Battletech: The Ghost Who Walks (Battletech Isekai)

[Imperator Pax]

Elidere Part 2​

"So you found a room full of mummies?"

... they had been sealed up in an environment where bugs couldn't get to them, and had dried out so yeah maybe mummies was the correct term. "Part of a Combine regiment trapped on the planet elected to commit suicide rather than be taken prisoner," He explained as Septim toweled his face off, "Did you find anything?"

He shook his head, "No, I mean yeah you can tell this was a battlefield. My mech's sensors were warning about old munitions being buried," Something to remind the IE diggers to be sure, "But I didn't pick up anything like what you described."

That didn't mean there wasn't a communications bunker tucked away somewhere, but it had been worth a shot anyway, "Alright well what about the town?"

"Radiation levels, but really they're fine. I don't know about the coast, but its probably okay as long we don't spend too much time there. You want me to check it out?"

"Don't grow any extra fingers, but yeah, schedule taking a look and get readings. Take Chang along with you, just in case. I know the locals aren't very happy, but I doubt they'll actually take a shot at you."

"Boss all they have are Franken mechs, whats the most 'bang an AgriMech can even carry?" He didn't know the answer to that, "I'll bring Bubbles, and Beau with me. Sound good?"

"Sounds good," He replied. "My bigger concern is if we have to start making trips back and forth between Ander's Moon." Which was yes technically a habitable moon, but it was in orbit of a gas giant and was basically a baby planet in its own right... smaller than Elidere IV, but still basically planet sized.

"What do you make about that Chalice of Herne thing, they plaster it on everything. They say its from Terra."

"I have no idea Septim," He had seen the images... and it just looked like gaudy big cup to him... it was a gold cup, but he had no idea what if any non local historical significance it might have had. "Anyway we've confirmed the unit markings on the gun which seems to validate that the Regiment survived the periphery campaign."

"Couldn't someone have left the gun with family? Then bought the farm out there?"

Gene shook his head, "Date on the gun says it was manufactured after Terra was liberated." He replied, producing the engraved laser pistol and handing it over. Septim raised an eyebrow at the jade inserts, and asked if it worked, "It appears to be functional. Power cells can be recharged. No reason it shouldn't work, but the techs have other things to do." It would be something for them to play with later. "What about the chalice? What brought that up?"

"Talking to some of the locals."

"Yeah, making friends?"

Septim held for a long moment, "Maybe not friends, just that in addition to being the duke's badge of office its supposedly the sacred chalice entrusted to the planet by the SLDF." He bit down the snide response that they were turning a gaudy goblet into the veritable holy grail. "I was kind of wondering if Doctor Ford had said something about it, I mean if its from the SLDF could it be important."

He shrugged, and reiterated that frankly he had no idea, Gene sighed, "I will ask Ford about the cup, but its on Ander's moon." Or at least it should have been, but even if it wasn't he doubted they could just walk up and ask hey can we look at your holy grail, "I'm hoping we won't have to go traipsing all over the damned continent." Septim returned the laspistol, and seeing the rain starting saluted, turned up his collar and went to find the others in his 'demi lance' even as people started cursing the sudden rain storm for the inconvenience of having to stop what they were doing.

Ford... so best as Gene had understood it was still in school... in the process of still attending post graduate studies and had not at least during the little expedition he'd been involved in, had not been awarded the post nominals of someone with a PHD.... unless of course the last thousand years of human development in future eighties had changed how that was treated. However a number of people had explicitly referred to Ford as Doctor though not professor. It was entirely possible that Ford had successfully defended his dissertation before committee while he'd been shooting pirates.

"Damned weather." Speak of the devil.
--
The spate of on and off rain continued for the rest of the week slowing digging and excavations to a near crawl, and that was without having to contend with defusing old ordinance. Ford though was convinced that they hadn't exhausted the area... citing the clear evidence of battle here as that there had to be something more here. He wasn't convinced, but Ford was signing the paychecks... and the paycheck meant that this wasn't a waste of time. Gene was getting a little concerned that they might have been getting lax, but he wasn't comfortable scheduling excercises while they were still digging unexploded remains of two hundred plus old battlefields... and realistically IE probably would have complained about the risk of damaging the dig site.

That of course left the unit with academic past times to engage in. On the plus side Ford had stated that he'd be able to put them in contact with suppliers for various equipment and material that hadn't been available in the periphery. Simulator pods were at the top of that list.

He pushed the pencil and pad away, rested his chin on his hand and scowled at the attempt to puzzle out the image... or his attempts to recreate the fragment of it. He was pretty sure at least that that was a Cameron starburst, which meant nothing the symbol of the hegemony and the star league were everywhere on this damn rock so this piece of a puzzle having it on there probably meant nothing... and of course he would probably sit there and laugh if this whole thing turned out to be another wild ass goose chase that turned up nothing... but it was one more thing that Ford was convinced that they were on the right path.

... and on that path would lead them hopefully onto the exodus road. It was an obsession he simply didn't understand... "What do you think?" He asked the dark haired teen across the table.

Bahar looked up from her end. "If it is a Star League unit patch it isn't one recorded for the 63rd​ division."

"How far down did you go?" He asked picking his pencil back up to move it back through his figners. It was as good of an idea as any to be sure... it was sort of kind of the right shape even though it... the image had empty spaces like it was incomplete. "And if its a unit crest why is it incomplete. Ford thinks its some kind of put the pieces in puzzle."

"I went down regimental patches, would SLDF batallions have individual unit patches?"

"They would." He replied. "On the other hand I don't think we have those on file, and even if we did I doubt its that." Pulling the tables for an SLDF division break wouldn't be a bad idea, there might have been some kind of attached battalion at headquarters for a division... engineers or pathfinders, but they were largely spitballing and there was no sense pretending otherwise. Presumably any of the SLDF gear they had recovered from 'the mummies' tomb' had had their unit marks had also been checked, "What do you think it is?"

"The very top might be," She paused, "A torii gate maybe, but if its a Terran unit why would it use that... and I think part of the missing segment, it looks like a wing. Some sort of bird?"

"Its not an eagle if it is, but yeah I sort of see it." He shrugged, and stopped twirling the pencil and craned his head to the doorway.

"Good I had hoped I'd finder you." Ford replied striding in, he had a noteputer with him showing a map of the region, but the note dated it as 2765. "This is the continent as it sat before the division that was stationed here was sent off into the unknown, we're excavating the ancient tramway its slow going what with the weather and much of the civilian infrastructure having been damaged by the fighting a lot of the ferrocrete had sunk and shifted. Well, regardless there has to be a spur that tracks off into the mountains."

"Why do you think that?"

"DOME liked excavating into rock formations, it provided natural ablative armor against orbital attacks, and concealed facilities from easy detection of course. That's what we need the digging machines for, its almost certain that the mountains have had landslides or other obstructions given this planet's climate." That made a certain amount of sense. "In any what this tells me is that there should be the remains of a starport, but we can't find it. I've gone over the Davion records from the time of the Ander's uprising and they don't have it on their maps either. Its like the starport just stops showing up."

... which was a long winded roundabout way of 'hey come help us look' in your giant stompy robot, because Ford didn't have any better ideas.

... "Anything?"

Nope. "Nothing on scopes." He replied to the question being asked yet again. He wished that he had Star League era copies of the maps programmed into his nav computer, but nothing was showing up... no beacons or electronic signatures, and there wasn't even any indicators of buried ordinance from the chemical sniffers. "This whole sector is clear Ford." There wasn't anything here... which... he paused, "What if the map is fake?"

"What?"

"More correctly how sure someone didn't modify the maps to show a starport where it wasn't, and then obviously when the davions and kuritas started fighting over the world they wouldn't have a starport on their maps?" There was a pause as Ford must have been turning the idea over in his head.

"Oh, yes, I suppose thats a possible misdirection. I didn't consider that." He paused, "But why would they do that?" at the proffered explanation of making people like us wander around like idiots, Ford shook his head over the line, "No, that can't be. I am sure that this is an unmodified map, and besides it matches all of the other 2765 era maps, further and earlier maps. The starport just doesn't show up in first succession war and later period documents." Gene rotated his Marauder's torso and looked around the stand of white pine. All of them were mature and covered what should have been support facilities for the port that had disappeared from history. "Look, just humor me," a pause as the radio seemed to get an intermittent signal, "lets try that sonar buoy idea, broadcast a general interrogative using an SLDF IFF, we haven't tried that yet."

He glanced up at his console's array of switches, and then back to the surrounding landscape... he didn't see any concealed turrets that would pop out and start shooting at him... and more pointedly his Mech hadn't detected any.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Elidere
Part 3​

He wasn't sure how to gauge the archaeological find. They weren't really pulling anything more than trinkets out. Oh sure there were a handful of various Star League era small arms that the Sun Zhang cadre seemed to have looted, there was the missing space port, but nothing really substantive one way or another.

The SLDF IFF broadcast hadn't turned up anything, and he was kind of glad for that. Truthfully Gene had been a little concerned that it might result turrets suddenly exploding awake and shooting at him... or worse anything not broadcasting an SLDF friend foe tag. Nothing had happened though, and Ford had been admittedly disappointed but they had moved on. Elidere had had a hard life, well like most worlds, since the fall of the Star League, the combine's turn around after Kentares had largely ended with the borders returning to the previous status quo. While that had without a doubt rankled the combine's military leadership it had had other effects. The 1st​ Succession war had killed more people than the Amaris Civil War... but not by much... and what was worse was that the succession war had been fault just as the losses of that conflict started to come home to roost.

Without the Star League to continue to distribute technological information, and the massive destruction of infrastructure that would characterize the first and second wars things had started to fall apart. While most of the fighting had originally been concentrated towards Terra it had morphed into general fighting along the old borders. Then peace, then the Minnesota tribe, then the second had started... and history. "I doubt it."

"But we know the tribe crossed through combine space,"

"Sure but why come this far coreward the last planet in the combine they could be confirmed on was Valentina." Gene muttered, which still ran into the problem of how exactly they had just disappeared like they had after presumably jumping over the border into FedSuns space. "It would make more sense that they then passed through the Alliance or made the jump to Niles and proceeded rimward."

"Unless they were looking for SLDF caches."

"That would explain why they came through the combine in the first place, but doesn't explain them disappearing after Valentina." He replied, "But cutting inward from there to come here would mean half dozen jumps, and this was on the border with the FedSuns." This was all target fixation as far as he could tell, cause that immediately brought Ford back around to his missing starport... thankfully it wasn't so bad he wanted to take time to cut down the forest and see if there was anything buried down there... which admittedly there might be.... but short of a better explanation swinging inward to Kesai was one thing, swinging in and then keep going ... seemed like wishful thinking.

He turned the Marauder through another series of hillocks. Mudslides over the last two centuries had buried what had been a town. Not that the town hadn't been shellacked during the FedSuns post Kentares offensive, and the combine hadn't had the resources to rebuild so it had sat abandoned and nature had done the rest.

A few minutes passed as he continued to poke the mech's snout around the debris strewn streets.

"Anything?"

"Couple of Unexploded ordinance warnings." He replied. From the looks of it one side or maybe both had held up in the city and neither had decided to pay much concern to minimizing collateral. "Looks like Arrow Vs, breached a wall, and diverted the reservoir."

Ford made a low hum into the microphone, "Hmm, that would make sense we only saw its remains on the fly over. You should be coming up on the turn the station entrance should be somewhere about kilometer further." His seisomgraphics built into the Star League Era dalban sensor package actually had the rail tunnel highlighted and projected for him to trace, but he decided not to spoil Ford's fun. He had after all walked basically parallel the length of the tube as he had progressed north looking for more entry ways or points of access, which the teams who had walked the length of the tunnel said were often stuck or otherwise sealed up and unable to be opened from inside. I.E. Didn't want to risk flooding the tunnels by pushing their luck by opening a door hastily when the other wise structurally sound tunnel was safe. They didn't want to do anything to compromise that.

... in spite of asking him to take his seventy five ton bipedal war machine and go check it out, which was why he was out here. Admittedly it might been a better idea to take the mongoose out for this but here he was. He eased back on the throttle to thirty five, and then to twenty to make the near right angle turn. Elidere's geography made the continent prone to rain, and was prone to blowing rain and fog without much warning as a result of the mountains shaping cloud formations. The planet itself though, in terms of development, even during the Star League had never been particularly advanced outside of its agricultural output. Elidere had never been particularly industrialized or technologically sophisticated by the standards of the star league though... and that had been before the Ares Conventions went out the window.

And that made sense given he doubted even without access to maps of how the town had looked in late 27-whenever or 28-whenever some had lobbed short range ballistic missiles into critical infrastructure it had been intended as anything other than intentional destruction meant to wreak further havoc. Whether there had been troops in the path of the released torrent of water, it had been intended to cut them off, or if just to damage the down to deny it to the enemy there was no way to know. It had been the first succession war.... and such behaviors had happened on a thousand worlds as the conflict had lasted over thirty years.

There was a marked difference in construction and building materials of the northern town, from the still inhabited towns to the south. The latter were all purely local construction reminding him of rural England, where as though a shattered husk the buildings in the north were the half buried remnants of large steel beams and wholesale prefabricated steel structures who after two wars and two centuries had largely wasted away to ossified structures. The roads were still built wide enough a mech could walk without an issue, but there were no correspondingly obvious entryways to let a mech down into the underground.

He keyed his mike, "Looks like its under a couple meters of mud, but it adjoins what might by the civic center, or other government office." Gene ran the mech's high beams up the gutted structure that was listing painfully to one side.
--
Gene would have felt more comfortable if they had demo-ed the derelict government center. Ford wouldn't hear of it, the structure despite being a safety hazard represented the Combine before Takiro Kurita had been the forced homogenization of the combine in the twenty seventh century. The town's structure and infrastructure had likely been laid out and constructed under the auspices of the Star League.... probably star league funds.

Admittedly the homogenization towards a more uniform reactionary Japanese culture had begun under Urizen, and from Takiro had succeeded Minoru, and then Jinjiro.

"Do we know what happened?"

"Best guess is that the regiment was pushed back here, and then the Davion's assumed they were out of the fight." Ford shrugged, "As you observed all of this was likely wrecked by that point, and had been for decades. The Sun Zhang students fell back into the urban center and the ruins and seemed to have found their way to supplies. House Davion must have realized that they were still a threat then and forced them into a corner, and rather than surrender or mount hit and run or defensive fighting or what have you they elected to commit seppuku."

He glanced around, "This place still has power, what's it running off of? Geothermal?"

"Indeed."

That explained why no one had tried to loot it then. Fusion power plant might have been worth it, but geothermal was local dependent. They still could have looted the power couplings and other apparatus but it probably just hadn't been considered worth it.

Or they thought the place was haunted, and it was always possible that there had been combine booby traps left behind. "What about the vault?" Ford hadn't been able to bypass the security lock on what should have been a civilian shelter, "Bahar you looked at it? What did you think?"

"I think someone had to repair the door, and replace the lock work, the original door is from the twenty seventh century, but looks like it had to be repaired or refit after. Still Star League." It was still a DOME door, big heavy, CRBN rated... big... anything that would breach it would probably do damage to the corridor.... or probably buried them.

He might have questioned why the building was mechscale, but apparently that had become the norm for construction projects by the end of the twenty sixth century. As a result anything 'modern' not built to that scale was deemed a result of the backslide from those glory days... and the great houses couldn't have that...

Gene scratched his head looking at it, glanced to Bahar. "Any signs of other tampering?"

"It doesn't appear to have been tampered with, or rigged with explosives given the door's structure it would be rather pointless and its a complete airlock seal on the other side according to the schematics." CRBN decon etc etc.

"Its unfortunate Pasha is out of the system." The JumpShips were on a gig to Robinson, "Alright how would you do this?"

"I think it could be just a simple software problem." Bahar hedged, "We need to plus into the computers and see why the lock is actually off safe, but a diagnostic could take days to fully run."

"Well we've got nothing better to do," Septim declared as he joined them, "I have the maps you asked for, I paged through the newest one says its from the reign of Jinjiro Kurita, but doesn't give a year."

"Does it say which year of his reign?"

Septim paused, "Chang, that last one, what's it say exactly?"

One long string of combine gobblygook later, "That would be 2828" Bahar didn't elect to point out that Jinjiro had succeeded to the throne after his father had been KIA-ed on Kentares... and subsequently... the eponymous massacre had been carried out on his order.

"Probably put together in the lead up to starting the second succession war," Ford opined. "Supposedly his court astrologer told him it was an auspicious year."

The diagnostic itself ended up not taking long at all. "It tripped a chemical weapons system, when?"

"It can't be right."

"When?" He repeated.

The tech shook his head, "According to this 2784, but like I said that can't be right, the door log clearly states that someone overrode the lock and opened it in -"

"Let me guess at the time of the Davion invasion of the planet?"

"Well yeah."

So the door could be overridden. They just weren't doing something right. They had ended up getting the door open by convincing it to run a diagnostic to check if it detected any poison gas. Then they had overridden the lock when the computer hadn't detected any nerve gas... which of course meant that computer forced them to repeat this process in order to get out.... and get back in. "So there was probably never any nerve gas?" Septim asked.

"Who knows,"

"When they installed the new door it probably created a compatibility issue with the computer. It can't clear the error so it seals the door, and forces you to go through the override procedure." ... Cause that was a good well designed system right there.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Elidere
Part 4​

What they had found inside didn't make a whole lot of sense... not that a whole lot of this made sense. Abner had joined them that morning. It had been a week since they had found the north town rail terminus point / station and started exploring it. "No, no none of these fellows," Mummified SLDF troops, "Made it to New Samarkand obviously." The old lyran doctor declared. "I don't understand how they ended up here." Then straightening, "We should do autopsies on the remains determine how these men died..."

Unlike the combine cadets no body looked like they had intentionally checked out. The tomb, because really what else was it... what could it be called was pristine, eerily so. The door didn't make any sense. It was newere construction than the original bunker, but okay sure, but why install a new door.... to say Gene was uncomfortable, "Putting aside the bodies for a minute, this is an emergency response bunker. Coordinate civil defense in response to a nuclear disaster, and the lock on it has a chemical weapons flag," Notably chemical, not nuclear... which might have at least made sense because at least one if not both Davion and Combine forces had used nukes on the planet during the first and or second succession wars nearby. It would have made sense to have a bunker flag for that... but they didnt. And then there was also, "These doors are big enough for a BattleMech to come through, and yet, I don't see anywhere they would go." He'd been all around the gargantuan room, there was an upstairs with computer hardware that certainly looked like it would turn on... but they hadn't gotten that far yet.

"Quite right." Ford agreed. "Its very queer."

The old man nodded, "An astute observation major, I wanted to look around a bit more, before I made an effort to come to a conclusion, if you might give me a few days. I'd rather have a look at those terminals though truthfully."

"We left them alone like as you requested," Even as Abner was leaning over one of the vintage 80s esque IBM super computer looking arrays. While Abner played with his new toy Gene glanced to Ford, and to the physical map, and shrugged. "I don't know what to tell you."

"Starports don't just vanish." The map was dated to before the Amaris coup of course. 2765 had been when the Taurians had launched their stupid uprising on New Vandenburg... but that was probably coincidental. So at least at that point the local government still had a starport there.

Gene was glad Abner was here now. That was good. It meant that they were less likely to have Ford just demolish and entire forest full of mature trees to see if there was anything buried down there... they might still do that... and Ford was probably going to be insufferably smug if they did turn something.

There was a horrible grating noise and the lights flickered as the computers powered up.... but nothing exploded or even started smoking. "Ah Ha. Its works." Abner declared. The old man went to what he was doing, and they went back to waiting... and waiting... and thankfully not getting shot at.


--
They had come to investigate yet another mummified body. He had been tired of being called up to look at them by this point... but it was the job. Bahar had been right it had been a Torii gate.

The old crazy lyran doctor guffawed, ignoring the dead man in the jumpsuit that had proved Bahar's suspicions. "Yes on ancient Terra it designated airborne unit. Men who would jump from planes you know. The Hegemony adopted it for units who were orbital drop specialists."

"What about the bird?" Septim asked.

"Its an Ibis," Or something in the family, Gene supposed. "They eat snakes." If he already hadn't liked this the nerve gas warning had been bad, but he had been able to run the regimental patch through his computer. "Its a Gunslinger unit. It wouldn't have been attached to 15th​ Army." Even though at one point the army in question had been famous for its participation in both the ACMS Program and counter ronin work in a broader sense.

He thought about all the SLDF murals and images, frescoes even in town. If he had to guess that the Torii gates of the icons in down had probably been destroyed as being mistaken for combine during the looting by marcher troops that had probably happened... or that would have been his explanation for why it hadn't survived to the present culture... but the simpler answer even to that was that it was a regimental patch not something larger and not attached to the regular SLDF command on Elidere IV.

"Are we going to open it?"

Everyone stopped standing around. "I'd want to know what's behind it first..." Though given its placement he suspected he already knew what it was. It was probably a tunnel. He didn't like how the computer database didn't seem to have the schematics for it though. They'd already found out that the air recycling and CRBN systems were complete separate from the rest of the complex. The bunker seemed to be on a separate network, which by itself wouldn't have been unusual if it had been independent but it seemed like... and if this was a tunnel... that it connected to somewhere else. "Give me a minute, I'm getting my mech. Bahar get yours as well. Septim go get the drilling machines and make sure they work." The positive side to Mech sized entry ways was that they could bring hover cars inside and that as long as you were careful and didn't drive into anything it was easy to navigate the labyrinth subway system.

"All set up there?" Ford asked over the radio as he gently prodded forward.

"Affirmative," He answered adjusting his Dalban, and then pinging the lighter mech, "Bahar are you getting anything?"

"No. If there is any kind of communications or sensor system its off. I'm not reading any guide of guide beacon or handshake."

That was weird. He had really expected there to be something if not from turning those big ugly computers on, to when they opened the giant hidden doors. What was worse was they were underground and he doubted that there was anyway to get a message to the surface team quickly if something went wrong... unless they happened to notice a caven in. The tunnel before them was dark, and unlit.

"I'd say this looks like DOME work." Ford commented. "Still may not be military, but its more like the SLDF than the civilian tunnels." He was shining a portable spot light from his spot in the back of the hover car. So they started walking and he started querying the computer in his own machine about the patch he was holding. There were limitted details available in the computer, but their last posting should have been much closer to Terra... within Hegemony space. They shouldn't have been on Elidere... which would he have probably justified as odd except Aquagea's unit's home garrison was also officially listed as being in Hegemony space.

It still might have been nothing. Bahar opened her channel back up, "This tunnel is several miles long, and appears to diverge up ahead."

"That's great," He checked his orientation data. He switched channels, "Ford, this looks like its goes up into the mountains." He had not meant that in a positive way. They were literally walking down a centuries old tunnel with no idea what was down there. Ford's almost giddy response was interrupted by the establishment of a laser com line establishing down from the start of the tunnel. "I read you Septim."

"Yeah, boss, some of these Star League guys were shooting at each other." That had been identified when they had found a couple of the bodies with obvious laser burns in their jump suits and uniforms. The combine students had stripped all the useful small arms from the bodies, and he was almost willing to bet that if they went back and counted what they had found that they would match the dead in the bunker. The bunker's command staff... their cause of death hadn't been as obvious though. They didn't know... and that was bugging him.

"Septim, put the unit on alert,"

"Boss?"

It was him, Bahar and her mech, and then Abner, Ford, and the teaching assistant driving the car. "This place has power, and is cycling oxygen through it. Could be automated defenses, if we trip something you need to be aware of it." He didn't want to think about what might happen if those automated defenses included sealing that big door... they really didn't have a way to get it open by force after all. "We're going to loose signal, this tunnel looks like it forks in about a mile and a half stand by for that."

Eight hours later it was obvious Septim was now regretting his previous tomb raider crack as they had signed off. The place was on initial glance looking around in the vaulted ceiling of the bay immaculate even after centuries. An almost textbook of the Star League's imperial power, and its view of the universe. It was almost perfectly preserved, undisturbed certainly since it had sealed... an edifice of an empire centuries gone, that could have existed yesterday from the looks of the interior.

Septim backpedalled nearly falling over the blonde TA who was with them. "They're holograms." Gene replied even as the shooting started. He didn't know why the holographic projectors had started playing what he was sure was a security recording of some kind... what exactly had triggered it. They had been out of their mechs for a good fifteen minutes now and they had been careful not touch anything.

There was no sound either. He didn't know what the ghost like figures had been saying and most had looked like they had been just going out about the usual business of bay crew. Holographic mechs left their bays and lights flashed presumably klaxons would have sounded, and he glanced to spots in the wall that minutes earlier they had glided over... but now were obviously patched and repainted after having been shot.

Unlike elsewhere though there no bodies. There had been no bodies so the holographic images of corpses slumped on the floor had been cleaned away at some point. He looked at the holographic Atlas and then to the sleeping hundred tonner that had returned to the bay to wait.

Septim didn't look convinced.

Then just as suddenly as the ghostly recording had started to play it shut off. "Bahar?"

"I didn't see any obvious mechanism, and no one touched anything." She called looking around. "Someone painted over the bullet holes, and there were ceiling mounted defense turrets." Mounted... more like concealed in the ceiling recesses. He was willing to bet the money that Interstellar had put up to get them to come that they still worked. "Doctor, do you want to keep going? Doctor Abner."

The Lyran was looking at the Atlas. "Ah yes..." He had been hoping Abner would want to bring more people in, or rather go back to the dig's base camp to collect more people. "I don't recognize this model. Do you?"

He looked at it again, "Its an Atlas II." He replied, looking at the LBX 10. The name meant nothing to anyone but him. "How do you want to proceed?"

"We need to find the commander center, we should take that lift," That was thankfully labelled, "We need to find out why they started shooting at each other." The Lyran declared striding forward with a purpose that belied his age.

Ford looked breathless, "Do you know what this means," He asked, "We may have found an SLDF command post that can tell us about the last days of the SLDF before they departed for Samarkand. With any luck we can find out where they went. These men obviously knew something was afoot and about what was happening." His head moved furtively side to side, "We may have found a full intact castle brian, look at all of this."

"Its not a brian. Its an outpost." Stocked was another thing he wasn't sure about, but this was too small to be a castle brian... but the correction did nothing to stem the FedSun's native's excitement. "Bahar take stock of the situation... I want to know what we're looking at." He cast a glance back to the tunnel bay doors, and to the elevators ... if something went wrong they weren't going any where and no one was going to be coming to them for at least hours.

"Major. Major." Abner called, "Major Shepherd, will you or miss Bahar come here. This door doesn't want to accept my credentials."

He glanced to her, "I've got this go take stock of down here, and see if you can get a hold of the rest of the company." He made his way back to Abner, pressed his hand on the biometric and swiped the chit around his neck on the other reader. It flashed green and admitted them without any trouble. He suspected that Abner had managed to have an AI make him a DOME or other nominally civilian star league department an ID chit with valid access codes and for most digs that was probably enough to bypass normal star league protocols under 'maintenance' or the like... but he hadn't asked, and he wasn't going to, "They're just holograms, Septim. They're not actually ghosts." He reassured the man as they were subjected to another haunting recording of the last days of the facility... still without sound.

Like down below the walls were unmarked... or rather painted over from where men had gunned each other down, but there was no frame of reference for why the shooting had started. Just men in SLDF uniforms shooting at each other... and the holograms made it hard to figure out which units were shooting at which units... even if it had been broken down on unit lines. Had someone snapped and just started shooting and in the confusion people started shooting wildly and just spread from there? He supposed it was possible as the hallway full holographic bodies cleared as they approached another sealed door.

A proud cameron starburst stood painted on the reinforced blast doors of the commander center.

"Major Shepherd, if you would." Abner requested ambling forward to the door, but stopped just a few meters short of the sleeping defense turrets.

... thanks a lot... he wanted to mutter eying the lasers. He stepped forward to the golden line painted on the floor where Abner had stopped. "Authorized User Detected." A masculine voice of synthetic origin stated evenly from... presumably recessed speakers. The turrets remained offline and pointed downward in their housing.

So far so good. He stepped towards the terminal and to the placed his hand on the flat panel feeling a sharp prick after he inserted the chit which the device actually fully recessed up to its chain, which he had never seen happen before.

"Stand by." The automated voice remarked.

He glanced at the drop of blood on his finger, and rubbed it. There was a flicker of light.

"Authentication, and gene code match. Welcome Major Shepherd." Then the voice shifted slightly. "It has been two hundred and thirty four years since an officer of the Central Intelligence Directorate has visited this facility."

He looked at the blue eye in the wall that was probably some kind of camera, or reader, or scanner something... "You're a hegemony artificial intelligence."

"Affirmative. This unit is designated Tristan St George 1283." Tritstan replied. "I am the central monitoring, directing and advising unit of this facility." A pause, "I must report that I have been out of contact since the mutineers destroyed my HPG uplink. I can only determine from degraded signals intercepts that the Star League has collapsed."

"That is correct."

"I understand. Please do come in."

The door opened to a pristine command center. Tristan started another holographic playback of the security footage... but this one had sound.... and that honestly made it worse than all the previous ones. " One of the Atlas drivers of the Snake Eaters had enacted the base's wildfire protocol when it became clear that they couldn't hold the facility... pumped the whole base full of nerve gas and turned the drones loose on all the remaining SLDF regulars from the Fifteenth, as well as the 209th​ Division troops caught in between.

"The Star League council had relieved Kerensky of Command. He had no legal authority to direct the SLDF to undertake the actions they did..." And apparently some of the troops from the combine had felt like insisting that Kerensky's orders had still been legally binding to the point of shooting a Hegemony major general... and starting the whole mess.

"So the Ardennes division died here then?"

He could almost hear the AI head tilt, "Yes, as I understand your idiom. I destroyed mutinying dropships and as a result most of the soldiers of the 209th​ enlisted and junior officers settled on the planet... regrettably most of them were KIA as a result of the nuclear attack on Elidere city." The original planetary capital. He had more questions, and he wasn't the only one. Abner was more than a little reluctant to wait or call back to base camp.

"Boss I really have a bad feeling about this." Septim pointed out to him, out of ear shot of the others. The other man seemed embarrassed about it, but was genuinely shook by the whole affair.
--
Commentary: This is end of the first half of Elidere IV. And also the last update of the story for the year... and the second half will solidly cement why Gene intends to spend most of the next decade of his career anywhere that isn't next to the Combine.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Eidere IV
Part 5​

He was thinking of the facility he had awakened in, and how much better provisioned this one was... such a fucking pity it was right on the Combine Fed Suns border. Bahar meanwhile looked at her new SLDF identification chit. It had taken some cajoling from the AI since the Star League, and especially the Hegemony, were long gone. "It should be an improvement over your other." Whatever she'd been using to have SLDF regular army credentials.

The Star League AI had presented them with the training material as well. With only five other people in the whole facility... so far as he was aware the tomb was largely empty.

"Do you know what this is worth?" She asked semi breathless as she held it up.

... he nearly shushed her. Explaining that they were in a mountain fortress where a Hegemony officer had ordered the nerve gassing of the facility rather than prevent it following into the wrong hands and then left the AI to stew for centuries... he was comfortable talking about that. "Not really." He replied, "but you can fill me in later. Captain." He concluded.

She stared at the dog tags. "What about the others?"

Besides Septim... the AI wasn't keen on issuing Ford or the TA credentials. It had logged Abner's credentials for whatever they were and issued him a new one for the facility, but he was a little concerned the doctor was badgering the AI about questions that it really didn't know the answer to. Ford seemed more crestfallen at having the wind taken out of his sails. "I We will see." A thought occurred to him, "Dragon slayer." He asked the AI.

"Yes Commander." It responded immediately.

... right. "Kerensky's desertion. The fifteenth weren't actually aware of the facility until Ardennes told them about it, correct?"

"Affirmative."

... he glanced at the others in the room, "Do you have any records pertaining to the survival of House Cameron in the Terran branch, potentially related to the flight of SLS tirpitz," He paused, and corrected himself, "Tripitz. Or other SLDF vessels to Hegemony safeholds in the deep periphery rimward of Terra?"

"I am sorry Commander." The AI genuinely apologetic, "I have no such records. This facility was likely not intended to be read into such programs. The only HPG record at the time of the coup was a master override broadcast to prevent contingencies of the fire wall system, even that appeared to be designed to take the SDS orbital defense drone platforms offline."

He wasn't surprised by that, Amaris had had to take control of those someway, "Was this facility equipped with M5s?"

"No it was not."

Of course not... oh he good he was getting the weird looks again... he really needed to stop doing this. "I'm sorry doc I thought to ask."

"No, no quite alright," Abner declared tapping lightly with his foot, "Do you think General Kerensky was going to one of these Cameron safeholds in deep space?"

... pft no. He wasn't even entirely sure they existed .... even if it did seem likely that they did, and at the very least would have been entirely in line with House Cameron... and then was the whole Taurian and apparently canopian, and cappies... and for that matter the Alexander worlds the Azami had originally been looking for. He was tempted to ask the AI about those contingencies, but he had already asked enough weird questions.

Bahar bit her lip... glanced at the blond woman. "You have to tell the machine, you need to tell Septim as well."

"Excuse me?"

"The HPG intercept. Doctor Abner already knows, as does Mr Ford." So the only other one who didn't was the car driver... great. She was probably right that they should tell Septim. The Lyran Lieutenant still looked uncomfortable.

"Septim with me." Ford and Abner were too busy playing twenty questions with the AI to notice them step into the Commanding General of the Castle's office near the command center, he shut the door but not before noticing the blonde TA's hadn't been as enraptured. Bahar had noticed as well and the dark haired woman had taken a position front of the door as it closed.

"Boss?" He asked, then straightened staring at the emblem of the Terran Hegemony on the wall, and the flag of the star league. "Sir."

"Tristan, I assume you can hold more than one, answer more than one question at a time?"

The AI burbled a chuckle at the question, "Of course major I would be a poorly thought system if I couldn't provide multiple units direction at a time."

Gene nodded, sat down, "Can you access my Marauder's computer?"

"Affirmative." The AI proceeded to comment that his machine was under tonned still from the refit on Aquagea and noted that would need to be corrected and overhauled, but then dutifully accessed the encrypted computer core... specifically the message that had gotten the Azami hunted down by the combine, "Can you authenticate those credentials."

"They are Authentic." The AI made some grumbling complaints about Blake's credentials, such that it made Gene not even want to mention modern comstar. And then triggered the holographic playback.

He hadn't been meaning to start anyway, but Septim's half pained confused look suggested the Lyran had a question, "Pause."

"Apologies Major."

"What is it Septim?"

"So the intelligence directorate ... is the ... was the Terran version of the Intelligence Corp, basically?"

Gene nodded, that was simple enough explanation, "More or less." He replied, "This HPG recording is not something you should talk about. How much do you know about the first succession war?"

"What I learned about in school, but not much. It was two hundred years ago."

Fair enough. Indeed that likely explained his question about his CID status, to Septim it was probably just Military Intelligence... the Hegemony was long dead. "Yes," He agreed after a somber moment that he half expected the AI to interject in. "To put this into context I assume you recall our conversation on Jinjiro Kurita, this would his father and predescor," The man's death would kick off the Kentares Massacre... "And Stefan Amaris. Play."
He'd seen the recording a couple of times. There were plenty of reasons why the Combine wouldn't want this to get out.
--
"Commander Shepherd you are needed forthwith." The AI declared, all business like.

Gene stared as the automated docking system continued working on his Marauder. He pressed the wall panel... even though it was probably unnecessary. The AI certainly hadn't had any problems answer questions on the command deck, "Affirmative. I'm on my way." Bahar followed after. The whole base was creepily pristine. The AI Core had full in house maintenance systems and had secured all the biological remains in the facility. Apparently if the nerve gas hadn't worked Tristan would have been cleared hot to go nuclear. That was not the sort of thing he really wanted to contemplate.

He was moving almost all the way through the doors before he had noticed that the automated turrets weren't 'sheathed', oriented down, like they 'usually' were. He kept walking, even though Ford looked nervous, and Septim almost looked like he was going to faint. Septim's Merlin was the only mech not getting refit because it wasn't a star league design.

"Commander, welcome. I regret to inform you especially given the delay in detection but we have incoming hostile forces."

... "Explain."

"I have tentatively identified the enemy force as 19th​ Galedon Regulars." The AI declared. "House Kurita's forces appear to be engaged in a raid in force against both this world as well as of Ander's Moon." A holographic map of the solar system appeared showing the Zenith Jump Point. It was obvious that the DCMS had divided their forces, one set of Dropships were clearly burning towards Elidere proper while another was hurtling towards the gas giant that Ander's Moon orbited...

Septim cursed.

"Are you inside their communication loop?" He felt stupid asking the question, because it was obvious that the AI was.

"Affirmative commander," The AI replied.

"Force analysis?"

"The opposing force appears to be a standard battlemech regiment, two battalions appear to be en route. Regimental leadership is present, I estimate an enemy force strength of 115 mechs."

"Gott in himmel."

"Septim get it together."

"We're going to fight right?" There was a surprising amount of steel in the man's voice for how pale he was.

"Yes, but I want as complete of a picture of what I'm up against." He replied, "Dragon Slayer, "You said they're divided in half," Or at least going to two different planets in system, "are they keeping a battalion in reserve?"

"I suspect that the enemy has sustained combat losses, and is keeping part of the unit in reserve."

"Regimental Leadership?"

"Signals intercepts suggest that the enemy commander is piloting an Atlas." How poor was Combine Comms discipline he had to wonder... or worse had they never changed the Star League era codec for transmitting. "Based on intercepts and positional data I have tentatively identified the regimental headquarters landing zone as Scarborough bluffs outside the town of the same name."

So they were probably here to break and steal stuff then. The projected meteor fall pattern of landings would deploy combine dropships all along the coast. Jasos city with its industrial mech production was about to get a lot of attention it was unlikely to want... or be prepared for. Tristan St George scrolled through the Planetary Government's systems with no issue at all, as the local feudal potentates prepared to ride out to defend their homes and possessions.

