First Luxen 1
There wasn't much to do during Space Travel other than to study away the tedium of it. The Magistracy was stressing that they'd have support techs and staff available on Luxen to handle any work that needed to be done over the contract. This was strictly supposed to be MechWarriors, and their Mechs no dependents coming along. It wasn't just that, they were going into this with no ASF, well very little ASF coverage, but he accepted that they were in a hurry.
So basically he was sitting in the DropShip reading. The Magistracy of Canopus was... was a product of the Earth that was. It really was an excellent example, just as much as the Azami worlds were, of people who had fled the the old order to colonize the stars. The Magistracy had been founded by people running from the incompetence of the Free Worlds League, but it had been founded by like many of the post earth states people getting away from the old political status quo. He suspected that the Azami like all the other collection of small and large interstellar polities must have had some great man of history who had organized and lead them into the stars.
It was just how the universe was. For the canopians that Great Woman of History had been Cassandra Centrella... who if she was mentioned at all in the current FWL sanctioned media was a deserter and coward. The Canopian side of things was that her unit had been stranded by the incompetence of the FWLM and left behind... and Gene kind of was willing to believe their version of events over the Mariks, or Andurien or whoever. (Though House Davion's reports threw around words like Pirate, an awful lot in their descriptions as well.) Cassandra though had rebranded herself 'Kossandra' and gathered up a bunch of other people with political views like hers and struck off for the Canopian system.
They had had a good run of it in terms of expansion and growth which had also come at a price. Kossandra had gotten a little loopy in later years engaging in a degree of political repression that would eventually see to the Star League getting involved. SLDF involvement during the 'reunification wars' had meant male suffrage in canopian space... but at the same time had involved a campaign of what the Canopians described as literal rape and plunder by SLDF troops...
History lessons aside he had other material to cover in his readings, and the Canopians actually had mostly functional distance learning systems. It was a stark contrast to the sort 'tinker' education that filled most of the periphery. Not that it was much better in the Inner Sphere compared to how things had used to be. The Inner Sphere with mostly function governments at least had certifications that were largely recognized by all the major interstellar powers... most of the time.
The succession wars had done a big number on organized education, and recognition of education credits between frequently hostile nations. The decline of publicly available education had also meant that most corporations had developed their own ways of doing things, and that didn't necessarily always translate over to other companies either. The inner sphere was its own sort of mess.
Luxen though? It had a legitimate claim to having an actual fucking University... it primarily a medical school, but still it had managed to avoid the succession war's worst... and now was probably about to get wrecked by pirates. Well maybe they could stop that.
The problem was how long it was going to take. The circuit jumpships going back made sense, Luxen was a provincial capital in the Canopian system of government, and given how scarce HPG sites were it made sense to have chains running back forth at least somewhat. Most likely the capacity for that only really applied to important planets like Luxen where there was basically a straight shot to the border.
--
The Union-class DropShip was not a comfortable ride. It was silly if true thought, because it was intended as a mass production military Mech Transport, but true or not it didn't alleviate the cramped conditions. Gene was glad he wasn't claustrophobic, but there was only so much time he could spend studying.
Once they had hit the circuit though, ugh. Several jumps in the course of a few days was rough even for someone without TDS, or another similar disorder. The five minute heads up ahead of the jumps just added to the general anxiety that was slowly becoming all but palpable throughout the DropShip. "Tell me that was the last one?" One of the other mercs, nicknamed 'bubbles' rasped as the last of 'eddy' from the jump subsided.
Gene felt a chill work its way up his spine something wasn't right. "It was supposed to be." and then the klaxons started warning, and they were probably late. The Union had a mix of Jeffery tubes, that was to say ladders and crawl spaces, and elevators to get around from deck to deck. The ladders were slower but safer to use, especially when the ship wasn't parked on the ground... the problem was that they were slow. Getting a bunch of cobbled together MechWarriors who'd been hired on as an emergency measure fitted onto the DropShip's bridge wasn't comfortable.
Luxen's jump point was about three days from the planet, which was very convenient. Unfortunately it was a double edged stellar feature, since it meant pirates didn't need to try risking a pirate point in order to show up. Gene had only gotten looks at the suspected Azami JumpShips well after all the fighting had been over. It wasn't like those pictures helped, the JumpShips weren't painted up anything special, and they were named anything like say AZAMI LIBERATION FRONT Vessel whatever ... nothing incriminating. They just looked like regular JumpShips.... for whatever regular JumpShips counted for.
