Battletech: The Ghost Who Walks (Battletech Isekai)

Scrap Series: Industry
Number 2 in Series (technically there is teaser already up for Number 1 and number 1 is set to occur after the battle of Dieron finishes and there is another one in planning that takes place in between)

Pseudo / Semi canon​

--
Arcturan Arms was as its named suggested an arms manufacturer on Arcturus. Inventive. They had made among other things the Mardsen II MBT that surprisingly the Canopians on Luxen had still had in inventory. It had suffered financial problems, and existed as a subsidiary of Arcturus based MacEnroe, the problem was that MacEnroe simply did not have the financial capital or political clout to break out into the market.

It kept its head above water, but it was a middle of the pack Lyran Company who's industrial performance did not do well to distinguish it from others in that bracket. In another successor state maybe it would have been different, but as a consequence of the Commonwealth being the largest economy by GDP in the Inner Sphere MacEnroe was forgettable. It was not a house hold name. It might have once been but that had been in a much earlier era of human prosperity.

The problem was the Davion Pound was weaker than the Lyran Kroner... the C-Bill was weaker than the Lyran Kroner so that made business complicated. It had dragged this out to assemble the capital involved, and then on top of that there was the political posturing on the side of things.

Arcturus was technically three jumps from the Combine border. Eight from Dieron, not exactly a short trip. It was more than a dozen jumps from the coreward periphery fifteen from Buttehold and further still from the von strang's world. Never mind going the opposite direction towards the rimward periphery...

In theory outside of the combine threat the world should be fairly safe, and it was the combine who was seemingly the real threat. The document that established the groundwork of the Federated Commonwealth had been signed.. and thus the investment into Arcturan had been smoothed over somewhat compared to the potential headaches that such an acquisition into a defense contractor might have otherwise run into. So as a result what had begun in 3018 through proxies and intermediaries had taken a couple of years and then time to run through company inventories and contend with other minutiae before the first new production Marsden II MBTs began to roll off the assembly lines.

It took another eighteen months after that before the first Crossbows since the 26^th century to roll off, built using VLAR 300 series engines, and a combined Dalban avionics and communications package along with a host of rebalanced weapons. Magna produced Mk2 medium lasers and a Hellstar PPC replaced older designs and integrated a new parts commonality with other machines... what made the crossbow design interesting still was that its missile racks in the 6B was in many ways a direct precursor to the mounting system that would evolve into Mercury a few centuries later, and thus a distant ancestor of the Blackwell industry OmniVehicles... which was the next Arcturan project that they had licensed to produce.

... with Natasha Kerensky's consent of sorts after that whole business in the rimward periphery. The Wolf Captain hadn't seemed especially enthused about merchant things... but the Wolf Dragoons had signed off on it. That was the next project as Arcuturan arms looked forward to in the later end of the decade increasing its production of vital war materiel.


The Azami technician departed having left them with the final report of where they sat with the latest tanks.

As it happened sharing a border ... well for worlds directly on the combine border and those nearby there was big business to be made in the defense industry once you had the ball rolling. Long term prospects of investment were looking good. If they could get the Federated Commonwealth off the ground then Arcturan arms could expand further.

Not that he was involved in day to day operations, but the Azami were sure they could get a Dervish line operational... and there salvaged Hegemony machinery that would eventually go to bringing Archer production online. There were Commando talks, but those would be strictly export. They'd licensed GM's 180 fusion engine, used in the Black Jack, for a Marsden II version with Large Laser, and there was planned test of an upgraded Marsden II with a prototype LBX autocannon also produced by GM.

All of that was in part why Gene was expecting that there were going to be questions, and as long as the Duke of Arcturus was prepared for the truth well ... he should be prepared to face the reality that the bulk of the starting capital on the venture to buy out Arcturan Arms had come from the Davion bounty for killing the Galedon Regulars DropShips during the Elidere Campaign.

The expansions of material, and advantageous licensing processes were built up on the legacy of the Elidere Campaign... but LosTech prospecting could also be credited as well. On the other hand he rather doubted the Duke of Arcturus would make that sort of small talk. The truth was the Lyran establishment hadn't tended to make military related small talk.

... it seemed like after you had a reputation for mulching Combine Regiments and slaughtering pirates with LosTech mechs that Social Generals no longer wanted to talk to you if they could avoid it and especially didn't want to talk shop. Most Lyran gentleman joined the LCAF as a gentleman's club of aspirant mechwarriors ... and well... for the Arcturus yeomanry, if to borrow a Davion term, military service to the Commonwealth was often about a loyalty to House Steiner than their more local politicians so they tended to be the more professional soldiers...

