First Battle of Harlech (3067)

Part of The Jihad
Start Date 15 October 3067 Location Harlech Planet Outreach
Factions
	(Defender) Wolf's Dragoons
Forces involved
Waco Rangers Smithson's Chinese Bandits 51st Dark Panzer Jaegers Tiger Sharks	Home Guard

Overview of the Battle

The First Battle of Harlech was the unexpected attack upon Wolf's Dragoons' home planet of Outreach by rival mercenary groups hired by the Word of Blake.

Prelude to Battle

After Operation ODYSSEUS, the Dragoons saw the Blakists as a threat, and Operation GUERRERO confirmed their fears. The expansion of the Blakists, and the birth of Word of Blake Protectorate sounded alarm within the dragoons. The Allied Mercenary Command (AMC) was created on the 7th of March 3066 by Jaime Wolf as a response to Word of Blake expansionism in the Chaos March. The founding members included the Dismal Disinherited, the Northwind Highlanders and the Dragoons themselves.; The stated goal of the AMC was to provide aid to planets who wished to remain autonomous, but could not afford the military forces or mercenaries to stop a determined invasion. While Jaime expressed that the formation of the AMC was not a declaration of war against the Word of Blake, it was clear that the AMC was created to oppose it.

On 11 October 3067, the Word of Blake's liaison with the Waco Rangers, Leopold Jenkins, spoke to Wayne Waco to update him on plans, intending for an attack on Outreach after several days of preparation. Waco attempted to convince him to attack the same day. When the liaison refused, Wayne murdered Jenkins and proceeded with his own accelerated plan of attack.

The Attack

On October the 15th 3067 the Waco Rangers, Smithson's Chinese Bandits, the 51st Dark Panzer Jaegers, and the Tiger Sharks (4 mech regiments with support units) launched a well coordinated assault on Wolf's Dragoons.

• Smithson’s Chinese Bandits bombarded the DropPort and Home Guard base.
• Waco's Rangers and Smithson's Chinese Bandits ground forces landed at Temptown and then moved to assault Harlech.
• Tiger Sharks returned from a training cycle to join the attack against the AMC forces alongside the 51st Dark Panzer Jaegers.

AMC Forces included the Dragoons' Wolf Spiders Battalion, Zeta Battalion, and Beta and Epsilon regiments. The Broadsword Legion was hired to aid in the defense. Other disparate mercenary units stationed on Outreach at the time of the assault joined either side as they saw fit. Battle Magic, long allied with the Dragoons, was a primary target for Waco's units. Struck in the early hours of morning by Waco's aerial units, they were totally destroyed. Smithson's Chinese Bandits were instrumental in the first strike on Dragoons Home Guard compounds, deploying fuel-air bombs to destroy their objectives, including entire fighter squadrons at Harlech spaceport.

Early on the morning of October 15, a small force detached from the Fifty-first Dark Panzer Jaegers attempted to intercept and kill Dameon Guillome, VP of Logistics for GM-Blackwell, and his staff. While returning to the downtown headquarters of GM-Blackwell, he was alerted by security of a small force bearing down on the building. Reacting quickly, the staff negotiated a verbal contract with a small group of mercenaries who had arrived that morning for a meeting with Hugh Farragut, lead archaeologist on the Remus Dig Project. The mercenaries held off the Jaegers long enough for Mr. Guillome to leave Harlech and make it to Blackwell's secured corporate complex on Romulus. Intercepted comm logs - turned over by the mercenary heroes who recorded the transmissions - revealed when later analyzed that the Jaegers had a list of high-level GM-Blackwell administrators slated as "targets". With this new evidence, it was finally understood that Blackwell Chief Financial Officer Thomas Crown, who had perished when his penthouse apartment suffered damage from an errant missile strike, was actually a target and not a victim of an unfortunate accident.

The Rangers met so much success that new mercenaries, probably ones with grudges towards the Dragoons, began painting the Rangers' insignia on their 'Mechs and joining them. The Waco's Renegade Rangers, as Wayne called them, had between 200 and 300 'Mechs, but lacked organization or coordination, attacking more like a horde than a real unit.

An augmented lance of independent six MechWarriors led by Lieutenant Elton Rice was hired to serve with the Rangers. Yet they were so aghast at the extremes shown towards the Dragoons and Harlech civilians that they abandoned their contract and defended several thousand civilians sheltering in an office building. Their defense cost many of the lance's lives and all of their ’Mechs.

Dragoons Counterattack

Only the timely intervention of the Dragoons' Zeta Battalion stopped the rampant killing. The Wolf Spiders and Zeta Battalion fought the attackers and briefly secured the DropPort. Commander Jaime Wolf, coordinating operations from multiple command centers, launched a counterassault in conjunction with elements of Beta and Epsilon regiments recalled from Remus, to finally contain the renegade threat. The mercenary group Ace Darwin's WhipIts sided with the Dragoons, but despite gathering two companies of other mercenaries, were overpowered by Waco's units on the city outskirts. Ace Darwin, piloting his characteristic pink Panther, was killed in the fight.

