MacMillan is in a better position to explain what happened to the Inner Sphere, so Trish Ebon lets him handle that part and just listens, watching the locals’ reactions to each fresh disaster. The Amaris broadcast, and General Kerensky’s recall of all SLDF formations in response. The conquest of the Rim Worlds Republic as a staging point and source of resupply. The long build-up of forces, despite each month bringing word of a new abuse by Amaris’ forces. Kerensky’s approaches to each of the House Lords for aid in the struggle – which netted only passive support or private-citizen volunteers, when he wasn’t outright rebuffed. The long, grinding advance towards Terra, with each counter-invasion being resisted and bled by suborned SDS and Caspars obeying the orders of ‘the First Lord of the Star League’ – Emperor Stefan Amaris. The fortuitous find of Professor Glimp’s notes in the NCC complex on Nirasaki, which offered a countermeasure to the Caspars. (Ebon notes that Jack seems skeptical - almost amused! – when these two points come up. Something to consider later?) House Steiner’s near-unnoticed blatant land-grab – wait, sorry, ‘peacekeeping missions’ - on most of the former Rim Worlds. The bitter fighting to liberate the worlds around Terra. Then, at last, Operation LIBERATION: the counter-invasion of Earth itself, two years of grinding assaults and digging Republican forces out of their holes and Castles Brian. General Kerensky’s personal capture of the Usurper, then several weeks later, the execution of Stefan Amaris and all of his direct family. Counting the cost of the ‘victory’, and realising that the SLDF at the end of the Liberation War boasted barely a third of its pre-2765 strength.
The reconvention of the Star League Council – and its immediate dual acts of appointing Jerome Blake as Minister of Communications and tasking him to rebuild the HPG network, then stripping General Aleksandr Kerensky, an interstellar hero for accomplishing the Liberation, of his title of Protector of the Realm. “Too many of the ‘unwashed masses’ wanted to make Kerensky the First Lord,†MacMillan notes bitterly. “The House Lords couldn’t have that – not when each of them coveted that title for their own.â€
The intractable impasse over which House Lord would assume the throne, and the subsequent dissolution of the Star League Council. Two years of frantic shuttle diplomacy by General Kerensky, trying to change the minds of the House Lords and reconvene the Council, even as those same House Lords massively expanded their militaries and recruited more troops from among Rim Worlder prisoners - and the very ranks of the remaining SLDF.
In 2784, Operation EXODUS: the mass desertion of one hundred and fifteen Regular and Royal Divisions of the Star League Defence Force, eighty percent of the surviving Star League Defence Force, absconding for parts unknown with the vast majority of their equipment and more than four hundred WarShips. An action supposedly intended to limit the damage inflicted in the inevitable civil war between the five Great Houses over who would succeed the Camerons to the throne of the Star League. “Personally, I’m half-convinced that it was the greatest mass murder-suicide attempt in recorded history,†is MacMillan’s scornful verdict. “Kerensky was old, he was worn out, and everything he’d fought for was dying or dead. All that was left to him was the SLDF: perhaps he thought it was better to take it with him than leave it to be defiled by the greed of the Successor Lords?â€
The rape and dismemberment of the Terran Hegemony by the five surviving states, each Lord annexing Hegemony worlds near their borders to secure technologies and lands – and their own aggrandisement. The outbreak of the Succession War, almost before Kerensky’s drive-plumes began to fade. The Lyran Commonwealth’s ‘objective raid’ on Bolan, and the use of nuclear arms against planetary targets - which prompted all the belligerents to discard the Ares Conventions. Jerome Blake’s use of non-deserting SLDF units to annex Terra and hold it against any potential aggression, declaring it, the new ‘ComStar’, and the entire HPG network neutral, to preserve them as islands of civilisation and sanity amid the slaughter that would soon come. The Combine’s avalanche-like advance into the distracted and disorganised Federated Suns; the DCA and FSNS’ mutual slaughter over Cholame; the butchery of the Kentares IV massacre; the AFFS’ ensuing resurgence, and the DCMS’ moral and strategic collapse in the face of the Davions’ outrage and victory. The war petering out in 2821, mostly due to strategic exhaustion. The Combine’s Chain Gang raids in the last couple of years, which served little purpose other than to inflame border-tensions once more.
