Operation ANGELS' LAMENT

Approved by Clan Ashen Corsac's Council in early 3072, Operation ANGELS' LAMENT was an intense 4-year operation to evacuate as many civilians and critical infrastructure from the Kerensky Cluster as possible, centered around the Huntress system.

## Background

Shortly after the conclusion of Operation REWIRE and the repudiation of Khan Faust towards the Star Adders’ genocidal orbital bombings on York, the Corsac Clan Council nearly unanimously decided through a two-chambers vote and secret Black Box technology that the situation in the Clan Homeworlds had reached an event horizon and that priorities had to be shifted from political and military expansion towards humanitarian aid. In order to do this, they elected to enact the contingency called Operation ANGELS’ LAMENT, which had been rapidly laid out and organized over the past moth between both Khans and Loremaster Dresner.

In order to accomplish the operation however, the Corsacs would need to put forth every single bit of resources and manpower they had, and then some more. Put bluntly, even the totality of the Clan’s readily available logistical assets, even if stripping the civilian jump lanes to the absolute minimum and assuming safe borders, were not enough. Therefore, the leadership of the Corsac, both Warriors and Merchants, would need to bargain hard and tough or accept a significant reduction in scope of the operation. This was deemed unacceptable.

### The Negotiations

Transportation assets were by far the biggest need and made up the bulk of acquisitions, both JumpShip and DropShips. Some were purchased outright on a permanent basis, but many were merely ‘loaned’ from those Clans trusting enough of the Corsacs to uphold the bargain. Escort assets were also negotiated for, though even the temporary loan of something so valuable as a WarShip was difficult in the utmost to secure or justify. Those negotiations targeted virtually every one of the Invader Clans, even the extremely recently arrived and nominally hostile Hell’s Horse.

First and foremost had, of course, been the Falcons. Long-time allies of the Corsacs spare the brief cold in 3068-3069, the two Clans had tacitly cooperated against the Hellions’ Operation ICE STORM and the Corsac Watch was already providing information on the Society cells discovered on Tiegel IV six years earlier. SaKhan Kadenza Schtern, herself formerly a Falcon, managed to broker a formal non-aggression pact and managed to secure the temporary service of a pair of aging, previously mothballed Aegis-class cruisers. In exchange, the Corsacs were to refit the mothballed ships with modern Ferro-Carbide armor and overhauled internal systems at their expense before being handed back to the Falcons. The Corsacs would also be beholden to continue providing as much information and technical support as possible against the Society.

Then came the Wolves. To the Wolves, were promised one full Cluster’s worth of first-line, advanced Heavy and Assault OmniMechs and BattleMechs, including one Trinary of Leviathans, as well as no less than three Cluster’s worth of equally advanced Gorgon OmniVehicle, potent and versatile Mech Hunters that could have turned the tide in defensive actions such as those they had to undertake all to recently dur to the Horses’ invasion. Also part of the deal was access to information related to the ongoing Jinse Shangu Reclamation project – the Corsac plan to decontaminate a major plant on Zhuhai destroyed by nuclear warheads – to help the Wolves deal with the fallout of their own tragedy after the nuclear attacks of the Word of Blake against the major Wolf world of Tamar

To the Diamond Sharks, obsessed with trade across the whole Inner Sphere, Loremaster Dresner delivered a data vault full of secret jump lanes and pirate points previously used by the Muspellheim’s Vigil to covertly travel throughout the Inner Sphere. The Corsacs also granted the Sharks the right to prospect the oceans of each of their world for the HarJel whose monopoly they were so fond of and, if found, exclusive exploitation of any such deposits.

Of the Hell’s Horses, and their preference for lighter Mechs and vehicles in combined arms, the Corsacs promised a full Cluster of jump-capable medium BattleMechs and OmniMechs, one additional Cluster of Gorgon assault OmniVehicles, and three more of the lighter and reliable Enforcer cavalry tank and Air Defense variants. The Horses were also offered considerable information about and limited direct support by the Corsac Watch in dealing with Spheroid resistance movements and insurrections, as a ‘Welcome to the Inner Sphere’.

