The 13th Tribe Book II: A Symphony of War

[Eternal_Freedom]

As much as I love RN ship names (and have consciously borrowed more than a few) I want to avoid making the TCN a complete RN-in-space analogue. Especially since with the Tau'ri expanding their forces, we'll actually have the RN in space!

Incidentally, the three British 304's are HMS Conqueror (in service), HMS Warrior (on trials) and HMS Ark Royal (~50% complete), plus of course the battleship HMS Dreadnought. I've no idea what I'll call the other two French or the other three Chinese ships though. Or the German one, though, since most of the names I might use are ones a real-life Germany wouldn't use for obvious reasons (see Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Bismarck, Tirpitz, Graf Spee and so on). Perhaps Seydlitz or Derfflinger.

[fnord]

Sweet. Is there going to be at least one lack of co-ordination such that TCS Battlewagon rows up alongside HMS Battlewagon in a large-scale fleet fight?

[U.P. Cinnabar]

Germans: Saschen, Molders, Rommmel, Hartmann, Hamburg,, Blucher, Niobe, Emden, Dresden.

French: Jeanne d'Arc, Destine d'Orves, Surcouf, Jacoubet, Suffren,, DeGrasse, Normandie, Jean Bart, Vengeur du Peuple, Jean Moulin, Virgine Guyot.

Chinese:Kunming, Changsha, Heifei, Yinchuan, Xiamen,, Zhenyuan, King Yuen,, Chin Yuen, Chung Yuen, Yangwei.

So, who flies the French 304s, the Marine Nationale or the Armee de l'Air?

[fnord]

Wasn't the US the major exception in having their air force drive starships, due to the USAF originally running the Stargate program? I got the impression the default Tau'ri option would be the respective country's navy. Dry naval operations, but naval nonetheless.

EDIT: A major bunfight, where a given nation has multiple services with aviation elements (eg the Dart, between the RAF and the Fleet Air Arm), would be close orbit/aerospace operations - does the navy handle such via its aviation arm, or does another service shove in?

[Eternal_Freedom]

Fnord: Nope, you won't have Kobolian and Tau'ri ships with the same name. This isn't a chance encounter, they know about each other so can avoid this. Though the British Admiralty were quite peeved about the Battlestar Warspite taking one of their better names

Cinnabar: Thanks for the suggestions. The French will have the Redoutable. Jeanne D'Arc and the Normandie, the Chinese will have the Sun Tzu, Kunming, Xiamen and Chung Yuen.

As for the German ship...as good as those suggestions are, I'm still leaning towards Seydlitz, as a) it sounds cool and b) it was a historical battlecruiser as well.

With the exception of the Americans and the Russians, the respective navies will be running the space fleet. The USAF will continue operating the Daedalus, Odyssey, Apollo, Icarus and the in-construction Achilles and Agamemnon, along with the Prometheus, but the new supercarriers (Yorktown, Enterprise and Constellation) as well as the 304's Lexington and Saratoga will be USN ships - again, because those two 304's were carrier names originally ordered as battlecruisers.

For reference, the four Russian 304's under construction are the Leonov, Komorov, Titov and the Moskva.

[DKeith2011]

I wonder what recruitment is like on Earth right now? For that matter I wonder which tech giants are cashing in.

[Eternal_Freedom]

You have an entire generation, perhaps two, who wanted the "sci fi future" and to see the stars. Now they can...

Private companies are going to be cashing in bigtime. We already had mention of one of Terra's big logistics companies setting up passenger and freight routes back and forth. Plus I like to think that Boeing, Lockheed, BAE and GE and so on are doing quite nicely on all the fighters, attack planes and bombers the militaries are ordering.

[DKeith2011]

Refresh my memory a bit here, what year is it in universe now?

[Eternal_Freedom]

Ummm...Well Book I ended just after the end of Atlantis season 1/SG-1 season 8, which was ~2004, though I did stretch the timeline a fair bit. It's now a total of three years later, so call it 2008. Thanks to the revelation of alien life, there was no global financial crisis (aside from that whole Middle East mayhem I referred to in the epilogue), no Donald Trump and so on. The environment is doing better with naquada/neutrino-ion power planets, and Asgard transporters and Terran plasma furnaces are reclaiming huge amounts of landfill, cleaning up the oceans and providing vast amounts of resources which as per Terran humanitarian laws are being spread evenly, so 3rd world poverty is falling while health and standard of living is rising.

