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Throw a Stone (BT/afterSI)
- Thread starter bluepencil
- Start date
UM-CIV2 Loadermech(?)
bluepencil
The tropics will be uninhabitable.
- Joined
- Feb 19, 2013
- Messages
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Hmm. It may look a bit too sensible, you know?
Still, the bare top does make it feel more crab-like.
I kind of like how industrial it looks. Give it a weighted backpack and you have a really goad "loadermech" type.
[edit]
A minor variation on the loadermech concept.
Less capable of melee though. Now those arms could do forestry work.
11.2 Doctrine 02
bluepencil
The tropics will be uninhabitable.
- Joined
- Feb 19, 2013
- Messages
- 721
- Likes received
- 11,592
Doctrine 02
Tripoli
Benjamin Prefecture
Draconis Combine
April 02, 3025
From Colchester to Tripoli was normally 5 jumps and two months. But the first jump was a dead system named Courney. The Scouts jumped immediately afterwards to appear at Bettendorf. The scouts had to wait there for 7 ½ days to charge the KF drives while surreptitiously charging the Fusion Battery from the reactor by using up gross amounts of fuel, equivalent to a dozen burn-days of operation.
But this was a WarShip that looked like a JumpShip and it had a thousand tons of fuel.
The next closest system towards Tripoli was another dead system, Ballentine. The ships jumped again, and that brought them to Royal, one jump away from Tripoli. They were joined there by another pair of Scouts, bringing Allwine Battalion and Badnik Company from New Aberdeen, which was but two jumps away.
The 91st Strike Cav and elements of the 121st Dark Horse were in force at full regiment weight. They set out from Colchester at the end of February and arrived in mid-March.
Although it would be simple enough to shuttle from Scout to Scout on dedicated Small Craft transports, Beth Duncan didn't get to meet Barbara Mosley. The Eridani Light Horse spent this last week on more meetings and briefings and simulations and planning for the worst case scenarios.
The DCMS was still preparing to take their revenge and move the multiple regiments necessary to assault a fortified world. According to standard SLDF doctrine, the element of surprise effectively doubles your force.
The Scouts appeared suddenly in-system, right between the planet of Tripoli and its star. As the DropShips undocked and burned towards the world with jaw-jarring force, Beth Duncan turned to her crew and said "If we're actually the SLDF now, then this has to be a perfect run. We can't screw this up. We are being watched if we're worthy of the name. We won't shame the flag!"
"Total obliteration," whispered back Jocelyn Xiang.
Paris Fendana whistled and softly sang "From the halls of Mon-te-zuuuma…"
Diogenes added "To the shores of Tri-po-liii~"
The skies opened and hell rained down.
-.
-.
Base Ecclesiasticus
Tripoli
Same time
The Eridani Light Horse timed themselves to arrive before midnight over the DCMS base on Tripoli. General Innocent IV woke up to the buzzing of the doorbell to his private quarters.
"Whu-?" The square-faced man with a pointed mustache and a goatee sat up suddenly. He winced in pain at the rush of blood. He reached out to the remote right beside the handgun on the nightstand, and unlocked the door. Paranoia about assassination was a virtue in the DCMS. "Enter."
After a couple of courtesy knocks, the door hissed open. Masashi Oh, the regimental aide-de-camp, entered and bowed deeply. "My deepest apologies, Tai-sho! But there are vessels that appeared in the Pirate Point and DropShips are of this moment burning towards us. We are under attack!"
Innocent IV's moment of alarm quickly resolved itself into grim anticipation. "How foolish." The Davions already tried recapturing Tripoli back in 3021 with the 17th Avalon Hussars and were beaten back. The 11th Benjamin Regulars were in full force in Tripoli, and two more regiments from the Amphigean Light Assault Group were two jumps away.
The world was ready to repulse another invasion.
He dressed himself and headed out. "How is the mobilization proceeding?"
"O'Connor's squadron has already been mobilized and ready to meet them in orbit. Conventional fighter airbases have already been alerted."
House Kurita prided itself not just on its MechWarrior's surpassing ability but also the skill and number of their pilots. Kurita air power was not only typically dense but used liberally.
"Excelente. Who are these fools that dare attack us at our own home ground?" he asked while continuing to briskly walk down a set of stairs and through tunnels heading to the command center. As the base was located in a desert, building underground was not only more secure but more comfortable. "Davions? How many ships? How much time do we have?"
"Begging your forgiveness my lord, so far things are unclear. The command center would know more, I rushed to inform you and assure your safety." The aide-de-camp was somewhere between a bodyguard and a secretary for the regimental commander. While it was not usually known for the Davions to use assassins to decapitate a defense, Kurita always expected their enemies to do what they would do themselves.
After a short walk, they reached the underground command center. "Report!"
"Yes, my lord! The enemy appeared at the L1 planet-star Pirate Point. They come with six ships, and twelve dropships. Ten dropships are right now are on the approach."
Innocent IV nodded. Whoever these invaders were, they had more bravery than sense. Even setting aside the risk of a misjump and ripping the ship and everything connected to it into their component atoms, by trying to jump into a Pirate Point you had best be completely confident you will win. Otherwise you were just giving your enemy free JumpShips.
"How soon before they arrive?"
"They're burning at 2 gees, lord general. Depending on how soon they break to decelerate, anywhere between three to four hours."
"Tch." This was the problem with Tripoli. It was a small planet orbiting a small star, only about half an AU away from its star and only had .76 Terran standard gravity. The lower gravity made life somewhat easier on the world, and made people believe they lived longer with less stress. They lacked discipline to endure hardship. In practice, this also meant that the distance between the L1 pirate point and the world was half as much as a main sequence star.
"This does not give as much time to prepare as the usual five days from the Jump Point, but it is enough. A surprise, but not exactly an unwelcome one." He had time to think. Where would the enemy attempt to land? What were the major objectives? It was not enough time for full mobilization. They had to work with what they had available. Anything that was more than four hours away at their best speed would be out of position and thus useless for defense.
Defending the capital city of Louca Town made sense, but Tripoli was primarily an agricultural world. Other than the capital, which was a fetid hive of degeneracy, and various other farming settlements, the only other site of import was this base.
He grinned fiercely. "Keep monitoring. I shall pray for our success - not because I have no confidence in it, but that it may be a glorious victory!"
-.
-.
The Draconis Combine was primarily a culture steeped in Shito and Confucian and Taoist themes, and only grudgingly accommodated Christianity and Islam due to the presence of Rasalhague and Azami territories within the Combine. As long as they served House Kurita well, they would be left mostly alone. Catholicism had long been considered a hated Davion characteristic.
So why then would someone who renamed himself Innocent IV, like a Pope, end up a regimental commander?
That was because prior to this, his name was Manuel Benedicto de Seville, and he was from Cadiz, a world close to the District capital of Benjamin. The people of Cadiz were so deliberately obnoxiously Spaniard that even House Kurita, which was deliberately obnoxiously Japanese, saw no point in trying to crush their culture. Cadiz produced a lot of bullish glory hounds for the military who, unlike most troops that needed to have the fear of death brutalized out of them, stood ready with machismo looking for a legendary fight.
Seville was excessively religious, but he was also an excellent taskmaster that would not make his men do anything he would not willingly do himself.
The DCMS considered his crusading in the name of House Kurita an acceptable expression of loyalty.
-.
-.
The time before an invasion force arrives was always spent in nervous uncertainty. Defenders could only hope they made the right disposition of forces. Four hours was not enough time to muster defenders usually spread out around the world. These invaders made a mistake in coming to Tripoli, where the regiment was concentrated into one landmass.
They could try to land and raid elsewhere, Innocent IV supposed, but it would be a waste to spend all that much time just to pick up bushels of corn.
His meditations were interrupted at around 2 AM by the drumming of explosions. Innocent IV entered the command center to see the frenzy of open battle.
The operators reported "My lord! Enemy dropships are landing due north and due south of our position. O'Connor's squadron was not able to stop their insertion. Planetary conventional fighters have all been wiped out. Anti-air guns are doing their part, but cannot completely stop high-altitude bomb drops. External hangars are damaged, but most of our mech forces are intact. They are coming here!"
"Who are they?"
"Eridani Light Horse."
The screen showed tracer fire stitching a line into the night sky, while the base erupted into stalks of flame. Mechs and tanks in hangars exposed above ground hurried to leave and find something to shoot out in the open desert.
Sending out Swift's Battalion to the city borders put them about two hours away from contact, but still near enough to pincer the enemy.
Innocent IV beamed. The 11th Benjamin Regulars were themselves the objective! "Good. Good! This is perfect! Prepare my mech, this is the fight I was training you for! Decisive Light Regiment battle! Go forth, in the name of God and House Kurita!"
-.
-.
East of Base Ecclesiasticus
Tripoli
Some time later
The cloudless desert night lit up across the horizon with multicolored glows. The sky blossomed with bright bursts almost like fireworks, and pillars of light swayed from side to side. Roy Barlow turned his binoculars to the right. Blue flashes that rippled across the dunes. Now and then punctuated by a blooming amber explosion.
PPC fire, Barlow mused. The night vision mode was turned off. He didn't need to see enemy mechs skirmishing at the distance. The blue streaks heading from left towards the center of his view were more sporadic than the enemy. House Kurita liked to use PPCs and it was predicted Panthers and Katapult K2s were in good number among the 11th Benjamin Regulars. Unfortunately for them, Gauss Rifle fire traveled so fast without a tracer that they were effectively invisible.
He listened into encrypted ELH comms, the electronics of his headset active only as long as it detected his particular brainwaves.
> Enemy contact at Nav Beta. Lance of two Dragons, one Jenner, one Commando.
> Strike Lance engaging.
> This is Badnik Company Lead. Nav Gamma cleared.
> Armor loss minimal. Moving to Nav Delta.
> Katapult down.
> G1 Lead to all Galleons, form on me.
> Push forward. Galleons concentrate fire on that Dragon.
> Looks like it wants to play Stomp on the Tankie.
Over to the right on the opposite side of the canyon, green lines criss-crossed. Kicked-up fine desert dust illuminated normally invisible laser beams. LRMs here and there made lingering streaks like someone wiping paint across glass.
He heard a crinkling noise from beside him. He turned to see Alfred Kirk wiggle an open MRE box at him.
"Popcorn?"
"Where did you get that?" Roy Barlow asked, aghast. "Did you put oil in the boiling vessel again?"
"One time! I did that one time!"
Barlow sniffed. "My tastebuds will never taste tea the same way again."
"Oh screw you, you boiled leaf elitist. The new Galleons have microwave and induction-based cookers. I just made sure to nuke up some blocks before we left."
"Wait, that was all the extra satchets you were carrying? I thought you were packing extra plastic explosives!"
"We're not jump infantry this run. Do *you* want to slap some battlemechs in the face?"
Barlow grimaced. The two Eridani Light Horse troopers were sitting in a small foxhole draped over with thermal-camo cloth. While infantry in mech combat were rarely targeted as a priority, fighting around the feet of warborn giants was terrifying and chaotic in equal measure. Jump Infantry were highly trained specialists, and for all their reckless bravery, were valuable enough not to waste on anti-mech swarm combat unless absolutely necessary.
Roy Barlow and Alfred Kirk were part of 9th Recon Company, Recon Lance. They were the third lance to the company that included Beth Duncan's Von Luckner. It was the group of Packrats and Darter Scout Vehicles normally led by Lt. Saludo in his Locust, which rarely contributed to a direct fight. Now the Recon Lance all upgraded to Galleon 3000s, and Lt. Saludo now in a much less fragile customized Super Urbanmech, were raising hell elsewhere.
The pair had been dumped to monitor the top of a canyon while the rest of the infantry component of the Recon Lance went ahead to secure enemy guard posts.
For a change he switched intercept to Kurita radio channels.
> Urbanmechs? Urbanmechs?!
> Who would dare fight us with Urbanmechs?
> My lord, the rumors of the Eridani Light Horse choosing to run these mechs as an insult might be true.
> They are also said to carry lostech.
> Then we shall have them.
> Lance, forward at full speed!
"Some idiots are happily running into Pulse Laser range." Barlow took the bag of popcorn and munched vehemently.
The general in charge of the 11th Benjamin Regulars moved the base from near the capital towards the middle of the desert, to separate them from all the 'immoral filth' and 'whores of the city' and snap the regiment into shape as a potent light mech regiment.
Light mechs were best with 'pursuit tactics'. A heavy lance supported by two light lances could finish off the enemy quickly through saturation of targets. The 11th Benjamin was even a combined-arms force, with a significant amount of tanks lances in their command battlegroup with mechs prowling from the sides. The 11th Benjamin Regulars were at their peak at this point in time, ready to match their prowess against all comers.
It was just unfortunate the the Eridani Light Horse, *the* actual peak of Light Mech Regiment operations in the Inner Sphere, had decided to come calling; appearing from the pirate point and dropping with the express purpose of destroying the 11th Benjamin Regulars.
The 11th Benjamin Regulars put themselves into a target-rich environment where the ELH had no chance of causing unwanted civilian collateral damage.
The sensors bleeped.
Barlow flicked his attention towards the Portable Remote Sensors pack. The canyon below led straight towards the nearby city. Kurita and ELH forces were engaged in pitched battle above the canyon, too consumed with each other to pay attention to anyone fleeing below.
Small 16-kg passive seismic sensors were air-dropped into the canyon in passing by ELH aircraft.
20 kilometers away, Barlow and Kirk tried to make sense of the readings and then switched to IR cameras pointing down into the gap.
"Looks like they're trying to move out and preserve the artillery," said Barlow. "Makes sense. In this canyon anything in front of them, they can just hit with direct-fire. Kurita is making sure that those on top are distracted by mech combat. If they can get away from the base it would be harder to remove them where civilians get to stand as human shields. Or if they can get far enough from base, they can start hitting us when we think we have already won."
Kirk spat. "They know how much we value our reputation keeping to the Ares Conventions." Then flicked on his own comm gear. "That is, *if* artillery makes it there in the first place."
Kirk spoke through the radio "This is Fisheye Two. Gale Support, you are go for artillery fire mission on preset coordinates Nine Tango Zero. Repeat, you are go for fire mission."
Less than thirty seconds later, their canopy fluttered from the passing of Arrow IV artillery missiles. Cluster warheads were total murder inside the confines of a canyon.
The depths crackled with light and fire. And screaming.
Barlow took out one popped kernel and stared down at it through the green tint of his NV goggles. It was total darkness inside the little foxhole again as the control panels dimmed.
"Company-level artillery. Mech-based tube and missile artillery in such numbers we don't even care about wasting them. Arriving with brand-new JumpShips into Pirate Points to leave the enemy almost zero time to react. Bombarding barracks and hangars from low orbit then dropping tank companies from dedicated transports. The Eridani Light Horse is now a regiment-killing task force. This makes it, what - the third regiment we beat in three months?"
He popped the kernel into his mouth and chewed. He could not believe it was not real butter. "This luxury of our new equipment is almost sickening. War isn't supposed to be fun."
> Enemy armor spotted. Tank on tank action imminent.
> Looks like Demolishers.
> Good hunting, Luckies.
"It should however be as easy as much as we can make it," responded Kirk. "Kurita isn't stupid. They're loathsome, but not stupid. We should do the most with what we have while we still can. But some things… well, they're going to keep." He took out another MRE satchet. "Apple juice?"
As Barlow's pensive silence, Kirk added "I also have guyabano, if that's more to your taste."
"What the hell is guyabano?"
-.
-.
South of Base Ecclesiasticus
Tripoli
Some time later
Beth Duncan was now in command of a Strike Lance consisting of her Von Luckner, a Manticore, and two Galleon-IIs. They were now, ironically, the hammer instead of the anvil; pressing forward with all the indomitability of an Assault mech lance. The anvils were now Urbanmech.
Beth looked through her command sights and called out "Panther, bearing 337." Or North-North-West. "All weapons."
"Aye, Panther is locked," responded Paris. SLDF combat vehicle neurohelmets allowed them to achieve weapons lock with just looking in the enemy's direction. Instead of relying on machine recognition, the sensors read the gunner's intent - this is the thing I want to die.
The Multi-Missile-Launcher spat out a stream of LRMs at the enemy mech. Shrack. Shrack. A pair of blue PPC bolts streaked from Von Luckner and the Manticore, with the Panther's own PPC fire crossing the distance at the same time.
Beth felt the enemy's return fire with its PPCs and AC/5s scraping out her tank's armor like little stings across her skin.
Much to everyone's continued displeasure, the DCMS produced a lot of excellent pilots that treated their machines like an extension of themselves. The enemy Panther twisted its body immediately firing to minimize its profile and jinked aside to dodge enemy retaliation. It moved with a fluidity that was almost organic.
Unfortunately for it, it dodged right into the path of a Gauss Rifle slug, fired a moment later to take into consideration its movement.
A PPC was capable of vaporizing half a ton of armor in a single shot. That was what made the Panther, slow for a Light Mech, so disproportionately dangerous for its size.
The Gauss Rifle's firing sound was a deceptively soft *PHRANG*, and a much smoother kick unlike the previous AC/20 main gun. Weapons lock was re-achieved in a fraction of a time.
The Gauss Rifle slug, a 125-kg watermelon shape arriving at hypersonic velocity, slammed into its side, punching through all intact armor there and crushing its soft foamed metal internal structure- sending the Panther spinning all the way around and crashing on its face. 'None of that warrior dignity for you', Beth mused.
The LRMs from the Von Luckner and the Manticore dropped onto the downed mech. Small explosion rippled upon the Kuritan mech, which suddenly erupted into a much larger one as one of the missiles must have gone into the unprotected SRM ammunition. The night and their night vision gear was overpowered for a second by the glare of ammo-cookoff.
"Demolishers about to enter into range," her radio reported from one of the Galleons.
A pair of AC/20s in a turret could kill even an Assault Mech in a single salvo. They had the armor to match. They were 80-ton juggernauts that feared nothing. There was even a full lance of them out there, moving forward with monstrous menace. The Demolisher was one of the most feared tanks in the Inner Sphere for good reason.
If you were in range. AC/20s had the effective range of a Medium Laser.
"There's a word for people who use Demolishers on attack instead of anchoring a battle line," said Beth.
"Bait?" replied Diogenes.
"Shmucks." Demolishers were assault vehicles, and therefore slow, maxing out at just over 54kph at flank speed. They were heading out as a wall trying to force the Light Horse to reverse their assault while the other Light mechs and combat vehicles, mainly Vedettes and lances of SRM-carrying hovercraft, swooped in from the sides. This was the classic three-wave attack of the DCMS - flank and isolate enemy groups and force them to either retreat or be destroyed.
But the enemy was trying this on a flat open desert that was just ideal for fast movers.
Beth ordered "G2 Lead to Strike Lance, move on echelon, bearing 67." East-North-East. The tank lance moved in a steep diagonal line towards the right. "Concentrate fire on the closest Demolisher, then move on to enemy light armor."
Their PPCs had already cycled, and once more the Lucky Miss spat out death - one hot blue line, and almost invisibly right behind it the sudden shock of a Gauss slug. The leftmost Demolisher recoiled from the hit. The Manticore was like a smaller version of her Von Luckner, with its main guns being a PPC and an AC/5.
The Galleons were not yet in range to fire with their ER Medium Lasers, and their gunners wer starting to grouse that they should have LRMs or something.
Demolishers were tough, able to take the hit of their own pairs of heavy guns. From the front. From the side? Not so much. Their combined fire was enough to punch through the assault tank's left side armor. The Demolisher brewed up instantly. That much unprotected AC/20 ammo packed into it like a can of sardines was a death sentence.
The rest of the Demolisher lance reeled from how a pair of heavy tanks were killing things in a single salvo.
The enemy waiting on the wings swooped down to try to take down her pair of heavy tanks.
Beth Duncan was the hammer.
Behind her were two whole lances of Super Urbanmechs carrying ER PPCs. They brought the storm. Demolishers could not dodge worth a damn. And the Vedettes in front of her were just crunchy little bits of metal.
Her main guns punched straight through their front glacis. The Galleons could finally rush forward and wreak merry havoc.
Super Urbanmechs swarmed. PPCs and Pulse Laser fire cut down anything that was not directly in front of her.
Soon enough Beth Duncan and the Lucky Miss rolled past nothing but burning wrecks with the way to the enemy base open. She reported to the command channel "G2 Strike, cleared Nav Delta. Looks like enemy Assault lance ahead, bearing 22, distance 3 clicks. Set as Nav Epsilon."
"Setting coordinates as Nav Epsilon," Diogenes responded.
Beth checked her tank's status. They were half down on Gauss Rifle ammo and almost out of long range missiles. But armor was still green across the board. The Lucky Miss had 12.5 tons of Ferro-Fibrous armor, enough to withstand two AC/20 hits on all facings. Those poor Demolishers only had ten. Still, even with mostly fresh armor, this could get dicey.
Well she did still have a neighborhood of Urbanmechs behind her. "G2 Strike Lance moving on to attack."
-.
"ERIDANI LIGHT HORSE! THE ANGELS ARE WITH ME! MURDERERS MIRED IN SIN, MERCENARIES SELLING YOUR SOUL FOR SILVER! TODAY YOUR LEGEND ENDS! I AM-"
"Mute that," said Beth Duncan.
"Enemy channel muted," Diogenes Eckhard responded.
Paris Fernanda took aim at the 85-ton enemy Stalker battlemech and fired.
-.
-.
The 11th Benjamin Regulars was a regular three battalion regiment with a reinforced regimental battlegroup with extra vehicle lances. They had approximately 140 ground combat units.
The Eridani Light Horse dropped with three Square Battalions plus two independent companies - Barbara Mosley's Badniks and a whole company of artillery. If surprise effectively doubled a force, then they were rolling with the equivalent of 380 combat units.
Before the sun was up, there returned silence upon the dunes.
-.
-.
Benjamin
Benjamin Military District
Draconis Combine
April 3025
Warlord Ukita Syovo Yoriyoshi was shaken by the news, but closing his eyes was all the emotion he could display.
He took a deep breath and whispered "The king was shaken. He went up to the room over the gateway and wept. As he went, he said: O my son Absalom! My son, my son Absalom! If only I had died instead of you—O Absalom, my son, my son!"
"... My lord?" his aide asked with a nervous quiver. He was only reporting the message sent urgently through the HPG. He would probably not be called to commit seppuku over this failure.
But someone had to pay for this. The Benjamin Military District had long been considered a place that got all of the work but little of the attention. It was Warlord Yoriyoshi's personal attention that brought back funding and equipment to the combat theater. As someone that prized initiative over orders, innovation over brute tactics, he had been personally courted by Takashi Kurita to support his military reforms.
In a similar way, he had personally courted then Brigadier General Seville to rebuild the 11th Benjamin into a new more potent light mech regiment built for long-range reconnaissance, skirmishing, hit and run drops, ambushes, screening larger force, and end-run maneuvers. He had even allowed the man to marry Yoriyoshi's former mistress.
A staunch puritan, General Seville renamed himself to Innocent IV and took over the 11th Benjamin Regulars. He moved the main base of the regiment to the middle of the planet's petrified desert to remove them from the "whores of the city".
And now because of that, the whole 11th Benjamin Regulars could be surrounded and destroyed within six hours.
And for now, through the white-hot rage and fear that he would have to explain this loss to the Coordinator - both of them losing face from this - he could only think:
'Poor Izumi. I had treated Seville like my own son. Now he is dead. And now she will also have to kill herself rather than to live in shame, and to be able to perhaps comfort her husband in the afterlife'.
He opened his eyes and waved "Yes. You were saying… they did not even bother to collect salvage?"
"Yes, my lord. The whole campaign happened within six hours, and we estimate that only half that time was in battle. The remaining hours were spent thermite-bombing the fallen mechs and equipment to make them mostly irrecoverable. The Eridani Light Horse focused on burning out combat recorders, but we have managed to piece together this report from offsite sensors and some black boxes and battle roms that managed to survive."
Warlord Yoriyoshi laced his fingers and scowled. Even as a man that commanded the entire force of the Benjamin Military District, a Warlord whose authority was second only to the Coordinator himself, Yoriyoshi grimaced at the sheer waste.
He personally commanded the 17th Benjamin Regulars, and his beloved regiment was fat with money and equipment, given the best and newest that the government could ever provide. What could not be supplied from Luthien, he personally authorized the acquisition from the black markets. A hefty Heavy Assault-rated regiment with substantial artillery and fightercraft support, Yoriyoshi had personally led his troops into many skirmishes and raids against Davion and Steiner to test the latest technological advancements. While mechwarriors took to the field, scientists and technicians crammed into the mobile headquarters at the regimental battlegroup to monitor some new medium laser or new type of armor.
The Combine, despite is economic policy of controlled scarcity, devoted much to the sciences and were a competent, highly efficient force. Always the Combine in its culture of ever-war sought more refinement and efficiency. With their deep spy penetration into other Houses, the DCMS were never too far behind any advancement.
It was always the people that failed the Combine, not its machines.
Yoriyoshi turned to the screen and considered again the events on Tripoli.
One surviving BattleROM showed a Locust quickly being taken down by a swarm of Galleon light tanks. Those appeared to be a pair of Medium Lasers in the turret.
Another had a glitchy video of fast-moving Urbanmechs firing PPCs and pulsing lasers.
Another showed a video of the ELH engineers slagging mech cockpits, after first making sure that the occupants were not feigning death or false surrender. Survivors were put into a prefab camp and just left alone there with enough supplies until they could be picked up by the planet's remaining defenders.
A short recording of a passing Von Luckner tank with two cannons on its turret. A longer one and a shorter but fatter one.
Cameras carried by infantry survived better than recorders in combat chassis. This insistence of recording all combat performance inherited from Yoriyoshi's own performance documentary habits over the 17th Benjamin Regulars turned out to be this debacle's saving grace.
As a technological aficionado, there was much to unpack here. The Eridani Light Horse's Galleon Light Tanks could in theory carry a pair of Medium Lasers in its turret if they went so far as to rebuild the whole engine and transmission for a smaller and slower internal combustion engine.
That tank. Was that a PPC and an Autocannon on a 75-ton tank? Fascinating. Arguably possible as well, if you trade an AC/20 for an AC/10 and a PPC.
Those Urbanmechs. Why so many Urbanmechs? And why are they so faaaast?!
Warlord Yoriyoshi clenched his fists. If it wasn't for the fact that this involved the complete destruction of a regiment, this was a wealth of information!
'Ah, Seville. Ah, Innocent Four! My son, my son.' Yoriyoshi had no direct progeny. His whole line would die with him. He put so much of himself into the regiment and evolving doctrine because it would be the only legacy he could give. These contributions would outlast him. Everything for the Draconis Combine.
He reached over and pushed a button.
The screen shifted into the familiar tan prancing pony symbol.
The Eridani Light Horse.
Looking at the summary of events, he could not help but to feel…
"Perfection," he whispered with a clack of his tongue.
His aide waited in perfect silence. Either he would explain, or he would not. He knew that sometimes great men needed someone there just to listen in order to work out the thoughts in their head. Of course, all such things were to remain in confidence and they were not to offer their own opinion unless asked for. Trying to do anything but a sounding board was to insultingly present themselves as an equal to their commanding officer.
"It is like the Eridani Light Horse wanted to show us what perfection in Light Mech tactics is like. Were they so threatened by my efforts of reforming the clunky regiments that they had to make this display? Imitate the enemy to our shame? No, that would be foolish. The best ideas are those taken from the enemy. Turn their own weapons and methods against them."
Yoriyoshi drummed his fingers on the table's glass surface. Glass on old oak, almost the color of his own sun-tanned hands. "Why assassinate the 11th? The Eridani Light Horse have already removed the 2nd Galedon, the E-regiment of Wolf Dragoon's, and now… the 11th. Why?"
Black Widow Company had been captured by the Light Horse, haven't they? Didn't the Wolf's Dragoons fight the 21st Centauri Lancers on Marduk just a short while ago?
He blinked.
"The 11th is the dagger pointed at the neck of Galtor and Marduk. It had to be removed."
The 'Galtor Thumb' region had always been an irritant to both House Kurita and House Davion, as Galtor stood in the way of Davion's Norse MechWorks on Marduk. Galtor III was also a wealthy and well-populated world with Galtor Naval Yards being the primary producer of Neptune Submarines for the AFFS. House Davion used underwater command posts extensively to protect and coordinate planetary defense that was immune to the initial barrage of invasion.
The 11th Benjamin was responsible for the defense of not just Tripoli but the nearby world of Paris. With those two border worlds removed, the only other two planets that could make the jump to Marduk would be from New Mendham or Donenac, at the very edge of the 30LY jump limit. Threatening Marduk, which is more valuable due to its BattleMech factories, meant inability to reinforce Galtor. The entire Irurzun Prefecture only had 5 regiments to work with, and of these two were permanently based in Irurzun and two more in Reisling's Planet. Both had Galtor in their reach, but not Marduk.
The rest of the worlds in Combine space were only lightly garrisoned or defended by mercenaries of company strength.
The Eridani Light Horse had already proven they can destroy a regiment and be gone within five days, sooner than reinforcements can arrive from a different system! They are trying to cripple staging areas against a future invasion of Galtor!
Warlord Yoriyoshi snarled and slapped his palm down on the table. He winced minutely, as the glass refused to redistribute the force and redirected it back up into his palm and bones.
His eyes glittered with enthusiasm and power again. This was a great loss, but there was now an angle he could explain to the Coordinator. The utter crushing that the Eridani Light Horse delivered even reduced the shame by a smidge. It was not the first regiment to be lost to the ponies after all. There was great dishonor here, but to win against a worthy opponent was a sweeter victory.
As a tech enthusiast, of course he knew about the rumors of an immense lostech facility recently found on Galtor III. How strange that a mercenary regiment is just running around now with so much lostech.
Galtor was the lynchpin, he was sure of it!
Then he scowled again. "But… why Urbanmechs?"
Tripoli
Benjamin Prefecture
Draconis Combine
April 02, 3025
From Colchester to Tripoli was normally 5 jumps and two months. But the first jump was a dead system named Courney. The Scouts jumped immediately afterwards to appear at Bettendorf. The scouts had to wait there for 7 ½ days to charge the KF drives while surreptitiously charging the Fusion Battery from the reactor by using up gross amounts of fuel, equivalent to a dozen burn-days of operation.
But this was a WarShip that looked like a JumpShip and it had a thousand tons of fuel.
The next closest system towards Tripoli was another dead system, Ballentine. The ships jumped again, and that brought them to Royal, one jump away from Tripoli. They were joined there by another pair of Scouts, bringing Allwine Battalion and Badnik Company from New Aberdeen, which was but two jumps away.
The 91st Strike Cav and elements of the 121st Dark Horse were in force at full regiment weight. They set out from Colchester at the end of February and arrived in mid-March.
Although it would be simple enough to shuttle from Scout to Scout on dedicated Small Craft transports, Beth Duncan didn't get to meet Barbara Mosley. The Eridani Light Horse spent this last week on more meetings and briefings and simulations and planning for the worst case scenarios.
The DCMS was still preparing to take their revenge and move the multiple regiments necessary to assault a fortified world. According to standard SLDF doctrine, the element of surprise effectively doubles your force.
The Scouts appeared suddenly in-system, right between the planet of Tripoli and its star. As the DropShips undocked and burned towards the world with jaw-jarring force, Beth Duncan turned to her crew and said "If we're actually the SLDF now, then this has to be a perfect run. We can't screw this up. We are being watched if we're worthy of the name. We won't shame the flag!"
"Total obliteration," whispered back Jocelyn Xiang.
Paris Fendana whistled and softly sang "From the halls of Mon-te-zuuuma…"
Diogenes added "To the shores of Tri-po-liii~"
The skies opened and hell rained down.
-.
-.
Base Ecclesiasticus
Tripoli
Same time
The Eridani Light Horse timed themselves to arrive before midnight over the DCMS base on Tripoli. General Innocent IV woke up to the buzzing of the doorbell to his private quarters.
"Whu-?" The square-faced man with a pointed mustache and a goatee sat up suddenly. He winced in pain at the rush of blood. He reached out to the remote right beside the handgun on the nightstand, and unlocked the door. Paranoia about assassination was a virtue in the DCMS. "Enter."
After a couple of courtesy knocks, the door hissed open. Masashi Oh, the regimental aide-de-camp, entered and bowed deeply. "My deepest apologies, Tai-sho! But there are vessels that appeared in the Pirate Point and DropShips are of this moment burning towards us. We are under attack!"
Innocent IV's moment of alarm quickly resolved itself into grim anticipation. "How foolish." The Davions already tried recapturing Tripoli back in 3021 with the 17th Avalon Hussars and were beaten back. The 11th Benjamin Regulars were in full force in Tripoli, and two more regiments from the Amphigean Light Assault Group were two jumps away.
The world was ready to repulse another invasion.
He dressed himself and headed out. "How is the mobilization proceeding?"
"O'Connor's squadron has already been mobilized and ready to meet them in orbit. Conventional fighter airbases have already been alerted."
House Kurita prided itself not just on its MechWarrior's surpassing ability but also the skill and number of their pilots. Kurita air power was not only typically dense but used liberally.
"Excelente. Who are these fools that dare attack us at our own home ground?" he asked while continuing to briskly walk down a set of stairs and through tunnels heading to the command center. As the base was located in a desert, building underground was not only more secure but more comfortable. "Davions? How many ships? How much time do we have?"
"Begging your forgiveness my lord, so far things are unclear. The command center would know more, I rushed to inform you and assure your safety." The aide-de-camp was somewhere between a bodyguard and a secretary for the regimental commander. While it was not usually known for the Davions to use assassins to decapitate a defense, Kurita always expected their enemies to do what they would do themselves.
After a short walk, they reached the underground command center. "Report!"
"Yes, my lord! The enemy appeared at the L1 planet-star Pirate Point. They come with six ships, and twelve dropships. Ten dropships are right now are on the approach."
Innocent IV nodded. Whoever these invaders were, they had more bravery than sense. Even setting aside the risk of a misjump and ripping the ship and everything connected to it into their component atoms, by trying to jump into a Pirate Point you had best be completely confident you will win. Otherwise you were just giving your enemy free JumpShips.
"How soon before they arrive?"
"They're burning at 2 gees, lord general. Depending on how soon they break to decelerate, anywhere between three to four hours."
"Tch." This was the problem with Tripoli. It was a small planet orbiting a small star, only about half an AU away from its star and only had .76 Terran standard gravity. The lower gravity made life somewhat easier on the world, and made people believe they lived longer with less stress. They lacked discipline to endure hardship. In practice, this also meant that the distance between the L1 pirate point and the world was half as much as a main sequence star.
"This does not give as much time to prepare as the usual five days from the Jump Point, but it is enough. A surprise, but not exactly an unwelcome one." He had time to think. Where would the enemy attempt to land? What were the major objectives? It was not enough time for full mobilization. They had to work with what they had available. Anything that was more than four hours away at their best speed would be out of position and thus useless for defense.
Defending the capital city of Louca Town made sense, but Tripoli was primarily an agricultural world. Other than the capital, which was a fetid hive of degeneracy, and various other farming settlements, the only other site of import was this base.
He grinned fiercely. "Keep monitoring. I shall pray for our success - not because I have no confidence in it, but that it may be a glorious victory!"
-.
-.
The Draconis Combine was primarily a culture steeped in Shito and Confucian and Taoist themes, and only grudgingly accommodated Christianity and Islam due to the presence of Rasalhague and Azami territories within the Combine. As long as they served House Kurita well, they would be left mostly alone. Catholicism had long been considered a hated Davion characteristic.
So why then would someone who renamed himself Innocent IV, like a Pope, end up a regimental commander?
That was because prior to this, his name was Manuel Benedicto de Seville, and he was from Cadiz, a world close to the District capital of Benjamin. The people of Cadiz were so deliberately obnoxiously Spaniard that even House Kurita, which was deliberately obnoxiously Japanese, saw no point in trying to crush their culture. Cadiz produced a lot of bullish glory hounds for the military who, unlike most troops that needed to have the fear of death brutalized out of them, stood ready with machismo looking for a legendary fight.
Seville was excessively religious, but he was also an excellent taskmaster that would not make his men do anything he would not willingly do himself.
The DCMS considered his crusading in the name of House Kurita an acceptable expression of loyalty.
-.
-.
The time before an invasion force arrives was always spent in nervous uncertainty. Defenders could only hope they made the right disposition of forces. Four hours was not enough time to muster defenders usually spread out around the world. These invaders made a mistake in coming to Tripoli, where the regiment was concentrated into one landmass.
They could try to land and raid elsewhere, Innocent IV supposed, but it would be a waste to spend all that much time just to pick up bushels of corn.
His meditations were interrupted at around 2 AM by the drumming of explosions. Innocent IV entered the command center to see the frenzy of open battle.
The operators reported "My lord! Enemy dropships are landing due north and due south of our position. O'Connor's squadron was not able to stop their insertion. Planetary conventional fighters have all been wiped out. Anti-air guns are doing their part, but cannot completely stop high-altitude bomb drops. External hangars are damaged, but most of our mech forces are intact. They are coming here!"
