Battletech: The Ghost Who Walks (Battletech Isekai)

[Imperator Pax]

That seems kind of... low. Even at the most earliest, most generous canon conversion rate that's... what, around $3,500-worth in buying power circa present day? I'm assuming the crew is at minimum 10-15 people... You probably can't even pay the crew's wages with that, and that's with me lowballing the crew size by possibly a whole order of magnitude. Much less fund maintenance, fuel, etc. Even if it's the net profit after all expenses are paid for, it certainly isn't high enough to justify the text around it where it's clearly supposed to be an impressive chunk of money. Did you, perhaps, intend to put another zero or two or three at the end? Three hundred thousand C-bills, or thirty thousand?

Click to shrink...

sorry should have been 300k C Bills.

I corrected it and put thousand in there.

 

[RoyalTwinFangs]

So on the paperwork Gene own a jumpship? That would make getting jobs easier by being able to get them more reliable then those that don't.

 

[Imperator Pax]

So on the paperwork Gene own a jumpship? That would make getting jobs easier by being able to get them more reliable then those that don't.

Click to shrink...

On paper work Gene owns two JumpShips though they're incorporated separately from the Merc Company proper, imagine like a conglomerate or other large business venture where there is a shipping department that has nominally the same owners, but different officers. The JumpShips crew, like the armor company are all Azami, and the Lebanon is originally an Azami JumpShip.


Lets see if I can make I make the forum do something approximating what I want or if I'm going to have to subject you all to my horrible handwriting... yeah no thats not working

Current Order of Battle (Canopian Cadre)
c. March 3016​

Strategic Mobility
Lebanon Liberty-class JumpShip [Originally an Azami JumpShip]
Colorado Leviathan-class JumpShip [Originally an Alexandrian JumpShip]

Ground Forces

Canopian Experimental Company 'Easy' sans attached Mercenaries
[Note that this is March of 3016, before the unit receives any Phoenix Hawks, as they will in later life. These are all stock Mechs.]

Spoiler: Easy

Abel Platoon
6x Vindicators

Baker Platoon
6x Vindicators

Charlie Platoon / Company Reconnaissance Section
2x Locusts
2x Wasps


Delta / Company Headquarters/reserves
2 Shadow Hawks
2 Stingers

Luxen Scratch Company Veterans
6 MechWarriors.
Currently detaching Beauregard and Schiffer to Charlie Platoon [Dervish, and Cicada respectively]
Currently detaching Septim and Bubbles to Delta Platoon [Merlin, and Hunchback respectively] [Septim is defacto Company level CO, captain equivalency to 'Easy']

Armor Company [Azami formation]
Company HQ
Tank Section (2 Heavy tanks)
Support Battery (2 LRM Carriers)
2x Light Vehicle Lances tasked for recon and harassment

That leaves Gene, and Bahar in their respective mechs as defacto Light Combined Arms Battalion CO and XO on paper and the Sam Houston as formal Battalion Headquarters and support, but in actual practical battle means that in traditional doctrine the Mercenaries can fill out all base Six unit formations in Easy Company in addition to fielding another full lance of Mechwarriors [So six Mech normal mech Lances total plus a vehicle company, plus a dropship, though no ASF]

This brings us back to Laxard's question on Septim's position in the company, meaning the Merc Unit as a whole. He's defacto CO over Easy company, and also the other five veterans of the scratch company who signed on with him to run the original cadre after gene left. Effectively a Captain's billet. Bahar technically has command authority over the DropShip, and the armor as well if Gene isn't around and thus is a Major equivalent. She might theoretically out rank Septim, but they're two distinct commands in the unit.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Septim Scrap #1​

Septim hadn't been able to sleep... at least this time it wasn't the animals again. He had seen ravenous wolves and green birds prowl across the surface of Terra too many times in his nightmares the last few years. Those same greens birds he'd seen tearing at corpses of men who had worn the same Lyran Guards uniform he had worn. The dreams that had haunted him when he'd been a lieutenant on Orkney.

The Dreams had started almost a decade earlier. Not always the animals though... like this time it had been a black flag waving in the sky. The last six month on Luxen had been some of the best of the lot... it wasn't like being in the Commonwealth's Armed Forces he had finally shaken off the feeling that Azami were just going to come back and completely steamroller them.

They hadn't, and it wasn't as if he'd had dreams about that. So was he supposed tell someone? Who the fifteen year old who was probably a marksman ten times over? Yeah right. He had left the guards because he had hated the political game that was the LCAF. He had only wanted to pilot his mech, hang out and drink beers with the guys not not get dragged constantly down into the mire of every social plot and counter plot, or watch generals try and determine the price of a mile on some far off planet.

No this was hands down the best unit he'd ever been with, and risking that on superstitious bad dreams that could have been caused by the curry the night before was insane. If he was ever going back to Tamar it would be as a big famous mercenary looking to come back and retire when he was old and gray. Or that was the dream anyway... that was what he told himself he was working towards... wasn't it what every dog of war said the dream was? Get rich go home and show it off to everybody back there that they had made it big?

It was a lot easier just being a singular mechwarrior making two thousand c bills a month living on a stead y corporate paycheck than it was being an officer dealing with politics. The contracts thing by itself had about killed him, cause it had been everything wrong with his life today magnified, when he should have been happy for what it signified. He'd talked a bunch decent guys together into sticking around and taking a good paying job.

Then he'd been stuck dangling there as the man at the top worrying when someone was going to run him off of the job. He had never had it happen before, but he'd heard about it happening. This was the first contract where it might be worth enough to have someone try it.

By the time Septim had dragged himself down the mess he was awake enough that they were apparently starting to run out of the good coffee. Not that the local luxen coffee was bad, it was caffeine after all, but he was little surprised Abner was up and mobile far more than his frame might have suggested. The old doctor waved at him to come and sit. "Ah Mr Alexander, welcome, welcome do sit down."

"Thank you professor."

"Didn't sleep well?"

He shrugged, "Something like that," Septim deflected.

"Don't trouble yourself over that drone business now. Its not anything to worry about, though admittedly I very much would like to find Amaris's fabled crystal palace. There are no records of the SLDF ever finding it, but Amaris allegedly constructed a kind, palatial castle brian for his family. I would expect that such an expenditure would have included countless priceless treasures of the rim world republic at its height.

Truthfully he hadn't even been thinking about the Drone comment from the day before. It had been a weird exchange especially who was probably pushing seventy and someone half Septim's age, but then, "The commander didn't seem thrilled at the prospect of it happening again?" He was fishing now.

"No I imagine not," Abener looked off in the distance dreamily reliving some archaeological adventurer months, "Star League era sites are so interesting, all sorts of things in them that tell us so much about things were back then. Oh my biggest concern is that due to how much water is on the planet any potential rim world facilities on the planet may have actually been built under the seas you know. The Rim World Republic had a history of doing that, I couldn't even begin to fathom how long it might take to organize never mind conduct a search, never mind the reduced sea level due the ice age." The doctor stopped himself coming a up a little short for breath, "I do terribly apologize MR Alexander I do let the topics sometimes get away from me at times."

"Hey, you're signing the check right, anything that might help uphold my end of the job." Septim chuckled. "Its just business."

"Yes, yes quite right. I suppose Mindy is technically signing the checks. She'd be utterly delighted if she could find some treasure trove. A BattleMech production line of Marauders is what I think she most desperately wants to find." Septim commented that the Magistracy already had one, "Yes, it was liberated by the SLDF and then refurbished from Amaris's army. Its been in service ever since, but really its the performance of Mr Shepherd's Marauder. Really I think any battlemech factory at all, never mind a heavy one, would a big enough feather in her cap. Any kind of salvageable industry found on this trip would more than pay for it. I just wish we could restore the planet to how it had been. Find some DOME outpost somewhere and fix this horrible ice thing."

"How would that work?" He regretted the question just as soon as it left his mouth.

"Well the best way would be two fold of course, you see the Star League manufactured solar mirrors that were easily transportable by jumpships to reflect more sunlight onto a planet, and the second way would be that they'd build big atmospheric adjusters. Those would be much harder to find of course, but they were used for planets like Lone Star. The Star League was terraforming some planets in this stretch of well what we regrettably must call the Canopian ruins. Even just a few solar mirrors would let us help the planet heat back up to more temperate conditions."
--
Commentary: This was not the one I was originally going to write, and even this got side tracked by two other BattleTech pieces of fiction set during the clan invasion, which we will talk about in a minute. So this a scrap, it is kind of nominally canon. The whole Septim has visions of the Clans thing thats 'canonical' for the story itself. Even though its not explicitly spelled out those 'visions' also tie in the Wolfs Dragoons arrival in the sphere. Septim isn't the only person in this story or in canon who have these kinds of prophetic warnings about not just the clans but other threats. Is this a major part of the story, no not really, I know recent BattleTech (relatively speaking maybe,) has tried to play down the supernatural aspects but I don't care we're gonna have Ki abilities, and other stuff and what not crop up from time to time. As for the visions the cult of st cameron is a thing, Comstar has visions of the clan from time to time. The Clans do visions sometimes. Its fine.

