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Chapter 35 - Time Enough For A Cat -
- Victoria II 4: Bridging The Rubicon -[]
Fighting with Hope[]
Base Camp ASTGHIK
Victoria, 'Capellan Confederation
January 12th, 3029
Perspective of Staff Sergeant Lo'un Noa, 103rd Aurigian Foot
Looking out over the breach in the walls of Bougainvillea, I winced.
"Breeching that is gonna suck," my lieutenant, Foxglove, muttered. "Good thing we're not the ADG on this one."
"It's always a good day to not be one of the poor bastards in the ADG."
"True."

Schrek PPC Carrier firing it's PPCs
Underneath us, our Vargr rumbled closer. I was riding descant, my mag clamp holding me fast to the hull while the troopers tried to not panic on the inside of the vic. It was mostly working, too, since the 2nd ADG had already lunged into the gap filled with smoke. As I watched, another salvo of Thumper rounds went out to keep the screen up while another company crossed the gap. Occasionally, I could hear the whip-crack of PPC fire overhead as the Schreks on the walls dueled with the Black Horse's company of Alacorn, but it was getting scarcer. Even an infantryman like me knew that Gauss Rifles beat PPCs until they ran out of ammo- and I'd seen the Argo. We weren't running out of ammo.

Alacorn VI Heavy Tank in combat
"Steady on target, five kilometers until we hit the fire basket," our driver warned us. A few hundred meters away, a rolling wave of metal roared around the plain- someone's quad BA? No, these were too big, too vicious.
"H-Hey!" a stuttering voice said from one, and I had to do a double-take. Was that a PAL riding one? What the fuck? "We're with- you guys!- For this one!"
"Who are you?" I shot back. This time, it wasn't the green-as-grass LT answering, but someone else in the formation I couldn't see.
"Separate Battalion no.21, Red Metal," a slightly synthesized voice replied. "Company 3. Company 1 and 2 are forming up behind you with the rest of the 103rd."
"Didn't think we had separate battalions for this one," Lt. Foxglove said idly. "Any reason you're not taking your metal in with the 2nd ADG?"
"Timing issues," the synth voice said idly. "That, and it was requested by the 3rd ADG commander to attach ourselves to another formation; it was seen as an issue to put those units with us."
"An issue?" Foxglove asked. I didn't say anything, adjusting the zoom on my optics to get a good look at the shoulders and hips of the design. The hips didn't have anything, which was annoying, but the shoulders? White horse rampant, surrounded by a wheat circle.
"They're White Horse," I said, cutting in. "I've got the feeling the ADG didn't want to play nice with the irregular units."
"Correct," the synth-voice said, now much warmer. That was a lot of emotional range out of a digital system, I thought idly. Why would a pilot use it? "The ADG is rather populated by luddites, although I think-"
Whatever they thought was cut off by a salvo of Long Tom fire as the breach in the wall was filled with shrapnel. That was… those guys probably weren't doing so good. Let's hope the counterbattery fires got that handled before it was my time to go in the hole.
"-that personally, that attitude will be changing soon."
"What are y'all packing?" Foxglove asked, curious. It was a valid question, too, since hopefully they'd balance out our own eclectic loadout. Our Harpoon suits were a hodgepodge of parts and systems: a four-cell rocket launcher for long-range anti-vehicle work, a light recoilless rifle for anti-infantry and anti-mech work, a thermal imager system that was originally for Sableye suits that was constantly overstocked, and a battle claw that also traced back to the Sableyes.
Oh, and a generic kalash because the infantry wanted to share. This wasn't a sarcastic remark, either: since everyone between Lieutenant and Coronet had started off in the Reunification War, battlefield logistics and ammunition commonality was a massive concern. The reforms on that had been widely voluntary, and now everyone's kit was commonized with everyone else's so I could trade an infantry squad my kalash mags for their recoilless rifle rounds, by design.
"SRM tubes, and plenty of reloads. Ah- I forgot to introduce myself. You may call me Hierophant-37."