"What assets do you have access to? What can be used to organize a defense of the planet?" He could feel the AI's interest turn from logical calculating to bloodthirsty war machine preparing to muster for its duty, for battle, as it projected a map of every star league station, outpost, and which rail lines were intact and how to access them to move. The status of ammunition, and ground combat vehicle drones, and the ability to jam all rival communications...

Gene heard the shout and saw the muzzle of the holdout pistol in the blonde woman's hand. It couldn't be any larger than a twenty two and made more of a pop sound. The superheated air from multiple laser discharges was honestly louder.

He whirled around tracking where the shot had gone high into the ceiling. "Anybody hurt?" He asked just to be sure.

"A little surprised," Ford grunted, "I'm alright. What the devil?"

Bahar helped Abner up from where he had slipped. "Thank you, my dear. Alright the Combine is attacking," the doctor declared. "But I must echo Mr Ford's question, why the gun?" The laser turrets hadn't been playing around the blonde woman was in no condition to answer. The teaching assistant had been dead before she hit the floor having been shot by a half dozen laser bolts each from at least two different turrets. "Major Shepherd," he exclaimed as he started rifling through the dead woman's pockets.

"The commander is cataloging effects that may yield useful intelligence." The AI reproved, "Commander Shepherd if you would place that device in the tray I will examine that device in a clean environment unconnected to the base's systems. It may take some time though, and the Dropships have hit the atmosphere."

Fuck, and they hadn't even raised the rest of the company. He looked at the holographic projection. Stay divided and split up you damned snakes.
--
Commentary: I did not plan to update this today. It was going to be a pathfinder update today.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Elidere Part 6​

He frowned, "What do you mean its not ready?" There were other mechs, Bahar had had a look around and in theory he could use one of them.

The AI apologized, "I apologize again Commander but the refits to your Marauder to bring it inline with," He ignored the rattled off a program number, "Will not be complete for several more hours." He thought about the Atlas, but watched as a hologram appeared. It was clearly a Marauder, but different than his own.

"LBX?" He asked.

"Testing and evaluation of the weapons platform as a successor to then standard Hegemony 2R." He nearly pointed out that the 2R had only finished replacing the 1R in Hegemony service barely half a decade before the Amaris Coup... and he wasn't especially keen to take a prototype weapon into battle... CASE or no... but it didn't seem like he had a choice.

He turned back to the holographic display. It seemed laughable to call to him to call a 'Regiment' of Infantry what the Combine were bringing down. Two companies of infantry had been identified and would be touching down at Salisbury, but their signals broadcast indicated they were supposed to be a regiment. It had occurred to him that the rest of the unit might have been allocated to attacking Ander's moon.

The 19th​ was clearly under strength, only a dozen ASF detected most of which were registering as Shilones... and the 19th​ was bringing no identified armor assets to the party. The infantry were potentially close enough to the dig site that if they were mechanized they might be a problem... he hoped of course that the company was alert enough to realize that they had just found themselves stuffed into a planetary invasion.

Gene glanced at the sound of a zipper, and a grunt, "Ah its fit, quite nicely." Abner declared patting his stomach. "Just my size you'd think it was tailored for me. Manufactured San Francisco, 2761." The Lyran doctor had found a size extra large SLDF regulation pilot suit. "Come along Mr Ford we must go collect our happy diggers."

Ford at least seemed to recognize the insanity of the situation, but he wasn't having any success in talking the doctor out of it. Septim shook his head, "Doctor Abner is insistent that he joins us for the sortie." Seeming to sense that his commander was going to ask if Abner could even pilot a mech, Septim pressed on, "He says he can do, and that you'll need everyone who can pilot a mech to do so... and that we're out numbered."

"Go get in your mech Septim." He ordered, then nodded to Bahar. Some automated droid looking things had already cleaned up the body, carted to presumably a bio recycler or the base furnace or somewhere for disposal. Gene leaned over the holotank, "Invasion force on Ander's?"

The combine had brought an estimated 115 mechs to play... they had reserves in system. A batallion was en route to Ander's Moon. "refreshing now." Tristan St George replied, "Vandenburg castle, and McBrin castles appear to be their primary targets, secondary objectives may be the central agricultural facility at Ander's Fall." The AI rattled off a couple of other potential options... but the first targets being the local noble's old fortresses made sense.

"any armor?"

"None detected, a company of infantry that I can confirm, but I estimate approximately a battalion of BattleMechs including the battalion commander and his headquarters unit."

Truthfully there was little he thought they could really do about the other planet. "Are they actual castles?"

"In the sense that they are fortified residences, yes."

... that was fair enough. Thinking about it was obvious that the Combine was here likely just to pillage and steal... if they knew about this facility they sure weren't acting like it. Not that there weren't SLDF facilities on Ander's Moon that might be salvageable... but the Duke of New Vandenburg had a planetary militia to call upon and could presumably have put up some kind of resistance.

Maybe.

Ander's Moon was going to be on its own for now. Still even there, the Combine forces were scattering their forces out, casting a wide net much like they were doing here. Still even properly supported a battalion of mechs was not enough to hold a planet... even just one of fifty million regardless of most of them being farmers. He had to wonder how long the combine intended to stay... long enough for their jumpdrives to finish charging... and long enough to load up whatever whasn't nailed down presumably.

"Commander?" The AI paused, "Enemy air attack being conducted against Jasos City."

He nodded, "Show me the eastern seaboard map local, geography only." The tub rippled and changed the map he was looking at, "Show us," Dot added. He gradually filtered in other features... and nodded finally.

There was the infantry to worry about if its units were mechanized. The Condor might have potentially been carrying vehicles for that... possibly partial mechanization. They'd have to wait and see. The ancient Star League systems provided good vantage where they had coverage, but coverage wasn't complete.
--
He flipped through the start up by the book. There was a minor difference in documentation, but nothing that impeded running the start up check for the Royal Marauder. The 'patch notes' claimed that the upgrade to the LBX was designed to correct the older version Whirlwind Autocannon... but he was skeptical of that. The computer's notes had been written by the Weapon's division of the Hegemony R&D department and reminded all gunslingers to insure their reports and battle roms were reported to them.

"All Green, how are we on Comms?" He asked lasing the Merlin.

"Five by Five, commander." Septim's Merlin was already moving down the tube as a tram platform prepped to carry them down the tube. It would be faster than walking. "This gonna work?"

"In the sense that we will get back there, yes." They'd be able to get back to the base camp, and just getting back to the train station should put them back into contact with the unit. It had been a mistake to have Septim and Bahar both along... maybe not so much if the JumpShip captains hadn't been out of the system but it had been a complacency move. "alright you are to rendezvous with our Mechs, grab Chang and Alexander."

"Roger that, boss."

It would have been nice to have Jowett and Andrews along, for whatever help two more mechs really would have done. "Bahar once we emerge coordinate with our infantry to securing non combatants outside the line of engagement," Put their asses in the old bunkers, and, "Then tell the crunchies to load up inferno SRM's and point them at any mech that isn't ours."

That really only was going to be focused on protecting their principles. Their non combatants were the Expedition people... and he hadn't forgotten that one of them had for whatever reason pulled a gun from somewhere.

... or that people would have to be blind to nt notice they were coming back on a tram with a pristine Atlas... and assuming they weren't completely stupid a different Marauder.
--
It looked like was going to rain, Septim cued his mike inside the Merlin's cockpit, the magestrix handshaking with the new Marauder the boss was riding, "Good hunting." He pulled away and stepped on the aging highway and brought the mech to sixty five kph. "Bubbles,"

"Septim? Where have you guys been??" The hunchback driver questioned, before stopping in a low whistle, "Woh what is that?"

"Boss says its an Atlas II," He glanced to his Magestrix Gamma's radar readout, "Look I'll tell you all about it later, but for right now we've got to go smash some pumpkins." He declared thinking about the dreams. The black fox on the river laughing at the clumsily pursuing combine mechs, and then turning around to chase them back. In the real world Bahar was mobilize the company of ground vehicles they had, "Look we have," Fuck, Boss hadn't really specified how to explain their help when it came, "Boss has secured some local support so we're not alone out here."

"That's good to hear," Beau declared expansively in his deep bass, "Cause between us looks like the whole damn DCMS coming down."

This probably would have been the part where the boss pish sha-ed and went no its just a battalion of mechs. "There are a lot of the bastards," He replied instead, "But they're all spread out, and we've got artillery and they don't, so once we get the IE people safe we're going to be able to cut them apart while their forces are divided."

In the cockpit of her Mongoose Bahar listened, but didn't interrupt. The distinction to captain had really been done to place her on the same footing on Luxen with Septim. He was more familiar with their fellow mechwarriors more a friend than a colleague. She wasn't sure how he would take the news of the HPG transmission... but it probably meant less to him. He was Lyran. The elders all tried to act, and some sincerely believed that everyone in the world had to have similar scruples of morality and were appalled not so much when someone failed, but when someone who espoused honorable conduct so thoroughly betrayed it.

... The Lyran Commonwealth soldier didn't ascribe much of a tie to the horrors of the fall of the star league, or the succession war. They were just a part of history now.

She touched the double matte green bars on her collar. Apparently the green had been a decision during the wars on terra because they were subdued colors on earth tone uniforms. Her hand snapped to her ONS comms system.

"Tai-i." Hanzo greeted respectfully. Shiffer's rebuilt Cicada was now effectively just a bigger Jenner. A slightly more protected jenner in any event. It could hit nearly a hundred twenty kilometers an admitted downgrade from its previous hundred and thirty. "My mech has completed rearmament with inferno missiles. I have permission to engage and destroy the enemy infantry, may I depart?"

Bahar checked the Mongoose's computer log, and confirmed the orders. She would have preferred not to, she would have preferred to use the armor company against the Condor... but a single mech with a pilot committed to proving himself would be harder to detect. "Yes, good luck."

"And you as well." The disfigured man's hologram inclined slightly in a bow, and the machine sprinted off with nothing further. It was risky to send just one mech.

Hanzo rejoiced in his good fortune. He was a mech warrior now. The privilege of destroying the enemy lay before him with command of a forty ton warmachine. It was true he might have looked forward to face a Combine warrior mech to mech... but he recognized that he was the most junior mechwarrior in the unit.

He keyed into the battalion navigation network as his Dynatec labelled it and viewed the coordinates... he would have to hurry. If his good luck held he'd be able to get there while they were sitll unloading, and following the advice firing his missiles into the enemy dropship's open cargo bay.
--
He would have liked to have his jumpjets. It felt weird to not have them, like a phantom limb linked to the machine connection. Gene had gotten used to know he could clear terrain obstacles and maneuver, but there weren't any real issues to piloting this marauder. He had the mech flat out hoping to stay ahead of the rain the doplar was tracking as coming in, but also prepared to listen in to intercepts filched by the AI.

As a command battlemech the Marauder, just like his own could relay those as needed to the others, or failing a good connection to the others either the Sam Houston or the Atlas to pass on. He wasn't ignorant that the Combine couldn't have missed the two dropships.

Ford had been willing to put half up in an escrow account. That very well could have drawn attention, and he wondered if that played a role in it. The bigger question was whether the combine invasion was related or if they were dealing with an honorable third party. He hoped not. One set of assholes to fight was enough. "FASCAM loaded?" He questioned the AI.

"Affirmative commander." The Combine had superior numbers, and he did not want to tip his hand about hte drones if he could avoid it. The ability to deploy field artillery scatterable mines insured that ... well the artillery range was basically yes. He just needed to find where they were going to be most effective, and then hopefully the Combine would be obliging enough to follow. "Designate a grid target zone at your leisure, and stand by."

"Understood." He banked the machine wide around a bog and kept pushing towards the hillside. "Any idea on mech deployment?"

"Standby," The AI linked to the Dalban, feeding data in, "I estimate approximately forty mechs deploying at multiple beachheads. Predominantly light mech." The warbook projected Panthers in haggard gray paint jobs. The Combine's iconic mech had served with the SLDF in the periphery after all, and he was familiar with them from previous battlefields. He was reading modern versions of the Jenner as well, no big surprise. "I estimate as much as half the enemy mech force are Light BattleMechs." The AI declared after a moment more, and then the bad news, "Preliminary sensor returns suggest thirty percent of the remaining force are Heavy BattleMechs." He didn't grumble. That made sense, there were nearly no Medium mechs binging on the sensors. He didn't like the news, but he wasn't really surprised either. "I will apprise you if any more sortie, or of further deployments."

There were catapults, dragons, even a handful of Grasshoppers that were returning SLDF iff recognized codecs. The latter suggested that those heavy mechs had been built either sometime before the League had fallen, or been built by factories hewing strictly to the standards of the league design. The enemy were divided though, there were two unions separate from one another far enough that neither would be able to assist the other... though that was probably because the company commanders wanted to race the other to see who could get to the city between them first.

"Commander?"

"What is it Tristan?"

"I am reading an anomalous IFF indication from what I believe is the enemy command mech."

"Can you clarify what you mean?"

"I believe the Atlas in question has been modified," No surprise there, "But the original machine is transmitting and SLDF pattern IDC of the 15th​ Army." That could be nothing, "I'm pulling its battle log now." The AI continued... he continued through the countryside while he waited.

The string of spatial coordinates didn't immediately mean anything. Most the actions on them came with combat lobs attached that he didn't have time to watch even assuming that the Atlas driver didn't for whatever reason notice that kind of data connection. Errai stood out though, even more so with Ozawa as the planetary coordinates resolved to SLDF era facilities. Nothing important, and certainly nothing that suggested he would have known anything about a Hegemony Outpost... but... his mind flashed back to an earlier conversation, a proposed opportunity... and more recently the little dots on the map.

He'd been told months ago with conviction that the 63rd​ Mechanized Infantry Division which as brigade would have included a BattleMech brigade had dissolved and its successors had gone on to join the Lyrans and the Free Worlds League. Captain Pasha had been quite sure no one had come back during the succession wars and found anything left behind in those facilities, "Were any of those facilities used?"

"The deserters attempted to secure material, I expect the majority of what they falsely requisitioned was lost when I destroyed their DropShips."

That made sense, Gene thought, no one had found the depots because they had probably been looted by Kerensky's people to prepare for the exodus only to trip Hegemony protocols and lose all of it once the AI shot their DropShips down... dropships that probably hadn't been expecting hostile anti air... or however. "But nothing since?"

"Some of the facilities were destroyed during subsequent conflicts, and others have sense fallen out of contact due to lack of maintenance. To the best of my knowledge however most of the facilities themselves have been left alone."

Because the natives thought the SLDF might one day return, maybe? Did that mean the Galedon were here to chase the possibility of loot a little more lucrative than whatever they usually went after? Or did they definitely think they knew something was here? "Are any of the Ander's Moon facilities intact?"

.... the second succession war had been harder there... well for a given value since Elidere City had had a close call with a nuke that had just barely managed to go wide. Nearing fusion returns cut the conversation short and Gene reached up to flip the master arm on. The LBX indicator light flashed green indicating the weapon was hot, and a ballistic reticle appeared in his heads up display... at least it hadn't jammed on the first go.

If there was some higher strategic goal in mind the light mechs from the first union showed no sign or indication as they went joy riding through the intersection road between the coast and the fens that lead to town. This had been the same roadway that lead to the junction that Septim had taken to go see if there was anything out along the sea shore.

He queued the mind machine interface and let the Dalban start numbering off and cataloging the enemy mechs.
--
Operation Ashika as it had been called in the briefing opened to an ignominious beginning. The attack on the Davion occupied planet brought with it no opportunity to face the troops of the Draconis March. There was no one here... and for all the better for their real objective. Captain Inanzo knew that really they were behaving as nothing more than bandits raiding a poorly defended border world that had once, and would one day, be apart of the Glorious Coordinator's realm... but they were not actually here to conquer the world.

"Captain," His officer of the watch declared sharply, "Enemy fusion signature detected."

Inanzo blinked and turned to the thin bespectacled sensor tech, "What-" That was impossible there had been no enemy force present. The Davions dogs probably hadn't been to this world in years, "The locals then? Some," He had been about to ask if it was some Industrial Mech, or perhaps one of the local nobles actually had a real mech. Since it had gotten this close maybe a Stinger, or a Wasp that had been able to power up and get close to the DropShip without being noticed... but that chain of thought ended with the sudden warning klaxons of an incoming fusillade of missiles.

They were under attack.

He didn't hear the warning, four Inferno SRM's had streaked into the open bay of the Lapida built Condor class Dropship Manju Yama was on fire within minutes as the offload area became consumed in gelatinous highly volatile chemical mixture began to cook off ammunition and fuel supplies that eventually reached the DropShip's fuel bunkers.

Manju Yama died not from external enemy weapons fire but from several tons of her own ammunition cooking off shattering a wing from the inside going out. Captain Inanzo was already dead by the time a lone forty mech crossed the nose of the dropship harassing the less than platoon of conscripts that had survived the dozen missiles fired into the loading area ninety seconds earlier.

Not exactly a glorious first battle, but Hanzo cabled the confirmation of the objective's completion to the designated channel and turned his mech to rejoin the others on the receipt of the RTB command. There were probably some survivors, but the main threat in this sector had been destroyed. A destruction that would have been harder to accomplish if they had had pickets deployed.
--
Commentary: We get a little bit of some of the other people in this one, and we're officially in what the history books will remember as the Battle of Elidere 3017. Note that it is spring of 3017 and that this battle will take place over a period of roughly three weeks of fighting and maneuver and some of the second half scenes are somewhat larger than is typical... as might be obvious.

As you might have noticed this is a Friday update. It has been an exhausting day, but this will still update on Sunday as well.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Elidere Part 7​

19th​ Galedon Regulars Planetfall: +36 Hours
He'd peeled off into the furoughs of a large farm leaving the main road when he'd confirmed the signal. Then he had waited almost an hour, hull down behind a barn.

Gene watched the Firestarter and slowly edged his ER PPC's reticles over the machine. If it passed him he'd be entirely behind the enemy company, as soon as it happened he pulled the trigger. Twin bolts of ball lightning slammed into the right rear torso of the enemy thirty five tonner and pitched it forward as it stepped, but that inconsequential to the ammo explosion that destroyed the mech.

For a moment he had worried that the ammo hadn't cooked off, but that was one down. The Jenner two mechs up was the first to realize something was wrong and that allowed the other two mechs to completely over shoot it. With any luck the SLDF jamming would see to it that this lance simply disappeared without getting a word out to the higher company level. Two more PPC blasts into the same right torso rear quadrant aimed at the SRM ammo the Jenner carried resulted in a giant explosion of flame and heat that set the mech on fire...

The mech had been carrying inferno not standard high explosive. Gene checked the heat indicator, and eyed the Panther Left Torso this time to check and see if it had standard HE for its SRMs. He'd take the shot, and then have to deal with the waste heat put off by the ER PPCs. He was going to have to shoot the Jenner again, but probably after the Panther and the last mech in the lance was gone.

But they were going to have to come to him at half a kilometer out, that would give him time to let the double heat sinks work. The Spider was going to have to come to him anyway, but given it had been broadcasting an SLDF IDC it was the mech he wanted most intact. It was also the only hostile mech that looked about pristine even if someone had painted a big grinning jack o lantern on the shoulder over a horrible gray paint job.

... if Gene were going to bet it was the Company commander or XO in the seat having been rewarded with the machine ... it seemed to be in too good of condition to have been a hand me down. No he needed information, and if he to guess what mech in the lance might have potentially had information it was the Spider.

Whether he could actually acquire that information was doubtful. The enemy company was moving by lance through the countryside, and this was the last element in the formation, but they had enough fast movers to be able to turn around and return if they realized something was wrong. Much of this ambush hinged on the Star League jamming blanketing the area preventing an enemy distress signal from getting out.
--
It was getting dark... and the boss still wasn't back yet. He really didn't want to quibble with Bahar over who was supposed to be in charge of the unit... but that was in no small part because he wasn't sure which of them was in charge.

That, and he certainly going to start that argument in front of, well earshot of the I.E. People. Abner frowned, on the holoscreen the doctor's face knit up, "Oh dear."

Septim glanced to Bahar's holographic image, as presumably she did the same. "What's up doc?" Chang beat them to asking from inside the cockpit of her Hunchback.

"Well while I wouldn't consider it within the city's metro area its still close enough to the planetary capital to worry the duke." The doctor was fidgeting inside the Atlas, which was making the hundred ton warmachine shuffle around the perimeter they had set which was in no way reassuring. "Anyway," He said after a few minutes having put them on hold, as it continued to creep into night, "Precentor Killos has sent out an HPG broadcast , or rather he sent one when the Combine JumpShips arrived in system, apparently there have been raids on other worlds by this unit. The duke insisted that the precentor send another one once it was clear an attack on the way. Not that a second really would do all that much,"

Septim nodded, and then nodded again at Bahar's comment that their own JumpShips were probably at Robinson recharging their drives, but that was still a month's travel if their drives weren't charged... and even so the whole unit was here. He also wasn't confident that duke's insistence that Robinson do something would bring any kind of relief... they were on their own. An HPG message, ten HPG messages even weren't going to help.
--

The duke... well the Duke of Elidere the planet... was apparently demanding that Doctor Abner cede military control of the contract to the planetary militia... which Gene wasn't exactly sure that was how it worked like that ... and Abner wasn't convinced either. The Lyran doctor had picked in his ear and explained that, 'no no, per the terms with our experienced knights it is tradition that they have full command authority in security matters Its just not in the contract like that.' Except with a lot more german and italian thrown into the conversation... a conversation which had ended with the main company getting its first taste of action against the invading combine troops.

Abner had cited communications issues for why he wasn't able to answer the duke's further calls through the morning. "But every one is okay?"

"Just a lance of light mechs boss," Septim remarked, "Like you said they were bound to notice Baffins even with camo netting strewn over it."

He flicked through the holographic stills that Tristan had fed through. They had dug in their own battalion of infantry, most of whom had been recruited from Detroit's militia. Baffin's company were forming a picket along a southern hillside, hopefully preventing someone from sneaking up behind them while the infantry off of Sam Houston were dug in like ticks inside the abandoned urban center with their SRMs. The latter were there to insure the Combine didn't get into the old city.

Presumably the Combine didn't know the Maguanacs, the armor company aboard Sam Houston, were Azami.... but with Tokugawa tanks and a Daimyo HQ they were going to have questions anyway you sliced the pie. Questions that would probably be asked with PPCs. What they wouldn't learn until they tried to approach from where the Maguanac were dug in laying in wait was that there was a mine field across that open plain just waiting for any mechs that wanted to come that way.

He was hoping it didn't come to that. There were two unions close by. There was the Excalibur, a large spheroid dropship design that had entered service post star league, serving as the enemy regimental HQ between them and the planetary capital. "Any resistance to speak of?"

"I have scattered fusion signatures, but little coherent this side of Jasos City." Tristan replied. "There may be some AFFS regulars in the city, but nothing to contest the incursion."

Gene glanced at his holographic count down. They didn't have a good idea of what was going on on Ander's Moon, but it was probably going better for the Combine than it was here. There were only going to get one shot with anti DropShip munitions anyway, and that was a trump card he wasn't sure he wanted to use unless they had to... but it was looking as if the moment was coming. Whatever the situation was on Ander's moon the dropships presumably carrying the regiment's reserves were now burning towards Elidere IV.

Even if they hadn't had the intercept of it they had telemetry. They had eight days. They needed to achieve a solution to this in that time frame, because even assuming the enemy reserves were battle damaged from previous operations they were still talking about basically another Mech Battalion. "Standby Septim, I've got the heavy lance coming up," He looked at the highway, the direction from which his sensors were detecting the inbound sixty tonners from the VLAR 300 fusion engines.

The catapult was the odd mech out in the lance with its smaller Magna built Fusion engine, but it and the quickdraw, and Ostsol were all modern build mechs. As was of course the Dragon.

"Boss I'd really feel better if you'd let us send you reinforcements."

"Hold your position Septim."

"I assure you Captain Alexander matters are well in hand." The AI declared. Or rather the carefully planned ambush had been in hand up until a fusion signature spoiled the fun. "Anomalous mech signature powering up. Reading SLDF IDC, 209th​ BattleMech Divison."

"Major?" Bahar asked.

"Some local I'd bet." He replied, "Tristan give me ground local control."

"Affirmative Commander."

"Bahar watch your sectors for the mechs heading your way, I'll keep these off of you." This would have been a hell of a lot worse if the Combine had shown up with proper combined arms support... the complete lack of any 'lowly tanks' was the height of arrogant stupidity...

His command systems flashed showing the drones. It was a pity that Tristan's Ground Combat Vehicles, his drones, weren't equipped with inferno munitions, but it didn't matter. The plan had been to catch the force of mechs before they could get to the base camp and catch them before they could link up.
--
They had discovered the BattleMech one day two summers earlier... or rather they had found the entrance to what had probably been an old barn two summers earlier. The property had been abandoned since the end of the first sucession war... back when the Combine had still ruled the planet.

It hadn't been hard to figure out what it was the Dervish had been built by the Lyrans in the early 26th​ century and had been mass produced and adopted into the SLDF. Snape, and Donnie Orwell had both shipped off to join the AFFS and Andre Sutton had been looking forward to leaving for Robbinson to attend the RBA having received acceptance the first of the year.

Andre had ignored the orders to take shelter, and instead had rushed through the countryside and to where the old farmstead had stood following the simulator's start up procedure from rote memorization. The Dervish had powered up and read all systems nominal... and then the realization had struck that the combine were here in force.

So he had frozen... and then spent the next several days lurking in the countryside hoping that he'd get the opportunity... that surely the snakes would be right around the corner, and that he'd see them coming... and that he'd have the stones to pull the trigger on the invaders instead of freezing again.

Then on sunday they'd come down the pail. Four enemy mechs, and he'd followed the start up sequence just like he'd practiced in the simulator, exactly right. The SLDF crest and the badge embossed with XX appeared and once again the war machine was ready to fight.

There were four snakes coming down the road. Four enemy mechs... he bit his lip and glanced at the weapons readout. He had twenty four salvos with his LRMs... and then he'd have to get close. Andre adjusted the weird cooling jacket... he had to make them count. "Come on you bastards."
--
Gene maneuvered the drones into position. In SLDF terms drones were cheap. The idea behind Hegemony thinking was that they could hold an attacking enemy in position to let professional terran troops decapitate any hostile leadership and then break through the enemy rear wreaking havoc in the back end. That was what the book said anyway. Of course also suggested a much larger scale of combat than lances...

Tristan would have preferred ambushing the enemy closer to the main, intact, tram stations, but it would also advertise that fact that something was going on. At the very least the enemy might assume that there was a davion armor battalion present or mercenaries... no telling which the Combine might get more pissed off at losing mechs to...

had the DCMS really sortied without armor support? Had they just left them behind... if so why? It was annoying him, he eased the reticle as the mechs pivoted registering the poor man's archer firing on them. The LRMs were in direct attack mode so he was prettty sure that the dervish pilot was by himself. The Ostsol was the first to run forward even as the fusillade of LRMs started sandpapering the Catapult.

The verbal command was unnecessary. He could have sent it by neurohelmet mind machine interfacing directly to the command, but the manual's procedure specified verbal command authorization. "Execute."

The Quickdraw found itself under fire from two lighter vehicles carrying a dizzying number of srm mounts. Lighter was relative of course, it was still basically a SRM Carrier. The hover vehicles had popped up out of the tree line creating a haze of dust and debris from the trees both from their motive systems and the launch.

The squat gray painted Dragon had less than the proscribed half ton of armor cover its its left rear torso. The pain back there had gone over the mauled but someone in a previous deployment had taken a shot at the mech's backside, and it was time to finish what they had started.

Naturally by that point the combine lance's lieutenant started to complain about them being honorless dogs and refusing to face them as warriors. That would have been fine if the idiot in the Dervish had just kept blasting at them with his LRMs.

"I'll fight you." Dervish declared the mech starting to come down the hill side.

Gene weighed his options he had two more heavier drones still concealed in the hillside, and the SRMs had backed down the hillside and were out of line of sight. The Dragon was damaged but either hadn't been fully loaded with ammo or it just hadn't cooked off when he'd blown through the rear armor on the left side. The Quickdraw was non mobile at least, one leg completely demolished by the shoot and scoot, and the other leg's ankle actuator was smashed. The catapult could fight, but how well with one ppc mangled remained to be seen.

He reached over with his left hand and directed the drones to their next targets. The Ostsol, the Kuritan lieutenant's mech, didn't have any ammunition he could cook off. He wondered if he could blast the catapult's machine gun ammo.

... no he lased the Dervish as it started clear the three hundred meter distance with the Ostsol at full speed.

Not that that was any faster than the Ostsol could make, but it meant he was running out of time.

--
"Here they come." Abner declared unnecessarily. The Atlas waded forward firing its LRM 20 at the assaulting charge of light mechs coming from the south. They were being funneled in from the hills and Abner's mech might as well have been a beacon because the combine were charging right for it. "Once more dear friends."

Septim shook his head, and added his own LRMs to the mix. He wasn't the only one. They had dropships adding into the mech's fire. Haqim's voice came over the coms, "Captain," He declared, "they are ah', about to hit our picket line. Two hundred meters to range."

They couldn't let those Jenner's get close. He was sure some if not all of them had infernos. To best of their knowledge the Combine had landed six dropships total on the planet. One Excalibur. Three confirmed Unions, the uh roasted turkey aerodyne Hanzo had cooked... and then another spheroid. "Forty something god damned mechs."

Never mind the enemy reinforcements due in a week's time.

"Captain?"

"Nothing Haqim," Then somewhat brighter, "Just thinking about the salvage." He heard a response about fixing anything that got broke, and smirked before he brought his PPC into the fight as Abner's 'Atlas II' opened up with the weird autocannon that took the head clean off a light mech.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Elidere IV Part 8​

The mech stood out, and he was contemplating what to do about it as it continued to come down the road. It would take it another half hour to get here at its current pace.

The Wyvern was a 45 ton mech, thus a medium. It was another mech that was in unusually good condition for its age... but unlike the Spider probably hadn't been accepted into SLDF service and then put into storage... most likely it had been in storage when dug up on Errai which the 19th​ had hit at some point. Since being dug up it had clearly been dinged a couple times but was still something to watch out for... even if they didn't have a way to recover it.

"Tristan?"

"The lance appears to be spread out over several miles, two Grasshoppers in the center, a Catapult K2 variant bringing up the rear."

Great. He cast a disappointed side long glance at the remains of the enemy machines, and lased the Dervish, "We're pulling back." He informed it. The extended patrol probably was them attempting to get around the jamming, but he doubted they were having any success.

"What?" The other mechwarrior sounded offended.

Gene scowled, and pivoted his Marauder's torso towards the Dervish, "I cannot baby sit you up against two heavy mechs, we are disengaging before that one's friends get here." It was true that his Marauder out massed the inbound mechs, but they had clearly gotten the other Union's attention and it had sent units through the city. The Grasshopper if kept at range he could probably kill, but it wouldn't be due to an ammunition explosion, he doubted that he'd be able to reliably kill them that way not with it only carrying a ton of ammo for an LRM 5. Most likely they'd expend the ammo before closing, and he intended to be gone before then.

He was admittedly a little surprised that the Wyvern was forward most of the lance, but it didn't matter, he adjusted the reticles of the ERPPCs and fired and watched as the mech crumpled from the headshot mid stride.

"But,"

"We are pulling back to our defensive line." That and while he was pretty certain the enemy light mechs had been dealt with he wanted to be sure, "They can come to us," And once they were dealt with they'd see about moving on to Jasos city.
--

Gene would have preferred to strip off and shower, but as it was he only had had time to switch to a clean suit. SLDF protective equipment or no he'd been in the mech for days, eating and sleeping in it. They were facing a problem, and he had had to take too long ducking into the Outpost to make the computer system authorize a link to a non star league system like this. He leaned against the table in the Daimyo command vehicle, "How are they doing?"

"Not good." Bahar answered honestly from over the line, "I admit I'm surprised that they lasted this long, but the local militia has done well... even if it has forced them to pay a great deal of blood." The number of mechs in combine possession on planet had been revised up to approximately fifty, or close to that not counting combat losses since. Three Unions, that Excalibur... and whatever the other thing on the far side of the landing zone was.

They didn't have good readings from that side... and the enemy had reinforcements coming in. "Where are we on ammo," He already knew that they couldn't restock their inferno ammo," Once they expended it, it was gone, which would be a pity. A holographic image appeared of stockpiles from the facility as well as their own stores. If it came to it they were absolutely going to pull back into the Outpost ... but Tristan wasn't confident that his remaining anti dropship ground to air systems would be able to hit the incoming battalion as they came in from the sky. Not based on their current trajectory that probably wasn't intentional it just appeared that they were choosing to land in the hills outside the planetary capital. The systems there had been destroyed, or so severely degraded by the succession wars that Tristan couldn't access their controls. Even if they could get into an access system in Jasos city there was no guarantee that they'd work one hundred percent.

He lased the relay, "Bahar, sitrep?"

"The enemy lance has challenged us to individual duels." She paused, "I am inclined to accept the captain's offer,"

"He made that before I got back, did he?"

"As they were pulling the survivors from the first attack back."

Gene would have preferred to make the combine troops attack prepared ground, but he also didn't want to show too much in the way of support before moving on Jasos... and they had a contractual obligation to minimize the risk to IE personnel. "How's that supposed to work?" He regretted asking the combine captain of course wanted to sideline infantry and combat vehicles, and rely strictly on one on one combat between mechs. "I guess its a good thing he didn't challenge Doctor Abner," That showed at least a little bit of sense.

"You don't want me to accept?"

"That's to your discretion captain," He glanced at the map of the dale, they had days left until the enemy reinforcements made planet fall. "Doctor the northern force is about an hour out, I want to meet them before they get much closer."

"And then Jasos then?" The doctor declared, "Go see about that relay in the cathedral?" Abner had been carrying on a conversation with the AI, and realistically they were probably both going to be there. Tristan doubted whether Abner's credentials would authorize the employment of the necessary air defense batteries.... assuming any of the Hadleys still worked. He'd be able to get the security bunker open to move the populace in them, but they were basically just giant fallout shelters. "I think mr ford can handle things here."

"Bahar, be careful." When she signed off, "Tristan if the combine attempts anything funny,"

"I will grid smash their position commander," The markings of what was rolling out of the mountain were Arrow IV launcher, they wouldn't be anything approaching discreet. "I have their dropship being zeroed for artillery as we speak." Given how short they were on mechs relative to the opposition he wasn't going to try and pull what had become his usual.. rolling a couple Padilla would have to work.

--
He felt the fat under his chin, but that wasn't why he was scowling. "Sho-sho?" A rank he had worked hard to attain in spite of incompetents stymying his movements and attempting to deny him what should be his. He had had to scrounge and fight tooth and nail for supplies.

"What is it?" He hissed finally before the lieutenant colonel could ask again. The general turned to full height and let his hand drop. Something had obviously gone wrong again. This should have been simple. They had faced resistance before, but his regiment were regulars, professional soldiers, they should not have been having this much trouble.

"Captain Mori reported that he had challenged one of the enemy company commanders to single combat before we lost contact. Lance to Lance."

"Lost contact?" The damnable jamming. They had interrogated several enemy prisoners to no avail... not that the infantry officers might have known, but their insistence of enemy force strength were clearly lies given the resistance they were encountering farther from the capital. "So Captain Mori has been killed?"

"No, we do not believe so. The interference simply makes it impossible to contact his unit."

Or just as likely the captain was using it as an excuse to ignore the orders to return and rejoin the main force. The enemy in that sector had already mauled two Mech Companies costing the regiment valuable mechs. The prudent tactical maneuver in the face of an enemy whose strength they couldn't ascertain was to concentrate their forces. He suspected that they outnumbered the enemy force, but he couldn't prove it, but most likely it was a battalion of Davion regulars not simple March Militia an independent battalion from the Guards but that wouldn't' explain how they had missed them. "Order him to return."

"Sho-sho we cannot raise him on the radio."

"I said order him to return Colonel, Captain Mori must rejoin the regiment." They would deal with the interlopers, and find their identity after they had captured the ducal palace... and presumably took the duke hostage. "I will brook no further insubordination if he does not return he will be betraying his oaths to the coordinator." He spat, "Dereliction of duty will not be tolerated. He is to obey."

They had thirty BattleMechs inbound, but if Mori destroyed his unit for his own personal glory, Grieg promised to destroy the captain. He looked out the view port of his Excalibur's command deck to where his gray painted Atlas waited. Unlike the frontline mechs of the regiment his was still painted with the blue and white stripes of parade colors.
--
Due to simple geography the Star League jamming had let them shut down any unauthorized comms in the dale after he had head shot the Wyvern. The enemy coming down through the valley could have chosen to turn around, but presumably they had orders to launch this attack in an attempt to coordinate with the lighter mech formation they had already driven off once.

The Heavy BattleMechs moving down without a screen could have in theory been ambushed along the road by the drones, if they had had the time to put those in position... which they hadn't. He swapped channels, "Fire group, position check?"

"We're here." Bo replied. He, and the local Dervish standing to in order to provide LAM fire on the incoming three mechs.

They had worked out that the combine was running entire light mech units, possibly having extended that to an entire Light Mech Company of different models, but had put at least two unions with heavy mech lances, and this one had had a medium added in. There was no confirmation of Assault Mechs besides the Regimental leadership.

He was hoping it stayed that way and that no Awesome, or Stalkers showed up. BattleMasters and Victors were a possibility as well.

Gene flipped to the laser designator to direct the drones where he wanted them. He wanted the Grasshoppers in a kill box, which meant he wanted them to come to him. Thus he and Septim, were basically bait standing guard in the middle of the road. Two heavy mechs that you'd have to approach in order to get on, and the plan was to have the Dervishes rain indirect LRM fire on the enemy mechs just as soon as they moved to close, and to have the drones execute an enfilade encirclement.

