Chapter 78
By Cliff
Beta and Clean up: Not done
Reviewed by Hotpoint and Cannonshop
Ltzehoe system
8 May 3052
Duke Terry had not been sitting on her hands after the last attempt to remove her from leadership of this planet. She had been making plans and then seeing to it that some of those plans were ready to be put into action on short notice with as few words as possible. Then she would work on making counter plans just in case there was a fly in the ointment. She knew that when dealing with something the size of the phone company for the whole Inner Sphere that was normally called ComStar she would need to react very quickly. Okay she would need to react quickly, if she wanted to live for more than a few dozen hours after the attack was launched.
One of these plans that she had come up with had been the moving of all of the planet's military related factories. She had suggested that they needed to be moved to "more secure" areas after each attack. When those facilities were reset up to provide the needed income that Terry needed to support the defensive budget of the planet. The new factories were rebuilt in such a way that they could be moved very easily, if they were attacked again, after all pirate raids had been a fact of life for centuries. It was too bad that all of the people running those facilities had not been brought into Operation Exodus. Then Duke Terry started looking around to see what else might be useful when she moved to a new planet. Some of these useful things might or might not belong to her or people that were loyal to her. That was going to be a hard needle to thread when push came to shove when she had to leave this planet.
When the second and third dropship had landed at the ComStar compound and not at the main drop port? Duke Terry had quietly put her military forces and close friends on alert for a possible renewed assault. She had some people that she trusted watching every movement going on within and around the ComStar compound. She also activated a plan that started the spying on the groups of locals that were known to be working with ComStar way to closely. When the ComStar warriors broke their pattern that they had held for the last half a decade four months later? Duke Terry quietly put all of her best plans for this situation into motion with less than a dozen words spread-out between three messages. She had just made her first countermove and hopefully ComStar would not notice this until it was way too late for them to do much about it.
Terry had noticed what the date was and then sent another message "to some friends" that had a home "near the edge of town" so to speak. It was not lost on her that it was the same day that the clans were supposed to have started fighting for Earth on far away Tukayyid with what was being advertised as all of the Com Guards. What had really started waving the red flags for Duke Terry after the last of now three dropships had landed within the area claimed by ComStar? It was that not one mech or tank had left this ComStar facility for a few years. So why would they be sending out light forces that seemed to be scouting the local areas.
Terry was not surprised that her "certified" messengers were turned back from the gates of the ComStar compound. It would seem, that the HPG generator was offline for an unknown length of time and all none ComStar personnel were not currently allowed inside the Compound at this time. When traffic control picked up a jumpship arriving at a Pirate jump point, and they were not responding to any attempts at communication. Now Terry knew that she was out of time, deep in her gut. She knew that ComStar was getting ready for another attempt to remove her from her seat of power.
Terry called a full meeting of her key staff half an hour after she was told about the HPG being broken and no messages were coming in or going out. They only had eight hours before "the invaders" were going to make landfall with six military type of dropships.
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Duke Terry looked over to the traffic control commander sitting across the briefing room with a stone face. "Do we have a count and type on what we might be facing?"
With the increase in traffic coming to this planet over the last few years. Duke Terry had rapidly added to the number of crewmembers working in the small office with handpicked operators and leaders that she knew she could trust. The "Manager" of her Traffic Control office was an old Jumpship captain that had failed his last space status physical, and he needed a new job to pay alimony for four ex-wives on four different planets. He had been the night shift Traffic Control shift leader for Dunianshire for the last two years, before getting a pay raise to come out here to take over the whole show for Duke Terry.
Kelly did a half turn to look at the Duke sitting at the head of the table and he decided to just give a quick up date for everyone. "Right at 75 minutes ago, a Star Lord class of jumpship jumped into a pirate point close to the planet. They deployed their jump sail and emptied her jump collars at a rate that can only be done by a well-trained crew. We have three Unions, a Triumph, a Condor, and what I think is a Lion class of dropship. One of those dropships is a Carrier modification of the base design. They have a dozen fighters flying escort for them, and they don't seem to be in a hurry. It's that or they are trying to let the crew's recover for some reason. Right now? I would say that they have been pushing very hard to make it here on someone else's timeline."
Terry looked over to her Militia commander, and he took this to mean it was his turn to speak to the meeting. "I don't think that we have the firepower to stop them and the local Com Guards at the same time. They have a Union, Mule, and Mammoth that all are sitting outside the main capital drop port. And that is on top of what they have had in that compound of theirs for the last year, and what might have been given to friendly locals on the sly."
Terry now turned to the only stranger in the room. "I think this is the time that we accept that the final moves are now being made by ComStar. With the HPG being reported as being "down"? We are cut off from the rest of the Inner Sphere. I think it is time to look at our escape clause." Terry raised one eyebrow, but the rest of the room was as silent as a grave.
The thin stranger did not say much in the time that the very handsome and tall man and his small team had been on the planet. He normally was the only one of the team that dealt with the Duke in any official details, and then only in private. To the rest of the planet, he and his team were just one of the growing numbers of merchant factors found and their employees that sold LRM and SRM munitions to some of the groups off of this planet.
The tall and strikingly good looking man kept his voice level and calm. "Are you sure about this? There will not be a way to come back, if you take this final step."
Duke Terry gave a snort at what the well-built and tall man had said. "IF…. we stay? We will be under those robed crazies' control until the end of time. I don't think that I will live that long after they take over control of this planet. We all know what the rules will be, and how they will be enforced by those robed jerks the day after they take power. We all also know that ComStar will take half of everything that is made on this planet, all to support what they say is Blake's Will for the rest of Humanity".
The tone that Terry had used was clearly copied from an often repeated advert that played on all of the entertainment channels used by this planet. She quickly let it drop and go back to her normal tone. "We all know that it will only be what ComStar wants to take, and not what is good for the people. They will not care who starves or freezes as long as they are not active members of ComStar at the time they died."
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When the last attempt had been made to change the local government by force of arms, Duke Terry's people had recovered and decoded a few notes that were not supposed to ever see the light of day. The information in those files had come from a third party, which seemed to point right back to the desk of ComStar. Those found reports also had a list of people who might cause trouble for the new leaders of this planet when ComStar took over as the puppet masters. It did not say to kill any of the people on this list, but that was the way that everyone who had seen the list had taken it. It was as good as a death warrant to anyone smarter than a 5th grader.
The showing of that list of names had been used to grow the support Terry could call on when things went sideways for this planet. A few of the people on that list had been publicly supporting for a change of local leadership, but it seemed that ComStar had not thought them truly trustworthy for their needs. Now that one time group of revolutionaries had totally flipped on ComStar. Many on that list were carefully coached on what to say and then told just to leave the room anytime someone connected from ComStar tried to corner them in any way.
A few months after that one attack had been cleaned up, ComStar had started to pay some of the older recruits and had had them start looking for more sympathetic locals. This was all going to be needed to support for a future ComStar attack. ROM had even been able to funnel mechs, tanks, and other weapons for future need to this group. The total local troops that ComStar should have been able to call on should have been equal to over four Level IIs made up of a mix of mechs, tanks, and with heavily armed and armored infantry in close support. Someone from ComStar had even set up and paid for training for them in a camp that should have been unknown to Duke Terry and her staff. But now most of them were going to be really reporting to people loyal to Duke Terry and be very willing to do so. It could be a very nice hold card for Duke Terry to have in her hand to play in a later game. It was just too bad that none of the equipment was currently that cutting edge when compared to what was coming online in increasing numbers around the Inner Sphere. Oh, a few Mechs and tanks held late Star League weapons or support systems, just not all of them or even many on any one machine. The Fifth Column had only been supplied with mechs and systems that could not be tracked back to ComStar, but well above current pirate grade.
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That little meeting of Duke Terry's ended after the last details were worked out and everyone went to their own staffs. No one was expecting anything too happen until the dropships were almost in orbit of the planet. With so many heavy aerospace fighters acting as escorts, there was little that the mostly light fighters on this planet could do to that would not be suicide. They were basically sticking to the plan that had been drawn up for some time.
The stranger to this planet took a nondescript hover car from the common parking lot that any other employ of the Duke would use, and he left the command compound of Duke Terry with very few knowing how important this factor might be. No one knew what the man was going to do that had been in that meeting with Duke Terry, but they knew that he had a part to play in the upcoming events. With the list of needed tasks firmly in all of their minds, they knew that each group needed to keep things close to their chest.
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The TacFax needed a lot of power to work, but it needed way less power to operate than what an HPG needed or what ComStar said was needed to send messages across the stars. That was why this type of hover car was used by the undercover SLiE team. It had been bought and shipped to this planet all the way from Dunianshire at a huge expense for the ground team. This one type of hover car had been picked, because it had a powerful fusion engine under its hood. And that was something that was hard to find on a planet like this one only a few years ago.
The very special hover car quickly was put into the home's garage, and then a heavy duty power line was connected between the transport and the SLIC run device. A message was sent faster than light, and one was received less than an hour later from a little less than 30 light years away. Operation Dunkirk was being launched while the enemy was still moving at .75g from the pirate point to the planet. Only a dozen people on the whole planet knew that help was on the way from a group that lived a very long way from the rest of the Inner Sphere.
When that part of Operation Dunkirk was going to get to this planet was not listed in the short reply the SLIC ground team had received. In the Split system the cargo and military dropships were already loaded thanks to the warning and planning that Robert have given them. All they had to do was load the last of the crews and dock with the waiting jumpship. While they were moving, ComStar was not waiting in their attack on this world on the edge of explored space.
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Two hours after the last of the maybe ComStar Scouts had returned to the Compound. The ground combat units that had called the ComStar compound home, along with some support that had only been on the planet a few months came barreling out of the main gate of the compound. The local Com Guard commander had studied the locals for years but granted most of that had been from notes made by others. After arriving at this command, he wanted to know everything about what had worked and what had not worked on the last attempt to remove Duke Terry. He had thought that he had learned a lot, but it was a tossup on weather if he learned the right things or not.
After lots of thinking, the senior Demi Presenter had come to a single conclusion that was very much a product of the ComStar training that he had undergone. He had decided that it would take only one very hard push, which would put the locals on their back foot. That would delay any response away from the local area hopefully long enough to take over the leadership rolls of this planet. That would give the newly arrived Com Guard combat unit a safe foothold to start with, and then the converting of this planet to support the glory of Blake could begin. This was not the plan that had been approved of by highly placed people within some parts of ComStar back on Terra. The local commander felt that he had something to prove to one of the "special" unit commanders that ROM had trained. After all he was the one that was in charge of this operation before the rest of them landed on this planet. You might say that he was just a little overconfident and way too ambitious for his own good.
Only the Com Guards and ComStar administrators were not the only ones who had reviewed those actions of the past. Then you add in that the locals were not worried about a divided command. Duke Terry was just wanting to buy time for a big hammer to fall out of the sky so that she could get people loyal to her out of the way and off of this planet. Duke Terry and her staff had some time to plan, and they used it to ruthless advantage. The locals were now going to put into play some plans that had been drawn up. Besides the local commander of the Com Guards had forgotten one key concept of warfare. It was that the enemy also had plans, and they might not willingly go into the night without putting up one big frakking fight.
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When the Com Guards exited the main gate of the ComStar compound? They were thinking that they were going to steam roll over any of the locals. They walked right into trouble almost the second that the first combat forces of the Com Guards had started exiting the compound they had called home but not home. When the 70ton Magi class tank cleared the main gate and entered the traffic lanes that supplied the Compound. The tank crew had noticed that the road had been devoid of traffic since the alert had gone out with the arrival of the "pirate" jumpship. The tables were already turned on the would-be attackers and they had no idea that it was happening to them.
When the massive, heavily armored, and fast tank had just cleared the first lane of the road? That was when the traffic control pedestal mounted in the center of the road erupted into flames and white, black, and orange lined smoke. Right below where the traffic control officer would normally stand to help with enforcing the traffic laws during rush hour was strongly built and over 2.5meters tall. It had also held fixed mounted three sets of six single shot, short range missile tubes loaded and ready to be called into service of Duke Terry by remote signal. The eighteen fat missiles were almost point blank when they were freed of the very well hidden launching tubes. The only warning that the tank crew had that they were under attack, was the blast of smoke before over a dozen flying weapons hit the arrow shaped front hull with less than an eye blink between missile hits.
