Operation SCORPION

Are the Blakists in the room with us now?

Last time, I wrote to you about Myndo Waterly as the architect of a promising window of peace in the Inner Sphere. This week, we’ll discuss how that peace and Waterly’s life came to an end.

The Coming of the Clans

In the past, I’ve talked about the ascension of Leo Showers and the “go vote” for Operation REVIVAL largely from the perspective of the Clans themselves. My motive wasn’t to dismiss the Inner Sphere outlook, but to balance it: in BattleTech, we all too often get the Spherer book and a sentence or two from the other side. I’m not exactly going to correct that here: the members of ComStar, and especially their most senior members like Primus Myndo Waterly, had a very different experience of Operation REVIVAL to people elsewhere in the Inner Sphere. But I will be shifting perspective somewhat, and so the Spherer term Clan Invasion will be preferred here.

The 1990 novel Lethal Heritage tells us that Waterly was aware of the first contact between Clan and Inner Sphere forces on The Rock, though at the time the invaders’ identity was a mystery. I’ve touched on the infamous scene of Waterly discussing the evidence with Precentor Martial Anastasius Focht but it’s important enough to bear repeating here. Waterly seized on the most available explanation for the report of strange ‘mechs with advanced technology: that the unknown forces were descendants of Kerensky’s Exodus. Focht told her that it was a bit far-fetched to think that Kerensky had brought scientists and technicians on the Exodus and suggested… aliens. Waterly found that preposterous, pointing out that an alien species would be unlikely to come up with technology so similar to humanity’s. But Focht had his answer:

Imagine a higher creature, Primus, one capable of more complex genetic assimilation. It would only need to obtain human genetic material to be able to assume our form. If it could consciously manipulate its development, it could even begin to maximize its new potential.

So not just aliens, but aliens that stole human shapes and human technology. I’m pretty sure that Michael Stackpole was pulling the same trick he used with Edo and loading up the reader with relevant ideas before their significance is revealed, so I don’t want to knock the writing. But the logic involved does make the Precentor Martial look more than a little ridiculous. Focht’s insistence on going out to meet aliens who he believed capable of perfectly imitating humans in the hope of negotiating with them comes across as at least two shades of crazy. The novel tells us that Waterly is extremely tired – and it wasn’t her personal skin at stake – so perhaps she had an excuse for going along with the plan.

Still, I tend to think that this is a case of “stories from the BattleTech universe”, written to convey popular conceptions in that imagined future. If we’re trying for a sober reconstruction of events, it’s pretty unlikely that the alien theory would have been taken seriously even by Focht. Making sense of the evidence from The Rock would have involved input from teams of analysts and the return of Kerensky’s people was the best fit, followed by more marginal explanations like the descendants of a secret Star League or Amaris project. On that basis, Focht’s diplomatic mission seems fairly reasonable – if somewhat odd given his lack of interest in politics. It would make sense, however, if someone in ComStar had information about Clan culture and was able to convince Waterly that Clan warriors would be most comfortable talking to a high-ranking soldier.

The Clan-ComStar Pact

Lethal Heritage doesn’t show Focht’s first meeting with the Clans. The novel doesn’t use him as a point of view character (which is probably just as well in light of that aliens scene), so the Precentor Martial just pops up later, having established his mission with Ulric Kerensky’s Wolf Clan. We were told later that members of ComStar’s Explorer Corps established first contact a couple of months before Focht met with the Wolves, and by that point they’d largely confirmed that the Clansfolk were substantially human and descendants of Kerensky’s Exodus.

If the meeting between Focht and the Clans lacked the tension of a first contact, it certainly led to exciting agreements. For their part, the Clans gave away their largest concession before negotiations, promising that ComStar’s Hyperpulse Generator (HPG) stations would only be cordoned off and guaranteeing the safety of ComStar personnel on Clan occupied planets. Waterly and the First Circuit agreed to not to transmit interstellar HPG signals between the growing Clan Occupation Zone and the rest of the Inner Sphere in return for lifting the cordon. Sometimes I hear Inner Sphere fans declaring this concession treasonous, but really ComStar had no way to use their HPG network to the Great Houses’ advantage. They could either cooperate to the advantage of people in the Occupation Zone, or dig in their heels and gain nothing. A second concession from ComStar was really of the same kind. They agreed to assist the Clans in administering worlds in the Occupation Zone – essentially acting as a buffer between civilian populations and overstretched military governors.

The sticking point for a lot of people is an information-sharing agreement. ComStar gave the Clans information on worlds targeted for invasion. We recently saw an interpretation of this in MechWarrior 5: Clans and, in my view, the ComStar representative wasn’t that helpful! I haven’t turned up any cases of ComStar intelligence foiling one of the Inner Sphere’s trademark “cunning schemes”, either, so it’s doubtful that anything that exciting was being handed over. I’m sure that the order’s personnel were instructed to share publicly available documents such as the Technical Readouts and reports on the Great Houses, as well as guides for traveling business people and super-wealthy tourists. But it’s not clear that this gave much of a military advantage. In the most part, ComStar gave the Clans information that helped the invaders understand (not defeat) the Inner Sphere, and Focht’s mission gathered significant information on the Clans in return. Lethal Heritage has Waterly treating the pact as temporary and expedient from the start, vowing that there would be a day when “the Precentor Martial will have learned enough to enable him to defeat these hordes.”

