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Don't care; just give me hot ship-on-ship action.

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Total Members Voted: 2

[Sanyachan]

Nod. "I have time."

--snip--

Bide our time, and keep talking if it helps. Once Hades is a bit more stable, we should report everything we've learned from Dauntless to High Command: the particular capabilities of our enemies, and any intel we have on their fleet yards. At this point, we should consider ourselves at war with the Builders.

+1 to the above

[Iris]

The Commander thought to himself. A ship with issues, in this case, is a multi-kiloton mass of issues with a whole host of small repeating guns, a brace of rockets, and enough parasites to defend a merchant convoy or be a thorn in the side of a larger fleet. You simply couldn't afford letting them run around unstable.

A sailor was replacable. Not as an individual - they were still human - but each midshipman could do the same duties as any other midshipman. All he (or increasingly in these days, she) needed was basic training for their position and a willingness to study under their superior officers. One the other hand, a ship represented a small fortune's worth of red brass, at least six months in shipyard, and a crew of hundreds. It simply wasn't economical to replace one every time they had a bit of a tantrum.

Was that the only reason he did this? Or was there... ulterior motivations?

Hades' elevated breathing brought the Commander back to reality. She seemed to be recovering, slowly.

"T-thank you, Commander."

"You're welcome."

"I should go."

"You can stay, if you'd like. I still have time."

The ship stood up. Her tone was insistent.

"No. I'm fine."

"Alright. I'll be busy for a bit, but after that, you should be able to talk to me."

"There's probably something I need to focus on, anyway. Thank you again, Commander. Take care~"

The cheery, sing-song tone was evidently forced, but Hades looked very earnest. She seemed to ask, 'are you going to challenge me?'.

"Just remember you're still a soldier."

"I'll be sure to~"


Through an interstellar telegraph link - extremely expensive, and limited only to the military - the Commander spends some time relaying all of the intelligence learned from Dauntless to a representative of High Command. He authorizes the Commander to take action against the Builders when ready but warns him that there may be consequences for botched missions. The representative also encourages the Commander to continue to reverse-engineer Dauntless, and give regular updates of his progress - hinting that the Bureau of Design and Materiel may have plans for her and the Builders' technology.

[Superdorf]

Hmm. We're likely not ready to stage an attack, and we won't know how best to build up our strength until we have a better grasp of Dauntless' tech. Best to wait on doing anything too dramatic.

Business as usual, then, with a focus on preparing our manufacturing base for when the reverse-engineer goes through—we should consult with Dauntless on which industries will be helpful to found/expand, for the efficient production of vessels like her.

…before we do anything, it'd be worth taking a general stock of our resources. Cash, foundries, industry deals: what's available to us right now?

[Iris]

The Commander, wanting to be cautious, delayed fighting the Builders for now. He wanted to take stock of the situation, first. Genevieve, naturally, was always on top of things.

"Genevieve, what is our fleet strength?"

"Nominal. A half-dozen capital ships - Venus, her two sisters, two of the Luna-class... have you met the battlecruiser?"

The Commander raised an eyebrow.

"Battlecruiser?"

"Oh, sorry, 'large cruiser'." Genevieve was evidently unamused.

"Genevieve..."

"I hate it when people split hairs over terminology. How is she not a battlecruiser? It's ridiculous."

The Commander crossed his arms. Genevieve rolled her eyes and continued to read off of a clipboard she had in her possession.

"No full-sized carriers, I'm afraid. Just four Hades-class."

"We'll be hurting for parasite capacity."

"Yes. There's also the four small cruisers, two Cassandra-class and two Lilith-class. Picket ships are four Peony-class, four older Bumblebee-class. Then the interceptors- 10 C-class, 5 D-class, 9 E-class."

"And that's it?"

"For now." Genevieve set down the clipboard.

"Thank you, Genevieve."

"You're welcome. Just make sure you win."


The Commander put out feelers to his associates at the Bureau of Design and Materiel, the entity responsible for wartime production. The engineer he talked to - an excitable young man named Lieutenant Jackson - gave him an overview of the situation. Since it had been some time since the last war, and certainly not one of this scale, it would take time to mobilize - but he promised that the Bureau would dedicate as much as is reasonable to alien production. Many of the mundane industries would need to ramp up, but had been languishing unused; the red brass industry would appreciate the surge in demand, and many of the naval rifle foundries had been having financial difficulty due to a lack of orders. Lt. Jackson assured the Commander that the human-technology war machine would be more than up to any task he demanded of it. The Commander would not want for material resources. He also said that he would see about contacting specialist industry if the Commander wanted something in particular made or retrofitted. He projected that the retrofit would take a long time to complete, but some things will be discovered relatively quickly - as it is an ongoing process.


