The Fools Bargain 03
Wagnall Plain
Galtor II
Several hours later
But of course, they could not simply board a random DropShip to go to the Star League fake site right at that moment. Transport and malfunction problems dogged the AFFS regiments. The ELH conveniently just showed up with extra JumpShips and DropShips and offered them direct transportation.
The 33rd Avalon Hussars welcomed the arrival of Meade's Battalion and Lyon's Battalion, in the UnionDropShips Century City and Atlan, bringing them up to full regimental strength.
The Dahar Draconis March Militia had to welcome their own French's 3rd Battalion - or rather French's Company, since two companies were destroyed in a DropShip explosion. General Sir William Dobsonhad to deal with the loss and assigning these troops to reinforce his Regimental BattleGroup in defense of New Derry. The DMM had assigned Pope's Battalion under the command of the 33rd Avalon Hussars to reinforce their short regiment, but now that the 33rd was at full strength it was unknown if that would still be necessary and if Pope's battalion should make the long trip back to the planetary capital.
The Eridani Light Horse had a simpler sequence. Their regiment was four battalions to a regiment, and so they simply assigned two battalions for each landing site.
The first order of business was to offload and recombine defenders all over the planet.
Since Nathan Armstrong was now in overall command, he had to oversee these deployments within the holotable in the 33rd's command center. Moving overall command operations into the new ELH base - whichever of the two - was the sort of complication why surprise command authority handovers like these were so disliked in the first place.
The alternative however, would be for someone else to take over command facilities in your own army. The Davion staff accepted this without complaint, but there was a mood that this was just adding an extra inefficient step in the process.
"General Mandella, Margrave Douglass, if you will permit, we have something that can make this somewhat easier. If you would permit it?" Armstrong stopped and said after a while.
"You could just make it an order," Mandella snorted. "But all right." As much as the portly man disliked the situation, with grit teeth he would not be shaming himself by looking unprofessional under the eyes of two mercenaries.
"Please accept the transmission. Do not be alarmed."
The light in the command center flickered. All the screen buzzed, much to the alarm of their operators.
"Sir!" one of the sensor technicians yelped. "Receiving... an encrypted holovideo file?"
Mandella frowned, and gestured "Do it."
The holo over the table blinked out, and was replaced by a spinning logo of the Star League. The Cameron Star squeezed into itself, becoming a white eye.
"ONE. MAN. ARMY. CORPS." a synthetic voice announced. "FROM TERRA TO THE STARS. SHINES THE LIGHT OF THE STAR LEAGUE."
The holo expanded to show the entire continent of Eyrie, which contained a spine of mountains running across its west and vast plain much of the west, cut through by numerous rivers. Icons depicted moving objects both on the ground and near space. Small windows showed overhead real-time views of relevant military areas. "EVIDENCE. YIELD. EXECUTION. BROTHER. EYE. IS ONLINE. RELAYING STRATEGIC COMBAT LAYER."
"Impressive," said Douglass. "Did you bring your own sensor network? How is a sensor web like this protected from being intercepted or disrupted?"
He noticed that Green-Davion had also flinched in surprise. How it could it be the first time he was seeing this? Or perhaps he was just surprised that how quickly the program could authenticate itself past all the security encryptions of Davion computers?
Normally military transmissions were sent in the form of encrypted signals data. It was up to computers to integrate that with local data and update the battleplace. But a highly compressed media signal that somehow decrypted itself with the computers only doing minimal work could be presented as an extra self-updating layer over known map data.
This should be a waste of bandwidth and easily disrupted. You need actual hardware to accelerate decoding or else you were just sending information to your enemy. A translation layer that downloaded itself and sits on top of your output stream is something that without good reason might be called malware.
"BROTHER EYE is a cloud," answered Armstrong. "It cannot be blinded because its assets are a distributed system. The exact mechanism is too technical to explain right now, but it is designed to function passively and work through ECM interference. In fact, it needs to get in range of our ECM to know that it is transmitting to a friendly.
"We know that the first thing Kurita will do is to set off EMP bombs in the atmosphere to disrupt long-range communications. When they think they have accomplished that, then BROTHER EYE will reactivate a mixture of ground-based, low-level and orbital sensors."
