Kurita Takashi, 22 years old this year when his world view was shattered.
He looked at the cover of he unassuming book that had done the shattering and pondered just what kind of man this William Slim was.
Know thy enemy and know thyself and thou shalt win a thousand battles.
The words of Sun Tzu had echoed in his ears and thus, when he had come across the body of a Lyran officer, he had rummaged the body for information, something that his 'peers' in the Dieron Regulars had not done. Out of sheer hubris or something else, they had simply not bothered with the most basic of information warfare practices.
To gather information from the enemy to better understand the enemy in order to defeat them.
This was… simple.
It was basic.
It was something that even an idiot would be able to understand.
This was, of course, after that braindead order by the Bridgadier-General to bodily fling an entire Regiment of Battlemechs through enemy territory on terrain at best considered as inhospitable, through multiple chokepoints and then into an ambush that had destroyed the Regiment in its entirety.
Takashi had escaped by dint of commanding the flanking force, who, due to the geography, had flanked so far wide that he had avoided the fighting.
Slipping past the enemy, he made it to the Dieron lines when he had learnt of the fate that had fallen the Academy Cadre he had been attached to as an 'exemplar' for them to aspire to.
There would be very little aspiring from that cohort.
He had not been pleased.
But orders were orders and they had died following their orders. Their deaths would be honoured.
In any case, it was in doing reconnaissance of the ground that he had found the dead officer, had found the book, and had taken to reading it inside of his Panther's cockpit, away from prying eyes.
He had read barely a fifth of the way into the book, and yet, the prose within was that of a master general. The kind that the Brigadier General could only hope to emulate if he had a modicum of sense.
Takashi did not.
The words he was stuck on now as Book 1 (book inside a book?) ended, was the quote:
For myself, I had little to be proud of; I could not rate my generalship high. The only test of generalship is success, and I had succeeded in nothing I had attempted.
He felt those words resonate within his soul.
He had seen the state of the realm, he had seen the results of his father's actions, and he had seen just how far the Dragon had fallen.
He knew, that if he kept reading he would find answers that he did not wish to hear.
Kurita Takashi, heir to the Dragon, embodiment of all that was the Draconis Combine saw too much similarity between the Imperial Japanese Army and the Draconis Combine Mustered Soldiery.
He knew that this general had beaten them.
The book's different sections even said so.
The blueprint for defeat was within, and thus, the blueprints for victory.
Defeat into Victory, not just for this William Slim, but the Draconis Combine.
He had already seen the bullheaded adherence to orders and what it led to.
He had witnessed it just this morning.
The headlong charge over the top by the waiting armour and Battlemechs, right into the teeth of a Lyran counterattack and dug in infantry.
Their orders had been to attack at first sighting of the enemy, and they did so.
No matter if that enemy was a single face appearing over the peaks of the hill.
The Brigadier didn't even countermand his own orders and had led the charge straight into the counterattack.
He had been the first to fall to the concentrated firepower of the new Lyran medium Battlemechs, deployed in regimental strength it appeared, given his own visual identification of the in the Sun Zhang pocket.
Now he was left with a leaderless force who were completely surrounded. They were falling back on a doctrine of relentless assault no matter the circumstance.
All that they could imagine was to assault, assault, and assault again. Giving up all of their higher order thinking to discipline, a discipline that held them in marching order as they went off a cliff.
This was the result of the DCMS' training, this was the result of unthinking obedience no matter the cost.
Meanwhile infantry were holding, excellently he might add. Not part of the orders for relentless assaults, they had fortified.
So much so that he suspected that the common belief of infantry in the DCMS was fatally flawed, as their dug in positions were all that was standing in the face of annihilation of the armour and battlemech elements of the Dieron Regulars.
Takashi was watching, with his own two eyes, the failures of the Dragon.
The only test of generalship is success.
The words filled his ears.
The words bedevilled his mind.
He was seeing the results of the Dragon's doctrine and training.
Tetersen was a crucible and the DCMS was the final ingredient, an adjustment and development of doctrine to counter the DCMS' own doctrine.
Worse, it was working.
