Chapter 150 - Rebellion Preparations

The ‘White Fang’ tapped his finger on the table with obvious stress, looking at a document detailing the budget that the central rebellion command has provided to him. “This can’t be right, the budget is ridiculously low!”

Sierra nodded her head. “This budget is the final approved version. The unification has come much earlier than expected. The announcement by Oliver Athen in the recent press conference has had our supporters dwindle by more than 50%. No sane business on Athen would want to get caught as sympathizers with a rebellion movement, even if they operate outside of New Saint.”

It’s been barely a week since the press conference announcing the unification, and already the aftereffects were being felt everywhere.

The rebellion had been propped up on individual personal savings, donations and sympathizers. Not every inner agreed with the way the outers had been segregated, providing the rebellion with an informant network of sorts.

Many small towns and cities such as Rockhold did not want to see New Saint succeed as well, hence they funded the rebellion so as to take New Saint down a peg. However, now that Oliver had obtained the authority to enforce the law all over the planet, many towns and cities could see the writing on the wall.

How long could a small independent town of 600 people hold out against the New Saint enforcers? All of them were bound to eventually fall under the supervision of New Saint at some point, either willingly or by force. Many towns and cities were split on what to do, it was an abrupt end to their perceived independence.

Hence, the supply network of the rebellion immediately dried up terribly. The ‘White Fang’ stared at the budget in a solemn mood. This practically meant that they could no longer maintain the same level of operation that they currently had.

“Immediately cut all rations and reduce supplies to only the bare minimum. All non-essential mission agents are to return to base upon completion of their mission. If their mission cannot be completed within two weeks, return immediately. We have to retrieve as many of our deployed soldiers as possible before they get swept up by the enforcers.”

“Yes sir.” Sierra logged down the orders when a holographic image of ‘Bonfire’ the rebellion leader appeared in front of the ‘White Fang’.

[Due to the sudden change in circumstances, it is understood that the rebellion would not be able to maintain its current state of operations for long due to our dwindling support.] ‘Bonfire’ spoke in an announcement.

[New information obtained and assumptions seems to suggest this is only the first of multiple phases in the enforcers attempts to unify the planet. Already half of the enforcers have been spun off into a new planetary military force, called the Athen Enforcers. This organizational shift implies that they are going to be taking on a more offensive role.]

A map of the planet appeared, marking out the key cities such as Rockhold, New Saint and many other minor cities.

[New Athen Enforcer squads have been venturing further beyond New Saint, subjugating or intimidating outposts, towns and other colonist groups into submitting under the administration of New Saint. It is only a matter of time before the small cities are targeted as well.]

[However, due to its relatively close proximity to New Saint, our intelligence suggests that Rockhold is the main target for the first offensive military operations. The intention by the Five Families here seems to be hitting the largest target in a brutal offensive to scare the small cities into submission. If they succeed, it would be a domino effect and would lead to the death of the rebellion.]

[As such, the rebellion must interfere in that operation, while achieving our goals. Previously we have delayed the prison break mission due to lack of information, but it is clear now that we are out of time. If we want to make an impact and stall the military growth of New Saint, the prison break must be initiated at the same time the conflict in Rockhold begins, which is estimated to occur in three weeks.]

[Hence, the prison break mission would be brought forward to be commenced within three weeks. All other major and critical missions are now terminated. All rebel cells are to participate in this operation.]

[We have to strike the enforcers in the opening stages of their invasion of Rockhold and while we’re at our peak strength. By exploiting this diversion, the prison break mission has gained a success chance of more than 30% from its previous 5%. All agents from minor to top rank are to operate in this mission.]

The recorded message ended, with another document appearing on the ‘White Fang’s screen. It was the deployment orders for his rebel cell. “Looks like our top agents are the main forces breaking into the prison, while our major and minor will mostly help the Queen defend Rockhold. This is probably the biggest operation that the rebellion is about to pull off.”

“Sir, can we really pull this off in just three weeks?” Sierra asked concerningly. “This is a bit too sudden and too big of an operation, and it seems like a lot of things can go wrong. I don’t think the rebellion cell is ready either, we have to do a lot of reorganization and training for a large-scale conflict like this.”

