Erinyes rang the chime on Cassandra’s office door, flask of tsiraki in one hand and datapad in the other. Taldryan’s engagements against the Children of Mortis had gone well enough, but the way the Chancellor’s eyes glazed over during after-action reviews had given her right-hand woman pause. The Traditionalists? The 19th Saber? They knew their stuff. If Cassandra didn’t, it would be to Taldryan’s detriment, and Erinyes wasn’t about to let that happen.
“Come iiiiiiiiiin!” Cassandra called as a green light appeared next to the door and they slid open with a wooshing sound. She sat upon her throne with her glass and gold goblet on the armrest empty. “You wished to have an extended meeting with me? I assume it has something to do with either the 19th, or Zxyl has gotten bold in his endeavors.”
“Nope and nope. Well, not directly, anyway.” Erinyes plopped down in the chair across from Cassandra and took a swig from her flask. “Today you’re going to learn how armies work.”
She blinked, her expression similar to that of a womprat facing the forward lights of a speeder as it quickly approached. “Huh?”
“See, there you go again. You’re cute when you’re confused, but doing it in strategic meetings doesn’t exactly inspire confidence among the military,” Erinyes said. “The Children of Mortis weren’t militarily competent. The 19th Saber and Zxyl are. If our forces have to meet them on the battlefield, our generals need to know that you understand what’s going on, instead of just smiling and nodding at whatever they say.”
“Some of the Traditionalists probably even use your lack of military experience as an excuse not to support you.”
“That wouldn’t surprise me, given some already don’t support me because I’m basically a ‘miniature rancor’ to quote District 8’s senator. I do know some at least, from my time on the front lines with some of the Commanders. But…I do admit, my tactical knowledge is extremely lacking.” she said back as she considered her words. “I’ve usually left it to the trained military personnel, and trust their opinions and tactical prowess.”
“Not micromanaging them is good. They appreciate that. They appreciate it more if they know you know something about their job. It’s the difference between a boss who leaves you alone because they have no idea what you do, and a boss who leaves you alone because they know what you do and trust them to do it. It also protects you from someone trying to pull one over on you, whether on actual military deployments or things like budget negotiations.”
“What do you propose?”
“Virtual army training exercises against Zxyl himself?”
“Tell you what. I’ll start the lessons, and when we’re done, you can come back and answer that question yourself.”
“Very well, I consent.”
“Excellent.” She put her feet up on a nearby low table. “Why do we have both infantry and tanks?”
“Besides trying to pacify that one senator who has the tank manufacturing plant in his district.”
“So the tanks can break armored lines or defensive positions that way the infantry can charge in unmolested?”
“Good, you were paying attention in the meetings. Now, why do we have repulsortrucks? Or why should we have repulsortrucks, since they’re conspicuously missing from the army’s TO&E.”
“To move troops easily over debris fields, to help conserve their energy and give them a break while providing protection to exterior attacks?”
“That’s part of it. Any other ideas? Think more on what you said about tanks and infantry working together.”
“Tanks blow holes, repulsortrucks enter strongholds and deploy troops?”
“You’re getting there. It’s more of a defensive concern than an offensive one. Want to try again, or should I just tell you?”
She tapped her chin with her right index finger for a moment as she pondered. “It keeps the troops safe during ingress until they are inside?”
“Other way around. One of the reasons tankers hate urban fighting is because there could be a bad guy with a Plex-1 around every corner and in every window, and tanks aren’t very good at clearing buildings. They need infantry to do that for them. They also need the infantry to be able to keep up with them, so they aren’t just sitting around waiting for the building to be cleared. Troops on foot aren’t very good at that, so…”
“…they clear the building themselves by ramming through it and bringing it down?”
“Well, they could, but the repair bill would be bigger than my alcohol budget. Plus, sometimes you want buildings intact.”
“Otherwise you could just have an airspeeder squadron bomb it, or even bombard it from orbit, and not bother risking the ground-pounders at all.”
She gave a nod of understanding as she continued to listen. While she was definitely naive on some, she was intently listening.
“But, sometimes it’s not that easy. If you want to move past the building, you have to send infantry to clear it, or you’re bound to get ambushed. Likewise, if you want to retrieve something from inside the building, people have to clear it. And if you’re really intent on making sure someone doesn’t leave alive, better to see their body firsthand. You never know if they might have an escape tunnel. That’s the whole reason we build them.”
She took a slug from her flask before continuing. “Of course, ideally we wouldn’t be taking tanks and IFVs through a city at all. If you want to move troops around a built-up area like that, using LAAT/is or other aircraft is a lot easier. Between not being limited by terrain and the raw speed, there’s no better way to get boots on the ground quickly, which is why Typhojem and Derriphan use LAAT/is instead of speeder trucks.”