The coverage though! That level of detail was too much for a passive system, unless -
The Davion officers blinked. Unless BROTHER EYE was *literally* in the clouds.
"General Armstrong - does this also mean you can listen into Kurita communications?" asked Green-Davion.
"Of course it does."
Green-Davion's face looked too perfectly calm and pleasant. Yes, that should be discomfiting, Douglass noted silently. If the Light Horse could pull this against Kurita, they should also be able to pull this against Davion. A reputation of being honorable only goes so far.
Gifts given too generously could be as much as a threat as a sign of affection.
"We have the eyes, but we don't have the enough men at arms." Armstrong continued, waving towards the map "Kurita will throw everything they can afford at us. What separates us from them… is intelligence."
"Tch. So is this lostech why Davion puts you in command?" Mandella groused. He had to wonder what would happen if he ever had to send his assault regiment to fight someone that had absolute awareness of his deployments. They would only ever be seen if they wanted to be seen.
"It is because the DCMS and its generals will be aching to claim glory against each other and we can drive them into wherever *we* want just by *existing* nearby. Right, Robert?"
Green-Davion nodded. "Unlike the Federated Suns, their generals directly compete against each other for glory and favor, instead of a shared common good. We are just lucky that for all their forces can be highly competent at times, their leaders far too selfish to look beyond their own faces."
"I understand." The Davion general pointed to the lines on the map. Having the ELH sit in two separate bases looked vulnerable... but wherever Kurita lands around the area, they were always in reach of artillery and being pincered from two or three directions. Mandella and the Avalon Hussars were some distance away from the site across the long but shallow Salt Lick River, but that was just good sense as you did not want your base to be right at the front lines. "So we have three regiments ready to pounce on the Dragon when they land?"
"Brother EYE will let us know where, when, how, and how soon. Brother EYE does not obsolete the use of Scouts, but as it is a secondary communications network it will help scouting forces deliver actionable intel almost immediately."
"Is this how you were able to win so consistently against Kurita?" asked Douglass. "I can see how valuable this would be. Is this something that can be reproduced, or must it be proprietary to the Light Horse?"
Armstrong looked up. "It will be available to the AFFS wherever the Light Horse fights, but for certain reasons to prevent being captured or reverse-engineered, sadly the system cannot be released for open use without certain stringent requirements. House Kurita is many things, but technologically backward and unwilling to technologically innovate is not one of them. The Combine's scientists might not be as good as NAIS, but if they know something is *possible*, they would be smart enough to try and make up their own equivalents and counters. It would be less effective and prone to being jammed or intercepted, but just its existence would make it harder for less electronically-savvy Federated Suns units."
"Then you should not have revealed it so soon," said Mandella. "Isn't it a waste to spend the advantage so early here instead of a more important campaign?"
"Actually, it seems better to make the most out of the advantage while you still can," Douglass demurred. "On the offense, *we* would have the initiative, so this would be less relevant. The enemy would have to react to our movements, instead of us having to wonder where the enemy has landed. Information is power not only when you have it, but when you deny it to the enemy. We have set up a grand trap, now all we need is for Kurita to fall into it."
Green-Davion, although of much lower rank than the generals standing around the holotable, responded with the official Davion policy on this. "This battle is expected to be perhaps the most significant event of the year. We expect House Kurita to attack on a broad front from the Raman to Dahar PDZs. Specifically, we expect focused assaults on Galtor, Marduk, New Aberdeen, and Harrow's Sun, with raids all along the border."
"Places where they have recently suffered some very public defeats, then?" said Douglass.
"Switch this holo to the local starmap please," Armstrong said out loud, and one of the station technicians complied. The hologram now showed most of the Raman PDZ which included the 'Galtor Thumb' and Combine territories beyond. He pointed. "When we took on Tripoli and destroyed the 11th Benjamin, that made it harder for them to attack Marduk. We have the Light Horse's 121st Regiment on standby on Marduk as a reserve force, and the 4th Crucis Lancers are on the way."
