The 13th Tribe: Standing Against Evil (Out-Of-Universe Stories)

[Eternal_Freedom]

Now that was some real carnage. Funny thing is any of Alliance capital ships could have wiped out that drone fleet single handedly.

Exactly. This plan from Jellicoe is both a major psychological warfare exercise ("look at how inferior you are!" and a colossal demonstration of Alliance technological superiority. He doesn't wan to kill other humans if he can help it, so he's going all in with a show of force to splatter the drones and bring the SLDF forces into a decisive position to liberate Earth.

[DKeith2011]

*peeks in*

Anyone home?

[LadyTevar]

I'm wondering what moves Iblyss is making against his counterpart on the game board right now.

[Eternal_Freedom]

If you mean in the context of these out-of-universe bits, none at all. In the context of the main storyline, well Iblis has noted that they've passed the fulcrum point and he will lose this round, so he's shuffling his pieces in preparation for the next bout while keeping up appearances of fighting to the bitter end to distract Jupiter - whether that will work is another matter.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Ahem. It's been a while everyone, for which I apologise. But! Igot my mojo back, and since I'm not quite ready to start Act 6 of the main story, I thought I'd continue this bit. This is part 3 of the BattleTech short, there'll be one more I should think, then maybe the Star Trek one can be next.

Command Bunker,
Unity City, Terra
0900 hours, Augist 2nd, 2767

Stefan Amaris remained sat in his seat/throne in the command bunker under the Court of the Star League, a curious mix of emotions running through him. Dominant among them was a brooding despair, he was beaten and he knew it. But mixed in and occasionally coming to the fore as he issued ultimately-futile commands was a strange, almost euphoric feeling of peace. He was beaten, and he did indeed know it. But this removed all worries from the equation. His death was now both inevitable and imminent, but he could deny Kerensky and this Cameron pretender their prize, make them suffer for daring to show up and overthrow his Empire.

Several of the battle staff had tried to flee when they first saw that vast portal and that impossible ship out towards the Moon. A few more had attempted it when the realisation came, of the vast horde of SLDF WarShips and DropShips that were even know approaching orbit. Fortunately, Gunthar von Strang was utterly committed to his Emperor’s cause and had casually shot the half-dozen who actually dared to make a run for it. Their bodies had been quickly removed by the ISF guards, for fear of the scent of blood and releasing bowels distracting Amaris at a critical moment.

Amaris had barely even reacted to the gunshots, knowing that if von Strang was shooting people he had a good reason. Instead he had been barking deployment orders: any Mech or Armoured units that could get there quickly enough were re-positioned to North America, to dig in and fight the Star League for every foot of ground. All told he had fifteen Mech divisions and another thirty armoured and infantry divisions, enough to give the enemy one hell of a bloody nose.

Those forces that could not move quickly enough were ordered to dig in where they stood – but not in the many Castles Brian, abandoning those mighty fortresses for a more evil defence. They moved in to cities, towns and villages all over Terra, securing hostages and human shields. Or at least that was the order – only about a quarter of the commanding officers had any intention of resisting, especially when being told they were being abandoned and left to fight to the last man for a doomed leader.

Amaris still held out a faint hope that the ground-based SDS batteries could at least thin out the incoming hordes. The massive collection of PPC’s, lasers and missile silos had orders to prioritise DropShips over WarShips where possible, a reversal of their usual orders. This assumed that any SDS bases remained active by the time the landings began of course – the SLDF fleet had more than enough firepower to suppress them, never mind these massive new arrivals.

“Gunthar.” Amaris spoke, the first time in thirty minutes, as the SLDF fleet and the strange new ships were approaching engagement range of his orbital forces, his voice quiet and remarkably calm. “Send the activation code to all sabotage warheads on Terra, and to those in the Hegemony via every available HPG. Then bring me the detonator, I will not allow this corrupt, fallen Star League to retake the planet.”

Von Strang nodded. “At once Emperor.”

Amaris smiled slightly, a cold, mirthless smile that promised pain. “Comms, prepare a general broadcast, all channels at maximum power. I will address my loyal forces, and the approaching traitors.”

The officer nodded, doing her best to hide her absolute terror at the idea of her immediate future and bent to her task. She flipped a few switches, twirled a few dials then handed Amaris a handset, her hands just barely kept from trembling at being so close to Amaris and von Strang.

Amaris smiled again, that strange euphoria settling in again. He raised the handset and began to speak.

Fleet Ops, Warstar Jupiter

Admirals Jellicoe and Brandt, General Kerensky and First Lord Jennifer watched, impassively, as the image of the Usurper appeared on the main holo-display.

”Warriors of the Empire, stand fast. The lackeys of the corrupt, fallen Star League are at our gates. We will throw them back, broken and bleeding, to crawl away to die. We. Will. Not. Fail! Our brave Fleet still holds orbit and will destroy many of the enemy, the SDS batteries will slaughter many more, leaving us just the shattered remnants to face on the ground.”

