Disclaimer: Just to change things up a little, this Disclaimer is going to disclaim claims to owning MechWarrior.

Chapter 5

Tamar
ComStar compound
Office of Virginia Hoppe, Precentor Tamar

"I must protest."

"Your protests have been noted," Virginia said coldly. The man who stood before her could have stepped out of a recruiting poster for the AFFS, or played the part of a suitably heroic MechWarrior in a big-budget holo-drama. Unfortunately, the Precentor Tamar thought sourly, he was neither.

She had thought it a bad idea when the Primus has first ordered the unveiling of the Com Guards. The double command structure meant that giving Lawrence Urrutia orders was complicated at best. In fact, she privately doubted that it gave her the authority within the Blessed Order to force Urrutia to follow an order that he objected to strongly enough. That would have been bad enough, but four succession wars, a half dozen only slightly less horrific wars (at least on terms of scale), and countless conflicts, police actions, skirmishes, rebellions, insurrections, and other battles, had provided ample examples of one group of people lashing out with a rock simply because another group of people had their own rock.

There was no better way to convince the Successor States to try and take the HPGs—at least in the opinion of one Precentor Virginia Hoppe—than to give them something visible to shoot at. Recently she had come to the conclusion that revealing the Com Guards was an even worse decision than she had originally thought. Their sudden revelation must have made the Successor Lords wonder why Com Star had suddenly felt the need to protect itself. Either it was revealing a weakness in the Blessed Order, or it knew in advance that these 'Clans' were coming.

But worries about the Successor Lords and what they or their armies might do were purely secular concerns. What they would soon face in the skies was a problem of an entirely different nature. A threat to everything the Blessed Order had worked towards for the past two and a half centuries. Unforeseen, incalculable, bringer of chaos that none could predict, disrupting centuries of work and effort and sacrifice. They might believe to be doing good, they might even have honestly good intentions—Virginia Hoppe was realist enough to accept and grant them this—but their very presence was an affront to the Will of the Blessed Blake himself!

She took a deep breath.

"Precentor Urrutia," she continued in a much calmer tone. "I can understand your…apprehension. These are dark days. However, the Blessed Order's compounds have been inviolable for centuries without the safety and Security of the Com Guards. If Clan Wolf were closer, than I would agree that removing the Guards at this time would be contraindicated, but this is not the case. Under the present circumstances, at the present time, I am quite confident in our security.

"It is in this light that I am ordering you to accede to Marshall Correlli's very reasonable request that we provide an Opposition force for her next series of exercises. Besides, was it not just last week that you were in this very office telling me that you were planning on conducting some field exercises of your own? Something how simulators were fine training tools, but there were things that no simulator could teach."

"True enough," Urrutia acknowledged. "I just do not like the idea of leaving the compound unguarded. The Duke has become increasingly…erratic. I do not trust him not to do something…unfortunate. And I like the idea of revealing our tactics, our abilities, to one of the Successor Lords even less."

"And you think they would not watch your exercises through their satellites? Or even an observer with a pair of old-fashioned binoculars?"

"Nonetheless… And that doesn't address my concern about the Duke!"

"Kelswa is a reactionary old fool who was none-too-stable to begin with," Virginia said dryly. "The very real threat that Clan Wolf presents to his precious 'Sacred Tamar' is causing him to crack under the strain. His perception of reality is growing increasingly warped and he may very well try something stupid, which is why the Compound will not be 'unguarded'. "

"Mercenaries?" Urrutia gaped.

"The War College has agreed to see to our security, actually," Virginia said. "The Duke offered to loan me a unit of his personal guard, but I declined it. He was quite upset," she added for the benefit of Urrutia, "but even he had to agree how it would look to the other successor Lords if we allowed a unit sworn to the service of a Lord in one of the Houses to guard a Com Star compound."

"Still, the Tamar War College is firmly in his pocket," Urrutia said.

