TBoE-9

==Chapter 9 – The Best of Enemies==
“The whole secret lies in confusing the enemy, so that he cannot fathom our real intent.” -- Sun Tzu, 孫子兵法 (The Art of War)
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=== Departure ===
FWLS Sofia Cameron-Jones
L1 Point for Irian VI, Irian System 
Marik Commonwealth, Free Worlds League
17th January, 2798 (Seventeen Months Since the Kentares Massacre Began)
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With a flash of radiation, a Scout-class Jumpship appeared from hyperspace in the outer reaches of the system. The swollen mass of the dark blue-green gas giant dwarfed the intruder into its realm.
Ilsa Liao took a deep breath as the queasiness of the K-F drive’s activation faded and the universe once more made sense around her.
She looked across the dropship’s bridge while the crew hurried to their duties. “Position check?”
“We have arrived on location, Celestial Wisdom. No contacts. Our information about the outer-system and planetary movements is correct.” The captain answered her.
There was a thud and the massive bloated bulk of the Dropship shook as they detached themselves from the Jumpship who had brought them to this desolate and unobserved corner of space.
Then, with a bass five-part harmonic rumble that vibrated everyone’s bones, the Dropship’s Bally Tech Super X-40 Drive lit off.
A fusion torch stretched behind them as a plasma plume stretching for thousands of meters.
Apparent gravity manifested itself, stabilizing at half a standard gee.
Then a digital clock above the helm began to count down.
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Ilsa took a deep breath and visibly braced herself. She turned to the communication officer. “Send the messages out now! Initiate Phase II of Operation Léitíng at time mark.”
Above their heads, the red numbers moved once more and the days remaining counter dropped a digit.
The communication officer spoke into the intercom. “Send code phrases for Operation Léitíng phase two.”
“Acknowledged. Messages sent.”
=== New Orders ===
"LCS Ironwood", Zenith Point
New Dallas System System
17th January, 2798
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“Message received from our mobile HPG, Kong-sang-shao! Dāng nín yídòng shí, xiàng léidiàn yì yàng shuāi dǎo! Date and time follows.”
The commodore nodded and steepled his fingers where he floated in microgravity. “Tightbeam the other fleet elements and synchronize clocks. We shall be going with Léitíng plan five if successful, six if not. Service to the State!”
“Service to the State!”
As the flotilla received its orders, a matching clock to the one on board Ilsa Liao’s dropship began to count down.
The Commodore looked at the display of the dead system that had once been a thriving Hegemony regional capital world. A world that Stefan Amaris had mortally wounded in the Coup with the WMD usage and destruction of terraforming equipment, and then Kenyon Marik had given the coupe de grace.
One among thousands of planets humanity had made habitable, colonized, and lived upon.
One among dozens of planets that humanity had now gone mad and slain.
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=== Unpleasant Report ===
FWLS Duchess Sofia Cameron-Jones
Domovoi Lunar Mining Facilities, Domovoi (moon of Irian V) 
Irian System, Marik Commonwealth
Free Worlds League
19th January, 2798
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“That’s the last of them.” The mine foreman pointed as the CargoMechs scuttled out of the hatch. “Seven thousand five hundred tons of refined iridium as per our counteract with IWW.”
The captain flipped through the paperwork and then spoke with the Hindi accent of a native of Regulus. “Looks good to me. All the proper paperwork filed?”
“Of course. This is the scheduled monthly shipment.”
“Good. See you next month.”
With that, Captain Sooraj Harish headed aboard his family-owned and operated cargo dropship. “Right, let’s get ready for departure!” He looked over at his wife “Any messages while I was out?”
“Just that your sister Kunti finally has the due date for her twin boys, and her astrologer passed along some lucky numbers as a favor to you as the normal data dump we got.”
Sooraj’s eyes widened in his swarthy face. “I see! Well when we get to Irian III I’ll have to HPG her back and see if I can’t pick up a gift for her then!”
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FWLS Duchess Sofia Cameron-Jones
Enroute to Irian III 
Irian System, Marik Commonwealth
Free Worlds League
23rd January, 2798
A head exploded as a laser pistol’s discharge flash-boiled the brain of the man in the captain’s chair.
Half an hour later, an airlock opened and a dozen corpses drifted free into the void of space.
No one noticed.
Yet.
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=== Rally Cry ===
FWLS Duchess Sofia Cameron-Jones 
Enroute to Irian III 
Irian System, Marik Commonwealth
Free Worlds League
14th January, 2798
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Ilsa Liao walked up and down the ranks of young men and women assembled in the cargo hold for her review. She made a point of looking each soldier in the eyes from the newest recruit to the most senior officer. Finally satisfied, she walked to the front and about-faced. She looked one last time at the horde of eager Slavic faces under their shiny plasteel helmets with the orange front square patch for a regiment assigned to Tamar.
She took a deep breath and spoke in fluent Russian. “Comrades! Fellow citizens! Today, you and I both are embarked on a mission of great importance, upon which the very survival of the Confederation depends! I could ask for no better or more loyal companions than those who stand before me to guard my back as I shall guard yours! I know that you must march today under the Steiner Fist and not the colors of Tikonov, but that is because deception is the foundation of war. Know that while we may not return from our mission, we shall succeed! Our children and children’s children will remember what we shall do here while the trumpet summons us to defend the Confederation until the youngest star burns out!”
