3028 Operation Rat, Phase 2
Spaceport of Groffer's Toil, Algol, Capellan Confederation
1st Ariana Fusiliers, 2nd Battalion.
In the quiet of her cockpit, Zong-Shao (Major) Lei Ling wondered if taking cough syrup and a long hot shower to deal with her cold on New Years was indeed responsible for her bad luck. She didn’t get a haircut, but she did remember eating porridge and cleaning house. There were a list of taboos her Grandmother tried to beat into her about things you must not do at New Years lest you draw bad luck. Likewise, she had tasked giving out her red envelopes to her family to her Si-ben-bing (lance Sgt), another taboo. Sitting in her 65 ton Catipult, she laughed softly. Clapping her hands together three times, she bowed three times to the dead spirit of her departed grandmother. “Sorry grandma. You were right. I screwed up at New Years, and got the worst bad luck ever.”
At least her grandmother was safely dead. It did not go well for the families of the officers who had lost a world of the Capellan Confederation that Chancellor Maximillian Liao had given into their care. It went even less well when the blood of the Celestial Throne itself had been shed by the enemy. As the Davion dropships burned overhead, the radio transmissions came through the long satellite relay system from the other important world in the Algol system. On Kali, three full mech battalions of the 3rd Regimental Combat Team had landed, and crushed her commander, Tormano Liao, and his entire command. Last word had Davion claiming to have killed Tormano Liao, son of the Capellan Chancellor.
Looking at the icons displaying the forces arrayed against her, Lei Ling smiled, at least she would be spared facing Capellan justice herself. Two mech battalions of the elite 71st Light Horse Regiment of the famed Eridani Light Horse deployed with a full regiment of hovertanks screening them, and what looked like a heavy armour regiment deploying in line behind. If she was very lucky, they hadn’t had time yet to unload their artillery, as it was known the Eridani Light Horse had three full batteries of Long Tom artillery. Those monsters were vanishingly rare in this fallen age, but the Eridani Light Horse held themselves to the traditions of the fallen Star League, and made war in a fashion the Successor States hadn’t been able to afford in centuries.
Looking over her emplacements, she had one battery of dug in LRM carriers, each able to unleash 60 long range missiles at the enemy from the edge of direct fire range. They were dug in deep, restricting their firing arc, but protected from the bombing of the Aerospace fighters only the enemy had, and the artillery, that hopefully the enemy didn’t have. She had two battalions of Striker wheeled missile carriers to support her mecha battalion with indirect LRM fire, and a battalion of fast moving Saladin hovertanks whose heavy AC-20 could kill most light or medium mecha or tanks in a single rolling burst, and threaten even a heavy mecha given a second shot. She had four regiments of heavy infantry dug in with heavy lasers, manpack PPC, and short range missiles. Anyone who closed on their position hoping to over run them would be bitterly disappointed at the price they paid.
Of course, they would pay it, and she would lose. Looking at the medium battalion of the 71st Light Horse, it averaged a good fifty tons, Mostly Centurion and Jagermech, with Enforcers and Griffins. The mecha were all at least as fast as hers which ranged from her own 65 ton Catapult, two venerable 60ton Ostol who qualified as museum pieces, two thirds of her machines were Vindicators, and the rest were twenty ton Wasps which should have been used for training purposes only, but the Tikonov Guards and Warrior House Regiments that stood higher in the Chancellor’s favour always seemed to claim the new machines being produced, and now those pathetic training machines would have to face mecha with five times their armour and striking power, and over twice their range. Looking again, she saw the heavy battalion moving ponderously towards their position and sighed.
They were not going to be able to hold. The heavies were just that. Heavy. Warhammers and Archers were the most common, with Orion and Marauder being only slightly less common. Each of those machines boasted twice her heaviest machines long range fire power, and enough armour to sit and slug it out without ever entering the range of her infantry weapons, or the LRM carriers dug in behind her lines to keep them out of direct fire range due to their low armour. Still, she would not yield this world. Every mecha, tank, and infantryman she killed now would not be available to hold this world when the Confederation came to take it back. If she could not win here, she could make it cost enough to make holding the world impossible.
Heavy Aerospace Fighter harassment and some sort of airborne jamming was making her radio communication a problem, and her land lines were only to local forces, so Zong-Shao Lei Ling gripped the control sticks of her Catapult with sweaty hands as she wondered what it was they were working so hard to keep her from seeing.
With an order, she called for the light cavalry charge, and her battalion of Saladin hovercraft blasted towards the enemy advancing line, along with the hovertanks came a full lance of Locust battlemech, lightly armoured and armed, they were counting on a mech warriors arrogance to treat even the least of mecha as more of a threat than any mere conventional vehicle. Essentially, the mecha warriors were charging in the vanguard to draw fire from the Saladins in the hope of getting the hovercraft within range of their mech killing cannon, for they boasted no long range weapons, and not a lot more armour than the twenty ton scout mecha.
