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Operation Overlord II
Massive fanfiction about the retaking of Terra from the WoB
by Collective of Authors |
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Terra orbit
Overste Lee stretched out in his chair during the conference. During the invasion the widely disparate commanders met by secure teleconferencing daily to discuss the situation and plan out responses to enemy action.
So far, things had been going well. The Word of Blake had tried to shore up their defenses in the few days that the DropShips had transited to Terran orbit, but the assault landings had still caught the enemy dispersed into small, easily-digestible pieces. However, in several cases, the Blakists had put up fierce resistance. It seemed likely that the Rasalhague Marines, despite being the reserve force, would be thrown into battle before Terra was completely liberated.
Lee allowed himself the luxury of a full and complete stretch. "It's a good thing these video pickups only show the head," he thought wryly, hearing vertebra click. The other allied units had just reported in, and it was his turn now. He rattled off the situation, without using notes.
"Our forces so far have been pretty much untouched. Our two aerospace squadrons," he continued, "have taken light losses, but they'll be back up to full strength in a few days. Since we have local aerospace superiority," he paused, cocking his eyebrow quizzically and getting an affirmative nod in return from Rolyat. Lee went on. "I want to transfer all of my forces down to the surface. We need to get used to real gravity again and get acclimatized," he concluded.
Rolyat grunted. "Ok. The fighting in Salinas is just about over. As soon as we get the word, you can move your guys in there. There should be enough room for you guys to settle in there."
"Roger. Just give us the word."
The teleconference concluded shortly afterwards.
Dropship Khe Sanh
Terra System
Terra orbit
"All hands, all hands, prepare for reentry in 15 minutes."
Private Jimmy Parks let his breath out in a whoosh. "About fucking time!" It seemed that everyone in the Seeker class DropShip was about to go crazy.
First there had been the space battle. Jimmy had hated that part the most. Sitting still while sudden death could take them at any time grated on the young man. He hated being in situations whose outcomes he had no way of influencing. Then after that, they had to wait while everybody else in Operation Overlord got to land, leaving them there, as Ibby Assad had put it, "sitting around with our dicks in our hands." This, of course, resulted in a sharp kick to the shins by Geraldine Jones.
Outside, they could see the huge green and blue ball that was Terra. It was just about close enough to touch. They could see the white feathers of clouds drifting below them, and the earth-colored tones of the earth, as it were. At night, the lights of the countless cities and towns beckoned skyward, even at war. It was right there, and they were stuck in this suddenly too-small DropShip!
"They're just doing this so we'll be irritated enough to kick some Blakie ass." As usual, Assad.s tone became more cynical the closer he expected to get shot at.
"Well, shit, it's working," Parks commented as the squad bay's occupants got settled into their acceleration couches. "At this point, I'm ready to take out an Atlas with a butter knife."
"I think, Jimmy, you'll have something a wee bit more effective when the time comes," Jones commented wryly as she finished making herself comfortable in her seat.
Corporal Jeffries, their squad leader, gave each of the Marines one last go-over before getting into a couch himself. Then, there was nothing to do.
Soon, the Marine DropShips punched through the stratosphere. Jeffries, Assad, and the rest were buffeted as the DropShip bucked and shivered through the air. Aside from the roar of the DropShip's engines and the sound of the atmosphere protesting to the ship knifing through it, there was no sound.
Eventually, the sound eased, the shields covering the portholes retracted, and everyone aboard began to feel the press of real planetary gravity again.
All too soon, they arrived at Salinas.
The trio were walking on the tarmac to their barracks, looking around. Truth be told, it was no different from any other spaceport in the Inner Sphere, but busier. They occupied themselves with observations about the planet.
"Hmm, so this is Terra, huh?" This was from Jimmy Parks. He jumped up and down a couple times, experimentally. "Well, the g's comfortable enough, and it smells okay."
"Freezing my ass off, though. Did you see the snow on the ground?"
Assad had come from the desert world of Al Hillah. It was a tossup which he hated worse: the Clans or snow. "'Bout to freeze my huevos off." The ethnically diverse makeup of the Marines occasionally led to interesting linguistic situations.
