KnightofTempest
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Chapter 38
🕑 Added 2024-07-23 01:49:21 +0000 UTCThe Area around Dadaocheng was a Grassy Plateau. The Dao Sing Plains jutted up from the Dao Sing Highlands that surrounded them, itself a relatively dry patch of land amidst the everpresent wetlands that seemed to form the bulk of the landmass of Oberon Six. Much of the area of the Plain was given over to agriculture, though the Highlands themselves were dotted with various mining sites, all of it had seemingly been evacuated in advance of our attack.
Instead, as we moved through the Highlands and the Plataeu towards the network of bunkers, trenches, and fortresses that formed the Dadaocheng Line surrounding Dadaocheng City, we passed by abandoned farms, burning fields, booby-trapped mine shafts, and empty villages. It seemed like Hendrik Grimm was taking no chances that we might be able to get anything useful out of the Plateau or Highlands on our way toward the Line. Fortunately, we didn't need to forage for supplies and could get straight to the fighting.
Our first skirmish happened just before we reached the main area of the Dadaocheng Line, near the town of Ciji, known for its ceramics works. The Hipparchs of Delta Company, Beta Battalion, of Colonel Wetere's Eight Guards Regiment, which had been scouting ahead ran straight into an ambush by a concealed Thumper Artillery Position. We lost two Hipparchs before they managed to find the small, camouflaged, bunker and light it up. That wasn't the end of the skirmishes though, as Eight Guards lost a third Hipparch to an anti-Hovercraft Mine shortly after that.
The remaining Hipparchs opted to stop until the minefield could be cleared, and Eighth Guards brought up infantry from Beta Company of Delta Battalion to do so, only for another pair of concealed bunkers, these ones sporting machine guns, to open up on the infantry that were clearing the minefields. After losing forty-five infantry and three Hipparchs to surprise ambushes from concealed positions, Colonel Wetere decided to clear the minefield and any bunkers via artillery.
Long Toms from Gamma Company under Major Hohepa opened up on the position, demolishing the minefield with high explosives and cracking open several hidden gun positions including the two Machine Gun Bunkers, one Hidden Thumper Position, and an Underground Vehicle Hangar that seemed to host a number of Scimitar, Saladin, and Saracen Hover Tanks that had been lying in wait to ambush Eighth Guards' Recon Vehicles should they bypass the minefields and clear the Machine Gun and Thumper positions.
Instead, the Scimitars, Saladins, and Saracens were flushed out of their hidden hangar and forced to engage with Eight Guards' Beta Batallion as a whole while surprised. A running engagement ensued that routed the hidden forces back to Ciji and the Big Fortress There at the cost of Two LTV-Fours and an Ignis destroyed or damaged on Eighth Guards' side. Still, the Skirmish outside of Ciji had cost. Sixteen Percent of Eighth Guards' Combat Vehicles had been destroyed or damaged, while Beta Company of Delta Battalion had lost eighteen percent of its strength in the ambush at the minefield.
I pulled Eighth Guards Back and took Second Guards Ahead for the battle at the big fort, we were supported by Colonel Kelly and Fourth Guards, Colonel Dimitrou and Seventh Guards, and Colonel Zelenski and Twelfth Guards. Ciji was an important town for the Oberon War Effort, so I wasn't taking any chances and hitting it with four regiments as the tip of the spear.
The Town itself was dominated by the ceramics industry. While that did mean that consumer goods were made here, it also meant that Armor Composite was made here for use in standard armor for mechs and vehicles, as were the composite ceramics that went into personal armor, heat sinks, and a half a dozen other components critical to supplying an army. There were also ammunition factories and an electronics factory for the production of munitions and electronic components, but the sheer scope of the ceramics factories made those sectors a distant second in terms of the local economy.
Accordingly, Hendrik Grimm would have known that Ciji would be too tempting a target to take en route to Dadaocheng City. That was why he chose to make it a major strong point in the Dadaocheng Line. The roads into town were covered by bunkers with Autocannon and SRM Launchers studded on them. No doubt the inside of the town would hold a number of concealed gun positions, and in the center of the town held a massive structure of reinforced concrete and gunports. Fort Ciji was one of the main fortresses of the Dadaocheng Line.
Holding down the Fort were two Regiments, the Southern Triangle Legion made up of a Battalion Each from Crellacor, Gustrell, and Paulus Prime, led by Colonel Adalind Van Den Hoek, and the Combine's Twentieth Benjamin Regulars acting as 'advisors' and 'volunteers' under Colonel David Lyons, the nephew of the Combine's Duke of Iruzun in the Benjamin Military District. The Twentieth Benjamin Regulars, however, wasn't a mech regiment. It was one of the Combine's Light Assault Regiments, meaning a mix of Infantry and Combat Vehicles. Therefore, I felt reasonably secure in my ability to handle them.
