GblaRCS Chpt 53

==Guided by the light of a (Red) Cameron Star - Chapter 53 -==
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"The mark of a first rate Great Power isn't always raw military strength but rather power projection capabilities, the ability to bring that military strength to bear upon a distant foe. There are several regional players in and around the Inner Sphere that are undeniably strong in their own backyard but can't readily make their presence felt, or impose their will on someone five hundred or more light years away. From the mid 2840's Niops proved to be the regional power that unusually could, and would do that if they thought you deserving of their wrath and within twenty years Niops-flagged merchant JumpShips could roam freely accross much of the Inner Sphere unmolested by pirates, largely because of the fear that if you attacked one Niops was just insane enough to dispatch an entire naval task force after you. The concept of 'forgive and forget' was apparently an entirely alien concept to them, they held onto a grudge like a cranky Taurian and would reputedly chase you to the ends of the galaxy if needs be to make an example of you regardless of how long it would take or much it would cost them. To quote one renowned Buccaneer Captain hailing from Star's End, 'Niops be crazy, yo'."Stephen J. Tran, Red Star Rising: A History of Niops 2800-2900 - Niops Press, 2915
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===Proposal of dealing with Von Strang's World===
Capital City – Niops Association (Niops VII) – 2842
Listening to the conversation that was already well underway when he arrived late for the meeting being held at the Council Offices building, the diplomat having entered as quietly as he could and sitting down in the only free chair at the conference table while trying not to disturb anyone, Gareth Jeffries gradually started to wonder if he had stumbled into some kind of parallel universe.
The person from the diplomatic corps who was supposed to be attending and had been sent the notes and itinerary had called in sick that morning and because Jeffries was only doing some paperwork he got sent instead. As a result he had gone in blind, a situation not helped by the fact he had only found out about the meeting shortly before it was due to start and had to dash there with zero preparation.
In common with the tendency of Niops to practice government by committee there were representatives of every government department present in the room along with the military, with General Romanov apparently chairing by default because the High Associator had opted not to attend himself, as was his habit. James Murray much preferred to be simply presented some options prepared by others, with a written summary of each included, and then to choose which one he wanted to be implemented. He didn't actually like to be as involved in the day-to-day running of government in the way that his predecessor Giles Olson had.
Behind his back the civil service joked that Murray was elected to read, not lead. This was not to say that he was lazy, and he certainly wasn't stupid, he just wasn't that inspirational, and he certainly wasn't exactly passionate about the business of government. Unless that business intersected with one of the issues he was ardent in supporting of course in which case he was very passionate indeed.
Getting James Murray to care about the minutiae of fiscal policy was hard, getting him to shut up about orbital telescopes even harder.
"I'm sorry." Jeffries spoke up eventually after listening to everyone for a while, increasingly perplexed and dismayed by what he was hearing. "Have I gone insane or are you really all discussing the overthrow of a foreign government and putting their planet under military occupation?" he asked in bewilderment, looking around at the military officers and civilian officials sat around the large conference table.
"Yes" General Romanov confirmed, looking confused as to why he was confused.
"We can't do things like that!" Jeffries exclaimed. "Our international reputation would be in tatters, it would completely undermine all the efforts we've been making aimed at garnering a reputation for being better than the Great Houses" he declared, standing up so he could make his objection to this deranged course of action as strident as possible. "It would throw away everything we gained in terms of diplomatic good will from handing over Critchly and releasing the blueprints of non-military technologies to the masses."
Romanov stared at him in mystification. "Since when was hammering scum into the ground unpopular?" she asked.
"Just because we know they're scum doesn't mean they haven't been successful in fooling other people into thinking they're a legitimate state" Jeffries replied. "I mean, they've practically got ComStar running a PR campaign for them."
"ComStar? What the hell has ComStar go to to do with…" someone from the Department of Trade and Industry started to say before she stopped mid-sentence. "Wait. Did you think we were discussing invading Circinus?" she asked, that possibility seeming to dawn on her suddenly.
