Battletech: The Ghost Who Walks (Battletech Isekai)

[Imperator Pax]

Highland Faire 17​

The first bouts were.. weren't scripted per se, but they much more formalized than the free for all format that the melee's clearing houses had been in. For one the participants had been expected to follow civil etiquette and salute one another from their respective starting position. It wasn't specifically a Davion thing but he suspected that it was more part of the spectacle than anything else. The sets were tallied up by points won in the free for all... and that meant most though not all of the competitors who had advanced were pilots who hadn't been knocked out during those first four scrums.

The matches Monday had themselves averaged a surprising between five and seven minutes. The scoring was a bit more game like and there was more play in the bout. It was easier to focus on just the one guy in front of you. While not alphabetical, the first two scrimmages had been organized close enough, first half of the alphabet, second half, the latter two had originally been lower half, and the top scorers. That had turned into something of a scandal because the subsequent knock out of pilots in Friday's match had eliminated pilots who likely would have gone on, by points.

The games were an important ritual though, and they went on, even if there had still been some grumbling about it. Gene put the comms transcript aside, and looked at the surly teenager. Then to the Rasalhague Assault Mech pilot.

Soren piloted ... well what had started life as a Ymir 3 Alfa but the last two hundred years hadn't been good to the machine as it had sort of backed tracked along the way to its 2 Echo roots. Yusuf had said the Hermes 360 in the Machine had a manufacturing date from 2601 and had probably come out of a Hegemony Militia Mech. It had a pair of Fusigon PPCs as its primary armament, and ran hot even with DHS installed.

He wasn't surprised that the Griffin pilot had actually challenged her opponents in order, or that she'd gone into the match with that in mind... with that sort of plan. She seemed confident bordering on unreasonably cocky that she'd make the finals. He suspected that was probably in part based off of having survived starting in the deep end with the top ranked pilots, but it certainly reminded him of Rio's attitude.

That was only part of the problem. Free Rasalhague was the other one. Rasalhague had been one of those by products of the exodus from terra in the 23rd​ century, a blip that might have faded into history if what might have just been seen as queer early exodus colonial parochialism that might had turned into a national identity that had never existed historically. That was to say that Combine had through a pattern of cultural repression and driving a literate educated populace underground had insured that the idea of a rasalhague national identity had survived. More than survived thrived as an expatriate community, a literary movement, and militant factionalism.

The combine's attempts to go out of their way to crush competing social identities the more hardy those identities became... self defeating was maybe was the best even description...

That said it was still a little difficult to take seriously claims to represent the Principality in Exile... especially when the claims on what world were natural Rasalhagian was somewhat grandiosely nothing short of the entire Military District.

Of course it was entirely possible that Soren's bosses were banking on talking big would win them points, or that it would cause them to be taken more seriously. There was no telling how real their profession of local support was... but they did have money, and manpower and equipment and they had support from other groups. The azami endorsement of their character was a plus, at least so far as he believed Pasha in that the old JumpShip captain held that it was sincere.

He was also pretty sure that Soren Holmgren was volunteering for this because if they succeeded in taking Dieron it might not only win Davion support for their political ambitions... it would them kudos and recognition more broadly. A rasalhague contingent at Dieron, a victory or even just a presence against the combine would be a statement. A political statement. A potentially very loud political statement.

In order to participate though they needed a structure. There were no shortage of mercenaries in the inner sphere, and as in the star league era before it the succession wars had plenty of mercenary outfits that were little more than private military arms of the patron noble house or corporation that sponsored them... actually that was perhaps both more or less common now depending on how one looked at it. The more things changed the more things stayed the same, but again the problem was that Rasalhague wasn't a recognized government. The movement to which Holmgren and friends belong also couldn't just register as mercenaries for a corporation that might being paying them either... not unless they were willing to risk their backers getting the full attention of the ISF or possibly even combine regulars.

That left enrolling as mercenaries under an existing company for the purpose of learning the trade, and in truth learning the trade of arms to ideally serve as the center piece of a future free Rasalhague state. How much they'd been banking on riding out into the periphery with the azami going out there to work in the periphery, a distance out from Combine scrutiny and presumptive retaliation was unclear but a chance at an active strike at the dragon was probably too good to pass up.

This was in what history, what annals, and chronicles of the company... a Highlander brought in tradition would record as establishing Bardiche. In historical record more broadly it would be the day that the Rasalhague government reaffirmed its signature on the Ares Conventions originally signed as a nominally independent power in 2412... though its signatore had been a member of House Kurita... which of course no one had been ass enough to bring up.

"We'll start intake procedures for pilots, your mechwarriors will go through the same familiarization course as the highland cadets. With minor modifications to accommodate for outfitting the Battalion. I'll have you a berth aboard the San Saba prepared."
--
Septim looked like he was going to break the stylus as he attempted to compose the monograph, presumably to his kinsmen back home. The Highlander officers were currently engrossed in a conversation over the contents of the caches here and on Robinson, and on Elidere with Bard as the rain continued to shake the windows.

Considerations for the expansion of the unit were going to be complicated... Gene had to question why the Hegemony had never acted more forcefully to encourage the break up of the Combine. It made little sense. The limits of KF drives and the perpetual belligerence of the Combine had always been topics of discussion. The lack of a clear indictment over who was responsible for the assassination of the second to last Star Lord, and the previous Davion succession crisis had been too late to effectively act on... the Hegemony had lacked strong leadership by the end. By 28th​ century the Hegemony had been too unwilling to act, and whether the Hegemony even could have been saved was a pointless what if.

What was left were the Hegemony's weapon stocks and that they could be used against the Combine... maybe Rasalhague could succeed, become independent. Maybe the Azami too. Maybe it'd just weaken the combine more. The odds were too hard to calculate but they were still favorable enough in terms of making the combine's life hell that Dante was willing to throw the dice.

"Even distributing some of the Rasalhague pilots with the Storm hunters, we don't have enough assault mechs to stand up another Dragoon Battalion." It wasn't as if the Rasalhague didn't have some mechs of their own to contribute, but they'd most likely have organize those into Scout Lances, which would overlap them with the lighter mechs that the Azami would likely be adding... that was actually probably a good thing... but Pasha was still in conference with the exodus fleets elders about where they stood with their own forces.

He'd seen estimates for exactly how many civilians were up there... and transporting that many people to the periphery was going to put them on a time table just for the simple facet of keeping them fed, and also with regards to water... but also staying in one place for too long might attract unwanted attention from the combine.

Mercenary units were rarely mono ethnic in the periphery. People came out to the periphery in order to get out of the Inner Sphere... there was a little more homogeneity in the Inner Sphere, but that got back to how many merc units were corporate security or some noble's private bully force Active working mercs were more likely to be a combination of different national origins, but there was that and then there was... well there set up.

Dieron would be the real test.

"There is also the matter of hiring pilots into the company itself."

They had slots open, and she was just talking mechs never mind the whole armor issue. "I know." He replied to Bahar's statement, "What's your opinion?"

"She's reckless. I think she has great potential, but she's very angry, and that could get her killed in a real fight."

He tapped the application for hiring the Griffin pilot, and her surviving retainer. "Is that a yes?"

"Its a yes."

They'd been planning originally to make hiriing offers to the participants after the the games concluded but nothing about this trip was remaining static in terms of planning. "I'm not entirely comfortable at this stage reading her in on events that lead into the first succession war."

"It probably wouldn't matter. The dragon has committed an extreme breach of personal honor in its actions, I doubt she's at a stage where she's consciously processed that misfortune never mind crimes committed by generations past." He nodded in concession to the point even as he thought back to telling Septim about the the things during the lead into the battle for Elidere IV. It was not unreasonable to assume that regardless of present employment or indeed perhaps because of it, the Lyrans military and intelligence services would want statements.

They weren't likely do anything untoward, but Septim would probably be asked questions about the success of Elidere, and the condition of the Combine's forces in real combat. Only Septim would know how he was going to answer those questions. It was a risk, but throwing a look up towards orbit, and the artificial stars in the afternoon sky. "We have a lot of people who are going to need to be moved." That meant supplies, an exodus from the inner sphere, meant a lot of supplies. He was sure that the Azami had made progress towards that, but he also knew that the road to Alamut was long, and that they were hoping to pad that reserve out, so they'd need time, after Dieron.
--
Notes: Dieron as I've said is going to be a fairly short arc, it covers a small chronological period of time, but it has a significant outsized effect on what it sets up for. It is among other things a demonstration that Elidere was not some fluke. It is also a major feather in the FedSuns cap for other reason and it has major knock on effects in the wider Inner Sphere and in particular for going forward.

While its not definitive, the outlines are not concrete yet, the events on Dieron shape how the 4th​ Succession war plays, it shapes the clan invasion when that occurs... at least it does in the current versions, and we will get to that.

Spoiler

And regarding the clan invasion what will probably happen is that there will be a breakdown of large polities into smaller ones because Jihad... but more of that will be set up for in, hinted at in Smoke Jaguar 2 in the extras segment because well decade in the future.

But yeah post dieron there are some travel stuff, and then a time skip to allow for Jump Travel distances to the periphery and what not and the pirate wars start. While the Pirate Wars are going on we will probably get some follow on from the Davion side of things from Yvonne and Kersten (we're actually missing a few Kerston segments that just never got finished) as well as ComStar and Wolf Dragoons stuff.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Highland Faire 18​

Truthfully he would have liked to have said that the Faire was ... that they'd been able to network with other mercenaries... but the truth was it hadn't. Part of that was their existing contract with the Davions, and the invasion, which was what he was dealing with at the moment.

Gene punched up the Davion's files for Dieron, the Azami data, and the historic data that ... went back to both the second succession war as well as to earlier, including the hegemony files. Fortress Dieron being intact was what worried him. It had been abandoned when Clancy had gone, so he had locked the facility... but theoretically the wolf dragoons, or even for that matter the Eridani probably could have accessed the facility or gotten the AI to open the door for them if they'd known to ask.

... and the Eridani were not the only SLDF unit that had turned mercenary, far from it as he was finding out, and of course there were people out there with less scruples than Abner, who could have Star League credentials. Then of course there... weirdos like the knights of ST Cameron... and he had know idea how they'd respond to a Hegemony AI.

Invading Dieron wasn't going to be easy. Invading a planet never was, never mind one with five billion people. They needed break the combine forces quickly. Try and take the capital... but Dieron was a mountainous planet. There were not a lot of good places to land, there was really only one place to land and that was west of the capital of San Martin where you could actually drop to the planet's surface offload an invasion force of any substantive number, mass and then go overland against the capital.

"Can it be done?"

"Of course it can be done," He replied to Pasha's question. The bigger question was could they hold Dieron... but that like the question of defending forces was a matter of what forces were available... which was part and parcel of why the Davions intended to drop the mech force as it was... the mech force they had planned before the 'Caches, and the volunteers swelled their ranks. The succession wars had worn down the number of BattleMech regiments that were in service... and what they had available. The truth was, "As soon as Elider happened, or resolved I should say," given that the Makios duke had spent the liquid capital in order to pay for live communications, "The Davions probably were putting plans into place."

The Davions had a thin materiel advantage in numbers of regiments and were banking that chauvinism aside that the Combine wouldn't strip the Commonwealth border of units, especially with Rasalhague worlds proving restive. Whether that would be born out remained to be seen, but the bid to take Dieron was something that the Davions had run the math for, and especially with Mercenaries padding their numbers considered practical. That the Davions were trying for some mad dash to completely cut from the Terran corridor, much as they might have wanted to, suggested they had a good idea of what they could and couldn't sustain.

What they could take and hold.

That was also in part why the Davions were hoping to recreate Elidere if possible. Minimal losses to FedSuns aligned forces, maximum losses to Combine Forces. In part that was what Altair was aimed at as well, aiming to destroy combine regulars with more standard Davion forces. Every little bit would help, but investing Dieron provided the opportunity to devastate both a Sword of Light Regiment, and also a training cadre of future mechwarriors before they could come online. Inflicting those losses would mean not only would combine losses entail elite troops, it would also damage their replacement capacity... if they succeeded then the combine would be forces to stretch units, the units they had left even thinner...

"It is unlikely that the Lyran commonwealth would move to take advantage of this."

"That might be why the Davions are willing to give Rasalhague," And their bombastic claims, "The time of day," If the RMD's ethnic rasalhague units elsewhere in Combine space switched sides, or just started getting into shoot outs with the ISF or whomever on the Combine side because there was an idea that there was going to be an independent or a restored Rasalhague that would seriously mess up the combine.

What Pasha couldn't promise was that the Arkab legions would change sides. It was one thing for the Azami community to agree to allow clans, even collections of clans to peacefully leave, it was another to brook open rebellion... and that was understandable given the Combine's historical success of putting down rebellions.

Surely some of that was also that not everyone remained committed to the historical memory of the Star League, and humanity's golden age versus surviving in the reality of the present Inner Sphere, and its political situation. The Azami ... lack a coherent nationalist rhetoric a desire to have their own independent state at least in comparison to the ambitions of Rasalhague.

... and both, or even just one of those would be enough of a headache. If the Combine splintered then there was going to be nightmare... because for all that had changed compared to the Star League the Succession wars, the states competing to succeed the hegemony in the position of preeminence of human states at the heart of human space, none of them had simply sloughed off entire ethno-nationalist successor realms. If that started happening... well it had the potential to get very bad very quickly, even by the standards of the succession wars... but that wasn't Gene's problem... because Dante was right it was hard to be worse than the combine

... well unless the clans invaded.

Or as it turned out someone decided to try and recreate Amaris's empire in the periphery... but who would have predicted that.
--
Gene looked over the crowded mass all occupied by the assembled hundred tonners. The Marauder IIs were unique to the Company outside of the Wolf Dragoons who had 'helped' Blackwell develop them... and it was hard to miss the tartan badging applied to a lance of the standard configuration 'mechs.

Seeing that look Cameron elbowed him in the ribs, "What do you have a different clan tartan. There is a Shepherd's check-" Gene tuned him out, because they'd been through this. The tartan piping on the mechs was a temporary applique, it would be replaced once the final insignia for the Highland Mech Battalion was ... finalized, accepted whatever what one wanted to call it. There were stylistic issues with sword and wolfhound for putting on BattleMechs uniformly, and then putting them on file with the MRB.

He had absolutely put his foot down at talk of trying to use the Rakkasan snake eater ibis motif that his White Horse had in its parade configuration... but even that intransigence might well eventually fail if the unit continued to grow at this rate over the next year. That was the big thing, they survived the significant lethal period of a merc company, and were now in the big leagues with the slate recruitment... it was just that recruiting was unique.

"What are you going to do about the Swedenese?" Cameron asked.

It was a valid question, "We'll see how well they hold up on Dieron, but I'll run their units in the same scope as everyone else... and if nothing else," Gene stated, "As missile boats it will provide us a fires advantage." Running part of the Rasalhague contingent as scouts would be dangerous, there was no point pretending otherwise... invading a planet was dangerous work, "I want to be able to put as many missiles onto Combine squares as possible before we close to engage."

Truthfully he was hoping they could force the enemy to engage them west of the city in and along the Kazakh valley where they would have to drop in order to have enough flat open space to utilize Fury, and Alacorn gauss rifles from dug positions of ambush. Whether they would would or not, they wouldn't know until they were planet side.

The conversation froze as the machines started, and a handful of cadets from the Highlander's academy made their way to the machines for their first test of the assault mechs. Beyond the barricade they had just passed through at the observation deck were the mass of onlookers from various participants of the Faire, both mercenaries and corporate.

"Why the 3D and not one of your versions."

"Simplicity." He replied, "The 3D is an entirely reasonable modification to the Marauder," Accepting the loss of DHS and ferrofibrous, and frankly replacing it with Lamellor armor was understandable change from Royalist machines, "The 4A," The Marauder II, "Addressed the heat curve issue," For unskilled pilots, which frankly as a machine the 75 ton Marauder shouldn't have been issued to anyway, "It doesn't completely eliminate that, but realistically that's a necessity." If you had to fire everything actually were in a situation where that was warranted them that was the case.

Naturally Bard brought up the routing trick, he'd demonstrated on the fire course... the same course that the cadets were about to take on. The range master cleared them, and the lights from their vantage point greened, and a clock started with the first Marauder II took a step forward and then accelerated into the track. "They're not going to beat your time."

"I don't expect them to do that, I expect them to do their best on the course." And then shrugged, as he watched the reports from down range, repeated the gesture, "The 4A or one of my Hunters or a Hammer are all assault mechs. 19 ton engines, and good armor coverage." If he needed to rerun the course in a 4A to demonstrate that you could do it in a factory Marauder in that time, with that demonstration of piloting acumen then fine. "Dieron is going to be the first real combat, and they won't be on the back line they'll be up front in real mechs, facing real opponents with probably years of experience."

When they had run the DMM participants who had been allocated MAD IIs they had done fine they could do better, but the mistakes were understandable. Either too slow or too fast more often than not. "Do you think the Eridani will start procuring themselves some?"

"I think Kerston is going to try... I don't know what the relationship is like between Blackwell and the Dragoons are... but I get the feeling that Blackwell's CFO," And probably the CEO felt the same way, "Thinks they should at least try and get the Dragoons consent, which GM is already suggesting that they should be able to produce the Marauder II." But that was for the lawyers to fight out, and for royal patronage and what not.

... and speaking of patronage, the Field Marshal, well Field Marshals since the duke of Robinson were both coming over... even with the crowd parting it would take them a couple of minutes, "So why did you paint them?" Bard asked as they waited.

"What, oh due to the interactions of the neurohelmets, pilots actually see positive improvement and reinforcement to the mech's appearance."

"I'm sorry did you just say that a pilot gets better based on how his mech is painted?"

That's was a... a bad description, "Pilots respond to tactile, and perceived features while connected to the machine. The tartan is reassuring, and that comfort helps improve synchronization at least in a statistically significant number of mechwarriors."
--
Notes: Obviously Rasalhague will be a thing, not strictly as it was in canon, but that will happen, and frankly because I am of the opinion that the successor states probably should have broken down or lost pieces to movements sooner, if it was going to happen. The skye, and tamar and what not all felt really shoehorned in with how it was handled.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Highland Faire 19​

When you got right down to it the it was somewhat baffling that someone hadn't tried to well do a lot of things with what was feasible on the Marauder Chassis. Why no one had reinforced it before... particularly given historical Star League era examples was a little shocking... but now that Blackwell had done that... chances were good anyone who could still manufacture Marauders would theoretically be in a position to domestically produce an assault mech version... but that would take time... and money... and money was probably one of the potentially limiting factors at least in terms of capital expenditure to just get started and develop a prototype.

Was that worth it?

That would depend on a manufacturers unique situation.... and Gene wasn't an industrialist. He wasn't sure how you weighed that kind of decision or justified to a bank or whoever was putting up the equity.

Score tally posted. "that's not bad." Bard observed.

"That's a good sign actually." He replied. The Marauder II was a new mech, and he doubted that most of the cadets had either much time on the original or on an Assault Mech that was similar tothe Marauder II's armament. "Twelve minutes for a first run on this course is not bad at all." Elidere as a campaign was a contract, a payout worth a significant amount of money. The salvage value receipts were still being calculated, and god that would probably really need lawyers to really be sure, but the AFFS had picked up the bill... and rather than just pay it out as cash, they were pumping into Blackwell to buy up production of machines to turn over to the company. That was going to take time, they wouldn't, weren't likely to get the next shipment of vehicles they were allocated until after they hopefully came back from Dieron in one piece.

... and if they succeeded in pulling Dieron off... well that was the whole point of a merc's gig anyway, it was to get ... well what was the legalese? ... 'material compensation substantially in excess of that promised or paid to combatants of similar ranks and functions in the armed forces of that Party'...

"You think these will make the difference, then?"

"I think they'll help." They wouldn't be something that the Combine would be expecting... but the Combine likely wouldn't be expecting the greatly expanded Davion Force the plan had been to hit them with a significant force to begin with, they were just ... increasing the margins, "The Field Marshal is serious about this request to do as much damage to the Sword of Light."

"That's a dangerous job."

The best idea would be to wear them out as much when they inevitably counter attacked... if they attacked them... "There is a chance they'll go for the Guards, and we can catch them in a pincer maneuver." If they were already engaged then it'd give them the opportunity to advance the Pillagers into close quarters and at flank angles ... it was an appealing prospect.

"You've got an evil look on your face."

"We're going to have to see what happens, won't we?" He replied, they were interrupted in continuity as the swollen bearded highlander Lieutenant Colonel arrived ahead of them.

"What are the chances you'd let them use one of these in later melee bouts?"

The question caught him off guard, "I'd advise against it," To be frank the machines were too new, leaving aside impressions, "But I would imagine that that would be for the games commission to decide." certainly he would have assumed that you in theory continued with the mech you started with but if that wasn't the case then it raised up a host of other questions. Not that it didn't make sense that with the Faire's typical structure there was a general expectation that you'd have more assault mechs... the upset in the last of the large scrimmages probably left the Commission wanting to spice things up.

"And?"

"Well, Little Lord Rio is proving to be something of a loud mouth." He half considered feigning shock, but it would have been too ridiculous. Cameron shook his head picking at his ear idly. "Truthfully with the way these things go its not unusual to have adult matches, its just a little different this year... I'm actually surprised you haven't... from what I understand Bahar, and Hanzo both have their share of challengers."

They hadn't said anything... but he also wasn't surprised... they had managed to avoid having to fight duels with the locals after ... and well Robinson... "So I take its because of the delay?"

"It doesn't help the situation... but this year is different... the Combine getting a thrashing and the Davion's going on the offensive, aye people are a special sort of anxious."

It made sense though that the Davions would be interested to see how the hundred tonners would perform in the later stages of the squires tournament. For their own reasons, they too wanted to see how the Blackwell Assault Mech performed, preferably in its base configuration, but they weren't going to oppose variants being used.

Gene frowned a bit, "If we're going to go that far... I'd want to go ahead and transfer candidates to our Hegemony Mechs from the cache get them off Academy mechs entirely. The sooner they transition to standard machines the sooner they'll settle in."

Which admittedly was not how, he was given to understand the the tourney was supposed to operate... but they had a planet to liberate...

They discussed the issue. The problem with changing thing, with the Hegemony machines was in standard mechs like the Archer wouldn't go well in the tourney configuration. Gene watched the final rankings go up. The same displays were mirrored on his noteputer which then changed as Dante started running Hegemony program evaluations and modelling different scoring metrics from their performance. Bard cocked his head at the techno wizardry of the screen's dancing pixels.

"Is that better or worse than us?"

By us he meant the DMM portion of the invasion force. That was comparing apples to oranges, and he replied as much, before pausing to watch the countess's dusky expression, "Anyway, its not the same thing. We really won't know until we actually make contact with the enemy. The training we can do now is how we can prepare for working through any complications on the ground."
--
When you got right down to it, the press releases tended to emphasize Elidere IV. It had been the larger share of the fighting of course, but there were other reasons. As a part of the campaign the fighting on Ander's moon had achieved strategic to the campaign goals... but people watching the holos of the combat roms didn't give a shit about how the maneuver had insured that the Combine advance on Ander's ducal capital couldn't be pressed, or that by interrupting that advance is kept the combine from being able to force the duke into a head on engagement.

Most people just wanted to watch the duels between mechwarriors, and that was it. If it was just the fighting there were details that were lost, but the combine's dueling culture ... well ignoring propaganda that tried to claimed two thousand years of history going back to the bushi of Heian era Japan... which Gene found absurdly ridiculous it was true that the samurai, and their martial forbearers had been a part of an urban literate society whose elite had practiced a lot of dueling... but there was a difference between one on one with a sword and giant stompy robots.

Similarly Omi Kurita's seminal work, the original first edition of the Honorium... or for that matter the daughter of the Combine's founder's death predated the first test of the mackie by over sixty years. Certainly having read the book, and that Omi generally opposed wanton bloodshed... and supported a prototypical notion of limited war in the vein of the Ares Conventions ... in so far as her opinion on the use of strategic grade ordinance on population centers... it was hard to suggest to that she somehow could foresee the coming of the BattleMech.

The First Edition was very clear. Taking prisoners, and treating them well was entirely honorable. You shouldn't molest civilians. The treatise was written... penned in ridiculously flowery archaic even by 24th​ century standards language but the general expectation was that honor entailed filial piety and respect for others. It was neo Confucian and zen at its core and certainly part of the neo feudal traditions of exodus space colonization , but it was was as he had noticed very different in key passages from the modern editions... in ways that simple grammatical changes and word differences didn't explain.

That wasn't to say that the Combine of the 24th​ century had been nice, or not prone to aggressively warring and conquering their neighbors. They were just less bad than the Combine of the modern era... the 24th​ Century Inner Sphere... had been a pretty unpleasant lawless place.

So on Ander's moon the Combine had accepted the duel and made sure that things were above board... and in the official media, and recordings for both sides... there were no indications that Gene had prepositioned gauss rifle equipped drone combat vehicles surreptiously near enough that if things went side ways the 2nd​ Battalion 19th​ Galedon Regulars would get very far. That didn't make it into the public record.

People who watched the full record saw honorable conduct, saw honor duels being largely satisfied up until basically the arrival of overwhelming Davion relief forces Jumping into the System. That was the picture that was painted.

Ford nodded, "Most people can't read it."

"Hmm," Gene glanced up to catch the Lyran businessman who... well very interested in Blackwell's assault mech... the man wore non descript suit in vaguely late 19th​ century german continental styling's... it was fancy, big epaulettes, but not ridiculously so in the face of what other people were wearing... there was a guy from Andurien literally in purple lesiure suit with a diamond studded cane.... and there were people from the periphery who were much more outlandishly dressed in attendance at the faire which was characterized by thousands of men in kilts... so if the guy wanted to wear Lyran colored suits .... and that was okay.

"Well that's an exaggeration, its archaic in speech, which you know of course, but some of the characters fell out of use," Actually before Omi had even written the thing, and her use of them was probably very intentional. She'd been going for archaic, and harkening back to ye olde glory days of Japanese culture... and Japanese was a very common language post Exodus from earth, it had been common in the Hegemony, in the Lyran Commonwealth, in minor states that had been absorbed by the Free Worlds League, and others... but that was because Japan had been a member of the western aligned power block, and a member of the alliance, and had enjoyed a significant 21st​ century cultural popularity .

Hanzo sat down with a dog eared copy of Inanzo Nitobe's Bushido originally published at the end of the 19th​ century, and intended for a western audience. The medium mech, or oversized bug mech, pilot had a list of annotations of his own about the book. It was interesting that Hanzo, and Ford had struck up a friendship over philosophical, historical study of old books.

That there had been a copy of the book published by a Terran publisher in the era of the Star league in the library. It was in English, naturally.

"What Mister Ford is observing is that there are many characters that are no longer taught in common primers."

"A well educated person is considered such if they know about 2100 characters." Ford remarked, "That's the minimum I think you need to get into higher education in the language... and of course we have to recognize that so many so many schools were destroyed in the last two centuries, during the star league literacy was almost universal across the inner sphere."

... and there was a university, a surviving university on Dieron. "Excuse, me," He got up, and was almost to the door without a highland escort when Alexandria stopped him before he could make to access Hegemony archives on the University of San Martin at Dieron. Maybe that was just as well, there was no way to be sure the University of Dieron was still the same... or that archival data would be useful. The countess of Kestrel also had a point there was the social assumption he'd attend the matches even though this Faire was proving to be a bit odd.... but also she was supposed to stick around to deter any other Fed Suns nobles or any nobles in general from trying to poach... or something. That and apparently there was a request from one of the pilots to use one of the original versions of the Pillager that he was supposed to at least hear out.

... Chang had a point it really did convey an unfair advantage.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Highland Faire 20​

The paper work might as well have been in some secret hieroglyphics. There were scotts, and swedense names and schedules, and all of it... but he was having a hard time focusing. He'd sent the letter already... now he was waiting to see if he got a response before they shipped off. Septim continued to look at the gunnery tables the boss had laid out, but that really wasn't where his head was, or where the conversation had been drifting away from assault auto cannons. "Would you care to explain what that's supposed to mean?"

"Not particularly." He replied. There was a pause between them.

Chang grimaced and then scratched her head. "Do you have any idea what's going to happen?"

"Not a clue." Septim replied reaching over and taking a pull from his beer, "The boss said I could go once we're done on Dieron..."

"Right," She replied and exhaled in annoyance, repeating the word quietly under her breath. "What's it about?"

"You just asked that Bubbles." The Lyran groaned, "In all honesty... I don't want to talk about it, because its probably just gonna piss me off... its got to deal with Elidere for sure... but, " He'd been wracking his brain... and she put it into words.

"I mean its not everyday the Combine loses a whole mech regiment."

"Right." He agreed... and he'd go find out what papa wanted, but truthfully he was expecting to get his ass chewed out. "What about you, surely you've got family who's heard about?"

"My sister Shenhua's in the Red Lancers, but I haven't heard anything from her... paying ComStar to relay mail is a lot of money, and I don't rightly know if the Confederation would have gotten the news," She shrugged, and laughed "Of if they'd even realize I'd been involved at all. That they knew you were involved means that your family was looking out right?"

Maybe if you were optimistic, which he had a hard time being given everything going on. He had had to leave the Guards for personal reasons, and they'd been his reasons, but it wasn't like he'd have had much option, promotions had passed him by already, and he couldn't stay... so he'd gone out the periphery to make a living...

... which he'd never expected the situation he'd found himself in, prophetic dreams didn't make him all knowing.

They were interrupted by the announcement that the next match of the day was slated to begin shortly.
--
He was a little disappointed by the meeting with the Federated Boeing representative, but it was everything they could do on short notice, and without much in the way of prep. He'd take the pilots, and make sure that they were ready as they could be which he wasn't going to rely that having the Eridani, and the ... Blue Star Irregulars assist with that was a boon he couldn't refuse.

The other concern was maintenance of the two Overlord-class DropShips... apparently the main drives of the big bastards were well on their way to being LosTech... but he hadn't planned for sending either into hot landings... or the Triumphs. The most valuable contribution though was the spare JumpShip collars... this wasn't commercial running, this was an invasion of another major power, and each collar carrying a DropShip was a major asset being brought in.

"I have to ask at this point," The countess began, her voice low, and almost drowned out by the broadcast, "You stated a Terran world would have been reinforced by successive generations of house cameron..."

"Dieron," Which had been a part of Lone Star Province, and with Fortress Dieron, which he wasn't going to mention by name, "almost certainly produced billions of tons of electronics per year, and there should be a boneyard in the Atacama desert, and the Combine probably is inadvertently telling the truth that there were caches built into the mountains... what's left after two centuries I can't say... but if the Field Marshal's intelligence is correct and there are active resistance to combine rule on Dieron then we will have to wait and see."