That also was when the Com Guard tank crews found out something shocking about the locals, something that had not been in any of those reports. All of those warheads on the short range missiles were not filled with explosives as most people would think they were. They were filled with a near magical concoctions of combustibles, ones that only the most deranged minds could have come up with in the first place. The sticky flaming jell covered the ancient heavy tank going from the white painted front bumper of the tank and going all the way back to the twin machine gun mount. The tank was an instant mission kill, and its burning hull had stopped almost blocking the main gate. Just as the local defenders had planned to happen. There were fewer roadblocks better than a 70ton tank that was almost completely covered in sticky and smoky flames, but it was not a perfect fit. Something like that would have taken an act of extreme luck. The crew of the anti-infantry tank did not have time to bail out before a second tank was trying to pass the burning mass of metal off to one side.
The second Com Guard tank that was trying to leave the compound was a 40ton hover tank called a Zephyr in the old and now new books on military equipment. That medium class hover tank was the last of the original and heritage SLDF equipment that had been deployed to this planet when the HPG had been first set up. That did not help the lighter tank in this coming battle with the local defenders.
Just as the hover tank tried to pass the burning Magi, the ton of machinegun ammunition carried within that tank contacted the flames started by the SRMs for the first time. The shockwave of this interaction was held within the huge tank for maybe a dozen microseconds, but by the time it was released from the heavy tank. The now released energy blew the lighter tank onto its side as the red orange flames went around it. When the blast wave of flames moved away from the Zephyr? The laser packing turret was frozen, and its turret was pointed into the air and the crew stunned at their controls. In any book, this was a very successful ambush.
With the main exit to the ComStar compound now thoroughly blocked by flaming wrecks of the pair of tanks and dead bodies. The Com Guard mechs could now only go over the compound's wall or threw it to get at the locals. As it turned out, both of those ideas were not as good as the mech pilots had first thought. The locals made short ranged missiles, almost by the dropship load every few weeks to be used off planet. Those types of weapons were both cheap to make and easy to use if someone had steady nerves.
The wave of charging Com Guard mechs were met with a huge wave of missiles that the locals had made. It was under the waves of flaming tails that the locals welcomed those that came over the walls of the compound propelled by jump jets. Those missiles and launchers were made on this planet, and they were not scared to use them in numbers that would have made a Lyran accountant cry. The waves of high explosives and inferno jelly rounds were mixed with a liberal use of even heavier warhead fitted dumb fire missiles. This odd collection of warheads was blanketing the Com Guards and the ComStar compound from one end to the other.
It did not take long for the Com Guard defenders to be pushed back into the hardened buildings around the inner layers of the ComStar made and occupied compound. There were little islands of resistance spread around, but the grounds were controlled by the locals with what seemed like an endless supply of missiles. This caused two things to happen within the Compound. First was that a frantic message was sent to the on-rushing forces not even close to being in orbit. This made the space group rush and change their plans and now they would react to what the locals were doing. Controlling the initiative of battle has been a keystone of warfare going back to Sun Tzu.
The pair of Wasp type mechs, one of them a MMM made machine, were only landing in burnt parts as they each were hit in midair by a few dozen fat missiles. Duke Terry was very happy that the Clint class mech had been transferred off planet and the lighter battlemech had replaced it months ago. Not only was the Clint a heavier mech, but its pilot was well liked by the locals. Not that it would have stopped anyone from firing into that mech, if it had been used in this attack. Even the SRMs that missed the flying mechs still fell into the Compound with armed warheads with telling results.
The heavier but almost as thinly armed Rifleman might now have been packing a pair of KWI autocannons with the 8cm lasers that it had not landed with on this planet with a few years ago. But it still was a Riflemen. Being a heavy mech that might be used by ComStar against the locals, it and its pilot had been closely studied by the locals.
The heavy mech was started to be covered by inferno jell even before it was all the way bashing its way through the outer wall of the compound with its heavy and armored covered legs. When the now burning mech had been fully exposed, after clearing the newest access point to the compound. The mech pilot had gotten off a pair of double shots from the high tech autocannons and the 8cm lasers, that did little but add more to the mech's still building heat issues. With its heat taking a massive spike that overwhelmed the pilot and its very complex control system. The Riflemen had fallen back into the inner buildings of the compound almost as fast as it had tried to exit just two minutes before. It was not out of the current rounds of fighting, but that mech was on its back foot, at least until the flame jell had burned itself out.
The second effect of all of those exploding missiles was that the smoke and flying weapons fire have given a lot of cover when some of the drop ports support staff when they had raced across the battlefield. This group of specialists were augmented by many heavily armed volunteers. More than a few in that group had some mad skills that had been developed over the last few hundred years of living on the edge of the Inner Sphere. A part of this group went about the collecting of any fallen weapons. While the battlefield was being cleaned up and the ComStar personnel were hiding in their buildings or in the combat dropship that could not leave without getting picked off one by one.
A massive number of undirected fired missiles could make even a combat dropship not very happy. The hard outer shell of the combat dropships might protect against flame weapons, after all they had to survive plowing through a planet's atmosphere on landing. But if they opened one of the six bay doors like on the Union. It was very likely that the burning jell or high explosive might slipped through the hard outer shell and get to the cream filling under it. That would make the crews very unhappy or even dead, and then there was the issue of hydrogen used to power the dropship not liking any open flames.
One last surge made by the locals took a supply Mammoth dropship sitting on the outer edge of the ComStar Compound. This dropship had been put so far out there because of the risk of the massive plasma output from the ring of engines that went around the huge dropship to the rest of the compound. The mostly "non-ComStar" crew on the ComStar owned massive dropship did not put up a fight as the dropship was boarded. With a new crew it had lifted off to parts unknown on this part of the planet.
The massive dropship rose on an equally massive plasma fire only a few minutes after the "new" crew boarded it and leaving the smaller Mule and combat Union behind. It just happened that this dropship was one of the key objectives of the mission. Well, that is besides pulling out some of the fangs of the Com Guards and crushing their morale. The original idea had been to take any ComStar cargo dropship that ComStar had taken to almost always keeping there, when the balloon went up. Terry wanted the cargo carrier to help with her move off of this planet and the Mammoth was bigger than the Mule. So, it just happened that they got a bigger fish than she could have ever dreamed of when the planning had been done. Oh, and it was one that also was almost half full of ComStar military cargo when it was taken under new management. Score one for grand theft dropship.
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The attack force coming in from the pirate jump point was on the other side of the planet when the now ex-ComStar owned Dropship was moved. Both groups of ComStar, the ones in space and the one under siege on the ground, were not able to see where the massive dropship landed after they received word of it lifting off. As soon as the massive cargo dropship had landed in its final hiding spot. The dropship's crew was secured and blind folded before being loaded into a cargo hover truck, and they started to be moved around to keep any spies off balance. After a time, they would be taken to a kind of nearby farmstead for "safe keeping" to be released after the shooting had stopped. It also would act as a vailed threat to keep ComStar from doing something….rash after Duke Terry and her friends left to find a new home.
When the drive flare from the huge dropship had faded away the battle went into a new phase. There were dozens of missiles falling into the ComStar compound every few minutes, and it was causing the Demi Precentor that was in charge of this facility to stress out even more. This incoming weapons fire kept all of their heads down as it slowly wrecked the area of the compound. The frantic radio calls from the Demi in charge of the HPG forced the escorting fighters to leave their dropship charges alone while they were still in deep space.
When those fighters made orbit and made it through the atmosphere interface, they reported no enemy mechs or tanks in sights that could be raining that weapons fire on the compound. All the high flying fighters could see were what read like unmanned firing points blind firing into the ComStar compound on their built in TT and S. That did not mean that the ComStar aerospace fighters did not make a few attack runs on those class 10 LRM and class 6 SRM turrets that had been hidden in a triple ring around the ComStar compound.
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When the rest of the invading dropship fleet made land fall, there were not met with weapons fire from any local defensive points. All of Duke Terry's people had left the area around the city that had grown up around the drop port and was the planet's largest city under her watch. When the ComStar compound personnel were finally able to exit the battle-damaged buildings and dropships? They did not find one of the ComStar war machines that had left for the attack. Some thought that it was because of all of the fire they had been taking. But even the two Scorpion class light tanks that had been sitting in a nearby underground garage at the start of the attack were also gone. Those two light tanks could not support the attack due to having some track issues. Well, the issue was that both tanks all were missing their metal and plastic tracks. The security data said that the locals had taken the two trackless tanks while everyone else had been hiding from the incoming missile fire.
This had not made the Com Guards in both the attacking dropships and local base very happy with the locals. Those tanks were to have been turned over to the locals helping ComStar once they were repaired. It did not take long for the new Com Guard forces to start looking for a list of known Duke supporters and other high value personnel. When the invading ground forces made it to the first support depot that they were told to take from Duke Terry's forces? The force of Com Guards had found that it was empty. Well, it was almost empty.
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Adept Tito was the head of this and only Light of Mankind unit that had been assigned to this mission. His ride for this mission was a prototype APC that was being tested by only the most highly trained unit…like this one. It had started life, in 2725, as a hover jump tank for the SLDF and assigned to a non-Royal unit. Sometime after the SLDF had left on their little Exodus, something had happened to the odd "little" machine.
The tank had been down checked when it had been brought out of the mothball yards to help get the Com Guards ready to take over security of the HPG stations around the Inner sphere. It had not been the only Kanga to receive that down check, not by a long shot. A few of those old SLDF tanks had only been good enough to just be reduced to spare parts for supporting the maintenance of other tanks. That had left more than a few old hulls just laying around collecting dust and taking up space, at least until someone came up with an idea on how to get some use out of them. ComStar was not the old SLDF and so nothing was just thrown out with the bathwater.
Right off the bat, repair teams swarmed over the jump tanks. The jump tanks had first lost the high-tech computer that made up the core of the ability to jump and not just hop around the battlefield like a metal kangaroo. On this tank, the AL2200 had been broken down at the processer level due to old age and the odd cosmic rays breaking something deep within the device. So, it had been replaced with a system that could be supported by Terra in the post 4th SW era. Then the jump jets had also been removed, even when it was found that they could be repaired with enough tech time invested into the job.
On this tank, the Lonworth Type V autocannon along with its ammunition and feed system had been stripped out of the tank for an unlisted reason in the logbook. All of that now freed up mass was used to support an elite unit outfitted with some of the best protection that ROM could beg, borrow, build, or steal to put together. This oversized Special Forces team was outfitted with some of what had now been called Inner Sphere standard battle armor for the last year. All of the people wearing those armored suits felt that as long as they didn't run into any Clan Elementals, then they would rule the coming battle thanks to that high tech armor. But that battle armor was not going to be that helpful today. It was just too bad that the wearers didn't know this when they first woke up this morning abord their assigned dropships.
As the very heavily modified Kanga tank crashed through the hard gate of what was the main base to support the local militia, it was traveling at just under 130KPH. 50 tons of metal and men moving at over 125KPH had a lot of Kinetic energy when it made impact on the dual use fence that marked the outer edge of the base. The fences had not slowed the super heavy APC down by more than ten KPH, but soon the hover craft made up that speed as the driver of the craft lined up on the real target.
The hover craft's commander fired first the small five tube LRM rack, and then the generic four pack SRM was fired as they "gate crashed" the main part of this base. There were a few visible rock, dirt, and smoke fountains made by explosions as the hovercraft made its way to the main access point of the base made by the locals. Local intelligence reports had said that the massive mech sized doors were not made from real battle steel or even mid-grade BAR rated metal. Instead, they were made of just a thin skin of aluminum artfully painted to look like weathered battle steel. That skin was just thick enough to keep the wind, sun, and rain out of the mech housing and repair areas for this part of the base. This was viewed as the local leaders being cheap by the ROM Intelligence team and not unexpected in this part of the Inner Sphere.
The massive and fast Com Guard APC made out of an old tank hull, did not even slow down when it "breached" the main door of the mech hangar. The Light of Mankind unit had only deployed the first four of their battle armored personnel out of the back of the APC, when the world dropped on them like an angry god. While the ground attack was going into the now stripped Mech lance support base, which the location had been leaked to ComStar. A single hover car exited out the back of the small base and it went flying upriver unseen by the ComStar attack force. As soon as the evacuation sedan had reached a certain distance from the base, a surprise package was sent the final arming codes from the person riding in the passenger seat.
