Interlude: Battle of Placida

Task Force White Field had been comprised of the most recently raised regiments of the Grand Ducal Guards. They were well-drilled, and well-equipped but unblooded, which might have posed a problem had the enemy had anything more powerful than Militia formations, Armed Police, and a couple of training battalions on Placida.

Similarly, Juliusz Mickiewicz and his Third Flotilla of the Grand Ducal Aerospace Fleet were also well-drilled, and well-equipped, but mostly unblooded. Fortunately, Aerospace Forces tended to get at least a bit of combat experience doing anti-pirate patrols out on the Rim, and in a region like the Coreward Periphery, there were more pirates than legitimate governments. Hell, some of the Legitimate Governments were pirates!

That meant that some of Commodore Mickiewicz's flotilla had seen action. True it had been against Pirates, but it was better than nothing. There was only so much that simulators and field exercises could show you about how a person reacted under fire, after all, and though Arne Jorgensen had sought to make exercises as realistic as possible, it was no substitute for the real thing.

He needn't have worried so much, though. The Aerospace Forces protecting Placida were as anemic as the ground forces. A Group of Aerospace Fighters and a small, three Dropship Section of a Leopard CV, Achilles, and Fortress-class huddling around an ancient station that looked like it was held together with duct tape, rust, and prayers. A few ancient Autocannon batteries studded the station, but mostly it appeared to be there for refueling, air traffic control, and the odd bit of trade. Only one of the gantries was currently full, an aged, scarred, Tramp-Class JumpShip berthed and undergoing some sort of patch job on the hull. From the pockmarks, Commodore Mickiewicz had guessed some sort of ballistic impact, either by asteroids or pirate autocannons.

Regardless, the enemy was literally caught with their pants down as Third Flotilla poured out of the Jump Point and began burning toward the planet. Four days later, the battle in orbit was fought, such as it was. Commodore Mickiewicz's flagship, the Pentagon Two-class Assault Dropship Kokenhuza, completely smashed the enemy Fortress-class Dropship with a full salvo of ten ferronickel slugs from its Dropship-grade Gauss Rifles within twenty minutes of the outset of the battle. Its next salvo two minutes later from nine ER Large Lasers finished it off handily.

With that, the battle was pretty much as good as won, though the enemy attempted to feign a withdrawal to the edge of the system in an attempt to string Third Flotilla out along a wider front and hopefully pounce on a less unified battle line. Ultimately, while it succeeded in damaging the Avenger Two-class Dropship Moralltach, the tactic failed when the enemy Leopard CV was destroyed by the Moralltach's answering salvo. That left the Enemy Achilles to scamper back behind the dubious safety of the Station's Autocannons.

Likewise, the fighter battle was going primarily Third Flotilla's way, with only two squadrons down to half their operational number of fighters, mostly due to the piecemeal deployment of fighters from Third Flotilla's less-blooded Dropships. Still, the Vulcan Aerospace Fighters reaped a deadly tally of Tridents, Shilones, Sabres, and Gothas. It got so bad that the enemy resorted to Kamikaze attacks with their Aerospace Fighters on the Kokenhuza and other Dropships of Third Flotilla, likely spurred on by advice from Combine advisors, but it didn't do much to deter Commodore Mickiewicz.

Twelve Medium Pulse Lasers acting as anti-air guns ensured that none of the suicidal Aerospace Fighters so much as scratched the Kokenhuza, or even most of the Dropships of Third Flotilla, though a single Trident was fast enough to slip past the Anti-Air Fire of the Excalibur Two Dropship Helagsfjället in time to crash into its side. Thankfully, the thick, Ferro-Aluminium Armor plating, the size of the Helagsfjället, and the fact that the Trident had been barely holding together before crashing meant that the Helagsfjälletwould still be capable of landing its embarked troops with only a bit of a delay due to the ramming attack damaging one of the drop doors.

Eventually, however, after an hour of orbital combat, only the enemy forces around the Station Remained. The Station also began broadcasting a request for terms of surrender after a brief gunnery duel left four of its eight Autocannons smoking ruins from beyond the range where the station could effectively fire back with any degree of accuracy. Commodore Mickiewicz would accept a conditional surrender of the Aerospace Forces on Placida, where Third Flotilla moved in to take command of the remaining enemy Dropship, Station, and berthed Tramp-class JumpShip. General Jorgensen wasn't around to see it, however.