... and it was those professional soldiers utilizing the Marsden II tanks, and other products that were now on the market, because the Combine was a close and belligerent neighbor.

Sensing his probable worries Septim started to reassure him that most likely that Doctor Abner would monopolize the Duke's attention. The years after Dieron had been busy... the times and the Inner Sphere were changing. Their stop over here was really part time after all, in part due to things Abner had brought back from his latest expedition into the periphery

--
Notes: This is a short scrap, largely brain storming stuff I did Monday. So one of the things that I am still weighing is Rasalhague at this point, particularly the questions related to what happens in that neck of space due other factors. The Rasalhague are going to rebel, and while peeling off an entire military district is unlikely the combine is very likely to lose a lot of worlds from that RMD if they weren't careful. So in this scrap, it assumes Orestes is still in Combine hands even though by the time the Aurigan crisis is resolved rasalhague may actually be in existence in the main timeline, but here it is assumed to not be.

If it is though, then by that point there would be significantly more breathing room for Arcuturus in ~3026 or perhaps the Rasalhague are in the process of rebellion concurrently to the Aurigan Civil War wrapping up. In either case, it would likely behoove the Lyrans to insure that the Combine cannot attempt a reconquest of any separtist RMD worlds effectively... and of course that assumes that that the Azami likewise do not rebel in general in the 3020s either. If the Combine starts sloughing provinces to internal rebellion domino effect is possible

 

Dieron Part 6​

Morning came entirely too quickly. His body was flagging, and with good reason history would inevitably record that the invasion of Dieron and Davion efforts more broadly would be part of the final stage of the third succession war. For Kerston it was a sign that his age was catching up with him... short duration fights in a battlemech were one thing. Commanding the Eridani might be possible for another few years... but how many grand set battles like this would he be able to manage.

The simple truth was he was getting old. While this wasn't likely to be his last major campaign he was cognizant that the Light Horse needed to prepare for him handing over the reins. With early morning now upon them he could tell from long experience that today would decide things, he could feel it in his cut... and with that instinctual recognition the Brevet General began reaching out to the Eridani constituent commands to find out what the Draconis Combine had in store for them.

There was movement across the entire front. Some of it was probably obfuscation, but which pieces wree feints and which were actual attacks, or movements to reposition to support an attack were hard to say from the feeds within his BattleMaster.

Very quickly though he was interrupted by a notice of Davion Command, or at least the Mercenary Liaison was patching in. A youthful face appeared. A stark contrast from the Eridani's usual Davion Liaison the countess of Kestrel had been pushed forward from her initial position as liaison to Shepherd's company to administering the larger command and control of mercenary forces on behalf of her superior the Duchess of Victoria, Field Marshall Yvvone Davion.

Her report had a point, the amount of artillery, the shell expenditures, going out more reflected the habits of the first succession war than most battles of the third, and yet the Combine continued to throw men at the prepared defensive formations.

It was a grisly result, and reminder of what had happened in history after the Star League had first collapsed. The difference though was that the Combine was not on the offensive their attacks weren't being mounted on shocked and disoriented commanders who were trying to piece together why things had gone wrong... as had been the historical explanation for the failures of tactics and operational and strategic response in the closing years of the 28^th century. The combine infantry were also not assaulting civilian population centers to traumatize them or to prevent their governments from simply deleting combine positions from orbit as might have been the case during the height of the age of war centuries before. Instead the fights going on, as morning light crossed over Dieron's rolling hills were out in the open... what wasn't ... served as little more than choke points for clusters of infantry to be caught up together as they tried to advance.

He'd seen this before in the other states... where often enough Lyran social generals would botch an advance, or where the Capellans simply demanded the advance continue... and of the two it was more likely this was the later. The Sword of Light expecting virtue to carry where firepower was lacking.

--

Gene flipped through the maps. Dozens of fusion powered Harasser tanks were swarming around his position which concealed any heat returns his VLAR 300 would have put out. Anyone going on fusion returns if they did pick it up might well assume so many mixed fusion returns from both the harasser and the heavy vehicles further to the rear was one of their Recon Groups.

It was true that the Harassers ran off the same Fusion Engine as Davion Stingers... and invading Davion forces had deployed a number of those as it was. Not that it mattered the entire purpose of this leap frogging was to insure that both 'mechs and armor were supporting one another, and that their advance was screened by, and in turn screened for the Infantry.