"Yes" Jeffries responded, noting that when he did so most everyone in the room either looked at him like he was an idiot or rolled his eyes.
"We're discussing a proposal for a military operation against Von Strang's World" the woman told him flatly.
"Von Strang's World?" Jeffries repeatedly awkwardly.
"Yes" General Romanov confirmed with a sigh.
Wishing the ground would open up beneath him and feeling like a complete idiot Jeffries grimaced. "Oh" he said feeling all the eyes upon him. "Yeah, screw those guys" he gave his personal endorsement to such a plan. "Sorry, but everyone was saying 'Bandit Kingdom this' and 'pirate raiding that' so I just sort of assumed…" he continued awkwardly, trailing off. "Why are we discussing attacking the Barony of Von Strang though?" he asked, this was literally the first he had heard of it being proposed.
"Someone put a note in the High Associator's suggestion box while you were still on your way back from Terra, he asked for a committee to be formed to look into it" General Romanov explained. "I guess you were out of the loop."
The woman from Trade and Industry nodded. "There was a general feeling that we got a lot of good press from ridding the galaxy of one bunch of Amaris Empire remnants so why not build on that?" she asked rhetorically. "It's not like it's going to be hard work demonizing a group that named their planet after Gunthar Von Strang of all people."
That was true enough, Jeffries considered. Modern historians still argued whether he or Antilos Legos were the worst of the worst when it came to ranking the various war criminals commanding regiments for Stefan Amaris. Legos got style points for personally executing Pope Clement XXVII but Von Strang's rape, loot and pillage of much of North America gave him a higher body count.
Romanov fixed Jeffries with a look. "So, just to be sure. In your professional opinion would it be accurate to say that you don't think us kicking the ever-loving shit out of Karl Von Strang and his goons would be a diplomatic faux pas?" she asked sardonically.
"No, I mean yes, I mean most if not all of the Inner Sphere and the Near Periphery would consider the galaxy a better place without Von Strang's World in it." Jeffries answered the question. "If we did anything to Circinus ComStar could spin the story to make us look bad, but they're going to find it difficult to convince the general public that giving the Von Strang family a whupping is a bad thing. His predecessor literally renamed the planet after a mass-murdering war criminal" he noted, trying to remember what else he might know about Von Strang's World. The planet was originally called Erin if his memory served him correctly, although what its capital city was called before Nico Von Strang, the father of the current ruler, had renamed it 'Amaris City' escaped him.
Choosing to rename a world in honor of the infamous Gunther Von Strang, and its capital after Stefan Amaris, was certainly a bold move in the mid 2780s so soon after the Amaris War, although not nearly so bold as it would have been if Gunther's heir Nico had done so before Aleksandr Kerensky led the SLDF Exodus away from the Inner Sphere. The veterans of the Star League Defense Force that had defeated Amaris would have come crashing down on Nico Von Strang and his followers like the Chicxulub asteroid.
Romanov nodded. "Yes, we were operating on that assumption" she observed drily. "Perhaps you could make sure to arrive on time in future so that you don't go off half-cocked again" the old soldier suggested in a manner that made Jeffries feel like he was being told off by his grandmother.
"Point taken." Jeffries replied sheepishly.
Jenna Romanov resisted the urge to wag her finger at him reprovingly. "Also, just so you know, 'on time' should be read as meaning getting there early' she added. "Just because you're famous from one side of the Inner Sphere to the other these days doesn't mean you get to swan in five minutes late to meetings. I can only hope you showed up on time for your audience with the Pope" she chided.