Moving on:

So we've wrapped back around to the clans for this story we will get to our first encounter in due time, but one of the ideas I was had considered was something brought up in SB. A break up, a great balkanization of the Inner Sphere. Lets get out in front of this. Nicholas Kerensky was a lunatic, and quite frankly even he didn't just come out and insanely declare that whichever clan got to Terra would get to be IlClan that is some crazy that the clans themselves decided to adopt right before the invasion... and you know I've said here, if we ever get to the point where the clan's are invading Gene's whole attitude of 'the star league is dead, or the Star League died with house cameron and its never coming back' would be controversial. to say the least.

And taking Terra is not going to get the Inner Sphere to accept clan overlord ship because Terra has been under Comstar 'stewardship' since what 2780? Terra doesn't really mean anything to the Great Houses strategically or as political importance, and speaking of ComStar having a clan show up and declare itself IlClan is very likely to result in the Wobbies early or in ComStar as a whole going nuts at their own delusional mythos being proven wrong and nukes. ANd of course there is the fact that most likely any clan who got to Terra first would inevitably get stabbed in the back by other clans who 'dispute' their getting to Terra.

Anyway and its this idea that leads to me having this clan invasion era prompt of where you don't have the great houses any more (or the great houses exist but in a much more rump state) so much as everything has reduced down a level, to the provinces. The Clans are still around but are exhausted their warship fleet having allowed them to sunder the great houses but there several hundred warships eventually attritted by not only fights with other warships but destroyed by just ASF fighters being desperate. Worlds have been destroyed. Terra is gone.(Maybe ComStar nuked the planet rather than let the 'sldf returnees' have it, maybe Jade Falcon threw a tantrum at not being ilClan) Its just duchies and what not and now you need more mercenaries than ever because even the clans have splintered into their galaxy commanders trying to become khans of little fiefdoms in the Inner Sphere or periphery.


Like as an opening something like this idea, that I will probably not use.

Spoiler: Scrap

All the Khans get to Terra, basically we'll just say Gene but it could be someone else, but the idea was Phantom MechWarrior OP, Gene gets the drop on them with *insert armed infantry power armor turned elementals whatever* troops and has all the Khans at gunpoint. And tell thems bluntly the Star League is gone, and it doesn't matter that they have terra. Then goes "but tell you what I have this perfectly good Dire Wolf A. Since you have come here and caused this much trouble go pick your mech I will kill each of you in single combat for all of your troops to watch."

And then since Phantom MechWarrior you get some straight Kell or Yorinaga bullshit and they can't hit the side of barn while he's putting Gauss through their cockpits. End of it all the Khans are dead and this has been broadcast to the whole of the inner sphere and being beamed back to the clans.

Then Gene just fucking leaves for the periphery. and the Clans just completely splinter. Some of them over run the last great house resistance but can't hold ground against local forces. Opening / prologue over, and it picks up a few years later with the new status quo

Now part of this as an idea hinges on a more complete invasion corridor, you need a minimum of two clans invading for the other two states. (The capellans, and FWL) Or you need an explanation of why the FWL isn't intact as a result, maybe the capellans just finally bought it from residual pressure of the war

 

[DReznov]

​

Like as an opening something like this idea, that I will probably not use.

All the Khans get to Terra, basically we'll just say Gene but it could be someone else, but the idea was Phantom MechWarrior OP, Gene gets the drop on them with *insert armed infantry power armor turned elementals whatever* troops and has all the Khans at gunpoint. And tell thems bluntly the Star League is gone, and it doesn't matter that they have terra. Then goes "but tell you what I have this perfectly good Dire Wolf A. Since you have come here and caused this much trouble go pick your mech I will kill each of you in single combat for all of your troops to watch."

And then since Phantom MechWarrior you get some straight Kell or Yorinaga bullshit and they can't hit the side of barn while he's putting Gauss through their cockpits. End of it all the Khans are dead and this has been broadcast to the whole of the inner sphere and being beamed back to the clans.

Then Gene just fucking leaves for the periphery. and the Clans just completely splinter. Some of them over run the last great house resistance but can't hold ground against local forces. Opening / prologue over, and it picks up a few years later with the new status quo

Click to shrink...

Yeah no they wouldnt splinter they'd fucking UNIFY, and start following gene around like lost dogs.
Gene would never be able to get rid of them
They'd be like "get the fuck back here you have fucking DUTIES and RESPONSIBILITIES: You killed it you earned it, Now do your job"

Yeah in their eyes a man kills each khan in single combat one after the other?

He,d be Great Father 2 Electric Boogaloo

 

[Imperator Pax]

Yeah no they wouldnt splinter they'd fucking UNIFY, and start following gene around like lost dogs.
Gene would never be able to get rid of them
They'd be like "get the fuck back here you have fucking DUTIES and RESPONSIBILITIES: You killed it you earned it, Now do your job"

Yeah in their eyes a man kills each khan in single combat one after the other?

He,d be Great Father 2 Electric Boogaloo

Click to shrink...

Yeah, and you see one of the reason I wouldn't use that idea, and probably just go Waterly detonates all the nukes.

 

[Laxard]

Lol, Gene will become Clans Saint if he pull such shit on them. They will pester him to become their new Great Khan and will call him Kerensky, especially if it comes to light that he is the only one with the "legal" SLDF authorisation.

 

[RoyalTwinFangs]

I just think that Gene is a product of genetic engineering by taking all of those that gradated the Gunslinger Program to produce the the best MechWarrior.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Lol, Gene will become Clans Saint if he pull such shit on them. They will pester him to become their new Great Khan and will call him Kerensky, especially if it comes to light that he is the only one with the "legal" SLDF authorisation.

Click to shrink...

I just think that Gene is a product of genetic engineering by taking all of those that gradated the Gunslinger Program to produce the the best MechWarrior.

Click to shrink...

As an Alternate to using Gene for this, I could sub one of my other prompt MC's for this.

Lord McKenna, or Duke McAllister maybe. Kane wouldn't work as he doesn't have Phantom Mech Warrior ability and doesn't do the dueling thing, even though he actually wants an empire, and already has a massive army of clan Mechs so being ilKhan would be annoying but acceptable. My Mongol Empire successor state Khagan wouldn't work because he is too busy being furious at Clan Steel Viper to worry about the other clans.

Lets actually go through this
All under Heaven's Khagan as mentioned is to busy fighting Clan Steel Viper to do this, and doesn't have Phantom MechWarrior and he's not really on the front lines either. [Successor State CYOA]

Kane doesn't have Phantom MechWarrior and quite frankly he has the numbers to stalemate the canonical clan invasion with just the Brotherhood and friends the Clans don't get that far in that story so doesn't really work. That and ComStar is the bigger overarching enemy despite Kane really not liking Jade Falcon and Smoke Jaguar and that filtering down to the Brotherhood in his abscence without any kind of moderating influence.

Eugene Duke McAllister is a Phantom MechWarrior but has the problem of being married to the Archon, and father to Archon designate and being absolutely furious at clan Wolf to try something like this. He'd be more likely to challenge Ulric Kerensky to single combat [and then probably have to fight Jade Falcon, and Smoke Jaguar's khans in succession.] [This is one of the sstories spawned by the Space Heir II CYOa]

Lord McKenna though... yeah he doesn't have anything pleasant to say about Kerensky. as in 'is a traitor, and a coward who shirked his duty to House Cameron, the Star League and the SLDF' but of course he's also a broadly speaking a member of House Cameron as is responsible for the Armed Forces of a deep periphery state colonized as a result of Cameron Paranoia [This is the Exodus CYOA story I've got in the works] and is the exact opposite the direction of the Pentagon worlds relative to Terra [being in the Canopian ruins region of space] He'd absolutely be down for the take the khans in single combat, and he is a formal graduate and instructor of the Hegemony's successor Gunslinger program.

I'm trying to think if I've forgotten any of my BattleTech prompts

 

[Silverbullet]

I'm waiting for someone to connect the dots that he's a human popsicle thawed out centuries after his due date. I do love the idea of "The Last Gunslinger" wandering the Periphery and taking jobs like is opening acts. Simple good deeds against tyranny.

