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Battletech: The Ghost Who Walks (Battletech Isekai)

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I IE Part 4
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    • I Interstellar Expeditions
    Part 4    ​
    He couldn't be sure when the final decision to make for the Alexandrian Covenant. Whenever it had been had had probably been made before the planet with the whales and mormons on it. The announcement had been made after that as the flotilla of JumpShips had converged on schedule at the following rally point.

    They were now two hundred and seventy light years beyond the canopian border... though admittedly at the end of the Star League it would have been more like two hundred light years, maybe less. In the late 26th​ century well the borders had looked even pretty different.

    The good thing with meeting up with the Azami had been the ability to restore his salvaged mechs... never mind the awkwardness of them being salvaged from the Azami in battle... back to Star League era functionality.

    They'd arrived at the JumpPoint for Sophos and surveyed it from a distance, and it had been a good thing they had. Gene touched the computer. He had no idea why there was no one on this planet, but primitive not the surface to orbit missile battery here would have been hazardous to a DropShip coming in unaware. They probably would have needed several dozen to cover the entire planet, and that wasn't in evidence, but there were enough to cover the major population centers.

    Or what was left of them. "I've got something." One of Hassan's infantry commanders called.

    "What is it Rashid? Where are you?"

    "About thirty klicks from the capital missile battery, the magnemeter we use for prospecting had found a buried DropShip we think. Or rather the remains of it. I suspect it was blown out of the sky Colonel."

    Gene raised an eyebrow. It was the first time he had heard Hassan be given a rank. The Azami had been fastidious about that sort of thing. Hassan shook his head at the oversight, "What do you make of it Rashid?"

    "Pirates I would think, at least on any other world, we are trying to dig it up now. Give us a few hours."

    A few hours later they were poking through what they were pretty sure was a Rim Worlds Republic DropShip, and it was like walking through a tomb. "This is the only one we've found."

    "We are lucky that we managed to find this one." Rashid remarked sweeping his compact assault rifle out in front as if expecting to be attacked by Zombie Amaris supporters at every junction. "They're trying to get the computer on line now, but one of the dates within the missile facility suggests this was lost some time after 2750." Before the New Vandenburg Uprising. "As to where everyone went... I don't know... something is very wrong."

    But not so wrong as that there had been some kind of planet wide war. There were no radiological signatures. The Capital Missiles were pure fusion drive KKVs. Point accelerate slam into target in orbit bang sort of affairs by all appearances. They weren't even particularly smart missiles with their seekers being downright primitive and probably requiring ground control telemetry to hit a DropShip not standing still relatively speaking.

    The problem was that while the network wasn't large enough to cover the entire planet it was numerous enough that the planet's major indicators of infrastructure definitely suggested the locals had been able to build them. As if they'd been expecting an invasion... it would have been easy to just assume that perceived threat could have been from the Rim Worlds Republic, but he had his doubts.

    "I'm surprised its this intact," He muttered swinging a light over the fancy shark embossed emblem, "I don't recognize this model of DropShip, but this armor is ferro-aluminum." Which was probably why it had survived the heat of reentry with such a big chunk of it gone from amidships. "Did they manage to crashland?"

    "I can't be sure." Rashid replied opening a bulkhead. "I want to say no, but I think they were riding the nav beacon from the city in before they were shot down."

    It still went no where to explain where Sophos's population went. A single Rim World's republic dropship being chanced upon didn't come close to explaining that. Abner and Ford were equally perturbed by the lack of signs of what had happened. "I suspect that they packed up and left," Ford announced.

    "There are no signs of JumpShips, but we have found platinum mines, Germanium mining and industrial systems. All the sort of things needed to make primitive or even early modern JumpShip designs... but it looks like it was dissambled, and taken off. There are huge chunks of machine missing."

    "Which could be scavengers." Rashid pointed out.

    Hassan glanced at the surroundings. "I admit Rashid might have a point, but I don't think any of this was done in a hurry."

    "No this would have been months at least. We have remains buried in graveyards that we're sure are from the 2700s, but no exposed remains, and nothing after 2800s. We're not sure where the cut off is, there is detritus, human artifacts, but there aren't any signs of war."

    Everyone had basically independently verified that, over and over again. They'd found weapons over the following couple of weeks, but all of them were Rifles. Either the infantry small arms sort or the predecessors to modern Mech scale auto cannons. The natives living on Sophos had industry to build combat vehicles.

    "What if they chose to move off world because they were running out of fossil fuels?" Ford suggested next, "The DropShip could be a red herring. Their vehicles, the ones left behind are all ICE powered, and that might explain their armament too. If they thought they were going use up all of the petroleum they might have left."

    "I doubt it, there is corn growing rampant on the continent. That would have been able to be refined into gasoline even with just 20th​ century chemistry." Gene put in, "Its not impossible but I don't think it fits."

    "Combination of factors?" Another IE grad student put in looking up from his noteputer, "They still had technology to build vehicles, and reach orbit at least with weapons. And if ICE wasn't an option, they could build fusion drives even primitive fusion engines should have been possible if those are primitive DropShip yards. If they were capable of building early JumpShips the same."

    Sophos was one more world with more questions to it than it answered. Naturally of course as they wandered through the deserted city Abner took as a challenge rather than something to be discouraged by. The general conclusions though were not internal or external strife. It took significant effort to unearth the library cache, and star maps from the building they assumed was the planetary capital. Part of the structure had simply given way due to an earthquake probably forty fifty years ago. The computer itself though was even older. "This is Taurian Concordant."

    "So its really weird then that we haven't found signs of nukes." Ford muttered, and Gene laughed, "Can we pull dates from it?"

    "The reader says that this was," The tech adjusted, "2581 is when it was encoded. Its a library core from New Vandenburg. As for how long its been here, it seems like was installed in 2642. It has all the earmarks of the Alexandrian Covenant government, and has a Magisters seal on it,"

    Ford explained that one "the male half of the government, as we understand it," The other issue was Sophos being depopulated wasn't the only 'lost' covenant world, apparently Cyrene had suffered an extinction level event as well... at least in Cyrene's case though it made sense where there wasn't anyone living there any more... not the mass disappearance of Sophos. It had brought up two more theories. The first was the easier one to investigate... go to the largest of the surviving, known, Alexandrian Covenant systems. Pharos. It was possible of course they had gone to another system, but that was where the second theory came in, with one of the IE researchers suggesting that they had fled to a system inside the Perseus Cepherus Cloud Complex.

    Since they had the coordinates for 'Pharos' the system it made more sense to make the jump there... if that turned out to be a bust the Azami elders were content to try and colonize Sophos and make a living there. They were however going to have to start the long trek back towards civilization soon. The expedition could in theory back track the way it came and not explore any new worlds in return for spending more time in Pharos, but they needed to settle on a course home and there were very few direct routes back even with the maps they had. Either way that trip would potentially take them the rest of the year to get back.

    At the end of that discussion things turned back to the Azami situation. There were a lot of questions including whether or not the Combine knew about the dependents. The general thinking was know. The Combine hadn't molested the Azami merchant travel thus far, but there was no telling whether that would hold... of course the main issue was officially they were only hunting a small renegade unit of the Arkab legions who had turned traitor. The official byline would really start running into a problem if the Combine started attacking merchants, and JumpShips outside the Combine borders.