Gareth Jeffries knew that sometimes it was better just to suck it up and take your being told off publicly with good grace, so he didn't attempt to defend his tardiness, nor indeed his jumping to conclusions any more than he had already. Instead it would be better to contribute something useful to the discussion. "My only caveat to what I said before as to the diplomatic reaction would be to us taking action against Von Strang's World would be that it's situated way on the other side of the Lyran Commonwealth, and that kind of power-projection so far from Niops might potentially ruffle a few feathers, particularly on Tharkad." he said. "They're not going to vociferously object in public per se, but they'll likely not be too happy at seeing us operating in their back yard and some of them might view it as us deliberately making them look bad by doing a job of cleaning house they should have one themselves" he continued. "After the digs we've already made at House Steiner for continuing to keep Raymond's Redcoats on the payroll they're likely to be sensitive to perceived criticism coming from our direction. We might want to consider offering them an olive branch as part of any such plan to smooth things over, they're primarily a business-orientated society so opening up new trade links might be the best approach."
Romanov thought about that a while. "It's not like they're remotely the worst of the Great Houses" she responded eventually. "If we were going to do something that might potentially antagonise the murderous tyrants running Luthien or Sian I personally wouldn't care if they were feeling a little butthurt about us playing in their sandbox without being invited, and I doubt many other people on Niops would either, but you make a good point. We should probably take Lyran sensibilities into account here when finalising our proposal" she concurred.
"It's still only a proposal at this stage then?" Jeffries checked. "We're not planning to launch an invasion of Von Strang's Worlds next week, or rather in about six months when our ships would actually get there if we set out now?"
"Even if the High Associator gave the go ahead it's unlikely we'd be doing anything other than make preparations before the end of the year" Romanov replied, shaking her head. "For one thing we're still not sure when the linchpin of the whole operation will actually get here and when they do if they'll be actually be willing to do the job" she said. "That's out of our hands at the moment so we should just plough on for now with what we do have control over. You were saying, Colonel Benedict" she addressed the other army officer present who had been just starting to speak when Jeffries interrupted proceedings.
Jax Benedict directed a look of personal annoyance at Jeffries for interrupting him earlier before clearing his throat. "Thank you, Ma'am' he replied, glancing down at his notes for a brief moment to see how far he had gotten. "As I was saying, even our higher-end estimates for the planetary population of Von Strang's World places it at below twenty-five thousand. Therefore in the event that local infrastructure is damaged in the fighting to the point it can't support them we could simply evacuate them all and relocate them elsewhere after a successful mission" he suggested. "It's likely that a good proportion of that population are feudal serfs, or perhaps even outright slaves, and far from happy about their current circumstances so they may not even want to stay there anyway and will desire relocation regardless" he said. "Getting them all the way back here would be a severe logistical stretch, just getting our own forces there and back is no simple undertaking, but there are multiple populated systems within a jump or two of Von Strang's world that could readily absorb a few thousand refugees."
"Paran perhaps?" Romanov suggested. "They had a major food surplus the last time we were in that part of space and with the SLS Pioneer to keep the riff raff out it's probably the safest place in the region" she reasoned. The old warship and its crew of former Expeditionary Brigade members were not something any corsair in his right mind would mess with. According to intelligence even the so-called 'Void Nation' pirates that preyed on much of the former Rim Worlds Republic, the large well-armed and well-organised band usually dismissive of any opposition they encountered, had poked their noses into Paran precisely once and had promptly crapped themselves when they found themselves looking down the gun-barrels of an Avatar class heavy cruiser.
There were plenty of other systems to plunder elsewhere that wouldn't shove a battery of Heavy Naval Particle Projector Cannon up your ass if you messed with them, so the Void Nation's pirate fleet had metaphorically taken one look at Paran and the SLS Pioneer and had then slowly backed away grimacing while saying 'Sorry. Wrong room'.
"What are our best estimates as to the estimated military strength of Von Strang's World?" Romanov queried.
"Our sources indicate perhaps a battalion worth of Battlemechs, likely with tank and infantry support" Benedict replied, Romanov assuming that was accurate. One of the senior regimental commanders of the 331st Benedict had been assigned the task of formulating a plan to deal with Von Strang and he was nothing if not professional, diligent and thorough. Some considered Jax Benedict borderline anal as regards his attention to detail in fact, those tending to be the ones that also regarded him as something of a martinet in his command style, but even those people that disliked him personally would never accuse him of doing anything in a slapdash or sloppy manner.