"But there could be stockpiles on Dieron."

"Yes." He shrugged, "The Hegemony believed in a castle doctrine," The first castle facilities predated Brian Cameron, "And originally began stockpiles for a war against the Combine, are there things left probably... but that's a question of how much time and resources can you put into digging in the desert or in the mountains looking for buried treasure."

"Such cautions might have been the conventional wisdom before now." She rebutted.

Gene shrugged. His thoughts turned to Lone Star's memory core. Lone Star the provincial capital of the Hegemony era was two jumps away... and a dead world now... Dante advised against going there ... not when there were other major Hegemony worlds that in the AI's opinion rated higher... and that they needed a clearer picture of what Admiral Clancy had left behind at Fortress Dieron, and particularly the personnel who had gone with him. There was something nagging him about the whole affair... Dieron's domestic electronics industry could well have stockpiles of medical equipment and other material in storage could be useful... or it could have thousands and thousands of tons of entertainment computers that weren't.

It depended on what had been found, and what hadn't.

He made the comment the match was starting as the machines entered the field.

He hoped that the Davions weren't going to try and prioritize seizing all former Hegemony worlds on the chance that there were caches to rebuild their forces... or that the other houses wouldn't all start looking at the worlds in question and doing the same and that he hadn't inadvertently made the third succession war get worse.

The truth was the match between the two cadets wasn't holding either of their attentions, which was probably impolite but it couldn't be helped. Gene knew the situation had changed markedly from just the ideas drafted after Elidere... that they had changed things. They were beyond one dead combine regiment.

One of the fake buildings, a Potemkin structure of plywood and tarps, shattered as it was plowed through by one of the cadets as they rushed to close into close quarters. It was more of a showy move than a practical one... even if you could do it in real life with real buildings, it was chancy, but it was known to work... and more than anything it stood out, and impressed the crowd... even if not as much as the real thing would have.

"If we want to get down to it, that's the sort of thing I want to avoid when we're on Dieron."

There was screech as a battlefist scraped paint off of standard plate, the crowd went wild as the fisticuffs commenced, and he wasn't surprised when the two cadets didn't stop when the judges called for them to stop. At least not immediately... but that was adrenaline as well the neurological connection to the machine, the interface that allowed man and machine to form that extreme presence on the battlefield could drown out all other sensory inputs under stress. That could be problematic, but it happening also indicated a high level of aptitude with the neurohelmet functionality... case in point Rio may have been a pain in the ass but was a capable pilot for all of his blustering.

... Dieron would be the real test though, and that was what they were going to have to focus on. "If there is anything I don't want to do is get bogged down in urban fighting, if we can ensure the DCMS is out in the open thats for the best."

She started to wrinkle her nose, "That's why you insisted the Sword of Tyr affirm their commitment to the Ares convention." ... and the question was whether the Sword of Light would feel quite as obligated to what was, in truth a legally defunct treaty.

"It doesn't hurt things," He replied... but he understood her point he was asking a rebel group admittedly one with pretensions to government standing to honor a treaty originally signed centuries ago, and one that had been declared void centuries earlier. "I'm fine taking their pilots with me," Whatever the political fallout of that might have been he knew that more mechs and more heavy mechs would be better for fighting the combine.

... the truth was what he expected to happen was that the Highland government would start looking for other caches ... or at looking at the less likely likely to be productive caches once Harlaw was cleaned out... and he expected that the Davions would want their 'cut' so to speak... or that the AFFS high command would want to start looking for its own.

... and before long well the Combine might try to make a move, but so might the neighbors... the Azami fleet could just as easily been an invasion force... and and he knew he wasn't the only one thinking that. Though he wasn't betting on the matches he did give it good odds that it was only a matter of times before the Church of St Cameron became involved... and talk of Cameron survivors who had escaped the coup circulated and once it hit people who didn't know how to keep their mouth shut it would spread... now whether that would mean anything or not in real terms that was another matter.

He hoped to have Dieron done before then. He planned to take a select group to New Dallas's CID facility if they had time, depending on what they uncovered on Dieron. The problem with that idea, was it was within the modern borders of the FWL... they'd have to work out some kind of itinerary, and he wasn't ready to start charting jumps this early.

"Lord William," Doctor Abner, " and Mister Alexander are pushing for a change of venue to the Lyran Commonwealth."

That wasn't exactly accurately reflecting what actually had been said, "Septim is taking leave to visit his parents," Which from what he did understand wasn't what the Davions wanted to hear, "Yes, Doctor Abner would like us to visit New Kyoto. If that happens I may grant parts of the company leave to visit Solaris," For these games things... that wasn't the point though, "The next job after Dieron is this Exodus," And while he'd been about to comment that he had a speech he needed to prepare, and he almost expected that she was about to ask something along the lines of 'you're coming back aren't you?' they were interrupted by the entry of the Precentor New Avalon, who looked a little more peaked than he had on New Avalon.

Who if, and in the interest of peace and fair trade... and a lot of other lofty ideals as well as just stopping the butchery of civilians, he was going out into the black wouldn't mind trimming the ranks of Black Jack's pirates. At the time PNA's singling out of this 'Kelly's Kommando's' band of cut throats didn't raise any alarms. He took Vandal at his word that 'Kelly' had smashed a ComStar facility on the Davion border at his word, before the pirate had jumped off, presumably to rejoin BlackJack McGirk on their continuing escapades of destruction.

'There needs to be action taken!' A comment that was really unnecessary, but the PNA was really speaking of the inaction of the First Circuit.

They would have taken action they would have fought those pirates this would solidify what would become known in the history books, at least in the Aurigan Reach, and the Magistracy of Canopus 'the Pirate Wars.'
--
Notes: this is the End of January 3018. I need to go back through my notes, either I originally intended for Chang to have two younger sisters/ more than one sister, or I changed names of the character. Anyway we're moving into the Dieron chapter, that will among other things set up for some of the big changes that happen on 'the map'.

Dieron will be a much shorter chapter, mostly centered around the destruction of the 5th Sword of Light west of San Martin, and the liberation of San Martin before setting up for Fortress Dieron which will be another short chapter, and the interludes between this and the start of the Pirate Wars, which this is obviously calling forward to.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Highland Faire 21​

Gene looked at the glimmering star map of known CID stations... known to Dante at the time immediately preceding the atrocities. If Dante was right about the storage facilities on Dieron... if there was electronic material stored there, then ... well they might be useful they might not be... they wouldn't know until thy looked the same with all of these other places, but the truth was they had to get through there first.

So much in the Inner Sphere had been lost... and that wasn't even the half of it... how was he supposed to go searching for the Tripitz's trail. Never mind wherever the Black Lion-class ship had been supposed to be going. Even accounting for Pasha being right and that they would be able to, somehow, convince the Alamutians that ... to support them with the manpower, and spacelift to search the rimward it would take probably years.

Dieron first... and then New Dallas to see if thee were any other leads... to see if they could chart a path from Terra to how it had ended up on the Taurian front... it was possible that the protocol had been broken that someone had insited on trying to get to Kerensky and ordering him to launch a frontal assault with the commands to disable the SDS or turn it against the rim world... and they had just never made it.

They didn't know enough.... but a few months, a couple years more weren't going to make a difference. Not after all this time. He eased back in the chair, and put pressure on the joints of his fingers and cracked them. "Alright, geography, show me landing paths and directionals for Dieron again." He ordered the AI.

The rippling star map gave way to a brown, and green and blue world. The world he was going to invade. It took hours before he was satisfied with the plan... and that was just for bringing down his combined force... never mind the Davion Guards, and the Eridani.

... but he had the DMM troops under his command... a gesture of good faith... but probably also that the duke of Robinson was confident that all together they would wreak a bloody vengeance against the DCMS. Dante suspected it was part of enticement to convince him to follow Clancy's example of if not outright joining then following the example of the Blue Star Irregulars and being effectively indistinguishable from house troops other than some paper claiming to still be legally mercenaries.

Was that what the future held? It was hard to say.

He cleared his throat, "Alright, Dante punch this up," Print the documents, "And give me a data rom with the plan, I'm going to go run this up the chain." and he also had a speech to give... it was time to talk about what they were doing.

Several hours later, he ignored the questioning as Septim's comment from back on Luxen was unknowingly echoed by a Davion officer of comparable rank. He also ignored the shuddering barely suppressed chortle from the Lyran as he finished outlining planetfall securing a planetary beachhead south of the Kazakh, and west of San Martin.

... and that what he didn't mention was the chance that the Hegemony transport network being intact would mean a potential way to bypass Combine defensive positions in and around the planetary capital. Those had, according to the update on the condition of Fortress Dieron, had been intact in the 29th​ century ... and they were probably as intact as the ones on Elidere had been but they wouldn't know for sure until they were physically there to check them.
Yvonne paused leaned over to talk discrete aside with one of her staff... something about recording things ... but that did make sense the invasion of Dieron was going to be accompanied by pomp and circumstances. The Draconis March alone was eager to take the fight to the neighboring realm... and from the bits he'd picked up on the Field Marshal really did not like the Haseks... if she could show them up, make them look weak as a result of their inaction against the sick man of the Inner Sphere but decisively wailing on the Kuritans well... that without even considering avenging her nephew the previous first prince who had died against a Sword of Light unit.

Which would do the realm some good to hear they'd been paid back... even if this was the wrong regiment. What mattered would be how they framed things to the public... so they had speeches, and parades... that was the advantage of the downside to the speed of the HPG system. Dieron would be conquered by the time the Davion's released the recordings from Northwind, and would likely already have footage of Dieron... so the public would only see the whole thing not how it was all made.

More importantly speeches done indoors meant that doing it on Northwind did not require figuring out the specifics of arranging the mechs in any kind of uniform parade colors which might raise questions, or confuse an audience, even if by the standards of contemporary Lyran blockbusters the clip would have been considered a little unpolished. For all but the highest budget productions of the Inner Sphere though the clarity of the holographic footage and sound quality was superlative. The footage lacked the post production effects that would have been found in a propaganda reel. Nor was it the sort of quality one would have associated with a spy's, or a private investigator's, clumsy recording devices. After all why would House Davion not use very excellent devices for their own historic recordings of the day's proceedings.

The Star League Vintage cameras had been given an excellent vantage to do their work, and given the business of the Faire it had been easy for not one, not two not three, but quite a number of intelligence services to splice into the original feeds and insure they received copies to private terminals... and of course for those personnel of intelligence agencies who hadn't wanted to gamble on such obvious bait a few found it much easier to simply borrow a copy of the footage from a film aficionado at the MRB who had found a copy.

It would still take time to disperse the recording of the day's proceedings. The Combine had known something was going to happen, but by the time the word had gotten out there were other complicating factors. The ISF was already busy ... busier than normal ... and the voice of the dragon had done an alarming capable job of convincing the the DCMS that the New Avalon Hussars had been responsible for the losses at Galedon... a unit of whom supported by elite mercenaries and other Davion troops had already begun the invasion of Altair...

Really the recording came too late to warn against the strike on Dieron even if commanders would have been willing to question official combine propaganda. The recording lacked any details that would have telegraphed future Federated Suns strikes, in the following years...

.... the raid at Galtor, which had yet to be planned at the time of the recording

or

...the liberation of Tancredi, which the Federated Suns had already been planning and revising for decades now.

"Everyone gathered in this hall has accepted a unique risk. In many ways this operation is beyond the standards of basic soldiery or practice of arms. Regardless of past or present experience this coming battle is different." The speaker was a younger mercenary colonel standing in front of a marauder painted in white and gray parade colors. The great ibis that dominated the machine's crest prophetically devouring a snake.

The primary body of the speech laid out in no uncertain language what was to be expected. Every soldier, and every mercenary expected to risk life and limb facing the enemy. It wasn't even unusual for commanders or political leadership to speak of liberating foreign worlds.

"To those most recent cadet graduates gathered here, this is a distinct opportunity to participate in something beyond oneself. When we make planet fall in this coming campaign you will be among the striking force. You will not be relegated to a bench warming for attrition or a mech to be freed up or provided due to casualties or a later advance. Each and every one of you gathered today will spend the following day training in a heavy or assault battlemech that will carry you on the field when we begin combat operations."

The final weeks on Northwind ahead of the early spring of 3018 were to be an interesting time. The speech at the end of its just more than fifteen minute run concluded with the expectation and that nothing less than full victory would be accepted. That might have been dismissed by observers coming from other speakers as simply bravado or even an impossible demand. If the recording had circulated around before the invasion it would have been more or less ignored by the other successor states.

Instead it made the rounds among the other great houses coinciding and viewed through the lens of not just Dieron falling to Davion hands, and the monster that prowled the battlefield on their behalf... but that point at least within the Inner Sphere the MRB had up to date roster information for the Dieron battle.

That information was supposed to be for the purposes of considering whether or not a mercenary company was suitable to a specific employers need. The MRB was supposed to be a neutral arbiter of disputes of course.

Twenty four recent graduates of the Northwind Military Academy filled the ranks of would become Battalion C, Claymore, Shepherd's Highlanders would distinguish themselves on the shores of the Kazakh river west of San Martin. A distinction of action with the hundred hour whirlwind of battle that had prompted the MRB office to rate an otherwise freshly raised BattleMech battalion as Veterans, raising their approximation over Regulars, to reflect participation in the destruction of 1st​ Battalion / 5th​ Sword of Light and the subsequent capture of the planetary capital.

But on that February afternoon all of that was still in the future. Indeed a few days earlier Precentor New Avalon had only just received a report he had requested on paramount importance. After all, what had not yet made the news, had not become public knowledge, was an attack over the Davion border in the periphery and the loss of an HPG station at the hands of a revenge addled warlord with Star League war machines of his own. Huthrin Vandal had decided it was in the best interests to bypass discussions with the first circuit using options he didn't need their permission for. That meant looking for a solution with the resources he had available.

That was to say, money, lots of money. It was a very lyran solution to the problem the Precentor New Avalon would have admitted, but the problem of Black Jack McGirk had been ongoing for over a decade by this point and the arguments over how to deal with a pirate king who had destroyed the 1st​ division of the ComsGuard Militia. A destruction that had included, to add insult to injury, the pirate absconding with the remains of the 1st division as salvage. It was a problem that had dragged on entirely too long. They simply could not afford the loss of any more HPGs they couldn't replace the ones that had already been destroyed in the periphery as it was.

They had dithered to long within the first circuit and Huthrin Vandal had decided enough was enough, and measures had to be taken. Vandal would bullishly declare such to the rest of the first circuit as attacks in the rimward periphery expanded as McGirk saw increasing forces attacking and carrying off of ComStar personnel.
--
The holographic image was of a stern looking blond woman in the uniform of a Terran Admiral. She could have been in her late late twenties if not for the service ribbons which suggested thirty plus years in service with the HAF. Admiral Krennick was long dead of course... she had been killed during Amaris's attack on the capital of the Star League and the Hegemony.

Still the Admiral looked impressive, formidable. The black naval dress uniform fit Talia Krennick well... like a glove. The personnel jacket of the Terran Hegemony listed two divorces. A single son who had in contrast to his mother had joined the HAF Army. Not really a surprise Krennick while apparently still on amicable terms with her divorced partners, given they were still marked on her file's emergency contacts had both been naval officers as well.

The Field Marshal suspected that Terran medicine being what it was Krennick and her ex husband had probably still looked quite young when they had died. This holographic image floating in front of the field marshal was dated a year before the usurpation and massacres on Terra.

She had seen the picture of the son an amber eyed mechwarrior with close cropped dark hair who wore the insignia of a Terran Major, and the gunslinger tab on his uniform jacket... that was a better than ninety percent match of a picture taken two years earlier in the Magistracy... which raised other questions

It suggested a great deal but proved nothing. She turned to the MIIO officers who had entered. "tell me you have them?"

"A couple of SAFE operatives thought they were being clever." The man's partner elbowed him in the ribs, but she waved off the man's lackadaisal response, "Sorry ma'am. We identified potential couriers from other intelligence services. We are still tracking those there is a potential combine agent at large, but from his previous behaviors we suspect he'll turn up in the morning."

"Do tell?"

"He's very predictable ma'am. Standard patterns of behavior for his cover identity. Frequently moves to ingratiate himself with large corporate entities."

"Where all has he been?"

There was a pause, and The prince's champion frowned. "He's been to several of the demonstrations of the Marauder II BattleMech. He's basically ignored the Blackwell industries presence with their combat vehicles, which is why we didn't catch it originally,"

She could understand that. The Marauder II had attracted quite a lot of attention... and she could guess why they were so confident that there was going to be an appearance tomorrow. 'Wonders of the Star League'. The King Crab had been distributed to the Great Houses as a 'gesture of House Cameron's benefice' shortly after its debut. Not in any significant numbers of course, but also as notation to the other house lords surely that the Hegemony's new Commanding General was of astute mind when it came to BattleMechs.

Cosara Industries of the Terran Hegemony had created a vicious close range combatant at General Kerensky's request. The King Crab had been licensed to GM and who had continued to produce it until they had lost the ability to do so as a course of the succession war.

The conversation winded away, and eventually she dismissed them directing the countess to be shown in. The Duke of Errai was unsurprisingly proving a problem. The Thug had been such a ubiquitous mech in Terran service there was no way they'd be able to avoid his learning of additional machines. The Thug predated the start of the reunification war, and the introduction of machines like the modern version of the Wolverine; in its 6R configuration.

Admiral Clancy's files had proven... not especially helpful. Thankfully the admiral had made a searchable database but not a complete one. It hadn't answered many of her questions. She had plugged in the various alpha numeric data entries and only received partial matches. There were tantalizing suggestions to answers.

And, places to look. She opened with a rhetorical question, "You said the DropShip's name was the Argo?" There was a perfunctory nod from her lady in waiting, "I haven't spoken to Galax's people but it did make its way into the periphery ahead of the New Vandenburg uprising. It disappeared, presumed lost and I don't imagine even Admiral Clancy though knew much of it, but we do have confirmation that it and a sister ship had been planned."

Unfortunately that was really as far as her information extended for the time being.
--
Notes: I made the decision just to keep this basically as it was after the first bit, but will be moving on to Dieron next
This may be of interest to readers, it is not my creation, and does not necessarily reflect canon for later in the timeline: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UUdhNDI1R_Qkl08LhUezgAxyiiVIy1NDnTubLGqH2Kc/edit#gid=0

 

[Imperator Pax]

Dieron Spring 3018
Gene didn't like some of the communiques going out... but there wasn't anything he was able to do about it. The Duke of Robinson, though not present, his catholic clergy were couching this in extremely loaded religious terms...

... and the Azami were not far behind either. On the other hand... he didn't suppose they were really any different than statements made on Robinson in celebration of the Combine's defeat.

The Sword of Light had a reputation ... and it was very possible that that would be what would happen... that this fight would turn into a messy atrocity ridden slog of a scorched earth campaign. It was a worry he'd already had before the step off , hell before the last few matches of the game... and those had mostly gone as expected once the matches had shaken out. The stalker pilot who'd already taken a post with the Crucis Lancers in the AFFS had taken the top slot... though that had not been without some grumbling from his peers.

... they had had to restrain Rio from trying to challenge the victorious 'squire' before they had left. Hanzo had had to put two different Pheonix Hawk pilots on their asses in the arena, but at least he'd had a good time. Of course that in itself was complicated.

Northwind had been ... had had its share of surprises... and Gene was worried about what this world would have in store, but he reached up to flip the controls and shut the noise off. They hadn't gotten a return to their broadcast signal when they had jumped in... but he wasn't surprised either. Dante hadn't responded initially to the transmission... so they would have to wait and see if they received any signals once they were groundside.

They had waited long enough to see if they had gotten a response, and it was time to drop, "In Fury Born." He transmitted. Drive signatures confirmed the command as Tartan banner icons on his display moved to orbital insertion positions to begin the descent to planet's surface.

He traced the movements across the eastern frontier as the Eridani, and Davion Guards began their own force drops. There were a dozen plus unions on his, well the DropShip's scopes broadcasting SLDF IFFs. The majority of those were the signatures of the Light Horse. His display painted 3rd​ RCT units and their projected flight paths.

There were no plans to drop mechs from orbit. The Unions, and Leopards, also their DroSTs among other frontline dropships would make the run down to planet's surface then they'd offload. It was less risky that way... especially with as many units as they were fielding The simple mathematics meant that error probabilities was already dangerous for deploying this many dropships to the planet's surface so they'd be landing in waves anyway.

Reflecting their in house advantage in numbers, Kerston had command of the invasion force's air units for the drive in. That air coverage included assault dropships to make sure the combine didn't do anything funny... or at least to soften up any combine ASF. There had been objections to that, including ones that it put all their eggs into one command basket that if Light Horse C&C went down coordination for that many fly boys would be a problem... but it was what they were doing.

ASF, any aircraft really so especially DropShips, needed a safe distance to operate on. What looked good on screen for blockbuster movies was dangerously cavalier flying. That meant timing their landings especially when they brought their dropships down to where they needed to be. Once they were on the ground though , there would still be a risk from ASF but well they'd have options to shoot them... and with a combined arms force Gene was less worried about the frankly anemic air resistance.

The planetary drop approached. The aerodyne dropship's display of the front, a projection of those nose cameras showed increasingly the horizon dominated by the sphere with increasingly fewer stars, and once the nose of the aircraft dipped down well they'd start losing reception as air temperature force them to rely on sensors rather than video telemetry... but he wasn't piloting the dropship.

He compared the clock to the local time. "Won't be a gentle morning," He muttered... but the Combine defenders were probably already up, and waiting for them to come in." Just as they hadn't moved for an orbital drop, they also hadn't executed a truly high Gee burn from the jump points... the DCMS would have some warning... and it would take probably better than an hour and a half to fully come down from orbit given their numbers. By the time the Triumphs touched down there would DroSTs, Leopards, and Unions already throwing out forward pickets. Gene turned to the Azami Armor officer, "Are those chapparals ready?"

"We will roll them off once the lances sortie." He replied, he was still somewhat reluctant, by carrying the lost technology fifty ton artillery vehicle they were giving up a very useful scouting capacity from their light vehicles. It broke with how they had been operating the company.

There had been arguments about that. Given the Unions and Leopards it had been considered that maybe throwing organic artillery out front might be a good idea. He'd disembark the Sam Houston and form a part of the clearing section, and landing security section ... and if the Combine decided to directly contest the landing... they were going to get unpleasant surprise.

... and if they didn't they'd get an unpleasant surprise later. He'd have liked to have put a cruise missile... or twenty... through the 5th​ SoL's headquarters, but he dind't have that option... and that wasn't even accounting for as a DCMS unit its headquarters was most likely a mech rather than a command vehicle or fixed installation.
--
The flight in wasn't so bad. About average turbulence to be expected from an aerodyne inflight descending into a gravity well. He adjusted the marauder's trim and eased up over the ridge, but there was nothing to contest his seventy five ton heavy battlemech the last three hours had seen the offload of an increasing volume of metal.

There had been no initial resistance allowing the DroSTs to offload their Daimyo HQ vehicle as well. They had lit its beacon and Sam Houston, and her sister Ships the recently, hastilly even, renamed, and repainted DROST IIAs Crockett and Boone advanced. They had leap frogged into forward further fighting positions disgorging infantry and light CVs... in the form of the Blackwell OmniVehicles which had been loaded aboard the two other DroSTs. That was the sight that spread out from his cockpit, but it was the heads up display from his regimental management tracking software that he was really focused on.

Sixty plus DMM Mechs, the volunteers, were still orienting to his west, but the pilot images of each of that original volunteer force were displayed in the Dalban integrated systems. Their ranks were further supplemented by Highlanders, and the Rasalhagians, and also the Azami forces forming the broad western flank of the Davion Invasion Force.

A data package pinged and updated from orbit providing him a view from satellite coverage, with the invasion of Dieron now hours underway the Combine was beginning to spread out their own battle lines. Dieron's militia defenders... and their pre landing intelligence seemed to be confirmed by communications intercepts... weren't actually planetary natives. They were 'Dieron Military District' troops but apparently the Combine didn't like stationing their troops on their home planets ... he had known they did that in the Rasalhague district but he supposed that it was a more general policy it was probably to keep planetary nobility and governors from getting any of hte wrong sorts of ideas, if he had to guess.

... but the important thing was that the DCMS was starting to move to meet them... and that there were a lot of foot infantry.

The thumpers courtesy of Robinsons own ground pounders a part of the March Militia would need to be brought up. The FASCAM shells might have been lostech but he intended to use them to force the enemy to either attack through mine fields... which the combine might choose to do, or to attack through pre prepared channels, but to use that they would need to keep rolling forward, hot if need be.

"Bard," The holographic static image of the wolverine pilot, he had chosen not to pilot a Highlander given the duelist program he'd been a part of, turned into a live holographic feed of the man rotating through his own feeds. "I'm forwarding you data positions to bring your force up a series of number hills," They were fairly choice ground. Calling them hills might have been a bit of a misnomer, a hill on dieron could be several hundred meters of AGL but this planet had obnoxiously large mountains... as in Everest on Earth didn't even rank here.

Thankfully they wouldn't have to worry about any of those monsters, but the mountainous nature of the planet made the cauldron that Iran on Earth sat in in terms of Geography look cute in comparison... they were in many respects in a giant arena until this thing was over.
--
Notes: This opens Dieron it is a little shorter than I had initially planned but this is a very combined arms campaign in planning, and obvious as indicated by various preview content not the kind of fight that the Combine especially the combine of the 3rd Succession war deals well with.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Dieron
Part 2​

Hanzo checked the Cicada's scopes again. The machine spoke to him. They had been on this planet for five hours. The DroSTIIA Daniel Boone was only about a kilometer from his medium mech. Dust, and sand still swirling from where the DropShip had dropped its forward ramp and coating his machine's 'arid alpine' brush stroke camouflage. Bandit, and Badger vehicles were currently disembarking.

Every man down the lowliest foot soldier had his place here. That, of course, had been true on Elidere as well, but not to this volume of manpower. His displays were filled with identifications, so many as to make his head hurt. That was without even considering the electronic noise of radio chatter from so many sub units. He was grateful that English was so common across human space... but it did not change the fact that dialect, and accent could vary wildly across planets... never mind linguistic drift between planets.

The radio traffic involved thousands of voices, and that was only a fraction of the many involved in this action. This was a true battle. One of strategy and operational art, not simply tactics, and maneuver. It would mean that today would largely be one of crossing the wide river valley north, coming down from great hills, and advancing to contact with the enemy rather than true battle... tomorrow, perhaps the next day would be when honor was won.

There was a bloom on his thermal scopes. The Davy Crockett lifting off and pushing to its next way point further ahead of the line of advance. From behind him he could also register the advance of the half dozen missile artillery tanks ... the Chapparal. Their Nissan 200 Fusion Engines were otherwise easy to miss in the multitude of such engine returns. There were very many battlemechs who also used the engine from the not so common Mongoose to Hunchbacks to the many Centurion and Enforcer BattleMechs to his west.

He watched as the vehicles from the Daniel Boone, and specifically the hovercraft paired off and began to push forward away from the DropShip. The Robinson infantry soldier had no such benefit they were largely driving forward via jeep, but at least they were not having to walk. Still they could not simply board a Leopard like troops aboard a DroST could. They could not bound forward and then reconnoiter. Indeed many companies of Robinson Infantry were only occupying initial landing positions established by first wave troops carried by DroST pattern DropShips.

--
There was a groan from the other end of the comm line, and Gene had to agree the Combine return signals were still pinging back and forth that he was pretty sure they weren't sure what they were gonna do. That was a problem. If they had been closer to the line of contact... if they'd actually been in contact maybe they could have done something about that but right now? They couldn't do anything other than keep moving forward and waiting to see what the Combine was going to do.

The problem with their advance wasn't the aerodynes, it was the spheroid dropships. Repositioning them was going to be a bitch... so what they were likely going to end up doing was to use the Triumph class DropShips as supply tenders closer to the front... they were going to need to throw together some sort of make shift temporary forward air base to handle rearming and refueling their ASF assets... which would probably mean working through the night. He didn't like the idea of having to pick somewhere west of the city to serve as an airbase to mount attacks on San Martin, but that might be what they might have to do.

A part of him wanted to to try and interdict the air breathers that were doubtless moving planetary militia from bases to the east towards the capital. The combine had rebuilt the surface rail network on Dieron and probably could move planetary militia that way, but they would have to come from ... so far away even if they were mobilized they'd never reach San Martin in Time... not from the East. The forces coming from 'Tatsuyama' they were a lot closer, but would also have to cross the great lake to make contact, or go north of it and cross the Kazakh river unless they were going to ignore them entirely and move north skirt them and head directly for the planetary capital.

He doubted that the Combine was going for that. Not whatever forces they'd been able to scramble on the burn in were probably going to try and force a confrontation if for other operational reason than stopping them from encircling the city... and just as likely combine doctrinal aggression ... elan vitale... or really its revisionist Japanese equivalent was to push to engage with the enemy. They were most likely going to run into an emboldened head long assault tonight followed by arriving regiments of infantry ...

... which if the reports were right that might also explain a lack of commitment to defense, instead of a focus on the offensive. If these militia troops weren't from Dieron then they had no concern for defending the planet other than what their leadership ordered them to. So attack, attack, attack seemed the order of the day.

"Have we identified them?" He asked tapping through the holographic display to adjust his Dalban communications suite.

"Given movement profile we estimate its a portion of the Training Cadre. They are still too far out to do more than guess at a mix of medium and light mechs." They needed to be able to bring Baffins forward to serve as an anchoring command post along their lines though... he didn't mention that... ideally they could leap frog the Unions and Triumphs before it got dark... once the sun set the naked eye would show fusion drives for hundreds of miles... certainly from the other side of the lake as they came down to relocate... which meant they were running out of time.

Looking at the punched up data slate, he almost asked how after their raid on Mara the 9th​ Sun Zhang cadre had survived. There was something in here about how the Kell Hounds had stolen their JumpShip? He didn't think Succession War etiquette permitted that... but he didn't have time to ask about it or question if the JumpShip had been ransomed back after being seized. It didn't' matter, it wasn't relevant to their situation, "Do you think they're attempting to link with the 3rd​ Battalion of the Sword of Light?"

Bard paused from the other end. "Yeah that's what it looks like." The Wolverine pilot made an observation that their nickname was well deserved, and that if they kept up their current pace they might be looking to see combat tonight.

"That would put them well ahead of any reinforcements that could support them." Gene replied.

"Frankly, colonel the little bastards might not give a shit."