The ‘White Fang’ did not reply, instead re-reading the document carefully. The details of the operations were not revealed yet to maintain secrecy, but the amount of equipment and vehicles they had to prepare was almost their entire stock. It looked set to be a life-or-death battle.

Ardan was definitely unsure of the viability of the operation, but he agreed with the rebellion leader that there was no better time to do this than now while the enforcers were distracted by Rockhold. “Cardenia won’t be happy to hear she’s being used as a main diversion…”

He assumed Cardenia already knew about this, but he was not about to go and save her – because he knew that Lisa and Braton were in the prison. Also, thousands of former rioters were in the prison, and saving them will give them a fighting chance in the coming fight.

It was unclear whether they would actually have the budget to support such an increased strength, however. Nutri-paste was cheap, but the more expensive things were exosuits and ammunition. Exosuit parts didn’t come easily in the rebellion.

“Call all of the officers in now, both minor and major to the lecture theatre. I will brief them there about this now.”

“Yes sir.”

A few hours later, the ‘White Fang’ was delivering a similar briefing to the officers gathered. Not all the officers were here, some were still out in the field.

“We have two objectives for our cell group:

1. Perform a prison break and ferry the three hundred thousand prisoners to the surface.

2. Stall and inflict as much damage on the enforcers in Rockhold during their offensive.

The details of the prison break will be explained later in a separate briefing when more agents have returned, but the Rockhold defense is something we can cover right now.”

“We currently have an agreement with the Queen on our defense strategy, and our job is to simply harass and kill as many enforcers as we can. We do not need to defend any key objectives or emplacements – the Queen’s Guard will handle this. It is their city after all, we are simply there to exploit and stall.”

“As such, our doctrine will be a pure hit-and-run. Critical objectives such as command posts and communication relay drones will be highlighted, but the first and foremost rule is to stay alive as long as you can. Do not engage into a pitched fight and do not expose yourself to the enemy any longer than is necessary.”

“Concealment and electromagnetic countermeasures is our primary resource here. We must continually catch the enforcers off-guard. We have a much clearer map of Rockhold courtesy of the Queen’s Guards, who have been building infrastructure in the subsurface of the city.”

While the entire city was underground already, it did not mean they ran pipes out in the open street. Rockhold had an entire sewer, tunnel and pipe system below that could be easily used for quick movement through the city without getting hit by mortars or artillery.

“Are we planning on bringing any heavy armour or vehicles of sorts?” One audience member asked.

“No, no heavy armour. We are fighting with pure urban guerrilla warfare, the most we will use is armoured hovercars as an infantry fighting vehicle, but we will not expose ourselves in the air. Traps, grenades and timed explosives will be our main method of rubbling buildings or breaking enemy barricades if any.”

“Any non-combatant unit we have will be dedicated to booby-trapping buildings, building obstacles and establishing resupply points. Each rebel squad is expected to operate independently for up to a week or more with resupply, and potentially a month without command communication.”

Urban warfare was too cluttered and dense for clear communication lines. Even with the advancement of wireless communications, electromagnetic countermeasures existed on both sides, so the rebellion had to anticipate the possibility of losing all communication with the command point.

The ‘White Fang’ continued explaining, showing the relatively flat hierarchy compared to the Athen Enforcers. Each squad leader only had three levels of command to go through before reaching the top commander.

This allowed the rebellion to act in a decentralized manner, making it hard for the Athen Enforcers to pinpoint any specific chain of command to stall the entire rebellion force.

The briefing concluded, with the ‘White Fang’ heading down to the exosuit factory area, where Felicia, the head of the exosuit department, was busy calculating numbers on a spreadsheet with her multi-terminal.

The factory was where many of the exosuit parts, weapons and ammunition were produced, though much more was needed for the daily expenditure of the rebellion. The rebellion has then been contracting other suppliers to make up for the shortfall.

“Do we have enough supplies to pull the defence off? Can we produce them in time?”

“No, but that’s always been the case right? We won’t be as well equipped as the Queen’s Guards or the Athen Enforcers, but we can still pack a punch at the right time in the right moment. We have the advantage in numbers as well.”

“What’s the current loadout of a rebel squad?”

“Hmm, a four-man fireteam made up of two buddy cells. Rifles for each of them, three claymore booby traps, two grenades, an anti-armour energy cannon along with refills for their particle canisters. That’s about it, I can’t afford anything else. Even refilling the particle canisters, we may not have enough after three weeks of fighting based on my spreadsheet.”

