On Board Seeker-class Dropship Low-Brow Good Time
New Delos, Free Worlds League
12th March, 3015
More than nine months after that party, we'd fought our way across the whole of the Free Worlds League to make our way to New Delos to end it all.
Alright, I exaggerate slightly. Costiniu, Evangelos and I had spent a week going over various options regarding our possible service to the loyalists before coming to a mutually satisfactory deal. Barring last minute changes we were ordered to Atreus, from there to proceed as a supporting unit in any counter-attack or defensive capacity as required. On our journey to Atreus we'd be used to chastise any rebelling systems along the way, especially since I had insisted on keeping the unit together all as one, rather than letting the Mariks use it in smaller detachments.
There was also our existing contract to discuss. There would be no way we'd be able to keep enough people behind to rotate across multiple worlds, so it was agreed we'd continue to garrison Merton while having the Roamvisiting other systems within a single jump to "show the flag", so to speak, with whatever else we could spare.
That ended up being a company of mechs and the majority of the marines. Some of our mech pilots rotated out of their positions with our new hires and took up their old machines (while others had temporarily allowed the new hires to pilot their mechs) to form our Fourth Company. I promoted one of the lance leaders, Uljana Bissel, to lead the new company (she'd been an XO's of one of the old merc groups that made up our mechwarrior contingent) and to act as home guard. Lucas would be remaining behind on board the Honestywhich would be accompanying the Roam as its protector, though he would have overall command. That meant the Little Bit O' Scrap had to remain behind to transport the rebuilt mechs (as well as finish its refit), as well as the Big Bobby B – since I didn't have anybody to put on it yet – and the Hard Road – since the Mule had a local cargo carrying contract to fill for the next couple of months. Everything else was coming with us.
We left Merton on the 10th of April, having been given a list of worlds to hit. The first stop on our journey was Maderas, where we dropped in fast and hit several supply depots for their militia and wrecked or stole what we could carry away within a few hours. We managed to do this pretty sneakily and with little damage because I'd gotten us the navigation data necessary for us to hit pirate points all along our route - meaning we were able to land and hit them before they'd started to scramble and entrench their defenders. I say we but I remained on board the Breaks, not having the time to recover from the jump sickness and thus leaving it up to Jaye to lead the ground forces. I made an announcement from the ship after I recovered - just before we jumped out – reminding the planetary government that Janos was the current legal ruler and they should have kept out of the brotherly squabble.
Conarky was our next targeted stop and went down much the same, except the militia was a bit more on the ball. Didn't help – Robin led his mech company in a pretty text book flank and smashed the tank battalion which tried to defend the main dump rather than retreat. We got away fairly clean in the end again, my only contribution being sending another message to the rebelling government.
The third target was Bowang, which seemed a bit puzzling based on the history of the planet. A strategically located trading hub, the independent system had a long history of neutrality in these sorts of happenings – they were kind of infamous for it actually, many companies had offices on the planet solely because it was considered neutral ground, almost to the point of sitting out the Succession Wars themselves. Why they declared for Anton was a mystery to me, pretty sure they would have continued to do nicely out of staying neutral. I had Jessica lead our attack here, wrecking the orbital infrastructure that supported interstellar trade and didn't attempt to land troops – it was all very much about punishment than anything else and I figured hitting them in their pocket books was the best option. We didn't encounter any defending fighters at all, later we found out they'd all been pulled planet side to protect the people down there. It would likely have hurt us a little bit, running into them coming down.
Chalouba wound up being the world we spent most of our attention on. The other worlds we mainly focused on hitting supply dumps, military resources and the like rather than any civilian industries. Chalouba we hit several of the local industrial sectors and carried off equipment from various sources, partially at the direction of the League, partially for our own usage at my direction post-receiving those orders - I don't know who they annoyed, but they were deliberately targeted for the removal of stuff under the Replevin Doctrine and I figured some of it would be good for the Hangar Queen. The cargo bays on the Bonnet got a fair bit of loot thrown in there than had previously been on board – it had been carrying all our lostech spares. After nearly two weeks of running around pillaging and skirmishing we left for our next target, Ashburton.
Ashburton saw a return back to hitting militia stockpiles and moving on, spending between one or two weeks on a planet before moving on. We hit Home the same way, then Aconacagua (where we were informed not to make for Atreus but for Calloway VI instead, as well as being given a whole bunch more worlds to hit along the way), Jiddah, Faddiffolu, Bismarck, Wilkes, Hindmarsh, Nullarbor with Barlaston for last. The only difference between each world was the damage taken and the ammo expended in the fighting.
Except for Faddiffolu. The Eighth Orloff Grenadiers had hit there not long before we did while they were making for Tiber. We came along and shot up what the locals had managed to get repaired.