Don't worry about the supernatural stuff. As you said it's all in the setting and they straight up bend reality to do FTL so some weirdness is to be expected.

 

[RoyalTwinFangs]

As an Alternate to using Gene for this, I could sub one of my other prompt MC's for this.

Lord McKenna, or Duke McAllister maybe. Kane wouldn't work as he doesn't have Phantom Mech Warrior ability and doesn't do the dueling thing, even though he actually wants an empire, and already has a massive army of clan Mechs so being ilKhan would be annoying but acceptable. My Mongol Empire successor state Khagan wouldn't work because he is too busy being furious at Clan Steel Viper to worry about the other clans.

Lets actually go through this
All under Heaven's Khagan as mentioned is to busy fighting Clan Steel Viper to do this, and doesn't have Phantom MechWarrior and he's not really on the front lines either. [Successor State CYOA]

Kane doesn't have Phantom MechWarrior and quite frankly he has the numbers to stalemate the canonical clan invasion with just the Brotherhood and friends the Clans don't get that far in that story so doesn't really work. That and ComStar is the bigger overarching enemy despite Kane really not liking Jade Falcon and Smoke Jaguar and that filtering down to the Brotherhood in his abscence without any kind of moderating influence.

Eugene Duke McAllister is a Phantom MechWarrior but has the problem of being married to the Archon, and father to Archon designate and being absolutely furious at clan Wolf to try something like this. He'd be more likely to challenge Ulric Kerensky to single combat [and then probably have to fight Jade Falcon, and Smoke Jaguar's khans in succession.] [This is one of the sstories spawned by the Space Heir II CYOa]

Lord McKenna though... yeah he doesn't have anything pleasant to say about Kerensky. as in 'is a traitor, and a coward who shirked his duty to House Cameron, the Star League and the SLDF' but of course he's also a broadly speaking a member of House Cameron as is responsible for the Armed Forces of a deep periphery state colonized as a result of Cameron Paranoia [This is the Exodus CYOA story I've got in the works] and is the exact opposite the direction of the Pentagon worlds relative to Terra [being in the Canopian ruins region of space] He'd absolutely be down for the take the khans in single combat, and he is a formal graduate and instructor of the Hegemony's successor Gunslinger program.

I'm trying to think if I've forgotten any of my BattleTech prompts

Click to shrink...

So you got other Battletech stories planned? I like the exodus one the most.

 

[ChaosTheVoid]

Ok. Time for my review before getting off this train for now.

You had me hooked in the beginning, fighting the 'Empire' solo was engaging and the Azami 'pirates' fights were good and him trying establish himself was pretty engaging. But after Luxen battle, and the intro to the IE, my eyes started to glaze over every chapter since. The writing got kinda dry and lifeless. Nothing is exciting or got me anticipating more.

Probably just me but it doesn't help that he somehow ended up working with the Azami after fighting them by doing a job with the IE and just being handed a mech company and ships full of Azami. I think that kinda rubbed me the wrong way.

Everything has been real dry and boring exposition since. The people being added are pretty forgettable too.

Thanks for the cool ride while it lasted.

 

[Imperator Pax]

II Luxen Part 6​

Space travel wasn't really that bad, but he would glad to get back ground side. The artificial gravity generated by the grav deck rotating was okay... and helped, but dirt... dirt was nice. It would have been great if they could have been doing this groundside.

Not today though.

They were in space today.

As much of a probably not a good idea as it was... the unit had a split chain of command. It was something they were dancing around, but even as Bahar dug through SLDF training documents to distribute to the Light Mech pilots sitting against the tables during this stint of down time that was hard to miss.

It could have been worse. He had some legitimate concerns that Bahar's gender would have created drama that they frankly didn't need with regards to running cadre for the canopians. ... yeah really was kind of glad that hadn't reared its head... but then the Canopians had experience with Septim even the ones added to the expanded roster had known he had been around the last year. Strictly in unit Septim had the rest of the scratch company... and if things came to it, Bahar could direct spot, or otherwise exercise a separate company level command over the armor complement. That was sort of why he'd moved her back over to that role rather than trying to put her directly over the rest of the light mech unit as a whole.

That was what they had to do. Classwork. The Colorado didn't have sim pods unfortunately, and neither did the Sam Houston. It wasn't exactly the sort of the thing you could pick up just anywhere but they weren't super rare either.

There were a few that the magistracy had on Luxen but they were... if Gene were being honest utterly garbage. They were nothing like the ones in the Castle Outpost. He didn't have the time, or inclination to go down there, and just rip those out, but he certainly missed them, and it wasn't even like he had had access to them for all that long. He was also out of the hydroponic's system's coffee from the Outpost finally... mostly because the Canopians actually grew coffee... and the Azami had had plenty... presumably they would start growing coffee at some point on Eros.

As for the Vindicators... well their briefing was going to consist primarily of sticking together where in the event if something did go wrong that they could mass their fire with LRMs before dividing into fire teams to concentrate their PPCs at range where possible. The idea of course there was... to keep them at range and having several of them gang up on a single enemy. That was the theory, but Septim had looked tired in the mess this morning.

He tapped the map, because that split could have advantages. ... it just wasn't something that would be necessarily ideal for the Canopians though, "Modelling is going to be guesswork, even with satellite telemetry we have little idea of how much the topography is going to mess with maneuvers."

The SLDF documents were well one part just scouting in unknown terrain, common enough refresher, but also warning packets about booby traps, electronic sensors, turrets and so forth. Things that might be normally concealed which would be bad to run into. Sure the Vindicators had jump jets, and maybe the pilots should have been in here to.

The idea though was to run the recon unit as much like it would be done anywhere else in real field conditions. That, and well, "The others aren't here because we going to minimize jump jet usage where possible. Topography, and vertical clime aside we don't know how stable the ground is going to be." He responded, "Once we get vehicles unloaded we're going to move outward and attempt to get a feel for how much of the planetary maps need correcting."

Pioche should have been a temperate world with mild weather and small ish continents. Glaciation, snowglobe effect, whatever you wanted to call it seemed to have created some gnarly looking ice sheets, which were going to continue to melt over probably the next two centuries barring something big. All that water being trapped though meant comparatively bigger landmasses and ... no idea what that would mean for moving.

Septim stuck his head having obviously walked over from the other room where he was carrying on presumably much the same conversation. "So what happens if we get attacked by pirates?"

That was a good question, especially with Raventhir's whole diatribe against the Marian hegemony to consider... but it was also unlikely, "The planet is in an ice age, there isn't any civilization, and I have a hard time expecting pirates would invest the resources for a base, but if we run into something our biggest vulnerability are the JumpShips. I'll talk to Raventhir about it when she gets up, but for now if make groundside contact make sure to figure out what we're up against first. We'll have civilians to protect so have the Vindicators' understand screening rolls."

"and in a less theoretical situation?"

"In all seriousness it would depend on what we're up against. If it comes down to it we'll probably be the ones doing the heavy fighting. If they're mediums or heavy mechs have the Vindicators exploit the terrain and we'll use the rest to pick them apart... but I can't really give you more clear instructions on such a vague hypothetical."
--

Apparently Raventhir's wish list for the planet would be an automated factory that produced Marauders. The Taurian Concordant had followed the examples of the Combine, and other Great Houses in adopting the SLDF workhorse mech from the original early 27th​ century Mech. The succession wars had long since meant no one was entirely convinced that the Taurians hadn't simply stolen the designs ala how the great houses had stolen the Mackie, but it had trickled out either way... and while never in comparative numbers to its volume with the SLDF regulars the Marauder had been an integral component in the usurper's Secret Army.

It wasn't unreasonable that Amaris's Rim World Republic had contributed to spreading the design around, but it had never been the most common design. Majesty Metal's exiting Marauder production traced back to machines and tooling captured and refurbished by the SLDF after all so it wasn't impossible. They were however assuming Abner's rock theory was accurate, and that anything had survived... but again Gene got the feeling that they were probably holding back some evidence or facts about what they knew. 2799 would have been more than a decade into the first succession war... only several months after the Combine had finally been driven from Kentares IV... and there was the possibility that it hadn't been a booby trap at all, but still a man made disaster. Maybe there had been a factory there and someone had tossed a rock into a prosperous agricultural planet... maybe someone had just decided to toss a rock because it was a breadbasket world in the first place... they couldn't say with the facts they had on hand.

