System: Hexare

[3031] Following their successful raids on Altorra and Fronde in late 3030 – as part of the joint Andurien-Canopian invasion of the Capellan Confederation - Carson’s Renegades struck deeper into the Confederation on a mission to sow chaos, this time targeting Hexare, midway between the capital and the St Ives Compact. As with the previous raids, the Renegades swiftly took charge of the world after a six-day campaign that scattered the Home Guard stationed there. Unlike the previous worlds, Hexare did not seek to surrender to the invaders but rather mounted a cool and defiant non-cooperation campaign, vowing that the Renegades would suffer when the Celestial Wisdom revealed his secret plans to crush them. The Renegades laughed at this, and with two more worlds on their hit-list — Hustaing and Carmen — set about commandeering supplies and equipment. The delay nearly cost them their lives.

Incensed by the strike so close to her capital, Romano Liao dispatched both battalions of the rebuilt Prefectorate Guard from their cantonment on Sian to chase down and destroy the Renegades. The Guards arrived at a pirate point in the Hexare system a scant eleven days after the Renegades’ landing and succeeded in landing while the Renegades were still engaged in re-supply operations. The Guards’ hopes for a surprise attack on the Andurien troops were scotched by the Renegades’ interception of CCAF broadcasts, but the mercenaries could not complete their preparations to leave before the Capellan troops attacked. Leaving a battalion to oversee the re-supply, the main Renegades force deployed to meet the Liao troops.

The Guards showed little imagination, staging a frontal assault on the Renegades’ line that they repulsed with ease. Counterattacking on a broad front despite their smaller numbers, the Renegades forced the Capellan unit to give ground, pushing them almost a kilometer further from the city before disengaging. The second CCAF assault was more cautious, a series of probes intended to identify weak spots in the Andurien line. Some of these were turned away violently, while other probes were allowed to overextend themselves before being crushed, and yet more were allowed to find “weak spots” that were subsequently reinforced (to the Guards’ surprise) when they returned to exploit them.

Renegade flanking attacks kept the Guards off-balance while fake withdrawals lured Guards formations into killing zones. When the Renegades broke contact with the CCAF unit late on 14 March, the Capellan commander assumed it was another trick. Only when the Renegades’ DropShips began to boost for orbit, their drive trails visible even to the Guards two-dozen kilometers away, did he realize that the trick was their escape.

There are no functional factories located on this planet.