Battletech: The Ghost Who Walks (Battletech Isekai)

[Imperator Pax]

So now the Commonwealth is being to poke its nose in. Given the... subtlety, it likely is legit and not LOKI doing the stupid. Though they are still capable of finding SOME way to fuck things up, I'm sure.

Click to shrink...

Loki doesn't actually show up until the Skye fuckery down the road... but thats like an eight way shooting frenzy between multiple factions rather than uniquely Loki idiocy

 

[Imperator Pax]

Highland Faire 21​

Gene looked at the glimmering star map of known CID stations... known to Dante at the time immediately preceding the atrocities. If Dante was right about the storage facilities on Dieron... if there was electronic material stored there, then ... well they might be useful they might not be... they wouldn't know until thy looked the same with all of these other places, but the truth was they had to get through there first.

So much in the Inner Sphere had been lost... and that wasn't even the half of it... how was he supposed to go searching for the Tripitz's trail. Never mind wherever the Black Lion-class ship had been supposed to be going. Even accounting for Pasha being right and that they would be able to, somehow, convince the Alamutians that ... to support them with the manpower, and spacelift to search the rimward it would take probably years.

Dieron first... and then New Dallas to see if thee were any other leads... to see if they could chart a path from Terra to how it had ended up on the Taurian front... it was possible that the protocol had been broken that someone had insited on trying to get to Kerensky and ordering him to launch a frontal assault with the commands to disable the SDS or turn it against the rim world... and they had just never made it.

They didn't know enough.... but a few months, a couple years more weren't going to make a difference. Not after all this time. He eased back in the chair, and put pressure on the joints of his fingers and cracked them. "Alright, geography, show me landing paths and directionals for Dieron again." He ordered the AI.

The rippling star map gave way to a brown, and green and blue world. The world he was going to invade. It took hours before he was satisfied with the plan... and that was just for bringing down his combined force... never mind the Davion Guards, and the Eridani.

... but he had the DMM troops under his command... a gesture of good faith... but probably also that the duke of Robinson was confident that all together they would wreak a bloody vengeance against the DCMS. Dante suspected it was part of enticement to convince him to follow Clancy's example of if not outright joining then following the example of the Blue Star Irregulars and being effectively indistinguishable from house troops other than some paper claiming to still be legally mercenaries.

Was that what the future held? It was hard to say.

He cleared his throat, "Alright, Dante punch this up," Print the documents, "And give me a data rom with the plan, I'm going to go run this up the chain." and he also had a speech to give... it was time to talk about what they were doing.

Several hours later, he ignored the questioning as Septim's comment from back on Luxen was unknowingly echoed by a Davion officer of comparable rank. He also ignored the shuddering barely suppressed chortle from the Lyran as he finished outlining planetfall securing a planetary beachhead south of the Kazakh, and west of San Martin.

... and that what he didn't mention was the chance that the Hegemony transport network being intact would mean a potential way to bypass Combine defensive positions in and around the planetary capital. Those had, according to the update on the condition of Fortress Dieron, had been intact in the 29th​ century ... and they were probably as intact as the ones on Elidere had been but they wouldn't know for sure until they were physically there to check them.
Yvonne paused leaned over to talk discrete aside with one of her staff... something about recording things ... but that did make sense the invasion of Dieron was going to be accompanied by pomp and circumstances. The Draconis March alone was eager to take the fight to the neighboring realm... and from the bits he'd picked up on the Field Marshal really did not like the Haseks... if she could show them up, make them look weak as a result of their inaction against the sick man of the Inner Sphere but decisively wailing on the Kuritans well... that without even considering avenging her nephew the previous first prince who had died against a Sword of Light unit.

Which would do the realm some good to hear they'd been paid back... even if this was the wrong regiment. What mattered would be how they framed things to the public... so they had speeches, and parades... that was the advantage of the downside to the speed of the HPG system. Dieron would be conquered by the time the Davion's released the recordings from Northwind, and would likely already have footage of Dieron... so the public would only see the whole thing not how it was all made.

More importantly speeches done indoors meant that doing it on Northwind did not require figuring out the specifics of arranging the mechs in any kind of uniform parade colors which might raise questions, or confuse an audience, even if by the standards of contemporary Lyran blockbusters the clip would have been considered a little unpolished. For all but the highest budget productions of the Inner Sphere though the clarity of the holographic footage and sound quality was superlative. The footage lacked the post production effects that would have been found in a propaganda reel. Nor was it the sort of quality one would have associated with a spy's, or a private investigator's, clumsy recording devices. After all why would House Davion not use very excellent devices for their own historic recordings of the day's proceedings.

The Star League Vintage cameras had been given an excellent vantage to do their work, and given the business of the Faire it had been easy for not one, not two not three, but quite a number of intelligence services to splice into the original feeds and insure they received copies to private terminals... and of course for those personnel of intelligence agencies who hadn't wanted to gamble on such obvious bait a few found it much easier to simply borrow a copy of the footage from a film aficionado at the MRB who had found a copy.

It would still take time to disperse the recording of the day's proceedings. The Combine had known something was going to happen, but by the time the word had gotten out there were other complicating factors. The ISF was already busy ... busier than normal ... and the voice of the dragon had done an alarming capable job of convincing the the DCMS that the New Avalon Hussars had been responsible for the losses at Galedon... a unit of whom supported by elite mercenaries and other Davion troops had already begun the invasion of Altair...

Really the recording came too late to warn against the strike on Dieron even if commanders would have been willing to question official combine propaganda. The recording lacked any details that would have telegraphed future Federated Suns strikes, in the following years...

.... the raid at Galtor, which had yet to be planned at the time of the recording

or

...the liberation of Tancredi, which the Federated Suns had already been planning and revising for decades now.

"Everyone gathered in this hall has accepted a unique risk. In many ways this operation is beyond the standards of basic soldiery or practice of arms. Regardless of past or present experience this coming battle is different." The speaker was a younger mercenary colonel standing in front of a marauder painted in white and gray parade colors. The great ibis that dominated the machine's crest prophetically devouring a snake.

The primary body of the speech laid out in no uncertain language what was to be expected. Every soldier, and every mercenary expected to risk life and limb facing the enemy. It wasn't even unusual for commanders or political leadership to speak of liberating foreign worlds.

"To those most recent cadet graduates gathered here, this is a distinct opportunity to participate in something beyond oneself. When we make planet fall in this coming campaign you will be among the striking force. You will not be relegated to a bench warming for attrition or a mech to be freed up or provided due to casualties or a later advance. Each and every one of you gathered today will spend the following day training in a heavy or assault battlemech that will carry you on the field when we begin combat operations."

The final weeks on Northwind ahead of the early spring of 3018 were to be an interesting time. The speech at the end of its just more than fifteen minute run concluded with the expectation and that nothing less than full victory would be accepted. That might have been dismissed by observers coming from other speakers as simply bravado or even an impossible demand. If the recording had circulated around before the invasion it would have been more or less ignored by the other successor states.

Instead it made the rounds among the other great houses coinciding and viewed through the lens of not just Dieron falling to Davion hands, and the monster that prowled the battlefield on their behalf... but that point at least within the Inner Sphere the MRB had up to date roster information for the Dieron battle.

That information was supposed to be for the purposes of considering whether or not a mercenary company was suitable to a specific employers need. The MRB was supposed to be a neutral arbiter of disputes of course.

Twenty four recent graduates of the Northwind Military Academy filled the ranks of would become Battalion C, Claymore, Shepherd's Highlanders would distinguish themselves on the shores of the Kazakh river west of San Martin. A distinction of action with the hundred hour whirlwind of battle that had prompted the MRB office to rate an otherwise freshly raised BattleMech battalion as Veterans, raising their approximation over Regulars, to reflect participation in the destruction of 1st​ Battalion / 5th​ Sword of Light and the subsequent capture of the planetary capital.

But on that February afternoon all of that was still in the future. Indeed a few days earlier Precentor New Avalon had only just received a report he had requested on paramount importance. After all, what had not yet made the news, had not become public knowledge, was an attack over the Davion border in the periphery and the loss of an HPG station at the hands of a revenge addled warlord with Star League war machines of his own. Huthrin Vandal had decided it was in the best interests to bypass discussions with the first circuit using options he didn't need their permission for. That meant looking for a solution with the resources he had available.

That was to say, money, lots of money. It was a very lyran solution to the problem the Precentor New Avalon would have admitted, but the problem of Black Jack McGirk had been ongoing for over a decade by this point and the arguments over how to deal with a pirate king who had destroyed the 1st​ division of the ComsGuard Militia. A destruction that had included, to add insult to injury, the pirate absconding with the remains of the 1st division as salvage. It was a problem that had dragged on entirely too long. They simply could not afford the loss of any more HPGs they couldn't replace the ones that had already been destroyed in the periphery as it was.