    Of course if ComStar substantiated that JumpShips with merchant credentials were 'casing' ahead of the pirate raids the Azami had committed there was probably going to be hell to pay. Of course if the azami were serious about settling down that was less of a concern about coming back.
     
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    • I IE Part 5
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    • I Interstellar Expeditions Part 5​
    The system they were calling Pharos as it was easier than the alternative. Calling it the 'Alexandrian Covenant' (home) system, was entirely too long a name for non academic usage. The system had two inhabitable planets. Eros was the third planet in the system, and 'Phaeton', the fourth. The issue was confirmation of more of those capital missile launchers on the planet, except these surface to orbit missile platforms were manned and operational. "Definite signs of technological decline though." Ford observed. "The missile batteries are the most advanced tech I'm seeing."

    And they were on both planets, which was interesting considering Eros was abandoned or near enough. Not entirely unexpected but it made sense. "The JumpShip fleet looks like its been mothballed."

    "Sophos?" Someone asked in the crowded bay's throng of people.

    "Maybe." One of the techs replied, "We're cataloging them now, but they're all designs that would have been in service in 2500s. Some of these I don't even recognize." A couple were clearly liberties, but well time had moved on.

    "That looks like a Leviathan, but they've done something to its arms, as well as the fuel bunker." Someone else put out as the astro geeks tried to make heads or tails of flotilla of ships that had been towed into a safe stable space near the jump point. Sophos though had shown signs, and the Taurian data core had the information necessary, of mining for germanium and construction of Jump Cores...

    Eros looked like it had had a bad meteor impact a few centuries previously, but nothing extinction level. Phaeton was a different story. If the natives had noticed their arrival at the Jump Point it hadn't been enough for them to take a break from their usual affairs. They seemed pretty preoccupied by a small case of civil war. The ongoing conflict was going to keep them off the planet's surface for this trip, much to Professor Abner's disappointment.

    There were discussions about habitability, ending with the question of whether or not Eros would work.

    "It will have to." Hassan replied to the question.

    Professor Abner nodded, "We will land our first expedition on the southern continent. Its the oldest site of ruins we've identified. I would like to examine those before any other landings." Estimations from IE analysts put them as early as sometime in the twenty fourth century, much earlier than mainline 'Taurian' settlement ruins on the planet that had been abandoned sometime in the 27th​ century.

    Personally Gene would have preferred investigating the Taurian settlements first, but he wasn't getting paid for that sort of thing... so watching over Abner's dig site on the southern continent would be what he would end up doing. "We will be bringing our DropShips down hopefully where it will not disturb the remains." Hassan replied, which was the elephant in the room. Even assuming 'Phaeton IV' or 'Pharos' as the natives referred to it now apparently, hadn't noticed the JumpShips arrival... there was a good chance that they would notice dozens of DropShips burning for their system neighbor. That was the sort of thing you might well be able to notice with the naked eye never mind with even primitive telescopes.

    That kind of 'astrological event' might throw the civil war into a higher gear, which was something Ford brought up, but it would have to be. The good thing though about a southern landing on Eros's southern continent was that it wouldn't have been covered by any missile platforms that they could see... and the Eros missile platforms were noticeably inactive compared to the ones on 'Pharos's surface. Given the warmer nature of Eros they might have long since corroded during the hot summers without maintenance, but who knew. It seemed unlikely that they were automated, or had tripwires, but he would have preferred taking a little more caution on the first trip ground side for this planet.

    It wasn't up to him though, so he packed it into the DropShip, and waited for them to make final checks.

    --
    Gene glanced up into the night sky from his cockpit. A curtain of shooting stars descending en masse covered the horizon. Except they were meteors but the first wave of Azami DropShips and small craft establishing their base camp to the north. He hoped Hassan had been making a bad joke about naming the first city on the new world Alamut. Even though Interstellar Expeditions had first discovered 'Pharos' in 3007, the trip to Eros III 's surface had been the confirmation that the primitive firebases for capital missiles had powerful enough radar arrays to actually track objects in space beyond orbit... of course light speed lag delays being a thing it would have been impossible for ground direction to effectively guide course corrections for a missile as primitive as wait the Covenant was using... still a little concerning though.

    There wasn't anything for him to do really but watch the night's sky though. The Covenant hadn't tried to take a shot at the DropShips, but the active tracking returns definitely suggested that the neighbors were watching. He didn't necessarily consider that to be a good thing. They'd need to be careful when they returned to the JumpShip on their way out, just in case. He keyed his mike, "How often does Interstellar Expeditions come out this way?"

    "Professor Abner was with the original team in 3007, there has only been one another expedition that I know of, and it was only a cursory follow up." Ford answered, "after we leave I expect the commission will take the new charts we have and focus on exploring those worlds. We probably won't chart another expedition to the Covenant worlds until 3020 or 3025. I mean something in the interim could happen to change that, but the new maps will devour any spare jumpships we have available in the rimward periphery."

    ... and really this expedition had really been made possible because of the Azami 'merchant' / colonization fleet coming along, and that was shady backdoor dealing he was trying to avoid... the irony since he had signed onto Abner's exploration thinking he was just going to be able to sidestep running into the Combine. In hindsight signing on to hang out on Luxen probably would have been the better choice even though by contract this was going to pay a lot better.

    "So what are you going to do? When we get back?"

    "Assuming the Canopians need a security contingent, training cadre, I'm going to start looking at hiring pilots. Start a Mech Company and try that." Detroit had had people looking for jobs when he'd arrived, and he wondering who all from the Luxen contract would still be on Luxen when they got back to the Magistracy.

    At about 270 light years from the border though ... really the travel back to civilization would be getting back to Skyfog, and then it would be Itenzoe. "I see. I can write you a letter of recommendation if your looking for work with the Federated Suns."

    ... uh, "Thanks." It almost came out as a question mark on the end.

    "It might mean potentially sitting in the Draconis March, but it would pay better, and be more regular than hunting pirates."

    "I'll take that under advisement."

    "Its only a matter of time before the AFFS launches an offensive against the combine, or that the snakes attack of their own."

    He could have entirely taken that as Ford viewed the succession wars with a degree of cynicism that the war was inevitably going to result in yet another round of pointless bloodshed... but that wasn't what the comment felt like in the slightest. He had no doubt Ford was a patriot, but there was a good chance that Ford was something more than just a patriot. IE supposedly vetted their membership thoroughly, but he suspected that meant academic credentials and not... extracurricular ties or maybe it just meant making sure they weren't thieves looking to do some grave robbing. "So what about this place, its not Taurian."

    "We're still digging, and its twenty fifth century layer but we think they might be originally Capellan. Once we finish the excavation of the sight we will have a better picture," Ford remarked accepting the change in subject. "Initial examination suggested they fled out here in the early years of the Confederation, and as we already knew from orbital mapping and studies predate the covenant settlement by more than a century.

    That was interesting. Weird but interesting, "Is there any sign of a database, like we found on Sophos?"

    "No. Lots of what looks like might be military equipment, stockpiles, caches of arms that sort of thing," The Fed Suns native carried on, "it has preserved fairly well, and small technology in terms of gunpowder hasn't changed terribly much in twelve hundred years really."

    "What are you hoping to find?"

    "Its the oldest sight of habitation that we've identified on the planet, but i'll be honest, the professor will be terribly disappointed that its probably a dead end. It might have been better starting with the Taurian settlements."

