It was big, that was for sure. Eight hundred meters long and massing maybe a hundred and fifty thousand tons. Supermonitors were bigger but they were never designed to enter atmosphere. It had to be pretty much the biggest ship ever to come near landing on a planet. It's hull was glittering gold, sinuous and . . .distinctly womanly. Warp nacelles jutted like wings , upward on either side, and surmounting it were a rack of grav drivers and laser cannons. More were forward of the nacelles and even on the underside although it was clearly designed for landings.
Appearance and size of the new Des Moines. 800 meters in length, compared to 4,000 meter supermonitors. Ship is a gold woman, naked woman with retractable angel wings. The Quantum Tanglers are in the breasts (and the reason for the whole shape) while the mass drivers and laser weapons are on the shoulders.
State of the art CIC, stealth systems, heavy duty close-in-defense system, armored to the max, missiles that were faster than any current . . . It even had two normal space engines based on antimatter ejection systems that would give it more speed and maneuverablility than a current destroyer.
Some of the advantages Daisy Mae enjoys over existing ship designs. These alone were enough to ensure the Darhel would never let the thing be built.
"Only place we could put it," Michelle said, more sturdily. "It's capable of housing nine Falcon Four Space Fighters and two Banshee shuttles. Or a similar mix to size as needed."
New models of Falcons, too. Daisy Mae carries 9, plus two shuttles as standard. In a bay roughly the location of a womb with an entrance… you know where the entrance is.
"Cloaked ships?" Jeff asked.
"None apparent," the TACO replied. "But we can't detect them at more than five light seconds."
Limits to Daisy Mae’s ability to detect cloaked Hedren ships.
The dreadnought was pointed more-or-less directly at the asteroid at a range of just over a million and a half kilometers. According to the mentat, the system should be able to lock within twenty degrees of forward and at a range of up to seven light seconds. They were right at the edge of range because Captain McNair did not want to be near something that was having 'random energy conversion events' going on.
Quantum Tangler range (7 light minutes) and firing arc (20 degrees any direction of straight forward.)
The space cruiser was about the size of the Des Moines before her 'upgrade' and massed about the same. Beyond that they were very different ships. The Bristol was a long cylinder bristling with plasma cannon and mass-drivers.
Cruiser from the last war. Finally learn something about their armament.
The 53,000 ton cruiser flashed white for a moment then was revealed as a wasted hulk.
"Wow," the TACO said. "Loss of ten percent of mass. On the basis of visual . . ."
"We just stripped off about half the hull and most of the guns," McNair said. "A couple more hits and she'd be beyond dead in space. I'd hate to be onboard when this thing hit. And the range, especially since once you get a lock it tracks, is frightening. Right. Send a message to the nearest com-sat that we have suspended exercise and are returning to Luna. No data about this weapon is to go on the net without my approval."
Effect of Quantum Tanglers on above space cruiser, which now masses 53,000 tons. In which case, over 5 kilotons of armored material is disintegrated.
If there was a superdreadnought near enough they'd shoot the planetoid with their big-ass mass driver. Which had it's good and bad parts. The good part was that the destroyer sized chunk of metal would go most of the way through the Globe and then let loose enough antimatter to make the local area a slice of hell.
The bad news was that those damned Posleen ships were tough. So about a half to a third of them would survive. And then it was like kicking a fucking wasp nest. They'd come swarming out of that blast of antimatter, which by rights should have blown them to smithereens, and swarm over the super-dreadnought like hornets.
Supermonitors firing ‘destroyer-sized’ projectiles. That must hurt. Posleen globes stand up well enough to the impact that I’m starting to think they might do okay against Star Wars again.
The bombardment ship GFS Mound had rarely been used in the War. Even the task force that relieved earth hadn't needed its services. One of the first Posleen planets that had been retaken had received its attention. The Posleen had not enjoyed the experience and the Hedren were about to find out why.
The Mound was, in reality, nothing but a highly modified bulk freighter such as had originally been used to move forces between planets. Nearly a kilometer long and with cavernous holds the modifications involved ways to move stuff out of its holds and onto certain courses, very fast, as well as binary, tunnel and Ley-line, FTL engines. Its ship-to-ship weapons were pop-guns but it could toss out a bunch of kinetic energy weapons. They didn't go out very fast, but when you're firing in a gravity well, it doesn't really matter. Especially since it was punching out fifteen KEWs the size of a train engine every second. Secondary guns were, in the meantime, firing smaller KEWs at the rate of several thousand per second.
The KEWs really weren't much more than chunks of iron. Oh, they had tungsten fins and an internal gyroscope. But other than that they were just great big pieces of steel shaped vaguely like a dart. The rain of steel was aimed in various directions, but most of it was aimed more or less straight down at the just completed, and nearly charged, Hedren wormhole generator.
Bombardment cruiser. Let the steel rain begin. Train engine sized probably mean about 200 tons, but could easily be twice that. It almost doesn’t matter, the big ones are impressive, no doubt, but this is a ship that machine guns rods from god.
