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New Dawn in the Sun's - Chapter 18[]
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Negotiating with Sandoval[]
Fox's Den
New Avalon, Federated Suns
January 18th, 3017
"Aaron, it's good to see you again." Hanse greeted the Lord of the Draconis March warmly. Unlike his relationship with Michael Hasek-Davion he got along with Aaron Sandoval, the two men had worked together frequently since Aaron Sandoval had risen to command the Draconis March.
"My Prince," Aaron bowed slightly. "you summoned me?"
"I did," Hanse acknowledged. "I have need of your expertise."
"Another stab at the dragon?" Aaron asked eagerly, his well-known hatred for the Kuritas and all their works showing on his face.
"Possibly, it depends on the situation on the ground as always." Hanse tried to gently keep Aaron from expressing yet another grandiose plan to do something like raid Luthien and burn Luthien Armor works to the ground. He had more limited goals in mind. "The war is winding down, everyone is too exhausted to make more than a single large push before we all need to begin rebuilding. I think we'll have the edge there, but the Dragon has surprised us before. In order to mitigate that I have an intelligence operation in the works, but success is not guaranteed. If it works, and unfortunately that is an if not a when we should have some flexibility on the Capellan border."
"So you want to push there?" Aaron cocked his head to the side with a slight frown. "I'm not seeing where I come into this."
"That's because I don't know how successful we will be I want you to develop a couple of plans for me mostly using the resources of your march, not federal troops." Hanse indicated for Aaron to follow him over to the holotable which was already set up to display troop dispositions in the Draconis March.
Holotable
"Much as I would like to heed the calls for liberation I hear coming from under the dragon's boots I can't do it on my own." Aaron disagreed with Hanse mildly. "Oh, I could make some progress hitting under-defended worlds, but the cost wouldn't be worth it. Repairing my forces afterward would be the next best thing to impossible, and I'd need a lot of support to hold what I gained."
"I'm hoping to mitigate that for you." Hanse didn't like letting the cat out of the bag this early, reports were still sketchy about the success of the first phase of Operation RELIANT, but he would need to if he wanted Aaron to cooperate. "If things go well I'm going to be moving two production lines worth of tooling to produce front-line quality equipment to Robinson Mech Works in the next year or two. I've spoken with Countess Jaffey and secured for you the plans and a license to build Awesomes as Robinson's first front-line offering, as well as a significant investment in Robinson by Lycomb-Davion Introtech to get your people over any problems they encounter."
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Awesome Assault BattleMech
"That's…" Aaron might have been a tanker during his own time in service, but he was well aware of the power of Battlemechs. The political implications of building an Assault 'Mech, Hanse was trying to sweeten the pot for him, which made him cautious. A successor lord didn't stay in power through sweetness and light, so for him to be making concessions like this meant he wasn't going to like the rest of this plan of his. "That would be helpful, Quentin is a bit exposed for my tastes, and it is our primary assault mech factory."
"Dieron district is a hard target. Unfortunately, even if everything goes as planned that's not going to be the focus of my efforts." Hanse admitted.
"You want a stalking horse?" Aaron accepted, although not easily.
"Not… Somewhat." Hanse admitted. "A lot is going to depend on other factors. What I would like for you and your command staff to do is come up with a variety of options." Hanse frowned as he looked over the map once again, still seeking a point where he could do the most good for the lowest investment in resources.
"I'm assuming that the plan using primarily Draconis March forces is the most likely to be used?"
"Yes. I'm going to be cutting orders for the light horses to launch an extended raiding campaign into the Galedon District as a distraction operation. I doubt they will do much damage, but it should tie up most of Warlord Aris Hansen's forces…"
"Your hoping internal politics get him?" Aaron asked with narrowed eyes. The current Warlord of the Galedon District was known to be disliked by the more traditional members of the nobility who served House Kurita. While his family was known for giving the dragon solid service, having provided several prefecture captains to the dragon over the years which traditionalists disliked them. Not that the dislike had kept Aris from rising to Warlord under Hohiro.
"He's flexible, which is a bad thing for us, and politically astute enough to have survived the purges that Takashi launched when he took power," Hanse answered obliquely. "I wouldn't be upset if someone less capable replaced him."
"A worthy goal, though I'm not sure how anything I could do would accomplish that…"
"I want you to take a look at widening our defensive depth around Marduk," Hanse said as he zoomed in on that region of space. "I doubt we could take Galtor, no matter how much I wish to. Tripoli and Paris? Might be possible."
"It would be a heavy lift." Aaron frowned as he looked at the map. "Especially with the Chisholm Raiders being moved out of my operations area… Yorioshi might be a traditionalist but he's not an idiot. That's going to create a meeting engagement, and the outcome is going to depend on who can feed their reinforcements into it faster."
"That's the idea," Hanse admitted. "I want everyone in the sphere convinced that I'm looking that way for my last push. I'll give you everything I can to win the fight, but it's not going to be my priority."
"Before I say yes," Aaron frowned as he looked at the map, shoving units around in his head as he tried to make it work. He would need to get with his staff, but it did on the face of it look like an offensive with achievable goals. "I need to know that whatever your true objective is worth the cost of blood."