    The data core that they had pulled off the abandoned world had dated to the age of war, and had been presumed Taurian in origin. He hadn't gotten a chance to go through it but it was supposedly the sort of thing some one from 2570 or so might have thought necessary to build a colony on if you were from the Concordant. There was a degree of sarcasm to that statement so he wasn't sure exactly what all it had entailed... or even if they'd really had time to go through the whole thing.
    --
    Commentary: I've got some replies in the works, but I consider the conclusion of the following 'chapter' to be stronger than most of this one, as this serves a necessary building role and time mover for later events. That and FtL in BT isn't that great by sci fi standards.
     
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    • I IE Part 6
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    • I IE Part 6​
    There were some details that weren't adding up. It wasn't necessarily indicative, and certainly no smoking gun, of malicious events in the past, but something wasn't right. The southern most settlement was definitely anachronistic possibly predating the age of war, and truth be told it wasn't as if the definitively Taurian settlements on the northern continent of Eros III were in much better condition. "What I don't get is that this planet was hit with a pretty substantive meteor shower," And it wasn't the only planet either that had eaten a couple of rocks.... "I thought having a large moon," Well a normal sized Earth type moon, "Was supposed to reduce the risk of catastrophic impact."

    "It does, but sometimes these things happen."

    "We will take appropriate precautions my friend." Hassan replied, "Give us a few months and we should be able to restore the capital missiles and potentially be able to upgrade them to be able to intercept any more errant rocks." The Azami had landed on a massive plateau of ancient and stable geography, which was good because they had landed dozens of dropships. "While that is something indeed, it is not why I called you. We found a Taurian cache."

    "Another datacore?" Ford inquired notably perking.

    "Yes, much the same as the one we found on Sophos, but that was not all." Hassan lead them into a hardened structure, and waved a hand.

    "Those are nuke magazines." Gene muttered looking at the warning labels in the imperfect light of the bunker surrounding them.

    "Yes, megaton scale even." Ford stuck his hand out expectantly, even as Hassan fished out his wallet and handed over some money, "I am afraid though that the Taurians probably carried with them other caches with weapons like this." which meant the neighbors probably had nukes tucked away somewhere... the general consensus was that no one on Pharos had actually thrown nukes despite the civil war, which was a good thing, but it wasn't proof that they didn't have them. It seemed as if civil war or no the surface to orbit platforms were safe and neutral to both sides.

    "Are you going to try and move?"

    "No, we are relatively secure here, but it felt like something to mention." Hassan replied, "We have much to do here, and that will mean farming and clean water are our highest priorities," Housing as well no one really wanted to live out of a grounded DropShip unless they had no other choice, and the Azami had their dependents to think about as well. "I am sorry that we were unable to locate the Minnesota tribe, or indications to their trail."

    "We will just keep looking." Ford responded.

    "The answer is out there somewhere. Once my people are settled here, I will rejoin you in the quest." Hassan remarked, "If we are able to get those old JumpShips working," The Azami colonel nodded to the sky. "God willing perhaps we might explore the cloud complex as well."

    "There is no telling what is out there," Ford declared, "Who knows who might have settled there, and we might still find your Alexandria."

    "I would like that." After the surprise we found nukes, and talk about all the stuff that might still be left to find in the rimward periphery... including the slightly turn of what if we turn up Amaris supporting Rimworld Republic colonies that missed the war they went off to lunch. There were still DropShips and Small Craft coming and going bringing people and supplies down, but here two hundred and seventy light years rimward of the modern / official Canopian border the ground work for an Azami settlement free from Luthien's grasping ambitions looked to be starting up. There were only about two thousand families so they wouldn't be doing anything but surviving, but maybe Hassan was right and others would follow them. Once they were sustaining their own population in food and water they'd probably work on fuel, not that fusion engines were hard to feed, and that would let them make the journey back to the Inner Sphere.

    Gene climbed back into the cockpit of his Marauder, and bypassed the seat. The SLDF operations manual stated that in a non permissive, meaning NBC weapons getting thrown around, you shouldn't need to leave the cockpit's safety for anything less than a week. Was it comfortable for that period of time? Hell no, but there was enough room to unfurl a mat and sleep if the situation called for it, and it had enough room for storage and auxiliary equipment. Aquagea's Castle Outpost had easily been able to make a copy of the Volgadon University core. He hadn't brought a 'field library' with him in whole, but he had brought a copy of the Star League era Medical Library of the university... of course he hadn't expected to go to the Magistracy, and Luxen which housed their largest medical university so...

    He picked up the hard bodied polymer safety casing, and deployed the handle. After months of mucking around the deep periphery no one paid him any mind at all despite standing out. Most everyone else were in overalls and work clothes, but there were enough people in jumpsuits or lab coats that his day clothes didn't stand out that much.

    He'd been considering this for a while... since they'd been out here for months now. The truth was the biggest hang up to the datacore... never mind he had not idea what was even in it, but Sophos had been missing tooling, and what pieces had remained had often had parts missing. The most simple answer to the latter was that they'd been scavenged for spare parts for other machines, but there had been no indication of why. The Azami weren't precisely bringing in large volumes of machinery or tooling themselves.

    The raid on Detroit's capital had been partly a bluff. The smaller armed Danais, Trojan blockade runner whatever, had hit the seed banks at Ann Arbor for seed stocks for a future colony. Everything else had been a bonus to that objective, and had been designed to obscure it but taking more impressive things. This planet was far enough out for the Azami's needs, just as it had been for the Canopians and Taurians fleeing the end of the Reunification war, and maybe before them the Tikonov Galactic Rangers.

    The Alexandrians though had for at least a century had been capable of building their own DropShips and even JumpShips until what Interstellar Expeditions labelled the first Upheaval, and probably still had some limited capacity to do so at least as late as the 'Second' one. The Covenant didn't have the specifics any more and Sophos hadn't exactly had that information where it could be easily found... and there were obviously questions missing.

    Something had happened. The rocks falling by themselves could have been natural after all. For a colony world, bolt hole, whatever one wanted to call it, the Taurian original raison d'etre of building a military infrastructure to resist the star league seemed to have fallen flat on its face.
    --
    Commentary: This is more interlude, and was originally going to be paired with the conclusion of the Expedition chapter. Its mostly going up as is. The Alexandrian Covenant and the wider Canopian Ruins will be something we explore later particularly as the colony grows larger, but really this is what sets up for the company's origins.

    That being said... I had meant to include the Azami talking more about the HPG conversation that got them in this shit in the first place, but thats been rescheduled.
     
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    • I IE Conclusion
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    • I IE Conclusion
    ​
    He leaned back in the chair and kept reading his noteputer's copy of the Volgadon University general education curriculum. He might have slightly misjudged exactly how valuable Star League memory core copies of anything education related might have been. One of the IE research assistants had described it as 'you could start your own Canopus with blackjack and hookers, err more blackjack and hookers with this'. He played it off as having not been about to leave the core in his loft in Detroit while on contract... and that was true, but he had expected originally to go from Detroit to the Luxen emergency and then come back... he'd kind of jumped on this job to get out of town.... that 'lostech Mongoose' as salvage being part of the reason to book it sooner rather than later.

    "They think that Leviathan will actually work." Ford remarked breaking his concentration, "I still think they're taking a big risk but they've offloaded all nonessential personnel." Unlike the smaller Liberty class ships the Leviathans were supposed to be much easier to repair, and service. The ships had been mothballed by trained crews, and given time the Alexandrian JumpShips might all be eventually returned to service, but the Azami should have been focusing on other priorities, and so that might take a decade to finish.

