Mercenary Coalition

## History

### The Founding

In the year 2204, no more than a year after the Rebel Fleet's first colony ship made landfall on Baranik Prime, three men met in a dingy, smoke-filled room aboard the transport ship *Starfare's Gem.* These men were Jorg Succorso, Chief security officer aboard the *Gem,* Titus Rand, captain of the retrofitted assault cruiser *Calm Horizons*, and Devlon Vrell, senior technician of the *Gem.* The three men met to discuss the future of their careers and the Rebel Alliance as a whole. Jorg saw that there would soon be a demand for independent escort forces to transport the numerous supply flotillas between the worlds. Captain Rand, representing himself and five other ship captains, agreed with the former security officer, while Vrell simply longed for a chance to experiment with new engine and weaponry configurations, an opportunity that this new Coalition would give him. In less than an hour, the men shook hands, and the Mercenary Coalition was formed.

### The Pirate Threat

The advent of space piracy came not long after the formation of the Coalition. After the assault on mining stations in the Hykkan system, the Coalition found their services more and more in demand. Thankfully, a flood of new recruits accompanied this increased demand, as young men and women looked to the stars with romantic thoughts of combating space pirates as roguish vigilantes. Soon, the Coalition had a monopoly on escorting independent trade convoys between the two, and soon three, Alliance planets. With the influx of wealth, Captain Succorso was purported to have said, "I hope this conflict never ends. Peace is all well and good, but war is good for business." This would become the unofficial motto of the Coalition.

### Conflict with the Whills

By 2213, the stretched-thin Alliance military relied heavily on troops hired from Mercenary Coaltion to police Hoth while a large part of the Alliance regulars were shipped to defend the new colony from pirate attacks. During this time, abuse of power by representatives of the Coalition was rampant, despite some efforts to quash such behavior. Before the situation could escalate out of hand, Senator Kenobi of the reclusive Order of the Whills stepped in and offered to play the role of peacekeepers on Hoth. The Senate readily agreed. Although this defused the situation and stopped the abuse of power, it also meant that the Coalition was gradually pushed out of their position as guards. This led to tension between the Whills and the Coalition, which ultimately culminated in a brief skirmish, initiated by Coalitions members, in the capital city. Ten Whills and over one hundred mercenaries took part. in the end, ten of the mercenaries were dead, twenty five wounded, and not one Whill had been hurt. After the embarrassing battle, the Mercenary Coalition quietly withdrew from Hoth and worked on rebuilding their now-tarnished reputation.

### The Spice Must Flow

Fortune soon found the Coalition once more, however, with the discovery of the planet Tiqim III. An initial study of the planet's surface revealed that it held an as-of-yet unknown spice, smelling like cinnamon and granting beings strange powers after extended usage. The planet was an inhospitable desert, populated by gigantic, deadly worm-like creatures, but Jorg Succorso knew that the Alliance had stumbled on a gold mine. Acting quickly, he presented himself before the Alliance Counsel and petitioned for exclusive mining rights to Tiqim III to be granted to the Coalition. As soon as the motion was carried, a small outpost was established on a rock shelf near the spice fields, and Devlon Vrell began designing specialized spice-mining equipment, as well as refineries to purify the spice, which the Coalition soldiers referred to as 'melange'. With this rich new source of revenue, the Coalition was once again ascendant.

### A Window to the Shroud

After months of experimentation with the spice, Vrell Enterprises, a subsidiary of the Coalition, discovered that consumption of large quantities of refined spice did more than calm the user, extend their lifespans, and turn their eyes a peculiar blue color. It allowed them to see short glimpses of the future, or what was happening on planets thousands of light years away. Upon learning this, many religious sects, including the order of Whills, claimed that the spice allowed normal people to become 'Shroud-sensitive' for brief periods of time. These sects warned that tapping into the Shroud in such a way might prove disastrous for the Alliance, as they might attract the attention of strange Shroud entities. This critique only deepened the animosity between the Coalition and the Whills.