It was widely known that he thought he should have been appointed saKhan instead of Trish Ebon and had even wanted to fight a Trial of Grievance over the matter at one point which provided him with some notoriety in military circles, but despite still visibly glaring at her whenever they were in the same room Benedict had accepted the status quo.
Despite routinely using contractions in his speech these days he was still a little more clanner in outlook than most of his contemporaries though. He publicly advocated introducing Romanov and MacArthur bloodnames to Wolverine society so as to help bring the 295th into the fold, not entirely grasping why Jenna Romanov and Robert MacArthur just weren't wildly enthused about the notion.
If not for Jennifer McEvedy remarking that she thought it was a good idea too the whole proposal would have died a death some time ago but her name, and her practically clone-like resemblance to the great Khan Sarah had breathed new life into the rather niche campaign.
Benedict had even recently suggested adding a Donovan bloodname as well. Claire Donovan bringing down Bernard Critchly and being appointed a knight of the Roman Catholic Church by the Pope himself as a result was something that would make for a couple of good lines in the Wolverine Remembrance.
"In terms of aerospace assets, Von Strang operates at least one JumpShip and multiple DropShips, a couple of them armed military types, which they use both to conduct trade and to occasionally raid other periphery worlds they've taken a dislike to" Benedict said. "They also strike at the Lyran Commonwealth when they can, or rather the systems annexed by the Lyrans that used to belong to the Rim Worlds Republic, generally ones that the Steiners don't care much about likely for fear of making Tharkad angry enough to divert forces away from fighting the Combine" he continued. "They also possess a non-trivial number of aerospace fighters, perhaps a fair proportion of these being the ubiquitous Vulcan heavy."
Romanov nodded. "The Rimjobs always did love the Vulcan" she observed. "Perhaps you might explain to our civilian compatriots why that's particularly noteworthy here" she requested of the colonel.
"The Vulcan is a heavy fighter, albeit only an eighty-tonner so it's on the lighter end of that scale but being a heavy with a decent wedge of firepower and Armour it's a viable threat to DropShip and thus a deterrent to them being raided" Benedict told the room. "They're something you ideally need to remove from the board before trying to risk a landing, and even if they don't come out to play when you're on your way in they're also a very effective ground-attack platform when utilized in that role."
"I'll never forget the first time I was strafed by them" Romanov recalled, the memory clearly not a pleasant one judging by her expression. "Damn things came in at tree-top level going like a bat-out-of-hell and they just flew straight through all the flak our Rifleman air-defense mechs were throwing up in front of them" she said. "A light fighter would have been shredded, but those big pointy bastards just shrugged it off and kept going, shot up half the unit before they hit overthrust and disappeared over the horizon before our own fighter-support could get there. We were only lucky they weren't carrying ****** Inferno bombs that day, they usually did, it was practically their trademark."
"The Vulcan was always a mainstay of the Rim Worlds Republic, the Blood Rain built their fighter-force around them too, so it would be wise to assume that the Amaris hold-outs who rallied to Nico Von Strang brought along more than a handful of the things with them" Benedict said. "Von Strang's World, then known as Erin, was a naval base for the Rim Worlds Republic, and while the orbital shipyards are no longer functional ground-based military installations, including those needed to operate and maintain aerospace fighters, were not blasted down to the bedrock there by the SLDF like they were in other places."
"We're not talking Castle Brian-like fortresses are we?" someone asked.
"No, but we are talking about an old Rim Worlds Army bunker complex that is known to exist and may have been expanded in the last few years. It's also possible that Von Strang may have re-purposed some of the diamond mines the planet is known for into additional strong-points and shelters" Benedict replied. "We know that they're still digging up the shiny rocks because Von Strang uses them to trade with his neighbours, at least the ones that are willing to stomach him. While we were scouting the region during our spell at Camelot Command we heard rumours that one of the city-states in the Fredotto system supplied Nico Von Strang with machine tools and infantry weapons in return for diamonds. Some of his people had contacts there from where they were stationed on the planet."
