Modern Mercenary - News  From Coopers World Colony 28th July – 3rd August - Unit updates

Starblazer Scouts

The Starblazer Scouts were honoured with a dinner to celebrate the recovery of the hostages from the Sardarken and the peace treaty between Carson City and the Long Claw Sardarken.

During the dinner, the guards tried to capture the City council but were thwarted by the Scouts who then successfully prevented a coup attempt led by some of the officers previously removed from their positions in the Carson City Brigade.

News then reached the Scouts of a large Government force at Journeys Rest preparing to move South to attack Carson City. The Scouts, along with the remainder of the Brigades forces headed North to meet the advancing units well outside the city walls. The idea was to stop the attacking forces at the river, but the Government had thought of that and created a second crossing of the river that threatened to outflank the Scouts forward positions.

The Scouts pulled back to ambush positions in the jungle and managed to create havoc with some of the advancing units of the attack. A marauding Sardarken unit also intervened and threatened the flanks of the advancing Government forces causing them to re-orient their forces to meet the threat.

The Scouts armoured units traded a few shots with the lead units of the Government flanking force before worrying news reached the forces that Cason City had been raided by heavily armed troops and the unit left behind to defend the city had been routed. Fortunately, it appears that their target was the Governor, who was actually in the field leading his forces in battle!

The Scouts pulled back again with half their force returning to Carson to deal with the new threat whilst the rest withdrew to form a new defensive line.

Fortunately, when the units got back to Carson, the attackers had pulled out and the expected follow on Government attack never materialised. The reason for this became slightly clearer a few hours later when Finlandia broke through to Carson City having fought their way through the rear of the Government forces causing mayhem as they went.

The Scouts had suffered a few losses over the last few days fighting, but had also greatly improved their reputations as strong and brave fighters with the Carson City Brigade.

In the last day, the science team that had been left with the Longclaw have returned to Carson with some interesting news. They have spent the last couple of weeks with the Sardarken trying to learn how to communicate with them. It appears that the Sardarken have evolved a method for transmitting their thoughts to each other. This ability doesn’t seem to extend to reading minds as the Sardarken have a lot of trouble understanding the science team. However, the Sardarken have had no trouble projecting their thoughts and memories to the science team and the story they tell could be very important to current events.

It was always well known that the colonists, having thought the Sardarken to be nothing more than animals, cleared large numbers of them out of the mineral caves to begin mining.

It appears that the Sardarken were prepared almost to overlook this incident as the colonists were sticking mainly to the coastal areas and out of their territories. However, after a few years of relative peace, the colonists started to send their metal monsters into the Sardarken territory. On several occasions, as many as 30 of these monsters would attack Sardarken homes killing hundreds of females and young. The Sardarken managed to capture a couple of these monsters and learnt their ways.

At the same time, the colonists were building a large city right in the middle of Sardarken territory. It was decided that to survive, action needed to be taken. Four tribes of Sardarken came together to assault the city and carried off large quantities of war material. The rest is well documented.

Finlandia

Finlandia started this period in Jackson City providing security for the city under contract to the Government. However, after a failed assassination attempt against the Battalions headquarters staff, the battalion was soon out looking for the perpetrators.

Some evidence was found that the attackers were human and had either arrived or left via a shuttle.

It was at this point that Capt Leung arrived in Jackson with a plea for help from Carson City. Major Ostlund decided to head towards the battle area with a view to interposing his unit between the two combatants. Also, to look to help the Starblazers.

Finlandia moved out towards Jefferson City taking the mountain route but only got as far as Maddison Heights before running into a roadblock set up by the Jefferson unit garrison in that town. In a very strange encounter, it emerged that the unit was being commanded by an officer from Jersey City and as tensions escalated the leutenant commanding the garrison shot his notional commanding officer having received an order he felt was illegal.

