Battle of Andurien (3039)

Battle of Andurien (3039)
Conflict details
Part of	Andurien Secession
Start Date	10 June 3039
End Date	January 3040
Planet(s)	Andurien
Result	Free Worlds League victory
Territorial Changes	Duchy of Andurien surrender
Attacking Forces
Affiliation	Free Worlds League
Commanding Officer(s)	Captain-General Thomas Marik
Command(s)	First Free Worlds Guards (Initial), Third Free Worlds Guards (September), Eleventh Atrean Dragoons (Initial), First Marik Militia (Initial), Tenth Marik Militia (September), First Fusiliers of Oriente (Initial), Second Fusiliers of Oriente (Initial), Stewart Dragoons' Home Guard (September), Eighth Orloff Grenadiers (September), First Regulan Hussars (Initial), Always Faithful (September)
Defending Forces
Affiliation	Duchy of Andurien
Commanding Officer(s)	Duchess Catherine Humphreys
Command(s)	First Defenders of Andurien, Third Defenders of Andurien, Fourth Defenders of Andurien, Fifth Defenders of Andurien, Sixth Defenders of Andurien
Other Forces

Prelude

Following the April 3039 surrender of Lurgatan, the Andurien Secession movement had been reduced to one unoccupied world, the capital Andurien. Where previously the Duchy of Andurien forces had fall back worlds that spared the civilian centers the gruesome cost of heroic last stands, there was no such option any longer. From late April until 19 May the two factions held ComStar arbitrated peace talks in Terra's Geneva. Despite intransigence by both parties on particular points, Primus Myndo Waterly did succeed in securing agreements on ComStar-facilitated humanitarian supplies, inviolable HPG and medical facilities, and civilian safe havens all protected by the newly revealed Com Guards. To underscore this Primus' point, both parties were invited to a demonstration of what the Com Guards' Star League technology–equipped force was capable of.

With negotiations having failed, the invasion was slated to begin on 10 June. With the exception of the invasion of Tikonov in the Fourth Succession War, this was the largest military operation so far in the thirty-first century, and by the end of the campaign would involve more troops than any aside from the Battle of Tukayyid. Facing the League forces were all five Defenders of Andurien combined-arms units, who though they were bloodied were all hardened combat veterans at this point.

Overview

Orbital Battle

On 10 June the JumpShips of the Eleventh Atrean Dragoons, First Marik Militia, and First Fusiliers of Oriente jumped into the polar jump points of Andurien. They were met with token resistance at the zenith recharge station and the cargo transfer stations at the poles. But the Defenders never expected those stations to hold, they were to report troop strength for the invaders, which they did. Unknown to the Defenders, the First Free Worlds Guards, Second Fusiliers of Oriente, and First Regulan Hussars had come into the system at an oblique pirate point, and it would be sometime before the Defenders realized their force projections were off by half. The main fleet settled in for a leisurely burn towards the planet, both out of an abundance of caution and to keep the Defenders focused on them. On 25 June the Defenders had massed a flotilla of aerospace fighters and attack DropShips which slashed through the FWLM flotilla with the help of slingshot velocity from the outer moon, Betic. Expecting such a maneuver the FWLM fighter screen and attack ships were deployed, and the space quickly became a massive battle. The FWLM lost a cargo transport, two assault DropShips and more than thirty aerospace fighters compared to the Defenders' six assault DropShips and fifty fighters. The Defenders pulled back to the moon in order to regroup, only to receive demoralizing news, FWLM troops were already on Andurien. As the Defenders focused on the main flotilla, the three regiments from the pirate point made a quick and mostly stealthy orbital insertion. Andurien space controllers registered the insertion, but had no uncommitted aerospace assets to oppose them with.

Gaining a Bridgehead

The First Free Worlds Guards landed first, dropping on top of the military DropPort of the coastal city of Hulan, roughly 1,000 km north of the capital city Jojoken. Their landing was bitterly opposed by the militia forces stationed there, but after thirty minutes of hard fighting the militia commander recognized they could not hold and surrendered to spare his troops. The Second Fusiliers of Oriente and First Regulan Hussars likewise dropped onto logistic and administrative centers around northern Altay, facing equally stiff resistance but also managing to expand the bridgehead. Within 24 hours the regiments from the main flotilla had touched down at the Hulan DropPort and elsewhere, firmly implanting the FWLM on Andurien.

The Defenders forces did what they could to oppose these landings, but Dame Catherine was well aware her meager forces could not dislodge them completely. Opting to bleed them as much and where possible, she still sent a series of probing and recon raids into the bridgehead. The FWLM would not achieve air superiority for several weeks, during which time several dogfights and recon missions occurred in the skies above northern Altay. The first major clash would not come until the second week of August in the town of Callan, about 500 km from Jojoken.