The forty year old Taigen recognized that they were probably walking into a trap. The loss of the lance's wyvern was unpleasant, but he was a forty year old sergeant and it was unlikely the lieutenant would listen to his cautionary advice. The lieutenant had hoped that the catapult would be able to manage to get through to the DropShip and was blaming the lack of signal on the DropShip or their own equipment, which seemed unlikely. The Catapult was far enough back now that they were losing contact more and more frequently.

It would have been better to consolidate the unit to have a better fighting posture.

Taigen's superior wouldn't hear of it. He had heard that the enemy had heavy battlemechs in the area and wanted to challenge the davion soldiers... so they were probably about to walk into a trap. There was no other way to reach their assigned destination in time. In fact they were already probably too late Mori-Tai-I had probably already committed his company to attacking the suspected enemy position from the other side.

"Ah, look the enemy is ahead of us. One for each of us old man." The lieutenant declared. "I shall engage the Marauder, take care of whatever that other one is!"

Gene eased forward, "come on, you see us, come on."

A light blinked, "I am lieutenant Pavel Simonov of the 19th​ Galedon Regulars in service to the glorious coordinator." The mechwarrior shouted, going on in declaring that he had graduated from Sun Zhang and of course wasn't calling to surrender.

"I am Major Gene Shepherd, and in case it wasn't obvious you're in a killing field."

"What?"

"He means its a trap sir." The older enlisted mechwarrior declared.

"Impossible there are only two enemies in front of us," Simonov snapped. "Clearly he is bluffing, I will not be fooled by such a ruse. We should-" He didn't get to finish probably because his Grasshopper registered the Dervishes powering up and the fifty LRMs flying... and if not that the fusion signatures from the hover craft that were behind them.

Or the two PPC blasts that slammed into his seventy tonner's chest. Gene would have preferred if they had been closer. They were still at the long range of the Merlin's standard PPC. "Don't suppose you want to surrender?" Septim asked the sergeant, and received a flurry of LRMs in response. "Shit."

The pair of PPC armed drones opened fired into the mech's rear arc as Gene pivoted targets to keep the mech occupied as the smaller SRM equipped drones surged across the rain strewn grass and roadbed. "Bo, focus your fire on the lieutenant's mech I'm still reading his fusion signature." Indeed there was a flare of heat on his sensors as the mech's jump jets fired, and it added its missiles to the fray.

They passed harmlessly wide and left of Gene's Marauder as he pushed it into a forward closing motion with the two mechs. The two dervishes were moving up out of cover to the hillside, even though it was unlikely given the box they'd be able to close in any meaningful time frame.

The Blankenburg's electric feed system whirred as the hundred twenty millimeter LB 5-X prototype loaded slug, and stitched a three round burst into the torso of the lieutenant's grasshopper. That was followed by another PPC blast . It wobbled as its gyro failed, and then collapsed as a storm of SRM ripped through its left leg finishing what their long range cousins had started as the lieutenant fired one last LRM that went high and into the hill this time to his left.

Having taken his own share of LRMs from the massed fire the sergeant's grasshopper had had its armor sandpapered by the blistering missile fire but was focusing on staying mobile and trying to use its greater speed but it was pretty clearly hopeless as faced with a lance of vehicles, and a lance of mechs now free to concentrate solely on it it succumbed dropping into a culvert.

The final mech in the lance that catapult was still a klick and a half, nearly a full mile, distant and only vaguely aware of the weapons fire that had made it the last mech in the lance.
--
"We have to go to Jasos city." The professor declared dabbing at his forehead. Bahar, Chang, Ishida had all won their respective duels with the last one getting called off on account of sudden attack, followed by steel rain falling on the combine in reply. Truthfully from comms data they were pretty sure the combine company commander hadn't called the air support, but Tristan really hadn't cared at that point because the impression he had was that the Combine had tried something shady.

"We'll leave a light lance here, Chang you have command." He informed here, and waved at the map. "The infantry and the Maguanac corp will remain with you. Maintain a defensive posture," He covered a scenario to pull back and withdraw if the combine did somehow manage to put enough forces to overwhelm them... say for example that the incoming enemy battalion somehow managed to attack them in full while they were in Jasos city. "We're going to divide into two forces when we hit the city." Once they got off the train that was, but Bahar and Ishida would reconnoiter the flank of the city with drones. Bahar's credentials would let her authorize orders locally. "I'll rejoin you as soon as we're done, Septim you, Bo, and Andre," He nodded to the local, "You're to back stop Professor Abner. Keep the enemy at distance." He was the god damned principle, "if you can get the civilians into the shelters that is fine." IT would get them out of the line of fire. They were DOME built and designed to shrug off nukes supposedly surely they could outlast a light rain of mechs.

"I won't allow the locals to take command major. They have no right." Abner declared. "We shall do what we can, though to help."

Gene decided that he didn't want to make an issue of that. Abner was the one signing the paycheck after all. The hologram shifted to a view of Jasos city highlighting the Cathedral... or what was today a cathedral. The good news was even though they couldn't take the line right up to the old star league facility they'd be able to ride it close enough that they should be able to get there quickly... assuming that their sudden appearance didn't panic the local militia into shooting at them. "It looks the Combine is massing for an assault in force." The handful of Mechs they had identified in Jasos city.... actual BattleMechs weren't prepared to handle a company level assault that was largely heavy Mechs, "Have we identified those?" He was gesturing to Eighty ton question marks

"Given the engine signatures I suspect Chargers, another tentatively returns as a Banshee." Tristan replied.

As fast assaults the 'fragenzeichen', using Abner's term, mechs had been moving along the flank probably proving more useful as glorified protected runners than actual break through units now that the combine had cleared the hills and occupied Scarborough proper. Not that there was anything there, Scarborough had existed during the star league era of course but its agricultural sector had only really blossomed after the second succession war and was largely a religious community of farmsteads according to contemporary information.

They were assaults, "Battlemaster?"

"No further signature detected."

That was odd. Tristan was sure his returns had detected the eighty five tonner at range, and it had been using a separate encryption protocol but they hadn't logged further contacts since yesterday afternoon. "We'll try and get the relay operational, but if I was the combine given that they don't have to worry about coordinating anything but Mechs," And exactly how conscious they were going to be of civilian damage was unknown, "They may launch a night attack especially,"

"Wouldn't it be smarter to wait for their reinforcements?" Septim asked, not unreasonably either. "Their dropships are getting really close."

"Yes, but my thinking is that they know we know they have reinforcements, and given their own attrition they may suspect an attack against them before we can execute our own, besides they'll still have to offload their mechs."

"The enemy may attempt an orbital insertion." The AI pointed out. Tristan was right but that would be risky.
--
Commentary: Ugh I don't want to do a time skip, but the next arc is proving a pain in hte ass, and involves a lot of deep dives into the old fasa books for covering whats coming. Like i'm trying to avoid the canonical lost tech caches near terra really I am, but they would be on maps that would be potentially available.

Anyway we're in the wind down stages for Elidere IV just as an aside Elidere is three months from terra assuming you're going straight that direction, not that we're actually going to Terra just that thats the frame of reference for BT's JumpDrive.

With any luck the I Davion contract which roughly about the same size as the original II Luxen Outline will work itself out. Speaking of Luxen II, its got its own thread and will be the standard Thursday update as we expand more upon some of the other characters and see some other events during that contract gig in Canopian space.

I will be posting (in the misc thread) a new Battletech story based off of Space Heir and Ramble's essence of Megamek lab some time in February, probably the first. There are some other things which will follow in February, but we will deal with that, and I'll address other updates for the rest of January somewhere else.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Trying to stop the clan invasion

... maybe going to botch it up.

​

Spoiler: The Following is NON CANON.

The hpg transmission wavered as it bounced off so many satellites to get to wherever it Kerensky had runaway to. He didn't know the location of the clan homeworlds, but he might if he got out of this alive. "Assuming you still have your ciphers, you be able to validate my identity chit's encryption, just as you should likewise be able to validate Kerensky, and Jerome Blake's receipt of the HPG recording of Stefan Amaris being adied by the then Coordinator Minoru Kurita. Kerensky was a coward, incompetent, and a traitor promoted far beyond his ability. A competent mechwarrior yes, an accomplished tactician yes, a fine strategic mind, but he wasn't promoted for any of these things... he was promoted for who his friends at court were... and in this failed in his responsibilities to House Cameron, and the Hegemony which is why he lead your ancestors not to the Hegemony boltholds deep in the rimward periphery but to the worlds you eventually colonized. If he had taken you there, Alexander Kerensky would been cashiered and then shot for treason. He was protector of house cameron, regent and still permitted Lord Cameron to associate with Amaris despite repeated warnings from both the Hegemony and Star League Intelligence services of moves by the rimward republic... but thats another matter..."

He let the holovid play, which took a while given the timelag.

"Kerensky permitted Minoru Kurita to come to Terra, and didn't kill him on the spot. Thats treason. He permitted a member of a treasonous plot by a member of the star league ruling council, and a man he knew had collaborated with Amaris to deny him not just access to Kuritan staging grounds, but who had actively fed Amaris information on SLDF positions to continue to breathe. So instead of standing and fighting against a clear enemy he ran away, and concealed the truth. So let me tell you the truth. There will be no IlKlan, there will never be a Star League again." He gave a sigh, and took a breath before pressing on, "That died with House Cameron and the Star League only existed because of they, and the economic might of the Terran Hegemony. Taking Terra is irrelevant its just one pretty little world, that still quaintly divides itself into nation states. You come here you'll bleed to death of a million cuts."

He left the final frame of the HPG recording frozen on Minoru and the rearing dragon he wore facing Stefan Amaris.

"Colonel Wolf," He declared, "Thank you for your time, what you decide to do from here is on you." He glanced to the blanched image of 'Khan Ulric's' face as he digested the information. It was time to leave, hopefully before Ulric realized Dante had included an HPG virus into the transmission back to clan space. If Ulric were too attempt to sit on the HPG recording the malicious code in the HPGs computers would broadcast the conversation between Amaris and Kurita continuously and across any comms platform it could reach until it burned the Germanium cores of the HPGs out.

It was even designed to look like someone had done so locally. It wouldn't use Ulric's credentials but the code would find someone's to use.

"What are you going to do?"

"The same thing I've been trying to do since I climbed out of that stasis pod." He replied to the sudden question, "Try and make things a little better at a time. I hope your people don't come, the Sphere is a mess as it is. We have enough assholes with delusions of grandeur. We sure don't need any more. I guess we will find out in a few years." He thought ... he had known Wolf was going to make the transmission back to clan space. The Wolfs Dragoons had proven sloppy in a number of ways... simple things really... and if there was anything he was concerned with it was that it would be from their side that word would get out about his 'origins'.

Hanse Davion had presided over the creation of a Federated Commonwealth, which was why he had made sure that Dante had placed such an emphasis on Kurita collaborated with Amaris. If the clans invaded he wanted Kurita to be target number one. Wolf had completed a rotation in each of the great houses... and they had been on the same side in the Fourth Succession war when that had come, and which still continued....

And he felt bad about that, Gene knew that the Combine would be the most likely major target of any clan invasion anyway, but an attack on the federated commonwealth would have to come through Lyran space... and that was a distraction that they couldn't readily afford. Not when they still had to rely on ComStar for most of their communications... the HPG network was hard to work around.

"Commander."

General Shepherd looked at the marine as he reboarded the Qin Shi Huang, "Standby to jump." The wonder of a Lithium battery. As soon as the two ships moved to a safe distance they vanished in a pulse that dropped them far away from the Wolfs Dragoons and their meeting response. "Did we get it?" The maneuvering to insure safe separation of the ships was long enough to receive the data, and to safely shut the AI in a safe space from the rigors a jump.

"We did commander. I would have preferred that we had been able to wait until Colonel wolf received a response," The AI complained, "But we have it." The location of the Clan Homeworlds... or at least Clan Wolf. They could work the others out with spectral telescopes and all the datacrunching as necessary.

The AI had preferred an original plan of just burning out all the HPGs in their network but that wouldn't have been functional. The clans obviously could do what they still couldn't, and build HPGs enough to fill their needs and as a result while it would be a set back it wouldn't be nearly as catastrophic as it would have been in the Inner Sphere.

The truth was of course more complicated than Dante or the General would have preferred. Kerensky had been a tired old man. Tired of war. He had graduated from the Nagelring, and in fifteen years become the highest ranking officer the in the Star League... and in those fifteen years he had bypassed other more senior officers on the basis of connections more than actual ability. Kerensky had made meaningful reforms, and contributions to the SLDF. A dozen years after that appointment he instead of retiring had tried to juggle, and ultimately failed to do so, the responsibilities of that rank and as regent of the Star League.

Was that really cowardice? Or just mortal frailness?

In the view of the AI it was cowardice. The duties and responsibilities laid out to officers of the Star League Defense force was supposedly unswerving commitment to the institution and to the honor Kerensky had under League Ethos a requirement towards bravery and gallantry against all enemies foreign and domestic. The AI, Dante, considered Kerensky's refusal to fight a treacherous house lord like Minoru as treasonous and cowardice. Other Ais didn't agree a hundred percent but the promulgation of of what had happened on Terra after Amaris's fall had slowly circulated to enough of them that there was a consensus that the Star League was dead... and that it had no successor.

ComStar were a collection loony cultists, and Kerensky had had no right to appoint a middle manager like blake to the rank and that the final council meeting had of course been illegitimate by lacking a member from House Cameron... why on Earth, pun intended, would Terran Hegemony AI accept the recommendations of four house lords, never mind a fifth who was a confirmed traitor. Not when the situation with the Capellans and Mariks had been what it had been before the situation...and the Lyran political situation... but the biggest factor was the lack of an Heir to house cameron.

... and of course that was the problem. That was the balancing act. All it would take would be one Hegemony AI who didn't want to listen and had an active HPG uplink with the right codes... and them deciding that since the Hegemony was dead to burn out every HPG in the Inner Sphere as Dante had wanted to do to the Clans.

Damn the consequences.

Fuck that. The Inner Sphere was enough of a mess without losing the HPG network it would be even harder to do what needed to be done... even if Comstar was a mess, and nightmare.

You may remember the somewhat tongue in cheek 'ah you may think getting to Terra will magically fix things, I've got a dire wolf all of you line up I'll fight you one on one in order' duel comment yeah this is related to that. It is still non canon to the main story, but I'll be happy to take commentary on it.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Elidere Part 9​

Battle of Elidere IV Day 11
It was wet, and cold. Not quite frost on the ground outside, but wet enough for mud. There was a lot of it being churned up by foot traffic and vehicles. The combine invasion had pushed people into the city, and there was a very real question of what to do if this didn't work. Jasos City was the modern capital because Elidere City had had a very near miss with a nuke. The city still existed of course but it had been rebuilt and was now the seat of the heir apparent to the duchy.

Given the occupation of Scarborough he was surprised that the duke was actually still in his palace rather than retreating to Elidere city, especially given the air raids last week. He looked up at the unmarred superstructure that looked absurdly different to the Star League era structure's picture. "That's, this is ridiculous." At some point after 2800 the locals had in a piqué of religious fervor painted the building white and then added frescoes of Star league icons and religious iconography that would have clashed horribly with the strictly secular purpose of the league civic's center. Over the last two centuries they had built up the space around it, and so it was now a cathedral.

Where did people seek shelter during an emergency?

Holy Mother Church of course.

The place was slammed, and created problems for their, he grunted as they pushed through the crowd and managed to get to an aclove that gave them a little bit of space.

This was a stampede waiting to happen, and get a bunch of civilians killed. "Doc?"

"I wouldn't worry Captain," he informed to Septim's inquiry, "I doubt anyone has accessed the facilities we will need since the first succession war. We will get the people inside the public shelters as quickly as possible and that should clear things up."

That was easier said than done, and slowly making their way through the throngs of people took far longer than he would have liked. That was without even running into the issue that cropped up from the local militia, or the bishop and other priests who had little reason to take them seriously. Andre insisted that if given time he'd be able to get someone to listen so they had divided up after about an hour... that they really shouldn't have wasted... waiting leaving the local Dervish pilot to try and find someone to listen to Doctor Abner.

The modifications to the civic center's massive ferrocrete structure were superfluous in terms of real changes to the structure. .. for the most part they were inconsequential. Nothing load bearing was changed according to his mech's seismographs and other sensors. The natives had white washed walls, put up hypostyle pillars and painted great frescos of Star League glory but the building had been an massive edifice to the league at its height. Finding an elevator and plugging his credentials into it to get down to a secure floor had been easy.

"Good Afternoon Colonel Shepherd." The Synthetic voice was much more artificial than Tristan's masculine one, this wasn't an AI, but rather a simple vocalized greeting from a smart system, the kind of computer aid programs much more common in the days of the star league.

"Colonel?"

"Tristan authenticated my time in grade, my date of promotion +10 years under the regulations warrants promotion to Lieutenant Colonel," And presumably as the only Hegemony credential holder Tristan had found that had been enough to offer command of the facility, of at least for the facility, and thus in theory a brevet promotion to probably full bird.

The truth was he was more concerned about how long all of this was taking. He had wanted to move to the front, to join the action. There was no continuous line of contact the Combine's emphasis on Battlemechs meant they could decide when to attack, and the planetary government had pulled their militia back to as clustered of a defensive frontage ... which was unlikely to stop a concerted attack.

He glanced at the yellow indicator dots on the sensor returns. Local communication was working, but at some point two hundred years ago something had broken something somewhere and a bypass or redundancy had failed to switchover and thus the local systems stopped talking to continental defense network, and thus Tristan had limited air coverage, not enough to guide missiles into incoming dropships in any event. Why there wasn't some kind of drone unit that could feed telemetry back he didn't know, maybe the hegemony had never expected that, maybe they had existed and had been lost... too many maybes, and frankly they didn't have time.

"Shouldn't we get the doctor?"

This was technically the access section of the facility that was civilian still. This was part one of can we even get ground to air targeting operational, and get the system up and running... if they could access the Defense Communications bunker and if that still had links to an operation Air Defense battery then they might not have to engage another Battalion of Mechs on the ground.

... but it was looking like a longshot. "We will," He was looking at the returns panel, and frowning at the 'offline' and 'destroyed' indicators in different shades of red. This was not a hegemony facility, the civil defense infrastructure covered everything from weather service monitoring to of course orbital telemetry... and two hundred years in a major city... in the present capital of the planet most of the systems no longer worked. "With any luck Abner will be able to get the machines talking to each other, but if he doesn't have a response from the systems I want you all back in your mechs."

"Yes sir."
--
The professor was with David Bowie. David Bowie in a kilt... but David Bowie circa 86 as Jareth the goblin king. Introductions passed around, "Bard," His call sign, "Cameron," David Bowie declared in a Scottish brogue, "detached service from Robinson's rangers I'm an instructor at the Battle Academy." He paused, "Cadet Sutton says we have you to thank for the Snakes not rolling over us."

Gene decided to cut straight to the point, "Then you know the combine has another battalion of mechs incoming, and will probably attack before they arrive."

"I've been told, and the duke is aware that the enemy have reinforcements in bound." It was almost an indictment, certainly a statement of the gravity of the situation. If the combine assault had been properly combined arms this wouldn't have been a contest... Elidere wasn't an important world not in the schemes of the Successor States. It was just a border world.

"The combine has been here two weeks now," Not counting the time it had need to burn for the jump point, which didn't need saying. "And even assuming that the first HPG message did prompt an immediate dispatch of reinforcements," Which he doubted, but replied to the comment anyway, "They'd still have to burn for the planet to get here. That's ten days, and the combine reserves will be here by tomorrow?" The window was closing. Either they had been wrong, and in the face of their casualties the combine was erring on the side of caution and wasn't going to attack...

"That's why the Duke wants to consolidate our forces. You have units in reserve of your own." Cameron pointed out, but didn't go for the duke's attempt to coopt those forces. "You've divided your forces up... if I were a betting man, you showing up with a big Atlas in town and your forces elsewhere... the Combine hasn't attacked because their ASF know you're here. They can't see your armor battalions... I would guess you came here as bait."

There was the accusation.

"Did I?"

"The combine attacks, you hit them from behind with artillery and armor and cut them from their dropships. Tell me that isn't the plan, major?"

He disagreed with some of the implication, but he could see why and where the logic of the conclusion came from.... and he certainly wasn't about to admit that they were here gambling on the long shot chance that there were Star League era air defense systems that would keep that battalion from ever making planetfall to relieve their colleagues. "Its close enough."

"You could come see the duke. We may not have a lot of forces, but can you really carry the day without us?" The ranger shifted, "The combine's excuse for honor won't let them stay still for long, they'll come looking for a fight... we'd be better off coordinating our troops."

... and there was a good chance that the instructor of Robinson Battle Academy had suborned Sutton just by that position alone. "Professor, its your choice," The combine still had presumably most of a regular company, plus the battalion and Regimental HQs. "They've got to come through the valley, and if not stopped there it'll be the farmsteads," that lay beyond the river, which was the effective geographic boundary of where the County as a feudal domain began. That narrow valley would be the best place to bottle them up, but Abner was the one who was paying the bills, and the professor was on the spot.

"Major Shepherd, the church is packed with people, if the combine were to make it here..."

A firestarter in the streets, yeah he could imagine, or a catapult with machine guns.

He didn't like the way the lyran was staring up at the great cameron starburst painted on the ceiling.
--
The duke was an average looking man, to whom the last month had been supremely unkind to. If the Mikios scion had gotten much sleep since the Combine JumpShips had appeared in system it didn't look like it. Precentor Gregory Killos was enduring his host's obvious discontent with surprising grace given the duke's pacing, and the duke didn't even notice their arrival.

"My liege you must calm yourself."

The priest, because that must have been what he was, was carrying a cameron starburst instead of a crucifix or a cross but had all the robes and connical hat of presumably a bishop equivalent.

"Why haven't they attacked yet?" The duke's jaundiced face and baggy eyes swept to the new speaker from the precentor.

Bard Cameron stepped forward bowed and addressed the Duke of Elidere, "With respect your grace the enemy are waiting for their reinforcements."

"All due respect Sir John," The duke protested turning to the ranger, "They don't need them, they've got twice our weight in Mechs at least. They don't need reinforcements. Our poor militia has done its best but what are men on foot supposed to do against battlemechs." Sutton shifted uncomfortably beside Gene at the Duke's comment about his own militia. The comment was parternalistic sure, but it could have been worse. The duke actually cared or seemed to care about the troops he just didn't think PBI were any use stopping mechs.
--
"Do we join you?"

"No." He replied to Bahar over the line. "Stay where you are," Ishida's holographic image nodded in silent ascent to the order. He wasn't going to bring their two mechs inside the defensive perimeter, and certainly wasn't going to bring the drones where anyone could get a good look at them.

The truth was he didn't like the Duke's handling of the situation. If they stayed clustered up in the city it was going to be a bloodbath just like Doctor Abner feared. "I do not like this commander, our odds are significantly diminished by permitting the enemy to reinforce their position." Tristan clucked in disapproval. "I have begun bringing up what forces are available, but we will not be able to cover all possible landing sites."

Gene had known that already, and a part of him wanted the Combine to spread out, to disperse their forces. The combine's decision to commit at all was throwing away their lives in pursuit of a battle already lost. They had comm intercepts for the Regimental Commander ordering the battalion to the planet, but there were no protests. There were no indications that the Regiment HQ was considering quitting the field... and that had contributed to his surprise that the Combine had not launched an attack sooner.

He could understand the tension, the tinge of Bahar probably growing impatient waiting for the battle. Bahar had been brought up probably from as soon as she could walk to pilot a battlemech at the very least from the way she handled a bow and arrow in her off she had been brought with a classical education that emphasized martial characteristics... sitting here and waiting for the enemy had to be galling.

Gene linked the neurohelmet and fed his thoughts into the mind machine interface that ran the information directly to Tristan. "Understood Commander." The AI answer as the map projected pathing.

"Best case is that the enemy lands their dropships within range of our artillery." Hitting their deployment zones even with inaccurate artillery would delay the enemy deployment. "We will deal with those unions as they come in either way." He really wished they had a larger ASF complement, but that would be a matter for a larger Merc outfit... and chances were good they weren't going to get any real payout from Elidere.

This was a pro bono good deed defending a more or less poor backwater planet from a bunch of assholes with a bunch of mechs. He didn't even know how salvage was going to play out when all of this came down. Maybe FedSuns proper had some kind of bounty to buy the salvage off of them.

His sensors flickered, "Eyes on," He confirmed as the drone filtered feed in through the Dalban. In respect to Abner's wishes to cooperate with the locals, "We've got enemy movement in sector 3...." he paused as the Drone's sensors, "LOCAM," Local Command, "they are firing into the town. I have mechs firing into Scarborough, check. Do you have local forces?" It was a stupid question. He had been assured that the Duke had ordered a fall back of forces to consolidate what forces the planet could muster into a defensive line.

"Negative, we have no one out there."

Gene frowned, but he couldn't be surprised as he watched the feed from his dalban as it registered the weapons fire. So they were shooting civilians then. Combine chatter just made it worse, as they were complaining about the lack of foxes to hunt, lack of real Davion opposition. That was a complaint that they were going to regret.

"Commander?" The Ai asked.

--
Commentary: Firstly this will undergone minor further revisions in all likelihood, but is going up on schedule. In any event if you like this story, you may be interested in another I'm working on based off of Ramble's Essence of Mek Lab and Mage Okhi's space heir II called Essence Wielding Social General that is in the works. If you are the first two scrap segments of it are in the Battletech thread over in NSFW index, and have been threadmarked.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Part 10 Elidere IV
​

Brown eyes narrowed as the reticle lined, and a three round burst of 120mm slug ripped apart the Jenner's face. Gene stepped the Marauder over the Charger's remains that had been his previous victim. "Grid coordinates," He ordered into his throat mike, and instantly was rewarded by the illuminated map indicator.

The Kuritan BattleMaster attempted to return fire but he was at long range and they were shooting up a hill at him. Rather than charge his open line into Kuritan Regimental Comms were opened with the snarling angry voice of a thirty or maybe forty something man berating them that it was just one mech, and to 'Get him'.

Which was enough for the hornets to come out from under the porch... so to speak notably the BattleMaster didn't throw itself forward.

He tossed the mech back in reverse while looking at the ammo indicator. He lobbed a couple of more shots in ballistic flight from the half click out just before he dropped beyond the hillside. A couple of hits but nothing died.

He had their attention, which was the whole damned point of this. "You have their attention commander. One moment," Tristan gave the AI equivalent to a vocal frown, "Battlemaster and Atlas MechWarriors seem to be arguing." Good, let the enemy officers fight among themselves. "Commander might I recommend you withdraw to the access point, and clear weapons hot." As if to hope to sway him changing the plan the command mech's hud illuminated a map of Time on Target artillery strikes aimed at the enemies and their current positions.

But realistically the accuracy wasn't good enough.

Half a dozen or better combine heavy mechs inbound were faster than his Marauder. Even if he could get to a subterranean access point and lose them dropping artillery forward of the original target had a much higher chance of civilian casualties. Civilians by the Combine for whatever reason who had decided to start shooting up the town.

They chased, and he ran. He didn't have the ammo for a sustained fire fight. Even discounting the possibility that the prototype LBX might decide to jam on him, a probably he might potentially have with the regular Whirlwind found on a 2R, he didn't have the ammo. A single ton was sixty rounds, or twenty three round bursts from the autocannon.

The problem the combine had was that they were chasing him with the old mark one eye ball... and that wasn't working so well. "They arguing still?"

"Affirmative commander."

He swung around a copse of mature trees and imagined the noise the mechs chasing him must have been making as they ran through the valleys. He hadn't been looking for confirmation. There weren't a whole lot of people who'd have been arguing with a Combine Regimental CO, never mind a brigadier general not a full bird. That short list, "The ISF liaison is demanding that Sho-Sho Samsonov join the pursuit."

In a fucking Atlas?

The asshole in the BattleMaster had a better chance of catching even without being closer, and it didn't even look like he had moved yet. There could be excuses for that. The BattleMaster had attempted to shoot at him... maybe the ISF couldn't walk and hold an argument, which seemed unlikely given the Atlas was trundling through the woods. At thirty kilometers though the Atlas wouldn't beat him to the river bank. He'd be on the other side before the hundred tonner made it... but there was a good chance given its position it would get there sooner than most, and they'd have company soon.

He pushed on. Get over the river and then let the steel rain fall. Spring the trap, turn and engage force the combine down into the engagement with their main force... and deal with the DropShips as they made their final descent. They had hours... and given the ISF man's barking he wasn't sure which of them or if both were responsible for this overcommitance to this shit show.

This waste of life.

He wondered if these officers were just here chasing medals?

Tristan asked whether or not he wanted to begin to move the drones into their step off positions, but it was too early. He didn't want the fusion signatures to tip off the Combine until it was too late to realize they were already dead. "There is a significant probability that Atlas will be inside the arc of fire."

"Then I'll deal with it." Preferably from half a klick out with the river between them, but Gene resolved to do what he needed to.
--
"The boss said that." Not that Septim doubted the machine spirit, but... "He's going to take that Atlas?" He ran a hand through his hair, he ordinarily would have needed a shave and a hair cut... he still needed a shave from two weeks in the field, but the SLDF issue neurohelmet was great.

"I know you guys are confident in your artillery but," Andre trailed off from within his Dervish. "Are we-"

"Not to worry dear boy, I've seen this a time or two," Abner declared stopping his trawling questioning of their situation. "Nothing to worry about, the Major will be fine, and he has more than artillery supporting him... and remember that our bit is coming up."

They couldn't really explain Tristan ... Septim had to wonder how would they even start that discussion. The boss had been frozen in a stasis tube for two centuries. They had found stasis tubes inside the Castle... and Tristan had lamented that none of his Terran officers had survived to use them before the traitors had killed or mortally injured them. The final ranking hegemony officer had ordered the AI to pump the whole base full of nerve gas to prevent the rebels from seizing control of the facility. In the close quarters with scarcely anywhere to move and take cover automated defenses and drones had scoured the base of the invaders... leaving the machine to weep over his dead, and then wait.

Maybe the boss had been hoping that there would be somebody in one of the tubes, but the professor was right. Their part was fast approaching. The enemy reinforcements were coming... and there was a whole battalion on Ander's moon as well... and if his dreams really were more than dreams then Pasha was on the way even now with reinforcements. There had been no word from Robinson in response. The duke had money to burn. Through a hundred thousand C-Bills on a phone call was pocket change for him, and that was probably why they were going to get reinforcements.

"The combine is making good time," Bard Cameron declared, "They're sure to run him a hell of a race."

Inside of his Merlin Septim checked his scopes... or more correctly the feeds that the Star League thinking machine was feeding to them through Abner's Atlas. "Bahar are you seeing this?"

Her dark eyes narrowed, but managed to keep her affirmative professional. Bahar's Mongoose was in a nest of other fusion signatures... a whole company of vehicles for her to point at the snakes.

Not unusual by the company's standards... they had drilled and practiced with Bahar leading a scouting and reconnaissance unit that would also screen for her to direct the Company's armor assets on target. So as along as nobody got to close... well nobody should notice. "We still are going to have to fight our way through the newcomers... and then go to Anders, Castle Brin fell already..." Vandenburg probably wouldn't last much longer either. The duke of Ander's Moon had consolidated his forces but his seat of power was better suited to protecting its defenders than the open fields of farmland.

He hoped that they'd be able to hold out. The Vandenburg dukes were obvious more martial than House Makios... if not nearly as well off financially.
--
He had consulted the LandNav package on the way in so he knew exactly where to cross..

They had chased him over the valley and as he expected over the farmlands, but he could see the riverbank, and Tristan began to signal he had begun the start up for the machines. The AI flashed a signal to Bahar to stand by even as his mech treaded through the river, and neared the other side.

He still had mechs incoming. The seventy five ton Marauder cleared to the other side and backed up as his command systems started coordinating the finalization of the artillery's orders. His DalBan reading the powering fusion signatures of the ground combat units.

The lasing on his mech's comm area jerked his head up to the Atlas paring with his SLDF Comms system. "I am Sho-Sho Grieg Samsonov, Commander of the 19th​ Galedon Regulars. Well fought, Mechwarrior, do you care to trade pointers with me?"

Against himself he laughed, Tristan had played the Combine General's message for ... maybe not the whole planet to hear but loud enough, and shook his head, and then accepted the challenge to 'exchange pointers'. He wondered how Bahar's challenge to duel had been made, but he had other concerns as he would have sworn the mech actually bobbed its skull like head when Samsonov's hologram shifted as he grunted. The Mech had PPCs in each arm, clearly combine retrofit Lord's Lights and fired wide.

Gene steadied his Marauder, Samsonov's Atlas was standing still, and the width of the river made it too far a shot for his Medium lasers even if they'd both been right at the edge. If Samsonov had walked up to the river bank he'd have been comfortably within the effective range envelop for a medium engagement with the PPCs. If he had had a standard Atlas he could have thrown LRMs... but then that would have been really the only weapon he could fire. The Combine General had turned the Atlas into a slow long range bruiser.

His own dual lighting bolts answered and scored long angry flashing streaks across the mech's torso as bits of leaves and tree limbs ignited. Samsonov didn't reply to first blood being scored and fired as his targeting sensors failed him again Gene fired adjusting left into the right torso where after his second barrage Samsonov decided to close the distance... and Gene could see why.

There were other mechs approaching, and Samsonov was about to be on the spot for failing to have resolved his duel. "Ride on my gallant huntsman... when must I come again? For you should never want for a fox to chase all over the glen." The indicators for artillery greened as he placed the LBX's reticle onto the skull face. Just over half a ton over armor protected the grinning jack and that vanished under the near alpha strike just as the mech touched the water's edge.

The Combine Mechs paused no doubt as his voice echoed over their speakers... or as their commander's mech slowed, and toppled into the water. He swung his arms as the sky deafened with the roar of artillery coming down like thunder. His seventy five tonner crossed into the water it hissing into steam as they helped his dual heat sinks, and fusion powered hover, and tracked vehicles rolled forward. "Tristan, Pipes and Drums march."

The Combine's communications lines ceased being of any use as all that went over the lines was Farewell to Gibraltar, echoed by it coming over the drones speakers. Over a hundred fusion signatures rang through the hills over the other side of the river. Light Mechs backpedalled in place twisting and turning in place orienting to the new contacts, and likely being deafened by the bagpipes from their own speakers, as well as ringing through the valley.


--
Commentary: and we have two more Elidere IV pieces before we open I Davion, but yeah in terms of realistic load out the Marauder's 60 rounds of one twenty is actually surprisingly realistic for only a single ton of ammunition.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Non Canon
Scrap Timestamp 3018 / Davion 1​

Spoiler: NON CANON Snippet

Gene grimaced at the question, "As annoying as Bard's rendition of Black Fox is," and despite the silly idea having been used to pester him at nearly every turn while they'd been on leave, and in particular after the Eridani had shipped offworld, "I'm not prepared to declare Clan Fox to be a thing," It had been a long twelve months and he ignored the protest from one of the kilted men that Clan Fox sounded like a quite proper idea as he fished out the dossier in printed paper and handed it over to the Sandoval Duke. Gene sat back in his chair and waited.

There were the rufflings of the thick paper as Aaron Sandoval, Duke of Robinson and Field Marshal of the Draconis March smiled. He had browsed the papers and flipped them over as he read, "The order of the golden kite," He declared. "I think this would be just the sort of thing Lord Nicholas would be looking for, sure to tweak the combine's nose."

The historical abstract he had included for the briefing had been designed to maximize that. He had done what the duke had asked and provided an organization name, but also the historical backdrop included the specification that the historical golden kite had been a degree higher, and military only, to the order of merit that Takeo Kurita a distant Kurita ancestor had held. The cultural ties, the use of specific language, history, and so on were somewhat modified by the new proposed device. The golden bird would be holding a daisho in its claws underneath a Torri gate, but would be fixed on a european style shield.

The proposed designed raised a quirk of the eye from the legless duke, "Would have expected, if on were to be honest, Colonel, the Cameron Starburst. I think that would be better."

Gene had consciously been trying to avoid Star League iconography in the the device, or the in the proposed documentation to accompany awards. He'd made a point of neither mentioning the Star League, nor House Kurita. That was part of the whole couching of the packet.

After Elidere... hell technically after the Kuritans had routed on Elidere IV they had been under contract with the Davions for operations since Ander's Moon, but that didn't mean the Kuritans were going to be shy about how they felt. That would have been a problem without doubling down on it by signing on with the FedSuns for their romp through Near Terran Space over the last year.

The 19th​ Galedon Regulars, that was to say an entire Combine BattleMech, Regiment along with most of the supporting DCA assets had been destroyed in detail for what amounted to no cost to the Armed Forces of the Federated Suns. They hadn't been able to achieve a repeat of that peerless victory, but that was less important to the fact that the AFFS in combination with other mercenaries had been able to not just take other worlds, but savage other Combine Mech Regiments.

This was the Draconis Combine March's opportunity to rub salt in the wound so to speak. Not that they really needed to... but it wasn't going to stop them from doing it... and given the enmity that existed he didn't expect them not to use the opportunity to do.

He didn't want to stick around, even though the AFFS was hoping to turn the mercenary units involved in the campaign, not just them but in particular the Eridani Light Horse, into what amounted to House Troops.
--
"What's wrong with Clan Fox?" The hunchback driver had thought it had been a good idea.

... well there were actually a number of reasons... and even discounting the sheer degree of political brown nosing it might have been interpreted as he had other reasons. He sipped at his drink and glanced at the command staff who were looking from Chang to him waiting for an answer, "It conveys the wrong sort of distinction. Evoking an order, a military honor like this may not be a formal structure but it allows a delineation in rewards that a lodge wouldn't be as good as formally conveying. This isn't a knightly order, or a warrior house the Draconis March wants to be able to provide recognition for command ability, leadership, and bravery in the field. The duke wanted a proposal he could put to New Avalon," And apparently the head of MIIO, "I expect that it will be sent off and either they'll reject it or rework it as necessary as either a Federal award or that Lord Aaron will issue as a Draconis March specific award."