Then he pointed towards other nearby planets. "The 2nd Robinson Rangers are off to support New Aberdeen along with mercenaries like the Kell Hounds. Harrow's Sun is defended by our 21st Strikers and the 4th Deneb, two regiments, but we expect Wolf's Dragoons to assault it in force. The 1st Ceti Hussars were moved up to Elidere IV to guard the border, but they could join the fight once the Dragoons have fully committed, or strike at Misery or Thestria directly."
He looked up towards Douglass. "We have massed enough force that if Kurita doesn't take the bait, we *would* be going on the offense again. Likely our regiments - the Light Horse and the Rangers - and would combine to destroy the Amphigean Light Assault Groups at Reisling's Planet or a raid-in-force at Irurzun. Our objective is not to capture worlds, but to destroy the enemy's ability to conduct damaging offensives. With these many troops on the border, a clash is *inevitable*."
"Defenders usually have the advantage. Logically, the Combine should just prepare to destroy our own forces on the ground instead of going on maximum aggression," the other mercenary commander replied.
"But of course, if they were logical, they would not be the Combine," said Green-Davion.
"This… this could work," Mandella murmured. "This *should *work."
Douglass winced. "... Sir, it has been a thousand years since the first rocket lifted off from Terra, and still we better not tempt fate like that."
-.
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Fake Star League Site
Galtor II
Next day
The two moons of Galtor III were visible as white little dots during the early morning. Unlike Terra's Luna, the moons were only less than five kilometers wide and had different orbital speeds around their host world. They were named Temos and Froma, after the founding fathers of the colony. Douglass could more easily see a brighter group of small stars beyond the little moons.
Those were not stars. As impressive as jumping into the stable pirate point between a star and a world, there was another reason beyond the difficult and the risk of misjump for people to prefer to emerge from hyperspace at the nadir or zenith points beyond a star's gravity well.
Planets… move.
And therefore, the L1 Lagrange Point between the star and the world… moves.
As the days pass and the planets unceasingly move in their orbits, so would those pirate points cease to be effective to allow JumpShips to jump out again. Normally then they would be stuck deep in-system until they could be towed out by spacecraft at the agonizingly slow .1g their hulls were rated to take. JumpShips were surprisingly cheap for their mass, but also incredibly fragile.
So, JumpShips transporting military forces were considered to be one-shot wonders if they manage to jump into an in-system pirate point. They had best succeed with that invasion or they were easy prizes. Unless they were willing to waste fuel burning through space to chase the moving bubble of their pirate point.
This was the other reason. It would take around a week to safely charge the KF-drive core. The volume of fuel that a JumpShip would spend burning its tiny station-keeping drive would be inefficiently much more than DropShips would spend burning to and from the system's inner reaches.
But the Eridani Light Horse apparently had Scout-class JumpShips, which while the smallest class of JumpShip were also oddly the type of JumpShip that could adequately move around on its own drives.
Douglass frowned minutely. Monoliths were not supposed to do that, maybe? But then again they were also 450,000 tons and the largest class of JumpShip, so he was not sure. The 12th Vegan Rangers did not have such a princely inheritance from the SLDF.
"What have you done?! You have ruined it!" hissed Lt. General Mandella at the sight of the (fake) Star League Depot.
That brought Douglass' attention back to the ground.
The three generals disembarked from the VTOL. Green-Davion remained behind at the 33rd to handle communications between the regiments all around the world and to field complaints by Comstar about the ELH's showboating.
The Eridani Light Horse had bulldozed through the minefield and laid a wide road straight into the depot. IndustrialMechs were deepening the trenchworks, which might not actually stop a Mech but would certainly slow down combat vehicles and make BattleMechs hesitate just jumping past them, knowing it was part of an active minefield.
The road was inviting and clear bait. A company of BattleMechs now clustered around the site. They were emplaced more like walking turrets behind embankments. "Urbanmechs, huh." Douglass mused as they disembarked from the transport. "I guess that makes perfect sense."
A group of them flanked either side of the road almost like an honor guard.
He pointed to the similarly-shaped bright yellow Industrial Mechs digging into the ground past the old minefields. "But since when were Urbanmechs also IndustrialMechs?"
Armstrong grinned. "We have far too many of them. Do you want some?"
Douglass had no idea how to respond to that.
