----- One Month Earlier -----
Date: September 5, 3024 [See Notes]
Location: Trell I
Title: Decision at Thunder Rift
Author: William H. Keith
Type: Novel (Decision at Thunder Rift)
Synopsis: The story opens as Stefan, a native Trell astech, services security systems at the fortress occupied by Carlyle’s Commandos, a ‘Mech Lance assigned to garrison Trell I (aka Trellwan). Moving from the command center to the repair bay, he observes the maintenance work being done on the Lance’s Shadow Hawk, which he’d earlier sabotaged with a booby trapped circuit board, leaving the Lance with only a Phoenix Hawk and two Wasps.
Elsewhere in the fortress, 20-year old Grayson Death Carlyle is late for his training session with the unit’s Warrant Weapons Master, Sergeant Kai Griffith. He sheepishly admits to having been off-base with Mara Stannic, a local Trell girl – the daughter of Chief Minister Stannic – and offers the excuse that it will be his last chance to see her, since the unit is moving offworld in three days.
The two go to the Combat Command Center, where technicians are tracking an inbound House Mailai DropShip carrying representatives of the Oberon Confederation. Among the group are Grayson’s tutor Nicolai Aristobulus, Chief Tech Riviera, and Viscount Olin Vogel, Archon Katrina Steiner’s personal emissary from Tharkad. Vogel arrived 80 days earlier with a plan to broker a peace with the Oberon Confederation and to contract with the Oberon Guards to garrison Trellwan, freeing up Carlyle’s Commandos for transfer to Tharkad.
Looking at the monitors, they see that Grayson’s father, Captain Durant Carlyle, is at the spaceport in his Phoenix Hawk to greet the Oberon emissaries, while the unit’s two Wasps are on patrol in Sarghad, Trellwan’s capital city. As the Mailai ship touches down, Chief Tech Riviera notices that some security cameras in the repair bay have gone dark. Griffith puts internal security on yellow alert.
Down in the repair bay, the Trell astech kills the watch officer with a vibroblade, then opens the external doors, letting in a black garbed assault team, which cuts down technical and security staff in short order. He gives the password (‘Hunter’) to the attackers, identifying himself as their mole. He leads the commandos towards the Command Center.
Up in the Command Center, Griffith, Ari, and Riviera attempt to coordinate a defense and raise the ‘Mech Lance. At the spaceport, Durant Carlyle reports that he’s come under attack from weapons turrets on the House Mailai DropShip. Ernest Hauptman, the Shadow Hawk pilot, reports to Griffith that the intruders are just one deck below the Command Center, and are equipped with combat sneak suits. Griffith gathers personnel to lead a sortie against the intruders, and asks Chief Tech Riviera to get Grayson to safety if they’re overrun.
At the port, the Phoenix Hawk is crippled by the DropShip’s weapons fire, losing an arm and the gyroscope. Durant orders the Commandos to evacuate from Trellwan. Security Chief Xiang arrives to support Durant with the security patrol, but neither Durant nor Xiang’s forces are a match for the Marauder that emerges from the Mailai DropShip. The battered Heavy ‘Mech bears the insignia of the Oberon Confederation, and is backed by a Stinger and a Locust. The Marauder walks over to the Phoenix Hawk and crushes its cockpit with a blow from its arm, killing Durant. Xiang’s security troops withdraw as the Light ‘Mechs press the attack. Riviera orders Xiang to fall back to the Commandos’ DropShip and form a perimeter until the Lance’s Wasps can arrive from Sarghad.
Griffith returns to the Command Center and tells Grayson they have to evacuate. He says the security forces are holding for now, but there are too many attackers. The Command Center personnel leave and make for the Vehicle Bay to board hovercraft and evacuate to the DropShip. The Commandos’ families, and support/technical staff are already en route to the bay. Viscount Vogel demands a special escort and a private hovercraft, but Griffith rebuffs his demands. Grayson worries that this might cause political trouble for Griffith in the future.
They reach the vehicle bay without incident, join the dependents, and begin boarding HVTs – transport hovercraft capable of carrying 25 to 30 people. On the way to the port, the convoy will be escorted by armed HVWCs (Hover Vehicle Weapons Carriers?). Griffith orders Carlyle to board a scout hovercraft with Sergeant Brookes. Before Grayson can bet aboard, shots ring out and enemy troops storm into the vehicle bay. Viscount Vogel goes down while Griffith returns fire. As Senior Tech Riviera and other Commandos’ troops die, Grayson breaks away from Sergeant Brookes and tries to save Griffith – being unwilling to lose both his father and his mentor in the same day.
Hovercraft begin to race out of the bay as sneaksuit-clad figures continue to pour in. Grayson grabs a rifle and fires at the enemy reinforcements, killing many, but is too late to save Griffith from being shot. Gas grenades fill the bay with paralytic fumes, and Grayson sees the attackers beating passengers on one hovercraft that had not escaped the bay in time, before he passes out.
