War of the Reaches

Conflict Zone War of the Reaches is the second sourcebook for Battletech Vengeance, detailing mainly the fights in the rim-ward periphery between the Fronc Reaches and the Aurigan Trade Alliance.

• Dramatis Personae
• Random Attribution Tables
• Missions and operations
• Atlas

Lead up the to conflict…

The Fronc Reach and the Aurigan Trade Alliance have been in relative peace for most of their existence, as neither of them had any real desire to grow “beyond their borders”. One thing is that a lot of planets in the Reach were actually shared by the two parties, with the Trade Alliance having some military units protecting their trade partners and assets, without interfering with the Fronc Reach Colonial Marshals.

Jealousy is what led to this war, but not jealousy between the two Reaches, but the Canopus/Andurien jealousy of the relative peace and stability of the Trade Alliance… along with their various BattleMech factories. Pushing for the Fronc to “take action” against “foreign power in their sphere of influence”, Lady Centrella expect Fronc to win a quick political victory against a foe that has never really been tested in battle, at least to her knowledge. The Andurien/Canopian Alliance was also ready to drop large amount of currency to keep Fronc in the fight. One of the main way they did this was by financing heavily their “armored infantry” program to build battle armors.

By the late 3151, Fronc starts political and economical pressure against Coromodir, both pushing the Aurigan troops out of shared planets like Mandalas and Sacromonte, going as far as impounding ships from the ATA’s shipping companies. House Arano replies by deploying the ANS Kamehameha in Panzyr, to which the Fronc has little recourse other than waiting for them to pull it back.

The actual shooting war began as a group of Flanagan’s Repair and Refit mercenaries and Sea Fox allies were hunting Blakist remnants on Portland. During the operation, a group of marshals engage a Sea Fox Star, which leads to a retaliation by the FRaR forces. The company of house troops and the binary of Sea Fox troops play cat and mouse with the Fronc troops on Portland from that point onwards in the war, while escalation occur on all other border planets.

A new kind of war

Neither sides in the conflict truly wanted to engage in a shooting war, which is somewhat odd in the Inner Sphere (or within the Clans). Without warships of their own, Fronc couldn’t do much against a single Impavido-class Destroyer, so they could not attack the ATA directly, rather impounding and capturing as many Alliance assets as they could in their own territory and in Liao territory, which was happy to let them in as long as they got rid of their nosy (and wealthy) neighbor.

On the Trade Alliance side, the mobilization of the troops was slow as a lot of them were deployed in humanitarian missions throughout the Inner Sphere, and with the ongoing ComNet black out, not much could be done to warn them quickly. Bastion Regiment and the FRaR Home Guard were the only full strength units ready to be deployed, and they didn’t have a clear objective in mind, since this “war” was mostly fought by stealing resources at this point.

In response to the actions by Fronc, the ATA finally deployed a strike team from Bastion regiment on Mandalas to recover all stolen material on the planet. The first step in this was actually getting FRaR to allow the ATA military to use their Zechetinu-class corvette for the mission, carrying the original Argo-class dropship still used by the Bastion regiment. The Zechetinu jumped in system on April 6th 3152, where it was met with 3 assault dropships and a small wing of ASF assets. The battle was devastating, the Fronc forces losing all ships while the Sagar’s Virtue was heavily damaged, but still space worthy, with the Argo deploying the 2 Union-class dropships and the Leopard it was carrying on Mandalas. A week later, two Gwendor-Dorwinion jumpships jumped in system carrying the remainder of Bastion regiment to secure the planet, while the Virtue turned around for repairs at Artru.

In retaliation, the Fronc forces moved a regiment of combined arms forced towards Weldry, still in process of being terraformed by the Alliance. Local defense forces were quickly overrun, but Flanagan’s Home Guard, along with the Belfast replied by deploying their full force and basically offering no pity to the Colonial Marshals, in a display of true Clan-like behavior by the Flanagan commanders. This prompted a drastic response by the Marshals, executing a group of “rebelling” Trade Alliance defense force officers on Detroit.

Steady escalation

By May 3052, the war took a turn for the worse. More Trade Alliance regiments returned from foreign missions and as more Fronc forces mobilized in response. Things came to a head as the Fronc forces attacked a Clan Sea Fox merchant ship carrying goods (mostly weapons) to Artru for refits on Sea Fox mechs at the FRaR facilities. This angered ovKhan Andrew Yung, who had remained mostly content in not engaging in the conflict outside of supplying his own troops still dealing with Blakist troops. While reporting this to Khan Mori Hawker, Yung began deploying his 2nd Line and Sibko Galaxy in support of the Aurigan forces. While none of his troops were highly trained or well equipped, a lot of them still had machines that were meant to be tested for the Battle of Terra by Clan Wolf, which were more than a match for most Fronc units.

Fronc at this point requested assistance from “their backers”, and Andurien and Canopus had to start providing them with mercenary units. They still feared this would reveal the reason for the whole war to begin with. They also provided a single Eagle-class Frigate, the Thunderchild, as a mean to defend their capital at Fronc, fearing the Belfast could be equipped with nuclear and biological weapons.

