Battletech: The Second Luxen Contracts

Imperator Pax · Jan 13, 2022

Returning to Luxen Part 2

Gene had made the decision to jump planet with IE heading out to the black for a reason... IE was willing to hire him with all the benefits he was looking for, berthing space for the salvage he was actually interested in keeping and of course they were planning to come back to Luxen. A return to that would be months after the Combine had presumably found somewhere else to lurk It had been a short sighted plan based on the situation and cognizant of the resources he had. Seghal probably would have wanted to talk anyway on getting back, even if he hadn't come back Magunauc, the dropship, and the JumpShips.

As for the other salvage shares he'd let the MRB auction those off. Other mercenaries, nobles looking to expand their houses, or corporations had probably come through to bid on them and that money had gone into escrow account. It was padding, he needed it less with the payout from the IE contract.... with IE paying him seven hundred cbills a day before overtime and hazard pay. Never mind non financial gain.

And of course IE had the money to recoup that pittance if they had gained what he expected they had from the Taurian core... they would need capital... but if IE's financial backers could start up a new jump ship line then they would in all likelihood make returns within a decade of starting... as long as it actually got up and running. He suspected the first thing Ford would do was make copies of the core, and presumably that would be the first thing the expedition backers would do when they received their copies.

Would it show results? Not this decade, probably not even next. At some point though they'd be able to get the resources to start rebuilding interstellar travel. He glanced at the window as it started to mist again, and the windows started to fog on the exterior of the building. Seghal was making him wait, either intentionally or the canopian equivalent to a little bird was on the phone. Not that he was in a hurry, he'd shown up early but there were other things he needed to get done today so he was hoping to be out of here by lunch time.

He had a suspicion from the material that had shown up at the DropShip before he had even gone to talk to Septim that Raventhir had already told Seghal to approve of the contract. The courier Wednesday had dropped off nothing really that he hadn't already broadly known. The Magistracy Armed Forces were perennially short on supplies and money due to politics. The federal government didn't want to raise taxes to pay for a larger standing military... as a result the Luxen Volunteers were functionally single battalions of regulars, if that, with other positions served by those conscripts doing their national service stint... and that wasn't a good solution.

The door opened rubbing against the plush carpet, giving a view of Seghal's office, and the woman herself standing behind her desk near the phone. Her official rank was Force Major... which was the Canopian equivalent to lieutenant colonel. She was a long faced woman with broad forehead and would have looked like a librarian, in Gene's opinion if you threw a pair of spectacles on her. She was now defacto Adjutant General to the Luxen Volunteers as a whole now. Lady Raventhir might or might not have had a part in moving people around, the recommendations to get all the rest sorted and he suspected she had a larger hand in what was going on behind the scenes.

Right now the major was looking at a typed up break down of force arrangement. It took the original twelve vindicators split into two six Mech groups, and expanded on it. Twelve mechs was ordinarily three lances, and his 'suggestion' added a six mech 'Recon' unit on paper, and a six mech 'command' unit. The last was going to be the unit in theory the observation group.

Her office looked more like a lounge, a couch with throw pillows in one corner, bookshelves. The carpet underneath his boots was thick and decidedly residential in cut... and was probably a bitch to clean compared to what he normally associated with office standards. After a moment she offered him a seat in what was basically a recliner by the window.

"Can this be done with what we have available?" She asked.

He affirmed that and noted she didn't question his knowledge of 'current assets' though that could have just been going from last year's experience, "But in the future," He remarked I'd recommend something like massed Shadow Hawks. Not necessarily six of them, but enough that they could mass LRM fire like the Vindicators can." It was the scout unit that was the problem. During the battle of Luxen such that it had been he'd been able to keep his marauder watching the two six groups. The Magistracy had its share of Light Mechs but the truth was domestic production or no he really didn't like the mish mash of stinger, locust, and wasps... all twenty tonners that were filling out the recon unit. None of those carried LRMs which was fine because at the top end the locust only had four tons of armor spread around. They weren't supposed to stand up and fight anyway, they were supposed to observe and fall back and let the medium units come in. "Which should allow the Vindicators to catch up and concentrate on hostile units."

It was still not an ideal solution to contending with Heavy Mechs barring all of them ganging up on one or two heavier enemies... or fighting a Charger, which was technically an Assault mech he supposed. Leaving aside that who in their right mind thought five small lasers was appropriate for a mech that size.

The Force Major pushed the paper to one side. "This will put you in command of the mercenaries who fought at Luxen," Though they had honestly been divided it up to cover sectors of the defense not really deployed together, "And you've brought in additional assets." She managed to make both statements sound accusatory.

"Is that a problem?"

She sort of ducked the question, "There are three regiments of Luxen Volunteers." The intention was that the parent brigade would allow the diminished magistracy military to protect against pirate attacks and supplement even more local militia units those explicitly at the planet level who weren't provincial capitals in times of crisis. The problem was that Luxen as a provincial capital hadn't been seriously threatened in a while, and it looked like 'pirate season' was going to be bad for the next couple of years.

That was especially weighing on the Luxen civilian government... and the Corps.

He knew that much from Majesty Metals being worried about criminal activity on ur Cruinne, and knew those worries were translating up into the, federal, Canopian government to pirate nest on the doorstep potentially. What he hadn't known was that there were concerns from the other end. That was to say of threats coming anti-spinward.

He managed to avoid questioning the 'what' when the Marian Hegemony had been brought up. The fact that a pirate kingdom had managed to survive near a century and had three generations of one asshole family manage to keep the place running was mildly disturbing. The Magistracy Armed Forces weren't configured for offensive, expeditionary warfare. The idea that nine planets had been under the control of a single bandit kingdom doing roman cosplay was... was fucking absurd.

Yet that was the situation on the anti-spinward border of the magistracy. Thraxa was the most obviously exposed to such a threat, but the reality of JumpShips meant raids further rimward were not outside of the realm of possibility.

Major Seghal shuffled some papers, "When can you start?"

"Immediately." He replied standing up.
--
He had left the government building for a trip to Friar Tuck with Seghal in tow. The MRB liaison was about as happy to be pulled away from his drinking as could be expected but filed everything needed for the cadre contract to be filed and then shoed Seghal, and him along so that he could go back to his beer. Ordinarily though cadre, and garrison work on a world like Luxen would have rated much lower in risk than the MRB currently considered it... even with the Azami 'driven off' and no sighting of that particular unit since the threat by both the MRB and the Canopians warranted a higher threat assessment.

That was without accounting for the other security concerns. The Magistracy were willing to fork over the C-Bills for security. It was going to be completely different than the sort of work he had been doing for IE though.

Seghal left him at the MRB hall and Tuck told him to go tell some of the lower ranked adepts to get 'whatever it was' he needed and went back to his drinking. That was fine to, Gene settled into the prospect of finding and registering lodgings for the unit, including adding the rest of the 'old' scratch company, but more importantly the support contract with magistracy metals for ammunition that they'd need and that Canopians would be paying for.

That had required a working lunch, but no one seemed to have batted an eye at Friar Tuck pushing the paperwork off on more junior personnel. No body batted an eye at his situation certainly. Bahar sat the steaming mug of tea down. "Have you found somewhere yet?"

"The university has a building with free space." He replied, "Any trouble?"

"No, Professor Abner provided generous and expansive letters of praise, and good conduct. None of the volunteers have any prior history that would get them in trouble with signing on as mercenaries... though admittedly some are veterans of the Arkab legions. The combine may view that as suspicious, if that is their inclination."

"Pasha find anything to keep him busy?"

She laughed, and then paused, "Oh yes, there is never any lack of demand for JumpShips." The other mechwarrior sipped her tea, "He's working on the contracts now, and should have something to you before Monday, probably even before the day is out."

"I thought he was going to Friday prayers,"

"I'm sure he is."

Gene shrugged and adjusted the papers, "It occurs to me, speaking about the unit," Well, "Septim mentioned that the Marik civil war ended," And, "We're going to need simulators at some point for down time training for the unit. I have no idea where or who to talk to in order to buy those, so if Pasha is going to be doing trade missions that would be something to look for."

Imperator Pax · Jan 20, 2022

Return to Luxen Part 3

It was Monday morning, and he already felt like they were running behind. He had had... really less than a weekend from accepting the final job offer to being ready for now. There had been things with the MRB that needed to be worked out to fold Septim's command of the ad hoc company he had put together was only part of that. A weekend really hadn't been enough.

Even if Friar Tuck had been more helpful. The paunchy middle aged balding drunk had not appreciated his weekend involving actual work. However it meant that now that it was done there was no chance for Septim's fears of getting run off the contract coming to pass. No singles or pairs of Mechwarriors regardless of their MRB rating was going to be able to swing running them off easy street pay.

Maybe if another actual company showed up, but that didn't seem likely given that for Septim it had just been the aforementioned singles and doubles when it came to competition. After all that was part of why Septim had been trying to be surreptitious in the cafe. Luxen was an option for R&R of course, but also medical treatment and what not before the incursion. This was the periphery one or two mechwarriors could get jobs out here without being a part of company. Mechs were fairly scarce, and Septim had had what sounded like legitimate concerns about getting driven off by a higher rated longer serving mercenary as a result... or having Raventhir say someone new should be in charge.

It was about a quarter to ten in the morning. They were finishing the last check ups for the hand over or at least the meeting with the canopian unit. He knew he shouldn't have been surprised but there was no commonality with the Azami ground vehicles with what little vehicles that the Planetary Militia had. Hassan's volunteers were all Azami who had no history with the Arkab Legion, or who had otherwise honorably separated out of the DCMS it should have in theory given him cover to employ them. They hadn't raised any obvious or immediate issues with either the MRB or the Canopians, and IE, Doctor Abner and Ford, had written letters of recommendation on good conduct.

'All that good shit.' As it had been put.

He checked his watch again, and then glanced out the window. It hadn't been hard to get space at the university of Luxen, and from this vantage point he could see the outline of the College of History's west side. Raventhir had allocated twenty young canopian mechwarriors to this, probably what she had wheedled from the local government, probably partly money, and probably in part wanting to be sure that there was enough hands on training with a small instructor student ratio.

"You could have scheduled this earlier," Bahar noted as he checked the time again.

"I could have." He agreed as the clock up above them mounted on the wall continued to tick. Three minutes till, he turned on his heel and scuffed his way out of the hallway and into the class room to double check that the projector was going to work.

Once they were all in the room, he started "This course will encompass two levels of revised curriculum from what you've been doing with Captain Alexander." He declared to the twenty Canopian MechWarriors, and the assembled mercenaries. The number of attending MAF pilots was representative of the simple reality that the program couldn't be attended by all the MechWarriors in the understrength and largely green 1st Luxen Volunteers. Seghal had been convinced to let them try the six strength units out, and potentially if Mechs came available to run 2-1-1 formation with integrated Mercenary pilots filling recon and HQ units. "The first will be Mech Operations, the second will be combined arms operations." He clicked the remote brining the hologram to life, "While I have discussed it with Major Seghal," who had said she would bring it up with Lady Raventhir, "we will not be covering ASF operations under that heading. Combined operations will entail maneuver and joint role missions with infantry and ground vehicles."

The image of the crossed out Eagle ASF changed, and was replaced by the itinerary that he had compiled as soon as he had started the program. They had twelve vindicators from 1st Luxen Volunteers... and then a mix of mechs filling the rest out. They had two Shadow Hawks out of that number.

Two six Vindicator Groups appeared, followed by the six light mechs. The stingers would be in the headquarters unit... by choice they wouldn't have even been using it at all, but it was what they had. Not that the Wasp was much better. "The Locust is a scout mech." He went on to explain that 'Yes, if we had other varieties of them we could do other things,' But they didn't have those other varieties, "As a result the curriculum will focus on observation in the Mech component, or in the support of combined arms to suppress hostile infantry."

The 1V was not designed to engage enemy tanks or other Mechs... and carrying an entire literal ton of machine ammo was dangerous... to the MechWarrior inside.

He looked around the mix of mech warriors, including the ShadowHawk pilots, before returning to the dozen who had piloted vindicators, The two vindicator sections will comprise the principle article of battle in the Company." He stated authoritatively, "The Recon force will identify the target,"

The icon of the locus appeared surrounded by a sunburst and graphics representing hilly terrain. It changed to the two six mech vindicator units allocated to the company. "One group of Vindicators can cover the other, while it advances to engage." A range indicator for PPCs and LRMs appeared on a map grip, "Alternatively in less ideal situations a Six Mech unit can divide in half, with three mechs firing and three mechs maneuvering.

A new mech icon appeared, underneath the single mech icons two Vindicators and one locust.

"Six mechs will comprise the Command section of the Company. Its principle objective is to provide flank security for the company, and where necessary supplemental fire."

There were reasons for that as he went on to elaborate.

Part of it was literally that there would be mercs in both units observing and providing guidance, he turned the topic of that placement. With the original twelve mechs during the Azami incursion he'd been ancillary to the formation 'baby sitting' as some one else had put it. A ride along, and that would be what most of the mercs would be doing. Bahar would be slotting into the Light mech unit and covering navigation as a priority over gunnery, though they'd get to that. Septim and Bubbles would remain with the command unit. Other members of the scratch company would be involved in running opfor and also filling in as part of larger maneuver exercises.

That was realistically going to be a couple of weeks out though according to Seghal. That was a simple facet of the MAF being tiny, and Luxen just previously not having been considered an at risk world. Forty something planets being covered by something like ten regiments was well over the border of insane, even accounting for planetary militia to supplement the Magistracy's equivalent 'Federal Army'. The less said about the Magistracy's lack of an air force...or ASF rather the better. Still that was part of the reason he was getting paid to try and shape Easy Company into an effective fighting force.

Given most of these MechWarriors were young reservists serving their compulsory bit with the Home Guard or whatever this ... was going to have to entail a bit more class room lecture than Septim had probably been banking on. "I think my brain is melting out of my ears." Bubbles complained rubbing her eyes some ninety minutes later as the Lyran MechWarrior nodded in agreement.

Which merely underscored part of the problem... the truth was a lot of this was distilled from SLDF era manuals with his own spin on such things. He couldn't just copy from the manuals from the Aquagea Castle Outpost, and even if he had been it didn't change the fact that these were largely 16 to 18 year olds who might not be sticking around in the service, or just the fact that Star League and its logistical chain was long gone.

He supposed that he should have been grateful that both the Shadowhawk and Stinger both had SRM 2 launchers. Not that it really would have mattered per se. He wasn't responsible for the Magistracy's logistics chain, and most everything had energy weapons. LRM 5 and machine gun ammo excepting, and of course also the Shadow Hawks' AC 5.

--
Commentary: This is largely a straight revision of Part 2, however we will be introducing the pilots, and ad hoc company in the next section before moving into March 3016

Imperator Pax · Jan 27, 2022

Part 4

Fiona Short looked up from the workbook she had been issued. Her promotion to first lieutenant felt ... unstable. She wouldn't be demoted but the workbook asked questions and assumed a level of training that ... that the MAF hadn't provided her with. Since September they had been cramming in as much simulator time as they could manage largely centered around the invasion. The Lyran hadn't even contemplated class room time which was in itself a far cry from how MAF basic had been... she had had eighteen hours in a simulator before being put in a real mech against a real threat... now since September she had six hundred hours.

The problem... "Put 'em down, time to turn them in." The order rang out. The Cicada pilot had a voice that carried through the lecture hall. He moved up the stairs looking gleeful at the chance to chew anyone still scribbling away, but everyone had stopped.

She hadn't' finished, but she doubted anyone else had either. There was a shuffling as the workbooks were collected along the edge of the rows and taken away. The projector hummed as their former instructor, and the younger newer instructor took over. "The Magistracy's response to the invasion can be neatly summarized," Major Shepherd remarked in a controlled tone as if he was trying to avoid drawling the speech, "As a drop everything, pay through the nose emergency." A star map appeared highlighted the jumps that had come from Detroit. "the cost of this kind of response is more than just the C-Bills needed for mercenaries. This is the course of jumps taken from Detroit, to Luxen last year." The image changed to a Union changing jumpships. "This is what has sometimes been charitably called the pony express, or a jump circuit. Jumpships meet at prearranged points making it so that a cargo or specific DropShip can immediately or near so jump to the next in sequence. This is expensive. Without JumpShips specifically allocated for this it pulls JumpShips out of normal service, which is hard to coordinate."

He changed the map again... to one that was obviously the Magistracy but the borders were wrong.

"This is the original, greatest territorial extent of the Magistracy of Canopus," The major clicked again, "This is the province of Luxen. As it originally existed. The the new vandenburg rebellion as a prelude to the Amaris coup dissolved nascent plans to expand to ur Cruine officially, but the presence by both wild cat mining communities, as well as industrial concerns like Majesty metals has long put it in the Magistracy's sphere of influence as the Inner Sphere receded."

"Are we going there?" a curly haired Vindicator from the other six asked.

"No." A map of the planet appeared, "Majesty Metals would certainly like it if the Magistracy did something, but you're not ready, but it does make it a useful example of potential future experience." He nodded to the blond lyran, the taller man stepped forward to take over.

"So most of our sim runs have been focused on the invasion with different iterations, trying out different things that we could do different... learning from our mistakes."

Which basically meant dying over and over again in digital reality. The pirates always won. It was even worse in the simulations that started before reinforcements, before the mercenaries had arrived on Luxen. They lost and kept loosing.

"This is a different sort of simulated mission. We'll be conducting this as if it were the real thing, because its not impossible the MAF might need you to go to some nearby world to fight pirates. Now in real life in order to move Easy Company we'd need multiple dropships, four leopards with all mech cubicles, but for the sake of the simulation each of Easy Company's,"

"Platoons," Major Shepherd remarked, "Unless you would prefer squadron?"

"Platoons is fine," Septim replied a little lower than his normal speaking voice, "Of six," He said returning to his normal voice will start already on surface. You will be going up against an unknown opposing force that has been attacking."
--
'The school day' was over even though they were still technically in the history college's building, but the Canopian MechWarriors of easy company had been let loose.

Gene looked at the note that Pasha had forwarded him, "And we're sure that's current?" He was talking to Septim about the chances of needing to actually contend with packing up the Magistracy greens and going to ur Cruine.

"Majesty would like it, but no." Septim had stayed while Gene had left with IE. "They never tried to move the unit offworld or even move us around they wanted us practicing here so if something happened we could theoretically do something. I mean its not impossible."

"But it is still highly unlikely." Gene nodded. That was something of a relief. For simulated operations ignoring the logistical transport needs for JumpShips and Dropships was one thing, but moving the company to another planet to fight pirates would be a big ask. "Lebanon and Colorado have some free lance cargo jumps they're going to make inside the Magistracy. Our JumpShips are covered in the contract with Raventhir so its fine, but I did want to be sure they weren't going to want us to go anywhere anytime soon. I do want us to have a plan for that just in case, Chang." 'Bubbles' the Hunchback driver looked up, "I want you to look into DropShips, this is just a fact finding mission. Financial information and potential hires."

"You said that the magistracy would have eventually colonized ur Cruine."

"Yeah." He replied to the question.

"How do you know?" Septim asked.

"DOME had it slated for terraforming." The Capellans had already been hitting the end of the logistical leash at the time under Warex Liao. "It never beyond initial surveys," That he knew of, so he wasn't sure why the CID database had an inconsequential periphery world marked. Germanium wealth wouldn't have by itself explained it. It had struck him that it might have had something to do with Amaris... something to do with the hiddden army... maybe, but the flag hadn't had any elaboration on it. "It doesn't matter, we've got a job to do here, Ur Cruine is as good as any of the options to run simulations on."

Septim and Bubbles left leaving him with Bahar in the office. She wore the khaki uniform of the SLDF Army, which contrasted to the to departing mechwarriors. He hadn't considered it, but Colorado and Lebanon's cruises would produce more money than Raventhir was paying... but then maybe that wasn't the point. They needed the contract on the record, and a mercenary lived or died by his reputation as he'd been told.

"What about combined arms drills?"

"I was about to bring that up, I don't know how the magistracy does it and I'm not especially familiar with Combine or Arkab legion doctrine. Find out from the corp what would be the best way to organize joint maneuvers. With an eye towards integrating local infantry."

Pasha would be leaving but they'd still have the Sam Houston, but they didn't have their own infantry or ASF so even with the aerodyne there was little they could in the way of joint operations there, and the Magistracy's air assets were abysmal. They wouldn't be able to borrow any from that side.
--
Commentary: It is February of 3016 at present and we will be showing some perspectives from other characters as we move through this. There are differences between this and the main story version, the overall plot is not massively altered from the main outline and thus that rendering but we're talking about a series of months in the Magistracy.

Imperator Pax · Feb 3, 2022

Part 5

26 February 3016
Gene rubbed his eyes and stared at the mirror, turned the water back on, and yawned. People talked about a mental component to working on any kind of job, but that didn't entail the actual linking to a machine via a neurohelmet. It was probably true that the ASF flyboys had it worse, but the neurohelmet couldn't be used effectively by everyone so it was hard to put into words. A good mech pilot was capable of synchronization far above was just a mediocre one was... and that was without factoring in equipment.

They had started a week of actual mech driving. It wasn't going badly but the shine had worn off the Vindicator.

Gene dried his face, and glanced out the bathroom window. The university had furnished them... well given the carpet he would have described as a frat house esque building of sorts that wasn't in use to serve as living quarters for the company. That put it in easy walking distance of the history department and thus not just where they held the classroom component of lectures, but for that matter the space Interstellar Expeditions were set up in. Admittedly he hadn't seen hide nor hair of Doctor Abner, and he knew Ford had apparently been returning to the Federated Suns.

He made his way down after he had dressed for the day and looked at the documents. "That's them?" He asked.

Septim shrugged over his coffee, swallowed and nodded, "Yeah. Vindicator specs from the Magistracy's deal with the Capellans. Then the other mechs," Not that Septim seemed to understand why they were needed.

12 Vindicators. A mech that was the product of the weakest of the great houses facing the deprivations of the star league. It had been intended to be a jack of all trades, and while it could do a little bit of everything, which was probably had made it appealing for the Magistracy to purchase them when they had had the money come available to spend on new BattleMechs.

"They need time in the field in real mechs not just simulators," And not in a depot where they could barely have two mechs walking around without someone running into either a wall or the other mech. They'd have to put the mechs on flatbeds and move them somewhere at least until they were out the 'urbane build up', but they needed somewhere to practice without the risk of someone not managing to walk in a straight line for a kilometer or less... there were too many turns immediately around the depot really. He wasn't sure they could trust a navigation program even at slow speed to baby walk the mechwarriors in. "They need time at a gunnery range with live ammo."

Which would be expensive, he knew that even without looking at Septim's face. "The magistracy barely wanted me to shoot blanks before you got here."

"We don't have a choice. Any Pirates do show up they'll need to have as much time on their machines and that means shooting. At the very minimum give them time on the energy weapons." Those wouldn't cost ammunition... though if anything broke it would mean maintenance... but he'd have the techs check, if there was something wrong the men in the Sam Houston's bays would find it.
--
With twenty MAF MechWarriors assigned they didn't have the Mechs to fully fill out twenty four Mech slots needed, the Luxen Volunteers simply didn't have them to spare. What that would mean for Easy company in the long run? Gene didn't know. For a training cadre it would be fine to fill out the slots with Mercenaries from the unit, but the Luxen volunteers wouldn't be able to rely on that in the long run... but Raventhir was supposedly going to bring more mechs in a few weeks.

In the inteirm though it really wasn't a problem. It wasn't the problem. The two vindicator sixes were the principle unit of battle and could be trained together and separate and divided and matched in the simulators but it wouldn't mean the same thing as being in the field, which was what they were out here doing while they were waiting for actual approval to conduct live fire gunnery practice, and an allotment of ammunition.

The MAF paperwork was still ridiculous. It wasn't to the point of being malicious self sabotage, but it was definitely an impediment. The SLDF course he had been adapting the training regimen wasn't much of a help. It made certain assumptions about having ammunition to train with, and the Star League likely would have had money to burn.

"This is a highlight of our current problem." The two mechwarriors of the Mech in question shuffled, but didn't start to protest yet, "Debuting in 2550 in an acceptable configuration, Lang Industries intended for the Shadow Hawk to be a multirole medium battlemech. Its fifty five tons. The SHD 2H is quite ammunition dependent which means that if requisitions don't come through the only weapon that will be used in the first round of live range time will be the right arm mounted Medium laser."

