The Eagle takes flightTo say that the Free Worlds League was divided over what their response should be to the outbreak of the 4th Succession War would be of probably little surprise to anyone, least of all themselves. The strongest voice for joining in on the war on the side of the Concord of Kapteyn was from the Duchy of Tamarind, with Prime Minister Otho Korituk insisting that now was the time to strike towards Bolan. However he was a very notable minority in his enthusiasm as even longtime allies in such thoughts like the Silver Hawks Coalition and Stewart Commonality were surprisingly cool on the idea.
There are several reasons to point at for their lack of support of course. One was purely strategic; the sheer mass of the Lyran and Suns assaults were almost unprecedented in their power and force, making it clear that Katrina and Hanse were ‘playing for keeps’ and were operating a scale that would clearly take a national response to coordinate. Even the vaunted DCMS was being torn to pieces and the wild rumors of ‘Lyran SuperMechs’ (with carefully organized LIC leaks to make it clear that units remaining facing the Free Worlds League were also being upgraded with the TSM technology) added a whole layer of ambiguity. Ergo, the ‘Hawks and Commonality publicly took the stance that patience and time would give a better chance for the Free Worlds League to jump into the fight fresh when the other powers were exhausted - and that it would take a national response, not a few border provinces, to get them to move on that.
It also didn’t help that the Draconis Combine had with their ‘Death to Mercenaries' order earned the ire of Kristen Marik, the Captain General's daughter and an aspiring mercenary herself. A public statement denouncing the Combine publicly for their vile actions no doubt increased the Captain Generals headache, even if she nominally held no formal title or position, the media gave her words considerable play. And with both the Free Worlds Leagues allies reputations being dragged through the mud, public sentiment for simply staying out of the war was riding quite high, no matter how many messages Maximilian sent Janos demanding assistance.
But in truth, the main reason there was little enthusiasm for pushing into the Lyran Commonwealth is that the power players in the Free Worlds League were far more interested in events inside their borders than outside it when they were under no clear threat themselves.
While Lord Garth of Irian had failed to get his hands on the Helm cache, he had also been shrewd (and fast) enough to ensure that he was not caught red-handed in his intentions. It might have been taken as a foregone conclusion by the Captain General and his close allies that he had indeed been planning to use the equipment to put his ambitions for a much higher post than he currently held, but, without anything like the hard evidence to
prove it, there was little that Janos Marik could do. Especially as it became increasingly clear that Garth had a huge support base through many of the ‘lesser’ provinces and independent worlds that no-one had anticipated - as well as a strong ally in Dame Catherine Humphreys and Andurien who had put considerable resources into the remarkable rebuilding of Irian BattleMechs Unlimited (that the Captain Generals troops had destroyed to deny to Anton during the civil war - a sore point to many people on the planet).
In the aftermath of Helm, Garth seemingly settled in for the long term and decided he could only go forward, not back. The block that Garth had formed could be broadly said to be anti-Capellan and with his Helm project ruined, he seized on it as a wedge issue and
pushed, perhaps inspired by Cranston Snord's Trolling masterpiece on Nestor during the Helm covering raids. For all the border worlds history and hate of the back-and-forth with the Lyran Commonwealth (and the clear fact that Cranston Snord was, yet again, taking the opportunity to tweak the Captain General at a distance), the giant ‘artwork’ got incredible play in the media on worlds closer to the Confederation. The reminder that their leader had gotten into bed with a man who had eagerly supported his brother only a few years back trying to steal his throne?
Seemingly overnight even as the Free Worlds League struggled to come to grips with the events on Helm, Garth had become leader of the ‘loyal’ opposition to the Concord and the leader of the anti-Capellan block that Dame Humphreys had nominally led (and seemingly had no problems with him taking on). And as the Captain General dared not publicly accuse him without hard proof, Garth ruthlessly took every opening he could to reposition himself and discourage Janos from sending in Federal troops to just kill him and be done with it, lest he touch off a second civil war.
Of course, Garth also had more than a few enemies; most notably the Captain General himself but also an understandably furious opponent in Earl Hector Stewart. Leader of the Stewart Commonality
and speaker of the Federal Parliament who used every trick in the book to cut support away from Irian with limited success, counter-balanced directly by the Silver Hawk’s who chose to support Irian, being no friends of the Confederation. The Duchy of Oriente, while nominally neutral in the entire glaring match, had absolutely no desire to jump into a war on behalf of House Liao and little care for taking on House Steiner and opinion polls taken there were rather receptive to most of the sentiments pushed by Garth's faction. The Principality of Regulus, just to be contrary, decided to proclaim a motion of support for the Captain General … apparently just because he was doing a good job, given that there was ‘officially’ nothing to support him over. And unsurprisingly Marik was firmly behind Janos. Most of the remaining provinces also did their best impersonation of denying there was any issue at all inside the Free Worlds League, while privately making it clear that they didn’t want anything to do with this … unless it was in their advantage to do so, while independent worlds support tended to be measured by how close they were to the Confederation.
