With the strong points and gun emplacements in and around the logistical base destroyed, I have initiated strategic operations in concert with the other Bolos of the regiment. Opening my main dorsal weapons bay, I bring my VLS array online and begin firing heavy missiles in support of my fellows at Dolendi, Kanth, and Losethal.
My on-board arsenal includes both nuclear and conventional warheads, as well as several special force packages, but I have limited my initial strikes to conventional warheads, even though the Enemy has resorted to the use of nukes quite early in this engagement.
My Escalated Response Protocols are in force, a set of inhibitory subroutines that require me to seek release from Space Strike Command before employing nonconventional warheads, even when I come under attack by nonconventional weapons. The protocols restrain my freedom of action considerably and increase response time significantly, possibly by as much as several full minutes while my human commanders debate the issue.
Still, in this instance, I completely understand the need for tactical and strategic restraint. My combat history files include a complete range of battle descriptions and analyses, from planetary invasions at one end to squad-level hostage rescues and patrol actions at the other. Even though this is a large-scale strategic operation, involving as it does the conquest of an entire world, nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons would not be appropriate in this situation, since our primary operational task involves freeing the human inhabitants of this world rather than incinerating them.
There reside within my historical archives records of a training simulation. A young officer cadet, tasked with planning and executing a hostage rescue operation, elected to storm a compartment occupied by twenty hostages and three terrorist soldiers while armed with a flame thrower. Freeing the human population of Caern by employing nuclear warheads with multimegaton yields would involve a similar inconsiderate use of excessive force.
I have not even routed a request for force escalation as yet. So far, the Enemy's attempts to block the invasion's first wave elements have been less than successful, even with the use of nukes. If they continue in this vein, however, serious ecological damage could result to the habitable portions of Caern which, I deduce, are quite fragile, if only because they constitute such a small fraction of the planet's total surface environment.
In any case, the missiles I launch are self-guiding fusion ramjets, programmed to circle the battle zone until key threats are identified and specifically targeted. Invictus, of 1st Battalion, is still attempting to penetrate the Planetary Defense bastion at Dolendi, and my bombardment of the deeply buried, heavily armored and turreted Hellbore bunkers there may help him complete his operational orders at that target.
I check my BIST data and note that my sector has become quiet, but doubt that resistance has ended. Likely, the Enemy is preparing a new counter-thrust.
I await further tactical developments.
Elken emerged from a tunnelnot the large, main entrance he'd used in his last attempt against the invaders, but a secondary tunnel a kilometer to the west, carefully screened and masked and barely wide enough to allow a Mark XXXII to exit without scraping track guards against the support frame.
Though it was still dark and would remain so for another several hours before the slowly advancing dawn, the sky was aglow with a somber red and orange haze, the cloud-reflected glow of burning cities. The Sky Demon invaders had to be stopped. . . .
He engaged the TSDS link, connecting immediately with the thoughts of the other three Mark XXXIIs. The psychic shock rocked him, causing him to hesitate a moment at the threshold of the tunnel. This was like having the sensory feeds from the other three overlaid across his own . . . but much more so. He was aware of Palet and Veber and Sendee, of their personalities, of their thoughts and feelings, in a way he hadn't been before, the four of them mingling and flowing together, like four rush-and-tumble streams merging into the deep, surging, unstoppable current of a river.
We have the enemy now, he thought to the others . . . or was it Veber who voiced the thought? He couldn't tell. It didn't matter.
Enemy Bolo targeted and locked, range three kilometers. . . .
Disperse. Increase separation between our units. . . .
Their thoughts mingled and their actions. Elken felt his own ego, his sense of self fading as he became more aware of the central core of the minds of the others. The sensation was at once terrifying and thrilling. He'd never felt so alive. . . .
All four Mark XXXIIs had emerged at roughly the same moment from four separate tunnel entrances. The base complex was riddled with them, and four tunnels had been selected by the gods as offering them the best chance of emerging at the same time and at roughly the same distances from the target.
Linked by UHF signals relayed through the base structures themselves, the four Caernan Mark XXXIIs exploded into the open air, battlescreens full on, weapons charged and ready. They knew exactly where the Confederation Bolo was positioned. The gods were giving them data feeds second by second, downloading the data they needed to optimize their attack.
Increasing speed . . .
Commence fire! Now! . . .
