Battletech: The Ghost Who Walks (Battletech Isekai)

[Imperator Pax]

Interlude 7
--
The duke of Robinson maneuvered his wheel chair around the tables as his officers worked processing equipment checks, and across the hard ferrocrete of the yard. "And we're ready?"

"As ready as we can be your grace." Colonel Cameron replied jogging beside the duke. Thirty meters to their right were the massed forces of the Draconis March Militia... or at least the primary striking force.

Battlemechs, and supporting armor, including of course machines that had been pulled from a star league depot that he had been ignorant of.

Part of that complement were Star League Chaparrals, being stood guard over by more recently constructed Enforcer and Centurion BattleMechs... which was what he wanted Robinson Standard BattleWorks to look at... because all of them, and indeed the Mongoose, the Dragoon's mysterious Annihilator, and the venerable Hunchback could all run off the same fusion engine.

He needed the local company to begin manufacturing fusion engines... no what he really needed them to do was to begin producing BattleMechs wholesale. One of the things that had been discussed but that the Prince's Champion had nixed, as not having time, was the refitting of equipment to consolidate a logistical bottle neck in both ammunition use, and for that matter even on lasers.

"Your grace." The head of Robinson Standard BattleWorks was a good hardworking man, but it was clear he'd been overtaxed by recent preparations. There were deep bags developing under the man's eyes and that only accentuated his rail thin frame.

"Mr Surrey its good to see you again, I do apologize for keeping you waiting."

"Not at all your grace."

The papers were handed over, "Can it be done?"

Ultimately it would take time and money. He had known that, and yet the man's pause filled with a sudden inescapable feeling of dread, "Well, your grace, yes the engines, armor, certainly. The Enforcer, and Centurion, are different BattleMechs your grace." He was tempted to hurry the man along, or interrupt him that of course he knew that, and knew that ordinarily the Centurion was finicky with its standard auto cannon, and that whatever else they could just replace the Luxor with the Federated version, "Its true, and well some parts commonality aside, your grace would be better suited attempting to choose one, or the other... and if I may."

"The enforcer," He grunted from his wheel chair. How hard would it really be to just mount missiles in, "But I will want our Centurions refit for the Federated Autocannon as soon as we are able to do so."

"Yes your grace." The man acquiesced forthwith, and they moved along to the other issues. When it was all said and done though the Sandoval duke was sure that given time Robinson would be able to make the appropriate steps, with the appropriate political support to begin expansion... and that his world would be able to produce new BattleMechs for the Draconis March.

A Prospect that would be, he expected, much easier as among the new arrivals he expected were the other dukes of the Draconis March, particularly those of the Elidere system, and the others who had suffered attacks by the 19th​ Galedon Regulars. He had played the game long enough to recognize having them come in the autumn would keep them on their worlds if reprisals came, but having them not be here with the discovery of the Brian Cache had been its own lucky break.
--

Within the core of the Eirdani Light Horse's regiments each had a contingent of what were now LosTech machines... carefully guarded once it had become clear that they were harder and harder to repair and replace. He thought of Campbell's Highlander, and shook his head head. He knew, from the records of his predecessors, that at the core of the Azami community was a carefully unbroken chain of descent from soldiers of the Combine's SLDF units who had not for one reason or another left with General Kerensky. He knew that the Highlanders similarly had their own traditions.

That first look suggested that was all it was, especially with Azami troopers in tow. It made perfect sense that Highlanders, and Azami survivors' descendants would have ties of their own. The Eridani Light Horse had accepted the terms of House Steiner through negotiations with former SLDF units, or their descendants in Lyran service. His lyran counterparts had been using it as an old boys club, more than living up to the League's ideals, but that was life.

The mech start up over the channel echoed.

"It's hard to light a candle, easy to curse the dark instead."

The Marauder lifted to full height hull rising over the ferrocrete embankment.

The observation deck's support display listed battle rom data, which was dominated by a truly exhaustive compilation of mech kills of the last two years. "Sir." The staff officer's expression was puzzled and concerned as he toyed with the noteputer. An SLDF IFF wasn't something they'd never seen before, each and every man, and woman in the Eridani Light Horse swore the oaths, that wasn't the problem.

The piloting credentials listed were valid, fair enough. It was the beyond that. The list of credentials was alarmingly complete, but of all the impossibilities there was perhaps the most impossible, that stood out against all the rest. Credentials like Master Gunner qualifications were still issued out by the Eridani Light Horse. They still had the testing, evaluation and issuing ability for that, and plenty of other basic, and some advanced mechwarrior courses.

The tab and scroll which stood out most was for the Advanced Combat and Maneuvering Skills Project.

The Gunslinger Program.

The other impossibility was Service Nationality. The brevet colonel wasn't from the Lyran Commonwealth, the Draconis Combine, the Federated Suns, the Capellan Confederation, the Free Worlds League or any of the territorial states. It listed the Terran Hegemony, listing an HAF service number.

"Command, standing by, LBX 120mm three rounds," The rest of the firing sequence Kersten didn't recognize but he supposed it was a lostech weapon, cluster was an artillery command he was familiar with.

The General Motors rep was all but plastering his face to the transparent aluminum bubble that separated them from the air as the autocannon did its work on the targets. The man might as well have been salivating as the class five autocannon went to work.

He was aware that the other mercenary command had already transferred Star League era samples of the ammunition. There were copies of two different class ten versions apparently, he had seen one of the examples labelled Lubalin Ballistics, the other was apparently a Krupp example. The excitement and the clamor at the test wasn't just GM's reps.

The smaller corporation was here as well, and was looking on in interest. The Marauder, swapped ammunition types back to standard, and then delivered a burst on target in excess of a typical Whirlwind's range. Whether that was showing off or the lostech, or a mix wasn't immediately clear, but it probably didn't matter. The purpose of all this Kersten knew damned well was to show off. This was a dog and pony show to impress General Motors. The first prince was wooing one of his vassals to come around to his point of view, and was offering them the prospect of involvement in some new Davion auto cannon business.

... the davions were famous for their obsession with autocannons, it was almost apart of the national character of the Federated Suns really... and GM would have been insane to step back from involvement in it. This was the carrot that would help entice them, and deter them from the reminder that the First Prince was still a monarch with exceptional powers not counting those that had become normal after the succession wars had erupted two centuries earlier.

The show continued. The mech that they didn't see was Blackwell's Marauder II, but Kersten had been told about it... and also the variants of it that the terran brevet colonel had apparently requested... and there was one other. They had gotten to see the White Horse, but apparently in the constraints of travel the Colonel had left the Black Horse behind.

That was what the news called them. Someone on Elidere had coined it in response to an interview showing previous BattleRom footage. White Horse, Black Horse. He wasn't offended by it, not at all, the parade paint jobs made perfect sense... and when it came to field operations well it didn't seem to be any trouble to apply Star League environment camouflage patterns to them for campaigning... but in today's events the white horse was the white horse, painted white and gray.

The aide had already been attempting to run down whose parade colors, a Hussar unit, possibly, maybe the Combine had been on to something. Maybe not. It wouldn't hurt to look. The 'Devastator' was also in SLDF parade colors, but it had apparently been found by the Lyran. Something to look up, but not a priority... not nearly as much of an anomaloy. LosTech turned up, and sometimes it was a really impressive find like this.

There were rumors going around that they'd found a whole army cache, some division whose depot hadn't been found before now. It would have been nice to have been able to bring some of their units back up SLDF unit specifications. As the years had gone on his predecessors had had to adjust to supply realities. There were still some infantry units fielding the standard issue weapons of the Star League era, but there numbers were a handful of jump infantry companies compared to a time when the RCT would have all had standard Mauser Las Guns. That was long in the past now.

They had lost so much. So much had declined over the centuries.

The door opened to readmit the young mechwarrior, and it seemed to take Field Marshal Yvonne Davion the Prince's Champion considerable effort to keep the GM rep from trying to get to the colonel. What was notable about today, besides the mechs of course, was also the absence of other less grand finds. There had probably been infantry equipment, but the cache had apparently contained significant combat vehicle stocks... but the Eridani hadn't been the ones to locate it... and being upset about it would be counter productive.

The problem would be having a conversation in private. In the last two days there hadn't been a priority there, not with all of the colonel's time monopolized either by the Lyran doctor, or by Davion inquiries, and there hadn't been a pressing need. With as much travel time there would have been time to talk about the contract... but now the Field Marshal's mothering looked different. "I'll try and get you some time on the others," The field marshal was presumably referring to Blackwell's Marauder II mechs.

"I was wondering about that, we're here," At AMA, "I take it we're displacing the students."

"That's true." She replied as they moved to sit back down. "A necessary accommodation for the realm though, I assure you. You could come back here after."

"Lex has mentioned that." He replied.

"And how are you and Alexandria getting along?"
--

 

[Imperator Pax]

Interlude 8 (A)​

"Did you know that General Kersten is looking for you?"

"Now?" It was a change of pace. ... not that he'd exactly made a point of getting beyond exchanging pleasantries with the man. "What about the Blackwell test?"

"Oh he's invited himself along to that." Yvonne replied adjusting the horn rimmed glasses she was wearing, "Something about necessary military capacity since your unit will be fielding these models... Blackwell tells me you'll be the first outside of the Wolf Dragoons, and the first with, what did you call them?"

"Sturmjaeger." Abner declared.

"Storm Hunter." She looked between the two of them. "For the record the name is in English." Gene replied.

"It will be more popular in the commonwealth if you give it a good german name." Abner recommended nodding his head. "I think it will be popular either way," It was an assault mech after all, and Lyran reached for his coffee. "But the marketing is important." Gene nodded for the Professor's benefit.

"The Brevet General?"

"He hasn't made time before this." Yvonne remarked, reaching for her own tea cup, "What do you make of that?"

"We just showed off Gauss rifles, I would want to know what else the other unit in the Operation has admittedly."

"Do you have any objections?"

He wondered if he actually had a choice, "I don't have any objections field marshal." Besides that hadn't been what he had wanted to talk about anyway. "I didn't have time to finish the," She was looking at him, "This is related to the Marauder 2. It utilizes a certain of degree of parts compatibility , but I didn't expect or plan to have access to certain weapons, but given we are talking an assault chassis, and since Cosara and GM aren't manufacturing the King Crab any longer it should be possible to mount a pair of class twenties in the arms, two tons of ammunition in the side torsos."

She smiled, "Were you hoping originally to simply buy King Crabs on Northwind?"

"No. I understand that they're strictly in refit and repair these days." He shook his head, "The other project I have one of the techs working on based on spare parts but until we have an actual chassis to install them on it'll have to wait."

"What do you need it for?"

"I expect the Combine to try and banzai charge light mechs, I want something that if they do manage to get close .. a pair of hundred tonners for close area defense in an urban environment is what I came up with based on what I expected would be coming in inventory."

"I see." She nodded, "for the time being let us focus on the brevet general, and his involvement. It is in all likelihood that this goes beyond inter unit cooperation... and given today's demonstration it won't just be Blackwell, General Motors has decided that they do wish to be present."

That was a change, but not an especially shocking one. The whole strategy at play here seemed to have been one of making an impression on GM to carrot them into playing ball.

--
The Marauder II's cockpit layout was for the most part similar to the layout he was familiar with, there were minor differences. Functionally though, for what they were doing today, there was no difference to what they had done yesterday There were some differences in the hardware in the transition to the Hi Rez II and the comms system was Blackwell's own in house system... as opposed to retaining the Dalban Star Link used in other Blackwell Industry products.

"How do you things look?"

"Solid." He replied keying the mike.

There was a pause on the other end of the connection. Then Yvonne came back on, "The Blackwell representative asks why you wanted two LRM 5 intead of a single LRM 10?"

"Am I weapon's free?" He replied, a question for a question.

The Field Marshal paused, presumably to double check with the mustachioed man who's range theyd been monopolizing the last few days. "Yes colonel."

He reached up to flip the arm switches, and painted separate targets. He had run the mental math through the targeting computer. The two stand ins for light mechs were about half a klick out, well beyond their engagement envelope. Ten missiles cycled from vertical launch in the upper torso of the Mad II and peppered the heads of both machines. Not enough to confirm kills on an enemy mech but enough to insure that whoever was getting their bell run would know that he had them dialed in.

"Well that's just you showing off." She remarked, drumming her fingers on the console in front of her, near the mike, "But it does make sense when you put it that way."

"Its a skill thing." He responded, "admittedly having two launchers makes the gyro's job easier," Having them in opposite torsos, and saving tonnage. Gene didn't presume to understand how the LRM 10 class of launcher had remained viable given how inefficient it was. Inertia he supposed, "Its not ideal for less experienced pilots, but it provides some indirect fire."

"You mentioned seeing if the Krupp could be installed on the frame."


It was funny how yesterday she had put that to the side, "Ideally we could put one in the right torso to make sure the Krupp would work." The Krupp was an 120mm but classed as a 10, instead of the GM Whirldwind's class five designation.

He got the feeling Yvonne must have been prodding GM's rep up in the control tower because she came back over the radio, "Ah well its such a pity we don't have to experiment more with the chassis as it is." It definitely seemed as if Yvonne must have been needling the General Motor People, and possibly for that matter the Blackwell corporation. He knew that GM was angling to get access to the prototype LBX class 5in his marauder before they left new Avalon, and the field marshal was probably holding that as a trump card in terms of getting them to play ball.. and of course she had also shown up to new avalon with 30 Marauder II chassis, most in standard configuration, but others loaded to specifications he had written up short hand on Robinson. All of the machines had probably been stock originally, but regardless that many machines was an implicit demonstration that Blackwell could in theory enter full scale production of the BattleMech in the near future.

More to the point it was the demonstration that Blackwell would be contributing to the now inevitable counter attack against the combine. This was all about politics, and it wasn't as if GM hadn't been all too happy show battlerom footage from Elidere of their arguably most famous mech, at least their most iconic in appearance mech excelling on the battlefield. It certainly didn't hurt that his 'White Horse' was in silhouette profile much closer to the common 3R that the inner sphere as a whole knew, than the black horse brawler with its abundance of medium lasers.

With little else to do, he painted the fake locusts and fired the arm mounted ppcs confirming the lights as destroyed, and ran through the test for the medium laser suite. Testing and evaluation for the rest of them was more or less the same. He wasn't running a course of maneuver for the machines, that would have taken all day, but the transition still took time.

Then again the reason there were this many was because Yvonne had gone to New Valencia before they had found the Brian Cache, and so had been bringing addition assault mechs to round out DMM' heavier weights.

For Yvonne Davion up in the control deck the plan had been to use that as a horse trading implement with Lord Sandoval, and that cache find while certainly useful meant she was now adjusting the plan. Not that she couldn't make it work, the intended company of assault mechs meant for the DMM could still be used. Given combine aggression, and the need to retaliate it was the perfect opportunity to publicly show off the new machines, and there would be little the head of the capellan march would be able to do.

Brevet General Kerston had been in command of the Eridani for almost two decades, and to say was an experienced officer went without saying. In many respects the Eridani had been the wolf dragoons before the wolf dragoons had appeared on seen, the difference was that unlike the dragoons the Eridani hadn't demonstrated any miraculous ability to restore their manpower, or equipment in the manner the Dragoons had. "Well General, what do you make of the new machines?" She inquired as Kerston straightened from looking over the projected holographic projections of individual armaments.

What Blackwell had done in conjunction with the wolf dragoons wasn't unheard of. Certain Chassis were known to be robust enough that one could accommodate a greater mass, and the stress of going up a weight class... "In my opinion, for Dragoons, or other similar weight units, the design makes sense. I think the loss of speed does limit its tactical application compared to the Marauder. Its true that as with an Atlas or another hundred ton design if it is in range then smaller lighter mechs would be hard pressed to stand up and fight," But left unsaid was that the Eridani Light Horse had survived as a regimental combat team for two hundred plus years while still largely conforming to SLDF doctrine.
--
Note: Due to Covid there is a chance that i will be increasingly MIA. If this shit continues through next week I will probably post scraps to the other misc thread dail, but basically as things sit right now. I was prior to monday several updates ahead of schedule, but am now basically just copying and pasting the updates. I have not had time to sit down and respond to people's posts as a result of being sick.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Interlude 8 (B)​

Gene figured the Brevet General was probably Yvonne's age, part of that was the way the middle aged man was starting to fill out the khaki uniform, the rounded shoulders, and the increasing waistline you got as you increasingly road a desk... and from the file Kerston had been in command of the Eridani for longer than Gene had been expecting... and that was the RCT over all not holding a regimental command. Kerston had inked the current contract with the FedSuns seventeen years earlier after the Eridani had left Lyran space.

The Eridani had a dozen JumpShips to the name, and twenty attendant Droppers to fery personnel and equipment. They had lift capacity to spare which meant the Eridani would likely be assisting in ferrying Davion troops to at least the staging grounds, if not for the actual invasion.... but probably for that too.

Kerston wore the rank insignia of an SLDF lieutenant general, but was ironically outranked in uniform grade by at least two of the AFFS officers present, plus Yvonne who was still in civilian dress. The Field Marshal's office had laid out the various highlights for them, including potential ramifications. "If we succeed in taking Dieron then we will have other effects." She meant ComStar, and the office of Precentor Dieron which was supposed to represent all Combine based HPG stations. "Obviously the most likely successor to that role will be the Precentor Altair, but given Altair's location," Litterally right next door, "if we can hold Dieron we should be able to in the long term take Altair as well, and proceed to cut the Combine out of the Terran corridor."

The transmission range of the HPG of course was capable of broadcasting to a fifty light year spherical volume, which even assuming they didn't know the number knew that the combine not being one jump from earth meant that the Federated Suns could insist on restrictions of Combine flagged shipping in those lanes... at least in theory.

The immediate priority was taking and securing Dieron. They could worry about Altair later, if that proved to be in the cards for the unit. Anything beyond that was too far down the road to talk about at an operational level, and this wasn't the kind of conservation, or time for strategic level planning.

"We've considered the chance that the Combine may attempt to spike the Dieron HPG station to that end we are recommending that if it can't be secured immediately, it be bypassed and encircled until after the planet is secure."

In other words don't e stupid and get baited into potentially making us be considered responsible for the loss of the HPG station. Yvonne nodded as the map of the planet, and its key points appeared, "To a similar degree we want the planet taken intact as possible, which the combine might be unwilling to just aquiese to. Securing the university of dieron, and the major space ports around the capital are all principal objectives to take before we attempt to secure the city center."

Yvonne Davion paused to illuminate an urban build up that hadn't existed during the league, and he raised his pen, "Industrial production?

"Tatsuyama," Dragon mountain, "Is where the Dieron Military District governor has his residence. The so called dragon's roost. Its a secondary target after the capital has been secured," Unfortunately the next major target was Deber City, another post league development, this one a vanity project by Hugai Kurita which also Dieron Military District value. "Our primary focus is securing the capital and its infrastructure, and we expect the combine will predict that once we begin the attack, so you should expect garrisons from Tatsuyama city to move south to meet you."

Given Geography of the planet it would potentially in their interest to mass on the plains and force the Combine to fight through bottlenecks in the mountain passes. Kerston decided to go ahead and get to the bigger issue. "Dieron is considered Combine provincial capital, who's defending?"

"Primary Opposition is the 5th​ Sword of Light, the ninth sun zhang academy cadre is also known to be posted on Dieron but if at all possible destruction of the assets of the 'Golden Dragons' is to be considered a high value objective to the operation."

Kerston's left most aide wasn't quite as good as the others in concealing his reaction, but the meeting moved on with a gruff acknowledgement of target package on Combine Mech Regiment... one that here at least they were being told to potentially expect the whole regiment.... of course it was probably better to be prepared just in case they did cycle back without a warning.

In terms of operational information they had relatively up to date maps of the planet, though it was going to be likely that once they were dirt side Dieron's municipal level street layout would be different than what they were expecting. That would present problems to pushing into the deep valley that the planetary capital was located in, and make coordinating with AFFS infantry more of a headache.

Coupled with a highly varied range of elevations, Dieron was a mix of expansive mountains, deep valleys, large oceans, deserts that came together for a very large, by succession wars standards, population of almost five and a half billion inhabitants. San Martin, and Tatsuyama city had the potential to prove stalingrad esque nightmares if the Combine could mount a scorched earth defense.

Which meant they were on a time table as soon as they landed, which was why Yvonne wanted the city secured, and ideally to force the combine to attack them, and if at all possible to destroy the Sword of Light as fighting force. Admittedly, it was possible that the 5th​ could make the decision to withrdaw from obviously superior numbers...

"Thats why we're hitting the planet with overwhelming force, and disproportionately Mech forces." Especially given the Blackwell shipment, and now the cache findings.

"Yes, the objective is to break the main line of Combine resistance and take the capital before resistance can solidify. If we destroy the dragons in the field with overwhelming firepower we can then retask across Mateo," The main continental land mass. An interminable, but probably less than an hour, of circular questions went around the table on what they could expect both from the combine and as well as what they're Davion support would look like, and then Yvonne dismissed her staff compelling Kerston to have to do the same, "Recent have put us to where taking Dieron is feasible, and more, if could be frank. Perhaps simply among the vagaries of fate, but the Combine has over the years institutionalized a particular breed of poor behavior that we may finally be able to fully exploit. Admittedly other recent events prevent the First Prince from his planned greater involvement in this operation, but rest assured the Federated Suns is fullly committed to supporting this operation to its conclusion."

Gene kept his mouth shut about the Marauder II not being the first new BattleMech in a hundred years... Septim's Merlin being a thing, because... well she probably meant first new Davion mech or something and well it didn't matter. What mattered was the icing on the cake so far as unit participation. House Davion had apparently recently founded the New Avalon Institute of Science and it would be partnering with industries through out the Federated Suns to invest in technical learning and manufacturing.

The goal was to reverse the technological decline caused by the destruction of the first and second succession wars with an aim to eventually retread to the heights of the league. It wouldn't bring the Star League back, but it was one more way for Hanse Davion to dig poke his finger in the combine's eye.

... and of course that would attract attention. House Davion needed experienced commands to integrate and evaluate new machines, like the Marauder, or Blackwell's ground vehicles, and given Dieron would likely require some post operation downtime a garrison protecting the NAIS facilities with refit and rearmament covered seemed like a pretty sweet deal for any command.

... but first they needed to get through Dieron first. The flight plans that would taken to Northwind were already prepared.... which was the next topic to be broached, the Brevet General gave a half nod, "I'm sure you already have some idea of what to do at the Faire, but I'm can make introductions to certain parties that might be useful."
--
Notes: We are slowly wrapping up the Interludes between Robinson, and Northwing, with Hanse making his reappearance next section, and of course the end of this deliberately foreshadows the highland meeting with the descendants of the Black Watch that was mentioned ages ago. We will also in the remaining interlude deal withsome of the other cache mechs both here on New Avalon as well as with the Robinson people because well Sandoval has the other great lords of the Draconis March coming.

Oh, and yes, for the various Mad II kits I will attempt to post or refer to those in a future separate post, I just don't have the energy and probably won't until I get over covid. [This is so much worse than the first go around two years ago]

 

[Imperator Pax]

Interlude 9​

Within the ancestral fortress Hanse Davion had gathered his most trusted ministers and aides around him. Obviously in an ideal world any minister should have been trusted, but that was naïve to think, and take that as a given. MIIO and DMI were the swords and shields of the realm against myriad insidious threats. "And?" He asked as the gun camera footage concluded.

... the question was aimed at the analysts, and what did they make of it. Yvonne nodded to let the doctor speak freely, "The most reasonable explanation, your majesty is two years removed from everything else he's known. Collation of subject conversations highlight a normal of abnormalities beyond the already atypical language, dialect usage. In terms of historical cues, and references. The Capellan Confederation only formalized its servitor caste system after the fall of the Star League, and its unlikely that the League would have permitted that kind of acrimonious behavior. We just kind of accept that's how the capellans are but it seems to have come as something of a shock. Relations with the other states are example of this fish out of water situation, because at certain moments in time, the reference to the houses, and states are as if the 27th​ century."

"The Colonel doesn't seem to like the Taurians much," Yvonne remarked, "but for things that should be ancient history." The description of the Taurians 'as' an unruly territorial state with a tendency towards nuclear terrorism, and piracy was in the historical context accurate, but hadn't been true for two hundred years when territorial state had stopped being used for anyone seriously in this day and age, "on the other hand,"

The doctor, an AFFS colonel in his own right, resumed speaking, "Its classic dissociative, the zoning out , or layered speaking is a catch of sorts in the mental machinery to prevent him from spinning out of control. You put the colonel behind a battlemech yoke and you end up watching him shoot down dozens of other battlemechs." Which was an achievement, BattleMech aces were rare, most BattleMech pilots had plenty of kill counts in their BattleRoms, but the majority would be Vehicles... pretty much no one had their recorded kill tally as a majority of Enemy Mechs. "You take him out of the cockpit and ask him about the local sports team, or Solaris VII stables and he looks at you like you've grown a second head. Of course its age as well. The name Amaris is culturally coded in our society to prompt revulsion to one degree or another, centuries of cultural encoding and we see that, but we see the same reaction to Rim World Republic in general, and in a more visceral way. As if the coup was months or years ago instead of centuries. You also see it in his response and treatment of Kerensky as if he was a living, and very much imperfect officer, instead of a heroic general from the distant past. Indeed, in some conversations the colonel slips up and refers to General Kerensky in the present tense as if he's alive, and refers to other League General Officers in the same manner."

Hanse Davion nodded, "And what is the best recommendation for our plans in light of this?"

"We should proceed with the operation against Dieron, we're too far committed to the broader operation to change it. If we take the planet we succeed in further diminishing the Combine's ability to wage aggressive war." Yvonne replied, "I think that's our best option, and if the situation bears out on its current course, slow walking recruitment has the very real possibility of if we succeed in bringing the colonel over we will do so with a much larger mech command because, well and I quote 'I don't have a problem with material what I need are soldiers', and given our new insights into Brian Caches, and league materiel policy we could furnish out a new regiment of League era mechs if we we wait a year or two."

... and as for the great external threat to the realm. The images faded replaced by a star map. The hologram of the Inner Sphere showing the movement of precious JumpShips that would reinforce planets with AFFS infantry and armor regiments to offer some measure of protection. Thrusts aimed to conquer Dieron, and potentially Altair, diversion raids that were already underway and preparing to cross the border. The wash of planned activity across the Draconis March's Coreward Combat Theater.
--
The Duke of Robinson was pleased to welcome his peers of the realm to the capital of the Draconis March. He'd been looking forward to this just for the opportunity to celebrate the victory of Elidere, which could easily have gone the another way. The combine's losses aside, their attack in force at all demonstrated the need to take precautions to protect the realm. The Galedon Regulars had been able to raid with impunity before being trapped in pitched battle at Elidere, and several of his fellow lords had suffered losses against the Regulars previous attacks.

The use of the HPG to have a conversation with someone was an extravagance that some of his peers could hold because of their commercial assets but to spend that kind of money seemed absurd. As Field Marshal of the Draconis March Militia Lord Sandoval had professional obligations to his fellow dukes, and in that respect he wanted to make the rulers of Errai, and Elidere, and elsewhere at home.

The Galedon Regulars had hit Errai before, but the Maltex factory that had produced the eighty ton Thug had been destroyed almost two centuries earlier. The assault Mech had entered production in 2572, and had resulted in machines that were LosTech by contemporary standards having been stored away by Terran authorities for a rainy day. Now he would be able to distribute it to PDZs across the border area, bolstering important planets in the march without disrupting existing, and often tenuous, supplies from the broader Federated Suns. He'd of course been assured by the office of the Prince's Champion that the forthcoming counteroffensive against the combine would mean that the Draconis March would mean more supplies coming in.

His counterpart from Errai seemed especially interested in the Thugs presence in the cache... and in the cache find itself. "Errai was a Hegemony world."

"I am not disputing that," He wasn't, the other duke's position was probably right on the money, but there simply wasn't time, "But while its possible the Hegemony would have stowed such hardware away it isn't as if we found a map that would show us where they were."

His counterpart from Errai perhaps sensing that the conversation was going no where fast, prepared to switch tracks. The colonel was absent, Shepherd not being here prevented him from being ambushed with petitions, invitations, requests and so on to come visit ... and Errai had the potential of being viable recruiting grounds for pilots that the mercenary company could use. .. and of course the truth was they were no longer under command that having passed higher up the feudal ladder, and while she was a daughter to a duke the Countess of Kestrel was not yet a duchess, and Lady Yvonne was not here.

Still this was a predictable problem. One he should have suspected would crop up once he disclosed the recent cache discovery, and its contents... but realistically just the MID depot on Elidere might have prompted a basic inquiry if there might not be resources on Errai... but certainly the discovery near Purki in hindsight would warrant the questions regarding Errai.
--
They were sitting in one of the dining halls in the guest wing of Castle Davion, really killing time as the prospect of departure drew nearer. The Davion Guards were doing something. Presumably getting ready, but also going over, presumably, their share of lostech cache they'd been provided with before they were loaded up. So, small talk for what might after Dieron. "The objective is to complete the mission." It probably wasn't the answer Kerston was looking for, but before he could clarify the topic had already changed back to the elusive Minnesota tribe. Abner had shown them the artifacts... it was unfortunate that Abner hadn't had with him on Elidere, because they were high technology.

They were precisely the sort of things that a Royal Command would have been issued either as potentially next generation standards, or testing and evaluation of the latest cutting edge equipment. The BattleMechs which were identified as having fought the combine in the second succession war period that the 'Minnesota tribe' had been active, and their tactics certainly provided credence to the working theory.

Gene adjusted the cuff of his full body suit.

"Do you have transponder data, that would include the IFF?" Kerston suggested.

Abner shook his head, "No, the Tribe forces attack under complete radio silence. They made no attempt to contact the Combine forces. There was no indication electronically of who they were." And that was probably part of the mystery.

... one of Kerston's aides beat them all too it. "Thats insane," He wasn't wrong the whole point of integrated IFF systems capable of being read through battlefield ecm was to insure you didn't accidentally shoot your own men. Launching a planetary assault was reckless in the extreme.

"As I said complete radio silence. Admittedly its possible they could have used advanced ECM but more likely the units involved were drilled to operate in close order that they were relying purely on visual contact." ... which was to reiterate insane. "Jinjiro Kurita was always terrified that Kerensky would return."

... which made sense given that the Coordinator of the present day had known that his ancestor, and Jinjiro's predescessor in the office had collaborated with Amaris, and that Kerensky and Blake had known. That did raise the question of when exactly the combine had found out that the SLDF, and ComSTar had known about minoru's treachery, and how much of Jinjiro's paranoia had been irrational fear of being found out, and it spoiling his ambitions.

... and speaking of the coordinator's paranoia, he tossed a look at Abner, "Has Pasha talked to you about their planned exodus?" ... Pasha hadn't figured a final course but instead of jumping off in Canopian space, which might raise questions, he wanted to leave from somewhere called the Aurigan Reach.

"He has."

"I suppose ... if the Combine is going off the deep end, then the next potential gig will be escort duty, humanitarian convoy looking to avoid being caught up in purges." Purges that seemed to be already underway... but if they did kick the Combine's teeth in on Dieron, Gene was pretty sure that the Coordinator's response would be to start searching around for traitors that didn't' exist, and start lashing out at anything he could put his hands on... and so even though they wouldn't be able to get everyone out, the prospect of doing anything to help in pulling civilians from harms way seemed the next best gig to take up. Not so much on the prospect of the money, but for actually doing something... and of course from the sound of it, actually recruiting was going to be increasingly difficult... and if most of their next round of recruits were azamis, or other ethnic or social group that the Combine was beating on this week... well that was going to be different than hiring at some hall on a hub world... "Anyway, I'll know more when we get to Northwind."

 

[Imperator Pax]

Interlude 10​

Her fellow Azami were completing the loading. Without the Triump they had to make do with using a provided transport DropShip, but the massive Alacorn tanks were already loaded into the full size vehicle bays of Sam Houston.

Yusuf was her father's cousin, and the captain of the Colorado was young to be commanding such a large and capable, if date design, Jump Ship. Keeping Colorado on station had been done to insure that if something unfortunate developed, if they had to leave they would b e able to move the greatest volume of material quickly to the front. Unlike Pasha though Yusuf was too junior to really command the respect of more senior members of the community plying the Jump Ship routes. It might have been better had Pasha remained, but that couldn't be helped. There were completely practical reasons they had displaced and divided their forces as they had.