As an aside, Japan hasn't decided to build any starships yet because they're still negotiating an exclusion for that whole "no offensive ships" rule, and they can make more money out of supplying components and funding than building a ship themselves.

[DKeith2011]

I'm guessing we could see a planet-wide tech level similar to what we saw in Independence Day: Resurgence by 2018 in universe.

[Eternal_Freedom]

That's largely the idea I'm aiming at, only with more starships and less collateral damage.

[DKeith2011]

What? No planet sized face-hugger paying a visit?

[Eternal_Freedom]

Nope. Remember that Earth took surprisingly little damage, it was just damage that was too obvious to be covered up. A few shots hitting Prague, Stuttgart, Le Harve and Bristol (I'll say it again, fuck you Bristol! I even know which building got hit, because gah) and the minor tidal wave/flooding from a ship crash-landing in the Chesapeake.

[DKeith2011]

Will the SGC be relocated to a more accessible base of operations? A greatly expanded Area 51 perhaps? Or a totally new Gate station/space port?

Routing what is sure to be a huge volume of gate traffic thru the mountain doesn't seem practical.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

Cinnabar: Thanks for the suggestions. The French will have the Redoutable. Jeanne D'Arc and the Normandie, the Chinese will have the Sun Tzu, Kunming, Xiamen and Chung Yuen.

Glad to be of service.

As for the German ship...as good as those suggestions are, I'm still leaning towards Seydlitz, as a) it sounds cool and b) it was a historical battlecruiser as well.

To quote a former Scottish footballer turned celebrity chef, ah, fuck me! I'm embarrassed to say I forgot about Seydlitz, veteran of Digger Bank and Jutland.

I tried to go with a mix of Kaiserliche Marine and Bundesmarine warships, plus Erich Hartmann, because he was the highest scoring fighter ace ever, and both a Luftwaffe and(after being released by the Soviets, a Federal German Luftwaffe officer(retired as a colonel, due to his outspoken criticism of the F-104 ), so less controversy than naming a craft after his contemporary, Werner Molders(as there was when the Bundeswehr named both a warship and an installation after him).

With the exception of the Americans and the Russians, the respective navies will be running the space fleet. The USAF will continue operating the Daedalus, Odyssey, Apollo, Icarus and the in-construction Achilles and Agamemnon, along with the Prometheus, but the new supercarriers (Yorktown, Enterprise and Constellation) as well as the 304's Lexington and Saratoga will be USN ships - again, because those two 304's were carrier names originally ordered as battlecruisers.

So history repeats itself, except, this time in reverse.

For reference, the four Russian 304's under construction are the Leonov, Komorov, Titov and the Moskva.
[/quote]

No Vladimir V. Putin? More seriously, no Gagarin, or Tereshkova?

Okay, it's your story. I've no reason to doubt your judgement thus far.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

Will the SGC be relocated to a more accessible base of operations? A greatly expanded Area 51 perhaps? Or a totally new Gate station/space port?

Routing what is sure to be a huge volume of gate traffic thru the mountain doesn't seem practical.

What?! SGC be removed from the headquarters of the Galactic Patrol?!* I should think not!

*EE "Doc" Smith's Galactic Patrol HQ was the Hill, which some fans believe was Cheyenne Mountain.

In all seriousness, Cheyenne Mountain, in addition to being probably one of the most defensible bases on the planet, is also a major command and control center, being the alternate command center for NORAD.

I think the mountain will remain the command center for all of Earth's defenses against alien assault, with possible bases on the Moon and Mars to coordinate Solar System defense duties.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Yeah the SGC are quite happy with their current location, especially since Asgard transporters make moving stuff to/from the Gate a lot easier.

As for Russian ships, they already have a Gagarin, though I admit I had (embarrassingly) forgotten about Tereshkova. Works better than Moskva I guess, given the "theme" they've got going.

I honestly haven't put too much thought into what's going on on Earth, except to include a few civilian characters, like Secretary-General Samuel Hayden and Defence Council President Sir Basil Charleston (more shoutouts btw, a cookie for the winner).

[U.P. Cinnabar]

If they can find more gates they'd have an alternative form of public transportation.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Can't have two active gates on or near the same planet remember?

[U.P. Cinnabar]

I'd forgotten that, actually .

Besides, I'm old. I'm allowed.

I'd also forgotten the Asgard gave Earth their beaming tech. So, the planet still has an alternative form of public transportation.