From Barlaston we made our way to Calloway VI to join up with the units gathered there, preparing for a counter push. Along the way I got a message which was interesting. Back out on the Periphery edge, one of the systems that we'd spent a fair amount of time on pre-coup, Sackville, had had a nasty revolt when the main planet had declaring for Janos, but the mining colonies on the moons above it had declaring for Anton and proceeded to convert their ore launchers into impromptu orbital bombardment guns. Within a fortnight of the first launch Lucas had brought the Honesty slamming down on them, the marines kicking in the doors and arresting everyone involved. It took a few trips but he brought the population of all of the rebelling colonies down to the surface and handed them over to a grateful planetary government, which included a nice little chunk of cash. In the message he included several references which made me think he'd taken the chance to do a little looting of his own, to funnel mining equipment back to the converted Mules on the Queen.
We arrived at the jump-point at Calloway VI just after units began to disperse to other planets for their counter moves after seeing off Anton's Operation Condor forces, both sides still reeling from having taken heavy casualties in the fighting. Our arrival had been too late to accompany the Second Fusiliers on their raid to Emris IV – which ended up being a good thing because they got absolutely hammered, reduced to under forty percent strength when two of the Dragoon regiments dropped in behind them – but wound up being assigned to support the First and Second Oriente Hussars to liberate Matheran in early February.
It ended up being a total snoozefest. The actual rebel units had been pulled off-world months ago and the few collaborators in the militia were quick to surrender when turned upon by their colleagues. By mid-February it was already over and none of us had fired a shot. It did give the Hussars time to finish up repairs and working in some of their replacement troops into their line ups, though. Both green troops and the few people they'd managed to grab from the shattered Sixth Hussars before the Fusiliers had taken the rest of them.
Our orders included the ability to launch our own attacks purely using our own resources, to act as a distraction to draw rebel troops away from the thrust of loyalist counter attacks. Combined with the fact I had five free collars available for anyone else that wanted to tag along – a big factor in why I'd been sent with the Hussars, to transport them in force earlier than the FWLM would have been able to move them itself – I decided to take my idea to the leadership of both units here with me, to see if they were interested in being involved in a raid on New Delos.
The basis of my plan was to have my own battalions of Mechs and armour work with the two Oriente regiments and drag the rebel regiments – hopefully the Dragoons would be gone by the time we arrived, leaving the intact First as well as whatever damaged or new units were on planet – around the planet while our respective fighter covers did as much damage as possible. While they did that I would take any available infantry – which would end up being just mine and the VTOLs carrying them - and prepare for a lightning raid on the Ducal Palace to do as much damage as possible and potentially grab any intel or prisoners we could find. The First were a medium mech regiment with some light aerospace support, the Second a light formation overall. In no way shape or form did we want to get into a slugging match with whatever of Anton's forces were on planet, since my mech battalion was the heaviest unit we had. If we tried to do a head on assault it wouldn't end well for us.
When I presented the basic plan to Colonels Mondou and Covaleski they seemed interested, even though they had taken heavy casualties during the fighting on Calloway VI. The Hussars were considered the lesser of the two Oriente formations, even though they had served just as long and ably as the Fusiliers and this type of daring raid – if successful – would raise the profile of the Hussars as a whole, let alone the reputation boost to these two officers specifically.
"You are suggesting a raid? I love it!" Covaleski's voice boomed out as he stood up, slamming a fist down onto the table. Newly promoted to command the Second, he'd started to build a reputation for unconventional reconnaissance techniques, but hadn't quite gotten it nailed down yet. Loud and large pretty much described him as a person and this sort of idea would greatly appeal to him. Mondou was a lot more measured in his response, leaning back in his chair and obviously thinking on it.
"What if Wolf's Dragoons are present in force? Or other rebel units, what then?" Mondou asked after a few moments more of consideration, obviously worried about feeding his troops into a meat grinder. Something I was worried about too, I couldn't lie, even though I was fairly sure by the time we'd arrive the Dragoons would be well gone – and if they returned it would be to kick Anton Marik's teeth in, not rushing in to save him.
"The Dragoons are the only thing keeping Anton in the fight right now. He won't be keeping them in tight on New Delos yet, he's not quite desperate enough. Some of their support elements might still be in the system but their line regiments will be off somewhere else, propping up this losing proposition. We'll use our aerospace assets to suppress that orbiting station they have as well as both the Duke's and the Dragoon's fighters before we move down the planet itself, doing the best recon we can. If there is any significant force beyond the First Ducal Guard units on planet then we abort the landing. Simple as that." I shrugged. "From what the intel reports suggest there are no other formed units on the planet apart from militia, maybe a training cadre looking to work up a new force but apart from that, only damaged sub-units rotated back there. Between the three of us, our forces should be able to match that, especially if we're not assaulting any positions front on."