Lebanon and Colorado had both been plying the trade routes while the Combine had invaded Elidere and that had left as the ranking Azami officer since as a Mechwarrior Officer she outranked the junior field grade Armor Branch officers... and that had been before engaging the Galedon regulars. A mechwarrior was defined by the number of other mechs she had downed. With not even a dozen mechwarriors in the company, Elidere had been a truly target rich environment as far as the paperwork was concerned basically everyone in the company had made ace... though not without damage. The duels on the surface of Ander's moon had created impressive, respectable battlerom footage as well.

It was social credit vital to a mechwarrior's standing in the eyes of her peers and others. To that end it had made sense to leave command of the duelist contingent with here... and of course that company would still be her responsibility until they linked back up on Northwind.

"Without Pasha it will be difficult to make decisions on hiring." Yusuf remarked, the JumpShip captain was enjoying the opportunity to be planet side and in greenery surrounded full gravity as it was available, "I think might be best to leave securing supplies to me." He admitted with remarkable patience... the truth was... they weren't in a position where supplies were really a priority now... they needed manpower, but the merchant would go looking for spare parts taht they might need, while her Septim searched for recruits... and hoped that any potential Azami recruits were willing to wait until Pasha arrived in the event they wouldn't deal with 'juniors'. The discovery of the cache really had been to their benefit, but it had also complicated the scheduling beyond existing matters.. the need to take San Saba, and Lebanon off station and to New Avalon had been a hassle.


--
Gene glanced out the planet side window as the San Saba departed New Avalon's gravity well, nearby an Overlord in SLDF colors was laid in to a parrell course of the jump point. The Eridani DropShip was going the same place after all. The trip to Northwind had been the thing he'd been looking forward to for months as it had represented a chance to spend the money IE had used as a retainer to get them to come to Elidere in the first place. They would be able to recruit for the company, and allow them to grow. Northwind had been a center of mercenary hiring really since the Scots-irish diaspora had colonized the planet as new colonies were looking for private security options for various reasons. So visiting the biannual highland faire he'd been hoping for the option to do a little bit of shopping, things like bulldog tanks, and more lrm carriers to and of course the chance to hire freelancer ASF pilots before going back out to find a niche on the Magistracy's borders.

All of that had been if not derailed then force to reschedule. It was true that the company treasury was swollen to levels Gene could scarcely contemplate, but that came with the destruction of DropShips, and mechs on the regimental scale. The original plan, besides of course the I.E. Paycheck had been more about expanding the company enough to have a reasonable military force that could operate reliably in the periphery against pirates. He certainly hadn't planned to get involved in the disputes of the successor states on such a scale the money be damned.

They were involved. Davion against Kurita. Federated Suns against Draconis Combine.

Or more involved. .. given the Azami... given the hpg recording indicting Minoru Kurita in collaborating with Amaris... evidence which would humiliated the Combine publicly, and besides potential revolt, also incentive further propaganda against the Combine from the other houses. Was it truly a game changer in the balance of power? Probably not. The combine though in the pursuit to defend their own honor certainly believed it had to be concealed... which raised the question of why it had been floating around in the first place, and who had found it and baited the combine with it.

... and even without that knowledge... they'd certainly have a target on their back since Elidere... to that end was committing Dieron the best option? Probably not, but the best thing they could do was expand their ranks at the Faire and complete the objective... like he'd told Kerston, because it was the only thing he could think to do.

"What's bothering you commander?"

He looked from the window. It was a lot. Everything from his thoughts of New Avalon on Initial Approach... and what seemed to be missing, to the consideration that all the House capitals would have similarly decline... to the realization of what the capellans were doing with their servitor caste, and had been for centuries now as the wars had continued... and back to the matter of the HPG recording and who might have been trying to exploit it... and of course, "I don't understand how gauss rifles became LosTech," Advanced JumpDrive technology either, compact drives and lithium batteries were as old... it didn't seem feasible for him... the capacitor technology shouldn't have just disappeared.

Abner folded his paper, "Ah, well, not to add another mystery to your plate but I'm afraid I must, I looked into your missing warship."

"Missing warship?"

"The SLS Tripitz, she was found derelict in the periphery some years ago."

Gene shrugged, "Not surprising I suppose," Except for how warships seemed to have so completely disappeared from human space.

"No, no, no that's not the mystery. The Taurians attempted to mount a recovery operation, and well it would be easier to show you," The small trivid projector was from the Star League era, the sort of thing that would have been expensive back then, but still available at retail in Lyran space.

The SLS Tirpitz's damage was most likely a misjump, while there appeared to be some battle damage along the hull the battle cruiser's damage control teams looks like they had patched over it... which suggested whatever the reason they had abandoned ship, if they had abandoned ship in good order, was internal. The Black Lion was being crawled over by Taurian teams who didn't seem at all prepared when the first strikes came in, the footage panned to incoming strafing ASF fighters unmarked in Factory White.

If anything Gene was almost willing to bet that someone had dug the ASF out of an automated factory's warehouse and instead of adding appropriate unit insignia, and finishing Terran parade colors and decided that they were good enough in white. Whatever the case was, the Taurians weren't prepared to be facing those kinds of numbers.

"What do you make of it? Of these Vandenburg white wings?"

"Given the," twenty dropships, "the ships they were with, I'd guess whoever they were originally were hoping to recover Tripitz, and with that not being an option prioritized operational security and..." And scuttled the ship into the gas giant's gravity well. He wasn't even sure why he bothered scrambling to scribble the coordinates... in the League's time the navy probably could have brought complex recovery equipment in, drones, and tugs to recover Tripitz... but all that infrastructure was gone, and even if the ship could have been recovered? What then, if the ship had been abandoned in good order then the ship's drives would have been ordered scrubbed by the admiral, or at least the watch commander to prevent exploitation... given the conflict with the rebelling territorial states. "I don't suppose, I suppose my next question is whether or not there was any indication of when Tripitz was lost originally," The Taurians had managed to find her in 2979 which was when the footage was from... footage that he had no idea how Abner had managed to source even if it was almost forty years old now.

Abner didn't have answer. It was unknown exactly how much time the Taurians had spent aboard the derelict only that they had made the decision to try and recover it... and if rumors were right, that the Capellans had thought to try and claim jump them, and then, bam honorable third party intervention in the form of these white wings... but complete details were missing.

The Tripitz was lost.

He plugged the coordinates into his own small hegemony produced computer, and looked at the coordinates... not that there was a point. They didn't have the resources to go fishing for a battlecruiser in a gas giant, "There is no way we could divert for that," If they did got to this Aurigan Reach place with Pasha's refugees the year after.

Abner, perhaps the growing morose feeling, changed subjects, "What do you think of the devastator?"

"In all honesty it completely eclipses what I was hoping" Personally"to get out of the Marauder II series." Which shouldn't have been that much of a surprise. The truth was it was much more suited to his engagement style at rangegiven those gauss rifles... that wasn't to say the Marauder II wouldn't work for the company at larger... or for DMM units supporting it would... "I'll admit I don't understand why it took this long for someone to make an assault mech off the Marauder Chassis, I really would have expected given logistics that the SLDF would have done it, but it is what it is."
--
Notes: We may or may not start Highland Faire sunday, there are two other 'scrap' interludes that basically nominally canon that were cut for timing issues but its about four thousand words of content covering Septim's perspective and some of the other characters that I might rework somewhat to include. I won't really be covering the travel time from New Avalon to Northwind, except possibly Kerston and Gene getting a discussion in, but that could basically be done on Northwind, and then a conversation between Gene, and Pasha about Cairo's manifest and computer core which can be covered later since its not going to be dealt with until years down the road, but of course travel time in BT is slow, and even so I'm going to be fudging arrival dates slightly, because thats on me... but anyway this basically gets us through the interludes between Robinson and Northwind.

Highland Faire, Northwind, will effectively be its own standalone chapter somewhat centered on the SLDF remnants and the traditions remaining. It will in the current outline be a full size chapter before jump off into the invasion. Dieron will basically be jump from Northwind launch the invasion, no real travel time because its one jump

 

[Imperator Pax]

Highland Faire Prologue
Northwind January 3018
The 12 Jump trip from New Avalon to Northwind had been nearly three months, but it had also been solely through Davion controlled space. Making planet fall though still took time, and it was now early January... it was good to be back in a gravity well... especially one so very close to Earth's gravity.

The Eridani Light Horse certainly knew how to flex. The assembled Regimental Combat Team was gathered on Northwind, and that meant a lot of DropShips, more than that it meant the presence of the ELH's sole surviving Excalibur class. "It was intended as a next generation SLDF transport a successor to the whole Colussus boondoggle." And according to Tristan it hadn't been properly tested... production had been delayed due to the Amaris civil war. The result was of course, yes a cheaper combined arms carrier, but at the cost of significantly less armament... and it was still sixteen thousand tons of DropShip.

... but the Excalibur as it touched down still managed to look impressive surrounded by twenty other Dropships, a mix of Aerodyne and Spheroid, but all in SLDF colors. The Eridani had even gone the extra step of having repainted the entire Regimental Group, including those dropships, for the Temperate forests of Northwind. Gene had to wonder if they had issued forest cammies, but so far it looked like everyone dismounting for inspection was in Regimental Dress Uniforms.

These were the other half of the people they'd be invading Dieron with.... though Gene supposed third might be more accurate. Yvonne Davion had the ability to assume operational control of the Guards... but the Field Marshal wasn't sure that that would be how they would launch the assault.

The plan was to launch the operation in early spring, so they had a minimum of ten weeks. It was interesting how even after nearly a thousand years, nine hundred and change that operations continued to be modelled, timetabled off of the northern hemisphere of Terra's seasons. He tossed a look at Kerston's BattleMaster, and then to his own Marauder. The great expanse of one of the hubs of scotch-irish diaspora of the first Exodus of Terra was Cromarty City... Tara's Castle Northwind.

The Highland Faire was positively medieval in its sprawl, and length. It was only run twice a year because well if you ran four of them in the usual format they'd basically abut against each other... and there was no shortage of stands, temporary camps, and of course rather than walk given the space mechwarriors road their warmachines, and navigated smaller ground and hover cars. That was part of the advantage. On a planet that was currently playing to host to more mechs than... well probably anywhere in the inner sphere the Eridani didn't warrant a second look, and when the Guards arrived in a few weeks, well it was a Davion planet. The arrival of a Davion regiment was hardly something that would attract immediate attention.

"What about the new Mechs?"

"I want them kept in reserve for the time being." The Faire had a melee ... some of mech scale free for all for young 'squires'.... that was more of a translation convention but it was aimed at young untested mechwarriors, and the faire's marshals seemed pretty serious about it. Gene wasn't surprised they hadn't let 'Rio' participate, but Sutton was also apparently ineligible to participate in the festivities. It was still considered a fairly safe event they weren't using real ammunition, but it wasn't one hundred percent either. Bahar had been pretty clear before she had taken off that advertising that they had ... anywhere near as many mechs available as they did. Then on top of that there were other things. "to be honest given the Blackwell order, my focus is on recruiting armor and infantry for those vehicles. Field Marshal Davion," Yvonne, "Says she has volunteer ASF pilots already lined up for us."

"Speaking of that the Countess asked what that was you beamed out?"

"Hmm," He shrugged, it had been a query ... well him and Abner playing a wager, "Its nothing, I didn't get a return signal, but I'm not surprised." The truth was he had kind of hoped that maybe Abner's optimism wasn't misplaced that... some fragment of the system's defenses, maybe something of the SDS had survived and was looking for surviving Terran signatures... but there had been nothing returned to his broadcast interrogative. Gene shoved his hands into his frock coat as the wind picked up, "Kerston promised an introduction to the Highlanders, and given our situation," And the fact that they were their hosts nominally, it seemed a good idea.

Septim tossed a glance towards the gray clouds promising rain and blew out a breath, "Yeah, I'll come with you boss." He glanced to the other Alexander who shrugged his broad shoulders.

"I have everything under control here I'll tell Bubbles." The dervish pilot declared with a wave.



Hanzo tagged along powering his cicada and linking the mech into the tac com without saying much. He doubted anyone realized, as they mounted their mechs that part of what made the faire possible was this broad expanse that so readily, so easily facilitated the presence of so many BattleMechs and allowed them to maneuver dated to the Age of war, but even more than that was the Castle Brian that was underneath the surface. An actual Castle Brian, built by the Hegemony to protect one of the earliest Hegemony worlds Castle Northwind's surface muster space had been built to fit in with the aesthetics of an established hegemony world much like those Castles on Terra had been.

They moved to the ferrocrete 'foot path' that crisscrossed and spread around the 'camp grounds'. Kerston's battle master waved them in with its left hand, as their trio of mechs joined up. "Colonel Shepherd. Captain, Lieutenant." He added more on formality.

They moved on to the navigation network, a series of beacons that kept them out of traffic per se, in so far as the lookie loos were in a lane on the outside where they could get off quickly and dismount, while Kerston took them in a far side course looking to lead them up towards the looming gothic form of castle northwind's most obvious surface structure.

Gene idly flicked his consoles, but he wasn't expecting anything. He'd read Tristan's report, as well as the history of Northwind that Abner had had handy. Not that he was completely sure of the New Kyoto text being free of bias but regardless it told him enough.

"SO uhm."

"What?" He asked to Septim's start.

"Colonel Cameron is doing his Black Fox rendition at the pub. Just be ready."

Gene rolled his eyes. It was good natured ribbing, and it wasn't as if Bard didn't live up to his call sign, but he was really beating a dead horse... or at least Gene thought so, but for the Draconis March Militia ... celebrating a major combine defeat was... was not gonna get old for them any time soon. "I can sit through it," He muttered as he checked the clock against the dinner plans. Advantage of a small unit it wasn't hard to organize for. Really it was the first night they had everyone back together, and it had been something of a pity that he had missed the holiday festivities, but San Saba hadn't made it planet side until after New Years day 3018.

There was a handshake chirp, and Gene expected it to be a nav beacon from Castle Northwind, instead of the expected N001 SLDF Fortress code his Dalban started returning a Hegemony handshake and unit return. The Terran Hegemony handshake immediately eliminated the possibility that this was Kerston. The Eridani Light Horse used standard SLDF handshakes... and frankly there would have been no point. His machine was already linked to Kerston's battlemaster, and the wider Regimental Combat Teams comms.

His Marauder hand shaked and linked into a Terran Hegemony officer's ninety five mech, and authenticated the man's 191st​ Division Credentials. He hit the las com line to the Eridani Assault Mech, "General, do you know a Captain Campbell by chance?"

--
Notes: This is short, I'm going to bed, but this is the opening to Highland Faire, you may recall there was a scrap that covers some of what is about to occur, but this takes place immediately before a version of that. This may see minor adjustments in the morning, but yes short update we're on northwind. Some material from before this may go up at at a later date.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Highland Faire​

His marauder trundled slowly steadily forward, at a safe 25 kilometers an hour.

Castle Northwind was even given its age and the service it had endured an impressive structure... he would have felt better if he had a better idea of what they had just walked into. It didn't help that no two castle Brians were identical. This wasn't the periphery, this wasn't the ... wasn't Elidere, where the Combine were willfully firing on civilian homes... he'd been trying to do the right thing in a surrounding that was alien to him. The Castle's bunker access lead into what for all intents and purposes was a massive underground parking garage, if one draped with tartan patterns, battle flags, ensigns and honors...

It was quintessentially Northwind as he had seen it thus far. It very much reflected the great diaspora of earth and gaelic revival that had spawned it and been sustained by hundreds of worlds to colonize, to grow on. At least on Elidere, against the Combine he had had an idea of what to expect, and was in his comfort zone. He was at home in buckled into the armored cockpit of his Marauder... or really any mech he'd run the Mongoose and Locust through their paces, and the revisions to the Cicada had been his idea before they had had Hanzo sign on. This wasn't the same thing, he was comfortable fighting, not contending with this... whatever this was.

He brought the Marauder into a crouch, and nestled down. Kerston had already brought his battlemaster to a kneeling position and dismounted. The Brevet General didn't look alarmed at least. The Highlander was painted with a black tartan pattern badge... that coincided with its IFF. An impossibility of course... or should have been... the captain aboard had dismounted an older man... probably in Kerston's age bracket.

That definitively made him the youngest officer present. The other highlander mechs had authenticated their Hegemony IFFs to his Marauder, there were a number of Highlanders, and he wasn't sure if that was because of the commonness of the assault mech in Hegemony service, or because they were playing games over their shared namesake.

What he wasn't detected were any indication that the subterranean level had any of its defense guns. Defense turrets, even automated, or remote controlled ones should have been technology that even in the decline of the third succession war should have still been feasible to maintain, even replace... but there was no sign of even a passive connection. He had no indicators available to that there were sensors he could have sent a signal to... nothing.

It was possible that the damage to the Castle had been that significant... which was in its own right alarming... especially as they moved deeper into the fortress, and further underground without any sign of the electronics that should have been present in a Castle Brian.

His Marauder was configured into command and control mode. Ordinarily this would have meant nothing. Normally speaking a Marauder's Dalban would parse data down such that he rarely would have had complex pilot data coming through the link unless he specifically wanted it, or if the other mech was sending him a warning that a pilot was injured or otherwise. With only a lance in his chain, and no data coming in from the other 'SLDF' flagged units... his Hegemony software was telling him that Kerston wasn't sure what was going on... "General?"

"I've never been to this part of the Castle before." He replied to the question. "I, Campbell has my complete trust colonel... what he wants to show us," He trailed off as they passed another series of posted battlemechs running 191st​ IDCs.

The whole area was decorated in Northwind fashions. Something that he didn't think would have been the case in the Star League era, but it was how things were. Campbell's highlander moved to a dismount point, and the 'Captain' dismounted from his mech after powering down the reactor. His camera caught sight of a kilted man, in his mid or late fifties, which conformed with the piloting credentials that had been relayed from the Highlander. Kerston followed suit, easing his Battlemaster in. Thankfully the gantries had been designed with universality in mind, so after he moved to the dock Septim's merlin didn't have any issue.

Gene powered down the VLAR 300, logging a directive to the MMI before then unsapping his harness. There was a reception party waiting. They didn't seem belligerent, or overtly threatening, but the kilted men wore uniforms that were SLDF... and carried Mauser Las-Rifles. He doubted there was anything ceremonial about their full length dirks sheathed ... but the reception stood at attention to let the Highlander pilot through, who saluted. "General Kerston, welcome back to Northwind." He brogued.

It was something of a marvel, that Gene had a hard time wrapping his head around. The great scotch irish diaspora had departed from the United States, and from the Anglosphere of the western alliance to colonize many worlds. That was an understatement, but Northwind had been one of those worlds that of the great exodus of the golden of stellar colonization which had settled the scotch irish here, and Donegal, and Skye, and countless others. The Gaelic revival of the late 21st​ and the 22nd​ centuries made those that had happened in America, Canada, and Australia look like a joke. That much was apparent given how many kilted clans dotted Northwind's surface in the year 3017.

"Captain Campbell. This was not quite the reception I was expecting." Kerston replied.

Campbell glanced around at the banners that turned the massive mech ready bay, and briefing area into a majestic scottish hall. "Oh this, think nothing of it. I just thought it appropriate, given our situation, you're our guests." He centered back on them, "Colonel Shepherd."

"Captain Campbell." He returned the salute in as textbook as he could, cognizant that Septim was not thrilled by the development the group had found themselves in... and if Gene were to guess... it was those prophetic dreams again, something here must have clicked. He catalogued it away as the guards allowed an older highlander to come by and hand something off to Campbell. Gene couldn't see what it was but the man signaled that they should follow him, and so they left their mechs behind and into a open archway into what was clearly some kind of checkpoint... or had been before being turned into a great room of sorts with a large table, and stuffed deer mounted on the walls, "Offer any you a drink, water of life anyone."

"We're on duty, Captain." The brevet general said, before Gene could perfunctorily accept the scotch invitation for the sake of being polite. They had managed to reduce the number of highlanders in tow... Kerston seemed to have noticed that.

The kilted man shrugged from the bar, poured himself a healthy glass and sat down, beckoning them to do the same at the long oak table that dominated the room. They all accepted, even the most of the squad of guards, security contingent, other highlanders whatever they were taking seats on a bench, and others remaining by the door they had entered from. He reached down after placing his scotch on the table and placed a case on the table with a tartan insignia and badge, he opened it.

Septim swallowed at the laser pistol in the case that was resting on the table as the highlander reached inside, and plucked what was beside it. "Do you know what this is?" He asked, placing beside it the thistle bloom there.

He had to bit down the juvenile answer that the species name was 'Sillybum'. "The Milk Thistle." Then in practiced, church esque latin, "Nemo me impune lacessit."

"Boss." Septim protested to Hanzo's obvious annoyance as the Cicada pilot tensed.

He ignored the Lyran's complaint, and continued on. "I'm not Black Watch," The highland men started at the comment. "You broadcasted an 191st IFF to the Marauder, that pings back to a Hegemony handshake. The mech and its identification, your machines register as from the Royal Highland Regiment."

Campbell bit his lip and tilted his head, acknowledging the explanation, "Aye, my highlander." He said wistfully, eased and then sipped his scotch. The tension eased out of the room, "You beg my pardon there, but you barely look twenty Lieutenant Colonel," He emphasized the peace time rank not the brevet promotion to full bird... which suggested the handshake had possibly included both, "Shepherd." He produced a silver tin box from within the case. It was decent sized thing, with a reader on it. "Place your hand on it. I'd like to see if we can find out what's inside it, yeah?"

The thing slid over as Gene looked at it. Then, he reached up and pulled the dog tags from his neck, and put it on the reader, and then rested his hand on the space for it to scan. Campbell swallowed as it flashed green, and then he drained the rest of his scotch. Kerston had remained silent, but the brevet general looked to be building to an outburst, and as if stymie that, there was a clink as the glass went down, and Campbell explained. "My ancestor was given that box by Captain Hazel she got it from Colonel Schmitt two hundred and fifty years ago. He was a wee lieutenant in the regiment fresh to it when Amaris attacked."

The silver tin case opened inside on crushed velvet was tablet with the emblem of House Cameron, and the Terran Hegemony. A diary... or maybe some kind of record. Final orders... who knew.

"And you've been white shielded for those two and a half centuries." Campbell blinked at the term, Kerston too, and probably the others. "Your parents passed down a Hegemony log key to enlist their children with their credentials..." Tristan had informed him that, "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," presumably you could enlist private soldiers, 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... given that was what Campbell's rank was.

"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, and General Kerston will be fine... just a jaunt something else to show you. There is another door we cannot open." He lead him deeper inside the Castle, modern furnishings 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?"
--
Notes: Kerston gets less dialogue here than I would like, but we're moving relatively quickly as they dismount and move into the Castle Northwind. This and the previous segment are all taking place within basically the same afternoon, Kerston is going to find out about the castle, and the rest probably in part four.
--

 

[Imperator Pax]

Highland Faire​

He looked at the circle again, wondering if the reader worked, but really as soon as Campbell had finished his question things started to happen. There was a change in the air, a kind of draft. The N001 complex was old. In a way that Tristian's outpost castle wasn't. There were differences also in scale. Castle Northwind was a castle Brian that at least its original foundations predated the Star League. It was original a 23rd century Hegemony facility built... the fact didn't escape him... from the strategic concerns of the Hegemony, and Brian Cameron of Kuritan ambition, and aggression.

Gene exhaled the breath and watched the ceiling move.

A speaker crackled to life, and synthetic voice initiated. He was cognizant that the others had started to follow, no one had apparently in the access office, side room, lobby whatever it had been, had stopped Kerston from decided he was curious to. "Authorized user detected." The voice declared. Unlike with Tristan, the turrets had activated dropping down, or raising from their floor housings 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 towards the others. Gene stepped up into the blue ring on the floor and placed his chit on the reader and hand on the scanner and felt the prick of the machine taking a blood sample.

The speakers shifted again, possibly signifying that the initial synthetic voice has simply been an automated smart system. "Standby." The new artificial voice ordered in a brogue tone, similar but distinct enough from the locals... say two hundred years out of date. "Authenticated. Welcome lieutenant colonel Shepherd, I am Dante." The Hegemony AI stated introducing himself, "It has been 177 years since an officer of the Central Intelligence Directorate has accessed this facility."

He blanched as the massive doors opened. Gene was stepping out of the circle snagging his keys as he went from where they sat on the green illuminated reader and marking a hard line for the inside and the myriad of consoles, and projectors that he could see within, "I understand, can you prepare a briefing of this facility, its actions and evaluations."

"Wait, Colonel Shepherd." Another brogue voice, Campbell had been staring around at the ceiling looking for the speakers, or maybe looking at the Laser Cannons as the AI had introduced himself. The Black Watch descendant stumbled a bit and followed him as he cleared the threshold of the doorway.

He threw a look back over his shoulder, The turrets didn't move to track him.. but he was also unsure how they would respond if the others saw the doorway and decided to try and come down the hall to follow... he'd need to see to that... but, there was the math to consider. "A hundred and seventy seven years ago would have been fifty five years after Kerensky's Operation Exodus." He snapped striding through the inner armored bulkhead... a further redundancy against biological or chemical weapons being used against this part of the Castle.

"Yeah I can do math." Campbell was following slower looking. "And yeah, so you know that was also the year the Davion's took the planet."

"Colonel." The AI inquired. He wasn't sure if Dante was asking about his and Campbell's exchange, but...

"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. He looked at them, and specifically highlighted as priority.

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...

Campbell came to a stop by the command terminal, and rested a hand on the railing, "Colonel, you look white as a ghost-,"

"According to Admiral Clancy's log, the one he left here, Fortress Dieron is intact." He'd read about it in Tristan's files on SLDF facilities operated by the Hegemony that were now inside the combine, 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 raised questions. Dieron was a castle. The Fortress was equipped equipped with a massive suite of orbital to surface capital weapons... it was possible that the SDS override had disabled those but he couldn't be sure.

"That is correct colonel. The facility should be securely locked down, with access to sensitive sections prohibited to unauthorized personnel." That was to say that the automated turrets would shoot first, assuming they got past the drone combat vehicles, or anti infantry drones...

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

"Authenticated." Dante replied as a hologram appeared showing the contents of the data storage device.

"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... err woman... Prince's champion

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.

... he thought about the data slate in the lockbox that had gotten them this far... the las pistol was functionally identical to the one he was wearing... the device that Campbell had carried. "Dante if you would inform the of personnel in the access pathway to remain there, and standby." He waited for acknowledgement, as the AI's voice echoed faintly from the hallway to the others. Then as an additional precaution, and hoping that AI wouldn't override the order directed that Dante shouldn't fire on them without being fired upon. He received no protest, with that out of the way, "Captain Campbell I need the data slate, I want to access it." It was probably encrypted, but presumably either his credentials or Dante's would be able to open it.

... and he wasn't quite sure what he was going to find.

Campbell handed him the slate, which he placed on the console interface, but it seemed it was going to take a minute. "Dante can you confirm Taurian ASF footage is the SLS Triptiz?" He questioned referring to another saved file on the data chit bearing the damning footage of Kurita and Amaris.

The footage played showing the hulk as it floundered pulled into the gravity well of a gas giant somewhere in the periphery near or in Taurian space.

Data markers appeared on the hologram as the AI cross referenced details. "This footage is valid, Colonel." The date of 2979 held on the projection, "I can confirm further that the SLDF fighters in use are not broadcasting properly configured SLDF IFF, they are neither regular army, nor Hegemony forces. "

He hadn't had the resources to process those signatures from the recording, but the latter also strongly implied that the strike mission wasn't being carried out by Hegemony in Exile forces.... so who then?

Dante resumed speaking, "Colonel, as ranking Terran officer present I am required to inform you this material is sensitive to the Hegemony." He acknowledged the statement, and the recognition that Dante was going to seal the bulkheads, when he did so, "Additionally, the package from Colonel Schmitt contradicts my orders from General Marlborough."

... that was a problem. He glanced at the report... tapped the stainless steel console's backlit keyboard in acknowledgement. "There is a secure file on the data chit, please review it. I'm authorizing its release."

"Standby."

... and so another recording played... he should have ordered Dante to review it without playing it. Tristian's outpost's wildfire protocol... and the AI's attendant report. "This data would validate General Marlborough's orders."

That was all well and good for the long dead Duke of the defunct Hegemony, but that wasn't the point. "What portion of Schmitt's data contradicts the General's orders?"

"SLS Tripitz successfully ran the republican blockade of terra. The encrypted material was to be delivered to then Commanding General Kerensky ordering him to commence an immediate counter attack."

"The SDS would have cut him to pieces." Gene felt the need to point out.

"That had been taken to account. Schmitt's data package includes the command override code to release all M Series drones to autonomous. Any Caspar series or other drone starfleet unit would have begun direct attacks against rim world forces and all ground based control systems would be rendered useless by the signal."

Caspars didn't really have the same scope of sentience, sapience, which ever it really as ... since AI weren't his specialty and he wasn't sure just how much thinking a drone dropship or lola did... and well the space stations had as much thinking power as Dante or Tristan and the personality quirks. They'd be left with the primary directive of defending the hegemony... against an enemy had been committing atrocities left right and center since Christmas.

He could guess even without the projective modelling of the battle. Caspars in autonomous would likely prove completely willing to mount what crewed ships would have considered suicidal death rides... and yet manage to have the fine motor control to outshoot entire flotillas of Rim world ships.

"And Tripitz?"

and that was the delivery.. the shock... that Kerensky was supposed to kill Amaris and then report that success to the heirs of the Star League. The Tripitz had run the blockade carrying the last remnants of the Terran branch of House Cameron under the watch of another splinter of the Black Watch that had made it off Terra.

... the problem was those orders had never been delivered. Kerensky hadn't received it either 2767 or after the liberation of Terra in the following decade... and it had been two hundred years... and Dante's previous command officer of the facility, who had held it as the Republicans had been besieging Northwind had indicted Kersenky as derelict in his duties, and potentially even a traitor for ordering Hegemony forces to permit garrisoning of Rim World forces in sensitive hegemony positions... and the subsequent coup.

... "Do we have coordinates for Tripitz's final destination in the deep periphery?"

"We do not. They are not included." The black lion was supposed to rendezvous with a portion of the 'secret fleet' the hegemony maintained, and an anchorage with a connection to the SLCOMNET but one that was otherwise a second shadow network separate from the Ministry of Communication that chained out into deep space that supposedly Kerensky would be able to signal when Amaris had been defeated.

... which at least suggested to Gene that House Cameron hadn't seeded an entire empire in the black of space rimward. Not one big enough that she planned had been to deploy some fleet sufficent to throw Amaris out on their own... but then that made sense... AI needed to be asleep... basically disconnected or offline in order to make Jump Travel for whatever reason... there was something out there... but the question was who, what, how big many?

"Could they be alive?" Came the croaking question.

"They'd probably be dead of old age by this point. Even if they were children, the projected lifespan for a Terran citizen with the best medical care was estimated to be a lucky two centuries," Outliers not withstanding, and he wasn't aware of any records from the league era of Hegemony citizens living to 250... but, "Could House Cameron's Terran branch potentially survived, yes. It is possible that they could have made it to a bolt hold, and there is a remnant... but if the plan was for Kerensky to reestablish contact, and without the Tripitz's logs... thats a slim chance based on what we know right now."

--
Notes: Kerston gets told in most likely the tail end of the next segment when he gets brought down into the complex.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Highland Faire​

It was Campbell's face. He looked like he needed to sit down.

"Captain, your vitals are abnormal. We recommend that you please have a seat." The Ai remarked, and the captain numbly sat down, on the floor since there weren't really any chairs, bracing against the railing.

Dante had projected the odds based on what they knew, and ... well... they weren't good odds. Of course Star League medicine being what it was perhaps the twins had been shoved in stasis tubes they might have survived that way... but again... odds weren't in the favor.

A part of him was disappointed... but it made sense. If there had been a Terran hegemony exile surely they would have had made a reappearance... or maybe they had and maybe they'd weighed what resources they had, and probably on the determination of population... deemed the cost too great.

Gene suspected that if he could come to that then the AI Dante had probably considered that any Hegemony in Exile might constrained by limited resources, or time have written off the Inner Sphere... but there were two problems with that. It didn't change that it was possible they didn't know, and of course that if they had made it then the Cameron twins had made it out with a Black Watch lance to mind them.

