The Fools Bargain 02
Galtor III
Draconis March
Federated Suns
08 May, 3025
The third world of Galtor was settled by Irish and Chinese colonizers in successive waves of colonists that each thought they had been given an exclusive claim. Within ten years of their arrival on the world their populations competed with each other, eventually escalating into all-out war. Although they only had a few tanks and an artillery piece or two, the damage wreaked was terrible. A breakout of a plague - a constant fear on new worlds with limited medical resources and research on how alien worlds might mutate old diseases - forced the two groups to sign an armistice to combat the sickness together. This eventually developed into the Webster Compact that paved the way for both sides no longer considering themselves Irish or Orientals and just Galtorians.
In the centuries that followed, Galtor became a peaceful and prosperous world that served as a breadbasket for surrounding worlds. This sleepy planet was left mostly untouched by the Age of War, and at the rise of the Star League the world became host to a major SLDF presence on the planet. Soon enough the military became its largest customer, and Galtor fed nearly a billion soldiers over a thousand worlds.
Then the Star League collapsed. When the SLDF abandoned Galtor to follow Kerensky, the world got its first taste of true hardship. Refugees flooded into the world even as trade dried but, but for the most part war was something that happened elsewhere in space. When Kurita made their great assault against Davion worlds, the ancestors of Galtor III made little resistance. Life under the Draconis Combine was grim and sullen, with quotas and manual fieldwork replacing automated farm machinery. Anyone that showed any hesitation were immediately punished, any complaint made people disappear. For a hundred years, Galtor languished in malaise, and the structure of the world fell apart under the management of occupying soldiers and administrators. A world that once fed thousands now struggled to feed itself.
For a hundred years, Galtor remained under the grip of the Combine. The Dragon and the Suns warred around Kentares IV, Mallory's World and Harrow's Sun while Galtor was ignored as a former Davion world. It would not be until 3022 when under Hanse Davion's command the Federated Suns managed to capture the world in a bloody campaign that saw one-third of the population losing their lives.
And yet even so, Galtor would much prefer to be in Davion hands.
But their freedom was uneasy and their world was still shattered. They knew that a return to Combine hands would come with brutal and unrelenting punishment.
When Hanse Davion ordered a survey of all the worlds captured in the past few years, records in New Avalon indicated that Galtor III would have an unusually rich deposit of priceless and irreplaceable parts and equipment dating back to the Star League.
The depot set into a small hill was turned out to be long ransacked, and was by design not a very defensible position. The local defenders - elements of Draconis March (Dahar DMM) militia and the Raman DMM, the native Galtor Irregulars and mercenary BattleMechs of the Lone Wolves - were not aware that the site was fake.
The plan as communicated to the parties was for two strong regiments to lie in wait in Galtor to trap any raiding party and then destroy them in a series of short, swift and decisive thrusts. The AFFS' 33rd Avalon Hussars and the mercenary 12th Vegan Rangers were originally slated for this purpose. Their high command was aware of the true nature of the trap.
But immediately all that could go wrong, did.
Two battalions of the 33rd Avalon Hussars regiment still languished in their barracks on Kestrel because a lack of dropship parts prevented them from moving the entire regiment.
The Union dropship Jasper exploded on liftoff at Marduk, destroying two companies of the Dahar DMM, and the repair and landing facilities of the spaceport were heavily damaged. This was suspected to be the work of Kurita guerillas.
Kurita raids intensified across the border, stressing the Raman DMM, a green force that had to defend a large section of the frontier. This seemed to be a punitive response to their loss of an entire regiment on Tripoli. The Dragon, wounded, bared its fangs to remind others that it was not weak.
Suddenly, the night sky burst open and a wash of electromagnetic waves from a nearby K-F emergence filled the sensor web.
A Monolith-class JumpShip and six Scout jumpships arrived with impossible precision on the Pirate Point between the world and its host star. Any overlap in their drive fields would lead to a fatal misjump.
