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.
“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 batallion 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 milenia 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.
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3028, Operation Rat, Phase 2
Nanking City, Algol, Capellan Confederation
I looked at my reflection in my cockpit transplex before I put on my bulky neurohelmet, Sing-Wei (Captain) Jimmy Chavez, Bravo Company 3rd Battalion 1st Ariana Fusiliers. I was not a recruiting poster for the Capellan Confederation Armed Forces, I was a tall, black haired, blue eyed mix of a lot of extra’s into what was proudly a Hispanic bloodline that traced its roots back to something called the Five Kingdoms of Mexico, which was so far back in pre space Terra that even less survived in history than the ancient Chinese dynasty House Liao based Capellan Culture on. Had I even a hint of that old Chinese ancestry in my face, I should probably be ranked as Sing-Wei*, meaning promotable, as opposed to Sing-Wei, which means a person from a family that earned citizen rank, but must prove their loyalty and ability in each generation as they are only “true” Capellan’s by sufferance. The Capellan Confederation taught the five pillars of the world under one roof, that all of humanity would prosper once brought under the benevolent guidance of House Liao, but it went without saying that the Celestial race from which House Liao sprang lay just a little closer to the ideal than all others.
It was one of those things you learned to accept about the Capellan Confederation. I could not really criticize it, you won’t find a lot of diversity in House Steiner’s Germanic blond nobility, nor the Anglo Saxon review of House Davion’s peerage. House Kurita is as unapologetically Japanese in its ideal as is humanly possible. You could point to House Marik of the Free World’s League as a symbol of diversity, but they mostly used that diversity to indulge in never ending civil wars that allowed the second most powerful economy and arms manufacturer in the Inner Sphere to be a tottering wreck of a realm scarcely able to defend its own frontiers. House Liao provided our unity, and as a very small center of civilization surrounded by literal barbarian hordes, we needed that unity above all else.
I settled the bulky neurohelmet on the padded shoulders of my cooling vest. We have lovely uniforms in the CCAF, and as mech warriors standing at the apex of Capellan society and the Capellan Confederation Armed Forces, our uniforms are the most splendid, but we went to war in our swim wear.
My Vindicator was a 45ton battlemech of the medium class, it’s heart was a GM180 Fusion reactor that could power a small town of about fifty thousand without effort. What it powered for me was the huge Ceres Armsmasher Particle Projection Cannon (PPC) in my mecha’s right arm that took plasma from my reactor and pumped it through a series of focusing magnets to release a blast of living lightning that could reach out half a kilometer with enough power to burn through the complex metalo-ceramic composite that makes up mecha armour. It produced enough heat doing so to make the machine glow like a sun to thermal scanners, and made the cockpit a foretaste of hell. Heat sinks in the torso and right arm channeled that heat out as swiftly as it could, and the Vindicator ran cooler than most mecha due to having more heat sinks than almost any medium mecha, but it still ran hot.
To keep the pilot alive, we wore coolant vests, bullet proof vests laced with coolant lines that connected to our mecha heat sinks to wick the heat away from us before we cooked like Christmas turkey in the oven we called a cockpit, below the coolant vest, we wore minimal shorts, and combat boots, because we have to stomp on our pedal controls with a certain ammout of authority to make this beast control its jump jets when we need to jump out of trouble. That is right, the Vindicator isn’t the fastest mech out there, it walks about 40kph and can lumber to a sort of jog about 64kph, but at need it can vent the plasma of its fusion reactor mixed with water to leap on jets of steam 120m, which comes in handy to go over rather than around terrain features or jump on and off buildings in city fighting. It also produces heat, but when you aren’t that fast, being able to move vertically when your faster enemies can’t can be a life saver.
