Nadir Reprisal Initiative - Faction Information

[Nadir Reprisal Initiative]

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#104 History - Old Ill Fortunes

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“This is how you communicate with
a fellow intelligence; you hurt it, and
keep on hurting it, until you can
distinguish the speech from the screams.”

— Peter Watts,
— Blindsight

Task Force Apotheosis was created to monitor military and alien movements in the Alaska system in mid 819A.S. A chaotic mix of freshly commissioned warships and former wrecks dragged from their graves above Toledo and pressed into service, at its inception the task force consisted of little more than the dreadnought Apotheosis, a handful of fighters, and a trio of freighter-sized auxiliaries.

Both the strategic value of the Alaska system and its apparent hostility saw the Task Force steadily expand over the following years, growing from a reconnaissance picket to a combat-capable fleet. At the height of its strength, Task Force Apotheosis consisted of four capital ships and more than a dozen gunboat escorts and support craft. While individually far from a match for the nomad warships that frequented the star system, Apotheosis’ fleet provided an early warning network effective enough to avoid such powerful opponents until the task force’s full weight of fire could be bought to bear. These were not years of peace, but it was a time of stable, predictable hostilities for the task force, and it was during this period that, in 820A.S, the task force first extended its hand to the Liberty Navy.

Initial contact between the task force and the navy was fleeting, limited, and markedly cautious. A handful of task force ships bearing spoofed naval transponders screeched news of an incoming alien flotilla to naval listening stations, sent packets containing trajectories and positions, and vanished back into the silent void before their shocked witnesses had time to report the contact. Acting on information received from the unknown ships, a single tracking station belonging to the Navy’s External Security and Research Division (ESRD) broke from its prescribed mission, scanned the skies for the alien presence, and found it.

ESRD Listening Station, Kansas.

An alert was passed up the chain, and an alien cruiser was intercepted and engaged by the dreadnoughts Cloverfield and Durango, along with their attendant fleets, two weeks later. A creature that bathed in the heat of stars burned beneath the fire of a dozen naval guns. Human antimatter and alien flesh met in flashes of light that blinded nearby sensors, and left the nomad little more than a burst of radiation and a smear of plasma escaping Alaska at an appreciable fraction of light speed. The cruiser was six days out from Anchorage.

The pattern of anonymous early warning continued for twelve months; tip-offs from ships bearing naval transponders in regions of space no squadron was assigned to, unsigned transmissions containing strings of co-ordinates and vectors that, on closer observation, inevitably marked the site of some recent incursion. For a little over a year, Task Force Apotheosis settled into the routine of tracking nomad ships in-system, destroying those they could, and throwing those they couldn’t into the teeth of the Liberty Navy.

Then-assistant director of the ESRD and commander of naval intelligence in Alaska, Aisling Cenncroithi, was not the sort of woman to stand by and watch her people used as pawns. Aisling tasked personnel of her own with locating their unknown patrons, but dwindling political support for her superior, Vice Admiral Nicole Hayes, and the war in Gallia stretched naval intelligence thin, and Aisling’s personnel came back empty-handed. The one-way exchange of information continued.

Nemesis changed that.

July 821 in Alaska was marked by the arrival of a nomad cruiser. Codenamed Interloper A2173-8, the Irra was first detected by the recon cruiser Kebechet, stationed in high orbit over Anchorage. Sensors showed the nomad basking alone in a high orbit around Alaska’s cold sun. Several days burn from the bulk of the task force’s ships, and unwilling to pull the fleet out of position for a single distant cruiser, Fleet Commander Alyssa Siravane gave the order to notify the navy of the alien’s position.

By the time the familiar warnings crackled over naval frequencies, Aisling already knew. Interloper’s orbit had carried it easily within range of ESRD tracking stations and, as the alien hung silent and still in space, a fleet was assembling at Juneau. Only the ceaseless schedule of naval logistics remained unaffected, a steady trickle of transports and escorts travelling the long routes between facilities. All the while, intelligence analysts and software alike watched each new readout, every sensor return, waiting for some sign of intent from the alien. Interloper remained motionless, paying no more heed to distant rangefinders than a mountain did to a raindrop, the alien’s readouts rarely rising above a dull baseline.