They had dithered to long within the first circuit and Huthrin Vandal had decided enough was enough, and measures had to be taken. Vandal would bullishly declare such to the rest of the first circuit as attacks in the rimward periphery expanded as McGirk saw increasing forces attacking and carrying off of ComStar personnel.
--
The holographic image was of a stern looking blond woman in the uniform of a Terran Admiral. She could have been in her late late twenties if not for the service ribbons which suggested thirty plus years in service with the HAF. Admiral Krennick was long dead of course... she had been killed during Amaris's attack on the capital of the Star League and the Hegemony.

Still the Admiral looked impressive, formidable. The black naval dress uniform fit Talia Krennick well... like a glove. The personnel jacket of the Terran Hegemony listed two divorces. A single son who had in contrast to his mother had joined the HAF Army. Not really a surprise Krennick while apparently still on amicable terms with her divorced partners, given they were still marked on her file's emergency contacts had both been naval officers as well.

The Field Marshal suspected that Terran medicine being what it was Krennick and her ex husband had probably still looked quite young when they had died. This holographic image floating in front of the field marshal was dated a year before the usurpation and massacres on Terra.

She had seen the picture of the son an amber eyed mechwarrior with close cropped dark hair who wore the insignia of a Terran Major, and the gunslinger tab on his uniform jacket... that was a better than ninety percent match of a picture taken two years earlier in the Magistracy... which raised other questions

It suggested a great deal but proved nothing. She turned to the MIIO officers who had entered. "tell me you have them?"

"A couple of SAFE operatives thought they were being clever." The man's partner elbowed him in the ribs, but she waved off the man's lackadaisal response, "Sorry ma'am. We identified potential couriers from other intelligence services. We are still tracking those there is a potential combine agent at large, but from his previous behaviors we suspect he'll turn up in the morning."

"Do tell?"

"He's very predictable ma'am. Standard patterns of behavior for his cover identity. Frequently moves to ingratiate himself with large corporate entities."

"Where all has he been?"

There was a pause, and The prince's champion frowned. "He's been to several of the demonstrations of the Marauder II BattleMech. He's basically ignored the Blackwell industries presence with their combat vehicles, which is why we didn't catch it originally,"

She could understand that. The Marauder II had attracted quite a lot of attention... and she could guess why they were so confident that there was going to be an appearance tomorrow. 'Wonders of the Star League'. The King Crab had been distributed to the Great Houses as a 'gesture of House Cameron's benefice' shortly after its debut. Not in any significant numbers of course, but also as notation to the other house lords surely that the Hegemony's new Commanding General was of astute mind when it came to BattleMechs.

Cosara Industries of the Terran Hegemony had created a vicious close range combatant at General Kerensky's request. The King Crab had been licensed to GM and who had continued to produce it until they had lost the ability to do so as a course of the succession war.

The conversation winded away, and eventually she dismissed them directing the countess to be shown in. The Duke of Errai was unsurprisingly proving a problem. The Thug had been such a ubiquitous mech in Terran service there was no way they'd be able to avoid his learning of additional machines. The Thug predated the start of the reunification war, and the introduction of machines like the modern version of the Wolverine; in its 6R configuration.

Admiral Clancy's files had proven... not especially helpful. Thankfully the admiral had made a searchable database but not a complete one. It hadn't answered many of her questions. She had plugged in the various alpha numeric data entries and only received partial matches. There were tantalizing suggestions to answers.

And, places to look. She opened with a rhetorical question, "You said the DropShip's name was the Argo?" There was a perfunctory nod from her lady in waiting, "I haven't spoken to Galax's people but it did make its way into the periphery ahead of the New Vandenburg uprising. It disappeared, presumed lost and I don't imagine even Admiral Clancy though knew much of it, but we do have confirmation that it and a sister ship had been planned."

Unfortunately that was really as far as her information extended for the time being.
--
Notes: I made the decision just to keep this basically as it was after the first bit, but will be moving on to Dieron next
This may be of interest to readers, it is not my creation, and does not necessarily reflect canon for later in the timeline: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UUdhNDI1R_Qkl08LhUezgAxyiiVIy1NDnTubLGqH2Kc/edit#gid=0

 

[Imperator Pax]

Dieron Spring 3018
Gene didn't like some of the communiques going out... but there wasn't anything he was able to do about it. The Duke of Robinson, though not present, his catholic clergy were couching this in extremely loaded religious terms...

... and the Azami were not far behind either. On the other hand... he didn't suppose they were really any different than statements made on Robinson in celebration of the Combine's defeat.

The Sword of Light had a reputation ... and it was very possible that that would be what would happen... that this fight would turn into a messy atrocity ridden slog of a scorched earth campaign. It was a worry he'd already had before the step off , hell before the last few matches of the game... and those had mostly gone as expected once the matches had shaken out. The stalker pilot who'd already taken a post with the Crucis Lancers in the AFFS had taken the top slot... though that had not been without some grumbling from his peers.

... they had had to restrain Rio from trying to challenge the victorious 'squire' before they had left. Hanzo had had to put two different Pheonix Hawk pilots on their asses in the arena, but at least he'd had a good time. Of course that in itself was complicated.

Northwind had been ... had had its share of surprises... and Gene was worried about what this world would have in store, but he reached up to flip the controls and shut the noise off. They hadn't gotten a return to their broadcast signal when they had jumped in... but he wasn't surprised either. Dante hadn't responded initially to the transmission... so they would have to wait and see if they received any signals once they were groundside.

They had waited long enough to see if they had gotten a response, and it was time to drop, "In Fury Born." He transmitted. Drive signatures confirmed the command as Tartan banner icons on his display moved to orbital insertion positions to begin the descent to planet's surface.

He traced the movements across the eastern frontier as the Eridani, and Davion Guards began their own force drops. There were a dozen plus unions on his, well the DropShip's scopes broadcasting SLDF IFFs. The majority of those were the signatures of the Light Horse. His display painted 3rd​ RCT units and their projected flight paths.

There were no plans to drop mechs from orbit. The Unions, and Leopards, also their DroSTs among other frontline dropships would make the run down to planet's surface then they'd offload. It was less risky that way... especially with as many units as they were fielding The simple mathematics meant that error probabilities was already dangerous for deploying this many dropships to the planet's surface so they'd be landing in waves anyway.

Reflecting their in house advantage in numbers, Kerston had command of the invasion force's air units for the drive in. That air coverage included assault dropships to make sure the combine didn't do anything funny... or at least to soften up any combine ASF. There had been objections to that, including ones that it put all their eggs into one command basket that if Light Horse C&C went down coordination for that many fly boys would be a problem... but it was what they were doing.

ASF, any aircraft really so especially DropShips, needed a safe distance to operate on. What looked good on screen for blockbuster movies was dangerously cavalier flying. That meant timing their landings especially when they brought their dropships down to where they needed to be. Once they were on the ground though , there would still be a risk from ASF but well they'd have options to shoot them... and with a combined arms force Gene was less worried about the frankly anemic air resistance.

The planetary drop approached. The aerodyne dropship's display of the front, a projection of those nose cameras showed increasingly the horizon dominated by the sphere with increasingly fewer stars, and once the nose of the aircraft dipped down well they'd start losing reception as air temperature force them to rely on sensors rather than video telemetry... but he wasn't piloting the dropship.

He compared the clock to the local time. "Won't be a gentle morning," He muttered... but the Combine defenders were probably already up, and waiting for them to come in." Just as they hadn't moved for an orbital drop, they also hadn't executed a truly high Gee burn from the jump points... the DCMS would have some warning... and it would take probably better than an hour and a half to fully come down from orbit given their numbers. By the time the Triumphs touched down there would DroSTs, Leopards, and Unions already throwing out forward pickets. Gene turned to the Azami Armor officer, "Are those chapparals ready?"

"We will roll them off once the lances sortie." He replied, he was still somewhat reluctant, by carrying the lost technology fifty ton artillery vehicle they were giving up a very useful scouting capacity from their light vehicles. It broke with how they had been operating the company.

There had been arguments about that. Given the Unions and Leopards it had been considered that maybe throwing organic artillery out front might be a good idea. He'd disembark the Sam Houston and form a part of the clearing section, and landing security section ... and if the Combine decided to directly contest the landing... they were going to get unpleasant surprise.

