Operation Liberation Rise and Fall
Hesperus II:
General Nondi Steiner jinked to the side, one of those damnably long-ranged clan PPCs scorching her advanced Zeus. But they were also doing damage, pushing the clan forces back, and if the Toads were more powerful than the powered armor they had, the Clans hadn’t trained to function with semi-portable weapons as much, and most importantly, a Toad could kill a PAL trooper, but not and also attack a mech.
And the vaunted Clan warriors seemed to be in short supply. Prisoners had been taken, and they were either from second-line Clan forces, or even auxiliary troops—periphery scum equipped in mechs very little different from the ones the Federated Commonwealth troops were piloting. Even better, the fleet in orbit, including a pair of destroyers, had withdrawn after a brief skirmish with the Comstar warships.
And we will talk about that little secret. But right now, it was time to smash the Clans. They had clearly been banking on panic to win their wars for them. But now that they were getting tied down on planets that they couldn’t simply flee from… Even better, one of their “Battleships” a McKenna class, had withdrawn, showing clear signs of maintenance problems.
“All units continue to advance. I want the factories cleared of the forces besieging them.”
The Clans had attempted to terrify the Inner Sphere into submission, but they had failed.
“If we had another month, they would be completely out of position.” Frederick gestured at the situation map. “Damaged” warships had skirmished with Inner Sphere forces, and then vanished, and now the Inner Sphere units were moving faster, trying to catch or pin down their “retreating” enemy.
“That is impossible,” the Ghost Bear Khan said. “There have already been a few unauthorized Circles of Equals over these Dezgra tactics.”
Frederick glanced at his superior. “And you, My Khan?”
“More of a delay would give us more time to fortify the Rasalhague Republic. Their conditional surrender requires us to protect them from any retaliation. But we cannot wait, not and keep the Grand Council United.”
Frederick frowned. The information coming out of the Combine… They had taken Rasalhague’s decision very poorly. He could see the worry but…
“And integrating their own intelligence services with the Clan Watch?”
“That has raised issues. I understand the need for agents who are more used to the Inner Sphere, but a number of other clans feel that is placing too much power in the Watch.”
Or that it will be full of people who are more sympathetic to the Wolves and Ghost Bear’s way of doing things than the Smoke Jaguars’.
But there were some things you didn’t say to a Khan, even your own.
“Very well. With the approval of the Grand Council, My Khan?”
“It is given.”
All Warfare is based on deception.
Another book few in the Clans had read. But it would serve them well. The Clan forces had withdrawn from their initial targets, save for second-line forces and some… over eager units, most of them Smoke Jaguar and Jade Falcon, but the Inner Sphere wasn’t aware that they had withdrawn from those initial targets, and advanced further into the Inner sphere, prefabbed space stations providing supplies and support.
I am wagering everything on a bet, including, quite possibly, my own life. They could not take every world, and if the Inner Sphere did not lose their nerve, they could weather this blow.
But the Scavenger Lords were just as honor-focused as the Smoke Jaguars were, which was another thing you didn’t bring up, even to your own Khan.
We will see. The target list, every Clan Warship save for the ones engaging in their deception operations, nearly fifty percent of their total frontline troop strength…
Focused on just three worlds.
Luthien, Tharkad, and New Avalon. Frederick would have preferred to hit all of the capital worlds, but they simply didn’t have enough manpower, and targeting Terra was something that just couldn’t be done, not without the risk that the first Khan to land would proclaim himself IlKhan. For that matter, New Avalon was more of a raid than an invasion. Too far away to effectively support, the primary purpose there was to smash the elite units protecting the capital, as well as show the civilians that their Lords couldn’t protect them.
First, the Samarkand raiding groups would attack a few worlds within two jumps of the capital planets. Frederick didn’t expect much from that, but every unit drawn off was one that could be destroyed or isolated.
Then…
The main groups would strike.
Fortunately, his primary worry, that they’d use the Wolf Dragoons as a reserve force, one capable of engaging Clan forces one on one, wasn’t going to be an issue. The Dragoons were on Outreach and by all accounts were actually tying down Federated Commonwealth forces assigned to watch them in case they took the side of the Clans.
And if they panic, they will move as quickly as possible, rather than leaving a reserve charge in their battery-capable transports. They will come trickling in.
And if they do not, if they are smart, it will give us enough time to turn their capital worlds into traps, to savage even a united force on the way down.
Even better, if the tides of war turned against them, they would withdraw from those worlds in good order, turning them into devastating raids without risking their own forces.