"So no upfront battle, that's what you're saying?" Mondou leant forward as he asked, steepling his hands in front of him. He kept quiet for a few moments, obviously thinking deeply about the plan and the possible issues involved. "I have no issues in principle. Let's do some planning and get preparations to leave in order."
I felt and surge of relief as Covaleski cheered and thrust his fist in the air, then we quickly thrashed out some of the basic details. I pushed for and got Jessica put in charge of the aerospace detachments – again relying on the Alliance Aerospace Arms sterling reputation there – but agreed that on the ground, Mondou should have overall command. I also told them that they wouldn't be dealing with me primarily – they'd be working with Jaye who would have Leo acting as his second. That got a puzzled look from the pair of them before I explained my TDS issue and that I would be focusing on getting over it in time to lead the raid on Anton's palace.
That brought up the plan for the commando raid itself. The pair of Colonels had a few ideas about it, so I shared what I was looking to do. "The idea is that you and the rest of the ground forces drag the Mech and vehicle defenders away from the palace, far enough away none of them can get back in time to intercept or interfere with the infantry. So the rest of the ground forces will have to be both near enough to be a threat but far enough that they don't suspect a run around and keep some back to boost the static defences. Once the rebel air cover is down, our own will run continuous attacking runs all over the place, including several high-altitude bombing runs on the palace itself. Once I've recovered I'll lead the commando raid, take what prisoners and intel I can and get out. Once I've done that, we'll look at withdrawing from the planet depending on how we're doing otherwise." I leaned back in my chair and spread my hands. "How you draw out the rebel's I'll leave in your hands. How we withdraw, we'll have to wait and see." They both nodded at that and I swear I could see Covaleski's eyes light up as he thought of some different scenarios.
Our basic ideas and plans in place we broke the meeting up and went our separate ways, sending orders out as we went. A day later we were in orbit and heading out for the jumpships, messages continuing to fly as we went. The two extra Merchants which had brought the rest of the Hussars here had been preparing to leave to transport other units but the two Marik officers convinced them to carry them instead, not sure how they actually did it but they were still waiting for us when we arrived. My own ships had been laying there fully charged and waiting so as soon as everyone was docked and locked down, we jumped.
New Delos was two jumps away, and we trimmed down the charge times as much as possible without potentially damaging the drives. It meant I still felt like shit when we did the second jump, but not bad enough to have the compounding effect multiple jumps usually had on me. And so two weeks later, early March, we appeared at an in-system pirate point in New Delos – the same one the Seventy-Seventh Heavy Air Wing had used for their lightning raid some months earlier.
I knew I was cheating somewhat with my prior knowledge, but I still damn called it - no signs of the Dragoons or Hephaestus Station. I had been worried, because my memories of the exact timeline were a bit blurry and the recorded writing hadn't been much more exact, but I'd been sure that the Dragoons had left for McKenna wholesale at the end of February. Which meant, somewhere on the planet below Joshua Wolf and twenty seven other Dragoon dependants, including Jaime's wife and daughters, had just been taken prisoner and were being held hostage to get Jamie to break the Dragoons down into subunits under Anton's soldiers local leadership, to firm those units up. Speaking with the two Colonels I pointed out the missing station as confirmation that the Dragoons, at least, were no longer on planet. They agreed and we went for one of the slightly more aggressive plans that had been worked up during our transit.
Jessica had command ofStage One. We took the orbitals quickly, sweeping the defending fighters away for no losses – only a handful had come up from the surface, so there really hadn't been much of a fight at all. I think they expected us to pull something like what the previous raid had done and just bull rush the surface. The dropships remained in orbit while a rotation of the ASFs headed down into the atmosphere, teasing a response out of the defenders and any ground emplacements as well as trying to destroy space and ground based warning systems.
Twelve hours later (and a squadrons worth of destroyed rebel ASFs, with four losses of our own – including one of my Tomahawks) and Jessica called the path down clear. There were still enemies in the air, of course, but they weren't interested in skirmishing with our guys without a chance at taking down the transport dropships. We also had some options to be tricky since we'd opened up gaps in the detection coverage that surrounded the planet, options that would let the Second in particular pull some interesting moves out if we could get them down safely.
After a short period of time to let all the fighters rearm and repair (and get some sleep for the ones on the latest rotation) landing operations commenced. Almost two full wings of rebels tried to jump us but we had been ready and waiting for them – our lighter craft had all remained up higher, obscured from ground detection by the sensor shadow of the dropships themselves while the heavier ones were intermingled with the formation. Three wings to two, with my veteran wing in largely SLDF grade planes, meant a fairly distinctive win for us. Over thirty of the rebels were shot down, four more fled with heavy damage (that saw them crash short of their landing sites we found out later) and three got away with minimal damage.
