Life was not fair.
Everyone knew about this.
It was up to the person in charge of their own to prepare to balance the scales. Having a large family can be a boon. Building up a good career can get them some more. Knowing the right people and being at the right place was why people desperately clawed at every single opportunity that they hear about.
Because life was not fair.
Life was not fair, and it was why I could not get in my own battlemech to defend my home, because if I did that, then that would unnecessarily risk the future of my people. So I stacked the deck. I focused on defenses most modern planners would dismiss. I built inaccessible static defenses rather than ground fortresses that might persuade my enemies to use nuclear bombs. I certainly didn't goad them go come but come they did.
And one of the ways that I have been stacking the deck in my favor had been to specifically target the mech-focused military doctrines of the Inner Sphere states.
What did that mean for me, Sian, and the current invaders?
It meant that standard atmospheric heavy load carriers had been ignored by most of the Inner Sphere's intelligence agencies and spies. For all they knew, they were planetary cargo haulers, and no one really cared about that.
But, well, those could easily be converted to bombers.
And that's how I got dozens and dozens of heavy bombers, all loaded up with powerful but guidance-less dumb bombs.
Fortunately for my defenders and me, dropships, once landed, were slow to take off, especially after they had unleashed their load and they had less than ten minutes before the bombs dropped. Worse for the invaders, most non-naval lasers and guns could not hit targets above fifteen kilometers.
And my heavy bombers flew just above that.
Just dropping steel bars at this height could do significant damage against dropships, but dumb bombs dropped by the hundreds?
I knew that the Light Horse was watching their own death.
Because each of those bombers carried several tons of TNT worth of bombs.
But if the Eridani Light Horse was as elite and experienced as they were, then they might find a way out of the bombing run. Possible, yes. Probable… I wasn't so sure.
I watched on screen as several of the more agile aerodyne ships took off to get out of the way but the slower and heavier dropships couldn't budge in time.
The bombs began to drop and the armored hulls of the dropships began to cave.
One bomb struck directly on top of one of the few Overlord dropships and exploded with enough force to break one of the legs keeping the round ship upright. With one leg damaged, the other three strained under the weight of the behemoth at bay… but the bombs didn't make that possible in the long run.
Eventually, one of the bombs dropped next to the legs and detonated.
The explosion ripped the leg clear off the dropship and sent it into the ship itself, tearing a gash into the dropship's hull, making it incapable of atmospheric flight, never mind a space one.
While the battle against the Eridani Light Horse commenced smoothly, the same could not be said about the ones fighting the Lyrans.
Between the two, I expected the Lyrans to fold quickly, but no, the Lyrans acted swiftly and bluntly. They smashed into the meager force defending one of the artillery parks. The Zeus leading the charge soaked up all of the damage from the two lances of battlemechs, many combat vehicles, and tanks guarding the park, ignored them all, and smashed the artilleries to pieces before using the cover fire provided by its allies to retreat.
The general in charge of the defense realized that the other artillery parks were too close to the Lyran position and ordered them to fall back.
This meant that the Lyrans got breathing room.
I narrowed my eyes.
Who could have the Lyrans sent that they were able to so easily force my people to back off? It couldn't be a social general; they would have done something stupid like camping inside the dropship to moving as planned while under artillery fire.
"Director Ling."
"Yes?"
"Ask the precentor to find out who the commander of the 6th and 10th Lyran Guards are."
"Of course, Chancellor."
They must be someone formidable but possibly politically volatile for the Lyrans to send my way with so small a force.
-VB-
"General!"
Frederick gasped as his people pulled him out of his overheated Zeus. The cool air felt like a blessing, and he collapsed into the arms of the technicians who managed to pull him out.
"He's having a heat stroke! Someone get me some cooling pads!"
"Shit, half of the heat sinks are done for on this Zeus. We need to switch them out quickly!"
"The back armor's gone!"
The shouts and flurry of activity passed by his mind without any note or recognition. He knew that he had overdone it, but he had to. There was no one else who could have, because there was no one else who understood the severity of the problems they had faced.
Frederick gritted his teeth as he tried to get back up, but his doctor pushed him back down.
"Let… me… back… up…!" he hissed.
"You're safe, Frederick!" his personal doctor hissed back down at him. "If you get up and get around, then you're going to end up dead. You cannot leave the entire regiment without their commander in their hour of need!"
"I need… the situation… can't let it…!"
"We're safe for now. You did good, you big dolt," he replied while the nurses started IV's. "You are so dehydrated that you should be unconscious. So stop struggling and let me do my job!"
"Can't… Need to push them…" Frederick gasped at the end when someone placed a cold pack on his forehead. He nearly moaned at painful the cold was on his skin.
"What the hell are you doing?! You'll put him into shock if you just drop it like that!"