And if they were lucky, the damage to the morale of the Inner Sphere would win the war for them. The Council was already preparing to send a proposal—really an ultimatum to the Free Worlds League and Capallen Confederation, offering peace in return for disarmament. Frederick wasn’t certain if they’d agree, but their forces were far inferior to those of the Draconis Combine, Federated Commonwealth, and Taurian Concordat, so if they could strike enough of a blow…
I will receive no bloodname for this. The Smoke Jaguar’s may accept the Grand Council decision, but these tactics are too Dezgra. I wonder if when the war is over, they’ll change the history books? Frederick shook his head. Probably not. His own Khan would take that as an insult to the Ghost Bears. Still… does it matter? It is my duty, after all.
He keyed in the orders.
Now it was time to wait and see how the dice fell.
Where warriors fought, the navy played. A common jest, most often followed up by a circle of equals, it had a grain of truth in it.
Very few clans were willing to risk a warship. Warship “trials” were often simulated, or in other cases, fought with carefully negotiated terms that saw damage, but not destruction. Alone among the clans, a warship crew might go years without a major, ‘no holds barred’ battle.
The fact that they were almost the first thing bargained away added insult to injury.
The response was quite clanlike. If the clan navies weren’t allowed to fight, they’d make every training exercise as close to a battle as they could make it. Officers and men alike spent immense amounts of time on VR simulations, wagering personal treasures and the potential for postings on the outcome. Unlike other Clan forces, the fleets poured over the old SLDF manuals and the history of both the Reunification War and the Amaris Civil War. Tactics and strategies were theorycrafted, between taking ungrateful ground officers between the worlds.
Ironically, for all that they were in opposing clans, a Jade Falcon and Wolf naval officer had more in common with each other than they did many of their fellow Clan members.
While only a small number of new ship classes had been fielded over the years, the price of having more than enough warships and few battles to use them in, refits were more common, including the addition of more self-defense, a lack that had been commented on by the very officers who had taken Terra.
Drills and training couldn’t account for everything. But Frederick’s plan saw the Clan naval forces used, for the first time in centuries, the way the SLDF Admiralty had expected them to be used.
Galax system.
When the Clan task force erupted into space, it made no attempt to disguise its presence or work from a pirate point. Two Samarkand IIA’s, served as Star Admiral Liam McKenna’s primary fighter reserve, escorted by three Lola’s and his Black Lion. A Tammerlane fast support ship finished out the squadron.
The first target was the Nadir recharge station. It was shining brightly in their sensors, radar reflectors and transponders screaming out its civilian status.
It really wasn’t, of course, as it supported military craft, but its destruction was not on the menu.
Now fighters and dropships were launching from it.
“They have stripped much of their defense forces here for frontline forces, Aff?”
“Aff.” His XO responded.
Which means the only place you can reinforce this world from is likely your capital.
The Samarkand squadrons launched, forming up around the Titan and Pentagon dropships that would serve as support, while the rest of the fleet moved into position for long-range targeting of the enemy.
A pity my ship will do little, Liam thought. But no sense in giving them a chance to hit the warship, so the only contribution the Scharnhorst would make was with its missiles.
Malignant blossoms of fire started appearing on the display, NPPCs and Lasers using updated Star League anti-fighter targeting programs hitting the enemy squadrons. Then it was time for the final battle—the two lines of fighters and dropships interpenetrated, and a brief, savage, battle ensued.
The outcome wasn’t in doubt—one side had warships standing off, the other side did not. More importantly, only an idiot heavily protected a recharge station. The dynamics of space combat made it all too easy to go around such an obstacle, and the structure of the station made it equally easy for a force to destroy it, no matter what its escorts would try to do. The forces there were merely enough to keep the Clans’ honest, rather than risking losing a station to a single dropship.
A gamble that had failed.
“Deploy recovery vessels,” Liam ordered. There would be time to recover the pilots who had lost their spacecraft. The distress beacons were beeping away, and by a custom nearly as old as space conflict, all would be rescued, rather than risk the darkest fate any spacer dreaded—being left to die floating in the dark.
“Detonations on the recharge station—microwave beamers.”
Liam nodded. “Now they will surrender.” The station was worthless to the Clan in the short term, but it was also now worthless to the Spheroids at least in any timeframe that mattered. And because of that, he wasn’t even going to waste time putting a boarding crew on it. “Secure from stations, prepare to enter the system.”
Nearly every “perfect” design for new warships Liam had seen got rid of the useless cargo space. He’d done more than one or two in his sibko days, and it had taken years to understand why the Star League had never done so.
One of a warship’s greatest advantages was endurance. Naval battles could sometimes last for weeks of maneuvering, interspersed by deadly combat, and a warship that had to pause to be resupplied was a soon to be dead warship.
