Chapter 1: Lord of the Crucis MarchIn an Inner Sphere kingdom, a ruler did appear.
Born with a secret power so great, alone she stayed in fear.
Although the force was well hidden, one day she let it go.
And whole worlds will be covered in eternal ice and snow.
Yet if this day should come, hope should not be forsworn.
This fate can be avoided - and a new one born.
Hark well then, that for all of our Trothkins skill at war,
Love by far, is the greatest power of all.
[[Poem recorded as final vision of Oathmaster Johnathan Drummond - May 14 3034]]
[[Accessed Khan Severen Leroux - August 18 3053]]
[[RESTRICTED; KHAN, SAKHAN, LOREMASTER AND OATHMASTER EYES ONLY, August 18 3053]]New Avalon
Crucis March
Federated Commonwealth
April 03 - 3053“Ardan said that you wanted to see me?”
Hanse Davion glanced up from the neat piles of paperwork that covered his desk, nodding to the figure at the door and gesturing to one of the seats opposite him. The other, dressed in the standard duty uniform of an AFFC MechWarrior entered at the invitation, returning the salutes offered by the two soldiers from the 1st Davion Guards standing guard as he did so before they exited the room, closing the door behind them.
Hanse set aside the files he had been working on, gathering them up and locking them in one of the secure desk draws. Opening another draw, he retrieved a new package of hard copy printouts and folders, pausing for but a moment to reflect on what these innocuous looking folders meant before he dropped them onto his desk and watched Victor sit down. An unexpected surge of pride hit him then, as he studied the easy and confident way his Son now wore his uniform – or more specifically, the way he wore everything that came with it, visible and invisible both.
Victor was no child anymore, but Hanse couldn’t help but study the man his Son had become seemingly overnight. Thrown into the deep end after graduation from the Nagelring four years ago, Victor had gone from a green soldier filled with that dangerous mix of youthful ignorance, impatience and invulnerability into a hArdaned combat veteran tempered in the fires of war.
Like any parent, Hanse quietly hated the loss of his son’s innocence … but at the same time, he couldn’t help but feel a surging pride in the fact that allowed a chance to sink or swim entirely on his own, that Victor had thrived in perhaps the ultimate test of a person’s character. He had taken up the crushing burden of having people put their lives in his hands knowing that he would probably get at least some of them killed – yet he had not let it crush him or distort him. Far too many soldiers he knew had come back from the hell of war shattered and twisted mockeries who of what they had been beforehand.
And far too many soldiers, would never have the chance to come back at all.
The Clan Invasion had been a catastrophe – there was not really any other way to put it. Not just his wife’s half of the Federated Commonwealth, but also the Draconis Combine and the Free Rasahlahuge Republic. The former had lost almost a third of its worlds and almost had its capital overrun, the latter had been all but wiped out and existed now as little more than a sad joke, a footnote in a history book. And yet, the Clans had been stopped for now, honour bound thanks to the sacrifices of ComStar and bloodied heavily by their ComGuards. They would not advance further for another thirteen years, time enough for the vastly larger industrial powers of the Inner Sphere to catch their breath, rebuild, unify after a fashion until finally they were ready to counter attack with overwhelming force and fury.
Such was the theory anyway.
Hanse couldn’t help but glance away from Victor for a moment as he settled himself, to take in once more the massive map pinned to one wall of his office that he still found more useful than any number of holotanks or computer screens. Over five meters across, the star map was festooned with various pins, sticky notes and scribbled markings showing unit locations and strengths, logistical webs, Jumpship chains and other various tell tail signs of an energetic contest between nation states to those who knew how to read them. A few months ago, such a map would have been focused at the ‘top’ of the Inner Sphere, where the daggers of the Clan Invasion corridors had become a depressingly permanent seeming border on the newest generation of such maps hanging in varied war rooms and command centres across known space. This map however, was focused on almost the exact opposite side of the Sphere, with red and green lines stabbing out of the gold of the Federated Suns half of the Commonwealth deep into the jade emerald of the Capellan Confederation.
The fifth and smallest of the Successor States, that crazy idiot Romano had scoffed at the threat the Clans when the damning evidence of their prowess and power had been presented to them all on Outreach. While he could appreciate from a ruler’s perspective that she saw no reason to bleed for her enemies, especially given that she was under no direct threat from the Clans, he had thought it blindingly obvious that it was in her interests to not to anything to compromise the Commonwealths unwilling defence of her realm. Even if only to ensure her various enemies did the maximum amount of damage to each other while she used the relative peace to rebuild her still shattered nation from the wreckage of the 4th Succession War – it was plain common sense.
He had clearly underestimated her insanity. Or perhaps, it would be more accurate to think that he had overestimated the control her various retainers and family had over her decision making, compared to her father Maximilian. Because not even he would have been so bold as to overtly order the assassination of one of Hanse closest advisors on his own capital world.
Granted, given her and Justin’s history, she had probably seen it as a strictly Capellan event; a strike against Saint Ives and her ‘traitor’ Sister Candace, leader of the FedCom aligned breakaway Capellan region of the Saint Ives Compact. And granted, she also had no way of knowing that the Clan Invasion would come to a sudden halt shortly after, meaning that suddenly she would have the near undivided attention of the Armed Forces of the Federated Commonwealth.
But even Romano should have damn well known that when predicting the reactions of an enemy, it didn’t really matter what you thought, but what the other person might think of your actions.