He looked at the tentative long range returns coming south, "Fair enough." The DMM didn't have a vantage from their spotter planes that were currently loitering over the lake on the elements of 3rd​ Battalion 5th​ Sword of Light. "We'll know in a couple of hours," maybe even sooner if they were trying to charge forward, or if they were aiming to link with the Sword of Light. He ran the mental math, but it didn't give him anything but best guesses... Elidere had been a string of aggressive frontal assaults... this would probably be similar.

It wasn't long before the communications chatter was filled up with complaints from Davion Officers who hadn't been on Elidere that they should have deployed more aggressively. That was one thing for the Davions Guards to suggest, and if it had just been them or the Eridani that was one thing... but the DMM readiness and interaction wasn't something he was prepared to run on...

... and leaving aside that he spared a look at one of the clocks on his Marauder's HUD. Tomorrow sometime they'd try again to see if they could force Hegemony systems to boot and reply. Part of where they had dropped had been that maybe they'd be able to remote boot Fortress Dieron, and potentially dramatically expand their available on call artillery. So far they had had no use... and while a part of him wanted to try and access one of the underground the subway access station they couldn't afford to slow down. They needed to push the advance forward.

On their current time table their best option was to try tomorrow hopefully being able to access potentially surviving, well intact, hegemony civil defense facilities on the lake to the west... and hopefully they'd be intact enough to deploy troops into San Martin bypassing Combine defenses if they couldn't use them to access Fortress Dieron directly.



His thoughts, and some of the grousing that they should have landed further north in the first place, were interrupted as air alerts went out signaling that their jaeger mechs and blackjacks were about to get some action given there combine ASF and air breathers coming south. There were Sabres, and Shilones, and some positively tortoise paced thirty tonner coming along in waves. If they had had flak ammunition for the auto cannons for the unit they had segregated off the Black Jack and Jaegar mech pilots into as an ad hoc brigade AAA Mech detachment things would have been better... but again losses due to the succession war meant that such production were almost artisanal in terms of what they had available.

This part of the conflict was to be fought with air power, and most mechs weren't effective at shooting angry metal pigeons as he had experienced on Aquagea... well it would have been nice to have more rifleman... enough that they could have swapped all of them into the unit and run it... but they didn't... this wasn't the SLDF.

He acknowledged the threat of the incoming aircraft and switched channels. The DMM anti craft section would from their current flight path get first shots, but after that, well his Dalban linked into the fire control network of the Nirasaki computers aboard the Fury tanks of the Company.
--
Notes: Anyway as I've mentioned Dieron is a relatively short chapter/arc and most of the parts are two sections, brief glances into other people's views, opinions stuff we didn't fully get too on Northwind, and also Combined Arms and Mech battle. Once the Battle for Dieron concludes there will be post battle Septim goes to his see his relatives, there are some Davion stuff, there is briefly Dieron's new government, some Highland discussions and the preparation for the return to the periphery which leads into the Pirate Wars, which will be divided into several smaller sub arcs.

The travel to the Periphery will largely be time skipped due to JumpDrives being suck and jump charge jump charge, and the Crews handling their end of things up until we get to the Periphery. [the House Arano introduction, and so on]

 

[Imperator Pax]

Dieron Part 3​

Chang whooped in excitement as the flying wing exploded. The DCMS aircraft, a Shilone, turning into a fireball. She idly, within her borrowed Atlas, wondered exactly where the fuck their own aircraft were, but ... well while she didn't know for sure expected that they needed little things like refueling... which was probably a hassle given all the jostling and moving around that they were doing.

She watched another aircraft kaboom it plunging into the inland sea to her west as the chatter of auto cannons continued to streak up into the sky.

Now, admittedly she knew that what they were doing was a bit ... well not professional. They were invaindg a major inner sphere world. This was well beyond what they'd gotten up to on Elidere... people were going to make holovid blockbusters about Elidere she'd heard the Davions talking about. Never mind what they were going to say once they wiped out two combine 'mech regiments here.

Well admittedly it was most of one, and the 9th​ Sun Zhang was a training cadre so ... but still TWO MECH Regiments. Never mind all the normal soldiers... the mundane meat and metal that were so much more common for MechWarriors to fight... from a purely business side of things they werne't going to make as much bank in payout from wrecking that much metal... she'd seen the contracts and new they were looking at a nice payout...

... but she also knew that was because House Davion, big H big D, was probably leery of one of their big nobles having such a big stick. She'd seen the way some of the FedSuns nobility acted about everything. It was kind of embarrassing, on the other hand it wasn't like the FedSuns were a bad employer. They were making good money, and no one had tried any shady stuff.

Bubbles was hoping it stayed that way.

There was stuff going on in the background that she didn't know... but ... that creepy underground crypt beneath Castle Northwind made her head spin.

She didn't know what a Special Class A security profile was.... other than Special. The HAF was the Army of the Terran Hegemony the nation of the Camerons, of McKenna, and Kerensky. If this was like some kind of holovid drama maybe he'd be a vampire awakened from long dormant slumber in a destroyed castle... Northwind had been creepy enough with its high ceiling... weird robot bugs.

A message flashed across the Atlas's com display jarring her out of it.

Big heavy fusion returns started to go up. The Rapiers they had found on Elidere were lifting off, in a minute as they set their throttles they'd go supersonic. The 85 ton ASF were heavily armed. The two returns on the Ford 340s she was picking identified them as 101 models mounting three Magna Hellstar PPCs. Her computer updated to transmit the rest of the flight were RP 100s two PPCs supporting an assault auto cannon.

Half a dozen aircraft in total aimed at crossing through the enemy formation. They'd get the pass and then they'd have to move into chasing each others tails, but that was what fighter jocks did.

--
The projected weather forecast was so far so good. The wind projections were low, they wouldn't need to worry about rain, thunderstorms, sand storms, floods or anything like that today which would support their continuing advance.

The Presidio's air complement had just sortied to mop up... but also to cover rearmament of the Jaeger mechs and the 40mm whirlwinds of the BlackJacks as the break in air attack came. The air breathing aircraft were actually potentially more dangerous at night than their ASF counterparts, lacking fusion drives they didn't create nearly the visible light, and infrared signature in the dark.

... also they were cheaper.

With the rate that that brigade was knocking Combine Shilones out of the air that they might not have to worry about them. ASF were a precious resource in the modern era and the Combine pilots while good, had clearly not expected such a volume of ground based anti aircraft fire. Then again, no one expected Gauss Rifles in this era... once the Fury tanks had opened up, even with their limited ammunition their networked fire control ... well... Gene flipped channels delegating air command to the actual flyers... that there number of aviation assets was ... well what it was played a part in that.

He swiped his hand manipulating the holographic display... they needed to reduce Combine forces in the open as much as possible... just in case the Combine commander decided to switch tracks and go for scorched earth and deny the Davions the civilian population. He didn't see a whole lot of ways to do that, but on the other hand they had the Combine out numbered. That much was apparent with the way the regiment of student mechwarriors and the sword of light were spread out... they were trying to cover and move to engage now with too wide of a front.

A more conservative commander would have traded ground, and certainly wouldn't have put a river to his back, which was exactly what the Sword of Light's 3rd​ Battalion had done with itself.

Gene blew out a breath, and started a data packet for retasking


He ran through the Company's core membership, and then punched up a hail to the Highland Battalion. Claymore Lead took a moment to connect. The old Highlander, and his highlander that had had its gauss rifle replaced with an auto cannon at least a forty years earlier according to the report from the mechanics that was appended to the regimental management software was really in good condition. Given that the Northwinders had Highlanders with Gauss Rifles Gene suspected that some of those looted store caches from the invasion had disappeared into the hills and... that also maybe the Black Watch had known where others were.

... the door they hadn't been able to open had had Dante's annex behind it, but that suggested that their credentials were able to open, they just hadn't known where all to look... and given all the damage Amaris had done on Northwind... that wasn't actually a surprise.

Even two and a half centuries on, Northwind wasn't any where close to a billion people... and the truth was that wasn't a direct result of nuclear bombardment... or silly ideas about nuclear winter... it was the disruption of the planetary and interplanetary economy making an otherwise fertile world unable to conduct, organize, and transport food to its population leading to first a planetary die off, and then the subsequent longer lasting economic depression that resulted.

Dieron had fared much better than Northwind on the surface but part of that was Rim world incompetence. As a result Dieron's population had survived the crisis more intact so that there were five billion souls on Dieron, a real distinction from Northwind. It was part of the reason, he really didn't want to risk urban fighting. If they had to do that... well that why he had the devastators in reserve... if it came down to it they'd bring close range brawlers in and do what needed to be done... but he was really hoping the Combine would show some goddamn sense and abide by the Ares conventions, that when they lost they'd surrender.

... but the current iteration of the dictum honorium really was a hot mess. The original version was fancy archaic poetry but it was high minded noblesse oblige this and that throw backs to a supposed better moral place. He didn't believe those good old days existed but ...

"Colonel?" The highlander asked.

"Standby." He hit send on the data packet.

"They've no where to fall back to, sir." The Highland replied scrutinizing the Combine position, "Not that I think that they'd retreat anyway, but they can only go forward against us from there."

"That was my thinking as well." Still there was at least a regiment of militia infantry, with a second trying to fill out the gap if the spotter plane footage was right... a long scraggly mass of harried foot infantry rushing across pontoon bridges. He transmitted the artillery detachment information, he didn't like shelling the crossing not the least of which was hitting pontoon bridges at distance was something of an ask so they'd probably be wasting ammo but it needed to be done. "The 3rd​ RCT is preparing to feint and strike 1st​ Battalion / 5 SOL if they can make contact I need you to prevent the 3 – 5 from trying to relieve them."

He wasn't about to throw a new Battalion against fanatic veterans without something up his sleeve, but he also needed to protect their western flank, and that meant those infantry needed to be shaken up, disoriented if not outright destroyed as a viable fighting force.

Within his Command Mech Colonel Shepherd filtered the orders and sent them down to the Battalion level, attaching specialist units to an all mech formation.
--
Notes: So I should be asleep right now, but anyway, this story has Isekai in its subtitle due to that being what Cimbri had as his CYOA name, but I will be doing a slightly more Isekai BT story... that will at current rate be getting (see the extra thread mark most recently) its own thread. The first two chapters will be a bit rough covering the late 3013 battle of Halstead Station, and then the early 3014 battle of Mallroy's world using the Essence of Megamek lab power set followed by a time skip... anyway thats officially in the pipeline for May

 

[Imperator Pax]

Dieron
Part 4​

As the returns filtered on his screen, Septim cursed more in frustration than anger at the situation. They'd kind of sort of had this problem back with the Canopians. The Merlin was the first new BattleMech in ages and it hadn't been built as a Command Mech. He didn't have all those fancy Star League computer systems to order hundreds of BattleMechs around.

... Not that he wanted to but in this case it was that the boss was doing.

Both of their new Overlord DropShips had been filled up with new people. 36 BattleMech the overwhelming majority being heavy or assault mechs... proper lyran stuff that the boss had just pulled out of storage to hand over. Septim had enjoyed Professor Abner pointing out that the Rapier was also 'a good sturdy Lyran flying machine'.... and well twelve of those had been loaded up with the company's new pilots as well.

They just hadn't had time to get to know all the new people. It was one thing to be in charge of, be responsible for the DMM people. They were good people, but they were also temporary. People joked about how Lyrans were used to money, and spending it and whatever but the boss hadn't batted an eye at digging ... who knew how much heavy metal out of the ground enough to just stand up whole new units and give it away... and even before that the boss had more than one BattleMech sitting in a cubicle.

It had only compounded with how Bubbles, and the quiet guy were reacting to the situation. Hanzo had proven good at coaching the DMM troops, seeing it as he put it a 'moral imperative' to provide a a good foundation to one's 'juniors' and what not... and while that wasn't any kind of problem once they had gotten back with the boss and landed on Northwind... well things on Northwind had been crazier than they had been before that.

Apparently exposure to the Davions, and the northwind, and Bard's singing had infected Chang with some ridiculous 'Clan Fox' brain bug...

He eased the yokes of his Heavy BattleMech dipping back behind the hill more to shelter against the overhead sonic booms than to minimize his profile of any potential air attack. His machine's massive VLAR 300 might easily confuse the Combine planes that he was something else, but they'd know a BattleMech when they picked on up on their scopes, and he didn't want to make them trying to strafe him any easier.

The sooner the snakes were in front of them the better. He was actually getting stir crazy. Bo at least knew what he was getting into with Echo Company being kept just behind the line of advance as a kind of reaction force... the idea was that if they had to the missile boats could swing to engage an enemy lance or company force already engaging DMM troops.

That suited the Free Worlder fine. Bo would be fine waiting.

... but even nominally sitting here on the front line he was tapping his foot like mad waiting for an actual Snake Mech to show up. He couldn't shoot down aircraft, but they also needed to keep moving forward... and they were burning daylight. He figured that was probably the point that the Combine was trying to slow them down. The Draconic March Militia units needed to bring up their infantry and combat vehicles and prepare fighting positions and an air raid threat was going to impede those efforts.

Even if he'd been standing on the crest of the hill, rather than in its shadow, the sun's light was fading... the sky wasn't that dark yet but dusk was on the way, and then it'd be dark... and who knew what the fuck that was going to be like. They had been warned, and warned, to be wary of a combine night attack being launched so they were going to have to stop and prepare fighting positions...


There was a chime from his console as the text only transmission reiterated that warning... he wondered if it was an automated message, as he continued to slow walk the Merlin down the hill. The 19 ton fusion engine was faster than the original Merlin's smaller engine, bigger more horsepower it was a trade off... the combine had seriously damaged his mech on Ander's moon after all. He needed to pay them back for that, even if the boss hadn't billed him for the repairs.

--
Standard Battle Plate was ridiculously effective for its weight in offering protection. That and coupled with contemporary ECM capacity, and the difficulty in resolving the interference from fusion engines to certain other targetting capacities... well tanks, and BattleMechs, were hard to kill at really anything other than close range.

If you wanted to kill something from a couple miles out... well your best option was artillery, the same as it had been for a thousand years now, which was why they were screening the lances of thumpers to come up. He idly wanted to park them, dig them in out of sight, and pour indirect fire into the combine... but they'd need ammo and the truth was there was a chance that the combine might mount an attempt an aggressive break through, and he wanted the artillery to have the ammunition to blunt any kind of assault combine infantry might mount and that meant things pre sighting positions before they lost all the daylight.

So that was why he was calling a halt to the advance. "We're refueling the planes now, we should be able to get one more flight but I think the snakes are wising up that we have aircraft ... whether they have an idea of it or not well we'll have to wait an see." The scots major remarked.

The DMM officers still connecting into conference. Highlanders, the mechs, were more suited to these sorts of communiques... or at least the machines were configured for it. There was also the problem that the DMM Mech units were not alone. There were another five companies of armor mostly things like bulldogs, and von luckner tanks that were supposed to be supporting the mechs... "And how are we on the time tables?"

The highlander colonel guffawed, "Aye, our own infantry and armor, well you can't complain about those blackwell toys. They're letting us move along." They were fusion powered no need to refuel them with petrol and thus no need for petrol lorries to come along and risk exposure. That meant that they could focus on transporting missile reloads for their vehicles. "The terrain is no good, though... we're going to have to reposition some of the dropships maybe before the sun comes alighting."

They had been talking about this. Their DropShips were carrying supplies... not as much... Overlords weren't cargo vessels... and Unions frankly sucked in that role as well, in addition to being cramped... but this wasn't intended to be a long duration campaign. Still Gene could understand why the Azami preferred energy boats and very limited supply dependent weapons, largely sticking to specialty SRMs, LRM ammo, and a single model of AC 10 for their ground forces when they could help it. He agreed with that thinking. Logistics won over sheer guts in a unit on unit slugging match.

... which was what they were in. "Do you think you'll need the added firepower if the Sword of Light swings to meet you?"

"It certainly couldn't hurt, but at the same time, I'm getting good feeds from those Fury tanks. If you be right that will maintain through the night, it might be better to have the dropships not come in sooner. If put them down close the Combine might take the bait and come at us." And while the Ancients Company of Claymore might be prepared to fight a Sword of Light unit head on, having the battalion taste its first battle in the dark against a veteran combine battalion wasn't ideal. The main thing was keeping the sword of light from bearing down on the Eridani's Light and Medium mechs and trying to roll their flank.

Not because he expected that was what could happen, it could, but the bigger concern was the casualties the combine could inflight if they were allowed to commit to that kind of attack without being interrupted. The Azami were a combined arms out fit their legion background was based off of light horse doctrine if filtered through a combine view of it, with an emphasis on PPCs for mechs in particular, the Azami had a lot of hovercraft, if it came to that he expected he could retask them as rapid reaction filling a breach in the front with so many Harasser and Saracens missile boats that the combine would have to fall back... or take such a pounding that he was able to shore things up... they would have to wait and see what the snakes actually did though... just be ready for it.
--
Notes: I have started a second Essence of Meklab story / BattleTech Isekai, Rabid Fox hews more towards Isekai tropes, and is more narrowly focused than this. GW2 is a story that takes place across really the whole inner sphere, with lots of travel. Rabid Fox at least in its current plan while it may dip into the rimward periphery because it does operate on similar ideas is primarily focused on Davion Space and the Inner Sphere.

I will go ahead and say that it will focus a lot on the principle davion side cast

 

[Imperator Pax]

Dieron

Part 5​

Twilight had fallen. The Brevet General was both disappointed with their progress and impressed at the same time. The 5th​ Sword of Light had slipped away from them. The enemy force had won first blood, though largely on their weight. Kerston hadn't been willing to over commit to an attack and so they'd both broken contact... truthfully he'd been expecting the Combine to come forward after... but perhaps the Sword of Light commander knew better, knew the Eridani Light Horse's reputation and didn't want to be lured in.

Tomorrow though the battle lines would be fixed... they were already hardening into formations as refueling trucks and ammunition palls were brought up to prepare for tomorrow. The officer of the watch within the command vehicle relayed footage to his BattleMech's HUD Inferno munitions flying out to blunt incoming infantry attacks.

... he hoped that the Combine wasn't so callous as to be intentionally using human wave attacks to blunt their thermal scopes at night for something more. He had fought his share of night battles, as both aggressor and defender they were always complicated. This campaign was going to be more complicated than most.

If it had been up to him, they'd have waited before launching this. Taken more time to train together, better integrate their forces and that would have been true of any invasion... he wasn't sure what the Federated Suns had planned in the long term, but maybe it would be good for the Inner Sphere... good for humanity as a whole rather than just one of the successor states.

It was more than that though... and he was hoping that whatever was going to unfold that the Federated Suns would let them rotate back to a garrison contract... they needed, they were going to need time to train up. It took time to properly run a training course. The SLDF manuals were invaluable and were not the sort of instructions passed from master to student, knight to squire but were for preparing units, and built on the inherent espirt de corps of a body of picked men.

It was strange to see the interoperability of so many thrown together units... but Kerston wasn't stupid... he knew very well what ...

... the systems under Northwind had made that clear... a hundred seventy seven years since an officer of the Hegemony's Central Intelligence Directorate had been down there. The AI wanted blood paid for Hegemony losses... he understood that on Neue Karlruhe in the Lyran Commonwealth the Hegemony AI there had a priority to protect the Hegemony but that the Hegemony was gone, but there were still responsibilities to those left behind.

Shepherd was a Hegemony officer, a CID officer he had probably commanded member state, or at least advised them given his age, forces before the coup. From what the MRB had said he had commanded Canopian sub units since coming out of the stasis tube... but more than that Shepherd had asked about Cameron survivors something that no one had considered possible... that members of the Terran ruling house had made it off Terra during the coup.

It would have made sense for them to be trying to link with Kerensky, but could it have been more than that? Could they hope? But two centuries as a long time, and they had to be realistic about what they could do, and besides Shepherd had his hands full with enough volunteers as it was.

His BattleMaster's computers processed another packet of data. Their Kuritan rivals had a battle master of their own somewhere in the area... it was relaying command and control data to its own forces. They hadn't been able to throw a spotter plane up over it, before it was probably a Sword of Light Command Lance. There were a number of Kuritan command vehicles as well that was generating some interference as well. There were requests to start bringing up Thumpers to start plastering whole grid squares to destroy those command vehicles in an effort to disrupt command and control.

It wasn't the worst idea he'd heard... ordinarily the light horse would have sent light mechs and hover craft to try and head hunt such specialist vehicles from behind the enemy lines, but in this geography and at night against this enemy... and with an unknown enemy air threat forcing them to conserve their air power artillery was the better option.

--
Gene grimaced under the red night vision preserving lights of his cockpit. These banzai charge attacks were disgusting wastes of men's lives... and for what? The Combine was pissed that the Rasalhagians were rebelling? Enough to attack them like this. Disgusting.

The Azami commander had actually volunteered to sortie and bait the Combine into attacking his own forces ... and Gene was hard pressed to find a valid tactical reason to refuse the offer... given their situation.

The Combine's fantasicsm was worrying. Not that he hadn't been expecting night time attacks, but there was expectation, and then reality. Support PPCs were a good idea, were good weapons, they provided infantry with reasonable offensive striking capability and the combine fielded them in rather surprising numbers, but it was also something expected by 'dirty rebels' as the Combine thought of the Rasalhagians and the Azami.

Making a decision meant watching an Azami lance from one of their Drosts... one that hadn't been rebranded that was... that included a pair of classic catapults. The jumping heavy battlemechs were reinforced with half a dozen hovercraft and finally a pair of SRM carriers rolling in.

The Sheik's captain provided him a time table and assured him that it wouldn't impact wider operations for his whole combined arms unit to have the front anchored, and that the Rasalhague force would be able to rearm and reequip as they needed. With that handled he relayed confirmation to the Bexar allowing the Hegemony built Triumph to start its bit of hop scotch to Bardiche's AO.

He paused and swapped channels from the Azami officer to their Davion Liaison, "It would seem they're beginning to mount similar attacks against the Draconis March Troops."

Lovely.

Alexandria filled him in with what was filtering in from their far western line of advance, but there wasn't much to be done. The DMM troops were dug in for the night, and had organic armor support... and while they didn't have the cruel efficiency of inferno munitions at least they had good armor supporting them.

He closed the channel once the report was done.

Gene looked up at the dark sky. The moon was obscured by clouds, but other than that the weather was clear. Line of sight wasn't great given the preponderance of hills to the west that ringed the great lake that the Kazakh river flowed into, but that worked both ways... and that worked really well for anything that wasn't eight plus meters of bipedal murder machine.

What was worse was if his signal returns were right the Combine had over shot the nearest access point to the underground in their unseemly unhaste... it would have been nice to know they were going to do something like that so he could have had troops waiting to access the tunnel... but that also supposed the tunnels were intact enough to move troops.

They probably were. His Marauder's seismographic sensors gave no indication that a collapse had distorted the ground beneath them... if they had been collapsed then the cave in should have distorted the returns. He wasn't seeing any of that. That was promising, but it was something for later, he watched display shift.

He reached up to the master arm, and flipped it. Inferno SRMs in mech's hoppers cranked into their tubes and launched from the dark green and stone gray Marauder that waited in the night. The infantry men's screams he couldn't hear, but he was already bringing the machine forward as the nose mounted small pulse laser started to flash as his hud resolved targeting data on the pbi positions coming out into the open.

The men never had a chance, never saw it coming. One second they'd been bounding forward egged on by their officers exhorting them to fight for the dragon's glory and then missiles had started spraying an aerosilized gel that rapidly ignited into a viscous mass of fire, and from that fire they probably saw if only briefly the devil coming out of the black of the night.

He moved to one of the few trucks with the column and pumped a medium laser into it as a precaution as his hoppers reloaded from the bin. His heads up display told him that he was going to run out of inferno ammunition if he kept this up... and with all the fires he had started someone was going to notice.

... or they wouldn't.

He wasn't the only throwing Inferno SRMs... and it was also true that the combine mechs also had inferno srms ... maybe the combine would assume with no returns from his machine that this was blue on blue and someone had fucked up.

... and in a sense the combine had. They had rushed into the area without any apparent kind of screening in favor of rushing towards the objective. Not that scouts would have necessarily found him in the dark of night.
--
Notes: In addition to the Rabid Fox Essence story: Link, I also am considering doing one more periphery centric in the vein of using the essence to show up ala the Wolf Dragoons but playing Periphery kingmaker... but I'm currently kicking around ideas for that, as well as the Davion heir story, from which Rabid Fox has incorporated some of the ideas from that.

I do want to conclusively reiterate that Essence of MegaMek Lab is like most essences really freaking OP so both Rabid Fox, and its periphery counterpart are overpowered. Less so than in Essence Wielding Social General as Odin in that is more invested in the Lyran state as a political entity.

Anyway I need to go work on the rest of the battle of Dieron so next week's update will actually happen... and all of that is just Battletech content... never mind all of the other setting stories I keep saying I'm going to find time for.

... and also finding time to play Zelda tears of the kingdom.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Dieron Part 6​

Morning came entirely too quickly. His body was flagging, and with good reason history would inevitably record that the invasion of Dieron and Davion efforts more broadly would be part of the final stage of the third succession war. For Kerston it was a sign that his age was catching up with him... short duration fights in a battlemech were one thing. Commanding the Eridani might be possible for another few years... but how many grand set battles like this would he be able to manage.

The simple truth was he was getting old. While this wasn't likely to be his last major campaign he was cognizant that the Light Horse needed to prepare for him handing over the reins. With early morning now upon them he could tell from long experience that today would decide things, he could feel it in his cut... and with that instinctual recognition the Brevet General began reaching out to the Eridani constituent commands to find out what the Draconis Combine had in store for them.

There was movement across the entire front. Some of it was probably obfuscation, but which pieces wree feints and which were actual attacks, or movements to reposition to support an attack were hard to say from the feeds within his BattleMaster.

Very quickly though he was interrupted by a notice of Davion Command, or at least the Mercenary Liaison was patching in. A youthful face appeared. A stark contrast from the Eridani's usual Davion Liaison the countess of Kestrel had been pushed forward from her initial position as liaison to Shepherd's company to administering the larger command and control of mercenary forces on behalf of her superior the Duchess of Victoria, Field Marshall Yvvone Davion.

Her report had a point, the amount of artillery, the shell expenditures, going out more reflected the habits of the first succession war than most battles of the third, and yet the Combine continued to throw men at the prepared defensive formations.

It was a grisly result, and reminder of what had happened in history after the Star League had first collapsed. The difference though was that the Combine was not on the offensive their attacks weren't being mounted on shocked and disoriented commanders who were trying to piece together why things had gone wrong... as had been the historical explanation for the failures of tactics and operational and strategic response in the closing years of the 28th​ century. The combine infantry were also not assaulting civilian population centers to traumatize them or to prevent their governments from simply deleting combine positions from orbit as might have been the case during the height of the age of war centuries before. Instead the fights going on, as morning light crossed over Dieron's rolling hills were out in the open... what wasn't ... served as little more than choke points for clusters of infantry to be caught up together as they tried to advance.

He'd seen this before in the other states... where often enough Lyran social generals would botch an advance, or where the Capellans simply demanded the advance continue... and of the two it was more likely this was the later. The Sword of Light expecting virtue to carry where firepower was lacking.

--

Gene flipped through the maps. Dozens of fusion powered Harasser tanks were swarming around his position which concealed any heat returns his VLAR 300 would have put out. Anyone going on fusion returns if they did pick it up might well assume so many mixed fusion returns from both the harasser and the heavy vehicles further to the rear was one of their Recon Groups.

It was true that the Harassers ran off the same Fusion Engine as Davion Stingers... and invading Davion forces had deployed a number of those as it was. Not that it mattered the entire purpose of this leap frogging was to insure that both 'mechs and armor were supporting one another, and that their advance was screened by, and in turn screened for the Infantry.

The coordination of which was lacking between the branches ... almost as if the DCMS commanders were afraid one of the other branches were going to upstage them. Actually, if their comms intercepts were accurate that was exactly the problem with individual hostile Militia Infantry regiments launching unsupported attacks without the support of one another... or if it wasn't that it was because nearby infantry regiments weren't being tasked to the same objective, though that could at least have been on the basis of needed to attempt to suppress by numbers an enemy that rather uncooperatively kept shelling anything larger than a company level position with battery of thumpers.

... of course that policy had already seen Lex remark that they were burning through a lot of shells for the guns. He knew part of that was legitimate concern for their logistics, but he also knew that there were apparently questions from officers of the Crucis March contingent wanting to ask her questions about what the fuck was going on here.

It wasn't that Robinson's people, the DMM officers didn't want to be in the loop, but Elidere was one of the worlds that was their responsibility. The Scotts Cuirassiers, the highland armor and infantry units, were moving to assist MacIntyre's current point in the salient, which meant they were back on schedule at least. The holographic display panned eastward across a relatively wide depression between the hills and further until it showed him the telemetry from orbit of Sorenson's batch of Rasalhague units.

They'd finally broken through the pop up infantry contact, which was good.

As the view, and the pan across the landscape, went wider he could see the highlighted fusion signatures start to tally from both sides. It looked as if the Combine had made up their mind... the infantry attacks had almost certainly been designed to give the Mech units time to reorient and redeploy... and if the combine had planned it that way it had certainly tied up their thumpers from shooting at their redeploying units in favor of the regiments of foot.

It sucked to be the PBI but at least it made a certain sense in immoral mathematics.

Magunauc 1-1 pinged his Marauder from three mikes out signaling they were moving to link up. Sam Houston's original Azami complement was understrength relative to 1-2 and 1-3 stationed aboard the DropShips registered Crockett and Boone. The armor and mech Inf combined arms unit closing in meant the Sam Houston was in bound with more supplies.. but the lack of a radio call meant that the Sam Houston's beacon broadcast as it had crossed one of the planet's innumerable and otherwise generic mountain ranges had failed to elicit an SLDF or Hegemony handshake.

They'd try again in a couple hours.

It was possible that Fortress Dieron was running intentionally radio silent due to the hostilities... that was indeed the most likely explanation. They kept hoping for a handshake and invitation to access the facility rather than just trying to navigate to an access point by map data from N001 because they didn't want to risk tripping automated defenses... defenses they wanted to potentially use against the Combine.

Still with no progress on that front it was time to maneuver and turn this flank.

He reached over and signaled his receipt of 1-1's maneuvers, changed channels to call up the three lances, batteries in red leg parlance, of thumpers, who were about to use up more shells. If this was a longer campaign... one of weeks, never mind months the Combine would likely have ascertained that they were using the aerodynes to transport ammunition from safe areas back at their original landing sites.

They might have some suspicions at this point but with air supremacy achieved, Combine air support having been rendered if not non existent than no one currently trying to contest their short duration hops there was little the Snakes could do about it. They just needed to maintain that in order to maintain this operational tempo.

He keyed another internal company channel, "Septim standby."

"Roger that boss."