When Grayson awakens, he sees the victorious attackers herding small groups of prisoners among the remaining hovercraft. He sees Griffith, wounded, but still alive. He also sees the enemy force’s warleader wearing a metal sensor mask, interrogating a somewhat worse for the wear Viscount Vogel, who tells him that the Lyran Commonwealth will offer a large ransom (Grayson estimates it would be in the millions). The warleader considers this, then shoots Vogel in the chest.
Astech Stefan, the mole, identifies Grayson to the warleader as Captain Durant’s son. Afraid he’ll be the next to die, Grayson breaks away from the guard holding him and strikes at the warleader, pulling off his mask and revealing a black bearded face. Grayson doesn’t recognize him, but Griffith does, identifying him as “Singh.” Singh shoots Griffith in the face, killing him. Grayson attacks Singh again, but is knocked out as a bullet creases his temple.
Notes: William H. Keith’s “Grey Death Legion” books don’t have datestamps on the chapters. However, they do have internal chronological markers: three days later, a week later, etc. Plus, the scenarios from the Gray Death Legion scenario pack do, in fact, have fixed dates. Using those as reference points, and working back along the internal chronology from the dated battles, I believe I’ve determined the canon dates for the Gray Death Legion books.
What makes William H. Keith’s work so fantastic is the high level of detail he adds to everything. The man was a master worldbuilder, and it shows in both his GDL novels and his work on the early BattleTechnology magazines.
The LosTech nature of Trell I is immediately evidenced by the astech’s description of the Shadow Hawk as having a “particular balance of heavy firepower and maneuverability.” I don’t think any BattleTech player would find the SHD-2H’s mix of a Medium Laser, LRM-5, AC/5 and SRM-2 to be “heavy firepower” or a jump rating of 3 to represent superior maneuverability, unless your point of comparison is an UrbanMech.
In this scene, Grayson is 20 years old, and remarks that he joined the Lance as a warrior apprentice at the age of 10, implying that Carlyle’s Commandos is at least that old. It’s been garrisoning Trell for five years, just after Grayson’s mother’s death. If the first responder security troops that attempt to contain the incursion in the repair bay are any indication, the unit colors are gray and blue.
Interestingly, Grayson dismisses Kai Griffith’s anti-Trell attitude as “the prejudice of most old-time garrison soldiers against the local civilians they were supposed to protect.” It’s not clear whether he’s referring to veteran garrison troops, or to people of Griffith’s generation in general. It’s possible that the Peace Proposal and the Federated Commonwealth treaty has created a new mindset in people Grayson’s age, who would have been in their formative years when they were announced.
The Oberon Confederation is described as “the new and blossoming empire of Hendrick, the Bandit King of Oberon VI, who had forged a tottering alliance of a dozen Bandit Kings.” When last we checked in with Oberon VI, roughly 50 years earlier (2972), they were just entering into trade relations with the Hanseatic League, and their vassal planets barely acknowledged their sovereignty – seeing Oberon representatives only twice a year, if Sigurd was representative of the rest of the Confederation’s worlds. Since that time, the Confederation has greatly expanded its military force, forcibly unified its hold over its members, and acquired the Elysian Fields as a “protectorate.”
The force structure of Carlyle’s Commandos is interesting. For having only one Lance of BattleMechs, the castle seems overly crowded with astechs, security guards, and other ground troops. That would track with the early FASA-era conception of BattleMechs as “Hero Units” escorted into battle by swarms of conventional forces. Another sign that this is from BattleTech’s early days is the description of Combine troops as “Kuritists” rather than “Kuritans.” Likewise, the text describes Carlyle’s Phoenix Hawk being knocked down by a strike from a “medium-range missile” – a technology that didn’t appear until after the Clan invasion.
The Trell system is described as “lying at the ragged boundaries of the Lyran Commonwealth, an isolated sentinel against an unthinkably large and empty unknown.” That would be news to Winfield, Persistence, Steelton, Toland, Apollo, and Bensinger, all of which lie in a direct line between Trell and the Commonwealth’s Periphery border.
House Mailai, whose crest is a blue X-and-circle, is described in this section as “a local trading house hired to ferry negotiators between Trellwan and Oberon VI.” Later in the book, it’s mentioned as being based in the “Erit Cluster.”
Grayson notes that small tactical nukes have long been forbidden by treaty and practicality. He might be referring to the Ares Conventions, but nobody’s been adhering to that treaty since the fall of the Star League. Given the earlier reference to searching for "illegal nuclear weapons" in a Kell Hounds scenario, it's possible that the Lyrans and the Free Worlds League, at least, signed some sort of treaty regarding WMD usage and/or possession at the end of the Second Succession War.
It’s not clear that Carlyle’s Commandos are, in fact, mercenaries at this point. Grayson reminisces about his father “outfitting, supplying, and leading a House Steiner BattleMech Lance.” Granted, they don’t appear to be part of any known line formation, but House Steiner seems to have a tradition of using independent Lances within the force structure of the LCAF – the Crescent Hawks, for example.
Given the payload description, the HVTs appear to have a capacity equivalent to a Heavy Hover APC or a Maxim. They’re probably more the former than the latter, given the need for armed escorts. The scout hovercraft is described as seating four and having a "light laser" in a pintle mount on the back, somewhat implying that it uses the Support Vehicle construction rules.