Maybe showing Captain Campbell the odds wasn't the best idea. Portions of the secret fleet had fought to keep the Hegemony in the fight against Amaris's forces, but without a detailed report he had no idea what the navy might had... only that Tripitz had made it to the periphery along a shadow route off the usual jump maps...

"Colonel Shepherd do you have the resources to investigate?"

... did he... not really. "Not without bringing in assistance. The JumpShip fleets are significantly degraded as a result of the post League wars of succession." ... and bringing in assistance... there was really only one person there who was an option... bringing this to the Davion's was out, even though it appeared that the Admiral, Clancy, had elected to side with the Davions. His logs suggested that given Lyran leadership weaknesses that the Federated Suns represented the best option in his argument to sway Dante.

... and that had been made without knowledge.... had been made solely on Combine belligerence in the form of things like the Davion succession crisis, and ronin incidents ... all the historical grievances, like the fact the Combine had been the historical reason for the Castles Brian in the first place. That call had been made without knowledge that Kerensky had left knowing Kurita had handed over SLDF positions to Amaris... and given that 2841 Warships had still been a thing, and that there were potential other nasty Hegemony surprises behind that might have very well ended up with Luthien suffering a very unfortunate fate indeed.

"Due to the loss of my HPG uplink I have no way of ascertaining at the present the status of Hegemony anchorages, or other naval installations, given the degrading of the SLCOMNET even acquisition of a mobile hpg to replace my previous connection would likely be insufficient to reestablish a connection."

Right, the network was slower, weaker, smaller than it had been during the league. So even if Gene knew where to find a mobile HPG Dante was right it might not help.... especially if you needed to physically liase into the shadow network ... and if there was a break in that chain then that wouldn do much good.

So much time had passed. There was only one option... take this to Abner ... and he couldn't do that with what he had... there were three distinct data points.

Dante's logs from the Coup, and after.

Clancy's input from... the ... second he was fairly certain succession war, and that data. Including the report from the second succession war that there was an intact hegemony castle on Dieron's equatorial band... and south of the capital.

... and of course the data from the Highlander's lockbox, and the dispatch dated from the coup... and what Kerensky was supposed to do, but the dispatch had never been received... and on Elidere Abner had asked if perhaps Kerensky had been going to a bolt hold... but he was pretty sure Kerensky hadn't been going to anywhere... except maybe that he knew there was survey data that said there were habitable planets far out that direction.

The Hegemony had concealed various scientific secrets for decades, and even centuries, from the other member states of the star league. The Hegemony had represented the most industrially developed and settled worlds due to the sphere around terra that had been colonized. That had meant closer trade within those worlds, and also more established centers of learning...

... like the university of Volgadon.

Still, as he had observed to Abner when he'd first showed him the footage, it had been almost forty years since the Taurians had stumbled upon the SLS Tripitz... but that was a find to Dante who was presently attempting to map the route, or possible routes that would have carried the Black Lion-class warship rimward to her final resting place, estimating twenty jumps.

A series of projected pathways occupied the central globe. He was going to have to talk to Pasha... but the soonest they would be able to move would be probably the end of the year.... and of course there was no assurance that even with that time that Abner could put anywhere near the scientific hard ware to dive down into the gravity well of a gas giant.

... and of course there was no telling how the Taurians might react, or the 'white wings' or supposed cappellan interests might respond if any kind of ferreting around started at the sight... and it assumed no one had beaten them to it.

But it was the last lead they had... but there wasn't anything saying they had to start there either. They could start looking closer. All three data sources had points of interest which might yield clues to follow.

"Unfortunately given the passage of time," Dante had started speaking again as Gene looked at the security monitor feed. The others were still out there. "there is no guarantee of sourcing additional space lift capacity," He meant JumpShips. "The port facilities here contain a handful of remaining DropShips, but the last of the system's fleet installations were lost in the 29th​ century."

The comment of course merely jarred his fragmented memory. The dragoons he were sure were the descendants of Kerensky's exodus. He knew that, even if the evidence he could actually cite was circumstantial. The problem was less so that, even though he wasn't sure how exactly the Highlanders would respond... Campbell was going to need time to digest all of this... but it had already been clear that the explanations of simply finding a cache was believable. There were people who would question that , but there was a kernel of truth that could have been born out by just being lucky...

... or having a map. CID wouldn't have lists of regular army Brian Caches... at least not officially. There might be some records, security, investigations, and other normal business might well provide... he could look or have them flagged, but that paled in comparison to the bigger question of how the Dragoons might react... and 'Clans' how would the rest of Kerensky's exodus survivors deal with the included news.

"Colonel Shepherd, Captain Campbell, on evaluation perhaps the stress of this news is significant should I bring one of the auto-doc's online?" Gene blinked at the display. He had been starting to zone out, and a headache had begun to form behind his eyes. If it had just been contending with Dieron it would have been one thing. He had been lead to believe that the war with Amaris, and subsequent first and second wars should meant the loss of facilities like this or Fortress Dieron. How many other Hegemony facilities were still buried under the surface of planets... and were the Cameron's still out there?

CID might not have had a master list but it was possible if there even was a directory of all the caches the Camerons might have it... but did that even matter? The Hegemony had functionally ceased to exist even before the liberation of Terra and the apparent reality was that most if not all of the great houses had been already planning to annex Hegemony worlds as a result of the coup.

"I need a minute." He replied looking back at the exterior security feed. Did Campbell know that the Eridani and he were employed under the same contract that, the Davion's were going after Dieron... he racked his brain for details.

Kerston had vouched for Northwind's Highlanders, and their descent from SLDF survivors. Kerston was going to have questions... understatement... but just for what was behind the door that the Highlanders themselves had admitted to being unable to open. The security must have also been occupying a portion of the AI's attention as the map of Tara, on the surface projected the Eridani positions.

By itself that might have warranted concern over it, but the holographic display was painting them face value of being the Eridani Light Horse and of the SLDF, of course this wasn't the first time the Eridani had been on Nightwind for the faire.... there were marked as in SLDF colors on the display.

Campbell was struggling to his feet, "I," he began, "The ship," He stumbled over the words.

"Tripitz? I didn't have proof," Not without the documents that had been in the Black Watch's possession, "Dante this is a Hegemony facility what's the local procedure for bringing SLDF regulars in?"

There wasn't one... not one that had been planned for dealing with this scenario. Dante had briefed defending Star League troops against Republic forces, but Northwind had taken a beating over hte course of the conflict as like many hegemony worlds the Rim World forces had largely been able to open hostilities from within defensive envelopes.

That that hadn't been universal was another lead to chase... "Can you evaluate the brevet general's service identification packet and make a decision."

"Standby."

The response was almost monotone.

Campbell straightened, and a few moments passed without him broaching the subject of whether or not they shouldn't tell Kerston. There was a crackle from the speakers, "The 3rd​ Regimental Combat Team's data is relatively complete. I believe that it would safe to inform the General that there is the possibility that House Cameron was evacuated offworld, and the vessel which ran the blockade was discovered."

"So you'll let him in?" Gene questioned.

"Yes," the AI replied, "I'm compiling a briefing packet from the available data." There was a pause, "I would be remiss not to point out that the SLDF certifications do potentially create codex issues given the official dissolution of the Star League Defense Forces, and Council."

... right because that had been the result of the liberation. None of the houses could agree, and Kerensky had then absconded with the regular fleet and army... he looked at the SDS override command on the display of data from the Black Watch device. The SDS drones would have been effectively left to their own devices without ground directors.... and that meant had they still been around they would have cut invading ships to pieces... a what if that hadn't come to pass.

There was a chime, and the armored bulkhead opened. Dante must have been in the mood for guests as he was letting the whole party in.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Highland Faire​

The small retinue of highlanders, plus Kerston, Septim, and Hanzo all stepped a little uneasily through the reinforced bulkhead. "Deja vu," Septim muttered, probably a little louder than he should. The comment seemed to echo in the expansive theater esque main data space. They probably could have done without the comment at all. Whatever the case he did look relieved that things were under control, enough to continue to stick his foot further into his mouth. "I, this didn't happen to play out like last time I guess."

"Its complicated," He replied as he scrolled through the terminal in front of him on a variety of data packets that Dante was flagging as 'read this', 'read that', 'read this too'. It was a long list.

"A wildfire protocol was not necessary." Dante remarked. "General Marlborough held to his responsibilities to the Hegemony, and as an officer of the armed forces." And had died in his mech surrounded by dead republican guard before a Rim World warship had hit the theater defensive cordon's several square mile area with an orbital bombardment and.... "Subsequent access to this facility occurred but has been intermittent since the dissolution of the League Council." and while Dante didn't precisely come out and admit to reading people's comms, or mail, it was probably the explanation, "I am given to understand that House Davion is preparing an offensive against House Kurita that while unrelated to particular details is still aimed at liberating Hegemony worlds."

"Excuse me."

... Kerston was still using SLDF encryption codes. Hegemony AI probably had master lock cipher overrides... but regardless. He sighed. "Captain Alexander has seen the footage.," he remarked, "Play the HPG recording."

"Affirmative."

... and so, Jerome Blake, and Alexander kerensky's credentials authenticating the recording, it wasn't really an intercept, showed Kurita giving up SLDF positions to Amaris. The footage that the 05P had attempted to kill a valuable, highly decorated portion of the arkab legions on the off chance that they might have peaked at it...

... and there were other issues... but that was the situation.

Septim had moved around through the recording. "So like he said, what happened to General Marlborough?"

"They called an orbital strike as his unit was covering civilians making for the shelters here." not here here, but as a part of Tara's defensive zone. "The strike killed most of the regiment," Dante's report stated that only a handful of Smoke Jumpers, the SOG Regiment that had formed the majority of the local CID's presences combat force, had survived to see the liberation of Terra.

"He said somebody had been here when the Davion's took the planet."

"Yeah," Clancy seemed to have spent some time in a stasis tube, "I haven't read all of his reports, but Fortress Dieron is intact, or was in the mid 29th​ century. Its a castle brian, a very heavily armed castle. That could be good or bad for the invasion." ... and he wasn't sure he was going to tell Yvvone but ...

Campbell was looking at them. "Cameron?" He asked a little shakily.

Kerston missed the context. "The AFFS colonel, who is attached to your command?" He asked straightening his uniform jacket.

"No Brevet General Kerston." The AI replied.

Septim put two and two together to get four, "There are Cameron survivors?" everyone looked at him, "You asked Tristan about the possibility of survival," He trailed off before mentioning any more. "And then Abner found the Tripitz. Or found out what happened to it."

"Yes," He replied straightening and realizing he had the room. "The SLS Tripitz ran the Republican blockade of Terra and jumped from the system, she was carrying the last members of House Cameron's Terran branch pursuant to a Hegemony security failsafe under the orders of the Black Watch. The plan was that Kerensky was supposed to launch an immediate counter attack, transmit an automated order to defense units and turn the tables on Amaris, and them signal an all clear. That didn't happen. The SLS Tripitz was rediscovered in 2979 by the Taurians, and from them possibly the Capellans, and a third party. Said third party then proceeded to scuttle the warship with concentrated air power sinking her in the gravity well of a gas giant that year to deny her to the Taurians. We do not believe those forces were Hegemony in Exile."

Dante had projected holographic images behind him, because they were staring up and behind him now. Given their expressions they were probably static images rather than video.

"If there were survivors wouldn't they have tried to reestablish contact?" Kerston asked.

"I speculate here, that either they chose not to, either maintaining radio silence, on the assumption that Kerensky had failed, or in recognition that with the destruction of the hegemony... the Star League would follow, or maybe they sent out feelers and saw that that, what had happened after. I have no idea whether or not they were aware of the HPG recording or not."

"I consider that very unlikely colonel. Given the situation, and the sensitivity of such things. I suspect that if they survived they were maintaining radio silence. The lack of fire wall protocols being instituted especially in light of House Kurita's collaboration strongly imply the ignorance of events and isolation of any Hegemony elements within the deep periphery." That was the other thing. Kerensky had probably not told anyone if he'd already been planning to leave Inner Sphere... which spoke to other issues.

"Are you saying you believe the League is at war with the Combine? That the Hegemony Position is that-"

Dante cut Kerston's question off with harsh bark, "Yes." The AI snapped, "That is exactly the position I adopt General." and that was when it struck him... Kerston didn't seem surprised that there was an AI talking to them... he had to have figured out that was what was going on. What Gene hadn't expected was for the deluge of images of Rim World atrocities to start appearing in holographic windows, followed by Kuritan atrocities during the 1st​ succession war. "Colonel Shepherd I am committed to assisting in the liberation of Dieron, and any other Hegemony worlds from Combine occupation. In the interest of strategic interoperability I can release resources, and provide limited assistance elsewhere to liberate non Hegemony worlds."

Kerston nodded. "I don't think it is appropriate to hold the combine at fault for the sins of their fathers, but I will obey the lawful orders of a star league chain of command, and in accordance to the regulations of the SLDF."

... Kerston was right... if this had been 2796 ... and the resources available... then Gene could potentially see having to respond by hunting down Jinjiro Kurita, warships and orbital strikes would have been part of the conflict... but now? Even if Dante could magik up a fleet of drone warships from some anchorage, Luthien didn't deserve a Mass Driver strike from a SDS drone built on a Battleship hull.

Kerston's response though seemed to have mollified the AI. "House Cameron?"

"I have no idea, if they survived or not. Septim is right, I knew Tripitz had gotten out, and that there were rumors that they'd run the blockade with survivors of the House, I don't know who they met up or when or how far they got... just that it seemed like they were heading into the deep rimward periphery... and that there were likely black box facilities and castles out there. How many people would have been out there? I don't know. I don't have details, but the orders given were to initiate protocols and not draw the conflict out. Those never reached Kerensky, and Kerensky had to batter through the defenses of hegemony worlds with brute force, and then fight on the ground. Could there be survivors, yes."

"Kerensky went to the periphery."

"He went the wrong direction. He went the complete opposite direction. That isn't to say there might not have been hegemony facilities, but Kerensky," he blinked and swallowed, "Coreward, he went coreward," The galactic 'north' so to speak looking at a map. "I don't think, he was going for actual holds, but rather for unsettled worlds that had been found as habitable by surveys done decades earlier. Tripitz was found by the Taurians rimward as it was, and they didn't send the ship to the Davions, or the Commonwealth."

Kerston didn't protest. "The general," Kerensky, "knew about House Kurita turning over data on the SLDF, and House Kurita then tried to seize the Star Lord's throne." Gene knew that the ELH had had to shoot their way clear of the combine in the 29th​ century, and that they had served with at least the FWL, and the Commonwealth. They'd spent time in the periphery too.

Dante seemed to be prioritize, seemed to have come the conclusion that whatever else might be, the real world value of driving the combine off terran soil was a better use of limitted resources than anything else they could do right now. Part of it was probably finding the resources to mount an expedition into the periphery. He thought about the JumpShips that had been mothballed above the elliptical ... of the JumpShip from that number that he legally owned... Pasha knew there were going to be other Azami who would be fleeing the combine and would need passage to the periphery.

Abner was going to need to be told. Pasha was going to need to be told.

Gene tapped the display and navigated to Kerston's credentials. They authenticated out as a brevet general based authorization... to an AI supervising an Outpost Castle on Neu Karlsruh. "Dieron huh, Feet first into hell?" Campbell asked.

"DropShips more likely than orbital drop pods." He replied... and the Highlander's crack about the deployment on Luxen told him that most likely Campbell had pulled whatever data was avaiable from the MRB.

"There is a lot to talk about it, a lot to talk about." Campbell replied.

Septim opined that that was an understatement. Gene leaned back, "Any questions Ishida?"

"No, Colonel. Where you go I'll follow."

"We can only move forward and rebuild, the hegemony is gone, we can take steps to make a better world but that means going forward not longing for what will never be again." He replied. There were nods, and echo of agreement from Dante.

"Yes, and first and foremost means ending the threat posed from malicious actors."

... and of course maybe Dante believed that evicting the Combine leadership from formerly Terran worlds would improve things, and that maybe if there were Hegemony survivors maybe they could still come back... but that was all speculation. They'd go look when they had the resources to mount an exploration of the breadcrumbs that they had to follow... Dieron first.

--
Notes: HF5 will go up on the ninth most likely. I may post some scrap content, probably nominally canon stuff , possibly wolf dragoon stuff, since we've got highlanders and eridani.

Dante's ending line was actually going to be something a little more dramatic, but I couldn't find the quote I had planned to use, but effectively 'Yes a better world without the Combine, or at least a much reduced combine'. The Eridani have plenty of reason as it is to not trust the Combine canonically... and I've 'fluffed' their backstory to fit with other lore and stuff for this.

Anyway early update, but notably among other things for the ELH this explains why they have current SLDF credentials as well as why Brevet General, why they can promote upwards, protocols and what not. It also sets the stage for the ELH to in the future rebuild back to the equipment standards that they were at in 2764 down the road.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Highland Faire​

If the Camerons had escaped ... it seemed doubtful that they would have lost warships... he didn't understand how they could have lost warships, but the Inner Sphere some how did. Then, of course there was the state of FtL, Jump Drive, production anyway... but even with them the Camerons so far as what amounted to napkin math would have needed a minimum of the forces that Kerensky's exodus had taken into the deep black... so no... Gene confident that an invasion that hadn't happened wouldn't be forthcoming.

He stared at the display, the one dominated by a frozen still image of a deceptively serene looking mountain, on what had once been a Hegemony world.

There was a imprecise sort of pause in the room and they looked around. "it would seem as if you've been missed." It wasn't just their people Kerston's Eridani were wondering where they had all gotten to as well. There was a good chance they were going to be late for dinner. Gene would have been lying to deny his concern at the pervasive surveillance coverage... but he wasn't surprised at the situation either.

The fact Dante was monitoring a supposedly secure conversation between the Countess of Kestrel and Field Marshal Davion was probably to be expected of a CID AI. The mind was right, they had been missed ... which suggested that Yvonne had been watching or on the look out to how he interacted with the eridani. "General Kerston has informed me," He remarked navigating the keyboard with one hand, "That there are other surviving SLDF units. Can a list of those units be compiled." Tristian had from the best available intelligence he had done so, but at the time ... the bigger concern had been the possibility of returning Kerensky ... ists? Like the Wolves .

"There are indications that elements of SOG regiments survived the Hegemony campaign," and did not follow Kerensky. A list generated, that was painfully short, a handful of entries of units from Terran parent formations, "In addition to Special Mission Units," Which also was pretty short. The number of units that could be traced to SLDF formations as well as those who were harder to substantiate but claimed descent from SLDF units was larger... but included units who had of course chosen to enter Successor state service as House Units.

Gene's eyes scoured the list... half way trying to burn the information into his memory... but he'd get copies of it... "32nd​ Recond Group." They'd been tagged in Clancy's report as supporting the Admiral... and tellingly were still in Davion service after all these years.... they were still mercenaries interestingly enough. The Admiral's report suggested that any effort to maintain the inner sphere would need to be through the Davions, because they were the least malevolent of the great houses and most competent.... hence Clancy's decision to side with Davion over Steiner... but the succession wars had been a long time occurring.

... and whatever loyalty the descendants of those units might have had to the league, it was a stretch to contemplate them. There wasn't time to get a message too them, and they'd be getting ahead of themselves. Dieron was first. With as limited, as reduced as the JumpShip fleet and the HPG network clearly were by the succession wars he was going to need resources and that meant support from apparatus that still existed.

He made a face at the holographic security intercepts, and then smoothing the grimace away, half turned. "I take it we will need to reconvene here some time in the immediate future," Kerston remarked beating him to it.

Gene nodded. "That would be for the best." He agreed.

"Aye," The Highlander agreed. "maybe not on the morrow, but, there is a lot to talk about."

Kerston probably wasn't going to wait that long before he asked one or both of them... questions... especially if he had even the slightest idea of what all of this was, that was without even touching the contents of the security box.

Gene attempted to parse what Kerston had certainly heard, and how the Eridani, in their persona as the league continued would react.

Kerston though... what did the general think about everything he'd heard tonight.

There had been the matter of questions related to the Royal Highland regiment... the Tripitz, and of course there was the matter ... the sure to come questions of possible cameron survivors. The walk back into the much more homey creature comforts of modern Northwind's pseudo victorian revivalist decor was done mostly in silence. There was too much to think about ... he needed coffee... caffeine and a chance to think.

Gene swung himself across and into the cockpit's seat reaching for the harness restraints on autopilot while initiating the start up through his neurohelmet. The VLAR 300 spun up to standard running electrical power to the motive systems. Gene accepted the incoming data request, and packet.

The map program headed under the same N001 notification he'd been looking for, and the update to his local area map confirmed that while there 'should have been a significant number of defensive systems... most had been destroyed during the Amaris conflict, and hadn't been operational after the Capellans had invaded, never mind the Davion invasion in the following century. That was not to say the highland world defenseless. There were still turrets and defensive emplacements, and and while most of the league era defenses no longer existed the network of underground railways still existed.
--
The Highland Faire was a demonstration of an Inner Sphere that was, and had been. Much of the festivities, the culture on display, was of a time before the Star League. It was of the gatherings from really the first exodus from Sol, the great migration from Earth... from a world that no longer was. It was also of course a celebration of a post Star League inner sphere, the inner sphere of the succession wars, because while mercenaries had been big business even before the league they were even more critical in the modern, the contemporary Inner Sphere.

It was heavily raining when they arrived and to say the pub was noisy was an understatement. He'd made a handful of trips to bars on Luxen, and watering holes of all stripes had been common on the Magistracy planet, but it was still a periphery world apart of a territorial state that was rather opposed to armed force as a necessity... but the pub was overflowing with MechWarriors and hangers on. It was largely MechWarriors as far as crowds went.

There were other establishments that catered to both enlisted, and officers, as well as the other combat arms... there was even a surviving officers bar specifically for ASF pilots nestled south of the castle that dated to the Age of War, and had survived, at least as a building site, the amaris crisis and succession wars.

This was strictly speaking even though it was built in the rustic neo victorian styles that dominated the planet that evoked a time that had never been, a much more recent structure. It actually post dated the Davion conquest... which as avenue still made it old. The brass plaque on the door celebrated it at more then a hundred and fifty years old from just its participation as part of the Highland Faire.

They were indeed late... not that Gene had really known what to expect in hindsight with the Highlanders... and certainly not ... not the situation, but regardless they were the last of the company's mechwarriors to arrive. In sharp contrast to the wrought iron, brass fixtures, and an abundance of tartan and pennants the holograms showed BattleMechs, and played Combat Roms... and advertisements even as the thunderstorm mounted outside.

Gene shrugged off the dress jacket, that thankfully was water resistant, as Kerston followed suit. By comparison Hanzo and Septim had been inundated by the squal. The truth was he had been storing the garmet bag in his Marauder and had only put it on before they had gotten on, just because of how much rain the sudden turn in the weather had started. Kerston had probably been intending to wear the formal great coat of an SLDF command level officer to make a statement... but he'd have to do without.

The coatman nodded, and took the garmets and set off for the side room even as Bubbles, and Bahar both moved through the crowds. "What happened with you guys, did you hear they're talking about how its gonna snow tonight?" She shook her head, "If you were planning to dodge Bard's performance you're shit out of luck its been amateur hour to warm up, but then it isn't as if youre not the only ones getting here late... so I think they're waiting."

"Who'se missing?" He asked half way conversationally.

Obviously Kerston had probably been one, and the General was looking around, "I don't see the Blue Star irregulars," specifically their general, " they should be here. They're built around the 1894th​ Light Horse Regiment, and function as a RCT similar to the Eridani,"

The SLDF unit had been listed by its League Credentials, but he hadn't been expecting them. "Are they?"

"They're descendants of recipients of the Blue Star of Kerensky." Gene couldn't help but respond with a flat look, "Distinction for Valor in the face of the Usurper."

"I see," He didn't say anything more, but he suspected he was going to need to ask, or perhaps just run an itinerary and see ho w many league descendant units or at least mercenary units were currently on Northwind... and who all the Highlanders, or Kerston might feel it necessary to inform of developments... if there were any.

"oh well here comes Bard.," Chang waved, "I've got them they're over here."

"What happened? Frankly you look like you nearly drowned out there."

Gene ran a hand through his rain soaked hair. "The Highlanders offered us the water of life." He replied... and the truth was he did want a drink. Then it was getting through the throng of people.


--
Notes: this is shorter, on the basis of some of the material will be resumed in the subsequent update, Real Life is proving inconvenient ... and I will probably have some unplanned travelling this week... lots and lots of driving.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Highland Faire Extra 1​

She sat at the head of a long table that had supposedly carried from a castle in Scotland during the heyday of the first exodus. It must have weighed nearly a ton, built from a single large centuries old oak tree. It was here countless decisions had been made by planetary officials, Terran generals, and then their inevitable successors. Decisions were made in this room that had effected the history of the Inner Sphere. It was here she mulled over her work. Her working thesis remained that the Combine in the waning days of the league must have done something...

Yvonne Davion flipped through the most recent courier delivered reports GM was ... desperate was probably accurate summation. In terms of what was being suggested wasn't as impressive as developing an entirely new BattleMech. It was simply providing for codification of a new version... admittedly in the case of the Marauder II or this... Lyran Merlin BattleMech they were new BattleMechs but but they were one thing.

Why no one had thought to consider it before though still was a bit grating. GM had a facility on Quentin that produced the Marauder for the Federated Suns... but the Federated Suns didn't have an Orion production line. For a Mech that was occasionally referred to as a poor man's Atlas... despite the absurdity in that the Orion predated the Atlas by over two hundred years... no one had thought to simply outfit its successor design with its weapons. The Marauder had a great deal of existing parts commonality with the Orion. The proposal was easy.

Alexandria, the countess Kestrel, had attempted to locate their fish out of water, but he seemed to have gone off with General Kerston to meet the highlanders... and after transmitting something from the JumpShip after they had arrived it raised questions. The colonel had claimed it was nothing to worry about, and 'worry' in a technical sense perhaps it wasn't, but as Prince's Champion it was among her prerogatives to 'worry'.

... and her lady in waiting was right, she had already considered given the 'Brian Cache' on Robinson and what had sparked its 'topping off' that there was chance , more than a chance that there were resources here... which just brought her back to the hypothesis that at some point before Minoru Kurita had declared publicly there had been other acts that were enough to warrant a Gunslinger, and before him a Hegemony officer from a completely different service branch to side against the Combine. She wasn't going to complain, but she certainly would have liked to know the story behind it.

General Motors wanted access directly to the mercenary company, well the commander at least, but that couldn't be afforded right now. The orion armament Marauder was just part of that, of course it used Davion produced weapons. Weapons like replacing the SRM 4 with the Archer series, and the Kaliyama for the New Avalon built Federated Auto cannon. It was galling that no one in the Federated Suns had thought to do it sooner.

There was the slight issue that the Colonel's clear assumptions were that Mech production was higher than they were. The design was appealing, even with its ammunition dependencies, enough that given the Federated Suns expanding economy that they might be able to to coax additional production out of GM, especially if Blackwell on New Valencia's production remained apace. "Lord William," The Lyran professor, "seems confident the Marauder II will attract Lyran interest." It was an assault 'mech, but given Lyran production of the Marauder, and especially its recent success they might very well want to produce those... the Lyrans were the Largest BattleMech producer in the universe after all. The great factories at Hesperus were likely sufficient to start production of new variants sooner than those at Quentin or on Avalon.

The documents entailed a number of different configurations for the Marauder, and its hundred ton new development. The packet included modifications to the Merlin, a case study and evaluation of both the modifications to a Catapult that was apparent in inventory, a Cicada... which was unlikely to go anywhere, as the Free Worlds League produced the strange design. That was going to go anywhere, but there had been a circular regarding a modified Thunderbolt. Yvonne could see where some of the proposal had begun though, the readying force preparing for the Invasion of Dieron in two months was swarming with variants of Shadow Hawks, and other mechs still produced domestically within the the Federated Suns, and of course the previously discussed issue of no standardization of autocannons.

... and that had probably been less of an issue in the heyday of the star league... but why had no one corrected it, the cost of retooling during the destructive, catastrophic, warfare the active shooting of the first and second succession wars? Recessionary periods?

She suspected that it was more than anyone factor. "He knows Cassara Industries can't provide him with Crabs, or King Crabs."

Yvonned glanced up from her tea cup, "Yes," ... and that raised the question of was there something like Bristol here. Some protected warehouse where there was material waiting to be rolled out to reinforce SLDF units that had never been moved off world for the loss of transit orders, a storage place forgotten about. "I'll admit I've always found the Eridani's theater of being the league... the last remnants of the SLDF equal parts amusing and grating..." She trailed off, and she had the countess's full attention. "I don't think the Colonel knew what to make of it. I think he may be warming to the Eridani now, but not enough to suggest his own origins to the Eridani. To that end I believe that we can safely discount any concerns he may be preparing to open a cache at least not ... regarding wherever he has disappeared to at the moment. This may well be simply Kerston making introductions in good faith to the Highlanders." and Yvonne was more comfortable wtih hires that MIIO could more readily vet before they came on.

Alexandria had already apprised her of the likelihood of Azami rebels likely joining in the offensive... which raised potential security vulnerabilities but at the moment the ISF had its hands full.There were rumors that the Hand of Tyr movement, or some other Rasalhague group, had stolen a number of Panther BattleMechs. Chronologically reports of the theft seemed to have occurred after the ISF had started their purge, so it might have been a daring raid in response. Whatever the case it was useful, if Rasalhague revolted even if the Lyrans didn't move to take advantage of it then they could could on the Combine to be distracted.

"You believe thats why they went to Castle Northwind? Just to meet."

"I would think so..." Yvonne carefully held back what she knew of Admiral Clancy's service with the Federated Suns... of the fact that Northwind was a Hegemony, if an ancient one, Castle Brian... and while Kerston probably knew it was, he had been the reason to visit. The Mechs had gone to link up with the Brevet General. They'd met with a Highlander escort, and then moved underground, and they'd been gone a few hours now.

There was a knock on the secure conference room's door. "Your Grace, we have them back on scopes." There wasn't anything unusual going on. All the mechs were accounted for, and everything seemed to have resumed as normal... well except that it had started raining since they had disappeared.

The weather was positively ghastly outside. The brigade officer attached to her staff provided them with the course projection. It gave them enough time to reach the pub at least. That hadn't been the plan originally, but they also hadn't expected Kerston to abscond with the colonel or for the colonel to pulse whatever that signal had been... and that signal presumably similar to the one he had used on Robinson to search for a return response had been what had drawn Alexandria, and thus her attention.

--
Notes: Not the original planned update, this will not effect sunday's update either, but this wasn't even originally the Battletech snippet I was going to put up today, I had something else in mind as a contingency originally. There is the possibility that in addition to Sunday's regular update, I may end up updating both the Luxen Contracts, and Essence Wielding Social General in addition to possibly other BT material.

This chronologically takes place basically alongside HF5, so the previous segment. Other than that note that this is from Yvonne's point of view, based on what she knows rather than what is objectively true if anyone is confused by this seegment I will qualify, and answer questions, and try nad make any inconsistencies in perspective clearer.

Anyway there is some confusion in canon on production. Everyone has Marauders, because obviously its originally a tabletop game, but the Cappies nor the Combine don't have production. The FWL production is across a very wide selection of mechs, but then Fasa goes loony toons and gives them a ridiculously low volume of mechs per year. (The cottage industry mech production excuse only goes so far... admittedly hey look at production of Ka-52s in Russia before this current shit that was like one every six months, even so). The davions have that black box facility of theirs producing the Valkyrie in droves. Herpsus... is Hersperus in lyran space enough said.

I'll throw this up here: https://bg.battletech.com/forums/the-successor-states/is-3025-production/

EDIT 2: I should also point out that this serves as the useful, foreshadowing of in the event in 3019 or 23 or whenever of any variant models need to show up [I've mentioned the Thunderbolt, and the Catapult previous, the Merlin, this is just expounding on that in universe] as the sort of like 'ackley improved' versions of the introtech mechs

 

[Imperator Pax]

Highlander Faire 6​

Getting through the crowd was the bigger issue, though Gene wasn't entirely convinced that having multiple levels was the best idea, then again all the dancing lights from the holograms probably also wasn't the best 'safe' practice when dealing with copious quantities of alcohol... but it was what it was, and probably a little safer and more sensible than the layout of some Canopian establishments from during the Luxen contracts.

