3018 Dragoon's Learn of Elidere
(I)
Jaime Wolf waited for the trivid battle footage to conclude before he addressed the others. It was a recent acquisition to their library of media, but he had watched it before he had summoned the other officers of the Wolf's Dragoons. The conflict between the Federated Suns and the Draconis Combine had occurred last year, but they had been on the opposite side of the inner sphere.
The dragoons were currently in their third contract with a great house, operating as mercenaries for the Free Worlds League under House Marik. The contract had not been much different, Natasha Kerensky was hardly unique in her contemptuous disdain for the blight ridden decay that covered the Inner Sphere.
Every so often though something came up that was interesting. The initial footage that they had seen clips of was mostly just reiteration of what they already knew. Though it was not zellbringen the Draconis Combine practiced a more honorable form of battle between mechwarriors where possible. They had learned that first hand in their first contract. That was not to say the combine did not discard dueling, any more than the clans themselves did, when it was required but the combine's dueling like those of the clans of Kerensky expected honorable combat to take place at range between individual mechwarriors, and from what they had seen as far as averages went the Combine fielded the best warriors of the Inner Sphere
At least in terms of averages for the successor states. The simple proofs did not work as well for smaller samples. Mercenaries were a common profession but there was a tremendous variance in skill levels that made it impossible to make a judgment like that. There was simply too much difference... and the Dragoons had just witnessed a demonstration of that.
The actual battle footage was over, had ended with a pan out over the scenery of Elidere IV, over the strewn remains of a Combine BattleMech company. It faded to black and then began projecting a scrawl of numbers... the tallying of the battle.
A tally that was ridiculous in its lopsided value. That wasn't the only thing.
The white Marauder was certainly a 75 tonner... but its equipment... Jaime Wolf was willing to wager that it was the royal model that had lead to the creation of the 85 ton Assault Frame Clan Marauder II. Though they were considered second line units the original iteration of the IIC machines had often bee developed from existing designs in use by Terran Hegemony divisions of the SLDF. He suspected that he was not the only one of their number to recognize that, and that would raise questions.
That was of course speculation... much as he was willing, would be willing to voice such... there were other matters to discuss among them. The news was coming just as the Widow's company had just made it back from another round of cattle raiding the Lyrans on behalf of House Marik. In theory what House Marik had been having the Dragoons as a larger unit doing and what the 19
th Galedon Regulars had been doing for the Draconis Combine, even though the latter was a regular house unit.
The devastation was complete. 115 mechs, a handful of aerospace fighters in comparison, a couple of dropships even. All lost to the combine in the span of a month's fighting. Fighting, between BattleMechs, that was meticulously available through MRB office's provision of the BattleRoms, but shorter clips had been making their way across space already due to the ComStar run new service.
Korsht, commanding officer of Gamma regiment, was watching the scrolling text as it listed the allocated kill tally of mechs, and other materiel to the defending, victorious, Davion side. "Andrei would you have tried to fight this?"
The large BattleMaster pilot paused, before giving a barking laugh. "I wouldn't fight like that at all. Would I fight yes. This is more like you, Willy I think." Shostokovitch replied. He laughed again, and glanced to Jones, and Weisz the commanders of Beta, and Delta Regiments respectively.
Delta regiment's commander squinted at the hologram and withdrew the control unit to rewind. The BattleRoms focused on BattleMechs and their onboard recording. It did not include footage from the perspective of CV, or DropShips. It was something that only painted part of the picture, except really on the subsequent battle ... the duels on Ander's Moon.
Natasaha might have ordinarily scoffed at watching some 'small' merc unit fight, but that wasn't the case here. It did not matter that she was just a captain. Not for a true born warrior of a blood name. She had earned her spurs, and not speaking her mind would have been shameful to the wolf pride.
Jones turned away from the reply, "Jaime this is interesting, but we are not likely to fight the Combine, or these people, and not any time soon." Beta's commander remarked even as the footage rewound peeling through deciduous trees and burning light mechs. He was correct so far as it was unlikely that House Marik would pivot to face House Davion, and if they moved on schedule to House Steiner they were unlikely to move against the Federated Suns, if the Wolf Net's analysis was correct... but the Wolf Net report on the footage raised other issues... issues that he felt hi might need to report to the Khan of Clan Wolf, and he might in turn bring to the Clan Council.
It was one thing for the Eridani Light Horse to maintain Star League Traditions, and of course the MechWarriors of the Combine had proven themselves brave warriors who fought with honor. The White machine's torii gate and bird moved as the footage resumed. "Willy?" Shostokovitch questioned.
"This is a Hegemony deep battle double envelopment." She declared, and looked to the other colonels of the regiment. "Its a textbook execution of a Terran Hegemony Combined Arms attack on a numerically superior enemy force." Clan Goliath Scorpion would be pleased that their lessons on the league had been so well remembered.
"So the kid can read a book. You might have noticed he can drive a mech as well."
