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Twigster -> Second Battle of Daidalun 1 (8/23/2016 8:35:45 PM)
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Flagship, Imperial 1 Battlefleet
7 August 2402
Admiral Uki Haksur, task force commander for the planned second assault on Daidalun 1 was more than satisfied. All six of the assault fleets- fully loaded with troops- and the three battlefleets assigned to the attack were at the designated assembly areas a few light years outside of the Daidalun system, waiting for him to give the order to attack. Just before doing so Haksur quickly reflected on events since the disastrous first attack. It had taken six years for the Empire to raise the troops required to completely fill all of the troop transports and move all of the assigned assets into position. On 11 March 2402 the Daidalun unexpectedly requested peace from the Empire which was accepted without condition as the Imperial economy had become greatly stretched during some eight years of war with the Phaerax. While the Emperor had been extremely disappointed with STRATCOM over the events at Daidalun 1 years earlier, the Privy Council had decided to see the episode as a learning experience, as it had been the Empire’s first major attempt at expansion since the Second Shakturi War. On 2 April the Ancient Guardians dropped their trade sanctions against the Empire, ratcheting down tensions in that regard. And so it was that on 6 August 2402the task force reported almost no Naxxilian or Daidalun ships in the area of operations- and this would later be seen as a critical flaw most responsible for what happened next. No scout ship had been dispatched to the Daidalun system within the last six years, and the Ministry of Intelligence had not recently obtained the Naxxilian operating plans- the point here being that Daidalun system was just outside of the Imperial Detection Network zone. STRATCOM had made the enormous error of assuming that because there was so little traffic within the IDN so close to Daidalun that there was not much activity in the system itself. On 7 August Admiral Haksur gave the order for the second battle of Daidalun 1 to begin. At this time, while all combatant ships had been upgraded with Warpgate jumpdrives, the troop transports were still operating with decades-older jump engine models, the result being that the battlefleets entered the Daidalun system well before the transports did- and received the shock of their lives. This accidental fortuitous occurrence helped prevent a much, much larger catastrophe. Admiral Haksur entered Daidalun system on 29 September and to his absolute horror beheld what scans of Daidalun 1 revealed- a seemingly impossibly large Naxilian garrison on the planet. Skirmishing began immediately between Imperial and Naxxilian ships, and almost immediately Haksur had ordered the transports to change their target to the Naxxilian colony of Vilosea 1. The Char Dilba had issued the standard warning for Imperial ships to depart Naxxilian territory on 29 December 2402, but on 1 January 2403 the Imperial landings on Vilosea 1 had begun. The Naxxilians immediately declared war on the Empire; at first it looked as if the invasion of Vilosea 1 would be a success- and then the second shock of the operation occurred. Within a n extremely short period of time, a large Char Dilba fleet had arrived t Daidalun 1, loaded an immense ground force, and deposited this horde on top of the Imperial force that was about to take Vilosea 1. By 28 January 2403 the Imperial position on Vilosea 1 was destroyed and heavy fleet actions were now taking place in the system. It was here that Admiral Haksur, in an act of extreme desperation to attempt to salvage something from what had turned into a truly epic disaster, ordered what remained of his invasion forces and fleet to attack Yaselur Prime 2. Initial landings against the very lightly-held world began in late February. A month later the planet was nearly taken BUT extremely large numbers of Char Dilba ships had arrived and very desperate fleet actions were taking place in the Yaselur Prime system. Yaselur Prime 2 fell to the Empire on 2 April but it was here that Admiral Haksur’s luck finally ran out. In a fitting culmination to the worst military disaster in known Zenox history, Haksur’s task force was nearly completely wiped out by the Char Dilba fleets. Fifty-four warships had accompanied forty-eight transports Haksur to attack Daidalun- by the time it was over in early May, one transport, a carrier, a heavy cruiser and a destroyer were all that would return to Imperial bases. Haksur was killed along with three other admirals, two troop generals and 3 legendary captains. By the end of May the intensity of the Naxxilian invasion of the Empire was so overwhelming that the Emperor sued for peace, which the Naxxilians accepted without condition on 22 May. Fortunately, the enemy had not invaded any Imperial colonies but one LSP, six SSPs and eleven commercial bases were destroyed. STRATCOM had exactly miscalculated by n incredible margin, banking on the technology that had been used to fight the Shakturi- the Imperial defense system had proven to be near totally ineffective in countering the Char Dilba. For the first time, the Emperor wanted to execute numbers of STRATCOM and Ministry of Intelligence officers but was constrained by the Privy Council, which pointed to the death toll already. Instead, while some STRATCOM officers were relieved and replaced emergency session meetings broke out across the Empire to decide how to deal with what had essentially become a truly existential threat. The crew members of the few ships that had returned from the disaster were quickly retired from the Battlefleet and provided with whatever they wished by the Empire.
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