Next came the Ghost Bear, who had the most to offer, but whom the Corsacs knew the least about. To the Ghost Bears and their great value of family and community, the true purpose of the Operation ANGELS’ LAMENT being prepared was actually revealed. To pay the Ghost Bear’s price with more than good will, they were promised no less than the second of the formidable Paladin-class Battlecruisers scheduled to be constructed at Vanguard’s Titan Naval Yards. Better armored and with a longer range than most Battleships, the no capital ships in the whole Inner Sphere was as fast as the Corsacs’ new Paladins, and the Bears would be earmarked the second.

Finally, to the Snow Ravens with whom the Corsacs had fought so ruthlessly back in 3069-3070, was promised 15 Stars’ worth of advanced OmniFighters, primarily Phoenix IICs, Saker Falcons and Subotais. Additionally, the Ravens would be allowed access to confidential technical information held by Vanguard Industries regarding their highly automated and efficient naval assembly lines, a relic of the golden days of the Star League era manufacturing techniques itself.

### Establishment of the Life Road

With the assets gathered in late 3072, the Corsacs began their move. All gathered logistical assets slated to take part in what would eventually become known as the Life Road would be assembled in four large convoys each defended by at least one full WarShip, at least two Trinaries’ worth of Aerospace Fighters, and at least six Assault Dropships. These effectively represented the totality of existing Corsac naval assets not already committed in the Homeworlds, including the ships loaned from the Falcons and the mobile components of Tiegel and Grenze’s orbital defense networks. The Corsac worlds had been stripped bare.

On their way Coreward to the Homeworlds, these convoys were laden with enormous amounts of foodstuff, medicine, air and water filtration equipment, and of course military supplies and spare Mechs for Alpha Galaxy currently embroiled in deadly fighting against The Society on and around Huntress. On their way back, the convoys would returned back to the brim with evacuated civilians and strategic machinery stripped from the withering enclaves, often abandoned to their fate outright - to die by starvation or bioweapons - by their nominal owners in the chaos of the Reavings.

With late 3072 also seeing the first recorded deployment of said bioweapons by the Society – lethal plagues that would kill tens of million across one or two dozens of worlds over the next three tears – an important step was added to the Life Road, Anima Sola. Strict NBC containment procedures were also made to be observed at all time by those serving the Run, many of whom would spend the better part of three years in hazmat suits more often than not.

Anima Sola was a new colony established in the Near Periphery for the sole purpose of acting as a preventive quarantine and triage post for the civilians returning from the Homeworlds, who may or may not have been covertly poisoned by one of the Society’s many bioweapons. Each and every individual Enclave from the Homeworld would have its own ‘new enclave’ on Anima Sola, ideally far away from one another, to avoid any potential cross-contamination.

## Operation ANGELS' LAMENT

### Phase One: Zeroing Targets

The Society was an enemy unlike anything the Homeworlds had faced before, hiding well and striking from the shadows with the most ruthlessly twisted of unconventional tactics. In order to fight them, one needed to find them, and ideally without being exposed first. After wiping out all Society presence on Huntress and bloodily repulsing several raid attempts, the Corsacs’ Alpha and Gamma Galaxies began to branch off, first only to the nearby worlds of Ironhold and Foster, but eventually Atreus, Lum, Marshall and Shadow were all visited.

The operating procedures were deceptively simple, but effective. Small groups of the 1st Star Rangers would be preemptively inserted via small crafts from pirate jump points and go lay low. Shortly afterwards, Corsac task forces would visit the systems and enclaves in a very obvious and visible manner and monitored from the outside for reactions. Any raid would be spotted ahead of time and traced back to its origin points if any survivors allowed on purpose to withdraw was foolish enough to lead them back to their hideouts, and the same with any spy ‘caught’ by the Rangers but not apprehended.

Special attention was taken to monitor the air and water filtration equipment as well as the food and water supply for any sabotage or infection attempt, but by the time the Corsacs got there, food supplies were generally dangerously low or empty. Due to the total crash of the HPG network in early 3073 and the screeching halt of civilian shipping, many enclaves across the Homeworlds had devolved into desperate measures to find or ration food, with some even having been noted to resort to cannibalism.

The goals of Phase One were simple: Stabilize the situation and mark out targets. Often, small contingents were purposefully sent to enclaves in order to feign weakness and bait an attack from the Society or their Dark Caste allies. Gathering accurate intelligence on the enemy was vital to any further actions to be successful against an enemy that pathologically hid in the dark. Often was the bait taken, and the Corsacs had their first encounter with the crazed, drug-frenzied hollow shells of Warriors used – sometimes against their will, one would later learn – by the Society to pilot their Mechs. Often they fought like rabid beasts rather than Warriors; savage, swift, and immune to pain or fear, but lacking in tactical skills.