The Posleen tunnel drive was extremely useful, tactically, but enormously expensive energetically. The only really functional fuel for it was antimatter, which was both costly to make and extremely unstable. But there was no way that any ship could have enough fuel space, bunkerage, for fusion bottles to produce the same power with any reasonable range.
Converting ships to use both ley-line transport, which was much cheaper energetically, and tunnel drive meant that something had to go.
In the case of the superdreadnought Lexington IV it had been Ronnie's pride and joy: the primary mass-driver. However, the Hedren in the Daga Nine system didn't have any ships really suitable for the main-gun to engage. Would have been cute, mind you. Even their battleships would have come apart like tinker-toys. But they just needed the space.
What filled the space where the enormous mass driver had once been, its fusion bottles and capacitors, its grav drivers and magazines, was nine tunnel drives from Posleen Command Dodecahedrons, C-Decs, and a one of the largest containment vessels of antimatter ever made. Even with that much antimatter, the ship only had the range to go from the nearest star to the Daga system. Going out they'd have to find a ley-line.
Jury-rigged system on a supermonitor finally gives it what they wanted from day one, dual FTL. Tunnel drive used by Posleen is a lot more energy intensive than I’d thought.
The enormous Globe-breaking mass driver had been removed. But the Lexington had been designed to not only break Globes, but to destroy the huge swarms of lesser Posleen ships. B-decs, a C-dec surrounded by twelve Lampreys, equated nicely to one of the Hedren cruisers. A C-dec to one of the destroyers.
And the Lex was designed to take on thousands of such not a mere handful.
Arrayed along her sides were literally hundreds of lasers, each capable of destroying a Lamprey. Nearly as many heavy plasma cannons capable of gutting a C-dec. But the pride and joy were over two dozen grav-guns per side. Each of the GalTech 200mm mass-drivers accelerated a one hundred and fifty kilogram chunk of refractory heavy metal to ten percent of light-speed. The kinetic impact was equivalent to a sixteen megaton nuclear weapon.
The impacts from the Hedren meson cannons had barely caused the ship to shudder.
The Blue Ghost's first broadside nearly threw everyone off their feet.
Secondary weapons of a supermonitor. This includes several hundred laser and plasma weapons. There are also 24 grav-guns to a side, which are twice the size of the grav-cannon used in the Planetary Defense Forts, yet throw a projectile half the weight at a third the velocity. My head hurts.
"We determined a method to use bodies from Marder fighting vehicles and the suspension, drive, and tracks from Russian T-62s to create a tracked artillery system. We ended up scrapping most of the towed artillery systems, however. Chemical rounds are so . . . inefficient. These use a railgun based drive system that has significantly more range than the original 155. The system has an auto-alignment system based on the American MLRS, an auto loading system and an automated reloading system. There is a separate but similar vehicle for that. We've improved the barrel design so that it has a top rate of fire of sixteen rounds per minute and with the auto-loader and sufficient support it can maintain that all day. Moreover, by adjusting elevation and propulsive force, and thus time of flight, it can do up to nine round time on targets from a single system. Top road speed should be right at one hundred kilometers per hour. We somewhat improved the engine, transmission and track system. Among other things, the second is now automatic and the controls are similar to a Leopard tank. Oh, and we installed ground-effect drivers so that you can cross boggy terrain and for march-order movement to reduced damage to the track systems and the roads. We considered installing full anti-gravity but the reengineering requirements and training requirements were considered suboptimal. All of the vehicles, however, have similar improvements."
First work by Inodwy Etari, considered slightly odd by his fellows for his interest in human designs, and his tinkering to improve them. The standard artillery piece (besides the new mortars, obviously) of the new war. A heavily modified Marder IFV (top speed 100 kph) as a base for a railgun that generously outranges conventional howitzers. 16 rounds per minute, with enough ammo to keep the rate up all day, or 1440 rounds. Maybe they’re small but powerful rounds, or maybe RIngo forgot that the ammo can’t outmass the vehicle carrying it again. Can do a 9-round time on target all by itself.
Like every other vehicle to get this treatment, it has been converted to run on diesel. New production will use fusion. First mention of ground-effect drive, which uses magic mass lightening to make every tank and truck weigh less than a man, so they can easily drive over mud and sand without sinking in. Forget the mini-map, I think this is every commander’s wet dream.
We debated for nearly a day whether to convert all the engines to fusion-electric systems but decided against it, again for training reasons. However, all those that formerly ran on . . . 'gasoline' are now converted to diesel reducing your logistics complexity. But you will have to assure a supply of diesel for support. Future systems will be converted to fusion-electric."
Galactic fusion small enough to run a truck. All the versions of these vehicles they build later will have fusion, for now they’ve all been converted quickly and easily by the indowy, to diesel.
Muehlenkampf, for all his experience of military vehicles, was not sure what he was looking at. The base may have been the Russian T-62 again. Many of them were used by forces in the Vienna pocket, mostly those who had survived the debacles in Eastern Europe. They may have ended up in the valley.