[fnord]

What's with your deep and abiding love for Bristol, E_F?

[fnord]

Basil Charleston - Tom Clancy, Red Rising ?

Samuel Hayden... umm.. the Doom reboot?

[Eternal_Freedom]

Basil Charleston is indeed from Tom Clancy, though he turns up in a lot of the Jack Ryan books (at least up to Bear and the Dragon, after which I stopped reading them). Samuel Hayden is from Doom, but isn't a three metre tall cyborg in this story (not yet anyway).

As for Bristol, well, applied for a job there with a certain popular astronomy magazine. Got through the first interview, through the second, looked really solid. Get told that I'm being picked and they'll have a started date for me in about a week.

Four days later get an apologetic call from the guy who'd wanted to hire me saying they'd given the job to someone else and it wasn't his choice. Turns out the guy they picked just happened to be the owner's son-in-law who'd recently been fired from a different company. Shocking.

Hence my hatred for Bristol. Nothing good has ever happened to me there. It joins Maidenhead and Reading as places I avoid at all costs.

[Eternal_Freedom]

The Predator and the Prey
Outer Rim of the Pegasus Galaxy,
One Week Later

Things were going fairly slowly for the hastily-assembled Task Force that was hunting down the Goa’uld. It had grown considerably and was now an Alliance affair, although the Kobolians provided the bulk of the forces, almost a third of their total fleet in fact. Battle Groups Phoenix, Lionheart, Illustrious and Indomitable were all present at full strength, supported by the explorers Enterprise, Endeavour, Excelsior, Eternity and Excellent, the last of which having recently arrived from Terra with some new prototype systems from General Carter and Professor Bazelgette’s joint research lab.

The Tau’ri contingent had expanded too. The Korolev had been joined by the American Apollo, the British Conqueror, the French Redoutable and the Chinese Sun Tzu, making it an all-hands effort by the people of Earth, only a handful of other 304’s remained behind, either in refit, commissioning trials or on patrol. The British captain, Sir Jonathan Baird, had been deeply apologetic that they hadn’t been able to bring the new BB-306 HMS Dreadnought, but she wasn’t quite finished yet. Privately, Commodore Wallace was quite keen to see how the new British all-big-gun design fared, but he felt he had enough firepower on hand to deal with the situation and no need to rush an uncompleted ship into the battle.

The enemy they faced now had a name. The forces from Earth had confirmed, based on the observed enemy patrols and the information recovered from the crippled Al’kesh a week ago that this was indeed Ba’al, the System Lord who had been a singular menace to the Milky Way, and the God of the Cylons. It was the number of ships present that worried the senior officers.

Ba’al had amassed no less than eight Ha’taks in close orbit of his new base world, along with veritable swarms of Al’kesh and gliders. More troubling to the Kobolian forces were the few images captured of the orbital shipyard and what was contained therein.

Basestars.

Cylon capital ships of a new design, heavier even than the First War models they had faced over Terra, presumably begun because they didn’t require the same structural materials as Goa’uld ships yet still added a potent punch to his fleet. Worse still, these were not First War relics hastily refit with shields and weapons. No, these were built from the skeleton up as a fusion of Goa’uld and Cylon engineering.

The orbital shipyard held six of these Basestars in varying stages of completion, but luckily none of them were finished yet. One or two appeared close to ready however, which put something of a time limit on the plans for the main engagement. The plan they currently had was decidedly lacking in subtlety. Knowing they had a clear firepower advantage, they planned to jump into position at maximum effective weapons range and let fly with every gun they had in a massive alpha strike. The same tactic had proved devastating against a much larger Rebel Jaffa force over Terra two years previously, but Commodore Wallace was less than satisfied with it.

He was standing at the plot table in Fleet Ops aboard his new, and temporary, flagship, the heavyweight Battlestar Phoenix, running his calculating gaze over the disposition of his forces yet again. They were dispersed at the moment, spread out to cover as wide an area as possible. This served two purposes; the cloaked explorers used their powerful sensor arrays to map out every enemy position around the half-dozen worlds now known to be under Ba’al’s control. The other vessels moved around in a rather obvious and menacing patrol or blockade. While this did let the enemy know they were there, and even gave them some idea of the human’s available forces, Phill had carefully managed which ships he sent out to give a false impression.

