I had gathered out officers together as we appeared at the Nadir jump point of Ashkum, Federated Suns. We had a problem.
“According to the Maskirovka reports, Ashkum as one of the worlds of the Capellan March with serious war industry has a garrison force from the AFFS, not the Capellan March lord. According to our intelligence, Hanse Davion is not happy with his step brother, Duke Michael Hasek-Davion rerouting or delaying supplied moving to regular force units in favour of his own Capellan March units like the New Sirtis Fusiliers and Capellan March Miliita. Hanse Davion has put serious hard core mercenaries here, the Blue Star Irregulars and a full armoured regiment from the 33rd Avalon Hussars RCT.” Sao-wei (Lieutennant) Tina Chin said in tones that made it clear what she thought our chances of survival were.
“Awesome!” I said, shooting her a thumbs up.
“Jimmy,” she said, dropping all pretense of military correctness in the face of my seeming idiocy, “are you into the Patron before breakfast? Listen, with all due respect to your Hispanic legendary ability to process Tequilla in the cradle, which by the way gives you fetal alcohol syndrome not a super liver, the Blue Star Irregulars have a least a full company of Awesome.” She went through her reports, then corrected.
“I lie, they had seven Awesome, three Stalkers and two Atlas in that company. They could kill us in a single salvo, then there are the two companies ranging from Archers and Warhammers that can match us in speed and double us in firepower and a whole company of Griffins and Dervishes which can outrun us and cover us with enough LRM at the very edge of our range to kill all of us before we got into range to shoot back. Then, of course, should we try to run, the full regiment of Hovertanks, mostly Harassers but some Condors, from the 33rd Avalon Hussars RCT make the idea of running away ludicrous, as they can drive backwards twice as fast as we sprint forwards.”
Hawk Heimdalson whistled and tugged at his cowboy hat.
“At the Chiang Kai-Shek Military Academy, that was what they called a negative correlation of forces. Our instructor had one eye, two mechanical legs and an empty sleeve on the right hand side. He liked to rap his steel legs with his cane when he said that, to remind us that officers that chose those kind of fights were doing Davion’s work for them.” While not calling me an idiot outright, he was certainly putting the idea on the table to see what everyone else thought.
I looked over to my XO. “Lieutenant Chin, it is about time we stopped using Confederation ranks even in private. We are selling ourselves as mercenaries, and that means Star League Defense Force standard ranks going forward.”
Tina sighed. “Jimmy, I will call you Captain Chancellor Chavez-Liao and kow-tow three times if you can tell me how you expect twelve Vindicators are going to survive against an elite Mech regiment backed by enough hovertanks to shoot us to pieces before we exit the drop zone.”
I grinned, almost ready to explode as my genius, or stupidity if I was wrong, flowered into full form and was finally brought into the open for wild applause, or gunfire if my subordinates decided a change of command ceremony was required.
“Lieutenant Chin, I give you three items to consider. First, Phoenix Heavy Industries on Ashkum is critical to supplying the forward regular house units of House Davion, his Crucius Lancers, his Davion Guard Regiments, and his elite mercenaries and his Line Regimental Command Teams, due to Federated Suns infighting and noble bullshit, he cannot and will not allow any forces loyal to his brother-in-law, Duke Hasek-Davion of the Capellan March to have control of this supply world. Second, neither Com Star, nor the Maskirovka had a clue that House Davions front line units were even still on the front, let alone blasting across the Capellan Confederation all along the Terran Corridor. And lastly, a question. Can you tell me where the Maskirovka reports place the 9th Illician Lancers, the 71st Eridani Light Horse and the 3rd Davion Guards RCT right now?” Those units were the ones that dropped on us at Algol and killed most of our friends, and no small number of our relatives.
Tina stopped laughing, and her eyes went wide. She scrolled through on her data slate before reading in a voice that was hollow and shaking.
“The 9th are currently listed as in garrison at Ulan Batar, the 71st Eridani Light Horse on Valexa, and the 3rd on Kesai IV.” She said, her tone rising as if making it a question, turning to face me, suspicion growing on her face.
“Davion lied. Davion lied to Com Star, although the Blessed Blake knows how you hide where you moved your troops and their supplies to from the people with a monopoly on interstellar communication, but Com Star, and even the Capellan March own leadership and military believes exactly what the Maskirovka said in that report. The forces that Hanse Davion hit us with are HIS troops, not Duke Michaels. They are exclusively the troops of his Galahad exercises which were nothing less than training for his war of aggression. Every unit that took part in those exercises should be part of his offensive into the Capellan Confederation, but he is even hiding from his own regional commands that they left.” I said calmly.
