OBT Forum

Interlude
November 3, 3043

Of course, not all went according to plan.  On Deia, Vandervahn Chistu and the Jade Falcon’s Delta Galaxy were mauled by the 1st, 11th, and 15th Lyran Regulars, supported by House Davion’s 1st Argyle Lancers.  To make matters worse, both Chistu and the commander of Vau Galaxy were killed in the fighting, and disputes between Cluster commanders over who was now in charge prevented the Falcons from stopping the Fed-Com troops from executing an organized withdrawal.  Once in orbit, the survivors of the four Regiments scatted, leaving the single Falcon WarShip present unable to intercept and engage them all.  Although the 11th Lyran was destroyed, the remaining regiments survived (in part) to fight another day.

On Parakoila, the Ravens met with their toughest fight to date—and perhaps a harbinger of things of come.  Three independent aerospace fighter wings, supported by no fewer than thirty assault DropShips swarmed over the Raven JumpShips as they emerged in-system.  While saKhan Damien Crow responded almost instantly, two entire Raven Clusters (the 4th Raven Wing and the 1st Raven Dragoons) were lost, along with their DropShips.  The remaining three Clusters of the Swift Wing Galaxy proved insufficient to clear the surface of the defenders, and Khan McKenna was forced to reinforce his saKhan with elements of Beta Galaxy—despite a sudden surge in terrorist activities all through the Horse/Raven Occupation Zone.

The Wolves and Coyotes won on Tamar, but Garth Radick died holding back a ferocious assault by the Davion RCTs, and Beta Galaxy suffered serious losses.  Perhaps luckily, Tamar was the only seriously contested world for the Wolves and Coyotes in Wave 3; the remainder fell with scarcely a fight.

The Bears and Scorpions had the single easiest and least costly Wave of all of the Clans.  Hitting only four worlds, opposition was encountered only on Gunzburg and Vorarlberg, but the Bears easily swept aside the defenders.  On Memmingen, the planetary governor—with no troops of the KungsArmee and a militia just four companies strong—answered the batchall with a challenge for a game of beach volleyball.  The competition turned into a major attraction, complete with a fair, and the governor handed control over to saKhan Posavatz when the team of Scorpions from the Heartvenom Cluster handily won.  Posavatz surprised many, however, when he appointed the same governor as the Clan’s interim ruler—and Memmingen quickly became part of the Clan fold.

Radstadt should have been a bitter fight for the Adders and Cobras, but the KungsArmee had completely collapsed, leaving the planet with only militia and a single Capellan Regiment (the Blackwind Lancers) for defenders.    Kaesong and Thessalonika were much more difficult; the Draconis defenders—once again, mostly militia with a handful of ‘Mech companies and battalions in support—fought to the last man, woman, and child.  Insurgents hidden among the civilian population started a terror campaign, the day that the last organized military force was defeated, and slowly the Adder and Cobra garrisons were being bled.

 Already suffering from the shame of being the only Clan to have lost a WarShip in the invasion (the destroyer Rage being the victim of a kamikaze strike at Schuyler two months earlier), the small Mandrill Kindraa’s, many of which failed to coordinate and cooperate, found themselves strained to the breaking point.  There were too many casualties against the fanatical defenders, and nowhere nearly enough garrison forces to hold the worlds that the Mandrills had conquered.  Where some Clans in Wave III refused to commit forces in less than Galaxy strength, the Mandrills were forced to rely on single Clusters to take their objectives.  Without the Blood Spirits aid and assistance, they would have failed, but even with the help of their partners, the Mandrill garrisons were woefully thin, and their brutal methods of dealing with insurgents made for a volatile situation.

On Outer Volta and Juazeiro, the Nova Cats pounced; relying upon their superior technology, training, and numbers to overcome stiff resistance before moving on to secure Caripare.  The Jaguars fought fiercely for Teniente and Irece (wrecking the LAM factories there utterly), but both of those worlds were defended by far less troops than Brandon Howell had feared—and the subsequent interrogations told him why.

Pesht was heavily fortified, with no fewer than eleven DCMS BattleMech Regiments, thirty regiments of armor and infantry, and six aerospace fighter wings (in that odd Combine 36-fighter wing that they flew).  Khan Howell made certain that his forces finished the pacification of Irece and Teniente, and then resupply and received the first few trickles of replacements coming from the homeworlds.  And then he jumped three full Galaxies of Jaguars, supported by a Galaxy of Nova Cats, into what would become known as the Cauldron of Pesht.

