V For Vindicator

The year is 3028, and mankind has taken to the stars. We learned to master the Kearny-Fuchida (KF) drive to jump great starships 30 light years in a heartbeat, and colonized the stars in the spirit that has driven men always to seek new frontiers, and the chance to make their own place among the stars. Like every frontier, once the bold explorers claimed it, those who were better at exploiting than exploring soon closed down those opportunities for anyone else to get rich on the frontier, and set about creating at least as closed and oppressive system as that they just fled. Then the next wave went farther. After hundreds of years of expansion, consolidation, conquest, and atrocity, mankind had brought a sort of stability to the stars. The Terran Hegemony ruled the worlds of mankinds first wave of expansion, the rich core world who had not successfully thrown off the shackles of mother world or at least trusted her more than their hungry outworlder neighbors. War between the states became a thing of navies and nukes, whole planets glassed to lifelessness before the Terran Hegemony sat down with the other houses of the Inner Sphere and signed the Ares Conventions to limit how war was fought. Since armour and infantry alone could not take a world, war looked to be ending, until the battlemech was invented.

Massing between 20 tons and 100 tons, powered by nuclear reactors and boasting weapons that could wipe out a pre space tank with a single trigger pull, the power of a tank platoon in a single mecha, the power of a Regiment in a single company, the great piloted robots made planetary conquest again possible, and war reclaimed the Inner Sphere. When civil war started by Stephan the Usurper claimed the Star League and Terran Hegemony, each of the other houses of the Inner Sphere declared they were the true heirs to the Hegemony as the rightful rulers of the Star League, and have been fighting over that empty throne and the rich worlds of the former Hegemony ever since. The Star Legue is gone, a distant half forgotten dream, the Terran Hegemony only a note in history, but the Great Houses of the Inner Sphere remain, and their Succession Wars have raged to this day.

The Germanic merchant houses set up the Lyran Commonwealth, and set about becoming richer than anyone else, largely succeeding. They began as a council of ruling Archons, but as with any shared power, in the end, one will rise, and the rest will fall. House Steiner rose, now there is only one Archon in the Lyran Commonwealth, and it is Katerina Steiner. Those who embraced the culture of Samurai Japan settled the Draconis Combine, where the Dragon, Takashi Kurita, rules with an iron fist over a people outwardly united, and inwardly stressing at the seams of a culture that buries conflicts deep until they explode. The Free Worlds League was settled by the Balkan states and other groups, and is both the freest and the most troubled of the Inner Sphere states, as it is the least successfully repressed, its Captain General Janos Marik having spent half his rule battling for the throne, and the rest putting out local uprisings; the price of freedom being open discord easily fanned by jealous neighbors into outright conflict. Then there is the greatest military power, the Federated Suns, ruled over by Hanse Davion as some dystopian echo of a British Empire that never fell. We in the Capellan Confederation of House Liao look to the unbroken civilization of China for our culture, and while our culture is rich, we are the poorest of the successor states in military power, substituting guile for firepower to stave off stronger foes like Davion.

My name is Sing-Wei (Captain) Jimmy Chavez, Bravo Company 3rd Battalion 1st Ariana Fusiliers. As you can guess, I am not a poster child for the Asian spirit of our glorious Capellan Confederation, nor am I a good Russian to be part of the Industrial and corruption powerhouse that is the Tikkonov confederation, industrial powerhouse of the smallest of the Succession States. I pilot a Vindicator, a 45 ton mecha, on the low end of the medium mecha, it is not that fast, not that well armed, not really the best at any of the jobs we need it for, but as we have one mecha for every two of the enemy, we take what we can get, and do without specialized machines for every role. The Vindicator has a Particle Projection Cannon (PPC) replacing its right lower arm and hand, a series of magnets that takes superheated plasma ejected from the fusion reactor and accelerates it to light speed and releases it as a bolt of lightning that can blast three quarters of a ton of armour off targets at long distance. It is a great weapon, but hot. The Vindicator boasts a five tube long range missile rack in the left torso, granted that isn’t a lot. A Griffin, Dervis, or Centurion has a ten rack, a Trebuchet or Thunderbolt a fifteen rack, and an Archer has a pair of twenty tube LRM launchers, but we go to war with the mecha we have, not the mecha we want. For close in combat, the Vindicator has a medium laser in its head, a nice weapon for mid to close range that does half as much damage as the PPC for one third the heat. There is a small laser in the left hand, but if you need it, you are probably about to die. It doesn’t shoot far, or hard, but if everything else is broken, it is something. The PPC and medium laser both generate a fair bit of heat, but the Vindicator has a good cooling system and can fire both of them all day long without running hot. When mecha get hot, the targeting gets wonky, the reactions get slow. When they get really hot you have a choice of the mecha shutting down randomly, or your ammunition cooking off beside the reactor, so a good cooling system is a very important thing.