... but it would have been a bigger tweak if Hanse Davion, as First Prince was the issuing party awarding people golden birds with heavy shinto symbolism and references to the Nihon Shoki. It was probably the sort of slap in the face to the combine's claims, historical and present, regarding manifest destiny that the First Prince might like to present to the Inner Sphere.

"So we're going back to the periphery?" Septim's question had been accompanied by a look being thrown in Bahar's direction. The fighting over the last year had been concentrated in near earth space. While original Azami settlement worlds like Markab had not been conquered, nearer worlds like Galatia had fallen to the Davions, Dieron's regulars had suffered losses, and the result, subsequently had been a wave of Azami migration that would be heading to the periphery.

The fighting was an excuse... or additional justification to ferry another load of colonists far into the periphery to settle on Alamut in the Lighthouse worlds. Pasha shook his head, reached up and toyed with his long grey mustache, "Admittedly it is not so glamorous but it will be down time that is sorely needed. Returning to the periphery will not be so bad will it?"

They were pulling off the front for a number of reasons not the least of which was that they'd be going to a Magistracy garrison and training contract for Raventhir... or rather that was what Raventhir was to claim. Something about Ur Cruine and the pirates was causing enough of a stir that the money was now there to see to some kind of expansion, such that Detroit was willing to spend money.

Black Jack McGirk was still running around reaving from apparently the Tortuga Dominions all the way round to the Magistracy border. That meant he was hitting the Davions, the Taurians, the Aurigans and the Canopians... as well as all the free holding worlds in between at times. The simple truth was no one had expected a pirate with... what some reports went so far as to claim was a division worth of Star League Defense Force equipment. Whether that was an exaggeration or not didn't matter, McGirk had a mountain of hardware and he was willing to rampage wherever he liked, and trash whoevers stuff he liked, and pay his men with the booty. That meant he had no shortage of bastards willing to fight for him.

"I want to talk about the conversion work being done on San Saba," To carry BattleMechs, "I've been assured that Blackwell has our order completed and we should be taking delivery on that soon."

--
Commentary: Again this is not necessarily going to be canon, its probably more likely to be close to or share a great deal with the final draft than the 3030 segment, but that's also because at the moment, well Elidere IV takes place in Spring of 3017 and this takes place the year following.

This obviously foreshadows the 3019 Pirate operations alongside the Aurigan Royal Guard under Montgomery Raju, among other things admittedly as this is Battletech and we are talking about hundred of light years some of that time will be skipped over due to it being travel times.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Part 11
Staff Interlude​

Her mongoose lacked either Royal or the Gunslinger versions complex supporting systems. No Beagle, no null signature or light polarization shield, but the same two medium lasers in each arm, and of course her SRM 6 packed load was by Azami standard, and clearly her new unit standards, loaded with Inferno missiles. Ideal to crippled enemy vehicles, mechs, and keep anyone else distracted while other units maneuvered.

Of course that was possible because of the skill and careful work of Azami technicians in keep its system's operational. She had hoped of course... the prospect of a Star League facility intact might yield potential resources to help the colony founded in the periphery. Professor Abner had hoped to return there in a year or two even if they didn't unearth anything but there had been other developments since.

The Star League shooting at one another would have been unthinkable but made a frightening amount of sense really. It was painfully logical that of course not everyone would have agreed, plenty of units had remained behind... and that Kerensky's supporters might have used violence... and of course if the lost tribe were star league returnees why had they returned, and of course where were they going.

Had they been trying to find a distant Cameronian bolt hold? It would be something to mention to the elders.

"All systems nominal, captain." The machine spirit declared.

Bahar looked down at her radar array. "Regimental Air Defense Battery stand by," She received an affirmative series of chirps from the machines. They would only get one shot at this, they were going for local air defense options only which meant that at best they might manage to down only one of the unions, but they had to least try.

Unlike the command mechs, like a Marauder or Atlas, her Mongoose lacked the complex integration of satellite and communication overlays to directly interface with so called 'near orbit' predictive algorithm avionics. She was relying on the drones to take the data being fed to them, and then she would order them to attack the DropShips by available target as they came in.

The assembled DCMS troops should have lost comms now. Jamming outside of the planetary gravity well was beyond Tristan's capability but the DropShips wouldn't be capable of maintaining reasonable comms anyway during atmospheric descent... the singular possibility was on the ground at least Laser Comms but that required local proximity.

Presumably the forward most mechs having just watched the tail end of a gun duel with their commanding officer wouldn't immediately know who was in charge. The ISF BattleMaster was too far back... ironically in choosing not to pursue had left himself neatly within the bracket of the artillery.

"Artillery going out." Tristan announced a message flashed across her Star League comms identical to the one that would passed to Professor Abner's Atlas.

--
"Well yes there you can see the rain," Abner declared pushing the hundred ton mech spryly forward. His Atlas was now certainly the heaviest BattleMech on the field surely that must have been a comfort to the FedSun Boys. To see a proud Atlas, and in Star League parade colors no less. The locals might take some comfort in that as well, the aging lyran considered scratching his chest.

OF course, he supposed, rain could be taken another way. He could detect the upper atmosphere signatures even if he could not see the fireballs streaking of the entry profile of the enemy's dropships.

His musings were cut short as the Duke of Elidere's major domo appeared on the holographic globe of his Atlas's comms system. "His grace wishes to inquire-"

"That racket in the sky is ours," Abner grunted tersely within his Atlas to the majordomo, "Not the enemy dropships they haven't gotten here yet." Not, quite yet... twenty minutes maybe according to his Atlas.

"As you say Lord William, I shall assure his grace that the situation is well in hand."

... Professor Abner glanced at the other feed to the Federated Sun's instructor. Cameron's Wolverine was at the other end of the block. The duke had decided to remain in his palace, which admittedly was fortified if probably not to the degree of the Star League era shelter, but they remained here so long as the priory members were shepherding civilians into the shelter.

He keyed the mike, "Captain Alexander how are you doing?"

'Septim' Alexander shook his head from within the cockpit and pushed slightly against the restraining harness of his mech looking at the signatures. The boss's poetry had echoed off the comms to notify everyone what to expect. They had the snakes on the back foot now. He thought about the bird's claws burying into the black snake, a eagle, an ibis maybe, some kind of bird the dreams were fuzzy times. "I'd feel better if we had a better connection to the magunacs on our territorial fringe." He admitted He didn't have to worry about the drones the Hegemony's magic computer had them handled and even if they weren't Bahar should be able to manage.

"Can't be helped," Bard declared, his holographic image rippling "Even in the best of situations a regiment is lucky if it knows what everyone is doing."

Septim pegged that the older MechWarrior was wondering how their 'treadheads' had managed to roll the armor up with this much coordination without losing comms before hand. "Well we're going to be in the thick of it."

"Aye the snakes will realize they have more company than they anticipated."

Translation could the armor handle that? Would the treadheads manage? Conventional wisdom said no of course. Alexander knew that armor had a place in conventional military application. They were a vital part of the LCAF, and the AFFS for that matter, a whole fresh mech Battalion was coming down, even if the Snakes hadn't brought their own armor to the party. "Yeah, I think we'll manage," Cause... yeah the Maguanacs were good and all but the machines they had weren't what conventional wisdom had in mind.

Ford abruptly cut in over the line, "Alright so I've gotten the Triumph ... fixed. I think." What? Septim looked at the line as Ford's face appeared. "Don't give me that look, the ship will fly... Tristan is sure at the very least that we can take it and relieve the Vandenburg position once we're all settled up here. I mean after we load all of our armor back on board, but I daresay Tristan thinks we'll have to get inventive about getting landed."

"Ah yes jolly good," Abner declared resting his hands on the rockers of his forward controls, "Yes yes splendid mister Ford I knew Tristan and I could put our faith in you thank you for your hard work."

Septim had the sense to cut his own holographic feed before his face gave anything away. He could put two and two together from Abner's comment. Four was, ... well somewhere or another the AI had found a DropShip that Ford must have been tasked with repairing... which meant most likely... most likely the AI had shown Ford where his disappeared Starport was hidden... if Septim were to guess.
--
She had heard but not spoken up. "Apologies Captain. We thought we had more time before needing to employ this ruse." Tristan declared. "Truthfully Mr Ford does not have the Triumph-class Dropship ready for a real sortie, and certainly not one contested by enemy ASF. I did not consider it particularly probable that we would interact with the local Federated Suns government or military assets in this manner. Not in this time frame."

Mr Ford had assured the thinking machine that he could source the paperwork and documentation for the ship if it came to that, but nothing that would stand up to scrutiny without months to prepare so the best solution was to avoid drawing attention... but they had needed somewhat to explain large numbers of combat vehicles.

They were going to be pushing it though... but the situation was one where they either withheld the forces to conceal them ... and put everyone at risk. They could hardly admit what they had found, even the interstellar expedition staff hadn't been told... neither her fellow Azami nor her fellow mercenaries hadn't been told, not entirely.

Tristan must have just completed a cycle of his trans orbital array because he was suddenly calling for Doctor Abner's attention. The Combine DropShips were hitting the upper atmosphere, and they had made last minute course corrections. Their fighters were in the air, which made sense of course unions were not a practical launch platform to launch ASF... but that wasn't the issue. It was the latest projections over where they were going to come down.

"We can't worry about that now, we need to mop up their first battalion. We will turn and engage after." A reassured professional voice answered.

"Quite right major, I-," Dr Abner's holographic face fell to his console, "This is, this was my decision I chose to."

It couldn't be helped, especially not after the ISF liaison in the BattleMaster had presumably ordered the attack on Scarborough's civilian population... which had probably been bait all along to draw the Davions into sallying. "All we can do now is start a clock, it will take them time to offload. Bahar keep screening if the battalion air assets try and go up." It was all they could do.

She doubted it. The planetary militia might not have been equipped to fight BattleMechs but they had managed to orient enough anti aircraft fire to deter the combine from making any further air attacks.... which had been why the streets of Jasos city had been packed with people.

"Enemy BattleMechs on scope." Ishida declared from within the Cicada to her right. "They are running like whipped dogs, looking for a place to hide." He added with a bit of a snarl. Bahar could imagine why as her scopes tracked one enemy mech simply disappear as a 'Fury' cored it from the rear with what her warbook called a Gauss rifle.

Her handshake with the drone version told her that these particular 'b' models had been originally constructed on Bristol in the Federated Suns like all others but had been outfitted by the Hegemony as drones utilizing an improved iteration of the Nisaraki that was apparently found on standard versions of the combat vehicle. Tristan was advising her through the comm link to allow the war machines to screen for her apparently to protect their mechs from missile attacks. "It will provide some cover, and if my gathered data is accurate it should provide you some initial cover. Avoid short ranges, direct measures. If I may, no more dueling captain our objective is elimination of the hostile force, and conservation of our forces for the next battle."

... and the one after that... and the one after.

She glanced down to her map, the icon marked Hanzo's Cicada and flagged him a lieutenant, and further distant but approaching was the professor in his borrowed Atlas as it approached Scarsborough... or what was left of the village. Further back were a scratch company's worth of Davion mechs... a distinction in the projection. Her fellow company mechs and armor were flagged in Terran colors, the Davions in AFFS colors, and the enemy... in Kurita red.
--
Commentary: Looking for feedback on the extras/non canon / future possible snippets and whether or not I should keep the section in spoilers, or for future ones go back to the original of just having them posted not in a spoiler tab?

 

[Imperator Pax]

Highland Fair​

Spoiler: 5 January 3018

5 January 3018
Federated Suns
Northwind​

Gene didn't quite understand the cultural diaspora that had created the inner sphere. Part of it was probably simply a matter of money. He wondered how many worlds had been settled by people with enough money to get off Earth with the equipment to survive just because they had disagreed with some stupid talking point. Thousands of worlds had been settled.

It was odd how many were Irish, or Scots Irish. The Gaelic revival in the 21st​ and 22nd​ centuries and the great diaspora must have made the Irish Diaspora to America and the British colonies like Australia look like a joke.

The kilted man sat down, "Do you know what this is?" He put the thistle beside the gun resting on the table.

Sillybum. "The Milk Thistle. Nemo me impune lacessit."

"Boss." Septim protested to Hanzo's obvious annoyance.

He ignored the Lyran's complaint. "I'm not Black Watch," The men started from around the table at the comment. "You broadcasted an 191st​ IFF to the Marauder, that pings back to a Hegemony handshake. The mech and its identification,"

Campbell bit his lip and tilted his head, "Aye, my highlander. You barely look twenty Lieutenant Colonel Shepherd." He produced a silver tin box with a reader on it. "Place your hand on it." He reached up and pulled the dog tags from his neck, and put it on the reader, and then rested his hand on the reader. Campbell swallowed as it flashed green. "My ancestor was given that box by Captain Hazel from Colonel Schmitt two hundred and fifty years ago. He was a fresh lieutenant in the regiment then."

"And you've been white shielded for those two and a half centuries." Campbell blinked, "Your parents passed down a Hegemony log key to enlist their children with their credentials... the dragooning process was common during the war with Amaris, its a program that predates the age of war. It was never intended to authorize for that long." Just so teenagers could fight long enough to receive official acknowledgement from Terra. You could make lieutenants out of it, but without an authentication for it, say an AI like Tristan to validate promotions, captain was probably the highest that had been approved in a very long time by a system that was now long dead.

"Come with me, colonel." Campbell stood up, the fifty something year old man collected the diary that had been in the locked box his ancestor had been entrusted. "Your friends will be fine... something else to show you. There is another door we cannot open." He lead him deep inside the Castle, modern construction gave way to Star League era reinforcings laid bare. Gene glanced at the blue circle on the floor, and the recessed laser cannons mounted in the ceilings... but he supposed the hallway was big enough for light vehicles... probably a tramway on the other side... might have linked to a Port complex if he had to guess. "Can ye open it?"

... assuming the reader wo-, the thought died as a synthetic voice powered up. "Authorized user detected." Unlike with Tristan, the turrets activated dropping down, or raising from their housing to cover the hallway's approach.

"Tell them to stay back." He grunted as the guns oriented, ignoring Campbell, and himself and pointing down the hall. Gene stepped up into the ring on the floor and placed his chit on the reader and hand on the scanner and felt the prick taking a blood sample.

"Standby." The artificial voice ordered in a brogue tone. "Authenticated. Welcome lieutenant colonel Shepherd, I am Dante. It has been 177 years since an officer of the Central Intelligence Directorate has accessed this facility."

He blanched as the massive doors opened and stepped out of the circle snagging his keys, "I understand, can you prepare a briefing of this facilities, actions and evaluations."

"Wait, Colonel Shepherd."

"A hundred and seventy seven years ago would have been fifty five years after Kerensky's Operation Exodus." He snapped striding through the door way. The turrets didn't move to track him.

"Yeah I can do math." Campbell was following. "But that was also the year the Davion's took the planet."

"Colonel." The AI inquired.

"I want a catalog report of any CID data transmissions, and accesses to any facilities in system, and any confirmed communiques coming in after the Liberation of Terra, most recent first." holograms snapped up in the air.

Shortly before the AFFS had launched their attack a Rear Admiral of the Hegemony, apparently promoted twice since the fall of the Star League by time in grade, had arrived with a retinue of picked men and accessed the castle.

Northwind was two jumps from Sol, they had been put here because Hanse Davion wanted to hit Dieron and make the Combine bleed, but... one of the files added in 2841 was...

"Colonel, you look white as a ghost-,"

"According to Admiral Clancy's log left here, Fortress Dieron is intact." He'd read about it in Tristan's files on SLDF facilities operated by the Hegemony within Combine base, but he'd assumed it had either been destroyed by Amaris or looted. That expectation had been supported by Pasha's report that Dieron had been brutally savaged by the Satan Amaris.

"That is correct colonel. The facility should be securely locked down, with access to sensitive sections prohibited to unauthorized personnel."

Shepherd pulled a data chit from his vest pocket and placed it into a holographic projector. "Verify, authenticate data and credentials."

"Authenticated."

"Play HPG recording."

Minoru Kurita, and Stefan Amaris appeared to give Dante, and Campbell the shock of their respective lives. While he stared at the specifications of Fortress Dieron as of its last reported status the world he and the Eridani Light Horse, along with some Davion regulars had been planning to invade with the intended goal of proving the combine to not be invincible... per the briefing from Hanse Davion's number two man.

Dante's sudden string of invectives startled him out of staring at the topographic display and the holographic onion map of Fortress Dieron's layers as it spread out in front of him. Dante no longer had an HPG uplink it had been destroyed in order to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Republic forces, but not before it had received and transferred other updates and a backlog of movements and orders.

Dante had probably been curating them, splitting his attention as he processed the HPG recording, because a series of orders signed by Kerensky appeared ... and being countermanded by local Terran militia forces, and CID personnel. Not just here, but on other worlds, including New Dallas.

--
Commentary: So this is currently non canon for a couple of reasons the trip to Northwind is still planned to take place but there are details about this which are still up in the air.

The AI Dante was referenced in the 3030 segment, but in particular as this continues... I had originally planned for the Dobrev to lead back to a Wolverine colony fleet in stasis though I'm less set in that particular direction right now. Thats not the only issue, but finding the Wolverines is looking more and more like an idea I think I'm going to use somewhere else. Part of the original outline had been putting the McEvedy up in either Magistracy or the Aurigan Coalition, post civil war, as a newly installed noble house.

Moving on, the end of I Davion in 3018 also runs into the problem of Dieron falling now, because Hanse's outlined plan is to drop the Davion Heavy Guards, Eridani and others onto the planet... and while Sun Zhang does graduate the most mechwarriors of any school Gene really needs to stop killing graduates of the school, they're going to develop a complex... before long he's going to get blamed for the deaths of the cadre on Elidere when the davion's took over Elidere IV at this rate.

Comments: I said we'd get the Ford Scene, I was wrong, so have this one instead. I'll see about posting the Ford scene next week.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Elidere
Part 12​

19th​ Galedon Regulars Planetfall + 17 Days.
They had chased them all the way back to Scarborough, which ultimately hadn't been good for the smoldering town. The combine had already put the town to the torch, or started to, but having been forced back to it had only made things worse. He wondered if the DCA officers would attempt to lift off... if they tried could they manage to get off world.

"Commander I am processing your combat uplink now standby." Tristan told him as he neared the uplink. The armor they had carefully shepherded, no pun intended, had been intended to be sprung on an enemy force that shouldn't have been expecting it. That and to hit a fresh enemy force still in the process of deploying.

The combine was supposed to have been coming here. "Thank you Tristan."

"Of course Commander. The ISF attache appears to have ordered the redeployment of forces we are presently seeing."

"Do you have him on scopes?"

"No commander, I expect his BattleMaster was caught up in the artillery strike on enemy positions. Whether he was KIA in the resulting strikes I cannot ascertain. His orders to redeploy the regimental reserves though appears to have been issued contentiously."

"But the DCA officers obeyed it." He pointed out, but he wasn't strictly speaking surprised they had obeyed the order. It would have been great if after the asshole's signature had disappeared in the storm of steel that had fallen they had decided to just cut their losses... but no such luck

"Indeed."

Gene eased his Marauder around the burned out remains of a barn and a two storey farmhouse. He was looking for something to vent his frustration on, but the enemy mechs were slagged. An ER PPC had the same damage potential as his standards but even though they ran hotter they extended his range envelope to a distance well in excess of anyone thinking of trying to shoot back at him. "Where are they now?"

A territorial map expounded from the uplink red lines falling back from the town towards the DropShips. He wondered if the enemy were going to run, even as he ordered a projection of enemy combat losses. They had gutted the battalion. Its ASF units had been by all indication caught on the ground when the artillery had come down, which was of course very nice to hear.

1st​ Battalion 19th​ Regiment was a Battalion in name only. If Tristan's readings were accurate there was nothing left of them to form any kind of detachment that would be useful in combat as a unit.

"Do I have permission to proceed with fire missions on the enemy dropships?" The AI inquired in a sanguine tone.

"Affirmative." He gave the authorization and watched as the drone artillery platforms chirped acknowledgement to his command. That left them the pivot and sweep overland... or rather that was the maneuver that the enemy would be expecting. "Do we have casualty assessments for the camp?"

"Minimal. The directive to withdraw personnel into the Star League Civil Defense facilities was completed. Mister Ford accounts for approximately eighty wounded, and approximately a dozen personnel dead among the infantry." The men who hadn't been shielded by the combined anti air envelope of Baffins and Sam Houston.

A part of him as he continued to dance the Marauder around the debris was that he should have been extending the Combine the courtesy to allow them to quit the field. That as knights they should act in accordance with the spirit of the long defunct Ares Convention. That he should be the bigger man and let the combine make for their JumpShips...

His Marauder's 'Thompson gun' tracked over the delimbed enemy mech as its machine gun ammunition cooked off from where it had been sitting in a smoking ruin of a building. Gene rubbed his eyes as he dismissed the reminder from the software as he safed the autocannon to file his evaluation report to the long dead Colonel Thompson at Hegemony R&D.

Bahar's Mongoose, and Hanzo in the Cicada appeared around the curve with a pair of vehicles in tow. They hadn't found anything either. Not that they had been expecting to. He felt the tentative return through the mind machine interface as his scopes picked up the Wolverine, and Dervish bringing up the duke's aid parties. They were escorting militia, first responders and volunteers to try and sort out the damage.

"They're done in." Cameron declared without preamble, his face in the hologram obscured by the ugly modern neurohelmet, "The Duke wants you to come back to the city so we can coordinate dealing with the other." He maneuvered around the shattered remains of a firestarter that had allowed Abner's Atlas II... well there wasn't much left of the machine's hollowed out internals.

He considered Cameron's report that the Duke's apparently repeated very expensive phone calls to Robinson had apparently yielded some results. Or at least he was being allowed to have conversations with the reign duke of the Sandoval dynasty... which meant he was bouncing off two fucking HPG stations to get there. ComStar must have been making a lot of money off House Makios... Gene didn't even want to think about it. Not that the duke was so spend crazy or worried he was talking about insisting to the precentor to hold the line open and wait... Makios seemed to have more money than sense, but had at least that much sense. "Bahar take armor command go reinforce and dig in."

... he was going to go deal with any command level issues. If Bard intended to protest that he thought better of it, but more likely he didn't' intend to do any such thing to begin. The Baffins was the problem. The Sam Houston could take off and fly to the starport if it came to that, but the Union was a spheroid dropship. In a non hostile situation it would have been different... but it trying to take off in this clusterfuck... no. It was an unacceptable risk... and while the Star League era rail transports could in theory handle the weight of a dropship there was no apparatus to load it or offload it. They couldn't move the Baffins right now.

Tristan's connection stabilized across the command's hud projecting the condition. Flagging the recovery of Hegemony equipment to prevent it from following into unauthorized hands appeared, but he had expected that. There would be questions raised if they didn't, "Do you have equipment to handle recovery?"

"For debris in general, yes. However that doesn't preclude parts and scrap being left behind."

Gene doubted that they'd be able to bring bay personnel from the Sam Houston in, certainly not quickly. The flagging came with casualties presently sustained, which were better than what the Hegemony's projected attrition had made assumptions on facing rebellious member states with Star League era weaponry and training, even considering rebel SLDF troops. The problem was of course that those casualties were something that could have been easily replaced in the age of the Hegemony not exactly the case in 3017 centuries after the downfall of the Star League.

"If I may make recommendations on loading the Triumph?" Inventory screens appeared. Ammunition was surprisingly not something to be concerned with. "Battle plans for the relief of Castle Vandenburg," approaches, landing sites joined it on Ander's Moon.

The AI was giddy if that was the appropriate description at being able to do its standard function, but they were getting ahead of themselves. There was a battalion in front of them to deal with.

The holographic representation of the continental landmass shifted, and he paused the shifting terrain as directional arrows appeared from the subterranean access lines. In any prolonged engagement it would probably be a matter of time before the enemy noticed there had to be some kind of infrastructure moving the units around underground. This wouldn't have been unusual in the Star League era, and on a more built up world in the present day people might have suspected it, but Elidere had taken a pounding through the succession wars so they had the advantage of surprise for now.
--
Kotaro reached to touch his jaw. It wasn't broken at least, and if he thought there was anyway that they might survive this cursed planet then he'd have lamented the trip to the dentist... but that seemed unlikely. It was best to be realistic at times like this. He had considered that Samsonov might have betrayed them into this trap, but more like the 19th​ Galedon had been destroyed by the vagaries of fate.

Even if they managed to survive this battle it would be impossible to hope for the honor of the coordinator's garden. As the regiment's ISF liason he had been prepared to relieve Samsonov, and of his head, if this had been treachery... but for good or ill that didn't seem to have been the case. Samsonov-shosho had admittedly well died as a mech warrior should... much as Kotaro loathed putting that in writing.

Their initial suspicions had been this was a unit of the Davion Guards. The lack of air support had eliminated the Second Davion Guards even before they had started to piece together what units the enemy had in the field. That had still left them with the possibility of facing the Fourth or the Heavy Guards.

A cheer rose from the lips of the crowd as one of the duke's portable holographic projectors, no doubt dragged out from storage somewhere showed the hulking form a white gray painted Marauder scything down Combine Light Mechs as the armor, in similar paint, kept others at bay in the chaotic frenzy. Another BattleRom clip changed this time to show an Atlas but Kotaro turned away and stepped forward to the beckoning robed man.

ComStar's professions of neutrality was a disgusting farce, Kotaro knew if he wasn't careful the giddy robes might well attempt to waylay him and turn him over to the planetary authorities... and he couldn't allow that. He had a final duty to the dragon before he could die. Someone had to know how wrong all of this had went...

That was why he was in a tweed suit and a jumper pulled over it. He had changed clothes in order to blend in... not that with the swarm of refugees fleeing the battle it had been hard to do. He had blended in easily. It only served as a reminder that the planetary populace, weren't the real enemy just peasants looking to exult in the proximity to victory won by warriors. The real victory was being won by mercenaries, which was galling to his pride. He rubbed his jaw again and handed his travel papers to the Robe.

"Thank you Mister Thornburg," The balding man hand by the Lyran paperwork.

"I need to make an important call to our office, I know that it is just a matter of expense." As if money were any object to true service. The service fee rate was from a Lyran based Class A HPG station, but it shouldn't have mattered. It was obvious of course that ComStar had been hit as severely as others, records of the ISF from the star league suggested that HPGs should have been much more capable than they were... or at least much more regular. Prices had also increased of course, but money was not an object of concern.

When the Adept started to protest Kotaro felt the urge to yell at the man, but his excuses made sense... of course the Duke would have the money to make such an expensive communique. ComStar was not the Star League it didn't have the resources of the League so it had to stagger messages. The duke was, much as Kotaro had intended, circumventing the queue established.

He spent a good eight hours before they admitted into the sixty acre compound Comstar maintained near the heart of the city, and the ducal palace. It was ridiculous that they had taken a tram that directly connected from the palace to the ComStar facility. At least he could breath something of a sigh of relief. He posted a dozen shorter smaller parcels of information out even though there was no telling when or if they would ever go out... he needed to access an immediate outgoing feed.

The troops on Anders Moon were still fighting. They at least were only fighting provincial backwater warriors. The Regiment's first and third battalions... not that there was anything left of first were lost. The third might yet succeed in crippling the enemy regiment's dropships, but given the volume of artillery being reported that seemed faint. Samsonov's insistence that they could cripple the enemy's mobility and catch them in a pincer had failed... not that he was surprised Kotaro had been skeptical. They had misjudged the readiness of the Highlanders, made all the clearer when those awful earsplitting pipes had interrupted their lines of communication.

--
Ishida contemplated the daisho. They were still working to salvage the Atlas, but the swords had survived their master's death as the armored skull had caved into the shell of the cockpit. Burying the Kuritan general was not really feasible. It wasn't quite so bad as needed to actually hose out the cockpit as he had described for others, but repairing the Mech's head would take work. They would cremate the dead warrior's remains, that was the best they would be able to do.

... assuming they were going to keep it, but it had been dragged from the water's edge by winch. Andre Sutton fidgeted in the clean pressed white shirt, "I wish I'd been there." and that they'd be returning to battle soon, it was obvious... he didn't wish to be here in his finer closers.

"Bahar has our line redeployed." Then, most reassuringly, "Once we find out what the duke wants we will go back out there."

Ishida had returned only because he had been ordered to, and it was a temporary return. Bahar had received word from the JumpShips that they were returning with Davion reinforcements. The message delivered by some Star League marvel called a black box. The Davion defenders, or rather the duke of Robinson's relief expedition had been happy to take a ferry ride aboard the JumpShips returning to Elidere... but they were still weeks out.

"Yeah but how many mechs have you head capped?"

"Pull the BattleRoms," was the reply to the Dervish pilot's question, "I don't keep count."

Captain Alexander snorted. "I think everyone is watching the BattleRoms." He trailed off as they passed a businessman arguing with one of the ComStar acolytes about yet another delay in service. At first Ishida would have been prepared to dismiss the man as perhaps a visiting Lyran, but the man's aura was wrong. He dressed the part certainly, but he carried himself wrong. He felt like a killer, a demeanor of barely contained fury as his eyes saw the swords that flashed with recognition.

The holographic display near them did them no favor, but perhaps the most damning distraction was the duke, and the precentor who were animated in seeing them. Neither the duke, nor the precentor were impressive men. The duke had served in the AFFS of course, but he'd been out at least a decade at least for anything non ceremonial. The man was not totally to seed and his captain of the guards, a big man named Bates, physically threw himself over his charge.

Precentor Gregory Killos wasn't so lucky, and wasn't fast enough to get away.

"You!" The howl of anger wasn't enough to deter the fake salaryman from not processing the duke was outside of his threat radiance, and instead he had grabbed onto the precentor, and yanked him back before he could get free of the grasp.

"Mr Bates, what's happening, I can't see," The duke's muffled report came.

The big man heaved over and shuffled the duke away from the man in the suit trying to survey the crowd while watching the furious man at the same time. "It'll be alright your grace." The pistol that had appeared in Bates's hand looked like a child's toy.

Ishida's pulled the stainless autopistol at his belt, and wasn't the only one. Within the span of breaths they were in a standoff as a semi circle of men with a differing pistols of various makes stood there as the man in the suit dug his hold out pistol into the precentor's collar. If it had been a knife, Hanzo would have been confident he could have killed the salaryman without too much worry. The gun though, that might go off if he took the shot.

Bard Cameron was facing a similar problem as he levelled his Howdah Auto Magnum, and pushed Andre Sutton further back. The Dervish pilot was the only one in the group who had come to see what the duke had wanted of them without a pistol.

Septim knew he had no shot, not really an avid pistol enthusiast to begin with he had kept the LCAF standard issue sidearm for officers out of familiarity and in recognition he knew how to clean it. Even at ten feet he knew there was no way he'd have a shot he'd have been willing to take... and it was doubtful they could expect anyone else. ComStar security was for dealing with drunks and distraught people not armed madmen.

Kotaro snorted furiously, and bit his lip. He wasn't close enough. He'd hoped to grab the duke, maybe they could have salvaged things. In theory he could still drag the Precentor backwards. He wasn't close enough to be sure he could hit any of the men in front of him, not with squirming robed man who outweighed him by six Kan, or maybe about fifty pounds. The holdout pistol wouldn't care, not at this range, the shot to the neck would kill him if made too much trouble. If he dragged the man backwards though he could force him to let him access the HPG and make him send the encoded signal.

His actions would be disavowed of course if the Davions or ComStar ever connected him to the ISF but they'd never take him alive, and he'd have completed his mission. Someone would be able to provide warning and knowledge to the dragon of this failure, and the destruction of the 19th​ sooner rather than later.

"Let him go."

They were fanning out. Looking for a shot, and minimizing the threat he posed to them as a group. The kilted man and the Lyran had no shot. There was no way the Davion would risk using his hand cannon, and the lyran's whole posture and movement told Kotaro enough about his confidence. The duke's bodyguard's priority was protecting his master. That left the man carrying General Samsonov's daisho, and the Mercenary Commander.

"Now see here sir, if you put the gun down, and let gregory go we will let you go, we will put you on the first dropship off the planet, you can go back to the combine." The Duke declared. "Isn't that right Gregory?" Kotaro scowled as the Precentor swallowed against the muzzle of the gun nodding. "this isn't necessary."

Kotaro would have laughed at their weakness, but it was good. It was a distraction he could use. The duke's bodyguard would focus on keep his master out of harms way and that meant he could focus on t he two men who were real threats. He dragged the Precentor further backwards.

"I don't,"

"No, no, don't do that. Please let Gregory go." The duke begged, and the Precentor was struggling more to avoid being pulled back further... but the further he was the less-

The last thing Kotaro Tanida realized was that the pistol in the major's hand was a laser pistol. His thoughts that it must have been a hold out model given its small size, and that he was safe now from it terminated in a red flash that ended his life as the recoiless light speed weapon fired.

The result was most of his head vanishing, boiling away, and dropping him backwards like a puppet with his strings cut.

Gene slid the Terran Hegemony issued compact laser pistol, approved in the 2760s, back into the dress uniform's synth letter holster, making a mental note to thank Tristan for mentioning it was in the outpost's armory.

"A crack shot, I say." Not really, since lack of recoil and a two pound trigger press really made it a matter of putting the dot on the target, but he didn't interrupt the Makios dynast as the duke and his guardsman went to check on the precentor. "Good heavens are you quite alright Gregory, I was so worried about you man."

"Precentor."

"Commander." The head of station nodded.

Gene bent down to peal the handgun out of the man's hand and handed it to Hanzo behind him, before rifling through the man's pockets. "This looks technical." He muttered pulling a cylinder out of a pocket, "Looks like it plugs into a terminal," Gene shook his head. Looked like big thumb drive, but no obvious data reel or something.

"Oh heavens look at the time, we'll be late, we'll be late." The duke exclaimed, "Robinson, Duke Sandoval will be calling."

... ah that explained it.
--
Commentary: Ok tuesday I will be putting up the triumph star port bit that is set in the early part of Part 11, we will talk about that then, its nominally canon as it will be going up, so I probably won't be spoilering it but its also not touching on everything that was going to be covered.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Nominally Canon: The Starport​

Everyone had to do their bit, and as nice as a shower would have been there was still a lot to go... but thankfully, most of it would be opening doors, and turning on machines... and Tristan promised that he could handle most of the command and control. They had finally switched from emergency lighting to the facility's normal lighting. The AI had been able to patch up the Outpost Castle magnificently. You'd have never guessed that there was a battle there. The same was mostly true for the Star Port. Mostly.

"Be still my heart." Ford murmured exhaling and looking around as the guide lights lit up, and smiled. It was beautiful. The Star League's idea of star port had blended in perfectly with the natural surroundings, someone had decided to plant the trees for Arbor day, whatever that was. And well... he'd seen the ghastly security feeds of what had happened. The majority of the starport was underground though, and even now...

... and Tristan had a handful of anti personnel drones still skulking through the corridors. He heard every so often a rapid series of scurrying clicks as they rushed from position to position. More than once he'd turned around expecting them to have moved to some previous position just to see one hanging from the ceiling dim red optic glowing... but they were useful for looking around. He had needed their search lights to work.

"If only the Combine hadn't attacked Mustafa, we would be getting so much more done." He told the Azami senior tech for probably like the tenth time. He sighed and looked over the internal tram way. "I wish we had found this place," so many toys to play with as it were, "sooner," Again something he had said before, but really... so much was here.

Tristan had summarized what had happened.

If the combine hadn't attacked... or that hadn't been that ghastly business in the command center... which he still wasn't sure what that had been about, but later... later. If the combine hadn't attack Ford was sure that they'd have been able to explore the 63rd​ Mechanized Infantry Division's garrison as well.

Tristan's anti aircraft fire against the escaping DropShips had destroyed the fleeing vessels over the ocean... well really it was more of a sea, but same difference. The SLDF units whose breadcrumbs he had managed to suss out, the records of communication ultimately had lead to Elidere, and it was disappointing to have learned that Kerensky didn't seemed to have had a plan at all... beyond just leaving the Inner Sphere of course.

The Triumph left to sleep in the hangar had been built in 2735 by a now defunct Terran firm which had not survived Amaris's tyranny... never mind lived to see the horrors of the succession wars. A hundred twenty nine meters long the aerodyne dropship managed to still look small in its slip. The Dropship slips were intended to as needed accommodate Titan or Vengeance class ASF carriers, which were both such behemoths that either were wider than than Triumph was long.

But for what they were going to do, well they needed something that would be able to move an entire armor battalion to Ander's Moon. Mustafa plugged a terminal into a port. "Its going to take us a couple of days."

Tristan's voice came over the speaker, "I've already a series of recommendations based on data from Ander's Moon. I will forward those to Commander Shepherd."

"How many vehicles can this carry?"

"Forty five heavy vehicles, plus two lances of lights," Mustafa answered.

"Forty five, that's a bit odd of a number." Ford complained shaking his head, "Okay then what do we need to do from here?"

"Pre flight checks, I can bring some astechs in, we'll check fuel, the intakes and the drives." Mustafa looked down at his terminal, "this looks promising, but we'll need to refuel, and do manual inspections."

"I'll go back to the central terminal and see about getting the beacons lined up." The lift back was designed to allow a quick step into a transparent aluminum ... casemate, bubble or sorts that gave one a protected view of the inside of the individual hangar bays that connected to a central area, that could be closed off by bays. Apparently it had been designed to allow safety, advertised as a way to prevent fires from spreading.

Nearly nothing of the facility was above ground. The old access roads had been completely overgrown and demolished and ... well all of the conveniences, the terminal stores, and duty free shops and so on... had been abandoned for centuries within the star port's subterranean sprawl. None of those had been touched.

Contemporary Elidere was asplash with ornate gables, wrought iron fencing around gardens, two and three storey buildings ending steeples or adorned with towers. The interior of the starport had plenty of arches, but was a network of of angles and glass, and clean white walls.