"General, it's me, Colonel Emiamberg," the newcomer ignored him. "Give me the orders. I'll carry them out."
Emiamberg…? Good man. Good man. Not a social general. Had a modicum of … strategy. Understood war.
"Go… smash them as … far as you can… Stop them from … surrounding us…" Frederick hissed out. "The moment … they surround us … we're done for…!"
"I hear and obey, general. And our rendezvous with the Eridani Light Horse?"
"Contact…?"
"None, sir. Our Locust scout managed to reach their position. They are getting pounded without a way out with how the Capellans surrounded their position. They expected the Light Horse, but not us."
"C-Can't … Can't let them… get hit like that …! Break them out…!" he gasped before whatever it was they were pumping him with finally got him and his eyes started to close.
"Yes, general."
-VB-
Brevet General Nathan Armstrong gritted his teeth as his Atlas withstood attacks from the front and above.
With no choice left to him, he led only a battalion of mechs to fight against the approaching Capellan heavy mech battalion (and since when did the Capellans have a heavy mech BATTALION?!) of the Death Commandos (of all enemies he could face, he had to face their most elite fighters, too) while he sent the rest back to assist the dropships in shooting down the bombs before they struck the dropships. Some of the more "agile" aerodyne dropships had gone up to fight the heavy bombers, but with how many conventional fighters and aerospace fighters there were, he didn't expect them to be successful. In fact, he was half-tempted to tell them to come back, load up what they could, and retreat.
Because even if the mechs and grounded dropships couldn't hit the aerial bombers, they could at the very least try to shoot down the bombs.
But there was now a new problem.
In the half an hour that they had spent unloading and fighting, the Capellans reinforced their troops with combat vehicles and tanks.
The most pesky of those was the Saladins. Unfortunately for him and his soldiers, they had to choose a roughly flat field to set their dropships down. This meant that all vehicles - wheeled and hovercraft - were operating at their optimum maneuverability instead of being hampered by congested roads, bumpy hills, or thick forests.
And those Saladins were fast fuckers who wove in and out with light mech speeds and unloaded their AC/20's into his people.
But even those could be taken care of once the bombers spent their load and had to go back to load up on more.
The real problem was the appearance of an artillery barrage.
There was a whistle before his right flank mechs got annihilated by another barrage of artillery barrage.
"Those Cataphracts have to go!" he shouted into the comm again, and his people pushed forward despite the horrendous casualties he was starting to see.
As his Atlas stepped within gauss rifles' optimum ranges, he felt invigorated. Just a bit closer! Gauss rifles were heavy weapons, which meant that the Cataphracts either had not enough armor or any other useful close range weapons!
And just after he thought that, streaks of lasers sliced at his armor from a distance beyond Medium Laser ranges and got sliced by multiple beams from a single source. Some of the mechs in his battalion exploded after taking too much abuse.
For a second, he stuttered inside his cockpit.
That couldn't be Large Lasers. Large Lasers would be too -.
He reset his mech's analyzers and put them to work again.
In seconds, the computer with ancient database built into them spat back an answer. Those Cataphracts had four medium lasers.
But they shouldn't have struck him so accurately if they were medium lasers!
Only seconds later, he got strafed again by three beams while the fourth missed.
'Advanced weapons tech,' he thought with horror.
The rumors about the datacore had been false. The Capellans had a real Star League memory core. They had advanced technology, which was how they were able to reopen factories all over their state!
And they had -.
He already knew that they did from their possession of Gauss Rifles. There were too many of them, and the Cataphract mechwarriors were too good at aiming and thus told him about the number of practices they must have had.
Which meant…
'Extended range medium lasers…? Something to bridge the gap between large lasers and medium lasers…?!' his mind concluded.
Such a technology should have reached the FedSuns intelligence. They should have been warned about them!
Which meant the FedSuns - DMI and MIIO - had failed in their works.
Nathan braced as a gauss round shook the air around his Atlas as it sailed past him after missing.
Finally, he was within his range.
He raised his AC/10 and fired.
The impact on his target and watching the ugly heavy mech staggering felt great.
-VB-
I let out a sigh of disappointment.
I knew that dumb bomb drops from tens of kilometers high wouldn't cause too much damage, but to see that only three dropships had taken serious damage? It was disheartening.
Worse, the Lyrans had completely pushed back the forces that they met and were on their way around the mountain to help the Eridani Light Horse.
"Chancellor," one of the colonels spoke up. "It is not too late to … erase them."
I knew what he meant.
A nuclear bomb.
