Approaching Ducal Palace
Cienfuegos, New Delos, Free Worlds League
12th March, 3015
Twenty three fast movers going nape of the earth to remain under radar cover on a long, round-about route was a combination of exhilarating and exhausting, even when the journey had been broken into two chunks. The rough camp we'd had the night before wasn't really helping either, but I really had lucked out getting these VTOL crews on Galatea, even the Cobra drivers were pushing their craft to the utter limit and making it seem easy. It was probably a good thing that they'd done those hazing manoeuvres back on Merton, it meant the troops were somewhat used to being thrown around like this. Probably didn't make them any happier, judging by some of the groans I could hear from some of the command squad.
The First Oriente Hussars and my Mech Battalion were reporting more and more upfront engagements with the First Ducal Guards, though they had started falling back slowly, drawing them back more and more towards our landing point. The Second Hussars were working the flanks of the advance but were otherwise not pushing too hard. We wanted those Mechs too far forward to quickly return to the Palace so me and my squishy boys and girls could attack without worrying about a tank-sized foot stepping on us, or dowsing us in napalm.
Both of the Hussar aerospace wings were buzzing around over the fighting, occasionally dropping down on a strafing or bombing run but mostly making sure that the rebels could see them up there. My wing was doing a rotation of hitting the palace defences one squadron at a time from all different directions and then circling back to base to repair and rearm.
The rebel push was almost far enough advanced to have reached the range of my Marksman battalion. I'd almost sat out the commando raid just to see them use the guns in anger for the first time. Almost. It had been a little tempting, but I did need to be on the front-lines somewhere in this conflict. Especially if I was serious about not just being the owner but a fighter as well.
It took us a few hours but we reached our penultimate objective point, a rarely unforested valley a short hop from the palace. It may have actually been the place where, in a few months' time, Natasha Kerensky and her company would crash-land and push through the burning forests to stomp into the undefended rear of the palace (note, Anton hadn't been desperate enough with just us on planet to napalm the hell out of everything. That had actually been one of the reasons for us fighting the campaign this way, to make him think we weren't going to push the palace itself by ourselves thus not requiring a forest fire for defence. Everything required might be in place to fire the forests up by now, but it hadn't been set off - yet). Either way it was a short rest break to let everyone recover from the harrowing trip before we went into combat. Everyone double-checked their gear after they'd finished stretching (and complaining - never ever do soldiers ever let an opportunity to bitch go by) before we loaded back on to our respective craft and prepped to go.
Each of the transport variant Cobras could carry a bit more than a full platoon, with the command variant sacrificing the majority of that space to carry extra communication equipment, leaving room for barely more than a company or battalion-level command squad. Normally we'd deploy the whole battalion from the Cobras but for something like this raid we'd practised taking the eight best squads from the whole battalion and putting them on the Rippers to kick in the door first. They were much quicker than the Cobras, and had been designed to insert special forces infantry onto a scene rapidly and, well, those eight squads were the closest thing I had available to actual spec-ops.
Pretty sure more than a couple of them might have done spec-ops training from one nation or another. Not a hundred percent certain, but comments made by them gave that impression. They never said they served as special ops troopers, but jump infantry did tend to be one of the pools those groups recruited from.
Half an hour after we landed we were off again. Tree top level flying was very much an exercise in not crapping ones pants as a passenger, but I managed somehow. We weren't maintaining our tight formation anymore and the Ripper and Cyrano groups surged ahead of the rest of us in the Cobras. Still, they weren't as fast as the ASFs which roared past us barely a hundred metres above, the mixed squadron of Gothas and Shilones heading in on the latest bombing run.
We didn't time it to perfection but we came damn close. The fighters had hit the remaining active defences hard and loitered in the airspace above the palace for a few seconds, encouraging the defenders to try and hit them in retaliation. They were still blasting away when the Cyranos arrived, the VTOL lance splitting into pairs and blasting away with their 8cm lasers at the last few remaining power junctions that had survived the repeated bombing runs. As the defences either swung to target them or shut down from lack of power the Rippers dropped their squads right on top of the remaining actives, the jump infantry storming the bunkers and towers with great speed even as their VTOLs swung around and sprayed 5cm laser fire everywhere they could.
