A/N: Thanks to Yellowhammer, Decim and the others who helped with rolling out the ASF combat. Some artistic license has been taken with the results, which I’ll summarize after the chapter.
Chapter 19
Dropship Implacable, Inbound from Zenith Point, Sevren System,
Radstadt Prefecture, Rasalhague Military District, Draconis Combine
January 1st, 3016
Recharging at Laurent took us 119 hours, so it was New Year's Day when I recovered from my usual bout of TDS. We were just about four days out from Sevren, and still one and a half from turnaround.
We’d used the Zenith point to avoid the usual traffic at the Nadir Point’s Recharge station; the last thing we wanted was the Seventh Sword getting an accurate count of how many Dropships were headed their way. Since there wasn’t an officer standing by waiting for me to recover, it seemed unlikely that we’d lost anybody to a misjump.
That meant I was a passenger for another four days with literally nothing to do.
Well, almost nothing. I admitted. So after some light PT (a normal workout under a single gravity was light by definition after years on Catachan) and a small meal (chicken soup and dry toast since my stomach was likely to be rebellious for hours yet), I settled down with my office door open to be seen Doing Paperwork While Totally Unconcerned.
Two battalions of Battlemechs and an ASF Wing spread across three dropships created an ungodly amount of paperwork every day. Since I’d been incapacitated for most of our first day in-system, that meant my workload had been piling up on me. Just about the time I was finally beating back the ravening hordes, Julia popped her head into my office.
“Colonel Weber,” she greeted with a nod. It was good practice. We might not have landed yet, but we were in a hostile system, and salutes were, in the ancient vernacular, a sniper check.
“Hauptmann Steiner,” I returned her greeting. “Just stopping by, or are you here officially?” I inquired.
Now that she’d had a chance to settle in, official communications from the 8th Donegal Guard, or any future LCAF forces we were attached to, were to be routed through her. It was unlikely for us to have gotten an intelligence update this far out from the target, but any bit of civilian shipping could potentially be a LIC front.
I still wasn’t terribly surprised when she shook her head.
“No, sir, just letting you know that I’ve spoken with each of your company commanders and gotten acquainted.”
I nodded.
“Good, it’ll make it easier to do your job the better they know you,” I said. Her competitiveness could have hurt or helped her back on Sudeten, but she’d given a credible performance on the range once she started thinking of her LB-10X as a heavy multimode autocannon with the range of a PPC and not a PPC itself. Her willingness to pay the forfeit without any complaints had solidified the Unit’s good first impression of her. The way she kept making strides in the following days: adapting to the superior cooling capability of the integrated Double Heat Sinks, adapting to the ‘Mech’s ability to split fire accurately, and all the while dealing with the offset cockpit throwing off her instincts had just been icing.
“And what are your impressions of them, one officer to another?” I asked.
Julia hesitated for a moment before answering. Probably putting her thoughts in order.
“Captain Schmidt … he’s good where he is, but I don’t think he would enjoy any higher rank than he already has. Captain Levy, though, is very sharp. She’s probably the best of them at being an
officer. Captain Fischer … is he by any chance related to Lieutenant Fischer?”
“He’s the twins’ father,” I nodded in confirmation.
“He’s very good as well, especially considering he never attended a formal school,” she asserted, then gave me an inquiring look.
“My grandfather kept a large library of military thinkers. Everything from Sun Tzu, to Clausewitz, to Kerensky. At the most fundamental level, war hasn’t changed much since the first industrial-age conflicts of the 20th century, because it isn’t fought by ‘Mechs, but men. Learn enough of history, and you can see the general shapes of it reflected on the future.”
“That sounds like one of my father’s quotes,” Julia said thoughtfully with an approving nod. “He’s a reader too, and it rubbed off on me. The family has a strong tradition of being thinkers in addition to blunt-force military-types.”
I shrugged.
“Not intentional if so, but it may be a paraphrase,” I admitted. I’d read extensively, so it was entirely possible that I was repeating something I’d internalized a bit too well.
“Comet, my XO, only had a single semester at Sanglamore. She’s spent a lot of time over the past few years reading up on military history as well. It’ll be good to have another outside viewpoint besides Captain Levy.”
