Task Force Serpent

Task Force Serpent was a multi-unit task force tasked with executing a secret military operation commissioned by the newly formed SLDF under the aegis of Marshal Morgan Hasek-Davion. Task Force Serpent's goal was to sneak back to the Clan Smoke Jaguar homeworld of Huntress and destroy it. The mission ran concurrent to Operation Bulldog - an operation whose goal was to drive the Smoke Jaguars from the worlds they occupied in the Inner Sphere. Although Morgan Hasek-Davion died en route, Ariana Winston of the Eridani Light Horse succeeded him and completed the mission. She too, however, was killed in her 'Mech, a Cyclops, during the battle for Huntress, homeworld of the Smoke Jaguars.

Units

Ground units

• Eridani Light Horse - RCT
  • 21st Striker Regiment
  • 71st Light Horse
  • 151st Light Horse
• Northwind Highlanders - 1 Regiment (3 Mech-Batallions) + one Mech-company of the Royal Black Watch
• First Kathil Ulans - 1 Regiment (4 Mech-Batallions)
• one batallion of the Second St. Ives Lanciers
• Kingston's Rangers - 1 Regiment (2 Mech-Batallions + infantry)
• Knights of the Inner Sphere - 1 Regiment (3 Mech-Batallions + Infantry)
• Eleventh Lyran Guards - RCT
• Second ComGuards Division
• Fourth Rasalhague Drakons - 1 Mech-Batallion

Special ops

• DEST - Teams 4, 5 and 6; ten people each
• MI6 - two teams; ten people each
• ROM - one agent

Additionally, Theodore Kurita deployed a team of five Nekekami, which revealed themselves only to the present head of Task Force Serpent. However, one of them, Honda Tan, was a doubleagent from purportedly Word of Blake.

Fleet

• Invisible Truth - Comstar, Cameron-class
• Ranger - Comstar, Lola III-class
• Smaragd - Comstar, Essex-class
• Starlight - Comstar, Essex-class
• Haruna - Draconis Combine, Kyushu-class
• Antrim - Federated Commonwealth, Fox-class
• Rostock - Federated Commonwealth, Fox-class
• Firefang - Whirlwind-class; captured from Clan Ghost Bear during the operation

Additionally the fleet consisted of several Monolith-, Starlord- and Invader-class Jumpships.

History

En route

Task Force Serpent assembled on Fort Defiance, a barren planet deep in the Mark Crucis of the Federated Commonwealth, which was mostly used for military training maneuvers. There the various units trained fighting alongside each other and against simulated clan forces. Simultaneously, the DEST- and MI6-teams trained the boarding of spaceships.

It started on May 1st 3059, first jumping to Tsamma, where Morgan Hasek-Davion exchanged several damaged Mechs from Task Force Serpent against Mechs from the planetary militia.

Task Force Serpent went along a route, that brought them near the Outworld Alliance. They went on with a route, parallel to those commonly used by the clans.

In November 3059 Task Force Serpent arrived in the Meribah-system, with a habitable planet. Morgan Hasek Davion ordered a Mule dropship to get fresh drinking water from that planet. The 5th Striker Batallion of the 21st Striker Regiment of the Eridani Light Horse was to serve as guards. However, the Eridani were encountered by several bandits: Meribah was the base of a group of space pirates. Luckily, their main force was gone for a raid. The Eridani destroyed the base and released the slaves. The captured pirates were court-martialed and their bosses were executed. (The fate of the pirates led to deep ethic problems among the commanders of Task Force Serpent. Morgan Hasek-Davion had the final say, but the friendly feelings were gone.)

On December 15th Task Force Serpent stumbled over a small fleet of Clan Ghost Bear: one Congress, two Whirlwinds and an Invader. The warships of TSF engaged the Ghost-Bear-warships, while the DEST-teams conquered the Invader.
The Haruna, the Starlight and the Ranger suffered heavy armour damages. The Starlight lost one of it's naval PPCs. The Firefang was the only Ghost Bear-ship, that could be salvaged. The Congress could have been repaired if a shipyard had been available.

TSF spent several days with repairs and left then. Just as it left the system (later dubbed Gibraltar) it encountered an abnormal jumping signature, which was noted, but nobody bothered.

In late December, the remaining pirates in custody and the surviving Ghost Bears were exiled on a habitable planet.

Death of Morgan Hasek-Davion

In the night of the 2nd January 3060 to the 3rd January, Morgan Hasek-Davion was poisoned with a rare venom. The assassin had put it into his Whiskey. Captain Roger Montjar from MI6 led the inquiry and was later supported by Sho-sa Michael Ryan from DEST.