Major Ostlund then headed to Jefferson City to try and establish what was going on. Several scouts were sent into the city along with Captain Leung and reports came back of military units patrolling relatively quiet streets. One of these scout teams was then captured and over an open radio link the captors were heard to say they would be removed to Jersey City. A convoy was seen leaving the Jefferson barracks with several vehicles filled with what appeared to be prisoners and towing what appeared to be an armoured car. It is believed that this convoy was headed to Jersey City and probably took the President with them.

While Finlandia were in the Jefferson area, they witnessed a lander come and go from the space port. The lander appeared to be taking equipment south.

As night came, Captain Ostlund decided that he could achieve nothing more in Jefferson so headed south to try and intervene in the continuing battles for Carson City. A few hours before sunrise, Finlandia linked up with units from Carson City’s cavalry battalion who had been keeping the village of Journey’s Rest under surveillance. The village was being used as a logistics centre for the Government attack and Major Ostlund decided that by taking this centre, he could stop the attacks south. The attack was launched at dawn and Finlandia quickly overwhelmed the defences which, did not seem well motivated and were quickly overwhelmed with minimal losses.

Major Ostlund moved quickly south towards Carson and soon arrived at the bridge that the Government had taken only the day before! The defenders were quickly swept aside although a couple of key Finlandia units were hit in the exchanges. As the lead units of the Finlandia battalion crossed the bridge, the command team picked up a signal. This was the activation signal for the explosives on the bridge which were detonated shortly afterwards. Luckily, no Finlandia units were on the bridge at the time!

However, this left the lead elements of the Battalion isolated on one side of the bridge and the Government counter attacked these elements with infantry anti tank fire and armoured cars. The counter attack caused some damage but poor gunnery meant that what could have been a disaster for Finlandia did not materialise. The elite crew in Finlandia’s only Cyclone tank quickly despatched a couple of the armoured cars and all resistance crumbled.

It was at this moment, that a radio message came over all previously jammed frequencies.

The message said that all hostilities between Government forces and Carson City forces would end immediately and that the President had been arrested for crimes against his own people. Finlandia and Starblazers were declared outlaws and arrest warrants had been issued for all of their personnel. Also, all their funds would be seized!

Carson City has extended the same privileges to Finlandia as Starblazers. They are free to stay in the city and all maintenance costs will be covered.

In the last 24 hours, some interesting news has come to light. Yesterday, the new Government issued the following statement.

“ We regret to announce the death of our once great President Franklin Jefferson Cooper. He was assassinated by agents working for Carson City supported by mercenaries in the pay of the Governor of that City. Although the President was under house arrest for his orders leading to the deaths of so many of our fine citizens, he deserved the right to justify his actions in court! This despicable action has removed this right from him and taken from us our greatest leader!

We have very few details thus far, but we know that a crack team of mercenaries, led by one Captain Leung from Carson City, attacked the residence where the President was being held under house arrest. They slaughtered the guards and killed the President. Fortunately, they were seen leaving the residence by a passing patrol and many of them were killed in the ensuing firefight! Captain Leung was injured in the exchange and later died in hospital. But not before she claimed the act of terror on behalf of the citizens of Carson City that had died at the hands of the President.

The Government is announcing a day of mourning for the President.

More details will be announced soon!”

The announcement has been accompanied by pictures of troops wearing Finlandia insignia and of a clearly seriously wounded Captain Leung.

Within 30 minutes of this announcement, Captain Ostlund received word from one of the scout units left behind in Jefferson. It appears that Captain Leung had left some documents with the unit before she went off to Jersey City.

The documents appear to be from the CMC. They seem to show that the CMC orchestrated the Sardarken uprising to showcase their military equipment against an underdeveloped indigenous race. However, they didn’t realise just how fast the Sardarken could learn and adapt and how aggressive they could be! It also appears that this information was purged from all of the CMC systems and hushed up!

Hunters

Captain de la Croix and key units from the Hunters were blissfully unaware of the events that had broken out in the colony as they had their own problems on the main continent.