“Hmm,” Julia said, distractedly. After a moment she continued, “‘War isn’t fought by ‘Mechs, but men.’ Would you say that’s your philosophical viewpoint on conflict?” She asked.
I didn’t answer her right away. The conversation had gotten unexpectedly deep.
“You could probably simplify it more than that, but, yes. ‘Know your enemy and know yourself and you will find victory,’ and all that. Though it helps if you’re benefiting from the partiality of Almighty God, even if that isn’t always
comfortable.” After another silent moment, I spoke up again.
“Why, what would you say yours is?” I inquired.
Julia smiled and her eyes slipped mostly closed as she recited.
“‘Out of every one hundred men, ten shouldn't even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior, and he will bring the others back.’ Heraclitus of Ephesus said that thirty-five hundred years ago. Ever since I read it I’ve wanted to be that Warrior, the
leader, the woman that makes sure that at the end of the day, the Combine is the one that’s losing. That I bring my people home to their families. That the generations of soldiers that have been
failed by the corruption in the LCAF’s High Command before now won’t die for nothing on my watch as an officer and a noble.”
By the end, her eyes were open and intent.
“I’d planned to request a transfer to the 10th Lyran Guard once I made Hauptmann on the battlefield. The right way,
not because of my last name or my family’s wealth, power, and connections. However, Aunt Katrina thinks I can do more good here. If we can retake Sevren …”
She trailed off, and I nodded. Sevren was one of the worlds closest to Tamar, and it had been fought over more than once in the Succession Wars. In taking it, the Combine had nearly completed their isolation of the capital of Trellshire and the Tamar Pact. Taking it back would cut time of passage to Tamar by as much as three weeks. And that was before considering that it would mean any assault aimed at Sudeten and the critical factories there would be three jumps out instead of two, with a commensurately greater chance of being detected before arriving.
“Yeah. Hell of a down payment.”
Julia met my eyes, and she nodded back.
XXXXX
Dropship Implacable, Approaching orbit, Sevren System,
Radstadt Prefecture, Rasalhague Military District, Draconis Combine
January 5th, 3016
As was my job, I sat in the middle of the Dropship’s bridge and looked composed. With the inevitable interception attempt at Atmospheric Interchange coming up, the
Birdcage was launching a squadron. But only her, and only a squadron.
The plan depended on making us seem less threatening than we really were. It was why we’d gone to the trouble of using the stacked dropship formation we were in. It also meant that we should only have so many ASFs.
The Jägers air complement was a known quantity: one squadron. Likewise, it would have been reasonable for the LCAF to have attached a full Lyran Wing of 18 to the operation, especially given the Sword of Light routinely traveled with a full Combine Wing. LIC anticipated Sevren’s orbitals were guarded by 42 ASFs: the Teak Dragon’s 36 and a half-dozen militia birds. What the Combine called a Flight and we called a Squadron.
Since we were playing with our cards close to our vests, the Warriors were going to be pretending to have only the ASF bays in our Overlord.
Of course, the squadron that Colonel Weintraub wanted was all Interceptors to quickly gut whatever Strike Fighters the Dracs sent after our Dropships. My CAG’s Stingray was not an Interceptor. So we were improvising: making it look like we were launching from the
Implacable while really launching from the
Birdcage.
It was a non-trivial exercise, but we were handling it.
Still, the reality meant that we were facing odds a touch worse than 4:3. That wasn’t insurmountable, but it did lean heavily on the militia being as bad as LIC anticipated, and our modified Centurions rapidly leveling the playing field via enthusiastic application of many, many 5cm lasers.
That was The Plan.
As usual, it blew up immediately on contact with the enemy.
“Count is fifty-four, five-four, Drac ASFs!” The sensors officer announced.
It seemed the Dracs had extracted an extra Company of Aerospace Fighters from their asses. Some-fucking-how.
“Launch reserve fighters,” the order sounded almost bored in contrast to the nerves in the previous speaker’s voice.
It took me a moment to realize I was the one who’d spoken. By the time I did, Captain Chapman had seconded the order, and the radio and intercom had relayed it.