The coordination of which was lacking between the branches ... almost as if the DCMS commanders were afraid one of the other branches were going to upstage them. Actually, if their comms intercepts were accurate that was exactly the problem with individual hostile Militia Infantry regiments launching unsupported attacks without the support of one another... or if it wasn't that it was because nearby infantry regiments weren't being tasked to the same objective, though that could at least have been on the basis of needed to attempt to suppress by numbers an enemy that rather uncooperatively kept shelling anything larger than a company level position with battery of thumpers.

... of course that policy had already seen Lex remark that they were burning through a lot of shells for the guns. He knew part of that was legitimate concern for their logistics, but he also knew that there were apparently questions from officers of the Crucis March contingent wanting to ask her questions about what the fuck was going on here.

It wasn't that Robinson's people, the DMM officers didn't want to be in the loop, but Elidere was one of the worlds that was their responsibility. The Scotts Cuirassiers, the highland armor and infantry units, were moving to assist MacIntyre's current point in the salient, which meant they were back on schedule at least. The holographic display panned eastward across a relatively wide depression between the hills and further until it showed him the telemetry from orbit of Sorenson's batch of Rasalhague units.

They'd finally broken through the pop up infantry contact, which was good.

As the view, and the pan across the landscape, went wider he could see the highlighted fusion signatures start to tally from both sides. It looked as if the Combine had made up their mind... the infantry attacks had almost certainly been designed to give the Mech units time to reorient and redeploy... and if the combine had planned it that way it had certainly tied up their thumpers from shooting at their redeploying units in favor of the regiments of foot.

It sucked to be the PBI but at least it made a certain sense in immoral mathematics.

Magunauc 1-1 pinged his Marauder from three mikes out signaling they were moving to link up. Sam Houston's original Azami complement was understrength relative to 1-2 and 1-3 stationed aboard the DropShips registered Crockett and Boone. The armor and mech Inf combined arms unit closing in meant the Sam Houston was in bound with more supplies.. but the lack of a radio call meant that the Sam Houston's beacon broadcast as it had crossed one of the planet's innumerable and otherwise generic mountain ranges had failed to elicit an SLDF or Hegemony handshake.

They'd try again in a couple hours.

It was possible that Fortress Dieron was running intentionally radio silent due to the hostilities... that was indeed the most likely explanation. They kept hoping for a handshake and invitation to access the facility rather than just trying to navigate to an access point by map data from N001 because they didn't want to risk tripping automated defenses... defenses they wanted to potentially use against the Combine.

Still with no progress on that front it was time to maneuver and turn this flank.

He reached over and signaled his receipt of 1-1's maneuvers, changed channels to call up the three lances, batteries in red leg parlance, of thumpers, who were about to use up more shells. If this was a longer campaign... one of weeks, never mind months the Combine would likely have ascertained that they were using the aerodynes to transport ammunition from safe areas back at their original landing sites.

They might have some suspicions at this point but with air supremacy achieved, Combine air support having been rendered if not non existent than no one currently trying to contest their short duration hops there was little the Snakes could do about it. They just needed to maintain that in order to maintain this operational tempo.

He keyed another internal company channel, "Septim standby."

"Roger that boss."

He navigated the screens, before linking the holosuite projections to the Merlin, "Orbital telemetry confirms Combine redeployment," It wasn't as bad as it could have been, but it went a long way to explain what they'd been doing. "You need to clear that sector, I wouldn't be surprised if they don't attempt another banzai charge if they think it'll give their mechs an edge.."

"Roger." There was a pause, "Any sign of that other battalion?"

"No," It seemed like the Davion intelligence continued to have been accurate, "It does seem that they're off world."

"That's too bad." The Lyran replied sarcastically. "I'll relay that to Bard after they finish rearming his wolverine."

He wondered if the other brevet Colonel had been thinking they'd be able to bag themselves an actual Kurita on this trip, but he didn't say that and the connection ended.
--
Notes: So notice for the Pirate Wars, particularly the late periphery wars section, the Aurigan sourcebook canonizes Katinka's SLDF facility being hit by a RimJob mass driver. (Well not specifically Rimworld but it was either them or the Taurians and I suspect the former) that is going to be something that comes up

 

Dieron Part 7​

The battery's guns were arguably doing more damage to the infantry than everyone else combined. In this situation twelve artillery pieces firing from beyond visual range into infantry you knew was out in the open was a messy, bloody prospect. It was a necessary millennium old reality of warfare though. It was much faster for 155mm air bursting shells to wipe entire grid squares of infantry than it was for mechs, or tanks.

