SEIA27

=Chapter 27=
==Silent enim inter arma: Tribunals==
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Unity City
North America, Terra
Sol Star System
Republic of the Sphere
3079
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[Tribute Courtroom, Prosecution turn]
"The Prosecution calls the Defendant, Elizabeth Ngo, to the witness stand as a hostile witness."
Liz stood up, and mounted the stand.
"Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?"
"I swear."
"You didn't follow the operational plan."
"I accomplished the operational mission." she stated.  "The plan was garbage."
This drew shocked gasps.
"The..plan...was garbage?" Haskins could hardly believe it.
"That's what I said.  We analyzed it using both public sources and forward reconnaissance.  If we had followed the the plan Unity City would still be in the hands of the Word of Blake. There would be a lot of dead soldiers, and further operations would be impossible for anyone except maybe the Lyran Commonwealth plus Jade Falcons.  AS it was, the plan we did follow didn't mitigate casualties enough, but it's not like we could submit changes in a timely manner without informing the Blakists."
"You had forward reconnaissance?" he asked.
"When planning an offensive to end a war, it's a good idea to have scouts." she stated, "Especially when other Intel sources have proven unreliable-as Comstar's did with both the Wolf's Dragoon operation, and with Case WHITE at the beginning of the War.  The Cutter group for Battleship LCS Hermann Steiner was deployed into the system through deep oort insertion and conducted telescopic and signals intelligence for three months prior to jump-off. I can discuss this now, because the operation was successful."
"How were these findings reported, and how were you able to conceal them from detection for three months?"
"Well, Cutters are small." she said, "We staged a tender in deep space and rotated cutters through the system using low-duration jump points off the main routes.  Deep Radar's great, but it's also Directional. When your insertion is four light hours from the primary, pretty much all of space is flat null. If you will, move in on cold thrusters or angle your burn and you're already hard to spot in the sky unless someone is looking.  During that time, Our people contacted the Oort Belters and the Metis folks and gathered Intel from inside the system, including what the Bureau of Terran Affairs was doing to the belts."
"Is this when you staged the...CROWBAR weapons?" Haskins asked
Liz nodded, "We did."
"And the Belters had no objections?"
"I can't say what people who aren't me weren't thinking, but they didn't stop us. They could have by simply asking." Liz stated, "I think their decisions may have been influenced by the presence of automated warships destroying burrows. Forced relocations of citizens to industrial sites supporting the Blakist War Effort, but you'll have to ask Sov. Janice Martins and her people in the Metis Congress about that.  I don't dabble in other people's internal politics.  What I do know, is that they cooperated with our reconnaissance and raised no direct issues with the deployment of CROWBAR."
"This explains some of your fleet's involvement in jumping the gun on the Belts? Yes?"
"I am unaware of any situation in which freeing political prisoners or liberating slaves is illegal or unlawful, Colonel Haskins." Liz said coldly. "My subordinates and peers acted in accord with their duty and conscience as human beings and members of the Lyran Commonwealth Navy. That this happened to coincide with improved intelligence on the strategic target and expediting a strategic objective is secondary to the deed of getting a boot off of an entire people's neck. I consider the outer system operation to be separate from the...'Liberation' of Blakist occupied Terra."
"You don't consider Operation Scour to be a liberation?"
"I don't." she said.  "This is a conquest and occupation mission, done on behalf of a third party. Against the government accepted by the majority of the locals. That said government were monsters who ordered and carried out a laundry list of atrocities in an unprovoked war with the rest of mankind is beside the point."
''
"You consider the Belt operation a Liberation?" he pressed, "Why?"
"Under the Bureau of Terran Affairs, they had no legal representation in the Terran parliament and were denied the privileges of citizenship." she stated, "Including the right to vote.  Their properties were officially treated as the common property, to be taken and used as the Government saw fit in the name of 'the people' without recompense, they were denied the right to self defense, the right to vote, the right to protest abuses and those abuses themselves were enshrined as justified with a simple majority vote of a body they had no seats in, or by the stroke of a corporate pen here at the bottom of the gravity well."
"But the Metis Congress? Isn't that a government?"
'"Now it is." Liz said, "NOW they have the rights they were denied, including the right of free travel and trade, which they were also denied. An ambassador to the Lyran Commonwealth, which they were not permitted when the Terran Assembly was carving up their gains for the benefit of Terran corporations and inner system political blocs who have representation...or had it, before it was all blown up."
"You ordered it destroyed."
"No, I ordered the Bunker Complex of the headquarters, Terran Militia. Which had hot-lines to missile silos all over both hemispheres, and command and control of six hundred million soldiers blown up.  The Terran Assembly and Bureau of Terran Affairs just happened to have their offices upstairs from it...had. Had their offices just upstairs from it."
"You don't seem particularly bothered by this."
She sighed, "I will regret every civilian child, every common resident, every shop-keeper and street sweeper who died because they put that bunker under a city.  I will regret every cab driver, every clerk, every house-spouse...I will spare no pity for officials who thought that hiding a military command complex under crowded arcologies was a good idea because nobody would dare attack them through their civilian human shields. I won't mourn a governing body that allowed a sequence of events like that to occur...besides, enough representatives and agents of both the assembly, and BOTA were shirking their jobs that there was still a government to surrender to Stone and the Coalition."
"Back to my question, why was it garbage?" he asked.
"Typically it requires three to one firepower and numerical superiority to assault a fortified position." Liz stated, "This is demonstrated, by the way-we  have LOTS of examples.  This can be mitigated by technological disparity-say, four Battlemechs versus a battalion of light infantry. If the 'Mechs are sufficiently advanced, or the tech disparity seen in the Clan Invasion between 3049 and 3052, but with peer, near-peer, or even superior technology for the defender, it requires three or more to one to take that defended position minus luck. Which is in the extreme, and rare, and not to be counted on.  Coalition forces did not have one tenth the necessary forces to take a single one of the surface objectives.  CROWBAR only slanted that math to a forty percent probability of success. With only fifty percent probability that we'd even be able to retreat after being defeated.  The original numbers were five percent chance of success, and seven percent chance of successfully retreating.  If we had followed Devlin Stone's plan, and the locals actually defended, the mission would have failed catastrophically."
She paused, "I can give you our simulations at G-3 level if you like for verification.  This whole operation was likely to fail. It would have, if the defending forces had had time to properly mobilize. As it is, it's a wonder we succeeded anywhere on any major body inside the orbit of Mars."  she folded her hands, "Devlin Stone's plan wasn't going to work, not if the Blakists actually chose to fight."
==Author's Note==
In Canon, Stone wanted to grind down his "allies" until they were too weak to oppose his "swords into ploughshares" treaty, leaving his "Republic" the dominant power in the Inner Sphere.
And yes, I've always thought that was a stupid plotline.
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