GblaRCS Chpt 76

Guided by the light of a (Red) Cameron Star
- Chapter 76 -

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"What the hell did you just say? Let me see that HPG message for myself. I swear to Blake that if this is some kind of sick joke that I'll have you ****** killed!"

Raymond Karpov, Primus of ComStar - 2849CE

---

Hoping the Other Guy Not Crazy

Hartwood City - Stafford System – 2849

If he was the governor of some wealthy, populous Inner Sphere planet then Jonas Johanson might have had an underground bunker containing one of those fancy 'War Rooms', the ones with all the massive flatscreen computer monitors mounted on the walls and a big holographic display in the center of the room that you saw in the movies.

Since he wasn't the governor of such a planet, what Johanson did have was the small private movie-theater in his mansion that a couple of technicians had wired into feeds coming from Militia Headquarters, the local NHCOMNET HPG station and the SLDF garrison, along with some limited access to the Blackhearts command channel as he read through the briefing notes he had been given by his aide.

Currently projected up on the screen was Colonel Brasher, the commanding officer of the Stafford militia, who had been running around like a lunatic the last few hours trying to get everybody he could mobilized to resist a potential landing by the presumably hostile force that was now barrelling its way towards the planet from the Nadir point.

At least the Lyrans hadn't jumped in at a much closer pirate point, which would have only given Stafford hours rather than days to prepare. Unfortunately given that they had turned up in a ****** battlecruiser they probably figured they didn't really need the benefit of surprise. They hadn't issued a menacing ultimatum on arrival either, probably wanting to do so once they reached the planet where their words would be backed by the prospect of immediate orbital bombardment if the reply wasn't what they wanted to hear.

"Reservists are starting to report as ordered, Sir." Brasher told the governor, the expression of his face projected up on the screen giving the appearance that he was entirely relaxed and unperturbed by the current situation, although in reality he was likely anything but. Just visible behind the colonel in militia HQ his command staff seemed to be frantically beavering away, though like their commanding officer none of them seemed panicked, just very motivated as they spoke into telephones and moved things around maps. It said a lot for how bad the situation really was that the government and people of Stafford were fervently hoping that they were facing an invasion, something they could potentially resist and in doing so maybe even obtain better terms in negotiations for their surrender. If the Lyrans landed troops then they probably weren't just here to drop bombs on civilians from space until they got want they wanted, the latter scenario not being entirely unprecedented in the bloody wars of the 28th and 29th centuries.

"Do they seem keen?" Johanson asked Brasher, speaking into the microphone headset he had been provided to enable him to talk to whoever was currently on the screen. The reserves were former militia members many of whom hadn't been active for years, maybe even decades for some of them, but sometimes you just needed everyone that knew which end of a rifle was dangerous and might remember how to clean it and what to do if it jammed.

"Apprehensive would be a better descriptor than keen for most of them, except for the lumberjacks anyway, you know how those guys are always spoiling for a fight." Brasher replied.

"In my experience the gal lumberjacks are no better than the guys on that front, maybe worse, but I guess that might be about to come in handy." Johanson suggested, trying to put a brave face on the whole situation.

"I'll make sure to get them good and liquored-up before the fight and tell them the Lyrans are townies." Brasher joked, obviously forcing a smile as he was clearly none too enthused about what was coming himself, not being a drooling moron.

Johanson chuckled. "Sounds like a recipe for war crimes" he warned. "Just make sure that sending violent drunks with axes at the enemy doesn't violate the Ares Conventions first, okay? I don't need some chinless wonder of an Association bureaucrat up my ass for the next six months whining about human rights or whatever."

"Will do, I think I've got a copy of the conventions in my desk, next to a bottle of Scotch imported from Skye" Brasher replied.

"Lyran whisky? Are you sure it's not poisoned?" Johanson checked, smiling.

"If it is I must have built up a tolerance real quick because it's half empty and I'm not dead yet."

"Better to be safe than sorry." Johanson advised. "Have what's left delivered to the mansion so I can have an expert verify for sure that it's safe to drink."

"Would that be an expert in poisons or in finagling free Scotch, Sir?"

"You'll know for certain depending on how much of the bottle makes it back to you, and if I'm dead, or just dead drunk" Johanson told him, hoping that all the levity would improve morale. It wasn't like Brasher was really experienced in how to handle circumstances like these. Nor Johanson himself for that matter, they were both just making it up as it goes on.

The Stafford militia had fought off a few pirates in their time, albeit mostly smaller, poorly armed bands because the larger and better equipped ones preferred to hit more profitable targets, but having the flagship of a Great Power bearing down on them was, needless to say, a whole new experience for them.