Now that the fusion reactor was safely powered on everything was now well lit, and he couldn't even see the recessed ports for the red emergency lighting. The hallways would have once been filled with people, but by the time of the fall of 2785 fewer and fewer people were making regular jumpship travel. The house lords had already been preparing for the first succession war by that point... and of course it would be long that without people tending to the facility that it would be forgotten as the horrors of the first succession war had erupted.

The elevator dinged as it opened leaving in a control chamber completely unlike the ones that predominated the contemporary inner sphere. Most spaceports built in the first and second succession wars, never mind after had been thrown up on the surface of a planet, sometimes, often, several hundreds of square kilometers in area with multiple control towers poking into the sky. There were more computers, and control systems that could minimize the number of personnel needed to run a facility this size, and yet this was capable of directing and shuttling emergency traffic and diversions from the entire hemisphere if it had never needed to.

A holographic map of the solar system the size of a duke's feasting table showed Elidere IV in precise detail along with all of the major stellar objects in the solar system, including cleanly the Jumpships. As if reading his thoughts Tristan's voice projected through one of the spidery drones that had managed to sneak in after him, "Unfortunately with the degredation of Elidere's air defense network we cannot rely on this projection exclusively for detecting enemy air assets."

"We can't?"

"Theoretically conventional 'air breathers' would likely be able to avoid detection, detection of ASF powered by fusion drives and smaller dropships might also be able to exploit the gaps in coverage to mount an attack."

"But the combine doesn't even know we have this," He pointed.

"To the best of our knowledge," Tristan reproved, "I am obliged to apprise you of the conditions as I observe. The enemy could exploit vulnerabilities in system coverage. A Triumph class dropship is not designed to make a landing in contested airspaces." A pause, "orbital entry, and final touch down will depend on when exactly we depart, the enemy will have some degree of warning, though precisely how much will be dependent on their own command and control's ability to monitor. It will be imperative we secure a landing site before attempting to bring the Triumph in."


The AI's pause was more pronounced this time, "Tristan?"

"Apologies, the enemy regimental commander is dead, artillery going out now." The machine declared.

"Well thats good right, cut the head off the snake," No pun intended, "And all that?" He didn't get an immediate response, "Well I'm sure you're busy." There was that whole other battalion on approach.
--
Notes, so what in theory this should have entailed, is a section several days earlier dealing with Ford having access to resources, for lack of better description a directory, and then a follow on of taking a team up to actually acess the star portbut as I said this was originally cut from Staff interlude.

 

[Imperator Pax]

I Davion
First Davion [Contract]​

Jasos City
May 3017

Without the threat of Combine attack, or at least the immediate threat of a DCMS Mech Battalion coming down, or an air raid the capital of Elidere IV had begun to return to normal even though Ander's moon wasn't so lucky. Gene finished lacing his new pair of boots. Lord Aaron was paying them to liberate Ander's Moon... or keep the Combine Ground Pounders occupied until reinforcements arrived when Pasha and the Jumpships carrying them came round. ... so they were officially under contract with the Field Marshal of the Draconis March of the Federated Suns.

The door opened up to bring everyone in. They weren't going to need JumpShips for their own machinations de le geure. It would be simple in its own way. Get on the DropShips fly to the gas giant's habitable moon and execute what was a cracking flank maneuver before the Vandenburgs could be overwhelmed... but if it was to succeed they needed to go. They needed to get underway soon.

He'd expected Ford patching the Triumph would have been the issue, or loading up the drones or onloading their own mechs Baffins, or armor Sam Houston. They were but not the only issues. "Do you even sweat?" Bard grunted, speaking of the spare full body black pilot suit tossed on the table, then shook his head. "The duke has agreed to the plan," not that he had really much choice in the face of Aaron Sandoval telling him to, but having him sign off on it made things easier. It bolstered their numbers by another company of mechs. This would be closer to a fair fight that way, "We're loading as it is, but we're going to have to land."

"I wasn't going to suggest an orbital insertion."

The look Cameron gave him suggested that he wasn't sure Gene was telling the truth.

Abner shuffled in, "I'm quite appreciative of that consideration for those of us getting on in years." The professor declared, "The Combine are having to fight an incursion across a quarter million square miles, but they've done most of the heavy fighting, the Dukes of House Vandenburg have been driven back into their core heartlands and most of the ducal guard is, well its not good. The canyons allow their infantry and they've ambushed the enemy with tanks, but since the McBrin have been overrun the Combine are closing the noose. Its only a matter of time, I'm afraid."

If Elidere IV or at least this slice of it reminded him of England Ander's moon had, presumably been terraformed, to be a dead ringer for a swathe of southern mexico writ large... unfortunately deforestation and subsequent desertification and all the fighting meant... there were strips of barren terrain that was closer to desert than the jungle.

Having thirty something Combine mechs tramping through everything, and shooting inferno missiles into productive farms didn't help either. "There is one thing I do want to touch on," that the combine probably would not have stuck around this long. If he was being blunt... the information that htey had put together at this point, if it was accurate. Then this had supposed to be just a stupid raid, a macho posing peacock display of look how tough we are. Go in trash some shit, maybe steal some stuff... it was little more than state sponsored piracy, "We've put the Combine into a place they can't escape from, we should be prepared that they will fight to the last man, and atrocities against civilians should be taken as likely." The DCMS were backed into a corner and were going to fight... and that was probably going to be messy.

That meant they needed to fight smarter... the last thing he wanted was the fact that they were no longer lopsidedly out numbered to mean they'd start doing stupid shit.

Doctor Abner cleared his throat, coughed again, "Well Second Battalion 19th​ has had its share of losses, regrettably fewer than we might have liked, but we are still facing two largely full mech companies with some support and a small reserve of mechs." There was no word on how much technical support the Combine had, or if they'd be able to repair their damaged or replace their lost mechs, but it wasn't something they expected either, "The Headquarters of the Second Battalion appears to be a Stalker that determination is based on the fall of Castle McBrin."

Gene resisted the urge to run his hand through his hair, which the auto-doc inside the Castle had trimmed down to regulation length as he stood up, the new boots clacking against the teak hardwood floors. The holographic globe shifted, adjusting into a flight path from Jasos City, a simplification, and Elidere orbit to Ander's Moon of the DropShips. "The assault force will move as a convoy formation, and will separate in the last moment for descent." The individual dropships would be miles apart but the idea was to give as much anti air cover as possible up until the last minute. "We will step our landings," The orbital telemetry dissolved into a map of the 'planet's surface, "I will be going with Bahar and Hanzo and heading up a tactical group to secure the initial landing here. The Baffins will land, here, and offload its Mech Compliment," A combination of their assets, and some volunteers with lights and mediums. A second Union-class appeared a few miles away, "Bard will offload the main Elidere forces here, and the San Saba," The Triumph, "Will land in the middle, to offload our armor assets."

Tristan had made advisements on what form the battalion of armor that could be carried aboard the more than eight and a half thousand ton aerodyne should comprise of. There were pros and cons of different vehicles. Elidere was a bit more mild of a climate than Ander's moons more tropical humidity but that shouldn't readily effect operations.

The two lances of fifty ton hover drones had been easy. Figuring out which eight tonners to bring was a harder choice. The Furys with their gauss rifles were an excellent example of the trade off. Their range was one thing, but ammunition would be a problem... that and having them damaged would be an issue. While Hegemony doctrine held drone units to be expendable and to be used at the discretion of Terran troops as needed to destroy enemy forces, Gene had already intended to risk them as little as possible. The range of the gauss rifle, and ammunition constraints had to contend with the risk of them being destroyed, and someone poking around in the internals. That and, once they were done with them they'd need to be flown back to Elidere and returned to Tristan for maintenance and used to keep the outpost castle secure.

"There are two primary considerations." A direct conventional engagement was the more likely, but there was, "The Combine may agree to resolve this in effectively single combat." Mech to Mech, he spared a brief glance to Bahar, "This would minimize casualties but would need to be recognized on both sides. Individual Mechwarriors, only. When we touch down a message can be transmitted to establish a basic frame work for these duels." Tristan had organized the frame work based on historical ronin duels interspaced with enough flowery language and quotes from his first edition Dictum Honorium. "The frame work should preempt the combine from making a challenge. If they accept we will reciprocate." It probably wouldn't save the Vandenberg defenders but it would buy time for the Field Marshal's relief forces to arrive. "The alternative is a conventional action." At least in the sense of actually fighting with combined arms.

The two unions would offload two understrength companies each of mechs. Not ideal but it was what they had. He wasn't happy precisely that Abner was insisting on joining the Baffins deployment, but they weren't in a position to refuse the firepower contributed by the Atlas. They hadn't had enough time to find other pilots, and techs hadn't had near enough time to salvage and bring any downed combine mechs back on line so they were going to use what they had immediately ready to go.

There first objective was to take a town along a river, and then move along it for the roughly two days travel northward to where it took a sharp eastward bend. The Combine Battalion were acting as independent mech companies, and they wanted to cut the force that had taken Castle McBrin from consolidating if they tried to do that.

Their information on current opposition was limited, incomplete. Their two mech companies were going spread out and act independently across the front, simply because they needed cover that area.
--
"You saw what they did at Scarborough, can't let that play out somewhere else," Abner informed his protégé. "And besides, I'll be in a proper BattleMech. That Atlas will keep me safe enough." He continued on. He cleared his throat, "Well that out of the way, we have other matters to discuss."

The conversation took a darker turn. In LosTech prospecting it wasn't uncommon for double crosses to happen, Spies were an unpleasantness, but not an unexpected one. Interstellar Expeditions ordinarily prided itself on its background checks but sometimes there slip ups... or just rivalries that went a bit too far.

They would take the appropriate precautions.

"What about, well,"

"Miss Bahar. You did pull the Kolassa file from the directory didn't you?"

"I did." Ford replied.

"And?" Abner asked leaning forward, bushy eyebrows knitting in anticipation.

"Tristan estimates that the nuclear strike on Bristol by the Combine at the start of the first succession would not have breached the secure underground storage facilities. They're basically bunkers after all."

Abner nodded, "Well that's another reason for me to go like this. We're going to hand Hanse Davion a victory that has resulted in the destruction of an entire Combine Regiment, I trust you'll be able to leverage this with your contacts."

Ford somewhat reluctantly nodded. There was no way they were going to tell the Federated Suns about the Outpost Castle. Never mind because Ford suspected that the Hegemony AI would trigger the nuclear magazine of the facility to deny it to a successor state... and that was just completely an unacceptable risk. Tristan was an invaluable insight into the Hegemony of the Star League. It would be almost unthinkable as admitting to a successor state that they'd found a Hegemony officer who'd been shoved into a stasis pod after Amaris had been defeated and Terra liberated.
--

Commentary: Some of the Ford, Abner scene including comments about the Wolfs Dragoons it simply wasn't working. This is as obviously implied the First Davion Contract, hence I Davion. It will be roughly equivalent in length with Elidere, or for that matter II Luxen if you haven't checked that out it has its own thread for the expansion of that, but its not necessary to read either. It just adds some extra content.

 

[Imperator Pax]

I Davion Part 2
May 3017​

Within a fitful sleep, The golden bird flexed its talons slashing at the black snake before lifting it up to perch on the fortress walls, Septim shook himself as the rumbling engines made their course corrections. He stretched, "What time is it?"

"We're still two hours out."

Septim nodded, and yawned, "At least Haqim managed to talk the boss out of his orbital insertion plan." ... though probably only because no one else had the certifications. The jump at Luxen had been crazy, but Septim supposed it made sense. "What needs to be done?"

"Final checklist before we start operations." Doctor Abner declared coming down the ladder, "Especially important since we've a few more friends along Mr Alexander, sorry yes the both of you," He chuckled to himself.

Septim nodded to the older Lyran, "Yeah, Stingers and Blackjacks," They weren't going to be a whole lot of use, he felt, "any suggestions doc?"

"If the combine agree to settle this like gentlemen," And his tone suggested he doubted that, "There won't be much for them to do I'm afraid. If it comes to a brawl though... well that will make it a real mess."
--
Technically speaking the Sam Houston wasn't even pushing her engines at all. The aerodyne combined arms carrier could have left the two Unions well behind, but that would have defeated the purpose, "Any sign of ASF?"

"No sir."

Good, "We're going to start the briefing." The Azami ensign at the comms panel hit the requisite intercom to direct to the briefing room, as he turned away from the view of the gas giant. The Sam Houston had room for two square companies of infantry, but they hadn't left Alamut in the deep periphery with Azami infantry. They just hadn't been available. Truthfully he was surprised to have the volunteers for the technical support section he had, but he had the armor. The infantry they had hired on Detroit were aboard Baffins. The plan was to have them dig in and emplace their SRM and support lasers to deter any Combine light mechs that felt froggy.

The Sam Houston's briefing room was not the biggest, and with a full complement it would probably would have been better to hold it inside the vehicle bays, but this was officers only. So while not a lot of space was enough for them and the hologlobe.

Three Mechs, and a company of armor... a demi lance and a company of armor. "Our immediate priority is to dismount the dropship and punch forward to each respective zone." The plan was to take a forward position and spread the pairs of six hover vehicles out. The LRMs they carried wouldn't be much of a deterrent, but it'd give them something of a trip wire. The Daiymyo, and its minder would offload next, extending their lines of communication to the east towards the Elidere Volunteers. The heavy armor would have to come off last.

It was doubtful the combine would be able to confront the landings. They would have had to pivot and drive the opposite of their advance. The only things that might be able to contest the Sam Houston's offload would be light mechs but the bigger issue would be covering the perimeter and securing a landing zone for San Saba.

In an ideal landing Baffins would have offloaded the Atlas II and Professor Abner would have its communication array up to anchor the western command link.

The problem was offloading everything before the combine could recognize something was going on. Most likely they'd notice four dropships, two of which were unions, on the descent phase. What the combine response would look like... well they wouldn't know that until they were on the ground.

He hunched forward, and looked at the holographic representations of Combine Mechs. Hideously grinning jack o lanterns floated over the map. The Dragon was the Combine's standard heavy mech, being even more common than the catapult, or the Grasshopper.

They had talked about and discarded any orbital insertion to directly relieve castle Vandenberg. They were fighting the clock though. If the Combine succeeded in taking out the defenders before they landed this would be significantly harder. With a heavy sigh, he rotated the holographic projection, "Alright, contingent on the Combine accepting mech duels as a conflict resolution tool, armor assets will offload establish a perimeter, and screen while the San saba unloads its unit. Our principle objective in that case will be to screen, and insure that the artillery can be offloaded quickly and effectively." The grid shifted, "If that happens our objective shifts to engaging the combine mechs as we offload. The tactical objective of concentrating our armor forces in the event the Combine breaks the agreement," At which point in theory they would hammer and anvil the shit out of the combine in a classic double envelopment... but that of course assumed the combine choosing to agree in the first place.

A tone sounded... not that it was really needed the feeling of turbulence more than signaled to everyone present that they were now on their final approach and that very very soon they would be touching down on the dust ball. He checked the last page of the report... estimated highs put the temperatures at over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit and then a sharp decline after dark.

"And if the combine refuses single combat?"

"Then we will attempt to narrow their avenue of approach by Fascam, and attempt to force them to come to us, or failing that cut them off from their dropships and harass them at range until we can isolate and destroy enemy leadership."
--
Sam Houston made a relatively soft landing, easier than some helicopters as it settled under its VTOL oriented fusion drive that then slowly whirred dimming and then cutting off. After a moment to let the dust outside settle, the cameras outside began feeding surrounding footage, and a light flicked on in the bay. A green bay door light flipped on replacing the red on signaling it had unlocked.

The harnesses started to click off one by one down the line easing his marauder away from the secured gantry. Bahar's Mongoose was already loose of its restraints and easing its reactor through the start up checklist.

"Commander, the Baffins has ignited their beacon, and are on final descent now. They should be out of contact for approximately twenty minutes."

He nodded looking into the camera, "Give them another five minutes, and check the radar, and lidar tell me if we get any returns by fast movers by then." The Unions were, well the Union-class was robust enough that it would very hard to take them out with anything but a significant commitment of air assets. The Unions should have been able to deter any in coming attack head on as they descended, but they didn't need to take an unnecessary risk. Once the mech carriers were on the ground and the Triumph was in its final approach they would go ahead with the broadcasting the challenge.
--
"We are receiving an incoming transmission, sir."

Sanada Sasuke, commander of Rekka Company, turned towards the communications officer who had called for the Battalion commander's attention. They had already been fast approaching the limit of their supply chain. If this had only been a raid it wouldn't have mattered, but they had committed to throwing down the descendants of traitors, and had had to go to great lengths to clear an area enough to avoid being harassed by the rabble.

"From the navy?"

"Its on all frequencies Major." A pause, and then the obvious, "The enemy." The communications officer remarked rigid holding the print out to the battalion commander.

Over the three weeks that they had been engaged in operations against the rebels there had been a steady break down in communication with other forces. The first indication that something was going wrong on elidere had been really the calling of reinforcements in the form of the regiment's 3rd​ battalion.

There had been no indication when they had arrived in system of significant Davion resistance. General Samsonov in personal command of 1st​ Battalion should have faced no more significant resistance than they had. Truthfully Operation Ashika had shown no indication of any meaningful resistance... and it was only with dawning horror as they pieced together what was happening on the other inhabitable world as 3rd​ hurtled towards the planet.

General Samsonov's unit was being chewed up by some sort of heavy-medium Mech force supported by, by all indications their own supporting regiment of armor and artillery. Whispers had made their way around the the unit of Davion Guards who'd been on exercise. They hadn't had any real confirmation... just a game telephone as the DCA personnel communicated with one another and then rumors making their way from dropship crew to dropship crew to DCMS personnel.

... and then General Samsonov had been killed in battle. They had been able to intercept the broadcasts of the duel. A white Marauder had cut down the Atlas after each had exchanged volleys. The only White paint scheme in entry recognition for House Davion were the Avalon Hussars, which did at least support the theory that they had stumbled upon Davion elite. The Avalon Hussars would have been the right sort of unit to field medium and heavy BattleMechs.

That should have been explanation enough. Save that it was dispelled... by the Mech's upper hull, and the crest painted there. A torri gate featuring a proud looking bird.

Sanada didn't realize he'd been hovering beside his superior until the major cleared his throat, and with a sour look foisted the paper at him. They had been challenged... that was likely the only reason the major hadn't berated him for getting so close. Sanada swallowed to himself.

"We must accept." Major Hashiba replied after a moment, "Assemble your company. They've sent this challenge planet wide... I would not be surprised if the DropShips and JumpShips both received copy of a challenge in accordance to the wisdom of the Dragon, and Bushido."
--

The damage was extensive. Hell extensive was probably an understatement... the combine pilot had really beat the shit out the Merlin. Septim would be fine, but the rebuild would take, more time than they had, "What do we even have on hand?"

The senior Azami tech shook his head in the negative. "Its pretty bad." He declared continuing to shake his head. Then at the question of if it could be rebuilt he nodded, slowly, "We don't have a spare engine."

"Can you retrofit that spare 300?" Haqim frowned. He had planning a conversation with regards to approaching Mountain Wolf BattleMechs with a faster 'cavalry' Merlin with a VLAR 300 but he wasn't even sure if they were even interested in that proposal. "If you can do it, replace the PPC with one of the large Lasers in the hold,"

... and so gradually the Merlin's rebuild was sketched out even as assistant techs build off burned and busted parts of the machine. The Martell Model 5s would be the easiest thing to replace, with Magna Mk II. The real good news was that Septim wasn't going to end up dispossessed the mech could be rebuilt. Talk of the LRM 10 was considered before being decided against to put in just a second LRM 5, both for gyro balancing, and cost and availability.

He was through the door, and down the hatch, "Who's next up?" He asked passing Bahar coming from the outside.

"Bard."

"And?"

"He should be fine," She replied. "Septim?"

"He's fine, his opponent?"

"I'm not sure about the pilot but I don't know if they'll be able to get the Dragon operational quickly." Gene nodded... that was technically a victory then. "The enemy commander is still delaying until all of his officers have had a chance to find an opponent." That was actually fewer mechs than one might have thought. The Galedons did have enlisted mech warriors, and while those samurai were entitled to the chance for honorable combat it was not the same as giving their social betters the opportunity to fight.

"Anything I should be worried about."

"Regarding this?" She asked, and shook her head, "No, this is entirely normal. I believe he's prepared to see this to its completion."

The quotes from the Dictum Honorium had apparently been what had made the difference, though Gene was sure having basically broadcasted the challenge to the whole damn system had probably helped. Quoting Kurita Omi by name had probably ensured that the samurai felt it absolutely necessary to do this above board... and well... if they didn't... well he'd taken precautions against treachery.

They had twenty... twenty six mechwarriors and mechs ready to go. "Is Hanzo going to need to switch mechs?"

"The Cicada is fine."

"If you need to you can swap to the other mongoose." He suggested, Bahar gave him a dark look in response, "We're in a situation where realistically, I would very seriously consider swapping to another fresh mech. That is an advantage that we currently enjoy."

The walk outside showed a large holographic... for lack of a better description a billboard with brackets on it. Every combine officer ... who was a mechwarrior was on one side displayed in a format similar but not identical to the way the 'judicial duel' on detroit had been displayed. That might have been slightly more reassuring if they had actually had precentor Killos along to record and adjudicate any disputes.

Opposite the brackets was another projected 'billboard' projecting a mech scale projection of first edition handbrushed copy of the dictum honorium.

The Combine Mechwarrior was a ready looking red haired man who looked about Bard's age... and looked more academic than soldier, especially peering at the image. The kilted david bowie look a like was waiting on their side, "They're all doing that," He drawled as the Combine Warrior bowed to the words of Omi Kurita, then his superior and fellow DCMS officers. "Means he's ready to die."

Bard Cameron set off for his Wolverine leaving them to watch both Mechwarriors approach the fighting arena... or the area marked off in the middle of the dry river bed that they were using for it. "Is he really going to let Sutton fight?"

"Do we really have a choice?"

... not really, "He has a 6MD." which meant Sutton had the advantage of armor protection, but it was a wonder to him that the Mech's XL engine even worked.

"That works to his advantage, these duels emphasize ranged combat until a participant concedes that they can't hit. They won't want to admit that in a duel with a green mechwarrior his age." That reminded him that Samsonov had been trying to close with him before Gene had shot him down. "They won't be expecting 30 LRMs a salvo. That should let him win his match." Bahar assured him... and that would be the last duel of the day and then dinner.

Then theoretically they would all say see you tomorrow and fall back to their respective camps, and wait until tomorrow. "My concern goes beyond that," Gene remarked, "I don't particularly want lord Vandenberg getting involved in this, but I've got no way to stop him if he shows up in his orion." Worse, Lord Michael Cameron Vandenberg coming to this dance would knock him down in the queue which wasn't by itself a problem... except it would mean that the local duke would be fighting the enemy battalion CO's Stalker.

--
Septim groaned, his mouth was dry, and had the faint lingering metallic taste of blood. He smelled disinfectant, "ugh what happened." He voice came out more of a distorted croak.

A few seconds later, "You lost." A synthetic voice remarked through a speaker. The Star League AI tristan broadcasting through a relay somewhere beaming back to Elidere IV. "Unfortunately the brackets are proving a bit more in the draconis combine's favor." The AI tut tutted.

"Bahar was coming up,"

"And she won. As it happens putting an SRM 6 with specialty munitions into a machine that already by design runs hot is remarkably effective." A heavy sigh, "Optimally we can buy more time."

"Any sign of SLDF beacons here?"

"Its not that simple." The AI replied to the question. "The local feudal powers have coopted much of the Star League era infrastructure, but that has largely meant salvaging it and relocating it into their... own castles." Septim didn't have much of an idea of what Ander's moon had been like during the Star League, but the first and second succession wars had seen the ascension of the ancient colonial families into positions of power when the Davions had taken over in recognition of their part in taking the planet from House Kurita. "I expect any regimental or battalion structures left from the 63rd Mechanized Infantry Division would have been picked over, if not by deserters than by subsequent scavengers. I have seen no indication that any directional guides are operational."

That just meant they weren't likely to get any more help. "What are the snake's doing?"

"It appears that their last company is maintaining a rear guard, or staying deployed along the front to prevent the planetary elite from sallying. Its just as likely they can't move either. Something will have to give."

Septim scratched at the scab along his scalp. "What do you mean?" He asked as he reached for the water.

"The Combine has very, very limited supporting forces. The 19th Galedon deployed with just its mech forces and some infantry. Infantry which is outnumbered by the local militia. In responding to the challenge the Combine may have pulled enough forces back to answer the duel to allow a local break out."

"That's good right?"

"The DCMS has numerical BattleMech Superiority."

"scheiße," He attempted to sit up pulling the IV. "Shit.

The AI continued without noticing the expletive, "Degredation of force strength is according to my projections expected to continue over the next several days of combat."

"What happened to my mech?"

"Presently being retrofitted. It won't be possible to repair it in time." Tristan's tone implied he wasn't sure it should even be a priority. A tone sounded. "I can connect you to Haqim in the hangar if you like, but I must take my leave captain."

 

[Imperator Pax]

I Davion
Part 3​

They had relocated to the remains of... what his map beacon said had been a precious jewel mine that had at some point eaten a nuke during the first or second succession war. It had been a small nuke of course, an alamo was the most likely culprit. Background radiation was nothing dangerous... though you probably didn't want to drink the water without double checking it, if you could help it... but that was more likely a is this tainted by industrial mining run off than the nuke.

In real terms though it made a change of pace to duel the combine in. The truth was that the Combine had a greater reserves of Mechs though... and it was starting to show. Hanzo's Cicada was after three rounds no longer able to continue... and they were lucky it had lasted that long. Bahar was hanging on, but Septim's early knockout from the 'competition' had done them no favors.

In a way he was kind of glad that the Combine only apparently had the single Stalker left in the Assault weight class. Abner had yet to be challenged, and most of the fighting had been confined to medium and heavy weight mechs.

The grey white Marauder paced into the arena at a canter. The big pit was ... well miles across, complete with access to mining shafts large enough for BattleMechs. He reached up to adjust the Dalban as it lased a connection to Abner's Atlas II, and from there to the SLDF Drones waiting. They had a trip wire of Furys standing by, but he was hoping that that wouldn't be necessary.

"You killed General Samsonov?"

"and," Well probably both first and thirds officers... though Bahar could have nailed 3rd​ Battalion's CO... "Colonel Tanida as well."

"Ah, did he die well?"

"Cleanly, at least." He replied.

"A good death is its own reward." The pudgy major agreed taking his eighty five tonner over the concrete divider, and low chain with a sandblasted stop sign.

Gene blinked through the notification to relay his report on weapon performance to Hegemony R&D as he turned master arm on, and unsafed the Marauder's weapons. He didn't respond to his opposite's comment... even though he'd almost quipped that was a lot more appealing when a Valkyrie said it.

A timer from the projector started. A bright red 3 2 1...

The Assault class workhorse fired both LRM 10s and large lasers. Only the lasers came close but the LRMs kicked up a mass of dirt and dust that filled the old open pit mine. Not that he needed visuals, the heat on thermals through the MMI feed from his Dalban made the bigger mech standout. PPCs opened, scoring angry blue, and then orange white flames as the dust burned into the left torso armor of the Stalker.

Major Hashiba did not immediately return fire. A few seconds passed, and for a moment Gene considered whether or not his own thermals had given an implication away regarding the fact his mech had double heat sinks. His Dalban had started flagging comms traffic through the net... something else was going on.

Hashiba's face appeared, "Ah, gomen, a moment please to resolve this disturbance."

Gene nodded silently and the channel closed. Once the line was closed his eyes narrowed, he didn't like this. He knew the combine had another company out there checking the locals... and the most obvious situation was that something had happened with them. They clearly hadn't stolen a march this way, as he was relatively sure that would have tripped their pickets on look out. He keyed the SLDF secure royal comm channel, "Abner whats going on?"

"The DCA just broadcasted something. It wasn't, it wasn't a message, some kind of warning. I'm trying to resolve now, Tristan said he'd get back to me." The professor replied from his Atlas. His first assumption was incoming airpower of some sort. Conventional Air Breathers, ASF, other dropships... which was close but not quite accurate. Abner's line reconnected to his mech, "Mister Pasha has returned with Davion regulars to reinforce."

Which sounded great. It did. Except that there were a bunch of combine mechs around them, and the distance from Jump point was measures in literally a week and change. "Stand by." He turned the com laser to Hashiba's stalker, "Given the situation we have a few days to resolve this before the new comers spoil things." Please work... please don't decide to banzai charge into a general free for all.

Hashiba's image solidified, "Hai. I am prepared to resume." The still running warm eighty five tonner lumbered forward a couple of paces, and fired the same weapons to a similar though magnified effect of kicking up an interminable amount of dust.

In hindsight it made sense that the auto cannon would jam eventually, and would choose to do so after that three round burst had woofed over the Stalker and bit into the pit mine's outer ring. The PPCs slashed into armor, but Gene cursed the missed shot and not having advanced all the same, especially as Hashiba once again advanced his mech and the SRMs joined the LRMs pushing the Stalker dangerously hot.

He grunted as a missile found its way home in the mech's shoulder while another probably had his the left arm. The rattling subsided as he glanced at the inoperable notice due to the jammed ammunition feed. Gene reached up to safe the Autocannon as a matter of procedure and brought both Medium Lasers online. The strikes his the beak, but more center armor line than the cockpit, probably all on the center armor belt if he had to guess.

No lasers this time, Hashiba had figured out getting closer was the way to insure his big mech could hit, and they were within three hundred meters. After the vibrations cleared though and he blinked through the armor display he flipped off the PPCs and punched the left torso, and into the ammunition bin for the SRM 6 that just made his ears ring. An explosion followed and something in the mech's shoulder gave, probably fragments into the gyro given how the Stalker suddenly lurched rightwards and took two drunk steps in that direction as it tried to correct.

Hashiba was already too far, overcorrecting for the lurch and pushing his nose the other way and brought his mech forward as he did so. A warning indicator on the Marauder's dash warned him of hte incoming alpha strike a split second too late the right SRM 6 sent two wide entirely flying into the wall behind, another smacked his left arm again, a torso, and left leg. Gene rearmed the PPC advanced into effectively point blank and fired both through the cockpit at roughly forty meters in a gratifyingly gratuitous overkill coup de grace. "Tristan, stand by for potential fire mission." He ordered as he started tagging secondary target areas for the AI. He wouldn't have time to direct the drones so the best he'd be able to do was assign targets in specific areas, or specific enemy units.


A Dragon walked down into the arena the jack o'lantern painted on it wreathed in stylized flames. "My turn." The pilot declared raising his autocannon... and then proceeded to completely underestimate the range and drop all five shots of the burst into the dirt seventy odd yards from the Marauder's feet.

Gene keyed his mike, "Standby," He ordered along the company channel. His hands found the joysticks and adjusted his machine to face the new challenger. A glance at the controls informed him the DHS were doing their job at least where with standards he'd have been fighting serious waste heat from the Extended Range PPCs he didn't have that problem ... or at least not as much of it.

Not that Sanada had any real way to know that as his sixty tonner found that his Imperator A had fallen short, direct fire energy weapons didn't so much drop as disperse... and didn't do that at ranges below a kilometer... not to any meaningful degree in the Hellstar's case. At half a kilck both PPCs hit the grey snout of the Rekka company command mech, relatively high for where he'd been aiming. One and a quarter tons of armor boiled away under ball lighting, and leaving less than a ton protecting the internals of the sixty ton mech's center torso.


The almost painfully cliche totem mech of the Combine charged head on right arm sending another five rounds down range, and missiles spewing from blackened chest. He might have honestly been better off doing one or another. Running and shooting while possible was often not practical. A second pair of lightning bolts burned through the rest of the armor and into the center torso, failing to find anything critical in its VLAR 300 but either hitting, or as a by product of the particle beams, otherwise fritzing the gyro sending the mech crashing into the dirt.

He heard professor Abner give a quiet sigh over the line as the Dragon's engine went dark.
--
Septim resisted the urge to rub his nose, and sucked in another breath. "Where's the boss?" He asked looking around the Daimyo for something to do.

"Currently on patrol as a precaution."

Leaving aside that he was pretty sure the combine troops who hadn't died in the duels had found themselves in something the bossed called a double envelopment, which seemed like just a really complicated pincer maneuver involved two dozen heavy drone tanks suddenly crawling up the snakes' backside... "Ok where is Bahar?"

"Liaising with the JumpShips." The Maganac officer replied.

He wasn't sure if the six JumpShips, he didn't think so, that had been stated to be at the Nadir point included the Combine JumpShips or not... they could have been at Zenith he wasn't sure. Whatever the case they had a few days to untangle the mess before things moved on. "So what's this then?"

"The report for the 63rd​ Mechanized Infantry Division Depot we managed to get open." The Armor captain declared. "We're going to take stock of what's there, and rearm and refit with what we can. We noticed it has spare parts, myomer bundles some vehicles we can load as replacements. Most of the depot was cleaned out by units Tristan reported were subsequently shot down over the ocean."

The mention of the AI made sense. They weren't going to tell the natives about the Star League Machine spirit or its castle... hell to the best of Septim's knowledge after the ... probably combine spy .... traitorous TA they weren't even going to mention the castle at all. Most of the Interstellar personnel didn't even know, and the hidden tram line was separate from the others sealed off behind a hidden door with some kind of super secret hegemony lock that only responded to the credentials of Hegemony Knights or something... "Are we going to hand it over to the Davions?"

"That's the plan. The facility anyway, but we need to take the San Saba," Their new Triumph, "And I need a ranking officer to supervise."

... you're the only one who isn't busy went unsaid, but certainly implied. "Well," Septim chuckled, even though it hurt to laugh with his nose, "Well I'm not doing anything lets go be industrious."
--
They had given the DCMS personnel two choices ... well three the implied you could always surrender though had been there. The first of course was to resume dueling this out in honorable single combat and stuff. The second was to go to a full free for all. What they hadn't exactly mentioned was that they had already begun collapsing their armor pickets into the area around the dueling space, and had unsafed the Sam Houston's weapons in case they picked the latter.

Most of the Combine warriors had picked the former though.

It would still take ... probably weeks of work to repair all of the damage, months even but such was the case. Nothing he could do about it. That left him with other things to do. Ford was sitting at one of the terminals, "Did you write this?"

Gene leaned over to look at the screen. "I did."

"This is good." The Federated Suns native laughed, "I mean especially if you wanted to really tweak the combine's nose."

' ... The Kazoku, or most commonly translated as peerage, on Terra was abolished in 1947. It had replaced an earlier split aristocracy in the form of the Shizoku and Kuge to distinguish them from commoners... to that extent this historical backing creates problems with the modern Combine's preferred rendering.

Daimyo means great name, and while it is not completely unreasonable to equate this to mean to Marquis Tozama Daimyo were in the ancient rules of Japan on Terra were 'great names' who existed as part of lineages who were not historical vassals of the last of Japan's great unifiers. Indeed Marquis might be a more appropriate use of Tozama Daimyo than Daimyo as a stand alone... within the Kazoku the equivalent to the English Marquess, the basis for the latter unified Terran peerage, was Koshaku. Count, or Earl, was equivalent in the Kazoku...'

It went on, and into a summary table, with a distinction in the characters to write Koshaku for Prince or Marquess respectively Then through count, viscount and baron.'

"I just found the Combine's use of Shogun for Ducal titles to be, quite silly, and it spiraled from there."

Ford marveled at him, and laughed, "I have to have a copy of this. OR better yet, get the Professor to circulate it on New Kyoto, they'll be happy to publish it." Ford's humor continued, "I mean for that matter, your annotations on the first edition of the Dictum Honorium were really what I was looking to read. I could never get through the modern edition of the book. Its positively exhausting to read through."

"What edition are they up to?"

"The eleventh, revision they call it. Horribly ponderous, six volumes." He shook his head, "I heard about Mr Alexander, he's going to be alight?"

"He's got a broken nose from the ejection seat, but at least it worked." He replied, "The Merlin will be getting a rebuild." was being rebuilt.

Ford prepared to say something, but stopped as the sagging tired form of professor Abner saddled into a spare chair, "I know its part of the job, but I feel horrible." He exhaled, "I never expected all of this, I certainly didn't mean for you to end up wrapped up in the games of the great houses, or their bloody wars." He complained that while the dig had exceeded his wildest expectations and he couldn't say things had not been worth it, "We will pay you for all the damage, and passage to Robinson at least. We'll be going there as well. In fact, Mr Ford?"

"There is a good chance that we will be all of us going to New Avalon apparently Precentor Vandal of New Avalon is apoplectic at the Combine's man taking their man on Elidere hostage in the HPG station. Word about what all else has happened on Elidere has also started making the news. You'll never have to buy drinks in at least the Draconis March ever again." Seeing his face twist, Abner's eye brows knitted up again, "Something the matter?"

"Normally I'd run this by Pasha," But the JumpShip Captain was still busy ferrying them more Davion reinforcement... that admittedly they didn't need. "We got in the 63rd​ MID's depot," Not much there, most of its contents had probably been splashed into the sea when Tristan had shot down the Dropships... but that wasn't the point. "There is another depot that should be intact, its on Galtor Three."

"And you're wondering what to do with that information?"

"I'm not going there, to be honest, I need to hire more people, and that was true before we took this gig. The unit is understrength, and after this I'm prepared to spend money to get that underway," Even if he didn't expect to have that fixed, "before heading back to the periphery."

The two academics shared looks, "Well," Abner cleared his throat, and made a show of checking his ornate pocket watch, "I can understand that. I must be off my fellows, lunch is calling."

"Hiring would be a good idea. Lord Aaron I'm afraid is a man of grand ambitions and will want more from you than just this victory against the Combine. I think he plans to mount a grander offensive, especially if he can convince the First Prince." Ford remarked. "He's not the only duke of course."