"For funding, yes, including the purchase of BattleMechs, though the ones he has purchased of late are decrepit machines even by the standards of the Inner Sphere. But they are accredited by the Federated Commonwealth and the last thing the Commandant wants is to have to explain to Hanse Davion how forces under his authority violated Our neutrality. We shall provide a little support—replace some minor parts and provide a fresh coat of paint, perhaps—and reap the benefits of being seen to aid the Inner Sphere in these terrible times."

"It seems as though I do not have much of a choice," Urrutia grumbled. "You have already thought of all my arguments and provided a counter to them, have you not?"

Virginia smiled sweetly at him. "Blake's Will be done, Precentor."

"Blake's Will be done," Urrutia grumbled back. He bobbed his head in a manner that might have been a gesture of respect before turning on his heels and stalking out of the office.

"Yes, Precentor, Blake's Will will be done," Virginia murmured, "as it must."

Ridderkirk/Satellite L1 Point
SLS Hood

Privately, Ariel Murakama had nothing but respect for whoever was in charge of the woofie fleet component. Rather than face a long flight-time from the standard points, she had jumped a pair of Star Lord-class jumpships into the system primary/Ridderkirk L1 point. Not only had it cut the transit time for the droppers from days to mere hours, but it had put the primary at the two jumpships' metaphorical back which had kept the planet from noticing the EM and thermal waves that heralded their emergence. The jump had been complicated by the position of the third planet and the jumpers were riding their station-keeping drives hard to stay in the zone.

"Do you wish us strand them, General?" she asked rhetorically as she rested a fist on a hip. It was a pose worthy of a trivid, a gesture that would let the watchers know that she knew the odds were not nearly so much in her favor as they looked…and that she didn't care.

Richard Winters stared into the depths of the holo-tank. Enabling the transports for the 7th and 1/4th Cavalry Regiments to make a single jump into the Ridderkerk/Satellite L1 point had taken intricate station-keeping and careful synchronization of their KF-drives. Without either it hadn't been possible for Murakama to move anything like a fraction of her fleet—in fact she had only brought Hood, Birkenhead, and Tradewind—to come to their assistance. And only the fact that both transports had fallen away from the point had allowed even that. In essence she was running a bluff.

Unlike the warships used by the SLDF's Naval-branch, those purpose-built to be on permanent 'detached' duty to the Black Watch had much more narrow design constraints. Where regular warships had played cargo-vessel and fighter carrier as well as broadside combatant, and regularly carried enough supplies to cruise literally for years, the cruisers and destroyers that had made up the gunslingers—the line-combatant escorts—for the Black Watch were designed as pure broadside combatants, with an enhanced fighter component, and liberal arrays of secondary weapons to deter fighters and other light combatants. While Admiral Murakama's flagship was still an SLDF-N vessel, it had spent more than a little time in the yard being refit closer to Black Watch standards.

Tradewind had been built on a Potempkin-class hull, and effort had been taken in the past to make her appear as a member of that class, but it wouldn't take much effort for an attacker to realize that she was effectively unarmed and unarmored. Birkenhead actually was a Potempkin, and the ground attack units it carried would have stomped the woofies if they remained on-planet, but it had only its own guns to protect itself against anything sent at it and SLDF WarShips were notorious for their lack of defensive batteries since that was a job that doctrine, training, and equipment insisted be left to covering fighters and dropships.

The logistics dropships she'd carried had immediately assumed a covering formation. In fact, it was the standard formation for a squadron of Pentagon-class assault dropships. At their current range the woofies could certainly see the formation, though probably couldn't get a hard reading on the droppers. Tradewind had released its own droppers and they formed a small cloud around the three central vessels, but they would be even more vulnerable than the logistics ships and the valuable vessels were effectively irreplaceable.

In the near term at least. Long term…there were plans.

Given the size of the observed forces, and the observed drop ship classes, the woofies almost certainly had to be holding at least one—more probably two—of their out-sized aerospace squadrons in reserve. They might even have more than that if the jumpships had been configured into pocket-carriers for self-defense.

