Ya know what, something else just occurred to me about Dead Space. Something else that wasn't flawless.
There's that one section of the game where you have to use TK to pull wall blocks in a puzzle-y way to make a path through these living quarters. Ya know, pretty standard game mechanic, rearranging blocks to allow access to new areas. So I do this and get to the end, which triggers this script to send in the Hunter, or Regenerator. I've heard it called either way. They both make a certain amount of sense. The thing does hunt you through the game. But it also regenerates its limbs. Perhaps it should be the Hunter-Regenerator, like some feminist who decides to finally settle down and get married?
Whatever you want to call it, the boss creature that's invincible. You can't kill him, he just regrows the limb. Kinda cheap, I think. Not a fan of invulnerable enemies in games... but that's not the issue really. Anyways, I start running back and get to where I've been pulling the wall pieces. Now, obviously, you've gotta move em back the other way so you can block off the area and be free of the boss. Seems simple enough. I turn around to start using TK and a leaper jumps out of the ceiling. I shoot it a few times and kill it. Easy enough. Now, time to move the wall block. Except I can't. It's only moving a few inches before stopping. What the hell? I've still got a gap in the walls where the Hunter-Regenerator might be able to wiggle his way through. I can hear him growling and snarling from where I am. It's crazy tense. This is like a nightmare. Why the hell can't I move this wall block?! I could move it before when I wasn't being chased by a holy terror... what's the matter? The snarling and gurgling... it sounds like it might be moving closer...
Oh! I got it... the body of that dead leaper is partway in the gap between the walls. That must be why I couldn't move the block. Oh silly me... I should've seen it sooner. Ok, I'll just use telekinesis to throw the leaper corpse out of the way! Oh wait... I grabbed the wall block with my telekinesis instead. Ok, that's not what I wanted to do... I'll target it again. Oh no, the telekinesis got on the wall block again! Oh boy, this is frustrating... okay, fuck that. I'll just shoot the damn corpse instead. Wee, that got rid of it. Now, let's move this wall block so I can feel safe and sound. Footloose and fancy-free, even.
Wait... no, the wall's still not budging. Why isn't it moving? Why oh why is this part of the game not working? It's not working as intended, I'm sure of this. The game designers surely didn't plan on having the Hunter-Reg... ya know what, let's just call it the H-G from now on. My fingers are tired. Tired from talking about fucking black bars. But that's neither here nor there.
I try moving it a couple more times, but no dice. So I look into the gap again and see that a little bit of the leaper's severed limb is lying in the gap. Is that what's stopping me from moving the wall with TK? That little flimsy limb? Really EA Redwood? All this time, I've been putting up with crazy corpses flipping out and jiggling through doors and just generally going crazy whenever something happens to them, and now I'm being stymied by a little severed limb lying in the gap between the walls I have to move? Okay, that seems ridiculous, but I'll get the limb out of the way. And... hey. What do ya know, that did the trick. That was the problem all along... now the wall moves like butter!
Okay, now I just need to move the wall block along the side to open up a new gap for the last wall block and I'll be out of this puzzle and free to go about my business. Just gotta move this block up... oh wait... it's only moving a little bit. It's not fully moving across like it should! Holy hell, this has been taking forever to do... this so called escape from the big bad H-G... It's just gotten silly. The wall moves like it needs to be oiled or something, it's not fully sliding into place where it should. There must be something wrong with this one too. Okay... let's check here... what's the problem this time?
Oh! I see here, there seem to be three shattered pieces of a crate that I had broken apart earlier. Ya know, those big green crates that you always break apart for loot? Sometimes there's just little swarmer thingies inside, but most of the time, it's some sort of goodie? Well, I find this very odd. The crate itself shattered into pieces, but these three pieces seem really really solid. Like, their durability is impressive, cause I've just been working this wall with my telekinesis and smashing it against another wall block. Yet these three crate fragments seem as indestructible as ever. Is it spelled indestructible or indestructable? They both sound right when you pronounce it, ya know?
Well, gotta get these three crate remnants out of there so I can move this wall block over. Ok, I'll use telekinesis to get at em and throw em away... oh wait, my telekinesis latched onto a wall block instead. But I was aiming right at the crate pieces. Okay, let's try again... nope, again the telekinesis failed. Well, okay now... I guess I'll have to move into the gap and stand right over them to use TK. Yep, that worked. Throwing em out... one by one. Yea, that did it... the wall snapped into place. Great, I'm finally out. Escaped from the H-G boss.
And all it took was about 10 minutes of fucking around with wall blocks. How exhilarating.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Windows Media Player: what's the deal?
I never understood why Microsoft won't allow you to run multiple WMPs at once. I have to switch to VLC if I want to play another movie while keeping my first movie paused. It's a nuisance. Ya know, VLC won't let you play more than one either. That's strange.
Don't tell me it's because of some resource/processing limitation either. If a computer can handle a game like Crysis, I would think it could handle two WMPs at once. Right now, I can have WMP playing a movie and VLC playing another. Just think what would happen if I got Winamp into the mix. Three motherfucking movies at once, BOOYAH!!!
Don't tell me it's because of some resource/processing limitation either. If a computer can handle a game like Crysis, I would think it could handle two WMPs at once. Right now, I can have WMP playing a movie and VLC playing another. Just think what would happen if I got Winamp into the mix. Three motherfucking movies at once, BOOYAH!!!
Why I generally won't go to a Best Buy.
Ya know, I don't generally go to Best Buy. Why? Well, because I've happened to notice that they often will not have... the best buy. The cheapest prices. On their goods, you see. And ya know... I just think that's such a crock. It's complete bullshit advertising. Why call yourself Best Buy if you won't always have... the best buy? Why should I trust a store like that? It's idiotic. They often have prices much higher then the lowest you can find. Is that really a best buy? I think not. I think not. That doesn't seem like a business on the up and up. If you name yourself Best Buy, I expect the best buy. They don't deliver. Don't hold up their end of the bargain. And where are you? Up a creek without a paddle.
Ya know, what do people do up a creek without a paddle in the first place? Do you ever wonder about that? Don't people generally skinny dip in a creek? It's kinda... shallow, and you'll usually see some cat tails along the shore... it's very rustic looking. People will skinny dip in those environs. But then, why have a paddle? A paddle doesn't suit you if you're gonna skinny dip. People use paddles with canoes, right? Canoeing with a paddle, that makes sense. Or a kayak, I suppose. What's the difference between a canoe and a kayak? Is a kayak just a one-man version of a canoe? You never do see multiple people situated on a kayak, it's always a solo operation. Like a lone eagle, or something. Canoes can seat many people though. I remember reading a Jules Verne story... The Mysterious Island, where the castaways fashioned a simple canoe from the trunk of a tree. Marvelous chapter, they chipped away at the inside of the trunk and had this canoe to seat more then one. Canoes seem much more useful then kayaks, I gotta tell ya.
"Talking out of turn...that's a paddling. Looking out the window...that's a paddling. Staring at my sandals...that's a paddling. Paddling the school canoe...ooh, you better believe that's a paddling."
-The Simpsons, The PTA Disbands
Ya know, what do people do up a creek without a paddle in the first place? Do you ever wonder about that? Don't people generally skinny dip in a creek? It's kinda... shallow, and you'll usually see some cat tails along the shore... it's very rustic looking. People will skinny dip in those environs. But then, why have a paddle? A paddle doesn't suit you if you're gonna skinny dip. People use paddles with canoes, right? Canoeing with a paddle, that makes sense. Or a kayak, I suppose. What's the difference between a canoe and a kayak? Is a kayak just a one-man version of a canoe? You never do see multiple people situated on a kayak, it's always a solo operation. Like a lone eagle, or something. Canoes can seat many people though. I remember reading a Jules Verne story... The Mysterious Island, where the castaways fashioned a simple canoe from the trunk of a tree. Marvelous chapter, they chipped away at the inside of the trunk and had this canoe to seat more then one. Canoes seem much more useful then kayaks, I gotta tell ya.
"Talking out of turn...that's a paddling. Looking out the window...that's a paddling. Staring at my sandals...that's a paddling. Paddling the school canoe...ooh, you better believe that's a paddling."
-The Simpsons, The PTA Disbands
The Star League Part 26
PROTECTOR OF THE REALM
The civil war claimed more than 100 million people. Four times that number were wounded, and ten times that number were left homeless. The immensity of the devastation caused by Amaris stunned everyone, and a silence seemed to fall across the entire Inner Sphere.
Ruling over this sad domain was General Aleksandr Kerensky. He announced that he was reassuming his title as Protector of the Realm. He invited the Council Lords to come to Terra for meetings “to help guide us away from the memories of these devastating times.”
Relief supplies and aid began pouring into the Terran Hegemony from all five Houses. Trading companies donated space on their ships to carry the supplies and donations to the Hegemony, but it was the common people who made the most heartfelt contributions. A massive outpouring of concern came forth from the citizenry of the five realms. They gave what they could afford, often taking food from their own mouths to feed the starving in the Hegemony. Even people in the Periphery, themselves not yet recovered from the ravages of war, felt compassion for the billions in the Hegemony and gave what they could.
Many people were stricken with remorse upon hearing about what life had been like under Stefan Amaris. Some had relatives in the Hegemony. Others felt guilty that their governments had allowed such a thing to happen. Many assuaged their guilt by traveling to the ravaged worlds to offer their time and skills to the reconstruction effort.
People looked forward to seeing Aleksandr Kerensky become the next First Lord. His fame, considerable even before the war, had grown to superhuman dimensions immediately after the liberation of Terra. Everyone took comfort in the thought that he would soon rule the Star League.
The Council Lords reconvened in the ruins of Unity City on October 10, 2780. The arguing started soon thereafter. The Council Lords, who shared none of their citizens’ guilt for having stayed aloof from the civil war, fought among themselves for power. The past four years may have caused incredible grief to some but they had also created a wealth of opportunities for the House leaders. Among the few things that they agreed on was the appointment of Jerome Blake as Minister of Communications. They gave him the monumental task of rebuilding the League’s communications network.
They were also agreed that General Kerensky would not be the one to lead them. To quiet the public cry for him to become the First Lord, the High Council unanimously stripped General Kerensky of his title of Protector on October 18 of that year. They then ordered him to demilitarize Terra and to disperse SLDF units to their peacetime locations.
In response, many people took to the streets to demonstrate in support of the General, even in the Draconis Combine and the Free Worlds League.
Before leaving, General Kerensky asked to meet the Council Lords one last time in the Throne Room, which had been mostly restored to its former glory. They agreed, though not without some misgivings.
After the five Lords gathered, the General entered carrying the ornate laser pistol of Stefan Amaris. The Council Lords’ uneasiness turned to near panic when the doors to the room closed and General Kerensky sat on the First Lord’s throne. Though the Lords must have feared for their lives at that moment, Kerensky merely began an impassioned plea to the Council Lords to be lenient with captured Republican soldiers. With a sigh of relief, the Council Lords listened and agreed to the General’s proposals for the treatment of the Amaris soldiers.
General Kerensky left Terra for New Earth, the temporary headquarters of the SLDF. There, he issued orders to his troops to treat the Republicans well and congratulated them on surviving the long campaign. “In the coming months some of you may envy the dead,” he concluded. “The universe has become a very different place and you may feel that you cannot cope with it. Have courage. You and I have faced the worst; what comes next cannot be as bad.”
A week after Kerensky’s return to New Earth, General DeChavilier approached him with word that all of the Star League troops were ready to help overthrow the Council Lords. General DeChavilier wrote in his journal that the General smiled but politely refused the offer, saying that he was too tired for treason. He went on to say that as long as there was a Star League, he would remain loyal. Historians have pointed out that Aleksandr Kerensky was a military man, not a politician. Others have maintained that Kerensky realized that his age and lack of heirs meant an overthrow would only have delayed the inevitable.
As the weeks wore on and the High Council continued to meet, the continued existence of the Star League looked more and more doubtful. The Council Lords could not agree on who would become the new First Lord. Their meetings turned into aggressive auctions, with each House leader attempting to trade huge sums of money, resources, and even whole planets in desperate schemes to become the ruler of the League. The only hopeful sign was the fact that the Council Lords were still on Terra and still talking long after the meetings had been scheduled to end.
On August 12, after ten months of deliberations, the five exhausted and angry leaders agreed to disagree forever. With a short written statement that they brusquely handed to some reporters, the five left for the spaceport and their individual realms.
The message read: “After long months of intense negotiations, we have reached an impasse on the question of who should become the next leader of the Star League. It is our opinion that the inability to find a new First Lord makes any further decision-making impossible. Therefore, we officially dissolve the High Council on this day, August 12, in the year of 2781.”
MOBILIZATION
When news of the dissolution of the Star League reached New Earth, many soldiers believed that now General Kerensky would have an excuse to seize control. Instead, Kerensky immediately sent messaged to the five Houses imploring them to reconsider their decision. For the next two years, he traveled to and fro across the Inner Sphere trying to get the leaders of the five Houses back into the Council Chambers, where he hoped them would reconcile and resurrect the Star League. His efforts had tremendous public support but did nothing to sway the House families, who seemed to prefer the new political alignment.
Freed of limits on the size of their militaries under the Star League Accords, the five families began massive buildups. They turned to the skilled soldiers of the Rim Worlds Republic, who were waiting for release from prisons in the Hegemony. Recruiters from the five Houses met every group of soldiers released. They offered money, rank, positions, and even titles to get them to sign contracts. MechWarriors and AeroSpace Pilots often received huge plots of land for their services.
In August 2783, General Kerensky heard that recruiters had been talking to SLDF units. When the General tried to keep the recruiters away from his troops, the House lords asked for his resignation as commander of the SLDF. A month later, most of the Ninety-first Heavy Assault Regiment (The Armadillos) deserted the SLDF to join the Federated Suns. General Kerensky realized that the spirit that had made the Regular Army and the Star League so noble was fast eroding.
No one knows exactly when General Kerensky decided that the Exodus was the only answer. Most records left with the General, leaving historians with only sketchy notes and hints into the General’s thinking. Some have suggested that Kerensky was planning the Exodus even before the New Vandenberg rebellion and the subsequent second war in the Periphery. Other historians have theorized that it was not General Kerensky’s idea at all, but General DeChavilier who originated the plan.
Most of the evidence points to August or September as the time when General Kerensky settled on an Exodus of the SLDF. Records show that in September, activity at the General’s headquarters jumped dramatically and that the HPG station on New Earth was in almost constant use.
On February 14, 2784, more than 100 division commanders and an equal number of lesser officers crowded into an empty wooden warehouse on Terra. General Kerensky and his High Command then explained Operation Exodus to the astonished officers. The Star League still lived within the heart and soul of each trooper and sailor, the General said, but this new cruel age would eat away at that spirit in no time. If so many lost lives were to have any meaning, the essence of Star League had to be saved. Thus, the Exodus. When Kerensky finished speaking, everyone present stood and applauded.
News of Operation Exodus traveled quickly through the SLDF. Soon every soldier was talking about it, yet the plan never leaked to the five Houses. Though secrecy was complete, many Believers in the Saints Cameron guessed what was about to happen from reading Jonathan Cameron’s letters. There are also indications that Minoru Kurita suspected Kerensky’s scheme.
Each soldier was eventually asked individually if he or she wanted to follow General Kerensky, and more than 80 percent said that they did. Most of the remaining 20 percent felt that leaving would be improper. A few whole units decided not to go, and like the Eridani Light Horse, played an important part in the future of the Inner Sphere. Most of the individuals who refused later died wearing the uniform of one of the five Houses.
Ship traffic among SLDF bases rose dramatically after the February 14 meeting. Star League shipyards grew hectic as workers hastily repaired damaged ships for the coming journey. Because 200 more transports were needed to carry the soldier’s families and supplies, the SLDF went on a buying spree, snapping up all available ships from commercial JumpShip manufacturers.
Quartermasters began buying massive amounts of food and supplies. They bought on the open market from private companies in the other realms. Sometimes they even bought directly from the House governments. Star League military bases were stripped of all their supplies and parts, and families bundled up their lives into boxes and crates.
Despite the scale of the preparations, the preoccupied leaders of the five Houses, except for Coordinator Kurita, failed to realize what was going on until units in the Periphery and in outer reaches of the Inner Sphere began moving in August.
It was not until July, when the jump points around Hegemony worlds were thick with warships and transports, that the five leaders begin asking for explanations. General Kerensky gave them none. He banned the SLDF from communicating with outsiders unless absolutely necessary.
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STORM INHIBITORS
The Terran Hegemony gained influence over the other realms partly by providing high-tech services that others could not do themselves. One of these services was terraforming, and Storm Inhibitors were among the most advanced features of the process. Consisting mostly of huge orbiting reflectors that focused heat on clouds, the installations could not actually prevent storms but greatly reduced their severity.
Storm Inhibitors could change weather in other ways, too. By using heat, they could create high-pressure areas and guide rain clouds to parched areas. Storm Inhibitors could also warm a planet, or part of it, either to make it more comfortable for colonists or to melt icecaps of glaciers to provide water. The fall of the Star League took with it all production of Storm Inhibitors. The few that remain do not work properly because of the lack of maintenance and spare parts.
-From Ghost in the Machine: Technologies Lost, by Gwen Hill, Stormseed Press, Donegal, 2980
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THE EXODUS
To those that we leave behind, let me say that we see no way to continue living in a civilization that spurns the ideals it once professed to hold so dear. Though we depart, our hope is that one day we might return.