On paper though they were looking into the possibility of a Rim Worlds Republic hidden facility on Pioche with manufacturing capability, and that was what the Magistracy was contracting I.E. To do their mercenary archaeology stint for with security and transport being provided... and so here they were. As for the Rim Worlds Republic presence... well they'd see when they got there. Being in charge of a unit was different than just shooting bandits, this was vastly different than just dancing around Zathras's sloppy attempts to chase him through the bush country last year.


The transition confirmed that they were where they were supposed to be. A hundred fifteen light years south and west of the border... the modern border. They had been jumping through old canopian systems, from back when the canopians had a south western crescent added to their modern holdings comprising about twenty more worlds like Pioche. This was the right place, and it would take them about ten days to get from the JumpPoint to the planet's surface.

The view from the JumpPoint matched up about with what they were expecting though. He sighed, with as small of a population as Luxen was it had been weird to buy a parka and winter clothing... especially as it had been season. As long as they stuck to the tropics they probably wouldn't need it but ... they had brought them just in case but it would have been a problem to wear them and pilot a BattleMech in combat.

That didn't look like it was going to be too much of a problem. He had been a little concerned that they probably didn't have enough ground personnel along, and infantry for on the ground security, but from the look of the planet that wasn't going to be a problem.

Earth at the start of the Early Modern era had had less than a billion people on it. Within three centuries it was on a trajectory to seven billion. Pioche hadn't been effected by the near two decades fall of the star league. Canopian records had suggested it had been growing in population, but that had been ended up the impact event, and the subsequent global winter. The polar shallows freezing had resulted in a new glacial maximum from all the dust in the air and killed over a hundred million creating a population bottleneck.

Abner though was ecstatic to find that that hadn't meant the extinction of humanity on the planet. The decline yes... "A tremendous find. While plenty of deep periphery colonies did collapse down to neo Paleolithic levels, this is wonderful, yes a splendid find. I am astounded by what all we could learn." The doctor went on like that, but it wasn't why they were here, and Gene didn't have the patience to listen to recovery and population growth rates that might be in the tenth of a percentage point range.

There was barely anything in orbit. No maintenance at all after a hundred years had meant largely early space faring satellites had decayed or broken down, but it hadn't been as if Pioche had ever had much in the way of orbital infrastructure. There was no sign of a charging station at the JumpPoint they had arrived at, or the nadir jump point. Not that they'd been expecting one it hadn't been indicated on any of the Star League era maps.

They were far enough Rimward that there was no sign of a pirate presence, and Abner could be left to lament the situation while they prepared to detach the DropShips and burn for the planet.

--
Commentary: Yeah I suspect the out of universe reason that Taurain RAT in the Star League era allows them to field the Marauder is because it was to let people use the Marauder. Similarly we know that from the lore regarding the Gunslinger program, and the first hidden war the Combine were already fielding Marauders by that point. That seems ridiculous given the Marauder only entered production in 2612, though the Marauder was not originally in the lore just for the SLDF Royal units... but the earliest model with stats is the 1R... which als breaks with tradition in nomenclature. Arguably the even bigger oof than that is that the DCMS has King Crabs in 2765 in its RAT table.

But its whatever canon is a mess.

Moving on alright I get this whole arc has been rather dry, and I'm hoping Detroit will be an improvement. What I am going to do is try and get through Luxen, and work from there. I"ll be honest there were things I could have done different, and I don't know if it might have been better to do time skip through the Luxen content and save some of the plot points for later on and just moved directly to either Detroit or Ellidere or what. I mostly write this because the content just kind of spews onto the page.

 

[Laxard]

And now, so many chapters later, I finaly noticed that Bahar is a woman.

 

[Imperator Pax]

And now, so many chapters later, I finaly noticed that Bahar is a woman.

Click to shrink...

Well technically its really only been two chapters (she shows up in IE), though technically this current chapter (II Luxen) is like three chapters worth of events and on the dragon's prehensile tail I suppose I should have made it more clear than basically just her introduction in the first half of IE I admit thats on me

 

[Imperator Pax]

Notation, I don't think this warrants a thread mark, but according to PlotvitalNPC, the Canopians do not actually in canon produce the Union class DropShip.

Which I have no reason to disbelieve but that flies patently into the face of what I was operating under. SO basically, yeah you will see later in this story, production of Union class DropShips by the Canopians, like its hardly the biggest canon thing change / industry / whatever i'm making but yeah the Canopians can make Union in 3015 here but that is apparently not canon. I don't know if that bothers anyone, but just FYI. I mean sure I could basically go oh Pioche has this automated DropShip factory thing ooh look shiny and I could probably reasonably fudge that, because see earlier remarks about 2765 Draconis Combine fielding King Crabs (the union debuted in 2708), and I'm reasonably sure that Amaris's secret army used Union DropShips, but I'd have to check the sourcebooks that dealt with that and I could be wrong. ANyway...

II Luxen will conclude Sunday. It will be like thirty five hundred words and will finish out this chapter.

 

[Rodon]

Which I have no reason to disbelieve but that flies patently into the face of what I was operating under. SO basically, yeah you will see later in this story, production of Union class DropShips by the Canopians, like its hardly the biggest canon thing change / industry / whatever i'm making but yeah the Canopians can make Union in 3015 here but that is apparently not canon. I don't know if that bothers anyone, but just FYI. I mean sure I could basically go oh Pioche has this automated DropShip factory thing ooh look shiny and I could probably reasonably fudge that,

Click to shrink...

One option would be to admit that instead of a fully functional dropship factory, they have parts of one. They can make spare parts easily and slowly make a complete Union by hand. So a couple per year, would likely be ignored by everyone else, due to the small numbers produced. With their efforts to expand it, running into a combination of lack of capital investment ability and their lack of base industry support.

 

[Imperator Pax]

II Luxen
Conclusion

​

Had the whole thing been a waste of time? No, probably not and certainly they were getting paid, and the 'kids' had gotten to drive their mechs around on an unknown planet. They hadn't found anything, not that he'd been expecting some giant ominous tower, or a bunch of sharks painted everywhere announcing 'Evil Bad Guy place here' and what not. Realistically he wasn't sure if that was a facet of not having the resources at hand, or just unreasonable expectations to just trip over LosTech. There was no immediate threat present, and bust or no it didn't meant that over time there would be other ventures to be made... but it wasn't their responsibility.

Abner at least went away from it all happy. His stone age hunter gatherers were something for him to write home about. Was there something there on Pioche... maybe, but given the glaciation north of the tropics, the extent of the glaciers in the mountains? Pft well they were the most likely place to put something like a castle and they were icicles.

They were hardly gonna stay icicles for a while, and no body had brought out any mole man machines so it had been back to Luxen, and face the reality that they were coming up on the end of the contract. There might be one more renewal after this but realistically even with Lady Raventhir foot the bill he couldn't imagine that her dragging off the experimental company to what had turned out to be a wild goose chase had gone over as well with the planetary government.

The Merc Court had over a year of hearing and deliberation together over the matter of Detroit's salvage... and they still weren't fucking done yet. The MRB recognized that they were under contract, but that hadn't stopped them from sending an HPG message telling them they should show up to Detroit. It gave them time to accommodate for travel and waht not but it was what it was.

Friar Tuck had waved it off because it wasn't actually like a subpeona, but still... "We're gonna go right?" Septim asked.

"We will," He replied as he paged through his paper work. Friar Tuck had sent him Septim's summons as well leaving it to him to pass along. It had almost gotten buried in the deluge of other mail. Interstellar Expeditions was not a tightly run central organization. It was a collection of professionals, and amateurs that had been bound together from two big preceding organizations that had been cobbled together from early organizations and thus was a patchwork of different scientific interests and studies and qualifications. They did a little bit of everything, chased urban legends, and engaged in the sort of archaeology that would been appropriate to 1910s Earth. The latter was enough to give some of the more 'respectable' institutions the 'vapors', but that Lyran money... it paid out on time.

There were other financial matters to deal with. Colorado was a JumpShip from an earlier time, and while not exactly ideal for Star League Military applications its retroffiting in the late 26th​ century had fixed up the issue of fragile fuel bunkers. He had an idea for dealing with the issue of the corridors if someone tried to board, but the ship had largely been plying safe trade routes. It had been more money than the Cadre training pay but that was what it was.

