Preparation For War

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*Authors note: Some liberties have been taken to spice up this story but the general content is 100% true

Koridon Prime was in the mist of mass construction, rows of factories as far as the eye could see were in the process of building the great Kaidan war machine.

2 Starports were assigned the duty to mass produce squadrons of fighters for the up coming battles. The scientists of Research Lab #3 were hard at work designing a MK2 version of the massively successful P2kT10k Engine. Jeff Blumberg was over seeing the project and was extremely pleased with the level of success his hand picked team of scientists and engineers were having.

“Jeff good to see you.”, came a voice from behind Jeff.

Jeff turned to see Jovien walking through the entrance to the main lab.

“Jovien…”, Jeff replied in a surprise voice, “I didn’t know you were coming here today…”

“No that’s the idea, I like to drop in on my best and brightest and see what they really do when they aren’t trying to impress.”, replied Jovien.

“I see, well you certainly have me surprised.”, joked Jeff, “I reckoned I wouldn’t see you till at least phase 4 of the design process.”

“I bet you did, but after reading the most recently progress report I just had to come and see what you guys do that is so different to my other research teams.”, explained Jovien.

“Sorry, what do you mean?”, queried Jeff.

“Well the MK1 engine took us almost a solid week of redesigning to finally get a half decent design working. You guys were giving the same design asked to improve it and on your first go you have blown the previous design cleaned out of the water.”,
Jovien smiled then added, “That’s pretty damn impressive for a team that has just been put together.”

“Suppose you’re right. But to be honest we just progressed the design in a logical fashion, we reduced the complexity of the material content by reduce the number of different materials in the overall design. That in turn reduced the manufacturing cost and in turn reduced size. Then we added some tweaks here and there with what we learnt from the members of the Galactic Alliance, though our design isn’t has impressive as their it is much more cost effective and as a very short development time, meaning we can field this design within a VERY short period of time.”, Jeff explained.

Jovien nodded understandably, “Yes the new engine is a vast improvement upon the old one, I have already issued orders for all manufacturing facilities to switch production to the more economic design once you have finalised it.”

Jeff smiled, “Thank you sir, I am glad to see you have the utmost confidence in the design. I as well as my team with endeavour to make sure we live up to your expectations.”

“You better do, this war is shaping up to be the war to end all wars, currently my forces are being deployed across the universe, but I fear I might be spread to thinly.”, replied Jovien.

Jeff smiled, “Understood”.

Hours later Jovien arrived at the Imperial Navy Command Centre on the homeworld.

“Admiral, any news?”, asked Jovien as he lifted his evening cup of coffee.

“Actually yes, Baron, it seems Exodist has declared war on Zelik early this morning.”, replied the Admiral.

Jovien coughed and spat out his coffee onto the holomap table.

“WHAT!?”, he gagged.

Admiral Greyward laughed, “You ok there Jov? You didn’t take that to well…”

“Of course I didn’t, we effectively declared war several hours early, what the hell…?”, snapped Jovien. “What was he thinking? Do we have a response to this act of war? Did the 4 horsemen declare war on us?”, hurrily queried Jovien.

“No sir, the cease fire is still in effect, what has changed is that Zelik has engaged Exodists forces and are in the process of annihilating him.”, informed the Admiral.

“Damn it, why did he declare war early Admiral, do we know?”, asked Jovien.

“Yes, apparently Governor Exodist was required to attend a important conference in another part of the galaxy, he feared that the 4 horsemen would attack his people while he wasn’t there and so declared a preemptive war.”, explained the Admiral.

Jovien shook his head, “Fool, what a complete fool.”, “So he declares war then runs off to a conference effectively leaving his people defenceless till he returns… Clever, he should of just waited for the 4 horsemen to declare the war on him, declaring war early has just made him a easy pre-war target for Zelik to annihilate.”, Jovien continued.

“Agreed.”, concurred the Admiral.