Romanov nodded. "The RWA maintained training facilities on Fredetto so a lot of regiments cycled through there" she recalled. "It was one of the places we expected to have to take by storm but in the event Amaris moved so many of his troops to Terra he couldn't properly garrison his own worlds" she said, mind going back to fighting in a campaign which had happened before anybody else in the room had even been born.
"It's likely that part of Karl Von Strang's so-called 'Guard Division' are actually mercenaries from Fredotto as well" Benedict added. "We know that at least one of the major factions in their ongoing civil wars were originally formed from Amaris loyalists that fought the SLDF, then Lucien Dormax and his supporters in the RRA and then the Lyrans, so they would be a convenient source of experienced and ideologically aligned military personnel. More reputable mercenary units from other places would likely baulk at association with the Von Strang name, but there are going to be plenty of guns-for-hire on Fredotto who just don't view history through the same lens we do."
"How well equipped is this Guard's Division?"
"We're assuming that most of Von Strang's battlemechs and tanks are common Rim Worlds types, gear that was left over after the war that had plenty of spare parts available to keep them running" Jax Benedict said. "Best case scenario, lots of older model Phoenix mediums that haven't been upgraded since the Reunification War, worst case scenario Rampage assaults with Star League supplied weaponry" he said. "We do know that Von Strang himself pilots a Battlemaster, he's boasted about it, and it's also known that his raiding forces use a number of Wasp lights and at least a couple of Hunchback mediums, but the latter may not be representative of his actual fighting force."
"They've got hands, useful for smash-and-grab operations." Romanov explained for the benefit of the civilians.
Benedict nodded. "That was my thinking on the matter anyway" he said. "We know the Rim Worlds Republic produced their own version of the Orion heavy, so we might expect to encounter those on Von Strang's World too, but despite being a good reliable fighting machine if you need something picked up they're just not the tool for the job because they don't have hands."
"Back in my day the joke was any mech can ****** you up, but only some of them can give your corpse the finger afterwards" Romanov said with a chuckle a few of the civilians amuse by her coarse language. "That said, fighting in close quarters I'd rather turn a corner and find myself nose to nose with an enemy Orion than a Hunchback anyway, those things will end all your hopes and dreams in an instant."
"Given their home-field advantage, and that they'll be playing defence, that particular scenario with the Hunchback sounds all too likely" Benedict stated flatly. "That's why we plan to mitigate the possibility via unconventional warfare tactics rather than charging down the guns seeking glory like good little clanners would" he added with some disdain for how he was actually encouraged to do things as a young mechwarrior on Strana Mechty. "As regards tanks there are indications that they operate the Burke, Ignis and possibly also the Merkava all of which were manufactured in the Rim Worlds Republic. A dug-in Burke is bad news."
"That's a lot of hardware for a world with such a small population isn't it?" someone observed quizzically.
"A number of surviving Rim Worlds Republic Army units rallied to the banner of Nico Von Strang after the war" Benedict explained. "Thanks to their diamond mines and particularly the stripping of other nearby worlds of resources they've been able to support a disproportionately large military for such a minor periphery power. After the Republic-Commonwealth War the whole region was such a power vacuum that Nico Von Strang had a free hand to asset-strip several systems that had fallen into anarchy. They've been largely living off that bounty ever since."
"Given how far away we are we seem to now quite a lot about them." Jeffries observed.
"It's mostly open-source intelligence gathered from when we were living in the Dark Nebula." Benedict explained. "Much of what we know comes from poking our noses into Star's End, pirates gossip like teenage girls apparently" he continued disparagingly. "We learned more during our dealings with the Expeditionary Brigade remnant at Paran who were happy to talk to us after we handed them a load of naval autocannon ammunition and spare parts, and who were understandably wary of having a Von Strang two jumps away and kept tabs on him, and, believe it or not, the newspaper archive in the public library on Erit filled in an awful lot of blanks."