A wave of missiles and autocannon fire, the hellish traceries of PPC lightning and burning beams of large lasers turned each of the wildly evading Locust into funeral pyres from which there was no chance of escape, the mech warriors died to a man without ever closing to the range of their single onboard medium laser, yet they had not failed. The Saladin lost only three hovertanks to the fire, as only those without a valid line of sight on the mecha bothered to waste a shot on the diesel powered hovercraft. They paid for that arrogance as the Saladin swept within range and cut across the face of the enemy formation in a tightly executed firing run, each disgorging a full close range burst of AC-20, sawing 200mm slugs in ten round bursts into whatever mecha filled their heads up display.
A Davion Warhammer took a salvo to its right shoulder, the rounds tearing through its torso armour and detonating the stored SRM missiles inside, the explosion causing the right arm PPC to fall from the machine, and the fusion engine and gyroscope to shatter as the explosion sent fragments sawing through the center torso. The pilot rode to safety on the pillar of fire as his ejection seat blasted him free when the containment of his reactor was lost. A Davion Rifleman decided heat was less of a risk than the enemy autocannon as it did not just trigger its twin AC-5 in a hail of 105mm shells, but both its 5cm Large Lasers in blazing blades of light that cut through the armour and destroyed the lifting fans of the Saladin charging at it. Both machines would share a fate however, as the AC-20 of the Saladin cut through the Rifleman’s left knee and the heavy mecha fell forward in time to intercept the tumbling hovercraft. Neither crew nor pilot survived.
Of the 36 hovertanks that charged the line, seven lived to streak away, ten priceless battlemechs were downed, but the Light Horse sent a wave of their own Pegasus hovercraft in pursuit, two dozen SRM carrying tanks closing quickly on the fleeing Capellan machines. Lei Ling smiled, quoting Sun Tzu in her head “in difficult ground devise stratagems”, well this was difficult ground. What did the Davion merc think she had been doing? As the Davion hovertanks closed on her own few machines, whose own fixed forward AC-20 could not even fire back on their pursuers, she triggered the signal to activate the anti vehicle mines that had been emplaced by her engineers yesterday.
Four of the seven fleeing Saladin had been destroyed by spreads of SRM-6 missiles launched by the Davion hovercraft, but when the minefield went live, the very speed of the Davion hovercraft spelled their doom. Without contact with the ground, you steered a hovercraft more like a boat than a tank, there was no stopping sharply and reversing course. They could only swing in wide arcs, and that took them through the bulk of the minefield, and the lightly armoured machines made a festive holiday light display as they died. Happy New Year, mercenary bastard. Enjoy your red envelope.
There was a pause from the advancing mercenary line, then a crackling sound like thunder. Ah. How unfortunate. The 71st Light Horse had indeed brought their artillery. The heavy cargo carrying rounds came apart over the battlefield and scattered submunitions in a computer calculated optimal dispersion and the firecracker rounds went off in a rolling blanket of thunder that swept the ground between the armies not only setting off all the buried mines, but cutting the buried fiber optic lines to her well concealed forward infantry scouts. That would hurt. She needed that spotting since the radio was too jammed to work for forward fire direction.
Her own threat receiver went off as someone’s targeting sensors bathed the rear of her machine well below the threshold for a workable long range missile lock, and checking her rear mounted camera’s she saw a sight that made her blood run cold. Her repair and recovery vehicles, HQ vehicles, and the massed vehicle park for the APC to extract her infantry if the battle was deemed lost were now being stomped flat by very angry 71st Light Horse mecha. The Eridani Light Horse had dropped their own jump equipped Thunderbolts, Victor, Grasshopper, Griffin, Wolverine and Enforcer mecha. The least of those machines outmassed the Vindicators most of her pilots had, and the total force in her rear was already enough to crush her whole command, not counting twice their number closing in across her front.
Sighing softly, Zong-Shao Lei Ling keyed her radio to the all mecha frequency and passed her last command as anything beyond a lance leader.
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“In death ground, fight. There is no retreat. We fight for our father’s grave and our mother’s hearth. This is our land, for the Capellan people, CHARGE!”
Three Vindicators fell in around her as her lance moved with the ease of long practice. Her lance Sgt was directly to her front, and she waited until his targeting settled on a single Davion Victor before she set her paired LRM15 racks that stood like wings on her birdlike mecha on the same target. His PPC flashed out in a whip of azure lightning to carve the right arm of its big Pontiac AC-20, but it was not enough to tear the heavily armoured weapon arm off. His five pack of Long Range Missiles missed, as she could tell her Sgt fired when his PPC had lock and had not waited for the LRM lock to sound as well. If they lived, she would talk to him about that habit. As the tone came solid on her Long Range Missiles, Lei Ling felt the heat fill her cockpit as thirty missiles burned from her racks to soar over her lead Vindicator and arch down to hammer the unfortunate Victor. Eighteen missiles divided their fury between the right torso and left leg, combined with the three quarters of a ton of armour blasted off by the PPC, the shock and impact of the strike was too much for the Victor pilot and his eighty ton machine crashed to the ground, down but not out.