Gene was glad his uniform coat was weatherproof, but it didn't change the fact it was nearly pitch black outside, not much better inside, and he was still wet from the storm. He threw a look back to Septim, and Hanzo, and the rain dripping off them, "Do they have a fire going?" He asked as they mounted the stairs.

"Yeah we've got a fireplace." She half shouted in order to be heard over the noise. "Oh come on." Bubbles grumbled as they continued to move through. It still took another five minutes to get up along a wall and follow it parallel to the railing to the nestled alcove near one of the bars on this floor. There was an access to a staff elevator that presumably lead down to the kitchens

It didn't escape Gene that Bard had disappeared from there number once they had managed to make it to the table... and when the music ended and the first chords of Farewell to Gibraltar began and the holograms shift to a familiar stream of combat footage that originated from Bard's Wolverine.

He'd always interpreted that Bard's use of the, modification of the lyrics as 'eyes of molten gold' as merely artistic license, but either they'd modified the holographic footage, which he doubted or the lighting did actually do a good job making his more amber eye color look a bit brighter. Thankfully those clips only seemed to be coming from his infrequent liaising with Davion defenders. It had clearly been edited , but mostly to splice different segments together.

The Marauder swung to bear on the river front.

Down below the mutli floor spanning hologram of the mech David Bowie waved to the crowded throng of half sloshed mercenaries, including those still making their way in from the rain. Minor celebrity mechwarrior, though not necessarily minor in the Draconis March... one didn't make colonel easily, and it was no secret that Bard was on personal speaking terms with the dukes of Elidere, as well as direct vassal to the Duke of Robinson.

... and certainly minor wasn't the word given the reception Bard was getting from the crowd on the landing.

"...a morning in the spring with hounds and horses running well made the hills and valleys ring..."​

Gene took the plate of turnips, potatoes and beef as the food came around. He looked at them, and counted two extras, "Thats Bards," he pointed as Kerston received his plate. The eridani's commanding officer didn't have anyone added at the last minute. Sutton was down with a mob of cadets on the lower level. Abner had had to decline the invitation citing another dinner engagement, and Ford was supposed to be with him.​

"The huntsman cried that, 'If only the Devil himself ran by, we'd run him such a race!' And up there sprung like lightning, a fox from out of his hole But his fur was the colour of a Starless night and his eyes like molten gold."​

Gene sipped his requisitioned brandy nog, but the timing of the lyrics coincided with footage from his own guns.

"So they chased him over the valley and they chased him over the fields. And they chased him down to the riverbank, but never would he yield. And he's jumped into the water, and he's swum to the other side. And he's laughed so loud that the green woods shook. He's turned to the huntsmen and he's cried: "Ride on, my gallant Huntsman... when must I come again? For you should never want for a fox to chase all over the glen And when your need is greatest, just call upon my name And I will come and you shall have the best of sport and game." Well, the men looked up in wonder and the hounds ran back to hide For the fox it changed to the Devil Himself, where he stood on the other side And the men, the hounds, the horses, they went flying back to town But hard on their heels come a little black fox, laughing as he ran."​

"Well?"

Septim had been with them, and didn't know. Beau shrugged, "They just seated up with extra seats, I don't know. I figured... you guys boss. Highlanders maybe?" The big man asked.

That was a point...very easily Campbell could have joined them... but the Black Watch descendants were no where to be seen. Instead he caught sight of a different group, "Never mind, I think I know who our plus two are." Yvonne Davion didn't need to push through the crowd... most likely because she had an escort from the faire marshals plus the Davion Guards in uniform to menace through the crowd... that and it was a lot easier to make way through with most of the floor crowded around the balcony to watch the minstrel woo the crowd.

The sommelier came out with a bottle of wine and hurriedly talked to Yvonne to the exclusion of everyone else... he was whispering but it wouldn't have mattered with the crowd and the speakers going. "Field Marshal, Countess."

"Back to formalities Colonel?" It was a light tone.

Her look glanced to the water streaked hair, "This is last minute so I wasn't sure if there had been a development."

"Just a social call, you don't mind do you?"

"No ma'am." Not at all... even if they stood out likely by intention. Gene's immediate thought was if this wasn't a pressing matter of the contract then showing up in brazen finery was probably to ward off off any competing interests ... but then that could be General Motors, or lesser FedSuns notables financial or aristocracy or who knew.... but it was a long list... and it was something that he hadn't needed the countess of Kestrel to warn him about, Yvonne had done so on New Avalon, and for that matter besides their liasisons there was what Septim and Bahar had observed while they'd been handling the cadre duty on Robinson.

"Are you settling in on Northwind well enough?"

"I can't answer that until we've had a chance to participate," The whole point of the faire was to make circles for hiring. There were commercial venues, and certainly he would have liked to have talked to Cosara's reps... even if the company was a pale shadow of its Star League existence, but he had originally planned to come here to hire on mechwarriors and other support. "And the drill facilities in particular." No one would pay attention to another arriving Davion regiment but they really needed to focus on expanding on their current drills.

"Yes, well, on the matter of business I did wish to discuss evaluating the company sized element. We didn't have time to properly discuss it but the combine has for various reasons maintained its dueling traditions, and the ronin like culture that emerged from it."

He really would have preferred if Kerston had nodded. "Something to answer the ronin, you're looking for a Gunslinger program of your own?"

That cheshire smile on the old lady's face was back, "Well you could call it that. I've been told that both sides extensively used the Marauder, isn't that right?"

"Thats right."

Pilot skill rather than any technological gulf. The Combine of the hidden wars had been operating machines equal, if not inferior to their Terran counterparts. The long term strategy of course had been to rotate surviving ACMS Program Graduates back to teach the subsequent classes with lessons learned, and thus increasing the volume of graduates relative to in theory a static, or ideally declining, number of 'Ronin'... but that had been the late 27th​ century, and had not accounted for other developments had meant that ... that objective hadn't been met

The Hegemony had not restricted the program from regulars. There had been combine graduates of the program schools. It was just that by all indications the Combine hadn't been interested in the Program methodology. The Capellans had expressed the most interest of the other member states but most attendees had been Terran, there had been Lyran, and League attendees...

There was no pointed in bringing that up... in fact there were penty of reasons not to mention such data. "This has something to do with General Motors I assume?

"To some degree." The Prince's Champion agreed. "GM produces, for the Federated suns both what the 3R, the version that debuted in 2819 as well as the Marauder 3D that entered service fifteen years later. The AFFS continues to employ both models."

"And either will suffice, or both. Discounting that we don't have time to run that kind of complex program, its really more about familiarity with the mech. The Combine used Marauders, the Kuritan 6K modification of the warhammer is an exemplar of their ronin philosophy because machine guns have little purpose in a mech duel." And frankly he was surprised that the modification hadn't stripped out the small lasers too for a duelists machine... but it was what it was. "An Archer or a Dervish, an Atlas," Samsonov's came to mind it had on review almost certainly been configured to let the deceased Kuritan general duel rival Combine officers rather than outfitted as an endurance fighter though with duel ppcs and plenty of armor could still fulfill that role. "I will make the effort to insure that the," He stopped talking as Bard finally managed to get through the crowd and made it b ack to the table, "They're as ready as they can be." He finished, but even so dueling the combine on their terms struck him as unwise outside of niche tactical situations that were unlikely to be the case given the numbers they were planning to drop with... but she was the one signing the paycheck and it was her invasion to plan... and likely all of this was aimed at being prepared for further, future campaigns.
--
Notes: Tentative update plans: So I plan next week to update next week obviously this, II Luxen, I'm going to try and update Essence Wielding Social General, and then some other things, but in the mean time I'm going to sleep.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Highland Faire 7​

Septim winced, and rubbed his eyes. The headache was fairly pronounced, and the rain had cleared off even though it was still early in the morning. The lyran ran his tongue around the corners of his painfully dry mouth and then winced looking at the door, "Alright, gott mitt uns." He hissed against his hangover, "I heard you." Making sure he still had his trousers on the right way he hobbled to the door and opened it to stare bloodshot eyes at the courier.

Mail.

Priority mail.

Still mail though.

He signed for it and sent the robe away... and with annoyance glanced at it. Post Marked Lyran Commonwealth of course... home. Mail from home... and dated recently. This wasn't something that ComStar had been dancing around trying to get to him from the periphery, from his time there. It wasn't of course, and it had been silly to even think it might.

Severus callsign 'Septim' Alexander was itself a nom du guerre and his family had had enough sway to insure a posting with the Lyran Guards but not enough to insure he would make rank and not enough to rise to command it. Thus his moving on to mercenary life had been, for him at least the right move, but the family back home hadn't approved.

He wasn't cut off per se but there had been no attempts by either side since he'd parted ways with the Inner Sphere.

He doubted they knew he was on Northwind, or that this was where the mail would land. Forward Service Paid for, not requested, they'd paid ComStar to make sure it followed him. He wondered if it had gone to Robinson first or if ComStar had picked it out and sorted it somehow before that point knowing that the Shepherds were moving to the Highlander homeworld. Surely since ComStar ran the MRB they knew who was shipping wear and could just tell the Post Office that.

The letter was even if it hadn't been in glowing gold holographic script pretentious in the extreme, it opened with salutations, and included as if he needed to be shown references to the things being referred to clips of battles on Elidere. God in his heaven he'd seen them enough, but he supposed that the public couldn't get enough of them.

--
Gene closed the thermos of coffee was the vehicles moved over the ground.

The Badger ground vehicle was expensive, as in, the Jenner 7A was or would have been cheaper. It wasn't as if he had to pay for them per se, and he didn't have the pilots for them. He had been looking for something cheap and effective as an easy to maintain raider, scout vehicle... and the Badger's modularity while nice worried him in terms of keeping it functional given how new they were.

That and there was the need for crews. He could wrap his head ... sort of... around the fusion engine shortage. The lack of engines meaning that 'mechs were the priority reducing the commonality of things like Manticores, or the Tokugawa that the Azami used but it still made his head hurt. Had the production bottlenecks really been that significant... but he supposed the Succession wars were two hundred years of strife and fratricidal murder between the member states.

"What do you think?" He asked the Azami tanker finally.

"It is a credit to its designers." He replied. Rashid was a big man, easily Beau's height, if not as broad as the Free Worlds native, he was still not the build that Gene associated with a tank commander. "I appreciate that it is compact enough that we secure it in a light vehicle bay. I also appreciate that it was a gift."

He nodded in agreement especially to the last one. Gene thought about the meeting he was due to have in Castle Northwind... meetings... he corrected mentally as he sipped the coffee. "I know we're short on people."

"I have sworn to Yusuf that I am doing my best to find good able bodied recruits, but Pasha is surely correct that our best option..." he trailed.

Would be to recruit Azami tankers who would be able to fold in to their doctrine of battle, and support. "Do we have time tables on that?"

"As the wind the blows I am afraid."

The Bandit and its heavier hover version would have fit well to Star League needs for independent regiments, but he declined to mention that. If only the league had made them, "I understand, than you Rashid. See what you can do." This was really their last opportunity to test the vehicles. They had a couple of more weeks and then it would be time step off.

That wasn't a lot of time. Even for elite formations within the Star League that was a very narrow scope, and would typically have only been application of those units to make planet fall ahead of a larger force. Not... throw basically the whole invasion force into the Gravity Well of a major world and wing it.

... but then again Dieron's defenders were much less numerous than the planetary militia would have been in the 27th​ century... it was a small... minor blessing. The successors states had been in a constant back and forth for centuries now, and that had worn them down to the point that Gene was relatively sure they would have potentially fared poorly against their late Age of War early league predecessors... or not he was only relatively sure .

Whether or not that was the case or not he wanted to be sure they were as prepared for a combined arms offensive against the combine before they left Northwind. BattleMech evaluations were the priority as far as the Davions were concerned. There was no shortage of paper work to catch up on from things on Robinson, and Bahar had been busy, so that was his next stop.

The twelve davion mech warriors were already inside the facility, somewhat less expectedly were the additional presence of a mixed Eridani and presumably Northwind native collection of MechWarriors. The Northwind were dressed similar to the Eridani in SLDF pattern uniforms in more of a scotch irish garrison style, but there were no obvious declarations to evoke the black watch. Instead they wore the Stuart Tartan.

He was less surprised that Bard was ribbing it up with RBA alumnus and the others, but when the Countess of Kestrel showed a few minutes before the scheduled start the room started to quiet.

"Did you invite them?"

It was the same question he'd been about to ask. "No. I have a meeting with the Eridani, and the Highlanders later." In addition to the meeting he'd expected to see the countess at where presumably the Field Marshal intended to address any particular developments. "Its not a problem." he slid the data chip into the star league era computer and started the 'power point of doom' tm. "The cache on Robinson was intended to facilitate rapid rearmament and mobilization in the event of conflict. To that end it included a wide range of designs common to the Hegemony of the 27th​ and the SLDF of the latter period in particular. There were questions regarding reequipping brigade forces with technically superior models, which was eschewed on the basis that this course is designed to insure maximum ability with your chosen chassis. This is a compiling of data on personnel equipment. You should know your machine, and its model the best as possible. Even if we moved you to machine even one with objectively superior systems and you then suffered a problem that you encountered hitherto unknown issue in live combat you would be ill equipped to deal with it. Hence the decision that it was preferable to keep you in the machines you started the course with."

Obviously the entire introduction had been done on the expectation that he'd just be addressing the company strength of the Davion Mechwarriors. There wasn't anything he could add for the sake of the Eridani or Higland observers. So, he went and got on with it changing slides.

"Combine preference for single combat will preference ranged engagements, particularly in the use of particle projector cannons, and the limitations imposed on BattleMechs by excess heat." It wasn't that he didn't understand where turning a catapult into a direct fire unit didn't make sense. It did but only in a narrow niche focus. The K2 could work, but the Catapult's default second line configuration still could be used as a duelists machine. "The exchange of shots, while not a priority also minimizes potential civilian collateral damage. Its ultimately a game of nerves." No one liked taking hits, even if it failed to breach armor. That put stress on a pilot, that effected their MMI synch rate...

That brought them to where, how the company of pilots would be deployed,

The division into battle buddies was aimed to insure frontline deployment to maximize the frontage covered. There were two real scenarios the first was of course letting experienced pilots cut down training cadre units. The second... the dicier proposition was the company facing sword of light pilots... who realistically were going to have much more significant dueling experience.

A duel though would keep those pilots and possibly units of them penned down while other sectors advanced. It was an operational calculus. It was part and parcel of being the first boots on the ground, and tip of the spear. Units that were offloading from San Saba, or the other Triumphs, or the Overlord class dropships would face different threats as the battle lines oriented.

Which was about the point when he was interrupted, by one of the highlanders, "Begging the colonel's pardon, but this makes it sound like you intend to handle the whole lot of them. Not to disrespect this lot, but we're talking a whole regiment of the sword of light with extras around."

Gene spared a glance to the Countess of Kestrel, before moving to address the matter. "Cooperation with the Eridani, and the Guards is a priority, and in an ideal scenario there would be frontal coverage aimed at decapitating Combine leadership with units like this. In practice we simply haven't had time. The resources are not, and have not been available to pull the 3rd​ off the line and focus on rearming for this sort of strategy." He might even have used the word gambit, "This program was put together at the request of the DMI for a tactical solution," and one with limitations reflecting what they had had available on Robinson basically at the start... and that was including obviously political pressures from within the Draconis and Crucis Marches.

None of them could enter the 'squires tourney'. Everyone here were mechwarriors, all the Davions complete with spurs... which Gene felt relatively silly to wear outside of actual formal ceremony. "If this lot isn't getting the new ones, the new mechs, then what about all the talk coming out of GM?"

There was rumbling not just from the other highlanders, but apparently scuttlebutt had been making its rounds through the Eridani and also probably the DMM Units. Who cared about artillery, or tanks with gauss rifles when there were battlemechs after all.

He looked around the unruly pilots, "That isn't on the itinerary today," He half expected to be booed, "Who has been briefed officially on the Marauder II program?" No one raised their hand, but he hadn't expected them to. "And that's why we're not covering it today, in addition to the cache on Robinson there are a number of additional systems that need to be covered ahead of introducing these systems to the brigades at large." He paused, "I'm due a conversation with Captain Campbell, and Brevet General Kerston this afternoon. Briefing packets will provided over the next few days on the Marauder II Program, and we will address it in greater depth in the following week."
--
Notes: I am pulling, have pulled the last scene for this segment delaying with Lycomb Davion Introtech, and Federated Boeing it doesn't add much content other than commenting on ASF pilot recruitment in exchange for FB and Introtech getting access to ASF pulled out of the MID's depot. It is material that is not polished enough for putting up I don't think.

The Davions have a 340 engine option. Its not the Aero Ford the Rapier originally used, and presumably that was made somewhere in Lyran Space and may have 'sploded other wise. Hell the Rapier this odd duck entered by a company that is a toy maker. This is not a toy maker makes assault rifle design because country being invaded this Bauer makes ASF in peace time because Star League is looking.


.. and the Rapier has DHS which is just mind boggling given this is the height of mother doctrine and yet the standard rapier has DHS it has twelve double heat sinks in 2596. I digress, but in this and Essence Rapiers both reenter productions in slightly different configurations obviously the 'freezers' are in the works at NAIS at this point because of well 'here are DHS' because they're old Hegemony tech mid 26th​ century. Just the advantage they offer, Hanse Davion probably went 'those buckaroo those'. Admittedly this only puts them a few years ahead of canon's timeline on the project its not a magical solution.

EDIT: as a note there will probably be an interlude next before moving on to eight

 

[Imperator Pax]

Highland Faire Interlude
7-8​

There were about a dozen men in the room when the next load of boxes came in. There would be more trickling in as they prepared the expected briefing that would probably only occupy an hour maybe of the Prince's Champions time... but there was the chance something would be asked and they'd need to reference.

The Shepherds were just the sort of Motley Crew that made popular movies. Dramatizing the entire campaign on Elidere was an easy task for the Federated Sun's propaganda wing. It was an entire full spectrum media series for the Elidere Campaign, and the intelligence officer would have been shocked if the Draconis March's broadcasting service wasn't planning to do just that. That was probably part and parcel why the latest memorandum had against warned them against taking too many liberties when dramatizing the affair.

It didn't help that despite a dazzling performance on Elidere IV that half of Shepherd's company seemed to have disappeared ... probably for a garrison contract or security provisor in Lyran space... but thankfully those were just tanks. The public .... from the battle roms knew that there were more but mostly as a faceless extras a role treadheads tended to be in most productions. The Duke of Robinson might not care for that reality but it was probably what they were going to do.

... and casting this Commander Tristian since they didn't know what he looked like, they could make him any Davion or Lyran actor in the right age range it didn't matter. No, the bigger warning was going to any cheap titilation... the Prince's Champion had a hand in that he was sure. She'd also quashed any potential romantic subplots, which was unfortunate for hitting demographic targets. There were other details that obviously should be quashed.

He'd already had to completely squash a couple proposed scripts for how ridiculous they were, which given the subject matter was saying something. Heaven forbid they try and fictionalize the Colonel as some long lost descendant of house cameron, one of his writers had bullishly held on to the idea and suggested a 'compromise' of just settling on a 'McKenna'... which was still almost as absurd as making him some lost Davion line... Heroes didn't need to always be long lost royalty.

... and of course any projects needed to be done so they could work around the snake's own failures at propaganda.

The door opened and they all stood.

Field Marshal Yvonne Davion sat down at the head of the table, and Alexandria, the Countess Kestrel, took her place besides the Prince's Champion.

She looked around and gestured to be seated, and nodded, "The budget requests have been submitted, which means we should see a flurry of activity." Including of course internal actions, demands for revisions and what not, but they were hoping to catch foreign vermin not just the usual corruption, "I will say the meeting with Introtech and Federated Boeing went well, unfortunately while that is the case," She paused considering the reason Federated Boeing was being patient than for example GM or even Blackwell. She almost wished that they could delay in hopes the Colonel would find and open another of these 'brian caches' ... It would have been nice to insure that the Blue Star Irregulars and the New Avalon Hussars would be launching their offensive with SLDF weapons to maximize their striking power.

They were making certain contingencies with the entire spring and summer campaign aimed at hitting the Combine and inflicting such a severe blow that the snakes had to give ground. There had to be a median though of doing what they could without overstretching.

That took Asta, and Yorii off of the table. It would mean that for the time being that the Combine would still have access to the Terran corridor, even if that was mostly prestige given the jumpship transit rights. The idea was however that the combination of the Hussars, and Light Horse would be able to seize Altair as well. It would be tangible gains and something they could use to shore up the Crucis and Draconis Marches support while both enriching hte realm and weakening the enemy's. It was the job of her and her staff

That meant more than simply invading a planet. "We will begin with the considerations inside of the realm. There is a broad consensus among the Crucis and Draconis March that not only must a blow be struck against the combine we have been given the opportunity, a once in a lifetime opportunity to do so." Any of the successor states could mount an invasion, but they needed to be able to insure it succeeded, that things changed in the inner sphere.

That meant more than just the AFFS succeeding on the battlefield.

There was a pause from the assembled men and women from around the table, and then someone to her left finally managed to work up the stones to ask, "The duke of Errai is on planet." And he wasn't the only one. The Duke of Robinson's decision to make an appearance was understandable of course.

Yvonne didn't miss the dark look the flashed momentarily across her lady in wait's face, and she doubted anyone else did either. It was of course a small mercy that they were still far enough ahead of the curve that thus the Capellan march, the Haseks, hadn't moved yet... but that wasn't going to last and she knew that.

Michael Hasek may have been content to ignore the destruction of the 19th​ Galedon Regulars, but it was doubtful he had ignored the discovery of the MID depot on Elidere, and certainly wouldn't ignore the finding of another depot on the March capital. She certainly wouldn't have put it past the Duke of New Syrtis to attempt to leverage emphemermal, estranged even familial ties to the Dukes of Elidere as reason that the capellan march should receive some portion of anything recovered from the Mechanized Infantry Divisions stockpiles.

... after all plenty of members of the aristocracy were already sticking their hands out. That was why she wanted an eye on the ruler of Errai, "The Duke of Robinson believes that for the time being Errai can be kept on the sidelines." How long that would last was still up in the air.

It didn't assuage the sandy haired blonde man, "With respect your grace, our best records on Errai say there was only one Castle Brian."

That was to say that there had only ever been proven to be one Castle Brian... on a world brought into the Terran Hegemony by Director General James McKenna, on the world that had produced the Thug Assault BattleMech...

--
The truth was that propaganda films were nothing new. They dated to ancient Terra when films had been the latest medium of communication. To that end dramatization of events was simply a tool of the trade... but Alexandria did get annoyed have to read through some of the drek that MIIO's media department some times put together.

Besides there was a more pressing concern, "What if there are caches here?"

That there probably were was the consensus. Colonel Shepherd was willing to admit that much at least, but his reasons for not looking while not identical to their preferences were at least understandable, "It would be a problem. The Robinson Cache, we might be able to place or obfuscate as from the 100th​ BattleMech Division," And that wouldn't require anything too special in the way of deception, "but access of the two close together will raise questions we can defer those with saying one lead to the other but it will raise questions of where other ones might be. That's why the squires tournament is going to be the particular issue,"

There was an expectation that guests would attend to see the next generation. It was therefore the most likely place that if someone was going to accidentally bump into anyone and strike up a conversation ... well it was there that they'd have the opportunity. "What about the Highlanders, it certainly seems as if they're monopolizing his time... and I understand that General Keston wants to introduce him to the Blue Stars."

The Prince's Champion hummed thoughtfully, "I didn't intend to exclude them from the dinner, but realistically they need to be ready." Even though they were technically mercenaries the Blue Star Irregulars may as well have been Davion Regular troops. The truth was that they needed the combine to commit to their current scope of repression and terror attacks against their own subjects... it was distracting the ISF and it was tying down troops that should have been focused on the outside. "But you're correct it would probably do to have them at this briefing you mentioned."

That wasn't quite what Alexandria had meant, but she didn't say anything immediately. That wasn't what she had meant ... but there was another matter. The countess of Kestrel hadn't been able to make the trip to New Avalon. She'd been needed on Robinson and as annoying as some of the higher peers of the realm were, there was work on Robinson that had needed to be done, "What happens if GM makes the decision to attend?"

Yvonne Davion paused, "On New Avalon we were able to structure things, and truthfully General Motors had other priorities." At the time of the original offload there had been no knowledge of the most recent developments on Robinson. The cache, the mechs, the spare parts the manuals, none of it... and GM had been unaware of other finds at the time. They had known she'd been in contact with the firm on New Valencia and there were customized Marauder II packages in the delivery... but that hadn't warranted much interest until the specifics had started to circulate... and the rumor mill.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Highland Faire 8​

The Hegemony security protocols, even given the ... not quite decrepit, but skeletal ... appearance of some of the hallways had involved significant volumes of anti vehicle and anti personnel turrets from the walls, and ceilings and floors and several elevation changes. The tram changes were interesting, but probably suggested there were collapsed tunnels that they weren't seeing... or when the Hegemony had built Northwind... there had been some reason to layout the castle... which was probably also possible. It was however time consuming to reach this portion of the facility and the meeting with the Field Marshal had run long as it was, not helped by the flagrant degree of Dante penetrating Davion data networks.

The tram dinged as it came to a stop in a full size station, and Gene could understand why. For Dante there was no need to restrict his presence to any single room. The AI had already demonstrated he could communicate across various terminals, or network connections, even with DropShips.

The fact that they were in what he was fairly sure was a shielded annex in the mountain that given the way the angles were... probably lead to a port complex, the landing sights for accepting Aerodyne and possibly even spheroid dropships of significant size. Then there were the various storage crates, including several marked SCI, and the more telling logo of Star Corp Industries Terran based home branch. That certainly lent credence that this was access to a port complex.

While the Black Watch was the Royal Highland Regiment... it was far from the only scottish regiment of the star league... and well the Northwind Highlanders while mercenaries had also been part of the Hegemony, and mercenaries were semi deniable. The Hegemony had had really countless other Scotts-Irish units, as had the Lyrans, the Davions, the League, the Kuritans, the Capellans, and of course the Magistracy and the Taurians. Even today twelve hundred years after the Act of Union joining England and Scotland into the United Kingdom there were tartan units, including those who claimed descent and colors from the British Empire, or the United States through the heritage of the star league or through that exodus from Terra.

On Northwind at least three Highland Mech regiments had fallen during the Amaris Crisis.

It made sense that the Black Watch could blend in as just another Highlander fraternity, who would believe that the lodge might really have valid credentials?

He pushed around the side of the crate, even as Campbell asked what it was.

"Well what is it?"

He stuck his head back out, "M7 Gauss rifle, probably intended for a Highlander." There were other Mechs that could have accommodated the M7, and would have been transported like this but, the Highlander was the most common mech in Terran and SLDF inventory fielded with the weapon. The M7 had been in service so long that the Hegemony and later the League had produced by different companies under license and in various versions, including the M7D that was standard aboard the Alacaron which was really only distinguished by its lengthened 'barrel' profile what in other naming convention might have simply been specified with the barrel calibre that were produced by Norsestorm.

The M7D had eventually been developed into the M9 which frankly wasn't all that different, but had then been fielded with the Fury that together with the superior avionics package offered an effective Anti Aircraft system only limited by its ammunition. That hadn't been much later than the Alacorn entry into Terran service though. The fury had entered Hegemony use and then SLDF royal division use, and then dumbed down export models in the 27th​ century.

Judging from the situation...

"Just left here?"

"Air raid sirens probably went off, and they sealed the port." He guessed. The blast doors were rated for megatons of sunshine even in contact detonation, but if the doors were open then... the doors armor wouldn't have done you any good.

"Affirmative colonel... the facility was locked down, and then left. This port was not intended as a priority facility, and while it was potentially secure the manpower was allocated elsewhere. The bulkheads were sealed, and other portions were struck by orbital fire from Rim World warships that dissuaded Terran personnel from the use of the facility."

"But ... I was under the impression that Rim World troops took Northwind?" Kerston queried stepping over to hit an office light switch, add a little more light into the room.

The AI's voice crackled through the speakers, "Yes, I was required to weigh engaging the facility's self destruct but held off on the calculation that SLDF reinforcements would arrive to relieve a still resisting world." Dante replied, "Instead as the invaders had demonstrated no ability to override SDS or other systems I simply insured they remained bottled in the main facilities."

He suspected but couldn't prove that Dante had probably pumped the facility's sealed wings full of if not poison gas then at least full of an atmospheric compound that would keep anyone from wanting to try it... though Dante had just implied that strategic level bombardment had been raining down on Tara probably for a protracted period of time. It was giving him a headache thinking about it, and it was no longer relevant to their present needs... then again the Secret Fleet, and an ongoing resistance, Dante probably had expected a main SLDF counter had been on the way from the periphery... and not years down the road.

--
Gene finished the boot process, and watched the system telemetry come in. Kerston was a career mechwarrior and command track. Campbell despite his age was a career mechwarrior as well but with a different track from the regular SLDF. The technical instruction and education component just no longer existed... which of course left Gene wondering why he hadn't pulled more continuing education courses from Tristian's outpost.

Whatever the case this was the sort of thing that would have been left to a specialist officer track anyway to manage and coordinate incoming systems handling, and he would have b een supported by an entire detachment of enlisted. Thankfully much of that could be bypassed once Dante was networked into the system to handle processing incoming and outgoing feeds.

... they sat there and watched the rest of the holographic displays populate. White lights black lights, red lights not enough yellow painfully few green.

"God in his heaven."

"Yeah."

Northwind had been colonized in the initial wave of exodus from Tara. The Scotch Irish Diaspora from the english speaking world at large on Terra had carried the 7th​ Taking to settle worlds like Northwind and Skye, and as one of the Hegemony's initial worlds.

... there were indicator returns reading non functional or destroyed for settlements, towns, forts, orbital facilities, lagrangian dockyards, deep space facilities, and more on terrestrial surface and space that were uncountable for as many as there were.

N001 was reading massively reduced in effectiveness.... which wasn't surprising given the long skeletal hallways and the constant movements and shifts

... Danta finished recalculating a number, and the estimated dead on Tara from the 2765 to 2767 revised upward...

What was worse was that these were wholly fixed assets. Population centers that you couldn't move, means of production... these weren't units that had died they were things you could saturate with ballistic missile fire and tag by minute of nuke. Some were military targets of course, and some were nominally civilian but with military value, but the saturation attacks on Northwinds cities had killed hundreds of millions.

"I guess we know who Jinjiro Kurita learned how to fight from then."

It was an unnecessary sullen comment from the highlander.

While technically inaccurate of course it was the sentiment that Dante agreed with. "What is an Argo?" Kerston was in the flight data logs, "It doesn't look like it landed, but it says it launched .. "Warship?"

He pulled the same file up. A hundred thousand tons... gigantic even by League standards of DropShip construction, but definitely not a Jump drive equipped vessel.

Pulling the registry didn't make sense either. The vessel had been on its maiden flight, but the course plan didn't make sense for it to be leaving Hegemony space for trip that had all the ear marks of a deep periphery exploration.

"Dante, was this an SLCOMNET Tender?"

"I do not believe so. Argo's mission statement was exploration, it would make little sense not to specify an HPG role. It is possible of course that it was a clandestine service package, but why send it into the deep periphery?" The AI posited.

Still there was a course intersection that might have been coincidence or might not that took it down through into the Periphery similar to the route that they were with high probability confident that Tripitz had taken but the Argo went further into former Taurian space, and further rimward still.

"Federated-Boeing operated the Galax shipyards after the fall of the league." Kerston observed, "If you think its relevant, they might know something."

"Aye, they're poking around." Campbell agreed, but also on the other hand this could be just what it looked like another League era boondoggle of doing something with a too fancy too cutting edge piece of machinery that hadn't been properly tested... like the baron-class warship for example.

Whatever the case was the Argo was only one of many DropShips that had in the unknown to then final years of hte league had logged flight plans with this port complex. Because, however of its unique size, its uniqueness in general the Argo's registry and plan stood out in most data tables. That and he had already plugged in the tables for known SLDF losses, which was probably no where near complete but it was better than nothing in terms of having something to parse through the data.

The Highland captain cleared his throat, "I dunno if we can clear this blockage of the main hangar, gonna be needing digging equipment, I don't even have exterior camera feed. This probably got buried and then snow and mud piled on for two hundred years on."