Gene didn't need reminding of that. The Duke of Robinson wouldn't have been the only duke clamoring for their attention... because Sandoval had exemplified political astuteness by hedging his bets. He'd hired them on to lead the relief effort of Ander's moon after the destruction of the bulk of the Gaeldon regular, but it would probably be tidied up in media portrayals as 'Duke of Robinson's 'forces' fend off piratical kuritan invaders' accompanied by probably significant footage of Robinson regulars on victory parades after. While those Davion regulars were enroute the local aristocracy had other priorities now that the immediate military threat was over. "I thought you were handling that for us?" He responded after a minute.

"Oh certainly, the locals are peculiar, I keep hearing something about the chalice of herne. I've only seen pictures. Its part of why I was going to ask about the mech repair?"

"They're fitting my Marauder," Royal, "with replacement armor sections now." He could hardly use his other Marauder for a parade when all the locals had ever seen him use was the white one. "Have you seen Bard I know his wolverine nearly lost an arm."

"I have not, not today."

Gene nodded, "I was hoping to find out if he is planning to travel with us."

"You don't really have space on the Baffins, not if your planning to take anything with you, and you heard Professor Abner he insists on take his Atlas home with him, so he'll need berthing for the beast."

... and the Dervish. "Don't remind me," he halfheartedly protested. Even before hiring they were probably going to need to get another DropShip. He left and made his way out into the open sunshine of the starport near castle Vandenberg that loomed atop the hill in the distance. In spite of the sun it was quite mild now, barely eighty degrees compared to the hundred twelve high recorded a week ago.

Though he wasn't a native of Ander's moon the future robinson battle academy cadet Sutton and his Dervish were not hard to find. He was a native of Elidere IV and that was enough to draw a hero's homecoming welcoming for the teeming masses of people who had hidden behind Fortress Vandenburgs defenses against the combine. The fact that he had battle roms dueling combine medium mechs certainly didn't hurt either. It took a minute before Sutton could extricate himself from his adoring fans. "Colonel." The salute needed some work.

Gene returned the gesture, "Has your mech been looked over?"

"Uh yes sir." He replied with a boyish falter, "Are-"

"We're not under attack, I just wanted to make sure it had been seen to." It had an endosteel frame if that broke... the damage done Septim's merlin was going to be time consuming given all the wrecked heat sinks and everything else. "Have you seen Bard?"

"He's with some of the Robinson personnel, they're working on repairing his Wolverine for the parade now that you mention it."

Good, the truth was the Azami were already swamped for work as it. "Future classmates, or staff?"

"Its a bit of both, the training cadre was mobilized with the rangers to respond." The presence of the Robinson Rangers reflagged a concern he was going to hear some variation of either One Riot One Ranger, or Rangers Lead the way... or something similarly corny, but there was no helping it.

"Alright, I won't keep you, you look busy." He remarked glancing over the crowd that ws surprisingly not mobbing them... and he certainly didn't want to stick around for that.

 

[Imperator Pax]

I Davion
Part 4​

May 3017
The captain of the Lebanon remained aboard his vessel, but one of his officers had been spared to hand ferry reports beyond just company documents regarding contracts expenses and incomes. The lieutenant had managed to touch down zero dark thirty local time, and still wasn't even dawn outside, "Given this victory over the dragon's servants, recruiting should not be a problem."

"What are we going to be able to source on Robison?"

There was a pause, and Gene expected the naval lieutenant to be about to hedge that he should ask Pasha such a thing, "Robinson is an important planet, there were DropShips which could be purchased, certainly spare parts, and ammunition as we require. Hiring is possible." He hedged, but clearly the Azami officer wasn't thrilled with the idea. "Captain Pasha relied reports of your initial successes against the Regulars on Elidere IV to others among the people, word of the battle may be spreading, more quickly than most would expect as a result."

Translation: After the Duke of Elidere had made multiple live calls via HPG people would have known about the attack, but the destruction of 1st​ Battalion being reported had probably been shared along the fax machine network. A k-series transmission had a hundred light year range, and took ten days to reach maximum signal propagation... but presumably there was someone in place to relay that information to the deep periphery.... and presumably back over the border into combine space as well.

The Azami elders had stated that they had gotten their black box from friends in Rassalhague, which presumably contributed to the Rasalhague resistance's ability to survive underground for so long. "Well Robinson is four jumps from here, I'll have plenty of time to consult Pasha on whatever steps are to be taken."

"Sir." The Naval Lieutenant saluted and departed the dropship's stateroom. Gene sat back into his chair and scratched the back of his head. He had hoped this would be a quiet lucrative gig, which is certainly was going to prove the later, but given the developing situation, there was no way they were going to make the fall festival for mercenaries, of sorts, at Northwind. It was four jumps to Robinson, so they'd see what they could pick up from there. Five jumps or roughly five weeks from Robinson though was the capital of the Federated Suns proper. New Avalon.

Gene glanced at the empty mug of coffee, and got up, snagging it as he passed around the desk. The truth was he was dragging. He would have liked nothing better than to actually do something defense related... but part of that was with Robinson Rangers arriving in force to both planets a prevailing notion of security had taken up with the nobility. The 'salvationists', as Septim tended to refer to the Star League venerators, had declared a religious holiday that had gridlocked most the roads.

"Ah Commander Shepherd," Ford remarked as he made his way towards the smell of fresh brewed coffee.

"Doctor Ford. I don't suppose there is any possibility of maritime salvage?"

Ford shrugged, "I'm not familiar with whatever the dropships were struck with, it would be a lot of specialist equipment to pull them out of the Dog's Sea. I'm not saying its impossible, but it would take me more than a year to put together the kind of experts needed to even to preliminary dives at even one of the locations we think they splashed into."

"I understand." Maritime recovery, especially since it had been two hundred years hadn't been something he'd been holding out much hope for... there was no telling, ragnarok proofing aside, what exactly might even be salvageable from several hundred feet of water. Not his area. They managed to get into the Sam Houston's mess before it started to fill up as they day really began. "What is it?"

"Lets just say that... Precentor Killos, made a call to the Precentor New Avalon about the ISF's actions, the fellow you shot down, he apparently had a HPG control override stick, now telling how he got that but... well ISF certainly. The combine will deny it of course, but. Precentor Vandal was apoplectic say the least by all accounts."

"Interdiction?"

"heavens no." Ford shook his head, "But he is a towering fury at the violation of Comstar's Inviolable neutral status." Gene gave an irritated click of his tongue. "There will be trouble for it for sure, but it will most likely be financial penalties."

Nothing that he could do about it, no sense sweating about it, "Were you able to get into the device?"

"It was, an encrypted report."

He frowned, "What did it say?"

"Just the battle," Ford replied, "i get the impression that Colonel Tanida would have preferred to blame General Samsonov more. The earliest part of the battlefield report clearly are more critical prior to the the counterattack we launched once the massacre of Scarborough started. The real change are the documents written, presumably after his Mech was lost, and we started engaging the newly arrived third. Officially Colonel Tanida places the blame for the loss on Davion Heavy Guards being disguised as mere mercenaries."

"If the Combine thinks they could get away with it, I wouldn't be surprised, if they claim Samsonov was acting without orders." He stated mixing the honey into his coffee.

"It won't matter, ComStar will extract some kind of payout, but with an entire mech regiment destroyed... Hanse Davion is going to exploit this to the hilt." Ford sipped his own coffee, "I think you'll see that soon enough, I expect Lord Aaron was probably in contact with New Avalon as soon as it was apparent the 19th​ Galedon had bitten off more than they could chew."
--
The money in the bank... was big, that was how Gene decided to mentally sum it up. Putting it in writing or in a speech he would have used 'windfall' or 'lucrative', but Lord Aaron's contract had been for a regiment scale action, retaining that many mercenaries was ordinarily expensive, there were overhead costs, and hazard pay, and so forth. Destroying a DCMS Mech Regiment in the process of invading the Draconis March was by conservative Mercenary Review Board was tens of millions in C-Bills... never mind DropShip salvage value. Ordinarily that would have meant upkeep, maintenance, spares to go to the entire regiment being retained so while a hefty payout, would have been less obscene of a profit.

It was enough money to make him queasy.

"The MRB still, they're currently tallying off destroyed Combine Assets on Elidere," It had taken less time to finish on Ander's moon." The Relief Forces sent from Robinson had already known that Elidere would clear of hostiles by the time they arrived so had already planned to launch and secure the moon, and that on top of the smaller Combine force a much easier prospect to total up, and account for. "Robinson wants to set us up with a merc liaison they say they have something in the works to tied us over, but we need to address our ASF issue, and we need at least another Union."

"What are they offering?" She asked

"Tied over is a nine weeks cadre course out of the Battle Academy," He pushed over a set of files that had come with, "According to Robinson the 19th​ did a number on Robinson graduates over their raids the last several months, they're bringing in a mix of graduates and incoming students." He paused, "I haven't had a chance to talk to Septim," Who was still on Elidere IV, "But Ford, and Pasha have independently stated they suspect something bigger is in the works."
--
The Chalice of Herne was only brought out of its vault for important, paramount even events. The annointing of the duke upon his coronation with sacred unguents, ashes and offered a cup of wine from the chalice were a huge ceremony normally, and was in living memory the only time the Chalice had been taken from the star league venerating cathedral within the capital of Ander's Moon.

Gene had never really been a wine guy anyway, but swallowed it down, and accepted the ashen attempt of a starburst on his brow as the ceremony required. "What is it?" Ford asked as they finally got through a long hall and into the reception area.

The Chalice, which bore the name Herne, "Do you know what the Martial Olympiad was?"

"Yes, of course."

"Its the first place cup for individual duelists," The Olympiad had entailed over a hundred events and entailed both ground and air unit participation, as well as the Fleet, "If you look at it, it says, Mars, and the dates 268 something. The last digit was too well worn to be sure, and even the others were nearly as worn as the jewel encrusted trophy cup had lost some of its luster. The relic had allegedly been recovered from a vault somewhere, and more importantly bore a pristine Cameron starburst on its face. "They moved the games off Mars for whatever reason to a planet called Outreach," He laughed, "I have copies of Kenyon Marik's court martial proceedings, it mentions Outreach, one of his conduct unbecoming officer involved events at the Olympiad, I gather he and his staff got drunk, crashed an air car," Some kind of fratboy competition with with one of the royal regiments present... and none of the Terran troops had got court martialed naturally, but really it was only one in a long stream of incidents of back and forth that seemed to involve Kerensky and Marik and their respective political backers. The whole thing, regardless of the facts, smelled like political griefing... Someone had gone through tremendous effort to document Kenyon Marik's clowning around. "Got into a brawl, its embarrassing egg on the face stuff." But not nearly the getting drunk in the Star League Council Chambers and causing a ruckus there... like some people who could be named.

That thought just, to him anyway, underscored ... how fucking sureal these people's veneration of the League was. Seeming to catch his mental drift Ford quirked an eyebrow, "I suppose you probably think of the Hegemony or the League as well as we think of the Federated Suns."

"There has to be a government, anarchy only lasts until the first group of guys with sticks knock enough heads to be acknowledged as in charge. Certainly you can do worse than the Davions." He signaled he was getting a drink and walked over to the bar.

He took the local's attempt at an oak lily and glanced to Sutton, who was looking probably more out of place than he was, "What are they not letting you drink?" He asked the dervish pilot looking at the ginger ale he was holding.

"Uh, I never expected to be knighted... I mean maybe in the future, but I haven't even started the academy yet."

"What's this then?" Bard asked, "Corrupting the youth?"

Gene sipped his drink, "No, its his choice not to drink. As long as he has the option, you can pull the trigger, you can drink."

"Here here." The Ranger raised his stout. "I appreciate the offer of the ride, but I have a DropShip that will be taking Sutton and I to Robinson, but since," he shrugged, "we'll be happy to take a docking collar if you can spare one. The School will reimburse you for the lift, Sutton and a couple other cadets will be aboard." Bard elbowed Sutton, "Drink up you won't be able to drink with us while your our pupils."

"Huh, what?"

"You didn't hear, Lord Aaron has hired the battalion to run a training cadre it will be your first term at the academy."

Technically speaking Gene hadn't actually signed on the dotted line, but he supposed that really was a formality. Ford was shipping to Bristol after going over the IE personnel at Robinson, and apparently they had some other dig. "I have some lesson plans from my last cadre duty," He doubted the FedSuns would have any interest in the Six unit model, but the SLDF would likely be just as useful, "Truthfully Robinson is a good place to start hiring until I can get to Northwind."

"You'll have no shortage of volunteers the 19th​ Galedon plundered from here to Errai, I know they hit McGhee and Kesai IV. You'll never need to buy a drink in the Draconis March as long you live," That might be something to mention to Septim who had been absent this bit of festivities, though he'd be present for when they went and presumably endured a similar one on Elidere with the rule duke of House Makios.
--
"I'm sorry I missed your speech boss."

"It was a good speech boss." Chang added.

Gene looked at the rain beating the windows of Elidere IV, "I gave credit where credit was due. The duke of Vandenberg did the smart thing by putting his infantry where they could harass and make the combine's life miserable to buy as much time as he could to get his civilians out of that." Apparently Lord Vandenburg had evacuated his civilians as the fighting had neared the castle into the miles long tunnels underneath the fortress that would have protected them, and gotten to safety if the combine had managed to breach those defenses. That hadn't been necessary, but it demonstrated forward planning for the worst if... there hadn't been someone to show up and draw the combine main force off into a long delaying action.

It also said a lot that Makios had been unwilling to leave his capital even if he had had less confidence in the ability of infantry to do anything meaningful to delay BattleMechs.

The tri vid projection changed as the ComStar news service tuned in from New Avalon where Precentor Hudrin Vandal appeared. In their room Precentor Killos and the MRB liaison on the planet entered just as Vandal started giving the combine a tongue lashing, and Killos nodded with supreme concentrated smugness. "We need more of that. The combine has a long history of acting like they're above reproach." He declared.
--
Notes: It is Friday, this is an early update there will probably be a smaller update on Sunday. There are some minor timeline issues I'm probably going to fudge. My saturday gaming group has input that the time frame issue of I Davion runs into similar problems to II Luxen... and also Ardan Sortek 's stuff needed to be changed, which just reminds me of the whole doppelganger plot.

To clarify on the JumpShip thing I mean that the inviobility of JumpShips generally applies to those belonging to the successor house or other legitimate entities.

So a (B) section will go up Sunday most likely. It will be shorter than this fifteen hundred probably, and I may be doing revisions to Davion I . [By which I mean I Davion as a whole chapter of ~30 thousand words]

 

[Imperator Pax]

Part 4
(B)​

Elidere IV
"These are retainer contracts, similar to the ones you signed before shipping off to Ander's Moon," The MRB liaison declared, not necessarily comfortable with the way his boss seemed to be hovering to make sure the MRB liaison didn't screw things up somehow. "The real contracts for the cadre training, and any other contracts with House Sandoval or the Federated Suns will be handled on Robinson." With another awkward glance to his superior the MRB liasion bit his lip, "I do want to clarify, MRB records document that you have detached-"

Saving the man some time, "We've got two mechwarriors in the Magistracy, in the rimward periphery running a small security gig for Majesty Metals. Its long duration, but they only wanted a couple of reliable mechwarriors to protect a mining site. We were coming in to run the I.E. Security contracting with plans to make purchases in the Inner Sphere."

"Right. Well detached commands, and units are nothing unusual. The realities of the succession wars, just so that we have the paperwork in order, so Robinson doesn't create any confusion."

Precentor Killos's face gave a twitch of impatience, "Get on with it Paul." and from his tone, and the presence Killos must have felt he needed to be present despite, well Gene was willing to bet money that most likely Precentor Elidere never interacted with the MRB on a regular basis... and had probably sharply changed that habit over the last couple weeks.

Another throat clearing, "Well, so this," he flipped through three sheets, "Outlines the transport of students, and other personnel aboard an AFFS dropship, via JumpShip to Robinson, it includes JumpShip fees, docking, accommodations, all the food, room and board. All standard, this is boiler plate." Not what Killos necessarily wanted to hear, but it was true. This was barely any different to space lift contracts that Friar Tuck had drawn up back on Luxen. The rates were higher per DropShip but that might have been market driven, and there was probably more demand for Docking Collars right now.

Whatever the case nothing here was anything unusual. It would be a simple matter of talking to Pasha and having him allocate a dropcollar to either Colorado, or Lebanon.

The second batch of papers were final clearing out of the original I.E. Contract. The other half of payment, and of course the hazard pay for actually deploying into combat. The transport and berthing fees for Abner's Atlas to Ford included, and were already signed off on by a Lyran backed banking institution out of New Kyoto. "I'll pass this to Pasha, and let him handle cargo, and settling," The Lebanon's captain was the senior of the two squids, and better to leave JumpShip, and Dropship allocations to them. "Whats this one?"

"Finder's fee, and legislation from the Federated Suns." Paul clarified, "That Duchy of Elidere," He flipped two pages, and highlighted the section of the paper's start, "The Draconis Marcher lord on Robinson," started the tail end of the three, "and the office of the first prince. Mr Ford, representing Interstellar Expedition, says that there might salvage in the ocean according to filing, but given the state of martial law its unlikely further archaeological ventures will be permitted through the year."

The details of the find were... well it made him queasy in other ways. Disclosing the 63rd​ Mechanized Infantry Division depot would end the rumors about what had happened to it, and it did make a certain amount of sense that every level of the Fed Suns would want a piece of what was found. That was admitting to finding regular army equipment.

"There is one other matter."

"Yes?"

"it is normally customary," Oh boy, that was never a good sign, "To allow captured mechwarriors to ransom themselves. Family mechs are generally offered to be ransomed back to their houses, most of the defeated mechs belong to the Combine proper."

Killos grimaced, but Gene stopped him, "Is the Atlas a family mech? Samsonov's mech, I was considering keeping that one," The duke had expressed an issue in buying its salvage shares out, nothing quite said tweaking the invader's nose like taking their equipment. "Major Hashiba's Stalker?"

There was a pause, "The Stalker is a family mech, are you willing to remit an offer to ransom it back,"

"If they don't bite led the davions know its available." House Vandenburg wanted the battalion commander's mech. "I've got a catapult I need to rebuild as it is, and I need to train Mechwarriors for the unit anyway." ... as soon as he said it he regretted adding that remark to the official record, because it was probably going into a file somewhere.

--
The massive siege doors opened, to admit the forty odd vehicles returning to the bays, "Holy shit." A labyrinthe of gantries, and ramps, elevators set into polygonal cubbyholes. "This is huge."

Tristan's ghostly voice chuckled, "This is but an outpost, Captain Alexander."

"A castle Brian is intended to be able to service whole brigades." They were here to reintern the drones on Elidere. ... apparently Tristans machinery could fabricate spare parts, and ammunition.... admittedly Gauss rifle ammunition was pretty simply, but there were limits to other things. To the best of their knowledge the circle of who knew about the Outpost Dumnonia. Tristan has specifically invalidated, two centuries earlier units planning to desert with Kerensky, a list which had only expanded thanks to IE's much more complete list of units that had gone onto the Exodus.

"You have the updated list?" Gene asked.

"I do."

"Revoke." He intoned.... and with that single command all SLDF units known to have survived the dissolution of the Star League and had either remained on Terra, or had joined a successor state ... or gone mercenary wouldn't have valid access credentials. Tristan believed he could repair most of the damaged systems and lock everything down. Anyone attempting access would need Hegemony Intelligence Credentials... and hopefully he was just being paranoid about anyone trying... and Tristan was capable of hearing out an argument... so if someone did come out of a stasis pod... well that'd been different. "I'll be back in a couple minutes."

"Yeah, we'll stay here, and not touch any thing." Septim replied still treating the whole base like was some haunted tomb.

CID's Annex was one part communications bunker... but frankly that was somewhat less useful without an HPG connection. Star League Comm Network, the HPG network that was in the contemporary era operated by ComStar as a successor to the Ministry of Communications had been part of the Mother Doctrine designed to maximize the influence, and soft power of the Terran Hegemony. As part of the Hegemony Nuclear options destruction of the HPG network in part or in full could be triggered either by officers of the Central Intelligence Division, or the highest echelons of the ministry of communication. Unfortunately those capable of issuing those orders had all be killed in much of the early decapitation strikes against the Hegemony during the coup, in no small part to orders from Richard Cameron, and signed by Kerensky to allow Rim World troops into Hegemony facilities, like the castles on New Dallas, and elsewhere.

"Commander?"

Gene placed the BattleRom into the projector, "Start analysis."

The clip played, "This is most unusual."

"I've run the warbook for what they call the Imp," and nothing turned up, "2 PPCs, LRM 15, five Meds," Medium Lasers, "But the other hundred tonner is an Annihilator," A downteched version but that actually raised more questions than it answered.

"Which entered prototyping just before Operation Liberation. Entering production in 2779 shortly after the Liberation of Terra. It would have carried LBX 10, and a suite of pulse lasers." The AI replied.

... and as far as the Inner Sphere had been concerned a decade prior with when five pristine regiments of BattleMechs had shown they hadn't even known what they were. The Imp was certainly a product of design doctrines and trends... Kerensky, it made sense. "Given the state of their battle mechs and their Hephaestus station, and the likelihood that it is a black box manufacturing center, Wolfs Dragoons are -"

"The descendants of Kerensky's deserters, I have pulled their officer files, a Kerensky, N. Commands this newly formed Black Widow Company," Kerensky as a name was circumstantial evidence at best, "I would need a genetic sample to confirm."

Gene doubted he'd be able to get one of those, "Options, and recommendations? Speculation." He added.

"Their appearance in 3005 is, anomalous. Their equipment and general bearing highly suspicious, the implication from that disposition is that they had no current Intel, or very limited intelligence on the Inner Sphere. The Exodus Route as Doctor Abner refers to it terminates on the now abandoned world of Gutara. They could have continued coreward of the Caliban Nebula, there were estimations from the League satellite based telescopic network, observations suggested that there might life sustaining worlds beyond it, but given the distance no attempts to confirm were mounted prior to the Coup." A pause, "Apologies Commander, I have insufficient information to provide effective advice on these Wolfs Dragoons."

Well it had been worth a shot to ask. That left really only the last matter, handing the AI the incomplete details of what they knew.. The combine had just lost one of its sixty something mech regiments, or about roughly 1.5 % of its overall Mech Regiment strength. In other arms that would have been less in away of an expense, but where as combat vehicles like tanks and IFVs could be produced like way back in the 20th​ century the venerable internal combustion engine the realities of density and energy weapons meant fusion engines were part of the factored in expense of BattleMechs.

"If these numbers are accurate," That was the AFFS having nearly eighty mech regiments, not including mercs, or other irregular forces, "I would consider it highly likely that a Federated Suns offensive would be launched. The most obvious strategically sensible motion, would be across frontage or against specific high value worlds."

.... The Terran Corridor.

But that was for the FedSuns. Loosing an entire mech regiment to a world might vrey well be enough of a slap to the combine's ego that they felt the need to retaliate... and that made Elidere a very likely target. Especially with the expected disclosure of finding the 63rd's depot. "Recommendations for defense of the planet?"

"The 63rd​ Mechanized Infantry Division Depot's self destruct mechanism should be intact-"

"No,"

"The remaining stocks could be stripped from the facility before-"

"Tristan the self destruct on that facility is a megaton scale nuke," He replied, "Even if the Combine drops a whole fresh regiment of," For example, "Sword of Light a nuclear strike could potential convince both sides to start throwing cans of instant sunshine around."

Unlike in the case of a Castle the... detonation of the base's self destruct would be significantly more obvious as a nuke going off. Some of DOME castle designs barely gave any indication outside of the immediate local area if destroyed intentionally, they just folded in as the structural supports blew out, "Stripping the facility should be a priority, relocating material offworld would significantly devalue the facility. Potentially creating propaganda material demonstrating the facility was empty, or being repurposed might reduce value of a strike sufficiently enough that one might not be mounted."

It was better than a nuke exploding up through a mass of carboniferous limestone, and causing who knew what ecological damage, "There is one other thing, I need to log an update. 131st​ Division, Query JumpShip losses bearing supply," He uploaded the picture of the Cairo, from the Sam Houston's database, "Cause of lose unspecified Combine sabotage."

"Logged." A pause, "Date of recovery?"

"... officially it was recovered recently. It has been put back into service as a JumpShip." The Azami had found it misjumped into a dead system in Combine space but actual recovery operations had probably only begun during Hurgai Kurita's reign, when Pasha had been a boy. It taken decades to be sure the JumpShip was ready, and apparently had only reentered service before the present coordinator had come to power.

"JumpShip and DropShip cargo manifests?"

He confirmed the print order, "There were likely other 'accidents' that were not accidents. Flag any MisJumps to the Draconis Combine assigned units."

"If I may make a recommendation, it would be possible with CID command codes to override the HPG network, and broadcast the meeting between Kurita, and Amaris across the Inner Sphere."

"Comstar claims that the modern network has degraded from its SLCOMNET Capability."

"That is," Tristan paused to run calculations, "Quite likely, given the resources required, and the decline in number of HPG stations. It is also likely an override, has a statistical probability of burning out the cores of already damaged stations... but that should be an acceptable loss."

--
Notes: Alright this is (B), an addendum of sorts, so as some people are aware there is a separate Luxen II thread basically going back to flesh out some of that part of the story. That's a sidestory it doesn't really effect my update schedule, unfortunately there are other things that effect that unrelated to the story itself. However, parts 5 and 6 should still go up on time.

... and daylights savings time this weekend, fuck. Anyway, this touches on some other things.

As an aside what might happen is I may, for organizational sake redeisgnate this something like Elidere Contract Conclusion, but this mostly foreshadowing throw out to things outlined for much later.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Extra Content: Note NON CANON.
[Also this is a rough draft, but that's another matter, for kioras ]

Whoops don't mind the HPG network.​

3018 Lyran Commonwealth, New Kyoto​

Gene looked up from his plate as the news broadcast suddenly cut off, digital noise squealing through the speakers of the eatery. He bit down an expletive.... the most likely explanation was that the Civil Defense sirens were about to start wailing, and the planet was about to be invaded. The possibility seemed to have occured to other people as well. Men, and women were starting to get up from their tables, and through the transparent aluminum windows he could see people frozen in the street like deer in headlights.

Then all the screens changed, a crest appeared and a line of digital code, and then the authentication certificates that meant nothing to probably anyone but ComStar in the modern era. Jerome Blake. Alexander Kerensky. The HPG recording he must have seen a dozen or more times by now started to play... and he doubted it was just New Kyoto. It had been months since he had talked to a Star League AI... and both Dante, and Tristan had had their HPG uplinks destroyed and so hadn't been able to pipe in... so it couldn't have been them.

The Azami maybe. Maybe one of them had grabbed an override stick, and gotten into a class A, and used to it jack into the emergency broadcast system from the SLCOMNET. New Kyoto had a class A station, but he doubted it... not given the data telemetry and feeds in the bottom of the HPG footage that wasn't normally there. This was being broadcast through the entire network with presumably some kind of override into all local media... that meant some kind of malicious code.... but then given how few people had bothered to actually remove the JumpShip, and DropShip network systems override from their computers that didn't surprise him. The Star League override were in probably easily ninety percent of all JumpShips that were plying the routes ... as he had found out inspecting the nav computers on one of the Combine JumpShips that had since been ransomed back to the DCA after Dieron had fallen to the Fed Suns.

The problem here though was that those overrides only shut the system down until it could rebooted or a Star League override was provided on the lock. There was no direct harm. The numbers in the bottom stream were things like heat monitors on a cpu... and not good numbers. IF Gene were to guess from the Network Connections numbers this was the first time in possibly centuries that ComStar had had the whole network connected in one stream... and their modern network simply wasn't built for that.

If Gene were going to guess those dropping connections were probably Cat B stations out in the periphery who's stations were used to... the other possibility was it was the spoke stations connecting out to multiple stations beyond the middle rim... but the problem....

"Does that say this is broadcasting from Terra?" Chang asked.

"I, yeah I think so." Septim replied. "I thought maybe that was for where Amaris was broadcasting from,"

... but no the lag made sense for it be originating from Terra... and it would make sense that whatever upload and proliferation into the comms net would broadcast from Terra and radiate outward along the modern network. The numbers along the bottom were changing quicker now, which was probably a good thing... because the HPG recording was finishing up.

ComStar's modern A stations connected in normal operation sequentially to each B station in range every day, or some every twelve hours. That would have been ridiculous in the Ministry of Communication's day which would have had near constant uplink to critical Hegemony worlds most of the time, and links to the great houses', the capitals of the member states available too. In the Star League 12 hour connection was the norm for B stations to transmit... in the modern the norm was for every few days.

The HPG recording froze as it finished showing Stefan Amaris's unmistakable visage staring at the then Coordinator of the Combine, in the latter's obvious finery. Then it cut to black and a diagnostic started running. Whole swathes of the HPG network had burned out all to show a video that wasn't even twenty minutes long, of Minoru acquiescing to Stefan Amaris's demands for SLDF deployment locations, and force strengths.
--
Primus Julian Tiepolo almost stumbled back into his chair within the heart of the blessed order. His left arm felt numb, shriveled, his mouth dry, any hope that this was someone's poorly thought out attempt at a jest ... a prank... had vanished what seemed like hours ago. "The damage?" He managed."

"The," Germanium "core burned itself out, primus." Someone had betrayed the order. It was the only logical explanation. Julian knew he had been a compromise candidate after Russtein's tenure as head of the order. He was terrified of the prospect. "That was the last of the HPGs on Terra, we're still investigating the secondary broadcast that started but it infected all of our stations and as a result burned out the cores." The robed man's report was growing increasingly shaky as he started to repeating himself.

The primus waved for him to shut up. Starting to panic wasn't going to help. The loss of Terra's HPG was bad, but not utterly catastrophic. "Were we able to confirm the diagnostic?"

"It appears to be a valid diagnostic of the network." Never mind it had been of a kind that the Primus, nor anyone else here had seen... it wasn't mentioned at all in the Blessed Blake's recordings on HPG functions. The Entire network transmitting at once... apparently that wasn't supposed to happen for good reason. "The damage doesn't seem to have been intentional, a byproduct of running so many connections at once... we can reasonably speculate that the transmission involved both distribution of the media, as well as playing it through the uplink across connected networks. The diagnostic suggests that a disproportionate number of HPG stations that ceased to return 'ping' function of the test were in the Draconis Combine."


--
Luthien was in chaos. There could be no other description. The harmony of the palace was shattered... and even with the order to invoke martial law it would take time to restore it. Kurita Takashi was livid behind his stone cold mask of court... he had had to act quickly as they had figured out what was taking place.

The DCMS had taken too long to bring artillery up, forcing him to rely on the even less elegant solution of leaving matters to the DCA... but the HPG station of Luthien was now destroyed. His Otomo, and other units of the ISF were even now roving through the capital, and soon across the planet looking for any more traitors. The Admiralty had orders to impound all jumpships and execute any member of ComStar summarily.

He had seen the footage before of course, the former Primus of ComStar had lied claiming it was the only copy... why it had taken the treacherous vermin this long to act escaped him... but it was now out there. The Combine would need every JumpShip, ever dropship and every BattleMech and every loyal samurai to do their duty the war against the dragon was so much greater than any previous conflict.
--
Note: This was not a planned update, this is a case of I'm bored, I'm going to post a scrap of something that I know I'm not going to use its just extra content. Sunday there will be a normal update.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Davion Travel time interlude
#1​

Hoff, Zenith Jump Point.
Summer 3017
Lebanon's crews were currently running a safety stand down in preparation to deploy the jump sail and begin recharge of the capacitors that allowed the K-F drive to 'Jump'. Ford's DropShip had finished separation and was, the drive fired as it reached safe distance and started its trip towards the planet. "Do you know what he's going for?"

"I don't." He replied to Pasha's question. Ford had said he'd find his own way back with his personnel at the last minute. I.E. had paid for the contract as if they were going with the whole crew, and Ford hadn't asked for a refund or anything, he was just leaving with the dig crew. "He told us to go on without him, can you find another DropShip looking to go to Robinson?"

The captain sipped his tea, "Probably so, " It was clear the old captain wasn't happy with Ford's abrupt detour with most of the IE personnel but he accepted there was nothing to do about it and especially not with Ford's dropship burning towards the planet. "I was under the impression their destination was on Bristol.."

"So was I." Gene said sitting down, they still had Abner and maybe a quarter of the other I.E. People in another civilian DropShip. The Professor still intended to go for Bristol, or so he had said, "Have there been any other developments?" He said hedging to the real matter.

He gave a heavy sigh, "but that isn't what I wanted to talk about," There was a printout from a K series Fax Machine on the table. Pasha had expressed his disappointment after he'd been debriefed... after they had all debriefed about their respective commands' adventures... not getting to see the outpost, "Our friends in Rasalhague have been apprised of the victory at Elidere."

He raised an eyebrow, and looked at the printout, "There are limits to those things, so I assume they're using the HPG network." and never mind that people probably would gossip, that meant a dispersal of the news that could increase significantly as it spread. "Leaving aside, how, what is probably the more important question to ask... What does that mean?"

"The present coordinator is a tactically astute leader, if one prone to suspicion, and mistrust, I expect we will see a wave of repression as the realization mounts." The loss of a Mech Regiment on the Davion border might have been better planned for if the Combine had been launching some sort of direct offensive, Samsonov leading his unit into destruction on what should have been a typical raid... wasn't, "The community of elders believe that we should prepare to make another exodus to the periphery, before it becomes too late."

He paused, "What about the Azami who stay behind, that paints a target on their back if Takashi," and defaulting to using the Coordinator's given name casually wasn't the best habit, or necessarily polite, "starts purging people, even if he starts in Rasalhague."

"This is known, we will exercise caution, but we hope to be ready to depart Al-Nair by the pilgrimage season."

Gene gave him a blank look, "Get me a time table, and some idea of what to expect," Al Nair wasn't exactly a Terran corridor planet but it wasn't out of the realm of possibility that the Fed Suns might attack it.

"Its precisely that, we are counting on a Federated Suns Invasion, the present coordinator's paranoia is not misplaced, many have attempted to take his life within the combine, and with the recording of his ancestor's betrayal and memories of Kentares remain strong on both side of the border." He put the tea cup down, "If we are lucky then we can convince many to uproot themselves from their homes before the storm comes... but I expect many will wish to remain. Our friends in Rasalhague have pointedly refused to abandon their worlds, still dreaming of independence... but I fear they'd end up as nothing but a buffer state between two successor states... condemned to be ablative armor between the Lyrans and the Combine."


"Its twenty jumps to the periphery from periphery easy, that's not even counting the trek out." and with a pointed pause, "I was under the impression you wanted to maintain secrecy."

"There is a point where the risk of atrocity outweighs the long term need for discretion, it is very likely that this will draw attention from others besides the Dragon. There is another matter, besides... if our families were not under threat from the dragon's servants, there are an abundance of young warriors who would then be free to fight under banner of freedom... and given Elidere the Dragon is unlikely to forget its defeat."
--
There wasn't all that much to do during JumpShip transit. Jump, wait for sail to charge, Jump, repeat until you to where you were going and could detach the DropShip from the JumpShips and then it was more waiting as it usually took a couple days to make it to the planet you were going to do, but it was still different. Right now different would have been nice, he could have done with different he really hoped that Pasha wasn't talking about ... about what? The Rasalhague, and Azami planets in the combine kicking off a full scale rebellion? It didn't sound like it, and he wasn't sure how wide spread the tape of the deal with the devil had gotten. They obviously hadn't done what Tristan wanted done, and blasted it all over public space... but if the AI had wanted to do that to maximize the disruption it caused to Combine status in the short term... how long before someone tried that without the technical systems necessary... and what would the response of that be from the other successor states.

He finished stretching and glanced sideways. "So what is ford doing?"

"He thinks he might be able to dig something up," Abner replied, "I really thought it would be better to wait, but he is bound and determined."

Dig up what was the question, Abner's response had been somewhat evasive, "I thought you were going to Bristol to dig?"

An exasperated sigh, "Yes," The doctor shook his head, "I believe Bristol is more likely to yield real results than here, but and I've told him as such... but he is bound and determined.... and he has a point Hanse Davion is a nice young man, but when he makes a decision, well he's going to want 'those stars in his hand'. So I suspect we will see a very impressive declaration, or attack if not this year, than next."

"This is about good will from the first prince?"

"That's one way of looking at it, bluntly Mr Ford should not have any trouble finding you work in the Federated Suns if we're somehow wrong about an invasion of the combine," He paused a moment, blew out a breath, "but well, I would say now would be a good time to start making big investments." Abner paused, "If I might, your reluctance to settle in, in any successor states makes sense, especially given what we know of House Kurita's behavior, and the Mariks hardly cover, none of the Great Houses covered themselves in glory after the downfall of the Star League... but a permanent base of operations in the Inner Sphere would probably be something to plan for. This is not is not the Star League, where rebuilding a Mech Regiment can simply be done by fishing out spares from some depot and furnishing newly graduated pilots."

Gene nodded to the old man's advice, "If Sandoval is willing to sign off on it, I'm going to grab whatever whoever I can hire, whatever DropShips and crew I can, and run an abbreviated SLDF MechWarrior course."

"Is that what you were doing with Tristan?"

"What, oh no," The AI had actually made him sit through, "I ran the staff officer's paper exam, and the brigade level tactical operations course." Both were like six hour two part exams, "The course work is Regular Army, Robinson will have simulators."

"Yes, House Sandoval had invested quite heavily in the battle academy, I daresay its a very Lyran thing to do," Abner replied with a shrug, "But what will you do then?"

"Run everyone at all level of skills through the same, run debriefs on who did what why, and discourse on what informed those decisions." The bigger problem was the question of how to run armor in that scenario, Robison apparently has infantry and armor schools, but I don't know how much support for non battleMech arms will be provided." The use of drones had been a key part in their victory, but drones by themselves hadn't been the exclusive. "High mobility and stand off capability is critical to a maneuver environment," It wouldn't work in an urban situation, not in built up urban fighting... and that did still happen in the succession wars. He shook his head, "It'll really depend on what it is that Robinson wants out of this."

