The pointer landed against the briefing screen with a hard, flat 'krak' of plastic on plastic, and newly promoted Lieutenant Commander la Flaga almost jumped as the noise jolted him out of the doze he'd fallen into while the pompous windbag up front went over information everyone in the room had heard half-a-dozen times already.
Yes, Aube was valuable as a symbol. Yes, it was a mid-Pacific base that the Atlantic Federation badly needed if it was to prosecute a war with ORB. Yes, it was critical to keep ORB from regaining access to the military secrets and unique technologies buried in Morgenroete's files and databases. Yes, this was an important mission they were being assigned now that their three suits were safely documented down to the last centimeter.
They'd gotten all that straight the first time, dammit! Along with the fact that, no matter how true those things might be, their superiors did not consider it important enough to assign more than token assets to reinforce their defenders.
His academy classmates might have said that he had a knack for making the impossible, possible, but the scale of this was a little outside his reach.
When the windbag was satisfied that they'd been sufficiently impressed by the importance of the task only he had been trusted enough to brief them on, he finally began to get to the point. "ORB has concentrated half their fleet around Segen," he said. "Including the Takemizuchi and several lesser carriers. We're not expecting them to seriously contest our control of the air during the first phase, but intelligence reports suggest that they may be planning to deploy as many as one hundred and twenty mobile suits in the primary wave. Since evacuation and relocation efforts are expected to have the city emptied by then, the 1st Mobile Suit Squadron is being deployed as a forward reserve for the infantry and armor assets being stationed there."
One hundred and twenty? That was a sizable proportion of ORB's overall strength - rather more than would have been left in this area after losing the forces actually stationed in the capital. "They finally broke out some of those 'Reaction Battallions' they've been hiding from us? Or did they pull troops from the north?"
"Neither," the windbag snapped, he evidently being the sort who resented interruptions. "The space monsters launched a heavy lifter from Jachin Due about two and a half days ago; thrust balance and acceleration are consistent with a full load of GINNs."
Any seasoned spaceman knew the Hohmann transit time for the Earth-Moon system, knew when and how to change the speed of their orbits and how long to spend coasting. Mu didn't even need to think about it any more. "That'd put them into Onogoro Spaceport around dawn tomorrow, wouldn't it?" If they went straight into reentry rather than taking an intervening orbit or two, which was likely given how much of a hurry ORB would be in.
The briefing officer was glaring at him, but Mu didn't give a damn, not after sitting through half an hour of redundant information that should never have taken more than three sentances in the first place. "Yes, Commander, it would. Encoded signal traffic between ORB and PLANTS has been considerable, and, though we haven't broken the code, would be consistent with their having their plans coordinated before that ship lands. If that's so, they could move almost within the hour of touchdown. Even if that's not the case, we expect the attack to take place within that same day.
"The first phase is expected to be a cruise missile bombardment directed at our defensive missile batteries. Once they have been cleared, the most likely first wave will be a party of mobile suits approaching the island submerged and only surfacing to clear a beachead for the rest of the invasion force..."
Ja, -n
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"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"