### Phase Two: The Executioners Come

With a good idea of local Society presence on Ironhold and Foster – it is important to note that not all planets were scouted simultaneously, where one planet shifted to Phase Two, the Star Rangers moved to enact Phase One elsewhere – and knowledge of the open collusion of the Coyotes with the vile alliance, the Corsacs were ready to move. Where they had previously fought with extremely strict adherence to Zellbrigen against other Clans, these foes were no Clan, they were butchers of civilians and tormentors of unwilling captives.

The Society and its allies received absolutely no mercy nor warning. They were assaulted in the most pragmatically ruthless ways possible, which was the first large-scale use of the Corsacs’ Executioners cluster, a formation dedicated to the utter annihilation of a foe via large numbers of TAG-guided Artillery Mechs, supported by a solid frontline of Assault Mechs and dedicated electronic warfare light mechs. They were a walking, roiling barrage of designation lasers, Gauss Rifles and lethally precise Arrow IV and Swarm LRM fire that decimated all unit types they encountered in their inexorable march. But the Executioners could not be everywhere.

Gamma Galaxy, entirely made up of bondsmen taken in earlier years, as opposed to Alpha Galaxy, raised back in the Corsacs’ own homeworlds, were more than eager to defend their own old enclaves and even that of their former rivals against this new, utterly detestable enemy, and bore the brunt of Phase Two fighting. Still, only a fraction of all of the Society’s bases could be found with the limited personnel of the 1st Star Rangers and the even more limited factor of Time. With Khan Faust personally taking the CAS ‘Vengeance’ and its trump card jammer to annihilate any and all Space Defense System that had fallen under Society control, the skies were clear, and Phase Three could commence.

### Phase Three: Hold The Line

Early in 3073 already, evacuation had began, and the Corsacs were forced into defensive positions. The fact of the matter was that although the Enclaves had been largely abandoned, most were still nominally the possessions of various other Clans, some of which would come back knocking if they ever realized what was going on. The fact that what few Enclaves actually resisted and refused to fold when offered food, medicine and safety actually received proper BatChalls and were won by the rules relatively easily against weakened second-line Warriors would matter little. For the next two years, any visitor on any system was a very likely enemy.

Enemies within, and without. In addition to this threat, many Society secret hideouts still remained undiscovered, and many also had sleeper agents hiding among civilians. The Corsac Watch and Star Rangers were hopelessly over-stretched and could not monitor everything, being forced to focus on the most critical sectors – again, food water and air. Wounded warriors from Alpha and Gamma temporarily unfit for frontline duty – and even support personal – often volunteered to assist the Watch and Rangers as much as they could, having seen what the Society could do as it unleashed its deadly plagues on Huntress in mid 3072.

Even the relatively sizable amount of Corsac forces were also spread fairly thin defending large numbers of Enclaves. Those that could not yet be directly defended and held continued to receive food shipment from the Life Road’s inbound trips. And as it is known, the Attacker has the luxury of concentrating their forces wherever they wish. Times and times again, Corsac Garrisons were targeted by numerically larger forces. Against Dezgra raiders, every piece of ‘cowardly’ tactics that did not involve sacrifice or the harming of civilians were used. Against Clan invaders, savage bidding practices and provocations were routinely used to insult the attacker’s honor if they attempted to leverage numbers.

The number of ‘60 light years’ was no random choice. It was precisely the distance that a LF-equipped ship with a full charge could travel. By choosing to establish a 60-light-years radius protection zone, Khan Faust ensured that if a major threat ever manifested, either at Huntress itself – the de facto Clan capital in the Homeworlds – or on any of its umbrella worlds, all WarShips present on Huntress could immediately sail out to parry the threat, and conversely, all naval assets in the entire protection zone could converge back on Huntress if it was itself threatened.

One such instance happened in mid 3073 when a large naval taskforce of the Bandit Caste appeared in the Marshall system and attempted to get into position to bombard the world into extinction. Khan Faust immediately mobilized all naval assets on Huntress after being quickly but covertly warned via Black Boxes. The Bandit Caste fleet was forced to abort and break off from its run when four WarShips, the ‘Vengeance’, the ‘Ascendency’, the ‘Diligence’ and the ‘Humility’ suddenly appeared at the Nadir and Zenith points of Marshall and moved to intercept.