Only then did Colonel Weintraub’s face appear on my screen.
“Colonel Weber, we need those reserve ASFs,” he said, maintaining admirable calm.
“We see the welcome wagon,” I returned equally calmly. “Launching … now,” I called as the first bird departed from the
Implacable, Richthofen’s Stingray, of course. He was already moving, but the faster Centurions were still forming up. They’d overtake with their superior Overthrust, but unless I was willing to feed them into the fight in dribs and drabs….
I tried to run through the math in my brain. I could tell the Dracs would beat our second wave to the fight, but not by how much. Seriously, fuck physics.
Gladys rescued me by flashing all ten fingers once.
“Estimate Wave One ASFs will be alone for ten seconds before reserves arrive,” I said.
“I’ll pass it on,” Colonel Weintraub said. And then I was a passenger again, depending on untested if well-practiced pilots to keep some of the best in the Combine off our backs.
Here goes everything.
XXXXX
Captain Richthofen growled as the hammer of
Bobtail’s overthrust pressed him back into his seat. Already the Centurions of Squadron One and Squadron Three were overhauling, but he could tell they weren’t going to make it to the furball before the fight started. In that case …
“Squadron One, you’re with me, keep the damn Dracs off the Strike Fighters’ tails so they can chew up the Dogfighters,” he commanded. “Squadron Three, kill every motherfucking fighter those Snakes send at our Dropships. Clear?”
Green lights answered him, and then the Dracs were in range of the first wave.
The exchange was too fast for him to keep track of, but his targeting systems highlighted a Lucifer spiraling to the ground, one wing gone, and at least a squadron’s worth of Combine Interceptors doing the same. As he watched, another combine pilot had to bail out of a crippled Sholagar. On the surface, that seemed like an advantageous trade for the good guys.
In reality, they’d traded those ASFs to tie up the Lyran Interceptors and Strike Fighters while utterly isolating the Dogfighters.
And they weren’t breaking off for the Dropships.
“Squadron Three, slashing attacks on the furball!” he ordered, just as the second exchange started.
Then he was far too busy to have any idea what was going on in the rest of the fight.
A Combine Sparrowhawk had pounced on the solitary Lyran Typhoon, likely fallen out of formation due to overheating. Since the Lyran Heavy lacked tail guns, it was in a bad position, and the Sparrowhawk was already chewing into its limited aft armor.
Time to squash an ankle-biter, Richthofen thought as he closed the range.
The Eggheads back on Catachan were still working on a full refit for his baby, but what they had done was swap out the in-engine heat sinks for freezers and the standard plate for Ferro-Aluminum. That meant his usually easy-to-overheat Stingray
wasn’t anymore.
At the last second the Sparrowhawk’s pilot must have seen him coming, because he at least tried to evade.
Between his own skill and the neurohelmet he was using, Richthofen still managed to cluster his PPC and three of his four lasers into the Interceptor’s tail.
A less well-armored ASF would have gone to pieces instantly. Armor all over the rear of the fuselage shattered or sublimated, but the Sparrowhawk actually still had some scattered bits of protection left. Unfortunately for the Drac, the other bird’s heat profile was already spiking. At least one of Fredrick’s shots had gotten a piece of the fusion engine.
Seeing which way the wind was blowing, the Sparrowhawk’s pilot tried to disengage, likely hoping to form back up with the rest of his squadron. Fredrick was having none of that; despite the speed of the Combine Aerospace fighter, it couldn’t outrun light.
He followed the other ASF through the disengagement maneuver, the information flowing back from wing and frame sensors making managing the controls, even under heavy G load, child’s play. In the moment the other pilot straightened out, clearly expecting to have left his slower Dogfighter behind, he put all three of his big guns into the Sparrowhawk’s aft a second time.
The Sparrowhawk was a sturdily-built machine, with seven and a half tons of armor and structural members meant to resist the G-Forces of its own massive engine as much as enemy fire. But it wasn’t built to take a PPC bolt and a pair of 8cm laser beams when its aft was down to less than 200 kilograms of armor.
Fredrick’s fire cored the Interceptor out; the Drac’s parachute only serving as confirmation of his first kill of the engagement.