A force of dropships, could, it was true, carry enough fighters into space to match his Samarkands… but generate the sustained sorties? Repair, refuel and rearm fighters again and again? Never. Why should they? Dropships either operated with warships, or were used for the final drive on a world, after which their fighters would move to surface bases with cargo runs giving them everything they needed.
Three days in system, and Galax had still not responded as the Clan force proceeded in system at a leisurely one-G.
“A pity,” Liam said, returning from a well-deserved lunch. “I had hoped they would try to meet us further out.”
“Tomorrow.” His XO gestured at the screen. “After turn-over.”
Liam nodded. “Aff.” The turnover would indicate they intended to arrive at Galax with a zero relative velocity.
And best, this is our plan. Frederick did not ask how to achieve it, merely if we could, and accepted our judgment as to the best method. Liam knew that there was no chance he’d receive a blood name from his Clan. He was too old, and had too many enemies. But after this was all over, he might make an excellent Snow Raven…
After turnover, the XO’s prediction was proven correct. The first signs of dropship drive plumes were projected on the big tank, their vectors intersecting with his fleet.
Flip a coin. Will they go for a zero-zero engagement, or blow through? High speed meeting engagements could be dangerous for a warship force, but were generally suicidal for the attacker, especially if they were facing a layered defense. Worse, especially for the defender, the velocities demanded usually meant that any survivors, even if they were undamaged, were more or less irrelevant to the later fight as they had to kill their velocity, turn around, and come back.
“Thirty Dropships.” The sensor officer’s voice was clipped. “Drive plumes indicate 10 Overlord class. Fifteen Leopard class, five others unknown.”
So, ten Overlord hulls from a shipyard modifying Overlords for other roles. They had stripped their defensive forces to support the offense. Sometimes you had to gamble for success. As they had.
And sometimes, your gamble failed.
“Project their commit line.” The line where at their current acceleration, they would have no choice but to enter his fleet’s missile range. Other lines showed NPPC, NL, and NAC ranges.
He nodded. Two hours until the high speed commit line. If they wanted a zero-zero, they’d have to enter turnover in forty-five minutes.
“Signal the fleet. Begin Evasive plan Delta in Four-zero minutes.”
“Aff.”
Forty minutes later, the high-G warning blared through the ships, and the fleet turned on its axis, going to full military power and boosting on a tangent that could carry them by Galax, in a perfect move for a fly-by attack.
Warships, contrary to popular myth, could accelerate at the same rates as drop ships and fighters. The unidentified dropships, now ID’d as Avenger and Achilles class could out-accelerate his fleet, but they needed to stay with the main group.
“Signal intercept, what is the reaction on the planet?”
“Many confused signals, sir. Civilian caste broadcasts are reporting panic. Ah…” The officer blinked. “Some are accusing their leaders of cowardice. They can do that?”
“Aff.”
The enemy squadrons were becoming disordered, some of their helmsmen not used to operating in this way. They couldn’t let Liam’s forces get past them, and yet, if they were fearful of bombardment, they could not just sit there and let him fire missiles from extreme range to wear the defenders down.
For the next day, Liam’s forces kept working to evade the enemy, the spheroid dropships boosting at full military power, their squadrons becoming just a little more sloppy with each maneuver. It was tiring for his own crews, and they’d all spent endless hours drilling just such operations. If the enemy dropship crews were just used to short, high-speed engagements, it must be murder on them.
But now it was time.
“All ships, execute assault plan.” With that, they flipped and drove towards the enemy, intending for a zero-zero engagement at extreme range, where the NPPCs and NLs would benefit from bracketing and targeting systems, to say nothing of the missiles. The Scharnhorst was actually in front—anything trying to engage the longer ranged warships would have to come in range of the Black Lion’s weapons.
“Capital Missile launch!” the operator sang out as they hit the commit line. In return the missiles from his own forces were launched, while the first salvo’s of NPPC and NL fire lanced out. Fighters were launched from the escorts but the two Samarkands remained still, tucked in behind the main fleet. Meanwhile the dropships of the fleet took up position, firing on the incoming missiles.
“Marking Overlord missile carrier-class, designation Epsilon.”
“Strike on Pentagon seven, heavy damage, crew evacuating… near miss on Tamerlane, minor damage to hull…”
The fight went on, but the same thing was happening to the enemy. First one, then two Overlords came apart, as fighters were launched from others. They didn’t have the layered defense Thomas did, after all.
“They are not coordinated.”
Liam nodded. “We know that for decades the Spheroids fought only to land their troops. They are a bit like our own ground warriors, Quiaff?”
“Aff. Seven-Eight fighters approaching. Estimating a zero-zero engagement in three-five minutes.”