When he’s done with all that, MacMillan sighs and drains his water-glass for the umpteenth time. “And that’s the last sixty years of history in the Inner Sphere: a picture painted in the blood of untold millions, with brushes made of unbridled ambition, petty jealousy, naked greed and arrant stupidity. All because five people who were supremely convinced of their own importance couldn’t stop squabbling over who should hold a title that stopped meaning a single goddamned thing the second Richard Cameron’s corpse hit the floor.â€
“If you must editorialise, Adept MacMillan, please be more sparing with the vitriol,†Ebon inserts firmly, even as the locals bristle at his tone. “I am well aware of your disillusionment; you do not need to reaffirm it so pungently in front of those not yet accustomed to it.â€
“General –â€
“She’s right, Tad: give it a rest, huh?†Katsuragi sighs.
“... Yeah, maybe you’re right.†MacMillan looks to their hosts with a rueful expression. “I’m sorry about the rant. I just... I came to ComStar with a head full of their high-minded PR, and finding out what it masked....†He shakes his head. “But that’s getting ahead of the tale. Javier, I believe it’s over to you?â€
This was agreed earlier, and with good reason. Trish Ebon may be their General, yet she was born on the Pentagon Worlds less than a year before Aleksandr Kerensky’s death; by the time her education began, the Exodus was beyond the living memory of all but a handful, and most of those were dismissive of the past and dedicated to the new ways. On the other hand, Antonescu was born soon before the Pentagon’s settlement; he witnessed many of those events, and learned the tale of the rest from those who had been there.
Again, the speaker finds the locals a highly attentive audience - while his companions watch their reactions to another recounting of far-flung misery. The Exodus, and the SLDF fleet’s seemingly aimless wandering through the Deep Periphery. The Prinz Eugen mutiny – triggered in part by Nicholas Kerensky, to reinforce his father’s control of the Exodus fleet - and its suppression; General Order 137, the Hidden Hope doctrine, intended to prevent further sedition and a plank in the platform that would become the Clans. The settlement of the Pentagon Worlds; the shortage of labour and massive preponderance of soldiers; the mass demobilisation in the absence of any apparent threat, and the stockpiling of the surplus equipment in Brian Caches. The grumbling of lifetime soldiers suddenly demoted to civilians; the rise of the old nationalistic factions as those same troops agitated to regain their old prestige; the outbreak of rioting on Eden, General deChevilier’s death, Kerensky’s brutal reprisals; the use of ’Mechs for riot-suppression, outright civil war between Liao and Davion factions. General Kerensky’s heart failure. Nicholas Kerensky’s accession to his father’s post of Protector, only to be refuted by the rebel leaders in an eerie echo of Aleksandr’s renunciation. The Second Exodus, and the reformation of the survivors’ civilisation into the Clans, each its own self-sufficient society. Twenty years of callous social engineering and military organisation. The return to the Pentagon Worlds in Operation KLONDIKE; Andery Kerensky’s felling in a rebel ambush on Eden before the final pacification, removing one of the last checks on Nicholas’ conscience.
Once he reaches the end of Operation KLONDIKE, Antonescu stops speaking and looks to General Ebon. She opens her file-folder and hands him a datastick of her own, which he slots into the holoprojector. “The next portion of our history is best told by one who saw all the dealings from the inside. I would ask you to be respectful: the officer who dictated this recording was one of our greatest heroes.â€
Antonescu keys the projector to life once more, presenting the locals with an image of a woman in Regular Army khakis – a MechWarrior Captain of the 331st Royal BattleMech Division. Her face is ravaged by illness and an horrific network of fresh-healed scars, and gauze hides what seems to be an empty eye-socket.
