Quoted By:
“I spent the last day pouring over the map with MERRYGATE, planning the location of our next attack. I had originally advocated for a decisive strike: maximum burn towards the densely-populated inner system, followed by the launch of the NOVEMBER RAIN’s entire missile complement once we entered engagement range. However, I now realize that such a plan is unrealistic.
There is too much traffic. I suspected this issue when I examined the traffic manifests that MERRYGATE in loaded from MIZAR-IX, but the map has now confirmed it. Hundreds of stations and pressurized installations litter the orbital plane of the major planets. Of these structures, there are an uncomfortable number that are large enough to host a military presence – regardless of whether or not they are marked as such.
Moving into the inner system at full burn would risk detection. Launching an attack would be inefficient, not to mention suicidal. Against a single planet, losing one or two missiles to detection and interception is irrelevant. But if I aim to cripple an entire species, each intercepted missile represents an immeasurable setback.
To this end, MERRYGATE has compiled some of the more promising targets located within the system’s asteroid-rich mid-band. Our reasoning is simple: if we cripple the infrastructure supporting the aliens’ orbital assets, we can degrade and scatter their forces to the point where an inner-system strike becomes viable….
>MINING CHAIN. A peculiar cluster of three stand-alone stations positioned to extract resources – most likely tritium and deuterium - from the mid-system asteroid belt. The backbone of any interplanetary civilization is power and fuel. By attacking this station, I will deprive my enemy of both these crucial resources.
>MIZAR-VI-A. A colonized ice-moon positioned exceptionally close to its parent ice giant. Likely responsible for supplying the vast quantities of purified water that the aliens use for both habitation and propulsion. Clean liquid water is not trivial to find in space, and it is easy to see how the loss of such an installation could panic an aquatic species…
>MIZAR-V-B. A peculiar moon at the very edge of the inner system. Spectroscopic output from the RAIN’s astrogation suite points towards the existence of a vast array of orbital mirrors surrounding this world. MERRYGATE has – quite reasonably – proposed this as evidence of a massive farming operation. The fact that this structure exists at all reveals a degree of necessity – or more precisely, vulnerability. The system is well defended, but the mirrors themselves are undoubtedly quite fragile…