The image on the screen changed to glaring red Xs over the missiles and autocannon.

The slide changed to a different mech, and he heard Septim mutter "Knock off Griffin," Either to himself or to Chang who was sitting next to him.

"This is the 2K." The image changed from a clean pic to an image of one during the battle last year of one in yellow and green paint, "House Kurita facing ammunition shortages for the eighty millimeter pulled the autocannon out. Replaced it and other weapons to equip a Particle Projector Cannon. This debuted I'm told in 2803." It wasn't one of the Mechs he had killed during the battle but apparently been downed a couple miles down the river., and hadn't been dragged out of it until a few weeks before he'd arrived. "This configuration eliminates multirole flexibility wholesale. The 2K is a dedicated ranged combatant. LRM and PPC give it an impressive range on the modern battlefield. Hence the comparison with the Griffin."

"But we don't have one of these?"

"No we don't, but its what you'll be fighting in the simulator," He replied, clicking again causing a flood of grid tiles to appear showing a map, "This is a mesa on ur Cruine near a mining camp, you'll be facing an enemy force of unknown strength taking pot shots from extreme distance with their PPCs. You're to reconnoiter and if all possible," Stressing the word before continuing, "and this is without exposing your own mechs to too much incoming fire and to eliminate the threat they pose."

Beau stood up and waved towards the door on his left, "Alright into the simulator pods, we'll set you up with your lances and once your in final briefing showing where you are." He drawled before following them down to the testing floor.

"They're four mechs short."

"We don't always deploy at full strength," Hell he had to wonder if any of the Magistracy units were actually at their full paper allotment, besides the royal guard on Canopus of course, if anyone was surely they would be.

"And they're just light combat vehicles too," Schiffer grunted, "They'll be fine." He waved the matter off, "Large lasers or no, they're just twenty five tonners."

That comment was oriented towards the 'surprise' he had programmed into the simulation of the Shadowhawks supporting force, which if the Mechs of Easy Company appropriately scouted, and looked for fusion signatures in the backdrop would spot and be able to avoid. The cannons and western terrain differential should make it possible that the mechs could avoid putting themselves in direct line of fire except of the units that they were themselves shooting at. They just needed to avoid being caught in a pincer between mechs and tanks. In theory they should have been able to drive off the enemy mechs without committing to a battle, but that was rarely how simulated battles worked. Unlike in most succession wars era combat battles usually culminated in one side having enough and disengaging.
--
Commentary: I really like desert scorpions. Anyway, I have question, I posted a non snippet here for the main story, and for the last two of those I've put them in spoilers, but would it be better to leave them unspoilered. they are already header-ed as non canon at the moment?

Imperator Pax · Feb 10, 2022

March 3016
Part 1

Almost a hundred men in coveralls were presently crawling over the mechs of easy company. Final checks really. "Anything I should know chief?"

"No sir." Mustafa shook his head waved his clipboard in the direction of the twelve Vindicators, "They look fine. I mean they're within factory spec." He bit down on his lip, and the a little quieter, not much since otherwise he wouldn't have been heard from all the drivers, and machine tools, "The ejection seat looks like a good way to broken neck, shosha."

"Lets hope none of them have to punch out." He remarked, thoughts turning back to the Azami withdrawal last year when the mechs confronting them had punched out. Gene understood why, they had what they needed, and they'd been planning to leave known space to find their own little slice of paradise.

... and the Sheik had gotten what they had come for.

"Indeed, sir."

"They'll be ready for live fire exercises?" He asked glancing up at the clock on the wall. They had managed to make it into march without breaking anything, but he wasn't sure if they were really ready to transition to maneuvers with live ammo. So it would be stationary range training... which was certainly easier to get signed off on by Seghal, who in turn had to get it approved by the planetary government for whatever reason.

"They will be."

"That's good." He adjusted putting his size nine SLDF issued black combat boots on the hangar's concrete floor and stood up off the four foot wide crate he'd been using as a stool, "what about the other mechs?"

"Marauder is fine. The mongooses are both combat ready. The Jenner is repaired. Hunchback, Merlin Cicada," He kept going, "They'll be fine. If you want we can schedule them maintenance after the exercises but they can be run now for them without any problems."

That sounded like a report he was going to enjoy reading. Not. "Anything beyond standard wear and tear?"

"Just mercenary mechs, and lack of regular maintenance." Mustafa glanced towards one of the crew on the second Shadow Hawk, "One thing I can say for the MAF at least they have techs available."

"What is it?"

"Your Marauder, immaculate, but its."

"Its got space for equipment that I didn't have to slot in, for when it was last overhauled." It wasn't as if he could really explain Aquagea.

"I understand." Then, "I saw the double heat sinks installed in the engine. That will be hard to replace." Replace? "The fellowship could replace them but try not to get them broken. As for the armor ordinarily we'd have to patch it, but we have about fifty tons in the cargo hold from Alamut. The elders included it for the Marauder, and the Mongooses."

"Any replacement for the SPL, if that breaks?"

"Last factory known to be making them was blown up in 2950, I'd have to let a trade caravan know I was looking. Might take months,"

"So don't break it," He stuff his pockets into his field jacket as the wind blew dusty snow into the hangar. The weather promised this cold snap would end and Monday's high would in the mid fifties and no rain, but he supposed they'd see. "Any issue with the jump jets?"

"They're fine. They were looked over at Alamut. No need to worry. Maybe don't volunteer for orbital insertions if you don't have to, but they're fine." He repeated himself.

Fair advice, "The Magistracy is hoping they can find some other Marauders, or Raventhir," Not that they'd gotten word back from her yet, "is I suppose, if she finds any are your techs going to have issues?"

"No we can handle a few more mechs we at least have some support from the MAF since we're doing their mechs too."

"Is that an issue?"

"Most of their assistants are just conscripts. They can fetch and carry well enough." Mustafa handed over a checklist letting him look. It was delineated into two sets of stapled reports.

The first covered the 12 Vindicators comprising Abel and Baker Platoons, as well Charlie and Delta. The latter two 'platoons' really could have been called lances as they had four MAF mechs each without having mercs attach. The freshly printed paper used the official terminology of 'Company Reconnaissance Section' for Charlie and listed the two Locusts, and two Wasps. Delta, or the Company Headquarters / Reserve Section listed the two Shadow Hawks, and two Stingers. The second was a thicker stack of sheets covering the Mechs and armor of his mercenary command as they stood at present.
--
He leaned back in the harness and breathed slowly. Master Arm was off, all of the weapons were safe and the Marauder finished its third loop around the building. He was pacing in a seventy five ton warmachine capable of levelling an entire city block in roughly sixty seconds. Gene keyed the mike, "Major Seghal can you explain to me exactly what is the delay?"

Maybe it was a legitimate accident. Maybe some idiot sunday driver had tboned someone and there was a giant billion car pile up that hadn't made the news.

Or maybe the transportation people just didn't want to shut down the highway to follow safety procedures that the Magistracy had written up for moving equipment.

"The ammunition hasn't been signed off on."

He bit down a curse, "You didn't sign for it? Hold on," He swapped channels, "Septim tell the convoy to get on the road. Go to the contingency for energy weapons only." Back, "Why exactly?"

"The funding for replacement is still held up in committee." They had actually talked about this already, and the simple solution of 'its fine I'll pay for it you can pay me back' wouldn't have worked if the Planetary Government thought they could just duck pay... and then it would have been an MRB hassle and a half... and god the thought of having to involve Friar Tuck over there to do it would take who knew how long... or waiting until Raventhir showed up to sort things out. "I'm not allowed to to purchase ammunition without authorization for its replacement."

"Fine, I'm taking the clause in section 2, and rolling the unit to the exercise site. We'll do this with just the energy weapons. But in a week we're doing it with missiles," cause aforementioned Section involved arbitration regarding supply disputes that Raventhir had insisted on and that made a whole lot of damn sense... but mostly involved call her if there were supply troubles.

The government probably hadn't gotten used to Septim's training regime being in expensive. Now he was here and they thought they didn't have to spend money because there hadn't been expenditures the rest of last year.

"I don't think the planetary council is going to change course on it in a week," Seghal pointed out, "And the planetary charter on the powers of the purse says that they have the right to do as they are doing." and Luxen had largely escaped the succession wars without much of a scrap, up until presumably the events of last year.

That probably had hit the pocket book hard. Raventhir had come through with money for the volunteers, or at least that had been his understanding. He took the ramp and moved up forward as his clock turned from 10:59 to 11:00. They were so behind.

The outdoor temperature read a balmy 39 degrees fahrenheit. Cloudy with a chance of rain. "Major, out of curiosity, how," Often "do you do drill qualifications for the volunteers?"

"Once a year," She replied.

... fuck. "That all the budget is there for, I guess?"

"effectively."

"I'm going to ask Raventhir to pay for the unit some ammo. Soldiering is a perishable skill, and pirates aren't shy about shooting at people. I'll see you in a couple days." He eased back on the throttle to a somewhat more polite speed as his Dalban registered Chang's hunchback signaling.

"Figured I'd join you boss."

"Carry on Bubbles." The fifty ton medium mech was a beast of armor and guns a humanoid shape unlike his Marauder, and with a massive 200mm autocannon mounted on one shoulder, but her Hunchback was capable of the same top speed as his Heavy, whether that was a good thing for a medium mech... was something people argued about... and always had argued about. Since they were at fifty kph it wasn't as if they were going to slow the unit down any. No the lighter faster mechs would be carrying up the rear ... not that he expected they'd need them to snap towards a response ... it was just a precaution.

Theoretically it took about three days from the jump points, but if someone jumped closer, say into a pirate point at L1 they'd have a hell of a lot less time than zenith... and it wasn't like three days was a lot of time anyway.
--
Commentary: Canonically the MAF numbers, and budget is small and their readiness is bad. Like not OWA hippy nonsense bad when it comes to ground forces, but still bad.

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

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

Ground Forces

Canopian Experimental Company 'Easy' sans attached Mercenaries

Abel Platoon
6x Vindicators

Baker Platoon
6x Vindicators

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

Delta / Company Headquarters/reserves
2 Shadow Hawks
2 Stingers

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

Armor Company [Azami formation] 'Maganac'
Company HQ Vehicle Section
Tank Section (2 Tokugawa tanks)
Support Battery (2 LRM Carriers)
2x Light Vehicle Demi Lances tasked for recon and harassment [Six Vehicles]

All of the Azami vehicles use Fusion Engines, rather than ICE powered versions that emerged over the course of the succession wars reflecting the Azami, and Arkab legions to maintain Star League era units within their ranks canonically through to the clan invasion.

Imperator Pax · Feb 17, 2022

March 3016
Part 2

Gene adjusted his position craning the mech's torso back to center giving him a commanding view over where the Sam Houston had touched down. The two Tokugawa tanks had rolled off out of the front and his Dalban was merrily following their IFF signatures in addition to the Nissan 220 fusion engines powering them. They were now formed on a mongoose with a friendly IFF and a pair of Locusts reading as 3Vs.

It wasn't too muddy but he'd admittedly been a little worried about conditions for the offload. The LRM carriers heavier still had the advantage of being tracked and were off as well. The hell they could rain would be tremendous, but there was nothing suspicious at the zenith and nadir jump points and it'd probably stay that way.

Almost a klick away the Mechs of Easy Company were starting their reactor power ups, which lit up his Dalban's passive sensors, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. They'd be out here a couple of days and then they'd head back to debrief the course and practice and resume classroom lectures. He was trying to strike a balance between hands on experience in the job, and actual book learning... but there was only going to be so much they could do without actual shooting practice. Even if today's was going to be energy weapon only.

They had driven almost two hours through the scrubland to put enough distance from Luxen's planetary capital that they shouldn't in theory get complaints from the civilians. If they maneuvered too far from the city and something did happen they'd get complaints about that though.

"Its doing it again." Septim grumbled over the radio link through the DropShip, "Stupid computer." His magestrix had some issue handling the codex for secure radio communication with the SLDF issued Dalban... part of it was that as the first unique fresh off the drawing board mech design in... well probably centuries no one at Wolf had thought it was a good idea to make it, or didn't have, all the proper software to make it compatible with the more advanced handling systems of the Hi Rez.

"Are you ready?" He asked the Lyran. Then pivoted his marauder to turn a direct laser communication beam onto the smaller heavy mech, "Septim Report."

"Uh, yeah boss we're not to the gunnery range yet." Came the Lyran's reply, even though that was obvious.

A thought directed through his neurohelmet directed the Mircronics to highlight the HQ unit headed up by Septim's Merlin. "Acknowledged, apprise me when you reach the first way point." He clicked off mechanically. That left him considering whether or not to check with Bahar as she was supposed to be navigating the Recon unit in mock operations with their company's ground vehicle. He decided it against it, and settled back into the seat to let the micronics and hi Rez filter information to him through the neurohelment.

With nothing flagging for immediate review he pulled the computer directory open with a thought and projected the financial projections into the command battlemech's cockpit. Hiring a DropShip was less of an issue when one owned a JumpShip. The truth was Pasha could probably find cargo to haul if they needed to make a jump to Ur Cruine. They'd need at least two DropShips for Easy, possibly as many as three.

Carrying a mech in steerage was always an option, but that would take time to offload.. and if the Magistracy shipped them anywhere far from ideal if they needed to go somewhere to actually fight. He paused the slow scrolling of the projection as a mech paired.

"So do you really expect us to shoot a berm with our medium laser?" The Shadowhawk pilot demanded without preamble.

He'd been expecting this, and the fact she hadn't asked this in the middle of the classroom was a plus, "Yes, in point of fact I expect you engage in gunnery exercises with the Martell Medium Laser, Captain." He replied. There was limited performance differential between the 6cm Martel and the Magna MkII series Medium lasers that Marauders were built with. Frankly much of the reliability of the Magna MkII series was more likely attributable to the armored gauntlet profile of a Marauder's limbs... they were designed to engage in mech scale fisticuffs and fire at point blank without issue ...

... why exactly the Hegemony had insisted General Motors build to that tolerance eluded him. It had been a design requirement. General Motors had delivered. That same sort of requirement had been made to Lang Industries when they had designed the ShadowHawk the previous century... punching another mech was considered a necessary tactical feature, but he wasn't going to suggest that the Canopian MechWarrior go around punching trees with her mech's fists.

He reached over and hit a couple of keys to transfer the course of fire to the ShadowHawk pilot. They had planned this with the understanding that they would have to use live ammunition... which would have entailed a lot more risk, but it also entailed maneuverability. The ShadowHawk was expected to 'run' the same ninety meter jump course as the Vindicators.

"You said," The rebuttal started up, "The purpose of a six mech unit was to contend with a lower entry skill level."

"Yes, I did. Pair six mechs, with the added benefit here of being all the same model facilitates not just a broader combat ability by size but preparing conscripts to understand their entire units performance characteristic."

"I am not a conscript, I am a commander in the Magistracy Armed Forces."

Commander was the equivalent rank to Captain, and the reminder of that of course also reiterated home that Commander McCloud had paid twenty thousand C-Bills for her commission. Gene wasn't sure if the MAF had always had a purchase commission It didn't matter if they had inherited it from the League, or if they had inherited from the Hegemony during colonial reconstruction. Whoever they had gotten it from that McCloud owned her own battlemech and had the money to purchase a captaincy meant she was used to getting her way.

"You are a captain in a regiment of detachments, and if you can clear the fire course on par time then we will discuss more advanced maneuver and operations in spite of the present logistical bottleneck to reflect your demonstrated skill level."

It was unfair of course, the ShadowHawk's single Medium laser and lack of other weapons she could employ on the course was a handicap that the Vindiators didn't have. So it actually took her almost triple the time Septim had taken to clear the course, in his Merlin, as a result.

--
Schiffer and Jowett both owned medium mechs, and had been working together for a number of years. They were rated as reliable by the MRB, but had little to distinguish them other than that long reliable friendship from any other mercenary group. It had been just luck that they'd still been on Detroit when the Magistracy had scrambled to get any mechwarriors they could to contend with the emergency on Luxen. They had in turn roped in a friend originally from the Federated suns, and then all three had stuck around when Septim had stiched most of the scratch company into his little training garrison gig of the last year.

Right now they were split up with Bahar and Schiffer in his Cicada with Charlie, and the Tikonov attached to assist Septim with the two Vindicators.

"Hesperus still produces the Chameleon doesn't it?" Gene asked as the Stingers queued up to rerun the course.

"And spare parts are cheap." The Fed Suns native replied.

At five tons heavier, and a mill and a half c-bills more expensive there were trade offs compared to the Vindicator. Gene had no idea what exactly had gone into the original purchase by the MAF of the Vindicator, but either the Chameleon or Merlin, seemed like a potential alternative. "You want to run the course Andrew?" He asked.

To answer the question the blinkers on the medium mech flashed and then it lifted off firing its jump jets to move to the line. The constant flux of jumpjets was causing little clouds of steam to spurt up from the rain falling around them.

The purpose of the course was fire and maneuver. They had to take certain, accommodations and so it was almost entirely close range even though the course itself was over a mile long.

Imperator Pax · Feb 24, 2022

March 3016
Part 3

The dirt crunched underneath his boots as he jumped out of the cockpit from his Marauder's hull down position. Sam Houston as it had been renamed belonged to a DropShip linage that dated back to McKenna's reforms... which was the high and mighty way of saying the expansion of the Terran Hegemony way back in the 25th century. The DropShip had continued to serve the Hegemony Armed Forces through the Reunification war , and only the advent of increasingly more able specialist dropships based around the new BattleMech had truly meant the end of its Terran Service. Its role in Star League service had largely be succeeded by the Triumph-class which took plenty of cues from the design, though not its iconic drive arrangement. The Triumph, like the Drost lineage shared an ease of customization to allow it to be modified for other roles.

Sam Houston wasn't perfect, but in terms of offloading a combined arms force to launch a lighting raid against an enemy Gene would have been hard pressed to think of something as useful to do so especially in terms of keeping maintained. Drost parts even centuries after it had left Terran service persisted in being common throughout hte inner sphere and periphery. There were limitations tough, beyond just, only having room for a single lance of mechs.

Take the lack of any ability to carry and deploy engineering, and earth moving equipment without reducing its combat effectiveness, which was something of a downside on a training and garrison contract. They really needed a better training space, other than painting berms and rocks bright neon yellow. Mech scale simunitions might have been nice, but he wasn't even sure if that was a thing... never mind that flinging an eighty millimeter projectile would be lethal to anyone it fell on... or at least grievously injuring.... never mind potential feed issues. Never mind auto cannons they'd need some kind of laser training system to manage missiles and he had his doubts that that was commercially available in the Inner Sphere never mind out here.

So really they needed money to buy ammo to train, but if Seghal was telling the truth ordinarily the Luxen Volunteers only really did that once a year.... which was insanity.

In the distance he could watch the churning clouds of the LRM carriers as they drove around the interior perimeter a kilometer out. Their fusion engines were mainly a logistical one, the General Motors 180 series was easy to keep in good condition... and didn't need fossil fuels. It didn't make the carrier any faster than an ICE engine, but it did mean they could carry more armor.. though it wouldn't have surprised him if the Azami didn't also field LRM carriers with other options. Small lasers, or even more LRM ammunition carried both came to mind.

The GM180 was actually the same engine the Vindicators ran off of, even these ones had been produced under license in the Combine, while the Vindicators of easy company had had their engines built under license on Capella. The engines were the same, and took the same parts, and hoses, and whatever else.

"Any issues?" He asked the tech coming.

"Nothing reported, major."

They'd be in trouble if something on the Vindicators broke down probably... assuming that their own techs couldn't fix it quickly. He didn't really think that was too likely, in either account, they'd gone over the mechs with a fine tooth comb before they had come out here, but it did worry him. He started for the Daimyo HQ vehicle parked a safe distance from the DropShip as ground personnel started draping camo netting over the seventy five ton Mech, while the other mechs powered down, and their pilots dismounted.

"Said, anything in orbit."

"Nothing unusual. No unexpected activity at the JumpPoints." The Azami officer on watch reported from his lurk near the hologlobe.

"Are you seriously expecting an attack?" Commander McCloud asked.

He almost cracked a 'I'm always expecting someone to show up uninvited and unannounced.' but bit down on it to steal a seat by the star league era command system hologram of the area, "It never hurts to watch the JumpPoints." He said, which he admitted silently was a half way measure.
--
Day two had passed much like the first, and day three was shaping up to be more of the same. A series of routine drills. Some of the maneuver drills were based off of what they had practiced in the simulators thus in terms of knowing what to do Easy company should have some idea. Chang wiped sweat from her eyes. "How did it go?"

"The stupid large lasers on the dervish surprised the shit out of me." Holly muttered to the Hunchback driver.

Fiona Short, the lieutenant in charge of the first six of vindicators, nodded sullenly.

"I don't know why," Gene commented stopping just short of the table, "You've seen Beau in action, you should be familiar with what his Mech carries. We're going to cycle through evaluations based on engaging other mechs. I regret that we can't effectively model air operations, but we don't have any ASF units," and the simulators just weren't useful for that ... not in a realistic fashion. "This is designed to test your abilities to respond to different battlefield scenarios." He nodded to the mustachioed officer who started the replay of the faux engagement.

"We weren't allowed to use our LRMs."

Gene nodded, "I'm aware, and while that is a variable to account for in drill, much of this field exercise was oriented around tactical mobility against an enemy holding the high ground. Your PPCs outranged Beau's large laser."

Beauregard Alexander crossed his arms over his barrel chest, "You want, we can rerun this in the simulators with full weapons."

"The purpose of the engagement was understanding the tactical applications of the environment." Gene interjected as the replay of the frontal assault stalled out, while Beau sat in the river's source and took his 'shots' at them. Realistically, in a real engagement the Dervish would have risked seriously overheating, or having a lucky PPC hit scew with his electronics, but it had just been an exercise.

... but the field exercise would have to come to an end... and being called away to answer Seghal's phone call was emblematic of that. He slumped into the office chair of the Daimyo HQ vehicle, "We'll be heading back tomorrow," Truthfully something like two thirds of his scheduling was classroom time... even if that admittedly including simulator usage, the last thing that he wanted to do was to complain to Seghal that 'while the idea of Mechwarriors as Knight Errants had its origins in the Star League, it hadn't been anywhere near as pronounced as it was these days', not that he really expected her to recognize that much of his lesson plan was from liberally cribbing from SLDF manuals. "I'll have a report ready for you tomorrow afternoon. I have recommendations, but to be honest given the ammunition issues nothing that seems like it would be palatable to the civilian government. I would really suggest more frequent regimental drill." The Luxen Volunteers, "If any serious pirate force does show up, I will be honest that casualties will be, significant, any improvement to readiness will help prepare the battalion."

--
Commentary: Apparently Russia doing some fool thing in Ukraine, and I'm posting this after several glasses of Akvavit, so I will make some revisions probably in the afternoon sometime.

Imperator Pax · May 19, 2022

March 3016

The succession wars, and for that matter Amaris's rampage, and the SLDF Reconquista, had ruined countless factories. Certainly it was true that the Succession wars had produced new mech designs, but Septim's merlin was the first new mech design in a century.

... which was mind bogglingly ridiculous to Gene... but that was another matter. "Realistically," He began, "We shouldn't take this as an accurate assessment, but I'm not happy with the results either. As it stands unit coordination needs to be improved, which is going to delay some of the planning I had in mind." He commented to Septim and Bahar as the ranks slowly trickled in.

Once everyone was assembled he could move on to the next issue. Since it had first strode upon the battlefield the BattleMech had been a tool of the independent, of decisive action, it had fostered a knight errant mentality in the individual mechwarrior that had occupied all echelons of strategy, operational and tactical thinking... The BattleMech Company in theory should still have had some combined arms to support it... but in practical reality, in the world of the succession wars that was often not true... or the company was a great kludge together of whatever resources were available... and which of those was worse was a matter of opinion.