Hanse was tempted to dissemble, his dream could easily be derailed by just a few loose lips after all. He didn't in the end though, if his enemies could hear his private discussions in the Foxes' den itself then he had already lost. Besides, Aaron had been critical to keeping Michael from even thinking about making a try at the First Princes' title when Ian died. If anyone deserved to hear the truth then it was him.
"I think so." Hanse reluctantly began to lay out his plans. "Like I said we have an intelligence operation that should distract the Capellans. MIIO is hoping to poke Janos right in the pride, given what happened with his brother it shouldn't be too difficult to convince him to shift his focus away from the Lyran border. Depending on how he reacts we could see a major offensive from him against the Capellans, or just releasing the border province's forces to take targets of opportunity. We know the Capellans are already overstretched, their primary reserves are mercenaries after all, and with just a little more pressure coming towards them from the other border it opens up some opportunities."
"The far side of the confederation is hardly my focus, but I have to ask why do you think that just releasing the provincial forces will be enough?" Aaron asked mildly.
"Because even without support the Anduriens took Palladaine recently, and they managed to fight off the counterattack." Hanse answered promptly.
"That sounds logical, but I have to question how the idea is going to work out in the real world. I've heard a lot of plans from MIIO which turned out to be little more than hopes and dreams." Aaron pointed out pragmatically.
"If that's the case then I'm going to be bringing most of the corps of Davion Guards and the Marlette Crucis march militia in support of your operations," Hanse stated flatly. "I don't want you, or your staff, planning on that happening though."
Aaron narrowed his eyes and looked at the map once again. Hanse hadn't said directly what he intended, but given the forces, he had named... Aaron had a very good idea of what he was doing. Mentally he weighed his options before speaking, he had an idea of how to profit from Hanse's plans but there was a political cost there. Finally, he decided that it was worth it, besides better to get in on the ground floor rather than wait and need to fight with Michael Hasek-Davion.
"You're going to make a stab at Tikonov." Aaron's voice was distant as he continued to weigh the odds. "I'll order the Cartago DMM to support your offensive, but I want priority on the production. I'm going to need it."
"I can't give you an absolute priority," Hanse started to negotiate. "I can reserve a percentage for your use though."
Aaron started to argue and then stopped himself. He wasn't as conversant on the Capellan's industrial capacity as he was on the Draconis Combine, but a part of his march did border them so he was aware of at least the bare bones. Tikonov was the Capellan's largest Battlemech production center, and it held at least part of their aerospace fighter production, even a fraction of that capacity when funneled into his march would allow him to rebuild his military. Especially given what was made there, Thunderbolts were an excellent mech, and the Quickdraw while hardly the most respected machine around was a sold counter to the fast heavies of the dragon. Aside from the benefits Aaron could see to his march in terms of production, the loss of the planet would be crippling to the confederation. It was an answer to Michael's complaints and would buy Hanse more than enough breathing room politically that he could support a real push against the Dragon.
"I can agree to that." Aaron said easily. His mind was already turning over the possibility, running through scenarios and seeing how to wrong-foot the dragon before he struck. "How long do I have before you start operations?"
"The earliest I can start would be at the end of this year. It's more likely that things will start heating up at the beginning of next year though. We need to wait for the reaction to my moves before we nail anything down, as it stands too much is up in the air. I'm not willing to just assume that things will go my way, so I want to wait until I see evidence of the Mariks moving before I commit."
"That makes sense…" Aaron looked over the map once again. "I presume you're going to begin stockpiling supplies and the like on Exeter?"
"I was thinking Layover, it's closer to Tikonov and Robinson so changing the direction of the thrust would be easier." Hanse's finger went through the holographic representation of the planet. He didn't want his supplies to end up in Aaron's hands by 'accident' should his maneuver pay off. Loyal as Aaron himself was a build-up of supplies in his march would be a target for diversion no matter what he said. Better not to put temptation in his way. "If fighting between the FWLM and the CCAF doesn't pick up then I can swing my battle group through Robinson and pick up the rangers there as reinforcements."
"They might not be there," Aaron said lightly. "I'll need to get with my staff before we make a decision though. Just off the top of my head, I think I can easily build up enough to push a front-line RCT backed up by a DMM one onto each of the targets. If I prime the 41st Avalon Hussars for a push on Proserpina it would give me an excuse to build up supplies for the Cartago DMM, but that's not going to be believable without you breaking out some of the more specialized units. The chemical damage there…"
"You're talking about reactivating at least part of the Plague Dogs." Hanse frowned as he said that. He really didn't like the message that would send.
"If we mean to keep the world, we're going to need their expertise at cleaning up chemical weapons releases. That and historically the last time we almost took that world the Dragon decided to open up with weapons of mass destruction."
"I'll think about it, but no guarantees." Hanse could see where Aaron was coming from, but his reservations remained. Perhaps if he moved a couple of DropShips to New Avalon that would be believable without being threatening? He would have to go over the idea with his staff before he gave Aaron a definite answer. Given that Proserpina was sixty percent uninhabitable due to the chemical release some form of cleanup would need to be done on world, the Dragon certainly hadn't done anything to clean up after itself, but that could be handled with specialists using conventional transport. The specialized equipment of the Plague Dogs would be needed eventually if he intended to keep the world, but that needed to be weighed against the optics of having them deploy. Especially as part of an invasion force.