“At any rate that’s not our problem… On to more pressing matters.”, Jovien directed. “What is the status of my corvette production?”
“At the minute it is non-existent, we have confirmed we have indeed ran out of the base rares for the engine design. Without them we can’t effectively produce any corvettes.”, replied the Admiral.

“Damn it, even with the new design specification of the engine?”, asked Jovien.

The Admiral shook his head, “Unfortunately no, while the new design is very efficient and more economical we just don’t we the amounts of minerals available to produce the engine in any number.”

Jovien sipped on his coffee once again then replied, “Hmmm, that’s not good, if we can’t produce a fleet then we will have to rely heavily on our allies for defence. That’s just not reasonable at the minute.”

“That’s not necessarily true, our Crane mark 1 fighters are in full production, we have about 300-400 of them at present with more being produced. However we have hit a snag.”, informed the Admiral.

“Snag?”, ask Jovien.

“Yes while these fighters are a basic but effective design, we can only deploy them in massive numbers. Unfortunately there is a slight issue with this… Fielding so many fighters at once is crippling our command centre direct ability, we effectively are overloaded trying to coordinate so many ships at once in his one planetary or space environment.”, explained Greyward.

“Hmmm I see your point Admiral.”, replied Jovien.

“But I have taken the liberity of checking the historical Galactic Alliance archives for a possible solution.”, informed the Admiral.

Jovien glanced at the Admiral, “Sorry Admiral I’m not quite sure why you are wasting your time doing that, please explain your reasoning.”

The Admiral grinned, “I’d be happy too, you see long ago, when humanity still existed on just one homeworld. Humans like in space had created multiple nations each armed with their own military. In the early 20th century naval warfare was reaching a turning point with the invention of fighters. Before like today massive fleets of ships would engage each other at range striking one another till one’s armour and structure failed. The victor was declared once all the opposing vessels were sank. But with the invention of fighters came the ability to remotely project that damage capability far beyond the range of any ship to ship armaments. This meant a ship carrying fighters could out range a normal equipped warship with ship to ship weaponary. In the 20th century it was realised that ships carrying fighters were massively more effective in combat than even the most advanced Battleships. Hence the advent of carrier warfare.”

Jovien smiled, “I like the way this is going. You think that fighters alone aren’t good enough, you are thinking we need a platform to deploy them from?”

“Exactly, at present, with CP limits being what they are it would be best to assign fighters to a carrier based unit, and deploy the carrier to areas of operation. Once combat starts we can deploy fighter directly into the environment from the carrier and maximize our strike capability.”, explained the Admiral.

“Interesting, very interesting, just one small issue Admiral, if I may.”, queried Jovien.

“Of course.”, replied the Admiral.

“This doesn’t solve the CP limit once the fighters are deployed does it? Having 50 fighters in one environment is going to take space 50 corvettes or larger vessels could take.”, questioned Jovien.

“You are entirely correct. However thinking in terms of logistics, carriers aren’t meant to be sent to planets fight fleets of corvettes, the fighters being deployed just don’t have the capability to deal enough damage. Instead the carriers are meant to be deployed as a means to project attacks into enemy territory with expandable units. While 50 fighters have little chance against a corvette, against a colony they could wreak it within hours.”, explained the Admiral.

Jovien pondered on the idea for a second, “Yes I see your point.”, Jovien paused for a second then said, “Ok Admiral, I want you to go to the research lab 5 and ask them to produce a quick design for a corvette carrier, tell them it must be fast and able to deploy fighters rapidly into any environment, also tell them it needs to be designed from commons as rares are to valuable right now.”

The Admiral saluted, “Indeed Baron, I will issue the directive immediately.”

Jovien walked over the holomap, it currently displayed the surface of the homeworld. Jovien pushed one of the control buttons on the edge of the table and the image transformed into that of the system. He knew the up coming war was going to be tough, he just didn’t know how tough it really was going to be…

*Authors note: War had already begun has I wrote the 2nd part of this story, see A Newbie Tale: Declaration of War for the incite into the first night of warfare for the people of the Kaidan Imperium.


Continue reading Declaration of War

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