“The catch is that you need damn good pilots, because you’re flying low enough that if that bad guy with a Plex-1 spots you and gets a shot off, you won’t have any room to maneuver. That’s probably the biggest advantage Force-sensitive pilots have over others: being able to anticipate ambushes like that.”
“Yeah, pilot wise Gehn has been talking my ear off. He’s…quite proud of his flight skills.”
“He might work out well for the way we usually deploy small teams. There’s only one of him, though.”
“True, if I remember correctly in my studies of the Clone Wars, there were many that did just that. Though some pilots also had major amounts of skill, such as Dameron and Antilles.” she said as she grabbed her goblet, before remembering it was empty and promptly sat it back down. “What about situations like what I was in with the Ethereal Realm where mechanical weaponry and ships aren’t capable of being utilized?”
“Then you have to make uncomfortable choices. The relatively safest option is to cut their supply lines and starve them into submission, but in the conflicts we see, we rarely have that kind of time. More often, you have to use a combination of infiltration and outright assault.”
“Similar to how Starr pushed the front of a chasm-crossing fortress, but then had the main bulk of the forces strike from the opposite side after crossing far to the south. Gotcha.”
“Maybe? I didn’t see it, I was in a different area at the time.” Erinyes paused for a drink. “In a situation where you don’t have any substantial fire support or siege engines, the first step is to get a small group past the wall undetected. Somehow, the Brotherhood has an uncanny ability to find enemy commanders and make them order the entire fortification to surrender. Most people aren’t that lucky.” Erinyes shook her head.
“Unless they can pull off a miraculous surrender, the infiltration team’s job is to unlock the gates and sabotage any static defences they can. That’s when the bloodbath begins.”
“I…was there with him in the vanguard forces of the Legion. His ability to coordinate and command was far beyond anything I had ever heard of, and quite literally what you just said is what went down. The fortress was down in under an hour, and barely any casualties at all. At that point, it was a matter of heading towards the skull fields which myself, Shanree, and Celevon moved ahead.”
“Don’t get used to it being that easy. Their commander was spineless and their troops were incapable of taking initiative.”
“If you can get enough troops inside without being detected, you might be able to disrupt the defences and reduce the casualties your forces take on the way in. The problem is that since infiltration forces have to be small to avoid detection, if they’re spotted they won’t always be able to fight their way to their objective.”
“If you can’t sneak inside, another option is to have sappers dig holes under the walls and bomb the foundations to bring parts of the wall down. That’ll give you an opening to move troops in somewhere the enemy hasn’t prepared defences. The sappers have to stay undetected for that to work, though.”
“If you’re able to open a hole in the wall, you rush your troops in and form a perimeter before the enemy can defend the gap. Usually the vanguard is made up of troops with heavy armour and repeaters, so they can suppress enemy forces while friendlies move in behind them. It’s the same principle as sending tanks in ahead of infantry. The first ones in need the best protection because they’re going to have the most fire directed at them.”
“Going in through a door the enemy knows about is the worst possible option, because they’ve had time to prepare their defences. It goes from enemy soldiers with blaster rifles hiding around corners to repeating blasters inside fortified bunkers, pre-sighted to exactly where you’re going to be.”
“Conventional wisdom says that to take a fortified position with a direct assault, the attacker has to outnumber the defender by 3 to 1, and can expect to have most of their troops killed or wounded in the process.”
“I’m sure you saw that firsthand at the front, though.” She looked over the rim of her flask at Cassandra, gauging the woman’s reaction.
“I did.” she said, giving just the reaction that Erin was full on expecting her to give if even inadvertently. “It…was far different than anything I could have anticipated, even with the fights I had been in over the years. Even with my old family, nothing has come close.”
“Caution and surprise, while avoiding giving them the known advantage is key.”
Erinyes studied the Chancellor’s features for a moment. “The sooner you give up trying to save all of them, the better it’ll be for everyone.”
Cassandra turned and sat back down, her arms firmly on the armrests. “I know not everyone can be saved, conflict will always lead to deaths. There is no such thing as a loss-less war.”
“Being able to say that in your head isn’t enough. You need to be able to do things like choose a frontal assault that has a better chance of success despite its casualties instead of an infiltration that’s more likely to fail but risks fewer lives.”
“I’ll be honest, I don’t think I could ever be a tactician. It was hard enough seeing my two best friends…” she replied with a slightly downward voice, only to pause mid second sentence and mentally compose herself. While it didn’t show outwardly, Erinyes would definitely sense the internal turmoil that she was going through especially with that topic. It was only a few moments later her inward composure was back in order, and she continued without so much as a beat missed externally and visually. “But, I do appreciate this for at least an understanding. Maybe even vocalize more to the operations council or flag officers with ideas for them, themselves, to deliberate and consider.”
“The Calerian military, and Ostara, was built very similarly to how the Republic’s Grand Army is now. I also heard you were helping propose additions and changes in the requesition and approval forms that crossed my desk. If I may ask, for additional learning, what were the tactical and usage thoughts since you were working on it with them?”