"Who are they?"
"Eridani Light Horse."
The screen showed tracer fire stitching a line into the night sky, while the base erupted into stalks of flame. Mechs and tanks in hangars exposed above ground hurried to leave and find something to shoot out in the open desert.
Sending out Swift's Battalion to the city borders put them about two hours away from contact, but still near enough to pincer the enemy.
Innocent IV beamed. The 11th Benjamin Regulars were themselves the objective! "Good. Good! This is perfect! Prepare my mech, this is the fight I was training you for! Decisive Light Regiment battle! Go forth, in the name of God and House Kurita!"
-.
-.
East of Base Ecclesiasticus
Tripoli
Some time later
The cloudless desert night lit up across the horizon with multicolored glows. The sky blossomed with bright bursts almost like fireworks, and pillars of light swayed from side to side. Roy Barlow turned his binoculars to the right. Blue flashes that rippled across the dunes. Now and then punctuated by a blooming amber explosion.
PPC fire, Barlow mused. The night vision mode was turned off. He didn't need to see enemy mechs skirmishing at the distance. The blue streaks heading from left towards the center of his view were more sporadic than the enemy. House Kurita liked to use PPCs and it was predicted Panthers and Katapult K2s were in good number among the 11th Benjamin Regulars. Unfortunately for them, Gauss Rifle fire traveled so fast without a tracer that they were effectively invisible.
He listened into encrypted ELH comms, the electronics of his headset active only as long as it detected his particular brainwaves.
> Enemy contact at Nav Beta. Lance of two Dragons, one Jenner, one Commando.
> Strike Lance engaging.
> This is Badnik Company Lead. Nav Gamma cleared.
> Armor loss minimal. Moving to Nav Delta.
> Katapult down.
> G1 Lead to all Galleons, form on me.
> Push forward. Galleons concentrate fire on that Dragon.
> Looks like it wants to play Stomp on the Tankie.
Over to the right on the opposite side of the canyon, green lines criss-crossed. Kicked-up fine desert dust illuminated normally invisible laser beams. LRMs here and there made lingering streaks like someone wiping paint across glass.
He heard a crinkling noise from beside him. He turned to see Alfred Kirk wiggle an open MRE box at him.
"Popcorn?"
"Where did you get that?" Roy Barlow asked, aghast. "Did you put oil in the boiling vessel again?"
"One time! I did that one time!"
Barlow sniffed. "My tastebuds will never taste tea the same way again."
"Oh screw you, you boiled leaf elitist. The new Galleons have microwave and induction-based cookers. I just made sure to nuke up some blocks before we left."
"Wait, that was all the extra satchets you were carrying? I thought you were packing extra plastic explosives!"
"We're not jump infantry this run. Do *you* want to slap some battlemechs in the face?"
Barlow grimaced. The two Eridani Light Horse troopers were sitting in a small foxhole draped over with thermal-camo cloth. While infantry in mech combat were rarely targeted as a priority, fighting around the feet of warborn giants was terrifying and chaotic in equal measure. Jump Infantry were highly trained specialists, and for all their reckless bravery, were valuable enough not to waste on anti-mech swarm combat unless absolutely necessary.
Roy Barlow and Alfred Kirk were part of 9th Recon Company, Recon Lance. They were the third lance to the company that included Beth Duncan's Von Luckner. It was the group of Packrats and Darter Scout Vehicles normally led by Lt. Saludo in his Locust, which rarely contributed to a direct fight. Now the Recon Lance all upgraded to Galleon 3000s, and Lt. Saludo now in a much less fragile customized Super Urbanmech, were raising hell elsewhere.
The pair had been dumped to monitor the top of a canyon while the rest of the infantry component of the Recon Lance went ahead to secure enemy guard posts.
For a change he switched intercept to Kurita radio channels.
> Urbanmechs? Urbanmechs?!
> Who would dare fight us with Urbanmechs?
> My lord, the rumors of the Eridani Light Horse choosing to run these mechs as an insult might be true.
> They are also said to carry lostech.
> Then we shall have them.
> Lance, forward at full speed!
"Some idiots are happily running into Pulse Laser range." Barlow took the bag of popcorn and munched vehemently.
The general in charge of the 11th Benjamin Regulars moved the base from near the capital towards the middle of the desert, to separate them from all the 'immoral filth' and 'whores of the city' and snap the regiment into shape as a potent light mech regiment.
Light mechs were best with 'pursuit tactics'. A heavy lance supported by two light lances could finish off the enemy quickly through saturation of targets. The 11th Benjamin was even a combined-arms force, with a significant amount of tanks lances in their command battlegroup with mechs prowling from the sides. The 11th Benjamin Regulars were at their peak at this point in time, ready to match their prowess against all comers.
It was just unfortunate the the Eridani Light Horse, *the* actual peak of Light Mech Regiment operations in the Inner Sphere, had decided to come calling; appearing from the pirate point and dropping with the express purpose of destroying the 11th Benjamin Regulars.
The 11th Benjamin Regulars put themselves into a target-rich environment where the ELH had no chance of causing unwanted civilian collateral damage.
The sensors bleeped.
Barlow flicked his attention towards the Portable Remote Sensors pack. The canyon below led straight towards the nearby city. Kurita and ELH forces were engaged in pitched battle above the canyon, too consumed with each other to pay attention to anyone fleeing below.
Small 16-kg passive seismic sensors were air-dropped into the canyon in passing by ELH aircraft.
20 kilometers away, Barlow and Kirk tried to make sense of the readings and then switched to IR cameras pointing down into the gap.
"Looks like they're trying to move out and preserve the artillery," said Barlow. "Makes sense. In this canyon anything in front of them, they can just hit with direct-fire. Kurita is making sure that those on top are distracted by mech combat. If they can get away from the base it would be harder to remove them where civilians get to stand as human shields. Or if they can get far enough from base, they can start hitting us when we think we have already won."
Kirk spat. "They know how much we value our reputation keeping to the Ares Conventions." Then flicked on his own comm gear. "That is, *if* artillery makes it there in the first place."
Kirk spoke through the radio "This is Fisheye Two. Gale Support, you are go for artillery fire mission on preset coordinates Nine Tango Zero. Repeat, you are go for fire mission."
Less than thirty seconds later, their canopy fluttered from the passing of Arrow IV artillery missiles. Cluster warheads were total murder inside the confines of a canyon.
The depths crackled with light and fire. And screaming.
Barlow took out one popped kernel and stared down at it through the green tint of his NV goggles. It was total darkness inside the little foxhole again as the control panels dimmed.
"Company-level artillery. Mech-based tube and missile artillery in such numbers we don't even care about wasting them. Arriving with brand-new JumpShips into Pirate Points to leave the enemy almost zero time to react. Bombarding barracks and hangars from low orbit then dropping tank companies from dedicated transports. The Eridani Light Horse is now a regiment-killing task force. This makes it, what - the third regiment we beat in three months?"
He popped the kernel into his mouth and chewed. He could not believe it was not real butter. "This luxury of our new equipment is almost sickening. War isn't supposed to be fun."
> Enemy armor spotted. Tank on tank action imminent.
> Looks like Demolishers.
> Good hunting, Luckies.
"It should however be as easy as much as we can make it," responded Kirk. "Kurita isn't stupid. They're loathsome, but not stupid. We should do the most with what we have while we still can. But some things… well, they're going to keep." He took out another MRE satchet. "Apple juice?"
As Barlow's pensive silence, Kirk added "I also have guyabano, if that's more to your taste."
"What the hell is guyabano?"
-.
-.
South of Base Ecclesiasticus
Tripoli
Some time later
Beth Duncan was now in command of a Strike Lance consisting of her Von Luckner, a Manticore, and two Galleon-IIs. They were now, ironically, the hammer instead of the anvil; pressing forward with all the indomitability of an Assault mech lance. The anvils were now Urbanmech.
Beth looked through her command sights and called out "Panther, bearing 337." Or North-North-West. "All weapons."
"Aye, Panther is locked," responded Paris. SLDF combat vehicle neurohelmets allowed them to achieve weapons lock with just looking in the enemy's direction. Instead of relying on machine recognition, the sensors read the gunner's intent - this is the thing I want to die.
The Multi-Missile-Launcher spat out a stream of LRMs at the enemy mech. Shrack. Shrack. A pair of blue PPC bolts streaked from Von Luckner and the Manticore, with the Panther's own PPC fire crossing the distance at the same time.
Beth felt the enemy's return fire with its PPCs and AC/5s scraping out her tank's armor like little stings across her skin.
Much to everyone's continued displeasure, the DCMS produced a lot of excellent pilots that treated their machines like an extension of themselves. The enemy Panther twisted its body immediately firing to minimize its profile and jinked aside to dodge enemy retaliation. It moved with a fluidity that was almost organic.
Unfortunately for it, it dodged right into the path of a Gauss Rifle slug, fired a moment later to take into consideration its movement.
A PPC was capable of vaporizing half a ton of armor in a single shot. That was what made the Panther, slow for a Light Mech, so disproportionately dangerous for its size.
The Gauss Rifle's firing sound was a deceptively soft *PHRANG*, and a much smoother kick unlike the previous AC/20 main gun. Weapons lock was re-achieved in a fraction of a time.
The Gauss Rifle slug, a 125-kg watermelon shape arriving at hypersonic velocity, slammed into its side, punching through all intact armor there and crushing its soft foamed metal internal structure- sending the Panther spinning all the way around and crashing on its face. 'None of that warrior dignity for you', Beth mused.
The LRMs from the Von Luckner and the Manticore dropped onto the downed mech. Small explosion rippled upon the Kuritan mech, which suddenly erupted into a much larger one as one of the missiles must have gone into the unprotected SRM ammunition. The night and their night vision gear was overpowered for a second by the glare of ammo-cookoff.
"Demolishers about to enter into range," her radio reported from one of the Galleons.
A pair of AC/20s in a turret could kill even an Assault Mech in a single salvo. They had the armor to match. They were 80-ton juggernauts that feared nothing. There was even a full lance of them out there, moving forward with monstrous menace. The Demolisher was one of the most feared tanks in the Inner Sphere for good reason.
If you were in range. AC/20s had the effective range of a Medium Laser.
"There's a word for people who use Demolishers on attack instead of anchoring a battle line," said Beth.
"Bait?" replied Diogenes.
"Shmucks." Demolishers were assault vehicles, and therefore slow, maxing out at just over 54kph at flank speed. They were heading out as a wall trying to force the Light Horse to reverse their assault while the other Light mechs and combat vehicles, mainly Vedettes and lances of SRM-carrying hovercraft, swooped in from the sides. This was the classic three-wave attack of the DCMS - flank and isolate enemy groups and force them to either retreat or be destroyed.
But the enemy was trying this on a flat open desert that was just ideal for fast movers.
Beth ordered "G2 Lead to Strike Lance, move on echelon, bearing 67." East-North-East. The tank lance moved in a steep diagonal line towards the right. "Concentrate fire on the closest Demolisher, then move on to enemy light armor."
Their PPCs had already cycled, and once more the Lucky Miss spat out death - one hot blue line, and almost invisibly right behind it the sudden shock of a Gauss slug. The leftmost Demolisher recoiled from the hit. The Manticore was like a smaller version of her Von Luckner, with its main guns being a PPC and an AC/5.
The Galleons were not yet in range to fire with their ER Medium Lasers, and their gunners wer starting to grouse that they should have LRMs or something.
Demolishers were tough, able to take the hit of their own pairs of heavy guns. From the front. From the side? Not so much. Their combined fire was enough to punch through the assault tank's left side armor. The Demolisher brewed up instantly. That much unprotected AC/20 ammo packed into it like a can of sardines was a death sentence.
The rest of the Demolisher lance reeled from how a pair of heavy tanks were killing things in a single salvo.
The enemy waiting on the wings swooped down to try to take down her pair of heavy tanks.
Beth Duncan was the hammer.
Behind her were two whole lances of Super Urbanmechs carrying ER PPCs. They brought the storm. Demolishers could not dodge worth a damn. And the Vedettes in front of her were just crunchy little bits of metal.
Her main guns punched straight through their front glacis. The Galleons could finally rush forward and wreak merry havoc.
Super Urbanmechs swarmed. PPCs and Pulse Laser fire cut down anything that was not directly in front of her.
Soon enough Beth Duncan and the Lucky Miss rolled past nothing but burning wrecks with the way to the enemy base open. She reported to the command channel "G2 Strike, cleared Nav Delta. Looks like enemy Assault lance ahead, bearing 22, distance 3 clicks. Set as Nav Epsilon."
"Setting coordinates as Nav Epsilon," Diogenes responded.
Beth checked her tank's status. They were half down on Gauss Rifle ammo and almost out of long range missiles. But armor was still green across the board. The Lucky Miss had 12.5 tons of Ferro-Fibrous armor, enough to withstand two AC/20 hits on all facings. Those poor Demolishers only had ten. Still, even with mostly fresh armor, this could get dicey.
Well she did still have a neighborhood of Urbanmechs behind her. "G2 Strike Lance moving on to attack."
-.
"ERIDANI LIGHT HORSE! THE ANGELS ARE WITH ME! MURDERERS MIRED IN SIN, MERCENARIES SELLING YOUR SOUL FOR SILVER! TODAY YOUR LEGEND ENDS! I AM-"
"Mute that," said Beth Duncan.
"Enemy channel muted," Diogenes Eckhard responded.
Paris Fernanda took aim at the 85-ton enemy Stalker battlemech and fired.
-.
-.
The 11th Benjamin Regulars was a regular three battalion regiment with a reinforced regimental battlegroup with extra vehicle lances. They had approximately 140 ground combat units.
The Eridani Light Horse dropped with three Square Battalions plus two independent companies - Barbara Mosley's Badniks and a whole company of artillery. If surprise effectively doubled a force, then they were rolling with the equivalent of 380 combat units.
Before the sun was up, there returned silence upon the dunes.
-.
-.
Benjamin
Benjamin Military District
Draconis Combine
April 3025
Warlord Ukita Syovo Yoriyoshi was shaken by the news, but closing his eyes was all the emotion he could display.
He took a deep breath and whispered "The king was shaken. He went up to the room over the gateway and wept. As he went, he said: O my son Absalom! My son, my son Absalom! If only I had died instead of you—O Absalom, my son, my son!"
"... My lord?" his aide asked with a nervous quiver. He was only reporting the message sent urgently through the HPG. He would probably not be called to commit seppuku over this failure.
But someone had to pay for this. The Benjamin Military District had long been considered a place that got all of the work but little of the attention. It was Warlord Yoriyoshi's personal attention that brought back funding and equipment to the combat theater. As someone that prized initiative over orders, innovation over brute tactics, he had been personally courted by Takashi Kurita to support his military reforms.
In a similar way, he had personally courted then Brigadier General Seville to rebuild the 11th Benjamin into a new more potent light mech regiment built for long-range reconnaissance, skirmishing, hit and run drops, ambushes, screening larger force, and end-run maneuvers. He had even allowed the man to marry Yoriyoshi's former mistress.
A staunch puritan, General Seville renamed himself to Innocent IV and took over the 11th Benjamin Regulars. He moved the main base of the regiment to the middle of the planet's petrified desert to remove them from the "whores of the city".
And now because of that, the whole 11th Benjamin Regulars could be surrounded and destroyed within six hours.
And for now, through the white-hot rage and fear that he would have to explain this loss to the Coordinator - both of them losing face from this - he could only think:
'Poor Izumi. I had treated Seville like my own son. Now he is dead. And now she will also have to kill herself rather than to live in shame, and to be able to perhaps comfort her husband in the afterlife'.
He opened his eyes and waved "Yes. You were saying… they did not even bother to collect salvage?"
"Yes, my lord. The whole campaign happened within six hours, and we estimate that only half that time was in battle. The remaining hours were spent thermite-bombing the fallen mechs and equipment to make them mostly irrecoverable. The Eridani Light Horse focused on burning out combat recorders, but we have managed to piece together this report from offsite sensors and some black boxes and battle roms that managed to survive."
Warlord Yoriyoshi laced his fingers and scowled. Even as a man that commanded the entire force of the Benjamin Military District, a Warlord whose authority was second only to the Coordinator himself, Yoriyoshi grimaced at the sheer waste.
He personally commanded the 17th Benjamin Regulars, and his beloved regiment was fat with money and equipment, given the best and newest that the government could ever provide. What could not be supplied from Luthien, he personally authorized the acquisition from the black markets. A hefty Heavy Assault-rated regiment with substantial artillery and fightercraft support, Yoriyoshi had personally led his troops into many skirmishes and raids against Davion and Steiner to test the latest technological advancements. While mechwarriors took to the field, scientists and technicians crammed into the mobile headquarters at the regimental battlegroup to monitor some new medium laser or new type of armor.
The Combine, despite is economic policy of controlled scarcity, devoted much to the sciences and were a competent, highly efficient force. Always the Combine in its culture of ever-war sought more refinement and efficiency. With their deep spy penetration into other Houses, the DCMS were never too far behind any advancement.
It was always the people that failed the Combine, not its machines.
Yoriyoshi turned to the screen and considered again the events on Tripoli.
- Six JumpShips, each with two drop-collars, possibly Merchants instead of the more common three-collar Invaders, appeared in the 'Pirate Point' of stable cancelled-gravity between the world and its sun. Normally Tripoli was five days away from the normal jump points above or below the star. Instead they had mere hours to decide whether to concentrate or distribute their forces.
- The 11th Benjamin had a squadron of aerospace fighters, O'Conner's Squadron with a mix of 12 heavy and light fighters, plus the planetary militia's airbreathers. The Eridani Light Horse disgorged a full wing of 36 fighters in three squadrons.
- Half of these tangled with the defenders, while the other half escorted the dropships to landing and made bombing attacks over the 11th Benjamin's base.
- While the base was in disarray, the ELH landed on two locations flanked east and west of the base and set out in simultaneous assault.
- It was difficult to piece together the results of combat, but behind all the screaming and explosions, three things remained consistent: Rocket artillery. Small and fast laser tanks. And Urbanmech.
- Targeted bunker-busters and fuel-air bombs completely leveled the base before the ELH decided to leave.
- The Eridani Light Horse thereafter refused to do anymore on the planet, but scoured the orbitals clean and occasionally pumped mysteriously garbled broadcasts down onto the cities and towns of the planet.
- After five days, the six JumpShips jumped out again.
One surviving BattleROM showed a Locust quickly being taken down by a swarm of Galleon light tanks. Those appeared to be a pair of Medium Lasers in the turret.
Another had a glitchy video of fast-moving Urbanmechs firing PPCs and pulsing lasers.
Another showed a video of the ELH engineers slagging mech cockpits, after first making sure that the occupants were not feigning death or false surrender. Survivors were put into a prefab camp and just left alone there with enough supplies until they could be picked up by the planet's remaining defenders.
A short recording of a passing Von Luckner tank with two cannons on its turret. A longer one and a shorter but fatter one.
Cameras carried by infantry survived better than recorders in combat chassis. This insistence of recording all combat performance inherited from Yoriyoshi's own performance documentary habits over the 17th Benjamin Regulars turned out to be this debacle's saving grace.
As a technological aficionado, there was much to unpack here. The Eridani Light Horse's Galleon Light Tanks could in theory carry a pair of Medium Lasers in its turret if they went so far as to rebuild the whole engine and transmission for a smaller and slower internal combustion engine.
That tank. Was that a PPC and an Autocannon on a 75-ton tank? Fascinating. Arguably possible as well, if you trade an AC/20 for an AC/10 and a PPC.
Those Urbanmechs. Why so many Urbanmechs? And why are they so faaaast?!
Warlord Yoriyoshi clenched his fists. If it wasn't for the fact that this involved the complete destruction of a regiment, this was a wealth of information!
'Ah, Seville. Ah, Innocent Four! My son, my son.' Yoriyoshi had no direct progeny. His whole line would die with him. He put so much of himself into the regiment and evolving doctrine because it would be the only legacy he could give. These contributions would outlast him. Everything for the Draconis Combine.
He reached over and pushed a button.
The screen shifted into the familiar tan prancing pony symbol.
The Eridani Light Horse.
Looking at the summary of events, he could not help but to feel…
"Perfection," he whispered with a clack of his tongue.
His aide waited in perfect silence. Either he would explain, or he would not. He knew that sometimes great men needed someone there just to listen in order to work out the thoughts in their head. Of course, all such things were to remain in confidence and they were not to offer their own opinion unless asked for. Trying to do anything but a sounding board was to insultingly present themselves as an equal to their commanding officer.
"It is like the Eridani Light Horse wanted to show us what perfection in Light Mech tactics is like. Were they so threatened by my efforts of reforming the clunky regiments that they had to make this display? Imitate the enemy to our shame? No, that would be foolish. The best ideas are those taken from the enemy. Turn their own weapons and methods against them."
Yoriyoshi drummed his fingers on the table's glass surface. Glass on old oak, almost the color of his own sun-tanned hands. "Why assassinate the 11th? The Eridani Light Horse have already removed the 2nd Galedon, the E-regiment of Wolf Dragoon's, and now… the 11th. Why?"
Black Widow Company had been captured by the Light Horse, haven't they? Didn't the Wolf's Dragoons fight the 21st Centauri Lancers on Marduk just a short while ago?
He blinked.
"The 11th is the dagger pointed at the neck of Galtor and Marduk. It had to be removed."
The 'Galtor Thumb' region had always been an irritant to both House Kurita and House Davion, as Galtor stood in the way of Davion's Norse MechWorks on Marduk. Galtor III was also a wealthy and well-populated world with Galtor Naval Yards being the primary producer of Neptune Submarines for the AFFS. House Davion used underwater command posts extensively to protect and coordinate planetary defense that was immune to the initial barrage of invasion.
The 11th Benjamin was responsible for the defense of not just Tripoli but the nearby world of Paris. With those two border worlds removed, the only other two planets that could make the jump to Marduk would be from New Mendham or Donenac, at the very edge of the 30LY jump limit. Threatening Marduk, which is more valuable due to its BattleMech factories, meant inability to reinforce Galtor. The entire Irurzun Prefecture only had 5 regiments to work with, and of these two were permanently based in Irurzun and two more in Reisling's Planet. Both had Galtor in their reach, but not Marduk.
The rest of the worlds in Combine space were only lightly garrisoned or defended by mercenaries of company strength.
The Eridani Light Horse had already proven they can destroy a regiment and be gone within five days, sooner than reinforcements can arrive from a different system! They are trying to cripple staging areas against a future invasion of Galtor!
Warlord Yoriyoshi snarled and slapped his palm down on the table. He winced minutely, as the glass refused to redistribute the force and redirected it back up into his palm and bones.
His eyes glittered with enthusiasm and power again. This was a great loss, but there was now an angle he could explain to the Coordinator. The utter crushing that the Eridani Light Horse delivered even reduced the shame by a smidge. It was not the first regiment to be lost to the ponies after all. There was great dishonor here, but to win against a worthy opponent was a sweeter victory.
As a tech enthusiast, of course he knew about the rumors of an immense lostech facility recently found on Galtor III. How strange that a mercenary regiment is just running around now with so much lostech.
Galtor was the lynchpin, he was sure of it!
Then he scowled again. "But… why Urbanmechs?"
Last edited:
12.1 To the Wild Frontier
bluepencil
The tropics will be uninhabitable.
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To the Wild Frontier
Comstar and ROM were in a tizzy trying to put out fires everywhere. While it was far too late to discredit or destroy the DEMETER CORE, they could still try to disrupt attempts at prototyping its open-sourced terraforming technology. Everyone from the ISF, Maskirova, LIC, ISF, ROM, etc. were trying to find out more and insert their own agents into the Eridani Light Horse.
If there was a group more confused than all of the intelligence agencies of the Inner Sphere, it would be the Eridani Light Horse 71st "White Horse" Regiment themselves. Through most of 3024, they had taken the brunt of fulfilling the Light Horse's commitments. Now they were being cycled back for rest and refit as the 21st and 91st regiments took over border security.
Fort Bradley had expanded by 50% since last year. Urbanmechs and Urbanmech-shaped things were running around the place. Civilianmechs were cutting down trees and processing lumber. Ultralight Urbanite mechs were helping like oversized infantry and workmen. All the newly refit heavy tanks had dome-shaped turrets. They had a new hippodrome for lectures and theatrical presentations.
We now have lostech out the wazoo, what?
Our lostech comes in the form of Urbanmech, what?
Barbara Mosley beat Natasha Kerensky, what?
She has an Independent Company now, what?
Natasha Kerensky is training our people now to plug the hole in our one-on-one fighting doctrine, what?
We have a 91st Regiment now, what?
We wiped out the 2nd Galedon Regulars, what?
We beat the Dragoons in space because we now have Assault Dropships, what?
We have new JumpShips, what?
We found a DEMETER CORE, what?
We released the DEMETER CORE to the public domain, what?
We wiped out the 11th Benjamin Regulars, what?
In our down cycle you're sending us out into the Davion Outback, what?
Colonel William Petersen, commander of the 71st, said "This is all vastly more complicated than how I have been informed. It appears too many decisions have been made without my being in the loop, and while I have no objection against majority rule this to me appears to violate the spirit of these rules, sir."
Armstrong nodded. "I agree. For the sake of operational security and interception of information too many things needed to be done quickly and without any prior warning. Now that you are back, it is time to get you all caught up on why the Light Horse is behaving like this."
"Yes, sir. Thank you sir. These Urbanmechs confuse me, sir."
"It is not that complicated," spoke Colonel Robert C. Fairchild, commander of the 121st Dark Horse. "They are surprisingly adaptable platforms once you start looking into their internals."
Petersen squinted, still in doubt. Fairchild was the youngest of all the regimental commanders, and was known for making bold and controversial decisions. It made sense for him to be so welcoming of this as he was also the most outspoken advocate of change in their tradition-bound RCT. However, while it was fine to disagree, Petersen refrained from saying anything that would imply he devalued the opinion of his fellow Colonel just for their age.
Petersen secretly hoped that he would eventually succeed Nathan Armstrong as Brevet General, and acted with dignity and achievement that would help others see them in that role.
"There is a better place to talk about this. Follow me."
A side room in the command center turned out to be an elevator. The three members of Eridani High Command entered, and then descended. Petersen felt momentarily weightless as the elevator moved at an unusual speed more commonly suited for high-rise buildings.
Ding.
The elevator opened to a nondescript hallway. They turned left and entered a room which had a wide conference table with holoprojectors facing towards the seats. The holographic figures stood up from their seats to attention as their superior officer entered the room.
"At ease. Been waiting long?"
"No, sir," replied Colonel Charles K. Winston. The old man sat back down on his conference chair somewhere in Harrow's Sun. "We have been looking forward to finally getting all of the regimental commands read into recent events."
"We have been talking over how things were going training with the 4th Deneb. The Marduk Militia… well, I can say they're rich in experience - no offense," spoke Colonel Edward Stimson.
"None taken," said Winston.
"But their mechs are just as aged. They're just to hold on until the Robinson Rangers or 1st Chisholm Raiders RCT can move. Marduk's swamps and jungles aren't a good fit for heavy mechs or large armies. ER PPCs are less useful here, apart from the lack of minimum range restrictions, but it's prime ambush ground anyway."
Once again, Petersen blinked. He personally did not feel that Edward Stimson would be a good fit as a regimental commander. Though he lived up to the reputations of his ancestors as a fighting line officer, he was a poor administrator and his unit often suffered from supply shortages and poor coordination. He had noted as such on the information docket he was provided, but had been outvoted in the formation of the 91st. He still had no idea why it was so urgent.
Then the destruction of the 11th Benjamins happened. He put aside any more thoughts of objection. Rarely did any regiment accomplish such total victory against another regiment, much less three complete victories in rapid succession.
Armstrong nodded towards him as he took a seat. "So you have been training the 91st in dense foliage operations? Did the Marduk Militia take the delivery?"
"Yes, sir. The militia and Norse MechWorks in particular are happy to be donated a whole battalion of Pulse Laser Urbanmechs."
That was 72 million Cb worth of equipment down the hole right there, while the entire Eridani Light Horse only cost 20 million per month to maintain. He could just hear the AFFS wondering since when did the ELH get the stones to just throw away mechs like this?
Though in a little more reflection they would see it would turn out to be a 1:1 exchange with New Avalon anyway. The best thing you can do with salvaged Urbanmechs is to exchange them for better Heavy mechs.
"Great." Then he turned towards Petersen and Fairchild on the far end of the table. He made a beckoning gesture to the former. "You look like you have questions. Go ahead."
"Yes, Sir. First, sir… I have to ask - Colonel Winston. Colonel Stimson. You… you are still at Harrow's Sun and Marduk, correct?"
"Correct," said Winston.
"Yup, right in the middle of the Tillerbee jungle," replied Stimson.
"This is a real-time holo-conference. I had an idea that this was possible… but this… this would be both extremely expensive and insecure if we go through Comstar. How is this possible?"
"We have our own secure HPG network now," Armstrong admitted.
Petersen clasped his palms together and rested his elbows on the table. His head hung in an almost praying position. He looked up and whispered "So the rumors are true, then? We are reactivated by the SLDF?"
Both Winston and Stimson winced, while Fairchild leaned back on his chair with an eager little smirk. Armstrong sighed. "Not… by the SLDF. We are reactivated as the Third Regimental Combat Team, but not under the authority of the SLDF. To understand why the Light Horse is acting this way, you must understand… what actually happen to the SLDF after Kerensky's Exodus."
One of the walls of the sealed conference room acted like a screen. A presentation began playing, narrated by an oddly youthful voice.
-.
The presentation covered
> Kerensky's war fatigue and the reasons for the Exodus
> The Exodus Road
> The Kerensky Cluster
> The rebellion against Alexandr Kerensky
> The Pentagon Worlds
> Nicholas Kerensky and the Clans
> Their reconquest of the Kerensky Cluster
> The establishment of the Clans and Clan Society
> Their technological development
> Their societal regression
> The extermination of Clan Wolverine
> Their mores and traditions against 'wastefulness'
> The infiltration of Intelser
> The debate between Warden and Crusader Clans
> The arrival of Wolf's Dragoons
-.
Colonel Petersen felt nauseous and light-headed. He swallowed thickly, trying to keep himself from vomiting. He blinked, his eyes stinging and wondered if he was actually shedding tears.
He looked up to see no judgment on everyone else's faces, only sympathy and grief. Those hundreds of years of waiting and hoping, for what?
Everything that the Eridani Light Horse had done to preserve the light of the Star League so that when Kerensky's children returned they would be able to stand proud, it was all pointless. The SLDF was finally and truly dead.
"I understand. So this is our mission now. To defend the Inner Sphere against the monstrosity that the SLDF has become. Why have we not wiped out Wolf's Dragoons yet? We must stop any more information from being sent back to the Clans!"
"Wolf's Dragoons have actually violated their mandate and are trying to prepare the Inner Sphere for defending against the Clans. They have the foolish idea that since House Kurita is closest to the Clans in military philosophy and that they are on the invasion road, it is the Draconis Combine that is best suited to fight the Clans."
"That… that is an asinine conclusion," Petersen groaned. "It is bad enough that the Clans think they can win against the thousand worlds of the Inner Sphere with their mere dozens of barely habitable worlds."
"They benefit from three hundred years of stockpiling and technological progression, instead of regression," Winston noted. "They are, for the most part, united - while each of the Great Houses would have to absorb the invasion. They don't have to fight the entire Inner Sphere - only eat through Steiner and Kurita."
The Great Houses would have to fight this with only half their power because they need to keep reserves against the inevitable backstabbing by their historic opponents. This was part of the duelist's short-term thinking. But at least House Steiner could count on the AFFS backing them. House Kurita would have to hang by itself. Davion would be more able to cycle troops to the Clan front on the Steiner side or grab the now sparsely-defended border worlds as the Clans press on Luthien.
Stimson added "Also they have WarShips. All the SLDF WarShips. If they wanted to bombard worlds down to bedrock, it's only their own traditions and our own horrors of the Succession Wars that can stop them. If they seriously wanted to prevent anyone from recovering worlds, well - that's as easy as blasting DropShips out of orbit."
"Do… we… have WarShips?" asked Petersen.
Armstrong shook his head. "Not to that level and not to those numbers."
"But we do have them," Petersen said with muted hope. "If it is not the SLDF that is supporting us, who is it? The Terran Hegemony? Has Terra and Comstar secretly been our supporters this whole time?"
"Oh nooo…" Stimson groaned.
"He doesn't know…." Fairchild moaned. "I am sorry in advance…"
"Prepare yourself," said Winston.
"Right. I am sorry to have to say this. It gets worse," said Armstrong.
Petersen scowled "What could be worse than knowing the honorable and professional SLDF have turned into fetishic techno-barbarians?!"
The presentation on the wall switched to another topic.
-.
> The formation of Comstar
> Jerome Blake's engineering of Comstar as a religious order
> Conrad Toyama's more militant doctrines
> The messianic rule of Comstar after the 'inevitable' societal collapse of the Inner Sphere
> Operation Holy Shroud
> The insecurity of HPG communications despite Comstar neutrality
> The use of HPG interdiction as a means of pressure upon the Great Houses
> The ComGuards
> Operation Holy Shroud II
> Fostering conflict and civil war across the Inner Sphere
> Would end up supporting the Clans in their invasion by administrating their worlds
> All to weaken the Inner Sphere for their ascendance
> If prevented from achieving their goals, would probably try to achieve it through deliberate apocalyptic action
> The Clarion Note Protocol
> The Clans can only invade and conquer. Comstar can end interstellar civilization on a wide scale and would do it in a fit of pique if ever denied their prophecy or on the verge of their own destruction.
-.
"Why are we not burning to retake Terra right now?!" Petersen roared. To hell with a calm dignified manner befitting a leader. "Comstar is half the reason for the Succession Wars! Every HPG station is an infection! A dagger pointed straight into your own heart. Comstar is the disease that will kill humanity if left unchecked! I thought the Clans were idiotic, but this is deranged. The only way they see themselves winning is by ruling over ashes! We must end them, and quickly, for the safety of all humanity!"
"ComGuards may be green, but Terra still has fifty regiments in their rolls. Five thousand battlemechs," Fairchild said with a reluctant sigh.
"They *also* have WarShips," Stimson had to say. "And unless Comstar has its own civil war, the moment someone tries to take Terra, the whole HPG network goes down and the Clarion Note would prevent even new HPG stations from operating."
"Comstar has the ability to hold the entire human civilization hostage and that is something not even the Clans can manage. The Clans can be beaten militarily. Comstar?" Armstrong made an eloquent shrug, "They are a problem that requires more finesse than what the Light Horse is capable of right now."
Petersen stared at the Brevent General of the Eridani Light Horse RCT for several long moments. "You said right now. This implies something different in time. Is there actually a plan for the future? Even if it is not the Terran Hegemony that is supporting us with new equipment, it is clear that *someone is*, and that they are aware of this. It is clearly not Davion. Who are we secretly taking orders from?"
"No one. The Eridani Light Horse is reactivated fully as the germinate for what will be the second SLDF in service of the Second Star League. Do not misunderstand. *We are all that is left.* We *are* the SLDF in all its totality. We are all *that is necessary*."
"How?"
Stimson interjected "We have a Cameron."
One could almost see the moment Petersen's heart stopped and then restarted with fresh and propitious power.
"That has not been proven and all the tests show otherwise!" Armstrong hissed at Stimson.
"Sir, with all due respect, with all the bullshit that surrounds Devlin Stone, the boy being secretly a Cameron brought out of coldsleep is the least unbelievable thing there is! You know his name anagrams into Devil in Stone. What's a devil in stone? A gargoyle. What's a gargoyle? Something that doesn't move. In stasis. In cold sleep. You know Robotnik plays stupid games like this!"
"He could be an Amaris, you know. Doctor Robotnik was very insistent that Stone is neither a Cameron *nor* an Amaris. Or… actually - have we compared his bloodwork to Natasha Kerensky?" mused Robert Fairchild.
Armstrong groaned and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. "Results are… inconclusive."
Stimson crowed "Oh! Ohoho! Have we tested Stone's genetic markers against ALL of the Great Houses? That's one way to have a First Lord, by being related to all of them."
"No. We have not. And I don't think a clone would be viable for rulership by blood rule anyway, that sets a bad precedent."
Petersen asked "Who is Devlin Stone? Who is Doctor Robotnik?"
This time, the wall did not switch to a different presentation. All the heads of Eridani High Command turned towards Petersen, and instinctively he held up his hands defensively.
-.
"All right. I know this is serious. You would not be lying to me." Petersen slammed his fists down on the table. "BUT THIS IS THE MOST BULLSHIT THING YET!"
Their muted chuckles did not help. He pointed accusingly at each of their faces. "Some genius that is contemporary to Kearny and Fuchida themselves, brought himself to the future with the power of some green magical wishrock, helped found the Star League, saw its demise as inevitable, brought himself into the future again, missed his exit point by accident, and died while leaving the Eridani Light Horse with the complete endowment necessary to found a new SLDF and a new Star League with functionally unlimited production capacity."