-Last known transmission from the warship McKenna’s Pride, assumed to have been written by General Kerensky
On July 8, General Aleksandr Kerensky flashed a one-word order to the ships assembled about him at the New Earth jump point and to the ships assembled above 50 other stars throughout the Inner Sphere. The order was “Exodus.” More than a thousand ships made jumps that day.
General Kerensky’s convoy headed into the Draconis Combine, making as many jumps as possible in the shortest time and making no outside contact. Across the Inner Sphere, other convoys were moving through the other realms toward the Combine. When asked the purpose of their journey, they replied: “Out on extended maneuvers.”
They rested only in star systems with a sizable SLDF base. Food and other supplies had been stockpiled in these systems and were loaded onto the transports when the fleet reached the system. When the last group of ships was about to leave, the people on the base packed up and joined them. Some convoys stopped to pick up civilians, too, as on the planet Helen.
To the five Houses, the Exodus appeared to be a military mission. Warships guarded each fleet of transports, and the SLDF’s reluctance to explain their extended maneuvers seemed to indicate that the General was planning revenge on one or more of the House Lords. Because Minoru Kurita had treated Stefan Amaris so well and Aleksandr Kerensky so badly, the Draconis Combine seemed a likely target. The routes of the convoys seemed to confirm that suspicion. The SLDF was still vastly stronger than any of the House militaries. It would not take much effort to depose any of the ruling House Lords and declare that realm the true Star League. Each of the five House leaders remembered every real or imagined slight to General Kerensky and was haunted by the fear of becoming the target of the General’s wrath.
House Kurita had the most reason to worry. The Kuritas had always been at odds with the Camerons and the Star League. Almost everyone except Coordinator Minoru Kurita in the Combine felt certain that Kerensky was about to attack. Kurita believed he understood the honor-bound thinking of the General, and if he were correct, the worst response would be panic. The Coordinator told his realm to remain calm and wait. Coordinator Kurita’s conviction that General Kerensky was planning to leave the Inner Sphere grew when the convoy’s routes turned away from Luthien.
The first transports and warships arrived above the Combine world of New Samarkand on October 2, 2784. Daily, more and more ships appeared at the star’s two jump points. By October 12, the entire fleet of 1,349 transports, carrying more than 100 divisions and their families and escorted by 402 warships, was in the New Samarkand star system.
The SLDF had two major military bases on the planet, each with large wilderness areas of deep forests and mountains. General Kerensky ordered that everyone be allowed to spend some time on the two bases before they left the Inner Sphere. For the next three weeks, a constant stream of planetary transports shuttled between the planet and the jump points. At night, the forests and mountains of New Samarkand were speckled with the campfires of men, women, and children all enjoying some rest before journeying on. Above them, their ships shone like stars in the night sky.
During this shuttling, General Kerensky completed his last duty in his old role of Protector; he gave the remains of Stefan Amaris and his family to the medical school at the University of New Samarkand.
On November 5, as the last DropShip was docking with its JumpShip, the first groups of ships left New Samarkand for the Periphery. It took a whole day for all of the ships to leave the system. The last ship to leave New Samarkand was McKenna’s Pride.
The fleet quickly moved through the Periphery. The last known star system where the fleet was seen was above the sparsely populated world of Gutara V, which, coincidentally, had been the site of one of Stefan Amaris’s secret MechWarrior academies. After the 1,000 ships of the Regular Army left Gutara V, they were never seen again.
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THOSE WHO STAYED BEHIND
Though the Star League Defense Forces remained loyal to General Aleksandr Kerensky through frightening times and 115 divisions joined him on his voyage into the unknown, there were some who stayed behind.
In the long years between the executioner of Stefan Amaris and the Exodus, recruiters from the five Inner Sphere realms attempted to lure Star League troops into the House militaries. Without their previous sense of purpose, a few soldiers and units of the SLDF were swayed, but the vast majority remained loyal to General Kerensky.
The idea of the Exodus, however, cost General Kerensky the loyalty of many more of his troopers. Units that declined to join the journey had enough love for the General to help keep his plans secret even though they would not join him.
When it became clear that most of the SLDF was not coming back, the five House governments looked eagerly at the few units that were left behind. A swarm of recruiters descended on these troops, most of whom were in the Terran Military Region.
With offers of high pay, promotions, and land, the realms of the Inner Sphere each recruited a number of units. The Free Worlds League wooed fewer units than the other realms but did eventually get one of the plums, the remainder of the Third Regimental Combat Team. These units, the Seventy-first Light Horse Regiment, the 151st Light Horse Regiment, and the Twenty-first Striker Regiment, survived to modern times as the elite mercenary Eridani Light Horse.
Other units, including the Twelfth Heavy Assault Regiment, the Twenty-fifth Striker Regiment, the Fifteenth Dracon Regiment, and the Fourth Tau Ceti Rangers, also kept their organization and identity to modern times. Most other units eventually broke up or were destroyed in the Succession Wars.
In all, the Draconis Combine recruited nine independent regiments of Star League forces, the Lyran Commonwealth recruited an infantry division and nine regiments, the Federated Suns got ten regiments, the Capellan Confederation got the biggest prize, the 360th BattleMech Division (The Bannockburn Division), and seven regiments, the Free Worlds League recruited the Eridani Light Horse plus two other regiments, and one regiment joined the Periphery.
In many cases, these units formed the backbone of key fronts in the Succession Wars, and often their weapons, training, and organization became models for House units.
-From The Rise and Fall of the Star League, by D.H. Rand, Tharkad Press, 2989
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AFTERMATH
It is a favorite cliché among scholars to say that General Kerensky and his men disappeared into history. Almost immediately after the Exodus was confirmed, people began turning the story into romantic myth. Biographies, novelizations, and holo-shows purporting to tell the true story of General Kerensky, the coup, and the Exodus came out by the thousands, barely slowing when the Succession Wars started. One of the most telling pictures ever taken in the First Succession War was of a Davion infantryman in a foxhole, his rifle in his lap, reading a book whose cover asked the question on the minds of billions: “Where Did the General Go?”
There have been five attempts to trace the path taken by General Kerensky. During the height of the First Succession War, when it seemed that the Draconis Combine might conquer a huge chunk of the Federated Suns, the First Prince sent a fleet to look for the SLDF. The hope was that five JumpShips could find the SLDF and persuade them to come back on the side of the Federated Suns. The five ships returned two years later. They had gone more than 100 light years beyond Gutara V, following a trail of debris left by the General’s ships. The trail eventually became confused and then stopped altogether, forcing the expedition to return.
The next four missions, two by the Federated Suns and two by the Draconis Combine, extended the scope of the search but yielded only a few tantalizing clues. Only recently, the Guided Light Expeditions have provided a clearer picture of where the General and his followers might have gone. The explorers discovered that the General probably did not continue in a straight line, as everyone had assumed. About 130 light years from the Periphery, the survey teams found proof that the fleet had changed course. This raises two new possibilities. One is that General Kerensky had a definite destination for his fleet, contrary to romanticists who believe he just leaped off into the unknown. The other possibility is that his descendants could be living just outside known space, waiting and watching.
If this proves to be true, it will help explain certain mysterious incidents that have occurred in the Inner Sphere since Kerensky’s Exodus. One of the most well-known of these puzzling stories is the one involving the Minnesota Tribe.
In 2825, as the Second Succession War was just getting under way, a regiment of unidentified ‘Mechs appeared in the Draconis Combine. From a convoy of transports and DropShips, the regiment struck at the garrison on Svelvik, seizing supplies and then leaving. People were quick to notice that the ‘Mechs were in excellent condition and painted according to Regular Army standards. The regiment fought using Regular Army tactics, and wounded or stranded MechWarriors killed themselves rather than be captured. There was a small symbol on each ‘Mech that was later identified as a map of Minnesota, a geopolitical domain of North America.
The leaders of the Draconis Combine did not need further proof to be convinced that the Minnesota Tribe, as the regiment came to be known, was the vanguard of an SLDF attack. The Minnesota Tribe attacked three more worlds. During its last attack, its MechWarriors freed thousands of political prisoners on the Combine world of Richmond. The Minnesota Tribe then left the Draconis Combine and was never seen again.
Another curious incident was the departure of the Clinton Cutthroats during the Third Succession War. A reputable mercenary unit, the Cutthroats had been working for the Federated Suns when a courier vessel landed in the midst of a battle. A man and woman got out of the ship and asked to see the commander of the mercenary regiment. For three days, they engaged in private talks with the unit’s commander. Then DropShips, unmarked but obviously in excellent condition, landed and whisked the Cutthroats offplanet and out of the Inner Sphere.
These incidents are just two of many stories and observations that have accumulated over the years. Other stories revolve around the powerful Wolf’s Dragoons, who many believe are part of the SLDF. Another favorite tale told in smokey taverns on cold winter nights is one about the Vandenberg White Wings, squadrons of white AeroSpace Fighters that appeared on the Periphery edge of the Capellan Confederation escorting 20 Star League transports. The Disappearing Battleship of Merope is yet another story about a Black Lion battleship that was seen and filmed orbiting Merope, but then vanished when ships from the Inner Sphere came to investigate.
It is uncertain whether these stories are the wishful thinking of men and women eager for the return of the good days of the Star League or whether they are factual sightings. What is certain is the possibility that descendants of General Kerensky and his forces still live. Just outside our sphere of light, men and women may well be watching and waiting for the day of return.
The civil war claimed more than 100 million people. Four times that number were wounded, and ten times that number were left homeless. The immensity of the devastation caused by Amaris stunned everyone, and a silence seemed to fall across the entire Inner Sphere.
Ruling over this sad domain was General Aleksandr Kerensky. He announced that he was reassuming his title as Protector of the Realm. He invited the Council Lords to come to Terra for meetings “to help guide us away from the memories of these devastating times.”
Relief supplies and aid began pouring into the Terran Hegemony from all five Houses. Trading companies donated space on their ships to carry the supplies and donations to the Hegemony, but it was the common people who made the most heartfelt contributions. A massive outpouring of concern came forth from the citizenry of the five realms. They gave what they could afford, often taking food from their own mouths to feed the starving in the Hegemony. Even people in the Periphery, themselves not yet recovered from the ravages of war, felt compassion for the billions in the Hegemony and gave what they could.
Many people were stricken with remorse upon hearing about what life had been like under Stefan Amaris. Some had relatives in the Hegemony. Others felt guilty that their governments had allowed such a thing to happen. Many assuaged their guilt by traveling to the ravaged worlds to offer their time and skills to the reconstruction effort.
People looked forward to seeing Aleksandr Kerensky become the next First Lord. His fame, considerable even before the war, had grown to superhuman dimensions immediately after the liberation of Terra. Everyone took comfort in the thought that he would soon rule the Star League.
The Council Lords reconvened in the ruins of Unity City on October 10, 2780. The arguing started soon thereafter. The Council Lords, who shared none of their citizens’ guilt for having stayed aloof from the civil war, fought among themselves for power. The past four years may have caused incredible grief to some but they had also created a wealth of opportunities for the House leaders. Among the few things that they agreed on was the appointment of Jerome Blake as Minister of Communications. They gave him the monumental task of rebuilding the League’s communications network.
They were also agreed that General Kerensky would not be the one to lead them. To quiet the public cry for him to become the First Lord, the High Council unanimously stripped General Kerensky of his title of Protector on October 18 of that year. They then ordered him to demilitarize Terra and to disperse SLDF units to their peacetime locations.
In response, many people took to the streets to demonstrate in support of the General, even in the Draconis Combine and the Free Worlds League.
Before leaving, General Kerensky asked to meet the Council Lords one last time in the Throne Room, which had been mostly restored to its former glory. They agreed, though not without some misgivings.
After the five Lords gathered, the General entered carrying the ornate laser pistol of Stefan Amaris. The Council Lords’ uneasiness turned to near panic when the doors to the room closed and General Kerensky sat on the First Lord’s throne. Though the Lords must have feared for their lives at that moment, Kerensky merely began an impassioned plea to the Council Lords to be lenient with captured Republican soldiers. With a sigh of relief, the Council Lords listened and agreed to the General’s proposals for the treatment of the Amaris soldiers.
General Kerensky left Terra for New Earth, the temporary headquarters of the SLDF. There, he issued orders to his troops to treat the Republicans well and congratulated them on surviving the long campaign. “In the coming months some of you may envy the dead,” he concluded. “The universe has become a very different place and you may feel that you cannot cope with it. Have courage. You and I have faced the worst; what comes next cannot be as bad.”
A week after Kerensky’s return to New Earth, General DeChavilier approached him with word that all of the Star League troops were ready to help overthrow the Council Lords. General DeChavilier wrote in his journal that the General smiled but politely refused the offer, saying that he was too tired for treason. He went on to say that as long as there was a Star League, he would remain loyal. Historians have pointed out that Aleksandr Kerensky was a military man, not a politician. Others have maintained that Kerensky realized that his age and lack of heirs meant an overthrow would only have delayed the inevitable.
As the weeks wore on and the High Council continued to meet, the continued existence of the Star League looked more and more doubtful. The Council Lords could not agree on who would become the new First Lord. Their meetings turned into aggressive auctions, with each House leader attempting to trade huge sums of money, resources, and even whole planets in desperate schemes to become the ruler of the League. The only hopeful sign was the fact that the Council Lords were still on Terra and still talking long after the meetings had been scheduled to end.
On August 12, after ten months of deliberations, the five exhausted and angry leaders agreed to disagree forever. With a short written statement that they brusquely handed to some reporters, the five left for the spaceport and their individual realms.
The message read: “After long months of intense negotiations, we have reached an impasse on the question of who should become the next leader of the Star League. It is our opinion that the inability to find a new First Lord makes any further decision-making impossible. Therefore, we officially dissolve the High Council on this day, August 12, in the year of 2781.”
MOBILIZATION
When news of the dissolution of the Star League reached New Earth, many soldiers believed that now General Kerensky would have an excuse to seize control. Instead, Kerensky immediately sent messaged to the five Houses imploring them to reconsider their decision. For the next two years, he traveled to and fro across the Inner Sphere trying to get the leaders of the five Houses back into the Council Chambers, where he hoped them would reconcile and resurrect the Star League. His efforts had tremendous public support but did nothing to sway the House families, who seemed to prefer the new political alignment.
Freed of limits on the size of their militaries under the Star League Accords, the five families began massive buildups. They turned to the skilled soldiers of the Rim Worlds Republic, who were waiting for release from prisons in the Hegemony. Recruiters from the five Houses met every group of soldiers released. They offered money, rank, positions, and even titles to get them to sign contracts. MechWarriors and AeroSpace Pilots often received huge plots of land for their services.
In August 2783, General Kerensky heard that recruiters had been talking to SLDF units. When the General tried to keep the recruiters away from his troops, the House lords asked for his resignation as commander of the SLDF. A month later, most of the Ninety-first Heavy Assault Regiment (The Armadillos) deserted the SLDF to join the Federated Suns. General Kerensky realized that the spirit that had made the Regular Army and the Star League so noble was fast eroding.
No one knows exactly when General Kerensky decided that the Exodus was the only answer. Most records left with the General, leaving historians with only sketchy notes and hints into the General’s thinking. Some have suggested that Kerensky was planning the Exodus even before the New Vandenberg rebellion and the subsequent second war in the Periphery. Other historians have theorized that it was not General Kerensky’s idea at all, but General DeChavilier who originated the plan.
Most of the evidence points to August or September as the time when General Kerensky settled on an Exodus of the SLDF. Records show that in September, activity at the General’s headquarters jumped dramatically and that the HPG station on New Earth was in almost constant use.
On February 14, 2784, more than 100 division commanders and an equal number of lesser officers crowded into an empty wooden warehouse on Terra. General Kerensky and his High Command then explained Operation Exodus to the astonished officers. The Star League still lived within the heart and soul of each trooper and sailor, the General said, but this new cruel age would eat away at that spirit in no time. If so many lost lives were to have any meaning, the essence of Star League had to be saved. Thus, the Exodus. When Kerensky finished speaking, everyone present stood and applauded.
News of Operation Exodus traveled quickly through the SLDF. Soon every soldier was talking about it, yet the plan never leaked to the five Houses. Though secrecy was complete, many Believers in the Saints Cameron guessed what was about to happen from reading Jonathan Cameron’s letters. There are also indications that Minoru Kurita suspected Kerensky’s scheme.
Each soldier was eventually asked individually if he or she wanted to follow General Kerensky, and more than 80 percent said that they did. Most of the remaining 20 percent felt that leaving would be improper. A few whole units decided not to go, and like the Eridani Light Horse, played an important part in the future of the Inner Sphere. Most of the individuals who refused later died wearing the uniform of one of the five Houses.
Ship traffic among SLDF bases rose dramatically after the February 14 meeting. Star League shipyards grew hectic as workers hastily repaired damaged ships for the coming journey. Because 200 more transports were needed to carry the soldier’s families and supplies, the SLDF went on a buying spree, snapping up all available ships from commercial JumpShip manufacturers.
Quartermasters began buying massive amounts of food and supplies. They bought on the open market from private companies in the other realms. Sometimes they even bought directly from the House governments. Star League military bases were stripped of all their supplies and parts, and families bundled up their lives into boxes and crates.
Despite the scale of the preparations, the preoccupied leaders of the five Houses, except for Coordinator Kurita, failed to realize what was going on until units in the Periphery and in outer reaches of the Inner Sphere began moving in August.
It was not until July, when the jump points around Hegemony worlds were thick with warships and transports, that the five leaders begin asking for explanations. General Kerensky gave them none. He banned the SLDF from communicating with outsiders unless absolutely necessary.
