The Special Operations Group of the Army of the Southern Cross (SOGASC) was a clandestine black operations section of the United Earth Defense Forces that answered exclusively to the UEG Ministry of Defense. Since the post of Defense Minister was held by the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, Field Marshal Anatole Leonard, the efforts of SOGASC from its inception in the late 2020s to the fall of the Southern Cross in 2031 were generally controlled from his office; separate from, but parallel to, the Global Military Police.
Unlike the more public multi-service MYTHIC (Multi-disciplinarY Tactical Headquarters for Intelligence gathering and Combat operations) teams like Gryphon Squad, SOGASC operations remained highly classified. Additionally, the individual mission groups tended to be more homogeneous as far as which services they drew their membership from. In general the core of any given SOGASC team was made up of units from whatever specialty army was best suited to the mission at hand. SOGASC teams were also almost universally drawn from the Department of Surface Operations, though specific missions might have detached aerospace support components, and teams frequently had a mission advisor from the Global Military Police.
SOGASC missions were nearly always "off-the-book" and members of the special forces units in the field often used non-standard weapons and equipment, and when using regular Southern Cross issue items all army division and unit markings were stripped to prevent enemy forces from identifying their attackers and to allow for a level of deniability should any SOGASC equipment or soldiers be captured by the enemy.
D (Delta) Company, 1st Battalion, 3rd Regiment of the Special Operations Group was made up of four platoons, each made up of three infantry squads from the Jungle Division Special Forces and one armored squad from the Humid Climate Offensive (Marsh) Division Special Forces. The Company was under the command of Jungle Division Captain Ryan Macy when it was dispatched on its final extended mission in early 2031. The assigned GMP advisor and liaison officer was Lt. Harrison Boone.
History
At the end of 2030 and beginning of 2031 the United Earth Defense Forces were faring poorly against the continued attacks of the Robotech Masters. The Army of the Southern Cross began pulling troops from satellite bases to bolster their forces in regions facing heavy assault by enemy forces. To reinforce the Southern Cross forces under siege in Australia the Army abandoned bases in Indochina, including Borneo Base, the original Overwatch Base and the Mekong Outpost Bases they had only recently re-established and rebuilt during the N.W.O. conflict and its aftermath.
Despite the increasingly difficult odds, Supreme Commander Leonard still arrogantly expected to achieve victory. Recognizing the risk of surviving Zentraedi Malcontent forces still believed to be hiding deep in the Indochina jungle emerging and joining the Robotech Masters, Leonard issued orders to SOGASC to come up with a plan to deal with this potential threat. Since there was no firm intelligence backing up the Supreme Commander's fears, SOGASC opted to deploy one of its black ops groups for long term deep insertion operations in the Indochina region.
Delta Company was selected as the unit to be sent on this mission, code-named Operation Hangman. Under the command of Capt. Ryan Macy, Delta Company was to be deployed to central Indochina. The Outpost Bases were covertly re-stocked and were to serve as supply depots while Delta Company itself was conceived as a continuously mobile infantry unit. The troops were to operate in a nomadic fashion, never settling in one place long enough for that position to be pinpointed as their base of operations.
Delta Company's orders were deliberately vague, and as was usual with SOGASC operations left room for interpretation in the field for actions that could later be denied should they ever come to light. In the broadest sense, Delta Company was to seek out any remaining Zentraedi forces and where possible wipe them out. If a large enough force were encountered, Delta Company was instead to engage in hit-and-run tactics to disrupt enemy operations until a dedicated task force could be dispatched to deal with the issue (once the source of the intelligence driving such an operation could be sterilized to protect SOGASC and Delta Company).
The orders gave Delta Company wide latitude. They did not specifically refer to Malcontents, nor even to Zentraedi. Their targets were simply referred to as any group or individual that in the view of the Company leadership was engaged in hostile or threatening actions against the United Earth Government, its military or its allies; or that presented a clear or potential threat to the aforementioned. Since the entire operation was, as normal for SOGASC, off the books, Delta Company was technically free to utilize tactics that would be considered illegal, immoral or even war crimes under other circumstances.
