Jacqueline Fincher
Sarna News
Jacqueline Fincher | |
|---|---|
| Personal | |
| Affiliation | Lyran Commonwealth |
| Career | |
| Rank | Leutnant-General[1] |
Jacqueline Fincher was the commanding officer of the Twenty-third Arcturan Guards during the War of 3039.[1]
History[edit]
During the War of 3039's first wave, Leutnant-General Fincher and the Twenty-third Arcturan Guards—accompanied by the command company of the Fifth Donegal Guards—were tasked with conquering the Draconis Combine's Alrakis system. While Alrakis was essentially a stepping stone on the path to taking more important worlds, the presence of the Eleventh Legion of Vega, former unit of Gunji-no-Kanrei Theodore Kurita, made it a tempting symbolic target. On 16 April, the Arcturan Guards' initial landings caught Alrakis' defenders unprepared and managed to successfully drive the Eleventh Legion out of their barracks despite the Combine force's numerical advantage. Fincher's follow-up landings took the planetary capital of Sigmundrac and forced the Eleventh Legion to spend an entire week attempting to regain the initiative, resulting in the Legion taking sizable casualties.[1]
As Fincher's Arcturans pushed the Eleventh Legion against the Caradhradene Mountains, the enemy unit's commander realized the depths of his predicament and ordered his men to retreat off-world. By 24 April, the last Vegan soldiers had left Alrakis and the Lyran Commonwealth Armed Forces' high command canceled the arrival of the rest of the Fifth Donegal Guards, having deemed Fincher's troops more than capable of pacifying the planet's citizens.[1]
Matters on Alrakis turned grim for the Twenty-third Arcturans when both the Eleventh Legion of Vega and Eighth Alshain Regulars counterattacked at the height of a local festival, leaving many of the Lyrans' celebrating troops unprepared for the invasion. The situation worsened when several units of Alrakis militia imprisoned Lyran soldiers who were too busy celebrating or too intoxicated to resist, although these militia units soon overestimated their abilities and were eliminated when they pushed against the capital city. By the time the militia's initial resistance was crushed, the invading Combine units had managed to land uncontested and quickly surrounded Sigmundrac while awaiting further militia reinforcements. On 23 July, Combine soldiers infiltrated the capital's underground sewers and aquifers in order to plant several explosives underneath Fincher's headquarters building, setting the stage for a push on the city proper.[2]
That night, the Combine besiegers advanced on Sigmundrac as the Eleventh Legion's commander called on Fincher to surrender, with the Arcturan commander immediately refusing her enemy's request. At that moment, the explosives planted during the earlier infiltration were detonated, collapsing Fincher's command building into the sewers and nearly decapitating the Twenty-third Arcturans. Twenty-three members of the unit's command staff were killed and seven other officers—including Fincher—would later be dug out of the rubble by Combine troops and imprisoned for the remainder of the war. Fincher's Twenty-third Guards would ultimately lose the battle for Alrakis, although she was personally repatriated to the Commonwealth after the conclusion of hostilities.[2]