While obstinately the objective of this mission is to
disrupt the CCAF forces on Fletcher while denying them resources, there were
several other objectives. The first and foremost was to gather material that
could be used to aid our own forces. One of the others, however, was the
retrieval of certain high-value assets that had been captured during the invasion
of Fletcher. These assets possessed vital information regarding the CCAF and
its plans, as well as other vital matters.
The information we’d gathered from Biao-McTavish had a lot
of valuable leads on their location. Unfortunately, that location was the
Baradin Island prison, the highest security facility on the planet. Located
underground on an offshore island, it’s very remoteness made any extraction
difficult. However, to make matters worse, the Fletcher Planetary Guard had
assigned heavy vehicle assets to protect it, likely as a response to the
raiding force on planet.
Based on this information, Major Magyari and I developed a
plan to retrieve our assets. Her command lance, as well as other elements of
the unit, would launch a diversionary attack on one of our identified secondary
targets. The Assault and Recon Lances, supported by part of their Battle Armour
forces, would then drop directly on the prison itself and secure it, allowing
us to extract the targets.
As expected, the Planetary Guard units assigned to the
prison attempted to repel the attack, but it quickly became apparent that their
force of armour, SecurityMechs and Battle Armour infantry were rather
outmatched. The biggest initial threat came in the form of a pair of
TSEMP-armed Prowler APCs, which served to slow the attack while also making
themselves targets. The rest of the Armour was quickly damaged or disabled and
tried to fall back towards one of the maintenance facilities as a regroup
point. This also left the facility itself open to invasion, with two of
Magyari’s Battle Armour squads seizing the above-ground command center.
The reason for their fallback maneuver became clear as a
trio of BattleMechs emerged from the maintenance facility. Two of them were
regular Planetary Guard issue, a Firestarter
and Hatchetman. The third, however,
was a Neanderthal that we later
confirmed had been confiscated by the Planetary Guard. The three of them
attempted to rally the beleaguered planetary guard force but had only limited
success; while the Neanderthal was
able to severely damage Lt. Oda’s Akuma, it
was quickly surrounded and destroyed by the others. The Hatchetman was crippled and captured, while the others fled the
prison’s immediate surrounds.
Having taken control of the facility, another problem
presented itself. The Cappellan forces had apparently equipped the prison with
a self-destruct as a way of preventing anyone from reclaiming it, and had
tripped the failsafe at some point during the battle. After accessing the
computers, Randy R. Georges determined that the bomb itself was connected to
the prison’s generators.
Realizing that they lacked the time to locate and evacuate
our specific assets, he and Lee Zhen, accompanied by a squad of Battle Armour, headed
straight to the generator room in order to defuse the device. Once down there,
they were met by a squad of CCAF soldiers, clearly intent on delaying the
inevitable even at the cost of their own lives. The Capellan soldiers, however,
were quickly dealt with by the Battle Armour squad, allowing Zhen and Georges
to disarm the device.
Following our lead, the targeted high value assets were then
evacuated along with the assault force. A full list of those assets recovered
will be attached, along with the known dispositions of several others who were
otherwise unaccounted for. And while I have only so far skimmed the information
that was recovered, I feel that it will be vital to our future.
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