He supposed really it came down to the unit skill... or practice. "As I mentioned at the beginning of the course," In February, now that they had moved into March, "We do not have the resources to cover the integration of ASF, or even conventional airbreathers into the program." He clicked the slide bringing the company's attention to the 20 allocated MAF BattleMechs. "We will be moving to an emphasis training on the Light Platoon's scout and reconnaissance role on our next field outing. That will entail, joint operations with non Magistracy light combat vehicles," which wasn't ideal, he would have preferred they be able to run exercises with other Luxen Volunteer militia units, units of armor, but no one seemed to want to do that. That was a far cry from Raventhir's initial letter promising full support and cooperation of his curriculum, but she wasn't here. "The company's principle unit of battle, the two platoons will be oriented on bounding, fire and maneuver engagements through Week 5,"

"And what about us," The Shadowhawk pilot demanded.

"You, commander McCloud and the reinforcement section will be running drills, with an emphasis with moving to reinforce and execute breakthroughs against enemy forces already engaged. It will be pure simulator work, until we can source LRM ammo for live fire range time. Thats our limitations at the moment." He clicked through the next two slides showing 2 Stingers, and 2 Shadowhawks. A holographic urban diorama appeared, "Your stinger lance mates are to provide some protection against dug in infantry." The two light mechs were illustrated on the exterior flanks of the Shadowhawk icons, occasionally moving to bound ahead to clear intersections, "This leaves you free to directly engage enemy armor assets or contest the battlespace against hostile Mechs."

An icon showing a bulldog tank appeared, followed by further down the avenue an unknown hostile battlemech. The problem was that unlike with the twelve vindicators the other two units of the company were each a lance of Magistracy mechs being filled out to six with mercenary pilots. This was reflective of the at large problems of the Luxen Volunteer Regiments, and the MAF as a broader organization. The Volunteers were functionally single battalions of regulars, if even reaching that paper strength, with other units being staffed by conscripts who were mostly killing time until they finished out their compulsory service.
--
The simulator's mock cockpit was actually more cramped... and less comfortable, than that of his Marauder. Having spent a not insignificant amount of time inside the seventy five ton warmachine the simulator was... inaccurate to how he was used to. The Marauder was something that Gene was comfortable running with the 'shade' down and relying strictly on the 'mech's avionics and sensor packages to tell him what was around him. Here though it was all clumsy screens and air vents designed to mimic excess heat venting from weapons.

... and of course he wasn't piloting his Marauder for this run. Just a Shadowhawk. It wouldn't have been 'fair' to bring his Marauder in, or for that matter the recovered Mongoose. No, just a Shadowhawk... and besides he neither wanted to advertise the advanced capacities of the mechs in his stable nor was he really confident that the simulator could accurately handle the more advanced mechs without having some kind of issue. It was to that end something of a handicap.

The screens flickered generating a painfully eighties arcade blocky rendering of a generic downtown skyscraper surrounded plaza. This was an unavoidable confrontation, not because he was contractually obligated but because it was regardless of what the Magistracy claimed, MechWarriors were MechWarriors regardless of gender.

Unlike how it would have been during the Star League, or how it might be in the Combine, dueling it out seriously was out of the question. Certainly not in their present situation. You couldn't just complain your superior officer into a duel with giant stompy robots, knight errant credentials only gave so much leeway in the Magistracy of Canopus, even if dueling was legal between consenting parties.

He exhaled, but they were actually using neurohelmets. The simulated environment was far from perfect, but, he could work with this. "Let the game begin." The Shadow Hawk began to move. Whoever had programmed the city in hadn't been real inventive... or maybe they hadn't been trying... he'd taken the Marauder through these streets in combat against the Azami... and while he didn't know them from that alone he knew where he was going.

The false battlefield was an eight kilometer square... it was almost too much space.... actually it probably was too much space and one dominated by Luxen's skyscrapers and core shopping distrct and mall. McCloud should have started opposite him, but he guided the simulated mech across the road to the MSR. He wanted to be on the highway with the clearest line of sight.

... and a part of him almost would have preferred to have a 2K instead, regardless of whoever thought it was a Griffin knock off. He moved up the ramp onto the digital highway, and put the mech into a crouch pulling the J11's stick and magnifying the gunsite to its ten power magnificantion... he wasn't entirely sure he trusted the simulated sensors, better to be on the look out.

The 80mm's reticle was a simple post... near vintage to what would have been normal at the onset of the first world war, and hardly what he would have preferred for aiming the armstrong, but it would do. Nothing was visible though. He was disappointed, but it was entirely possible McCloud wanted this to be a close range brawl... maybe it would be. The optic zoomed back out and he stood the mech up, and crossed the highway to the other side.

Someone hadn't updated the street he noted passing an off ramp which had at some point after he'd left after the Azami had had a mural of his Marauder painted on the back of a Mechwarrior dive bar that Septim had shown him on his return to Luxen. The bar was still represented in the fake city but featured an entirely different set of urban art work.

... still more tasteful than the images of assless chaps and technobarbs he knew decorated another bar down the road opposite of his heading. Gene consulted the O/P detection array wondering if the simulation modelled active detection, and being able to detect active search. He doubted it, but no sense not being cautious. The lighter by twenty tons than his preferred chassis paused, and reached to desafe the LRM 5. If he was reading the elevation right then he might be able to maintain line of sight up ahead while largely being concealed himself... but that assumed the simulation was that accurate to the real city. He slowly edged the mech forward, and confirmed the approaching heat signature resolving as a running and bounding Shadowhawk zig zagging through the streets.

He waited until the mech landed on the city street before taking the armstrong also off safe. The cockpit vibrated as the right and left torso weapons fired. It wasn't an accurate depiction of the recoil more like just being in a rumble seat that shaking rather than the actual Torso cannon firing, and the LRMs launching in a ballistic arc.

First round hits, even as he started moving back and towards a crossover road that would take him back and to the right of where he'd came, but more important would let him remount the highway and also not generate excess heat by taking the machine to full speed, as say firing the jumpjets would have done. He ignored the open channel challenges to head on combat, and kept circling before pushing the throttle up to a comfortable speed to peak over as she finished crossing the median.

He squeezed the joystick.

Medium lasers and SRMs shared the same long range in terms of achieving an effective, damaging, hit against modern armor and they weren't close enough for that... but she was definitely trying to close. "GOT YOU!"

The post moved to center mass as the declarative and the cockpit rattled as the armstrong fired. Simulated warning lights first flashed to warn him, in addition to the image of the other shadowhawk firing and disappearing into a haze of exhaust plumes, of inbound LRMs. A few seconds laster his cockpit told him he'd been hit, even as his own third LRMs registered their own hits on the charging mech and with it the realization. McCloud wasn't just trying to get close the MAF Commander intended to turn this into a Mech Brawl.

There was nothing accurate about the simulated jumpjet firing just more roller coaster esque rumbling from the seat under him, but supposed it was better than a completely static experience. He had no need to conserve ammo, and plenty of reason to burn through it... and no need to worry about overheating the mech. That was one problem that the Shadow Hawk didn't have... it was just fielding too many potentially explosive ordinance problems for his liking.

Ammunition cook off was a bad thing.

The screen went black. "What happened?" Gene asked.

"I think... we overheated the computer." Septim's voice muttered from his external commline. "Yeah its smoking." He heard some muffled cursing in the background over the line. "Also Seghal just walked in."

"I'm coming up," He replied reaching over to one side to pull and then twist the hatch so it would fold out into the dark simulator room.
--
Notes: Okay we're back, and to outline this is an expansion, a necessary one of the February through basically august september of 3016 before the unit goes back to Detroit. We will hopefully be going back to regular updates of this through the next month as we explore more of the second luxen contract.

Imperator Pax · May 26, 2022

March 3016

Seghal was waiting for them in the debrief room and didn't seem to have planned to show up today, she was in business attire not her militia uniform which was telling. "Am I interrupting?"

"Nothing important," He replied shaking his head, "Has something happened?" It didn't seem likely there had been any sign of an attack... even assuming that something was burning in from the jump point well a phone call would have worked.

She cleared her throat, "I've gotten you a platoon of tanks, attached. " Four Marsden II tanks who had been bought refurbished from who knew originally, but they worked... and that really was the more important thing.

"I appreciate it, I don't suppose that comes with ammunition?" ... no that still hadn't been settled. The truth was the Azami had swatted Luxen regulars aside and more than that the defenders had expended significant by canopian standards which was ammo that hadn't been replaced. Luxen had never high on priority for conventional spending in the MAF and the MAF didn't receive the kind of budgetary support from the federal government that other successor states to the Star League expended on their armed forces.

Seghal left them to deal with the simulator problem, which meant calling in one of their techs to look at the computer, and the officers to glance around. "A platoon of tanks is a platoon of tanks."

"They're antiques though,"

... the fact that the design was six hundred years old and predated the Star League by a full century or more and was diesel hadn't escaped him... but it still carried a class 5 autocannon... even if four tons of short range missiles seemed a bit much. "They're tanks, and we need something to maneuver with in the field," That they'd do thirty miles an hour was good enough for him. If they were up to spec they could work with them, and they'd go from there. Better to have them, than not after all. "moving on how much printed out from the simulator before it fritzed?"

Septim returned with a ticker tape real that much like pen and paper cataloged movement, heat, damage, attacks hitting attacks missing all of that. "Here ya go."

"Alright we will break this down later, on what happened, and what everyone observed watching." They'd been planning to go on an indepth... three hour lecture of every mech in the unit, including ones like Schiffer's Cicada or Chang's Hunchback. They'd been due a more comprehensive coverage of the machines to build on the earlier survey at the start. "Bahar can you call one of our techs in from the Sam Houston see if they can't fix this." He tossed his thumb back at the computer. "Or at least take a look at it and see what's broke, we're going to need it fixed."

Even accounting for lunch traffic... and the magistracy took French lunches or seemed to spend three hours at lunch most days getting a car in through traffic didn' ptove that difficult. They were in the computer room which still smelled faintly 'burn-ing' in ozone tinge, but they had been assured that the internal thermometer had shut it down before anything electronic had been damaged.

There was a grunt as the large, squat tech finally worked out whatever he was trying to pull from inside of the housing assembly, and a few minutes later Gene was looking at the piece of ... collapsed metal tubing, "Is that a heat sink?" He guessed looking at the somewhat tarnished copper.

"That's a heat sink?" Schiffer asked in the background to one of his fellow scratch company veterans. The cicada pilot grunted as Andrew Shraeder elbowed him with a shush.

"Its used to be, its part of the computer's cooling system." The Azami grunted, "I don't think they've refilled the liquid coolant in that computer in a hundred years," He hoped that was an exaggeration, these things were robust but that was absurd. "But this is part of the solid cooling, it was very dusty in there." He gestured to something that Gene thought might have been a shop vac.

"How long is this going to cost us in down time?" He paused, "Can you fix this?"

"Oh yes," He gestured to the mangled piece of metal, "This will be easy, Tomorrow maybe, certainly before Friday. It will not be a problem commander."

That was a relief. He nodded, "Pack them into a class room we're doing paper work." Today was supposed to have been nothing but simulator time, but obviously that wasn't an option, and if the machine was down until the end of the week then there were going to be limits about what they could do, and that might be pen and paper exercises.

Designed to lecture to bored undergrads, freshmen who had to take a history class mostly, the classroom could have seated plenty more than just the company who even with them all piled in only filled about a third of the classroom. They could easily find space for the Marden platoon whenever they met up with them, but that wouldn't be today.

Once the units were divided off he seated a fiche in the projector. "We'll consider this a draw due to unforeseen technical difficulties, and discuss tactical debrief following. The Shadow Hawk predates the Star League, developed shortly after the Mackie the original Shadow Hawk was modernized with mature vehicle fusion engines, and armor to in 2550 create the 2H. The mass savings of mature technology allowed it to expand its armament to what we're now familiar with." He paused, "The shadow hawk is on paper a good all around battlemech, and in the proper hands capable of filling a number of battlefield roles."

... and if they had six of them instead of just two that would have been great... but that was besides the point. They didn't have six, they had the two. They had twelve Vindicators, the Vindicators were not suited to close battle, which certainly a weakness.

"If the 2H has any singular weakness it is that its teeth to tail ratio is problematic this applies both to supporting units of them, as well as individual mechs. That's why the Kurita with their weaker industrial base created the 2K. They knew how to build PPCs but couldn't supply either by manufacture or shipping sufficient 80mm HV to provide for the combat loads. The 2K though is a dedicated combatant and observation platform as was demonstrated on both Detroit, and here on Luxen. It is not intended to fight at close ranges, and certainly not against a heavier battlemech, not that the Shadow Hawk or anything in its weight class fares well against an assault class autocannons fusillade."
--
He'd dismissed the others for the day leaving four of his nominal subordinates to head for the bar on eleventh avenue well away from the university campus, and Septim, Bubbles, and Bahar hanging around to discuss what needed to be done from here.

"McCloud was going for melee." Septim remarked, "I think she wanted to punch it out."

"I figured that." It could have been an assumption that because he was used to fighting in a larger mech she had assumed he wasn't used to fisticuffs, or would be less willing to engage in them because his Marauder lacked actual fists... that kind of fell somewhat flat because of its armored gauntlet housings were perfectly well suited to bashing another mech if that was the game. "We'll address that in the debrief," When they went over the write ups everyone watching had been supposed to fill out tonight as homework. "The Marsens are good news, we'll need to schedule transport for them out to the grasslands," the exercise field, "Once we go over what everyone thought of the simulator battle we'll brief them on the tanks, and how we can apply a tank platoon in conjunction with assets Easy Company already has access to." In fact if he was honest, given that it was twenty mechs of the MAF having four tanks attached after they were gone might well be in Raventhir's best interest for having an effective force. "Field exercises next week will need to be moving from what we wanted to do in terms of fire and maneuver."

Bahar nodded, "We could pair the the Marsdens with the Tokugawa."

"Yeah, they've got heavier auto cannons, despite being the same size." Septim added, "That'd be six vehicles. Like we're doing with the mechs... and really we've been keeping the LRM carriers in the back anyway."

"It frees up tonnage to play with." He agreed, lamenting quietly their lack of ASF. "It'll let use the light vehicles as screening platoons if we need to as well, we can keep them on the flanks or skirmishers."
--
Notes: The Next segment will provide some perspectives from the other characters, and gradual expansion of Magistracy characters who will return down the road in the main story.

Imperator Pax · Jul 14, 2022

March 3016

Bahar sat in the cockpit of her Mongoose as the Star League Defense Force war machine ran through its start up checks. Her patience was beginning to wear thin in the face of the periphery oddities. The computer required her to confirm the system maintenance requirements given her machine's six tube missile launcher an upgrade over an earlier overhaul when the advanced Star League era electronics couldn't be replaced with similar parts. Ironically of course since then the people had managed to replace the machine's patchwork armor with new... well unused GA 3 series Ferro Fibrous.

It meant nothing to the locals who some times came to stare at them in the morning. They had become something of a basically a curiosity to the canopians as the conspicuous fear of a pirate attack began to fade back out of... the public focus. The threat of BlackJack McGirk's pirate band carried in footage from the HPG networks of ComStar showed machines that ... were not the usual pirate rabble.

Some of the battle Roms that comstar carried even included, when plugged into SLDF readers, confirmed the suspicion that the pristine BattleMechs of the pirates were indeed former Star League Army BattleMechs dug out of some cache or another... and McGirk seemed to have no shortage of them.

"Any troubles?"

The voice asked over the tactical net.

"No, all green." She replied before maneuvering her Battlemech around the Daimyo HQ vehicle. Bahar wondered how her people were doing even further away from civilization than she was. The periphery here at least had a remnant of the star league, but the settlers in their hidden redoubt were ... effectively starting from scratch... but at least they would be safe from the Dragon's retaliation and for that matter from attacks by Black Jack McGirk.

Though it had not been their original planet, and it did seem as if they had simply latched on to the far flung hope that the Alexandrian lead they had found was the Alexandria they had been looking for, when really it had just been a shared name of ancient terran origins... it was still a new beginning. She thought of the fleet of mothballed JumpShips and the wealth that was there in just that, never mind in the simple habitable planet , and the other resources they would be able to salvage. In a generation or two what might come of that. The elders were unlikely to want to open direct routes back even with those JumpShips, the goal would be self sufficiency in the short term, and importing what they could without revealing the redoubt, and attracting unwanted attention.

Her neurohelmet fed new signatures to her attention. The powering fusion signatures. Ones, and twos. Twenty Magistracy flagged battlemechs in her display as League Territorial States. Then the rainbow of other colors. Green, Gold, Blues, Purple. White. Red dots on the display for their own vehicles followed as the Tokugawa, and then the hover craft powered.
--
They'd been on paper, on contract, for a month now. He was using the Marauder's software to keep track of things. Thankfully the Magistracy of Canopus had been a territorial state of the Star League so it wasn't that hard to find the requisite entries... it didn't work perfectly of course, but it made taking notes easier. Mercenaries had of course been a thing in the Star League era even going all the way back to before the first member states...but the Star League had not considered Mercenaries with things like Marauders even if BattleMechs had entered into Mercenary service by the mid 26th century in truly private hands rather than 'mercenaries' being deniable assets.

The Marsden, ammo volume aside, should have been simple enough that Luxen... or at least the Magistracy should have been able to throw a factory together to produce them.... but he was getting the impression that the Magistracy didn't have the manpower pool for the hardware they did have... and probably didn't have the capital to just build a tank factory.

Gene leaned back against his rest, and looked at the calculated report on the MAF's official paper strength circa 2764... which was far far different than the projected strength of what the MAF was on paper. Then again the post Star League era had seen the Magistracy lose planets the same as everyone else.

Comparing the maps from Aquagea, to the modern copies he'd gotten from the Comstar Bureau, and then from the even older maps in the archives that had lead them to the Alexandrian worlds... was... surreal. They were talking hundreds of worlds... possibly even more than a thousand depending on how you counted the disappearance of various distant periphery worlds... which probably shouldn't have counted because they hadn't really been populated or at least not heavily at the time of hte League's fall.

... the estimated number of JumpSHips in service according to ComStar would have been absurd to think about during the league days... and..

a tone sounded through the speakers, and a series of paperwork minimized as the holographic 'tri vid' projection initiated. "Beau." He greeted the FWL native Dervish pilot as the fishbowl helmeted man appeared.

"Hey boss, just got tagged from MAF traffic control." He said as preamble to the breach in radio silence from where he was supposed to be maneuvering with the 'company recon section' on the near side, relative to Luxen's capital, of the river. "Looks like a JumpShip just came in off schedule. Traffic control says its a Magistracy flagged vessel so they're not worried."

A mild relief. He didn't like how lax the Magistracy was about their airspace... but it was kind of an attitude he could understand given their lack of ASF assets... a dearth that he wanted to address but didn't seem to have any luck with. He remembered flipping through the MRB bureau, and seeing a couple of pilots mostly from the Capellan confederation it seemed looking for word... but he hadn't had a ride back then, and presumably they would have moved on. He flipped a switch on his navigation display, "Alright, keep your head, up but maintain the exercise." Gene eased on the throttle bringing the seventy five tonner into motion.

"Roger that."

The image shifted slightly as he started down the river bank, and adjusted his bearings pushing through towards the grasslands a few miles where he had initially inserted from orbit on Luxen during his first visit to the planet. His Dalban continued to track the Charlie 'Mechs. Technically he had considered using colors to number off the platoons, but the Magistracy didn't do that either for whatever reason... Mech Lances were generally call sign based, and he wasn't doing that. "I'll find out what's going on." Cresting a second hill, he moved to where he could laser comm Bahar's mongoose, and relayed the news.

It was probably nothing. An unscheduled JumpShip arriving really shouldn't have been that big of a deal... but better safe than sorry. The unit wasn't ready... maybe if the entire Scratch company crammed aboard the union had stayed on, maybe if over the last year more mercs had been hired ... even if Septim had probably been right and they'd just been looking for an easy pay check and to pad their resumes... but unit wasn't ready for a serious fight.

They were supposed to be out here retracing how the Battle of Luxen had been fought. Maneuvering through the terrain, and so on... but the truth was, not that he'd disclosed the detail, was he had the Azami's after action reports. He knew the Azami under al-said had been fighting under highly restrictive rules of engagement ... basically the Ares conventions and hadn't been willing to actually seriously harm the major residential centers, or the university itself. Not that Luxen's defenders had known that... but Septim was right in a simulated fight based on what the MAF knew the Azami should have inflicted catastrophic losses and defeated the MAF in detail... they hadn't because they hadn't been here for that.

"Air space control, this Major Shepherd," He said into the mike.

"Go, Major." The voice probably roughly his own age replied.

"JumpShip arrival telemetry, have you identified it yet?"

... and as if to complicate his existing issues as it happened Lady Raventhir was back...
--
Notes: now what will happen next is that we will get the fight scenes that were omitted, or some of them in the original version. We will also move somewhat into the Magistracy's own political issues , besides just the economic, lack of heavy industry development as well.

Obviously hindsight being twenty twenty there are a couple of other things I could have done differently. In practice the original posted version of this ended up being fifteen thousand words, roughly half of the original outline version... and part of that was to well stuff was cut that I'm still eery about putting back in.

No seriously spoiler

Luck of heroes and using SLDF technomancy whatever is one thing, but the original outline plan involved find a pretty big material production find for the magistracy, even though we'd be talking about Age of war era early star league tech mechs, nothing los tech production

cause Hidden Army.

...and Raventhir, and Short, and Seghal and the magistracy are due to make a return because the Aurigans under Kamea are affiliated in that direction of Periphery politics but that is 3021 and then during the Aurigan civil war and liberation from Espinosa (I.e the HBS canonical main campaign).

... and of course the Fed Suns have plenty of reason to want the Aurigans, and the Canopians to look favorably on them and disfavorably on the Taurians as well... so there is that. So yeah, somewhat long delayed update.

Imperator Pax · Aug 7, 2022

March 3016 (Ides I.)
Inside the cockpit of a Vindicator a MAF pilot was sweating as her mech's heat sinks struggled to catch a break against the load.

Still she pushed her mech forward hard, flooring the acceleration... which the Vindicator was no sports car, but it could go fast enough... normally, but this run she was coming up short. Easy Company had eleven other Vindicators like hers, and they had just barely managed to scrape through their first real battle, and as a result the Magistracy had added eight more mechwarriors to the unit supported by mercenaries bringing the force up on paper to five lances and a headquarters element which was in turn backed up a now even further expanded vehicle company.

The Vindicator logged the handshake beacon from the Marsden pair, and returned the las com rather than just use the radio like she wouldn't have thought twice a year ago.

"They're learning." Bubbles remarked within her Hunchback, the only 'medium' mech on the hillside... not that at fifty tons was her mech much smaller than the Merlin. The seventy five ton Marauder though was half again her mech's mass.

The magunacs had repainted the heavy mech in a fresh coat of tan and darker browns streaks that made the war machine look pristine, but her magnometer sensors implied the machine was missing hardware. The mass reading was light... which made sense she supposed most Marauders carried an 120mm Whirlwind autocannon and that was lacking... but if that was all that was missing then it would have been easy to replace. The LosTech laser in the mechs nose suggested that it had probably been something else.

Whatever it was missing it hadn't impacted the mech's habit of headcapping, or downing hostile mechwarriors ... and that wasnt right scary. Most mechwarriors in the periphery, or even in the inner sphere had the sense to clear off if an area was too hot. Both sides could usually come to terms to let one side leave rather than risk destruction. There were exceptions of course, but in the era they lived in no wanted to risk near irreplaceable BattleMechs on a suicide run.

... and well that kind of deterrent was exactly what the Magistracy was looking for with them. They wanted enough of a defense that any pirates looking for easy pickings would decide to go elsewhere.

Running lights flashed to signal course completion, and mech crouched as the tanks joined it in the end area. "Alright lets pack it in, we're done for the day.

"What do you think the boss lady wants?" It was Raventhir's money after all that was really paying their contract with the planetary government, "You think she could deal with our ammunition problem?" Septim asked.

"We can only hope. As for what she wants I guess we will find out." The two male holograms on her display flickered as the Marauder shifted to go find the Light Mechs, and Schiff's Cicada.

"Alright then," Septim's bubble enclosed face scrunched, "Come lets get them and head back." Then he paused, "You wanna do the honors?"

"Sure, why not."

She lased the MAF mechs, and armor at the course sight, "Alright troops form on me, lets RTB." Gladys Chang had been a free lance mercenary mechwarrior for six months since quitting an outfit called the Iron Dogs after a change in leadership in the company that had soured more than a few people. The chance to get off Detroit and take a high paying gig from a major periphery nation had been too good to pass up. She hadn't wanted to be put in a financial position where she had to go back.