Since the ultimate goal of Operation Hangman was to disrupt and neutralize existing and potential threats, Delta Company would engage in not only combat operations but propaganda and psychological warfare actions against any enemy as well as any potential support network for said enemies. For remainder of the Second Robotech War, Delta Company operated in Indochina and to be truthful did engage and eliminate several Zentraedi Malcontent groups. All the while the group would make their reports to SOGASC headquarters, and receive any new orders. On occasion the company was even contacted directly by the Supreme Commander, usually following a particularly successful operation against Zentraedi Malcontents. During the last months of the war, Delta Company fielded operations deep into Indochina, their actions stretching the length of the Mekong, and as far west as the Bangkok ruins and the foothills of the Himalayas.
When the war ended abruptly in June 2031 with the destruction of Monument City and devastation of the Southern Cross Forces, the members of Delta Company were unaware of what had happened. All they knew for sure is that they stopped receiving regular transmissions and re-supply. Their GMP liaison, Lieutenant Boone, had built up a network of contacts and slowly pieced together what had happened. At the same time, surviving splinter groups of the SOGASC command structure began to rebuild themselves. Bitter at the defeat, one senior officer within these groups took it upon himself to take revenge on the "damn aliens" and managed to re-establish contact with Delta Company. That officer was Colonel Nathan Harris, now a newly minted Brigadier General under the re-forming Provisional Government.
Presenting the illusion of a surviving command structure, General Harris ordered Delta Company to continue its operations and eliminate any enemies of the United Earth Government still operating in the area. He also destroyed any records of Delta Company's existence or mission, using back channels and black market contacts to continue supplying the group. When Col. Wolfe and his Expeditionary Forces arrived in 2032, the officer continued to hide the existence of Delta Company and its actions.
From the Provisional Earth Government Headquarters in Denver, Harris continued to make use of Delta Company to gather intelligence and dispatch threats in Indochina. By this point the Provisional Government was at odds with Col. Wolfe, who was backed by the UEG Plenipotentiary Council on Tyrol, over who was "in control" (in reality neither were, it was the EBSIS that was rapidly emerging as the only true global power).
When the Invid invaded in 2033, Delta Company were only vaguely aware of what had happened. Their controller had managed to escape in the evacuation of Denver, but he had lost his primary means of contacting them. By the end of 2033, Delta Company had spotted the Invid that were operating in Indochina from the Thailand Hive, but with no orders they did not engage but continued to gather intelligence on this new enemy.
Back in North America, by 2034 General Harris and his small entourage had made their way south, eventually encountering the newly formed Lone Star Army near the New Albuquerque ruins. In a slip up, Harris accidentally revealed information on the existence of Delta Company, information that found its way to some curious but unfriendly ears.
Hearing about the possibility of a surviving Southern Cross holdout in Indochina, members of the Krugacht faction of Soviet intelligence captured General Harris as he attempted to cross the Caribbean Sea in an effort to reach South America and tortured him for the details on Delta Company. Realizing the potential value of such an asset as Delta Company, the Krugacht forces re-established contact by posing as General Harris. By the end of 2034 they had started re-supplying the surviving elements of Delta Company, initially keeping the group's orders status quo while they decided what to do with them.
In 2035 the Krugacht had a new rising star, a former GRU counterintelligence agent named Wendy Curtis who had been a valuable asset to the EBSIS during the N.W.O. conflict and had further impressed her superiors during and after the Second Robotech War. Wendy was handed responsibility for formulating a use for the Delta Company asset.
Wendy planned to use Delta Company, already experienced in dealing with alien forces, to help gather information on the Earth's new masters. Efforts at intelligence gathering by Krugacht in North America had been less than successful, and had not been able to organize surviving EBSIS assets in South America to a level where they could be useful. The next most populous Invid region was Indochina, and that meant Delta Company.
