Battletech An SI in the Concordat - GhostRider's Revenants (Battletech CYOA)Rev.2

[paulobrito]

Ever since I had appeared in this universe (3015) and had been given access to a computer, I had been thinking of what could be done by adding the technology from the universe I had come from.


It took me decades to be able to do something. My first company, V4RU, had nothing to do with computers and even when I became first a member and then the CEO of VMI, I had the same problem as it was not a company dedicated to producing / developing computers.


Only when I bought a stake in O-P Computer Electronics in the 30s, was I able to start investigating other chip building techniques. Finding / hiring like-minded researchers was extremely difficult, not even counting the limits imposed by extremely tight security.


It didn't help that my background was as a programmer, with little knowledge in this peculiar field.


Only in the mid 40s did we see the apparition of new techniques by some small laboratories , which allowed for the reduction of chip sizes.


But it was only in the early 50s, with a company / lab specifically dedicated to the problem and built on Coromodir V, that the first components, smaller and faster than the original ones, started to be produced. Obviously because of the lack of applied researches in this field for centuries, they were fragile and could only be produced at a small scale and were not yet up to the military specs, meaning they could only be used in some places that needed much computer power and were considered safe. Fragile, being for me a very relative term, since by my standards, they were incredibly robust, but by local standards (with BattleMechs lasting hundreds of years), they were fragile and short-lived.






It was also in the 50s that we finally started building industrial models of the equipment we had taken from the Argo. For all intents and purposes, they were a kind of highly advanced and versatile 3D printers, capable of building almost anything within the dimensions of the unit, provided (quite obviously) they had access to the necessary raw materials and blueprints. Difficult and time-consuming to build, extremely expensive, they were the ultimate state-of-the-art technology from the Star League. A small factory on Coromodir V was, to my knowledge, the only one that produced them in 3058, and even then, less than a dozen unit per year.






Whether integrated in the Concordat or not, Kamea's plans (and mine) were to make the Aurigan Province as independent in terms of resources, factories, universities and even military capabilities as possible. To this end, Coromodir V, Mechdur and Detroit had been chosen as the major industrial centers. Since Coromodir V was personally controlled/owned by our family, I had spent the time from the early 30s until now quietly moving as much as I could of new and/or more profitable departments of the companies I controlled or had a stake in there or into the province



Not that we were planning to get our independence back, far from it, but we wanted to leave a solid and secure inheritance to our children and Kamea would always consider the Aurigan Province as her own.






However, we (me and Kamea) only achieved a partial success in that objective. For one side, while the Calderons and Edward in particular were our allies and friends, ultimately, they were the ruling family of the Concordat, and to maintain / secure their power they couldn’t let any other family, not even their closest allies gain excessive power. So, several of the movings we had planned had been blocked, and several big contracts distributed to competitors. The construction of the Concordat class frigates or of the Winchester II Heavy Cruisers and the work on the Texas battleship, were awarded to shipyards controlled by the Calderon family, for example.


And while our political opponents, while good at this game but lacking in the industrial ones, were not blind enough to let us grow too much, without some counter moves. In that they were supported by the Calderons – to a point.






Evidence that the Calderons had started to take measures to guarantee their supremacy was pointed to me by Kamea – I’m a bit blind in that area, I confess. She noted several facts that seemed to prove it:


- in the Marian Hegemony Crisis, we didn’t receive any benefits, even if our forces (with our Heir included) were the only ones apart the federal ones involved.- following the creation of the Fronc Reachs – the territory between us and the Magistracy / FWL, no world was added to the Aurigan Province with the best ones directly under the Calderons’ control and the rest ‘gifted’ to our political adversaries.


- while we needed to pay in full the upgrades in the Mechdur shipyard to be able to make Ajax Destroyers, the one in New Vandenberg received generous federal subsidies for that.


- only federal units had been sent to fight the Clans, gaining experience and controlling the advanced tech captured. That turned in a spectacular blow-back with the disaster in Jeronimo.






Yep, the Calderons had started to limit our growing and to secure their position as the leaders of the Taurian Concordat.






Note: the following is based on some ideas I get reading the excellent Cannonshop Ngoverse.






I had launched several pet projects to expand the capabilities of the Coromodir system. These included a new variant of the Snowden-L, with a bay for more mining ‘Mechs of a variant that used cheaper fission reactors, a special type of DropShip / thug that was basically a cockpit, engines, K-boon connector and an articulated rib-cage that could ‘capture’ the Snowden and move it to the desired position and / or transport it via JumpShip to another system.


To complement these, a ‘ferry’ was designed – a very small JumpShip, using a very old, experimental, type of K-F drive that could only jump up to 3LY, (thanks to the use of modern alloys and techniques of construction) with two K-boom connections and super-capacitors in place of LF battery, to transport the above mentioned units to the Coromodir Oort cloud.


That type of K-F drive, with only 10% of the range of those in use today, even if it used much less energy, had long been considered an evolutionary dead-end and abandoned, but for the ferry job between the inner part of a system and the distant Oort cloud, it was perfect, being much cheaper and smaller than a conventional one.


All of these models were the product of the work of Dr. Murad, the locally resident genius.


So far, none had moved past the theoretical design and / or proof of concept, but together, they would greatly facilitate the expansion of the local economy, provided that we could develop and produce them locally. After all, the tech, tools, trained personnel, and raw materials were already there, I was “only” missing the budget to finish these projects.






The idea of the ferry type JumpShip came out during a dinner with the Murad family. Her adopted daughter, Gabrielle, was working on K-F drives theory and was a very good story teller. She talked about the early 15LY range drives, the experimental 50LY one and even about the tentative to obtain one more compact, simpler and less energy hungry. The last one proved to be an evolutionary dead-end that never exceeded the 3 LY range, quickly forgotten by almost everybody. At the time I was starting to look on the resources of the Oort cloud – too distant to be obtained by DropShip only and using conventional JumpShips would be too expensive and attract too much attention. The story brought me some fresh perspectives and was the start of this project.

 

[paulobrito]

When we were also excluded from the contract to expand the Quatre Belle shipyard in the Outworlds Alliance, and from the to help Magistracy repair / refit the ex-SLS Zughoffer Weir (no MCS name assigned yet, that we knew of) Kamea decided it was time to activate the Deep Space Resources program. The first step of this program was the exploration of the Oort cloud in the Coromodir system.


To this end the production of at least four 'Ferry' class JumpShips was authorized.


The first one was built on the Orca prototype chassis, to keep costs low (after all this program had a limited budget) since both designs had the same dimensions were similar. It helped that with everything required already being produced in Mechdur, the production of future Ferry would be considerably less expensive than any other JumpShip design.


The main difference with a classical JumpShip was that we removed all armament, LF Battery and compact K-F drive in favor of a short range K-F drive. This type of drive had some interesting features, for example, being made of only 80% of the usual Titanium-Germanium alloy while the remaining 20% were various metal alloys, neither exotic nor expensive to produce. Even if it had a maximum range of only 3LY and a minimum of 0.05LY, it could be 'charged' in just one day via fusion reactor safely and did not need a solar sail to do so. Because of residual effects, there was also a minimum period of 6 hours between each jump, making the implementation of super-accumulators for a second jump in a row useless. Its size was basically the same as a compact K-F drive, but at the cost of a 'civilian' K-F drive, making it much more economic provided you had the space to put it into any ships.


It also had a higher jump error margin, about 10% than standard drives, with the pilots calling it suicide to use one to reach the smallest pirate points.






Only the final step, installing the new K-F drive, was performed in Coromodir V, everything else was done in Mechdur at the facility that also built the Orcas.


Testing with the Ferry 001 began in March 3059 with some jumps between one of the Lagrange points of Coromodir V (the biggest one) and various areas of the Oort cloud system and back.






The funds for this project came partly from the provincial budget, partly from the Aurigan Central Bank controlled by our family, and partly from our personal funds.

 

[paulobrito]

The much anticipated continuation of the Federated Commonwealth counter-offensive against the Clans began in February 3059.


Hanse and Morgan Hasek-Davion had gathered 50 of their best RCTs near the border with the Jade Falcons, reinforce by extra artillery and Battle-Armor units. All units had been upgraded to the latest technology and the assault had received a full naval support with WarShips (80% of the Federated Navy being deployed for this operation), Pocket WarShips, Assault DropShips and extra units of ASFs.






The remaining WarShips, the second echelon regiments and mercenary forces would remain behind to protect the borders.






The delay before launching the attack came from all sort of logistical and organizational problems. For example, in order to maximize the impact, the Federated Commonwealth took the risk of producing two vessels of their newest and still untested designs, even before fixing the design quirks. Other units had to go through a complete retrofit of existing units like one Mjolnir that had serious problems with the intra-system engines.


Another basic “problem” was that the moving of so many RCTs took time and this without taking into account the time spent upgrading the units and re-training the personnel, even if it had been backed up by the massive industrial capability of the Federated Commonwealth. Luckily, in the two last decades, the number of JumpShips in all the Inner Sphere had grow considerably, which, unlike in the 4th Succession War, allowed to move so many forces at the same time with only minor disruption in trade.






Such delays had also given a boost to the Fighters branch with more Royal grade Stukas available for the FC Navy (and for some RCTs) while the first full production run of AAMs reached the frontline units.






As with the Draconis Combine and the Concordat operations, and prior to any offensive moves, several units of the Rabid Foxes and Loki had been inserted into the targeted systems. Now, months later, had they not only identified the Falcons bases, ammunition depots and parts, but they had also prepared sabotage and assassination operations for when they would be activated. Thanks to communication through the Black Boxes, the AFFC High Command had a fairly detailed picture of the forces present. It had also been decided, from the very beginning, to attack only one Clan, in an attempt to drive it out of the Inner Sphere, or to weaken it enough to make the other Clans turn against it.