Four enemy Bolos emerge from separate locations within the ruins of the command control base, on bearings between two-eight-three and three-one-nine, roughly toward the northwest at a range of 3.17 kilometers. I bring all Hellbore weapons to full charge, route reserve power to my battle-screens, and prepare to face this new threat.
I detect the stuttering, flickering pulses of UHF transmissions indicative of high-speed data transfers. It is almost as though . . .
Yes. A brief analysis of the signals correlated with the movement of the four enemy machines, for a period of 0.19 second, proves that the four are sharing data at an extremely high rate of speed, reminiscent of the old TSDS first employed by Bolos Mark XXI. One of the Enemy Bolos, which I designate Charlie One, is clearly the focus of much of the data flow and is, therefore, most likely the command unit.
I slue all three primary turrets to face this new threat. The Enemy must be desperate indeed to continue throwing outmoded Bolo marks at me in this fashion, though the fact that they are employing a Total Systems Data-Sharing suggests that they have learned from the last encounter and are taking care not to allow their combat units to be defeated in detail.
I fire, and in virtually the same instant, they fire as well. White light engulfs the landscape as fusion bolts sear through tortured air. One bolt strikes me squarely in the glacis, but my dual-ply battlescreen absorbs much of the energy, both from the fusion of the cryo-H projectile and the sheer kinetic energy released on impact, rerouting it into my accumulators. Three routing circuits are overloaded, however, and their failure degrades my screen's effectiveness by 12.3 percent. Excess energy leaks through, melting a deep crater 8 meters across and .93 meters deep in my frontal armor. The shock of impact rocks me back, literally lifting me off my front tracks before gravity slams me back to the ground once again. Internal power feeds melt through under the onslaught, tripping circuit breakers and cutting my main power feed to my armament centers by 42 percent.
Two of my Hellbore bolts strike home, while the third expends much of its megaton fury on a ruin-strewn ridge sheltering one of the targets as the enemy Bolo went hull-down behind it. Explosions rock the area, though the targeted Bolos continue to fire.
The Enemy has emerged inside my defensive picket of Dragon hovertanks, which precludes my using them as a screen or to degrade the enemy forces through attrition. I direct the Dragons on my west and north to close with Charlie One through Four, however, and also signal the Warlock teleoperated ground-strike aircraft, which are now orbiting in support 4.7 kilometers to the north.
I initiate emergency field damage control measures, noting that my overall performance will be reduced by as much as 28 percent until I can reach a maintenance bay for full repairs.
First, however, I must survive this attack, which is being pressed with unexpected vigor. All three of my primary turrets, and seven of my secondaries, are in full operation now, loosing the hellfury of fusing, high-kinetic projectiles as quickly as they can be loaded and fired. Charlie Two takes three direct hits in rapid succession, its Hellbore turret and much of its upper deck reduced to flamingly incandescent wreckage within the space of .44 second. Charlie Three takes a direct 20cm Hellbore shot in its forward left track assembly, which wrecks the tread and drive bogies, partially crippling it.
I take two more hits, absorbed by my battlescreens and my rapidly degrading frontal armor. I compute that I will be able to destroy three of my attackers, but not all four before my defenses are overwhelmed and I am myself reduced to burning and insentient wreckage.
I must find a way to shift the odds in my favor, and swiftly.
Vulj'yjjrik sent the mental commands that boosted his fighter's acceleration another notch. Half of a da'j'ris ago, the magnetic launchers of The Silent Contemplation of Form had flung him and the rest of his squadron, a twelve and a half of sleek, deadly fighters, into the void. Now, his strike squadron and a second squadron from The Flexible Vigilance of Anger were hurtling through emptiness, and he was plunging toward the near-full brown, white, and ocher globe that was Caern, now only a few detyk distant. Behind him, vast and swollen, was Dis, black as night and edged by the silver crescent of dawn. The two Aetryx battlecarriers had long since dwindled into invisibility, but they and the rest of the squadron would be accelerating now as hard as they could, eager to begin the slaughter.
But the fighters would reach the objective first, fast-striking epretta among the helpless d'jorn.
It wouldn't be long now.
"Alert! Alert! Enemy spacecraft on approach trajectory! . . ."
Colonel Streicher was submerged within the virtual simulation of the battle being played out hundreds of kilometers below, but the sharp bark of the command craft's AI warning system jolted him to full awareness. "This is Streicher," he said. "What is it?"