Of her two remaining Vindicators got lucky, and its PPC connected with the head of a Davion Wolverine, the hammer of man made lightning shattering the cockpit transplex and flash heating the vulnerable flesh of the pilot into an explosion of gore that would leave the tech crew responsible for rebuilding the cockpit needing serious therapy, but the machine itself would probably be back in service in a week. The five pack of LRM hit the massively armoured center torso, but with the pilot dead, no one noticed as the machine slid in an uncontrolled heap to the ground. The last Vindicator missed between the legs of the seventy ton grasshopper, and its return Sunbeam Large Laser carved half a ton of armour off the Vindicator’s erring PPC. Both machines locked on and hit with their LRM-5, with the Vindicator scarring the Grasshopper’s left arm above the medium laser mount and the Grasshopper shattering armour plates on the Vindicator’s right leg.
Both Enforcers focused their fury on her Sgt’s lead Vindicator, and while both Luxon AC-10 hammered 120mm bursts into right leg and center torso, only one of the 5cm Large Laser hit, but it compounded the center torso hit and stripped the last of his center torso armour away. That was bad, his fusion reactor, and gyro now had no protection at all, and worse, the shock of all the impacts forced him to stagger his mech drunkenly to the side and fall to one knee as the gyro tried to use the pilots sense of balance to compensate for the massive damage. Lei Ling moved her Catapult past the stricken Vindicator and fired all four of her medium lasers and both LRM-15 at one of the Enforcers. One LRM -15 failed to lock as she was just at the minimum range to hit, but all four medium lasers and the first LRM-15 all hit. Lei Ling felt the heat in her cockpit soar, and she angrily slammed the shut down override as the excess heat caused her HUD to flicker and her electronics threaten to stop working. The Enforcer she targeted on the other hand was dead. Her LRM-15 had struck twelve of the missiles into the right torso, along with two of the four medium lasers. Combined they tore through the heavy chest armour and dug deep into the internal structure. More tellingly, one of the medium lasers punched the AC-10 ammunition bin and set off a chain reaction that destroyed the machine.
Her joy was short lived, the Davion Victor missed with its SRM-4 pack, the missiles detonating around her feet falling short as she stopped her run abruptly in the face of the eighty ton death merchant. It’s AC-20 on the other hand punched her center torso with enough hypersonic metal to blast a ton and a quarter of her armour off, leaving only bare shreds. The Victor was not happy with that damage, and his left arm brought the two medium lasers up, one cutting a line along her right missile cover plate, and the second unfortunately cutting through the scraps of her center torso armour and cutting into her gyroscope.
Already stressed from the heat burden, and shocked by the loss of over a ton of armour, with the gyro stressed beyond its limits, her Catapult fell face first to the ground before the Victor. As the big machine pressed its AC-20 to her cockpit roof, Lei Ling supposed she would save the Confederation the cost of her burial anyway, as 200 mm trans uranic penetrators sawed through her cockpit and command couch, blowing her body into unrecognizable chunks.
Knowing he was already dead, her lance Seargent decided to do his final duty to the Capellan Confederation and his commander in the best way he could. Cutting loose with his Diverse Optics 18 medium laser mounted in his head, he caught the Victor in the cockpit and had the pleasure of seeing the murderous little shit flinch. He ignored the searing laser that carved more than half the armour off his leg and the blast of autocannon fire that took most of the armour off his left arm. The Enforcer firing at him did not matter, what mattered was balancing the scales. The Zong-Shao had been a decent commander and saved him when his family came into criticism for involvement in trade unionism. Because of her, his family had been spared “re-education”, and while he was not some Samurai to write poems about life debt or anything out of a cheap holodrama, he paid his debts. His Vindicator had hit its top speed of 64 kph when he hit the Victor chest to chest. Half of the Victor’s own chest armour was shattered, but the Vindicator had no chest armour left. The fusion engine on the Vindicator suffered a containment failure and vented out the armourless front as the sensors detected the least catastrophic panel to blow. That left the unleashed heart of a star blazing from the chest of the Vindicator to wash both the Victor and Vindicator where they pressed in a ridiculous wrestling pose of a 45 ton middleweight chest to chest with an 80 ton sumo. It took less than a second for the fusion plasma to eat its way into the Victor and the second reactor broke free of its chains. In the ensuing explosion, the Victor pilot was badly burned, losing both legs and use of his left arm. The Vindicator pilot however was melted into his cockpit as the Victor reactor breach was level with his head when it burst.
