Battle of Lakfakalle

The Battle of Lakfakalle, or, more accurately, the Battle of the Abriel Star System was the battle fought by Four Nations Alliance against the Humankind Empire of Abh in a drive to occupy the capital or destroy much of the Laburec high command.

Stage One: Fall of the Sord Kryb
The time bought by the Imperial Guard was spent as well as it was possible. Many combat-capable elements, that were previously was part of the Lakfakalle, were now located near the Sord Kryb. Tens of thousands self-propelled mines (smaller mines without plane-space capability) were placed around the Sord. Several hundreds of mobile forts (in this case, the fort was anything, from the orbital mansions of higher echelons of the Imperial nobility, to the repurposed outdated ships without plane-space capability), organized into three defensive units, led by the Kryb Dynasty Palace Fort were surrounding the Sord. Thousands of laser and electromagnetic cannons on the space forts of the Capital Defence society were targeted at the Sord area.

The Alliance had started its offensive with the strong mine barrage, clearing all mines in the area surrounding the Sord in three minutes, and focused exclusively on forts. Fort 426 was the first to fall.

The Alliance ships now started to cross the Sord. Because the ship’s appearing point is purely probability-based, the fleet was disorganized, and lacking speed. The forts immediately switched its attention to the ships, meaning that they had to reduce their attention to the mines, and several more forts were lost almost instantly.

Some of the forts, who survived enough time to expend their ammunition were used for the “final defensive measure” – ramming attacks after quick evacuation. First to employ this measure was Fort 19, who evacuated its crew to other forts and went full speed against the Alliance ships, which opened dense fire upon it. Newly arriving ships made a flanking strike, and the fort exploded without doing any damage to the enemy. Effectiveness of other such attacks is not mentioned, but each such attempt should have at least forced the Alliance ships to focus their attention on such threats, instead of surviving and combat-capable elements.

Soon enough Alliance managed to clear the area near the Sord, opposite to the Palace Fort, and started to regroup there. Lamem responded by regrouping all surviving forts in front of the Palace Fort, preparing for the final attack on the enemy. She also contacted Capital Defense Society Chief of Staff Dusef, and requested long-range bombardment.

The bombardment was executed with gigantic laser cannons and electromagnetic cannons, too big to fit any space-time bubble. The electromagnetic cannons were firing simple unguided rounds, able to separate into tens of thousands of pieces, and had additional coils, allowing them to accelerate the charges up to 0.6ls, instead of the common 0.1. Located 17 light seconds away from the sord, their aiming was purely probability-based. Alliance ships attempted to mitigate the laser cannons threat by using emission-dispersing particle screens, but even then the beams retained enough destructive power to damage and destroy ships. The hit probability of each piece of shrapnel from electromagnetic cannons was less than 0.0001, but due to the total amount of shrapnel and the initial lack of speed of the Alliance ships, they did score hits. The shrapnel was also almost immune to interception.

The downside of probability-based bombardment was that the Abh forces were exposed to friendly fire, but using the predictable moving patterns the Abh managed to minimize its damage.

As the Alliance ships accelerated, bombardment efficiency was drastically reduced. Even flying at 0.6ls shells, that had to travel for about half a minute were easily avoided by the Alliance ships, and by constantly observing laser cannons line of fire the ships were able to reliably avoid them as well.

The Palace Fort and others went into the final attack against the enemy, who by now fully organized its ranks. The Palace Fort was subjected to the terrifying amount of firepower, constantly shaken by the explosions, each of which would have obliterated even heaviest of ships. The Palace Fort attempted to provide the cover to the other forts, but the Alliance high-mobility ships easily outflanked it, focusing on the smaller forts first. The battle for the Sord was soon over.

Stage Two: “Fort Dragon’s Egg”
The need to constantly avoid the long-range bombardment gave the defenders thirty-six more hours, before the Alliance fleet came into contact with the main forces of the Capital Defense Society. The forces were organized into seven Defensive Units, and were centered around the City Ship Abriel, now renamed into the “Fort Dragon’s Egg” (Sairia Noshar Heka). The Alliance have split its forces in two groups – smaller distraction force heading against the Capital Defense Society forces, and the larger main force, containing majority of the fleet, pushing towards the Sord Barke.

