Strike where it hurts

[Jester]

Fleet Commander Cero Galkea stood on the bridge of her Queadol Magdomilla Command Ship, hands clasped behind her back as she surveyed the field reports on the large viewscreen before her. It was not her 5 foot 9 inches of height, or her pale pinkish skin, and long purple hair that made her appear to be more noticeable. A close observer would notice that that it was her hazel eyes, as hard as the nut they were the colour of, that made her so imposing. Sbe rarely blinked as her eyes drank in every detail around her, and it was often whispered amongst the part human crew members that she could quite likely out-stare a fish.

Situated at the edge of the star system wherein lay the UNG world of New Patagonia, her fleet of 8 destroyers of mixed meltran and zentran origin, and equal numbered and origined scouts and frigates were marshalling themselves in to position for the coming raid. Numbering less than half of her usual Fleet's size, Cero had chosen to leave the slower carriers and logistics vessels behind for this particular mission due to its rapid strike requirements. She had elected instead to take only scouts and frigates for the first stage of the fast suprise attack, and destroyers to back them up in the second stage. Her Executive Officer, an experienced normal meltran, and not one of the advanced Terasi clones, passed hera datapad with the order of battle information on it. Fleet Commander Galkea nodded each item, which she had already committed to memory, and signed it.

In the communications pit below her the senior comms Officer turned to face her. "All ships report readiness for intra-system fold Sir." Cero nodded her acknowledgement. "Very good, inform all ship's Captains to fold in 2 minutes on my mark." The comms Officer turned back to his console with a quick understanding of the order. "Aye aye Sir." Minutes later the fleet vanished in a brief flash of light. Obscured by the Oort cloud at the edge of the star system New Patagonian sensors did not pickup the space fold.

In the New Patagonia Space Dock civilian module bar, The Rusty Spanner, Namari Vemnor ran her finger around the edge of her glass of white wine. The soft ringing sound did nothing to placate her, and she signed audibly as she gazed out of the porthole across the dockyard. As a War Correspondant she had assumed she would get to see tings few dreamed of seeing.  Battles in space with alien invaders, the frantic hubbub of the UN Spacy Fleets Command Ships war rooms, the interviews with Variable Fighter pilots coming back from sorties. But nothing. Granted, she hadn't been one for very long, just 6 months, and of course more experienced journalists got the best spots. But as a young half meltran with a few strings being pulled by her influential father behind the scenes, she had managed to get posted out here, as close to Terasi space as the UN believed it to be. Until the UN Spacy 5th Fleet arrived in a week she had nothing to do but drink wine, wander the civilian module shops, and talk to her considerably less than interesting cameraman. Just thinking his name seemed to call him as she half turned to the sound of the bar's restroom door opening. Where as Namari was slim and attractive with short dark blue hair and mediterranean olived skin, Jonathan her cameraman was very much so a behind the camera person. Apart from the fact that he was of average height, there was nothing average about him. His physique was portly, his hair thinned back so much that he only had short strips of hair along the sides and lower rear of his head. His moustache was alrge and bushy to take the emphasis off of his protruding nose. He was certainly not attractive, but he was not really truly ugly either. His was like a comical background character in some Broadway farce. With her attention on Jonathan as he walked back to the table after retrieving his pint glass from the bar she didn't notice what he was indicating to with one hand as his other guided his drink to his mouth. His off hand quizzical pointing turned to an abject look of shock as he slowly lowered the beer from his now frothed moustache. Putting it down quickly on the table, splilling some across the table and  making Namari shoot backwards to avoid getting her skirt splashed. His uttered oath of, "Holy Crap !!" followed by his rapid fumbling in his bag made her turn around sharply to the viewport. As Jonathan virtually ripped his bag open to retrieve his camera, Namari stared in shock at the scene outside. Even though it was some distance away the flashes of particle beams, cannons, missiles, and other weapons of war between the small UNS guard force, and Terasi ships was unmistakeable.