"Lieutenant Foxglove, and the trooper outside is Staff Sergeant Noa. Speaking of which, Noa, you might want to get inside."
"One klick to the basket," our driver warned. "Prepare to enter smoke."
Popping the roofside bailout hatch, I slid into the guts of the Vargr and made sure the hatch was battened down behind me. The inside of the vic was dark, as normal, so I just tabbed over to thermal so I could watch everyone. We'd managed to squeeze twelve suits into the things with some work, which was a full platoon and some tons left over to haul ammo besides. From there, I had time to check my recoilless' autoloader- five shells of hi-ex, one shell of airburst, just how I liked it- and then we were in the smoke.
Occasionally, I could hear the LRM turret cycling, but that was the only indication we were in combat. That, and the occasional splash of a Thumper shell or crack of the autocannons.
"Five hundred meters to drop zone," the driver said, voice notably tenser. "This is gonna be a drop and run, they're swarming aggressively."
"How aggressively?" Foxglove asked.
"3rd ADG thinks there's an entire militia regiment they've killed."
I snorted. "Bullshit."
"Probably, but it's getting thick out there- fuck!"
An explosion rocked our fighting compartment.
"Wheels are hit, everyone out!" the driver yelled, and the back hatch slammed down on its near-explosive pneumatics. Vargr's were good vics, but with only a single machine gun for close-in defense the standard protocol was to dump troops the minute they took a mobility hit. Slamming out of the back hatch with the rest of the squad, I growled. We'd barely cleared the smoke, only a few dozen meters past the wall, and there was no damned cover at all- and a lot of rifle fire coming from the buildings.
"Everyone, straight for the buildings!" Foxglove yelled, highlighting it on his tac monitor and transmitting the ping to the rest of us. "No more cushy vic time for us!"
With a scream, the Vargr got moving again, starting to clear the pathway of the rest of our unit in the assault. More Vargrs and even a few Slepnirs ran past, as well as more of the odd cat-mechs like Hierophant-37 had been piloting.
"Let's go, people!" I snapped, punting a shell at a machine-gun nest that looked like it might be about to open up. "On the double!"
Thirty-five kph might not sound like a lot, but when it came to crossing open ground before machine guns could give you a hard time, it was more than enough. As I saw targets, I lofted recoilless rifle shells at them, and the rest of the platoon did the same. It wasn't the world's best mouseholing, but it kept a lot of infantry's heads down while we got in close- and once we were in close, that's when things got serious.
The initial plan for 2nd and 3rd ADG was a straight push in to the city's central industrial logistics hub, which intel from Argo predicted was where their artillery park had been sited at. Pushing through the outer wall of skyscrapers that were serving as an impromptu internal curtain wall proved that very wrong, though- artillery elements were all over the city, and were mostly small-scale towed guns. We had to find and destroy their headquarters, while facing off an estimated three regiments of leg infantry and two battalions of tanks.
"No fucking pressure, of course!" Foxglove snapped as we huddled by a convenience store while a pair of Goblins prowled through the neighborhood we were trying to clear.
"Of course," I agreed, spooling through my autoloader until I picked up an HE shell instead of the airbursts I'd been loading for infantry. "Squad two, squad three, lead vic, all weapons. Fire on my mark."
Two double-click mic tones, they read me loud and clear.
"Three. Two. One. MARK!"
Snapping around the corner, I fired the recoilless rifle first, then triggered my rocket pack. Four consecutive snap-hiss sounds came from the hip-mounted tube, and with a scream the rockets were away. Behind me, squad two was doing the exact same thing, and squad three was mirroring us from across the street. Sure enough, a few of the rockets cracked into the suspension of the tank just right, and it came to a complete stop.
"Hit it!"
Running in, I dropped my kalash against the sling, before grabbing one of the heavy anti-armor bundle charges we'd been issued. Before the back of the Goblin had finished loading, someone had already cheesed the fighting compartment with a canister round, while the rest of us were jamming the tank with bundle charges. Mine went on the turret roof after I'd climbed up, and I managed to jump off before the massive shaped charge went.