At least Brasher had a lot more toys to play with these days than he did when all the militia could boast in terms of firepower was a handful of obsolescent tanks, some towed-anti-tank guns and a whole mismatched bunch of assorted rifles that were currently being taking out of storage for the reserves. While joining the Niops Hegemony had seen a good amount of modern, effective, not to mention expensive, hardware handed over to the militia, the fact remained however that a company and a half or so of medium BattleMechs, a couple of batteries of Ballista SPGs and some Manticore tanks recently purchased from the Magistracy of Canopus weren't really much more help than a rifle would be if that damn warship planted itself overhead and started bombarding them from space.

Saber Light Aerospace Fighter

The single squadron of Sabre aerospace fighters, themselves also purchased from the Magistracy by Niops and that the militia had recently added to the rolls as well, would have represented a serious force multiplier in most scenarios where Stafford was attacked, just not this one. While the Association had kindly upgraded the things to SLDF Royal specification before shipping them on to Stafford, making them better than what most Great House units could boast let alone periphery worlds, a Tharkad class capital ship was a more substantial meal than half-dozen light fighters could chew on. This was particularly true given that as well as its anti-fighter armament the LCS Invincible was likely also bringing its full complement of six squadrons of ASF escorts to the fight, plus whatever its half-dozen DropShip were carrying.

Tharkad Class Battlecruiser, SLS Invincible

The SLDF garrison made up of Association regulars had another squadron of fighters stationed on Stafford to support the militia, these being Stingray mediums purchased from the Free Worlds League and then also souped-up by Niops to what it considered an acceptable modern standard, but the large majority of the available fighter strength to oppose the Lyrans would come from Colonel Johnson's people instead.

The Blackhearts mercenary regiment currently operated some four squadrons of aerospace fighters, and although they were a mixed bag of types, and none of them were flashy Royal ASFs, normally that would have been more than enough to frighten the life out of any invasion force. Unfortunately in the current situation however, and even though the fighters on the Stafford side might not be drastically outnumbered overall, according to what Johanson had been told if you wanted to try and take out a Tharkad with fighters then you needed to be the one bringing heavy numerical superiority in ASFs to the fight, ideally a big numerical superiority, and that was definitely not the case.

Unlike the major capital ships built by the Terran Hegemony, the Lyrans had intended their most powerful ships to be able to defend themselves from enemy aerospace fighters if necessary, and as such their flagship carried plentiful amounts of anti-fighter weaponry as well as it's big naval guns. As a consequence while in theory if an SLDF battleship turned up on its own you could usually count of several of its docking collars carrying assault DropShip like the Pentagon, or ASF carriers like the Titan to help defend it from fighters, a Lyran Tharkad could devote all its collars to hauling DropShip full of Battlemechs, tanks and infantry instead which wasn't good for Stafford.

The Blackhearts themselves had a number of armed DropShip that might potentially have been available to support their fighters in a space battle that didn't involve the other side possessing an actual warship, but while the heavy guns of the Lyran battlecruiser couldn't readily target something fighter sized, they could unfortunately draw a bead on DropsShips. A round from a large naval autocannon wouldn't just blow a hole in something like an Intruder, it would completely shatter it leaving behind an expanding debris field, and it was a bit too much to ask the Blackheart DropShip crews to play the role of skeet like that.

It wasn't like the mercenary DropShip were stood idle however. They were currently helping to evacuate those that wanted to leave the capital before the invaders arrived, moving civilians to smaller settlements on other continents. The Flying Doctor service was doing likewise, their VTOL's transporting healthy people for once instead of the sick and injured they usually dealt with, but they had nowhere near as much carrying capacity.

Letting Brasher return to work, Governor Johanson considered how simultaneously well-planned and yet ill-advised this operation seemed to be from the Lyran side. To their credit the 'pirate' JumpShips which had jumped into the Comstock and Francas systems had clearly been a feint to try and draw off some of the naval strength of the Association, as well as make it difficult to move units around and it had very much worked as intended. After accomplishing their goal they had not stuck around to attempt an actual landing on either world and had jumped out again, the problem there being that they could re-appear again at any time, not just at Comstock or Francas, but potentially at Copernicus, Baccalieu, Ballalaba or even Islington with the latter definitely being a place that Claudius Steiner had an interest in.

Just because the 'Mad Archon' undoubtedly wanted to get hold of Melissa Nin the most, that didn't mean that getting his hands on the Von Strang's wouldn't be a nice bonus if he was minded to dispatch forces quite this far from home.

On the other hand, sending the most powerful weapon of war in your arsenal so far from home, it would take the battlecruiser months to get back to the Commonwealth from here, was an open invitation for the Draconis Combine to come storming into Lyran territory all guns blazing.