The upper, however, looked more like a bastardized Amerian M-1 with the exception of the gun, the barrel of which was thick and short.
"The round fired is actually a high-velocity missile," Etari said, climbing up on the tank. "It tracks on Hedren heavy armor so it is 'fire and forget.' When it hits, it uses a system similar to the Posleen heavy-armor penetrator, a smart bot that finds the weakest point in the Hedren armor and drill an anti-matter breaching charge into the interior. There are various countermeasures, some of which the Hedren use, but there are counters for the counters and so-forth and so-on. But this is your primary anti-armor system. We're leaving the naming to you.
The Hedren have a sort of flying SheVa, except bigger and meaner. This is the so-far nameless vehicle fielded as a counter. Though it should work just fine on other tanks as well.
"Primary tanks will be modified Leopards, tentatively designated Leopard Vs. Slightly more robust drive train, more or less the same speed, heavy rail gun based on the Posleen designs but with the same firing system and lay-out as the Leopard III. Improved communication and ground-effect drive for march-order movement. Sights work in thermal imagery and 'cloaking reveal.' The latter is not perfect, but as good as anything that is out there. Secondary guns 3 and 5mm rail guns.
Leopard V tanks. 9mm railgun for primary armament, 5mm as a commander’s pintle weapon and 3mm as additional secondaries, ground effect drive and sights that see through the cloaking technology the Hedren all use on the battlefield.
"Primary infantry fighting vehicles will be a modified Marder, improved lay-out, improved communications and tracking system, improved drive train including enough speed to keep up with the Leopards while in track mode and, of course, ground-effect drive. Primary weapons system is a 5mm rail gun, secondary is a smaller version of the smart-bot gun. Much the same sight system as the Leopard.
It’s a Marder with the new weapons and ground effect drive. Some tweaks to improve this and that, and all the all-important sights that actually see the enemy, but it’s basically a Marder.
"Primary heavy support vehicle is based on the Marder fighting vehicle. Armored against shrapnel and light weapons rounds as well as mines. Sealed, as are all the other systems, in case the Hedren use poison gas or nuclear weapons. Ground-effect drive. Primary light wheeled vehicle is a Mercedes design with same modifications. Light scout vehicles are designed around those with the 5mm rail gun. Heavy scout vehicles are based on the Marder, again. All vehicles are equipped with blue-force trackers and sub-space communications systems that are at least hard to intercept or jam. And all are, of course, cloaked."
And the remaining vehicles. More than 70% of which are based on the Marder. I suppose there’s something to be said for interchangeable parts, at least. And it makes a lot of sense, since the first vehicles are those salvaged and rebuilt from the SS vehicle graveyard. Oh yes, and all of the vehicles above can turn invisible and can be buttoned down completely air tight for a full day.
Etari raised a small wand and pointed it at the Leopard which abruptly faded from view.
"The system is not the same as the one the Hedren and Himmit use," Etari said, dismissively. "I found their system to have . . .flaws. They use a projection field that warps light around the cloaked device. Simple enough, but not exactly . . .robust. A strong enough hit, even one that does not take out the vehicle, can disrupt the projector. And the Hedren design is much less effective than the Himmit. There is a noticeable warping if you are looking closely enough."
"And this?" Muehlenkampf said, walking over carefully and reaching out. Yes, the Leopard was still there. He could see that it, too, distorted the background slightly but it was very much as if the entire tank was transparent. He hoped the crew would not be viewable sitting in their seats. It would be humorous but not exactly stealthy.
"Actually, humans were on the cusp of it during the Posleen War," Etari said. "But they hadn't put the pieces together. One group was working on biochemical transistor design, another on a thinner, flatter projection system, another on the base theory of a cloaking system and the last an actual produced paint used for holographic art primarily on personal wheeled vehicles."
"So this is a hologram?" the Generalmajor asked.
"Not at all," Etari said, thumbing off the cloak. "The vehicle is covered in a dual layer paint. The outer layer of paint is from the thinner, flatter projection system, a paint that lays down plasma reactor nodes, very small bits of material that fluoresce in a particular frequency when energized. The inner layer is a biochemical processor. Each of the plasma reactor nodes binds to the processor at a particular point. The overall sheet acts as the computer, to put it in terms you understand. When the paint is dried the vehicle is run through a laser designation system that tells the processor which nodes are directly opposite each other. One node picks up a signal from reflectance and transmits it to its polar opposite which then energizes . . ."
"Making a picture of what is behind the vehicle," Muehlenkampf said, nodding. "I suppose for you this is child's play."
"Sometimes the simplest way is the best," Etari said. "Short of being hit by a large scale plasma burst, the paint is very redundant. And if it gets scratched, all you have is a bit of the base, which is a mottled green-brown, in view. Repainting requires a facility but it is easy enough. It creates a bit of a flicker when in movement, but is quite effective when still. And in movement, the secondary effects of the vehicle are, after all, noticeable."