If they had simply dragged the defence further back, the armour and Battlemech elements could have been surrounded, isolated, and destroyed, as per the Sun Zhang Cadre. Leaving the infantry on their own to be starved out at their leisure.
The overly aggressive nature of the Dragon's Claws made them brittle, and the Lyrans had identified the perfect angle to strike to break them.
There had to be changes.
There had to be developments.
There had to be improvements.
Worse… they had to be dramatic and drastic.
The Dragon would not survive if both the yellow bird and the lucre warriors learned from one another and attacked separately.
But, that was a matter for a later time.
Takashi Kurita took in a deep breath.
Kurita Takashi breathed out.
He sighed.
Then he stood up.
He would unlock the secrets of this William Slim in the future, he had duties to attend to.
"Sir!" Robertson William saluted as he neared.
He looked at the two men and the third that was kneeling between them.
"The prisoner?" He asked, looking down at the man who, well, had been wounded and thought to be dead by his comrades.
He had the unfortunate fate of waking up in the middle of Kurita's camp when one of the other lance members had sat on him.
"Korporal. I would ask questions of you." He started, the men looking confused at him.
They had assumed he would follow the Honorium Dictum and execute the prisoner straight away. After all, he wasn't even an officer, what value did he have other than his blood on a DCMS blade?
"Ask away Kurita, can't say that I'll answer though." The prisoner said with a chuckle.
"As is your right. As is mine for executing someone that did his nation the dishonour of being mad a captive." He replied mildly, not allowing the reflexive jerk of shock at the man's words. How did he know that he was a Kurita?
"Ha, that's the way it is with you lot. Ask your questions, I've got all day." The Korporal replied, in blatant defiance of reality at that. He had some rather grisly wounds that would see him dead in a few hours if they were not treated.
Takashi admired the bravery however, this was a true samurai. He would have been proud to have this man as part of his Lance in another world, one where they were not enemies.
"In space, those dropships. What designs were they?" He asked, pulling a shattered piece of tree closer so he could sit upon it.
As he did so he waved his men to step back, the prisoner was so weak that he couldn't attack if he wished it. Not with his guts spilling from different holes in his stomach... And a broken leg. That too.
"What dropships?" He looked honestly confused at the question.
"The ones that blocked those white fleet vessels." Kurita answered, acknowledging the question given he had seen two other designs of Dropship on Tetersen so far. Something that absolutely needed to get back to the Combine immediately. Something had changed here and the ISF better have answers for him... And, well, his Lord Father, or there would be hell to pay.
"Those weren't dropships. Those were jumpships." The Korporal's voice was filled with anger a distant part of his mind noted as the rest of it was filled with shock.
"Jumpships," he replied, leaning back, voice faint. His men looked ill, the ones holding the prisoner and the ones standing around them.
"Yeah. 37 of them. 37 newly built Jumpships that you and your mates in the white fleet took out." The voice was filled with recriminations now.
Kurita Takashi nodded.
He understood.
For the last 150 years since the end of the first Succession War, there had been a constant decline in the number of jumpships. Due to destruction and sabotage of their manufacturing facilities the number that came off the lines kept reducing in number as older models fell apart due to old age and a lack of replacement parts.
So many worlds across the Inner Sphere had been reduced to barren wastelands as their populations died to a lack of water or food that needed jumpships that were simply not there due to logistical constraints.
War was reduced to a parody of what it was as units postured against each other and doing minimal damage before retreating due to the lack of capacity to supply factories with materials for new machines or, barring that, transporting units to the frontline.
Jumpships therefore were off limits in regular warfare because they were so precious.
37 had just been destroyed in a single action.
Whatever response that the Lyrans decided upon would be ruinous.
So much of what the Combine needed to survive was predicated on imports from the Commonwealth. If they stopped them due to this attack by the damned White Fleet... He couldn't imagine the catastrophic damage that would be done to his realm.
No wonder the Lyrans were fighting a battle of annihilation against them.
If they simply allowed a posturing raid and a retreat their loss of face would be catastrophic.
Annihilation was the only path forward.
Damn the Brigadier-General. The damned fool had put the Combine into this position.