The First Regulan Hussars surprised a battalion of the Third Defenders of Andurien just west of Callan and immediately pushed on the offensive. The heavier Defenders battalion took heavy casualties at first and continued to give ground for the first several hours of the engagement. Unnoticed by the Regulan commander Colonel Tomaso Kinchuhara, the Defender retrogrades had the effect of positioning the Hussars in ground of the Defenders' choosing. Once the maneuvers positioned the Hussars where the Defenders wanted, they launched a series of counterattacks which pushed the Hussars into constrictive terrain between the town of Callan and the adjacent river, forcing the Hussars to endure the fire and pray superior numbers carried the day. The fighting was so intense that Colonel Kinchuhara's aide, Lieutenant Alex Upland, scored three ’Mech kills though nominally a noncombatant. As night fell the tempo began to tamper off, leading Kinchuhara to worry the Defenders would try to break contact. From his Orion he ordered his front lines to put a little pressure while hovercraft flankers helped to create the illusion on encirclement. As dawn broke the next morning the Defenders tried to disengage by shifting the line to the west. Unfortunately for them, their line of march put them right into the Eleventh Atrean Dragoons who were moving to support the Hussars. Now caught between two regiments, the Defenders were annihilated to the last ’Mech. After 22 hours of constant contact, the Battle of Callan was over, claiming the life of Michael Humphreys, heir to the Duchy. The presence of an Armor Colonel suggests while the Defenders might have had a battalion of ’Mechs, they had at least a regiment of combat vehicles present.

As the Battle of Callan was wrapping up in the League's favor, the Defenders put their own points on the board in Baroda. Beta Company, First Battalion, First Marik Militia had been assigned to deploy sensor drones along the Darnel Bridge, 60 km north of Baroda. Their mission complete they were preparing to withdraw when elements of the First Defenders of Andurien surprised them and destroyed the company to a ’Mech. The sensors Beta had planted captured their fate as four MechWarriors managed to eject. Shortly after landing, a mob of Baroda civilians descended on them and began beating the MechWarriors, then hanged them from the Darnel Bridge. Andurien forces arrived to scatter the mob shortly afterwards, but it was too late for those MechWarriors. FWLM commanders accepted that Andurien troops had no role in this breach of the Ares Convention, but the Anduriens likewise refused to turn over the responsible parties to League authorities. The First Defenders eventually withdrew back to Baroda around November 9 as the First and Second Fusiliers of Oriente maneuvered to put pressure on the Defenders.

Incensed by the atrocity on the Darnel Bridge, the First Free Worlds Guards became even more aggressive than usual. On 19 August they encountered the Fourth Defenders of Andurien 30 km west of the bridge and thus began a brutal slugfest that lasted four days. Each sought to utterly annihilate the other over the bad blood spilled previously on Cursa. While the Guards were so badly mauled they had to be taken off the line for months, the Fourth Defenders ceased to exist

Reinforcements

The overall slow progress, along with the losses taken by the First Guards, Captain-General Marik tapped his reserves and brought the Stewart Dragoons' Home Guard, Tenth Marik Militia, and the mercenary Always Faithful into the fray. He also brought in two units that sought to either capitalize on or restore their tarnished reputations, the Eighth Orloff Grenadiers and the Third Free Worlds Guards. The Grenadiers had reinforced their infamous reputation with civilian carnage in their conquest of Sadurni, while the Guards had recently been expelled from Hsien following the League's ill-fated attempt to capitalize on the War of 3039.

The Regulan Hussars, Orloff Grenadiers and the First Fusiliers encircled the city of Qinda which the remnants of the Third Defenders were using as a base of operations after losing a battalion at Callan. Recognizing they were unable to break out, the Defenders instead withdrew into the city and prepared for block-to-clock fighting. The FWLM forces reluctantly obliged and began a three week operation to dig the Defenders out. The FWLM would lose nearly sixty ’Mechs in this process, but the Defenders lost all forty-five remaining ’Mechs.

On 6 November the pivotal battle of the campaign began when a company of Second Battalion, First Marik Militia probed into the city of Baroda only to be cut off and surrounded by the Sixth Defenders of Andurien in what surely seemed like a cruel replay of the Darnell Bridge debacle several months before, this time on a company scale. The recon lance took crippling casualties, losing all but Staff Sergeant Adrianna Chowla and her MON-66 Mongoose. Rather than attempting to break out, Chowla reasoned the Militia would send a rescue when they failed to report, thus her best chance to survive was paradoxically to go deeper behind Andurien lines and gain as much intelligence as possible to aid in that rescue effort. The First's commander, Colonel Shanna del Ray reacted as Chowla had anticipated, and launched a series of raids to draw the First Defenders' attention away from the beleaguered company while calling in the Third Guards, Orloff Grenadiers, and Always Faithful for assistance. Chowla's presence behind the lines allowed her to not only evaluate the fortifications the Sixth was erecting, but spot the First Defenders as they slipped into the city on 9 November. That same day, the remains of Chowla's company managed to link up with FWLM forces and return to their side of the line, though Chowla remained. Several times Chowla was able to slip away from the Defenders and broadcast her intelligence to FWLM forces. The Defenders spotted her several times, quickly attributing the "Ghost ’Mech" nickname to her. She usually evaded all contacts, but not all of them. In a duel that would later be used as a training module at the Allison MechWarrior Institute, Chowla defeated a VND-1R Vindicator, a feat that was even more impressive when battle ROM revealed she intentionally disabled one of her medium lasers when the cooling jacket was damaged in order to ensure the fidelity of her Beagle Active Probe scans. Despite the accurate intelligence Chowla provided, the fight for Baroda was a meat grinder, with the Always Faithfull losing nearly all their infantry and armor support. In hopes of bringing the battle to an end, the Regulan Hussars were added to the ledger, though the Defenders refused to yield. Though additional forces remained on planet to be thrown as Baroda, Thomas Marik waged that Dame Humphreys had grown used to his slow and steady pace; while the Baroda battle raged, he sought an end run around the few Andurien forces not committed to that battle