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STORM INHIBITORS
The Terran Hegemony gained influence over the other realms partly by providing high-tech services that others could not do themselves. One of these services was terraforming, and Storm Inhibitors were among the most advanced features of the process. Consisting mostly of huge orbiting reflectors that focused heat on clouds, the installations could not actually prevent storms but greatly reduced their severity.
Storm Inhibitors could change weather in other ways, too. By using heat, they could create high-pressure areas and guide rain clouds to parched areas. Storm Inhibitors could also warm a planet, or part of it, either to make it more comfortable for colonists or to melt icecaps of glaciers to provide water. The fall of the Star League took with it all production of Storm Inhibitors. The few that remain do not work properly because of the lack of maintenance and spare parts.
-From Ghost in the Machine: Technologies Lost, by Gwen Hill, Stormseed Press, Donegal, 2980
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THE EXODUS
To those that we leave behind, let me say that we see no way to continue living in a civilization that spurns the ideals it once professed to hold so dear. Though we depart, our hope is that one day we might return.
-Last known transmission from the warship McKenna’s Pride, assumed to have been written by General Kerensky
On July 8, General Aleksandr Kerensky flashed a one-word order to the ships assembled about him at the New Earth jump point and to the ships assembled above 50 other stars throughout the Inner Sphere. The order was “Exodus.” More than a thousand ships made jumps that day.
General Kerensky’s convoy headed into the Draconis Combine, making as many jumps as possible in the shortest time and making no outside contact. Across the Inner Sphere, other convoys were moving through the other realms toward the Combine. When asked the purpose of their journey, they replied: “Out on extended maneuvers.”
They rested only in star systems with a sizable SLDF base. Food and other supplies had been stockpiled in these systems and were loaded onto the transports when the fleet reached the system. When the last group of ships was about to leave, the people on the base packed up and joined them. Some convoys stopped to pick up civilians, too, as on the planet Helen.
To the five Houses, the Exodus appeared to be a military mission. Warships guarded each fleet of transports, and the SLDF’s reluctance to explain their extended maneuvers seemed to indicate that the General was planning revenge on one or more of the House Lords. Because Minoru Kurita had treated Stefan Amaris so well and Aleksandr Kerensky so badly, the Draconis Combine seemed a likely target. The routes of the convoys seemed to confirm that suspicion. The SLDF was still vastly stronger than any of the House militaries. It would not take much effort to depose any of the ruling House Lords and declare that realm the true Star League. Each of the five House leaders remembered every real or imagined slight to General Kerensky and was haunted by the fear of becoming the target of the General’s wrath.
House Kurita had the most reason to worry. The Kuritas had always been at odds with the Camerons and the Star League. Almost everyone except Coordinator Minoru Kurita in the Combine felt certain that Kerensky was about to attack. Kurita believed he understood the honor-bound thinking of the General, and if he were correct, the worst response would be panic. The Coordinator told his realm to remain calm and wait. Coordinator Kurita’s conviction that General Kerensky was planning to leave the Inner Sphere grew when the convoy’s routes turned away from Luthien.
The first transports and warships arrived above the Combine world of New Samarkand on October 2, 2784. Daily, more and more ships appeared at the star’s two jump points. By October 12, the entire fleet of 1,349 transports, carrying more than 100 divisions and their families and escorted by 402 warships, was in the New Samarkand star system.
The SLDF had two major military bases on the planet, each with large wilderness areas of deep forests and mountains. General Kerensky ordered that everyone be allowed to spend some time on the two bases before they left the Inner Sphere. For the next three weeks, a constant stream of planetary transports shuttled between the planet and the jump points. At night, the forests and mountains of New Samarkand were speckled with the campfires of men, women, and children all enjoying some rest before journeying on. Above them, their ships shone like stars in the night sky.
During this shuttling, General Kerensky completed his last duty in his old role of Protector; he gave the remains of Stefan Amaris and his family to the medical school at the University of New Samarkand.
On November 5, as the last DropShip was docking with its JumpShip, the first groups of ships left New Samarkand for the Periphery. It took a whole day for all of the ships to leave the system. The last ship to leave New Samarkand was McKenna’s Pride.
The fleet quickly moved through the Periphery. The last known star system where the fleet was seen was above the sparsely populated world of Gutara V, which, coincidentally, had been the site of one of Stefan Amaris’s secret MechWarrior academies. After the 1,000 ships of the Regular Army left Gutara V, they were never seen again.
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THOSE WHO STAYED BEHIND
Though the Star League Defense Forces remained loyal to General Aleksandr Kerensky through frightening times and 115 divisions joined him on his voyage into the unknown, there were some who stayed behind.
In the long years between the executioner of Stefan Amaris and the Exodus, recruiters from the five Inner Sphere realms attempted to lure Star League troops into the House militaries. Without their previous sense of purpose, a few soldiers and units of the SLDF were swayed, but the vast majority remained loyal to General Kerensky.
The idea of the Exodus, however, cost General Kerensky the loyalty of many more of his troopers. Units that declined to join the journey had enough love for the General to help keep his plans secret even though they would not join him.
When it became clear that most of the SLDF was not coming back, the five House governments looked eagerly at the few units that were left behind. A swarm of recruiters descended on these troops, most of whom were in the Terran Military Region.
With offers of high pay, promotions, and land, the realms of the Inner Sphere each recruited a number of units. The Free Worlds League wooed fewer units than the other realms but did eventually get one of the plums, the remainder of the Third Regimental Combat Team. These units, the Seventy-first Light Horse Regiment, the 151st Light Horse Regiment, and the Twenty-first Striker Regiment, survived to modern times as the elite mercenary Eridani Light Horse.
Other units, including the Twelfth Heavy Assault Regiment, the Twenty-fifth Striker Regiment, the Fifteenth Dracon Regiment, and the Fourth Tau Ceti Rangers, also kept their organization and identity to modern times. Most other units eventually broke up or were destroyed in the Succession Wars.
In all, the Draconis Combine recruited nine independent regiments of Star League forces, the Lyran Commonwealth recruited an infantry division and nine regiments, the Federated Suns got ten regiments, the Capellan Confederation got the biggest prize, the 360th BattleMech Division (The Bannockburn Division), and seven regiments, the Free Worlds League recruited the Eridani Light Horse plus two other regiments, and one regiment joined the Periphery.
In many cases, these units formed the backbone of key fronts in the Succession Wars, and often their weapons, training, and organization became models for House units.
-From The Rise and Fall of the Star League, by D.H. Rand, Tharkad Press, 2989
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AFTERMATH
It is a favorite cliché among scholars to say that General Kerensky and his men disappeared into history. Almost immediately after the Exodus was confirmed, people began turning the story into romantic myth. Biographies, novelizations, and holo-shows purporting to tell the true story of General Kerensky, the coup, and the Exodus came out by the thousands, barely slowing when the Succession Wars started. One of the most telling pictures ever taken in the First Succession War was of a Davion infantryman in a foxhole, his rifle in his lap, reading a book whose cover asked the question on the minds of billions: “Where Did the General Go?”
There have been five attempts to trace the path taken by General Kerensky. During the height of the First Succession War, when it seemed that the Draconis Combine might conquer a huge chunk of the Federated Suns, the First Prince sent a fleet to look for the SLDF. The hope was that five JumpShips could find the SLDF and persuade them to come back on the side of the Federated Suns. The five ships returned two years later. They had gone more than 100 light years beyond Gutara V, following a trail of debris left by the General’s ships. The trail eventually became confused and then stopped altogether, forcing the expedition to return.
The next four missions, two by the Federated Suns and two by the Draconis Combine, extended the scope of the search but yielded only a few tantalizing clues. Only recently, the Guided Light Expeditions have provided a clearer picture of where the General and his followers might have gone. The explorers discovered that the General probably did not continue in a straight line, as everyone had assumed. About 130 light years from the Periphery, the survey teams found proof that the fleet had changed course. This raises two new possibilities. One is that General Kerensky had a definite destination for his fleet, contrary to romanticists who believe he just leaped off into the unknown. The other possibility is that his descendants could be living just outside known space, waiting and watching.
If this proves to be true, it will help explain certain mysterious incidents that have occurred in the Inner Sphere since Kerensky’s Exodus. One of the most well-known of these puzzling stories is the one involving the Minnesota Tribe.
In 2825, as the Second Succession War was just getting under way, a regiment of unidentified ‘Mechs appeared in the Draconis Combine. From a convoy of transports and DropShips, the regiment struck at the garrison on Svelvik, seizing supplies and then leaving. People were quick to notice that the ‘Mechs were in excellent condition and painted according to Regular Army standards. The regiment fought using Regular Army tactics, and wounded or stranded MechWarriors killed themselves rather than be captured. There was a small symbol on each ‘Mech that was later identified as a map of Minnesota, a geopolitical domain of North America.
The leaders of the Draconis Combine did not need further proof to be convinced that the Minnesota Tribe, as the regiment came to be known, was the vanguard of an SLDF attack. The Minnesota Tribe attacked three more worlds. During its last attack, its MechWarriors freed thousands of political prisoners on the Combine world of Richmond. The Minnesota Tribe then left the Draconis Combine and was never seen again.
Another curious incident was the departure of the Clinton Cutthroats during the Third Succession War. A reputable mercenary unit, the Cutthroats had been working for the Federated Suns when a courier vessel landed in the midst of a battle. A man and woman got out of the ship and asked to see the commander of the mercenary regiment. For three days, they engaged in private talks with the unit’s commander. Then DropShips, unmarked but obviously in excellent condition, landed and whisked the Cutthroats offplanet and out of the Inner Sphere.
These incidents are just two of many stories and observations that have accumulated over the years. Other stories revolve around the powerful Wolf’s Dragoons, who many believe are part of the SLDF. Another favorite tale told in smokey taverns on cold winter nights is one about the Vandenberg White Wings, squadrons of white AeroSpace Fighters that appeared on the Periphery edge of the Capellan Confederation escorting 20 Star League transports. The Disappearing Battleship of Merope is yet another story about a Black Lion battleship that was seen and filmed orbiting Merope, but then vanished when ships from the Inner Sphere came to investigate.
It is uncertain whether these stories are the wishful thinking of men and women eager for the return of the good days of the Star League or whether they are factual sightings. What is certain is the possibility that descendants of General Kerensky and his forces still live. Just outside our sphere of light, men and women may well be watching and waiting for the day of return.
The Star League Part 25
THE LAUNCH
Defeating the automated defenses at Terra’s two standard jump points proved to be the easiest part of the entire campaign. The SDS had five major immobile battlestations at each jump point, their weapons ready to attack anything that materialized and failed to signal the proper code. To deal with this, General Kerensky ordered the automating of 20 aging Jumpships and 60 Overlord DropShips with sophisticated computer and guidance systems. The DropShips weapons were replaced with extra armor. Their massive holds were then stuffed with explosives.
These unmanned ships materialized in the Terran system and accelerated immediately toward the enemy battlestations. Though many DropShips were destroyed, enough got through to detonate on their targets to destroy all of the battlestations.
Almost a thousand warships and troop transports surrounding the jump points of eight different worlds waited to make the journey to the Terran system and responded within minutes after receiving confirmation that the last obstacle had been cleared away. Because of the premium on speed, the General reluctantly agreed to cut the distance between jumping ships to one-fourth the norm so that extra ships could pack the points and make the jump. After fully materializing, ships had just five minutes to clear the jump point before the next group of ships materialized. If they made a mistake, groups of ships would materialize inside of one another. There was also no way to stop the operation should something go wrong; once it started, it would not stop until the last ship materialized above Sol.
Fate seemed to be looking out for the soldiers and sailors of the SLDF that day. Of the 932 ships that waited to make the jump to Terra, only 20 failed. Eighteen of those suffered drive failures at the point of departure without any loss of life. Of the remaining two, the troop transport Richardson suffered a partial failure of its station-keeping drives upon materialization. Captain G.T. Garret, realizing that he would not be able to move his ship out of the jump point quickly enough, ordered its DropShips to launch immediately. The DropShips made it clear of the jump point. The Richardson almost made it clear, but the corvette Mississippi Queen materialized with its prow inside the transport’s engineering section. The Richardson exploded, with all hands lost. The Mississippi Queen sustained heavy damage but vacated the jump point before the next wave appeared.
Once the fleet was assembled into formation with the troop transports (armored DropShip carriers) surrounded by warships, it began a High-G acceleration toward Terra. The orders for the warships were to protect the transports at all cost. Though not discussed in the briefing rooms of the warships, the ship captains understood the unspoken order from the Admirals to sacrifice even their ships as a last resort to save the transports.
Four days before the main force was to rendezvous with Terra, 40 warships used pirate points to materialize just a day’s travel from Terra. They were ordered to destroy as many drone warships as possible. Each Caspar carried the firepower of a cruiser and had the maneuverability of a destroyer. For the next two days, the Star League ships fought the swarm of Caspars that gathered around them. The cruiser Sovetskii Soyuz was the last warship to succumb to the sheer number of drones. The 40 Star League warships had destroyed more than 100 drones.
This left only 150 drone warships to challenge the fleet. With the main fleet still two days from Terra, the battle with the Reagan drone warships began. The drones, using the tactics that long-dead admirals had programmed into their distant computers, shadowed the fleet just outside of weapon range, waiting to single out ships to destroy. Occasionally, groups of two or three drones would suddenly accelerate and attempt to cut through the fleet with the ferocity of sharks. They concentrated their fire at the transports, destroying many. Whole divisions disappeared in a single pass of the deadly ships.
Twelve hours from Terra, with the sudden brightness of their engine exhaust signalling their acceleration, all of the drones attacked. Admiral Grec ordered most of his warships to meet them midway. Fighters scrambled from their carriers.
The two fleets opened fire, the flash of lasers and the angry exhaust of missiles casting eerie shadows on the hulls of the ships. Several drones broke through and drove toward the vulnerable transports. Clouds of fighters chased them down and destroyed them, but at the cost of more transports. Debris traced the path of Kerensky’s fleet.
As the battle wore on, the drone warships lost their tight organization as more were destroyed. No longer able to make coordinated attacks on the transports, more Caspars began defending against the Star League warships. The unspoken order was also having an effect. Captains of grievously wounded warships aimed their vessels directly at drones. Most of the time, the automated ships easily dodged the suicide attacks, but these tactics by their human opponents seemed to confuse the drones and make them more cautious.
By the time the fleet was two hours from Terra, the tide of the battle had turned. Star League warships outnumbered drone ships. Admiral Grec’s warships caught the enemy in a crossfire. With the transports safe, the fighters returned to their carriers for refueling and rearming.
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KERENSKY’S RETURN
The campaign to recapture Terra was long and bloody. It took eight years and cost millions of lives, consuming more than half of the most powerful military ever assembled.
Though the Periphery uprising had cost about one-fourth of the strength of the SLDF, General Aleksandr Kerensky still had an army of more than 300 divisions, and he threw the full force of it at Stefan Amaris.
The campaign cost more than half of General Kerensky’s divisions, including 46 of the remaining 82 ‘Mech divisions, advanced weapons that mankind has been unable to replace.
From the beginning of the Periphery uprising to the Exodus of General Kerensky and his remaining loyal troops, the SLDF was reduced from a force of 486 divisions in strength to one of 113 divisions. Even with such horrifying losses, General Kerensky took with him a force stronger than any that remained. The Star League forces that did stay behind became the strongest units in the House militaries, with some surviving intact to modern times.
-From Fall of an Empire, by Grenville DuSimpson, Tharkad Press, 3021
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THE DROP
An hour from Terra, the fighters were ordered back into combat. They left their DropShips and warships and headed toward Terra to destroy 30 key laser and missile batteries on the continents of Europe and Asia.
To reduce their vulnerability to laser and missile fire, the fighters chose an especially steep descent angle. Many were shot down anyway, some by Republican fighters, but most by the automated defenses of the Reagan SDS.
Some ‘Mechs were already making their descent when the first fighters reached their targets. DropShips were already releasing armor and troop carriers. The few fighters protecting the rain of ‘Mechs and men had their hands full with Republican fighters that scrambled from bases all over Terra. Aiming for the thousands of ‘Mechs, the Amaris fighters had little trouble scoring kill after kill. If the fighters sent to destroy the SDS bases could not accomplish their missions, the entire invasion was in jeopardy.
The fighters almost failed. Losses due to enemy fighters, ground-based weapons, and the treacherous descent were higher than expected. The remaining pilots, chased by Republican fighters and fired upon from the ground, needed to make every bomb count. They succeeded, but with extremely heavy losses.
Because of the skill and determination of the Star League AeroSpace pilots, 30 divisions made their drops onto Terra in relative safety. The first division down was the 146th Royal BattleMech Division (George S. Patton Division), which landed within striking distance of Moscow. The other divisions landed as far west as Madrid, Spain, as far east as Magadan on Asia’s Pacific coast. Their landings went unopposed by the Republican forces, who were holed up in the major cities and in Terra’s twelve Castles Brian. The few attacks came from AeroSpace Fighters and other air units, which retreated quickly when challenged.
General Kerensky landed a short time after the initial drop. He assumed control of the Patton Division and led the first assault to retake his home city of Moscow. As he did so, other units were launching similar attacks against other major cities and, more importantly, spaceports.