In late May, another thing took a turn as the 2nd Liao Dragoons decided to get in on the “steal what actually belongs to the ATA” on Detroit, believing that the Aurigans would not have the guts to retaliate against a “major power” while in a war against their neighbor. Having taken these actions without approbation by Capellan high command (at least from all sources), Detroit was abandonned by the Liao leadership when the 2nd Sword of the Cormorant landed on Detroit and quickly captured Detroit Mechworks. Using all available ‘mechs “almost complete” to bolster their numbers, the Swords pushed the 2nd Liao Dragoon off world, effectively conquering the industrial world of Detroit.

At the same time, Fronc forces landed on Bellerophon hunting a pirate group which had been raiding their supply lines, finding that those pirates were actually supported by a local Mandarin, which they arrested before capturing the planet for Fronc. The CCAF realized the problems which this was going to turn into and reinforced their rimward planets and ordered all forces to not engage or touch ATA assets on their planets, actually increasing their payments to the ATA protection scheme.

The Anger of An Hawker

Normally, Clan Sea Fox would have been happy to just remain distant in this conflict, even with saKhan Yung being involved. He was a 100% deniable asset for their organization from the start. Changes came after Petr Kalasa looked at the spreadsheets and realized just how much of the ferro-fibrous, hardened armor, ferro-lamellor, Autocannons and double heat sinks they sold were sourced from the Aurigan Coalition.

In June 3152, Hawker and his own command ship and support Galaxies showed up on Panzyr, requesting to take command of the Aurigan forces. This was opposed by Lady Arano, but it was Molly Karosas who challenged Hawker to a Trial in order to command the “unified forces”, with the young leader of House Karosas defeating Hawker’s champion in her Guillotine, facing an old Mad Dog. Hawker still had a hard time accepting this, but Lady Arano explained clearly that they weren’t going to destroy the Fronc forces, they just wanted to go back to a state of peace.

Still, the Sea Fox Khan moved his fleet and started maneuvering it towards Fronc directly, his ships engaging the Thunderchild, which they captured as the captain surrendered. From July 3152, a full blockade of the capital began at this point. In response to this, Lady Centrella mobilized multiple Canopian regiments to support the Fronc forces, in a hope this would put some pressure on Khan Mori Hawker to move away. House Liao also felt threatened by this display of force by the merchant-warriors and began reinforcing the nearby worlds, but did not begin engaging in conflict with either forces.

Pulling the Taurians in

In August, Fronc forces moved in and established a beach head on the Taurian planet of Argos to be in striking distance of Artru, FRaR’s headquarter world. While not “disrupting” any Taurian operation on the planet, a lot of Taurian Defense Force units began fearing for the safety of the Concordat. While FRaR forces were pulled from front to go defend their homeworld, the Fronc forces pushed quickly towards Mystras, Ahlat and Hellespont, capturing three isolated Taurian worlds for their own. Later on, some would learn that the commanding officer of this whole operation was actually a Wolverin Union agent trying to disrupt Taurian affairs and sow more discord in the region.

After this affair, the Fronc forces decided to raid Artru, where they were the first “outsiders” not cleared by FRaR to see the orbital drydocks and production facilities of the Flanagan’s… along with being the first to meet, and face the wrath, of the TCS Samantha Calderon, the fully refitted and reequipped Concordat II frigate of the Taurian Concordat, which destroyed 3 Froncian jumpships before the rest surrendered.

With the Taurian now heading towards the Froncian border, the leadership of the Fronc started negotiating in earnest with Clan Sea Fox, but Khan Mori Hawker refused any injunctions “as he was not the one in charge”. Canopian forces in the Reach started pulling out under the pressure of all neighboring forces, leaving the Froncians isolated.

A Strange Affair

House Arano was not interested in conquest and holding Froncian territory, and was actually quite happy with simply releasing most controlled worlds if the Froncian were only to pay reparations, but the Taurian and Sea Fox leadership had more ample demands, which they relayed. In a strange turn of event, it was decided by the three parties (Fronc, Sea Fox and Taurian) that instead of a massive transfer of power and wealth, the various nations would sign a non-aggression treaty.

After further negotiations, supervised by Clan Sea Fox, the three parties further solidified this into a more formal alliance between them, mainly to oppose the Magistracy of Canopus, the Capellan Confederation and the Federated Suns (at the Taurian’s request). The Colonial Marshals were allowed to remain fully armed and equipped as a pirate and anti-insurgency forces, while other Froncian military units were integrated into this more general “alliance”. Remembering the days of the Liao Trinity Alliance where had to sacrifice for the “bigger player”, the Taurian Concordat kept a commanding control over the alliance, later accepting the Calderon Protectorate in the scheme.

The Rimward Alliance is eagerly awaiting the marriage of the Doru and Calderon heir. They are building up a military force to defend its joint territory, expecting trouble from the “big boys” before too long, with a strong focus on the Canopian/Andurien border. With multiple warships, including one in construction and one in refit and repair (the TCS Victor Taurens, another Concordat II frigate), the Alliance also faces increased threats of piracy from beyond the periphery. Little do they know that those pirates are actually advanced forces from the Wolverine Union…