Alright people, BIG chapter here.
This will wrap up the New Avalon Battle, we'll have an aftermath chapter which will also advance things after this.
So you might want to get some snacks :)
Chapter Seventeen: E=MC^2
Something between two-thirds and three quarters of Kuritas main body managed to get through the gap in the NAIS perimeter by the time Morgan was ready to bring them directly under fire.
Morgan’s original battle plan (throw that
on the planet sized mass of military plans that had not survived contact with the enemy) had been to deploy his force right on top of Kurita. Of course, a Hover-Drop maneuver with an entire Regiment was rare to see executed in the 3025 time frame - especially by the defenders.
Partially because it was quite high risk both in execution and if the enemy realized what was happening, partially because only the most elite units generally had both the training and equipment on hand to do it. Few commanders would also have the stones to drop onto another
elite unit as opposed to grounding further away and advancing to contact.
Morgan however had mercilessly drilled his Swordsworn for months
in the technique. Putting them through both simulated and
real drop maneuvers until the poor troops were probably dreaming
about falling through the skies. And with the enemy out of position and divided, it would have been a textbook perfect drop that Indrick Boreale himself may have given an approving nod to … if not for the minor fact that he had needed to divert his Battalion North to pull his uncle out of the fire (literally and figuratively) at the last second.
In Battletech however, Morgan Hasek-Davion had been said to be uncannily good at adapting on the fly to changing situations on the battlefield and turning them to his advantage. I saw the first hints of that today as Morgan deployed, crisp orders streaming out as he read the battlefield and anticipated the flow of combat. While he dropped directly to stop his uncle (and me for that matter) getting char-grilled, he sent 3rd Battalion down to the East - to enter the NAIS in a more conservative drop that would let them get into NAIS without enemy interference, keeping a piece on the board in reserve. 2nd Battalion however he had kept more-or-less on target, if not right on top of the enemy anymore, dropping close to the gate where the DCMS were trying to push through.
Of course, this also meant Morgan had divided his force in the face of the enemy.That
was one of the biggest
‘no-no’s in warfare according to every military textbook - and one that all soldiers were conditioned to jump on faster than your average Lyran on a lose 100 Kronor bill they saw on the footpath. Taking advantage of the Davion ‘mistake’, a Battalion of Genyosha who would never make it inside had assembled and charged off right at 2nd Battalions LZ as they came down, clearly wanting to engage them in isolation before they could link up with 1st Bat and press on the wall. Intending to buy enough time for the last of their comrades to get to ‘safety’ inside and slow the Davion counterattack.
Of course, even at near numerical parity this ‘omega battalion’ had to know the odds were not exactly on their side. 2nd was Morgan’s ‘big stick’, made up of a Company each from the Davion Assault and Heavy Guards plus a Company of the Lyran Royal Guards handpicked by Katrina, while the DC unit was made up of mediums with a couple of heavies and a lance or two of lights.
Even so, the odds of survival (or at least dragging out their deaths and inflicting as much damage as they could for as long as possible) would be much higher if they could engage 2nd in the kind of mobile freewheeling battle the DCMS preferred rather than a slugging match pinned against a wall. Indeed, they might even have felt a brief moment of genuine hope
as they came into the visual range of the center company they were aiming at … and they saw it was made up of Banshees
.
Honest to God Banshee
-3E’s
!
Assault Mechs with the firepower of a Medium Mech, they were a bit of a joke only seen in third tier units where any
Battlemech was better than no
Battlemech. To the DCMS MechWarrior’s, they must have looked deliciously
for all the world like a ceremonial Lyran unit on the Federated Suns capital pressed into service for the emergency, what given their immaculately perfect Royal Guards dress paint contrasting against the Davion Guards far more utilitarian thermal suppressing field camo. And indeed, on paper,
if the DCMS could smash through them first and fast,
they might just have a chance to split the Heavy and Assault Guard companies from each other, then wheel and engage those units with superior numbers in the kind of mobile running fight Yorinaga’s people excelled in.