"I dunno, I kinda like it," Geraldine Jones replied. She managed to talk easily as they walked, even though, as the fire team's support gunner she was burdened down more than the other two. She breathed in the air, invigorated by the chill air that entered her lungs. "How cold do you think it is?"
Assad replied in a mock grumble, "Oh, about minus too-goddamn-fucking-cold-to-deal-with. More or less."
Jimmy pointed to his right, where the armored vehicles were headed to the garages. "Too bad we can't drive around in nice heated vehicles, like those zipperheads over there."
Jones couldn't resist. "Well it's not like you got anything that needs to be protected," she drawled.
The banter managed to warm them up a bit.
Germany
Lojtnant Karl Schmidt was not having that much fun at the moment. When the invasion had come, Schmidt's platoon of 25 Force Recon commandos were still trying to find and disarm all of the self-destruct charges wired into the Krupps industrial complex. The work had been psychologically draining, as many of the charges also had anti-tampering mechanisms that would go off if the explosives were not worked on carefully.
The local Blakie commander was in charge of a Level III garrison unit. He had been very much wound up as the Spartan Legion had assaulted both England and France. As soon as he saw DropShip tracks heading his way, he had panicked and tried to blow up the complex. Only a quarter of them had exploded, causing widespread destruction, but not the complete demolition that he had intended.
The Blakist, in the face of all this had decided to defend inside the urban area around the factories, intending to suck in the Legion and cause heavy casualties before withdrawing for a linkup with friendly forces.
Unfortunately for the Rasalhagians, he had left a company of mechanized infantry in the factory complex to seek out and eliminate the Force Recon personnel. The hunt had turn into a dangerous cat-and-mouse game. Each 5 man section had essentially been operating as independent cells, and continued to operate as such to disperse the infantrymen sent to hunt them out.
Schmidt found it a full time job to coordinate his platoon, as well as trying to avoid
the Blakies. Unfortunately, 4 to 1 odds didn't allow for tactical flexibility, he thought ruefully. The Blakies were slowly herding the Rasalhagians into a circle. Though the Marines had kept them at bay with ambushes and booby traps, it was only a matter of time.
Schmidt was just behind the point, carrying an issue IAW-53 assault rifle.
Force Recon had a bit of leeway in what they could carry around, but Schmidt had decided to just go with standard issue firearms. Others chose to go with other weapons. Sergeant Palme behind him was carrying a nasty-looking autoshotgun. The lojtnant had seen just how good Palme was with it earlier. Like now, they had been trying to navigate their way through the claustrophobic maze that was the Krupps complex. Karl had decided to call for some help on the radio, but needed a clear sky for that, so his section was heading to the roof.
The journey had been punctuated by short, sharp firefights with the Blakists, with the Marines firing just enough to buy them some more time, and setting hasty boobytraps. One of these fights had almost been catastrophic, when the Marines had almost walked into a Blakist ambush. However, Sergeant Palme had heard a slight shifting sound of a nervous Blakist. He turned with a fluidity Schmidt could still not believe after the event, and fired a two round burst at the young soldier, just about vaporizing him on the spot. Karl imagined that the recoil must have been murder, but the big Scandinavian seemed completely oblivious.
They finally reached a roof area. Leaving the other Marines in his section to provide top cover for the other sections by sniping at the Blakies, slowing them down, he moved to one side and turned on his radio.
Germany
"This is Bulldog Six, do you read, over." The voice crackled over the radio speakers, the sound filling the command van. The Legion commander frowned. His reinforced regiment was hunting Blakies, and the call had interrupted his concentration. His unit had just blasted right through a Blakie unit that had decided to buy their fellows time to escape from the town they had just defended. On the bad side, he had had to resort to fierce urban fighting, adding civic affairs to the long list of headaches he was dealing with already. The Legion unit was trying to pin down the location of the remainder of the enemy Level III but was not having much success. In addition to his own recon troops, he had 2 sections, 10 people, of Lojtnant Schmidt's Marines, prowling out there in the woods.