Four medium and one large laser from the Grasshopper crossed paths with a single medium laser and PPC as the last Vindicator went toe to toe with a mecha half again heavier than itself. The PPC carved deep into the undamaged arm of the Grasshopper, while the head mounted medium laser carved into the center torso of the massive seventy ton Light Horseman. In return, the 5cm Large laser and two of the 3cm Medium lasers carved into the right torso of the Vindicator, one more into the already damaged leg, and the last missing between the legs of the lurching mecha. Given the shock of the weapon fire, the Vindicator pilot struggled to keep his machine upright, but for a few seconds lost to balance issues, he paid with his life. The remaining Enforcer and Grasshopper cut the mecha apart as four medium lasers, a large laser and autocannon 10 combined to cut off one leg and arm, leaving the mecha and unconscious pilot on the ground.
As the 2nd Mech battalion of the Ariana Fusiliers closed with the 71st Eridani Light Horse heavy battalion that had caught them in the rear, the Eridani Light Horse Aerospace Fighters screamed in over the fight, cutting a swath of laser fire through the backs of the Capellan machines, and scattering high tech vibrabombs that disrupted the gyroscopes and electronics of the Fusiliers, taking a third of the Fusiliers mecha out of action before they could reach the enemy. It took less than ten minutes for the Capellan mech battalion to die, and the trap on the conventional forces to close.
The medium Striker tanks had a ten pack LRM system and short range SRM-6 for close defense, but were supposed to rely on mecha spotters and indirect LRM fire to fight as the light wheeled tank had little in the way of armour. Forced into a fight with the heavily armoured Patton tanks, trading LRM-10 salvo for AC-10 fire, with the light weight Jagermech and Blackjacks setting up outside the maximum missile range to support with light AC-2 fire, the Strikers found themselves melting like sugar cubes dropped into too hot coffee, dissolving under a steady rain of various high caliber penetrators, while their own direct mode fired LRM were able to score but not penetrate the heavy armour of the sixty ton main battle tanks rolling in slow unhurried advance towards them.
Before the last of the Strikers could be killed, the commander of the LRM carriers decided to get at least a blow in before he too was killed safely from out of range. He boasted six times the firepower of the Striker, but a lot less armour or mobility. He was supposed to provide the heavy punch for mecha to direct upon the enemy, but the mech battalion was busy buying time against the enemy who somehow dropped behind them. It was use it or lose it time, and Chang Ti stamped out the cheap cigarette from his issue ration and decided he would prefer to die under the sun he was born under, than down hiding in a hole cowering before his enemies.
The heavy LRM carriers lurched over the berm and six of them unloaded 60 Long Range missiles each. Six of the Patton tanks shattered under the hammer of an angry god. There is no way of telling how many missiles it took, because at least twice that many hit. The Davion Marauder and Warhammer stepped into range and a thick tracery of lightning lit the battlefield like the first dawn of the universe. The scream of the men was lost in the scream of burning armour and cooking off munitions as the LRM carriers burned, their light armour no match for Marauder and Warhammer massed PPC fire. The Davion mecha stepped just outside the range of medium range weapons and began to methodically work over the entrenched positions. The light Galleon tanks of the militia boasted little armour and only a single medium laser, even dug in deep, they were vulnerable to the long range fire of mecha precise weapons, and the constant rain of deep penetrator rounds from the Long Tom Artillery worked the Capellan positions hard. Another wave of Davion fighters brought a new horror to the battlefield as they strafed with lasers and this time dumped napalm over the Capellan fighting positions. As the heavy and medium mecha moved to closer range to target any movement, the light weight Firestarter mecha with their massed flamers moved it, scouring any detected hole with both conventional napalm and fusion plasma torches to burn out any dug in infantry, and to wipe out any punched out mech warriors or tankers that had survived the death of their machines.
This was not a raid, this was an invasion. Those who chose to dig in and fight the Davion forces with no clear hope of victory were dangerous enough that a prudent commander would not allow them to escape to form the nucleus of a resistance movement. Hanse Davion’s orders for Operation Rat included some rather stiff guidelines about the long term occupation, a lot of well thought out “hearts and minds” strategies to wean the Capellans from the loyalty to their mother nation, however the same orders were prefaced with a quote from Nicholo Machiavelli’s “The Prince”. His advice to his prince all those millennia ago were that an invader should commit all his atrocities at once, to get maximum shock value from his brutality, but to instill in the occupied a reliance In their conquerors forbearance and mercy after that. Today was for atrocity. Algol died as a Capellan world today. They would learn to become good citizens of the Federated Suns, and in time would come to cherish and love it for the free and enlightened state that it was. Today, the hard-core loyalists could die screaming though. They had a job to do, and this was far from the last world they had to hit.