The General’s tactics were tinged with conflicting emotions as he maneuvered his Orion BattleMech down streets he knew so well. Every building, every tree, every monument in the city was sacred to him, and the General knew that this battle would damage Moscow as much as it would his enemies. Seeing what his city had become under Emperor Amaris-the defaced monuments, the hospitals turned into mortuaries, the parks where daily executions had been held-enraged him beyond caring. Even the house where he was born had been destroyed.
With the aid of the Eleventh Mechanized Infantry Division, General Kerensky pushed the Rim Worlds units, the Thirty-third Amaris Dragoons ‘Mech regiment and attendant regiments, out of the city and then surrounded them on the plains. For a long while, General Kerensky seemed to be waiting to call in air strikes and artillery barrages. Even when the enemy offered to surrender, it appeared that the General would let his anger rule the day. After two hours of sitting in the cockpit of his ‘Mech, he finally accepted the surrender.
INVASION OF NORTH AMERICA
You will fight to the last soldier, and when you die, I will call upon your damned soul to rise and speak horrible curses at the enemy.
-Orders of Emperor Stefan Amaris to his troops
By January 2779, Europe and most of Asia were in General Kerensky’s hands. Though there had been some bitter fighting, especially for the Castles Brian, it was obvious that most of the Republican forces were massed on the North American continent. The Republican forces were using desperate tactics, including using entire city populations in chains as shields. To save lives, General Kerensky canceled plans to invade Africa and South America and instead focused on North America.
Getting there would be the biggest problem. Using DropShips to ferry troops would expose them to the still-active SDS ground weapons in the Americas. The ten transoceanic tunnels that connected the continents had been destroyed by Amaris and were beyond repair. General Kerensky devised a plan that balanced safety and speed.
On January 15, a massive force led by the 322nd BattleMech Division (The Antarctic Division) and the Ninth Mechanized Infantry Division crossed the Bering Strait and entered the northern state of Alaska. At the same time, SLDF warships and fighters loosed an enormous barrage on SDS ground weapons to cover the descent of thousands of DropShips into the Mexican Republic.
Resistance to the simultaneous invasions was much stiffer than anything encountered in Europe and Asia. The elite of the Amaris military fought the Regular Army for every centimeter of land. On the northern front, the Antarctica Division’s tenuous foothold on Alaska was almost taken away when two Amaris divisions threatened to push it back into the frigid waters.
Then Emperor Amaris assumed command of the continent’s defense. He had been a good strategist, but years of paranoia had eroded his skills and judgement. By March, the northern force, reinforced by a landing in central Canada, was working its way down the coast toward Unity City. On the Southern front, the 135th Royal BattleMech Division (Van Diemen Division) was leading Star League forces north along the coast toward the Court of the Star League. The states of Florida, Texas, and New York became secondary invasion sites, pinning down Amaris troops that might otherwise have gone to the aid of their Emperor.
The Amaris forces made desperate stands against the approaching Star League troops during June-July 2779. On the northern front, massive battles took place on Vancouver Island. To the south, Republican forces held the northern bank of the Columbia River against the 135th for three weeks. Star League forces finally broke through both lines, pushing Republicans back to the terrain around the Court of the Star League by September.
On September 3, 2779, forward elements of the Ninth Mechanized Infantry were the first to see the Court of the Star League. (The Ninth was known as the “The Pride of Puget Sound” because its ancestor division had once been stationed nearby.) The final battles proved to be the bitterest. Republican troops, true to their Periphery heritage, resorted to suicide tactics in futile efforts to prevent the Star League from regaining the city. Their desperate tactics delayed the final assault, which General Kerensky led personally.
The victory of the long campaign quickly turned sour, however, when Kerensky learned that Amaris was not in Unity City. Even before Star League troops reached the Court, Terran citizens welcoming the General told him that Amaris spent most of his time pacing the Imperial Palace.
Heeding the pleas of his wife, two sons, and three daughters, Stefan Amaris had left Unity City for the Star Palace that Richard Cameron had built for him in the Canadian wilderness years earlier. Amaris had renamed it the Imperial Palace, and there he waited.
General Kerensky left Unity City to his staff and turned his attention to Amaris. To make sure the Usurper did not escape, General Kerensky called on his second in command, General DeChavilier, to lead a special assault force. On September 29, ‘Mechs from the elite Twenty-Sixth Royal ‘Mech Division (The Graham Division) dropped on and around the Imperial Spaceport, which was located near Amaris’s retreat. General DeChavilier’s drop, which was soon reinforced by DropShips carrying more troops, disrupted the Republican defense and cut off Amaris’s only avenue of retreat.
General DeChavilier, commanding regiments from the Ninth and Twenty-sixth divisions, soon linked up with General Kerensky, who was commanding several regiments from the 328th Royal ‘Mechs (Lion-Hearted Division). Together, they defeated the Republican guards protecting the area. Despite repeated ambushes, Generals Kerensky and DeChavilier subdued the opposition in one day and closed in on Amaris.
The two Generals, with two lances of ‘Mechs guarding them, entered the large park that encircled the Imperial Palace. Members of Amaris’s personal guards had been warned that General Kerensky would be coming in his olive-drab Orion. Actually seeing the ‘Mech and knowing that commanding it was the mighty legend himself, however, made them hesitate.
General Kerensky pushed his Orion into a run. By the time the Republican defenders in their armored pillboxes on the wall began firing, the General was halfway to them. He quickly reached the walls, where bad firing angles for the pillboxes protected him. As General DeChavilier and the rest of the two lances silenced the pillboxes, General Kerensky’s Orion smashed the gates of the Imperial Palace.
With that, the Republican soldiers inside laid down their weapons and cleared the way to Amaris’s quarters. When the Generals approached Stefan Amaris, still in his now-tattered Emperor’s robes, came out to meet them. He slowly drew the same pistol he had used to execute Richard Cameron, and laid it at the feet of General Kerensky’s ‘Mech. He then looked up, as if expecting his conqueror to say something. When no response came, Amaris shrugged and began to leave the Imperial Palace grounds.
The sight of the former Emperor walking ahead of General Kerensky’s olive-drab ‘Mech ended the resistance of the few remaining Republican soldiers. From a side entrance, Amaris’s wife and children emerged. They ran to catch up and fell into step beside him without a word.
The General escorted his prisoners to the headquarters of the Ninth Mechanized Infantry Division, located in the remains of what had been a posh hotel for visitors to the Imperial Palace. General Kerensky treated the Usurper like a gentleman and ordered a suite of guarded rooms turned over to the Amaris family. In return for treatment that he did not really expect, Amaris gladly agreed to broadcast an order to his troops to surrender.
The effect of Stefan Amaris’s message was immediate. Republican troops, mostly in the three North American Castles Brian, began to lay down their weapons and surrender. The message took longer to reach troops on other worlds, where fighting did not end until early November. Enemy troops, who surrendered by the thousands, were treated with respect, as ordered by General Kerensky.
END OF THE STAR LEAGUE
The General’s advisers debated what to do with Stefan Amaris, his family, and his top aides. Many argued that they should be executed immediately, but General Kerensky felt that executing Amaris and his people without a trial would make a shame of all they had fought for. Only a few sided with the General, but no one dared challenge the legendary leader. The prisoners continued to live on in their luxurious cells.
After nearly a decade of war, General Kerensky and the SLDF rested. The people of the Hegemony and in some other realms celebrated. Star League troopers were heroes everywhere they went. General Kerensky allowed the atmosphere of celebration to continue for a month. Then it was back to work. He ordered his units to assess the damage to the Hegemony, salvaging what they could, and begin the reconstruction.
Two weeks later, while cleaning up the Court of the Star League and attempting to restore it to its former grandeur, troops unsealed the Throne Room. Even the most battle-hardened soldier could not take the sight or the smell of the room for longer than a few moments. The outrage was immediate. The cry for Amaris’s head grew so loud that General Kerensky had to be careful about who he assigned to guard the Amaris family.
Though he had been wading through the stack of administrative tasks that had built up, the General had to see the Throne Room for himself. Two weeks after the unsealing, Kerensky flew from the Imperial Palace to the Court of the Star League. He walked into the Throne Room, which had not been cleared, and asked to be left alone. Thirty minutes later, he came out and flew back to the Amaris’s retreat. He ordered that Stefan Amaris, his family, and his aides be marched into a courtyard, where soldiers with laser rifles waited as each prisoner refused a blindfold. The General himself gave the order to fire.
When the deed was done, Kerensky was heard to mutter as he left, “There will be no sympathy for the devil.”
Later that day, the General ordered the bodies preserved and protected until he could decide what to do with them.
Defeating the automated defenses at Terra’s two standard jump points proved to be the easiest part of the entire campaign. The SDS had five major immobile battlestations at each jump point, their weapons ready to attack anything that materialized and failed to signal the proper code. To deal with this, General Kerensky ordered the automating of 20 aging Jumpships and 60 Overlord DropShips with sophisticated computer and guidance systems. The DropShips weapons were replaced with extra armor. Their massive holds were then stuffed with explosives.
These unmanned ships materialized in the Terran system and accelerated immediately toward the enemy battlestations. Though many DropShips were destroyed, enough got through to detonate on their targets to destroy all of the battlestations.
Almost a thousand warships and troop transports surrounding the jump points of eight different worlds waited to make the journey to the Terran system and responded within minutes after receiving confirmation that the last obstacle had been cleared away. Because of the premium on speed, the General reluctantly agreed to cut the distance between jumping ships to one-fourth the norm so that extra ships could pack the points and make the jump. After fully materializing, ships had just five minutes to clear the jump point before the next group of ships materialized. If they made a mistake, groups of ships would materialize inside of one another. There was also no way to stop the operation should something go wrong; once it started, it would not stop until the last ship materialized above Sol.
Fate seemed to be looking out for the soldiers and sailors of the SLDF that day. Of the 932 ships that waited to make the jump to Terra, only 20 failed. Eighteen of those suffered drive failures at the point of departure without any loss of life. Of the remaining two, the troop transport Richardson suffered a partial failure of its station-keeping drives upon materialization. Captain G.T. Garret, realizing that he would not be able to move his ship out of the jump point quickly enough, ordered its DropShips to launch immediately. The DropShips made it clear of the jump point. The Richardson almost made it clear, but the corvette Mississippi Queen materialized with its prow inside the transport’s engineering section. The Richardson exploded, with all hands lost. The Mississippi Queen sustained heavy damage but vacated the jump point before the next wave appeared.
Once the fleet was assembled into formation with the troop transports (armored DropShip carriers) surrounded by warships, it began a High-G acceleration toward Terra. The orders for the warships were to protect the transports at all cost. Though not discussed in the briefing rooms of the warships, the ship captains understood the unspoken order from the Admirals to sacrifice even their ships as a last resort to save the transports.
Four days before the main force was to rendezvous with Terra, 40 warships used pirate points to materialize just a day’s travel from Terra. They were ordered to destroy as many drone warships as possible. Each Caspar carried the firepower of a cruiser and had the maneuverability of a destroyer. For the next two days, the Star League ships fought the swarm of Caspars that gathered around them. The cruiser Sovetskii Soyuz was the last warship to succumb to the sheer number of drones. The 40 Star League warships had destroyed more than 100 drones.
This left only 150 drone warships to challenge the fleet. With the main fleet still two days from Terra, the battle with the Reagan drone warships began. The drones, using the tactics that long-dead admirals had programmed into their distant computers, shadowed the fleet just outside of weapon range, waiting to single out ships to destroy. Occasionally, groups of two or three drones would suddenly accelerate and attempt to cut through the fleet with the ferocity of sharks. They concentrated their fire at the transports, destroying many. Whole divisions disappeared in a single pass of the deadly ships.
Twelve hours from Terra, with the sudden brightness of their engine exhaust signalling their acceleration, all of the drones attacked. Admiral Grec ordered most of his warships to meet them midway. Fighters scrambled from their carriers.
The two fleets opened fire, the flash of lasers and the angry exhaust of missiles casting eerie shadows on the hulls of the ships. Several drones broke through and drove toward the vulnerable transports. Clouds of fighters chased them down and destroyed them, but at the cost of more transports. Debris traced the path of Kerensky’s fleet.
As the battle wore on, the drone warships lost their tight organization as more were destroyed. No longer able to make coordinated attacks on the transports, more Caspars began defending against the Star League warships. The unspoken order was also having an effect. Captains of grievously wounded warships aimed their vessels directly at drones. Most of the time, the automated ships easily dodged the suicide attacks, but these tactics by their human opponents seemed to confuse the drones and make them more cautious.
By the time the fleet was two hours from Terra, the tide of the battle had turned. Star League warships outnumbered drone ships. Admiral Grec’s warships caught the enemy in a crossfire. With the transports safe, the fighters returned to their carriers for refueling and rearming.
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KERENSKY’S RETURN
The campaign to recapture Terra was long and bloody. It took eight years and cost millions of lives, consuming more than half of the most powerful military ever assembled.
Though the Periphery uprising had cost about one-fourth of the strength of the SLDF, General Aleksandr Kerensky still had an army of more than 300 divisions, and he threw the full force of it at Stefan Amaris.
The campaign cost more than half of General Kerensky’s divisions, including 46 of the remaining 82 ‘Mech divisions, advanced weapons that mankind has been unable to replace.
From the beginning of the Periphery uprising to the Exodus of General Kerensky and his remaining loyal troops, the SLDF was reduced from a force of 486 divisions in strength to one of 113 divisions. Even with such horrifying losses, General Kerensky took with him a force stronger than any that remained. The Star League forces that did stay behind became the strongest units in the House militaries, with some surviving intact to modern times.
-From Fall of an Empire, by Grenville DuSimpson, Tharkad Press, 3021
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THE DROP
An hour from Terra, the fighters were ordered back into combat. They left their DropShips and warships and headed toward Terra to destroy 30 key laser and missile batteries on the continents of Europe and Asia.
To reduce their vulnerability to laser and missile fire, the fighters chose an especially steep descent angle. Many were shot down anyway, some by Republican fighters, but most by the automated defenses of the Reagan SDS.
Some ‘Mechs were already making their descent when the first fighters reached their targets. DropShips were already releasing armor and troop carriers. The few fighters protecting the rain of ‘Mechs and men had their hands full with Republican fighters that scrambled from bases all over Terra. Aiming for the thousands of ‘Mechs, the Amaris fighters had little trouble scoring kill after kill. If the fighters sent to destroy the SDS bases could not accomplish their missions, the entire invasion was in jeopardy.
The fighters almost failed. Losses due to enemy fighters, ground-based weapons, and the treacherous descent were higher than expected. The remaining pilots, chased by Republican fighters and fired upon from the ground, needed to make every bomb count. They succeeded, but with extremely heavy losses.
Because of the skill and determination of the Star League AeroSpace pilots, 30 divisions made their drops onto Terra in relative safety. The first division down was the 146th Royal BattleMech Division (George S. Patton Division), which landed within striking distance of Moscow. The other divisions landed as far west as Madrid, Spain, as far east as Magadan on Asia’s Pacific coast. Their landings went unopposed by the Republican forces, who were holed up in the major cities and in Terra’s twelve Castles Brian. The few attacks came from AeroSpace Fighters and other air units, which retreated quickly when challenged.
General Kerensky landed a short time after the initial drop. He assumed control of the Patton Division and led the first assault to retake his home city of Moscow. As he did so, other units were launching similar attacks against other major cities and, more importantly, spaceports.
The General’s tactics were tinged with conflicting emotions as he maneuvered his Orion BattleMech down streets he knew so well. Every building, every tree, every monument in the city was sacred to him, and the General knew that this battle would damage Moscow as much as it would his enemies. Seeing what his city had become under Emperor Amaris-the defaced monuments, the hospitals turned into mortuaries, the parks where daily executions had been held-enraged him beyond caring. Even the house where he was born had been destroyed.
With the aid of the Eleventh Mechanized Infantry Division, General Kerensky pushed the Rim Worlds units, the Thirty-third Amaris Dragoons ‘Mech regiment and attendant regiments, out of the city and then surrounded them on the plains. For a long while, General Kerensky seemed to be waiting to call in air strikes and artillery barrages. Even when the enemy offered to surrender, it appeared that the General would let his anger rule the day. After two hours of sitting in the cockpit of his ‘Mech, he finally accepted the surrender.
INVASION OF NORTH AMERICA
You will fight to the last soldier, and when you die, I will call upon your damned soul to rise and speak horrible curses at the enemy.
-Orders of Emperor Stefan Amaris to his troops
By January 2779, Europe and most of Asia were in General Kerensky’s hands. Though there had been some bitter fighting, especially for the Castles Brian, it was obvious that most of the Republican forces were massed on the North American continent. The Republican forces were using desperate tactics, including using entire city populations in chains as shields. To save lives, General Kerensky canceled plans to invade Africa and South America and instead focused on North America.
Getting there would be the biggest problem. Using DropShips to ferry troops would expose them to the still-active SDS ground weapons in the Americas. The ten transoceanic tunnels that connected the continents had been destroyed by Amaris and were beyond repair. General Kerensky devised a plan that balanced safety and speed.
On January 15, a massive force led by the 322nd BattleMech Division (The Antarctic Division) and the Ninth Mechanized Infantry Division crossed the Bering Strait and entered the northern state of Alaska. At the same time, SLDF warships and fighters loosed an enormous barrage on SDS ground weapons to cover the descent of thousands of DropShips into the Mexican Republic.
Resistance to the simultaneous invasions was much stiffer than anything encountered in Europe and Asia. The elite of the Amaris military fought the Regular Army for every centimeter of land. On the northern front, the Antarctica Division’s tenuous foothold on Alaska was almost taken away when two Amaris divisions threatened to push it back into the frigid waters.