Probably exactly like Bristol that was going to be who knew how many months of work to get to where you could even open the hangar doorways... maybe Abner still had the digging equipment in the IE dropships' holds. It would be worth asking about once they backtracked, and went back to the surface... but it would almost certainly be after dark by the time they finished here.

There didn't look to be anything they could reliably pull out of the Port, from Gene's cursory overview. They needed manpower to come in and make sure the trams could pull that weight and they needed loaders, but it would make more sense to just clear the port entryway and see if they could get the doorways open and then just bring DropShip crews in.
--
Notes: This is really more along the lines of an interlude but it does reference ahead of time several things that come about or are dealt with later on. We have the Marauder II and mech stuff next, then the Squires tournament and the introduction of what will become Bardiche and Claymore and then preparations to finish out January of the year and then the HPG interlude of the attack on Cranston Snord's folks by Marik in February possibly. I'm not sure i'm going to do that or not.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Highland Faire 9 (a)​

The Azami had taken most of the factory white mechs and repainted them in SLDF temperate patterns leaving the mechs earmarked for DMM pilots to be painted up in Robinson Ranger colors leaving in one that had been painted an approximation of the white and gray that wasn't quite right. It had caused its share of snickers from both IE personnel and the Azami, especially when the 'White Horse' was right next to the bigger machine.

Gene glanced up to the hundred ton war machine, one of several of its like in the factory default 4A configuration. A machine that was only available because of political pressure, and because no one had wanted to take a risk he suspected without the infusion of Davion capital.

The Marauder II was based on the Davion 3D. It was slower. That was the price one paid for keep the engine but having an additional twenty five tons to move. The Marauder II though was a hundred tons with jumpjets and armor to equal an atlas.

They simply hadn't had the ferrofibrous stocks in inventory to replace the factory valiant lamellor with that... and that was scarce enough only available, like with the Chaparral's main weapon, now digging out of league caches... and he had no idea when they were going to find more. Dante was working on that but didn't have a timetable other than they could potentially resupply from Fortress Dieron... which required landing on planet.

Gene moved around the hull down machine and put a foot in the wrung and pushed up to the cockpit to look around. He was killing time until they were due to start. He tapped a couple of controls on the approach side.

"Are you sure you know what you're doing?"

"Yes." He called back, "This is built on the GM Marauder chassis, same as the original," The Terran Hegemony iteration of the 26th​ century, before the loss of Hegemony based factories, "Orion or my Marauder, and the same engine. Same primary weapons package with magnas in the arms." the diagnostic check started up. Admittedly the jump jets were a different model, and he maybe would have preferred Super Verniers but it didn't matter it didn't make that much difference.

Alexandria Cunningham moved a little closer to the assault mech, "I read in the manual that they changed the communications system."

"Yes, and the targetting system to the Mk II."

"Why would they do that?"

"I have no idea the HiRez II was used for Light Mechs to give them something similar in set up to the Marauder," the HiRez B from the King Crab would have made more sense... but it didn't really effect anything. As TTS went the II was maybe slightly more friendly to lower skill end users, it was by no means a downgrade from his reading. The Marauder II was just as capable of running the regimental command role as its original slimmer version. "It shouldn't matter if you've driven a Marauder its close enough."

The countess looked at him clearly skeptical of the conclusion. "And for people lacking in experience in the mech?" He moved into the cockpit and to let her follow up to look at the controls.

"The TTS interface isn't especially different." He repeated as he double checked the communications system, and its connection to the various vehicles, and the DropShips. A couple of keystrokes later and he received a five by five return confirming good. Not that he was expecting anything different.

"Something wrong?"

She had caught the twist in his expression as he scrolled through. They had rolled off a Fury from Bristol, and it was pairing to a connection that handled as no doubt being Dante. "No." He responded flipped the comms line to the Nirasaki 400X equipped Hegemony tank, "Dante how do things look on your end?"

"Very good commander." The AI replied suavely, "The Fury is operating within the expected parameters and data relay, and there are no communication issues between it and the Blackwell Multi-linq."

He leaned back in the seat even before the Countess riposted. "He doesn't sound happy."

"Its not going to be an issue," He replied, "Connect me to Abner, or remind him that we're going to begin at the top of the hour." or in about fifteen minutes.

"I do wish you had insisted that these... Storm Hunters, and the Hammers had been built with the Marauder avionics package." He continued to look at the forward display but could feel that look.

"We prove they work, we can work from there."

They were interrupted by Campbell, and Cameron jogging up. "Ah getting started early."

"Just warming the engines," He replied looking over the rim as a steady of trickle of DMM troops and men in SLDF pattern uniforms filed into the hangar. It was a crowd larger than the one he had been expected, and without formal introduction to the Blue Stars own general... which a question for later. Kerston had joined them, even though he'd been on New Avalon, but then again there was Field Marshal Davion filing in behind him. Gene reached up to key the mike and increase the volume to be sure he was heard of the the crowd. He had planned to boot the variants, one or two at least, but he'd start with the Blackwell standard, as soon as Abner got here.

The Lyran doctor didn't need reminding and was far from the last in the room.

The crowd was substantially larger than he had expected from Davion regulars from several different regiments, to highlanders, to the already large formation of DMM personnel who needed to be here... especially the ones who'd actually be piloting Marauder II in the stock configuration.

"This is a Marauder. It features a different avionics suit, but it is the chassis and armament of the 3D in an Assault mech's weight." It was the simplest summary. An a hundred ton Three Davion. The prominence of the Marauder in the media and in the literature surrounding mechwarriors made that of particular note, while it was not just the Elidere campaign that impacted the sudden interest that certainly didn't hurt.

That simple description probably still undersold the work New Valencia's Blackwell corporation had put into the machine.... but Gene suspected that the Mechwarriors neither cared nor wanted to hear about whatever had gone into making the hundred tonner that wasn't oriented towards the fight itself.

Gene stood, "This should be easy to take note of from the fact that the Marauder II is substantially more massive than Marauder. The nineteen ton VLAR 300 is now better protected, with the mech carrying nineteen tons of Valiant Lamellor and accompanying increase from twenty in the 3D to twenty nine heat sinks," Or from 16 in the case of the '3R' that was the 'default model' of the Inner Sphere at large. "This increase accounts for most of the change in mass along with the addition of jumpjets, which helps to offset the drop in overland speed." Which to be fair, it was a hundred tons fifty four KpH was still reasonable flank. "Before we go any further, does anyone have any questions about where the 4A differs from the 75 ton 3D?"

There weren't any. He had their attention. That was good.
--
The briefing was going somewhat afield. The reality was this was supposed to be focused on the 4A and the Davion mechwarriors who would be using the stock factory model, but obviously it wouldn't have been a gathering of MechWarriors without expectant looks at the ones that weren't stock.

"You know that Blackwell painted it that way purely for PR reasons."

He shrugged as the moved away from the 4A in white gray, "I assumed as much," Or as a cheap attempt to curry favor, but it didn't matter. Thankfully Blackwell had designed the Marauder II with the Magna models of standard marauders There had been no difficulty sourcing weapons.

"And that they want feedback."

"I understand that."

"They also seem to have constructed additional prototypes of the requested variants for their own in-house testing."

All in all nothing he wouldn't have expected, "As long as they understand its not intended as a magical solution to everything on the battlefield." He rested a hand on the armored gauntlet that instead of protecting a Magna Hellstar PPC it was protecting the massive assembly of an assault class auto cannon. "I almost considered telling them try and fit fifteen tons of capacitor and rails," Gauss rifle ammunition was painfully simple it was not having a capacitor explode and cook off like a bomb on your mech that was the problem. That and there was the Devastator in inventory to consider. "Since we have some M7s in storage." He glanced back at the approaching mass, including a couple of men in business suits. "You can tell them that if you want." He put a foot in the wrung and popped the cockpit of a camo pattern that might be described as a mix of earth pantones and reactivated the mike. "This machine lacks the range and endurance in combat of any of the other variants. It is it a specialist machine designed to do one thing, and that is break a last ditch charge. This machine is designed for clos quarters urban fighting." It had the potential to run hot confined to standard heat sinks, and it hadn't limited ammunition, "It has the armor to fight to a position and then hold it until its reinforced by additional units."

It was as Bubbles had coined it a big Marauder for the Hunchback's role. She wasn't wrong. Her Hunchback was faster.

"This is a dedicated close quarters mech killer."

The idea was to stop banzai charges, but if they were going to be on the offensive then it was just as likely that at fifty four kph it would be bringing up the rear in a dragoon company or lance attached to facilitate a break through of an urban strongpoint.

"I already called dibs." Chang declared from somewhere to the left in the crowd of the davion who had spoken up, "So don't anyone get any ideas." It had been impromptu an outburst she hadn't planned to say, but eyes turned, "I mean no offense the Atlas is great," There was a titter of laughter that rippled through the assembled .. probably almost a hundred mechwarriors.
--
Notes: SO I pulled my copy of the original 3025 and indeed it does specify that the Chassis of the Orion is a Kali Yama chassis, you will note that assuming I haven't caught them all that I specify that Orions in Terran Hegemony service use GM Marauder chassis. This is because GM originally developed the Orion, and GM is (was) of course a Hegemony based company, and as a result in the modern day the 'Kali Yama Chassis' is effectively just Kali's locally produced version of it and we can just blame Inner Sphere intellectual property laws for it it having it, but I swear I have seen contradictory bits in the lore where it says the Orion uses the GM Marauder chassis which is what prompted this whole bugbear in the first place.

Just FYI if you see that that is why, because and I'd have to find the book where it says the Orion uses GM's marauder chassis, but current production Orions (built in the FWL) do canonically use a Kali Yama Chassis, and that is true here, but the Orion is a very very old mech design.

Also this is part (A) of 9 B will pick this up, this is going up today instead of tomorrow, but B will go up Sunday per normal. I will aim to update the Luxen Contracts Thursday. That's the plan anyway.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Highland Faire 9 (b)​

He almost broke his not really a script but outline of the briefing he had in mind, and invited Chang to come up and take the mech out of the hangar, but put that off until after they had finished. It avoided any issues with neuro helmets as well.

The truth was this hadn't been finished long enough for him to be aware that she had called piloting the mech but it wasn't any secret that they didn't have pilots yet earmarked for them. The company was looking for mechwarriors. Hell that probably wasn't even a secret anymore. If it ever had been

Gene nodded to the blue haired glasses wearing mech driver, "It is indeed, a close quarters mech killer." He responded to the Guards officer who had started the distraction. Still better than comment then turning this to the quintessential atlas boast of how an Atlas could kill a battalion's worth of stingers with nothing sans some armor scuffing.... no one was probably going to make that comment given what the company had done on Elidere. This machine, and the one configured similarly were designed to a special role in view of the invasion based on the fact that they had a surprising volume of resources.... and because he'd originally thought to need them in a situation where he wouldn't necessarily have an abundance of vehicles to back shoot any sudden swarm of light battlemechs making a last attack.

Desperate troops fighting to the death in a last stand were dangerous and best dealt with by artillery... but they were rarely cooperative enough for towed artillery to deal with them... meaning it came down to close quarters... as it had on Ander's moon at the end.

"This is not," He resumed speaking, "Like the others. Hammer and Hunter units are based on a more rounded engagement profile." That was to say they were closer to the 4A and didn't have the limitations of carrying two AC 20s on the Chassis. "There are variations of each, experimentation, machines designed to be introductory models, machines designed for more advanced skillset end users." There were looks, "Fire, and maneuver. Who regularly uses JumpJets?" It was a rhetorical question, he knew there were highlander pilots present, and not everyone here were assault mech pilots besides, "The 4A is an assault mech with ninety meters of clearance. That's useful in that it provides tactical mobility. The storm hunter retains this jump jet capacity to allow it to maneuver as a wing unit, as an outrider, as heavy cavalry if your prefer that description in support of hammers or as independent elements of an advance. The hammers are direct forward attacking units designed to breach a line and act up in the enemy's rear."

Breakthrough and exploit.

Specialization wasn't a bad thing. Not when the use of assault mechs was being done to address a previous lack in capacity.

The eyes looked over the temperate camo machines. The paint scheme had been chose because it worked well enough for Northwind, at least Tara and it would probably work for where they were going to drop on Dieron, where they wouldn't need something with a higher contrast for an arid environment. They also didn't need anything truly Alpine for where they were going.

The versions were all based off the same general chassis, but to meet certain objectives had sacrificed certain features. The idea had been to keep to as general baseline as possible, with the exception of Chang's 'super hunchbacks', or as he thought of them Marauder King Crab stand in, the idea was to have as much parts interchangeability as possible.

That meant Magna Hellstars, MkII medium lasers remaining standard across all platforms carrying ppcs, and medium lasers.

It hadn't escaped him though that a representative from Lycomb Davion Introtech was eying the two machines fitted with the company's Harpoon-6 Launchers. The other alternative had been the Robinson based Valiant systems entry, but they simply hadn't had the volume of available assets. It made more sense to use the older Harpoon 6 series.

"You said something about M7s." It was clear that Alexandria was weighing between potentially distracting the briefing and causing an interruption, her own inquisitivenss and potentially damaging any all knowing mystique she might have been trying to cultivate for any onlookers.

"Gauss rifles. Highlander's primary weapon." Or the 7D used in the Alacorn or as license produced for the Nightstar though those were modified to fit inside armored gauntlet housings. "It doesn't matter the Devastator will suffice if we need that kind of specialized fire in a mech platform." And he doubted they would after they were on the ground... once they were planet side he was already envisioning Fury and Alacorn companies moving to provide long range precise fire on hostile targets and letting the mechs move to close in.

Alexandria gave him a look, "And what is the Devestator, besides obviously I assume an assault Mech mounting these gauss rifles?"

"Did you not get a New Avalon packet?" He regretted asking the question as soon as it had left his mouth, because obviously where as everyone in the Company had received copies of the minutes from New Avalon that had been company personnel geared towards MechWarriors, and technical staff to contend with the hardware influx. "I'll make sure you have a copy by end of," He replied shaking his head... the Gauss rifle should have been something at least that she'd been read in on, Robinson March Militia had taken possession of Highlanders out of the Brian Cache, the Company had taken possession of Alacorns.... but it was what it was.

Gene eyed the crowd... and made the decision that given this turn out... it would be better to keep the devestator crated up on the DropShip for the time being. There were enough people here including corporate reps to give the company enough interest. The last thing he wanted was the sudden squawk from the Marauder's computer.

"Commander I am detecting inbound Large-Mass KF traffic. Resolution windows evaluation, confirming inbound JumpShips." Dante intoned. "Resolving now, mass readings are as follows..." The scottish accent of the AI began to list at least two star lords and a handful of smaller more normal JumpShips at Zenith. "Processing traffic to Highland regiments and mobilizing the Company."

He put a hand on the rim of the cockpit, and scanned before finding the Black Watch descendant, "We have multiple JumpShips at Zenith coming from the same vector, Campbell, Dante is relaying to your people."

"Aye." the Black Watch Captain replied looking up at the hundred tonner. "alright lads lively now good order."

He had to let Alexandria get down first which took longer than he would have liked before he jumped down from the second rung. Dante was already complaining about 'lack' of AFS coverage the planet had available... which was from the decline of the league.

"It could just be a late comer?"

"IN two star lords, and enough to total at least a million in displacement?"

Campbell moved back from the MechWarriors moving towards the entrance, "Aye, short of the Wolf Dragoons showing up I can't think of anyone who might visit the faire, who isn't already here with that kind of footprint. Unless you think we invited MacCarron?"

... or the Highlanders in Capellan service... but no... even if there had been time to get a message to them through the HPG network in its current state certainly not enough to get them here this quickly... he decided not to mention it at all. "We can figure out who it is, the didn't jump to Lagrangian one, but," He nudged his head in the direction of Kerston and Field Marshal Davion. "Dante ring Bahar aboard the Sam Houston, start tasking Regimental Command and Control."

"Stand by." The Hegemony Machine Spirit replied.

"Colonel? We have relayed system telemetry of JumpShips, we're waiting for optical resolution."

"Put the company on alert mobilize coverage, General Kerston and I are probably," He glanced to the Field Marshal and approaching general, and then to the face Campbell was making. "Sound general quarters and put everyone on alert, I'll get back to you."

"It wasn't a priority," The brogue was stronger, "But shit we take this to the elders, if one of the others," Presumably other successor states, "Is making a run at the planet, unless this is the dragoons, we need to talk to them now." He pressed.

He queried Dante for Optical resolution, didn't like the answer, and then glanced back to the tartan clad captain, "Go, I'll find out what the field marshal wants us to do, we've got brigade wide communications open, and our naval assets should have eyes soon." Not as soon as he would have liked.

"I'll be back in two shakes."

"Well this is exciting." Bard chimed in, "But as an invasion, I doubt it." He punched Gene's shoulder lightly, "You're too wound up, invading during the faire would be insane. It'd be suicide."

"Unless the Mariks are unleashing the entirety of the dragoons. Five regiments of mechs." Alexandria rebutted... but even that seemed unlikely ... even with star league era machines and not their down tech versions that they apparently had assaulting Northwind seemed ridiculous given the present presence...

"Lets not speculate wildly, I have reasonable indication that the Dragoons are currently indulging House Marik's feuding with House Steiner," Doctor Abner's face went flat in annoyance, at the Field Marshal's statement, "They're in packet raiding by all indications at the moment,"

"They launched an attack on New Kyoto, I've been told." Abner grumbled a little tersely.

So probably not the dragoons. "We will resolve who our guests are and then we will address the matter," The Field Marshal turned, "if it is House Kurita are you prepared?"

"Yes ma'am."

 

[Imperator Pax]

Primary (Main) Timeline: January 3018​

Highland Faire 10
(A)​

He leaned on the console, the excitement was starting to lapse into the beginning of fatigue. It didn't help that there was a significant amount of historical data, of recordings of the last days of the hegemony that kept him from sleeping. Gene knew he was fighting back a yawn, but the old man didn't seem to notice it from his end of the feed. "And you've confirmed it Pasha?"

"Indeed commander Shepherd. The Azami and Rasalahgue vessels all check out." Gene sat back in the chair as the telemetry from Colorado resolved and confirmed the DropShips detaching. Pasha at least had the advantage of being opposite, "I have received repeated and distinct confirmation."

"Alright, let me know if something changes." The line dropped, and he wheeled slightly, bringing the chair to face the Davions, "What do you think?"

A couple of the Guards Staff always floating close to The field Marshal during meetings looked birdlike as they froze before one of them answers, "The Rasalhague resistance group is the Sword of Tyr."

"That means nothing to me, sorry." He picked up the thermos of coffee, "Why are they here? How are they here?" JumpShips had limitations. Anyone coming here would have had to have route plotted... and an Azami presence was one thing, but he was a little leery of of more than that.

"They may have stolen a number of 'Mechs from the combine before they headed this way." A guards officer admitted looking a little sheepish at having spoken out of turn.

Gene was cognizant of the hand on the back of his chair. The fact that The clan elders very much wanted a meeting of their own... and the fact that Field Marshal Davion had if he had counted right two Davion regular RCT, and two SLDF Mercenary Teams readied if this went sideways. He reached to the side and opened the long office style case drawer and started rifling through the fields, then offered it behind him, "New Avalon Packet. I'm about to start passing out briefing materials to the DMM officers as a follow up to the Marauders."

"Now?"

"Now." He replied "I was going to give them a day or two to read the briefing for the Marauders but I want them with hands on training in the morning."

Field Marshal Davion coughed slightly drawing his attention away from the countess, "I would very much commend the initiative, but if this is not the crisis we thought it might be, it bears remarking that the squires tournament is going to open the day after. Attendance is expected. Even if they wanted to do a High Gee burn we would still have days." She paused, "This is not how I would have preferred certain introductions to be made, but it is what it is."

her assessment wasn't quite accurate. If they had wanted to, they could have burned hard from the Jump Point and ... well it wasn't the Star League any more and few people were going to be that reckless with expensive military equipment that was much harder to replace. They didn't need to worry about the situation. "Is there that needs to be done?"

"No Colonel, the current readiness can remain elevated," The DMM troops that had been scrambled to their mechs could stay where they were. The Field Marshal checked her watch, "until they would change over. It would be best for everyone if the faire went on as normal."

The troops were in the field in their mechs spread across a moorland on the far side of the star port, the comparative higher elevation of both the castle itself and the mountain pass and the rocky river valley were presumably protected by Northwind militia. Most of his pilots though had been scrambled to fill liaison slots with the mechwarriors they'd been involved in training on Robinson.

Yvonne Davion excused herself leaving with a portion of her staff, which left him there with Kerston and his counterpart of the Blue Star Irregulars. "So at least we're not being invaded."

"Right," He replied to Campbell already reading the situation. "How is this going to effect things?"

Campbell glanced to one of faire's officials, "They're late, no denying that," he paused, and the other man nodded, "I admit its not unheard of for that," But apparently, certainly not for this much metal... "But they've got merchant, and competitor tickets, and pledges for good conduct, you trust your JumpShip captain." It was not a question.

"I trust that Pasha is telling the truth about trusting what he's been told."

"Then we see their kid does in the squire's tournament then." He was a little surprised that they were going to let whoever the new arrivals had to compete just like that but... then again he really didn't know what to make about all of this... and of course, "But, I really think Colonel that this scare behind us, we ought to go ahead and take time to sit down with the clans."

Which was not necessarily what Alexandria wanted to hear, but it was certainly a meeting she was not invited to, was not going to be privy to.... and certainly with everything going on she knew something was going on. Whether the countess of Kestrel didn't like it or not she didn't really have much of a choice. Frankly he doubted that if it came right down to it... that even the Field Marshal really would have tried too hard to get involved. "Let me get with Abner, I trust that your presbyters aren't going to object to what needs to be done?"

"No," It came out more like neigh, "Go on ahead with it... given what's been talked about I can't see them complaining." If I.E.'s diggers had expected a simple vacation they were about to have that hope spoiled.

"Are you going to call them back?"

He hummed, and then smiled, "Recall them, no, We're on a clock, they need all the training they can get." He hit the switch on the console pairing to the radio, "Hanzo, run them through gunnery drills on the south field." He received an affirmative over the channel, and could almost hear the groans from the Robinson cadets, and probably the alumni too.

"Are you going to put him in one of those things?"

"He's gotten comfortable in the Cicada, truthfully I think he'll do well in one of the ones carrying SRMs, but we will see. I may move him to the Catapult."

There was a pause, "Yeah, I seen it sitting there."

"From the specs its almost like your Black Horse." Kerston remarked entering the conversation. In more ways than he knew. It had taken them time to fill it out but because it was ten tons lighter it used a light engine and outfitted much of the same equipment and that included recovered DHS from League era stockpiles... it was

"You could think of it that way, or as a product improved model of the K2. Its capable of Jumping like a standard catapult, and carries SRM-2, and a salvaged pulse laser that we sourced from an Azami merchant."

"I thought that's what it had went in," Bard remarked. "its sounds like a nasty surprise, but what was the point?"

"I suppose there wasn't one. It wasn't the original plan," Far from it, originally the plan had been to turn the repaired K2 back to a standard catapul or near enough, but they had had down time for the techs, and they had spare parts... and they had wanted to test out and work with the Dalban systems that had gone into the Catapult.

... but there had been no one to pilot it... and since there was LosTech in the machine he'd been convinced it was probably a bad idea to stick any new recruit into the machine. That didn't include Mister Ishida, but he'd been happy with the Cicada, and Chang had moved to the Atlas at his request ... Bo was out the big Free Worlder's skill was needed in a missile boat.
--
As he had expected Alexandria hadn't been invited to join them... if anything the guards at the door waiting to escort them to the meeting had been rather loathe to even allow Kerston to come along... they had accepted it as just part of the day.

Unlike the Stuart tartans common to the other men the room, a grizzled one eyed man wore a sword pin on his sash denoting that in addition to the, dark blue and green, black watch tartan he wore he was intended to be identified as knight commander of the Star League's Order of the Sword. If it wasn't an original then the burnished and worn metal had still seen a lot in its lifetime... and given among other things the display case holding the burned remains of the left hand of an HGN 732b, he assumed it was original. There were other artifacts from the Star League, and from before dating back to wars on Terra before spaceflight had been common.

Introductions passed around, and Gene was surprised that for their Scottish flavoring Northwind great clans included Welsh, and Irish surnames among the council ranks. William George, and Richard O'Connell stood side by side in tartan dress along the MacKenzies and Sinclairs.

All of them made clear who at least chaired this meeting, if not necessarily all of them. What more than anything though that dominated the meeting was the prospect of getting into the door that had been locked to them, and atl east confirming with their own eyes. He was sure that they had probably spent many sleepless hours pouring over the documents that Colonel Schmitt had left behind.

There was no question that they were loyal to the dream of the Hegemony, and the Star League at least as much as Kerston was. Kerston was here, but his counterpart from the Blue Star Irregulars had been left at the doors of the great hall with the countess of Kestrel... and they were about to leave them further behind... because their next stop was a secure underground tram to take them to access the the CID annex where Dante was waiting.

Gene carefully navigated around the skittering spider like drones that were now active in order to access the panel. "Is there something going on?"

"Merely taking precautions colonel."

Each of the anti personnel drones in addition to vibroblade forlimb for melee... because someone had thought that was a good idea... also carried Mauser laser pulse rifles that had at the end been standard to HAF Special Operations Forces... though carried was probably a misnomer given that they were mounted into the machines. This was nothing, these were anti personnel drones, not the ones intended to actual impede light vehicles until GCV drones could arrive on station.

The intention had been that any force assault from the outside trying to force their way into a castle would block the entry ways with bodies. It didn't work out as well for the defenders if they had been ordered to allow the attackers into the castle gorunds before hand and not have the defenses ready to protect it, or if they'd had significant troops stripped from their posts before the fighting started.

"You've proof then that Minoru Kurita was more than just a covetous bastard?" Old One Eye asked stepping forward to press a hand and an ID chit that ran against the data and blood sample. It authenticated nothing unexpected, that he was a survivor, the descendant at least, of the Black Watch lineage.

The question was unnecessary, Gene had no doubt that Dante had potentially been salivating, or near enough for a machine to play the footage, to bring additional resources in that might be able to carry out orders from a royal command, or at the very at least ascertain things so that if there wasn't a Cameronian fleet waiting, that they could redirect efforts instead to striking back at the combine in full. They were certainly going to get to the latter... to the issue of Tripitz... and the Cameron children.
--
Notes: This is part A, and if you remember earlier someone asked what if Gene were Ian Cameron the younger we're still not doing that. That would be very messy and complicate the timeline even more than it already potentially is. I keep waffling on whether to include explicitly MW5 events since to the best of my knowledge it hasn't been codified, but this story does heavily involve Interstellar Expeditions and frankly its interesting that Mason came in and infiltrated DC space ahead of the wolf dragoons and that raises potential lore questions, especially given his choice to bring a Nightstar.... well we will see but there maybe oblique references that can hint at MW5 potentially being true in the background.

Just to reiterate, this part is mainline canon / primary timeline for Ghost Who Walks. Its fun for me to delve into alternate branches and gives me something to do on the side but this and part b and the following on will likely be primary timeline through the end of the year.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Highland Faire 10
(B)​

Gene had allowed himself to lean on the console he'd taken a seat at, Dante didn't have coffee unfortunately. None of this information was 'new' in the sense that he hadn't had access to but Dante was an AI the material he was sorting through after playing all the request footage was still a lot of data. He had no idea whether the children of the Star Lord had made it out...

... and even if they could get a recovery team down into the gravity well, which was a big if it assumed that there was data in the computer. The damage to the Tripitz certainly looked like she'd suffered a misjump, but the question was more about the details. Had Tripitz been scuttled by its crew after whatever had happened? They didn't know that. What was the damage caused by the the ASF that had pushed into the gravity well? Severe, but how severe... would they be able to recover drive data, or other data from computers aboard?

If they could they might be able to backtrack to wherever the Tripitz had come from, or move forward looking for the next stop out into the black. There were a lot of questions, there was a lot of information that they were just short on. They were going to need specialized resources. Including ability to authenticate and access any survivor shadow network of HPGs and memory systems, and that would be complicated in itself if their defense systems were still operational.

That was still a significant if, a lot of significant ifs really. They would need time they would need resources Just figuring out those questions would require significant pre planning and the truth was there was only one outfit set up to go on such a snipe hunt. They were also going to need to provide security. The information suggested that the Taurians and Capellans had both rushed to try and salvage and through one of them or some other third party the 'vandenburg white wings' had learned of and appeared... if they started doing any kind of work then they were going to get questions just from nosy people.

Nosy people and expensive toys tended to attract pirates as well... and these operations would be largely out in the black so MechWarriors weren't going to have a whole lot to do.

The Terminal chimed as Dante finished the calculations... it would really would have been more appropriate to call them speculation. Which was why tehy weren't just straight out telling the others... because

... of course given the timing... it was also possible that ... due to the vagaries of hyperspace, of how the jumpdrive and how unclear some of its physics were that the Tripitz's misjump had caused it to be held in hyperspace.

It was an astronomical chance... but it was a possibility given that Tripitz hadn't been discovered sooner... and they needed an explanation for that. As a Black Lion-class Battlecruiser given its location Kerensky's expeditionary force of the SLDF suppressing the territorial states insurrection should have found and recovered it... so why hadn't they. Triptiz should have been equipped with a mobile HPG and should have been able to broadcast a signal through the SLCOMNET and also the Shadow Net used by Royal Command ... help should have come.

... but the chaos of the New Vandenburg Revolt simply made details opaque. They didn't know enough and they would have needed access to the navy's side of the logs to even begin to guess which ships had been where. They needed more than that... Dante had been cut off from the HPG network for longer than Tristan, and Tristan wouldn't have been slated to receive materiel of that nature... or regarding evacuation. There would be details in area commands, there should have been clandestine stations that had at least some of the details on what all Hegemony provinces had tucked away but those would likely require an AI to sift through the data and would still probably be so much data that finding one would potentially take searching by hand to confirm if a cache or depot hadn't been picked over by someone in the intervening centuries.

So much to do... and much of it the sort of work that needed specialists and little to do with piloting a 'Mech.
--
It was going to take Abner's diggers probably a couple of days, but at least they had gotten started. Being safe more than that, but they could have rushed if there had been actual threat of invasion... but it didn't seem like there was a reason to do that.

"What do we do now?"

"I think that's my question," Gene replied to Campbell, then shrugged. "Dieron first, we still have some time until we step off... and if these are Azami then their merchants could have stuff that might useful."

"More useful than whatever the Hegemony stored? There are assault mechs in the inventory, earmarked for the Royal Scotts Dragoons."

"I'm not going to turn down looking." Not when they were contending with invading another successor state. Looking was the least they could do to see if the digital inventory was in there. The Azami made a point of painstakingly digging through old scrapyards. Boneyards that had been ignored and forgotten about that in some cases had been left behind by the age of war. They looked through ruins, and battlefields. Even if that was a little macabre they never threw anything away... and that was why their techs were able to keep SLDF era machines running. ... but he also knew that going to talk shop, going to shop around at their wares would give him and pasha the chance to sit down with whatever elders were in charge of the caravan... and talk about getting them on the road out to the periphery... into the deep periphery to settle either at the Alamut colony or on some other Alexandrian covenant world that had been left behind. "The reality is if those documents are accurate, the loadout is designed for Hegemony units, and I don't have the manpower right now to make that useful."

There was a grunt, "What about that list of worlds you gave to Dante? You think they'll be useful?"

... it had been give and take and the truth was going back to Elidere would probably be necessary... more than necessary they needed a better idea of what the Combine side of the border had looked like... and of course while they couldn't go to earth Dante recommended a trip to each of the provincial capitals, and if possible the major worlds of the Terran Hegemony. It was a lot of potential stops on the map... and they were talking about planets, stopping to visit wasn't going to mean that they wouldn't come back later with more details and find something else.

... but one thing at a time and focused. "Yes, and I think it will help the Davion's keep the Combine off foot rather than allowing them to concentrate their forces near Terra." He'd recommend to the Field Marshal that they plan to liberate Galtor III citing the map to the SLDF depot on Eire; the planet's eastern continental landmass.

He had specifically asked for Dante to prioritize a list of worlds that both could be used to potentially benefit actions taken against the Combine, as well as well ones that would be viable given the more limited resources of the succession wars. They weren't the same thing. They were similar but not the same thing.

