Quoted By:
“We breached the outer reaches of their defensive perimeter yesterday, slipping between the half-dozen sensor-ghosts patrolling the fringe regions of their fortified homeworld. Our proper approach begins tomorrow, in less than twelve hours.
There will be no way of circumventing this battle. The vacuum squirms with EM radiation from orbiting sensor buoys and mammoth ground-based emitters. The RAIN will almost certainly be identified before she can bring the planet inside her launch radius.
Once that occurs, we will be engaged. The Mizarians have been given a year to prepare for our arrival. Enough time for their captains to have studied our tactics and navigation, their engineers our weaponry and propulsion. Enough time – I think – for their species to truly hate us. I see it in the form of desperation, and in the form of spite. MIZAR-III's Orbital space is saturated with engine-flares and mass-signatures. Their fleet of heavy cruisers is arranged in a screening pattern, positioned as if to physically blockade our approach. At night, their lighter counterparts test-fire torches overdriven to the point of suicidal recklessness, jealously hoarding fusion fuel for their final chase.
Our mission terminates here. MERRYGATE and I have spent months paring candidate assault plans down to their best iterations, calculating risk-propensities down to the ablative kilogram. Yet she is adamant that the final decision should fall upon me – to determine how we are applied, and how we may be expended..."
- [UNSIGNED], EXECUTIVE AUDITOR, TRS NOVEMBER RAIN, AD. 2242, DECEMBER 12th, PERSONAL JOURNAL
>RED. The L2 defensive station is spatially isolated, carrying older hardware susceptible to cyberwarfare intrusion. MERRYGATE will attempt to subvert the station and turn it against the rest of the defenses; in the ensuing chaos, we will use the moon’s sensor shadow to remove key targets before initiating an attack run on the planet itself…
>BLUE. This section of MIZAR-III’s defenses is thin, and somewhat lacking in peripheral sensor coverage. The RAIN will expend its sensor drones to bait the enemy forces out of position before initiating an attack run on the planet itself…
>GREEN. This section of MIZAR-III’s defenses lacks central sensor coverage, despite an ample fleet presence. The RAIN will burn towards the planet at maximum thrust, using a MSL-AM to clear away any intervening ships before launching against the planet itself…
>??? I will use the hunter’s archive and its blood-warm method of recording information. I do not know precisely what will occur, and I sense that employing it will deny us a possible conclusion…
