Tamar
Colonel Lloyd McGavin was a retired DCMS officer who, against all odds, formed a unit and turned it into one of the premier light fighters.in the DCMS. Unfortunately for the Colonel, he and his troops were never high on the DCMS support and supply list, and he had to scrap a fight for every ton of armor and ammunition. Hit hard in the first wave of Operation VALKYRIE while on Basiliano, Colonel McGavin retreated to Kufstein, and waited. And kept waiting. As supplies for the 5th Sun Zhang came to Kufstein, very little came to Colonel McGavin. After months of waiting, through the Lull, and with the resumption of hostilities in June, Colonel McGavin was tired of sitting and doing nothing. He had recruited his unit with the intent of using it on the battlefield, and he was going to do just that.
Realizing that the LCAF needed to be distracted, or at least given a few more problems, with the news that the Lyrans were on the offensive, Colonel McGavin took his unit to their waiting jumpships, and left the system. Three weeks later they appeared at a Pirate Point in the Tamar system, and began a high speed drop to the planet surface. Despite being outnumbered, Coloenl McGavin was confident in his mechwarriors abilities. Knowing he could not fight a standup battle, Colonel McGavins troops instead fell back on what they did best, raiding. Landing in the massive Industrial parks outside of Tamar City, they moved towards the industrial section.
Colonel Steven Zaks of the 12th Donegal Guards was caught in a bind. An experienced officer who has served on both Marik and Kurita borders, the 12th Donegal was his first command. His unit, having rotated to Tamar from Barcelona, was quite green, and most of his troops had never fought a unit of the Nightstalkers caliber. Adding to his troubles was the Duke of Tamar, Simon Kelswa. Appearing at the Donegal command post as the Nightstalkers were landing, he demanded that he be placed in command of the defense, if not by his right as a noble but as leader of the Tamar Pact. When Colonel Zaks objected to the presence of the Duke in his command post, it started an argument between the two as to who was in command. Finally losing his temper, Duke Kelswa had Colonel Zaks arrested. While the stunned officer was led off by members of the Duke’s security detail, Duke Kelswa ordere the 12th to find and engage the Nightstalkers. The Nightstalkers had taken advantage of the confusion to charge into the Industrial section, destroying everything in their path. The lances and companies of the 12th moved in cautiously, the thick smoke generated by the burning buildings cut visibility, heat sensors were thrown off by the fires, magnetic sensors could not function because of the buildings.
The engagement soon became a disorganized cat and mouse battle. Lances would appear and disappear like ghosts, lasers and missiles would appear out of the murk in haphazard fashion. When the two sides did get involved in fight, the Combine troops almost always came out of top. Back at the command center, Duke Kelswa was slowly losing what control he had of the situation, issuing a stream of contradictory orders, ignoring situation reports, and generally causing more problems than solving. At one point a lance of Nightstalker mechs had blundered its way to within a few blocks of the command post, and the air was filled with the Dukes cries for reinforcements. The fighting continued throughout the night, the Nightstalkers laying waste to much of the northern sector of the district.
The next morning Lyran reinforcements arrived. Two regiments of armor and two of infantry had made their way to the battlefield. At their head was Kommandant-General Mitch Felspar, Assistant Margrave of the Tamar Theater. When he entered the command center and saw the disorganized chaos that was going one, he asked for Colonel Zaks. When Duke Kelswa appeared and told the General what he had done, Felspar went outside for a few minutes, came back in with a LCAF security detail, and physically pulled Duke Kelswa into a room. When the Duke started to protest his treatment, General Felspar quieted him by threatening to forcibly remove him from the premises.
In the closed room, the General lit into the Duke, making pointed criticism of his conduct during the previous day, including the obvious disorganization as the result of the commands issued. The Duke was not a military man, he was not schooled in the operational arts, he needed to get out of the way and let the men and women of the LCAF do their job. Duke Kelswa was livid at this treatment, and threatened to bring Felspar up on charges, to which Felswpar readily agrred to. Then he would have a public forum to lay bare the events that had occurred in the last day. At the very least the Duke would be put on trial for gross incompetence. Declaring he was looking forward to such a trial, General Felspar made to leave the room, but Duke Kelswa, realizing he had made an error, if not the enormity of it, made quick amends. A few hours later, Colonel Zaks was back in control of the Lyran side of the battle.
Using the low lying smoke to block key positions with the armor, the 12th Donegal began a series of sweeps in the sector. When they ran into a Combine force, they retreated, often enticing the Draconis mechs into a fire sac of tank fire. When the Kuritan troops stopped falling for that ruse, larger groups of combined units began a slow but steady advance, block by block. There was little fighting, but the Night Stalkers did pull back.
Three days later, having destroyed most of the District, the Night Stalkers retreated off planet. Neither side lost much in the way of men and material, the Kuritans left behind less than two companies worth of mechs. The 12th Donegal, which had heaver mechs than the majority of the Night Stalkers, lost less than a company of mechs destroyed, it had many more units damaged. The Night Stalkers had destroyed or damaged so much of the park that it would be cheaper and easier to destroy what was left and rebuild.
The Night Stalkers Raid on Tamar would be an event noone would forget in the near future, especially Duke Kelswa. A man whose reputation was already damaged by the war made no friends with his actions in the defense of his home planet.
