Trials of Possession
Freedom, Isle of Skye
Lyran Commonwealth
8th December 3119 Following successful Trials of Possession conducted by Clan Coyote against six Rasalhague Dominion systems and the successful seizure of Yed Posterlor, Baxter and New Wassen Clan Coyote surprise everyone with an early morning assault on the Isle of Skye system of Freedom which was defended by a combined Lyran Commonwealth, Star League Defence Force, and mercenary force. The Coyotes deploy their entire Coyote Prime Galaxy supported by an entire star of WarShips, a rare mass deployment for the Clan which usually deployed its WarShips in single deployments.
While the world of Freedom was on the border of Clan Wolf it was not seen as a priority target of the Clans as Clan Coyote and the Rasalhague Dominion which were two Warden Clans while the Jade Falcons and Hell’s Horses were more interested in charging deeper into the Isle towards Hesperus II and Skye itself.
At and near the main system jump points a pitched battle between defending and attacking WarShips breaks out as soon as the Coyotes attack. Four WarShips jump into the Nadir point ambushing the two SLDF WarShips based there, in a mass attack with fighters, DropShips and weapons from the WarShips themselves. In the attack an Essex-class Destroyer, the SLS Loch Lomund, and a Dante II-class Frigate, the SLS Hamburg are overwhelmed by the attacks with both ships destroyed. As the four WarShips move to secure the Zenith point the Coyotes Potemkin-class Troop Cruiser along with a dozen JumpShips enters the system carrying the ground forces. During their defence of the planet the Lyran and SLDF forces have destroyed the Spirit of the Sky, a Liberator-class Cruiser, crippled a second WarShip and heavily damaged two others while securing the main jump points.
The ground-based defenders have two-and-a-half days to prepare for the onslaught from Clan Coyote’s armada which has almost four dozen DropShips and the Potemkin-class Troop Cruiser Cordoba. Duke Everett Gunther the leader of Freedom orders all Lyran aerospace assets to stop the invaders deploying two wings of aerospace fighters and six DropShips, the 208th Hussar Regimental Brigade’s commander General Amelia-Rose Knott advises against throwing everything at the incoming Clansmen but agrees to support the Lyran defenders sending two more aerospace fighter wings to join the Lyrans. Of the four mercenary commands on the planet only the Wolf’s Dragoons Alpha Regiment has enough aerospace fighters to be of any use in supporting the fight, the Dragoons who are under Lyran contract agree to support the defence of the planet. On the planet Duke Gunter calls for support from the Isle of Skye and the SLDF.
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If it were possible, it looked like you could step from one aerospace fighter to the next in the space near to Freedom. “Dragoons and SLDF forces you have the heaviest fighters, you will launch a strike and open up the wings, this will hopefully allow our DropShips to get to the WarShip and their DropShips and blunt this invasion before it begins.” Admiral Griedge Tylinski the Lyran commander ordered the aerospace fighters with them.
“Admiral, once again the Wolf’s Dragoons protest this in the strictest terms, we are under contract not cannon fodder.”
“You Dragoons should have thought about that when you didn’t deploy a WarShip to the front-lines!” Tylinski commented “the attack goes ahead as ordered, punch us a hole Major Koslov, punch us a hole and the assault DropShips, yours included, can make a difference in this fight.” The Lyran said, the Dragoon fighter pilots were angry at being up front with the SLDF troops while the house troops who were defending their own territory took up the rear with the DropShips. The fact was the strategy was sound the Lyran fighters were lighter and suited for close in dogfighting which would take place once the two forces had met, the SLDF and Dragoon fighters on the other hand were configured for strike missions intending on causing as much damage as they were able knocking down as many enemies down as possible.
Lieutenant Derek McClean was a pilot of the Wolf’s Dragoons and flew a Clan built Scytha Heavy Fighter, the ninety-five-ton aerospace fighter had been captured from Clan Smoke Jaguar during the Battle of Luthien and several pilots had flown the aircraft in the last fifty years. His aerospace fighter had been configured in the alternate B configuration with five large pulse lasers up front he bore down on one Coyote fighter burning it from stem to stern with green pulse laser fire destroying the craft. He then spun his craft to the port engaging another craft as it flew past, he could barely tell the models he was firing only that his targeting systems were identifying them as hostile. The furball had disrupted the lines of the Coyotes enough that the Lyran fighters and DropShips were now moving in, an egg-shaped Excalibur-class Pocket WarShip moved through the middle of the Lyran formation heading straight for the Potemkin accelerating beyond the Lyran fighters and DropShips. “What the hell are they doing!” He called out turning to join the charge which was most likely going to be a suicide charge. “Breaker One, what are they doing?”