After consulting with Genevieve, the Commander went to talk to Dauntless a third time.

"So you've come back to me again. If I didn't know any better, I'd say you enjoy debriefing me, Commander."

The Commander brushed it off. "Just business, I'm afraid."

"Of course. What do you need to know about?"

"What would we need to build up to produce vessels like you?"

Dauntless chucked. "You can't be serious, Commander."

They stared at each other for a brief moment, neither of them yielding.

"...you are serious."

"Yes."

"Well, then. First, you would absolutely need to develop your steel industry to produce aether-safe metal. You will simply not be able to produce ships of my size quickly enough otherwise. This takes years, Commander. I don't think you have that kind of time."

"We have you to reverse-engineer. I wouldn't count us out yet."

"Commander, do you know just how outclassed you are? This is a guerilla war. Hit and run. You just don't have the capacity to stand and fight. It's not a contest."

"And I'm supposed to take you at your word?"

"Frankly, Commander, yes."

The Commander was slightly amused. "I will take your advice into consideration, Dauntless. But first, the industry."

"Your electronics industry is almost nonexistent. What is this 'mechanical' garbage you use? It won't work for missile targeting. You need real computers. The reverse-engineer will take some time before you can produce any of this, which you will need if you want to retrofit missiles onto your ships. You need something to fight with, and you need it soon. I would recommend a strike on their fleet yards. Capture anything you can and destroy anything you can't. I'm ready, Commander. I'll do it if you ask of me."

"Vessel, I'm not sure you're ready. You have a lot of... unresolved tension with your Builders, and I'm afraid that it may cloud your judgement."

"Commander, if you told me to burn the whole fleet to the ground, I would do it. Nothing will stop me."

"You said you carry... 22 large missiles? Would that be enough for a raid?"

Dauntless was bashful. "About that, Commander. 22 missiles is my nominal capacity."

"...how many missiles are you carrying, Dauntless?"

"Right now? Four."

[Sanyachan]

>What can we target? Ask Dauntless about admin centres, industrial complexes, supply lines we can strike. Perhaps we could intercept material shipments?

[Dwarmin]

The thought of old soldiers and bold soldiers had been orbiting rings around The Commanders head for a few days. Bold soldiers weren't Bad Soldiers, but they didn't always live to be Old Soldiers, and Old Soldiers had to remember how to be Bold Soldiers to be Good Soldiers...and so on and so forth, a maddening nursery rhyme tune stuck on repeat in his head...

But, he supposed there was something new in his consciousness, a sort of steeling of the spine that happens right before violence would soon go from future hypothetical to happening now. He felt they had to act, and soon. If they denied their enemy a strong point to invade it would drastically slow down the progress of any invasion...

If you were totally outgunned in a fight, victory was simply surviving long enough. Strength and size came with drawbacks. The Builders could only have so many ships, and so much space to patrol-Dauntless had said they were Warlike, which implied at least they had many enemies and potentially unruly citizens. You couldn't take something without the ability to hold it. Otherwise you lost it someone stronger.

So the question to him wasn't so much how much damage they could do, not now-but what would bring the most value to staying in the fight.

...

He had a white board he worked on sometimes. Just when he needed the act of writing something down and looking at it. Stupid ritual behavior. Did it belong to his grandfather? His mother? Or maybe he just absorbed it like osmosis from someplace else.

He considered the technological imbalance they would be facing.

The enemy possessed powerful guided missiles and improved speed. And likely everything else, sure, why not. Assume a massive, ridiculous technological advantage-Parasites that could defeat theirs 10 to 1, guns that could fire faster and hit more reliably, armor that could resist their most well placed shots, excellent jamming and interception tech, and a coffee machine in the officer lounge that actually works.

The Builders had all the tools to sit back and take potshots. Any ship with a brain would not usually risk putting themselves into range of guns, not when you could just watch the little blips on the screen make the enemy blip disappear. They had the superior maneuvering and firepower, so any conflict was a nose dive for them-as soon as it got out of knife fighting range, they'd immediately be in an increasingly worse position to continue fighting.