... and if they didn't they'd get an unpleasant surprise later. He'd have liked to have put a cruise missile... or twenty... through the 5th​ SoL's headquarters, but he dind't have that option... and that wasn't even accounting for as a DCMS unit its headquarters was most likely a mech rather than a command vehicle or fixed installation.
--
The flight in wasn't so bad. About average turbulence to be expected from an aerodyne inflight descending into a gravity well. He adjusted the marauder's trim and eased up over the ridge, but there was nothing to contest his seventy five ton heavy battlemech the last three hours had seen the offload of an increasing volume of metal.

There had been no initial resistance allowing the DroSTs to offload their Daimyo HQ vehicle as well. They had lit its beacon and Sam Houston, and her sister Ships the recently, hastilly even, renamed, and repainted DROST IIAs Crockett and Boone advanced. They had leap frogged into forward further fighting positions disgorging infantry and light CVs... in the form of the Blackwell OmniVehicles which had been loaded aboard the two other DroSTs. That was the sight that spread out from his cockpit, but it was the heads up display from his regimental management tracking software that he was really focused on.

Sixty plus DMM Mechs, the volunteers, were still orienting to his west, but the pilot images of each of that original volunteer force were displayed in the Dalban integrated systems. Their ranks were further supplemented by Highlanders, and the Rasalhagians, and also the Azami forces forming the broad western flank of the Davion Invasion Force.

A data package pinged and updated from orbit providing him a view from satellite coverage, with the invasion of Dieron now hours underway the Combine was beginning to spread out their own battle lines. Dieron's militia defenders... and their pre landing intelligence seemed to be confirmed by communications intercepts... weren't actually planetary natives. They were 'Dieron Military District' troops but apparently the Combine didn't like stationing their troops on their home planets ... he had known they did that in the Rasalhague district but he supposed that it was a more general policy it was probably to keep planetary nobility and governors from getting any of hte wrong sorts of ideas, if he had to guess.

... but the important thing was that the DCMS was starting to move to meet them... and that there were a lot of foot infantry.

The thumpers courtesy of Robinsons own ground pounders a part of the March Militia would need to be brought up. The FASCAM shells might have been lostech but he intended to use them to force the enemy to either attack through mine fields... which the combine might choose to do, or to attack through pre prepared channels, but to use that they would need to keep rolling forward, hot if need be.

"Bard," The holographic static image of the wolverine pilot, he had chosen not to pilot a Highlander given the duelist program he'd been a part of, turned into a live holographic feed of the man rotating through his own feeds. "I'm forwarding you data positions to bring your force up a series of number hills," They were fairly choice ground. Calling them hills might have been a bit of a misnomer, a hill on dieron could be several hundred meters of AGL but this planet had obnoxiously large mountains... as in Everest on Earth didn't even rank here.

Thankfully they wouldn't have to worry about any of those monsters, but the mountainous nature of the planet made the cauldron that Iran on Earth sat in in terms of Geography look cute in comparison... they were in many respects in a giant arena until this thing was over.
--
Notes: This opens Dieron it is a little shorter than I had initially planned but this is a very combined arms campaign in planning, and obvious as indicated by various preview content not the kind of fight that the Combine especially the combine of the 3rd Succession war deals well with.

 

[HellTeddy]

Thank you for the update!

And so the battle for Dieron begins.

Myndo Waterly only became Presentor Dieron in 3025 iirc, so i'm wondering what she is doing right now and if the fall of Dieron will change her future.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Thank you for the update!

And so the battle for Dieron begins.

Myndo Waterly only became Presentor Dieron in 3025 iirc, so i'm wondering what she is doing right now and if the fall of Dieron will change her future.

Click to shrink...

Presently her and her boyfriend are students at the university of Dieron

 

[Fragment of Serenity]

And so it begins. Giant stompy mechs, lots of tanks, a crapload of infantry, all showing up to have a little brouhaha with the local SoL.

It shall be most glorious.

 

[Bofors40mm]

Presently her and her boyfriend are students at the university of Dieron

Click to shrink...

huh could butterfly her joining comstar....

 

[Imperator Pax]

huh could butterfly her joining comstar....

Click to shrink...

It would at least butterfly the circumstances that lead to her joining ComStar as she did in canon.

 

[Sogen]

It would at least butterfly the circumstances that lead to her joining ComStar as she did in canon.

Click to shrink...

Huh, that could potentially butterfly the Wolf's Dragoons getting screwed over by the Dracs.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Huh, that could potentially butterfly the Wolf's Dragoons getting screwed over by the Dracs.

Click to shrink...

Well, that and Greg being ded. That doesn't entirely assure in theory that the Dracs wouldn't do something so bone headed in canon... but yes, the Combine, in general less reason to do something like canon.

Now I could reasonably see the combine trying to dispossess the Dragoons but I could equally see Takashi accepting the dragoons as mercenaries out of no other reason than just necessity given the Combine's condition, because the Combine is already in a very different position at present.

Now In terms of canonical timeline plotting in 3028 the Battle of Misery occurs, this is the culmination really of the Combine completely fucks it relationship with the Wolfs, but without Samsonov its unlikely that they run into those problems. But again the Dragoons don't canonically enter Combine service until 3023, which I've written some content that far forward

 

[Sogen]

Well, that and Greg being ded.

Click to shrink...

Oh yeah, I forgot he was the commander Gene sniped on Elidere.

 

[Bofors40mm]

Huh that also probably alters the galtor campaign if that happens. Albeit I suspect the dracs would throw a shitload more effect into retaking Dieron vs a SL depot unless it's a huge ass one

 

[Imperator Pax]

Dieron
Part 2​

Hanzo checked the Cicada's scopes again. The machine spoke to him. They had been on this planet for five hours. The DroSTIIA Daniel Boone was only about a kilometer from his medium mech. Dust, and sand still swirling from where the DropShip had dropped its forward ramp and coating his machine's 'arid alpine' brush stroke camouflage. Bandit, and Badger vehicles were currently disembarking.

Every man down the lowliest foot soldier had his place here. That, of course, had been true on Elidere as well, but not to this volume of manpower. His displays were filled with identifications, so many as to make his head hurt. That was without even considering the electronic noise of radio chatter from so many sub units. He was grateful that English was so common across human space... but it did not change the fact that dialect, and accent could vary wildly across planets... never mind linguistic drift between planets.

The radio traffic involved thousands of voices, and that was only a fraction of the many involved in this action. This was a true battle. One of strategy and operational art, not simply tactics, and maneuver. It would mean that today would largely be one of crossing the wide river valley north, coming down from great hills, and advancing to contact with the enemy rather than true battle... tomorrow, perhaps the next day would be when honor was won.

There was a bloom on his thermal scopes. The Davy Crockett lifting off and pushing to its next way point further ahead of the line of advance. From behind him he could also register the advance of the half dozen missile artillery tanks ... the Chapparal. Their Nissan 200 Fusion Engines were otherwise easy to miss in the multitude of such engine returns. There were very many battlemechs who also used the engine from the not so common Mongoose to Hunchbacks to the many Centurion and Enforcer BattleMechs to his west.

He watched as the vehicles from the Daniel Boone, and specifically the hovercraft paired off and began to push forward away from the DropShip. The Robinson infantry soldier had no such benefit they were largely driving forward via jeep, but at least they were not having to walk. Still they could not simply board a Leopard like troops aboard a DroST could. They could not bound forward and then reconnoiter. Indeed many companies of Robinson Infantry were only occupying initial landing positions established by first wave troops carried by DroST pattern DropShips.

--
There was a groan from the other end of the comm line, and Gene had to agree the Combine return signals were still pinging back and forth that he was pretty sure they weren't sure what they were gonna do. That was a problem. If they had been closer to the line of contact... if they'd actually been in contact maybe they could have done something about that but right now? They couldn't do anything other than keep moving forward and waiting to see what the Combine was going to do.

The problem with their advance wasn't the aerodynes, it was the spheroid dropships. Repositioning them was going to be a bitch... so what they were likely going to end up doing was to use the Triumph class DropShips as supply tenders closer to the front... they were going to need to throw together some sort of make shift temporary forward air base to handle rearming and refueling their ASF assets... which would probably mean working through the night. He didn't like the idea of having to pick somewhere west of the city to serve as an airbase to mount attacks on San Martin, but that might be what they might have to do.

A part of him wanted to to try and interdict the air breathers that were doubtless moving planetary militia from bases to the east towards the capital. The combine had rebuilt the surface rail network on Dieron and probably could move planetary militia that way, but they would have to come from ... so far away even if they were mobilized they'd never reach San Martin in Time... not from the East. The forces coming from 'Tatsuyama' they were a lot closer, but would also have to cross the great lake to make contact, or go north of it and cross the Kazakh river unless they were going to ignore them entirely and move north skirt them and head directly for the planetary capital.