## Conflict with the Alliance

During a regularly scheduled meeting of the XPG Alliance Counsel, Jorg Succorso exchanged heated words with both Nom Sulvura of the Rebel Broadcast Network and Keith T. Maxwell of the Diplomatic Corps. This exchange centered around the conflict with the Whills that had forced the Coalition off Hoth years ago. Succorso touted the fact that the Coalition was essentially the main policing force in Alliance space and on the colonies, to which Maxwell replied with a threat to have Coalition troops replaced by troops and ships from the Diplomatic Corps, while Sulvara taunted Succorso over the Coalition's embarrassment on Hoth and implied that Coalition were blackmailing Traders in exchange for protection. The meeting ended shortly afterwards. The Coalition later posted an official statement stating that they did not recognize the authority of the Corps to relieve them of duty, as the Corps was primarily meant to deal with outside powers, not internal matters. Coalition bases and fleets were put on a battle ready status, waiting to see if Maxwell would order the first shot.

### The Anti-Trust Bill

However, the Alliance elected not to engage the Coalition in a civil war, but instead quickly passed a bill through the senate which proclaimed that no one company could control more than thirty percent of hyperspace lanes in Alliance territory. Additionally, Coalition security forces in the colonies were augmented with Armco security teams, taking away the Coalition's monopoly on planetary garrisons as well. This move drastically cut the power of the Coalition, as they had lost over a third of their income and now had dozens of idle ships with nothing to do. In response, Coalition shareholders elected to raise tariffs for the space lanes they did control to 15%. In addition, several Coalition fleets 'defected' to the Tuskan Suns during this time, helping the despotic empire to brutally suppress colonies recently captured from the Imperial Remnant. At the same time, numerous anonymous 'donations' were made to bank accounts owned by Coalition members across Republic Space. After a few months, when war the the Suns began to loom, the 'defectors' returned home, where the Coalition made a point of shielding their identities, a move which infuriated the coalition's now-numerous enemies.

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## Organization

### Ground Forces

   Although primarily a space power, the Coalition does have a substantial standing ground force consisting of infantry and armored vehicles. The primary infantry force of the Coalition is the Enforcement Trooper (pictured to the right). Clad in Standard Combat Armor (or SCA) with thermal shielding and a combat HUD, these soldiers are perfectly suited to manning garrisoned positions or fighting in the ice-capped mountains of the colonies, but are of generally lower quality than the mainline Alliance infantry. Their main weapon is the Standard Pulse Rifle Mark IV (SPR-IV), contemptuously referred to as the 'spray-and-pray' for its low accuracy at longer ranges.

The elite core of the Coalition's ground forces is composed of former security officers and Alliance military veterans. Called 'The Omega Legion', these men and women possess elite training and much higher quality weapons and armor than their Enforcement Trooper counterparts, putting them slightly above the average Alliance soldier. These troops are rare, and are mostly used as bodyguards for VIPs or shock troopers when boarding high-priority enemy vessels.

The Coalition also has access to the Rimbeck Heavy Assault Platform (RHEP), a series of cargo lifters retrofitted to act as platforms for heavy ordinance such as heavy machine guns and energy cannons.

The standard Coalition squad composition consists of eight Enforcement Troopers, two Omega Legionaries, and one RHEP. Four squads form a platoon, eight platoons form a battalion, and sixteen battalions form a Legion. As of today, the Coalition has eight full active legions. Originally, the legions were composed solely of humans, but in recent times they have accepted a healthy number of Kel-Azaan, Raxycodia, and numerous other species into their ranks.

## Mercenary Coalition

The Emblem of the Coalition's Omega Legion

### Fleet

The main power base of Mercenary Coalition is its massive fleet. Although some individual ships (such as Jorg Succorso's private ship *Captain's Fancy)* have armor and weaponry on par or above Alliance standards, the majority of the Coalition's vessels are little more than retrofitted cargo ships and transports. While staffed by veteran crews, these ships are fitted with outdated surplus weaponry and shielding which the Alliance fleet discards after updating their own ships. The Coalition makes up for this deficiency through sheer numbers, and it is currently estimated that the Coalition has seven fighting ships for every one official Alliance vessel.

Currently, only eight Coalition ships have firepower comparable to Alliance and pirate vessels; *Calm Horizons, Captain's Fancy, Punisher, Stalwart, Radiant, Jade Hammer, Dagger,* and *Cutlass.* The standard composition of each escort fleet consists of one of these eight ships, acting as the flagship, and four or five smaller vessels. Thanks to the Coalition escorting supply convoys between the colonies, the Alliance military can focus all of their ships and resources on contending with other Empires, safe in the knowledge that civilian space is being policed by the Coalition.