.... which the dismissal of the attack as just the maneuvering of gear heads was .... expected. Had there perhaps been members of Steel Vipers, or certainly Clan Hell Horse then the action would have attracted more discussion. Goliath Scorpion, and Nova Cat would have talked about the doctrine, or what it meant, but it was in conjunction with the BattleMech contact which came to mind.
If it had been just a decade earlier Jaime might have agreed, but they were coming up on a report, and the truth was the attrition of materiel the Dragoons were suffering was something that had been discussed. They needed to resupply. It was true that they were not using frontline cluster, modern clan weaponry, but second line, and solahma troops would be either, and any invasion of the inner sphere would likely involve the bidding process to minimize collateral damage... a prospect that he doubted the modern inner sphere was likely to respect.
"And the uniform?" Weiss questioned.
If it had been an SLDF a regular army uniform like his subordinates, that might have warranted less reaction. The MRB preferred, did not quite require, but made it essay for mercenary units to adopt SLDF rank structures, and their supply stores provided generic SLDF pattern uniforms. The Eridani and other SLDF successor units likewise used league uniforms often based on their last duty station, or variants reflective of their current posting.
It was still possible it was nothing. Terran manuals, might be found with Terran uniforms, but both, with a Terran mech, three coincidences all in the hands of a pilot capable of fighting as well as any true born of Kerensky's clans. It was suspicion Jaime Wolf had that something about all of this simply failed to add up. They had been able to convince the Inner Sphere of their good fortune by simply claiming that they had found a cache of the Star League, "Cranston what do you think of all of this?"
The eccentric true born glanced up from the paper book in his hands, he reached for his bookmark and closed it, "I have read everything they have. Including the drop he made into an invasion force on Luxen." With exaggerated motion he moved to pull data slates containing BattleMech data that seemed to no longer exist in the Inner Sphere.
It confirmed for Jaime his initial suspicion. Though the IIC had been later modified for mass production to carry three extended range PPCs it had begun life as an evolution of the Royal Marauder of the Terran Hegemony. A few 3Rs had survived the Battle of Terra, and the knowledge of the LBX class 5 had gone with the clans on the Exodus, and eventually had become a part of the clan arsenal. As they had been clearly marked Royal division machines the 3R had not been included with the Marauders brought by the Wolf Dragoons, though they had brought some of the machines that had passed to the regular forces of the SLDF that had been used by commanders who had made the exodus.
Snord toyed with his sunglasses and Jaime was obliged to play a long with the game. Cranston Snord was the opposite of Natasha Kerensky in many ways. "Is there something on Elidere?"
"Haven't," he pointedly contracted the word, "you heard, Colonel?" Sounding like a news broadcaster from one of the marik news channels that had been lurking around the dragoon garrison. A little too like the reporter, really, "The colonel opened up the 63
rd Mechanized Infantry Division's depot for House Davion."
There was a pause through the room. There was no reason such information would have been included in BattleRom footage, but Cranston had certainly beaten Wolf Net to delivering the news to Alpha Regiment's commanding officer. "There is more?" He asked as all eyes fixed on the true born slumped comfortably back into the low couch.
Cranston toyed with his sunglasses even as Natasha started to get visibly impatient with the needling. "There are some rumors coming out from Robinson. The Draconis March Militia suddenly has a significantly heavier mech quota from what I'm," Natasha ground her teeth, "hearing. As if, they might have also found something. If I were to guess, I would figure that that the 100
th Battlemech Division had a depot that hadn't," again with the intentional contraction, "been opened before this."
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Notes: As threadmark implies this is nominally canon, but not for sure. I don't have a perfect handling on the Dragoon main leadership so this is an Extra. In particular as far as canon goes, I don't understand how WolfNet / Dragoon intelligence is supposed to be as good as it is in canon, its very plot device / MC syndrome / whatever you want to call it that their int service does this especially given what HSII implies about the effectiveness of the successor states intelligence services, which is to say they're not incompetent. However Cranston (he's probably supposed to be a freebirth in canon, he's a true born here solely because he's such an odd duck) is an excellent option for handling int wonk business, and also putting things together, in this case digging through the archives to identify Gene's mechs and their official designations.
Regarding the Mad 3R designation, that isn't canon, but I am using it to explain Mad IIC and as a way to refer things to the wolf dragoons, basically on that end, its a data point. Canonically the MRB wants you to use SLDF ranks (probably either because well Star league obsession, but also because paper work) for your merc companies, and the MRB does .... intermittently operate its own stores (its probably just select worlds) though they can also just refer you stores as well. So it makes sense that if you're buying from an MRB recommended or operated store, they'd sell you mass produced star league style uniforms, its cloth. Its not Star League tech, but it evokes the SLDF's memory, and that probably sells them well enough.
Nominally canon, though this takes place after Highland Faire, but before Dieron is taken by House Davion, this is early spring 3018 in terms of calendar. Pointedly this is of course before the Dragoons find out about things like Blackwell providing equipment because they're a davion company.