II Luxen Part 4
He keyed his mike, and surveyed the spread of grasslands that was about six kilometers from where he originally dropped onto Luxen so many months ago. "Alright this is an evaluation of mobility. Power up your Mechs, and move to way point Alpha." He ordered, and then silently mused that they still didn't have infantry for this.
The Dalban of his Marauder registered the slow power up, and cataloged the different 'Mechs coming on line. The Micronics tasking them to their respective unit to keep track of at a unit as well as individual basis. He watched Short's Vindicator start moving the one eighty rated General Motors standard Fusion Engine pushing the forty five ton mech to thirty something KPH easily enough. The Vindicator was hardly a sports car of a Mech. It topped out at the same speed as his Marauder, Septim's Merlin, or Bubble's Hunchback, and that wasn't very fast, but nor was it really slow.
He flipped channels, "Beauregard?"
"Yes Commander?" The Free Worlds League native replied, fishbowl appearing on the holocom from close range.
"You have a green light," He replied, and the Dervish powered up. About thirty seconds later he detected Bo's wingman for the operation Schiffer's Cicada join him in moving to screen the recce unit. Bahar would be staying in final reserve element with his own Marauder. They had spent a week going over in depth the Battle of Luxen. He hadn't gone over everything that had gone wrong, but... he also had the advantage of having seen the Azami's own After Action Reports. Including that Schiffer was prone to recklessly pushing forward and engaging, when he really shouldn't have been. Aggression in a MechWarrior was a good thing by most standards, and it was certainly better than being perceived as timid, but there were limits and had contributed to Schiffer getting taken out early by the same trap that Septim had fallen for... i.e. He had eaten a batch of infernos when not expecting it leaving a big hole in the Luxen defenses for very mobile enemies to exploit.
The Cicada was basically a bigger Light Mech. Weighing in at forty tons Schiffer's mech could hit eighty miles an hour. The down side was like the Locust the factory cicada was poorly armored, and Schiffer was lucky he hadn't been killed charging the Azami last year.
He accepted the incoming line from Septim's Merlin, "What is it?"
"I'm getting chatter from the starport about an arriving JumpShip. I think the boss lady just got in."
He acknowledged the statement, but it would still take time for Raventhir if she had arrived, and they had been expecting her JumpShip today or tomorrow. Of course that still gave them the time it would take for her DropShip to make from the nadir jump point to Luxen dirt side. The drill would continue, but he decided to go ahead and check in with the Force Major and find out what she had to say.
--
The exercise field looked more like a sports day field than a military drill site, but that wasn't really what was bothering him.
Being told that no you can't participate in the scheduled drill was annoying. Having the entire drill changed, not once, but twice in as many days was arguably even more so. Lady Raventhir had shown up the day previous and decided to change things up. To be fair that was her prerogative. There had been instructions to change to a simulated pirate attack. Nothing odd there per se, never mind the Azami attack.
You still had pirates in the Inner Sphere it wasn't as if the great houses could garrison every world even important factory worlds were sometimes vulnerable to pirate attack. The difference was in the Inner Sphere proper you had more money to spend on defense, more resources, and in some cases at least for pirates some worlds had military academies where the cadet corp could do things like fight them off. Luxen's main problem was that its relative isolation had allowed it to avoid damage from the succession wars and hadn't really had to deal with pirates in a very long time.
That had changed this morning, which he hadn't appreciated. It had still been designed designed to model a pirate attack but in addition to prohibiting him from participating, she had went ahead and basically reduced 'their force' down to one 'demi company' of six mechs versus... an entire company of light mechs. That was certainly not what they had trained for.
The six vindicators were going up against all three light mechs that the Magistracy could domestically produce. Locust, Wasps, and Stingers. Raventhir brought another small batch of new light mechs to shore up the Luxen Volunteers.
Lieutenant Short was coated in sweat as she got out of her Vindicator her unit mates following along at various degrees of speed. "That went pretty well." Septim pointed out high fiving one of the canopian pilots.
Well not exactly an objective unit of measurement, 'well' was accurate enough. The 1
st Luxen Volunteers was on paper a regiment... but it was understrength and heavily slanted to what BattleMechs it did have to Light Mechs. Of the Magistracy's three light mechs in domestic production the Stinger was the only one capable meaningfully getting in close and doing damage. It couldn't sustain that, because that was mostly the SRMs... that hadn't stopped the older pilots from the other company from trying to mass SRM fire into the Vindicators.
They would do an after action report and break down of mistakes after... right now Lady Raventhir looked to be satisfied with six mediums managing to wipe out a company of mostly light mechs in simulated combat. Of course Raventhir was really the only reason this kind of test was possible, and to be entirely honest Mediums on light was hardly an even test despite the lights having the number advantage. It wouldn't have been unfair to say that exercises like this were just to impress the brass.
He didn't like that aspect of it in particular since the 'correct outcome' of the test might not be what actually happened in real combat against non green troops.
--
In contrast to the dog and pony show outdoors the Canopians of Easy company weren't invited upstairs as the reception after began, which should have been a red flag to start with. The fact the mood had completely shifted from the public facade of the outdoor spectacle was another issue. Lady Raventhir didn't waste any time getting to the point, "Are they ready for combat?" Ideal response would have been no, but it wasn't really a question. "The pirate threat is real."
"Yes ma'am." Ur Cruinne? He wondered, but no, "Most pirates aren't ex DCMS professionals with significant armor support," which while true of the attack on Luxen as a whole...