My mecha’s name was FFP, for the record that meant “Freedom For the People”, but in reality it was my grandmother who named it “Failed Foreign Policy” when she bought the Vindicator to replace the Awesome assault mecha lost in a pointless raid on the heavily defended Davion world of Stein’s Folly. The Awesome was an assault class mecha of 80tons whose three PPC could devastate any mecha on the battlefield and could stand alone against even the mighty 100 ton Atlas. It could not stand against three 75 ton Marauder and a 75 ton Orion which it was left to do to buy time for the remainder of her father’s company to make it to the dropship and run back to Liao space in defeat. The Ever Victorious Army frequently wasn’t. Now my mecha was a Vindicator, half the size, and a third the power of our families lost Awesome.
My neurohelmet plugs snapped in as I banged my head against the bulky coolant housing of the head mounted medium laser. That beast made the cockpit cook when I fired it, but it was linked to the HUD in my neurohelmet and automatically tracked on whatever my eye settled on, so the seconds it saved me on target lock balanced the possibility that it might kill me as I hit it if I have to eject from my dying machine. The Diverse Optics 18 is the most efficient weapon in my arsenal, it reaches half as far as my PPC, does half the damage, for only one third of the heat. It was as good a bargain as you were going to get in this world. I loved my laser. My father loved it too, when he inherited this mecha from grandmother that he pulled the Ceres/Sian five tube long range missile launcher and its one ton of ammunition and replaced it with one more heat sink and two more Diverse Optics 18 Medium Lasers. Sure it cost me a tiny bit of long range damage, but it more than doubled my close range punch. The Vindicator was designed by committee, one mecha the Capellan Confederatin could afford to make with the few resources we had left after the Ever Victorious Army got its ass handed to it, losing dozens of worlds and two thirds of our battlemech production facilities in the First Succession War. We tried to make a mecha that could do everything using almost nothing, and ended up with the Vindicator.
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The Vindicator is not fast, but it is reasonably mobile. It is as armoured as its size allows, armed with a heavy long range direct fire punch with the PPC, and a decent close range weapon in the medium laser, even an anti infantry weapon with the small laser in the left arm. The goal of giving it indirect fire with the LRM-5 I could see, but while a LRM-10 could threaten a light mecha, and an LRM-15 or 20 could threaten even the largest mecha, the LRM-5 was like a slap from mama. Enough to annoy you, to remind you that you were bad, but not enough to stop you. The pair of medium lasers I added instead could do as much damage together as my PPC and carve up an enemy machine, without the added risk of my ammunition cooking off if I ran hot.
I brought up my systems, taking my mecha from standby to hot. The limiters came off and my slowly warmed myomer muscle fibers twitched to life and my mecha rose in all it’s glory. I moved out of the bay, and noted that my three lance mates were up and running as well.
To my left, Corporal “Big” Billy Wasserman, who weighed about a hundred and five pounds in his cooling vest and boots, and comfortably fit in a locker (as demonstrated by Fiffi). His Vindicator (named Pretty boy)had been modified to match my own, swapping the LRM for medium lasers. To my right was Fifi, Philomina Teng, about six foot even of very quiet woman who loved power lifting and painting ceramics. Her Vindicator (named Pepper) was an even more radical model, having twin flamers in the chest and replacing the small laser in the left wrist with a third. Even with the eighteen heat sinks, she could run a little hot using them, but at close range, she could up a target’s heat by six points in a single blast. It doesn’t sound like much, but against a huge assault machine, it could force them to half their fire, or even shut them down completely. It could also be used against infantry, but no one loved burning people alive, even in war, as sometimes the gun cameras caught sights you could not unsee.
Poor Irina Korakova was our last pilot, our scout. She was running a twenty ton Wasp. Half again faster than our Vindicators, it was the lightest mecha in existence, rivalling the Locust, and so lightly armoured that dedicated infantry with support weapons could take it down. For weapons, it had only a single arm mounted medium laser and a two tube short range missile launcher in one leg. Almost no armour and light short range weapons, this mecha was supposed to be for training new mechwarriors only, but the Succession War’s had reduced the capacity of the Inner Sphere to create new battlemechs. Most were inherited, many dated back centuries. When one was lost, you took what replacements you could get. Her family had lost their ancestral Javelin to a Davion Hunchback when she was still at the academy, and all they could afford between their family savings and the Capellan Confederation death benefit was this stock Wasp. Unlike the even cheaper Stinger, the Wasp had sensors at least as good, possibly better, than my Vindicator. Her contribution would be enemy detection and targeting, if she had to trade shots, she would not last long.
