FEBRUARY 25th, 836 A.S.
PENNSYLVANIA SYSTEM
PLANET ERIE
VOSBURG HINTERLANDS
SURVEY STATION 79-013 "Wickett" [Decommissioned]
NEAREST SETTLEMENT: GANISTER
- SIZE: SMALL CITY
- DISTANCE: 132 KM
- STATUS: LIBERTY CONTROLLED
Not even three months ago, the ragged Erie Militants of Group Clarion worked only in scattered, compartmentalized teams, launching attacks independently from the woods and hills, or from within the Zoner population against their Libertonian rulers.
Driven by the lingering insult of Operation Pesticide, these Erie natives and patriots conducted limited ambushes and bombings on House holdings - and people - for minimal real gain beyond vengeance and symbolic resistance. Despite their force's descent from well-trained and paranoid Erie militias from before the invasion, attrition had ground them down into simply one among dozens of other local paramilitaries conducting such attacks.
As this bitter campaign against the House Liberty occupation carried on across half a decade, strict communication protocols were enacted and thoroughly enforced to guard the identities of each cell leader, as the guerrillas learned to be rightly fearful of the counterinsurgency work of the LSF.
In this way, they clung to survival - but they did not thrive. Even with all the precautions towards secrecy they and their predecessors had taken after the first battles of the invasion, surgical Liberty strikes had wiped their leadership off the board no less than three times during this fight.
Their desperate state of affairs today is the consequence.
Organizational collapse, repeated defeats, and desertion born of hopelessness left only forty-seven volunteers remaining in this weathered force. Beyond that, all safe lines of communication with Groups Alleghany and Elk, their closest surviving Militant partners on-planet, were cut as contacts were killed or went underground.
The opposition this group of Zoner Militants provided to the Liberty military-industrial complex was, for all their ferocity, negligible.
Then, contrary to hard-won wisdom, they received orders to rendezvous at a secluded location in the wilderness far northeast of Vosburg City. All of them, in one place.
Their newest coordinator had dispatched a scout to investigate an old deserted complex at the foot of the Doherty mountain chain, unmarked on modern maps of the local area and uncared for by the old Protectorate government. They found something worthwhile.
This site, a wilderness survey station constructed in the years following the Rogue invasion of 767, was once a launching point for prospectors looking to found new settlements and take measure of the region's natural resources and weather patterns. However, the arrival of House Liberty and their docking ring saw the facility abandoned. Settlers of the day either preferred other more prosperous regions with easier access to the orbital elevator, or struck out even deeper into the wild interior, to be as far from House influence as possible. This place was left with no clientele.
The guerrillas' scout determined that it had the robust perimeter walls and hardened construction necessary to survive Erie's wilderness intact over the decades. However, the compound was overgrown, and quite far from Liberty held territory if they wanted to launch raids conveniently.
Despite this, the order was given and, after allaying their suspicions of a trap, Group Clarion began to link up near the complex over the next few days, one small group arriving to their field camp at a time. Each new team was rotated in on sentry duty to deter vicious turbolizard attack until around half of their total number arrived. They then went to the task at hand.
They were going to take this place for themselves.
After driving out a colony of yellow-beaked rockhoppers that had made their nest within the command center, Clarion's senior staff wasted no time in setting everyone to work. This base had the ability to house soldiers, food, equipment, and optronic capabilities that were never possible to accumulate while operating scattered like they were. It needed to be renovated.
The veterans had their doubts. To them, all they were accomplishing now was painting a target on this base for Liberty to drop an antimatter bomb, killing them all in one go. At the very least, it was secluded, but when they resumed attacks on the Liberty occupiers, what then? How long until they were tracked down here?
Begrudgingly, work began repairing and reinforcing the old structures where necessary. The Group's Zoner supply runner, weaving through Liberty aerial patrols, transferred specially requested supplies from Pinnacle Station, allowing them to set up new generators and optronic systems, dig out space beneath the compound, and even start up some small-scale agriculture.
It all seemed planned in advance, but the only thing their coordinator would let slip is that "time isn't on our side". Discontent simmered, not least because as the cells had all unified into one, it was now apparent to his most radical fighters that he was no Erie native, but a Bretonian stinking of military know-how.
To these Zoners taking up arms against a House planetary conquest, this did not conjure pleasant memories.