No, the problem was going to be the fortifications. Fortunately, I had artillery and the ability to call for air support. I called for the fleet to send a wing of Aerospace Fighters down on ground attack duty to help reduce the fortress in the center of town while the artillery hit the bunkers on the roads into town. For a few hours, that was the pace of operations. A slow, grinding, bombardment to soften up the hardpoint for assault. The bunkers leading into town along the roads to the west and south were methodically cracked open by artillery bombardment by Captains Jakobsen, Nystrom, Komorowski, and Katsoupolos.
Unfortunately, the LRM Launchers on the roof of the Fortress, took out another dozen of our Vulcans before they were destroyed and it seemed that even with a clear shot to bombard the hell out of it from the other Vulcans, we would still need to physically assault the Fortress if we wanted to clear the town. After all, by the time the bombardment ended four hours after it began, the Fortress was battered, but still mostly standing.
"All right, let's get this over with. Colonel Dimitrou, you and Seventh Guards are with me and Second Guards, we'll be hitting the town from the south. Colonel Kelly, you and Colonel Zelenski are to take Fourth and Twelfth Guards around to hit the town from the West. We'll meet at the Fortress in the Center." I ordered.
"Copy, My Lord." Intoned Colonel Zelenski.
His family also had roots going back to Krakow, the Moon of Predlitz that my family had ruled back in the days of the First Principality of Rasalhague. He was stoic, almost too much so. It could be off-putting to some, but he definitely knew his business. He was almost the antithesis to the over-gregariousness of Colonel Dimitrou, who seemed to treat everything with less sincerity and more joviality. Speaking of the Koskenkorva Native, he spoke up next.
"Indeed. I just hope we do not miss out on all the fun that the second prong is having at Lancardin. Apparently, they're dealing with the Twenty-Eighth Galedon Regulars and the Second Oberon Guards under Ella Grimm. Hell of a fight." Grinned Colonel Dimitrou.
He was referring to the last reports of the attack on Lancardin by Sixth, Tenth, Eleventh, and Thirteenth Guards. General Jorgensen had taken Colonels Bartek, El-Fadil, Hellgren, and Devlin to hit Lancardin, the border town between the Dao Sing Plains and the small area of the Highlands that fronted onto the Truthail Lowlands, where a bunch of Scots descended from the MacGregor Expedition had settled. Lancardin was also a major strong point for the Dadaocheng Line, though it had more to do with Chemical Manufacturing for explosives and Optics Manufacturing for lasers than anything involving Ceramics.
"Don't worry about that. Focus on the task at hand." I chided.
"Aye, after all, it could be worse. You could be Colonels Davies and Watere." Grinned Colonel Kelly.
"True." Grunted Colonel Zelenski.
"I don't suppose that taking Dunalban would be very exciting, now that all the enemy forces have withdrawn here. I have to wonder why you sent more than a single battalion for that job, My Lord." Admitted Colonel Dimitrou.
"There might be a few stay-behinds and militia with surplus equipment to take care of, plus booby traps. Dunalban has a number of plants for the manufacture of combat vehicles, munitions, spare parts for Mechs, and Aerospace Fighters. If Hendrik Grimm left them completely undefended then I'll eat my combat boots. This way, there's less ability for any surprises to do anything nasty." I huffed.
"Good plan, my Lord." Agreed Colonel Zelinski.
"Aye, it wouldn't do to lose a battalion to something like that." Confirmed Colonel Kelly.
"I suppose that's fair." Shrugged Colonel Dimitrou.
"Right, now we have a job to do. Let's get to it." I commanded.
And with that, the assault on Ciji began. We had to send in Jump Infantry supported by regular infantry to clear out the bunker remnants before moving into Ciji with our main forces. The bunkers may have been cracked open, but breaches didn't make them secure. As it happened, the enemy was still raring to go. As the bunker complexes were cleared, I got reports of desperate, room-to-room fighting. While some of the enemy would surrender after being bloodied, there were a lot more Combine Infantry in the bunkers than I'd thought there would be. Those fought to the death, and it dragged the fighting on something fierce.
Not only that but the top-level of the bunkers wasn't even the whole thing. I was receiving reports of multiple sub-levels, each of which was bitterly contested. The Elite Jump Infantry and their advanced equipment helped, but casualties were high on all sides.