It wasn’t a crazy Banzai charge though - or perhaps it was, but,
executed with undeniable skill, professionalism and purpose. Executing a formation change with parade ground precision as they oriented on the Lyran Battlemechs and accelerated, shaking out into a tight wedge that made it hard to miss hitting them but conversely let the Combine troops concentrate a massive amount of firepower forward making their intentions clear. A logical tactic; ‘wrecking-ball’ through the Banshees
with massed fire tactics, then wheel either left or right to engage one of the flanking Davion companies in isolation. Sort of double divide-and-conquer, continually reducing the overwhelming might of the Swordsworn down into manageable chunks where you could bring local superiority to bear in an outstanding display of taking an enemy’s mistake and exploiting it ruthlessly.
Really, the only problem with the tactics … was that they were exactly what Morgan had hoped
they would do.
Explosive bolts fired as the Banshees
came to a halt and the trap was sprung; vis-Mod coverings painstakingly attached with thousands of man-hours of tech work at NAIS flung away like Neo flinging open his long coat to reveal … guns.LOTS
of guns.
A barrage of particle bolts and gauss rifles had slammed into the tightly packed DCMS force at range with crushing force, knocking out a half dozen Battlemechs and causing the entire Combine formation to shudder
as it tried to avoid crashing into itself like an upset house of cards. To their credit, again the Combine MechWarrior’s reacted near instantly with the Mechs on the edge of the formation spreading out and returning fire as they tried to cover for the rest of the unit, but it really wasn’t any use. Shrugging off the scattered return fire, the Lyran’s fired as soon as their weapons cycled without any concern for heat, carving into the beleaguered center of the enemy formation as swarms of LRMs started to rain in from the flanks into the Combine Mechs trying to engage. The Davion Guardsmen now pressed in at a full FOMO sprint, clearly affronted at the idea that the Royal Guardsmen would steal all the kills, expertly collapsing the kill box collapsed around the enemy...
By the time Morgan arrived with both his Battalion and Hanse’s people in tow, the slaughter was all over. Third lesson for the day; massed formations of Assault and Heavy Mechs were ****** terrifying
in how rapidly they could dismember lighter units stupid enough to put their head on the block in front of them.
Wasting no time, Hanse had reformed and wheeled around. Sprinting back to the NAIS as fast as he could. And that was when it happened.
A transmission had been broadcast from inside the NAIS over a general channel. A transmission in the unmistakable voice of Yorinaga Kurita … giving voice to a Haiku in English.
The circle is closed.
Return to the beginning.
To find the ending.
Was it a death poem? I had no idea. Was it ominous? Just a tad! Pretentious? Oh God yes.
Did it piss Hanse Davion the ****** off? You betcha.
The Prince took up the implied challenge and smashed his battalions through and over the breach in the perimeter like the mother of all battering rams … only to find Kurita wasn’t even bothering
to try
and hold the other side of the wall against pursuit. No, the bastard had marched straight into the heart of the NAIS and unleashed his people with clear orders to spread out and go full 1st Succession War on Hanse Davion’s pride and joy - presumably as much to gain a reaction out of the First Prince as to destroy the critical strategic facilities. Starting with the massive campus of the College of Engineering and flinging infernos around like fireworks on New Year’s Eve.
Well, if he wanted
to get a reaction out of Hanse, he had succeeded.
Once again, a First Prince of the Federated Suns and Yorinaga Kurita had squared off - although ironically with Kurita in Ian’s place as the Combine Troops kept working to slip away and buy time in a hopeless battle. The Genyosha were not
standing their ground like many of their idiotic ‘not one step back!’ peers may have but were performing a fluid defense with immense skill. Smashing their way in and out of buildings to surprise the advancing Guards, hitting the spearheads before falling back as they played out space for time using tactics that also happened to smash and burn the NAIS at the same time - ****** Japanese efficiency hard at work. Making the tactics devilishly effective was surprisingly effective radio and sensor jamming that had started up as the Combine troops had come into contact with the Honour Guard, making a hash of tactical radios and sensors inside the urban jungle as the snakes weaved their way through it. While initially countered by the NAIS communications network being tied into the battlenet, that
had only lasted until a burning twenty story building in the College of Finances had collapsed and done something
to the underground conduits that routed in that area. Yeah, idiotic design with single points of failure still happened even in the 31st century at the NAIS of all places and Murphy remained equal opportunity. Go figure.