The faster VTOLs were slipping and sliding all over the place, trying to avoid the enemy fire as they worked to finish supressing the outer defences with the infantry on the ground. The experienced ex-MAF crews were definitely getting performance bonuses for their part in this op, especially that one Ripper pilot who was practically playing chicken with a pair of turrets that were plugging away at her – particularly risky considering how little armour the VTOL actually had. Finally the last of the defences immediately surrounding the palace went silent just in time for the slower Cobras to come sailing in over the outer walls.
I jumped out of my ride as it came to hover ten metres above the rooftop of the palace itself, my jump pack flaring to bring me down smoothly and softly. For this adventure I had my SLDF kit on me, some of the best non-powered body armour in human space even to this day and a Mauser 960 rifle, which I even got to fire at someone shortly after hitting the roof when a squad of guards came boiling out of a hidden hatchway behind the troops sweeping ahead.
Our deployments were all split up. Second Company dropped on the roof with the command group, First Company was going for the ground level entrances and Third Company went swinging out to the Mech hangars and repairs bays to ensure no surprises popped up on us from there before going to secure the rest of the grounds. The Cyranos and Rippers were flitting back and forth across the Palace estate keeping an eye out for anything worthy of their guns while the rest of the VTOLs lifted up and hovered above the estate, trying to stay out of small arms range.
The command group had soon finished setting up a control point on the rooftop, along with a couple of squads from Second Company for security. I split off from working with Dawson to link up with Henrik and his squad in starting the assault.
Now, the way they did this was a pretty cool way to do it. First and Second Companies had left the majority of their support SRM manpacks behind on the transports, so as to not have to lug them through the interior corridors of the buildings since it wasn't like you'd be able to use them inside due to backblast issues. But you could use them outside to breach windows and doors - especially if you were using a jetpack to hover outside said window.
Three troopers hoisted their launchers and gracefully launched themselves off the roof, twisting in mid-air to face the windows the level below the roof. They took a second to hover and confirm they had the same target point, then shot from practically point-blank range. And I do mean point-blank, they were barely outside the safety radius of the blast zone, the lunatics. After firing they took a second to recover themselves before returning to the roof top.
The missiles barely had a chance to "zoom" before they slammed into the armoured window and blew it all to hell, sending fragments scything through the room beyond. Almost as soon as the blast passed the rooftop the first troopers jumped forward and did a complicated flip/barrel-roll type move (it's a bit hard to actually describe via text) and entered the broken window frame, rifles at the ready.
We didn't have any floorplans for the Palace beyond some maps of the areas that had been open to the public pre-war, with no idea if they were accurate at all. There'd been an attempt to build a map from data acquired by the bombing runs flying overhead which hadn't amounted to much, so we were pretty much in the dark.
There was another loud boom a few minutes later, the three heavy weapon troopers having reloaded and blasted a whole in another window, the company splitting into two groups and filtering into the palace proper. Only a few guards were still on this level, going down in a short firefight as they tried to fall back down a series of staircases. Reports flew fast over the communications net, fire-teams reporting in as they moved into and out of contact and very shortly the floor was declared clear.
It didn't take long for us to clear the next two floors down either, with reports from the other companies coming in regarding their progress elsewhere forwarded to me from the command post. First Company had successfully breached the front door and garage access points but weren't getting very far, the resistance there being much more stiff than what Second had encountered so far. Third Company had swept the hangars and repair bays, finding no mechs inside and little resistance in general before moving on to secure the rest of the grounds.
On the fourth floor down from the roof we found the stairwells that led to those hidden hatchways up on the roof itself. These entrances were much less camouflaged, so after securing the area around them a fire-team went up each one to confirm no one was inside, going all the way up to the roof exit and leaving the doors open. Hey, if we needed a fast exit it would save us precious seconds.
For the next half an hour we fought our way down the building, sweeping each floor clear before moving on. First Company was making slow but steady progress, the defenders managing to lock down the paths to the secured areas behind them as they retreated, with one of Third Company's platoons detaching from the grounds to join them. The MASH Cobra landed right on top of the ground floor breach and saw a steady stream of lightly injured customers, most of whom turned around and went back to the fight after getting patched up.
That SLDF body armour was good stuff.
