The Battle for Casatus Dome . . . End?!
Zarori
The Untrustworthy Author
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[x] Plan Firefighting
-[x] a Bus-full of Scopedogs should put down near the colony (not taking unnecessary risks of interception etc.) and try to delay the harassers with skirmishing.
-[x] Skull Squadron to catch the battlepods and grasshoppers against the allied mobile suits before they can adjust or be reinforced, then all eight provide space superiority in the capital fight.
-[x] SDF-1 to engage the enemy battleship, remaining Scopedogs to position and fight defensively against their battlepod+grasshopper escort if it closes and gets past the point defenses.
-[x] a Bus-full of Scopedogs should put down near the colony (not taking unnecessary risks of interception etc.) and try to delay the harassers with skirmishing.
-[x] Skull Squadron to catch the battlepods and grasshoppers against the allied mobile suits before they can adjust or be reinforced, then all eight provide space superiority in the capital fight.
-[x] SDF-1 to engage the enemy battleship, remaining Scopedogs to position and fight defensively against their battlepod+grasshopper escort if it closes and gets past the point defenses.
The perks of being a genetically modified super-genius, practically hooked directly into a hyper-advanced space battleship's sensors, is that you got an immediate overview of the Mars battlefront and were able to respond immediately. You promptly pointed the Macross in the direction of the alien battleship (And why did the computer already have a label for it of 'Tou Redir'?), even as you called out over the comms.
"All forces, launch! Skull Squadron back up the Feddies and make sure those alien mobile suits can't attack the Space Bus! Space Bus and Scopedogs, head to Casatus Dome directly. Don't take chances, but see if you can delay those Grasshoppers while the Space Bus makes itself available for rescue operations. I'll make sure that the enemy ship and it's reinforcements won't be a problem."
To their credit your forces, even if the majority of them are children, hop to battle immediately and sortie fast. Normally you wouldn't immediately charge an enemy ship straight-up, but the fact that it was surprisingly heavily damaged and had it's mobile suit compliment scattered gave you the confidence to go for a lightning strike.
Enemy Ship +10: 29 = 39
Battlepod Squad: 37 = 37
Grasshopper Squad -10: 47 = 37
Fortunately, it seemed like the enemy forces were completely unprepared for a someone to space fold into battle and immediately strike. Off-handedly you notice that the enemy ship's sensors don't appear to be functioning completely, which is a lucky break!
Captain Ruri: 64 +8 Martial + 5 Cyber Newtype +5 Systems +15 SDF-1 Full Repair = 101
Alien Captain: 63 -11 Ambushed -15 Damaged = 37
"All hands, stay in safe locations, and prepare for transformation . . ."
"OH HELL THE FUCK YES!" Uribatake's voice echoed over the internal comms, as you sighed.
"Preparing to fire the Macross Cannon."
Klaxons sounded throughout the ship as the repaired SDF-1 easily and smoothly began to shift, internal walls raising and lowering as it's body separated out and spun around, eventually forming a vaguely humanoid shape with the bridge acting as the 'head', and a pair of arms that were really more like weapons platforms and launch catapults pointed out towards the enemy battleship. It's screening forces began to move forward to put themselves in-between the two ships, only for a suddenly explosion to catch everyone off-guard from the rear of the alien vessel, causing it to list rather than properly turnabout. A lucky chance for you, as the majority of the ship's alien systems began to shunt power to it's primary armament.
"Say the thing! You gotta say the thing or it doesn't count!" The deranged engineer practically screened as he clung to his viewing screen, his minions trying to pull him down.
"Idiot." You began with a sigh, before limply raising a hand. "Super-Dimensional Fortress: Macross Cannon, fire."
From the 'shoulders' of the ship, currently aimed directly at the enemy forces, massive amounts of energy gathered between them, sending sensors wild all over the place. The enemy forces began to move, only for the black of space to be replaced with blinding light as a blast comparable only to the Federation's Solar Ray System cut across the void to strike the enemy battleship and it's compliment of mobile suits head on. The Grasshoppers were annihilated instantly, with the Battlepods lasting a bare moment longer before being reduced to space dust. The alien ship might have fared longer if it wasn't for the greatly damaged side of it pointing directly at your ship, meaning that it was almost instantly shattered into two pieces, then ten, and finally a cloud of warped scrap as the Macross Cannon abruptly cut off with a series of new alarms.
"What? Ah shit, I knew we should've tested the systems more. The Macross Cannon is down for now, that blast overloaded a bunch of the Federation-issue power couplings and shit."
