System: New Aberdeen

[3039] During the War of 3039, Lima was one of the worlds targeted primarily by mercenaries. Like the other worlds involved in these mercenary-supported actions, Lima was once a part of the Federated Suns but was lost to the Draconis Combine during the Fourth Succession War. As such it had a significant anti-Kurita feeling among its population. On the other hand, the world’s governor was something of an oddity. A retired DCMS Sho-sho, Yosuki Yamada was interested in promoting harmony on the world. He had opened his own military academy, of sorts, and was building up industry on the world using contacts he still had within the DCMS and its military suppliers. Thus, while AFFS special forces troops had little trouble finding citizens willing to stand up against Yamada and the Combine, they knew they would have problems with those that supported the governor.

On the other hand, the mercenary Cunningham’s Commandos was tasked to assist the uprising. This was not the unit’s first time on the world, as it had actually served briefly in the personal employ of Yamada several years earlier when he was first assigned to the world and was having troubles with pirates and even rogue Combine warriors. As soon as the mercenaries landed, the struggle for New Aberdeen began. Special forces-assisted insurgents stormed government buildings in fifteen cities, with mercenary ’Mech lances taking up positions within the most important of cities. Governor Yamada was captured within an hour, but taken into protective custody by the mercenaries after a group of insurgents threatened to execute him and any other Combine-installed officials.

The struggle for New Aberdeen did not end with Yamada’s capture, though. Citizens and militia troops on both sides of the fight continued on, leading to a low-level guerrilla war that lasted for months. In fact, the fighting became so brutal that the mercenaries distanced themselves from the action, lest they be drawn into a conflict where they might have to fire upon unarmed civilians. By July, the world had gone up like a powderkeg; cities were literally burning while the two sides fought over territory like rival street gangs.

Thousands had died already, and the death toll was only going to keep going up if someone or something didn’t put an end to the violence. Perhaps just as tragically, productivity on the world had dropped to almost nothing; those who didn’t take up arms on one side or the other were too scared to leave their houses and go to work. Even the arrival of the Twelfth Galedon Regulars had little effect on the fighting.

It did, however, inspire a solution. Retired Sho-sho Yosuki Yamada convinced the leader of the Cunningham’s Commandos to meet with his counterpart within the Twelfth Galedon Regulars. The mercenary leader recognized that there was little way he and his MechWarriors could hold off the Regulars for any length of time, while the commander of the Regulars knew he would need as much help as possible to calm emotions on the world. And though the Regulars would chafe at the thought of working side-by-side with the mercenaries, Sho-sho Yamada was the world’s military and civilian governor and was calling the shots.

So, on 17 August, the joint Combine-mercenary force embarked on a peace-keeping mission. City by city, they disarmed the entire populations, imprisoning the worst offenders on both sides of the fight and forming a police force to maintain the peace in conjunction with the Galedon Regulars’ infantry. After just a week of this, many of the people actively fighting each other across the planet went back to their regular lives, especially after they realized that the mercenaries and the DCMS were working together to end the violence. There were still a significant number of citizens fighting, though, and the joint peacekeeping force spent the next three months ending the worst of the violence.

Cunningham’s Commandos left the world in early December, and though initially charged with aiding the enemy, were acquitted after a communiqué from Yamada reached the High Command.

There are no functional factories located on this planet.