He tapped another key to scroll. They had come to Luxen via New Abeleine and then circuit rode the rest of the way. "We've got a cargo job to the Duchy of Don't for transport," Lebanon would be taking that. It seemed like the Duchy of Don't even further spinward had gotten hit pretty hard by some other pirates so the Canopians were transferring some humanitarian aid that way. "So Lebanon will detach from us at Fronc. He was considering depending on what all was available getting involved in any of the open contracts on Bellerophon's ongoing civil war. The planet had no military to speak of and the ongoing strife had been made worse by the influx of pirates into this region of space so it looked like it would be relatively steady employment if wanted to stick close to Detroit, which was as single jump away. On the other hand there was a strong religious bent to more than one faction in the war, and he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to get involved in that kind of mess. He exhaled, "Other than that," The truth was the Magistracy accepted that Luxen was underequippred... just generally understrength, and they were looking to fix that. That was looking like it would come a couple of ways. The present 'Easy Company' Roster was going to run into problems. The MAF wanted to send some of their candidates to Canopus for Academy OCS or whatever the equivalent was, but that would only really work for members of the unit looking to actually stay in the military beyond their stint in national service. Never that problem there was the bigger issue of equipment, and general lack of funding. He could understand the hope at least for finding some magical solution in the form automated production from the Star League era, after all it had been part of how the MAF on paper strength before New Vandenburg had been possible. They might yet find that, but for now, the best option was to contend with since they didn't have an immediate option to buy mechs from the Inner Sphere then to refurbish salvaged mechs... like most periphery planets.

--
They were approaching the end of their contract so the expletive demand wasn't unreasonable. "Are you fucking kidding me?" He heard one of the scratch company veterans shout. It was the other Alexander ... he wondered how common the last name was, but Beauregard 'Bo' Alexander was originally from the Free Worlds League.

He leaned against the chair and over the console, "What do we have Bahar?"

"Pirate point insertion, and DropShips burning hard."

He reached over and tapped the screen, "Whats with this Union, its acting squirrelly." It didn't have any ASF launches either, which was weird, but maybe the pirates just didn't have any ASF's for it. She shook her head, unable to come up with an answer. "Alright go ahead and suit up, we're going out." He needed more support personnel and that was another reason to head for Detroit sooner rather than later.

He was halfway through the roster of the company making sure they and their canopian 'pupils' were underway when Friar Tuck's channel opened up, and the clearly painfully sober old drunk and the local Gamma precenter appeared over the hologram. "Commander Shepherd," Precentor Gamma greeted, "we would just like to apprise you that the pirates coming in are particularly fearsome examples of their breed. The band of Black Jack McGirk has pillaged his way from the Lyran Commonwealth to the Taurian Concordant." The Precentor remarked his accent thick from somewhere Gene couldn't place. "We believe they may even have acquired a Star League Cache of weapons that has allowed them remain so active over the last twenty years. If you can bring these individuals to justice, or even just stymie them there will be significant bounty paid out on behalf of the MRB."

Some one whooped over the open channel even as he finished his mech's weapons diagnostic. "I understand, can you tell me anything about them?"

"We believe that they were apart of the Tortuga dominions for the last few years. This is probably only a small part of Black Jack's band but they may be in heavy BattleMechs," The precentor grimaced, "Far be it from me to tell you how to do your job, but you should be careful." The two ComStar members' heads snapped sideways to somewhere off camera, "Please excuse me commander brother adept Richard will attempt to help you any way he can I must go speak with the Canopian Authorities."

Friar Tuck couldn't really tell him much though, other than these assholes had been rampaging their way anti-spinward for about the last year. "Anyone who wasn't listening in, there is a good chance that they have heavy Mechs we're not going to be able to get in close. Bahar will scout out what they have." ... and if could put eyes on them he'd direct as many LRMs on the enemy position as possible.

Luxen's capital city's civil defense sirens going off didn't make anything any easier. The rest of the regiment were trying, and pretty badly failing to get out and into the open. Gene didnt' understand why the idiots had even jumped for the pirate point given how close the normal points were, but maybe McGirk's people were used ot it... and just did what they knew. Whatever the case the pirates, the threat of them had tied the regiment's mech and vehicle companies into a mess of trying to get out of depot.

Precenter Tau VII Labarbera, having said the whole thing in her introduction, didn't have anything to do with the MRB... ComStar did a lot of everything and as a result she was that person who did stuff with the University of Luxen's history department... and the ComStar's news channel. She had provided a general over view on all the worlds McGirk had hit in the last decade without the rampant speculation that devoured the news boards and other gossip sites. Unfortunately it didn't sound good. McGirk supposedly had a regiment worth of Heavy Battlemechs, which was a pretty scary concept... but it wasn't as if they were all in one place

It had taken them entirely too long to get everything sorted and moved out and to actually deploy to the field. Not helped of course by the lack of Magistracy air assets to in any way meaningfully force the pirates to land further away. It wasn't all bad news though. Despite ComStar calling in there were Stingers, and OstScouts and plenty of Phoenix Hawks... there were Gulloitines, and Quickdraws and other mechs but it wasn't as if they were up in their eye balls in heavy mechs.

True there were heavy mechs in the field... and that one that poor Charger he had shot in the back... it had been easier to deal with than the Gullotine which had insisted on hopping around up until he'd shot one of its legs off as it had been jumping... it had ended up in the hydro electric plant's reservoir. Not that ComStar had been exaggerating, those heavy mechs in the field which were proving to be a problem for the Luxen Volunteers.

"Think they'll renew our contract now, boss?"

He wished Septim wouldn't make comments like that during operations, and ignored the question as he searched for the next Mech to fight. The pirate band had no indication of combined arms inclination, but they'd smashed up plenty of militia vehicles as they stomped through the salient he had orbitally inserted into last year.

"Boss two Ostrocs just broke through C's defensive line. Looks like they got close enough to go loud and fatal with their SRMs."

He acknowledged the startled mechwarrior's radio call, and turned into the wind putting the Marauder into a full on sprint. On paper a MAF Battallion should have been five companies... in practice even if that were true they were combined arms. An MAF battalion was usually two and sometimes three companies of BattleMechs. There were three battalions of Luxen Volunteers to each Regiment of the provincial volunteers, and three regiments... again on paper, but 3rd​ was off world and two even before the Azami attack might as well have not even existed for how few 'mechs they could scrape together.

He ordered the unit to remain in contact with Force Major Seghal. As defacto head of the planet's defense forces if she went down this was going to be a mess. He kicked himself for considering swinging by Dunianshire and doing a little LosTech prospecting of his own for the unit as they headed back for Detroit. They could have afforded a couple days to poke around with the map... another time. Gene pushed over the next ridge and resolved the first Ostroc about six hundred meters out... not that he had a shot of course.

Fifteen tons lighter than his Marauder but running off the same fusion engine they had a flat out speed of close to fifty five miles an hour, which in car terms wasn't that fast but in giant armored vehicle terms was pretty nice when you were talking about a sixty ton vehicle dating from the early twenty fourth century.

The holographic map of the battlefield projected to his right mapped the grid coordinates, which he then relayed to the Vindicators standing by. As harassment it was something, but this drawn out fight had depleted ammunition and even if it hadn't LRM 5s weren't a lot of firepower to begin with. "Bubbles, yeah your sector has two heavy mechs inbound." He relayed to Chang's Hunchback.

Within two minutes he was seeing the flashes of electric blue white from Vindicator PPCs and and another minute later registering Large laser dispersion as the Ostroc's had slowed from flank to return fire. The Vindicators carried a decent amount of armor for mediums, basically equivalent to what the Ostroc had, and the Hunchback carried ten tons of standard armor.

"Lady Raventhir, I really do not have time to hold a conversation right now." He ground out as evenly as possible as the Mobile HQ that Major Seghal was commanding from connected him to the Magistracy noble. He was coming down the slope of a rise as his Dalban calced the shot for each PPC as he closed into a half click, and his gunsites magnified to four power.

Both lightning bolts slammed into the left mech's left rear shoulder armor nearly tipping the sixty tonner over as it took a step forward and then blew into the internals. The right Heavy Mech was trying to close into presumably range to fire his srms or alpha strike with all of his energy weapons but he kept his guns trained on the left one as the right Ostros moved away.

"I need to know if your DropShip can conduct an air to ground mission, yes or no?"

"Yes." In terms of equivalent the Sam Houston had enough LRMs to be equivalent to what a Leopard carried. Was that some kind of huge accomplishment? No, but it was missiles. "Target?" He got off the line, and relayed that mission to the DropShip, as the Ostroc he was shooting into crumbled and stumbled down a concrete shored up embankment. He moved to the next one to add what amounted to a coup de grace as the battered mech shuddered.

They had other problems to deal with.

The pirates had come in with three DropShips from a single JumpShip. The union though looked like it had undergone some kind of modification. What exactly who knew precisely, but it hadn't thrown out ASF, and there was PBI coming out of the damn thing. "Houston, I'm moving towards the Union." The Azami captain acknowledged, and he swapped channels to Bahar. "Bahar, fall back consolidate the unit."

