[RP] Turn 46, Sector 2419 Orestes

[Daemonknight]

Khan Sonoma stood in the tent, and took a long drink of water from the canteen handed to her by a Wolf bondsman from the SLDF force. Although they had been caught with their feathers ruffled, they still managed to smack the Wolves back, not allowing them to take advantage of the situation. Sonoma thrust the canteen back at the bondsman.

"Where is the stravag? Are we to wait here all day?" Her impatience was growing, however Robert Kelswa-Steiner and Evelyn Mosovich wisely decided to keep quiet, neither one wishing to risk the Khan's current foul mood. When the SLDF's forces had splintered, a handful had escaped into the cityscape, and already there were reports of sniper casualties, battlemech lances appearing from nowhere to burn supply depots, and random acts of violence, yet it never seemed anyone responsible was caught. They were waiting for the Ghost Bear commander, and also for the communications technician to finish setting up the portable satelite comms transciever, so they could speak with the Raven naval commander.

[Fatebringer]

Bryn's retinue entered the tent. His lips were pursed into some wicked looking grin. His one eye showed enough emotion to supliment the one that was missing. The aperture on the prostetic replacement eye opened wide in the dark confines. "Greetings Khan Sonoma. I see the Roxbert line has done well for itself in another's nest." To his right side, Star Admiral Nervis McKenna and Star Commodore Douglas Lankenau flanked him on the right, and Galaxy Commanders Reagan McCorkell and Rafe Seigel to his left. The second in command for each the air and ground campaigns were notably absent from the meeting to oversee the changing of the guard on Orestes while the planning session was going on.

[Daemonknight]

Sonoma whipped around at the sound of Bryn's un-modulated voice.

"So, you decided to come in person." She glared at the technician, and backhanded the man when he didn't take the hint to leave. He scurried away, avoiding the gaze of the bionic Clan warrior.

"What is our next move, Star Admiral? This is your world, not mine. Do the Terrans still infest it, or have they truly run off with the remnants of the Wolves...yet again."

[Cannonshop]

Evelyn Mosovich watched half-interestedly, and then reviewed the after-action reports and sightings for the day.  Orestes is a Dominion world... she reminded herself for the thousandth time- and felt like an un-necessary add-on to the proceedings.  I should be out in the field, dammit, not here like some kind of...trophy.  backing to a corner, she reviewed unit status and readiness reports from Alpha Galaxy-it was still, until the Khan said otherwise, her responsibility to keep them in fighting trim-until the 'grown ups' decided otherwise, the campaign, after all, wasn't really over.

they need more surveillance assets-those Lances don't come from nowhere-they have to have somewhere to hole up...  she keyed up the initial holorecon shots of the city, and ran a cross-reference with the available databases, looking for likely 'hides' where the SLDF/Terrie/enemy forces might be holing up to patch and rest between raids, she started a cross-reference on known ambushes and the performance profiles of identified enemy 'mechs on her PADD (set to "Remote Net Access") and listened as the higher-ups, the Admiral, Khan, and assorted senior leadership did their discussions.

What would I do in the enemy's shoes?  she drew on the memories of the '56 uprising-of all present, she was, after all, the only one whom had actually fought a guerilla war as a guerilla.

The plotting showed a limited number of probable locations where the enemy could be laagering their vehicles and 'mechs-places relatively secure from air-borne reconaissance, with sufficient overhead cover, and large enough cavities to conceal battlemechs.

She immediately removed the locations that had poor ingress-egress chances.  A guerilla needs an escape route-any camp you set up where you can't get out, is a death-trap.

Next, she plotted likely observation points where the remnant troops would need to position eyes-and-ears to watch for approaching counterinsurgency forces-sight lines and concealment would be paramount-she eliminated a few possibilities based on their obvious nature-the SLDF remnants had, according to reports, 'appeared from nowhere'...and vanished back into it.  She'd seen Clan scanner tech, and sensor arrays-the equipment was too good to be a mechanical issue, and, at least, HER pilots (while they were still hers) were too good to ignore the systems in the right ways...