Eventually we'd cleared all the upper levels and joined the fight on the ground floor. By now the rebel guards had been pushed back to the basement access points but were managing to hold them fairly well. Henrik and I made our way to where Pauu was directing his troops around.
"Just hit it with grenades and keep on hitting it with grenades until they stop shooting back. A few volleys from the rifle launchers should keep their heads down for a bit, then hit them with the bayonets!" He was telling one of his Guardians as we joined him. The Guardian nodded at Pauu and turned, saw us and almost saluted before remembering we were in an active combat zone. "Good to see you sir, Henrik. Find anything special up there?"
"Nothing as far as we can tell. Mostly civilian offices up there, though if we can spare a squad or two to go back up and do a thorough search I'd like to get that done. Otherwise we can do it on the way out. Anything in particular we need to get caught up on?" I asked him. I had been paying attention to the reports over the comm-net, but it had been a secondary concern to potentially getting shot by someone I missed while distracted.
He shook his head. "Not particularly, sir. Some of Second's mob can head back up if Henrik doesn't mind, most of mine are pretty focused on getting past this layer of the defences. I'd like to split your squads between this floor and the garage if you don't mind, Henrik. It feels like it's going to be a grind to get much further in."
Hendrik nodded. "I'll send the rest of Third platoon back upstairs, their first squad is still playing around with the outer defences and second squad is up on the roof. I'll leave you First platoon and take Second with me to the garage. When are we getting the guys at the outer defences back anyways, Colonel?"
"That's the Dawson's call, Henrik. Hopefully it'll be soon, I think we'll need them for the push downstairs. Any sign of Anton or other high level targets?" They were the purpose of this raid, after all.
One of the Preceptors spoke up. "Sir, far as we can tell so far everyone we would want was in the secure bunker about six floors below ground due to the air raids our flyers have been hitting them with. We found a reference on a civvie datapad saying they'd been down there off and on for three days now and were getting pretty sick of it."
That got some chuckles from the people who hadn't heard the news yet. A sudden upswing in the noise level pulled everyone back to the combat, the Guardian having gotten back to his squad and proceeded to direct the majority of squads' rifle-grenades into or around one of the defensive points before charging in, firing their lasers as they went.
Two wounded and one dead later they'd finally cleared the last contested point on the ground floor, the last of the rebel guards going down in a blaze of glory as their friends locked the next barrier down the staircase behind themselves. Fanatically loyal indeed.
I stood just to the side of the hallway and carefully peered around the corner and down the stairwell. Then I looked up at the roof above me, trying to judge the distance.
"My math might be wrong, but I think we have enough space here to potentially not kill ourselves firing a missile down there. Anyone?"
There were a few considering looks from the troops around me at the roof above us, before one of the Preceptors shook his head. "Negative, sir. If we were desperate I'd say give it a go, but it'd be too close for comfort as yet."
Damn. Oh well, we did have plenty of other high explosives. And a few other toys.
The fighting in the garage was ongoing, comm reports seemed to suggest the majority of the guards who'd pulled back from here on the ground floor had done so to positions there, which seemed to indicate to me they didn't believe we could breach that barrier any time soon and were focusing on the more immediate threat.
Time all of a sudden seemed to drag on for a while there for me, I think I was having a bit of an adrenaline come down now I wasn't as close to the gunfire as I'd been for the last half hour. The squads from First and Second Company that had gone in on the Rippers came filtering back in and re-joining their platoons, a couple of them bandaged from minor wounds but otherwise intact. A set of daisy-chained detpacks were set up on the barrier preventing us from going downstairs and blown, doing some damage but not enough for someone to stick a rifle through to fire let alone get past.
I wandered out the door to the grounds, getting some fresh air for a second. Smoke was rising from several points I could see, though I couldn't see any fires. I turned my commset over to the command frequency as I leaned against a garden post. "Dawson, Damon. How are we for time?"
A few seconds later I got his reply. "Air cover suggests a couple more hours before any of the fast movers managed to get in range to threaten us back here, as much as four before any sizeable force arrives to do the same. It looked like some of the grounded dropships at the main spaceport were looking at lighting off for a minute there according to the Bonnet but they seem to have aborted. Aerospace wings are plotting ground attack runs on the returning fast movers but haven't got much for us yet. That do you, boss?"