The "surprise package" was equal to twenty reloads for an SRM 6, and all were set to detonate at once. The resulting blast from that ordnance took the building made of a few tons of scrap battle armor plate that had only been put in place as a trap. The few tons of scrap mech armor had been added in the hope that the scrap would augment to the fragmentation effect into the local area after the building being….. reduced.
The only reason that any of the special APC was able to get any of its payload into the building, was because they were an elite unit before the building came down around their ears. The force of the blast ripped the converted Kanga jump tank in half, all in less than a blink of an eye. The "crack" started just in front of the top mounted LRM launcher, and it had quickly made its way down to the lifting skirt. The "APC had stopped just below the bomb without noticing anything was wrong. The bottom of the blast wave was almost as bad as the sides or top. It was a physics type thing.
The crew of the modified jump tank only lived maybe a half of a heartbeat longer than the team in Battle armor that still was working on exiting this craft threw the open armored hatches. Bits of now flying parts of the tank and battle armor did more damage to the follow-on forces than the "light" metal that had been added to the outer walls of the building. The blast wave damaged the two following "normal" heavy hover APCs by flipping them over and pushing them back a few dozen meters…on average. The three battlemechs (two mediums and one heavy) were blasted clean off of their metal feet and onto their backs by just the sheer force of the shockwave. About twice as much damage was done to the front of these three mechs as was done to the back by the fall to the very thin back armor. This one explosion stopped anymore attacks being launched by the "Com Guards" forces for almost an hour. That was an hour that was well used by the locals, before ComStar started up again to find what else was waiting for them that the locals had set up.
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When ComStar combat units did start back up in the plan to put the planet under new management? The attacking Com Guards found each of their assigned target locations empty, but for more large bombs left behind to greet the invaders. All of those bombs were able to do their primary job, if not their secondary tasks. The primary missions of those bombs were to deny the infrastructure Duke Terry had worked so hard to have built from falling into these invader's hands. If they could have taken out a few more ComStar warriors or fighting equipment at the same time as denying these local assets to them? Well, that would have been great. But that did not happen after the first surprise that was sprung on the attacking forces
The investigating units attached to the Com Guards did report that all of the locations were empty or mostly empty of anything that seemed valuable to the highly trained unit assigned to those missions. Even Duke Terry's headquarters and home was found to be in this barren state when a team made it passed all of the booby traps that had been left behind by the locals. Well, that is except for a few insults that had been spray painted on many of the interior walls before the building became a fountain of debris and a good-sized hole in the ground. The team doing this work had been smart enough to know when it was time to pull back, and the specialized Com Guards personnel had just made it to the outer wall when a time delayed bomb went into unfriendly mode. The one thing that was also missing from all of these actions, were all of the defenders the attacking Com Guards were expecting to fight in this phase of the battle.
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As night fell on this part of the planet. ComStar took over the capital of the planet, for value of control. The prototype CV Triumph class dropship had landed outside the ComStar compound, but all of her assigned aerospace fighters took over the space port as their new base of operations. The only time, after the ambush of the combat unit assigned to the ComStar Compound, which had any "real" combat was now. It happened when a Com Guards patrol "bumped" into a small group of local defenders well outside of the city.
By now the Com Guards commander assumed that the locals were planning on trying to drag out a guerrilla type war and try bleeding ComStar until they gave up and left this planet. It was not a bad plan for a defender to take, at least when you were both outnumbered and out teched by an attacker like the units used by the Com Guards. Still, that was not rated as going to happen on this planet for at least the next hundred years. ROM had deep plans for this planet, at least once most of the defenders had been run to ground. Then the education camps could be put fully into operation to feed the local population threw to strengthen ComStar's footing on this planet.
The ComStar commanders were right, at least about one part of what they were thinking the locals were doing. The locals were playing for time, but not in the way that ComStar was thinking that they were doing. Duke Terry had ordered "her" people to hide, and they were only to defend themselves or one of the hiding sites that had been planned and supplied over the last few months without direct orders. The one conflict had been outside of this pattern, had been on what Terry knew was a lightweight Level II made of a mix of mechs and tanks.
The Com Guard Level II had been met with a medium lance that had been able to lay a textbook ambush on the invaders. Only the two very fast Gabriel hover scout tanks and an even luckier Thorn light mech were able to get out of that ambush. The pilot of the light mech had made it back to the ComStar compound fully exposed to the world after her cockpit had been blasted from around her, but somehow the enemy weapons fire had not killed her.
It was around dawn local time the next day that ROM agents had found out that the local Duke was planning on leaving this planet and never coming back. No one knew where she had planned on going after she left this planet. All she had told her people was that she was only going to take them someplace that they would never see explored space again. It was reported that Duke Terry had told that if they could not handle that? Then they should not plan on going with her, and they should not be connected to her from that moment forward. Duke Terry and her command group would not hold it against them, but she didn't want to risk any of the people that wanted to leave. This information was not found to be creditable by the military and compound leader of ComStar. Not even after it came up half a dozen times from different HVT groups found hiding in bunkers under their homes.
Before ROM agents and the gunslingers that they brought with them could act one way or the other on this possible turn of events. The jumpship at the pirate point radio down that a "new" jumpship was coming into this system. That was not expected, and ROM was not tracking that any jumpship was due into this star system for the next week at the earliest. With this system's primary and only traffic control station now a smoking crater, there was no way to double check the data the ComStar, ROM, and the Com Guards held. That was something that had not been planned for, and it would take some time for a replacement. Now a Traffic Control set up could be slapped together out of whatever was handy. Oh, and then the control team needed for the Traffic Control office had to be trained to do a very complicated job. So far none of the locals with said training had been recovered by ComStar.
This new and unexpected arrival was not taken as good news, and the Alert fighters were launched from the drop port. About the only thing this alert force knew, was that this interloper was large, jumping far, and carrying a good sized payload. It was that, or it was a medium sized warship. There were no defenders at the ComStar's jumpships location. Why should there be? It should have been safe from any attack launched from the primary threat location for this operation, the planet. That might have been a slight oversite on the part of the Com Guard commander and of the staff that had worked on this battle plan.
Everyone was on alert when the new craft finally popped into "real" space at a pirate point that no one but ComStar should have known about. It would take a few minutes before any new information comes to this planet after that arrival, that damn speed of light limitation. It was something that you had to work with… or that was what those within ComStar thought. Only the locals didn't have to play with that particular rule of the game. The plan was for the ComStar Jumpship to warn the new arrivals that the locals were having a very bad flu outbreak, and that they were not to land or be at risk of spreading this virus to other planets around the Inner Sphere. The only way that the ComStar compound would know how that was taken by the newcomers, was after the talking was done between the two jumpships.
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"BLAKES BLOOD!"
At the shout Precentor Malcom's head shot up and over towards the sounds of the blasphemy being spoken within his command post. That type of language that might be okay in the barracks or bar, but never while on duty serving Blake's will. Before he could work out who to berate, the voice came back in a more normal tone.
"Sir! The Blake's Travels just reported that they are under attack by fighters!" The tone of the voice was full of disbelief.
It was one of the unbreakable rules of the Inner Sphere, that you never attack jumpships. The only ones that had broken that rule in the last two hundred years, without being cast as the lowest of the low pirates, had been the clans. It was even a chancy bit of action to take over a jumpship with a boarding action and not firing mech scale weapons into the almost priceless jumpships.
Malcom heard himself say the same blasphemy, that he had been about to berate one of his staff for using while making Blake's Will physical in this fallen universe. It had been a rule of war for over two hundred years that you did not attack jumpships. Precentor Malcom needed more information, before he could really do anything. "Confirm that report! And find out if they are clanners!"
It took only thirty seconds for more information to come pouring into the command center, that was way shorter than it would have taken if it had been a reply to his message. "Sir! The Travel reports that a Star Lord class jumpship without IFF has jumped into the system. They then launched two larger dropships, one light carrier and a wave of fighters. Six fighters made a single pass and fired into her before breaking off. The bridge is holed, and the attackers have blown her main helium tanks seals for her jump drive. But she can still hold air outside of the bridge and main drive tunnel! They report ready to repel any boarders."
The new leader of the ComStar controlled planet let out a shallow breath, and his mind started to catch up. He had sacked the local leader of his military roles after the report about the early start of the ground battle and had taken over as the overall commander for all of ComStar operations within this star system. "Barbarians! Launch our own fighters. Have them intercept those dropships and blow them out of the skies! This planet is ours!"
Precentor Malcom took a few steps over to the Demi in charge of the ground forces under him and he spoke in a volume that would not spread too far. After all he didn't want to shake the morale for the rest of the people in this room. "Then they can take out the intruders on that jumpship. IF they want to fire into a jumpship? Then we will return the favor tenfold. Alert all ground forces that they are now limited to defending "the compound", drop port, and then the city for now." With the orders given, Precentor Malcom returned his gaze to the main displays around the room.
#######
That was a smart move to make, and it was the safest move. The Com Guard commander did not want to get his fighter forces caught on the ground by a surprise ground attack. He also was not going to let the newly arrived enemy aerospace fighters get a free shot at his grounded fighters. But there was a reason that when all of the other commanders had been sent to fight the Clans, that he had been left behind. Precentor Malcom was book trained, and that was about as far as higher command wanted him to get. Malcom had been to all of the right military schools, he had all of the right political contacts, and he was loyal….to ROM. If he had been any good? Then others would have known, and he would have been noted as missing on Tukayyid and some very pointed questions would have been asked about his current location.
One of the things that Precentor Malcom should have remembered, was that the locals had aerospace fighters. And they had not been taken at the space port or had enough of them been reported as being damaged at the known runways his forces had already investigated with laser fire and high explosives. He also should have thought about, what if the locals and the new arrivals were in communication with each other. Both of these things had totally slipped his mind. Okay, he never even thought about that they would be able to coordinate as a possibility.
The alert part of the aerospace Level II was already in the air by now, but the rest of the dozen aerospace fighters were still on the ground. The two aerospace level IIs were a mix of heavier designs like the Rapier, Hammerheads, and they even had a pair of 100 ton Ahabs to give them a solid hammer. Before the ComStar aerospace fighters could launch their attack, the enemy played one of their trump cards.
The locals launched their won counterattack from the air, to support the arrival of the reinforcements. This counterattack was led by the pair of Vulcan class fighters, and between the heavy load of bombs and the weapons provided by the pair of 80ton fighters escorted by another four lighter fighters. With some help from a few locals on the ground doing the spotting, and knowing when the other jumpship arrived in system, the counterattack was devastating to the Com Guard aerospace unit. All most a dozen enemy fighters were blasted before they could take off, and some of those ex SLDF fighters ended up in two different pieces. The rest of the grounded Ex SLDF aerospace fighters "just" had a wing blasted off. The ComStar fighters base at the space port went from two full level IIs to just three working fighters in the span of a few minutes.
Those remaining three died under the guns of space craft that had also started life as SLDF machines, but by now they were so much more than that. The old Rapier RPR-100's used by the Com Guards only had been fitted with updated heat management systems and the weapons had been "only' age of war level technology. Still the three 85ton fighters would need a lot of killing, but they had died under the guns of the SLiE modified space craft. They had fought and even when recovered from the wrecks the three Com Guard pilots had been found dead of self-inflicted wounds.
When reports came into the acting military command center set up within the damaged ComStar compound about the attack on the space port. A pair of Tridents that had been launched from one of the three Unions were diverted to chase the local defenders. The six local fighters were flying at tree top level away from the area of their attack on the space port. In theory, this had left only four Com Guard fighters to attack the six "pirate" fighters left on the Union class dropships. The commander did not think that any local units could have weapons tech that matched what the Com Guards could bring to the battle, along with all the training they required to use something like aerospace fighters effectively.
Something like that happening was just too far outside of his frame of reference or from what had been said in every briefing that Precentor Malcom could remember. The hyper swift Tridents were ordered to follow the low flying fighters at a safe distance. The key mission for that pair of light ex SLDF fighters was to find the locals hidden base, and not just shoot the barbarians out of the air at first sighting.
The two old SLDF designed light fighters did so, right until they ran into a flak trap that the locals had set up for them. It was focused around a Jagermech class battlemech that had been refitted with twin high rate of fire cannons, and it was supported by a metric crap ton of towed LRM launchers from defensive points that had already been packed up from other parts of the planet. The lightly armored Tridents came apart not long before the last three members of the two Level IIs was taken apart by clan grade weapons or better grade weapons at extended range in space.