On February 23rd, 3059, 10 systems controlled by the Jade Falcons were suddenly invaded. Each system, received the full might of 5 RCTs with extensive support. At the same time, infiltrated units were ordered to do as much damage as they could.






Black Earth, Golandrinas, Somerset, Apollo, Wotan, Maxie's Planet, Butler, Romulus, Seiduts, and Evciler had been selected because none of them was protected by more than 2 Clusters and therefore they were quickly cleared, with the Falcons losing about 3 Galaxies (out of the 10 they had in the Inner Sphere) as well as the WarShips CJF Black Talon and CJF Blue Talon, with 4 other WarShips escaping with varying degrees of damage.


Particular attention had been directed to neutralizing the Snow Raven Storm Crow Naval Pursuit Star CSR Mountbatten (Texas), CSR Kerensky's Hope (Cameron), CSR Ark Royal (Conqueror), CSR Storm Crow (Sovetskii Soyuz) and CSR Nestling (Carrack), which was stationed at Planting, and could counter-strike, even if records of Clan cooperation were nearly non-existent – with the exception of the attack on Luthien. To deal with this threat, a Strike Fleet had been gathered with several heavy Ships, the FCS Alexander Davion and the FCS Lucien Davion (Avalon), the FCS Mjolnir (Mjolnir), the FCS Fox and the FCS Ian Davion (Fox), the FCS Jaipur and the FCS Midale (New Syrtis block 2) and the FCS Invincible (Tarkad). All the Federated Commonwealth WarShips were equipped with LF and positioned at Derf.


Note.: The New Syrtis Block 2 Class is a modernization of the previous Class, with LF, AMS, DHS and Ferro-Aluminum Armor


At the last minute, the MIIO lost track of the Snow Raven combat group, which had vanished. Much later, it was discovered that the Snow Ravens had made a deal with the Ghost Bears and moved to help defending their territories in the Inner Sphere, in exchange for getting the Bears territories in the Homeworlds, with the Bears moving their entire Clan to the Inner Sphere.






Unlike in OTL, the deal between the Snow Ravens and the Ghost Bears includes the squadron of Snow Raven warships that until now patrol the area controlled by the Jade Falcons and Steel Vipers, to move to patrol and help secure the area controlled by the Ghost Bears. The helping build the Leviathans and moving the Ghost Bears population to the Inner Sphere (the OTL deal), is also included. For that the Snow Ravens receive all the Ghost Bears territories in the Homeworlds, and access to any future shipyards that the Bears built in the Inner Sphere. The reason of the different deal is caused by the inclusion of the Snow Ravens in the invasion, by then IlKhan Leo Showers.






On March 17th, 3059, at Romulus Nadir jump-point, a big Jade Falcon force, including several WarShips emerged, immediately heading for the inhabited planet. As soon as it was detected, a message was sent to Derf. A few hours later, the Federated Commonwealth Strike Fleet also appeared at the Nadir jump-point, immediately beginning the pursuit.


Because the Jade Falcons were indeed heading towards more offensive operations, with most of the units already embarked or in their way to gathering areas, their reaction was faster than had been expected, all the Falcon Khan had to do was to change the objectives from invading new worlds to attacking where the AFFC was now.

 

[paulobrito]

The past year had been a nightmare for Marthe Pryde. First, was Elias Crichell’s scandal of his false combat certifications, which had led to his execution and Marthe's promotion to saKhan.


After that, in a gambit to augment the available WarShips, the clan moved several ones that were playing escort roles on the Exodus Road to the front lines.


That backfired spectacularly, when the Taurians raiders started to hit the area, with the Falcons losing several JumpShips. In particular, the loss of the CJF Arrowhead (a Star Lord), with enough equipment to equip two full front line Clusters, had delayed the resuming of the invasion by several months. That the other Clans had also reported losses and also had to delay their operations was of no help. The only answer was to to move the WarShips back to protect the supply lines, removing several warships from the front-l lines.


Then the Federated Commonwealth launched its offensive, just as Vandervahn Chistu was about to order the new offensive operations. By the end of this operation, not only had the Clan lost 10 systems and about 3 Galaxies, but also 2 WarShips with 4 others being damaged. The counterattack had been a disaster, with the ambush on Romulus and the subsequent destruction of 2 other Galaxies and 4 more WarShips, including CJF the Turkina's Pride (Cameron) and the CJF Falcon's Nest (Texas), as well as the death of Vandervahn Chistu, promoting Marthe to Khan of the Jade Falcons. The fool had advanced blindly in the jaws of the Federated Commonwealth trap, never understanding that the technological gap had been reduced and that the forces he faced were first class, not second rate ones, like during the first stage of the invasion.


It was of little comfort, that he and his force had died well, concentrating all the OmniFighters, from the Warships and Galaxies alike, to protect the force to arrive mostly intact to orbit, and them, for the ground forces to land. Unfortunately for them, the AFFC forces have dispersed or hidden, not presenting a viable target to the warships weapons. And them, the AFFC warships arrived, and in the following space battle, the clans are defeated, even if extracted a heavy toll, enough to force the Federated Commonwealth fleet to return home to much necessary repair, removing the massive warships from the front-lines for several months, if not years.


On the ground, the battle as not gone much better, the numerical superiority of the AFFC, supplemented by great numbers of artillery and some space support, from the surviving and still operational warships, dictated the victor.






Demonstrating their numerical superiority, the AFFC had resumed its attack, occupying 6 new systems and destroying 3 more Galaxies, and 2 other WarShips, the CJF Green Lantern (Congress) and the CJF Lightning Strike (Vincent). Again, they launched 3 RCTs in each one of their target, leaving the more damaged / exhausted units to defend each of the recently conquered / freed systems.






Left with only about 2 Galaxies, one of which was composed almost entirely of second-line forces, and with the Steel Viper moving to take advantage of their weakness, Marthe had had no choice but to abandon the Inner Sphere and return to the Pentagon, to try to recover and survive.


To that end, she had given orders to Samantha Clees, her saKhan, who was in Eden, to launch a crash training program for the Trueborns of the last generation who had failed the tests as MechWarriors and even to test Freebrons who showed qualities. At the same time, he had given her orders to open the Brian Caches available to equip all the forces thus created with whatever they obtained from the Caches, since the Falcons with only 4 Galaxies, 3 of which being mostly garrison forces, desperately needed more troops and equipment, unless they wanted to suffer the fate of the Smoke Jaguars.


Now, Marthe just hoped to get to the HomeWorlds in time, to prevent the Clan absorption, and if possible rebuild her forces. One thing was certain - it would be many years before she could return to the Inner Sphere.

 

[paulobrito]

Having driven the Jade Falcons out of the Inner Sphere, or at least, out of the occupied Federated Commonwealth territories, the AFFC offensive stopped because it had run out of steam. Most of the WarShips involved were in need of repairs, large ones for most units. The squadrons of ASFs that had supported said WarShips had suffered heavy losses and needed to be replenished. Even though about half of the RCTs involved were still at over 90% capacity, Hanse Davion and Michael Hasek-Davion, were not prepared to begin operations against another Clan without clear superiority in all combat compartments.






While the Steel Vipers had wasted no time in occupying the systems left empty by the Jade Falcons, that the Federated Commonwealth had not liberated, the Wolves and Nova Cats, who also had territory in the Federated Commonwealth occupation zone, had instead withdrawn from some systems, letting most of the systems in direct contact with the AFFC to be owned by the Steel Vipers.


On the Draconis Combine front, the Ghost Bears had followed a similar path, with the Hell Horses taking over several former Smoke Jaguar systems and abandoned Ghost Bear systems, letting them in contact on most of the 'border' with the Combine.


It was clear that some Clans were creating buffer zones with the Inner Sphere to give them enough time to react should further offensives be launched. That other Clans were being used as cannon-fodder was just another proof of their survival of the fittest mentality.


On the other hand, scout missions indicated that several systems in what had been the Oberon Confederacy, the Elysian Fields and the Great Valkyrate were receiving considerable amounts of Clan ships, apparently consolidating their position and according to some analysts, they could be creating a industrial base closer to the current operation zones, making them independent of their more than 1000LY long supply/support line.






On the other side of the Inner Sphere, the Taurian Concordat benefited from contracts to supply both the Draconis Combine and (to a lesser extent) the Federated Commonwealth with military hardware. While from the FC side it didn’t receive any Clan equipment, on the Draconis Combine side, not only due to the TDF forces operating in the area (including the Orca raiders), but also because of the agreements with the ruling family, large amounts of Clan material were sent to the Concordat laboratories for analysis.


Although with limited access to Clan material, due to the current cabal against our family, we still received some, but the real gold price was getting access to the blueprints for the first generation of Combine OmniMechs with a direct contract with the two first years of production already bought by the DCMS.






In January 3060, Capellan forces supported by two WarShips CCS Aleisha Kris and CCS Elias Jung, both Feng Huang Class Cruisers, accompanied by Pocket WarShips, Assault DropShips and extra squadrons of ASFs took control of the Andurien worlds of Conquista and Lugartan. The defenders while fighting viciously, had no chance against the more numerous and better equipped Capellan forces. Of interest was that Capellans, used their WarShips to rain heavy orbital fire onto the heavier defenses, a practice more and more common these days, demonstrating that any side lacking WarShips, after losing its ASF component, had very little chance of surviving, much less of winning against even a single WarShip.


It was later discovered that a shipyard was operational in the Capella system, apparently they had rebuilt the old Delhi Warships Shipyard, without anyone discovering it until now, providing House Liao with two shipyards, both capable of building WarShips and JumpShips.






MIM spies inside the Duchy of Andurien reported that the CCAF has deployed native designed battle-armor, and that the organization of the Capellan Hussars had changed, moving into something akin but not like the Taurian Brigades and the Federated Commonwealth RCTs.