Naturally, the other Goblin seriously considered running, right until it backed up into squad one's ambush and lost most of its right track. More bundle charges went out, and soon enough the turret was disabled helplessly. I wasn't too happy about catching a few rounds from the hull-mounted machine gun, but I could deal since someone was getting another raft of bundle charges to rip through the top armor to kill the tank. As the machine gun was silenced, everyone decamped the tank in case it was gonna blow. Fortunately, it seemed like the magazine wasn't about to cook off- someone would want it as salvage, then.
"Anyone missing or hurt?" I asked quickly. Nobody spoke up, so we were probably fine. "Good. Let's keep moving."
"We haven't heard from HQ in a while," Foxglove muttered, looking over his ammo rack. "I'm getting worried."
"I agree, but I think everyone's still doing good. Wait until we hit one-half on ammo before we try and get back to HQ."
"How are you for rounds, then?"
I finished dropping my last round of Hi-Ex in the spindle autoloader for my gun, and frowned. "Sixteen out of thirty left, just used my rockets, and two more bundle charges."
"About the same as me, then."
"I guess we're going to be fighting careful for a while, then."
"I guess so. Let's hope the ADG can hold."
"We can only hope."
How you apply the weapon is how you get the kill[]
Dropship Argo
CIC Annex - Annex Toilets
Victoria, Geosynch Orbit
Capellan Confederation
January 12th, 3029
Perspective of Lt. Gen. Tam Gallowglass
As much as I loved having an honest to God porcelain toilet on my command dropship, it wouldn't make up for the fact said toilet was within easy running distance of the CIC, and therefore I couldn't have two damn minutes of piece and quiet to take a shit in. Nobody ever realizes it, but those moments of calm are essential to life, especially life in command of a weeks-long planetary invasion against a force that was possibly superior to yours while large chunks of your chain of command were green and brittle.
Fortunately, nobody had abused the location of this head yet, and I was nearly done when my adjunct stared beating their fist on the door. "Commander! Commander!"
"What?!"
"We just lost contact with everything! Someone's got a surface to orbit jammer up aimed at us, and we can't see shit!"
Okay, that was worth the interruption. "Give me thirty seconds," I replied with a pinched frown. "And tell the ASF teams to start warming up and loading for a dropper escort mission. We need that thing fucking dead, so I'm sending in the Black Horse."
"Isn't Black Horse on the ground already, sir?"
"Just the armor," I replied, before finishing up and washing my hands. That done, I opened the door with my boot and stepped out while still drying my hands. "The only mech forces on the ground right now should be the 1st Aurigian Hussars and Kamea's guard unit. That's deliberate; I expected to need them as fast response units."
"Isn't that Pale Horse, though?"
I shook my head, detouring into the butler's pantry to grab yet another mug of coffee. "No. They're the strategic reserve."
My adjunct frowned, picking up their own cup of coffee and dolling in an irresponsible amount of cream and sugar. "I fail to see the difference, sir."
"Strategic reserves are something I plan to commit to either drive a point home, or to shore up a danger area," I answered as we moved into the CIC directly. "Fast response, I need to be able to see a problem, put my finger on it, and fix it now. The practical difference is one of response speed: Black Horse has their own droppers, Pale Horse doesn't."
My adjunct cycled their emotions, pulled up three orders of battle on their tablet, looked at me, back at the tablet, and then back to me. I was still riding the command chair, unfortunately, and pulling up a cycling chart and the ouija board for our aircraft handling bays. "Why?"
"Because the Pale Horse is my personal beat stick," I replied, wishing dearly I could have a smoke. This wasn't the beginning of the end, but it was certainly the end of the begining- and I was having memories of Coromidir echoing through the back of my mind like an amphitheater of the damned. "And in a pinch, between the skill of the men and women there and the power of the communications equipment in my Cyclops, I can wield it as a personal beat stick no matter how thick the jamming is. How much more material do we have to unload?"