I'm not sure how to phrase this without sounding like I'm attacking your preferred style. I'll try my best, but let me be clear, this is meant as an honest question and not an attack on this project. (I should mention, I enjoy reading the project, regardless of whether or not it is the style I prefer.)

What villains do you have left? It seems a concentrated effort is underway to eliminate any character that has the slightest mustache-twirling tendencies (Waterly, Chistu, Romano, Steel Viper Khan whose name I forget, etc.) or are villainous due to a single poor decision (Sandoval) , even ones that may have had solid motivation or plot line behind them. It seems to make it harder to grab onto any specific character as a protagonist, since foils are lacking. Both the Clans and select IS personalities are left in "hero" type roles with very few characters to act as foils, since they both seem to come from largely "pure" motivations. It's not so much shades of grey, but shades of "kind of off white" and any of the contrasting tones seem to have been eliminated. Is this intentional, or simply the result of desires to "fix" certain characters or story lines? If more of the latter, it might be worth keeping in mind for the future (bearing in mind, this is simply one reader's opinion).

I'm not sure how to phrase this without sounding like I'm attacking your preferred style. I'll try my best, but let me be clear, this is meant as an honest question and not an attack on this project. (I should mention, I enjoy reading the project, regardless of whether or not it is the style I prefer.)

What villains do you have left? It seems a concentrated effort is underway to eliminate any character that has the slightest mustache-twirling tendencies (Waterly, Chistu, Romano, Steel Viper Khan whose name I forget, etc.) or are villainous due to a single poor decision (Sandoval) , even ones that may have had solid motivation or plot line behind them. It seems to make it harder to grab onto any specific character as a protagonist, since foils are lacking. Both the Clans and select IS personalities are left in "hero" type roles with very few characters to act as foils, since they both seem to come from largely "pure" motivations. It's not so much shades of grey, but shades of "kind of off white" and any of the contrasting tones seem to have been eliminated. Is this intentional, or simply the result of desires to "fix" certain characters or story lines? If more of the latter, it might be worth keeping in mind for the future (bearing in mind, this is simply one reader's opinion).

No problems.  Let me think this over and I'll get back to you.

MA

Andrassy Island, Andrassy
Pesht, Draconis Combine
November 11, 3043

Three full Galaxies of Jaguars landed to the south of the city; the shorter northern coastline was occupied by the lone Nova Cat Galaxy.  Captured maps showed that the river section to the north was relatively deep, with a muddy bottom—but three bridges connected the island to the mainland here.  The southern shore was wide, but fairly shallow and featured a bottom of rock and claw—strong enough to support the Jaguar OmniMechs . . . perhaps.  Seven bridges crossed the river on this side, but Khans Howell and West were well aware that these bridges were bound to be sited in by the defenders—and possibly mined.

Still, the first actions were at those bridges, where Stars of combat engineer trained Elementals carefully crossed, searching for hidden explosives while engaging the infantry pillboxes and strongpoint’s the Combine had built.  For six hours, the bulk of the Jaguars and Cats waited while a vicious close-quarters battle was being waged on—and beneath—the bridges. 

Howell and West, having suspended zellbrigen each landed one of their Provisional Garrison Clusters—equipped with artillery vehicles; the smoke rounds from these third-line Warriors provided the Elementals with cover as they fought the fanatical Kurita infantry and disarmed explosive charges.

In the meantime, Khan Howell ordered another Trinary of Elementals outfitted with UMU (underwater maneuvering units) in place of their SRM launchers; a small laser replacing their AP Gauss Rifle.  Assigned to search the bottom of the river for surprises, these nautical Elementals discovered that the riverbed had been liberally sewn with mines, covering nearly every possible approach . . . save one.

One section of the southern arm of the river shallowed to the point where the current was too much for the mines to remain embedded in the floor; that same current was hazardous to OmniMechs, but the risks were deemed as acceptable.  Still, Khan Howell was not wholly convinced that the clear lane had not been planned by defenders of Pesht.

Low-level recon flights by fighters outfitted with Active Probes revealed the interlocked bunkers that covered that section of the river front, and Howell knew that his opponent was waiting for him to discover the ‘neglected’ sector and charge across.  As night fell on the first day of the Battle of Pesht, Howell prepared to make his move.