Even though I knew he couldn't see it I nodded. "Yep, all good. Anything from Third Company or the VTOLs I should know?"
"Negative boss. All quiet out here." The radio cut back out and I took a few more deep breaths before turning around and heading back inside, switching back over to the squads commnet.
The fighting in the garage seemed to have died down now as well, the defenders pushed back behind the defences leading down further underground, automated turrets forcing my soldiers to hang back a bit. A second bunch of detpacks had been set on the barrier we'd already tried to breach on the ground floor, to no avail again. It seemed we'd have to bring in the specialist equipment.
Something that most infantry didn't have access to on the regular – apparently some groups did, including spec-ops – was hull breaching tools. Laser or plasma torches, things like that, that could burn through most metal alloys with great speed. My marines trained with them extensively, even if they didn't use them that often due to other concerns during their boarding actions, so we had plenty of sets on hand. Dawson had liked the idea of using them for breaching hardpoints and had a few fireteams from each company train on them under the steady eye of Preceptor McHayes, who'd declared them adequate for the task.
We had to be a bit cautious using them, of course. They operated slightly different in atmosphere than in vacuum, after all, which was why we hadn't immediately gone for them to crack the doors open.
There was two ways down on this floor (apart from the garage entrances) so we set a team on each of them. The noise and stench coming from the burning metal was incredible, as well as the heat, but soon enough a hole big enough for two troopers abreast was cut into both barriers, clanging down the corridor beyond.
A torrent of fire had come blazing past as soon as the barrier was out of the way, there having been no way to do it secretly or discretely thus giving the defenders plenty of time to prepare a response. My non-coms had thought that would likely be the case and so had made sure no one was in the line of fire, though one of the torch teams almost had his arm taken off by a heavy machine gun ricochet.
"Now, here I think we do have enough space to use a missile, sir!" It was the same Preceptor who'd shook his head at my question earlier about feasibility of using such to do the initial breach, a grin on his face. I chuckled and waved him on.
The rocket-bearing trooper hustled up to just outside where the gunfire was pouring through and waited for it to slacken. He was very carefully looking around, obviously memorising where things were in relation to what would be behind him when he fired. Sure enough the bullets started to slacken off when it seemed obvious we weren't going to charge obligingly into their guns and the trooper tensed up in preparation.
Soon the firing stopped, the Preceptor screamed "FIRE IN THE HOLE!", the trooper popped up and fired as the rest of us hunched in and down on ourselves. The backblast rolled over us, a very uncomfortable wave of heat and pressure, followed closely by the explosion down range boiling back up to us.
We all took a few seconds to let everything settle and cool back down before moving forward. A Defender was the first to cautiously stick his head around the corner and he let out a low whistle before pulling his head back and gesturing the rest of his squad forward.
There were little spots of fire guttering away at different points along the corridor as well as various bits of debris, leading down to the utterly destroyed hard point that we would have had to charge down to secure which somehow, the rocket trooper had managed to blindfire into. Bits and pieces of bodies and equipment lay in circles away from the impact point, the more intact of course being further away.
I stood there for a time as the members of First Company poured past me, the occasional whine of a laser coming back to me. It was a pretty full on and confronting scene, part of me thought even as another part was insisting it was time to move on. Even before he came up alongside my shoulder I was aware of Pauu's presence, so it didn't come as a surprise when he clapped a hand on my shoulder. "You think this is bad, you should see a full company caught in the open by a Firestarter. That mix of napalm and burnt human is pretty distinctive."
That actually got a laugh from me, macabre as it was. Snapped out of the slight funk I'd fallen into, I slapped him on the shoulder in thanks and moved forward again.
It seemed like the rebels hadn't figured we'd be crazy enough to use a heavy weapon inside the building and we had them on the run for the next few floors down. One of them playing possum almost got me but something tipped me off and I managed to put a couple of shots into him before he could bring his weapon to bear on me. The fourth floor underground was where the resistance stiffened again but by now we had both companies down and fighting down there and it we continued to grind away, making our way down to the fifth sublevel.
Fourth floor though… that was the one with the prize. Not the big one, the command bunker, but the next best thing – the cell block. Funnily enough, all the guards had been pulled away and it had been left completely unmanned, not being linked to other parts of the underground structure and being somewhat of a dead end. A squad had split off and swept through there quickly before returning to the firefight happening a couple of corridors away, reporting that there were people in the cells who they'd promptly ignored.
