Blood and Steel: The Battle of Orion Nexus 3

[FlipsTheSlayer]

Battle of Orion Nexus 3 Military Box v4.1 Final.jpg (380.36 KiB) Viewed 240 times

[FlipsTheSlayer]

Amidst rising tensions between the Gizurean Menas Devourers and the Human Terran Star Imperium, the Devourers launched a heinous and unprovoked attack on the 32nd Defense Fleet ‘Halcyon II’ in orbit of the imperial world of Foralis, in the Yggdris system. Halcyon II had been in the process of retrofitting when the attack came upon them, and were caught unawares. While nearby defense fleets were able to arrive in time to drive off the Menas forces and reassert orbital control of Foralis, the 32nd Defense Fleet was left crippled.

The attack provoked outrage across the Imperium, as the 32nd Defense Fleet had been named in honor of the Imperium’s very first fleet, the 1st Defense Fleet ‘Halcyon’. Now known as Augustus Fleet, the Imperium’s first fleet had been greatly enlarged by order of the Imperator, and placed on permanent guard duty in the Almas system, home of Terra Nova, the imperial capital. To honor the fleet’s legacy, its former name was gifted to the Imperium’s newest fleet at the time, the 32nd Defense Fleet. The crippling of this fleet was seen as a grave insult to the legacy of the empire’s first fleet, and to the storied, 72-year history of its name.

In the aftermath of the attack on Halcyon II Fleet, Imperator Orellius called for “blood and steel” to be taken as payment for the insult, and to avenge the thousands of crewmen killed in orbit of Foralis. Admiral Tiko Hassari of the 13th Attack Fleet ‘Imperious’, and Admiral Klopis Ulari of the 35th Invasion Fleet ‘Unholy Retribution’ answered the call, exacting bloody revenge upon the Menas Devourers in the Orion Nexus system, from which the attack on Foralis was launched.

After the cowardly local defense fleet of the Menas Devourers fled the system, Imperious Fleet destroyed the spaceport above Orion Nexus 3 and rained death upon the planet, annihilating its garrison forces and paving the way for Unholy Retribution to launch a full scale ground invasion of the planet, conquering it in 10 days. The planet was renamed Karvoss.

271 Million Ackdarians paid the price for the Menas Devourers’ iniquity, cowardice, and dishonorable attack on the Terran Star Imperium.

[FlipsTheSlayer]

For anyone interested, here's the non-dramatized AAR: a neighboring Gizurean empire randomly attacked one of my defense fleets from an exclave system they owned that sat right between my empire and another neighboring empire. It was an independent Ackdarian system I was planning on colonizing before the bastards snapped it up. I forgot about it eventually, until one day I got a warning message saying they had sent a fleet from there to attack one of my defense fleets while it was retrofitting in the next system over. The two systems are very close, so they got to my fleet before I could order them to get out of there, and it got heavily damaged before reinforcements arrived and mollywhopped the Gizurean fleet.

Imagine my surprise when I went to check the name of the fleet they had attacked and crippled, only to find that it was the defense fleet I had *just* ordered built, specifically so I could give it the name of my first fleet in this run, Halcyon. That's when I got pissed and went to get an invasion fleet, so I could take the Ackdarian colony from them as revenge. The closest invasion fleet I could find happened to be one I had named Unholy Retribution, after a star system in the X universe. The story pretty much just wrote itself after that.