"What are you doing?"

Probably something stupid, but he was banking on the pirates being too busy taking effective air to ground fire or even ground to ground missile fire to realize what he was doing. During the down time more than a year ago he'd gamed out with the simulators the Zathras Union... it didn't work nearly as well as it had. The computer could see him where as in the field under fire the computers couldn't. The semi automatic fire control, largely automated to reduce crew concerns, meant the Union couldn't see his mech couldn't target him... but the simulator had taught him plenty about the Mech itself.
--
Gene nodded to himself at the reading and keyed his mike, "Black Jack Dropship," Having nothing better to call the thing, as the pirate dropper's name was somewhat vulgar when translated into English. "this is Major Shepherd. I have confirmation of your reactor shut down." He avoided saying anything like thank you for cooperating or the like. The pirates were already going to have to walk past a bunch of their dead, either scythed down by LRM shrapnel, or the unfortunate charred remains of those who hadn't seen his Marauder closing in until the pulse laser opened.

He'd taken the chance just because he'd seen the DropShip, and saw the opportunity. That and thoughts of the Zathras DropShip had flittered in the back of his mind nagging him.

There was a thunder as the Sam Houston executed a verticle landing and its forward roll on roll off bay doors opened carrying clusters of Militia Infantry to secure the DropShip, and the prisoners. "Is it done?"

"I'm returning to the Company position standby."

He flipped through the displays of the unit's mechs. Two companies was no trouble for Mech that had endeared it to SLDF Battalion and Regimental commanders. Unfortunately unit armor levels were perilously low. With explicit orders not to engage most of the Light Mechs were as a percentage value in the best shape.

Repairing the Vindicators after the battle with the Azami had been easy for the defenders, after all Luxen Volunteers had never really driven the things in the field but that had required most of the spare parts that they did have on hand. The fact that they'd never used them in twenty years of having them meant that now that they were gone there weren't any easy spares on hand. One of the Shadow Hawks was down its entire left side from the AC 5 ammunition going off, but the pilot was alive and the mech was walking.

Sam Houston had picked up three of their Vindicator pilots who had punched out, one hadn't made it due to the faulty ejection system, and the other two needed to be medevaced... but the canopians at least had that covered. With the Union out of the fight though, the battle field was completely different. Lady Raventhir seemed surprised they had captured the Union, presumably having expected them to blow it to high hell. They had it now, and that meant its LRMs. Pirates weren't especially feeling brave and a leopard was currently high tailing it out of the way.

"Going to have to seriously invest in ASF pilots. I'm tired of watching them fly away." He muttered to Bahar. "How is Bo's mech?"

"Severely damaged, both legs suffered critical actuator hits." He had gotten tangled up with a Thunderbolt only to get broadsided by a couple light mechs jumping to try and take advantage before the rest of the 'HQ unit' could finish cleaning up. That was going to be expensive, which went without saying. "I would say that it is out of the fight."

Coming down one of the gangways Septim stuck his head in the ward room, "Shiffer is KIA. Shrapnel internal bleeding, nothing they could do." He had seen the mauled side of the man's customized Cicada.

As bad as it was, he'd barely spoken to the medium Mech pilot even after he'd signed on. The man had been competent at what he did. Had been useful for demonstrating jump jet, and aggressive maneuvers in the field and overland navigation, and that had been it really. He hadn't been entirely sure that the Lyran pilot had intended to stay on once this contract finished or when they got to Detroit. "Jowett and Andrew?"

"Both fine, dinged up but okay." Which was better than their mechs. Bubble's hunchback was pretty fine as well and anything dumb enough to get close enough had gotten introduced to the AC 20 that was why she was still out there as the command staff assessed the situation and she had directing authority over Easy company.

The planetary government was hoping the pirates would just surrender... Gene was fairly certain that the Canopians didn't have the death penalty ... he knew at least that they had prisons for pirates so it wasn't as if they were surrendering to like the Capellans. "Septim your mech is in no condition to go back out there, I need you to take the militia catalog everything, make copies, and start the paper work for the MRB. They said bounties for killing Black Jack Pirates, get on that."

"Yes mein herren." The Lyran replied with a smart click of his heels.

Gene ignored that exaggerated display and head back towards the Mech bay with Bahar in tow. The Azami pilot glanced sideways at him. "Next target?"

"We need to find out what's still out there," He really hoped they were exaggerating 'battalion' worth of pirates, "break whatever resistance remains."

"I understand." She replied. Bahar was the only other person here wearing Star league era, or more correctly SLDF grade gear. Her khaki jumpsuit was the same size as his and would have designated her as a Star League Defense Force regular army MechWarrior. An SLDF lieutenant green bar marked her jumpsuit. "What?"

"We need to get uniforms." He muttered.

"Before or after ASF pilots?" She responded.


He wondered if she was serious, that was sass or if he was just that tired. Probably before though, surely the Luxen had some tailors who could make standard pattern clothes. "We can put a batch call out to the local industry here once things quiet down." Gene replied.

--
Commentary: Alright yeah okay Luxen done, we won't be back here for a while. Like Rodon says up above handfitting DropShips is a thing in setting, and that would work. Kind of what I had in mind as well. So we're going back to Detroit, well technically next chapter opens still on Luxen, but heading back to Detroit.

Now that will predominantly be Gene centric, most of the unit will be up on North keeping a low profile babysitting engineers like Gene did most of his time on Detroit last time. We'll get some more exposition about McGirk and the Combine will make an appearance. It will be more personal character drama and will hopefully be an improvement.

Alright theoretically my Drow CYOA story will update monday, probably monday afternoon, and then hopefully I'll have worked out something of an update schedule for September Monday as well.

 

[lancelot]

Commentary: Alright yeah okay Luxen done, we won't be back here for a while. Like Rodon says up above handfitting DropShips is a thing in setting, and that would work. Kind of what I had in mind as well. So we're going back to Detroit, well technically next chapter opens still on Luxen, but heading back to Detroit.

Now that will predominantly be Gene centric, most of the unit will be up on North keeping a low profile babysitting engineers like Gene did most of his time on Detroit last time. We'll get some more exposition about McGirk and the Combine will make an appearance. It will be more personal character drama and will hopefully be an improvement.

Alright theoretically my Drow CYOA story will update monday, probably monday afternoon, and then hopefully I'll have worked out something of an update schedule for September Monday as well.

Click to shrink...

Dude you skip way too much of anything interesting. Speaking on most combat only after the fact, and what little combat we do read for 1st person is hardly mentioned. You need to work on expanding things and showing instead of telling.

 

[Kyryst]

A bit more detail would be appreciated. It feels like half the conversations and actions are cut off, and we are left wondering what happened. Like the Raventhir conversation, what was being targeted?

What was the faced opposition? Three Dropships ( Leopard, modified Union and something else), Stingers, Ostscouts, Phoenix Hawks, Quickdraws, Guillotines, Ostrocs and a Charger, and Poor Bloody Infantry. Maybe a Combined arms Battalion, two companies of Battlemechs and a company of infantry?

And I am having difficulty tracking age and time. If you could either have dates or how old Gene is at the beginning of the segments, it would be appreciated. Because right now I think Gene is sixteen, owns two Jumpships, a Mercenary Company, a vehicle company, and a lot of Salvage, and is doing all of that better then the planetary representatives of an interstellar nation. Yes I know he has the training and education, as well as a past life, but there doesn't seem to be much reaction from people besides the sheriffs, the Azami, and the Mercs he leads.

I love what you are writing, I just would like to see it fleshed out a little bit.

 

[Silverbullet]

Dude you skip way too much of anything interesting. Speaking on most combat only after the fact, and what little combat we do read for 1st person is hardly mentioned. You need to work on expanding things and showing instead of telling.

Click to shrink...

A bit more detail would be appreciated. It feels like half the conversations and actions are cut off, and we are left wondering what happened. Like the Raventhir conversation, what was being targeted?

What was the faced opposition? Three Dropships ( Leopard, modified Union and something else), Stingers, Ostscouts, Phoenix Hawks, Quickdraws, Guillotines, Ostrocs and a Charger, and Poor Bloody Infantry. Maybe a Combined arms Battalion, two companies of Battlemechs and a company of infantry?

And I am having difficulty tracking age and time. If you could either have dates or how old Gene is at the beginning of the segments, it would be appreciated. Because right now I think Gene is sixteen, owns two Jumpships, a Mercenary Company, a vehicle company, and a lot of Salvage, and is doing all of that better then the planetary representatives of an interstellar nation. Yes I know he has the training and education, as well as a past life, but there doesn't seem to be much reaction from people besides the sheriffs, the Azami, and the Mercs he leads.

