This is a small attempt at a FanFic based on the Tribble I posted earlier
High Speed (downward)
Upper Atmosphere
Royal
Federated Suns
SLS Nothe Fort
8 November 2729 0745
Alek managed to keep his swearing quiet enough that the microphone in his NeuroHelmet would not pick it up, conscious that it would not be ideal leadership for his company to hear him swear, whether it was in English, Russian or French – he could swear fluently in all three and was pretty good in German too. Instead he tightened the straps holding him in place as the Nothe Fort plummeted through the atmosphere from orbit and called out to his company to check in on the internal comms, forcing a smile as he did which he hoped his troops would hear.
The ride was bumpy and while the 564th Hussar Regiment had jumped in at an unconventional point, there had still been several hours of high speed transit from the JumpShip to orbit, a brief moment of respite when they arrived in orbit to mount their ‘Mechs, vehicles or assume assault positions for the PBIs – and then they had broken orbit and crossed the atmospheric boundary. The plan was for an initial portion of the Hussars to land, secure the Drop Zone and surrounds, and then the “main force” would land to start the assault proper.
Sadly, the 564th, and the whole of the Sirius Division, had spent too much time duelling “ronin” or undertaking exercises and too little time having unexpected changes to plans – while chaos and confusion make for good training for combat, they make it harder to compete in standardised assessment exercises for a unit to look good when reporting “up the chain”. The DCMS Regulars sadly recognised this and had read the same books as those who set the SLDF’s training command. The DCMS had also trained to sow chaos and confusion to anyone trying to follow the SLDF primer too closely.
The 3rd Galedon Regulars aerospace fighters attacked the falling DropShips, or at least they tried to. Fortunately, the Sirius Division had thought about this and sent their own fighters to guard the vulnerable DropShips – one squadron flew ahead to look at the ground and shoot up any AAA, the other two were on escort duty. While it made good tactical sense for the two squadrons of fighters to be in a “loose escort” pattern, it meant the ground pounders looking at their vid-feeds on the drop could not see the fighters tying up nearly all of the attackers, but it meant they could see the handful that “leaked through”. The only thing that kept morale up was seeing the DropShips’ own weapons reach out and destroy the leakers.
What Kerensky and his comrades could not see was the combined force of 6th/14th Benjamin Regulars aerospace forces striking at the practically unescorted “rear” DropShips still in orbit – with only the two fighters from the Union class ship carrying the third company of Kerensky’s battalion – the Dictator Command and Colossus class DropShips carrying the regimental and battalion HQs and the whole 3rd Battalion were very vulnerable. The Union and their fighters manoeuvred wildly to try to protect the more vulnerable Dictator but the DCMS pilots knew their job and focused their fire on the command ship. The battle raged in a wild maelstrom of muzzle flashes from autocannon, missiles streaking past in clouds and, every so often, a brighter flash when a fighter was destroyed, or a DropShip took a hit.
It was never clear whether the attack was a deliberate kamikaze or just an unfortunate clash but the heavy Slayer fighter slammed into the Union DropShip with a huge amount of “delta-V”, the Union was caught mid-twist and lost control, slamming into the Dictator they had been trying to shield. There were no survivors.
The Benjamin aerospace forces pulled back having destroyed two out of the three orbiting DropShips and aware that the rest of the 160th BattleMech Division was on their way steadily from the Zenith Jump Point and due in just a few short days. The DCMS force had decided to fight and the SLDF had handed them an opportunity to destroy them piece-meal!
Royal, planetary surface
8th November 2729 0800
Drop Zone BLUE FIVE was actually scheduled to be the Hussars’ main Drop Zone, the name a legacy of rapidly formulated plans and deemed sufficiently vague, alongside the other Drop Zone codenames for the secondary and forward/flanking positions which were also made up of somewhat random colour-number combinations. SLS Nothe Fort landed at BLUE FIVE and it was only when Kerensky and the others disembarked, and he tried to contact the higher echelons of the force that they discovered their loss.
“What do you mean, Sulla-56 is *gone*?!” Kerensky could not keep the shock from his voice, “why are we only hearing this now? Who is in command?”
“Gone as in gone, the whole ship just blew up! Firefly-247 too. We’ve only just got comms back online here ourselves” came the response from aboard the now-lonely Colossus still in orbit “we can’t make it down either, we need time to repair before we risk hitting atmo. Right now, you’re the senior officer in olive drab Mr Kerensky – find us somewhere safe to put down and finish the mission!”
Again, Kerensky managed to keep his swearing sufficiently quiet that the microphone did not catch the stream of Russian, French, German and English. Having taken his moment, Kerensky switched the frequencies on his Orator-5K to include the entire landed task force: “All units, this is Kerensky, the op is a bust! We’ve lost the Sulla and the Firefly, Ada and 3rd Battalion are ok but can’t land for a while. We don’t have a FRAG-PLAN for this, and we’ve lost coordination from above – check in by company and let me know if you landed on-target.”
Bravo Company, long time friendly rivals of his own Alpha Company, were the first to check in and Kerensky was pleased to hear they had got down fine and in position between him and the main force of Kurita ‘Mechs. 2nd Battalion had also managed to make it down in reasonable order, their transporting trio of Lion class DropShips depositing the mixed companies along the other main threat axis and on two key pieces of high ground.
“Well, at least that’s something,” Kerensky was startled at the voice, not one he recognised and seemingly coming from inside his cockpit rather than over the comms.
“Ach,” another voice, “it’s still too easy.” That voice was female. “I could do this with half what he has.”
“Shut up, Natasha,” first voice, male, again, “let Alek fight.”
Being careful to turn off his comm suite, Kerensky took a moment to assess the larger scale map and where the friendly icons had been placed by the small staff he had backing him up aboard the Nothe Fort, and rather pointedly asked “Who are you? What are you doing in my ‘Mech? And… just what the…”
“Now, now,” he was interrupted by the male voice, “no showing swearing, this will be posted on a Family Friendly site rather than 4Chan.”
The female voice now cut in, “Really, you’re breaking the Fourth Wall this early? Anyway, Alek, I am Natasha Kerensky – the Black Widow – oh, wait, you won’t have heard of me, anyway, I am… your great great great etc granddaughter. And this is Ulric Kerensky, he’s a generation or two younger than me. You keep your eyes on the tactical displays and don’t worry about what we look like, we can sort all of that after you become a Hero of the Star League and survive this cluster-frag."