Now, renovations are almost complete. A consistent long-range connection with Pinnacle Station has been established, enabling them to relay communications through the space station's Net linkup and beyond. With several decoy jammers deployed throughout the wider Doherty range to mask their transmissions amid the noise, it has proven safe to get comm traffic out to wider Sirius without alerting Liberty observers to their position. As far as they can tell, anyway.
The Group's morale, however, doesn't yet live up to these lofty ambitions.
Their difficulty in filling out their spacious new headquarters has made clear to them just how few in number they are, leading to some grim looks shared across the table at chow-time. They might be safe for now, but nobody took this war on themselves to play it safe. Restlessness thusly also grows among the fighters, while Liberty's program of forced integration continues largely unimpeded. Most are wondering when they are going to quit playing camper in the mountains and get back to causing Liberty damage, but "His Majesty" appears to have something else in mind.
In the absence of easy vengeance and enraged passion, doubt lingers. Why is their once-free homeworld worth continuing this struggle to the death? What can they accomplish that won't be swept away and forgotten by history, in just a few short years?
Is all this too late to matter?
The world offered them no easy answers. But time was not on their side.
MARCH 7th, 836 A.S.
PENNSYLVANIA SYSTEM
PLANET ERIE
VOSBURG HINTERLANDS SURVEY STATION 79-013 "Wickett" [Decommissioned]
GROUP CLARION HEADQUARTERS, "TRESTLE BASE"
Things were beginning to take shape.
With the buildings on the surface having been made reasonably livable, anyone with the technical experience was hard at work digging out new impromptu tunnels and rat-holes for storing critical supplies out of the open air or from within the exposed structures, away from the reach of Liberty air power.
To their enduring relief, they didn't have to start from scratch.
This old survey station where Group Clarion had put down roots had already possessed modest subterranean facilities, though of a larger scale than one might expect from a settler outpost. Clarion's personnel assume that the industrial pipelines and storage tanks on the premises must've originally been built in anticipation of accommodating an ever-increasing scale of neon extraction from the atmosphere for loading onto prospector freighters. In the modern day, however, all neon operations of industrial scope are located far from here, well under House Liberty guard.
Perhaps these tunnels were meant to assist those potential operations by providing rapid underground transport of the harvested gases by train? Or perhaps, whoever built this compound had other intentions, now lost to time. The heavy-duty passageways that would've snaked underneath the mountains outside stop short, unfinished, with nothing of interest left behind but exposed rock.
For the Militants, however, any well-hidden and secure construction like this is a godsend, even if it is just a slightly more orderly-looking hole in the ground. Some fighters went about making themselves at home, establishing barracks and cordoning off jagged and dangerous passageways.
The extra breathing room was readily appreciated as, on the surface, new faces had arrived. Group Clarion had visitors.
After over a week of proffered explanations and convincing, via messages conveyed through one of Clarion's most important benefactors, more guerillas had begun to arrive at the newly-christened Trestle Base.
The former comrades of the Group before they were all forced into hiding had been brought back into contact. The Militant forces of Group Alleghany and Group Elk had, following this reestablishment of communications, finally agreed to suspend their detached cell-based operations and unify in one spot, at Clarion's request. Over the last four days, one squad after another made their way through the perimeter, until eventually all of the remnants had made their introductions and arrived on-base.
The cell coordinators of Alleghany and Elk arrived with serious expectations. By pooling their forces, they had now compromised the guerilla information structure that kept each of them safe if the man to the left of them was captured, or turned traitor. They were promised that this base would serve as a foundation to make real progress, and demanded to know how. To the credit of their newfound ability to network, Clarion did finally receive ample funding from sympathetic Zoners abroad after terse negotiation, as well as supportive elements within Liberty's own Xenos.
But where is it all going?
So, the deliberation began. Since they had arrived and met with Clarion's own coordinator, the three leaders had spent hours in long, tiresome discussions within the command center, arguing over organizational structure, transfers of personnel, and of course, the overall strategy for the rest of the year.
None of the troops knew the details except those closest to the officers, but rumors were passed around. They were all together again after all, some even reconnecting with former friends not seen for over a year now. A merge of their cells was definitely on the table, they said. That'd triple this force's size to around a hundred and fifty people.
But to what purpose? Whether a hundred and fifty, or a thousand, how are they going to put the hurt on Liberty's Erie administration in a way that sticks this late into the game? Were they being lined up for a major operation? Raiding the government complex to gun down that smug prick Davis? One of the zanier fighters put forward an idea about a marine assault on the Battleship Alma, met with incredulous laughs and mockery from their fellow mud-crushers.