Relieved of his reason for tunnel vision, Richthofen checked his cockpit telltales and saw the rest of his squadron in good shape. One of the Chippewas was turning away from the fight to limp back to its dropship, too lamed to continue, but it seemed to be the only one the Dracs had gotten a solid piece of, and there were no longer any Drac Interceptors lingering around the Strike Fighters. Already the 8th Donegal’s Heavies were reorienting to take Drac ASFs on the edges of the furball under fire, and a quick glance told the tale there as well.
The Jägers and the 8th had started with a squadron of Dogfighters each. They were now down to a squadron
total, though the Dracs hadn’t had it all their own way.
Richthofen’s own Third Squadron was pushing into a zoom climb, regaining altitude after their first slashing attack. His computers highlighted four Drac ASFs, a Corsair and three Shilones, all on their way to the ground in pieces thanks to existing damage exploited by the Centurions.
That left Squadron Two, and a quick check revealed that they had just sent the last of the Drac Sholagars that had tried to intercept them running.
“Five, Six, go help the Mud Wrestlers Interceptors,” Richthofen ordered, seeing the three remaining Sholagars gamely sticking it out against the 8th’s four remaining Interceptors. Green lights acknowledged the order even as he turned to the Furball.
“Alright, gentlemen, high speed slashing attacks are-” he began, just in time for the Strike Fighters to shoot apart a Slayer that was on the edge of the fight. Moments later, the furball disintegrated as the Dracs realized their attempt to isolate and destroy the Lyran Dogfighters had resulted in the isolation and destruction of their own Interceptors.
“General pursuit!” Richthofen called, freeing his squadron’s number three and four to seek their own targets. A damaged Lightning with a blue and white shield-and-stripes insignia drew his attention. The range was long, but his PPC still scored, chewing up aft armor. One laser, however, missed, and the second only burned through the left wing, seemingly hitting nothing important. The Lightning’s tailgun lashed out at him, but the range was too long and it skittered on and off his nose without doing more than charing some paint.
Then his wingman, far faster than a Stingray under Overthrust, slipped in behind the evading Combine ASF and put at least three lasers into the armor Richthofen’s PPC had damaged.
The Lightning went to pieces as its fusion engine’s shielding failed. No parachute erupted from that wreckage. Already seeking another target, he was surprised by Colonel Weber’s voice coming over the radio.
“Pull back, Warriors. Don’t get overextended,” he said, and Richthofen saw that the boss was right. Squadron Two was moving to support Three and the two-thirds of his own Squadron in the pursuit, but they were already leaving the Strike Fighters behind, and the Combine’s Slayers were distressingly undamaged and had the fuel advantage besides.
Of the twelve Lyran Dogfighters that had begun the fight, a single Eagle was limping back to the Donegal Guard’s Unions, and the Jägers were only getting a badly mauled Hellcat and a Lightning back.
Without support … it would be all too easy to end up pursuing the Combine’s Dogfighters until he got them right where the Combine wanted him.
“Colonel’s right, boys and girls. Back to the barn!” he called, and disengaged from the pursuit. A good day’s work. The combine had begun the fight with nine squadrons of ASFs to the Lyran’s seven squadrons. Even assuming several cripples had gotten away during the fighting, they were down to four Squadrons of intact airframes to the Lyran’s five.
A glance at the mission clock showed that the whole engagement had lasted less than five minutes from first shot to last. It had felt more like an hour.
XXXXX
“A
shield with a blue and white triangle on top and vertical stripes?” Julia asked then frowned. “That’s-”
“The Ninth Rasalhague Regulars,” Colonel Weintraub preempted her. “Not a unit that LIC thought was going to be waiting for us. We have to consider the possibility that we’re on the losing side of an Intelligence coup. We could be about to land right in the middle of a trap.”
With the words spoken, everyone’s expression tightened, and my own was no exception. Still …
“I don’t think so,” I disagreed. “The Warriors have been on the business end of a Combine mousetrap like that before. The last time we hit them on Mozirje, the Dracs only threw Militia ASFs at us on the way down. Let us land for our raid all fat dumb and happy. Only after we’d disembarked did they spring the ambush, and hit us with half the Seventh Sword of Light’s ASF Wing while they swarmed over us on the ground two to one.
