The Space War Thread

[TheReal_ND]

Should probably not call them Gundam

[Smitty-48]

Mars is like the gateway, you go to Mars to test your kit and use it as a way station to the outer system.

The colonies which matter are on Ganymede and Europa in the Jovian system

Orbiting Titan and on Iapetus in the Saturnian system

The combat zone in between is the Asteroid Sea.

The colony in the Asteroid Sea is Ceres. It's a neutral port. There's two towns, like Hong Kong and Macau

It's a DMZ, you can't dock a warship there, but civilian vessels use it as a port.

[Smitty-48]

Both sides are of course mining the Asteroids.

So there's a lot of civilians up there too. Space Miners.

There's a lot of commercial traffic to and from the Asteroid Sea.

The warships are guarding that civilian traffic. The Asteroid War is your naval war.

It's like the maritime chokepoints, Panama, Suez, Gibraltar, Hormuz

This is where you can have blockades, blockades are what incite Gundams to fight.

[Smitty-48]

"Hey, what's wrong with this coffee machine?" Clem Rogers knocked on the casing of the Nespresso maker.

On the flight deck, Colton Graves responded without looking away from his pre watch checklist; "It's empty"

"Were out of coffee?" Rogers winced. "Shiloh, Rogers, are we out of coffee, how copy?"

The feminine voice of Bitchin' Betty responded from the ship "Shiloh copies, we're out of coffee"

"Fuck me", Rogers pushed off and floated down the tunnel to the flight deck.

"Checklist complete, we are go at throttle up, holding DEFCON 5" Graves passed on routinely.

"Go at throttle up, DEFCON 5" Rogers confirmed, strapping himself in to the g-seat.

Graves cycled through the sitreps in holo while Rogers went VR and flew through the tactical situation viewer.

The klaxon sounded twice followed by Bitchin' Betty in a surly mood;

"All call signs this is Shiloh, contact, possible Foxbat, designate contact Sierra One, authenticate . . ."

Graves switched to launch control reflexively while Rogers turned to look at the contact in virtual.

"Conn authenticates, I have a valid contact, do you agree?" Graves selected pre launch checklist on the holo

"I agree" Rogers zoomed in by VR to inspect the imagery "Confidence is high, Bogey is looking like Bandit"

"Almighty, Almighty, this is Shiloh, message traffic, contact, Foxbat, danger close, set DEFCON 3" Graves clipped.

"Foxbat, Foxbat, stand to, stand to, commencing pre launch, I tally" Rogers tightened his g-seat

"Shiloh, Graves, battle stations, battle stations. set for counterforce, preemt, ROE's weapons tight, copy?"

"Shiloh copies, conterforce option, preempt, weapons tight, confirmed, standing by" Bitchin' Betty cooly reported.

"Checklist complete, insert launch keys" Graves ordered as he pulled his key from the tether on his suit.

"Insert launch keys" Rogers confirmed as he pushed the key into the analog lock.

"Select launcher switch to ready" Graves waited for Rogers and both turned the keys at once.

"Shiloh confirms, set and ready" Bitchin' Betty spun up the main drive with a whir.

"Maintain DEFCON 3, keep us up in the saddle, Shiloh, ISR for target acquisition" Graves instructed

"Let's come around the well and get in his baffles, keep the rock between him and us" Both men switched to VR

"Shiloh, acknowledged, moving now" Bitchin Betty commenced a rotation as she thrusted towards the horizon . . .

/scene



Cold War Space Race.

[Smitty-48]

Graves and Rogers viewed the imagery from the nanosat over the horizon.

The humanoid shape of the Nihon Kawazaki Bushido Exoship was clear despite the optical camouflage projecting the background star field towards the camera, the ghostly outline stood out as it shifted slightly relative to the view.

"Almighty, Almighty, message traffic, contact, Sierra One, Foxbat, hostile, set DEFCON 1, advise National Command Authority, Shiloh at battle stations, preparing to engage, more to follow " Graves sent to NORTHCOM by the long range antenna to Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado Springs.

"Shiloh, going hot, set launch keys to execute, now, now, now" Graves commanded and they turned the keys.

"Shiloh, counterforce, preempt, kill-capture, weapons hot, stand by" Graves sent and Betty acknowledged.

"TACAMO, this is Shiloh, contact, sitrep, Foxbat, danger close, presenting hostile, I send Linebacker, how copy?" Graves went to the tactical channel on the local net.

"TACAMO confirms Linebacker, requests status" Betty reported from higher

"TACAMO, Shiloh, I am saddled up, hot and fresh, all in the green, go for counterforce, confidence is high" Graves returned

"TACAMO copies, you are go for counterforce, prempt, kill-capture hostile, move when ready, next report line is Fullback, green light, watch and shoot" Betty acknowledged.

The astronauts sat back and considered their options from cover, reviewing the imagery in the VR contruct

"Who is the fuck is this, and what is he doing all the way out here by himself?" Rogers squinted at the robotic phantom

"It's definitely Japanese, look at the heat exchangers, slick set up, that's Nip for sure" Graves mused

"Splash the Zeros" Rogers ran the contact through the sensor fusion engine.

"Okay, this is spooky, it's unknown silhouette, it's not in the database, no joy for recognition, all new contact" Rogers shifted upright in his g-seat as he viewed through his VR contact lenses

"Yeah, I don't get it, who would send a single, no wingman, where's the rest of them ? Graves nodded.

