The battle of Tukayyid and beyond.
TUKAYYID: WORLD OF FATE
Khan Jorgensson made the official bid of three Galaxies for the Ghost Bears' right to invade Tukayyid, and won the right to descend in the fifth hour of combat. The Ghost Bear targets would be the twin cities of Spanac and Luk. Khans Jorgensson and Kabrinski laid out a simple and direct battle plan designed to crush the Com Guards quickly, confident that the strength of their forces would carry them to victory.
The Ghost Bears drove straight for their target cities, Opposed by the Com Guards' First Army and the reserve Fourth wormy. As the senior commander, Precentor Katherine Luarca deployed her First Army to engage the Bears upon their landing, leaving only her veteran 103rd Division (Truth in Communication) to defend Spanac. Fearing that the green troops of the Fourth Army would break facing Clan OmniMechs in the field, she assigned the Fourth to garrison Luk.
The Ghost Bears split their forces, landing Alpha Galaxy in the hills above Spanac and Beta and Delta near Luki Both forces landed unopposed, but suffered hit-and-run attacks as they advanced. The First Army's 308th Division (Clarity of Thought) did little to slow the veteran forces of Alpha Galaxy, and Beta Galaxy decimated the 121st Division (Gray Backs). The Ninety-First and Twelfth Divisions of the First Army fared betters trapping Delta Galaxy s Twentieth Polar Bear Attack Cluster in the outskirts of the Holth forest and inflicting heavy losses on the Clan troops. This skirmish turned the tide in the BearSs push for Luk and forced Beta and Delta Galaxies to withdraw The Ninety-First Division then fell back to assist in the defense of Spanac, but just managed to enter the city before Alpha Galaxy took up positions in the suburbs. The Bears settled in to hold Spanac under siege until reinforcements from the failed attack at Luk arrived. Unfortunately for the Clans, the Com Guards' Twelfth waylaid those reinforcements in a brilliant ambush, setting fire to the Holth forest and attacking Beta Galaxy's Seventh Bear Guards as they fled from the burning woods. When the exhausted Seventh finally broke free of the inferno, they ran down wide paths cut through the woods to the hills beyond. By entering these corridors, the Bears fell to devastating short-range fire from the dug-in forces of the Twelfth. To a man, the overheated Ghost Bear'Mechs died in the forest.
Meanwhile, the Com Guards had trouble on other fronts. The troops of the Ninety-First Division failed to achieve a proper defensive position in Spanac, and the arrival of Beta and Delta Galaxy troops at the siege enabled the Ghost Bears to overrun the Ninety-First and capture most of its supply caches intact. Predicting the imminent fall of the city, the Precentor Martial ordered Precentor Luarca to pull her 103rd Division out of Spanac.
The Ghost Bears took the city, but soon faced a counterattack from two divisions of the Fourth Army. Garrisoned at Luk, the Fourth Army divisions had seen little combat in the battle on Tukayyid and so arrived at Spanac fresh and ready for action. With the Fourth Army raining artillery fire on the city and the remnants of the Ninety-First and Twelfth Divisions raiding in the suburbs, the Bear Khans chose to leave Beta and Delta Galaxies to hold Spanac while Alpha Galaxy mustered for an assault on Luk.
At Luk, Alpha Galaxy tore into the remaining divisions of the Fourth Army with all the ferocity of Clan Ghost Bears namesake. Despite the Com Guards' superior numbers, the Fourth came close to breaking until Precentor Luarca redeemed herself by leading her 1 03rd Division and the remaining elements of the 308th in an attack against Alpha Galaxy's main supply depot. The assault forced the Bears to pull back to defend their supplies; though the Fiftieth Striker Cluster managed to enter Luk's suburbs, the Clan troops lacked the force needed to take the city. Alpha Galaxy fought off a raid by reinforcements from the First Com Guard Army, but they suffered such high losses in doing so that the Bear Khans reluctantly ordered a withdrawal back to Spanac.
At this point, the ilKhan declared an end to the Ghost Bear campaign. Knowing that they lacked the strength to take Luk from the fresh Com Guards troops stationed there, the Bear Khans raised no objection. The battle of Tukayyid had already ended in defeat for several of the other Clans, and so if the Bears continued to fight, the Com Guards could easily shift enough forces from other combat theaters to drive the Clan from Spanac. Rather than lose all that they had gained, the Ghost Bears withdrew while they could still claim victory.
The Precentor Martial also welcomed the end of the Bear campaign. Though the Com Guards had lost to these particular Clan opponents, their forces' departure from Tukayyid left the First and Fourth armies free to turn against the hard-fighting Jade Falcons. Because the Ghost Bears captured Spanac, breached defenses at Luk, and inflicted somewhat greater losses than they sustained, ilKhan Kerensky and Precentor Martial Focht agreed that the Ghost Bears had won a marginal victory over the Com Guards.
AFTERMATH
Clan Ghost Bear wasted no time in recriminations for being forced to accept the Truce of Tukayyid by other Clans' failures to achieve their objectives on that planet. The Khans immediately began rotating their battered troops back to the Clan home worlds and bringing fresh warriors forward to the occupation zone. Clan Ghost Bear has quietly and efficiently rebuilt its occupying forces into the strongest Clan contingent in the Inner Sphere, and stands well-placed to leap out in front of a renewed Clan offensive.
