TBC15

==Chapter 15 - The Broken Commonwealth==
JLS White Aerie, Black Lion II Class Battlecruiser
Alyina System, Lyran Commonwealth
March 24th, 3146
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"Contacts!!  Emergence waves starboard and port!"
Star Commodore Julius Binetti looked up at the announcement-a fairly standard patrol had suddenly gotten a lot more interesting-the reports of ships failing to arrive at destinations crystallized.
"Get ident on those contacts!" the admiral ordered
"No transponder signals, but..."  a high magnification telescope image appeared on the central screen.
"Tinker toys.  They are using tinker toys!!  Action Stations, and I want those...pieces of crap swept from my sky!"
The Lyrans had to be desperate to be using such vessels.  It wasn't that the Clan were unaware of the Sampan class cutters, it was that the little ships were known.  Specifically, known to be low-technology, obsolete before they were even laid down, and largely abandoned due to the expense of keeping such shoddy vessels on anyone's registry.
Almost an insult to real warriors by even having existed.
"Get the markings, we should certainly punish whoever sent those...things." he scowled.
"Confirm Orca Rampant markings, OvKhan."
Of course.  Nobody else would be insane enough to use them.  Julius thought. "Get the NL-45s out in screening positions, those tinker-toy ships are carrying thermonuclear anti-shipping missiles. They are Kowloonese, so they will lead with that! Give me a count on how many they sent!"
"Three emergence waves so far, class one, estimate ten seconds...less than ten thousand kilometers range." sensor tech reported
They weren't trying the low-probability jumps yet.  of course they are not, there is nothing out here but US!
"Hot points! Missiles incoming negative Z-axis ten thousand kilometers from bearing one-sixty by Six Zero! Quantity four....five....fighter signatures, count twelve."
"Warriors are clear to intercept the fighters." he ordered.  The other three emergence waves also finished, and fighters were already spreading from the other three on his flanks and positive axis.
"Engage the nearest enemy vessel with primary batteries!" the Star Commodore ordered
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*; Note from the Author : The Standard warload for a White Shark nuclear missile is a single 500 kiloton warhead, laser-fused, 'clean' nuclear warhead. Kowloon doesn't make those. The initial spread from the 4th Patrol's cutters use a different layout-the warhead section contains three independently targeted, space modified Alamo anti--shipping missiles at 5 Kilotons per warhead, and that's been since the Jihad taught Groves Industries that single warhead systems can be defeated by point defenses. The first wave is meant to overwhelm point defenses on capital ships and pocket warships, it's the second wave that carries the fun boxes. A 'Fun Box' is a single-megaton warhead and a selection of tuned metallic lenses.  The lenses are released first, and spread in an array. Fun boxes go off while the rest of the first wave are coming, and what they let out, is a concentrated x-ray pulse, known as a 'Teller's Flashlight' bomb-pumped X-ray laser. These are specifically to blind enemy sensors and guidance while the MIRV warheads are on terminal guidance to the target. This tech wasn't finished by the time that Operation SCOUR had cleared the Word of Blake from Terra, but it almost was. Someone had kindly kept the tooling and specs in a bunker on the surface of Snark's second moon, along with an entertaining selection of other horrific toys whose development was turned off by the end of the Jihad. For the NL-45 shuttle three, the result was...predictable.  Whatever X-rays don't penetrate, they heat up. Clan armor is pretty good, but all those electronic arrays require connections into the inside of the ship. Nobody told the crew to close the blast shielding, because they were there to play electronic warfare games with the incoming missiles and fighters. The other problem, is drop-bombing. Here's how it works: Normally, an Alamo Missile strike doesn't rely on dead-fall terminal guidance, because the Alamo warhead is a precision warfare item. Enemy fighters really don't want you to get a good shot/lock with it-so they're going to try to shoot you down. If you take the guidance head out, and the rocket motor off, and just keep the warhead and the detonator assembly. You can make that now-unpowered bomb about half the mass of an Alamo...or if you're using Plutonium layer-cakes, you can make a dial-a-yield device from 10 to 50 kilotons in the same mass.  Fly at the target's predicted path, accelerate hard, hit the bomb release, and angle away. The bomb will keep going at your last velocity, and it can't be spoofed or confused-it's an inert object with no heat signature. A good pilot, drilled on dive-bombing against moving targets under simulated fire, can put a drop into a straight line in vacuum with a deviation of maybe ten meters. A Black Lion Battlecruiser is a lot bigger than a ten meter circle. The battle would continue for several hours after it kicked off, but despite spoofing or intercepting the capital missile launches, over a dozen ten kiloton warheads made contact with the White Aerie and only one was actually necessary.
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