"Bulldog, this is Eurotas Six, go ahead."
"Sir, we got Blakie infantry breathing down our necks here. We'd appreciate some help here, sir."
An idea glimmered inside the Legion colonel's brain. "All right, fine. We'll send an infantry battalion your way. In return, you can help me out a bit."
"Roger that."
The battle ended two hours after that radio call. It had been short, swift, and ridiculously lopsided. The Blakist soldiers, who had enjoyed such a numerical superiority before, had the tables turned on them. Karl looked in satisfaction as the remnants of the enemy infantry were marched away.
"Thanks for pulling us our chestnuts out of the fire, Colonel," he told the Legion commander. "That fight was a pretty close thing. Now what can I do for you?"
"I had to ask," he thought grumpily to himself. "We go from a sauna to up to our asses in snow, just to help out Barton's boys." The rest of the platoon had joined the other two sections out in the winter forest to hunt down the Level III headquarters that was reputed to be around.
"Six, this is Two. Lucky Charms, over." That meant that Section Two had hit the jackpot.
"Roger, acknowledged, Two. Light 'em up and call em in, over."
"Wilco."
In section two, the sergeant leading it turned his head to the side, and spoke into his whisper-mike. "Light em up, Tom."
The corporal, hidden with the rest of the unit in the thick woods, aimed a laser designator at the clearing. It held a small, yet functional headquarters, the command vehicles guarded by a lance of heavy Mechs. After some deliberation, the corporal aimed the laser at the front tire of a truck parked next to the array of portable domes. In the meantime, the sergeant called it in to the Legion battery.
The battery commander re-checked the data, and pushed a button, sending the location and firing requirements to the individually located guns. There, the gunner read the screen and yelled out to the gun crew.
"Fire mission. Load with guided HE and anti-Mech mines.!"
Within a quarter-minute, the first round was on the way.
Schmidt could hear the sounds of artillery going. And going. Three minutes later the firing ceased and he turned his radio on. "Two, this is Six. Do you read me? Over."
"Roger Six. No friendly casualties." Lojtnant Schmidt breathed out a quiet sigh of relief. "They sure pasted this place. Nothing left here but toenails. Am alerting Legion EOD and salvage teams now."
"Roger. All units, this is Six. Let's head back in."
Salinas, Kansas
.A week later, Terrence Lee got a visit from Duncan Mackenzie. The Lancer officer looked a lot different than he had on Centaurus. He was wearing fatigues that had seen hard use, and despite his best efforts, he still managed to look stubbly even after having shaved. The bags under his eyes didn't help things either.
"Hey Dunc! You like like shit," Lee greeted his visitor.
"Love you too, Terry," Mackenzie shot back. "We've been busy lately, you know? How are your guys doing?"
"Bored out of their minds." Since the Marines were being used as a reserve, they had no idea where they would end up. Although the staff was busy running tactical simulations and logistics preparations, the troops were getting restless, according to Sergeant Major Dell. "We're trying to counter that with PT, maintenance, and familiarization, but that only goes so far."
"Well, I got a job for some of them that ought to shake 'em up a bit. We need your aerospace and some of your special ops troops for this."
"No prob. Just give me a few minutes to whistle up my people."
15 minutes later, one of the conference rooms at Salinas was filled with uniforms. Lee and Dell were there, as well as Lees XO, Tim Williams, S-2 Brian Overton, and S-3 Frances Hathaway. Majors Thomson and Michaels represented the aerospace contingent. Kapten Carter from Force Recon was also there. The Kuwait City, which had brought the special ops company to the Canadian Rockies, had touched down last night, bringing two platoons with them. One platoon had saved the Krupps factories from destruction, while the other had liberated political prisoners from the reeducation facility in Arizona.
Overste Lee spoke. "As you know, the invasion operation has been going all right, even though we've had tougher fighting than we expected.We've managed to contain the Blakist forces, but at the cost of spreading ourselves out a bit. There's a mission we need done that we don't have the resources to do ourselves, so I'm afraid for some of you, the vacation's over.