By the end of the first day of battle at Ciji, we hadn't fully cleared all the bunkers. Our infantry had taken around twenty-percent casualties dead and wounded just clearing the top three levels of the bunker complexes with another level below that. Fortunately, the Combine troops were either too dead or too wounded to continue fighting, leaving just the Southern Triangle Legion and a smattering of armed police and militia forces to contest the bottom level. Two hours into the second day of the Battle of Ciji, their commander, a Major Geybels, officially offered a surrender.
Among the wounded Combine Officers was a Sho-sa Shogo Tahiro, a nephew of Miyamoto Kurita, brother to the coordinator, by marriage to Yumi Tahiro, the niece of Duke Ishi Mahiro of Koping Chian. That meant that the Coordinator had a pair of family members fighting in this battle and we had just captured one of them. Shogo was sent immediately back to the rear for treatment of the severe burns he'd suffered in the fighting that had left him unable to fight or commit seppuku. Fortunately, with our Star League-era medical technology, he would be able to recover fully. He'd have some scarring, but nothing that would affect his day-to-day life.
With one of our bargaining chips to get the Coordinator to back down while saving face secured, we moved into Ciji Proper in the fifth hour of the second day of battle. Almost as soon as I entered Ciji in my mech, we came under attack from a concealed Sniper Cannon. The gun was heavy enough to do some pretty severe damage to an assault mech and it showed as a round smashed into Colonel Lindqvist's rampage, tearing off one of its arms at the shoulder and forcing the CASE Ammunition Storage to activate and avoid a massive secondary explosion. I fired my Gauss Rifle at the concealed position, on the ground floor of a cafe. The Ferronickel Slug tore through the brick building and utterly demolished the first floor, gun position and all.
As that happened, a series of Combat Vehicles started spewing out from a car park nearby, opening up on us even as General Lindqvist retreated to the rear. A Griffin got its legs shot out from under it by an SRM Strike from a Combine Sabaku Kaze, and two of our Ignis Support Tanks were destroyed by SRMs from enemy Saracens while an LVT-Four was damaged badly enough by a hidden flamer and thumper position in a nearby Body Shop to catch fire, forcing the crew to bail out. Fortunately, we fought back and the ambush was fought off with aplomb, inflicting severe casualties on the enemy as we did so.
I took my revenge as I could, firing a burst of Ultra Autocannon Rounds that demolished the two Sabaku Kazes that had taken the legs out of the Griffin, putting a Ferronickel Slug into a Bulldog Heavy Tank that had just downed Captain Svenson of Beta Company, Alpha Battalion, of Fourth Guards, forcing her to eject from her Arctic Camouflage-Painted Dragoon at the last second. The Slug punched into the Bulldog and tore the turret clean off it, killing it. Colonel Kelly, meanwhile took out a Saracen and a Saladin painted in the colors of the Gustrell Contingent of the Southern Triangle Legion that was trying to flank me. The Saladin got off a single autocannon round that spanged off my frontal armor, denting one of the plates inward before she did though.
As we moved deeper into town, more ambushes of that nature ensued. Little attacks from concealed positions that we had to fight our way out of. Each one individually was a pinprick, but they added up over time. By the time we made our way to the center of town at the end of the second day of fighting, both I and Colonel Kelly had lost another sixteen percent of our unit strength. Colonel Kelly was forced to halt there, as Fourth Battalion was now at two-thirds effective strength until they could get replacement equipment and troops, while I and Second Guards would press on alone to the third day of battle with eighty-one percent of the unit able to fight.
That was outside of Infantry Casualties, however. The fighting in the bunkers had mauled our regular infantry, bringing them down to two-thirds strength, while the Jump Infantry was at eighty percent strength. The Combine forces in the bunkers had fought room to room until they physically couldn't fight anymore and it had mauled our infantry.
Fortunately, it seemed that Colonel Dimitrou and Colonel Zelenski had an easier time of things. Seventh and Twelfth Guards were only down to eighty-four and ninety percent strength respectively. Their own infantry was also better off, as there had been fewer Combine troops in the Western Bunkers, with their regular infantry at eighty percent strength and their jump infantry at eighty-five percent strength.
We could push through this and finish the fight here in Ciji today. Fortunately, the enemy was down to just infantry, the single Battalion of Triangle Legion Battlemechs, and a scant handful of combat vehicles. Unfortunately, the enemy seemed to know that. As we arrived near the fortress, we found the infantry had buttoned up behind the fortress' reinforced concrete walls while the Combat Vehicles were nowhere to be found, hidden away for an ambush while we fought no doubt. Only the mechs were there to contest us, largely made up of Marauders and Combine Surplus Jenners with a handful of Atlases and Combine Surplus Dragons.