The Free Worlds League meanwhile might not use this as an opportunity to launch a major offensive into Lyran territory with any warships they had left, because they had to consider the unpleasant reality that there was now a Steiner capital ship in a prime position to hit any of their poorly-defended systems far from the front lines that it wanted to during the long trip back home. If he was in charge on Atreus then Johanson would have started sending reinforcements to places like Westover that were vitally important to the Marik war effort as soon as the news arrived.

Since the Stingray fighters that Niops bought from the League were actually produced on Westover then Claudius might even consider smashing the factories there not just to hurt the Mariks, but as an additional screw-you to the Association as well.

Luckily for Westover it had avoided the unwelcome attentions of the Lyran navy the last time they had ventured this far rimward in force, this not actually being the first time that Iron Fist of House Steiner had struck so far from home, although admittedly it wasn't exactly a common occurrence. Back during the First Succession War the LCAF navy had hit the Free Worlds League system of Karachi hard, that world being about as far away from Commonwealth territory as Niops was and lying only three jumps away. Since it was only a raid, not an invasion, back then the Lyrans had simply dropped a couple of hundred-megaton warheads to smash most of Karachi's industry before triumphantly heading home again, hitting the odd target-of-opportunity enroute as they did.

The LCAF attack on Karachi half a century ago had utterly destroyed the large complex of Battlemech factories which had been located there, leaving only twisted radioactive wreckage and also incinerating some twenty million people into the bargain.

Arguably the people of Karachi had actually gotten off light when the Lyran Navy came calling that day. When the LCAF really meant business, as it had at Finmark in 2792, it was perfectly happy to glass an entire planet which was why Governor Johanson, and anyone else on Stafford with any sense, was hoping like hell that Archon Claudius wanted to land troops to try and take Melissa alive rather than just simply burning the entire continent she was on as a warning to anyone else thinking of becoming an annoyance to him.

Quietly musing to himself Johanson pondered the thought that if anyone in the Hegemony had been wondering why the Niops Association had sought to maintain the warships they had inherited from the Star League, at undoubtedly great cost, then the unwelcome appearance of the LCS Invincible was probably making things a little clearer. Recalling the bad old days of the First Succession War, when the Great Houses were even more prone to solving every problem they had with nuclear ordnance than they were now certainly gave you a new appreciation for the Niops fleet.

Not that the Niops fleet was really equipped to deal with a seriously out-of-context problem like a freaking battlecruiser turning up out of the blue, Johanson considered sadly. A frigate, a couple of destroyers and some armed naval transports might be pretty intimidating by most terms of reference these days, but his military advisors had told him flat that a Tharkad would chew them all up and spit them out. It was the meanest thing anyone outside the Terran Hegemony had ever built, with only the last generation of big battlewagons operated by the Star League Navy outgunning a ship like the LCS Invincible by any margin, and all of those had left the Inner Sphere with Aleksandr Kerensky.

If the LCS Invincible had jumped into Niops itself things wouldn't have been nearly so easy for it of course. Although exactly how many of the things the Association actually had in service was classified it was well known that multiple squadrons, perhaps multiple wings, of Voidseeker drone fighters defended the Hegemony's capital system, and a bunch of those things coming at you like a swarm of robotic kamikazes was a nightmarish scenario for any ship. A Voidseeker punched above its weight class in firepower, could maintain sustained accelerations and pull high-gee manoeuvres that no human pilot could match and was, of course, not subject to morale problems.

Even if the Association might perhaps be reluctant to sling a few Alamo missiles underneath the drones so they could take out enemy capital ships themselves, SDS drones had killed a lot of SLDF ships during the Amaris War after all, they could always use the Voidseekers to strip them of their fighter cover and then follow up with human piloted ASF's or small craft to finish the warship off with nuclear warheads.

Voidseeker Drone Fighter

Add in the fact that everyone in the Inner Sphere was well aware that those 'orbital telescopes' of theirs were no such thing, and that the Niops system was apparently chock-full of the things like a budget SDS, and you could see why Claudius Steiner had wisely decided not to send his flagship right to the High Associator's doorstep and making demands.

Stafford itself only had a single 'orbital telescope' unfortunately, and even a satellite the size of a mid-sized DropShip could only fit so many big guns inside it, so in Johanson's estimation it seemed like the Invincible would burn it down fast.

It didn't seem likely that the Lyrans were dumb enough to believe the 'telescope' cover story, Johanson himself never had, so they weren't about to ignore the thing entirely and potentially eat a bunch of missiles, or naval lasers, or whatever from the thing at an extremely inopportune moment such as when Stafford's fighter strength was sent in.

'Excuse me, Sir" a voice interrupted Johanson's thoughts, the governor turning to see Captain Callahan stood there.