Considering the relative forces, the woofies would certainly lose if they were brought to action. As soon as Hood was within range it would open up those jumpers like a force-blade through a combat ration-wrapper, at which point the droppers and fighters would be stuck in-system. Hood would take a beating from those fighters first, though, and finding time to make repairs would be…interesting.

Part of General Winters was tempted to take Admiral Murakama up on her offer, if only to see her reaction. But no, he decided. The woofies had won without actually winning. They'd spent too long chasing the Cavalry and afforded Felix Steiner the time he needed to board the local defenders and destroy much of the local military infrastructure. Not all of it, there was a whole planet of civilians to consider. But enough infrastructure had been ruined that it would be impossible to maintain any more than (an admittedly sizable) garrison of infantry out of local resources until new infrastructure could be built.

"No," he said, his tone treating it like the serious offer that everyone on the flag bridge knew it wasn't. "No pursuit, Admiral. We'll wait right here until our forces are all docked. We'll have to rendezvous, and I'll trust you to pick an appropriate system, but the Task Force will head straight to Tamar…if you think we're up to it."

"Ironically enough, all of our KF-drives look good, General," Murakama said. "I only wish the same could be said for other systems."

Tamar Orbit
SLS Hood

"Orbit, Admiral."

"Nicely executed, Captain Paulus," Ariel Murakama replied levelly to her flag captain. Actually, it was even better than that. Compared to the massive fleets she had watched go into combat not even a full year before, Task Force TH-X1138 barely deserved the 'Task Force' designation, and yet it was probably the most awesome display of martial power that the Inner Sphere had seen in two centuries. Paulus had put not just Hood, but every escort, transport, and auxiliary vessel—and their dropships—into orbit in the space of perhaps two seconds. It was as nicely a piece of parade-formation flying as she'd seen in her career, especially since they hadn't done any parade-formation flying in…six years, almost seven?

She thought about it briefly before giving a mental shrug. "Please alert astro-control that we have arrived in our designated parking orbits. Malachi," she half-turned to her staff communications officer. "Please establish a channel with Marshal Corelli."

"EM spike!"

"What?" Murakama's head snapped around towards the shout from Eric LeBlanc, her tactical officer.

She turned just in time to see the coded light in the holotank that marked the position of SLS Birkenhead flare, then turn into the purple-colored inverted horseshoe indicating a total loss, skipping right past the tiny purple cross that would have indicated a dead/derelict ship.

"Birkenhead is code omega," LeBlanc whispered.

Murakama felt her blood congeal. The Potempkin-class troopship was capable of transporting an entire division and dropping them directly into combat. An almost five-hundred-person crew, dead in less time than it took to blink. It didn't have its dropships attached since it had been under its own thrust, but the ships in formation around it had to have taken damage and General Halliday was certainly as dead as his flagship was…which meant TH-X1138 had just lost its third senior-most officer.

"Report!" she snapped. She turned to LeBlanc. "Nuke?" After General Steiner's report about the status of the Inner Sphere she didn't think anyone would be quite so callous as to violate the Ares Conventions that openly, but there just weren't that many things that would spike an EM reading and were capable of taking out a warship.

Even with a nuke it was hard to completely destroy a warship.

"No." Her tactical officer visibly shook himself. "Emission spectra is wrong, Admiral. It wasn't a nuke. There was an odd double-spike, and the secondary emission signature conforms to a pure-fusion detonation with helium-spectra markers," LeBlanc said. "Her reactors let go."

"Dear God…" Ariel whispered turning back to the holotank. "How?" She had seen it happen before, but not without battle damage. Serious battle damage.

"We're working on that."

"Admiral, we're starting to pick up distress calls from—"

"How bad?"

