Samuel Macao

Samuel Macao
Personal
Died	17 August 2604
Affiliation	Rim Worlds Republic

Samuel Macao (b. 25?? - 17 August 2604) was the commander of the Seventh Amaris Dragoons during the Reunification War before serving as a member of the military junta that toppled First Consul Gregory Amaris, unwittingly playing a key part in the junta's defeat.

Biography

Reunification War

Immediately prior to the outbreak of the Rim Worlds Republic Civil War in 2575, Macao held the rank of Colonel, with the Seventh Dragoons posted on Timbuktu, the provincial capital of the Rim Worlds Timbuktu Province. While Colonel Macao and his command remained loyal to the isolated First Consul Amaris on Apollo against the Rift Republican Army, after the strategy of the Star League Defense Force's Task Force MAILED FIST shifted to reducing all Rim Worlds Army no matter their loyalites and the brutal actions of of the Draconis Auxiliary Corps troops on Nightwish in mid-2584, Macao prepared to repulse Star League invasion.

The Seventh Amaris Dragoons were still the main defensive force on Timbuktu when Battle Group Timbuktu arrived at the start of July 2588, the SLDF commander Duke Narinder Selaj assigning the Eleventh Royal Division - the greater part of the SLDF IV Corps - to the conquest of of Timbuktu, along with all four regiments of the despised Draconis Auxiliary Corps. The first week of the campaign saw the elite Eleventh Royal and the brutal Draconis Combine Mustered Soldiery regiments easily smash their way through the bulk of the defenses prepared by Macao's forces, leading Macao to pull his troops back to the continent known as Hades, which was a lightly populated continent with a number of mining complexes that the Seventh could use as pre-built defenses.

While the Seventh Amaris Dragoons could have drawn the campaign out substantially by switching to guerilla warfare, the harsh treatment the civilian population of Timbuktu were undergoing at the hands of the Draconis Combine troops enraged Macao who launched a number of precipitous raids in retaliation that sorely weakened the Seventh. With the civilian population of Hades being small enough that it was effectively negligible for the SLDF, the Task Force Timbuktu forces resorted to wholesale bombardment of the Seventh's positions; after nineteen days of sustained bombardment Macao surrendered the few surviving elements of the Dragoons, ending major combat actions on the planet on the 29th of July.

Coup, the Military Junta and Death

As with many captured high-ranking Rim Worlds military officers, Samuel Macao was interned after his surrender before being repatriated and returning to active duty in the reformed RWA after the conclusion of the conflict in 2596. He was also among those like Admiral Hakim Wbika who were increasingly dismayed that Gregory Amaris seemed even more arrogant and self-centred than before despite his nearly two decades of house-arrest on Apollo. Deeming Gregory Amaris to be a threat to the future of the Rim Worlds Republic, Wbika gathered together a group of like-minded officers to overthrow Amaris, culminating with Wbika himself personally shooting Gregory with a laser gun on 11 August 2599. In announcing the coup, Wbika made an impassioned speech that the time had come to overthrow the tyrant Gregory Amaris and that to ensure a peaceful transition that Richard Amaris would be the Republic's new president, albeit under the careful "guidance" of Wbika's "hand-picked staff", Macao promoted to the rank of General and serving in the military junta as Wbika's chief aide.

Richard Amaris had no intention of remaining a puppet of the junta however. Though Amaris would dutifully carry out Wbika's "advice" on good government at first, he was merely buying the time to study the weaknesses of the junta members and establish ties and support both in and outside the Rim worlds to launch a counter-coup. Amaris would ultimately focus on Samuel Macao, while highly capable Macao was also notorious for his exceedingly petty nature and inability to control his often violent temper. Seeing Macao's character flaws as the key, Richard slowly engineered obstructions and miscommunication among the members of the junta that ultimately triggered the stentorian-voiced Macao to angrily and aggressively turn on Wbika in 2604. Macao was totally unaware that his ranting was the signal for the guards loyal to Richard to purge the palace of junta members, with Richard himself shooting both Wbika and Macao to avenge the death of his father. Richard would later write in his memoirs that the most exquisite moment of his life was when he heard Macaco himself unwittingly giving the signal for the coup and his execution.

Bibliography

• Historical: Reunification War
• The Periphery (sourcebook)