Admin67

==Chapter 67 - The Administrator==
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"Everyone knows the saw about 'preparing to fight the last war'. This...this isn't the last war."
-Assemblywoman Jennifer Vanh, Kowloon, 3148.
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Pangkalan System
Jade Falcon OZ
January 4, 3148
0345 hours
The 7th Mixed Cluster knew, just like everyone knew, that this was as safe an assignment, as boring, as devoid of possible glory, as a Clan unit could be saddled with. Pangkalan had fallen in an afternoon to the power of the Clan, after all.
The citizens knew it too. No-one was coming to save them and it had been over a decade now. A decade of being ground into the dirt.
The midnight sky lit. Flashes in the darkness where there should be no flashes...and then, the sirens in the remaining cities began to sound, and Clan warriors scrambled to their machines, to get them into the field.
The first thing to go, was the field-portable HPG erected when the planet was taken.
The next, were the air-bases where the second-line cluster kept their fighters. As the alert was sounded and the ready rolled to the end of runways, their less ready kin were savaged with slanting lines from orbit. Ten meter long lances of tungsten from orbit came smashing down on fortified hangars and tarmacs. Followed by a rain of metal balls that shook the very ground for hundreds of kilometers.
The fighters that made it into the skies, and into orbit, finally got a glimpse of their assailants.
There was a confusing regularity to these-they were not bandits, or if they were, they were remarkably well equipped bandits. OmniFighters painted in white, with a Killer Whale on the left wing roundel, and a Lyran Commonwealth Fist on the left. These also sported a black and red checkerboard pattern on the vertical stabilizers, with clearly marked series numbers.
The ships coming in with those colors were not dropships and the haze-gray over white paint-schemes were broken by a single red line, with the same Killer Whale rampant, and the words "Coast Guard".
This intelligence was transmitted to the surface, as the attacking force interlocked its fire, and began erasing the Jade Falcon Aerostar with the same almost-casual ease that it had erased the defending assault dropships, and the same ease that they had already erased the 7th Mixed Cluster's transport dropships.
As the fighters fought back, more radar contacts showed more incoming objects.
Surface based defenses, fortresses, bunkers, erased in quick succession by objects moving at or above escape velocity, put in motion days ago, on a strict timer.
A meteorite shower of low-scale kinetic death, hammering with just enough force to knock out surface radar stations, communications hubs, military barracks.
It is, perhaps, a testimony to the central flaw of the Mongol concept, that all these targets were relatively easy to identify-because only military targets had electrical power with electrical lighting.
The scheduled beating continued until 0600 hours shipboard time. 
Then, the landings began, as the spindly shapes of transport jumpships arrived at pirate points less than two hours from the planet, and released dropships.
It was at this point, it became abundantly clear to the surviving officers of the 7th Battle Cluster, that this was not a raid.
The second thing apparent, was made so by a simple comparison of markings-and that, scared the dogsnot out of them. Panicked orders to scout units that had been conducting live-fire exercises on a rebellious hamlet's residents led to seeking out the landing place for one of those dropships.
The report was cause for existential dread.
The dropship's hull was marked "Cuerpo de Marines de Arluna."
Biohazard protocols were immediately pulled out. The Plague Zone had sent an invasion force.
The Quarantine, was Broken.
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