TAZ40

==Chapter 40 - The Absolute Zero==
Ghost Bear High Command
Alshain Star System
 April 30th, 3159
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Half a month.  Half a month for the economy to grind to a stand-still.  Half a month, for enough of Rasalhague's military fleet to be reduced to the point of needing to draft civilian merchant vessels, and half a month for that draft to result in the loss of hundreds of merchant ships.
Effectively, the largest and most powerful army in the Inner Sphere was paralyzed, locked in garrison, and unable to reliably patrol further than atmospheric interphase of inhabited planets.
"Our only mobile asset left, is the Alshain." Prince Hjalmer Miraborg stated, "The Lyrans have locked us in."  On the status maps, an encroaching wave of Combine influence had spread-back to the pre-war border, then stopped.
Merchant traffic had not entirely ceased.  The Lyrans very assiduously observed the rights of neutrals in their war on Rasalhague, a move that some might consider strategic insanity.  Sea Fox, Free Worlds League, and Snow Raven merchant traffic was taking up spaces where Dominion merchants had once held dominance-but only with civilian cargoes, Attempts to commandeer foreign shipping inevitably resulted in the foreign government protesting and shortly after that, the commandeered vessels being destroyed by marauding Cutters, or lurking destroyers.
And yet still, no ground troops had landed.
What are they waiting for?
The tactical disposition made no sense.  Some of the non-naval strikes were clearly designed to presage invasion forces-the Lyran Navy was making something of a sport of demonstrating the ability to destroy fortified surface installations with minimal short-term collateral damage, forcing units to abandon their garrison posts for constant field exercises because the Brian-like surface forts were being hammered like clockwork.
As yet, no surface invasion.  Airbases on a hundred worlds were cratered. Every space based installation in the path of the Lyrans was hammered into scrap and yet no invasion.
Out of twenty warships given to the Clan by the Republic, warships rebuilt by the Sea Foxes into true terrors of space at ruinous expense, not one vessel remained.  After the battle of Lyons, the first weeks saw how thoroughly the Lyrans prepared their campaign, because not one ship was left unengaged.  The ones in Refit met battlegroups as soon as they left Sea Fox custody, the ones going to refit were intercepted and destroyed by Cutter groups, the ones in service?
The Alshain, the recently rebuilt, final, only Leviathan II in the fleet. Reconstructed in haste when the Lyrans rolled out their new naval force and hammered the Jade Falcons, she is was the only one remaining.
The yard she was rebuilt at? Now drifting debris now, but the final warship of the Dominion's fleet remained intact for the moment.
"What does MIMIR know about the Lyrans plans again?" he asked, tiredly.
''
"They are still not massing ground forces for an attack on the Dominion sir, but they are rallying more forces, and building more ships to replace the ones they have lost."
War is a contest of will.  Even with the very and remarkably generous policy regarding neutrals. The reduction in shipping was strangling hundreds of Dominion Worlds and the losses of orbital industry. Tne destruction of terrain from kinetic bombardments were inflicting harsh secondary effects.  Ash clouds and dust, new volcanoes in a few cases, the damaging of biomes and disruption of services...
and no invading army to vent the anger on.
"Get me Beckett." he said, "This situation is intolerable and has gone far enough!"
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