Burn the Horizon
In 2372, Gowron withdrew the Klingon Empire from the Khitomer Accords after the Federation refused to support his brain-dead decision to invade the Cardassian Union.
Diplomatic efforts went nowhere for months. Starfleet and Klingon ships traded shots for the first time in almost a century, culminating in a massive assault on Deep Space Nine to capture the surviving members of the Detapa Council, the legitimate governing body of the Cardassian Union, who had been rescued and brought to the station in a daring operation by Benjamin Sisko and the USS Defiant. Among the people with Sisko that day, Commander Worf had almost convinced his countrymen to step back from the brink.
"It is often said that there were a number of reasons as to why Gowron chose to attack the Cardassians," Worf explained to me, "But those reasons are suggested by people who are not Klingons. The real reason was simple to figure out. There were many on Kronos who felt that the Empire had been at peace for too long. K'mpec had robbed us of our chance for revenge against the Romulans. With the threat posed to the Alpha Quadrant by the Changelings, and with our blood riled by the civil war, Gowron, at last, had a viable excuse to give my people the chance to do what they were born to do. To fight."
And fight they did. Gowron committed a third of the Klingon Defence Force to the invasion of Cardassia, driving almost to Cardassia Prime in a week, until the Cardassians were finally able to reorganize and fight back, halting the Klingon rampage just 52 hours short of Cardassia Prime.
With the offensive stalled and Gowron fearing that his idiotic plan would get him killed by Klingons with more sense, he declared victory anyway and instead turned his attention to an opponent that no Klingon would have refused an opportunity to face in glorious battle.
In late December 2372, Gowron formally issued an ultimatum to the Federation Council, demanding that the Federation cede the Archanis Sector back to Klingon control, after the Khitomer Accords had forced the Empire to give up the colony. The Federation Council attempted to stall the wiry and idiotic Klingons with peace talks while Starfleet, the Federation Marines, and the Bajoran Militia all started making plans to fight off an expected Klingon assault.
Unfortunately, Gowron proved to be too fast. On New Year's Day of 2373, the second third of the KDF attacked the Federation on a massive new front, stretching from Archanis all the way to Bajor.
"Gowron caught us with our pants down and our asses hanging in the wind," Colonel Dan Beckenridge of the FMC admitted to me, "MIS had been screaming at Starfleet for months that the Klanks were coming. Every, single, fucking, day, we'd watch more and more Klingon ships moving off their advance in Cardassian space and lining up along the border, almost like it was a Fleet Week parade."
"But the Fishies, as usual, dismissed us out of hand. They said the Klingons wouldn't be stupid enough to try to fight the Federation at the same time they were trying to put down the Cardassian Navy. You know what I said to that? I said that six months ago, you stupid fucking bastards swore that the Klanks would never be stupid enough to invade Cardassia, for fuck's sake."
Regardless of who might have dropped the ball, the fact was that Gowron had committed almost every last Klingon Warship that could fly and fight into a siege that hadn't been seen since the Four Years War.
Only two Starships had been stationed at Archanis IV despite MIS' warnings. The USS Armstrong and the USS Drake did everything they could, but outnumbered nearly 80-1, they were forced to bail out of the system under fire, while a Klingon Fleet of 280 ships was running amok in the most populous Federation colony between Bajor and Betazed.
After finally managing to pull the wool off of the "Fishies" eyes, Beckenridge convinced Starfleet Command to assist their Sharkie cousins in putting together a task force to retake Archanis. Beckenridge's 5th Mechanized Battalion and the MARFORECON Battalion, better known as the Marine Force Recon Battalion, better known still as the Secret Squirrels, joined thirty starships for Operation Horizon.
"The Squirrels would be in the first wave," Dan explained to me, "They'd land on Archanis IV and do what they were trained to do, stir up trouble until the heavies could show up. They had to smash a bunch of generators for the Klank's ground based comm relays, and they had to set up lase targets so the Fishies could do real OSPs without blue-on-blue. In the perfect plan, we would have been twelve hours behind them. But no plan ever survives contact with the enemy."