The communications network had died along with the main power grid, not simply cutting the Mechs off from each other at any real distance but cutting everyone off from the Fox’s Den’s Star League era computers that had been mashing together a complete tactical picture together. In that moment, Command Mechs tactical displays had switched from a crisply rendered image of where everyone was into a ‘fog of war’ - and the enemy was making maximum use of it. The words ‘slippery ****** snakes!’ seemed to be in use an awful
lot by company commanders right now as Hanse split off from Morgan, leaving him in charge of one flank while taking the lead on the other to compensate as they adapted to try and pincer the enemy.
The paradigm had shifted when 3nd Battalion had arrived and cut into the dance, checking the Combines vanguard as they pushed (literally) through the Materials Engineering laboratories, rocking them back on their heels in a sudden barrage of firepower. Having landed on the Eastern edge of the campus grounds, Major Green-Davion had expertly maneuvered the much more mobile Battlemechs of the 3rd, 5th and Light Guards through the NAIS. The lighter and faster medium mechs had hit with exquisite timing, many leaping from rooftop to rooftop to spot for fire support lances just as the Genyosha had been about to push out and into the College of Chemistry. Their sudden intervention throwing the Combine troops back on themselves in confusion...
For about fifteen seconds. Give or take.*
**
******
**
*
While Hanse and Morgan had gone running to the sound of the guns, I … well, I was
sent to the rear. I mean, the orders were a bit more subtle than that, telling me and the rest of my lance to recover our dismounts with the help of a hover APC coming out then head to the CMS campus which was the designated rally point for all NAIS defenders. But translated from that, it was pretty clear we
were being sent to the rear. And with Jackson dispo … err,
dismounted as well as Jonny and Jimmy out of ammo? It made sense for
them.
But why
me? My Mech was more or less fine and I didn't have any ammo concerns - and surely they needed every gun on the line?
Most probably I guessed Hanse didn’t think I was up to the bar brawl that he knew was about to come when two elite units smashed into each other with quarter neither offered nor given at point blank range.
Hell of it was, he was probably right.
With my person removed from the
immediate danger (even if I tried to keep watching in every direction simultaneously on my 360-degree display) my mind started wandering back over the battle. The adrenaline and training that had gotten me through the first engagements on autopilot was thinning out and leaving my mind going in increasingly small circles as, bit by bit, it sunk in just how
close to dying I had come this morning. The
crackle-hiss of the PPCs lightning clawing at the edge of my cockpit, the visual of the implacable
Griffin stomping towards my immobilized Battlemech...
No video games save-scumming. No reset buttons. No tabletop do-overs. Just …
dead. In any event, I parked those thoughts as our little group approached CMS, following the Hover APC through the gate. Being the nucleus NAIS had been built from, CMS (or NAMA as the alumni still stubbornly insisted on calling it) retained an internal perimeter wall separating it from the rest of the campus (mostly because it would just be too much damn work to demolish it) complete with - limited - static defenses. It also had a fully functional command center with landline uplinks to the Den, an independent power grid, plenty of hard open parade ground reinforcing dropships could land on in a pinch and all the infrastructure to support the cadets military hardware, making it a logical fallback point and/or final redoubt. Indeed, the last known orders BB had given as the DCMS had stormed into the NAIS were for Team Banzai and the Cadets to fall back and regroup here … meaning they should have beaten us here.
They were nowhere to be seen.
They
might still be alive, but if so, they were somewhere in the middle of the massive cloud of jamming hanging over the NAIS like an electronic counterpoint to the thick black clouds of smoke, ****** over communications and what datalinks the 3025 era AFFS used. Listening in on the command net, several of the more technically inclined members of Team Banzai’s support staff in the local command center here had positively identified the interference as coming from multiple Capellan EW systems - the prototypes of which they had already seen on a couple of salvaged
Ravens brought back to the NAIS late last year.
How in the hell Kurita had gotten his MAGIC BUSHIDO HANDS on that
technology? No-one knew. And as far as
I could remember, nothing on that level of technology transfer had happened in the original timeline between the Kapteyn powers, making it
another butterfly I had caused. The NAIS communications grid was still down despite frantic attempts ongoing to get it back up again and the steel jungle that made radio unreliable even in normal times was increasingly covered and filled with thick smoke that obscured overheads too; the end result being that outside of close range high-frequency radio links, we were playing double blind rules.
I ******
hated double-blind rules.