In a way, it was good that House Davion was determined to win this on the cheap. They had been throwing three to one mecha odds, plus at least two to one odds in ground armour and total domination of the air to hit our other battallions. That meant since both the 3rd RCT and the 71st Eridani Light Horse had destroyed our other battalions, all that was left to murder us was their mercenaries.
The Illician Lancers were dropping on us. Specifically the 9th Illician Rangers. As a mercenary group, they were neither as ancient as the Eridani Light Horse, nor as feared as Wolf’s Dragoons, but they were a solid outfit, and more to the point a Regiment.
They had three full mech battalions, rated as medium/heavy, two battalions of hovertanks, and a full battalion of attack helicopters. That last one was a real annoyance, as since we lacked any Aerospace fighters, the attack helicopters could sweep across the battlefield providing targeting for the artillery and mecha, harass any of our units that had to retreat, and close in to provide devastating fire from the rear whenever we were forced into a battle line against the enemy mech and tank forces.
House Liao “Elastic Defense” doctrine was non-discretionary. When a world could not be defended, the irreplaceable mecha assets had to be evacuated. The Lorix Order was non-discretionary, it was the duty of every Capellan mechwarrior to lead by example, to be first into battle and last to retreat. The Ever Victorious Army could not be defeated in honest battle, nor were the strategies of the Chancellor anything but wise and insightful, therefore any loss in battle could only be a betrayal of the loyal and well trained CCAF warriors by corrupt and incompetent leaders who should, and would very publicly, pay for their disgrace with their lives (frequentl with their entire family). This resulted in a lot of officers chosing to die on the battlefield rather than risk their family by surviving defeat.
There is no freedom like knowing you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Our major was a cunning witch, she had decided that while she was going to die on the field, we were going to live to retreat with enough force to perhaps turn the tide on other worlds. She would buy us this chance with the blood not of her warriors, but of the Davion dogs who came for us. We could not hold this world, but we could water its soil with the blood of so many Davion dogs that our own dead could rest in peace.
Davion did not respect our intelligence. Thier intelligence service had beaten ours so badly we never saw the invasion coming. Their “Fox”, Hanse Davion had beaten our Chancellor Maximillian Liao and our commanding General Pavel Ridzik so badly that we neither had the forces to defend this world, nor any hope of reinforcement. Their victory, in general, was assured. Their victory on this field was not. The Capellan Confederation Armed Forces had been training to face the Davion invader we all knew was coming for centuries. We knew they had more and better mecha, more and better tanks, more and better Aerospace fighters and worst of all, more and larger jumpships, meaning they could move whole armies faster than we could. We had always trained to face superior forces without any hope of support. In all honesty, I don’t think Davion had a clue how much better we were at this when our political lords and masters were taken out of the equation, and they killed Tormano Liao, our political general, in the first strike.
We played stupid, and they fell for it.
My own mecha company had to watch the battle unfold on our cockpit displays, we had to watch two companies of our mecha advance into a hopeless battle while we waited alone in our cockpits, hoping ancient seals would hold as we sat on the bottom of lake Kana, hoping the 9th Illician Rangers would follow their past battle tactics once again. We were, after all, betting our lives upon it.
On the surface, Sao-Shao (Major) Edith Tang smiled grimly. She patted her tired Vindicator controls and smiled. She had been afraid she would retire, and be forced to watch from her porch when her troops went to war without her. She had only barely passed the physical last year, and the pointed memos from CCAF HQ about how many noble officers of great potential stood in need of such seasoning as her command would offer them, not to mention the connection with Tormano Liao, son of the Chancellor himself. She had held the jackals off long enough, now she would send her troops to face the Davion Lion with her own grey and cold head at the helm, not some overbred hothead.