Instead, he would be with the first wave of Dropships landing troops on the surface of Placida. . .

XXXX

Placida was an odd planet. It had been settled largely by two, very different, groups of people. The planet had two continents, the larger, Mediterranean Shrubland Continent of Matorral and the smaller, Subtropical Highland Continent of Lanka. Matorral was largely populated by those of Iberian Descent while Lanka was largely Tamil and Telugu. Matorral was richer than Lanka in terms of wealth, being home to most of the best farmland and many of the manufacturing centers, while Lanka subsisted mostly on coffee, sugar, and tea plantations which were worked on a sharecropping system, along with mineral extraction in the Usilic Highlands. Mattoral was heavily Catholic, while Lanka was largely Hindu with a smattering of Buddhists.

The two continents could not have been more different, which was one of the reasons it was so surprising that the Planet was as functional as it was. The capital, for instance, was situated on a large island in the Placida Ocean roughly halfway between the two Continents. Not only that, but it used Star League Standard English as an official language to help smooth out any problems in communication between the two populace and their local languages.

General Jorgensen was landing Task Force White Field's Regiments on both continents at once. The idea was that he would land three Regiments on each continent and attempt to seize the primary population centers on both of them first, before proceeding to move on the Capital of New Quilon from both sides.

On Matorral, Ninth Ducal Guards under his direct command would hit the City of Gasteiz Berria, which was the main Manufacturing Hub for munitions, Chemicals, and most importantly, Heat Sinks, on Matorral. Tenth Ducal Guards under Colonel Devlin would hit Nou Barcelona, where the primary production of composite materials, electronics, and metal alloys was, while Eleventh Guards under Colonel Hellgren would take Novo Oporto, where the primary cloth, fuel, and machine parts factories and refineries were.

Once those were taken, the three Regiments would then move on Nuevo Salamanca, the regional capital of Matorral, seizing the smaller towns in the Farm and Ranching Belt between the big cities and the Capital along the way. Nuevo Salamanca is where all those spare parts, munitions, cloth, and foodstuffs were processed into all manner of finished goods, from plants for Aerospace Fighters like the Sabre, Spad, and Corsair, to clothing, and even things like tinned beef.

In the meantime, on Lanka, the Twelfth Guards under Colonel Zelenski would assault Pandikut where a lot of Sugar, Coffee, Spices, Chocolate, Tea, and Rice were harvested on massive agricultural plantations, Colonel Bartek and Thirteenth Guards would take Tondinur in the foothills of the Usilic Highlands where all sorts of clays, metals, building materials, and phosphates were pulled out of the mineral-rich mountains. Finally, Colonel Iqbal and Fourteenth Guards would assault Vanjikkai where the majority of the cotton, fruit, and other plants were grown.

Once that was done, those three Regiments would advance on the Regional Capital of Lanka, Pattinappakkam, a major shipping center, with its deepwater port and well-sited harbor, and seize the City. With both continents down, the way to the planetary capital of New Quilon would be clear. General Jorgensen had thought it would take a while for them to clear both continents, especially after hearing that the Combine had sent massive amounts of material, advisors, and volunteers to the Oberon Confederation to aid Hendrik Grimm's war.

As he would come to find out, it would take less than a week for both Matorral and Lanka to fall. He'd landed in the vast, hilly, shrubland outside of Gasteiz Berria with the Ninth Guards Regiment only to find the defenders equipped with primarily combat vehicles, infantry, and a single company of sixteen Assassin Medium Battlemechs led by a Grasshopper, none of which were very skilled. General Jorgensen took out two of the Assassins himself with his Gauss Rifle before the enemy was routed once the Grasshopper was taken off the field thanks to being caught up in a crossfire between one of the Griffins' of Ninth Guard's Medium Mech Company and two of the Dragoons of the Light Mech Company. In total, Ninth Guards took Gasteiz Berria with very light casualties. They only lost a pair of combat vehicles, around twenty-two infantry, and one dragoon damaged or wounded, all of whom would be repaired or back in the fight in a few days.