It did not change that the appearance of mechs ... and tanks spewing incendiary weapons was enough to start a panicked route of infantrymen who had been under intermittent artillery barrages for hours. Even discounting the logistics after a certain point continuous shelling lost effectiveness, he knew that. "With crack flanking maneuver," He muttered, "I'm an uhlan alles uber striking terror into regiment of foot."

The synchronization, his tie into the command software shifted. There was a pulse across the communications software as the Dalban regulated an encrypted message through the Fury tanks of Hammer.

He wasn't holding his breath that they'd get a response this time. He watched as the SLDF communications gear broadcast its hailing signature... and then to see if the encrypted signal received a response from anything in what most people just dismissed as one of the continents mountain ranges on a planet with lots of those to begin. When there was nothing, which was what he'd come to expect after trying every six hours, he moved on to higher ground to observe the fight ahead as the command vehicles fed him data from across the advance... he picked one area and marked where he needed to be and set off pushing his Marauder forward into a sprint.

The overflights of Combine Positions were being validated out by the sensor returns. The Combine looked to be interested in committing decisively to an open battle... which might have suggested that unlike with the fighting on Elidere where the duke had beamed out a message and been hoping against hope for reinforcements... if the DCMS had sent out a message presumably the answer was they were on their own.

Part of that was probably that Dieron was a provincial capital, and that there were no BattleMech Regiments or the lift capacity to move reinforcements, especially if the Davion attack on Altair had drawn in any reserves the combine already had had... It was also just as plausible that the Sword of Light chose to commit to the fight solely for the sake of honorable deaths in battle. Gene watched the comms equipment readout... but now he was looking beyond the regiments of foot militia. The infantry were something to delegate to sub units within the advance, to be bottled up and wiped out as necessary, but otherwise kept contained and isolated so that they could assist the other arms of battle.

... even if that was, or had been as meat shields, and ablative armor.

The image fluttered opening on the holographic display. "It doesn't look like they're going to cooperate with the plan." Alexandria Cunningham observed.

"No." The original plan hadn't been set in stone, but they had hoped to pin the Combine in place for the Eridani to launch their own assault.. but battle plans didn't survive contact with the enemy and all that. .. but it would have been nice to pin the enemy in place to leave other units room to maneuver, even more so if they could encircle and wipe out major force combatants and then swing through turning the whole flank. "Hold on." He muttered and tapped the keys in front of him his eyes shifting under the data influx. "Yeah," She started to say something to that, "They've reduced the forces around San Martin." He tapped the controls in front of him after muttering the observation.

"Commander Shepherd-"

The fusion signatures he was detecting were a company of mechs from the Fifth Sword of Light, but at this resolution he couldn't tell which battalion they were.

His Marauder's Dalban started cataloging mass and signals throwing up war book identifications that ran from light mechs through to the single Assault eighty five tonner that was putting out too much signals for the mech's health. Most of the enemy force though weighted in as mediums or heavy Battlemechs a stark contrast to the expected Sun Zhang light mech cadres they'd been expecting to punch through and engage. It could have meant that this independent company had been thrown in front of them while, he assumed, the Kuritan's attempted to use the fast swarm of fresh meat to launch a suicidal banzai charge against the Guards, or the Light Horse closer to the capital of San Martin.

Or they could have been doing something else entirely.

"One-Two, One-Three break left of my position along the salient." He received a perfunctory acknowledgement of the order and a pair of jenner 7As from the One Two Tactical Group's mech lance zipped past his marauder churning through the dusty red sands. Following after them were a mix of Harasser, and Saracen LRM hovers who had been earning their name screening his flanks on the infantry. Machines that if they could pull this off, he expected he'd be able to replace wholesale with Bandits, but first they had to get through this.

The other machines of the combined arms units followed.

The good news was that their intelligence appeared valid. The entirety of Fifth Sword of Light wasn't present. Intelligence had said One battalion was off world, and we was glad that that was still the apparent case.

Of course that meant that if they did win the Regiment would survive, but it meant they would have to fight one less battalion of enemy mechs. Normal Azami doctrine was oriented towards lighter, and where possible less ammunition dependent raiding and strike forces, but that had its limitations... and of course here that role was largely already being filled by the Eridani Light Horse.
--
Alexandria Cunningham didn't like being sidelined. She had graduated from Sakhara Academy, and while her tour of service was in the office of the Prince's Champion that was actually step up from the arrangements her parents had made. Her star had risen further with Prince Hanse's ascension, as he had been quick to name his, distant, aunt as his champion elevating her beyond 'merely' the ranks of the Military Intelligence directors... but that did present other hurdles to her present position.