That some of the scratch company had immediately left a cushy gig with the magistracy hadn't bothered her at the time. They'd been able to get off world from Detroit fast, and she expected some of the lone mechwarriors had just been looking for a quick job before moving on. She didn't really expect to see any of them any time soon, but she'd made sure not to make any enemies either. You had to be able to trust the people watching your back out here in the periphery. The Lyran had been looking to put together or keep the crew together.

Out here just a lance would have been a potent mercenary band. Six Mechs, and really the only thing they would have been missing was lift capacity, they'd need money to buy something like a leopard or have to pay transport fees for a DropShip on top of a Jump charge. That would seriously cut into any kind of money they were trying to make.
--
Gene let the Marauder auto navigate by waypoints moving at a sedate thirty kilometers an hour. There was no reason to hurry, if Raventhir was back she was... it was a little odd, but it could be nothing. He wasn't going to pretend to understand local politics, never mind the Magistracy's things. This whole situation was sureal and he was looking to get by and work through something he could at least understand... so there was no point in rushing.

It would be nice if Raventhir could square the ammunition system but as it was they hadn't had the tanks for all that long, but it was an improvement over their previous situation.

A las-com handshake tagged his Marauder, the Dalban returning the querry and paired the channel to the Star League Mongoose. Bahar, supported by Schiffer's cicada on her far flank had the light mechs spread out over a grid square. It was a break from their usual allocation of the Light Mechs, as they had normally been running the Stingers with the Shadowhawks. Schiffer was an aggressive mech jockey, the Azami pilots report that Abner had passed along had not unfavorably compared him to DCMS mechwarriors in terms of willingness to attack, and rapidly counter attack. Aggression was good in a pilot, but there was a limit to how much you wanted.

He wasn't sure if Schiffer wasn't being a little too hard charging, but there hadn't been any complaints up the chain to his conduct. Gene reached over to tap the console, and scrolled through the compiling simulated gunnery results, and nodded to himself. He keyed the mike, "Any issues?"

"No we even ran them as a six mech unit after the initial run." He nodded. Locusts, Wasps and Stingers there were two of each, and that meant easily dividing into two demi lances of the same configuration, and letting the two lieutenants lead the nco-mechwarriors as separate units. "Has our employer returned?"

"Her Dropship," It hadn't reached Atmo yet, but it was on the way, "is on its way, whether that means anything for us, I can't say." The HPG network was ... well Luxen was lucky to even have a class B station given how much everything had declined, and that made news slow to come by from out of system. The ComStar supplied news service though seemed to be a constant stream of pirates hitting planets across the rimward periphery, really in a way that one thought would discourage space travel with as much constant bad news as seemed to be the case...

... but then again BlackJack McGirk's rampage seemed to be the exception not the norm. The would be king of the pirates seemed to be ridiculously well armed, and his bandits were all very well equipped for ... how far things had declined since the fall of the Star League.

It seemed unlikely that Raventhir would move them from somewhere with critical infrastructure to protect, i.e. Luxen, to move them somewhere else. The Magistracy didn't have a lot of institutions of higher learning, Luxen's university was effectively irreplaceable... and its mining industry was also pretty important as well.

He brought the Marauder in line with the formation, and continued, "If she's here because she needs something then we'll will find out sooner or later, but for the time being we will continue to follow the schedule."
--
Notes: In the following segments we will introduce and expand characterization of some of the other company members as well as deal with both the magistracy as a periphery nation, and the events in the periphery more in general, next time.

Imperator Pax · Oct 16, 2022

March 3016 Ides 2

He confirmed the power down of the last of the fusion signatures, and the safety authentication. They were done for the day... well they were done with the 'mechs for the day. He had a pervasive need to review the paperwork and documents that were generated by testing an evaluation that seemed lacking... and Bahar was probably right to say it was unlikely that they'd end up in a serious fight, but he wanted to take the job they'd been given seriously.

Luxen had been attacked once already, and the impression of weakness might be enough to convince some wannabe king of the pirates to give it a shot. He was thinking about that. A scenario of even just light mechs launching a quick raid might be in order... or probably would have been if Raventhir hadn't decided to show back up. It might be nothing, but ultimately speaking she was the one paying the bills.

Gene reached up to the console and tapped. The heavy battlemech unbuttoned opening the cockpit and let him survey with his own two eyes the yard around them. It was kind of cramped as they settled Easy Company in, especially with the platoon of Marsden tanks, but that was also because the yard wasn't that big to begin with. It would have been better for probably everyone involved if they weren't so close to downtown, access to the MSR aside.

... and speaking of down town most of the command were hopping to go check out, and get off what passed for a military base in the magistracy. The gravel crunched under his boots as he dropped down from the Marauder's hull down position, "You can go ahead and head off," Seghal hadn't radioed them in saying she needed them, and they were done for the day. The Force Major might still know something, and it would be germane to ask but there was no sense from stopping them from a bar crawl. As it was they were already dividing into a disagreement over where to start the libations.

"What's the maguanacs opinion on the Marsden crews?" He asked walking towards the gate with the woman in an SLDF lieutenant's uniform. Bahar paused lips thinning for a moment. "That bad?"

"It could be worse," The dark eyed mechwarrior replied shifting her feet slightly in a way that didn't entirely bolster her statement, "As supporting assets they should be fine, but we shouldn't expect a great deal of initiative from the platoon."

That unfortunately figured, "As long as they can support the Tokugawas we should be okay." The addition of the 'lance' of CVs would help. If Easy Company as an organization was going to stick around it would probably be better if the Canopians were fielding something reliable and non exotic in the armor department. Maybe Seghal could find more Marsdens and make up some of the difference, or just LRM carriers to give a little more ranged fires, "We will work on trying to integrate them with the Shadowhawks for the center element during reinforcement." All that though could be discussed tomorrow or the day after depending on what all Seghal had to say.

He glanced up at the usual DropShip traffic in the evening sky. A couple of mules were lifting off carrying supplies. They'd meet up with JumpShips who were approaching full charge on their drives, and then they'd wink out bound for the 'territories' carrying mainly medical supplies.

The attached administration buildings to the depot were, had been subject to magistracy renovations over the years. The original facilities were probably SLDF, or at least Star League modular design, built when Luxen had been a provincial capital. They filed back through a row of cubicles and past the pastel blue ivy wallpaper that was an eyesore to look at, and found Seghal already in the back office space with the other company commanders for the Luxen Volunteers. Gene suspected that the reason the MAF even still kept the separate regiments, despite the perennial manpower shortage, was prestige... it might even have been a tax racket as colonels of the regiments had to pay for their commissions most of the time... but he couldn't be sure. Whatever the case Raventhir had been right to recruit the Scratch Company of MechWarriors on Detroit given what she had known.

Given the pirate raids swelling out from the Tortuga domains, and the roman cosplaying weirdos to the 'west' Gene had seen it hit the news circulars from the MRB a few times as the 'Marian Hegemony' tried to pretend to be a legitimate government while also literally raiding their neighbors for slaves. Still with as relative 'south' as Luxen was he didn't really consider the Marians a realistic danger given their lackluster attempts at a veneer of legitimacy.

Gene didn't think whatever the conversation that was , or had been going on had to deal with a real threat... and that might arguably be worse given the arriving side eye. Bahar had been independent of, had not been a part of the scratch company so it had made no sense to try and place her in command of the Luxen 'veterans' and it might have been better to have brought septim since he was defacto officer for the remaining pilots from on hand. Given similar reasoning it hadn't made much sense to assign command and control to the Maguanacs. The end result was, the simple solution of filtering the first link up through each. As a result the Marsdens would be appended to Bahar's command of existing armor. Technically speaking they'd be under Azami armor command before those report would go to her, and then up the chain to him as needed.

That Seghal would ask about the units overall readiness suggested that something though was up. "I take it there has been a development." He remarked sitting down. "readiness is good," Not great of course. The ammunition system was something that if Raventhir was here he was going to need to bring up in person.

The absence of infantry officer representation was not surprising. The MAF was pitifully small and thus limiting the MechWarrior command level officers made this a small group made it smaller still. He doubted the scowl from the first regiment was on the basis of gender so much as whatever interloping status he had as a mercenary... he hoped that was the case.

He went ahead and guess that this coincided with Raventhir's return, and he was right. It didn't precisely make him happy they were having to scrub previously planned operations... but then again he wasn't keen on messing up another simulator or having down time as a result of that. Gene might have taken the matter in stride, and with solidarity if the other nominal battalion commanders had been willing to express such. It was pretty clear that Raventhir expected her arrival was sufficient to to simply tell Seghal to drop everything.

Gene wasn't going to pretend to grasp any of the nuances of Magistracy politics, but it was clear that Raventhir was wealthy enough to be bankrolling the planetary defense to some degree or another... and that seemed to be enough to suggest she had some kind of authority. How much of that being social influence and how much was letter of the law he didn't know. He had other questions, and after confirming that the duchess was at the spaceport he wondered if there was enough time to put together a pro forma invoice for the ammunition or if it was better to wait until the morning bell.
--
He stirred the honey into his coffee, and then sipped. Bahar followed suit with her own as they settled, "They're not happy."

"Yeah I got that." He replied with a rebated sigh.

Leaving aside that he was pretty sure word of his simulator match with McCloud had probably made the rounds, it didn't matter the Magistracy was looking for more Marauder pilots, and frankly he doubted any of the nominal Mech battalion officers of 1st through 3rd Luxen volunteers had missed battle rom footage of the battle of Luxen. That was to say, the regulars weren't happy at being told that they probably were going to be trounced as a spectacle for the leadership. "Honestly there was something else I wanted to talk about." Gene replied, "Admittedly with this, well they'd find out more tomorrow but, "The -A at the very least, but as company level entity, the Mongoose as well. We need to be considering training on Light Mechs, and expansion."

There was a pause. "The Mongoose is LosTech," And she was right, even her Mongoose was a Lost Mech never mind the Gunslinger version... and that probably wasn't the only reason he was talking about it with the Azami officer. They had been Azami mechs from SLDF sources, and while Gene knew he could be tactless at times, and miss the cues of.. the 31st century social norms he was certainly trying to avoid doing that.

"I'm aware," And he absolutely wanted to keep the mech in as an intact a state, and combat ready as possible... but on the other hand as the CBS talking head, currently muted, was talking about BlackJack McGirk's latest rampage he was pretty sure they needed to have more pilots. "Well, its not germane to our short term situation. We'll scrimmage against the volunteers tomorrow and see how that goes." He paused at the knock on the wardroom of the Sam Houston.

"Commander, Lieutenant." Artman was a heavy set career artillerist, Gene wasn't sure his translation was right but he was the equivalent of a field artillery officer and nominally was the man responsible for the battery of two LRM carriers. "They've managed to t-bone a truck trying to unload their mechs,"

"Is it serious?"

"The front gate of the start port is blocked. That's all I know."

"Go ahead and call Septim back." He didn't really want to issue a return to base, but if they were going to have a change of plans in the morning he didn't want to have to fish anyone out of a magistracy drunk tank either.

There was a pause, and the MLRS officer knocked again, "Also the captain," Of the Sam Houston, so a naval captain or at least a captain in that sense, "reports we have received salutations from Doctor Abner and his staff." So the Lyran doc was back too... he wasn't entirely sure, but he suspected from the scuttlebutt that Abner was probably the duchess's father, even though ... or perhaps for the Magistracy it was normal for the child, or at least the inheriting one to take the mother's surname. Abner was old enough to possible be a doting grandfather as well so, so something might have been lost in translation.

--
Notes: We'll be diverting back to this potentially for the rest of the month, certainly next week, but we will resume the Highland Faire updates in November most likely simply because of my current schedule. What will probably end up happening is we will end up name dropping and potentially starting to address early, in the Luxen Contracts, the matter of the Aurigan reach, which may end up as its own thread given that this story originally was drafted with a plan for covering the events of the HBS game including some of the DLC. That will be a ways, this is going up because its been sitting on the flash drive for a hot minute, but HBS's storyline gets rolling in 3024 though the plan is to introduce the Aranos and Espinosas and Raju, etc, in 3019.

Also while I will not be there, Fortress Minatures will be hosting a two day alpha strike tourney, and while its unrelated to that I figured I'd share:
https://www.fortressminiaturesandgames.com/collections/clan-sea-fox [Ignore the sea fox, they're not sea fox]

https://www.clanfox.com/downloads

The four mechs are fanon designs, I like them... if assembly wasn't required (and if I didn't having so many minis I already need to paint) I would buy another set, but they're currently on sale, and at least in non canon material for this story these designs may make appearances under the moniker of 'Clan Black/Fox' per this scrap: https://forum.questionablequesting....-battletech-isekai.15094/page-12#post-5240309 sometime in the late 3rd or early 4th succession war. [Obviously not all of this tech is readily available at present, and I probably wouldn't be using the exact designs or loadouts really even in a non canon snippet, but the defense of Northwind in that series is written with 'clan mechs' showing up 'early' but that also gets into other facets of the mainline, and other stuff that has spun off non canon/main timeline content] anyway as I stated in the last update we will be focusing on in the second half of march more magistracy, and more periphery politics and characters.

Imperator Pax · Oct 23, 2022

March 3016 Ides 3

Gene was wearing the black SLDF combat field mechwarrior uniform, sans environmental helmet, because he had gotten up this morning expecting to be in his mech, and engaged in mock battle. The five o'clock rising ahead of everyone else, most everyone, had been on the basis of this was important. Seghal had phoned in about seven am to check on things... and then as they were getting everyone ready things had started to get complicated. Leaving aside the auto accident the night before there were other issues in getting everyone mobilized and running because for some reason traffic control seemed to think that they were supposed to go somewhere else.

Then Raventhir's aide had called and just wanted them to stand by, and then no do what you were doing, and then finally it had been settled on to just run the MAF pilots. That had sparked a lot of other questions, and so here they were. Standing around.

Like pretty much any frontline, combat arm, soldier that didn't sit well with him. Gene didnt' want to be standing here doing nothing, especially given that the original idea had been a much larger unit drill. War game dog and pony show or not.

It didn't make him unique this morning. He wasn't the only one who'd been sidelined. The other scratch company veterans were up here as were the MAF Shadowhawk pilots. The change in organization had left the Vindicators with really only the light mechs for support in the exercise, and McCloud looked as if she was going to burst a blood vessel at being passed over for the opportunity to command Easy in place of any of the mercs.

Especially given that the exercise field looked more like a sports field. 'It might not be Solaris' had been opined, before the Cicada pilot had trailed off... but the comparison had merit. This was not strictly speaking a proper military exercise. Especially since the original plan had been to set up to fend off a simulated pirate attack.

The problem with throwing a horde of light mechs, including almost a full company of Stingers, against something even in a glorified game of king of the hill was those numbers added up. The Magistracy could produce Locusts, Stingers, and Wasps, and the ... arena wasn't big enough to let the Vindicators really use their PPCs to full effect. Easy, even in its reduced strength, was winning but the Vindicators weren't heavy mechs... and their numbers were starting to be whittled down.

"We should be out there with them." Commander McCloud spat banging her hand on the counter in front of her box seat.

He didn't voice a disagreement, nor did he chime in in support. Septim on the other hand took a half step, "Hey they're doing pretty well." He put in.

Chang nodded, "Six months ago this would have gone way different." and as long as the individual fire sections could continue concentrate fire, especially since they weren't at risk of simulated 'ammunition cook offs' due to their LRMs being expended they might pull out a victory.

Gene tapped the data slate and pulled the table up to confirm that some of the light mechs were versions that had stripped out the machine guns in favor of more mech oriented firepower, and right now everyone was within the effective range of medium lasers. That many attacking mechs was starting to really come into play.
--
It was a win. They had eked out a win... but the simulated losses in military terms weren't pretty. "I mean I can understand not letting us participate boss, but." Beau trailed off having to avoid knocking his head on one of the gaudy low hanging light fixtures. "McCloud is right."

"Raventhir set the terms." It didn't make sense... "I suppose it has to have something to do with the Vindicators." They hit the 'gym's' lockers which being the Magistracy of Canopus was garish, and coed.

Shraeder scratched at his receding hairline, "I mean Raventhir seemed happy."

"Yeah a happy employer is a good sign." Jowett agreed. "They did pretty well."

Short, still coated in mist of sweat from her mech, ambushed them as they crossed the threshold she must have heard the two. "What should we have done? What would you have done?"

"To an extent everything you did." Gene replied, "At a certain point its skill and mech weight, but your deployment strategy was sound." Especially if they had been defending something like a factory which held machinery that in this modern era could no longer be replaced. "Some of the older more experienced pilots in the opposition were using the newbies to screen their advance." Largely to get close enough for SRMs, or flanking shots. That was the advantage of a larger force attacking a static strong point. "We will go over what tactical lessons can be taken from this in detail later."

Septim hive fived one of the other Vindicator pilots congratulating their performance in more friendly wing mate terms. McCloud wasn't thrilled with it... especially since while she was invited to the reception so was Short.

"Right, grab a shower," he remarked, "The rest of you, you did well. Further gunnery training will improve performance in these sorts of evaluations, and we will address maneuvering later." Later, after they found whatever it was that Raventhir was here for.

"What do you think she's here for... I mean you saw those mechs for the Luxen volunteers." That was an assumption, that was the scuttlebutt in any event that Raventhir was shoring up the planetary defenses... which raised questions how much of it was a response to last year... or if something else had happened.

"I don't know. She hasn't said."

The lyran, the cicada pilot, nodded, "The change ups this morning probably some kind of disagreements going on."

"Did you forward the ammunition documents?"

"And the copies to the MRB," Bahar replied. "Which was only surprising in that our liaison wasn't actually drunk."

"Well, yeah, but probably is now." Beau grunted, "He was in the stands. He probably made a killing on the betting since he was buying everyone drinks when I saw him last. I mean he waved, so he wasn't completely skunked."

See his look Bahar shook her head, "I'm afraid he's not reported any available ASF pilots. The hiring hall doesn't likely have any, but I doubt it was considered a priority to look particularly hard." Gene nodded, as he had been about to ask about that particular request.

They at least had hangar space for ASF. The Sam Houston had space for a small craft and two ASF, but only carried four mech cubicles... and four would have been plenty accounting for him and Bahar, and the Mongoose and the -7a... it was not enough for moving the scratch company veterans off world... which meant if they kept together whenever this contract ended the ywere going to need to hire transport.

... but that would be a task for another day, "Do we need to dress up for this?" The Cicada pilot asked turning the conversation around.

"No. Just come as you are." He replied, which he was confident of saying because everyone here were mechwarriors and the MAF mechwarriors certainly didn't seem to be planning on changing out their attire.

"I thought you were going to change?" The Fed Suns native, Shraeder, interjected.

"Its not mandatory though." Gene replied to the medium mech pilot. "You want to wear something else to Raventhir's luncheon, go ahead."

Chang nodded with a smirk, "Just try not to look to look like a gigolo... unless you're going for that look Schiffer."

He checked the time, "Alright lets leave them to it, we have about an hour forty until..." Raventhir started making toasts or whatever she had plans for. "I'll see you then." They split up leaving the locker room behind dividing into the usual 'wings' or 'sections'. "Anything from orbit, or from the JumpShips?"

"Pasha isn't due back for another few days if he's on schedule."

"I actually meant the IE jumpship at nadir."

She made a small sound, as they moved past an elaborate fresco and back towards the main public venue "Ah, then no. They have at least one large DropShip incoming, and other civilian marked traffic, but they haven't sent us any particular messages."

If it had been salutations by Radio, then Abner could have just been being friendly or polite, using the black box suggested that the Interstellar Expeditions people were here with something bigger, juicier. Whatever it was though, it would have to wait. They had another dog and pony show upstairs. They were invited to that, even though most of easy company... or at least the enlisted mechwarriors... weren't.

—
Notes: I will thread mark this when I get back along with some minor edits and well follow with the continuation of the reception scene that was largely abridged in the original version

Imperator Pax · Oct 30, 2022

March 3016 Ides 4

The swings seemed like a bad idea... just inviting trouble in what he assumed was a faux marble gilt clad ball room... with the amount of alcohol available. Unlike the gala on Detroit where Raventhir had hired the scratch company to take an emergency JumpShip circuit to relieve the planet, right now, Luxen showed no signs of having nay sorts of restrictions on alcohol... though admittedly Gene wasn't sure if the Magistracy even carded people to begin with.

Whether or not there was a legal drinking age or just it was legal with no restrictions it didn't matter, but while he had no interest in drinking from the fountain... it was fairly cool to look at though again, probably not a sensible idea. Not that there was really much he would have considered sensible about the room, but it was probably intended to be a garish eyesore, and a place to have a good time.

... so hopefully no one had a little too much to drink and broke their neck.

This was the hallmark though supposedly of being in good with the employer... being invited to these sorts of things. That was as a fielding company with a name no more imaginative than the reflective of reality 'Shepherd's company' on the paperwork, the place one wanted to be. On the other hand Raventhir had yet to actually make her grand appearance at this soiree, or at least hadn't made any attempt to call attention to her presence.

If that meant anything it didn't seem like it. This whole soiree seemed to be an excuse for most of the two hundred plus guests to drink drink drink and make the rounds. For most people anyway, the two of them had found a wall side table. Bahar sipped her orange juice.

Which was probably the responsible thing to do, but any attack right now would have to mean someone jumping into the pirate point, and even then they'd have notice from the EM signature at the lagrangian point. Gene didn't quite understand why most people didn't use the lagrangian points. They were stable ... it was true that they were smaller areas in astronomical terms... but it wasn't like they changed, they weren't true pirate points... and there had been nothing more natural last year than the orbital insertion...

... it was the kind of feeling he had had absolute confidence in doing, and hadn't given a second thought to kicking the Marauder out from the Union's decompressed bay if that was what had been necessary. The Luxen Volunteers probably didn't need to be there. Actually, he was pretty sure that Seghal would have absolutely forbidden any talk of orbital drops... which maybe that was just as well... Septim had during the Relief of Luxen been shocked that he was considering a drop, much going to do it by himself.

Septim was currently .... participating in what seemed like some kind of drinking game or at least a card game that involed drinking. They were holding cards up, and money didn't seem to be involved.

Discounting the chance of pirates... putting that aside as a possibility, at the rate that drinks seemed to be taken he was a little concerned that they weren't going to be fit for duty in the morning. Gene spared a glance to the whisky sour in his hand. "Guess I'm going to cut off early." He remarked.

"That's your first drink of the evening."

One that he had half a mind to put aside, unfinished, and switch to something like black coffee... but the chance of an attack was unlikely. If Raventhir was going to just give a speech congratulating everyone, well that was one thing... hopefully whatever it was that she was actually here for, whatever IE was back for, could be addressed tomorrow after a goodnight's sleep. "Given the surroundings, even if it is a Friday night, maybe just the one is enough." He watched as Andrew Shraeder won a round as the last card was flipped on the table... they must have been playing some variant on poker, and another round of beers were signaled for.

It was very much not what he'd been expecting.

"are you planning for drills in the morning?"

"No, I have no idea what Raventhir has in mind, I'm not going to run something in the morning," Or try to. Raventhir being here though would provide the opportunity to ask what it was she was looking for goal wise at the end of this six months.

With all the glitz, and glamor it was no surprise that the room was facilitated, kitted out with high end holographic entertainment systems projecting from the walls, floors and ceilings. Why hang physical decorations, a foil Eiffel tower when you could just make one out of light ... and drunk were probably less likely to try and climb it, and get a few feet up and then fall.

There was a difference between look, we can make high end holograms of monuments and the expense and expertise to turn the entire floor of a fifty thousand square foot auditorium, "Its the capital district," He remarked looking as it took shape, before the 'Battle of Luxen' started replaying in holographic detail.

... and it was different seeing the ply through from the beginning.

Light Horse. He had accidentally said it out loud, but the thoughts were, the recognition was giving him a headache. He drained the remainder of the whisky sour. Hussar BattleMech Regiments were supposed to be the ... had supposed to... be the most common of the SLDF Independent Regiments... but now that he was looking at it... the combination of tanks and hovercraft the Azami... not just on Luxen, but on Detroit had been operating from SLDF Light Horse doctrine, or a kuritan derived equivalent he supposed.

He passed off the empty glass and passed on a refill from the Chippendale trying to be a waiter. "I didn't look too heavily at Septim's previous drills, regaming the invasion, did you?"

