Turn 58 - Can You Hear The Gears Of Evolution
Operation Black Champion Combat Report
Friendly Losses - 2 Pathfinder Regiments effectively destroyed
Enemy Losses - All organized ISF forces destroyed, all non-ISF Drac forces surrendered
The operation began catastrophically as both Pathfinder regiments deviated from the operational planning. Rather than landing at the planned LZ and securing it as intended, they evidently decided that the old phrase ‘You Only Live Once’ was wonderful tactical advice and tried to carry the entire day on their own by shifting their LZ from the planned site right at the edge of the Palace’s defense envelope to right in the middle of the most intact defensive works.
As a consequence they were utterly mauled by the fixed defenses, with many of the light and medium mechs shot out of the sky before they could even land.
The Special Forces Regiments, seeing this catastrophe in the making, held off their initial runs.
However, Jeremy grimly held to the plan, despite the failure of the Pathfinder regiments to follow it, and authorized the main landing force to land.
At that point, the ersatz Otomo regiment charged the landing zone, and promptly got mulched into shattered metal and mangled pilots in the process as they faced
real Assault mechs. The Assault Regiments led the way, forming a solid wedge of assault-weight metal grinding into the face of the palace defenses, and crushed their way through. Weapons that would be lethal when concentrated on light and medium designs were shrugged off by the titans, and turret after turret exploded under concentrated fire.
Fighting still raged inside the palace even as the assault ground forward, a few isolated surviving mechs from the Pathfinder regiments fighting against ISF infantry.
The fortress fell, the last turret going dark. The two training regiments of
Stingers that were still in the field promptly powered off as the last Otomo mech detonated spectacularly. They’d been keeping their range, staying technically engaged, but not closing enough to be targeted, until that point. It looked like neither the instructors nor the cadets had any interest in dying for the Dragon today.
Nor, it seemed, did any other surviving forces on the planet. The fall of the central fortress prompted Drac units on the remaining continents to signal their surrender, usually after vicious infighting against ISF commissars and minders.
One good thing came from the Pathfinder’s suicidal aggression, a single
Wolf Spider from 2nd Armored had landed in a garden near the very center of the fortress. The pilot, a young Lieutenant and recent honor graduate from the Aerie, cut off his jump jets and let the well designed quad mech absorb the last twenty meters or so of the drop, which turned out to be the best decision. Each foot of the quad mech crushed a single ISF agent, while a young boy was directly beneath the mech and was completely unharmed, apart from being tumbled to the ground by the impact.
The battle armored troopers attached to the Mech secured the garden, and the boy turned out to be Yoshiro Kurita, younger brother of Siriwan, who confirmed that the ISF agents present had been about to execute him due to the assault. His nurse was already dead, as was his chief tutor, they were saving him for last.
The pilot had the good sense to have the boy loaded into the jump seat in his cockpit and then they hunkered down in the garden, holding the single entrance against large numbers of ISF infantry who tried to fight their way inside.
Nowa Warszawa was in your hands, as was Siriwan’s brother.
Despite the Pathfinder’s impetuosity, the day was yours. Victory for Griffon.
-----
The decision to annex Nowa Warszawa arrives just days after the final surrender of Drac forces. This has several effects. For one thing, both the Home Army and the local Drac civilians are less than enthused by the plan, but it has distracted them from trying to massacre each other by giving them both cause to glare at you, and be intimidated from engaging in violence by the fact that your forces are glaring back at them with Very Big Guns And Scary Mechs.
For the first time since you’ve landed, you have more than one consecutive day without deadly riots on the planet. Plus there are now voices who are agreeing that given everything this is probably a good idea. The radicals in both camps don’t seem to like that, but don’t seem willing to draw your ire at the moment.
The move does catch your administration a bit flat-footed. Your various ministries are scrambling a bit to catch up.
First thing, you’ll need to decide who to appoint as temporary military governor of the planet, until a civil administration can be set up.
[] | Jeremy Griffith |
[] | Thanh Griffith |
[] | Hamid al-Aziz |
[] | Some poor Civil Affairs senior officer who’s qualified for the job but isn’t already named |
You do get distracted from this by the ongoing Olympics, at least a little.
Men’s Wrestling is surprisingly close, with the difference between Gold and Bronze being 2 whole points. Unfortunately Team Griffon got the Bronze and the Roman’s the Gold, but it was still a rather impressive performance from everybody involved.
Women’s Wrestling isn’t as close, with the Roman’s dominating every weight class. Team Griffon has several unlucky injuries early in the competition and winds up a distant third.
In Men’s Fencing, Team Griffon is utterly dominant from first to last, indeed by the second round the only question remaining was who would take silver as Team Griffon had built up such a lead that they could forfeit the remaining matches and still take Gold. The Rasalhaguians wound up with the Silver medal.
Women’s Fencing was a show of skill and is the closest of any competition so far in the games. In the end, the Rasalhaguians take away the Gold by a single touch, and the Romans get the silver due to winning by priority, which was effectively a random coin flip as no touches were scored in the overtime of the deciding tied match.
Men’s Archery is somewhat of a Roman/Rasalhaguian two-way battle, with Team Griffon being completely outclassed, while Women’s Archery was much the same at first, although Team Griffon was eventually able to eke out a silver on the strength of some superb shooting by the final archer.
And now, you can’t avoid it any longer, it is budget time. Sigh….
