Mercenaries Slaughtered

[DeJaVu]

[11 February 3070; Kathil Korroborator] The interstellar news for the last few years has been announcing the death of the mercenary industry, decrying the many turncoats suborned by the Word of Blake, or reporting the annihilation of yet another long-standing unit. Wolf’s Dragoons are shattered, their landhold a glowing reminder of the Word of Blake’s resolve. Little Richard’s Panzer Brigade died fighting on Pleione. The Dismal Disinherited are dead. In the popular eye, mercenaries are a dying breed.
On Sparrevohn, however, pride in the mercenary has just received a very unwelcome, but very powerful, boost of belief. A small unit of tanks and infantry, known as Paul’s Royal Guard, were under contract to provide security and defense to the Marley Munitions Works, a minor supplier of autocannon ammunition to the AFFS. An unknown bandit force, deploying a mix of BattleMechs and infantry, attacked the plant just before a scheduled shipment, hoping to capture the munitions for themselves.
Major Felix Paul, a graduate of the War College of Goshen, met the main bandit force on the road approaches to the factory. Deploying his tanks and infantry hull-down, the Royal Guard tanks were able to destroy two of the pirate ’Mechs and all of the transport equipment the pirates had brought to capture their booty. The pirates, incensed by the destruction of their trucks, attacked the Royal Guard positions in a rage, slaughtering the unit to a man, although it cost them all but two of their ’Mechs and all of their tanks.
Count Henry Thibideau, who’d hired the Royal Guards, spoke the day after the battle. “Major Paul and his men define the modern mercenary,” he said, in front of an audience that included all four thousand employees of the Marley factory. “Despite the odds, despite the danger, they kept the letter of their contract and went to their gods as soldiers. Wasteful, certainly… but honorable, as well. This is what we hired them for, and instead of running, instead of hiding, they fulfilled their mission.”
The Count announced later that a pension would be paid to the dependants of the Royal Guard, in gratitude for their sacrifice.

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For more information and updates on many other mercenary units, check out Mercenaries Supplemental: Updates document (available from the BattleShop).