"Invisible units," Muehlenkampf said. "Very good."
"And there is an interesting item to it," the Kobold said. "Ask me."
"What is the interesting item?" Muehlenkampf said, trying not to growl.
"The technology is not the sort the Hedren are used to facing," Etari said. "Their counter-cloak technology is designed to detect cloaking fields. This, General, is not a cloaking field."
The active camouflage used by all the new vehicles, and some of it’s advantages over traditional cloaking devices. So now we have invisible tanks and other vehicles, that can’t get stuck in the mud and are armed with railguns.
The M84 was slewed up and to the right at nothing Keren could see. But he wasn't going to be graded as killed so he pulled the commander's cupola down and strapped himself into his seat. What the hell. The vision blocks were wide plasma screens. He could see nearly as well down here as up there.
Oh, and like the ACS, none of these vehicles have easily-smashed windows, but armored plates with advanced camera pickups. The inside is a screen.
The R-28 Vehicle Crewman Rail-System Submachinegun had what he felt was a pleasant similarity in appearance to the WWII Schmeisser machine-pistol. The difference being that its long, thin, ribbed magazine carried two-hundred rounds of 1mm mini-flechettes and that it could dump them all out in under a second.
Oh yeah, and now all the infantry get railguns. This particular 1mm model is meant for vehicle crews, 200 rounds per seond, but only a 200 round mag.
"Actually, it's not," Keren said, looking at the device carefully. "I've used a converted rail gun and this is different. I'd say it's way better designed for humans to use."
The weapon was almost a sketch of a gun. The shoulder-stock was collapsible and looked flimsy. Keren suspected it was stronger than steel. The pistol-grip and trigger housing were comfortable but lightly built. The barrel was shorter than a Posleen railgun but had the same odd wideness on the horizontal access, a function of the magnetic accelerators. Sights were elevated and included optics that gave at least four power magnification. He suspected there was a way to dial that up. There was a dot reticle for fast firing. The really intimidating part was the magazine well, which looked about the size of a Barrett's. The gun, by itself, weighed not much more than an M-16 and was a touch shorter. With the magazine he wasn't going to guess the weight.
Appearance of standard infantry railgun, which for some reason gets called a grav rifle a couple pages later. Scope gives at least 4x magnification.
"M264 grav rifle," Sergeant Richards said, holding one of the rifles up. "The M264 uses linear magnetic acceleration to fire a three millimeter tungsten or steel flechette to a velocity of forty-three hundred meters per second. This is five times the velocity of an M-16 round and nearly six times that of the AIW. The maximum effective range is eight hundred meters while the maximum range is eight thousand two hundred and forty-six meters and it comes complete with a four position firing selector, safe, semi, burst and full rocking auto. The base design we took from the Posties but it has been significantly improved for ergonomics and so that it can, yes, be aimed using the M482 one to twelve power opto-digital firing scope . . ."
There was the M238 1mm grav pistol for the gunner and AG. A long barreled weapon with more maximum range and damage than an M-16, it was a nasty thing to fire by hand with a truly brutal recoil. The non-driver ammo bearer got the M825 combination 20mm plasma grenade launcher and railgun.
Paper manuals were distributed and with Sergeant Richards often less than helpful assistance everyone learned to field strip and reassemble their individual weapons. Particular note was taken of red comments about potential 'issues'. The M264 wasn't something to be fired if the barrel was blocked but that could be said of most weapons. Just more so in the case of a weapon with its power. The note about 'potential capacitor accidental discharge' in 'over-fire' conditions - like when you were firing as fast as you possibly could or get overrun - was not a good sign.
But the weapon could fire a round that ripped through a tank if you hit it just right and could fire four thousand rounds per minute. Both were good things. So was the five hundred round magazine with integrated battery compartment. And, yes, it was a heavy motherfucker. But adding it to the weapon actually improved balance and reduced recoil. By the end of the one hour class the experienced soldiers were field stripping their individual weapons to standard already.
It was followed by classes on the new mortar system, the M748 120mm electro-drive mortar system, which they still hadn't set eyes upon, the M635 mortar sight, the M186 Mortar Carrier for M748, preventative maintenance, track replacement methods and repair of same and on and on and on.
By the end of the first day, which didn't stop until 2200, Keren's eyes were bleeding and his head felt stuffed with straw.
Calc-fodder! 3mm railgun fires steel (or tungsten, perhaps armor-piercing?) rounds 5x as fast as an M-16. Be nice to know more than the diameter of the rounds. Like the Posleen version can ‘one-shot a Bradley and do a soft kill on an Abrams.’ 4000 rounds per minute, with 500 round mags. Scope actually goes up to 12x. 800 meter effective range, 8.2 kilometer max.
Plus 1mm railgun sidearms and a plasma grenade launcher. Amusingly, they have to teach everyone that unlike with fighting the Posleen, you can’t just flip the gun onto full auto and sweep the endless alien horde.