#######
With the air space now "safe" the modified IFFs and deception mode ECM supplied by the rebel Cylons were turned off of the newly arriving dropships. And soon a Lee class dropship landed along with a converted cargo/passenger Mammoth class dropship that was called Lyssa's Little Sister. The landing area chosen for these two huge dropships were not in the city or even that close to the small dropship port near the ComStar Compound. That last location had been the plan, at first, but with the amount of firepower that had been planned to be used by ComStar. A new location had to be found very quickly. Well, that is why you always had a Plan C that you and your staff had worked out in more detail than just at the hope and dream level of planning.
Duke Terry had pulled all of her people, or more to the point, all of her people that were willing to live under the conditions put out about leaving with her. That did not mean that the reinforcements were going to leave empty handed. Besides the locals had their own passenger liner, and the Mammoth they captured half full of ComStar property.
When the Lee class dropship that had been found way out in the Shaky system massive doors opened for the first time on this planet. The first of forty mechs that had walked out of that massive mech carrier had never been seen in this part of space in living memory. The first mechs had rushed out of the Lee like a wave of angry metal giant bears with both bad cases of hemorrhoids and a few toothaches. A unit from the 205th independent Royal Assault Brigade, the newest Battlemech BDE in Clan Wolverine, attacked the ComStar units invading this world with gusto.
The 205th might have been the newest unit, but it was outfitted with the oldest machines that the SLDF had in operation. They currently fielded a mix of updated SLDF Royal and early Clan Golden age looking designs, but they were modified with the newest generation of LR PPCs and clan tech weapons when they were available to be refitted or for the replacing of broken weapons. It had been first formed around the two dozen mechs that had also been found in what was now known as the Shaky star system. They had started with a Falcon Hawk, a Night Hawk, a Talon, two Dragon Fires, a Maelstrom, two Devastators, a Lynx, a Cestus, an Excalibur, three Shootists, two Spartans, two Emperors, a Night Star, a Pillager, a Rifleman II, two Shoguns and a very rare Annihilator classes of battlemech. It was a very powerful core to be able to start building around for the SLDF. That is if you were fighting anything but front line clan omnimechs, than you would most definitely be on the short in of the stick.
As new pilots were very slowly moved into this growing combat command, they were allowed to draw eighteen old machines from the cache site. The mechs they were able to draw to keep up with the rebuilding of a unit that had not been in service since the exodus run from Clan space were limited to only Mercury IIs, Rifleman IIs, Crabs, and Black Knights classes of battlemech. Those had been the cleared designs that could be added to the units' active roles without needing special permission from higher in the food chain.
The two-ground base LVL IIIs were out fought and out teched whenever the two groups ran into each other on the small battlefields on a quarter of the planet's land mass. Even the local ground-based defenders were able to push the SLDF militia level machines used by the attacking Com Guards off of the planet's main drop port without direct support provided by Duke Terry's friends. Then the two groups of defenders joined forces, and then worked on clearing the ComStar landing area of hostile forces. Only when all of the Com Guard units were pushed all the way back to the main buildings of the ComStar area. The locals and the reinforcements didn't do this without taking more than a few losses. But with the losses of the Light of Mankind? The rest of the Com Guard unit was not as well trained as they had thought before landing on this planet. That didn't mean that the Com Guards would go down without doing a lot of damage to both the local militia and their allies.
#######
Duke Terry was in her alternate command center that had started life as a gold mine. That mine had originally been owned by a family that had left the planet before Duke Terry had come to power. This Command Center had been set up not long after she had found out that someone high up within ComStar wanted her out of the way and for someone else to rule this planet for them. Still, it was more of a cave than a "command" center. But it would do the job that needed to be done in the short term, and it only needed to last for a month or less. Duke Terry was looking at a map that had a lot more of the red markers to show the location of enemy forces on it than it had blue or green markers to show friend and ally. Then her eyes were drawn to a figure coming into this room from out of the main tunnel system.
Major Austin Hennesy was looking around as he walked down an old mining tunnel into a mined-out gallery that held a slight smell of stale water. He had no idea how long ago that it had been cut into the mountain, but it could have been last year or over a century ago. Austin had been told that, he was being escorted to a cave that the local ground commander was using as a command post. When Austin had parked his Black Knight next to what looked like any of a dozen other cave openings that he had seen on his way over to this ridge line? He had not been that impressed with what he was seeing. Then he had been very surprised as he had cleared the tunnel and entered into this mine gallery and not a cave that had been formed by nature. That was the only way that something this massive could have been made, was only by the hand of man. Austin thought that you could have fit a Lee class dropship in this one room deep under the mountains with more than a little room to spare.
Austin could feel cold air rushing past his legs as he stood in the open tunnel entrance to the huge open space. This was his only hint that this "cave" went a lot deeper into the crust of the planet than he could see from this current point of view. He had been studying all of the reports that had been coming out about this planet for some time, and anything else that had to do with its leader or its military. It had been a fascinating story. Austin had really hit the books again when he had found out that his unit was the back up or the big stick to pull any "loyal" people off of this rock. There is a big difference between studying for fun, and when your life or those under your command might depend on what you might learn for what you remember from those studies.
When the Major had fully entered into what looked to be the lowest tech command center that he had ever seen, at least outside of a history drama. It made the Colonial's command center on the battlestars look cutting edge. At least in comparison to what even the Colonials used, to the CRTs that were spread around the huge room. Austin only stopped scanning the room when he noticed a very "regal" woman was looking right at him. She was standing near a huge line of monitors manned by people that looked way too young to be doing anything with battle management or command and control for a planet and star system.
#######
Terry was looking right at the man that should have been in mech shorts but instead he was sporting what she knew was a full body SLDF coolant suit and a light jacket. A jacket that held a rank badge that she had only seen in books in her studies about the old Star League. She gave him a little nod of her head when he returned her eye contact, and then he had walked quickly to stand by one of the main maps to her right.
Terry tilted her head to one side and looked at the man's face. "Major, thank you for getting here so quickly. Your unit has already made short work of a Level II of mechs that were pushing my people hard."
Duke Terry had an idea of what Robert's people might bring to this fight, but she had not thought about the people that might be trained to use them. She had been "trained" to believe that the Com Guards would be the best trained combat units in the Inner Sphere. With them having access to Terra, they should be even better than the Wolf's Dragoons. After all they had access to the same training as the SLDF had before the fall. She now knew that either the old stories about the skill of the SLDF had been inflated, or the current training of the Com Guards was lacking.
Major Austin Hennesy felt his back get straighter by a few millimeters, and he felt that his heals were wanting to come together. This involuntary action had forced him into the position of attention. It took some effort not to do something like this for a person that was not in the SLiE, much less the SLDF. "Yes, Ma'am. It was just luck and good training on both your people's part to get us into a good position to do our jobs. After that? Then it was just up to my team to show ComStar that they do not have the badest mechs in this part of space anymore. What do we have to look out for while your people load up?" The last part of his statement was the main reason that he was here in the first place, so Austin thought it was best to cut to the chase.
Terry gave a sly little smile to the reinforcement's commander. She was not going to tell him all of the details. Terry had gotten used to keeping a lot of things close to her chest for way too long. One detail she was holding back, was that she was not ready to leave the planet jest yet. Duke Terry wanted to punch ComStar in the family jewels as hard as she could one more time, before she left this planet. She was expecting that this would be the last time she would be able to do something like that for the rest of her life. So why not take that last shot at the ComStar's jimmy.
"My people took out the assigned ComStar Garrison's heavy units, and we even were able to clean up everything before this new unit arrived to make us run for the tree line. They landed a Level II or company in each of the Unions class dropships. The Lion had two Level II's of light tanks and a Level II of mechs. They might be hiding another two mechs in that Lion, but we think they just might have been running a little light for a Star League variant. We don't have a read on the Condor, but the Mule had three Level IIs of infantry and two levels II's of heavier tanks were seen rolling out of those massive cargo doors. The Union at the compound is still an unknown. The odd carrier let them field two level II's of aero fighters, which have already been taken care of. We think that they only might have four more aerospace fighters split up between two of the Unions."
Austin felt his eyebrows climb high up his forehead. "That is two full level III's and part of another one. You have some people that do not like you very much Duke Terry. We need to get out of here before they drop anymore on you and us."
Austin was thinking that if someone had used this much combat force already, that when they did find out about their defeats? Then they might just use some bigger hammers to get the job done, hammers that might be in the form of a warship or a few cans of instant sunshine. The SLiE didn't have anything to call in that could counter any moves like those very quickly. The use of a Lee class dropship full of mechs was more as a training exercise and to keep rust from forming on a still "young" unit. Two birds, one stone.
Duke Terry still had that little knowing smile that she had come to be very well known for using in times like these. "No, Major!" her tone was light, but it was fragile.
Terry took a few seconds and then pointed to a display off to her right. "It was three full Level IIIs that they had planned on using on my people or as they called it half a Level IV. I think that ComStar and their Com Guards were expecting some help from people that they thought were always on their side of this little conflict. Your people and my people took out all of the air support, except if they try to use their dropships in an air attack. You took out that light/medium Level II that was trailing my people and could have been an issue if they found one of my militia hiding spots. My people took out a dozen light vehicles and Mechs, and what we think was one and most of a second Level II of combat or security trained infantry by now. We think that we hit a few other units, but that did not take them off the battlefield as effective combat units. Well, off the battlefield until they can get some repairs done to them."
Major Hennesy was taking all of this in, and one part of his mind did not like that the woman had pointed out to different areas that the ComStar might have active units. Austin had thought that he had a good idea how much and what tech level of equipment that the Duke might have. That is until she had said that she might have taken some of the Com Guards level equipment from them by hook or by crook. That was something that had not been planned on, and about then Austin gave himself a mental kick. Copeland had said that Duke Terry was an out of the box kind of thinker in over a dozen reports with his by line on the header.
Then again, even then. The local militia had been outnumbered and out gunned, but somehow, they had not folded under the pressure they had been put under by the Com Guards. That was not something that many units could say was possible. Her people had even taken out the local defenders, took almost all of their equipment, and they had not just turned their coats and joined ComStar. Oh, and at the same time the local forces had captured one of the largest class of dropships that the Inner Sphere had ever made. That was sooo not bad for a militia unit to claim. Frakk even a front line unit would have trouble pulling some of those things off against someone like ComStar or House Lords much less a militia out on the edge of space.
"That was impressive Duke Terry. But we are still outnumbered, and I have orders to get your people off this planet as fast as we can." Major Hennesy was already feeling where this Duke was going with her planning, and more than a little part of him wanted to keep his guns blazing. "But I take it that you have a plan?" He was really hoping that she had a plan.
Terry still had a sly smile on her face that got just a little too wide before she could hide it. "Do you know what they pulled out of this mine? That is after the main veins of ores were mined out under the original owners?"
Austin made an odd face that was one of pure confusion, if you knew him. "No, and why is that important?"
Terry turned slightly to make it look like she was looking around the huge underground space. "It was used to pull out the harder to find items to make our Fuel Cell engines."
She did a throwing away jester. "It was a well-kept secret, but not that well-kept that we had to move it after the last attack. I had made sure that funds were diverted to make sure that it could grow in size over the last few years. It is well hidden but, some key leaders know the new location in case things went sideways on me. I think one of ComStar's key ideas is that they would want to take it under new management. A little birdy told me that they were going to take it and our other factories for only them to use. That same birdy told them that four of my mechs and a few gun trucks were at the location for that Fuel Cell factory at any one time. After what you just did to them? They will need a win on their side of the marker board. We will have the high ground, and after the last time they went after it. I made sure that they had plenty of very heavy weapons and my people would know how to use them."
Major Hennesy smiled and looked over to the large map. To know what the enemy was going after was a major golden nugget for the defenders. "That sounds like a plan. Now where do you think you might need us?" The major didn't say more for a few seconds as he looked at the data. It only took him a few seconds to see something. "Oh, and if we can break them with this attack? Then we can push them all the way back to their compound."
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Precentor Malcom let out a string of curses directed at Anastasius Focht. The Precentor was not going to ever use the title of Precentor Martial for that man, not now, and not ever again. At least not after he had tried to get more or better updated combat systems for his unit. That man had been damnably efficient in blocking any other units from staying out here, but the ones that he was planning on using for this little plan of ROM's.