The damned fool that had effectively just done more damage to the Combine than every offensive the Lyrans had ever launched combined because of his laxity and stupidity!
The damned fool that did not even have the grace to survive long enough for Kurita to have him executed for his failures.
Takashi took in a deep breath.
Kurita exhaled.
"I was not aware that those were jumpships. In fact, I was not aware that there were allies at all when we set off. We were communication silent for the entire journey from the Combine. Those white ships are unaffiliated with the Combine." He said, whatever the Brigadier's plan he hadn't shared them with any of his staff or Kurita for that matter. He had an inkling that even the Brigadier didn't know what was happening, but, as Slim had written, a pig headed adherence to orders in spite of the local situation was a Japanese and now, Kuritan trait.
To think, that even over the course of a thousand years... They had not changed.
"Riiiiight. And I'm the Archon."
Kurita reached down and unfastened his Wakazashi, the smaller of the two blades that he had received from the the Wisdom of the Dragon School upon his graduation two years prior.
"On my word as Kurita Takashi, heir to the Dragon, the Draconis Combine had no part in the actions of the White Fleet. In fact, upon my return the Internal Security Force will do all in its power to track down and identify the perpetrators. They will suffer for their crimes." He growled the last part out before placing the blade into the arms of the Korporal.
The Korporal looked surprised.
"You hold my Honour in your hands. Thus, you hold the Honour of the Draconis Combine in your hands. I may not regain it until I have regained my blades from you. I swear to you that we had no knowledge of this White Fleet. Nor did we work with them. They are enemies of both our realms for their destruction of the Jumpships." Kurita said, staring at the man who stared at him with wide eyes.
"Pass this to your superiors." He said simply.
"Right. Um. Okay." The man was not articulate, as was proper. It was the Honour of the Dragon he held in those hands of his.
"I will arrange a path for you to leave soon to pass on the message. But before you do, tell me. What of these new Battlemechs, when was a new design conceived?" Kurita asked, pondering the new machine and its bewilderingly many different configurations.
"Three months ago."
Kurita paused.
Three months ago?
And they had enough of them to equip entire regiments with them? It was as if it were the Jenner but a Medium chassis. The construction method must be exceptionally simple to allow such. They would do well to learn from it.
There were a few wrecks dotted about the frontline now that he thought about it… enough to possibly assemble a whole one if it were retrieved.
His eyes narrowed.
He had a window.
"You will be guided to your lines, but first, I must secure command of the Dieron Regulars." Kurita said as he stood up, motioning for his men to follow. Their eyes were wide.
Despite being in his lance for two years now, they were not prepared for this.
He wondered if he were truly unique… or if the Combine had truly beaten any sense of initiative out of them.
+Break+
Korporal Kendo (oh the irony of the name on someone who had been captured by the Combine), wanted to poke at the bandages that were roughly holding his guts in place.
The broken arm was in a splint.
He was, as best as the Combine practiced medicine at any rate, 'patched up'.
He also had a prime seat as Takashi Kurita himself, heir to the Combine, Chu-I, or Leutnant in LCAF parlance, knelt in a circle, his sheathed katana on his lap.
The madman had decided that he would take leadership of the Dieron Regulars, all of their regiments, and then said that any who wished to oppose him, Heir to the Dragon could come to the Circle of Honour and duel him.
Then he had knelt in a clearing made by a mech as it swept its foot in a circle… and just waited to die.
Like.
Seriously.
The fucking balls on this man, and this was after he had given his 'Honour' to Kendo to hold, the small blade still resting uneasily in his palms.
Fucking hell this was not normal, nowhere in the history of the LCAF had this ever happened before and he was just, really fucking glad, that his portable camera was still intact and recording.
Who knew that the standard issue piece of kit to NCOs and Officers would come in so useful.
Oh.
A challenger.
A mechwarrior with the tabs for Sho-sa, a Major stepped forward.
"Heir to the Combine or not, there is a chain of command. Step back young Kurita, now is not your time." The Sho-sa growled.
A big burly man whos katana looked like a toothpick in his hands knelt opposite of the heir.