He navigated the screens, before linking the holosuite projections to the Merlin, "Orbital telemetry confirms Combine redeployment," It wasn't as bad as it could have been, but it went a long way to explain what they'd been doing. "You need to clear that sector, I wouldn't be surprised if they don't attempt another banzai charge if they think it'll give their mechs an edge.."

"Roger." There was a pause, "Any sign of that other battalion?"

"No," It seemed like the Davion intelligence continued to have been accurate, "It does seem that they're off world."

"That's too bad." The Lyran replied sarcastically. "I'll relay that to Bard after they finish rearming his wolverine."

He wondered if the other brevet Colonel had been thinking they'd be able to bag themselves an actual Kurita on this trip, but he didn't say that and the connection ended.
--
Notes: So notice for the Pirate Wars, particularly the late periphery wars section, the Aurigan sourcebook canonizes Katinka's SLDF facility being hit by a RimJob mass driver. (Well not specifically Rimworld but it was either them or the Taurians and I suspect the former) that is going to be something that comes up

 

[Imperator Pax]

Dieron Part 7​

The battery's guns were arguably doing more damage to the infantry than everyone else combined. In this situation twelve artillery pieces firing from beyond visual range into infantry you knew was out in the open was a messy, bloody prospect. It was a necessary millennium old reality of warfare though. It was much faster for 155mm air bursting shells to wipe entire grid squares of infantry than it was for mechs, or tanks.

It did not change that the appearance of mechs ... and tanks spewing incendiary weapons was enough to start a panicked route of infantrymen who had been under intermittent artillery barrages for hours. Even discounting the logistics after a certain point continuous shelling lost effectiveness, he knew that. "With crack flanking maneuver," He muttered, "I'm an uhlan alles uber striking terror into regiment of foot."

The synchronization, his tie into the command software shifted. There was a pulse across the communications software as the Dalban regulated an encrypted message through the Fury tanks of Hammer.

He wasn't holding his breath that they'd get a response this time. He watched as the SLDF communications gear broadcast its hailing signature... and then to see if the encrypted signal received a response from anything in what most people just dismissed as one of the continents mountain ranges on a planet with lots of those to begin. When there was nothing, which was what he'd come to expect after trying every six hours, he moved on to higher ground to observe the fight ahead as the command vehicles fed him data from across the advance... he picked one area and marked where he needed to be and set off pushing his Marauder forward into a sprint.

The overflights of Combine Positions were being validated out by the sensor returns. The Combine looked to be interested in committing decisively to an open battle... which might have suggested that unlike with the fighting on Elidere where the duke had beamed out a message and been hoping against hope for reinforcements... if the DCMS had sent out a message presumably the answer was they were on their own.

Part of that was probably that Dieron was a provincial capital, and that there were no BattleMech Regiments or the lift capacity to move reinforcements, especially if the Davion attack on Altair had drawn in any reserves the combine already had had... It was also just as plausible that the Sword of Light chose to commit to the fight solely for the sake of honorable deaths in battle. Gene watched the comms equipment readout... but now he was looking beyond the regiments of foot militia. The infantry were something to delegate to sub units within the advance, to be bottled up and wiped out as necessary, but otherwise kept contained and isolated so that they could assist the other arms of battle.

... even if that was, or had been as meat shields, and ablative armor.

The image fluttered opening on the holographic display. "It doesn't look like they're going to cooperate with the plan." Alexandria Cunningham observed.

"No." The original plan hadn't been set in stone, but they had hoped to pin the Combine in place for the Eridani to launch their own assault.. but battle plans didn't survive contact with the enemy and all that. .. but it would have been nice to pin the enemy in place to leave other units room to maneuver, even more so if they could encircle and wipe out major force combatants and then swing through turning the whole flank. "Hold on." He muttered and tapped the keys in front of him his eyes shifting under the data influx. "Yeah," She started to say something to that, "They've reduced the forces around San Martin." He tapped the controls in front of him after muttering the observation.

"Commander Shepherd-"

The fusion signatures he was detecting were a company of mechs from the Fifth Sword of Light, but at this resolution he couldn't tell which battalion they were.

His Marauder's Dalban started cataloging mass and signals throwing up war book identifications that ran from light mechs through to the single Assault eighty five tonner that was putting out too much signals for the mech's health. Most of the enemy force though weighted in as mediums or heavy Battlemechs a stark contrast to the expected Sun Zhang light mech cadres they'd been expecting to punch through and engage. It could have meant that this independent company had been thrown in front of them while, he assumed, the Kuritan's attempted to use the fast swarm of fresh meat to launch a suicidal banzai charge against the Guards, or the Light Horse closer to the capital of San Martin.

Or they could have been doing something else entirely.

"One-Two, One-Three break left of my position along the salient." He received a perfunctory acknowledgement of the order and a pair of jenner 7As from the One Two Tactical Group's mech lance zipped past his marauder churning through the dusty red sands. Following after them were a mix of Harasser, and Saracen LRM hovers who had been earning their name screening his flanks on the infantry. Machines that if they could pull this off, he expected he'd be able to replace wholesale with Bandits, but first they had to get through this.

The other machines of the combined arms units followed.

The good news was that their intelligence appeared valid. The entirety of Fifth Sword of Light wasn't present. Intelligence had said One battalion was off world, and we was glad that that was still the apparent case.

Of course that meant that if they did win the Regiment would survive, but it meant they would have to fight one less battalion of enemy mechs. Normal Azami doctrine was oriented towards lighter, and where possible less ammunition dependent raiding and strike forces, but that had its limitations... and of course here that role was largely already being filled by the Eridani Light Horse.
--
Alexandria Cunningham didn't like being sidelined. She had graduated from Sakhara Academy, and while her tour of service was in the office of the Prince's Champion that was actually step up from the arrangements her parents had made. Her star had risen further with Prince Hanse's ascension, as he had been quick to name his, distant, aunt as his champion elevating her beyond 'merely' the ranks of the Military Intelligence directors... but that did present other hurdles to her present position.

She watched the Azami lance move the pair of heavier mechs following after their light star league era Jenners. To go harass the Combine; pecking at them with large lasers. There had been concerns that Shepherd might have been romantically entangled with his Azami XO but she didn't see it... or if they were they were vastly more discrete about it than Chang and the Lyran Alexander were ... but even that seemed more of a friends with benefits arrangement typical of military liaisons. It wasn't her concern.

Still with no real experience in a line command ... having gone straight to staff work she was perpetually on the back foot in terms of unit interactions... which was annoying in the extreme. It didn't help that the find of the Brian Cache on Robinson had warranted diverting Shepherd off world to the Davion Capital... and then of course the mild insanity that had been Northwind. A mystery that they still couldn't adequately explain.

One of the Field Marshal's staff had ridiculously asserted that Shepherd as a Terran native may well have himself been a highlander... something about a check pattern that felt entirely to far a reach... there had been talk about the Highland Formation, but those were definitively terran mechs in long term storage. Even if that were the case it didn't explain how Shepherd had been able to turn one of the most significant ethnic minorities in the Combine against House Kurita.

The sensors within the command center of the DropShip flickered passing on as Star League tanks, the Fury tanks from Bristol, relayed data about the Sword of Light Mech Company. She paused to insure that the prince's champion knew that it was about to begin. This was the moment they'd been waiting for. This was the principle secondary objective beyond the primary of taking Dieron from the combine... especially if there were Terran caches still on this world... but those were a tertiary priority if the Combine hadn't unearthed them then they could focus on holding the world.

Yvonne Davion's face appeared, and there was a pause as her brows knit. "Are we inside the Combine's communication's network?"

"By all indications, yes." It wasn't that the trick hadn't been done to the Combine before... somehow it had been done on Elidere IV, but there had been no explanation... save the assumption that given the number of losses inflicted on the combine that a machine had probably been captured intact. No such capture had been reported.

"Interesting." The duchess of Victoria replied. "Time to close?"

"The lead combine company appears to be the standard Fire, Recon and Command lances given their position relative the salient, no more than fifteen or twenty minutes." And that was assuming that the Sword of Light didn't charge on the advancing 'mech company and its supporting armor.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Dieron Part 8​

Gene wasn't immune to fatigue. Right now he was listening to snippets from a dozen conversations occurring near simultaneously. He'd been letting the software handle much of the work. The truth was his dialect of Japanese was... painfully archaic compared to modern Combine Japanese which did occasionally give him a headache... though there were interspaced bits of Russian, English and Swedish slang thrown into communication chatter which added to that.

The radio intercepts had thus far been more or less the expected sort of posturing and battle rhetoric. Nothing really actionable. "We are Samurai!" The pronouncement brought a banzai cheer from the ranks of combine mechwarriors more than a dozen strong, a company and it seemed an expanded command element... probably family retainers or other personnel that was his best guess given the mechs had been late arrivals. If his intercepts of their IFF was right a forty something year old DCMS Major was in charge.

Gene grunted, rolling his eyes, before keying the comms to the unit at large, a series of holographic projections manifested, "That one is mine," He ordered into the mike highlighting the offending Combine Mechwarrior's heavy battlemech in the battalion wide tactical network through his Marauder.

He received a series of affirmatives, before a brogue voice cut in accompanied by a flag unnecessarily the DMM icon, "So how long are you going to need, cause," The Volunteers commanding officer, Bard Cameron, cut off in a fit of static, before his image reasserted, "Yeah we're taking intermittent LRM contacts."

"Can you identify their position?"

"Nothing, just the general direction of fire." He would have killed, probably literally, for an effective ground based tracking radar but with all of the countermeasures going out there was too much interference. "We're scouring the hills for light mechs or vehicles that might be spotting for them, but nothing so far."

Gene paused, he assumed that the Sword of Light should have had some supporting assets, and ... they were attacking as individual battalions which... they should have been maneuvering as whole battalions given the infantry cover... or at least it would have made more sense, "Weight of throw?"

"I'd guess ground based hover vehicles. Fives and tens, but" The image shuddered, "Definitely not LRM carriers, but we're getting pecked at and its starting to cause trouble for the lighter mechs." He understood that, the Stingers probably weren't the best to have brought in. "I don't think they're grasshoppers at least."

Gene nodded, and prepared to finish orienting troops into position before an overhead observation plane spotted a bigger problem. "Bard, Break contact and pull back." He didn't get an immediate response, he switched channels to the Service Company ordering them to bring trailers up, and then cycled through the roster for the fastest vehicles they had in situation with the intention to send them as couriers to physically bard to drop back from where he was in advanced contact.

The holographic display of the planet's geography as it spread out through the broad shallow river valley that fed down into the great lake that was really a freshwater inland sea given its size presented them something of a tactical and operation buffer zone to one side.

"Commander?" An Azami Tech asked within the Daimyo HQ vehicle, "We're moving the devastator now." The trailer containing the hundred ton assault mech needed to be moved to as close to the hill he had highlighted in the mech display.

He acknowledged but was already running up how quickly artillery could be brought on line... the thought of how limited their stockpiles of chaparral... the arrow IVs were but the vehicles that had been pulled out of a brian cache intended to fight the combine. He'd need machines to lase targets for missile bound artillery strikes as well... that meant he needed to remain in the Marauder until the last possible transfer time... switch machines climb up the rest of the hill and hope the topographic readouts were right and then expend as much of the machine's forty gauss rounds as he could before the enemy could rush in.

It was a pity the devastator hadn't been built with command and control in mind. The Atlas was too generalist for his taste. He somewhat regretted at the moment handing over the Ought 10 King Crabs from the Northwind find... but he had had no idea they'd be in this position. He flipped a switch to tag his movement to the illuminated waypoint and turned the Marauder to move while keeping the nose of the machine oriented towards the horizon where the enemy were coming from... if he was right then Bard was being peppered Sun Zhang cadets being fed at him piece meal and that there was probably a battalion of sword of light behind them as well...

... which just raised the question of whether or not the intelligence was wrong. Was the the whole regiment here? Or had the Combine simply consolidated more of their forces?

The Combine Commander may have assumed that if he smashed them and turned and rolled up the flank he'd be able to sweep through the DMM and then face the Eridani or the Davion Guards in an encirclement... which only made combine was going deep throat on the whole elan vitale concept.... or in its Japanese counterpart 'Kokutai'.

It was probably that. The Combine expected to start a rout... and that just wasn't going to let that happen. He reached up and flipped the toggle, and punched in a key series, and waited for their ASF detachment to move to standby.

Seven minutes later he was starting the boot sequence on the Devestator, and then moving it up the rise to the crest of the hill moving the master arm switch to on, and transferring power to the Gauss rifle capacitors... while still trying to field questions from the countess of Kestrel on what was about to happen, and why he'd pulled Bard back into the main formation.

The Marauder had been left on standby... if he had time, if he could expend his ammunition and do enough damage he'd swap back to the command mech... but that wasn't a sure thing. The Marauder's targeting data fed 'mr samurai's position as the man's parade paint heavy mech as it crossed nine hundred meters.

He ran the ballistic calculations, and started plotting the spread and displacement of the other mechs in the hostile company including the lead mech's wing man and the other lance mates. He let a breath as they continued to come on. The reticle resolved and went green. The sixty ton mech's head dissolved in slow motion in the video feed, but also in a strange dual perception of the mind machine interface, but he was already adjusting the left gauss rifle onto a catapult k2 and preparing to let fly as the laser designator of his targeting system formed two dots from the returns.

Without the Marauder's dalban he could no longer manage regiment wide command structures down to individual tank and infantry platoons. The last orders to finalize positions and prepare support ppcs, and inferno loaded srms ahead to break any following action would be the last orders those units had received. The tanks needed to be prepared to fire from protected positions and then move back if anything came through.

With more time, with more warning, he'd have tried to maneuver fury and alacorns to enfilade the oncoming attack before directing the 'mechs to attack... but this banzai charge had been screened at first as a probing action rather than what was looking like a human wave assault... in hindsight that made sense doctrinally.

This was obvious a prepared counter attack as opposed to a probe. A counter attack after their own meeting of the DCMS infantry earlier this morning. If he needed to swarm his position with reinforcements they had hovercraft of their own.

The Sword of Light Company pressed their attack heedless to the damage being done to their command lance. They were committed and wouldn't break the attack until they'd sustained losses that rendered them combat ineffective... well he could oblige them on that.

His data feeds piped live gun footage from the Devastator back to the Davion HQ all the while.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Dieron Part 9​

Field Marshal Yvonne Davion watched the data feed. These were the weapons of a lost age. Shepherd's complete unfathomable, his inability to understand how they had managed to lose 'these' these 'gauss rifle' things aside... they were weapons which in the hands of Terran pilots or terran tankers apparently for that matter ... well they compared similarly in damage output, though with ranges favorable to PPCs, to assault auto cannons.

The Gunslinger did prefer his Marauder, but it was also faster... and as they had observed it encompassed a more effective command and control suite. Classified and passed by courier only Bukaroo Banzai, her nephew and sovereign's personal scientist, had made certain comments about the Terrans. She had not readily digested the full scope of what he meant, maybe she never would, but something akin to understanding existed watching the damage be doled out.

The question remained, almost always lurking there in the back of her mind, what the combine had done. If the snake had somehow provoked the mongoose to come tearing out of its den, or whatever other analogy one wanted to make. It wasn't a priority at the moment. It like the news footage that had come in, were just extra information, that didn't impact the present battle.

That being said... the poetic quips were a little concerning especially if they were accurate reflections of how he viewed the situation. Alexandria had been correct to note the amount of ammunition though fretting about it wasn't going to do them much good. If they had as it appeared largely cleared the chaff from the Combine front then they were no in the stage of battle where decisive force would be brought to bear, and it would be here that they could see what the Combine had in their hand so to speak.

"What about Colonel Cameron?" She asked turning to the Guards officer two rows down, and didn't like the answer, especially since he'd been ordered to disengage and consolidate.

--
"Its time to switch to whisky, we've been drinking beer all night." The hoppers obediently fed alloyed depleted uranium kinetic penetrators, and set them in between the charging rails of his gauss rifle's 'breech'. There was a pulse of dust as the mass of metal accelerated down range at hypersonic velocity. An in this case small hard object moving several times the speed of sound, met a large bipedal warmachine head on.

The K2 skidded down in a lopsided manner its front glass shattered as the machine rolled to a stop on its side.


The radio crackled giving him the bad news that Bard had found that other Combine Mech Battalion, that it was the sword of light that was coming down. He reached up to flip the controls as the left the left Gauss roared tearing into the side torso of a humanoid walking war machine. Gene hissed in incandescent fury against his harness, "MacIntyre." He ordered into the throat mike, the other lieutenant colonel's image flickered into his cockpit, "go pull the volunteers out of that mess, and then put your Thugs and Highlanders wherever they can do the most good." He ignored comments about the cadets earning their spurs from the older highlanders in the channel.

The other gauss rifle snarled and he adjusted the left to delimb another mech sending it crashing into the ground as it attempted to pick up speed. The Combine wasn't, couldn't rely on non smart thermals effectively. There were too many other heat sources, and while his VLAR was running the capacitors were highly heat effective. A VLAR 300 could be powering anything from a 100 hundred Assault 'mech down to any number of sixty ton machines that filled the Comine ranks.



The display greened. Hoppers dropped rounds as they cleared under five hundred meters. The gauss rifles fired. A Dragon's fusion signature died as a couple hundred pounds of tungsten alloy ripped in and out front to back. Twenty three rounds left, eventually became twenty three rounds expended and returns on his machine's sensors confirmed contact further north as the battalions other companies continued to throttle up the engines intended to commit to what would be the decisive battle of the campaign.

Not realizing that they were already too late as the last of their lead company dissolved at just over three hundred meters to the bloom of man made lightning of his PPCs converging on the machine's head. He registered Chang's Marauder steadily trundling forward , and not the only relatively slow mech pushing up. A Fury flash cabled a text update by lasercom of the archers starting to pour fire into the advance element that had been harassing Bard and hold his attention while the Sword of Light came along. Grasshoppers and Quickdraws among them.


He took a breath as his display updated, and he ran the math, before he ordered Bardiche to swing into reinforce the position the DMM troops were supposed to be vacating. "Anyone able to tell me what the Eridani are doing?"

"Still contacting infantry, and armor. Dug in support PPCs, and inferno missiles, to the east they haven't been able to break through and reach the capital." A voice answered from the command vehicle. That suggested but didn't conclusively prove that the Combine had divided between conventional assets and Mech forces after this morning, if they hadn't already had that underway with something like this kind of attack in mind.

He swapped channels, "MacIntyre, divide that battalion and drive them towards the lake when I signal."

"Whats signal would that be colonel?"

He hit the mike's transmit key, and started cueing their aviation assets with orders to the DroSTs to prepare to dust off and potentially put their small craft in the air. He watched the battalions as they continued to advance on his broader arrangement of forces. This was going to get very messy very quickly and do so from west to east. Most likely the combine had expected that first company to hold their attention, while the DMM had been held in place or potentially even pushed by the Sun Zhang cadre, that was even now trying to push into close quarters where mech combat was often the most lethal in normal engagements. ... but what he suspected, and what his own Azami officers had reached consensus on, was that this was a combine trial by fire for its green troops as disposable meat shields to soak ammunition ahead of a more elite, or really one of THE elite units of the DCMS to launch a concerted attack.

The devastator registered the boosting fusion signatures of the aerodyne dropships, small craft and ASF as they started preparations. He didn't much longer to watch as his computer informed him that he was less than half of his combat load as the other mechs began to resolve into extended ranges against their counter measures. Seventeen rounds was going to go fast.

If they could pull this off it would cement a Davion victory at Dieron, because the combine in committing to a decisive battle were facing not just a large mech force, but also one with better equipment.

"What are we doing?"

Bard's voice was a distraction he didn't need, "Colonel Cameron I am pulling you from the rotation, and redeploying you to screen the pivot we will execute towards San Martin." He ignored the protest that the enemy was right in front of them. That it was true didn't change things, he had wanted to pull the combine units further forward, and spread them out originally... that had been the entire reason to pull the Volunteers back.

In terms of average overland speed the DMM troops would be faster to redeploy along the line, after that even accounting for the presence of cache machines in what constituted the battalion was, Bardiche with Claymore being the slowest Mech Battalion in relative terms. He pulled the trigger, and watched as the gauss rifle tore a leg off of an advancing mech even as the conversation played out.

An argument they were still carrying on when the computer warned him he had ten rounds remaining and still a full company pushing forward but he didn't care about that third company so much as the nearer remains of the second. The gauss rifle continued on down the lances and then draining the capacitors to the gauss rifle as his PPCs began to flash.

"Bard I am switching machines, standby." He ordered as a machine died to man made lightning, and he took the assault mech a step backwards, and down the hillside and walked it back to the crouched form of his Marauder. He looked at the Azami techs. "Get it loaded, and bug out, we won't use it again today." He ordered stepping of the ladder to make for the dust and mud caked 75 tonner machine, before starting a full on sprint to the machine. Start from Standby and bringing the Marauder to full power took ninety seconds to make sure the ER PPCs were live, and that the Thompson gun was good to go. He blinked through the message from testing and evaluation command. The 120mm hopper told him he had ammunition in the chamber. The VLAR 300 pushed the machine into a sprint of its own even as heard the 185mm chemjet thunder from an assault auto cannon.

It signaled that the enemy were now in close quarters with Chang's screening force, as more AC/20s opened up all along the line. The familiar connection through the MMI to the Dalban's mass of data was reassuring. He could perceive the whole battlefield spiritually process the presence of Chang's Marauder, or Beau Dervish their brawlers, or missile boats respectively.

The Kazakh river was just north of them to the east lay the planetary capital. He stared at the holographic display, a blinking indicator in what ordinarily would have been his peripheral vision. A handshake from a Terran Hegemony Command.

He blinked hard. Not now, he thought.

When the Snakes were dead. The Machine crested the hill and his ER PPCs opened up even as his sensors processed the PPC visual returns to the west towards the lake where in closer order a lance of Pillagers with assault auto cannons were wading into battle. If any of the combine had gone to thermals he knew his 75 must have looked like a small sun from the waste heat of the extended range model Hellstars.

--

"Good god."

She ignored the outburst watching the holographic displays, the multitude of feeds. She had known that the Duke of Errai had been impatient at the prospect of potentially being able to bring back the Thug BattleMech. That didn't excuse the man's behavior, but given what the Highland battalion's supposedly green troopers were doing with those and the Highlander's totem mech she could understand. The recent Northwind Graduates had taken up a position on a low promontory the highest 'hill' near a bend in one of the tributaries feeding into the lake.

As the heat of battle mounted comms discipline fell away as streams of insults, and incoherent war cries echoed between competing mechs, and their pilots shouting at each other.

"Field Marshal, the Colonel's Marauder is online we're receiving telemetry now." Telemetry might have been a stretch the initial boot of camera footage showed assault mechs as the seventy five tonner banked out from behind cover, ran up to and then proceeded punch while firing a PPC into the cockpit of a mech in Sword of Light colors.

They watched the cockpit dissolve as the Marauder was joined by two hundred ton Marauder II BattleMechs and tasking orders started to post to air units to the command board within the Davion Operations center even as highlanders screamed rallying battle cries as they continued to maul Kuritan units in the open.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Dieron Part 10​

He felt the restraints of the cockpit do their job pressing into his chest, arresting his forward momentum, but the gravity was already reasserting itself anyway, and he leaned back into the couch right hand adjusting the stick. The mech's limb moved, and his reticle tracked looking for his next target.


PPC fire rained from Hegemony era Thugs kept cool by their DHS standing on the heights to their west. Gene took a breath as Chang finished polishing off another Combine Dragon. He wasn't going to argue about who got kill tallies or anything like this. If anything his priority right now was coordinating his light mech assets and getting them moving. The Combine companies were acting like they were independent units rather than a whole battalion moving in concert. That made them harder to predict but if his feeds were right then they could be enveloped and overwhelmed.


... and not getting sucked into an engagement where their units with ammunition loads would be reduced. The entire point of shock mechs like the AC 20 armed Marauder II were to provide enough close range firepower that they could effectively delete charging light mechs and that would allow more mixed armament units built off the same frame to focus on more distant threats. Chang and her wingmen though had to be running low on Ammo by this point in the exchange which would put a greater emphasis on more energy weapon equipped frames.


Case and point a Marauder II 'Stormhammer' sallied forward to bring its eight medium lasers into yet another K2. Both mechs being too close to use their PPCs. The resulting burst from the multitude of Magna mark 2s illuminating his thermals. Once this was over he expected that there would be a requested and lengthy debrief with Blackwell over the performance of the stock II, and the alternate armament configurations... but they had to win first.


He punched up a command line into the management software as battlefield air directors prepared for their attack run. MacIntyre was to the bring the weight of the Highlander formation into a combined arms attack after the CAS broke up the Combine units. Even now Hegemony communication protocols aboard Fury and Highlander talking systems were pushing to coordinate firing solutions across air and ground units.


A fury coming online over the hill about eight hundred meters behind him painted a mech to his left. The data fed to his Marauder's Dalban which he promptly serviced with his own medium lasers. An attack that severed the already exposed myomer bundle of the right left sending it crashing to the ground. On the one hand it spared the mech from absolutely being slathered as Highland Curssaisers with inferno SRMs opened up on its lance mates.


"In bound fires. 60 seconds commander."


He nodded at the notification.


--
Normally his prophetic talents were unclear, symbolic animal images that alluded to fighting but it wasn't as if he was seeing card hands, or lotto numbers. So it wasn't like he was in any position to predict that things were about to go crazy. Septim had been mostly focused navigating his unit portion of units through the nav points.


The boss had said start pulling back rather than go chasing after small ephemeral contacts. Not that he didn't get where Bard was coming from but even with a VLAR 300 pushing his Merlin Cavalry model to a faster speed that didn't mean everyone else could... and of course there was also the fact that outside of his first shots he rarely got the chance to carefully line up his reticles.


People tended to shoot back at his Merlin... like the bastards were doing now.


A couple warning lights illuminated in his cockpit showing armor bleed throughs into an arm actuator that while not going to break the bank would mean repair time. It wasn't as serious as the damage Beau's Dervish had taken on Luxen... never mind Schiffer buying the farm, but he was wary of the damage after the beating his machine had taken on Ander's Moon. "Dumb pig head," He snarled to himself, "you should have fucking taken the option for a Highlander. Its an Assault Mech," he cursed, before lining up the large laser on the closing Dragon, "Hey asshole, here's something for." His muttering in German was cut off as he jerked the trigger when the the alarms in his cockpit started signaling in bound air warnings. Then the Merlin's TTS system whited out, which wasn't good, and was worse was it was hitting across the others.


"Inbound artillery coming in." Someone in his radio announced.


He didn't recognize the call but that wasn't really a surprise... so many new people in the company, so many Davion allies to keep track of. He had no idea who made the announcement, "Artillery?" He questioned. He hadn't heard any calls going out. Admittedly the boss had been liberally calling for fire missions on large combine troop formations as they stuck their heads up, and there was supposed to be air to ground fire coming... and then he saw a missile streaking down into a cluster of Combine ground vehicles and infantry. There was an explosion of dust, and hit the frequency to squelch onto the DropShips , "Who cleared the Chapparals to fire?" He had been told that the Azami had a handful of TAG equipped units that were being kept behind clusters of frontline mech and actual fighting vehicles.

Somebody was going to be in serious trouble if those LosTech artillery units had fired without authorization the boss had been really clear about how they only had so many of those missiles for each launcher. He pushed the machine forward all the same already scanning for enemies while he waited for an answer...

There didn't look like Combine had much left though, he was panning for any active returns but so far the whole neighboring hill, where he'd been taking pot shots at, was a smoking ruin.
--


She felt rather than really heard the explosions. Alexandria Cunningham watched the displays as they reloaded. The surveillance aircraft had cleared wide of the attack run as it moved but she hadn't expected cruise missiles strikes to follow. It wasn't unheard of for there to be lapses in communication in high intensity fights like this. It was actually in the text books at Sakhara that some times calls for fire failed to be passed along in the heat of the moment, but also that technical problems meant in bound calls sometimes failed to reach higher echelon control.


"Lady Alexandria we are reading resolved telemetry. BDA pending," The officer paused, and really more to himself than to anyone, "but that looks positive."


Gray white Rapiers their star burst roundels visible as they banked hard to circle the area they had just come over with their PPCs. In a minute the pair of ASF dove their AC 20s churning into the side of a combine CP that had been moved forward as the attack had progressed. The daimyo not dissimilar to the one that serviced Shepherd's Company exploded.


Gray White marks on the holographic display glittered into a right angle, an L with other units massing to launch into the angry disorganized red icons. The DMM troops were in Davion Gold and heading east, having been ordered to join the Eridani.


"Can they sustain this?"


"We're in close quarters now ma'am I don't expect this will last another thirty minutes." If that, the Guards officer that was her liaison and advisor of sorts, to the Prince's Champion's own separate command post. "With the Snakes fixed in place this is a battle of annihilation."


It wasn't a battle anymore it was a slaughter. Sakhara had been established by SLDF officers, and approved to train SLDF officers. It trained cadets for all combat arms, and while there was a combined arms component no one had ever tried to have them direct or even participate in using what was for all intents and purposes a light regimental combat team in this manner.


The Prince's Champion's image appeared. She remained in civilian attire than the uniform of the Davion Guards that her mother the previous Duchess of Victoria had been laid to rest in, but it didn't matter. She didn't need to be in the uniform of the AFFS to radiate composure and command. "Its such a pity we don't get to watch all of this regiment be destroyed."


"Yes ma'am." She agreed.


A small smile tugged at her lady's face. "Wrap this up quickly Alexandria we need to press on San Martin we're getting communication intercepts the Combine seems to be about to try something stupid, and desperate. The guards are going to need the manpower to prevent them from burning the town, or the like."


She nodded sharply, not quite a curtsey but the function of a noble retainer.


She turned to the mech display as other machines opened fire. Masses of LRMs were raining into pinned down Combine mechs. Lord Aaron hadn't been permitted to participate in the attack here... it would have been unacceptable, and risky at the best of times, but the DMM were acquitting themselves well, even though they were being moved to other tasks. It was the highlander cadets though she was paying attention to.


All of them remained in the colors of Northwind's Terran Hegemony era Militia. They were Gray White machines with tartan badging. That had actually been an argument in itself as the original plan had been to repaint the battalion in arid mountainous SLDF camo, apparently, akin to what most of the force had been given. Even now she was watching a lance of Star League era Thugs open up with their SRMs which was proving another unpleasant surprise.


The noose was closed.

The demonstration of the Hegemony built mechs did have one downside. The Duke of Errai had been pushy in his demands... which was no real surprise given his planet's reputation, with additional Thugs recovered she really expected a repeat once the battle was won here... especially given their involvement on the ridgeline.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Battle of Dieron Part 11
(Spring 3018)​

He watched the first machine slam into another bug mech. Hanzo heard Chang as she whooped wholeheartedly again temporarily deafening him over the radio.