While the other ex-FWL provinces, noted with apprehension that the Capellans had started to invade bit by bit the Duchy of Andurien, that wasn’t enough for them to try to re-unite against a common foe or to send forces to help against the Capellans, they still considered their neighbors and former friends to be more dangerous. On the other hand, the Canopians had started to very discretely provide the Anduriens with some ASFs and Alamos, models that couldn’t be tracked back to the Magistracy, of course. The Concordat, while observing the situation with a growing preoccupation, hadn’t yet moved to support the Duchy, but plans were prepared, and forces were moving openly to the area as a not so subtle reminder to the Capellan Confederation that there were lines not to be crossed. Just in case.

 

[paulobrito]

Between mid 3060 and late 3062, the conflicts on the various fronts were little more than light raids / reconnaissances “en force”.


One of the reasons was that all participants were busy repairing / refitting WarShips, in order to give them better defenses against attacks from ASFs loaded with Alamos.


On the Draconis Combine front, by late 3060, the Taurian Concordat had rotated its forces. Three new brigades of Taurian Guards had replaced those hitherto on the Clan front, and among the replaced WarShips had been dispatched the TCS Amanda Calderon a modified Soyal class Heavy Cruiser (see chapters 40 and 51), which had meanwhile been converted to a Heavy/Fleet Carrier, after extensive trials had resulted in the decision to remove the Medium Mass Driver and take advantage of the space to increase the ASF force to 72 units, with abundant fuel, spares and ammo.






The 11th Taurian Guards Brigade faced the Hell's Horses in Nykvarn in March 3061, in the biggest battle of these period, defeating the 12th Mechanized Cavalry Cluster, part of the Alpha Galaxy, and capturing the heavily damaged CHH Gold Knight (a Lola III class Destroyer). The Taurians superior number of ASFs, the presence of the TCS Amanda Calderon, as well as the large number of Battle Armors - more than twice as many as the Clanners had locally - contributed to this victory, even though several new BA models - including some up to 1,500kg (Rhino and Gnome) - deployed by the Hell's Horses were an unpleasant surprise.






The fact that for the first time, a Clan used AAMs, and in great numbers, was a warning of what the future would be. On the positive side, the Taurians captured models of the new BAs and the AAMs used by the Hell's Horses, which they immediately sent to the Concordat for analysis.


The TMI finalized the re-deployment of the HPG satellite network that connected the Concordat to the Combine in March of 3061. All satellites were moved to other uninhabited systems and at same time, replaced by more modern models, with improved stealth, anti-tampering protections, and longer duration fission reactors. As the Concordat suspected, some had been tampered by the Federated Commonwealth, to let them listen to the traffic between the Concordat and the Combine.






In the Coromodir system, although it was not possible, for the moment, to build a shipyard, a large dockyard was taking shape around Coromodir V, equipped with a dozen slips and able to service the Concordat largest civilian and military ships. A smaller one is in construction in the Detroit system, planned to be operational by 3065.






In 3061, both Jaime Wolf and Natasha Kerensky retired from active service, due to their advanced age . Jaime was replaced in overall command by Mackenzie Wolf and Natasha by Maeve Wolf, who promptly changed the name of the unit to Wolf Spider Battalion.






The Wolf’s Dragoons had the same problem as other nations that had ex-SLDF warships - they had to upgrade them with defenses against ASFs. However, Outreach was lacking a shipyard, and the Federated Commonwealth had theirs occupied for a very long time, meaning they had to turn to my family.


This explains why in late 3061, the WDWS Alexander (Aegis class) docked onto the shipyard at Mechdur, for a refit. The other Wolf’s Dragoons WarShips were to be modified one at a time, so as not to overload the shipyard, which already had a long list of orders. The quid pro quo for such a service remained secret for some time.






On September 12, 3062, Takashi Kurita passed away, being officially reported to have died in his sleep.


On October 22, 3061, Dalma Humphreys, the Duchess of Andurien escaped an assassination tentative. The assassins were stopped at the last minute by MIM agents that had been ordered by the Magestrix to protect the Duchess.


The assassins, later identified as Death Commandos with cyborg-like enhancements, were defeated by the PA(L)s of the MIM agents. Unfortunately (for the Magistracy), they couldn’t hide their presence in the Duchy of Andurien any longer.






Having their two last WarShips finally repaired and refitted, the Marik forces used them, with a massive escort of ASFs, Assault DropShips and Pocket WarShips to renew the war with Oriente.

 

[paulobrito]

Note: The first part is based on a discussion in Cannonshop's excellent War is a Grave, regarding FASAnomics.






Thanks to a policy of financial incentives and tax breaks, coupled with a subtle but effective propaganda campaign, we had attracted to Coromodir a high percentage of the skilled space personnel working in the Concordat, some from the Federated Commonwealth, and even a few from the Earth asteroid belt, that could not find work anymore in such places.


Meanwhile, in the rest of Concordat (and the other nations) the Trinity of Corruption / Regulation / Taxes, controlled by the military-industrial complex in power, had substantially reduced / not allowed the development of large-scale resource exploration outside the habitable planets, this exploration being seen as a thread to their position.


Because of this, while other nations, and even the Concordat outside the Aurigan Province, had problems with costs and obtaining materials to maintain the current WarShips race, we were increasing our capacity at a good rate, only limited by local budget and time to train personnel, while the actual cost of building JumpShips and WarShips within the province was slowly but surely coming down.


At Coromodir V and Detroit, the local dockyards were slowly upgraded to full shipyards, only using hardware produced in the Province for two reasons, the blockade of exports from the core of the Taurian Concordat because of the internal political fights and our will to be fully independent. It was slowing down the development but the end result was much better.


A major contributor to this was the fact that Aurigan Province, had great autonomy (as did Provinces, Marches or equivalents of other states with the exception of the Capellan Confederation) as long as it paid its federal taxes, contributed troops to the TDF, and obeyed federal laws, which it did scrupulously.






A series of new WarShips began to appear in late 3062, early '63.


The Concordat had almost finished the Texas refit, which was scheduled to enter service in early 3064. Thanks to a reduction of its cargo capability, the changes included replacing the NL45s with NL55s, greatly increasing the missile magazines for the AR-10s, upgrading the Killer Whale tubes to AR-10s, doubling the number of ASFs to 80, and adding a considerable amount of anti-ASF and anti-Missile weapons. These consisted of 16 Arrow IV SAM tubes, 64 LPL, 32MPL and 64SPL. For the first time, the pulse lasers added an extra anti-missile capability in addition to their normal mode of operation, the Small ones replacing the standard AMS while the bigger ones added extra capability against capital missiles, Alamos, and even Arrow IV types.


A LF and armor upgrade to Lamellor Ferrous-Carbide completed the changes.






The EDF, meanwhile, showed an improved Mackenna, (see Delrane's Fighting Ships Revised page 41), that every intelligence service said was a new construction, and not a refit of an ex-SLDF one, packing considerable anti-ASF defense and many other changes. It first appeared in orbit around Rasalhague in December 3062, to replace the Farragut there, which returned to the Sol system for maintenance.






On the Clan side, for the first time, a Fleet Carrier had been seen, in use by the Snow Ravens, tentatively identified as the former SLS Formidable (Ark Royal Class - see Delrane's Fighting Ships Revised page 81), now the CSRS Storm Talon.






The Federated Commonwealth being busy building WarShips that already had decent anti-ASF and capital missile defenses, didn’t focus on new classes, freeing resources for other projects.


Clearly the time of 'easy' victories in space by squadrons of Inner Sphere ASFs against enemy WarShips was coming to an end.






As a result of the growing collaboration between the Taurian Concordat and the Draconis Combine, the Concordat had received models and plans to build C3 Master and Slave units, and in return the Combine had received the pulse laser anti-missile technology.


Another result of this collaboration was the launch of the Light Cruiser Dart II, built by both navies, although in small quantities due to its high cost. The Dart II was the result of a plan to built an WarShip that would be fully ammo independent.






Dart II (Light Cruiser)


Mass: 680,000 tons


Length: 703 meters


Sail Diameter: 10,135 meters


Safe Thrust: 4


Maximum Thrust: 6


Armor Type: Improved Ferro-aluminum


LF Battery : Yes


24 ASFs


6 Dropships


120 Marines (half with Battle armor)


3750 DHS (to manage a very heavy energy weapons system)


Armament:


21 NL45


21 NL55


8 Heavy NPPC


14 Medium NPPC


16 Large Pulse Laser


32 Medium Pulse Laser


16 ER PPC

 

[paulobrito]

February 23rd, 3063


Aurigan Reach, Coromodir VI, Cordia City, Arano Palace, High Lady Accommodations


While our younger sons, Paul and Peter, were busy trying out the new versions of the Penetrator 5TC and Highlander 732b TC1, Kamea and I had a chat with Sara.


The Penetrator 5TC was a hybrid, the first 'Mech to use Clan tech produced at the Concordat - and that we knew of in the entire Inner Sphere, outside Outreach - if only partially, only the guns and Heat Sinks were Clan tech, everything else was IS tech, albeit of the more advanced version.


The armament was basically the same, with 2 ERLL and 6 MPL, but these being Clan tech, they had greater range and did more damage. The AMS had been replaced by an SPL (also Clan tech) but for the first time in a 'Mech, one able to have anti-missile capability. The DHS were also Clan tech, which allowed more to be deployed because they were more compact and the reduced weight and volume of the weapons allowed for more free room and weight.


The Guardian ECM had already been upgraded to an Angel ECM, the result of a collaboration between the Draconis Combine and the Taurian Concordat - more accurately, between Coromodir Heavy Industries and Chandrasekhar Kurita's Hachiman Taro Electronics.






Note: in the OTL, it was the result of collaboration between Draconis Combine and Comstar.


The Highlander, on the other hand, was a more modest upgrade, having only replaced the MLs with (Clan tech) ERML.