"Shouldn't you be with your company, son?" Johanson queried.

"Plenty of time to rejoin them before any landing, Sir." Henry replied. "Major Butler sent me over to see how you were doing and to tell you that we've begun distributing surplus weaponry and ammunition from the garrison's supply dump to the militia" the mechwarrior told him.

"Spare ammo you've been keeping for a rainy day?"

"That and for training exercises, best to have the stuff and not need it than need it and not have it" Henry replied. "Colonel Brasher's men should be receiving a truck loaded with a few dozen additional Inferno Launchers and a couple of crates of mortar rounds presently, with two more trucks full of ammunition and some anti-tank mines on the way" he continued. "Speaking as a Mechwarrior I'm not usually frightened of infantry, but the idea of a grunt hiding in the trees with an Inferno Launcher quite frankly scares the crap out of me. The militia can do good work with them."

"And burn down half the forest into the bargain" Johanson replied.

Henry shrugged. "Yeah well, at least it's not like it takes very long for the trees here to grow back" he responded. Much of Stafford was about as green as anywhere could be, the warm temperate climate and CO2 rich atmosphere was paradise for plants.

Johanson sighed. "I guess we'd better hope and pray that the flames don't spread to the city though." he pointed out. Hartwood was mostly of wooden construction, effectively a great pile of lumber waiting to catch alight. Set enough of it aflame and you wouldn't need to hit it with an orbital bombardment to raze the place to the ground, it could readily firestorm itself to perdition, as Dresden or Tokyo had during Terra's Second World War.

"The major informed me that you intend on declaring Hartwood a Free City if they land an assault force. Is that the case, Sir?" Henry asked.

"You don't approve?"

"Not for me to say, Governor Johanson" Henry replied noncommittally. "Although in my professional capacity I'd have to agree that this isn't exactly a town all that well-suited to defensive urban warfare, even though that's usually the best terrain for infantry to take on tanks and mechs" he said. "The walls here would offer little if any protection against incoming fire and the sheer flammability of the place means that the old stand-by tactic of using flamers to flush out the defenders would work even better than normal."

Johanson nodded. "When I discussed it with Major Butler earlier he mentioned your use of flamers to clear out enemy dug-outs on Erin" he said. "Terrible way to kill a man if you ask me."

"I agree, but what usually happens is they surrender or run away first" Henry told him. "Every grunt's enthusiastic to fight and determined to hold his ground until a Firestarter turns up" he sagely observed. "Fortunately for the civilian population it has historically been the case that the Lyran military has been pretty decent when it comes to dealing with non-combatants, at least when they're looking them in the eye not bombing them from space, so they might go along with your proposal as long as they don't think of it as some kind of trick."

"Here's hoping" Johanson replied. "Of course the guy in charge on Tharkad was usually a lot less nuts than the one we have now so I don't know if the old rules still apply. If they don't recognise Hartwood as a Free City then we'll have to try and find a way to evacuate the people and cross our fingers that they're not so far gone that they'll strafe columns of refugees."

"Sir, if they start pulling shit like that then we'll tell them to stop or we'll cut loose with the battlefield nukes." Henry told him.

"And if they don't?"

"Then we'll hit one of their ground formations with a Davy Crockett to show them we weren't bluffing" Henry replied evenly. "Normally we wouldn't want to be the first to reach for the WMD, but if they've already shown a willingness to slaughter civilians then we'll need to send a message in no uncertain terms that we consider that a major no-no" he said. "In a way we are lucky it's the Lyrans, if we were facing Capellans, for example, we'd have to worry a lot more about nerve gases or even bioweapons, the Cappies love that shit and they're also more willing to lose their own people in retaliatory strikes."

Johanson mouthed an obscenity under his breath. "Maybe we'd be better off if I was okay with just surrendering outright and handing Lady Melissa over without a fight" he said gloomily. "Trouble is that would go against the grain" he added.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah" Johanson confirmed. "I'm a country boy. Where I'm from if someone trespasses on your land you ask them to leave, politely" he said. "If they don't then you tell them to leave, and if they still don't then you get your gun and shoot them. If this Claudius Steiner fella thinks he can just come into my house, order me around and assumes I'll just do what I'm told like a good little lap dog then he's got another think coming."

"Chances are he thinks that he doesn't need to care about you or anyone else here thinks as long as he's got a warship hanging over you." Henry suggested.

---

Not a idle Threats

Johanson smiled. "I remember when your Pa was here for the ceremony when we officially joined up with Niops" he recalled. "He was mingling with the crowd afterwards and he was explaining why Niops did things the hard way when it came to expanding the Hegemony, getting people to join willingly through negotiation with some give-and-take, rather than save a lot of time and effort by just threating them with all your battlemechs and warships."