The waning power of the Wolves and the Jade Falcons has created a power vacuum among the invading Clans, leading to further instability as other Clans in the invasion force jockey for power. At present, the Ghost Bears seem the most likely to lead a renewed invasion. The Bears have bolstered their troops with reinforcents from the Clan homeworlds, a development that poses a grave threat to the Draconis Combine worlds that lie above the truce line.
Kurita raiders have staged near-constant raids against Clan Smoke Jaguar in recent years, which have prevented that Clan from effectively recovering from the heavy casualties it suffered on Tukayyid. Nova Cat raiders have begun harassing Smoke Jaguar forces recently as well, further hampering the Clan's attempts to rebuild. As a result, the Smoke Jaguars seem unlikely to challenge the Ghost Bears for leadership of the Clans. Clan Smoke Jaguar's weakness has filled its warriors with frustration and a fierce desire to prove they are still a force to be reckoned with - which makes the Jaguars a potentially dangerous enemy for their Clan brethren and Inner Sphere powers.
Neither the Steel Vipers nor the Nova Cats have the strength to challenge the Ghost Bears, but both Clans are far from harmless. The Viper Khan, Perigard Zalman, has shown remarkable restraint while patiently rebuilding his Clan, which marks him as a canny and dangerous leader. Meanwhile, the Nova Cats continue to rebuild following their losses on Luthien and Tukayyid. Their weakened condition, however, has not prevented them from raiding worlds located above the truce line.
In an attempt to weaken both the Ghost Bears and Smoke Jaguars to give themselves time to recover from the refusal war with Clan Jade Falcon, the then-Jade Wolves set into motion a complex plan, with layers of plots and misinformation blaming both Clan Smoke Jaguar and the forces of Phelan Kell's Clan Wolf in Exile for the theft of genetic material of the Clan Ghost Bear founders. The Ghost Bears, through a series of raids and information gathering missions, discovered the true nature of this deceit.
Although discovering that the blame lie with the Jade Wolves and not Clan Smoke Jaguar, the relative weakness of Clan Smoke Jaguar has left that Clan open to raiding and perhaps a trial of absorption by Clan Ghost Bear. Whether the Ghost Bears take advantage of this opportunity or not is left to be seen.
Finally, with their long standing ties with the Wolves and Diamond Sharks, the Ghost Bear Khans voted against the election of Elias Crichell of Clan Jade Falcon to the post of ilKhan.
GHOST BEAR 3061 UPDATE
With the defeat of the Smoke Jaguars in the Inner Sphere and on Huntress, the Clans found themselves with the unprecedented prospect of an Inner Sphere invasion of Strana Mechty. The Star League Defense Force soon challenged the Clans to a Trial of Refusal over the invasion. If the Inner Sphere won, the invasion was over and the invading Clans would retain the worlds they had conquered. If the Clans won, the invasion would resume. In a surprising move, however, the Ghost Bears switched their allegiance to the Warden faction.
After much deliberation, the Clan had decided that continued hostilities with the Inner Sphere was fruitless and doomed to failure. The Ghost Bear Khans were relieved when the SLDF troops won the Trial of Refusal. Though Clan Wolf declared itself independent of the Trial verdict, Wolf Khan Vlad Ward stated his intentions of conquering Terra when the time was right. The transition of the Ghost Bears over to the Warden faction drastically altered the power structure of the Clans.
The Ghost Bears are the mightiest of the invading Clans. Only the Jade Falcons have the strength to stand against the Ghost Bears, but recent events precipitated by the Steel Vipers may change things once again. During the years following the Truce of Tukayyid, Khans Jorgensson and Kabrinski decided that the future of their Clan lay in the Inner Sphere.
They secretly began moving their entire population of much of their infrastructure to their Inner Sphere holdings. However, Clan Snow Raven became aware of their plans and, in return for concessions, agreed to help convert two Leviathan-class warships into huge transport vessels. The process took ten years.
In 3062, Khan Jorgennson sent the following message to the Grand Council and the various Successor States:
Centuries ago, the Great Father promised a return to the Inner Sphere for his children.
Many believed that we could only achieve this by conquering Terra in the Great Father's name, forcing the corrupted peoples of the Inner Sphere of the Successor States to see the truth of the Way of the Clans.
I believe this was a hasty and misguided assumption. Destiny is within our grasp, and we have only to reach out and take it! We of Clan Ghost Beart have won many worlds from the Draconis Combine and the Free Rasalhague Republic through legitimate Trials of Possession. In return, we have administered those worlds fairly, and instructed their peoples in the Way of the Clans. While our neighbors continue to skirmish for centimeters of land, we have cemented our position. As a result, losses to raids and civil disorder have been minimal, and our Clan has prospered.
I stand before you to announce that Clan Ghost Bear has moved from the blighted tundras of the Kerensky Cluster to the blessed pastures of the Inner Sphere: to the Ghost Bear Dominion, thirty-nine worlds claimed by rightful conquest. This area will henceforth be considered Clan territory, administered from the new Ghost Bear capital on Alshain. I urge the Grand Council and the Houses of the Inner Sphere to recognize our claim peacefully, to the mutual benefit of all.
Challenges to this claim will be dealt with harshly, until none remain to raise a dissenting voice.
-- Excerpt from Khan Bjorn Jorgensson's address to the Clan Grand Council, Strana Mechty, 27 April 3060.
