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« on: February 08, 2025, 12:57:26 PM »
"Admiral, I need your sign-off on something."
The admiral turned to her aide. "Yes, Commander?"
"You successfully sold Starsector that XIVth carrier, right?"
The admiral nodded. It had been an easy sale, and a predictable one. Starsector's movements were trending more and more into Fringe territories where his predilection for lightweight combat freighters was no longer going to cut it. "He took the bait."
"I have a proposal, but we'll need a third party to sell it." The Commander seemed diffident.
New appointee, desperate not to screw up while also making a name for himself. Packet says ambitious and smart. "Hit me, Commander," the admiral replied. "We're not Sindies here."
"I want to put a new civilian-auxiliary package in play, complete with Blueprint, and feed it to the Pathers."
The Admiral nodded, listening. "Which you know I'll have to sell to Daud at the next Joint Chiefs meeting. Okay, why the Pathers?"
"The Pathers because they have nothing comparable in their fleet arsenals per Intel, and everybody else has something with enough redundancy that it won't be plausible. Here, Admiral. I'm calling it Atlas mk III."
The Admiral took the encrypted comms pad and looked it over.
Her jaw dropped.
"You want to give the Pathers a Capital-class Troop Transport with built in heavy weapons array?"
"Yes," he replied.
"Justify it."
"I just spent my last deployment analyzing Pather incidents. They tend to involve themselves in extortion, etcetera, but one of their major problems is that all they really have is their "hammer." It does straight to their operational and tactical doctrine, insofar as they have one. They're unable, for instance, to simply raid for technology and blow it sky-high, and aside from certain famous terrorists, they're about as subtle as a Diktat fashion show."
The Admiral snorted. "You want to give them that capacity."
"No ma'am," the Commander countered, "I want to let the Pathers build it so they can sell a few to Starsector." The commander pointed to a display array. "On its own, my projections are that this would actually reduce Hegemony casualties, military and civilian, by forcing them into fights where doctrinal and tactical efficiency actually matter. But that I really want it for is to get it into the hands of auxiliaries who are likely to take on Alabaster-level concerns."
"How does this do that," The Admiral countered, "given that it's a troop transport?"
"If you'll refer to display four," the Commander replied, falling into Staff College Mode, "we render it plausible via the crudeness of the design. Atlas are in many ways fundamentally awful transports. It's literally nothing other than a drive and crew-habitation spindle with shipping containers magsealed to the outside. So this design simply magseals containers designed to minimally-contain, with no concern for comfort or safety whatsoever, armored fighting platforms and powered-armor suits for explosive drop-deployment."
The admiral frowned. "With four times the capacity of a Valkyrie, that's doable. You've effectively swapped cargo for deployable personnel, so long as we define "deployable" very loosely."
"Correct, ma'am," the Commander replied. "This is standard for Pather refits. Suicidally-poor refit qualities which would get our engineers hired are considered high brilliance for a faction that still thinks Orion Drives are clever. So it sells. But more importantly, this gives the Pathers the ability to act more like ARC raiders. So they'll take it."
The admiral nodded. "All right. Call Phase One, Minimal Justification passed. Now, why do we engineer that getting passed over to Starsector?"
"He'll buy it," the Commander replied smugly. "Heavy weapons raiders have a use that I believe Starsector will find absolutely irresistable."
"What's that?"
"Check Display Seven," the Commander continued, "Phase tank deployment system. It's Hegemony work, but it looks VERY much like a bit of leftover unadopted Tri-Tac software left hanging around that the Pathers will have stolen. The Pathers won't activate it, but Starsector will. And that will let him drop heavy weapons directly onto Alabaster targets, Nexus especially, for the purpose of engaging in combat-archaeology during fleet deployments."
"You've developed a sophisticated breach-pod device masquerading as a Pather-trash capital-class raiding ship design," the Admiral marvelled, whistling. "I was told you were ambitious. I wasn't told you were devious."
"Thank you, Admiral," the Commander smirked. "This isn't quite the same as the old Doom-style mines. In terms of operational tempo, this is destruction over time. And there's not really a "breach" per se, since the Alabaster threats don't have to bother with corridors or crew quarters. Call it "highly-kinetic salvage operations," with software pre-loaded for nice clean cuts, insofar as anything short of a Combat Drone Replicator can produce said effects."
"Nice clean cuts," the Admiral mused. "designed by Tri-Tac....Ludd's balls, Commander. That's how you're selling the story. It's an abandoned Tri-Tac attempt to harvest AI cores!" She laughed. "Plausible deniability all the way down."
The commander nodded. "It's not a secret that we have labs trying to figure out how to put the proverbial... what is that thing... ancient mythical wish-giving monster?"
"Jeen," the admiral replied.
"Jeen," the Commander nodded. "Thank you. If we want more actionable intel from Starsector's assaults on the Remnants, we need salvage that is more, rather than less, intact. In the meantime, staff projects an 8-14% overall drop in casualties from Pather events and a significantly likelihood that Pathers, mainstream Luddics, and ARCs use it to prioritize Diktat targets which are currently impossible for them to impact significantly."
"And if deployed against us, Commander?"
"We designed the ship and therefore have the drive profile, Admiral. The design has minimal ballistic PD, and a skin as thin as the wrappings on your lunch. Once it's out and in play, we can simply have our listening stations monitor for the specific frequencies in hyperspace, and we know who's getting hit, when. Easy enough job for COMSEC."
The Admiral shook her head. "I see a dozen proposals like this a year, Commander, and they all fail for the same reason."
"What's that, Admiral?" the commander asked, looking a bit crestfallen.
"It's too neat and practical," the admiral countered, adjusting her own comm pad on the staff table. "Put an Orion on the back of it, and put a really moronically large torpedo on the very front of the ship for no apparent reason. Because the Pathers will want to heroically charge the foe through a wall of flak and drone-fire, shooting on the way in even if it reduces deployment efficiency."
He snorted halfway through a sip of coffee. "Yes ma'am."
"Have Lieutenant Galawei's staff assist you on this. As it happens, I'm called in earlier than expected. I want to put this in front of Daud and Comsec asap."
A rating would have come to attention and saluted smartly. The commander's reply was just as formal but notably more relaxed. "For the Domain."
"For the Domain," the admiral replied.
That's the problem with the opposition, she mused into the rest of her ***. They could easily swamp the us given the right diplomatic approach, but for all their energy, they have no sense of strategic vision. And they forget that we can play just as dirty as they do...