Then Emperor Amaris assumed command of the continent’s defense. He had been a good strategist, but years of paranoia had eroded his skills and judgement. By March, the northern force, reinforced by a landing in central Canada, was working its way down the coast toward Unity City. On the Southern front, the 135th Royal BattleMech Division (Van Diemen Division) was leading Star League forces north along the coast toward the Court of the Star League. The states of Florida, Texas, and New York became secondary invasion sites, pinning down Amaris troops that might otherwise have gone to the aid of their Emperor.
The Amaris forces made desperate stands against the approaching Star League troops during June-July 2779. On the northern front, massive battles took place on Vancouver Island. To the south, Republican forces held the northern bank of the Columbia River against the 135th for three weeks. Star League forces finally broke through both lines, pushing Republicans back to the terrain around the Court of the Star League by September.
On September 3, 2779, forward elements of the Ninth Mechanized Infantry were the first to see the Court of the Star League. (The Ninth was known as the “The Pride of Puget Sound” because its ancestor division had once been stationed nearby.) The final battles proved to be the bitterest. Republican troops, true to their Periphery heritage, resorted to suicide tactics in futile efforts to prevent the Star League from regaining the city. Their desperate tactics delayed the final assault, which General Kerensky led personally.
The victory of the long campaign quickly turned sour, however, when Kerensky learned that Amaris was not in Unity City. Even before Star League troops reached the Court, Terran citizens welcoming the General told him that Amaris spent most of his time pacing the Imperial Palace.
Heeding the pleas of his wife, two sons, and three daughters, Stefan Amaris had left Unity City for the Star Palace that Richard Cameron had built for him in the Canadian wilderness years earlier. Amaris had renamed it the Imperial Palace, and there he waited.
General Kerensky left Unity City to his staff and turned his attention to Amaris. To make sure the Usurper did not escape, General Kerensky called on his second in command, General DeChavilier, to lead a special assault force. On September 29, ‘Mechs from the elite Twenty-Sixth Royal ‘Mech Division (The Graham Division) dropped on and around the Imperial Spaceport, which was located near Amaris’s retreat. General DeChavilier’s drop, which was soon reinforced by DropShips carrying more troops, disrupted the Republican defense and cut off Amaris’s only avenue of retreat.
General DeChavilier, commanding regiments from the Ninth and Twenty-sixth divisions, soon linked up with General Kerensky, who was commanding several regiments from the 328th Royal ‘Mechs (Lion-Hearted Division). Together, they defeated the Republican guards protecting the area. Despite repeated ambushes, Generals Kerensky and DeChavilier subdued the opposition in one day and closed in on Amaris.
The two Generals, with two lances of ‘Mechs guarding them, entered the large park that encircled the Imperial Palace. Members of Amaris’s personal guards had been warned that General Kerensky would be coming in his olive-drab Orion. Actually seeing the ‘Mech and knowing that commanding it was the mighty legend himself, however, made them hesitate.
General Kerensky pushed his Orion into a run. By the time the Republican defenders in their armored pillboxes on the wall began firing, the General was halfway to them. He quickly reached the walls, where bad firing angles for the pillboxes protected him. As General DeChavilier and the rest of the two lances silenced the pillboxes, General Kerensky’s Orion smashed the gates of the Imperial Palace.
With that, the Republican soldiers inside laid down their weapons and cleared the way to Amaris’s quarters. When the Generals approached Stefan Amaris, still in his now-tattered Emperor’s robes, came out to meet them. He slowly drew the same pistol he had used to execute Richard Cameron, and laid it at the feet of General Kerensky’s ‘Mech. He then looked up, as if expecting his conqueror to say something. When no response came, Amaris shrugged and began to leave the Imperial Palace grounds.
The sight of the former Emperor walking ahead of General Kerensky’s olive-drab ‘Mech ended the resistance of the few remaining Republican soldiers. From a side entrance, Amaris’s wife and children emerged. They ran to catch up and fell into step beside him without a word.
The General escorted his prisoners to the headquarters of the Ninth Mechanized Infantry Division, located in the remains of what had been a posh hotel for visitors to the Imperial Palace. General Kerensky treated the Usurper like a gentleman and ordered a suite of guarded rooms turned over to the Amaris family. In return for treatment that he did not really expect, Amaris gladly agreed to broadcast an order to his troops to surrender.
The effect of Stefan Amaris’s message was immediate. Republican troops, mostly in the three North American Castles Brian, began to lay down their weapons and surrender. The message took longer to reach troops on other worlds, where fighting did not end until early November. Enemy troops, who surrendered by the thousands, were treated with respect, as ordered by General Kerensky.
END OF THE STAR LEAGUE
The General’s advisers debated what to do with Stefan Amaris, his family, and his top aides. Many argued that they should be executed immediately, but General Kerensky felt that executing Amaris and his people without a trial would make a shame of all they had fought for. Only a few sided with the General, but no one dared challenge the legendary leader. The prisoners continued to live on in their luxurious cells.
After nearly a decade of war, General Kerensky and the SLDF rested. The people of the Hegemony and in some other realms celebrated. Star League troopers were heroes everywhere they went. General Kerensky allowed the atmosphere of celebration to continue for a month. Then it was back to work. He ordered his units to assess the damage to the Hegemony, salvaging what they could, and begin the reconstruction.
Two weeks later, while cleaning up the Court of the Star League and attempting to restore it to its former grandeur, troops unsealed the Throne Room. Even the most battle-hardened soldier could not take the sight or the smell of the room for longer than a few moments. The outrage was immediate. The cry for Amaris’s head grew so loud that General Kerensky had to be careful about who he assigned to guard the Amaris family.
Though he had been wading through the stack of administrative tasks that had built up, the General had to see the Throne Room for himself. Two weeks after the unsealing, Kerensky flew from the Imperial Palace to the Court of the Star League. He walked into the Throne Room, which had not been cleared, and asked to be left alone. Thirty minutes later, he came out and flew back to the Amaris’s retreat. He ordered that Stefan Amaris, his family, and his aides be marched into a courtyard, where soldiers with laser rifles waited as each prisoner refused a blindfold. The General himself gave the order to fire.
When the deed was done, Kerensky was heard to mutter as he left, “There will be no sympathy for the devil.”
Later that day, the General ordered the bodies preserved and protected until he could decide what to do with them.
The Star League Part 24
VOLUNTEER REGIMENTS
Though the five Houses of the Inner Sphere adopted a neutral attitude toward the coming storm, their citizens did not. The coup and its horrors were felt deeply by the average citizens in all five realms. The Houses’ refusal to join General Kerensky shocked and angered billions of people. Demonstrations in support of General Kerensky and against their government’s decision were common and often violent.
Some people were not satisfied with just protesting. Thousands of men and women left for the Republic so that they could fight alongside General Kerensky. Though the Steiners, Davions, and Mariks did nothing to prevent this, the Kuritas and Liaos did. Meanwhile, sympathetic traders smuggled whole shiploads of men and women to the Republic or a Star League base. Many volunteers had been soldiers and officers in the House militaries who risked court-martial or even summary execution for going AWOL. Some MechWarriors and AeroSpace Pilots escaped with their vehicles.
The unexpected response deeply moved General Kerensky and the rest of the SLDF. Everyone was allowed to join. Even the very old and young were given tasks to keep the SLDF supplied and fit. Boot camps and makeshift military academies were created to train those able-bodied enough to fight. General Kerensky set up a MechWarrior school on Circinus. Its graduates received new ‘Mechs from factories in the Free Worlds League and the Lyran Commonwealth.
By the time General Kerensky was ready to launch his offensive, there were 36 Loyalist regiments. They became among the most impassioned fighters, with casualty rates two or three times higher than the average.
HEGEMONY CAMPAIGN
You have your orders. All I can add is that I hope and pray some sort of sense will come out of this horror story because I certainly can’t see any at the moment.
-From General Kerensky’s address to his commanding officers, February 12, 2772
The Star League Defense Forces began leaving the Rim Worlds Republic in early 2772. They had spent a year and a half resting and preparing for the offensive, but that time could not replace the men and women who had been lost fighting in the Periphery. Most units were severely understrength. On paper, the General had 300 divisions and more than 200 independent regiments, but barely half that number in reality.
As the units began loading onto their DropShips and transports, General Kerensky received messages from the Inner Sphere that the leaders of the Lyran Commonwealth and the Federated Suns would allow the Star League soldiers to pass through their realms without challenge. These messages were not unexpected; each has provided shelter and information to SLDF units probing the Amaris defenses. The Free Worlds League, which had allowed the presence of the Eridani Light Horse, now refused the SLDF permission to use League systems as staging areas. Thus did Kenyon Marik again act on an old grudge against General Kerensky stemming from an incident when Marik served on General Kerensky’s staff. Later in the campaign, Kerensky repaid Marik by using the Oriente system without the leader’s consent. The loss of Marik support was partially offset by an offer of help from the Capellan Confederation.
With the aid of three realms, the General could shape his strategy. He divided his troops into three major elements, one to travel through each of the accommodating Houses toward the Hegemony. Once all were in place, the three forces would launch their attacks. The first objective was not to strike for Terra, but to link with each other and encircle Stefan Amaris and his troops. Only after the three had linked up and drawn their forces completely around the Hegemony would the General begin to move on Terra.
Some questioned Kerensky’s strategy, arguing for a sudden thrust for Terra. The General had chosen the slow and cautious approach because intelligence reports indicated that Amaris had been successful in hiring mercenaries and had amassed more than 40 divisions. This, coupled with the lethal Space Defense Systems and the Castles Brian, made him a force to be reckoned with. Besides, the General was still worried that the Draconis Combine might side with Amaris and was not sure about the Free Worlds League.
General Aaron DeChavilier was given command of Task Force Sun, which was to travel through the Federated Suns. Admiral Joan Brandt was given command of Task Force Commonwealth, leaving Task Force Confederation to be commanded by General Kerensky.
The campaign for the Hegemony began on July 14, 2772, with SLDF divisions assaulting border worlds and with groups of warships venturing deep into the Hegemony, hoping to pick off a few enemy ships or bombard enemy positions. Worlds on the Hegemony’s border with the Draconis Combine were lightly defended. With Minoru Kurita maintaining a nonviolent stance toward Stefan Amaris, the Emperor stationed few units facing the Combine. Sabik, Lambrecht, Kervil, Telos IV, and Murchison fell quickly. With Republican troops retreating before a superior enemy and with General Kerensky still afraid to expose his back to House Kurita, the SLDF paused to consolidate its gains. House Kurita, always ready to exploit a situation, sent Combine units to occupy the worlds the Amaris troops were vacating. When Star League forces later advanced, they were surprised to be fighting Kuritan troops on Vega, Imbros III, Styx, and Altair. Wanting no war with the SLDF, the Combine forces gave ground readily, only to return after General Kerensky’s offensive had moved on.
Because Hegemony relations with the Federated Suns and the Lyran Commonwealth had always been cordial, the Camerons had built fewer Space Defense Systems and Castles Brian on those borders. The Regular Army used its superior training, equipment, and numbers to overwhelm Republican troops on such planets as Mallory’s World, Ozama, Syrma, and Zebebelgenubi. These fronts were where Star League troops found the first evidence of atrocities, the massacres of artists on Helen and of scientists on Zebebelgenubi.
Though this gave the SLDF an even greater sense of mission, General Kerensky’s troops were bogged down on the Free Worlds and Capellan fronts. They also found more and more defenders as they attacked planets closer to Terra. Though Star League troops had a year and a half to train and plan, they were still largely stymied by the Castles Brian and the Space Defense Systems. The long and costly campaign to recapture Nusakan was a prime example.
Republican soldiers changed the access codes on the Space Defense Systems, thwarting SLDF efforts to break through the security and into the computers. Other SLDF strategies, such as drawing drone warships away from a world with a decoy fleet, also failed. For the first two years, the only way for General Kerensky’s soldiers to deal with an SDS was to fight with every drone. Though this worked, it was accomplished at the cost of at least three major warships for every planet protected.
Castles Brian proved equally difficult. Soldiers had maps of each world’s Castles, but they did not know how the enemy would use the fortresses. The castles had miles of tunnels, large enough for BattleMechs to walk through, leading to at least 20 concealed exits. This made it virtually impossible for Regular Army units to be sure that Amaris troops were not popping up behind them. The interconnected bunkers and strongholds were concealed so well that it often did not matter if a platoon of soldiers knew that a bunker was ahead of them; they could not attack what they could not see without sacrificing themselves to draw fire.
The early successes produced prizes for the SLDF when they captured several key planets, such as Oliver and Ozama, more or less intact. As General Kerensky’s troops began to meet stiffer resistance, however, they also gained less from worlds closer to Terra. The woeful conditions of liberated worlds revealed how horrible life was under Emperor Amaris. Food, water, and power had been reserved for Amaris troops. The Republicans drained the resources and supplies from cities they did not need, often causing the loss of thousands of lives. Living in the countryside was no better. Farmers were told to triple the yield of their farms or die.
Government buildings were destroyed or defaced. On Saffel, the local garrison, in a fit of ill humor, painted the government buildings in harsh day-glo colors and gave them to prostitutes from the Republic. Universities and instructors suffered as well. Any research project that might have military application was moved to Terra so that the Emperor’s scientists could monitor it. The rest of the university was destroyed. Professors who were of no value to the military were either killed or forced to build defenses for the local garrison.
By the end of 2774, General Kerensky’s troops had seized only eleven worlds and were contesting another ten. They had lost 30 divisions and 40 major warships. Morale among the troops plummeted as the soldiers realized how terrible life must be for those still living under Emperor Amaris and how long it would take to free them.
NEW STRATEGIES
In November 2774, forces from Task Forces Sun, Commonwealth, and Confederation linked up. Emperor Amaris was surrounded by a ring of worlds, each thick with Regular Army units.
The military value of this ring is debatable. Even General Kerensky admitted that the idea of encircling Amaris was strategically impossible. The psychological effect of being surrounded did have a profound effect on Amaris, however. Once he heard that his troops had lost Slocum and Connaught, the final two worlds in the ring, he reconsidered his defensive strategy.
From recordings made by automatic devices in Unity City, it was later learned that Amaris was slowly losing his sanity. Gone was the exultation of those first few months after the coup, when he had staged huge parties and forced his high-born hostages to attend. By 2774, he was walking through the deserted Court with a laser rifle in his hand, firing at anything that reminded him of Richard Cameron or General Kerensky.
After the encirclement was completed, Emperor Amaris gathered his high command and ordered them to withdraw from worlds without either fortifications or an SDS and to pull back to worlds that did. He felt that this limited withdrawal would strengthen his hold over the key worlds. He ended his meeting with his officers by remarking that “I can’t look at the stars anymore. Every time I do, they seem to constellate the face of Kerensky.”
Emperor Amaris’s orders were carried out in late 2774 and early 2775, as his forces pulled back from twelve worlds. Amaris was pleased that this would use his troops more effectively. When General Kerensky found out about the pullback, he had reasons to be happy as well.
The SLDF gained control of worlds scattered throughout the Hegemony. Officers and sailors of the Star League Navy quickly realized the importance of these worlds because their locations allowed Star league ships to jump across the Hegemony without using enemy star systems. Two of these worlds, Bryant and Asta, were within one jump of Terra and later became important as mustering points.
Recapturing another world, Carver V, provided psychological lift as well. The SLDF units arrived to relieve the remnants of three Marine regiments that had been holding out since the coup eight years earlier. The units had received emergency supplies from the Eridani Light House that had allowed them to continue their fight.
Star League troops quickly garrisoned the twelve worlds. Amaris’s forces had left plenty of minefields and booby-traps for the troopers to deal with, and the SLDF spent months removing and evaluating what the enemy left behind. On some key worlds, such as Graham IV, all that was left was nuclear devastation.
What Kerensky did find, however, led to a turning point of the war. Before the war, the planet Nirasaki was the headquarters of the Nirasaki Computers Collective. The NCC had been one of the major developers and contractors of the Space Defense Systems. It had had the responsibility of developing the incredibly intricate computer communications network that linked drone warships, ground weapons, and supply centers. When General Kerensky and Admiral Janos Grec, commander of the Star League Navy, heard that Nirasaki had been abandoned, they sent troops and scientists to the NCC research facility hoping to find something they could use against the Space Defense Systems.
At first it did not look promising. Most of the NCC buildings had been destroyed and the scientists rounded up and taken to Terra in the first year of the Amaris occupation. Searching the levels beneath the buildings revealed much of the same. The computer memories had been dumped and wiped clean. The paper files had been burned.
When a soldier discovered a small portable computer in a cleaning closet, it turned out that the computer’s contents had been hidden by Professor Catherine Glimp. When Nirasaki was being seized by Republican troops, Professor Glimp realized that the Space Defense Systems would be major stumbling blocks to anyone trying to rescue Hegemony worlds. She filled the limited memory of the portable computer with information that she and her colleagues thought might help.
Unfortunately, they had no way to defeat an SDS. In their own words: ”We just did too good a job, never once imagining we might one day wish the stupid things were more vulnerable.” The data Professor Glimp provided, however, allowed engineers and communication specialists to devise an electronic countermeasure. It was a device that swamped the primary communication channels of an SDS with static, forcing its computers to use backup links. The hope was that these secondary channels would be less effective in coordinating the various weapon systems. The device was also supposed to hamper the targeting of the SDS weapons.