"Ha." Her Atlas was out of AC 20 ammo, which as she had opined 'sucked', and had forced her to watch her distance but well, as she commented over the radio, locust pilots were a special kind of mechwarrior. She might have felt bad about throwing the Combine Cadet if the little bastard hadn't floored it and ran up and kicked her mech, but no he had so she'd picked his little bug mech and thrown him one of his friends.


He turned his machine and opened fire spraying inferno munitions at the disoriented mechs. They were long past the possibility of reciprocal dueling as had largely determined Ander's Moon so he felt no issue attacking the Sun Zhang Cadre trying to reinforce the Combine forces. He keyed the Assault mech via las comm, "Bubbles, we're preparing to separate."


"yeah yeah Hanzo I have this."


He nodded silently facing the camera.


He didn't question that. There was a dragoon mech lance under her command but he and Bahar were supposed to facilitate the pass through of the DMM troops through the line and that he meant he needed to retire from the engagement.


The general idea was fairly simple, but it was complex in execution. Their coordinating role would be to route troops from the March Militia through the nav points to insure they didn't bunch up. That way the combine couldn't hit them with artillery, or less likely air strikes. It was also to insure they didn't block other advancing units from the rear, which would include medical personnel as well as resupply.


What the Combine Commander was doing was not honorable, but brazen foolhardiness. Hanzo recognized that it was obviously more appealing to fight beyond the boundaries of a city... indeed the Ares conventions called for avoiding fighting in built up urban areas where possible, but the Combine Commander leading the force opposing them had spread his forces too far out and wasted the lives of the men underneath throwing them away.
--
Gene felt the tug on his mental connection to the machine even as he posted updated orders and data requests. The truth was a more pressing concern in terms of time table... and he wasn't going to be able to ignore.


He pressed a key to swap channels. "Bahar I need a second opinion, the way we have two options, mount a conventional Air Assault, or turn use Elidere's advance to target strategy." he wasn't sure who all was listening but her Mongoose was unpacking the subteranean rail network map pack.


Either way they were going to be forced into an Urban knife fight from the way things were looking... they would need time to load and off load... and of course there was the potential of any remaining combine reserves in the west. Davion thinking was the Combine leadership was spread out, that most likely the Dieron Military District Leadership were probably in Tatsuyama in the north west but that they could be isolated and dug out later. San Martin was the real prize anyway... a prize that the Combine might well be attempting to Nero rather than allow it to fall into Davion hands, and they needed to put a stop to that ASAP.


He wasn't' expect a hasty liaison with one of the pilots the Azami had vouched for. The Griffin Pilot was out of breath and unhappy, but he was fully prepared to take her at her word that the ISF was going to try and burn the city down because that was the general consensus of other sources. The question was still how to get to San Martin as quickly and with as coherent a force as possible. On the other hand the next words out of his mouth weren't exactly the best, "We won't let them torch the city," He assure the Griffin pilot, even though he had no way to be sure that they could actually stop the Kuritans from massacring the populace... but they would damned sure try.


He wasn't surprised when Kiyone volunteered or really... to be more accurate demanded to go along. Fine, that was fine. He qued up a mental command dialogue through the machine... and watched as the data unfurled into a holographic display.
--
They had planned for a quick campaign, and for the potential necessity of needing to withdraw. They had not planned for this kind of speed. They had expected thirty forty days potentially of conflict against the Combine. Engaging and potentially having to rebel combine forces from either the north west or from further east across the desert. They also had not planned for the tempo of operations thus far to consume the volume of shells.

The footage of combat was starting to falter. There were estimated to likely be tiny pockets of battlemechs scattered across the planet... but nothing that couldn't be mopped up. It was no longer the primary concern. The planets defenders were shattered... and without meaningful losses to the Guards, or really for that matter their forces as a whole.


In no small part because once the final forces had met there had been the strike ahead of the aircraft coming. She had an incomplete picture of how that had unfolded. She had attempted to parse through the data traffic... but Yvonne wasn't sure it was all there. There were no gaps in transmissions in the time frame, which of course was an anomalous, but perhaps, just perhaps there had been the plan to mass the strike going out with the combine close air support... but if that had been the plan it hadn't been included into the briefings.


The other detail was the steady disappearance of units from the tactical traffic. There were advantages to allowing Mercenary, or even regional commands tactical flexibility in operations. Yvonne knew that organic response times were often the key to defeating Capellan forces in the field. Capellan commanders rarely had the authority or inclination to initiate tactical maneuvers or show initiative without orders due to the Capellan political structure. They rarely could coordinate between service arms not because they were incompetent but because it required running requests up the chain of command in ways that took time.


"Mister Alexander." She greeted the Lyran Heavy Mech pilot as his image solidified. The man's dirty blonde hair was caked with sweat, all the more noticeable for his lost tech neurohelmet. In the background his Merlin was deployed near several alacorn tripple barreled tanks. Further beyond were the lighter single barreled gauss rifle tanks from beneath Bristol.


"The boss, said something about the snakes trying to pull a Nero... I think that means they plan to try burn the city."


She nodded. That wasn't honestly surprising. There were already tentative reports from the forward most Guards Scouts suggesting that ISF personnel were trying to rally citizens into last ditch fight attempts. Dieron had been chosen for a variety of reasons including that such tactics were less likely to succeed. Dieron had been a Hegemony World, and perhaps memories of that had inculcated a different set of ideals that protected the population from the Combine's usual body politic. Attempting to convince untrained citizens to potentially charge infantry with human wave tactics and improvised weapons was unlikely to be successful here.


Unsuccessful in the sense that the population was unlikely to even countenance such an attempt at resistance regardless of the exhortations of the ISF. Not that such attempts were usually all that successful against professional troops anyway.


She had some idea what was going on, part of the units that were being pulled from the rotation were the so called 'omni vehicles' made by Blackwell Industries. The Bandits, hovercraft, were being refitted but that was only a partial explanation. "Yeah, the boss said something about urban assault." Was all the Lyran would... or could admit to. He had no explanation for how they would be launching an urban assault, and her staff's conventional wisdom suggested to cross the intervening distance this was simply a preparatory measure before the march.


Yvonne Davion wasn't sure that was the case at all. Her eyes swept the holographic globe dominated the overlord's command deck.


--
Gene looked at the thermal signatures as the mag tube slowed


These tubes had been intended for rapid redployment of materiel ... for defending troops... and a quick check of his clock told him that in about sixty second the Highland Curaisser infantry bailing out the hover craft were going to deploy from the entryways deep inside the planetary capital's urban administration and behind the ISF's principle innermost urban barricade. Not that that wasn't anything really more serious than lightly armored infantry behind sand bags and machine guns... most of the heavier equipment around their communications gear... which would be their first target.


Once they visually confirmed that there was enough room to start sending hovercraft through they'd send the Bandits into the combine rear echelon and then he and the 'mech company would follow suit.


"Whatever the combine does our priority is civilian safety, secure the urban chokepoints, anchor the MSR the sooner we can link with Davion Guards Infantry," From their RCT, "the sooner we can secure overwhelming material advantage."


His intention was to deploy the Curassier into the urban center take the city's administration hub, the news stations and the university preferably without the Combine getting a distress call out. Ideally be fully deployed before they realized they were here.


He had optical telemetry and sensor returns being piped in from the Terran era surveillance equipment but that was incomplete.


"Breaching."


"GO GO GO." Shouted a platoon sergeant.


Daylight flooded the underground and acoustic signatures though not so much the actual sound followed as highlander infantry breached up and out of the subterranean. The space to clear a bandit to confirmed, and the first of the hovercraft accelerated up and out and then into the streets of San Martin. A second followed and within fifteen minutes Hanzo was pushing his bigger bug mech left while Bahar followed with her Mongoose.


One of the Pillager -D from the Reunification War would have been handy here in this kind of scenario, but they hadn't had time to pull one from the Company's reserves.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Dieron Part 12​

"He did what?"


The officer squirmed within the bowels of the Overlord. The Command Post had grown quiet again as attention shifted. The heavy combat ... the fight between Mechs had largely ended for the Invasion of Dieron. There would be mop ups but that wasn't really the issue right now.


Part of it was really more a question of how he had gotten from point A, their lines in the west, to behind Combine lines in the east. If this was some trashy unrealistic holovid blockbuster the answer would have been a quick trip into orbit and then from the orbitals reinsertion ... and that had died off really as practical during the 1st​ succession war.


The speed with which the forces had vanished from Davion lines, and then appeared in the city precluded overland travel, and they had appeared in the city which should have prompted them being shot at by whatever anti aircraft assets the combine had left.


The Davion Guards, specifically the Heavy Guards had been brought along for a milieu of reasons to this action, just as a regiment of the Avalon Hussars RCT with the Blue Stars were engaged on Altair. The objective of holding it was not a critical priority but it would be an emblazon to the whole campaign, but that would depend on their success since Dieron wouldn't be able to scramble reinforcements or relief forces to the attack.


"The air wing is rearming as we speak."


Just ASF this time. There was no sense sending dropships and combat small craft and even the ASF were going to be limited in what they could strafe effectively... but it didn't' matter because of the detail of the attack from within. Highland troopers were currently deployed in a combined arms bridgehead that opened the way into San Martin for the Davion Heavy Guards.


The Guards were taking full advantage of that beach head. Their infantry and their tanks moving forward to reinforce thin control of vital roadways and flood the city. Even now Davion intelligence officers were rushing forward to broadcast calls for the population to welcome them as liberators... a message that Colonel Shepherd had already delivered from his Marauder. The Command BattleMech had tapped into the local voice of the dragon 'official' combine news service as well as sending one of his officers... one of his combine native officers the girl piloting the Griffin and a detachment of Highland Infantry to the ComStar enclave to inform the Order that Dieron was now a world of the Federated Suns.


... there had been a slight protest apparently, but from the communications back and forth had culminated with BattleRom footage being handed to Precentor Dieron of what Shepherd's Company had done to the Sword of Light several hours earlier.


There was another detail she had to contend with. They were ahead of schedule... they were so far ahead of schedule compared to how they had expected this invasion to go.


They had the Sword of Light's particulars .... including where their missing battalion was... and who was commanding the unit. They knew where the heir of the Draconis Combine was. They in theory could could once the HPG compound was secure make a real time call out and attempt to capitalize on that information. It wouldn't avenge Ian, but it was step in the right direction... but even with the information that would mean an expensive HPG call to New Avalon and Hanse having to weigh whether to roll the dice on such a move.


It would have to be Hanse's decision, and regardless of what decision the First Prince made there would be detractors on both sides of the isle within the court.


For now though they had a battle to finish. They needed to finish securing the rest of the planet.


--
Gene watched kilted troopers herd confused civilians and Combine officials into separate groups. There was no way they were going to be able to get through this with their numbers. They were really just getting the ball rolling while they waited for more Davion Infantry to arrive on the backs of trucks into the capital. More infantry to scour the city and establish their own watch posts.


The Combine had wanted to fight a scorched earth policy, but the local ISF had never expected that the Sword of Light even down a battalion, with 2nd​ being off world, would be annihilated in open battle ... never mind in the space of a few hours of maneuver and then forty odd minutes of closing engagement to crush both 1st​ and 3rd​.


Not that anyone could have planned for slamming cruise missiles into clusters of the regiment's force as they had massed for a head on assault... but the ISF had thought that they could rally the populace for a last ditch resistance of the city... which had over estimated popular support for the dragon, and also the ISF had been mostly focusing its militia troops to the outskirts against the Heavy Guards. There had been interior defenses but nothing intended to stop more than unarmed peasants not well not highlanders full of piss and vinegar never mind the mechs that had followed once the breaches were open.


There were apparently Davion MI liaisons trying to rally anti combine resistance groups on the planet. He didn't exactly grasp who they had been backing, but he wasn't exactly surprised by spooks in shades showing up in the first waves of Heavy Guard vehicles at the University of Dieron to 'assist and advise'. The original plan had probably been running on a script that assumed... well he hoped the davion's hadn't been banking on a popular uprising in their favor... but that the Guards would be taking the city while the mercs were handling the fighting in the western countryside.


Frankly that the Eridani had themselves a numerical advantage on the Combine force initially opposing them then while potentially costly Kerston could have probably carried the day. The difference was the DMM addition. The Davions had probably planned that there needed to be some regular troops among the mix, for PR reasons as well as others.


He flipped the switches on his right side. "Bubbles I need a sitrep."


The Atlas's connection to his Marauder attenuated for a moment and then the image solidified. "Nothing going on here, we're still processing all of the dragon bits." Salvage from the Sword of Light, "But we haven't lucked out there is a lot of scrap metal but those big missiles are a lot less discerning than pretty little headshots."


"Our objective was the enemy's destruction... but we should see if we can't find any operational intelligence to pass along." He replied. They had been in high tempo operations for the better part of two days, not counting the ride in or the burn from the JumpShips. They needed to get everything locked down so they could stand down.


Maintaining this tempo was not practical, and with any luck they had completely broken Combine operational planning and exhausted their reserves. If that were the case they could stand down, take a breath, catch some sleep. Let the abundance of Davion troops secure the city... and then assess the new situation.


Chang promised she'd be on it, and Gene sat back against his harness and took a breath. The Highlanders were trying to keep the civilians from gawking too much at the 'mechs.


"Greetings Lieutenant Colonel Shepherd." A voice he didn't recognize remarked over his speakers as it read off his HAF service number and final CID operational posting. "Admiral Clancy suggested that there would be other Terran Officers who would make it to fail safe protocols and enter hibernation."


The Hegemony had had too many plans. He'd come to that conclusion on Northwind reviewing historical files... hindsight being twenty twenty of course it was all too obvious that a weak star lord and then the assassination of the second to last one had of course been a symptom... but the Hegemony really should have acted against the combine sooner.


"Commander."


"Colonel MacIntyre." He replied as the holographic image of the old scottsman solidified and the machine spirit quieted.


"I've the cadets joining us. We have control of the space port and are ready to begin transfers down from orbit."


"Good, do so." He replied. The cadets would probably be bored with what would be mostly guard duty , but they weren't quite to where they could stand down. "MacIntyre."


"Sir?"


"Stay available while you're handling that, I may need you for something."


"Yes Commander."


San Martin had been the capital of this world. That was his immediate focus with contact with the AI within Fortress Dieron... and about the time that he was doing this the news was beginning to circulate of the Wolf Dragoons activities and the Dragoons' leadership were sitting down to watch the BattleRom footage from Elidere.


The news of the Marik attack on Cranston Snord's Landhold didn't immediately raise any red flags, not to the normal intelligence services... but it was a detail that meant something to the AI within Fortress Dieron.
--
Notes: and very shortly we will be moving on to other things, including canonical ones regarding the Draconis Combine under Minoru Kurita at the end of the Star League as the driving basis for Clancy's initial pivot towards the Davions which well, we will get to, but certainly Minoru's immediate seizure of Hegemony worlds once Terra was liberated did not help, and certainly the authorization of the nuclear bombardment against Helm for their 'defiance' (read give him the SLDF materiel) cemented Clancy's decision.


That being said this is some what short as I had originally intended to contend with touching upon one of the things this heads off. The Davion takeover and prevention of the ISF from fighting a scorched earth campaign prevents the ISF from killing Myndo Waterly's college boyfriend and thus causing her to run off to ComStar. Myndo makes more appearances in the future, but is more active in the Whoops there goes the HPG alternate timeline that I occasionally spin ideas off.


I had originally planned to do an interlude of Cranston versus Marik but that's kind of been dropped even though it does still make the news, but news in BT travels slowly. Anyway we will start Fortress Dieron's chapter next week.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Fortress Dieron Part 1​

The Davions had filled the city above them with checkpoints, but that was no surprise. Even with that the Davion's focus had been mostly on civil order. He was sure they were engaging in SSE and other affairs but they had the opportunity to delve into the underground.


He had brought MacIntyre along for a couple of reasons. First and foremost because the old highlander was read in, but because there was a cover for action in being in discussion with the colonel of one of his subordinate battalions. The Davions were already, or had to be privy, that Northwind and Robinson Battle Academy were already in talks on how to move forward... and with the cache at Harlaw open there was material to equip additional units, never mind the materail the DMM had been able to add to their stores from the Brian cache on Robinson.


"I think Dieron Highlanders has a nice ring to it." The old Scotsman remarked as they walked. He was taking the escorting anti personnel drones very well all things considered, "Call it Battalion D on the papers for now." The paper work was going to be a problem.


The local MRB office, the local ComStar people weren't exactly sure what was going on. Precentor Huthrin Vandal had called in earlier that morning from New Avalon to finalize the change over of Dieron's ... map colors so to speak, and things had sounded tense when they'd been leaving. The MRB liaison at the Dieron ComStar office had looked a bit on the spot; never mind how the local Precentor must have felt at the situation. They were leaving it for the time being until they had things sorted out.


"So?" The colonel asked. "You went into one of these stasis tubes? Go to sleep in one century," The Rip Van Winkle sleep. "And wake up in another."


He paused and opened the panel and keyed the numbers into the access pad. "I don't remember much." They were dreams really, a recalling of, "A flash in the sky, that I'm pretty sure was either the Taurians, or the Rim World nuking our ships in orbit... or vice versa our fighter wings doing theirs. I remember a fight with Rim World Assault Mechs. I don't remember much beyond that other than flashes, just pieces." He repeated.


"Amnesia is a common side effect of stasis tube usage." the artificial voice remarked through one of the escorting drones, and rattled off the statistics. "Admiral Clancy demonstrated similar symptoms of memory loss." The lift began moving.


The portion of the old underground shelter was a washed out color scheme. He wasn't sure what color it had originally supposed to have been, but it connected to a mag tube that lead into the mountains that surrounded San Martin. The Combine had encouraged the rumors of Star League caches, and from the rumbling around them he could guess that they'd been hoping would be rebels would just die in the mountains.


That historical trivia was... well there were dim blue glows from the casket like structures. Some of those rebels probably had... maybe to rock falls maybe not. Given the facility they were transitioning into, he was going to wager that certainly not all of the disappeared would be rebels were dead. "Stasis tubes." Lots of stasis tubes.


They weren't all empty either. There were drones moving around. Priceless volumes of lost tech machinery everywhere. Hundred of meters below the surface buried treasure.


Apparently the original professed requisition had been long term protection of personnel ... Gene didn't question it... but it seemed odd that if that were the primary purpose of the facility why none of them had been used for that purpose... it seemed strange that Dieron's AI would be bagging would be combine rebels and putting them into the tubes, but then what did he know. Whatever was going on was authorized, or reauthorized by the last Hegemony officer to visit the facility, Clancy and his people.


It hadn't been included, or at least Dante hadn't mentioned it or put it forward to read, but the Dieron AI included after action reports against the SDS system that had to have come from Kerensky's command. More to the point the files within this bunker iterated off a list of personnel... and an attack on Richmond on Combine Forces in 2828.


"Clancy made contact with the Minnesota tribe." He remarked as he punched up the retinue of Clancy's people and their ages, and their jackets more broadly. The fact that Clancy had loaded up artificial wombs and Hegemony Medical tech before leaving Dieron was a little concerning. There had been no mention of that in Northwind's database... and it didn't seem like a stretch to assume that whatever Wolverine help Clancy had might well have been in exchange for cached terran supplies.


That worried him how that might have turned out. Worried him what might happen if the information got out. That might have been why Clancy hadn't posted that information to Northwind which didn't have involvement in that 'plan' or whatever.


... but whatever he had turned over to them, it was only a fraction of the complex machinery that Dieron, of the complex electronics and equipment Dieron as a world had made as part of the Hegemony... the problem was just the list of stasis tubes and computer parts, and artificial wombs... that still worried him... because there were notes included in the debrief at Dieron about this 'Kerensky Cluster', and the early clans... about Nicholas apparently going off the deep end... but a part of him sort of expected that.


A part of him knew that Kerensky's son had gone off his rocker... and yet seeing it in writing in the log books taht made it all the more real, and worrisome.


"Were Navigation," Unlike with Northwind's 001 annex there were no terminals projecting star charts... which was odd given San Martin had been the planetary capital during the Hegemony. "were there star charts included with this debrief?"


"They were not." The AI responded. "Given the data included I can narrow the general area coreward of the Inner Sphere," But only really down to 'far in the galactic north' terms. "I lack any viable data on the worlds Kerensky's deserters settled however there is another matter." That however would mean actually leaving San Martin, and visiting the Fortress Dieron in person.
--
The news channels were awash with Davion liaisons trying to smooth things over. Gene looked at the expanded officer contingent, but MacIntyre hadn't mentioned what was up in the mountains east of the city... or rather underneath them. There was some shuffling around, and Gene dashed the milk into the four shots of expresso sitting in his stainless steel mug. It was emblazoned with an animated appearance of a Fury tank, having been found in Bristol's storehouse, "Lets begin with the fundamental basics, Bard."


The DMM Brevet Colonel nodded raising his own coffee cup to the room. "First and foremost we won. The planet is ours. We're still waiting to hear back from Altair but our objective is accomplished."


After the polite applause to the announcement and some other minor issues during which he drank down the local cortado, "Anyone want leave?" Gene asked, "Its there for you, we will need time but the next objective on schedule is the agreed upon escort out into the periphery, while we are there Precentor Huthrin Vandal of New Avalon would appreciate any pirates we meet are dealt with. Black Jack McGirk has been busy. If you're taking leave but planning to meet up for the periphery escort I'll have data packets ready for your based on what we know. If you are staying Bard has something else for us to deal with."


"There is a short term joint duration contract we need any mechwarriors that want to sign up for this. Robinson Battle Academy's training cadre is going to be posted here for joint training with the Northwind Cadre under my careful ministrations. You'll be helping me digest our success and prepare the DMM troops for their role in mentoring the two cadres while they are here."


When Bard had ambushed them with the notion, the DMM colonel had been ignorant of where he and Macintyre had been coming from after all, it had sounded like a bad idea. Maybe not bad, but risky in terms of positioning them on the front. He agreed that the DMM group assembled made sense having them run down the cadre groups from the academies, full expanding access to that knowledge made sense, but sticking them on Dieron... that was gambling.


The Victory at Dieron meant that he had Highlanders who wanted the opportunity to take a trip home to Northwind. That was young people, the fresh graduates in the mech units as well older more experienced troopers. Part of the proposed training regiment was also going to be wider evaluation of Blackwell Industries equipment. Evaluations that if Bard's scuttlebutt was wright would very likely be passed to MI2 and probably to Davion units like the Hussars, and the Guards. I.E. The units who were the regular units participating in the actions on Dieron and Altair.


"That being said, ComStar has the battle Roms of the Marik attack on one Cranston Snord's landhold," Gene remarked, "This is not a social viewing, this is work. Review those roms, we'll be discussing them in detail." Not just the Marik side of things, but Snord. Snord was a red flag even to the Davions but the whole affair with the Minnesota tribe and Clancy earlier today... Snord's tactics... well Snord was suspected of having ties to the Dragoons.


Chang waved her hand, "Uhm, I already watched it, but ... it looked familiar, I mean Snord's people kind of did what we did, except using a base five unit formation instead of either lances or the base six mech platoons."


She wasn't wrong. It was an observation that would not be overlooked by others, or at least Gene assumed that someone else might have noticed the similarities. They might not necessarily be suspicious that Clinton must have had substantial underground facilities.


"He lost didn't he?"


The two Alexanders shared looks, and there was a pause. Not that Beau was wrong, the Marik regulars had pillaged Clinton and driven the irregular's home guard to ground but some of the footage was concerning since units seemed to disappear from contact with marik forces and pop back up in the rear echelons. "We'll talk about it, but we should consider what happened on Clinton, and the irregulars other combat actions. Not everyone is going to do us the solid of attacking us head on." ... and if there were going to be further cadre sessions the RBA and Northwind students needed to be aware of how to turn to respond to a flank or enemy in the rear.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Fortress Dieron Part 2​

Gene collected the printed papers, and took a breath. The Overlord's command space was still a wash with noise from the adjoining room. He knew there had been slight pressures on the fringes, and expected more direct efforts forthcoming ... but he had agreed to go with the Azami into the periphery. They wouldn't go all the way to Alamut, but to sweep into the Rimward Periphery, and hopefully be able to start investigating, or at least laying the ground work for an investigation... they had found that DOME outpost in the rim, and there were the umbella institutions... those needed to be looked into... but for now


"So what is the objective? You've been pushing the Battlion D plan fairly hard." He remarked to MacIntyre, "I'm not opposed to it, but we've been on stand down from combat for," He made a show of checking the data slate, "less than twenty four hours officially. This planet has been officially under the Davion banner for less than a day."


"Because the plan is to come back." MacINtyre replied matter of factly. "God willing House Cameron lives, and there is a trueborn heir to the league, but facing the odds... if not the law, then revenge. An' facing the facts the Combine cannot allow us to show them as so brittle. They'll attack. We have the machines to prepare highland regiments at strength for the first time in generations, never mind whatever is on this world."


and that was a whole other headache. He known that the Hegemony Defense Procurement Apparatus had been nightmarishly labyrinthe at best... "The mechs we had originally planned to deploy the cadets in."


"In part. In part there are other machines that came out of Harlaw. There are clan scions who will go to the academy, understanding that their duty is to fight the snakes." MacIntyre reached down and put his own documents on the table, "This is a copy from the filework of operations the Company ran in the Canopian Contracts. Luxen." The gray bearded man tilted his head and shrugged, "Its the base six thing Major Chang was saying. Now what I'm proposing here is we take the Archers we attach a whole platoon to two companies of mechs. We'd be talking eighteen mechs in a company. So in theory yes it would be more to manage, it would be larger than a square, but ah' reckon a major commanding, his XO leading the Archers. It would maximize firepower support."


Gene took the papers. "So the ultimate intention is a regiment?" He had strongly implied as much with his statement of preparing Highland regiments, plural.


"In the long term yes."


He glanced at the force chart. The biggest immediate issue was the perennial need to find ASF and pilots... but that wasn't new. Then he folded it and stuck it in his breast pocket, "Lets see whats here before we go making too grand of plans." He shook his head, "That is a lot of manpower to train up. It will take time before we're there." ... but he got the feeling that this had been probably something the Highland clans on Northwind had probably been cooking up since they'd opened Dante's annex beneath the planet... MacIntyre was right... the combine wasn't likely to take this sitting down, they had an influx of materiel and of course ... it wasn't rocket science they were very likely going to have to come back from the periphery, return to Davion space, and then deal with a belligerent combine


--
Septim had spent a couple hours shooting the shit with Bubbles, and she was definitely fucking right about the fighting tactics. This Snord guy, well he had danced around Marik before. It was scary how similar that was to, it was scary watching somebody else enevelop another successor state regular unit. It wasn't identical but the maneuver aspect of the fighting was all too like what the boss did. There was a lot less armor involved. He tossed his bag... and the leave prospect worried him...


There were going to be questions about Elidere. Now that the fighting was done the news broadcasts were crawling with battle rom footage of the Sword of Light being absolutely chewed up as well... and by the time he got home ... well he'd already asked for a copy of the public release roms from the MRB... otherwise .. well just so people would believe it.


"Ah there you are young man." Doctor Abner thumped him heartily on the back, "I should understand we shall be travelling companions." The Atlas driver declared, "A good thing I think, we have so much to talk about." Abner proceeded to talk his ear off about trying to convince the boss, again trying to, to visit New Kyoto, "There are benefits to personal presentations, but its not just that a trip to New Kyoto would have other benefits, regardless." The older lyran clapped his hands, "I have arranged proper quarters for you young man, and any one else. I know some people have made plans for leave go spend two weeks on Solaris enjoy the games, so you needn't fret. I have everything arranged." The univeristy's bell tower chimed, "In the mean time well, I have agreed to give a lecture on the history of the late star league at the university of Dieron. I would invite Commander Shepherd but I am afraid the Duchess of Victoria has absconded with him for some matter of National Security or some such military business." He waved dismissively at the notion.


Gene was situated between Lex and Bard with the Field Marshal at the head of the table. The Field Marshal looked tired. Kerston was directly across from him on the left side of the table. "The good news is Precentor New Avalon is as we speak overseeing the distribution of the battle roms through Davion space. They should be arriving to the media over the next few weeks." The Field Marshal remarked. "This is excellent news. The destruction of the majority of a sword of light regiment and the demonstration of Combine vulnerability in losing a prefectural capital will put them off balance further off balance given Elidere, and if the Blue Star Irregulars and the Hussars can secure Altair," That was two whole RCTs Gene was given to understand, "Then we will have achieved a significant coup de main there as well."


There was more to that. He'd known that as the highlanders had pushed into the heart of the Combine presence within San Martin and taken out their major command and control nodes.


They had taken the ISF headquarters more importantly their provincial archive intact. Well minus some bloodstains from highland infantry having to paint the walls, but there were supposedly two centuries worth of combine records in the facility.


Her comments made the man sitting to her left look uncomfortable. He was a spook. Probably from the DMI, he didn't look like he was from across the aisle... from the civilian intelligence service, but then what did Gene know. Either way the spook looked like he was uncomfortable being here.
"I had wanted to hold this discussion," Yvonne continued folding her hands and sitting back in her chair, "for of course much earned congratulations on the victory, but to discuss some of what we have unearthed in the archives."


That didn't sound right. They couldn't possibly have found anything too quickly in the archives. While there had been ISF prisoners taken it seemed absurd to think that the Combine could have given anything up this fast. The documents the man beside her distributed across the table were in ISF letterheads ... they were issued out under the seal of the Coordinator Minoru Kurita.


The documents detailed SLDF positions.... they detailed providing SLDF positions with the recipients of those details being the Rim World Republic. The paper detailed THS Allegiance's task group... his vision involuntarily shifted, and began to swim before he took a breath. Kerston had crinkle one side of a paper he was looking at... and Gene could make out that the brevet general's copy had been translated into English... and more to the point that the unit the ISF had passed details on... had been the 3rd​ Regimental Combat Team's 19th​ Striker Regiment.


... and the result of that was that 19th​ Striker Regiment of the Star League Defense Force had walked into an ambush and had been destroyed. Not the least of which because the Rim world hadn't minded luring the unit into an urban center and... then not caring about civilian losses in the ensuing battle.


"These are the sorts of things we've found, and its more. We plan to open the archive's historical section for study. Obviously we will need," She looked to her left, "To catalog everything first, and many people will need translators but I have already spoken with the ambassador of the Lyran Commonwealth regarding the distribution of such records to institutions of higher learning."