She watched the Azami lance move the pair of heavier mechs following after their light star league era Jenners. To go harass the Combine; pecking at them with large lasers. There had been concerns that Shepherd might have been romantically entangled with his Azami XO but she didn't see it... or if they were they were vastly more discrete about it than Chang and the Lyran Alexander were ... but even that seemed more of a friends with benefits arrangement typical of military liaisons. It wasn't her concern.

Still with no real experience in a line command ... having gone straight to staff work she was perpetually on the back foot in terms of unit interactions... which was annoying in the extreme. It didn't help that the find of the Brian Cache on Robinson had warranted diverting Shepherd off world to the Davion Capital... and then of course the mild insanity that had been Northwind. A mystery that they still couldn't adequately explain.

One of the Field Marshal's staff had ridiculously asserted that Shepherd as a Terran native may well have himself been a highlander... something about a check pattern that felt entirely to far a reach... there had been talk about the Highland Formation, but those were definitively terran mechs in long term storage. Even if that were the case it didn't explain how Shepherd had been able to turn one of the most significant ethnic minorities in the Combine against House Kurita.

The sensors within the command center of the DropShip flickered passing on as Star League tanks, the Fury tanks from Bristol, relayed data about the Sword of Light Mech Company. She paused to insure that the prince's champion knew that it was about to begin. This was the moment they'd been waiting for. This was the principle secondary objective beyond the primary of taking Dieron from the combine... especially if there were Terran caches still on this world... but those were a tertiary priority if the Combine hadn't unearthed them then they could focus on holding the world.

Yvonne Davion's face appeared, and there was a pause as her brows knit. "Are we inside the Combine's communication's network?"

"By all indications, yes." It wasn't that the trick hadn't been done to the Combine before... somehow it had been done on Elidere IV, but there had been no explanation... save the assumption that given the number of losses inflicted on the combine that a machine had probably been captured intact. No such capture had been reported.

"Interesting." The duchess of Victoria replied. "Time to close?"

"The lead combine company appears to be the standard Fire, Recon and Command lances given their position relative the salient, no more than fifteen or twenty minutes." And that was assuming that the Sword of Light didn't charge on the advancing 'mech company and its supporting armor.

 

Dieron Part 8​

Gene wasn't immune to fatigue. Right now he was listening to snippets from a dozen conversations occurring near simultaneously. He'd been letting the software handle much of the work. The truth was his dialect of Japanese was... painfully archaic compared to modern Combine Japanese which did occasionally give him a headache... though there were interspaced bits of Russian, English and Swedish slang thrown into communication chatter which added to that.

The radio intercepts had thus far been more or less the expected sort of posturing and battle rhetoric. Nothing really actionable. "We are Samurai!" The pronouncement brought a banzai cheer from the ranks of combine mechwarriors more than a dozen strong, a company and it seemed an expanded command element... probably family retainers or other personnel that was his best guess given the mechs had been late arrivals. If his intercepts of their IFF was right a forty something year old DCMS Major was in charge.

Gene grunted, rolling his eyes, before keying the comms to the unit at large, a series of holographic projections manifested, "That one is mine," He ordered into the mike highlighting the offending Combine Mechwarrior's heavy battlemech in the battalion wide tactical network through his Marauder.

He received a series of affirmatives, before a brogue voice cut in accompanied by a flag unnecessarily the DMM icon, "So how long are you going to need, cause," The Volunteers commanding officer, Bard Cameron, cut off in a fit of static, before his image reasserted, "Yeah we're taking intermittent LRM contacts."

"Can you identify their position?"

"Nothing, just the general direction of fire." He would have killed, probably literally, for an effective ground based tracking radar but with all of the countermeasures going out there was too much interference. "We're scouring the hills for light mechs or vehicles that might be spotting for them, but nothing so far."

Gene paused, he assumed that the Sword of Light should have had some supporting assets, and ... they were attacking as individual battalions which... they should have been maneuvering as whole battalions given the infantry cover... or at least it would have made more sense, "Weight of throw?"

"I'd guess ground based hover vehicles. Fives and tens, but" The image shuddered, "Definitely not LRM carriers, but we're getting pecked at and its starting to cause trouble for the lighter mechs." He understood that, the Stingers probably weren't the best to have brought in. "I don't think they're grasshoppers at least."