The fighting began with an exchange of LRM Fire, our Griffins exchanging long-ranged missiles with the enemy Atlases and Dragons. We significantly outmassed and outranged their fire, however, and even with the assortment of buildings and whatnot to take cover behind, the Artemis Four Fire Control Systems we used ensured that we came out the winner in that exchange. Five enemy Atlases and Dragons exploded at the cost of only two of our own Griffins, with a third damaged.
Then we broke out into a charge, attacking the enemy. I sighted my Gauss Rifle down on an enemy Marauder as it fired its Autocannon at me. The frontal armor plate that was dented earlier was destroyed by the hit, exposing the Myomer cables underneath, but my riposte smashed into the Marauder, punching into the cockpit to splat the enemy. I hit my jump jets in time to avoid a salvo of short-range missiles from an enemy Jenner. The four SRMs flew underneath me to explode against a pair of parked hovertrucks that went up in balls of flame and twisted wreckage. In response, a burst of Armor rounds from my Ultra-Autocannon Punched into the top of the enemy Jenner, piercing through the thinner top armor and causing the reactor to overload, sending the mech up in a ball of flames. As I landed, I ducked behind a nearby car park to avoid a salvo of four medium lasers from another Jenner. The lasers scored into the concrete of the car park wall, but I got away clean. Colonel Dimitrou put a Gauss Rifle Slug into that Jenner, freeing me to continue the fighting.
I spotted an Enemy Dragon moving to fire its autocannon and lasers into the rear of Colonel Zelenski's Rampage, even as Colonel Zelenski engaged an enemy Atlas. I immediately opened up on it with my Gauss Rifle and Ultra-Autocannon, Ferronickel Slug, and Armor Piercing Rounds punching into the Dragon's LRM Storage and causing the ammunition to explode, ripping the mech in half. Colonel Zelenski finished off the last Atlas and turned to fire on a Marauder, even as Colonel Dimitrou engaged the combat vehicles that finally decided to pour into the fighting and open up with a salvo of PPC and SRM Fire that tore into our flank, downing two Dragoons and a Griffin from Seventh Guards that had been holding the flank.
I took out the Marauder and one more Jenner before the last-ditch counterattack of Combine Combat Vehicles was wiped out while the remaining Triangle Legion Combat Vehicles under Major Anna Trausch surrendered. The remaining enemy forces were down to a short Company of nine Southern Triangle Legion mechs, mostly Marauders and a smattering of Combine Surplus Jenners. They fought for a bit longer, but by ten in the morning, they surrendered along with their Colonel, Elisa de Vries.
That just left the infantry in the fortress itself. The weapons emplacements on the fortress had been destroyed during the aerial bombardment, but the fortress was still standing and it would be a pain to clear. I had to order the infantry to do it anyway. Doing so took a heavy toll in terms of casualties and time. The Combine Forces fought to the death once again, and this time, several squads of Combine Infantry chose suicide charges when they knew they'd been beaten, pulling the pins on their remaining grenades and charging into our infantry with combat webbing filled with live grenades. All of our infantry was now down to at least eighty percent strength, including jump infantry, while Second Guards' Regular Infantry was hit the worst, down to sixty percent fighting strength, though our Mech Forces and Combat Vehicle Forces had come out the other end a lot better off.
Fortunately, with the fortress taken, the remaining forces in Ciji, mostly militia and armed police, didn't put up much of a struggle as we secured the rest of the town. Only a single attempt at an ambush near the Ciji Armor Plate Factory happened afterward, a camouflaged thumper in a car park took out a Hipparch from Twelfth Guards as they moved toward the Factory to secure it. That was the last casualty of the battle of Ciji. By the end of the third day of fighting, we had secured the Town and thus breached the Dadaocheng Line.
To do so, we'd taken massive casualties in the Urban Fighting. On average, Second Guards was down to seventy-six percent fighting strength, while Fourth Guards had been whittled down to Seventy-Five Percent Fighting Strength, Seventh Guards were better off at seventy-nine percent Fighting Strength, with Twelfth Guards the best off at Eighty Percent Fighting Strength. We'd also managed to kill or capture two more Regiments, including one more Combine Regiment, including one of the Coordinator's family members and the commander of the Twentieth Benjamin Regulars, Tai-Sa Lyons, who had been knocked unconscious from an explosion in the fighting that had thrown her into the wall.