"Three transports took severe damage and are being evacuated," her Chief of Staff said from where she was just putting on her own headset. "Yamaguchi is reporting the loss all of its armor and weapons on its port broadside. And the transport Admiral Tojo reports that one of its assigned droppers, Shirakumo, was hulled be a piece of debris the size of an assault 'mech. It carried the fourth battalion of the Kuronami."

Murakama managed not to wince. Yamaguchi was one of her Wodehouse-type destroyers, the Royal Black Watch (Naval Escort Group) variant of the Lola III-class destroyer. The Event had, for reasons unknown, left behind all of the first division, and Yamaguchi was the single vessel from the fourth division to have made transition with the Task force.

"We're still trying to assess damage to the droppers around Birkenhead," LeBlanc cut in. "At least two blew up, and several are drifting. EMP might have shut them down, we're hoping. Further damage reports are still coming in."

"Away lifeboats and rescue craft," Captain Paulus's voice ordered someone on his bridge that was outside of the audiovisual pickups. "Admiral?" he paused just long enough for Ariel to turn to her pickups, "Captain Nestor is taking charge of SAR ops."

"Understood, cut DesDiv 232 loose to escort Mercy."

"The Nessies are breaking formation," Ruth Bakerfield announced.

She started to turn towards her Chief of Staff, but a quick call from her communications officer turned her back.

"Ark Royal reports that Birkenhead was destroyed by surface fire, Admiral. It's squealing us a data—"

"In the tank, now," LeBlanc cut in.

Murakama turned back to the holotank as a light pattern—indicating a massive EM burst but no accompanying thermal events and nothing at all in the visible light-spectrum—blossomed on the planet's surface a moment before Birkenhead exploded.

"Silver Tower," Ruth whispered.

Ariel turned and looked at her Chief of Staff. 'Silver Tower' was one of several SLDF reporting codes for events that involved what were still euphemistically called 'Weapons of Mass Destruction'. Most of the codes on that list covered the miss-handling, lost, theft, damage-to, or accidental detonation of, nuclear warheads—still the most common of WMDs.

"Confirm that, Ruth," Ariel heard herself say. She felt strangely detached. Aware, almost super-aware of the activity going on around her, but not feeling any of it affect her.

"The surface event shares the same geospatial coordinates as Tamar's HPG, Admiral," her Chief of Staff said. "No indications of sub-surface, surface, or air-burst detonation of a thermonuclear or neutron-pulse weapon. Emission spectra matches what we'd expect to see from the aggressive discharge of a circa 2750 planetary-scale hyperpulse generator."

That wasn't quite confirmation. It was certainly possible for the planetary HPG to have been moved, destroyed, or even for a new HPG to be built and the first demolished in the centuries that they had missed. A Silver Tower event would fit neatly with the observed effects. Nothing electrical, no matter how hardened, could have survived a Silver Tower event. With the loss of the magnetic bottles there was nothing to stop Birkenhead's reactors from letting go. If it had been a 'mech that was targeted the fusion plant might have survived, especially the old-fashioned kind that were still designed with heavy neutron-shielding components. The low-temp/low-pressure reactors that most of humanity relied upon weren't sufficient for a warship though, not without giving an intolerable amount of the ship's mass and internal volume over to reactors.

"Scatter the task force," Murakama ordered as she took the two steps needed to cross to her command couch. She dropped into it and her hands sought out the battle frame and locked it into place around her. The fit was off since she wasn't wearing the vacuum suit intended to be worn in battle and that would have protected her from explosive decompression were the bridge to be breached, but it would suffice to protect her from most concussion damage and keep her from being flung from her seat. "Flash message, all ships," she continued, hitting the control to deploy her repeater displays from their stowed positions, "Silver Tower. Captain Paulus, take the task force to battle stations if you please."

Tamar Orbit
SLDS George Murray

Durandal dropped me out of the simulation we were running so quickly that I thought someone had gotten in a lucky cockpit hit that had 'killed' me.

