19 February 4009
As the fleet auxiliaries arrived back in the Belaire system, relieved not to have been blown apart by the latest Belaire battle fleet, recovery of the Belaire survivors could proceed and with this the usual occasional bits of intelligence gathering. Proving true once again the stereotype of the unreliable helm officer, the navigator of the first Sovremenny destroyed in the battle was easily persuaded to provide star charts for a system known to the officer as Algoma, which was soon identified as Tau Ceti, not too far from Duratus in light-years but rather distant along the jump network being reachable from Giclas 9-38. Of somewhat more practical use were sensor schematics provided by a sensor technician recovered from the wreckage of a Kiev, although the specifications provided did not match any sensor the Legion had yet seen in battle and was thus presumed to be a design intended for auxiliary craft. Finally, pulling off a rare hat trick a team of Legion intelligence officers managed to persuade a Belaire lieutenant, apparently recently promoted out of the Belaire survey corps into his role on a Kirov-class battlecruiser, to provide detailed mineral survey information from the Giclas 9-38 system. This turned out to be particularly useful, as it clearly indicated the presence of vast sorium deposits in the atmosphere of the third planet of the B-component star in that system, a massive gas giant. Legion commanders hoped this would prove a ripe target for a raiding action in the near future.
By the night of 23 February, First and Second Fleets had completed their rearmament and set out for the Giclas 9-38 jump point, transmitting a message back to Kuiper 79 requesting the B-108 buoy layer along with its third Type I probe be sent to perform reconnaissance of the far side of that jump point. This request was of course immediately granted. As the fleets set off, some slight shuffling of the order of battle occurred, such that Destroyer Squadron 1 contained the two damaged *Charybdis-*class ships as well as the light cruiser Domination, all of which would return to the Duratus shipyards for needed armor repairs.
On 25 February, while maneuvering through the Belaire inner system to take up watch over Belaire Prime, Brutal Legend reported resolving ground force sensor signatures on the planet surface. While the signatures could not be resolved into individual units, the intensity of emissions reflected a total of roughly 180,000 to 400,000 soldiers, depending on the composition of the Belaire forces as well as how well-fortified individual units were. As the Legion’s Ground Forces at this time could only boast of having some 97,000 soldiers under arms, this was a serious concern for the Legion high command as an invasion of the planet itself would not be feasible in the near future. Therefore, a multi-year siege would likely be required even after the orbital defenses of Belaire Prime had been eliminated, hardly an enticing prospect for the Lords Admiral who much preferred to list devastating victories in open battle on their service records.
From her monitoring position near the jump point to Giclas 9-38, Bad Omen reported detecting active sensor emissions from a lone Belaire Kiev on 2 March, as First and Second Fleets were closing in on the jump point. While the Kiev did not maintain its active sensors long enough for Bad Omen to determine its course, Commander Hera Thrace offered her opinion that the Kiev was likely attempting to recover the life pods of the spaceliner destroyed by Bad Omen two weeks earlier. This assumption was put to question eight hours later, as Bad Omen also reported detecting engine waste heat signatures from a pair of Borodino-class auxiliary vessels. By this time, First and Second Fleets had nearly pulled up even with the position of the Belaire contacts, albeit on a parallel trajectory, and thus First Fleet under Captain Felix Tegyrios was dispatched to investigate and likely interrupt what appeared to be some form of salvage operation.
Fleet and contact positions at 1724 on 2 March 4009, as Bad Omen reported detection of two Borodino-class contacts. While the Legion commanders had formed a working assumption that these vessels were carrying out a salvage operation, emissions analysis would estimate these vessels as displacing 170,000 void tons each, which was in retrospect rather a large size for a salvage vessel and certainly larger than even the Legion Navy’s most voluminous space stations, the 152,000-ton Achelous Mk III-class Terraforming Platforms.
As First Fleet approached the Belaire vessels, they were further able to resolve engine emissions from a Bodry-class vessel, estimated at 72,000 void tons displacement, before finally resolving not only the Kievs but a pair of escorting Slavas at a 12 million km distance. An additional trio of Osas were further resolved as FIrst Fleet closed to under nine million km, at which point the Belaire squadron finally appeared to take notice of their Legion pursuers. Noting that the escorts, while unimpressive, would be able to break through the point defenses of First Fleet which presently had only one destroyer squadron attached, Second Fleet was ordered to join the pursuit formation while First Fleet held position at a six million km distance from their targets. By 2324 this maneuver had been completed, with Captain Jocasta Gelanor once again assuming command, due to seniority if not due to being favored by her immediate superior officer. Captain Gelanor immediately ordered her fleets to close with the Belaire convoy, without bothering to wait for the Slavas to exhaust their missile stores.