They couldn't be sure, not until their officers clued them in, but they were still protected by their isolation for the moment. What struck many fighters most of all, though, was the simple confidence of now being shoulder-to-shoulder with so many likeminded souls. After fighting in small teams for so long, the thought had sunk in that the tide of history was against them.
Now? This felt like the start of something bigger.
APRIL 25th, 836 A.S.
PENNSYLVANIA SYSTEM
PLANET ERIE
VOSBURG HINTERLANDS
GROUP CLARION HEADQUARTERS, "TRESTLE BASE"
The plan was bearing fruit for Group Clarion and their sister cells.
Trestle Base's restored communications array was easily the most valuable asset these Militant fighters had ever gotten their hands on, and it continued to prove it. Their uplink to the Pinnacle Station comms network enabled them to orchestrate support for themselves on a scale they didn't know was feasible. Contacts were made with all manner of potential supporters. Zoner privateers looking to get payback on the Houses and make money doing it, sympathetic business enterprises, other Militant groups with roots beyond Erie. The command center's ops room was ever a flurry of activity.
The cause of Pennsylvania rejoining the Independent Worlds had more steam behind it than they before dared to assume. It did, however, remain as deeply disorganized in space as it was on the ground. Everyone was fighting their own private wars.
That would need to change someday, if they ever hoped to marshal a force against the Battleship Alma.
Clarion, for the time being, set about building rapport, and support, with these contacts rapidly, and with this effort they were rewarded with supplies, capability, and reach. Military equipment that would give their guerrillas a fighting chance against the Marines. Starships, and the people to man them, at least some smaller snubcraft and transports plus the single gunboat on a mercenary contract - a shrewd use of their prior donated funds. Even negotiated reinforcements, not to mention very rare personal-use technology, from some of the more notorious of the sector's troublemakers and arms dealers, granting them unique capabilities indeed for such a small bunch of rebel fighters and operatives.
New recruits were also trickling onto the base as fighters tugged personal connections, pulling Militants from other parts of the region to join up. After being subject to vetting outside the base amidst friendly camps and sympathizer safehouses, the newbies remained confused by the scanning process at the perimeter.
"We're checking for Lib-issue implants", the guards said, wielding their oddly high-tech handheld bio-scanners. The Militants had enough on their plate without infiltrators finding them, though they never told these new recruits the truth of the matter.
Some problems weren't for the grunts to worry about.
With the base population now numbering just over two-hundred souls, they were in a prime position to begin exploiting the intel from their most important deal: leads from the Lane Hackers on the LSF's local intelligence network that, if allowed to sniff out the base's location, would have them all flattened from orbit by an Archer cruiser's siege cannon.
Group Clarion doesn't plan to let that happen. They prepare themselves to hunt their rivals, while the Republic's focus is drawn towards its boiling tensions with House Kusari. Once Liberty's local intel network is out of the way, they'd be free to ramp up propaganda efforts, truly strike the match against the occupation, and rouse the population to start building momentum towards independence. This isn't a war that will be won without the support of the Eriean public, after all, and LSF suppression of the movement remains the main obstacle to building that support.
That's the real hit towards Big Mikey's - that is, Erie Governor appointee Mike Davis's - assimilation agenda they're looking to land. All the guns and ships in the universe would be pointless if they never manage to enflame the hearts of the people. They have to know it's worth it to fight back.
But who exactly is going to show them that?
For all his efforts, the Bretonian coordinator of Group Clarion was not popular with the men. He may have won them access to an impressive spread of resources, but in return, Liberty has been operating near-unimpeded in the vicinity of the city of Vosburg for months now, while they hide in their little base. His leadership style - pragmatic, calculating, cautious - reads to the impassioned Militants as weakness, a failure of nerve. His counterpart coordinators in Group Elk and Group Alleghany never fail to remind him of this, the former being a native Eriean, and the latter a Canarian - especially incensed at working with a former occupier of his own homeworld.
Unfortunately, they were right. He knew that his troops and volunteers needed a vision to follow, and he knew he wasn't the man to offer it to them. Efforts were being made to find a more potent agitator to inspire the troops and set them to tearing apart Liberty's rule piece-by-piece - but the Militants of Trestle Base weren't going to wait any longer.
The negotiations with Clarion's sister cells on the details of the merge were nearly done.