Furthermore, reports from the other regiments were coming in claiming similarly light resistance, complete with light casualties. They had engaged mixed battalions of poor-quality troops with second-line equipment and utterly demolished them, routing those enemy troops that weren't killed or destroyed from the field with overwhelming superiority. It was a puzzling development. These weren't the Combine fanatics or hardened Oberon Forces that they had been led to believe would be around, after all.

As it would turn out, after the first day of fighting resulted in the capture of three out of the eight initial targets, a message was received from the Grand Duke and Task Force Red Bull via the Flotilla's K-Class Transmitter. Apparently, most of the Hardened Oberon Confederation Forces and Combine Volunteers had been gathered at Oberon Six. There was a chance to completely wrongfoot the enemy by moving on Oberon Six in the next two weeks with the full force of their Invasion Force. That meant concentrating at Blackstone to jump to Oberon Six before the two-week Window expired, which meant finishing up on Placida quickly.

Mind you, it took less than a day to confirm the assessment of the Grand Duke, at least as far as Placida was concerned. Every interrogated prisoner had the same story. They were all either militia, armed police pressed into the fight, or part of a training unit that was technically listed as reserves and not supposed to be fighting yet. The last category formed most of the Mechwarriors that were captured, while the first formed the bulk of the Combat Vehicle Prisoners. The overwhelming majority of infantry prisoners fell into the second category.

Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, General Jorgensen ordered an immediate assault on the next set of targets. The same scene played itself out again, with poor-quality enemy troops barely scratching the forces arrayed against them, taking heavy losses before fleeing the field, and the capture of more population centers. By the sixth day of the invasion of Placida, both Matorral and Lanka were fully captured and the attack began on New Quilon. The fighting lasted just over a day before the Planetary Governor, an Old Pirate who had ridden with Hendrik Grimm's grandfather was killed in his Atlas, shot to pieces by Gauss Rifle Shots as he desperately attempted to turn the tide of the battle, his Atlas exploding in a ball of plasma as the reactor went up and showering the Governor's manner with melted slag.

By the end of the eighth day of the invasion of Placida, the entire world and its three-hundred-thousand people were now under the control of the Grand Ducal Guards of New Ålborg. General Jorgensen took a day to organize a provisional administration and repair any damage. Five days later, they had jumped to Blackstone just in time to make their window with Task Force Red Bull waiting for them.

All their casualties had been repaired and healed by the time they jumped back out and into the Oberon System. . .

XXXX

AN: The next chapter is already up on my Patreon, so check the link in the threadmarked post if you guys feel like throwing me a couple bucks to get chapters in advance. Everyone who does is super appreciated and I can't thank my patrons enough.

So yeah, Placida in almost a direct contrast to Blackstone, turned out to be a cakewalk. This is largely down to how both planets managed their respective military build-ups in advance of the planned invasion of New Ålborg. Blackstone was a lot more savvy than Placida in that regard, though that might be thanks to the connection between Placida's Governor and the House of Grimm.

Blackstone's Governor was a lot more cautious. The Blackstone Guards had two regiments, and he only sent the first and best regiment to Oberon Six, preferring to hold off on sending the second as potential reinforcements. This was something that the Combine Advisors were persuaded to go along with, largely because the Governor plied them with expensive alcohol before breaking the news.

By contrast, Placida sent all of the Placida Guards, pulling reservists into a training unit to plug any potential security gaps. After all, they were going to be the attacking party, so it wasn't as if Placida itself would be under threat any time soon. Accordingly, what they had were a lot of older mechs, combat vehicles, and the like that had been replaced from active service by better, Combine, Surplus in the leadup to the War, along with a bunch of poorly-trained, badly-motivated, Militia, Impressed Policemen given infantry gear, and half-trained reservists.

Most of the Oberon Confederation followed Placida's example. The only other exception was Santander's World, as it was so recently conquered that they had to keep a regiment there to avoid being kicked off the planet in an uprising. That means that the main fight at Oberon Six is going to be big and likely have a lot of casualties.

Speaking of which, the first part of that battle will be coming in the next chapter.

Stay tuned. . .