Even together with the “Dragon’s Egg”, Capital Defence Society had at best half of the summary military potential of even the smaller distraction force. Without the fort, it was roughly one third. Despite this, seven Defensive Units tied the distraction force with battle, while the Fort “Dragon’s Egg” engaged the main Alliance forces.

Alliance command probably considered the “Dragon’s Egg” a serious threat even by its own, and, unwilling to spend time and ships to fight it at the moment, attempted to just bypass it. This approach was proven incorrect, when the fort’s laser cannons quickly destroyed several dozens of Alliance ships, who passed the Fort and were exposed from behind. The Alliance command quickly realized it’s mistake, and redirected ships to focus fire on section 47 of the “Dragon’s Egg”. This caused some confusion for both Dusuum and Dusef – the section 47 had some cannons and warehouses, but seemingly nothing vital. Yet Dusuum expressed concern, that the enemy clearly wants to gain something by such actions.

They received their response 12 minutes later, when one of the Alliance battleships proceeded on the collision course with section 47. Dusuum and Dusef originally expected boarding attempt, but the battleship rammed the fort without slowing down and self-destructed almost immediately upon impact. The ship likely had its crew removed, received increased payload of antimatter, and were used as an improvised gigantic mine, or, using naval terms, as fireship. Explosion completely obliterated section 47, and did extensive damage to the data grid. Receiving proof of their approach being viable, Alliance command sent two more battleships on a collision course. The enemy’s intent was now clear to the defenders, but nothing could be done about it.

"“Only three battleships are necessary to wreck our house? Surprisingly cheap end”"

- (Capital Defense Society Chief of Staff Dusef (Banner of the Stars V novel)

After two more battleships rammed the “Dragon’s Egg”, it was broken in two parts. Even then it remained operational, but it’s defensive capabilities were significantly crippled. Smaller Alliance vessels passed between the rips, and opened fire on the undefended interior. In a few minutes both pieces of the fort were engulfed in flame. The “Fort Dragon’s Egg” was destroyed. Other seven Defensive Units were already destroyed by that moment by the Alliance distraction force.

Stage Three: Invasion in Lakfakalle, end of the battle
The Capital Defense Society had bought just enough time for the Operation Phoenix to proceed to the point, when the Alliance had no chance to catch the evacuating forces inside the Abriel system. The Lakfakalle itself was of small interest for the Alliance at the moment – it’s main attention was pointed towards massive antimatter producing facilities, which was called “Feeding Breast of the Empire” throughout the Galaxy for good reasons. Upon closing to the Lakfakalle the fleet again split in two parts. Smaller force went to capture the Lakfakalle, while the bulk of the force headed towards the antimatter facilities. Upon approaching the facilities at 1ls, they witnessed their self-destruction. Even the enormous amounts of stored antimatter were not enough to fully destroy them, but the explosions were designed to send the remains flying into a star. Very few ships were caught by the explosions, but the Alliance were unable to capture its target.

The smaller force found itself in much direr situation. The city had very few defenders, but those defenders were prepared to fight until the bitter end. At the same time that the antimatter facilities were self-destructing, numerous antimatter bombs started to explode inside Lakfakalle as well. The Alliance ships also found themselves subjected to surprise attacks from laser, antiproton and electromagnetic cannons from surprise angles. The defenders were also sending decoy communications, drawing attention of the attackers. The most tragic for the Alliance was the attempt to capture fake command center. Its self-destruction claimed the lives of all Alliance military personnel in its close proximity, including a portion of the Alliance best military cadre. Upon running out of the ammunition, the defenders did their best to take the Alliance ships with them in suicide runs, for example ex-barons Febdash’s personal mansion destroyed one ship with Its antiproton cannon, and two more during self-destruct. In the end the Alliance forces, sent to capture Lakfakalle suffered heavy losses (clearly much higher, than the defenders), during slow and bloody mop-up operation.

The final events of the battle occurred near the Sord Barke. Upon Alliance forces approach, the forts, surrounding the Sord, including the Palace Fort of Barke Dynasty self-destructed without fight, after single communications ship left it.