Many stories were not so one-sided however, often being far more Pyrrhic. On Marshall, Gamma Galaxy’s 5th Corsac Regulars’ 1st Trinary managed to repel no less than six raids by Society and Dark Caste raiders in one week against the city of Armesha, only for the Steel Vipers’ own relief fleet to Marshall to appear before new ammunition could be procured to replenish their depleted stocks. Tragically, the 1st Trinary had been themselves Steel Vipers just a year before, but their former Clansmen had no mercy. Only Star Captain Hartford’s shrewd bidding allowed him to bring the odds down even and to bait the 233rd Battle Cluster into over-confidence. He initially attempted to bid that only Energy weapons would be used in the battle, which the 233rd correctly understood to mean the 5th Regulars were out of ammunition and refused with sadistic glee. Unbeknownst to them Hartford had already ordered all his OmniMechs refitted with all-Energy loadouts and as much extra heat sinks as could be scrounged up. The 233rd was defeated, but by the time the last dropships lifted off, Star Captain Hartford was a Trinary commander with a subordinate count of One.

On Ironhold, the Corsacs discovered enormous Society presence, with preliminary intelligence suggesting most of the Enclaves had cast their lot with them. Several claimed to seek help, but only a few were genuine, with many launching fake distress calls that were revealed as Society ambushes by either orbital scans or Star Rangers ground-level reconnaissance. Not all of them were seen through however, and the 3rd Regular’s 2nd Trinary and the 5th Regulars’ 4th Trinary were wiped out. Enraged Corsacs of the 2nd Reiters and 1st Executioners spontaneously organized punitive retaliation strikes, but were quickly recalled by Khan Faust to focus on defense of the few genuine Enclave. Throughout the evacuation of Ironhold, the Corsac forces would come under relentless attacks by some of the Society’s most advanced weapons such as EMP and Inferno+ missiles, with respite only coming from the ‘Ascendency’ taking geosynchronous orbit over Complex VI, threatening any further advances with both naval artillery and heavy fighter screen.

On Atreus, forces of the Gamma Galaxy’s 4th Reiters found themselves suddenly blockaded by the unexpected arrival of the CSJ Streaking Mist in orbit, interdicting civilian jumpships and dropping raiding dropships. By a twist of fate, the Corsac navy was at that time still on Marshall from chasing off the bombardment fleet and could not return for weeks. By the time the ‘Vengeance’ jumped in to eject the ‘Streaking Mist’, the 4th Reiters had repelled at heavy cost several Coyote raids and fallen to below half-strength after answering distress calls from the Steel Viper and Fire Mandrill Enclaves, most of whose population would be wiped out by the Society bioweapons wrecking havoc through them. Surviving Viper and Mandrill Warriors reluctantly allowed themselves to be absorbed by the Corsacs after the former’s Khan callously answered their request for supplies by ‘take them yourselves by force or die like dogs’. The former enemies would go on to repel no less than three more raids before surviving civilians could be evacuated.

On Foster, it was not direct combat that brought tragedy, but deceit and treachery. While evacuating the former Ice Hellion enclave, Society sleeper agents infiltrated among the civilians managed to slip a chemical bomb in the air filtration system of the hangars used by the entire 1st Corsac Regulars, killing the entire maintenance staff on shift within minutes. The Society had intended to kill all of the 1st’s Warriors as they saddled up and prepared for a sortie against a carefully timed Coyote attack, but due to a slight hold up, most of them had already closed and sealed their cockpits. The sight was nonetheless a traumatic one for Warriors at the helm of enormous warmachines, forced to watch their comrades die against an immaterial enemy that couldn’t be fought, with no means of helping.

How many more were not recorded.

### Phase Four: Endgame

By late 3074, the Wars of Reaving were wrapping up, with most of the Society’s strongholds and their Coyote/Bandit allies burning either from the Corsacs’ actions or that of the much larger Snake Alliance. The Corsacs themselves had suffered considerable attrition, but Gamma Galaxy had managed to maintain relatively the same number of personnel and Mechs due to all of the forsaken Warriors from various other Clans who were either absorbed or otherwise joined the Corsacs for ideological reasons. Some of them even reinforced Alpha Galaxy itself.

