Turn 52 - The Wind Is So Much Colder
It takes hours for you to calm down after the battle is confirmed over, hours which you spend ranting at your patiently suffering husband, hours in which you threaten to fire your entire General Staff multiple times, hours in which you lash out verbally. Your eldest son is missing.
There is extensive footage of Kuritan mechwarriors deliberately kicking in the cockpits of downed mechs, indeed the last four Drac mechs were engaged in precisely that when the
Winged Hussars swooped in, which partially explained why the diminutive little machines managed to be so effective.
It doesn’t surprise you to learn that there have been no Drac prisoners taken. You are quite sure that many of the dead Dracs committed suicide via a pair of gunshots to the back of the head, but considering the atrocities you’ve already seen?
The valley where the final battle took place is swarming with medical personnel escorted by the Royal Grifftiger Mounted Police. There are survivors, although all of the units had been shattered and there’s not a single intact mech left on the battlefield, not to mention the hulks of destroyed tanks in their defensive revetments. Most of the survivors are infantry, and they join in on the search and recovery efforts.
Overall casualty figures are grim, even the preliminary data that you have coming in paints a horrid picture. Castor had become one of the most densely populated continents on Griffin’s Roost, and the fighting had torn through the place like a merciless plague. You’d managed to evacuate the population into the shelters prior to the Dracs landing, thanks to the excellent civil defense system you have in place, but the Dracs seemed to take a cruel and vicious delight in destroying any shelters they found.
Willis finally manages to force you to take some sleep aids and go to bed. You wind up crying yourself to sleep, despite the haze of the medication, and only your beloved husband holding you allows you to finally drift off.
When you awaken, hours later, it is to Sergeant Major Ngo… and the redoubtable old woman is smiling.
They’d found him. And he was alive. A
Jenner had indeed kicked in the cockpit of his mech when it finally went down, and his pilot was dead, but the command console provided just enough protection that he’d only been seriously wounded rather than killed.
The fact that he declared himself ‘fine’ has your ‘Mom’ sense tingling. And it turns out your Mom Sense was on the ball. He’s ‘fine’ only insofar as in eight months or so he’ll have freshly cloned legs, and that the doctors were quite certain they could completely eliminate the burn scar tissue using cloned skin grafts.
Fine your well-aged Imperial arse. The damned thing is he insists on going back to work, even confined to a medical chair and with a medical orderly attending him at all times.
You still have to deal with everything else. The fires are out, the rubble is being sorted, and rescue services have done what they can. But the economy of Castor is in rubble, and the casualties are still heavy despite all of your precautions. How bad they could have been if you hadn’t insisted on hardened shelters doesn’t bear thinking about. As it stands, while loss of life is bad enough, at over 2 million killed, tens of millions more are put out of work thanks to the massive destruction, reducing your tax base significantly. In addition the massive economic disruption causes the planetary economy to contract quite significantly.
You are very fortunate that none of the strategic factories were lost or even damaged, Jeremy had planned the final defensive line very well, so at the very least you weren’t going to have to rebuild any of that.
But of the Divisional commanders engaged? Jeremy is the only survivor, none of the other senior officers made it. General Brenda Jackson of 1st Armored had been killed in action, her command tank being stepped on by a Drac
Atlas, with the survivors being killed by pirate infantry. General Faye Dunn’s body is found, crushed by a
Jenner. General Angel Swannson was found quite literally ripped apart by pirate infantry, pistol still clutched in one hand and a destroyed battle armor at his feet.
So as much as it galls you, you desperately need Jeremy, he’s the most senior surviving ground forces officer you have left, and as much as the mother wants to wrap him in cotton balls and keep him safe, the empress realizes she can’t.
You hate being empress sometimes.
Work crews have managed to clear up most of the orbital debris, so your orbital stations and such will not be risking damage. A small number of
Achilles might be salvageable, with a great deal of work. They don’t really fit your force structure, but perhaps you could sell them to the Rasalhaguians or the NRI.
| [] | Just scrap them | +$1,000,000 |
| [] | Salvage and sell to New Rasalhague |
- +1 Trade Route
- Costs $500,000
- Improves Relations with New Rasalhague
|
| [] | Salvage and sell to NRI |
- +1 Trade Route
- Costs $500,000
- Improves Relations with NRI
|
It’s too early to be certain, but it appears that you might be able to salvage about a regiment’s worth of
Jenners from the battlefield, although all of them would be in pretty sorry shape. The design itself doesn’t fit anywhere within your tactical paradigm, so they’d be pretty much useless to you except, perhaps, as OPFOR mechs for training. On the other hand you could sell them to either the Rasalhaguians or the NRI.
| [] | Form them into an OPFOR for the Aerie |
- +5 Procurement Target for regular units
- Costs $500,000
|
| [] | Salvage and sell to New Rasalhague |
- +1 Trade Route
- Costs $500,000
- Improves Relations with New Rasalhague
|
| [] | Salvage and sell to NRI |
- +1 Trade Route
- Costs $500,000
- Improves Relations with NRI
|
A week later and things have settled down a little. Jeremy is still in the medical chair with a medical orderly hovering over his shoulder, but he’s well enough for the meeting.
