Victor Nicholas
Sarna News
Victor Nicholas | |
|---|---|
| Personal | |
| Affiliation | Draconis Combine |
| Career | |
| Rank | Sho-sho[1] |
Victor Nicholas was the commanding officer of the Eighth Galedon Regulars as of 3025.[1]
History[edit]
Sho-sho Nicholas, serving with the Eighth Galedon Regulars, was stationed on Marlowe's Rift in 3025.[1]
Harrow's Sun[edit]
During the Fourth Succession War, Nicholas and the Eighth Regulars were dispatched to the Federated Suns' world of Harrow's Sun in order to enact the Combine's vengeance against the defending Wolf's Dragoons. Bad information caused Nicholas's forces to drop far from the Dragoons' positions and the Eighth's ensuing outrage saw the massacre of the entire town of Trenton. This act succeeded in drawing out some of the Dragoons' forces and the mercenaries gradually began to draw the Regulars northward towards the Dragoons' main positions. The Dragoons finally struck while Nicholas's men were attempting to ford the Jinxor River and the unprepared Regulars lost several transport vehicles and two BattleMechs before the Dragoons disengaged.[2]
Nicholas responded by pushing his men hard in order to catch up with the retreating Dragoons skirmishers and managed to strike Major Arthur Dumont's troops just as they exited the String Forest. The Regulars' superior firepower gained Nicholas the upper hand but a miraculous maneuver on Dumont's part allowed the Dragoons to once again disengage at the cost of an entire lance. A Dragoons counter-ambush in the Yustis Pass, this time including the command companies of the Dragoons' Gamma and Epsilon Regiments, once more dealt the Regulars an inordinate number of losses before the mercenaries fell back to their primary base at Fort Belvoir.[2]
Nicholas spent the rest of September 3028 forcing his way through the Fort's outermost defensive perimeter, although the determination of the Dragoons and the versatility of their FedSuns supporting troops dealt the Eighth Regulars a heavy toll. In October, Nicholas changed tactics and began a complete encirclement of Fort Belvoir in order to spread the smaller Dragoons force as thinly as possible before launching a major offensive. While this maneuver held the potential to force the Dragoons into retreat, the Regulars paused their repositioning in order to receive the go-ahead from higher up the Combine's chain of command. This momentary lull gave the mercenaries the chance to reorganize their defenses and turned a quick Combine victory into a bloody slog.[2]
Nicholas's first assault was launched on 11 December but met fierce resistance from Captain Elizabeth Nichole's company and failed to breach the Fort's defenses. For the next week, similar attacks met with the same result and the Eighth Regulars lost thirty BattleMechs to the Dragoons' twelve. Still, Nicholas remained confident of success due to his superior numbers and the spread-thin Dragoons elected to retreat further into their defensive lines in order to consolidate their remaining troops.[2]
By 3029, Nicholas had shifted tactics to rely on aerospace bombardment of Fort Belvoir's defenses, although his disdain for aerial units—typical for the DCMS as a whole—meant that he had not constructed landing strips for his fighters within adequate attack range of the Dragoons' base. The first bombing run on 13 February was a complete failure as the Galedon craft, weighed down by bombs and with no fuel for evasive maneuvers, were badly damaged or destroyed before reaching their targets. Further tactical changes enabled some bombing runs to succeed with minimal damage to Fort Belvoir but all other Combine ground assaults failed through the rest of February and March.[3]
Nicholas' recourse was to order two companies of his combat engineers to dig tunnels under the cover of probing attacks, which took them eight weeks to accomplish. On 25 June, the Dragoons discovered the tunnels in time to kill a platoon of infantry by collapsing one route, although the soldiers from the other seven tunnels quickly eliminated the mercenaries' militia support and claimed territory within the inner fort. With the Dragoons' attention split between the infantry inside their base and the 'Mechs assaulting their trenches, the battle quickly degenerated into a vicious melee that lasted for two days and dealt high casualties to both sides. By the time the Dragoons retreated to their spaceport and their DropShips guns forced Nicholas' men to break off, all of Epsilon Regiment's top officers were dead and less than half of the Dragoons' total forces were combat capable. On 27 July, the Dragoons left Harrow's Sun for Crossing, conceding victory to Nicholas and the Eighth Galedon Regulars.[3]