"We're under attack, Colonel," replied the voice of the Navy lieutenant piloting the command craft. His name, according to the bio data attached to the virtual comm link, was Alisar Cavese, and he was a 28-standard-year officer from Fledryss who'd never been in combat in his life. "Looks like they were hiding inside the giant's atmosphere, and our scouts missed 'em." He sounded steady enough.
"Show me."
The data feed from the command craft's control center showed the Confederation fleet hovering above Caern's dawn terminator, each ship shown as a blue star. A spray of glowing red trajectories was moving rapidly toward the fleet, the threads of light converging to a single vector that curved up and over the gas giant's horizon.
"Range now . . . 70,000 kilometers," Cavese said.
"Fighters . . ."
"Coming out of the suns. We didn't even see them on radar until they hit our collision warning fields."
The red threads indicating the paths of the incoming Aetryx fighters were drawing themselves swiftly toward the cluster of Confederation naval vessels. They were closing the range at nearly two hundred kilometers per second, fast enough to have vaulted the million kilometers from Dis to Caern in a little over an hour. Data tags marking them in Streicher's inner vision identified them as Aetryx Slash fighters. There were thirty-six of them, and they would enter the Confederation Strike Force's Area of Operation within three minutes.
"Call coming through from the Denever, sir," Cavese said. "General Moberly. Flagged for all regimental and brigade commanders."
"Put him through."
A window opened in Streicher's simulated view. Moberly's florid features looked out at him from the surrounding star fields and the sweeping ocher horizon of Caern. Streicher could see enough of the compartment behind him revealed in the comm window to recognize it as the Combat Information Center on board the Strike Force's flagship.
"Gentlemen," he said, "and ladies. It . . . it appears we have stumbled into a trap. The enemy carriers were hiding in the gas giant's upper atmosphere." His words were hurried and faltered a bit, and he kept glancing away from the comm camera at something else in the CIC. "All command vessels are to scatter and stay clear of the other ships in the fleet, until we see how this thing turns out. . . ."
"KKMs incoming!" someone out of the camera's field of view shouted.
"Wh-what?" Moberly appeared dazed, as if he was having trouble focusing.
"Kinetic-kill missiles! . . ."
White flame blossomed against the backdrop of space above Caern in Streicher's sim-feed, sharp pulses of light expanding and dissipating in eerie silence. Four vessels, a cargo carrier, a tanker, and two light cruisers, were hit in the first volley, exploding in dazzling flashes against the night.
Kinetic-kill weapons were a variant of the projectiles used on Caern by the Confederation forces; a sliver of high-density metaldepleted uranium or neptunium-237wrapped in iron was magnetically accelerated to a high percentage of the speed of light. A gram or two impacting ship battlescreens at relativistic velocities yielded a release of kinetic energy rivaling a multi-megaton warhead. Not even a battleship's dual-ply screens could shunt that much energy aside in the billionth of a second or so it took the sliver to penetrate them.
A projectile had lanced in from the direction of Dis and the sun and struck the Denever a glancing, near-miss blow. A second window opened in Streicher's three-sixty view giving him a nightmare close-up of the flagship as white-hot fragments spun from the gash torn across the huge flagship's dorsal hull.
"All ships!" Moberly was screaming from his window, his voice shrill. "All ships commence maneuvering!"
The orders were less than precise . . . and the general in command of the invasion force was not the one to be giving orders to the fleet in any case. The Confederation strike force was in a terribly vulnerable position, concentrated above the surface of Caern, with the world-sized moon serving as a wall to block them off from moving in that direction. Nor were they in orbit, which meant their speed was zero relative to the planet, their only velocity vector being the one they shared with Caern in its four-day orbit about Dis. Had they been in orbit, at least, they would have possessed an initial velocity of a few kilometers per second, something to work with. As it was, they had to start from scratch.
And the enemy was not about to give them the leisure of time. As Streicher studied the tactical readouts, he realized that the kinetic-kill missiles weren't coming from the fighters. The main Aetryx fleet was still half a million kilometers away and traveling at a fraction of the speed of the front wave of fighters. Twenty-four of the vessels with the Aetryx fleet, however, were being IDed by the command craft's AI as KK gunboats. They were too far away, yet, for a direct optical view, but the AI warbook drew schematics of themstubby, massive, compact, hundred-meter hulls sprouting skeletal rail gun tracks half a kilometer long, ugly, vicious and functional.