"PEOPLE OF GALTOR. DO NOT BE ALARMED," the broad frequency signal announced. "OUR INTENTIONS ARE PEACEFUL. WE ARE THE ERIDANI LIGHT HORSE."
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Margrave Sheridan Douglass, leader of the Alpha Regiment of the 12th Vegan Rangers, did not have an overly romantic view of the Eridani Light Horse. The Rangers had served Davion for centuries while refusing offers to join the regular military. Unlike the Steiners, where it made sense not to be under the total control of social generals, the Rangers held onto their independence and made the Federated Suns pay a premium for their continued loyalty.
No mercenary regiment would easily accept that someone else would be 'the best' in their field, and despite the ELH's posturing they were just yet another mercenary unit to him. He considered his own heavyweight regiment to be a fair match to anything.
After verifying that the new arrivals were who they said they were, and that their intentions really were peaceful, they were given clearance to approach and land.
The ELH went down like an invasion force.
The 22nd Special Air squadron rose to meet them.
Colonel Sirius Golen, commander of the 22nd Special Air Squadron, had this to say:
"Galtor III was the first mission of the 22nd. We had a lot to prove and we would have to die trying. We were actually three squadrons - Parker's Squadron, Hunt's Squadron, and Morgan's Squadron. Every competent regiment had at least a squadron of ASF to push through contested orbitals. I sent Parker and Hunt to 'welcome' our new mercenary friends to Galtor.
"Now, the backbone of the 22nd was our STU-K5 Stuka Heavy Fighters. While we were a new unit, but we were made out of veterans of combat and we were all expected to fight even outnumbered by the Combine."
A Heavy 100-ton fighter, armed with 4 Large Lasers, 3 Medium Lasers, an LRM-20, a SRM-6, and 15 tons of protection - a group of Stukas could blow almost anything out of orbit. Their only weakness was their relatively low amount of fuel - 4 tons. The long narrow cigar-shaped fuselage with canards near the cockpit and a wide ogive wing at the rear was characteristic of both this craft or a smaller Lightning fighter, which could prove to be a deadly mistake.
"Parker reported to me later that seeing the ELH move out with their DroST pocket warships at the head - he didn't understand why, but his instincts were already screaming at him not to do something stupid."
Four DroST IIA assault dropships forged the way, and the 22nd's heavy ASFs, primarily Stukas, were momentarily caught aback by a formation that eschewed skirmishing in favor of a brute wall of steel and guns. The diamond formation meant that the dropships covered each other's firing arcs.
A squadron was typically six fighters. Three squadrons in total were 18 fighters. The 22nd only had half their number in heavy fighters, but assume they had 18 Stukas. That's 72 Large Lasers and 18 LRM-20s across 1800 tons of fightercraft.
A single DroST was 5,300 tons by itself.
Unlike a Stuka's four to six tons of internal fuel capacity, it could carry hundreds of tons of fuel. Therefore, paradoxically, while a DropShip was usually considered a slow and fast target, a Drost that boosts at 2.5 to 4 gravities could easily outrun its pursuing craft, punch through a defensive screen, and with all-around turret coverage didn't need to outmaneuver its opponents..
Even the 22nd Special Air Squadron had to reconsider when it looked like something twice their numbers were bearing down on them, with the danger of assault dropships shooting them in the back while skirmishing against other fighters.
"Each of those Pocket Warships was escorted by four ASFs… they looked like Stukas too, but something about them felt… wrong, somehow. Parker and Hunt could tell the difference between dedicated heavy escorts and the other smaller dogfighting fightercraft around the other dropships." Sirius Golen mentioned later in an interview."Kurita would find out the hard way later why ELH aircraft left this impression of cold mechanical fearlessness in their flying."
The groups buzzed and flew past each other.
The 12th Vegan Rangers were supposed to sit in the shadow of the world, waiting in their dropships ready to smash into the unprotected rear and landing sites of attackers, trapping them on the planet. However, as they were well fore-warned that friendlies were coming, it was better not to pull that surprise early or it might get leaked.