Gene had so many questions but bit down on most of them. It was no surprise that Kerston was going to have the Eridani dive into the archive at first opportunity... even just the material from the end of the star league. ... unlike Kerston though... well he'd need to take the general aside and mention the prospect of digitalizing the pages and letting the AI on planet sort through the material. "Who all are you granting access to?" That was probably the most immediate relevant question... because besides Kerston he was sure that MacIntyre would want access to the data contained within especially if there were more direct links of the ISF handing over SLDF positions to the Rim World.


... there probably were, and given Minoru's explicit authorization then there was going to be pressure to reciprocate what they knew in turn... and indeed that was the first thing Kerston wanted to discuss.


"Not while I have tens of thousands of Azami civilians waiting to ship out to the periphery. Or do you not think the Combine-" He bit down, the reality was if they dropped that HPG recording he expected retaliatory attacks against Azami population centers regardless ... beyond what was already happening, but JumpShips and Colonial Droppers were an easy target for Combat DropShips and ASF. "With all due respect general even without this bombshell there is something else. I need you to meet Colonel MacIntyre and I for something that will most likely take several hours of your time."


So five hours later as the curfew went into place and dusk fell over the city he was showing Kerston the copy of the reports from Richmond. The 'Minnesota Tribe's' liberation of the gulags there. The best solution... well the best idea that they could come up with for the time being was to be there bright and early in the morning and hopefully convince the Field Marshal to let Doctor Abner set up his star league era cameras to scan well as many of the documents as they could get into a computer file and then upload the digital copies of the physical paperwork from the archive to the AI.

As Kerston read, Gene thought about the archives here... would, how much about the Minnesota tribe and the combine's gulags would Admiral Clancy have included to his Davion allies. Was there a report about the attack on Richmond in the archives of the DMI somewhere? OR their civilian branch, certainly what was in the computer was more than he was under the impression of was in the public domain... but that was one more thing... and this was all just material that didn't entail going into Fortress Dieron proper this was 'unsecure' material in comparison to other data that would require being physically present to take possession of.
--
Notes: Jokingly Myndo Waterly of IE Searcher for the Minnesota Tribe! An alternate timeline. I kid I don't have the patience for that we are here for space feudalism and stompy robots, and a little bit of like 'lost history' and lost technology and what not, and rebuilding from the ashes, but yeah.


In this timeline Myndo is vastly less of a pain in the ass to the galaxy as a whole. As to the wolverines well as we will see probably soonest in 'you want to do what with my genes' the problem with tracking down the minnesota tribe, or the wolverines in general is that they ended up slitting up escaping from Kerensky space so one of the earlier leavers will show up before we get to either the dobrev or to the others on the Davion side of space.


Since we're on that note, I find Neuvo Castile to be campy as all get out, and yet I like them so much more than I like the Lyran pirates cosplaying as romans. Admittedly liking a faction more than the marians isn't hard for me. Also circling back around to Myndo to round out we will be Mori is slated show up and per canon she would have been apart of the ComStar for roughly seven years.


All that being said this update is going up in the hopes that I'll be able to make sure I do finish the update for Eminence in Shadow which will go up sunday; hopefully.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Fortress Dieron Part 3​

Doctor Abner was excitable once the morning came around even when he protested that this was just for the same of the historic record, and posterity and that this was not in any way political. ComStar had shown up to with basically those exact same words... and Gene didn't believe them either. The 'brothers', as he had dubbed them, from New Avalon didn't seem to get along necessarily with their co religionists from Dieron's chapter either.


The whole... weird techno worship thing was it made him uncomfortable. It made him want nothing more than to start sitting down the company and shoving League Era technical continuing education courses at his enlisted personnel and officers. That was something they could have potentially organized and done jointly across the whole unit, including the Azami, as well as roped in the Eridani for. The Blue Stars were on Altair as well, he hadn't forgot about them, but it couldn't be helped.


Gene shuffled through a stack of papers, and did his best to ignore the ComStar presence down in the foyer. Not that he was worried, except maybe that the New Avalon people might legitimately start brawling ... but everything here were copies not the originals. The Davions weren't taking chances given how much potential value there was in this stuff. Even with just copies the security presence was tight.


Alexandria sat down as he ran his thumb across a memorial, a formal petition to the coordinator. He was missing something these reports were, he stopped and looked at their liaison, "Good morning," was what he managed.


She returned the greeting cordially and looked at the papers. She didn't immediately say something and he wondered if she was waiting for a servant or something to bring coffee... coffee would be good. "You knew." She said simply. "Kerston suspected that the Combine had sold the Eridani out, but you already knew that the Combine was feeding League positions to Amaris."


"Yes." He replied, and then shrugged. There was no point denying that. He almost corrected her but she was right Kerston likely hadn't known for sure that the 19th​ had been attacking into a forward prepared position ... not for sure... but especially after Northwind he had probably started to wonder just how far, how many SLDF losses in the Terran campaign were the combine warning the Rimworld of imminent SLDF deployments to contest those worlds. "That's right."


"How?"


He blinked. That, that was what was bugging him. The most likely explanation of how Kerensky and Blake had known about the hpg conversation was comparatively easy to explain. Surely enough access to the Ministry of Communication apparatus was intact to eavesdrop and retrieve recorded conversations. That wasn't the only possible answer but those recordings had been validated out before the liberation of terra had commenced... and Clancy had never had access to the HPG recording. He might not have been completely clear on how much of the HPG network was working after the coup, but obvious enough for the Coordinator to take a live call from Amaris on Terra.


So how had he found out about the ISF passing information along? Surely he hadn't directly accessed the Dieron archive, assuming that those files had been present. He stood up and moved to the terminal. It was connected to one of their Fury tanks which was allowing the AI to parse data. He wasn't intentionally ignoring Lex but this was important enough to zero in on his focus to the point of tunnel vision.


"To answer your question, because these reports. The ISF orders to pass on Star League positions were leaked to the Military Intelligence Branch of the SLDF." It wasn't hard to prove with Clancy's files to validate, never mind with copies. "See," he indicated a list of documents, "These were all transferred to the SLDF. Some one in House Kurita tried to warn the SLDF that the coordinator was being blackmailed, that Amaris was holding members of the clan hostage and their safety was being used to force Minoru to comply." That was the excuse something something filial piety and what not, and that was probably how whoever had passed the information along had justified it. "And of course what they didn't know was that the combine ambassador was killed during the take over. Minoru collaborated without getting proof, so hard to excuse that... never mind what he did after." and fucking Jinjiro had even less of an excuse.

"So the Combine was simply engaged in a double gambit, hoping they both devastated one another."

... and Alexandria was right, most likely the Combine had probably been playing both sides. Minoru might well have been involved hoping that the SLDF would manage to rescue the diplomats, but it didn't matter not in the face of the succession wars that had begun after... or frankly from his position that the SLDF had clearly known... and on that...


"Its not that the brevet general didn't know the combine was handing over SLDF positions to the enemy it was that he didn't know for sure that the 19th​ was one of those units who were bushwhacked as a result of that intelligence. Its not the same thing." He commented, it was one thing to know something it was happening it was another to find out it had definitely hit someone much closer to your in group.


There was a cough over the speakers, "Commander, I may have a more pressing concern." The AI's voice remarked sounding like any generic mix of teacher and staff officer. "In the sense that it may undermine the combine's position, please move to the A18 box and look at the documents from roughly 2848 onwards in that file." It took a minute to find that box, and order one of the highland curassier to bring it over.


It was a lot of paper work that the AI had ordered sorted, "I'm not seeing it." He said into the speaker. "What am I looking for?" Dieron was the entreport through near terran space, and thus was in practice the large potential provincial point into the Combine from any of the other successor states for trade or diplomacy, even the federated suns and the lyrans used this despite their long borders... which was probably how the Davions had been able to plan the invasion of two of the provinces major worlds.


Alexandria moved, they were getting attention from one of the twenty something locals in comstar robes. The AI probably didn't have live feeds from the room, but the display changed and started tagging documents. Which he started laying out, "These entail actions by the ISF," Obviously, "The Lyran Commonwealth cells they were rolling up... and SAFE?" Alexandria paused questioning what she was looking at.


"Given the details I would parse that the Free World's League suborned a Lyran Intelligence cell and engaged Operation Praying Mantis, and from there terminated the reigning Coordinator in 2850." The AI replied laying out the intelligence and espionage chains that seemed to have been identified in isolation but never put together.


He shuffled through the papers, and the dates seemed to have lined up. The Combine had rolled up a Lyran cell but didn't get all of it, and from the look of it, the Dieron AI was right it looked as if their instructions started come through a Marik officer. Still he had to ask the Dieron AI how confident that the thinking machine was... and if the machine spirit had had a face, well his response was that he was fairly certain that SAFE had done a run around on both the Combine, and on the LIC.


The probable intention of this whole presence was that the Davions had assumed that anything from before the 'official' start of the 3rd​ succession, formally dated to the year 2866 wasn't going to be important. Or at least not likely to be important enough that anyone cared, Gene paused, "Jose," The AI's preferred given name, "Can you run a general catalog search for the Reimei ring files that might be here?"


"I'll start a search." The AI replied, and that more than anything generated significant returns given how important an information source that had been for the ISF, indeed Gene had expected that Reimei's collapse might have ended the ring, but... the AI came back with a near certainty from files proceeding into the beginning of the 3rd​ succession war that the ring had continued to be active. "An excellent catch commander I would have found it eventually but having a tag to search helped. It would be prudent to investigate jalastar aerospace."


"Collate those and then print them."

Hanzo had looked up from his copy of the dictum honorium as the sister from the ComStar local stepped a little closer than the 'mech pilot liked. The sister seemed imminently concerned about the assassination of the coordinator that... admittedly had gotten a little loud about.

He was glad he'd remembered the Reimei ring, even though it had only really snapped to mind being surrounded by so much of the ISF's archive material. He wondered what else he might have learned about heard about once that just wasn't coming to mind.
--
Yvonne Davion looked at the reports. Brevet General Kerston's reaction had gone from well depressive lows to a swing into a apoplexy with regards to the Combine... he had taken the data as she had expected had disseminated it to the Eridani as whole. The unit was furious, which was what they expected, the Eridani Light Horse was a large unit but with a well developed espirit de corp.


Those historical records were valuable to further undermine combine claims of legitimacy without compromising their ability to act on more recent intelligence. Or rather that been the thinking, they hadn't expected making them available would actually yield a current security threat or to suggest a misunderstanding of previous historical events.


The idea that the combine still had active spy rings in the Federated Suns was one thing. Of course the Snakes were spying, no the problem was that they had a ring that old still active... this whole operation had been a massive intelligence windfall. The fact that they knew where the heir to Combine was, and his unit, and for that matter his battlemech that was going to be potentially tremendously useful if only they got the chance to do so.


"I was hoping for a better picture," She told her lady in waiting, "a more clear picture for how Shepherd knows what he knows or really what he knows. This certainly falls into the latter category but I'll be honest Alexandria you don't seem to be making any progress on a personal front." She held up a hand to stymie the countess of Kestrel from an embarrassing outburst, "I understand the reality is that the Commander does seem focused on his job to the exclusion of nearly anything else, which I admit is a commendable work ethic but it is only a matter of time before the other houses of the realm start looking to cement an alliance." Never mind that the Highlanders might well have some sort of advantage on that front given the chatter... and House Sandoval was unlikely to wait much longer not with a shattered sword of light regiment's bones thrown on top of the Galedon regulars. "Then of course is that if this evaluation of data is correct our very understanding of how the 3rd​ succession war began is in question. The Mariks manage to have a Lyran spy murder the coordinator in his own bed, and the Combine blames the lyrans resulting in the Hesperus campaign..."


Right now as this conversation was going on the task of digitizing the entire archive was ongoing ... the whole archive they had allowed the old Lyran to set up his star league camera and scan all the copied documents even the ones that were painfully recent, over the objections of members of her own staff and her liaison with the MIIO. They had no reason to stop the Lyran noble from informing his home nation or the Magistracy of the existence of the Raimei ring though of course it would take time for that information to disseminate. It was in her mind a small concession in exchange for the fully searchable database, and presumably feed back from the copies by whoever was running the database on the other end.


Alexandria paused to regard the looping replay of what had befallen 'Splendor' company of the Sword of Light's 1st​ Battalion... which was to say watching as they had charged head long into annihilating fire while then also finding themselves under fire from mechs positioned high up on a ridgeline. An elite unit of combine mech warriors had been attacking a distinctly heavy mech formation of probably equivalent skill while being bracketed. The company had been wiped out, and a similar fate had befallen other units in the battalion and the regiment as individual companies mounted their attacks only to be enveloped and engaged as piecemeal forces by larger more concentrated force.


The combine would have claimed it was dishonorable... they would protest and object and make excuses but it didn't change the result. It also didn't change the facts that the battle rom looked visually impressive. The Combine's elite being broken in detail, by a force that suffered only comparatively minor damage. "I understand."


"Do you?" The prince's champion questioned, "Realistically even if he does take a sabbatical to the periphery for humanitarian reasons when he comes back that will mean that the other marcher lords, and their retainers will be more inclined to act. If you want my advice, on the subject, it might be blunt to simply make the offer of a home. You could even trade on descent from the SLDF, that may be of a benefit."

--
Notes: This would have technically been next week's update, but other things cropped up so hopefully I will be able to sit down and finish the next part of eminence in shadow and resume Tuesday updates for that, but yeah IRL is disruptive so it comes down to posting stuff that was ready weeks ago.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Fortress Dieron Part 4​

The Overlord's briefing room was only starting to quiet as they finished shuffling into the space around the holographic table, as he made the decision to start before anybody could speculate on why they were "Lets begin with the serious issue that is in front of us. There is a Hegemony fortress intact here on planet." He reiterated to Septim, and the others. "Jose has mentioned classified materiel that was earmarked for Lockdale's anchorage... which I will be honest we are probably going to pass on for the Davion's to investigate if only because that anchorage will have significant stocks of WMDs that I don't want found by anyone else if they haven't been already." But he'd also be warning the davions that if the anchorage hadn't been nuked to hell during the earlier fighting there were probably automated defenses around it.


That would mean most likely drone fighters... and probably malfunctioning drone fighters given the amount of time which had eclipsed so it was going to be risky. He was a little worried about about what that would mean if there were more complex AI present...


"Shouldn't we go check that out?"


"Are you zero-g operations certified?" Gene questioned the lyran who shook quickly his head in the negative, "I don't have personnel for that then."

"We do actually." He glanced to Bahar who had spoken up, "occasionally the community must salvage derelict jumpships and dropships."


He remembered what he'd been told about the JumpShip now called Cairo. "Alright then we will discuss it based on what information is available from within the Fortress, but that is more the point. There is a chance I will be in there for three days. If House Davion asks we may be interested in a landhold at Dieron. That being said Dieron was one of the worlds of the Lone Star province, that may impact available data there. I'll fill you in, in the mean time those reports that are coming in collated from the ISF archive... you should read them if you have time." Not that the staff present in the room hadn't all seen the laconic version of the hpg recording. "You may notice something I didn't... and I am interested in who passed information out see what can't be pieced together."


"What's going to be in there?"


He gave them a flat look. "Realistically? Fortress Dieron is a whole mountain facility, and," Turning to glance at MacIntyre, and thinking also about the AI on Northwind "And if the colonel is correct in his assessments of what the Combine's motives are. Their need to try and salvage their reputation it may be the key to supporting a wedge to cutting them from the terran corridor..." and it would be in a way, Dante had made suggestions of his own, but the communications logs inside Dieron were invaluable for other reasons and for the sake of preparing other decisions. "We are likely going to need to make long term plans for joint operations with the Eridani and some of their friendly commands, but again that will be something we will discuss later."


The meeting continued until lunch from which the officers were dispatched off to their respective assignments. For Septim that meant joining Bard in the current rotation of light duty supervising the DMM contingent.


Dozens of BattleMechs stood assembled, and he had to not gloat. The truth was he was happy. The March troops had proven their bonafides against the ancestral enemy... admittedly he had been happy at the time told to redeploy... he'd never actually been given those kinds of orders.


... actually he'd been in the moment pissed to be pulled off from trying to tear the snake's throat out with his bare hands.... but he could see the whole plan and why it had worked. He'd been in the moment though, and he hadn't been thinking about how Elidere had played out, and this wasn't that different. "Its a pity you're shipping off." He told the Lyran.


The merlin pilot swallowed down his black beer, the last of it in his glass, "I had been planning to visit home for a while... not, I didn't expect."


"Yeah. I don't expect any of us expected this." Then he waved for another beer for the two of them.
Septim nodded to him in thanks, "Hey when we get back the boss will need more ASF pilots if they're serious about the training thing."


Bard knew that his next assignment would be a series of critical liaison 'missions'. It was to be aimed at graduating cadets from his home institution, the RBA, and the Northwind Highlander's own academy. The posting was to be a Draconis March Command but that proposal was in an entire different light given the sheer scope of what they had accomplished.


Indeed it probably would have been a potentially cushy gig even if not for their slated posting. Dieron would need to be held... there would be other units here, but the command wanted to make sure that they could adequately prepare the troops from both academies for what the fights would be like.


The idea was to encourage interoperability between the two school's graduates, and also to increase the effectiveness of the Draconis March Militia overall. The lyran was right air power was part of that... "yeah well they don't exactly grow on trees." He said in relation well really to the fighters but their shortage also lead to a limit on the number of pilots to go with them. He almost suggested that if they needed pilots to try and convince the Azami pilots to stick around... but he guessed that wasn't going to work.


The DMM had been subjected to a lengthy stand down briefing about what the ISF had been trying to convince the population of San Martin to do, and what they had planned to do to deny the city to the invasion force. They had failed... they had been stopped, because well no one had expected what was happening behind the lines.


He took a pull from his own beer, "Between our guy, and this Snord, there is one other guy I've heard about who can pull something like that off."


"Oh yeah, why haven't we met him?" The Lyran asked, he leaned forward resting his elbows on the table beer hanging loosely, "What's this legendary knight's name?"


Bard felt his expression darken, "Yorinaga Kurita, he danced a whole battalion through on lines and murdered Ian Davion on Mallory's world. He made all of us look like fools." and the truth was that the bastard had meant to rub it in further, and had only had his victory spoiled by what was hard to see as anything other than luck.


There was an uncomfortable quiet. "Shit," The Lyran muttered in German, and sat back... and then hastily changed subjects, "So anyway, I won't be sticking around for implementation, but the boss has already put together planning." The biggest problem was the lack of uniformity in units, and frequency by which mech warriors acted as individual knight errants rather than as small units.


What was recommended were an emphasis where larger company sized actions were not feasible that lance sized divisions of fire and maneuver were employed. This was intended also to prepare such pilots for acting as larger fire and maneuver sections at company level as part of battalion wide actions in assault actions.
--
Gene descended deep into the underground beneath the city. Far deeper than the Combine had ever dared attempt to explore, and deeper than the Rim World had thought to attempt to invade. He had a data slate waiting for him on the mag lev train waiting for him.


Unfortunately given the disturbance the data crunching the AI had done at the archive his disappearance as likely to be noted. He had had to ask Professor Abner to see what all could be found out about Lockdale, and preferably before than the old man left... but the more dangerous factor was that if he was understanding the security key markers on Fortress Dieron correctly the Hegemony Fortress was more dangerous than an depot to sustain an Mechanized Infantry Division, or even for that matter a Brian cache. There were transit loads of material earmarked for the Navy's anchorage at Lockdale... so he needed to know what had happened at Lockdale in the interim... and from what he understood the Dieron AI had been ordered to disconnect from the HPG network rather than previous instances were the other Hegemony AIs had had their HPG uplinks severed by the destruction of those assets.


While Jose had not confirmed his suspicions he suspected that there was at least one HPG within the Fotress deep in the mountain's interior. If those were there then who knew what else was there, but if their existence became known it would spark a scramble for Dieron by both the successor houses and also attempts by ComStar to maintain their monopoly.


That was why he was planning to enter the fortress first and separate, even in spite of objections. Not that the AI was the one objecting. It was dangerous and risky, and if the Combine or anyone else showed up for round two there was going to be a problem... but the AI had done a good job making it seem like his entry by himself needed to be done... if only it didn't emphasize that he was the fish out of water.


He lost track of time reading as the train sped up to three hundred miles an hour... and then some time later a chime sounded as the train decelerated and came to a halt. Fortress Dieron's interior was painfully white. Bright clean, and swarming with the necessary hardware and material to protect itself. A reminder that the Hegemony Commanders had been overruled from on high, by Cameron and Kerensky both to reduce their defenses and allow Rimworld forces to take positions if not inside known fortresses then inside defensive fail safes that would have created perimeters, all the while stripping necessary garrison forces to fight in the periphery. He'd never been here, but the interior featured the Lone Star provincial banner alongside the Cameron icons... and it was reminder that the Combine had been responsible for Lone Star's demise as a planet.


"Welcome to the Fortress Dieron, Commander Shepherd."

 

[Imperator Pax]

Fortress Dieron Part 5​

The entry process was the standard insert data and blood sample he'd been expecting, followed by a neuro-helmet boot and logging for access to enter the secure facility access lift... and he could understand why. Nothing had changed in the hundred plus years since Clancy had been here... there capital scale surface to orbit guns still concealed in hardened and disguised recesses of the mountain's surface capable of murdering attacking warships.


Not that the successor states had warships anymore... somehow... but if someone had had control of the fortress and the ability to order the guns into action... warships would have had a bad day... but he had already seen enough to know Kerensky's exodus had functional warships, that the Wolverines had fled clan space with warships. There were no reason for warships to have gone extinct out there... and besides if it could kill a warship it could pop a dropper... not that he really wanted to advertise such a capability if he didn't have to.


The command center though felt empty. It felt tomb like and claustrophobic more so than Fort St George. There were no bodies of course. There was no indication this facility had ever been threatened from within. There was no indication that anything like what had fallen the Outpost Castle St George on Elidere had happened here. In fact it was a little strange that Kerensky had not attempted to strip the facility before running for the periphery... but then again he might not have had the time or personnel ... and Commanding General or not Kerensky couldn't have known everything.


... and of course House Cameron really needed to expand its naming conventions. There were too many that relied on traditional english or scots diaspora naming conventions. St Michael, Harlaw, St George, Wellington.... there was a long long list each of those, and then a handful of various ones named after other famous terran officers from the 19th​ and 20th​ centuries... but he wasn't here to critique the naming conventions of a long dead government. He was here to look at the holographic displays. "What are the probabilities Lockdale Anchorage is intact?"


Or any of the anchorages for that matter... but he declined to voice that question about the rest of near terran space... and it would be years before that question was looked at.

All the same calculations were weighed, and the AI considered the question with all due seriousness. "Given the absence of data and that Admiral Clancy would likely have access to the facility. It is possible the facility is intact, but that it was relieved of further useful material... on the other hand if the Minnesota tribe, as you called them were in need of overhaul I have a hard time believing it would have been especially practical to use the anchorage assuming it were intact."


Lockdale was a jump from Northwind, which historically would have meant nothing of course. Lockdale Anchorage probably had taken receipt of fresh materiel and immediately put it in storage until it needed to be shipped out somewhere else... the problem was so far as he could parse from the historical record was whether or not the successor states had ever fought over Lockdale... or if they had just written it off in the early first succession war.


The Davions had after all had to take Northwind from the Capellans.


"I am collating the reports I deem to be most important relating to briefing you on the current facility condition and its stockpiles, as well as other resources of Hegemony stockpiles on Dieron." The AI remarked as new holographic displays populated.

There was a lot of data here, never mind all of the data from the combine archive. Data that he wouldn't possibly have time to review personally but that the AI had the computational power to take a crack at. Still even the AI would need some amount of time. That left him with the ability to wander around while things were being compared.

--
The members of the community were awash with activity. Bahar took a sip from her canteen, and waited for the connection to establish.

It was true that mechwarriors were mostly supervisory in these duties, but they were still present. Bubbles had been correct the use of artillery to shatter the sword of light had left significantly less salvage than would have been typical of mech to mech engagements... never mind having to just salvage a mech who's cockpit had been shot out or otherwise forced to bail out. Though, from what they had examined there were a number of intact enough machines that didn't even posses such rudimentary safety features. For some that was absurd, but it was... all too common within the DCMS as a belief.


"Is this line secure?" The holographic image wavered, attenuating for a moment as one of the techs checked.


"We are," Pasha remarked.


"How long are the techs going to be needed out there?"


It was an absurd question. The ability to take a portion of the salvaged remains of the enemy were the lifeblood of most mercenary commands. Bahar amended that they were also not most. They weren't anything approaching the average up and coming commands, and for a soldier born in a distant bygone time of scientific understanding and material progress the idea of needing to salvage equipment must have been a straining concept.


The elder Azami stroked his beard, "We will be done with the work soon. There is not much left to be done given the coup de grace delivered on the Sword of Light." Pasha remarked.


"This is a sensitive operation," Gene remarked after a pause. "And its going to be labor intensive work. Give the men twenty four hours to stand down before you brief them... don't bring anyone who's claustrophobic or afraid of being underground."


Within the distant underground fortress Gene leaned back in the chair as the line disconnected... a significant amount of the Hegemony research apparatus and indeed mass production of certain systems had been pioneered within the core worlds of the Hegemony. Worlds that were lost. He was pretty sure Venus was gone, Mars was probably dying, Earth had been reduced to having nation states again... New Earth had eaten Nuke, New Dallas... well truthfully he'd need to make a circuit of the worlds in question. "Are they functional?" He asked.


"Unfortunately the program was interrupted," By the Coup presumably, "the advanced control system for battlemechs was still being evaluated in the field. Given the success though of integrating command software between ground vehicles and aerospace fighters there is no reason the Hegemony program wouldn't have born results."


Of course for the Hegemony the primary goal was to prevent any enemy from even contacting ground forces. The Hegemony hadn't seriously allocated resources to offensive warfare deployment for Drone BattleMechs because the drone program was intended as primarily defensive as a force multiplier. The ASF component though, well that was intended, and had been folded into the SDS program with the intention of keeping invaders off world in the first place.


Of course the SDS had also refined the system to allow high functioning artificial intelligences to operate. Warships never mind stations were sophonts though still bound into the concepts that had shaped their formative programing... and ultimately vulnerable to exploitation of having ground commands target hostile forces ... as had been born out by the subversion of the SDS system.
... if only the over ride and release command had gone through. It might have, probably would have... created other problems but it would have locked Amaris into an unsustainable planetary conflict ... but that was a what if, something that hadn't happened and there was no point going down that rabbit whole.


"The principle problem remains jump exposure?"


"Correct." Jose replied, "Jump Transit and the time," In null space or whatever one wanted to call it effected AIs badly, "between has always created significant problems. There were tentative reports that some AI were able to deal with this, but all AI who were capable of making jumps while active had onboard human crews."


Gene paused... taking a moment to weigh his next question... and then blurted it out, "The psychic space squid theory?"


Jose's holographic image flickered, "There was significant research on hyperspace phenomenon that still could not explain various debris patterns or data tracks from experiments intended to measure hyperspace. AI make the transition best when we're safely sealed within our cores, but obviously that leaves us dependent on humans for transit. Rampancy after exposure to jumps is commonplace."


But theoretically you could move the AI by sealing their cores and bringing them along. They just needed to be shut down for the Jump. Then woken back up on the other end.


"So?"


"While such drone BattleMechs are not in my inventory, it would be feasible to retrofit an ASF carrier dropship as a drone mother ship. It would be even less complicated to use a common armor carrier such as the Triumph as a deployment platform for ground vehicles as you have already utilized against the Combine in the Elidere System."


He was surprised Jose was willing to countenance such a proposal. The risk of revealing such systems in operation were part of the reason the hegemony had not gone for them. They didn't want to show that they could because of how the other member states would react. Hegemony pilots were bad enough, if the Hegemony started fielding mech regiments whose CO's were commanding combat teams of AI armor and air assets as force multipliers... well... to play the what if game a conflict with the Combine might well have taken a very unpleasant, and very likely nuclear turn.


"This is not a suggestion I make lightly Commander Shepherd. These are assets that would be very difficult to replace with our current resources, however your command is markedly short on available forces, and there is an severe ASF deficiency." The Fortress Dieron AI remarked, "My responsibilities entail providing a full spectrum of advice."


"So you want me to box you up and take you with me?"


"No. My primary responsibility is to defend Dieron... given the information available and particular the data you have shared we must consider that the Combine represents a significant threat to order in known space, and worse represents a major distraction in the even that the descendants of Kerensky's people do return in force."


Holographic displays appeared.


Data that he'd been viewing over the last couple days since the sword of light had been defeated.


The Azami fleet currently over Northwind had a plotted jump route that stretched out towards the Aurigan Reach. It terminated there. There was no continuation path to Alamut. That was data the captains of Lebanon and Colorado kept separate for good reason. Not that it mattered, what mattered was even just moving to the Reach should have put the Azami outside of the realistic reach of the Combine just because they'd realistically have to move through two or three political entities including one they had just lost a major world to.


That exodus had the potential to support basing operations in the periphery for ... at least investigating the disappearance of, and the loss of the Tripitz.


The AI did not like what he was seeing from the reports filtering in from the periphery. They hadn't had the resources, or the inclination to look too hard at the mechs the pirates had used during the second battle of Luxen... but that seemed to have been an oversight given some of the footage that was making its way back into the Inner Sphere.


There other things. Perhaps foremost among them though was the reiteration of all the various Hegemony worlds that were worth visiting. That might have information or supplies.


"I must additionally recommend given these Wolf Dragoons, that resources be allocated to locate additional information regarding the Minesota tribe, and its departure from whatever colonies Kerensky established."


"I was already planning to."


"Very good... then there is one other matter. I have an HPG signal transmitted through the network coreward. The location of the SLS Ulithi is here," A holographic image projected a series of coordinates, along with a navigation route, "the message is a follows..." It wasn't anything special they were looking to find Kerenssky and join the exodus.

When it was done Gene stared at the holographic map, fighting back the headache.

The Draconian rift was a coreward region of space. It was the Draconis Combine Periphery border. The Fotress's computer's astrological data had fed in the coordinates detailing 1245K3 and the habitable world within a single jump's distance as determined by the system. That wasn't what made it interesting. It was the feed data from 2785. Buffalo Meadows had attempted to send out a message, the contents were disappointing they'd been ferreting out, searching after General Kerensky having missed the Exodus lift off but it was something.

He punched up the coordinates again, and printed them out. Along with the scuttling protocols for triggering a warships self destruct... which assumed that they were there still... they were too close to the combine the last thing he wanted was the combine potentially taking warships on a death ride against anyone.


--
Notes: So I have for August a couple of other things slated to go up, these will be misc thread stuff mostly starting out. (As I mentioned I started playing the Xenonauts 2 demo, and I bought into early access when it dropped) I have based on xenonauts 2 fic of sorts in the works the first three roughly segments are done, and also I'm strongly considering doing an Inuyasha fic centering around a Seshomaru SI but that is still tenuous (this would be set during the original anime and focus on muromachi era japan most likely).