"Fuck this," Mangler said, reaching behind his back and pulling out what looked like a flare gun with a thick grip. "Suicide-bars! Clear!"
The anti-matter grenade launcher did not have the same connection to his goggles but he didn't care. He just aligned it with the corridor, fired all five rounds in the magazine and ducked around the corner.
Backup grenade launcher carries and fires 5 suicide bars. Remember those? Those are the adjustable anti-matter grenades that go up to 11 tons of TNT. Fair bit of firepower for infantry. I hope the arty is at least this potent.
These looked sort of like 4.2 with fins and a weird circular foot. They weren't much longer than a 4.2. But they had nearly twice the range. And you could pack nearly twice as many into the track as 120s. On the other hand, if the ammo racks took a hit, the blow-out panels had better work or everyone in the track was going to be a crispy critter.
New mortar rounds. They’re small, so the tracks can carry a lot, twice as many as before. Plus, the new mortars have twice the range of the prewar 120mm.
"Okay, troops, this is why you're really here," Cutprice boomed from the range tower. "I've been pretty interested in the anti-artillery system these things boast. I want to see how they do against our mortars. I've obtained permission for the elimination of one standard AFV from inventory . . ."
Oh, and they’ve reverse-engineered the Posleen autotarget systems for these all vehicles. Which now work on ballistic projectiles. Of course, the Hedren also have this technology.
The M576 mortar round had a small dollop of antimatter at its center and a bunch of notched wire surrounding it. With a casualty causing radius of fifty meters in contact setting, sixty on proximity, the explosion on direct contact could cut through light armor like paper.
And the puffs of smoke were getting closer. The sheer volume of fire was overloading the single anti-artillery system on the track. With 36 rounds headed its way, the system was having to hunt across the sky and the puffs came lower and lower until one finally impacted on the rear deck. The explosion was heavy enough to damage the anti-artillery gun and two of the next three rounds hit across the track, turning it into a mangled piece of very expensive metal.
"So we see the good news and the bad," Cutprice said to the subdued company. As with any company of infantry, the mortarmen had been rooting for the artillery and the gun bunnies had been rooting for the anti-artillery system. Both groups had reasons to be happy and chastized. "The good news is that the system works. The better news is that, en masse, it will probably work even better. The bad news is that even mortars can overcome it if there's enough incoming. The answer, gentlemen, is to make sure that all your M84 track-commander guns remain up, that commanders relinquish control to automatic at any incoming and that we maintain enough coverage that we can interlock fires. The system should also work against incoming anti-armor rockets. Keep it on auto unless you have an important target, commanders. Mortars, keep up your exercise. And keep in mind that the Hedren have a similar system."
Double the range, 50 meter footprint, the new mortars rock! Autotarget point defense, like the Posleen ones, can be swamped by enough incoming fire. In this case it took 3 dozen rounds.
The 5mm commander's railgun sounded like an electric chainsaw the size of a Mac truck and the coating on the rounds left a blue track of fire through the air like tracers.
5mm railgun as pintle weapon, in case you thought I was kidding.
There was a rave above his head as one of the AFV gunners fired at a target on the hilltop. Technically, that was their job. But he wasn't real happy with 9mm rail rounds going by overhead. The exercise wasn't using blanks or simunitions. The 'enemy' was dummies and some robots so they were authorized to shoot them up. But if one of those railgun rounds hit him he was going to be paste.
And 9mm tanks guns.
"You knew about this," Frederick said. "That was why you asked me about the platforms and the field generator."
"The platforms have repulsion systems on them," Harz said. "They have also been modified with a ribbon chute. We will drop very fast but the repulsion system will stop us instantaneously with contact with the ground. It has been tested. The ACS used them for resupply from orbit during the War. It will work."
"And the field generator?" Frederick asked.
I don't know much about the M-3698. It uses a set of energy fields to shield equipment or personnel in high-energy situations. Like if they know there's going to be a nuclear detonation. It won't stop the full power of one, but it will shield from secondary effects. Works on all forms of matter and most particles but once activated it only lasts for about thirty minutes. They were developed during the War but rarely used. All I can remember."
Repulsor platform for moving heavy things on ships, or occasionally to the ground when you add an M-3698 field generator, which can mostly shield a small area from a nuke, but can only stay up for less than 30 minutes. Put them together and you have a device you can slap onto an airtight tank and drop it from orbit. Won’t exactly be a fun ride, but they’ll make it to the ground intact, save for ground fire. Already used once in this book for a shock attack.
Hedren:
"Hedren primary method of hard insertion is through the matter wormhole. The unit inserted is, as was previously briefed, the equivalent of a heavy armored corps with combat supports including in-system attack craft. But that's not enough to take a planet. They're really just there to establish a bridgehead. They generally will land near a notable feature of the planet, a capital city or such, and take that as fast as possible. Then they sit on it until more forces arrive through hyper-jump."