It was not well known by many, but Anastasius Focht had even been keeping an eye on and blocking ROM from diverting anything he could that was related to updated weapons that had started as soon as the reports had come in that the Clans were back. Malcom had no idea how Focht had been able to do it, but he had not received one weapon, or second generation heatsink that had not been scheduled to be delivered to his base before January 3052. His unit had been so short of supplies that they had to buy spare parts from MMM out of his general budget to get his bodyguard King Crab ready for this mission. That was just something that a Com Guard unit like his should not have to do. It was offensive on so many levels that even the Precentor could not count them.
The only thing that had worked out for Precentor Malcom, was that the unit was formed on Hellesport to protect the growing Explorer Corps and other ComStar facilities in that area. Where Focht had to use older mechs to fill out his combat units. His unit had been formed with "real" SLDF mechs pulled from old SLDF cache sites hidden in that part of space. Not that anyone in this part of the galaxy knew this little fact. Those local area groups would just call the mechs and tanks filling his units as "lost" designs, if they lived long enough after they saw them at all.
But those facts were not the only reason that Precentor Malcom was upset about this current situation. This attack had not gone anyway like it had been planned for. It was hard for him to accept, but he knows that this local Leader had been at least two steps ahead of him at every turn. Then there had been those two large dropships that landed and what had been a third that was still somewhere out in the dark of space. One of those dropships had been a Lee class vessel, a class of dropship that even Precentor Malcom had to do some data mining to find out what in Blake's Blood it might be. Still all Malcom and his staff could find out in the few databases they had access to, was that the Lee class of dropship was kind of an Overlord class dropship just updated…somehow.
Whatever had been on that updated Overlord had killed the LvL II light that had been nearest to the landing sight. Then he had lost contact with two medium/heavy Lvl II sent to take over a fuel cell engine factory. Between those losses and what had been lost already, all had forced Precentor Malcom to bring his command LVL II out to block the rallying attackers. This LVL II was both his command unit, and it was filled with two upper end assaults and four high end heavies. That mass of metal just made it better to do the blocking of an enemy push. He was sure that after this part of the battle was over, then his BattleMaster could help turn the battle back into ComStar's favor. That he could be able to turn the tide of this battle was taken as a given, like a star burning bright, and Blake was a saint.
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Major Hennesy was using his second generation active probe to scan the areas around where his mech was moving. The amount of data that was flowing into his updated Black Knight should have overwhelmed him, but the Major's mech was a command mech. And the SLDF, much less the SLiE, knew how to do data management while a commander was on the battlefield and riding in his "command mech". Then there were the reports that the locals were very happy to pass along to the backup planetary command center, and that data was passed to him faster than he had thought possible. That fresh data was why one Austin Hennesy was taking his command lance to deal with this roadblock. They need to take out this reinforced assault lance, which also was reported to hold the commander for this whole invasion force. If they could take them out? Then the whole battle front should fold up and then the Com Guards would have to regroup further away from the assets that the SLiE and Duke Terry were working on pulling out. Well, then there was a reason that this was called a head-hunting attack.
The major could have taken his whole company to do this one mission. It was made up of two updated Black Knights, a Shooties, Riflemen II, two Crabs, Spartan, Lynx, and a long-lost Dragon Fire class battlemech. The scouting lance was centered on a core made of a Falcon Hawk and two 40ton Mercury IIs. For this attack? Austin would have his Black Knight, with a bodyguard running her 70ton Shootist, a very rare Dragon fire and the scouting mission was done for the unit provided by a 55ton Lynx. That is if thanking that you can call a high end medium, a scout mech. The rest of the mechs in the Major's command company were needed to deal with the other outlying ComStar units that were hunting the locals.
Austin looked at the latest data push covering the whole battle space, and he signaled the lance to slow down and opened a radio channel. "Okay, these people know and are currently fighting against the clans. They also have been working closely with those….people for at least a few years. What does that mean in English? All of our weapons are now cleared for Clan tech outputs, if your mech has them then frakking use them like they were designed."
The Major waited until the rest of his lance reported back understanding the orders that had just been given. With a few flips of buttons on a special MFD, a burst radio message would be sent to the Lee. And from there, to all of the combat forces under his command will be confirmed to be cleared to use Clan level weapons tech. This was just something that Regulations required to be gone over after someone forgot about that the software limiter had been removed while in battle.
The 205th BDE as a whole only had a few clan or better grade weapons spread out between all of them that had deployed to help Duke Terry. They did have all of the H class and other types of ER PPCs replaced with other weapons that were a lot better. At first, they were thought to use only IER PPCs that dated back to when the Wolverines had first left clan space. That had not worked out so well, and soon LR PPCs were fitted in place of the less powerful weapons. That was not the only weapon change the 205th had undergone. Weapons like the Newhart first generation extended range 8cm lasers were in the middle of being replaced with clan grade 8cm pulse lasers or clan grade super charged 8cm lasers. Other than that, most of the weapons were the same ones used by Royal units in the time of the old SLDF.
Austin was brought back to the real world after waiting from the confirmation codes to be sent from the Lee. After the paperwork was done, then he could get back to taking out this roadblock for this mission. "Okay, I want everyone to look out for that King Crab. It looks to be a 000, so I would bet that it's the bodyguard for the Battlemaster that is sitting over there. No matter what, we need to take down that Battlemaster. I just don't want anyone to get to close to that Frakking KGC. Now let's go." He had to step on the query affirmative that had threaten to slip out of his lips.
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Precentor Malcom was a little taken a backed by the sudden appearance of an enemy mech lance coming over the ridge. The data being pumped into the second seat of this mech, which was his command couch, quickly showed icons. Malcom knew what some of these battlemechs were on that screen. Black Knights were well known to the Com Guards, there even were three of them in his unit when they had landed. The Shootist was a rare type of mech, but he had read a few reports where they were used in some of the better Com Guard units as bodyguards.
The first mech to cross that stony ridge had been a mech unknown to the Precentor, but his battlecomp knew it. He had no idea where a rare Blue Shot Weapons made Lynx had been found by these people, but they had one of them in mint level working order. The other surprise had made him glad that he was not needed to control the movement of this mech. Even his command systems on this command grade Battlemaster had not known what the 75ton mech was. After long seconds the battlecomp was just marked it as a heavily modified Marauder and passed the data to the nearest mechs to the Battlemaster. The Precentor's mind was already bending to only one group that would have mechs like this, at least outside of key groups on Terra, and that was not good. But it did match with them shooting into a jumpship.
When the fast Champion and Lancelot tried to get a better look at the strange mechs. The enemy Lynx fired off the weapon in its' right arm, and the impact ripped off all of the armor of the heavier mech's left leg in one shot of purple lightening. There was only one energy weapon in known space that could do that, and it sealed the name that had been floating in the mind of Precentor Malcom like steel rivets in a support beam.
A young voice came through the speakers of the other five ComStar Mechs. "That was a clan grade PPC! These are Clanners!"
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With the word that Clan mechs was released onto the battlefield, even if they were what those gene freaks called garrison mechs. The ComStar Lvl II let their training kick in, because the SLiE Major was right. This ComStar unit had spent months and months training to fight against Clan units. Some of that training was even useful if they did fight a clan unit.
The Champion and Lancelot tried to pull back using their longest ranged weapons in the forms of Kinslaughter PPCs, Krupp Models 32's, and Lubalin autocannons as suppressive fires. The Champion was slower than the heavier Lancelot and the first enemy shot had done some internal damage to the leg that slowed it down even more. Then a clan grade 8cm pulse laser fitted in place of an old Blankenburge long shooter 8cm laser, hit the leg without any armor on the Champion.
The now one legged Com Guard mech did not fall down, well at least it didn't fall down until it put a class 10 autocannon solid slug into what the pilot thought was the enemy's body guard mech. Then it did fall over onto its rounded back, you know the little things like recoil from a 120mm high velocity weapon on an unstable platform. The mass of high tech metal rocked from side to side on the ground a few times until the pilot shut down the engine to keep it from blowing up under his….feet. That kind of thing tends to happen to pilots of mechs, even to Com Guard trained mechwarriors. Especially when something the size of say a Black Knight class mech taps your cockpit with its right arm mounted energy weapon. The soft purple glow of that energy weapon made the pilot's SLDF grade cooling suit a little warmer, especially down the legs.
The Com Guard Lancelot was falling back to the rest of his unit as fast as it could, it was not even really trying to hit anything with is PPC fire or the odd shot coming from one of the mechs two Fur Burners Krupp model 32 8cm class lasers. It was just wanting to get back under the fire support of the rest of his Lvl II. Still, he had not slowed down when the first set of LRMs came from the Bombardier behind him. The artillery mech and the Flashman had formed up to the front of the invasion commander and his bodyguard. This was called a fighting pair in the updated Training manual sent out to many of the Com Guard units far from Holy Terra.
It was a good formation when you think about the training this unit of Com Guards had been given for the last many months. Even if they were outnumbered on the battlefield? They would have the tech and the mass of metal to carry the types of battle they had been expected to find. Someone not connected to the military had thought of it. But they had forgotten the clans do not like it when you double team them.
So, the Com Guard LVL II was broken into two 2mech teams, but that had left tail end charley to fall in wherever the mech jock found a place. It was three vs four but the three ComStar Mechs could get support from the arm mounted PPC on the commanders mech behind them. It just didn't have the range from his current location. Besides the enemy mechs would have to come to them to get threw them to reach that command mech. It should have worked, and it would have worked against the normal units that the House Lords or Mercenaries would have brought to the field. This was a perfect example of book learning verses real combat experience against a specific threat. It's like having a lawyer try to write a history book.
The twin Delphinius twenties on the Bombardier drew the attention of the slightly downgraded LR PPC on the Black Knight. This was as well as the old Zeus Slingshot Gauss cannon on what had been fitted onto one of the earliest prototypes of the Dragon Fire class battlemech. The SLiE mechs were rolling back the defensive fire, and they were using their range advantage ruthlessly against the Com Guard mechs. Oh, and they were not fighting by Clan rules of one on one combat. This was war, not a game.
The Bombardier pilot was farming his damage by firing one double set of LRMs at one of the mechs and then moving to the next one in line to fire his missile racks at. She was hoping that this action would improve her chances of finding a weak point in any of the attacker's armor. Really all that it did, was prove that each of these mechs was fitted with at least one antimissiles system. A system that was both more efficient at taking down enemy missiles as well as somehow being energy based. The downside for the Com Guard trained pilot, was that she could only do this double shooting a total of six times before the small ammo bays on the 65ton mech ran dry. That would leave the mech with only AMS and Arrowlite-4 SRM Launchers to defend itself. Many within the Inner Sphere would have called that an under armed light mech.
What happened next happened, at the same time, as it tended to happen when you were on a battlefield as close as this one was. The twin LRMs launched the last long ranged missiles that the mech had at the Shootist. In reply, the Dragon Fire switched from cluster round for a solid shot, and it aimed low on the artillery mech. Of the forty missiles fired at the old SLDF bodyguard mech, only thirty were even close to the old battle machine. Then the two laser antimissile systems, which had replaced the right torso mounted Blankenburg 5cm pulse laser, each one took out ten of the thin skinned missiles.
The rest of the LRMs spread damage out, but it was the two that hit the head of the Shootist that caused the most "damage". Those two hits had at least stunned the bodyguard for a few heartbeats. But that was the limit of the damage from that many missiles. After all these combat units and pilots had been trained to fight Cylon Missile Spam for a few years now. In that type of warfare, ComStar was still rated as a piker…at best. For that little bit of damage done to the old mech it was not a good pay off of weapons and training investment.
The onetime SLDF prototype mech hit the 65ton fire support mech in an area between the top of the right leg and the main body of the mech. It would have been called the hip joint on a human or groin. The class 10 autocannon slug only had less than a quarter of a ton of armor to blast threw on the Com Guard mech before it reached the already damage bones in that area. That damage had been done by cluster round hits already. It was too much damage to endure for a mech a few hundred years old. And when the mech made another step, the leg joint first froze and then snapped under the stress of trying to run. The Com Guard pilot of the fire support mech had never even noticed that the attackers had been aiming low the whole time.
Now that the battle was even, at least as far as numbers being equal on both sides of this side battle went. Now Major Hennesy went into one on one fighting to give him more tactical flexibility. When the Com Guard fire support mech fell? It looked like the commander of the ComStar unit now thought that it was time to start pulling back from the blocking location. Only the very slow King Crab acting as its bodyguard slowed down the pulling back of the now four strong Level II.
