"Field holding. Two hours under the First Hearth's projectors and the field is holding. Rails bearing. Firing."Log of the battleship Republic, 1310, 16 March 2336
The Battle of Exedor of 10 to 16 March 2336 was fought in the Exedor system, the Voor home system, between the Grand Armada of the United Nations of Earth and the largest force the Voor Legion ever brought together. Fifteen hearths, led by the First Hearth, the Hiverion, fought from under Hiverion's planetary shield and its orbital platforms. They sortied in pairs against the fleet's approach and withdrew under the platforms' fire. The Navy lost a battlecruiser, a light cruiser and 19,000 dead in two days, and killed five hearths.
On 16 March the Hiverion came out with four hearths against the line of the new Republic-class battleships. The Republic's fields, read from the captured Voor Aegis, held for two hours, and the Republic's and Federation's rails put the first slugs through the First Hearth's field in nine centuries. She withdrew under the shield. By 17 March the Navy held every orbit of Exedor above 200,000 kilometres, and the Legion held the low orbit beneath. The battle was the Navy's on the count. It was also the first battle the Navy could not finish, and it began the two-year Siege of Hiverion.
A second battle in the system, in September 2451, is the Battle of Exedor (2451).
Background
The road to Exedor
By the end of 2335 the federation held the whole of the Confederacy's share of the Ciriban Gulf. The Legion had lost its forward fleets at the Battle of the Mog and the Second Battle of Media, its Gulf headquarters at the Fall of New Indata Mog, and its southern yards at Swur, from which the last four Gulf hearths withdrew to Exedor on 5 April 2335 without fighting. The Institute's reading of the court is that the High Command had decided to fight for the capital and nothing else.
The Legion's concentration
The Legion's twenty best hearths stood on the Maweer frontier opposite the Maweer fleets and never came south. The High Command, judging the Fevarians beyond the Veil the lesser danger, brought six hearths from the Veil frontier in 2335 and 2336. With the five of the home formation and the four from Swur, Exedor held fifteen. The Hiverion, the Primus-class hearth grown 900 years before contact, had never left the system. Her Voor name is The First Hearth, From Which the Order Was Kindled.
The new doctrine
The High Command's answer to the Mog and Media was a new way of fighting. The hearths would not sortie to the system's edge or hold in the open, and they would not wait for sanction, because the High Commander would be with them aboard the Hiverion. They would fight from inside the planet's 400 orbital platforms and under its shield, sortie in pairs against any approach, and withdraw under the platforms' fire. The fleet would have to come to them.
The Republic class
The federation brought a new weapon. The first two Republic-class battleships, the Republic and the Federation, laid down at Fortaleza in 2335, were 1,500 metres long and 7.9 million tonnes, with four rails each. Their fields were read from the Voor Aegis and held under plasma fire for two hours, where the Maweer-pattern fields of 2333 had held for twenty minutes.
Opposing forces
Grand Armada
Grand Admiral Tyson Vol commanded from the carrier Glory. The fleet of 260 hulls was the war's largest yet, with six carriers and 3,500 strike craft. Vol organised it in four parts:
- First Battle Force, Fleet Admiral Ruben de Haas, in the Republic: the Republic and the Federation, the Octavian-class battleships Onyx, Obsidian and Olympus, the Odin, and the heavy cruisers of the Aegis and Perseus classes.
- Second Battle Force, Admiral Saul Goldburg, in the Bolide: the Meteor-class battlecruisers Meteor, Comet, Bolide, Aerolite and Tektite, with light cruisers and frigates.
- Carrier Force, Admiral Xiao Qiang, who had commanded the carriers at Media: the Gladiator, Retiarius, Secutor, Myrmillo, Hoplomachus and the new Laquearius, with 3,500 strike craft.
- Outer Force, Fleet Admiral Izabel Beattie: the Home Fleet's light forces and Charlie Fleet, to clear the system's edge, hold the moons and watch for relief.
Voor Legion
The Legion's fifteen hearths fought under the High Commander's direct command. The Navy gave them reporting names drawn from the pickets' watch lists:
| Group | Hearths (Navy reporting names) | Fate at Exedor |
|---|---|---|
| Home formation | Hiverion (Primus); Styx, Cocytus, Phlegethon, Erebus | Cocytus destroyed 14 March; Hiverion holed 16 March |
| Swur's survivors | Tartarus, Nyx, Asphodel, Hypnos | Asphodel destroyed 15 March |
| From the Veil | Shade, Ember, Cinder, Pyre, Ash, Brand | Ember and Cinder destroyed 14 March; Pyre 15 March |
The Hiverion's Commander, whom the court's record names Oren Daskhal, held the First Hearth under the High Commander. The Veil's six came under a General from the Veil frontier, Telmar Vos, who sat with the High Command aboard the Hiverion.