The second-to-last major action of the Corsacs within the Wars of Reaving would be the assist the Cloud Cobra/Star Adder taskforce en route for the Tanis system, sending the 5th Regulars and the 1st Lancers (The Clan’s only all-ProtoMech cluster, formed entirely of isorla). As the strike force assisted in wiping out the primary stronghold of the Bandits – or the reformed Clan Burrock as they would have themselves called – they also kept tabs on the progress of events as the clock slowly but steadily ticked closer to midnight.

Khan Faust well knew that as soon as the real threats were gone, the ever more xenophobic Grand Council would soon turn to declaring a Reaving on the Corsacs due to their obsession on taint and purity. Before that could happen, she quickly began to consolidate her forces in the Huntress system as soon as all reasonable evacuation was concluded, with any remaining civilians moved to Huntress temporarily for the final phase: The complete withdrawal. All Clusters would also have an opportunity, no matter how short, for much needed rest.

The Grand Council sessions of 3075 proved Faust right, and the expected Abjuration came soon enough. Knowing that the evacuation was not yet finished and that her forces were neither numerous enough nor in any shape to be fighting off a coalition of several Clans, she took a major gamble and provoked them severely. So enraged were the Homeworld Clans that they did not take the time to properly coordinate with one another – if they even would have, so obsessed had they grown with being the one to Reave this or that ‘tainted’ target.

While the Corsacs’ ground forces had suffered significantly, the naval forces had made it thus far relatively unscathed, making use of overwhelming concentration of force to either force a rout or submerge a foe in a deluge of ASFs and naval fire. Yet even they were still severely out-numbered against the potential of a combined Coalition fleet. Faust knew her enemies needed to be bottle-necked, and in space. This seemed like an impossible concept, but it was actually simpler than one might have expected with the resources at hand.

With SaKhan Kadenza Schtern arriving at the head of Beta Galaxy and the Beta Naval Star, the Corsacs were able to put three fully armed and operational WarShips at each the Nadir and Zenith jump points of the Huntress system, with wolf packs of ASFs and attack DropShips also guarding each known pirate point. With ships only being able to jump one by one at roughly ten minutes interval in the best of case to avoid catastrophic overlap, it was impossible for the attackers to build up a fleet as they would come under attack one by one and be destroyed piecemeal. This was, incidentally, a cornerstone of SLDF defense planning which had protected Terra itself and many other major worlds.

Such a tactic was of course not infallible, and Alexander Kerensky the most revered figure of the Clans had done exactly that in his famous liberation of Terra and done so superbly. But Kerensky expected these defenses and planned around them meticulously. The enraged Homeworld Clans were neither expecting nor meticulous, and suffered horrific damage attempting to breach the Huntress jump points while the last of the evacuation was underway. By mid 3075, they eventually found the system utterly empty and silent.

## Aftermath

Operation ANGELS’ LAMENT was extremely costly for Clan Ashen Corsac, both in terms of military losses and in terms of all the trade agreements they had to honor. From a purely economic standpoint, it was an horrendous net loss as the Corsac worlds simply did not need the extra population and considerable amounts of war material was lost or pawned off, and only Beta Galaxy was in any shape to participate in the liberation of Terra from the Word of Blake. This was slightly off-set by the Clan managing to retrieve considerable amounts of experimental technology from the Society, as well as ProtoMech technology. The facts that the Clan had a considerably stronger navy than ten years ago and managed to raise a new Galaxy from former Homeworld Warriors was noted, but these were more elements that happened despite the operation rather than because of it.

The truest gain from Operation ANGELS’ LAMENT for the Corsac was that by this point its Touman numbered Abthaka or absorbed Warriors – and civilians - from nearly a dozen Clans, which provided an extremely varied amount of insight and perspectives, which the Corsac leadership would put to use for the betterment of the entire Clan. It also allowed this generally disparate force, which would normally crumble onto itself from old rivalries and disagreement ways, and united it through something greater. It proved to the bickering rivals that they could set asides their old blood feuds and come together as One Clan to do what was morally right to do, and damn the politics or economics of it. It reminded them what it meant to be a Warrior, which would harden the entire Corsac Touman for decades to come.