She had her Striker companies moving forward behind her mecha companies, letting the mecha spot for the long range missile fire of the Strikers from beyond the range of the more damaging heavy autocannons and large lasers, trusting that the PPC fire and long range missiles of the enemy that could range would be focused on the more prestigious mecha dangled in front like bait.
Her hovertank companies were in the rear, ready to build up speed to blast through the line at hundreds of kilometers per hour in a mad rush to close to killing range with their short range missiles and heavy autocannon once the mech lines were in contact.
It was the obvious plan, and an obvious losing strategy. The enemy had more mecha, heavier mecha, longer ranged mech weapons, and it had equal armour force. Worse, the long lumbering line of battle had to move at the speed the formation could be maintained, which meant slow as a crawling snake. The enemy had total command of the air, and huge numbers of conventional gunships and mechbuster fighters with which to ravage our lines before our mecha were even in range of each other. It was obvious that she was committing her force to pre-war plans that had no chance of success because she was more afraid of being shot by her own side for breaking orders, than being shot by the enemy in battle.
Two waves of helicopter gunships closed in from each flank, their long range autocannon and large lasers began to burn mecha on each flank as they swept to each side like jaws closing about a morsel they were about to eat. Moving past each flank, they took up position behind and above the Capellan mecha, ready to tear apart the rear of the irreplaceable mecha companies before they could come into range of the Lancers own mecha.
That was when our infantry pulled the cam nets off the concealed Partisan tank commpanies, their internal combustion engines not registering on the scouting Aerospace fighters until activated, and shielded from sensors by the cam netting until revealed. Each Partisan boasted four long range AC-5, the vehicles designed by Kallon Industries to provide a cheap tracked anti aircraft vehicle as good as the famed Rifleman the Federated Suns of House Davion protected its regiments with. Set up beyond each of our flanks, the concealed tanks would have been able only to reach mecha or armour forces that tried to move around our flanks, not able to reach the main line of battle at all, but they were perfectly positioned to chew the flanking helicopters arpart, worse, the helicopters would have to pass through their entire range envelope if they wanted to escape.
It was a slaughter. Gunships that had been moving low to fire on the vulnerable rear of the battlemechs and to target the Striker missile support tanks were now caught in a crossfire of quad autocannons in air defense mode. The lashing radars caused everyone’s threat receivers to scream target lock from all directions, and the autocannon rounds could not be lured by flares or chaff like missile systems.
In desperation, the Davion commander called in his Mechbuster conventional fighters and his Aerospace fighters to hit the Partisan batteries from behind, to come in nap of the earth so they would only pop up at the last moment to cut apart the lightly armoured Partisan tanks from the rear without the chance for their air defense radar to detect them and swing their quad autocannon to bear on the new threat.
Sao-Shao (Major) Edith Tang was a witch, she had war gamed this scenario a dozen times in the last six years, and she had forced the two senior retired Aerospace commanders who lived nearby to plot the best routes to attack such a threat. She did not guess completely right. One wing of Mechbuster fighters chose to come over the rolling hills rather than through the canyons and missed the LRM carriers that were waiting for them. In a screaming pass from behind they killed three of the four Partisan air defense tanks that were their assigned objectives, and as they engaged targets of opportunity, they loosed their Autocannon-20 mech killing nose gun to kill the mecha that was flagged as transmitting on the command frequency. Sao-Shao Edith Tang retired to glory as 200mm autocannon rounds punched through her rear torso, and her GM180 fusion engine. Her automatic ejection system blasted the cockpit transplex off, and ejected her command couch free, but it caught on the coolant housing of her medium laser, and the impact snapped her neck.
