Turn 111 - Tears Of Sorrow
The survey reports start rolling in at the start of the year, mostly due to skirmishes with the Rouges Noir slowing things down a bit. Thankfully you had sent your Expeditionary Fleet, centered around the
Jean Bart-class Battlecruisers, to accompany the survey teams.
On GX-D35 your forces encountered substantial Rouges Noir forces, both naval and on the ground. The naval engagement was short and sharp, with only minor damage reported and with the entire Rouges Noir squadron eliminated.
On the ground is a different story, the attached Regimental Combat Teams of the 1st Regimental Combat Team Division, which had been fully refitted to the new standard, made a combat drop on the fledgling Rouges Noir colony. The Rouges Noir were actually spread out in penny packets across the planet, rather than in a central location. From orbit it was obvious that the planet, which had been designated Nouvelle Bourgogne due to the gorgeous forests that were visible, was a pleasant place, likely with extensive forestry products available.
Until the Rouges Noir started massive forest fires with inferno gel and released chemical weapons and exceptionally dirty nuclear devices against your forces. The nuclear strikes were more ‘area denial’ than anything else, and actually missed your forces, but started even more forest fires. The chemical releases required your forces to stay buttoned up, complicating things a bit but thanks to the superior logistics enabled by the new designs it didn’t negatively affect combat efficiency all that much.
The Rouges Noir forces refused to surrender, going down fighting, and when defeat was certain at any given enclave they’d detonate suicide charges in an attempt to cause yet more casualties among your soldiers. In one of the largest enclaves your forces made an additional rather chilling discovery.
Slave pens, filled with ‘enemies of the people’ who were to be worked to death. It is very fortunate that your forces were highly disciplined even here, because it quickly became apparent that one of the ways the Rouges Noir controlled their ‘undesirables’ was to infect them with exceptionally contagious and highly agonizing diseases, then withhold palliative care unless work quota targets were met. The palliative medications had been destroyed by the Rouges Noir forces, dooming the slaves to an agonizing death. Your medics, however, are able to ease at least some of the symptoms on an emergency basis and have secured samples of both the palliative and the initial disease cocktail.
By the time the fighting is over the planet is a wreck, the planet-spanning forests that had been such a beautiful sight from orbit were gone, reduced to charcoal and burnt bits of wood. The air was choked with radioactive waste and the water supply had been heavily poisoned by chemical weapons. What had been a beautiful, near-Terran world has been reduced to a barely habitable ruin, requiring extensive work by DoME to make it habitable.
In GX-E34 your naval forces route the Rouges Noir units engaged in the construction of orbital installations to take advantage of the extensive orbital mineral deposits. The planet itself has a very noxious atmosphere as well as thoroughly unpleasant weather, but there are massive deposits of extremely valuable industrial metals throughout the system, both in orbit and on the planet. The CO of the survey expedition has dubbed the system Nyū Shikoku, however it will also require substantial DoME terraforming to be made truly self-sustaining as a colony, despite the enormous mineral wealth available.
Your survey forces skirmish with a Rouges Noir survey flotilla in GX-D37, annihilating the comparatively crude vessels with rather contemptible ease. No effort was made to take prisoners, as the Rouges Noir ships never made even the slightest attempt to surrender. Considering that the naval squadron involved was fully aware of the situation at D35, you suspect that even if the Rouges Noir had attempted to surrender there would have been a remarkable level of mass myopia and unfortunate comm failures.
Apart from the lack of fresh water, as the planet is one giant salt marsh, the sole habitable world in GX-D37 nonetheless is otherwise habitable. The world, while featuring a pleasant climate, edible fruits on the massive neo-mangrove spreads, and quite tasty fish in the shallow briny seas, has relatively little dry land, and little in the way of readily accessible resources. The waters are very warm, with a massive number of hot springs feeding the surface waters, and the rich salts within the water make for excellent bathing. The survey crews decide to dub the system Neubayern.
The final system surveyed has no Rouges Noir presence at all. GX-D38 is a beautiful system, with multiple gas giants featuring rich moon systems, and the lone habitable planet in the system is slightly larger than Griffon itself. The geography is exceptionally rugged, with towering peaks and incredibly deep and twisting canyons. The main challenge for colonization is clearing land for suitable landing sites, along with dealing with the same rather pesky artificial fiber consuming bacterium that you’ve encountered before. The strain here seems even more aggressive, being able to eventually consume even treated clothes developed for the older strain. The survey teams have decided to dub the system Neuhessen, with a wry comment that they suspect that, for a while at least, one would likely need to be a nudist to truly enjoy living here, as unlike the previous bacteria type, this one is airborne. Thankfully it is also extremely delicate, and the existing anti-microbial measures taken by your transports, and indeed the entire civil transport network, would easily prevent the stuff from spreading.
You really hope that the pattern seen on Nouvelle Bourgogne doesn’t hold true for all of the Rouges Noir worlds, because if so it will be an absolute shitfest to deal with.
Samples of the diseases used on the slaves are being worked on in your labs. Initial reports are that they are extremely crudely engineered, in many ways, and mutate rapidly and aggressively as a consequence. There are absolutely no signs of any involvement from any competent geneticist in the work. As a consequence there is a proposal to approach the Kilburroughans for their help in untangling this trainwreck. While your own geneticists are good, and could handle this on their own in enough time, having an additional perspective might prove incredibly valuable.
[] | Action | Result |
[] | Request assistance from Kilburrough |
- Improves relations with Kilburrough
- +2 to ‘Cure For What Ails You’ event chain
|
[] | We can do it ourselves |
- +1 to ‘Cure For What Ails You’ event chain
|
You get a chance to watch the first flight of the first fruits of Project Draken. The
JAS-X Gripen is an extremely fast and nimble 55 ton aerospace fighter with a maximum overthrust of 5.5 g and ample fuel reserves. The armored shell is comparable to designs over twenty tons heavier, with very careful engineering allowing that relatively high mass of armor to be stable yet maintainable. The fighter is equipped with a pair of the 8cm extended range lasers, one in each wing root, and a pair of 5cm pulse lasers, one in the nose and one in the tail, along with a laser-based AMS system in the tail. A very high end Lee Avionics Target-Trac V fire control system gives the armament unparalleled precision.