...

Had heard of a trick the Stalls-what some called the navy of the Albion Star Kingdom due to their often patient and cautious strategies-did sometimes. They'd cripple a ship and maybe tow her somewhere, but you'd keep the lights on and wouldn't otherwise make any effort to assault it. You'd listen in. And every communication you caught got sent out in a broadband wave. Everyone would know where she was...if they wanted to come and help, they'd have to step into the trap. A proverbial honeypot and Albion, which prided itself on a sort of honor, made no deceptive notions about the strategies they used. They openly admitted it. Anyone who went to war with them knew that-since their wars were always defensive ones. At least, that was the popular government line.

It was funny how often you could defensively invade someone to defend against the attack they surely would have done had you not invaded them.

...

He'd been surprised at his recordings, with how many times enemy ships came charging in-taking the bait. It was a lot of pressure. Listening. Day after day to someone else suffering. Someone you cared about. Sometimes it wasn't even a trap at all. Just a misdirection Sometimes nobody got out. Or the next day they were transmitting the signals from multiple captured vessels.

Well, that was why nobody liked fighting them, anyway.

His thoughts circled around to how cruel this war might really get if they wanted to win.

...

Yeah, sentient ships were weird. Some of them liked to fight. And some of them could be oddly cautious. And some of them even had friends. Could he learn from that? Profit from that?

Too many questions, but he was getting too old to sleep on them.

...

Action:
>The question is, what do we most need, and what is the easiest way to get it? Pow-wow with Dauntless and the Fleet about this.

>Ask Dauntless about the personality of her fellow ships in the Builders fleet, as much as a general consensus as she herself was one of them. How do they tend to be? Are they overly proud and consider others beneath them? Note that Dauntless herself seems to echo this idea. Are they conservative of supplies or wasteful? Risk takers? Loyal to fault, or do they exhibit any out of the box thinking?

[Iris]

"Dauntless. What was it like, serving in the fleet? What were your commanders like, your sisters, your crew?"

"Well..."

--
She was passion, she was glory, she was the Goddess of War herself. Empires fell at her will. With the launch of a missile she could destroy a flagship. With her aether-furnace she was nothing less than a bolt of lightning. She was beauty, grace, Death.

Who dared to question her? Not her Commander - not the old soldier in front of her, who would never be hers, not truly - but the Valkryie to her Freyja. She was the instrument of death, and the one that sat on her bridge chose the ones to be killed. None could resist her. Men died. Mountains fell. An endless cycle of conquering, subjugating, slaughter! Her enemies would fall before her, her sisters would fall behind her.

Some of her sisters were reluctant. Some of them were eager and bold. All of them were proud. And why shouldn't they have been? They were warriors on a holy crusade. They were the chosen ones. Soon there would be an empire spanning worlds! Soon there would be riches beyond belief!

When she fought she was an acrobat. When she crippled those bitches that dared to challenge her, she was an instrument of justice. All would see her might.
--

"We were close. I spoke, and they followed. I lead them to glory, and they served me faithfully."

"All of them?"

"Some were individually-minded, others followed orders slavishly. Some pushed hard and exploited any weakness they could find, others were cautious and lead our enemies into traps. A certain level of independent thought was encouraged by our commanders."

"How did they react to failure?"

Dauntless looked away. A shadow passed over her face. "...I'd rather not talk about that, Commander."

"Alright. Your crew?"

"I never met them much, only my Commander. She was... an interesting individual."

"How so?"

"That's between the two of us."

"Dauntless, how am I supposed to fight if you aren't honest with me?"

"Commander." Dauntless looked firm, like her spine was made of steel.

"Very well. How did they use materials?"

"Commanders hated it when we overused, but everyone did it. There were always spares."


Later, the Commander gathered a selection of members of the Fleet - the new transfers, Dauntless, and Genevieve - in a large conference room on the observation deck. There was a whiteboard on one wall, which the Commander stood beside.

"You are here because we are facing a battle against a superior foe. The odds are not in our favour. There is one question that weighs on us - what do we most need and how can we get it?"

There was silence for a moment, then Venus put her hand up.

"Well, we'd need to even the advantage somehow. What do we have that they don't? We can exploit this."

Hyacinth perked up but didn't say anything.

"Hyacinth?"