"Yes."
"Although we call the K/F Drives the Kearny and Fuchida means of FTL and their theories the foundation for hyperpulse generation, the actual names of the engineers responsible for designing the first actual FTL drive in Project Deimos are lost to time," noted Colonel Winston.
"Not that it would help, because Robotnik is obviously a pseudonym," said Fairchild.
"Robotnik is a perfectly valid Polish name," replied Winston.
"The man makes sassy robots," retorted Fairchild.
Winston shrugged. Fair enough.
"Wait, if Stone turns out to be a Cameron… being Robotnik's son, wouldn't this mean Robotnik *is* also a Cameron? *The* Cameron? If you think about it, that makes a lot more sense why he would be wiping his own involvement through space and time and why he can authorize the creation of Port Stone and command the SLDF 331st Battle Regiment in the first place," Stimson noted.
"If he was a Cameron, then he should just have lived," replied Armstrong. "A genius like that dying of deliberate radiation poisoning? The Inner Sphere is diminished from his passing."
"Unless… sorry sir, we're both the ones who managed to personally speak to the man, but as much as he was ostentatious and bombastic - well, I know people who have nothing left to lose can also get cheery just before they end their lives. A man like that, surviving through whole centuries and letting the Star League die because even with all his power he could only make it worse if he tried? That's some big survivor's guilt right there. He focused so much on raising his son into the weapon to beat the Clans and the tool to remake the Star League *because* he didn't want to survive to do it himself. A genius is the one that forgives themselves the least for making mistakes."
"On behalf of Robotnik, I am offended of this crude armchair psychology," said Amstrong.
"Sorry sir."
Armstrong sighed. "But in some way, I also feel that's right. We have the power now. So we have all the responsibility. Stones… shatter, if made to support a load by itself. As adults and fighting men of the SLDF, it's our duty to carry that burden."
-.
-.
"Wait, my question was not answered," Petersen belatedly realized as they were leaving the room. "Why are you sending half of the 71st out into the Periphery instead of cycling back into the fight now that we have assured House Kurita *has* to retaliate in force or lose face?"
Armstrong paused and turned. "The truth is…" he clacked his teeth "we have too many Urbanmechs."
"That… does not actually explain things," Petersen said.
Armstrong reached out to clutch the other man's shoulder with one outstretched arm. His fingers dug in painfully. "Far, far too many Urbanmechs," Armstrong said again, looming over the other man with a dark glower.
-.
-.
Rocco Ali was born in Belgrade, Terra, but his papers and his accent said that he was proud Media City, Donegal-born. His life history showed someone that started off as a reporter covering mercenaries transitioning into being a mercenary himself, becoming fully absorbed in the lifestyle. He had his own mech, a Hunchback of the 'Swayback' variant filling in the AC/20 shoulder bin with banks of Medium Lasers instead of a massive AC/20. He was, of course, an agent of Comstar ROM.
He looked around the room and the collection of new ELH recruits. Most of them looked much more crisp and veteran than he did, slouching there in a red leather jacket with the sleeves pulled up. Some of them were so obviously people from the House militaries ejected with the purpose of infiltrating the ELH. Perhaps by being so obvious, they planned on just earning their way with military action and feed their handlers drabs of information, and as a distraction for other and more subtle agents.
One lady in particular, tall and blonde, looked so Steiner that it was easy to guess she was actually a Kurita agent from Rasalhague. Another was even wearing a blue Sikh turban. Although SAFE was incompetent as far as intelligence agencies go, they were probably not that incompetent and this one was someone genuinely believing in the Eridani Light Horse's propaganda of fighting the good fight; for the sake of all that is good in the Inner Sphere instead of just selfish House interests.
It was just that most everyone outside of House Kurita agreed that sticking it to the Draconis Combine was for the common good as well.
The ELH representative entered. After settling the attention, he informed the gathered group:
"Congratulations to you all! Everyone here has passed the competency tests and security checks, and are probationary Eridani Light Horse combat team members. You have signed the confidentiality agreements, and in the preliminary contract you have also signed you have agreed that the Light Horse may refit or order you to use BattleMechs different to your own personal machines."
The representative gestured towards the positioning of the chairs. They were in four groups of four.
"You have been chosen because everyone in this room is a spy for one or more of the powers in the Inner Sphere or the Periphery, and as such you are assigned to the 71st Training Battalion, deploying out into the poorest regions of space. To educate, to help and build, because real professional soldiers can do more than just destroy."
What.
Comstar and ROM were in a tizzy trying to put out fires everywhere. While it was far too late to discredit or destroy the DEMETER CORE, they could still try to disrupt attempts at prototyping its open-sourced terraforming technology. Everyone from the ISF, Maskirova, LIC, ISF, ROM, etc. were trying to find out more and insert their own agents into the Eridani Light Horse.
If there was a group more confused than all of the intelligence agencies of the Inner Sphere, it would be the Eridani Light Horse 71st "White Horse" Regiment themselves. Through most of 3024, they had taken the brunt of fulfilling the Light Horse's commitments. Now they were being cycled back for rest and refit as the 21st and 91st regiments took over border security.
Fort Bradley had expanded by 50% since last year. Urbanmechs and Urbanmech-shaped things were running around the place. Civilianmechs were cutting down trees and processing lumber. Ultralight Urbanite mechs were helping like oversized infantry and workmen. All the newly refit heavy tanks had dome-shaped turrets. They had a new hippodrome for lectures and theatrical presentations.
We now have lostech out the wazoo, what?
Our lostech comes in the form of Urbanmech, what?
Barbara Mosley beat Natasha Kerensky, what?
She has an Independent Company now, what?
Natasha Kerensky is training our people now to plug the hole in our one-on-one fighting doctrine, what?
We have a 91st Regiment now, what?
We wiped out the 2nd Galedon Regulars, what?
We beat the Dragoons in space because we now have Assault Dropships, what?
We have new JumpShips, what?
We found a DEMETER CORE, what?
We released the DEMETER CORE to the public domain, what?
We wiped out the 11th Benjamin Regulars, what?
In our down cycle you're sending us out into the Davion Outback, what?
Colonel William Petersen, commander of the 71st, said "This is all vastly more complicated than how I have been informed. It appears too many decisions have been made without my being in the loop, and while I have no objection against majority rule this to me appears to violate the spirit of these rules, sir."
Armstrong nodded. "I agree. For the sake of operational security and interception of information too many things needed to be done quickly and without any prior warning. Now that you are back, it is time to get you all caught up on why the Light Horse is behaving like this."
"Yes, sir. Thank you sir. These Urbanmechs confuse me, sir."
"It is not that complicated," spoke Colonel Robert C. Fairchild, commander of the 121st Dark Horse. "They are surprisingly adaptable platforms once you start looking into their internals."
Petersen squinted, still in doubt. Fairchild was the youngest of all the regimental commanders, and was known for making bold and controversial decisions. It made sense for him to be so welcoming of this as he was also the most outspoken advocate of change in their tradition-bound RCT. However, while it was fine to disagree, Petersen refrained from saying anything that would imply he devalued the opinion of his fellow Colonel just for their age.
Petersen secretly hoped that he would eventually succeed Nathan Armstrong as Brevet General, and acted with dignity and achievement that would help others see them in that role.
"There is a better place to talk about this. Follow me."
A side room in the command center turned out to be an elevator. The three members of Eridani High Command entered, and then descended. Petersen felt momentarily weightless as the elevator moved at an unusual speed more commonly suited for high-rise buildings.
Ding.
The elevator opened to a nondescript hallway. They turned left and entered a room which had a wide conference table with holoprojectors facing towards the seats. The holographic figures stood up from their seats to attention as their superior officer entered the room.
"At ease. Been waiting long?"
"No, sir," replied Colonel Charles K. Winston. The old man sat back down on his conference chair somewhere in Harrow's Sun. "We have been looking forward to finally getting all of the regimental commands read into recent events."
"We have been talking over how things were going training with the 4th Deneb. The Marduk Militia… well, I can say they're rich in experience - no offense," spoke Colonel Edward Stimson.
"None taken," said Winston.
"But their mechs are just as aged. They're just to hold on until the Robinson Rangers or 1st Chisholm Raiders RCT can move. Marduk's swamps and jungles aren't a good fit for heavy mechs or large armies. ER PPCs are less useful here, apart from the lack of minimum range restrictions, but it's prime ambush ground anyway."
Once again, Petersen blinked. He personally did not feel that Edward Stimson would be a good fit as a regimental commander. Though he lived up to the reputations of his ancestors as a fighting line officer, he was a poor administrator and his unit often suffered from supply shortages and poor coordination. He had noted as such on the information docket he was provided, but had been outvoted in the formation of the 91st. He still had no idea why it was so urgent.
Then the destruction of the 11th Benjamins happened. He put aside any more thoughts of objection. Rarely did any regiment accomplish such total victory against another regiment, much less three complete victories in rapid succession.
Armstrong nodded towards him as he took a seat. "So you have been training the 91st in dense foliage operations? Did the Marduk Militia take the delivery?"
"Yes, sir. The militia and Norse MechWorks in particular are happy to be donated a whole battalion of Pulse Laser Urbanmechs."
That was 72 million Cb worth of equipment down the hole right there, while the entire Eridani Light Horse only cost 20 million per month to maintain. He could just hear the AFFS wondering since when did the ELH get the stones to just throw away mechs like this?
Though in a little more reflection they would see it would turn out to be a 1:1 exchange with New Avalon anyway. The best thing you can do with salvaged Urbanmechs is to exchange them for better Heavy mechs.
"Great." Then he turned towards Petersen and Fairchild on the far end of the table. He made a beckoning gesture to the former. "You look like you have questions. Go ahead."
"Yes, Sir. First, sir… I have to ask - Colonel Winston. Colonel Stimson. You… you are still at Harrow's Sun and Marduk, correct?"
"Correct," said Winston.
"Yup, right in the middle of the Tillerbee jungle," replied Stimson.
"This is a real-time holo-conference. I had an idea that this was possible… but this… this would be both extremely expensive and insecure if we go through Comstar. How is this possible?"
"We have our own secure HPG network now," Armstrong admitted.
Petersen clasped his palms together and rested his elbows on the table. His head hung in an almost praying position. He looked up and whispered "So the rumors are true, then? We are reactivated by the SLDF?"
Both Winston and Stimson winced, while Fairchild leaned back on his chair with an eager little smirk. Armstrong sighed. "Not… by the SLDF. We are reactivated as the Third Regimental Combat Team, but not under the authority of the SLDF. To understand why the Light Horse is acting this way, you must understand… what actually happen to the SLDF after Kerensky's Exodus."
One of the walls of the sealed conference room acted like a screen. A presentation began playing, narrated by an oddly youthful voice.
-.
The presentation covered
> Kerensky's war fatigue and the reasons for the Exodus
> The Exodus Road
> The Kerensky Cluster
> The rebellion against Alexandr Kerensky
> The Pentagon Worlds
> Nicholas Kerensky and the Clans
> Their reconquest of the Kerensky Cluster
> The establishment of the Clans and Clan Society
> Their technological development
> Their societal regression
> The extermination of Clan Wolverine
> Their mores and traditions against 'wastefulness'
> The infiltration of Intelser
> The debate between Warden and Crusader Clans
> The arrival of Wolf's Dragoons
-.
Colonel Petersen felt nauseous and light-headed. He swallowed thickly, trying to keep himself from vomiting. He blinked, his eyes stinging and wondered if he was actually shedding tears.
He looked up to see no judgment on everyone else's faces, only sympathy and grief. Those hundreds of years of waiting and hoping, for what?
Everything that the Eridani Light Horse had done to preserve the light of the Star League so that when Kerensky's children returned they would be able to stand proud, it was all pointless. The SLDF was finally and truly dead.
"I understand. So this is our mission now. To defend the Inner Sphere against the monstrosity that the SLDF has become. Why have we not wiped out Wolf's Dragoons yet? We must stop any more information from being sent back to the Clans!"
"Wolf's Dragoons have actually violated their mandate and are trying to prepare the Inner Sphere for defending against the Clans. They have the foolish idea that since House Kurita is closest to the Clans in military philosophy and that they are on the invasion road, it is the Draconis Combine that is best suited to fight the Clans."
"That… that is an asinine conclusion," Petersen groaned. "It is bad enough that the Clans think they can win against the thousand worlds of the Inner Sphere with their mere dozens of barely habitable worlds."
"They benefit from three hundred years of stockpiling and technological progression, instead of regression," Winston noted. "They are, for the most part, united - while each of the Great Houses would have to absorb the invasion. They don't have to fight the entire Inner Sphere - only eat through Steiner and Kurita."
The Great Houses would have to fight this with only half their power because they need to keep reserves against the inevitable backstabbing by their historic opponents. This was part of the duelist's short-term thinking. But at least House Steiner could count on the AFFS backing them. House Kurita would have to hang by itself. Davion would be more able to cycle troops to the Clan front on the Steiner side or grab the now sparsely-defended border worlds as the Clans press on Luthien.
Stimson added "Also they have WarShips. All the SLDF WarShips. If they wanted to bombard worlds down to bedrock, it's only their own traditions and our own horrors of the Succession Wars that can stop them. If they seriously wanted to prevent anyone from recovering worlds, well - that's as easy as blasting DropShips out of orbit."
"Do… we… have WarShips?" asked Petersen.
Armstrong shook his head. "Not to that level and not to those numbers."
"But we do have them," Petersen said with muted hope. "If it is not the SLDF that is supporting us, who is it? The Terran Hegemony? Has Terra and Comstar secretly been our supporters this whole time?"
"Oh nooo…" Stimson groaned.
"He doesn't know…." Fairchild moaned. "I am sorry in advance…"
"Prepare yourself," said Winston.
"Right. I am sorry to have to say this. It gets worse," said Armstrong.
Petersen scowled "What could be worse than knowing the honorable and professional SLDF have turned into fetishic techno-barbarians?!"
The presentation on the wall switched to another topic.
-.
> The formation of Comstar
> Jerome Blake's engineering of Comstar as a religious order
> Conrad Toyama's more militant doctrines
> The messianic rule of Comstar after the 'inevitable' societal collapse of the Inner Sphere
> Operation Holy Shroud
> The insecurity of HPG communications despite Comstar neutrality
> The use of HPG interdiction as a means of pressure upon the Great Houses
> The ComGuards
> Operation Holy Shroud II
> Fostering conflict and civil war across the Inner Sphere
> Would end up supporting the Clans in their invasion by administrating their worlds
> All to weaken the Inner Sphere for their ascendance
> If prevented from achieving their goals, would probably try to achieve it through deliberate apocalyptic action
> The Clarion Note Protocol
> The Clans can only invade and conquer. Comstar can end interstellar civilization on a wide scale and would do it in a fit of pique if ever denied their prophecy or on the verge of their own destruction.
-.
"Why are we not burning to retake Terra right now?!" Petersen roared. To hell with a calm dignified manner befitting a leader. "Comstar is half the reason for the Succession Wars! Every HPG station is an infection! A dagger pointed straight into your own heart. Comstar is the disease that will kill humanity if left unchecked! I thought the Clans were idiotic, but this is deranged. The only way they see themselves winning is by ruling over ashes! We must end them, and quickly, for the safety of all humanity!"
"ComGuards may be green, but Terra still has fifty regiments in their rolls. Five thousand battlemechs," Fairchild said with a reluctant sigh.
"They *also* have WarShips," Stimson had to say. "And unless Comstar has its own civil war, the moment someone tries to take Terra, the whole HPG network goes down and the Clarion Note would prevent even new HPG stations from operating."
"Comstar has the ability to hold the entire human civilization hostage and that is something not even the Clans can manage. The Clans can be beaten militarily. Comstar?" Armstrong made an eloquent shrug, "They are a problem that requires more finesse than what the Light Horse is capable of right now."
Petersen stared at the Brevent General of the Eridani Light Horse RCT for several long moments. "You said right now. This implies something different in time. Is there actually a plan for the future? Even if it is not the Terran Hegemony that is supporting us with new equipment, it is clear that *someone is*, and that they are aware of this. It is clearly not Davion. Who are we secretly taking orders from?"
"No one. The Eridani Light Horse is reactivated fully as the germinate for what will be the second SLDF in service of the Second Star League. Do not misunderstand. *We are all that is left.* We *are* the SLDF in all its totality. We are all *that is necessary*."
"How?"
Stimson interjected "We have a Cameron."
One could almost see the moment Petersen's heart stopped and then restarted with fresh and propitious power.
"That has not been proven and all the tests show otherwise!" Armstrong hissed at Stimson.
"Sir, with all due respect, with all the bullshit that surrounds Devlin Stone, the boy being secretly a Cameron brought out of coldsleep is the least unbelievable thing there is! You know his name anagrams into Devil in Stone. What's a devil in stone? A gargoyle. What's a gargoyle? Something that doesn't move. In stasis. In cold sleep. You know Robotnik plays stupid games like this!"
"He could be an Amaris, you know. Doctor Robotnik was very insistent that Stone is neither a Cameron *nor* an Amaris. Or… actually - have we compared his bloodwork to Natasha Kerensky?" mused Robert Fairchild.
Armstrong groaned and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. "Results are… inconclusive."
Stimson crowed "Oh! Ohoho! Have we tested Stone's genetic markers against ALL of the Great Houses? That's one way to have a First Lord, by being related to all of them."
"No. We have not. And I don't think a clone would be viable for rulership by blood rule anyway, that sets a bad precedent."
Petersen asked "Who is Devlin Stone? Who is Doctor Robotnik?"
This time, the wall did not switch to a different presentation. All the heads of Eridani High Command turned towards Petersen, and instinctively he held up his hands defensively.
-.
"All right. I know this is serious. You would not be lying to me." Petersen slammed his fists down on the table. "BUT THIS IS THE MOST BULLSHIT THING YET!"
Their muted chuckles did not help. He pointed accusingly at each of their faces. "Some genius that is contemporary to Kearny and Fuchida themselves, brought himself to the future with the power of some green magical wishrock, helped found the Star League, saw its demise as inevitable, brought himself into the future again, missed his exit point by accident, and died while leaving the Eridani Light Horse with the complete endowment necessary to found a new SLDF and a new Star League with functionally unlimited production capacity."
"Yes."
"Although we call the K/F Drives the Kearny and Fuchida means of FTL and their theories the foundation for hyperpulse generation, the actual names of the engineers responsible for designing the first actual FTL drive in Project Deimos are lost to time," noted Colonel Winston.
"Not that it would help, because Robotnik is obviously a pseudonym," said Fairchild.
"Robotnik is a perfectly valid Polish name," replied Winston.
"The man makes sassy robots," retorted Fairchild.
Winston shrugged. Fair enough.
"Wait, if Stone turns out to be a Cameron… being Robotnik's son, wouldn't this mean Robotnik *is* also a Cameron? *The* Cameron? If you think about it, that makes a lot more sense why he would be wiping his own involvement through space and time and why he can authorize the creation of Port Stone and command the SLDF 331st Battle Regiment in the first place," Stimson noted.
"If he was a Cameron, then he should just have lived," replied Armstrong. "A genius like that dying of deliberate radiation poisoning? The Inner Sphere is diminished from his passing."
"Unless… sorry sir, we're both the ones who managed to personally speak to the man, but as much as he was ostentatious and bombastic - well, I know people who have nothing left to lose can also get cheery just before they end their lives. A man like that, surviving through whole centuries and letting the Star League die because even with all his power he could only make it worse if he tried? That's some big survivor's guilt right there. He focused so much on raising his son into the weapon to beat the Clans and the tool to remake the Star League *because* he didn't want to survive to do it himself. A genius is the one that forgives themselves the least for making mistakes."
"On behalf of Robotnik, I am offended of this crude armchair psychology," said Amstrong.
"Sorry sir."
Armstrong sighed. "But in some way, I also feel that's right. We have the power now. So we have all the responsibility. Stones… shatter, if made to support a load by itself. As adults and fighting men of the SLDF, it's our duty to carry that burden."
-.
-.
"Wait, my question was not answered," Petersen belatedly realized as they were leaving the room. "Why are you sending half of the 71st out into the Periphery instead of cycling back into the fight now that we have assured House Kurita *has* to retaliate in force or lose face?"
Armstrong paused and turned. "The truth is…" he clacked his teeth "we have too many Urbanmechs."
"That… does not actually explain things," Petersen said.
Armstrong reached out to clutch the other man's shoulder with one outstretched arm. His fingers dug in painfully. "Far, far too many Urbanmechs," Armstrong said again, looming over the other man with a dark glower.
-.
-.
Rocco Ali was born in Belgrade, Terra, but his papers and his accent said that he was proud Media City, Donegal-born. His life history showed someone that started off as a reporter covering mercenaries transitioning into being a mercenary himself, becoming fully absorbed in the lifestyle. He had his own mech, a Hunchback of the 'Swayback' variant filling in the AC/20 shoulder bin with banks of Medium Lasers instead of a massive AC/20. He was, of course, an agent of Comstar ROM.
He looked around the room and the collection of new ELH recruits. Most of them looked much more crisp and veteran than he did, slouching there in a red leather jacket with the sleeves pulled up. Some of them were so obviously people from the House militaries ejected with the purpose of infiltrating the ELH. Perhaps by being so obvious, they planned on just earning their way with military action and feed their handlers drabs of information, and as a distraction for other and more subtle agents.
One lady in particular, tall and blonde, looked so Steiner that it was easy to guess she was actually a Kurita agent from Rasalhague. Another was even wearing a blue Sikh turban. Although SAFE was incompetent as far as intelligence agencies go, they were probably not that incompetent and this one was someone genuinely believing in the Eridani Light Horse's propaganda of fighting the good fight; for the sake of all that is good in the Inner Sphere instead of just selfish House interests.
It was just that most everyone outside of House Kurita agreed that sticking it to the Draconis Combine was for the common good as well.
The ELH representative entered. After settling the attention, he informed the gathered group:
"Congratulations to you all! Everyone here has passed the competency tests and security checks, and are probationary Eridani Light Horse combat team members. You have signed the confidentiality agreements, and in the preliminary contract you have also signed you have agreed that the Light Horse may refit or order you to use BattleMechs different to your own personal machines."
The representative gestured towards the positioning of the chairs. They were in four groups of four.
"You have been chosen because everyone in this room is a spy for one or more of the powers in the Inner Sphere or the Periphery, and as such you are assigned to the 71st Training Battalion, deploying out into the poorest regions of space. To educate, to help and build, because real professional soldiers can do more than just destroy."
What.
Last edited:
12.2 To the Wild Frontier
bluepencil
The tropics will be uninhabitable.
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To the Wild Frontier 02
Fort Bradley
Colchester
Federated Suns
Date unknown
The three Battalion Commanders of the 71st White Horse stood at attention while their Regimental Commander seemed to be studiously ignoring them.
11th Recon Battalion, "Alley Cats", cool and considerate, Major Steve Gray.
17th Recon Battalion, "Screaming Eagles", stern and aristocratic, Major Jim McCracken.
82nd Heavy Cavalry Battalion, "Kerensky's Favorite", huge and imposing, Major George Thomas.
Colonel William Petersen turned around briefly. "What do you prefer? Scotch? Brandy? Gin? Perhaps vodka?"
"Sir?"
Petersen turned to shove three small glasses across the desk. "At ease. This isn't the sort of talk we can have without something to lubricate our thinking."
Major Gray spoke "With all respect, sir - I don't understand. We are not supposed to drink on duty."
"And that is why I am ordering you to have the rest of the day off after this." He poured himself a shot and put the glass down in front of his place on the desk in his office. "You are here to complain. I understand that. I will hear you out. I have already spoken about your concerns to Eridani High Command."
Major Thomas brightened up. "In that case, sir - hang on. This feels like bad news. I guess I will take that brandy, then."
"None for me, thank you," said Major McCracken.
"You will take iced water," ordered Petersen.
"I… will take iced water, thank you sir," McCracken said, as Colonel Petersen poured out into each glass.
"Vodka please," said Major Gray.
Colonel Petersen sat down, and looked into the amber liquid in his glass. He swirled the surface around until it no longer showed his tired reflection. The three battalion commanders had already followed suit.
After a while he said "I understand your concerns. Removing troops from your battalions to form a new training battalion sounds like a unjust orders, more of a punishment after having done your duties to the best of your abilities at the front line. But after knowing High Command's reasons for this - I can say to you right now, this is possibly the most important action we can do for the Light Horse as a whole.
"More important than defeating more enemy regiments. More important than fighting House Kurita. It will be a long and frustratingly boring assignment - but it is in the Outback where the Eridani Light Horse will live or die. These immediate months will mean all the difference if the Eridani Light Horse are worthy of the name or if we are just delusional trash of the Inner Sphere."
"Sir?"
"There are things I cannot tell you due to operational security, but Hanse Davion has given the Eridani Light Horse the open authority to recruit as many people as we want from the Davion Outback."
"Sir. That is good, but that is the sort of thing that does not require dispersing a battalion though?" asked Gray. "It is not particularly difficult, send some support teams out with at most a lance for showpiece demonstrations."
Colonel Petersen gave a small smirk.
He put down the glass and said simply "The Eridani Light Horse has the authority to recruit citizens of the Federated Suns under the Star League banner. As of this moment, every piece of ground the Eridani Light Horse occupies, *counts as a consulate*."
"Sir! Are you saying what I think you're saying?!"
"Are you worthy?" Colonel Petersen asked instead, but gently. "Are you just children wearing the coats of their fathers to make yourselves feel important?" He then raised his glass high, in a salute to the departed. "Or are you ready to give everything you have to the ideas you claim to uphold?"
"We are all willing to die for- ah. I see." Major McCracken started nodding. "Everything we have doesn't just mean our lives in death. But also our lives in *time*."
"House Davion recognizes the Eridani Light Horse as representatives of *the Star League*," Gray breathed. "Something has happened to make House Davion treat us as the SLDF, and so we must behave *as* the SLDF."
"This sounds like the start to something big, sir. Something really, really big. And something that big is sure to have even bigger fights."
Each of the Battalion commanders down their drinks. McCracken truly regretted just then that he was stuck with cold water.
Major George Thomas, normally the most bullish and belligerent among the commanders in the regiment, said "If you think about it, the one thing the SLDF is known for other than fighting is just digging and squirreling things all over the place. Hundreds of years later, people can still hope of finding some secret SLDF cache and being rich as sin. Being teachers instead of soldiers… yeah, I can see how that's part of the same work."
Steve Gray raised a palm up and said "Sir, unfortunately I must mention that our troops are good, but they are not exactly… the most academically-inclined, I would say."
"Is this educational assignment not actually for the benefit of the Outback but as a way to surreptitiously train certain commanders in independent strategy?" McCracken mused.
Petersen sighed.
"Hearts and minds, people. Hearts and minds," he said. "Don't forget that this is as much about being at just as good at peace as we would be at waging war."
Gray nodded. "Understood sir. The SLDF was both carrot and stick. We get that."
McCracken added "It's just that being away from the rest of the unit knowing they are in danger and we are unable to help will be more dangerous to morale than the boredom of being away from the action. Simulators can only do so much, I think." He looked to the distance and stroked his goatee. "Spending most of a year out of contact, even if it is easier to try out maneuvers in the wilderness of unobserved podunk worlds, it will be difficult for the men to keep their skills sharp."
George Thomas only crossed his arms. It was left unsaid that those people sent out there would need to be even more disciplined than the norm. And the 71st White Horse had the worst discipline problems in the RCT.
Specifically, his Battalion. Send the 11th Recon, 17th Recon, and the 82nd Heavy Cav out there? The 82nd used to piloting Assault and Heavy Mechs and Heavy Tanks into the thickest of brawls would go insane from the boredom and probably spend most of their time in space jail.
Colonel Petersen responded "Every new ELH ship has a mobile HPG station on board. We have our own HPG network now. We will never be out of contact again. Our learning computers are busy assimilating Natasha Kerensky's combat data. Those simulators will be able to keep updated with regimental scale information and refight battles experienced by the front line."
"Our own HPG Network what-" McCracken hiccuped.
"Sir! The only ones who could ever give that are-!" Gray gasped.
Petersen interrupted with "- are not relevant. There is no other representative of the SLDF to the Inner Sphere than us. If Kerensky's SLDF-in-Exile ever showed up, we should be willing to fight them too. They surrendered their right to speak about the Inner Sphere when they abandoned it and left the Terran Hegemony to be cut apart like lions tearing into carrion."
Gray sagged back into his seat, temporarily nerveless. To even repudiate Kerensky!
The Eridani Light Horse held Kerensky in the highest esteem. This almost felt like sacrilege or blasphemy. The only higher authority with the ability to grace the Eridani Light Horse would be -
"Sir. Sir… do we…" the words choked and refused to come out, the thought was too unreasonable. "Do we have-"
Again Petersen spoke before they could finish completing their thoughts. "There are matters that High Command knows about that cannot be said due to operational security. Things only five people alive should know."
Five? Ah, right. The Light Horse had four regiments now. Plus the Brevet General. The three Majors nodded in assent.
"I withdraw my objections," said Major Gray.
McCracken said next "We will calm the troops, sir. But it just occurred to me that if we are supposed to give everything we have, then someone should be in command out there. It would be a meaningful sacrifice, but it would still be a serious morale issue."
Major George Thomas said "If ordered, sir, I will obey. But please don't choose me sir."
Colonel Petersen waved with his left hand. "It is a fourth battalion composed of elements from your three battalions. Run it like a miniature version of the Light Horse."
Gray brightened. "Indeed a fascinating idea, sir! Captains electing a Brevet Major."
McCracked added "If it is meant to be the Regiments in miniature, then they should be combined arms companies."
"All Light Horse Battalions are already combined arms in the first place," was Gray's response.
Major Thomas grumbled lightly. "Mmhrm. Losing three Assault/Heavy lances would be pain, but it can be endured."
Here Colonel Petersen chuckled. The Majors turned from their discussion to look quizzically at him. He smirked again with his lips hidden behind the rim of the glass. "What do we look like, an RCT with too few Urbanmechs? You will take your Assault-weight Urbanmechs, and you will *like it*."
...
... The three commanders stared back at Petersen's somewhat sadistic grin.
"... I don't understand anything anymore," said Steve Gray.
Petersen waved it away. "High Command will be sending formal directives. But work out the assignments among yourselves."
"Sir, yes sir!"
Before they were dismissed, Petersen looked down at his drink again. Almost empty. He swirled the liquid in the glass. "Who do you think is kin to boar?" asked Petersen softly.
"House Calderon, maybe? No, those are bulls."
"There has to be some lesser noble house out there with a pig on their heraldry. Is this something we should research, sir?"
"Can it rob?" Petersen murmured further.
A kin to a boar that is a robber? Was this some sort of code? Or someone that was involved in a robbery? Maybe it was a clue to yet another hidden SLDF cache.
Kin to boar.
Kanitrob.
Kabitron.
Cameron?
He sighed softly.
Colonel Petersen looked up. "The Second Star League begins and ends with us. Never doubt this. Not until your last dying breath. This is our responsibility and we will see it done."
He slammed the glass down on the desk like a judge's gavel. "Dismissed."
-.
-.
Later, with 17th Recon Battalion "Screaming Eagles":
"If you will not follow orders, then you can just leave. The Third RCT does not need officers that put their own desires over the long-term objectives of the unit. Go out and become your own boss if you feel that strongly about this."
The company commanders stared askance at their commanding officer. Just yesterday Major McCracken had been telling them that he was ready to fight for as long as it takes to keep them together and get back into doing something more useful.
"Sir, that seems far too escalatory," said one of the Captains with a betrayed tone.
McCracken slammed his palms down onto the table, then curled his fingers back like talons. He hurled back firmly "You will comport yourselves as *true* officers and soldiers of the SLDF! This is our time!"
Those words rang like a bell through the room and seeped into their bones. That cold hawk-like gaze had no hesitation whatsoever. Everybody in that room, no matter their history together, no matter how much they had bled and laughed and fought together - he was ready to sign their papers if they still objected.
Their blood started to thunder.
Even if the Light Horse lacked manpower -
There was only one reason to be so willing to discard the disobedient!
Those- who lacked faith!
"Sir!" Everyone stood up, punched their own chests hard to the point of bruising, and bowed their heads. Just as it would have hurt to know that Amaris had taken Terra, but Kerensky still ordered them to wait and prepare. "Apologies, sir! We hear and obey!"
-.
-.
With the 11th Recon Battalion, "Alley Cats":
"Sir! Just recruiting from the Davion Outback isn't enough! We should take all from over the Inner Sphere! I'm sure there are enough orphans out there to build whole Divisions!"
"After all this time together, I did not realize this. Are you all drongos?" groaned Major Gray.
-.
-.
With the 82nd Heavy Cavalry Battalion, "Kerensky's Favorite":
"Greatness demands sacrifice. The difference is that Kurita chooses to have other people sacrifice for theirs!" Major George Thomas roared. "IF YOU HAVE PROBLEMS WITH THIS, FIGHT MEEE!!!"
And the cool and completely unintimidated response "Sir, we are the battalion 'Kerensky's Favorite' and we saw you get your ass beat by Natasha Kerensky. Please do not take your romantic rejection out on us please."
"YOU PIECES OF SHIIIT. GO TO THE PERIPHERY!"
-.
-.
Fort Bradley Training Base Adjunct
Colchester
Federated Suns
Date unknown
Meanwhile, with the new recruits:
Of the sixteen that were identified and put into a special company, only three quit from the insult. Another two more quit when they were ordered to put aside their mechs and start training with industrialmechs and agromechs. They came to the storied Light Horse to be soldiers, not laborers. The pay scale wasn't all that interesting anyway.
They were all obviously ringers meant to be found and distract from the other real spies inserted into more mundane jobs like technical crew and civilian support staff.
Rocco Ali was starting to get a feel for how the Eridani Light Horse operated. They were a crisp and professional military unit, and the way they moved without an ounce of waste reminded him of what he had observed from Comstar's own ComGuards. The defenders of Terra had almost never needed to fight, and so for all their tech and numbers were as green as green could be. Even random pirates with real battle experience could give them trouble. But they just drilled and operated on base so exceedingly well.
The Light Horse had that flair of a well-oiled military machine that maintained both institutional order and the vitality of unique individual effort.
They were so respectable and rational that one could get caught up in their flow when suddenly the Light Horse would say something that was just absolute nonsense and blithely move on as if expecting you to just go along with it.
"Psst. Hey!" the dark-skinned man to the left of Rocco Ali whispered, hiding his mouth with his palm. "So, Steiner boy, what are you in for? I'll tell you right now if you tell me yours. I'm an agent from the Magistracy of Canopus."
Rocco stared dully at him from the side.
"Yeah, I know what you're thinking. It's the Magistracy. Why don't they send some va-voom bombshell, eh? But that's why this isn't a honeypot recruiting operation, you know?"
"Calling everyone in this room spies was obviously just psy ops designed to turn participants against each other to test teamwork," Rocco Ali said simply before turning back to his work.
"Sure, sure, if you say so." The man grinned. Two of his upper teeth were gold. "So the question is… are you low key?"
I will not break cover and punch a jackass in the face. I will not break cover and punch a jackass in the face.
Rocco gestured over to the tall statuesque blonde at the front seats. "Shouldn't you try asking her that?"
William Launder turned towards the woman in question, then leered. "She would break me over her knee for that and I would enjoy it too much."
"I am done with this." Rocco looked back down to his noteputer, and furrowed his brows.
-.
Topic: The Return of the Star League. Who is it Good For?
-.
What the hell, Eridani Light Horse?
What the hell.
-.
"I came here to be a mechwarrior, not to go back to college!" one of the men screamed and tossed away his noteputer. "Why must I write an esssaaayyy?! "
"Yes my brother! Testify!" another recruit beside him raised both fists. "This is cruel! This is unjust! A thousand words of fuck you!"
'Are these people actually spies?' thought Jadwiga Winter. 'Or just morons?'
She returned to her noteputer and seriously considered her homework.
This was not something all that complicated. Everyone had thought about something like this at some point, dreaming of a return to a golden age, but not quite being able to imagine the necessary conditions for the Inner Sphere's spiral of degradation to reverse itself.
Some houses probably benefited more than the others. House Liao probably would like a freeze on their borders and losing worlds. House Kurita's military ambitions would need to be broken first. Ironically, perhaps Davion would benefit the least from the return of the Star League and would be better off trying to remain independent. Marik and Steiner enjoyed having more worlds than what they had during the Star League. And of course, everyone would rather retain control over the highly productive worlds they had seized from the Terran Hegemony.
Her introduction started:
The Inner Sphere should dread the return of the SLDF. Because at the minimum,
it would require in them a willingness and a capacity to fight everybody
everywhere all at once at the same time and still have the confidence for
victory.
Fort Bradley
Colchester
Federated Suns
Date unknown
The three Battalion Commanders of the 71st White Horse stood at attention while their Regimental Commander seemed to be studiously ignoring them.