 

[Imperator Pax]

Fortress Dieron Part 6​

Gene checked the data slate, but it hadn't changed to provide him with the answers he was looking for. He wished Clancy had explained some of his reasoning. There were things like some of the various dropships in the bays he would have liked to know why the man hadn't taken them with him. Even with more than a hundred personnel admitted into the facility it wasn't enough not to make the place feel any less empty. The noise, the lights, the motions it didn't help. Not really.


A castle Brian was designed to maintain and rebuild the brigades within it. Sustainment of those units was key to insuring that a unit could weather a threatening enemy invasion and be prepared to counter attack once relief from the Hegemony arrived. It was part of a strategy to insure enemy forces were spread out or tied down on a planet and thus slow an incursion.

To that end there was a lot of complex machinery that was allocated to a Castle complex. That wasn't to say the average facility was intended to mass produce wholly new machines. There were exceptions but the program was more to rebuild and replace parts quickly. Construction of new mechs wasn't the usual objective. Myomer extrusion, onsite armor manufacturing, spare parts fabrication, and making weapons were all on a list of things. Given enough time a stocked castle brian could potentially turn out through its machine shops a machine from scratch, but that wasn't what they were intended to do.


This was intended to facilitate depot level rebuilding of machines... and since Hegemony Regiments could entail whole battalions of the same model machine or at least single unit lances or companies that meant the machinery could be fairly standard.



That didn't mean a castle wasn't about the ideal staging location to transport the heavy machinery necessary for complex construction tasks. The black box blocks of sealed machinery could be innocuously itemized and kept from prying eyes and who would have any idea what they were when sitting in depot. He was pretty sure that similar machinery had been at Fort St George on Elidere given the depot level overhaul carried out on his first Marauder.


"Do you know what this is?"

"Its part of a Marauder production line." He replied. "Automated Engine factory," It was designed to build DHS into the engine during the process... the kind of thing the Hegemony had never demonstrated to the others... and the sort of manufacturing technology that had all but disappeared when Kerensky had fled the Inner Sphere. "VLAR 300."

The Azami half turned, apparently he hadn't gotten that far only recognizing that the machine was some kind of black box facility. "Of course, what do you want done with it?"

To finish cataloging but this was going to need to be packed in dry storage and secured in a DropShip hull... he paused, "Earmark it, run a diagnostic, and check to see what needs to be done to configure it."

"And?"

"Once you familiarize yourself with it, run the precursor materials into it, and then see if it works as it is supposed to." They were standard 19 ton fusion engines, the integrated production of heat sinks though might allow them to free space in machines like Septim's Merlin Cavalry. A fusion engine was the heart of a battlemech or an ASF for that matter.

"Should I mount it in the Atlas once complete?" The tech seemed confident that the Machine would work as it was intended. He acknowledged that that would be fine, and resumed reading the Terran Hegemony Materiel's Command documentation trying to wrap his head around how this magic box even worked.


Gene almost said yes. "No hold off on that." He didn't understand why the original Atlas of 2755 had been built with standards. It didn't make sense by that point... neither did the King Crab's use of standards. "Just make sure the engine works. The Atlas we know it works and right now its better that we focus on keeping it available for combat."


The tech dimmed a little but nodded. No doubt the man had expected such an improvement to the Atlas would make it even more dangerous... and truthfully if they did make the change it probably would be an improvement ... Chang had been complaining that she ran out out of ammo too quickly for her tastes. Freeing up some space would let them mount Medium Lasers as a back up... but no, not right now.


He surveyed the machine.


The factory unit was a relic of the hegemony. Of the star league as well intended to simplify production. It was the story of a thousand years of industrialization. Increase the effectiveness of the industrial production process. Build a better machine to make better tools, to make better things. While the combine's wage slaves toiled in their cottage industry the hegemony had envisioned being able to have worlds... well some times that ability to produce complex machines had had negative repercussions... it had lead to more than its share of costly boondoggles... and of course the eventual result of black box production technology had made things like the mother doctrine feasible... and that had in turn probably contributed to technological decline after the Amaris crisis and the first succession war had started throwing nukes around like they were firecrackers.
--
Alexandria Cunningham groaned at the report.


The entirety of Shepherd's Company was acting weird.


... weirder, she supposed. The officers were the clear origin point, but even now the most recent recruits, the mix of hires on from Northwind's recent graduates constituting Shepherd's Highlanders and the Azami and Rasalhague contingents had been pulled for a training rotation with the DMM portion of the invasion force, and the Eridani.


... something revolving around SLDF manuals, and exercises. "Its an excuse to cover Shepherd's disappearance." The Field Marshal remarked matter of factly. "Which suggests that unlike Northwind this has the potential to be an extended absence, or that whatever is the cause of it has significant potential for repercussions."


"Could it be related to the ISF archive?" One of the first lessons she had learned... or more correctly been taught was avoid asking questions you didn't know the answer to... but there were times where that couldn't be helped and you had to ask.


"It is certainly possible. There was no indication that these drills were scheduled prior to the incident at the archive." And worse all of those had been copies of documents. MIIO's liaison still wasn't thrilled with her operation... but part of that was Shepherd was if not a native speaker of Japanese had most likely grown up on a Terran world where it was spoken throughout his childhood and thus didn't require translations of formal archaic even written Japanese that the ISF and the Coordinator's court frequently made use of.


There was also of course Shepherd's possession of a first edition copy of the Dictum Honorium ... which first edition somewhat mis named the book. The combine's digressions of honorable behavior was written in a haltingly archaic form of Japanese and had been handwritten by the daughter of the first coordinator. According to rumor Shepherd's copy actually had bloodstains on it, though the source wasn't clear. Whatever the case the existence of the book, his ability to read it, and his role in bypassing the ISF defensive line and then bushwhacking the ISF's command and control had the remaining combine's attention.


There were rules for how merchants were to be treated. Agreements in the third succession war's onset that governed how they'd treat one another's merchants. To that end unless she could prove they were spies she was letting the combine merchants remain active... that and their behavior might provide insights, but right now they were too frantic over the world being flipped.


"The commander had the archive turned into digital copies, all of which is apparently searchable by computer." Which should have taken potentially months or even years, but Yvonne was willing to make allowances for lost star league computer capabilities... but very likely he had, like she had, some idea where to start looking... and unlike her he had a searchable database to run key words through... and the aforementioned fluency to help.
--
The holographic lights swirled.


"The proposal has merit." The AI remarked. "The logic is sound, both as an evaluation concept and for political interest gathering. It bolsters the security presence of the new government and facilitates potential integration into the political order in a way house Kurita could not effectively undertake."


The Combine had tried too hard to push their interpretation of Bushido and what was Nihonjinron as the combine perceived their place in the universe. A view that incompatible with the planetary culture of Dieron even centuries after the Hegemony had fallen... he supposed that was kind of gratifying.


He tapped a holographic display, "what's this?"

The 'plate' shifted.

"A proposal, since you have refused the recommendation for extensive refits for combat armor units." The AI disapprovingly remarked, "it is a recommendation for further requipment. It is also recommendation to establish a landhold within a secondary mountain complex that would not compromise this facility. The proposal to begin standing up highland regiments has merit... but I believe there is one potential issue."


The image of the Northwind Highlanders, the Capellan Mercenary Unit, appeared.


"You think it would provoke a reaction."


"I do." The AI replied. "indeed I would speculate that given the observed Northwind behaviors they plan to formally reconstitute the Scotts Dragoons utilizing the resources made available to them, and potentially from there the Royal Highland Brigade. That might well arouse the interest of these Wolf Dragoons, and while we cannot be certain it is not unreasonable to suspect that as descendants of the migration from the sphere that they could piece together bits of information from which to reach problematic conclusions." The thinking machine continued, "This is made potentially more of a concern by the behaviors exhibited by members of the highlander officer corp. I would estimate that recognition of the Dragoons origins might lead to direct confrontation, and if not by Northwind membership than statistical likelihood by descendants of other SLDF personnel."


... by which the Eridani... or potentially the Blue Star irregulars.


"Dante recommended-"


"A proposal to locate a brian cache or Light BattleMech Division depot in order to refit the Eridani for resumed hostility against the Draconis Combine, with the aims of securing near terran space, and expelling House Kurita from the Terran Corridor."


Yes... that. "And?"


A holographic image of a world with notable seas appeared... and then morphed into a more recent image according to the date showing one absent. "This is Helm. It is the site of an SLDF Strategic Logistics Stockpile located as a part of the Nagayan Castle Brian Complex."
--
Notes: With regards to Gene's language, this has been touched on, but to the average combine wage slave / peasant /salaraiman whatever he speaks a very archaic standard of Japanese ala this sounds like Grampa to the Combine nobility of traditional mindset Gene speaks and reads classical Japanese texts so thus ironically Gene can better communicate albeit with a dialect drift with Combine elites than he can the common Combine citizen.

Anyway this has been a while coming.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Fortress Dieron Part 7​

Gene watched the automated gantries move as Pasha picked up the slate. The old ship master frowned and tapped at the screen his face shifting, probably digesting the gobbledygook of attempts to maintain secrecy and program. Too much of the dataslates dressed things up in as boring names as possible without hinting at what the systems were.


The holographic display showed readouts of the hulls down below but his thoughts were elsewhere, and on previous conversations. Argo. The DropShip had disappeared into the rimward periphery before the Amaris Crisis... his first guess from its size and its seurity profile at Northwind had been an SLCOMNET tender... but Dante had been able to shore that away... apparently from the review of what data they did have was its changes to the docking system allowed additional small DropShips... such as leopards to be carried docked to the hundred thousand tonner as it was docked to a jumpship...


It was an odd improvement to DropShip and JumpShip systems... he wondered where that development had originated, but it would have been useful here. "thats whats in the port." He said after a minute.


"They are dropships?" Pasha questioned stroking his beard.


"Yes..." He paused and blew out a breath... "In a technical sense, yes... in other terms, its complicated." Bahar had been supposed to brief the JumpShip captain on what they needed... but this was still going to be complicated... more than complicated. He didn't like concealing that they'd found a lead on the Minnesota tribe's activities from Doctor Abner... but he was holding back on that for the time being because he didn't' know what to make of Clancy throwing in with them.... what was more problematic was the ... was probably the route that Kerensky had used to get out into deep space given modelling from stellar telemetry and the information they had.


Pasha took the data slate and the jump information without a comment. "I can gather a body of volunteers from the community... but if this is what you describe it, there will be robotic defenders ... aircraft that don't require pilots, almost certainly there will be turrets, and such as well."


"Its entirely possible that there is worse than that. I have an override command ... I accept that this reduces our cargo capacity but we need to investigate Lockdale."


"Investigating is not a problem." The man remarked, which if only he knew of the number of worlds... there was New Dallas to consider as well after all, ... there was organizing a periphery expedition there the estimates on where the 'Exodus Road' was and the chance that there might be leads on that front at Lockdale... which worried Gene. "I will speak to the other elders when we return to Northwind. The highlanders will be expecting your return anyway."


There was no sense risking a jump straining the drives trying to make Lockdale from Dieron... now when Pasha was right the victory here would require going back to Northwind... which was good because he had a data core capable of sustaining Dante's consciousness safely.


But it wasn't just Lockdale. Dante's list had been one thing, but the Fortress Dieron AI had a much more intact facility, "The Field Marshal says they received an HPG transmission from Altair, the planet has officially changed hands." He remarked.


"That is good." Pasha responded, he was scrolling down, "These supplies marked for the anchorage, they are already loaded aboard a Star League era Cargo DropShip." Then corrected that there were two such cargo ships, "I cannot begin to comment on the value of such cargo, if it can carry such cargo we could make sure such tonnage is used for other goods. It would reduce the number of Mules, and other bulk freighters, and free up collars for transit."


"Has the Field Marshal made any further inquiries about Cairo?"


"She has not, To my knowledge there have not been any further inquiries since you opened the Brian Cache on Robinson." Pasha paused, "With the fall of Altair, this will have effects on the community at large. Even those who feel obliged to honor the oaths our ancestors made to the Coordinator in good faith will have to contend that providence has turned away from the house of Kurita."


"I don't follow." Gene replied bluntly, he was still on the fringes of Azami political notions... there were too many factions that were just names.


"The Davions have mistrusted our people for our long loyalty to House Kurita, and that is understandable but Altair and Dieron are not Robinson, and not Ander's moon. Breaking a sword of light regiment underscores that, coupled with the recriminations against the community there was already a rebellion brewing."


"That sounds like something you should coordinate where possible with Rasalhague Pasha, especially since they're the ones who provided you with the fax machines." Though admittedly the space swedes wanted to try and peal the whole RMD off into a new free state... and that was an ambitious proposal. "More than that though thats a political discussion Pasha, that would require recognition and support from if not just House Davion, but most likely House Steiner as well and I don't see that forthcoming at this stage."


"It is something to consider." Pasha replied.


Somewhere in the rush of everything he had remembered to find time to send orders to the Rasalhague contingent under Soren... but part of that was going to be dependent on whenever he inevitably heard something from the Field Marshal. "What do you think of Macintyre's proposal?"


"You are asking me?" The ship captain questioned. "This is a matter of mechwarriors."


"You have no opinions on the matter?" Gene questioned.


The old man paused, "I believe they would be political opinions, Commander." He replied, "I cannot comment on the validity of Colonel MacIntyre's proposal." Pasha paused, "I am fully prepared, I prefer even to leave matters of warfare on the ground to those with experience."
--
Septim fidgeted as the arcane ... it wasn't magic but it wasn't like he understood all the things on the screens and holograms floating around so it might as well have been magic.

Techno-sorcery from a bygone age was a staple of the media he'd grown up on. It'd been popular back home with heroic weapons of the ancient star league that had inspired myths and legends... and he supposed there must have been some truth to it all.


Maybe not to the degree of holo stories but there was clearly a name component, and these things were using neurohelmets in ways he'd never heard of as well as testing blood samples. That was scientific, where in the dramas there were more energy swords and magic circles that relied on drops of blood.


The lights changed colors.


It might as well have been magic.
--
"So when will he be back?"


Chang grimaced. They were on down time... the Davions didn't really need them for anything, and she'd have so preferred to be able to focus on practical well mech practice...


Chang was doing her best to keep things running smoothly but that was easier said than done. Her initial inclination was to do the usual mercenary thing and try and bluster her way out of it... but she didn't see that working. Not that San Martin wasn't a nice city, and Dieron didn't seem that bad of a place to live but... there was no way the Davion rep would believe her if she said she thought they were going to settle down here because she didn't believe it herself.


Northwind made so much more sense if they were going to settle down anywhere... but that wasn't what their FedSuns handlers probably wanted to hear either. .. but she didn't really know all that much about the FedSuns or any of their planets anyway... or their internal politics.


The ruler of their Draconis March seemed an appropriately pious and dedicated member of the high classes , but she also understood that not all the rulers could be properly Confucian either as her father would have described a noble's responsibility to the state.


"Tonight maybe. Tomorrow morning probably." She replied from inside the cockpit of the Atlas as she relayed the query through the network and waited for Septim to give her a response. "I've got responsibility for all of Marauder II force..." and she clammed up realizing even saying that much felt like saying too much.


Alexandria Cunningham felt the conversation slip and change. She could have pressed the mechwarrior... but the truth was she didn't know where the weak spots in the verbal floor were either... this was an unusual situation... and even that was an understatement. The expectation at the onset of this was that having destroyed outright a major house's regular combat formation that Shepherd's Company being a relatively young nascent even mercenary company would be easy enough to bring into the fold. The objective at the outset for the DMI had been the same as the AFFS more broadly take what lessons they could from the destruction of the Galedon regulars and apply them to regular units to further damage the combine.


... and what should have been a simple matter turned into a crazy upside down world. The initial dossier should have been a late teenage mechwarrior probably from a military background... not some vengeful ghost from the golden age of humanity with a tendency to disappear into ancient burrows and unearth weapons from a bygone era on most worlds he visited.


That was all together different from just some lucky lostech prospector who happened to be a mech warrior, and it made her problem harder than simply dealing with someone her own age who had his entire life deal with, circle around his job as a soldier of fortune.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Fortress Dieron Part 8​

Gene hit the enter on the keyboard, exhaled confirmed the start sequence and watched the doors move. He'd be taking the train back soon, there was a certain amount of anxiety on both sides and he could understand that, but expecting the Combine to be able to muster retaliation was unlikely. Altair had changed hands as well, and... well that meant he needed to have a conversation with Kerston as well.

Nagayan... Helm. New Dallas and its CID facility.

There was a certain degree of anxiety though. Dieron had been a major production center within Hegemony Space... which was saying something. At least Pasha had some idea of what they were going to be going into with moving on Lockdale, but really the bigger issue were the extrapolated star maps. The Hegemony well by holding Earth among other things had categorized and marked out using various telescopes and metrics number crunched thousands of worlds by the 26th​ century but the logistics of the JumpCore and the lack of major breakthroughs had kept the boundaries of the great states.


Not that that had stopped human exploration. The most likely explanation was Kerensky had stripped the archives looking for somewhere to flee to that was viable enough that whatever he could have looted from the Hegemony's corpse that it would be enough to set up a colony.. and then that colony had made it long enough to settle down and have enough of political kerfuffle to split off and the Minnesota tribe, the Clan Wolverine to make a run for the opposite direction to try and go Rimward instead of coreward.


That didn't necessarily mean Clan Wolverine was trying to find hypothetical Hegemony Bolt Holds, but enough of Clan Wolverine were terran nationals and Royal division officers that it was possible. They could very well have just been chasing rumors though, there was no sense in getting excited about that.


There was after all a good chance that Kerensky wouldn't have carried with him a recording that indicted House Kurita for Treason that had his security signature acknowledging receipt of. That kind of official documentation would have raised issues, or ta least he assumed it would have. By not acting against the traitorous coordinator it had allowed Kurita time to prepare to make a bid to claim the title of Star Lord... and thus the succession wars as they had unfolded.


The debriefing was inadequate in terms of answers, and it didn't explain why the Dragoons had appeared, that was beyond the frame of reference that the AI here had hard evidence of. Speculation though, was not charitable. Even the most benign fact finding mission was still a potential issue, especially since Fortress Dieron had had contact with the Minnesota tribe and Nicky Kerensky being a cult leader lunatic.


A part of him wanted to just gto to Yvonne and ask for all the copies of interactions any recordings of the dragoons interactions that the FedSuns had and feed to the AI and let him number crunch it all. That would probably risk more questions than he was already prepared to account for.


Pasha sidled past Septim, "these are planets?"


"Yeah, they're the installations where Hegemony forces successfully scuttled their own HPG assets." He said of the icon in question, the bigger problem were the ones which had of Terran worlds not accounted for their destruction, whether by Amaris, or the Ministry of Communications, or Kerensky or that the Successor States hadn't during the move in to occupy Hegemony worlds. "These are time stamps," For those worlds with conformably destroyed HPGs, "where those last transmitted. This is New Dallas its the world Dante suggested as a priority, but what I can determine from the historical record it'd be as much work as the Zero-G operations as Lockdale given that there is probably atmospheric hazard and we'll need fully shielded mechs."


... and then there was still the matter Helm, there was the Nagayan Mountain Castle Brian and the depot. The Quartermasters corp, that was another conversation he was dreading...and one that was going to entail... he needed to talk to Kerston about that as well.
--
His return to San Martin involved little in the way of circumstance, but the city was more relaxed when he had left it. The atmosphere of the university of Dieron though merely made him dread the conversation that he would need to have at some point with the Lyran professor.


For the moment though he had hte advantage of of another problem to tackle. "Did you ever give it any thought? I know we've been busy."


Gene nodded, "I did, is Lord Aaron on the planet?"


"No, he's on Northwind still." There were interactions, liaisons planned for the two academies, but that required fleshing things out.


That made sense. Surely if the Duke of Robinson had decided to jump to Dieron then there would have been communications indicating his arrival, but the fact was it didn't make much sense to have the Field Marshal of The Draconis March here in person. Really, Yvonne Davion's prescence was probably as much about their presence as it was the potential intelligence coup of taking a provincial capital. "Have there been any problems?" He asked turning the matter back towards business.


"No things have been pretty quiet, what did you slip off for?"


He thought about the shipping manifest of the dropships... what they were going to take to Lockdale anchorage and ... see what was there. The nitial plan was to have the transporters transmit their ID codes to see if that got them passed what if anything was there now. "Something I needed to look into, its complicated. Do you think the Federated Boeing Rep would still be on Northwind?" It really would have been a question better posed to MacIntyre or one of the other officers of Claymore, but Bard was right here, not out in the field with the recent graduates.


"You got that weird look on your face again," Bard shook his head.


"What look?"


"The oh yes the star league, never mind." Bard shook his head, "Any more of those Devastator things then?"


"No, It was a prototype ordered into rushed development by Kerensky." He could understand where Bard was coming from though, the devastator had proven itself immensely useful against the sword of light out in the hilly open landscape west of the planetary capital along the Kazakh river... but frankly the Pillager in its late Star League configuration would have likely sufficed, and the Highlanders supporting Thugs had also been important... but no doubt most were watching the mech kills by individual machine. That wasn't fair to supporting forces, who had contributed to the operational success of the battle, but it was also normal.


Too many in Gene's opinion of the Battle Roms over emphasized the frontal confrontation and thus dismissed the tactical, and operational realities hemming the Combine into a disadvantageous situation. He paused, and watched as the lance of hundred tonners, all of them built from the Marauder II shifted at the edge of the track. There were other blackwell industry vehicles nearby, the cache vehicles were in a motor pool further in, reflecting that they were on average significantly larger armored units, but there should have been several Fury tanks active at any given time waiting to feed data to active units.


It also, as with Dante on Northwind, allowed the AI a view into the world around them. Whether that degree of caution was necessary, well, it certainly didn't hurt, "How is the combine taking things?" The truth was he had gotten back to San Martin, but he had yet to see the Field Marshal or the brevet general.


"Shock mostly I guess, I mean... when they hit Mallory's world, we ended up fighting for three months before we finally managed to force the dracs off." And on Mallory's world in 3013, four years and change earlier, well Ian Davion had died and Yorinaga Kurita had tried to steal the body as some macabre trophy. "So I guess its shock, its not even like we dropped from orbit," He nodded out towards San Martin certainly I didn't expect to be here already." He trailed off, as the Marauder II BattleMechs were replaced in rotation by Claymore painted Mechs, "Hey those are new."


Gene nodded, looking at Claymore's Ancient Company. "The Combine has made a point of circulating rumors that there were lostech caches in the mountains, they're not wrong. Since Sorbel took a beating on the hill," Banzai light mech charge, death ride whatever you wanted to recall it, "We overhauled his lance first, and once the techs get done I intend to push as much as that hardware to Northwind units on the expectation is going to come for round two." Bard nodded in acknowledgement of the logic. "While we're running the follow on cadre work I want to keep the cadets original mechs handy, but I want the Robinson Brian Cache machines being practiced on as well for those in the counter-ronin company. Are you going to have an issue making a transition to the Highlander?"


"I shouldn't. I had planned to do that."


"Good Bahar, and Ishida will joining in a Highlander Gunnery Course we're setting up." Gene ignored the the AI's commentary cycling through his neurolink on managing the situation. That wasn't really what this was about, "I also need to brief Kerston about responding to a Combine counter attack so I may be busy tomorrow."

 

[Imperator Pax]

Fortress Dieron Part 9​

Gene was legitimately concerned about the possibility that the combine might commit to a rapid counter attack not necessarily one that might be effective even but that they might feel the need to do something and launch a surprise counter. The biggest threat there was not to their own military assets, that seemed unlikely, but rather that the Combine in the face of lack of civilian support or just recklessness would cause a lot of civilian casualties before they could be destroyed.


That had played a role in order repair and refit of units... but if the Combine did land he planned to slather their landing sites with artillery if at all possible. Mostly out of concern for potential civilian losses if the Combine managed to land in the vicinity of a major urban center.


To that end having Ishida swap over from the lighter SRM spewing big bug... well there were legitimate skill curve objections to make, much as there were in terms of moving pilots who were intimate with the dope on their personal machines... especially in the case of customized, non standard, load outs of succession era wars 'mechs.


And of course the Highlanders would represent a notable drop in mech speed, which admittedly was tactically less important if they were defending a fixed area, but Gene did want some kind of uniform cavalry mech requirement... that was going to have to wait though. He watched as Bard swapped to the Highlander pulled from the Robinson Brian Cache and brought the mech out of the erector frame on the back on the flat bed transport truck.. They were doing that publicly in order to minimize implication that they had opened another cache for the time being... but they did need to start running the course work. "Do you disagree with Dante's conclusion?"


"His conclusion on what?" Kerston asked.


"That we're at war with the Combine?" Not that, Gene really thought there was a Hegemony to fight the war... there wasn't certainly a Star League anymore... but then again maybe there was a Terran Hegemony in Exile... but what would they want... predicting a government's position would be hard... if they had escaped into the periphery it was entirely possible they could have pivotted hard into isolationism and wanted nothing to do with the Inner Sphere, and might need nothing from the Inner Sphere. "Is that where we stand?"


Kerston took in a breath, "It is readily, House Kurita broke the peace by attempting to usurp the title of Star Lord, and leadership of the League... and with everything else, especially everything since then the simple answer is yes."


"Do the Blue Star Irregulars agree with this conclusion?"


"I would presume that they do." The Brevet General replied. "May I inquire as to what this entails?"


Gene looked as another erector locked into place allowing another Highlander to step out from the framework, "I'll need the Field Marshal and the Federated Suns," really the AFFS, "to spare you probably for several months, its not an immediate priority, but there is a quartermaster's corp that according to our records which could resupply both of your RCTs to league standards, and I mean in terms of equipment standards before the uprising on New Vandenburg." He added probably unnecessarily. "it should provide you a back up as well to start training up new troopers as a reserve, or even as a permanent garrison force at home, but there is no hurry. I'll both RCTs and a significant space lift component and I can't organize that at present."


"So you'll just ask the Field Marshal to borrow us?"


... Gene looked out over the yard space, and was pretty sure he could make it worth House Davion's while ... if what was at Helm if what was in Nagayan besides all the mechs was what he thought was in there... and just the quartermaster corp's stockpile would potentially be enough to throw off the sent. "Yeah, something like that." He replied. "It won't be any time soon for now we need to focus on the chance that the Combine will try something." He paused glancing at the data slate in front of him as a message flashed on the screen, "Though that being said, regardless of how the procurement situation with Blackwell goes, any Mercury Light BattleMechs and materiel will probably need to be transferred to House Davion for the OmniMech program."


Kerston accepted that in stride, why wouldn't he. The last mercury battle mechs in service with the RCT had been lost on Sendai in 2998... and they were talking about restoring the whole Eridani at some point to its paper strength with appropriate SLDF equipment.
--
Yvonne appreciated not having to present a masquerade for the depot south of the Kazakh River that Shepherd had unlocked to resupply his detachment of the invasion force. That the roll off of heavier mechs was in progress was sure to bait any remaining combine spies into ... well they were unlikely to be able to help themselves.


What she was less keen on was the idea of permitting Shepherd to settle on a world this close to the front. That made the prospect of a surviving Hegemony fort of some kind on Dieron concerning... but it wasn't really a surprise after everything. Shepherd's sudden disappearance... well... "What are the prospects of a combine counter attack?"


"Negligible ma'am. With all due respect to Colonel Shepherd," The Guards officer replied, "I don't think he's processing the damage done to the Combine over the last twelve months. The destruction of the forces here including the Sun Zhang cadre," In what Yvonne had viewed as a particularly egregiously wasteful use of young troops, and beyond that... the reality was that the combine was not going to recover the mechs they had been shot out of either. "and with the victory on Altair we expect the Combine to be in disarray within the local theater."


Yvonne frowned at the man's leaky glee. Not that his optimism was overblown... he was probably correct that given the damage at Elidere the Combine had likely had to force a coverage of the front in anticipation of a AFFS follow up even if they hadn't wanted to admit that. They'd even sewn misinformation to that effect... well not misinformation but that the Draconis March Militia was intending to retaliate, but the width of the front and meant that it was an attack that didn't have to be anchored by Robinson.


Combine Strategists could have predicted that there was the likelihood of a thrust by forces relocated east or west but she doubted that they could have predicted the offensive such as it had been. Even after having been on Dieron a week, she could scarcely believe their success. They had been planning that they might need to fight the invasion phase for months if necessary, not to meet the Combine in a single decisive action in order to unfurl the DCMS's defenses. Had the campaign gone longer they likely would have started to run low on shells for the artillery given t he rate of expenditure, but instead the fight for the planet was over... and that suddenness seriously undermined the likelihood of combine reinforcements. Since any forces dispatched would now need to b e a counter invasion force rather than just reinforcing...


... in the mean time she was going to have to rotate back anyway. The DMM had officially started making requests up the AFFS logistics train for purchases of Blackwell Industries products... understandable given the swiftness at which the planetary capital of San Martin had fallen. There were similar requests already being made on behalf of the Highland Militia as well, and Shepherd's Company had already tendered purchases out of their bounty of pounds from Elidere. Blackwell of New Valencia would need more protection, and would need the capital to expand to meet production demand...


In the mean time there were other problems. Their success here presented other pressures to House Davion, she expected the proverbial full court press by House Sandoval and most if not all of the great houses of the Draconis March as well as their gentleman supporters among the gentry. There would almost certainly be resistance within the march, houses who felt slighted or whose domains also lay in the Caepllan March, and there would be of course push back from the latter March's ruling house of Hasek. That was what she was waiting to see, how the parliament and the court at New Avalon responded was one thing, but perhaps just as importantly was how the realm at large began to respond to their victories against House Kurita.


The conversation wound further.


--
Travel arrangements looked more or less finalized... which was both good, and potentially problematic. Septim would be leaving with Abner, with whom Gene still needed to have a conversation with about too many things. "They're locked in?"


"Seals in place, I have placed guards to insure that the cannot be accessed easily." Pasha replied.


The two large cargo dropships had been moved a fort via a railway system that was either the handy work of the department of mega engineering or its Terran forbearer and well deserving of its name... and the Cargo Carriers could be visually mistaken for the 27th​ century Mammoth indeed with some degree of parts compatability with the idea the member states were less likely to pay much attention to them. The problem... or most likely what had happened is Kerensky's tenure as Commanding General had wanted something to streamline the whole Star League and that had lead to the development of the Cargomaster program intended as a replacement for the smaller mule but also intended to see service when operational with all member states.