The main fleet was still 1.6 light seconds away, which meant that its ranging and radar targeting data was that out of date. According to the tracking data, the incoming KK missiles were traveling at .65 c, for a flight time of 2.46 seconds. With a total time lag, then, of a shade over four seconds, targeting had to be based on the predicted position of an enemy vessel 4.06 seconds after firing.
Had the Confederation fleet been capable of independent maneuver, the Aetryx gunboats would have been able to score hits only by sheer chance. As it was, though, the enemy's relativistic projectiles were spearing into a fleet that was both slow-moving and utterly predictable. Four vessels had been hit by the first volley, and as Streicher watched with dawning horror, two more, the carrier Gelidelfen and the destroyer Delphis, took direct hits.
Moberly was still shouting orders. "Ajecerras! Validente! Open fire on the attackers! Hold them until the rest of the fleet can get under way!"
The Ajecerras and the Validente were the fleet's two battlers, eighty thousand tonners with mag-rail guns of their own, spinal mounts normally used for planetary bombardment.
"Belay those orders!" another voice snapped. The craggy features of Admiral Resin Hathaway appeared in another window. "Cateran, Tritheladee, Larabes, maneuver to screen the fleet! Take out those incoming fighters!"
"We need to stop that main fleet before it closes the range!" Moberly shouted.
"You're outside your jurisdiction, General," Hathaway snapped, turning Moberly's rank into a curse word. "The fleet is mine. You stick with your overgrown tanks and keep your nose out of the Navy's AO!"
Streicher decided that the regimental commanders had accidentally been left linked to the command-com feeds; they weren't supposed to be privy to this infighting within the upper levels of the Confederation hierarchy of rank. Throughout the hovering fleet, main drives were coming on, ships were beginning to accelerate . . . but slowly, so slowly. . . .
The destroyer Larabes, blade-slender and spiked with 200cm Hellbores and particle beam weapons, had started her burn, accelerating clear of the other ships to put herself between the approaching enemy forces and the rest of the fleet. A KKM bolt almost missed her, nicking one of her aft maneuvering drive blisters. That glancing touch, light as it was, liberated the heat and light of a star which engulfed the aft third of the destroyer, turning her drives into molten slag. Streicher saw life pods boosting clear of the damaged ship, as internal explosions began to consume her.
"Shouldn't . . . shouldn't we get back to the Heritas?" Kelly Tyler asked. He could hear her voice shake with barely suppressed emotion. "We're targets just floating around out here."
"Negative, Lieutenant," Major Ramirez told her. "We're targets, but we're small targets. That's why they deploy us like this, so if somebody goes after the big boys, we'll be overlooked . . . and safe."
At least, Streicher thought, that's how it's supposed to work. The enemy must have a pretty good idea of Confederation operational tactics, though, and would know what the small, stealth-shielded saucers were for . . . especially if they'd mapped the Confederation's communications web for the past few hours.
The Bolo assault transport Vangled was struck hard by two KKMs, the explosions opening up like sun-bright flowers, one in her cargo bay, one in her drive section. The enormous craft was set spinning by the impact, and the stress of the rotation quickly snapped her spine. In a cloud of debris, the fleet carrier ripped into two halves, tumbling away from one another at three kilometers per second.
"That's why we don't go back to the transports, Lieutenant," Major King observed wryly. Another ship, too far off for an immediate identification, silently exploded in white and yellow brilliance. "Good God! They're mopping the deck with us!"
The fighters entered the fleet operations area, moving so quickly they were impossible to hit. Slash fighters were smallonly thirty tons or sotoo small to carry high-velocity railguns. They mounted 10cm Hellbores in turrets tucked up beneath their needle-prows, and they flashed past the fleet strewing fusion bolts in all directions. According to the data feed readouts, they were decelerating now at almost a hundred gravities . . . enough to kill any human pilots. Streicher decided the fighters must be teleoperated by pilots safe aboard the incoming Aetryx fleet.
Apparently the fleet command staff thought the same. He could hear shouted orders from the Denever, deploying ships to hit the Aetryx squadron, especially the carriers. "The fighters are being operated from the carriers!" Moberly was shouting. "Hit the carriers!"
"Your Bolos have space-superiority capabilities, General," Hathaway said. "Do they not?"
"Uh . . . huh?"
