Kelton Myers

Kelton Myers
Personal
Died	March 3074
Affiliation	Clan Goliath Scorpion
Profile
Rank	saKhan
Profession	Elemental

Kelton Myers was saKhan of Clan Goliath Scorpion from 3071 until his death.

History

Rise to saKhan

Kelton Myers was the successor to Nelson Elam as saKhan of the Goliath Scorpions. Elam was a casualty of the Trial of Refusal fought by the Goliath Scorpion Khan, Ariel Suvorov, against the short-lived Clan Fire Mandrill ilKhan Garret Sainze on Shadow in early 3071. The Trial of Refusal had been prompted by Sainze's failure to secure enough votes in the Grand Council held in February 3071 to have the Great Refusal overturned; a major factor in Sainze's failure was the failed attempt by three allied Clans—Clan Cloud Cobra, Clan Star Adder, and Clan Steel Viper—to have Khan Stanislov N'Buta of the Star Adders elected to ilKhan, prompting the three snake Clans and their allies to vote against the motion to overturn the Great Refusal. Following Sainze's death in the Trial of Refusal fought by the Goliath Scorpions, then-Star Colonel Kelton Myers successfully fought a Trial of Possession via single Elemental combat for almost half of the Star Adder enclaves on Albion less than a week after the Trial of Refusal. Within a week of his victory in the Trial of Possession, Kelton had been elected saKhan in place of the fallen Nelson Elam.

Wars of Reaving

The enclaves on Albion won by Kelton were lost to the Scorpions shortly after the Trial of Possession, as a result of attacks by the Dark Caste. The Scorpions were soon suffering from losses in a number of their holdings as a result of the machinations of the organization known as The Society. A combination of losses on Brim, Huntress and Marshall, the eruption of a major volcano named Hades in the region of Dagda known as Satan's Table that destroyed a large percentage of the Scorpions' mineral and ore resources, and the loss of communications with the two major undersea manufacturing plants on Dagda as well as the Scorpion enclaves on Delios and Foster led Khan Suvorov to take actions that echoed the responses being made by other Clans under similar pressures; the Scorpions worked to consolidate their current holdings and forces, and looked for opportunities to make specific, focused strikes against their opponents.

In March 3073, word reached the Goliath Scorpions of attacks against their enclaves on other worlds, and Khan Suvorov was forced to lead the Scorpion forces into battle. After losses on other worlds—including Loremaster Kyrie Ben-Shimon on Foster against forces from Clan Coyote—the remains of the Scorpion Beta and Gamma Galaxies were merged together, and Kelton was responsible for leading them to Glory in September 3073, where their allies, Kindraa Mattila-Carrol had been shattered, and their few remaining forces were grimly hanging on to the enclave at Portage under repeated attack from Steel Viper forces.

Dishonorable actions by an Inner Sphere MechWarrior in the Twenty-second Scorpion Uhlans against the Steel Viper 144th Phalanx Cluster on Foster had led to the Steel Vipers to declare the Goliath Scorpions to be little better than bandits. When Kelton's forces moved to orbit Glory, the Steel Vipers immediately declared the Scorpions to be dezgra and launched an attack on the Scorpions with their naval forces. Led by the Potemkin-class cruiser CSV Ophidian and the Aegis-class heavy cruiser CSV Silver Snake, the Steel Viper forces did everything they could to block the Scorpions from landing. Heavily-damaged, the Silver Snake finally drew back behind Foster's primary moon with the surviving Steel Viper fighters after the Ophidian had been destroyed, the Vipers having destroyed the Lola III-class destroyer CGS Auriga, the Sovetskii Soyuz-class heavy cruiser CGS Serket and the Aegis-class heavy cruiser CGS Corona Borealis.