The ‘White Fang’ frowned, checking the list loadout. “This isn’t good enough, they need to be able to sustain for much longer periods.”

“We don’t have a choice, we can’t resupply them often, so they are probably going to have to scavenge equipment from the enforcers themselves. Only their New Saint Peacekeepers have a DNA lock on the rifle itself, not the canisters.” Felicia shrugged. It wasn’t that far-fetched to use the enforcer’s grenades or canisters.

“Then we better speed up the production of particle canisters.”

“I’ll try my best. We’re low on exosuit repair parts as well, still waiting for the new batch to come in. Our factory right now can barely keep up.” Felicia saluted.

Ardan was then reminded that Ceres just went out for his first mission, a resupply mission. He would have to ask Sierra later on how the squad was doing.

Heading to the hangar, the ‘White Fang’ eyed each of the armoured hovercar as he walked through, checking in with the technicians and repairmen.

He ran his hand over the composite ceramic plates that have been crudely attached to the hovercar, while technicians ripped out the inbuilt chairs, modifying the interior to better fit their purposes.

Many of the armoured hovercars would be designed to carry a four-men team to their objective, as well as featuring a mounted autocannon as well as two inbuilt mortars.

The pressing issue was ammunition and battery charge. The armoured hovercars needed a safe place to recharge the battery and reload fresh ammunition. “We would need to establish well hidden resupply points, or the resupply points have to be continuously mobile to prevent the enforcers from locking onto us…”

There were too many problems to solve. Ardan himself was not a Legion veteran – many in the rebellion did not have prior military experience. He could clearly tell his force would not be as well prepared as the enforcers will be, but he was going to try his hardest to make it so.

He headed to the operations center, where Sierra was calmly staring at an overview of all squad locations in their region. “So far, the enforcers have not really pinned too many of our squads down, but I would expect them to gradually increase in intensity over time. I have already issued the recall command, though it would take about four days to return for most of them.”

“That’s fine. I need you to setup a VR training session for those participating in the Rockhold defence. No one in this rebel cell has ever experienced large-scale urban combat, so I would like them to run as much simulation training as possible. Use the map of Rockhold for better clarity.”

“Yes sir, I’ll have it done by the time all the squads return. We will organize and do a second briefing with everyone then.”

“Great. Speaking of which, how’s ‘Dumpling’ doing?”

Sierra’s brows twitched slightly, as she put on a fake smile. “He’s doing great. He is currently on a simple cargo retrieval mission of minor difficulty. The mission is expected to take only three days.”

“Good.” Ardan left the operations centre and returned to his own office.

Ardan re-read the details sent from ‘Bonfire’, noting that he himself has not been posted to take part in the prison break, which made sense. “They need me and Sierra to be the commanders on the ground.”

He pulled up the list of soldiers and vehicles they had available to them. He shifted a few numbers around, organizing the squads into companies that would then handle different sectors. He also allocated for reserve troops that could replace a squad within a few hours.

There was a lack of information for what was the new loadout of the Athen Defenders as well, which gave Ardan much worry. “Their loadout should be a lot more militarized and offensive aimed. I wouldn’t be surprised to see all of them have an energy shield at all or multiple flying mini-drones to assist them in combat.”

These were military tech equipment that he did not have nor know how to produce. Sure, they had their own factory to produce things, but it required classified information as well as proprietary machines that they simply did not have access to. “Maybe one of the missions next time would be to hijack a Bee Strathon factory.”

Ardan scanned the list of agents assigned to the prison break, noting Ceres’s name was not listed on it yet.

“Well, you don’t need to wait any longer, Ceres. Looks like you’ll be involved in the prison break whether you like it or not.” Ardan chuckled to himself. He could easily get Ceres into the prison break, though he had to be careful. He could not whimsically reveal Ceres and have him join the prison break so easily.

He wondered what he would have to say to Braton and Lisa once they broke them out. It would be especially hard for him to explain to Lisa what happened to Mr Qiu and Mrs Qiu.

He pulled up Ceres’s currently assigned squad and mission, a frown developing on his face. “Originally this might have been an easy minor mission for him, but it’s not going to be pretty now…”