Excerpts from Uncovered Legends of the Star League Volume 4: 741st Royal Striker Regimental History, Paladin Publishing, New Earth, 3141
21 November, 2765
-The 741st RSR is mobilized to counterattack Periphery insurgents in response to a Taurian uprising, massacres of garrison forces, and an attempt on General Alexander Kerensky's life. Their assignment is to attack New Vandenburg, home of the uprising and perhaps the most heavily-defended planet in the Periphery. The misson? Operation ROUNDHAMMER.
17 January, 2766 - Operation LAPHROIAG
-Echo Company, under Captain Freund's command, attacks an underground areodrome on the airless moon of New Vanderburg - Locke. They make a hot drop onto the enemy position and engage a mixed reinforced company of light Mechs and vehicles, backed up by static turret defenses. They make short work of their adversaries, with only WO Xin's Chameleon taking significant damage. The base cooling tower explodes as a result of combat damage, finishing off the remainder of the defenders and forcing a hard-shutdown of the base itself, trapping the fighters in their bays and ensuring the safety of Operation ROUNDHAMMER's flank for the full-scale invasion.
31 January, 2766 - Operation OBAN
-In response to an underground flanking movement by the defending 1st Taurian Jaegers, Echo Company is hastily redeployed to Firebase Rorke. The Jaegers will have to cross a small ford to get at them, and so the company sets up a defensive line along the hills surrounding the ford. With support from a battery of sniper artillery flown in at the last moment, they stall the Jaegers attack in the river itself. The Jaegers make three distinct attempts to ford the river as larger and larger Mechs come up to the battle line, but only the third wave manages to cross the river in force. Echo company leapfrogs back across the ridgelines and stalls the enemy out in the small valley just before the base. Finally, reinforcements from the 279th BattleMech Division airdrop around the base, strengthening the defenses just as Echo looks about to crack. Seeing the reinforcements, the Jaegers cede the field and withdraw back across the river. Exhausted, the defenders let them go.
14 February, 2766 - Operation ARDBEG
-Information taken from interrogation of prisoners taken during OBAN reveal that the Taurians have broken the security codes on the Star League equipment they captured when the initial uprising took place. With potentially a full regiment of top-of-the-line equipment now potentially available to the defenders, strategos of the SLDF decide to strike quickly and hard. Their resolve is only tightened further as the Taurians start breaking out tactical nuclear devices, wiping out a battalion of the 108th Mechanized Infantry disguising the suicide delivery troops as refugees. Colonel Jean-Baptiste D'Erlon of the 125th Battle Regiment is tapped to lead a frontal assault, supported by divisional-level artillery, limited orbital bombardment and the 741st (in a dual pincer attack) in an effort to encircle and wipe out the 1st Taurian Jaegers and their commander - Marshal Michael Ney, who is responsible for the entire Taurian defense.
The operation goes off without a hitch, and Echo company finds themselves the "third man in" on a showdown between D'Erlon's command company and Marshal Ney's forces. WO Rowan Hawker notices encrypted transmissions passing between the two forces, and sets his considerable skills toward finding out whom is talking to whom. As it turned out, Marshal Ney and Colonel D'Erlon grew up on the same Davion homeworld. There was an altercation, and Ney defected to the Taurians, which left D'Erlon and the subject of the altercation (a woman identified only as "Sophia") alone. Sophia perished, and D'Erlon held a grudge against Ney for 40 years that he was now looking to collect. Listening in on the transmissions, WO Hawker heard Ney challenge D'Erlon over whether this was what Sophia would have wanted, and D'Erlon broke down. Counting on his men's loyalty (the 125th was a "Davion"-sourced regiment, as compared to the Royal Regiments which required all personnel be born in the Terran Hegemony) to him over the Star League, D'Erlon ordered his men to attack the oncoming elements of the 741st to cover Ney's escape. Captain Freund desperately made appeals to slow the 125th down, but combat broke out between all three present forces. In the end, Marshal Ney made his escape in his upgraded BattleMaster, while D'Erlon's Banshee brought down a pair of Echo Company Mechs before succumbing to fire. Once D'Erlon was down, the 125th stood down, and the last surviving elements of the 1st Taurian Jaegers (about 2 lances) withdrew. The Jaegers had been broken, but their commander had escaped to continue his spirited defense of New Vandenburg.