This left the Captain General in the most curious position of publicly supporting an alliance he hated, supporting a war he refused to actually commit to and finding himself in a political tug of war with a man who wanted his job to do exactly what he wished he
could do.
The calculus shifted even more in late 3028 when Hanse Davion publicly announced the truth about operation Doppelganger to the Inner Sphere. The primary audience was of course the Federated Suns and Lyran Commonwealth, but it was fair enough to say it hit like a lightning bolt across much of the Free Worlds League. Hanse Davions war was reframed almost overnight and Garth wasted no time at all in having his allies in Parliament scathingly point out on the very next sitting day that while the Captain General had seemingly decided to forgive and forget Maximilian inciting his little civil war, Hanse Davion at least had the guts to take the attempt made on
him and repay the Liao. With interest!
There was of course the expected back and forward at that, but it was when a young MP from Zion, Casandra Knight, stood up that things moved into a new paradigm entirely as she asked the question of how they knew that Hanse Davion was the only one to have suffered from this? Wondering aloud how they could be sure that the Anton Marik who one day decided to rise up in rebellion … had really
been Anton Marik? How did they know that he hadn't been the original prototype of Doppelganger and the
real Anton not tortured for everything he knew and disposed of afterwards, as had almost been Hanse Davion’s fate?
The young MP of course had not the slightest evidence and on the face of it, the accusation should have been dismissed out of hand. But in the new reality of Hanse Davion’s terrifyingly perfect duplicate, the accusation landed like a crashing
Overlord onto the floor of the parliament. After a shocked silence lasting several seconds, a shouting match erupted in which the nominal ‘Garth’ faction were joined with increasingly broad support as they threw themselves with full voice behind that question until Hector Stewart shut down the floor for the day and suspended parliament for the rest of the week in a rather transparent attempt to buy time.
It was a futile effort of course as the Free Worlds League media erupted into an utter
frenzy on the back of Hanse Davions revelation. The Capellan ambassador tried to rubish the accusation - and undermined his entire attempt by repeating, almost verbros, the official House Liao line that Doppelganger was a complete lie word for word, refusing to engage on the subject no matter what evidence his host presented from suspiciously rapidly delivered press kits from the Federated Suns that destroyed his credibility and only ramped up the accusations and suspicions almost to the level of paranoia in some parts.
If LIC or MIIO had any hand in pouring fuel into this fire is still unclear, but it is undeniable that the idea spread like wildfire across the League and public opinion was firmly against helping the Capellan Confederation. The Captain General’s refusal to condemn the Combine for Death to Mercenaries or the Confederation for Doppelganger only played into Garth's hands until finally in January even as RIPOSTE was going in, the Captain Generals hand was forced and he decreed that the Free Worlds League would not attack either of the FedCom powers unless attacked in turn. While noting that they still reserved the right to provide economic and logistical support to their allies. The Captain General made little secret of his contempt for the Chancellor trying for yet another civil war in his enemies, but equally not wanting to make any rash decisions, he fought to keep the Free Worlds League out of the war.
As compromises went, his decision undercut the increasing noises in parliament to openly begin legislating to terminate the Free Worlds Leagues participation in the Concord of Kapteyn, but it hardly did anything to calm the border regions which were seeing the AFFS crushing the Confederation and, frankly, wanting to get in on the ‘fun’. Even the Captain General's own advisors pointed out the stark strategic fact that if the Federated Commonwealth were able to heavily damage the DCMS and shater the Confederation not simply militarily but politically, it would leave the Free Worlds League badly isolated and instead of having one weaker and one strong nation on the border, they would have a unified mega-nation surrounding it that would have control of the Confederation on top of their own industries, glaring across the borders at them because of who they had chosen to stand with. And if - somehow - the Confederation survived, they would certainly be unhappy with them abandoning them at the crunch anyway.
In short, the Captain General
had to pick a side.
Incredibly, Janos refused to act - perhaps fixated on his internal issues and not wanting to deploy his Federal and loyalist troops into a battle they might not want to fight. And given that at this point in time Hanse Davion had ‘only’ taken thirty worlds from the Confederation and there were debates as the delay after the 3rd wave grew if he
would continue the push, the Captain General held firm to his guns and refused to act, instead refocusing his efforts on trying to splinter Garth’s support base. Unknown to him however, Garth had been in secret contact with the leaders of the Federated Commonwealth from later 3028. Via an elaborate courier chain into the Lyran Commonwealth of still unknown methods that somehow managed to evade even the intense net SAFE had thrown around him. Through this chain, he received assurances and concluded several agreements on behalf of the Free Worlds League. And with them in place, Garth decided to take his plan to the next level.
The Captain General had been found wanting by many actors in the Free Worlds League, seemingly paralyised and unable to either make a decision to support his ‘allies’ or break away from them. And while Gath had long since lost his support for a straight play at the Captain Generals throne, he had been reborn as a Champion of the Free Worlds League against the Concord they were trapped in, seeking to build a new powerbase with considerable success in that space as the Captain General ground his teeth and fruitlessly tried to find evidence with which he could hang the man.