The fun thing is, while creating a wormhole to another planet is very demanding of energy, it takes just as much to send through a Corps of men and equipment as it does to send a single gram of matter. The Corps will usually have food and ammo for a month, and sometimes a few small spacecraft. The Wormhole device however, only has a range of 60 light-years.
"The functional effect is that the Hedren attack by porting in a vast quantity of war-making forces in one jump," Rigas said. "A force functionally equivalent to a Fleet Strike Corps or even Army with supports to include local defense ships and material supplies for fifty days of combat. Generally, they will infiltrate a system with stealthed warp-ships as well. These destroy things like communication satellites and critical space installations then guard the ley-line tranfer points to prevent reinforcement and to cover follow-on forces. The other ships jump up off the planet to support ground forces and any mop-up that remains in space. It is possible, obviously, to jump more than one group. However, the power requirements are as I said vast and it is generally some time, up to an Earth month, before there is another attack."
"Weapons and TOE?" General Wesley asked.
"Many and varied," Rigas said. "Infantry is primarily armed with plasma rifles. They are generally transported by anti-grav capable armored fighting vehicles. There are, in addition, tanks better than a SheVa, which the Federation is out of as of the action on R-1496 Delta. Close support aircraft are similar to the Banshee shuttle but a bit better armored and faster. They also have plasma artillery with ranges of over a hundred kilometers. They use a method of battle similar to that once termed 'air-land battle', using their strike aircraft and mobility for deep strike and getting inside their enemy's reaction cycle.
"The most critical part is that all of their systems use a reactive camouflage system similar to that of ours, that is the Himmits. If you don't have the right vision systems, they will be quite invisible except for effects. Their ships are, also, cloaked. And shielded well enough that all but the most powerful current weapons are useless against them. Not that any of the Fleet units that encountered them could even get a lock."
Hedren tactics. Infiltrate a system with cloaked ships then send a heavy corps thorough the wormhole. The ships ambush Fleet elements in system, destroy crucial facilities and seize strategic locations, all in preparation for the real, follow-up invasion. The corps on the ground does similar things.
"Quite bad," Himmit Rigas said. "The Tyranny is a very autocratic society. The Imeg maintain a thought-police that seeks anyone who does not accept the Hedren Archons as gods. Living conditions for the majority of the Tyranny are bare subsistence level. They do not eat their enemies as the Posleen tend to, but any race they deem 'lacking utility' is destroyed utterly as a waste of resources. Anyone not being productive to the Tyranny and totally in support of the Tyranny is equally destroyed. The Indowy have already been determined to be 'lacking utility' and the Hedren are destroying them on all their conquered worlds. Equally the Tchpht. Darhel are still being classified. Himmit they will kill out of hand. Posleen have also been put on their useless list due to the difficulty with distinguishing between God-kings and normals. Humans . . . Well humans can be slaves as has been proven repeatedly in Human history. Imagine the most repressive and autocratic dictatorship in human history. Now add a theocracy and 'priests' that can read your mind and send to death camps any who do not worship the Archons."
Hedren politics and philosophy. Particularly towards aliens. Chewie already posted this, but it bears repeating that these are not nice people.
As the light panned across the contact point there was a flicker, like a reflection on a pond. He panned back and frowned as the ripple seemed to move. Whatever it was, it was big. Maybe as big as a Posleen. His finger was playing with the safety on the machine-gun, wondering if he should just fire and then figure it out. But the contact sort of looked like a Himmit. Not that you normally spotted those.
He was still wondering when a strand of monomolecular wire entered his window and removed his head.
Mono-wire used by Hedren infantry, presumably Marro. Even their infantry is cloaked.
The Hedren vehicles are not only heavily armored but incorporate a shield system which is . . .extremely robust. It may take more than one round to destroy even one of their relatively light armored vehicles. There are several types of shield penetration systems but given that we have not had a Hedren vehicle to test them against . . . you may have to decide which works best in combat."
And some fairly hefty shields to. Damn, I already like these guys just for using their technology intelligently.
"The Hedren CSUs ?" (continent siege units) he asked, apalled. "The Juggernauts?"
"Ja, yellow-shit," the NCO said, grinning. "These little toys are what we are going to ride into battle. And we are going to be taking on tanks larger faster and more powerful than Tiger IIIs. Tanks as heavily armored as space cruisers and bigger than American SheVas. Now, yellow-shits, have I made you comfortable?"
Hedren CSU (Continental siege unit) or Juggernaut. The threat of these gets played up a lot, but we never actually see one in the book. Maybe the next one, assuming it ever gets written/published.
They weren't sure where the file had come from, just that the Himmit had obtained it. It was Hedren plasma mortars, which were going to be one of their major bugaboos. The mortars had at least the range of the 120s and there were bound to be mortar to mortar counter-battery duels.
The rounds were green fire drifting across the firmament. Despite it being broad daylight they could be tracked by eye, seemingly moving in slow motion. Then they dropped and dropped finally bursting in a hemisphere of green fire that torched everything in its zone. The vegetation, which had a faint purple sheen like that of Barwhon, burst into fire in a circle beyond the explosion.