They found out, that this was the work of a professional assassin, as he had used a sophisticated expensive electronic code-cracking device. They also found out, that they have five people in the fleet, that simply did not exist before they had entered Comstar: It was the five Nekekami. One of them, Rumiko Fox, was put under a lie-detector-test, but it yielded unclear results. The next candidate was Honda Tan (with the false alias Lucas Penrose). He killed the guards that arrested him and fled. When he was surrounded by other guards, he claimed that he had planted a bomb somewhere on the ship and demanded General Ariana Winston as a hostage. She complied. As Ariana Winston blamed him for killing Morgan Hasek-Davion, Lucas Penrose replied how proud he was of his skills and that bombs are such a crude method compared to venom. As they spoke, Ariana Winston got closer and closer, until she was able to attack him. They both wrestled until Penrose was hit (maybe by Kasugai Hatsumi) with a poisoned Shuriken. Penrose lost his gun and Ariana Winston shot him the same second. However, as guards and MedTechs stormed in, Kasugai Hatsumi (disguised as a MedTech) retrieved the Shuriken.

After Ariana Winstons wounds had been treated, Kasugai Hatsumi contacted her. He revealed the existence of the Nekekami-team and made up a story, that put all blame on Penrose. He also demanded the release of Rumiko Fox.

General Ariana Winston was named new head of Task Force Serpent.

Shortly after the funeral of Morgan Hasek-Davion, the ships of TSF recieved a broadband transmission of Alexander Kerensky himself. It was a declaration, why he had left the Inner Sphere. As the message was travelling with merely lightspeed, it would reach the Inner Sphere several centuries, after it had been sent.

Sabotage on Huntress

During the battle of Gibraltar, TSF had captured a Broadsword. The DEST-teams used this ship to infiltrate the Huntress-system. They left it with parachutes, while the dropship faked a crash and disappeared. The DEST-teams reached the C3-center and SDS-command-center of Huntress and destroyed them with several bombs. However, they had to fight their way out of it and lost several teammates. Afterwards, they hid in the wilderness, waiting for the rest of TSF.

Huntress was now much more vulnerable to an invasion by warships.

Assault on Huntress

On March 5th 3060, the fleet of Task Force Serpent entered the Huntress-System. They encountered three Smoke Jaguar-warships: one Sovetskii Soyuz and two Vincents. The Sovetskii-Soyuz and one Vincent were destroyed, the other Vincent was merely wrecked. TSF lost the Rostock and the Smaragd and Starlight were heavily damaged.

• The Eridani Light Horse attacked the planetary capital Lutera: The 21st Striker Regiment and the 151st Light Horse attacked a huge sibko-training-camp just outside Lutera. The 71st Light Horse conquered the Genetic Archive and suffered heavy losses with the infantry. They had to be reinforced by the 3rd section of the 2nd ConGuards Division.
• The First Kathil Ulans attacked the city Myers with only minor problems.
• The Northwind Highlanders attacked Pahn City with it's Mech-factories. Due to Trent's informations, they were able to jam the frequencies of the defending smoke Jaguars, thus crippling their defensive efforts.
• The Second St. Ives Lanciers and the Fourth Rasalhague Drakons attacked a small sibko-camp on the other side of the planet. They lost five Mechs.
• The Knights of the Inner Sphere and Kingston's Rangers attacked a large sibko-camp near the city New Andery. After a long and hard battle, they were hit hard by Protomechs and the flank-attack of a frontline-class-cluster. They had to retreat into the jungle with heavy losses. They were reinforced by the 1st and 2nd section of the 2nd ComGuards Division, finally ensuring a victory.
• The Eleventh Lyran Guard landed near Bagera, but just as they were shipping out their Mechs, they were attacked by a small force of Mechs and Elementals. Due to all that chaos it took too long to take them out and the Lyran Guard suffered several losses. Just as they marched to Bagera, they were attacked by a frontline-class-cluster and had to retreat. Marshall Sharon Byron was wounded during the battle and ordered artillery-fire from the warships in the orbit. The attacking cluster was wiped out in a single salvo. The Eleventh Lyran Guard had lost about half of it's Mechs.
• The MI6-agents, the rabid foxes, established a perimeter outside the Jade Falcon-base, to keep an eye on them.

Just about three Trinaries of Smoke Jaguar-forces survived and regrouped in the wilderness under the command of Galaxycommander Russou Howell. While Task Force Serpent systematically destroyed and pillaged all military and industrial structures (they even destroyed statues honoring Smoke Jaguar heroes), the remaining Smoke Jaguars staged a succesfull raid on the Northwind Highlanders, capturing amunition and supplies.

Smoke Jaguar reinforcements

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Avoiding annihilation

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