But finally, through the first months of 3029, more and more reports from SAFE came in insisting that Garth was rallying his forces and allies for a major move. The Captain General did what he could to dissuade any rash actions and urge this stupidity to end, but in April news came back to Atreus that at least fourteen provincial Battlemech units were on the move, including several Mercenary units and a large number of support forces - and possibly even two Federal units!
The Captain General ordered all his allies to full military readiness even though it would take weeks for them to arrive at the capital or any other ‘friendly worlds’ … but it proved unnecessary.
The first units to hit the Capellan Confederation went in on the 8th of April; all three Sirian Lancer regiments arriving at their homeworld and wasting no time in launching a full scale invasion to ‘reclaim’ the world the Confederation had ‘reclaimed’ just prior to the Concord being signed.
They were not alone in launching attacks.
Two units of the Defenders of Andurien jumped into the Zenith point of Betelgeuse and started a full burn for that planet even as additional units hit Sigma Mare and Latice which were all but undefended and took them with barely a shot fired from the local militia. A near dozen units scraped together by other worlds along the border jumped in as well, albeit over the next two weeks as jumpships had to shuttle back and forward, with Federal units staying put and watching in a mixture of shock and awe as the border erupted.
Raids in the Terran Corridor, targeting the Dutchys in the Tikonov Commonality as yet not targeted by Hanse Davion found surprisingly weak resistance and indeed, in four cases, the local units outright defected to the League troops with incredible speed. It would later be confirmed negotiations had taken place between Davions 3rd and 4th Waves with the worlds and units on them, with the ‘League’ representatives pointedly noting they had the choice of
joining the Free Worlds League, or, being crushed under Hanse Davions stylish boots and spurs. In fact, Hanse Davion himself had given his consent to the Free Worlds League in general to attack all the border Dutchys without any contest - with a singular exception for the world of Outlook, which the Federated Suns claimed, albeit with a concession to hand it over by 3035 (in hindsight they very clearly knew about and wished to loot the significant industrial assets that had gone unlocated since the fall of the Star League).
Only on the worlds of Tall Trees and Hall was there any real fighting - and then not directed at the Free Worlds League. The Maskirovka seemingly getting wind of the plans of the locals to outright defect attempted to do the unthinkable and open up the weapons vaults of the ancient genetic research facility that had been the development site of the New Tierra del Fuego II Plague, with plans to ‘salt the Earth’ and punish the population who were so eager to betray their Chancellor.
Mission orders would later confirm in fact that they were supposed to move the weapons offworld and back to Sian where they would form part of the ‘special weapons’ cache to be held in reserve as a last ditch defensive option against Davion, but were taken off guard by the planets sudden decision to defect when the Free Worlds League troops arrived and started to burn inbound. The Tall Trees Militia moved to stop them and were only partially successful; a single missile managed to airburst over the city of Helena and would result in the deaths of over eight million people, although six other targeted cities were saved by truly heroic work by the militia. The Free Worlds League moved in quickly to bring what support they could, but an undeniable resentment would stir in the population for the catastrophic losses as a result of the League troops arriving. Albeit, with far more hate directed towards the ‘Monster on Sian’.
Concurrent with the launching of the attacks, a broadcast from Lord Garth was disseminated to all Free Worlds League media stations on the capital, provincial capitals and key worlds - and would from there be quickly spread to the rest of the League. Standing with a dozen powerful figures from Provinces and Worlds bordering the Confederation, Garth announced that history was on the move and the entire Inner Sphere was being reshaped. And as the Captain General was refusing to accept this, it fell upon true patriots to act.
He did take pains to stress that he was not Anton, nor was he seeking the Captain Generalship (a statement that no doubt incurred a great deal of scorn from a great many Nobles). Rather, he insisted that he and those with him were launching an operation to eliminate one of the greatest threats to the Free Worlds League once and for all. A war of retribution against the Confederation for what they had done to the Free Worlds League and Anton Marik, condemning the Captain General for his cowardice as he broke bread with a man who had either backed his brothers bid for the Throne or, far worse, stolen his brother away and replaced him with a twisted mockery under his control like he had come so close to doing with Hanse Davion.
And that if the Captain General had no interest in avenging his brother and the League, then they would as they would no longer tolerate the insanity of existing with House Liao, but would help put him down like the mad dog he was.
At the same time, he acknowledged that they did not have the strength to take on the Confederation themselves, but with the Federated Suns now launching their next waves of attacks, they could make a
very good start, calling upon the rest of the Free Worlds League to follow - and for the Captain General to lead them into this battle as was his role. That unless he wanted the Federated Commonwealth alone to redraw the map of the Inner Sphere, the time was
now to move forward as one nation and let history be their judge for the sake of their children and their children's children!
Twenty Four hours later later, Oriente (who had seemingly held back their own forces at their jump points to see what would
really happen) launched an invasion of the world of Jasmine with quite overwhelming force with two units of the Fusiliers of Oriente backed up with two Mercenary units, clearly looking to minimise their footprint to defend, while still clearly pulling a seat out at Garth's table … and establishing a foothold in the Confederation only two Jumps from Sian itself as everyone wondered what course Janos Marik would now take.