11th Recon Battalion, "Alley Cats", cool and considerate, Major Steve Gray.
17th Recon Battalion, "Screaming Eagles", stern and aristocratic, Major Jim McCracken.
82nd Heavy Cavalry Battalion, "Kerensky's Favorite", huge and imposing, Major George Thomas.
Colonel William Petersen turned around briefly. "What do you prefer? Scotch? Brandy? Gin? Perhaps vodka?"
"Sir?"
Petersen turned to shove three small glasses across the desk. "At ease. This isn't the sort of talk we can have without something to lubricate our thinking."
Major Gray spoke "With all respect, sir - I don't understand. We are not supposed to drink on duty."
"And that is why I am ordering you to have the rest of the day off after this." He poured himself a shot and put the glass down in front of his place on the desk in his office. "You are here to complain. I understand that. I will hear you out. I have already spoken about your concerns to Eridani High Command."
Major Thomas brightened up. "In that case, sir - hang on. This feels like bad news. I guess I will take that brandy, then."
"None for me, thank you," said Major McCracken.
"You will take iced water," ordered Petersen.
"I… will take iced water, thank you sir," McCracken said, as Colonel Petersen poured out into each glass.
"Vodka please," said Major Gray.
Colonel Petersen sat down, and looked into the amber liquid in his glass. He swirled the surface around until it no longer showed his tired reflection. The three battalion commanders had already followed suit.
After a while he said "I understand your concerns. Removing troops from your battalions to form a new training battalion sounds like a unjust orders, more of a punishment after having done your duties to the best of your abilities at the front line. But after knowing High Command's reasons for this - I can say to you right now, this is possibly the most important action we can do for the Light Horse as a whole.
"More important than defeating more enemy regiments. More important than fighting House Kurita. It will be a long and frustratingly boring assignment - but it is in the Outback where the Eridani Light Horse will live or die. These immediate months will mean all the difference if the Eridani Light Horse are worthy of the name or if we are just delusional trash of the Inner Sphere."
"Sir?"
"There are things I cannot tell you due to operational security, but Hanse Davion has given the Eridani Light Horse the open authority to recruit as many people as we want from the Davion Outback."
"Sir. That is good, but that is the sort of thing that does not require dispersing a battalion though?" asked Gray. "It is not particularly difficult, send some support teams out with at most a lance for showpiece demonstrations."
Colonel Petersen gave a small smirk.
He put down the glass and said simply "The Eridani Light Horse has the authority to recruit citizens of the Federated Suns under the Star League banner. As of this moment, every piece of ground the Eridani Light Horse occupies, *counts as a consulate*."
"Sir! Are you saying what I think you're saying?!"
"Are you worthy?" Colonel Petersen asked instead, but gently. "Are you just children wearing the coats of their fathers to make yourselves feel important?" He then raised his glass high, in a salute to the departed. "Or are you ready to give everything you have to the ideas you claim to uphold?"
"We are all willing to die for- ah. I see." Major McCracken started nodding. "Everything we have doesn't just mean our lives in death. But also our lives in *time*."
"House Davion recognizes the Eridani Light Horse as representatives of *the Star League*," Gray breathed. "Something has happened to make House Davion treat us as the SLDF, and so we must behave *as* the SLDF."
"This sounds like the start to something big, sir. Something really, really big. And something that big is sure to have even bigger fights."
Each of the Battalion commanders down their drinks. McCracken truly regretted just then that he was stuck with cold water.
Major George Thomas, normally the most bullish and belligerent among the commanders in the regiment, said "If you think about it, the one thing the SLDF is known for other than fighting is just digging and squirreling things all over the place. Hundreds of years later, people can still hope of finding some secret SLDF cache and being rich as sin. Being teachers instead of soldiers… yeah, I can see how that's part of the same work."
Steve Gray raised a palm up and said "Sir, unfortunately I must mention that our troops are good, but they are not exactly… the most academically-inclined, I would say."
"Is this educational assignment not actually for the benefit of the Outback but as a way to surreptitiously train certain commanders in independent strategy?" McCracken mused.
Petersen sighed.
"Hearts and minds, people. Hearts and minds," he said. "Don't forget that this is as much about being at just as good at peace as we would be at waging war."
Gray nodded. "Understood sir. The SLDF was both carrot and stick. We get that."
McCracken added "It's just that being away from the rest of the unit knowing they are in danger and we are unable to help will be more dangerous to morale than the boredom of being away from the action. Simulators can only do so much, I think." He looked to the distance and stroked his goatee. "Spending most of a year out of contact, even if it is easier to try out maneuvers in the wilderness of unobserved podunk worlds, it will be difficult for the men to keep their skills sharp."
George Thomas only crossed his arms. It was left unsaid that those people sent out there would need to be even more disciplined than the norm. And the 71st White Horse had the worst discipline problems in the RCT.
Specifically, his Battalion. Send the 11th Recon, 17th Recon, and the 82nd Heavy Cav out there? The 82nd used to piloting Assault and Heavy Mechs and Heavy Tanks into the thickest of brawls would go insane from the boredom and probably spend most of their time in space jail.
Colonel Petersen responded "Every new ELH ship has a mobile HPG station on board. We have our own HPG network now. We will never be out of contact again. Our learning computers are busy assimilating Natasha Kerensky's combat data. Those simulators will be able to keep updated with regimental scale information and refight battles experienced by the front line."
"Our own HPG Network what-" McCracken hiccuped.
"Sir! The only ones who could ever give that are-!" Gray gasped.
Petersen interrupted with "- are not relevant. There is no other representative of the SLDF to the Inner Sphere than us. If Kerensky's SLDF-in-Exile ever showed up, we should be willing to fight them too. They surrendered their right to speak about the Inner Sphere when they abandoned it and left the Terran Hegemony to be cut apart like lions tearing into carrion."
Gray sagged back into his seat, temporarily nerveless. To even repudiate Kerensky!
The Eridani Light Horse held Kerensky in the highest esteem. This almost felt like sacrilege or blasphemy. The only higher authority with the ability to grace the Eridani Light Horse would be -
"Sir. Sir… do we…" the words choked and refused to come out, the thought was too unreasonable. "Do we have-"
Again Petersen spoke before they could finish completing their thoughts. "There are matters that High Command knows about that cannot be said due to operational security. Things only five people alive should know."
Five? Ah, right. The Light Horse had four regiments now. Plus the Brevet General. The three Majors nodded in assent.
"I withdraw my objections," said Major Gray.
McCracken said next "We will calm the troops, sir. But it just occurred to me that if we are supposed to give everything we have, then someone should be in command out there. It would be a meaningful sacrifice, but it would still be a serious morale issue."
Major George Thomas said "If ordered, sir, I will obey. But please don't choose me sir."
Colonel Petersen waved with his left hand. "It is a fourth battalion composed of elements from your three battalions. Run it like a miniature version of the Light Horse."
Gray brightened. "Indeed a fascinating idea, sir! Captains electing a Brevet Major."
McCracked added "If it is meant to be the Regiments in miniature, then they should be combined arms companies."
"All Light Horse Battalions are already combined arms in the first place," was Gray's response.
Major Thomas grumbled lightly. "Mmhrm. Losing three Assault/Heavy lances would be pain, but it can be endured."
Here Colonel Petersen chuckled. The Majors turned from their discussion to look quizzically at him. He smirked again with his lips hidden behind the rim of the glass. "What do we look like, an RCT with too few Urbanmechs? You will take your Assault-weight Urbanmechs, and you will *like it*."
...
... The three commanders stared back at Petersen's somewhat sadistic grin.
"... I don't understand anything anymore," said Steve Gray.
Petersen waved it away. "High Command will be sending formal directives. But work out the assignments among yourselves."
"Sir, yes sir!"
Before they were dismissed, Petersen looked down at his drink again. Almost empty. He swirled the liquid in the glass. "Who do you think is kin to boar?" asked Petersen softly.
"House Calderon, maybe? No, those are bulls."
"There has to be some lesser noble house out there with a pig on their heraldry. Is this something we should research, sir?"
"Can it rob?" Petersen murmured further.
A kin to a boar that is a robber? Was this some sort of code? Or someone that was involved in a robbery? Maybe it was a clue to yet another hidden SLDF cache.
Kin to boar.
Kanitrob.
Kabitron.
Cameron?
He sighed softly.
Colonel Petersen looked up. "The Second Star League begins and ends with us. Never doubt this. Not until your last dying breath. This is our responsibility and we will see it done."
He slammed the glass down on the desk like a judge's gavel. "Dismissed."
-.
-.
Later, with 17th Recon Battalion "Screaming Eagles":
"If you will not follow orders, then you can just leave. The Third RCT does not need officers that put their own desires over the long-term objectives of the unit. Go out and become your own boss if you feel that strongly about this."
The company commanders stared askance at their commanding officer. Just yesterday Major McCracken had been telling them that he was ready to fight for as long as it takes to keep them together and get back into doing something more useful.
"Sir, that seems far too escalatory," said one of the Captains with a betrayed tone.
McCracken slammed his palms down onto the table, then curled his fingers back like talons. He hurled back firmly "You will comport yourselves as *true* officers and soldiers of the SLDF! This is our time!"
Those words rang like a bell through the room and seeped into their bones. That cold hawk-like gaze had no hesitation whatsoever. Everybody in that room, no matter their history together, no matter how much they had bled and laughed and fought together - he was ready to sign their papers if they still objected.
Their blood started to thunder.
Even if the Light Horse lacked manpower -
There was only one reason to be so willing to discard the disobedient!
Those- who lacked faith!
"Sir!" Everyone stood up, punched their own chests hard to the point of bruising, and bowed their heads. Just as it would have hurt to know that Amaris had taken Terra, but Kerensky still ordered them to wait and prepare. "Apologies, sir! We hear and obey!"
-.
-.
With the 11th Recon Battalion, "Alley Cats":
"Sir! Just recruiting from the Davion Outback isn't enough! We should take all from over the Inner Sphere! I'm sure there are enough orphans out there to build whole Divisions!"
"After all this time together, I did not realize this. Are you all drongos?" groaned Major Gray.
-.
-.
With the 82nd Heavy Cavalry Battalion, "Kerensky's Favorite":
"Greatness demands sacrifice. The difference is that Kurita chooses to have other people sacrifice for theirs!" Major George Thomas roared. "IF YOU HAVE PROBLEMS WITH THIS, FIGHT MEEE!!!"
And the cool and completely unintimidated response "Sir, we are the battalion 'Kerensky's Favorite' and we saw you get your ass beat by Natasha Kerensky. Please do not take your romantic rejection out on us please."
"YOU PIECES OF SHIIIT. GO TO THE PERIPHERY!"
-.
-.
Fort Bradley Training Base Adjunct
Colchester
Federated Suns
Date unknown
Meanwhile, with the new recruits:
Of the sixteen that were identified and put into a special company, only three quit from the insult. Another two more quit when they were ordered to put aside their mechs and start training with industrialmechs and agromechs. They came to the storied Light Horse to be soldiers, not laborers. The pay scale wasn't all that interesting anyway.
They were all obviously ringers meant to be found and distract from the other real spies inserted into more mundane jobs like technical crew and civilian support staff.
Rocco Ali was starting to get a feel for how the Eridani Light Horse operated. They were a crisp and professional military unit, and the way they moved without an ounce of waste reminded him of what he had observed from Comstar's own ComGuards. The defenders of Terra had almost never needed to fight, and so for all their tech and numbers were as green as green could be. Even random pirates with real battle experience could give them trouble. But they just drilled and operated on base so exceedingly well.
The Light Horse had that flair of a well-oiled military machine that maintained both institutional order and the vitality of unique individual effort.
They were so respectable and rational that one could get caught up in their flow when suddenly the Light Horse would say something that was just absolute nonsense and blithely move on as if expecting you to just go along with it.
"Psst. Hey!" the dark-skinned man to the left of Rocco Ali whispered, hiding his mouth with his palm. "So, Steiner boy, what are you in for? I'll tell you right now if you tell me yours. I'm an agent from the Magistracy of Canopus."
Rocco stared dully at him from the side.
"Yeah, I know what you're thinking. It's the Magistracy. Why don't they send some va-voom bombshell, eh? But that's why this isn't a honeypot recruiting operation, you know?"
"Calling everyone in this room spies was obviously just psy ops designed to turn participants against each other to test teamwork," Rocco Ali said simply before turning back to his work.
"Sure, sure, if you say so." The man grinned. Two of his upper teeth were gold. "So the question is… are you low key?"
I will not break cover and punch a jackass in the face. I will not break cover and punch a jackass in the face.
Rocco gestured over to the tall statuesque blonde at the front seats. "Shouldn't you try asking her that?"
William Launder turned towards the woman in question, then leered. "She would break me over her knee for that and I would enjoy it too much."
"I am done with this." Rocco looked back down to his noteputer, and furrowed his brows.
-.
Topic: The Return of the Star League. Who is it Good For?
-.
What the hell, Eridani Light Horse?
What the hell.
-.
"I came here to be a mechwarrior, not to go back to college!" one of the men screamed and tossed away his noteputer. "Why must I write an esssaaayyy?! "
"Yes my brother! Testify!" another recruit beside him raised both fists. "This is cruel! This is unjust! A thousand words of fuck you!"
'Are these people actually spies?' thought Jadwiga Winter. 'Or just morons?'
She returned to her noteputer and seriously considered her homework.
This was not something all that complicated. Everyone had thought about something like this at some point, dreaming of a return to a golden age, but not quite being able to imagine the necessary conditions for the Inner Sphere's spiral of degradation to reverse itself.
Some houses probably benefited more than the others. House Liao probably would like a freeze on their borders and losing worlds. House Kurita's military ambitions would need to be broken first. Ironically, perhaps Davion would benefit the least from the return of the Star League and would be better off trying to remain independent. Marik and Steiner enjoyed having more worlds than what they had during the Star League. And of course, everyone would rather retain control over the highly productive worlds they had seized from the Terran Hegemony.
Her introduction started:
The Inner Sphere should dread the return of the SLDF. Because at the minimum,
it would require in them a willingness and a capacity to fight everybody
everywhere all at once at the same time and still have the confidence for
victory.
SilentCrowd
Pls help my Cat has taken over my house
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Hmmm watch
12.3 To the Wild Frontier
bluepencil
The tropics will be uninhabitable.
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To the Wild Frontier 03
Pascagoula
Edgeward Draconis March
Federated Suns
May 3025
Those who lived in the Davion Outback stared up at the night sky with all the intensity of the ancient astrologers that built pyramids and erected massive stone monoliths, all for much the same reason - they sought portents among the stars.
"Paw! Paw, there's a light!" Suzanne Klering jumped from the windowsill back inside, and then downstairs. "There's two lights!"
"Tarnation are you still doing awake?!" her father, Thomas Klering hurled back. "Stop climbing to the roof, you fool girl! Don't break your neck and go to sleep!"
On a farm in the Davion Outback, dinner was just after sunset. As soon as the lights were down, most everyone turned in. Early to bed, early to rise. The farm had an old methane-powered generator that sufficed to light up the living room and run some ancient radios and a primitive holo-reader.
"A light? From where, lil Missy?" asked Granpa Tucker Klering, sitting by the window on a rocking chair and puffing on a pipe. He looked out towards the fields and relaxed in the cool night air.
"Down north!"
The entire family froze.
Because the nadir jump point was right above the star, any dropship on the approach to a world was only properly visible from the hemisphere facing the system's sun. Which of course meant that for most of the time, the drive flare was invisible like the rest of the starry sky. Transit drives could only be visible when the dropships were close enough approaching the polar coordinates that even the side facing away from the sun, at night, could see two new points of light across the northern horizon.
Mother Winona Klering went over to her child and hugged her, much to Suzanne's protests that she was no longer a baby. Father Thomas, eldest brother Tucker the Second, and second brother Timothy, rushed outside.
"Dang," Second Tucker spat as he squinted towards the horizon. "She's right."
"Could just be a trader," said Timothy.
"If it were some Mule comin' in to trade with the capital, one woulda be enough. Two dropships? That's someone with mechs or summat and all the cargo for loot." The eldest son shook his head.
"What do we do, paw?" asked Timothy.
Thomas Clearing shook his head. "We're far enough from the city. Pirates like that want to go where the loot is. We don't got nothing to worry about."
He glanced towards the house, and his wife and daughter.
Unless the loot these raiders wanted were slaves, he did not say.
"We should have a listen to what the radio says," he finished up. "Maybe… maybe this won't be something that ends in blood."
-.
-.
Pascagoula was considered a low-tech world. This meant anywhere from the dawn of industrialization up to an early 22nd century tech level. For this hard-scrabble farming world, this meant a level of technology and society that could be maintained near indefinitely at around the pre 1950s in certain areas, with a sprinkling of the 31st century in the homes of the nobility.
Radio was one of the few free luxuries in the Outback, if you happened to be close enough to the fusion-powered tower transmitter. Even someone with a simple crystal radio receiver, which required no power whatsoever, could have their lives eased a little bit by music, chatter, and news about the stars.
If you were far from the city, then you had to wait for the best time for radiowaves to bounce off the ionosphere at night. With the generator chugging in the background, the family settled in to listen from the night-time broadcast.
There was only old-timey jazz music.
After nearly half an hour, someone finally started speaking. "Welcome back, listeners! You are tuning into Thirty-Three Point Three FAST Ay Emmmm, shout out to all our folks out there in the Wilds! Now to update on our visitors - we don't have an HPG, so but they've been beaming radio down all this while to the starport. They say they're Davion. It's the Vagabond Schools!"
Everyone suddenly let out loud sighs of relief.
"Of course, because we don't have any of those fangled advanced equipment like what the military and Comstar uses, we can't be sure they are who they say they are just yet. Prepare for the worst and hope for the best, listeners!"
Thomas Klering scowled. "He's right. We have time. We can hide."
"Mmh." Grandpa Tucker puffed at his pipe. "Last time the raid got this far into the farm was in… '82 or 84, I think? We all went out to hide in a hole we dug in the forest. We came back to see everything ransacked. T'waren't no pirates though - it was the neighbors! Haw!"
The old man laughed and began slapping his own knee in hilarity.
Thomas was not laughing.
Then Grandpa Tucker said "Course, then mamaw died later that year cos the pirates looted all the meds and stole away all the doctors into slaves."
Suzanne, who was not old enough to have ever experienced a raid before, shivered in her mother's arms.
"Let's hope it really is just Davion," Thomas sighed.
"Psh, what's Davion good for?! They don't protect us anyhows, and now they come along making people do things. All this talk of free educating's just a trap ta get good boys and girls to sign up to soldiering and get kilt!" Grandpa Tucker spat.
Thomas Klering said nothing. He clutched his palms together under his nose.
"I heard soldiering pays a lot though," Second Tucker Klering said. "You get to eat well and ain't that much more painful than farm work. Families get a pension when you die."
The old man looked away and sagged into his rocking chair. "My brudder went off ta' war… and that's why we got that holo reader. He used to send holotapes talking about soldier life and all the planets he was going to. Tank commander lieutenant, that's pretty high living for a farmboy, huh?"
Grandpa Tucker emptied his pipe of ashes and sighed. "Kurita mech burned him alive in his tank. Died out there in some stupid Kurita world, how did he defend Davion with that? All the lords are all alike - they're gonna trap you with promise of glory and let you die for their stupid lines on a map. T'aint a good way to live, t'aint a good way to die…"
-.
-.
A day later and the lights had vanished from the horizon. The DropShips had landed.
The night-time broadcast announced "Whoo-wee! Looks like we got lucky, listeners! It *is* Davion! Oh they are *armed*. If these battlemechs were out for blood there's no way we could've survived. But they're here as our friends, so they're aaaaaall riiiiiiight.
"Better news! They're here to give and to take. What they're taking is your children! There's a new Vagabond School set up on DeBerry, next star over. There's slots for a hundred children to get educated in the first steps to a real high class career - doctors, engineers, architects, artists, spacemen, you name it!
"But even if they don't go off to better futures offworld, after nine months they can come back with a specialization and tools to set up their own workshop. Veterinarians, mechanics, foremen, surveyors, and other jobs that can be finished with practical experience! All of this, for free. Everything will be provided by the Ministry of Education. You can't buy your way into this, folks!
"That means that for those hundred slots, it's a lottery! You got a week to bring your kids to sign up! All that matters is that they are from thirteen to fifteen!
"And then this goes into the next thing - what they're giving away. It's another lottery! There's sixteen Agro and Industrial Mechs up for grabs - thirty two in total! If you're signed up, then you're ready to win!
"If you're too far from the capital, don't worry. Davion's sending ships out to every town all over the world. But there's only so many seats in there. So if you can't make your way to New Fostoria on your own, then I guess it's up to each town to select down how many kids can fly out. Maybe another lottery?
"Oh no. Are we being afflicted by the sin of gambling? Haha, try not to get hooked on games of chance, dear listeners! It can ruin you!"
The family turned to the two children - Suzanne Klering, age thirteen. Timothy Klering, age fifteen.
"We shouldn't miss this," Winona Klering said firmly, her eyes ready to fight.
Thomas nodded. "It's gonna be expensive staying in the city though. Better be prepared to sleep inside the truck." It was hardly that bad. Without a load it was roomy enough and still protected from the elements. But the children had to get some treats if they're out in the big city. Maybe if it didn't pan out, he could get some schoolbook and some cheap holos instead. Their savings could still hold up for that.
This gambling for schooling thing… this would probably be just a loss, but it was a fine enough excuse to have a day of fun for the children, even if it would take two days of travel. Tucker was old enough now that he was more interested in just the next town over and finding a girl to marry.
-.
-.
New Fostoria
Pascagoula
Federated Suns
Some time later
The whole planet only had a population of 61.5 million people. There were three continents - Colfax, which contained the planetary capital, Sylvan Lake, and Reynolds. Colfax carried 40 million, and its capital had a population of nearly 200,000 people.
The outskirts of the city were barren sandy ruins. There was a time when New Fostoria had a population of over a million.
But as they approached the center, there appeared that rarity of rarities - a traffic jam!
A patrolman on a motorcycle sidled up to the truck. "You there! Here to sign up your kids to the Vagabond School too?"
"Yes, sir!" replied Thomas Klering.
"Follow that road to the east," the patrolman pointed to a road that several vehicles were detaching from the logjam to move on. "There's another recruiting station set up at the end of it. After you sign up, *then* you can try to go into the city."
"Yessir, thank you sir!"
As Thomas turned the wheel, he wondered "Recruiting station? Huh. Wonder why they call it that?"
-.
"What the sam hill is this?! This is a military camp!" Thomas Klering muttered.
Four standing battlemechs glowered above the parking area. Farmers and other citizens nervously parked their vehicles and joined the lines. Small tents provided water and bread sticks for free. Cloth streamers hung from tall poles on either side of the plaza to put the center area in shade.
"Oooh!" Obviously the children were enamored by the Mechs. "So big! So that's a real BattleMech!"
A Vindicator, a Hunchback, and two Griffins, to be precise.
There were two more yellow mechs with a curious dome shape and odd lobster-like hands protruding off the belly of the machine instead of where shoulders should be. Those arm locations had instead a pair of cranes. If ever Thomas was asked what an IndustrialMech would look like, he was now sure of saying 'yup, those look like IndustrialMechs all right'.
Two more much smaller mechs that looked like an egg with arms and legs and a carrying basket over their hips. Those were probably the Agromechs.
He could see people being helped in and out of the cockpits of the mechs. They remained locked in place, but the civilian mechs could swing around and try out movement and handling without the use of a neurohelmet. There were some small cargo pods that could be picked up to test the responsiveness of waldoes.
Eventually what drew his eye were the two lines at the far end of the old plaza, each in front of two flags. One had a long but orderly line. The red and gold sunburst behind a sword flag of the Federated Suns. Another had a small crescent of people watching from holos but unwilling to approach further. That one had the flag of the Star League above.
One of the tents was marked INFORMATION.
"Joining the Vagabond Schools waiting list is simple. Just fill out this form. Your children will have to join the line to get their biometrics and neural signature data taken. This will ensure no substitution or collusion can happen to the children. After that, they are due for a free health check-up. Adults too, if you want. Vaccinations are free as well."
"If it's all right to ask, what's that?" he pointed to the spot with the Star League flag.
"Oh, that is simply the SLDF recruiting station."
"The what."
"The SLDF recruiting station," the pale-blonde woman replied with a fixed smile.
"Uh, you… you all know that the SLDF are, like gone, right? The Star League fell hundreds of years ago."
"The Star League Defense Forces have returned. The Eridani Light Horse never left the Inner Sphere and they are looking for people to join the Third Regimental Combat Team."
What the hay is going on here?"
-.
While waiting for the children to process the line, Thomas inspected the information posters pasted on to the old walls.
BE ALL YOU CAN BE!
The Federated Suns doesn't just need soldiers!
For every man or woman in the AFFS, they need
the support of dozens of civilian specialists. They
need your help to keep fightin!
While others fight to defend the freedoms of good
people in the Federated Suns, it is also up to us
to make these worlds worthy of that defense.
Every citizen has the right to try to reach their
fullest potential. We need more teachers, doctors,
engineers, lawmen, large-scale farming and mining
specialists, drivers and pilots, space crew and more!
Be all you can be - don't let anyone stop you from
trying to achieve your dreams!
You don't have to do violence to serve. Make the
Worlds of the Federated Suns safe and lawful with
honest effort!
Sign up for the AFFS Collegiate Program today!
-.
Meanwhile, on the opposite side:
YOU ARE NOT COMING BACK.
Only by looking forward can you protect those
who stand behind you. You will carry the debt
of honor on your shoulders. Side by side with
your brothers and sisters in the SLDF, only you
can bring peace back into the Inner Sphere.
House Kurita is one main reason your life is full of
suffering. If they were not so intent on conquering
the entire Inner Sphere, things would be like in
the days of the Star League when taxes could be
put aside for peace and good works instead of
always fighting to keep the Draconis Combine
at bay.
For the wars to stop, the SLDF must come back
in strength to secure the borders. The Star
League can only be established again from the
Inside.
We are the SLDF 16th Army, 11th Corps,
3rd RCT- ERIDANI LIGHT HORSE.
When Kerensky abandoned the Inner Sphere, we
remained, to maintain the virtues of the Star
League, and to welcome them when they return.
The time has come.
The Succession Wars for an empty throne will end.
We are rebuilding the Star League Defense Force.
> You will have the finest training maintained since
Kerensky's own SLDF.
> You will be armed with the best technology
and equipment have been long considered lostech.
> You will ply the stars on new vessels made
for the new doctrine created just for you.
> You will have the support of the finest logistical
network ever devised by man.
>You will be part of the greatest endeavor since
the establishment of the Star League itself.
> You will become fully a citizen of the Star League
with all its rights and responsibilities separate from
your Great House allegiances.
Prove yourself worthy of the name, and through
a thousand years across a thousand worlds,
you will only ever know victory.
Are you ready to be greater than yourself?
-.
"Are… are you allowed to *say* this?" someone asked the officer sitting behind the desk. People were looking around, but the plaza was clear of stones.
"The Third RCT has been reactivated. We are, once again, officially the SLDF. Do you see that line?" A box was painted onto the cleared bricks. A sign said Beyond this line is SLDF territory. AFFS law is superseded by SLDF law. "You are not coming back, because as long as you are a soldier of the SLDF, you are not anymore *a citizen of the Federated Suns*. We only need the ones ready to give up everything."
One of the parents pointed to the sign
RECRUITMENT LIMITS
Ages 14-16 only.
"Why do you want to take our children?!"
"MechWarriors are best trained from an early age," was the response.
The word was enough to send their bones ringing. MechWarrior. Across a thousand years, BattleMechs and those who fought in them were the elites among elites.
"Davion needs as many MechWarriors as they can have, don't they? Why would they even allow this?"
"Because we are the SLDF and we have a treaty."
Murmurs of disbelief greeted this declaration.
"I want to be MechWarrior!" shouted a boy. He shrugged off the hold of his parents, ran into the space, and faced the desk. His father shouted but hesitated on crossing the line. The man looked up nervously towards the BattleMechs.
"Child of the Federated Suns, be more mindful," said the recruiter. "Remember this - until you surrender your commission in SLDF, if you are a noble, you will not inherit. If your parents have property, you will not inherit. You will be leaving your family behind it would be years before you might see them again. Maybe even never again. If you just want to be a MechWarrior… then try joining the AFFS, maybe?"
The boy scoffed "Then what's all this then? If you don't want more MechWarriors, then just say so! You need me more than I need you!"
The recruiter yawned and turned back to his noteputer. "Our Assault Mechs need soldiers that are capable of following orders and working with a team."
That left the boy standing there, alone and hearing the tittering of the crowd. He clenched his fists, standing straight and trying not to cry from the humiliation. He turned around, shouting "You will regreeet thiiiss!!!"
The recruiter lets some time pass and then sighed. "Not even thirty seconds. Children sure do lack patience these days, huh? If they can't even get through that, they won't be able to get through basic training. Just be a doctor or something."
He pointed to the left. "The Neurohelmet Test is free anyway. There is no obligation to join up."
Then another teen stepped up. "I want to be a MechWarrior!"
"Not without your parent's permission, you can't."
"Don't got none! Uh… Sir!"
The recruiter looked up. The teen was a young man with scraggly brown hair. "How did you get here then?"
"I work! Sir! Hitched a ride with my boss! Sir!"
"Fine." The recruiter gestured to a nearby cockpit-like chair. "Sit down and put on the neurohelmet. That will measure your BattleMech control compatibility."
The boy saluted "Thank you sir!"
The boy sat on the chair and a robotic arm lowered the bucket-like helmet over his head. A hologram rose up from the floor in front of the chair. It was a Marauder BattleMech. The people let out a small 'ooh' of interest.
A digitized female voice said:
"Initiating control test one. Please imagine yourself and the BattleMech moving forward at the same time."
The boy lifted his foot slightly, and the simulated Mech raised its left leg. He leaned forward slightly, and the Mech took one forward step. Then it began rocking back and forth in place as the boy tried to get the other leg to move without the mech losing balance."
"Try not to think too hard about it," the recruiter advised. "Neurohelmets are there to make mechs move like your own body. Relax and move naturally."
The mech took one sliding step forward. Then another. Then finally a few steps of real movement.
Then the mech fell flat on its face.
"Initiating control test two. Please move the arms according to the directions."
On the holo, arrows overlaid the image. Move the arms up. Left. Right. Down. Upper Left. Etc.
"Please twist the torso according to the directions."
And then after that, a more complicated sequence of moving the arms while twisting the torso.
"Initiating control test three. Pull the trigger and imagine firing weapons from each arm."
The holo let out a loud *FSHRAK!* of a PPC bolt. People jerked back in surprise. Someone clapped.
"Initiating control test three. Movement in combat. Please imagine moving forward and aiming towards the provided target."
A small sphere appeared a short distance away from the simulated Marauder. The Marauder took a few step, fired its PPCs, missed, and fell flat on its face again.
The chair let out some beeps and boops, and then with a chime displayed on the LCD screen atop the testing chair:
MECH CONTROL COMPATIBILITY: 77.13%.
PASS.
A few more people started clapping.
"Hey, kiddo. Did you sign up to the Vagabond School? What's your name?" the recruiter asked.
"Y-yes sir! I'm… Billyson, sir! Just Billyson."
"Come over here, Billy." The recruiter then passed a small data slate and a credstick to the boy. "If you pull out from the vagabond school class lottery that gives someone else a free slot. Are you sure you want to sign off your life to the SLDF?"
The boy turned to look for his boss. The squat pimpled man that owned a restaurant nodded. "Sure I'm sure, sir!"
"Congratulations. Here, present this to the guards. You have a signing bonus of five hundred C-bills, free lodging at the hostel until we leave, and a thousand C-bills of child support remuneration to whoever you designate as your guardian. Relax and settle everything you want to do in this world. You're not coming back."
Suddenly knowing money was involved had everyone in an uproar.
"I want to sign up!"
"Hey! Can my child be a mechwarrior too?!"
"Can girls be a mechwarrior?!"
There was a loud piercing sound as someone stepped over the yellow line. The gun turrets behind the recruiter spun up. Abruptly, people remembered that SLDF military law meant that anyone trespassing could be shot and Davion wouldn't be able to do anything about it.
"One at a time, please," said the recruiter. "The test is, after all, free to take. There is no obligation to join. The results of this test would be valid for joining the AFFS later, if that is your preference."
Thomas felt tugging at his sleeves. He looked down to see that his children had already finished signing up to the School Lottery. Now Suzanne was looking up at him with big doe eyes for a test.
"No!" Thomas Klearing immediately yelled at them.
One of the parents raised their hand. "Can adults be tested too?"
"Sure, why not?" the recruiter responded. "We will bring out some more testing chairs and set up a separate line."
-.
"I wanted to try…" Suzanne pouted. "It's not fair."
"Paw… if I can be a MechWarrior, that's big. Instead of gambling on a school, it's a sure thing!"
"What, and just abandon your family so easily? You're gonna spit in our eye for raising you to live just like that? I'm not letting it be! That's for orphans and people who ain't wanted by their families!" Thomas grunted. "Instead of a mech… here, try out the agromech."
"There's a lot of people, prolly not going to get this anyway…" Timothy murmured mulishly.
He soon changed his mind however. The Ruralmech was, unlike the neurohelmet simulation of a BattleMech, was a real thing. The waldoes responded perfectly, and the height of the machine made him feel powerful.
The smaller Ergomechs were 15 tons and subject to stricter supervision were now being allowed to walk and run and pick up and toss things, five minutes per test pilot. Now the pair of small ultralight mechs were doing a catch and throw game.
Those controls were very refined and responsible for comparatively crude physical-motion tracking.
Thomas Klering was handed a pamphlet explaining the details of the 30-ton Ruralmech. "Can this run on liquified methane?" he asked the roving support staff.
"It doesn't sir."
"Then what's the fuel? Gasoline?"
"It doesn't sir. Need any fuel, that is. It's fusion-powered."
The farmer boggled. "And you're just giving this away?!"
The ELH support personnel winced. "We… have *a lot* of Ruralmechs."
Suzanne had managed to slip away and ran for the lines to the neurohelmet test.
-.
"Suzanne! Where are you girl?!" Thomas Klering shouted.
"She's not at the mechwarrior lines," Timothy responded with a wheeze, having just ran from there. The line was getting long, it was getting late in the afternoon, and his heart pained from missing his chance.
"Paw!" Suzanne shouted back, waving from the food booth. "Look! I got free ice pops!"
The girl showed them three flavored frozen candies.
"Where'd you get this?"
The girl pointed to a booth handing out free treats. It was right next to another tent labeled
AEROSPACE FIGHTER PILOT
COMPATIBILITY TESTING
"Aw come on!" Thomas Klering felt like ripping the hat off his head and throwing it to the ground in consternation.
Pascagoula
Edgeward Draconis March
Federated Suns
May 3025
Those who lived in the Davion Outback stared up at the night sky with all the intensity of the ancient astrologers that built pyramids and erected massive stone monoliths, all for much the same reason - they sought portents among the stars.
"Paw! Paw, there's a light!" Suzanne Klering jumped from the windowsill back inside, and then downstairs. "There's two lights!"
"Tarnation are you still doing awake?!" her father, Thomas Klering hurled back. "Stop climbing to the roof, you fool girl! Don't break your neck and go to sleep!"
On a farm in the Davion Outback, dinner was just after sunset. As soon as the lights were down, most everyone turned in. Early to bed, early to rise. The farm had an old methane-powered generator that sufficed to light up the living room and run some ancient radios and a primitive holo-reader.
"A light? From where, lil Missy?" asked Granpa Tucker Klering, sitting by the window on a rocking chair and puffing on a pipe. He looked out towards the fields and relaxed in the cool night air.
"Down north!"
The entire family froze.
Because the nadir jump point was right above the star, any dropship on the approach to a world was only properly visible from the hemisphere facing the system's sun. Which of course meant that for most of the time, the drive flare was invisible like the rest of the starry sky. Transit drives could only be visible when the dropships were close enough approaching the polar coordinates that even the side facing away from the sun, at night, could see two new points of light across the northern horizon.
Mother Winona Klering went over to her child and hugged her, much to Suzanne's protests that she was no longer a baby. Father Thomas, eldest brother Tucker the Second, and second brother Timothy, rushed outside.
"Dang," Second Tucker spat as he squinted towards the horizon. "She's right."
"Could just be a trader," said Timothy.
"If it were some Mule comin' in to trade with the capital, one woulda be enough. Two dropships? That's someone with mechs or summat and all the cargo for loot." The eldest son shook his head.
"What do we do, paw?" asked Timothy.
Thomas Clearing shook his head. "We're far enough from the city. Pirates like that want to go where the loot is. We don't got nothing to worry about."
He glanced towards the house, and his wife and daughter.
Unless the loot these raiders wanted were slaves, he did not say.
"We should have a listen to what the radio says," he finished up. "Maybe… maybe this won't be something that ends in blood."