24 February, 2766 - Operation BOWMORE
-In a bid to end the organized resistance of the rightous SLDF liberation forces, the 741st is air-dropped on Vandenburg City to cut off the Taurian commander's escape from the full-scale assult by the 302nd. Resistance is fierce, and the missio is complicated by not one, but three armored and escorted limos moving frm the viscinity of the Taurian command center towards the city starport. The 741st takes severe damage, but eventually manages to capture Field Marshal Ney by collapsing builings on the street about his vehicle to pin him in. Sergeant Marshals actions are of special note: after ejecting from his Mech upon taking extreme damage from ground fire on landing, he commandeered a civilian truck and drove about the city, putting suppressive fire on holed-up infantry units that might have otherwise been extremely difficult for BattleMech forces to deal with. He received a unit commendation for his actions, but no official award was presented du to political fallout from the units actions during Operation ARDBEG.
24 February, 2766 - 2 April, 2766 - Cleanup actions
-During the period, the 741st is assigned to light garrison work while resting and refitting. No actions of note take place. On 2 April, the unit departs the Taurian Theatre of Operations to travel to Terra to answer questions regarding their actions during Operation ARDBEG. While no charges are formally filed, the company is considered enough of a political liability to justify the cost of their removal from the theatre and the depletion of the remainder of the 741st's strength.
21 November, 2766 - 24 December, 2766 - Fallout and training duty
-Once on Terra and into billets, and being the only unit on Terra with immediate experience fighting Taurian forces, Echo Company is relegated to training duties. They are stationed in Portland (near the Court of the Star League where they can be kept track of), and undertook several training mission with the various Rim Worlds commands that garrisoned the area with the absence of proper SLDF forces.
24 December-28 December, 2766 - Apocalyse
-On Christmas Eve, 2766, Echo Company was sent north of Calgary along with a unit of mechanized militia for maneuvers against elements of the 101st Rim Worlds Guard. Echo Company set up as OPFOR in a mountain pass, but unbeknownst to the members of the 741st, on 27 December, 2766 Stefan Amaris murdered Richard Cameron and transmitted his "attack" orders to the Rim Worlds military forming the primary garrison 98 of the 103 Terran Hegemony worlds. In the next 24 hours, 95 of those worlds were to fall to the surprise attack. On Terra, huge swathes of the SLDF garrison was wiped out in minutes as Rim Worlds troops made wholesale attacks on their barracks. On their maneuvers, Echo Company was taken completely by surprise as members of the 101st attacked with full-power lasers and live ammunition secretly transhipped to the Guards troops. Frantically powering up their weaponry, but without ammunition, Echo Company was forced to break contact and flee. The militia unit was effectively wiped out, and Echo Company took severe damage, but discipline and good order held and no Mechs were lost during the engagement.
The remnants of Echo Company and the militia picked up a transmission from other SLDF troops from the area who has escaped the carnage. Meeting at a set point in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, the company met up with an ad hoc command under the command of a military intelligence officer: Major Paul Stastny. Major Stastny detailed Echo Company's Captain Freund as his second-in-command and combat commander (thus designating the command as "Task Force Echo", after the simple primary complement of the unit). In the end, a total of 67 men and women made it to the rendezvous, and the ad hoc command set off east across the frozen Canadian wilderness toward the Winnipeg starport. Their end goal: get off-world and warn the bulk of the SLDF of the treachery of Amaris.