{“Listen well, and know the price of my pride, Jason Karrige’s spite, and Nicholas Kerensky’s maniac ‘vision’.â€}
And from beyond the grave, Captain Sarah McEvedy, Star League (in Exile) Regular Army, once Khan of Clan Wolverine, tells the story of the Wolverines’ downfall and their Flight. The incident during Operation KLONDIKE that had so slighted the ‘honour’ and lacerated the oh-too-precious ego of Jason Karrige, Khan of the Widowmakers. Wolverine prosperity during the peace after KLONDIKE, in part a product of relaxing the rigid Clan caste-system imposed by Nicholas Kerensky ‘for the duration of the crisis’ – only to find those ‘temporary measures’ had become permanent law. The first roll of the snowball, the first turn of the self-fulfilling cycle: Karrige’s quiet manipulations of the ilKhan and the Khans of the hardline Clans, poisoning Nicholas’ mind against the Wolverines to the point where he permitted the hardliners to erode the Woverines’ strength with combat-challenges and created ‘The Watch’ to spy – spy! – on the Wolverines in a society supposedly based on the open, honest dealings of warriors. Her own push for advanced weapons technologies that might encourage caution in their rivals - which the other Khans took as another sign of Wolverine arrogance and ‘proof’ of Karrige’s claims they were a growing threat.
The Jade Falcon incursion into the Wolverine-held Tiki Province, attempting to steal both land and an unmapped Brian Cache. (In retrospect, an incident so obviously intended to draw a reaction and an overreaction!) The carefully-orchestrated political ambush at the next Grand Council meeting. Trish Ebon’s inventory of the contested cache, including six nuclear-tipped Killer Whale missiles - when the Jade Falcons had claimed seven nukes lay within the vaults. ({“And the seventh? We would learn its disposition soon enough - and pay dearly for the knowledge,â€} the dying ex-Khan tells her listeners.) Nicholas Kerensky’s annexation of the cache’s contents; the Trial of Refusal against that ruling that killed saKhan Dwight Robertson – as the winner of the bidding, Karrige sent two of his Star Colonels in King Crabs against Sarah McEvedy’s Guillotine and Robertson’s Black Knight, a naked attempt not merely to win the Trial (regardless of the dishonour of the mismatch) but to kill both Wolverine Khans in the process. ({“I have wondered if it would have been better if he had succeeded. Perhaps Karrige might have let his vendetta against the Wolverines die with me, query-affirmative?â€}) The realisation that the supposed ‘honourable way of the Clans’ was becoming a sham and that the Wolverines’ only chance for survival might be to secede from the Clans and withdraw beyond their reach; the desperate flurry of planning for that contingency. Her determination to save her people from the jealousy and machinations of the other Clans - and from being the object lesson Nicholas Kerensky wanted to make to solidify his grip on Clan society. Knowing that the Founder would not – could not! – brook defiance, and that he would utterly erase those who went against his decrees.
Her choice of Franklin Hallis as saKhan, and assigning him to covertly secure cached WarShips and transports to prepare for Operation SWITCHBACK - the secession whose necessity grew more apparent with every passing day. The myriad of other preparations for the Flight; the assembly and concentration of people, equipment, resources; the planning of the evasive travel-route that would throw off the Clans and safely convey the Wolverines to their resupply waypoint on Gamma-1551V, the original Barbados.
The Grand Council where saKhan Hallis’ accession was rejected, supposedly for a violation of ‘tradition’ but more to salve Nicholas Kerensky’s wounded ego and reiterate his control of the Clans. The order for Trish Ebon to strip the contested cache of all its contents, save the Santa Ana warheads that were the focus of the issue, and defend it against any attempt by other Clans to loot it.
McEvedy’s private meeting with Nicholas Kerensky at his father’s tomb aboard McKenna’s Pride, a last appeal to his better nature (if it still existed), trying to divert him from the path both of them knew he was walking. At last, some candour in this whole sordid affair: his bare-faced admission that he intended to sacrifice her Wolverines to his vision of Clan society, unifying the other Clans in extirpating the ‘rebel’ Wolverines to solidify the others’ adherence to his strictures, rather than longing for the old and ‘divisive’ ways, forging the battle-steel future of the Clans with the fires of war, hammering it with suffering... quenching it in the blood of the Wolverines. Knowing, expecting, needing that McEvedy and her people would, could do nothing other than fight the fate he decreed with bared claw and bloody tooth, for only that ferocity in resistance could truly fulfill their role in his design.
The fighting for the emptied cache, and the last Grand Council Sarah McEvedy had ever attended. Throwing Nicholas Kerensky’s hypocrisy and perfidy back in his face, her ire fuelled by all the despicable scheming and corruption of recent months. Repeating to all present Kerensky’s stated intention to use her Wolverines as an object lesson of the penalty for defying the will of the ilKhan and the way of ‘his’ Clans. Finally, finally enjoying the freedom to renounce Kerensky’s precious ‘way’; spitting on his sanctimonious hypocrisy; relishing the defiance of declaring that any who laid a finger on her Wolverines during their secession would draw back a bloody stump.