Still using the General Harris double, Wendy began subtly altering Delta Company's orders. The active engagement of enemy hostiles was curtailed in favor of elevated intelligence gathering on both the new alien invaders as well as reporting any new information on Zentraedi Malcontents and the rumors that one or more Robotech Masters motherships had crashed in the Indochina region. The intelligence gathering efforts were further adjusted to include sending agents (recruited from the local populace) into Invid Protoculture Farms, and also encouraging some settlements to actively collaborate with the Invid in order to develop new avenues for intelligence gathering.
When Macy and Boone began to question some of the orders, Wendy stepped up her manipulation of Delta Company. Playing on the ego of the Special Forces, she made the bold move of presenting a scenario where the UEG and Southern Cross high command had survived and were preparing a major operation to take back the planet. Delta Company had already exhibited the xenophobic tendencies that were needed for their original mission, so it was not hard to play on the Human Superiority ideals espoused by the late Supreme Commander. Wendy's coup de grace, however, was to present the illusion that Supreme Commander Leonard himself had survived and was leading the underground government.
With the information tortured out of General Harris, Wendy had all the information she needed to fool Delta Company. When Boone was killed on an observation mission, the one member of Delta Company wily enough to potentially discover the ruse was eliminated. Playing on the fact that Boone died saving Macy, Wendy again stepped up the manipulation, even taking on the role of Leonard herself using sophisticated digital image manipulation.
By late 2036 the Krugacht had established relations with senior stage IV Invid commanders in several regions. Throughout 2037, Wendy continued to adjust Delta Company's orders so that their actions were actively hindering the formation of any actual resistance movements in Indochina while strengthening the Invid hold on the region. As she has continued to build up the false front she has presented to Delta Company into 2038, Wendy is now wondering if they have outlived their usefulness. For now "Supreme Commander Leonard" continues to provide updates on the UEG forces' successful campaigns against the Invid in North and South America.
Due to attrition, the Company was now at half that strength and had been reorganized into two platoons and continued to operate in the region. Meanwhile, Captain Macy had begun to question the actions of "Supreme Commander Leonard", and had started asking questions about when the underground military will start active combat operations against the Invid in the Indochina region. Intercepted snippets of "Radio Blackjack" transmissions have only added to his suspicions, and despite his attempts at hiding his doubts from "Commander Leonard", this has only served to reinforce Wendy's belief that it is time to cut Delta Company loose.
In late 2038 the Expeditionary Forces made their first attempt to liberate Earth with the ill-fated 10th Mars Division. Though the assault failed, some survivors of the 10th Mars Division attack had crashed in northern Indochina. Among these survivors were the Blackjacks, several of whom were familiar with the region from earlier missions when they had been part of the Southern Cross. Seeking supplies, resources, and information, the Blackjacks undertook a mission to survey the Outpost Bases. This brought them into contact with members of Delta Company. After a tense standoff the Blackjacks were able to convince the Marauders that they were legitimate. Armed with this new information, Captain Macy contacted "Commander Leonard". With the subterfuge exposed, Wendy realized there was no point in maintaining her facade. She dropped the "Supreme Commander" mask and took the opportunity to take a verbal jab at members of the Blackjacks (two of whom had histories with her) as a parting shot.
Though demoralized by the revelation they had been manipulated by the enemy, the Marauders regrouped and agreed to join up with the surviving members of the Expeditionary Forces. Along with their allied "irregular" fighters, the Marauders are now operating out of the wreck of the Garfish-class Guadalcanal, which has been christend as the new Overwatch base.
The Irregulars
The Irregulars is the name of the native Cambodian, Thai and Laotian fighters assembled and trained by Delta Company. The Irregulars are used primarily as covert scouts, but are also used in active combat operations when additional forces are required beyond what Delta Company can field. While over 100 in number, the Irregulars do not have any fixed organization or ranks to speak of, and are normally found scattered along the length of the Mekong or west towards the interior of Indochina living their normal lives until called on. Most have been equipped with M-35 "Ferret" 9mm pistols or the more versatile M-30 "Wolf" auto-pistol.