Certainly the two most pressing reasons for the Dragon’s choice of Mallory’s World as a target must have been strategic location and adaptability. As one of the route-worlds between the then-nub of the Federated Suns’ main body and the finger of worlds it thrust toward Terra, Mallory’s World was a vital link between New Avalon and Terra, as well as important industrial worlds like Quentin and Northwind. Removing a link in that chain could hamper AFFS resupply and intelligence efforts all along the Draconis March border, making a Combine invasion that much more likely to succeed.
Adaptability was almost certainly one of the DCMS’ reasons; Mallory’s World is one of the planets most suited to human life in the area; its New Helen continent provides export foodstuffs to a dozen worlds, and while its other continents were ravaged there always remains the possibility—as long-term AFFS contingency plans reveal—that funds and technology could be freed up to reinvigorate the wasteland. Having a possession they would not need to greatly recondition, that could provide a ready logistical source for their follow-on forces, would certainly aid any Combine penetration.
And, of course, we cannot discount the obvious: having once possessed it briefly during the First Succession War, the Kurita’s rapacious Dragon simply wanted it back. Next week, we look at the first of the players on the board: the Seventeenth Avalon Hussars.
Strategos is a syndicated weekly holovid column distributed by INN. Host Mordecai Aristobulus is a Galatea-based historian and writer who works widely with various Inner Sphere presses, including Merc and the Donegal Broadcasting Company.
