Operation Allied Protector

Kalora tossed the report on her desk 'Damnit Narik' she said under her breath looking up at her executive officer.

'You know this means the Board are never going to give up their claim on this system, no matter what the ISA and the Alliance say, I was hoping the initial surveys were wrong'

'Yes ma'am, Retaria is brimming with heavier elements, we've gone over the results three times, and the surveys have been repeated by different ships, this system is full to the brim with everything we could ever hope for'

The ISA surveys had found in favour of the Humans. It was not unexpected, but the decision had been made faster than anticipated, and it was wrong. Resha-Kar had been ordered to cease mining operations in the Khilsiek system, of which Retaria had now been deemed part, and the Earth Alliance was moving a small force of ships to enforce the order, at the request of the Khilsiek government naturally.

Things had gone badly for the humans from there, reports began to surface of Earth Alliance ships attacking civilians all across the system, and while the earth alliance had offered to deal with the problem, an offer that had been accepted by the Khilsiek government, other major factions had objected since the Humans would be defending them from humans. it was inevitable that a split would occur, and now there were 2 major factions on Khilsiek. 

Kalora smiled slightly, it was amazing what one could find on the secondary market these days. The Human Laertes had been out of use by their military for over 50 years, and there had been plenty of other ships salvaged by various parties in the Dilgar and Minbari wars available for sale if one knew where to look.

Progress on mining their first amazing find had been a lot faster than anticipated. The decision had been made to simply remove the asteroid from the system, rather than process it in situ and thus remove it from any future negotiations. It was, or rather had been, fairly substantial. Over one and a quarter million cubic meters, and massing just over 7 million metric tons. In just 4 weeks they had managed to break it up and load up the rocks into their large cargo ships, The Resha-Goliath, Behemoth and Colossus, overseen by the specially converted Resha-Prospector. All were converted Dilgar Eskravats that were still in service after 30 years after their capture. 

A Klaxon sounded as the ship went to Yellow alert.
'Report' she ordered as she contacted the bridge.

'Sensors have detected a force of Earth Alliance warships moving towards our location, they have ordered us to surrender our vessels and prepare to be boarded....'

In the previous encounter with Earth Force the forces of the Resha-Kar corporation were able to defend their claim to the Retaria system and make a nice addition to their fleet in the form of a captured Olympus-class corvette. With the ISA determining that the Brown Dwarf at the center of the Retaria system was in the gravitational influence of the Khilsiek star Resha-Kars hope of mining the mineral rich system is under threat. Fortunately, contact with Aliens has precipitated a civil war in the Khilsiek system, with the Earth Alliance siding with one faction, and Resha-Kar with another. The scene is set for a proper shooting war, on a limited scale as the Brakiri and Earth Alliance are both ISA members, as they aim to decide which faction will emerge victorious in Khilsiek. 
The Earth Alliance takes the initiative and jumps a force to Retaria to drive the Brakiri off and decide the war in a single stroke.

Earth Alliance

The EA Force has a few new additions

    The Earth Alliance has had a few reinforcements, and are putting them to the test. The centerpiece of the force is the EAS Furious, freshly repaired and anxious for some payback, supported by an Avenger carrier, and a pair of Hermes to give the EA force a respectable 14 fighter flights, a mix of Auroras and Thunderbolts. The Avenger also provides fleet carrier so the fighters can potentially be recycled, and +1 Command pushing their total initiative to +2. Rounding out the mix is a pair of potent Artemis heavy frigates with their superb all round firepower, and an Oracle-class scout cruiser for the ever valuable scout.

Omega-class destroyer: EAS Furious

Avenger-class fleet carrier: EAS Invincible

Artemis Class Heavy Frigates: EAS Apollo, EAS Dido

Oracle Class scout cruiser: EAS Cassandra

Hermes Class: EAS Wayfarer, EAS Ben-my-Chree

Resha-Kar

The Brakiri force includes some unofficial ships

    The Brakiri fleet was along similar lines to previously, the core of the fleet being the Brokados and a pair of Haltonas, This gives me a useful number of fighters, and some hard hitting ships with Graviton beams. Backing these up are a pair of Haltana-class gravitic frigates. These are very useful and quite potent ships with an impressive 5 Gravitic shifters apiece, so they can make a nuisance of themselves and potentially deal damage to multiple enemy ships if I can concentrate their fire. backing these up are a pair of Rakarta-class patrol ships, and a Halikorta-class escort cruiser. These last 3 ships are all homebrew designs that i've tried to ensure are well balanced, and my opponent kindly allowed me to playtest them. the Rakartas are there primarily as initiative sinks, and the Halikorta will hopefully be able to even the odds fighter wise since the EA fighters are better than mine, and I'm outnumbered 14-8.