Operation SCORPION

The key information Waterly sought was the location of the Clan homeworlds. Focht’s account in the ComStar sourcebook holds that the plan was to wait for that information and then strike at the heart of the invaders’ civilization – but this plan was derailed by the revelation that Terra (ComStar’s base of operations) was the target of the Clan Invasion. Waterly and Focht improvised a response in the form of the Battle of Tukayyid, which I’ve talked about quite a lot already. Rather than retread that we’ll hurry on to Waterly’s plan to capitalize on the battle: Operation SCORPION. This was really two operations in one, launched together on the 1^st of May 3052.

In the Clan Occupation Zone, ComStar personnel were instructed to overcome the second-line garrisons left in place while the cream of the Invading Clans fought on Tukayyid. This failed, though it’s striking that ComStar was incapable of rallying the population to their case. The Occupation Zone had tens of billions of people. Even if we do the usual discount by writing off 90% of them as enserfed people who cared nothing for the flag flying over their planetary spaceport, the task of keeping billions in line would have been extremely demanding. The whole Clan Warrior Caste at the time numbered about one hundred thousand, most of whom were in the homeworlds, and it’s doubtful that even this whole force could have occupied a population turned hostile. We’ll have to come back to this mystery another day.

In the rest of the Inner Sphere, the plan was more old-fashioned. All of the Great Houses would be placed under Interdict and denied the use of the HPG network. If this had been successful, it would have set the administration of this realms back to the 26^th century, or worse. After all, in the Age of War, the Great Houses were accustomed to carrying out communications by jumpship and built their system of government around that limitation. Focht’s version of events in the ComStar sourcebook holds that Sharliar Mori (b. 2997) had been handpicked as a successor by Myndo Waterly (rather famously born on the first day of 3001) and therefore knew enough to alert the Draconis Combine and Federated Commonwealth of the Interdict in advance. Given the ages of the two women, I suspect that the handpicked successor business is just a crude lie to justify Mori’s appointment to Primus after Waterly’s death – but that throws the rest of the story into doubt as well. We can say for sure that Operation SCORPION was betrayed by forces within ComStar, but who exactly did it and how they knew is far less certain.

The End

We can also say with a high degree of confidence that Myndo Waterly did not survive to see New Year’s Day in 3053 and that Sharliar Mori was her successor as Primus of ComStar. Past that, there are three stories about Myndo Waterly’s death and Anastasius Focht told two of them. (Remember that time when he swore off politics?)

Focht’s first try at explaining Waterly’s disappearnace was in the old Wolf Clan sourcebook, dated 9^th December 3052. At that point, he claimed that Myndo Waterly had retired in the face of opposition from the First Circuit, along with her close supporter Precentor Demona Aziz. The Precentor Martial noted that there were rumors about the deaths of both women, and insisted that he “had the pleasure of communicating recently with both”.

By 3055, the in-universe date of the ComStar sourcebook, that story had become untenable, in part because Demona Aziz had resurfaced in the Free Worlds League and the things she had to say about Focht ruled out any pleasurable communication between the two of them. As such, Anastasius Focht had to admit that Waterly had died of a brain aneurysm within days of her retirement – and surely months before December 3052. There’s no doubt that changing his story damaged Focht’s credibility and the credibility of Sharliar Mori as Primus of ComStar. Even if you don’t buy the next account, it’s clear that Focht lied about what happened to Waterly at least once.

The story in Lethal Heritage is that Focht murdered Waterly, personally firing the weapon that killed her. If Demona Aziz was the spark, stories of Waterly’s murder were the fuel, and the flame was the Word of Blake. The old ComStar underwent a schism, with the main body under Mori and Focht undergoing a secular transformation into a megacorporation while the Word of Blake upheld a reactionary version of the old organization’s creed. Under the leadership of Aziz, the Word of Blake set up operations in the Free Worlds League and would go on to do some truly terrible things – but going through that chamber of horrors is a trial for another day.

Still, we should conclude by reflecting on Waterly’s own legacy in the ComStar schism. The Word of Blake typically claimed her as one of their own and this was one of the few things that the Mori-led ComStar agreed with them about. Despite the unanimity of these organizations, I have to say that the account of Myndo Waterly in 20 Year Update matches Word of Blake politics poorly. Readers might recall that the Wolf’s Dragoons viewed Waterly as something of a liberal who wanted to loosen ComStar dogma. She also made a point of wearing eyeglasses to correct her vision rather than undergoing surgery, personal conduct at odds with Word of Blake experiments in “augmentation”. Even when it came to restoring the Star League, Waterly was firm that ComStar should lead that development while the Word of Blake was apparently happy to accept a supporting role in the Second Star League (sometimes known as the “Star League Alliance”). The only one of Waterly’s known beliefs that really matches up with the Word of Blake was her determination to destroy the Clans – but if that’s enough to be a Blakist, perhaps a quarter of the BattleTech fans you’ll meet are true believers. Indeed, the Word of Blake would look back on Waterly’s Clan-ComStar Pact as a mistake, matching up pretty well with the real-world Inner Sphere fans who denounce the pact as treason.