    "What happens if they can get it to work?"

    "Then we have a little more slack to explore," Ford replied. "That would be good Professor Abner wants to try another of the Star League markers in hopes we can find something."

    'Find something?' He dropped the tablet into his chest, "I was under the impression that this had been a successful venture?"

    "Oh certainly. Interstellar Expeditions HQ will be quite happy that we found anything at all, thats really the ballpark for success. The neo paleolithic society will make some of the fellows positively delighted. A DOME outpost is another outstanding find, stellar mapping is all the rage." Ford continued, "We've done quite well, and it wouldn't have been possible without the Azami's assistance. We will be able to play that off as our usual contracting with itinerant spacer JumpShip clans, mostly."

    The Azami merchants would claim that they had nothing to do with rogues... and since he hoped that all the 'rogue DCMS pilots' were accounted for and would be staying here there would be no further attacks. The Azami raids would hopefully be forgotten about, and that might might be helped by the tide of pirates that had been coming in from spinward anyway. "He's hoping to find the Minnesota tribe at one of the sites we didn't check."

    "Its a long shot, but given how much in the way of resources I can understand taking the long shot."

    One more world, just lets investigate one more world was an expensive vice to indulge in, especially this far out in the deep periphery. They'd be going back to Skyfog with two, and probably a third, JumpShips. Part of it was the Azami were probably backtracing a route, and since the Leviathan was a clean unmarked, but old JumpShip design if it worked it could go back and forth with cargo... or that was what Gene suspected was the plan.

    "The thinking that the southern continent site," Ford was talking about Eros now, "Being the Tikonov Rangers who disappeared in the 24th​ century will certainly attract attention from the foundation, their disappearance from the records after fleeing Liao's purge of private militaries is precisely the sort of thing to attract funding for future missions to explore the base camp."

    "I thought you said that it wouldn't be another few years until another expedition was planned out this way?"

    "Oh probably so, but academic ventures like this normally take ten years to get all the details planned away. It will be a few years until we come back, mark my words. Even with Azami cooperation assuming they start a regular run I don't see us coming back before 3020." If that was the case, he hoped that'd be enough time for the Azami to scrub the last of their impromptu insignia's and markings off in favor of... whatever they ended up deciding to use that wasn't that. "IE will have other operations, Skyfog needs security," Ford continued following his gaze out the window to the repainted gray aerodyne dropship. On the side of the modified Drost IIA style hull was a black bird and the name Sam Houston stenciled.

    Hassan reappeared from the stairwell lugging a case of his own.

    "I thought you were staying here?"

    "I am," He replied to Ford's question. "As you might have taken notice during our travels the Azami JumpShips were able to maintain good coordination."

    "Yeah I was beginning to wonder if you had a mobile HPG?"

    "There is such a thing?" Ford asked.

    "They existed for Warships, and diplomatic carriers." Hassan remarked, "The last of them were destroyed in the second succession war to my knowledge. We do not have those." He set the case on the table.

    "A fax machine?" Ford asked looking at the interior.

    Hassan nodded, "They have limitations, and as a precaution we have always communicated in code using them," he went on to explain the specifics of the Machine designated K-Series Transmitter. There were obvious limitations to the device despite its compact size. It would take ten days for its signal to reach its maximum range. Data limitation was another factor, but if you were communicating between two JumpShips within three jumps of one another while both were charging well it was hard to beat.

    Ford summed it up best, "This is extraordinary." He glanced over to Gene, "Well I can understand him getting one, but why not give the other one to Professor Abner."

    "Come now Mr Ford, I know quite well despite being the Professor's protégé, he is only interested in the academics of his work. You are here as much to keep him from wandering too far into the forest as anything else. That, and we were planning to provide IE with these anyway. You have been of invaluable help to us over the years." There they went, doing the spook behind the scenes shit again. "As well as to our brothers in Rasalhague who should be able to provide you with the instructions as to their manufacture."

    --
    It took a little longer for the Azami techs to be sure that the Leviathan was up to safety standards, but they had decided that it met them. The hardware aboard it was pre Star League, there were no back door codes like the Drone had hit the IE JumpShip with to power it down. As somewhat expected that meant that Professor Abner was positively giddy of the concept of being able to take a little time on the side to explore a few other worlds. That mostly included laying out other potential paths that the Minnesota clan could have taken as they had moved rimward of the Taurian concordant.

    With additional dropship cargo space available going back to that outpost would have been tempting, but he was getting paid by IE and he doubted they'd just let him yoink all of those. As it was the 'Sam Houston' only had a skeleton crew to begin with, and he'd need to hire people first and then look about loading it to the gills with treasure.

    As to the roughly ten jumps it was going to take them to get back to the Magistracy proper? Well Abner wanted to explore some of the other worlds, and was adamant that the Minnesota tribe had swung anti spinward. They couldn't go that far off the path due the way even their expanded maps, which had been something Abner had had to be reminded of in addition to the time table and getting back to 'civilized space' before the year's end.

    Still looking at the map of the path... it didn't make sense. Accepting that it had occurred before the second succession war had kicked off, and thus going directly through the inner sphere might not been the best idea... it still struck him as odd for them to get into it with the Combine, then go through well the peripheral fringes of Davion Space, the Taurian hinterlands, and have objects showing up as far .... Gene shook his head and looked at the map. He had a copy of it, and if the chance came to run things down, well that was fine. I.E. Was going to pull the thread, and maybe he'd get an answer to this, but in the mean time he just needed to keep an eye out, and ride out the rest of the contract until they were back. There just wasn't anything else to do until they got back to things like banking, and stores.

    So much money though, and the benefits besides. Of course Abner's offer had been first but the money hadn't hurt on top of being able to avoid the Combine throwing their weight around... but there was a good chance that he wasn't going to be able to do that forever.
    --
    Commentary: ... and that wraps first Interstellar Expeditions. As I said originally this was going to be coupled together with the previous segment, but they were split up to be a little more manageable for review.


    Okay Scheduling for August, this is tentative. The current plan trying to move back to regular updates on things, will be the usual Wednesday, Friday, Saturday rotation of updates. [That is Jumpchain, the SG1 Jumpchain standalone thread, and Saturday AoE update]. Cognizant that Percy Jackson, and MCU jumps are relatively popular I may attempt to go to a regular Sunday Update for one of those, probably MCU as we move into introducing the Netflix tv series arc.

    For non fixed updates, the Waifu Catalog stuff will probably all get updated in the coming month, that is the 'IN Another World' Sufficiently Advanced Magic, and DxD as well as the HSoD fic. I am aiming to get an update up in the coming month for the Drow CYOA fic as well. Those will probably all drop on separate weeks, likely early in the weeks probably will be monday updates or Tuesday. I say this because with as much content as I have for this fic in particular I would like to slot this into a regular update schedule like I have for AoE (the other fic I have with comparable content available).

    On the BattleTech front I'm considering starting a new campaign in BattleTech the game, which is unlikely to effect this per se, but we will be potentially moving into content related to the video game. I'm not really a big fan of Mechwarrior 5, though IIRC they do name drop Markham's Marauders in its campaign (set in 3015) we're not likely to use much if anything from MW5. However I do have a number of other BattleTech stories (yeah I know catalyst has really dropped the ball with the Kickstarter) which have been in the pipeline for a while, and they may get their own threads, but will not likely get the same volume of updates that this story is prone to.