'Need a map of the under-structure.' she muttered under her breath.   The guerillas had to be using tunnel systems to move their machines-there just was no room in the streets, and too many eyes topside that would pick them out.

Gone Insurgent in hostile territory, where would I look for support?  she quietly slid back further from the centre of the discussion, and kept working in silence-she sure as hell would not volunteer anything before she had a solid plan, and neither the Admirals, nor the Khans were all that interested in soliciting her input right at the moment...

[Daemonknight]

A handful of the recently arrived Falcon Star Colonels however, were watching her work, and wondering what she was upto. One was standing next to Robert, who was wondering the same thing himself. He looked at the Star Colonel and flicked his head off to the side. The Clanner nodded and walked over to a terminal, activated one of the smaller strategic planning tables that had been setup, and linked the datafeed from Evelyn's pad to the more powerful and robust table. The current map on Evelyn's slate was struggling to showcase both the city in wireframe, and the sewer and construction access mains below ground. The powerful table-mounted holo-field generators had no such performance issues, bringing up the required section of territory, a former warehouse district in the city's Southwest quadrant, now partially converted to a Cluster's billet.

The table displayed the cityscape about 1' above it's surface, and the sub-level; 2 actually, subways on S-1, alongside the construction access ways, and then S-2 held the power and sewege tunnels. Nothing bigger than an Elemental would squeeze into the power tunnels, and there wasn't more than 3 blocks of travel in any direction in the Sewers that could pass a battlemech bigger than a Locust. The subway system could handle about 50 tons per 20 meter stretch, the building code doubled the weight of a train overloaded with passengers to determine how much of a load to engineer into the tunnel system below.

Evelyn was overlaying a list of locations that'd been hit, and the datafeed was picked up by the table again, and several locations were marked with red blinking caveats on the main cityscape. Robert walked over and nudged her slightly, and she spotted the table as she looked up. She glanced at Bobby without emotion before walking over with him in tow to continue her work on the much more powerful system. Several of the Clan officers were standing around, a few nodded to her, showing deference to her knowledge about this style of warfare that still escaped many of them. The fact that another Clan had perpetrated this style of combat was just one more example of how far the Wolves had fallen from their glory days of being Kerensky's chosen.

[Fatebringer]

The smirk did not depart as he poured himself a drink, his tongue and stomach were still his own. Savoring the draught, he responded to the Falcon Commander. "They are out there." He said point of fact. "A small force has taken to the deep woods and shut down their reactor cores. We have forces in position with satelite support to monitor for any actions they may take. As to the main body? My Khan has seen reason. Once our force rotation is complete, the rest will be hunted down and their foul presense exterminated." Bryn offered a drink to Khan Sonoma, "She wished to make it clear. They came here to send a message, it is time they got their reply."

[Daemonknight]

Khan Sonoma accepted the drink, and nodded thoughtfully.

"It is about time someone took action."

[Fatebringer]

“The Dominion has been committed to recovering all of the worlds of the Old Free Rasalhague Republic. Considering the Grand Council's position on these people, the Terran’s move to grab the border worlds could only yield one possible response. Every regiment and cluster, be they Front Line or Hemvärnet, has been mobilized to meet the Terran Threat." Bryn motioned for the others to partake if they wished. It was one of the first time he seemed to drop the "Void" persona.

He refilled his class and this time offered a toast. "As we speak, my Khan is at New Caledonia overseeing the changing of the guard, metaphorically speaking. We have acquired the last northern territories the Rasalhague Dominion sought on behalf of their people. We must be vigilant here in eradicting those that chose to test the resolve of New Dominion. The will falter, as they must in the wake of such total and ferocious commitment by ourselves, and the Warriors of a True Clan, Jade Falcon. Let us raise our glasses to the eradication of the weak."

[Cannonshop]

"...direct interrogation will not reveal much." Evelyn commented, "If they have any sense at all, they broke into cell-structure  using digital dead-drops to relay objectives or intel, with engagement discretion at the unit level." 

"Why would they do that?"  one of the Star Colonels asked.

