Operation: HOT GATES
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WARNING: This document, Operation: HOT GATES, is protected under Office of Naval Intelligence Security Protocol 1A. Disclosure of its contents to personnel with a clearance level lower than [NOVEMBER BLACK] is an offense punishable by court(s) martial and imprisonment or execution for treasonous acts. Failure to disclose confirmed or suspected breaches of security will be treated as complicity, and is punishable by dishonourable discharge and/or imprisonment. Lieutenant Commander Michael Pomare, Office of Naval Intelligence, UNSCDF Navy |
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FROM: Lieutenant Commander Michael Pomare
TO: UNSC Security Committee Chairman, Fleet Admiral Lord Sir Terrence Hood
SUBJECT: OPERATION: HOT GATES
SECURITY: CODEWORD CLEARANCE [CODEWORD: PROCYON]
ATTACHMENTS: Minorca Colonial history.doc, Alpha Canis Minoris Astrography Chart.img, UNSC 30th Fleet.doc, 11th Marine Expeditionary Force Unit File.doc, OPERATION: PUNCTURE.doc, PROJECT: TEMERITY.doc, PROJECT: NOVA.doc, OPERATION: HOT GATES (A PROPOSAL).doc
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//INFILTRATING TERMINAL IDENTIFIED: JULIET ALPHA-20101//
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Please forgive the additional security precautions. Its just a little something that ONI Section Three counter-intelligence has been working on. From the meagre scraps of Covenant computer systems we’ve been able to recover, we’ve been able to piece together what their electronic-warfare capabilities are, and to be honest, they aren’t very impressive. While the actual technology itself is centuries ahead of ours, the programming is extremely crude. Their understanding of logarithms in particular leaves much to be desired. For now, the biggest indirect threat to our databanks is upstarts like this Colonel Ackerson, and even his pettiness is hardly going to pose enough of a threat to jeopardise our projects. I dare say he’ll find a way around our new measures, but by then we’ll have moved our server and built even better defences from the ground up. We don’t tolerate intrusion, even if it is by our own side. Disciplinary action is not advisable – he’s being investigated for much worse, and any action on this will only jeopardise them. Besides, his NavSpecWar projects are too valuable to risk…at least for the moment.
I understand you were at my presentation the other day, and your office has requested me to forward the concept to you directly. I have taken the liberty of redesigning some aspects, improving others, and streamlining the general outline for accuracy and content. There will undoubtedly be some alterations you want, and others that will be made out of necessity, but I am confident that this outline possesses enough flexibility to accommodate future changes. I have also enclosed information on OPERATION: PUNCTURE, PROJECT: NOVA and PROJECT: TEMERITY, which I feel have relevance to my proposal.
Originally commissioned in 2490 to deal with the ONYX xenoarchaeological ruins, TEMERITY it was expanded dramatically after the 2525 attack on Harvest by the Covenant. Encompassing the excavation of four other dig sites in UNSC space, it also encompasses the appropriation and reverse-engineering of any and all extraterrestrial technologies, including but not limited to those used by the Covenant hegemony. It has allowed humanity to make huge leaps of progress within the past twenty years, including tremendous advances in the fields of artificial gravity, energy sources, and reactive armour plating, and although our efforts to improve UNSC slipstream knowledge have been slow, some improvements have been made, cutting transit time to one-seventh of the original rate, and improving accuracy to a degree of kilometres, rather than light-years. Reverse-engineering of directed-energy weapons have so far yielded only weaponised lasers with limited capabilities, and focus has shifted instead to the study of engineering phase transitions in photons, effectively creating “solid light”, the method of energy shield generation superior to known Covenant technologies. ONI projections show that the UNSC will be able to field warships with similar, if not better, protective measures as the Covenant by at least 2555, improving our survival rate dramatically. This combined with Vice Admiral Whitcomb’s PROJECT: NOVA, should allow us to significantly increase the damage we can inflict.