It didn’t seem there was terribly much I could do about things as they stood, however. Jonny and Jimmy had run straight to the nearby cadet bays to have their ammo-bins topped back up, an evolution that the crack support staff of Team Banzai could get done in a matter of minutes with the facilities there. Jackson Davion had also gone with them instead of heading for the command post as I anticipated, looking to grab one of the training Mechs that had been left in place as a backup specifically for ‘dismounted’ MechWarrior’s to get back into the battle with.
My Mech didn’t need ammo of course (and I had enough hydrogen in my reactor tank to keep going for months) and while I would have
loved to re-armor my Battlemech; this wasn’t Mechwarrior III or IV with field bases to quickly duck into and be back to 100% health in ten seconds or less. Reskinning my Mechs damaged armor would take hours even
if they had Ferro-Fibrous armor just laying around (which was something I rather doubted). So when I went back into the battle, I’d have to keep a close eye on where the shots were hitting me...
If I went back into the battle.
I fidgeted a little then as I stood with my Mech on the outer perimeter wall, next to an Autocannon turret diligently scanning for any hostiles, feeling a little disquieted (or possibly disgusted) with myself at how
appealing the idea of not going back into battle sounded. When so many people, including the balance of friends I had in this universe, were fighting and risking their lives out there…
So, in an attempt to refocus and with no sign of hostiles anywhere near here, I turned to my command board and brought up the feed from the Fox’s Den relayed via my own SATCOM uplink - and almost instantly stumbled onto a chagrined Morgan reporting into Yvonne Davion, personally via
his SATCOM uplink.
She was not
happy. And that was a scary thought.
I mean, I had indirectly seen Yvonne Davion drop her ‘Grandmother of the AFFS who makes
epic cookies’ persona once or twice in ‘The Den’. Seeing very senior combat veterans walk out of her office looking considerably paler then when they had walked in and all that. But it was rare, and I had never thought she’d need to put
Morgan of all people under the blowtorch.
It was understandable why she was though,
given that Morgan was admitting he had lost track of the First Prince of the Federated Suns!If I was hearing this right, it seemed that having pinned the Combine force (more or less) into the Southern third of the NAIS, Hanse had switched gears and unleashed the infantry NAIS had been keeping in reserve. Using the extensive secure underground tunnel networks, the vast campus had, the infantry had already shifted into place unseen and, when the signal was given, they had popped up all over the place to make a very loud and obnoxious nuisance of themselves.
The actual damage inflicted was limited, but it was rather distracting to have people shooting into your back while you were busy playing tit-for-tat with enemy Battlemechs. And with strict orders to ‘shoot and scoot’, the ‘rat-pack’ had vanished right back down the tunnels and mostly escaped the furious but clumsy retribution cleanly … at which point other platoons had engaged from different directions.
It was kind of like those old ‘whack a mole’ arcade games - except the moles had SRM launchers, LAW launchers
and the occasional Manpack PPC or support laser, all chipping away at your armor or even occasionally placing shots neatly into armor breaches they could pick out to wreck things on the inside.
And without their own infantry units to screen then, the Combines possible counters were limited.
The sudden and violent attack that was launched in response was tactically sensible given the situation, very much the best option out of several bad ones. Breaking out of the burning and collapsing Engineering campus that was all but reduced to rubble, two- and a-bit battalions of Combine Battlemechs had
still moved as one well-oiled machine, working to collapse whatever was still standing on the way out. Fire support units laid down suppressive fire with the last of their ammo while assault units ripped a breach open in the Davion lines, allowing the rest of the unit to pour through in an attempt to unfold and rip the AFFS lines open from the inside out, all under the cover of their ECM bubbles, often detouring
through buildings to try and get around defensive strongpoints. Many of the enemy Mechs out of ammo even carried griders and other improvised clubs from the building wreckage in their hands, clearly planning to use them with TSM enhanced force on the Davion Guards.
Morgan and Hanse, however, had anticipated the move.
With micro-skills a Korean Starcraft Champion would have approved of and banking heavily on Guardsmen subunit commanders doing a
lot with very few orders to a big picture, the Swordsworn had smoothly flowed back from the charge, sweeping their units around to suddenly englobe them as their charge became drawn out - before forcing the leading assault elements crash into the stop line at a place of Morgan’s choosing.