He doubted that the Combine was going for that. Not whatever forces they'd been able to scramble on the burn in were probably going to try and force a confrontation if for other operational reason than stopping them from encircling the city... and just as likely combine doctrinal aggression ... elan vitale... or really its revisionist Japanese equivalent was to push to engage with the enemy. They were most likely going to run into an emboldened head long assault tonight followed by arriving regiments of infantry ...

... which if the reports were right that might also explain a lack of commitment to defense, instead of a focus on the offensive. If these militia troops weren't from Dieron then they had no concern for defending the planet other than what their leadership ordered them to. So attack, attack, attack seemed the order of the day.

"Have we identified them?" He asked tapping through the holographic display to adjust his Dalban communications suite.

"Given movement profile we estimate its a portion of the Training Cadre. They are still too far out to do more than guess at a mix of medium and light mechs." They needed to be able to bring Baffins forward to serve as an anchoring command post along their lines though... he didn't mention that... ideally they could leap frog the Unions and Triumphs before it got dark... once the sun set the naked eye would show fusion drives for hundreds of miles... certainly from the other side of the lake as they came down to relocate... which meant they were running out of time.

Looking at the punched up data slate, he almost asked how after their raid on Mara the 9th​ Sun Zhang cadre had survived. There was something in here about how the Kell Hounds had stolen their JumpShip? He didn't think Succession War etiquette permitted that... but he didn't have time to ask about it or question if the JumpShip had been ransomed back after being seized. It didn't' matter, it wasn't relevant to their situation, "Do you think they're attempting to link with the 3rd​ Battalion of the Sword of Light?"

Bard paused from the other end. "Yeah that's what it looks like." The Wolverine pilot made an observation that their nickname was well deserved, and that if they kept up their current pace they might be looking to see combat tonight.

"That would put them well ahead of any reinforcements that could support them." Gene replied.

"Frankly, colonel the little bastards might not give a shit."

He looked at the tentative long range returns coming south, "Fair enough." The DMM didn't have a vantage from their spotter planes that were currently loitering over the lake on the elements of 3rd​ Battalion 5th​ Sword of Light. "We'll know in a couple of hours," maybe even sooner if they were trying to charge forward, or if they were aiming to link with the Sword of Light. He ran the mental math, but it didn't give him anything but best guesses... Elidere had been a string of aggressive frontal assaults... this would probably be similar.

It wasn't long before the communications chatter was filled up with complaints from Davion Officers who hadn't been on Elidere that they should have deployed more aggressively. That was one thing for the Davions Guards to suggest, and if it had just been them or the Eridani that was one thing... but the DMM readiness and interaction wasn't something he was prepared to run on...

... and leaving aside that he spared a look at one of the clocks on his Marauder's HUD. Tomorrow sometime they'd try again to see if they could force Hegemony systems to boot and reply. Part of where they had dropped had been that maybe they'd be able to remote boot Fortress Dieron, and potentially dramatically expand their available on call artillery. So far they had had no use... and while a part of him wanted to try and access one of the underground the subway access station they couldn't afford to slow down. They needed to push the advance forward.

On their current time table their best option was to try tomorrow hopefully being able to access potentially surviving, well intact, hegemony civil defense facilities on the lake to the west... and hopefully they'd be intact enough to deploy troops into San Martin bypassing Combine defenses if they couldn't use them to access Fortress Dieron directly.



His thoughts, and some of the grousing that they should have landed further north in the first place, were interrupted as air alerts went out signaling that their jaeger mechs and blackjacks were about to get some action given there combine ASF and air breathers coming south. There were Sabres, and Shilones, and some positively tortoise paced thirty tonner coming along in waves. If they had had flak ammunition for the auto cannons for the unit they had segregated off the Black Jack and Jaegar mech pilots into as an ad hoc brigade AAA Mech detachment things would have been better... but again losses due to the succession war meant that such production were almost artisanal in terms of what they had available.

This part of the conflict was to be fought with air power, and most mechs weren't effective at shooting angry metal pigeons as he had experienced on Aquagea... well it would have been nice to have more rifleman... enough that they could have swapped all of them into the unit and run it... but they didn't... this wasn't the SLDF.

He acknowledged the threat of the incoming aircraft and switched channels. The DMM anti craft section would from their current flight path get first shots, but after that, well his Dalban linked into the fire control network of the Nirasaki computers aboard the Fury tanks of the Company.
--
Notes: Anyway as I've mentioned Dieron is a relatively short chapter/arc and most of the parts are two sections, brief glances into other people's views, opinions stuff we didn't fully get too on Northwind, and also Combined Arms and Mech battle. Once the Battle for Dieron concludes there will be post battle Septim goes to his see his relatives, there are some Davion stuff, there is briefly Dieron's new government, some Highland discussions and the preparation for the return to the periphery which leads into the Pirate Wars, which will be divided into several smaller sub arcs.

The travel to the Periphery will largely be time skipped due to JumpDrives being suck and jump charge jump charge, and the Crews handling their end of things up until we get to the Periphery. [the House Arano introduction, and so on]

 

[HellTeddy]

Thank you for the chapter!

 

[Wargamer08]

How badly are the Combine outnumbered on planet?

 

[Imperator Pax]

How badly are the Combine outnumbered on planet?

Click to shrink...

In mech terms (so basically the only thing the Sword of Light cares about)

It is

1st and 3rd Battalions 5th Sword of Light, 2nd Battalion under Teddy is apparently canonically posted offworld in 3018
and the 3 battalions of the 9th Sun Zhang Academy Cadre

plus whatever mechs the planetary nobility / samurai have on world which with Dieron would not be a lot

versus

Davion Heavy Guards Regiment, the Eridani Light Horse Regimental Combat Team, 1 Battalion of Highlanders, 2 Overstrength DMM Mech Battalions, 2 Battalions of 'Combine Rebels' (Rasalhague, and Azami)

So roughly speaking its two regiments versus almost six Mech Regiments

Now, the combine does actually have more infantry in the fight but it is their planet but in Mech terms they're very heavily outnumbered

 

[Fragment of Serenity]

Given what is deploying, and the tactics that have proven effective so far, what forces will be remaining behind to hold the planet? The Heavy Guard will need to move on I'm assuming, as will most of the merc units, which doesn't leave a lot on ground to repel any counter assaults.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Given what is deploying, and the tactics that have proven effective so far, what forces will be remaining behind to hold the planet? The Heavy Guard will need to move on I'm assuming, as will most of the merc units, which doesn't leave a lot on ground to repel any counter assaults.

Click to shrink...

In the immediate short term it will be the Eridani staying behind they were already on guard duty prior to this but Yvonne has said she plans to reinforce Dieron with other units once the planet is secure, in a similar case once Altair falls the plan is to camp the Blue Star Irregulars there for the rest of 3018

 

[Imperator Pax]

Another Story using essence of mech lab... when I should actually be working updating this.​

Initial Draft Version:

A Rabid Fox appears from the Heavens!
Mallory's world, 3013​

There is a point in your life where things have settled down, and you realize you're getting older. That maybe its time to hang up the spurs.

... and sometimes the Universe looks at you tells you your fucking stupid, and to hell with slowing down... and then proceeds to kick your ass to another dimension.

My mouth was dry. It was hot, and sandy outside, and humidity ranked up there with Dubai in the peak of summer. The threat of heat advisory was overshadowed by the one for Combine invaders. I would have figured that if I was going to get dropped into BattleTech it would be as some Space Heir shenanigans... at least I hadn't been dropped into the worst parts of the timeline... or in the middle of the clan invasion.

"Fuck." I hissed as the Warhammer I had just said hi hows it going to started to turn, the Warhammer pilot must have been wondering what the fuck was going on. "Fucker." This was supposed to be the rear of the formation I had no idea how some asshole heavy mech had gotten here... and I didn't really know why I was fighting ... I hadn't woken up in the AFFS ...

...on the other hand I was a guy with a mech, on a world being invaded... I knew what the other guy was piloting, but I doubted he knew as much about this thing of mine... but we were both seventy ton mechs.

The armored gauntlet containing the lasers reared back and I punched the Warhammer that didn't want to show up on my scopes. Punching a mech is harder than it looks, never mind that it would make any 'true born of Kerensky's clans weep'... and I was in a clan mech but leaving that aside the battlefist hit the Warhammer's side torso. I had already run into it moments earlier, and I didn't let up, the left arm carrying the same energy weapons load out slammed into the Sword of Light's mech and into about a minute of pummeling I realized that I'd reduced the Warhammer to so much inarticulate scrap... just about the same time as I realized that I was surrounded by a bunch of other combine mechs...