I love what you are writing, I just would like to see it fleshed out a little bit.

Click to shrink...

Everything they said plus we still don't have a good read on who's who character wise.

Gene- The SI with outside memories as well as memory and training as and SLDF Gunslinger. Phantom

Septim-Lyran mercenary mechwarrior who has visions.

Bahar- XO?

Lady Raventhir- current patron and likely future contact if you get the SI involved in the Aurigan Civil War.

We're not trying to bust your balls just help improve things. We all love the story just suggesting ways it could be better. The entire combat scene feels disjointed and detached and as stated beforehand conversations seem to just stop.

 

[Laxard]

I agree with others, it's like large chank of the chapter missing. What is the point of writing battle chapter and then "auto-resolve" it in the middle? All that walking into thpe battle made me excited, but suddenly it is a casuality report.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Duly noted. So I will be going forward with the next chapter, but would there be interest in me opening a new thread, and basically having the Luxen arc expanded as its own stand alone this would include writing out most of the attack and battle events going out in the conclusion. Yes, that got cut principally because I wasn't happy with what was on paper.

Like I will attempt to improve on the show not tell, and fluffing of characters, but while I think I can improve I make no promises on it being amazing. This would be basically be its own stand alone novella. Yeah I'lm probably take things like the age / date thing under advisement. I probably won't retroactively go back and add that in, but yeah it is probably something I should have done, and its something I should have done to start with. Kind of a duh.

 

[Meatlover]

I mean if you want to make youself extra work do it if you do not leave it. We do not pay you so you are not forced to carter to all our whims. I like the story as is for now.

 

[Laxard]

Duly noted. So I will be going forward with the next chapter, but would there be interest in me opening a new thread, and basically having the Luxen arc expanded as its own stand alone this would include writing out most of the attack and battle events going out in the conclusion.

Click to shrink...

... Why don't you write it as an actual chapter here?
You can write it as an interlude, not like it will help with confusion while reading an actual chapter here if you don't put it in the middle of the one you already written.
Separate tread for a chapter of a story is quite a strange idea, way to inconvinient, especially since you are not dealing with censure here.

 

[Viva01]

A bit more detail would be appreciated. It feels like half the conversations and actions are cut off, and we are left wondering what happened. Like the Raventhir conversation, what was being targeted?

Click to shrink...

So much this!

To sum up my thoughts. You have some great early chapters with the fighting cat and mouse that makes sense. There are some issues though. I don't think creating a seperate thread would be a good idea.

It's more as commentary for chapters going forwards. There's a lot of disjointed moments where you will skip into scenes and there's not enough information being shown with —The next day during a meeting with High Command...— or — Gene rubbed his head, "Why'd you have to do that?" — this gives us an understanding of where things are occurring along with breaking the scenes up. The second example lets us clearly start with who is talking OR more importantly, who's PoV we're supposed to be using. It's becoming typical that you need to read well past your initial statement to decipher who's talking, where, and when which then breaks the flow of the story as we might have missed what was supposed to be discussed.

They were approaching the end of their contract so the expletive demand wasn't unreasonable. "Are you fucking kidding me?" He heard one of the scratch company veterans shout. It was the other Alexander ... he wondered how common the last name was, but Beauregard 'Bo' Alexander was originally from the Free Worlds League.

Click to shrink...

I'm not sure if this is supposed to be part of the previous paragraph of is standalone... Might I suggest the Horizontal line instead of --- as this is something you can skim past if you read too quickly. It also highlights the previous point. What was the demand. From further reading, we assume it's something outrageous but doesn't seem that outrageous as they go ahead with it.

You have some great stuff when it is the early fight with him stalking around in the Marauder but that's suffering from the introduction of more characters as we don't have the streamlined understanding of who's who and what they mean. I'm still not really sure who's Under Gene's command if that's actually what's happened or not. I'm kind of not willing to go back and reread to find the clues to form the picture right now.

I love the Mechwarrior setting and there are some fun moments of him fighting so yeah. I'd love to read more but hope you can use this as feedback and not as negative commentary?

---

As an aside I love that he has a Maruader that is like a stealth sniper, that's how I try to use mine in all my Battletech campaigns. What are other people's favourite Mechs?

 

[Kyryst]

In this era, I love the Battlemaster as an allrounder, the Catapult for support, the Phoenix Hawk for trooper, and the Awesome for zombie.

I might just love battlemechs, LOL.

I wouldn't have you force yourself to write something you have no interest in. If you want to flashback as a debrief or hotwash of what happened as part of the teaching Gene is doing, sure. You don't have to open another thread and novella it, unless that is what you yourself want to do.

I know nothing kills a muse like rewriting, so just improve going forward, and you will be fine.

 

[Imperator Pax]

II Detroit
Part 1​

Luxen, Magistracy of Canopus. [-102.54 : -493.873]
September 3016 [1]

The 'second battle of Luxen' had generated a migraine inducing amount of paper work. Those following few days had been exhausting. There was no getting around it they needed to get up to Detroit, but Septim wasn't wrong they could probably reup this contract if it came to it... and to be fair it wasn't as if one pirate attack a year was that terrible when it came to having to contend with garrison duty.

The problem was when they were talking about one hell of a pirate attack. He'd looked over the second battle of Luxen's damage reports and cringed. He'd looked over the salvage taken from the battle... and wondered... kept coming up with what the fuck. BattleMechs were supposed to be rare. It was why Luxen's planetary defense was so thin on the ground to start with. Yes, ComStar's reported speculation that ole Blackjack must have found a Star League cache of Mechs made sense but even so... it was a mess.

One of these a year was plenty. The Magistracy wasn't going to really hold trials per se. There would be hearings for the captured pirates from the Dropship, and the MAF Intelligence wonks were going to do their bit, and after that well it'd be up to the Magistracy panel to recommend sentencing for them. That wasn't his problem. His problem was crewing the new DropShip, which well with no Aerospace bays, and him not having infantry to rack that wasn't as hard. What was probably going to happen was he'd hire on a temporary space crew from available people 'shore side' and have the longshoremen load up the Mechs that were going to be posted aboard the Union.

They'd worry about more permanent crew and fittings out to it once they were at Detroit. Going even further coreward, though not into the Inner Sphere proper, to Herotitus seemed like a bad idea. The scratch company remains from the original Luxen contract though was a good foundation, and given the rate at which Mercenary outfits failed he supposed the best option would be to pick up companies that were nearly defunct, or had recently failed in terms of recruitment since they were more likely to have a little of everything.

Technically speaking even 'countries' that didn't have a 'border' with the periphery maintained some degree of presence in the Rimward Periphery. Part of this was because it was a holdover from the Star league era, when the auspice of Inner Sphere trade was about exporting finished goods out to the undeveloped periphery. The Mercenary trade had already existed before the reunification war of course, but the downfall of the Star League changed the the game in innumerable ways. Detroit was an independent world that could feed itself and had something approaching an industrial base and it set relatively nicely in between the Concordant and the Magistracy, and that was nice. It was well positioned to act as a hub world for plenty of business, and that meant the merc trade and its supporting industries had a strong presence in Ann Arbor. Detroit was just all around a better option than heading for Herotitus, which only had a population in the low millions.

"And the fact we have to go there cause, Court."

"And that," He agreed, and the truth was he didn't know what to expect for that. No idea how long they were going to be there. "We don't have any infantry, and that's something I'd like to try and address while we're on Detroit." Septim nodded, and at the addition regarding the Union, "No, I don't imagine Lady Raventhir was really expecting us to to take Union to begin with." Their salvage clause was very air tight though, Raventhir when they had signed on to her contract had promised them any material they took in combat, which admittedly had been something of an oversight on her part but she had ... or her lawyers had written it up to divide between any LosTech prospecting finds (a cash payment), versus anything taken fighting pirates. "Anyway we're on the clock for another, what week?" During which the dockhands would be scrubbing that union out, and making sure it was ship shape.

"Technically its nine days."

He grunted. "Has Raventhir said anything?"

"Itenerary is the same, shore up the Luxen Volunteers, run training missions up until we lift off."

He hadn't expected anything different, but he had wanted to ask, "I've lined up a contract for survey security on North," Detroits eponymous northern continent, "That will keep the company busy while we're there, Its a three month gig with Majesty Metals, any body who doesn't have court can go make money." Idle hands and what not, and more than that it would let them have Detroit overhaul the Union if they needed to make any other changes, which they were hoping not, but there was a good chance he was going to need to get the ship insured. "Raventhir still talking about going to Sian," Or wherever, "To try and buy more Vindicators?"

