[12 October 3071; Firgrove News Service] Firgrove’s AFFS Mercenary Liaison office released today a report condemning the mercenary unit known as Gloria’s Gatecrashers as a rogue unit and placing a bounty of 300,000 C-bills (or local equivalent) on each member of the BattleMech lance, with ancillary bounties of 50,000 C-bills on any member of the Gatecrashers’ support staff.
According to reports, the Gatecrashers were hired by the AFFS to provide local security for a salvage operation on Merope, where elements of the CMM are engaged with a raiding force from the Taurian Concordat. Given the level of ferocity in recent engagements between the two forces, it was deemed necessary to provide more protection for our technical support teams while they worked to recover materials from the scene of the battle.
It appears, however, that the Gatecrashers’ commander, Gloria Goldstein, is a Taurian patriot and used her connections to gain this contract with the full intention of turning on the AFFS units she was assigned to protect and deliver them—and the materials they had already salvaged—to Taurian custody. It was only the quick thinking of one of the AFFS technicians that alerted the AFFS to the situation, and while security forces deployed to the scene found only forensic evidence pointing to their capture, officials are certain the entire force was delivered into captivity.
While the names of those captured have not yet been released due to operation security, our investigation has revealed that the AFFS believes the captured units to still be on Merope, along with the Gatecrashers. Units interested in securing the bounties on the rogue mercenaries are cautioned that prisoners may be held at the same location, and to act in a manner cognizant of that fact.