“Unknown Four…” his flight leader began to reply before the Lyran channel broke over all frequencies as the Excalibur’s missile launchers fired. The Excalibur Pocket WarShip was configured with six capital missile launchers.
“All allied units: Vitas, I repeat VITAS!” Someone McClean guessed was on DropShip called out on his HUD the Scytha’s computed recognised the command as one agreed with the Lyrans before the battle began. VITAS was a code for a nuclear launch order.
“Oh my god…” McClean whispered his eyes transfixed on the missiles as they flew towards the Potemkin, the Troop Cruiser engaged the DropShip at the same time with multiple naval particle cannon shots. The capital man-made lighting shots lit up the space in between the two ships and the Excalibur was shredded in a second, no-one on board would have had a chance to evacuate. McClean was not watching the Excalibur though instead even as his Scytha was targeted by missiles itself he had his eyes on the six capital missiles burning towards the Potemkin. The two Kraken Telescopic Capital Missiles struck their target first causing heavy armour damage but they were not the missiles that would deliver the real blow, moments after the Kraken hits all four missiles following them slammed into the hull of the Potemkin.
Nuclear warheads while rarely used in ground combat and controlled by multiple weapon conventions in space there was no such restrictions. This was due to the weapons not having a huge blast radius or leaving radioactive residue for decades afterwards due to the lack of atmosphere, instead the multiple impacts channelled their destructive force through the remaining armour on Potemkin and into the ship. Nuclear weapons were known as WarShip killers and rightfully so the explosive blasts hit the atmosphere inside the ship and lit the entire 1.5 million tonne WarShip up from stem to stern. Along its entire 1.5 kilometres of length parts of the ship were being blown clear of his huge rounded hull as the explosions tried to escape the metal hull. “Oh my god…” McClean continued to repeat looking at the dying WarShip, he had not even known that the Lyrans had nuclear weapons.
“MCCLEAN! PILOT YOUR FRACKING FIGHTER!” Simone Montour shouted through his comms snapping him out of his shock he saw his fighter had taken several missile hits but its heavy armour had protected him he spun his aerospace fighter along its axis and boosted away from the dying Potemkin.
“Did you see that?” He called back heading back to the other fights the destruction of the WarShip had shocked both sides into a general retreat.
“We all saw it McClean” Koslov said speaking up for the others “we now have to hope they haven’t made a mistake; we took heavy losses in this fight; we have the forces on planet to hold them for months.” He said within hours Koslov was proven correct as the Canis Latrans, a massive Mississippi-class Battleship which had been damaged in the initial fight but was still fully operational, boosted from the jump point.
With the Coyotes offensive blunted temporarily the Lyran, SLDF and mercenary forces prepare for a surge from the Coyotes when the Canis Latrans arrives. During the two days burn in the forces on planet learn that there will be no reinforcements coming into the system as two Mississippi-class Battleships of Clan Jade Falcon had jumped into the Gladius system and were threatening to burn towards the Isle of Skye’s only shipyard tying up the two Mjolnir-class Battle-cruisers based there. The two Jade Falcon WarShips do not have ground forces with them but their presence in Gladius is clearly one to tie up Lyran forces and threaten the shipyards in aid of Clan Coyote. It was impossible to know if this had been a preplanned move by the Falcons but it clearly is intended to tie up the naval defences and weaken the response that could be made towards Freedom.
Back in the Hell’s Horses Occupation Zone two Clusters worth of Hell’s Horses troops are transferred to Jade Falcon control both former Hell’s Horses units are picked up by JumpShip from the OZ and head straight to the Cameron system where they drop on top of the First Coventry Cuirassiers RCT. The two new Falcon clusters wishing to prove themselves throw their units straight into the well-prepared Coventry unit which has a three-regiment strong brigade of armour waiting for them. The Horde clusters were designed to cause trouble for these units moving quickly and in between armour units the Hell’s Horses despite having many vehicles themselves use inferno rounds and flamers to great effect causing heavy damage. While it may sound almost foolish the now former Hell’s Horses armour warriors know that their time as warriors might be short-lived as the Falcons do not respect armour crews like the Hell’s Horses.
While this does not appear linked to the ongoings in the Freedom system Lyran Intelligence Command (LIC) learn through Clan Sea Fox that the Hell’s Horses agreed to send troops to the Jade Falcon Clan in exchange for the plans to the Coyotes newest OmniMech the Sojourner, a mobile sixty-ton battle line design. The Sea Foxes are willing to broker the information with the Lyrans because the Coyotes had cut them out of the trade of the new OmniMech and had rebuffed their attempts to gain control of the design.