Working from Pasha's information Dante had calculated that groups like the Azami Liberation Front and others that weren't necessarily dedicated accelerationists potentially risked pushing an overstretched Combine towards increasing retaliatory atrocities ... beyond whatever the combine was currently perpetuating. The Combine hadn't exactly been the nicest place during the league but the last two centuries had certainly doubled down on all the worst traits it seemed. That was beyond their remit at this stage though

"Sorry that we don't have pilots to spare." He glanced to Campbell, "From the Academy I mean," Dante had already complained about the lack of ASF coverage ... but that really did go back to the Rim World invasion, but certainly much of the surviving at the time infrastructure had been blown up with the FedSuns invasion and the Federated Suns had never rebuilt.

The original plan had been to hire mercenary pilots, but they'd also taken hires from the Davion recommendations in part because of expedience, and to contend with Dieron. Gene wouldn't have agreed to that from the capellans... the more reports he saw about their servitor caste, even if it was coming from obviously biased davion sources the more pissed off he got... but the Combine was the threat directly in front of them for the time being. "Galax is only one jump from New Avalon," and it was home to the Federated Boeing operated Armstrong Flight Academy.

Yvonne had provided really two distinct rosters of recruits, the other list being drawn from Albion... "Do-" He stopped, and Gene turned.


And speaking of the Field Marshal she had entered the room. "You lads you look you've been up to trouble." She observed, with the countess of Kestrel following in behind. "I hope you found something useful?"

"We'll have to manually inventory it all." He replied. "Its not a Brian Cache."

"Well I'm here now lets have it, what did you find, and what has the bloody scotts all in a tizzy." There was no heat to the comment... at the same time he suspected that they might have preferred not immediately bringing Abner into it, but ... well Dante wasn't entirely sure that the port's ... assuming there were any still functional... drones would necessarily shoot at anyone without League compliant credentials. The IE industrial mechs, digging machines and earth movers would far less likely to be shot at by simple drones if there was a DOME IFF being broadcast... but they weren't going to advertise that.


He took a breath to collate the details of the reports Dante had flagged, "In the lead up to the Amaris coup, General Kerensky overruled local Terran commanders to permit Rim World troops to take up station on Hegemony worlds that had already been largely stripped of troops. This allowed the Rim World troops to largely bypass the killing grounds of Hegemony Castles Brian, like this one. The Hegemony looks to have blown some of the security bolts in access points, and the rim world bombardment against the defense cordons established by Hegemony force caused enough structural damage to collapse most of the rest. To that end, we can ascertain that there is a Port Complex that has DropShips, possibly even fully loaded ones, but certainly an entire port with war materiel that has been sealed since new years day," of 2767.

Dante wanted him to visit and ascertain the condition of New Dallas. If Volgadon was gone then the CID station at New Dallas was possibly the best hope for a facility to ascertain a master list of Hegemony caches for total war.... and New Dallas might also have access directives to secret fleet facilities and point them in the right direction in terms of the Rimward Periphery... one thing at a time. Dieron, and its fortress ... before them.

For the barest of moments he expected that the Field Marshal would complain about the Hegemony's naming conventions, classifications of facilities. Instead her focused jumped to the orders issued before the coup. "The documents colonel. Transcripts of the orders." Campbell lifted the satchel at request a little alarmed at the sudden back and forth.. and probably, obviously now that he thought about it, wondering how much they were going to tell the Field Marshal.

At the time, while obliviously imprudent, because Kerensky had had the legal command authority to issue those orders. He was protector of the Star League, and the former regent of House Cameron... but it certainly didn't look good.
--
Notes: Alright remaining end of year schedule.

Extras, both Arano content and Helm content are currently in the pipeline to round out the year in terms of extras. There is the possibility of previews of New Dallas and some Hegemony mad science projects as well, but I will be calling it that Highland Faire will resume probably on the eighth (that is in the new year) due to my travel schedule.

I may do (completely unrelated to BT) something Pokemon Scarlet and Violet's setting of Paldea (Space err Pokemon Iberian Penninsula) but that is still in drafting stages.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Main Branch Timeline
January 3018​

Highland Faire 11​

Yvonne Davion paged down through the document as the countess across from her was clearly fighting a losing battle against her growing migraine. All of the documents were clearly marked classified Star League Royal Command. HPG transmission log dates. These were not antique inventory filings of a long gone age.

These had been issued out of a printer on request. The documents contained similar requisition data to what had come out of the Robinson Brian Cache. She had had copies made of the later so that she could highlight the details on those for reference. It authorized a brevet colonel Shepherd to pull the files and print them out.

"There are differences."

Authorization. Authentication.

... "The most likely explanation is that Robinson was assigned to a different area command. Northwind would have been a Hegemony world." but in theory the Brian Cache and whatever facility these had been pulled from would have both been issued under Hegemony postings.

More byzantine alpha numeric designations that they hadn't deciphered the meaning of... and Campbell had been acting weird as well.

"He said the ... security bolts had been blown,"

"Yes, security precautions, the implication is there must be some roundabout way to get to the port... explains their disappearing." Which of course was a security concern for the castle, but far less of a priority than materiel which... "I assume these are incomplete." He referred to Campbell by the rank of Captain, Campbell's official rank was Colonel. He commanded a Highlander Fusiliers regiment in defense of the planet... there was no reason to refer to the older man as captain.

... and there should have been no reason for the highlander to follow it but Alexandria clearly decided not to mention that.

Another anomaly... and one that Kerston, who of course was old enough to have known Campbell since had had still been a captain should have known better.

"They're the files they had available."

And Campbell had not expected to hand them over... at least not when she had appeared. He had looked like he had been about to argue about handing them over. Perhaps later they might have brought the documents forward, but at that moment.

They could reasonably expect that this was unrelated to the sudden Azami appearance... but that was only a small comfort. It also raised further questions about motivation. They had been working off of understanding details that Hegemony officers must have been privy to some sort of highly incriminating information regarding the Combine at the end of the Star league. Admiral Clancy had been an officer of the Terran starfleet... in an era when there had been actual warships.

... and before he had gone into the stasis tube the last reports of the admiral had chronicled significant need to act against the Combine. There had been SLDF personnel who had joined the AFFS and there had been dedicated enemies of the combine. The Fox's Teeth came to mind. The Blue Star Irregulars were technically still Mercenaries... but there were units who had come into the fold.

... and of course that the Azami were showing up that was something to consider. She needed information about what was going on over the Combine border. If this was what it was purported to be a significant migration out of combine territory, as a result of the snakes having begun a significant campaign of either political repression or outright ethnic cleansing then that meant there were Combine units tied up on worlds not immediately on the front line. The question was which units, and which worlds... but even that could be speculated on based on implications in chatter among the Rasalhague movement.

They were still waiting for any indication that there was going to be a general rebellion, or that it was moving in that direction. Any DCMS units tied down outside of the Terran corridor was a tactical advantage to their plans.
--
Gene eased the Marauder into his assigned spot as his speakers piped in the sounds of the street and he watched waving pennants of Tara's main avenue leading to and from the Starport. He had a prime vantage on the wide ferrocrete landing deck, and also of the little stars getting steadily larger and brighter that were dropships inbound.

He could very much have done without the pipers playing March of the Cameron Men as the Highlanders moved to assembly through the streets... but it was their planet... and hopefully it really was just them standing on ceremony coupled with the fatigue catching up with him. What he really needed was a goodnight's sleep.

Not that that wasn't his own fault at least in part. They'd... Gene had made the cadets / the robinson troops more broadly participate in night time excercises.

For all that the Atlas was Iconic of the Star League in popular memory the Highlander was older. So too was the Pillager. The hundred ton assault mech had been in use in the Reunification War and its subsequent 3Z had been buried in warfighting stocks in numbers well in excess of the skull faced monster Kerensky had laid out the specs for. Harlaw looked promising though, but well... the Azami were here, and the Highlanders had put together the reception, and he was expected to be here.

"Conditions in the Combine seem to have potentially reached a breaking point." Which suggested that the loss of the Galedon Regulars under Samsonov at Elidere may have just compromised enough to tip the balance. Or it had just given that impression to units already looking for an opportunity to rebel or escape the combine, something that had given them the one last push they needed...

... but he doubted simply taking Dieron would be enough to force the combine into civil war... Takashi Kurita sounded like a paranoid bastard but the line of succession wasn't unclear. He had a single son, and any succession beyond that would require cousins who simply weren't plugged into the apparatus of power there was no apparent threat of a palace coup at the moment. "We don't that for sure," He replied to Abner's comment. The Lyran was within his Terran Atlas... probably just as much as a status symbol as Lyran Noble as it was for... if this shit went horribly wrong. "But it certainly sounds like the Combine's attention is elsewhere."

"So you'll be going?"

"I was always going, this possibly makes things easier."

"I should be able to help furnish support for the dependents, but IE has a policy of neutrality beyond that. I can't participate in offensive operations... and it can't appear as if we're supporting the conquering power's activities in that."

Legalese for any kind of lostech work that needed to be done on Dieron was going to walk an awful fine line, and potentially set a time frame measures potentially months or even years out. "I know. I've read IE's charter." Abner had insisted he do when he'd taken the first IE job... And was also aware that Abner's colleagues were not always so scrupulous but for the moment there were a lot of eyes. "I'm sure the Azami will appreciate any assistance for their dependents."

"Boss." Septim cut in over the comms as his Merlin piped in. "We've got movement."

Gene glanced at his scopes, telemetry processing the slow steady descent as the DropShips continued on the guide path from Tara's starport. "Clarify?" He asked tapping the computer.

"Not up there, I'm reading units patching into the unit command channel."

He blinked and reached up, initial assumption were light horse units coming onto the parade route to join them. Dante was remote controlling Regimental systems through a Fury so it wasn't unlikely that the AI was folding units into the command network without actively telling him. A quick mental interrogative brought up the postings of the units.

The Eridani while positioned in a respectful position though were marked opposite and farther down. They and the Blue Star irregulars were posted just ahead of a Davion unit that traced its lineage back to the SLDF. Abner was with them.. well he was with them because he had fought at Elidere if the unit was going to be here Abner had earned that right if he wanted to.

A heavy set man with a thick lumberjacks beard and a green SLDF pilot suit handshaked from a Highlander. "Colonel Shepherd, I'm Major MacKay I've been tasked to your command." He only elaborated so far on that before connecting them into a video conference with the one eyed Black Watch Commander.

"I was under the impression you were on Friendly enough terms with the Azami."

"Aye," For a minute he almost expected the old MechWarrior to call him laddie, but the man stopped and nodded, "We are Colonel. No, its not their visit that is the reason. MacKay and his men are under your command for other reasons. Not to just to strike a blow at all blackguard traitors but to provide a core for a highlander detachment you'll assemble for your inevitable search for what happened. I suspect the Azami travelling into the deep periphery should give you what the books calls cover for action."

Gene would have really preferred he not be just told he was being placed in command of a Highlander unit... and especially not in their present situation. They were going to have to have a talk about what this entailed... and then he was going to have to explain this to Field Marshal Davion

Within the Davion Command Center the Prince's Champion glanced at her staff intelligence officer, as the signals changed. Shepherd's Company featured a fairly bland unit insignia on its MRB page a symetrical Cameronian starburst set on green flanked by gray. It was an emblem that only appeared in the MRB file likely having been submitted at the request of ComStar but to the best of her recollection the closest she could recall was the roundel which was gray white painted on the the wings of the DropShips Sam Houston, and San Saba. She suspected that the lack of pilots for the ASF they had inventory, that would of course now had pilots might receive the roundels but that was a very recent change.

"Ma'am."

"I see it." She resisted throwing a suspicious look at the any one of the plaentary officials. Apparently someone thought it would be funny to redesignate Shepherd's Company as a Highlander Regiment. It had been added to the rolls of units, but also it reflected where the unit had been placed on the parade route near the front. "Get me the Colonel's Marauder." She ordered prompting a sharpish nod from the junior officer who moved quickly.

A voice cracked over, "One moment Dante," A Highlander's voice fell silent in the background, "yes Field Marshal?"

"Commander Shepherd have you spoken with the planetary authorities."

"I just finished with the colonel of the regiment," Which was a fancy distinction of honor that really was equivalent to adjuntant general commanding the planetary militia, "apparently seeing fit to inform me of dispensation to hire and recruit from Northwind. Its not a paper arrangement."

"This relates to the facility at Harlech I assume."

"Yes ma'am." He replied.

There was a cough, "Your grace, the dropships are preparing to touch down." The bagpipes swelled in their playing through the speakers. A few minutes later, "They're on the ground starport control is finishing safety checks," and finally those checks finished with dispensation that they could disembark and make their way down.

It was only a limitted procession. The welcoming comittee completely dwarfed the small contingent that was cleared to make the trip, but they were late to the Highland Faire and were getting a cordial demonstration of hospitality, but also a demonstration of probably just how important punctuality was supposed to be.

Inside his cockpit Gene leaned back as he confirmed the receipt as they started those down process blowing off the safety foam, and double checked that he was radio dark again. He sighed parsing through the tasking. This would have been highly irregular even in the Star League, Dante even though he was going along with this... might even potentially be encouraging it had cosigned the packet. It was not...

... technically speaking the Black Watch remnant had amended the last orders issued by Colonel Schmitt with mission critical information... that was to say that despite the Hegemony being gone, the League being gone, and only a very very narrow lead as by all indications ranking Hegomony officer he was supposed to locate and relay orders... ideally they wanted him to find where the Cameron twins had been shiped off to find what had happened... dream of dreams find the Terran Hegemony in Exile and restore the golden age of the Star League

No Pressure.

He wasn't sure ... Hanzo was game, Septim seemed prepared for what they were going to do, Bahar and the Azami were signed on... but how exactly was he supposed to let the others know. Bubbles, and Beau didn't know, and that couldn't be sustained.

Regardless of whether or not that the tasking orders were slated to allow him to fill out mech and armor, and infantry from Northwind.

--
Notes: Update schedule remainder of week, tentative, this is going up early (obviously) Saturday's update is of course per standard AH thread update of the chian warlord thread, I need to respond to some questions for that. I plan though it is not definitive to update Sufficently Advanced Magic, my percy jackson jump (in my jumpchain thread), and the 2nd​ Luxen (that will probably end up being sunday) with the arrival at Pioche and smilodons.

Anyway moving on, this is the set up for the big expansion of the company with the clear introduction of the begnining of Claymore and Bardiche following.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Highland Faire 12​

The beret on the desk that Bubbles had just picked up had a tartan flash on the brim, "Oh my god, I can't believe they're just giving you a battalion." Chang exclaimed, which wasn't quite accurate. It was more like a company of Highland volunteers and recruiting to fill out the slots in a mech battalion.

They had been put up in a set offices that were placed so they were overlooking the academy of Northwind's grounds. It looked like a golf field with a church in the background... or at least this vantage point did. He supposed that that resemblance it had, at least him, to St Andrews might well have been intentional on Northwind's founders part. "its complicated, we're going to crack open the Harlaw facility." He remarked as he adjusted his charcoal pencil and the pad.

There was a polite cough, "With respect colonel. I would recommend we accept the meeting with the latest arrivals first. The facility will still be there." Bahar remarked. "First impressions are very important."

"So what are you drawing, exactly." He had to move back to keep the Rangers Colonel from snagging the pad, "Oh come on ghost let me see it." David Bowie complained.

Gene grumbled at its incomplete, and placed the pad in the center tossing the pencil on the table, and tapped a couple of keys to scan the prototype image into the computer. There was an electrical whir, and the charcoal dog cleaned up, and he applied a pattern to the background. A handful of keystrokes and then some more.

Claymore. Shepherd's Highlanders. The image was really an adaption of the idea suggested to him.

The Stuart, Stewart, Tartan check that had been used afield, applied digitally. "The dog wasn't my idea." The irish wolf hound, or descendant probably of that formed the appearance of the popular native breed, was clutching a claymore as it reared.

... Bahar was right they needed to meet the Azami and Rasahagians who had touched down. They would have the most recent news on events ongoing... and the port complex wasn't going anywhere... and they were likely about to be involved in a great political clusterfuck besides... but he had been planning to use the visit to Harlaw to break the ice on things, handle the reveal on... this entire clusterfuck. He was certain he didn't want to wait till Dieron, even though there was almost surely a Hegemony AI on Dieron that might be able to give them some idea, some other piece of the puzzle.

He let the image float. "Alright we'll see about the new arrivals, then we will deal with reading in the situation." He shook his head, "Dieron was going to be complicated without all of this. We are going to take a planet back from the combine that had been under Combine rule since the first succession war."

There was some circular chatter surrounding the operation they had been hired from, and the reassurance of having Davion support, having the support in particular of the Draconis March in particular. Robinson, and the House Sandoval certainly wasn't going to forget Elidere, or pass the opportunity to humiliate the Draconis Combine on the field.

The trip to the allocated field for the new arrivals featured a handful of DroST IIA in identical configuration to that of the Sam Houston, unlike the Sam Houston they were in a variety of colors ranging from red and black, to brown and yellows, to greens. He wasn't really concerned though about their paint. They weren't the only dropships that had landed, but they were the ones in the process of offloading.

He counted two immaculate 7A Star League Jenners, a Thorn, a Catapult, a couple of Dervishes, the expected number of Azami Pheonix Hawks, and one customized Centurion. Nothing heavier though than the Catapult, actually the Catapult was out massed by some of the tanks sitting idle near it. It was five tons heavier than the Tokugawas, true, but the Shrek PPC carriers each massed eighty tons the same as a Fury.

He almost asked what the MRB thought of all of this, but decided against it. He pretty sure complicated didn't begin to cover it... that was a question to contend with later though.

Still he wondered if the arriving forces, these sword of tyr people had apparently mech jacked a bunch of Panthers, were all going to be proportionately on the lighter side of things. Well, the Hegemony had never thrown anything away... or near enough that it had felt like it had been true. Mechs had continued to be pushed down to militia units and boneyards on Hegemony worlds were likely buried and forgotten filled with machines that good techs could have brought back into service.

"Did you talk to them about it?"

"If you mean the ground vehicles by it, yes the Field Marshal has already put the second order in," The Badgers and Bandits... they had done that back on New Avalon... because after all San Saba had shown up with her hull loaded with choice examples from the Brian Cache on Robinson. They had left the existing periphery PBI under the Detroit natives to show the machines off. It gave them something to do, but moving infantry was going to be a potential issue. Baffins had some infantry berthing yes, but that had always been purely ground protection element, to the point the Sam Houston had more space for infantrymen. Of course, Pasha had been upfront that they could source more of the DROST IIA dropships and since they were such an ancient common, easily modifiable design they'd be sustainable. "We'll deal with it later..." Once they also figured out what to do about DropShips and in particular San Saba and any conversion work. He trailed off for that reason as much as the approaching officer in desert camo and russet colored beret.

"Sir." The Infantry Lieutenant saluted leading them through the nominal checkpoint and to the 'townhouse' provided to the latest arrivals. He wasn't quite sure what he had expected, obviously probably some multinational... multiethnic collection, but surely under Azami directive given their fleet, but instead of an easily parsed one or two groups, from the mix of colors, and units he had to double take to make sure that some of the reception wasn't from the Davion side.

Yusuf turned back from looking at all the ground cars, and then to the crowd in front of them, "They are busier than I thought... Pasha said the fleet was assembling I didn't think."

"Its fine." The truth was Gene had almost expected Lex to have tagged along... it would have been a little absurd, but he got the feeling the Field Marshal thought they were going to cause a ruckus anytime they were out of sight. The closest to standardization of any type of uniform was in the mass production modern issue SLDF style fatigue type service uniforms. The kind of thing that any MRB run mercenary outlet mall had in everything from extra extra extra large down to jammies for the mercenary brats... even that ran into the issue of distinguishing unit patches and insignia along with different camo patterns thankfully nothing that looked like carpet or a pattern more suited to a piece of furniture but it certainly varied.

The guest house was an expansive two storey affair with lots of faux wrought iron fixtures and railing a pseudo neo victorian style. The great room was more ball room in size. It was very emblematic of the golden age of the star league and the Terran Hegemony's vacation homes. The sort of thing for not just Northwind, but places like Alpha Centauri or any other number of worlds. He was sure that there were equivalents across the other member states, certainly the capellan aristocracy had had equivalents... probably still did.

They worked their way around for a couple minutes somewhat clumsily given their party wasn't dispersing. A man in blue black urban combat fatigues ... probably about six one stepped forward and glanced at the war eagles pinned at Gene's collar the eagles heads facing the clutched lightning bolts. The Mechwarrior wore an SLDF neuro circuit and a had a crested eagle tattooed on his forearm just above the wrist. "If I were to say to you that, "I am a stranger traveling from the East, seeking that which is lost ..."

"To which I would reply that, I am a stranger traveling from the West, it is I whom you seek." He replied accepting the man's hand shake and clasping at the wrist.

They took a wrought iron stair case that took them to a smoking room that was much less crowded. That wasn't to say there weren't people, just that there were fewer people. Their lead introduced them to a heavily scarred black man in more scarred combine esque costume and a sandy blonde haired man who could have made a good pass at Daniel Jackson cosplaying as Han Solo. Not quite, but sort of.

"These men are all vouched for." Yusuf remarked as a plate of tea was put at the island table between them.


The heavily scarred man's name was Yosuke... not that the Rasalhagian native he'd come in with hadn't beeen scratched up from probably exploding glass fragments. The rasalhague man stepped forward. "Soren Holmgren." He introduced. He was long faced man with steely blue eyes.

"Gene Shepherd." He replied accepting the handshake, but not reiterating his rank given the other man in blood stripes hadn't given his.

"The Walking Death,"

He couldn't help it, and rolled his eyes, but suppressed a groan. It was one more for the pile, but he supposed it was only little different. It had come out from a translation of a translation, of 'the Ghost who Walks'. He suspected part of it all was intentional propaganda spread... probably by Federated Suns, but he couldn't be sure. Introductions cycled around, from the mid thirties Shiseo-yen, to Yosuke's charge Akashi Kiyone. That was the 'kid' campbell had mentioned who had been registered to compete in the Squire's tournament.

A merry little band of Rasalhagues, and other friends to the Azami who were all wanted dead by the combine... and looking for some payback. More than that. The Rasalhague splinter's end goal was of course independent statehood. Freedom from Combine rule, but to do that they needed mechwarriors and political friends. They would need an army and also political recognition from the Combine's neighbors.
--
Notes: Rather obviously this does set up for the eventual balkanization ahead of the clan invasion.

I plan to install MW5 with a list of mods in it probably some time this month, and probably start replaying Battletech (HBS) as well, but this chapter itself has nothing to do with the implied new Rasalhague DLC 5 is supposed to have coming out [Mostly because I'm not paying 15 bucks for a dlc for a game I barely play, and I have never personally played all the way through other than just used it to drive big stompy robots] Anyway I do need to actually sit down and play through the campaign of MW5 in its entirety so yeah we may or may not see involve additional content from that

 

[Imperator Pax]

Highland Faire 13
(a)​

The Ghosts of Black Watch had been established by survivors of the Royal Highland Regiment the Black Watch, and their dependents and civilians fighting alongside them. The truth though was that most of the regiment had been killed. The lucky members of what would have been the eventual Ghosts had been off world performing duties of the unit on other worlds... but even they had been caught up in the destruction that had ravaged the hegemony.

Gene wasn't sure exactly who knew what. He had a responsibility to be careful about details... but he knew that the Azami seemed to know somethings... and Black Watch didn't seem to have fax machines... which was odd... or of course it was also possible they simply had had no reason to demonstrate the machines.... that was now that he thought about it equally possible.

"The northwind clans rarely extend such a courtesy."

"Not to Sassenachs usually." One of the Rasalhague officers muttered. The man's accent was almost Lyran, but that made sense by the details he had been piecing together the Rasalhague movements tended to naturally pop over to hide on the Lyran side of the combine border thanks a shared culture heritage.... which was potentially a long term problem for any Free Rasalhague depending on how one wanted to define Rasalhague.

His noteputer chimed. He'd been expecting a progress report on the work on the San Saba, and fitting her to carry a Company of Mechs, but it was Dante overviewing the MRB pay rates. The Highlander endorsement, sponsorship, recognition, whatever it was came with a boost in rates. He supposed that made sense, ... he had a good idea of what Harlaw was going to contain, and that meant even if they were green mechwarriors the cadets they could recruit were going to rapidly outnumber his original personnel. He'd bump everyone's pay for January and that would keep the books tidy.

"So I've been told." He replied tapping the keys. "What about your status? Shouldn't the Combine be screaming by this point?" Kiyone gritted her teeth. "No. Thats a serious question, I assume you have some idea of whats coming?"

That was where the real disagreement lay. Kiyone, and the Rasalhague wanted revenge, or justice whatever you wanted to call it. The Rasalhague largely wanted an independent country of their own in their historic homes. The Azami by and large would have been probably more accepting if Takashi stopped acting like a stark raving madman but too many combine rulers had been too crazy... and the HPG footage whatever the excuses were was just too much. Amaris was basically Satan after all. Even two hundred years later Amaris's reputation for bloodshed, tyranny, mass atrocities made the succession wars era population who had experience with frequent crimes against humanity far far more despicable than any western late 20th​ century association with Hitler would have been. There was revulsion for a villian and then was the extent it was with Amaris.

The Azami were thus political more fractured compared to the relative national coherency of the Rasalhauge faction. Fight the combine directly, lead another exodus into the black and try build their own state, or try and win the political support from the Davions either for an independent realm of their own or part of the FedSuns but it boiled down to getting away from House Kurita's influence.

In all honesty he wasn't sure which made them harder to predict. Keeping track of a long list of Azami factions who were largely agreed to ship out for the territories? Or trying to manage a bunch of space swedes wanting to crack the Combine in half?

No, that was politics. He needed to focus on preparing for the ops on Dieron. House Davion could deal with the political fallout. They hadn't been able to hire MechWarriors on Robinson. Hammer had taken on a few RBA armor grads and alumni from the militia but that was gratis more so than anything... and the truth was needing to use San Saba as a cargo ship to take stuff to New Avalon had prevented them from doing much actual work. He knew that they'd potentially be forfeiting a lot of cargo space if they tried to make significant modifications.

He let out a breath, but discarded notions of trying to talk about what future maps might look like, but the conversation slowly rotated around to the impending actions against the Combine. Four hours later and just after sunset Gene leaned back against the wall. A lot had been said, and there was besides the small talk necessary an idea of what they could do for each other after they were finished with the Davion contract.

Professor Abner accepted a beer from Septim. "Thank you my boy, thank you." He sipped the stein and then nodded, "We can open it tomorrow." Technically they could open the main gates of the port bay now, but daylight would be better. Not rushing would be good. "It certainly appears to be designed to accommodate both aerodyne and spheroid designs."

"Is that odd?" Septim asked putting his beer down. Obviously the Lyran was familiar with more standard space ports, which of course regularly accomdated both types of dropships.

It wasn't that odd, "Not for a port castle. Outposts are usually aerodyne only, Ports, and full size castles with landing spaces can be built to accommodate both." He replied automatically. For Abner though it was this Argo DropShip which was too big to land on a planet, and that had apparently left for the Rimward periphery. One more thing for tomorrow once they were actually in the facility and had access to the control center's telemetry logs. The data said one thing, but the picture surely didn't do a hundred thousand ton dropship justice.

... but they had no leads on the Argo. Even if he could guess that Abner had found his next potential project to go hunting for. Argo... but they would need more information, especially if the massive drop ship had been skirting through rimward space heading out into the black on some secret hegemony mission.
--
The fusion reactors sent electrical power through the cavernous facility and turned all of the lights on with clack clack clacks. Doors opened, fans began to blow.

The massive bays kind of resembled the ASF facilities... if super sized. Huge gantry arms were retracted into their alcoves. The fuel bunkers were safely protected against most conventional dangers, but a Port Castle Facility was considered the most potentially vulnerable to orbital bombardment... if a warship managed to get a shot through an open gate and hit a fuel bunker or an ammunition bunker....

well catastrophic explosion would have seemed like an understatement for the amount of material that might go off... so the defenders of Northwind had locked the facility down and evacuated... and then they had largely died to a man over the subsequent two weeks of fighting into the new year. Northwind had resisted the Rimworlds advance, but their defenses had been weakened by orders that violated Terran principles of planetary defense.

If only...

No sense dwelling on it. Gene stuffed his hands into his pockets and resumed looking around. "Ali you know what to look for, I want diagnostics on the lifts, and the seals. Safety checks." They'd look at tanks, and this being a hegemony facility he expected more alacorns of course, which was good. He wanted standardization. They went from the top down. Teams look at warehouses teams split off to go into the dropship bays, air crew techs, and techs and astechs moving to space for materiel marked Royal Scotts Dragoons.

Mechs.

He rested a hand on the steel gray eagle, from the storage the itinerary looked accurate. Close enough. He looked at the black field the crest sat on, in July that would mark eleven hundred years of unit history for a dead colonel in chief. Was Amaris the spirtitual inheiritor of Bolshevik tyranny? People lamented the death of house Cameron... how much of Nicholas II had been in Richard the second.

Rashid coughed politely. "The trams are working, Colonel. Automated loading systems, and gantries are ready to move."

Then it was time to take stock and see if there was anything that was missing from the registrar, or if there was anything extra. He would have liked to picked Rahsid's brain about how the Northwind cadets reacted to the Badgers and Bandits, but now wasn't the time. There was already some chatter about land holds going on and they hadn't even landed on Dieron left. "Alright, let me know if you have any problems."

--
Thirty mechs on the field and this was only the first scrimmage. There were four total. Not that it was total elimination. Point tallies were assigned by judges, points could be lost of course, but the big defining event would be the 'semi finals' and finals. The finals were going to be the more typical pool of individual MechWarrior duels, than... the metal free for all of the first four matches.

The marshals made sure to go over all the rules. These were training weapons. There was no live ammo but that didn't mean there weren't risks. The majority of the contestants were from the graduating class of the Academy. Those looking to impress potential hiring companies, or secure themselves a place with a highlander unit, or pad a resume for higher education or a place in an AFFS line unit. It was a pity that Tancredi War College had been one of the casualties of the succession wars... there were few true institutions of higher learning left in the galaxy.

There was betting going on.

There was a lot of betting going on actually.

The delay by the Highland Games Commission had allowed new information, interviews personal and on planetary media to be expanded upon. Now the squires were on the field.

That wasn't to say that the Commission had been fully happy with the situation. The late additions had been allowed to join, but to fill out the handful of slots in the last rung. That wasn't a complement, though it might be misconstrued as one. The last group had originally been the smallest because it was the highest skill members of the graduating class, and with the heaviest... there was a Highlander and a Stalker in that bracket and those weren't even the only assault mechs. It was that bracket that was really supposed to show off.

He sat down as that conversation resumed. "Yeah its really not particularly fair." Septim started to agree with her.

"The Parents are basically paying for their kids to win. Most of them even have stuff lined up so its basically bullying." Chang remarked sipping her drink.

Yeah, there was a longbow who he wanted to see how it competed alongside the Stalker as far as missile boats went but Bubbles was right the pilots were already basically spoken for. It was also not today's match. Todays match would be a lot more unpredictable.

Today it would be a bunch of lights and mediums painting each other, literally, with gel capsules for the most part. More importantly the majority of cadets participating were doing so with machines that belong to the academy. If they distinguished themselves here they could potentially get a job that would have them actually in a cockpit rather than being reserve pilots.

Dante was in on the action, the betting as well, apparently was indulging in the affair himself... which probably was cheating in its own right since the machine spirit had calculated the odds based on academic records, machine used, and starting position.

The noteputer populated with the first and second rungs of training mechs used by the school. They ran the gambit from Jenners and Locusts likely salvaged from combine battlefields of the first succession war, to Black Jacks and star league era Terran Hegemony built Chameleons.

--
Notes: this is doubly abridged in addition to being part A with a second segment to follow next week. I will be detailing some of the actual squire's tourney mech fights on screen, just not this first phase of the melee. The Rasalhague materiel was similarly focused on political things that are not Gene's prerogative until he's actually a peer and a land holder to deal with.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Highland Faire 13
(b)​

There was something he was willing to admit to be said for watching the general chaotic mélange of mechs piloted by young pilots trying to figure out what worked. It was entertaining, the cheering crowds left no doubt about that... and today's events had only been the first of four of these events ahead of more structured rounds that would follow once the herd had been thinned.

