TAZ33

==Chapter 33 - The Absolute Zero==
LCS Tatyana Steiner, Frederick Steiner Class Battleship
Tatyana Steiner Battle Group
Periphery / Rasalhague Dominion Frontier Zone
 March 20, 3159
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Officially they were out here on exercises and war games, practical certification drills for crews and units.  That was the outer layer of the onion.
Below the outer layer of the onion, they were conducting scouting missions. Identifying worlds that failed over the Succession Wars and deploying terraforming equipment on viable targets.  (The reason being that said second layer could come up dry-at least officially).
Quite a few planets had been bypassed as useless over the centuries since the fall of the Star League, lostech prospectors often having found 'forgotten' sites using old maps, even deep inside existing states.  The Clans that held worlds in the Wolf and Jade Falcon invasion corridors didn't have the manpower to police colonies, and so didn't.
After the Falcons were dealt with, LCN mapping missions using cutters have already identified a lot of these. The terraforming machinery being built in the Kowloon/Arluna Theater were already being deployed. Radically improving the value of 'depleted' systems the Wolves had abandoned when they marched rimward.
The third layer, was built of encouraged rumors surrounding exploration and securing systems for relocations and exploitation.  This wasn't a bad one either, and it was a legitimate use of Navy resources.
Past those layers of cover stories start the ones that get you arrested for spreading (and are, thus, very interesting to foreign intelligence services.)
Past those cover stories, was the truth.
Aboard the LCS Tatyana Steiner, Rear Admiral Elizabeth MacAulliffe studied the recon imagery from cutters deployed into the Rasalhague Dominion, the imagery was coordinated with intercepted Ghost Bear and Sea Fox communication.  On her 'big board' in the Fleetcom center, an updated and simplified display showed supply routes, identified fleet units and Clan transport routes, and showed fortified positions.  Where possible, dossiers on local commanders were posted and information on local leaders were being updated as well.
The Bears weren't the Mongols.  Civilian life wasn't exactly bad in the Rasalhague Dominion. The local civilian leaders had a reasonable level of autonomy, and generally things were better than in the Draconis Combine.
The only real problem, was that the Dominion and Clan Ghost Bear were in Devlin Stone's pocket.
So, a division of cutters were crawling through Ghost Bear territory. Identifying and marking possible targets, evaluating defenses, and locating internal lines of communication and logistics for destruction.
The balloon wasn't up. It isn't 'go time' yet.  This could still be just an exercise.
The cutters shadowing Clan Sea Fox and watching the Ghost Bear fleet's expansion sent back the most...interesting data.
The arriving ships from the Republic's mothball fleet were arriving stripped of weapons. Leaving with new layouts but, more interestingly they weren't making for the war with the Combine. At least, not the ones leaving Sea Fox yards.
They were massing on the Lyran frontier instead, on the front nearest the Republic of the Sphere.
It didn't match any rational strategic projection unless protecting the Republic was taking precedence over both winning against the Combine, and defending Rasalhague space...
"This doesn't make sense." Elizabeth said.  "We've been out here for months and their behavior doesn't make sense."
"What are you thinking, Mum?"
"I'm thinking I should ask for permission to have an incident." Elizabeth said.  "The Ghost bear fleet should be utterly mud-stomping the Combine right now, but they're heading into what is objectively the wrong place...it's like they're either expecting an attack from the Wolf Empire or Lyran Commonwealth. One directed at the Republic's core worlds, and that everything they're holding over the Tukayyid line is simply not worth protecting."
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