[ ] "I'll get up there with the boys and see if we can get it fixed, ASAP!"
[ ] "We'll have to leave it be. I want to keep the boys on standby, just in case we get more vital damage to the ship or mobile suits, or need to help out planetside."
Mars Orbit
The Initiative-
Skull Squadron: 92 +10 Space Planes Go Fast! +5 Aces = 107
Battlepods: 70 -12 Ambush = 58
Grasshoppers: 24 -12 Ambush -10 Drones = 2
Feddie Remnants: 14 -10 Damaged = 4
Critical Chance: Roll a d100, for every 10 an enemy is instantly destroyed, starting with Grashoppers and ending in Battlepods. The roll will gain an extra +10 due to the successful Ambush.
Blitzkrieg Result: 62 +10 = 72. All Grasshoppers destroyed. 2 Battlepods destroyed, leaving four remaining.
Battlepods: 88 -12 Ambush = 76
Roy: 95 +5 Ace +5 VF-1S = 105
Team A: 90 +10 MAXIMILLIAN FUCKING JENIUS +2 Ben +4 VF-1A's = 106
Team B: 36 +2 Training +4 VF-1A's +1d5 (1) Hikaru Potential +2 Rita = 45
"Alright lads and lady, you've got your orders, lets pull these boys out of the fire fast so we can focus on the colony!"
"Right!" "Yes sir!" "You got it!" "Acknowledged!"
With a scream of their engines, the five Valkyries of Skull Squadron zoomed out of the SDF-1 Macross and made a beeline for the mob of alien machines fighting those poor exhausted Feddie pilots. There was something to be said for taking advantage of the element of surprise. The enemies had definitely noticed Skull Squadron by now, but after getting used to fighting the dramatically slower original generation mobile suits, they were woefully unprepared for the sheer speed of the heretofore unseen Valkyries, let alone the fact that they could fire with any kind of accuracy while moving at said high speeds.
Gunpods opened fired while they were still in their approaching V formation, alongside the group of five launching their missiles as well. One of the unlucky battlepods took the bullets head-on and was instantly cored, while the spread damaged several of the Grasshoppers. Another of the Battlepods seemed to outright panic and try to jerk up and out of the way, only to be caught by several missiles as your Valkyries zoomed past, utterly destroying him alongside the remaining Grasshoppers. This left four Battlepods to fight five Valkyries, two GMs, and a single worn-down Zaku. Needless to say, the outcome was decided.
Hikaru and Rita looped around to support the surviving pilots, the two groups laying down a solid array of cover fire to force the surprised Battlepods further out of formation. Ben Dixon, with a hoot and a holler, ended up outright chasing a Battlepod away from fight and peppering it with enough shots to it's thrusters to blow it to pieces. Roy got his own dogfight, the apparent leader of the Battlepods going head to head with him, but failing to anticipate the sudden change from jet mode to guardian mode. Roy's shots left the Battlepod dead (The pilot as well) in the water, and drifting aimlessly. Not one to be one-upped, Maximillian Jenius once again proved that he is the best pilot you have, transforming to robot mode and easily disabling the two remaining battlepods with two short sprays of bullets in a high-speed spin that would've left any other pilot unconscious.
There was silence for a few moments, before a older male voice rang out on the open comms from the Zaku. "What in the ever-loving fuck wa-"
That was when the night of space turned to day, and the alien battleship and reinforcements were obliterated by the Macross Cannon, putting an end to the battle for control of Martian orbit.
Casatus Dome
The Initiative-
Scopedog Squad Alpha: 82 +5 MOTIVATION = 87
Scopedog Squad Beta: 53 +5 MOTIVATION = 58
Space Bus Team: 49 +5 MOTIVATION = 54
Grasshoppers: 60 -10 Drones = 50
???: Nat 100. Seriously.
With the forces in space *thoroughly* distracted, the Space Bus Rescue Assault Force (Name yet to be finalized) was allowed to reach Casatus Dome completely unmolested. What ensued would probably go down in the history books as the most chaotic, bullshit battle in the history of mech combat. Now, one might expect the Space Bus to discretely land, let out all of it's passengers, then make their way inside the damaged dome to help out wherever possible. That is not what happened. What instead happened was the Space Bus made a kamikaze run directly for the unusual black structure that was acting as some kind of space bridge to allow Grasshoppers to continue to deploy and attack the colony.