-.
-.
Pascagoula was considered a low-tech world. This meant anywhere from the dawn of industrialization up to an early 22nd century tech level. For this hard-scrabble farming world, this meant a level of technology and society that could be maintained near indefinitely at around the pre 1950s in certain areas, with a sprinkling of the 31st century in the homes of the nobility.
Radio was one of the few free luxuries in the Outback, if you happened to be close enough to the fusion-powered tower transmitter. Even someone with a simple crystal radio receiver, which required no power whatsoever, could have their lives eased a little bit by music, chatter, and news about the stars.
If you were far from the city, then you had to wait for the best time for radiowaves to bounce off the ionosphere at night. With the generator chugging in the background, the family settled in to listen from the night-time broadcast.
There was only old-timey jazz music.
After nearly half an hour, someone finally started speaking. "Welcome back, listeners! You are tuning into Thirty-Three Point Three FAST Ay Emmmm, shout out to all our folks out there in the Wilds! Now to update on our visitors - we don't have an HPG, so but they've been beaming radio down all this while to the starport. They say they're Davion. It's the Vagabond Schools!"
Everyone suddenly let out loud sighs of relief.
"Of course, because we don't have any of those fangled advanced equipment like what the military and Comstar uses, we can't be sure they are who they say they are just yet. Prepare for the worst and hope for the best, listeners!"
Thomas Klering scowled. "He's right. We have time. We can hide."
"Mmh." Grandpa Tucker puffed at his pipe. "Last time the raid got this far into the farm was in… '82 or 84, I think? We all went out to hide in a hole we dug in the forest. We came back to see everything ransacked. T'waren't no pirates though - it was the neighbors! Haw!"
The old man laughed and began slapping his own knee in hilarity.
Thomas was not laughing.
Then Grandpa Tucker said "Course, then mamaw died later that year cos the pirates looted all the meds and stole away all the doctors into slaves."
Suzanne, who was not old enough to have ever experienced a raid before, shivered in her mother's arms.
"Let's hope it really is just Davion," Thomas sighed.
"Psh, what's Davion good for?! They don't protect us anyhows, and now they come along making people do things. All this talk of free educating's just a trap ta get good boys and girls to sign up to soldiering and get kilt!" Grandpa Tucker spat.
Thomas Klering said nothing. He clutched his palms together under his nose.
"I heard soldiering pays a lot though," Second Tucker Klering said. "You get to eat well and ain't that much more painful than farm work. Families get a pension when you die."
The old man looked away and sagged into his rocking chair. "My brudder went off ta' war… and that's why we got that holo reader. He used to send holotapes talking about soldier life and all the planets he was going to. Tank commander lieutenant, that's pretty high living for a farmboy, huh?"
Grandpa Tucker emptied his pipe of ashes and sighed. "Kurita mech burned him alive in his tank. Died out there in some stupid Kurita world, how did he defend Davion with that? All the lords are all alike - they're gonna trap you with promise of glory and let you die for their stupid lines on a map. T'aint a good way to live, t'aint a good way to die…"
-.
-.
A day later and the lights had vanished from the horizon. The DropShips had landed.
The night-time broadcast announced "Whoo-wee! Looks like we got lucky, listeners! It *is* Davion! Oh they are *armed*. If these battlemechs were out for blood there's no way we could've survived. But they're here as our friends, so they're aaaaaall riiiiiiight.
"Better news! They're here to give and to take. What they're taking is your children! There's a new Vagabond School set up on DeBerry, next star over. There's slots for a hundred children to get educated in the first steps to a real high class career - doctors, engineers, architects, artists, spacemen, you name it!
"But even if they don't go off to better futures offworld, after nine months they can come back with a specialization and tools to set up their own workshop. Veterinarians, mechanics, foremen, surveyors, and other jobs that can be finished with practical experience! All of this, for free. Everything will be provided by the Ministry of Education. You can't buy your way into this, folks!
"That means that for those hundred slots, it's a lottery! You got a week to bring your kids to sign up! All that matters is that they are from thirteen to fifteen!
"And then this goes into the next thing - what they're giving away. It's another lottery! There's sixteen Agro and Industrial Mechs up for grabs - thirty two in total! If you're signed up, then you're ready to win!
"If you're too far from the capital, don't worry. Davion's sending ships out to every town all over the world. But there's only so many seats in there. So if you can't make your way to New Fostoria on your own, then I guess it's up to each town to select down how many kids can fly out. Maybe another lottery?
"Oh no. Are we being afflicted by the sin of gambling? Haha, try not to get hooked on games of chance, dear listeners! It can ruin you!"
The family turned to the two children - Suzanne Klering, age thirteen. Timothy Klering, age fifteen.
"We shouldn't miss this," Winona Klering said firmly, her eyes ready to fight.
Thomas nodded. "It's gonna be expensive staying in the city though. Better be prepared to sleep inside the truck." It was hardly that bad. Without a load it was roomy enough and still protected from the elements. But the children had to get some treats if they're out in the big city. Maybe if it didn't pan out, he could get some schoolbook and some cheap holos instead. Their savings could still hold up for that.
This gambling for schooling thing… this would probably be just a loss, but it was a fine enough excuse to have a day of fun for the children, even if it would take two days of travel. Tucker was old enough now that he was more interested in just the next town over and finding a girl to marry.
-.
-.
New Fostoria
Pascagoula
Federated Suns
Some time later
The whole planet only had a population of 61.5 million people. There were three continents - Colfax, which contained the planetary capital, Sylvan Lake, and Reynolds. Colfax carried 40 million, and its capital had a population of nearly 200,000 people.
The outskirts of the city were barren sandy ruins. There was a time when New Fostoria had a population of over a million.
But as they approached the center, there appeared that rarity of rarities - a traffic jam!
A patrolman on a motorcycle sidled up to the truck. "You there! Here to sign up your kids to the Vagabond School too?"
"Yes, sir!" replied Thomas Klering.
"Follow that road to the east," the patrolman pointed to a road that several vehicles were detaching from the logjam to move on. "There's another recruiting station set up at the end of it. After you sign up, *then* you can try to go into the city."
"Yessir, thank you sir!"
As Thomas turned the wheel, he wondered "Recruiting station? Huh. Wonder why they call it that?"
-.
"What the sam hill is this?! This is a military camp!" Thomas Klering muttered.
Four standing battlemechs glowered above the parking area. Farmers and other citizens nervously parked their vehicles and joined the lines. Small tents provided water and bread sticks for free. Cloth streamers hung from tall poles on either side of the plaza to put the center area in shade.
"Oooh!" Obviously the children were enamored by the Mechs. "So big! So that's a real BattleMech!"
A Vindicator, a Hunchback, and two Griffins, to be precise.
There were two more yellow mechs with a curious dome shape and odd lobster-like hands protruding off the belly of the machine instead of where shoulders should be. Those arm locations had instead a pair of cranes. If ever Thomas was asked what an IndustrialMech would look like, he was now sure of saying 'yup, those look like IndustrialMechs all right'.
Two more much smaller mechs that looked like an egg with arms and legs and a carrying basket over their hips. Those were probably the Agromechs.
He could see people being helped in and out of the cockpits of the mechs. They remained locked in place, but the civilian mechs could swing around and try out movement and handling without the use of a neurohelmet. There were some small cargo pods that could be picked up to test the responsiveness of waldoes.
Eventually what drew his eye were the two lines at the far end of the old plaza, each in front of two flags. One had a long but orderly line. The red and gold sunburst behind a sword flag of the Federated Suns. Another had a small crescent of people watching from holos but unwilling to approach further. That one had the flag of the Star League above.
One of the tents was marked INFORMATION.
"Joining the Vagabond Schools waiting list is simple. Just fill out this form. Your children will have to join the line to get their biometrics and neural signature data taken. This will ensure no substitution or collusion can happen to the children. After that, they are due for a free health check-up. Adults too, if you want. Vaccinations are free as well."
"If it's all right to ask, what's that?" he pointed to the spot with the Star League flag.
"Oh, that is simply the SLDF recruiting station."
"The what."
"The SLDF recruiting station," the pale-blonde woman replied with a fixed smile.
"Uh, you… you all know that the SLDF are, like gone, right? The Star League fell hundreds of years ago."
"The Star League Defense Forces have returned. The Eridani Light Horse never left the Inner Sphere and they are looking for people to join the Third Regimental Combat Team."
What the hay is going on here?"
-.
While waiting for the children to process the line, Thomas inspected the information posters pasted on to the old walls.
BE ALL YOU CAN BE!
The Federated Suns doesn't just need soldiers!
For every man or woman in the AFFS, they need
the support of dozens of civilian specialists. They
need your help to keep fightin!
While others fight to defend the freedoms of good
people in the Federated Suns, it is also up to us
to make these worlds worthy of that defense.
Every citizen has the right to try to reach their
fullest potential. We need more teachers, doctors,
engineers, lawmen, large-scale farming and mining
specialists, drivers and pilots, space crew and more!
Be all you can be - don't let anyone stop you from
trying to achieve your dreams!
You don't have to do violence to serve. Make the
Worlds of the Federated Suns safe and lawful with
honest effort!
Sign up for the AFFS Collegiate Program today!
-.
Meanwhile, on the opposite side:
YOU ARE NOT COMING BACK.
Only by looking forward can you protect those
who stand behind you. You will carry the debt
of honor on your shoulders. Side by side with
your brothers and sisters in the SLDF, only you
can bring peace back into the Inner Sphere.
House Kurita is one main reason your life is full of
suffering. If they were not so intent on conquering
the entire Inner Sphere, things would be like in
the days of the Star League when taxes could be
put aside for peace and good works instead of
always fighting to keep the Draconis Combine
at bay.
For the wars to stop, the SLDF must come back
in strength to secure the borders. The Star
League can only be established again from the
Inside.
We are the SLDF 16th Army, 11th Corps,
3rd RCT- ERIDANI LIGHT HORSE.
When Kerensky abandoned the Inner Sphere, we
remained, to maintain the virtues of the Star
League, and to welcome them when they return.
The time has come.
The Succession Wars for an empty throne will end.
We are rebuilding the Star League Defense Force.
> You will have the finest training maintained since
Kerensky's own SLDF.
> You will be armed with the best technology
and equipment have been long considered lostech.
> You will ply the stars on new vessels made
for the new doctrine created just for you.
> You will have the support of the finest logistical
network ever devised by man.
>You will be part of the greatest endeavor since
the establishment of the Star League itself.
> You will become fully a citizen of the Star League
with all its rights and responsibilities separate from
your Great House allegiances.
Prove yourself worthy of the name, and through
a thousand years across a thousand worlds,
you will only ever know victory.
Are you ready to be greater than yourself?
-.
"Are… are you allowed to *say* this?" someone asked the officer sitting behind the desk. People were looking around, but the plaza was clear of stones.
"The Third RCT has been reactivated. We are, once again, officially the SLDF. Do you see that line?" A box was painted onto the cleared bricks. A sign said Beyond this line is SLDF territory. AFFS law is superseded by SLDF law. "You are not coming back, because as long as you are a soldier of the SLDF, you are not anymore *a citizen of the Federated Suns*. We only need the ones ready to give up everything."
One of the parents pointed to the sign
RECRUITMENT LIMITS
Ages 14-16 only.
"Why do you want to take our children?!"
"MechWarriors are best trained from an early age," was the response.
The word was enough to send their bones ringing. MechWarrior. Across a thousand years, BattleMechs and those who fought in them were the elites among elites.
"Davion needs as many MechWarriors as they can have, don't they? Why would they even allow this?"
"Because we are the SLDF and we have a treaty."
Murmurs of disbelief greeted this declaration.
"I want to be MechWarrior!" shouted a boy. He shrugged off the hold of his parents, ran into the space, and faced the desk. His father shouted but hesitated on crossing the line. The man looked up nervously towards the BattleMechs.
"Child of the Federated Suns, be more mindful," said the recruiter. "Remember this - until you surrender your commission in SLDF, if you are a noble, you will not inherit. If your parents have property, you will not inherit. You will be leaving your family behind it would be years before you might see them again. Maybe even never again. If you just want to be a MechWarrior… then try joining the AFFS, maybe?"
The boy scoffed "Then what's all this then? If you don't want more MechWarriors, then just say so! You need me more than I need you!"
The recruiter yawned and turned back to his noteputer. "Our Assault Mechs need soldiers that are capable of following orders and working with a team."
That left the boy standing there, alone and hearing the tittering of the crowd. He clenched his fists, standing straight and trying not to cry from the humiliation. He turned around, shouting "You will regreeet thiiiss!!!"
The recruiter lets some time pass and then sighed. "Not even thirty seconds. Children sure do lack patience these days, huh? If they can't even get through that, they won't be able to get through basic training. Just be a doctor or something."
He pointed to the left. "The Neurohelmet Test is free anyway. There is no obligation to join up."
Then another teen stepped up. "I want to be a MechWarrior!"
"Not without your parent's permission, you can't."
"Don't got none! Uh… Sir!"
The recruiter looked up. The teen was a young man with scraggly brown hair. "How did you get here then?"
"I work! Sir! Hitched a ride with my boss! Sir!"
"Fine." The recruiter gestured to a nearby cockpit-like chair. "Sit down and put on the neurohelmet. That will measure your BattleMech control compatibility."
The boy saluted "Thank you sir!"
The boy sat on the chair and a robotic arm lowered the bucket-like helmet over his head. A hologram rose up from the floor in front of the chair. It was a Marauder BattleMech. The people let out a small 'ooh' of interest.
A digitized female voice said:
"Initiating control test one. Please imagine yourself and the BattleMech moving forward at the same time."
The boy lifted his foot slightly, and the simulated Mech raised its left leg. He leaned forward slightly, and the Mech took one forward step. Then it began rocking back and forth in place as the boy tried to get the other leg to move without the mech losing balance."
"Try not to think too hard about it," the recruiter advised. "Neurohelmets are there to make mechs move like your own body. Relax and move naturally."
The mech took one sliding step forward. Then another. Then finally a few steps of real movement.
Then the mech fell flat on its face.
"Initiating control test two. Please move the arms according to the directions."
On the holo, arrows overlaid the image. Move the arms up. Left. Right. Down. Upper Left. Etc.
"Please twist the torso according to the directions."
And then after that, a more complicated sequence of moving the arms while twisting the torso.
"Initiating control test three. Pull the trigger and imagine firing weapons from each arm."
The holo let out a loud *FSHRAK!* of a PPC bolt. People jerked back in surprise. Someone clapped.
"Initiating control test three. Movement in combat. Please imagine moving forward and aiming towards the provided target."
A small sphere appeared a short distance away from the simulated Marauder. The Marauder took a few step, fired its PPCs, missed, and fell flat on its face again.
The chair let out some beeps and boops, and then with a chime displayed on the LCD screen atop the testing chair:
MECH CONTROL COMPATIBILITY: 77.13%.
PASS.
A few more people started clapping.
"Hey, kiddo. Did you sign up to the Vagabond School? What's your name?" the recruiter asked.
"Y-yes sir! I'm… Billyson, sir! Just Billyson."
"Come over here, Billy." The recruiter then passed a small data slate and a credstick to the boy. "If you pull out from the vagabond school class lottery that gives someone else a free slot. Are you sure you want to sign off your life to the SLDF?"
The boy turned to look for his boss. The squat pimpled man that owned a restaurant nodded. "Sure I'm sure, sir!"
"Congratulations. Here, present this to the guards. You have a signing bonus of five hundred C-bills, free lodging at the hostel until we leave, and a thousand C-bills of child support remuneration to whoever you designate as your guardian. Relax and settle everything you want to do in this world. You're not coming back."
Suddenly knowing money was involved had everyone in an uproar.
"I want to sign up!"
"Hey! Can my child be a mechwarrior too?!"
"Can girls be a mechwarrior?!"
There was a loud piercing sound as someone stepped over the yellow line. The gun turrets behind the recruiter spun up. Abruptly, people remembered that SLDF military law meant that anyone trespassing could be shot and Davion wouldn't be able to do anything about it.
"One at a time, please," said the recruiter. "The test is, after all, free to take. There is no obligation to join. The results of this test would be valid for joining the AFFS later, if that is your preference."
Thomas felt tugging at his sleeves. He looked down to see that his children had already finished signing up to the School Lottery. Now Suzanne was looking up at him with big doe eyes for a test.
"No!" Thomas Klearing immediately yelled at them.
One of the parents raised their hand. "Can adults be tested too?"
"Sure, why not?" the recruiter responded. "We will bring out some more testing chairs and set up a separate line."
-.
"I wanted to try…" Suzanne pouted. "It's not fair."
"Paw… if I can be a MechWarrior, that's big. Instead of gambling on a school, it's a sure thing!"
"What, and just abandon your family so easily? You're gonna spit in our eye for raising you to live just like that? I'm not letting it be! That's for orphans and people who ain't wanted by their families!" Thomas grunted. "Instead of a mech… here, try out the agromech."
"There's a lot of people, prolly not going to get this anyway…" Timothy murmured mulishly.
He soon changed his mind however. The Ruralmech was, unlike the neurohelmet simulation of a BattleMech, was a real thing. The waldoes responded perfectly, and the height of the machine made him feel powerful.
The smaller Ergomechs were 15 tons and subject to stricter supervision were now being allowed to walk and run and pick up and toss things, five minutes per test pilot. Now the pair of small ultralight mechs were doing a catch and throw game.
Those controls were very refined and responsible for comparatively crude physical-motion tracking.
Thomas Klering was handed a pamphlet explaining the details of the 30-ton Ruralmech. "Can this run on liquified methane?" he asked the roving support staff.
"It doesn't sir."
"Then what's the fuel? Gasoline?"
"It doesn't sir. Need any fuel, that is. It's fusion-powered."
The farmer boggled. "And you're just giving this away?!"
The ELH support personnel winced. "We… have *a lot* of Ruralmechs."
Suzanne had managed to slip away and ran for the lines to the neurohelmet test.
-.
"Suzanne! Where are you girl?!" Thomas Klering shouted.
"She's not at the mechwarrior lines," Timothy responded with a wheeze, having just ran from there. The line was getting long, it was getting late in the afternoon, and his heart pained from missing his chance.
"Paw!" Suzanne shouted back, waving from the food booth. "Look! I got free ice pops!"
The girl showed them three flavored frozen candies.
"Where'd you get this?"
The girl pointed to a booth handing out free treats. It was right next to another tent labeled
AEROSPACE FIGHTER PILOT
COMPATIBILITY TESTING
"Aw come on!" Thomas Klering felt like ripping the hat off his head and throwing it to the ground in consternation.
Last edited:
12.4 To the Wild Frontier
bluepencil
The tropics will be uninhabitable.
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To the Wild Frontier 04
Pascagoula
Edgeward Draconis March
Federated Suns
One week later
"Paww! Paawww! There's a plane!"
While the crops were growing in the landscape only made barely arable by ancient terraforming era water channels, there was still much to do around the farm. Like most homesteads in the poor worlds, they tried to be as self-sufficient as much as possible.
Old Granpa Tucker stayed cool by the porch, puffing on his pipe. "Hoho, that aint' no reg'lar plane. I know that sound."
Suzanne ran back out, with Thomas Klering wiping his hands with a rag as he had been feeling slop to the pigs. The plane circled around the farm and then hovered in place. The rest of the family one by one went out to the front yard. The aircraft let out a dull roar as it slowly landed vertically.
A wave of kicked-up dust rolled towards the farm. Everyone coughed and shielded their faces.
"What is that?" Thomas asked.
"Aint' no airplane. That's a space plane!" said Grandpa Tucker. "I'da seen it in the holos. It's a lander that's smaller than a dropship an' bigger than a fighter! Dunno why they call it a Small Craft for some reason."
"So you think it's Davion?"
"Who else would give a crap, you think?" the old man cackled.
A small jeep rolled out from the back of the craft, and soon enough met up with the family. Two people stepped out, a man and a woman. The man was tall and dressed in green military fatigues. The woman was wearing a crisp orange pants-suit. They were both wearing sunglasses.
"Good morning! Is this the homestead of the Klering family?" the woman asked as she approached, taking out a noteputer pad.
"It is," Thomas answer.
"Excellent!" She marked down something on the pad, then held out a hand. She had fingerless gloves on. "Vivian Waters, Vagabond Instructor. Happy to meet you."
"Uh, Thomas Klering. Same, I reckon." They shook hands.
The man pressed a fist to his chest and bowed slightly. "Corporal John Merot, Support Division, Eridani Light Horse."
Thomas was unsure of how to receive the gesture, so just imitated it. He asked "Well then, may I ask what brings you folks here? Good news I hope?"
"Indeed, Mister Klering! Your child was lucky enough to be selected to the first round of the De Berry Vagabond School, school year of 3025-3026. Is Suzanne Klering present?"
"That's me! That's me!" the girl raised her hand excitedly.
"Aww fooey!" Timothy huffed.
"Congratulations!" Tucker Second rubbed that top of Suzanne's head. The girl slapped at his calloused hands indignantly.
The instructor continued "The selection process is completely random and does not take into consideration any educational aptitude. However, this is not very relevant, as it is the philosophy of the Vagabond Schools that every child has the potential to be good at something. These nine months build a foundation that would allow them to find their specialization."
Suzanne looked up and then nervously sidled up to her mother's side. "Do I gotta leave now?"
"Haha, not yet. Please take another five days to prepare. After this, it will be another nine months before you can come home. We will periodically be able to send holos on a monthly basis though as the jumpships go on rotation."
"Tch. Good luck, I guess," Timothy muttered. He crossed his arms and bit his lip. "Werent expectin' anything to happen anyhoos."
Suzanne glanced at him, then to her parents looking down at her with more worry than pride. She would be going away all by herself to a strange place with new strange people. Only now was it becoming clear to her how… scary that would be. At thirteen years old, she was no longer a child and had formed her personality, but being the sole girl in a distant farm meant that she was ill-socialized with other girls.
"Can I just… could someone have someone else go?"
"The 'ticket', as is stands, is non-transferrable, I am sorry." The instructor shook her head and smiled gently. "That is why biometrics and brain patterns were taken. Next time though, children who are already registered won't need to stand in line anymore. There's always next year."
Suzanne licked her lips. She reached out into her pocket and brought out a card. "Even if… I have this?"
The card stated: NEUROHELMET COMPATIBILITY: 94.6%.
Thomas glanced over, quickly snapped the card from her hand and read it. His face clouded over with fury. "I see! This is what you were after?! You cheats! I won't allow it!"
"Ah, sir. This is a coincidence, a coincidence! Even if that were so, parental permission is still required, so no one is ever really obligated to sign up to any military-"
"Get out of here, you child thieves!"
The ELH soldier stepped up protectively in front of the instructor. He bellowed "COOL YOUR HEAD!"
He grabbed Thomas Klering's outstretched arm by the wrist. "SINCE WHEN DO YOU THINK THE SLDF WOULD BE SO DESPERATE AS TO RIP CHILDREN AWAY FROM THE ARMS OF THEIR PARENTS?!" He pushed, letting go, and the farmer stepped unsteadily backwards.
The ELH man hissed out "Think clearly, man! Even if she spends nine months being told all sorts of things designed to get her to sign up - it does not matter. She is still too young anyway. She will not be able to sign up without your approval. If we just wanted to steal children, why bother with all this show? It would be much easier to just raid orphanages! How many starving families do you think would be happy to give up their children at least in the hope they would have a better and more structured life?"
The soldier waved to the farm behind the family. "You own your own land, with your own home. You are in your own way, privileged, but limited by the conditions of your homeworld. It is *fine* if other people fight for your sake. Pay your taxes and support the Federated Suns, only we ask you do not insult the honor of those ready to die for your safety.
"The SLDF only takes the willing and most determined. We need people willing and ready to fight, not just any random child!"
Thomas glared up hatefully, then took a deep breath. He pushed down anger at being overpowered, called out as wrong, and humiliated in front of his family. "All right. I was maybe out of line there. You promise she comes back?"
The ELH soldier stepped aside, and the instructor warily answered "It's like a boarding school. Boarding schools are not unusual. She will be safe and well taken care of, don't worry."
Now Suzanne jutted out her chin and muttered mulishy "I could fight. Can't girls join the SLDF? Don't tell me I can't fight. Chase your dreams, you said! Ow!"
Timothy rapped the top of her head with his knuckles. The girl rubbed at her crown and scowled. The boy looked up to ask "Can I join up next year? The SLDF has more than just mechwarriors, right? Even if I don't pass the test?"
"Not without your parent's permission, no," was the answer.
"Enough of this tomfoolery!" Thomas growled at his son.
"Barnacles!" the boy muttered in defeat.
"That being said, sir - we do need proof of your approval that Suzanne Klering will take part in the first batch. Slots are very limited, so we need you to sign off on this. Any cancellations ought to be done early so people on the alternative list can slot in."
Thomas looked down at his daughter. "It's up to you, girl."
Suzanne pursed her lips. "I guess I'll go then."
"Wonderful." The instructor passed the noteputer over. "Please sign here."
The ELH soldier then coughed into his fist.
"All right then. We are now only informing you of this so that it does not unduly influence your decision as if we were trying to bribe you or something like that. On behalf of the Ministry of Ways and Means, we are pleased to inform you that you have also won the Industrial Mech lottery."
He flicked open a small handheld holo projector, showing the prize. "Unfortunately, it is not the Ruralmech, but the Ergomech should still be useful on the farm."
Beeping noises came from the Small Craft. Slowly the egg-shaped utility mech slid out on rails and hoisted up to a standing position. A forklift began moving it out onto dry ground.
"The Ergomech - the ergo is intentional, it is not a mistake for agro - is a general-purpose ultralight industrial mech.It is capable of using a Combine harvester or Chainsaw attachment, and contains a Sprayer for irrigation or firefighting. It can carry through a system of pulleys and baskets up to half its own weight. It is 15 tons and capable of running up to fifty-four kilometers per hour, and protected by three tons of Heavy Industrial armor."
"Uoooh!" Timothy yelped and pumped his fist with glee. "I remember that! It's better cos it has arms!" He turned to Tucker the Second. "Bro! This is good! This is really good!"
Thomas grimaced. "Is it also fusion powered? Can I… refuse?"
"Paw, come on!" Timothy begged.
"Yes, it is. And yes, you can. But sir, would you care to guess what is the actual production cost of a 45-rated Fusion Engine that weighs a single ton?" the ELH soldier asked.
"Do I have to answer?" Thomas Klering sighed. "I don't want to play any more games."
"One million!" Suzanne chirped.
"Too high!" Timothy crowed. "One- one hundred thousand!"
The ELH officer smiled. "Forty-five thousand. It's the cheapest part of the agromech apart from the three-ton foamed metal endoskeleton. Even the myomers and the motors combined should cost forty-six thousand from the factory. Just because something is fusion-powered does not make it that much more valuable over a combustion engine counterpart. It is more convenient, yes, because then you can siphon power out of it for centuries instead of a power plant, but fusion engines aren't lostech."
"Ain't mechs expensive though? How much would this agromech really cost us, new?" asked Tucker the Second.
The ELH officer shrugged. "Somewhere around eight hundred thousand?"
Thomas Klering began choking and spitting on thin air. "What?!"
"Mechs of all types are expensive," the ELH officer mused. "We would probably be only three hundred fifty k down the hole if we just gave you a tank or something."
"What is wrong with you people? Are you just that rich?"
"Sir, we are the SLDF."
-.
-.
Pascagoula
Federated Suns
Date unknown
'Oh Blessed Blake, please intercede for a miracle. May my body spontaneously transmute into nitroglycerin that I might erase the universe of this sacrilege.' Rocco Ali silently prayed.
"I'm diggin' a hole, diggy diggy hole. Diggy diggy hoole. Digging a hole~!"
Two Ruralmechs fitted out with backhoes instead of salvage arms were digging a trench that would eventually be part of a rebuilt sewer and water purification system. The ancient first-settlement-era systems had already collapsed over the centuries and were buried under so much sand, enough that redirecting the flow around the damaged sections towards the filtration plant would be significantly simpler and faster.
William Launder was, of course, singing that stupid song he managed to overhear from the ELH channels at some point. "You are not a dwarf," said Rocco Ali.
"You're no poncy elf, either. Only oh momma Jadwiga is pretty enough for that!" Launder responded through the radio. Then he went back to whistling and singing "I'm a working on the railroad, all the live-long daay~"
When the Eridani Light Horse said they were sending people out into the Outback to build things, they were being completely literal. At some point, Rocco Ali would have to accept that the Eridani Light Horse meant everything with deadly seriousness. But, as his mind recoiled, half of what they said was complete nonsense.
Reviving the SLDF? Unless they planned on fighting everybody everywhere all at once, that was an impossible dream and this cult-like behavior would only shatter and collapse on them as reality proved them wrong.
Said the agent from Comstar ROM inside his head.
He sighed. Damn if these civilianized Urbanmechs were nothing if not well-built though. Normally having the backhoe right up front in the middle would block the view and prevent the driver from seeing what they were digging. The Ruralmech had an extensive camera system filling up its roomy cockpit. More than that however, it had a completely passive optical periscoping system for viewing blocked angles. The machine was a mix of redundancies both hightech and lowtech.
He closed his eyes and remembered how he got to this point:
-.
-.
Two weeks ago
It was not unusual for a DroST to be new. The design has clones and variants in the civilian sector. Someone refitting one back into military service instead of a Leopard variant was… fine. A new JumpShip however-
"This is blasphemy," he muttered under his breath, seeing the Eridani Light Horse logo superimposed over the Cameron Star of the Star League.
"Seems pretty normal for the course," mentioned William Launder.
"One. Why are you still hanging around with me? I am not your friend. Two. Explain, idiot."
"I am from the Periphery, you know? We don't consider the Star League to the same sacred heights you folks in the Inner Sphere do. Hmf. A bunch of prideful ponies sounds just about right."
"I am going to punch you now."
"Violence between blood brothers is forbideeeeeen!" the bronzed mechwarrior screamed as he swam in zero-g, pushing and bumping into others ahead. Annoyed 'hey!'s followed, until stopped with a sudden thump as he was face-slammed into the bulkhead. Jadwiga Winter drifted back.
The woman glanced back and people raised approving thumbs up at her. Look at the lance leader enforcing discipline. Good job.
-.
Everything in the JumpShip was new. There were areas that they were not allowed to enter, of course. The berths were clean and the 90-meter grav deck could accommodate everyone. There were enough beds to accommodate 150 people.
The ship had a bunch of robots. They were strange and oddly sassy. Robots were not lostech however. A Scout was small enough that it could be effectively crewed by just five people. Animatronics for entertainment and servile roles were still used in some high-class functions and parts back on Terra. It was a waste of time and volume for a robot to act like a bartender instead of a vending machine dispensing mixed drinks, but looked significantly more interesting.
Someone had decided to give the automatic functions some real-world interface out of… boredom, he guessed?
-.
Normally it should take two months to reach the outback region that just happened to border upon the Federated Suns, Draconis Combine and the Outworld Alliance. The recruits had to go back to their dropships in preparation for the jump, and they were confined to their quarters in the windowless holds.
After the jump, the dropships detached. Rocco Ali felt the orienting maneuvers in zero-g, and the DroST IIA thrusted at half-a-gee for about half an hour before flipping backwards to zero its relative velocity and hook up to another JumpShip.
Instead of waiting another week, if there just happened to be another ship heading along the way, then a dropship could travel a distance much sooner than expected from a single ship that needs to recharge.
The dropship clutched into a new collar, and was brought along in a jump.
That was sixty light-years traveled almost immediately, two jumps out of the expected eight.
But still they were not done. The dropship detached again, maneuvered again, and clamped onto another jumpship that for some convenient reason, was already ready to jump.
And then again.
That was four jumps out of eight and halfway there, in the span of a day.
Then they were allowed back into the JumpShip. The layout and the robots were identical. He and the others tried to look for any markings they left, but it was a different ship with a different crew.
So - a coincidence. Or Davion thought this was important enough to set up a command circuit and wasting valuable time for jumpships just to wait around in place in advance. Or, because Scouts unlike other jumpships can thrust at .2g by themselves, it could have been some shell game to hide the fact that these JumpShips had Lithium Fusion Batteries enabling them to jump twice in succession?
They spent a week in space just idling along and working the simulators, before again being moved to their dropships.
Another jump, five of eight.
Switch to another ship, jump, six of eight.
This time they docked to a common Invader-class JumpShip, and going from the pristine white walls of the Scout II to an old rustbucket was piquant. There were smells that he had not realized he had grown used to from space travel, that were absent in the environmental controls of a new-build. Their reintroduction was almost enough to make them gag.
Going from a 90-meter diameter gravdeck to a 65-meter one felt confining and the amusements in the old machine were starkly limited. Sleeping in zero-g, exercising daily to keep up muscle mass, everything other than passage had to be paid for, and old holos and tepid drinks and games of cards and dice made the week pass by agonizingly slowly.
The dropship detached after the jump and latched onto another ship. Seven of eight. That ship jumped again almost immediately. Eight of eight.
They were allowed to get back inside the ship for some refreshments before burning towards De Berry. They were once again inside an ELH Scout II JumpShip. The contrast between the old and the new felt like coming home.
-.
Rocco Ali grit his teeth. This ship, he had to admit through rising anger and terror, was optimized for long-duration cruising. This was a new build for a group that knew what they were doing. Destroying the Eridani Light Horse for their blasphemous delusion would not solve the problem - it was their backers and what they would do next that was the question.
Could they really have been reactivated by Kerensky's SLDF?
There was another thing that needled him. Everything about the ELH's space navy was painted flat matte white. Comstar white.
Until he had an idea of where the Eridani Light Horse was getting all this gear, it was best to just play along.
-.
-.
Now
Which brought him back to the sweltering heat of Pascagoula. Or rather, the cool air-conditioning of a Ruralmech. A fusion power plant and its heatsinks was just overkill for this.
Why a fusion powered industrial mech? Because, he guessed, it was a waste of cargo to carry petrochemicals across interstellar space when landing on a fresh untapped world. Build the petrochemical industry *first* before trying to cheap out on ICE-powered vehicles.
This technology revealed much about an expeditionary philosophy, and the Eridani Light Horse did not even care. It was clear they wanted this information to get out. And because of that, Rocco Ali had to consider that his conclusions were wrong and being deliberately aimed.
But then what would be the alternative?
He looked back to the other members of the lance. Jadwiga Winter and Orsino Buana were weaving together steel rebar. Ferrocrete, the standard material for construction in the Inner Sphere, resilient enough to withstand landings by multi-thousand-ton dropships and being jumped upon by BattleMechs, was more than just reinforced concrete. It was rebar and fiber-reinforced concrete.
The Ruralmech's 5-ton rear storage could accommodate a mixer and the liquid sprayer could be used to squirt shotcrete as easily as it could spit out water or paint.
He had to put aside thoughts of sabotage or assassination for now. Everyone too was playing along, playing lip service to that whole 'we are the SLDF' fantasy until they could know more.
"I'm a barbie girl, in a barbie wooorld~!" Launder continued to sing. "Life in plastic, it's fantastic~!"
Rocco Ali grit his teeth again. For a given value of playing along.
Pascagoula
Edgeward Draconis March
Federated Suns
One week later
"Paww! Paawww! There's a plane!"
While the crops were growing in the landscape only made barely arable by ancient terraforming era water channels, there was still much to do around the farm. Like most homesteads in the poor worlds, they tried to be as self-sufficient as much as possible.
Old Granpa Tucker stayed cool by the porch, puffing on his pipe. "Hoho, that aint' no reg'lar plane. I know that sound."
Suzanne ran back out, with Thomas Klering wiping his hands with a rag as he had been feeling slop to the pigs. The plane circled around the farm and then hovered in place. The rest of the family one by one went out to the front yard. The aircraft let out a dull roar as it slowly landed vertically.
A wave of kicked-up dust rolled towards the farm. Everyone coughed and shielded their faces.
"What is that?" Thomas asked.
"Aint' no airplane. That's a space plane!" said Grandpa Tucker. "I'da seen it in the holos. It's a lander that's smaller than a dropship an' bigger than a fighter! Dunno why they call it a Small Craft for some reason."
"So you think it's Davion?"
"Who else would give a crap, you think?" the old man cackled.
A small jeep rolled out from the back of the craft, and soon enough met up with the family. Two people stepped out, a man and a woman. The man was tall and dressed in green military fatigues. The woman was wearing a crisp orange pants-suit. They were both wearing sunglasses.
"Good morning! Is this the homestead of the Klering family?" the woman asked as she approached, taking out a noteputer pad.
"It is," Thomas answer.
"Excellent!" She marked down something on the pad, then held out a hand. She had fingerless gloves on. "Vivian Waters, Vagabond Instructor. Happy to meet you."
"Uh, Thomas Klering. Same, I reckon." They shook hands.
The man pressed a fist to his chest and bowed slightly. "Corporal John Merot, Support Division, Eridani Light Horse."
Thomas was unsure of how to receive the gesture, so just imitated it. He asked "Well then, may I ask what brings you folks here? Good news I hope?"