Kelton worked with Khan Amanda Carrol to use the combined remnants of the Kindraa Mattila-Carrol forces and his own troops in a strike against the main Steel Viper holding on Glory, Ettiau. The first step was securing a Brian Cache designated SLB-32. Star Colonel Anders Breen of the Steel Viper Ninety-third Assault Cluster was overeager to try and obtain glory and honor by crippling or destroying the Mattila-Carrol forces and moved most of his troops out of their defensive positions to strike at the Fire Mandrill forces. Breen's move left his defending Trinary of troops to be overwhelmed by a bombing run from the Third Scorpion Cuirassier aerospace fighters before the Tenth Scorpion Dragoons swept around the Ninety-third and crushed the Viper troops against the Fire Mandrill forces.

After discovering that the Brian Cache had already been emptied by the Steel Vipers, Khan Carrol wanted to push on to Ettiau with the combined Fire Mandrill and Goliath Scorpion forces, a plan opposed by Kelton, who argued that they should instead settle into a defensive posture and await resupply from Portage. Amanda and Kelton were unwilling to background, and moved to resolve the situation via a Trial of Refusal when the Steel Vipers launched an attack, catching the allies off-guard. An aerospace fighter strike launched by the Second Fang inflicted damage on both the Seventy-first Firestorm Cluster and the Tenth Scorpion Dragoons, and the strike launched by the rest of the Second Fang killed Khan Carrol and broke the Fire Mandrill forces, leaving them fighting in small pockets that were swiftly overwhelmed. Kelton was injured in the battle, but the Scorpion forces rallied around him, fighting back against the Second Fang, and the Thirty-eighth Phalanx, who had moved to support the Second. As the Scorpion forces withdrew from SLB-32 they called down supporting fire from the Nightlord-class Battleship CSV Atropos, which enabled them to break off contact with the Steel Viper forces and withdraw to Portage. Absorbing the Kindraa Mattila-Carrol civilian population from Portage, Kelton prepared for a counterassault.

In November 3073, Khan Connor Rood of Clan Ice Hellion appeared at Roche with an unprecedented proposal for Khan Suvorov; being open and honest with Suvorov over the losses taken by the Ice Hellions in Operation ICE STORM and the certainty that the Ice Hellions would soon be either wiped out via a Trial of Absorption or a Trial of Annihilation in a power play within the Grand Council, Rood wanted to retain whatever control was possible over the fate of the Ice Hellions by negotiating a merger with the Goliath Scorpions. Suvorov was amenable to the offer, as it would provide the Goliath Scorpions with another Galaxy of troops - sorely needed after the losses taken by the Scorpion touman - as well as half a dozen support facilities and two factory complexes for relatively little effort. Kelton opposed the idea, arguing that to engage in such a plan argued that the Scorpions and Ice Hellions were equal, whereas the Ice Hellions were demonstrably the weaker party. Instead, Kelton argued for forcibly Absorbing the remnants of the Ice Hellions, which he believed could be done with relatively few losses on the part of the Scorpions.

After some debate, the Scorpions offered to Absorb the Ice Hellions, an offer Rood accepted, as he believed it was the best offer the Hellions were likely to get. Before beginning the Absorption, Suvorov took forces from the Scorpions to Shadow in an unsuccessful attempt to contact whatever remnants of the Fire Mandrills might remain on their homeworld, only to be blocked by forces from Clan Coyote; Suvorov then moved to Dagda, only to discover that the planet was declining as a result of a failing ecosystem apparently caused by extensive orbital bombardment. The combination of the eruption of Hades and the shattering of several undersea domes meant that very few Clan enclaves were still managing to survive on the planet; the only surviving military forces were a few Fire Mandrills under the command of Star Colonel Hampton Schroeder, who agreed to a Trial of Absorption fought via a boxing match between Schroeder and Suvorov. Suvorov's return to Roche with news of the devastation at Dagda led the Scorpion Clan Council to vote overwhelmingly to support Suvorov's proposed plan for Absorbing the Ice Hellions.

Death

In March 3074, the Absorption of Clan Ice Hellion by the Goliath Scorpions was decided in a Star-on-Star battle between the two Khans. Suvorov was victorious, although Kelton was killed in action during the Trial. With Kelton dead, the unified Clan elected Connor Rood as his successor to the title of saKhan of Clan Goliath Scorpion.

Bibliography

• The Wars of Reaving