For reference, the Halik hulls are represented here by Antophs, and the Brokados is represented by a Torsha.

Brokados-class Battle Carrier. Resha-Emissary

Haltona-class Frigate: Resha-Defender, Resha-Guardian

Haltana-class Gravitic Frigate. Resha-Inflexible. Resha-Inexorable

Halikorta-class Escort Cruiser Resha-Shield

Rakarta-class Patrol Ship: Resha-Vigil, Resha-Watch

Deployment

The Earth Alliance fleet deploys to intercept the Brakiri

 

   We randomly generated the terrain for a no-nonsense battle, and the Brakiri lost the initiative to deploy, I used the terrain to shield some of my ships from line of sight, and the rest were deployed so i could rush them into the cover of a dustcloud and prevent the Earth Alliance from getting any easy shots. I was hoping splitting my force this way would mean i would be able to pincer the Earth Alliance if they went for one of my 2 forces, and make it harder for the Omega to pick a suitable target to shoot from turn to turn.

The Earth Alliance counter deployed, with the entire force looking like it was going to come straight at me.

Turn 1

    The Brakiri lost the Initiative on the first turn, and as planned, my flanking force of 2 Haltanas and the Rakartas dove into the cover of a dustcloud, while the remainder of the force used all stop to stay behind the asteroid belt. I wasn't sure what the humans would do, so I wanted to keep my ships in position to assist each other if needs be. 

The Earth Alliance advance...

    The only concern was the number of starfury's that would soon be on the field, but i was confident the Halikorta could level the playing field when the time came. The Brokados was able to scramble fighters, and the Earth Alliance advanced towards the Brakiri force but hadn't committed to attacking any particular force at this point. Their fighter strength swelled we moved into turn 2

..and the Brakiri hold position.

Turn 2.

    The Earth Alliance continued to close the distance, with the EAS-Dido taking the lead supported by a swarm of fighters. the rest of the Human force was behind, with lighter forces ahead of the Omega and Avenger and the Oracle moved towards the human right flank to get a better angle for scouting. The Brakiri continued to move carefully, with the Rakartas and Haltanas hugging cover.

The Earth Alliance continue to close, but the EAS Dido is a little too exposed...

 

   With the EAS Dido in the lead, the pair of Haltona's moved out of cover enough to get some shots off into the Heavy frigate, but not so much as they would be exposed to return fire, while a trio of Falkosi flights attacked straight into the heart of the earth alliance fighter force. Hopefully this would throw them off balance, and since I was moving my fighters second, I could gang up on a lone enemy flight and push the fight in my favour.
    I also positioned them so that if the Earth Alliance swarmed them as seemed likely, my Halikorta would be able to get into escort range on the next turn and provide a decent amount of anti-fighter. The dogfight went in favour of the Brakiri, although the fighters were able to return to the Avenger for resupply. The first shots came from the EAS Dido as it opened up on anything it could. to little effect, and seeing the Humans fire first for the second encounter in a row, Director Kalara gave the order to return fire. the Resha-Guardian opened up with the Graviton beam. the shot punched clean through the frigates hull and the guardian raked the shot across the flank of the ship. perforating every compartment. A few escape pods launched from the flaming wreck, but it was clear that the ship was going to undergo rapid unscheduled disassembly is short order. The Resha-Defender had a clear shot as well, but the Guardian had done the job in a single shot, it held fire, only sending a few shots into the advancing earth alliance fighters in an attempt to shoot a few of them down, which it failed to do

Turn 3.

With the Brakiri forces now about to commit, the earth alliance moved forwards, the Resha-Emissary had unmasked itself to get a long range shot off at the EAS Apollo, and this left it open for the EAS Furious to open fire with it's main weapon. the shot was wide at first, but the Furious corrected the shot and the beam connected with the ship causing serious damage, but redundancies kicked in to maintain the power supply to the forward weapons. the impact knocked the Emissary off its axis slightly, and the medium laser shot passed in front of the Apollo which had commenced firing wildly at everything in range, and landed hits on several Brakiri ships.