"What did Dad say the reason was?"

"He said it was because you weren't ****** and then he added that he thought the Inner Sphere had more than enough of those already without Niops joining in" Johanson told him, chuckling. "Claudius Steiner is a ****** ******, and I'd like to think I've got the guts to tell him so to his face even if it meant getting the axe treatment like he gave Karl Von Strang" he continued. "That said I'd bet the house that Karl thought that you were ****** when you turned up in his system uninvited intent on giving him a whupping."

"I guess" Henry conceded, "but damn if he didn't deserve it. Every rule needs to be open to exceptions, right?" he asked rhetorically as the big screen started flashing before a woman wearing an NHCOMNET jumpsuit appeared, looking to be sat at a desk.

"Can you see and hear me, Governor Johanson?" the woman asked.

"Can do, Ma'am." Johanson replied.

"It's Senior Technician Adams rather than 'Ma'am' if you please, Governor." the woman replied, "or Jackie if you prefer. Ma'am makes me feel old" she said. "My boss is working on the HPG, making sure we can maintain a constant connection to Niops via the Alphard Station and he asked me to tell you the Lyran vessel is now close enough to get a good look at it. I'm forwarding a feed from the orbital telescope to you now, copying in the SLDF garrison, Colonel Johnson's people and militia HQ" she said as her image was replaced by what appeared to be a blurry grey shape.

"Oh sorry, we must have zoomed in too far." the technician's disembodied voice continued. "Hang on." she said as the image pulled back and sharpened considerably, now displaying the massive warship LCS Invincible heading towards them in all its glory.

Given that the battlecruiser was still literally days away from reaching Stafford orbit Johanson's first reaction was that he was being pranked until he was struck by a more shocking realization. "Wait, are you saying that that the big telescope up there is really just a big telescope?" he asked nonplussed.

"Yes. What did you think it was?" Senior Technician Adams responded, confused.

"I thought it was an orbital weapon platform" Johanson replied.

Henry frowned. "Why?" he asked curiously.

"Because you said it was a telescope" Johanson explained, causing Henry to now be the one that looked confused. "You people shovel BS constantly to keep the Great Houses guessing as to how strong you really are, everyone knows that about you. It's like a running joke."

"Oh, right. I see" Adams voice coming through the speakers responded awkwardly. "We take our astronomy really seriously though" she told him, sounding almost apologetic about it.

"We do" Henry confirmed, nodding emphatically.

"Hang on, Colonel Johnson wants to talk to you. Patching him through, Governor Johanson" Adams announced, the screen dividing into two with the image from the telescope on one side and the mercenary commander on the other.

"Are you seeing this, Sir?" Colonel Johnson asked.

"Yep, I guess it was a telescope after all" Johanson replied. "Who would have guessed?" he asked rhetorically.

"Well yeah, but have you taken a proper look at the ship?" Johnson asked. "The dropships they're carrying haven't undocked yet, but you can tell what they are. I'm seeing a Mammoth, four Overlords and a freaking Vengeance! That's really not good" he stated with obvious concern.

"Sorry, Colonel, but I don't know even what a Vengeance even is, or why it's such a big deal" Johanson admitted.

"The Vengeance class dropship is an aerospace carrier, a really big one." Henry explained before Johnson could. "If it's fully loaded, and we've got to assume it is, then we're talking forty fighters on the Vengeance, another thirty-six carried by the Tharkad itself and finally each Overlord can carry six more."

"We don't have enough fighters to make it worthwhile even trying to contest a landing against a force that size." Johnson said. "They outnumber us nearly three-to-one in ASF strength, which also means that when they do land they'll have enough machines in the sky to maintain a solid CAP while still having multiple squadrons available to provide air-support for their ground forces and conduct strike missions."

"CAP means Combat Air Patrol, basically maintaining air superiority over the combat zone." Henry told Johanson quietly.

"The only positive here is that we probably have superiority in ground forces" Johnson noted. "Numerically at least, they're Lyrans so they're likely to lean towards a higher proportion of heavies and assaults than normal."

Henry nodded. "What they lack in tactical brilliance they tend to make up for in metal" he observed. "Given that the Blackhearts are providing the bulk of our mechs, and they lean the other way towards lights and mediums, we really don't want to get involved in a slugging match even if we have the number advantage."

"He's right, ideally I'd want to keep them off-balance with hit-and-run tactics, draw them into ambushes when they chase after us" Johnson concurred. "The problem for that approach now is them almost certainly having air-supremacy and hence plenty of eyes-in-the-sky" he said, pursing his lips. "That'll make it difficult to obtain the element of surprise even with all the great forest cover here to play with" he continued. "Don't get me wrong, my guys will be in their element, and the militia have home-field advantage on their own turf, but the opposition are going to find it real easy to conduct aerial recon if our ASF's can't get within a hundred klicks of where the fighting is."