Jeffries frowned. "So you're saying much of your intel dates from fifteen years ago?"
"Yes, which is why we would want to properly reconnoiter before actually go ahead with the operation just to make sure the current situation on Von Strang's World isn't radically different now." Benedict replied. "Some news from way out there does reach this far, but not much unfortunately."
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===Asking for Options===
"Von Strang's supporters are all hardliners no doubt? The type that think Amaris did nothing wrong?" someone Jeffries didn't recognize asked, he thought they might be an advisor to the High Associator.
"Given that they actually named their capital 'Amaris City' that seems a fairly safe assumption." Benedict replied drily. "Even by the standards of the Amaris Empire Gunther Von Strang was a complete monster and it doesn't seem that the apple fell far from the tree as regards his heirs" he said. "That said there a quite a few people elsewhere in the former Rim Worlds Republic that think somewhat fondly of the Von Strang's."
"Why?"
"Because they never kow-towed to the Star League or the Lyran Commonwealth right?" Jeffries interjected. "They're still out there flying the flag of the Rim Worlds Republic and proudly proclaiming their ongoing loyalty to House Amaris despite everyone in that House being dead and them being just a tiny single-system holdout of what was once a vast interstellar nation" he continued. "They venerate their former wartime leaders and wax lyrical about restoring the Republic and taking back the worlds they lost to grasping Inner Sphere barbarians" he said then paused to effect. "They're basically Niops. I mean, they're us if we were complete ******."
"I can't say I like the comparison much Gareth" Romanov replied using his first name so that he once again felt like he was being told off by grandma.
"They'd probably object to being called the Niops of the old Rim Worlds Republic too." Jeffries replied, sticking to his metaphorical guns. "Could be worse though, imagine the galaxy if a couple of Stefan Amaris class battleships and several regiments of RWA regulars who had been hiding out in the periphery for decades had turned up on the doorstep of Von Strang's World in 2827 pledging allegiance to the last remnant of the Amaris Empire."
Jenna Romanov stared at him for a while looking somewhat perturbed as she considered that scenario. "Well, that would have sucked but it's got the makings of a good Alternate History novel" she said eventually. "What do you think about Von Strang's World with capital warships and several regiment's worth of Amaris Dragoons Colonel?" she asked.
Jax Benedict considered the scenario himself, his moth forming into a feral grin. 'Finally a worthy opponent" he said enthusiastically. "Our battle would be legendary!"
"I guess you can take the boy out of the clans but you can't take the clans out of the boy" Romanov observed. "Seriously though, as regards other Amaris holdouts hiding out in the periphery those aren't just speculative fiction unfortunately" she reminded everyone. "According to Marcus our prisoner from the Blood Rain rumour was Rim Worlds Outpost 25 was built to host a full division and it's not been heard of since the war, while huge numbers of diehard refugees headed to an Outpost 27 even further out after the Lyrans carved up the Republic like a cake" she continued before leaning forward in her chair. "Other than the battleships it's not completely implausible that we could face an invasion by Amaris holdouts at some point" she added seriously. "They might potentially even be spying on the Inner Sphere right now, waiting for the Great Houses to wreck each other enough that they can come back."
"Kinda hilarious if they came back the same time as the Clans did and for much the same reason" the representative from the science ministry remarked. "It'll be all 'the Successor States are weak, this is our opportunity' and then they run right into each other."
"Good point. We might need to invest in a strategic popcorn reserve for when we just sit back and watch" the woman from the Department of Trade and Industry agreed, laughing.
"Just as long as paying for it doesn't come off my budget for establishing Brian Caches." Romanov said, playing along. They had already dug a few reserve bunkers on Niops VI to hold surplus mechs, mainly Mercury II, Stag, and Pulverizer types that they couldn't use off-world, following the precedent from the Kerensky Cluster when the SLDF had demobilized much of its fighting strength. The oceans and the bad weather on Niops VI caused by it being tidally locked made it a good place to hide things, cloud cover and rain in some places was constant and the frequent electrical storms played hell with sensors.
