Wendon McGaines
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Wendon McGaines | |
|---|---|
| Personal | |
| Affiliation | Free Worlds League |
| Profile | |
| Rank | Colonel[1] |
Wendon McGaines was the commanding officer of the Free Worlds League task force assigned to capture Bella I during the First Succession War.[1]
History[edit]
In 2813, Colonel McGaines and the Sixth and Eighth Regulan Hussars arrived in the Bella I system to claim the world for the Free Worlds League. Knowing that the Lyran Commonwealth forces in-system would be able to detect and monitor his forces long before they could make planetfall, McGaines ordered his troops to make twice as many readiness checks as usual, while using outdated encryption protocols, and while pretending to also include the Fifth and Sixth Free Worlds Guards among their ranks. This ruse worked, leading the Lyran defenders to believe they faced an overwhelming force and causing them to implement emergency evacuation procedures.[1]
With Lyran aerospace forces assigned to escort evacuating DropShips and every BattleMech defending the planet's primary spaceport, McGaines' Hussars landed unopposed. McGaines then ordered his men to uphold their ruse by charging forwards recklessly while their DropShips returned to orbit, leading the Lyran commander to believe that a return trip from the League ships would deliver yet more rampaging 'Mechs. While the losses on both sides during the fighting around the spaceport were fairly equal, the Lyrans' morale broke first, with McGaines' ruse only falling apart once the Fifth and Sixth Free Worlds Guards actually arrived in-system. With the retreating Lyrans already halfway out of the system themselves, the arrival of the Guards marked the success of McGaines' operation to take Bella I.[1]