Kendo watched with wide eyes as Takashi shook his head.
"I cannot. For urgency is a must. The Dragon must turn, it's reverse scale is exposed and a blade at its jugular."
The major looked confused then alarmed… and finally, his eyes closed in acceptance.
"Then prove your conviction. Sho-Sa Terrance stands before you representing the Dieron Regulars, 3rd Battlemech Regiment."
"Know that you have proven the honour of the Dieron 3rd Regulars this day, you and your family will be forever honoured for your service."
Then they both stood and unsheathed their blades.
Kendo held his breath.
The Major charged forward, his blade single handed, the other holding the sheath like it was a shield.
Takashi had dropped his own sheath and was holding his blade in two hands, angled to the left slightly, exposing the right side of his body.
The Major closed in, sword swinging into the right of the heir's body.
Then he was dead, the young Kurita stepping into the blade and piercing it directly into the Major's heart.
"With Honour." Whispered the major.
"With Honour." Takashi replied, holding the major until he passed, a single tear shining in the sunlight dropping from his eyes.
Then, he stood and gently placed the body down.
"Now then Korporal. We have a Parley to arrange."
Kendo froze.
As did the assembled DCMS men around them.
"There is much Honour to regain and time is short to do so."
+Break+
Colonel Augustine glared at the map before her eyes.
The problem was the damned bunkers!
Pillboxes.
Whatevers!
They were holding up the advance.
Each was situated so that one could cover two others, meaning that if they tried to push their way forward to clear out one, the others would fire upon them.
Now, one could do it with battlemechs, but the problem was that when they tried, they killed onebunker, in exchange for a Battlemech so damaged that it would take weeks to repair. It wasn't one of the new Utility Mechs but a Zeus, there was no easy repair facility nearby!
So now her staff were here, as was Brigadier Slim's, trying to identify a solution to the problem of the bunker.
The Sun Zhang Cadre had been bottled up, but the same problem abounded.
Infantry dug in, quick reaction force tanks.
What was a solution that was not ruinous in terms of manpower?
"The safest option is the autocannon approach, we bring them up, build up defences with a mousehole for a direct shot at the enemy position, then blow the bunkers to pieces one by one." Colonel Urizen spoke up, leaning back on the folding chair that was uncomfortable to all but him apparently.
"It's also the slowest and does not answer the problem of the reverse slope. How do we clear the from the reverse slope without them shooting us to bits as we skyline one by one?" Answered Blucher, colonel of one of her armour regiments.
"Artillery and Dropship bombardments. We scout, locate a position, blow it to pieces then repeat. With enough dropships, we could clear out the entire reverse slope without exposing our boys to danger." Another colonel said.
"We're ignoring the most basic option here, we have inferno SRMs. The DCMS area already using them on our soldiers, why aren't we doing the same to them? They won't surrender. We bring our boys up to the edge, we shoot them with infernos and burn them out." Colonel Jasper of an infantry regiment spoke up, interrupting the conversation.
"It's one thing to use it against Battlemechs, but if we use it against infantry… our boys aren't going to react well." Muttered another.
"It's either that or we charge forward and take casualties for every bunker we want to clear." Jasper replied. "A range of 270 metres, means we can just lob them over like mortars if we need to. For the ones in front of us, the infantry will be able to crawl forward and use them at short range, or do it under the suppression of the autocannons. In any case, they'll burn the bastards out." He continued.
"How are we meant to keep it accurate? There's nothing stopping them from doing the exact same against us from the reverse slope. Or just sending forward a QRF force to wipe out our infantry."
"Then we have the Chindwins flying CAB ready to drop 50 tons of Inferno missiles in crates if we need to. Clear them out that way." Jasper shrugged.
The room looked at each other.
There wasn't like they were able to find a way to counter the advantages that the Combine had in the defence without extreme casualties after all.
"A consensus if we would ladies and gentlemen, we'll test the methods out in the future. Give me 2 for us to test in the next offensives."
The room discussed and argued and then decided on two.
The Inferno idea, using infantry to crawl their way forward and then lob the shells over the reverse slope as well as loading the Chindwins with 50 tons of inferno munitions to drop on the defenders.