    I'm aiming to get back to some of those in the Misc thread, along with some other updates over there interspaced through August, but we will see. For the rest of the month, I'm actually still behind on a couple of stories. That was computer problems from some time back, and misplacing an sd card that is still missing. (Again, Out of the Dark the Drow CYOA story won't be updating until next month at least.) For HPGENFANFIC, I know its not everyone's cup of tea, and yes its a little slow right now, but probably two updates for that this week to catch up and get through Summer Year 2. I may push the Percy Jackson update I had planned a while ago to August as I've mentioned, but regular standard updates will still be happening. SG1's Curse Arc probably will continue into August, but we will see if I double update that this week or not.
     
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    • Alamut - Interlude
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    • Alamut
    -
    Interlude    ​
    Interstellar Expeditions had proven to be a useful friend through the years. Many chafed under the treachery and capriciousness of the dragon even while trying to honor their oaths. Chasing the dream of the Minnesota tribe had been a long time dream now. Rasalhague, or at least some of their allies, hoped that the Minnesota tribe might if not actually be some splinter from a long lost colony, might have descendants of those liberated from the gulags on Richmond.

    Was it an idealistic dream? Perhaps so. It was still hope.

    The truth was it had been as much of a dream as the idea of planet beyond the dragon's control, or reach, which was what they had now. Twenty years earlier Interstellar Expeditions had recovered a man marooned on a habitable planet. The last survivor of an accident that had stranded him and his crew.

    Their jumpship had been trying to trace the route that their ancestors had taken centuries previous to return to the Inner Sphere to see what had become of the rest of humanity. IE had been intrigued, and while he came from a largely primitive society it was one that had managed to maintain some degree of the technology that had existed during the great age of colonization when his ancestors had departed North Africa and left Terra behind. The JumpShip had reached their destination, but a battery fire had ensued causing a secondary explosion and imperiling the crew and forcing them to abandon the ship. The survivors had dwindled over two years before IE's explorer vessel in the anti-spinward reaches had noted the JumpShip debris and and detected the ancient Archaic SOS beacon.

    His story, and origins had gradually made its way through the network, the community of explorers, until it had reached a young Azami seeker who had brought it to the elders. A far flung colony mission that had gone from Terra in the golden age of colonization escaping far beyond Terra's reach and who had been separated sense. Fanciful? Perhaps, but to be free of the Dragon entirely that was a dream of many Azami, and some had turned to violence like the Rasalhague had as well. The matter had been left to lie as Alexandria's location was lost without the doomed JumpShips star charts, and the passing of the marooned and then rescued man.

    The truth of the last years of the Star League though had begun as any other mission, any other raid that the Dragon had sent them on. They had certainly not planned to mount an exodus of their own from Combine space before hand.

    They had not been told what they were supposed to recover by the ISF, and if they had never found out it was entirely possible that none of this would have happened. Jerome Blake the founder of ComStar had managed to record a conversation between Minoru Kurita and the Satan Amaris. The coordinator of the time would after the liberation of Terra attempt to lay claim to the position of Star Lord despite having prevented the SLDF to travel through Combine Space, and also betraying their positions to Amaris's forces. It was not the sort of knowledge that even these centuries later could be permitted to be outed in the public domain, and thus the attack had come, but it had failed. The first shots had been sudden and by surprise but poorly placed. A junior officer in his own exuberance had probably gotten ahead of himself instead of waiting for the better moment, and it had been that providence that had saved them.

    They had been able to escape even though it had meant ultimately fighting Azami apart of the Arkab legions who believed that they were fighting rogues who had turned to piracy. Loyal Azami who they had not been able to warn in time, and who they had had to fight through to make good on their escape. They had not mounted that escape with everything they needed to mount a desperate flight from the combine into the periphery, and so had had to supplement using their jumpships as both honest merchants as well as turning to piracy over the last few years. Desperation had excused some of their actions, and it wasn't as if they were friendless either. With ties to the Dragon broken their migrant fleet could provide a useful service in communicating to and fro with groups like Interstellar Expeditions more freely than they had been able to.

    A path that had eventually lead them rimward, and now deep into the Rimward Periphery. They had brought no heavy machinery, where would they have even gotten it in the attempt to flee, but by all indications Eros III would support the seedlings, and bulbs, and other crops that they had brought from Detroit's raid, and of course there were the now wild but still edible crops from the old Taurian settlement. That would not mean agriculture would be easy, but they had clean water, and shelter, and could begin working towards building a proper settlement.

    "You have validated it?"

    The elderly doctor rebuked the man who asked the question, "It is what it was stated to be."

    As crude as Mr Cohen's statement had been, yes they were talking about the kind of information that would in fact let one 'Start your own Canopus with blackjack and hookers... er, more blackjack and hookers.' "I did not think he was a doctor?"

    "He's not. I imagine the SLDF gave him basic field medical training, but that is all." He harrumphed slightly, before continuing on, "But it comes from the Medical College at Volgadon or was there." Lone Star was one of the losses attributable to the Dragon's greed. "It appears to be the master collection of the school, including the instruction material as well as its research." Information on procedure, drugs, cybernetics even, "We don't have all of the equipment, but it is what it is said to be."

    There were nods from the assembled commanders. The plan had of course always been to on the completion of this journey to pass along the Black Boxes that Rasalhague had claimed to have uncovered just before the start of the third succession war. They had carefully guarded their find for decades, and had only become comfortable with sharing the specifications at the start of the century. The Azami were one of a handful of groups who had been entrusted with such notion, and bringing Interstellar Expeditions into the fold had been something long discussed, but not acted on. Talks with Skye had fallen through in 3005 after the disastrous Combine raid on Summer, and that was not the only example Hassan could think of. Rasalhague, and the Azami were far from the only groups which chafed under the rule of a great house, and perhaps Skye might have been a valuable ally, if only...

    One of the commanders stroked his bright orange beard, and the gesture caught the attention of the others even before he motioned directly he wished to have the floor to speak. They had opened this meeting with the admission that it was unfortunate that they didn't have any leads on the Minnesota tribe, a kind of casual admission that there were objectives they hadn't achieved. Perfunctory humility before getting down to other matters. That should have been dominated by the establishment of the settlement, the planting, and things of that nature. All of that had been thrown on its head by the gift with little thought.

    There was no real shortage of volunteers at least among the young, and those who were not hunted by the Dragon's agents. They needed to be able to keep the line of communication open of course so there had been discussions to establish waypoints along the way. They needed to be able to communicate with the other communities after all.

    Then of course there were some who simply wanted to volunteer for the chance of adventure. What better way than to be in on the ground floor a young mercenary company. The JumpShip crews would be able to ply the merchant trade during garrison missions and that would let them ferry messages from courier to courier. Hassan's only real lament was being unable to go himself, but he knew he was needed here, for now.

    He would one day deliver the copy of Jerome Blake's recording of Minoru Kurita and Stephen Amaris to the descendants of those who had fled with General Kerensky, and hopefully one day the truth would be known to all in the Inner Sphere.

    --
    Commentary: This was not originally planned, this is an interlude, and Tuesday, in all likelihood we will start II Luxen. This will regularly update on Sunday for August otherwise.
     