“If they’d known we were coming, they’d have been sneakier about it than meeting us force for force,” I asserted. “Besides, they pretty clearly weren’t expecting our modified Centurions, or they wouldn’t have tried to match us one-on-one with Sholagars.”
That relieved a lot of tension in the room and Colonel Weintraub nodded at me.
“That was my conclusion as well, but it still could be a trap. More realistically, I think we’re running into the exact same thing the Dracs would have found if they’d attacked Sudeten back on the fifteenth or sixteenth of December.
“My best guess is that the Sword of Light was getting ready to launch a raid in force on Sudeten or maybe Tamar, and that the Ninth Rasalhague were probably taking over garrison duties for them until they detected us.”
I hadn’t gotten that far myself, yet, but his scenario made sense. If it had been a secret movement order, then that explained why LIC hadn’t alerted us to the change. Hell, depending on how far and by what method the message had to travel before it was received and decrypted, it might still be on its way to any spy’s LIC handlers.
But if that was the case …
“Our landing sites are unchanged, we’ll still secure NNI and Landing, but Colonel Weber, I want your scouts out along the road towards the Capital as soon as we land. Colonel Shaw, as soon as you’ve gotten them unloaded, I want your J Edgars scouting out on the flanks. NNI and the refining industry around Landing is the most important industrial center on Sevren. Between that, and the area’s agricultural importance, there will have to have been at least a battalion of the Rasalhague Regulars guarding it. I want them found and destroyed before they can consolidate. If we can manage that, we’ll be back to even numbers on Battlemechs, and with the superiority of the Jägers training, our armor will be better than theirs. This isn’t going to be as easy as we’d planned on, but we all knew the enemy was going to get a vote. Well, the enemy just voted, and we have to assume that they will know that we’re bringing more to the fight than they were expecting.
“Once the battalion that the Regulars had guarding Landing is destroyed, I intend to push towards the planetary capital and attack it as quickly as possible. I intend to leave most of our attached infantry behind to fortify Landing just in case. Hopefully, we can reach New Cartris before the enemy can consolidate their forces and any reinforcements that they HPG for can arrive,” Weintraub announced.
“If not, then we won’t have to hunt down any guerillas. Clear?”
Agreement answered and Communications were cut just before reentry ionization would have terminated them anyway. With the new plan decided, there wasn’t much for me to do but review my Aerospace Wing’s damages. Really, there was not a great deal to review. Armor damage on a half-dozen ASFs. The Squadron Leader of Squadron Two would need one of the 5cm lasers in his bird’s nose replaced, and 2-5 and 2-6 would need their XLFEs pulled for shielding repairs.
Depending on how bad they were, those could be a depot or factory-level rebuild.
And that was it. Compared to literally any other formation on the field, we’d gotten off incredibly lightly.
“How soon can you get those 240 XLFEs into production?” Julia asked, looking over the same data while sitting in the shock frame beside me.
I grimaced. The expansion there wasn’t planned until after we had the 300 line running at full capacity.
“If you or your Aunt can send us a couple dozen vetted fusion engine experts that also happen to suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder that they can channel into ensuring that
absolutely everything about an industrial process is so tightly controlled, you can hear the laws of physics squeak? I can do it in six months. Otherwise it’ll be at least a year and a half. More likely two.”
Julia took a moment to process what I’d asked for and just a hint of a smile appeared before she did her best to smooth out her expression. She pulled up a different document on her PDA and visibly thought for a moment.
“I can ask, though with specifics like that, I doubt even the Archon could find many takers,” she said, then her expression became fully serious.
“We need Centurions like the ones you’re fielding, and we need them badly. They’re less an Interceptor and more a light, incredibly fast Dogfighter,” she asserted. “Thankfully, Lockheed-CBM has the license from Jalastar to produce them on Donegal. I’ll also ask her about importing from the Feddies when the time comes, since they have been swapping over to the
Sparrowhawk.”