"Indeed, Mister Klering! Your child was lucky enough to be selected to the first round of the De Berry Vagabond School, school year of 3025-3026. Is Suzanne Klering present?"
"That's me! That's me!" the girl raised her hand excitedly.
"Aww fooey!" Timothy huffed.
"Congratulations!" Tucker Second rubbed that top of Suzanne's head. The girl slapped at his calloused hands indignantly.
The instructor continued "The selection process is completely random and does not take into consideration any educational aptitude. However, this is not very relevant, as it is the philosophy of the Vagabond Schools that every child has the potential to be good at something. These nine months build a foundation that would allow them to find their specialization."
Suzanne looked up and then nervously sidled up to her mother's side. "Do I gotta leave now?"
"Haha, not yet. Please take another five days to prepare. After this, it will be another nine months before you can come home. We will periodically be able to send holos on a monthly basis though as the jumpships go on rotation."
"Tch. Good luck, I guess," Timothy muttered. He crossed his arms and bit his lip. "Werent expectin' anything to happen anyhoos."
Suzanne glanced at him, then to her parents looking down at her with more worry than pride. She would be going away all by herself to a strange place with new strange people. Only now was it becoming clear to her how… scary that would be. At thirteen years old, she was no longer a child and had formed her personality, but being the sole girl in a distant farm meant that she was ill-socialized with other girls.
"Can I just… could someone have someone else go?"
"The 'ticket', as is stands, is non-transferrable, I am sorry." The instructor shook her head and smiled gently. "That is why biometrics and brain patterns were taken. Next time though, children who are already registered won't need to stand in line anymore. There's always next year."
Suzanne licked her lips. She reached out into her pocket and brought out a card. "Even if… I have this?"
The card stated: NEUROHELMET COMPATIBILITY: 94.6%.
Thomas glanced over, quickly snapped the card from her hand and read it. His face clouded over with fury. "I see! This is what you were after?! You cheats! I won't allow it!"
"Ah, sir. This is a coincidence, a coincidence! Even if that were so, parental permission is still required, so no one is ever really obligated to sign up to any military-"
"Get out of here, you child thieves!"
The ELH soldier stepped up protectively in front of the instructor. He bellowed "COOL YOUR HEAD!"
He grabbed Thomas Klering's outstretched arm by the wrist. "SINCE WHEN DO YOU THINK THE SLDF WOULD BE SO DESPERATE AS TO RIP CHILDREN AWAY FROM THE ARMS OF THEIR PARENTS?!" He pushed, letting go, and the farmer stepped unsteadily backwards.
The ELH man hissed out "Think clearly, man! Even if she spends nine months being told all sorts of things designed to get her to sign up - it does not matter. She is still too young anyway. She will not be able to sign up without your approval. If we just wanted to steal children, why bother with all this show? It would be much easier to just raid orphanages! How many starving families do you think would be happy to give up their children at least in the hope they would have a better and more structured life?"
The soldier waved to the farm behind the family. "You own your own land, with your own home. You are in your own way, privileged, but limited by the conditions of your homeworld. It is *fine* if other people fight for your sake. Pay your taxes and support the Federated Suns, only we ask you do not insult the honor of those ready to die for your safety.
"The SLDF only takes the willing and most determined. We need people willing and ready to fight, not just any random child!"
Thomas glared up hatefully, then took a deep breath. He pushed down anger at being overpowered, called out as wrong, and humiliated in front of his family. "All right. I was maybe out of line there. You promise she comes back?"
The ELH soldier stepped aside, and the instructor warily answered "It's like a boarding school. Boarding schools are not unusual. She will be safe and well taken care of, don't worry."
Now Suzanne jutted out her chin and muttered mulishy "I could fight. Can't girls join the SLDF? Don't tell me I can't fight. Chase your dreams, you said! Ow!"
Timothy rapped the top of her head with his knuckles. The girl rubbed at her crown and scowled. The boy looked up to ask "Can I join up next year? The SLDF has more than just mechwarriors, right? Even if I don't pass the test?"
"Not without your parent's permission, no," was the answer.
"Enough of this tomfoolery!" Thomas growled at his son.
"Barnacles!" the boy muttered in defeat.
"That being said, sir - we do need proof of your approval that Suzanne Klering will take part in the first batch. Slots are very limited, so we need you to sign off on this. Any cancellations ought to be done early so people on the alternative list can slot in."
Thomas looked down at his daughter. "It's up to you, girl."
Suzanne pursed her lips. "I guess I'll go then."
"Wonderful." The instructor passed the noteputer over. "Please sign here."
The ELH soldier then coughed into his fist.
"All right then. We are now only informing you of this so that it does not unduly influence your decision as if we were trying to bribe you or something like that. On behalf of the Ministry of Ways and Means, we are pleased to inform you that you have also won the Industrial Mech lottery."
He flicked open a small handheld holo projector, showing the prize. "Unfortunately, it is not the Ruralmech, but the Ergomech should still be useful on the farm."
Beeping noises came from the Small Craft. Slowly the egg-shaped utility mech slid out on rails and hoisted up to a standing position. A forklift began moving it out onto dry ground.
"The Ergomech - the ergo is intentional, it is not a mistake for agro - is a general-purpose ultralight industrial mech.It is capable of using a Combine harvester or Chainsaw attachment, and contains a Sprayer for irrigation or firefighting. It can carry through a system of pulleys and baskets up to half its own weight. It is 15 tons and capable of running up to fifty-four kilometers per hour, and protected by three tons of Heavy Industrial armor."
"Uoooh!" Timothy yelped and pumped his fist with glee. "I remember that! It's better cos it has arms!" He turned to Tucker the Second. "Bro! This is good! This is really good!"
Thomas grimaced. "Is it also fusion powered? Can I… refuse?"
"Paw, come on!" Timothy begged.
"Yes, it is. And yes, you can. But sir, would you care to guess what is the actual production cost of a 45-rated Fusion Engine that weighs a single ton?" the ELH soldier asked.
"Do I have to answer?" Thomas Klering sighed. "I don't want to play any more games."
"One million!" Suzanne chirped.
"Too high!" Timothy crowed. "One- one hundred thousand!"
The ELH officer smiled. "Forty-five thousand. It's the cheapest part of the agromech apart from the three-ton foamed metal endoskeleton. Even the myomers and the motors combined should cost forty-six thousand from the factory. Just because something is fusion-powered does not make it that much more valuable over a combustion engine counterpart. It is more convenient, yes, because then you can siphon power out of it for centuries instead of a power plant, but fusion engines aren't lostech."
"Ain't mechs expensive though? How much would this agromech really cost us, new?" asked Tucker the Second.
The ELH officer shrugged. "Somewhere around eight hundred thousand?"
Thomas Klering began choking and spitting on thin air. "What?!"
"Mechs of all types are expensive," the ELH officer mused. "We would probably be only three hundred fifty k down the hole if we just gave you a tank or something."
"What is wrong with you people? Are you just that rich?"
"Sir, we are the SLDF."
-.
-.
Pascagoula
Federated Suns
Date unknown
'Oh Blessed Blake, please intercede for a miracle. May my body spontaneously transmute into nitroglycerin that I might erase the universe of this sacrilege.' Rocco Ali silently prayed.
"I'm diggin' a hole, diggy diggy hole. Diggy diggy hoole. Digging a hole~!"
Two Ruralmechs fitted out with backhoes instead of salvage arms were digging a trench that would eventually be part of a rebuilt sewer and water purification system. The ancient first-settlement-era systems had already collapsed over the centuries and were buried under so much sand, enough that redirecting the flow around the damaged sections towards the filtration plant would be significantly simpler and faster.
William Launder was, of course, singing that stupid song he managed to overhear from the ELH channels at some point. "You are not a dwarf," said Rocco Ali.
"You're no poncy elf, either. Only oh momma Jadwiga is pretty enough for that!" Launder responded through the radio. Then he went back to whistling and singing "I'm a working on the railroad, all the live-long daay~"
When the Eridani Light Horse said they were sending people out into the Outback to build things, they were being completely literal. At some point, Rocco Ali would have to accept that the Eridani Light Horse meant everything with deadly seriousness. But, as his mind recoiled, half of what they said was complete nonsense.
Reviving the SLDF? Unless they planned on fighting everybody everywhere all at once, that was an impossible dream and this cult-like behavior would only shatter and collapse on them as reality proved them wrong.
Said the agent from Comstar ROM inside his head.
He sighed. Damn if these civilianized Urbanmechs were nothing if not well-built though. Normally having the backhoe right up front in the middle would block the view and prevent the driver from seeing what they were digging. The Ruralmech had an extensive camera system filling up its roomy cockpit. More than that however, it had a completely passive optical periscoping system for viewing blocked angles. The machine was a mix of redundancies both hightech and lowtech.
He closed his eyes and remembered how he got to this point:
-.
-.
Two weeks ago
It was not unusual for a DroST to be new. The design has clones and variants in the civilian sector. Someone refitting one back into military service instead of a Leopard variant was… fine. A new JumpShip however-
"This is blasphemy," he muttered under his breath, seeing the Eridani Light Horse logo superimposed over the Cameron Star of the Star League.
"Seems pretty normal for the course," mentioned William Launder.
"One. Why are you still hanging around with me? I am not your friend. Two. Explain, idiot."
"I am from the Periphery, you know? We don't consider the Star League to the same sacred heights you folks in the Inner Sphere do. Hmf. A bunch of prideful ponies sounds just about right."
"I am going to punch you now."
"Violence between blood brothers is forbideeeeeen!" the bronzed mechwarrior screamed as he swam in zero-g, pushing and bumping into others ahead. Annoyed 'hey!'s followed, until stopped with a sudden thump as he was face-slammed into the bulkhead. Jadwiga Winter drifted back.
The woman glanced back and people raised approving thumbs up at her. Look at the lance leader enforcing discipline. Good job.
-.
Everything in the JumpShip was new. There were areas that they were not allowed to enter, of course. The berths were clean and the 90-meter grav deck could accommodate everyone. There were enough beds to accommodate 150 people.
The ship had a bunch of robots. They were strange and oddly sassy. Robots were not lostech however. A Scout was small enough that it could be effectively crewed by just five people. Animatronics for entertainment and servile roles were still used in some high-class functions and parts back on Terra. It was a waste of time and volume for a robot to act like a bartender instead of a vending machine dispensing mixed drinks, but looked significantly more interesting.
Someone had decided to give the automatic functions some real-world interface out of… boredom, he guessed?
-.
Normally it should take two months to reach the outback region that just happened to border upon the Federated Suns, Draconis Combine and the Outworld Alliance. The recruits had to go back to their dropships in preparation for the jump, and they were confined to their quarters in the windowless holds.
After the jump, the dropships detached. Rocco Ali felt the orienting maneuvers in zero-g, and the DroST IIA thrusted at half-a-gee for about half an hour before flipping backwards to zero its relative velocity and hook up to another JumpShip.
Instead of waiting another week, if there just happened to be another ship heading along the way, then a dropship could travel a distance much sooner than expected from a single ship that needs to recharge.
The dropship clutched into a new collar, and was brought along in a jump.
That was sixty light-years traveled almost immediately, two jumps out of the expected eight.
But still they were not done. The dropship detached again, maneuvered again, and clamped onto another jumpship that for some convenient reason, was already ready to jump.
And then again.
That was four jumps out of eight and halfway there, in the span of a day.
Then they were allowed back into the JumpShip. The layout and the robots were identical. He and the others tried to look for any markings they left, but it was a different ship with a different crew.
So - a coincidence. Or Davion thought this was important enough to set up a command circuit and wasting valuable time for jumpships just to wait around in place in advance. Or, because Scouts unlike other jumpships can thrust at .2g by themselves, it could have been some shell game to hide the fact that these JumpShips had Lithium Fusion Batteries enabling them to jump twice in succession?
They spent a week in space just idling along and working the simulators, before again being moved to their dropships.
Another jump, five of eight.
Switch to another ship, jump, six of eight.
This time they docked to a common Invader-class JumpShip, and going from the pristine white walls of the Scout II to an old rustbucket was piquant. There were smells that he had not realized he had grown used to from space travel, that were absent in the environmental controls of a new-build. Their reintroduction was almost enough to make them gag.
Going from a 90-meter diameter gravdeck to a 65-meter one felt confining and the amusements in the old machine were starkly limited. Sleeping in zero-g, exercising daily to keep up muscle mass, everything other than passage had to be paid for, and old holos and tepid drinks and games of cards and dice made the week pass by agonizingly slowly.
The dropship detached after the jump and latched onto another ship. Seven of eight. That ship jumped again almost immediately. Eight of eight.
They were allowed to get back inside the ship for some refreshments before burning towards De Berry. They were once again inside an ELH Scout II JumpShip. The contrast between the old and the new felt like coming home.
-.
Rocco Ali grit his teeth. This ship, he had to admit through rising anger and terror, was optimized for long-duration cruising. This was a new build for a group that knew what they were doing. Destroying the Eridani Light Horse for their blasphemous delusion would not solve the problem - it was their backers and what they would do next that was the question.
Could they really have been reactivated by Kerensky's SLDF?
There was another thing that needled him. Everything about the ELH's space navy was painted flat matte white. Comstar white.
Until he had an idea of where the Eridani Light Horse was getting all this gear, it was best to just play along.
-.
-.
Now
Which brought him back to the sweltering heat of Pascagoula. Or rather, the cool air-conditioning of a Ruralmech. A fusion power plant and its heatsinks was just overkill for this.
Why a fusion powered industrial mech? Because, he guessed, it was a waste of cargo to carry petrochemicals across interstellar space when landing on a fresh untapped world. Build the petrochemical industry *first* before trying to cheap out on ICE-powered vehicles.
This technology revealed much about an expeditionary philosophy, and the Eridani Light Horse did not even care. It was clear they wanted this information to get out. And because of that, Rocco Ali had to consider that his conclusions were wrong and being deliberately aimed.
But then what would be the alternative?
He looked back to the other members of the lance. Jadwiga Winter and Orsino Buana were weaving together steel rebar. Ferrocrete, the standard material for construction in the Inner Sphere, resilient enough to withstand landings by multi-thousand-ton dropships and being jumped upon by BattleMechs, was more than just reinforced concrete. It was rebar and fiber-reinforced concrete.
The Ruralmech's 5-ton rear storage could accommodate a mixer and the liquid sprayer could be used to squirt shotcrete as easily as it could spit out water or paint.
He had to put aside thoughts of sabotage or assassination for now. Everyone too was playing along, playing lip service to that whole 'we are the SLDF' fantasy until they could know more.
"I'm a barbie girl, in a barbie wooorld~!" Launder continued to sing. "Life in plastic, it's fantastic~!"
Rocco Ali grit his teeth again. For a given value of playing along.
SilentCrowd
Pls help my Cat has taken over my house
- Joined
- Jul 13, 2022
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Oh God no more Barbie song's brings back bad memories watching Barbie Movies because of unavailable alternative entertainment and being forced to watch with cousins hu has to many doll's for comfort.
HellTeddy
Not too sore, are you?
- Joined
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lmao
It's stuck.
It's stuck in my head.
Get it out!
...
....
Noooo!
I hate you bluepencil
I love you and yet hate what you have done today. At least it is not ...
I'm blue
Da ba dee da ba di
Da ba dee da ba di
Da ba dee da ba di
Da ba dee da ba di
Da ba dee da ba di
Da ba dee da ba di
Da ba dee da ba di
I'm blue
Da ba dee da ba di
It's stuck.
It's stuck in my head.
Get it out!
...
....
Noooo!
I hate you bluepencil
I love you and yet hate what you have done today. At least it is not ...
I'm blue
Da ba dee da ba di
Da ba dee da ba di
Da ba dee da ba di
Da ba dee da ba di
Da ba dee da ba di
Da ba dee da ba di
Da ba dee da ba di
I'm blue
Da ba dee da ba di
13.1 The Fools Bargain
bluepencil
The tropics will be uninhabitable.
- Joined
- Feb 19, 2013
- Messages
- 721
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- 11,592
The Fool's Bargain
Declan II
Federated Suns
Date Unknown
"Hance Davion, I have come to bargain!"
Nathan Armstrong voice came from behind the door just moments before it slammed opened. The man inside jerked back in surprise, moved to hide what he was reading, reconsidered, then turned towards the door with a deeply unimpressed stare.
Therapist-bot entered the room, its chest a video screen showing Nathan Armstrong's face relayed real-time through HPG.
"Really? You could not do this with the actual Hanse Davion? You take advantage of my weakness, sir!" spoke the doppelganger.
"Salutations, Hans II Davion."
"In many ways, are you not better off than Hanse Davion? You are freer in many ways than the burden of rulership. Many would find that power and authority attractive and worth killing over, but you know that with Michael Hasek-Davion conspiring with Mad Max, you would have only lasted long enough to torpedo Steiner-Davion relations before being conveniently killed off so that Michael could assume rulership of the Federated Suns. We have bargained for your life, now it is up to you to do something with it instead of wasting it in obscurity."
Dupli Hanse threw the book at him. "And that is why you were having me read all these isekai reincarnation novels! To make me comfortable with having lost all my previous life and be comfortable inside someone's skin! What kind of blatant and deranged emotional manipulation is this?!"
Therapist-bot spoke: "You were violated in both body and mind. But even if you were a victim in the machinations of politics, victimhood is not your fate. Own it and make it your own power."
Dupli-Hanse cooly replied: "I am grateful enough that I was not just killed off for convenience, but now what does the Eridani Light Horse wish to do with me? A gilded cage is still a cage, and an unpaid prisoner of war is just a step removed from being a slave."
"You can do all the things that Hanse Davion can't get away with," said Armstrong. "Why don't we go for a run? Whoever loses must fulfill a minor request of the victor."
"Indeed. Physical activity helps break out of cycles of depression."
The doppelganger sighed. "Fine."
-.
The site upon which the Eridani Light Horse built their main base was in the middle of some idyllic green rolling hills. There were forests. There were cliffs. There were seas.
There was this giant country-sized beam lashing down from space reshaping the land.
The base itself looked normal enough, composed of ferrocrete and other prefab structures. For strength a lot of it was made of geodesic domes. The capital of Declan II would now be Mobius City. Dupli-Hance didn't take long to realize why.
The rocks were stained in a checkerboard pattern. Roads banked into the cliffsides. The loops on the horizon in this Green Hills Zone were just the most obvious symbols of how much of this was sculpted and not by human hands.
"It would be much safer for all of you if I never left this planet ever again," he sighed. "Why do you do this?"
"It would be a waste of potential," replied Armstrong. "You could just spend the rest of your life in safe obscurity, but will that fix the life stolen from you? Others can take vengeance for you, but will that be enough to bring you closure? Will you be happy just having your life continually be decided for you?"
"And what you are doing now, is not?! Being in the military is exactly having your life decided for you on all levels, you crazy horses!"
"You are now a Hanse Davion," replied Therapist-Bot. "Denying your own personhood would lead to life-long struggle and potentially unhealthy coping mechanisms."
"You don't even see me! You are the ones denying my personhood! What you want is Hanse Davion?"
"Do you even see *you* when you look into the mirror? Which would feel worse to you - just being some no-name lackey surgically altered into a death conspiracy, or being actually Hanse Davion in all the ways that Hanse Davion cannot Hanse? That twisty brainwashing in your head will keep insisting the rest of your life that you have to be Hanse Davion or you're nothing." Armstrong on the screen shrugged. "So why not be Hanse Davion *on your own terms* instead."
"You were programmed to act a Hanse Davion as far as Liao could imagine nobles to act - outwardly charming, but arrogant and narcissistic, demanding complete obedience. That is Worst Hanse, and instead of trying to fight against that programming, rebuke it by living a healthier, happier, more exciting and more fulfilling life than any other Hanse Davion. You deserve better than to be mediocre."
"This is insane. I can't - no. I don't even know anything about psychology but this has to be the worst way to deal with trauma that I can see." With a scowl he added "Apart from drugs and alcohol and things of that nature, I mean."
"Would you like to wear a white mask?" asked Therapist-Bot.
The robot played a strangely catchy tune.
"You may live in the shadow of his soul, but there's nothing that says you can be greater than some REMF sitting on his throne."
"... I am insulted on Hanse Davion's behalf."
They had by this time arrived at the hangars.
Therapist Bot stated: "Hanse Davion will never be allowed to be a test pilot."
Dupli Hanse looked up with narrowed unamused eyes at the experimental units. "They're all still Urbanmechs."
-.
Dupli Hanse secured the seatbelts and nodded. The Super Urbanmech had a blue and white paint scheme, with a line of white and red vertically down one side of the mech, much like Hanse Davion's own Battlemaster.
"Thank you, Charlie. I'll be fine on my own from here on. Maybe I'll see you later."
"W-whatever you wish, my Prince," the female engineer beamed as the platform retracted.
Armstrong spoke through the radio: "Hans Prince. Handsome Prince. Don't you go around breaking young girl's hearts."
"This is the face I was given and you all say I might as well accept all that it gives me," said the man with an eerie resemblance to a young James Tiberius Kirk.
The other Super Urbanmech was painted a flat wine red. The two mechs unlatched from their bays and began to walk out of the hangar. Therapist-Bot sat in the other cockpit, but only had a hardline connection to the DroneOS systems. With real-time HPG reciprocal connection, Nathan Armstrong could pilot remotely from an entirely different planet away just as easily as his Drone Command Console would control the virtual mech inside the simulation pod.
Dupli Hanse knew enough that this was supposed to be impossible.
Then again, as the two mechs began to run, so were many things.
The speedometer for an Urbanmech was calibrated to have a max speed of around 60 kph, and its actual top speed of 32kph halfway and highest point on that dial. "Slow" and "Less Slow". Even an Assault Mech which had a top speed of around 54 kph usually had more on the gauge. While the HUD of a neurohelmet had digital readouts, it was easiest for pilots to understand a proportional gauge that went up and down depending on their mech's movement.
The world began to blur past. Everything else started to fall away. There was no time to think, no room for hesitation. His problems just melted away. There was only speed.
Even most Light Mech scouts had gauges that topped out at 150 kph.
The Super Urbanmech's feet were a blur, chewing into the soil. They had passed that speed reading only 30 seconds after leaving the hangars.
The Super Urbanmech custom's speed readout did not top out at 150, or 200, or even 300.
Slamslamslamslam~
The Super Urbanmechs were traveling so fast that they had to run vertically on hardened walls just to turn. They had already passed 170 kph, which was a speed no sane BattleMech ever tried, much less an Urbanmech.
Extra ExtraLight engines. Extra Light Gyro. Endo Steel construction. An absolutely massive 390-rated Engine that ate up all room in the torso forcing the pilot to squeeze into a Small Cockpit.
Up ahead, the terrain inexplicably had turned into a huge loop like on a roller coaster, but on flat highway-grade land.
Dupli Hanse bared his teeth in a grin and accelerated. 200. 250 kph.
In complete defiance of gravity, the blue Super Urbanmech ran up the ramp, went completely upside down, and completed the loop out the other side - no sweat. Right now, in Declan, a Hanse Davion was the fastest thing alive.
Next were a series of three loops. He engaged the afterburners and MASC on the machine.
300. 350 kph.
Would Hanse Davion ever feel so alive?
Not even aircraft could compare to this, he mused. The neurohelmet fed back to him the sheer purposeful violence of his movement, every twitch of an artificial muscle myomers, the feel of air starting to thicken in front of him.
Swoop.
Swoop.
Swoop.
Now running at a quarter of the speed of sound.
He heard a muffled crunch. While upside down he glimpsed something failing to exit the loop cleanly, and had turned from something running into a disintegrating bullet scraping and tumbling across the countryside.
He kicked off, toggled his Jump Jets, and worked hard to bleed off momentum. Even so, the Urbanmech landed roughly and he had to keep running for a while longer into a broad turn just to head back the way he came.
He found the red Urbanmech as little more than a dented and torn egg, quadruply amputated.
"... What was I so worried about?!" he exhaled roughly and groused. "You were piloting this thing remotely. I had forgotten." A bit of lag was inexcusable when running at completely improbable speed for any Battlemech, much less an Urbanmech.
And yet, for the slightest mistake, this could have been his fate.
Hanse Davion would never be allowed to experience this.
"This unit is in distress. Help. Help." said Therapist Bot.
Dupli Hanse sighed. Even if it was just a robot, he did have some attachment to the oddly sassy counseling bot. "All right. Hang in there, my metal freud. I'm calling for recovery."
"Someone is making stupid dad jokes and this unit cannot make them stop. Help. Help. Save me."
-.
-.
Colchester
Federated Suns
Date Unknown
Petersen thought that if the whole point of having Kerensky was to rob the mystique off Wolf's Dragoons and let the Eridani Light Horse have confidence they can beat the Dragoons the next time they meet, this was entirely the wrong way to go with it.
There was a duelist-sized hole in the Eridani Light Horse. Kerensky's presence has turned the horses from a cooperative herd into a bunch of feral wild tarpans.
Petersen set out to privately question Kerensky at a convenient time. Kerensky herself was standoffish and uncooperative, completely uninterested in making any attachment. Fair enough, Petersen thought, they would have to try to kill each other for real again after three months. However, through weeks of observation, one strange thing emerged.
He set out on a small militarized pickup truck towards the training fields and found there a group of Mechs still drilling. It was already night well past nine, and still they were training.
It was a black 70-ton Heavy Urbanmech being followed by six pea-green 30-ton Urbanmechs. Whatever Petersen had been expecting to find with Natasha Kerensky, it was not a mother goose leading her goslings.
As the large Urbanmech swiveled to turn its baleful cyclopean amber gaze towards the approaching car, Petersen realized that peace with Kerensky had never been an option.
-.
-.
"Smoke? Vodka?" Petersen held up one in each hand.
"Neither." Then, belatedly as if remembering that she was a human being and had to express politeness "Thank you. No need to butter me up. It's bright enough to see your bars, sir. I hope you don't expect me to salute." She leaned against a lamppost and crossed her arms. "Now what does the Regimental Commander of the 71st want from me?"
"Hmm." Petersen put down the bottle and broke open the pack of cigarettes. He took one out and lit one up. He noticed that Kerensky scowled at his choice. "You… look like you disapprove."
"Throat and lung cancer is not a warrior's death," said Natasha Kerensky. "I have forbidden that amongst all vices from my trainees."
"That's fair. A filthy habit that somehow even a thousand years away from Terra, we're still doing it. Soldiers do like to find ways of dying even faster. Or maybe this is just how we take comfort in our mortality?" He puffed out and then suddenly jammed the cigarette into the side of the truck. "So I suppose I just have to ask - is your way actually right? Has someone beaten you yet in training?"
Natasha Kerensky bared her teeth and laughed a hollow laugh. "Do not tell me you're also buying into all that publicity and rumor. Of course I have. Many times. Even in the Dragoons, I am hardly untouchable. That is what training is for! Get beaten down, and stand up again. Sweat on the training fields saves blood on the battlefield. There is no failure in training, only hints towards improvement. Perfection is the enemy! If you ever feel like there is no longer anything more you can do to improve, then that is the moment you assure your own death. Your general's demands for OPFOR requires that we all know both how to win and lose."
She shrugged. "In war, the only victory is survival, Colonel! You should know that much."
"Surely there isn't much difference though? The herd and the pack both require cooperative effort. In the end, aren't we all too old and stuck in our ways? All of this is just adding some more tricks and traps into our toolbox without refusing to move from our preferred doctrine."
Kerensky only tapped her boots impatiently. She looked off to the distance, just blanking out the officer's rambling.
Petersen let out a small 'heh'. "All right then. I'll get to the point. Even with High Command asking for you to show special dispensation to some utter rookies in their first year as cadets, you are spending too much of your own time trying to get them to soak up your teachings."
Kerensky looked up. She smirked. "So - it wasn't me that you were curious about after all."
Petersen gestured to the open field. "Perhaps it is true that only an empty vessel can be filled? Perhaps that is all you are looking for - a synthesis between your way and our way that can be tested in the future."
Then with a voice completely flat and devoid of emotion "Or… did you figure out yet why for some reason Eridani High Command is so biased towards Devlin Stone? You are also noticeably biased towards these children and I don't know why."
"Can't I just find these kids cute and want to play with them? No?" The woman shrugged. "The boy is odd and unnatural, but nothing all that special. These kids-"
Sploosh.
Sploosh.
The light of the lamppost was bright enough to show how Natasha Kerensky was covered in bright hot neon pink paint. In the gloom just right outside of the light cone, Devlin Stone and Bennet Brooklyn held empty paint cans. Tom Robinson stood by nervously.
"These kids are dead meat," Natasha said simply.
"Vengeance for Little Tom!" Devlin roared.
"Yeah, take that, you red witch!" Bennet yelled as well.
Devlin and Bennet grabbed Tom from either side and hauled him off.
"That little random gene mistake SON OF A BITCH!" Kerensky turned around.
"I never knew my motheeerrr-!" Devlin answered even as they skedaddled.
"I am an unwilling participaaant!" Tom wailed.
-.
-.
As a rule, drill instructors are not actually allowed to harmfully touch their recruits. It was an incompetent one that had to resort to brutality in order to enforce their authority. By the same token, cadets attacking their instructor were due for a court martial.
The rules were somewhat vague on pranks.
So when the doors to the infirmary were kicked open at just before midnight, the night shift saw a pink splattered Kerensky dragging three teenage boys all tied up and gagged like they were tires being dragged for physical training in old urban martial arts movies, the staff's only thought was 'Where did she find the tar and feathers?'
Kerensky coldly stopped by the reception desk and said "I need you to check these brats for lead poisoning."
"Uh. Yes. All right. But why?"
"Because they are being morons more than the usual."
"... Fair enough." The reception desk rang for an orderly. "Ma'am, we can prepare anodyne solvents for you too. We can set aside a private bath."
"I'm visiting," said Kerensky.
"It is past visiting hours, but…" the receptionist glanced towards the three teens, still silent and shaking with terror "I think we can make an exception."
Kerensky turned sharply at hearing a giggle from one of the medics on station. "What?" she asked. "You find this funny? Are you getting comfortable now?"
She turned back to the receptionist and spoke in a drill sergeant voice designed to carry without shouting. "Ponies, we are not friends. The next time we meet in battle, I will still do my best to kill the one in front of me. Do not let the mischief of these children make you forget that they are all still enemies." She reached out and pressed a fingernail to the fleshy part of the receptionist's chin and forced her to look up. "Do not make any mistake that I have developed any fondness that would have me grant you any mercy."
The receptionist stared into Kerensky's burning gaze and blushed. "Y-yes, my Queen," she breathed.
Natasha Kerensky squinted.
-.
-.
Colin MacLaren sat up as far as he could rise to attention when Natasha Kerensky entered the room. "My Lady!" he cried out in pleasant surprise. "Are you well? You are… pink?"
Keresky held up an open palm. He silenced immediately. "First - these ponies are insane and I need to get the hell out of here. Second - it is midnight. Why are you still awake?"
Colin MacLaren's look implied 'wait, so you were just going to come here and watch me sleep?' The injured mechwarrior then gestured to the papers and noteputers on the small lap desk. "It is only at night that it is silent enough to work. In some way, as you work upon the Light Horse, I too wish to earn my keep."
"Are those what I think they are?"
"Yes, My Lady. I have been grading essays, yes."
Natasha Kerensky went over to sit beside him, and sagged on the chair. "These ponies are insane and I need to get the hell out of here."
But, she supposed, even if Jaime Wolf tried to get ELH prisoners of his own too and did something like seize an entire regiment, she had already given her word and there were still two more months until her parole was done. She was a Wolf. She would never be a Horse. This was just a chore she had to endure until she could feel alive again on the battlefield.
McLaren stared at her and with a thin smile said gently "These ponies are dangerous."
-.
-.
Two days later, Wolf's Dragoons invaded Harrow's Sun with three regiments and the DCMS fell upon Galtor with six regiments in just the first wave.
The last great clash of powers that would close out the Third Succession Wars.
Declan II
Federated Suns
Date Unknown
"Hance Davion, I have come to bargain!"
Nathan Armstrong voice came from behind the door just moments before it slammed opened. The man inside jerked back in surprise, moved to hide what he was reading, reconsidered, then turned towards the door with a deeply unimpressed stare.
Therapist-bot entered the room, its chest a video screen showing Nathan Armstrong's face relayed real-time through HPG.
"Really? You could not do this with the actual Hanse Davion? You take advantage of my weakness, sir!" spoke the doppelganger.
"Salutations, Hans II Davion."
"In many ways, are you not better off than Hanse Davion? You are freer in many ways than the burden of rulership. Many would find that power and authority attractive and worth killing over, but you know that with Michael Hasek-Davion conspiring with Mad Max, you would have only lasted long enough to torpedo Steiner-Davion relations before being conveniently killed off so that Michael could assume rulership of the Federated Suns. We have bargained for your life, now it is up to you to do something with it instead of wasting it in obscurity."
Dupli Hanse threw the book at him. "And that is why you were having me read all these isekai reincarnation novels! To make me comfortable with having lost all my previous life and be comfortable inside someone's skin! What kind of blatant and deranged emotional manipulation is this?!"
Therapist-bot spoke: "You were violated in both body and mind. But even if you were a victim in the machinations of politics, victimhood is not your fate. Own it and make it your own power."
Dupli-Hanse cooly replied: "I am grateful enough that I was not just killed off for convenience, but now what does the Eridani Light Horse wish to do with me? A gilded cage is still a cage, and an unpaid prisoner of war is just a step removed from being a slave."
"You can do all the things that Hanse Davion can't get away with," said Armstrong. "Why don't we go for a run? Whoever loses must fulfill a minor request of the victor."
"Indeed. Physical activity helps break out of cycles of depression."
The doppelganger sighed. "Fine."
-.
The site upon which the Eridani Light Horse built their main base was in the middle of some idyllic green rolling hills. There were forests. There were cliffs. There were seas.
There was this giant country-sized beam lashing down from space reshaping the land.
The base itself looked normal enough, composed of ferrocrete and other prefab structures. For strength a lot of it was made of geodesic domes. The capital of Declan II would now be Mobius City. Dupli-Hance didn't take long to realize why.
The rocks were stained in a checkerboard pattern. Roads banked into the cliffsides. The loops on the horizon in this Green Hills Zone were just the most obvious symbols of how much of this was sculpted and not by human hands.
"It would be much safer for all of you if I never left this planet ever again," he sighed. "Why do you do this?"
"It would be a waste of potential," replied Armstrong. "You could just spend the rest of your life in safe obscurity, but will that fix the life stolen from you? Others can take vengeance for you, but will that be enough to bring you closure? Will you be happy just having your life continually be decided for you?"
"And what you are doing now, is not?! Being in the military is exactly having your life decided for you on all levels, you crazy horses!"
"You are now a Hanse Davion," replied Therapist-Bot. "Denying your own personhood would lead to life-long struggle and potentially unhealthy coping mechanisms."
"You don't even see me! You are the ones denying my personhood! What you want is Hanse Davion?"
"Do you even see *you* when you look into the mirror? Which would feel worse to you - just being some no-name lackey surgically altered into a death conspiracy, or being actually Hanse Davion in all the ways that Hanse Davion cannot Hanse? That twisty brainwashing in your head will keep insisting the rest of your life that you have to be Hanse Davion or you're nothing." Armstrong on the screen shrugged. "So why not be Hanse Davion *on your own terms* instead."
"You were programmed to act a Hanse Davion as far as Liao could imagine nobles to act - outwardly charming, but arrogant and narcissistic, demanding complete obedience. That is Worst Hanse, and instead of trying to fight against that programming, rebuke it by living a healthier, happier, more exciting and more fulfilling life than any other Hanse Davion. You deserve better than to be mediocre."
"This is insane. I can't - no. I don't even know anything about psychology but this has to be the worst way to deal with trauma that I can see." With a scowl he added "Apart from drugs and alcohol and things of that nature, I mean."
"Would you like to wear a white mask?" asked Therapist-Bot.
The robot played a strangely catchy tune.
"You may live in the shadow of his soul, but there's nothing that says you can be greater than some REMF sitting on his throne."
"... I am insulted on Hanse Davion's behalf."
They had by this time arrived at the hangars.
Therapist Bot stated: "Hanse Davion will never be allowed to be a test pilot."
Dupli Hanse looked up with narrowed unamused eyes at the experimental units. "They're all still Urbanmechs."
-.
Dupli Hanse secured the seatbelts and nodded. The Super Urbanmech had a blue and white paint scheme, with a line of white and red vertically down one side of the mech, much like Hanse Davion's own Battlemaster.
"Thank you, Charlie. I'll be fine on my own from here on. Maybe I'll see you later."
"W-whatever you wish, my Prince," the female engineer beamed as the platform retracted.
Armstrong spoke through the radio: "Hans Prince. Handsome Prince. Don't you go around breaking young girl's hearts."
"This is the face I was given and you all say I might as well accept all that it gives me," said the man with an eerie resemblance to a young James Tiberius Kirk.