"Birkenhead was just destroyed by ground fire," it said before I could say anything. "Admiral Murakama has declared Silver Tower."

"Trudy, break orbit, take us down!" I snapped. She and a reduced flight crew had been piloting us from the nadir jump-point to planetary orbit, while the remainder of her crew had traveled in relative comfort aboard the assault ships. A pattern repeated on the other dropships. But my squadron was fully present, catching sleep in our command couches and eating field rations while using the datalinks between the droppers to run simulated field exercises.

"Quarterhorse, secure for drop!"

Barely had I gotten it out before the Gs slapped me against the restraining straps of Durandal's command couch. They bit into my shoulders and chest as negative-g forces made my vision start to red-out. It was going to be one of those days.

Tamar Orbit
SLDS Ft. Garland

Kenneth Ivanhoe Tennyson Carson cordially disliked his name, but was almost equally thankful to his parents for giving him an excuse to have a nickname after one of his favorite historical figures. At the moment, however, such petty distractions could not have been further from his mind.

"General Carson to all Ground-Force elements, I am assuming command of ground forces." Hood had come through, but Admiral Murakama was giving priority for its communication links to keeping the task force alive. And in any case, it would be a while before a dropper could link up with it to transfer General Winters, and the commander needed to be on the ground with his troops. The holographic battleboard in his command dropship updated. "General Jackson, take your division, the Boarderers, the Knights of the Cross, and the 1er Régiment d'Artillerie de Marine and move to block the unit calling itself the 223rd ComGuards Division."

The battleboard updated again, and Carson smothered an oath as the light codes for the Royal Dragoons (Scots Greys) and a battalion of the 16th Director-General's Own Lancers, turned to the purple crosses of dead units. In this case they weren't so much 'wiped out to the man', but merely 'combat ineffective' at least until a full assessment of their losses could be made. The 2e Régiment d'Infanterie de Marine, a Marine unit that specialized in trans-littoral combat environments went with them—the board updated again— along with two battalions from the 3er Régiment d'Artillerie de Marine, and two irreplaceable Tawara-class naval gunfire support dropships (one of these destroyed by a piece of debris, the other unknown). Loss of the RIMa was bad, but not immediately crippling as there weren't any litorall combat zones that he currently had to worry about, but the RAMa operated of mix of air-defense, tube and rocket artillery. And Harvey, one of the two Mako-class refits that were designed for surface fire-support had caught the edge of the pulse that had caused Birkenhead to blow up and its systems were in full reset mode.

"General Jackson, your command is designated Task Force Lion. Colonel Vicente, the Paissandu Regiment will establish a DZ north and east of the 26th Lyran's garrison. 5th Marines, 10th Marine Arty, Ceti Lancers, Kuronami, Skinner's Horse, and Regimento de Lanceiros, designated Task Force Bear. I will assume tactical coomand of Task Force Bear as soon as the DZ has been established. Colonel Moon, your Fortresses go down as soon as Colonel Vicente gives the okay.

"Colonel Brenard, the Royal Horse will take the Ducal palace, supported by Jydske Dragonregiment. Lt. Colonel Talbot, the War College nearby is yours, but you fall under Colonel Brenard's command. The 7th Parachute Royal Horse Artillery will support you, Colonel Brenard. Task Force Packers.

"Colonel Whitfield, the 41 Commando and the 1st Marines are the primary on clearing the HPG. 7th Cav, 29th arty, backstop. Task Force Viking.

"1st Royal Australian, 1st Royal Canadian, and Wendes artilleriregemente here, set up Firebase Hammer.

"5th and 32nd Royal Arty, and 62nd (Shawinigan) Field Regiment, here, Firebase Mallet."

Carson felt the shudder that indicated his dropship was passing the first atmospheric boundary layer and tightened his restraints a little as he wondered if anyone would recognize the naming convention. Eight and a half centuries and the North American Central Division games were still the only ones' worth watching. Maybe things had improved in the past couple of centuries. It wasn't likely, if for no other reasons that it'd mean something had gone right which didn't seem very likely from either his perspective or that of the rest of the Inner Sphere.