A massive barrage of smoke rounds concealed the southern shore from the Andrassy, just as the sun dipped below the horizon—meanwhile, Trinarys of light and medium-weight OmniMechs began to storm across the bridges cleared by the engineer Elementals.  Preplanned artillery barrages showed down on the bridges—but the move had been only a feint.

Alpha and Beta Galaxy moved into the open stretch of the river void of mines under the coverage of the smoke screen and gingerly made their way across; just before they emerged from the water, however, the combined aerospace fighters of the Jaguars streaked by overhead, releasing tons of bombs upon the heads of the defenders dug in on the island.  Reeling from the incredible blow, the Kurita defenders were not prepared to contest the beachhead with the elite OmniMechs and Elementals of Alpha and Beta Galaxy where they emerged from the water.

Flares of explosions and the staccato bursts of tracer fire lit the night, as searing flashes of lasers and PPC bolts reached out to hit the attackers and defenders alike.  The defending infantry and tanks fought to the last man, but they were unable to repel the Jaguars as Khan Howell secured a narrow strip of land and one of the city’s parks.

Simultaneously, two Clusters of Delta Galaxy loaded up in their DropShips and still under the cover of the dense smoke screen, they hovered across the river to emerge in sight of the astonished defenders—‘Mech and Elementals jumped from heights of just fifty and one hundred meters, even as the DropShips absorbed impact after impact from the defenders of the southern bridgeheads.  The Cloud Rangers lived up to their name as the 4th and 214th Jaguar Dragoons landed on the island and held their salient until the remainder of Delta could rush across the bridges—against whom the defending fire had suddenly lessened—to reinforce them.

Throughout the night, intense firefights raged up and down the boulevards and avenues of Andrassy City as the Jaguars pushed deeper in to the island in an effort to link up.  No quarter was given or asked for—by either side; and the rules of war quickly fell to the wayside as well.  Soon enough, neither side had was able to summon air support, as the dueling fighters clashed in the night sky above, and the Jaguars rain of artillery smoke shells was replaced with laser-guided homing munitions and cluster rockets called in blindly.

By dawn, Andrassy was covered in thick cloud of smoke and ash from the burning and collapsed buildings, and the Jaguars had bulled their way through a third of the city—all three Jaguar Galaxies having linked up in the night.  Both sides were utterly exhausted by thirteen hours of nearly constant conflict—but Brandon Howell had brought his DropShips across the river and rotated units back throughout the night to rearm, sometimes to exchange pod configurations before heading back into the fray.  He would not make the mistakes Showers and Osis had made in the past of not having enough supplies close at hand.

General Kurita was bleeding the Jaguars for each square meter of ground that they gained, but the causalities were far from one-sided:  over half of his own ‘Mechs were light-weight Panthers and Jenners; no match for the heavy and assault Ebon Jaguars, Warhawks, and Dire Wolfs that steadily advanced meter by meter.  Still, the close-quarters combat was bleeding the Jaguars for every block they took; one enterprising DCMS officer flooded a portion of the city’s sewer system with natural gas—the resulting explosion shattered the 225th Battle Cluster and utterly destroyed two blocks of skyscrapers.

In response, the Congress-class frigate Snow Leopard opened fire from orbit and tore the heart out of two blocks still in the hands of the Combine.  Khan Howell contacted General Kurita by radio and informed him that the bombardment was in retaliation of the actions of the Draconis officer who fired the gas mains—he vowed to reply in kind to any further such use of WMD as well.

Halfway through the morning, the exhausted Combine pilots—all seventy-three of them—climbed back into their cockpits as the Nova Cats on the north shore launched their assault.  One hundred carefully husbanded Cat pilots—in undamaged OmniFighters and rested—met them in the sky; thirty minutes later, the Combine had no air cover remaining.  The sixty-four Cat survivors returned to base and refueled and rearmed; then they returned in company of the one hundred and six surviving Jaguars to support the Nova Cat river crossing.

Throughout the night, the Cats had slowly infiltrated Elementals across the river—losing five percent of their number in the process; beset by the massive aerial attack and the sudden appearance of the Elemental infantry, Khan West managed to take two of the three bridges by storm.  The third had not been completely cleared by the Elemental engineers during the night; they had missed one demolition charge in the center span.  And the bunker which controlled that demolition survived both the air attack and the battle-armored infantry assault.