The other Super Urbanmech was painted a flat wine red. The two mechs unlatched from their bays and began to walk out of the hangar. Therapist-Bot sat in the other cockpit, but only had a hardline connection to the DroneOS systems. With real-time HPG reciprocal connection, Nathan Armstrong could pilot remotely from an entirely different planet away just as easily as his Drone Command Console would control the virtual mech inside the simulation pod.
Dupli Hanse knew enough that this was supposed to be impossible.
Then again, as the two mechs began to run, so were many things.
The speedometer for an Urbanmech was calibrated to have a max speed of around 60 kph, and its actual top speed of 32kph halfway and highest point on that dial. "Slow" and "Less Slow". Even an Assault Mech which had a top speed of around 54 kph usually had more on the gauge. While the HUD of a neurohelmet had digital readouts, it was easiest for pilots to understand a proportional gauge that went up and down depending on their mech's movement.
The world began to blur past. Everything else started to fall away. There was no time to think, no room for hesitation. His problems just melted away. There was only speed.
Even most Light Mech scouts had gauges that topped out at 150 kph.
The Super Urbanmech's feet were a blur, chewing into the soil. They had passed that speed reading only 30 seconds after leaving the hangars.
The Super Urbanmech custom's speed readout did not top out at 150, or 200, or even 300.
Slamslamslamslam~
The Super Urbanmechs were traveling so fast that they had to run vertically on hardened walls just to turn. They had already passed 170 kph, which was a speed no sane BattleMech ever tried, much less an Urbanmech.
Extra ExtraLight engines. Extra Light Gyro. Endo Steel construction. An absolutely massive 390-rated Engine that ate up all room in the torso forcing the pilot to squeeze into a Small Cockpit.
Up ahead, the terrain inexplicably had turned into a huge loop like on a roller coaster, but on flat highway-grade land.
Dupli Hanse bared his teeth in a grin and accelerated. 200. 250 kph.
In complete defiance of gravity, the blue Super Urbanmech ran up the ramp, went completely upside down, and completed the loop out the other side - no sweat. Right now, in Declan, a Hanse Davion was the fastest thing alive.
Next were a series of three loops. He engaged the afterburners and MASC on the machine.
300. 350 kph.
Would Hanse Davion ever feel so alive?
Not even aircraft could compare to this, he mused. The neurohelmet fed back to him the sheer purposeful violence of his movement, every twitch of an artificial muscle myomers, the feel of air starting to thicken in front of him.
Swoop.
Swoop.
Swoop.
Now running at a quarter of the speed of sound.
He heard a muffled crunch. While upside down he glimpsed something failing to exit the loop cleanly, and had turned from something running into a disintegrating bullet scraping and tumbling across the countryside.
He kicked off, toggled his Jump Jets, and worked hard to bleed off momentum. Even so, the Urbanmech landed roughly and he had to keep running for a while longer into a broad turn just to head back the way he came.
He found the red Urbanmech as little more than a dented and torn egg, quadruply amputated.
"... What was I so worried about?!" he exhaled roughly and groused. "You were piloting this thing remotely. I had forgotten." A bit of lag was inexcusable when running at completely improbable speed for any Battlemech, much less an Urbanmech.
And yet, for the slightest mistake, this could have been his fate.
Hanse Davion would never be allowed to experience this.
"This unit is in distress. Help. Help." said Therapist Bot.
Dupli Hanse sighed. Even if it was just a robot, he did have some attachment to the oddly sassy counseling bot. "All right. Hang in there, my metal freud. I'm calling for recovery."
"Someone is making stupid dad jokes and this unit cannot make them stop. Help. Help. Save me."
-.
-.
Colchester
Federated Suns
Date Unknown
Petersen thought that if the whole point of having Kerensky was to rob the mystique off Wolf's Dragoons and let the Eridani Light Horse have confidence they can beat the Dragoons the next time they meet, this was entirely the wrong way to go with it.
There was a duelist-sized hole in the Eridani Light Horse. Kerensky's presence has turned the horses from a cooperative herd into a bunch of feral wild tarpans.
Petersen set out to privately question Kerensky at a convenient time. Kerensky herself was standoffish and uncooperative, completely uninterested in making any attachment. Fair enough, Petersen thought, they would have to try to kill each other for real again after three months. However, through weeks of observation, one strange thing emerged.
He set out on a small militarized pickup truck towards the training fields and found there a group of Mechs still drilling. It was already night well past nine, and still they were training.
It was a black 70-ton Heavy Urbanmech being followed by six pea-green 30-ton Urbanmechs. Whatever Petersen had been expecting to find with Natasha Kerensky, it was not a mother goose leading her goslings.
As the large Urbanmech swiveled to turn its baleful cyclopean amber gaze towards the approaching car, Petersen realized that peace with Kerensky had never been an option.
-.
-.
"Smoke? Vodka?" Petersen held up one in each hand.
"Neither." Then, belatedly as if remembering that she was a human being and had to express politeness "Thank you. No need to butter me up. It's bright enough to see your bars, sir. I hope you don't expect me to salute." She leaned against a lamppost and crossed her arms. "Now what does the Regimental Commander of the 71st want from me?"
"Hmm." Petersen put down the bottle and broke open the pack of cigarettes. He took one out and lit one up. He noticed that Kerensky scowled at his choice. "You… look like you disapprove."
"Throat and lung cancer is not a warrior's death," said Natasha Kerensky. "I have forbidden that amongst all vices from my trainees."
"That's fair. A filthy habit that somehow even a thousand years away from Terra, we're still doing it. Soldiers do like to find ways of dying even faster. Or maybe this is just how we take comfort in our mortality?" He puffed out and then suddenly jammed the cigarette into the side of the truck. "So I suppose I just have to ask - is your way actually right? Has someone beaten you yet in training?"
Natasha Kerensky bared her teeth and laughed a hollow laugh. "Do not tell me you're also buying into all that publicity and rumor. Of course I have. Many times. Even in the Dragoons, I am hardly untouchable. That is what training is for! Get beaten down, and stand up again. Sweat on the training fields saves blood on the battlefield. There is no failure in training, only hints towards improvement. Perfection is the enemy! If you ever feel like there is no longer anything more you can do to improve, then that is the moment you assure your own death. Your general's demands for OPFOR requires that we all know both how to win and lose."
She shrugged. "In war, the only victory is survival, Colonel! You should know that much."
"Surely there isn't much difference though? The herd and the pack both require cooperative effort. In the end, aren't we all too old and stuck in our ways? All of this is just adding some more tricks and traps into our toolbox without refusing to move from our preferred doctrine."
Kerensky only tapped her boots impatiently. She looked off to the distance, just blanking out the officer's rambling.
Petersen let out a small 'heh'. "All right then. I'll get to the point. Even with High Command asking for you to show special dispensation to some utter rookies in their first year as cadets, you are spending too much of your own time trying to get them to soak up your teachings."
Kerensky looked up. She smirked. "So - it wasn't me that you were curious about after all."
Petersen gestured to the open field. "Perhaps it is true that only an empty vessel can be filled? Perhaps that is all you are looking for - a synthesis between your way and our way that can be tested in the future."
Then with a voice completely flat and devoid of emotion "Or… did you figure out yet why for some reason Eridani High Command is so biased towards Devlin Stone? You are also noticeably biased towards these children and I don't know why."
"Can't I just find these kids cute and want to play with them? No?" The woman shrugged. "The boy is odd and unnatural, but nothing all that special. These kids-"
Sploosh.
Sploosh.
The light of the lamppost was bright enough to show how Natasha Kerensky was covered in bright hot neon pink paint. In the gloom just right outside of the light cone, Devlin Stone and Bennet Brooklyn held empty paint cans. Tom Robinson stood by nervously.
"These kids are dead meat," Natasha said simply.
"Vengeance for Little Tom!" Devlin roared.
"Yeah, take that, you red witch!" Bennet yelled as well.
Devlin and Bennet grabbed Tom from either side and hauled him off.
"That little random gene mistake SON OF A BITCH!" Kerensky turned around.
"I never knew my motheeerrr-!" Devlin answered even as they skedaddled.
"I am an unwilling participaaant!" Tom wailed.
-.
-.
As a rule, drill instructors are not actually allowed to harmfully touch their recruits. It was an incompetent one that had to resort to brutality in order to enforce their authority. By the same token, cadets attacking their instructor were due for a court martial.
The rules were somewhat vague on pranks.
So when the doors to the infirmary were kicked open at just before midnight, the night shift saw a pink splattered Kerensky dragging three teenage boys all tied up and gagged like they were tires being dragged for physical training in old urban martial arts movies, the staff's only thought was 'Where did she find the tar and feathers?'
Kerensky coldly stopped by the reception desk and said "I need you to check these brats for lead poisoning."
"Uh. Yes. All right. But why?"
"Because they are being morons more than the usual."
"... Fair enough." The reception desk rang for an orderly. "Ma'am, we can prepare anodyne solvents for you too. We can set aside a private bath."
"I'm visiting," said Kerensky.
"It is past visiting hours, but…" the receptionist glanced towards the three teens, still silent and shaking with terror "I think we can make an exception."
Kerensky turned sharply at hearing a giggle from one of the medics on station. "What?" she asked. "You find this funny? Are you getting comfortable now?"
She turned back to the receptionist and spoke in a drill sergeant voice designed to carry without shouting. "Ponies, we are not friends. The next time we meet in battle, I will still do my best to kill the one in front of me. Do not let the mischief of these children make you forget that they are all still enemies." She reached out and pressed a fingernail to the fleshy part of the receptionist's chin and forced her to look up. "Do not make any mistake that I have developed any fondness that would have me grant you any mercy."
The receptionist stared into Kerensky's burning gaze and blushed. "Y-yes, my Queen," she breathed.
Natasha Kerensky squinted.
-.
-.
Colin MacLaren sat up as far as he could rise to attention when Natasha Kerensky entered the room. "My Lady!" he cried out in pleasant surprise. "Are you well? You are… pink?"
Keresky held up an open palm. He silenced immediately. "First - these ponies are insane and I need to get the hell out of here. Second - it is midnight. Why are you still awake?"
Colin MacLaren's look implied 'wait, so you were just going to come here and watch me sleep?' The injured mechwarrior then gestured to the papers and noteputers on the small lap desk. "It is only at night that it is silent enough to work. In some way, as you work upon the Light Horse, I too wish to earn my keep."
"Are those what I think they are?"
"Yes, My Lady. I have been grading essays, yes."
Natasha Kerensky went over to sit beside him, and sagged on the chair. "These ponies are insane and I need to get the hell out of here."
But, she supposed, even if Jaime Wolf tried to get ELH prisoners of his own too and did something like seize an entire regiment, she had already given her word and there were still two more months until her parole was done. She was a Wolf. She would never be a Horse. This was just a chore she had to endure until she could feel alive again on the battlefield.
McLaren stared at her and with a thin smile said gently "These ponies are dangerous."
-.
-.
Two days later, Wolf's Dragoons invaded Harrow's Sun with three regiments and the DCMS fell upon Galtor with six regiments in just the first wave.
The last great clash of powers that would close out the Third Succession Wars.
13.2 The Fools Bargain
bluepencil
The tropics will be uninhabitable.
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The Fools Bargain 02
Galtor III
Draconis March
Federated Suns
08 May, 3025
The third world of Galtor was settled by Irish and Chinese colonizers in successive waves of colonists that each thought they had been given an exclusive claim. Within ten years of their arrival on the world their populations competed with each other, eventually escalating into all-out war. Although they only had a few tanks and an artillery piece or two, the damage wreaked was terrible. A breakout of a plague - a constant fear on new worlds with limited medical resources and research on how alien worlds might mutate old diseases - forced the two groups to sign an armistice to combat the sickness together. This eventually developed into the Webster Compact that paved the way for both sides no longer considering themselves Irish or Orientals and just Galtorians.
In the centuries that followed, Galtor became a peaceful and prosperous world that served as a breadbasket for surrounding worlds. This sleepy planet was left mostly untouched by the Age of War, and at the rise of the Star League the world became host to a major SLDF presence on the planet. Soon enough the military became its largest customer, and Galtor fed nearly a billion soldiers over a thousand worlds.
Then the Star League collapsed. When the SLDF abandoned Galtor to follow Kerensky, the world got its first taste of true hardship. Refugees flooded into the world even as trade dried but, but for the most part war was something that happened elsewhere in space. When Kurita made their great assault against Davion worlds, the ancestors of Galtor III made little resistance. Life under the Draconis Combine was grim and sullen, with quotas and manual fieldwork replacing automated farm machinery. Anyone that showed any hesitation were immediately punished, any complaint made people disappear. For a hundred years, Galtor languished in malaise, and the structure of the world fell apart under the management of occupying soldiers and administrators. A world that once fed thousands now struggled to feed itself.
For a hundred years, Galtor remained under the grip of the Combine. The Dragon and the Suns warred around Kentares IV, Mallory's World and Harrow's Sun while Galtor was ignored as a former Davion world. It would not be until 3022 when under Hanse Davion's command the Federated Suns managed to capture the world in a bloody campaign that saw one-third of the population losing their lives.
And yet even so, Galtor would much prefer to be in Davion hands.
But their freedom was uneasy and their world was still shattered. They knew that a return to Combine hands would come with brutal and unrelenting punishment.
When Hanse Davion ordered a survey of all the worlds captured in the past few years, records in New Avalon indicated that Galtor III would have an unusually rich deposit of priceless and irreplaceable parts and equipment dating back to the Star League.
The depot set into a small hill was turned out to be long ransacked, and was by design not a very defensible position. The local defenders - elements of Draconis March (Dahar DMM) militia and the Raman DMM, the native Galtor Irregulars and mercenary BattleMechs of the Lone Wolves - were not aware that the site was fake.
The plan as communicated to the parties was for two strong regiments to lie in wait in Galtor to trap any raiding party and then destroy them in a series of short, swift and decisive thrusts. The AFFS' 33rd Avalon Hussars and the mercenary 12th Vegan Rangers were originally slated for this purpose. Their high command was aware of the true nature of the trap.
But immediately all that could go wrong, did.
Two battalions of the 33rd Avalon Hussars regiment still languished in their barracks on Kestrel because a lack of dropship parts prevented them from moving the entire regiment.
The Union dropship Jasper exploded on liftoff at Marduk, destroying two companies of the Dahar DMM, and the repair and landing facilities of the spaceport were heavily damaged. This was suspected to be the work of Kurita guerillas.
Kurita raids intensified across the border, stressing the Raman DMM, a green force that had to defend a large section of the frontier. This seemed to be a punitive response to their loss of an entire regiment on Tripoli. The Dragon, wounded, bared its fangs to remind others that it was not weak.
Suddenly, the night sky burst open and a wash of electromagnetic waves from a nearby K-F emergence filled the sensor web.
A Monolith-class JumpShip and six Scout jumpships arrived with impossible precision on the Pirate Point between the world and its host star. Any overlap in their drive fields would lead to a fatal misjump.
"PEOPLE OF GALTOR. DO NOT BE ALARMED," the broad frequency signal announced. "OUR INTENTIONS ARE PEACEFUL. WE ARE THE ERIDANI LIGHT HORSE."
-.
Margrave Sheridan Douglass, leader of the Alpha Regiment of the 12th Vegan Rangers, did not have an overly romantic view of the Eridani Light Horse. The Rangers had served Davion for centuries while refusing offers to join the regular military. Unlike the Steiners, where it made sense not to be under the total control of social generals, the Rangers held onto their independence and made the Federated Suns pay a premium for their continued loyalty.
No mercenary regiment would easily accept that someone else would be 'the best' in their field, and despite the ELH's posturing they were just yet another mercenary unit to him. He considered his own heavyweight regiment to be a fair match to anything.
After verifying that the new arrivals were who they said they were, and that their intentions really were peaceful, they were given clearance to approach and land.
The ELH went down like an invasion force.
The 22nd Special Air squadron rose to meet them.
Colonel Sirius Golen, commander of the 22nd Special Air Squadron, had this to say:
"Galtor III was the first mission of the 22nd. We had a lot to prove and we would have to die trying. We were actually three squadrons - Parker's Squadron, Hunt's Squadron, and Morgan's Squadron. Every competent regiment had at least a squadron of ASF to push through contested orbitals. I sent Parker and Hunt to 'welcome' our new mercenary friends to Galtor.
"Now, the backbone of the 22nd was our STU-K5 Stuka Heavy Fighters. While we were a new unit, but we were made out of veterans of combat and we were all expected to fight even outnumbered by the Combine."
A Heavy 100-ton fighter, armed with 4 Large Lasers, 3 Medium Lasers, an LRM-20, a SRM-6, and 15 tons of protection - a group of Stukas could blow almost anything out of orbit. Their only weakness was their relatively low amount of fuel - 4 tons. The long narrow cigar-shaped fuselage with canards near the cockpit and a wide ogive wing at the rear was characteristic of both this craft or a smaller Lightning fighter, which could prove to be a deadly mistake.
"Parker reported to me later that seeing the ELH move out with their DroST pocket warships at the head - he didn't understand why, but his instincts were already screaming at him not to do something stupid."
Four DroST IIA assault dropships forged the way, and the 22nd's heavy ASFs, primarily Stukas, were momentarily caught aback by a formation that eschewed skirmishing in favor of a brute wall of steel and guns. The diamond formation meant that the dropships covered each other's firing arcs.
A squadron was typically six fighters. Three squadrons in total were 18 fighters. The 22nd only had half their number in heavy fighters, but assume they had 18 Stukas. That's 72 Large Lasers and 18 LRM-20s across 1800 tons of fightercraft.
A single DroST was 5,300 tons by itself.
Unlike a Stuka's four to six tons of internal fuel capacity, it could carry hundreds of tons of fuel. Therefore, paradoxically, while a DropShip was usually considered a slow and fast target, a Drost that boosts at 2.5 to 4 gravities could easily outrun its pursuing craft, punch through a defensive screen, and with all-around turret coverage didn't need to outmaneuver its opponents..
Even the 22nd Special Air Squadron had to reconsider when it looked like something twice their numbers were bearing down on them, with the danger of assault dropships shooting them in the back while skirmishing against other fighters.
"Each of those Pocket Warships was escorted by four ASFs… they looked like Stukas too, but something about them felt… wrong, somehow. Parker and Hunt could tell the difference between dedicated heavy escorts and the other smaller dogfighting fightercraft around the other dropships." Sirius Golen mentioned later in an interview. "Kurita would find out the hard way later why ELH aircraft left this impression of cold mechanical fearlessness in their flying."
The groups buzzed and flew past each other.
The 12th Vegan Rangers were supposed to sit in the shadow of the world, waiting in their dropships ready to smash into the unprotected rear and landing sites of attackers, trapping them on the planet. However, as they were well fore-warned that friendlies were coming, it was better not to pull that surprise early or it might get leaked.
The ELH had a mix of transport and assault dropships, two Drost-II's remained in orbit to defend against space assaults even as the regiment passed the boundary. This was a grim preview of what the Draconis Combine might bring to the invasion, but now at least they had the numbers to fight the Dragon one on one.
Whole companies of Jump-capable mechs landed as a scouting party ahead of the landings. The sky above the drop site glittered with falling stars.
The 782d Davion Guard Auxiliary defended the site. They were an infantry force utterly lacking any BattleMechs or Heavy Combat Vehicles. Instead they sat behind eight layers of minefields and Sniper Artillery Pieces. The 33rd Hussars had Long Toms in their fortified and camouflage based camp. Spotters were ready to roll.
The 33rd Avalon Hussars' base camp only received a directional radio message on all bands. I SEE YOU.
Sheridan Douglass frowned and turned to see Lt. General Wilson Mandella's sweaty indignation. The AFFS officer clearly saw this as an insult and a threat to his authority.
The DropShips landed six kilometers from the site, southwest and northeast, and swiftly disgorged their mechs and vehicles. Heavy towed Long Tom Artillery and lighter wheeled Thumper Artillery pieces for counter-battery fire trundled out, and VTOLs climbed to provide scouting support and artillery fire direction.
The defenders of the Star League depot hesitated to fire their artillery training rounds. While this scheduled wargame was supposed to identify any weakness in the position, firing too early would expose their position.
Kurita would not have brought artillery. They wanted to capture the depot intact, no?
The Eridani Light Horse began to set up fortified positions easily visible from the air.
The scouts of the planetary defenders could only make verbal reports about what they were seeing, fortunately not yet disrupted by the usual Kuritan habit of EMP airbursts preceding an invasion. They lacked integrated datalinks.
Then those scouts suddenly let out panicked outbursts as mechs landed nearby. With a sigh they reported that they had been found and "captured".
The Eridani Light Horse did not bombard the 33rd's base camp. That would have exposed the location of their artillery. Instead, a dense group of flyers passed over the site, and the second-line ASFs that met them reported with a confused tone, that "what the flipping hell are a bunch of flying saucers doing over here?"
From emergence to landfall, it was four hours of a nearly uncontested landing in force.
-.
Davion wanted to hold on to Galtor III mainly to shield Marduk but also for Galtor Naval Yards. The AFFS liked to build underwater command posts that were protected from the early bombardment and disruption of command facilities in a full-scale planetary invasion. Ironically however, because Galtor had only been back in Davion hands for three years - Galtor didn't have any of those protected underwater command facilities.
Putting facilities on Galtor's underwater submarine pens would incentivize the enemy to wreck the yards, which would be foolish considering how the yards had managed to survive three hundred years intact.
The Grand Duchy of Galtor was headed by Governor Skyles O'Hanlon, appointed by Prince Hanse Davion. However, he had no power over the military defense. The Galtor Irregulars, formed of the guerillas and saboteurs that fought on Galtor ahead of the Davion offensive, were commanded by a Committee of Four, and likewise through them they employed the mercenary Lone Wolves. They were centered mainly around New Derry.
The Draconis March Militias defended the major cities of the planet and were given leave to do so on their own initiative.
Command therefore centered on Lt. General Mandella and the 33rd Avalon Hussars base on Wagnall Plain. Parts of the base, specifically the airfields, dropship landing zones, and storage depots, were visible from the air. Other parts, such as the command posts, were more mobile. Other portions were sheltered and camouflaged some distance away from obvious bombing targets, such as the artillery and communication parks.
A Drost II painted in flat Eridani green landed.
The craft disgorged the ELH regimental staff. Margrave Sheridan Douglass went out with Lt. General Mandella to meet them at the tarmac.
Douglass raised a curious eyebrow at the regimental bodyguard Mechs. His first thought was 'Urbanmech' but obviously they were far too large. 'Flashman', then? But they had humanoid legs instead of reverse-jointed chicken walker legs.
The ELH commander approached and saluted. "Ah! Lieutenant General Mandella and Margrave Douglass, I presume? I am Brevet General Nathan Armstrong, and I lead the Eridani Light Horse. I bring with me the 91st Cavalry Regiment of the Eridani Light Horse. I apologize for the disruption, but there are some drastic new developments that require a drastic change in plans."
Mandela pushed forward and scowled against that ELH officer's gentle smile. "This is an inexcusable breach in protocol. What is this grandstanding? It is brazen and unprofessional! Why are you doing so many things without even a by-your-leave? I am in command here!"
The other person shook his head slowly. "I am sorry, General. But you are not. I am Robert Green-Davion, official mercenary liaison to the Eridani Light Horse. By order of Hanse Davion, First Prince of the Federated Suns, the Eridani Light Horse are now assuming command of the defense of this world in the event of a Kuritan attack." He held out a datapad. "Verigraphed and signed orders here."
"What? Inconceivable!"
The general shakily snapped the datapad off Green-Davion's hands. He read through the orders and Douglass could see him tempted to accuse the mercenary general of lying, versus the reputation and lack of reason for the Light Horse to falsify orders. "This is highly irregular and I protest. You are mercenaries! You should not be commanding regular troops - and multiple regiments of the Federated Suns at that!"
Armstrong hummed. "The Light Horse are, right now, operating something like… Hanse Davion's personal beatstick. Kurita *will* attack Galtor. Not just because of the rumors of a Star League cache, but because *we* are here. Even Takashi Kurita knows that if they don't face us in Galtor, they will have to face us *in Irurzun*. The Light Horse being here is the strongest support for the site actually being a legitimately high-value target."
'Beatstick?' Green-Davion mouthed and glanced aside. A curious word, but not difficult to understand.
Douglass nodded. Few regiments could claim battle with another regiment one on one and then prove themselves able to completely wipe out the other with only minimal losses. The Eridani Light Horse did this *three times* before half the year was even out. He could understand how much that must rankle the DCMS. They could never endure any humiliation.
So they *must* face the Eridani Light Horse and wipe away the shame of those defeats.
Mandella grimaced. By comparison, while the 33rd Avalon Hussars wore the name that distinguished itself centuries before the Eridani Light Horse even existed, their storied nature was much less… overcoming.
The 33rd was one of originally 60 Avalon Hussar Regiments. By the time of the First Succession Wars, there were only 15 regiments that stubbornly kept the name, and refused to train with BattleMechs as they were too slow and heavy. They were all completely decimated within 6 years.
By the Second Succession Wars, much humbled and happy to train with BattleMechs, New Avalon newly minted the 33rd New Avalon Hussars and marched them off to the House Liao Border.
They faced the Capellan Hussars of House Liao and were swiftly and resoundingly crushed to the point that only 10 percent of their Mechs survived. Only propaganda saved the regiment from total dissolution, and made it out that the defeat was actually a piece of valor fighting down to the last man.
The 33rd was known as the "regiment that just won't die" because at least two more times the regiment had in recent memory had faced the enemy and been almost completely wiped out. Their track record against House Kurita was not much better, though with the support of other units they suffered less damage. They were a veteran regiment with many heavy mechs, and often could win against the enemy in a straight fight. Their bad luck could not be explained away as simply incompetence or inexperience.
This mission personally ordered by the Prince was their chance to see if they could shed the hard luck of the unit.
"I will obey my orders, but still I must lodge a formal protest," Mandella continued. Douglass could tell from the almost teary rage in Mandella's eyes how much this rankled. An assault regiment should not keep on being hand-held by other veteran regiments. He was in command! This was his chance! And once again the chance to redeem the honor of the unit was taken away from him. "Never in the history of the AFFS has command been seconded to mercenaries!"
Armstrong beamed. "To your knowledge, no. But there have been multiple recorded instances of Davion command seconding to the SLDF."
Douglass sighed and resisted a groan. Not this shite again.
Armstrong turned and beckoned. "Come, come, let me show you something that will change your mind. This false site you were using as bait… may not be as useless as you might believe."
-.
-.
Galtor III
Draconis March
Federated Suns
08 May, 3025
The third world of Galtor was settled by Irish and Chinese colonizers in successive waves of colonists that each thought they had been given an exclusive claim. Within ten years of their arrival on the world their populations competed with each other, eventually escalating into all-out war. Although they only had a few tanks and an artillery piece or two, the damage wreaked was terrible. A breakout of a plague - a constant fear on new worlds with limited medical resources and research on how alien worlds might mutate old diseases - forced the two groups to sign an armistice to combat the sickness together. This eventually developed into the Webster Compact that paved the way for both sides no longer considering themselves Irish or Orientals and just Galtorians.
In the centuries that followed, Galtor became a peaceful and prosperous world that served as a breadbasket for surrounding worlds. This sleepy planet was left mostly untouched by the Age of War, and at the rise of the Star League the world became host to a major SLDF presence on the planet. Soon enough the military became its largest customer, and Galtor fed nearly a billion soldiers over a thousand worlds.
Then the Star League collapsed. When the SLDF abandoned Galtor to follow Kerensky, the world got its first taste of true hardship. Refugees flooded into the world even as trade dried but, but for the most part war was something that happened elsewhere in space. When Kurita made their great assault against Davion worlds, the ancestors of Galtor III made little resistance. Life under the Draconis Combine was grim and sullen, with quotas and manual fieldwork replacing automated farm machinery. Anyone that showed any hesitation were immediately punished, any complaint made people disappear. For a hundred years, Galtor languished in malaise, and the structure of the world fell apart under the management of occupying soldiers and administrators. A world that once fed thousands now struggled to feed itself.
For a hundred years, Galtor remained under the grip of the Combine. The Dragon and the Suns warred around Kentares IV, Mallory's World and Harrow's Sun while Galtor was ignored as a former Davion world. It would not be until 3022 when under Hanse Davion's command the Federated Suns managed to capture the world in a bloody campaign that saw one-third of the population losing their lives.
And yet even so, Galtor would much prefer to be in Davion hands.
But their freedom was uneasy and their world was still shattered. They knew that a return to Combine hands would come with brutal and unrelenting punishment.
When Hanse Davion ordered a survey of all the worlds captured in the past few years, records in New Avalon indicated that Galtor III would have an unusually rich deposit of priceless and irreplaceable parts and equipment dating back to the Star League.
The depot set into a small hill was turned out to be long ransacked, and was by design not a very defensible position. The local defenders - elements of Draconis March (Dahar DMM) militia and the Raman DMM, the native Galtor Irregulars and mercenary BattleMechs of the Lone Wolves - were not aware that the site was fake.
The plan as communicated to the parties was for two strong regiments to lie in wait in Galtor to trap any raiding party and then destroy them in a series of short, swift and decisive thrusts. The AFFS' 33rd Avalon Hussars and the mercenary 12th Vegan Rangers were originally slated for this purpose. Their high command was aware of the true nature of the trap.
But immediately all that could go wrong, did.
Two battalions of the 33rd Avalon Hussars regiment still languished in their barracks on Kestrel because a lack of dropship parts prevented them from moving the entire regiment.
The Union dropship Jasper exploded on liftoff at Marduk, destroying two companies of the Dahar DMM, and the repair and landing facilities of the spaceport were heavily damaged. This was suspected to be the work of Kurita guerillas.
Kurita raids intensified across the border, stressing the Raman DMM, a green force that had to defend a large section of the frontier. This seemed to be a punitive response to their loss of an entire regiment on Tripoli. The Dragon, wounded, bared its fangs to remind others that it was not weak.
Suddenly, the night sky burst open and a wash of electromagnetic waves from a nearby K-F emergence filled the sensor web.
A Monolith-class JumpShip and six Scout jumpships arrived with impossible precision on the Pirate Point between the world and its host star. Any overlap in their drive fields would lead to a fatal misjump.
"PEOPLE OF GALTOR. DO NOT BE ALARMED," the broad frequency signal announced. "OUR INTENTIONS ARE PEACEFUL. WE ARE THE ERIDANI LIGHT HORSE."
-.
Margrave Sheridan Douglass, leader of the Alpha Regiment of the 12th Vegan Rangers, did not have an overly romantic view of the Eridani Light Horse. The Rangers had served Davion for centuries while refusing offers to join the regular military. Unlike the Steiners, where it made sense not to be under the total control of social generals, the Rangers held onto their independence and made the Federated Suns pay a premium for their continued loyalty.
No mercenary regiment would easily accept that someone else would be 'the best' in their field, and despite the ELH's posturing they were just yet another mercenary unit to him. He considered his own heavyweight regiment to be a fair match to anything.
After verifying that the new arrivals were who they said they were, and that their intentions really were peaceful, they were given clearance to approach and land.
The ELH went down like an invasion force.
The 22nd Special Air squadron rose to meet them.
Colonel Sirius Golen, commander of the 22nd Special Air Squadron, had this to say:
"Galtor III was the first mission of the 22nd. We had a lot to prove and we would have to die trying. We were actually three squadrons - Parker's Squadron, Hunt's Squadron, and Morgan's Squadron. Every competent regiment had at least a squadron of ASF to push through contested orbitals. I sent Parker and Hunt to 'welcome' our new mercenary friends to Galtor.
"Now, the backbone of the 22nd was our STU-K5 Stuka Heavy Fighters. While we were a new unit, but we were made out of veterans of combat and we were all expected to fight even outnumbered by the Combine."
A Heavy 100-ton fighter, armed with 4 Large Lasers, 3 Medium Lasers, an LRM-20, a SRM-6, and 15 tons of protection - a group of Stukas could blow almost anything out of orbit. Their only weakness was their relatively low amount of fuel - 4 tons. The long narrow cigar-shaped fuselage with canards near the cockpit and a wide ogive wing at the rear was characteristic of both this craft or a smaller Lightning fighter, which could prove to be a deadly mistake.
"Parker reported to me later that seeing the ELH move out with their DroST pocket warships at the head - he didn't understand why, but his instincts were already screaming at him not to do something stupid."
Four DroST IIA assault dropships forged the way, and the 22nd's heavy ASFs, primarily Stukas, were momentarily caught aback by a formation that eschewed skirmishing in favor of a brute wall of steel and guns. The diamond formation meant that the dropships covered each other's firing arcs.
A squadron was typically six fighters. Three squadrons in total were 18 fighters. The 22nd only had half their number in heavy fighters, but assume they had 18 Stukas. That's 72 Large Lasers and 18 LRM-20s across 1800 tons of fightercraft.
A single DroST was 5,300 tons by itself.
Unlike a Stuka's four to six tons of internal fuel capacity, it could carry hundreds of tons of fuel. Therefore, paradoxically, while a DropShip was usually considered a slow and fast target, a Drost that boosts at 2.5 to 4 gravities could easily outrun its pursuing craft, punch through a defensive screen, and with all-around turret coverage didn't need to outmaneuver its opponents..
Even the 22nd Special Air Squadron had to reconsider when it looked like something twice their numbers were bearing down on them, with the danger of assault dropships shooting them in the back while skirmishing against other fighters.
"Each of those Pocket Warships was escorted by four ASFs… they looked like Stukas too, but something about them felt… wrong, somehow. Parker and Hunt could tell the difference between dedicated heavy escorts and the other smaller dogfighting fightercraft around the other dropships." Sirius Golen mentioned later in an interview. "Kurita would find out the hard way later why ELH aircraft left this impression of cold mechanical fearlessness in their flying."
The groups buzzed and flew past each other.
The 12th Vegan Rangers were supposed to sit in the shadow of the world, waiting in their dropships ready to smash into the unprotected rear and landing sites of attackers, trapping them on the planet. However, as they were well fore-warned that friendlies were coming, it was better not to pull that surprise early or it might get leaked.
The ELH had a mix of transport and assault dropships, two Drost-II's remained in orbit to defend against space assaults even as the regiment passed the boundary. This was a grim preview of what the Draconis Combine might bring to the invasion, but now at least they had the numbers to fight the Dragon one on one.
Whole companies of Jump-capable mechs landed as a scouting party ahead of the landings. The sky above the drop site glittered with falling stars.
The 782d Davion Guard Auxiliary defended the site. They were an infantry force utterly lacking any BattleMechs or Heavy Combat Vehicles. Instead they sat behind eight layers of minefields and Sniper Artillery Pieces. The 33rd Hussars had Long Toms in their fortified and camouflage based camp. Spotters were ready to roll.
The 33rd Avalon Hussars' base camp only received a directional radio message on all bands. I SEE YOU.
Sheridan Douglass frowned and turned to see Lt. General Wilson Mandella's sweaty indignation. The AFFS officer clearly saw this as an insult and a threat to his authority.
The DropShips landed six kilometers from the site, southwest and northeast, and swiftly disgorged their mechs and vehicles. Heavy towed Long Tom Artillery and lighter wheeled Thumper Artillery pieces for counter-battery fire trundled out, and VTOLs climbed to provide scouting support and artillery fire direction.
The defenders of the Star League depot hesitated to fire their artillery training rounds. While this scheduled wargame was supposed to identify any weakness in the position, firing too early would expose their position.
Kurita would not have brought artillery. They wanted to capture the depot intact, no?
The Eridani Light Horse began to set up fortified positions easily visible from the air.
The scouts of the planetary defenders could only make verbal reports about what they were seeing, fortunately not yet disrupted by the usual Kuritan habit of EMP airbursts preceding an invasion. They lacked integrated datalinks.
Then those scouts suddenly let out panicked outbursts as mechs landed nearby. With a sigh they reported that they had been found and "captured".
The Eridani Light Horse did not bombard the 33rd's base camp. That would have exposed the location of their artillery. Instead, a dense group of flyers passed over the site, and the second-line ASFs that met them reported with a confused tone, that "what the flipping hell are a bunch of flying saucers doing over here?"
From emergence to landfall, it was four hours of a nearly uncontested landing in force.
-.
Davion wanted to hold on to Galtor III mainly to shield Marduk but also for Galtor Naval Yards. The AFFS liked to build underwater command posts that were protected from the early bombardment and disruption of command facilities in a full-scale planetary invasion. Ironically however, because Galtor had only been back in Davion hands for three years - Galtor didn't have any of those protected underwater command facilities.
Putting facilities on Galtor's underwater submarine pens would incentivize the enemy to wreck the yards, which would be foolish considering how the yards had managed to survive three hundred years intact.
The Grand Duchy of Galtor was headed by Governor Skyles O'Hanlon, appointed by Prince Hanse Davion. However, he had no power over the military defense. The Galtor Irregulars, formed of the guerillas and saboteurs that fought on Galtor ahead of the Davion offensive, were commanded by a Committee of Four, and likewise through them they employed the mercenary Lone Wolves. They were centered mainly around New Derry.