We don’t have as many mecha, or as many types of mecha, but our mech warriors are well trained, and our intelligence agency, the Maskirovka is very good about finding out what the enemy is after before their ships even head for orbit, so we have been able to keep our hungry neighbors at bay for centuries with our crappy little Vindicators that the other great houses like to laugh at.

Our power-hungry neighbor, the Federated Suns of Hanse Davion, the Fox, was ever at our throat and half our border, and the second richest of the Successor states, the Free Worlds League of House Marik was poised along the rest, ready to pounce if we showed any weakness.

Our House Liao survived by unity and strategy. Unity was the point of the dictatorial policies of our glorious House Liao, and the Maskirovka secret police that had their fingers and enforcers in every level of Capellan life. It was not ideal, but we were a very small island of civilization in a sea of very hungry, very well armed barbarians. Maximillian Liao, called the Spider, by his enemies, worked to destabilize house Marik, keeping them on the edge of civil war, unable to focus their manufacturing might on producing the war materiel to bury us under their weight of metal.

He tried the same policy on the Federated Suns, working to pit Michael Hasek-Davion against the military genius Hanse Davion his rightful prince. It was supposed to be working, according to the Maskirovka, the Federated Suns were demobilizing their mighty armies gathered on our border during their star spanning Operation Galahad. I guess it worked, because now the Fox was off on holy Terra, under the auspices of Com Star and the Precentor himself, to marry Mellissa Steiner, heir to the Lyran Commonwealth. They were the richest of the successor states, and one of two that we did not share a border with. I was thankful for that. If I worried that the House Marik could bury us under the weight of their medium and heavy mecha, while we had to hold them off with fewer medium and light mecha, House Steiner threw 80 ton Zeus mecha into fights dozens at a time, while the most common main line mecha we had to field were our 45ton Vindicators.

We were gathered to watch the wedding, happy at least that here at 3rd Batallion we didn’t have to worry about the Maskirovka breathing down our necks the way 1st Batallion on Kali did. 1st Battalion was on Kali, which was a toxic atmosphere industrial world of dome cities that boasted the most important production facilities, and more importantly, had Tormano Liao, Chancellor Maximillian Liao’s estranged son as its commander. As a result, we were gathered to watch the unprecedented live broadcast of the most important wedding since that idiot Cameron married the only other claimant to the Terran Hegemony throne and started on his path to putting together the Star League all the successor states had been fighting to recreate since the last idiot Cameron let it fall.

Hanse Davion looked every inch the fairy tale prince, a dashing military man in dress Davion Heavy Guards uniform, and Melissa Steiner looked like a little Germanic princess that should be locked in a tower someplace guarded by dragons waiting for some hero to rescue her. A child too innocent to know she was the bargaining chip linking the Successor states greatest military with the most powerful weapon producing state. This wasn’t a wedding; this was foreplay to Armageddon. Still, it was the only real time Hyper Pulse Generator shown event in living memory, the whole inner sphere was watching this wedding live. For tonight at least, there was no war, just a fairy tale wedding.

The time for the wedding toast came, and we watched the young bride feed Hanse Davion a slice of wedding cake.

“For your gift, I give you a Regiment of heavy battle mechs, and the resources to run them in perpetuity” Melissa said innocently. Being a Steiner she probably had no idea that a regiment of Heavy Mecha were not something that normal people, or even normal lords simply tossed around like wedding bouquets. The fate of a world could be decided by a battalion of light and medium mecha, the fate of a battle decided by the actions of a single company of heavy or assault machines.

A regiment of heavy mecha could crush any border world they struck, and even secure a beachhead on a march capital or heavy industrial world. She gave the greatest military mind in our generation a sword strong enough to cut through the armour of our Capellan Confederation. I shuddered at the thought.

Hanse Davion, less innocent than his new bride, cut her a slice of cake, and made his toast to her.

“And to you my bride, I give THE CAPELLAN CONFEDERATION!”

Sao-wei (Lieutennant) Tina Chin swore sulphurously “Fuck me with an Urbanmech, the son of a Davion is coming for us!” She said, hand still full of popcorn, frozen halfway between the bowl and her mouth as the realization of what had just been said hit her.

Just then, the alarms went off as a priority signal hit us from Starcom. I looked at Tina, she looked at me and I went for the wall comm box as she started shouting to rouse our people. I hit the comm code for StarCom and gave my access number and reached the duty officer.

“Talk to me Pitor, what are we looking at?” I asked.

Pitor Lenidovich looked back at me from the screen. “Death. We are looking at our death. We have an Infra Red signal at the Nadir jump point. At least sixteen jumpships, all of them registered as heavy.”