Again, the twelve
Banshee’s held in reserve stepped forward and again they proved utterly
terrifying in the sheer firepower they brought to the 3025 battlefields. Even at close range, for all the undisputed skill of the Combine MechWarrior’s they simply didn’t have an answer to Katrina's fanatic handpicked soldiers in their retrofitted Assault Mechs and the firepower they poured down the narrow choke points as fast as their triggers could cycle. Sure, more than a few fell as their XL reactors were torn open and several others were shot full of so many holes it was a wonder they could stand, but not
one of them paused as they kept throwing PPC, laser and gauss fire into the teeth of any Mech stupid enough to challenge the Lyran Wall of Steel. The unstoppable force met the immovable object head on … and this time, the unstoppable force blinked first.
They did
not give up mind you. Even as their push ground to a halt, they reformed quickly into defensive clusters of lances and company lines, trying to hold a perimeter around and inside buildings as they probed for an escape route to stay mobile, only to find every direction firmly locked down by tight, interlocking arms of the Honor Guard. They didn’t fight any less fiercely, but the N^2 law and intensity of the combat was now finally catching up to them and everyone knew it. They were running out of ammo, leaving more armor on the ground than on their Mechs and overheating without any break to flush their heat sinks and take a breather. The much fresher Honor Guard were in their element now and they ramped up the pressure steadily as the advantage steadily tilted their way and they pushed the enemy into Combat Loss Grouping.
God knows if there would be much left of the Southern third of the NAIS by the time this ended though.
Then, things went … wrong.
Our
glorious Prince had been maneuvering to try and come in on the flank of the enemy main body with his high-technology Lance in the lead. To punch into and cut off an enemy company from the main body and help liquidate it - especially the EW unit hiding there, working to break up the enemies mutually supporting formations. But as he did, a
new enemy formation had suddenly broken out of the ruins of the engineering campus, sneaking out unnoticed from the eastern side of the fiercely burning buildings. According to the infantry spotters who had managed to (eventually) get a line in to report to Morgan, it was reported to be a company sized force led by a
Warhammer.A
Warhammer that headshotted the two
Valkyries on the flank picket with a single PPC apiece, impossibly fast on the draw while seeming to casually walk through the return fire that just flowed around it, refusing to connect to it.
Yeah, no possible confusion over who
that was.
Still, even Yorinaga Kurita on the loose with a small force was something that could be dealt with, in time. Nothing to panic about, right?
Well it wouldn’t have been … if not for Hanse Davion
chasing after him with his depleted command company! The man who had killed Hanse Davion’s brother - and tried to drag his body back to Luthien to triumphantly march down Dragon Unity Road and dump it before the Coordinator.
The man who had tried to kidnap his future wife for Gods knows what fate as a prisoner of the Kurita’s.
The man who had led an invasion of his capital to burn down his greatest hope for the future of mankind…
So, yeah, Hanse was off like a bull chasing a red flag according to the infantry who reported his reinforced lance pounding past their position two minutes later, in hot pursuit of the enemy. And as it seemed Kurita had at least one of his units equipped with Capellan EW equipment, because the jamming was disrupting every attempt to reach him or locate him by radio - and with each and every one of the
Battlemasters SATCOM antennas destroyed by the earlier inferno rounds...we had a problem.
A big ****** problem!Worse, even if the Genyosha were being slowly squeezed to death into Combat Loss Grouping, they were fighting like the Elite Combine soldiers they were. Soldiers who also knew they were dead men walking. And so they fought with desperation, commitment, brutality and resolve, furiously thrashing and maneuvering with vicious local counter attacks the
instant the Guardsmen gave them a gap, forcing
every Davion Mech to hold their ground -often by their fingernails- as the two sides slugged it out at point blank range with Mechs falling on both sides steadily, leaving Morgan nothing spare to go after Hanse with.
The next wave of reinforcements made up of the rest of Team Banzai were still 35 minutes out according to the chatter -and I set one of the timers on my command board to that number- on their suborbital hop and unless he wanted to give the main body a window to break out themselves - and possibly reinforce their master - Morgan needed to keep every single gun on the line.
The fact that I could hear his own weapons firing as he briefed the Princes Champion on the situation rather spoke to that.
THAT, of course was when Jackson Davion had chosen to join the conversation as he jogged his new Mech back out to join me, the two
Enforcers behind him matching his pace. And as my stomach started to clench, the man almost happily noted to his Mother that there
was now an unengaged mobile unit back on the field, ready to go find Hanse. To back him up.