These improvements will not be sudden, however, and will require us to buy as much time for ourselves as possible. The Covenant’s destruction of the Outer Colonies has almost completely destroyed our ability to produce raw materials, and the loss of several Inner Colonies, such as Jericho VII, gives us a rapidly dwindling timeframe in which we can hope to upgrade our defence forces equipment and personnel to compare against the Covenant. ONI Section I estimates that at this rate, we have only a few years before the Covenant find and glass Earth, and from there mere months before they move against the last surviving colonies. Humanity is very much an endangered species at this point, and we desperately need more time.
For a long time, we have placed our hopes on a modern equivalent of the Wonder Weapon programs of Nazi Germany. We have desperately collected up the scraps our enemy leaves behind, hoping to reverse-engineer enough technology to level the playing field. The results of these programs have produced mixed results and while we have much that we did not have before, we don’t have enough to stop the enemy’s onslaught for more than a few years.
And so, I propose OPERATION: HOT GATES.
On September 29th, 2549, a single Covenant frigate emerged from slipspace in the Delta Pavonis system, immediately initiating a system-wide sensor sweep. Though it was destroyed by the Orbital Defence Platform of the system’s only colony, Pavonis Prime, and a small UNSC Navy taskforce, it was obviously looking for something, and the UNSC 30th Fleet were deployed there in preparation for further Covenant incursions. The thirteen-thousand inhabitants of the Prime asteroid colony were evacuated as a larger Covenant taskforce emerged, engaging UNSC forces in orbit. One-in-seven of the evacuation transports were destroyed by the Covenant’s brutal onslaught, together with the loss of the UNSC Frigates Triumph and Celeste, and although the enemy warships were eventually destroyed by the fleet, they managed to launch hundreds of Phantom and Spirit dropships, storming the asteroid colony. The 427th Marine Regiment, assisting the evacuations, were bolstered by the launch of the 506th ODST Force Recon battalion, managing to drive the Covenant back and finish the evacuation of the last refugees. Captured Grunt and Elite personnel allowed ONI interrogators to discern that the Covenant were searching for a “holy relic” beneath the surface of the asteroid, one very important to them, and ONI then enacted OPERATION: PUNCTURE.
Marine forces attacked the main force, seemingly in a straightforward attack, while the ODST’s inserted into Covenant territory, dealing with the depleted numbers as the enemy attempted to repel the 427th’s attack. The defeat of the Covenant in this battle allowed the UNSC to secure dozens of examples of Covenant technology – ranging from small arms, to a pair of Phantom dropships and an intact Seraph fighter, in addition to the relic itself (a small piece of rock with unknown geometric glyphs carved onto it). These were later shipped back to Reach, as part of TEMERITY, to be analysed and hopefully reverse-engineered. The relic itself was appropriated by Colonel Ackerson’s own KING UNDER THE MOUNTAIN initiative to study the more arcane artefacts we manage to recover, though I daresay little progress has been made.
But the real intent of the attack was to capture intact Covenant communications and computer equipment, a priority objective that was successfully accomplished. Over the past year, Section III analysts have managed to learn more about the Covenant’s structure, motivations, history, and plans than we have in the past twenty. And their communications channels and translation software are especially exciting prospects, especially their fleet-wide channels – because we now have a way of pinpointing potential Covenant targets, and precisely what their interest in it is.
We now know where they are heading. And they are heading for Minorca.
Minorca is a small colony orbiting Alpha Canis Minoris, better known as Procyon, approximately 11.89 light-years from Earth. Settled in 2499 by private corporations from the European Union, at its peak in 2520 it supported a population of over three million colonists, mainly from continental Europe and Britain. Its main industry was timber, exported from the wide swathes of genetically-engineered hardwoods to support a booming construction industry using wood-based polymers and materials. During the 249—2525 Insurrection, OPERATION: ULYSSES stationed Marines from the 23rd Marine Expeditionary Force to ferret out Insurrectionists, and specifically targeting the Minorcan Secessionists Federation terrorist organisation. In 2525, after the revelation of the Covenant attack and destruction of Harvest, Minorca was thrown into utter chaos – the MSF attempted to gain power through a bloody coup, only narrowly defeated by UNSC forces. Protest riots in the capital city, New London, turned into widespread panic across the entire colony, leading to a mass exodus of colonists to “safer” colonies closer to the Inner Colonies. The remaining colonists attempted to establish their own independent government, which was promptly torn down by the UNSC, leading to the utter destruction of the organisation, with survivors either killed during holdouts or surrendering. Today, Minorca lies abandoned as a forgotten relic of the UNSC’s great age of colonisation.