29 December, 2766 - Bullets, Bombs, and BattleMechs
-Task Force Echo's first mission was to liberate supplies for their journey. After a daring overnight march across the Rockies, the command struck a moderately-guarded supply depot northeast of Calgary. Casualties were light, and while every combat unit in the Task Force was irreplaceable, the loss of two BattleMechs was more than balanced out by the quantity of food, ammunition, fuel, and spare parts captured. Additionally, several captured RWR MechWarriors provided intelligence on the RWR commander responsible for the area of operations which the task force would be traveling through: General Anton Babcock. The General was previously noted for this enthusiasm for putting down the Oberon Riots of 2751, exposing the OWS protestors ("Oberoni Wealth Sharing"; poor, debt-ridden civilians upset about wealth and trade imbalances on their world, and effective corporate immunity to laws and regulation) to, in his words, "a whiff of plasma". Employment of the armored flame projectors to which he was so enamored caused the deaths of 17,522 protestors who had been unilaterally declared "violent antigovernment terrorists". No weapons aside from bottles and rocks were ever recorded being employed by the protestors. This man, a close personal friend of Stefan Amaris and ardent supporter of the Rim Worlds Nationalist Movement, was to be Task Force Echo's foil for the next several days.
31 December, 2766 - Surprise!
-Knowing that the remainder of the Rim Worlds battalion that garrisoned the area through which Task Force Echo was moving would be a serious threat if allowed to maneuver behind the eastward-fleeing unit, Major Stastny placed the destruction of the battalion high on his priority list. Echo maneuvered to the northeast to attempt to goad the battalion to leave their prepared positions and engage Echo in the open field where their superior strategic maneuverability would give Echo an advantage. The RWR battalion (unidentified as of this writing) did indeed leave their positions, but not in the manner Echo was expecting. Loading their Mechs as cargo aboard a civilian DropShip, the battalion landed nearby the Echo bivouac and underwent a night march to hit their position in a surprise attack. With less than 5 minutes notice, Stastny sent his cargo and support vehicles fleeing around a large, semi-frozen lake, with the Task Force's Areospace Fighter contingent providing security and airwatch. The BattleMech units covered the retreat, counter-attacking into the face of the oncoming RWR forces to maximize confusion and break their formation. A few light Mechs broke through to chase down the support vehicles, but did only light damage before being driven off by Echo's CAP. Echo lost nearly a lance of Mechs during the fight, but shattered the attacking battalion, killing the CO, XO, and Sergeant Major. The RWR forces ceeded the field and fled with no order to the west. It would be over a week until the unit put itself back together as a fighting force, and by then, Task Force Echo was long gone. Luckily, they were able to salvage a pair of RWR Mechs to make up for a portion of their combat losses. Including these captured machines, TF Echo at this time had a TO&E of 18 BattleMechs remaining of their original 25.
8 January, 2767 - Battle of Southy
-General Babock was no fool, and plotted the course of Task Force Echo's operations. The unit was generally heading east, with an estimated target of "a city near Chicago". To intecept the Task Force, on January 5th, Babock and a hastily-assembled reinforced combained-arms battalion lifted out of Chicago and touched down at a civilian airfield outside the city of Southy. His unit spent the two days rounding up as many civilians as they could (a total of some 11,000) and imprisoning them inside the twin Southy Business Towers, in the middle of the city. Thus acomplished, Babcock broadcast a radio message, in the clear across all SLDF military bands, informing the Task Force what he had done and promising that if the SLDF forces did not surrender as of 8 January, noon local time, he would wipe out the civilians.
Major Stastny and Captain Freunde briefly considered trying to goad the entrenched defenders out of the city, but eventually came to the conclusion that their oaths of service would not allow them to risk the civilians in such a manner. They resolved to walk into the obvious trap, but to do it on their terms. Task Force Echo split into two groups - a fast-attack ground centered around the unit's Land-Air-Mech that would swing north of the city and move through the airfield there, destroying any potential air-support unit that Babcock may have had available to him. The second group would pincer around to the southeast of the city to draw the RWR troops to them. Once combat was joined, with any luck at all the northern group would be able to move into the city from the north and attack the defending units from behind. Additionally unit technicians took the unique step of attaching mounting points to the LAM so it could deploy the Task Force's platoon of Night Hawk Battle Armor on the Southy Towers and being hostage-rescue operations. The modification was not wholly successful, imparting a distinct drag to the LAM that made it far more difficult to pilot, but the concept would be noted and remembered in years to come.