Intelligence drew the obvious conclusion. Interloper was wounded and had chosen Alaska to recuperate. Long-range sensors, hauling information across light-minutes, confirmed the observation. The flickering cloud of microorganisms, the biological equivalent to a shield, that was so common on nomad craft was absent from Interloper. The alien was, for now at least, unprotected.

Interloper did not react when the assault carrier Philadelphia arrived in system, strikecraft swarming around her like wasps alongside a hive. Nor did it react when Philadelphia was joined by the dreadnought Cloverfield, or when the battlecruiser Plymouth Rock entered formation alongside them. Even as the fleet accelerated towards an intercept, Interloper remained as motionless as stone.

Only when the fleet reached the midpoint of their journey, Philadelphia and her escorts streaking across Alaska at thousands of kilometres a second, did the alien show any sign of awareness. Interloper turned, and the nomad began to run. Philadelphia’s fleet altered their courses to match, and human steel and flame began to reel the wounded nomad in as it fled towards the system edge.

The Liberty Navy’s Alaska fleet hounded it mercilessly, closing the distance kilometre by kilometre. The fleet was more than a month from port when Nemesis arrived.

Nemesis A21727-1 was the first nomad battleship Kebechet’s crew had ever seen. It was also the last. Space twisted when the nomad arrived, a new jump point sliding into existence six days out from Anchorage and vanishing just as quickly. Kebechet might as well have been an ant trying to stop a landslide. Nemesis sent no message, touched no minds. But forty eight hours after the alien’s arrival, Kebechet and her escorts were so much scrap orbiting Anchorage, and Nemesis had altered course for the New York jumpgate, swatting unfortunate naval transports from the sky like flies en-route.

Nemesis was bound for New York, and Philadelphia and her fleet were too distant to do anything but watch. Task Force Apotheosis was capable of combating alien cruisers, at a stretch, but engaging a dreadnought in direct combat would have been little better than putting a gun to the heads of every operative in the fleet and asking the nomads to pull the trigger. Siravane saw little alternative. Engagement may have been suicidal, but giving the nomad access to New York was unacceptable.

Siravane ordered the task force’s ships loaded for combat. Apotheosis and the two remaining cruisers began stockpiling antimatter in quantities that, under any other circumstances, would have been unthinkable. Auxiliaries tied themselves alongside the warships as they accelerated towards an intercept, freighters straining to pump enough fuel to feed the ship’s hungry reactors.

As they rocketed towards an intercept the capital ships and their escorts flipped and began the deceleration burn. Siravane’s auxiliaries did not.

Eleven freighters sprinted towards Nemesis at a rate that would have ground a human to dust. Their controls hastily replaced with dumb autopilots, guidance systems salvaged from vandalised missiles, and their cargo bays little more than antimatter containment; the task force’s auxiliaries streaked towards the nomad in a haze of metal and exhaust vapour.

Nemesis jinked and altered course at a rate that would have torn a human ship in half, left three of the freighters drifting as their patchwork systems tried and failed to compensate, manoeuvres shearing engines from their frames and ripping systems from mountings. Impossibly accurate point defences lanced at the incoming freighters and bursts of energy that blinded sensors arced from alien flesh, reducing another five ships to memories and light.

Two freighters simply vanished as the biological cloud that served as the ship’s shield puffed into existence, tearing themselves apart in high-speed collisions with millions of microscopic creatures. Antimatter detonations lit the cloud like lightening in a storm, but the tiny organisms absorbed the worst of the blast. The final freighter followed in their wake, burning through the corridor the other ships had cleared and into the depths of Nemesis’ shields.

Apotheosis and her fleet, still two days away, saw a blast that lit the cloud like a miniature sun. Pain lanced through the human crew of the warships in time with the impact, a scream of agony that stretched across more spectrums than even the Order’s computers could monitor. A handful of half-hearted cheers drifted across the Osiris’ deck, but Siravane knew better.
When the cloud finally fell away, Nemesis was waiting.

The rear end of the dreadnought was gone, a bulbous, twisted section in its place that reminded Siravane of nothing so much as a week-old scab. Whatever the alien used for propulsion had been left damaged by the blast and the dreadnought was no longer accelerating. Nemesis was drifting, but still very much alive.