That was one of the reasons that the "new" SLDF liked having mechs that were at least as fast as the person that they were bodyguarding. The only good a slower mech than a commander would be was as a sacrificial lamb for that same selfish commander. That was what this bodyguard was looking to be doing, but the SLDF was not going to allow that. They had to take out the commander of the Com Guard forces before he could order an abort of this invasion. Right now, the Major and Duke Terry didn't want them to leave the planet to point's unknown to the SLDF.
The Shootist was soon tangled up fighting the Flashman and the Dragon Fire kept working on the Com Guard Lancelot. The Flashman was known as a zombie mech for a very good reason, and it was armed with three old tech, but still very powerful and reliable Selitex Radionics 8cm lasers. To fight this heavy trooper zombie mech, the Shootist had only one clan grade 8cm pulse laser. To end this fight, it would have to weather those three Age of War tech 8cm lasers so that it could bring its short ranged but very powerful Deathgiver autocannon into play.
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Anthony Figurski had been a petty officer deckhand on the only working hangar deck on the Galactica when the Cylons had attacked. He was one of the few Colonials that had been able to get over their issues with Battlemechs looking like just very large Cylons. He was not that great on the control sticks, but he could shoot, and he was a fair hand in helping with any repairs that needed to be done to the mechs in his unit. The Lynx class battlemech was still just getting used to him, but he was getting better every time he got into its cockpit.
When the Colonial had run past the fallen Bombardier, he saw that it was still trying to rise from the turned up sloppy mud that this field had been turned into. Anthony fired two of his 5cm Blue Shot B3M lasers into the side of the enemy mech at the run. It was not that much damage in the overall scheme of things, but it was enough to convince the pilot of the mech to punch out or maybe it was a delayed activation of the ejection seat that caused the pilot to get an E ticket ride.
All that matter to Anthony was that the enemy mech was now not a threat to the rest of his lance. He had to smirk as his 5cm lasers recharged. Anthony was more than half hoping that he took some damage in this action. The rumor back on base had it, that if those old B3M's lasers took damage? Then they would be simply ripped out of his weapon of war, and then replaced with some 2nd generation 5cm extended ranged lasers that were new off the production lines. Age of war tech 5cm lasers just were not worth repairing outside of some very specialized missions.
Anthony higher speed meant that he was the first 205th mech to get into firing range of the ComStar Assault class mech. Taking on a mech that was almost half again the mass of the one you were attacking might have looked foolhardy to anyone else but a Colonial. Anthony was not the sharpest person that had ever worked the flight deck of a Battlestar, and he knew this. So, to counter this? He spent almost all of his "free time" studying. And for weeks he had been studying the combat mechs that he might face this close to Earth. But for some reason, he had been drawn to the lines of mechs like Crabs and Marauders. In short, he knew a lot about this King Crab class battlemech even without needing to review that much of the data from his battlecomp.
His mech's old H class PPC had been so much scrap metal when it was found, and so it had been replaced by a LR PPC very quickly. His mech had been one of the first of the whole BDE to have a mech refitted with one of them. This version of the King Crab was a close in fighter with a pair of huge Deathgiver autocannons just like the Shootist packed as a single chest mounted weapon. And just like the Shootist, the King Crab had to get really close to use them effectively. So, to counter Anthony's LR PPC, he only had to worry about the Simpson 15 LRM rack and the shorter ranged old ExoStar 8cm laser. Oh, and the King Crab only had eight reloads for the Simpson, and it had already used three of those in support of the battle line that had just collapsed.
Anthony felt that his 55ton war machine should be able to stand up to a mech that could only shoot at him six times at a range that matched his own main weapon. Then if he wanted to improve his chances at scoring a hit? He would only have to close into the edge of the range for the Exostar laser. If he was a good enough pilot? He should be able to dance at the edge of the range of a mech that was also double his size and a lot slower. Yea, he had spent WAY too much time listening to Viper pilots before he joined the SLDF for mech training.
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While Mechwarrior Figurski was…. entertaining the King Crab, Major Hennesy went after the command mech that out massed his machine by ten very important tons. Both of these mechs were command mechs, but they came from two very different design philosophies. Both mechs had almost exactly the same top speed, and they both had active probes to help "see" the battlefield. The active probe on the Major's mech was lighter and higher tech than the one refitted onto the 2930 built Battle Master under ComStar's colors to round out its capabilities. That was about the only thing the pair of mechs had in common.
The Battle Master had only one long ranged weapon, and it was in the form of a Donal PPC. The heavy weapon was carried in a jettisonable mount on the right arm and hand of the Com Guard mech. It also carried six 5cm lasers along with a Holly 6 rack. It's massive skeleton was covered in 14.5 tons of high quality StarGuard IV armor that had not changed going all the way back to the age of war. All of those weapons were meant to beat anyone that got close enough to be a major threat to the unit commander while protecting them under that huge amount of armor plate.
The Black Knight that Major Hennesy was at the controls of held one ton less armor, but it was a lot better quality, and it offered slightly better protection for less total mass. It also was packing two LR PPCs and a second generation extended 8cm laser and two second generation extended range 5cm lasers to go along with a pair of laser based antimissiles systems. The Black Knight also had enough third generation heatsinks to use all of the weapons without too many issues, and that was not done often within the Inner Sphere. All of these weapons and armor tons were meant to beat on and keep any threat at extremely long range and then kill them if they were dumb enough to keep up with the pushing on the commander.
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The BattleMaster was running away, and the Black Knight was trying to chase it down like an elephant race. It was almost something out of a kid's entertainment show, that is if they were not shooting at each other with very powerful energy weapons. Austin was charging forward, and the other mech's pilot was concentrating on piloting. All while the back seater was trying to call up some help. In between those cries for help, the second seater would take over as gunnery of the BattleMaster and fire off a few shots.
But with only one weapon vs three long shooters, and the other mech needing to sometimes turn its back to keep the distance open. It was just a matter of time before the BattleMaster fell to the guns of the mystery Black Knight. It also didn't help the ComStar mech that the SLDF Major was both a better gunner and pilot than the other two men in the BattleMaster had been combined. Austin was watching and after the fourth exchange of weapons fire. The Major thought that he had noticed a pattern, and when he saw a little shift to the left of the shoulders of the BattleMaster that should have been the sign that the mech was starting a major turn. Austin adjusted his aiming point, and he fired all three of the Black Knights heavy weapons. If the Major was wrong, then he was going to miss with all of his weapons, guaranteed.
Austin was not wrong, and he hit the enemy with all three long ranged energy weapons. One energy pulse hit the right arm, the second energy bolt hit the BattleMaster in the back right torso, and the last one hit dead center of the white painted back of the mech. When the heat after image of the heavy weapons passage moved away from the two mechs? Austin was rewarded with seeing showers of huge sparks flying through the air from the weapon that was carried like a giant handgun in that arm. To be able to see these types of sparks, in this lighting conditions, and at this range. That meant that they had to be huge and powerful sparks. Both of those things would also mean bad news for the crew of the Battle Master.
The Major had an evil smile when he saw the handgun like weapon system fall to the ground and the right arm swing way back. It was like a runner getting ready to charge full speed away, like maybe from a very unhappy bear. And like running from a bear, it was the wrong move to make, even if Austin was not ready for just such a move after first seeing those huge and bright sparks. As soon as the three heavy weapons were charged up again, Austin brought his mech to a stop and took very careful aim at the back of the running enemy mech. This was going to be his best chance to end this fight and at the same time it would take the starch out of the ComStar fighters.
The 85ton battlemech acted like a back shot stuntman when two powerful PPC beams hits the machine in the back. It just happened that one of the "only clan grade" PPC's hit the back of the forward sloped cockpit. In between eye blinks the cockpit became so much gas and very small parts flying faster than the BattleMaster had been running. The BattleMaster was closing on 50kph when the two crewmembers of the old battlemech had been turned into steam. The mech took two more stumbling steps before it ran face first into the hard and rock covered ground. Smoke was coming out of what had been the cockpit for two hundred years in a huge wave pushed by flames.
The ComStar attack force had now lost its only command mech and the commander that was supposed to be using it when he was not in the ComStar compound. You know doing the job that he was supposed and was paid to do. That was why successful commanders at this level used fixed site HQs or one of the very rare mobile HQ trucks to run a battle of this size and complexity. After Precentor Malcom had "retired" the former ComStar Demi that had run the ground station. It had been for two main reasons. One was that he had screwed up the first part of this battle, and the second was that he would not take responsibility for those actions. So that was not someone the combat units would "accept" back into command.
When Major Hennesy made it back to the stretched out main battle area of this blocking position. He had found that Mechwarrior Figurski in the Lynx was still more or less standing along with the Shootist. He quickly found out that the Dragon Fire mechwarrior had gotten a little too full of themselves and just before it had killed the battered Lancelot. The prototype mech had gotten to close to the Flashman, and he had quickly found out why they were to be feared on the battlefield even when they had lost any high tech gear.
The 75ton prototype mech had taken four hits from those Ichiba 3000 5cm lasers into the backward turned legs that had cause them to become frozen from the internal damage. The Dragon Fire still had been able to get one final shot from its heavy weapons. Now that had put the old SLDF Lancelot down for the count, but the Dragon Fire was now also done until a SAR or recovery team could make it out this way.
The distraction of the Flashman firing into the Dragon Fire, it had allowed the Shootist to get in close and put the huge Deathgiver autocannon into action for the first time in this battle. The massive 190mm cannon had lived up to its billing by coring the center torso of the enemy mech. This hit had gutted the huge GM 375 extra light engine in-between eye blinks. With the loss of the huge engine and many of the needed support systems. The old Flashman dropped to the ground round face first into the mud. This freed up the bodyguard mech to now head towards the Lynx that was still effectively aggravating the huge King Crab. The medium mech was doing this by hitting the assault mech while it stayed out of range of its three remaining effective weapons. It was a textbook, on how a long shooter can take on a heavier mech outfitted with mainly short ranged weapons.
This version of the King Crab held over two tons of armor on each of its two short bird like legs alone. That was a lot of armor, but the clan grade pulse laser and the same grade of power coming from the PPC on the smaller mech could take huge bites out of the armor. By now all that the slower mech could do was return fire with the old tech 8cm laser and try to pin one of the enemy mechs so that it could use those huge arm mounted autocannons. It was just too bad that those high tech energy weapons made on New Circe were not going to allow that to happen. By the time that the Major had returned into weapons range of this battle after taking care of the ComStar leader in the BattleMaster. The King Crab was mission killed and the mech jock was riding to the ground on an air ram parachute as his mech collapsed into a small hill of some barely connected spare parts.
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The attacks on the rest of the spread out ComStar units went just as well as the taking down of the roadblock. The Star League in Exile had always planned on being outnumbered in any fight that they might find themselves in. Most of the weapons that the 205th BDE had been fitted with were the same that ComStar had. Only the mechs that had come to this planet mounted more of them on each machine along with a slowly growing number of surprises sprinkled in for taste. Call it about 20 percent of all of the weapons were rated as using clan tech grade in the battles on this planet.
These mechs might have had some of the oldest Long Ranged PPCs on New Circe fitted to them. It had been when the original machines might have only had an old school PPCs, or Star League made ER PPCs. Those older weapons were removed, and they were either kept for research, display, or added to the items that could be used for trading with the Inner Sphere. Also, this had been planned for some time by both the political and military command Staff. One of the things that was identified by the SLDF about Robert's plan was that they would need to send heavier units, with the amount of combat that already had happened on Duke Terry's world. The Lee had carried only three machines that were lighter than 40tons of the Mercury II. That was on top of what Duke Terry had been able to bring to the battlefield, and what ComStar had sent to people that were only acting to like what the robs were shoveling around.
Once battle had started, after the first lending of the two SLiE dropships had secured their landing zones. The first broad move had been the decapitation strike that the locals had been able to identify the opportunity to launch. This picked up when the Com Guard/ComStar commander was taken off the battlefield. The mixed force kept up the pressure and ran the dwindling number of survivors of the Com Guards across the battlefields. The ComStar mechs and tanks did not go down without a fight, and some of the ComStar troopers were very good or very lucky. At this type of fighting there was very little difference between the two. Still, some of them ending up being as good as the Clan Wolverine fighters sent to help with the Exodus of Duke Terry.