Lt Hawk Heimdalson leaned back in his chair, and winced as his casts bit into his legs. “Okay, I grant you that the strike forces came from here, that still leaves their reserve regiments, and the conventional troops. They may be shit, but pile on enough turds and you will suffocate.”
This time it was Lt Tyrone Jackson whose braying laugh cut him short. “No it won’t stumpy. If what Captain Chavez says is true, the 3rd RCT and 71st Eridani can’t exactly call up Duke Michael for garrison forces for the worlds he is hitting in the first wave. You know that the reason they dropped so goddamned many mecha and tanks on us was to keep casualties low enough that that they could refit, rearm, and be ready to launch a next wave inside of four, maybe six months. Their jump ships were staying, that meant they were not headed back to pick up garrison forces, but waiting to ferry them forward in the next wave. That means garrison forces must already be on their way to replace them, and they can’t be coming from worlds under Duke Michaels control, or he would know about it, and the Maskirovka would know about it. They had to come from the same worlds dear darling Hanse had his front-line troops on. He can’t have that many ways around Com Star, whatever he is using, he doesn’t have much of it. No, the worlds he had his strike forces on for Galahad are the ones he could draw on.”
Tina shook her head in denial. “That is crazy, no one is leaving Phoenix Heavy Industries undefended. Plus they have a whole mecha academy here. They aren’t going to leave them undefended when they are busy conquering the richest part of the Capellan Confederation.”
Lt Hawk Heimdalson whistled loudly and worked his cowboy hat back on his head. “Crazy like a fox. That Davion is trickier than a rattlesnake on peyote. I mean everybody knows this is the best defended place within two jumps of the Capellan front, only it isn’t the Capellan front because everything two jumps from here just had multiple Davion Regimental Combat teams drop from orbit and murder them into being good little Davion slaves, or loyal Capellan corpses. If we did have anything big enough to tangle with the Blue Star Irregulars, it would by either trying to take back our own worlds, or reenforcing the critical industrial targets now within one jump of the next Davion wave. Nobody would be crazy enough to drop on the Blue Stars with one piddly ass Overlord, and we are only really one third full of mecha, give or take a lance of tanks.”
Tina looked at me oddly. “What is the goal here then? Hit them for supplies and run? They are going to come after us. If we get a reputation as pirates, Com Star will put the word out, and good luck establishing yourself as honest mercs when you have been branded as pirates by Com Star, I mean, they aren’t just everyone’s bankers, but they do run the Mercenary Bonding Commission.”
Lt Jackson objected. “We are not pirates, we are Capellan Confederation Armed Forces in a declared sate of war operating inside enemy territory in a legitimate objective raid!”
I patted him on the hand, his outrage obvious. He was used to the honourable combat of the defense of our fallen home world.
“Sadly Tyrone, we aren’t. The Confederation branded us traitors and cast us from the fold already. Whoever hits this world, slaughters their defenders and loots Hanse Davion’s precious war materiel will be branded a pirate in the eyes of Com Star, the Capellan March of the Federated Suns, and the whole Inner Sphere. That is why I have got our techs repainting our mecha with 9th Illician Lancers colours, resetting our IFF to the signals we got from that company we stomped at Lake Kana, and why I am going to make Tina here spend the next day working our voice modulators so that our radio broadcasts in clear use both the names and the voice prints of those pilots we battled back on Algol.”
Lt Jackson objected, “But Davion knows they are still on Algol. Hell, half those pilots are already dead.”
Lt Tina Chin grinned widely. “Sure, you know that, Davion knows that, but Com Star doesn’t know that, and neither does the bulk of the Armed Forces of the Federated Suns or Capellan March Militia, in fact, I bet the Fox has kept information on his precious secret strikes so compartmentalized that no one outside of the direct chain of command and supplies to those units already launched on the offensive actually know it. It’s not like he can protest without lifting the veil on what he has worked so hard to conceal. He isn’t going to do it for one merc outfit who managed to let a Liao battalion hand them their ass and escape off world. I won’t say he will let them swing, but their rep is going in the crapper, and a whole lot of his mercenaries are going to start wondering if the Fox won’t let them swing next.”
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Tina looked at me. “So, Captain Chavez, what is the plan?”