Nemesis took a heavy toll.

And it was healing. The cloud that had acted as the nomad’s shield was concentrated around its damaged tail, and brief glimpses through the cloud showed long tendrils of alien flesh slowly beginning to stretch back into shape, growing along a framework of countless millions of microorganisms.

Siravane did not give it the chance. Two days later, the task force was within effective range, and Apotheosis and her remaining escorts opened fire on Nemesis. The task force’s guns spoke like enraged gods, antimatter and plasma alike bursting against the now familiar cloud as it poured from the wounded nomad. An Osiris-class dreadnought and two cruisers pumped enough energy into the cloud to vaporize a city. Streams of plasma burst against the shield, boiling away house-sized clusters of organisms. Bombers danced around the deadly light of point defences like panicked insects, frantically tossing torpedoes into the breaches before Nemesis could pull the cloud closed again. Gunboats hugged the fleet, exchanging fire with swarms of alien fighters.

It wasn’t enough.

Heket was the first to go, a plasma lance burning through the cruiser’s shields and ripping through its primary battery in a wave of heat and light. The ship seemed to stagger a moment, hanging in space as its weapons fell silent. Another blast severed its comms array, and the cruiser’s signature dropped off the network.

The remaining ships redoubled their fire, but Serqet followed a heartbeat later, another lance slicing out of the cloud and chewing through the second cruiser’s hull like so much paper. The alarm didn’t have time to sound before the lance breached containment, and the ship’s antimatter store exploded in a blast that reduced Serqet to light.

Apotheosis was the last capital ship on the field. Waves of energy lashed against the Osiris’ shields, and Siravane’s crew could do little more than watch quadrants buckle under the load, the ship’s reactor unable to maintain the shields, much less generate the antimatter needed for the warship’s guns. A terrifying thrill of triumph that had nothing to do with the ship’s human crew drifted through her corridors, growing stronger with every bolt that fizzled against her shields. Nemesis took advantage of a downed shield generator, and another lance boiled away an exposed segment of the ship’s armour.

Abruptly, the bombardment ceased. Crew members paused in their prayers, frowned at their displays.

Heket was moving again. Her weapons hung useless in their mountings, and there were a dozen holes in her hull, but the battered cruiser limped to starboard to face Nemesis. She didn’t open fire. No fighters sprung from her tattered bay, and her rangefinders sat as dead and useless as the weapons they guided. But, on Apotheosis’ scanners, the cruiser’s engine glowed like the heart of the sun as it accelerated towards Nemesis.

Nemesis realised what was happening, and triumph was replaced with terror. Plasma fire tore through the incoming cruiser, ripping strips from the hull, burning armour to ash. Point defences tore their attention from the bombers and the vacuum glowed as burst after burst hammered into the cruiser’s mangled superstructure. Before Heket was more than halfway to the alien, the fire of its engine gutted and died. It didn’t matter. Plasma tore the ship to white-hot fragments as it closed with Nemesis, each impact scything another section from the hull, but a cruiser-sized mass of fragments was an impossible thing to stop. The debris that had been Heket bludgeoned through Nemesis’ shield like a hatchet through flesh, and burned into the creature behind it.

Nemesis and Heket vanished in a fireball that showed on the sensors of every naval listening station in Alaska.

Apotheosis had won, but it was Alyssa Siravane who had to pick up the pieces.

With the majority of the fleet’s auxiliaries little more than radiation and fragments, Siravane faced the very real possibility of immobility and capture. Damaged as Apotheosis and her fellow survivors were, and without the recovery and repair facilities of the auxiliaries, the task force’s ships were in no shape to survive the jump out, even if there had been enough fuel left in Apotheosis’ bunkers to attempt the journey. When the first of Aisling’s ships arrived a week later, no more than a contact and a range on Apotheosis’ failing systems, Siravane could do little besides order gunners to half-functional stations and open a communications channel.

Siravane’s hail was answered by the Liberty Logistics Ship Newfoundland, an ESRD mobile refinery and manufacturing facility. Moments later, a pair of heavy transports responded to the call for identification, followed by a squadron of rapidly-closing battlefield repair craft and attendant freighters, made sluggish and awkward by the supplementary tanks hastily spot-welded to their hulls.