"No," I denied. "I will not bomb the heart of the confederation just because it would be easier than fighting off five regiments. It would send the wrong signal to everyone involved. After all, if we were strong enough to fight off the invasion with our understrength defense, then it would prove to everyone that the Capellan Confederation is not weak. But if I used a bomb right off the bat? It would be very telling of our strength. That we couldn't even last a day before we resorted to the last option." Then I leaned back and glared at him. "And what else would a nuclear strike mean for the people? Everyone knows I have sent whatever I have left on the planet, scrambling those much further away to come concentrate here so that we may face the invaders. If I were to drop a nuclear bomb first, then what did that mean? It would mean that I had no trust in the military. It would mean that I did not respect my people who were part of the militia. That I did not trust them with the defense of our capital. And if that was the message I sent, then what would happen, colonel?"
He stared up at me in surprise. "I… do not know, Chancellor. Please, enlighten me." I couldn't tell that he was being sarcastic and hiding it or genuinely didn't know.
"If I did not trust them to help defend to the point of deploying the weapon of last resort at the opening moment of this momentous battle, it meant that everything else I have done so far for the people … were nothing but manipulations. It would put everything into question. Would the servitors who fought valiantly truly receive their well-earned citizenships? Would I truly act on behalf of the confederation and the state and not for my personal amusement and gain?"
I took a deep breath in and continued.
"And in fact, would you trust me, colonel? Say I send you out to fight. Can you trust me to not drop a bomb - and thus end your life - over a battle that is not even critical?"
"N-Not critical?! Chancellor, the fate of the confederation is at stake right now!"
"That is true but what we see is nothing but a skirmish. If you truly thought that the entire planet would fall to five regiments, then you are better off leaving the confederation, shouldn't you? A state so weak that its capital would fall to five regiments?!"
My thunderous retort sent him reeling back.
"Make no mistake. This is an attack that will decide the fate of the confederation," I hissed, and I felt the entire command chamber's attention on me. "Should we fail here, then the Davions and Steiners will be reinvigorated, whether or not they achieved anything here by attacking us. Should I die because our defenses failed - because I have promised to not take undue risks - then it would mean that the heart of the confederation was open, and our own allies would turn on us to take whatever pieces of the confederation they could before we fell completely apart! Make no mistake. I know this is the battle that will decide our future and fate, and every single move we make will be the message the entire Inner Sphere sees! If we fail to show that the Capellan Confederation is one of the five Great Houses, then everything from menial trade to interstellar diplomacy will change to reflect that! A nuclear bomb that any state with half a decent fission reactor can make will show that WE ARE TOO WEAK!" I roared at the end.
I found myself gasping not for air but anger.
Was this the best that my people had? Nuke them from the start? Was that the limit of military and diplomatic intelligence my top officers had?
"C-Chancellor, the battle!"
My eyes snapped up towards the screen.
And my eyes widened…
…with glee.
-VB-
Nathan grimaced.
"What?"
"It's twenty-thousand infantry on our flank!"
Cataphracts, as versatile and powerful as they may be for their tonnage, fell to his Atlas and other assault and heavy mechs he used to push them back. The Death Commandos had … fallen back.
It was a surreal event.
Death Commandos?
Retreating?
But perhaps that was because whoever was leading them wasn't an idiot who thought all soldiers should fight to the death at every skirmish and battle they found themselves in.
And the sudden appearance of thousands of infantry made the enemy commander's tactics clear.
Mechwarriors often laughed at infantry because why wouldn't they? They were gods in machines who roamed the battlefield.
But those who learned within the Eridani Light Horse never forgot.
Never. Ever. Underestimate the infantry.
"How bad is it?" he demanded. "Quickly!"
"Their setting up LRM launchers just outside of our range!"
He blinked. "What?"
"Our sensors and visuals are seeing at least two hundred LRM-10's!"
He paled.
"We need to take them out-!"
"Our dropships will all fall if any of the mech battalions defending them leave, general! The heavy bombers have gone and done so much overall damage that their conventional fighters with their ordinance can and will break through the hulls if we lose the anti-air net!"
Then he only had only one option available to him.
He switched channels to his battalion command channel.
"50th Heavy Assault Battalion! We are doing about face! Our new objective is taking out the enemy OpFor on the other side of our dropships! Twenty-thousand minimum infantry! I want a backward retreat until we're within five clicks of our dropships, and which point we will turn and full sprint to infantry position!"
"Sir, the enemy heavies will wreck us if we go back out to their optimal range! We haven't even downed even a third of them!" Major Kroger's voice crackled over the radio.
"We have no choice, major," he grimaced. "Our dropships will fall if their two hundred plus LRM-10's become active," he grimaced. "So move! I want an orderly retreat! Concentrate on my targets as we fall back!"
But it was clear to him already that this battle was over even before they could see the capital city.
'Damn you, Hanse!' he thought angrily.
And then his radio crackled.
"... *crackle* This - *crack crackle* 10th Lyran… coming! Hold *crackle*..."
Nathan's heart surged.
The Lyrans! Did they break through against their own OpFor?
… There was still a chance! Even if they couldn't win the Battle of Sian itself, he could still win this skirmish