He had meet and greets with more highlanders this week than he could possibly keep track of... an early warning signal that this was just going to be one of those weeks... and there was still more to do. "You enjoying your time here Sutton?" He asked the cadet who had been a little surprised to get called up from the ranks of the DMM troops, but it was cover... and no one would glance twice at an Elidere veteran being up here in a way that other pilots might have.

Sutton nodded. The dervish pilot had been instantly popular on Robinson for participating in the defense of Elidere, but more than that he had been involved in... well whatever he'd expected classes to be like his slot in the planned counter attack against the Combine had been a surprise. It was obvious that the Dervish pilot would have liked to be participating, and he wasn't the only one.

It bordered on the ridiculous.... and he half wondered if that wasn't half the joke and that was why the Highlanders didn't let the 'knights' have their chance at each other... or maybe letting the supposed adults have a go was too much trouble. He supposed that was probably why most the competitors were in the squires tourney were also Academy seniors. This was the house cup of sorts for their prep school... or something.

That wasn't why he was here specifically.

He'd gotten fairly used to ... how could he not given what he was... Septim's vision dreams. The threat of the Clan Invasion. That was what he suspected the animal representations were ... Green birds? Jade Falcon. Wolf. The Dragoons or Clan Wolf. Smoke Jaguar had also come up... but the horses were anomalous... if his own vagrant thoughts were right.

Whatever the case there were issues. Septim's visions put the Jade Falcons invading the Lyran Commonwealth, attacking Lyran Guards... those were a recurring vision he'd been having for more than a decade now. A different clan, clans seemed to be attacking the Federated Suns and different clans seemed to attack the Combine. Attacking the Combine's own serpentine representation...

Were they accurate?

Gene figured it couldn't hurt to try and nudge as much sense as he could into the DMM contingent in hopes that the young officers were would support a motion to rebuild rearm, and effectively fight. .. both as combined arms, and also that they'd have the skillset to resist or put up a fight one on one against he combine, and the clans.

The door to the private box opened a pair of Highland Fusiliers borrowed from Campbell opening the doors to let the Duke of Robinson wheel himself in. The former tanker chuckled as he came down. "I suppose I did ask for some privacy for this discussion." He commented. "I didn't really mean posting pickets so much as just quiet."

Gene decided not to mention he'd had the room swept for electronic signals going out... especially since Dante was listening in. "Abundance of caution, I take it from talking to Lex this has something to do with your counterpart on Errai?" His other guess was Cosarra or maybe GM had decided to go around the long way. From intercepted digital traffic Dante had pieced together Yvonne was stalling GM for the moment. She was also doing the same for Blackwell, which coveyed an impression of fairness to both sides.... or that was probably the intention to the action.

"The Duke of Errai may have come off a bit brusque with the countess." The Sandoval duke remarked with a somewhat strained expression, "It does though." he admitted. "The discovery of Thug BattleMechs following the defeat of the Galedon regulars is a point of interest to him."

Maltex had debuted the Thug in the second half of the 26th​ century. Industrial manufacture of endo-steel frames required, at least an economical mass production required orbital smelting, low gee if not zero gee was a requirement. Those facilities had largely eaten nuclear attacks during the first succession war, but also had already been suffering from damage done during hte Amaris crisis, both in direct damage terms, as well as in the sense of by products of trade disruption caused by the coup within the hegemony.

"He wants to reintroduce production."

Down teching the Thug wasn't impossible. The so called 10E went to four tube launchers. He wondered if the local star corp office had a problem with that. The Thug had been intended to replace the warhammer after all. The bigger question though was how long did he have before the Field Marshal couldn't keep the metaphorical hounds at bay.

Not that that was it of course. Robinson had other ambitions. He had ambitions of his own that were not necessarily one for one with that of the Prince's Champion. That included the recognition that the Combine had two new potential targets in his realm. An attack on the MID Depot at Elidere they had emptied out on the Combine's assumption that the division's stockpiles wouldn't be completely empty, and of course for the sake of revenge, or an attack on Robinson for basically the same reasons.

The Robinson Brian Cache had yielded other material. The kind of material that would be useful to the RBA, and thus also other military institutions of learning.
--
The Duke of Robinson had joined them for this but was maintaining a non obvious presence as the cadets experimented with driving the New Valencia built hovercraft around the field. NMA, nor for that matter RBA, were exactly well known for cutting edge.

... not that there was such a thing in the succession wars, but the point stood that the schools' respective strengths had been elsewhere. To that end though it ran the issue of the Bandit, and Badger were very expensive pieces of kit. Gene adjusted the display on the terminal as the instructor, a man with salt and pepper hair named Spiers, maneuvered his students.

Gene wondered for a moment where they would be sitting if they had actually captured rather than destroyed the DCA DropShips... if they had been able to impound the JumpShips. The bounty and salvage systems weren't One to One. He knew part of the reason there was 'only talk' of a land hold rather than serious discussion was partly political... not just whose planet was where, but the chance that he might pick somewhere with a hitherto undiscovered Hegemony or League era military facility.

Dieron first though.

The Brian Caches had been built to be consumable resources. They'd been put into the ground in the even that the Hegemony needed to pour troops into a theater to lay the hurt on an enemy... but they'd also been built up as a concept to fight another Inner Sphere threat. The Combine. They hadn't been planned for dealing with a periphery rebellion.

That was actually why the Outpost Castles had been proliferated.

... but... the Star League had never expected a technological backslide. Oh less warships as a result of naval arms limitations, treaties yes... but also economic common sense. Warships were expensive they required significant manpower and infrastructure. You couldn't take a nuke back strategic level firepower was not something easily repaired, and had a tendency to escalate things far more quickly than international arbitration efforts would resolve.

The contents of depots and caches were more than just icons of another more prosperous era. The Hegemony had not intended them to be technology demonstrators. Anything going into a cache was old tech the kind of equipment that they might have preferred not fall into the hands of other member states but nothing truly classified by the time of the 28th​ century.

In the 31st​ century though with the succession wars have run their course... it wasn't about just distributing the cache to fight a campaign or even a war, but the chance to turn back the tide.

The countess of kestrel shifted her weight onto the balls of her feet, tensing slightly. "I take it we have an audience then?" He asked not looking around, not moving from watching the drills on the field. Blackwell Corporation was no surprise of course they'd be interested in what they were doing with their products.

"I have to ask, are these Star League machines?"

"No. The technology is derived from the Mercury," Gene wouldn't have been surprised if the SLDF or Hegemony based Royal Divisions had wanted something, dreamed of something these OmniVehicles but unless there was a prototype somewhere that had not managed to be snatched up by Kerensky... no these were mature concepts developed after Kerensky left. "This is a mature probably indigenous development of it." He had to explain how the Mercury BattleMech worked, and what an OmniPod system worked in comparison, "On the other hand the fact the Dragoons brought this with them, suggests maybe it was maybe Star League tech." He shrugged.

"Which is it then?" She questioned a little more forcefully leaning a little further over.

"I think its something Kerensky's people developed." Probably... maybe it was another case like the Imp... how fucked up were the clan's historical records if that was the case. "I don't have proof though, so it should be qualified as such."


--
Alexandria Cunningham regarded the complex it was as an inscrutable face as she could manage at the moment. The highlanders were working with a feverish energy alongside personnel ... this was more than just money... she wondered if money even factored into motivation. The Prince's Champion hadn't been able to spare the time to come leaving this visit to her, in part due to the presence of other dukes of the Federated Suns but also because of the impending final steps before the New Avalon Hussars launched their attack.

There had been a brief history lesson on the Tancredi Loyalists and their doctrine and how being able to mount raids into Combine space would have helped keep the snakes off balance. That unit, those units, that world, had been lost and the institution which had largely produced them would need to be rebuilt if they were going to recreate that. There were other priorities if they were going to go that far down the rosters.

So many units lost to the succession wars.

The countess glanced down at the sheet in front of her. The display of the noteputer an orange sheen listing her official job as liaison officer in the absence of the Prince's Champion. It detailed the proposed filling out of the Claymore Battalion with equipment being checked over.

She'd been happy that Shepherd had been reasonable enough to agree to ducking out of the ongoing drill in order to avoid talking with corporate representatives, or members of those ducal houses but this had not been what she'd expected.

"The material for this is here?" She asked.

He nodded. "The Dragoon Guards were holding Christmas mass when they were nuked. Pretty much their inventory in machines were on standby or crated ahead of being shipped out for the Periphery." The Colonel replied there was a baleful hint to the mead colored eyes but then it was gone. "Harlaw's depot has machines from the age of war as well, they'll be easier to maintain. I don't fathom how the Pillager models of the Early Reunification war wasn't brought back given its close quarters capabilities," He remarked, then verbally ticked with another shrug, "que sera sera."

It is what it is, she translated quietly. "Anything else?"

"We've earmarked the King Crabs, there is a note in there that we're not sure how," he paused, "Whether or not they'll end up being hangar queens, but they're on the list of what we've found if Cosara or GM need to be horse traded with." She scrolled through the noteputer and found the indicated list. "The Guards were allocated the 010," Aught Ten, "They have LBXs they might be useful in bringing LBX weapons back into production, which is the main reason I'm willing to pass on them." On the tram ride down into the bowels of the planet he had mentioned that there was no reason that OmniPod technology being originally developed from a Star League BattleMech system couldn't also be used in conjunction with Mechs... in fact he assumed they had been developed from mechs, or used with ASF.... the idea that something simple as a test bed like the Enforcer would probably be a good starting point... even though he'd then admitted to just be speculating.

Today's report to the field marshal was going to be especially exhausting.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Highland Faire 14
(A)​

The fireplace had been stoked to fight the chill from the rain, and the fog. In the place of that it left the large office contrastingly warm, shockingly so compared to coming in from the outside.

Field Marshal Yvonne Davion dismissed the extended portion of her staff gave Jeffries his marching orders and then dismissed the Davion Guards officer as well and turned to her lady in waiting. "Its never simple is it?" It was a rhetoric question. "I wonder if it was a speech. Surely he didn't just come out and declare he was the sword of the Camerons returned or some of this idiocy." She glowered at the proposed scripts from the media people. "Regardless there is a starport?"

"There is my lady, I have seen it."

"And an Overlord? I understand there has been interest in it."

"THS Presidio according to the Ship Registry." Which had been just two years old at the time of the crisis erupting, it was an immaculate tomb like ship from what she'd seen of the interior, Alexandria paused, and then moved on, "Along with a THS Bexar, she was apparently configured as a mobile field hospital and transport for armor."

The Field Marshal nodded. Bexar was apparently another Triumph. Then she scoffed, "and of course we'd look very silly if we complained about what they're handing us," never mind that they had even involved Alexandria. If the Countess of Kestrel had noticed the increased anti Combine chatter going on since the colonel's original disappearance with General Kerston she had not mentioned it. That had reached a fever's pitch this afternoon as she'd received offers to volunteer for off world duty from the planetary militia if it was against the combine. She had to wonder what it was the local aristocracy had been told. She wasn't going to engage in rumor mongering. The prince's champion spared another withering look at the media proposals, at least the duke of sandoval was being reasonable about all of this. "Shepherd has clearly stirred the Highlanders up," Clancy had also been agitating the Federated Suns ... not that he had needed to, not during the time before the admiral had gone in the stasis pod, "It raises questions of course, but more as a device on our existing ones." She flipped through the courier delivered packet that contained the colonel's medical records, and the blood sample, which reassuringly informed her with significant certainty that the Colonel was not some scion of House Davion... or at least not an immediate relation to the ruling family of the Federated Suns. Doctor Banzai doubted that even testing against samples from a century ago would yield anything. There were some additional notes about the blood sample but nothing she was particularly savvy to making an issue of. She leaned forward, "Alexandria, what I want is for you to find out what materiel the colonel is looking for. Especially anything he hasn't been able to find."

"I'm not sure I understand what you mean Ma'am. He's going to stand up highland companies on SLDF line."

"Not SLDF Terran Hegemony lines." She tutted, the Archer was a classic machine... but the Dragoons seemed to favor them as well... it might have been just institutional inertia, Yvonne was weighing if it was just that. "So far as the Highlanders are concerned, seem to be concerned Colonel Shepherd may as well have been chipped off some rock face on ancient terra. He's selected those archers for a reason, but I want to know if there is something he's looking for." and of course the reason why... "It may not even be machines."

"There was apparently a large DropShip," She paused, "The Argo, behemoth sized," The countess paused, "It was constructed at the Galax Shipyards it stopped over Northwind before departing for the Rimward periphery."

That could very well be a coincidence she admitted, but the Colonel seemed to be following both ends of the thread back. "There is a growing anticipation for action. We're beyond just contending with the usual Draconis March's push for greater action."

And success her could meaningfully swing positions at court. This was beyond the Draconis March, this was even beyond avenging her nephew the previous first prince success here represented more than just beginning the process to cut the Combine from the Terran corridor. Taking Altair and Dieron could meaningfully set the stage for real change in the Inner Sphere when taken with everything else that was taking shape.
"Should we do something?"

Yvonne scoffed. "The genie is out of the bottle." They had known ahead of time that the public support for a counter attack against the combine had been reaching a fever pitch even before word of the destruction in detail of the Galedon regulars. Lord Sandoval's curated speeches had been aimed at stoking a nearly religious and in some cases crusader fervor. They were approaching the margins on what they could direct in terms of pacing. "We have laid out to the assembled nobility, and elite that we are prepared to act against the combine." They would be able to jump and hit Altair and Dieron and ideally conquer both worlds... and if then if the Azami and Rasalhague wanted to revolt well that was fine... but she'd certainly prefer it look like they were the instigating factor and the rebellions a broadly speaking product of combine weakness.

The combine needed to be looking inward, and preferably stabbing one another over perceived 'moral failure' or what have you.
--
The mech threw a haymaker. Sloppy it skidded off chest armor, but the mud was washing out from under both mechs feet. It was day two, and the second of the scrimmaging was coming to its conclusion. Gene didn't know how the Accademy training battalion assigned mechs. As it was he could make out Rio animatedly, and probably with a lot of profanity thrown in, screaming presumably about the thunderbolt pilot getting punched was doing wrong.

Everyone was having a good time, and so he expected the faire marshals to give it another minute. It was still a little impractical to have mechs punch each other for reasons other than opportunity or desperation... but it certainly was winding the crowd up.

Frankly one of the other competitors should have taken the opportunity to take both of them off the board... but at least two of the remaining participants seemed to have stopped to gawk and the rest were understandably busy shooting at one another to be bothered.

... and the thing about a mech scale fist fight was it was the sort of thing Dante hadn't predicted as happening. Septim nad the Machine Spirit had a bracket going all the same going into wagering on the results... he hadn't forbid them from gambling. It was legal after all.

There was a heavy sigh as the Thunderbolt was called as out of the fight, right before its opponent took a mock large laser to the back side.

"Speaking of cadets how are ours doing?"

Chang turned around, "Well they're doing okay. There are some distractions from being here, I took them over to NMA this morning to coordinate between ... well our armor. With the duke of Robinson." She shrugged she meant both DMM attached armor and the highland armor cadets, "So what's this about... They have to ride somewhere but we're really growing."

"I'll explain soon." He hedged, "Its complicated." Beau cracked a joke whether or not he was getting married, "Its probably that degree of serious," He replied and the big free worlder nodded, "Its complicated but my priority is on missile boat pilots, or aptitude for." He was talking but a couple of looks had been thrown over to Lex's apparent change in body language or expression. Whatever the case the Countess of Kestrel must have tensed up, so he coughed and pointedly changed the subject, there were other things that needed to be done, and the faire was mercenary shot show, and that meant significant industrial presence, "GM and Blackwell are not the only industrial reps on planet," And while the succession wars had wrecked a vast .... incalculable volume of interstellar trade there were still subsidiaries to the massive corporations that had dominated the arms trade of the star league, "We can't duck them forever."

Septim grimaced into his beer, "Ah, yeah while you've been gone I got ambushed by GM about this ... Orion thing? I thought the guy was here about the Marauder II but then he blitzed me on it."

Gene nodded, it made sense. Septim was the easiest company command level officer to approach... even if GM knew about Claymore in the process of standing up, which was certainly possible since the paperwork had started they wouldn't have approached MacKay or the other NMA instructors tapped to lead the new Highlander Battalion. He admitted the fault was his, "I should have considered that they'd approached you we'll go over the Blackwell and GM packets, as well as potential other ones."

The crowd cheered as another mech went down and the marshals prepared to call the scrimmage to advance the remainder.
--
Harlaw's Terran Militia units included things ranging from reunification war pattern Pillagers to Shootists and more besides. The Harlaw facility was older, and not nearly as sleek as the aerodynamic flyboy lines and posters of the port. The difference in who had been running the facilities, but it had still been a a depot for the Hegemony.

There were no Grasshoppers in inventory. Those had only entered production after this facility had been sealed up. More than that the Grasshopper had been built for warfare beyond the border and frankly in the periphery in the hands of the regular army. The Terran Hegemony had experimented with many seventy ton machines, just as they had experimented with significant numbers of seventy five tonners like the Orion, Marauder, and Black Knight.

Endo Steel manufacturing had been developed in the late 25th​ century, but had gone extinct in the face of the massive volume of orbital and space based infrastructure lost during the succession wars, but it had been nearly ubiquitous to the Terran Hegemony of the early 28th​ century. In the 31st​ century where that had completely disappeared that technology was LosTech which would have been unthinkable in the golden age of the Star League as the Hegeomony had been increasingly looking at not just Combine Units but also Federated Suns machines beginning to field EndoSteel, and DHS.

The Shootist was a seventy ton VOX 280 machine intended at the time of its debut in the early 27th​ century had been intended to provide a commander of close quarters units a hard hitting gunfighter. It hadn't exactly worked out that way. The shootist was a good urban warfighter it paled in comparison at long range to the effectiveness of the older Black Knight or the newer Marauder especially in terms of command and control responsibilities.

So the shootist had already been considered obsolescent by the Hegemony in the 28th​ century being pushed to Militia units and the regular SLDF in a more line combatant role where its avionics suite wouldn't be considered a hindrance.

The King Crabs had like the Atlas been late to enter the Terran Hegemony service... and because Kerensky had developed them or at least their specific requirements those machines had similarly ended up not just in Hegemony hands but also in the hands of the member states... like the Combine. Kerensky had had friends at court to cover for his political failures, and the break of such things, and there had been other problems despite the still in recent memory second hidden war.

The ER PPC had only arrived to units in 2751 after all. The Marauder 2R had only started making full production in 2760 after what in hindsight would be unconscionable delays given the Thunderbolts had started receiving their extended range upgrade two years after proving viable for production, and the Griffin had managed its upgrade in '51 proper.

"Thank you Dante." He said ending the history lesson on procurement before the scottish brogue of the AI could continue to drone on in an info dump of technical specifications... especially the lobbying. "How long will materiel transfer take?"

"Each tram will require approximately sixteen hours due to the combination of damage to the system, and need to reroute," The zig zagging course way and transfer through the city sized underground maze of tunnels, "In short I estimate materiel distribution to the port would not be completed until march." It was therefore more practical to open the Harlaw facility and disburse some of the equipment to the planetary units directly, but that had been planned anyway.

He turned to the others. "This material was stored up to be used in the event of a war. We have a war to fight. To that end Claymore is going to be built on keeping units in the field and operational... we need missile boats to sustain an advance. The archer fulfills that role, and can maneuver." That it was probably the most common heavy mech in Terran Hegemony service, if not potentially even the most common BattleMech, "Each of the Cadet companies will be allocated a lance of Archers from this depot I need you to get them delivered to NMA tomorrow. Chang I need you to take a lance of Pillagers and do the same with your evaluation group. Bahar will meet you in the morning with the Marauder IIs. I've already spoken with the Maguanacs there is a good chance Blackwell will be sitting in watching our testing of the Bandits, and Badgers. They've been doing that for a couple of days now, and moving the Marauders will probably attract their attention, and that of GM." He looked over the hard ferrocrete deck, and the massive reinforced struts creating hte protective archways above the walkways over their heads.
--
Notes: There is a You are the Davion Heir CYOA where that is the main shtick I'm obliquely referencing that but of course the Davion propaganda people had already tried to do the long lost heir story suggestion.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Highland Faire 14
(B)​

As they walked through the rows, he mentally filed through an itinerary. Foremost among that list was that Field Marshal Davion had requested the report as soon as she had learned that there were Guillotines in the depot. She had known what one of those were, which admittedly had surprised Gene, but not what the early 27th​ century, thus newer Terran, Shootist had been. They were both seventy ton mechs running off 280 rating fusion engines. He had made note of that in his report, particularly that both utilized the same Vox 280 engine. Still she wanted a report as soon as they were done here, that was the main thing.

It was a pity that Buda Imperial Vehicles was one in the Combine, and two that their engine shortages were so severe that they could not produce the the fusion reactor. He looked over the Demon PPC carrier which used a 220. The vehicle was not the original but rather the one procurement command had foisted onto Hegemony Militia Units because they had agreed to buy Leopard products but then ran into issues... well somewhere else in the procurement change.

He couldn't do anything with them. He liked the utility of having a tank capable of keeping pace when necessary with his main mech line, but the Fury did everything the Demon or even the Tokugawas did better and with more capability. The Alacorn was slightly slower but if those could come into play the enemy wasn't going to be there much longer on connection.

Besides that he was pretty sure that House Davion didn't exactly have an abundance of 220s and even if they did they'd most likely be marked for ASF production Still he had endorsed the Tokugawa as an effective tank even though very likely the only reason it would see use on Dieron was because of the Maguanac ranks being expanded as part of a deal to attack Dieron as mercenaries in the Federated Suns service.

He tapped an indicator on his noteputer display and moved on. The Corporate Sector was circling. Earthworks, in the FWL, apparently managed to build one thug a month.. which wasn't a horrible rate of production for a single factory on a singular world, but the question was could the remains of Maltex in the Federated Suns a tiny shadow of its existence that was mostly just the name on a building on the planet Errai really restart production? Not any time soon he imagined.

"Here." He handed the electronic data sheet over to the countess. "This is a multi item recommendation for procurement. It makes two core recommendations but that can be reduced to one single critical one. The Federated Suns currently produces Warhammer, and Archer BattleMechs that both use 280 Vox engines. Diversification of production for that engine should be undertaken, and expansion produced. It recommends that either chassis can be modified to approximate the load outs and performance of the machines in the weight class. Grasshopper, the guillotine, even an approximation of the weapons load out of the Battle Axe."

"That's not what you would suggest we do?"

"I would recommend that new iterations of the Archer and Warhammer be built with as much parts commonality as possible. Given the situation? We're, the company is going to standardize as much as possible on Dalban combined TTS and Comms suites." though he would admit some personal bias on that choice... and as they were currently shopping around that meant probably procuring those electronics from Blackwell or GM.

"Lady Yvonne also had mentioned something about a royal machine."

He frowned. The truth was this wasn't a conversation he wanted to have, simply because ... well it was complicated by the fact that much of the machines were star league technology, and the Royal Dragoon Guards were Royal not just in actual name, but in status because they'd been Hegemony troops, it was complicated. "The Machine is a Shootist, its callsign was claymore. It carries a Magna Hellstar extended range PPC," Which was 'Royal' tech, "in place of the Assault Autocannon. The Northwind government wants it because it belonged tone of the Regimental staff officers. Outside of that PPC and its armor it is not unique for the period. It does have the Shootist standard medium pulse lasers, but the pilot did drop the extended range large laser in favor of carrying two standard large laser."

"What would be the rational for that?"

It was a practical question, and not the one he had expected as her first question over the machine, "The Hellstar offers a better threat envelope. It is a particle projector cannon so it does produce additional waste heat relative to a gamma laser, but not substantively so. The machine has sufficient sinks to fire the large lasers and the Magna at anything stupid enough to come at it head on." It was true that they were less heat efficient and three weapons on target not only was a trickier but if it could be delivered then the result was more than a ton and a half of standard armor gone, and at ranges more akin to a class 10.

Alexandria denied that the Federated Suns wanted to take possession of the relic of a distant era, "They wanted Cosara to look at it. We had questions, I will pass this along." She slid the noteputer into her bag, "They're planning a parade with it... or a funeral march I suppose is more accurate, once the faire is concluded."

He wasn't surprised. The truth was the unlocking of all of this provided hi definition recordings of all the atrocities recorded by footage of the Hegemony's planetary security network. The last stand of highland regiments, and the resistance fighters and the loss of cities to orbital fires called by rimworld naval officers.

What the clan elders had not told their population ... not yet was that their sudden support for attacks on the combine stemmed from the knowledge that Minoru Kurita had provided SLDF positions to Amaris. That was without even considering the possibility of Cameron survivors in the deep periphery.

"They're knitting a mech sized shroud for it." She continued.

"As I said the Dragoons were at Christmas mass when the Rimworld attacked. The pilot of the mech was one of those killed when the nuke went off."

"Why his mech specifically?"

"From what we recovered he was the unit historian," Officially titled, "chronicler. His ward room aboard the Presidio has among other things the royal warrant of 1751 creating them 2nd​ Dragoons." Which would no doubt be the subject of great fanfare come this July, but Gene doubted they would be on Northwind to see the exhibit debut. The Highlanders had long assumed such relics had long been lost to the war if not intentionally destroyed by baathist savagery during the occupation.

Not that he'd personally found the objects. They'd been in the port in safe storage for these past two centuries and he hadn't been minding every effort in the port complex. Abner had actually been the one to piece together the significance historical of the Presidio's contents because it wasn't the sort of thing that was listed in official orders.

He did wonder what had happened to the Unit's Eagle. It had presumably been on Terra though... so the spoils of victory over the French 45th​ had likely been stolen or destroyed by Amaris's forces as many of the relics of the historic unit had been presumed to be. In fact he had little doubt that Baathist units had probably quickly appropriated the eagle only for it to then be lost as kerensky's forces had finally made planetfall on the cradle of humanity the following decade... but the truth was the eagle was the least of his concerns. He had the flight plan from Northwind that would have marked the Dragoons towards the Taurian front.
--
In a way this was probably how things were going to be for the rest of the week. The third round was ongoing but as the mechs were increasingly heavier models, though the bracket today was still firmly medium and heavy mechs, the fights lasted longer. The pilots today were slower more methodical, pacing their machines

There had been a couple of cases yesterday where maybe there had been teams, or at least pairs, but today there was no question This batch of pilots was the one to really watch. They had come in in pairs, and outright lances. In fact he was reasonably sure that was going to make them unique compared to tomorrow... where most likely all of the really individual high skill show boats were going to debut. Dante had shown him the records for some of the candidates and the top scorers of the graduating class were all slated to go at it tomorrow, with a lot of chatter already circulating over who was going to go after who.

Then they would recess for the weekend. Give time to circulate. Then it would start the second brackets. Individual duels between survivors of the mad scrambles this week, culminating in the champion bout Friday. Today was already proving different as emphasized by a pair of medium mechs opened fire from a small 'fake', it was concrete with sod layered on top if he wasn't mistaken, hill to relieve pressure on the other half of their lance.

The attrition today was faster. A lance or even a wingman piling fire on a medium mech could quickly knock it out. They had started with thirty mechs, and most of the combatants had closed to medium laser ranges almost half had been eliminated as such bracketed fire. The other half of the lance blasted through their distracted attack's remaining armor splattering the machine with blue paint as the faire marshals called a headshot even before the last gel rounds landed.

"I want the data for this class in particular." Gene said. Truthfully he was talking both to Dante, and to his staff officers. The AI was multitasking the same as the rest of them. Dante had big ambitious projections . An independent Rasalhague, and Azami state, even the if the Azami were committed to that, could break off combine attention in multiple directions. It would potentially mean freeing AFFS troops on the periphery side as well...

It was all too political for where they were now. There were battles to fight, and battles required individual soldiers. Tomorrows matches would be more show boat, in comparison the Games Commission had barely given time to this group, and he expected that Bubbles wasn't wrong the four bracket was going to be the ones that hiring agents tried the hardest to sign for... and they were probably good pilots.

"What about the important thing?" Beau asked.

He glanced down to the noteputer in front of him as Dante piped the spider drone's feed in, of an otherwise dark cavernous, "Lets just say we're going to be a very large amount of metal." As if they hadn't showed up to the exercise grounds this morning with four lances of pristine mechs. The advantage of the Archer was that Beau would be able to fold them into his missile boat familiarization course work because the basic commands and actions would be the same. He still needed to fill Bubbles and Beau on ... some important details that they still hadn't been told. He'd been putting it off.

--
Notes: The following will either be section A of 15 or will be C of 14, and will read Chang and Beau (for what its worth the Capellan and Free Worlds League natives of the company in) into some things, but we will deal with that next time.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Highland faire 15
(a)​

The doors ahead of them resembled in many respects, in all practical function the ones that safeguarded the annex that had housed the space allocated to the CID annex and had also housed Dante core. Like those large blast doors these had also had been sealed for two and a half centuries. The facilities officers had to best guess died to a man. It was possible of course that some might have survived, and perhaps some of those had dependents who survived... but even Dante had not fully grasped the destruction that the Rim World bombardment had inflicted on the planet... because no one had come and retrieved the AI even upon planetary liberation. No one had delved deep into the planet, and if there was anything. If there was any silver linings to the mass of death, and murder wrought it was that the Hegemony had likely left thousands upon thousand of tons of armor and guns to a future fight.

It was the sort of facility that highlighted the Terran castle doctrine, the fortress earth and all other ideas of protected redoubts and knowledge and technological edge to win the fight. It was from this facility that the Terran General had planned once the civilians were safely withdrawn into their shelters to withdraw himself and the SOF personnel to wait for relief.

They had never made it that far.

"How deep are we?"

It was an astute question. The Trams had taken them down a disorienting pathway. "About eight hundred meters," The difference to how this facility differed from N001 was that this installation was not nearly to the same scale. The Castle Northwind was capable of easily sustaining the minimum required two brigades.

Gene didn't want to consider how much effort that the Department of Mega Engineering had to have put into that especially as Northwind was a very early Castle Brian... and perhaps that age, being a direct successor to the original Castle concept of defense in depth had meant there was a flaw somewhere that had allowed an already compromised defense in depth to be further penetrated.

He rested a hand on the console and looked at it. Some had gotten frustrated and tried to shoot this door open or at least the console, then they had tried using charges to breach the doors... but only to leave frankly anemic smudge marks.

"Shouldn't there have been automated defenses to prevent this kind of tampering?" He asked.

The intercom crackled, "Republican forces attempted to breach the complex by subterfuge and then by human shields. Anti-personnel drones were dispatched to deal with the intruders."

As if on cue a spider limbed machine dropped down from an alcove in the ceiling its mechanical limbs clicking against the ferrocrete shoulder of the doors. In 2765 with orders detailing increasing attacks on the periphery frontier outposts of colonies, of scientific missions, and other facilities the Terran Hegemony had increasingly dispatched more and more of its forces outward.

The Hegemony had doomed itself.

Septim leaned over to look at the panel, "So if this is thing is as broke as it looks, what then? There some kind of magic trick to open it?"


A spidery limb, whirred extending an omni tool head to fix into the metal box housing. The electrical motor still took time to remove and separate out the bolts and retaining pins, and disconnect enough wires that he had to wonder what all the terminal was supposed to talk with.

Beauregard decided to sit down and watch the robot work, giving him a better vantage point as the limbs deposited the burned and pierced board to one side. An hour later a new screen came to life, and began to show a progress bar and boot. "Special Class A security profile or better required to continue. System Administrator, Voice Input required."

He pushed the starburst identity chit into the new receptacle, and opened the dog eared manual, "HAF, Lieutenant Colonel Shepherd Gene. Protocol 94-8." He remarked reading from the installation and directive. Newer systems than this model would have required using neurohelmet technology to make sure that the installation of new hardware wasn't being done under duress but that had been a program that he doubted gotten particularly far certainly not in terms of updating old facilities in the deep heart of the hegemony

The new keypad back lit, and cycled from red to green. He tapped in a series of numbers, and confirmed that the keypad was working cognizant that the turrets inset into the wall were active and tracking as he worked.

"Authentication confirmed. System Boot Successful. Access granted."

He had to wonder how much equipment the Rim World had managed to loot from starports, and warehouses on the planet. How much material the partisans had carried off into the hills. The Hegemony had been shipping vast volumes of equipment and their best frontline troops to the periphery.

"Alright people welcome to a Hegemony Armed Forces storage bunker." Mechs in the Hegemony were cheap. Better your pilot that you had spent millions of Terran dollars training made it out so you could put him in another of the same machine or an upgraded version and send them back into the fight, than worry about the machine itself. The Hegemony wanted its pilots to rotate back home and pass on lessons. It wanted Hegemony pilots to input in next generation design.

