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5.2 - Operation Deadlight Part 2
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The rest of the briefing proceeded in much this fashion for some time. Nate would explain some small detail, like the Fluchtig's mech team being in charge of all fifteen machines from between the three ships - Only for Batty or Louise to interject before, finally, Kolme would throw his own oar in to bring the conversation back to sanity - Usually with some simple comment about how each ship's Vijaik-team leader would still hold relative authority.
It was through this that Hoki began to see a new side of Kolme. Clumsy and in-punctual? Definitely, but bizarrely enough, he was proving to be a vicious negotiator. She could only presume it was his uncouth nature that helped. Put bluntly, he was vulgar, his language rough, and his opinions unsuitable for such a discussion. It was this, Hoki believed, that kept taking the trio of captains in the room by surprise.
Thanks in large part to Kolme aiding Commander Nate in his pursuit of a sensible discussion, they did eventually reach the true meaning of the meeting. A new slide with black block capital words;
OPERATION DEADLIGHT #IAFS-OP-C-0030-TG
The room, for the first time in a while, truly quietened down when those words appeared - A sense of anticipation spreading throughout everyone. The following slide was somewhat less imposing but no less intriguing. On it was a full-size map of all human-controlled space in the UnderCurrent solar system. It was by no means a unique sight for those present - It pertained to the familiar sight of two planets (Bhaile, a bright blue and green orb to the left - And the desolate dusk of Abhaile to the right) surrounded by rings of Satellite-Nations and moon-like objects orbiting either of the central bodies.
Operation Deadlight Concept Sketches [https://i.imgur.com/yMAZI6e.jpg]
Being a full-screen display, the image was depicted in a high definition state, clearly showing the vivid watercolours of Bhaile's lush climates - While equally portraying the drab dusty greys of Abhaile's surfaces. As for the Nation-States or ‘Nation-Satellites’, they were depicted with simple gunmetal grey rectangles to represent their positions as literal cities and countries based on space bourn satellites.
Further marked were several capital cities and the like with simple red font.
"As you all know--" Nate began.
'Know what?'
"We have gathered here today to form the Tristan Group in that we, this fleet, may take the fight back to the enemy!" He finished in what was borderline broken grammar.
The rest of the room stared up at Nate as he made his strange statement. Most at this point, were growing used to the man's elongated way of explaining details.
He nodded at his two aides, and the projected map was updated to include new details. Reaching into his puffed, sleeveless bomber-jacket's pocket, he drew forth a folded telescopic stick and proceeded to swing it forward.
Nothing happened.
He shook in again. No response.
Internally, Hoki felt as though she'd die of embarrassment as the man, her commanding officer, her boss's boss - Began to vigorously shake the small piece of metal around his person.
Finally, he managed to force about half the thing open;
"That will do I suppose, ahem. Now then, as I was saying, yes, what was I on again?"
It took all her willpower for Hoki not to clutch her face in dismay. Behind the man on the map was a series of markers. One in particular stood out as a unique image - A scaled-down diagram of a somewhat famous repair ship known as the 'Clover'.
The image was crudely layered to be in a position to the north-east of Abhaile. This might have struck Hoki as odd (were she not busy being ashamed) due to the fact it was uncommon to chart the positions of individual ships on a regular map for no reason. This was a fact not lost on Kolme sitting beside her, now more alert and, well, up-right than he had been earlier when talking down to the captains.
"Ah yes. As you are all aware, Operation-Deadlight will see us track down and destroy the submarine labelled, labelled...." As Nate again fumbled to remember the words of his script, a new fear crept into Hoki's mind.
'All aware? He...he couldn't have forgotten to send me the files before the meeting by accident?'
She had found it odd not receiving any details prior to the meeting, but now it seemed that fear was confirmed. Glancing around the collected group of people in the room, their expressions showed no signs of confusion. No only her and Kolme seemed to be hearing of this 'submarine' for the first time.
'For the love of the Sun, he can't be that forgetful, can he?'
Nate continued on to explain about the submarine 'An-Curadh' - Submarine itself simple being a catch-all term used to designate any warship that attacked alone or in small groups - Usually lightly armoured, hitting supply lines or even civilian vessels before retreating without a trace.