The assassin who had killed Justin had also wounded Candace, her Sister and Justins wife in the same attack. It had been out of respect for them that for the longest time Hanse had limited his confrontations with the Confederation to defensive actions and limited objective raids that maintained the status quo left after the 4th Succession War. He knew perfectly well that Candace saw her Compact as the ultimate hedge; a lifeboat for the best of Capellan culture and society should the Confederation have been truly shattered during or after the 4th Succession War. He also knew full well that Candace truly loved the Confederation –through rose tinted glasses, but loved it none the less- and did not want to see its ‘good’ parts either destroyed or simply swallowed up by another state… but for all that he could respect that, Hanse had finally reached his limit.
Romano and her brood were mad dogs, and you did not negotiate or treat with mad dogs precisely because they would lash out at everything and everyone without reason or sanity. Hanse had seen the same intelligence reports Candace had, he knew the suffering the Capellan people were going through that made even the worst excesses of the Combine look almost civilized as she punished them for her own family’s failures year after year. The sheer randomness of a paranoid dictator with the authority and firepower to render entire planets lifeless if she so choose simply could not be tolerated anymore – and after such an open challenge to his own realm, Hanse had decided that enough was enough.
The Liao family on Sian was nothing less than an existential threat to the future of the Federated Commonwealth. While the FedCom borders with the Combine had been heavily stripped back in a mutual drawdown mirrored by the DCMS to free up troops to face the Clans with great success due to the wary trust born of a mutual understanding of their strategic situations, he had been forced to leave hundreds of badly needed Regiments in place in the Capellan and Sarna Marchs as a hedge against the Confederation, lest Romano sense weakness and look to strike and regain worlds she had lost - to say nothing of the constant insurgent activity she continued to sponsor. Justin’s assassination had simply been a wake-up call … one that had come too late. And so as soon as Candace had been well enough for him to visit, under a news blackout that stated she had in fact died, he had visited her and had a long talk. And by talk, he meant that he had issued what amounted to an ultimatum and she had agreed … although to her credit, not without doggedly pulling some painful concessions out of him and his Wife in a way that earned his grudging respect once again. Most of the Sarna March was to be returned to the Confederation, albeit under continuing Federated Suns law until major reform could be completed in the Confederation, was a heady price to pay … but as he gave much, so did Candice give much in return.
Six months from that meeting and Romano, her Consort and her Children were merely slowly fading memories and pages in history books – and good riddance! Candace now sat on the Celestial Throne of Sian as Regent for her son, Kai who was expected to take the throne within another five years after Candace finished starting the hard work of rebuilding what Hanse had shattered twenty years ago. It was early days yet to be sure, but all signs looked remarkably promising; it seemed the people of the Confederation did appreciate sane and stable leadership after all and Candace had been remarkably competent in cutting out all of those who may have been loyal to the old regime. The treaties that would bring the Confederation into the Federated Commonwealth alliance as an associated state were in their final drafting stages even now and were expected to be signed early next year. Already, planning was underway for hurried joint military exercises with some of the more sane units of the CCAF - and the planning for limited numbers of Capellan troops to be deployed to the Clan Front by late next year along with the redeployment of many AFFS units from the Capellan March, was causing Marshal Nondi Steiner to actually smile once in a while back on Tharkard – an event about as rare as a warm Tharkard winter. Map lines were even now being redrawn across the Inner Sphere to show a large bulk of his wife’s ‘Wedding Present’ being nominally subsumed back into the Confederation – even if little to nothing would change on those worlds besides flags, anthems and holidays, as Candace took on the daunting task of restricting Capellan society into something rather more acceptable to her new allies before any real turnover would happen.
The coup had been surprisingly bloodless on the whole; a handful of Capellan units who would certainly not have approved of the new order had been dogpiled by elite FedCom RCTs in something more along the lines of a live fire exercise for new Mechwarriors and prototype next generation Mech Designs starting to come off the production line, than a struggle between great nation states. Many other people had been quietly ‘eliminated’ across the Confederation in dark alleys and at the end of sniper rifles to be sure, but ultimately a Successor State had fallen in less than four days with less than ten thousand people dead. And with that boil lanced, Hanse had been able to start giving more time to other matters that had built up over the last year.
Such as Victor.
Turning back to face his Son from the map on the wall, Hanse appraised him once more before nodding, and leaning forward.
“Thank you for coming in on such short notice” Hanse started, before he paused and frowned slightly, annoyed that suddenly he was finding himself speaking so formally to his son.
Then again, it was a sort of formal occasion.
“It’s fine” Victor smiled easily as he leaned back. “All I had today were more staff meetings with Galen, then going over the results of the last training exercises with the staff of the Cavalry”.
“Oh? How did the last exercise go then?” Hanse asked, his interest suddenly piqued ... and Victor frowned at him as he noted the twitching smile trying to work its way onto his Fathers face.
“You knew”. It wasn’t quite an accusation.
“Of course I did” Hanse let the smirk bloom. “Who do you think gave Chapman the tools for the job? He and Banzai were working on this for months. Personally I thought it was a ludicrous idea, but once again we have been shown to never doubt the power of a mad scientist with a blank chequebook”.
“Well he certainly hasn’t lost his touch” Victor offered him a wry smile. “Chapman managed to get in, run our ‘Cluster’ around in circles while he accomplished his objectives, then disengage and get his main unit back out when we ran back to stop his assault force”. Victor shrugged slightly. “Granted we were fighting strictly by Clan tactics and wouldn’t have come out to play that way normally, but given the odds against them, I have to admit Marshal Devers was rather … annoyed”.
“But you were not?” Victor again shrugged.
“Yes, but to be perfectly honest, the 10th probably needed a good kick in the pants. Some of the troops have been getting a little too cocky after all the ass-kicking’s we’ve delivered over the last year”.