Strat-2 Chpt-5

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==Strategos (A Great Captain Roberts Tale!!) - Part 2Chapter 5 - Raise The Jolie Rouge==
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===Reaction to Operation Plan===
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In Space, it's…
…all about time, timing, and distance. It takes days to get anywhere at sublight speeds, sometimes, it takes weeks or months.
But, with a can of spray paint, a good stopwatch, and decent charts, you can get anywhere in a solar system… eventually.
Imagine the following scenario: at the Zenith point, are two Star Lord class jumpships, and two Invader class. The pairs are positioned for serial release into hyperspace as soon as their landing craft (DropShips) are docked.
Each Invader has a Leopard CV docked to their forwardmost docking collar, with two aerospace fighters from each flying in tandem with the fighters based on the JumpShip itself, with a ready pair in the launch bays, and the third in stand-down.
They are, after all, in a friendly port, with the ability to call for help from the system's garrison.
The Star Lord class ships are mostly bare of Dropships, their six collars mostly emptied, their landing ships being still two or three day's transit from the Agrodomes on the fourth planet in the Michtal system.
However, 'mostly' is just that…mostly. One collar each is also holding a Leopard CV, then the other two forward-most collars are holding heavily armed assault Dropships, suitable for escort work.
These also have fighter bays, but no more than two fighters per Star Lord are actually patrolling, thanks to the complements from their smaller brethren.
This is a formation that would be considered quite excellent for most navies in the Inner Sphere after the Second Succession War, and even right into the present.
It is a formidable force.
Especially in a relatively secure port environment in a relatively secured system, one that has not received an external visitor since sometime in the 2880s.
The crews feel safe, or at least, safe enough. News of ill fortune wasn't so much concealed, as it was simply distant to these men and women. Something bad that happened somewhere else, to someone else, and that someone else was getting a punitive expedition via Essex II class destroyer.
Word on the fate of SLS Lynnwood has not reached Michtal base, and the presumed silence and lack of a call for reinforcements was simply interpreted as being that the destroyer has not yet run down her prey.
After all, who could possibly have the kind of forces that could stand against the Star League's finest technology?
Not everyone is complacent.
Lord Lieutenant Carver Inslee IX had a bad feeling. His uncle, commanding SLS Lynnwood had not returned and was a week late. Comms silence rules had been in effect since last month, so calling him wasn’t an option.
"Run the drill again," he ordered his commander of the air group. "This time, like you mean it."
His extra pinky was throbbing where it had been cut off to fit his suit gloves. Trouble was on the way, and soon, he could feel it.
The first confirmation was having his CIC flicker under the assault of an EMP. "EMERGENCE WAVE!! Marines to Stations NOW!!" his palm slammed the shipwide alert button. It might be interpreted later as panic, but in this moment, Carver was moving on an absolute certainty he could not fully describe.
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Britney's stick went…
…dead as the EMP from a close-range emergence wave from something big hit Salacious Sally and flickered the avionics. She frantically hit toggles to reboot and restart the fighter's systems, while also frantically looking for her wingman, Jheri, whose Ironsides Fighters was supposed to only be a few kilometers off her port wing. "What the hell…what the hell.." 
She could see his running lights flickering to come back on, and the intermittent puffs of mixed helium and hydrogen from his engine trying a hot-restart.
Shit, shit shit!!
Her stick might as well be a gamer's joystick with the leads cut. "Come on…come on…"
She glanced out her canopy and saw Jheri in Four was six kilometers more-or-less closer than he had been. "Come on..."
The temp gauge was still climbing. She pulled the emergency flush-shoving liquid hydrogen into the PDU bays to flash-cool the heat sinks, then beginning the hot restart over again without forty minutes of fuel she'd had to waste cooling the systems back down.
Her radio was blasting jamming noises on all channels.
"GAWD DAMMIT!!!" an error message scrolled on her HUD.
Then, she felt the familiar shove as her main thruster ignited, and her stick inputs started getting responses from the RCS thrusters.
She let out a whoop as she angled her vector positive Z axis, and Jheri's stricken bird passed less than a meter below her ventral.
Where is that sumbitch?
She didn't have far to look, the bulk of a Warship…not one of ours!!...and the incandescent flames of shuttles and fighters launching from it, at Her ship!! "Oh the ****** you will!!" she banked hard starboard and poured the fuel into the afterburner.
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