Aisling had arrived.

A face-to-face negotiation was arranged, and the two commanders agreed to meet aboard Apotheosis. Siravane saw little choice in the matter. Her influence only extended to her now-crippled fleet, and Aisling was not only the director of an entire division of the Liberty Navy, but also had the potential of firepower that Task Force Apotheosis could not hope to match after the engagement with Nemesis. Regardless, the ESRD’s presence was limited to support vessels, and a few token escort fighters. It seemed unlikely that they would choose to use anything further. From Aisling’s arrival on the dreadnought, the first true negotiations between Task Force Apotheosis and the External Security and Research Division took place.

Tension marked the beginning of the meeting, each party uncertain of the other’s intent. While in theory they shared a common cause, lurking doubt plagued them, whether the fear of abused hospitality or the threat of an impending fleet. As the discussion progressed, Siravane grew more at ease—without the ESRD’s intervention, after all, Apotheosis would have been left dead in the water. When the bridge reported that Philadelphia and her support fleet were returning to New York, the ice slowly melted, and they were free to speak without fear of crumbling stability.

Beyond talk of how best to address Apotheosis’ repairs and the remainder of Siravane’s fleet, the director of the ESRD displayed sympathy for the Order’s cause. The establishment of mutual rapport on a more formal level would be the first step in forming the Nadir Reprisal Initiative, but at that time, it was nothing more than two minds coming together in support of one another. Contact with Task Force Apotheosis would be classified, and the degree of the Order’s presence in Alaska would remain concealed.

As repairs on the dreadnought concluded, Aisling and Siravane parted ways. It would not be the last time the two spoke face-to-face.

Positive it may have been, but Siravane’s newfound ally was little consolation on her return to the Edge. While the victory over Nemesis had certainly been noteworthy, not everyone agreed that it justified the losses suffered—and, most importantly, many of those who shared that view lay higher on the chain of command than the fleet commander of the task force. A pyrrhic victory may have been sufferable at some other period in the Order’s existence, but Toledo was still an open wound, and one that had cut deep enough that leaning too much weight on it caused it to buckle. The destruction of three Reshephs was unacceptable, she was told, and the Hathors and strike craft lost twisted the knife further.

In the end, Siravane lost what remained of her fleet, though the bridge of Apotheosis remained hers. Operations on the borders of the Order’s influence, however, were no longer her responsibility.

Similar strife plagued Aisling in her role as the director of the ESRD. Her popularity had never been great, as the previous director of the division was notorious for working beneath the notice of others in his attempts to carry out more questionable research, and Aisling had been his direct supporter. Upon his removal, her new position was only secured by virtue of the former Vice Admiral Nicole Hayes, now a captain. On the books, Hayes was the formal head of the division, while Aisling held a role of advisory—but, in practice, Aisling maintained the power. Hayes simply collaborated with her and dealt with the rest of the Navy, keeping their eyes off Aisling and on herself.

Hayes had suffered several wounds in her duty to the Navy, mental and physical, which had led to her placement on the naval reserve in the past. When it came time that it happened again, Aisling suddenly lost her guardian angel. The barrier between her and the rest of the Navy’s scrutiny was unceremoniously lowered.

Without a true rank in the Navy, Aisling knew that her days in the division were numbered, and swiftly set about gathering as much data related to her research as she could. Reduction to a blank slate would have meant scrapping years’ worth of projects and, proud as she was, Aisling could not stand to see anyone proceed with them but herself.

It was in the chaos of all this that the nomads struck Hudson.

The alien threat loomed clearly now, and as the corpses of Cloverfield’s crew began the long journey home, concern crept into Aisling’s conscience. The greatest enemy humanity had ever known was once again active on a level that had not been witnessed since the Nomad War and Aisling was about to lose any opportunity she had to combat it.

She reached out to Siravane over a secure channel, and once more, the two spoke and collaborated.