Gene nodded, and prepared to finish orienting troops into position before an overhead observation plane spotted a bigger problem. "Bard, Break contact and pull back." He didn't get an immediate response, he switched channels to the Service Company ordering them to bring trailers up, and then cycled through the roster for the fastest vehicles they had in situation with the intention to send them as couriers to physically bard to drop back from where he was in advanced contact.

The holographic display of the planet's geography as it spread out through the broad shallow river valley that fed down into the great lake that was really a freshwater inland sea given its size presented them something of a tactical and operation buffer zone to one side.

"Commander?" An Azami Tech asked within the Daimyo HQ vehicle, "We're moving the devastator now." The trailer containing the hundred ton assault mech needed to be moved to as close to the hill he had highlighted in the mech display.

He acknowledged but was already running up how quickly artillery could be brought on line... the thought of how limited their stockpiles of chaparral... the arrow IVs were but the vehicles that had been pulled out of a brian cache intended to fight the combine. He'd need machines to lase targets for missile bound artillery strikes as well... that meant he needed to remain in the Marauder until the last possible transfer time... switch machines climb up the rest of the hill and hope the topographic readouts were right and then expend as much of the machine's forty gauss rounds as he could before the enemy could rush in.

It was a pity the devastator hadn't been built with command and control in mind. The Atlas was too generalist for his taste. He somewhat regretted at the moment handing over the Ought 10 King Crabs from the Northwind find... but he had had no idea they'd be in this position. He flipped a switch to tag his movement to the illuminated waypoint and turned the Marauder to move while keeping the nose of the machine oriented towards the horizon where the enemy were coming from... if he was right then Bard was being peppered Sun Zhang cadets being fed at him piece meal and that there was probably a battalion of sword of light behind them as well...

... which just raised the question of whether or not the intelligence was wrong. Was the the whole regiment here? Or had the Combine simply consolidated more of their forces?

The Combine Commander may have assumed that if he smashed them and turned and rolled up the flank he'd be able to sweep through the DMM and then face the Eridani or the Davion Guards in an encirclement... which only made combine was going deep throat on the whole elan vitale concept.... or in its Japanese counterpart 'Kokutai'.

It was probably that. The Combine expected to start a rout... and that just wasn't going to let that happen. He reached up and flipped the toggle, and punched in a key series, and waited for their ASF detachment to move to standby.

Seven minutes later he was starting the boot sequence on the Devestator, and then moving it up the rise to the crest of the hill moving the master arm switch to on, and transferring power to the Gauss rifle capacitors... while still trying to field questions from the countess of Kestrel on what was about to happen, and why he'd pulled Bard back into the main formation.

The Marauder had been left on standby... if he had time, if he could expend his ammunition and do enough damage he'd swap back to the command mech... but that wasn't a sure thing. The Marauder's targeting data fed 'mr samurai's position as the man's parade paint heavy mech as it crossed nine hundred meters.

He ran the ballistic calculations, and started plotting the spread and displacement of the other mechs in the hostile company including the lead mech's wing man and the other lance mates. He let a breath as they continued to come on. The reticle resolved and went green. The sixty ton mech's head dissolved in slow motion in the video feed, but also in a strange dual perception of the mind machine interface, but he was already adjusting the left gauss rifle onto a catapult k2 and preparing to let fly as the laser designator of his targeting system formed two dots from the returns.

Without the Marauder's dalban he could no longer manage regiment wide command structures down to individual tank and infantry platoons. The last orders to finalize positions and prepare support ppcs, and inferno loaded srms ahead to break any following action would be the last orders those units had received. The tanks needed to be prepared to fire from protected positions and then move back if anything came through.

With more time, with more warning, he'd have tried to maneuver fury and alacorns to enfilade the oncoming attack before directing the 'mechs to attack... but this banzai charge had been screened at first as a probing action rather than what was looking like a human wave assault... in hindsight that made sense doctrinally.

This was obvious a prepared counter attack as opposed to a probe. A counter attack after their own meeting of the DCMS infantry earlier this morning. If he needed to swarm his position with reinforcements they had hovercraft of their own.

The Sword of Light Company pressed their attack heedless to the damage being done to their command lance. They were committed and wouldn't break the attack until they'd sustained losses that rendered them combat ineffective... well he could oblige them on that.

His data feeds piped live gun footage from the Devastator back to the Davion HQ all the while.

 

Dieron Part 9​

Field Marshal Yvonne Davion watched the data feed. These were the weapons of a lost age. Shepherd's complete unfathomable, his inability to understand how they had managed to lose 'these' these 'gauss rifle' things aside... they were weapons which in the hands of Terran pilots or terran tankers apparently for that matter ... well they compared similarly in damage output, though with ranges favorable to PPCs, to assault auto cannons.