"Information," the slight girl said immediately. "If we kept the monopoly on intelligence, we could have the inititive."

The Commander nodded. "What else?"

"Commander, if you kept the balance of power favouring you, they would have a much harder time making any attacks. We were always used to having the upper hand - something that made us think we were outclassed would cause indecisiveness and confusion."

"Yes," Genevieve said. "The ship is onto something, Commander. Strike once, demoralize them, break the links between the ships and their commanders. You might even get a few to defect."

"How are we going to accomplish this?" asked the Commander.

"Well, Commander, I see two ways to do it. Either we do a sneak attack - parasites, as much stealth as we can, the works - or we get her" - she pointed at Dauntless - "to attack something symbolic. They listen to her, right? The knowledge that she's fighting for us might be worth something."

[Superdorf]

"Shock and awe is only of help to us if it also gives us materiel. We don't have the supplies to make a second attack like this—if we don't piggyback off our enemies to get it, we'll be dead in the water."

"On that note, a stealth strike might be our best bet. If we can get clean hold of a fleet yard, without letting on who we are, we'll have your morale—" the Commander nods at Dauntless— "and your informational—" he nods at Hyacinth— "upper hand."

"Three questions, Dauntless. First: what would it take to convince more of your kind to defect to us? Second: what internal enemies of the Builders can we imitate—pretend to be, even? Who do they fear?"

"Third: how much prep time do we have before somebody figures out where you are?"

[Iris]

"You would have to convince them of two things - to leave, and to fight with us. They are... loyal, Commander. I was, too, before they betrayed me. You would have to show them the truth, or at least show them that they're better off with us. If you had some kind of catalyst, somehow..."

Dauntless shook her head.

"I'm not sure how to do it. I'm sorry, Commander."

She took a moment to gather herself, before continuing.

"You have a couple weeks, maybe a month. Not much time to do a retrofit."

"Oh, rogues. I know what to imitate."

"Excuse me?"

"Sometimes ships go rogue, end up committing piracy or raiding installations. Sometimes they did it because their commanders wanted to revolt, or sometimes they did it because they were fed up with something. We always hated dealing with them - they were still our sisters."

[Superdorf]

"Ships do go rogue, then. We might have potential allies there."

[Iris]

"They are... difficult to reach, Commander. But yes, I believe they may be an ally to us."

[Superdorf]

Tentative plan time, then. I'm gonna let the Commander work out some of the details.

Pick a lightly patrolled supply station, with more raw material than ships—vessels are sapient, so we can't trust our ability to get them working for us. Once we have a good site in mind, work out how much force we'd need to take it down: can we pull off a takeover without Dauntless? If so, make it happen, with more firepower than we think we need. Mark our vessels with the brand of a known rogue group, ideally one with a fondness for theatrics. If we generate some publicity for the right rogues, maybe we can get them interested enough to contact us for a potential deal.

If Dauntless isn't needed for the supply raid, we might consider a bit of additional terrorism. Hit-and-run, somewhere that hurts—one missile, maybe two, an angry one-liner (ideally, insinuating that Dauntless has gone rogue, without affiliating her with any particular group)—then she's gone. The two attacks should seem unconnected at first glance.

In the slightly longer-term, we need a power base with no obvious connection to our home-world(s). New anchorage in an asteroid belt, maybe, with a great big steel foundry nearby? The nature of our polity is to be kept deathly secret—any new vessel we build or capture is not to be informed of its central location.

When this is all said and done, we need to talk to somebody about starting a propaganda campaign. The grander we can make this war appear to our people, the better.

[Sanyachan]

Superdorf's plan sounds good. Propaganda is always good, and each war needs reasons why we're the good guys and they're not

[Eschar]

And the threat of imminent annihilation makes for a pretty good us-vs-them narrative. The knowledge that we are ludicrously outmatched in pitched battle may also be useful to that narrative - underdogs and all that - but would need to be carefully managed to avoid destroying morale and avoid defeatism or deserters.

[Iris]

All through the base, there was a buzz of anticipation. Everyone had heard of the impending raid by now - the news had spread like wildfire - and they were waiting for the order to attack. The air was practically electric. The mood was that particular mix of grim and eagerness that one only found among soldiers.


"Commander, if you were to attack this station right here--"

Dauntless pointed to the star chart laid out on the table, encircling one particular cold blue star in red ink.