"What do you think?"

"I think they want to know if it can be replicated, and to distribute as much experience as possible, either into local training and doctrine, or at a federal level ahead of a major offensive."

"Do you know very much about the current First Prince, about Hanse Davion?"

"I know he's the reason Bard kept making fox jokes."

"Let me tell you about Ian Davion, the Prince's brother, and his predecessor."
--
Notes: This is an interlude and basically a we're travelling across the sea SPACE, FtL hops take time in BT.
And in Whoops divergence from the timeline even though its non canon, well we'll talk about that when Yvvone shows up next chapter.

 

[Imperator Pax]

I Davion Part 5
(Segment A)​

July 3017
Robinson
The Sam Houston had touched down, it had been a month since they had departed Elidere IV, and he was glad to be off the JumpShip, and setting foot on Terra Firma, even if Baffins hadn't landed yet. "Good afternoon," The fifty something year old woman with the entourage remarked in a cordial if still commanding tone.

"Ma'am."

"You are Colonel Shepherd." It wasn't really a question, there was no question the woman in the tailored conservative long jacket, and pantsuit.

"I am."

She glanced once at the pinned eagles on his collar, "I am Field Marshal, Yvonne Davion," the newly identified flag officer gave a polite English smile and turned, "This," She indicated a pretty young mocha skinned woman in court finery, "Is her ladyship the countess of Kestral, Lady Alexandria will be your official liaison with the Federated Suns for as long as you're with us."

Gene got the feeling either something had happened, or that the nine week training gig Robinson had suggested was a little more than that. A feeling that mounted as the staff car, and procession left the star port of the planetary capital in silence. The ride took the better part of an hour, and did eventually bring them to the ducal palace where the duke waited. Even in a wheel chair the duke was a formidable looking man with a still largely unlined face, and whose biceps would have looked more natural on a twenty something marine non com than the ruler of a planet, and certainly not one now in his later fifties. "Welcome to Robinson, Colonel." The duke's handshake reflected the size of his muscles, firm, though not attempting to crush his.

"Thank you, your grace." Gene replied, wondering if he shouldn't have double checked to make sure that was the correct way to refer to a duke of the Federated Suns. The duke wheeled his chair around and gave them a tour through the halls, with a narrated history of his realm, and its relationship with the Combine. The Draconis March was to anyone present, from the duke's perspective the single most important front of the succession war, and protecting it against draconic predation, and the infinite avarice and wrothful pride of the gluttonous coordinators had provided them with the opportunity to strike back.

All of that rhetoric aside, and while it was clear that this wasn't just hot air from the pulpit, it was clear that the duke wasn't just saying this for them. The field marshal's presence was probably not something he'd counted on.. and if Abner hadn't explained the present royal house and significance of the Prince's Champion Gene wasn't sure he would have recognized it immediately. Sandoval must have reached some kind of agreement with the First Prince, and the broader AFFS , but whatever it was they weren't going to tell him yet.

After a good twenty minutes of walking through the ornate halls of Castle Sandoval they reached a massive hall two floors down from where they had started with guardsmen protecting the door, and inside was obviously some kind of strategic map room, and command center... probably the duke's lair on any ordinary day, or at least when he wasn't holding court.

The doors closed and locked behind them leaving them in a cavernous, if well lit, room built to seat probably hundreds of people, that felt empty with a retinue of merely twenty or so, most silent aids, or batmen waiting for fetch and carry assignments. Yvonne Davion spared a querying look to the duke, who bobbed his head.

"Well, its certainly true events on Elidere provide us an opportunity that we never considered having." She admitted, "And the First Prince does absolutely consider it necessary to capitalize on it. General Samsonov had spent the last year and a half raiding the border, and while he never had any astounding successes he won more than he lost and out performed other combine raiders. His successes against several units had already underscored an interest in study," Which was the ultimate reason why the field marshal had been 'in the neighborhood'. Units that originally the duke had wanted pulled back to learn, were being pulled back ... well to learn, but also to refit and rearm in the face of a planned Davion offensive over the border.

"its not false pretenses. The official contract will involve a teaching position," Cadre duty, "At the battle academy full lodgings and technical support will be made available at Tiberias. Completely discretion to run the course with whatever resources you need," Within reason of course went unsaid, there were always limits, but the Duke's delivery had the energy of a waterfall, excited at the prospect of what might come of it, "However its preparation for the real work."

"In September you will leave for New Avalon," Yvonne cut in, "A meeting with the first prince, the Davion Guards, and the Eridani Light Horse. The objectives will be outlined there and we will begin final prepositioning for the offensive next spring."

The duke if he objected to being interrupted didn't show it, "We intend to bleed the Combine, ideally we will be able to cut them off entirely from the Terran Corridor, in order to bring that about I am prepared to offer any assistance. Your unit will have access to the Academy's personnel, access to staff, students graduates, the industry of the entire march in order to prepare the brigade for action. Hire who you need to, purchase what needs to be purchased, make whatever preparations you need to."
--
Robinson was functionally a second earth in many ways, a lesson made all the clearer by the ride back from the Ducal Palace to meet with the rest of the unit. Significant efforts had been made by terran colonists in the early centuries to settle the planet and spread terran animals and fauna across the surface, and they had thrived. As a result Robison was a jewel of a world... and even if it had been a harsher existence it still made sense that the Duke would want to protect his home.

The official offensive was to be considered secret information. Until the brigade, as they were being called, was stood up and ready they weren't going to be told the official target even assuming that decision had been made... but they were going to attack somewhere over the border, and in Sandoval's mind they should be attack a lot of somewheres.

"So that's the situation." He finished. They were not actually getting a land hold... the duke probably wanted them to permanently settle somewhere on Robinson, but there were politics involved, well beyond the Draconis March. The Duke, and Field Marshal Davion had had some heated words over the Capellan March that Gene had only caught bits and pieces of , but on top of that the First Prince was probably at some level looking to avenge his brother and the previous First Prince by militarily crushing the combine with an offensive that he could put his name to. "this will not be like on Luxen most of these students have experience in mechs," and with that in mind he was hoping that they would be able to spend the bare minimum on basic mech operations, unless there was some egregious error. "But there is the issue of politics all the same. The Duke of Rio's son is here, and his father has insisted to Lord Aaron that junior be given the opportunity to trial for a position with the brigade." ... and to say that Gene was not thrilled about that particular missive was... well an understatement. "I haven't met him yet, but chances are we're going to get a lot of people all around trying to showoff... and I doubt Lord Castro is going to be the last noble who wants us to give their boy a shot. We are going to disperse paper work first and foremost on Mech weight, we will go to mech roles later."

"What about a DropShip?" Septim asked, "I heard something about a dropship?"

"Yes, Lord Sandoval is giving us an Overlord that has been in his family since the 1st​ Succession war. It officially in recognition for services to the Draconis March," And he'd be damned if he didn't have the Maguanac tecs go over that with a fine toothed comb, "Its called the Hidalgo," which was ... could made to work with his preference for naming Ships, even if one of the duke's ancestors had literally named it after his childhood horse... "it was built by Boeing Interstellar," what was now Federated Boeing. "I'm told its been some what modified, and is in good condition. The idea is to use it punish the combine..." For Great Justice... Lord Sandoval's son was... very dramatic, more so than his father was, but it probably did run in the family. Which meant that they had one dropship slot out of their twelve... well inside Baffins, and Sam Houston... so really it was one more dropship out of their twelve filled. "The duke is going to be making a public ceremony... holiday out of it to commemorate the defeat of the Galedonians on Elidere." He glanced at the clock, "That will be Friday... which probably be a problem for like seventy percent of the company. "If you need something dress wear, that isn't a uniform, I would suggest going after we finish. It doesn't have to be bespoke, but tailors, and some hemming wouldn't be out of line. Moving back, an emphasis is going to be on Medium and Heavy Mech use, Bubbles we're rebuilding the Atlas still, and by preference I'd rather you handle any assault course operations." The Stalker they had had to leave on Elidere, which in hindsight he somewhat regretted... but maybe Lord Vandenburg would be happy.... or maybe he'd end up breaking it again if it ended up with one of Hashiba's relatives.
--
With his own MechWarriors sent off to handle their own affairs That left him to return to meet up the Field Marshal and the Lady... the duke had a march to run after all. "Just so that you understand that House Davion's concerns are for the entire Federated Sun's safety." Yvonne remarked in a clipped tone.

The Prince's Champion dominated the Davion side of the discussion, which somewhat flew in the face of the introduction at the Star port this morning. It had only been ten hours since then so maybe it was that the Field Marshal knew she had somewhere else to be.

"To start with from an operational standpoint, killing Samsonov prevented the reinforcing 3rd​ battalion from coordinating with the remnants of first. Fighting 2/19," 2nd​ Battalion, 19th​ Galedon Regulars, "Was for the majority of the engagement fought Combine terms as individual mech duels it was only on the realization of in bound davion reinforcements that that was breached by first a lance leader and then the surviving unengaged company commander. All three battalion engagements involved combined arms of BattleMechs, Tanks, Artillery and other combat vehicles." He caught the skeptical looks from various Davion officers who's only real purpose seemed to be to sit in the chairs down the table and look stoic.

Yvonne nodded, "I've reviewed the battlefield reports. Artillery in particular was used to suppress enemy forces and disrupt the coordination between enemy mechs," Particularly in dealing with light and heavy mechs with significantly different overland speeds, "and significant effort was employed using harassing units to prevent the enemy from regaining their initiative. Most of the actual kills were conducted by a handful of MechWarriors."

"That's an accurate summation." It felt like a concession. There had been combine mechs destroyed by vehicle kills, both manned tanks, and drones, "And if you're looking for MechWarrior preparation focused on direct engagement, thats feasible. The operational art involved at Elidere was fundamentally a combined arms one, it was that combined arms which kept causalities low." He stopped himself, before he turned that into a winding justification about how low unit casualties improved sustainment in the field... there wasn't a point in trying to go into that.

"But you can replicate these kinds of operations?"

Don't exaggerate, don't elaborate... don't bore them with the details. "Yes." The explicit question had not after all been can you kill another combine regiment, it had been can you run the operation... and at a battalion level he had been since they'd come back from Alamut with the Azami in tow... so the answer was yes.

The conversation meandered from there, until it slowly, eventually wrapped around to the matter he had broached with Chang regarding the Atlas. The lack of Assault Mech drivers... and that was where Blackwell Industries of New Valencia came in.
--
Notes: This has been cut roughly in half, we are on Robinson, I'm posting this today (monday), it sets groundwork for some other material, Sunday will be the normal update and carry with Part B.

Onto some other matters: "Whoops there goes the HPG Network" will probably not get its own thread... and I'm not going to pull a With This Ring and have two main timelines running concurrent to one another, but I do want to talk about that.
Spoilers for that.

Spoiler: Whoops

So Whoops as a story idea diverges roughly speaking in about a year from present in story, the New Kyoto eatery scene and the rest occurs in mid 3018 when in what we shall call the main timeline the plan to return to the Periphery is still being prepared. This is the chapter 'Exodus'.

Now the principle difference that occurs after the broadcast in outline terms is that due to knock on effects we get the FedCom early, now what I mean by that is the Archon (Katrina Steiner) had already been considering the peace proposal that canonically she would send in a year and change (and canonically she had started considering the peace proposal in 3015, but I'd have to go back through some stuff). Regardless, the Combine bluntly goes off the deep end as a result of a combination of the footage directly, the damage to the HPG network, and then the reprisals that start that summer.

[Also the Wolfs Dragoons sign on with the Commonwealth, because the Clanner Reaction to knowledge any great house collaborated with the usurper is probably going to be significantly more magnified than even your average person in BT].

So among other things this cues up introducing Rasalhague earlier in the timeline, which as Pasha mentions gives the Commonwealth a nice buffer state in the middle, the Azami revolt en masse. Teddy ends up Coordinator but also outs ComStar as having been trying to coerce his father (back under Primus Russtein, the guy who Tiepolo replaced, andalso the guy responsible for the Jolly Roger affair). The Combine survives but looses a lot of territory (and unlike in canon BT) would never really get that back. The road is set for the FedCom here earlier than in canon (or in main timeline).

Gene and company largely swap to being full time Davion troops here. The HPG net being much more patchy means JumpShips are even more important, and eventually results in Volgadon's library being brought back from Aquagea and distributed between the two states of the FedCom, plus the Azami and Rasalhague.

 

[Imperator Pax]

I Davion Part 5
(Segment B)​

Gene had a shopping list that was metaphorically a mile long. Part of that diversity was more ... well was grounded in the fact that he didn't expect to be able to purchase more of the Tokugawa tanks that the Magunacs had. Then there was the matter of what the FedSuns produced normally, what was on market at present, what could be reasonably be shipped either to here, or to New Avalon. It was a lengthy list... and of course there was the matter of San Saba as a triumph-class could be modified to deploy BattleMechs or ASF if they came to that. With the way the DropShip Market was there were significant aftermarket involvement in addition to people posted what was available in catalogs through, in the case of the Draconis March, march wide.

The shopping list was also effected by another factor. The victory at Elidere by itself, not even accounting for the completion of the 19th's destruction on the sands of Ander's moon, won lots of good will, and the possibility that that sort of victory could be recreated was credit. Political capital was another good description.

Gene tapped the rotate on the projector, one hundred tons, familiar PPCs, Medium lasers, and engine. The Marauder II as had debuted on New Valencia in 3012. In a lot of ways it made sense for the hundred tonner to be a version of the Davion's Marauder version, replacing the persnickety GM Whirlwind with a Magna Mk III Large Laser. It would do. Convincing the New Valencia based corporation to produce more, and to produce an order of vehicles was not something the AFFS saw as any kind of difficulty.

The perceived obvious appeal of the Marauder II with its increase to Assault chassis was not shared by the new and perceived unproven vehicles... "If you're certain they'll help." Which got them to the nuts and bolts of the matter... the contract. There objectives that the Federated Suns as a polity hoped to achieve. All of the Successor States wanted to be top dog, no surprise there. The way you usually graded a cadre contract's success was how well its students performed after, and that usually determined whether or not you rehired the unit, or of if you changed the coursework. For Yvonne Davion that training was minutiae that wasn't her responsibility, "It'll take months in order to purchase them, I don't know if I can assure they'll be available by the time you reach New Avalon."

"I planned to go the Northwind faire," a biannual hiring and networking Convention for all conventional description, "Obviously I won't be able to make this summer, but the one at the start of the year, will I have time for that before the offensive?"

"You should yes. Prepositioning and reallocation of units will take time. We can station you on Northwind to continue training the brigade before hand." Which brought them into the matter, Field Marshal Davion continued, "His grace," The Duke of Robinson, "Is insistent that the Academy cadre participates." Not a surprise this had been talked about. Not in any detail, but Lord Aaron had made it all too clear that the honor of the Draconis March was at stake if they didn't participate in the offensive. "The form that participation will entail remains to be determined, but their success in achieving objectives, and effectiveness against the enemy will be a priority."

He took a sip of the coffee, "I understand." He put the Battle Academy embossed mug back on the faculty table with a clink, "Two months here, are they coming to new Avalon?"

"No, Colonel Cameron will take over the course work, before we begin pre positioning of forces." It would still take three months to get from New Avalon to Northwind.

Gene considered taking another drink, "What happens if the Combine comes over the border in interim. If their response to Elidere is to mount a hastily prepared offensive, will we counterattack as an ersatz force, or -?" He left the comment hang.

Yvonne Davion smiled, sparing a glance to the Countess of Kestrel, "the prospect of an immediate riposte would be dependent on where the attack was launched from. The Eridani Light Horse is presently on Colchester, if the Combine attacks in the Draconis March you will join them for a planned offensive over the border. In such an event you are to destroy whatever DCMS forces as possible, a bounty for any battlemech formations rendered ineffective paid out. Preferably we would like the salvage in order to deny it to the enemy."

--
Among the very earliest acts the Usurper had under taken was the nuclear attack on Mecca soon after his seizure of power It had been one in a litany of atrocities the Satan Amaris, and his despoilers had wreaked upon humanity.

Islam had already been behind most of the other peoples of the book, between the plagues of the 21st​ century, both literal and metaphorical Yusuf had known his ancestors had had to contend that the majority of the faithful had been among the most loath to leave the earth. The advent of the Kearny-Fuchida drive had sparked some interest and novelty, but it also been an unconscionable expense. The wealthy sunni dominated emirates had invested their sovereign wealth funds to colonize worlds like Rigil Kentaurus, rights granted to them by the western government for their support of the early colonization, but those colonies had only demonstrated the hurdles of conservatives to fulfil the pillars. How exactly did one pray towards the holy city in space, never mind when one was on another planet entirely... for that matter it was much more difficult to maintain the calendar and keep track of the holy days, and travel for the Hajj if one normally lived on another planet.

... and all of those concerns had deterred most conservative Sunnis from straying too far from the bosom of Terra... and that was long before the terrors of the satan Amaris had destroyed the holy cities, and devastated wide swathes of the mother world... and of course the whole Hegemony had suffered under the tyrant's yoke.

Adherents to the doctrines of Sunni Islam remained the majority of the faithful of course, they had started with a much larger population base to begin with, and could be found across the Inner Sphere... and it was true the various sub schools that broadly comprised Shia Islam were also more fractious to begin with. Still, it could easily be said that the Shia adherents, particularly the Azami had been better suited to thrive in the post Exodus of Earth, and weather the conditions of the down fall of the Star League better than most.

"You look bothered." Colonel Shepherd's voice cut through the ward room's silence. Truthfully he had been so distracted that he hadn't even noticed the mechwarrior pad in.

"It is nothing colonel." Which was a blatant transparent lie, and the younger of the two jumpship captains was hasty in trying to change the subject. "Are you particularly religious colonel?"

"Not particularly."

Yusuf nodded, "There are disagreements," which sounded like an understatement, "there always have been there are those who do not wish to leave their homes, and those who believe the correct decision will be to join the Rasalahagians in their struggle openly against the dragon's betrayal, and greed."

Pasha was presently somewhere in the planetary capital negotiating shipping contracts as a follow on to what they had been doing before Elidere had blown up. In the modern age with jumpships being effective inviolable due to... well the first one in particular, but the second as well, that meant taking tea with other JumpShips to gossip over tea. Especially with the way the Davions were now spamming the Elidere IV battle Roms all over the media since they had got in the previous morning ahead of what was looking to be a pretty significant public holiday.

"The federated suns," and Pasha had mentioned this as well, "Have a historical distrust of our people. The long tide of the succession wars, has fueled this on both sides" Yusuf made a gesture, "Us not so much, but I would have concerns how the Suns would react to an Azami free state on their border, or even simply to our dependents, or rather the dependents fleeing the combine, while others fight."

"I wanted to ask about that."

"The unit will be fine, truthfully we have so few Mechwarriors," Bahar, but, "with us that it isn't an issue. Not being required to attend will leave those who wish to attend Friday prayers time to do so, at least aboard ship."

They were interrupted, as the senior tech came through the door, "Ah boss, we're ready to test the ammo we turned out for that auto cannon."
--
Yvonne Davion's job description as Prince's Champion was to manage affairs that the First Prince wasn't available or suited to handle. In a sense she was a gate keeper of sorts. It was her singular most important job, but it wasn't her only job. Even before becoming head of the department of military intelligence's studies section, the ASD, she had recommended combined arms.

There was a difference between making recommendations, and watching, for the umpteenth time, a smaller combined arms force basically murder an entire BattleMech Regiment over the span of a couple of weeks. Even suggesting that such a thing was possible to her professors at Albion would have been enough to have her laughed out of the hall... and yet the facts were what they were.

So she was to analyze and speculate. "In my experience, commanders who manage to accidentally win, tend to bluster about how it was all according to plan, or they're less frequently upfront about it." She replied to the question over whether the whole affair could have been an accident, "And you don't just accidentally dismember entire battalions, with only a handful of your own dead to show for it." The girl, the young woman, across the table paused, "We want to keep them close. We don't know enough to offer them what we would give one of our own, and if there is the possibility that they'll accept citizenship that's hardly something we should miss. The possibility they can inflict further damage on the combine is extraordinarily valuable, and if they can repeat that damage or even to a lesser extent we benefit immensely. If the colonel is being on the level about training troops to fight as they did on Elidere then marrying him into the aristocracy of the Federated Suns should be considered a priority of national interest."

The trivid projection showed the splash of the water as the Atlas fell. The image changed to sensor reads of magnometers from theater wide as fusion engines from the armored regiment laying in wait came on line, and the artillery began to rain. The volume, not quite muted, low allowed the beginnings of the pipes and drums to play. People who blundered their way to victory generally didn't have the time or skill to get in the enemy comm system and interrupt it by signaling their attack across all frequency with a highland march after all.

There was a knock on the door, "Field Marshal," a man in the dress uniform of a captain of the Davion Brigade of Guards' general staff remarked, "The additional ROMs from the MRB, ma'am."

"Thank you Mister Durand that will be all."
--
Note: and as a notation, this is Part B, and it follows on within basically the same twenty four hour period of touch down on Robinson as the previous section. Now what is presently in the process of happening is that I'm dividing and expanding I Davion as a chapter (~32k total present word count) probably into a separate chapter for Dieron (Tentatively titled Fortress Dieron) for the battle and its fall out, while keep Northwind and New Avalon in this, and with Interlude Bristol hopefully being finished and going up some time in April.

 

[Imperator Pax]

I Davion Part 6
(A)​

Castle Sandoval's great hall was draped with flags, and pennants and all range of battle honors, some of which Gene was sure predated the Federated Suns and certainly the Star League. That wasn't the issue though, they had managed to get through the parade to the castle, but the previous day's orientation, for lack of a better word, was having knock on effects.

Gene spared a look between the two Davion mech warriors as they bristled at each other. Not a great start. Jason Castro, call sign 'King Wolf'... which Gene was willing to bet money he'd selected himself, was the first born son of the Duke of Rio. His daddy was currently making small talk over hor d'oeuvres with his friend the Duke of Robinson... why exactly Jason had attended RBA and not a school... well somewhere like say Albion... it didn't matter... what did matter was that this didn't spill into brawl in the reception floor. "If either of you hope to see combat against the DCMS ever again you'll stow this away." He hissed.

Monday could not come fast enough. The parade had been ... the same as on Elidere, or Ander's moon... well lacking the SLDF Star League venerating religious bits, but that was something of a relief. The duke, of Robinson's, speech had been similar in tone and character to the one he had made when he'd first arrived, extolling to the public the need for champions to stand against the dragon's tyranny... and so, sharpening swords. The religious aspect had come from the local bishop invoking Saint George. The chief rabbi of armed forces of the Draconis March... who was in uniform... had delivered much less religiously loaded speech after.

"Are you not enjoying yourself?" a feminine voice cut in. The countess of Kestrel normally dressed up, but the deep purple silk accentuated the gold jewelry in the kind of state of wealth and opulence that would have made the Medici, Crassus and the like feel under dressed. Taken with most of the high society attire it was like the Victorian period drama on steroids, cranked to eleven. Of course the reality was that most dress uniforms of known space were largely modelled on the styles of the Great Powers of the late 19th​ century... and if he were honest that wasn't the worst comparison.

Before he could answer Bard Cameron had taken a forward position on the stadium to speak. In something of a contrast to the previous Marcher Officers Cameron had been present at Elidere, fighting on both worlds. That didn't make his speech any less charged with rhetoric, but provided it with a somewhat different character from those of higher officers. When he was finished Gene wasn't sure whether Bard's speech had gotten enough or received too much applause from a room dominated principally by nobles used to hobb nobbing at each just as they had done for centuries of warfare since the fall of the Star League. There could be no separation of money, and influence either, even if there was some difference between just being rich and being a noble.

He snagged a replacement drink from a passing red jacket. It was better than the champagne that they had started the evening with. "We've been here two day, Lady Alexandria. The Field Marshal wants us off world and enroute in September. It will take us a month and change to reach New Avalon." He had been told that Robinson was one of the less ring knocker institutions, not in those exact words, but that there was an emphasis on learning to fight against the combine here than other institutions that relied more on noble networking schools. He wasn't seeing it. "In order to get anything meaningful done we need to be out in the field... and the last thing I need is some," butter bar, "First lieutenant slugging it out with a cadet anywhere, but certainly not at one of these."
--
The display on his clock ticked from 1101, to 1102 local time.

He buttoned back up in his cockpit. There were ... besides the time constraints other limits to just copying and pasting the SLDF instruction program for MechWarriors. Cutting PT, runs, crunches, and push ups and so on didn't sit well with him. They didn't have a choice though. They didn't have the time for it, even if the RBA had a gym that was second to none.

Rio's Thunderbolt, and he refused to use the lieutenant's declared call sign of king wolf, was standing by on the firing line. Not everyone was adhering to that. There were almost sixty AFFS battlemechs across an area, innocuously designated Scrubland, the size of Salisbury plain in England on old Earth.

Gene reached over and pulled the harness over his shoulder, and then the other latching in, "Alright, as a reminder this a maneuver exercise you want to maintain a safe distance between your lance mates." As Jason Castro had already graduated the RBA and held an active commission in the AFFS he'd been given one of the Lances to command, but nothing higher than that. Given that he was a duke's son that might well prove a problem since there were three provisional units on the field. "this is a maneuver course and ability to navigate terrain both real and simulated. Your weapons are to remain safed except at designated fire zones. On the flare." He couldn't hear the mortar like noise the launcher made as it threw a red strobing beacon into the air but he could see it fine. Bard's handshake pinged. "Battalion Commander," He greeted.

"Should I be referring to you as Regimental Commander then?" The david bowie look alike replied with a brogue drawl.

The truth was it didn't matter, "That depends on whether or not the Field Marshal thinks you should, or not. Colonel is sufficient."

"How about Ghost, its not nearly as long as Phantom, not nearly as pretentious as White Death, and you can call me Bard, it'll be like on Elidere." The Ranger replied.

... yeah the prospect of being outnumbered by an entire mech Brigade sounded lovely, but that wasn't what Bard had meant, "What do you need Bard?"

"I haven't gotten through the entirety of the lesson plan, I admit that, but why three and not four."

"Are you asking why I'm organizing this whole unit as a single Battalion?"

"Well yeah. I guess I am. I mean not everyone will be going, we don't have the lift capacity."

Well, on that, "I expect that that latter could change." It wasn't in stone in any event. Scheduling would probably be the bigger issue, especially given the necessary trip to New Avalon, but DropShips could probably be found. "But the other reason is that the element that remains behind can be used as a continued training unit to reconstitute from. This is already a mix of current students, and graduates," Robinson did have a cadet cadre, but nothing to the insanity of combine's sun zhang's academy cadre. "We have more light and medium mechs than I expected," More Valkyrie and Black Jacks primarily, and fewer Assaults ... though there was an Atlas, an Awesome, a Stalker in addition to a Victor among the AFFS mech.

"That's another thing."

"It is," The JaegerMechs were probably going to be left behind, unless they had an abundance of mech carrier space that they just didn't right now. "I need to know how All of them do in overland navigation before we even consider putting them in the field with tanks."
--

Yvonne Davion had the luxury of observing from the command post. That meant observing without being physically present. "You should be there," She idly chided the countess.

"If I show up in a BattleMech it'll be little more than a distraction." She replied, "And if I wasn't in a battlemech at this stage I would just be in the way."

The duchess clucked her tongue, and bit down a comment that she was glad Rebecca Hasek was already married, "In an ideal situation it will be the Guards who liberate any worlds we take from the Combine, but the damage to them has been done."

Her lady in waiting gave perfectly polite, if perfunctory acknowledgement of the obvious.


"It would be against our interests, or at least not ideal to have the command move along like the Wolfs dragoons did, this isn't the first cadre contract either, there is a unit out in Canopian space which has been giving our periphery observers fits. Given who his friends are its not unlikely his next stop will be the Lyrans, no that's why this is an excellent opportunity to capitalize."

And of course any major victories against the Combine would serve as a political check against House Hasek, and potentially diminish their power in the long run. There was a significant advantage to this campaign, for Hanse's vendetta to avenge the death of both his brother, as well as the losses at Halstead Station by breaking the most belligerent of successor states as a military threat. "We have an opportunity to humiliate the Draconis Combine, and cut them off from the Terran corridor... and the only thing we should truly lament about all of this is that it didn't present itself when we still had the Wolfs Dragoons under contract."

Entire regiments appearing just like that, more than a decade earlier, Whatever their origins the Dragoons had sense proven their bona fides in the field as mercenaries though... and more importantly they were not on the opposing side.


The old woman sighed wistfully, and lamented that it couldn't be helped. "You see Alexandria our young colonel appeared quite out of no where. He shows up in the periphery as a Mercenary with a pristine battlemech, not unlike the dragoons, even apparently at a comparable skill level. No background, no house affiliation, a willingness to make an unsupported orbital insertion against a hostile force of battle proven Combine veterans. That the Magistracy let him slip away from them twice is just absurd." She reached a long bony hand towards the files, "In 2766 as a part of the purge of the Hegemony, and Star League facilities, Stefan Amaris ordered a general purge, to be carried out by any means necessary, of all SLDF and Hegemony military institutions of higher learning. These ranged from very thorough, nuclear attacks on Venus, and mars to nerve gas, along with the somewhat more mundane though still brutal massacres associated with the Gestapo. Faculty students, and caught in the crossfire were the documents and manuals as well. That's why even today even reprints of SLDF manuals continue to fetch premium prices."

That wasn't because they were completely lost. You could still get reprints made, but they were copies often of even basic star league field manuals still three hundred years later being reproduced by major universities, or military academies. There Eridani Light Horse still used those manuals.
--
Notes: This has also been divided in half, as part of the restructuring two parts before the opening of this segment were removed one focusing on Cunningham the day before the gala, and the second an introduction of Jason 'Kingwolf' Castro, the duke of Rio's son. The content of latter is being adopted to be reused in Part B as I restructure the second half of the first Davion chapter. I Davion will most likely resolve itself in the meeting with Hanse Davion on New Avalon now under the revised outline.

Discounting the various interludes that are assigned to this the ~ roughly twelve thousand words will largely confine itself to Robinson's various major factions and those acting on the planet as Part B will largely pick up with the resumption of Bard's conversation as the Marcher Battalion goes through its paces.

 

[Imperator Pax]

NON CANON: Whoops
Part 2​

Gene kept pacing. The combat boots clicking against the linoleum tiles of the New Kyoto office building. It had been several days now, so the transmission itself wasn't the problem. It was the consequences of the message's content. It had been long enough that Rasalhague separatists on Skye had sent a message by Fax machine relaying a general call to arms against the Combine now while the Dragon was distracted. A rebellion that very likely would be echoed by the Azami in response to the transmission if as reported it had been transmitted everywhere with an HPG.

That had been a star le... a Hegemony data control override, it probably wasn't accurate to call it a virus so much as a backdoor, and maybe some aggressive malware, but that was irrelevant. That didn't answer the question of who was responsible. "You are going to wear a hole in the floor."

He glanced at the doorway with the JumpShip captain, "I give it good odds that Kurita, or a subordinate commander with launch authority goes nuclear sooner rather than later. The Sword of Light potentially has launch authorization," Or at least they had during the Star League era, but then there had been warships back then... and well there weren't now. "The Otomo almost certainly does, the ISF might, the Five Pillars command well, see the matter with the Otomo probably having that... you back a dog into a corner with no way out it tends to bite."

Pasha nodded, "Yes, I concede that we will see desperation from the Dragon's servants. The victories at Elidere, and at Dieron... and that is why, I must advise you to return to the Federated Suns and allow us to fight with them against the Dragon." He paused, "Unless you have come to some arrangement with the Commonwealth."

"No, I haven't spoken with the Lyran authorities, getting a meeting with the Daimyo has been a pain." Part of that was ... comstar being cagey about the status of the HPG. The one here might or might not have been fine, but the computer script running at the screen, a recording of which he'd been going over almost daily... had shown it had gotten dangerous overclocked and hot. The core might or might not have burned out... but given the network numbers a large chunk of the network had probably burned out under the strain of an inner sphere wide broadcast. "I was going to go to the MRB today," and try and sus out if they'd admit anything about the HPG network's status "I was under the impression that the plan was to help your people migrate to the periphery, to avoid any retaliation."

"I would like to see my sons again, but I feel this is the path god has put us on. Two JumpShips will not meaningfully impact the exodus, and assisting the suns is something they will repay."

"I'll convene the staff, make sure we have everything needed for leaving... and I'll need you to send a message with the second wave for the Magistracy."

"The canopians?"

"I need them to find a job for out two marooned guys out there, unless Majesty Metals wants to permanently stick them on that dust ball." It wasn't really levity, not given the situation. "I have no idea how the periphery is going to react to this assuming that they got this broadcast,"

"There is little chance that it would change day to day life. The biggest threat is likely to remain pirate activity, if anything the periphery may be safer with the successor states given a clear reason to focus on the Draconis Combine."

That was certainly true. "Just so we're clear, I can't promise being able to talk the Federated Suns into trying to liberate Markab," or that they wouldn't want to install their own rulers or administration on it in place of the Kuritan authorities, but it was just a single jump from Galatia. "And we'll need a jump route to Davion space."
--
He put the receiver down having gotten off the phone finally with one of Abner's colleagues at the Kyoto College.

Septim had looked like he had a rough night, which was a potential issue. The ruling noble of new Kyoto utilized the title Daimyo... in strictly speaking a somewhat more sensible use of the word than the Combine did.... which was ironic given the Commonwealths Scotts-irish German smorgasbord. "We're going back to fight the snakes?"

He raised an eyebrow. "We're going back to Davion space, how did you find out?"

"I-"

"Those dreams again? Do you have a Cameron in the family tree," He muttered, and shook his head pushing on, "What'd you see?"

"I don't know, just" The Lyran shook his head, "I saw wolves and horses fighting snakes," Septim paused... some times his dreams didn't happen. Sometimes there were cases where he was seeing totems of belligerents who wouldn't fight for years... or maybe not even at all.

"Right, grab a shower, and some coffee I need to give something to the duke of the planet before we leave."

"Thought you said they kept pushing you back."

"They're going to squeeze us in, but I need you to get ready." Septim left, and Gene got up from behind the desk. Wolves and Horses... the latter was obviously the Eridani. Septim had seen their totem mustang before, the black horse at different intervals. The wolves... the dragoons... that they'd recontract with the Davions wasn't outlandish. He walked around and grabbed the computer core case Septim had completely ignored when he'd walked in. Another copy of the Volgadon Medical school, like he'd given Alamut's Azami colonists. What the Duke and Kyoto college did with it would be on them but they'd be off world soon.

They took a convoy ride into the city, a standard precaution since the broadcast the previous week and the resulting panic and limited civil unrest that had struck New Kyoto's capital of Hirihito. Capital security was being provided by a Merc Unit in long term Lyran employ, which provided the BattleMech component. They were being backed up by Lyran Armor and Infantry, the latter of which were on display throughout Hirihito's streets. A far cry to the planet just two weeks earlier when the streets had been filled with pedestrians shopping and sight seeing and what not.

"So what are we doing boss?"

"IN theory, we're trying to make friends we can fall back on," He replied as the armored vehicle slowed to a halt, and prepared to let them disembark. "In practice, we're trying to undo a little bit of the damage the succession wars caused, and make life a little better."

Endo Musashi, Daimyo (Duke) Kyoto had allocated them twenty minutes, which was really about fifteen minutes given the formalized introduction. He hadn't really expecting much, and really only agreed on the advice of one of his retainers who sat on the board of Kyoto College. To say he hadn't really expected much to come out of the meeting with a mercenary had been an understatement.

Doctor Yamanaka on the other hand, "Do you know what you're handing over?"

"Yeah," Gene shook his head, "I know you're in a better position to use it than I am, and I'm shipping off world. " The consequences of that Spring day in 3018 wouldn't manifest, statistically for several years. The Lyran Commonwealth had all through the succession wars maintained a high standard of living disproportionately greater than the rest of the successor states. It had still suffered, but it its quality of life had not lost the basics of a social welfare that provided for the very lowest and frail of society even as it encouraged them to do ascribe to a bismarkian notion of greatness and aspiration to do better for themselves and their family.

It would take time for Kyoto College to digest and promulgate a new class of doctors on lost star league medical techniques, even longer for pharmacologic, amd machinery in the field to become available... and from New Kyoto it began to disperse out through the Lyran medical system. This did consequently effect the wealthiest and most influential first.

Within a decade on a routine physical utilizing Star League medicine an anomaly was detected in Archon Katrina Steiner, the early stages of cancer. If it hadn't been caught that early with techniques lost centuries earlier it would have certainly continued to lay undetected until it would have been terminal. In the nascent FedCom union between the great states the return of previous medicines and later other additions would play... other life saving, and life improving measures.

--
Notes: Tentatively, Essence will update in a week, Luxen II will update the 21st​. This is apart of the non canon 'Whoops' set which is why we don't get more of Endo Yamanaka other than a brief blurb here. If this were canon this would probably be a longer segment, because we would have to contend with the fallout of handing a Lyran duke that sort of thing.

Spoiler: Other consequences

Septim's very disappointed father "You did what, and didn't think about how it might benefit the family."

"Papa, I wasn't exactly told what we were doing before we went and did it."

 

[Imperator Pax]

I Davion Part 6 (B)​

July 3017
Robinson, Draconis March, Federated Suns
Three over strength companies to play with. It was a heady feeling, he had to admit. The prospective battle that awaited, well being on the offensive would be a relief. It almost made up for the hangover this morning had started with, but it was always a thrill to be in the cockpit.

He brought his fifty five tonner around the bend. The fighting on Elidere had been entirely too recent for the school's construction battalion to build mock ups from ply wood and fiberglass of the townships effected by the fighting, but for all practical purposes there was little difference in a frontier town in terms of how civilian buildings effected operations. You either avoided them, or you went through them.

... the Combine had demonstrated at Elidere that it was willing to go through them. It was true that that violated the spirit of the Ares convention, but the Ares Convention had legally been defunct for centuries... and while its spirit had reentered as something of a gentleman's agreement between the great houses after the third succession war had started, it was not legally binding. There were few real penalties for violating most of its strictures.