Bahar shook her head, "I didn't see the point either." The mongoose pilot had been... some place called Panzyr nearer to the Taurian border in the present day rimward periphery. Though he wasn't entirely sure he was almost certain that the Azami volunteers were all people who had rock solid alibis and count be affiliated with either Detroit or Luxen... and it helped that he was given to understand there was an Azami in one of the worlds near Panzyr... "Captain Alexander covered as much of the material as was available to him, it is doubtful there was anything to be gained."

... so why exactly did Raventhir go through this much effort to replay the battle in holographic high definition. "Have you seen Seghal, tonight, here I mean?"

"No, or Raventhir's aide de camp."

Gene wasn't sure what rank the short blonde woman held... presumably she held some kind of commission in the MAF to be in a position to tell Seghal what to do rather than just Raventhir's title... "She's a mechwarrior right?"

"A Shadow Hawk as well I believe." Bahar replied, which made sense. "Lady Raventhir owns a Griffin, if I've been informed." It wasn't surprising a Duchess had a mech. That it was a typically Lyran fifty five tonner was a little surprising... it certainly wouldn't have been his first guess, but the Griffin was a classic design that had been around for ages. He wasn't going to read too much into it, and it wasn't likely to make much difference one way or another.

The holographic replay started to speed up, rapidly moving from day to night. Even at twenty something speed...

"Ugh, yeah," Septim grumbled coming over, "They had everything down... if they'd come in attacked through the spaceport like they did at Detroit we'd have never gotten here in time.." The comment coincided with watch one of the Mech Companies from the 2nd Luxen volunteers get absolutely mauled by an Azami combined arms force of lead by an alarmingly uniform collection of desert camo Pheonix Hawks.

The Cicada pilot nodded, "If without that, they should have just pushed straight down the highway its not like Seghal's HQ could have withstood it." But that hadn't been the objective. The attacks on Detroit, and here on Luxen had been objective raids going after material that... he doubted the Azami had been completely sure of their location even after touching down. The defenders the MAF, on Luxen, had been more of a distraction, and a speed bump that was to be worked around. If the Azami had been a little faster or if whatever had probably been going on behind the scenes had happened sooner they could have recharged their drives and been gone before. "Oh look there you come." Schiffer pointed to the holographi streak in the 'sky' that eventually solidified into a to scale Marauder "That would have been 'the way' they should have attacked too."

Bahar coughed slightly at the brash medium mech pilot's slang usage, but then directed down and through the semi transparent holograms. "I see the Force Major," Apparently McCloud had found Seghal first and had already made a beeline in her direction.

"Its unfortunate the rest of the company isn't here, this would have been useful to show them..." Well maybe sans the alcohol and the swings. "It provides the whole picture in a much larger scale of reference." Gene remarked... and if Raventhir's point was to show how completely outmatched the Luxen volunteers had been in, this showed it, but it focused on the armor, and mech engagements... the cat and mouse game the attackers had been running and had no way of showing the infantry attack that he'd had to ask Friar tuck about against the university... or in its vicinity... it was purely the main attack force keeping the defenders from concentrating for any attempt at a rally... though that had probably been an abundance of caution.
--
Notes: Ides is slated to as a chapter conclude with the next segment, but next week we will be resuming updates to Highland Faire, though I do plan, tentatively, to try and maintain regular updates for this if not necessarily every week as I ended up doing for October.

We're still in the first 'phase' of the Luxen contracts but moving towards the second as Raventhir starts looking for something to strengthen the magistracy's position given the situation in the rimward periphery... Black Jack McGirk is still around, and the pirate threat is very real. This so far is mostly an expansion of content rather than a significant change from one of the decisions I made with the initially posted version wasn't to have any big lostech finds . In this version we will be spending more time on Pioche and its current format will probably as a small arc be roughly three chapters or fifteen ish thousand words discounting travel time which will be probably two segments about three thousand words.

The second contract arc probably won't finish until into the new year, and 'contract three' will start probably after a chapter or two after the second at the end of the six months and of course that concluding Luxen battle against one of BlackJack's feelers. This thread will conclude with probably a further expansion of Short's excercise before the Company shifts offworld, and she heads to Canopus's academy. Obviously with the Company going to Detroit. [So there is probably fifty thousand words in this story at least. I would potentially estimate up to about 120k words depending on how expanding some material, and how much some foreshadowing comes in. I'm doing revisions to the outline right now, so not 100% sure atm.]

Imperator Pax · Nov 9, 2022

March Ides Conclusion

Raventhir had an ermine... or ermine looking pattern... cape. It would have looked ridiculous if not for the fact that she wasn't the only one in a cape, and frankly with two hundred plus people in various costumes the duchess's outfit wasn't any more outlandish than anyone else's. Her speech opened with the observations... the statement of the obvious... and while she didn't go out and name names she certainly wasn't happy about perceived self sabotage.

It was obvious that the Magistracy needed to stop self sabotaging its armed forces, but there was an undercurrent of threat there. That Raventhir was spending a lot of money, but it wasn't like the duchess had infinite resources either.

But if there was anything to be said, at least here, the contract had lacked any protracted period of boredom. That had been Septim's perception of his stint running training for what had become easy company. The company just wasn't large enough to misplace anyone, and Luxen City had no shortage of downtime opportunities for weekend passes or so for the most part it had been no surprise Septim had been worried about being claimed jump by someone with a bigger rep.

... and Gene suspected that that might have been a concern, but Raventhir had taken Abner's letters of recommendation seriously even if she might have had questions about his new company's assets.

Right now though the Duchess was talking about how despite all the money she was spending trying to protect Luxen that her efforts were being undermined by other parties. She wasn't naming names... but from the looks... they knew who they were.

"Lets just hope this doesn't blow back on us." Gene remarked quietly to Bahar.

"Indeed."

There was no question Raventhir talked a good game. She probably had been queen of the mean girls in High School... in whatever probably obscenely fancy boarding school served to educate the magistracy's elite daughters.

The speech lasted a good forty five minutes including the ten minutes that highlighted how overmatched the conscripts would be ordinarily if Black Jack McGirk attacked with equipment that was widely rumored to have been dug out of a Star League cache. That should have been a flag rising, and recognized as a warning.

Still in that moment the more immediate concern was to enjoy the drinks, enjoy the spectacle, and hope no one broke their necks from drinking too much... and of course Raventhir had a private gallery off to one side to entertain. Gene didn't know anything about the local artists being shown off in the gallery, or if it wasn't even important, or relevant but he could tell that their employer was looking for answers.

Answers that he wasn't sure they could provide.

The simple reality was the Magistracy historically had begun life as a pirate queen quintessentially left known space to starter her own country with blackjack and hookers.. whatever legitimate grievances the magistrix might have had with the FWL they still held hadn't started off on the rightside of the tracks. That had meant that it had been hard for the Magistracy of Canopus to industrialize.

There was a shortage of machinery that could be made. There was a shortage of fusion engines, and it was likely that any fusion engines that could be produced would need to go towards 'Mechs, or ASF given the manpower problems as well.

Then of course there was little in the way of suggestions he could make besides. Even though the Tokugawa and Marsden were both hefty sixty ton vehicles the venerable Marsden II in addition to be centuries older than the Star League era Tokugawa design the Maguanac's used was an ICE vehicle... due to the way its tracked hull was configured it didn't take the same class of fusion engine ... or at least Gene didn't assume they could just shove a Nissan 220 and call it good.

"No probably not," Bahar paused with a look on her expression as she sipped another orange juice, and he had switched to soda. "I could speak with our techs, but 180 fusions shouldn't be hard to find."

"Its the same engine as the Vindicator," Wyvern, Falcon, and a list of other names that sprang up into his mind, "I doubt the Magistracy would go for it." But the truth was Bahar wasn't really thinking about the MAF's needs. The Marsden was an old reliable vehicle... and the Alamut colony wasn't exactly starting from scratch in terms of industry.

It would be a few years deep into another periphery conflict when was for all intents and purposes a Marsden -A with a fusion engine and a significant increase in firepower started making rounds from some unknown factory but frequently being marked with an eagle in flight. Of course by that point the Alamutians were also producing a local variant of their Tokugawa version also marketted under a -A moniker.

It wasn't what Raventhir was looking for in the present. No the ermine cloaked noble was looking to make a statement, and they were her best option to do that. Lieutenant Short settled in beside Bahar in the provided rows of seats as the blonde woman who was Ravnethir's aide de camp checked something in her noteputer for the umpteenth time.

... and then the hologram sprang to life and took shape.

It was a map that Gene was familiar with. It was a historical map. It was the Star League as it had existed in 2750. It was known human space. All the worlds that had been known to the public at large of the galaxy. The maps that were often given grand titles like the base of human progress in those days.

It was an evocation of early halcyon days... well allegedly halcyon days. Even though they hadn't needed to ship off from Luxen he'd seen enough of the 'modern' star charts... and anyone who had seen a modern map even just glancing at the map could tell how much more complete the League map was how man more inhabited star systems... how different the borders were.

There was no point in showing them this if there was a current threat from Black Jack McGirk or some other pirate. Any kind of contemporary movement order would have used the current maps of Magistracy space. There was no questioning that the pirate threat was real... and even if it hadn't there enough bad blood between the Magistracy and the concordant without them complaining that the other wasn't doing enough about the pirates before Black Jack had shown up. Canopus had outright accused Taurus of letting the, Azami, raiders who had hit Luxen purchase equipment which more likely had been the Calderon government just looking to make money from trade when the opportunity presented itself. According to what Pasha had said it was unlikely that the matter of trade had even been a ministerial concern... JumpShips passing through, and selling of industrial goods was largely a planetary concern. The scarcity of FtL community, the decline of the SLCOMNET under ComStar, meant that planets had much greater leeway to make trade deals. Whatever the truth was the Canopian impression, the capital of the Magistracy's position, was not favorable to the protector's situation. Gene had no idea how that was effecting Raventhir, but it was doubtful that pirates were the direct cause of showing off a map very similar to the one that was in the Colorado's navigation database.

"I want to commend all of you, upon the hard work you have put in towards the defense of the Magistracy of Canopus." Raventhir began rather abruptly addressing them. Leaving the lieutenant one over to his right the youngest MAF or officer really in the room. They'd left the other vindicator Lieutenant absent to these proceedings, and only the two shadow hawk pilots were present. It seemed a little superfluous to Gene for Raventhir to open that way, but it was what it was. "The threat of piracy remains painfully real across the whole of the frontier." He wondered if he were the only with the sinking feeling they were about to get involved in something dumb, but whatever the case the duchess made a grand sweeping gesture to the map of the stars.

... the Magistracy of Canopus as it had been before the periphery uprising.

So much for any kind of action tomorrow. He leaned to his right, "Alright we're convening a staff meeting in the morning," He kept his voice low to avoid any distraction from Raventhir's speech, "I'm going to guess Raventhir is going to move us off world."

"A snipe hunt?" Septim asked from the the row forward leaning back.

He shrugged. They wouldn't know that until they knew what the Duchess had in mind, but they would have to see. He wondered if Raventhir planned to wait for Pasha and Yusuf, the JumpShips Colorado and Lebanon to return to Luxen on completion of their current trade mission or if she planned to use the JumpShip she'd arrived on... but obviously didn't plan to tell them to night.
--
Notes, and in the next chapter we will address the periphery faction of supposed note that I forget the most frequently yes, the Lyran expats cosplaying as romans. The Marian Hegemony won't actually do anything yet, but we will get their backstory and they will show up later, much later.

Imperator Pax · Nov 16, 2022

The 31st Century Periphery

Gene hadn't gotten much sleep the night before. Raventhir's arrival and the subsequent gala had went late, later than he'd expected, and the truth was he didn't know what to make of it. That was why the Sam Houston's briefing room was already configured by the time he had finished showering after his morning workout and someone had made sure their was abundance of hot coffee taking the form of two laden carafes.

He appreciated it.

Raventhir was going to ask them something. It was obvious. The question though what was she going to ask... and he was betting sooner rather than later. There was a lot of material to get through, and truthfully he was glad there was a second set of officers to run this sort of work through.

There would have been too many questions otherwise. Things like What other Threats to the Magistracy existed, and more broadly what did the rest of the 'geopolitical' environment in the periphery look like around the territorial state. That had included a copy of the modern territorial zones, and what had been in the 28th century... there were too many changes to accurately guess what could have been Raventhir's motive.

At some point in the relative recent past though, probably as a consequence of the receding from the borders of old, about a century ago some LosTech prospector had found enough Germanium to bankroll his own colony. Which, wasn't Gene admitted, implausible, certainly the explanation wasn't too outlandish... it was at that point the 'Marian Hegemony' had taken a stranger turn. They could generally be summarized as Lyran expats playing dress up Romans while being a well organized bandit kingdom. The Marian Hegemony were just one of really several decent sized post League states that had emerged in the Periphery but probably easily the most offensive. The Aurigans didn't seem to throw up any red flags at least.

In comparison, at the very least they didn't raid their neighbors for slaves.

That brought up an unbidden question of resources... and lack there of. The biggest obvious issue was the Magistracy's lack of resources, both in terms of domestic production, and apparently public willingness... the best that he'd been able to peace together was the collective trauma of having had to watch Kerensky and Amaris troops resolve the New Vandenburg revolt that had served as a prelude to the disaster that had befallen Terra and the Hegemony. Worlds had been devastated, atrocities and retaliation committed... and then the league had broken apart into the Succession wars. Of course there had always been religious groups, the New Hedons came to mind, who had opposed military spending of any kind but he doubted they were the driving reason so much as a contributing factor.

He knew that the Luxen city government had auctioned off their parcel of mechs, and brought in a significant amount of money, from the Azami raid. Not the Azami had cared they'd left combine space with plenty of mechs apparently, but the auction of salvage had gone to a couple of mercenary groups and individuals largely who had been operating outside of the Magistracy... he doubted any of them were pirates, but there was the pervasive question of how many missed paychecks it took to jump that line.

Then there were the question of their resources. He thought about the other two mechs they had in storage. That wasn't much of a reserve, and they didn't have pilots... and as it sat already they didn't have carrying capacity for the scratch company veterans never mind Easy as a whole. That would depend on whatever private military or house troops or whatever that Raventhir had accesss to since it was obvious she meant for them to ship off world.

Gene regarded the solitaire esque pattern of paper work and empty carafe of coffee, and then the clock. Bahar would get her first, that would just be logistics she was aboard Sam Houston. Septim and Bubbles both needed to deal with traffic to get back to the DropShip. It was going to be a small meeting of 'the staff' before they worried anybody with what was probably speculation about what they might do next since Raventhir was probably going to tell them soon.
--
The promotion from lieutenant to ensign had entailed ... well had eaten a not insubstantial part of her savings if she were honest. Her mother had purchased the ensign commission as her mandatory period of state service had approached... but her mother was a part of the Canopian middle class. Not a member of the nobility but with enough of a comfortable income to see to it she could insure her daughter would be a mechwarrior officer.

That took care of compulsory service provided her a modest income, and on Luxen should have been a peaceful life path until she could figure out what it was she really wanted to do... and after some hours in teh simulator and never having been in a real mech until the actual invasion... well the pirates had come

... and they had been completely out classed. Every repetition of the invasion in the simulator showed that the invaders had had every possible advantage. It was the proverbial 'we might as well have been up against the SLDF, so of course we lost'. That hung on her even as she pulled her shirt on, and checked the mirror again, so as usual the question hung over how were they still here. The existential dread from the vagaries of fate of having sent one mech ace in an unsupported orbital drop that shooting star hurtling ground ward.

The After Action reports from the invasion of Luxen had very much been compared to the earlier battle of Detroit... and maybe the raiders had lost most of their heavy mechs there or just chosen not to commit them given the attacking force had chosen to disengage rather than fight to the bitter end. In the end there hadn't been any prisoners taken, and no answers to be had... they'd just been congratulated and the seventy five ton heavy BattleMech and a few others of the relief company that had come to Luxen's aid had just disappeared onto other JumpShips as quickly as they had come.

Lieutenant Fiona Short had found herself in a whole new sort of problem. Luxen had been exposed as vulnerable to pirate attack, and her lance had demonstrated that they had potential. All of a sudden she was able to use the simulator more, and actually drive a real mech, but even so that hadn't been enough to get her foot in the door in Canopian high society.

The 'teletype pattern' email to assemble was the standard format as every other email of the type she'd gotten in the past month. Not that she admit it, but there were details about the heading that ... she didn't get. Alpha numeric codes, that comparing seemed uniform across her fellow members of Easy company. Her Lancemates had the most similar data except for what she assumed was a rank indicator, and all the canopian pilots seemed to have the same Alpha numeric package to signify MAF, but that was just a guess. The pattern broke when it came to mercenaries unless it was identifying them by nation of origin... but that didn't make sense.

Either way, she had orders to report to the fifty three hundred ton aerodyne at ten hundred hours Luxen city standard time. Fiona Short had no idea Sam Houston had been or why he warranted bearing a battleship named after him, but the assembly order suggested there was a staff meeting, which meant Commander McCloud and her fellow Shadowhawk pilot were both going to be there... and the truth was if she was going to ask any questions she needed to beat the more senior MAF officers to the Dropship...

... which meant she was running late, if she didn't get out of the door of the dorms and on the way to the starport there was no way she'd beat them there given the chances of morning traffic.

--
Chang had done her bit with more than a few outfits in the periphery, worked with more than a few planetary militias, and larger governments. Her Mech had seen her through action on more than a dozen worlds. The Hunchback was a good solid mech and great when supported to actually close to brawling ranging where it could fight. That meant it needed support to get close, and that meant needing a lance or vehicle support.

And they had that, and she knew that.

So the talk as she had been coming into move the two mechs which had always been in their bays to Cargo 1 struck her was a sign that something was going to happen. The pirate threat was real, there was no doubt about that. The pair of holographic star maps, and the change in border over the centuries as the frontier expanded and more worlds became unclaimed wild space meant there was no shortage of wildcats mines, and pirate nests in the periphery. You never knew what you could find out there, and the idea that there was a planetary government was generally a polite fiction, or wholly transient thing dependent on who had money this week.

... and it was in terms of governments in the periphery lasting in some cases weeks without being apart of something bigger than just a single planet. Which meant mercenaries could end up turning bandit very quickly... and of course you ended up with the people who had money for firepower using it on their neighbors to take advantage.

"This is Ur Cruinne its on the short list," The Marauder pilot started gesturing the the orbital telemetry of the world they'd frequently had plugged into the simulator. "Whether or not its where Raventhir plans to send us, I can't say, but if there is a pirate nest there, or if this is just Majesty Metals wanting to secure their investment," Or something else, "It will still be a teeth cutting exercise. Most pirates are not ex-DCMS regulars,"

Or have a seemingly unlimited number of stupid hovercraft doing zoomies at you but refusing to get close... but Bubbles decided she wasn't going to come out and say that. They'd mostly just sandpapered her armor and kept her busy guarding a sector that hadn't mattered in the grand scheme of things.

Heedless of that he continued, "My larger concern is this man's work." A still image appeared, "This is a historical photo of one Sebastien O'reilly working on Alphard or specifically Alphard II or Periphery-ALphard which was FWL colony chartered by the Alphard Trading Corporation that collapsed as a result of the Star League's collapse." He trailed off before starting a history lesson, "He was a scavenger and allegedly found enough Germanium to found his own little hermit kingdom, the Marian Hegemony as he called his little fief added another half dozen worlds and has been a relatively stable as bandit kingdoms go for about a century now. They have a tendency to do as pirates do raid undefended frontier worlds for slaves."

"That's on the other side of the Magistracy boss." Septim pointed out.

"Hence my concern that this might be what Raventhir has in mind. Details on the Marian JumpShip fleet are scarce and we're unsure of how far they can deploy, but relocating to that end would mean taking us far away from Luxen."
--
Notes: Ugh, I have so much stuff that needs to be read, stuff that needs to be done... ok nominal update schedule for the rest of the year, and this is tentative, is that this should reenter weekly updates for through to January.

If necessary I may update my Pathfinder story more than once a week but that will probably be Tuesdays or Thursdays. Out of the Dark (Weber story) WC fic should remain a weekly staple as we get through the first winter of the Shongairi Invasion, Saturday and Sunday updates should be normal. That means working through the rest of summer 1917 and getting to the point in Highland Faire where Bardiche and Claymore Companies are established on Northwind. I am going to attempt to resume weekly updates of my JumpChain anthology.

I would like to update Emberverse and finish the Cammas Prarie chapter before the end of the year but I'm doubtful I'll update regularly once a week. So there a day of the week in the schedule without a fixed update for the next ~6 weeks.

Imperator Pax · Nov 23, 2022

31 Century Periphery
Part 2

He had misjudged the Canopian, a dive into local history based on a snippet from a news broadcast that happened to be talking about Raventhir's visit had turned up that Luxen while largely immune to pirate threats had a dedicated earlier attracted a Capellan incursion ... which didn't make sense to him and seemed a gross use of the sick man of the League's clearly limited resources in an era of declining technical prowess and two hungry larger neighbors... but it made on other accounts.

The last time Luxen had been threatened the day had been saved by the arrival of the second Canopian Light Horse. It was a demonstration that there were things he clearly didn't know, and that he'd been allowing his assumptions to act in place of confirmable data, and reference given the present state of the Luxen volunteers Materiel shortage. A shortage that was most likely effecting more than just the provincial regiments given the Chasseurs boon in taking the capellan raiders to task.

Gene would have guessed that had the Canopians had the option they would likely have pulled Federal Troops to deal with the Azami incursion ... but obviously hadn't had that option. They had gone to mercenaries as a solution probably because they'd been grasping at straws. Obviously they had to be doing something, and maybe the union with twelve mercs had originally been a delaying option... perhaps the plan had been to stall for time

He didn't know, and he was trying to avoid making further assumptions... on the other hand he was pretty sure that Raventhir was up to something. ... which was probably par for the course for any noble, inner sphere or periphery.

"A kroner for your thoughts Major?" Doctor Abner asked coming to a stop before the holographic table projecting the star map of Canopian space as it had been at the end of the star league.

He stood up taking his hands off the rim of the table, "I may have been working off faulty preconceived notions," And drawing bad conclusions as a result, or at least flawed ones.

The conversation wound around for a few minutes, "Well as I said at the beginning the periphery may be worse off than most, but the decline after the end of the Star League hit everyone." He coughed slightly, "Yes well I do say Mindy would like a moment then. The Lyran doctor ambled off slightly so he was out of the way and out of presumable earshot.

Lady Raventhir, thinking of a duchess or just his employer by the diminutive of her first ... or middle name was being contracted honestly not something he wanted to get in the habit of.

"I've been in discussions with Interstellar Expeditions for, well quite honestly my whole life," She remarked, "Do you know much about the Rim World's Republic, and Amaris's secret army?" It was really more of a rhetorical question she didn't, wasn't expecting an answer as made clear as she continued on. She wasn't concerned that O'Reilly's supposed motherlode wasn't what it seemed, that the Marians weren't sitting on some old rim world infrastructure... but at the same time the Magistracy's military budget during hte star league and their infrastructure hadn't been nearly up to the task of supply the units which had spontaneously appeared in the periphery uprising that had been the prelude ... the bait to get the SLDF away from the hegemony's centers of power... not that she put it like that. "We have a list, well documented lists of the hidden army units and the prevailing theory is not that the Rim World produced every mech, and other piece of war fighting equipment but rather that its more likely that hidden factories were set up across the periphery that produced this equipment independent of one another."

Septim was right though the Marian Hegemony was a long ways a way by modern travel, the opposite side of the Magistracy. The theory well it was novel at least, maybe a little more realistic than the iconic, cliche periphery lostech story of digging through a battlefield and find an SLDF cache loaded to the brim with lostech. Even so the entire secret army required a JumpShip fleet ... and volumes of Germanium ... to have been created and moved that maybe there was something to concerns about the Roman cosplayers... or maybe not either way it wasn't as if they were starting from scratch per se.

"Does this have to do with Abner's return?"

"Of sorts," Raventhir replied. It was clear as she moved through that she was convinced, how much of it from her own long investment he couldn't guess, that there must be rim world ruins somewhere out there... and that it was a gamble she was willing to take.
--
Pasha was in. In the since that the Colorado and Lebannon had returned to Luxen, and even now the DropShips that they had been ferrying were now burning towards the planet laden with trade goods. It was difficult to fathom the sheer difference in profit margins between their operations and while there was certainly a difference in dirt side creature comforts there was something to be said for the money.

