Hiroshi Pederson

Hiroshi Pederson
Personal
Affiliation	Draconis Combine
Profile
Rank	Tai-sho

History

Tai-sho Hiroshi Pederson was an officer in the Navy of the Draconis Combine during the Star League era and First Succession War. In February 2787 he was in command of an invasion force dispatched to conquer Skondia, which he led from his flagship, the DCS Galedon, a Samarkand-class carrier. The invasion force consisted of six fully-supported DCMS regiments carried aboard some twenty JumpShips and escorted by forty-five WarShips. Arriving at the nadir jump point, Pederson soon became aware of the major Lyran naval presence in the system; unaware of the events at New Kyoto and elsewhere, Pederson assumed that the Lyrans had been forewarned of the invasion, but proceeded to attempt to force his way through the Lyran forces and capture the planet anyway.

Skondia had been raided by the Draconis Combine in 2786, a humiliatingly successful raid by the Draconis Combine Mustered Soldiery that had led to the local garrison being bolstered by an additional two BattleMech regiments, with a naval picket consisting of five WarShips and some twenty assorted assault and carrier DropShips for support. The attack on the Bolson Shipyards had made Skondia the focus of a major naval buildup, however; that concentration of force meant that when a DCMS invasion force arrived in February 2787, it was amazed to discover a Lyran naval force consisting of fifty WarShips - including theTharkad-class battlecruisers LCS Impregnable and LCS Indomitable - backed up by more than two hundred DropShips, representing a total combat ship strength of almost three hundred vessels, all located close to Skondia itself and under the overall command of Admiral Seamus van Hatten, who was using the Impregnable as his flagship.

Before launching his attack, Pederson dispatched a courier back to Combine space, carrying the news that the Lyrans appeared to have been waiting for him, and that the LCAF might be aware of the planned DCMS strategy for their major offensive on the Lyran border; he then formed his fleet into a conical wedge, determined to punch through the Lyran naval forces and deploy his ground forces. Van Hatten was a competent but untested naval commander, and he attempted to use his forces to blunt the Combine assault. Van Hatten detailed a third of his naval forces to specifically attempting to interdict and intercept the Combine transports, while the remaining two-thirds of his forces engaged the Combine combat vessels.

Van Hatten's efforts were only partly successful; the forces assigned to attacking the transports managed to destroy enough vessels to account for perhaps a reinforced regiment, but both portions of van Hatten's fleet were unable to effectively counter the large number of fighter carriers present within Pederson's flotilla. The Lyran WarShips found themselves constantly harassed by aerospace fighters and having to either evade, divert more attention to the fighters, or call on their own fighters and DropShips to assist them - and when the Combine transports finished disgorging their troops onto Skonida, those ships and their attendant fighters and assault DropShips were free to rejoin the battle.

The Lyran naval forces fought bitterly in defense of Skondia, fighting for the better part of four weeks, until reduced to just a third of their original strength, in what would become one of the largest naval engagements between the Commonwealth and the Combine in the entire of the Succession Wars. Although the Lyran naval losses were heavy - including van Hatten himself and the Impregnable, which was crippled while battling the DCS Bladewind and DCS Star Spirit, a pair of Narukami-class destroyers - van Hatten's forces destroyed half the Combine forces, and the LCAF line regiments on the ground fought for four months before withdrawing.

Bibliography

• First Succession War (sourcebook)