"fuck."

I stepped forward, stepping on the downed Warhammer as I did so and fired the clan large lasers sending blasts of energy into the nearest combine machine as my targeting computer locked on. I couldn't keep that up, I noticed the immediate spike in my display of heat versus the DHS ability to address that kind of build up... and I knew immediately this was going to be bad.

The Clan Large Lasers, what were properly Clan Extended Range Large Lasers just ran too hot for the dual heat sinks to keep up... but not seeing any other options and accounting that I was outnumbered to hell and back... well okay there was a company of Davions around but we were properly hosed to be honest...

"Well guess you guys are earning your pay tonight." I grunted over the open channel as my seventy tonner took another step on top of the warhammer and then fired one arm and then the next hoping to avoid redlining my coolant system as the targeting computer fixed on the nearest mechs first. If they were going to kill me, I was damn going to make sure I took as many of them with me as I had to... never mind I'd been on this planet and in this universe for all of the morning.

... and that I was apparently fourteen again... that sucked too.

Sand kicked up, guns fired on all sides and the ... what the fucking history books would call the 3rd​ Battle for Mallory's world commenced amongst a wasteland of scrub brush, and dirt. My targeting computer and communications systems telling me all about the different mechs, and making sure I was only shooting at Combine Mechs or in this case mechs from the sword of light... the temperature gauge kept climbing as the cooling system struggled forcing me to pair down to just three of the guns as ferro fibrous armor was sand papered by enemy missiles, and withering fire... I got the feeling that eleven and a half tons really wasn't enough when there was a whole battalion bearing down... and just as soon as the heat would allow it the fourth laser came back into play...

... it would only be later that I remembered I could have routed my machines cooling to each specific gun and that not that I had had time to link the heat sinks into the weapons, and nor could I have pursued that for all four. It was one of those benefit of hindsight things.

So I just kept blasting, and with a preference to getting up close enough firing directly into mech cockpits whenever I could line the reticle up to do that, which was usually any time anyone got close enough to fire a medium laser at me.... which was by the end of it all was too many to count... and it was only after the shooting was done that the rest of the Davions decided to show up, and my armor had been shot to hell.

Nothing had gone internal but the armor was barely there any more.
--
I found myself panting outside the crouching mech... I didn't even remember getting out of the mech. I had unzipped the flight jacket. Post combat shakes. I was coming off the adrenaline dump, I told myself I'd been through this ... I needed to find something with a lot of sugar fight the crash that was going to come after this.


So what if I hadn't ever done in it a giant robot, or with laser cannons. So fucking what.

I stole back into my cockpit and managed to find a water bottle in the supply kit which I greedily drank down half of poured the fruit punch mix into my mouth and swished it around despite the grit and swallowed. Then sat back and panted behind the armored view screen of the closed mech... I don't know why I'd gotten out of the armored war machine...

... that had been stupid. Being in here offered me more protection than being outside of it. I didn't remember getting out, but that was the shakes. I grabbed a towel and wiped the sweat off my face, and shook like a dog... and then looked at the passive camera feeds and the broken war machines around... and the returns of incoming reinforcements.

I fell back into the seat as the Essence window popped up to nag me... maybe I'd just pass out sitting in the cockpit, and wait here.
--

A Rabid Fox Saves the First Prince
Part 2​

Ian Davion watched the teenage mercenary mechwarrior retreat back to his cockpit. Any physical weakness after the battle was understandable... his Atlas had also gotten a bit warm as the battle had progressed, and he wasn't running an energy boat. His command company hadn't been expecting combat themselves that Colonel Kurita had managed to waltz his battalion so brazenly onto them was ridiculous.

... but it had been what happened.

With their forces battered, but intact Ian Davion knew that they could succeed in driving the Combine from Mallory's world. "Signal Colonel Kell."

Five football fields away the seventy tonner booted.

"Alright," The teenager grunted looking at the screens, a mix of physical and hard light. "If I slave these here then, these," He muttered to himself... the pips were representational. He was pretty sure if he was reading the output right he couldn't just slave all of his heat sinks to his weapons... not if he wanted to be able to move ... and given how bad off his armor was, he didn't want to be standing there like some kind of sitting duck.

A couple of minutes later the displays greened. The projected heat curve flattened but the computer still projected the machine would risk overheating if he had to fire all four lasers... but he wasn't surprised This was better than nothing in any event.

His index finger hovered extended over the console interface... he had a headache staring at the machine... or that could be the come down from the adrenaline high. Whatever it was he exited out of the diagnostics display without out any further changes. Ten of the mechs 21 DHS were now slaved to two of the Clan Extended Range Large Lasers... it would help manage his heat problem this was so much more of a headache than it was on table top.

Sand swirled around his machine as the wind blew through the wasteland.

He looked at the mech returns... "Man, if I make it through this I am going to fuck off to nowherese-ville... this Inner Sphere succession war stuff is for the dogs." He remarked to the machine, rather to an actual person. The digital display returns showed... well a lot... a lot of signals. There were mech regiments, and non mech regiments... and there were a lot of both... this was a real battle, not some dust up with pirates, or local militia types.

It was about that time his actual computer screens were over laid with some gamer esque display from the essence triggering showing him a bunch of values and options that he didn't have time to deal with. BV, Currency values, the ability to spend for skills and buy items... all sorts of things that he couldn't use right now.... not with a piddling 25 BV 'in the till' so to speak. He 'd work out all of this once he made it through the day.

It would be later on after he had made it through the day that he actually looked at his character sheet... which seemed to be akin to a starter roll up from Age of War the table top RPG that some ideas would occur to him... that and using the recycle button. Today's survival was about making it through the cluster fuck of being dropped into one of the major battles of the late 3rd​ succession war, even as the details nagged at him.

He paused, and vocally observed "Oh the Kell Hounds are here." The pieces slowly fell into place as he turned his heavily scuffed heavy mech around... and half remembered details from a book he hadn't read or paged through in a couple years slowly came together... well there went the timeline for the rest of the third succession war...

He'd recognized the Second Sword of Light, and the lack of returns from the warhammer that he'd managed to nearly run over... and to tell the truth the Kell Hounds had never been his faction... this was the battle where Yorinaga Kurita was supposed to kill First Prince Ian Davion.

The Davion in the Atlas over there.

Then Yorinaga was supposed to be all emo about not getting to carry off the body to the coordinator when the Combine got run off the planet...

... so yeah, "There goes canon." He took a glance through the semi opaque overlays to squint at the remains of the mechs... and in particular another seventy ton mech... the one that had his Rabid Fox's foot impressions over its battered armor.

That was Yorinaga Kurita's warhammer.

Yorinaga Kurita was dead.

Ian Davion in his Atlas over there wasn't.

... Ian was still First Prince, and thus not getting succeeded by Hanse... which risked potentially derailing the whole battle of Halstead station which risked fucking up the whole NAIS thing... which would be bad whenever the clans came a knocking... that would be bad.

His thoughts were interrupted by a Davion liaison officer intruding on them by handshaking his mech... more or less with an offer he couldn't refuse.

--

He grumbled to himself that he thought this planet was supposed to be a breadbasket world... not that complaining didn't do him any good, but it was something to do while he trudged the heavy mech through. The Combine didn't seem to know what the hell to do, to the point he had to wonder whether they were waiting for Yorinaga to tell them what to do... in which case that sucked for them...

... maybe Yorinaga had been hit by the good idea fairy and had taken his whole battalion without telling anyone or what to do at all? Hadn't the Combine lost Halstead station, he had know that the Kell Hounds had made Yorinaga back off in canon so maybe he hadn't told anyone and the Davion counter attack had found some gap to exploit and now they were backpedalling.

His targeting computer flagged a Panther even before it crested the hill and as it soon as it showed up he slathered it with some love from his large lasers dropping the 35 ton mech into a burning heat...

"Second Sword of Light, 2nd​ Legion of Vega, 9th​ Benjamin Regulars, 24th​ and 36th​ Dieron." He recited in annoyance.... what a mess, he perked up and started shooting the Jenners as they zoomed in, not wanting them to get close given his armor diagram's abundance of yellow and red indicators... but the Davion liaison was right the Combine was fighting a if we can't have it neither can you.