The Draconis March Militias defended the major cities of the planet and were given leave to do so on their own initiative.
Command therefore centered on Lt. General Mandella and the 33rd Avalon Hussars base on Wagnall Plain. Parts of the base, specifically the airfields, dropship landing zones, and storage depots, were visible from the air. Other parts, such as the command posts, were more mobile. Other portions were sheltered and camouflaged some distance away from obvious bombing targets, such as the artillery and communication parks.
A Drost II painted in flat Eridani green landed.
The craft disgorged the ELH regimental staff. Margrave Sheridan Douglass went out with Lt. General Mandella to meet them at the tarmac.
Douglass raised a curious eyebrow at the regimental bodyguard Mechs. His first thought was 'Urbanmech' but obviously they were far too large. 'Flashman', then? But they had humanoid legs instead of reverse-jointed chicken walker legs.
The ELH commander approached and saluted. "Ah! Lieutenant General Mandella and Margrave Douglass, I presume? I am Brevet General Nathan Armstrong, and I lead the Eridani Light Horse. I bring with me the 91st Cavalry Regiment of the Eridani Light Horse. I apologize for the disruption, but there are some drastic new developments that require a drastic change in plans."
Mandela pushed forward and scowled against that ELH officer's gentle smile. "This is an inexcusable breach in protocol. What is this grandstanding? It is brazen and unprofessional! Why are you doing so many things without even a by-your-leave? I am in command here!"
The other person shook his head slowly. "I am sorry, General. But you are not. I am Robert Green-Davion, official mercenary liaison to the Eridani Light Horse. By order of Hanse Davion, First Prince of the Federated Suns, the Eridani Light Horse are now assuming command of the defense of this world in the event of a Kuritan attack." He held out a datapad. "Verigraphed and signed orders here."
"What? Inconceivable!"
The general shakily snapped the datapad off Green-Davion's hands. He read through the orders and Douglass could see him tempted to accuse the mercenary general of lying, versus the reputation and lack of reason for the Light Horse to falsify orders. "This is highly irregular and I protest. You are mercenaries! You should not be commanding regular troops - and multiple regiments of the Federated Suns at that!"
Armstrong hummed. "The Light Horse are, right now, operating something like… Hanse Davion's personal beatstick. Kurita *will* attack Galtor. Not just because of the rumors of a Star League cache, but because *we* are here. Even Takashi Kurita knows that if they don't face us in Galtor, they will have to face us *in Irurzun*. The Light Horse being here is the strongest support for the site actually being a legitimately high-value target."
'Beatstick?' Green-Davion mouthed and glanced aside. A curious word, but not difficult to understand.
Douglass nodded. Few regiments could claim battle with another regiment one on one and then prove themselves able to completely wipe out the other with only minimal losses. The Eridani Light Horse did this *three times* before half the year was even out. He could understand how much that must rankle the DCMS. They could never endure any humiliation.
So they *must* face the Eridani Light Horse and wipe away the shame of those defeats.
Mandella grimaced. By comparison, while the 33rd Avalon Hussars wore the name that distinguished itself centuries before the Eridani Light Horse even existed, their storied nature was much less… overcoming.
The 33rd was one of originally 60 Avalon Hussar Regiments. By the time of the First Succession Wars, there were only 15 regiments that stubbornly kept the name, and refused to train with BattleMechs as they were too slow and heavy. They were all completely decimated within 6 years.
By the Second Succession Wars, much humbled and happy to train with BattleMechs, New Avalon newly minted the 33rd New Avalon Hussars and marched them off to the House Liao Border.
They faced the Capellan Hussars of House Liao and were swiftly and resoundingly crushed to the point that only 10 percent of their Mechs survived. Only propaganda saved the regiment from total dissolution, and made it out that the defeat was actually a piece of valor fighting down to the last man.
The 33rd was known as the "regiment that just won't die" because at least two more times the regiment had in recent memory had faced the enemy and been almost completely wiped out. Their track record against House Kurita was not much better, though with the support of other units they suffered less damage. They were a veteran regiment with many heavy mechs, and often could win against the enemy in a straight fight. Their bad luck could not be explained away as simply incompetence or inexperience.
This mission personally ordered by the Prince was their chance to see if they could shed the hard luck of the unit.
"I will obey my orders, but still I must lodge a formal protest," Mandella continued. Douglass could tell from the almost teary rage in Mandella's eyes how much this rankled. An assault regiment should not keep on being hand-held by other veteran regiments. He was in command! This was his chance! And once again the chance to redeem the honor of the unit was taken away from him. "Never in the history of the AFFS has command been seconded to mercenaries!"
Armstrong beamed. "To your knowledge, no. But there have been multiple recorded instances of Davion command seconding to the SLDF."
Douglass sighed and resisted a groan. Not this shite again.
Armstrong turned and beckoned. "Come, come, let me show you something that will change your mind. This false site you were using as bait… may not be as useless as you might believe."
-.
-.
13.3 The Fools Bargain
bluepencil
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The Fools Bargain 03
Wagnall Plain
Galtor II
Several hours later
But of course, they could not simply board a random DropShip to go to the Star League fake site right at that moment. Transport and malfunction problems dogged the AFFS regiments. The ELH conveniently just showed up with extra JumpShips and DropShips and offered them direct transportation.
The 33rd Avalon Hussars welcomed the arrival of Meade's Battalion and Lyon's Battalion, in the UnionDropShips Century City and Atlan, bringing them up to full regimental strength.
The Dahar Draconis March Militia had to welcome their own French's 3rd Battalion - or rather French's Company, since two companies were destroyed in a DropShip explosion. General Sir William Dobsonhad to deal with the loss and assigning these troops to reinforce his Regimental BattleGroup in defense of New Derry. The DMM had assigned Pope's Battalion under the command of the 33rd Avalon Hussars to reinforce their short regiment, but now that the 33rd was at full strength it was unknown if that would still be necessary and if Pope's battalion should make the long trip back to the planetary capital.
The Eridani Light Horse had a simpler sequence. Their regiment was four battalions to a regiment, and so they simply assigned two battalions for each landing site.
The first order of business was to offload and recombine defenders all over the planet.
Since Nathan Armstrong was now in overall command, he had to oversee these deployments within the holotable in the 33rd's command center. Moving overall command operations into the new ELH base - whichever of the two - was the sort of complication why surprise command authority handovers like these were so disliked in the first place.
The alternative however, would be for someone else to take over command facilities in your own army. The Davion staff accepted this without complaint, but there was a mood that this was just adding an extra inefficient step in the process.
"General Mandella, Margrave Douglass, if you will permit, we have something that can make this somewhat easier. If you would permit it?" Armstrong stopped and said after a while.
"You could just make it an order," Mandella snorted. "But all right." As much as the portly man disliked the situation, with grit teeth he would not be shaming himself by looking unprofessional under the eyes of two mercenaries.
"Please accept the transmission. Do not be alarmed."
The light in the command center flickered. All the screen buzzed, much to the alarm of their operators.
"Sir!" one of the sensor technicians yelped. "Receiving... an encrypted holovideo file?"
Mandella frowned, and gestured "Do it."
The holo over the table blinked out, and was replaced by a spinning logo of the Star League. The Cameron Star squeezed into itself, becoming a white eye.
"ONE. MAN. ARMY. CORPS." a synthetic voice announced. "FROM TERRA TO THE STARS. SHINES THE LIGHT OF THE STAR LEAGUE."
The holo expanded to show the entire continent of Eyrie, which contained a spine of mountains running across its west and vast plain much of the west, cut through by numerous rivers. Icons depicted moving objects both on the ground and near space. Small windows showed overhead real-time views of relevant military areas. "EVIDENCE. YIELD. EXECUTION. BROTHER. EYE. IS ONLINE. RELAYING STRATEGIC COMBAT LAYER."
"Impressive," said Douglass. "Did you bring your own sensor network? How is a sensor web like this protected from being intercepted or disrupted?"
He noticed that Green-Davion had also flinched in surprise. How it could it be the first time he was seeing this? Or perhaps he was just surprised that how quickly the program could authenticate itself past all the security encryptions of Davion computers?
Normally military transmissions were sent in the form of encrypted signals data. It was up to computers to integrate that with local data and update the battleplace. But a highly compressed media signal that somehow decrypted itself with the computers only doing minimal work could be presented as an extra self-updating layer over known map data.
This should be a waste of bandwidth and easily disrupted. You need actual hardware to accelerate decoding or else you were just sending information to your enemy. A translation layer that downloaded itself and sits on top of your output stream is something that without good reason might be called malware.
"BROTHER EYE is a cloud," answered Armstrong. "It cannot be blinded because its assets are a distributed system. The exact mechanism is too technical to explain right now, but it is designed to function passively and work through ECM interference. In fact, it needs to get in range of our ECM to know that it is transmitting to a friendly.
"We know that the first thing Kurita will do is to set off EMP bombs in the atmosphere to disrupt long-range communications. When they think they have accomplished that, then BROTHER EYE will reactivate a mixture of ground-based, low-level and orbital sensors."
The coverage though! That level of detail was too much for a passive system, unless -
The Davion officers blinked. Unless BROTHER EYE was *literally* in the clouds.
"General Armstrong - does this also mean you can listen into Kurita communications?" asked Green-Davion.
"Of course it does."
Green-Davion's face looked too perfectly calm and pleasant. Yes, that should be discomfiting, Douglass noted silently. If the Light Horse could pull this against Kurita, they should also be able to pull this against Davion. A reputation of being honorable only goes so far.
Gifts given too generously could be as much as a threat as a sign of affection.
"We have the eyes, but we don't have the enough men at arms." Armstrong continued, waving towards the map "Kurita will throw everything they can afford at us. What separates us from them… is intelligence."
"Tch. So is this lostech why Davion puts you in command?" Mandella groused. He had to wonder what would happen if he ever had to send his assault regiment to fight someone that had absolute awareness of his deployments. They would only ever be seen if they wanted to be seen.
"It is because the DCMS and its generals will be aching to claim glory against each other and we can drive them into wherever *we* want just by *existing* nearby. Right, Robert?"
Green-Davion nodded. "Unlike the Federated Suns, their generals directly compete against each other for glory and favor, instead of a shared common good. We are just lucky that for all their forces can be highly competent at times, their leaders far too selfish to look beyond their own faces."
"I understand." The Davion general pointed to the lines on the map. Having the ELH sit in two separate bases looked vulnerable... but wherever Kurita lands around the area, they were always in reach of artillery and being pincered from two or three directions. Mandella and the Avalon Hussars were some distance away from the site across the long but shallow Salt Lick River, but that was just good sense as you did not want your base to be right at the front lines. "So we have three regiments ready to pounce on the Dragon when they land?"
"Brother EYE will let us know where, when, how, and how soon. Brother EYE does not obsolete the use of Scouts, but as it is a secondary communications network it will help scouting forces deliver actionable intel almost immediately."
"Is this how you were able to win so consistently against Kurita?" asked Douglass. "I can see how valuable this would be. Is this something that can be reproduced, or must it be proprietary to the Light Horse?"
Armstrong looked up. "It will be available to the AFFS wherever the Light Horse fights, but for certain reasons to prevent being captured or reverse-engineered, sadly the system cannot be released for open use without certain stringent requirements. House Kurita is many things, but technologically backward and unwilling to technologically innovate is not one of them. The Combine's scientists might not be as good as NAIS, but if they know something is *possible*, they would be smart enough to try and make up their own equivalents and counters. It would be less effective and prone to being jammed or intercepted, but just its existence would make it harder for less electronically-savvy Federated Suns units."
"Then you should not have revealed it so soon," said Mandella. "Isn't it a waste to spend the advantage so early here instead of a more important campaign?"
"Actually, it seems better to make the most out of the advantage while you still can," Douglass demurred. "On the offense, *we* would have the initiative, so this would be less relevant. The enemy would have to react to our movements, instead of us having to wonder where the enemy has landed. Information is power not only when you have it, but when you deny it to the enemy. We have set up a grand trap, now all we need is for Kurita to fall into it."
Green-Davion, although of much lower rank than the generals standing around the holotable, responded with the official Davion policy on this. "This battle is expected to be perhaps the most significant event of the year. We expect House Kurita to attack on a broad front from the Raman to Dahar PDZs. Specifically, we expect focused assaults on Galtor, Marduk, New Aberdeen, and Harrow's Sun, with raids all along the border."
"Places where they have recently suffered some very public defeats, then?" said Douglass.
"Switch this holo to the local starmap please," Armstrong said out loud, and one of the station technicians complied. The hologram now showed most of the Raman PDZ which included the 'Galtor Thumb' and Combine territories beyond. He pointed. "When we took on Tripoli and destroyed the 11th Benjamin, that made it harder for them to attack Marduk. We have the Light Horse's 121st Regiment on standby on Marduk as a reserve force, and the 4th Crucis Lancers are on the way."
Then he pointed towards other nearby planets. "The 2nd Robinson Rangers are off to support New Aberdeen along with mercenaries like the Kell Hounds. Harrow's Sun is defended by our 21st Strikers and the 4th Deneb, two regiments, but we expect Wolf's Dragoons to assault it in force. The 1st Ceti Hussars were moved up to Elidere IV to guard the border, but they could join the fight once the Dragoons have fully committed, or strike at Misery or Thestria directly."
He looked up towards Douglass. "We have massed enough force that if Kurita doesn't take the bait, we *would* be going on the offense again. Likely our regiments - the Light Horse and the Rangers - and would combine to destroy the Amphigean Light Assault Groups at Reisling's Planet or a raid-in-force at Irurzun. Our objective is not to capture worlds, but to destroy the enemy's ability to conduct damaging offensives. With these many troops on the border, a clash is *inevitable*."
"Defenders usually have the advantage. Logically, the Combine should just prepare to destroy our own forces on the ground instead of going on maximum aggression," the other mercenary commander replied.
"But of course, if they were logical, they would not be the Combine," said Green-Davion.
"This… this could work," Mandella murmured. "This *should *work."
Douglass winced. "... Sir, it has been a thousand years since the first rocket lifted off from Terra, and still we better not tempt fate like that."
-.
-.
Fake Star League Site
Galtor II
Next day
The two moons of Galtor III were visible as white little dots during the early morning. Unlike Terra's Luna, the moons were only less than five kilometers wide and had different orbital speeds around their host world. They were named Temos and Froma, after the founding fathers of the colony. Douglass could more easily see a brighter group of small stars beyond the little moons.
Those were not stars. As impressive as jumping into the stable pirate point between a star and a world, there was another reason beyond the difficult and the risk of misjump for people to prefer to emerge from hyperspace at the nadir or zenith points beyond a star's gravity well.
Planets… move.
And therefore, the L1 Lagrange Point between the star and the world… moves.
As the days pass and the planets unceasingly move in their orbits, so would those pirate points cease to be effective to allow JumpShips to jump out again. Normally then they would be stuck deep in-system until they could be towed out by spacecraft at the agonizingly slow .1g their hulls were rated to take. JumpShips were surprisingly cheap for their mass, but also incredibly fragile.
So, JumpShips transporting military forces were considered to be one-shot wonders if they manage to jump into an in-system pirate point. They had best succeed with that invasion or they were easy prizes. Unless they were willing to waste fuel burning through space to chase the moving bubble of their pirate point.
This was the other reason. It would take around a week to safely charge the KF-drive core. The volume of fuel that a JumpShip would spend burning its tiny station-keeping drive would be inefficiently much more than DropShips would spend burning to and from the system's inner reaches.
But the Eridani Light Horse apparently had Scout-class JumpShips, which while the smallest class of JumpShip were also oddly the type of JumpShip that could adequately move around on its own drives.
Douglass frowned minutely. Monoliths were not supposed to do that, maybe? But then again they were also 450,000 tons and the largest class of JumpShip, so he was not sure. The 12th Vegan Rangers did not have such a princely inheritance from the SLDF.
"What have you done?! You have ruined it!" hissed Lt. General Mandella at the sight of the (fake) Star League Depot.
That brought Douglass' attention back to the ground.
The three generals disembarked from the VTOL. Green-Davion remained behind at the 33rd to handle communications between the regiments all around the world and to field complaints by Comstar about the ELH's showboating.
The Eridani Light Horse had bulldozed through the minefield and laid a wide road straight into the depot. IndustrialMechs were deepening the trenchworks, which might not actually stop a Mech but would certainly slow down combat vehicles and make BattleMechs hesitate just jumping past them, knowing it was part of an active minefield.
The road was inviting and clear bait. A company of BattleMechs now clustered around the site. They were emplaced more like walking turrets behind embankments. "Urbanmechs, huh." Douglass mused as they disembarked from the transport. "I guess that makes perfect sense."
A group of them flanked either side of the road almost like an honor guard.
He pointed to the similarly-shaped bright yellow Industrial Mechs digging into the ground past the old minefields. "But since when were Urbanmechs also IndustrialMechs?"
Armstrong grinned. "We have far too many of them. Do you want some?"
Douglass had no idea how to respond to that.
He turned back towards the BattleMechs that now reinforced the formerly infantry-only force of the Davion Guards Auxiliary.
On further inspection, those were not AC/10s cannons on those 30-ton mechs. Some of them had missile bins in place of cannons. They were also not uniformly sized. Some Urbanmechs a bit taller than the others with larger cannons. He squinted. Too long to be AC/20s either. Those cannons had extra bolting and reinforcement half into the chassis of the small dumpy Mechs. The muzzle breaks on the tip of those cannons looked eerily familiar.
He stopped suddenly. "General Armstrong!"
"Yes?"
"Are those Thumper Artillery pieces on an Urbanmech?!"
General Mandella blinked. "Wait, what?" He turned about now to more deeply scrutinize the Light Mechs he had dismissed as simple disposable last-line defense. "Is that even possible?!"
Armstrong nodded. "In 40 tons, yes. The UrbanMech II-AT delivers a similar option as the 75-ton Helepolis."
"You all did uncover some massive secret SLDF cache, didn't you?" Douglass breathed. "Although, I do recall that the DEMETER CORE had to come from somewhere. Only the SLDF would have the riches and the time to experiment and produce such odd Urbanmech variants. I would assume that they do work as intended?"
Armstrong shrugged. "They're even faster than normal Urbanmechs, able to run up to Assault Mech speeds, yes. We have tested them, yes. The guns do work and are accurate enough. They have minor jumping ability like a regular Urbanmech."
"This is another mistake!" yelled Mandella. "You should not be showing your hand this soon! Light Mech Artillery like this… you should keep them hidden in reserve!"
"I must agree," added Douglass. "Even if the point is to offer substantial bait, this is too much. If Kurita were able to capture and reverse-engineer these Mechs, the whole concept of a Light Artillery Mech would be devastating to the balance of powers in the Inner Sphere!"
"I will not deny that it is a possibility. But look around you. This site started with nine layers of minefields. In the week it would take for Kurita to arrive from the jump point, if they started now, we could expand that into *twenty*." Armstrong spread his arms wide. "And when they try to sap the minefields, then we would have, as a friend liked to say - This is the only path. So we pray, Unlimited FASCAM Works."
"What?" quoth Mandella.
"Field Artillery Scatterable Minefields."
"That's lostech," the portly man added, with a flat unamused stare.
Douglass turned back to look at the wide highway into death. So… you can just replant minefields. Artillery firing High Explosive shells smashing down on enemy groups should also kick up the ground and disable minefields. But now the defenders don't even have to sally forth to close up gaps in their defense.
Douglass turned back to consider Nathan Armstrong.
There were those who considered the ELH as 'arrogant', and 'delusional' among the mercenary rolls. They could claim to be the most honorable, but 'the best' mercenary unit was in constant flux. There were many mercenary and even house regiments that could trace their history back to the Star League and even older.
Would it be unfair for the ELH to keep the largesse they discovered all to themselves?
Wait, they didn't. They shared the DEMETER CORE.
When it comes to military hardware, finder's keepers was the rule. Lostech were by their nature irreplaceable.
That confidence that the mercenary General showed, ready to *lose* so much valuable lostech in battle, confident that even enemy salvage would not make a difference, that was not a mercenary's mien. Not even he and the 12th Vegan Rangers would dare to be so carefree.
Perhaps the notion of being 'Hanse Davion's personal beatstick' was more than just a colloquialism. Unlimited funding and unlimited backing did wonders?
So this was political, then? He scowled. He did not wish to think about that. But if the ELH were now playing political games, having something that assured Hanse Davion of their loyalty even above his own Davion Heavy Guards, Douglass felt that reduced the veneer of respectability a little bit. Sharing the DEMETER CORE painted them as heroes of the Inner Sphere, but now he felt that was more of a smokescreen to distract from something more insidious.
He shook his head. No, that was none of his business. Only the upcoming battle mattered.
"This is the bait," Armstrong was saying. "Now let me show you the jaws of the trap."
-.
-.
AN:
While this is redundant, the whole "god-sensor" thing has already been covered in earlier chapters, I felt this may show the difference in reception between a SLDF-derived unit and ones that had always been Davion.
Wagnall Plain
Galtor II
Several hours later
But of course, they could not simply board a random DropShip to go to the Star League fake site right at that moment. Transport and malfunction problems dogged the AFFS regiments. The ELH conveniently just showed up with extra JumpShips and DropShips and offered them direct transportation.
The 33rd Avalon Hussars welcomed the arrival of Meade's Battalion and Lyon's Battalion, in the UnionDropShips Century City and Atlan, bringing them up to full regimental strength.
The Dahar Draconis March Militia had to welcome their own French's 3rd Battalion - or rather French's Company, since two companies were destroyed in a DropShip explosion. General Sir William Dobsonhad to deal with the loss and assigning these troops to reinforce his Regimental BattleGroup in defense of New Derry. The DMM had assigned Pope's Battalion under the command of the 33rd Avalon Hussars to reinforce their short regiment, but now that the 33rd was at full strength it was unknown if that would still be necessary and if Pope's battalion should make the long trip back to the planetary capital.
The Eridani Light Horse had a simpler sequence. Their regiment was four battalions to a regiment, and so they simply assigned two battalions for each landing site.
The first order of business was to offload and recombine defenders all over the planet.
Since Nathan Armstrong was now in overall command, he had to oversee these deployments within the holotable in the 33rd's command center. Moving overall command operations into the new ELH base - whichever of the two - was the sort of complication why surprise command authority handovers like these were so disliked in the first place.
The alternative however, would be for someone else to take over command facilities in your own army. The Davion staff accepted this without complaint, but there was a mood that this was just adding an extra inefficient step in the process.
"General Mandella, Margrave Douglass, if you will permit, we have something that can make this somewhat easier. If you would permit it?" Armstrong stopped and said after a while.
"You could just make it an order," Mandella snorted. "But all right." As much as the portly man disliked the situation, with grit teeth he would not be shaming himself by looking unprofessional under the eyes of two mercenaries.
"Please accept the transmission. Do not be alarmed."
The light in the command center flickered. All the screen buzzed, much to the alarm of their operators.
"Sir!" one of the sensor technicians yelped. "Receiving... an encrypted holovideo file?"
Mandella frowned, and gestured "Do it."
The holo over the table blinked out, and was replaced by a spinning logo of the Star League. The Cameron Star squeezed into itself, becoming a white eye.
"ONE. MAN. ARMY. CORPS." a synthetic voice announced. "FROM TERRA TO THE STARS. SHINES THE LIGHT OF THE STAR LEAGUE."
The holo expanded to show the entire continent of Eyrie, which contained a spine of mountains running across its west and vast plain much of the west, cut through by numerous rivers. Icons depicted moving objects both on the ground and near space. Small windows showed overhead real-time views of relevant military areas. "EVIDENCE. YIELD. EXECUTION. BROTHER. EYE. IS ONLINE. RELAYING STRATEGIC COMBAT LAYER."
"Impressive," said Douglass. "Did you bring your own sensor network? How is a sensor web like this protected from being intercepted or disrupted?"
He noticed that Green-Davion had also flinched in surprise. How it could it be the first time he was seeing this? Or perhaps he was just surprised that how quickly the program could authenticate itself past all the security encryptions of Davion computers?
Normally military transmissions were sent in the form of encrypted signals data. It was up to computers to integrate that with local data and update the battleplace. But a highly compressed media signal that somehow decrypted itself with the computers only doing minimal work could be presented as an extra self-updating layer over known map data.
This should be a waste of bandwidth and easily disrupted. You need actual hardware to accelerate decoding or else you were just sending information to your enemy. A translation layer that downloaded itself and sits on top of your output stream is something that without good reason might be called malware.
"BROTHER EYE is a cloud," answered Armstrong. "It cannot be blinded because its assets are a distributed system. The exact mechanism is too technical to explain right now, but it is designed to function passively and work through ECM interference. In fact, it needs to get in range of our ECM to know that it is transmitting to a friendly.
"We know that the first thing Kurita will do is to set off EMP bombs in the atmosphere to disrupt long-range communications. When they think they have accomplished that, then BROTHER EYE will reactivate a mixture of ground-based, low-level and orbital sensors."
The coverage though! That level of detail was too much for a passive system, unless -
The Davion officers blinked. Unless BROTHER EYE was *literally* in the clouds.
"General Armstrong - does this also mean you can listen into Kurita communications?" asked Green-Davion.
"Of course it does."
Green-Davion's face looked too perfectly calm and pleasant. Yes, that should be discomfiting, Douglass noted silently. If the Light Horse could pull this against Kurita, they should also be able to pull this against Davion. A reputation of being honorable only goes so far.
Gifts given too generously could be as much as a threat as a sign of affection.
"We have the eyes, but we don't have the enough men at arms." Armstrong continued, waving towards the map "Kurita will throw everything they can afford at us. What separates us from them… is intelligence."
"Tch. So is this lostech why Davion puts you in command?" Mandella groused. He had to wonder what would happen if he ever had to send his assault regiment to fight someone that had absolute awareness of his deployments. They would only ever be seen if they wanted to be seen.
"It is because the DCMS and its generals will be aching to claim glory against each other and we can drive them into wherever *we* want just by *existing* nearby. Right, Robert?"
Green-Davion nodded. "Unlike the Federated Suns, their generals directly compete against each other for glory and favor, instead of a shared common good. We are just lucky that for all their forces can be highly competent at times, their leaders far too selfish to look beyond their own faces."
"I understand." The Davion general pointed to the lines on the map. Having the ELH sit in two separate bases looked vulnerable... but wherever Kurita lands around the area, they were always in reach of artillery and being pincered from two or three directions. Mandella and the Avalon Hussars were some distance away from the site across the long but shallow Salt Lick River, but that was just good sense as you did not want your base to be right at the front lines. "So we have three regiments ready to pounce on the Dragon when they land?"
"Brother EYE will let us know where, when, how, and how soon. Brother EYE does not obsolete the use of Scouts, but as it is a secondary communications network it will help scouting forces deliver actionable intel almost immediately."
"Is this how you were able to win so consistently against Kurita?" asked Douglass. "I can see how valuable this would be. Is this something that can be reproduced, or must it be proprietary to the Light Horse?"
Armstrong looked up. "It will be available to the AFFS wherever the Light Horse fights, but for certain reasons to prevent being captured or reverse-engineered, sadly the system cannot be released for open use without certain stringent requirements. House Kurita is many things, but technologically backward and unwilling to technologically innovate is not one of them. The Combine's scientists might not be as good as NAIS, but if they know something is *possible*, they would be smart enough to try and make up their own equivalents and counters. It would be less effective and prone to being jammed or intercepted, but just its existence would make it harder for less electronically-savvy Federated Suns units."
"Then you should not have revealed it so soon," said Mandella. "Isn't it a waste to spend the advantage so early here instead of a more important campaign?"
"Actually, it seems better to make the most out of the advantage while you still can," Douglass demurred. "On the offense, *we* would have the initiative, so this would be less relevant. The enemy would have to react to our movements, instead of us having to wonder where the enemy has landed. Information is power not only when you have it, but when you deny it to the enemy. We have set up a grand trap, now all we need is for Kurita to fall into it."
Green-Davion, although of much lower rank than the generals standing around the holotable, responded with the official Davion policy on this. "This battle is expected to be perhaps the most significant event of the year. We expect House Kurita to attack on a broad front from the Raman to Dahar PDZs. Specifically, we expect focused assaults on Galtor, Marduk, New Aberdeen, and Harrow's Sun, with raids all along the border."
"Places where they have recently suffered some very public defeats, then?" said Douglass.
"Switch this holo to the local starmap please," Armstrong said out loud, and one of the station technicians complied. The hologram now showed most of the Raman PDZ which included the 'Galtor Thumb' and Combine territories beyond. He pointed. "When we took on Tripoli and destroyed the 11th Benjamin, that made it harder for them to attack Marduk. We have the Light Horse's 121st Regiment on standby on Marduk as a reserve force, and the 4th Crucis Lancers are on the way."
Then he pointed towards other nearby planets. "The 2nd Robinson Rangers are off to support New Aberdeen along with mercenaries like the Kell Hounds. Harrow's Sun is defended by our 21st Strikers and the 4th Deneb, two regiments, but we expect Wolf's Dragoons to assault it in force. The 1st Ceti Hussars were moved up to Elidere IV to guard the border, but they could join the fight once the Dragoons have fully committed, or strike at Misery or Thestria directly."
He looked up towards Douglass. "We have massed enough force that if Kurita doesn't take the bait, we *would* be going on the offense again. Likely our regiments - the Light Horse and the Rangers - and would combine to destroy the Amphigean Light Assault Groups at Reisling's Planet or a raid-in-force at Irurzun. Our objective is not to capture worlds, but to destroy the enemy's ability to conduct damaging offensives. With these many troops on the border, a clash is *inevitable*."
"Defenders usually have the advantage. Logically, the Combine should just prepare to destroy our own forces on the ground instead of going on maximum aggression," the other mercenary commander replied.
"But of course, if they were logical, they would not be the Combine," said Green-Davion.
"This… this could work," Mandella murmured. "This *should *work."
Douglass winced. "... Sir, it has been a thousand years since the first rocket lifted off from Terra, and still we better not tempt fate like that."
-.
-.
Fake Star League Site
Galtor II
Next day
The two moons of Galtor III were visible as white little dots during the early morning. Unlike Terra's Luna, the moons were only less than five kilometers wide and had different orbital speeds around their host world. They were named Temos and Froma, after the founding fathers of the colony. Douglass could more easily see a brighter group of small stars beyond the little moons.
Those were not stars. As impressive as jumping into the stable pirate point between a star and a world, there was another reason beyond the difficult and the risk of misjump for people to prefer to emerge from hyperspace at the nadir or zenith points beyond a star's gravity well.
Planets… move.
And therefore, the L1 Lagrange Point between the star and the world… moves.
As the days pass and the planets unceasingly move in their orbits, so would those pirate points cease to be effective to allow JumpShips to jump out again. Normally then they would be stuck deep in-system until they could be towed out by spacecraft at the agonizingly slow .1g their hulls were rated to take. JumpShips were surprisingly cheap for their mass, but also incredibly fragile.
So, JumpShips transporting military forces were considered to be one-shot wonders if they manage to jump into an in-system pirate point. They had best succeed with that invasion or they were easy prizes. Unless they were willing to waste fuel burning through space to chase the moving bubble of their pirate point.
This was the other reason. It would take around a week to safely charge the KF-drive core. The volume of fuel that a JumpShip would spend burning its tiny station-keeping drive would be inefficiently much more than DropShips would spend burning to and from the system's inner reaches.
But the Eridani Light Horse apparently had Scout-class JumpShips, which while the smallest class of JumpShip were also oddly the type of JumpShip that could adequately move around on its own drives.
Douglass frowned minutely. Monoliths were not supposed to do that, maybe? But then again they were also 450,000 tons and the largest class of JumpShip, so he was not sure. The 12th Vegan Rangers did not have such a princely inheritance from the SLDF.
"What have you done?! You have ruined it!" hissed Lt. General Mandella at the sight of the (fake) Star League Depot.
That brought Douglass' attention back to the ground.
The three generals disembarked from the VTOL. Green-Davion remained behind at the 33rd to handle communications between the regiments all around the world and to field complaints by Comstar about the ELH's showboating.
The Eridani Light Horse had bulldozed through the minefield and laid a wide road straight into the depot. IndustrialMechs were deepening the trenchworks, which might not actually stop a Mech but would certainly slow down combat vehicles and make BattleMechs hesitate just jumping past them, knowing it was part of an active minefield.
The road was inviting and clear bait. A company of BattleMechs now clustered around the site. They were emplaced more like walking turrets behind embankments. "Urbanmechs, huh." Douglass mused as they disembarked from the transport. "I guess that makes perfect sense."
A group of them flanked either side of the road almost like an honor guard.
He pointed to the similarly-shaped bright yellow Industrial Mechs digging into the ground past the old minefields. "But since when were Urbanmechs also IndustrialMechs?"
Armstrong grinned. "We have far too many of them. Do you want some?"
Douglass had no idea how to respond to that.
He turned back towards the BattleMechs that now reinforced the formerly infantry-only force of the Davion Guards Auxiliary.
On further inspection, those were not AC/10s cannons on those 30-ton mechs. Some of them had missile bins in place of cannons. They were also not uniformly sized. Some Urbanmechs a bit taller than the others with larger cannons. He squinted. Too long to be AC/20s either. Those cannons had extra bolting and reinforcement half into the chassis of the small dumpy Mechs. The muzzle breaks on the tip of those cannons looked eerily familiar.
He stopped suddenly. "General Armstrong!"
"Yes?"
"Are those Thumper Artillery pieces on an Urbanmech?!"
General Mandella blinked. "Wait, what?" He turned about now to more deeply scrutinize the Light Mechs he had dismissed as simple disposable last-line defense. "Is that even possible?!"
Armstrong nodded. "In 40 tons, yes. The UrbanMech II-AT delivers a similar option as the 75-ton Helepolis."
"You all did uncover some massive secret SLDF cache, didn't you?" Douglass breathed. "Although, I do recall that the DEMETER CORE had to come from somewhere. Only the SLDF would have the riches and the time to experiment and produce such odd Urbanmech variants. I would assume that they do work as intended?"
Armstrong shrugged. "They're even faster than normal Urbanmechs, able to run up to Assault Mech speeds, yes. We have tested them, yes. The guns do work and are accurate enough. They have minor jumping ability like a regular Urbanmech."
"This is another mistake!" yelled Mandella. "You should not be showing your hand this soon! Light Mech Artillery like this… you should keep them hidden in reserve!"
"I must agree," added Douglass. "Even if the point is to offer substantial bait, this is too much. If Kurita were able to capture and reverse-engineer these Mechs, the whole concept of a Light Artillery Mech would be devastating to the balance of powers in the Inner Sphere!"
"I will not deny that it is a possibility. But look around you. This site started with nine layers of minefields. In the week it would take for Kurita to arrive from the jump point, if they started now, we could expand that into *twenty*." Armstrong spread his arms wide. "And when they try to sap the minefields, then we would have, as a friend liked to say - This is the only path. So we pray, Unlimited FASCAM Works."
"What?" quoth Mandella.
"Field Artillery Scatterable Minefields."
"That's lostech," the portly man added, with a flat unamused stare.
Douglass turned back to look at the wide highway into death. So… you can just replant minefields. Artillery firing High Explosive shells smashing down on enemy groups should also kick up the ground and disable minefields. But now the defenders don't even have to sally forth to close up gaps in their defense.
Douglass turned back to consider Nathan Armstrong.
There were those who considered the ELH as 'arrogant', and 'delusional' among the mercenary rolls. They could claim to be the most honorable, but 'the best' mercenary unit was in constant flux. There were many mercenary and even house regiments that could trace their history back to the Star League and even older.
Would it be unfair for the ELH to keep the largesse they discovered all to themselves?
Wait, they didn't. They shared the DEMETER CORE.
When it comes to military hardware, finder's keepers was the rule. Lostech were by their nature irreplaceable.
That confidence that the mercenary General showed, ready to *lose* so much valuable lostech in battle, confident that even enemy salvage would not make a difference, that was not a mercenary's mien. Not even he and the 12th Vegan Rangers would dare to be so carefree.
Perhaps the notion of being 'Hanse Davion's personal beatstick' was more than just a colloquialism. Unlimited funding and unlimited backing did wonders?
So this was political, then? He scowled. He did not wish to think about that. But if the ELH were now playing political games, having something that assured Hanse Davion of their loyalty even above his own Davion Heavy Guards, Douglass felt that reduced the veneer of respectability a little bit. Sharing the DEMETER CORE painted them as heroes of the Inner Sphere, but now he felt that was more of a smokescreen to distract from something more insidious.
He shook his head. No, that was none of his business. Only the upcoming battle mattered.
"This is the bait," Armstrong was saying. "Now let me show you the jaws of the trap."
-.
-.
AN:
While this is redundant, the whole "god-sensor" thing has already been covered in earlier chapters, I felt this may show the difference in reception between a SLDF-derived unit and ones that had always been Davion.