JumpShips were scarce. The two Azami crewed JumpShips were the real money makers of the company. JumpShip crews weren't especially large and in present 'market conditions'... well in the Periphery the nations were especially dependent on merchant house operated JumpShip fleets to do anything. Only the most stable of trade routes could maintain a regular link of commerce, which meant there was a glut of potential cargoes that could be taken even a a single jump out never mind two or three.

"You should pack cold weather gear." He opined.

Septim nodded looking at the orbital telemetry dated a couple of years ago. The glaciation wasn't that bad... as such things went, but... "So what happened?"

Raventhir had danced around, ad not really played coy, but probably polish over the edges of what she wasn't sure about while still admitted that they were operating on... an alarming degree of speculation. "The Magistracy is bringing in two unions for Easy company in particular. There will be a leopard," Locally built in the Canopian configuration, "plus the IE dropships." It hadn't escaped him that the IE security contingent roster had Azami on it.

The Lyran zeroed in on that or rather that there was a bolstered presence, "Who's in charge?"

"My assumption is Raventhir, but I think she'll listen to Abner," He hoped. As it was it didn't seem like she knew the details, but she'd made a point of dancing around them coming back from 'the periphery', deep periphery, with two JumpShips rather than just out and acknowledging it. That lift capacity was what had brought up looking at the bank account, and preparing the transport fees to the MRB for processing. It hadn't been deemed a time sensitive matter though. "Lets take it from the top." He adjusted the telemetry of not quite a snowball. "This is Pioche. The Telemetry here is from Abner's last visit," And at the time there probably hadn't been any pressure to go back quickly, or at least as likely that the high priority had become the Azami exodus into the deep periphery. It did raise some recurring questions about what Abner was doing, what was motivating him given his apparent resources, but... that wasn't their problem. "It has been," He paused glancing to Bahar who was the only other MechWarrior in the room, "We have reason to believe," Mimicking what Lady Raventhir had opened with as she had described the situation, "That the asteroid which struck the planet was not a natural occurence. Abner had visited, we have historical records from the University of Luxen," In the school's archives it wsan't sitting in the public library, "That most likely someone intentionally accelerated a bolide, the asteroid," They had video footage of it in the atmosphere where it had been visible and the impact. "Which impacted the planet."

They couldn't conclusively prove that someone had intentionally accelerated a rock from the system's asteroid belt up to speed to crash into the planet. Abner seemed pretty confident that had been the case. The question then became motive, and well... that was really where they got off into the weeds.

Had someone done it? Maybe. Had they done it to conceal some secret rim worlds base? It certainly seemed like the sort of grandiose dramatic fail safe that would have appealed to Amaris's tyrannical baathist psycho laden regime.

"If they threw a rock at the planet and no one lives there anymore there shouldn't be anything left, right?"

"No, the thinking is that asteroid impacts aren't really ideal for damaging underground structures," Especially not projects built to the scale or tolerances of DOME facilities. DOME had actually designed Castle structures to withstand some degree of orbital impact, up to and including nuclear attacks. It took a lot of effort to break open a castle from orbit, and it was easier to just liberally nuke the surface or bottle it up and force the defenders out by waiting than anything less extreme. Not that that had stopped Amaris from mounting literal human wave attacks against Castles or Taurian nuclear terrorism against the Star League... so something certainly could have survived.

Now in interim could structural supports have given way, were things going to be necessarily safe or a hundred intact... maybe not. "So what are doing?"

"Security, dig site protection, off world training." They wouldn't be doing much with missiles or autcannons but then what else was new.

--
Note: So moving into the Pioche arc we will be getting into a divergence from the original version of this. I'm just mentioning its coming up, but its a minor retcon in terms of more the outline than the posted material, but there will be some changes. Most of the changes can be explained away as digging post the fight with the pirates at the end, but we will deal with that in a few chapters.

Imperator Pax · Dec 1, 2022

31st century Periphery
Part 3

Professor Abner had talked everyone's ear off about how Pioche had been a lovely world and how its loss was such an endemic example of the succession wars as an era and how there had been os little that had been able to do from it than just trying to get people off with such little warning.

Pioche had had roughly double Luxen's present population, and its agricultural sector had been their prime export to neighboring star systems. It had been a long morning, and thankfully, not once had the Minnesota tribe come up... he'd been dreading the prospect of it

He leaned against the railing and blew out a breath. The workout he'd put himself through after the meeting had been pushing beyond his usual, and from the looks of it he probably needed a shower. "Pioche is going to be a long trip. Longer than I expected." At the look of surprise and confusion from Chang he shook his head. "Its a hundred fifteen lightyears rimward," at least, and he paused "thankfully we have a compressive map of the old canopian space," what were now caused the Canopian Ruins, "but we're still looking at a suprsing amount of travel time."

"The major is saying that you should enjoy your time on Terran gravity while you have it." Pasha observed keenly. He was pretty happy that the Magistracy was footing the bill for fuel costs and other supplies and there were talks about copies of their atrographic data from the trip. The Magistracy was probably at least nominally interested in looking at some of the old Canopian systems they were going to pass through on the way.

"And you're doing that by running?" Jowett's tikonov accent was a little strong this afternoon.

"If you want to hit the bars that's fine to, just be on time for ship off." Gene replied moving to sit down. This was an informal meeting, he hadn't even had time to shower or change out of his pt clothes before he'd been told that Abner was back at their little slice of the university of Luxen. The professor had probably been there all day.

"Good afternoon all. I do apologize there were unfortunately some... itinerary matters regarding our schedule. Mister Pasha it is very good to see you, I have spoken to the captain of our transport and we should have everything ready to leave tonight, for docking I mean. Obviously we can't leave until tomorrow but we will at least be on schedule."

"Are there problems on the Magistracy's end?"

Gene looked at the Mechwarrior nominally under his command, and Cicada pilot clamped shut, but it wasn't a bad question, just one that was a little impolitic to ask given that Magistracy was the one paying the bills. "Is it something that's going to stop up from shipping off?"

Abner hemmed and hawwed for a minute, "No, I think you should go ahead and do what you planned to do." The professor had a massive volume of pictures, telemetry and data from the snowball. In 2799 it had caught the rock, the dust kicked into the air, coupled with the breadth of its shallow seas had resulted in rapid glaciation that deflected sunlight back into space and coupled with the mass plant die off had serious comprised the planetary eco system outside of the equatorial band. The degree of glaciation had also slowed planetary recovery.

It was safe... in an atmospheric sense. There were no serious radiation concerns, Oxygen levels were good, right mix for humans to breath... it was just still pretty cold outside of the equatorial range. Thankfully given the amount of mountainous terrain luxen had and that this was Canopian space they had already found a ski resort on the planet that sold sub zero heavy snow gear to use as a precaution... and it was a work expense.

Once Abner was gone Chang paged through the pictures while most of the others watched, "Do you really think there were no survivors?"

"The planet wasn't that populated." The Star League hadn't built an HPG on the planet at the time because it was just a breadbasket work of a few hundred million people... it turned a profit certainly but in theory the Canopians had in the 2750s had a seat in council, but in reality they hadn't had a say. The price of adding a farming world to the network wouldn't have been worth the cost given Pioche's reported GDP without some other reason.

"They could have done more to try and rescue people."

"I doubt it," The Magistracy had tried, but... "the Star League had collapsed by that point," He paused thinking about the timeline of events that had been detailed... that he'd read on the way out from Luxen laster year, "the Inner Sphere already in the first Succession war Kentares happened two years earlier, the Magistracy had already been retreating from worlds and consolidating what resources it had survived the war in the periphery with... by all reports JumpShips were already getting scarce. They did what they could."

It was where they were going. Pioche... but if Abner was right ... well maybe it wasn't just the modern maps they should be looking at but the historical ones. He wanted to make sure the Luxen Volunteers were ready, and to double check with Friar tuck that the MRB had all the paper work done and in triplicate.
--
It was now about three in the afternoon, long enough Abner had been gone about an hour to an early dinner, and that Gene had had time to grab a shower and change from shorts and army green shirt.

Miranda Minerva whatever other of the four first names she had was a member of House Raventhir. Which was a cadet branch of Centrella. Centrella being the Great House who ruled the Magistracy of Canopus since the beginning. She had deep pockets, deep enough pockets and influence that she felt comfortable for this probably a wild goose chase.

From what Gene understood the whole distinction of cadet branches had been to keep the number of Centrella's down... though besides the at least two Raventhir Duchies he wasn't sure how well that had worked out for the Centrellas.

The problem Septim had identified with the long travel time was the one sitting in the email basket. "Are they kidding? There must be a hundred emails in this packet..."

Maybe not that many, but... Gene had gotten back and unlocked the terminal only to find the company email innundated with a variety of questions from Raventhir's Iron Hand officers. The inquests themselves were addressed to the company email and some of them did detail to course work and practice during the Lyran's time as project lead for training easy company.

... it was clear Raventhir was looking for something tha would distinguish her militarily. Her iron hand contingent had probably spent the past week picking through the data clean without ever having met Company membership. ... and with significant JumpShip time ahead of them on this expedition he expected they were going to move on to more personal interaction, and probably time in the simulator pods... "Did they really drop all of these on us just now?"

It looked like they had started being forwarded into the network around lunch time, but the short answer was, "Yes. This is probably just the first wave of inquiries. Raventhir has a small contingent of her own guard, I expect, though it hasn't been confirmed that they'll want to participate in simulators. Colonel Kemal has a contingent of mechwarriors with him in addition to hovercraft he can capably run an OpFor though his mech component is a little heavier in weight than what he saw last year."

That started a clamor of activity from the various mechwarriors of the company, "What's he drive?" The question came from the ginger with the receding hairline. How the normally reserved fed suns native managed to be heard over the sudden noise didn't matter, Andrew Shraeder had managed to get the question out there, and everyone shut up.

"He's a Marauder pilot." Gene answered from behind one of the unlocked terminals. Clicking and clacking to another 'spreadsheet' of information that had come in from IE.

Which of course just started more noise, before "Is he good?" Bubbles asked

"I've been told he is," Gene replied, glancing to Bahar.

She shrugged, "I'm also told he's very good. Its a Three Davion." Magna Mark III Large laser in place of the GM 120mm Whirlwind autocannon. "We will all have to find out together."

Gene was glad that Luxen didn't have the same mech gladiatorial tradition that more coreward Canopian planets had. Everyone was going to have to largely settle for hitting bars, and going to any of the music festivals for their send offs rather than possibly getting into serious trouble.

Septim looked over from the other Terminal, where he and Chang had sat down at the pair of them to go through them, "How do you want me to respond?"

"To Raventhir's inquiry?" When he'd taken over... well from Raventhir's question in the email, there seemed to b e a lingering question over why he had spent a lot of time on classroom lectures. "Tell her you thought it was best to go with simulator time, and replaying the invasion." Wasn't that the truth?

They'd been at this a couple weeks now, and there was a marked difference though between the two... so it was probably natural that Raventhir and her guard officers had questions. "I was thinking about the base six arrangement."

"Leave that to me, it was my idea, and if they have questions I will do my best to answer them." Gene responded looking at the screen, "Given that they dropped this on us so last minute I'm not going to hold anyone up once five o'clock runs around. I want to give Easy company a pre departure briefing on what I expect. That means making sure they know how to load their machines on the union."

"McCloud isn't going to like that." Some one false whispered to their wingman.

... and frankly the Tikonov native was probably right.

--
Notes: Nominally next up is the pre ship off bar scene that may or may not happen so I will leave everyone reading this side story the extras:

Much as with Out of the Dark there are various songs that ... are useful set pieces or have appearances in the universe at large

And the lyrics of this one will show up later.

Imperator Pax · Dec 6, 2022

31st Century Periphery
Part 4

The heavy strobing effect of the lights and the rave like quality of the atmosphere somewhat contrasted with the actual more punk rock with the addition of a saxophone playing support on the stage in the back itself. It wasn't that it didn't work... it was just a little unusual, or maybe it wasn't. There was no company bar.

Even when it had been Septim and the remains of the scratch company, the guys who had staid behind to form the basis of Septim's initial training cadre, everyone had more or less gone and found their own watering holes. Septim's tenure of leadership had also been a lot less regimented the change in organizational leadership the nominal foundation of what was on paper the oh so imaginatively 'Shepherd's Company' was a more organized military hierarchy, but it hadn't gone so far as to opt for one single corpo esque patronage of a bar.

That meant the pre ship off festivities hadn't had an obvious send off locale... and they also were planning to go out with Easy Company who were shipping off as well. Gene was relatively certain this was if not Chang's default locale to grab brew from it was in her stable of usual watering holes, and probably selected because it was better suited to having a crowd their size.

It was also a reminder to Gene that he hadn't really purchased that much in the way of spare clothing up until this prospective trip to a melting snow ball. So while everyone else was in significantly more relaxed attire he'd opted for cargo pants and with a henley thrown over which at least somewhat passed for civilian attire. It only worked so well in a crowd, of crop tops, sleeveless shirts, silly impractical shoes, and so on.

He'd have made a joke about designated driver, but Luxen had a very reliable taxi service that catered to the entertainment quarters... and the entertainment quarter was one of the places where at least for the moment it was possible to forget the general state of decay and decline that had wracked human space seemingly been ongoing since 2765. A decline he was cognizant of given the constant exposure to th e different star maps of the eras, and how human space, and common travel routes had declined, receded, over the last two centuries.

That world view, that impression could be lost, or forgotten in the face of the much smaller world in a microcosm world of noise and flashing lights. One could forget the Inner Sphere or even for a time the potential threats of pirates, and slavers existing in the periphery beyond the borders of established civilized states.

The roughly thirty of them were situated along a faux industrial wall styling that accentuated the grunge esque feeling of the bar as they overlooked the stage that dominated the back wall, and the center points of all the lights, even as speakers reverberated surround sound through the awkwardly shaped hole in the wall.

Luxen was best defined by places like this... or at least Luxen's northern continent and capital district. Out of sight and out of mind the mineral rich southern contintent was a bit more hard scrabble as people worked in less urbane but here, this was Luxen, and it was clear that scuttlebutt had started making the rounds as they weren't the only group here tonight. There were other Luxen Volunteers crowding tables on the ground floor, and crowds that Gene pegged as a mix of Luxen university students and probably mercenaries who happened to be on planet.

This was not going to be a conventional deployment.. or maybe it was... what exactly did one define as conventional in a post post apocalyptic star faring techno barbaric technology is still near to magic, and pretty much everything was largely being kept up by faith and duct tape?

--
The DroST IIA variant had no trouble breaking atmosphere. The gees as the aerodyne lifted up were still noticeable, but it wasn't a bad experience. He much preferred being aboard the Sam Houston than the crowded confines of one of the two Unions that were available. The Union had been designed with military, and industrial expediency in mind though... not creature comforts... not that the DroST IIA had been intended as opulent but it wasn't nearly as crowded as a union was.

The ground starboard was falling away, with builiding, and the cities parts and other things only becoming part of the color splotches in the landscape, and clouds beginning to cover even the pastoral canvas of browns and greens and blues. Not that there was any temperature difference inside the ship. The inside was environmentally rated and comfortable thanks to the abundance of fusion power provided electricity which could easily meet environmental needs and then tune the heating and cooling without any concerns.

The Terminal in front of him was not only relaying flight telemetry from the Sam Houston, and the nav beacons from the port and Lebanon, but also flight paths of the IE DropShips, and those chartered by Raventhir as they moved. One thing he had noticed, was that popular media portrayals of aircraft in flight certainly hadn't changed frequently showing DropShips, or aircraft in general flying far far closer for the sake of visual effect than they did in practice in normal circumstances.

That wasn't to say he couldn't catch glimpses of the shape he knew to be the Canopian manufactured Leopard detailed to this little outing. He did, but it certainly wasn't close enough to touch from a window seat so to speak. There was nothing so dramatic about their proximity, as they climbed higher and speed increased to fight gravity the powerful fusion drive made that visibility worse.

They were approaching an altitude where very shortly they would be in near to zero gravity, though the thrust would mean instead of being free they'd still have something approaching it, and that would hold true once they vectored to renedzvous with the JumpShips after excitting planetary gravitional pull.

Once they were clear of Luxen's gravity well they could actually unbuckle from their couches, but thrust gravity at the moment wasn't severe enough to seriously impair physical movement, at least not enough that he couldn't operate a computer terminal.

Ford's absence from the IE contingent apparently was due to him being back in the Federated Suns for an 'academic eccentricity' whatever that meant, and most of the IE notes contended with some guy Karosas in that post League founded periphery state called the Aurigan Reach. It didn't specify what Abner and his diggers had been doing out that way... but given the time frame it didn't seem that important.

... or if it was important, Gene recognized that he simply didn't have the insight, or necessary information to extrapolate what made the trip between the former territorial state, and a state formed after the collapse of the Star League important...

There simply wasn't all that much available about the Aurigans. They were a nation of merchants, and feudal power... which could well have described any of the various successor states, or for that matter most space faring states to a degree for the entirety of human exodus after the 24th century. Perhaps though was made them somewhat hard to pin down was that as a nation they were only about a century old. Not much different than the Marian Hegemony anti-spinward of the Canopians but with vastly less of personality complex and significantly less belligerence towards the Magistracy.

He adjusted his seating against the harness, well as much as he could, the unfortunate reality of what he understood of what Lady Raventhir was intending to try and accomplish... was to find some magical solution to the Magistracy's perennial materiel shortage.

Which of course raised the question of what if anything they were even going to find, what they were even supposed to be looking for, assuming that the hypothesis was right and that that rock that had hit Pioche hadn't been some fluke cosmic accident.

He leaned back against the rest securing his head.

... had Amaris... or the Rim World Republic really rigged a dead man's trap to drop a rock on two hundred million peaceful farmers to hide something? It sounded believable... but it didn't give them any clue as to what that might be. He didn't like the idea of going into completely unknowing. He started typing...

"Whats that?" The only other MechWarrior aboard the Sam Houston questioned.

He glanced sideways to Bahar's chair, but kept typing. "Security briefing, just a reiterated warning that we could be running into a Rim World base," Even if they were on the opposite side of the Canopians from the Taurians a RWR installation wasn't impossible... and if whatever it was was important to drop rocks on millions of civilians then chances were there might be something nasty left over after all of that.

"Do you think there are people who still support the Rim World, support Amaris?"

"On Pioche? Probably not, but automated defenses or just a booby trapped tomb, thats reason enough to be careful of any signals we find."

--
Notes: the bar scene was largely abridged, and we go to the JumpShips and travel next in the conclusion of this chapter but again this is something, of not just an expansion any more but a mild retcon to the main timeline in terms of the Pioche arc, but it doesn't really change anything that follows per se for Gene and company, since it could just as easily have been that Raventhir's findings are post the company shipping off to Detroit. That neatly avoids any issues of people who are reading the main story but not this so when we get back to Luxen (or Royal Foxx) in 3019 and the Pirate Wars to explain Raventhir's better position.

Imperator Pax · Dec 13, 2022

31st Century Periphery
Conclusion

With an acceleration rated in multiple Gees the time to reach the 'safe' JumpPoints at Nadir, or Zenith was largely trivial to modern Drop Ships, not instantaneous by any means they were confined to newtonian physics still, but still a quick safe trip. Fusions drives were safe mature technology that had not disappeared... for which he was very grateful for even a civilian ship just doing one gee of acceleration could make it feasible to reach the safe jump points above or below the elliptical plane.

"It is your JumpShip."

"Technically sure." He replied as he moved through low gravity. "But you're Navy, and I'll leave the helming a ship and the other business to you."

Gene was cognizant of the difference in earnings an invader out here could easily pull down 300k, three hundred thousand c bills, in a weekly haul taking three DropShips. In theory they could make more in terms of value if they accepted payment in the local currency, so having the magistracy pay them in something other than the C Bill... and an Invader was smaller than the Liberty class, and was significantly smaller than the Leviathan in terms of cargo. The Colorado and Lebanon with a total dropship capacity of twelve DropShip or equivalent to the capacity of four Invader-class. It wasn't necessarily that clean cut, but Gene was very aware of how much money Lebanon and Colorado made for the company.

The Azami captain didn't disagree with his point. "The sails are safely retracted and the drives are charged."

"And course?"

"We are going deeper into the periphery, we will pass through a few minor canopian worlds," and worlds that should have been on the maps, but weren't for whatever reason... apparently too poor to warrant it. He knew that worlds Frobisher, and McEvedy's Folly were on the list of worlds that IE had earmarked from the DOME star map they had recovered, and that Abner was interested in going to but this outing was going to Pioche. "There are a few tasks to carry along the way."

Abner didn't really need their Jumpships and the entire logistical footprint being what it was meant that they could afford to leave one of their jumpships to ply the routes. They'd be making less of a profit... but frankly the previous two months was enough to cover salaries for everyone in the company and overhead for a while. They could pull the Leviathan just on the off chance they did find something interesting enough to bring back.

"Actually that was something I wanted to talk about," He paused as they came to a corridor junction, "Bahar do you mind showing them," He nodded to Easy Company who had been trailing along behind, "To the facilities," The two ninety meter grav decks might not have been much, but at least it was better space than the cramped quarters of a Union like the company had been assigned to.

The old naval captain moved to one of the ship's offices ... which looked well neo persian if Gene were being honest but Pasha was the captain he could oversee redecorating as he liked. The door sealed. "What is your will?"

He paused avoiding the reflexive use of starting a sentence with an adverb, like 'so', "Pioche, and I've reviewed what we have, may have been a rim worlds republic hidden facility, factory."

"You are of the opinion that Doctor Abner is correct then, that some one ..." the old man paused, "Strapped a fusion drive to a rock as it were,"

"I consider the odds of that being the case to be unfortunately likely." Of course was it booby trap, or had someone just decided to do it? The latter was an unpleasant possible possibility as well, and one he had to consider. " They moved to sit down and he recounted, at least an abridged format how he had ended up getting to Detroit. Specifically the Germanium.

In the Age of War JumpShips had, as they would be really throughout the Star League , and the succession wars, been fair game. After all they could be replaced. Oh The Ares Convention had placed restrictions on the use of nukes, and on targetting civilian infrastructure... at least among signatories per the capellans but the idea was that at least at that time that it was ludicrous to think of a JumpShip as irreplaceable. Even so JumpShips were ships designed to cross the vast gulf between space and as spaceships had been built to last. Maybe not as fighting ships, JumpShips were not warships but a JumpShip was supposed to be robust enough to serve centuries... and as it turned out those service lifespans, that lack of planned obsolescence had meant that JumpShips from the age of war were still plying the lanes.

"I admit of course," Pasha replied, "That our community is likely searching the known covenant space, -" He stopped to allow him to speak.

"No," That wasn't exactly what he had meant, "I've been perusing the database, the library the Taurians brought with them," The copy of it, "Sure by the standards of the League its primitive, but its still containing JumpDrive manufacturing for JumpShips of the period that the Taurians were able to manufacture. The Taurians knew they were running from wider civilization, that were going far enough that trade wasn't plausible," at the time at least, especially given politics. "Its the information, that could provide the information to make the tooling to manufacture drives in the long term."

... and of course there was nothing to say that they might not be able to salvage abandoned machinery and repurpose it in order to do that from the failed colony. The Alexandrians situation looked to have been internal. They had started shooting at each other, and the abandonment or possibly retreat from their worlds very well had been internal strife... certainly given the lack of orbital fires evidence... well all of the nuclear exchanges had been surface launched, which was still unpleasant to think about but there was nothing to indicate it had been more than a very very messy civil war.
--
Pasha had agreed to relay his realization through to the elders on Alamut... but that would take time. It wasn't that they wouldn't likely have figured out, but the cultural inertia of it all... that some things were just lost might have stymied even as the Azami put the mothballed fleet the Alexandrian Covenant worlds had left behind and forgotten about in order to reestablish trade.

The Azami exodus put them far enough out that they should be able to build that kind of infrastructure without ... as the Capellan raid in 3005 on luxen had shown... one of the great houses coming out to cause trouble...

and frankly as he was standing on the bridge command deck of the JumpShip in conjunction with the others. Yusuf, and the Lebanon would be left to plow the trade routes, and well, they were going to wink out in a flash and start the journey through the rim ward edge of the Canopian borderlands, ferrying a couple of DropShips from Luxen along the way to drop off very valuable supplies, and personnel but otherwise drop those DropShips off and keep moving.