The Gunslinger did prefer his Marauder, but it was also faster... and as they had observed it encompassed a more effective command and control suite. Classified and passed by courier only Bukaroo Banzai, her nephew and sovereign's personal scientist, had made certain comments about the Terrans. She had not readily digested the full scope of what he meant, maybe she never would, but something akin to understanding existed watching the damage be doled out.

The question remained, almost always lurking there in the back of her mind, what the combine had done. If the snake had somehow provoked the mongoose to come tearing out of its den, or whatever other analogy one wanted to make. It wasn't a priority at the moment. It like the news footage that had come in, were just extra information, that didn't impact the present battle.

That being said... the poetic quips were a little concerning especially if they were accurate reflections of how he viewed the situation. Alexandria had been correct to note the amount of ammunition though fretting about it wasn't going to do them much good. If they had as it appeared largely cleared the chaff from the Combine front then they were no in the stage of battle where decisive force would be brought to bear, and it would be here that they could see what the Combine had in their hand so to speak.

"What about Colonel Cameron?" She asked turning to the Guards officer two rows down, and didn't like the answer, especially since he'd been ordered to disengage and consolidate.

--
"Its time to switch to whisky, we've been drinking beer all night." The hoppers obediently fed alloyed depleted uranium kinetic penetrators, and set them in between the charging rails of his gauss rifle's 'breech'. There was a pulse of dust as the mass of metal accelerated down range at hypersonic velocity. An in this case small hard object moving several times the speed of sound, met a large bipedal warmachine head on.

The K2 skidded down in a lopsided manner its front glass shattered as the machine rolled to a stop on its side.


The radio crackled giving him the bad news that Bard had found that other Combine Mech Battalion, that it was the sword of light that was coming down. He reached up to flip the controls as the left the left Gauss roared tearing into the side torso of a humanoid walking war machine. Gene hissed in incandescent fury against his harness, "MacIntyre." He ordered into the throat mike, the other lieutenant colonel's image flickered into his cockpit, "go pull the volunteers out of that mess, and then put your Thugs and Highlanders wherever they can do the most good." He ignored comments about the cadets earning their spurs from the older highlanders in the channel.

The other gauss rifle snarled and he adjusted the left to delimb another mech sending it crashing into the ground as it attempted to pick up speed. The Combine wasn't, couldn't rely on non smart thermals effectively. There were too many other heat sources, and while his VLAR was running the capacitors were highly heat effective. A VLAR 300 could be powering anything from a 100 hundred Assault 'mech down to any number of sixty ton machines that filled the Comine ranks.



The display greened. Hoppers dropped rounds as they cleared under five hundred meters. The gauss rifles fired. A Dragon's fusion signature died as a couple hundred pounds of tungsten alloy ripped in and out front to back. Twenty three rounds left, eventually became twenty three rounds expended and returns on his machine's sensors confirmed contact further north as the battalions other companies continued to throttle up the engines intended to commit to what would be the decisive battle of the campaign.

Not realizing that they were already too late as the last of their lead company dissolved at just over three hundred meters to the bloom of man made lightning of his PPCs converging on the machine's head. He registered Chang's Marauder steadily trundling forward , and not the only relatively slow mech pushing up. A Fury flash cabled a text update by lasercom of the archers starting to pour fire into the advance element that had been harassing Bard and hold his attention while the Sword of Light came along. Grasshoppers and Quickdraws among them.


He took a breath as his display updated, and he ran the math, before he ordered Bardiche to swing into reinforce the position the DMM troops were supposed to be vacating. "Anyone able to tell me what the Eridani are doing?"

"Still contacting infantry, and armor. Dug in support PPCs, and inferno missiles, to the east they haven't been able to break through and reach the capital." A voice answered from the command vehicle. That suggested but didn't conclusively prove that the Combine had divided between conventional assets and Mech forces after this morning, if they hadn't already had that underway with something like this kind of attack in mind.

He swapped channels, "MacIntyre, divide that battalion and drive them towards the lake when I signal."

"Whats signal would that be colonel?"