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    • II Luxen Part 1
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    • II Luxen
    Part 1    ​
    As the MRB was so mournful to inform him by the time they got back... no the Mercenary Court had not returned a judgment just yet, we're sorry could you be a little more patient please. Apparently the Combine lawyers were throwing every conceivable bullshit attempt they could at the wall to get something to stick. That was fine he had other things to do.

    Especially given the fat pay check from six months contract plus the extra time of work for IE. Paperwork, registration and moving from single mechwarrior with mech to small company commander had taken time to fill out. Luxen was much more calm now, despite a full half of the scratch company still being in the employ of the Magistracy, and more mercenaries seeming to have arrived since. Septim sat down across the table from him. "I hear you're hiring now."

    "I am."

    "The Magistracy has been paying us to drill the Luxen Volunteers, oh did you hear, the Marik civil war is over?" The what? "The news came in like right after you left. The Wolf Dragoons switched sides and cleaned house." The crowd of others passed, "Sorry, anyway, the Magistracy was pretty interested in that divide three lances into two fire groups concept you used. We have gamed that battle over and over again in the simulators and we should have all died, man."

    "The Azami made contact, and then withdrew."

    "Yeah, but they had our ticket punched. So yeah the six mech thing."

    "We had twelve of the same model mech." He reminded him. "The Vindicator seems to be workable, I suppose even with different models with overlapping armaments you could have well your Merlin, and the Vindicators coordinate like that." Part of it had been intended to compensate for lack of training, and tactical initiative. He had hoped that six or twelve lrm launches simultaneously an 'LRM 30' or 'LRM 60' attack on a target would be effective at softening up or at least disorienting a hostile force. That would be easier with CVs in the unit of course.

    "Who is your father man, Aleksander Kerensky?" Septim replied offhandedly, and loud, "So you're hiring? Cause if you tell the Magistracy that stuff you've got a job. There looking for more Mercenaries in general, but especially Heavy Mechs. Your Marauder, any marauders are at the top of what they want list."

    "Have they brought any in?" He thought back to Markham who had shipped out for spinward prospects before he'd headed to North for the survey job.

    "No, the Magistracy brought in some Shadow Hawks, back in August, more Jenners and Locusts. I know the MAF wants to purchase more Vindicators, but that involves negotiating with the Capellans..."

    Apparently the civil war going on over the border with house Marik had deterred the Cappellans from authorizing any export sales... and they didn't have a whole lot of export capacity to begin with normally. The Vindicator was the work horse of the Capellan military so it was produced in greater numbers than most of their other mechs so it was possible... just not any time soon. "They didn't try and buy Merlins?"

    "Its a new mech, yeah I did well enough to get a job, but I doubt its 'proven itself'." The topic drifted... He wasn't surprised to learn that 'Septim' was a MechWarrior from the Lyran commonwealth, and that he'd come from enough money that even as a second son he could just buy a brand new Battlemech to be an adventurer after his stint as a Lyran lieutenant. He was seriously concerned now that word was getting around about the training contract of getting pushed out this year in favor of a bigger company or someone with a bigger rep who was looking for an easier job. The pirate tide out of Tortuga wasn't even hitting in full force if the rumor mill was to be believed, but the early waves had been bad enough with everyone spinword hiring up who they could so Detroit was doing brisk business, as was hiring centers on Herotitus. He hadn't been surprised the Majesty Metals had already hired a unit to handle ur Cruine, but their rep had been worried about potential pirate problems.

    "What about the salvage, did the government buy that up?"

    Severus Alexander shook his head, "Luxen didn't have the C-Bills for the purchase. Lady Raventhir bought some, and she's 'loaning' them magnanimously to the planetary defense, but most of those mechs are still in the shop all the same. Most of the mechs were bought by other corporate interests... not that they really have pilots for them."

    Panic buy but understandable he supposed. Septim clearly had some MechWarrior elitism about what constituted real pilots, "What about the Kuritans who showed up on Detroit, did they turn up?"

    "Yeah they finally showed their faces back in September. Their little princess and her samurai weren't happy that they had missed everything. They got into a big shouting match with the local MRB over the fact that the MRB had already run the salvage auction, and distributed shares."

    "Did they try and buy the salvage back?"

    Septim snorted, "No, I don't think their pride allowed them to. I think they're still on some wild goose chase looking for the pirates, but they haven't shown up since. They might have gone back to Detroit since that mess is still being strung out in the courts."
    --
    Major Seghal or Force Major... which was the Canopian equivalent to little bird was a long faced woman with broad forehead and would have looked like a librarian, in Gene's opinion if you threw a pair of spectacles on her. She was defacto Adjuant General to the Luxen Volunteers as a whole now. Lady Raventhir might or might not have had a part in moving people around, the recommendations to get all the rest sorted.

    Right now the major was looking at a typed up break down of force arrangement. It took the original twelve vindicators split into two six Mech groups, and expanded on it. Twelve mechs was ordinarily three lances, and his added a six mech 'Recon' unit on paper, and a six mech 'command' unit. The last was going to be the unit in theory the observation group, "But in the future," He remarked I'd recommend something like massed Shadow Hawks. Not necessarily six of them, but enough that they could mass LRM fire like the Vindicators can." It was the scout unit that was the problem. During the battle of Luxen such that it had been he'd been able to keep his marauder watching the two six groups. The Magistracy had its share of Light Mechs but the truth was domestic production or no he really didn't like the mish mash of stinger, locust, and wasps... all twenty tonners that were filling out the recon unit. None of those carried LRMs which was fine because at the top end the locust only had four tons of armor spread around. They weren't supposed to stand up and fight anyway, they were supposed to observe and fall back and let the medium units come in. "Which should allow the Vindicators to catch up and concentrate on hostile units."

    It was still not an ideal solution to contending with Heavy Mechs barring all of them ganging up on one or two heavier enemies... or fighting a Charger, which was technically an Assault mech he supposed.

    The Force Major pushed the paper to one side. "This will put you in command of the mercenaries who fought at Luxen," Though they had honestly been divided it up to cover sectors of the defense not really deployed together, "And you've brought in additional assets." She managed to make both statements sound accusatory. Promotion or no, or maybe it was the promotion she seemed to be getting pushed from somewhere up top.

    "Is that a problem?"

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

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

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

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

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

    "Immediately." He replied standing up.

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

    That was without accounting for the other security concerns. The Magistracy were willing to fork over the C-Bills for security. It was going to be completely different than the sort of work he had been doing for IE though.
    --
    Commentary: Minor revisions might continue through tonight, but just so we're clear 'Severus Alexander' is an assumed name its a nom du guerre, but its also the source of his call sign Severus Septim. I'm going to do another Index Extras post shortly now that the Merc company is on the books.
     
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    • II Luxen Part 2
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    • II Luxen
    Part 2    ​
    He had had... well less than a weekend from accepting the change over on the contract from Septim's command. There had been certain points that had needed to renegotiated that friar tuck over that MRB hadn't been real happy about doing. Septim's contract and ad hoc group of mechwarriors had been subject to fending off poaching attempts at what was perceived as easy pay by late comer mechwarriors with better ratings with the MRB. Nothing company size, singles and pairs of freelancers who had heard about in th last couple of months. It was opportunism from people who had been in the business long enough to try and capitalize, but who for whatever reason weren't apart of a larger unit.

    That had been why Septim had been trying to be surreptitious in the cafe. Luxen was an option for R&R of course, but also medical treatment and what not before the incursion. This was the periphery one or two mechwarriors could get jobs out here without being a part of company. Mechs were fairly scarce, and Septim had had what sounded like legitimate concerns about getting driven off by a higher rated longer serving mercenary as a result... or having Raventhir say someone new should be in charge.