It was why Kerensky's opinions on Mech Design had been considered so important. The King Crab and the Atlas were obviously a by product of Kerensky's education at Nagelring, but they worked, they accomplished the stated objective parameters of the program. The mechs in questions accomplished the program goals. They did what Kerensky wanted them to do.

"Do you have media control?"

"Affirmative." Dante answered as they moved into the facility.

"Play timeline of the coup by major events, and intercepts earmarks." He turned back to the others as they spread out, "The following is a history lesson on how the Star League died." CID had been earmarking movements by Rimworld jumpships for years, decades before the coup. Kerensky and the Star Lord both during his minority, and after had ignored these recommendations for action, or to really follow up on them in favor of other priorities. In hindsight it was obvious that the Rim World had been preparing for war... "Whether or not Simon Cameron who was assassinated in 2751 was killed by Rim World agents is debatable." It was certainly possible but the reason that it had not been pursued was because there was insufficient evidence to say for certain who was responsible... it had been murder but the perpetrator had not left evidence sufficient to say who had done it.

... and at the time CID leadership had been more inclined to blame the Combine than to assume one of the Territorial States in the Periphery might have been responsible. Due to the implication that it might have been the combine, Kerensky has squashed the discussion by declaring the first lord's death to be a tragic accident. "With only a handful of divisions remaining in the Hegemony Amaris launched his coup seizing power on Terra . The Royal Highlander Regiment, the Black Watch under the directive of Colonel Schmitt initiated emergency protocols."

Her final orders going out even as nukes were falling on other hegemony worlds. Worlds like Northwind... and at time when Hegemony troops had been fighting Rim World troops in the periphery for months, years by that point. Amaris's secret army had been operating for years by that point, decades of arms build up, and careful manipulation.


In short barring certain details which had been classified or simply had never passed into the public record due to the extent of destruction. All of this was the public recollection of the great crisis of the human race.

"And it is from there that things,"

"Got worse." Septim interjected.

"Yes," he agreed. The Star League had already been fraying by the time of the Second Hidden war... the War of Davion Succession should have been such a clear cut black and white scenario, and it shouldn't have been possible for the star lord to bungle it so badly. The successive lords hadn't made things any better. "Which brings us to our present contract with house Davion, and where all this material is coming from."

An all too familiar HPG recording played, and while it played he looked at the empty stasis pods.

Takiro Kurita had been the Coordinator during the war of Davion Sucession, his son Minoru had started the succession wars by proclaiming himself the 'natural successor to the camerons' by the most nebulous of blood ties, and Takiro's grandson was forever remembered for the Kentares massacre.

"I may or may not be the last Gunslinger." It was possible there were other stasis pods out there, with Hegemony officers who'd frozen away to wait the passage of time. The Star League had died with the Terran Hegemony... and whether or not there were survivors of House Cameron they needed to go look at least. "Tripitz ran the Republican blockade of Terra, where she went from there we don't know, but the Black Watch had issued orders for Kerensky to immediately counter attack, we assume he did not get those orders, and because he didn't given time Amaris was able to refortify and prepare for a longer war against the SLDF that ultimately set the conditions for the succession wars."

--
Gene was glad that the last of the matches would be tomorrow. The games commission was really going all out to ritz it up, they kept comparing tomorrow's match to Solaris in the Lyran Commonwealth.

"And the cicada is looking fine?" The tech nodded, they would be going up against a lot of light mechs on Dieron. The ALF had volunteered to drop with them, and while he was sure that there were reservations on the Davion side it seemed that there was enough ISF on Azami violence ongoing by this point, in addition within Rasalhague areas in the combine, enough repression that they'd been given the green light. Still he was a little worried about the machine, "Alright the course set?" He received another affirmative.

They looked over to the gathering crowd. "I think they're getting anxious." The tech remarked.

"I'd say so."

"You do not wish to tell me what you plan to do?" The forty something year old senior non com asked after a moment.

"I want to make sure something works before I try it in live combat."

It wasn't the answer the man was looking for.

He swung into the hundred ton mech's cockpit and started the boot checks. He flipped a thumbs up to a man in bright fluorescent jacket to signal he was read and the traffic director signaled he could close up and move to the range.

Gene glanced down to the displays and focused. Cooling and heat indicators flickered into holographic displays. The Blackwell communications suite showed him the feed from the control tower and the field.

There were two principal reasons he dind't ordinarily use this technique but he did want to make sure it worked if he ever had to use it. The first was that he liked retaining the use of his medium lasers for in close work, and the second was that this wasn't as effective even with DHS when combined with the much more heat intensive Extended Range Hellstars.

Abner cleared his throat over the radio, "How are things?"

"I still would prefer the original HiRez's datafeed." He replied to the tower.

Another voice came over the line, "With respect colonel," a middle aged somewhat... nerdy voice, perhaps was the best description, spoke up, "Our test pilots suggested that was too much data inflow and that it caused lapses in pilot judgment."

He did 'the math'. HiRez II had been selected for lighter mechs like the Hornet which had been intended as an urban fighter ... having holographic displays potentially cut line of sight was undesirable. "It was a statement of preference." He replied turning master arm to on, and watching the reads turn hot.

A clock started, and he started firing cycles as targets appeared. Two minutes of continuous firing of his energy weapons and his machine was still running cool even as he pushed the Vlar 300 trhough its paces. He was running at heat neutral... if he had needed to fire his LRMs then yes that would be the limit he'd start accumulating heat as he continued to move, but as it was, he adjusted the trim and touched down on the course path that would take him to the finish point, almost six minutes ahead of par.

He tapped the comms suite, "Haqim, I'm bringing her in, check the coolant lines that's what I want to make sure of."

"Understood."

Ten minutes later he had tossed a waterproof jacket over his flight suit and shoved his hands in the front pockets. "I don't understand. I was watching the heat, I mean," Beau moved further back inside the hangar away from the rain squalling outside, "You don't sweat, but those gauges barely moved."

"I went in and slaved heat sinks to specific systems." He replied as an explanation to the greater efficiency that his marauder II, the Storm Hunter first model demonstrated on the course. It was also why on a Star League era machine he wouldn't have been concerned, but this was probably brand new version of the marauder in a whole lot more weight so he did want to make sure he hadn't risked a coolant rupture if he was going to use the technique in the field, in real combat.

Ordinarily the course was designed to take upwards of ten minutes in an assault mech because you couldn't just flat run and gun and hit the targets accurately. There had been shots he had had to make follow ups on, but he hadn't been expecting perfect accuracy.

He shook hands with Blackwell's representative. "I take you want access to the mech?"

"Yes, colonel we would," He half glanced back to another, more so than the techs. "If you don't mind."

"Go ahead, Haqim will make sure you have everything on it." He glanced over, "Chang they're going to reset the course for your run, expect a lot of light mechs."

"right." The Marauder II with two Assault auto cannons waited... and he expected that there were going to be questions about preparing everyone for Dieron.

"Once does her run we're going to start cycling the Marauder II pilots from the DMM, make sure Septim is ready," Gene glanced to the countess, and brevet general and moved to join them.
--
Notes: This is of course a reference to I think its tactical operations, for heat management by pairing heat sinks specifically to certain systems, including if you've taken an engine hit.

Spoiler

When gene finally does run into some surviving hegemony personnel its very much a 'oh of course you guys would be the ones to survive'

 

[Imperator Pax]

--

Highland Faire 15
(B)​

Gene was glad that Friday had arrived.

He was physically exhausted, mentally too. He needed this week to be over. He planned to just drop on to a couch and sleep... but that would have to wait for the weekend itself, that would have to wait for the work and the last match of the week to be over. Among the matter of work was the further observation of drill using Blackwell's combat vehicles.

The Bandits were in what was referred to as alternate configuration A. A single magna Hellstar, standard range, PPC as was found in most of the standard marauders of the succession wars era. The exercise called for them to provide direct fire support in enfilading fire while LRMs from a unit of Badgers, Aus C, fired from naturally protected cover as infantry dismounted and moved to fighting positions. These were purely light vehicle and infantry operations they didn't have 'mechs allocated for this but that was also a factor of the potential of who would be sitting in.

He had already penned the inevitable question he had expected to get. It was a fairly obvious question to ask. Why the Enforcer and not the Marauder... leaving aside that neither he nor Field Marshal Davion knew what actually went into these OmniMachines the Enforcer was cheaper and more ubiquitous in Federated Suns service. The Marauder was expensive. The Marauder was a heavy BattleMech powered by a nineteen ton VLAR 300 engine. The Marauder, in his approximation, was too expensive to use as a test bed for this program at this time. The 'Omni Enforcer' as a proposal was predominantly built around that Nissan 200 engine.

It was the engine in his opinion a consultation with the techs had resulted in the comment that that VLAR 300 engine weighed roughly as much as that Enforcer when it was stripped down to nothing but the engine and the frame. Whatever went into these pods they were going to have teething problems... it was a wonder that these Bandits, and the badgers didn't have problems... which suggested to gene that they were a mature design that the Wolfs had just handed over and managed to make roll off the factory production line without any problems... maybe that was unfair to Blackwell but he had no reason to think that Blackwell would be able to make the transition from OmniVehicle to OmniMech cleanly.

If they surprised him, then they surprised him, but it made more sense to recommend any OmniMech program would probably do better testing on a cheaper lighter medium mech.

It was not the only question he was expecting. Truthfully he would have appreciated more time to prepare the unit, and to have the techs work on the mechs they had. They had struck out on Robinson as far as hiring had went, not with ... well with the situation as Lord Sandoval had understood from the initial conditions of the 19th's invasion of the planet... but the original idea had been to make the summer faire last year. They hadn't made it and the issue was still manpower not materiel, and on a significant change.

"So when are we going to drop?" The kilted man asked.

"Not for another month. The Hussars and the," Blue Star, "Irregulars, are going to step off first," He assumed that the Federated Suns had something else, some front level theater command masquerade going on, "At least march from what I've been told." He replied to Cameron's question "They didn't tell tell you?" He asked.

"Nope."

Spring was not a clear time frame precisely. Early Spring presumably suggested leaving at the end of march. It was one jump. Pasha had already informed him that the volunteers he was screening would largely be piloting medium battlemechs like Dervish or Centurions, there were some catapults both in A and K configuration. What Pasha had not been told was the size of the Azami exodus fleet or the details of the rasalhague contingent... instead diverting to bring up that when they returned it would perhaps best to consult the computer core that had been recovered from the JumpShip that would go on to become the Cairo... he wasn't looking forward to it.

Gene had know that the CoreTech 275 was probably, if not the, then one of the most common Medium BattleMech power plants. Dervish, Griffin, Kintaro, Shadow Hawk, Wolverine, even ancient relics like Gladiators. The Nissan 200 was not quite as common but it powered Azami Mongoose, more common Hunchbacks in addition to the Centurions.

"Are you afraid they're not ready?"

"Nothing like that." Bard replied. "Its just... this stop hasn't been what I was expecting."

He thought of the Blackwatch situation... "You and everyone else." He replied, because that was the truth... the Black watch situation, the expansion in manpower, and the contingent that they were going out into the periphery... he thought of the intelligence reports all the same about the tracking of Rim World ships moving out in the black ... what was now apparent as part of the construction of the 'secret army'.

Bard seemed skeptical of his response.

Gene paused. No. It was more than just the Blackwatch the truth was he'd seriously misjudged the Combine's status within the successor states. He had assumed initially that Takashi must have been particularly egregious, a return to the bad form of Jinjiro... or maybe not that extreme, but still a bad seed.

Not that Takashi Kurita was by all indications what passed for moderate at least compared to his father Hohiro... and of course that Jinjiro and Minoru hadn't been all that different from one another in terms of war waging in the grand scheme of things. Dante was right... hindsight being twenty twenty the Hegemony should have interceded heavily on the davion side of things in the war of davion succession, but that was a long time ago.

"Yeah," He glanced up at the sky, "Lets just say complicated is an understatement." There was a noise to the side of the area, and he turned.

"Someone sounds unhappy." Bard commented.

He didn't need to base off of the physical description he'd received of the pompous man, the Duke of Errai was a dead ringer for his AFFS picture even though it was ten years out of date.
--

He'd been preparing to more or less glaze over and sit through the last of the four matches, the scrum free for all to eliminate most of the candidates because he fully expected this to be the biggest collection of glory hounds wielding by and large ancestral mechs. Gene also knew that by cracking open the facilities on Northwind that he had very likely enriched the patrimony of the various Northwind clans insure that next year's graduating class would probably have more students with their own mechs as second and third sons were provided with venerable archers and orions, and other mechs that weren't really lostech but of hegemony vintage to show off.

That was how he was understanding the planetary government was dividing up their portion of the spoils. Subdividing their portion to the great clans.

The Terran Hegemony had ruled Northwind from the early 24th​ century onward, during the latter half of which Brian Cameron had ruled the Hegemony... and for three hundred years or thereabout the Northwind Highlanders had maintained a private standing planetary army.

It was a once in a life time find by the standards of the succession war, maybe once in a generation, but frankly Gene was appalled that Northwind didn't have a larger domestic military industrial complex to support such a long standing military tradition.

He sucked down the warm tea, and watched the festivities aware that as the elites of the class prepared to take the field. What distinguished today from the previous three bouts was that they were in the Davion box, with the Field Marshal. It had been a sudden change, but one he suspected stemmed from the squabble in the pecking order of the dukes of the Federated Suns.

In that instance, if it had gotten to this point chances were it was more than just GM trying to direct questions through Septim. "I read your report over lunch." Yvonne remarked putting her own tea cup to one side. The box was large, and plush, very well furnished. Pasha was to his right, and the countess of Kestrel to the field marshal's left. "It wasn't quite the report I was expecting, at least no so soon." She had in fact been expecting data on the Marauder II and its variants, feedback, plans, and so on. "These Mercury BattleMechs?"

The Mercury had been intended to replace Wasp and Stingers in SLDF service, and while it commanded an impressive top speed it lacked the striking power of a royal Mongoose... and of course he had a sneaking suspicion that the Mercury had been a project supported by political opposition to Kerensky and thus had never received a royal version for Terran units. It was of course also possible the mercury hadn't won attention from Kerensky for the simple fact that it was a light mech.

"A pity." She replied.

It really was because the combination of the existing omni pod system for vehicles coupled with its presumable direct ancestor would have potentially sped up the possibility of an Omni Mech. It couldn't be helped. The Dragoons likely had had no need for such a machine given their specific unit doctrines. They would have had hovercraft to fulfill scouting in addition to air vehicles, allowing them to bring up heavy and assault mechs to engage the enemy. Maybe some other royal unit had had Mercury in inventory, it certainly wasn't impossible, but that a Dragoon unit somewhere else might have chosen to attach a recon company of such mechs.

The conversation paused as the first batch of competitors, including the academy's outgoing highest scoring candidate, took the field. Unsurprisingly it was the Highlander pilot. "There are a lot of those now." He bit back that he didn't understand how they'd declined in the first place... they said the first succession wars had resulted in a preponderance of attacks and attrition rate of mechs that truly boggled the mind given the design had been centuries old and every regiment in the army had had at least a lance of the assault mechs. Within a few years of the reunification war ending they'd been in wide scale production enough to start sending them into caches like the one at Robinson. "GM tells me at the time it was the largest battle mech with JumpJets."

"No, the original Pillager could manage sixty meters, two years after the Highlander," the 732, "debuted the 3 Zed added another jumpjet allowing it match the Highlander while still being ten tons heavier." which was another machine he didn't understand how it had disappeared... even more so since the original version had run off a standard 300 VLAR engine so it wasn't even a case of needing some kind of lost engine if you just wanted to go back to assault autocannons.

She hummed in response, "Yes, well one hundred ton battlemechs would bring us back around to the issue of the Marauder II." He thought about the facility he had shown the rest of the company. An empty nest left behind as its regiment had died. There were only a handful of mechs remaining in it, but that wasn't the point what had been inside were spare parts, spare gear, replacements and material. The sort of thing that could be packed up and put into crates. Taking his silence in stride, Yvonne resumed speaking, "The production of new battlemechs is a major industrial statement. I'm sure you've heard all about the effort to maintain centurion production, and competition between it and the Enforcer. Whether intentional or not you've made a thorough endorsement of Blackwell, which might together with their history with the Dragoons could be taken out of context."

"And that New Valencia is in the Crucis march, if I'm not mistaken, might also be misunderstood by the Duke of Errai." He replied, shifting in his seat, "I think brusque," as the term Lord Aaron had used, "is an understatement."
--
Notes: this will follow on with (c) with the mech fights next sunday (that is to say the 19th​.) I don't know what I'm going to do for this Sunday's update right at this moment.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Highlander Faire
15 (c)​

Field Marshal Davion's expression largely remained placid save the vaguest narrowing of the eyes, which suggested she wasn't ignorant of yesterday's ... altercation after the evaluation of the Blackwell vehicles by the cadets. An altercation that seriously undermined... well he suspected the only reason the duke of Errai was even here was because he felt entitled to something... but it wasn't a good look

The what, how and why weren't clear... but the specifics didn't matter but obviously that must have played a role in them getting camped in the Davion box. The pipes swelled at the hipowered search lights focused on the top rated students, but they were only one set of participants...

The last match had been placed in one of the training grounds for the school that hadn't been in use for the faire, and was dominated by a large false concourse of rail line complete with fake derailed train. There were some fake buildings that might or might not have supposed to have been a train station it was kind of hard to tell from here.

Whatever the case the game's commission had endeavored to make things stand out, and of course to give plenty of destructible environments around for the show. Next weeks events were to be more... perhaps not sedate, but laid out to allow one on one Mech matches throughout the course of several days each of which might last five or ten minutes if both opponents began within shooting distance of each other. Today though they had plenty of wide open spaces.

And as soon as everyone was on the field and deployed he wasn't surprised as simunitions of PPCs began to start flying.

Pasha rested a hand on his shoulder and indicated the Griffin, "She is very good." The fifty five ton mech retained the primary PPC armament.

"Its like a smaller version of a battlemaster." Septim agreed as the machine cleared ninety meters to the left. Without the machine guns, but then really what good were those in a battlemech fight in most situations. The comparison was apt though, for even though the griffin had given up its LRM capacity the trade was probably worth it, as long as the pilot knew what they were doing... it was almost assuredly a machine that had seen a lot over the course of the succession wars.

Unlike their original booth the Davion booth had terminals keeping active tracking on the judge's score calls.. and Gene doubted it was to keep the judges honest either. A series of PPC blasts knocked a warhammer out within two minutes of the buzzer.

Some of her fellow new arrivals were proving as lucky, or a s good. A Pheonix Hawk sandwiched into the left corner was down an arm, and was lucky they hadn't called an ammo breach, and likely wouldn't last much longer as a pair of heavies chased the golden mech. Whatever Gene had expected, and there was some showboating going on, but there was really less than he'd expected. He watched the two heavies chase the Pheonix Hawk down and dropping it out of contention rather than face each other both pivoted off to move towards a tartan clad heavy pilotted by one of their fellow cadets showing they were equal opportunity about ganging up on someone else.

Gene watched the feeds more than the field, not because of the scoring but because there was too much going on. If he'd been in his Marauder it would have been different... he'd been on the field with this many machines moving but that number was being trimmed down quickly... and faster than he expected. "The top scoring cadets are all avoiding each other."

"They want to fight each other one on one."

Sure... and it wouldn't have surprised him if the game commission hadn't told them to save it for those later matches given a quick glance at the noteputer provided him with the current odds, favorites and the amount of money being wagered.

In the back row behind them there was a chatter about the solaris game.

They were down from thirty mechs to twenty two... twenty one now as the games commission called another elimination with only four minutes after the starting buzzer. A victor's auto cannon dropping a lighter tartan painted mech eliminating it from the roster before the assault mech started taking PPC fire.

One of the judges' face went slack for a minute then hit his buzzer signaling he was calling a head shot on the Victor. The Machine wasn't out but the display showed the machine's head as in the red. The Victor... since this wasn't real energy weapons was trying to turn and find where his attacker had come from... which was a little hard when your cockpit was covered by simunition paint.


There was no point complaining about the kid's mistakes. He'd taken a closer quarters brawler into the open, and to be fair he probably hadn't assumed anyone would head shot his mech. That was the bigger problem over anything else he'd done wrong.

A minute later, just as the big digital display ticked five and a half, another simunition PPC packet repainted the Victor's face from where the 9 Bravo had tried to wipe the paint off the cockpit. "She's showing off." He remarked. "Waiting for him to make a move in this mess wasn't the right move." Even if it was what Combine honor duels would have required, to allow the other opposing mech the chance to do something, and to focus on him, and in ranged combat. "Are we monitoring their feeds, I assume their radios work?"

"We are, but normally we don't broadcast that." A plump short man in a kilt remarked slowly. "Beginning the colonel's pardon its more of a safety thing, sometimes the lads get a little excitable... and admittedly we've had some of the fellas... skirt the rules a bit."

"Did she challenge the warhammer or the victor to a fight or didn't she?" He wasn't ignorant that she could have called them out before the fight, but if she was going through a list... they were a little beyond showing off, and well into something else.

"I could ask." The man waffled clearly unused to this kind of request... which might have suggested Yvonne didn't ask him to do anything or requests regarding pilots were on a different sort... or just some other factor.

Gene nodded and looked back at the display as the Griffin peeled off towards its next victim. The dispersion was different, how much of that was the map's terrain forcing them to use different starting positions but there was a convergence point where the fake hills forced some of the mechs to get into close quarters. The kind of place where a mech like a Stalker, or a Longbow could just sit over the rise and throw rocks at your head from top attack. The breaks in the terrain were such that a mech with jump jets could hop, and go between cover and protection... or a mech could stand up on the hill for a little extra vantage force someone to shoot up the hill from the base or below it.

The fake railway buildings being little more than ply wood and canvas structures were not doing well either from contacts with simunition still having enough force to break them or just cadets driving mechs through the fake structures. That meant there was an increasing lack of cover from the buildings in the area around that end and with mechs congregating in that area the judges were calling hits left and right.

"That was a bad choice, if they keep this up they'll have the quota."

Two 'mechs went down as they moved into close quarters blocking the road access and boxing in another six mechs representing a substantial number of remaining mechs on the field, right as the Stalker came over the hill within its SRM range, and the pilot behind the yoke of the 85 tonner didn't waste any time running his mech hot with SRMs, his large and medium lasers, taking advantage of the boxed in smaller mechs and before the judges had called it the pilot had knocked all of them out, and seized top spot for individual mech kills in the match.

"This is the kid going to the Crucis Lancers I take it."

"He is." Yvonne replied. "I take it he meets with your approval."

"Certainly you could do a lot worse," He replied. The new subaltern would have six months before he was brevetted to lieutenant time in that rank after which he'd probably be confirmed to the rank within his posting to the 7th​ Crucis Lancers.


He watched the names and the scoring go up. By knocking out the mechs, they weren't eliminated, they did take a score penalty, which was probably going to effect who they went up against next in the one v ones that would start next week. He tuned out the narration, and glanced at the clock that read just shy of seven minutes. Not the fastest of the four but faster than he'd been expecting.

The one v ones next week would take longer four sets of advancements, four brackets even if every match was as expected to be in size of a few hundred meters starting where they'd be short and brutal it could still take ninety seconds. Four matches on monday... well they'd see.

"So what is one the schedule now Field Marshal?"

There was a pause. "Realistically the volunteers should be your priority, but for the moment and think an early dinner will suffice, and discussions about how to prepare."

 

[Imperator Pax]

Highland Faire 16​

Field Marshal Davion was right they needed to focus on the DMM troops.. but it wasn't that simple, because they were in uncharted waters as to how to handle this from a training and logistical side of thing. "I did say that the Archer was perhaps the most common 'mech in Terran service." Gene replied flipping over the list, "And the Highlanders were iconic to the Hegemony as well," Or to mercenary based from the Hegemony's neck of civilized space... but it was understandable that Northwind's clans had all but scrambled for the totem mech. "We should have the next set of trams offload tonight so I think we should be settled until then."

Septim paused, deciding to change subjects, "So I got mail from home." He paused, and leaned back crossing his arms over his chest, "My family they heard about Elidere."

Gene leaned forward folding his hands, "You're from the Lyran Commonwealth." It wasn't really a question so much as a statement of the fact.

"Right... I know the plan is to go back to the periphery."

Gene paused considering his words, "Septim, if you need time off I can give it to you, I'll need a time frame, but I can see to it you're free as soon as we're done fighting on Dieron. The Azami need our dropship collars, the extra space, extra supplies for going out to the periphery... and lets be honest. It will be easier to do repairs here, than try and effect repairs either enroute or only after we get back there."

Septim appreciated the understanding, but at the same time. "Its really okay?"

"Its more a matter that I need a time table to work around. If I need to I can sit close to Terra and deal with the GM and Blackwell people... and,"

"The Landhold talks?"

Gene wasn't prepared to commit to that. He didn't have the manpower for that, and of course, "The Davions would prefer I settle somewhere that they can vet. The clans would prefer I settle on Northwind... I suspect that the recommendation,"

"Is Kestrel." Dante's voice interrupted, the AI clearly a bit testy at the notion.

It wasn't a suspicion. The AI was in the Davion's data networks. He suspected that the AI agreed with his human natives of Northwind that the planet was preferable. Gene pursed his lips into a narrow line. In fact it was more than the AI was in the data networks he was actively monitoring their employers... and everyone else presumably at the fairy. The Machine was carefully guarding his homeworld more actively than he had been in centuries. As a result there were a variety of details that were being tabulated, and run to generate odds.

It had probably been from the implication of those reports, though it did not appear explicitly stated in documents that that might have been the intention all along. It wasn't definitive, because of initially the Draconis March's dukes... in the system of Elidere as well as on Robinson... and of course New Avalon wasn't an option simply for the optics it would conveyed. It would have looked a little high handed.

"There are talks going on, but nothing is definitive at the moment. I also plan to bring the Highland units back here after we rotate off Dieron in order to let the cadets decompress. That will give us some time. If you need to send a message planning for a where and when, then now is the time."

Beau cleared his throat. "We gonna talk about the Landhol', Or back about mechs, bushwhacking snakes?"

"Something in particular?"

Beau shrugged, "We have a lot of archers, so we should be good. I mean as it was the lrm sections have been pretty squarred away, anyway. Unless you want to complain about ten tube launchers to General Kersten."

He'd only been pointing out that an LRM 10 was inefficient in terms of mass, and that he didn't think the Eridani choice to downgrade from the LRM 15 the Thunderbolt ordinarily ran was a particularly good idea... not the least of which was because it was decrease in throw weight. "Nothing we can do about that how are things we the LRM carriers?" Or specifically the new drivers.

"No problems we're good. They're green, but they understand the game we're playing." Beau detailed that he planned to lay out a combination of missile boat mechs from the volunteers along with their LRM equipped vehicles to screen. "I think we will be okay."

That was good. He glanced at the clock. A look mirrored by the others, "Feel free to go grab beers, we're done." They shuffled out, then Septim paused and stepped back in. "What?"

"This, about Bahar's group."

"I'm going to take the twelve sunday." He replied thinking back to the conversation with the Field Marshal.

"No I knew that, I meant how are the Highlanders ... we have have so many of them." He meant Northwind natives, though they did have a handful of the totem mechs in inventory.

He shrugged, "They haven't said anything yet," It was only a matter of time, "But it was frankly too late to focus on adding more to the group. Has there been any more problems with Rio?"

"He's fine, I think Bard has the kid on a short leash." Septim replied, then glanced to the dark eyed woman.

The Mongoose pilot shook her head. "He still talks too much, but thats not surprising."

Septim bit down a snort. It was no secret that Bahar was no slouch in close quarters. An SRM 6 at close range... inside a football field was really no space at all to get away, and with HEDP or Inferno a machine carrying ammunition of its own would have a bad day. It would have been better if the Mongoose, ferro fibrous or not, had been larger and more armored but it was a very much high skilled machine. "Take them into the upper levels of the Northwind castle there are training pods there, I'll have Dante clear them for programs that should help."

"Like Gunslinger programs?"

"No, the MechWarrior Advanced Gunnery Course." Dante stated from his speaker box as Gene punched up the syllabus in the noteputer. "I'll need to make adjustments for their non standard machines, give me twenty four hours."

There was a pause as they tried to move through the doorway and out into the adjoining office / lobby / living room space without trampling over the ELH officers. They must have heard at least part of the last bit of the conversation. "You should warn them they're up for two weeks of hell." The Eridani major remarked.

"Yeah, why's that?" Septim asked, the lyran glanced back and forth to the Light Horse Officer.

"Exam requires a hundred percent to pass." The major remarked, "You have a master gunner's certification colonel, you tell the captain how it is."

Gene shrugged mimicing the amicable man's tone, "Master Gunner's course is Thirty nine days, six exams. Am I to assume, General Kerston wants the testing program then."

"The Eridani," Funny how it was the Eridani right now instead, 'the star league', but he didn't say that, "Doesn't have a copy in our library so the General did send me over to borrow a copy."

He shrugged moving into the larger space, "Come by Sunday, I'll have a rom for Hegemony Mech models." Which actually meant he was going to pull them from Dante's library of tradoc related materials... but that still would run into the problem that course work had been developed in packets specifically because the SLDF ran whole units at time, and typically lances, of single model battlemechs. It would be one thing to run a Marauder, or an Archer through the course as in weapons terms their load out had not changed over the succession wars. To the best of his knowledge the Grasshopper had never had an Advanced Gunnery Course planned, and without that he doubted a master gunner course likely hadn't either. The 7A probably hadn't either, but since that mech only carried a Large Laser and was explicitly a scout platform it shouldn't have been as difficult... but still he doubted the League had ever gotten to it... never mind the version of that machine that had actually entered production for the successor states.

Dante made a rasping cough, scoff approximation over the speaker. "They'll lack the instructors to run the course." The scottish machine spirit remarked.. and he was right the advanced level courses were more than just semi smart tests to simulate conditions they were supposed to be tests with skills being passed on from the field from instructor to learner. There was an ample classroom time component in addition to the field exercises. The Hegemony had an expectation that classes would all pilot the same mech that was why they were focused on specific models.

There were exceptions in the Gunslinger material but even there, there was an emphasis on PPC gunnery because that weapon class tended to be the preferred weapon of both the program as well as its key opposition; in the Combine Ronin. The problem there was apparently somehow the Succession Wars had had problems with PPC technology, in production, and installation in new machines. The technology wasn't LosTech by any means but production hadn't kept up with demand and it wasn't a simple plug and play system compared to say running an LRM box to a fire control system. He didn't understand it.

They didn't have time to worry either.
--
Sunday arrived a little earlier than he'd have liked, but the sleep had helped. He was decompiling material still, but planning for Dieron was hard without specifics. There were more political questions cropping up. This wasn't just taking a provincial capital either. This wouldn't cut the Combine off from Terra, the one jump from Terra mark... it certainly wouldn't prevent HPG transmission ... but it would force ComStar to restructure apparently... and that was something that apparently was a point of concern within Davion command.

The general suspicion was that though ComStar professed neutrality the order was not above national sympathies. To that end in papal terms, obviously a FedSuns Primus, loyal to New Avalon or at least sympathetically inclined would have been best, but it would be good enough to have a Lyran or even a Free Worlds League Primus than one from the Capellans or the Combine.

Gene was a little surprised that the office of primus wasn't a terran dominated position, but ComStar was not the Ministry of Communications. They were techno cult holding things together with duct tape and prayers... suggesting that with the League's collapse the mother doctrine had probably cut both ways.

He looked at the twelve Davion pilots. "We're moving forward with your training. The next two weeks will focus on a program of advanced gunnery qualifications. You'll be in class a lot." It was best to just be blunt with them, let them know what they were in for, the Thunderbolt pilot was already groaning, and Bard didn't look especially enthused. "This is not going to be an easy or routine course work. You want to pass the exam at the end of it you need to hit every target." The holographic projector triggered. "That means if you are using an autocannon or missiles you will need to make the decision of what is the best weapon for a given target. There will be known and unknown ranges. So in preparation for what I'm sure you will hate tomorrow is we're going out into those muddy flats for mech exercises."

Alexandria shrugged out of the rain jacket she was wearing over her piloting suit, and looked at one of the standard Marauder II assault BattleMechs.