Note: The only Clan tech we are currently capable of producing are ER and Pulse Lasers and Heat Sinks.






'Mom, Dad, I understand that this is a political proposal and not one out of love, and as such I think we should discuss the situation. Antony Calderon has sent me a formal marriage proposal.'






Calmly I opened my wallet and passed a 50 Bulls bill to Kamea, who took it it with a smile.






'It was to be expected daughter' Kamea said, as Sara looked at us with an amazed look, 'since the attempt to economically strangle us failed, Edward is now trying to ensure that the next generation will be loyal to him. I'm just amazed it's taken so long.'


'And you have nothing against it?' asked Sara 'From a personal point of view I kind of like him, he's a good man, funny and cultured, easy on the eyes, but the reason is political not personal.'


'The options are to accept, and you will have to ensure that you maintain as much autonomy as possible - as we have done' I replied, 'or to refuse which will be considered like a declaration of war, for which we are not prepared. Not in the next 20 or 30 years, at least. And that would be going against all of our plans and ideas for the future anyway. Accepting is by far the best option, I'm glad you two are compatible.'


'Yep, you share a room when you've been together for at least 5 years' Kamea said with a twinkle in her eye at Sara's indignant look. ‘You two are not properly subtle or discreet about that over the years, at least, according to your security detail, which happens to be also working for me, if you had forgotten it.’


'Mom! Dad! How... never mind' Sara said with a now resigned look.



'Sara, don't forget that besides our daughter you are also the Heir-Designate - you are both in fact, keeping a watch on both of you is SOP' I replied calmly. ‘ I bet good money that Edward also knows almost everything about your relationship.’


‘Our objective isn’t to get independent again, but to grow and protect the Reach while being as autonomous / independent as possible. We are too small to survive alone, just look at the Duchy of Andurien. The result of the efforts of the last 30 years is that we have the best education of the Concordat, we are almost fully independent in the food, education, medical and industrial areas, but we still need to be part of the Concordat to survive against the big predatory nations that are some of our neighbors.’






'Now,' continued Kamea 'we have to study how you are going to maintain maximum autonomy. See if you agree with...'




In March 3063, production of Lee DropShips began on Coromodir V. A small group was however of Block 2 - only for the moment for the Aurigan Province forces, more specifically for the 1st Aurigan Guards / Revenants.






Lee Block 2


removed 200 tons of cargo space - now 767 tons.


The 8 ERLL are upgraded to Clan tech


The 26 ML are upgraded to Clan MPL - with the new AMS mode included


The 5 AC/20 replaced by LBX-20


Armor is upgraded to Improved Ferro-Aluminum Armor


Added 50 DHS.


Added 4 Arrow IV launchers - capable of launching SAM, AShM and all other variants.


It also has a brand new scaled up ECM unit - 50 tons, capable of denying lock to all kinds of missiles, from capital ones to Arrow IV, Alamos, LRMs and SRMs (Artemis and Streak included). This unit is in the final phase of tests to also be integrated in the Concordat WarShips.


The Lee Block 2 had much greater survivability, and an expanded ground support capability, but it was substantially more expensive than the already very costly original model.






After the two years of full production allocated to the Draconis Combine had past, we could now start to sell some of the Kuritan-designed Omnis (Avatar, Black-Hawk-KU, Owens, Raptor, Strider and Sunder) that we produced to the TDF and to use some for the Revenants. With these and the Marauder-II Omni, I created a 5th battalion of 'Mechs, pushing the unit to a full 200 'Mechs (5 reinforced battalions each with a command lance). About 50% of the vehicles were Leclercs (all fusion powered), which also gives us a massive flexibility upgrade. In the other 'Mech battalions of the unit, many of the 'Mechs were quietly upgraded with Clan weapons, when possible (ER and Pulse Lasers for now).

 

[paulobrito]

3063 was not a good year for military operations, at least from the point of view of the Taurian Concordat.


In April, the CCAF launched a final assault on Andurien, supported by the two Feng Huang Heavy Cruisers they had.


With a powerful escort of Pocket WarShips - which for the first time included 2 of a type never seen before, in the region of 25,000 tons – plus Assault DropShips and ASFs, they had no difficulty reaching orbit.


Although discreetly reinforced by the Concordat, the Magistracy and the Federated Commonwealth, there was little the Andurien forces could do against the CCAF, which not only used several Warrior Houses in this operation, but also a large number of advanced equipment, which until then had only been seen in WoB hands.


With the battle lost, the royal family tried to escape in extremis, to a Canopus JumpShip that was waiting at a pirate point, but their DropShip was destroyed by one of the big Capellan Pocket Warships, that not only showed an acceleration in excess of 5G, but was armed with a (spinal mount?) HNPPC. Observations, later shared by the Canopian JumpShip, that only escaped thanks to being equipped with a LF battery, reported that said ships also had 6 AR-10, 12 ASFs, and a robust conventional weapons suit.






Confirming that the WoB had settled into the Capellan Confederation, a TMI reconnaissance operation using Mryias and Orcas (both with LF) detected a previously unknown shipyard in a supposedly uninhabited system, 29.3 LY of Sian.


Two WarShips undergoing repairs were detected, a Baron (ex-SLDF Destroyer) and a Vincent (ex-SLDF Corvette), as well as several JumpShips receiving maintenance, including 2 Magellan.






In the Free Rasalhague Republic, a planned offensive to liberate Gunzburg from the Clans ended in a bloody battle in space, and the invasion/liberation was aborted.


It seemed that Clan Wolf had more WarShips present than reconnaissance had indicated and that they had a credible anti-ASF / anti-Missile defense together with OmniFighters equipped with ECM and AAMs, nullifying the advantage enjoyed by the Inner Sphere forces.


Also detected for the first time in use by the Clans was a pocket WarShip, based on an Overlord-C, equipped with 4 Barracuda tubes, which had been dedicated to attacking the larger ASFs.






As if that wasn't enough, news broke out that one of the Clans not previously involved in the invasion, Clan Goliath Scorpion, had begun invading the Outworlds Alliance. What was strange about this invasion was that they seemed to be using almost only second-line equipment, i.e. SLDF upgraded with modern systems, what were called IIC variants.


Consultations with the Wolf's Dragoons allowed the identification of the Rho Galaxy, usually acting as a garrison force, supported by only one WarShip, Potemkin class, the rest being JumpShips.


Desperate calls for help from the Outworlds Alliance reached Taurus, and it was decided to send a support force, consisting of the 1st Aurigan Guards (the Revenants), supported by 6 Pinto class WarShips. The reason of so many Pinto escorts, was that Mechdur alone built 4 each year, every year. Each Pinto had a Union CV so the number of ASFs of the expeditionary force was not bad. Unfortunately, better ships were already busy inside the Draconis Combine or occupied defending the Concordat.


With the marriage of Antony Calderon with my daughter Sara Arano-Bassot decided, the relations between both the ruling families had once again improved.






In the recent years, the new management of the Wolf's Dragoons (Mackenzie Wolf and Maeve Wolf) had lobbied long and hard for the Dragoons to be accepted in direct offensive operations against the Clans and not only assigned to training roles. That they could, in theory accept missions from the Capellan Confederation or any side of the ex-FWL, was well know, but they also knew that if they were to do that, they would be placed in a not contracting list by all the big players. And finally, they had the ban on anti-Clan operations lifted by mid 3063.






That coincided with the order by Edward to send the Revenants to the Outworlds Alliance, and I quickly secured the first WD contract, obtaining the services of the Wolf Spider Battalion to go with the Revenants. That the WDWS Alexander (Aegis class Cruiser), that had just finished its refit was also available was just perfect. I obtained the WD contract rather cheap and easily, because they needed to pay for the WarShip refit, and this contract was the perfect way to do so.






Note.: The Wolf Spider Battalion is a Battalion only in name. In reality it is a Clan Cluster unit, with about two thirds of the ’Mechs being Omnis, the rest fully equipped with Clan weapons and systems. The rest of the unit is made of OmniFighters, BattleArmor (Clan) and stealth PA(L)s in the case of the Seventh Kommando. They are transported in two heavily modified Overlords.





The reason of my actions was that the leader of one of the Revenants Mech battalions was my son Paul Arano-Bassot, going for the first time in harms way. A quick series of talks both with Edward and the TDF HQ solved any problems that my initiative might have had. That I paid the Wolf Dragoons bill, in good part sealed the deal with Taurus.






The Revenants only had 1 Lee, the first Block 2 produced, the rest of the DropShips were mostly smaller ones, because so few Overlords were produced in the Concordat.










At the last minute the Alexander also took 2 Leopard PW (the model with a spinal Naval Laser), because the Dragoons only had 2 of is 4 collars full with their units.


Unfortunately, the Aurigan Province and the Revenants didn’t have any Mriya, so the civilian JumpShips were almost all improved Leviathans (8 collars each).


My departing gift to Paul was my Mech (a modified Nightstar 9Jb), that received one last upgrade. Replacing both Medium Pulse Lasers with Clan ER Medium Lasers, provided free weight for an Angel ECM suit, and the Small Laser being replaced by a Clan Small Pulse Laser with AMS capability at the cost of half a ton of armor.

 

[paulobrito]

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.

 

[paulobrito]

The last few months had been interesting for Galaxy Commander Julian Kirov.


After the conquest of Antallos and Rezak's Hole, the Goliath Scorpions had finally turned their attention to the Outworlds Alliance.


The three systems captured so far had not offered much resistance. On Risin and Dneiper, the HPG messages transmitted prior to their capture had reported that they were under pirate attack, and on Prinis Prime, only raiders had been reported. Unlike the initial attacks by the other Clans, the Goliath Scorpions had neither proclaimed their identity nor launched batchalls when they jumped into the systems. In the first two systems, the defenses had been second or third rate militia units, that didn’t even have ’Mechs, just a few tanks and mostly support vehicles. Prinis had a little more with a Lance of old ‘Mechs and a company of tanks defending the system.