The five Tau’ri ships were moving around individually in a search pattern designed to give the impression that only two of them were present, their hyperspace flights delicately timed to avoid arousing enemy suspicion. The Terran ships were using a similar pattern, but they were divided up into eight Task Groups, each comprising a cruiser and two destroyers. The four Battlestars under his command were held in reserve, concealed in the Oort cloud of a system thirty light years beyond enemy territory but easily within reach of any of the reconnaissance elements.

Phill hoped that in the apparent absence of heavy warships, Ba’al may feel overconfident enough to try sending out some of his forces to ambush one of the patrol groups, allowing the rest of his ships to jump in and wipe them out, bleeding the resurgent System Lord of vital ships and information. He felt that the plan was workable and had a reasonable chance of success; he added that mental caveat not because of any doubts over his forces but because the Goa’uld psychology was sufficiently alien as to make accurate predictions very difficult.

The holo-display beeped, drawing his attention to the fact that the patrol group led by the Franklin North had arrived at their next destination. Argus Control had only minutes before reported at least one possible cloaked Al’kesh in the area, so they were expecting trouble. The patrol group had made a full combat jump, and the reserve Battlestar force was likewise at Action Stations ready to jump in at a moment’s notice. His flagship’s main weapon, the scaled-down superlaser that ran half the length of the ship, was fully charged and ready to fire. Off to starboard sat the Excellent, her experimental systems ready to be powered up.

Another beep. The update from Argus Control showed that two of the Ha’taks around M9Z-359 had jumped to hyperspace, heading at full speed right for the Franklin North. They would arrive in six minutes. Phill motioned at his comms officers for an all-ships channel.

“All units, this is Fireman. They’ve taken the bait. Make ready to jump to Task Group Lionheart-Alpha’s position in six minutes, combat jump protocols. All main batteries to be fully charged and missile tubes spun up and ready. All Earth vessels to continue patrol patterns until further notice. Hostile ETA now five minutes thirty seconds. Fireman out.”

The ships immediately began making final preparations. The jump coordinates were locked in, the guns charged and made ready. The ports on the cruiser’s missile tubes were opened, cutting reaction time by a few precious seconds. The Phoenix’s Captain reported a minute later that all weapons were ready and all fighters were in the launch tubes prepared for immediate take-off.

Phill did not expect to launch fighters this time. With the plan being to reverse an ambush with a much superior force and a powerful opening punch, launching fighters would simply be in the way. It was, perhaps, one of his flaws. He hadn’t been a Cobra pilot as so many of the Colonial officers had been, his entire career had been driving heavy ships and firing the big guns and this prejudice towards capital ship engagements definitely showed in his tactical thinking.

The timer counted down as the crews stood ready. At the forty-second mark, Phill once again opened an all-ships channel for a final order:

“All ships will fire as you bear and are free to manoeuvre as necessary to unmask batteries. No quarter, kill the bastards.”

There was an approving murmur in Fleet Ops. Everyone aboard knew of the carnage that this Goa’uld had wrought, both on the galaxy at large and on the Kobolians in particular. Mercy was not a feeling many of them were contemplating right now.

In a few seconds, the tactical display changed beyond all recognition. First, the two Ha’tak’s dropped out of hyperspace almost on top of the patrol group, which had already begun evasive action making the opening Goa’uld salvos miss by a wide margin.

Then the timer reached zero and the entire Task Force jumped into position. At the centre were the four huge Battlestars, centred on the Phoenix, while the other seven patrol groups had deployed in a hemisphere formation, bows pointed inwards at the enemy ships at the focal point. It was a perfect formation for focusing fire; every group could bring their guns to bear without the worry of shots missing their target and threatening friendly vessels on the far side.

Barely a second had passed after the jump when the human ships opened fire. The flagship’s superlaser lanced out and vaporised the lead Ha’tak, the outer framework and the centre pyramid disintegrating under the crushing power of the weapon.

The second Ha’tak lasted only a few seconds beyond that. Every ship, with the exception of the Franklin North and her destroyers that were still evading, fired their megalasers in a single concentrated punch. Sixty seven blood-red beams slammed into the pyramid ship from eight different directions, overwhelming the protective barriers in a matter of milliseconds and breaking through to vent their remaining strength on the hull. The plating peeled away, the compartments below exploding into flames as the atmosphere ignited briefly before being vented to space. The crew had barely half a second to scream before being incinerated.

The glare of the megalaser beams faded to reveal a ship that was already dying, so no second attack was launched. The Ha’tak was awash with flames as secondary explosions consumed more and more of the vessel, before finally something critical exploded in the centre section and reduced the big ship to chunks of debris.