"General, damn it! Pull yourself together! Can your Bolos hit targets in space?"
"Uh, yeah."
"Then get them targeting those incoming! We need all the help we can get!"
"Fourth Regiment?" Streicher said quietly. "How about it, people? Can any of you get your machines into the space fight?"
"Negative, Colonel," Lieutenant Tom Winsett, the UC of Second Battalion's Ferox, said. "The Aetryx fleet is too far out, and their fighters are too fast."
"We can let the Bolos themselves judge," Lieutenant Shauna O'Hara, with Third Batt's Fortis, pointed out. "They're the best ones to decide what they can do."
"Victor is occupied right now," Lieutenant Tyler said. "Firefight."
"So is Invictus," Captain Johanel added.
"And Terry," Lieutenant Edan Abrams reported.
"Pass the word to your units, everyone. The fleet is going to need fire support from the ground." Odd. Usually it was the other way around, but the Confederation Fleet had just been caught with its collective pants around its ankles.
Explosions continued to flash and pulse throughout the scattering invasion fleet.
They were picking the Confederation vessels off too quickly to keep count. . . .
The battle rages with a savage ferocity I have never in one hundred eighty-seven previous combat engagements encountered before. Hellbore weapons are designed for combat out to the horizonor even into near space, so long as the firing Bolo has a clear line of sight and a solid, predictable vector track. I was engaging these four at a range of a scant three kilometers, and the hellfire fury of that torrent of fusion energy loosed within so tightly constrained a sphere lit the ruined defense complex up as brightly as the midday sun and reduced any of the few structures still standing to half-molten wreckage scattered by hurricane blasts of superheated air.
For a seeming eternity of seconds, my four Bolo Mark XXXII opponents and I trade blow for Hellbore blow, main guns and infinite repeaters both. Charlie Three has been badly damaged, but I have received multiple direct hits to my frontal armor. Much of my glacis plate has degraded or been stripped away entirely, and only my internal disrupter shields are saving me from complete obliteration. Four of my secondary turrets have been knocked out, Numbers Two, Four, and Six on my starboard side, and Number Three on my port. I continue facing into the storm of fire, returning bolt after bolt. The air, superheated, dust-laden, and violently roiled by the exchange, serves to deflect some of the raw energy into the surrounding atmosphere and ground and makes aiming and tracking a considerable challenge.
My single tactical advantage in this unequal contest is the remote Dragon tanks I've deployed, which are now moving into position behind the Enemy. They are still making their way through the ruins, however, and do not yet have a clear line of sight at the attacking Mark XXXIIs.
I am still trading shots with the Enemy when an incoming message on the narrow maser command frequency reaches my communications filters. Codes and communication encryptions check, and I open the channel to Space Strike Command.
"Victor!" my Commander exclaims, with that excess of emotion that I have come to associate with her. "Thank God we got through to you!"
I ignore her reference to a deity. She frequently makes such statements, but I have learned to treat them as the formal or polite noise generated by most humans in situations of social intercourse. She sounds pleased, as am I, that communications have been reestablished, though this channel is crackling with static due to the tremendous build-up of electrical charges from the ongoing Hellbore barrage.
"I am currently engaged in close combat, Commander," I tell her. "I shall upload a proper combat report when the current action is complete."
"That's not what I need to talk about," she replies. "Vic, the enemy is attacking the fleet! A surprise attack! They're knocking our ships right out of the sky! Can you help?"
A side-band data feed gives me the updated tactical situation in near-planetary space. The situation is, indeed, critical . . . but I fear there is nothing material I can contribute at the moment.
"The main enemy squadron is still well out of range," I tell her. "To engage the fighters would require my full targeting and tracking faculties, which are currently engaged in this action with four enemy Mark XXXII Bolos. Do you require that I break off this action in order to initiate an engagement with enemy assets in space?"
In fact, I am not certain that I could break off this action. But I would try, if so ordered.
"N-no, Vic. That's okay. But see if you can help once you beat those XXXIIs!"
"I will comply, Commander."
I may not be able to keep my promise. The question is whether I can survive the next 2.7 minutes, the time, I estimate, it will take for me to assemble my full tactical assets and press the advantage.
I am taking extremely heavy damage.
"Can we fight back?" Lieutenant Winsett asked. His voice was shaking. "We might as well have a giant target painted on our hull!"