So far, everything was going according to Kirov's plans. The longer it took to identify that it was a Clan invasion, the longer it would take for the Outworlds Alliance or anyone else to notice them, the longer it would be before any serious reaction could happen. This was a lesson Kirov had learned by studying the reports from his Clan Watch section.


The downside of focusing on the Outworlds was that all the systems were sparsely populated, with almost no industry and that the population was composed of Ommiss - pacifists and anti-tech.


Not having the strength not the time to try to impose the ideals of the Clans, and deciding that this task was for those who came after him even if that was going to be more than two years in the future, Julian Kirov did not try to change the way of thinking and acting of the new subjects of the Clan. His priority was to gain a sufficient number of systems so that the Clan could prosper. To do this, he needed all his forces, leaving other matters for when the rest of the Clan arrived.






With five systems already captured, a JumpShip had been sent back to inform of the success of the operation, and for the second phase to be initiated - moving the Clan into the new territories.


One more system, and he would stop the offensive operations.






However, Rushaven did not go as smoothly as the previous worlds.


For starters, the locals correctly identified the invading force, to be a Clan one, even identifying correctly the Goliath Scorpion Clan, and the local HPG sent a message in time, ending the secrecy of the operation.


And this time, the defenses were more capable. For the first time they encountered ASFs from the Alliance Military Corps, the Outworlds Alliance military and they proved to be at least as capable as those of the Clan.


The mercenaries defending the capital, had ’Mechs with some advanced weapons - SLDF level - which made combat more difficult.


However, the final outcome, had never been in doubt, only the cost of capturing the system had been a bit higher than planned.
The battle ended with Kirov's Highlander IIC taking out the Marauder-5D of the leader of the mercenaries defending the planet.






What was curious from Kirov’s point of view was that of all the systems captured, only Antallos, a pirate nest, had any advanced industry and was the most populated, while all the other systems from the Outworlds Alliance only had raw resources.

 

[paulobrito]

Two and a half months after the Revenants left for the Outworlds Alliance, news arrived - via TMI - that the Alliance Military Corps (AMC) had executed an operation against the Clans on Rushaven. Information was sparse, only that some of the best ASF units had participated, and there had been no news since.


This was obviously an operation with political components and it was likely that someone important in the AMC or in the government did not want to wait for the help of the Concordat and show that they were more than able to solve the matter by themselves.


It seems that something didn't go right, as no more news came until the Revenants arrived on Alpheratz.


Reinforced by ASF units from the AMC, the Revenants and the Wolf’s Dragoons arrived at Rushaven, where they found a mystery.


At the Zenith Jump point was the wreckage of a battle, which included many ASFs, 6 DropShips and two JumpShips, The strangest thing was that the Clanners had pulled out of the system, and taken the core of the local HPG with them.


An exhaustive survey of the battlefield, indicated that they had lost about a hundred ASFs, all conventional models since no wreckage of OmniFighters was to be found. The remains of the DropShips and JumpShips were part of the AMC forces that had tried to liberate the system a few months earlier.
The Goliath Scorpion had also collected anything useful, leaving only wreckage.


Risin, Dneiper and Prinis Prime had also been evacuated by the Clanners, which had taken not only the HPGs but also everything they could remove from what little industry there was.






The Clanners having left the Outworlds Alliance, it was decided, after some discussions, that the Taurians and Dragoons would stay for six months training of the AMC forces, but would not go on a possibly futile quest to find out where the Goliath Scorpions had gone.


Meanwhile, four of the six Pintos that had come with the expeditionary force were sold to Outworlds Alliance, creating an embryonic naval force that would aid in the defense of the nation. The remaining WarShips and JumpShips went through Quatre Belle, which had finally entered service, receiving some maintenance.






Meanwhile, in the Taurian Concordat, the marriage of Antony Calderon to Sara Arano Bassot had taken place in Taurus on September 12, 3063, bringing together the two most powerful families in the Concordat.


Because the wedding of our children represented a shift in the balance of power in Concordat, exceptional security measures were taken so that nothing would interfere with the ceremony. Fortunately, everything went well, and it was a dignified ceremony with evident popular support.


Interestingly, it was the opposition itself that carried out an internal purge, removing the most radical elements/ against the new alliance. Clearly the more pragmatic elements of the opposition had won.


And to add further support to this wedding the TCS Thomas Calderon (former SLS Bismark) entered Taurus orbit during the ceremony, being at least declared ready for service after a lengthy rebuild, modernization and shaking cruise.


Part of the works done on It included facilities for performing as a flagship together with Black Box and Naval Grade ECM suit.


A new WarShip of the same class was already under construction, using much of what the Taurian shipyards had learned during the Thomas Calderon operation.

 

[paulobrito]

In early 3064, after having absorbed the Duchy of Andurien, the Capellan Confederation turned its attention to the Zion Province, trying to capture more territory from the fragmented ex-FWL, trying to take advantage that it was still embroiled in a civil war and that the other neighboring nations were still busy with the Clans.


The timing was perfect as at this time, the Marik faction, who had the last WarShips in the region, was busy invading the Duchy of Oriente, leaving the small province consisting of the Zion, Kirkbacken, Asuncion and Suzano systems virtually defenseless.


In February 3064, CCAF forces, supported by WarShips, Pocket WarShips, Assault DropShips and large numbers of Aerospace Fighters ,invaded the Zion, Asuncion and Suzano systems, with a mix of House Units and regular Regiments. At the same time, Word of Blake forces, albeit without WarShip support – as the ones they had were in maintenance/repair deep inside the Capellan Confederation - but using their powerful Pocket WarShips and also with large numbers of Fighters, invaded the Kirkbacken system.


In all these systems, the defending forces, struggling with the few resources available to them due to the prevailing civil war, were quickly defeated by the more numerous, better trained and better equipped invaders, who also dominated space and the sky.


By early April 3064, the Zion province had been completely captured by the Capellan Confederation.
The TMI, MIIO and MIM agents present there reported the use of large quantities of AAMs by the CCAF and the WoB, helping them quickly to quickly destroy the few defensive ASFs present with barely any losses at all. In the CCAF it was evident that the House Units had better, more advanced and larger quantities of equipment than the regular forces.


Of particular interest to the agents was the fact that the House Units had more advanced battle armor than the regular forces, and that the WoB was using, albeit in small numbers, what were tentatively described as cyborgs. WoB apparently don’t use battle armor. They deploy great quantities of PA(L)s instead. While the capellan House Units have new designs of mechs, the regular forces and WoB only deployed SLDF and traditional designs, even if the WoB are more like royals.






Of course, these aggressive Capellan initiatives created great concern in their other neighbors: the Taurian Concordat, the Magistracy of Canopus, the St. Ives Compact and the Federation Commonwealth. Both the Concordat and Magistracy moved more troops (and WarShips) to the Capellan borders. The FC deployed several mercenary units to the area and hired two regiments of Wolf Dragoons – all with WarShip support. St. Ives also contracted several mercenary units to bolster their defenses.






To no one surprise (especially after the Capellan operation), the number of 'pirates' on the Confederation borders had in the meantime more than doubled. It was clear to everyone that they were black units controlled by Sian to keep its neighbors occupied, even if a relatively small portion of them were identified as remnants of ex-FWL units destroyed during the ongoing civil war. However, this strategy was not as efficient as one could have expected as unlike similar tactics in the previous years,the better in-house communications and the increased use of WarShips meant that many of these would-be pirates were quickly and effectively eliminated.


Also, the 'liberation movements' that had begun right before the invasion of Zion operating on former worlds controlled by the Capellan Confederation and now part of the Concordat and Commonwealth were not very successful. Both the TMI and the MIIO had access to more advanced surveillance technology and great experience dealing with these types of organizations, from similar attempts in the past.


But on the whole, both the 'pirates' and the 'liberation movements' did what Sian expected of them - they distracted both nations for a time, opening a window of opportunity for the CCAF and WoB to execute the occupation of the Zion Province unimpeded.

 

[paulobrito]

An unexpected (or not) consequence of the Capellan Confederation invasion of Zion Province was the end of the civil war in the former FWL.


The two major groups – the Duchy of Oriente and the Marik Commonwealth, having absorbed/conquered basically all the remaining survivors, and being too exhausted to achieve a clear winner and , with the threat of Capellan Confederation continuing to conquer systems while they were busy with each other, finally reached a ceasefire / truce.


In a rare (for a civil war) display of pragmatism, taking into account their situation, they finally decided, albeit begrudgingly, to recognize the other side as an independent nation and no longer as rebel provinces.


This agreement led to a significant number of troops from both sides moving to their borders with the Capellan Confederation, although (due to the trust in each other) a substantial number remained on the common borders.


At the end of 3064, both States launched new WarShips. Interestingly, both were Zechetinu II class Corvettes.


When they tried to resume the official contacts with other nations, the situation was curious. For starters, in a bit of schadenfreude, nobody gave any side the older ex-FWL embassies, with, curiously, all nations using the argument that that the older Free Worlds League was no more and that they were new nations. Also, both sides were much poorer, in debt, and weaker than the FWL ever had been. So, it was obvious that they wouldn’t/couldn’t get the level of respect and/or attention they expected. In the end, both ‘new’ nations needed to find and equip new embassies in the other nations capitals but also consulates in several important systems or province capitals. Not surprisingly, because they were neighbors, the Duchy of Oriente got some interest from the MIM, while the Marik Commonwealth received more attention from the MIIO. Neighbors will always be neighbors, after all.






Meanwhile, in the Aurigan Province, with Sara and her new husband staying at least two more years on Taurus, and unsure that she would not be too influenced by the Calderons, Paul in the Outworlds Alliance, Kamea was busy training Peter to, should the need arise, handle the provincial government.