Her vengeance was not long to arrive as two Corsair and for Sparrowhawk Aerospace fighters screamed down Swayback canyon towards the second Partisan position only to pass over four concealed LRM carriers, the barely armoured barely mobile LRM carriers each sent 60 long range missiles at their target fighters. Four were killed my missiles, and two were killed when reflexive evasion actions at low level in a canyon resulted in collision with the canyon walls. Davion Aerospace dominance over the battlefield died with Edith Tang.
The 9th Ranger commander saw his glorious victory turning into a debacle and moved to settle things with the scientific application of massed gunfire, rather than fancy combined arms strategies. He threw his own Harasser hovertanks and their short range missile systems out in a wave before his main line battalion, not with any hope of reaching the enemy mecha, but to blunt the wave of Saladin hovertanks the Capellens had in reserve. The AC-20 of the Saladin was a threat to even his medium and heavy mecha, but it was a short range weapon, and the Saladin was lightly armoured. His hovertanks could kill the Saladin short of his mech line, or at least kill enough of them that his own mecha with their longer ranged weapons could kill the rest.
He ordered his Fire Support mecha to advance along the far shore of lake Kana. He boasted large numbers of Jagermech and Blackjack whose light AC-2, while a lot less damaging than heavier autocannon, outranged any other weapon available since the fall of the Star League. Given a dozen mecha each bearing twin AC-2, they could sweep the surviving hovercraft before they could range his own main force. That done, they would mass fire on any target detected as operating on a command frequency. Headhunting was a Davion specialty. Given the tight central control of the Capellans and the lack of initiative permitted to their lower ranks, loss of officers crippled their formations at low cost.
He ordered two companies of his fast mediums to swing on the opposite flank of Lake Kana, to both remove the screening Partisan air defense tanks and LRM carriers, and to cut off any chance of retreat into the mountains on that side. That left him with three companies of medium to heavy mecha against two companies of mostly Vindicators and mecha of even lesser weight and threat.
All was proceeding to plan. The Harasser’s twin SRM-6 flashed twelve heavy anti-armour missiles directly into the Saladin’s charge. The AC-20 that tore from them in return in their deadly meeting engagement was an orgy of mutal slaughter. Those few Saladin that made it through faced a sheet of AC-2 fire that was almost a wall, and they shredded against it like pushing through a wood chipper.
Two Saladin blessed by luck alone won through the storm, and faced PPC fire from Marauder and Warhammer heavy mecha, and the burning beams of Rifleman large lasers. It was overkill by an order of magnitude, but Davion’s New Avalon Institute of Science military academy stressed the truth that overkill was still dead, and underkill shot back.
That was when we should have received the message from Sao-Shao (Major) Edith Tang to attack, but no message came. I waited for another minute, but no message came. Either she was dead, or she was out of communication, because if our trap was to work, i had to spring it while there was someone left to save. Well, I had been given discretion in my orders. “On my command or at a time of your choosing” is her phrasing. Sao-Shao Tang was a witch, and I thanked the blessed ancestors that House Liao had left her strong and wise hand at the helm for this battle, she trained us how she wanted us to act, and trusted us to use our initiative to achieve her desired end in whatever means suited the situation we found, not the one we planned on finding.
“Company, execute case dagger.” I ordered, and powered my jump jets.
As I rose from the bottom of the lake, I found my company of Vindicators (and two Wasps for those who could not afford a Vindicator), facing a line of Davion 8 Jagermechs and 4 Blackjacks just inside medium laser range.
The Jagermech is 65 tons, boasts two class 2 autocannon, 2 class 5 autocannon, and two medium laser, but had only two thirds my armour. The Blackjack had two calss two autocannon and four medium lasers and nearly my armour. On paper, we were in trouble, but in reality, Davion was screwed.
