Scavenged Restoration 69

Commissioned by RoyalTwinFangs

Warning. Infodump chapter.

Scavenged Restoration

Chapter 69

-VB-

The Battle of Necromo (3039) ended Davion participation in the War of Lyran Aggression even before the war truly took off. 

Advised by his queen and the rest of his inner circle, First Prince Hanse Davion broke his Combine expedition fleet into two: the lesser half retained almost all of the pocket warships and remained in the front. The other half with the greater number of jumpships returned back home to reinforce the logistics of the Capellan March. 

The First Prince knew clearly that the Capellan March would be the focal point around which his realm would have to defend itself. With the loss of twenty-two jumpships, too many worlds were left without means to pull their soldiers away. But by the time the Davion jumpships reached the Capellan March, it was already too late: the fall had begun. 

When the Capellans captured those twenty-two jumpships, not all of those were that of the Federated Suns. There were plenty that weren’t like those belonging to mercenaries and civilian transportation companies and clans. Unfortunately for everyone involved except the Capellans, the Capellan Confederation confiscated them - and all other assets they brought with them- for their own use. The only jumpship that was spared this fate was that of the Rumos Shipping, a civilian transportation company. They avoided this fate in the only way possible: they pledged their allegiance to the Capellan Confederation and brought everything they knew about the Federated Suns, their home, to the table just to be able to keep the jumpship. In essence, they turned traitors and the Capellan Confederation still ended up benefiting from it. 

The CCAF then took these new jumpships and amassed an invasion into the Capellan March’s Alcyone PDZ, striking directly at Cammal, Monhegan, Daniels, Shoreham, and Alcyone itself. These worlds were heavily fortified but without jumpships in the area to shift troops for reinforcements, they were sitting ducks for the Capellan Confederation. 

At the same time, the CCAF finally joined the coreward war in earnest and deployed their roaming warship fleet, which “happened” to be near Tikonov, to strike at the Chesterton PDZ. They struck at New Aragorn, Algot, Halloran V, Mira, Mesartim, Almach, and Demeter. Though their dropship and mech regiments were slower to form and follow the warships, the warships managed to secure those systems while most of Davion warships were busy in the Combine front. The few warships that were available for combat were outnumbered the Capellan’s 1st Fleet, never mind the combined might of the 1st Fleet and the newly revealed secret fleet. 

More than half of the worlds that the CCAF struck at had been part of the Capellan Confederation a mere few decades ago, and its people have been treated poorly since the Fourth Succession War. It was enough for more than a few rebel groups to rise in concert with the invasions. This did not happen, however, on Demeter and Alcyone. Those two worlds were not only the command centers of their respective PDZ but also staunch believers of the Federated Suns.

It was on those two worlds that the CCAF met the heaviest and fiercest resistance. But when there were no reinforcements on the way, they eventually fell after three months of intense combat where they had to fight not just regiments of properly trained Firebee resident-mechwarriors still wanting their chance at citizenship but also updated and improved mechs like Vindicators with pulse lasers and ferro-fibrous armor, Crusader with way too many medium pulse lasers and double heat sinks, and an introduction of new mech called the Tuphoroi, the properly designed melee mechs derived from the “Pillager” Vindicator variant; it carried hard shields instead of ablative ones. It was with these shields that the Capellans showed another advance in the metallurgy field that the rest of the Inner Sphere had fallen behind on. They created a shield with high hardness that was able to deflect and tank hits with far less weight. For every ton of “hard” armor, it could withstand up to an equivalent of two and a quarter tons of standard battle armor. This allowed these melee mechs to be equipped with better engines for speed, allowing them to sprint up to enemy mechs in the flanks and put them down quickly in a bloody melee.

By the start of 3040, they managed to reconquer Gan Singh, Pleione, Ningpo, Algol, Kansu, Yangtze, Azha, Slocum, Bharat, Hamal, Tigress, Alpha Eridani, Tybalt, and Ronel on top of conquering Mira, Mesartim, Almach, Algot, Halloran, New Aragon, Demeter, Monhegan, Daniels, and Shoreham. 

At the same time, the Draconis Combine was putting up a stalwart defense against the combined might of the FedCom Alliance. Prior to the outbreak of the war, they had invested heavily into aerospace fighters, and this turned out to be a mistake on their part. While this strategy would have worked against regular dropship-warship combinations, pocket warships were cheaper to produce and had been made by FedCom Alliance in enough numbers to invalidate the aerospace fighter increase. What they had also invested in, however, was into their ground force. All of their border worlds, but especially those connecting the rest of the Draconis Combine to the Terran Trade Corridor, possessed more ground troops than expected by the FedCom Alliance. On top of that, while the Combine did produce more mechs than before, their focus in the past decade had been in armored combat vehicles that did not need mechwarriors. This was because the Capellan Confederation had been selling them cheap combat vehicles on the cheap, exporting thousands of Po Heavy Tanks alone. Armed with a AC/10 and cheap enough that a mech-less world could field four of them for every medium mech, each world in the Dieron Military District saw at least a regiment of these tanks alone, not counting the infantry, aerospace fighters, and battlemechs. 