"If I might interject, I just checked and according to our database the Lyrans don't manufacture the Vengeance class dropship themselves. So presumably this must be one they captured from either the Free Worlds League, or Draconis Combine at some point" the disembodied voice of Adams who was still listening in suggested.

"Chances are they've never captured more than a handful of them, and it sure wouldn't be easy to keep them running, but I guess if you're already invested enough to send your flagship you might as well go the whole hog and send a possibly irreplaceable dropship too" Johnson remarked. "Raises the chances of their warship getting home in good condition too if they give it a fighter escort so large that their ASF's will blot out the sun."

"Then we'll fight in the shade" Governor Johanson responded, feeling pretty pleased with himself for the reference. "You know, what with all the forest cover" he added, ruining it slightly.

"One second people, I've managed to improve the computer enhancement of the images from the telescope. We might be able to see some more detail now" the NHCOMNET technician interjected again. The warship being projected on the screen shimmering for a second before coming back into focus even sharper.

"Can you zoom in on those Overlords a little?" Colonel Johnson requested, "We might be able to make out unit markings, give us a better idea of what we're facing on the ground."

"Can do, just a moment." Adams replied.

Thanks to the way space travel works the LCS Invincible wasn't actually pointing nose-first at Stafford as it traveled there, but rather at the point its trajectory would intercept the planets orbit in a few days time. Effectively it was aiming to where Stafford was going, not where it was right now and as such the orbital telescope had a somewhat side-on view of the Lyran warship as it burned through space.

"Those are the markings of the Second Lyran Guards" Henry recognised them, his childhood had involved a great deal of time spent reading recognition guides, not just the profiles of tanks and battlemechs but also unit insignias. "That's Claudius Steiner's own command. Effectively his Praetorian Guard these days."

"You don't think he's nuts enough to come himself do you?" Governor Johanson asked, raising his eyebrows.

"Doubt it, he'll want to stay close to the seat of power, but dispatching some of his own to fetch back his sister-in-law might be the next best thing to doing so himself." Colonel Johnson responded. "That's only one of the four Overlords though, the others aren't even painted up in regular Lyran colours" he noted.

Henry blinked and did a double-take as he recognised the insignia on the other mech-carrying dropships the Tharkad was hauling. "Jeez, I guess Claudius really wants to rub our noses in it" he said, shaking his head. "I'm pretty sure that's Raymond's Redcoats."

Johanson frowned. "Those guys who pretended to be you?" he asked. "Before you went public that you'd been hiding out on Niops I mean?" he added, remembering seeing something about that on NHCOMNET News.

"The very same" Henry confirmed. "I guess they thought pretending to be a former SLDF unit would be better for their career prospects as mercenaries than listing, 'Formerly known as the pirate band Cameron's Curse and before that the 38th Amaris Fusiliers' on their résumé" he said wryly. "Probably not many ex-pirates still to be found among their ranks by now, and none of the guys that raped, looted and pillaged their way across Castor in '75, but if you believe that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree then you might want to warn the civilian population that some extremely bad hombres might be about to arrive, Sir" he advised the governor.

"I hope you're exaggerating about the 'rape, loot and pillage', son?" Johanson replied.

"No, and I left out the part about how many nukes they tossed around to try and slow up Kerensky's advance." Henry replied evenly. "Amaris had the notion that as well as using them against military targets that if his people struck the odd population centre with WMD into the bargain, it would play havoc with SLDF logistics because our side would be drawn into relief efforts" he continued. "Large parts of Castor were literally scorched by the 38th before they decided the war was lost and decided to hightail it out to the periphery, civilian casualties just as high as you'd expect" he said before chuckling mirthlessly. "It's all kinda a sore point with us really." he added.

"If you ask me Claudius might not have just picked them for this job because it would get your goat" Colonel Johnson spoke up. "It could also be his way of guaranteeing the mercs he sent don't swap sides or surrender if things go wrong. If you were one of the Redcoats would you raise the white flag knowing how Romanov thinks about you?" he asked rhetorically. "They might think this job only has three possible outcomes for them, they either win and earn a healthy bonus from a happy Archon, they die in battle or they lay down their arms and get strung up from the nearest tree by some angry grunt from the 295th that's still holding a grudge after all these years."

"We don't summarily execute prisoners." Henry stated firmly.