The plan largely depended on our resource situation. We needed fuel and supplies. That meant we needed to land at the starport which was between the Academy and Phoenix Heavy Industries. The third point of that triangle was the huge base for the Blue Star Irregular mech regiment, but they had nothing left their but training cadre. The problem of how do you smuggle a whole company of clearly Capellan mecha onto a Davion world in plain sight of its defenders, and keep them there long enough for your Dropship to resupply all of its expendables and for us to send a very specific set of messages to Com Star, and wait for the inevitable reaction. If we were right, and Com Star had figured out that Davion was not just lying to them, but had found a way to get around their monopoly on interstellar communications, we would be turning Com Star from neutral to anti-Davion. I mean, we were lying, but we were not actually wrong. Com Star just needed a little help getting from grumbling to actively sabotaging Davion’s war efforts.
I had a solution. It depended on the Academy and Phoenix both knowing that they were deep inside a communications blackout, and expect that hand carried messages superseded what their Hyper Pulse Generator carried official orders from the AFFS had to say. Sadly, I didn’t have a clue what they were using for messages, or what codes and protocols to follow, but I knew they had something, and was betting that at least part of the message chain got carried by hand from starships that jumped between message centers.
“Attention Ashkum Military Academy, this is Captain Maxwell Lord, 9th Illician Rangers, Illician Lancer Mercenary Regiment on a supplemental contract for your precious Prince Hanse. I have a dozen salvaged and more or less repaired Vindicators slated for Ashkum Military Academy Cadre, but since your precious Prince lied to us about the resistance at our last port of call, I am down to two, count them two walking wounded pilots capable of moving them. I need your CO to come out and sign for receipt of these machines before I can collect on my supplemental contract and repair my real goddamned battlemechs.” I said cheerfully, listening to the arrogant and oddly paced English of the Federated Suns replace my own softer and more musical Capellan accent when I spoke the same language.
“This is Lt Colonel, Ian Keppler-Smythe, authenticate Whiskey Bravo One Seven.” A crisp professional voice of a bureaucrat in uniform answered him. Gods but I knew the breed. Every regulation was important, training standards, not battlefield experience were what mattered and career advancement should be the result of carefully planned postings, and making the right social connections, building up the right network of favours owed, and nothing as untidy and crass as actual battlefield heroism or combat experience. In the Capellan Confederation, for fear of my career and probably his life, I had to swallow so much crap from these guys. Now I was here for the express purpose of ruining the 9th Illician Rangers reputation, and Com Star Mercenary Bonding rating, sowing discord between the Federated Suns and its mercenaries, and stealing or destroying any and all supplies used to support the invasion of my homeland. I was not just allowed to piss him off, I was required, purely for strategic reasons, to piss him off.
“I can’t authenticate fuck all. Everyone who could got nice and dead when your precious Princes battlefield intel turned out to be bullshit. Your Ministry of Information and Intelligence Operations shouldn’t be called MIIO, it should be called moron, which you seem to be as well. This is an Overlord, it should be commanded by at least a major, and have a minimum of 36 pilots, plus any trainees for replacement or salvaged additional machines. I have FUCKING TWO. Your prince did not honour his contract terms to replace our lost machines, he did not honour his terms on battlefield salvage, which is why I am stuck bringing these salvaged Vindicators to you and not bringing them back to base for the heirs and replacements of my lost pilots. The only way I could even get the bodies of my dead back for burial is to accept this supplementary contract to haul the salvaged Capellan Vindicators back to you to strengthen your defense in case someone decided to raid the place. Now I cannot and will not spend days with myself and mechwarrior Jenkins walking the damned things to your Academy and cabbing back to the star-port. I am not leaving a dozen Vindicators with live weapons and blanked security systems sitting in a starport tarmac to see who wants to steal them first. You will send out a company worth of your pilots, I don’t care if they are students or cadre to pilot the damned things, and you will send out a sufficient mecha or armoured escort to make sure they get to the academy safely once you have signed for them.” I shouted into the radio, quite enjoying ranting at the Davion officer, knowing my words were indeed being captured by the local Com Star branch because I didn’t know their encryption and was broadcasting in clear.
“If they are armed, why do they need an escort?” Snapped Lt Colonel Keppler-Smythe.