Tamar Orbit
SLS Hood

"Let me make myself clear, General Steiner. I have more than a thousand dead, I probably have ten times that dead. They were killed without warning using a weapon that utilized Kearny-Fuchida principals. Such weapons were banned, sir, under the Ares Conventions—I suggest careful reading of the section Other Weapons of Mass Destruction and its annexes. I am fully within my rights to conduct a reprisal against the battery that attacked us, using any weapon— any weapon at all, Sir—that is at my disposal. That I choose not to do so is out of concern for the civilians whose lives have been placed in jeopardy by the planetary government's illegal actions. That concern will not save them if I decide that ground-battery remains a clear, present, and illegal danger to my people."

General Winters glared at the other officer in his comm.-screen. "If any of your dropships make a move that looks even remotely hostile I will order Admrial Murakama to turn it into very tiny pieces. Am I understood?"

"You are, General," Felix Steiner said carefully. "And I regret—"

Winters slapped the line closed and the screen went dark. "New message, wide-beam broadcast."

"Sir."

He looked at the communications officer that was assigned to him. "There's an incoming transmission for you from Marshal Joy Corelli, she's the CO of the 26th Lyrans, and Precentor Lawrence Urrutia."

"Put it through."

The screen split. On one side was a slight, trim woman with the kind of face that needed a broken nose and a couple of scars to look complete. Fortunately, hers had been and there were, and she wore a field uniform with little more than rank insignia. In his experience there were exactly three types of people who only wore rank insignia: those who didn't have any other insignia, those who were trying to be either intimidating or anonymous (usually spooks), and those for whom such decorations had ceased to be important. Winters was one of the latter himself when he could get away with it, and this woman looked like she was another member of the same school.

The man on the other half of the screen wore a white uniform with a stylized version of the Communications Ministry logo surrounded by a red halo with a capital 'E' inside of it.

"General Winters, I protest your blatant and illegal violation of the sovereignty of the Federated Commonwealth," the woman began.

"Save your protests, Marshal," Winters cut her off. "I have just been attacked by surface fire, illegal surface fire, from a planet I was informed by no less than a co-chief of state—the co-chief of your state, to be precise—was friendly. Surface fire that originated at your HPG station, Precentor, if my understanding of the role your…organization fills is correct."

"Don't be ridiculous, General," said the man, presumably Precentor Urrutia. "ComStar is a neutral power. Our HPG stations have little more than self-defense forces assigned. Certainly they do not have any strategic or ground-to-space weapons."

"I didn't say we were attacked by a ground-based naval PPC or another conventional weapon. We were attacked by the generator itself," Winters said coolly.

"HPGs aren't weapons," Corelli said.

"Neither is a fusion torch, but I expect you would disagree with me if I were to apply one to your arm."

Corelli started to reply, but a slashing motion made her pause.

"I am not going to debate matters with you, Marshall, Precentor. I am going to land my troops, and I will secure a planetary beachhead, local government facilities, and the hyperpulse generator. I will remain in control of those things until such time as I am satisfied that they no longer represent a threat. In the mean time, if any of your troops leave their present encampments and garrisons I will take it as a threat and respond with all due force.

"Right now it appears I was brought to this system under false pretenses. Rest assured, Lady, Gentleman, I will find out who did this, why they did it, and see that justice is served, up to and including reprisal strikes if I must. If you desire a quick, peaceful resolution, you will encourage your forces and the local populace to cooperate or face the gravest of consequences." Something very close to a growl crept into his voice, "you will comply, because if you do not I will strand you on this rock and leave you to the wolves, after placing message beacons transmitting my sensor records of the attack on Birkenhead, so that they know what kind of greeting to expect.

"I doubt you will enjoy their response."

He paused.

"Or I suppose you could take the honorable way out."