"Maybe not, but they don't necessarily know that, and people right across the Inner Sphere do know that you like to hand folks you don't like a shovel, drag them out into the desert and make them dig up germanium for the rest of their lives." Johnson countered. "You did it to one bunch of Amaris goons turned pirate, you might do it to another, especially since they sullied your good name as you see it. Anyhow, if we find ourselves in a situation where we have to opportunity to capture some Redcoats better let my people handle it, they might assume that professional courtesy between mercs, and our lack of a personal grudge against them, means less chance of their POW's being put up a wall and shot after they lay down arms."

"You were an SLDF unit once too" Henry reminded him. "They might be wary of the Blackhearts as well on that account."

"Yeah Captain, we were, but most of my people have more Taurian blood in them these days than anything else and they were born on Sterope like me, you're still basically displaced Terrans, we just don't have the same cultural baggage that you do."

"Cultural baggage?"

"Tell me honestly that you don't dream of booting the Great Houses off all the Terran Hegemony worlds they annexed and bringing back the 'Good Old Days' when the entire galaxy tiptoed around a guy named Cameron or McKenna." Colonel Johnson asked him knowingly. "Not that I'm saying that it hasn't all been a total shit-show since Richard Cameron got his brains ventilated, what there were of them" he said wryly. "Anyhow, my people can play the 'Taurian not Terran' card so, like I said before, better let mine handle any surrendering Redcoats if we're lucky enough to win some fights despite a lack of air-cover, it'll go smoother."

"What about the Lyran regulars?" Johanson asked.

"If any of them throw in the towel then let the militia handle them, it'll totally humiliate the bastards" Johnson replied, grinning.

Governor Johanson laughed. "Do you think we really have a chance?" he asked.

"Depends" Colonel Johnson responded with a shrug. "Given a little patented Lyran tactical ineptitude if Claudius put one of his Social Generals in charge then maybe, but then we might run into a bigger problem if we did manage to give their ground forces a big enough shellacking. They might just take it very badly and respond with scorched earth tactics. Just because they'd prefer to stomp us into the dirt with mechs, achieving a glorious victory for Archon Claudius and the newsreels back home as they bring Melissa Nin back in chains, they'll always be able to resort to orbital bombardment as their Plan B."

"Melissa has offered to give herself up if they start bombarding us from orbit." Johanson told him. "She seemed a little surprised I wasn't going to just hand her over without putting up any fight at all, what with Niops not having anything to send as help. I talked to the High Associator via HPG and while he says that the captain and crew of the Cape Bon are willing to jump from Alphard to try and take on the Invincible it's not a fight they can win. I'm not prepared to ask them to throw their lives away by pointlessly committing suicide like that. I'm just not."

Henry nodded. If she jumped to one of Stafford's non-standard jumpoints, a planetary Trojan point being the closest, the Cape Bon could actually reach the planet before the Invincible could. Unfortunately an Essex II class destroyer like her was ludicrously overmatched by a Tharkad, and she only carried a single squadron of fighters, a fraction of the number needed to influence the air campaign.

If the Saratoga and the Yukon jumped in, with their lithium-fusion batteries they could probably get from Niops in time and they carried more than enough upgraded fighters between them to overwhelm the Lyran ASF's, it would be different. Indeed Henry suspected that if the Lyrans started bombing civilians they would appear, but even with the Cape Bon joining them the truth was a first-rate battlecruiser versus three destroyers in a slugging match wasn't great for the destroyers, especially as the Riga II was essentially an aircraft carrier, not a gunboat.

The appearance of Saratoga and Yukon would also let the cat out of the bag as regards where Clan Wolverine ended up too, potentially bringing Old Nick and his fleet to Niops's door, not to mention the mystery of the 'Canada Tribe' would be solved once and for all, which wasn't exactly good either.

After a few more minutes of discussion Governor Johanson dismissed everyone and Henry returned to his unit, they still had time to dig in and camouflage their positions as best they could against aerial reconnaissance.

Henry didn't doubt that they probably could beat three battalions of mercenaries and one of Lyran regulars in a stand-up fight, although enemy air superiority would make it bloody even if Claudius sent his dumbest general to lead them, but the notion that if they won they could still lose because of the warship looming above their heads really sucked.

Philomena should be safe at least, she had been evacuated to a small farming community a few hundred kilometres to the north where she was undoubtedly being stared at a lot by rednecks that could at least sympathise with her peoples ongoing problem with inbreeding, but more than half of the population of Hartwood had opted to stay put.

When the Invincible finally arrived a few days later, having already launched its dropships which now flew along beside it, the commanding officer aboard issued the expected apocalyptic threats and demanded the surrender of the planet and the handing over of Melissa Nin.