Through her work in the ESRD, Aisling had become well-known and respected in the division, for her support to the researchers, her charisma, and her ruthless restructuring of the old, nightmarishly cryptic systems to make way for more efficiency. Aisling and Hayes had together hand-picked a squadron known as Strike Group Nadir, a collection of pilots that, until that point, had trained in covert operations and precision elimination, and that was nearing its time to be fielded. Her influence proved valuable in securing the basis of the new Nadir Reprisal Initiative—a new team of scientists, pilots, and logisticians that would continue the fight against the nomads.

Preparation was one thing, but bringing the Initiative into being was another altogether. Support in the ESRD for Aisling’s vision, while strong, was far from universal. Desertion in a time of war, as Aisling’s unsanctioned orders would inevitably be painted as by Naval brass, was treason and, in a division renowned for nigh-fanatical devotion to duty, bloodshed seemed inevitable. Here, however, the labyrinthine complexity of the ESRD’s security systems worked in Aisling’s favour. The same lockdown grids and authentication arrays that stood guard over the Navy’s most precious secrets now served to suppress whispers of desertion. Questions were asked on the dark, isolated decks of classified facilities but, in the cryptographic hive of ESRD central communications, they went unanswered.

By the time the rumours filtered back to Fort Bragg most of the Sixth Support Flotilla and two fighter squadrons – now collectively operating as Strike Group Nadir - were solidly under Aisling’s control. Those who disagreed were quietly rotated to ever more distant postings and rapidly found themselves powerless to do anything more than throw messages into a communications network so heavily restricted that it may as well have not existed at all. Isolated and alone, those few who realised Aisling’s intentions were imprisoned by the same protocols that they had trusted to ensure the safety of their projects, and left with little option but to trust to glacially slow inter-system supply ships to carry warning to their superiors. Aisling did not wait for them to act.

Transports and auxiliaries took on fuel alongside half a dozen concealed refuelling stations and, suspended in the silence of the Alaskan sky, the massive fabricators of a mobile refinery hummed to life. Naval living quarters and ammunition stores were ripped out and replaced with ever larger fuel tanks, heavier radiation shielding and expanded life support; luxury giving way to the cold realities of survival beyond the edge of civilised space. The last of Aisling’s retrofits were completed two days before word of her coup arrived in New York with the Bison Fort Wayne.

Naval command’s response was as swift as it was useless. The battlecruiser Challenger Point, her crew on leave from the Rheinland front, was shaken from her moorings at Norfolk shipyard and thrown on a hasty course to relieve the wayward director of command, a trio of Defiant-class gunboats scrambling in her wake like hornets. Ultimately, it was a matter of too little, too late. By the time the battlecruiser’s reactor stuttered to life, Strike Group Nadir had left Zone 21 behind and vanished in to New York’s Badlands.

The collapse of the Omicron Minor jumphole in early 822 layered another complication atop Aisling’s already precarious plans for a rendezvous. Now actively pursued by the Liberty Navy, Strike Group Nadir found itself facing the long journey from the core worlds to Liberty’s border and the waiting Apotheosis with precious few friends and an abundance of enemies. Rumours of a resurgent Hellfire Legion, now calling itself the Commonwealth of Liberty, did little to foster support for Aisling’s actions on the homefront.

Supply ships returning to Liberty carried news of Aisling's betrayal with them.

Deprived of the haven offered by the jump network, the strike group’s lumbering auxiliaries became as much a burden as they were an asset. Every day dredged supplies from the dwindling stores of the fleet's two bisons, and the threat of attack – by both the Navy and opportunists for whom an under escorted mobile refinery offered the score of a lifetime – hung over the group like a shroud. Escort pilots flew day-long patrols, pushing the strike group’s stimulants and their own bodies to the limits.

Ultimately, it was not enough. The grizzly Little Rock, equipped with a long-range sensor array to guide the rest of the fleet, was the first to come under attack as it exited the jump point to Galileo. Little Rock, made cumbersome by her payload, was torn apart in the seconds before her accompanying fighters arrived. The strike group’s fighters broke formation as they entered the system, splitting on a dozen different trajectories to avoid the newly-formed debris cloud.