General Order Wolverine 014, declaring the severance of ties with the Clans and repealing the caste system that had so chafed and restricted all Clansmen as to underlie the whole affair; a much-welcomed return to personal freedoms and growth, the right to choose one’s own career and spouse, to have families of the pre-Clan model.
The other Clans advancing on outlying Wolverine settlements, and the grim satisfaction of knowing they were capturing only scorched earth. The evacuation of the Wolverine capital city of Great Hope on Circe, even as her forces fended off repeated probes.
The sudden, appalling, tragic discovery of the seventh Santa Ana’s location: stolen by Widowmaker Warriors, smuggled into Great Hope... and remotely detonated by Khan Karrige as his ’Mechs, and Nicholas Kerensky’s, advanced towards the city. Almost ten thousand Wolverine civilians who had opted to stay behind, whatever their reasons, incinerated in an instant; apparently by a Wolverine nuke; apparently as an act of scorched-earth defiance; apparently an attempt by McEvedy to kill both herself and the ilKhan.
Nicholas Kerensky’s initial response: retaliation in kind, ordering the Snow Ravens to tac-nuke a Wolverine field-force. The intervention of the battleship Bismark, stolen from mothballs by Wolverine forces, to rescue those same forces from Circe’s surface, shooting down the nuclear-armed Snow Raven fighter in the process; the inadvertent airburst detonation of its weapon far off-target after the hit, horrifically all but leveling the Snow Raven capital of Dehra Dun.
On Strana Mechty, the defiant ‘last stand’ of Trish Ebon’s command against overwhelming Smoke Jaguar forces - and their last-minute reprieve, purchased by Franklin Hallis with the batteries of the orbiting McKenna’s Pride. His emphatic, oh-so-gratifying punctuation of the Wolverine’s break with Kerensky’s way: turning the Pride’s guns on the Council halls of each of the Clans attacking the Wolverines before he and his people joined the Flight.
Kerensky’s longer-term response to the nuclear ‘assassination attempt’: a ‘Trial of Annihilation’, the newly-coined Clan euphemism for systematic genocide. The execution of all Wolverine Warriors taken, no matter if they professed loyalty to their Clan or the ilKhan; the chemical sterilisation of all captured Wolverine civilians before they were annexed to ‘loyal’ Clans; the annexation of all former Wolverine holdings and the complete erasure of their iconography; brutal penalties imposed on any who sheltered Wolverine refugees.
The Clans’ long pursuit of the fleeing Wolverine convoys despite the captive Sarah’s pleas to let them escape, and the Grand Fleet finally running Franklin Hallis’ group to ground in the Barbados system. Savage fighting in space and on land, no quarter asked by the Wolverines, none offered by the Clans. No prisoners taken, military or civilian: refugees in their hundreds simply incinerated with Inferno SRMs to avoid the hassle of any more considered action. Franklin Hallis’ last desperate attempt for vengeance, taking his Pulveriser to head-hunt the ilKhan himself, only to be intercepted by a Wolf ’Mech at the last. Nicholas Kerensky’s revelation of Jason Karrige’s perfidy and machinations, of how Karrige had nuked Great Hope, and his giving Khan Franklin Hallis the last meagre consolation of striking down his true enemy before Ferris Ward ended his life. Kerensky’s honourable burial of the last Khan of the Wolverines, and leaving his secret prisoner Sarah McEvedy on Barbados, to wander the planet and curse the stars for her fate. The return of Trish Ebon’s task force and other Wolverine vessels which had escaped the slaughter, scouring the planet for salvage or clues to their comrades’ fates, finding only scrap and a single survivor: McEvedy herself.
{“No longer do I lead Clan Wolverine, for Clan Wolverine is no more,â€} declares the holographic Sarah McEvedy. {“We are the 331st Royal BattleMech Division, soldiers of the Regular Army of the Star League in Exile. The Star League may no longer exist in Clan space or the Inner Sphere, but that does not mean we cannot serve or re-create its ideals elsewhere, in a society of our own making, on a world beyond the reach of the insanity of the Clans or the grasping ambitions of the House Lords.