The explosive collapse of the bridge took with it two-third of the 489th Assault Cluster and the Vision Keshik—Khan West assumed command of Alpha Galaxy from the Nova Cat Keshik, which safely crossed one of the other two bridges.

Caught between two fires, the Kurita perimeter slowly shrank, but the combat raged within narrow streets hemmed in by the towering buildings.  The costs of fighting within the Cauldron doubled, and then doubled again, as the relentless unstopping assault was met by fanatical defenders who refused to give up even a millimeter of ground without a fight.

By nightfall, the entire city was ablaze from the northernmost spur of land to the docks on the southern end facing out to sea.  Now in its second consecutive day, the battle dissolved in certain sectors to hand-to-hand combat amongst the ‘Mechs, with broken and battered Atlases and Dragons pummeling and being pummeled by the Jaguars and Cats.

Their troops utterly worn out by the constant fighting, Khans West and Howell pulled back, away from the current lines and gave their Warriors a small respite as Techs rushed to bolt on new armor plates and replace damaged weapons and empty magazines.  Although Akira Kurita would have liked nothing more than to launch a counter-attack, his troops as well were drained of all energy, and he too took advantage of the lull to prepare for the following morn.

An hour before dawn, the assault resumed and it continued for the next nineteen hours before the sounds of the guns finally fell silent on the third day of the battle.  Every soldier assigned to the defense of the Cauldron lay dead—fifteen thousand in all, including the pilots lost in the sky and in space.  The city itself was in ruins, filled with shattered and scorched buildings, without power or water, with fires raging out of control.

The Jaguars and Nova Cats stood victorious—but the cost was staggering.  Storied Clusters, such as the 7th Jaguar Dragoons, the 362nd Assault Cluster, the 225th Battle Cluster, the 1st Jaguar Cavaliers, the 4th Jaguar Dragoons, and the 19th Striker Cluster had to be disbanded; their troops divided amongst the shattered remains of Alpha and Beta Galaxy (Delta being temporarily stricken from the Jaguar rolls).  Even with the these Clusters being broken up, no unit in Alpha or Beta reported in at more than sixty percent of authorized strength.  The Jaguars had lost half their total strength in the Inner Sphere in this one fight, although his Techs promised the Khan that they could restore one hundred—perhaps even two hundred—of the OmniMechs lost in the fighting; once they were recovered from the battlefield that is.  Manning them would be another matter completely.

The Cats did not suffer quite so much, but then they avoided the earliest and some of the bloodiest hours of the fighting.  Still, of the five Clusters which they began, the 489th Assault Cluster and 7th Nova Cat Guards had to be disbanded—and if the remaining three could field one hundred OmniMechs between them, Khan West would have been surprised.

But Kendrick Wheeler and most (not all, but most) of his film crews had lived—and they caught the entire battle in living color on film. 

I was expecting some sort of submarine attack while the Jag mechs were still in the water.  Those LRTs triggering flooding in 'mechs can be such a pain.

Field Headquarters of the ilKhan; Bayern
Memmingen, Clan Goliath Scorpion Occupation Zone
November 20, 3043

“Khan Djerassi, you want us to leave our conquests undefended, before we get any of our reinforcements from the homeworlds, and engage Wolf’s Grand Army in a battle that you admit we might not win?  Tell me how I am to sell that to the other Khans?” Yvonne asked, throwing her hands up in the air.

“Never mind,” she continued before Nikolai could say a word, “that carrying out this attack will derail the invasion schedule completely—and force us to declare a halt for the next six months . . . at a minimum!  If we win.”

Nikolai waited to be certain the ilKhan had finished her rant and he sat down the tall goblet of golden pilsner on the side table.  He looked into the eyes of his fellow Khans—Marion Truscott, Jake Fletcher, Amanda Tseng, Peter McKenna, Pavel Kerensky, Olivia Sutherland, Mark Steiner, Ulric Kerensky, and their saKhans—then he nodded.

“And if we do not launch a preemptive strike against the Grand Army, while we have the chance to do so . . . what will that mean, ilKhan Hazen?  Jaime Wolf has between thirty-five and one hundred regiments of BattleMechs at his disposal; depending on which source of information you trust.  No offense, saKhan Kerensky,” he said the Black Widow, who sat beside Ulric.  He had protested against her being present, but the ilKhan had overruled him.

“None taken, Khan Djerassi,” Natasha answered.