Duranium Legion Navy Combined Attack Fleet
Captain Jocasta Gelanor commanding aboard CL Disruptor
Cruiser Squadron 1: Denouement, Devastator, Dissolution, Grand Cross, 2x R-56, 2x AR-56 Osprey
Cruiser Squadron 2: Dauntless, Defenstrator, Disruptor, Gothic, 2x R-56, 2x AR-56 Osprey
Cruiser Squadron 3: Devourer, Double Edge, Garrote, 2x R-56, 1x AR-56 Osprey
Destroyer Squadron 3: Catharsis, Centaur, Chronomancer, Final Blow
Destroyer Squadron 4: Champion, Covenanter, Cry, Ye WIcked, Final Judgment
Destroyer Squadron 7: Carnivore, Chu Ko Nu, Cretaceous, Felstalker
1x Bellerophon class Frigate (detached): Bad Omen
Totaling 265,000 tons displacement with 7,991 crew complement
Republic of Belaire Auxiliary Convoy 1
Designation and commander unknown
1x Kiev class Jump Cruiser
2x Slava class Escort Cruiser
3x Osa class Destroyer Escort
2x Borodino class Auxiliary Vessel
1x Bodry class Auxiliary Vessel
Totaling 480,000 tons displacement (69,000 tons military) with unknown crew complement
The encounter could be described by any number of words, but “battle” would not be among them. As the Belaire convoy could only make 891 km/s due to the slow auxiliary vessels, the Legion fleets closed from six million km to point-blank range in only twenty-two minutes. While the point defense work was in large part more than sufficient to deal with the output from just two Slavas, a number of inexplicable fire control mishaps aboard the fleets’ destroyers occurred as the cruisers prepared to fire, causing Champion to suffer hits from eleven missiles in addition to receiving a number of laser hits from the Osas, suffering internal damage to a number of components before all three Osas were destroyed in a thoroughly-uncoordinated volley of fire from the Defiants. While the display of gunnery had been, stated generously, appallingly unprofessional, with the three Osas destroyed there remained no threat to the Legion warships and the remaining Belaire vessels were summarily dismissed from their duties with extreme prejudice. This was in spite of a futile and frankly amusing attempt at retreating once the Osas had been eliminated, as the Belaire convoy plodding back toward Belaire Prime at 891 km/s could hardly be called a proper attempt at withdrawal.
Interestingly, the massive Borodinos appeared to have multiple layers of armor, as the 152 mm railgun blasts failed to penetrate the armor of either vessel on the initial salvos. Based on this, Legion intelligence officers would tentatively designate this class as a heavy assault transport for carrying out planetary invasions, largely as Legion intelligence officers could think of no other reason to armor a large auxiliary vessel so heavily. In any case, armored or not the Borodinos could not put up any resistance beyond dogged persistence, and by 2348 the space around the jump point had been cleared of any Belaire presence save for nine smoldering wrecks. The wounded Champion was detached to collect the Belaire survivors and return them to Juiper 79 for debriefing before setting her course for Duratus to receive armor repairs. While questioning these survivors, Legion intelligence officers were able to persuade a nervous Belaire sensor technician to confirm technical specifications of the large active sensors mounted on the Kirov-class battlecruisers, a minor coup though hardly groundbreaking.
Barely three hours later, yet another Belaire auxiliary vessel was detected between First and Second Fleets and the Giclas 9-38 jump point, this time of the Kanin class displacing only around 34,000 void tons. Fortunately for the Legion crews, who were by now getting slightly annoyed at having to slaughter random unarmed passers-by just because there was a war on rather than conserving their ammunition for glorious battles with proper enemy battle fleets, the Kanin was unescorted. The ship also proved to be unarmored, being destroyed with only 49 hits with Captain Tegyrios and Dissolution claiming the kill. No further Belaire vessels were encountered along the path to the jump point, granting the Legion crews some questionably-deserved rest.
First and Second Fleets arrived at the Giclas 9-38 jump point by 0942 on 3 March, at which time the B-108 buoy layer which had already arrived launched its third and final Type I probe through the stabilized jump point. Even by Legion Naval standards, the returned telemetry from the probe proved quite illuminating, and in fact highly surprising.
Initial sensor telemetry from the Type I probe sent through the Giclas 9-38 jump point. While the Legion Navy may have been prepared for any number of possibilities, detecting a fleet of 31 undefended Belaire auxiliary vessels directly at the jump point was decidedly not on that list.