{“No longer am I your Khan. I was too sorely wounded in the destruction of Great Hope to serve as a leader should - not in the brief span I have left. Trish Ebon commands you now; she will lead you to the haven I discovered.
{“During the Second Exodus, I was among the team that prepared Saratoga for her time in storage. While I was conducting my survey, I found an officer’s private journals from her service before the Amaris Coup. Among the entries were the coordinates to a Star League Fleet Base in the Deep Periphery, a world ready for settlement, where we will find stores of Star League supplies and equipment that will permit us to establish a new colony world, a free society truly worthy of the ideals of the Star League. I kept those coordinates a secret against an occasion such as our Flight, hoping I would never have need of them... but now that they are needed, I have given those coordinates to General Trish Ebon and Admiral Sebastian Hennesy, so that they may guide you to the haven I will never see.â€}
The recording ends there, and Trish Ebon finds herself blinking back tears all over again. “Sarah McEvedy died of her wounds less than two days after making that last broadcast to the fleet. And there are times when I think some part of me died with her.
“We learned at least one lesson from Aleksandr Kerensky’s Exodus: while we kept Haven’s exact location a secret, we confirmed it as our destination and announced an expected time-frame to the fleet at large, so that they would have that hope to sustain them through the rigours of the journey ahead.
“As you saw, just before she died, Sarah McEvedy renounced all Clan trappings and titles, reverting to the substantive rank she achieved in the Star League Defence Force before Nicholas Kerensky’s Second Exodus: a simple Captaincy. She administered the Officer’s Oath to myself and several senior officers, formally inducting us into the reformed SLDF, and in turn we swore in the rest of our military personnel. That is why I was so concerned about your acknowledging my command authority, Jack: while I am an acting Major-General, I am only a Brevet Colonel, and my substantive rank is that of a mere Lieutenant; Captain McEvedy could promote me no higher.â€
“I don’t know about that,†O’Dwyer notes. “She had what, forty years in grade between the Exodus and the Flight? Under normal circumstances, she would’ve been a light General herself.â€
“If she hadn’t deserted her post,†MacMillan murmurs.
Antonescu glares at the ex-ComStar defector, raising a finger. “Only a quarter-century’s seniority, Commander; Sarah McEvedy was only fourteen during the Exodus and joined the SLDF after the settlement of the Pentagon worlds. Nonetheless, had she lived until we reached the Inner Sphere, I believe that it was Captain McEvedy’s intention to surrender herself to the loyalist SLDF – if it still existed – and face court-martial for her part in the ‘desertion’ of the Exodus. However, she was the last survivor of the Exodus among us; all of the former Wolverines who remain amongst our task force are the descendants of those deserters, and as such they should not be held accountable for the crimes of their forebears, query-negative?â€
Trish Ebon waves all that aside for now and takes up her portion of the retelling. Gathering the scattered remnants of the Wolverine fleet and convoys, including the battered Zughoffer Weir, and setting them back on their course towards the Inner Sphere. Realising that their resettlement would require far more of a labour-force than was left to them, and resources they lacked – construction equipment, farming equipment, seed-stocks of food-crops, and so on almost ad infinitum. Scout-forces ranging ahead of the fleet in the guise of wayward travelers and down-at-heels mercenaries, seeking news of events in the Inner Sphere and indications of where they could ‘obtain’ what they would need. Learning of the Succession War, and the butchery Jinjiro Kurita ordered done on Kentares IV – too similar to Nicholas Kerensky’s recent deeds.
“That alone would have prompted us to target the Combine to replenish our supplies, but we also needed to augment our civilian population if we were to successfully found a colony on what we thought to be a derelict world; we had soldiers and technicians and scientists aplenty, but far too few ‘blue-collar’ types to make a real go of a settlement-ftom-scratch. With the aid of information acquired from our scouting missions, we raided DCMS installations on Svelvik, Trondheim and Jarrett, mainly to replenish basic necessities like food, water and clothing, though we also ‘acquired’ some seed-stocks and construction equipment and our technicians thoroughly plundered their computers for information to plan successive operations. A number of the locals were surprisingly sympathetic to us, or at least approved of those who struck at their Combine ‘oppressors’.â€
“Come again?†Doctor Tosa arches an eyebrow. From what little I know of the Combine, that is hardly conduct typical of its subjects.
