.png){kind=link}
Chapter 30 - The Broken Commonwealth[]
Rim Territories
3147
There was no warning given at all. No rumors of a punitive expedition, no suggestion that this level of violence was about to descend.
It's been more than a generation since the last time, and there had been no signs of intelligence agents pursuing them.
It began, with the jumpships, and simultaneous strikes.
Fighters scrambled, with no better target than 'out there somewhere'.
That's when the kinetic kill weapons rained down on spaceports containing dropships.
On Main Street, Engadine, both worlds were the first hit. Every ship at the jump points, and everything in orbit, and everything capable of orbit were being hit, with no better target than 'somewhere out there'.
It spread out from there, until only worlds of Pain, and The Rack....then, it arrived there, too.
It is impossible to maintain a pirate realm without ships. The ability to maintain those ships went the same time those ships were crippled or destroyed. Effectively, the Rim Territories and their Bandit-King Overlords were cut off from the outside world. As even HPG systems (which, strangely, had NOT been blinded by whatever blacked out the network) were struck as well.
As each local lord got organized, and tried to restore order?
Well, that's when the rocks started falling.
48 hours after it began, most of the worlds of the Rim Territories were rendered borderline uninhabitable with dust clouds and volcanic gasses, and the scourge of the Lyran border and periphery of the Free Worlds League was...removed. A memory. Rendered in the past-tense.
Regiments of Mechwarriors can do nothing when the sky falls.