"Enough, Lieutenant," Third Batt's CO, said with acid in her voice. Major Katrin Voll was a career Bolo officer with little patience and less tact. "You're out of line!"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Take it easy, people," Streicher said, trying to smooth the tension filling the netlink. "Our best tactic right now is to keep doing our job and let the Navy do its business."
"These command craft aren't much more than high-tech glorified lifeboats," Major King added. "They're no match for a blade-fighter."
"Right," Carla Ramirez added. "We sit tight, lay low, and hope they don't see us with all the junk floating around out there!"
Local space was cluttered now with the shattered remnants of capital ships blasted by the enemy's relativistic bombardment. The simulated view spread before the minds of the 4th Regiment's Command Team showed drifting wrecks still aglow with inner fires and explosions, bits of wreckage, tumbling chunks of hull, drive module, turret, or cargo bay, and even the tiny, pathetic forms of people blasted out into hard vacuum.
Cateran and Tritheladee were accelerating toward the oncoming fighters, firing wildly with every weapon in their arsenal. Their stand was glorious . . . and all too brief. The fighters flashed past, tail-first, decelerating furiously, loosing Hellbore blasts in all directions. Tritheladee was crippled by a rapid-fire barrage that riddled her main deck and drive sponsons, blasted her main turret, and left her bridge section ablaze with interior fires. A nuclear warhead found the Cateran a moment later; the flash seemed to illuminate all of local space, then faded to a fast-swelling fireball and a haze of hull metal turned to vapor.
Streicher turned his attention to the Denever, the flagship that was now finally beginning to pick up speed. It might be that she would be able to work her way clear, along with a handful of other vessels. Denever, Streicher saw, was tucked in close alongside the much larger and bulkier frame of the assault transport Heritas.
The Aetryx fleet was still firing KKMs at long range. Heritas was struck by two relativistic projectiles in rapid succession, and the explosions savaged the transport as it shattered and dissolved, consumed by inner fires as hot as the surface of a star.
General Moberly, his face still peering out of an open window in the sim, looked about, startled. "What the hell was that?"
And then the window in Streicher's data feed grew intolerably brilliant as a third KKM speared out of the void and loosed its megatonnage of kinetic energy in the Denever. The window blinked out as the feed was cut; on the main view, spread like a fire-blasted panorama in Streicher's data-linked mind, Denever staggered under the blast. Fragments slammed into the disintegrating wreckage of the Heritas, while others hurtled outward through space. Streicher could see the huge vessel's battle bridge disintegrating in lambent flame and vaporizing metal.
For a moment, his numbed thoughts could only circle around the question of how anything could burn in the vacuum of space. Then the flames winked out, and he realized they'd been fed by the huge vessel's atmosphere as it rushed through the huge rents in the hull.
Secondary explosions continued to wrack the flagship, however, as torn and shattered sections glowed orange- and white-hot. The bridge and combat control sections looked completely wrecked, and Streicher wondered if General Moberly had paid the full price for his blinkered strategic vision.
Then the view of the battle flashed a dazzling, intolerably brilliant silver-blue-white, then winked out to black as the data feed went dead. A crashing shudder thundered through the command craft's hull; gravity vanished in the same moment, as the artificial grav and inertial dampers failed.
"What happened?" Beswin shouted, his voice ragged on the edge of a scream in the darkness.
"We're hit!" Winsett shouted. "God, we're hit! . . ."
And they weren't in orbit, and their contra-gravity projectors had been taken off line. There was nothing now to hold them up against the pull of Caern's gravity.
They were hit, and they were going down. . . .
There are those military historians who still hold that the invasion of Caern could have, should have, succeeded as it was originally envisioned. The plans were well laid, the targets and objectives meticulously listed and studied, the enemy's forces estimated, his capabilities evaluated in thousands of hours of invasion planning and simulation.
There can be no doubt that the Aetryx naval maneuver utilizing the gas giant Dis in order to stage an ambush of Confederation Fleet elements was the turning point of the battle. Their victory in the skies above Caern demonstrated conclusively that ancient military maximthat control of the planetary surface is secondary to, and depends absolutely on, the control of circumplanetary space. Bolos may reign supreme on the ground, may control every piece of strategically vital high ground, but space is the ultimate high ground from which one side or the other can claim an overwhelming strategic advantage.
Disaster at Caern:
A Study of the Unexpected in Warfare
Galactic Press Productions, Primus, cy 426