“The General chose her targets well, Doctor,†Katsuragi puts in, near-absently rubbing the blue dragon shoulder-patch she wears. “Those three worlds used to be part of the Principality of Rasalhague – well, before the Snakes annexed them way back when – and ever since the Dracs went hard-core Japanophile a couple of centuries ago, people like the Arkabs and gaijin-looking folks like me have been second- and third-class citizens compared to ‘true children of the Dragon’. Add that regional memories of once being a sovereign nation, unrest stirred up by the shame of Kentares IV, and Jinjiro’s being a complete friggin’ nutcase, and the Rasalhague District’s ISF prisons, ‘Unproductive camps’ and outright slave-labour gangs have been getting awfully full these days.â€
“A fact quickly revealed to us by the Draconis databases we cloned in our raids,†General Ebon nods. “Our last strike in the Combine was against an Unproductive camp on Richmond, most of its population being political prisoners like Rasalhaguian activists – the disenfranchised, the disenchanted and the discarded, people we hoped would be willing to make fresh starts in a new society, one that would value their contributions fairly. True, we expected they would start out mostly performing manual labour, but once our settlement on Haven was sufficiently viable, they would have every opportunity to build new careers and lives in their old trades, or new ones if they chose.â€
“Case in point: Chu-i Misty Katsuragi,†Katsuragi chimes in again. “A wet-behind-the-ears DCMS intelligence analyst attached to the staff of the Trondheim garrison commander, well-regarded by her boss as she understands it, but always under a cloud with the ‘real children of the Dragon’ because she’s female and gaijin, despite her name and loyal service. One day, a Rasalhague lobby-group asks for an audience with the Planetary Chairman, hoping to get him to relax the Dragon’s restrictions on their movements and associations a little so they could better serve the Dragon. The Chairman’s an utter reactionary who takes that as an act of rebellion, so he has them all executed where they stand and sics the ISF on their relations and associates... including a family of very distant cousins who’d taken the name ‘Katsuragi’ specifically to evade that kind of backlash. The only reason I wasn’t shot during my arrest or my detention – at least, before the Remnant showed up - was because Tai-sa Aylesworth threw all of his influence into prying me out of the ISF’s claws. I understand they were a hair away from arresting him... only the 331st hit Trondheim first.â€
Doctor Tosa reads between the lines. “I trust he died well?â€
“As did most of the 20th Rasalhague Regulars who fought beside him,†Ebon inserts, not without mixed feelings of her own. “He knocked out one of our Crusaders and crippled two more before we put him down – which was better than fair piloting, since his own machine was merely a Trebuchet-Five-November.
“In any case, the Richmond prison held almost fifteen thousand people, most of them half-starved - the Dragon does not ‘waste’ his bounty feeding the disloyal and the ‘Unproductive’.†The acid Trish Ebon puts on that comment is fit to burn through the table. “On the other hand, we had deliberately secured vast stockpiles of food and water in our previous strikes against the Combine, both to fill our own larders and to prepare for just this eventuality. When our ’Mechs broke open the camp, we landed DropShips nearby, distributed food, explained ourselves to a certain extent, and offered them the chance of new lives. Not one of them refused to join us.â€
MacMillan interrupts again. “Some would argue you made the choice for them, General. After all, you chose to ‘recruit’ people who were desperate for any alternative to the ISF’s programme of starvation, brutality, and execution-without-trial, then filled their bellies for the first time in months - or years! - and offered them more of the same if they’d join your ‘colonisation effort’. Wow: some ‘choice’.â€
“But a choice nonetheless, Adept. I am not entirely proud that the options were... weighted in the fashion they were, but given our own straits, neither will I hang my head over offering salvation and a fresh start to others who were unjustly condemned.†For that matter, it was not the first time I found myself taking little pride in what needed to be done, Ebon adds privately, remembering a cinderblock room on Strana Mechty. “Once we lifted from Richmond, we continued on our way without further troubling the Combine, and we thought ourselves free and clear - until we were intercepted a jump past Valentina. But we were not met by the Combine. Tadeusz?â€
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Topic: 2827 - Ense Petit Placidam... (Read 20258 times)