Not one to pass up an opportunity to easily destroy a large fraction of the Belaire auxiliary fleet, Captain Gelanor ordered First and Second Fleets through the jump point to ambush and destroy the fleet of Azovs. The destroyers Covenanter and Cry, Ye Wicked were detached to intercept the two Udaloy-class destroyer-size vessels, which appeared to be unarmed in spite of their provisional hull type designation, while the rest of the Fleets intercepted the fleeing Azovs. While the Fleet easily overtook their slower targets, it did take about two minutes before the fire control systems on the Legion vessels had recovered from the jump transit and could line up shots in the hapless Belaire ships. In the ensuing slaughter, two of the vessels briefly signaled their surrender to the Legion forces, but this surrender was apparently not supported by the entire crew and in an unclear sequence of events a number of rogue crew members managed to destroy the engines of both vessels, causing each to explode spectacularly as roughly one-third of their crews escaped in life pods. The rescued Belaire crew members would later confirm that the Azov class were in fact small civilian-operated colony ships, which had been gathered about the jump point awaiting a signal from the Belaire Navy that their home system was safe to traverse.
Far more tragically, one of the Udaloys began frantically signaling Cry, Ye Wicked, protesting that the vessel was a diplomatic ship and requesting that the destroyer cease firing. Unfortunately, the diplomat had displayed even worse tactical aptitude than a typical Belaire Naval officer, and signaling the diplomatic status of his vessel while it was being fired upon proved to be far too late to save the Udaloy.
Once the unarmed Belaire colony fleet had been neutralized, the light cruiser Disruptor was detached to collect the survivors and return them to Kuiper 79, bringing with her Captain Gelanor who would be in attendance at the upcoming Naval Conference. Disappointingly, though not unexpected from a fleet of largely civilian crews, no useful intelligence was gathered from the non-surrendering survivors. As Disruptor returned to the Belaire system, she transmitted orders to Bad Omen ordering the frigate to transit to Giclas 9-38 to provide long-range sensor coverage for the Legion fleets on the jump point. While crossing the Belaire system to the Kuiper 79 jump point, Disruptor detected active sensor emissions from yet another Belaire Kiev, apparently fleeing the system. However, as the Kiev could be accompanied by any number of escort vessels, Captain Gelanor contented herself with sending a message of warning back to the Legion fleets assembled in Giclas 9-38, alerting them to the incoming traffic and sending best wishes for good hunting.
These best wishes apparently had some effect, as when the Belaire convoy was detected jumping into Giclas 9-38 on 7 March the Legion officers were delighted to discover that the escort consisted of three Osas but no Slavas. Not even thirty seconds later, another Belaire convoy had been reduced to trans-Newtonian waste, with the greatest problem confronting the Legion fleets being that of prisoner transfer to Kuiper 79. As the jump point was stabilized and the Grand Cross class contributed no firepower to the cruiser squadrons, it was determined to use the jump cruisers as prisoner transports in the absence of more suitable vessels such as the traffic monitor classes. Little useful intelligence was gained from these prisoners, perhaps the most notable finding being confirmation of sensor specifications for the midrange sensors used by the Belaire Sverdlov and Kirov classes.
Sensor readings showing the composition of the seven-ship convoy destroyed by the Legion on 7 March.
After this, a period of relative calm settled across the Belaire war zone, to be broken at 0305 on 20 March by an urgent report from Warden 2 that a pair of Kirov sensor signatures had been detected in Kuiper 79. As Warden 2 had recently arrived at the jump point to WISE 0350-5658, this was suspected to be a Belaire battle fleet returning to its home system, which had only just now chosen to pulse its active sensors. However, on initial detection it was not yet clear what course the Belaire fleet had set, and the sensor pulse proved to be transient as the Kirovs disappeared from the scanners of Warden 2 as quickly as they had first appeared. At this stage, the Belaire battle fleet was estimated to be roughly 2.2 billion km from the Belaire jump point, which could be traversed by the Belaire in about seven and a half days. First and Second Fleets, on the other hand, could travel the 3.16 billion km from the Giclas 9-38 jump point to the Kuiper 79 jump point across the Belaire system in just under seven days and eight hours. Lord Captain Selene Styx immediately sent out an order for First and Second Fleets to set their course for the Kuiper 79 jump point with all due haste, hoping to set an ambush for what may have been the last remaining group of Kirov-class battlecruisers.
