Respawn

Words of Wisdom

The ornate overhead lighting of the board room created a stark contrast between the faces of the eleven members sitting at the round table and the darkness beyond them. From within the circle, it seemed as though the board were adrift in a vast empty expanse; echoing, in theme, the clandestine nature of the intrigue taking place.

One woman stood, slicing the air with her hand as it rose and fell with the cadence of her speech, dropping swiftly with each emphasized syllable.

"The attack on Demeter station is a deafening message from the Senate; they are clearly aware of the chink in our armor and are striking at our weakest points. Our colonies, most of them stations or none-breathable rocks, can't compare to the population capacity of Earth and the old Jovian settlements. Taking out our agricultural production in the gateway systems is the equivalent of a medieval siege. They intend on starving us out." She stood silent, her hand finally relaxing and falling to her side. Slowly, she sat as the others sternly contemplated the data streaming from the holographic display at the center of the table.

The Chief put his hands on the armrests of his chair and leaned forward, the brass name tag on his chest glistened from the bright lights above. The lettering 'J. Chopra' lit one letter at a time as he rose. "Thank you Elizabeth, but you're preaching to the choir. We're all painfully aware of the shortfall in population the Conglomerate has suffered over the last half century of expansion. Our predecessors opted to stretch out every last morsel of their resources in the hopes of obtaining a larger number of claims before the rift was encountered on all the edges of the cluster. It proved prosperous as a business strategy, but as most capitalists; they had no forethought on keeping their claims for the long term. Short sightedness and a quick return to contributions are the catalyst to the dilemma we find ourselves steeped in today. Those facts, however, are facets of the equation that we cannot change; much like the destruction of Demeter, they are in the past and we have to look forward to confront the true problem of our current situation. That being said, Demeter still gives us insight into the enemy. Dr. Seegan, what did telemetry tell us about the capabilities of the fleet that struck at Demeter?" The Chief motioned to the man across from him.

Dr Seegan nodded, "It told us more about our current S.O.P.'s and how Demeter could have been saved; by the way I'm not standing, I hope that doesn't ruffle any feathers." He slid his hand across the keyboard embedded in the glass of the table. "So, if you'll turn your attention to the display, you'll notice a sizeable fleet of missile cruisers and a small contingent of pocket carriers. The fleet jumped into Hospice's heliosphere on the 20th of May and spent the following three months in acceleration before burning retrograde to intercept with Vespa's gravity well in late August. They refuelled at the gas giant, unthreatened by our security forces who were still bickering with each other about the fleet's ultimate destination." He eyed Gurgawitz, two seats to his left. "We know who lost that bet now don't we." He sat back in his chair and continued. "The enemy fleet then had enough delta-V to escape Vespa's orbit with a very clever and well timed slingshot around VE271-B, the second moon of an extra solar planetoid on the way through the system." Seegan shot his index finger in the air. "Pay attention, this is important ladies and gentlemen. This is clear proof that the operation was planned well in advance with deliberate and impeccable trajectory analysis and forecast for a very specific time and date. This was not an arbitrary attack of opportunity, but an extremely well prepared blitz; a skilled scalpel stroke at the artery of the Conglomerate." He cleared his throat. "After the slingshot, the carriers launched drones on the markers shown in the orbital line of their progression toward Demeter's gravity well, the first deployment was at a range of approximately four hundred thousand kilometers. That first wave was on a close flyby, and was basically used to test how trigger happy the defense system was going to be for the second wave. In their favor, Demeter's defense system was very trigger happy indeed, and spent a fifth of their primary ammunition on a target that was statistically incapable of causing any harm to the installation. The second wave of drones was a screen for the missile salvo that followed on a parallel trajectory, confusing the tracking systems and allowing more than a third of the warheads to strike their targets, leaving Demeter relatively defenceless as the fleet then burned prograde for a flyby, unleashing everything else they had left at the station, while escaping our security forces who were already too short on Delta-V to make an intercept in time to stop the attack. The closest point of contact with the actual ships from the fleet was roughly nine hundred and sixty kilometers, outside of all weapons ranges. They were unscathed; a flawless victory. On our end, in contrast, Demeter lost fourteen of its twenty defense platforms and the station itself received an estimated three hundred missile strikes, along with railgun strikes in the millions. Three of the eight hydroponics rings were severed from the main body of the station and fell into Calypso's atmosphere to burn up, while the rest of the station was pushed out of stable orbit and is, to my knowledge, still moving to a high apoapsis with a terminal periapsis expected in about three weeks, ending in a burnup in Calypso's atmosphere, which for the sake of dramatization, will look something like this."