Having taken a contract to investigate the area around the crash site looking for evidence of off worlders, the Hunters were soon left stranded on the continent because of the failure of communications and contaminants found in the spare fuel for their landers.

Making the best of it, the Hunters started patrolling the rift looking for evidence of off worlders and on the third day of patrols, sighted a lander moving up the rift. They were obviously on the right track!

Captain de la Croix made a decision to commit the majority of his forces, including all of his landers to a sweep of the top of the rift, sure that it held the key to the location of the base for whatever was operating the lander.

The lead lander came under fire from an area to the east of the rift and a battle ensued between the Hunters and a group of privateers that were using the area as a base to scavenge for alien technology.

During the battle, one of the Hunters (actually a Finlandia ) landers was shot down along with the pirate lander and the battle climaxed as the pirates made a break for it in their dropship pursued by the lone remaining Hunter lander which succeeded in scoring a hit on one of the engines bringing the ship back to land.

Captain de la Croix made a deal with the pirate leader who handed over the ship and all of the alien artifacts in return for his and his men’s freedom. He also told de la Croix as much as he knew about the crash site. The ship crashed onto the planet several thousand years previously. It seems to have been a colony ship carrying thousands of lifeforms, many of them escaped the crash in pods but thousands died when the ship hit the planet. The lifeforms were lizard like and, it would appear, of much greater intelligence than humans. It seems, that this evidence, along with the pictures found in the caves several months before would strongly suggest that the Sardarken are not native to the planet and are descended from this race of advanced lizards.

The Hunters Super-Panther remains lost after being taken by Government forces. The last update was that it had been taken, along with some other equipment belonging to Manncorps Arms, by Government forces. The equipment belonging to Manncorps had a tracker attached and this indicates that the equipment is being held in a warehouse in the south of the city. Outside the CMC compound.

Praetorians

The Praetorians have had a very quiet time of it over the last few days as they have been on a contract providing security for the village of Peaceful following the ‘disappearance’ of the garrison there.

The unit has mounted some patrols but found no evidence of any forces, friendly or unfriendly!

In the last couple of days, it has been established that the unit originally tasked to defend Peaceful, and believed to have been wiped out, was one of the units that surrendered to the Finlandia Battalion during its fight at the bridge!

Young Lions, Black Watch, Scythian Sword

The Young Lions, Black Watch and Scythian Sword took a contract in mid July to defend a construction site along the Kalamein river while outposts were constructed. These would then defend a new bridge to be built across the river to replace the one blown up by the Sardarken.

The three units split themselves up with the majority of the Black Watch on the West bank, the majority of the Sword on the East bank and the Young lions split between the two. The units had only been on site for 2 days when the Sardarken attack occurred. The attack fell on the West bank with a diversion on the East bank. In all, a full battalion of Sardarken were involved in the attack with support from fast attack vehicles. Losses in Black Watch and Young Lions were moderate with several armoured vehicles being knocked out.

The attackers got all the way to the bank of the river before being stopped by the combined firepower of all three units! Shortly after this attack, a distorted message was received by the Young Lions commander Captain Bison. The message was a call for help from the people of Statesville, a town only a couple of miles East of the construction site. The town was under attack by a couple of hundred Sardarken and the garrison had gone, leaving the towns defences in the hands of 20 or so police!

The Young Lions set off with their only serviceable vehicles on the right side of the river, a Bobcat and a Leopard. Plus a lone infantry section. They got to the town to find that the Sardarken had attacked an outlying farm and were reorganising to attack the settlement itself. With the police protecting the left flank, the Lions quickly stopped the first Sardarken unit with overwhelming fire from the mortars and artillery in support plus direct fire from the apcs. Then they moved against the second unit quickly breaking it. Estimates suggest that over 150 Sardarken were killed in the action. The Lions suffered no casualties although 8 brave policemen died in the attack. The remaining police have asked to join the Lions once the current danger has passed. The Lions command remained at Statesville