Converging from three directions, the Dragoons caught most of Waco's forces in a classic encirclement. Each side fought fiercely, with quarter neither asked nor given. In a climactic battle, Wayne Waco led a company of 'Mechs against Wolf's lance in the shadow of the destroyed Hiring Hall. Although it has been said than Waco's frenzy attacking the Dragoons was fueled by the belief than the Word of Blake forces would arrive to support them, by 18 October, Waco was well aware that no support was coming for his not-quite-authorized attack; the furious assault was known to be suicidal from the start, and Waco didn't expect to do more than hurt the Dragoons. In the end, Commander Wolf and his lance destroyed all Waco's forces, fighting the renegades to the death, until only Jaime Wolf and Wayne's 'Mechs stood. Wolf finished the battle on his own, bringing down Waco's command even while dying from mortal wounds. Wolf's Archer, battle-ravaged and surrounded by a field of destroyed 'Mechs, was still on its feet when allied forces finally made it to the scene, the ruins of Colonel Waco's BattleMaster sprawled before it.

Commander Wolf's death only seemed to galvanize the Dragoons. Brian Cameron took the command of the Dragoons, ordering Condition Feral, a bloody no-mercy policy. The Dragoons' counteroffensive gained the strength and character of a berserker fury. In less than a day, the Dragoons swept Harlech clean of the last renegade forces in a brutal action. No further renegade activity was reported after or since, and even the looting one might expect after such devastation had been minimal in the past 48 hours.

The Mercenary group Lone Wolves, divided between pro-Waco and pro-Dragoons, had begun fighting within the company. Some renegade Lone Wolves then broke free and joined forces with the attackers, which prompted many of the rest to fight on the side of Wolf's Dragoons, partially to save the Wolves' reputation. The Committee had the majority of the group leave the planet, hunting down the defectors and renegades, destroying their stolen DropShip in a brief battle at their jump point. Ironically, the pro-Dragoons faction who stay behind were mistaken as pro-Blakist and destroyed by the Dragoons.

In the four days of heavy fighting, civilian casualties in the battle were at least a quarter of million dead, and three or four times wounded. Harlech City's infrastructure, power, and water supply, was severely damaged, and most people had to burn bodies on the streets to prevent disease outbreak. Dragoons military losses were terrific: The Home Guard and Epsilon Regiment were destroyed. Beta Regiment casualties were estimated at thirty-five percent, and Zeta and Wolf Spiders battalions were between thirty-five and fifty percent, respectively.

Aftermath

Enraged, the dragoons launched a counterstrike led by the AMC against the Word of Blake forces in the Battle of Mars. The battle ended in disaster as the AMC forces were intercepted in orbit and largely destroyed. The units wiped out in the ill-fated assault were Beta Regiment, Zeta Battalion, and a battalion of Home Guard, along with the Second Dismal Disinherited and Lindon's Battalion.

The Word of Blake would soon retaliate with a major assault on Outreach, the Second Battle of Harlech this time with the goal of destroying the Dragoons directly. Defeated on the ground, the Word of Blake had WarShips waiting in orbit, and when it was determined victory would not come through a ground battle alone, they launched nuclear strikes against the Dragoons, completely devastating the unit and Harlech. General Maeve Wolf gathered what survivors she could and evacuated with the assistance of Clan Wolf-in-Exile and the Kell Hounds, finding sanctuary on Arc-Royal. The First Harlech was one of the first attacks of the Jihad.

Notes

• Although a number of mercenary units in the employ of the Word of Blake went through with the initial attack on Wolf's Dragoons, at least one minor unit broke its contract with their employer (implied to have been a Blakist surrogate) rather than take part in the attack, and a number of personnel abandoned units that had honored their contracts, choosing to instead retreat away from Harlech.
• First Harlech was a graveyard for mercenary units: Ace Darwin's WhipIts and Battle Magic, from the Dragoons' side, and The Waco Rangers, Smithson's Chinese Bandits, the 51st Dark Panzer Jaegers, and the Tiger Sharks, from the attackers, were totally annihilated. Between the Battle of Mars and Second Harlech, the Dismal Disinherited and Lindon's Battalion were annihilated. Even the Dragoons were almost totally destroyed, reduced to barely a regiment full of broken and traumatized warriors.

Bibliography

• BattleCorps Solaris Broadcasting Co., 28/10/3067: "Blackwell to Honor Merc Heroes'"
• An Ice-Cold Dish (in: Shrapnel, Issue 5)
• Jihad Hot Spots: 3070
• A Line in the Dust
• Total Chaos