He put the reticle in line with the mech's head, and squeezed the right trigger, the ER Large Laser with slaved heat sinks in the arm fired, and down went another bug. He tapped his console to send the video footage to the davion hq vehicle... some command call the 'Brigands' of all things attached to the 7th​ Crucis Lancers and then turned bringing his left arm in line to fire on another slightly heavier BattleMech with shit armor and vestigial arms. It exploded into its own glorious fireball as the lasers ripped through standard armor.

Keep moving and shooting, survive and then figure out what the fuck to do from here.
--
Notes: As I mentioned I should be starting yet another thing, and especially not a BT, but this idea has been nagging me so this is Essence of Mega Mek lab (https://forum.questionablequesting....discussions-thread.4740/page-101#post-5134727) + A Simple Battletech CYOA (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eden4TNeOBtrhSjClK8eVcJIiaVGEOzKIq02Pc6OMgM/edit) dropping into Mallory's world in 3013

The title is not fixed, its a reference to the Rabid Fox B configuration that is the starting mech. That information can be found: https://www.clanfox.com/downloads in the record sheet document available on this page.

This is currently sitting at about five thousand words ... coming up on an idea that first went to its first draft about twenty hours ago, and I've been doing other things today... some times its like that. I know I should actually be working on updateing the story that uses the essence first as such, but this operates using the same essence with a slightly different plot line... it is fairly Davion aligned, so more like GWW but it uses plot ideas from both. I hope to get an actual update to that story up in May, but in the mean time I'll probably post some more of this in the misc thread.

EDIT: Yes I wasn't paying attention and posted this here, and not in Essence Wielding Social General.

 

[RoyalTwinFangs]

The title is not fixed, its a reference to the Rabid Fox B configuration

Click to shrink...

You know that this link doesn't work right?

 

[Imperator Pax]

You know that this link doesn't work right?

Click to shrink...

I did not, Let me go fix that.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Dieron Part 3​

Chang whooped in excitement as the flying wing exploded. The DCMS aircraft, a Shilone, turning into a fireball. She idly, within her borrowed Atlas, wondered exactly where the fuck their own aircraft were, but ... well while she didn't know for sure expected that they needed little things like refueling... which was probably a hassle given all the jostling and moving around that they were doing.

She watched another aircraft kaboom it plunging into the inland sea to her west as the chatter of auto cannons continued to streak up into the sky.

Now, admittedly she knew that what they were doing was a bit ... well not professional. They were invaindg a major inner sphere world. This was well beyond what they'd gotten up to on Elidere... people were going to make holovid blockbusters about Elidere she'd heard the Davions talking about. Never mind what they were going to say once they wiped out two combine 'mech regiments here.

Well admittedly it was most of one, and the 9th​ Sun Zhang was a training cadre so ... but still TWO MECH Regiments. Never mind all the normal soldiers... the mundane meat and metal that were so much more common for MechWarriors to fight... from a purely business side of things they werne't going to make as much bank in payout from wrecking that much metal... she'd seen the contracts and new they were looking at a nice payout...

... but she also knew that was because House Davion, big H big D, was probably leery of one of their big nobles having such a big stick. She'd seen the way some of the FedSuns nobility acted about everything. It was kind of embarrassing, on the other hand it wasn't like the FedSuns were a bad employer. They were making good money, and no one had tried any shady stuff.

Bubbles was hoping it stayed that way.

There was stuff going on in the background that she didn't know... but ... that creepy underground crypt beneath Castle Northwind made her head spin.

She didn't know what a Special Class A security profile was.... other than Special. The HAF was the Army of the Terran Hegemony the nation of the Camerons, of McKenna, and Kerensky. If this was like some kind of holovid drama maybe he'd be a vampire awakened from long dormant slumber in a destroyed castle... Northwind had been creepy enough with its high ceiling... weird robot bugs.

A message flashed across the Atlas's com display jarring her out of it.

Big heavy fusion returns started to go up. The Rapiers they had found on Elidere were lifting off, in a minute as they set their throttles they'd go supersonic. The 85 ton ASF were heavily armed. The two returns on the Ford 340s she was picking identified them as 101 models mounting three Magna Hellstar PPCs. Her computer updated to transmit the rest of the flight were RP 100s two PPCs supporting an assault auto cannon.

Half a dozen aircraft in total aimed at crossing through the enemy formation. They'd get the pass and then they'd have to move into chasing each others tails, but that was what fighter jocks did.

--
The projected weather forecast was so far so good. The wind projections were low, they wouldn't need to worry about rain, thunderstorms, sand storms, floods or anything like that today which would support their continuing advance.

The Presidio's air complement had just sortied to mop up... but also to cover rearmament of the Jaeger mechs and the 40mm whirlwinds of the BlackJacks as the break in air attack came. The air breathing aircraft were actually potentially more dangerous at night than their ASF counterparts, lacking fusion drives they didn't create nearly the visible light, and infrared signature in the dark.

... also they were cheaper.

With the rate that that brigade was knocking Combine Shilones out of the air that they might not have to worry about them. ASF were a precious resource in the modern era and the Combine pilots while good, had clearly not expected such a volume of ground based anti aircraft fire. Then again, no one expected Gauss Rifles in this era... once the Fury tanks had opened up, even with their limited ammunition their networked fire control ... well... Gene flipped channels delegating air command to the actual flyers... that there number of aviation assets was ... well what it was played a part in that.

He swiped his hand manipulating the holographic display... they needed to reduce Combine forces in the open as much as possible... just in case the Combine commander decided to switch tracks and go for scorched earth and deny the Davions the civilian population. He didn't see a whole lot of ways to do that, but on the other hand they had the Combine out numbered. That much was apparent with the way the regiment of student mechwarriors and the sword of light were spread out... they were trying to cover and move to engage now with too wide of a front.

A more conservative commander would have traded ground, and certainly wouldn't have put a river to his back, which was exactly what the Sword of Light's 3rd​ Battalion had done with itself.

Gene blew out a breath, and started a data packet for retasking


He ran through the Company's core membership, and then punched up a hail to the Highland Battalion. Claymore Lead took a moment to connect. The old Highlander, and his highlander that had had its gauss rifle replaced with an auto cannon at least a forty years earlier according to the report from the mechanics that was appended to the regimental management software was really in good condition. Given that the Northwinders had Highlanders with Gauss Rifles Gene suspected that some of those looted store caches from the invasion had disappeared into the hills and... that also maybe the Black Watch had known where others were.

... the door they hadn't been able to open had had Dante's annex behind it, but that suggested that their credentials were able to open, they just hadn't known where all to look... and given all the damage Amaris had done on Northwind... that wasn't actually a surprise.

Even two and a half centuries on, Northwind wasn't any where close to a billion people... and the truth was that wasn't a direct result of nuclear bombardment... or silly ideas about nuclear winter... it was the disruption of the planetary and interplanetary economy making an otherwise fertile world unable to conduct, organize, and transport food to its population leading to first a planetary die off, and then the subsequent longer lasting economic depression that resulted.

Dieron had fared much better than Northwind on the surface but part of that was Rim world incompetence. As a result Dieron's population had survived the crisis more intact so that there were five billion souls on Dieron, a real distinction from Northwind. It was part of the reason, he really didn't want to risk urban fighting. If they had to do that... well that why he had the devastators in reserve... if it came down to it they'd bring close range brawlers in and do what needed to be done... but he was really hoping the Combine would show some goddamn sense and abide by the Ares conventions, that when they lost they'd surrender.

... but the current iteration of the dictum honorium really was a hot mess. The original version was fancy archaic poetry but it was high minded noblesse oblige this and that throw backs to a supposed better moral place. He didn't believe those good old days existed but ...

"Colonel?" The highlander asked.

"Standby." He hit send on the data packet.

"They've no where to fall back to, sir." The Highland replied scrutinizing the Combine position, "Not that I think that they'd retreat anyway, but they can only go forward against us from there."

"That was my thinking as well." Still there was at least a regiment of militia infantry, with a second trying to fill out the gap if the spotter plane footage was right... a long scraggly mass of harried foot infantry rushing across pontoon bridges. He transmitted the artillery detachment information, he didn't like shelling the crossing not the least of which was hitting pontoon bridges at distance was something of an ask so they'd probably be wasting ammo but it needed to be done. "The 3rd​ RCT is preparing to feint and strike 1st​ Battalion / 5 SOL if they can make contact I need you to prevent the 3 – 5 from trying to relieve them."

He wasn't about to throw a new Battalion against fanatic veterans without something up his sleeve, but he also needed to protect their western flank, and that meant those infantry needed to be shaken up, disoriented if not outright destroyed as a viable fighting force.