I let my legs absorb the impact of my landing, the heat from the jump only mild, but that was about to change. I felt my eyes lock on the Jagermech in front of me and my head mounted medium laser marked it as a valid target with the solid gold of lock. I cut loose with my head mounted medium laser and the first wash or heat ran over me as it carved a line in the left torso. I could feel the coolant lines flush as my heat sinks began to work to shed the excess before it could degrade my systems. About a second and a half later, my right arm which ended in a Ceres Armsmasher PPC gave me a solid target lock tone, which warbled with the sound of my twin chest mounted medium laser lock and I cut loose with all my remaining weapons.
I had just jumped, so my machine was not in perfect alignment, causing one of my lasers to burn high over the left shoulder before the second cut into the center torso. My Ceres Armsmasher lived up to its name as a blast of man made lightning connected me to the Jagermech’s left torso, captializing on the damage my first laser had done and punched through the armour, the shock causing the mecha to fall onto the left side, the left arm collapsing into the left shoulder, destroying the lasers there and setting off an ammunition explosion that gutted the Jagermech. He had been blasting away at our two line companies when I jumped, so none of his weapons had targeted me.
Irina in her Wasp had sprinted forward at full speed and cut at one of the Jagermech with both her medium laser and SRM-2, scoring a hit with only one missile, her closing speed being too fast for a decent target lock, but she was past the enemy line before she could be targeted.
Fifi cut lose with her PPC and medium laser as she charged the Davion mecha, hitting a Jagermech with the PPC but missing with her laser, probably due to her running. Her Jag had also been blasting away at our main line, and was only now bringing his weapons arms to bear on her. Well, that would be fun.
“Big” Billy Wasserman had the opposite luck, his PPC being triggered when he heard the first warble of weapons lock, unfortunately that was for his head mounted medium laser with its “glance” targeting linked to his eye movement. The medium laser carved into his enemies cockpit, failing to breach it but scaring the Davion jock enough his mecha flinched. The PPC was moving into line, but not there yet, and it blasted rock about two hundred meters past the enemy machine. A second later, his two chest mounted medium lasers carved into each of the enemies legs, penetrating nothing.
Since Billy was to my left, he was on his own. I swung my PPC and head mounted laser onto Fifi’s target and cut loose. I didn’t bring my center toso lasers into the mix because I was already gasping at the heat in my cockpit and could not get the heat any higher to lower my speed or targeting ability. The PPC carved the armour of the Jag’s left leg, and the medium laser tore into the left arm, neither one immediately fatal, but just then the two mecha exchanged fire.
The Jagermech plot was scared enough that he hadn’t reconfigured his trigger assembly, and he had to fire his weapons in sequence rather than a jointly targeted alpha strike. His targeting computer was still fixed on his AC-2 which had the longest possible range bracket which meant his AC-2 both hit perfectly, his AC-5 hit as well, and the medium lasers heated lakewater and possibly killed any fish that hadn’t been boiled by our jump jets.
Both AC-2 ripped into the armour on Fifi’s massive PPC as she swung it to bear, unfortunetly, while being a supremely accurate autocannon, its 90mm rounds had little penetration against the armour composite used on battlemechs and did little beyond scratching her paint. The 105mm penetrators of the two AC-5 did more damage, but while one hit the right torso and the other hit the center torso, they neither penetrated her armour nor did enough damage to make her gyro go out of phase.
Closing at the charge, Fifi ignored her PPC, and cut loose with both chest mounted flamers and her head mounted medium laser. The medium laser carved into the left arm, the flamers into the center torso and left torso, but more importantly, 45 tons of charging Vindicator at 64kph hit the left torso of the Jagermech with her left shoulder actuator like a free safety on a slow moving quarterback.
The sound was incredible, and only Fifi’s piloting skill kept her staggering beyond the mecha, which was good, beause the Jagermech exploded. Being on its back, the fusion engine had no safe venting space, so it blew the chest apart, setting off its stored ammunition. The ejection system blasted the pilot out of the fireball, but he went off almost parallel to the ground and his cockpit rockets failed to stabalize before impacting the ground. If he pilot lived, he would be facing long surguries and rehab before he walked again, let alone piloted.