One of the issues that came back to hamper the ComStar combat force, was very unexpected for the ComStar personnel. It was that they did not have the long-ranged weapons that they should have been using for the combine armed tactics they had trained for. The SLDF might have had longer ranged tactical weapons, but good artillery would have leveled the playing field in more than one way. This was noticed by even the non-combat trained members of ComStar sitting deep underground in the compound. All they could do was wonder how everything had gone so wrong with the plans. The pair of towed Long Tom class cannons that Duke Terry had smuggled onto the planet were dropping steel rain on to the heads of the ComStar compound in a slow and steady rate. A rate that saves barrels but broke armies. Those two massive and hard to move cannons had started firing as soon as ComStar had lost air superiority.
What did go unnoticed by anyone that was not part of the expeditionary forces of the SLiE, were the Thunder-Javelins class of missiles. The Hobgoblin was still sitting in high orbit launching fighters to keep a close eye on everything. When they saw something worth the effort they would come down and launch a few of those very special type of weapons. They would hit and hit hard in flights that had "only" been in pairs or quads from under the wings of the local's aerospace fighters. They were like the Listen Kill missiles that would hit the cockpits of the old Star League machines. More times than not they missed the smaller types of cockpits, but still they would hit in the upper parts of the battlemechs at least when they missed the cockpit. It was almost like someone had NARCed them in the head and command centers of the Com Guard mechs without being noticed.
The mixed group of defenders kept pushing the ComStar conventional troops, tanks and few surviving mechs back out of the countryside in less than a day. By the time the Com Guards forces hit the city limits, they were not any "units" left in their ranks. The Com Guards were fighting as individuals, or maybe pairs if they were lucky. After a few hours break that gave the locals time to regroup for another push, the attack was back on with a vengeance. What was left of the battered ComStar war fighting machines kept falling back or falling to the local's weapons fire, and even the battle scarred newly build outer walls of the ComStar compound could not save them from the locals for very long.
The wave of attacks with old and new equipment kept on going after the invaders from Terra like a cat going after a catnip filled toy. The first major area of the newly expanded ComStar compound that fell into the local's control had been the space port, again. This time the locals were not satisfied with isolating the dropships on their pads, so that they can take a single prize and flee the local area and return it to ComStar's control. The once hidden airpower of the locals was added to the "mercenary helpers" and the combined group crushed their enemy. Any of the other air and space craft that might try to lift off the ground without the expressed approval of Duke Terry was fired into.
Some of the four Union class dropships connected with ComStar were cracked opened like eggs by repeated air attacks and Long Tom fire when they fired onto the locals. The Mule, Lion, Condor, and the Carrier modified Triumph were captured intact when a sudden surge of infantry "popped" out of support tunnels that the locals should not have known about. At least after those dropships were intact after a heavy mech used one hand to open a cargo hatch to help with a flood of reinforcements. Even a light mech with hands like the Wasp can be a huge combat modifier for taking the right objectives. The dropships' crews still put up some fight, but the locals supplied ground pounders took them down with a mix of darts, shocking weapons, gas, and colonial inspired small arms. The locals even were able to come up with enough trusted crewmembers to get some of the new captured dropships off the ground after some work was done to make them at least safeish to fly once more.
The main buildings of the ComStar Compound were not taken, it would have cost both too much blood and risk to much damage. A set of Burke and a Fury tank were not to be taken lightly, not when they were supported by Infantry and many heavy fixed weapons emplacements. Granted most of those SRM launchers and support lasers were improvised into the bones of the very hard buildings. Many didn't know it, even those that worked within these buildings, but the main buildings outer skin was as hard as an Atlas class mech. But that was only the outer shell of the buildings. Behind that outer layer of mech grade armor was an additional layer of armor that was more or less recovered or used on an Overlord class dropship for the last few centuries. It was planned that they were to be a very hard egg to be cracked by any attackers.
A lance of local mechs with one off world mech fitted with ECM supplied by the SLiE were used to keep the two tanks and the rest of the building under fire while being very hard targets in return. That fire was heavy enough to keep the two tanks in the lobbies of the two largest buildings. It would also keep anyone inside them that might think that it was a good idea to try to find out what was going on in the local area. The locals were not trying to kill the two powerful tanks or even bring down the harden buildings that ComStar had invested so much money in making that way in the first place. The locals just wanted to keep their heads down and in the dark with what was going on right outside. Well, beside what any overly brave acolyte could see from their location and that was not much.
Duke Terry and Major Hennesy knew that they were on a short timeline to get everything they wanted done. The HPG stations were still in operation and the ECM on some of the mechs could only jam so much. There was no way to stop that HPG from sending messages out without more or less leveling the main building and at least two of the smaller support buildings. That type of action would have caused other…issues, and besides it was against the Major's orders. Higher Command and SLIC wanted some information about this attack and the counterattack to make it off of this planet. At least they wanted it to get it off the planet in a way that would not let ComStar know that someone might have been able to hack into their data and message flows. That way other Intelligence groups would find out about the attack, so that ComStar could not sweep it under a rug like they had with some much in the past.
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A man's eyes were drawn to a reflection coming from the nearby store front. The store and the town for that matter was well outside of the only official drop port on the planet. The only "real" drop port just happened to be at the only major city on the planet, but there were dozens of places on this planet that had seen a dropship land. The man turns and runs his left hand over his cheek and forehead before bringing his hand back down and rubbing his chin. Tom let an odd little smile come to his face as he turned his face slightly to get a different view of the stranger in the reflection. The face he was looking at was not the face that he was used to seeing, even if he was only a few years "old" as humans might count things.
Tom Black had come to this planet by way of a well-hidden path that had at first saw him land on Canopus. Undercover agents had found that the MoC had a reputation for the ultra high level of medical sciences they could call on. They had even found information or stories about them having been able to modify humans to be like some of the fabled mermaids. So, a dozen members of his people had "volunteered" to undergo radical surgeries all to change the way they looked. After all there were times that just changing things like hair length, facial hair, hair color, clothes, or even glasses were not enough to get the mission done.
Tom Black had been sent here to see what he could learn about the tech that this group of humans had been able to develop. Technology that was so different than what his people had been able to accomplish. The local news had been filled with stories about three planets in this political group that had major booming economies that were soaking up what was reported as "any warm body" willing to work. The data bases that the command group had reviewed, had said that in such an economic climate, that it should be easy for someone new to be picked up. All they needed to do was want to work, and soon they would be placed into areas that would have allowed them access to maybe some sensitive data. Now if these agents could find out about where the Colonials and their odd friends might be also, then so much the better. It was always nice to do more than one spying task with the same asset.
Tom Black had planned on staying on this planet. That had been even after his boss had brought him in on the idea that the local leader might have some job openings for those that were not afraid of taking on a little adventure. But oh, it would be on a world far from here and you would never be able to return to the Inner Sphere ever again. Something like that had not fit in with the mission that this Number Two had been given by the Number One's. Tom had not declined the offer; Tom had only said that he would need to think about it very hard. The subject had been dropped after Tom had been told not to say anything to anyone about these jobs. If Tom was found out to have talked about this subject, he would be removed from the job list without a word being said. But he didn't "know" this, it was just one of those things.
Tom had not said anything to a soul after that "interview". But that was more out of condition habit of being a human form Cylon, all while on a mission to bring about the wiping out of the Colonials and anyone that might be helping them. It was all on him to make the call, the only way that "Tom" could check in with the Number Ones, was to kill himself. That was kind of self-defeating especially after all of the pain that Tom had endured just getting started on this mission. Besides if the locals went under new management, then he might get moved up and get a job that would finally open the doors that he thought were still closed to him.
Then the invasion had happened, and Tom had joined everyone else in a bunker built under the building he was renting a room in. The bunker access was covered in the rent that said he would have a safe place with food and water that should last weeks in case of a pirate attack. Tom had thought that it was very Colonial like in the locals thinking. Still when the alert of the attack on a quick approach to the planet had sounded. One Tom Black had headed to the underground bunker with the rest of the building's population. He had thought that it was going to be a test on fighting boredom and fighting the urge not to start killing the humans stuck in the bunker with him. But he quickly found out that the owners of the building had video and local entertainment stations pumped into the multi room shelter to help control the stress.
"Tom" had been sleeping when word had been first sent out that allies of Duke Terry had come to help the local defenders. After awakening, he had watched some of the "field reports" sent out by the press or imbedded reporters after rejoining the main group. Tom still was amazed every time that he saw one of the walking combat units in action. Also, the lack of control on the media was strikingly different than what the Colonials had been like, even before the Cylon surprise attack. Tom made sure that he took advantage of this as much as he could. Surprisingly this didn't raise any concerns with his other bunker mates.
It was when the reports started showing the "Duke's" allies, that Tom had a very human reaction to the images. Before he had been Tom Black, this Number Two had studied all the data that he could get out of the wet interface on the Colonials new allies. Tom Black could identify the paint schemes and the iconography painted on these "allies" heavy weapons, and they were the same icons that were used by the allies of the Colonials. Tom quickly worked out that this was his chance, if a small one, to find out where the Colonials had been able to hide from the Cylon Empire. The Cylons now knew that there were other humans, but they still had a mad on to kill any Colonial that had escaped their surprise attack.
As soon as Tom could get out of that bunker, he worked on contacting his boss as fast as possible. Soon Tom was told that if he was sure, and that this type of action should not be taken rashly. Tom was told that he would not be leaving a warzone, only that he would be going from one warzone right into another one. That was enough to make Tom convinced that he was making the right move at this time. It took some doing, but he was able to get cleared to join the rest of Duke Terry's people that would be leaving.
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That was how Tom found himself walking down this small town street when he saw his reflection. Tom was on his way to a dropship that would be carrying him off of this planet. Being so short notice, Tom was not going to be needing as much cargo room as the ones that had some time to plan on what they were going to take. He also would have to help with getting the dropships ready for all of the people, as another cost of his short notice additions. It turns out one of the jobs Tom had been doing was directly related to what he had been doing as his job on this planet. A good welder was hard to find, much less one as steady and as fast as one Tom Black.
No one knew where she had gotten the plans, but Duke Terry had been having a few trusted shops make metal plugins for the dropship. They turned out to be Infantry bays that would fit into cargo bays like on dropships like the Mule class or like the Mammoth that had been captured and moved by the local forces on that first day of this round of conflicts. This modification would increase the number of beds and bathrooms on a dropship, but they still would need the cargo bays to supply food and air to keep the people alive in those metal boxes. It also would not be comfortable traveling like this, but it would get a lot of people off this planet all in one lift using the fewest possible vessels.
That was why Tom Black had his pack of clothes on his back and heading down the road. He had helped get the last module in placed a few hours ago, and now he had to make his way to a huge egg called Lyssa's Little Sister that would take him off this planet. With a smile on his face that made many walking around give him space without thinking about it. Tom Black was on his way to find the hiding spot of the Star League and the remaining Colonials.
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It was 6 days 8 hours and 57 minutes after the mechs had first left the Lee dropship that the mission was done on this planet. That was when the Lee, two Mammoths, a Mule, a Lion, and the carrier modified Triumph were to have lifted off the planet. Duke Terry and the Major had to work out one major issue. The SLDF wanted to take the Lion, but Duke Terry wanted to take the modified Buccaneer class cargo ship liner. She had been able to repossess that dropship for the Canopus Grand Bank and then the Duke had picked it up cheaply. The two had to work out what was more important to both groups.
In the end the captured Mule and Mammoth were going to be enough, thanks to a couple thousand of her people changing their minds at the last minute. This made it only a two hour long meeting for them to come to an agreement. That whole meeting had been thrown out the airlock when a message had come from the pirate point the SLiE had used. The second jump ship had been damaged, but when a small craft had tried to sneak away from the ComStar flagged jumpship. The security crew on the old Rim World Star Lord had to react quickly to make sure that threat went away. That was done by taking down the small craft with a boarding action and then taking over the second jumpship with the heavily armed security team.
They were over 10,000 people, their belongings, long storage food, and all of the heavy weapons like tanks, APCs, and mechs that Duke Terry had been able to use to defend her people. They also had packed down all of the items they could from the mines, and factories that belonged to Duke Terry or her supporters. Duke Terry didn't have a military dropship that "belonged to her" so the last two shifts of suppressing the ComStar compound with weapons and ECM was done purely by groups of SLDF mechs. This let the local defenders pull back and have their mechs packed down into the cargo dropship's very full cargo bays.