Within his Command Mech Colonel Shepherd filtered the orders and sent them down to the Battalion level, attaching specialist units to an all mech formation.
--
Notes: So I should be asleep right now, but anyway, this story has Isekai in its subtitle due to that being what Cimbri had as his CYOA name, but I will be doing a slightly more Isekai BT story... that will at current rate be getting (see the extra thread mark most recently) its own thread. The first two chapters will be a bit rough covering the late 3013 battle of Halstead Station, and then the early 3014 battle of Mallroy's world using the Essence of Megamek lab power set followed by a time skip... anyway thats officially in the pipeline for May

 

[Imperator Pax]

Dieron
Part 4​

As the returns filtered on his screen, Septim cursed more in frustration than anger at the situation. They'd kind of sort of had this problem back with the Canopians. The Merlin was the first new BattleMech in ages and it hadn't been built as a Command Mech. He didn't have all those fancy Star League computer systems to order hundreds of BattleMechs around.

... Not that he wanted to but in this case it was that the boss was doing.

Both of their new Overlord DropShips had been filled up with new people. 36 BattleMech the overwhelming majority being heavy or assault mechs... proper lyran stuff that the boss had just pulled out of storage to hand over. Septim had enjoyed Professor Abner pointing out that the Rapier was also 'a good sturdy Lyran flying machine'.... and well twelve of those had been loaded up with the company's new pilots as well.

They just hadn't had time to get to know all the new people. It was one thing to be in charge of, be responsible for the DMM people. They were good people, but they were also temporary. People joked about how Lyrans were used to money, and spending it and whatever but the boss hadn't batted an eye at digging ... who knew how much heavy metal out of the ground enough to just stand up whole new units and give it away... and even before that the boss had more than one BattleMech sitting in a cubicle.

It had only compounded with how Bubbles, and the quiet guy were reacting to the situation. Hanzo had proven good at coaching the DMM troops, seeing it as he put it a 'moral imperative' to provide a a good foundation to one's 'juniors' and what not... and while that wasn't any kind of problem once they had gotten back with the boss and landed on Northwind... well things on Northwind had been crazier than they had been before that.

Apparently exposure to the Davions, and the northwind, and Bard's singing had infected Chang with some ridiculous 'Clan Fox' brain bug...

He eased the yokes of his Heavy BattleMech dipping back behind the hill more to shelter against the overhead sonic booms than to minimize his profile of any potential air attack. His machine's massive VLAR 300 might easily confuse the Combine planes that he was something else, but they'd know a BattleMech when they picked on up on their scopes, and he didn't want to make them trying to strafe him any easier.

The sooner the snakes were in front of them the better. He was actually getting stir crazy. Bo at least knew what he was getting into with Echo Company being kept just behind the line of advance as a kind of reaction force... the idea was that if they had to the missile boats could swing to engage an enemy lance or company force already engaging DMM troops.

That suited the Free Worlder fine. Bo would be fine waiting.

... but even nominally sitting here on the front line he was tapping his foot like mad waiting for an actual Snake Mech to show up. He couldn't shoot down aircraft, but they also needed to keep moving forward... and they were burning daylight. He figured that was probably the point that the Combine was trying to slow them down. The Draconic March Militia units needed to bring up their infantry and combat vehicles and prepare fighting positions and an air raid threat was going to impede those efforts.

Even if he'd been standing on the crest of the hill, rather than in its shadow, the sun's light was fading... the sky wasn't that dark yet but dusk was on the way, and then it'd be dark... and who knew what the fuck that was going to be like. They had been warned, and warned, to be wary of a combine night attack being launched so they were going to have to stop and prepare fighting positions...


There was a chime from his console as the text only transmission reiterated that warning... he wondered if it was an automated message, as he continued to slow walk the Merlin down the hill. The 19 ton fusion engine was faster than the original Merlin's smaller engine, bigger more horsepower it was a trade off... the combine had seriously damaged his mech on Ander's moon after all. He needed to pay them back for that, even if the boss hadn't billed him for the repairs.

--
Standard Battle Plate was ridiculously effective for its weight in offering protection. That and coupled with contemporary ECM capacity, and the difficulty in resolving the interference from fusion engines to certain other targetting capacities... well tanks, and BattleMechs, were hard to kill at really anything other than close range.

If you wanted to kill something from a couple miles out... well your best option was artillery, the same as it had been for a thousand years now, which was why they were screening the lances of thumpers to come up. He idly wanted to park them, dig them in out of sight, and pour indirect fire into the combine... but they'd need ammo and the truth was there was a chance that the combine might mount an attempt an aggressive break through, and he wanted the artillery to have the ammunition to blunt any kind of assault combine infantry might mount and that meant things pre sighting positions before they lost all the daylight.

So that was why he was calling a halt to the advance. "We're refueling the planes now, we should be able to get one more flight but I think the snakes are wising up that we have aircraft ... whether they have an idea of it or not well we'll have to wait an see." The scots major remarked.

The DMM officers still connecting into conference. Highlanders, the mechs, were more suited to these sorts of communiques... or at least the machines were configured for it. There was also the problem that the DMM Mech units were not alone. There were another five companies of armor mostly things like bulldogs, and von luckner tanks that were supposed to be supporting the mechs... "And how are we on the time tables?"

The highlander colonel guffawed, "Aye, our own infantry and armor, well you can't complain about those blackwell toys. They're letting us move along." They were fusion powered no need to refuel them with petrol and thus no need for petrol lorries to come along and risk exposure. That meant that they could focus on transporting missile reloads for their vehicles. "The terrain is no good, though... we're going to have to reposition some of the dropships maybe before the sun comes alighting."

They had been talking about this. Their DropShips were carrying supplies... not as much... Overlords weren't cargo vessels... and Unions frankly sucked in that role as well, in addition to being cramped... but this wasn't intended to be a long duration campaign. Still Gene could understand why the Azami preferred energy boats and very limited supply dependent weapons, largely sticking to specialty SRMs, LRM ammo, and a single model of AC 10 for their ground forces when they could help it. He agreed with that thinking. Logistics won over sheer guts in a unit on unit slugging match.

... which was what they were in. "Do you think you'll need the added firepower if the Sword of Light swings to meet you?"

"It certainly couldn't hurt, but at the same time, I'm getting good feeds from those Fury tanks. If you be right that will maintain through the night, it might be better to have the dropships not come in sooner. If put them down close the Combine might take the bait and come at us." And while the Ancients Company of Claymore might be prepared to fight a Sword of Light unit head on, having the battalion taste its first battle in the dark against a veteran combine battalion wasn't ideal. The main thing was keeping the sword of light from bearing down on the Eridani's Light and Medium mechs and trying to roll their flank.

Not because he expected that was what could happen, it could, but the bigger concern was the casualties the combine could inflight if they were allowed to commit to that kind of attack without being interrupted. The Azami were a combined arms out fit their legion background was based off of light horse doctrine if filtered through a combine view of it, with an emphasis on PPCs for mechs in particular, the Azami had a lot of hovercraft, if it came to that he expected he could retask them as rapid reaction filling a breach in the front with so many Harasser and Saracens missile boats that the combine would have to fall back... or take such a pounding that he was able to shore things up... they would have to wait and see what the snakes actually did though... just be ready for it.
--
Notes: I have started a second Essence of Meklab story / BattleTech Isekai, Rabid Fox hews more towards Isekai tropes, and is more narrowly focused than this. GW2 is a story that takes place across really the whole inner sphere, with lots of travel. Rabid Fox at least in its current plan while it may dip into the rimward periphery because it does operate on similar ideas is primarily focused on Davion Space and the Inner Sphere.

I will go ahead and say that it will focus a lot on the principle davion side cast

 

[Fragment of Serenity]

Going with the logic of making them come to you on your ground in a method of your choosing. Lets hope that the SoL decide to play along, otherwise this could get dicey real fast.

 

[Bofors40mm]

The overwhelming artillery and conventional forces advantage (and presumably ASF advantage given the garrison of Northwind who probably at least partially tagged along is one of the Deneb Light Calvary RCTs and those guys have at least 80 birds and up to 120) the Sun's brought to the party does help force the combine to make battle on way less than advantageous terms. Because short of forting up and waiting for relief and being shelled in the meantime they have to attack.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Dieron

Part 5​

Twilight had fallen. The Brevet General was both disappointed with their progress and impressed at the same time. The 5th​ Sword of Light had slipped away from them. The enemy force had won first blood, though largely on their weight. Kerston hadn't been willing to over commit to an attack and so they'd both broken contact... truthfully he'd been expecting the Combine to come forward after... but perhaps the Sword of Light commander knew better, knew the Eridani Light Horse's reputation and didn't want to be lured in.