"Here's a piece of disconcerting trivia some of you may not know, or may not have given due consideration to if you did." Romanov said. "It's actually possible that more of Amaris's people fled anti-spinward to Outpost 27 than SLDF personnel followed Aleksandr Kerensky coreward." she told the room. "Not necessarily relevant to the current discussion but it's something I like to remind people when they discuss mothballing more of the military" she said, smiling. "It's potentially not just the clans and the Successor States out there, the galaxy is even more dangerous than you think."
That in itself of course was likely part of the reason why the military would want to advocate sending off a force to beat up on Karl Von Strang, Jeffries considered. It helped justify their existence and also gave them an opportunity to blood their younger mechwarriors.
For Jax Benedict and the former clanners in the SLDF there might be another motivation too. Most of them had either served in the 331st Royal Battlemech Division themselves or their parents or grandparents had.
The 331st was known as the 'North American Division', and had always primarily recruited from that region, while Gunthar Von Strang and his 18th Amaris Chasseurs had laid waste to several large urban centers in the northeast of that continent. That made it a little more personal for the 331st than it might be for the 295th, it had been some of their childhood friends and kinfolk who had Von Strang's boot on their necks and they weren't going to let that slide very easily.
Just settling scores wasn't as easy to justify to the civilian government as a potential propaganda coup though, something else to raise the profile of Niops in the public imagination of the Inner Sphere and in particular give the population of the old Terran Hegemony and Terra in particular something to cheer about.
Beating up on a single-system polity, albeit it a distant one, was also an achievable goal, Jeffries considered. Dispatching an armada right across the Inner Sphere to go put an end to the Tortuga Dominion would actually benefit far more people if you were looking for someone unpleasant to go beat up on, but that would be really expensive and tie up far too much of the military.
Von Strang's World had a notoriety that far eclipsed its actual impact on the galaxy. The more Jeffries thought about it the more he came to realize they were just a great choice if you were out looking for a whipping boy. Just strong enough that attacking them wasn't akin to kicking puppies and with truly terrible connotations regarding their name recognition among the masses.
As a student of history Gareth Jeffries idly imagined what would have happened to a small country on Terra in the late twentieth or early twenty-first century that was taken over by a relative of Oskar Dirlewanger, said relative then subsequently renaming the country after his infamous forebear and then announcing its new capital to be 'Adolf Hitler City'.
After due consideration Jeffries concluded it would not have likely ended well for them. People were slow to forgive and forget certain things.
"Can we actually spare the forces to accomplish this though?" Jeffries queried.
"We couldn't before, but after Bolton's Rangers have run out their remaining contract and made it here it'll free up some units we've currently got deployed as garrison troops" Benedict told him. "Even so we don't have the full brigade available we'd need for a quick decisive, overwhelming victory with minimal friendly casualties so this entire operation is predicated on whether or not the Blackhearts come aboard and are willing to travel quite that far to help us knock Karl Von Strang off his pedestal."
Jeffries raised his eyebrows. "The Blackhearts?"
"Dirty deeds done cheap deep in the periphery is kinda their thing." Benedict told him. "If they go in quietly ahead of the main attack to disrupt Von Strang's defenses and sow a little chaos it'll make things much easier for our own combined-arms-regiment that'll be following up as the primary assault force."
"I was thinking we might want to see if Bolton's Rangers wanted to send a token company along too" Romanov interjected. "Give them the opportunity to say that they were there at the last battle of the Amaris War again."
"The last battle of the Amaris War so far, Ma'am." Benedict responded. "Still those Rim Worlds Outposts out there somewhere that might need to be taught one day that there's still a few SLDF units watching over the Inner Sphere and keeping faith with the Star League."
Jeffries fought back the urge to laugh at just so completely earnest the expressions were on both his face and Romanov's when he said it. "I assume part of this plan involves renaming Von Strang's World and Amaris City again?" the diplomat asked instead.