The precision bombing idea was the second.
Right.
Time to test it out then.
"Sir. We've got a white flag of truce from the Kuritans." A soldier burst into the room.
She stared.
"What the fuck?" One of the colonels muttered, echoing their thoughts.
"They've got one of our soldiers with them. We've confirmed him to be Korporal Kendo from the 9183rd Infantry Regiment. They're asking for parley."
Colonel Augustine looked at the assembled Colonels.
Their blood was up.
They were on the offensive.
They were winning.
They would wipe out the Kuritans given time.
But did she want to take that time and lose more men?
She sighed.
Ah right, she wasn't the one in charge, she could delegate.
"Brigadier?" She asked of Slim.
He looked at her and nodded.
"Take the call. We might as well see what's going on while we move our assets up to test the two theories. It's not like we're doing anything anyway." He said.
And so it was.
Once the call was connected, things were upended again. She was not liking this world where things were complicated and constantly changing.
What was wrong with the old order of things she wondered?
Where things didn't change at a moment's notice.
"I am Kurita Takashi, Heir to the Dragon. I have come to parley in light of our mutual foe in the White Fleet who seeks to pit us against each other in the destruction of priceless jumships and their slipways. I pledge upon my Honour that the Draconis Combine had nothing to do with this heinous crime. I must return to the Combine to identify these enemies to both our realms and destroy them."
Oh.
Well.
That changed things didn't it?
They couldn't very well destroy them now, the optics would be particularly bad.
This Heir certainly was better at diplomacy than his father… which was a problem since it would be that much harder to kill him when the time came.
+Break+
A peak into the future; 5 Months Later
Kurita Takashi strode into the throne room where his Lord Father sat upon his throne.
His Lord Father's court knelt around him, obsequiously displaying their lack of any redeeming qualities.
He had finished Defeat Into Victory.
He had learned the secrets of Slim, he had learnt of where the Combine was lacking, he had learnt where his Lord Father was lacking.
If there was to be victory, the Combine must change and must adapt.
The only test of generalship is success
His father had not been successful in what he attempted.
He had attempted to rejuvenate the Combine after his grandfather's failings… but had failed in that as well.
The Combine had been losing against the Davions and Steiners despite this overwhelming focus on military capability.
Slim had the right of it, without a strong civilian component to manufacture the needs of the military, there is nothing but weakness in the military that is now brittle and lacking in flexibility.
There was so much that needed to be done.
His Lord Father would never step down, Takashi Kurita knew that. That was an admission of weakness and failure.
He was however, in all honesty, over his head.
He was unable to handle the sheer strain that the rulership of an entire nation put on his shoulders.
Kurita Takashi, for the sake of the Combine, would need to step up.
He was young… but Slim had shown him the way forward.
He need not be the best warrior or the best tactician or the best soldier.
He just needed to be the moral centre and the driver of change, he would have his generals and his warriors, for the Combine was the greatest of the Inner Sphere's nations. So long as he remained and his reforms proved fruitful, so too would the Combine evolve and change.
Takashi Kurita stepped further into the room, his brown and white uniform gleaming. His katana at his waist.
His Lord Father saw him and beamed.
For he loved him. His Lord Father loved him in a way that he could not for the rest of the Combine.
Takashi loved him back, how could one not love someone that loved them so whole heartedly? He closed his eyes.
Kurita opened his eyes and kept striding forward, ignoring etiquette that required him to kneel.
"Lord Father." He said.
"Speak," Coordinator Kurita Hohiro intoned.
"I love you Father." Takashi said.
His Lord Father's eyes narrowed in outrage, for allowing himself to appear so weak in front of so many. Yet his Lord Father was not stupid. He was simply ineffective. He knew something was different.
"Why are you here?" He asked.
"To succeed you Father." Kurita replied.
"You are aware of what this means." Was the reply, the eyes opened themselves in surprise, a hand instinctively grasping at the katana on his waist.
"Yes. I am the Dragon, and the Dragon must be strong." His words stirred the court who were watching this drama with unblinking eyes.