That was what the potemkin village reminded him of.

The wolverine slowed to a halt, and he pivoted the torso surveying the fake surroundings. Green foliage swayed in the wind, and then from the hills a seventy five ton mech emerged. The Marauder's black box like frame lacked the typical torso mounted Whirlwind, and the gray white paint job of the machine used on Elidere. He'd seen some of the trivid holographic combat footage of the machine in action though, specced out as it was for close quarters brawling.

There were rumors that it had been stripped down and been fighting at reduced capacity until recently, but he didn't know how accurate those were. Certainly the footage from Detroit didn't speak of a mech that had been fighting at a handicap. Whatever the case, there really should have been no way for the Heavy BattleMech to get this close... and yet there it was.

Two more mechs followed with a missile boat bringing up the rear.

"How'd you do that?"

"Terrain masking. There are enough fusion signatures active, and enough debris through the exercise field. This whole plain is a riddled with hematite and other metals. We adjusted for the changes in height and avoided generating any additional heat." The young colonel replied as the Marauder stepped forward. "That and most of your mechs were looking in the wrong direction, any time my Dalban told me you were looking at us, we stopped moving."

It made a certain amount of sense. "God in heaven, you maneuvered an entire armor battalion like that..." Which really was the defining aspect of Elidere as a tactical set piece battle. It was true the mechs had done most of the actual killing, but the Combine had kept getting shot from behind, and by flank seemingly left and right.

... and Bard could remember asking in Jasos city whether they could have carried the day without the planetary militia... and in hindsight... that answer probably was yes. Obviously they had contributed... but two entire snake battalions had died on Elidere's surface... and artillery had smashed most of the Combine's dropships. Hell he'd watched from a safe distance as four hundred LRMs had pummeled a Union as it had attempted to fly.... and he'd only seen the missiles not whatever carriers had been unloading.

The hologram rippled and the colonel's face scrunched, "Stand by,"

Bard resisted the urge toy with his own neurohelmet as they stood at the waypoint. "What's the plan... I mean, there" He drawled, dragging the word out, and clipping the next, "sixty mechs here... and that's not counting, any late comers."

"Or Septim's Merlin being repaired, or the rest of the unit being here." He added with a shrug showing the full length black sleeves.

"Aye, or that. But yeah, we've got more mechs than I expected," Bard shook his head and used his terminal to highlight one of the over strength companies, "His grace is watching... for that matter the Prince's Champion is here. So why run all of these at once?"

"Because most of these people have never tried to maneuver three whole companies of Mechs together, and we can evaluate how they handle that new experience, but more importantly we can acclimate them to being around this many other MechWarriors." Gene leaned back in his harness... "Engendering an espirt de corps doesn't happen over night, and I don't expect it to just appear, but I want the unit to be able to able to work together, and integrate not just as Mechwarriors, but also integrate with our armor and also aviation assets." Aviation assets that were new, truthfully Sam Houston and Baffins had conducted fire missions largely as stationary assets. "I also realize that we're going to be undertaking a lot of training, and that entails a logistical foot print."

"But we could do it," Bard replied as a group of mechs approached from the south east, "Most of these are green pilots."

"Good training creates good habits, and corrects bad ones. So yes, if put in a place where we have to fight the combine forces along the lines of what we saw on Elidere, if we have to fight another Regiment, we'd be in a better position. More importantly if this can be pulled off, whatever happens next year, the graduates of this course will hopefully have a better appreciation of the logistics and combined arms application at a tactical and operational level."
--
"What will you do about him?"

Bard was off with the Duke, and Gene wasn't sure what that meant. That wasn't who Field Marshal Davion was talking about though, "A certain amount of show boating is to be expected," He replied resisting the urge to thumb through Castro's file again... the clock on the wall read seven... a brass ornate thing that would have looked at home in Victorian england. "What do you make of it?" He asked turning the conversation around.

"Lord Jason has bluntly a chip on his shoulder. He's been brought up with no expense spared, told he would be the best... and then on his first real taste of action his entire lance is shot out from under them one by one in a duel, its a wonder he survived the ejection and didn't drown. That didn't help I don't imagine... and then to make things even worse, well." She waved a hand.

"Elidere happens." He replied reaching for the tea cup. The combine had not actually planned to conquer elidere, they had double downed in response to stiffer than expected resistance. The original had originally just been a raid in force.. and if they had impounded the DCA JumpShips they probably would have found the cargo bays stuff with loot from other worlds... "Or ander's," moon, "which I suppose is the root of his problem with Sutton," Who hadn't even been attending the RBA, just accepted, at the time of his duels. "Realistically," Since Rio was basically assured a spot in the line as a lance commander, "I'm going to keep them in separate companies... come Monday morning we're going to start dividing people into skill level courses based on time. We'll integrate AFFS, and Cadets in with mercenaries, but the truth was I needed to see them actually physically walk a mech from place to place, run a course of fire, and maneuver to rendezvous. All of them."

"No one failed." Yvonne noted.

"No one was supposed to." He sipped the tea, "Castro survived contact with the enemy," And clear survivor's guilt aside he hadn't eaten his sidearm, and showed no suicidal tendencies... but his attitude was going to be a problem. "I'm going to be honest, he isn't ready to lead a lance but if you say that's how it has to be I'll work around it."
--
It was almost nine o'clock, and in a way this reminded him of their stint on Luxen. They'd been allocated space at the academy and that included their own hall, dorm space, and the Mechwarrior component were all piled into the a dining facility meant to accommodate more like three hundred people...

Jason Castro still hadn't gotten on message. "So what was the point?"

"The point Mr Castro?" He replied, "IS you're a mechwarrior, being able to fight one on one is all well and good but you're a part of the premier combat arm, not the sole combat arm." Castro was taller than Sutton was, but that might not have meant much. Sutton still had traces of 'baby fat' in his face and Castro lacked some of the meat of his pater familias despite sharing the same high aristocratic cheeks though that expression was somewhat marred by the broken nose on the eighteen year old's face. "And you're not the only mechwarrior, your lance is intended to operate in conjunction with the others of the Company, and Battalion elements, and above that with the broader regiment. Inter operability is essential on the battlefield. Today's exercise was intended to evaluate how well you can maneuver and complete a course of fire under test conditions. You're performance was good... and then you basically screwed that by failing to maintain communications discipline during the last transit exercise moving to the rendezvous"

It would have been one thing if he'd been using the laser comm, those were mostly secure... barring well SLDF tech, and even then that only applied to detection. Castro had decided to carry on a conversation not just within his own unit but with other participants over radio and with encryption.

It was the reason that he'd gotten the call to meet Yvonne Davion once the exercise had concluded with the training battalion assembled at the rendezvous point.

Castro's face was as red as a tomato.

"Not tomorrow, but Monday there will an apparently all too necessary briefing on Operational Security, and Communications Security." Tomorrow would be dominated by debriefing from this course, as everyone was supposed to have filled out after action reports based on how they thought they had done. "This course is going to be two months, and will likely be very different to the usual curriculum. The goal is to prepare the battalion for the Combine's inevitable response to the destruction of the 19th​ Galedon Regulars at Elidere." Since of course telling them that there was a planned offensive was bad opsec.

--
Notes: You'll note I included the Date, including year, and location part of that is to cement that the Whoops snippet is non canon and its divergence from the main timeline is the following year. This takes place as a continuation of the previous segment.

Part 7 will open up the following monday afternoon with more mercenary administration stuff... also the realities of yeah tech in the Succession wars ain't great. The plan is still to run the usual Sunday updates, but yes First Davion will end in roughly six parts, with probably an interlude for Bristol, and then the New Avalong interlude. So really this should probably be called 'First Robinson' / 'First Draconis March'. Anyway...

Spoiler: You don't have to read this, its minor stuff.

AI various: so the Hegemony largely built its AI to reflect 'Hegemony Values, and we willl see this more in Whoops, which while a spin off non canon timeline shares certain factors. As already shown Tristan doesn't look fondly on Kerensky's Exodus, and this isn't unique to him as an AI, Dante similarly is very not happy... though Dante finding out there are still Amaris's alive, and people who support House Amaris and the Rim World cause would be a 'Commander we must break out the nukes.' on the opposite end of the spectrum you have Mother Bear for example who favors reapproachment and embodies the idealized better nature, protect civilization, help civilians rebuild administer good government the positive side of the Star League's work, and she's not the only one.

One minor thing, I have been told that and I'm not sure whether or not I'm going to go by current rules or not, but that you can longer (apparently this changed fucking ages ago) use specialty ammunition out of Streak SRMs. Thats dumb but that is currently the rules in PNP. I'm probably going to ignore that... even though apparently that shit was errated in twenty years ago. I can understand how I missed it though.

Spoiler: warning mildly ranting

The rule change came during the height of FedCom civil war dumbshit, and I played only a bit of tabletop during that period. (This the same time as MechWarrior 4 released, which I still occasionally boot and play) The subsequent dark age stupidity just kept me away from the setting longer.. and didn't come back into association with the Catalyst canon until like... Obama's second term. [Alright that was somewhat ranty]

 

[Imperator Pax]

Davion I
Part 7​

Eight hours of work, and he still had Haqim's detailed scrub down of the Hidalgo to get through The Star League V450 was earmarked for a second look, but the Hidalgo's significant find were it still had its Star League era Mech simulators. That was, and wasn't a surprise. As a star league, and they were talking about the peak of the Star Leauge, dedicated mech transport carrying 36 BattleMech it would have been standard practice at the time of Hidalgo's construction.

What the Overlord-class was not, as an assault dropship. Though relatively well armed, pound for pound an argument could be substantiated that the Union was better protected in terms of making planetfall in contested or hostile territory. It was true however that it was better armed than the Triumph. Most likely though any Davion first wave would conducted by Union-class dropships, potentially screened by Assault Dropships to break defending air coverage, or suppress enemy air defense... and if not they'd just drop and go overland from outside local ADZs which from orbital insertion much easier than with conventional air breathing transports.

"But that's approximately the sum of what I can draw up without a specific target, much less without a detailed intelligence packet to work from,"

Yvonne Davion nodded.

The third floor room had the usual faces, and company level officers he simply hadn't had time to really aquaint with. That would change over the next few weeks, but this meeting was really the first to include attached battalion level armor assets from the March.

"No, that's quite sufficient." It had been a mistake to mention the intel issue. They didn't have that at this time. "Beside the intelligence information, is there anything else."

The armor was here, but not infantry, and not ASF, "Realistically holding any kind of ground will require infantry, and contesting hostile airspace integrated ASF level control, being able to run six to twelve asf supporting a company would ideal. Failing that squadron level support at the company level, even if not as air lance configuration would provide some degree of protection."

"You have a number of Rapier Heavy Aerospace Fighters in inventory."

"Yes, I don't have pilots for them."

"We can provide you pilots." The Field Marshall replied. She glanced to the Duke of Robinson, "Lord Aaron believes he can contribute assuming that the Hellcats can be brought back on line." Though they had been considered a second line garrison fighter by the time Amaris, succeeded by increasing proliferation of more advanced aircraft the Hellcat was nearly ideal to the needs of the modern era's logistics situation. "The Combine's preference for duels between leadership is well known, deployment to the surface of a planet is only half the battle. Once on world there are two broad outcomes," Either a conventional battle along combined arms lines, or a battle more like the offer they had made counterattacking on Ander's moon.

That was when Yvonne triggered a playback of the 'arbitration' of the Detroit dispute. It shouldn't have surprised him. In all honesty it probably made sense that that kind of thing would end up in the MRB file... he wondered if the subsequent arbitration was in there. The Combine ... or technically Arisaka he supposed.. paying out in C-Bills for the salvage... getting bled for it.

That... made more sense why the company commanders, and the XOs, were all here though. "The neurohelmet is a piece of technology called mind machine interface, MMI is the bland acronym. Your brain interfaced to a digital system, a computer. You can pilot a mech without it, but a neurohelmet can allow you reaction times by feeding full spectrum data analysis... and even though it sounds like mysticism and hocus pocus there are ways to improve synchronization." He didn't think of anything when it came to be asked for examples, "The combine... well their highest scoring ace was Kerra McAlister, an alias suspected to be one of Urizen Kurita's illegitmate daughters. She's estimated to have killed 12 Gusnlinger graduates, and almost fifty other royal division pilots during the Davion Succession crisis from a Marauder 2R." ... and her mother had probably been either ISF or O5P, but that wasn't relevant to the conversation, "She'd been practicing Kyudo, traditional longbow archery since she was five. I can give you pointers," But just putting a packet together wasn't going to be a cheat sheet...


... and that conversation was how he ended up watching a pick up game on the school grounds. He leaned back against the ball court seats, personally he found cricket to be boring... but then he also gave no shits about baseball either.

"I prefer football." She meant soccer, "You said sports help."

"I don't think this would help." Supposedly boxing did... well for Mechs like the... well a south paw in an awesome was supposedly even more scary than a regular Awesome. "Regardless of what Wellington was alleged to have said about Waterloo, and Eton."

"What would you suggest then?"

"If you're serious about this, we can organize duels." It wasn't the worst idea, "Simulators will give us some degree of benchmark, "I need to be upfront, Mech weight gives some degree of padding," for lack of a better term, "But some of it is instinct. Mechwarriors used to be more scarce than machines to pilot, there is a certain degree of skill, Field Marshal. A combined arms action is more likely to pay off than playing to the combine's strength."

"You can understand the appeal though." She replied rhetorically, it wasn't really a question so much as an affirmation of the accepted thinking. "There is no denying though that holding any planets will require infantry. So long as you can secure the planet, we can bring garrison troops in after."

He almost pointed out that the usual mistake... the mistake made basically universally to combined arms formations in the early years was underestimating the number of infantry you wanted to have with your armor. "Still can't tell me where we're going, what we're going after?"

"Not yet. That will be the Prince's surprise."

Don't guess. It was almost certainly a former hegemony world. Possibly even more than one, but surely somewhere in the Terran corridor. They'd embarrassed the Combine and with the way the duke of Robinson kept pressing the rumor must have been going over from was a Crucis March world. Then there was, "I'm going to need to hire whoever I can from Northwind."

"We've discussed this, that will work out. You'll have local support on Northwind to make what you need in terms of final preparations. You'll have months to prepare for the actual invasion, the immediate priority is insuring the Robinson battalion is ready. I'll need to leave before the end of the month. Lady Alexandria should be able to handle things in my absence."

"I need to ask, in your capacity as field marshal are you overall command of the operation."

"No, as Prince's champion I'm in charge of the operation." Yvonne corrected.

Ah, "I see." He wasn't sure what the distinction was, not in a practical sense, but alright that was fine too. Yvonne being Strategic level control was the bigger answer. "Lord Aaron wants this to succeed as much as anyone, any chance to further weaken the gravest threat to the Federated Suns is to be the highest priority. Let me be clear colonel Shepherd if we have the opportunity to move, if we can significantly damage the Combine's military strength, if we could repeat Elidere there would be in a position to consolidate gains at the Combine's expense."

--

Gene flipped the paper work, paused took another bite of the pasta.

"You're not drinking?" Alexandria Cunningham sat down, snagging one of the free seats at the 'faculty' table as he was thinking of it.

He'd been considering maybe having something after dinner, and reached for the water, "Not tonight." Gene took a sip, "What can I do for you Lady Lex?" She raised an eyebrow.

"I need to be involved in the drills tomorrow."

He mirrored her gesture, "Fair enough," Should have seen that coming, "How hands on is your liaison supposed to be for this,"

"If the Field Marshal is indisposed at the-"

"When we jump the line?"

She nodded, "I can remain on ship, just as if she were present."

"Unless something comes up, and you have to be in the field."

"That's correct." She agreed readily. A little too readily, especially since he'd had the conversation with Yvonne... and he was pretty sure she'd either just come from there, or near enough... Yvonne was no where to be seen despite having eaten with the battalion officers at dinner two days in a row. "Situations might arise where thats necessary."

Time to go fishing for information, "We're going to drop into a former Hegemony world." She blinked, but he kept going, "My best guess is Dieron or Altair. Maybe Nirasaki, but probably one of those." He'd been digging through the maps. It wasn't hard. Process of elimination. All three belonged to the former Terran Hegemony's lone star province. And really the problem was just not being told. "The Field Marshal said that ideally we cut the combine from the Entire Corridor, but that's four worlds."

"What are you suggesting?"

"I'm suggesting that we are probably going to run into soon or later significant resistance. You want to take a battlemech into the field tomorrow, fine." he pushed the plate to the side guessing he wasn't going to have any more to east tonight, at least not for a while,

She frowned, marring her features, "If you're dancing around the subject, I graduated from Sakhara academy. Does that surprise you?"

He shrugged, "I actually expected you to be an AMA grad, Kestrel being in the Crucis march."

She mirrored the gesture, "The family has attended the school since the first succession war. Shall we move on?"

"What are you hoping to learn?"

"We could trade pointers." She had barely gotten that out of her mouth, when the duke rolled his wheelchair into the mess hall.

"Colonel,"

"Your grace."

The old tanker slid up the table and applied the manual break to the wheel chair. "Keeping the war machine fed I see." Lord Aaron remarked leaning forward to glance at the paperwork. "I was actually hoping to discuss your Marauder?"

"Which one?" It wasn't intended as a boast, but he really did have to ask... and at least the Duke hadn't said 'your Mech'... cause hell that could included the Atlas that Bubbles was currently driving.

"The one you used at Elidere, the White. The autocannon is LosTech?"

"Yeah, The Hegemony was doing research, its whats called an LBX. They never made it past the prototyping stage. I do anything with it the computer reminds me to email Colonel Thompson if I have an problems. He probably ate a nuke on New Earth. What about it?"

"You can produce ammunition for it?"

"Yeah, well yes and no." He explained the LBX ammunition issue, they hadn't tried to make cluster ammunition, "Its based off the GM Whirldwind." It was half to a deflection, but it made sense that someone would have noticed the Autocannon had a range to throw lead comparable to his PPCs. He certainly didn't want anyone poking around his Marauders and figuring out they were ER PPCs.
--
"Anything?"

"I was making progress up until his grace arrived, then they delved into discussion about guns, which somehow turned into a topic of education, and the vagabond schools, which wrapped into techs, and Assistant techs."

Yvonne Davion tutted disapprovingly at the excuse, "Start from the beginning," Occasionally interrupting for clarification about one point or another. "I shouldn't need to tell you this, Sakkhara was founded by retired SLDF officers, Albion was an SLDF Military Academy. One of only three outside of the boundaries of the Terran Hegemony. I've made copies of the two month course work, and I've compared it to AMA's," The Field Marshal's alma mater, "I would guess the bulk of it is from the Hegemony originally." The reality was that there were more questions now than there had been. "Do you know the conversation we had, about mechwarriors?"

"No."

"I believe his exact quote was that 'its generally recognized that there is an accepted genetic component to mechwarrior aptitude, but like most skills probably entails epigenetic factors, as well as more conventional learning of the skill.'"

"What does that have to do with anything your grace?"

"I have a growing suspicion that Lord William, Doctor Abner as he prefers to go by, very likely stumbled upon a stasis pod. Maybe he dug into a lost hegemony facility, a castle brian on some dead terran world, but the Colonel and the Doctor cross paths repeatedly... and Dr Abner believes that he can provide a service to the First Prince. There is something on Bristol... something that may well have survived the Combine's nuclear strike in 2791."

The first succession war had been an utter disaster, but the truth was even before it had begun the Amaris coup had already created a financial crisis, the Federated Suns in the 2770s had gone from economic recession into a full blown depression with the disruptions to trade with the Hegemony... and then the Combine had invaded kicking them back into financial uncertainty as they had begun to recover. There was speculation of course that the Combine had probably been planning even in the 2770s, and certainly by the 80s to go to a war time economy and that had given them temporary advantages, but by the time Kentares had occurred they'd been hitting the limits of their logistical bottleneck.

That was the least glamorous part of the First Succession wars. The DCMS as a military was outsized to the national GDP that supported it. The Combine had always had a significant population, but had lagged behind on industry. It always had... and that was why they had an opportunity, because south of Avalon city proper in the suburbs built on the sacrifice, and gains made on on Halstead station in 3012, from the ruins of a library of the Star League Era the New Avalon Institute of Science.

It had been completed just the previous year.... but that was a long term investment. More than anything, it created for Yvonne a time table. A clock counting down to end or at least severely curtail Hasek influence... and Elidere had created a way to severely curb Combine power, potentially reducing the military importance of the capellan march as other resources could be spread around.

She gave a heavy sigh, "I suspect that there are details we don't know regarding the Combine in the lead up to the first succession war, something that provides a reason to take sides." But ultimately that was just what her gut told her based on the fragmentary evidence she was still piecing together.

 

[Imperator Pax]

I Davion Part 8​

Another day, another hanger, a garage and trucks loaded with ammunition. He could remember having issues getting ammunition being like pulling teeth from Luxen's civilian authorities... but he supposed it was different with an actual military institution. "how are we doing, chief?"

"We're on schedule. Another hour perhaps."

"Did we get a final tally?" He asked referring to the major logistical bottleneck. An outgrowth of early procurement habits, the Star League had codified a general series of requirements that divided a wide range of individual weapon systems... in this case autocannons... into grades or classes 2, 5, 10, 20. Greatest Range to shortest, least to most damage performance. It was far less logical than the LRM system... and significantly more prone to graft. He doubted that even with the end of the Star League all the graft had gone away, but with a much reduced tax base he suspected it had at least suffered along with everyone else.

"We need 10 cm, 100mm" two different cartridges both in the came caliber, "185 ChemJet, 200mm it goes on... I don't like it." That didn't even touch any of the other classes of Autocannons. BlackJack JagerMech, Rifleman the list went on each mech carrying different models of autocannon. "... only good news is that 120mm will work across Whirlwinds in the caliber."

"Assuming it doesn't jam."

"True."

Gene shrugged, "I'm mounting up." He left the chief to his business. The senior enlisted would neither appreciate nor want command lurking around while there was work to be done. The Seventy Five tonner was crouched hull down legs bent underneath and alongside the main hull. The Marauder shared a lineage with the Orion next to it, but those were largely internal chassis points and the final mechs in each were significantly different even though they ran off the same VLAR 300 power plant. No small part of that were the program requirements for the Orion in the 25th​ century asking for a multi role combat platform.

The Orion's Valiant Lamellar had long been replaced more commonly available StarGuard offering off of New Avalon lines. The Marauder"s original design of Valiant lamellar had represented an intention to replace the then current iteration... but it had then itself been subsumed by most Terran contract and later (of the Star League era) marauders being armored around Ferro Fibrous as that proliferated. Of course that limitation, the supply bottleneck to the original Marauder's Lamellar armor had then run into Ferro Fibrous, compounded by the effective extinction of that armor manufacturing within a quarter of a century of Kerensky running for the boonies. There simply hadn't been enough diffusion of manufacturing of Ferro Fibrous at the time of the New Vandenburg rebellion to diffuse it far enough into the Inner Sphere, and thus the first succession war meant it was basically extinct...

"You going to put a neurohelmet on?" Someone cracked as it started up to the cockpit.

He side eyed the other mechwarrior in the tank top and Rhodesian short shorts. Then rather than say anything tapped the silver composite material circlet initiating the standby start sequence on the seventy five tonner.

"First time seeing the hat trick." Septim remarked. He wasn't suited up. Not today, ther Merlin needed a testing and evaluation program to make sure it worked fine in its new Cavalry mech configuration with the VLAR 300... and then they could test out the weapons. The Lyran would be in the Daimyo with operations staff for the day.

He mounted the black machine's cockpit, and settled into the seat. "We should be getting started in about an hour."

Septim nodded. "Hang up with the ammo?"

"Distributing AC ammo is on schedule," At least. The screen in front of him threw up a flash of light the updated OS and a master checklist diagnostic ranging from the motive, and myomer bundles in the feet up through the legs and gyro and through the rest of the mech's systems.

Most mechs came with a standard common id number. MAD 3R designation was for example the common mass production Marauder that was ubiquitous when one thought of the Marauder It was visually recognizable for its top 120 mm autocannon, and the somewhat elongated appearance of its limbs from standard armor. The Marauder had been intended as a direct engagement mech. The command role it had found popularity with had not been an original design requirement, because the Star League had not been looking to replace the Black Knight when the Marauder had first debuted meaning that for the SLDF the Black Knight had remained a company command mech, and battalion and regimental commanders had taken the Marauder in recognition of its more sniper oriented loadout.

The Marauder's standard load out had also proved it an exemplary candidate as a Mech for graduates of the Advanced Combat and Maneuvering Skills Project. ACMS had later publically and officially ... for basically marketing and bragging rights rebranded itself as Gunslinger ... but by that point customization of mechs had already been underway during the 2720s with the clear writing on the wall of new and developing Hegemony 'royal' tech. The MAD 2R as its short hand readout was in league warbooks was the debut of the next Royal units and had replaced the 1R in those prestigious commands by 2760... and yet as his White Marauder demonstrated the Hegemony R&D had known not to be complacent. That was really an iterative improvement though from the 2R still maintaining the Sniper Role.

Septim cleared his throat and then less discretely threw his head in the direction outward across towards the main hangar doors. It took Yvonne Davion, and Alexandria Cunningham and the other hangers on a few minutes to get through the area.

"This is the other one." The Field Marshal remarked all business.

"This is the other one."

"You didn't have the missiles installed when you fought on Luxen or during either engagement on Detroit."

"They're Targa 7 driven Short Range missiles, feeding from a single," Half and half dual feed system of Incendiary and HEDP. "Ton bin. Break through, and exploit the break through. The additional medium lasers are designed to maximize close range firepower," Especially since the replacement Magnas Tristan had put in were ER versions identical to his White. Its a brawler."

"Sounds like it'd turn into bloody sauna." One of the Fed officers muttered. That was without him understanding the greater waste heat ER model PPCs generated... and he wasn't about to point it out.
--
...and things had been starting to shape up.

Two hundred fifty meters ahead of his own BattleMech Castro stamped his Thunderbolt's feet, which was either intentional, or he was overtuned into his MMI link with the Battlemech through his neurohelmet.

"You really want to do this?" He asked cracking his neck side to side already resigned to the answer.

"Hell yeah." 'King Wolf' retorted.

Taking this to the simulators would have been more fair... and safer. Realistically even with their weapons safed and running only electronic training return signals there was always the chance of something going wrong.

The Thunderbolt was a fine heavy battlemech. It was also recent one to replace the machine... which might well have been a Thunderbolt as well he hadn't checked... that Castro had been forcefully ejected from on his first real sortie.

Gene considered the surrounding participants. As liaison Cunningham was a maybe, he doubted Bard could talk some sense into this, the field marshal and the duke of Robinson were both with ground command station for the training area... which was a big tower over looking the space. As if sensing it Lord Sandoval rather than calling it off decided to encourage his friend's son's ... whatever this was supposed to be. "You've taken precautions for the weapons." Which had been confirmed by the rangemasters inspecting both mechs and having comnet feeds to watch. "You may begin on my signal." He informed them.

Fuck... fuck fair. Gene pushed his palms forward relaxing his arms so that they rested against the side consoles rather than the fire control joysticks. There were three broad tactical choices Rio could make. Alpha strike from stationary, maneuver conservatively, or attack aggressively hoping to bring this in close.

Gene exhaled. The neurohelmet readout blinked as the MMI checked and tittered over the synchronization.

The clock changed to 12:00 and the Duke of Robison signaled them to begin.

"I've got you!" Followed by a far less cocky, "What the fuck!" From the Thunderbolt pilot as the Marauder vanished from his scopes before his Mark ten Istatrack could start feeding combat date into the weapons for ranging never mind lock on.

The jump jets flared underneath the Marauder hurtling it into a ballistic arc forward as the verniers did their job. They were not designed for flight, hence 'jump' jets, but they also didn't need to be. The arc ... the vectoring of the thrust had thrown him to the right of where he'd started and allowed him to bring all four medium lasers on target, and for the computers to register four streak SRMs 'launching' into the mech's left side after having cleared half the distance

This wasn't anything like the duels on the BattleRoms. He didn't intend it to be. This was the mine complex against the 3rd​ Battalion commander, or the company commander in the dragon, or Samsonov on the river bank... or that Catapult on Detroit. There was no take your turn and wait for return fire.

The Verniers flared again even as the Thunderbolt was pivoting... and then the Marauder was point blank, "And you're dead now." He grunted from press against the harness of his restraints, as the machine settled pushing the two Magna Hellstar X in plain view of the cockpit.

Thirteen tons of standard armor was good, but if some was point blank with those nearly touching your cockpit glass or 185mm ChemJet, class twenty autocannon, you were toast.

The two mechs stood there as the range masters called it, and after a pregnant pause Lord Sandoval confirmed it. 25 seconds Thirty seconds of moderating and officialdom

The clock ticked 1201.

It took longer to walk the mech back over the safety lines. Dismounting and handing off took several minutes. "Holy shit that was," Sutton was out of his Dervish, and was the first one over. "That was awesome."

He reframed from quipping that an Awesome was an eighty ton assault mech with three PPCs.
--
Notes: I've been basically most of the week sick as a dog; I'm not a hundred percent yet but getting there. So I am now officially behind... so we are on the last week of the month. Pipeline, Pathfinder, tomorrow, Out of the Dark, Tuesday hopefully its not ready yet, Jumpchain Wednesday should be easy, Essence will probably go up Thursday, thats what I'm planning for with its Fray fight scene, Revisions for Friday and Saturday need to be done.

Then a week from now will be the first.

Anyway. If you don't think

Spoiler

Yvonne needled this whole duel into happening...

and Gene Phantom MechWarrior Shenigans in the broad daylight even if it was a blink and you miss it for as short in the fight as it was factors in as well.

So in table top, as I've mentioned Streak SRM 2 were allowed to use special munitions back in the day... this was nineties (things were radical, extreme, yada yada) and thats obviously the case here also here half ton SRM used to be a thing in FASA canon the Orion is the usual example everyone calls out even though that quickly ran afoul of published mech build rules. Basically you can have half ton of Ammo for missiles, or mixed magazines of specialty ammo because well here its a dual feed electrical system. You have to feeds pulling ammo from the bin you use feed 1 to run Incendiary, or Feed 2 to shoot HEDP perfectly viable real world tech

 

[Imperator Pax]

Davion Part 8 (b)​

Sutton's praise aside. "No that was me being an asshole. Castro has his problems, and he's lashing out at everybody who doesn't seem to be suffering. I shouldn't have rubbed his face in it." He splashed some water onto a towel and rubbed the sweat off his face, "Our priority needs to be preparing, for fighting the Combine in Round two," He ran his other hand through the front of his hair. "Alright we're gonna divide off if there aren't any more distractions, and then we'll take lunch." The Assault and Light Mechs could both run their maneuver course work and that would pair down enough mechs to make the numbers somewhat manageable, and then they could try and apply Terran Hussar doctrine into a vastly disparate motley crew of modern mechs and mostly young knights.

... and that was the distinction there were probably too many commissioned officers or people equivalent there of, or officer cadets here. The median age was 24 25 and he was pretty sure most of the RBA graduates brought back had all done so in the last decade. Lord Sandoval had come into the ducal Coronet in 2994 more than twenty years earlier so everyone present would have graduated during his patronage of the academy. That of course was likely to only apply to BattleMechs in the grand scheme of things, but the duke had not yet brought in armor or infantry to conduct combined arms training.

"Why's the Cicada moving?"

It was technically a medium mech, "Because as the name implies, its really just a large scout mech..." And when Schiffer had bought the farm on Luxen, "We rebuilt it as basically a larger protected Jenner, the -7D, not the A." This being the border with the combine there were a couple of 7Ds in with the light mechs alongside Valkyrie and Wasps. The A distinction was one he probably didnt need to make, because while they had As in Inventory Sutton was probably only familiar with the standard Draconis model. That was what people thought of when they thought Jenner. Medium lasers and SRM.

"Do you really think the Combine will attack?"

He didn't see how they 'politically' had a choice, but before he could find a way to phrase a simplified expression of geopolitics and the strategic clusterfuck he was interrupted, "Apologies, Commander."

"What is it Sadiq?"

"If you have a moment, Lebanon has opened dialogue with," the arabic translated to as a member of the community, so presumably an Azami merchant. "He brings news, and goods that may be of interest." It was clear the Azami lieutenant was if not very deftly dancing around what to say in front of Sutton.

"Good news I hope," Yvonne Davion hadn't entirely slipped her retinue but they'd managed to get to the dismount area here without being seen.

"Yes ma'am." The lieutenant replied perfunctorily. The boiler plate wasn't anything they hadn't already known. Elidere to Robinson was four jumps, and the combine had left the System well within hours of the FedSuns reinforcements jumping into system well before they had made planet fall but after the fighting on the ground had all but been decided. Even beyond that ComStar's class A HPG had transmitted the news at the very least to stations in Davion space in range, never mind the duke of Elidere's very expensive live stream.

"Its gotten out into the public then?" Yvonne shared a look with her lady in waiting, "I suppose ComStar will need to be included on the Christmas card list this year. There was no other way the BattleRoms could have started to circulate from Elidere in that time frame otherwise... but the question was why? ComStar was supposed to be neutral, and showing the 'Davions' utterly thrash a Combine Mech Regiment in trivid was almost sure to stir trouble up in the most blatant fashion.

"Well if the DCMS General Headquarters didn't know they have to know now,"

"And a reprisal is likely." Yvonne agreed, and idly Gene had to wonder how much in fees and services ComStar was making from what were almost assuredly the number of live calls the Davions and Kuritas had to be making, especially since that wasn't a service that they regularly advertised... "I'd very much like to sit down with your merchant captain, and find out whats the latest." That clearly wasn't what the lieutenant had been prepared for, but this was Davion Space and even if they'd been elsewhere you didn't just tell Hanse Davion's aunt, and more specifically the Prince's Champion no. "Well in the mean time lunch."

Gene wasn't really sure about the brightly colored pavilions that were the field dining facility, they were a mix of FedSuns, Draconis March and RBA school colors ... sprawled out in a sunburst pattern on the grounds, but that was how they did it. They did sort of need the space even with the Light and Assault Mechs moving off there was still a battalion worth of MechWarriors that needed to be fed alongside support instructors and observing persons.

He spared a glance to the table up front where he had a seat waiting, "Is that going to be a problem Sadiq?"

"I will speak to Captain Pasha, but it should not be a problem." The man exited the tent, and gene walked over to sit down.

"So how does that work?"

"How does what work?" He replied.

"The missiles? You're machine carries paired SRM 2 launchers?" Yvonne was asking the question but the surrounding table was paying attention.

"Its twenty four standards, and twenty four inferno." Basically a half ton of each in the hoppers dual electric feed system. It was a simple flip of a switch to change... and if the launchers had to cycle more than twelve throws... well that was on him. "Sadiq says their merchant friend pulled a 1vb out out of landslide. The Locust's internal frame was scrap, but they salvaged what they could." He wasn't sure if it had actually been pulled out of a landslide but that was what Sadiq had told him, and that he presumably had been told... but his conversation with Tristan in the Fortress came to mind about the JumpShip now called Cairo.

"And you'll see what else they have for sale as well?"

"It wouldn't hurt," Which just lead to Yvonne volunteering Alexandria to tag along, but then they dug into the chicken, and changed subjects. "Its true the Enforcers carry a Large Laser, which somewhat obviates their ammunition dependency, but loosing the autocannon in a fight is pretty much unavoidable. " Never mind the issue of having to stock its ammo, but that was how it was.

"You think we should commit to a time consuming refit program?"

"If there is time, yes, but if there isn't. And really its the Jager Mech I'd focus on refit them to – Alpha configuration LRMs and more armor than...." Well whatever -D was supposed to be. Consolidating all the Class 2s to Whirlwind 40mm would have been great, but he wasn't going to push the point. "It would consolidate the number of ammunition types we have to carry. As long as you can supply the ammo, well only a fraction of the brigade is carry autocannons." Jokes about Davion proclivities aside the number of mechs in the roster presently carrying autocannons was not so overwhelming that trying to standardize was elevated to a major priority. It would just be a nice logistical boon.

Yvonne smiled and nodded. "Of course we asked for your advice on this, and there is the possibility of this becoming a protracted conflict with the Draconis Combine." She sighed, "If the word is beginning to circulate in public, " another pause, "I need you to make revisions to the training contract, specifically for urban warfare colonel. I also think dueling will probably need to be a priority, a body of picked men at the least." The older woman paused, "Don't misunderstand I'm not saying abandon plans for a conventional engagement, I will make all appropriate arrangements to supply armor and infantry for the operation, but the Combine cannot be allowed to mount a successful counter attack. If an attack is detected you and the Eridani are to both sortie to relieve it."

They had talked about this, or something similar at least, and it was likely any incursion by the DCMS would be in the Draconis March. Most routes to the border were four and five jumps from Robinson, which significantly limited the efficacy of any potential response, "How quickly can you find me pilots, other than that it'll be expediting personnel hiring."

"Hire whoever you need to, as for pilots, realistically that will take me several weeks, and thats being optimistic. The only faster alternative would be to pull AFFS from their existing planes, which may end up being what we need to do, but that would be exigent circumstances." Yvonne glanced sideways to Alexandria, "Work with Alexandria for whatever you need, and you should plan to still travel to New Avalon," Even though that was five jumps.
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Notes this is the second half of last week's update, sans one scene. Obviously ComStar has its own internal factions, but some of the proliferation of BattleRom footage is being put out specifically to encourage the Successor states to fight it out. To a lesser extent its also to make the Combine look bad, because the Combine and Comstar have had a history in recent memory of beefing with one another

Next chapter will introduce the Merlin Cavalry model, Septim's rebuilt machine, and the emphasis on tanks and hovercraft in combination with medium and heavy mechs if I can get the scene how I want it. We have some other news from Combine space, and the Azami coming into this and we work towards August of 3017.