One of the Hussar dropships took enough damage that it was iffy if it would be able to get back to space safely by the time we would have to depart, but the rest took only minor damage – weapons, armour, various sub-systems – and minimal casualties to themselves and their contents. Of our combined aerospace wings, we lost fourteen airframes and eleven pilots, mostly from the lighter Marik wings. From my pilots I lost another Tomahawk, as well as a Gotha and a Shilone – and only one of the pilots managed to eject. She was picked up fairly quickly, luckily with only minor injuries.
It was a long shot but I hoped we would be able to retrieve the wrecked fighters, especially the cache ones. Aerospace fighters were pretty rugged when it came to surviving crashes in a repairable state. Well, the airframes themselves at least, the more sensitive innards were usually trashed.
We landed safely a couple of days' march from Cienfuegos and proceeded to set up a base camp in and around a commercial air/spaceport, chosen for the availability of runways for us to use launching our own ASFs from the ground rather than having to deal with the issues of launching and landing from a dropship in planetary gravity. The Hussars got to work straight away; the Second disappeared into the forests surrounding us to confirm some of the details our overflights had given us while my mechs aided the First in preparing some rudimentary defences above and beyond what already existed. My armour battalion was pretty much all split up – the Manticore company was remaining behind as rearguard with the Chaparral artillery tanks (and my actual artillery) while the Zephyr company dispersed to form nearby forward observation points and the Chevalierand Gabriel companies went off and joined the Second in scouting and confirming the aerial and satellite recon we'd accumulated.
For now I was with the infantry, waiting for the right time to take the whole battalion and do an end run around the majority of the defences of Anton's Palace. I say with but they were performing security patrols around the port while I focused on absorbing as much information as possible while recovering on the Low-Brow.
When we didn't seem to launch in for the palace it seemed to briefly confuse the rebels. Reports of skirmishes between the Second Hussars and the planetary guard came in, sightings of the First Ducal Guard were reported but they didn't seem to want to engage in combat yet. A number of conventional aircraft attempted a strike on the landing zone on the second day we were there and ran right into the massed First Hussar aerospace wing, which had just started launching for a ground strike mission when the enemy planes were spotted on approached.
None survived.
A militia tank company managing to ambush one of Second's recon lances out on one of the flanks was pretty much the only other major news for the first few days we were on planet for. The hovertanks actually managed to destroy two of the light mechs and cripple the other two while losing only one of their own vehicles before they retreated. Well lead crews there.
It was the eleventh when we had our first prolonged encounter with the First Ducal. Having finished their defensive preparations after a couple of days the First Hussars had moved out towards the capital in force, sweeping aside the militia units that had formed a loose cordon in a short firefight and then begun poking at the various defensive positions and lines behind them. Jaye was leading my whole mech battalion right in the middle of them, occasionally stepping forward to blast a particular fighting point that was proving more difficult for the medium-weight regiment. They started actually skirmishing with Ducal Guard mechs who seemed to be caught off guard that we were pushing to engage them rather than hanging back. There seemed to be a lot of confusion as to what the Hussars were doing on the planet in the first place, since we hadn't pushed to attack the rebel forces too hard but weren't forting up and waiting reinforcements. Soon there was frequent contact with the enemy mechs over a wide front, though neither side was really trying to push past the other.
The aerospace contingent were flying squadron sorties every few hours and it was starting to take its toll, both on us and the rebels. We'd hammered the palaces defences at the cost of two heavily damaged Gothas and finished shooting down the last of the rebel ASFs, leaving us as uncontested masters of the sky – airbreathers don't count against ASFs unless in very specific circumstances, but even most of them had been destroyed. As reports started coming in of more and more contact with the rebel Mech regiment Jessica focused on locating their movements as much as possible while maintaining regular harassment runs on the palace complex. She managed to get visual confirmation that the last elements of the Ducal Guard were at least twelve hours travel away from the palace to back up our sigint peoples' reports from back on the Bonnet, which was doing low-orbit flybys over the planet gathering intelligence every few hours before returning to our base.
Now was the time to launch the commando raid. We were taking all but one of the VTOLs, with full squad loads on the eight Rippers as our first wave supported by the Cyrano lance, to be followed up by the rest of the battalion in the Cobras – minus the MASH unit which remained behind. Dawson had argued against taking the empty Cobras but I'd managed to convince him that somehow or other we'd end up needing them for prisoners or loot and it would be better if they were with us rather than stuck back at the landing point. Most of the palace's air defences were in shambles by now so we should be able to get in and supress them just with the VTOLs, especially with Jessica sending all of my available planes on a last minute airstrike. We took off on a circularly long route the day before, getting ourselves into a better position to launch off the raid without spending hours in transit.
It was the twelfth of March as I jumped onto the command-variant Cobra with Dawson and his command group and settled in for take-off after a night in a rough forest camp. Gods let this plan work…