On the morning of the fourteenth the Canis Latrans approaches Freedom along with a protective screen of DropShips and fighters. The Lyrans and their allies rise to meet them once more but unlike the commander of the Potemkin-class Troop Cruiser the commander of the Mississippi-class Battleship takes no chances and engages the DropShips and fighters with everything at its disposal at the longest ranges possible. The engagement is extremely one sided with the Inner Sphere forces unable to close on the Battleship and stop the ground forces at the same time.
With an entire galaxy streaming to the ground things go from bad to worse as the Coyotes broadcast to the planet below that the nuclear attack against the Morning Star required a ransom to be paid. They broadcast planet-wide that the main planetary spaceport and the Duke’s personal estate were forfeit along with everything on those grounds and that everyone at these places had eight hours to evacuate before they would be destroyed. One minute to the eight hours mark the Canis Latrans moved over the planetary spaceport and blasted it from space with its naval particle cannons, the huge battleship then moved over the Duke’s residence and flattened it from orbit. The explosions from the two strikes are seen for several kilometres in several direction, following the assault the battleship informs the planet below that it will not commit further attacks against the planet itself unless it is attacked.’ The year would end with Freedom being an embattled world with both sides attempting to reinforce their position with neither able to establish superiority.
System Defence Station One
Moon of Tybalt, Terra Firma
Liberty EDZ, Star League Protectorate
17th December 3119 It was impossible for the Titan shipyards to produce enough Casper WarShips for every system of the Star League Protectorate instead the Star League Protectorate defences was being pursued from a second angle. With worlds that had lesser threats towards them the Casper II system was being deployed it consisted of moon-based stations and space stations both of which could launch drone small craft which would provide support for planetary defences and a nasty surprise for enemy forces.
On the airless moon of Tybalt, the Star League Protectorate Defences had built a base capable of supporting two hundred personnel, a squadron of Dragau DropShips and eighteen Cockatrice Drone Small Craft while in orbit of the moon a Drake System Defence System (SDS) Control Station would extend the range that the drones could be deployed. Near Tybalt the SLS Wasp, a Potemkin-class Troop Cruiser, which was controlling the station coming online while its support ships the SLS Balder Viking and the SLS Ethan Allen making the final touches to the Drake and delivering the drones that would be based there. The additions of the Drake, Dragau and the Cockatrice gave the Terra Firma Casper II fleet more teeth than previously Casper II fleets. To further reinforce the Terra Firma defences naval weapon emplacements on Tybalt were planned as were more Drake stations and additional fighters, small craft, and DropShips.
Trial of Possession
Ferris, Raven Alliance
Periphery
21st December 3119 From New Barcella the Fourteenth Nova Cat Vision Cluster had travelled through the periphery to the world of Ferris in the Raven Alliance where the Snow Ravens and the native company United Outworlders Corporation had constructed a factory capable of producing the fifty-five-ton Wusun OmniFighters. When they had arrived in the system the Nova Cats had requested and they were granted safcon which had allowed them to land on the world unmolested.
Once on the planet Star Colonel Lucian Nova Cat had met with Star Colonel Ryuzo Shu the Elemental commander of the Eighteenth Raven Battle Cluster. Lucian had declared his intention to seize a production run of Wusun OmniFighters from the planet’s factory which Ryuzo had initially refused…
“That was until you, stupid idiot agreed to their Ransom” Lucian cursed himself running his Shadow Cat III OmniMech through the foliage on Ferris. The foliage was not normal trees instead while they were as tall as trees instead of brown wood and green or orange foliage these had completely black with blue, green, and purple bulbs which produced light. “Well, you’re not getting me today” he cursed twisting the Shadow Cat’s torso and letting rip with the arm mounted LB 10X-AC equipped there blasting the chasing Wusun. The Raven Ransom was if the Nova Cats lost the battle, then the entire Fourteenth Vision would become a Snow Raven unit, while Lucian had been rejected at the Grand Melee his father had been a Nova Cat and his mother had brought him to the Clan from St Ives, it was his home.
Today he was going to defend his home and win the battle “One-One, to Command Star I’ve got a pair of Wusuns tracking me through the Blue Forest, status.” He asked realizing he had used a contraction after he used it. He had been separated from the lead Trinary when his star had been ambushed by an aerospace fighter star, he had ordered them to scatter and regroup but his path had brought him into an enemy vehicle unit and then more aerospace fighters.
“We are holding Star Colonel, Assault hit them full force at the same time as the Snow Tigers, the Ravens tried to counter us with fighters but we have them boxed.”
