FLEET
 Gold is for the mistress – silver for
the maid – The Board is packed with advanced technology and mystical powers in the hands of negotiators, scientists, analysts, and even a few soldiers...but when the time for special effects ends, they call in FLEET. To call FLEET merely the Board's heavies would be to insult the range of equipment and capabilities therein, but as one might expect...their main strength is in Blowing Stuff Up. Boardies may laugh in the face of evil, but FLEET just shoot it...and no matter how much they may begrudge it, most of the Board are damn glad to be able to call in the boys in black and their power-armoured troopers when things go Hell-shaped. Where Boardies love to revel in their innate weirdness, FLEET prefer rough-and-ready solutions to their problems – ones that will work with a minimum of effort and loss on their side, and stay working once accomplished. Their equipment may not be as flashy, as packed with wondertech, or defy the laws of physics as much (at least until Boardie engineers get their hands on it), but there will be lots of it, and it will keep the brave souls who have to get their hands dirty alive while they get the job done. And if the job can be done from orbit without endangering anybody, so much the better - a little collateral damage is seen as a small price to pay in what FLEET consider a war that just hasn't erupted or developed battlefronts yet...and most of the thousands of officers and men who follow this view consider Boardies overly squeamish, prone to avoiding such hard truths when they think it'll hurt them. Boardies in turn consider FLEET to be seeing every problem as a nail when they have far, far too many thermonuclear hammers. Perhaps the key difference, the one that causes the most friction between the two nominally-allied forces, is that most of FLEET didn't sign on for this. Aside from a trickle of recruits from Earth and the Board, the average marine or spacer is career-military...just up against a very nasty enemy. Earth is, while an important battleground, just another world on campaign. The locals might have more of a clue this time around and some snazzy gear, even if they are a bunch of utter weirdoes, but they're still locals – inexperienced, think too much of themselves, and surrounded by politicos that just mess everything up. And given who they seem to be fighting...and every spacer who thinks the reports are exaggerated usually gets that tendency burned out of him pretty quick...this isn't a combat zone one can play around in. It'll take a lot of blood, sweat, toil, and tears to kick Lucy-boy back down the hole he came from, and that means less playing around and more getting out there to shove plasma down some demonic throats. And if the cosmic balloon ever does go up, and you run into the angels out there, tell 'em to get aboard the dropships... |