General Kerensky had no way to test the effectiveness of the new ECM device except in battle. In March 2775, he led an attempt to invade New Home, an SDS-protected world just a few light years from the important world of Keid. At the head of a large fleet of warships and transports, the General anxiously watched as the new ECM was tried. At first, it seemed to have little effect. The nearest drone warships responded to their presence and attacked. Other warships around the planet, however, and the missile and laser batteries on the planet, seemed confused about how to respond. Their ineffectiveness allowed the General to drop his troops with few losses. New Home fell quickly, and Kerensky finally had his first break of the campaign.
He wasted little time in exploiting his new advantage. From mid-2775 through late 2778, the SLDF launched a series of attacks against SDS-protected worlds. Terra could not be attacked directly because of its advanced and extensive SDS, and so the worlds around it became the General’s targets. Because many of the worlds attacked were not protected by Castle Brians, the fighting on these worlds was relatively straightforward for the Regular Army.
On worlds like Dieron and Procyon, where there were Castles Brian, the fighting was especially difficult because there was no high-tech answer for overcoming an enemy firing from inside a bunker or for ’Mechs popping up from a hidden tunnel entrance. General Kerensky could have bypassed the mountains, where most castles were built, but that would have left whole regions vulnerable to attacks and atrocities from Republican troops, who thought nothing of killing civilians to hurt their enemy. The only solution was to break into the forts and hunt the enemy down. On Dieron, Republican troops had entrenched in the cities, too. The campaign for Dieron lasted two years, cost millions of lives, and devastated the planet and its economy.
In 2775, some of the mercenary units hired by Stefan Amaris began to surrender to the SLDF. Seeing the Space Defense Systems neutralized and the Regular Army’s new tactics for combatting Castles Brian took much of the fight out of many Amaris soldiers and mercenaries.
Also in 2775, some of the Star League member states began to participate in General Kerensky’s campaign. Supplies from the Lyran Commonwealth, the Capellan Confederation, and the Federated Suns began appearing at worlds held by General Kerensky’s troops. While most of the aid was for the many millions of refugees, there was also considerable ammunition and other equipment for the SLDF. Some of the soldiers cynically thought that the member states had begun to contribute only after General Kerensky and his army had gained the upper hand.
Despite recent successes, General Kerensky felt far from certain of victory. For every world like Keid, where Amaris had destroyed the military installations but had found the planet too useful to ravage, General Kerensky captured another like Caph, once a jewel of the Hegemony and left in ruins by the Rim Worlds forces. The General had lost more than a third of his forces and almost half of his navy. He did, however, control all the worlds closest to Terra. He could turn his attention and his remaining forces to the awesome task of seizing the most heavily defended place in the universe.
LIBERATION OF TERRA
The Reagan Space Defense System was many times larger and more powerful than the others, and the engineers and scientists of the SLDF could offer General Kerensky no short cuts to defeat it. Brute force was the only way through the Reagan Space Defense System.
The General and his staff spent months of conferences to shape the plans for capturing Terra. Code-named Operation Liberation, the resulting risky plan was to swamp the Reagan Space Defense System with so many targets that most of Kerensky’s forces would be able to reach Terra’s surface.
While his troops were preparing for the operation, General Kerensky issued a statement to Terra giving Stefan Amaris a chance to surrender. Amaris, by then almost totally insane, sent a long, rambling reply that, among other curious things, called General Kerensky the angel of death. Taking the reply as a no, the Regular Army continued to prepare for the assault. This could be the final battle and no doubt the biggest.
On January 23, 2777, soldiers on eight worlds loaded onto their DropShips. General Kerensky, in his flagship, the McKenna’s Pride, watched as ships began gathering around the zenith jump point of New Earth. Twenty minutes before Operation Liberation was to commence, a taped message was flashed to all ships.
“Soldiers of the Star League, I’ve a few words to say before we begin. We’ve come a long way, my friends. From the far Periphery to just outside home, we have fought battle after battle. We’ve seen our enemy fall before us. We’ve seen our friends die. Now tired, bloodied, and battered, we are about to enter a battle that many have said is impossible to win. Perhaps they are right. Perhaps freeing Terra from the Usurper is humanly impossible. If it is, I’m not worried. I have long known that the men and women whom it has been my honor to command are more than just flesh and blood. That they are more than the sum of their physical parts. An unalloyed spirit runs through you like the sparks in diamonds. It is hard to put this into words but when I look into the eyes of even the lowest-rank trooper, I see the Star League. And I know that the worth of the Star League lies with the fact that it gave birth to and nurtured men and women like you. Friends, it is time to go home. Godspeed to all of you.”
Though the five Houses of the Inner Sphere adopted a neutral attitude toward the coming storm, their citizens did not. The coup and its horrors were felt deeply by the average citizens in all five realms. The Houses’ refusal to join General Kerensky shocked and angered billions of people. Demonstrations in support of General Kerensky and against their government’s decision were common and often violent.
Some people were not satisfied with just protesting. Thousands of men and women left for the Republic so that they could fight alongside General Kerensky. Though the Steiners, Davions, and Mariks did nothing to prevent this, the Kuritas and Liaos did. Meanwhile, sympathetic traders smuggled whole shiploads of men and women to the Republic or a Star League base. Many volunteers had been soldiers and officers in the House militaries who risked court-martial or even summary execution for going AWOL. Some MechWarriors and AeroSpace Pilots escaped with their vehicles.
The unexpected response deeply moved General Kerensky and the rest of the SLDF. Everyone was allowed to join. Even the very old and young were given tasks to keep the SLDF supplied and fit. Boot camps and makeshift military academies were created to train those able-bodied enough to fight. General Kerensky set up a MechWarrior school on Circinus. Its graduates received new ‘Mechs from factories in the Free Worlds League and the Lyran Commonwealth.
By the time General Kerensky was ready to launch his offensive, there were 36 Loyalist regiments. They became among the most impassioned fighters, with casualty rates two or three times higher than the average.
HEGEMONY CAMPAIGN
You have your orders. All I can add is that I hope and pray some sort of sense will come out of this horror story because I certainly can’t see any at the moment.
-From General Kerensky’s address to his commanding officers, February 12, 2772
The Star League Defense Forces began leaving the Rim Worlds Republic in early 2772. They had spent a year and a half resting and preparing for the offensive, but that time could not replace the men and women who had been lost fighting in the Periphery. Most units were severely understrength. On paper, the General had 300 divisions and more than 200 independent regiments, but barely half that number in reality.
As the units began loading onto their DropShips and transports, General Kerensky received messages from the Inner Sphere that the leaders of the Lyran Commonwealth and the Federated Suns would allow the Star League soldiers to pass through their realms without challenge. These messages were not unexpected; each has provided shelter and information to SLDF units probing the Amaris defenses. The Free Worlds League, which had allowed the presence of the Eridani Light Horse, now refused the SLDF permission to use League systems as staging areas. Thus did Kenyon Marik again act on an old grudge against General Kerensky stemming from an incident when Marik served on General Kerensky’s staff. Later in the campaign, Kerensky repaid Marik by using the Oriente system without the leader’s consent. The loss of Marik support was partially offset by an offer of help from the Capellan Confederation.
With the aid of three realms, the General could shape his strategy. He divided his troops into three major elements, one to travel through each of the accommodating Houses toward the Hegemony. Once all were in place, the three forces would launch their attacks. The first objective was not to strike for Terra, but to link with each other and encircle Stefan Amaris and his troops. Only after the three had linked up and drawn their forces completely around the Hegemony would the General begin to move on Terra.
Some questioned Kerensky’s strategy, arguing for a sudden thrust for Terra. The General had chosen the slow and cautious approach because intelligence reports indicated that Amaris had been successful in hiring mercenaries and had amassed more than 40 divisions. This, coupled with the lethal Space Defense Systems and the Castles Brian, made him a force to be reckoned with. Besides, the General was still worried that the Draconis Combine might side with Amaris and was not sure about the Free Worlds League.
General Aaron DeChavilier was given command of Task Force Sun, which was to travel through the Federated Suns. Admiral Joan Brandt was given command of Task Force Commonwealth, leaving Task Force Confederation to be commanded by General Kerensky.
The campaign for the Hegemony began on July 14, 2772, with SLDF divisions assaulting border worlds and with groups of warships venturing deep into the Hegemony, hoping to pick off a few enemy ships or bombard enemy positions. Worlds on the Hegemony’s border with the Draconis Combine were lightly defended. With Minoru Kurita maintaining a nonviolent stance toward Stefan Amaris, the Emperor stationed few units facing the Combine. Sabik, Lambrecht, Kervil, Telos IV, and Murchison fell quickly. With Republican troops retreating before a superior enemy and with General Kerensky still afraid to expose his back to House Kurita, the SLDF paused to consolidate its gains. House Kurita, always ready to exploit a situation, sent Combine units to occupy the worlds the Amaris troops were vacating. When Star League forces later advanced, they were surprised to be fighting Kuritan troops on Vega, Imbros III, Styx, and Altair. Wanting no war with the SLDF, the Combine forces gave ground readily, only to return after General Kerensky’s offensive had moved on.
Because Hegemony relations with the Federated Suns and the Lyran Commonwealth had always been cordial, the Camerons had built fewer Space Defense Systems and Castles Brian on those borders. The Regular Army used its superior training, equipment, and numbers to overwhelm Republican troops on such planets as Mallory’s World, Ozama, Syrma, and Zebebelgenubi. These fronts were where Star League troops found the first evidence of atrocities, the massacres of artists on Helen and of scientists on Zebebelgenubi.
Though this gave the SLDF an even greater sense of mission, General Kerensky’s troops were bogged down on the Free Worlds and Capellan fronts. They also found more and more defenders as they attacked planets closer to Terra. Though Star League troops had a year and a half to train and plan, they were still largely stymied by the Castles Brian and the Space Defense Systems. The long and costly campaign to recapture Nusakan was a prime example.
Republican soldiers changed the access codes on the Space Defense Systems, thwarting SLDF efforts to break through the security and into the computers. Other SLDF strategies, such as drawing drone warships away from a world with a decoy fleet, also failed. For the first two years, the only way for General Kerensky’s soldiers to deal with an SDS was to fight with every drone. Though this worked, it was accomplished at the cost of at least three major warships for every planet protected.
Castles Brian proved equally difficult. Soldiers had maps of each world’s Castles, but they did not know how the enemy would use the fortresses. The castles had miles of tunnels, large enough for BattleMechs to walk through, leading to at least 20 concealed exits. This made it virtually impossible for Regular Army units to be sure that Amaris troops were not popping up behind them. The interconnected bunkers and strongholds were concealed so well that it often did not matter if a platoon of soldiers knew that a bunker was ahead of them; they could not attack what they could not see without sacrificing themselves to draw fire.
The early successes produced prizes for the SLDF when they captured several key planets, such as Oliver and Ozama, more or less intact. As General Kerensky’s troops began to meet stiffer resistance, however, they also gained less from worlds closer to Terra. The woeful conditions of liberated worlds revealed how horrible life was under Emperor Amaris. Food, water, and power had been reserved for Amaris troops. The Republicans drained the resources and supplies from cities they did not need, often causing the loss of thousands of lives. Living in the countryside was no better. Farmers were told to triple the yield of their farms or die.
Government buildings were destroyed or defaced. On Saffel, the local garrison, in a fit of ill humor, painted the government buildings in harsh day-glo colors and gave them to prostitutes from the Republic. Universities and instructors suffered as well. Any research project that might have military application was moved to Terra so that the Emperor’s scientists could monitor it. The rest of the university was destroyed. Professors who were of no value to the military were either killed or forced to build defenses for the local garrison.
By the end of 2774, General Kerensky’s troops had seized only eleven worlds and were contesting another ten. They had lost 30 divisions and 40 major warships. Morale among the troops plummeted as the soldiers realized how terrible life must be for those still living under Emperor Amaris and how long it would take to free them.
NEW STRATEGIES
In November 2774, forces from Task Forces Sun, Commonwealth, and Confederation linked up. Emperor Amaris was surrounded by a ring of worlds, each thick with Regular Army units.
The military value of this ring is debatable. Even General Kerensky admitted that the idea of encircling Amaris was strategically impossible. The psychological effect of being surrounded did have a profound effect on Amaris, however. Once he heard that his troops had lost Slocum and Connaught, the final two worlds in the ring, he reconsidered his defensive strategy.
From recordings made by automatic devices in Unity City, it was later learned that Amaris was slowly losing his sanity. Gone was the exultation of those first few months after the coup, when he had staged huge parties and forced his high-born hostages to attend. By 2774, he was walking through the deserted Court with a laser rifle in his hand, firing at anything that reminded him of Richard Cameron or General Kerensky.
After the encirclement was completed, Emperor Amaris gathered his high command and ordered them to withdraw from worlds without either fortifications or an SDS and to pull back to worlds that did. He felt that this limited withdrawal would strengthen his hold over the key worlds. He ended his meeting with his officers by remarking that “I can’t look at the stars anymore. Every time I do, they seem to constellate the face of Kerensky.”
Emperor Amaris’s orders were carried out in late 2774 and early 2775, as his forces pulled back from twelve worlds. Amaris was pleased that this would use his troops more effectively. When General Kerensky found out about the pullback, he had reasons to be happy as well.
The SLDF gained control of worlds scattered throughout the Hegemony. Officers and sailors of the Star League Navy quickly realized the importance of these worlds because their locations allowed Star league ships to jump across the Hegemony without using enemy star systems. Two of these worlds, Bryant and Asta, were within one jump of Terra and later became important as mustering points.
Recapturing another world, Carver V, provided psychological lift as well. The SLDF units arrived to relieve the remnants of three Marine regiments that had been holding out since the coup eight years earlier. The units had received emergency supplies from the Eridani Light House that had allowed them to continue their fight.
Star League troops quickly garrisoned the twelve worlds. Amaris’s forces had left plenty of minefields and booby-traps for the troopers to deal with, and the SLDF spent months removing and evaluating what the enemy left behind. On some key worlds, such as Graham IV, all that was left was nuclear devastation.
What Kerensky did find, however, led to a turning point of the war. Before the war, the planet Nirasaki was the headquarters of the Nirasaki Computers Collective. The NCC had been one of the major developers and contractors of the Space Defense Systems. It had had the responsibility of developing the incredibly intricate computer communications network that linked drone warships, ground weapons, and supply centers. When General Kerensky and Admiral Janos Grec, commander of the Star League Navy, heard that Nirasaki had been abandoned, they sent troops and scientists to the NCC research facility hoping to find something they could use against the Space Defense Systems.
At first it did not look promising. Most of the NCC buildings had been destroyed and the scientists rounded up and taken to Terra in the first year of the Amaris occupation. Searching the levels beneath the buildings revealed much of the same. The computer memories had been dumped and wiped clean. The paper files had been burned.
When a soldier discovered a small portable computer in a cleaning closet, it turned out that the computer’s contents had been hidden by Professor Catherine Glimp. When Nirasaki was being seized by Republican troops, Professor Glimp realized that the Space Defense Systems would be major stumbling blocks to anyone trying to rescue Hegemony worlds. She filled the limited memory of the portable computer with information that she and her colleagues thought might help.
Unfortunately, they had no way to defeat an SDS. In their own words: ”We just did too good a job, never once imagining we might one day wish the stupid things were more vulnerable.” The data Professor Glimp provided, however, allowed engineers and communication specialists to devise an electronic countermeasure. It was a device that swamped the primary communication channels of an SDS with static, forcing its computers to use backup links. The hope was that these secondary channels would be less effective in coordinating the various weapon systems. The device was also supposed to hamper the targeting of the SDS weapons.
General Kerensky had no way to test the effectiveness of the new ECM device except in battle. In March 2775, he led an attempt to invade New Home, an SDS-protected world just a few light years from the important world of Keid. At the head of a large fleet of warships and transports, the General anxiously watched as the new ECM was tried. At first, it seemed to have little effect. The nearest drone warships responded to their presence and attacked. Other warships around the planet, however, and the missile and laser batteries on the planet, seemed confused about how to respond. Their ineffectiveness allowed the General to drop his troops with few losses. New Home fell quickly, and Kerensky finally had his first break of the campaign.
He wasted little time in exploiting his new advantage. From mid-2775 through late 2778, the SLDF launched a series of attacks against SDS-protected worlds. Terra could not be attacked directly because of its advanced and extensive SDS, and so the worlds around it became the General’s targets. Because many of the worlds attacked were not protected by Castle Brians, the fighting on these worlds was relatively straightforward for the Regular Army.
On worlds like Dieron and Procyon, where there were Castles Brian, the fighting was especially difficult because there was no high-tech answer for overcoming an enemy firing from inside a bunker or for ’Mechs popping up from a hidden tunnel entrance. General Kerensky could have bypassed the mountains, where most castles were built, but that would have left whole regions vulnerable to attacks and atrocities from Republican troops, who thought nothing of killing civilians to hurt their enemy. The only solution was to break into the forts and hunt the enemy down. On Dieron, Republican troops had entrenched in the cities, too. The campaign for Dieron lasted two years, cost millions of lives, and devastated the planet and its economy.
In 2775, some of the mercenary units hired by Stefan Amaris began to surrender to the SLDF. Seeing the Space Defense Systems neutralized and the Regular Army’s new tactics for combatting Castles Brian took much of the fight out of many Amaris soldiers and mercenaries.
Also in 2775, some of the Star League member states began to participate in General Kerensky’s campaign. Supplies from the Lyran Commonwealth, the Capellan Confederation, and the Federated Suns began appearing at worlds held by General Kerensky’s troops. While most of the aid was for the many millions of refugees, there was also considerable ammunition and other equipment for the SLDF. Some of the soldiers cynically thought that the member states had begun to contribute only after General Kerensky and his army had gained the upper hand.