"But this submarine is no ordinary affair. In the last couple of months, this 'Curadh' has destroyed over eighteen supply vessels and three warship escorts. All while seemingly taking not a single casualty of its own as far as we can tell."
The tone in the room was far more settled now. It was one thing to argue petty politics, but Hoki was at least glad to see ample respect being shown towards the loss of civilian life. Batty may have used a destroyed escort as ammo against Nate, but seemingly, the actual loss of people was still a sacred topic demanding respect, even amongst this rowdy bunch. Still, she could only presume it came as more of a shock than it did the others.
As someone with an intimate knowledge of the history of modern warfare, Hoki could safely assert she had never heard of a lone vessel with such a high success rate in that short a period.
'Well, except maybe for it....'
The markers on the map made more sense now, too. The series of red Xs plotted out the path of carnage An-Curadh had marked out for itself.
"The submarine displays some strange tendencies that make it hard to so much as gather data on. Until recently, it was undecided whether it was the culprit behind all these deaths," even Nate seemed a little less boisterous as he traced a line through the X's with his half-drawn pointer before turning back to the rest of the room, "It jams all communications before a battle begins and then seemingly appears from nowhere. It does not leave survivors.
We have confirmation of it destroying escape pods and continuing to engage against surrendered ships. No traces and no survivors. Further, unlike most submarines, it is not only carrying a Vijaik team but also what we believe to be a new model of Casnel."
This last point caused a new stirring of voices; "We were not informed of such a machine!" Exclaimed Commander Batty, standing halfway out of her chair.
"Certainly not. Command gave strict orders that you should only be informed in person by me," Nate replied with just a hint of satisfaction at 'winning' one over Batty.
'Well, at least there are some things that Kolme and I are not the only ones in the dark about.'
Casnels - Machines made from the exceedingly rare metal Goibniu - Capable of almost supernatural feats, with near-infinite energy generation, hyper heat resistant armour and equally devastating weaponry. A single Casnel could easily sink an unsuspecting fleet, even one protected by its own friendly Vijaiks.
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"So, just to get this right, you expect us with fifteen regular Vijaiks and four– sorry, three ships to hunt down an invisible enemy guarded by a Casnel and who knows what else?" Louise stated with raised brows and a combination of venom and disbelief in her tone.
"I take it Lt.Commander Emilia will be joining us then, Sir?" This question came from Louise's second in command, Lt.Tabitha. Her tone was far more respectful, and it was the first thing she had said all day. Hoki had almost forgotten the small woman was over sitting in Louise's shadow.
Nate shuffled on his feet with evident discomfort, "Not exactly..."
An uproar rang throughout the room: "You can't be serious!"
"Facing a Casnel with just Neos is suicide!!"
"Surely you speak in jest Commander Novel?"
"This ain't what I signed up for. I ain't nobodies cannon fodder!"
That temporary reprieve from earlier now seemed lost - But then Nate did something entirely unexpected (which, considering all that had already transpired, Hoki was genuinely surprised she could still be, well, surprised at this point).
He walked silently over to the terminal, all the while questions and curses from almost everyone present (even some of the engineers and pilots) were hurled towards him. He reached over, Lt.Sunglasses leaning back in his chair to allow the stocky captain access to the terminal. After a few miss-pressed buttons, the correct file blipped onto the large screen - Its volume cranked up just enough to be heard over the cacophony of complaints.
----
The recording that came up had a found-footage quality: a grainy camera feed and a slightly distorted voiceover. The image (where not corrupted by a static blur) seemed to be of the large windows of a warship's bridge, with rolling metal columns in between each sheet of heavily armoured glass.
The view it afforded was bleak. On that blackest backdrop of space was the site of three or maybe four other civilian transport vessels - All shrouded in flames.
Shafts of metal protruding in and out of each hull - Bloated to look like butchered metallic animals. The ships were so severely disfigured that one couldn't hope to identify what they had once been as flames and explosions splurged in and out of the carcass remains of the four stricken craft.
Hoki could have sworn she momentarily saw the bodies of people, dressed in plain clothes, floating lifelessly in the vacuum of space to one side of the camera's sight. Their faces drained of all oxygen as they shrivelled and froze, as though they'd never held any life to begin with.