I told Pauu I'd handle it, grabbed one of the squads which had rotated back for a breather and headed over there myself. The troopers spread out and searched the block again, while I walked up and down past the cells, looking at who was inside.
"Alright then people, sound off. Who have I got here?" Most of them were in either civvies or a garrison style uniform, but a few were wearing bits and pieces of combat uniforms. Those were the most beat up of the lot, obviously having resisted captivity a fair bit.
And who I thought they were was somewhat confirmed before their leader spoke up; there were some children, including two girls clutching onto someone I could only presume was their mother.
"Major Wolf, Wolf's Dragoons. Myself and twenty seven dependants, taken by that fool downstairs to try and get my brother to fold to his demands to break down the regiments and place them under his commanders." The man speaking had managed to half rise from his cot in the cell, even though he looked like he'd been worked over by a couple of pro heavy-weight boxers for more than a few rounds. "We would appreciate you getting us out of here, if you could."
"Jesus Christ, what the hell was he thinking? Your brother is the only reason he hasn't lost the war already!" I acted shocked and appalled. Well, I was shocked and appalled, because damn did Joshua look bad, but I did go a bit over the top with my acting. Not full Shatner though, I was trying to be more subtle than that.
I got a pained laugh from the Major as well as dark chuckles from some of his people. "Pretty sure he wasn't thinking, but yes, we share your disbelief."
"Well Major Wolf, I'm Colonel Karter, leader of the mercenary group the Valiant Defenders. Please, hold your laughter until we get out of this mess." A few of them had jerked and looked ready to laugh when I'd said the name. I figured I'd go with it a little. "I will be getting you out of here, Major, but in all honesty I'll be handing you over to the loyalists as soon as we get off-world. You willing to trade one prison for another with no fuss?"
They weren't happy, I could hear grumbling from the other cells but my eyes were locked with Joshua's. He also wasn't happy but seemed resigned to it. "Well, you won't be executing us in a weeks' time to send a message to my brother, so I guess we'll have to accept. I surrender myself and my people into your care, Colonel."
I set the squad I'd brought to opening the cell doors and got them to escort the prisoners up to the grounds, grabbing another squad along the way. While they were doing that I got on the command frequency again and let Dawson know what was happening. "Dawson, I just checked those prisoners out. It's a bunch of Dragoons, the liaisons left behind when they went off-world and it just so happens to include Wolf's brother. Seems like Anton got it in his head to arrest them trying to force Wolf to split up and subordinate his troops to Anton's commanders. Get one of the empty Cobras to land and take them on, I want us to get them all out as quick as possible. Actually, make that two, split them up between the two. You got any news for me?"
"Well, shit Damon, I haven't got anything like that for you. Fast movers aren't stopping, they're probably a couple of hours away by now. We might want to look into leaving soon if we aren't going to be getting down into the bunker well before they arrive."
I'd been making my way back to the fighting but pulled myself up short. "Did the squads from Second Company bring you any good stuff when they did those sweeps upstairs, Dawson? And did they bring any party favours back with them?"
Response was a quick negative on the first and a detailed yes on the second, so I took some time to think. As much as I wanted to get Anton for that guaranteed prestige, I didn't want to sacrifice a battalion of troops and all the shiny VTOLs which had brought them here to do so, but I didn't want to waste the trip, so to speak. It didn't take me long to make a decision.
"Alright, to hell with it - we need to get down there fast. Screw this softly softly shit we've been doing, let's hit them hard."
We had two more levels to fight down and we took them much harder and faster than we had since the original assault. I think the speed change helped throw the defenders off, but the party favours – small hand held flame throwers with limited capacity as well as a number of the riot shields my marines had used on the Hangar Queen – that caught up with the front line definitely didn't hurt, we burnt out defence point after defence point before slamming past. We took about a dozen heavily wounded and half again that in dead, but it got us to the bunker door quickly enough.
I got to the front of the fighting just as my troops finished clearing the defences at the door, feeling sick at the damage that had been done to the bodies I'd passed. There was a communications console outside the main bulkhead that protected the bunker, so I gave my "Surrender" ploy another go. When it didn't work, I nodded to the team that had brought the plasma torches down with them to get to work again.
