Light Cavalry

Created Monday 25 March 2019

Yeah, space mongols.
Mad Max-made mongols. A plague borne of the waste. The steppe. The artic tundra. The crafts from the Outback Overthere.

Armed with M.U.L.E.s. Yup. Sure, some they ride into combat. In fact, they'll bring a very robust and well-tuned M.U.L.E. (nearly always with key parts made of biphasic carbide, too) that can replicate other M.U.L.E.s. These replicants are never as high-quality as their creator--but not far from it. So, it's key to have that one well-tuned M.U.L.E. to have a good herd of replicants. These replicants (and thus the original) are spat out also well-learned in war tactics in general and the ways of their human in particular. So right away htey can work very tightly with their human to accentuate their talents and compensate for their weaknesses.

They pilot them from the command line. They use not only their hands in crazy fast keyboarding, but also voice, eyes, and--to give weight and nuance to commands--posture. Sure, they loose the intuitiveness of something like an analog joystick, but they're not here for the joy nor to fight with sticks. And they don't fight with much intuition.

The human can jump on one of their replicant M.U.L.E.s and blast off right away into the melee. The M.U.L.E.s are designed to take a hit--to be a mobile shield for their weapons, including the human. Car Wars style armor around those three hit points of human in the middle. When they've taken a beating (and given one), they blast back to the staging ground where the human can jump right into the next replicant and keep the heat on as incessantly as they can last. A well-trained mongol army is primarily trained in endurance fighting and timing sleep patterns with the other three watches (blue patrol, gold patrol, and red patrol).
Light cavalry in that the M.U.L.E.s can jump far, quickly establish a beach head, and lay down a very steady and lasting fire. Sure, they're known for their accuracy and rapid fire of their rail guns, but as true as that is, it's their abilities to wear down even AI systems with lack of sleep that makes them battlefield terrors.

And as good as they are tactically, it is really their skill with command and control, logistics, resource utilization, and psychological warfare that makes them so formidible.

They're very skilled with their psychological warfare. Among the best--so good, they're not known for it at all, but only for its effects. They terrorize whole peoples with this incessant and deadly accuracy (along with a host of other juicy nasty tricks: They are alwyas learning from those they fight). Turn them into hypnotized chickens. Create such trauma that others will be so terrified of a mongol that if a mongol forgets his weapon, you'll sit there and just be too afraid to try to run away until he comes back with it to kill you and your entire city. And if one mongol can do that, imagine what a whole army could do! So--yeah-you'd totally become paralyzed if you saw even one mongol.
Makes it easier for the mongols. Long-jump single dudes in all directions and spread quickly. (In fact, probably faster than communication, so that'd slow them down.)

The MULEs. A surprisingly slow platform. People remember the fast swoop in and death lowed behind, but maybe are too stunned or too stupid to realize that first and for a long time after, there was a lot of walking. A lng, steady trip to another bloody day. A life for few. But life indeed for those who stay.
- (Oh, yeah, and Hemmingway mode is for pussies. And those who actually do write.)
  - And, yeah, I don't think my forte is in a novel. (And if it is, it's pretty lost in there.) Mine is a world of ideas. Surprisingly chaotic in many ways, I hope not unsurprising in other ways as well. But, ya know, it's my worke, my Wake while I still am to see.

Tell them (if you have to):

Temuchen strove from nothing to be the emporer of the largest continguous empire in history--maybe even before there was beer--because he failed and swore to learn from his mistakes. And that he did. Although a light cavalry was always the core of his army, he wasn't the first to do that. He became great because he also learned from others. Tradition, so I've heard, around them parts was such that the leaders of the beaten foe were brought to the head of the vitors to be cleaved off--but not so for Temuschan; he invited those who fought hard, bravely, and wisely to join his forces. And so the Mongols could even siege, and nearly--if I understand correctly--invent bureaucracy--which should be regarded as the awesome invention it is. (But isn't by those who want to cut the line--or the many who follow them who wish they could.)

MULEs first as accounting machines--accouting for things; accounting for, weighting, and balancing things like gains and losses--long before they were mining / settling platforms long before they were juiced to cavalry speeds.

Hm, no, that doens't sound right. I think here is a time when maneurvability beats speed. The MULEs are not that fast. But they can move in astounding unison. And in clever maneurs that are constantly novel. That is my light cavalry: The speed of well-based innovation. Innovation honed to stick to the edge of my precise goals. That is a MULE (to those who understand).

Organized into groups of ten (called "thunders"), hundreds ('heartbreakers"), and thousands ("lots").

They can keep a tight formation while staying nimble

This makes it harder to tell how many there are---even at relatively close distances
They can use each other as shields---and do fly with meat shields: modified MULEs with no ordnanace or crew, but extra padding
They can concentrate firepower better---especially for long-range gamma guns

In addition to disintegration rays, they also use slings. Local tractor beams that can grab local (>2 AU) rocks and change their orbits while often increasing their velocity towards even small targets with surprising accuracy (~0.1%accuracy within most solar systems. And in some systtems, you never run out of rocks

So, because of one of the innovations of the Khan, it's not so much that MULEs choose an attack formation where they're all in a perfect line to hide their numbers. They arrange themselves around a system---and move in one their target while following---in a formation that lets signals bounced off of them interfere with each other at the receiver. They have learned to move in formations that essentially create noise that also diminishes the signal. And doing so in biased ways that subtly change what that signal---now much fainter (especially relative to the noise)---in ways the receiver may well not have figured out.

But this "information camouflage" isn't perfect. In changing the return signal (slowly some down---and thus building up thermal energy---or speeding them up---taking Succubi drives) makes the signal brighter. More energetic. If the whole "screen" suddenly gets a bit brighter, there may be something of interest to see there---even if whatever you're looking for is a very faint signal, and may not be where or what you think it is.

The Khan is the one who made them into light infantry. He both invented and nearly perfected that as a form of weaponry. Pythagorus and he then try to figure out what other weapon platforms can be built from jump point construction sites.