TBntG-3 Chpt 27

=The Bull and the Genie=
==Chapter 27 - Book III - The Clan Invasion==
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== The Clan's Plan (and so does Frederick)==
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The Council was silent. Frederick Ghost Bear wondered if it was because they were enraged, or because they were just in shock. 
 
Finally, the Smoke Jaguar saKhan spoke. A new one. The old one had decided to try to break a UMC regiment with superior will and individual warrior prowess. 
 
The Spheroids were well past breaking just because they faced 'mechs that were individually superior to theirs. 
 
If we had kept moving, not let them get used… Frederick shook his head. Thoughts about the past were useless.
 
"Abandon our holdings on Tharkad and New Avalon?" he said. "Are you Mad?"
 
"If you can find front-line forces, Warships, fighters, capable of stopping the enemy, then I would like to hear it." Frederick called up a map. "A single Mule class Cargo DropShip can carry over three hundred weapons, if they are only targeting a world. One DropShip, one dead world. That doesn't open the question of biological weapons." He paused. "Our scientist caste?"
 
"Have established testing centers," ilKhan Leo Showers said. "Any refugees will be tested for possible biological contamination."
 
And there are refugees. People were swarming out of the Combine heading for any world they could, even offering to become bondsmen to the Jaguars or Falcons. Some of them had seen things…
 
Others were just stampeding. Fleeing, like animals that have scented the burning trees and don't need to wait until they see the fire. 
 
"Secondly, we must release all Inner Sphere forces currently held in our POW camps."
 
"Why?" 
 
Frederick turned to the Fire Mandrill Khan, his image flickering with the HPG transmission. "They are patriots. The Combine may be visiting nuclear hellfire on their worlds, and they are trained in disaster relief and civil defense. We do not have the numbers, they do." 
 
"Thirdly, we must bring up all reserve and secondary Clans, now." That led to a pause, the Clan Homeworlds Khans staring at each other. 
 
"For the same reason, Quiaff?" Nornian Tseng said. 
 
Frederick nodded. "Aff. We did not have enough forces to defend against a conventional attack, let alone this atrocity. My staff has provided logistics plans, in cooperation with the Diamond Sharks and Snow Ravens, to move first DropShip based forces and later Warships, staging them behind the lines and putting them on bases not at risk from a direct attack. Our Warships and combat DropShips will have to focus on the destruction of the dezgra Combine's space-based forces. Once they have lost those, we can commence reducing them with planetary invasions."
 
"We have not decided on this plan yet, Frederick." 
 
"I had not thought any Clan would wish to be named dezgra…" Frederick said. 
 
"Explain." The silence from the other Khans was warning enough. 
 
"Very well. The Black Dragons are clearly even madder than the Usurper. We have reports of the use of chemical and biological weapons against their own populations mass executions, to say nothing of the use of fusion weapons…" He touched a button and the image of a field hospital outside of Lillehammer was shown, along with the long lines of mass graves being dug in a school's sports field. 
 
There was muttering. Nobody got to be a Khan or SaKhan without fighting, but this level of destruction hadn't been seen since the Pentagon Civil War—and not even then, because the BDS had killed more people in two attacks than had left with the Great Father. 
 
"The Wardens seek to protect the Inner Sphere. Is this not the very thing the Wardens sought to protect them from?" Frederick turned to the Jade Falcon Khan. "The Crusaders say that the Inner Sphere must be freed from their mad rulers, and if there are any madder than the BDS… I have not found them. In both cases, the duty is one we cannot avoid—unless we were never true adherents to the Clan Way." 
 
There was muttering and grumbling, but Frederick nodded. Nobody was going to say no. Not just because of the moral persuasion in his words, but the fact that their enemy clans would take the chance to tear them down. 
 
"And what of you?" The Ice Hellion Khan said. "What of your Solahma and freebirth units. Are any of them usable?"
 
"I will be deploying all units that can be moved from the Occupation Zone." 
 
"And how many? Truth, not the fairy tales your reports have claimed." 
 
"Why… It is the truth. My corps will be moving in. We have three mech divisions, four mechanized infantry divisions, 3 infantry divisions, and a number of independent regimental groups. I found SLDF patterns more effective for occupational duties." 
 
"Three… divisions?" The Ice Hellion Khan seemed to be short of breath. "How—where did you get them from?"
 
"I was authorized to obtain needed local resources, and Inner Sphere Merchant and Labor Castes need work," Frederick said. 
 
A tiny, quite unworthy part of him enjoyed the look from the homeworld clans' Khans, although most of the ones present in the Inner Sphere had at least read his reports. 
 
"What if the Inner Sphere attacks?" asked one of the Khans.
 
Frederick shook his head. "They will not. Our intelligence indicates that they are engaged in the same kind of realignment we are. Combat regiments and naval units are being staged to the border with the Combine. Like us, they are concerned with protecting their own people and dealing with the flow of refugees. I should note that on at least two occasions, the Combine used naval fire to destroy refugee ships." 
 
Now for the hard part.
 
"We must seek a truce with the UMC, and share our intelligence with them.", Fredrick told them.
 
"What?" The room exploded, and Frederick let a rare bit of temper show as he brought his broad hand down onto the podium. 
 
"Every day, every hour, they are building more WMDs. They can build them faster than we can build Warships. We have no Time, my Khans, and that means we must seek help where ever we can. We must have enough cooperation to smother the madmen of the BDS, to seek out every one of their Warships and JumpShips, destroy or take them, and then reduce their nation into a collection of individual worlds. If one ship, just one, say a tramp with three mules gets free, we could lose entire worlds." He paused. "And the UMC has one thing we do not."
 
"Which is?"
 
"Access to the Combine. Even if they were officially cut off, they have been sharing codes and intelligence, and likely that gives them a better view of what needs to be done in order to neutralize the Combine. Their intelligence has been quite successful in tracking our own activities, after all." If that is the only thing. But Frederick wasn't about to share his scientists' theories about jump detection systems. It was still only a theory. "This is no longer a war of our ideology vs. The Inner Sphere. It is a war of annihilation. You have all received the claim by the BDS that they are the true rulers of the Star League—and consider that started the First Succession War, and all that came after."
 
"But how can we grant them that kind of recognition?" Someone called.
 
Frederick smiled and lied. "After these mad dogs are put down, we can return to bringing civilization to the Inner Sphere." And if you believe that… Whatever the outcome of the conflict, the Clans would be lucky to hold onto anything in the Inner Sphere, and those who did would not do it as crusaders. 
 
And here I am, being as corrupt and duplicitous as a Spheroid. Frederick had not lied. He would need every force he had. They would need help.
 
And if the Crusader clans from home, the ones most likely to form a core of resistance to any possible peace arrangement, slam head first into a war that cares little for individual skill and honor…
 
I suppose it is just luck, but Frederick was loyal. Some of his Inner Sphere staff wondered why and there had been that carefully phrased discussion with the Wolf Khan as to what Frederick would do if there was a rupture in Clan politics, but he was loyal to the Clans. 
 
But if the Clans were to survive the events Operation Revival had set into motion, they could not blindly hold to the old ways. 
 
Which required those most likely to hold to those old ways to be… stopped. 
 
"Indeed," Frederick said. "After this conflict, we will be ready to bring Operation Revival to a successful conclusion. But first, we must put the mad dogs of the BDS society down, and that requires our cooperation with the United Military Command." 
 
And then the debate started. It didn't take long, and in a few hours, offers of truce were being sent to Terra, even as the units on New Avalon and Tharkad were ordered to withdraw.
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Book 3 - 27