He turned back towards the BattleMechs that now reinforced the formerly infantry-only force of the Davion Guards Auxiliary.
On further inspection, those were not AC/10s cannons on those 30-ton mechs. Some of them had missile bins in place of cannons. They were also not uniformly sized. Some Urbanmechs a bit taller than the others with larger cannons. He squinted. Too long to be AC/20s either. Those cannons had extra bolting and reinforcement half into the chassis of the small dumpy Mechs. The muzzle breaks on the tip of those cannons looked eerily familiar.
He stopped suddenly. "General Armstrong!"
"Yes?"
"Are those Thumper Artillery pieces on an Urbanmech?!"
General Mandella blinked. "Wait, what?" He turned about now to more deeply scrutinize the Light Mechs he had dismissed as simple disposable last-line defense. "Is that even possible?!"
Armstrong nodded. "In 40 tons, yes. The UrbanMech II-AT delivers a similar option as the 75-ton Helepolis."
"You all *did* uncover some massive secret SLDF cache, didn't you?" Douglass breathed. "Although, I do recall that of course the DEMETER CORE had to come from somewhere. Only the SLDF would have the luxury to experiment and produce such odd Urbanmech variants. I would assume that they do work as intended?"
Armstrong shrugged. "They're even faster than normal Urbanmechs, able to run up to Assault Mech speeds, yes. We have tested them, yes. The guns do work and are accurate enough. They have minor jumping ability like a regular Urbanmech, yes." That was not something the 75-ton Helepolis could do.
"This is another mistake!" yelled Mandella. "You should not be showing your hand this soon! Light Mech Artillery like this… you should keep them hidden in reserve!"
"I must agree," added Douglass. "Even if the point is to offer substantial bait, this is too much. If Kurita were able to capture and reverse-engineer these Mechs, the whole concept of a Light Artillery Mech would be devastating to the balance of powers in the Inner Sphere!"
"I will not deny that it is a possibility. But look around you. This site started with nine layers of minefields. In the week it would take for Kurita to arrive from the jump point, if they started now, we could expand that into *twenty*." Armstrong spread his arms wide. "And when they try to sap the minefields, then we would have, as a friend liked to say - This is the only path. So we pray, Unlimited FASCAM Works."
"What?" quoth Mandella.
"Field Artillery Scatterable Minefields."
"That's lostech," the portly man added, with a flat unamused stare.
Douglass turned back to look at the wide highway into death. 'So… you can just replant minefields. Artillery firing High Explosive shells smashing down on enemy groups should also kick up the ground and disable minefields. But now the defenders don't even have to sally forth to close up gaps in their defense.'
Douglass turned back to consider Nathan Armstrong.
There were those who considered the ELH as 'arrogant', and 'delusional' among the mercenary rolls. They could claim to be the most honorable, but 'the best' mercenary unit was in constant flux. There were many mercenary and even house regiments that could trace their history back to the Star League and even older.
Would it be unfair for the ELH to keep the largesse they discovered all to themselves?
Wait, they didn't. They shared the DEMETER CORE.
When it comes to military hardware, finder's keepers was the rule. Lostech were by their nature irreplaceable.
That confidence that the mercenary General showed, ready to *lose* so much valuable lostech in battle, confident that even enemy salvage would not make a difference, that was not a mercenary's mien. Not even he and the 12th Vegan Rangers would dare to be so carefree.
Perhaps the notion of being 'Hanse Davion's personal beatstick' was more than just a colloquialism. Unlimited funding and unlimited backing did wonders?
So this was political, then? He scowled. He did not wish to think about that. But if the ELH were now playing political games, having something that assured Hanse Davion of their loyalty even above his own Davion Heavy Guards, Douglass felt that reduced the veneer of respectability a little bit. Sharing the DEMETER CORE painted them as heroes of the Inner Sphere, but now he felt that was more of a smokescreen to distract from something more insidious.
He shook his head. No, that was none of his business. Only the upcoming battle mattered.
"This is the bait," Armstrong was saying. "Now let me show you the jaws of the trap."
-.
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AN:
While this is redundant, the whole "god-sensor" thing has already been covered in earlier chapters, I felt this may show the difference in reception between a SLDF-derived unit and ones that had always been Davion.