From the Tales of the Long Night
Excerpt from Jane's Fighting Ships of the Mutual Prosperity Coalition
Damocles-Class orbital artillery networks are typically deployed by the Mutual Prosperity Coalition upon achievement of orbital supremacy over a target world. Capable of both tactical fire support and strategic bombardment during planetary assault, these networks are also used to maintain pacification of the populace of conquered worlds as well as existing Mutual Prosperity colonies with populations regarded as ideologically unreliable.
The Damocles orbital artillery network utilizes a variety of Kinetic Energy Weapons (KEWs), dictated by the specific fire mission and target. It employs platforms deploying purely gravity-assisted "Lazy Dog" projectiles for low-priority or stationary targets and mass drivers for higher priority or mobile targets. Orbital denial systems based on both high energy lasers and the "Brilliant Pebbles" concept are used to defend against attacks from the surface and it has robust anti-ship defenses against attacks from space.
Designed to require minimal logistical support, a Damocles network includes a fleet of maintenance drones and robot support vessels capable of assembling replacements from stores and even manufacturing parts and systems, as well as mining drones that ensure a supply of KEW ammunition limited only by the presence of the appropriate metals in a system's asteroid belt(s).
NOTE: Damocles was the poor fool the sword hung over. Dionysius the First, Tyrant of Syracuse, is the man who hung it over him. Most likely, anyone who pointed that out to whatever Guiding Caste official named the system was promptly sent to Social Remediation.
—Chief Archivist Isher, Greenline Town Archive
Experience the destructive power of a Damocles orbital bombardment in A Kiss for Damocles by
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