"4th and 6th ADG, 6th Separate Artillery, Red Horse Battle Armor, all the CF forces, 2nd ADG Armored, 45th Luxen Ducal, and… yeah, the Aurigian armor elements are all landed and operating normally. Six regiments, seven conventional fighter wings, and an artillery regiment. We're getting a regiment a day moved, but now that it's not jam-packed in the holds we can probably pick that up some."
I nodded. Good. If we had to deploy the QRF forces now, though, that indicated that whatever grace period we had from the Big MAC for them to get information on how we fought from the militia had been well and truly spent. Now they were moving in force, which meant I needed to match and exceed the enemy's movement in force.
Now, I had a small advantage here, mostly in that I was swinging into this with a shitload of artillery. Normally, mech regiments would be used as a tool of decision; but I didn't need to do that. Kamea's surprise cruise missiles meant that fortifications were now second to useless, and even if she hadn't brought the final answer to concrete and rebar I still had CF- conventional fighter, that is, non-ASF air support- units to pound those sorts of positions into rubble.
This depended on me being able to actually use these assets, though, and The Wild Ones- 3rd Regiment, MacCarron's Armored Cavalry- were a medium-weight elite regiment. Getting my units in position to cream them was going to be difficult, and practically speaking their advantage in maneuver would easily negate my advantage in fire. The solution to this would be to use my CFs and BA troops to 'tarpit' them into engagements where they couldn't exploit their mobility. The issue was, however, getting the Big MAC to leave their feet in the tar.
Thus, my plan from the outset with Bougainvillea. An assault there would capture a fairly large war material stockpile, and more importantly leave me a straight shot to the capitol wide open. While I hadn't expected the Big MAC to be a factor, I did expect some mech units to be forced to commit by that move. Once they'd committed to either sealing the breach or trying to roll me up from the rear, then the Black Horse would counter-drop behind them, engage, and roll this mess up in a pincer.
Well. That wasn't happening now. They'd counterplayed my bait, and had done so decisively that I had to respond. Therefore, I'd send the Black Horse down on the jammer, and roll the dice on what was in Schroedinger's Box of Cats and Guns here.
Option one: the jammer was a trap. The Black Horse would land, and the Big MAC would immediately fall on them. Option two, the jammer was bait, and the Big MAC would hit my assault on Bougainvillea in the rear to try and force a rout, or even better, a cauldron.
So, now I had to get the cat out of Schroedinger's box without disturbing the packaging, before the radium-fired gun went off. Fortunately, I wasn't without tools for this. The assault on Bougainvillea had a lot of artillery and vehicle assets, plus Aurigian troops that were comedically well-supplied and equipped with damn good Battle Armor. If the Big MAC tried to hit their rear, then they'd be plowing smack into a formation of BA that were ready and willing to inflict severe toad shock while my CF assets interdicted their transportation dropships and nailed supply trucks. Best case, they'd be out of ammo and armor so we could pick them up like fish in a barrel when the Pale Horse was ready to ride.
In the entirely unhappy chance that the jammer was a trap, though, that was also something I'd prepped for. CF, by their very nature, had decent legs and could strike battlefield targets even if it was ruinously expensive in frames and lives to do so. More importantly, Kamea's cruise missiles meant I could target their droppers independent of their mechs, and bagging a dropper meant an excellent chance to try negotiations at gunpoint while my own droppers got the Red Horse Battle Armor and the 2nd ADG Armored behind them to make a cauldron.
If, by some miracle, I could actually kettle and break the Big MAC? Well. Even odds that would be grounds for the planet to surrender. This was all dependant on me reading the cards right and fighting it out, though- and not losing the assault on Bougainvillea, either. Fighting a campaign from the command deck of a dropship was new to me, but I could start to see the appeal as plans like this came together. We were about to take a great big kick in the nuts here, but if things went right the knife in their neck would be worth it.
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