Sharon Michaels sighed dramatically. "Just when we got all rested and used to gravity!" All of the Marine aerospace assets had been transferred from the Iwo to dirtside in a series of shuttle runs. The Vengeance class DropShip could not enter the atmosphere, and it put too much wear on the aircraft to keep going up and down the gravity well. There were other reasons too. Salinas had long runways that allowed the aerospace fighters to fly with heavier ordnance, as well as extra space for landings. That last was especially important. Although grounded DropShips could still launch aerospace fighters, recovery was difficult, as a minor error resulted in the spectacular sight of an aircraft trying to occupy the same space as the space vessel. In addition, the runways provided for more margin of error when aircraft had sustained battle damage.
Duncan Mackenzie grinned at her, and put a slide up. It was an aerial view of some other spaceport. "This is the Johannesburg Orbital Launch Facility. It is located 40 kilometers southwest of the city itself, and has the equipment necessary to do depot-level maintenance on DropShips. As you know, the Blakists lost much of their aerospace capabilities in the battles for orbital aerospace superiority. In the course of the ground battles, we've managed to push the Blakies away from their DropShips, so they can't leave to either go back to Gibson or reinforce other units here. Aiming his laser pointer at the slide, he continued, "All except this one. The Johannesburg facility is pretty important. Not only does it contain facilities for launches, it is also has access to an extensive road and rail net.. The Blakies can sneak in by road, rail, or cross country and board their DropShips, if they wanted to flee. In addition, the spaceport also serves as a major logistics point for Blakist forces, since it is ideally situated between Europe and Asia. This is their only way of leaving the planet, and Colonel Rolyat intends to slam the door on them. Unfortunately, we don't have the forces to take it, and our aerospace assets are either too light or otherwise engaged. We need you to disable the Launch Facility and cripple the DropShips there, if you can." Mackenzie sat down.
His place was taken by Brian Overton. "Overste Lee asked me to check into the situation down there. From the latest information, there is a Level III unit stationed there, chasing down ComStar stragglers and providing local security. The Blakist forces down there were recently augmented with a lance of Partisans. Right now, there three Unions, an Overlord, and a few spheroid cargo DropShips sitting there."
"Great news," observed Tom Thomson.
Frannie Hathaway looked thoughtful. "We can use guided weapons to take out the Partisans and the DropShips'"
Sharon Michaels took up the train of thought. "And use anti-runway weapons once the defense is breached. I like it," she pronounced, satisfied.
"We just need spotters to lase the suckers for us. I'm sure Mary can help us out," she said, grinning at Kapten Carter.
Carter grinned right back at her. She had been friends with Michael's younger sister back home, and the two went back a long way. "Oh, I think we got a few people who can handle it."
Lee took control of the meeting again. Ok. All of you come up with a plan in the next twenty hours. We will have CAP backup by a couple companies of Lancer Darts, so work on the ground attack angle. That is all."
The Marine commander and the Lancer officer left the room, leaving the others to work out the details.
Somewhere in Africa
The ComStar Precentor frowned at the message. "Are you sure this is right?" he demanded of the commtech on duty.
"Yes, sir," came the response.
The Precentor walked outside, barely managing to contain his temper. He had not been having a good year. His force was down to 9 mechs, all that was left of his command after the Blakies attacked. Fortunately, they had been out on extended maneuvers, but months of guerilla warfare had taken their toll on men and machine.
Recently though, an invasion force had arrived to help fight the Blakies.
They had arrived with authentication codes giving them the authority to command what ComStar forces had been left on the planet.
This, however, was not what was angering the Precentor. The message he had received had come from the ComStar sent Task Force Overlord, directing him to take his force and conduct a "demonstration".
Basically, it meant showing yourself, and getting the Blakies to run after you without seriously going after anything yourself.
"It's one thing to have your ass shot off," he grumbled. "It's quite another to purposely hang it in the breeze to get it shot off." |
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