Intercepted communications picked up by ONI Deep Space Reconnaissance teams using the new technology recovered from Pavonis Prime possess detailed stellar coordinates and fleet movement orders. Ship formations are building up to attack the Hellespont region of space, as well as Minorca and Coral. Although the reasons for the Covenant’s interest in the Hellespont and the Coral colony are unknown, they apparently believe that another “holy relic” of much greater importance than the Pavo Artefact is present under the surface of Minorca. Furthermore, it seems that they do not even know that the planet was once a UNSC colony, and that their initial survey teams will be unarmed, dispatched within a matter of months.
Let us consider three factors that have made OPERATION: HOT GATES at the very least feasible, and at the most a potential tide-turner.
1.) PROJECT: TEMERITY
2.) Alpha Canis Minoris AbII (Minorca)
3.) PROJECT: NOVA
Firstly, TEMERITY has allowed us unprecedented access to the Covenant’s strategic and tactical abilities and methods, their motivations, and to some degree their intent. We know that the Covenant are dispatching a military formation referred to as the Fleet of Illuminating Benediction to transport a large excavation force on Minorca to recover a relatively important alien artefact, and though ONI suspects a link between this and ONYX, there is every chance that this world holds even more extensive and well-preserved artefacts. It may be that the Covenant is attempting to recover new technology to improve their own further, something that we simply cannot allow under any circumstances. We even know their composition (seven CPV-Class Destroyers, two CCS-Class Battlecruisers) and their estimated time of arrival (March 22nd, 2551). We have eight months to nail down the logistics of such a massive operation, assemble the orbital and ground forces we would need to pull it off, and establish ourselves in a defensible position.
Secondly, Minorca II is uniquely placed in a perfect position to neutralise any advantage the Covenant might have. It is locked in orbit around Procyon A, and is extremely close to a thick belt of asteroids. The planet has periodically been struck by large masses, but colonisation was followed by the establishment of a trio of Orbital Defence Platforms to intercept any life-threatening objects. Those platforms are still present, and although using less advanced technology, they are perfectly capable of being refitted and updated. In addition, Minorca has historically had an extremely strong electromagnetic field, extending many thousands of kilometres out of the planet’s atmosphere, deep into space. Such a powerful EM field was one of the reasons why the UNSC Navy introduced significant electromagnetic protection measures into its equipment, but it is also capable of shorting out Covenant shield generators, neutralising the Covenant fleet’s defensive abilities. In addition to that, scattered dust particles litter the space around Minorca, able to absorb and reflect plasma and laser weaponry, neutralising the Covenant’s offensive abilities. With any luck, the magnetic field will also interfere with the Covenant’s plasma magnetic guidance systems, further crippling their offensive capabilities. Minorca also possessed a trio of tidally-locked satellites which further hinder access to the planet, funnelling any incoming ships into an extremely narrow corridor which UNSC defenders can focus their fields of fire upon. While access to the planet is difficult, especially via slipspace, entering slipspace is far easier, allowing any ships that are critically damaged to simply jump to safety for repairs. The Covenant on the other hand, even with their much improved ability to manipulate slipspace, is still unable to enter the small clear space without extensive knowledge of the system. UNSC Astro-Cartographers have been mapping the place for over a hundred years, a luxury the Covenant does not possess. These factors combine to place the UNSC in an entirely unique position – we possess offensive and defensive superiority, and element of surprise, and superior “ground,” a combination that will allow us not only to hold the planet, but to destroy the majority of Covenant ships that make an attempt to attack the defending fleet or land ground forces.
