9th Arcturan Guards

Ninth Arcturan Guards
Formed	ca. 2341; 2821-2830
Disbanded	First Succession War Second Succession War
Nickname	The Euterpe Regiment
Affiliation	Lyran Commonwealth
Parent Command	Arcturan Guards

History

Formation

The Arcturan Guards brigade was originally founded as the Capitol Guards when the Lyran Commonwealth was founded as a nation in 2341, and the brigade changed its name to the Arcturan Guards sixty years later when the government of the Commonwealth was relocated from Arcturus to Tharkad. The Ninth Arcturan Guards was one of the nine founding units of the Guards, and like the other Guards units was named for a muse from ancient mythology - in this case, Euterpe.

Star League Era

Like the other regiments of the Arcturan Guard, the Ninth struggled with boredom and ennui during the closing years of the Star League era; the Star League Defense Force acted as an effective deterrent in the main, making large-scale military deployments for the Ninth a rarity, and leaving the regiment to occupy itself with training exercises and garrison duty.

In 2765 the Ninth was close to finishing its current tour on the world of Chaffee, a quiet or even cushy posting on a world mainly known for its artistic retreats. Given how easy the assignment had been, the Ninth's command staff were anticipating that their next posting would be much more difficult.

First Succession War

In June of 2786, an unmarked freighter entered the Skondia system and passed through the Lyran picket lines unchallenged. Several DropShips then detached from this vessel and began a hi-gee burn toward the planet. Once the ships were in orbit, a regiment of Draconis Combine BattleMechs attacked the planet catching the defenders by surprise. The Commonwealth ground forces focused their might on defending the major industrial centers waiting for an attack. However, the Combine troops began attacking civilians and population centers instead. When the Lyran troops moved to stop these attacks, the quicker Combine forces flanked their opponents, as well as dropping additional BattleMech forces from the still unchallenged DropShips, seized the now undefended factories and destroyed them. The Kuritan troops were then able to withdraw. This defeat was a major embarrassment to the Commonwealth High Command. However, the defeat led to many reforms regarding system security and planetary defense. The quick victory also convinced then-Coordinator Minoru Kurita to focus his efforts against the Federated Suns as it was now seen as more dangerous than the Lyran Commonwealth. For the Ninth Benjamin Regulars, the DCMS unit responsible for the attack, the raid was a great success; having dropped near the cities of Passageway and Wurston on the Edel continent, the Ninth then began attacking the cities when the defending Ninth Arcturan Guards scrambled to protect their primary assignment, the major factories on the planet. The Arcturan Guards responded to the reports of wide-scale slaughter in the two cities by leaving the factories to attack the battalion the Benjamin Regulars had deployed, only for a second wave of troops from the Ninth Benjamin Regulars to land on the factories dozens of kilometers away from where the Arcturan Guards were fighting. The Arcturan Guards contingents on the other continents scrambled to redeploy from their current locations to assist the beleaguered forces on Edel, by which time the Benjamin Regulars had already had two days to wreak havoc; as the Benjamin Regulars withdrew to meet their DropShips in the foothills of the Lafferty mountain range, they added insult to injury by destroying three of the largest factory complexes, located at Passageway, Vorenstag and Wursten. The DropShips then rendezvoused with their JumpShip near the orbit of Skondia III and jumped out, well ahead of pursuing Lyran WarShip forces.

The Ninth was a casualty of the First Succession War; by 2821 the regiment had been destroyed.

Second Succession War

The Ninth was rebuilt in the years between the end of the First Succession War in 2821 and the beginning of the Second Succession War in 2830. The Ninth was stationed on Hesperus II alongside the Tenth Skye Rangers in April 2853 when the DCMS launched the offensive that became the Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Battles of Hesperus. With the Draconis Combine Admiralty quickly establishing aerospace superiority by deploying a flotilla that included all of its surviving WarShips, the Combine forces spent five months wearing down the Ninth and the other defenders on Hesperus with air attacks and raids, before landing eight regiments on South Whitman. The DCMS then launched a grinding, grueling operation intended to wear down the defenders, keeping up the constant tempo of battles by rotating units into and out of the front line. By October, both the Tenth Skye Rangers and the Ninth were in ruins; it was only the intervention of company staff from Defiance Industries using locally-manufactured equipment and the arrival of the Tharkad-class battlecruiser Invincible that prevented the conquest of Hesperus. By the end of the Second Succession War in 2864, the Ninth was an inactive command once more.

Officers

Rank	Name	Command
Commanding Officers of the 9th Arcturan Guards

Tactics

Unknown.

Composition History

2765

Ninth Arcturan Guards (Regiment/Regular/Reliable)

- At this point in time the Ninth were stationed on Chaffee.

2786

• Ninth Arcturan Guards (Regiment/Regular/Reliable)

- At this point in time the Ninth were an assault-weight regiment operating at full strength and stationed on Sabik.

2830

• Ninth Arcturan Guards (Regiment/Regular/Reliable)

- At this point in time the Ninth were a heavy-weight regiment operating at just above two-thirds of full strength and stationed on Arcturus. The unit was destroyed during the war.

Notes

• According to Greek mythology, Euterpe was the Muse of flutes and lyric poetry.

Bibliography

• Field Report 2765: LCAF
• First Succession War (sourcebook)
• House Kurita (The Draconis Combine)
• House Steiner (The Lyran Commonwealth)
• Second Succession War