Erinyes nodded. “We’ll come back to the importance of you learning tactics in a minute.” She pulled out her datapad and brought up the procurement plans on the desk holoprojector, then tapped a few keys to highlight her changes. “Prepare for background information.”
“The Mandaboo and Ewok allowed changes that wouldn’t have happened if they’d known how maneuver warfare worked. Namely, they got rid of two critical components: the ground-based troop transports and the artillery. We already went over why the transports are important. I can’t really blame them for not wanting to use the Juggernauts; their size makes them easy targets, and their age makes them almost impossible to upgrade or repair. As for the AT-ATs, well, read about the Battle of Hoth.”
“The thing is, they didn’t replace the transports with anything, so our LAAT/is have been working overtime to ferry troops around behind the tanks. That’s a problem, because LAAT/is depend on their mobility to avoid AA fire. If they have to slow down to let the tanks keep up, they’re vulnerable. It also causes maintenance and crew burnout issues to run them that hard.”
“So, I put in orders for a bunch of A-A5 speeder trucks. They’re better-armoured, not prone to AA fire, and they have a top-mounted laser cannon that can provide direct fire support for the troops.”
She slightly snickered at the AT-AT comment, giving off the indication she was fully aware of the catastrophy; or in this case, the epic fail that helped the rebellion.
Erinyes paused for more tsiraki. “The next mistake they made was getting rid of the artillery. I’m gonna guess this was because Teebu was a big advocate for naval firepower and argued that fighters and orbital bombardment can do everything artillery can.”
“The thing is, that’s only true to a point. There are different kinds of artillery: laser cannons, missile launchers, and mass-drivers. If laser artillery is just an oversized blaster rifle, then mass-driver artillery is an oversized grenade launcher. Artillery shells explode like grenades, but the boom’s a lot bigger, so you can destroy vehicles and demolish walls. You can also fire mass-driver artillery from behind a hill the same way you can throw a grenade from behind cover. Plus, mass-driver artillery can carry a lot more shells than fighters can carry missiles, and they aren’t as prone to getting shot down as fighters and missiles are.”
“Yeah, from what I read even during the empire’s time, many battles on numerous worlds came to very fast ends from naval assaults on the planet or moon. Even concentrated turbolaser fire from star destroyers was known for obliterating entire armies, cities, and a ton of farmland, support areas, and more. I can see why he would think that way, but given the rough nature of what happened with Saijo and the area of the kingdom being so concentrated within a mass waterfall area, it prevented any kind of orbital assistance from the fleet. As far as I can tell, the new Ewok the naval forces have in their command structure definitely sees things a little different, at least from the progress reports sent by the Fleet Admiral. So hopefully that trend doesn’t continue.”
“Those are all factors, yes. Another thing to remember is that aside from damage to the surrounding farmlands and so on, there’s a difference between destroying cities and destroying city defences. Even the best naval gunners aren’t going to be able to knock down a shield generator or gun emplacement without destroying the area around it. That’s a big problem if ‘the area around it’ is a spaceport you need to capture to extend your supply lines.”
“Particularly if you want it intact and not millions of credits worth or repairs, or an angry civilian populace.”
“Exactly. The third problem was that Appius and Teebu took all the assault companies—the ones with heavier weapons like repeaters—out of the infantry battalions and replaced them with scout companies. I… don’t really know why.”
“Repeating blasters are how you suppress enemy infantry. When a squad’s moving to attack, the light repeater gunner with the T-21 or Fwimby keeps the bad guys’ heads down while the others advance. When the objective is secure, you set up an E-Web emplacement to hold off light armoured vehicles and low-flying speeders. Taking those capabilities out of the infantry battalions doesn’t make any sense, so they went back in.”
“As for the scout companies, I transferred some to the armoured battalions and got rid of the rest. Scouts are great, but pairing a long-ranged, highly mobile unit with leg infantry is a waste of the scout’s abilities. Better to put them with armour that can arrive fast enough to do something useful.”
Erinyes squinted at her datapad. “What else did I… I think that’s all the changes that need explaining. I expanded some of the tank companies, but that’s just more of the same.”
“As for you and being a tactician… Like I said, the troops know the difference between deferring to a more experienced commander because you don’t know what you’re doing, and deferring because you know enough to know how important their experience is. The latter leads to morale. The former leads to mutinies. The Republic loyalists might be willing to give you some slack, but the Traditionalists will use it to claim you’re a weak leader.”
“You need them to feel like they’re helping you do your job, not doing your job for you.”
“I agree. Though even if the Traditionalists didn’t succeed on that avenue, they would certainly go for another. They’ve been trying to influence those loyal to the Traditionalists in the districts, try and upend more senators and replace them with those that are loyal. Increase the pressure on us internally. So doing the best I can to help the military do the best they can, is definitely a major factor to go against it.”
“Without a doubt, Zxyl is determined.”