Thirdly, we have Vice Admiral Whitcomb’s PROJECT: NOVA. I understand the basic principles of the project – a collection of nine or more thermonuclear warheads within a highly dense tritium case, which upon detonation compresses the blast and multiplies it a hundredfold. It is a weapon designed to deal utter devastation against an entire planet, rather than just a military force – I understand NavSpecWar’s SPARTAN-II teams were intended to insert into an enemy planet, perhaps even a homeworld, to plant the NOVA bomb for detonation. I myself have concerns with the proposed exfiltration methods, which seem utterly inadequate, but I understand that it is a plan that was merely in the proposal phase.
I propose a much more effective, and plausible, use to which we can put it.
1.) FORTIFICATION PHASE
2.) AMBUSH PHASE
3.) DEFENCE PHASE
4.) SCORCHED EARTH PHASE
The initial stage, the FORTIFICATION PHASE, is relatively simple enough. The UNSC must move in a fleet, as well as transporting the Army, Air Force and Marine divisions for the groundside defence of the planet. While the Covenant is projected to take devastating space losses, they have shown a determination far beyond mere commitment, driving their ships beyond the point of no return in order to fulfil their mission objectives. It is therefore almost inevitable that a number of warships will manage to penetrate, and land significant numbers of personnel and equipment before interception by UNSC defenders. Ground Army, Air Force and Marine bases will house the defending personnel, and serve as launch areas for attacks against Covenant-held territory. Navigation within the Juno Funnel is not easy, and requires precision manoeuvring, so our preparations will take several months at the least. There is also the task of repairing, refitting, and upgrading the three Orbital Defence Platforms back to operational standard. In twenty years of abandonment, they have no doubt taken damage from space debris and micro-shrapnel, and their railguns will require extensive maintenance and upgrade. The new Mark XIV guns for the Earth and Reach Defence Grids are already out of date, and so this will also serve as a testbed for the new Mark XV guns.
The AMBUSH PHASE is the implementation of these measures, estimated to begin on March 22nd as the Covenant enters the star system. The Juno Funnel will force the enemy fleet to pass through the narrow corridor, concentrating their numbers and presenting a denser formation. As they enter the planets electromagnetic field to come in firing range, their shields will fail, leaving them exposed to devastating damage from missiles, MAC strikes, and moon-based Mass Drivers. Unable to return fire to the same degree, the majority of the enemy’s ships will be destroyed in the opening minutes of the AMBUSH PHASE. ONI projects up a 7-3 ratio in favour of the UNSC defenders, a figure unheard of before now. After that, ships will be forced to engage the enemy ship-to-ship, but with a dramatic cut in efficiency, we project a relatively easy victory for our forces. It is likely that the surviving Covenant ships will launch any and all ground forces, and that the majority will slip through our defensive perimeter to land on the planet, establishing a foothold and consolidating their gains. Without orbital support, however, UNSC ground forces will have a substantial advantage, and we will be able to put the Covenant on the defensive for once.
The DEFENCE PHASE consists of holding our position against further Covenant encroachment, and it is anticipated that the Covenant will take substantially smaller losses, adapting to the disadvantages they now have. During the lull between the first and second waves, it is recommended that the Juno Funnel be laid with alternating HORNET and MORAY mines, dealing early damage to starships and fighter pickets. Reinforcements should be provided as soon as possible to reinforce the position, bolstering the defenders’ numbers and replacing any destroyed or damaged ships. It is probable that the second wave will land a substantially larger proportion of ground forces, and that the ground battle will change to give the Covenant the advantage. As UNSC-Covenant combat intensifies on the ground, the orbital forces must work to deprive the Covenant of their orbital support, allowing them to provide it to allied ground forces.
ONI projects that the capacity for the UNSC to retain control of the planet will exponentially decrease after that, and further Covenant incursions will not be able to be stopped by UNSC defenders. This leads into the SCORCHED EARTH PHASE. Having concentrated the Covenant focus on Minorca, tying up their personnel and slowing their progress elsewhere, and destroying a significant number of ships and warriors, the primary objective of OPERATION: HOT GATES is accomplished. The secondary objective is to deprive the Covenant of the planet, and whatever “holy relics” it possesses – either by excavating and removing them or, failing that, destroying them.