The ELH had a mix of transport and assault dropships, two Drost-II's remained in orbit to defend against space assaults even as the regiment passed the boundary. This was a grim preview of what the Draconis Combine might bring to the invasion, but now at least they had the numbers to fight the Dragon one on one.
Whole companies of Jump-capable mechs landed as a scouting party ahead of the landings. The sky above the drop site glittered with falling stars.
The 782d Davion Guard Auxiliary defended the site. They were an infantry force utterly lacking any BattleMechs or Heavy Combat Vehicles. Instead they sat behind eight layers of minefields and Sniper Artillery Pieces. The 33rd Hussars had Long Toms in their fortified and camouflage based camp. Spotters were ready to roll.
The 33rd Avalon Hussars' base camp only received a directional radio message on all bands. I SEE YOU.
Sheridan Douglass frowned and turned to see Lt. General Wilson Mandella's sweaty indignation. The AFFS officer clearly saw this as an insult and a threat to his authority.
The DropShips landed six kilometers from the site, southwest and northeast, and swiftly disgorged their mechs and vehicles. Heavy towed Long Tom Artillery and lighter wheeled Thumper Artillery pieces for counter-battery fire trundled out, and VTOLs climbed to provide scouting support and artillery fire direction.
The defenders of the Star League depot hesitated to fire their artillery training rounds. While this scheduled wargame was supposed to identify any weakness in the position, firing too early would expose their position.
Kurita would not have brought artillery. They wanted to capture the depot intact, no?
The Eridani Light Horse began to set up fortified positions easily visible from the air.
The scouts of the planetary defenders could only make verbal reports about what they were seeing, fortunately not yet disrupted by the usual Kuritan habit of EMP airbursts preceding an invasion. They lacked integrated datalinks.
Then those scouts suddenly let out panicked outbursts as mechs landed nearby. With a sigh they reported that they had been found and "captured".
The Eridani Light Horse did not bombard the 33rd's base camp. That would have exposed the location of their artillery. Instead, a dense group of flyers passed over the site, and the second-line ASFs that met them reported with a confused tone, that "what the flipping hell are a bunch of flying saucers doing over here?"
From emergence to landfall, it was four hours of a nearly uncontested landing in force.
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Base Camp
33rd Avalon Hussars
Same day
Davion wanted to hold on to Galtor III mainly to shield Marduk but also for Galtor Naval Yards. The AFFS liked to build underwater command posts that were protected from the early bombardment and disruption of command facilities in a full-scale planetary invasion. Ironically however, because Galtor had only been back in Davion hands for three years - Galtor didn't have any of those protected underwater command facilities.
Putting command facilities on Galtor's underwater submarine pens would incentivize the enemy to wreck the yards, which would be foolish considering how those same yards had managed to survive three hundred years intact.
The Grand Duchy of Galtor was headed by Governor Skyles O'Hanlon, appointed by Prince Hanse Davion. However, he had no power over the military defense. The Galtor Irregulars, formed of the guerillas and saboteurs that fought on Galtor ahead of the Davion offensive, were commanded by a Committee of Four, and likewise through them they employed the mercenary Lone Wolves. They were centered mainly around New Derry.
The Draconis March Militias defended the major cities of the planet and were given leave to do so on their own initiative.
Command therefore centered on Lt. General Mandella and the 33rd Avalon Hussars base on the Wagnall Plain. Parts of the base, specifically the airfields, dropship landing zones, and storage depots, were visible from the air. Other parts, such as the command posts, were more mobile. Other portions were sheltered and camouflaged some distance away from obvious bombing targets, such as the artillery and communication parks.
A Drost II painted in flat Eridani green landed on a field nearby.
The craft disgorged the ELH regimental staff. Margrave Sheridan Douglass went out with Lt. General Mandella to meet them at the tarmac.
Douglass raised a curious eyebrow at the regimental bodyguard Mechs. His first thought was 'Urbanmech' but obviously they were far too large. 'Flashman', then? But they had humanoid legs instead of reverse-jointed chicken walker legs.