In fairly short order (the light mechs of the Ducal Guard were getting closer and closer, after all) the troopers finished their cuts on both of the sets of bunker doors. Yeah, both sets, they'd gotten through the first quickly only to realise there was a second set when the door didn't fall over when pushed out of the way. A minor delay, but we were cutting it closer and closer.
Then we were in. I didn't have them wait for the fire to slacken this time, I had the shield-wielders fling themselves through the fire that came our way while the rest of their squads breached in behind them. It was largely senior officers in the room, only a few guards with heavier weapons and armour so after a few exchanges the fight was over, bodies littering the room.
Unfortunately, Anton Marik was one of the dead on their side, along with a man I could only assume was Vesar Kristofur – a Comstar agent, technically Precentor ROM according to the recordings and my own recollection – who I had both hoped and dreaded to take alive. We secured the surviving prisoners and Anton's body, then I issued the call to evacuate.
The retreat back to the VTOLs was methodical and quick. The Dragoons had already been secured on a pair of the Cobras which were in a holding pattern above us. Most of the badly wounded were stowed safely away on the MASH Cobra, with the overflow spreading out on the others as they were able to be cared for. Most of the troops boarded their VTOLs and got out with no issues, though the last few squads on the Rippers actually took fire from some rebels who had come charging up from the their defensive positions at the last minute, attempting to stop us spiriting away our captives. We had to do a wide dogleg to avoid possible interception by the fast moving light Mechs of the First Ducal Guard who'd almost returned back to the palace but otherwise we just flat out sprinted at the Cobras best speeds, just under a hundred and thirty kilometres an hour back to base. The aerospace wings kept us safe, harassing the few mechs that got into anything approaching range to shoot at us.
Before we'd even gotten half way back at base the rebel Mechs which hadn't come back to chase us off had pushed hard for the landing zone – somebody must have told them we had Anton, whether they knew if he was dead or alive we weren't sure. Jaye and my Mech battalion formed a hardpoint behind the centre of the First Hussar line, which collapsed back towards them luring the rebels in only to get smashed by half a dozen volleys of artillery fire - which seemed to come as a great surprise to them – and over twenty heavies and assaults. Using Jaye and his Mechs as a linchpin, Mondou led a countercharge right into the face of the shaken but recovering rebels that knocked more than a few enemies out of action before withdrawing back towards our dropships.
Then somehow Covaleski magically appeared between the main group of rebels and their light contingent, which was apparently torn between re-joining the mech battle and chasing me and my infantry, jumping them with the majority of his regiment. They lost a few Mechs themselves but pretty much wiped out the ones they managed to catch. With that the First Ducal forces pulled back towards the palace and the spaceport, leaving the field to us.
While we were discussing the next possible steps as salvage operations commenced we got word that a number of new jumpships had arrived at a different pirate point, carrying forces from the Second Ducal Guard coming in from Ling. Grudgingly – especially on Covaleski's part – we pulled our forces back to the dropships after finishing salvaging what we could grab from the battlefield and lifted for orbit, the heavily damaged Hussar dropship from the way in having been worked on non-stop by all the dropship crews meant all of the lift we needed was available. Even with the Second Ducal having taken a fair amount of losses earlier in the rebellion it still brought the rebel forces to a level of strength high enough above ours to be dangerous.
Maybe if we'd had a heavier weight of metal on the ground we might have stayed to keep fighting, but the three of us felt we'd done the best we could – it wasn't worth losing Anton's body or take more damage trying to beat the rest of the rebels on the ground. Our ASFs kept an eye out for any of the Second Ducal's that might be feeling adventurous while we launched and then during the docking procedure. I got the Dragoons dependants settled on board the Low-Brow – the Seeker-class's medical facilities were the best we had on hand and I could empty out one of the platoon bays to hold the captives until we knew what we were doing with them.
We hadn't been on New Delos for a full week, or been in the system for much more than that, but it felt like we'd accomplished a fair bit. The Second Ducal Guard landed unopposed by our fighters who remained close in, making sure nothing got to our jumpships while they finished charging. When they'd finished charging we took our first jump on the course back to Matheran.
After all, that was where the plan said we were…