So far as Fleet Commander Cero Galkea was concerned the battle was happening exactly as planned. The UN Spacy ships had fallen in to a standard defensive position, with their carriers at the rear of the formation, and frigates and cruisers forming a picket line ahead of them to try and stop the Terasi strike force from approaching any closer to the shipyards orbiting New Patagonia. Between and below the captial ships firing lines Variable Fighters and Variable Glaug mecha battled exchanging gunpod and laser blasts, missiles flying between the two sides. Galkea had already lost one of her destroyers, the Pin Point Barriers stolen and retro-engineered from captured UN ships having been over-whelmed by the firepower directed against it. But for this one ship the Terasi had taken out five of the ten UNS ships. The two carriers were now only protected by two frigates and a single cruiser. Cero allowed herself a small smile of satisfaction as she crossed her arms across her chest and surveyed the battle. Within 10 minutes the remaining defenders had been damaged beyond usefulness, or destroyed utterly at the cost of only one meltran frigate. Cero gave the order for the survivors to transfer to the remaining ships and activate their self destruct systems which would wipe the capital ships computer memory cores and cause a critical overload of the reactors resulting in a destructive fireball that would consume the ships leaving nothing bigger than metal shavings the size of ticker tape floating in space. Pressing her fleet forward she confirmed with her communications office that the jamming blanket across the planet and shipyards was still in place and denying the planet and shipyards the opportunity to call for reinforcements.

"Whatdo you mean you can't get a signal?" Namari wanted to scream in frustration at the cameraman as he adjsuted settings on his camera's transmission unit. "I can contact the local relay in the station but its not getting an uplink to the civilian galaxy network." Jonathan exasperated looking up briefly to Namari before putting his head down to the comms unit. "I've tried getting it to let us use the military channels but its saying its not able to get an outbound signal on that either." This time Namari did scream. A throaty muted scream of frustration. "Damn it record straight to tape then and we will have to hope that they don't destroy the module we are on." Jonathan nodded grimly to Namari's instructions. 30 seconds later the camera was rolling and Namari had quickly reapplied her lipstick and pulled her hair back to look the part of a war correspondant. She was glad she was dressed her casually and that the camera wouldn't see her skirt. She figured that anyone would watching could easily imagine her in the middle of some jungle or cityscape reporting on a war instead of in the bar of some space station. Giving her the thumbs up ready sign Namari gripped her microphone a little tighter than normal. Stress of the situation showing through in her grip. "This is Namari Vemnor, reporting from the New Patagonia Space Docks orbiting New Patagonia. In the last few minutes a fleet of what appears to be Terasi warships has fold spaced in to the region and engaged the UN Spacy defence force protecting the dockyards. Behind me are the twisted hulks of UN Spacy ships where brave men and women of the UN Spacy have laid down their lives to protect the civilians here, and on the world below." Jonathan angled the camera to encompass Namari, and the view out of the large viewport as Namari turned to look behind her and continued her report. "As we speak the Terasi are attacking the dockyards and may possibly move on to attack the civilian section of the station as well. We don't know. We do know that they are jamming all communications within the sphere of the planet and dockyards and as yaet have no idea if this report will ever make it out." Jonathan signalled off camera to indicate small shuttles evacuating the civilian module obviously carrying the stations occupants to safety. "As you can see the population of the station are evacuating as we will shortly, but we will try to continue broadcasting from an escape vessel. This is Namari Vemnor for MNBC"

The battle continued to rage over New Patagonia for another 40 minutes. Whilst Namari and Jonathan dashed to get onboard one of the escape shuttles to continue reporting from relative safety, the Terasi fleet mopped up the defences of the dockyard. UN Spacy ships were disabled, Variable Fighters destroyed or damaged beyond repair so that their pilots were forced to eject, dockyard weapons were slagged by concerted fire from Terasi ships and Variable Glaug's. When all resistance was dealt with the Terasi proceeded to pummel the dockyards in to twisted scrap metal. Fleet Commander Galkea had chosen her timing well, aiming to attack the dockyards just after midnight as there would be minimal numbers of non-military personnel on the construction and repair platforms. The Terasi had deliberately left the civilian module unharmed.

Watching and recording the whole time from their shuttle, Namari and Jonathan saw the Terasi ships take their Variable Glaug's back on board and fold away. Scant seconds later one of the red lights on the camera's comms unit flashed to green. "We have uplink now." Jonathan said breathlessly. Namari blew out her breath in a long sigh. A smile spreading across her face at the impact of what she they had recorded, and how it would affect their careers. Her smile turned grim as she looked out at te lost lives floating in the frozen vacuum. "At least we have seen what the Terasi are capable of." Namari whispered to herself.