"Because it works." she said simply, "Assume a competent enemy, assume he is on a hostile world, with little to no local supporters, assume he is working from the assumption that surrender equals a messy death.  assume he expects relief or rescue-or reinforcement, because he does-or at least, he expects to.  that is why he still fights, instead of going to ground until all he has to deal with are standard garritroopers and military police..."  she paused, "And stop thinking he is an idiot.  we already KILLED the idiots.  These guys are NOT going to give you a clean stand-up fight at these odds, not when every scrap of Terrie propoganda has Clan warriors killing prisoners after a nice bout in the torture room.  this means that they are not, currently, playing a centralized command structure-they are working independently, and probably just passing short-notes on sidebands or through dead-drop methods with one-use codes-what we did to the Regency on Kowloon in the fifties, because that way, even if someone GETS popped and has a nice trip to the torture room, interrogators are not going to get much, if any, useful data from the effort, meanwhile they can count on their pre-conceptions being confirmed regarding what happens to 'survivors' who get popped-because it is ALL about playing with your head-and more importantly, playing with the minds of the civilians."

"Meaning?" the Star Colonel asked.

"Meaning that they want you to go overboard-'when on deadly ground, fight'." she told him, "If surrender is not a viable option, even outnumbered and out-matched, soldiers, and want-to-be soldiers, will perform well above what the standard projections say they should be able to-see, Desperation makes people creative and resourceful- Advantage makes them complacent.  Complacent is NOT what you want to be."

[Fatebringer]

The second oldest man in the room was Rafe Seigel, junior to Nervis Mckenna by quite a few years. He was intrigued by the ramblings going on in the corner and sauntered over. “You should not take into account that these people expect relief. They are not trained insurgents and will think with a military mind. Klaus Harper and myself have had many debates on this topic in the past and are agreed that most likely once a unit like this goes to ground, they lack the training and patience to properly implement covert operations. Expect they have taken a certain amount of munitions with them and that they will most likely try to make a symbolic move against the Riksdag building, or attack the Mech Factories. We already have a unit covering the HPG station. Keep that in mind for your calculations.” Rafe tipped his glass to the Falcon entourage.

[Cannonshop]

The second oldest man in the room was Rafe Seigel, junior to Nervis Mckenna by quite a few years. He was intrigued by the ramblings going on in the corner and sauntered over. “You should not take into account that these people expect relief. They are not trained insurgents and will think with a military mind. Klaus Harper and myself have had many debates on this topic in the past and are agreed that most likely once a unit like this goes to ground, they lack the training and patience to properly implement covert operations. Expect they have taken a certain amount of munitions with them and that they will most likely try to make a symbolic move against the Riksdag building, or attack the Mech Factories. We already have a unit covering the HPG station. Keep that in mind for your calculations.” Rafe tipped his glass to the Falcon entourage.

up close, while her face wasn't the horrorshow it had been for more than a decade, but even the very BEST reconstructive surgery, when it covers nearly an entire human face, reveals itself on close examinations-especially when blending makeup isn't used-especially when the face doesn't quite express emotions correctly.

"The calculations are busy-work unless we are allowed to move past staff-work." she said.  the 'blinking' reflex was slightly off as well...more like a simulation automaton than a living person, "But you are correct-assuming things not necessarily in evidence to our opponents, like the likelihood of a counter-attack, rescue mission, etcetera."  her voice was well-modulated too, with just the lightest hint that someone had to rebuild the top end of her throat.

Not-quite-right-but close.

The streaks of gray in her black hair, visible at this close distance, insisted that the young face may have been her face twenty years ago, but it clinched the impression of someone who's spent too much time in trauma surgery.

"But the end result is that we NEED to have more information-and yeah, upping the guard-force on the industrial sites and the Riksdag is a start...but, ông tốt, I think you may be assuming a lot in expecting impatience.  Most of the people we put together to lead the sự nổi dậy và sự phục hồi were military vets, and while the Terries might not be professional insurgents, neither were MY people on Kowloon in the fifties-the ones likely to be impatient were already on the line, most of them, when we got here-war has a massive darwinian selection effect on soldiers, and soldier psychology-some probably will try for a grand last stand, but I think that more will play a tougher game than that."