For Clan Scorpion Goliath the invasion of the Inner Sphere had been a strange experience.
Deeply in the Warden faction, and one of the smaller clans, they had not participated in either the first phase of the Invasion, or the call for reinforcements that had followed.
The defeat of the Smoke Jaguars in the Inner Sphere, and their subsequent Destruction / Absorption had been a wake-up moment for them: one of the most powerful and aggressive Clans had fallen.
Khan Ariel Suvurov also noted that Clans such as Clan Wolf and Clan Ghost Bear had managed to capture a large number of systems, partly in the Periphery, partly in the Inner Sphere, that added considerable population and resources to them.
The return of the defeated Jade Falcons forces, had saved the Clan from the same fate as the Smoke Jaguars, with Martha Pryde defeating attempts to absorb her Clan at the proverbial last moment.
In both cases, the battles had been incredibly hard fought, with a savagery only seen in the No-Named Clan Annihilation Trial. Clearly. the Invasion of the Inner Sphere had changed the mindset of the invading forces.
It was clear that within the HomeWorlds Clan systems, the Goliath Scorpions had no room to grow, and the Inner Sphere was a very risky area, where even powerful Clans had suffered heavy defeats. Sooner or latter, some bigger Clan would look at the Goliath Scorpions and try to absorb them.
That Clan Ghost Bear, Wolf, and Snow Raven were, even if It was in a stealthy way, relocating their populations to the conquered territories, a fact that the Clan Watch branch as detected, didn’t help them at all, because they were the strongest of the Clans “friendly” to the Goliath Scorpions.
Galaxy Commander Julian Kirov, after stating that he had had a vision of the Clan future, proposed an alternative: according to the information accumulated by both the Wolf’s Dragoons earlier, and the Watch during the current Invasion, there was a nation in the Periphery that had neither large forces nor WarShips - the Outworlds Alliance. All information reports pointed out that it was is a low industrialized nation, mostly inhabited by pacifists, which meant probably that the local resources were probably not exhausted.
The problem would be to launch the invasion undetected by the other Clans, which would otherwise react immediately and violently to this potential change in the overall equilibrium.
Again, Galaxy Commander Kirov had a proposal stating that his Rho Galaxy, would be enough for the operation, while the other forces would continue to protect the Clan enclaves. To camouflage the operation, some of their equipment would be replaced by stocks from the Brian Caches and the OmniMechs by IICs. To create the illusion that the Galaxy was still present, Kirov went so far as to propose that about a third of his forces should be replaced by Sholama units, with those remaining in Roche, being assigned the best equipment and ‘MechWarriors.
Against any other adversary, this plan would have been considered as a crazy one, but all available information indicated that the Outworlds Alliance was badly equipped and had few forces to confront the expedition. Because some reports showed the quality of the ASF squadrons of the OA, and because of the analysis of the conflicts in the invasion of the Inner Sphere, the number of refitted ASFs sent with the expeditionary force was increased as much as possible.
To avoid detection, and since the Alliance had no WarShips and Clan has so few of them, only the CGS Prometheus (Potenkim class) would be used, accompanied by half a dozen JumpShips.
It was clearly a low-cost, high-risk proposal, and both Khan Ariel Suvurov and saKhan Nelson Elam, after studying the plan and meditating on it, supported the initiative.
One of the problems was that in order to avoid being detected by the other Clans, they could not use the HPG satellite network that linked the HomeWorlds to the Inner Sphere and since Clan Goliath Scorpion lacked the means to establish a dedicated network, this left the expedition without contact until a JumpShip could be deployed for the long return trip and report back.
The operation was carried out in the utmost secrecy, and apparently without any other Clan finding out, and about a year later they reached Antallos, on the border of the Outworlds Alliance, and a well-known center of piracy, one that even the Clans had heard about.
During the long voyage, Galaxy Commander Julian Kirov had worked hard to turn his force into a cohesive, well trained force. The techs had been busy using the store of parts and weapons to upgrade the SLDF ’Mechs to Royals or when possible even to IIC variants.
The occupation of the system went without incident as the pirates had nothing capable of stopping a WarShip, and in a stroke of luck, all the JumpShips present were captured in a two tier operation. While the Prometheus with 5 of the 6 JumpShips emerged at the Nadir position, quickly capturing all the JumpShips present there, the CGS Azur, a SLDF modified Tramp, (with LF and carrying 4 DropShips), emerged at same time at the Zenith location, launching one Sassanid, one Achilles and two Carrier and capturing the unfortunate JumpShips present. Adding to this auspicious start to operations, the local HPG was down for maintenance, which allowed the occupation of the system without any news escaping.
Because it was a pirate world, the Goliath Scorpions did not bother with Zellbrigen, and while they used “inferior” SLDF / IIC equipment, which was still superior to what the locals had, the quality of the combatants from both side was far from equal, with a clear advantage for the Clanners. Only the fact that there was no central government and so each and everyone of the city-states had to be captured, delayed the full conquest, but, two months later the planet was secured.
Analysis of the datacores of the captured JumpShips and interrogation of the (few) pirate leaders captured, lead to the discovery of Rezak’s Hole – a pirate controlled system 73.1 LY of Antallos. The Azur was sent with enough forces to deal with the pirates present.
That mission went without any incident, and thanks to the use of old SLDF records, a small cache, containing among other things, two lances of ’Mechs was also found on the system.
Now, the Goliath Scorpions controlled two systems in this area, and despite of not having a ‘Mech factory, they were capable of producing armor (but no FF), ammo (but no Streak nor Artemis IV) and myomers and they had access to several repair / maintenance facilities, that the local pirates had possessed, even if they were basic and in bad condition, but the Clan technicians managed to fully repair/ upgrade them.