"It'll be fun sending an HPG to ComStar telling them that the starmaps need to be changed to say 'Erin' again, but as for the capital, I think 'Cameron City' would be apt" Jenna Romanov opined. "Anybody think otherwise?" she asked the room in a tone that led everyone to assume she would not be best pleased at dissent, not that it wasn't a great choice.
"Incidentally General Romanov, given your seniority I'm slightly surprised you're here and not General Hallis instead. This doesn't seem like the sort of meeting the Head of the Joint Chiefs would usually go to." Jeffries queried.
"General Hallis has his own pet project, something he knows more about because it's somewhat more akin to fighting a clan trial than it is planning a planetary invasion" Romanov replied. "The High Associator signed off on us entering the Mechwarrior games on Illyria next year, we've tasked the Skunk Works with coming up with something… special for the occasion."
"We're entering the games?" Jeffries responded in surprise.
"It's not exactly Solaris but it's something else to help raise our profile." Romanov replied. "You really do need to get back up to speed on this stuff Gareth" she told him. "You can't ride on your fame and name recognition forever" she joked, half the room laughing.
"I think you're probably the most famous person that lives on Niops, General" Jeffries replied.
"It wasn't a photograph of me stood next to the Pope when he visited Critchly in his cell that made it onto the front page of most of the newspapers in the Inner Sphere." Romanov replied. "Tell the truth, what did God's representative on Terra say to the prick after excommunicating him anyway?"
"He called him something very rude in Latin." Jeffries replied.
"You understand Latin?"
Jeffries nodded. "Well enough that I had to try hard not to wince" he replied.
"Think we could get the Pope to sign off on a crusade against Von Strang's World?"
"Probably not."
"That's a pity, we could have easily painted a few lances of Crusader heavies white and put a St. George's Cross on them" Romanov said regretfully, though far from seriously.
"Von Strang's World isn't exactly the Holy Land." Jeffries noted.
"You're right, it's not so much a crusade as it is an exorcism. We'd be casting out the last stronghold of Amaris" Romanov decided. "The firepower of the SLDF compels you!"
Jeffries laughed. "If you don't mind me asking, if we captured Karl Von Strang alive what exactly do we plan to actually do with him?" he asked.
"Good point. Let's open that to the floor, the High Associator will want to have a list of options he can choose from" Romanov replied, looking around the room for suggestions. "For a start I'm thinking germanium mine or maybe just throw the bastard out of an airlock, any other ideas?"
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==Chapter Notes==
*;Notes from the Author : Von Strang's World, originally known as Erin, in the Apollo province of the former Rim Worlds Republic is a somewhat notorious place. Smarting after losing the Amaris Civil War and the Republic-Commonwealth War, and after Operation Exodus removed Aleksandr Kerensky and the SLDF from the picture, Nico Von Strang and his supporters took over Erin, establishing the Barony of Strang in honour of his relative Gunthar Von Strang.Given that Gunthar Von Strang was an infamous war-criminal that commanded the equally infamous 18th Amaris Chasseurs during the war (rape, loot and pillage was very much their modus operandi) this would have ruffled enough feathers already but then Nico decided to name his capital 'Amaris City' after, you guessed it, Stefan Amaris. Karl Von Strang is what I've chosen to name Nico's son.It's a long way from Niops, about thirty-three jumps, on the other side of the Lyran Commonwealth, but if you were a Star League/Terran Hegemony colony with a SLDF presence looking for someone to beat up on for various reasons Von Strang's World is a prime candidate.Noteworthy systems not too far from Von Strang's World include Paran and Fredotto.While everyone talks about the millions of SLDF personnel that went on the Exodus with Kerensky the millions of pro-Amaris people that fled to RWR Outpost 27, the future Coreward Confederacy, after the war gets understandably less attention (they didn't come back later like the Clans did to try and conquer the Inner Sphere, although they might have under different circumstances. Their own civil war being more catastrophic than the one on the Pentagon Worlds).
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Chapter 53