The Brakiri catch the Earth Alliance in a pincer

    Not to be outdone by its sister ship, the Resha-Defender opened fire on the Apollo. The Heavy frigate disappeared in a massive explosion sending debris in all directions. the ship was lost with all hands just as the EAS Dido was succumbing to the damage caused and it too was torn apart by internal explosions. fire too was levelled at the pair of Hermes, First EAS Wayfarer and then EAS Ben-my-Chree were disabled by fire from the Brakiri ships.

and quickly dispatch the light ships

 

   The Earth Alliance response was not quite as spectacular, but it saw the Starfury's rapidly overwhelm the Brakiri fighters, despite the Resha-Shield targetting them, their evasive maneuvers proved to be far too erratic for the escort ship to hit anything, and the thunderbolts flew into the Brakiri formation and unleashed a torrent of missiles into the Resha-Defender causing light damage. The Resha-Inflexible caught the worst of the human wrath, first shots from the Apollo had punched holes through the ships hull, and now fire from the EAS Furious landed a direct hit on the primary fire control system seriously damaging it and leaving the ship struggling to find targeting solutions, 

The Resha-Shield too took fire from the Furious' forward batteries which damaged the cruisers engines and disabled several of the ships weapons. fires ripped through the ship injuring scores of the crew and damage control teams.

Turn 4.

    The Earth Alliance had lost all of their screen, but their main combat power, the Omega and their fighters were largely intact, and the number of Falkosi's was dwindling. The attrition continued with more Brakiri fighters being destroyed. some made it back to the Emissary but the majority were destroyed by the superior human fighters. The Shield's anti-fighter armament again opened fire but the targeting was off, and only a handful of the Earth Alliance fighters were hit. the ship stumbled forwards its damaged engines barely able to move the ship. This allowed the Furious to aim its primary armament, and the Shield was hit. The Heavy laser cannon punched through the ships armour, and knocked out the engines and reactor leaving the ship drifting helplessly. The Emissary was also targeted the forward pulse cannons beating down the ships interceptor grid and scoring numerous hits, and also allowed a flurry of missiles from the thunderbolts to also find their marks. Damaged but not beaten, the Emissary returned fire, but the Laser scored only minor damage.

EA Fighters continue their attack as the Brakiri concentrate their fire on the Furious

 

   The Humans had done their worst, and now the Brakiri responded. the Guardian, Defender, Inflexible and Inexorable had maneuvered themselves between the Furious and EAS Cassandra, and were able to target all 3 of the remaining Human ships. The Cassandra was instantly disabled by concentrated fire, and the Furious herself endured a pounding. The Guardian scoring the most damage as the Graviton beam ripped the side of the omega to pieces, the ship was at the center of a raging inferno and emerged damaged but still largely intact and dangerous. The Invincible too was targeted, but there was far less fire directed at the ship and it suffered only minor damage. with their escorts gone, fighters dwindling, and now being outmaneuvered by the more numerous Brakiri ships, the Captain of the EAS Furious received a hail from the Emissary.

At close range, the Resha-Shield is disabled by the Furious, but it's too little, too late

'This is the Director Kalora of the Resha-Emissary to the Earth Alliance fleet. Cease fire, surrender your ships, and prepare to be boarded. If you do not comply, we will kill you.'

21-5 
Brakiri Victory

Conclusions.

This battle was fairly one sided. The Brakiri plan had been to catch the Earth Alliance in a pincer and thus be able to bring all their weapons to bear on multiple ships, and it worked very well. It was helped by several very excellent beam shots throughout the game on the Brakiri side, and below average results for the humans. The Halikorta did not perform very well. out of 16 Anti-fighter shots (needing 5+) I landed 1, and this meant that the EA fighters were really starting to have an effect. the only other weapon I had that could reliably deal with the fighters were the gravitic shifters. I'm happy overall with how things proceeded. The Rakartas didn't do much, and they proved to be poorly armed and not very agile, quite tough though.

On the earth alliance side, I can see several mistakes. The Hermes' should not have gotten as close as they did, they were both shot down very very quickly. The EA also failed to take maximum advantage of their fighters. I think they should have slowed their movement slightly, and let the starfury's work for a couple of turns, and they should have gone after the ships that weren't covered by the Escort. As it was, the escort did nothing, but the EA could easily have lost 5 flights of fighters more than they did over 2 turns. The EA also did not focus their fire very well, in the end I lost 1 ship, and had damage on several others, which totaled more what one ship could take. I think the EA were also unfortunate that the Brakiri beams were on form, and out of 3 shots I made with the Graviton beams, all 3 were well above average (the Brokados' medium laser whiffed though)

Now Resha-Kar needs to decide what to do with the Surrendered human ships, and who they are going to sell the salvaged wrecks to, maybe the ships are only moderately damaged and can be repaired

I hope you enjoyed the report, and I will see you next time

Main Image: Omega by R Salcombe, Starfury by Fabio Passaro, Image by MagnierML
STL's by Tyrel Lohr