The Magistracy Merc Rep along for the ride held up a hand to more or less try and get everyone to shut the fuck up while she pressed her head to a truly archaic cobbled together with duct tape sort of comms array, but it was obvious something was already on going on the planet's surface. Gene pulled up the planet's information on his noteputer. Luxen was well would have had a big population for a good sized European country in the the twentieth century... but for a planet was sparsely peopled. Part of that was probably the higher than average canopian standard of living, but it was a small all the same.
There were less than a hundred million people on Luxen, and if these had been typical pirates he would have guessed the mining towns on the southern continent might have been the target if they'd been looking for something easy to sell for cheap. From the way the Merc Rep was acting, that didn't seem likely, especially with the hurrying to get them uncoupled from the JumpShip and get them underway to the planet.
The situation as reported groundside wasn't good, "The majority of the Luxen Volunteers," That was to say the professional full time troops of the unit, "have been destroyed or incapacitated since the pirates began their attack last week. Much like the attack on Detroit we believe they scouted out the defenses first and then sent word back via JumpShip, but right now the planetary defense forces are barely holding."
He let some of the other people in the room ask their questions, "Is this Union configured for hot drops?" Gene inquired, "Can I combat drop my Marauder along the river that forms this natural salient?"
"We have DropPods." The captain of the ship added a little unsurely, and none of the other Mercs seemed particularly thrilled at the notion of an orbital insertion, which was fine. He wasn't going to push anyone who wasn't confident that their mech was ready for that. The truth was he had about sixty hours, not including time spent sleeping, to go over a refresher of SLDF Orbital Drop protocols, but even then the Marauder's navigational computer would be handling much of the fine course corrections anyway. Then again plenty of mercs in this era made combat drops without the benefit of SLDF software, and lack of formal courses on the subject. It wasn't quite a routine thing, but he wanted to be on the ground, and in the fight, and didn't see any other way to get there.
The DropShip would need to land and offload and that would take valuable time. After that they'd need to, after offloading the scratch company, need to actually maneuver to the front and there was no telling how long that would take. No he wanted into the fight, and it didn't hurt that the suggested landing sight behind Canopian lines was probably not nearly as secure as they were making it out to be. The Azami in DCMS were specialized raiding units, assuming that these were deserters who had left with all of their gear a DropShip would surely be a tempting target.
--
Gene kicked his duffle back into the netting. Technically they were under thrust gravity, but not a lot of it. He had a change of clothes in the duffle, a first aid kit, and some necessities. They were in the final preparation stages and he was zipping up the sealed body suit. It was SLDF manufactured and rated for void operations, but unlike the usual Terran Hegemony stone gray color it was mostly black with red trim lines.
"You don't have to fucking do this, kid." Gene picked up the sealed environment helm that vaguely reminded him of a bird's head, "A hired soldier doesn't need to rush straight for the front lines." He ignored the probably decade older mercenary and slung the bag over its shoulder as it came back up.
The light in the bay flashed red. "That's the five minute mark." Three hundred seconds. They were way past calling this off. "I'll see you on the ground, Septim." The other merc's call sign. He pushed off the plating of the floor and to the airlock hatch leading into the bay where his marauder, or more specifically the pod, was undergoing final checks by the Astechs in preparation for the launch.
It looked completely different, the union's mechanical systems, than the SLDF Outpost Castle's gantries. It had a used lived in feel of being cobbled together and patched over the centuries. The seventy five ton heavy BattleMech was a palpable hum as it sat in the folding nest of ceramic and ablative gel dispensers that would carry it through the atmosphere. The egg would fold shut and then be jettisoned from the bay door once final checks were completed.
After he was out of the airlock the egg would make small course adjustments to the planet's surface through the atmosphere, and would ablate and slow the machine down as it head for the surface. The final course corrections after the last of the pod fell away though would be handled by the Mech itself, and its JumpJets.
The reactor readings looked good from the brief glance he threw to the machine's console as he climbed into the cockpit. He stored the bag behind the seat, belted it down, before belting into the chair, and closing the hatch. Running lights illuminated the interior console, and the exterior view through the cockpit darkened as the egg closed and final authorization was granted.
There wasn't really a catapult launch to deploy the drop pods. The union more or less gave a gentle shove, that pushed the marauder out. If this had been an SLDF warship or something like an Excalibur or some other 'last generation' SLDF system intended to deploy the hammer of Terra to the surface of a world there might have been, but the pods were what did most of the work, and in a simple largely unassisted by ship factors. Just a gentle push really.
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Commentary: Its Wednesday and ordinarily I would be updating Jumpchain today... and I will likely post an update for HPGENFANFIC this week, but other factors cause me to post this today.
As an aside Luxen plus the following arc (which may yet still be fluffed out some more) is sitting (with this part) at forty pages plus. That's single spaced not double, and the following arc is already being written.
