[Azatol]

Here comes the Monarchy!

With his ally gone, the Plans Archivist of the Collective pondered his options, and determined that despite the risks, the D'Anconian Monarchy must be involved in this war. Surely their military perspective would help in countering the Empire.

The negotiations to enter the Monarchy into the war were difficult, but the Queen agreed to join the war on condition that full support would be given to Monarchy forces in establishing a forward operations center on the Collective homeworld.

As a result of the negotiations, the Collective was informed that the Queen's forces included nine carriers, eight support warships, and two troop transports that were under construction currently. There were also a number of refueling ships in the fleet.

The Queen informed the Archivist that the 1st Elite Royal Army was almost formed up and ready for action. These were all elite infantrymen and women who had trained and met rigorous standards over the past ten years of recruitment on the harsh Elite Army Training Grounds planet.

The Collective in turn informed the Queen that they had the most sophisticated missiles in service under any navy, and 22 warships crammed full of them to fight off the Empire.

2413.5

The Imperial fleet took some damage from mines overhead Polaris V, they are limping back to the Initiative homeworld, having destroyed that colony.

The First Mechanized Army of the Monarchy was forming up, composed of small war machines instead of infantry. Transport craft were under construction at the moment, ready to take these troops to the staging area above the Naval Training Grounds colony, where training exercises were frequently run to improve manuevering, targetting and team work.

The Second Royal Army was the only standard grade infantry force deploying. This was the first unit formed up under the auspices of Queen Laraina's rule. Many of these soldiers had served as the Outer Palace Guard for over a decade.

There were nine squadrons of fighters with pilots who had graduated from the recently constructed Elite Fighter Pilot Academy. They piloted fighters with slightly toughened hull strength and greater manueverability. The total squadron count was 84 Small Fighter Squadrons and 18 Medium Fighter Squadrons (including the 9 elites).

The Small Transport Carrier design used could carry 12 Small or 9 Medium fighters per ship. The Agmen class missile defense ship was built as a precaution, since if the Collective was using so many missiles, it clearly would be a good idea to sweat a little about missile defense. Once a few of these ships, along with two troop transports were fully loaded and in formation with the fleet, then they would make their move to the Collective homeworld to assess conditions and plan the next actions.

The Collective, as of 2413.6, still had a substantial portion of its fleet being retrofitted to missile designs. The Plans Archivist was frustrated with the slower construction rate of the bigger ships being built now. More ships always seemed better than bigger ships. But a lesson had been taught by the battles with the Empire, bigger ships are better.

However the lessen the empire took from the early stages of the war was, small ships are a real bear to hit, because of their manueverability. They focussed research efforts on why the weapons crew missed so much and how to make improvements.

In those days and months, the Archivist always believed the Empire would be on their doorstep any month now. In fact, the next battle would once again be in the Polaris system.