These hopes would soon be dashed as the Kirovs were reacquired by Warden 2, on a direct course towards the WISE 0350-5658 jump point. Disappointed, Lord Captain Styx ordered First and Second Fleets back to their previous locations while Warden 2 retreated from the jump point. Oddly enough, the Kirovs appeared to detect Warden 2 as they approached the jump point, retreating from the traffic monitor as if her presence heralded an entire Legion battle fleet lurking in the void. While the Legion crew was gratified to be held in such high regard by their enemy, it was rather less appreciated to have an undetected Belaire battle fleet traversing Legion space undetected. To get eyes on the targets, Broken Wind was detached from her surveillance position in the Belaire system and ordered to travel along the line from the Kuiper 79 jump point to the WISE 0350-5658 jump point, hoping to spot the Belaire fleet and shadow them if possible. First and Second Fleets were once again ordered to Kuiper 79 to provide security against the potential threat, over protests from the crews who were rather put out by the constant back-and-forth of life in the Legion Navy.
This put out-ness would not be helped as the Belaire fleet detected once again by Warden 2 at 1429, at the instant before they passed through the jump point to WISE 0350-5658. As the various Legion Navy elements were once again ordered back to their previous positions, crews and commanders alike pondered the inscrutable nature of the Belaire fleet actions. Adding to the confusion, Warden 2 reported the re-arrival of the Belaire forces at 1829, although they immediately disappeared through the jump point once again. This was repeated again at 2312, and again at 0742 and at 0757 the next day.
Despite the fact that the Belaire fleet was being kept at bay by an apparent and overblown fear of a 3,000 ton traffic monitor, Lord Admiral Criasus was not comfortable with the presence of a Belaire battle fleet behind his front lines so near to Kuiper 79. To resolve the situation, Cruiser Squadron 5, consisting of the two Invincibles and Judgment Day which had recently completed their allotted shore leave periods, were dispatched to Giclas 9-38 to maintain an anti-commerce presence at that jump point. This would free up First and Second Fleets to commence an offensive action against the Belaire battle fleet. Without the Hellfires the fleets would be likely to suffer some losses against the Sovremennys and their laser batteries, however this would be an acceptable price to pay for comprehensively eliminating the last substantial Belaire combat presence from this sector of the galaxy. To facilitate this, Warden 2 was ordered to move away from the WISE 0350-5658 jump point to remove herself from Belaire active sensor range, counting on her RF scanner to pick up the Belaire sensor signature at this distance.
The Belaire fleet captains apparently had spotted the Legion Navy’s fleet movements, as on 25 March a third pair of Borodinos were detected making a break for the Giclas 9-38 jump point. While they were only approaching at just over 600 km/s, Cruiser Squadron 5 remained seven days away from the jump point and thus would have to give pursuit of the ambling Belaire convoy, aided by Bad Omen on station in the Giclas 9-38 system. Interestingly, as the convoy closed in on the jump point, probe telemetry indicated that there were no escorts of either Slava or Osa class, simply a Kiev-class jump cruiser which would be unarmed. Clearly, the Belaire Navy was running out of even their most numerous escort-class vessels. Shortly after this, Bad Omen reported that the Belaire convoy was sitting immobile at the jump point in Giclas 9-38, at which point the convoy remained for several hours before returning to the Belaire system on 26 March and setting a return course for Belaire Prime - at which point Cruiser Squadron 5 was diverted towards an intercept point along with Gatekeeper 7 which happened to be passing through the system.
Fleet positions as of 1647 on 26 March, at which time First and Second Fleets were passing Cruiser Squadron 5 as each traveled to their respective new positions. The #2 labeled waypoint on the map indicates the planned interception position from which Cruiser Squadron 5 and Gatekeeper 7 would attempt to ambush the Belaire troop convoy.
At 0547 on 2 April, the active sensor signature of the escorting Kiev was detected, on a clear evasive course away from Cruiser Squadron 5. Continued evasion proved fruitless for the Belaire ships, which were efficiently destroyed by 0959. This marked the final pair of Borodino-class armored assault transports, as well as the last known example of the Bodry class which had been provisionally designated as a large auxiliary jump tender. Interrogation of the survivors provided no useful information, although Legion xenobiologists continued to be fascinated at the wide range of colors to which a Belaire could be turned given appropriate external stimuli.
Sensor report from Gatekeeper 7 at 0547+50 on 2 April, as the active sensors of the fleeing Kiev-class jump cruiser gave away the position of the Belaire convoy.
Shipbuilding
1x Furious class Jump Destroyer: Fight Fire With Fire
1x Ars Magica Mk II class Survey Frigate: Adamant (refit)
2x Phaeton class Freighter
Research
Flag Bridge
Particle Beam Strength 6
Systems Discovered
Tau Ceti (ex. Algoma): Belaire interrogations, 19 February 4009