----- 6 Years Later -----
Date: November 18, 2772 [See Notes]
Location: Milton
Title: Tactics of Betrayal
Author: David L. McCulloch
Type: Short Story (25 Years of Art and Fiction)
Synopsis: Captain Paul Rice leads a ‘Mech company in 2nd Battalion of the 18th Volunteer Regiment against Republican lines in the third month of the Milton campaign, trying to push through towards the capital of Paradise Foundation. The regiment is one of 36 attached to the 413th BattleMech Division. [See Notes for the continuity issues this raises]
Rice is a native of New Earth – a world yet to be liberated by the SLDF. He’s distracted throughout the battle, a fact commented on by his XO, Brian Mahone, as well as by another acquaintance, Benedict Clancy, back at the base camp. Rice’s internal monologue reveals that he feels a strong sense of comradeship with the other volunteer troops, but the time has come to betray them.
The division’s tactical genius, Brother Anthony Block of Gibraltar’s “Brotherhood of the Rock” (warrior monks), briefs the troops on the plan to take Paradise Foundation. The 18th is assigned the task of supporting an assault against the eastern heights of Paradise Foundation. After the briefing, Block puts Rice on watch at the command tent, where he compiles all the data on the planned assault and thinks about his brother, Peter – a civilian on New Earth. Three weeks previously, he’d received the photo of his family and a demand that he gather information and transmit it to the Republicans, or else his family would be killed. He prepares to send the data, but then halts and considers his duty to the SLDF, and decides not to send the data. Before he can log off from the communicator, somebody knocks him out with a blow to the head.
He awakens a few minutes later to find Clancy standing over him. The transmission window has closed, and he now has to worry about who knocked him out, and for what purpose. He checks the logs and sees that the transmission went out while he was unconscious.
During the assault, Rice expects to walk into a trap and be killed, but is stunned when the Republican forces maneuver poorly and end up badly out of position. Artillery strikes and a ‘Mech charge allow the SLDF forces to carry the day with minimal losses. Afterwards, Block tells Rice that he’s the one who knocked him out and sent the data, having deduced that Rice was being pressured to pass info to the RWR. The entire briefing was staged to put fake data in the RWR’s hands, via Rice. Block acknowledges that Rice made the decision not to transmit (forcing Block to knock him out and send it anyways), and promises to task assets inside the Amaris Empire with getting his family to safety. The story ends with Block proposing a plan to ferret out the RWR agent in the camp.
Notes: The accompanying planetary writeup notes that Amaris’ troops ransacked Milton’s industrial centers as part of a scorched earth policy, hoping to deny them to Loyalist forces.
Of note, the SLDF troops and volunteers use “Sharks” as a shorthand for Republican forces, just as “Snakes” is used for the Draconis Combine.
This story’s facts were perfectly fine when it was published, but there are a number of discrepancies between its timeline and the units involved compared to that presented in the Historical: Liberation of Terra series. The official Catalyst policy in such cases is that the newer products supercede the old one, so let’s see where the problems lie, and how we can reconcile them with the H:LoT accounts:
There’s a chronological discrepancy between the datestamp of this story and the timeline in Historical: Liberation of Terra I. HLoT1 states that 20th Army was responsible for Milton, and notes that it faced a relatively small garrison of mercenary and “Patriot” forces, rather than Republican regulars, and had little difficulty routing and eliminating the Republicans, throwing two divisions the planet. The maps in HLoT1 show that Milton was hit in July-August 2772.
However, “Tactics of Betrayal” dates the beginning of the Milton campaign to August 2774. The chronology works fine if we take the datestamp as a typo and have the story take place on November 18, 2772. (Rice mentions he’s been through seven years of hard fighting, with only six years having passed since the coup, but he could be including one year of fighting in the Periphery Uprising before that.) This means that this actually takes place prior to the Star Lord prologue chapters just posted.
This still raises the question of a three-month campaign being considered one of “little difficulty,” but perhaps the SLDF divisions were taking things slowly to avoid blunders like Admiral Braso’s suicidal strike into the occupied Hegemony shortly after the coup. Perhaps the Volunteers were sent in to establish a bridgehead and contain the RWR garrison in a perimeter while awaiting the two divisions of SLDF regulars that would be able to squash them quickly, with the delay largely attributable to the fact that the divisions doing so were transferred in from the Nusakan/Zebebelgenubi theater.
FM:SLDF notes that the 413th BattleMech Division was originally part of 11th Army’s XXVII Corps, and was noted for having a dedication to steampunk culture. However, HLoT1 places the XXVII Corps in the 15th Army Group, rather than the 2nd, with 11th Army assigned to the Zebebelgenubi/Nusakan operational area. Looking at the details of the Nusakan battle (where XXVII forces took part) most of the fighting seems to have been done by WarShips and aerospace fighters – major fleet engagements, airstrikes with nukes to drive the Republicans into their Castles Brian, etc. I suppose it’s possible that the 413th BattleMech division was temporarily seconded to Milton to oversee the volunteers as they fought the weak Amaris garrison, while their WarShips and other escorts were securing the Nusakan system. (Sending ground troops in before enemy space assets had been degraded proved costly – HLoT 1 notes that XXVII Corps lost 15 regiments of ground troops when their transports were destroyed en route to the planet. Perhaps High Command didn’t want to risk the ‘Mechs, and held them back until orbital insertion paths could be secured.)
In addition, H:LoT1 says only a small collection of mercenaries and Patriot forces were on Milton, but this story pits the SLDF against the 23rd Republican Division, which was split between Alioth (14th Amaris Dragoons & 23rd Battle Regiment) and Milton (43rd Amaris Hussars, 22nd Amaris Dragoons, 212th Amaris Cuirassiers – with supporting artillery and mechanized infantry, plus enough air cover to be able to deny the SLDF air superiority).
One “Hail Mary” to square the continuity issues would be to assume that Block was orchestrating an epic deception – falsifying unit numbers, orders, logistics records, etc. to bamboozle the Krypteia/AsRoc, and some of his tinkering may have led Victor Steiner-Davion and his research team down some false paths as they compiled H:LoT I & II, at least in areas where Block was active. Or, as part of the deception on Milton, Block had Rice and the other Volunteer Regiment troops so totally in the dark that they were misled about the identity of which army group they were part of, what divisions supported them, and which foes they faced…or even what year it was ;)
[It’s clear that this story, predating the Liberation of Terra Historicals, and tucked away in the massive “25 Years of Art and Fiction” anthology, was overlooked or disregarded by the Historical authors, leading to continuity issues. However, I generally try to figure out a way that the events depicted in the fiction could square with the sourcebook accounts, even if dates and the like need to be adjusted. Better suggestions for reconciliation of the accounts are welcomed.]