The man's voice accompanying these images was ragged, on the verge of shouting in rage or perhaps just bursting into tears. Through gritted teeth, it commented over the continuing visuals;
"Th-They just appeared the bloody bastards. No sonar, radar, no look-out - Nothing saw them. The Puma just exploded; it was there, and then it wasn't. We--"
The voice forcefully halts in time, with the camera suddenly shaking wildly around, the picture of destruction outside the windows shifting as the ground beneath the cameraman begins to warp and buckle.
A new noise of a ship groaning, a crunching screech of metal compressing against metal filling the air. A sound that made nails on a chalkboard seem pleasant by comparison.
"We haven't long now. Escape pods are no good; they shot them all out of the air when the Pirelli tried to run. T-there were kids on that ship, kids for Sun's sake--------- N-no God no----"
The commentary paused again. This time, something new came into the camera's focus - Although partially blurred, one could make out the humanoid shape of a mech, jet black in places to the point of almost blending in with its surroundings - And yet, other surfaces, a gleaming silver glow. A faint green shimmered around it, a clunky-looking cannon fixed to its arm and an angular head on its shoulders.
'A Casnel...' Hoki and perhaps everyone in that meeting room thought to themselves.
Said head turned as if to look straight at the camera before suddenly the whole machine swung rapidly to the right of the camera shot with blinding speed in an almost elegant, cartwheel motion - Before shooting up and out from the camera's limited field of view. In its place raced a bolt of orange energy fire, cutting a horizontal line across the film for a brief moment, helplessly missing the target and careering off into the distance.
"That's John. Remember him, you hear me? Ha, hell if anyone finds this."
The so-called 'John' came into focus now; his machine was the green and cyan shades of a Neo-M-type Vijaik, a variant of the very same mechs used by the Fluchtig.
This lone Neo rose its thin rifle to the sky, feet spread out, almost touching the deck of the warship below, with the visor of its face looking towards the anonymous cameraman as it fired desperately into the space above again and again and again and again.
"He's the only one of his team left; remember John Smith, you hear me, rememb--"
Even as the Neo-Vijaik desperately fired at the Casnel somewhere off the screen, a single return shot of bright, shimmering green smashed back down through its oval-shaped head in a mere second. Then the mighty blast bore into the mech's main body, sizzling momentarily like sparks off a welder, before appearing straight through the underside of the mech with a violent flourish - Finally piercing straight into the ship's deck beneath. In a single blast, the Neo was defeated.
The camera footage wholly cut out for a few moments at this point, but the voice-over persisted, now with interspersed panting and the sound of someone running on metal flooring.
"This is the cruiser class 'Red--"
The audio didn't so much cut this time but instead was drowned out by the sounds of screeching alarms and more buckling metal not far in the distance;
"--The enemy has a Casnel, I rep-------- further multiple Vijai-------- tell m-my ------ lov--------"
The voice stopped.
A few moments of silence passed in the briefing room, and just as it looked like someone would have to break the moment - The screen suddenly flashed back to life, even more distorted than before as crack lines and static scored the film.
The voice's owner was lying hunched in on himself, his back pressed against a non-descript grey wall. Aside from the distortion, there also now appeared to be another layer of glass in front of the lens.
The man was smeared in blood; whatever had hit him had come up through the floor just out of camera shot and, in doing so, had severed his left leg - Which lay a few feet away from the rest of his body, pooling vivid crimson blood across the floor - Seeping ever closer to where the camera seemed to lay.
The man was middle-aged but past that, was so battered as to be near indiscernible. His face was smattered with harsh burns, his black uniform singed or absent entirely in large patches, where bare, blackened skin showed from underneath.
He clutched one arm to his stomach, that same shade of red seeping through the gaps between where he held himself and the flesh beneath. While the leg that had been served just below the knee seemed at first the most grizzly, the culprit had been brute force rather than heat, leaving the former limb open to the air, tendons and all.
Finally, as his hands fell limply to his side, a massive gushing wound across his sternum was revealed, bleeding profusely into the lapping waves of blood that had already covered the floor.
In the tape's final moments, the man seemed to find strength enough to lift his head up, stare straight at the camera and nod in what might have been a salute of sorts - Before finally going entirely lame.
All the while, the image seemed to shrink. The blood still spreading across the floor's surfaces but now further away, which Hoki soon realised must mean the man had launched the recorder off of the ship in some manner. The camera was literally moving further away from its former owner.
The recording ended for good this time.
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