DISCLAIMER:
BattleTech and its universe used to belong to FASA; now it belongs to the people who bought them out. I'm just borrowing their concepts to tell a story.
SPOILER WARNING:
If you've read the 'Blood of Kerensky' trilogy, you're sweet.
DISTRIBUTION:
Please notify me, but otherwise, have at it! My address is Matryoshka_01@hotmail.com.
STORY NOTES:
1. Italic text indicates thoughts or non-verbal communication, non-English words, or names, depending on context; \backslashes\ indicate dialogue translated from another language; and {brackets} is a transmitted medium - electronic or written.
2. Feedback is, of course, welcome (either in reviews or by e-mail); criticism that is in any way constructive will be accepted, but out-and-out flames will be met with HALON.
3. Special thanks go out to the folks at the CBT forum, especially Rip_Snorgan, for putting up with my incessant dumb questions and helping me make this fic so much more true to canon than it might otherwise have been. :-D
4. More notes may follow when (and if) I can arrange my thoughts into something approaching coherence.
We, the willing few, led by the unsure, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful.
We have done so much, for so long, with so little, that we are now qualified to do anything, with nothing, for anyone, against all opposition.
Unit motto - 20th Donegal Hussars
Union-C-class DropShip TalonStrike
Trell system
Jade Falcon Occupation Zone/Federated Commonwealth
October 4, 3052
Star Captain Tanya Jade Falcon, once of the Mercer bloodhouse, leaned on the gantry rail overlooking the bay that held five of her Trinary's 'Mechs, her eyes focussed not on the assembled war machines in the here and now, but on events four months past.
Amongst the Clans, eugenics is not only a well-established science, it is an accepted, expected fact of life. Genetically engineered from the fiercest of their forebears, Clan warriors are the product of more than two centuries of selective breeding and acculturation, built from birth to be the fastest and fiercest, designed to excel in combat. To earn a place within the ruling warrior caste, to advance in rank and position within that caste, to defend one's position and decisions in that caste, one must fight. Every Clan warrior has earned his place in the Clan's forces through a series of live-fire duels. A Bloodname, which assures the bearer that their genetic material will be used in the eugenics program, requires a series of live-fire duels known as a Trial of Bloodright. Given the advanced BattleTech the Clans field, duels are short, savage affairs which can be fatal for one or both combatants, but when the wreckage cools, the point is settled.
Competition for 'honour', the guarantor of advancement and eventual incorporation into the Clan's gene-pool, could be politely termed as 'savage'. The smaller the force with which one defeats an enemy, the more prestigious the victory, hence the bidding process: each commander wishing to fight in a given battle must offer the minimum force with which they think they can win, and commander who bids lowest is accorded the honour of validating their bravado - and their worth - by executing the mission with the forces they have bid. Those who bid cautiously, who seek to bring more than 'just enough' firepower to get the job done, rarely win the bidding and thus rarely advance, so military conservatism is discouraged; similarly, only a smashing frontal assault is considered a 'true' test of a warrior's skill and courage, and cunning and skillful manuvering are considered 'trickery'.
When the Clans returned to the Inner Sphere to lay claim to their ancestral homeland, they found that their style of warfare had evolved in almost exactly the opposite direction from what had become accepted practice amongst the Successor States. Their hold of the stategic initiative let them choose their targets as they would, and their technological superiority let them run rampant over the Inner Sphere when they first appeared, but their almost unchecked drive deep into the heart of the Successor States obscured the weaknesses of their style of fighting.
Until Tukayyid.
ComStar, the quasi-religious cult that controlled interstellar communications within the Inner Sphere, had challenged to a proxy battle for humanity's homeworld of Terra, the object of the invasion (and, not coincidentally, ComStar's home). Lulled by how easily they had shattered every Inner Sphere force to date, the Clans had gone into the campaign riddled with that most insidious, pervasive and fatal of military diseases: false confidence. Expecting the same inferior 'Mechs they had encountered to date, they had run almost headlong into a buzzsaw of BattleMechs that had been almost a match for their own, working in concert with conventional forces, and the weaknesses of their own style of warfare had been driven home. MechWarriors used to open-field running-and-gunning with other 'Mechs or the occasional group of Elemental battle-armour troopers had been confounded by having to fight tanks and armoured vehicles in entrenched positions and confined terrain. Clan forces used to approaching a battlefield unmolested and engaging the enemy only with line-of-sight weapons had instead found themselves constantly savaged by air-strikes and incessantly pounded by massed artillery. Clan doctrine called for short, sharp, decisive campaigns, so the foresight necessary to stockpile large amounts of supplies had been rare; most of the Clans had found their stockpiles either insufficient or outright depleted, and ComGuard strikes against those depots that were established had wreaked havoc completely disproportionate to the utter lack of glamour associated with the forces that usually carried them out: the lowly, foot-slogging, mud-stained, foul-smelling Poor Bloody Infantry.