The planet's defences were 400 orbital platforms inside 200,000 kilometres of Hiverion, each a projector battery and a field, and the planetary shield from sixty generators. The surface projectors were the largest the Voor had built.
Battle
10 to 12 March: the outer system
The Grand Armada arrived at Exedor's edge on 10 March 2336 and fought the outer system for three days. It reduced the edge platforms and the Legion's forward pickets. Beattie's Outer Force took the outer ice dwarf's picket station on the 11th and the installations on Hiverion's moons on the 12th, under the fire of the inner platforms. No hearth came out to meet the fleet at the edge, as every hearth had at the Mog and Media.
13 to 15 March: the sorties
From the 13th the fleet closed on Hiverion's orbit. The Legion met each approach as the new doctrine required. Two hearths at a time came out from under the platforms behind Harbinger screens, engaged at 200,000 kilometres with the support of the platforms' and the other hearths' fire, and withdrew before the fleet could close. The fleet could not follow them under the platforms.
The sorties of the 14th and 15th cost the Navy the battlecruiser Comet, the light cruiser Thorax, the frigate Celebes, the corvettes Churchill and Hood, twelve other escorts, 1,400 strike craft and 19,000 dead. The Comet was lost on the 14th, when Goldburg's force closed to cover a carrier strike and took the fire of two hearths and thirty platforms.
The Legion paid for it. A pair of hearths that sortied against 260 hulls with two Republics among them met twenty rails and a swarm at 80,000 kilometres, and not every pair went back. Five hearths were destroyed on the 14th and 15th. The Ember and the Cinder, the first pair from the Veil, were caught on the 14th by the Republic and the Federation when they turned back for the platforms; the Cocytus was destroyed covering them. On the 15th the Asphodel and the Pyre were destroyed by the carriers' third swarm of the battle, in the first engagement in which the Harbinger screens ran out of projector fuel before the strike craft ran out of missiles.
16 March: the First Hearth
On the 16th the Hiverion came out herself, with four hearths, against the Republic's line. On the Institute's reconstruction of the court's record, the High Commander meant to break the line or die on it. The four with her were the Styx, the Erebus, the Tartarus and the Shade.
The First Hearth's projectors were the largest in the Legion. The Republic took them from 1100. Her fields, which held for two hours, held. The rails of the Republic and the Federation put the first slugs through the First Hearth's field that anything had put through it in nine centuries. At 1500 the Hiverion withdrew under the planet's shield with her hull opened along 2 kilometres and her High Commander alive. She did not come out again until 3 May 2338.
Aftermath
By 17 March the Navy held Exedor beyond the planet's defences: the outer system, the edge, the moons and every orbit above 200,000 kilometres. The Legion held Hiverion's low orbit, its platforms, its shield and the ten surviving hearths under it. Neither side could reach the other.
The fleet blockaded the system from March 2336. In June 2337 Beattie's Home Fleet destroyed the Legion's last relief force at Leesak. Through the winter of 2337 to 2338 the fleet's bombardments destroyed everything in the system beyond the shield's edge. On 10 January 2338 President Elliot O'Neil chose to take Hiverion from the ground, and the Corps landed on 14 February.
The ten hearths that survived Exedor stayed under the shield as fixed batteries. On 3 May 2338, after the High Commander's death in the Kindling, the Hiverion and the nine came out against the Republic's line. The First Hearth and four others were destroyed.
Analysis
Exedor showed both the Navy's strength and its limit. The Republic class could survive the First Hearth's fire and could kill a hearth that came out, and the Navy's strike craft could exhaust a Harbinger screen. The shield-and-sortie doctrine denied the Navy the thing War Plan Purple depended on: hearths caught in the open, waiting for sanction. With the High Commander aboard the Hiverion, the Legion did not wait. The Navy's histories call Exedor the end of Purple and the beginning of the siege.
BOOK SOURCES
- Solar Eternal, Part IX, §9.4 "Interstellar Blitzkrieg"
- Solar Eternal, Part IX, §9.5 "Taking the Krakre: The Siege of Hiverion"
- Solar Eternal, Fleet Reference (July 2333)