“They were even more effective than I expected,” I admitted, but I wasn’t going to leave her with false expectations either. “But if the Combine targets them in the merge, they’re vulnerable to armor penetrations from anything meaner than a 5cm laser. The Dracs aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed, but they know how to fight. They’ll prioritize any Centurion on our side just in case it’s an upgraded version. Even if it doesn’t penetrate, a bunch of nose damage from the merge will make them vulnerable to tailguns, and the Dracs are smart enough to mount decent aft weaponry on their main ASFs.”
Julia nodded, accepting my point, and then countered.
“If they do focus on Centurions? Then that means they aren’t focusing on our Dogfighters or Strike Fighters. For all that the Shilone and the Slayer are solid Dogfighters, the Eagle is better and the Lightning and Hellcat are just as good out of the atmosphere. I think my first recommendation for the Archon will be that we stop procurement of the Sabre once production of 240XLFEs has ramped up sufficiently. Even if all you can do in the short term is ship out electronics and armor refit kits for the Centurion, it will be a vast improvement. The Sabre is just too fragile.”
I thought about that for a moment and couldn’t find fault in her request.
“I can see about getting more Ferro-Aluminum made for the -1D weight scale. And electronics are currently easy enough. We already knew we were going to need to expand production of those. The hard part will be locations. We can only dig holes in the ground for all our production so fast, and the Battlemech lines have priority. Might have to step up survey work. See if there’s a played-out mine up high somewhere we can repurpose…” I trailed off in thought. .
Julia spoke into the companionable silence.
“I’ll have a word with Great-Aunt Lisa. She rules our family private holding of Gallery where the bulk of the population lives underground thanks to the weather and weak sunlight. So it should be child’s play to source some mining bots from my personal pocket along with trained, security-cleared miners
quietly so we can make our own tunnels. Assuming you’re willing to accept a buy-in from a new business partner?”
I smirked at her.
“Depends on how good the men and the material are. We’ve imported a bunch of hard rock miners from Steelton who know their business, but we could use better tools and trainers for them.”
Julia nodded.
“So, what’s Catachan like? I’ve gathered that it’s a heavy-gravity world with dangerous flora and fauna, but most of what we’ve discussed has been practicalities.”
“Well, I hope you like mountains,” I said with a smile, “because the Holdfast is built at the mouth of a mountain pass above the tree line of the cloud forest. When the weather is clear, you can see just about forever. Really fantastic scenery.”
I stopped for a breath then continued.
“What about Gallery? I’ve never been there?”
Julia paused and gave a surprisingly gentle and shy smile at some memory before she answered.
“I love visiting Gallery; dark and mysterious forests with stormy clouds and fog. It makes me feel like I’m the heroine of a Norse Saga or one of Great-great grandfather Marco’s Gothic poems.”
“Time to reminisce later,” she said with a shake of her head and changed the subject. “So what do you think needs to be done first when back home on Catachan?”
“Well, the expansion for electronics production will need to be planned out. Replicating the tooling for that won’t be easy, but-”
Anybody who’d been having a case of nerves over the unexpectedly stiff opposition would soon hear that the boss and his LCAF liaison were so totally unconcerned that we were already planning for what we’d do when we got back home to Catachan.
Somehow, I didn’t expect the Seventh Sword of Light to make things that easy for us.
XXXXX
A/N: Thanks again to Seraviel, Lordsfire, and Yellowhammer for beta reading, idea bouncing, and canon compliance checking. This chapter is vastly improved by their efforts.
As for the ASF combat … Lostech is bullshit. Even in LordsFire’s ASF rules, combat is fast and brutal, and I modified them to try to stay truer to the source material on the fragility of ASFs.
Ferro-Aluminum makes a huge difference on TAC survivability; the Warriors air wing was the only formation not to lose a single ASF. Also, Advanced Neurohelmets that let Regulars roll like veterans and their Veteran squadron leaders roll like Elites. It didn’t help the Combine that Yellowhammer, who rolled for the Lyrans, rolled consistently well on piloting checks to avoid being tailgated. Sometimes by as many as four enemy fighters at once.
With some of the odds in the furball, I decided to fudge things there in favor of the Dracs. Several ASFs that survived in the rolling have been destroyed or mission-killed in the story to make the fight less one-sided.