Eight Clans had attacked Tukayyid. The Smoke Jaguars, the Nova Cats, the Diamond Sharks, and Tanya's former Clan the Steel Vipers - all had been comprehensively defeated, their forces shattered and thrown back in disarray; it would be years before their toumans recovered. The Ghost Bears had taken one of their two objectives, but they too had paid the price for the resultant draw with blood and treasure. Only the Wolf Clan - Wardens, would-be protectors of the Inner Sphere! - had taken their objectives and won the day.
And Tanya's own adopted Clan, the proud Jade Falcons, they who would have been the chosen Clan of the founder Nicholas Kerensky himself but for Wolf machinations... they too had been humbled. Tanya's commander in the 89th Strike Cluster, Star Colonel Devinnia Guili, had been gravely wounded in the fighting around Robyn's Crossing. The Falcon Guards, the Clan's flagship unit, had been decimated, and entire Clusters were manned mainly by corpses and equipped primarily with wreckage.
Which, literally, brings me here, she thought wryly, staring at her Cauldron Born with unseeing eyes. That OmniMech design was a new Smoke Jaguar model; Tanya had taken that machine as isorla during the Trials of Possession that had seen the Falcons seize a half a dozen for evaluation just after the Battle of Luthien. Idiosyncratic the 'Mech might be, but she was becoming quite attached to it. I warned Devinnia Guili that our munitions stocks were too small and too vulnerable, but the fool insisted that the Com Guards would rather seek honourable combat against our field forces than attack mere supply dumps. Our own doctrine urges us to strike at C3 facilities to disrupt the enemy; why did she not recognise the danger that the Com Guards might employ the same tactics?
And we paid the price for her blindness. Hers, and the Khan's. The Wolves were flexible enough to adapt to the true nature of warfare in the Inner Sphere, and where are they? They hold more than twice as many worlds as we do. They work with the pre-existing planetary authorities to maintain order, which prevents or stymies the formation of resistance movements like those that plague the Crusaders' invasion corridors.
Even as we were embarking to assault Tukayyid, I advocated modifying our tactics and deployments to suit the Inner Sphere's form of warfare. I argued for the use of artillery against fortified positions and Elemental attacks against Com Guard supply columns. I even dared suggest that we match the enemy's use of tanks by deploying vehicles of our own! I made my case so loudly and so forcefully that the Galaxy Commander herself came to hear what I thought. And what did I do? Like an addled freeborn, I told her what I thought.
It is one thing for a Clan warrior to disagree with a superior's judgement in private. It is quite another to do so publicly. It is a fatal sin to do so publicly and be right! she finished with a snort, shaking away her reverie. Introspection was uncommon amongst Clan warriors. To be introspective when there was work to be done was a waste of time, and waste was anathema to the Clans.
With that in mind, Tanya raised her bookreader again, paging through the pitifully thin dossier The Watch had compiled on the leader of the so-called 'Twentieth Donegal Hussars'. Mostly a collection of narco-interrogations and verbal debriefings of former members of the planet's garrison unit, the Twelfth Donegal Guards, it also included what little had been recovered from the Twelfth's records after the planet's capture. Amongst those gems of intelligence was this, a copy of a paper this 'Trace Coburn' had submitted as part of his formal military education on Northfield. The introduction alone was quite an insight into the man's character:
"The cardinal responsibility of any commander in combat is to defeat his opponent(s) and accomplish his objectives speedily and without losing any more of his own people than he can help. Achieving this mandates that such a commander must exert the utmost effort to find (or create) then exploit any and all tactical and technological advantages available; they must make maximum use of their capabilities, seek to neutralise the opponent's, and generally do everything within their power to ensure that any set-piece battle is fought on *their* terms, not the opponent's. Anything less is criminal negligence.
"In simple terms, any CO who gets into a fair fight fucked up somewhere."
Tanya snorted a laugh and looked back at her 'Mech again as she digested the comment. Incomprehensible freeborn curses aside, the paper was giving her quite the look inside her soon-to-be-opponent's head.
What a colourful man. Leftenant Trace Coburn, I have a feeling that you and I are going to be the best - the very best - of enemies....