The Birort Kuneiguna (City of Chaos), Sath Nosher(Root of Draconic Heads), Birort Gasoder(Eight-Gated City), Gyrsaug Frybaral(Cradle of the Empire), Birort Neg(City of Love), Muraut(Native Home) – Lakfakalle now forever lost one of its grand titles – Dawatosaria (Unsinkable City).

Sides numbers
The Alliance’s initial strength was probably roughly the same 200 partial fleets, observed in Plane Space by the Imperial Guard. The strength of the Capital Defense Society is somewhat trickier to determine. The Society’s forces were organized into ten Defensive Units, with three units stationed near the Sord Kryb, and seven more forming the bulk of the Society forces together with the “Dragon’s Egg”, still en-route to the Sord. Seven defensive units were roughly one third of Alliance’s smaller distraction force. Assuming for the sake of simplicity, that the distraction force was precise half of the total Alliance forces (which is not the case), we can say, that seven Defensive Units were roughly equal to thirty partial fleets. Assuming each defensive unit was of equal combat potential, as others, we can expect, that ten Defensive Units were the rough equal of 40 partial fleets. It is, however, likely that the Society forces were noticeably weaker, since the novel describes Alliance distraction force as noticeably smaller, than the main Alliance battlegroup. In sum, it is likely that the Imperial forces could be considered to be rough equal of 30-40 partial fleets at best, with the inclusion of the potential of the larger Kryb Dynasty Palace Fort, and the “Dragon’s Egg”.

Course of the battle
In general, the Alliance was able to effectively exploit it’s overwhelming forces, and the Capital Defense Society was able to resist their opposition to the best of their abilities. Both sides were no strangers to war by that moment, and with large combat experience on both sides the size of the Alliance fleet was the main deciding factor.

Some questionable actions, however, were done by both sides.


 * Lamem’s attack during the battle near the Sord Kryb. In a battle, where the main emphasis was to gain time, was probably a mistake. Even if the attack allowed to inflict heavier damage, it also allowed the Alliance to effectively exploit not only its numbers, but its advantage in mobility of its ships to destroy the opposition faster.
 * Another questionable action was the decision to abandon the forts near the Sord Barke without a fight. Both sides employ significant amount of automation, turret targeting is mostly done by the AI, so even with the skeleton crews these forts should have been able to buy at least some time for the Phoenix fleets.

In sum, this actions might have costed the Space Forces enough time, to make it possible for the Alliance ships, pursuing the Imperial forces in the Plane Space to inflict damage to the transporters of the Fifth Phoenix Fleet later.


 * The Alliance’s clear mistake was the attempt to avoid “Fort Dragon’s Egg”, although its consequences were probably somewhat mitigated by the unorthodox approach to its destruction.

Losses
The Imperial losses can be described with single word: “total”. Determined resistance gave no chance of the survival for the defenders, and the Alliance, frankly, had no choice but to destroy anything that was opposing them, especially in the last part of the battle.

The precise losses of the Alliance are never mentioned in the book; however, some guesses can be made. The nature of the Sord assault (lack of initial speed, random point of appearance) pretty much ensures, that the Alliance had to take significant losses, and bear with them, until significant numbers of ships would build up in normal space and manage to organize themselves to a degree. With the additional effect from the long range bombardment, it is quite possible, that the Sord offensive was the main source of losses for the Alliance.

The losses during the mop-up of Lakfakalle was clearly higher for the Alliance. They were, however, higher only relative to the number of the defenders. The book mentions, that the Capital had very few defenders, so it is unknown, what impact on total losses these losses had.

The initial spike of losses during the battle with the "Fort Dragon's Egg" were probably somewhat mitigated by the unortodox approach to it's destruction later. The losses of the distracting Alliance forces are unknown, but with rough advantage of three to one, it is unlikely, that the distraction force suffered any excessive losses.

In general, the Alliance had likely suffered moderate losses, with some unpleasant, but irrelevant spikes.

It is also worthy of notice, that the defenders usually employed skeleton crews on their forts, which probably implies heavier losses in terms of manpower for the Alliance.