"Maybe he's so bad that he thinks he's the meanest motherfucker in the valley, Molon labe?" Rogers chewed a fingernail

"That would be scary badass, there's no cover around the corner, when we break cover we'll just have to go straight at him, fighting wing, pincer, pray for puck luck" Graves tweaked the trajectories with his hand in VR, the AI presenting the scenarios in real time.

"What if we're the ones in the kill zone and he's the rabbit?" Rogers came out of VR to look at Graves face to face

Graves pondered "Betty, confirm contact Sierra One is the only Bogey we're seeing here?" Betty confirmed the sitrep.

"Well, this is report for duty time right here, he is well inside the wire, he is hostile and covert, and he's a bad ass mamma jamma, apparently" Graves slipped back into VR and stared at the apparition

"This is gonna be some Medal of Honor shit up in here, Reb, buck a promotion, you can buy the new hab for the fam" Rogers quipped.

"Can't spend it when you're dead, XO" Graves came out of VR and cocked an eye at his subordinate

'Everybody gotta die sometime, Skipper" Rogers lent forward staring intently the VR "When you break cover, just stay high, I'll muckle on to him and take it down to the rock, if he turns out to be a super ninja, I can go to cover in those uplands, then we've got him boxed, just keep moving and shooting, keep him at arms length in the kill zone"

"Just win, baby" Graves selected the checklist for the Apollo launch sequence

"No fears on earth" Rogers unbuckled himself from the g-seat and set off down the tunnel towards the airlock to the Apollo.

"What about in space?" Graves called after

"Scary as fuck, but he might have coffee on that thing, so it's worth the stretch" Rogers entered the airlock

"De espresso liber" Graves smirked

[Smitty-48]

Should probably not call them Gundam

Indeed, I'll call them Exoships, Started off as Exoskeletons grew into wearable ships ; Exoships.

Japanese made are Bushidos

Amercan are Apollos

Russian are Vityaz

Apollos are Space Shutttle white $ black, they have Nose Art, but it's on the shoulder,

They are named, not "USS" designation, just a call sign, satirical, like Snake Eater or Fighting Cock

in tactical mode they use optical camouflage.

So like USS Shiloh is a ship, a frigate basically, but there is an Apollo docked with it ; Ulysses let's call it

On the left shoulder it has Old Glory, on the right shoulder is the Nose Art ; like a WWII blond bombshell

The Nose Art graffiti says "Bitchin' Betty"

Ulysses is on the chest, where a soldier would have a name tag.

Major Colton Graves is a character I lifted from another one of my projects, military action thriller Delta/CIA guy

Clem Rogers is Clement V. Rogers, distant descendant of the ancestor, Cherokee warrior.

The exoskeltons were called Minuteman. Minuteman I > Minuteman II > Minuteman III

gettting bigger as they go, each one more of a ship. Apollo is the new generation Exoship

The USSF ships don't have a naming convention, they are named after US Navy ships, that's not going to change.

So it could be the USS Shiloh or the USS Reuben James or the USS Seawolf American style.

[Smitty-48]

The frigates are not exotic looking, they're shaped like bulky rockets, Saturn V on steroids.

Space Shuttle white & black or optical camo as well.

The hull is layers of armor composite for different typed of weapons,

around a core in the middle with the crew compartment,propulsion etc

the weapons are in compartments on the hull

The Apollo is in a drop bay,or on some ships which don't have one the Apollo is docket on an airlock.

[Smitty-48]

So there are multiple battle spaces right here in the Solar Sytem

Mars. It's the first big colony exploration site, but it's dead, so becomes a testing ground and gateway.

There are cloud city research stations like mega blips basically over Venus above the storms.

Then there's Jupiter and Saturn, this is the gold rush zone, where everybody is racing to.

The Terran System Earth and the Moon is a stalemate, the Moonbases and Habitats are not in combat.

Everybody is racing out, building infrastructure and ships, launching colony missions.

The Asteroid Sea is like no man's land.

In the Jovian and Saturnian systems there are both moonbase colonies and orbital habitats.

The big push is to Titan, because it's the terraforming mission, Titan can be terraformed is you add life to it

Titan is like a primordial mini earth, terraforming will take centuries tho, it's a multi generational project

Everybody is working on starships but those are just in the experimental stage,

[Smitty-48]

Religion might lose more ground in globalist land, but will thrive in America. Getting rid of religion is not progress, it simply leads that religious impulse to be displayed in other way, like Climate Doomsday Cults for example or just generally putting religious faith in science. Religion ain't going away, even atheists are religious, just not about religion.

This is another source of tension with America, since America is the only beacon left with freedom of religion

There is a Virtual Iron Curtain repressing the religious minorities so they are all trying to escape to America.

America has built the walls, all around Fortress America, Canadian and Mexican borders are hostile.

[Smitty-48]

The standing army is gone. It's still called the US Army, but it's just a bigger badder National Guard now,

State Governors deploy it on Federal duty at their discretion, the POTUS has to ask.

The Navy and the Marines are the Federal arm of decision on earth.

The Air Force defends everything up to and including orbit and all the way out to the Moon

The Space Force is for interplanetary, the Air Force is an aerospace force in the Terran system

SOCOM deploys Operators to the Space Force, so there are Green Berets & SEALs in Space.