I, meanwhile, was busy creating a second RCT for the Revenants, taking advantage of the excellent production of the Province (and of my companies abroad) and of the surplus of trained personnel coming out of the local military schools. At this time, several infantry units, including Battle Armour, Jump, and Mechanized ones, as well as armored units were already undergoing training, while the BattleMech battalions were just starting theirs.


On the equipment front, the first generation Heavy Battle Armor we had been developing had been canceled, with many unresolved problems. Now, with the collaboration of Luthien Armor Works in the Combine and of Magesty Metals and Manufacturing in Canopus, a new design had been completed.


Inspired by the Marauder Mech, at 1,500kg but running only 11km/h, the MiniMad - as it immediately came to be known - had a Support PPC and an Anti-Personnel Weapon in each arm, a Light Recoiless Rifle or Battle Armour level Gauss Rifle in the right torso together with a Light TAG. It also had Magnetic Clamps which allowed it to be carried by friendly units.


Depending on the missions, the APW could be a Heavy Machine Gun, a Micro-Grenade Launcher or a scaled-up infantry Pulse Laser Rifle. The Light Recoilless Rifle had three types of ammunition - HE, FRAG or thermobaric.


While basically useless against Mechs and heavy armored vehicles, it was deadly against all types of infantry, PA(L) and BA, as well as unarmored or lightly armored vehicles.






Note: Basically a slightly improved/more versatile Marauder Battle Armor created OTL in 3110 by the Marian Hegemony.






In May 3064, CHI began industrially producing Clan level ER PPCs and Gauss Rifles.


A positive side of our research into new (ie from my home universe) chip production techniques was that it was easy for us to reproduce Clan electronics, such as Targeting Computers. As for Angel ECM and Bloodhound Active Probe, the ones we were starting to produce weighed half a ton and a ton less respectively than the standard ones. Prototypes in the lab weighted only one ton and two tons and occupied only one critical slot, but so far none had achieved – by a wide margin – the levels of ruggedness necessary for military components.


As for C3 Master and Slave Computers, LAW in collaboration with CHI was finalizing the second generation, which would be produced by both companies.






In September 3064, the shipyard at Coromodir V went into operation, starting to build, in 3 slots, Invaders. It was planned that by 3068, it would also be capable of producing Ajax Destroyers.


As for the shipyard in Detroit, it would become operational in 3066.

 

[paulobrito]

Since the beginning of the invasion, the Inner Sphere (and the Periphery) nations were trying to gain access to the communications of the Clans.


By August 3065, both the Federation Commonwealth, Terra (which means including the Free Rasalhague Republic) and the Draconis Combine (with their allies, the Taurian Concordat) had finally succeeded in finding and altering some Clan communications satellite (HPG two-ways).


The missions to find and hack them had been executed by Magellans and in some cases by Orcas. It had been no easy task since several were in systems with WarShip presence, forcing them to hasty retreats (easy to do since both types of Ships had Lithium-fusion batteries), while others had self-destruct when the attempts to hack them had failed.


The technology and sophistication level the Clans used was a bit better than the very late SLDF – probably thanks to advanced prototypes that they took with them in the Exodus – updated with more recent tech. The only area where the Inner Sphere powers were ahead was encryption and decryption technology, thanks to the centuries of continuous warfare.


After a rocky start, when all sides found out that the others also had access to Clan comms, the Inner Sphere started a program to share the information obtained. For that, an organization was created formed of members of the different intelligence units of the different nations having access to this intel, tentatively named Allied Intelligence Service, or AIS for short. For now, their single function was to share the information and to make the best out of it.


One of the immediate results of said program was the postponement of any offensive, when a thorough analysis revealed the sheer number of WarShips and ASFs present in the occupied systems.


Clearly, the next offensive would require more resources.


However, it appears that the Clan side was not idle on the information war front. A crescent number of Bug Eye (JumpShips) and Pueblo (DropShips) had been spotted in and near the contested areas. So far, none as been captured or destroyed, but the hunt was on.


Some information was also obtained about what was going in the Clan Home Worlds. Apparently, a war started when the Home Clans clashed over the control of the territories vacated by those that had fully moved to the Inner Sphere (and near Periphery). While it stated in normal Clan fashion, things escalated when they also tried to absorb the defeated Clans that had returned home, like the Jade Falcons with nukes being used in space.


While for the Falcons, after years of war in the Inner Sphere, using nukes outside the 75k km limit of any planetary atmosphere, was now a normal fact of war, for the Clans that never participated in the invasion, is a dezgra move, that caused retaliations in kind.


What came to a surprise for the Home Clans was that the Snow Ravens also used the same tactics and weapons. Even after sustaining some losses in combat and with their fleet divided, the Ravens still had one of the biggest fleet in Clan space. Their use of nukes, and the fact that they were ahead in improving the anti-ASF and anti-missile defenses of their WarShips cemented their superiority in space. That they decided to side with the Falcons was also a nasty surprise for the other Clans.

 

[paulobrito]

Khan Ariel Suvurov did not wait for news from Galaxy Commander Julian Kirov to begin preparations for the migration of her Clan to new territories.


As soon as Kirov's forces departed, a very discreet but continuing upgrade of the available naval means began. Gradually, in the utmost secrecy, and using different explanations, such as replacing another WarShip, or planned maintenance, their fleet was brought to a full state of readiness being able to quickly move to any location.


At the same time, the various civilian JumpShips, available to all the Castes, received an overhaul in order to put them in the best condition possible for such a long journey.


Tremendous effort was made to hide their preparations from the Watch , in which they were helped by the fact that the best operatives were focusing on the operations in the Inner Sphere and the nascent conflicts in the HomeWorlds made the few operatives remaining there unavailable for anything else.


Dismantling the factories and preparing the necessary reserves for the trip was time-consuming, even more so, because the necessity of doing it discreetly, but fortunately it also went without incident.


Unlike the Ghost Bears, the Goliath Scorpions did not have the naval means to move the entire Clan, forcing Ariel Suvurov to make the difficult decision to leave behind the elders, the incapacitated and a few volunteers, who had the difficult mission of maintaining the illusion that the Clan was still present for as long as possible, while representing less than 10% of the total population of their Clan.






Still, it took tough negotiations with several Clans (some allied, some merely neutral) to gather everything needed. Fortunately everything went secretly enough even if not perfectly and the Goliath Scorpions managed to obtain the necessary equipment to begin the long journey, without their enemies or any predatory Clan discovering their true intentions before it was too late. In order to do that, they had to cut deals that were far from optimal and to give away most of their possessions.


On Dadga, they gave away their part of the system to the Star Adder, in exchange for JumpShips and DropShips, keeping only a small force on ground to create the illusion that they were present. Their natural allies, Clan Wolf, was also transferring forces to the Inner Sphere and had to use the same trick..


On Huntress, their territories went to the Jade Falcons and Star Adders, in exchange for JumpShips, DropShips and specific equipment.


On Marshall, a complicated game of moving units continuously was played to trick the forces of Clan Fire Mandrill and Clan Ice Hellion present on-world and this up to the last moment. They were helped in this game by Clan Star Adder.


On Roche, since both Clans Wolf and Goliath Scorpion were leaving the HomeWorlds around the same time (even though the Wolves had started earlier), the withdrawal was peaceful, which left the system abandoned until the other Clans found out and fought among themselves for the system.


Clan Goliath Scorpion gave up their enclaves on Tokasha to the Diamond Sharks, in exchange for JumpShips, DropShips and the CDS Speculator (Volga Class).






Note ...: the DropShips obtained were all civilian versions, which the Clans valued less but were still the best choice for transporting the population and equipment the Goliath Scorpions were able to carry.

 

[paulobrito]

The offensive launched by the Ghost Bear, the Wolf, and the Snow Raven Clans in 3068 took everyone by surprise.


Due to the extensive, but careful use of highly modernized Bug Eye spy ships, they knew in detail the location and composition of the various EDF /EN (Earth Defense Force / Earth Navy) task forces within what was left of the Free Rasalhague Republic.


On July 12, 3068, each of these task forces was attacked and destroyed, by squadrons of WarShips from all three Clans, operating together for the first time.






Of note, all the WarShips used by the Clans had been massively modified, having been given robust defenses against ASFs and missiles, while the numerous OmniFighters used ECM and AAM in quantities never seen before.


Among the WarShips used in this operation were the CSRS Storm Talon (Ark Royal Heavy carrier, see chapter 107) and at least two massive WarShips, one of which, later identified as the CGBS Great Bear (Leviathan II Heavy Battleship class), destroyed the ENS Defender of Earth (Farragut class).


Several other WarShips of unknown model (and not of SLDF origin) were also used, in a clear demonstration that at least these Clans had an active production of WarShips.


With the way open for invasion, Rasalhague was the first system to fall, having been assaulted by 12 Galaxies, 8 from Ghost Bear, and two from each of the other Clans.






In a radical departure from common Clan practices, no batchall was offered, and few of the Clan Mechwarriors indulged in single combat.


The Clan ground forces had also changed – While only a few new OmniMechs designs are spotted, various new Configurations of the know ones were present on the battlefield, many of these with more and/or improved EW equipment. One specialized Omni extremely rare until now, was now present in great numbers, the Naga. Also, many new types of Battle Armour were now deployed. Even OmniVehicles, which until now had almost only been used by Clan Hell Horses, were being seen in some numbers. Among them were arty (Arrow IV or tube) or SAM ones (Arrow IV SAM or an Omni variant of the Pollux ADA), and a few were even EW-dedicated. The Clans, or at least these three Clans, had radically changed their behavior, and in a very lethal way. It seems someone had found some SLDF manuals on combined military operations and read some chapters of it.