"From the sound of it."

Well that would be after they left. The pirate attack had demonstrated that there still remained vulnerabilities in the Magistracy's defenses, and Luxen had to make more practical investment into their defenses. Not their problem. "I wonder if Major Seghal will bring that up." the general after action report notably omitted his commentary that the Vindicator had been found to painfully light on armor. Not that he really expected her to bring that up. They were finishing this up, and and they were being paid for it. If the employer didn't want to recognize a problem, or deemed it worth it for whatever logistical reason they had that was fine they had done their bit.

"Alright, I'll clear out." The lyran through a very imprecise salute and sauntered off, and they'd probably needed to do something about discipline, but then again they still didn't have uniforms either.

Instead of picking at his sleeve he turned back to the paper work as the door closed shut behind Mr Alexander's retreating form. There was a good chance all Septim was here for was the adventure and didn't want any of the responsibility of trying to manage a company, even if he clearly didn't mind the teaching aspect of cadre duty. The ultimate downside to that was Alexander's staff talents had been lacking, Septim could drive a mech, but his field exercises before Gene had gotten back to Luxen had probably originated from some Lyran manual, but without the manual or any of the other material to work from. 'Winging it' as a description came to mind, but really it had become more apparent after the battle. Septim didn't want anything to do with the command responsibility to casualties... not that Gene particularly looked at that part of the job as a plus.

Truthfully he'd been winging this as much as the Lyran man had. This whole thing had spiraled into something where he wasn't sure how they'd really gotten to this point. Maybe he was over compartmentalizing to deal with everything, but that was only going to work for so long. The MRB letter came to mind, the merc court was a hassle from one of the great houses throwing its weight around... they needed to go though... but there was this as well.

He'd been winging it. The MRB had logged his combat performance on Detroit of course, but the command side of that had only really entailed directives to Captain Fields. The MRB had made a note of it, and it had only been brought back up because of what that meant in terms of the Merc Court hearing. Here though, Gene bit down a scoff, against the Azami the first go around there were pages worth of 'reports' from the MRB, and this thing against the pirates who had landed last week was sure to generate as much. Command Performance Review.

A review.. a write up he found straight up laughable. He thought about things back on Aquagea shooting at would be Zathras conquerors... and the dance in the desert. Now he was the on paper owner of a company with two fucking JumpShips... all the while being stuck in a body that didn't even need to shave yet.



--
He had made the decision not to try and straight copy the SLDF doctrine, but there was no denying it influenced the coursework. A knock ended the rustling of papers. "Force Major Seghal."

"Commander Shepherd."

Perfunctory greetings out of the way they moved back to the seats and sat down. "You'll be losing experienced people to mustering out, as well as them being shipped to the MAF's Academy on Canopus?" He assumed that graduates from there would come back, but that could be wrong.

"Most of the Luxen Volunteers in the company are nearing the end of their terms for national service," Seghal pointed out, "the magistracy doesn't require further service from those not willing to make a career of the military." It hadn't been any secret that Seghal had been getting into arguments with Luxen's civilian government over the second battle, no one there wanted to lose defense assets, but the money just wasn't there right now. Letting the contract lapse wasn't popular with all of the increased pirate activity in the Rimward periphery. "We need to discuss Saturday's exercise, and the Militia Battalions would like copies of all training materials past and present."

"I understand," Most likely there was probably going to be an attempt by Seghal's command to keep the lessons in place, or even build from them as hopefully they received new equipment through Lady Raventhir's largesse. It would still run into the fact that well the batallions, the kids serving national service in the militia just weren't being given indepth training. It went back to most of the pilots having little to no time in a real mech, and barely any simulator experience before being thrown into one for real. "Luxen has been lucky so far, the Hashashin could have just as easily decided to resort to everything is permitted and brought their LRMs to bear before any kind of help could have arrived. This most recent attack was by a more conventional force, but should be considered a sign that times are changing."

"Unlike in certain other nations the military doesn't control the budget its given to work with," She riposted. If she had noticed he'd made the effort to distinguish the Azami with a prepared cover story she didn't say anything, but that was fine to. In a little under two weeks they would be under way, but he'd need to bid the local partner company good bye and what not.

"I understand, final exercises?

"1st​ Luxen will be conducting a regiment wide drill based on our most recent pirate attack." She paused, "the Opposing Force will be on the field and operating already set up south of the capital. While this will be based off... recent events we won't be involving dropships." The news was as good as any to serve as an excuse to head out. Seghal was right the Magistracy wasn't one of the Successor Houses he would have thought that any of them... any sensible government would probably have conscripted the University's College of Engineering students for military service, and as Seghal had stated the Canopians were reluctant to extend military service... and that was probably a decision being made by someone off world if he had to guess.

The depot though really, really could have used the extra hands. They had only seen part of the action against the pirates. Largely green pilots had proven to be an issue with things like heat management, and ammunition tracking which was all to be expected. Thankfully there had been only a few ammunition explosions reported, but the precious and comparatively expensive and rare Shadowhawks spread across the Luxen Volunteers had expended their ammo in many cases too early in the battle.

The depot was a smorgasbord of parts laying out in the sun, or under hastily thrown up tents. Damaged BattleMechs stood out in the open, or crouching besides buildings, or laying on cargo mover recovery vehicles... or the like. It looked like a junkyard. The pirates who hadn't escaped had surrendered the ones who hadn't had been destroyed... and so the machines which could be salvaged had been dragged over here. Friend, and Foe.

Gene stepped into one of the actual legitimate pre fab steel structures that had been apart of the original depot to the noise of shouting and arguing techs, MechWarriors, and MAF desk jockeys alike. "I told you, fucking Cappellan machine not have enough armor." One of the techs snarled. "The whole arm is wrecked." One Tech shouted at someone else over the din of a power tool.

The arm in this case was the PPC carrying one. The statement besides was probably true. The Vindicator was a medium mech on paper... not that the regiment's light mechs had done better. He decided he wasn't going to get involved in the argument, sidestepped them, and hoped that Seghal was at least aware of the situation with her command. It wasn't hard slipping past them, and the gantry with the strung up Vindicator. There were other Vindicators as well, but they had to be seriously scraping the bottom of the spare parts supplied by the factory at this point. Myomer bundles would be easy, or easier to source he supposed. Mech Gyros were fairly standardized, so they'd probably be alright he thought navigating carts of tools, lube, and other odds and ends.

In a week though this wasn't going to be his problem... unless they came back. "In here boss."

"Raventhir still wants to run regiment wide exercises are there enough running mechs for that?" He asked cutting straight to the chase as he ducked into the little more than a cubicle against the wall.

--
Commentary: I know, and I knew going in that Luxen's conclusion was going to be, well that there were problems with it. I basically had decided 'fuck it we need to get through this'. I'll see about revisting II Luxen later in the month, October maybe.

[1] On the date, this is approximate it might actually still be august my notes, the timeline is a fluid thing. Lieutenant Short's interlude is however marked as September 3016 and thats what probably going up next.

 

[Imperator Pax]

In this era, I love the Battlemaster as an allrounder, the Catapult for support, the Phoenix Hawk for trooper, and the Awesome for zombie.

I might just love battlemechs, LOL.

I wouldn't have you force yourself to write something you have no interest in. If you want to flashback as a debrief or hotwash of what happened as part of the teaching Gene is doing, sure. You don't have to open another thread and novella it, unless that is what you yourself want to do.

I know nothing kills a muse like rewriting, so just improve going forward, and you will be fine.

Click to shrink...

Some degree of rewriting is probably going to be inevitable as I've got 19 pages typed up waiting to be posted that constitutes what would have been the rest of II Detroit as a chapter

 

[Kyryst]

Well... Good Luck?

Clearing it up would be appreciated, and getting some investment into characters and their motivations. People have quirks and interests, use those to bring depths to your characters, to make us want to know who they are. It doesn't have to be much, just enough to make them distinguishable.

EDIT: You know, Gene has been in the Magistracy of Canopus for a while now, and there has been little to no hedonism, no brothels or pleasure circuses! Boo! We want to see the sexy MIM agents, the hedonism! Gene is a young man in the midst of puberty in the the lewdest nation in the Sphere! We want to see misunderstandings and sexytimes!

Goes and reads the FMs and TROs...

Boo, the sources are supporting the OP in his regarding of the MoC as a boring, poor region where the military action we've seen is the exception, not the rule. And canonically, the University of Luxen is one of two surviving sources of higher education. Boo, rain on my parade!