And these tanks turned the conquest of every single world in the Dieron Military District into a meat grinder that would have done Stalingrad proud. Later records would reveal that to take out a company of these tanks, the FedCom Alliance would need to sacrifice at least two mech lances due to the “armored ambush” tactic properly trained DCMS officers employed. The DCMS mechwarriors would engage the FedCom Alliance mechwarriors in combat, always specifically targeting their heavier mechs and not their lighter scouts. These mechwarriors would then hold their ground in honorable combat as the “dishonorable” infantry performed a pincer maneuver with the Po Heavy Tanks. Oftentimes, Jenner light mechs would accompany these tanks to act as further bait; they made it appear like light mechs were flanking the FedCom lances for quick hit and runs instead of an encircling pincer move. While it took the AFFS only two worlds to learn and properly counter this tactic, the LCAF’s upper brass took much longer to learn. 

But where they succeeded in bleeding the FedCom soldiers on the ground, they continued to fail in space. 

The first battle where their own warships met the FedCom Alliance in battle was over the orbit of Ashio, the capital of the Ashio Prefecture within the Dieron Military District. The Federated Suns Navy had with them their new corvettes: the Fox-class. These Fox-class corvettes, however, were a pale imitation of what would come later. They lacked the Lithium-Fusion Battery all post-3039 Foxes would have. They lacked the Barracuda Missiles. They lacked the Naval Autocannon. They only possessed half of the naval lasers that later versions would have. They lacked close to a hundred tons of armor later versions would have. This was because the Fox-class Corvettes of 3039 was a hastily armored and armed corvettes that were deployed after the Battle of Necromo in an attempt to bolster the frontlines. They were, however, better than nothing, and when combined with pocket warships, they proved decisive against the still heavily aerospace fighter dominated warship fleet of the Draconis Combine. The Draconis Combine, on the other hand, brought the first missile frigate design of the post-Succession War: the Daikyu-class Missile Frigate. At 500 meters long, at 650,000 tons, and 600 tons of armor, it was not impressive. What was impressive about this ship was that it carried fifty Barracuda missile systems at the expense of all other missiles. Unlike its predecessor, this Barracuda system was named BCC and had a guidance system that outstripped SLDF-era’s primitive guidance. However, the Combine had only one of the Daikyu frigates over Ashio to the FedSuns Navy’s four Fox-class Corvettes and eight pocket warships. 

It was there in the orbit of Ashio that the FedCom Alliance discovered four things.

One, enough Barracudas will end a pocket warship and heavy and assault aerospace fighters can carry Barracudas. Two, Fox-class Corvette, as it was introduced in 3039, could not survive a Barracuda barrage. Three, salvages from the crippled Daikyu-class Missile Frigate revealed to them that the new guidance system used by BCC, which allowed BCC missiles to lock onto their target and chase like a hummingbird, was an import from the Capellan Confederation, hence the “CC” part of its designation. 

And four, the components used in the BCC guidance system - particularly the microchips - were not capable of being produced by the Federated Suns or the Lyran Commonwealth’s microlithography machines… because it was not a micro scale component but a nano scale component. In essence, the Capellan Confederation had access to nanolithography technology, something wholly unknown and thought impossible by the scientific community of the entire human civilization.

The last discovery and its implication was enough to push the FedCom Alliance into an intelligence frenzy as they tried to send in spies into the Capellan Confederation to find the source of the “nanolithography.”

Though they left Ashio without having conquered it, these discoveries were valuable enough on their own for the FedCom Alliance high command to consider the victory in orbit a strategically valuable victory.

By the start of 3040, the FedCom Alliance managed to take Styx, Nirsaki, Deneb Algedi, Yorii, Ko, Atria, Sabik, Moore, Kaus Media, Kaus Australis, Imbros, Pyke, Asta, and Athenry, leaving Altair and Dieron surrounded and isolated. They were ready to cut off the Draconis Combine from the Terran Trade Corridor, which would isolate them even further from the Free Worlds League and the Capellan Confederation. 

The Lyran general in charge of the Lyran invasion force believed that the FedCom Alliance just needed one last push to bring the Draconis Combine to the table, and that last push had to be the fall of Dieron, now isolated and weak. This was, however, against the order of both the Archon and the First Prince, so he engineered a situation in which Draconis Combine soldiers “happened” to be able to escape prison and steal a dropship, “happened” to “fool” their way to the jumpship at the nadir of Pyke, and “happened” to be able to subdue the jumpship crew. And when the escapees jumped away to reach Dieron, the full fleet under his command that had been waiting in the zenith of the star jumped after them. They would not be invading Dieron, oh no no no. They would simply be taking back what was stolen! 

What the general forgot was that Dieron laid within the Terran Trade Corridor. 

So when he jumped into Dieron on February 11th, 3040, he wasn’t just met by the Combine’s largest warship fleet that matched the warship fleet under the general’s command.

He was met by ComStar’s very angry demand to leave the Terran Trade Corridor.

The general refused.

ComStar responded by jumping in from Terra to Dieron with their own warship fleet.