By December 22, 3068, the whole the Free Rasalhague Republic was in the hands of these Clans, and what was left of the EDF withdrew to the Sol system, having lost all the WarShips involved in defending the FRR, with only a few remaining, rumored to be less than a dozen in the solar system. As ground forces were concerned, the EDF had lost the equivalent of 10 divisions, leaving it greatly weakened.


Military operations stopped at that date, the Clans being apparently satisfied with their new conquests, or not wishing to invade another nation.






Note: In this alternate universe, the Clans Ghost Bear, Wolf, and Snow Raven were concentrated in the FRR, not occupying systems in either the Draconis Combine or the Federated Commonwealth, leaving the invasion/occupation of those nations to the remaining Clans involved in the invasion. These three Clans had also occupied several systems in the Periphery, north of the FRR, while only the Snow Ravens still holding territories in the HomeWorlds, with the Ghost Bears and Wolves having, at this date, completed their full transfer to their new domains in the Inner Sphere and Near Periphery.

 

[paulobrito]

Note..: chapter highly influenced by the excellent works of Cannonshop in his excellent Ngoverse.






One of Jean-Luc's long-term investments from the beginning had been to try to attract as many spacers / belters / rockajackers as possible to New Vandenberg first, and then to Coromodir.


By 3068, this effort had resulted in a spacer population of about 250 million in the Coromodir system, which was the third system with the most spacers in the Inner Sphere/Periphery, being only surpassed by the Sol and Kowloon systems.


Arriving in small groups, they had come from large concentrations such as Sol, Cambiano and even Kowloon, and also from small communities that existed in all nations, with some even coming from the Kuritan space.


The end result was the availability of a huge population trained to work in space and with the investments made at Snowden and Snowden-L in equipment to both explore the asteroid belts and the Oort cloud, the shipyards at Coromodir were not short of either trained personnel nor of resources that in other systems would be rare and expensive.


Adjusting the legislation to support the specific needs of these communities had contributed a lot to the attractiveness of the whole system.


Another factors that helped attract several of these groups was the excellent repair and maintenance conditions offered at the dockyards and shipyards, as well as excellent credit conditions for the purchase of JumpShips for spacers, as long as they worked a large part of the time within Concordat. / Aurigan Province. Or the building of a complete teaching/healthcare system in selected asteroids. Since their needs were usually not taken care of and the spacers viewed all governments with suspicion, it took a lot of discussion and negotiations to put everything on tracks..


Another area of interest for spacers was skinsuits. A modern factory had been built in Coromodir to produce the best possible design. To this end, a competition had been instituted in which each improvement, each bug fix, was rewarded, leading to several spacers communicating their personal improvements.






The end result was a model superior in quality, autonomy and comfort to any other in existence. They were sold at a low profit to the local community, which was so large (in the millions), that the factory still made a small gain, but the reason was mostly politic, leading the managers to be overruled by the ruling family when they wanted to increase the price. Obviously, the price of the ones sold outside the Coromodir system was more in line with the desires of the company.






A side effect of these measures was that even JàrnFòlk's JumpShips began to appear in Coromodir with the first contact being made in 3065.






Reaching such results had been neither easy nor short journey, on the contrary. In the beginning, and in the first few decades, this policy had to face the many suspicions and distrusts of the belters and rockajackers, more than triple burned and deceived by successive governments in the Inner Sphere.


But, thanks to the same focused politics being pursued overtime accompanied by constant consultations with the interested parties, results were reached until we gathered in 3068 what was the third-largest concentration of spacers ever created.






From Kowloon, the biggest enclave outside Sol, spacers only started to arrive in numbers after the Clan invasions, any attempts before that only got very small results.


One thing interlinked with spacers is their JumpShips. You couldn’t have ones without the others.


While the Concordat has five full shipyards – Bolthole, Taurus, New Vandenberg, Coromodir and Mechdur – all capable to deliver WarShips and JumpShips, they also had two more – Detroit and Pinard – that could only build Invaders. What they had in greater numbers were dockyards, that couldn’t make new ships but were vital for the maintenance and small repairs of the growing fleet.


For example, in 3068, Coromodir had one full shipyard over Coromodir V, a dockyard on the asteroid belt that mostly served the spacer community, and was busy building another dockyard (that was planned to be latter transformed into a full shipyard) in the Oort cloud.


That network of dockyards was part of the reasons the spacers were eager to move to the Coromodir system as they knew their fleets could be maintained at a rhythm and price not possible in other nations, thanks in no small part to the accords with the Arano-Bassot. Outside Coromodir, they had, like in other states, to ‘fight’ to obtain access to said dockyards and shipyards, even if the Concordat treated them better than the other nations.


Another really important factor was that the space lanes inside the Concordat were much safer than in any other nation, a thing much appreciated by the spacer communities. Much of this came from the Pinto Class WarShips.


The growing fleet of Pintos Block 2 (with the 80 MG replaced by 24 AMS and the 800 SHS by 600 DHS – see chapter 68) was mostly used for ‘Coastal Guard’ missions, aka, patrolling against piracy / contraband and helping ships in distress. Even with some sold to the Magistracy, the Draconis Combine and even to the Outworlds Alliance, the remaining fleet was big enough to be the reason that any pirate would consider the Concordat space Death Ground and departed to less dangerous territories.


Apart from the increased number of people to work in space oriented jobs inside the Coromodir system – one of the reasons said system is economically growing faster than any other – the presence of the spacers JumpShips also accounted in no small part for the increase in trade inside the Aurigan Province and the rest of the Concordat. Inside the Province they represented about 20% of all commercial Jumpships, while in the Concordat they are about 10%. And more ships meant more trade.






By 3068, the Taurian Commercial Navy – and private companies- were doing business with all the Concordat territory as well as all the systems up to the Magistracy of Canopus, the old Lothian League and Illyrian Palatinate (these two now Taurian territory or Taurian vassals in all but name), the Circinus Federation, the Federated Commonwealth, the Draconis Combine, the Outworlds Alliance and the news states in the ex-FWL, and Earth.


Basically, they only didn’t do business with the Capellan Confederation and the Clans. The Concordat was also selling WarShips to the Magistracy, the Outworld Alliance, the Combine and after the disaster in the Rasalhague space (and in urgent negotiations) with Earth, and was the only nation to do so.

 

[paulobrito]

Note..: Second part of the heavily based on Cannonshop works. Now, the WarShip toys...






As was to be expected, the sale of WarShips, even the lighter classes, to Earth, was not well accepted at first by the Taurian elites. However, once the high price per WarShip was known– along with the various advantages that the Concordat got, ranging from an obscene amount of licenses, to a complete copy of the Prometheus database version or to various exceptions in taxation, the opposition to the sales died quickly.


What was not announced in the media on Taurus, was that since only the Aurigan Province produced Pintos, the bulk of the (financial) slice would go to them.


In the meantime, a new type of Corvettes, the Tribal class, began to enter service in the Taurian Concordat based on the experience earned from the sales of the Pintos to other nations, what they had learned in the meantime from the growing population of spacers and the feedback from the different war missions of the Orcas and Pintos.






Highly based on the Pinto design, the differences were nevertheless immense.


For starters, the armor was Heavy Ferrous-Aluminum. It was equipped with LF, the latest Black Box generation available to the TC and with one of the most compact HPGs ever produced (similar to the 14 ton SL mobile HPG for ground forces). The sensor and communication suites were also state of the art.


The armament was also quite different - 4 NL55, 2 LNPPC, 2 Light Naval Gauss, 2 AR-10 tubes (loaded with “standard” missiles in normal, anti-piracy and patrol missions, with nuke loaded missiles when heavy fights were foreseen). 16 LPL and 16 MPL provided it with AMS and anti ASF capability. It kept the 12 ASFs and the DropShip docking collar from the Pinto.


The targeting computer used with the Light Naval Gauss, took in consideration, that in space, the range of the weapons was basically unlimited, and could calculate very long ranged shots – another first for a space navy.


In fact, tests/exercises made to validate the design, showed that with a competent crew, hits could be achieved at more than 3 light-seconds – the actual record against a moving target (that didn’t do fancy maneuvers, that is) was a bit in excess of a million kilometers. That exercise was against an invading DropShip moving in a usual (aka, predictable) trajectory… and the shooter was never detected during said exercise.


To ensure its safety and for anti-piracy and boarding missions, it carried 48 Marines, with a combination of PA(L) and Battle Armour.


The other difference was the massive use of Radar Absorbent Material (RAM) on it giving it both a black paint and a black sail.






Nothing too over the edge but the layered materials were able to absorb as many electromagnetic spectra as possible, including frequencies above and below visible light. it's an absorptive, rather than reflective tech. Because it's less concentrated, and has to have 'tuning elements' spread throughout to convert received signal (into the radio spectrum) into electrical power, the sails are unusually large for the mass of the vessel, and require some care when retracting, often requiring crew to be on the surface of the ship in hard vacuum to prevent snags and address malfunctions in the retraction gear.










Finally, it had the most advanced jump-point calculator/advanced navigational computer available thanks to the many lessons passed on by the spacers.


Another factor was that both the crew and the Marines were prepared/trained from the start to fight in vacuum, with the atmosphere drained.






Simulations, and careful testing had demonstrated that the survivability of a WarShip rose brutally if this training took place, allowing it to keep on operating in situations that would have destroyed any other WarShip.






The RAM coating/black paint was also very good at absorbing/hidden the heat signature, turning the ship very stealth, unless under very focused active search from modern systems. The negative side was that it made it mandatory to have two sets of maneuvering thrusters – the ‘standard’ high energy/hot plasma and a low power one, using high pressure cold gas, virtually undetectable unless at very short range. Another problem, was that in order to hide the heat signature, a massive internal heat sink/dump system was needed, that could only be activated for a couple of hours, until its capacity was exceeded, and the radiation vents had to be reopened. But, during these hours, it was the most stealthy WarShip known by the Taurians.


Obviously, this WarShip was not included on the “available for other nations” lists.