"Very pretty," Sergeant Moreland said. "Gist, think you could figure the counter fire trajectory?"
"Not sure, Sergeant," the senior gunnery computer said. "I'd need a bit more data on scale. Off-hand, I'd say they were firing from two thousand meters. If that's accurate, I could more or less determine their position. Give me any sort of compass or sight and I could do it for sure."
"Which is the one of their many weaknesses," Moreland said. "You can see the damned things. You don't have to use a fucking computer and radar to figure out where they are. There arty works the same way, only from further away. Incoming is going to be Mark-One eyeyball time. Our shit is, comparatively, invisible.
Hedren plasma mortars, and some of their disadvantages.
"This system has no shrapnel," Moreland said. "If you're not directly in that rather narrow footprint, or real close, you're golden. Now, it's a pretty serious footprint if it hits in our perimeter and anything in the footprint is, literally, crispy fried. But it's a narrow footprint compared to shrapnel. Twenty five meters versus fifty. That matters."
"It's got one benefit," Sergeant Richards said. "It's like napalm. It's very fucking scary."
Hedren mortars have a comparatively narrow footprint. On the other hand, anything inside that area tends to be most thoroughly dead. Psychological advantages to watching the big green balls of light incoming probably don’t overcome the disadvantage of seeing where they’ll come down ahead of time.
"What the hell?" Cutprice said as the M84 by his ear started firing up and to the left. It wasn't the right angle for artillery fire.
"Sir!" Specialist Riley shouted. "BFT says we're auto-engaging a Hedren probe rocket. That's their version of a . . ."
"UAV," Cutprice finished. "Command team! Four hundred meters west! Now! Now! Now!"
Hedren probe rocket for recon.
Mosovich winced as most of Alpha team was wiped out in one blast. The Hedren grenades were as bad as suicide bars.
Hedren have grenades equivalent to suicide bars. Fun.
"The ship is primarily crewed by Marro," Mosovich said, bringing up a hologram of the snake-like enemy. "Call 'em Snakes. Standard weapons are flechette shotguns for the majority of the enlisted and rail subguns for the officers and senior NCOs. They're ship's crew so they'll have some training in security but Himmit indicate that weapons for the enlisted are locked down unless they are preparing for boarders."
The Marro laid flat on its belly before him would, to a human, appear to be a massive snake or worm. Its body resembled that of a cobra but its skin was scale-less and disturbingly human looking and it had two tentacled 'arms' jutting from just below its massive head. The race fought for the Hedren Archons, occupying mostly line infantry positions. However, their premier position was masters of military intelligence and matters of science, for the Marro were always curious.
Marro, the foot soldiers who don’t have feet. We see literally less than a dozen aliens besides them, individuals that is, they work as soldiers, technicians, scientists, intelligence, pilots, and junior officers.
"Another race we may encounter is the Kotha," Mosovich said, bringing up a hologram of the massive cephalopods. "They're leaders of the Hedren forces and may be in officer positions."
"Ugly," Mueller said.
"And they can use all those tentacles to wield weapons," Mosovich noted. "Keep an eye out for these guys; they're reputed to be very bad news."
"Report."
General Etugul was a Kotha, one of the elite warriors of the Hedren Tyranny. Scion of an ancient family of generals, he was one of the Chosen, those sent to this new galaxy to bring the power and glory of the Hedren Archons to these new races.
Over seven feet tall, his blueish gray epidermis crossed with colormophs of honors, rank and family standing, the general stood upon eight dual-use tentacles. Any of them could be used as a secondary set of arms or for locomotion. Two additional tentacles were used for fine-motor skills. But any and all of the ten could wield a weapon in a pinch. Six eyes, two red and the other four purple, waved above a powerful beak. The beak was used only for eating and occasionally rending a foe limb from limb. The general spoke through two whistling jets mounted below his rapacious maw.
Kotha commanders, ship captains, and elite warriors. Can wield and fire a number of weapons simultaneously, by virtue of being giant Octopi with 2 extra tentacles.
"The main threat is going to be the Porkies," Mosovich said, bringing up a slide of the Glandri. Who did look, a bit, like porcupines. "They're primarily trained as populace controllers but they're also the Imeg's body guards. We'll know we're close to the Imeg when we hit them. They're primary weapon is a neural scrambler. At low power it's a very painful stunner. At high power it tears up neural pathways and has an effect like nerve gas. Our armor has had a layer of metal fibers added that might mitigate the effect. But don't bet on it. Getting hit with one of those things is purely gonna suck.
