----- 1 Month Later -----
Date: August 20, 3019
Location: Salem
Title: Desk Jockeys
Author: Joel Bancroft-Connors
Type: Sourcebook Fiction (Hexpack Promotion 1)
Synopsis: Captain Max Masterson is the CO of the Fire Masters mercenary company. While their employers’ regular troops tie down the planetary garrison - a Davion-contracted mercenary battalion (Harlock’s Warriors) - on the other side of the planet, the Fire Masters plan to attack the General Motors factory, overwhelm its corporate security company, and make off with some easy loot. Wilkins, the XO, is paranoid of a trap, but Masterson dismisses his misgivings as excessively cautious.
At the GM complex, the security company scrambles. Among their members are Jake, Carl, Sam, and Gus - gunners in some of the factory’s heavy turrets. As the lead element of the Fire Masters comes into sight, the turrets concentrate fire and vaporize Wilkins’ Phoenix Hawk. Masterson orders his remaining troops to engage the turrets, while the gunners call their mechanized infantry auxiliaries and artillery into play.
Minutes later, Masterson’s Marauder is crippled and sprawled in the street, and the shattered remnants of the Fire Masters are fleeing the battle site, trying to get out of the range of the defending artillery. Jake whoops with victory, calling out “Score one for the desk jockeys!”
Notes: Interestingly, the House Davion sourcebook, with an in-universe date of 3028, refers to the GM factory on Salem as “new,” despite it being at least a decade old by then. I suppose compared to the centuries-old factories on other worlds, a decade does seem pretty young. (The publication date of the House Davion sourcebook is a point of speculation. At times, it makes references to 3026 as a time in the future, implying a 3025 publication date like the rest of the House sourcebooks. However, two citations from the ComStar author are dated 3028. My guess is that the book was prepared for publication in 3025, but held back from release until 3028 at some point prior to the Steiner-Davion wedding on Terra, without updating the sections written from a 3025 point-of-reference.)
The House Davion sourcebook doesn’t state what the Salem factory makes in 3025, but Objective Raids lists its output as primarily Wheeled APCs and internal combustion engines for APCs, Pegasus hovercraft, and Partisan tanks. The Salem plant grows massively during the Jihad, expanding its product lines to make main battle tanks, all manner of APCs, WiGEs and Battle Armor, according to Objectives: Federated Suns.
Circa 3025, Harlock’s Warriors are a Medium-weight Regular regiment with a contract running through July 3026. Their FM: Mercs (Revised) entry notes that by 3020, the Warriors had full armor and infantry support, and specialized in gladiatorial-style combat.
The identity of the Fire Masters’ employer is never stated, but given its location, the odds are that they have a contract with the Capellan Confederation. This is a fairly deep raid into the Federated Suns, striking across the border into the Crucis March, rather than just hitting the Capellan March. The distance from the Capellan border might explain why the Fire Masters appear to have received no Maskirovka intel support. One would think that any facility being raided would have had at least some groundwork done by intel assets onworld. The Fire Masters knew how many armored vehicles and infantry were in the corporate security detachment, so why were the mercenaries caught by surprise by the gun turrets. Those should have been visible from casual observation by whatever team ascertained the quantity of mobile defenders. Chalk one more instance up of the Mad Max-era Maskirovka being utterly gormless. When did Alex Mallory/Alexi Malenkov infiltrate the Mask, anyways?
Despite the apparent failure of the raid, it may have served the purpose of a dry run for McCarron's Armored Cavalry's "Long March" campaign in 3022-3023. In 3019, Davion mercenaries were hitting the Confederation hard, striking St. Ives with Tristram's Terrorists and Kingston's Commandos, so this may have been a quickly planned retaliatory strike. The House Liao sourcebook notes that McCarron's raids were aided by timely information from local agents of the Maskirovka. Perhaps the failure of the Fire Masters' raid on Salem brought home the need for close Maskirovka coordination in support of deep raids.
This story is attached to Hexpack Promotion 1, which provided guidance for including turrets (using the new construction rules) in BattleTech play. I’ve had a fondness for turrets ever since reading the ruleset in McCarron’s Armored Cavalry, which featured a fiendish lineup of heavy turrets including: The Mosquito Tower (10 AC/2s); the Archery Artillery Bunker (7 Long Toms); the Primary Missile Hell (9 LRM-20s), and my favorite, the 'Mech Trap (a pit with a concealed cover – ‘Mechs could fall in and either land on mines, be cooked by a ring of flamers, or have infantry dropping 100-point AeroTech bombs down a chute on them).