Despite recent successes, General Kerensky felt far from certain of victory. For every world like Keid, where Amaris had destroyed the military installations but had found the planet too useful to ravage, General Kerensky captured another like Caph, once a jewel of the Hegemony and left in ruins by the Rim Worlds forces. The General had lost more than a third of his forces and almost half of his navy. He did, however, control all the worlds closest to Terra. He could turn his attention and his remaining forces to the awesome task of seizing the most heavily defended place in the universe.
LIBERATION OF TERRA
The Reagan Space Defense System was many times larger and more powerful than the others, and the engineers and scientists of the SLDF could offer General Kerensky no short cuts to defeat it. Brute force was the only way through the Reagan Space Defense System.
The General and his staff spent months of conferences to shape the plans for capturing Terra. Code-named Operation Liberation, the resulting risky plan was to swamp the Reagan Space Defense System with so many targets that most of Kerensky’s forces would be able to reach Terra’s surface.
While his troops were preparing for the operation, General Kerensky issued a statement to Terra giving Stefan Amaris a chance to surrender. Amaris, by then almost totally insane, sent a long, rambling reply that, among other curious things, called General Kerensky the angel of death. Taking the reply as a no, the Regular Army continued to prepare for the assault. This could be the final battle and no doubt the biggest.
On January 23, 2777, soldiers on eight worlds loaded onto their DropShips. General Kerensky, in his flagship, the McKenna’s Pride, watched as ships began gathering around the zenith jump point of New Earth. Twenty minutes before Operation Liberation was to commence, a taped message was flashed to all ships.
“Soldiers of the Star League, I’ve a few words to say before we begin. We’ve come a long way, my friends. From the far Periphery to just outside home, we have fought battle after battle. We’ve seen our enemy fall before us. We’ve seen our friends die. Now tired, bloodied, and battered, we are about to enter a battle that many have said is impossible to win. Perhaps they are right. Perhaps freeing Terra from the Usurper is humanly impossible. If it is, I’m not worried. I have long known that the men and women whom it has been my honor to command are more than just flesh and blood. That they are more than the sum of their physical parts. An unalloyed spirit runs through you like the sparks in diamonds. It is hard to put this into words but when I look into the eyes of even the lowest-rank trooper, I see the Star League. And I know that the worth of the Star League lies with the fact that it gave birth to and nurtured men and women like you. Friends, it is time to go home. Godspeed to all of you.”
The Star League Part 23
THE KURITA HOSTAGES
Stefan Amaris proclaimed himself First Lord in January 2767. This was the first transmission from the Terran Hegemony since the coup began. General Kerensky and the leaders of the other realms were shocked. Everyone had considered the Periphery uprising, not the Rim Worlds Republic, to be the threat. Even the suspicious Takiro Kurita, who had tried to warn the other Council Lords about Amaris, was caught off guard by Richard’s death. Kurita knew that Amaris was a schemer, but the Coordinator had believed that Amaris would exercise control through his influence over Richard. Kurita had thought Amaris too shrewd to risk the reaction of the entire Inner Sphere and the wrath of General Kerensky and the SLDF.
As weeks passed and the fait accompli began to sink in, the House leaders began blaming each other for letting it happen. They also waited for General Kerensky to restore order. The General, however, was totally surprised by the coup. When he recovered from his initial shock, the General reasoned that Amaris could not have been foolish enough to attempt the coup without support from one or more of the other realms.
In fact, the Draconis Combine began to cooperate with First Lord Stefan. Shortly before the coup, Takiro Kurita had ordered his grand-nephew, Drago Kurita, to evacuate his post as Ambassador to the Star League because the Coordinator feared a popular uprising against the large number of Republican troops on Terra. Drago and his family did not get out in time, however. Though the 121-year-old Takiro had assigned most of his duties to staff members, he flew into a rage upon learning that Amaris had arrested Ambassador Drago, his wife, and their four children. After fretting for days because he knew how brutal Amaris could be, Coordinator Takiro had a heart attack. On the day before he died, Takiro made his son Minoru promise to resolve the hostage situation through negotiation.
Thus the Draconis Combine was civil and cooperative despite Amaris’s brash goading of the Kuritas. Not knowing why House Kurita behaved in a friendly manner to the Usurper, the other Council Lords and General Kerensky feared that the Draconis Combine had been part of the plot.
WARRIORS WITHOUT A HOME
While we fought and died trusting that all was well back home, a cancer was allowed to grow that has now seized our hearts and souls. The Hegemony is lost and our hopes with it.
-General Aleksandr Kerensky, announcing the Amaris coup to his troops, February 15, 2767
In January 2767, General Kerensky led the attack to retake New Vandenberg. For a year, he had been at the head of an offensive to regain the Taurian Concordat. Though he faced stiff resistance from the Periphery forces, he finally gained the upper hand.
With the seizure of New Vandenberg complete and the submission of the Concordat likely to follow soon, the General hoped to pressure the neighboring realms to submit with a minimum of bloodshed. Yet certain things worried him. The large enemy BattleMech divisions, once so eager to engage in combat, began to avoid big battles. It seemed to General Kerensky that they were waiting for something.
His message to Terra, telling the First Lord of his victory of New Vandenberg, went unanswered. Then General Kerensky heard Stefan Amaris proclaim himself First Lord. An unbelieving Kerensky immediately asked for a status report from commanders in the Hegemony. The few still alive told the General that there was no hope for the SLDF units that were still fighting.
On May 19, the General received a message whose full implication filled him with horror:
FROM: Stefan Ukris Amaris, Emperor of the Amaris Empire
TO: General Aleksandr S. Kerensky, Commander of the late Star League Defense Forces
General:
I, with my infinite skills and aided by my loyal subjects, have struck, with a swiftness given only to the righteous, a blow that has corrected decades of injuries and slights to my family. I rule where the Camerons once called home. I control the Cradle of Humanity. All within the Hegemony have bowed before me; those who didn’t are dead.
Join me, General Kerensky. Become my sword arm and help me impress my word and wisdom upon the other realms. I’ve no reason to hate you; I wish only peace between us. Join me and convince your men and women to follow you, and I will give you power second only to mine.
But should you dare turn a blind eye to the wisdom of my offer and decide not to join, then heed my warning: I control everything the Hegemony has. All its defenses, all of its fortifications are now manned by people loyal to me. Should you try to attack, every inch of Hegemony soil will be stained with the blood of the fallen, and every drop will be a burden upon your soul, which must already be heavy with guilt for allowing me to accomplish the complete control of your homelands.
(signed) Emperor Stefan Ukris Amaris I
The feeble attempt at conciliation and the mockingly adversarial tone of the letter confused General Kerensky. Even after the losses in the Periphery war, the SLDF was by far the strongest military ever assembled. How did Amaris dare to antagonize its commander?
For three days, General Kerensky stayed in his quarters. His troops were more vocal in their reaction. Because Amaris was from the Periphery, many troopers wanted to go on a rampage, destroying anything and anyone from the Periphery. Just barely, their officers contained them and prevented a catastrophe.
Royal units, whose soldiers were recruited from the Hegemony, were the hardest hit by the news. Most of them wanted to leave the Periphery immediately to attack Amaris, but their officers ordered them to wait for General Kerensky’s decision. One unit, the Thirty-fourth Royal BattleMech Division, would not wait. It left its post in the Outworlds Alliance and headed for home. It was later wiped out above Epsilon Indi, its homeworld, by that planet’s automated Space Defense System.
General Kerensky finally broke his silence by issuing a long message to his troops and the people of the Periphery. He expressed outrage at what Stefan Amaris had done. He stated that, considering the nature of the Amaris family, there was little hope for the life of the First Lord or anyone who dared to show their loyalty to the Star League.
The General went on to say that a state of war obviously existed between the SLDF and the Amaris Empire. He cautioned his troops that it would be foolish to charge blindly at Amaris and his forces. The Rim Worlds forces were strong enough that the SLDF needed to plan strategy, General Kerensky said. Though the SLDF vastly outnumbered the Republican forces, General Kerensky knew that his adversaries would be in excellent defensive positions, and he worries that one or more of the House militaries, especially the Kuritans, might be fighting alongside the Amaris troops.
Addressing the people of the Periphery, he said it would be ridiculous for his troops to continue fighting the Periphery rebels to preserve a Star League whose capital was enslaved. He declared a cease-fire with all the Periphery realms except one. General Kerensky warned the Rim Worlds Republic that he intended to seize the homeworlds of Stefan Amaris to use as his base of operations. This was not simply a matter of revenge. General Kerensky, mistrustful of all the Lords after what had happened, needed a command center, and the Rim Worlds Republic lay undefended.
His announcement calmed the soldiers of the Star League. Knowing that their leader, a man whose stature and charisma had grown to almost godlike proportions, was back in command gave everyone hope that all was not lost. Some still disagreed with the General and felt that they should try to recapture the Hegemony immediately, but the news of the fate of the Thirty-fourth Royals restrained even the most impulsive among the soldiers. MechWarriors and common soldiers eagerly agreed with General Kerensky’s plan to attack the Rim Worlds Republic as a chance to repay Amaris for what he did to their homeworlds.
RIM WORLDS CAMPAIGN
The decision to move on the Rim Worlds Republic must have been a difficult one for General Kerensky. He had long been a vocal opponent of what he called “war’s unnecessary acts of stupidity against the innocent.” Even during a battle’s angriest moments, he had never succumbed to the temptation to strike an easy and telling blow against an enemy’s civilian population. General Kerensky was an anachronism, more in tune with a time when warfare had a set of rules and a code of honor.
As news of General Kerensky’s plan passed through the Inner Sphere, many people questioned its sense. These individuals believed that the General should stay in the Concordat, summoning his strength and planning his strategy. To embark on a campaign against the Republic seemed a foolhardy waste of effort and lives.
Some among the militaries of the five inner realms understood. They realized that the Republic was probably woefully underdefended. Officers of the five Houses also understood that the Rim Worlds Republic was the only Periphery realm that was not battle-scarred and exhausted. There was every reason to believe that General Kerensky would find plenty of supplies and equipment for his troops in the Republic. Some also realized that Star league forces would vent their frustrations on the Republic and thus be able to fight for the Hegemony with less passion and greater thought.
When he heard what General Kerensky was planning, Emperor Amaris was livid. He sent messages throughout the Inner Sphere about “the butcher Kerensky” and “his unholy intention to attack innocent men, women, and children.” He also sent messages to the remaining Periphery BattleMech Divisions that he had helped form, ordering them to defend the Rim Worlds to the last soldier.
The offensive began in August 2767 after General Kerensky and his forces approached the Republic from one side, and General DeChavilier, with an equal force, moved in from the other side. Before they attacked, the Star League force offered the Republic the chance to surrender. Mohammed Selim, Regent of the Rim Worlds Republic in Amaris’s absence, flatly refused.
The Periphery divisions that Amaris had ordered to protect the Republic had refused the order. Their reasons were many, but the most common one was revulsion for what Stefan Amaris had done. The warriors in the divisions had wanted independence from the Star League, not the death of innocents. Without the protection of the Periphery divisions, the Republic had only reservists and a few militia units to defend against the most powerful fighting force in history. Against such odds, many Republican warriors simply gave up, either refusing to fight and going AWOL or defecting to General Kerensky’s side at the first opportunity. The main contests were at the 20 fortifications scattered throughout the Republic.
Built decades earlier by the Star League, these fortifications were virtual copies of the Castles Brian in the Terran Hegemony. After Richard Cameron had ordered the SLDF to transfer the fortifications to Republican units, Stefan Amaris had used them to train his troops on how best to overcome the Castles Brian in the Hegemony. General Kerensky assaulted the Republican fortifications in a variety of ways: full frontal assault, combined assaults, bombardment from the air or space.
As expected, General Kerensky’s troops fought the Republicans with unmatched fury. There were many acts that, under different circumstances, would have been called foolhardy and overly violent. The General and his command staff issued special orders in an attempt to prevent the Star League troops from committing the same sins as their enemies. To their credit, most SLDF soldiers controlled their emotions. There were exceptions. The massacre at Gutui Junction, where the Ninetieth Dragoons killed 100 POWs, was the worst incident.
The Rim Worlds Republic fell quickly.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ADMIRAL BRASO’S LAST TRANSMISSION
[EDITOR’S NOTE: The Thirty-fourth Royal BattleMech Division was aided in its attempt to win back the Hegemony by the 568th Armed Transport Flotilla. The flotilla consisted of a single Black Lion Class battlecruiser, two Aegis Class cruisers, four Lola Class destroyers, one Potemkin Class cruiser/transport, and 20 transports and service vessels.
Commanding the 568th was Admiral Amanda Braso, a 30-year veteran of the Star League Navy and recipient of the Naval Medal of Valor, for her action during the Battle of D’Van’s Star. What follows is her last transmission. The message was received and recorded by a small trading vessel that was watching the battle from a jump point. The message was forwarded to the Periphery.]
This is Admiral Braso, commander of the 568th Armed Transport Flotilla. I’m hoping that someone friendly to the Star League might be listening in and relay my message to the General. He has to know what has happened.
We materialized into the Epsilon Indi system on July 1 at 0900 hours at both the zenith and nadir jump points. No resistance.
We high-geed it to Epsilon Indi in two groups, I in my flagship and Vice Admiral Mitchell Justin in his cruiser, the E. Presley. A day away from Indi, we picked up a challenge from a drone warship. We gave the proper response. To no one’s surprise, it refused our ID code. Our computer programmers took over at that point and attempted to worm their way into the controls of the Space Defense System. They tried everything but were rebuked by the computer’s security system each time. My hat’s off to whoever built the SDS; they built quality stuff, damn them.
As we drew nearer, more Caspars left their posts on the far side of the planet until all 56 were ready and waiting for us. There was no way to avoid a fight. I ordered Justin and his ships to change course and try to make it to the far side of the planet while my group would bear the brunt of the fighting. I was hoping that he might have a chance to unload his troops unopposed.
The Caspars, looking for all the world like warships from hell, are incredible to watch. They took the initiative, which surprised me, and performed an incredibly swift raking pass at my ships. Our gunners found it difficult to aim at the drone ships because of their speed and maneuverability. After they passed my ship, they concentrated on the Rex, a destroyer. Her commander made a fatal error and tried to run away. Like sharks around a whale, the drones encircled the Rex and sliced her to pieces. They went after the transports next. We managed to scatter the drones by diving into the middle of the fray, but not before they had gotten two troop transports. The gunners on my ship, bless their hearts, managed to get two of them by aiming at their tails. There seems to be an unusual weakness there that might be exploited by whoever follows us.
I ordered the remaining transports to launch their DropShips and ‘Mechs, hoping that so many targets would confuse the SDS and that some would get through. The Caspars split into two groups, one to engage us and the other to slice through the cloud of DropShips and ‘Mechs, their weapons firing at even the smallest tank-carrier. Many ‘Mechs were lost, but some survived.
Then, without warning, one of the drone ships rammed the Huston, an Aegis Class cruiser. I was horrified to see both ships explode. I then watched helplessly the ground-based SDS lasers and missiles picked off our remaining ‘Mechs and DropShips like so many kernels of corn thrown into a fire. One by one, ‘Mechs and DropShips were singled out and destroyed. I estimated that of all the DropShips and ‘Mechs I had in my group, maybe 10 percent actually reached the ground. Justin’s last report said that his group fared a little better, but not much. I do not hold out much hope for those that did reach the surface.
I don’t know how we are going to overcome these SDSes. The only way I can see to combat them is just hunting its warships down and destroying them all, then bombarding the hell out of the planet in hopes of destroying the laser and missile batteries on the planet’s surface. I…
What? Evasive action to port! Gunners fire, maximum spread. Prepare for collision. (Sounds of explosions)
End of transmission.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PREPARATIONS AND NEGOTIATIONS
The Rim Worlds Republic had a wealth of resources badly needed by the Regular Army. What was not expected was the docile way the people of the Republic accepted the presence of so many SLDF units on their worlds and in their skies. This has never been fully explained, though some historians have speculated that even the citizens of the Republic were shocked at what Amaris had done.
Stefan Amaris sent new messages to the leaders of the five major Houses calling General Kerensky everything from an unprincipled schemer to the Great Satan. These messages had a new twist, however, in that they stated Amaris’s terms for admitting the Great Houses to join with his new empire.
General Kerensky also called upon the five Houses to join him “in ridding Terra, the home of us all, of the Amaris scourge.” He did not offer terms or try to persuade them to join; he merely stated that he considered it was a duty honorable people would undertake. Not one of the five member states joined either side.
Oddly enough, the Draconis Combine, the one realm that most thought would join Stefan Amaris, was actually the most eager to join General Kerensky in smashing the Usurper. Though Minoru Kurita had pledged to try to rescue his nephew peacefully, he privately did all he could to help Kerensky. Though pleased to have the support, General Kerensky was mystified by the Coordinator’s public stance.
The other Houses had no such excuse. Members of their ruling families had escaped the Hegemony safely. The other Houses did not want to join the struggle for political reasons. To join the losing side would cause physical and political losses that could not be recouped, and none could predict the eventual victor. Though the SLDF was obviously more powerful than the Republican military, none of the leaders knew what secret deals might exist. All the inaction heightened the mutual suspicion.