It would take a while to get to Pioche they were talking several hundred light years and that would really that travel time would largely consist of Jumping, spending a week recharging the drive stuck aboard either their DropShips or aboard the Jumpship proper waiting for that charge to be done, before they made the next jump, and repeating the process until they finally got there.

As a precaution of course they would be using the telescopes to confirm things like stellar light emission, radiation emitted from stars and the presence of planets from those measurements confirm that those jump coordinates were correct as they got further out into the rim ward periphery and beyond the modern commonly travelled commercial lanes.

Right now though they were finishing the last of the safety checks and communications lines staying open with the other Jump Ships in order to make sure procedure was followed and that travel was as safe as possible.

There was nothing magical about the K-F drive. You didn't have to make specific chants, wave incense around or conduct prayers to the god in the machine. It was advances physics sure, but it was not magic, and as long as the maintenance was done the machines worked.

Once they had confirmation a start the clock was called, and then shortly there after the venerable Leviathan-class JumpShip blinked out of system.

Imperator Pax · Dec 20, 2022

Travel Time Interlude

They were two jumps from Luxen now. They were going to run pen and paper work in a couple hours, which would at least give everyone something to do.

Gene reminded himself that the JumpShips needed to be fitted with Mech Simulator pods. It was one of the major military amenities that the University of Luxen had that the Colorado did not. The Leviathan had been built of course at a time that the BattleMech had been walking the Battlefield but sim pods hadn't been aboard... not that he was surprised by that. Whatever the Colorado had been called in Taurian service it had been packed full of supplies and loaded down with DropShips to carry Taurians fearing the inevitable reunification of human space under the Star League that had existed ... back then.

... and of course if there had been any mech pods in the exodus fleet if there had even been battle mechs with the fleet ... if there were they would have been of the generation of the age of war like the Dervish or the like... but from what they had seen of the Alexandrian worlds there didn't seem to be any in regular service.

The Alexandrians... or at least those on Pharos the surviving covenant society besides the worlds that were called Cyrene, which had been the planet that had eaten a nuclear exchange according to the IE / Azami survey, and Sophos which had just been abandoned. He doubted the Azami would attempt to contact the Alexandrians on Pharos ... not when IE had pretty quickly looked at their historical records and how they lived in general and figured it would result in getting missiles fired at anyone for being demons.

Missiles were likely to be well beyond any surviving humans on Pioche... and while it wasn't the objective he hoped if they could confirm a surviving population that the Magistracy might do something proactive about bringing them back into the fold even if they didnt' find some rim world treasure horde.

Idealistic or not that hope contended with the fact it wasn't their job. One could probably make the argument that hte Magistracy probably owed it to the descendants of Pioche's colonists who had been canopian citizens that they should do something... but they probably wouldn't unless there was something on the snowball that made it worth the effort.

His door chimed. "Enter." He ordered.

"Studying are you?" Abner idled into the room, with two more in tow, "that's for the best. A good habit given how long these journeys are. Not that this will be all that long compared to some," The aged lyran rambled on jollily. "Well it is quite a pity Mr Ford is not along. He really does need to be prepared to defend his research in person, and be vigorous about it. Yes."

Her Grace the Duchess Raventhir sighed. "What are you reading?"

He pushed the printed copy of SLDF Medical Commands recommendations for commanders operating in cold weather away. It was fairly dry reading but he doubted anything new had been added to the subject since the 2650s. It probably wasn't the most recent version of the material either... surely the SLDF would have issued an 'updated' version at least once, if not just had some unfortunate captain voluntold to publish a new version... but he'd been looking for advice.

"Recommendations for field officers operating in extreme cold weather environments." He replied deciding that she had seriously been asking the question and not just being polite. Though she probably hadn't been intending to start a book club sort of conversation Raventhir did ask for a copy... to foist on her aide de camp.

He could print a spare copy out from the database. There was so much out of even the curated list of books from the Volgadon University library that he simply hadn't found the time to read. Self study was all well and good, but the library had been intended to turn out well rounded students with the benefit of a university level course of study that involved instruction... and that infrastructure simply no longer existed any more.

"I take it there is something else about Pioche?"

"Or the Canopian ruins more broadly," Abner replied. "A significant portion of the anti spinward rimward Canopian territory just simply falls off within, really a few decades of the Amaris crisis... and the truth is we don't really think that incidental so much as by design." The doctor paused, "Leaving aside that the greater perseus cepheus cloud complex and whether or not there are more life sustaining worlds out there... the reasons we're confident that it wasn't simply the vagaries of fate is that there are surviving documents from the Rim World Republic internal structures ... well its unpleasant to say the least."

"May I see them?"

"Oh, yes, but," There was some ruffling, and the noteputer came out of a satchel. Amaris's scheme had been pretty simple the Taurians were bait. Disposable bait... let them maul the SLDF and if the SLDF didn't wipe them out, then the Rim World Republic planned to do it themselves. Amaris didn't need the Taurians or Canopians for that matter getting any funny ideas about using the factories he had seeded in the periphery to build up the secret army once he was actually sitting on Terra's golden throne... and well Amaris was already looking towards subjugating the rest of the Inner Sphere. "Its not exactly much more than broad designations, presumably to prevent discovery or ... if one of the usurpers underlings decided to attempt to seize power himself at some point. Its likely that Amaris either kept the master list that only he knew... but we do know for sure that by the 2770s there is an abrupt pervasive pattern of both violence, and supposed accidents that begin to take place in the anti-spinward, and that appears to coincide with violence further rimward and spinward on the Taurian frontiers as well."

He certainly wouldn't have put it past the Rim World to do that sort of thing. "So what do we do once we get to Pioche?"

"We will need to set up a base camp, that will mostly be liasing, if there are any active fusion signatures we haven't been able to identify them from orbit. If there were anyway they probably would be concealed from emissions detection by thousands of tones of rock, obviously if Pioche does host a rim world republic installation its also possible its located underwater, which we do not have the resourced to pursue at this juncture." The latter sentence though delivered in the same rambling manner as was normal for him was aimed more at Raventhir than otherwise. "Thankfully we're not sure thats the case , and that we are working from a baseline investigation of looking at the impact sight near one of the old settlements." The planetary map appeared from the Star League era pocket projector showing the planet as it had been in the days it had still be a canopian breadbasket.

There wasn't anything that stood out, but he didn't expect anything to be from even a low level fly over... no they were just going to have to go down there and look themselves.
--
If a BattleMech was almost impossible to put a price tag on for an individual to buy it seemed mind boggling that someone would own personally not one but two JumpShips. For an individual the cost of a Battlemech was very much you didn't go out an buy one. To actually get aboard not just a privately owned DropShip, but then privately owned JumpShips... again plural was insane. These were the things that kept interstellar civilization running.

... and the Sam Houston was a lot more comfortable than her berth on the Union.

"What do you not space travel well?" The Mercenary Bubbles poked her sharply. "There is nothing to it."

"Besides being bored out of our minds." Schiffer snorted. "Its gonna be atleast a month of just sitting. A week to charge the drives. Then we jump. Then we charge the drives and we jump rinse and repeat... and for a snipe hunt. I mean okay we get to drive our mechs around a big snowball." The lyran shrugged shaking his head.

Pioche... the world they were going to was coming out of a small ice age... but it was still covered in significant glaciation where the low lying north seas had frozen over and still hadn't fully melted once the dust in the atmosphere had cleared away and settled.

Why they were going wasn't really clear, either.

... and they didn't have Force Major Seghal along with them either... which of course she been promoted to head the entire Luxen planetary defense after the invasion ... but that just made them shipping off world even more strange.

The doors opened across the room allowing access to the grav deck and some semblance of normal gravity. "Uh oh." Chang remarked.

"Mmhmm." The other merc agreed.

"Safety briefing for pioche. In the event we do get shot at, or otherwise have an emergency."

"Hypothermia?" Lieutenant Short questioned, looking at the lengthy description of what it looked like and how the body shivered in order to stay warm... and in turn how that burned calories.

The cicada pilot was flipping too fast to be doing more than skimming, "Boss, the Rim World wasn't anywhere close to here. I don't see how they could have had a base in Canopian space." Short vaguely recalled that Schiffer was from the Lyran commonwealth.

"Amaris invested heavily in the other periphery states, there were installations used by the Baathists across the periphery as a result. Given Pioche's destruction, its not unreasonable to assume that it could have been caused by a dead man's trap to conceal a rim world base. And if anything, our employer is hoping that facility is intact and can be salvaged."

Even if that wasn't the case... Pioche was a hazardous environment because of the ice age.

--

Imperator Pax · Jan 11, 2023

Pioche Part 1

Glaciation in the polar regions aside the planet really didn't look that bad. The big snow caps were incongruous to the strip of evergreen dominating from the tropics towards the equator. So far, so good in terms of visual inspection at least. It was cold enough you didn't want to be out after dark, but apparently there were thermal signatures indicating a robust adapted ecosystem, including what from drone overflights looked like roving bands of neo Paleolithic humans. Hunter gatherers... which complicated things...

The free worlds league born pilot tossed another down stuffed parka onto the table. When Beau was done he was going to look the stay puft marshmallow man, but the Dervish pilot had made it absolutely clear he did not want to be cold.

"Its really not going to be that bad." Chang tried to tell him. "Weather forecast for where we're going to land doesn't even think we'll get snow for a week."

The big man grumpily informed her he didn't do snow. Whether or not Snow was for Bo didn't matter they were on site, and Pioche showed nothing actively trying to kill them... at least for right now.

Leaving aside that Change meant well, there was a good chance that she was wrong. Pioche didn't look to him to be not that bad as he checked his merino wool base layer. It was ... old fashioned ? Perhaps. None of his cold weather gear was sleekest most modern sports wear it lacked high visibility bright neon colors like Chang's parka did. If Bo was worried about being cold, it was really going to be wind chill he needed to worry about, but that wasn't a real concern because he would be buttoned up inside of his mech.

His instructions had based more around comfort and utility than military ... demeanor perhaps was the word. It was a business expense, and one of the few ones where Luxen's planetary government hadn't objected to paying a clothes expendtirue ... but then again they were shopping at Luxen based clothing vendors... so they were roundabout subsidizing the local economy.

It very well could have been a case of overthinking things... maybe they had just caught the planetary government in a good mood... who knew. Gene leaned against the holo table, and compared the new footage over flight to what they had from previous flights conducted by IE as well as the historical footage. They were restricting their area to the impact crater.

Crater should have been in air quotes of course there wasn't really a crater in the conventional sense so much as what had been the area that had gotten hit by the rock. There was a ring outline left behind by the impact, and the rok's excavation of material... but there wasn't a gaping expanse of a hole like with say an airless moon.

No Pioche had an atmosphere, and wind, and thus dirt and water and ice filled in such things over time especially as the dust clouds had settled back in. They had known though where hte rock had impacted the planet. I.E. Was going to take core samples but that was largely pro forma... he was sure the geologists would find any details riveting but it was not the mission.

The primary mission was so far as he gathered treasure hunting.

It gave them a pretty good CEP to start searching around. If the theory was right and some asshole had strapped a fusion drive to the rock and aimed it.... but that also assumed they had aimed the rock... other than just point at planet... had there been guidance. It wasn't exactly complicated math per se, or it wouldn't have been with Star League era computers ...

It was physics. The mathematical modelling wasn't impossible didn't even require those computers...

Whatever the case it gave them an area to start looking at. Investigating the impact site was also the best chance of confirming or disproving the theory that the tragedy of Pioche had been malicious, not some terrible cosmic accident.

None of the overflights had prompted any kind of anti air indications. Not that that was really expected. There had been no tracking radar returns, certainly not any missiles fired... but they'd have to see.

"I can't believe really people survived."

He half turned to look at the Easy company pilot who had spoken up, a little loudly. They had talked about it, but seeing survivors was another story. They weren't the mission. They'd survived this long without the Magistracy swooping in they could wait a little longer... assuming that the Magistracy would do the right thing and ... he put it out of his mind. What the Magistracy did or didn't do was beyond his ability to control. He grimaced ,and pushed off the holo table, not hard they were still in reduced gravity, he didn't want to send himself across the DropShip's planning room. "Pioche has been separated out from the Magistracy for two hundred years these people, their ancestors, managed to survive an extinction level event and are beginning to recover on their own. If they even know that there are other people its as the barest myths and legends passed down orally about metal birds from the sky and other world islands," Or however they had remembered the exodus from Island Earth, "leaving aside the dropships you'll be in 45 ton war machines, try and consider how their reaction to never having seen a BattleMech to one showing up from great metal bird will be taken. They're the priority. You want something done about it write your representative when we get back from this tour."

He went back to the safety gear checklist, before making sure everyone was familiar with conducting and receiving search and rescue. The locally produced Leopard wasn't anything special, but it was aerodyne it and the Sam Houston and the Sam Houston's small craft would be substantively easier to conduct search and rescue if anyone got lost.
--
There was a slight tremor that transmitted through as they finished the touch down procedure. There was a pretty serious chance of sinkholes as a result of the asteroid impact. He had known that before he touched down, but he was fairly certain his Marauder was going to to start squawking as soon as his seismographic sensors came online.

I.E. Was going to establish a mobile base camp, and start boring for core samples and all that fun geology stuff. He reached up and pressed the switch to bring the computer hardware online. The Sam Houston's roll on roll off forward doors opened letting in sunlight that was harsh from the light of the system's primary bouncing off all the snow and ice of the mountains. He'd seen one of the overflight pictures as the drone had been banking.

Part of a mountainous cliff face had literally broken off and slid down either at the impact or shortly after. They hadn't been able to do a flyby in the dropship but it was scheduled for a few days... but it was an excellent demonstrator of what the Rok had done.

The Marauder connected, and his computer projected a star map using the League Era database and was running down a list of channels. Nothing. Not that he'd been expecting anything either. The only signals appearing were those ones they were broadcasting. No overflight conducted thus far by IE had indicated any electronic emissions.

The Star Map resolved showing their position one hundred fifteen light years rimward of westheimer... and projected a woefully out of data population census from the 2750s.

Gene tapped the down key.

The Magistracy's records suggested that Pioche by 2799 totaled somewhere over two hundred million. There were some quibbles over just how many people had been on world at the time.

Which was small for a breadbasket world, especially one in the periphery. Pioche had always had a small population... which it really shouldn't have. Admittedly it had been colonized in the 26th century but there still should have been plenty of people rushing to colonize an earth like world that was ideal for farming, just to get away from the massive industrial and strong central governments it had been one of the driving factors of colonization of places far from the Inner Sphere ... the Outworld Alliance certainly came to mind.

Nothing he was seeing added up, he could have overlooked the clearly Francophone original colonists... the new quebecois would have probably been isolationist leaving andurien and according to 28th century records the nominally largest religion was Catholic, but with heavy swathes of agnostics much like the Magistracy or the Duchy of Anduerien.

There was no indication in League or Canopian records that the planet had been involved in mech construction. The relatively small continental land masses had encouraged domestic maritime trade but that coupled with shallow oceans meant storms were relatively week... of course it also meant that when the rok had hit the planet that they'd frozen over much more quickly.

He eased the Marauder out into the sunlight and looked over the sprawling coniferous forest to the northwest of their landing zone. A quick glance at his temperature gauge showed it was sixty three degrees, Fahrenheit, in the low land plains.

Not bad at all but it was also the warm part of the day, with twenty mile an hour winds it would certainly have felt a bit cooler but nothing compared to the sub freezing temperatures still in the alpine highlands to the north.

The Merlin connected, "We good to go boss?" The Lyran asked.

"One moment." Even though he doubted that they'd find anything he flipped the NBC sensors to active and let the chem sniffers do their job. Nothing hazardous came back of course. Sam Houston's atmospheric sensors would have long since warned them if the atmospheric content was dangerous. "Interesting looks like there was a substantial amount of boron in the soil, naturally occurring." No surprise of course, except it wasn't mentioned in his data packet on the planetary economy, since boron was good for agriculture, but it had other uses. Particularly uses that would have been relevant to the Magistracy's medical machinery industry, "Lets move out, get a view of our surroundings while the diggers play in the dirt." He ordered watching the Leopard deploy McCloud and her contingent of mechs.

A planet named pickaxe with significant boron deposits should have been a mining colony not a farm world...

Imperator Pax · Jan 18, 2023

Pioche Part 2

The cold front moving in wasn't really a concern. They had packed for snow... and frankly while it was going to drop probably thirty plus degrees over the next couple days there was no guarantee it was going to stay that way. They just didn't know one way or another. It would have been different if they moved further away from the tropics, but that was the interesting thing about how the rock had hit.

Initial forecasts had projected they weren't going to get any serious rain, or snow, so that meant without significant cloud coverage the Sam Houston was capable of deploying the Azami manned small craft and conduct their own flight at basically the lower threshold of the atmosphere looking to take mapping tracks of the entire crate border of the impact site. The idea was to then expand that out and look at how the ash and debris had settled and the surround topographical landscape.

The planet had had two weeks to realize the rock was flying towards them.

What they didn't have from those historical records was proof it had been under power. It might not have been . The acceleration of a fusion drive to aim the rock could have been calculated for a burn on a flight path with only only minimal thrust corrections firing in order to conserve or minimize the needed fuel.

That meant the active fusion signature would have been intermittent. That was a little concerning but it was definitely plausible. Early space colonization technology. 23rd Century Terra could have built a weapon like that. If Amaris had rigged a dead man's trap then the answer was yes. It was possible.

He flipped the control on the regimental management suite to transmit to air assets, "Alpamys confirm?"

"I confirm Major. Standby for telemetry uplink." It took almost a minute for the holographic globe to provide a fully populated display from almost two days of mapping thus far. "Do you want us to expand?"

"Yes, focus on mapping of the inner crater rim." He was looking for identifying sinkholes. To sink probes in. It was going to be the easiest way for the rock docs to sink their probes into it and see if there were any obvious underground structures.

It would also help them do chemical evidence to ascertain chondritic composition or not. He wasn't sure what the alternative composition made up would be, but since they were here, and he had the resources they were getting paid to coordinate with the researchers.

He swapped channels to the IE mobile dig site and opened the holographic communications suite illuminating Doctor Abner, and the Duchess Raventhir standing in front of their terminal and filled them in on the progress or lack of ... depending on how one wanted to rate the checklist procedure.
--
Lieutenant Short navigated the Vindicator after the Mongoose as descended past another stand of evergreen firs and white pine. They were new growth, probably no more than twenty or thirty years old but were already very tall. They had reached battle mech height.

"Proof of ecological recovery." The Major's voice cut in over the channel, "Most of the white pine probably died out during the ash cloud event and their resurgence has probably taken four or five generations to reach this stage."

"Aren't evergreens not supposed to die during the winter?" Another Vindicator pilot asked.

"There is a difference between severe cold in conventional winter and and the conditions immediately after. The planetary albedo slowing down wouldn't have done any favors to broadleaf plants which is probably why these are the first resettlers we're seeing. Their success may even be stifling the return of deciduous trees in addition to the cold."

They had been out here for a couple of days now. Driving mechs with both sixes, and the broader easy company maneuvering around trees, and looking at the surreal alien landscape of a planet with amazing sunsets. They hadn't been doing much.

She had been subjected to briefing packets talking about shock waves, eject melt, and how the excavation by the rock had blasted tens of billions of tons of material into the atmosphere that had resulted in a two year super winter as one of the scientists had described it.

That had been the defining experience so far.

Getting lectured about obscure scientific facts while they drove mechs around a people less wasteland of a world. They weren't allowed to shoot at anything. There were survivors of the colony who couldn't even be called techno-barbs. They were Neo Paleolithic hunter gatherer bands who largely subsisted off of fishing.

Fish. That was the great survivor of the cataclysm. When the landscape had been scoured and the plant life had died fish had probably been what had allowed the descendants of heavily mechanized farming communities to survive the cataclysm.

They didn't want to spook the stone age people so no weapons practice.

Lady Raventhir would decide what they would do when they returned back to Luxen, or at least were back over the border, within the modern borders of the Magistracy.

A display flashed, and her Ceres built communications suite signaled incoming laser handling. "Bring the platoon to a halt, Lieutenant." The major ordered.

The seventy five ton marauder was standing on a low hill rise about half a klick east along the tree line. She hadn't even seen the machine before it had contacted her own 'mech by laser com... a shake passed through which was probably the same as most of the invaders at Luxen had felt on turning a path on the river bend only to start taking ppcs bolt from that was twenty tons heavier or more.

She'd seen enough of the footage from Luxen... or Detroit for that matter. There was no telling where else.

Her las com registered the other six of vindicators moving to a secondary position designated navpoint beta on her display.

--
Gene looked over the map as he shuffled the feeds. Iridium's presence in the soil sample from the initial core samples... Because they were only talk about two centuries, hah, which was nothing in real geological earth moving terms the burial of material was a result of the crater excavation filling back into the crater. There was some erosion of loose soil, the various rings formed around the site, there were places where sink holes and water tables and what not had all effect topography as the planet had gradually warmed over the last century... but it was all... pardon the pun a glacial process that they were looking at.

There was some skepticism given the shallowness of the planetary seas, and with the resulting drop in sea level due to the glaciation that the Rim World would have relied on an undersea facility near the impact site. That did still assume that the rock had landed where it was supposed to, but not assuming that meant they were in the wrong area entirely as well. Also of course was that the IE team was considering what was in this area, if not deep water ports.

Abner was right... if the DOME had still been around... they could have pretty easily have fixed this. Now admittedly the question that Gene really suspected was, would they have bothered spending the money... but Abner had laid out it would have simply been a matter of automated orbital mirror arrays to speed up, though not too quickly the thawing of the oceans. Obviously there were other things but even that wasn't necessary.

The truth was that if the Magistracy decided to recolonize this planet could support human life. Agriculture would be harder but wheat would likely be possible with some adjustment... and that would just be a short jumpship route to Detroit and its agronomics reserves.

That was wholly coincidental ... a result of what he knew of specialist trades in the rimward periphery and unrelated but there was still something, there were details about Pioche that didn't add up.

Part of it was the sheer then versus now of looking at the planet of his punched up maps... but was there something here? He doubted it was an automated marauder line, which was of course the absolute top of Raventhir's pie in the sky wishlist to unearth after centuries of hidden silence. No, while even the Taurians had been fielding marauders and surely the hidden army had been producing 1R's somehow in 2765 before the coup on Terra there were easily a number of more likely candidates.

The two front runners were the Pheonix and the Rampage but there were certainly age of war mechs like the dervish that wouldn't been that surprising... but was a line like that sufficient to warrant a rock being dropped?

Maybe for Amaris that was plenty of reason... he looked at the projections of the planet and waited for Abner to call him back. In the mean time he pulled up the RMR data packet, but he doubted he would find anything but they were back into a hurry up and wait situation.

He wondered what the CEP for a rock from the asteroid belt was, were they even in the right area for the target? He tapped the console and watched the wind pick up... if the geologists prediction was right, he looked from his current vantage point. There were one or two candidates for a mountain that would have insulated from the impact shockwave in the area and yet still in the ring where they might have been the target.

Imperator Pax · Jan 25, 2023

Pioche Part 3

Beauregard knew he was be watched as adjusted his heater from over the other end of the holographic display. They were getting rain, but the bigger factor at base camp was wind chill not precipitation. Not that knowing that made it any better.

The league native blew out a breath, and looked at the camera. Their ?Employer? Well probably the Lyran noble helping organize the agenda must have been born on a world that was snowy all year round because he seemed to pay no mind to the cold as carried on about stellar colonization and the route that had lead to Pioche being colonized in the 26th century.

Beau had perked up really when the League had been mentioned. It wasn't difficult to figure out why settlers from the duchy of Andurien would have been making for the periphery at the end of the 26th century. The Canopians had only established their state towards the beginning of the century and their movement steadily out away from the sphere made sense. The 26th century, the 2500s, had been a fairly frequent set of brushfire wars over the duchy between the League and House Liao.

It made this contract weird but it meant he wasn't in the League space. He had gotten out in time, but if he went back to Marik space any time soon there were going to be questions. He wanted to avoid any questions by SAFE, questions he didn't have good answers to. The 3rd Marik was gone there was no going back to that.

