A resounding victory against the Legion of Freemen had eluded the Church military stationed on Sabattann soil for months, driving down the morale of it's soldiers. Commander Jarredd Boyle had, however, made a career out of making the most of bad situations. When the orders came down for him to mobilize the Church of the Nuclear Messiah's Fourth Legion and lead a frontal attack against rebel Freemen positions within New Rydynn City, he knew it was a suicide run. Such a strategy, against an entrenched and well-hidden enemy, couldn't possibly result in a victory. It came to light that the Church's Third Legion, led by Commander Kymm Myrtt, would commence a sweeping follow-up attack in the wake of the Fourth's movement. The ingredients for victory would then be in place ... but at what cost to the Fourth Legion itself? His Eminence, Most Revered Reverend Sidd Neverr, was attempting to solve two problems with one action ... Jarredd felt it in his gut. The Fourth would soften Freemen positions suitably so that the Third could then move in and execute a crushing final attack ... the Fourth, with it's iconoclastic reputation, essentially being sacrificed in the process. Jarredd Boyle never considered himself an intellectual, but he knew when he was being set up to become a statistic ... to become part of the "acceptable losses." Commander Boyle wasn't about to let that happen.
What Boyle didn't now, at least not at first, was that the Third was in the area for another reason ... to secure an old Sabattann Space Agency satellite relay station several clicks away from the city. Church technicians in Perdoxx had reestablished some rudimentary connections to the old Global Network and this SSA outpost appeared to be the source of mysterious transmissions. It was widely assumed, although never directly announced, that the transmissions were from the SSA moonbase on Axann ... specifically from the Elliot Enterprises Incorporated Series 5 supercomputer. While travel to the moonbase would be quite impossible, a connection to the E.5 data could greatly assist the Church in repairing the failing components of it's own EEI Series 9. Communications officers from the Fourth intercepted and decoded secret transmissions between High Command and the Third ... revealing the plot to Boyle. Boyle responded by taking a small detachment of men to beat the Third to the relay station and perhaps salvage the fate of himself and his men.
Fate is, much like it's patron god Venexx, a mercurial thing. When the Third arrived, Myrtt would have no negotiations and appeared fully satisfied with the imminent elimination of Boyle and the majority of his group of outcasts and rogues. Push came to shove and it was Myrtt who was left dead while Boyle scrambled out of the station to counter an ambush from a large unit of Freemen. The Third Legion was caught off guard and took extremely heavy losses ... but their superior numbers and firepower evened the odds to a very bloody tactical stalemate. Broken bodies and broken vehicles littered the battlefield and all that was left of the SSA relay station was a smoking pile of rubble. Jarredd was left with the task of unifying what was left of the Third with his own Fourth Legion and embarking on a new course of action ... this time without the consultation of Reverend Neverr.
Knowing that he now lacked the men and armaments to directly confront the Freemen within the city itself, Commander Boyle ordered his forces to surround the city and blockade it. If he could not drive the rebels out with force, he would cut off their supplies and starve them out via attrition. The blockade, however, was not perfect and while supplies became harder to come by ... the Freemen managed to continue their resistance and fight on with small-scale hit and run skirmishes. When it was plainly obvious that the Freemen were not going to surrender, Boyle finally contacted Reverend Neverr to request the deployment of the "the big guns" -- two mammoth ballistic cannons with the capability to raze almost entire city blocks from a range of several miles. Neverr didn't want to commit the cannons, code-named "The Truth" and "The Word," but relented in hopes of salvaging something out of what threatened to become another large scale debacle overseas.
The cannons made the difference they were intended to make. With the blockade still active and in place, Boyle directed random shelling of the city ... done in spurts that allowed for periods of quiet to be sandwiched between quaking explosions. His men questioned why they did not just continue a steady stream of shelling, but Jarredd made his reasoning clear to them ... "give'em some time to count their dead 'fore we start givin'em more ta count." In short it was a plan not designed to expedite an end to the situation but to maximize the terror generated from it. Support for the Freemen began flagging amongst the shaken city population and then nearly collapsed when the Church began mixing in mustard gas shells. Freemen leader Ricohh Gideonn was forced to do that which he never expected to do ... surrender.
Gideonn and Boyle met in the middle of the city and the terms were made clear. The Freemen would disarm themselves and march out of the city, leaving their positions and hardware behind. In exchange the Church would call an end to the shelling of the city and end the supply blockade. Church forces swept through the city collecting the abandoned Freemen equipment (much of which was originally Church material to begin with), flushing out small pockets of resistance as they did so. Back at the Church base-camp, located a few miles outside the city, unmitigated jubilation ensued ... victory had finally been attained. Jarredd Boyle was hailed as a hero amongst the Church military and plans were laid out to secure New Rydynn City and set up a command center within in. The plans, however, never came to fruition.
The Most Revered Reverend Neverr surprisingly recalled nearly all of the extant Church forces, leaving behind only a small team of covert operatives in the region. In Perdoxx, Boyle and his men were met with a thundering celebratory welcome ... replete with personal commendations from Never himself. In private, however, Neverr made it clear that the gross insubordination that had been employed by Boyle would not be tolerated and had to be addressed. Reverend Peterr Silverr, a missionary who had been assigned to New Rydynn City and had left with the military withdrawal, was appointed by Neverr to conduct an investigation and tribunal to decide Commander Boyle's punishment.
Now as the people of New Rydynn City begin to recover and the Freemen come out of hiding, their nemesis enjoys a halfhearted hero's lifestyle in Perdoxx. While he is greeted everywhere he goes with congratulations and gifts, Jarredd Boyle lives with the shadow of the impending tribunal. His appreciative thanks to the people of Perdoxx are tainted by the cloud of a bad situation which may be out of his control.