The first to be pulled back for the local defenders had been the Bulldog class tanks, missile carriers, light scouts, and then the other captured tanks that the locals had been able to get back into operation over the years. A 100ton Behemoth class tank was great but finding parts for one tank and not being able to use half wrecked ones for the parts was hard. So, the more numerous but lighter tanks were loaded first. Then had come most of the remaining mechs that were under the Duke's command. It was a tossup on who was more surprised, when a pair of very battered security mechs and a Clint reported for loading on the cargo dropships. They had led a nice sized convoy of workmechs and trucks full of supplies as well as tools. The busses and trucks that had brought the people that knew how to use them also were loaded, sometimes just as filler cargo between larger items.
The mix of SLDF and Locals also had worked together on a major operation that was more than a little rushed. They had used every truck within sight along with as many willing hands as they could find, and they had gone out from Duke Terry's controlled zone. They had gone out and picked up all of the wrecked ComStar equipment that had been used in this latest round of assaults. They also had gone out to pick up any of the local defenders' heavy weapons that had been left on the battlefield that was broken or otherwise damaged.
A lot of the times they just rolled the truck loaded with damage machines into shipping frames and a few more cargo straps added before the whole mess was loaded onto the dropships. It was a tight fit, but the locals were even able to take their pets and farm animals with them. The downside was that they only had purposed built animal shipping cages for so many, and a few slapped together temporary cages. Then they had to turn around and tell the locals that they would need to leave those animals behind after all. When the local cargo masters were done with the loading. There was not one shipping container or crate left anywhere on this side of the planet.
That had changed again, but only after Major Hennesy had told them that it was going only to be a short trip before they were going to be hitting the first gravity waystation that could support them. Animals didn't like Zero G, and that was why sperm and eggs were the preferred way to move them in any real numbers around the Inner Sphere. That downside was that would delay any use of products like wool, meat, eggs, cheese, and the like for at least a year if not a few years after arriving on a "new" planet. It was one of the reasons that each planet had "local" animals used to provide protein instead of "Terran Cows" and the like as the primary sources for the average person. Those animals normally could handle Zero G for a few hours at a time, and that could be arranged by doing some math and a good engine control system. When they did finally leave this planet? Duke Terry and many others knew that this planet was going to be in trouble for a long time after they had jumped out. It was in the opinion of Duke Terry and her staff, that if ComStar wanted to take over the planet so badly? Well, then they could deal with those types of problems.
Besides taking so much of the industry, spare parts, transports, defenders, weapons, and food. The planet also just been subject to a sudden and massive brain drain. Many of the best and brightest or just those with the highest skills and training had decided that they didn't want to live under ComStar or some other puppet they left with a fancy title. Still Terry and a few others knew that they had to leave, but they were not abandoning those that had been friends and family without a backup escape plan. The modified Buccaneer class cargo dropship was well hidden, and it was available if a group decided that they needed just to leave after Terry and the rest of them had left. They would not be able to find Duke Terry and her friends, but at least they could get off this planet, and at least have a chance to catch a jumpship to another planet. It was the best and only lifeline that Duke Terry and her new friends could afford to leave behind.
The trip out from the planet to the pirate jump point was at a steady 1g all the way to the pirate point that held their ride to maybe safety. The second wave of dropships left the ground lead by a captured Union. That one dropship that had been able to be repaired by a ground team that might have been just a little past crazy. Surprising to everyone next came a Monarch liner, and an ancient Jumbo class cargo dropship. That last one had been hidden by a local years ago and filled with what could be pulled out of the three mines on the other side of the planet. Terry's staff had not known their political leanings quiet questions had been unanswered. The group had been known for their more independent nature for generations. That one ancient dropship had given another surprise to Duke Terry and the SLDF Major. It had been when a message was passed to Duke Terry and her staff checking if there was room for a few more to leave with her.
The last Union ship had barely made it off the ground, and the crew was kept in fully closed up in armored space suits. The last group of dropships was moving at only .7g and heading to the pirate jump point next to the mostly wrecked Union. That was as fast as the slowest ship could make and not blow her engines out the aft of the very damaged dropship… maybe. Duke Terry's remaining dozen functional aerospace fighters escorted the craft until they were well on the way to the jump point. There should not be any enemy aerospace assets left in deep space.
It took the second group over eight hours at such a low speed to reach that jump point. When the second group was safe, the fighter escort changed course and did a fast burn to catch up to the larger unit of dropships. They were going to use the now ex Com Guard carrier to get out of this system, but the pilots had never used a CV class dropship before. It was going to take a lot longer than normal to get those craft onto the carrier. There was plenty of room after the bombing runs that had been made on the space port that turned the ComStar fighters in to smoking spare parts. Oh, and those spare parts had been collected and packed into the cargo bays along with everything else that had not been nailed down. After Duke Terry's fighters were loaded, the fighters on the Hobgoblin would act as the solo CAP for the evacuation fleet.
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The pirate point currently held two jumpships that were now under the command of the SLiE military forces. At first one of the jumpships was hoping not to draw attention, and the other was hoping that the other one would dare to draw their attention. After the second group had proven that it was not too be messed with by a few shots of 5cm lasers from aerospace fighters before they made to intercept the rising forces of ComStar. The first jumpship's crew was…divided as they worked on repairing the "light damage" the lasers had done to the jumpship.
You could say that anyone working for or with ComStar was not well liked by most of the crew of the old Star Lord. There was not much the old Star Lord could do but recharge her jump drive while she waited for the battle on the planet to be settled. She had been meant to be sold and had not been modified to carry the artificial gravity plating or a Colonial made jump drive. The SLDF crew was not fast charging the K-F drive, but they were not slow charging it.
When one of the four small crafts were launched from the ComStar "long term chartered" Star Lord, and it looked to be heading to the planet. The Ex-Rim Worlder Star Lord put her security team on a copy of the Lupus small craft carried in the small craft bay. The heavily armored and armed battle taxi was able to get the under armed small craft to stop and board in deep space. The security team found out that the small craft held twenty of the thirty-five crew needed for a Star Lord. They had decided that it was better to find new jobs outside of the ComStar contract even with the fines they would get for breaking the current contract they had with the phone company.
They had been very happy with the information that they would be able to land on the planet and not just be shot out of the sky. The crew on that small craft had a total of four low recoil weapons and the few survival weapons found in the crash kits. The battle armored troopers were getting ready to leave the long ranged shuttle, when the senior officer pulled one of them aside for a few quiet words. She quietly told them that the remaining crew on the Jumpship were diehard ComStar personnel, and they were trying to hot charge the engine to get help. The leader of the security team smoothly passed over two germanium coins when they clasped hand in Zero G before exiting the craft.
This new information was passed along to the Free Ride, the current operating name of the ex-Rim World jumpship. Without waiting for orders to come from Split or the mission commander on the planet. The Lupus was redirected to the other Star Lord using tight laser comms. They were to try to take the enemy jumpship under new management. It was a complex track that they would have to run to get close to the enemy ship. The idea was to make it look like the Lupus was not heading toward the target jumpship, at least not until the last possible minute.
After the Lupus had docked to the targeted Star Lord. It had not taken long for the half dozen armed PA(L) troopers to get control of the jumpship. There were only fifteen remaining crewmembers on that jumpship, and there was almost that many SLDF troopers in Weasel type battle armor. It also helped that the remaining crewmembers didn't have weapons worth the name, and still they had tried to stop the contracted crew. That also still had not stopped them from dying to stop the takeover of the jumpship by the battle armor teams. It took almost as long to eject the dead bodies into space than it had to clear the defenders of the jumpship.
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When the now expanded fleet of dropships closed on the two jumpships, it caused some issues that the crews had been dreading. The Free Ride had not been expecting to take on this many dropships for the ride "home". They had carried two dropships with the Hobgoblin using her own jump engine coming in hidden in the surprise with her fighters acting as cover. They had been expecting to have one maybe two dropships from the locals. Now they had more than half a dozen dropships needing a lift out of this star system. That did not cover that half of those dropships did not have full crews' much less "regular" crews. The Free Ride was now short personnel, the idea had been to just occupy the other jumpship and then blow it apart when it was time to pull back. That now was not an option to get so many dropships to safety before any reinforcements from ComStar could arrive. So along with greener than grass crews on some of those dropships, both the jumpships were now also very short handed to get those dropships attached.
After the Lee and the two Mammoths were safely docked and locked down to the jumpship called Free Ride it was time to start on the smaller dropships. Then some of the small craft had to shuttle most of their dropship's crewmembers around until the other three dropships were attached to the Free Ride. The jumpship commander and docking chief had more grey hairs after this iteration of docking was over just from those three "other" dropships, and their day still was not done.
Then the key staff on the Free Ride had to be ferried over to the now Ex ComStar jumpship flagged as Blake's Travels and repeat the whole process one more time. A lot more grey hairs were given to both jumpship and dropship bridge crews. It took three more hours than it should have to dock those smaller dropships onto what they had started calling the M/V POW. This was why the best crews had been put on the larger and most dangerous to handle vessels of this lot. The other dropships were in even poorer state of training for the crews.
While the docking of all of the dropships were being done and the dropships locked down? TacFaxes messages were flying off of the jumpship going back to SLDF's base in another star system. This had turned into a lot bigger mission than had been planned for, in even the worst-case planning sessions with beers involved. It was not the number of people coming off of the planet that was so unexpected. It was the amount of recovered hardware that was also coming out with all of those souls. Oh, and then there were so many more dropships full of items that were coming along with another huge jumpship. Both Duke Terry and the military took every bit of salvage that they could lay their fingers on, even if it would later prove to only be good to be melted down at a later date. It all was picked up and packed down onto those various dropships of this little fleet. Then there was the case of those "captured" dropships and large jumpship.
The senior command group for the SLDF had gotten so use to using what was at hand and not throwing it away until you had to and maybe just a little longer than that. That there was never any thought given to leaving those very expensive and maybe useful assets for ComStar to maybe use against their people, be they Duke Terry's people or the SLiE again. Well, that was not really thought about. Okay yes it was, and a few grins were passed around, but nothing was put into any log that would reference grand theft mech, wreck, dropship, or jumpship. It was seen as better to ask for forgiveness than permission.
As it turned out the delay in getting all of the extra dropships and the new Star Lord ready to leave was not that big of a deal. The major problem would be some of the larger farm animals as they were in zero g for a few hours until the ball and string systems could be activated to give at least half a g for those dropships while they waited. That was a few hours more than planned, that the animal's handlers would wish that they could forget.
Major Hennesy kept at least two fighters on CAP at all times in case anyone showed up without an invitation. Now those aerospace fighter crews had plenty of experience landing on the Hobgoblin before this mission had been launched. So, they would be able to land with only a few minutes notice, that something they should have with "normal" jump drives used by ComStar.
Duke Terry felt a little bad about all of the orders for ammunition that she just messed with by taking all of the missile production factories with her. Oh, and about a third of the completed orders had been shot into the ComStar backed invaders. The planet and its remaining population that it supported would be put in a bind, but then again. It would be up to the new leaders and their off-planet supporters to have to deal with the effects of them winning the battle but losing the war.
Duke Terry took the time to send one message towards the planet before the two jumpships activated their interstellar drives. It was not a nice goodbye, and it would be referenced in the near future in this part of space at her use of colorful invective and the names she was dropping. She even gave "evidence" to her using those names in this way. That was much to the unhappiness of ComStar, and that was before what she had said would spread far and wide and even outside of the MoC. It would even get out past what most called the Inner Sphere given enough time.
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Notes
Shakey system finds: See chapter 42 for what was found in orbit around that star.
A battle between unit of the 205th BDE and locals against heavy units of Com Guards. 3 X LVL II mechs one light, one medium, one mix of heavy and assault. 1 X lvl II mech -1 light and -1 medium, 2x LVL II light and medium tanks, 3 x LVL II of INF, 2 x LVL II of heavy tanks. 3 x lv II of fighters. Command LVL II King Crab (KGC-000) Battle master (BLR-2C), Lancelot, Bombardier, Flashman, Champion.
Major Austin Hennesy attack company: Black knight (LR PPC down to CER PPC) Shootist 70ton (cLPL), Rifleman II,2 x Crabs 50ton, Spartan 80ton, Lynx 55ton CER PPC, Dragon Fire 75ton (GR and lbx10), Black knight, Falcon Hawk 35ton IER PPC, and 2 Mercury II 40ton.
Tom Black. Got the name from the Black Tom explosion in 1916. It kind of seemed to fit with this idea. Hidden Number 2 will find his way to New Circe.
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