Santa Clara was less fortunate. The bison smashed in to the wreck of Little Rock in the instant it emerged from the jumphole. Shields down and functionally blinded by the jaunt through jumpspace, Santa Clara’s fate was a function of mass and inertia, and the bridge of the bison crumpled beneath the blow even as the impact bludgeoned both ships clear of the jump point. The handful of torpedoes thrown at Santa Clara by the attacking fighters was little more than an afterthought. The attacking fighters were forced to withdraw as the rest of Aisling’s strike group arrived, careful barrages of fire swatting incoming torpedoes from the sky, but by then the damage was already done. In a single frenzied minute, the fleet’s supplies had been cut in half and her most valuable scout was nothing but dead metal. The attacking ships were never identified.

Strike Group Nadir rendezvoused with Apotheosis on the edges of Galileo shortly after, following a set of co-ordinates sent before Aisling’s fleet departed Alaska. A little less than half of Siravane’s surviving command had chosen to join Apotheosis on her long journey from the Omicrons, and only three Hathors flew where once there had been a dozen. That three; however, combined with Apotheosis, was more than enough to stretch the newly-formed Initiative’s limited supplies to breaking point.

Perhaps, without the additional burden of Siravane’s warships, the Initiative could have made the journey to the Omicrons with the stores aboard the fleet’s remaining bison. Could have cut rations and plotted longer, more efficient courses. Could have dropped excess mass to stretch limited supplies further still. Could have cut their escorts loose and hoped for the best. Perhaps somewhere else Newfoundland’s drones could have pulled fuel from the skies of gas giants, but Galileo offered only empty space and a long, lonely trade route.

Instead, the first fleet action conducted by the Nadir Reprisal Initiative was an act of piracy.

It was almost laughably easy. Law enforcement in the border worlds was uncertain at the best of times, and the lack of dedicated installations in Galileo only complicated an already expensive patrol route. Aisling’s ships were flagged as rogue in Libertonian space, but beyond the Reppu Bend the Kusari-owned tradelanes extended them the same mechanical courtesy they did any military unit. ‘Patrol Delta Six’ confiscated several tonnes of raw materials from bewildered transport captains before the resulting identification requests made it back from Rio Grande. By then Aisling’s ships were long gone, returned to the Reppu cloud and Apotheosis. The Initiative managed the same trick twice more over the subsequent week before the first response patrol arrived in-system, a pair of Defiant-class gunboats slipping from the Colorado jumpgate like the first pebbles of a landslide. The Initiative left Galileo behind two days later.

Weeks rolled into months as the Initiative crept through Kusari, crawling its way across the sector on a haphazard network of jump points long since superseded in civilised space by the trade network. Without the Nomad War-era survey data aboard Apotheosis the Initiative would have quickly been reduced to a drifting mess, countless miles from home. Instead, they followed a trail long abandoned by law-abiding citizens and house governments alike, threading a careful path between pirate strongholds and long-haul smuggling routes. The journey was long, but the supplies the fleet had scavenged in Galileo held, and the Initiative slipped from Kusari in to the lawless Edge Worlds in mid 822.

The reception was not all Siravane and Aisling might have hoped for. For an organisation composed almost exclusively of foreign nationals, the Order had little tolerance for disloyalty. Individual captains may have been allowed a large degree of leeway in how they conducted their missions, but Siravane’s apparent dedication to members of an organisation with which the Order often found itself in open conflict were enough to raise eyebrows in the distant stations of Omicron-100.

The Overwatch did not go so far as to order Apotheosis shot from the sky, but Siravane and her erstwhile fleet was quietly locked out of the Overwatch’s intelligence network. Docking permits were revoked and requests for resupply met with icy silence. To the Order, Aisling’s ESRD flotilla represented an intelligence leak that could undermine what remained of the organisation, and granting them access to the hard-won information that kept their stations functioning would have been the height of folly.

Once again, the Nadir Reprisal Initiative found itself bereft of allies. With the resources of Omicorn-100 lost to them, the fleet instead turned its attention to the closer goal of Omicron Eta. The fleet arrived in orbit around the gas giant Catania in September 822, and Newfoundland’s scoop drones dropped from the ship’s belly into the planet’s thick atmosphere. Catania had little enough of value that it had evaded any serious mining efforts over the years but, given time, there was enough for a desperate flotilla to survive.

Scoop drones in action over Catania.

As of September 822, the Initiative remains in orbit over Catania, slowly gathering its strength.