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

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

    "You could have scheduled this earlier,"

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

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

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

    Two six Vindicator Groups appeared, followed by the six light mechs. The stingers would be in the headquarters unit... by choice they wouldn't have even been using it at all, but it was what they had. Not that the Wasp was much better. "The Locust is a scout mech." He went on to explain that 'Yes, if we had other varieties of them we could do other things,' But they didn't have those other varieties, "As a result the curriculum will focus on observation in the Mech component, or in the support of combined arms to suppress hostile infantry." The 1V was not designed to engage enemy tanks or other Mechs... and carrying an entire literal ton of machine ammo was dangerous... to the MechWarrior inside.

    The two vindicator sections would be the principle article of battle in the Company. Recon would identify the target the Vindicators would cover the others advance and engage, and be supported by the command section which would provide flank security and if necessary supplemental fire.

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

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

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

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

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

    There were other things to do though. The truth was even with basically half a company of MechWarriors now signed on... the realities of Luxen as a campaign contract had meant the Magistracy had paid for drop everything come to our aid now thing. Not that he hadn't already needed to hire support personnel, but the Sam Houston wasn't going to be able to carry everyone so he was going to need another DropShip if everyone stayed on, but that would mean even in more crew. That wouldn't be a problem for a couple of months though. "What are the chances," He asked since he hadn't been here as the situation had developed, "That the Magistracy will want us to go to ur Cruine and deal with the pirate nest proactively?"

    "Its possible," Septim replied, "Its not ur Cruine though, even if Majesty Metals would like that to be priority number one." That made sense of course, but they were in no shape for that kind of maneuver, and transporting Easy Company, the actual MAF unit of 1st​ Luxen Volunteers would require several DropShips.

    On the plus side they had the Liberty, and the Leviathan, which was one less level of headache, "I'll start drawing plans for that, I need you to start looking into DropShips. If only as a fact finding mission. I don't mean just push this off on Bubbles, I need the financial information, as well as who all we could potential hire if we need to."

    He had other concerns about ur Cruine though if truth was told. He copies of the overlapping maps put together by Interstellar Expeditions, and while it really didn't tell him much more about planets in the Rimward periphery in terms of location... it gave context to some of those worlds. The bigger problem was ... no it was ludicrous to be worried about some secret Rim World Bolt hole colony wasn't it? Then again Amaris's secret army had been massive... ur Cruine had been a cold world though... the DOME had slated it for terraforming but they had never reportedly done more than basic surveys beyond the temperate habitable equator... so he had to wonder why CID had flagged it on the map.

    There were plenty reasons that were possible, and he couldn't justify going back to Aquagea to trawl through the archive for answer. No he had been hired to do a job, and he was going to do it. If got asked to go to ur Cruine then he'd go. Interstellar Expedition had a regular office though on Luxen, it hadn't just been a temporary thing, despite his suspicion that IE had been planning to team up with the Azami for a while though.... he still wasn't clear what it was they'd been after. Some ancient canopian map was possible, or maybe it had just been about medical supplies... but it didn't matter now.
    --
    Commentary: So II Luxen will not likely end up back to the whole 3 Chapters in length. It will still be relatively long, there is for example material that I cut out of this and out I Luxen regarding both the canopians and the scratch company Mercs participating in 1st Luxen, as well as the would be scalpers. Still working on revisions, but the whole chapter together should probably be closer to twenty thousand words than the original original 3 arc 30k or previous revision that jumped it down to like half that.

    I need to do another Index post both for the Merc Company and for the Canopian unit, or at least I feel I should.
     
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    • II Luxen Part 3
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    • II Luxen Part 3

    ​
    They had rolled into March soon enough, and that meant two dozen Vindicators doing ninety meter jumps along a series of embankments about seventy miles from Luxen's capital. They would have done it closer to the city but apparently that would have disturbed the locals. It wasn't strictly some kind of peacenik thing, the Magistracy wasn't the Outworlds Alliance or whoever, but it did seem a little silly. Regardless that Magistracy was their employer, and thus they were doing their best to abide by noise pollution concerns for these things. Not that there weren't other perfectly reasonable reasons to not fire off any sort of missile in the vicinity of the capital besides just all the noise a rocket motor made.

    The local military base, depot, whatever one wanted to call it had too much going on to realistically conduct the kind of maneuvers needed to run training, but Luxen had a planetary population of under a hundred million, which meant land was cheap. If they had had the air lift capacity, there was an old mine that had been played out from before the New Vandenburg revolt on the southern continent that would have made a pretty exercise field... but they didn't really have the infrastructure to fly in equipment or ammunition... and ammunition was already going to be expensive enough.

    This was pretty much as far from the city they could get without really it becoming a pain in the ass to get supply and logistics. They were making do, their impromptu maneuver field was close, but still segregated off from the square mile gunnery range. Eventually they were probably going to move to combined fire and maneuver exercises, but the Canopian pilots, even the ones who had fought in first Luxen needed a better grounding on maneuver beyond just make big stompy robot walk forward.

    Gene keyed his mike, and radio channel to hail the Daimyo HQ vehicle, "Alright bring them in," He ordered, and now to make sure they could follow nav points and get back to the rendezvous point from an alternate route. Was it repetitive? Yes. Was it boring? Probably after a while. Was there a point to the monotony though? Absolutely. This entire course was supposed to cover the very basic basics.

    Out here was also useful because it kept them from having to compete for time at the facilities with other Companies in the Regiment. That had been part of Septim's problem is that he hadn't tried to get around the system, just getting the que for access to the range, or the simulators, or so on. The Vindicators were at least the easy part.

    On paper well as combined command include the mercenaries they were a combined arms battalion on their own, sans air power of course. Twelve Canopians in Vindicators would have been one thing, but there eight other MechWarriors in the unit, and while while Raventhir hadn't been able to supply four more to fill out as Light and Headquarters that was what they were supposed to be in a six Mech formation. They weren't proper Demi-Companies though, which were apparently a thing as well, but the lights were recon and observation, and the effective HQ was a reserve element rather than a strictly rear echelon coordinator, because otherwise that could have been a 'demi lance' or what not.

    He reached to swap channels, "Septim report."

    "Uh, yeah boss we're not to the gunnery range yet." Came the Lyran's reply.

    A thought directed through his neurohelmet directed the Mircronics to highlight the HQ unit headed up by Septim's Merlin. "Acknowledged, apprise me when you reach the way point." He clicked off mechanically. That left him considering whether or not to check with Bahar as she was supposed to be navigating the Recon unit in mock operations with their company's ground vehicle. He decided it against it, and settled back into the seat to let the micronics and hi Rez filter information to him through the neurohelment.
    --
    ... and of course not everything was field exercises. Actually when he got down to it not quite two thirds of the measure were classroom, or at least outside of mech operations. The whole concept of MechWarriors as Knight Errants had its origins in the Star League era, but it had not been nearly as pronounced. The SLDF manuals, doctrine, historical records, and official literature of all other sorts that he had access to did not condone that sort of shennigans for regular SLDF troopers. Enlisted MechWarriors weren't supposed to go around doing some of the shit that made it into popular trivid holodramas.