Jump ships were rare. The great houses of the Inner Sphere made maybe as many as three each a year. There were thousands of worlds in the Inner Sphere, and trade moved between them on these great ships jumping up to 30 light years in a single burst of power. Sixteen jumphsips, heavy, meaning bigger than Invaders (3 dropships), Star Lords (6 dropships) or Monoliths (9 dropships).

Assuming this was Davion, that was enough for at least two Regimental Combat Teams. Two full Regiments of mecha, ten regiments of armour, the same of infantry, and probably another regiment of aerospace fighters.

We had two battalions of the 1st Ariana Fusiliers, the 1st battalion being with Tormano Liao on Kali, and we had the Home Guard armoured regiment, two battalions of wheeled Striker missile carriers and a battalion of Saladin hovercraft. Tormano had the regimental artillery train on Kali, along with half of our Aerospace fighters. I hope he needed them, because they would have been really handy here right about now.

I sighed regretfully, I should have known a wedding broadcast to the whole inner sphere live could only end in bloodshed. Since the fall of the Star League under Stephan Amaris the Usurper, there had been no peace in the Inner Sphere. Until the Star League is reformed, those who are left shall know only war without end.

“How long Pitor. When will their Aerospace Fighters reach us, and how long until we can expect a good count on their dropships mass and drop points?”

Pitor brought himself back under control.

“Twelve hours for fighters, I should have a flight profile enough to give you mass and drop point as soon as they make turnover and start decelerating, call it eighteen hours, since they are only starting to detach now. There are so many you see; they can’t do it all at once.” Pitor smiled as if the fact there were so very many enemy dropships they had created an air traffic backup was a great victory. My smile failed to appear. It may be the only victory we get.

Still, the Capellan Confederation relied on our Maskirovka letting us know what our enemies were doing, so we could mass our limited resources to match invaders at every point of their advance. We were supposed to bleed the enemy, then retreat our precious and irreplaceable mecha off world, elastic defense, we would fall back, regroup and drive them off world once we had gathered our resources.
“How many?” Sao-wei Tina Chin muttered quietly.

“Dropships? I don’t know. Jumpships, sixteen heavy, so lots of drophsips for sure.” I answered.

“No Sing-Wei. How many worlds. Hanse Davion didn’t say he was giving her Algol. He said he was giving her the Capellan Confederation. How many worlds is he dropping on right now? If we have to fall back, how do we know they aren’t dropping on them too? The forces we are supposed to rally with, how do we know they aren’t getting shredded right now?” Tina chin snarled, grabbing my arm and glaring at me, her voice low and intent.

“There is no way, this has to be an isolated incident. The Maskirovka told us that House Davion stood down all the forces they massed after Galahad, they should be half way back to their own marches by now.” I reassured her.

Tina laughed, the sound shocked me, my conservative XO shook her head at me in honest surprise.

“The Maskirovka? The Maskirovka? I AM FUCKING MASKIROVKA, I am your minder, the knife that is supposed to go in your back if you even looked like you were backing Tormano Liao to rise against his father the chancellor. Let me tell you about the Maskirovka, my ultra classified reports assure me that the Davion forces within two jumps of the border have less than three jumpships, the largest of which is an Invader. So, that being said, my dear Sing-Wei and leader, how many worlds are watching hundreds of Davion dropships burn in, ready to release whole Regimental Combat Teams against single battallions? The Maskirovka lives to deceive, but this time the Fox is the one who was doing the deceiving, and if we are not careful, it will cost us more than worlds.”

My mind went cold. My training kicked in and I snapped my orders.

“Forced rest for the battalion. Officers report in ten hours for readiness briefing, I want the real numbers on maintenance and munitions, not the feel good bullshit to keep people off discipline parade. I know we can’t whip people for not having the parts to make repairs, but I need to know how many of our mecha are down, how many hovertanks and ground armour are deployable. Then we have most of a shift to fix what we can, and then we meet up again after dinner to find out where the damned Davion are dropping, and how much hell is falling on us.”

Mechwarriors were held to the highest standards by the Lorix Order in the Capellan Confederation. We were treated the best of any citizens save the nobles, and we were expected to pay that back with constant training and excellence in battle. I won’t say I believed all the propaganda, but the time had come to earn my paycheque, and I didn’t mean to be found wanting.

It might not be as bad as it looks, they might be bluffing, they might decide to burn up in atmosphere and save me the trouble of shooting them. I smiled, in the Capellan Confederation, lying to others was a critical skill. In the CCAF, lying to yourself was THE critical skill. WIth that happy thought, I grabbed my half finished beer and headed for my bed. I was going to get at least one good night on it, then leave a grenade trap rigged for the Davion bastard who tried to use it next.