Vice Admiral Whitcomb’s PROJECT: NOVA is therefore required. No longer useful to our purposes, Minorca is no longer needed. UNSC forces will evacuate and make a slipspace jump to Reach before further Covenant taskforces can arrive to capture the planet and destroy our forces. But at the same time, we cannot simply allow the Covenant to secure their prize unhindered. As the Evacuation proceeds, an ONI Prowler will covertly drop a NOVA bomb from high orbit, and withdraw from its gravitational field and transition to slipspace. Allowing for time to evacuate, the NOVA will then detonate, destroying the planet and whatever artefacts it still holds, depriving the Covenant of what they search for.
There are five objectives which HOT GATES hopes to fulfil, of varying degrees of magnitude:
1.) A military victory, with a projected kill-to-death ratio far more positive towards the UNSC than any other battle in the last twenty years.
2.) Tying up a significant amount of Covenant personnel and resources for a long period of time in a single area.
3.) A psychological deterrent, making the Covenant more cautious and less rapacious.
4.) A propaganda tool with which the UNSC can improve the morale of the public, and perhaps even increase recruitment figures.
5.) Bring the Covenant to the negotiation table.
The UNSC desperately needs a victory, and a major one. We are losing this war, and at this rate we have years, not decades, left before humanity is completely obliterated. A victory on such a scale will buy us time in several major ways – it will divert Covenant resources and personnel from other Theatres of Combat to Minorca, where the UNSC stands a much better chance of winning; it will provide a deterrent for the Covenant to pause before selecting their targets, revealing the existence of a weapon far more powerful than any they have yet to use against us; and it will give us a propaganda tool with which we can dramatically boost morale and increase recruiting rates, allowing us even more resources with which to buy more time.
What we do with the time we buy is crucial. We have already made some breakthroughs, especially in the field of energy shielding. There are proposals to upgrade the SPARTAN-II Program’s members with MJOLNIR Powered Armour that can generate full-body energy shields, making them nearly invulnerable. That is only the tip of the iceberg. If we can distribute portable shields to infantry, then we could completely neutralise the advantages Covenant DEW’s have. Or if we could field starships with shields, we would increase our ability to defend our territory threefold. Better still, we could use that time to use what knowledge we have to our advantage – TEMERITY’s ability to analyse Covenant communiqués could filter out stellar coordinates, allowing us to locate Covenant worlds – perhaps even their homeworlds. Perhaps the capital world. Coupled with PROJECT: NOVA, it could end this war once and for all. All we need is the time to implement it.
I have compiled a detailed profile of the military forces available for the operation, including some that have already been consulted on the military capabilities that will be required. A preliminary list includes thirty six divisions of Army and Marine Corps troops, as well as seven Air Force Divisions. The UNSC Navy 30th Fleet has been consulted with in terms of orbital strategy, and many of the manoeuvres proposed were suggested by Rear Admiral Laurence Dresden, commanding officer of 30th Fleet. More information on these units can be seen here.
//OPEN ATTACHED DOCUMENTS//
I hope that this file has included all elements that you deemed of note, and if not, then a follow-up will be sent if requested, including alterations and additions if necessary. Once again, this plan is in the preliminary planning stages, and security remains the highest imperative. All references to Alpha Canis Minoris and OPERATION: HOT GATES are classified under CODENAME: PROCYON, and files and documents pertaining to any PROCYON information will be classified under the BGX DIRECTIVE. This file encloses a military virus, intended to target and delete selectively all information regarding PROCYON from this terminal, and a Firewall Buffer Enhancer has been installed to hinder further intrusions.
Lieutenant Commander Michael Graeme Pomare (UNSC Service Number: 88966-73755-MGP), UNSCDF Office of Naval Intelligence, Section Three, Naval Special Warfare
//END FILE//
//INITIATING SECONDARY SECURITY SCAN JULIET-ALPHA 4468//
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