“Roger, I am…” he paused for a moment turning and blasting the lead Wusun with another salvo of autocannon fire, following up with lasers and then finally an SRM salvo as the two craft strafed overhead. Fire hitting the underside of the fighters brought one craft down and crippled a second. “two Wusuns out of the fight, I’m heading back.”
“Star Colonel…” his XO interrupted
“Frack it Jack, I am heading back” he repeated speaking properly “no-one gives a damn.”
“We care Star Colonel and so do you, remember that, things come around in their own time.” He said Jack was six years older than Lucian and a freeborn warrior like Lucian, unlike Lucian he did not have the blood that he had and would never have a chance to fight for a Bloodname.
“Roger” he answered running the Shadow Cat III back towards Nova Cat lines when he arrived, he entered at the far-right flank of the battle and saw the units were adhering to Zellbrigen, the Clan duelling rules. “This is Star Colonel Lucian to the Cougar; you are challenged to a Circle of Equals…” he said seeing an unengaged Snow Raven light OmniMech.
“Neg, let us end this Star Colonel Lucian, this is Star Colonel Ryuzo Shu you are so challenged.” A booming voice broke in leaping from the Cougar came five Elemental warriors quickly closing the distance between them.
“Accepted” Lucian said dodging his Shadow Cat III to the right leaning with his autocannon towards the Elemental point filling the air with munitions several of the brown Snow Raven suits were battered by autocannon pellets but they kept coming. As his Shadow Cat moved missiles impacted on the side and back of the OmniMech further damaging armour plates on the medium Mech’s back and left shoulder. Lucian twisted the Shadow Cat’s fleet while continuing to circle the Elemental’s position a Mech could easily run away from the Elementals but that would make the trial pointless. Instead, he allowed them to stay in range the autocannon clicked as it reloaded and he fired another salvo at the Elementals, as the autocannon munitions flew in on the Elementals while they leapt through the air trying to close on the OmniMech. At the crest of their leap another ten short range missiles launched from the suits heading for Lucian’s Mech, Lucian decided to throw off the Elementals by turning straight into the missiles ducking the head of the Mechs cockpit under the missiles. As he did his own short-range missiles locked on the battle armour point and the launcher sent its four missiles towards the Elemental point, he also pulled the trigger on the large laser which was built into the Mech’s torso. Due to the speed of the Shadow Cat Lucian had outfitted the medium design with an Improved Heavy Large Laser which was mounted above the missile launcher, heavy large laser was a double-barrelled laser, the opal laser tore through one of the Elementals tearing the trooper in half.
Now facing the remaining four Elementals Lucian braced seeing the suits land then launch into the air bringing them within range. Lucian reacted quickly as they closed with the right arm of the Shadow Cat III swatting one of the four battle armoured troopers out of the air sending it flying. The trooper slammed into the ground and flipped several times across the ground and did not get back up. The remaining three troopers latched onto the OmniMech and fired their arm mounted lasers to damage the Shadow Cat III’s armour. Inside the cockpit of the Mech Lucian tried to swat the Elementals using the OmniMech’s arm but did not hit any of the three troopers, instead of allowing them to continue to attack the Shadow Cat he brought the right arm across the OmniMech’s chest and threw the Mech forward rolling onto the ground over the arm. One of the scrambling Elementals were crushed under the forty-five-ton OmniMech’s sprawling form while the other two Elementals jumped clear. Lucian continued to roll his OmniMech bringing the legs back up under it and standing it back up, the roll had caused more armour damage but nothing critical, he brought the OmniMech back under control and spied the remaining two Elementals but before he fired on them, he saw that his comm. unit was active and he flicked the switch.
“Star Colonel this is Elemental Pacheco you just crushed Star Colonel Shu; you have won this Circle of Equals.”
“Elemental Pacheco I accept your surrender, you fought well and I claim you and your point mate as Isorla, you will serve Clan Nova Cat now.” He said seeing that the battle around them had almost grinded to a halt as the two Star Colonels fought, more Nova Cats appeared to be active than Snow Ravens and their commander was dead, the Nova Cats had secured victory, and the aerospace fighter production which was the goal.
Pirate Raid Aftermath
Sierra, District of Lothario
Free Worlds League
25th December 3119 On the world of Sierra near the border of the Cirincus Federation Phil Langenberg laid flat on the roof of the warehouse he was based on. Langenberg was a former twenty-year veteran Free Worlds League military trooper who had retired and returned to his homeworld joining the local militia as a weekend warrior to supplement his retirement funds. Now in the aftermath of the worse raid he had ever experienced he was probably the only remaining militia trooper and he believed it was his duty to the people of Sierra to gather as much information on the invaders as possible before they either left or they killed him.