He flipped a finger over the console to his machine and looked at the table. It had been a gamble signing on with the scratch company but they'd made it through it and he had thought at the time that it was nice money... but what IE was paying for going to this freezing rock ... that was really nice money... all because the boss had two JumpShips to his name. So what if they were borrowing a DropShip to move part of the unit they had gotten regular pay for travel time. This was the kind of gig that he figured would have required being apart of a bigger more fancy unit... then again thinking of the first class berths aboard the JumpShip they were just a fancy unit.

"Bo, did you get that?' A familar voice asked over the line.

"Yeah." He grunted, "I see it." Even if it was just letters and numbers to him, but yeah he'd gotten it.

The Lyran in his heavy mech shook his head, "Peel off go join up with McCloud and meet up with those ground cars."

"Roger that Septim." He replied pulling on the yoke of the machine and started to turn and walk forward in his Dervish. Commander McCloud was as was typical Impatient. It was an accepted trait of ShadowHawk pilots... always thinking they had somewhere to be. That his Dervish was capable of out jumping a 'Hawk seemed to have been willfully ignored by the Commander.

He was a missile boat she fancied herself a brawler.

McCloud's made sure her platoon knew she wasn't happy. "Right because we're swarming with pirates, and need the reinforcement." She protested over the line with the Marauder Ace.

Beauregard suspected that there was still a certain degree of chip on the shoulder at hand. Shepherd claimed a Major's rank which given that he owned two JumpShips, a tricked out DropShip, owned spare horses, and had armor support... yeah it was appropriate... but he also got that the Lyran kid was also too young to shave. Just speculating, not that it mattered in the slightest one way or another, the kid had probably been shipped off to some Lyran military academy graduated early and then went mercenary. He clearly wasn't related to Septim or the Lyran doc, but McCloud might not have figured that out, all she probably saw was a kid with a 75 ton mech.

Not the MechCommander and not the Devil on the River Bank.

"You are approaching insubordinate Commander." The Major commented in a frankly normal tone, "We are on an unknown periphery world lost to civilization, not only should we not disregard the potential pirate threat, but particularly it is ideal that your platoon be supplemented with a missile boat, further that the Dervish can provide a communications link to our air assets."

Inside his Dervish he flipped his venerable HID 21 Comms system to track the relative position of Alpamys. Keeping track of the small craft's course overhead. He'd kind of skimmed the what to do in the event they started taking fire, but he knew the bird was armed. Anything stupid enough to show up and attack seven mechs would get a nasty surprise.

It was potentially a paranoia decision, but it was nice to have.
--
Gene watched the lake waters tracking the clunky industrial mech sorry ResearchMech and its variety of probes and tools waddle into the water. He didn't know where Abner had found it but it broadcast a DOME signature to his Marauder on handshake. Right now one of the students was taking it out into the frigid sub alpine lake to examine the conditions of the lake bed.

The Leopard nearby was still offloading another worker mech to see about clearing more space for this secondary camp. He didn't know if this was normal procedure, if IE was moving fast, but he assumed that this differed from the Rimward expedition because their efforts were being concentrated on a single planet, and in a comparatively small area.

He knew they were getting a little stir crazy. This wasn't a normal mercenary contract at least strictly speaking. Babysitting a bunch of diggers would have probably done in house, and he got the impression that the rumors circulating around that Abner was in charge and not Raventhir might have been annoying the Magistracy pilots, which probably was compounding McCloud's bulldog tenacity.

He wondered if there was anything to find here. Had anything more complicated than hunter gatherers and trees survived the impact? He flipped another series of setting, searching and scanning for signals that he knew weren't out there. Gene was increasingly growing to dislike this planet... the math didn't add up.

Any brooding had to be put aside as touched base with the cicada pilot. Currently he had his machine's 320 engine revved up and was zipping around in the oversized bug mech seemingly without a care in the world. At least one of them was having fun.

The man's face was set in an easy grin, "Hey boss, not getting anything." He shook his head, "Seriously boss if there is something out here besides snow and trees, we need to spread out. Get in that locust and get a little speed. I can tell you there isn't anything going to tangle with as much metal we have on this rock."

He prepared to disagree, but Raventhir had appeared on the line.

"Your MechWarrior might a point commander," The duchess remarked, she seemed tired. "We need to spread out further. We need to cover more ground if we're going to make any real progress here."

With no real ability to protest... or at least not make a sustainable case for why they shouldn't he nodded, "Understood." He raised a glove hand and went into the regimental management software to tag the communication to go across the whole operational unit. "All right everyone fan out, stay in radio contact but start wide scale patrol, Two hundred meter intervals between your wingmen to start with. We will expand from there."

Bahar's mongoose moved to join him, and the Vindicators began the process of pairing up as the map software showed the 2d grid inside of his cockpit. There were a lot of woodland. Lot of bare hillsides to and a mix in-between.

This would be more effective tomorrow when they could actually pre plan search patterns... maybe they could go over the mountain... but before they went and did that it'd b e best to make sure everyone's mechs had a couple days worth of MREs and survival gear... of course they'd be sleeping buttoned up in their mechs.

--
Notes: and of course unreliable narrator and speculation are in effect, but we are working our way to Ice Castle, which is of course something of a retcon from how these events are portrayed intheir abridged format in the original thread.

Imperator Pax · Feb 1, 2023

Pioche Part 4

The temperature gauge monitoring outside was slowly rising as the sun crept higher into a cloudless sky. The morning frost would start to melt soon.

He pulled the league era data packets up again, and re ran them against the diggers report. There was the possibility of course the rock had been like the one that had fallen on south Africa and that that explained the wealth of minerals, but he was suspicious that was the case. It didn't mesh with what they were seeing. Yes there was iridium, and diamonds from the impact, but other resources ... they'd know more once the core samples came back.

He looked over the messy brown green landscape. Pioche was not a planet he would have called beautiful. It was a stark harsh world as it slowly recovered from the impact. Scrub grasses would supposedly give way to taller grasses and wildflowers and in a hundred years or so maybe this would all be reforested, and a hundred after that the planet would probably have another big warming period and well go through another change... and who knew what the landscape would look like then.

They wouldn't be here for that. Pioche was proving a good example thus far of the Silurian? Paradox... no, hypothesis, he mentally corrected the idea that a catastrophe or just the passage of time could be so significant it literally erased signs of advanced civilization.

Not that he expected looking at the historical record to just trip over a big metal sign proclaiming: Weigel A&M or Whitworth Company, or Krauss Liemann... but the rock falling had done a good job of excavating a big hole and burying things after.

Then there were the manpower limits.

The chime from the console updated the packet of data. 'Capital Armor' was something of a misnomer. What made a warship a warship was a compact a K-F drive, it was what allowed an armed vessel to mount an appreciable volume of weaponry. The structure and armor that allowed it to suffer through attacks, but it wasn't fundamentally a unique feature of warships. They ablated when struck, whether that was weapons fire or protection from micrometeorites at high g. That ablative property was useful because it endured traumatic shock and allowed a bulkhead to survive contact nuclear blasts.

The engineering behind such structural integrity dated back to the early spaceflight era. It was an engineering principle that was at least nominally more than a thousand years old. It had its basis... in protection mundane attacks. Sea going warships of terra's world wars had been armored to the point that a by product that anything other than a direct hit, and really not even a sure thing, could with a damage control crew keep the ship in combat in a nuclear battlescape. That had not been a design requirement, nuclear weapons hadn't been a practical design requirement for protection... but that and bunker design also originally meant against conventional attack had in the age of war resulted in the great epoch of human expansion resulted in the development of protective armor capable of bearing immense loads continuously and also withstanding significant stresses while under load.

Unfortunately said armor wasn't any more readily detectable when buried as anything else. They were sticking probes in the ground on the basis of pictures from orbit of terrain disfigurements... which was probably unhelpful because most likely ... if the Rim World had built a facility here, they'd have bored out a mountain, just like during the cold war on ancient terra.

... and likely it had been facilities like SAC, and Raven's Rook that had inspired the first castles, which had eventually would give way to the Castles Brian. If however such facilities, of a similar pattern had been built, "It'd all be buried." He muttered looking over his scopes. The ash clouds would have buried it all, and in turn shifting earth over the past century particularly as the planet warmed and summer thaws melted ice would have buried any entrances further.

He let his head hit the back rest even as he brought the Marauder up to a higher vantage point to look around. There were no fusion signatures that they could detect on this rock... at least none that weren't there own. No fusion signatures, even ones with ECM active, meant no real way to find industry... the thermal returns they got were so minor as to be irrelevant. The planet had medium sized fauna besides humans... there were some frankly very large fish in the oceans, but there was nothing larger than deer. He suspected that even that had been a near miss, most likely the planets cattle population had died out being unsustainable without human aid, where as the ... sitka might have been some canopian import for hunting reserves that had managed to survive... and even those herds were not very large... and probably at risk of being over whelmed by a recovering human population.

Gene blinked as the Thermal readers zoomed in on a mule deer as something snatched it out of the brush. Only his connection via the MMI allowed him to watch the food chain in action, and he might have assumed it a lynx, but replaying caused him to blink, and transfer the images from the system up to holograms. He hit the comms display, and toggled over to channel 3, "Professor, I'm pretty sure I just watched a juvenile smilodon make a meal out of a mule deer."

"What is a smilodon?" He wasn't sure who was asking maybe it was one of the IE personnel or maybe it was one of the Canopians. It wasn't like he'd been introduced to everyone on this, and he hadn't expected to.

It was a valid question he mused in hindsight. "AN extinct apex predator from North America on Terra. I can find nothing in the historical record that no one," Had been hit by the good idea fairy and decided to play Jurassic park, "Introduced them to the planet." Admittedly he didn't have any records stating that mule deer had been introduced to pioche for the purposes of either farm raised deer meet or as an agronomic method of planetary settlement colonization terraforming or as just a hunting option but any of those or all them were possibly for a colony world... introduction of an extinct species while certainly well within the star league era's capacity for mad science was something he would have expected to at least bear some comment on, "Is there any indication that the magistracy might have done this intentionally some where else?" Were there Canopian planets were there were dinosaurs running, maybe it didn't make the news because everyone knew such and such world had Jurassic park as an attraction...

He didn't exactly have a Canopian tourism bureau directory handy but the point stood out that maybe it was possible, especially given that they had better retained star league era medicine. Whatever the case, however such a large mammalian predator had come to be on Pioche it did not fit with the presence or the claims of Pioche as a farming planet of two hundred million people as it had been before the asteroid had struck. There was obviously more to the planet, an absence that was not detailed in the official historical record.
--
Notes: this is shorter, we notably do not get to the first scene with the pioche natives, or their shrines and great caves, or the matter of language. Part of this is because much like in the original draft I still have an issue putting the folk lore portion into a format that works. So what will most likely happen is the summation being provided of events through translation convention, of a story of ancestral memory of how Pioche's human population survived the end of their world, and how they travel and survive their planet's harsh winters of particularly the 29th century generations earlier.

Imperator Pax · Feb 15, 2023

Pioche Conclusion

The deer encounter and its maybe maybe not saber toothed tiger predator had prompted a revision of how they were moving. Nothing significant turn the thermals on and look at the surrounding area. The eco system wasn't barren, but that made sense. This was a hard scrabble world, but it wasn't a dead world. The results in the meant time were confirmation that sea ward side of the mountains, had been sheltered, not entirely protected from some of the blast and shockwave. The mountains had still shed some material, but mostly the likes loose soil or otherwise already comprised rock face like they had already observed.

No more than anything their presence was about looking at the surrounding eco system. The broader ecosystem. The deer had other predators, specifically, unsurprisingly the remaining native humans who seemed to get by on hunting and gathering, but particularly from a combination of land and sea based fauna.

Nothing that they hadn't in theory already known and recognized.

"Does the name McEvedy mean anything to you major?"

His face scrunched up at the question, and the name, "In the context of prehistoric animals? No, it does not." Gene answered, hoping that Abner wasn't going to ask a follow on.

"He was a member of the DOME in the late star league working in the rimward periphery." Abner paused as he watched the fur wrapped humans over the feed.

At the time the zodiac names meant nothing. Sagittarius, Libra, Pisces. Other than the DOME had been following a naming pattern working in the rimward peirphery. "Skyfog? Right, the gas giant." That had been project Libra Umbrella. He pulled up his star map within his Marauder cockpit and the jump route history, then zoomed out. Luxen to Skyfog had been three jumps, which at the time he really hadn't paid any mind to. Coming 'west' from Luxen to get here, he had to pause looking at teh world on the map labelled Schmitt, but he brushed that off as coincidental. It was probably nothing. "are we revaluating?"

Was this DOME's work? That was in short the question, but no... there was no indication historically the DOME had been interested in Pioche with its well known loamy black soil and easy agriculture. There wouldn't have been much for them to do here if the historical record was to be believed.

"No." It was Raventhir's voice. "We have solid evidence," Funny how she sounded so sure of it now, but he wasn't going to question it... it was plenty of since that the duchess might have been holding something back, "That there was rim world activity on this world." She grated, and he had to wonder what that Evidence was.

He decided he wasn't going to push the issue, and adjusted his feeds to zoom in on the small band of spear armed humans. They were wrapped in furs, and he couldn't make much out. They slunk away and he watched them go. There was little else to do but take pictures at this junction. Gene returned his attention back to the nearest mountain peak, before punching up the thermal data from the overflights. The human population was apparently starting to bounce back, but it was still precarious and overhunting might be a problem in a generation or two, it was simply too hard to move overland.

That wasn't a problem for them given their mechs and vehicles, and it had probably been long enough that these people could have come the long way. He switched feeds back to the pre cataclysm data but it yielded no more answers than it had before.

Five hours later.

"Major Shepherd." He accepted the incoming line gripping the yoke and easing the seventy five ton heavy BattleMech into a turn. "We're finished installing the coffer dam Doctor Abner wants you on site when we finish draininage work." The map displayed a way point, and he acknowledged and started maneuvering.

The dig site?... whatever the technical term was for whatever the IE people were doing. He did a quick check of the outdoor temperature and craned his head to check that his jacket was in the cockpit rather than the space allocated for buttoning up in the field. He had spare pair of boots back there and hiking pack which kept the change of clothes and a couple of freeze dried meals, and several chocolate bars. He'd swept out the coffee he normally had for tea.

The trip took him to an alpine lake, which given the general conditions of Pioche it was one more depression that had filled in with rainwater or the snow melts as the planet warmed. The lake itself had been at a state of equilibrium, not full and not empty.

He saw the ShadowHawk on over watch and maneuvered up opposite of the lighter mech.

With the cofferdam installed the water was being pumped out revealing large fixtures of rock along the shore of the lake. Even as a voluminous amount of water was pumped out, nothing immediately stood out as unusual. Not to his naked eyed, but to the sensor array of his Marauder, well that wasn't the same thing, as the water level receded he started to receive faint contacts of refined metal.

... not iridium, not rare earth metals, refined metal. The kind of thing that didn't happen by cosmic accident, that required human industry. The mech's hand was stretched out, the desert camo distinctive along the arms, but its shoulder were black, badged with a pair of even more distinctive futhark runes. Its legs were sunk deep into the river bed, but other than that it looked in surprisingly good condition.

Gestapo.

State Secret Police.

He had to let out a breath. Then he hit the radio console key, "Alright. Rim World Republic presence confirmed." He said on the master channel, transmitting the image from his machine's gun cameras of the Charger laying on the mud.

It didn't answer any questions, just added more.

By the time it was getting dark he had looked at the rock cracks... apparently you could use them to cut ice, melt it for water... and if you weren't careful you split the rock and cause a landslide. The Mech was fine... the pilot inside, well not so much. The guy's head had serious occipital fracture ... which had probably not only concussed the man but also been fatal due to pressure and bleeding... not telling which had done him in.

The IE med doc was still in the surgery doing the autoposy, but she'd been in there the better part of an hour he really didn't know what she was looking for.

Gene was flipping through his suit. "Its like yours." Beau remarked to Bahar ribbing the other pilot from his heavy jacket.

He grunted vaguely affirmative, as the two lighter mech pilots looked at the harness, and cooling suit. The dead man wasn't carrying a side arm. No pistol, no spare magazines. He had knife, which okay sure, but there was a lot missing. He thought about the lack of a flashlight as well, "As it should Mister Alexander. Its 2750 pattern SLDF Pilot suit, standard issue to the MechWarriors of the Star League." Abner remarked stepping forward. "The RimWorld Republic had full access to Star League Military Equipment."

They had had the greatest access to the technology of the star league.

Still didn't answer the question of how they had known. "Is this the first one you found?"

"You mean a mech?" Abner came to a stop by the examination table, "Yes, this the first time we had a chance to make a good exploration... what we found was a series of corroborating finds. Records, shipments, people who ... who frankly should have been in prison walking free and going..." He paused. "Lyran, the Commonwealth's Intelligence dropped the ball, I'm not afraid to admit it, there were Rim World officers who went to ground... and there was a network. People forgot about in the succession wars, but there was a discovery, a crashed dropship an a Rim World raid on a scientist named McEvedy's, on this drive were references to machinery and transportation, and a rendezvous."

"Pioche." It wasn't really a question. "What do you think happened?"

"We think that Rim World came to Pioche hoping to take possession of whatever was here, and well as I've said, we think that it tripped some kind of safety system..."

... and whoops there went the planet's population. Right. He glanced out the wind, "Then we still have a problem, of where that thing came from." You didn't use a mech for survival and water boiling like that for yourself. You could, but it seemed wasteful.

There was a snap of latex gloves coming off, as the doctor came out of her surgery, "Not the only thing either," her accent was vaguely British, posh... Canopian Posh, "The Pilot doesn't make sense."

"Excuse me, can you clarify what you mean?"

"I estimate he's male, approximately twenty five years of age, post puberty full skeletal fusion in the hands. No medical care." A diet of heavy fish, the list went on. Conclusion, he was most likely a planetary native. Not a Rim World Pilot. Approximate age and the limited computer data they'd pulled from the 'Mech suggested the Charger had gone into the drink forty years after the planet's ice age had begun.

Which still left them with the hypothesis that there was a DOME style underground facility of some kind on the planet, and that their best guess was that it was near the site of the impact.
--
Notes: So I know that in later canon... well fuck its been ten years now but Gestapo in current canon is its a nickname for the unit... we're not going with it, we're going original canon this is Amaris is bad people

Imperator Pax · Feb 22, 2023

Ice Castle Part 1

That night the natives came out of the woods. Not that they'd done much, but it had been a little shocking that it had happened at all. They'd taken one look at a moving 'mech with its roving spotlight and backpedalled back for the wood line but that was significantly closer than they'd done... and either they had gotten really quickly acclimated to their presence, or it was in response to pulling the charger out of the water.

It was the subject that the IE personnel were currently arguing over... and it was monopolizing the comms network. That included the email system where he was CC-ed into as people chattered about timelines, and about the potential anthropological effects of neo techno barbarism and the role being able to operate a battlemech but not understanding the technology might play in otherwise neolitihic hunter gatherers.

It sounded like a recipe for disaster to him.

He was also cognizant that Dropships, and small craft in space at least in near planetary orbit were visible with the naked eye... and JumpShips might potentially be as well given the lack of light pollution from artificial sources... possibly. He couldn't be sure about JumpShips, but artificial moving stars in the heavens was not a facet that they had considered and how primitive societies might react to that kind of change to their environment. He thought about the information they had on the society of the Alexandrian covenant worlds... world... in the case of the sole surviving one as he directed the Marauder up the gap.

His main focus was not on how the natives might have survived per se... it was on how they were eluding their sensors. It wasn't as if they'd been specifically looking for the hunter gatherers specifically, but they had started acting odd, and now it was a security concern.

It was a good thing that the slow planetary albedo meant that the reforestation was a gradual process. The pine trees and limited other trees on this side of the mountain face were comparatively sparse rather than being thick old forest growth... that might have been found on a more typical world with Pioche's soil composition.

The thing about trees, and the process of reforestation is that while there were gaps in natural terrain, particularly over changes in elevation, shallow tree roots allowed trees to take footholds on ridges, and even across relatively thin soil layers. That allowed his seismographic sensors and and his thermal imagers to sweep through...

When the rock had hit it had probably thrown billions of tons of material into the air, which had settled back down and then the slow glacial melting of frozen water into sluice and moving material had brought thousands of gallons water carrying tons of rocks and soil down to redeposit had created a landscape very different than the Pioche topography of what this place had looked like two hundred years ago before the rock had fallen and everyone had died.

There were however certain rules that governed natural erosion principles and while storms could occasionally introduce freak variables, and earthquakes, and sinkholes could loosen and cause landslides erosionary forces tended to eventually wear down hard edges due to the sheer amount of force glacial change exerted. That meant the old map wasn't quite as useless as it might otherwise have been... he assumed that whatever cabal had been involved hadn't gone so far as to blatantly falsify the farming world's data after all... and that meant you needed enough space either for a road system to transport to and from or you needed enough space to land and load offload a fucking dropship... probably an aerodyne but he wasn't ... he didn't have enough data to discount something like a Union or a cargo variant there of.

That at least helped narrow things down.

"Commander?"

"Standby professor," He flipped to the small craft over head. "Okay start comparing the feeds."

This was the monotonous part of the work. Move to a point and run the old data, and the current data from both a fixed ground position, seismographic data, and above low orbital topographical mapping data and compare the footage.

There was chatter in the back end of the feed. There were no active fusion signatures, and it was doubtful that anything other than a reinforced protected pile would have remained functional this long... which suggested that the power was off. That meant if Abner was right, the doors were open... which of course raised questions of why hadn't the facility flooded, but DOME at least would have built flooding protection systems, and control gates that wouldn't have required power to run, gates that would have opened under water pressure from the inside to drain outward.

... though that did raise the question of would DOME's counter flood system have worked as advertised in an ice age. Add that to all the other questions that they didn't' have answer to. Regardless the archaeological measuring continued. They were banking on that there were only so many places that the natives could have gotten to in order to narrow things down, and that they could do these searches while there was daylight. So far they had come up with zilch working their way westward from the alpine lake the charger had been recovered from.

Chargers were relatively tall mechs so that suggested an entry point that would be high enough clearance for the machine to walk in and out of, especially if the natives had been driving the machines. It was a lot of slow moving, and mapping, and number crunching.

"Adjust that..."

"... no go back...."

"Look at the glaciation..."

"... see that rock deformation there."

"That's clearly not natural."

Gene was listening to the background chatter intermittently they weren't really talking to him so much as each other as they went back and forth on various spots. Thermal imagers, and aerial photography were less likely to trigger any kind of protection systems... they hoped, but those systems might trip from the fusion signatures of a battlemech or a small craft in a general holding pattern over the target... so he wasn't sure if they should have tried for more active invasive radar scans... besides the typical seismographic readings of his avionics.

One of the geologists started to talk about sinkholes further back, and how that precluded an entry way in that direction... then that spawned an argument with someone over water flow, and he went back to ignoring the speculation flipping through the the feeds.

Underground would be insulated. Thereby underground structures would reach a higher temperature equilibrium than ground level structures on the mountain's surface... to the point that an underground mine without access to something to reduce the temperature could become an almost tropical level heat and humidity.

"Professor, the natives are neolithic hunter gatherers correct, or at least broadly speaking."

"Broadly speaking yes, that's an apt decision."

"So if they had a protected warm shelter they would most likely use it for food preparation, and probably also as a place of disposal, they would use it to create fires, fires need fuel, they'd need to be able to harvest trees, and that fuel would then have to be brought into an access point."

They probably wouldn't then go to the trouble of disposing of that material outside of the cave... well probably not... which meant that for the most part the main comings and going would be taking goods in, but not out. Into a structure large enough for mech access so thus large enough space that a primitive society was unlikely to fill up the material...

... especially if said people happened to be depositing their waste into a midden that happened to be a flood control system that then ran that waste into an underground river that didn't freeze.

"A probable hypothesis on native behavior."

The hunter gatherers didn't have much in the way of domesticated animals. Whether they still had domesticated dogs was an unknown but domesticated cattle, especially dairy, had presumably died out over the harsh perpetual winter of the 29th century.
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Notes: I'm sure that it should be somewhat obvious as to why this content was originally dropped and Pioche was more of an offscreen go and not find something in the original posted version, I wanted to get back to the pirate fighting, and thus mechs, and thus move forward.

Battletech: The Second Luxen Contracts

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