Steel cleared the sheath as Ilsa Liao drew her dao. She held the gleaming blade above her head in both hands as her voice reached a crescendo.
“Who among you today shall follow me to strike the Marik a blow to the heart! To stop his assault upon us?”
Her blazing eyes stared past the eyes and into the souls of her men as her voice reached a crescendo.
“Who among you today shall fight alongside me to protect our parents, wives, children, friends, family and homeworld? Step forward if you have the heart to follow where I shall lead, sons of Bulun!”
With a crash, a thousand boots hit the deck as the mass of Jump Infantry surged forward like a great unstoppable wave just as their forefathers had rolled over the Wehrmacht with the bodies of their own dead and wounded at Moscow, Stalingrad, Kursk, and Berlin.
Over the growing roar of the infantry, Ilsa’s soprano voice called the regimental motto and battle cry of the Fifth Bulun Jump Infantry. Her steel gleamed in the light as she brandished it.
“Stal' za Rodina! Stal' dlya Tikonova!!”
The surf roar of noise broke and shook the fifty-thousand ton dropship as a thousand hands drew and brandished the vibrobayonets for their Mauser 960 rifles overhead in a forest of steel.
“URRAH!!!”
Ilsa raised her hand. The room slowly subsided so that she could be heard again.
She turned to the bearded man in a robe and cassock standing next to her. She then bowed in visible respect to him. “Reverend Father Alexander, kindly pray for me alongside your flock when you tend to them before the battle which we must go into. I deliver them into your care now.”
With a matching bow, the regimental chaplain took her place as she walked from the room.
Elias Teng was waiting for her in the hall outside.
“Celestial Wisdom,” he spoke as the hatch closed behind her, “why are you wasting your time with infantry soldiers. Surely if they were of any worth, they would be Mechwarriors!”
Ilsa spoke quietly with tears in her voice. “I expect maybe two of every three soldiers in there to make it home in the best case. They know that they are likely dead men walking; soldiers talk and the holes in the ranks cannot be hidden. If they break, if they flag or falter, then we are all dead if we are lucky. They, plus your Fifth Company, are all that will be holding our escape route open.”
Teng said nothing and his face revealed little of his thoughts.
She turned and looked at him. “Colonel Teng, we all must do our parts from the smallest to the greatest for the Confederation to thrive for the good of all. That is what I have been taught, that is what I have seen, and that is what I shall live my life for. Yes, Mechwarriors like us are elites, and yes, we have greater responsibility.”
Her voice grew contemplative as she listened to the faint chorus of Russian responses to the priest and his acolytes through the steel of the door. “But one of those nervous young recruits I just spoke to may be the difference between our success and failure when we make planetfall. Men live for themselves, but they die for a cause, for a belief, for a symbol. To that young recruit, the Confederation is something in books and taught in school, a flag on a pole, the yuan in his paycheck. An unnoticed abstraction around him, like a fish does not notice water. But I am real to him. I am a face and a voice and a name who looked into his eyes, told him of his worth and value and importance in the grand scheme of things. To him I am the Confederation. I am now real so that he can draw strength and courage from me should he be called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice for the good of us all.”
Teng looked at the hatch. “I… never saw it that way….” He finally said as they walked toward their Mechs.v
“Few do, Colonel. Few do.” Ilsa said sadly. “Good men may not be called upon to be made soldiers, but they must be good enough or the State shall suffer when war comes.”
She paused at the rope ladder leading up to her Thunderbolt. “You and I are good soldiers and good men and the State is served by us well. But then are we better than those men who go to fight and die in ballistic cloth with a one-shot SRM if they are lucky and the Strategios is wise enough to properly supply them like we are properly supplied?”
Teng’s face was unreadable as he watched her climb up her Battlemech before he headed to his Warhammer.
Once inside the cockpit of Shíshī, Ilsa Liao, Chancellor of the Capellan Confederation, took a deep breath. She pushed a switch on the console while her Battlemech stirred to life. A Commtech’s face appeared in a secondary monitor from his seat in the control center of the mobile HPG that she was linked to by fiber-optic communication cable.
“Technician Sung, send the go order for Operation Léitíng. Execute immediately!”
Father, Mother, Uncle Barnabas, Grandmother, watch over me this day. Paul Davion… I wish you were here to fight alongside me, but you have your own war to win.
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Irian III, Irian System
Marik Commonwealth
Free Worlds League
31st January, 2798
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Eyes widened in shock at the report coming into the planetary command center.
“Full alert! Sound the alarm!”
Hoarse shouts of panic.
The news spread like a wildfire from the planetary capital.
Pilots ran to their ASFs.
Aboard Warships, Techs dragged nuclear tipped missiles from the magazines.
In cities across the planet sirens wailed.
Panic filled the streets as civilians ran for the shelters frantically.
In the garrison bases, panic was replaced by purpose.
The thunder of running feet was dwarfed by the roar of fusion engines powering up.
Then the ground shook as the first purple-painted Battlemech strode forth to do battle.
The First Succession War had suddenly come once more to Irian III, the crown jewel and most heavily industrialized planet in the Free Worlds League.
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==Author's Note==
;Author’s Note: This episode brought to you by Timothy Seals.
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