After finding enough pilots and soldiers to fill out the unit’s roster, they then looked into picking up enough support personnel to keep everything running.
While a larger command team would be great, Albus is stuck running the command on his own. They did manage to find five qualified ‘Mech technicans, three mechanics including Marketa Reszewicz, a former house veteran with plenty of experience under her belt. A pair of AeroSpace technicans includes Lisil Dashko, a technical wiz with anything that flies rounded out the technical side of things.
Only two doctors were willing to sign up with such an unknown outfit, and neither one of them was particularly skilled yet in their field. In fact, Albus was fairly certain given their much greater skill with rifles that they were former corpsmen passing themselves off as doctors for the greater available salary. That said, any medical care was better then none, or a half-drunk backalley surgeon, so they were retained.
The local mercenary board office rates the Iron Brotherhood as D-ranked, based largely on their new status and lack of transport.
With only a few million left in his trust fund account, Albus arranged as much in the way of supplies as he could. The amount of supplies it needed to keep a mercenary unit even as small as this one functioning for a short contract was appalling. Using a rule of keeping three tons of ammunition available per ammo bin meant that the unit needed 89 tons of ammunition alone of various calibers for the autocannon shells and racking for the short and long ranged missiles.
Enough armor to re-armor every vehicle and ‘Mech once came to another 95 tons, and then there were the spare actuators, jump jets (impossible to find in the field, he was assured by several of the Mech jocks), and a few spare weapons of the most common types in use by the unit...
In the end, not everything was brought up to the desired amount of reserves, but the unit had almost 400k C-Bills in the bank still to cover personnel and maintenance costs, without having to take out a loan.
On the 1st of February, Kincaide called a meeting with the unit commanders of the Iron Brotherhood. He laid out the terms of a contract he had found, and set out the short and long term unit goals.
The contract itself was simple, hired by the Free Worlds League on behalf of the Capellan Confederation, their objective was to support a raid seeking to gain access to several ancient Star League-era fortifications. While there was limited chance that LosTech was to be found, the Capellans were willing to take that risk.
The defenders would be the
1st Aragon Borderers. While a veteran outfit, it was anticipated that the experienced defenders would be facing the Capellan raiders, while the mercenaries and their FWL liaisons would be fighting fresh recruits to the unit.
As for the Iron Brotherhood’s goals, in the short term, Albus was looking to expand the ‘Mech forces to three lances, fill out the tank platoon with another heavy or assault tank, and look into acquiring helicopters to form a support lance.
For a longer term goal once the unit’s finances were better stabilized, he was planning to take on infantry units that were interested in joining, and stripping out the veteran and elite members, as well as anyone with anti-‘Mech or artillery training, and any recruits still green enough to take to training. The long-term goal was to create a unit of anti-‘Mech trained jump infantry to serve as commandos, and to fill out a battery of artillery to provide support to the combat elements.
The unit’s technical support was not sufficient to maintain all of their equipment in route, but as part of the contract, Kincaide secured 9 astechs on loan from the Marik unit, which was enough to supplement their own Techs.
Just before liftoff, another Mechanic joined the unit, giving them a bit more leeway with vehicle repairs.
Two jumps before their destination, the unit ran short of money, and Albus was forced to take out a loan against the unit’s assets to finish their journey to their first contract.
On Monday, March 30, the unit jumped to the nadir jumpoint of the New Aragon system and began a fast in-system burn. Their Capellan allies were already two days ahead, and had engaged the defending AFFC fighters, leaving their path open.
Friday, April 3rd the Iron Brotherhood landed and began combat operations. Their task was to scout out the AFFC’s defenses. On advice from Lieutenant Nova, the unit had organized a temporary training command, consisting of the infantry platoon, and the three green ‘MechWarriors. The green trainees would receive guest instruction when the senior MechWarriors had time. Meanwhile, Nova, Kaine and Fischer operated as Alpha Lance on recon, while Gamma Platoon was on defensive duties. Delta Flight was tasked to aerial reconnaissance of the surrounding area to prevent any nasty surprises.
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Topic: The Iron Brotherhood - A Battletech/MekHQ Let's Play: Operation Eclipse (Read 46912 times)