By the end of February 3113, the Confederation was still reeling from the aftershocks of Operation MAGNUS. The CCAF had lost its primary staging base on Sarna, and the few Republic worlds still in Confederation hands were behind enemy lines and running out of supplies. The deaths of Burton Davion and Kai Allard-Liao were not the shot in the arm for CCAF morale that Sun-Tzu had hoped for, and the war for which he had spent thirty years preparing for was on the verge of failing. In order to turn the tide, the Capellans needed a decisive victory that would rally the troops.
For a number of years Sun-Tzu had known he was living on borrowed time. When his physicians told him he had only a few months before suffering mass organ failure, he chose to take advantage of the time he had remaining.
Here is where historical accounts differ. The official Capellan line is that Sun- Tzu traveled to the Republic to initiate peace talks and his retinue was attacked upon their arrival on Liao. A more likely interpretation of events is that Sun-Tzu assembled his most loyal Red Lancers and Death Commandos and led a deep strike force that would carry the war back to where it had started, where beleaguered Capellan troops were still fighting a losing battle. In so doing, Sun-Tzu hoped personally leading his men on Liao would provide enough of a morale boost to end the stalemate.
SEPARATING FACT FROM FICTION Stories portraying Kai Allard-Liao’s exploits during the Capellan Crusades vary widely, from lifeless, docu- mentary depictions to sensational tall tales. The truth, however, lies somewhere between these two extremes. As previous chapters have established, Kai was always well aware of his own legend. Most men who are aware of their own fame are gripped by immense pressure to excel or continue along the same path of greatness. Instead, Kai chose to walk his own path. He would invoke his celebrity status only when necessary, but he would never rely on it as a crutch, and he never allowed performance anxiety to defeat him.
When the Crusades rolled around, Kai’s celebrity status held no part in his decision to fight. His fight was personal. He no longer cared whether he took top honors in an arena contest, and his battlefield behavior showed he had no real care for his own survival. Rather than accomplishing cartoony, superhuman feats—as the tall tales would attest—or treating the Crusades as “just another routine battle”—as the documen- taries would have us believe—Kai approached each battle as though it would be his last.
That kind of motivation can propel even the most mediocre of soldiers to impressive feats. In the case of Kai Allard-Liao, those impressive feats only increased exponentially. For example, some claim Yen-lo-wang singlehandedly destroyed an entire Home Guard bat- talion on St. Andre without suffering a scratch (the tall tale), while Fifth Hastati after action reports state Kai destroyed two tank platoons (the documentary). What both versions fail to acknowledge is that, based on bat- tleROM footage and stills, Kai annihilated each of those eight tanks with a well-placed laser shot to the turret.
On Tsitsang, the sensationalists would have us believe Kai took to the field by himself and chased the Capellan garrison all the way to their DropShip without firing a single shot. The documentarians would have us believe the Home Guard packed up and left the instant they received positive confirmation that Kai and the Fifth Hastati were inbound. However, the truth, again lies somewhere in the middle. Kai and the Fifth did indeed land on Tsitsang, but Kai stepped out from his unit and told the garrison troops that if they wanted to see their families again, they would leave; otherwise he gave them his personal guarantee that all of them would die. The Home Guard commander then saw reason and took the out that Kai had offered.
—Kai Allard-Liao: The Man Inside the Legend, New Avalon Press, 3115
To direct attention away from Sun-Tzu’s movements, Daoshen launched what historians dubbed the Warrior House Offensive. Codenamed Operation GOLDEN DESTINY, the risky push saw the remainder of the Warrior House Orders enter combat. Within two weeks Houses Hiritsu, Dai Da Chi, and Imarra reclaimed Phact, Corey, and Ulan Bator from RAF garrisons. The Warrior House maneuvers and further saber rattling from Capellan troops in the Sarna Commonality indicated the beginnings of a hard push toward the CCAF attempting to reclaim Sarna.