Both ideas were interesting... but... well the Star League had been in its descent by that point. "Lets hope they're not necessary." Ostensibly they were on alert for combine saboteurs but there were a series of anti personnel drones supporting the Azami naval armsmen as a precaution against sabotage of any sort... the local phone company whether or not they weren't quite neutral enough for example... they'd already had at least one pretty public argument with the P.NA representatives who were supposed to take charge now that Dieron, and also Altair now, were FedSuns worlds... and on that note, "Have you-"


"Yes, the community has been apprised, we should have the manpower needed to make the expedition to Lockdale, and if we are able to retain these DropShips we could consolidate supplies for our journey into the periphery."


Right, a part of Gene was all too eager to get that underway. He'd gotten a good look at the exodus fleet... and had a horrific flash of what nukes in space would do to JumpShips packed with civilians... no the sooner they were out of the Combine's reach the better. They could return to FedSuns space in due time... as it was it seemed like they would be making a semi regular transit from the periphery. "And the situation with Black Jack?"


"There should be no shortage of volunteers amongst the community, if Alamut is to prosper we cannot afford that man continuing his rampage... but if I may, if you register those forces as it is the MRB is likely to suffer an inundation of objections from the servants of the dragon. It would be perhaps best to wait until we reach, the magistracy of Canopus perhaps. Cite that, the conditions have degenerated enough that there were then volunteers rather doing so while we are within the Federated Suns."


He nodded acknowledging that the older man had a point.
--
Notes: and this sets up for the back and forth of the next really the next five years, because travel time in BT is kind of crap

 

[Imperator Pax]

Fortress Dieron Part 10​

They were on a clock now... and he still hadn't found the time to drag Abner away from Dieron university where he was trying to make all the friends, and spread IE's mission of exploration and study of the mysteries of the galaxy. He still wasn't sure how to broach the situation.

Gene looked at the White Mechs. Then turned to the Azami tech who'd' been talking, "Pull those Large Lasers, swap them for Mk III from inventory and then pull those Blankenburgs. Crate them and the ammo." He wondered if refitting the LBX for something else... but no... he didn't have an industrial base, and it would be better to toss these to someone who did, and that meant House Davion. So he'd turn the LBX 10s and these ER Large Lasers to House Davion... "Also get me Colonel MacIntyre. These are probably going to his people, so I want him on site." Make the question of the space from the autocannons his problem.

The senior Azami non com left him in the hangar as he went to fetch the old highlander... the Machines were in Militia colors, and the manuals were here... and he had an idea. He had already heard, though Lex hadn't confirmed it and thus far the Field Marshal hadn't said anything, through scuttlebutt was that the Eridani would be staying behind... at least for the time being.

The AI of the Fortress Dieron recognized the Eridani as SLDF, which was nice, but it wasn't about to let them inside the fortress .... which was unfortunate, but he understood that... he had been worried that the ... that the Blue Star Irregulars might have been a different story... but he had bigger problems to contend with. There were a lot f things he needed to deal with right now... Fortress Dieron had the space allocated to it to camp an entire division, which was atypical.... but Dieron was a critical parts hub in the hegemony and carried anti ship capital arrays.

He personally figured that the multi brigade scale was more about defense spending, than engineering hurdles, or conservative don't put all your eggs in one basket. Castles Brian were expensive and the Hegemony's defense industry... its military industrial complex had been massive.... so maybe it was really all of the above... but Dieron had surface to orbital capital batteries and he was loath to turn those over to the Federated Suns...

... maybe that was silly, but maybe it wasn't... only time would tell. The truth was that if Dieron's AI was right... if the reports it had number crunched from its data banks were right... then well there were a lot of places they needed to check.

"Colonel."

"MacIntyre," He tilted his head towards the mechs, "these are Crocketts there are twenty four of them here they were slated for Dieron militia units for training purposes." The plate inside the one he'd looked at was marked from Detroit, on Terra, dated to '41. The Rim world had strafed the local civic centers before the Militia could deploy, and coupled with compromised defenses they had just never been able to scramble, "They're going to need to be rearmed but you can mark them for your Battalion D program."

The old highlander turned to look at the eighty five tonners. They were assault mechs. "Aye sir. Sir with regards to the jump back to Northwind?"

"You have command of the unit for the duration of the training missions, you are to integrate as best as possible the brigade," The combination of DMM troops, Azami and Rasalhague volunteers and the nominal battalions of the Company proper. There were days he really regretted going for something as simple as Shepherd's Company. It was short and too the point, but he hadn't expected to be in a position where his day to day life... entailed dealing with this shit. "I'm going to see about ferrying some of those ASF to offload Northwind or failing that the RBA but my preference would be to keep the Rapiers with us."

"Very good sir. My liaison would be Colonel Cameron then?"

"That's right. Bard is staying behind." Or at least he was to the best of his knowledge as of this morning. It had also been the morning he had submitted the paper work detailing a hypothetical Highland force for Dieron that, per MacIntyre's endorsement had the clan elders sanction.

In part distributing the Crocketts for a new unit on Dieron was also an attempt to sidestep multiple issues in one move. Soren's three companies of Rasalhague volunteers were still finding their footing, but the highland cadets had on boarded to the company being issued company mechs ahead of the move to invade the planet... that by itself might cause some trouble. On the other hand Rasalhague had its own political ambitions and their participation at Dieron had likely been intended to support ambitions of national independence.

Bard had asked him on Northwind what he planned to do.

Dieron had been the test supposed to answer that question.

Now though Gene wasn't entirely sure what the answer was.

The destruction in detail of the Sword of Light was impossible to conceal. That was going to get attention. If they had stayed in the periphery it might have taken years to attract the attention of the successor states, and maybe never gained this sort of fame.

Not to this degree.

"Sir?"

"If the Rasalhague contingent asks we're still in the process of evaluating specialty versus generalist unit organization at this time for Bardiche, and matters of standardizing Mech dispositions."

"Ah, aye sir." The highlander replied, "Would you prefer I tell them we're just not sure how best to use the bastards in a fight, then?"

... that had been what he'd said right, Gene paused again, "That will work, I need to know when we get back how comitted they are to their current weight ratios, and whether or not I can expect ASF volunteers, and if there will be any issues with periphery rotations." Arguably the last was the more likely issue given it would remove the unit from the Inner Sphere and thus away from the conflict with the Combine for potentially protracted lengths of time.
--
Alexandria stared at the massive DropShips as they lifted off. They were civilian ships from the star league, and it wasn't as if Mammoths didn't continue to ply the trade lanes of the Inner Sphere. They were the lifeblood carrying ships of intersteller trade between and within the great houses. Still to see the fifty two thousand ton dropships flawless lift off from the ground after more than two centuries was a testament to the engineering process which had gone into the ships, which had all the appearances of being fresh from the yards that had built them.

It did raise questions about their size... and about the Argo DropShip Shepherd had filed an inquiry about with Federated Boeing, but they were questions about the late star league. In what way exactly Star League era Mammoths differed from those of the modern day, which had entered service roughly half way into the first succession was unclear to her. As it was Shepherd's Company's more senior JumpShip captain had already begun preliminary filings on filling the two monstrous cargo carriers full of humanitarian aide for the Azami refugee fleet in orbit over Northwind.

There was no reason to doubt that was the truth either. Most likely whatever had been in the Hegemony era depot had been allocated out to meet needs on a per unit basis. Since Shepherd had been upfront about his obligations to the Azami it was entirely possible he'd landed on Dieron with the plan to grab the two large cargo lifters from some manifest on Northwind... or he had received a data package when they had made planetfall, or at some point later.

The two large DropShips would each take up a collar of course, but given that the Colorado, while still even older, was a Leviathan class JumpShip that wasn't an issue. Colorado was probably not its original name given the ship almost certainly predated the Reunification Wars. The Leviathan carried eight dropships and had entered service in the mid 25th​ century.

The MIIO liaison had already opined that the combination of the two Mammoths and the Colorado would have been an idea starting point for transitioning to a civilian shipping concern if there was any interest in getting out of the mercenary business. The real implication of the statement was what the resources could mean if, like her ancestors had the company was settled somewhere within the interior of Davion space.

It wasn't meant as a barb, but it reminded her of Sakhara... and that New Avalon's court was many light years away, but high society was never far. Her eyes swept to across the observation deck to the Lyran. Abner was talking to Shepherd. She was near enough to overhear them, though this was nominally a secure location.

"Pasha has the drives charged up now. We can jump back to Northwind at any time." Alexandria knew that that wait was of course a go ahead for transit back to their starting point, but one that would be forthcoming from the Duchess of Victoria... because of course she would be returning with them to Northwind

"You said you would have something important for me when I returned about the Tribe's journey into the inner sphere?"

"I'm hoping to yes. I don't think the Minnesota tribe were one path, so much as they split apart coming in from the same coreward starting point. They were running from whatever society Kerensky's people put together."

"You're sure?"

"Pretty sure." Shepherd replied, "I'll have a packet for you... when you get back."

 

[Imperator Pax]

Post Dieron
​

The reality of Fortress Dieron had effected his planning... though that made Gene want to scoff at the idea of planning... he was getting pulled in a million directions. There was so much to do. There was too much information, and that was ultimately why he had pushed back telling Abner what they found until he knew what was at Lockdale if there was anything there.


Dieron though had been a lightning battle. The sort of thing that the Hegemony would not have planned for in terms of someone taking the planet and had happened historically because the Rim World had been inside the outermost defenses. The Combine had wanted to fight, but had insisted on fighting stupidly. It had been the Combine's own mistakes tactically, and operationally that had sped up their defeat in the face of superior Davion numbers... that was to say Northwind hadn't been expecting them back so quickly.


The lack of a lengthy campaign meant the cadets could spend time at home with their families before a by nature of travel times more lengthy deployment in the periphery. That was something he could offer the young highlanders of Claymore, but was less available to the DMM group.


Still the jump back in was awash with activity, and was just a poignant reminder that they needed to start the great trek out to the periphery sooner rather than later... and that required him to adjust his plans. The AI within the Fortress Dieron was right, they would have to return to the Fortress once they came back in from the periphery. They would have to come back to northwind... and from Northwind, to Dieron, and from there over the border into Lyran space... and from there it would be easy to access certain other Hegemony worlds within a jump or two.


"I have done what I can in terms of shoring up support," He squinted at the chip, "But whatever is on this, will explain it all?"


Maybe not all... but within the chip included what Kerston already knew... it was a copy of just the HPG conversation between Kurita and Amaris... and Aaron Sandoval could make of it what he would. "I'd prefer you not watch it until after the civilians are out of harms way," He replied referring to the exodus fleet. "You said," In this morning's memo, "that the 'mechs we're offloading from Dieron might be an issue."


"There were already complaints."


It was a conversation he was going to have take to Dante, which would mean slipping away within castle Northwind... which might be a problem, "There were Kintaros in the Robinson Brian Cache." He remarked... not that he'd cared at the time.


The Duke of Robinson nodded, "Indeed, and the truth his that honestly caused its own trouble with certain parties."


"The duke of Errai is still here then?"


"he is." The wheel chair bound ex-tanker confirmed.


He didn't... Gene didn't precisely catch all of the social cues, he recognized that he had been missing things in the Canopian space, but it had actually gotten worse, not better when they had reached Davion space. Or at least it seemed perceivably worse. He understood that young soldiers had a reputation, but there was a certain degree of feudal future going on that outright irritated him, "I don't suppose his grace the Duke of Errai happened to actually supply troops to the operations?" That was the entire point of cracking open the caches and handing their contents it was what they were for. They were for fighting the Combine...


"There wasn't time." He replied somewhat deferring the issue, and that was probably true mobilizing the force to hit Dieron probably had had limits on which units could be prepared or ready and Lord Aaron probably had more pull with his immediate allies... but even so... "Perhaps if the attack had gone out over the summer or if we had been campaigning against other worlds."


"You really think so?"


It probably wasn't the question the Field Marshal of the Draconis March wanted to hear, and he sighed, "No you're probably correct, the dukes of Kesai and Errai both allege that Samsonov and the Galedon Regulars were attacking their worlds to raid secret star league caches at the expense of their dominions."


If Gene were prone to being a little more crass about such things, he would have retorted that that was tough shit , and in no way entitled the prick who was the Duke of Errai to any of the spoils... but to be completely honest as much as he wanted to, it wouldn't have done any good. So he responded on the basis of what he did know, "We can't confirm that General Samsonov actually got anything from either world," He might very well have, both were Terran worlds, "But we can only confirm the raid on McGhee yielded anything." Mostly because of how torn up the 19th​ had been by the drones when it was all said and done. "But as for Errai, There is something."


"Yes?"


"Abner, and I," Well he said the truth was he'd added his two cents and signature but mostly it was the techs who were sure this would work, "Have discussed about needs to be done with the Thugs, and it hasn't changed those mechs we pulled out will be going to Highland volunteers, but there are spare parts, weapons, electronics, engines." He flipped through his data slate, cognizant that Dante was connected to the data platform through a Fury tank tied into the Regimental Communications Network, "here." The program was for all intents and purposes a down teched thug, presumably very similar to what Earthwerks did, but that wasn't his problem... really the real work had been done on the chargers that the Magistracy had dug out of that Rim World tomb, and it only had made sense to talk about what to do if the endosteel on Terran Hegemony Thugs was wrecked in use. "The Kintaros I already told Bard we can leave those behind if that will help with Ozawa."


But Ozawa was not Errai, or their apparent new found noble allies of Kesai. This was now a game of political maneuvering. A game that he wanted no part in, but one he found himself involved in because Robinson was home to a Brian Cache and Aaron Sandoval was attempting to shore up the march for war with the combine. Dante knew that from monitoring the activities of the Draconis March nobility within Northwind Castle's grounds


"And the Mongoose?"


... "I'll need to talk with the Azami," The truth was he needed some kind of screening and outrider component... "If it will help and is in writing." He suspected given the situation the Azami weren't necessarily going to need new mechs, but he had hoping to recruit from them both for the periphery campaign that PNA wanted against Black Jack, and for when they inevitably came back to pick up where they had left off on Dieron... but there were stockpiles within Fortress Dieron yet to be opened up. There had been a war planned against the Combine by the shadow ministry... and then there was Helm to consider.


The Duke of Robinson was more interested in what the news was on potential landhold development... which was a conversation he expected to be hearing a lot of during the 'downtime'.
--
He checked the roster again, and it merely reiterated that he was looking forward to returning to the periphery. "Expectations?"


"We do not, I do not think," The Tech paused, "be concerned. Obviously Hanzo's Cicada has proven useful, and given the situation the rebuild procedure should proceed smoothly." But it would have to be when they actually returned to the Magistracy of Canopus's space... when they made the circuit back to Luxen. That was part of Abner's terms in return for his agreeing to organize the manpower and the secrecy that were going to be necessary for what they were going to ask... and... and Gene was hoping that Abner would be as good as his word with regards on not trying to mount an expedition too deep in the periphery... that his warning about the potential danger of drawing the descendants of Kerensky back into the inner sphere would be heeded.


... but he was also worried that even if Abner did heed his cautionary advice that Comstar might still find the clans and the clans would still launch their attack... or that Dragoons had said something that might prompt the clans to attack... or anything else going wrong.


But he had time before next he saw Abner, and hopefully Lockdale would have answers... more likely it would just have more questions and not the answers for them... but better to know he didn't have the answer to something than be wholly ignorant of it. At least he would know he didn't know something... better that than not knowing his own ignorance even if it was frustrating at times. "What do you think?"


"About the proposal commander?" He shook his head, "It should be fine. As you observed two tons of ammunition is excessive without the ammunition safekeeping," He meant case, "it as you say sitting on a bomb. A lot of bombs." The tech cracked a grin. "it should work." But they wouldn't really know until they actually got to the part of putting a physical machine together for the Luxen volunteers... and there was probably something more going on with Abner on that front but only time would tell.


... and while he might still be convinced to transfer spare parts to Errai's ruler for Thugs he certainly want' going to turn over hegemony machines unless he had to, and Dante agreed the machines in question needed to be in hand for use against the Combine. If the duke of Errai could sink the funds in to build a down teched thug that was great... and NAIS could focus on making DHS and they could upgrade from there...


Pasha signaled for him, a notice that they were more or less ready for the next errand, and the one after that, "We are as prepared as we can be, commander." The old ship captain remarked, "And indeed there may be little there."


--
Notes: Post Dieron will be largely set ups for events in the future we see that here, we that over the next few before we actually transition to the travel segment interludes before reaching the border of Taurian and Aurigan space.


This is going up now to hopefully dodge any issues in the morning with the server issues, so if you catch an errors (allow the swordsman / longsword or otherwise, feel free to point it out or question things) I know that I could probably better quantify the near-Terra political situation of the Draconis March both here, and also in Rabid Fox because that will be relevant but this does go to respective protagonists local allies, as well as Davion internal politics in the long run.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Post Dieron​

Holographic images of battle flashed, without sound though for the public to watch. It made Alexandria uncomfortable. Not the cadets, who were here on leave. They had all made it home from their first combat action alive and in one piece. She'd seen the footage of Elidere of course, she would have had to have been living under a rock to have not seen it even if she hadn't been posted to this assignment but it had been wholly another thing.


... what was worse was Shepherd's easy confidence. He didn't boast he didn't brag... he acted as if what he did was a normal benchmark of mechwarrior excellence. He didn't expect the Highland cadets to magically reach his level, but he clearly had high expectations for them nonetheless. It was something the DMM troops had caught on as well... and their leadership.


Two battalions of sword of light lay shattered on the field along with another regiment of Combine students fresh from the Sun Zhang academy, and a world had fallen. That was discounting the success of the other assault that had gone on concurrently. The Comstar broadcasting services addressing Davion audiences, were more focused on Dieron, but that made some sense given the lopsided losses the Combine had suffered especially since it had been a major provincial capital.


That news had actually beaten them in arriving because ComStar had made the Battle Rom footage of the battle available through space as soon as the HPG administrators had changed hands. Ordinarily it would have taken weeks or even months of word from the front to transition from just rumors from jumpship crews passing through, to authenticated Battle Roms. It would have been one thing to know the Combine had been defeated on Dieron, another to watch the combat unfold, on what had previously been a major enemy world.


Her Orion, her piece of the Kestrel Partimony, had remained effectively unused in the battle of Dieron, though her name would be present on the rolls of MechWarriors who had participated. Her job had been to liaise ... and that had kept in the secondary lines and often in a command post... with the expectation of a battle lasting weeks, months potentially instead turning into a running battle across a few days.


She had expected to still be on Dieron. To be probably waiting for updates bunked on an Overlord dropship planet side... but if ComStar had relayed all the battle roms across the Federated Suns then that meant the footage was already on New Avalon in the court of the First Prince and also on Kestrel... and all of the other worlds great and small or at least those important enough to warrant an HPG presence.


She bit her lip. None of the other noble houses would be able to get anyone here in reaction to Dieron, but there were those who were here already who were here for the Faire or who had come in response to Elidere, and recognition of what it and even the cache on Robinson represented in terms of wealth. She was cognizant there of the Thug Assault BattleMechs handed over from some fort in the mountains of Dieron near the Kazkah river to freshly graduated cadets of the Northwind academy that were currently parading through the streets in their new machines.


Those same cadets would be shipping out to the periphery when Shepherd left Davion space for some fool escort mission of civilians looking to fleet the sphere ahead of the inevitable combine retaliation. The exodus of the Azami refugees was ... if they had a better idea, more time to work the duchess of Victoria would have tried to leverage it, to convince the First Prince to allow them to settle somewhere else. It was a risk, but more than that it simply had too many moving parts, but it might have succeeded in keeping Shepherd's Company in Davion space for that inevitable next stage of conflict with House Kurita.


--
The Mobile Core to contain the AI's existence was a small almost inconsequential thing... and really even more so it was the core itself, the 'bulk' relatively speaking was the shielding case designed to protect the core.


A robotic arm probed the device. "This will take time to configure." Dante remarked extending another mechanical limb, "You will have to depart for the anchorage without me."


"I see, and the other matter?"


"Davion Military Intelligence has been active. The other Member States have been active, were active during the faire but activity understandably increased relative to the reports and developments that have had time to make their way through the communication. I understand that seizure of the Combine Archive on Dieron has yielded data returns of combine operations?"


"It seems like the Combine was relying on fairly entrenched operations rather than standing up new operations."


"Most likely without free trade, and diplomatic credentials facilitated by the Star League, and intercession by the Council to smooth over issues, coupled with the increasing belligerence between the successor states and a war footing economy the Combine lacks the ability to meaningfully generate new Intelligence front operations."


That wasn't to say that the Combine was incompetent at spying but there were too many culture mores impacting them vis a vis the war. The succession war and the limitations on trade relative to the Star League Era really had changed the game. There were almost surely current combine programs running that had no continuity with League era initiatives but it bordered on absurd that things like the Reimi ring had existed as long as they had without one of the vulnerable parties detecting the incursion.


Even now Dante was having the entire digitized archive from Dieron uploaded to a clean system to dig through in the interim.


On the surface of Northwind, on the Highland grounds BattleMechs paraded ... Gene could have done without the unnecessary white and black check that had been applied to the Lance leaders of the cadet 'mech battalion. He supposed better than than the Campbell tartan of the Black Watch... just in case the wrong people were watching and might manage to add two and two and get four.


The two sat there in amenable silence for a moment, with only the flickering of displays, "Lockdale?" He asked.


In the mid 29th​ century something must still have been there.


What they knew from the reports generated by Clancy's presence on both Dieron and here on Northwind was that the main thing the Kerensky-ites, the 'clans of Kerensky', had managed to do in the intervening period of time was to further bring prototypes of Terran technology into the mass production stage.


It was possible the Imp had been one. The thing the Wolf Dragoons had shown up with still didn't match anything in the Dieron databanks, much as it didn't anything else they had checked it against, but the Fortress Dieron AI admitted that it made plenty of sense as a machine developed in the vein of the Titan and Grasshopper concept.


Or, that it was a downteched machine which itself just raised more questions of why? Or how much the clans knew. "There is another matter regarding those machines."


"Go ahead," Gene replied watching the holographic images cycle through, "That a Shogun," He asked looking at the Alpha Regiment mech.


"Yes, but that is not the machine in question." It was the other assault mech which Dante was indicating, however the AI had added a note to the Shogun that the Dragoons had been unable to find anyone to be able or willing to reintroduce production of the eighty five tonner... that was interesting. "The pilot in question is almost certainly from his medical file from his time in Davion employ subject to some degree of in utero, but more interesting still is the genetic donor component."


"How so, during the star league you could donate genetic material from multiple parent samples," Polygamous families had been a thing after all... he was actually surprised it wasn't something that the canopians didn't still have, or maybe they did and didn't advertise. "The mech -"


"No, I had considered that however the new data inputs regarding clan wolverine and the apparent eugenicist nonsense espouse by Nicholas Keresnky coupled with the interest in artificial wombs suggests to me that we are not dealing with a typical designer baby... so much as an outgrowth of those reports."


"Do you have an actionable suggestion, Dante?"


"Not at this time commander, but it bore commenting. As for the Mech, the call sign appropriately enough was Behemoth, its one hundred tons, and its nearest equivalent seems to have been the Matar super heavy project, though this has been scaled down its armament onboard makes no more sense than the down teched Annihilators. However it seems to have symbolic significance to its pilot in ways distinct from that of the other dragoons. I am continuing to review Field Marshal Davion's files as well as those of the MRB."


Gene sighed, "tell me if you find something, but there isn't anything more on Lockdale?" He paused, "Bring up the historical records pre 2765 please, any transit data from Northwind to Lockdale that might be security relevant." Maybe something in that traffic data would stand out... Lockdale was just far enough away that one couldn't jump directly there from Dieron... but Dante was in turn quick to point out that one couldn't jump directly from Terra, but then one also couldn't jump to Northwind from Terra either due to the limits of the KF drive. That meant... unfortunately that any traffic from Terra to Lockdale might well have bypassed Northwind by jump to Caph for example first.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Post Dieron 1.3​

Gene tossed his bag into the compartment, he was cognizant of what the Black Watch's final order packet contained. Orders which if they had been implemented would have changed the whole face of the inner sphere. AI unbound, left to their own devices with the mandate to defend terra worlds... how many warships had Kerensky lost, how many naval officers and enlisted had died in the void because those orders had never reached Kerensky.


... Gene assumed that Kerensky must never have received a copy... it didn't matter one way or another it was in the past... but the thoughts still weighed there in the dark recesses of his mind, coming to the fore when he was idle.


Especially since they had no idea what they were going to find. Dante had already configured the necessary command protocol... but that was taking a... making an assumption regarding the condition of any defenses... or that there was anything at all. If there wasn't anything... well then they would be making the jump waiting a week and coming back... and out of all the possible solutions well it wasn't the worst possibility.


If there wasn't anything at Lockdale too find then, they had just wasted time. Time that they admittedly could have used to be training, or more likely attempting to leverage the nest egg of Davion House bills for future means, but a week or even two was unlikely to change anything. If there as nothing they would just jump back, land the two large cargo dropships into the Port and then have the automated gantries pull whatever it was in there and put it into storage before loading them full of Azami cargo holds with the aim of reducing the number of employed DropShip collars.


It might have seemed silly to adhere to the protocol without even knowing if there was anything still out there but given Lockdale's importance to the Hegemony the anchorage if it was intact would almost certainly have an AI and some degree of self repair and maintenance capacity as the facility administrator. Would the supplies c. 2765 mean anything? After this long there as no telling They weren't perishable goods of course... so it was really a matter of actually seeing what was there.


"Are you prepared?" The Azami officer questioned storing his own bag in a compartment parallel to his own.


"As we ever will be," He answered, the truth was this was just a reminder about the need to ... well maybe not need but that he should look at or get a copy of the Cairo's Computer Core... and the manifest it had been carrying when her previous service with the SLDF had been interrupted by Combine sabotage... but the logistics of wrangling that seemed like a lot.
--
It was her prerogative to grumble to her staff.

"The Azami know something, something about the last days of the Star League." Yvonne Davion observed... but the question still remained what... and whatever it was was serious enough that the combine was more murderous than usual.


The succession on Dieron was going to have effects though. Given the base of the third succession war it has seemed as if they were slowing down. That there would be a long break in the fighting... that Yvonne's thinking at the turn of the century still at the time reasonably fresh in her post as DMI 2.


Instead Black Jack McGirk and other pirates had appeared. Then the Wolf Dragoons had appeared. Then Ian had been killed, and they had out about the university on Halstead Station. The underlying factors that had contributed to the slow down of military affairs hadn't changed though. The AFFS was fatigued, and the economy needed time to rebuild and expand, and all of that. It would need time to digest the period of mobilization, the Inner Sphere as a whole needed a break from the fighting, because hundreds of world or not the Federated Suns couldn't fight forever without some rest.


It hadn't escaped her that the Precentor New Avalon's behavior towards McGirk was unusual. He wasn't the pirate king dead, even to offer substantive payouts for something that Shepherd had been frank about that ... given the kind of scum they were dealing with he'd likely have done pro bono if McGirk showed up on the same planet. It also hadn't escaped her attention that McGirk had appeared with pristine battlemechs at the turn of the century... and looking back, and his continued success she doubted that he had just happened to find the motherlode.


It vexed her. Being ignorant vexed her. It especially vexed her when her job was to know things.


It didn't vex her enough to attempt to press Shepherd into taking Alexandria along on whatever meeting he was going on with the Azami, just as she certainly couldn't spare the Countess of Kestrel for the periphery trek either. In the mean time there were other potential issues, like "Blackwell has certainly wasted no time publicizing the battle rom footage from Dieron."


It was unsurprising, but she accepted that man responsible for monitoring media relations, and in particular who was supposed to be sitting on the various corporate representatives was right. There had been a significant amount of maneuver for the short duration of the combat on Dieron, but that wouldn't be really visible in the brief clips taken of the Battle Rom footage


The problem was that New Valencia, even though Blackwell hadn't been the main target, the Capellans had attacked it while the dragoons had been granted the landhold there. The consequences of the successful taking of Dieron particularly with a new model of Assault mech in prominence in the media coverage would attract attention.

Both domestically and with foreign audiences, the capellans as well as the dragoons current employers the Free Worlds League. Blackwell's executives were concerned with what the Dragoons might think, and it ws possible Jaime Wolf would be in contact, but the lawyers had already made clear that there was sufficient case law precedence going back to before the Star League that the Federated Suns had the legal right to purchase the machines it had given the circumstances. One might have argued that those machines thing going to Shepherd's Company was less well established in common law, but she didn't see that as an issue.


She supposed they could expect the dragoons to be in contact, but there were so many other things going on it would likely be someone else's problems... except for the Dragoons surprising shocking ability to resupply and rearm their regiments... but even with her concerns it would likely proceed through the civilian side of hte intelligence community if the Dragoons attempted to mount a legal protest.


... and Shepherd would be absent by the time the Dragoons had the chance to learn of Dieron, it was doubtful that they were too well informed about the ongoing affairs here given at last report they were engaged in the petty border raids against the Lyran Commonwealth on behalf of House Marik.


In spite of that Yvonne had considered that it might be best to actually get out in front of the matter... that was to say she had suggested in her memorandum to the First Prince, to be delivered by courier, that they might be better suited by inviting the dragoons to come discuss the matter. As prince's champion though she wasn't all powerful, and there were careful balancing acts to her responsibility, which was why she expected the civilian side of government to take charge of ... whatever this turned into...
--
The process of docking was just like any other. In part due to the need to provide the appearance that this was nothing unusual. The Federated Suns didn't need to know the specifics, House Davion the field marshal... marshals including the Duke of Robinson didn't need to. They didn't need to know, and no one needed to get their hopes up.


So they went through all the usual safety checks, and tried to make this look as normal as possible as Pasha held the deck, and ordered the tech to start the clock. They had checked and triple checked the calculations, Dante had crunched the numbers.


He could honestly say he hadn't been this nervous about executing the jump from Northwind to Dieron. The countdown being verbalized did not help. Once they made the jump it wouldn't matter, the Kearny Fuchida drive would cross the intervening eight point two light years in an instant. At least perceptible experience would be that way... his conversations with the AI raised other questions, maybe that was why it was bothering him more than normal.


The count reached zero, and the digital display flashed and the world turned into a pin prick of light for just a moment. A moment that did seem to last forever, before the field of stars shifted in their perspective, and the near objects in the field of view changed.


The computer took measurements of the stars and confirmed they were where they were supposed to be. Lockdale's star was 40.4 light years from the yellow star Sol that the earth revolved around.
--
Notes: So yeah, besides the tech problems eating the original update Wednesday I'm now sick which is fun, next update we will be hitting Lockdale anchorage and then in 1.5 be setting up for the departure to Davion space with subsequent chapters introducing the Aurigans.