Governor Johanson told him to stick his threats where the sun didn't shine and told him that any hostile action undertaken by the Lyran Commonwealth would be considered an Act of War against Stafford and the Niops Hegemony. In a more diplomatic and conciliatory matter he also requested that Hartwood be considered a Free City, one where no fighting would take place to avoid civilian casualties, and then he challenged the Lyrans to meet the defenders in battle outside the capital like soldiers from a civilised nation, not like pirates from a Bandit Kingdom.

The Lyran flag officer refused to accept Hartwood being designated the status of a Free City, although he did accept the challenge to meet his enemy in the field and said he would not bombard civilian areas 'without provocation'.

On the way in the battlecruiser had previously destroyed the large orbital telescope that was pointing right at it at the time, the ship's crew no doubt celebrating their successful kill of such a dangerous weapon platform with raucous cheering while later, High Associator James Murray howled in rage instead when the news arrived at Niops via the NHCOMNET HPG system.

Protected by massed squadrons of aerospace fighters the quartet of Lyran Overlord dropships, set down near a lake located in a great swathe of farmland south of Hartwood, the troops who disembarked immediately beginning to secure their landing zone as their air cover provided a solid CAP over the LZ and their reconnaissance flights began searching for defending units.

Within half an hour of landing, and upon moving closer to a more heavily forested area, the invaders started to receive sporadic mortar fire and then much larger shells from a hidden battery of Ballista Self-Propelled-Guns that were using camouflage nets and the wide forest trails made for loggermechs to their best advantage.

Not nearly enough to cause the invaders much in the way of genuine concern of course, although the thing that caused that happened at roughly the same time.

Sensors aboard the Tharkad class battlecruiser detected the powerful emergence wave of an inbound interstellar vessel when it arrived at the closest non-standard jump-point to the planet they were now orbiting, although they had been too far away from the jump-point to previously detect the infrared jump signature which had preceded the ship's arrival. Not having picked up the thermal bloom that would have allowed them to guess at from how far away the ship had come, and more importantly just how massive a vessel it was, the bridge crew of the battlecruiser assumed the interloper was one of the small warships belonging to the Niops Association, a destroyer or maybe their lone frigate, and they reacted with some enthusiasm to the prospect of actually getting to fight an enemy warship.

Rather than letting the army below get all the glory this could be a time for the navy to shine. Just because they would badly outgun anything put up against them that would hardly diminish the kudos to be gained in defeating an enemy warship. This was an event that had become very rare in recent decades as the fleets of all the Successor States were cut down to size by ceaseless warfare and a lack of shipyards to build replacement vessels.

To paraphrase the playwright Oscar Wilde, there are only two tragedies in life. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it, with the latter being the worse of the two.

The crew of the Lyran battlecruiser realised with dismay that they were getting the second type of tragedy when they were hailed by the vessel that had just arrived.

McKenna Class Battleship, SLS Thorin

<<"This is Commodore Sarah Mbeki aboard the McKenna class battleship Thorin in service of the Niops Hegemony. If the hostile warship currently orbiting Stafford does not surrender before we arrive then mark my words, we will find out just how ****** invincible you really are. Also, if you bombard that planet from orbit then I swear to God I will kill you all whether you decide to surrender afterwards or not. Thorin Actual Out.">>

As a point of historical trivia, the Lyrans aboard the LCS Invincible weren't actually the first outsiders to start freaking out about this extremely unexpected development. That honor fell to an undercover ROM agent posing as a trader who had been aboard the Olympus class recharge station at the Niops Nadir Point a few days earlier when he watched through a porthole as a couple of transport JumpShips undocked from their charging cables and then a ****** battleship rolled up in their place.

Thanks to NHCOMNET running the local HPG, and Niops not allowing anyone to jump out under threat of opening fire on them if they tried, the ComStar operative couldn't get the word out before the McKenna had completed a quick-charge and was off on its way, hundreds of locals aboard the station cheering wildly as it did so before one of them yelled out 'Who doesn't have to take shit from anybody because we've got a ****** McKenna?!' to which the others all chorused 'Niops!' in response.

The ROM agent grimaced and thanked Blake that he wasn't going to have to be the person to tell Primus Karpov about this because the man didn't seem the type that was totally averse to shooting the messenger when he received bad news.

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Chapter Notes

• Notes from the Author

  A Tharkad class battlecruiser carries six squadrons of aerospace fighters for the purposes of self-defense and conducting strike missions, but having it bring a Vengeance class carrier dropship along with it more than doubles the number of available ASF's (plus each Overlord itself provides an addition squadron. Archon Claudius Steiner really threw some resources at this operation.

Sending Raymond's Redcoats at Niops seems like a notion that would appeal to the Mad Archon if he felt slighted although he's want a battalion of his beloved Second Lyran Guards along too to get the glory.

Don't worry fight fans, there will be plenty of action in the next part trust me. I just wanted to set the scene a little first!

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