He hit the mike's transmit key, and started cueing their aviation assets with orders to the DroSTs to prepare to dust off and potentially put their small craft in the air. He watched the battalions as they continued to advance on his broader arrangement of forces. This was going to get very messy very quickly and do so from west to east. Most likely the combine had expected that first company to hold their attention, while the DMM had been held in place or potentially even pushed by the Sun Zhang cadre, that was even now trying to push into close quarters where mech combat was often the most lethal in normal engagements. ... but what he suspected, and what his own Azami officers had reached consensus on, was that this was a combine trial by fire for its green troops as disposable meat shields to soak ammunition ahead of a more elite, or really one of THE elite units of the DCMS to launch a concerted attack.

The devastator registered the boosting fusion signatures of the aerodyne dropships, small craft and ASF as they started preparations. He didn't much longer to watch as his computer informed him that he was less than half of his combat load as the other mechs began to resolve into extended ranges against their counter measures. Seventeen rounds was going to go fast.

If they could pull this off it would cement a Davion victory at Dieron, because the combine in committing to a decisive battle were facing not just a large mech force, but also one with better equipment.

"What are we doing?"

Bard's voice was a distraction he didn't need, "Colonel Cameron I am pulling you from the rotation, and redeploying you to screen the pivot we will execute towards San Martin." He ignored the protest that the enemy was right in front of them. That it was true didn't change things, he had wanted to pull the combine units further forward, and spread them out originally... that had been the entire reason to pull the Volunteers back.

In terms of average overland speed the DMM troops would be faster to redeploy along the line, after that even accounting for the presence of cache machines in what constituted the battalion was, Bardiche with Claymore being the slowest Mech Battalion in relative terms. He pulled the trigger, and watched as the gauss rifle tore a leg off of an advancing mech even as the conversation played out.

An argument they were still carrying on when the computer warned him he had ten rounds remaining and still a full company pushing forward but he didn't care about that third company so much as the nearer remains of the second. The gauss rifle continued on down the lances and then draining the capacitors to the gauss rifle as his PPCs began to flash.

"Bard I am switching machines, standby." He ordered as a machine died to man made lightning, and he took the assault mech a step backwards, and down the hillside and walked it back to the crouched form of his Marauder. He looked at the Azami techs. "Get it loaded, and bug out, we won't use it again today." He ordered stepping of the ladder to make for the dust and mud caked 75 tonner machine, before starting a full on sprint to the machine. Start from Standby and bringing the Marauder to full power took ninety seconds to make sure the ER PPCs were live, and that the Thompson gun was good to go. He blinked through the message from testing and evaluation command. The 120mm hopper told him he had ammunition in the chamber. The VLAR 300 pushed the machine into a sprint of its own even as heard the 185mm chemjet thunder from an assault auto cannon.

It signaled that the enemy were now in close quarters with Chang's screening force, as more AC/20s opened up all along the line. The familiar connection through the MMI to the Dalban's mass of data was reassuring. He could perceive the whole battlefield spiritually process the presence of Chang's Marauder, or Beau Dervish their brawlers, or missile boats respectively.

The Kazakh river was just north of them to the east lay the planetary capital. He stared at the holographic display, a blinking indicator in what ordinarily would have been his peripheral vision. A handshake from a Terran Hegemony Command.

He blinked hard. Not now, he thought.

When the Snakes were dead. The Machine crested the hill and his ER PPCs opened up even as his sensors processed the PPC visual returns to the west towards the lake where in closer order a lance of Pillagers with assault auto cannons were wading into battle. If any of the combine had gone to thermals he knew his 75 must have looked like a small sun from the waste heat of the extended range model Hellstars.

--

"Good god."

She ignored the outburst watching the holographic displays, the multitude of feeds. She had known that the Duke of Errai had been impatient at the prospect of potentially being able to bring back the Thug BattleMech. That didn't excuse the man's behavior, but given what the Highland battalion's supposedly green troopers were doing with those and the Highlander's totem mech she could understand. The recent Northwind Graduates had taken up a position on a low promontory the highest 'hill' near a bend in one of the tributaries feeding into the lake.

As the heat of battle mounted comms discipline fell away as streams of insults, and incoherent war cries echoed between competing mechs, and their pilots shouting at each other.

"Field Marshal, the Colonel's Marauder is online we're receiving telemetry now." Telemetry might have been a stretch the initial boot of camera footage showed assault mechs as the seventy five tonner banked out from behind cover, ran up to and then proceeded punch while firing a PPC into the cockpit of a mech in Sword of Light colors.

They watched the cockpit dissolve as the Marauder was joined by two hundred ton Marauder II BattleMechs and tasking orders started to post to air units to the command board within the Davion Operations center even as highlanders screamed rallying battle cries as they continued to maul Kuritan units in the open.