Another much less technological challenging ‘WarShip’ was also brought into production for a specific use in the Coromodir system, first and later also in Bolthole and Taurus.


In short, this cheaper vessel was a modified ferry short JumpShip, with an HNPPC spinal mounted, 12 LPL in dual mode, and four Killer Whales in single shot tubes. Taurians being Taurians, these were in reality, Peacemakers. Since they suffered from the same limitations as the ferries – aka, imprecise and short jump, only a few were constructed to help patrol the system. But to act, as a single system patrol and as a first line of defense, they were good enough. Contributing in no small part to their efficiency was the fact that their existence was not publicly known with only few people outside of the high ranking officers being informed. They were only deployed to the Taurus system, Bolthole, and to the Coromodir system and with no official existence.

 

[paulobrito]

Coromodir System

Nadir Jump-Point

Olympus Station

12th January 3069




The duty station started like all others for Ensign Julius Silva. Monitoring the traffic on the Nadir Jump-Point of the Coromodir system was a busy job, but not a properly exciting one. Until now.

"Unscheduled emergence wave. A big one! Confirmed several big ships!'

'Sound the alert!'

'Interference on the Box! Can make the bloody thing work.'

'Switch to radio signals! Fast.'

'Can't, also massive interference.'

'Activate case Zulu, prepare the emergency secure laser data-links for communication with both planets. Whatever is arriving is big and is serious.'

'Time count… already passed the megatons class jump, incoming is going to be a very big WarShip, or various ships arriving at the same time.'

The force that arrived was composed by 4 WarShips, more precisely, 2 Aegis class Heavy Cruisers, 1 Lola III and 1 Baron class Destroyers. None with active IFF, a sure sign that they were hostile.

The forces present at the Nadir Jump-Point tried to do something, they really tried, but they didn't have any WarShip and the only Pocket Warship, a Leopard CW, only had a single NL55. To be fair, it got a clean shot on the Lola III, without any visible damage other than a scar on the Destroyer armor.

The answer destroyed all the defending forces present, including the Olympus station with one Ensign Julius Silva, but not before he successfully sent the composition of the invader force via secure laser data-link to both Coromodir V and VI.




After that, several hours later, in Coromodir V, the nearest inhabited planet, (Coromodir VI being on the other side of the system at this time) potent optical telescopes were pointed to the location. Soon, they confirmed the composition of the invasion (or raider) force and also detected a late arrival wave with a very rare Falsane Yardship, 1 StarLord, and 6 Invaders.

Furthermore, the DropShips, that by now, were deployed were a mix of Assault, 'aerospace carrier and infantry transport, which indicated a will to capture targets.




As usual in these emergencies, any JumpShip present at the Nadir that could immediately jump out, did it, and the poor ones that couldn't were destroyed.

The JumpShips at the Zenith Jump-Point, as soon as they learned of the invasion also jumped out if they could.

That let the system without any (civil) way of alert the near systems, because of the unprecedented and unexpected jamming of the FTL communications.




Their objective quickly became obvious as the force moved in direction of Coromodir V.

Whoever they were, they didn't try to go for the stable pirate jump-point near the planet, having no doubt been well-informed about the (relatively) massive defenses covering it (as well as the stable pirate Jump Point around Coromodir VI).




Note..: OTL/Lore the HPG/BlackBox and radio interference/jamming can be caused by the massive 1000LY ranged Super-HPGs that WoB used in the Jihad.




The forces defending the system included the Winchester II class Cruiser TCS Daniel Calderon, and two Corvettes – the Tribal class TCS Tribal, first and so far only operational ship of her class, and the Pinto class TCS Mandalas, as well as several Pocket Warships. Also present were 3 Carcajou class Cutters.




Because of the jamming, the nature and numbers of the invaders and the location of the forces present, it was decided that the TCS Mandalas that was near the Coromodir VI jump point would jump to the Guldra system and from there alert all the forces in range to provide support.




Only later was it discovered that both Guldra and Itrom, the two inhabited system at less than 30 LY from Coromodir, had also been hit by the same jamming. The defense had thus been deprived of a WarShip for nothing.




In the Coromodir V shipyards, 2 Tribal class Corvettes, 2 Ajax class Destroyers and 6 Invader class JumpShips rested in varied stages of construction and represented without any doubt a very tempting target for the invaders/raiders.

The 'journey' to Coromodir V was not easy for the invaders.

Captain Mary Li, commanding the TCS Tribal pulverized the previous range record and while it took her the full ammo of her Light Naval Gauss to take down three DropShips, she managed to destroy them, at over 5 million kilometers. Of course, not all the shots hit, but the ones that did were enough to destroy a Union-CV, a Titan and a Triumph.




Due to the fact that the distance between the Nadir Jump Point and Coromodir V was about 9 days, and that the locations had more JumpShips and ferries than a system without shipyards (or spacers) would normally have, a series of immense navigational feats moved several military DropShips from Coromodir VI, that at this time was on the opposite side of the system, and under normal conditions wouldn't be able to send help in time, a fact more than probable know by the invaders, to Coromodir V, with the very capable navigators making full use of the Pirate Points near both planets.

Normally, more than half of these jumps would have make anyone navigation licenses removed but this was a special circumstances.

The end result was that several Pocket WarShips, Assault DropShips and Heavy Carriers, the latter carrying a considerable number of ASF and small crafts - small crafts in this case being Flankers-F, 200 tons of pure malice equipped with 3 ERPPCs and a dozen Arrow IVs, in a mix of AAMs and AShMs, were moved from Coromodir VI to the orbit of Coromodir V, greatly reinforcing the local defenses.




Note: This was only possible due to the fact that both planets (Coromodir V and VI) had moons of reasonable size which created Lagrange Points, AKA stable Pirate Points, at a short distance from the respective planets. These were the kind of Pirate Points that ferries could - at the limit, and only with high-class navigators - operate. In reality, the ferries were not certified for these operations, but military emergencies...




Two days away from Coromodir V, the forces on both sides faced each other.

The first line of defense were the ASFs and small crafts, leaving on the Coromodir side the WarShips, Pocket WarShips and Assault DropShips for the second wave.

But what the first wave lacked in mass, they had in numbers and the numerical advantage for the defending forces was obvious from the start. Some 200 ASFs - all SL models, though many clearly upgraded, were up against just over 300 ASFs and 70 small crafts. The two WarShips and DropShips of the invading force did what they could to support their escort.

Clearly the invaders also had AAMs and ECMs, which balanced the forces somewhat, but after the first pass, the invaders had lost more than half of the ASFs, for a loss of ninety two from the defenders. Even if none of the DropShips or WarShips had been destroyed in this attack, all of the invading WarShips and several of their DropShips had been hit badly.

Now it was the turn of the defender heavyweights to enter the game with 1 Winchester II class Cruiser, 1 Tribal class Corvette, 3 Carcajou class Cutters, 4 Lee Pocket WarShips, and 6 Leopard Pocket WarShips.




In terms of mass, this fleet was not impressive. But unlike the attackers, they still had full magazines, and undamaged armor. And being Taurians, they carried lots and lots of nukes.

Whereas the attackers would have basically emptied their magazines to defend themselves and have little anti-missile capability left after stopping the Alamos salvos from the first attack.

Or so the defenders thought. In fact, the two Aegis had been extensively modified, and not only had a comprehensive anti-ASF and AMS defense, but, also much deeper magazines for the capital missiles.

The 4 Lee concentrated on one of the Aegis, and between them, they had enough AR-10s to saturate the Heavy Cruiser defenses. They were destroyed, but the Cruiser died along with them, hit by 3 Peacemakers.

The Baron showed what a Destroyer was capable of against Cutters. It destroyed two and heavily damaged the last one, but did not survive the encounter, hit by Heavy Naval PPC and Peacemakers.

The Cutters, while clearly not designed to fight against true WarShips, survived long enough to do lethal damage, even when they were hit by enough fire that a ship double that size had no chance to survive.

The other Aegis and the Lola, were busy dealing with the Daniel Calderon, and destroyed it, even if in the process, the Cruiser had been moderately damaged and the Destroyer heavily damaged.

This left only the TCS Tribal with some PW Leopards again the invaders – that and several ASF and small crafts with their ammo depleted.

But, in their planning, the invaders had forgot one tiny, small detail that proved to be critical – the jamming worked for the outgoing and incoming messages. Like all important Concordat systems, Coromodir has two HPG networks – one the civilian one, based on the old Comstar HPGs, and another, full Taurian made, for exclusive military transmissions with transmissions being made on a regular basis just in case. When several systems begin losing contact with Coromodir, in both networks, it was evident that something bad was happening there.

And several WarShips were send. Since all the WarShips of the Concordat Navy, with the exception of the Pinto class, had LF batteries they could move fast, helped in this by a network of recharge stations constructed in the last decades at great expense.

The end result, was that when the TCS Tribal was apparently alone against the invasion force, several jump points became active in the system. And from these, emerged several WarShips, including the recently operational TCS Thomas Calderon (a modified Texas class), that arrived with its escort group – 2 Winchester II Heavy Cruisers, 2 Dart II Light Cruisers, 2 Concordat Frigates, and 4 Ajax Destroyers, that were in exercise nearby. While the Thomas Calderon and its group arrived at the Zenith jump point, said jump point had a recharge station, so the fleet could jump to Coromodir V in as short time, negating access to the shipyards to the invaders, which understood it too.

Instead of trying a useless continuation of their mission, the invaders changed directions, moving to the nearest point past the jump limit they could achieve.

But, when they, some days latter, were near the jump limit, the Thomas Calderon task force jumped there, having already recharged its K-F drives, thanks to the Zenith recharge station.

Confronted by a massively superior force and with no escape possible, the invaders destroyed their ships, exploding the reactors (or the nukes that they had inside) committing suicide in the act, so as not to give clues about their origins.