“Launch Samarkand forces. Shift targeting to carrier dropships.”
Each Samarkand carried seventy-two fighters. Shelly was one of the pilots. She’d been on stand down for most of the engagement, laying in a G-bed. Now she was in her fighter, the other fighter units being moved to launch, rails gripping her fighter’s undercarriage so that it wouldn’t go tumbling across the deck if the ship entered maneuvers.
If the Inner Sphere forces had been hapless on the ground, it wasn’t the case in space. Their fighter pilots were in general, as good as the Clan pilots, which had the scientist caste facing some awkward questions. But Shelly had two Inner Sphere kills to her name, and she looked forward to adding more.
The enemy pilots were driving for the warships. Shelly could understand why. Fighters couldn’t drop ortillery, after all.
But to get to the warships, they had to run a gauntlet, including Shelly’s group. Outnumbered, exhausted from the maneuvering, and most importantly, desperate. The forces interpenetrated, and Shelly’s vision started to gray out as she flipped her Vandal over, triggering her lasers at a light Spheroid fighter. The pilot desperately attempted to evade, but with a bright flash, vanished into a cloud of frag—suddenly her fighter tumbled as another spheroid fighter attacked her, heavy autocannon hammering at her fighter. Shelly went to maximum thrust, even as red warnings flashed over her hud. The fighter was hanging on to her, trying to kill her, but Shelly flipped her fighter end for end, and then prepared—with a flash, the enemy was a cloud of expanding debris, as a pentagon flew through it.
Shelly made a vulgar gesture at her savior. That had been her kill.
She found few other enemies. The outnumbered spheroids had driven for the warships and largely died far short of their objective.
What savages. If they were civilized, they could have just bid down their forces, saving some instead of losing them all in a last stand. It proved just how superior the Clan way was. But everyone knew that the Spheroids would promise the moon and then break their words, so there was no point in even offering the chance to bid down.
Shelly marked a distress beacon, this one spheroid, for recovery as she tested her engines and headed back to her carrier.
Where the tech would yell at her for damaging his plane.
The fleet accelerated, keeping away from the pirate point. There were transient points, but Liam doubted anyone would risk a major fleet on them. Transient points were too dangerous for anything but the most important battles.
And since intelligence agreed that all the Ministry of Communication’s warships were far away helping the “offensive” the spheroids had launched, the only ships that could use them would be conventional jumpships.
“Continue transmitting.”
“Aff.”
Coordinates for their missile strikes. Not the world.
The big solar collectors for the orbital forges and fabrication docks.
Huge, fragile, and unmanned. The kind of energies the big microwave transmitters put out weren’t the kind of thing organic beings tolerated well. The strikes went in and the remaining enemy fighters and defensive units, clustering around the collectors, put up a brave resistance—but it only took one or two hits to knock them out. Even if they had wanted to attack the fleet, the vector would force the defending forces to chase them.
And none of the remaining defenders were into suicide. They got most of the warheads, but enough survived to put the collectors out of action for a month or more, and with them, much of the shipyard.
Liam leaned back into his chair. They had one more possible danger point—someone could always jump out in front of them, but that would put them in a position of having to engage his ships.
There was something vaguely annoying about not finishing the job.
But if they wrecked the shipyards, there would be no reason to defend them. No reason to reinforce them. To say nothing of no chance to put them to better use once the victory had been secured and the people of the Inner Sphere had been freed from servitude to the scavenger lords in return for a more civilized way of doing things.
Not that this system was in any further danger. Liam had a new rendevous to make—the strike fleet assigned to New Avalon.
And even if they do not reinforce this system, the ships you destroyed will not be available to defend their capital.
And even better, Fredrick’s plan had not saddled him with some ristar screaming about getting her mechs to the ground, no matter what.
“It is so pleasant to have a superior who understands, quiaff?” He said to the air.
The sudden appearance of warships, not individual warships, but squadrons, some of them made up of ships that had last been seen “limping away” with critical malfunctions was a dreadful surprise to the Inner Sphere. As with the Reunification War, the naval war turned on cutting off individual worlds and the power of a full squadron or fleet, making use of layered defenses, was something that even the Taurian pocket warships had no answer to.
Hanse Davion and Takashi Kurita found the formerly promising fact that they were encountering mostly second-line clan units far more troubling—if the Clan warships were popping up in their rear area, where were the Clan front line troops?
They would soon find out.
In many respects by the end of the disaster of Operation Liberation, many people assumed it was the Clan’s war to lose.
Thanks to inter-clan politics, those individuals would be right.
A Near Run Thing: The Initial Stages of the Clan Invasion
3100 UCLA Press.