"I've been in discussion with Interstellar Expeditions." Of course she had. "What do you know of the Rim Worlds Republic, and Amaris's secret army?"
Most of what followed was Lady Raventhir's aide de camp a modest looking blonde woman running down that the MAF units on paper ahead of the New Vandenburg Rebellion had been Amaris's secret army funded and equipped by the Rim Worlds Republic... which while not explicitly phrased to totally absolve the Magistracy of participation was certainly skirting the line of 'we didn't do anything wrong'. Thankfully they moved on from that and to their anti rimward neighbor the nearly century old pirate kingdom. "Sebastian O'Reilly was a los tech prospector." He had founded the hegemony after an apparently massive Germanium find rather than the los tech he'd been looking for... but that find had allowed him to found the pirate kingdom and expand. Now of course they had no proof that the Marians weren't doing anything other than what it appeared to be (that was raiding for slaves) but Lady Raventhir and Interstellar Expeditions was convinced that somewhere rimward were ruins from the rimward republic. Anti-Spinward was out going out of the question, or rather going too far 'galactic west' was out for this little adventure, but Lady Raventhir had a copy... partial copy... of what was sure to be an IE star map of space before the end of the Star League.
A map appeared. "We have reason to believe," Lady Raventhir picked up, "that the asteroid that struck Pioche was not a natural event at all. Doctor Abner who visited the world two years ago believes that someone had intentionally accelerated a rock from the system's asteroid belt up to speed to crash into the planet." With a pause she continued, "Potentially as a safety measure to conceal the existence of a Rim Worlds Republic facility on the planet in the event of its discovery."
... yeah that sounded like something Amaris would have done. Grandiose, and probably not very effective at destroying any underground or well hidden industry, but hey it sent a message. DOME had actually designed Castle structures to withstand some degree of orbital impact, up to and including nuclear attacks. It took a lot of effort to break open a castle from orbit, and it was easier to just liberally nuke the surface or bottle it up and force the defenders out by waiting than anything less extreme. Not that that had stopped Amaris from mounting literal human wave attacks against Castles or Taurian nuclear terrorism against the Star League... etc.
Gene leaned back. "This could be filed as an offworld training and security mission, something that a Mech Company could be expected to deploy on... if InterStellar is coming along that doesn't necessarily change that, but I'd like to know what we're reasonably likely to run into. The Marians, regular pirates, are fine, Rim World Automated Defenses fine. I would like all of the information up front from both you and IE, and we're going to need to talk about transport."
"I was understanding you had returned from the Periphery with two JumpShips."
Lebanon, and the Leviathan-class, which seemed to be doing well. The Azami were operating them as merchant tenders when he didn't need them, which meant they were plying back and forth between Luxen earning money... in all honesty they were putting more money in the company coffers than this merc contract, but he wasn't going to mention that. "That's not the problem, we're going to need a DropShip, or two," Or potentially even more, "to move Easy Company," and technically the rest of the company. He didn't even want to touch on well what if we find something in terms of salvage, realistically they'd need more than one, "Two unions, depending on what IE is bringing," Especially if they were supposed to be providing security for dig crews, he thought glancing to Septim. "to transport Easy Company. Its not preferable to transport BattleMechs as cargo. It can be done but best to avoid it if we're going into the unknown. I also need a time table on all of this."
"Of course. We will draw up the specifics, and make sure they're available in print."
--
If he didn't like the general idea of this, he ended up disliking filling out the paper work even more, and that was before they even got to the sub contracting work. Thankfully they weren't completely flat foot by that... but he'd been expecting something like making a run to ur Cruine and dealing with pirates in some canyon shit hole down there. This was a little more in-depth, and it wasn't like friar tuck was the most involved MRB liaison. He wasn't going to call the adept a sorry alchoholic but it was readily apparent the MRB man would have preferred not having to file paper work, but Gene was pretty adamant on retaining at least some ASF pilots, which a headache.
He probably would have had better luck there in terms of looking for them on Detroit, or somewhere, anywhere further coreward because there were slim pickings. He hadn't had much time to work with either, so they loaded up with Doctor Abner and his diggers and other personnel. Lady Raventhir was supplying some of the DropShips, I.E. Was supplying the rest... and apparently since he had two JumpShips it was on him to provide FtL transport, but he'd gotten that impression. The Magistracy was footing the bill for fuel costs and other supplies at least.
"Good morning Mr Shepherd." Professor Abner greeted putting his dig case down. The not quite elderly lyran academic shook his head, "Ah you will see one of the great tragedies of the succession wars. Pioche is a lovely world in the history books, and the damage to it could have easily been fixed by the Department of Mega Engineering if only the Star League were still around. A true shame of our modern era." Abner talked his ear off about the agricultural productiveness of the planet and how it had at one pointed supported a planetary population more than double of Luxen's present population, and it was a while later he absentmindedly lamented that Ford wasn't able to join them as he had some business regarding some 'academic eccentricity' in the Federated Suns.
Gene half suspected that might be true, but just as likely Ford might well be reporting to MIIO or whoever on the civilian side of the Fed Suns. That was his suspicion anyway, but he couldn't prove it nor did he care to. He was also sorely tempted to ask the doctor if this world might have been visited by the Minnesota tribe, but if the professor did think that he probably would have already brought it up.
--
Commentary: Yes, it is Saturday, and I'm not entirely happy with this update, but this begins the 'second arc' of the Second Luxen contract. It will probably undergo a few minor revisions throughout the day, but we will still have a regular update on Sunday like normal.