On his rooftop he watched the victors at the spaceport through binoculars they had hit in the middle of the night with airstrikes against the local militia’s base which had flattened the Mechbay before a single BattleMech had been able to deploy. The raiders ground forces then had steamrolled into the local mercenary base and dispatched every member of The Green Resistance Battalion including their dependents wiping out the combined arms battalion.
Now Langenberg was watching as the pirates secured and stripped equipment from the space port and the nearby militia base. They appeared to have an entire Battalion of BattleMechs supported by vehicles, and aerospace forces. He had not seen a single aerospace fighter so he believed they had returned to orbit probably to a carrier DropShip as nowhere else on the planet had the defences nor the facilities to support their number. There was nothing special with the vehicles other than they appeared to be from manufacturers that were based across the Inner Sphere and from the Star League-era giving no indication of whom they belonged to.
The strange thing about these invaders were their BattleMechs, the tactics of overwhelming force was nothing new but this Battalion of invaders appeared to use only two designs of BattleMech both of which Langenberg classed in the assault category. There were units in the Inner Sphere like the Davion Assault Guards or the Lyran Royal Guards which were known to have entire regiments of assault machines but pirates rarely had more than a lance of the type of unit. The second strange thing was that he did not recognize either design after twenty years as an infantry trooper Langenberg thought he was familiar with the majority of the Inner Sphere and Clan designs but neither of these he could say for absolutely certainty that he knew where they were from.
The first and more numerous designs was a humanoid design with two boxy but agile looking legs supporting a torso which appeared to be split into three sections in the middle the chest almost looked like the figure “8” with a rounded lower part and a rounded upper chest which blended almost seamlessly with the rounded cockpit. From the just above middle of the “8” in were four missile ports but otherwise the central torso section appeared to lack weapons. On either side of this there were two rectangular side torso which extended from the waist to the shoulders extending beyond the central torso and curved over down the back of the Mech. Unlike the central section these side sections featured two weapon ports which extended from the torso which Langenberg had noted that they were probably medium lasers of some type. The right shoulder section of the torso sported a small turret which appeared to be an anti-missile system. Finally, from the right shoulder another laser extended from the arm’s structure while the arm itself held a large Mech sized sword while the left arm held a Mech sized shield. The BattleMech was like a variant of the Spartan BattleMech manufactured during the days of the original Star League but it was like no production model he had ever seen before.
While the first design was similar to something that Langenberg had seen before the second BattleMech was like nothing he had seen before. The design looked like it was around the same size as the first design but took a different approach, this design featured two heavily armoured legs with the armour angled off in multiple directions. Langenberg was no expert in armour design but he believed that the armour may be a form of stealth armour and he had made such remarks in his logs. These legs were connected to one angled box of a torso which extended forward of the Mech’s body the lower part had long angled armour slabs which angled upwards and supported the low-slung cockpit of the BattleMech. It was possible that the heavily armoured cockpit was even a torso mounded variant but Langenberg was sure that the plates of armour on the front of the design were armoured viewports meaning it was more likely a lower slung cockpit. On top of this cockpit was almost like an angled helmet of a ground trooper again like the leg and torso armour this was angled in various directions and looked like it was designed to deflect radar signals while also acting as the ships sensor suite. Finally, the torso featured what looked like a forward mounted ten-tube long range missile launcher over its left side. Both arms were of a similar design featuring the same angled armour as the rest of the BattleMech, the upper arm sections almost appeared like they had been applied in rectangular sections while the bottom of the arms both ended in full battle fists. Over the left wrist there were two large tubular weapon mounts they featured insulation piping and no obvious vents so Langenberg believed that they were some type of laser weapon probably of the large calibre. On the right arm, like the other arm, the rounded weapon was fitted over the wrist of the Mech and it took the form of a wider tube almost like a box with rounded sides the weapon appeared to have several capacitors attached to it leading Langenberg to believe it was a particle projection cannon of some type.
Neither of the Mechs had any insignia or numbers that Langenberg could make out and both designs featured standard forest/urban camouflage giving no clue to their origins. The only thing that Langenberg had decided was that these Mechs did not belong to the Cinincus Federation, they felt far better maintained and disciplined than anything he had encountered out of the nearby realm. He also could not imagine any mercenary unit other than the Wolf’s Dragoons who could build such a unit so that only left the Lyrans, the Star League or one of the Clans but none of them had motives for striking Sierra. With the defenders destroyed and the planetary HPG disabled the invaders had full control over the local planetary region for nearly a week unlike most raiders they did nor pillage the town instead they only acted if anyone attempted to enter the spaceport. Following the week-long occupation, the pirates pulling out leaving the local population to try and recover from the stunning attack.