"The utility of all of these races is so minimal, Lord," the Glandri replied. Short, web-footed, crouching, but powerful and brutal, the quill covered Glandri were the Hedren's best at breaking a race to the service of the Archons. The neuter worked its molar filled maw for a moment in frustration. "The Indowy methods of manufacture are capable of producing advanced materials but only with enormous being-hour input. And they are so numerous, they simply crowd out other races. The Darhel, unless remodified, may be of use as managers in time. But not in any combat role. The Tchpht are premier scientists but very difficult to manage. They do not seem to respond to either damage or death. The Indowy are the same. They accept death without any response and will not even change their practices when put to great pain. And they are so numerous that it will require some sort of industrial method to eliminate them. The most flexible are the Humans. We have put a few of them to work in minor tests. They respond in a reasonable fashion to pain and the threat of death. Some are more resistant than others, however . . ."
The porcupine-like beings were spilling into a cross-corridor, laying down a withering fire with their neural whips. Mangler grabbed a stanchion and slid backwards, angling his rail-gun around the corner and firing. He wasn't blind, though. The scope on the rifle fed to his goggles and he could lay down some pretty accurate fire that way.
Glandri blood was blue. That became apparent as it splashed all over the corridor.
Glandri, giant porcupines that serve as both elite warriors and experts at breaking in new races to serve the Archons. They use neural scramblers as weapons. Interesting that the Tchpth don’t respond to fear or pain as inducement.
"What the hell are those?" Hannibal screamed. He was pumping railgun rounds into the compartment and all he was getting was bouncers. The rounds wouldn't scratch the nightmares in the room.
"Imeg," Wind shouted then blasted backwards to thump into the far bulkhead.
The two creatures in the room were nightmare, a mass of rippling black tentacles and armored bodies. The tentacles were coated in blades but that was not what was killing the team. It was the half dozen weapons each of them wielded. Expertly.
Suicide bars wouldn't detonate. Railgun rounds bounced off a hard-held shield. And still they continued to fire and slice, destroying anything that came near them.
Mueller could see the effect of the battle between the two groups. The air in the compartment was heating up as irresistable force met immovable object. He could even see the shields of the Imeg, now, glowing white-hot under the power of the dozen human adepts.
And he could see when the one on the left finally collapsed.
Railgun rounds, though, bounced off the armor of the body. He searched for weaknesses and finally found one at the juncture of the tentacles and the body. The nuckle there was tough, but it finally surrendered and the Imeg was blasted back in a green spray of ichor.
Suddenly, the railgun was ripped from his hands, turned, and slammed forward, barrel-first, into his brain.
Imeg, the thought-police of the Hedren. They also use sohon, but as it to fight rather than to build things, so both sides are still getting a feel for each other’s capabilities. The Imeg have many bladed tentacles which can also wield weapons, they also have a carapace hard enough to laugh off railgun rounds, even without their protecting themselves with their vast powers.
"No, sir," Colonel Paul said. "This is from a Fleet communique. An unknown force attacked by surprise. One courier managed to warp out. He reported that as of his system exit, all ground forces had been destroyed or surrendered and all the communications satellites were destroyed, some of them apparently from cloaked ships already in-system before the attack. The attack was two and a half months ago. We're just getting the word."
Cloaked ship sabotage of system defenses.
The Hedren fire was slow to start but brutal when it finally got into motion. Hundreds of lasers flashed upwards along with dozens of heavy meson guns. However, they were having a hard time hitting the Mound and her consorts. The air was almost literally filled with chunks of metal. Meson bolts capable of tearing apart a cruiser burst into pointless fireworks when they hit a KEW the size of a crowbar. Lasers had trouble with just the plasma and gases that were filling the sky.
Targeting the KEWs was automatic, but there were simply too many. Lasers flashed and flashed, but all it did was cut the darts in half. Small enough they would burn up from reentry heat but most of them were large enough it took quite a bit of chunking to get to that point. Missiles flashed up as well, intercepting the larger KEWs and blasting them apart. But, again, there were a lot of KEWs and only so many missiles. Well before the Mound was out of chunks of steel the Hedren anti-ship missile inventory was exhausted.
Hedren ground fire defending from the bombardment cruiser and tank drop.
The Hedren had the range. Their heavy forward meson cannons had a range of almost five light seconds. Each of the four Hedren battleships in the squadron, long cylinders bristling with secondary weapons, had two of the massive cannons forward. Capable of punching through six meters of homogenous steel, they were brutal devices of war. The ten cruisers and four destroyers each had lesser versions with the same range if not the same power.
And they used it, concentrating the fire of all thirty-six meson cannons on the Lex.
Primary weapon of Hedren warships, 2 forward mounted meson cannon, range 5 light seconds that can ‘punch through’ six meters of steel. All warships have a meson gun, some are much weaker, but they all have the same range.
The Hedren ship used primarily grasers, gamma ray frequency lasers, while the human ship mounted mass-drivers and plasma cannons. The latter two were visible while the grasers were, unfortunately, invisible. They did, however, show up on sensors. And her sensors were showing no way through the fire.
Grasers, this is a particular ship used to ferry around VIPs, so may not be the same as other warships. Then again, the grasers are likely the backup to the meson gun, which this ship may simply not have.