We advanced just a bit further after taking Ciji to the Agricultural town of Anzhen, where we would wait to replenish our casualties and equipment. The fighting to take Anzhen was mostly perfunctory, a duel between myself and a Combine Mechwarrior, Tai-I Kenzo Akiyama, piloting a Jenner. I managed to take out his Mech's right leg at the start of the battle with a well-placed Gauss Rifle slug at the cost of him scorching off some of the armor on my right side with a salvo of his medium lasers. Another ferronickel slug shooting off his Jenner's remaining leg convinced Tai-I Akiyama that I had won. Surprisingly, the mix of Combine Stragglers and Militia agreed to abide by the results of the duel, something about settling the fighting honorably.
It was only when we entered the town at the end of our fourth day of operations against the Dadaocheng line that we found out why. Apparently, they only had a short company of mixed Infantry and Combat Vehicles remaining in the town, the bulk of their battalion had been recalled to Dadaocheng City early this morning. Something about fighting breaking out inside Dadaocheng City.
Meanwhile, I received a report that stated I turned out to be right about Dunalban having a hidden garrison. Apparently, the Northern Triangle Legion, with troops from The Rock, Drask's Den, and Taran's World had been waiting for an attack. They thought they would be ambushing us, but Colonels Wetere and Davies handled the situation admirably with only another ten and twenty percent casualties killed or wounded respectively. The Commander of the Northern Triangle Legion, Colonel Anders Drask, the nephew of the Governor of Drask's Den, Wladyslaw Drask, surrendered the City after a one-day fight.
By the end of the week, the situation had become clear. Apparently, General Jorgensen had finally punched through the Dadaocheng Line at Lancardin a few hours after we'd done so at Ciji. They'd annihilated the Twenty-Eighth Galedon Regulars and had chased their remnants and that of Ella Grimm and the Second Oberon Guards to the Black Canyon near the town of Jingang, which oversaw a literal goldmine on the Dadaocheng Plataeu along with the manufacture of infantry weapons, ammunition, Combat Vehicles, and various machine parts. By the end of the fourth day of the Week, they had cornered the remnants of the Second Oberon Guards and Twenty-Eighth Galedon Regulars in the Black Canyon with no way out. The Fifth Day of Fighting resulted in the incapacitation of Tai-Sa Hotaru Akiyama of the Twenty-Eighth Galedon Regulars via an artillery strike that knocked her unconscious. The remaining Galedon Regulars had to be incapacitated or killed, they refused to surrender as well.
While that was ongoing, however, it seemed that the two breaches in the Dadaocheng Line had seemingly convinced Hendrik Grimm that the Combine were on the losing side of this war. He'd launched an attempt to kill or capture the remaining Combine Forces in Dadaocheng City and had managed to deal with a good chunk of the remaining Ninth Pesht Legion during the night of the Third Day of the week in a surprise assault.
Unfortunately, Alexander Kurita had managed to escape along with some Sixty-five Mechs of the Ninth Pesht Regulars. Now, they were laying siege to Dadaocheng City in the hopes of gaining revenge. He'd put out the call for all battalions bolstering the line and any stragglers from the battles to join him, and most had sent the majority of their forces to help him do just that. Alexander Kurita now had the equivalent of three combined arms regiments, albeit short regiments, laying siege to Dadaocheng City.
This all came courtesy of Precentor Hope, who had been keeping an eye on the situation. I, unfortunately, had little time to finish replenishing my forces. I would have to go in now and hopefully catch Alexander Kurita and the remaining Ninth Pesht Regulars off-guard while they were dealing with the First Oberon Guards and the Ferris Guards under the overall command of Hendrik Grimm. On the first day of the third week of the Invasion of Oberon Six, I sent the orders. All regiments inside the Dadaocheng Line were to converge on Dadaocheng City.
This war would end there. . .
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AN: All right, so here we see Jozef's part of the battle of the Dadaocheng Line. It was bloody and brutal, and his regiments took a beating. They're also only partially replenished with replacement troops, healed wounded, and repaired damaged mechs and combat vehicles. Most regiments will be going into the fighting with only up to eighty percent of their average fighting strength having been replenished. It's not ideal, but fortunately, Alexander Kurita isn't exactly doing so hot either.
At any rate, the next chapter will be an interlude showing the battle of Lancardin, followed by another interlude showing the battle of Dunalban. Then we'll be back with Jozef for the assault on Dadaocheng City.
Stay tuned. . .
Comments
Grey Heart
Always excited to see this story update.