By traveling through uninhabited systems, the Chancellor and his troops secretly landed on Liao. After resupplying the faltering remains of the Dynasty Guard, the Red Lancers and Death Commandos executed a pre-dawn assault on the Ninth Hastati’s cantonment outside Chang-an. Many of the Ninth’s soldiers were helping with the city’s reconstruction and were caught out in the open when the attack occurred. A company of Amaterasu, the elite RAF regiment of Draconis Combine pedigree, was patrolling the city outskirts and prevented the Capellans from routing the Ninth. Despite initially outnumbering the enemy, the Red Lancers and Dynasty Guard began to falter against Amaterasu tenacity and the Ninth’s defensive maneuvers. Before sunrise, the battle moved from the Cavalry River to the edge of Chang-an’s eastern city limits, where several thousand onlookers had gathered to witness the fighting.
At dawn, the sky was overcast. From above the battle, an Emperor—entirely electroplated in burnished gold—dropped through the cloud cover, weapons blazing. According to eyewitness reports, the Emperor’s armor plates scintillated in the sunrise, which made the ’Mech appear almost godlike. Nearby lasers and missile contrails only served to make the ’Mech’s polished armor shine with further brilliance.
In the light of dawn, Republic and Capellan troops alike stopped to witness the ’Mech’s descent. Several quiet seconds passed until the Emperor’s pilot transmitted a general broadcast across the battlefield: “This world belongs to the Capellan people, my people!” Chaos broke out as Amaterasu’s commander, Major Rachelle Mikazuki, identified the pilot as Sun-Tzu Liao. The Capellan troops had known Sun-Tzu planned to make an appearance, but none, even his Red Lancer bodyguards, knew quite what he had in mind. The Chancellor’s unexpected arrival spurred the Red Lancers command company to abandon its current fight and form a wall to protect the Chancellor, but he ordered them away. Alone, the Chancellor of the Capellan Confederation waded into the Amaterasu and Ninth Hastati. His Emperor’s firepower allowed him to down a few careless light ’Mechs, but as he was not a master at the controls, the Amaterasu easily crippled Sun- Tzu’s ’Mech. The sight of the Chancellor’s defeat sent the Red Lancers into a rage, singlehandedly forcing the RAF into retreat while a company of Dynasty Guard hunted down stragglers.
Rumors spread across Liao that Chancellor Sun-Tzu’s ’Mech was empty once it was recovered after the battle, that in his final moments he had ascended to
godhood. No effort was made to dispel these beliefs. BattleROM and news camera footage of the whole Sun-Tzu incident, from descent to defeat, was circulated around Liao and other worlds for months afterward, and amongst the Capellan people, the legend of his final moments continued to grow.
BEYOND THE PALE
The most sensationalized conspiracy theory of the Crusades deals with the disappearance of Sun-Tzu Liao. Ever since news of his putative “ascension” on Liao swept across the Inner Sphere, speculation ran rampant outside the Capellan Confederation. Ask a Capellan national, and she’ll say the former Chancellor “took his rightful place among the divine.” But what really happened that fateful morning of 8 March 3113? Did Sun-Tzu really transcend into godhood, or have the Capellan people been lied to?
Rational thought concludes that Sun-Tzu died a mundane death on the battlefield. The most common theory of his disappearance posits that a team of Maskirovka operatives disguised as battle armor infan- try discreetly pulled Sun-Tzu from the wreckage during the battle, closed the hatch, and spirited the body away so the Chancellor’s fanatical Red Lancers would “discover” the empty cockpit afterward. Detractors of this theory claim that no battleROM footage captured such an event. Even adaptive camouflage would not be able to mask the opening and closing of the golden
Emperor’s access hatch.
Another theory claims Sun-Tzu may have used an incendiary device in his cockpit—either triggered by himself or by remote—to burn his body. Of course, the lack of ash and carbon scoring in video footage of his cockpit tends to dismiss this idea. A more plausible theory is that Sun-Tzu wasn’t even in the BattleMech at all. The beliefs that the Emperor was either controlled by remote or piloted by someone other than the Chancellor both have their propo- nents. Those against remote piloting claim such technology doesn’t exist, as without a pilot there is no data to feed a ’Mech’s gyroscope. Those against the idea of an alternative pilot say extant footage show no means by which a pilot—Sun-Tzu or other- wise—could have escaped the ’Mech without being captured on camera.
—Conspiracies Theories: The Capellan Crusades,