many noble ships have been returned to the fold via close action and daring bravery.
The Iconoclasts are basically not as good as Swords, and these are armed with missile batteries - giving them LUDICROUS range, but a slow rate of fire!
You almost choke, gasping. "Em!" You laugh, despite yourself and Em looks deeply smug - at last, he's finally gotten you more flustered than you had gotten him.
Dr. Ventris scowls. "We have...St..." She swings to glare at you. "See what I said about this medica deck! It's fully stocked, I can't keep track of all this medicine! You fucking mothering overbearing...cancers are good for a spacer, keeps them from...grumble..." She starts to stalk off to get the different medical concoction.
Regarding the vote... I really, really WANT that fucking grand cruiser. For one thing, it would clearly send Em over the moon with joy. For another, it sounds awesome on multiple levels. The Iconoclasts I'm indifferent to. If I'm understanding right these guys are also slipping through the asteroids, presumably on some kind of pre-charted course for their part? Is that right or nah? Gonna assume that's right for now.
[X] Attack.
-[X] Draw on Jessie's experience with the Rock War, and charge the silicates. Between that and the Demise you should be able to lay quite the ambush for these raiders. Prioritize boarding the Defiant to reclaim it for the Imperium (by way of the Scourge dynasty), and neutralize the Iconoclasts to stop them from interfering by whatever means seems most efficacious.
DC, you still understand naval combat in this system much better than me. Does this look potentially viable?
I'd treat the silicates as basically, if you succeed in setting them up, will let you pop a void shield before firing, if they're within range of them.
Well, since they're heading in to Inequity not away from it, there are between 400,000 to 600,000 slaves in them! Like, you guys know Inequity is a horrifying slave port - Karrad Vall takes captives here to sell them off!
Can we even fit 600,000 additional people on our existing fleet to rescue them? I suppose it won't matter if we manage to take her intact but if we shot out her engines or damage her Geller field we will have a problem.
I'd treat the silicates as basically, if you succeed in setting them up, will let you pop a void shield before firing, if they're within range of them.
Can we even fit 600,000 additional people on our existing fleet to rescue them? I suppose it won't matter if we manage to take her intact but if we shot out her engines or damage her Geller field we will have a problem.
The slaves are in the transports, not in the warships.
[X] Attack.
-[X] Draw on Jessie's experience with the Rock War, and charge the silicates. Between that and the Demise you should be able to lay quite the ambush for these raiders, and strike from behind to gain the advantage in heading on them. With the Iconoclasts shields' stripped by the silicates, have the Demise put a brace of torpedoes into them while the Revenge rakes them with her lances, and both employ their macrocannons. The Colossus will target the Defiant with their squadrons as those ignore void shields, negating that advantage. The Revenge will also target the Defiant with Hit and Run actions to start fires, lowering their morale and numbers in preparation for a boarding action. Overall the ultimate priorities are to board the Defiant to reclaim it for the Imperium (by way of the Scourge dynasty), rescue the slaves, and neutralize the Iconoclasts to stop them from interfering by whatever means seem most efficacious.
Does this make sense? Should I just stop trying to micromanage? I wish we could use the Nova Cannon, but I think it would risk the slaves way too much if I'm understanding the enemy formation correctly.
Oh, and can more than one ship conduct a boarding operation simultaneously, by the way? I'm envisioning a scenario where the Revenge and the Demise board the Defiant from either side, which would shift the weight of crew population in our favor instead. And let the Revenge make use of its ship-to-ship regiment without getting dogpiled by vastly superior enemy numbers.
[X] Attack.
-[X] Draw on Jessie's experience with the Rock War, and charge the silicates. Between that and the Demise you should be able to lay quite the ambush for these raiders, and strike from behind to gain the advantage in heading on them. With the Iconoclasts shields' stripped by the silicates, have the Demise put a brace of torpedoes into them while the Revenge rakes them with her lances, and both employ their macrocannons. The Colossus will target the Defiant with their squadrons as those ignore void shields, negating that advantage. The Revenge will also target the Defiant with Hit and Run actions to start fires, lowering their morale and numbers in preparation for a boarding action. Overall the ultimate priorities are to board the Defiant to reclaim it for the Imperium (by way of the Scourge dynasty), rescue the slaves, and neutralize the Iconoclasts to stop them from interfering by whatever means seem most efficacious.
[X] Attack.
-[X] Draw on Jessie's experience with the Rock War, and charge the silicates. Between that and the Demise you should be able to lay quite the ambush for these raiders, and strike from behind to gain the advantage in heading on them. With the Iconoclasts shields' stripped by the silicates, have the Demise put a brace of torpedoes into them while the Revenge rakes them with her lances, and both employ their macrocannons. The Colossus will target the Defiant with their squadrons as those ignore void shields, negating that advantage. The Revenge will also target the Defiant with Hit and Run actions to start fires, lowering their morale and numbers in preparation for a boarding action. Overall the ultimate priorities are to board the Defiant to reclaim it for the Imperium (by way of the Scourge dynasty), rescue the slaves, and neutralize the Iconoclasts to stop them from interfering by whatever means seem most efficacious.
@DragonCobolt
could the support craft from the Colossus be used to facilitate hit-and-run and/or large scale boarding attempts?
@Fayhem
Depending on DCs response to the above, do you think it's worth adding the support craft to your plan? To increase total number of simultaneous boarders?
The support craft are liable to get gunned down by the flak turrets on the Manus Defiant if they do. There's a reason that the job is left to things like boarding torpedoes and Shark Assault Boats, only purpose-made craft stand a chance of pulling it off against something as intensely powerful as a grand cruiser.
The support craft are liable to get gunned down by the flak turrets on the Manus Defiant if they do. There's a reason that the job is left to things like boarding torpedoes and Shark Assault Boats, only purpose-made craft stand a chance of pulling it off against something as intensely powerful as a grand cruiser.
This is true.
My thought was to have our entire bomber wing, escorted by half the fighters, going in first to try and knock out as many turrets as possible (in addition to general damage dealing). Then send in the support craft with the rest of the fighter wing as escort to attempt mass boarding.
As far as I recall, we don't have dedicated boarding ships, so was my attempt to MacGyver a work-around.
This is true.
My thought was to have our entire bomber wing, escorted by half the fighters, going in first to try and knock out as many turrets as possible (in addition to general damage dealing). Then send in the support craft with the rest of the fighter wing as escort to attempt mass boarding.
As far as I recall, we don't have dedicated boarding ships, so was my attempt to MacGyver a work-around.
Thing is, we have a perfectly functional Teleportarium in the Revenge, as well as a full complement of murder servitors. Just have the bombers knock out the Void Shields, beam them aboard and we're pretty much covered for boarding actions.
Thing is, we have a perfectly functional Teleportarium in the Revenge, as well as a full complement of murder servitors. Just have the bombers knock out the Void Shields, beam them aboard and we're pretty much covered for boarding actions.
I did forget about the murder servitors.
But my understanding of the teleportarium is that we can only use it with smaller numbers. A couple of dozen at a time or so. Which is fine for hit-and-run or dropping in murderbots, but if we want to capture the ship relatively intact we need lots of boots at once.
I figure the support craft can hold 100-200 or more soldiers each and can hit several areas of the ship simultaneously if they're well coordinated. Then while the enemy is scrambling to react to dozens of boarding parties, we drop the murderbots into the bridge via teleportarium 😈😎