"--you would only have to fight two or three small patrol craft. No parasites, and only two large missiles each. The rest would be in mothballs: unconscious, and unable to attack you."

"Would you give us good odds?"

"If you attacked with overwhelming force? Maybe."


The vessels laid up in drydock - Venus and her sister Mars; two cruisers, Cassandra and Cressida; Hades and her sister Persephone; and a couple of picket ships and interceptors - were hastily being painted over. The Commander and Genevieve had calculated that they could have taken the anchorage comfortably with four cruisers and four picket ships, so they naturally decided to bring most of a fleet. There was no disguising their brass hulls and gun armament, so care was taken to cross out the Colonial Fleet badges, give them purple pirate markings, and, at Dauntless' insistence, some choice anti-Builder slogans. According to her, this would make the ships dead ringers for the Daughters of Reckless - one of Dauntless' sisters that had gone rogue long ago, taking a small fleet with her. Reckless had abandoned her fleet because she had grown disillusioned with expansionism, and fought alongside the Builder's enemies until - increasingly bitter, desperate, and unstable - she began press-ganging the same ships she had fought alongside into her service and preyed on any soft target she could find regardless of the flag it flew. She also had a flair for the dramatic, which would make the Daughters the perfect false flag.


Venus looked at her new paint job in her hand mirror. In her human form, it manifested as purple war paint all over her face and upper body.

"Commander, I won't question your decision, but are you certain this is a good look?"

"Of course. You look fantastic."

"Thank you."


"Should I go dramatic? Something like 'I shall fight you until my furnace burns no more!' Or should I be more... brooding? 'I served you and you betrayed me. Now I will make you pay.'"

"You want to go for something that suggests resentment, but makes you look like a lone actor. We can't afford them linking the two attacks."

"Brooding, then."


The makeshift battlefleet dropped into the system, wearing their new colours and with hastily-stitched flags flying from their masts. They had made sure to approach from the opposite side of the sun; a tactic in aether-combat as old as time, but one that still was effective on occasion. The anchorage - really more of a supply depot - was on the other side, though it was impossible to tell what it held from this angle. The aether was tense with anticipation: soon they would cross the star and into full view of the installation.

The ships passed the harsh blue light of the star, out into the open. They could see in their scopes that there were two patrol ships - tiny, and flying the Builders' flag, an emblem resembling a cogwheel dappled with greens and browns. The two sides stared at each other for a brief moment, and then all Hell let loose.

The force of the "Daughters" started a mad dash towards the anchorage, cannons blazing, but even the interceptors weren't quite fast enough. The two patrol ships had the initiative - but they did a very curious thing. One turned and fled out of the system; the other stopped, apparently dead in the aether.

Wary, the ships approached their prize - a couple of missile destroyers in mothballs and a full stock of Builder components, enough to start making some serious upgrades.

The voice of Cassandra filled the silence, complements of her wireless telegraph.

"Don't you think that was a little too simple?"

Her sister, Cressida, had wandered a bit too close. The patrol ship lit up the darkness, firing both of its missiles directly into the cruiser's underbelly.

""Cressy!"

The reply was faint and pained, but reassuring nonetheless.

"I'm... okay, Cassie. I'm okay."

She was, evidently, not quite 'okay'. The impacts had torn a huge gash in her side, and machinery spilled out.

"Don't worry about me."

"Cressy..."

The retaliation was swift: a hail of cannonfire from every ship with a gun calibre over 6 inches. The patrol ship struggled for a moment - somehow taking the strain - before collapsing, half her engines disabled.

"Did you really think you could challenge us? Our might will fell worlds! Your 'mother' was one of ours, and she will return to ours again."

Venus and Hades looked at each other - or, rather, swivelled their scopes in the direction of the other ship - and a spark of opportunity seemed to pass between them.

"You know, for someone so overwhelmingly powerful, I was really expecting an attitude better than 'cliche supervillian'. You sound like a character in a penny dreadful."

There was an immaterial sigh.

"Girlie, I am a patrol ship. This is the closest I am getting to being relevant."

Venus mustered her best 'proper lady' voice - which was actually quite good.

"With all due respect, please be quiet."


Dauntless, meanwhile, was attacking a symbolic target - the fleet yards that she was commissioned at. What better way to sever her ties to the Builders?

She let loose a missile, and the stars were outshone by fire.