On 2 December the Second Fusiliers pushed into Jojoken, focusing on the military complexes in the northern part of the city like the Andurien Aerotech complex. After pushing through the Botanical Gardens they were finally met by the Fifth Defenders who forced the Second Fusiliers into a bloody street battle. Among the Fifth was lance commander Sally Hoffman. For two hours the Second remained bogged down as the Defenders unleashed all they could on them. They lost nearly twenty ’Mechs, half their vehicles, and more than three hundred infantry but it was the loss of Colonel Ricardo Fuentes' ’Mech to Inferno SRMs that nearly broke their resolve. At long last, the pressure eased off as the Defenders were set reeling from a new threat; the First Fusiliers in their rear. While the Defenders were focused on the First, the Second had circled around to the southern edge of the city and forded the deep Amur River. Aided by reconnaissance aircraft and Land-Air ’Mechs they were able to avoid major pockets of Defenders until they poured into the rear of the Fifth's main body. The Defenders shattered like glass on ferrocrete, breaking into disorganized lance-sized formations that were easily defeated in detail over the next several days. The military and governmental offices like the People's Assembly in Jojoken would not hold out as long, all of them being secured later on the 2nd. Footage of the First Fusiliers celebrating on the steps of the Humphreys Palace were a propaganda coup. But, Dame Humphreys was nowhere to be found, nor did FWLM intelligence discover any indication of her whereabouts amid the government papers.

The Eleventh Atrean Dragoons had set up a cordon around a southern suburb near the Amur River, looking to crush a resistance cell operating in the area. Unknown at the time, Dame Humphreys had been caught in that perimeter and had been unable to break out. With no hope of escape and hoping to spare her citizens any more pointless suffering she approached an Atrean checkpoint on 19 December, announced herself as the Duchess, and surrendered. Almost immediately afterwards she was before holovid cameras to record an order to all Anduriens to cease resistance and lay down their arms, which was broadcast on all Andurien channels.

Despite the loss of Jojoken and the capture of Humphreys, the fires of war in Baroda still burned brightly. This too came to a head on 27 December when First Battalion, First Marik Militia allowed themselves to be pinned down after several days of raiding. The Defenders, enraged by the continuous pricks they had taken in those raids failed to see the trap until it was too late. Second Battalion under command of Force Commander Paul Masters had sprinted around to the left flank of the Sixth Defenders. His light and medium ’Mechs formed a wedge with Masters' PXH-3M "Roc" Phoenix Hawk at the tip and punched through the Sixth's flanks then poured out of the rear. As the Sixth turned to address this new threat Second Battalions' came up behind the wedge, enveloping the Sixth and collapsing the entire line, followed shortly thereafter by organized Andurien resistance. The Andurien Secession was over.

Aftermath

Duchess Catherine Humphreys was brought up on charges of treason, but died of a massive heart attack on 19 March 3040 before her trial began. With her death, Captain-General Marik pardoned most of the surviving military and political leaders of the secession, which greatly helped with reconciliation. Paramilitary activities continued on Andurien for several years however, culminating in the execution of a dozen insurgents against a wall of the Botanical Gardens in May 3040, earning it the appellation of "Martyr's Wall" among the natives. Though pardoned for the secession, it did not spare those who committed atrocities for the Duchy, and there were several jail sentences and executions handed down for such crimes, including for the Darnell Bridge Incident. The Defenders of Andurien were disbanded, their equipment (and many personnel) forming the Free Worlds Legionnaires. Though cleared of wrong doing, there continued to be a bias against Anduriens; twenty years later Colonel Sally Hoffman would be the highest ranking Andurien in the FWLM as commander of the Third Sirian Lancers. Finally, the right of House Humphreys to rule the Duchy was suspended, a federal governor would rule in their stead until 3048 when Dalma Humphreys, daughter of Catherine's fifth son Richard would be allowed to resume authority over the realm.

Bibliography

• Field Manual: Free Worlds League
• Historical: Brush Wars
• Phoenix Hawk Lore and Blueprint
• Technical Readout: 3050 Upgrade
• Technical Readout: Succession Wars