Jellicoe smirked. It almost sounds inspiring he mused silently. Too bad it won’t do him any good. The Usurper rambled on for a minute, exhorting his men to fight to the last man. Jellicoe doubted it had any effect whatsoever. Then, the Usurper changed tack, and channels, speaking to the allied forces in orbit and, conspicuously, not to his own men and women.

”To the Traitor Kerensky and the Pretender Cameron, come and face me on Terra if you dare. We will use every weapon we have in this final battle, this Ragnarok that you have brought about. I have placed nuclear warheads throughout Terra’s population centres, and on every other world of the Hegemony. For every DropShip that lands a Hegemony world will burn, and nuclear fire will rain down upon your forces and the innocent civilians alike. Come and face me if you can stomach the cost. This world is MINE and you will NEVER take it back from me!”

Jellicoe, Kerensky, Brandt and Cameron exchanged a look; the three Star League leaders at first worried and sad that the prediction about Amaris using these tactics was correct, then rapidly shifting to confusion and almost outrage when they saw Jellicoe outright smirking at them.

Kerensky broke first. “Admiral? What the hell is so funny about this?”

Jellicoe’s smirk became a full-blown Cheshire Cat grin. “It’s funny because I know what Amaris doesn’t. Firstly, you’ll note he sent that threat just to us, not his own troops or ships – I guess it would be bad for morale, knowing you’re sitting on a nuclear suicide charge that someone else has the trigger for. Secondly, the bombs aren’t what he thinks they are. Remember my Explorers?”

Admiral Brandt answered that one, as the other naval officer present. “You said you had them doing recon under cloak – god knows how that works anyway.”

Jellicoe kept smiling. “Oh they’ve been doing more than that. Now, I think this little shit deserves an answer. May I?”

The three Star League members exchanged more looks before nodding – after all, Jellicoe had delivered on his promises so far, they might as well trust him with this.

“Excellent. Now, Commander Harrison?” He called over to his faithful aide. “Please broadcast a recording of that last threat, in the clear, on all Rim Worlds channels. Let them see just who they’re supposed to die for. Then get me a channel to Amaris directly, it’s time we had a chat – oh, and broadcast that to the Rim Worlds troops as well.”

The officer nodded and shortly thereafter another hologram of Amaris appeared, somewhat surprised to see an unknown figure within the enemy leadership. Jellicoe got things rolling:

“Stefan Amaris, I am Admiral Sir John Jellicoe of the Colonial Fleet, Supreme Allied Commander for the Interuniversal Alliance, which the Star League is a provisional member of. You have seen that my forces and ships massively outgun you, and can brush aside your remaining ships in short order. However, I have no desire to kill other humans, so those ships will only be destroyed if they fire into us. I demand the unconditional surrender of yourself, your government and your armed forces. You have thirty seconds.”

The hologram showed Amaris looking almost apoplectic with rage. ”You are clearly insane “Admiral,” if you think I will surrender. I’ve no idea where you came from and I don’t care. The threat remains, for every DropShip you land on Terra a city here will burn, and so will another Hegemony world. I’ll see this world in ashes before I let the corrupt bastards of the Camerons take it back!”

Jellicoe nodded, as if it were a reasonable discussion. “Well if that’s your position, so be it. However, since my friends here will shortly be landing an overwhelming force, and I’m sure your trigger finger will get tired, why not go ahead and set those nukes off all at once, right now. It’ll slaughter a lot of your forces too, making mopping up a lot simpler.”

Amaris blinked in shock. Kerensky and Brandt swore under their breath while First Lord Jennifer grabbed the Admiral’s arm and hissed in his ear, too quietly for the holo-transmission to pick up.

“Admiral, what the fuck are you doing? You’re practically daring him to kill billions.”

Jellicoe smiled again. “First Lord Jennifer, I give you my word as an officer, if Amaris does press that switch, the bombs won’t harm a single civilian, here or elsewhere. The bombs aren’t what, or rather where he thinks they are.”

Mollified somewhat, but deciding to play up the situation for Amaris’ benefit, she nodded, then dramatically turned away in disgust, winking at Keresnky and Brandt as she did. Amaris, meanwhile, was only just processing the insane thing his new enemy had said.

”You…you want me to trigger the bombs and kill billions of innocents? And you all have the nerve to call me a monster!”

Keresnky, who had been quietly clued in by First Lord Jennifer, stirred the pot. “Better dead quickly than enslaved by a bastard like you Stefan. And as Admiral Jellicoe said, most of your forces – who are listening to this by the way – will be gone as well. Much less work for my boys and girls once the Mechs hit the ground.”

