Battle for Ares
The Conflict
Prelude
During Operation Glass Bowl a small fleet of Lunaren ships had been confiscated and re-crewed with Martians, mostly mining ship crews or ex-Lunaren navy. Riji Howland had the fleet consolidated and placed under the command of the newly commissioned Admiral Micha Varon-Lace.
The Engagement
When Micha and her fleet reached the shipyard, using the guise of being Lunaren ships to get close, they quickly jammed communications then attacked and disabled the station's small contingent of protection ships as well as station defenses. Once they had control of the station that put all remaining personnel on a transport ship and sent the ship back to Mars where it would be held as a prisoner ship for the last months of the war. I was two days before the Lunarens learned of what happened at Ares and immediately tasked a large strike force to take back Ares Shipyard. he battle group was commanded by Marcel Bach, a man known as the "Moon's Hammer" for his no-quarter exploits with pirates over the years. They burned hard for a month, taking a suboptimal route to avoid Mars and the blockade, and hardly gave time for a breaking burn, the idea being to attack the lesser force of Martians at speed. But they arrived to nothing, no fight, no stolen Lunaren ships, noting but a drifting cloud of debris around a broken and mangled superstructure. The Martians had destroyed Ares Shipyard and left before the DPLN could muster a response.
Outcome
The sight on Lunaren media was devastating and most of the population of Luna began calling for an end to yet another expensive war fought to keep hold of a group of people who were so far away a lot of Lunarens had never met a Martian. The loss of Ares Shipyard was simply too much and soon the government agreed to negotiations with the Martians.