General Stewart leads things off. “Your Majesty, with the collapse of Drac forces on Nowa Warszawa, as well as the decision to incorporate the planet into the Empire, we are going to need to establish a proper garrison force for the planet, complete with local recruiting and training facilities. This will pave the way for a future expansion of the Aerie, if such is desired. There are a large number of salvaged mechs, two entire regiment’s worth of
Stinger light mechs, for example, that are easily repaired, although they are functionally useless to us. There is some consideration to giving these to the Home Army to form the nucleus of a future garrison force, but there are concerns that this may lead to radical elements within the Home Army using them against non-Polish civilian populations on the planet. We’ve already had to secure previous mechs given to the Home Army due to attempted attacks by radicals in their ranks. For now we are keeping these machines in depots for future disposal, either to a militia or to scrap.”
She checks her notes. “Your son did report the capture of two specific Mechs, however. One is not in
SARAH’s Star League database, being what appears to be a hybrid between an Atlas II and a standard Atlas, and appears to have been the personal mech of the original Dragon. The other is a Royal Stalker, and appears to have been the personal mech of Siriwan Kurita’s mother. Both machines are being shipped here on the next transport.”
“Beyond that, we have captured extensive military factory infrastructure on Nowa Warszawa, including sufficient Light/Medium mech production capacity to produce an entire regiment a year, once retooled to our specifications, as well as 3 additional ASF wings worth or production, likewise once retooled.” she reports with evident satisfaction. “This does not mean that we should slack on our own factory expansion, plus we will need to continue to boost all of our strategic production, but especially endo-steel given how ubiquitous it is in our Mech designs.”
She checks some notes. “I’ll be handling the ground procurement brief this year as well. Your Majesty, we functionally lost both Pathfinder regiments, primarily due to the commanders of said regiments disregarding orders and acting in a highly reckless manner that led to severe losses of men and machines. We recommend that the surviving senior officers who made that decision be court-martialed and cashiered from service. But this leads to us needing to rebuild our LZ securing assets. As such, we are recommending the procurement of 1 Pathfinder Regiment, to be assigned to 1st Armored Division. We also recommend procuring 3 Standard Mech Regiments, 2 to be assigned to 4th Brigade, 1st Armored, and 1 to 2nd Brigade, 2nd Armored. Finally we recommend procuring 2 Armored Regiments, 2 Mechanized Regiments, and 1 CAS Regiment. One Armored Regiment and 2 Mechanized Regiments will be assigned to the 4th Brigade of the 1st Infantry Division, while 1 Armored Regiment will be assigned to 1st Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division and the CAS regiment to 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division.”
General Reyes then steps up and fires up her Powerpoints. “Your Majesty, we would like to procure a second Planetary Defense Wing to station on Nowa Warszawa, while also continuing procurement of Carrier Wings for the
Silver Tower stations. We are also proposing procuring a Planetary Defense Wing for Calliope IV to boost local defenses as well.”
Well, that was rather short, a single short statement with only three powerpoint slides to deal with.
Admiral Benjamin is on crutches for some reason that he hasn’t seen fit to admit to you. “Your Majesty, we’ve got 21 large and 1 regular Dropship slip available to us this year for new construction. My brilliant staff has come up with the following recommendations.”
- Large Dropships (21)
- Regular Dropships (1)
“Now this may seem strange, but there is a method to our madness, Your Majesty. Starting next year, we intend to split our production slips into A and B groups, with them alternating each year, this way we will have a steady stream of new dropships coming off the line, rather than having to deal with python lumps of ships which has been straining our manning capabilities even with the improved projections from the new training vessels. The Aerie can only graduate so many officers a year, Your Majesty, and our prior pattern was seeing very inconsistent demand, leading to serious scheduling difficulties.”
“On the other hand.” he grins wickedly, “We would like to order a truly epic number of PPG-01’s this year, to be distributed amongst the
Silver and
White Towers. My wife assures me that we’ll be able to man the lot of them, especially if she doesn’t need to fill up crews for everything else.”
Bridget is looking a bit harried, but in a cheerful way. “Your Majesty, DoME would like to send a team to Nowa Warszawa to do a full environmental survey, we already have quite a bit of good data but they want to see things for themselves before making recommendations for amelioration. In addition, the teams that had been working on the various water related projects on Griffon IV are ready to continue at your word. We have organized teams to procure and install modern machine tools and such on the newly captured factories on Nowa Warszawa, which will allow us to make use of them in our own production. In addition, we are recommending that we begin building strategic materials production, space infrastructure, and possibly a new orbital yard in Nowa Warszawa orbit.”
Isoroku is extremely busy with the Olympics, although he does send a progress report on Calliope IV that shows that progress is being made there.
Jake is looking a little grim. “Your Majesty, a military government on Nowa Warszawa is fine as a short-term solution, but we really need to start moving towards a civilian administration, even one run from here. We have tiger teams ready to go into action in that regard, as we’ve been planning this internally for some time, but we need your authorization and sufficient budget for the purpose.”
Mary didn’t bring her normal remote. “Your Majesty, we’ve not got anything new for you, but we have teams ready to begin work. We recommend starting research on Orbital Infrastructure and Improved Agriculture so we have plenty of capacity next year in case anything new pops up.”
Harry is looking exhausted. “Your Majesty, two things. One, the expanded POW camps are, thankfully, almost ready, just in time it seems, and two we can expand our current COINTEL methods and assets to Nowa Warszawa, which should hopefully help us deal with any radical elements among any of the groups there, as well as root out any remaining ISF and Drac loyalists.”
Janet is also looking exhausted. “Your Majesty, Parliament threw us a curveball, forcing us to move up our timeline. I’ve got teams ready to move in to start establishing a Griffon style legal system on Nowa Warszawa, informed by our experience on Nowy Gdansk. We can get the basics set up very quickly, but will take time to do anything more in depth.”