"Then, prove your strength." His Lord Father said, stepping down from the throne.
Kurita stepped back and into the centre of the hall, his Lord Father standing opposite.
There was no place for emotion and sentiment here.
The future of the Dragon was at stake, he had been honest when he said that Dragon's reverse scale was exposed.
There must be change or there would be no Dragon.
His Katana was unsheathed.
His opponent's unsheathed itself in response.
He held his blade ready.
Kurita's eyes tracked his opponent's blade, watching it waver slightly, trying to force him to make a reaction.
He refused to allow his opponent to dictate the pace of his fight.
He was Kurita.
Kurita dominated all.
The blade in front of him continued to waver.
He stepped forth and struck.
The return blow was strong but unfocused.
His counter blow was strong and sure.
He continued to strike, the return strikes were ineffective, weak.
His opponent wavered one last time.
He struck true, his blade cleaving into flesh.
Takashi Kurita's eyes opened as his Lord Father stood tall, absolutely refusing to allow himself to fall.
"You are the Dragon now." His Lord Father said with a smile. His eyes carried a pride so strong that Takashi felt himself tear up.
"I am the Dragon now." He answered the unspoken question.
His Lord Father died.
Kurita Takashi strode past his father's body, his eyes dry.
He was the Dragon now.
Sitting on the throne he looked at the assembled military officers, useless chaff the lot of them.
The celebration of his return and the story of the honourless White Fleet trying to use the Combine as a shield in their attack on the jumpships had been running through Luthien. The camera was still recording, sending out all that it saw live to Luthien, he had made sure that it would not be censored before he had entered the room. It would be recorded and played across all worlds in the Combine.
Good.
All the Draconis Combine needed to hear his words.
"My first decree. All Military Districts and positions of Warlord are abolished. All officers and units will be separated into 12 Commands based upon the Zodiac animals. The list will be dispatched to all commands by HPG. Each Zodiac will be responsible for all matters in the Combine in their area of responsibility, military, civilian, jumpship, manufacturing. All Zodiac will be ranked against each other at the end of each year based on that year's mission. The head of each Zodiac will have a seat in my War Council. The highest ranked Zodiac will be granted a permanent addition of most Honourable Zodiac of the year to their standard. There will be universal missions where all Zodiacs must work together. Your first mission is to reverse engineer the Utility Light to Medium Battlemech that I have brought back from the Lyran Commonwealth. I want a factory for its production to be ready by the end of the year."
In a single decree he had shattered the DCMS as an institution.
The institutional infighting where different cliques would assassinate each other for the sake of nebulous honour as they defined it was now formalised with different Zodiacs to concentrate themselves within. They would have all that they wanted, just not in the way that they wanted.
Each Zodiac was to be headed by the heads of the most powerful cliques, they would be less powerful as a whole… but they would accept it regardless. Better to rule in hell than to be a servant in heaven was their mindset. The Warlords of course would be given command of a Zodiac to keep them pliable, but there were now 7 more Warlord equivalents for them to compete against.
The DCMS already had complete and total control over the civilian sector regardless. This was a formalisation of this, a formalisation that would force the military forces to take a more active role in their civilian industries to drive them to better performances.
After all, at the heart of all of this was competition.
The DCMS was stagnant, its tactics in the face of the Commonwealths new production capacity was inadequate. Rapid, dramatic transformation was necessary.
The Combine must be flexible, rigidity was brittleness.
His eyes traced to his Lord Father as he lay there in an expanding pool of his own blood.
+Inner Sphere at War System wishes to bond with you+
The words went through his mind, the world slowing down.
His eyes narrowed.
"I refuse." He said, not in words but in mind.
He was the Dragon, the Dragon did not use crutches like some invalid.
The Dragon would grow strong.
There would be resistance… but he would overcome them, for he was the Dragon now. He was the Draconis Combine and the Draconis Combine was him.
He was Kurita Takashi.
If this Huu Vu, of the same age as himself could singlehandedly bring the Lyran Commonwealth out of its cowardly slump, then so too would he ensure the Dragon regained its luster and brilliance.