Phill blinked. That’s all the time it had taken. Of course, he knew he had the drop on the enemy and considerably outgunned them, but it still amazed him that the big ships he loved so much could obliterate enemies quite so quickly.

He lifted the comm handset to his ear once more, having never actually put it back it the cradle and spoke on the still-open all-ships channel.

“Task Force will stand down from Action Stations. Everyone take a breather, the next move is Ba’al’s.”

It seemed that the enemy had not been able to send a warning about the presence of Battlestars, which meant Ba’al would have no idea just what happened to his two ships. This overlooked one critical element however; there had been Cylons aboard the two destroyed Ha’tak’s and even now their consciousness-bearing data streams were hurtling through subspace to be resurrected in the facilities on the orbiting shipyard.

Tel’Mok Shipyard, Resurrection Chamber,
One Hour Later

The now-lifeless body of one of those resurrected Cylons crashed to the deck in two pieces. Standing over the mess, Ba’al was utterly enraged. He’d sent his servants out on a simple mission to ambush one of the human groups before they closed the net on his base. A simple mission, destroy three light enemy ships, but his servants had somehow failed.

He had spent the last hour in the Resurrection Chamber, interrogating as many of them as possible. And one by one, when the answers proved to be ones he didn’t like, his incredibly sharp blade had struck out, beheading, dismembering and generally butchering the failures before him. Of course they’d simply resurrect again, but this would prove a useful learning experience for them.

His servants would not notice, and he himself had long since ceased to care, but his sanity was slipping ever more out of his grasp, especially where the Kobolians were concerned. Other human groups like those here in the new galaxy didn’t bother him, but the people of Terra and the Twelve Colonies caused him to lose his grip on things a little more each time something happened.

After all, they had been the last people to kill him, which tended to leave a mark on the psyche.

Finally, he had the complete picture. One which only drove him to further rage. The humans had reversed the ambush on him and worse still they had four of their cursed Battlestars nearby, one of which was even bigger than the ones he’d faced previously, almost as big as the fabled Wraith Hive Ships in fact. And it had a main weapon that could destroy his ships in a single shot.

His ships had taken barely six minutes to travel to the ambush site and he knew from his Cylon servants that plotting an FTL jump and spinning up the drives took several minutes at least, and these ships had jumped into perfect ambush positions which would have taken even longer to prepare. So unless their sensors were tracking his ships from the moment they left, they had to have had advance warning.

And it was unthinkable for their sensors to be that potent, as Tel’Mok had not yet been found. If it had, Ba’al had no doubt that whichever human was in command would have struck here immediately, rather than continuing their search. Thus there was only one inescapable conclusion.

He had a traitor in his midst, someone who had warned the humans somehow. That thought led to another of his servants losing their head, only for the System Lord to use his hand device to catch said head and hurl it at a second servant with enough force to kill them as well.

It was time for him to make some contingency plans. He stalked out of the Resurrection Chamber-turned-abattoir and to his throne room. As he marched, his servants noted the blood soaking his robes and wisely decided to say nothing. He barked out orders as he went, recalling every ship to Tel’Mok, ordering the shipyard to get as many ships as possible out into formation ready for the inevitable assault. He’d rather have a half-finished Basestar firing at the enemy than sitting helpless in dock. If needs be he’d use them as ramships.

He also issued orders to prepare his Al’kesh, the only one fitted with a jump drive, for an intergalactic voyage. If needs be he’d sneak away in the carnage and return to the home galaxy, there was bound to be some out of the way planet where he could start over yet again.

Finally, he prepared a new mental command for all his Cylon servants, an emergency code that would allow him to quickly exterminate them all if the traitors were more numerous and determined than he expected.

He was Ba’al, Last of the System Lords. He had survived Ra, survived Apophis, survived Anubis, defeated the Replicators, destroyed the Twelve Colonies and escaped the Asgard. He was not going to be beaten by a bunch of upstart humans. He began to wish he’d completed work on his time-travel plans and wiped out Earth decades ago, it would have solved so many problems.

========

Welp, here we go. The main combat action for Act One begins here, and Ba'al's mind slips a few notches further down the path of insanity. I told you Fireman would lead the First Fleet over the horizon like the proverbial cavalry.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

It's all starting to come together. Let's just hope Fireman's love of big ship firepower isn't his undoing.