Big Billy was a big target, and his Jagermech lit him up like a Christmas tree. The two mehca exchanged fire as the air between them became a rainbow of man-made energetic death. One AC-5 and one medium laser missed, but three medium lasers each picked a torso to mark, one of the AC-5 joined in the fun to ravage the center torso, while both AC-2 carved into the left torso. None of his armour was breached, but the total impact was enough to put his mecha down on its back.
Billy had proven a better shot when he was stable, and his head mounted medium laser missed the enemy cockpit, but his two center torso lasers carved into the enemies central chest, while the big Ceres Armsmasher carved the rest of the armour from the right leg of the Jagermech, eating into its leg actuator after burning through.
It is possible a good enough pilot could have survived that, but it didn’t matter. Irina had turned her Wasp and both her Medium Laser and SRM-2 had hit the rear torso of the Jagermech. Two missiles hit the center torso rear, and the medium laser hit the left torso, burning all the way through and hitting the ammo bin for the AC-5 ammunition. The rolling explosions gutted the mecha, dropping its arm off, and tearing through both the fusion engine and gyro. Automatic shut down killed the reactor before it blew, but the mecha was dead. The pilot blasted free as his ejection seat took him into the waters of the lake we had just exited. He would live to see how the war turned out. Knowing our luck, he would receive one of our own battalions broken machines when it got repaired. War was a bitch that way.
The remaiing Jagermech pilot of the lance we engaged began to walk backward as fast as his stubby legs would carry him, but that left him moving at the same speed as the two standing Vindicators, with a Wasp at his back.
I can’t really understand the logic behind the Davion pilots move. He should have concentrated his fire on one of us to possibly bring the mecha down and alter the odds of his company and regiment in this battle. He chose instead to try to defend himself by splitting his fire over two widely separate moving targets. He did not do it well.
I am told in the ancient Star League weapons could hit at ranges we only dream of, and engage multiple targets with ease as their sophisticated targeing computers matched everything from air density and currents, mecha momentum and recoil forces, to ensure that you could engage as many targets as you wanted without any loss of accuracy. That was then. That is losttech, lost technology. We squat in the ruins of greatness and squabble over its scraps. The weapons we have left are pale copies of the Star League versions, our electronics crude knock offs of the matchless precision of the fallen glory of mankind. So he missed, mostly.
I caught a medium laser to my left arm, which had only my baby small laser for chasing infantry and a fist for punching Davions, so it’s not like I really needed it. The medium laser failed to burn through my armour, I could take a couple more like it.
Irina missed with her SRM, the leg was a crappy place to put a missile launcher and it was slightly off bore when she shot. The arm mounted medium laser carved into the right rear torso and burned through, shattering the emitter coils of the Jag’s own medium laser, but doing no further damage.
I missed with my own PPC shot, for which I will review the battle ROMs and see if my machine targeting was lagging or did I just need more simulator time to make sure my own targeting is not so sloppy I can’t rely on a snap shot of my big gun. My head mounted medium laser carved into the right torso, while my two center torso mediums carved into center torso and left leg. Not enough to kill it, but combined with Irina’s damage, the mecha was already reeling, its gyroscope buffeting the pilot with serous feedback as it tried to stabilize the machine as so much of its armour was exploding off of it.
Fifi did not help. She missed with her medium laser, but her PPC hammered into the existing damage on the right torso and spun the mecha to the ground. The mech took more damage to the right torso rear which was already without armour and the internal structure collapsed. The pilot popped his canopy signalling surrender as he killed his engine before his machine could explode.
This would be the last shining star on the battle record of Sao-Shao (Major) Edith Tang, because what remained was the brutal mathematics of material based warfare, the cold military science of the Federated Suns.
Two companies of heavy and medium mecha at the front, and a full company to one flank after suppressing our armour, came to the edge of their effective range and began to trade fire with our mecha line.