Tomorrow though the battle lines would be fixed... they were already hardening into formations as refueling trucks and ammunition palls were brought up to prepare for tomorrow. The officer of the watch within the command vehicle relayed footage to his BattleMech's HUD Inferno munitions flying out to blunt incoming infantry attacks.

... he hoped that the Combine wasn't so callous as to be intentionally using human wave attacks to blunt their thermal scopes at night for something more. He had fought his share of night battles, as both aggressor and defender they were always complicated. This campaign was going to be more complicated than most.

If it had been up to him, they'd have waited before launching this. Taken more time to train together, better integrate their forces and that would have been true of any invasion... he wasn't sure what the Federated Suns had planned in the long term, but maybe it would be good for the Inner Sphere... good for humanity as a whole rather than just one of the successor states.

It was more than that though... and he was hoping that whatever was going to unfold that the Federated Suns would let them rotate back to a garrison contract... they needed, they were going to need time to train up. It took time to properly run a training course. The SLDF manuals were invaluable and were not the sort of instructions passed from master to student, knight to squire but were for preparing units, and built on the inherent espirt de corps of a body of picked men.

It was strange to see the interoperability of so many thrown together units... but Kerston wasn't stupid... he knew very well what ...

... the systems under Northwind had made that clear... a hundred seventy seven years since an officer of the Hegemony's Central Intelligence Directorate had been down there. The AI wanted blood paid for Hegemony losses... he understood that on Neue Karlruhe in the Lyran Commonwealth the Hegemony AI there had a priority to protect the Hegemony but that the Hegemony was gone, but there were still responsibilities to those left behind.

Shepherd was a Hegemony officer, a CID officer he had probably commanded member state, or at least advised them given his age, forces before the coup. From what the MRB had said he had commanded Canopian sub units since coming out of the stasis tube... but more than that Shepherd had asked about Cameron survivors something that no one had considered possible... that members of the Terran ruling house had made it off Terra during the coup.

It would have made sense for them to be trying to link with Kerensky, but could it have been more than that? Could they hope? But two centuries as a long time, and they had to be realistic about what they could do, and besides Shepherd had his hands full with enough volunteers as it was.

His BattleMaster's computers processed another packet of data. Their Kuritan rivals had a battle master of their own somewhere in the area... it was relaying command and control data to its own forces. They hadn't been able to throw a spotter plane up over it, before it was probably a Sword of Light Command Lance. There were a number of Kuritan command vehicles as well that was generating some interference as well. There were requests to start bringing up Thumpers to start plastering whole grid squares to destroy those command vehicles in an effort to disrupt command and control.

It wasn't the worst idea he'd heard... ordinarily the light horse would have sent light mechs and hover craft to try and head hunt such specialist vehicles from behind the enemy lines, but in this geography and at night against this enemy... and with an unknown enemy air threat forcing them to conserve their air power artillery was the better option.

--
Gene grimaced under the red night vision preserving lights of his cockpit. These banzai charge attacks were disgusting wastes of men's lives... and for what? The Combine was pissed that the Rasalhagians were rebelling? Enough to attack them like this. Disgusting.

The Azami commander had actually volunteered to sortie and bait the Combine into attacking his own forces ... and Gene was hard pressed to find a valid tactical reason to refuse the offer... given their situation.

The Combine's fantasicsm was worrying. Not that he hadn't been expecting night time attacks, but there was expectation, and then reality. Support PPCs were a good idea, were good weapons, they provided infantry with reasonable offensive striking capability and the combine fielded them in rather surprising numbers, but it was also something expected by 'dirty rebels' as the Combine thought of the Rasalhagians and the Azami.

Making a decision meant watching an Azami lance from one of their Drosts... one that hadn't been rebranded that was... that included a pair of classic catapults. The jumping heavy battlemechs were reinforced with half a dozen hovercraft and finally a pair of SRM carriers rolling in.

The Sheik's captain provided him a time table and assured him that it wouldn't impact wider operations for his whole combined arms unit to have the front anchored, and that the Rasalhague force would be able to rearm and reequip as they needed. With that handled he relayed confirmation to the Bexar allowing the Hegemony built Triumph to start its bit of hop scotch to Bardiche's AO.

He paused and swapped channels from the Azami officer to their Davion Liaison, "It would seem they're beginning to mount similar attacks against the Draconis March Troops."

Lovely.

Alexandria filled him in with what was filtering in from their far western line of advance, but there wasn't much to be done. The DMM troops were dug in for the night, and had organic armor support... and while they didn't have the cruel efficiency of inferno munitions at least they had good armor supporting them.

He closed the channel once the report was done.

Gene looked up at the dark sky. The moon was obscured by clouds, but other than that the weather was clear. Line of sight wasn't great given the preponderance of hills to the west that ringed the great lake that the Kazakh river flowed into, but that worked both ways... and that worked really well for anything that wasn't eight plus meters of bipedal murder machine.

What was worse was if his signal returns were right the Combine had over shot the nearest access point to the underground in their unseemly unhaste... it would have been nice to know they were going to do something like that so he could have had troops waiting to access the tunnel... but that also supposed the tunnels were intact enough to move troops.

They probably were. His Marauder's seismographic sensors gave no indication that a collapse had distorted the ground beneath them... if they had been collapsed then the cave in should have distorted the returns. He wasn't seeing any of that. That was promising, but it was something for later, he watched display shift.

He reached up to the master arm, and flipped it. Inferno SRMs in mech's hoppers cranked into their tubes and launched from the dark green and stone gray Marauder that waited in the night. The infantry men's screams he couldn't hear, but he was already bringing the machine forward as the nose mounted small pulse laser started to flash as his hud resolved targeting data on the pbi positions coming out into the open.

The men never had a chance, never saw it coming. One second they'd been bounding forward egged on by their officers exhorting them to fight for the dragon's glory and then missiles had started spraying an aerosilized gel that rapidly ignited into a viscous mass of fire, and from that fire they probably saw if only briefly the devil coming out of the black of the night.

He moved to one of the few trucks with the column and pumped a medium laser into it as a precaution as his hoppers reloaded from the bin. His heads up display told him that he was going to run out of inferno ammunition if he kept this up... and with all the fires he had started someone was going to notice.

... or they wouldn't.

He wasn't the only throwing Inferno SRMs... and it was also true that the combine mechs also had inferno srms ... maybe the combine would assume with no returns from his machine that this was blue on blue and someone had fucked up.

... and in a sense the combine had. They had rushed into the area without any apparent kind of screening in favor of rushing towards the objective. Not that scouts would have necessarily found him in the dark of night.
--
Notes: In addition to the Rabid Fox Essence story: Link, I also am considering doing one more periphery centric in the vein of using the essence to show up ala the Wolf Dragoons but playing Periphery kingmaker... but I'm currently kicking around ideas for that, as well as the Davion heir story, from which Rabid Fox has incorporated some of the ideas from that.

I do want to conclusively reiterate that Essence of MegaMek Lab is like most essences really freaking OP so both Rabid Fox, and its periphery counterpart are overpowered. Less so than in Essence Wielding Social General as Odin in that is more invested in the Lyran state as a political entity.

Anyway I need to go work on the rest of the battle of Dieron so next week's update will actually happen... and all of that is just Battletech content... never mind all of the other setting stories I keep saying I'm going to find time for.

... and also finding time to play Zelda tears of the kingdom.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Commentary: BattleTech Isekai CYOA Notes​

It did not exist at the time I started this project, but Cimbri has since (well he put it in probably last year, since that was the last edit date on the post) added disadvantages to his BattleTech Isekai

and there is this one:

[ ] It sucks but it seems like the Draconis Combine has marked you for death. Good luck with that as they'll send progressively more people to do you in if the initial attempts fail. With that said they're unlikely to poison you or just blow you up in orbit. No for the offence of looking exactly like and seemingly sharing the exact same DNA as one of the Gunslingers that humiliated a relative of the Coordinator during the late Star League era you've been marked to fall in combat to an honourable samurai. (Gain 3 fate points and prepare to meet ever increasing amounts of people wielding glorious Nippon steel against you).

 

[Bofors40mm]

Does that include DEST teams or not?
Because if not well...thanks for the points suckered. Proceeds to not go within 2 or 3 jumps of Combine space without a full regiment at my back

 

[RoyalTwinFangs]

marked to fall in combat to an honourable samurai.

Click to shrink...

Does that mean only mech duels or can be also sword duels too?

 

[Imperator Pax]

Does that mean only mech duels or can be also sword duels too?

Click to shrink...

I think (not having the lore in front of me) that would include sword duels in theory, I know there is an article on Combine Vendetta rules for the nobility