For the next year and a half, while both sides sought to win the support of the five Houses, the military of the Star League prepared for the offensive. General Kerensky grew more cynical and less trusting of the Lords. He created two groups of the divisions and regiments that were stationed in the Inner Sphere. One group stripped Star league bases of supplies and equipment and sent the material to the Republic. General Kerensky ordered the second group to test the defenses of Stefan Amaris. Emperor Amaris, too, began to prepare for the inevitable, building up his forces and strengthening fortifications.
The House leaders attempted to protect their interests without angering either side. The Capellan Confederation rebuffed Amaris incursions. The Draconis Combine, still trying to negotiate with Stefan Amaris, refused General Kerensky permission to stage raids on Amaris from Combine territory. Coordinator Minoru Kurita even forced the Third Regimental Combat Team, the Eridani Light Horse, to leave the Combine if it persisted in testing the Republican defenses. Colonel Ezra Bradley, commander of the Third RCT, was treated brusquely even though his unit had been based in the Combine. After an initial confrontation with the Free Worlds League, the Third RCT was allowed to use bases there. Colonel Bradley learned a lesson from the Thirty-fourth Royals, making only probing raids on worlds protected by an SDS in the hopes of destroying a few drones at a time.
Often these tactics worked, but sometimes they did not. Almost weekly, the soldiers training in the Republic heard about the deaths of their fellow soldiers. This news hardened their hearts and deepened their resolve.
Stefan Amaris proclaimed himself First Lord in January 2767. This was the first transmission from the Terran Hegemony since the coup began. General Kerensky and the leaders of the other realms were shocked. Everyone had considered the Periphery uprising, not the Rim Worlds Republic, to be the threat. Even the suspicious Takiro Kurita, who had tried to warn the other Council Lords about Amaris, was caught off guard by Richard’s death. Kurita knew that Amaris was a schemer, but the Coordinator had believed that Amaris would exercise control through his influence over Richard. Kurita had thought Amaris too shrewd to risk the reaction of the entire Inner Sphere and the wrath of General Kerensky and the SLDF.
As weeks passed and the fait accompli began to sink in, the House leaders began blaming each other for letting it happen. They also waited for General Kerensky to restore order. The General, however, was totally surprised by the coup. When he recovered from his initial shock, the General reasoned that Amaris could not have been foolish enough to attempt the coup without support from one or more of the other realms.
In fact, the Draconis Combine began to cooperate with First Lord Stefan. Shortly before the coup, Takiro Kurita had ordered his grand-nephew, Drago Kurita, to evacuate his post as Ambassador to the Star League because the Coordinator feared a popular uprising against the large number of Republican troops on Terra. Drago and his family did not get out in time, however. Though the 121-year-old Takiro had assigned most of his duties to staff members, he flew into a rage upon learning that Amaris had arrested Ambassador Drago, his wife, and their four children. After fretting for days because he knew how brutal Amaris could be, Coordinator Takiro had a heart attack. On the day before he died, Takiro made his son Minoru promise to resolve the hostage situation through negotiation.
Thus the Draconis Combine was civil and cooperative despite Amaris’s brash goading of the Kuritas. Not knowing why House Kurita behaved in a friendly manner to the Usurper, the other Council Lords and General Kerensky feared that the Draconis Combine had been part of the plot.
WARRIORS WITHOUT A HOME
While we fought and died trusting that all was well back home, a cancer was allowed to grow that has now seized our hearts and souls. The Hegemony is lost and our hopes with it.
-General Aleksandr Kerensky, announcing the Amaris coup to his troops, February 15, 2767
In January 2767, General Kerensky led the attack to retake New Vandenberg. For a year, he had been at the head of an offensive to regain the Taurian Concordat. Though he faced stiff resistance from the Periphery forces, he finally gained the upper hand.
With the seizure of New Vandenberg complete and the submission of the Concordat likely to follow soon, the General hoped to pressure the neighboring realms to submit with a minimum of bloodshed. Yet certain things worried him. The large enemy BattleMech divisions, once so eager to engage in combat, began to avoid big battles. It seemed to General Kerensky that they were waiting for something.
His message to Terra, telling the First Lord of his victory of New Vandenberg, went unanswered. Then General Kerensky heard Stefan Amaris proclaim himself First Lord. An unbelieving Kerensky immediately asked for a status report from commanders in the Hegemony. The few still alive told the General that there was no hope for the SLDF units that were still fighting.
On May 19, the General received a message whose full implication filled him with horror:
FROM: Stefan Ukris Amaris, Emperor of the Amaris Empire
TO: General Aleksandr S. Kerensky, Commander of the late Star League Defense Forces
General:
I, with my infinite skills and aided by my loyal subjects, have struck, with a swiftness given only to the righteous, a blow that has corrected decades of injuries and slights to my family. I rule where the Camerons once called home. I control the Cradle of Humanity. All within the Hegemony have bowed before me; those who didn’t are dead.
Join me, General Kerensky. Become my sword arm and help me impress my word and wisdom upon the other realms. I’ve no reason to hate you; I wish only peace between us. Join me and convince your men and women to follow you, and I will give you power second only to mine.
But should you dare turn a blind eye to the wisdom of my offer and decide not to join, then heed my warning: I control everything the Hegemony has. All its defenses, all of its fortifications are now manned by people loyal to me. Should you try to attack, every inch of Hegemony soil will be stained with the blood of the fallen, and every drop will be a burden upon your soul, which must already be heavy with guilt for allowing me to accomplish the complete control of your homelands.
(signed) Emperor Stefan Ukris Amaris I
The feeble attempt at conciliation and the mockingly adversarial tone of the letter confused General Kerensky. Even after the losses in the Periphery war, the SLDF was by far the strongest military ever assembled. How did Amaris dare to antagonize its commander?
For three days, General Kerensky stayed in his quarters. His troops were more vocal in their reaction. Because Amaris was from the Periphery, many troopers wanted to go on a rampage, destroying anything and anyone from the Periphery. Just barely, their officers contained them and prevented a catastrophe.
Royal units, whose soldiers were recruited from the Hegemony, were the hardest hit by the news. Most of them wanted to leave the Periphery immediately to attack Amaris, but their officers ordered them to wait for General Kerensky’s decision. One unit, the Thirty-fourth Royal BattleMech Division, would not wait. It left its post in the Outworlds Alliance and headed for home. It was later wiped out above Epsilon Indi, its homeworld, by that planet’s automated Space Defense System.
General Kerensky finally broke his silence by issuing a long message to his troops and the people of the Periphery. He expressed outrage at what Stefan Amaris had done. He stated that, considering the nature of the Amaris family, there was little hope for the life of the First Lord or anyone who dared to show their loyalty to the Star League.
The General went on to say that a state of war obviously existed between the SLDF and the Amaris Empire. He cautioned his troops that it would be foolish to charge blindly at Amaris and his forces. The Rim Worlds forces were strong enough that the SLDF needed to plan strategy, General Kerensky said. Though the SLDF vastly outnumbered the Republican forces, General Kerensky knew that his adversaries would be in excellent defensive positions, and he worries that one or more of the House militaries, especially the Kuritans, might be fighting alongside the Amaris troops.
Addressing the people of the Periphery, he said it would be ridiculous for his troops to continue fighting the Periphery rebels to preserve a Star League whose capital was enslaved. He declared a cease-fire with all the Periphery realms except one. General Kerensky warned the Rim Worlds Republic that he intended to seize the homeworlds of Stefan Amaris to use as his base of operations. This was not simply a matter of revenge. General Kerensky, mistrustful of all the Lords after what had happened, needed a command center, and the Rim Worlds Republic lay undefended.
His announcement calmed the soldiers of the Star League. Knowing that their leader, a man whose stature and charisma had grown to almost godlike proportions, was back in command gave everyone hope that all was not lost. Some still disagreed with the General and felt that they should try to recapture the Hegemony immediately, but the news of the fate of the Thirty-fourth Royals restrained even the most impulsive among the soldiers. MechWarriors and common soldiers eagerly agreed with General Kerensky’s plan to attack the Rim Worlds Republic as a chance to repay Amaris for what he did to their homeworlds.
RIM WORLDS CAMPAIGN
The decision to move on the Rim Worlds Republic must have been a difficult one for General Kerensky. He had long been a vocal opponent of what he called “war’s unnecessary acts of stupidity against the innocent.” Even during a battle’s angriest moments, he had never succumbed to the temptation to strike an easy and telling blow against an enemy’s civilian population. General Kerensky was an anachronism, more in tune with a time when warfare had a set of rules and a code of honor.
As news of General Kerensky’s plan passed through the Inner Sphere, many people questioned its sense. These individuals believed that the General should stay in the Concordat, summoning his strength and planning his strategy. To embark on a campaign against the Republic seemed a foolhardy waste of effort and lives.
Some among the militaries of the five inner realms understood. They realized that the Republic was probably woefully underdefended. Officers of the five Houses also understood that the Rim Worlds Republic was the only Periphery realm that was not battle-scarred and exhausted. There was every reason to believe that General Kerensky would find plenty of supplies and equipment for his troops in the Republic. Some also realized that Star league forces would vent their frustrations on the Republic and thus be able to fight for the Hegemony with less passion and greater thought.
When he heard what General Kerensky was planning, Emperor Amaris was livid. He sent messages throughout the Inner Sphere about “the butcher Kerensky” and “his unholy intention to attack innocent men, women, and children.” He also sent messages to the remaining Periphery BattleMech Divisions that he had helped form, ordering them to defend the Rim Worlds to the last soldier.
The offensive began in August 2767 after General Kerensky and his forces approached the Republic from one side, and General DeChavilier, with an equal force, moved in from the other side. Before they attacked, the Star League force offered the Republic the chance to surrender. Mohammed Selim, Regent of the Rim Worlds Republic in Amaris’s absence, flatly refused.
The Periphery divisions that Amaris had ordered to protect the Republic had refused the order. Their reasons were many, but the most common one was revulsion for what Stefan Amaris had done. The warriors in the divisions had wanted independence from the Star League, not the death of innocents. Without the protection of the Periphery divisions, the Republic had only reservists and a few militia units to defend against the most powerful fighting force in history. Against such odds, many Republican warriors simply gave up, either refusing to fight and going AWOL or defecting to General Kerensky’s side at the first opportunity. The main contests were at the 20 fortifications scattered throughout the Republic.
Built decades earlier by the Star League, these fortifications were virtual copies of the Castles Brian in the Terran Hegemony. After Richard Cameron had ordered the SLDF to transfer the fortifications to Republican units, Stefan Amaris had used them to train his troops on how best to overcome the Castles Brian in the Hegemony. General Kerensky assaulted the Republican fortifications in a variety of ways: full frontal assault, combined assaults, bombardment from the air or space.
As expected, General Kerensky’s troops fought the Republicans with unmatched fury. There were many acts that, under different circumstances, would have been called foolhardy and overly violent. The General and his command staff issued special orders in an attempt to prevent the Star League troops from committing the same sins as their enemies. To their credit, most SLDF soldiers controlled their emotions. There were exceptions. The massacre at Gutui Junction, where the Ninetieth Dragoons killed 100 POWs, was the worst incident.
The Rim Worlds Republic fell quickly.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ADMIRAL BRASO’S LAST TRANSMISSION
[EDITOR’S NOTE: The Thirty-fourth Royal BattleMech Division was aided in its attempt to win back the Hegemony by the 568th Armed Transport Flotilla. The flotilla consisted of a single Black Lion Class battlecruiser, two Aegis Class cruisers, four Lola Class destroyers, one Potemkin Class cruiser/transport, and 20 transports and service vessels.
Commanding the 568th was Admiral Amanda Braso, a 30-year veteran of the Star League Navy and recipient of the Naval Medal of Valor, for her action during the Battle of D’Van’s Star. What follows is her last transmission. The message was received and recorded by a small trading vessel that was watching the battle from a jump point. The message was forwarded to the Periphery.]
This is Admiral Braso, commander of the 568th Armed Transport Flotilla. I’m hoping that someone friendly to the Star League might be listening in and relay my message to the General. He has to know what has happened.
We materialized into the Epsilon Indi system on July 1 at 0900 hours at both the zenith and nadir jump points. No resistance.
We high-geed it to Epsilon Indi in two groups, I in my flagship and Vice Admiral Mitchell Justin in his cruiser, the E. Presley. A day away from Indi, we picked up a challenge from a drone warship. We gave the proper response. To no one’s surprise, it refused our ID code. Our computer programmers took over at that point and attempted to worm their way into the controls of the Space Defense System. They tried everything but were rebuked by the computer’s security system each time. My hat’s off to whoever built the SDS; they built quality stuff, damn them.
As we drew nearer, more Caspars left their posts on the far side of the planet until all 56 were ready and waiting for us. There was no way to avoid a fight. I ordered Justin and his ships to change course and try to make it to the far side of the planet while my group would bear the brunt of the fighting. I was hoping that he might have a chance to unload his troops unopposed.
The Caspars, looking for all the world like warships from hell, are incredible to watch. They took the initiative, which surprised me, and performed an incredibly swift raking pass at my ships. Our gunners found it difficult to aim at the drone ships because of their speed and maneuverability. After they passed my ship, they concentrated on the Rex, a destroyer. Her commander made a fatal error and tried to run away. Like sharks around a whale, the drones encircled the Rex and sliced her to pieces. They went after the transports next. We managed to scatter the drones by diving into the middle of the fray, but not before they had gotten two troop transports. The gunners on my ship, bless their hearts, managed to get two of them by aiming at their tails. There seems to be an unusual weakness there that might be exploited by whoever follows us.
I ordered the remaining transports to launch their DropShips and ‘Mechs, hoping that so many targets would confuse the SDS and that some would get through. The Caspars split into two groups, one to engage us and the other to slice through the cloud of DropShips and ‘Mechs, their weapons firing at even the smallest tank-carrier. Many ‘Mechs were lost, but some survived.
Then, without warning, one of the drone ships rammed the Huston, an Aegis Class cruiser. I was horrified to see both ships explode. I then watched helplessly the ground-based SDS lasers and missiles picked off our remaining ‘Mechs and DropShips like so many kernels of corn thrown into a fire. One by one, ‘Mechs and DropShips were singled out and destroyed. I estimated that of all the DropShips and ‘Mechs I had in my group, maybe 10 percent actually reached the ground. Justin’s last report said that his group fared a little better, but not much. I do not hold out much hope for those that did reach the surface.
I don’t know how we are going to overcome these SDSes. The only way I can see to combat them is just hunting its warships down and destroying them all, then bombarding the hell out of the planet in hopes of destroying the laser and missile batteries on the planet’s surface. I…
What? Evasive action to port! Gunners fire, maximum spread. Prepare for collision. (Sounds of explosions)
End of transmission.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PREPARATIONS AND NEGOTIATIONS
The Rim Worlds Republic had a wealth of resources badly needed by the Regular Army. What was not expected was the docile way the people of the Republic accepted the presence of so many SLDF units on their worlds and in their skies. This has never been fully explained, though some historians have speculated that even the citizens of the Republic were shocked at what Amaris had done.
Stefan Amaris sent new messages to the leaders of the five major Houses calling General Kerensky everything from an unprincipled schemer to the Great Satan. These messages had a new twist, however, in that they stated Amaris’s terms for admitting the Great Houses to join with his new empire.
General Kerensky also called upon the five Houses to join him “in ridding Terra, the home of us all, of the Amaris scourge.” He did not offer terms or try to persuade them to join; he merely stated that he considered it was a duty honorable people would undertake. Not one of the five member states joined either side.
Oddly enough, the Draconis Combine, the one realm that most thought would join Stefan Amaris, was actually the most eager to join General Kerensky in smashing the Usurper. Though Minoru Kurita had pledged to try to rescue his nephew peacefully, he privately did all he could to help Kerensky. Though pleased to have the support, General Kerensky was mystified by the Coordinator’s public stance.
The other Houses had no such excuse. Members of their ruling families had escaped the Hegemony safely. The other Houses did not want to join the struggle for political reasons. To join the losing side would cause physical and political losses that could not be recouped, and none could predict the eventual victor. Though the SLDF was obviously more powerful than the Republican military, none of the leaders knew what secret deals might exist. All the inaction heightened the mutual suspicion.
For the next year and a half, while both sides sought to win the support of the five Houses, the military of the Star League prepared for the offensive. General Kerensky grew more cynical and less trusting of the Lords. He created two groups of the divisions and regiments that were stationed in the Inner Sphere. One group stripped Star league bases of supplies and equipment and sent the material to the Republic. General Kerensky ordered the second group to test the defenses of Stefan Amaris. Emperor Amaris, too, began to prepare for the inevitable, building up his forces and strengthening fortifications.
The House leaders attempted to protect their interests without angering either side. The Capellan Confederation rebuffed Amaris incursions. The Draconis Combine, still trying to negotiate with Stefan Amaris, refused General Kerensky permission to stage raids on Amaris from Combine territory. Coordinator Minoru Kurita even forced the Third Regimental Combat Team, the Eridani Light Horse, to leave the Combine if it persisted in testing the Republican defenses. Colonel Ezra Bradley, commander of the Third RCT, was treated brusquely even though his unit had been based in the Combine. After an initial confrontation with the Free Worlds League, the Third RCT was allowed to use bases there. Colonel Bradley learned a lesson from the Thirty-fourth Royals, making only probing raids on worlds protected by an SDS in the hopes of destroying a few drones at a time.
Often these tactics worked, but sometimes they did not. Almost weekly, the soldiers training in the Republic heard about the deaths of their fellow soldiers. This news hardened their hearts and deepened their resolve.
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