“OK, Mom. Let me start with this. I screwed up. I failed to press for more ground forces procurement, I got complacent about our technological superiority, and I had far higher hopes for CAS and orbital bombardment than turned out to be the case. Against fast and agile mechs, air strikes are far more difficult than we expected, as our aerospace fighters were simply moving too fast to provide more than nuisance value. Once the fighting became general, they simply weren’t able to engage effectively, as unlike our simulations and expectations the enemy was able to rapidly close with us despite our theoretical firepower advantage. Once they had done so, our pilots had to abort their runs rather than risk blue on blue casualties. Our artillery was likewise far less effective than we hoped, although it likely was the decisive factor in keeping us from completely failing.” Jeremy looks grim. “One thing none of our training and exercises showed was how vulnerable conventional vehicles are to physical attacks, once the enemy mechs got in amongst our armored forces they were able to destroy vehicles with ease that, on paper, should have been nearly impossible targets.”
He looks at his notes. “Some of the problems that beset us wouldn’t apply to offensive operations, of course. We’d be able to be far more liberal with orbital artillery support, for example, and our aerospace forces would be able to make better use of external ordnance, which was restricted due to the fact that the fighting was taking place within our own populated areas. Likewise long range artillery fire may have been more effective with an enemy unable to use our own citizens as shields, a large number of fire missions had to be aborted due to the fact that civilian shelters would have been within the danger close range.”
“With that being said, we have some preliminary analysis. First, our total losses. 1st and 3rd Armored Divisions are, quite simply, gone. The 1st Rapid Reaction Force is gone. The Imperial Guard is shattered, with only the Winged Hussar regiment remaining. As far as Mech forces go, we are down to our Training Regiments and three Armored Cavalry Regiments of 2nd Armored. Preliminary analysis of recovered BattleROMs show that the Light Horse Regiment concept is fatally flawed, the light and medium mechs of those units were unable to effectively support the armored forces. One of the major factors was the lack of integral infantry support for those units, however due to the design of the mechs assigned to those units there is nothing to be done in that regard. Bipedal light and medium mechs simply cannot support squads of power armor infantry in the same way as our quad designs in those tonnage ranges, let alone our heavy and assault mechs.”
He brings up a graphic, showing side by side a
Trooper and the smaller quad
Orb Weaver. “The simple truth is, the smaller
Orb Weaver can support six power armor troops, her ‘back’ is broad enough for our engineers to build in a sextet of support stations that permit the suits to ‘ride’ the mech into battle. The
Trooper is far more vertical, and as such is lacking in suitable attachment points for infantry. They’d have to dangle from the mech by their hands, which might be feasible over short distances at low speeds, but is incredibly dangerous.” An image of the
Soldatin comes up. “Our heavy and assault mechs have body forms far more similar to quad mechs, being broad and long, rather than tall, with digitigrade legs beneath and arms attached at the rear corners of a roughly arrowhead shaped body. Even then our engineers had to get creative. On the
Soldatin they lengthened the upper arms to bring the enhanced PPCs further away from the body, and mounted the torso enhanced PPC on a high swivel mount inspired by the
Marauder design in
SARAHs databanks in order to create sufficient clearance for the infantry riders. The upcoming upgrade has had to borrow solutions from our assault mechs, specifically the method of mounting the long range missile racks and the redirection of the exhaust gases upon firing upwards rather than backwards.”
“These solutions simply don’t work well on smaller mechs, or at least not well enough. We’re still researching the issue, but we’ve been doing that for years now with little progress.” he shrugs with a sigh. “So for the time being, as much as I appreciate the old mechs, I recommend ceasing procurement of Light Horse Regiments until such time as we finally crack that problem.”
“Likewise, we need to reconsider the organization of our Standard Armored Regiments. Right now they are deficient in infantry support, have inferior artillery support to our mech units, have too many light vehicles unable to stand up to attack, and are, bluntly, trying too hard to be jacks of all trades. We have too many different tank designs in service, with overlapping roles and capabilities that fail to synergize well together. Before we start procuring new Standard Armored Regiments we will need to reorganize them, and possibly split them into Armored and Mechanized Regiments, the need for APC’s to carry infantry along crippled the overall capability of the regiments. We hope to have proposals on your desk as soon as we can.”
He pauses again. “For our Armored Divisions, We would like to rebuild on the grounds I outlined last year, with modifications. Instead of a Three Brigade configuration I would like to go to four. First brigade would have the same organization, one pathfinder regiment and two armored regiments, although we will be studying replacing those with mechanized regiments instead. Second and Third Brigades would consist of one Armored Cavalry Regiment and two Standard Battlemech Regiments each, while Fourth Brigade would be either three Assault Regiments or a third brigade identical to second and third. In addition, I have asked the Strategic Planning Board to analyze the possibility of adopting an SLDF style Regimental Combat Team approach for smaller, more responsive units, as I am concerned that the Armored Division concept might be becoming too large and unwieldy.”
“Finally, we will need to upgrade our battle armor troops, the light suits we have been using are clearly inadequate, as was shown by the heavy casualties they suffered at the hands of the pirate suits. However, I have asked Mary to investigate the possibility of creating a Mechwarrior power armor suit, optimized for mechwarriors, to increase survivability in the event of a cockpit breach.” he looks very grim at that.
Your son used to be so happy and upbeat. Now he looks like you imagine your grandfather would have looked after a battle. Grim, implacable, like a glacier waiting to crush you if you stood in his way. There’s something just a bit fey about him, like the conquerors of old.
You glance over at Willis, and can tell that he sees it too. It is decided, as soon as he finishes his medical therapy, has new legs, and completes PT, you are conspiring with the twins to stuff your firstborn into a hover racer and forcing him to have fun.