70 ton Warhammers and 75 ton Marauders traded PPC fire with Vindicators as 50 ton Trebuchet came to the edge of the range of their LRM-15 racks, to exchange fifteen tube salvos to the pathetic five tube replies of the standard Vindicators.
Given no chance to keep the Striker back behind the line to engage Davion machines that closed with our mecha, there was no choice but to order the thin skinned wheeled missile carriers to advance into range of the enemy machines and take fire to return it.
Single 35ton Strikers with the limited armour they had room for after their larger inefficient internal combusion engines and bulky missile systems, were facing 60 ton Rifleman mecha, who replied with twin AC-5 and a 5cm large laser for every salvo of long range missiles, or 50 ton Centurion who would match their ten tube LRM missile salvo, then add an extra 120mm AC-10 salvo for good measure.
Two companies of the 1st Ariana Fusiliers mech battalion were cut apart in an hour, along with three companies of ground armour, on top of the loss of the total hover strike armour fleet. They died to buy time for the hover APC to recover what pilots and vehicle crews they could from the destroyed machines, and to evacuate the wounded from the dug in infantry defense bunkers.
Once the line of battle reached range of each other, Davion casualties were non-existent. They controlled the range, as they had equal or greater mobility, equal or greater range, far superior numbers, and far superior armour. The 9th Ranger were mercenaries. They were being paid to kill Capellans, not to die for the Federated Suns. They were supposed to grow rich on the salvage of an inferior foe defeated with minimal cost, and thanks to the tactical witchcraft of Sao-Shao (Major) Edith Tang, they would win the battle, and lose money doing so.
The Overlord class dropship Winter Moonrise was waiting in the hills to the far flank of lake Kana, and we were withdrawing what we could from the battlefield to escape. History records that one mech battalion of the 1st Ariana Fusiliers retreated from Algol. History often looks through a fairly dark glass to see the facts it records.
An Overlord dropship like the Winter Moonrise could indeed hold all 36 of our battalion’s battlemechs. It could also hold six Aerospace fighters to screen the massive dropship’s run to orbit, and guard it while it mated with our waiting Merchant class jumpship at the Apex jump point.
What it had in fact was a short company of battlemechs, nine functional Vindicators and a Wasp. It had another twelve Vindicators in various states of destroyed, two field repair vehicles, two prime mover mech carriers and four Partisan Air Defense tanks. We had pilots and techs, vehicle crewmen and Aerospace pilots. We were a mech battalion in name only.
As we blasted to orbit, we were pursued by a flight of Davion Sparrowhawks, but the light fighters did not want to try to close with their medium range lasers against the longer ranged air defense weapons of the heav yOverlord dropship. The Davion heavy fighters were still busy slaughtering Capellan conventional armour forces, firebase fortresses, and lone retreating mecha.
By the time we were docking the Winter Moonrise to our Merchant jumpship, held in readiness to carry survivors or news in case of the attack we were sure we would have lots of warning about, Com Star carried a message that struck a death blow to any morale we had left.
“From the Office of the Chancellor Maximillian Liao to the renegades and traitors of the 1st Ariana Fusiliers. For your gross dereliction of duty, for your failure to employ the wise defensive stratagems and war plans crafted to guarantee the safety of the Capellan citizens from the depredations of the Davion aggressors, for the violation of the Lorix Order’s duty to stand ever between the Capellan people and the foe, any mechwarrior who fled the field of battle with a single functioning weapon, including their dagger, shall face the death penalty.
Let the people of the Confederation see that the CCAF will chose death before the dishonour of defeat. The Davions will rue the day they thought they could take worlds from the benevolent rule of the Capellan Confederation and the glorious House of Liao”
The Com Star header read, “For delivery to all CCAF units on or in orbit of the world of Algol, Federated Suns.”
Algol, Federated Suns.
When the KF drive of the jumpship shredded our bodies and souls across 30 light years of space in a single heartbeat, none of us noticed. We were already lost to shock.