“If we do nothing, then Wolf will roll out those forces and hit us with a sledgehammer we are ill-prepared to stop:  ten thousand BattleMechs, fifteen thousand tanks and armored combat vehicles, more than two thousand aerospace fighters, and more than a quarter of a million infantry!  Not to mention between six and fifty WarShips!  Those numbers are on the high side of our estimates of what he has—I believe he has somewhere around half.  If he can choose when and where to use that power, my Khans, then we are fucked.”

The Khans—except for Natasha—winced at the deliberate use of such crude lower-caste profanity by the Scorpion, but Yvonne slowly nodded.  Nikolai met her gaze and he too nodded.  “If Wolf attacks in force, no single Clan here in the Inner Sphere can stop him.  We will lose the fighting touman of three, perhaps four, or even five Clans before we can even slow him.  And he is not the only threat; we have destroyed more than one hundred regiments of Inner Sphere troops—luckily for them, they only have five times as many more to throw against us!”

Marion and Jake winced, most of the others stirred in their seats, but Amanda, Natasha, and Ulric allowed no expression to reach their faces.  “We can no longer lie to ourselves; the Clans of Kerensky simply do not have the manpower from our thirty-three inhabited star systems back in the Pentagon and the Tanite Worlds and the Homeworlds, to successfully take and garrison 2,000 worlds in the Inner Sphere!  We literally cannot do so.”

Yvonne sat back, her face drained of all color.  “And we have failed in our purpose then; Revival has failed.”

“Perhaps not, ilKhan,” Nikolai answered with a sly grin.

Every Khan and saKhan present leaned forward, wanting to hear his answer.

“Revival had to be attempted—if only because the most devoted and fanatical Crusader Clans would consider nothing else.  But, if we can carry out a spoiling attack against Wolf’s Grand Army on Tukayyid—if we can eliminate that threat hanging our us, then perhaps we can present the Inner Sphere with terms of a truce.  A truce that will allow us to consolidate, recover, and—most importantly—give us the time to bring men and equipment and defenses forward.  We will have secured a beachhead in the Inner Sphere, and given enough time for us to fortify it properly, nothing the Inner Sphere does can dislodge us.”

Nikolai lifted his goblet and took another sip of the rich frothy golden liquid and he smacked his lips.  “And once we have recovered our strength, replaced our casualties, and made certain our enclaves here are secure, we can still move on our final target—Terra.”

“With no supply lines, with our flanks open to attack from all sides?” asked Ulric.  “We disregarded this idea long ago; it is too risky.”

“Khan Kerensky—we do not have the strength of arms, not in numbers at least, to drive all the way to Terra and hold every world we take in our wake.  Not even if we brought every last Warrior and Sibkin in the Homeworlds forward.  And every day we delay, we let our enemies grow stronger.”  Nikolai paused and he turned his attention back to Natasha.  “I am correct in that, saKhan Kerensky, quiaff?”

“Aff,” she said.  “Star League equipment was just starting to reach units destined for your Wave IV worlds when I left,” she grinned.  “The Grand Army already has it.  And light powered armor for Jaime’s infantry troopers—not in any great numbers yet, but you know how many suits of Elemental armor you can produce in a short time.  Do not doubt that capabilities of the Inner Sphere’s factories in a crisis.”

“Win or lose, we must throw the die, ilKhan Hazen, my Khans,” Nikolai continued.  “We cannot afford to continue to take the losses that the Jaguars and Cats suffered on Pesht—or the Falcons on Deia.  The Ravens on Parakoila.  The Wolves and Coyotes on Tamar.  We are being bled white, and while we remain combat effective, we will not for many more such Waves—and that is when Jaime Wolf will come crashing down upon us like a tsunami.”

Nikolai lifted his beer and took another sip; he didn’t say another word, but instead allowed each of the Khans present to consider what had been spoken.

One by one each Khan and saKhan nodded, until Yvonne stood.  "Khan Djerassi; it is your plan.  You are willing to accept the consequences that the Khans will demand if it fails?"

"I am, ilKhan Hazen."

“Very well.  I will find a way to convince Timur Malthus—and then we will assemble a Strike Force such as the Clans have never before fielded.  And we will obliterate this Grand Army of the Inner Sphere.”

“Seyla,” responded Nikolai and the other Khans . . . but out of the corner of his eye the Khan of the Goliath Scorpions noticed that Natasha’s eyes had never left him.  And he shivered.

It is against Clan Nature and Natasha is ready to stick the poisoned dirk into someone's back