While Dan's 5th Mechs (their nickname) were on their way to Archanis IV, the Klingons struck Aijion Prime on the other end of the sector. 12 000 of the colony's population of 24 000 were trapped in two small settlements on the planet's northern continent.
Resource, the local government administration, had only a platoon of underequipped Starfleet Security officers to protect the civilian population, and the Klingons had managed to deploy jammers that blocked the colony's transporter infrastructure, so the only way to evacuate the civilian population and to respond to Klingon attacks was via Hopper.
"A Hopper is repurposed civilian shuttle design from the 2340s," Dan further explained, barely able to keep his seething annoyance down, "And is nothing more than a flying piece of civie clap-trap aluminum death ball that the Fishies slapped a light phaser cannon and a sticker onto and had the balls to call a combat vehicle. About the only thing a Hopper is useful for is target practice, which is exactly what the Klanks did with them on Aijion Prime. In ten hours, they'd shot down fifteen Hoppers, and when one of these civie clap-trap aluminum death balls goes down, they go down fucking hard."
The 5th Mechs had no choice but reinforce Starfleet and evacuate the civilians. Dan, the 750 Marines with him, and the far more effective Lynx IFV were able to successfully push the Klingons off the planet and rescue the civilians. But when Dan ordered his battalion to pack up and get back to their real job on Archanis IV, the thirty starships that had dropped him off were diverted to the Cardassian DMZ due to reports of Possible Cardassian Activity in the region, which meant that the Secret Squirrels – who were now on day three of a mission originally planned to take 12 hours – would be stuck on their own for at least another day.
"Bull-fucking-shit! That's exactly what I said when those orders came down that waved off our ride," Dan says, not holding back any venom for Starfleet, "The Spoonies had spent a year getting the absolute living piss beaten out of them by the Klanks, but you suddenly expect me to believe that they can slap together enough combat-worthy ships that it takes the Fishies sending 30 of their own to respond?!"
"I promised the boys that if I ever found out who signed off on that order, I'd rip his fucking spinal cord out through his asshole and beat him to death with it. The Corps has one rule above anything else. No Marine gets left behind. And we had just been told we were leaving Colonel Bagsley and the Squirrels behind on Archanis IV to chase after Spoonie ghosts."
After having to submit a dozen freedom of information requests to Starfleet Command, I finally learned who's signature was on the orders that left the Secret Squirrels behind on Archanis IV. Admiral Thomas Ashcroft.
"It was a criminal act. There is no other way to describe what happened that day," Jean-Luc Picard said to me. Picard had been on detached duties with the USS Cairo during the Battle of Archanis while his new ship, the Enterprise-E, was still fitting out over Mars.
By complete chance, the Cairo had managed to pick up a weak distress call from Archanis IV, with Colonel Mike Bagsley screaming for someone, anyone, to help.
"It is absolutely unfathomable to me that Starfleet Command would have willingly sacrificed an entire battalion of Marines. Regardless of the interservice rivalry between Starfleet and the FMC, we are all Federation Citizens, and it is the first responsibility of any uniformed officer to protect and defend the lives of Federation citizens wherever they may be. Against orders from Command, I took the Carlo to Archanis IV, and I was able to get Force Recon out of there. My only regret was that I wasn't faster."
Out of 750 Force Recon Marines who had touched down on Archanis IV a week prior, 112 Squirrels were able to fight another day, 300 were wounded but alive, 337 had died, and one man – Colonel Mike Bagsley, OC-FR (Officer Commanding – Force Recon), had been taken prisoner by the KDF during their retreat. Operation Horizon was, officially, recorded as a successful but hard-won victory with heavy casualties, considered by historians to be a dress rehearsal for the savagery of the Dominion War to be witnessed two years later.
For Jean-Luc Picard, Dan Beckenridge, Mike Bagsley, and the Federation Marine Corps, Operation Horizon was cold-blooded murder. The FMC lost more killed and wounded Marines that week than any other operation they had fought in prior to the Dominion War.
And for the next year, Colonel Mike Bagsley was a guest of the "Alien's Graveyard" Rura Pente penal facility in Klingon Space.
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