The raid on the airfield went completely unopposed (unbeknownst to TF Echo, the few areospace assets held by Babcock were deployed to the east to detect the Task Force if they tried to slip past the city and ignore Babocks threat entirely - upon hearing of the battle, they simply diverted to other airifields),and members of the task force dealt minor but crippling damage to the few civilian airframes in the hangers to prevent the RWR troops from using them. Damage to the airfield was minimal but for a hangar fire inadvertently started as a result of a refueling line improperly secured.
The southern arm of TF Echo's pincer encountered extremely heavy resistance in the city. While the Light Horse mechs tended to have superior maneuverability than their opponents, Babcock's forces had hidden several armor assets inside storefronts scattered about the city. Several times during the battle, horrified Echo MechWarriors would be confronted with a fully-loaded SRM carrier bursting through a plate glass window behind them and at point-blank range. Eventually the superior manueverability of the Echo units began to tell, and aided by some timely air support, then managed to grind down Babcock's attackers. The members of the 741st Striker's "proper" suffered their first casualty in this engagement - SGT Joanna El Amin was gunned down by the crew of a Rim World's Ignis after ejecting from her crippled Griffin.
The final nail in Babcock's coffin was hammere home with the arrival of the northern pincer within the city. Casualties amoung TF Echo were heavy (their armored infantry were entirely wiped out). but casualties among Babcock's ambush force were total. A half-dozen vehicle crewmen and a pair of MechWarriors survived, and Babcock's command vehicle was destroye by an airstrike, with Babcock being thrown clear through the open rear hatch and captured. The RWR Ignis's attempted to set the Business Towers aflame with the civilians inside, but either surrendered or were destroyed in the face of the assembled guns of the entirety of the remainder of TF Echo.
11 January, 2767 - Starport Security Hassles
-Following a hurried repair and rearming effort from the salvage, TF Echo limped on toward the Winnpeg Starport. The civilians left behind at Southey agreed that they may well be the target of a retributive strike by Rim Worlds forces and abandoned the city as best as they were able, fleeing to relative's homes or communal country shelters. Pausing a few kilometers north of the port, TF Echo planned a hasty assault on the starport and the hyper-pulse generator station adjacent to the facility.
The Task Force again split into two groups, one assaulting directly north against the HPG station, and a second assaulting north-west against the Starport and the pair of DropShips moored there. The assault went off nearly perfectly; the force defending the HPG was wiped out within thirty seconds of beginning the engagement, and the HPG assault force swung west to assist against the starport. That nut was slightly more difficult to crack. The air defense turrets were silenced quickly, but the lance defening the starport sheltered near the Pentagon-class DropShip and used its considerable firepower to bolster their own. Any TF Echo Mech that strayed into a range much closer than 500 meters was subjected to a virtual deluge of concentrated fire from the Mechs and the DropShip. An entire lance of Echo BattleMechs were wiped out before the accumulated fire took their toll and the defenders, now under attack from two directions as the HPG assault force entered weapons range, began to fall. After furiously trading fire for several minutes, the Dropship guns fell silent. The defending Mechs, bereft of their cover, were quickly wiped out. In the aftermath, it turned out that a pair of RWR infantrymen had been aboard the Pentagon DropShip's (the Ajax) bridge, ensuring their compliance with Rim World military orders. It had taken several minutes, during which time the bridge crew had little choice but to fire on the attacking forces, for the captain to ease his laser pistol out of a concealed slot in his chair and dispose of both troopers.
The next 48 hours were spent frantically reinforcing their position, repairing the damage Dropship and what Mechs could be salvaged, and making HPG calls to worlds within the station's 30 light-year range to request air and/or instructions. The news was grim. Fighting was still ongoing on barely a handfull of worlds, with the rest falling in a day or fighting or less as surprise attacks by RWR forces massacred Star League troops in their barracks. General Kerensky was almost certainly unaware of the attacks (still engaged in combat operations in the Periphery), but a general evacuation order was given under Kerensky's authority by General DeVillars for all Star League forces to get offworld by any means necessary, and rendevous on the Davion-controlled Kentares system. TF Echo had their orders. The matter now was simply how to get off the most heavily-defended system in known space.
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Topic: Apocalypse Rising Master Timeline (Read 5449 times)