Jellicoe nodded amiably. “Indeed. I bet your troopers will be pissed at this. Our recon indicates a lot of them were unhappy with your human shield, fight to the death orders to begin with. Knowing they’re sitting on top of suicide charges that you can trigger? I’m willing to bet you’ll start getting word of mutinies fairly soon. You’ll have to trigger the bombs then, to deal with the forces that hate you and are, conveniently, right under your nose. At any rate, if you don’t surrender, if you press that trigger, the consequences and the blood are entirely on your hands. Go ahead.”

Amaris was struggling now. He’d made the threat, and fully intended to follow through, but the enemy weren’t deterred. Worse, he had to maintain his image of a strong leader, who was willing to do anything to win. He agonised over the choice for a full two minutes, only for his mind to be made up by an urgent whisper from Gunthar von Strang – the 44th Division that was digging in outside Moscow, and already very unhappy with his orders, had broadcast it’s unconditional surrender to the Allied forces.

Amaris’ whirling confusion was silenced and a cold fury ignited in his heart. Almost without conscious effort, he changed a setting on the detonator so it would trigger every bomb, and slammed his hand down on the trigger.

What happened next surprised everyone – except Admiral Jellicoe, who looked on with a confident smirk.

The signal went out by radio and HPG, detonating every one of the nukes - nearly ten thousand of which had been seeded over Terra and the other Hegemony worlds by the Rim Worlds forces. Had they still been in place the effect would have been apocalyptic.

But they were not, in fact, scattered all over the Hegemony, or even all over Terra.
Instead, thanks to the sensors, cloaking and beaming systems of the Terran Explorers, they had been discreetly collected over the last month and gathered together, with convincing but non-explosive decoys left behind in their place. The combined arsenal was, in the moments prior to detonation, gathered in a group of two dozen crudely-cloaked cargo containers – that just happened to be floating in and around the Rim Worlds fleet in Terran orbit.

There was a series of brilliant flashes in space, among the massed battleships, battlecruisers and escorts that Amaris had either built or stolen from the SLDF mothball yards. The officers and crew barely had time to register the flashes before the storm of radiation ripped their ships apart by the hundred. One unfortunate vessel, a mothballed Farragut class battleship, had the stunning misfortune to have one of the cloaked containers detonate when just twenty metres away from the ships centre section, ripping the ship into fragments and hurling them outwards, adding a fragmentation effect to an otherwise purely nuclear conflagration.

In a moment, in the blink of an eye, the Rim Worlds Fleet ceased to exist as a coherent entity. When the flashes faded, only a single old Texas class battleship remained of the two-hundred strong force of capital ships there had been – and that old battleship was currently spinning out of control, atmosphere and fuel venting from dozens of rents in the armour. The lighter escorts had fared little better, less than a hundred ships overall remained operational, and none of them were intact. Three hundred more remained as little more than blasted hulks, completely devoid of power, with their few surviving crew wondering what the hell just happened even as the cracked hulls leaked their last precious oxygen out to space.

Cameron, Keresenky and Brandt were shocked, but happy that yet more of the enemy had so easily been disposed of. Jellicoe turned back to the hologram of Amaris and fixed him with his best impression of what the Colonial Fleet called “The Adama Glare.”

“Well Stefan, I told you the consequences would be on your head. Now, will you surrender? That was your last card I believe – while I have plenty more to play.”

In the hologram, Amaris shook off his stupor and could only ask, with an almost childlike wonder: ”How…how did you do that? Who are you? WHAT are you?”

“Now, Stefan, you said you didn’t care who I was or where I came from, but I’ll give you the simple version. I’m the Supreme Commander of an Alliance that stretches across universes, not mere star systems. We stand against evil wherever we find it. I have fought insane AI’s, renegade Gods, alien species that wanted to feed on us and others that wanted to annihilate every human they found. They’re all dead now – and now we’re here, standing against your evil. Your drones are gone, your nukes are gone, your Fleet is gone, and parts of your Army are starting to mutiny. I’m guessing the next act is to brag about your mighty SDS bases. You really think I haven’t got a plan for those? My flagship will soon be in orbit Stefan, directly overhead. Your SDS batteries will have a choice – they can fire upon my ship, or they can live to see tomorrow. And then…then we’ll have another little chat. Bye for now.”

With a gesture, the channel closed. Jellicoe turned to his three slack-jawed companions and, still with that smirk on his face, said:

“I enjoyed that a lot more than I probably should have.”

==========

Well there's not much left of this little piece. I may fold this in to the main timeline between Book II and III, I may not.

[DKeith2011]

Kind of gives a whole new meaning to 'shock and awe'.

Hopefully there's a Babylon 5 crossover still ahead.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Well I said int he first bit that Jellicoe is going for maximum psychological shock here, so yeah "shock and awe" definitely fits.

As for a B5 bit...eh, sadly I just don't know that setting well enough to do it justice.

[DKeith2011]

*does a bit of dusting*

[DKeith2011]

*does some more dusting*