The ELH commander approached and saluted. "Ah! Lieutenant General Mandella and Margrave Douglass, I presume? I am Brevet General Nathan Armstrong, and I lead the Eridani Light Horse. I bring with me the 91st Cavalry Regiment of the Eridani Light Horse. I apologize for the disruption, but there are some drastic new developments that require a drastic change in plans."
Mandela pushed forward and scowled against that ELH officer's gentle smile. "This is an inexcusable breach in protocol. What is this grandstanding? It is brazen and unprofessional! Why are you doing so many things without even a by-your-leave? I am in command here!"
The other person shook his head slowly. "I am sorry, General. But you are not. I am Robert Green-Davion, official mercenary liaison to the Eridani Light Horse. By order of Hanse Davion, First Prince of the Federated Suns, the Eridani Light Horse are now assuming command of the defense of this world in the event of a Kuritan attack." He held out a datapad. "Verigraphed and signed orders here."
"What? Inconceivable!"
The general shakily snapped the datapad off Green-Davion's hands. He read through the orders and Douglass could see him tempted to accuse the mercenary general of lying, versus the reputation and lack of reason for the Light Horse to falsify orders. "This is highly irregular and I protest. You are mercenaries! You should not be commanding regular troops - and multiple regiments of the Federated Suns at that!"
Armstrong hummed. "The Light Horse are, right now, operating something like… Hanse Davion's personal beatstick. Kurita *will* attack Galtor. Not just because of the rumors of a Star League cache, but because *we* are here. Even Takashi Kurita knows that if they don't face us in Galtor, they will have to face us *in Irurzun*. The Light Horse being here is the strongest support for the site actually being a legitimately high-value target."
'Beatstick?' Green-Davion mouthed and glanced aside. A curious word, but not difficult to understand.
Douglass nodded. Few regiments could claim battle with another regiment one on one and then prove themselves able to completely wipe out the other with only minimal losses. The Eridani Light Horse did this *three times* before half the year was even out. He could understand how much that must rankle the DCMS. They could never endure any humiliation.
So they *must* face the Eridani Light Horse and wipe away the shame of those defeats.
Mandella grimaced. By comparison, while the 33rd Avalon Hussars wore the name that distinguished itself centuries before the Eridani Light Horse even existed, their storied nature was much less… overcoming.
The 33rd was one of originally 60 Avalon Hussar Regiments. By the time of the First Succession Wars, there were only 15 regiments that stubbornly kept the name, and refused to train with BattleMechs as they were too slow and heavy. They were all completely decimated within 6 years.
By the Second Succession Wars, much humbled and happy to train with BattleMechs, New Avalon newly minted the 33rd New Avalon Hussars and marched them off to the House Liao Border.
They faced the Capellan Hussars of House Liao and were swiftly and resoundingly crushed to the point that only 10 percent of their Mechs survived. Only propaganda saved the regiment from total dissolution, and made it out that the defeat was actually a piece of valor fighting down to the last man.
The 33rd was known as the "regiment that just won't die" because at least two more times the regiment had in recent memory had faced the enemy and been almost completely wiped out. Their track record against House Kurita was not much better, though with the support of other units they suffered less damage. They were a veteran regiment with many heavy mechs, and often could win against the enemy in a straight fight. Their bad luck could not be explained away as simply incompetence or inexperience.
This mission personally ordered by the Prince was their chance to see if they could shed the hard luck of the unit.
"I will obey my orders, but still I must lodge a formal protest," Mandella continued. Douglass could tell from the almost teary rage in Mandella's eyes how much this rankled. An assault regiment should not keep on being hand-held by other veteran regiments. He was in command! This was his chance! And once again the chance to redeem the honor of the unit was taken away from him. "Never in the history of the AFFS has command been seconded to mercenaries!"
Armstrong beamed. "To your knowledge, no. But there have been multiple recorded instances of Davion command seconding to the SLDF."
Douglass sighed and resisted a groan. Not this shite again.
Armstrong turned and beckoned. "Come, come, let me show you something that will change your mind. This false site you were using as bait… may not be as useless as you might believe."
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