Linda Chandrasekar

Linda Chandrasekar
Character Profile
Affiliation McCarron's Armored Cavalry
Rank Colonel

Linda Chandrasekar was the commanding officer of the for the Third McCarron's Armored Cavalry in 3025.[1]

History[edit]

Third Succession War[edit]

At some time in 3008, Linda Chandrasekar was interviewed by the Capellan Wire Service for her perspective on the Wolf's Dragoons attacks on the Confederation in 3006 and the response from McCarron's Armored Cavalry in 3007 on New Valencia. Her interview was part of the Ten Years with McCarron series.[2]

Fourth Succession War[edit]

In the Fourth Succession War, all regiments of McCarron's Armored Cavalry except for the First were stationed on Menke. They later fought a long campaign to defend Sarna.

After arriving in the Sarna system, AFFS forces led by the aggressive behavior of General Gordon Hartstone, the combat commander of the Fifth Syrtis Fusiliers, combined with a lack of military intelligence about the garrison on the planet cost the invading Federated Suns forces dearly. Hartstone had his DropShips accelerate towards Sarna at high speed, faster than the DropShips transporting the other forces, intent on arriving two days early and thereby giving his Fusiliers the chance to make their mark in the invasion. What the invasion forces were unaware of was that all four regiments of McCarron's Armored Cavalry were on Sarna, and the Fusiliers dropped in their midst. The initial landing zone was intended to be just north of the Gray River, but the proposed landing site proved untenable due to heavy mud and floodwater left over from local flooding, forcing the Fusiliers' DropShips to ground on higher ground to the northwest. As the Fusiliers deployed, the empty DropShips in orbit detected more than a hundred aerospace fighters converging on the Fusiliers position, forcing the DropShips in orbit to land on Sarna after destroying the defending AFFS aerospace fighters. The Capellan fighters then began an intense strafing and bombing campaign, savaging the Fusiliers attached aerospace wing and ground forces. The Second and Third Battalions of the Fusiliers were subjected to intense fighter attack with heavy casualties, while the First Battalion was harassed by fast-moving Savannah Master hovercraft. Even with supporting fire from the grounded DropShips, the Fusiliers losses were catastrophic; after shattering the three 'Mech battalions with aerospace forces and ambushes and leaving just a company of Fusilier 'Mechs fleeing into deep forest under the cover of forest fires behind them, the Big Mac used their aerospace fighters to destroy the bulk of the Fusiliers ten supporting regiments, with just two regiments surviving. Ten of the twenty DropShips that transported the conventional forces to Sarna were destroyed; the crews of six of the destroyed DropShips, the FSS Calona, FSS Deborah, FSS Hasek, FSS Haversham, FSS Minos, and FSS Parker, could have survived if they had abandoned the Fusiliers, but instead chose to fight until destroyed.[3]

Westrick's Black Cobras and the Screaming Eagles were still on approach to Sarna when the Fusiliers were destroyed, and were faced with an invidious choice; Sarna was obviously a brutal trap, but aborting the invasion would leave them in breach of contract, placing any future employment in jeopardy. The commanding officers of the three regiments including Westrick decided to press ahead with the invasion, but to alter the plans given to them by the COC in the hope that they could hold out long enough for reinforcements to arrive. All three regiments dropped at the Blackhole DZ, 200 km from where the Big Mac had destroyed the Fusiliers, after their DropShips made multiple in-flight course corrections to confuse the Big Mac's fighters. The drop was successful, with the mercenaries arriving on Sarna on the 29th of May and swiftly destroying the local militia forces near Backtal, securing the landing zone to enable their attached conventional forces to deploy. Narrowly avoiding a hidden minefield, Westrick's Black Cobras secured a weapons factory near Backtal after surprising the defending militia forces before the munitions stored there could be destroyed. Fighters from the Big Mac subsequently destroyed the factory complex, but not before the Black Cobras had secured significant quantities of autocannon ammunition and vibrabombs.[3]

With ComStar enacting a communications interdiction in response to the invasion of Sarna, the other DropShips and JumpShips in the system that had transported the invasion force acted on the last messages they received - false messages apparently indicating that everything was proceeding according to plan - and left the Sarna system, leaving the mercenaries unsupported. The Big Mac, believing that the mercenary drop was a decoy intended to lure them away from the capital, maintained a cautious defense until August, when it became apparent that the mercenaries were unsupported. In late August the four regiments of the Big Mac arrived near Backtal, where the Cobras and Eagles had been nervously awaiting a rapid demise; with the Big Mac finally attacking, the two mercenary commands elected to make their last stand in a region known as Graves Hollow, a forested valley some twenty kilometers in length, with numerous locations where strongholds could be fashioned or ambushes launched.[3]

The Black Cobras were the first unit to engage the Big Mac, battling the Third McCarron's Armored Cavalry after the Third stumbled across the defensive positions put in place by the Second Capac Infantry regiment. Colonel Westrick moved his forces swiftly along two parallel roads before dispersing them into the woods when the Third noticed them, turning the battle into a deadly free-for-all amidst the forest, where the two 'Mech forces fought amidst the huge trunks of the Saman Pine trees. Westrick's tactics allowed the Black Cobras to hold out long enough for the First Kluane Assault Tank Battalion to join the fray, with the Demolishers and Manticores of the First persuading Colonel Linda Chandrasekar of the Third to order her regiment to retreat.[3]

The battle fought by the Black Cobras was the first of many to be fought between the mercenaries and the various Big Mac regiments, losing roughly a quarter of their forces by early December, whilst inflicting at least as much damage on the Big Mac; despite the lack of word from the COC, the morale on the mercenary side was still high, until the Big Mac managed to slip through a lightly-guarded portion of the hollow to surround the mercenary forces. The Cobras and Eagles began what they thought would be the last battle, only to be saved by the appearance of more AFFS forces. Two of the premiere RCTs from the Davion Brigade of Guards, the Davion Heavy Guards and the Davion Light Guards, had arrived with no clear idea of the situation on Sarna until they received frantic messages from the mercenaries. The two Guards regiments skipped the usual planning stages for a drop and left their DropShips on the next orbit, a dangerous tactic that saw many of the Guards' 'Mechs scattered, but with the bulk of their strength behind the Big Mac regiments. With the Guards' conventional forces descending by DropShip, Colonel Archibald McCarron chose to save his regiments rather than try and finish the Cobras and the Eagles, staging a swift, fighting retreat against the vengeful Guards for several weeks before managing to reach his DropShips and escape, less a regiments worth of 'Mechs and personnel.[3]

References[edit]

  1. House Liao (The Capellan Confederation), p. 95: "McCarron's Armored Cavalry"
  2. Wolf's Dragoons, p. 10: "Professional Discourtesy"
  3. 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 NAIS The Fourth Succession War Military Atlas Volume 2, pp. 44–51: "Sarna"

Bibliography[edit]