“Listen school teacher man, your baby Prince stole everything that wasn’t hard mounted to these things. There are no missiles. The coolant in half of them is cooked and I wouldn’t trust them not to overheat if they fired a small laser, and a lot of the rest of them are going to need some fine tuning before I trust the targeting. Half the cockpits are rebuilds, and we can’t exactly zero the guns on a goddamned dropship, can we? Some of them have arms that used to belong to another Vindicator, so we figure the PPC will go off when we pull the trigger, but where exactly the bolt goes is something of a mystery. These things are battlefield salvage. Battle, school teacher man, war. You know, where machines break and people die? You don’t get a snarky report on how you deviated from training norms after you step out of your simulator, you die screaming as your cockpit burns. Now, get your ass down here and sign my contract or I swear on Alexander Kerensky’s Star League balls that I will take them back to base as forfeiture of contract, and put some real pilots in them.” I snarled.
I love holocalls. Watching his face turn purple as I watched my own image overlain with an Illician Lancer coverall and the face of a man I had killed not too long ago was a surreal experience. I was doing my best to portray myself as a PTSD headcase, a mercenary three missiles short of an SRM-4, and without any loyalty beyond his immediate unit and his next paycheque. Mercenaries know their employer is using them, and is more than willing to let them all die rather than risk one of their own precious warriors or even more precious machines. The Armed Forces of the Federated Suns (AFFS) knows that mercenaries are not willing to take heavy losses to secure a victory for their employer, it is a good way to go broke for someone else’s win. They are past masters of putting mercenaries into positions where they have no choice but to do just that, spend elite pilots and irreplaceable machines to achieve their units very survival and the Federated Sun’s strategic goals. Both sides used the other, and both sides intended to do the screwing, and not get screwed. The didn’t call Hanse Davion “The Fox” because he lost a lot. He was really good at letting other people do the dying for his glory (including his older brother and the rightful First Prince probably). The Lt Colonel was a political officer, not a warrior. He would play nice now, and screw “us” hard later. If he screwed who he thought we were later, that was an extra win.
“I will have a company of my Cadre out there for escort, and a lance of Patton heavy tanks for escort, will that be sufficient?” Lt Colonel Keppler-Smythe said through a false smile and gritted teeth.
“And pilots? I got me and mechwarrior Jenkins. I can get them walked out to the tarmac and kneeling so you can get in them easy, but I am not marching them out from beyond our Overlords guns until they have a real military escort. I need this supplementary contract signed and delivered to get enough C-bills to get my surviving mecha rebuilt, and put anything heavier than a fucking Locust under our replacements.” I said, massaging my eyes as if too tired to even bother being polite to this idiot.
Lt Colonel Keppler-Smythe had a limit, and at least one nerve I seem to have gotten to.
“Listen to me you third rate amateur. I will be forwarding a very detailed report, including this conversation to AFFS Mercenary Command, and you can be sure your commanders will not like what they have to say. I will be coming out myself to sign your precious contract, and I will have a few hover APC bring out my graduating class to pilot the rightful property of the Federated Suns like disciplined soldiers of the Armed Forces of the Federated Suns. Perhaps while you are counting your C bills, you might watch how a professional mech warrior conducts himself, and next time you wouldn’t find yourself losing a company of heavy mecha to a bunch of jumped up Capellan nobodies in a third rate medium mecha!” The good colonel seemed to have lost control, the spit hanging from his lower lip and bulging eyes really argued he had stopped thinking critically. This would be important. War is fought by humans, and any combat soldier would be doing his job and dealing with my inability to answer his challenge and response. Loss of personnel or not, anyone in the chain of command would have inherited the sealed orders with the proper challenge and responses for this operational theater and phase. I was dealing with a bureaucrat in uniform, a jumped up clerk who was now focused entirely on my unprofessionalism and was letting that excuse every failing, including what should have been flashing red flags.
I had always wanted to shoot officers like that, for the benefit of the Capellan Confederation Armed Forces. Nothing like cutting away diseased wood to improve the tree, but it seems I would be doing that favour for the AFFS, and trimming dear Lt Colonel Keppler-Smythe, as much of his teaching cadre as I could get, and the next batch of shiny new Federated Suns mech warriors getting ready to help invade my nation. Davion had this belief that dropping five times the force on your enemy, bombarding them with artillery you could not reach, or bomb them from the air when you had no fighters to defend you was just, right and holy, and that achieving strategic surprise by deceiving everyone about where your troops were was totally above board, but when we used deception to even the odds, we were somehow the dirty Capellan sneaks. Self awareness is not a Davion virtue. Luckily, if thing went well, the Armed Forces of the Federated Suns and the Com Star Mercenary Bonding commission would be blaming the 9th Illician Rangers and their parent Illician Lancers for the wanton acts of piracy we were about to commit. Unless we got our ass kicked, then I guess they would have to pick which violation of the Ares convention they wanted to shoot us for. So, there is that.