All of the 15 visible Grasshoppers froze, and immediately changed tactics to head for the Space Bus like bees going for a dumb kid that poked their beehive. Mid-flight, the doors on the Space Bus opened up and the entire compliment of Scopedog Spacers were released. Half of them clung to the sides of the transport or surfed on top of it, opening fire with their GAT-22's and SAT-03's to great effect at the dumb drones. The other half simply jumped out and took pot-shots at different concentrations of drones. While the spacer enhancements were never meant to work fully in-atmosphere, let alone on a dusty world like mars, they worked enough to slow their falls enough to let them land safely and begin zooming around to attack.
It wasn't a perfect battle, by any means. There were multiple moments where the tide would start to shift, such as a Grasshopper grappling onto the back of a Scopedog to lift it up for another to attack it, but overall the children fought with unusual motivation and skill. Clearly they were eager to see this colony not go the way of Macross Island, and they put their full efforts into stopping the enemies. There was one thing however that completely solidified a win for the Macross crew. A single Scopedog with a matte black paintjob stepped up to the edge of the Space Bus's doors as it passed above the alien structure. Carried over it's head were not one, but *two* of the SDF-1's Anti-Ship Missiles. A pair of other scopedogs had their side panels opened and were tweaking with the hardware, before flashing the black Scopedog a pair of thumbs up. The pilot leapt out of the ship at that signal and *threw* the large missiles down at the alien structure before gliding out of the way. The pair of missiles only partially entered the multi-colored event horizon of the structure's opening before striking the edges of it and exploding. The petal-like edges of the opening warped and bend from the explosions, causing the event horizon to distort before collapsing inwards with a weird implosion of fold-like energy, pinching the structure's upper half shut like a crushed can of Pepsi.
The remaining Grasshoppers immediately lost what little unity and accuracy they had, and were quickly able to be mopped up by the Scopedogs. As the black unit landed safely on the surface of Mars, it turned upwards to face the giant flash in orbit, before radio-ing back to the others.
"This is Sergeant Sagara Sousuke, mission complete."
"We don't have actual ranks, dummy!"
". . . Moving on to the Casatus Dome to sweep for survivors and any remaining enemies."
Up in orbit, as the sensors cleared up from the one-two bunch of the Macross Cannon and the destruction of the alien gateway, you could only sit back in your chair and stare blankly at the readouts on-screen as all hands checked in.
"What do you mean we already won?"
The Battle of Casatus Dome has, *somehow*, been completed in record time. This should have been entirely impossible, but it ended up happening anyways, ensuring that once the word spread the SDF-1 crew are going to be famous for entirely different reasons than they already would have been.
Battle Results: Total victory. The Zaku and two GMs have been rescued. The surviving citizens of the Casatus Dome (Again, mostly children and elderly) that evacuated into shelters with their own oxygen supplies have been saved. Samples of multiple forms of enemy technology will be recovered.
This, however, leads to an unprecedented choice: It might not be too late to intervene in one of the other ongoing crises. There may be unforeseen consequences to going straight from one combat zone to another, but if successful even more lives could be saved, and solving *two* major crises would be a massive feather to stick in Ruri's cap once the political things start happening.
[ ] Operation Stardust: The Colony hasn't hit the Earth yet, but there's quite literally no time to spare. It's a coin-flip as to whether or not you can get the Macross Cannon online, but you do have what is known as a 'metric fuck-ton' of missiles to make use of. You'll have to leave behind the majority of the Scopedog Spacers for the time being though to help clean up any remaining resistance and help out the survivors before you can return. (An opportunity to stop a Colony Drop resulting in big reputation gains with most factions, especially the Federation in general and Britannia specifically.)
[ ] Human Instrumentality Project: The Angel has officially made it to land, but now that you're actually this close to Earth, you can directly Space Fold into the area and get involved. Like above, you'll only have the SDF-1 and Skull Squadron (maybe the Feddies you saved) to work with, in addition to whatever forces remain in Area 11. (An opportunity to help save Area 11 from an alien threat resulting in reputation gains from the Japanese people, and NERV. Definitely more research options on paths you don't currently have access to.)
[ ] Martian Saviors: It's sad to say, but you're not willing to put the SDF-1 and your pilots in any additional danger so quickly. Haste does in-fact make waste sometimes. Instead you'll focus on rescuing the survivors of Casatus Dome immediately, and salvaging everything possible from the battle. (There will be *no* additional opportunities for reputation increases with factions. A head-start on Mars-related options, and research from *2* enemy factions, as well as additional salvage and repair. The Colony Drop and Angel Attack will proceed without any further opportunities for you to get yourselves involved.)