    He had other things to do. The Canopians had allocated him campus space to hold classroom time, and it created another layer of separation from competing units, but it wasn't the only thing going on. The office space he had settled into included the various drafting attempts for fitting heavy missile capacity, LRMs, onto a marauder of course, which Septim had seen previously, but also the tooling around with other projects.

    Not that he expected any of it to go anywhere. "In theory it would let us the mech go up to an LRM 10," Which would to an extent defeat the point of cost saving measures from downgrading to a large laser, "It would still maintain multirole capability, and minors gain in close in combat without having to worry about the PPC's minimum range envelope, but it is just an idea."

    The LRM 10 cost triple what an LRM 5 did. It was three tons heavier... but you were throwing more missiles. Six such Vindicators would be equivalent to an LRM Carrier... which he hadn't had any of those at the time. The benefit though would be in what all multiple Vindicators could do that a single vehicle couldn't operationally, which was all spelled out in the documents... "This is what you do in your spare time?"

    ... well it wasn't as if he was going to draw undue attention to his educational material. The SLDF manuals were helpful, they gave him an idea how a professional military thought things should have been done, "Its what I do in my spare time." He agreed. "Its not serious engineering work, more revisions to the design, most refits could be done by techs," Septim's scoff was a highlight to another matter. It was true that the Azami techs who had volunteered and who maintained his Mech now, Bahar's, and the vehicle company could do that kind of work if they had the parts and the machines but well they weren't your average periphery scroungers either. He was lucky like that. He shrugged, "You lose a little bit of distance, but you're less likely to cook an inexperienced pilot. Still obviously not useful to our current situation." He wasn't even sure how interested in 'battalion' scale combined arms manuever the Canopians were because Seghal had looked at him like he was out of his mind when he had laid out the plans to run the excercise so it was just going to be the Canopians he was responsible for and his own tanks though it would have been nice to have some local infantry to represent for the drills.

    He certainly hadn't considered it all together that great of ask, hey lend me some infantry for drill operations in a few weeks? Had he gotten a response? No, it wasn't Seghal, but somewhere along the line someone had probably decided 'I'm not going to answer this email one way or the other', because a 'no' would have been an answer. They would make do without them, but it was the Canopians problem, he supposed if they did want to integrate the units into the rest later.

    --

    --
    They weren't technically on a garrison contract. There were clauses and sub clauses about defense retainers, and this and that that MRB had grumblingly set up to cover the unfortunate, but probable outcomes of well what if scenarios involving pirates. That was more of a... well of a what if scenario where things did go wrong. They weren't however intended to be Luxen's primary line of defense, and that was why Septim had been worried about having some hot shot with a big name come in and talking his way into the job.

    Gene wasn't worried about that problem there was a certain mystique that had involved not just First Luxen's BattleRoms hitting the news just as he was shipping off with IE, but then months later when the Detroit BattleRoms had arrived to be consumed by the public. In black or dark green his marauder's distinctive shape had cropped into a variety of art work, murals, and well graffiti. That and coming back with a dropship and a company of vehicles to support him and Bahar with her mech.

    Septim had never said anything about getting called into the Planetary Defense Headquarters to be involved in regular briefings. Part of it was they weren't just dealing the remains of the Scratch Company, but it was still something akin to awkward. It made sense of course, the local planetary government didn't have a real air force... well one of the local nobles had some conventional air breathers but she was on the far western shore southern continent and those weren't necessarily going to be very quick to respond to defend anything this far north. No ASFs.

    1st​ Luxen should have been an entire regiment... but outside of the royal guard regiment Gene had his doubts whether any of the MAF were actually up to their on paper allocated strength. Even if they were the diminished size of the province of Luxen coupled with the lack of threats throughout most of the succession wars had resulted in it and its sister regiments being terribly understrength, and that had been before the Azami had swatted people's volunteers, militia, units aside during the recent battle of Luxen.

    Well relatively recent, especially by planetary history standards.

    He was the only person not wearing the blue uniforms of the MAF. He was the youngest person here... and he was having a hard time not cracking a social general joke. Seghal wasn't that bad, but some of the other staff officers none of whom he recognized from the battle, but again the 2nd​ and for the most part 3rd​ only really existed on paper.

    That and... no one seemed to have invited the infantry, or armor. Nominally at least the only people here were people who owned Mechs and who had purchased their commission. He'd never seen Seghal's mech, or her in it, but she'd been in the Headquarters vehicle during the battle for Luxen... so there was that. Most of these other people though, well some of them had probably legitimately been off world, and there was nothing that they could have done. With the way talk about defending the city had opened the conference, or whatever you wanted to call the staff meeting he wasn't thrilled at the prospect, but the final item was really he supposed why he was here, "So Lady Raventhir has scheduled the drill?"

    Seghal nodded, and filled him in on the details as the rain started rattling the windows of the room ... and they had two weeks, which was good, but they had two weeks because Lady Raventhir was coming in person, and it was going to take her that long to get her via her personnel JumpShip because she was coming to watch the show.

    --
    Commentary: So this is basically all content that was originally going to be cut, and what this and other segments that will follow will total out to, probably updwards of a dozen parts to the chapter, because originally these was going to be three chapters.
     
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    • The Jolly Roger Affair
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    • The Jolly Roger Affair​
    Sarna's Canon article for reference: https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Jolly_Roger_Affair

    So I'm going to start on a tangent. The fandom, or parts of the fandom, like to describe the combine as Feudal Japan in Space. This is 'wrong'. Air quotes are necessary, and I'll get to that. This is because the Combine is basically Imperial Japan in Space, through the lens of the eighties and as a result of being future eighties, and neo feudal future in many parts there is a distortion. In many ways the Combine is an improvement on Imperial Japan, for all the fucked up shit the Combine does it actually has some notable step ups from WW2 Japan, and also it does hew closer to a kind of Imperial Japan's romanticized view of feudal Japan than Imperial Japan actually managed, especially Imperial Japan of World War 2. However the DCMS is a more professional military than the IJA was, now what I mean by that is that the Combine doesn't suffer the same problem of you have junior enlisted officers going around starting shit in neighboring countries to advance what they think is the correct national policy. [Combine leadership doesn't really need help in that department any way] You don't have an Inanzo Nitobe in the Combine having to explain in the successions war (or ever that I can find) explaining stuff like the Manchuria incident in space, or what not. Yeah, and ontop of that is that the 1st and 2nd Succession wars meant there isn't a need for things like Washington Naval treaty (of which you could potentially argue there existed an equivalent of if not as high profile during hte STar League era). However this is the thing the combine is a much more centralized, arguably more effective Imperial Japan. Its an Imperial Japan with the Japanese Golden Year Keiretsus running business without any of the nuance of real life.

    This is important I think before we talk about the Jolly Roger affair, because the way I see it, ComStar has many parallels to the problem of the Imperial Japanese Army, and what I mean by this is the following. The Jolly Roger affair basically occurs because the First Circuit feels that the third succession war is slowing down, can't have that. Now, this doesn't absolve Primus Russenstein anymore than it absolves any Japanese Prime Minister after *insert your preferred date here* and so the robes make the brilliant idea of giving Rom orders to '3001 to enact a plan to supply pirate forces in the Periphery with combat equipment as well as financial and logistical aid to set up pirate operations in various isolated parts of the Periphery to stir up and escalate military conflict in the general area.' Now this isn't explicitly Imperial Japan, though they did supply arms to competing warlords in China. They weren't the only imperial power to provide weapons to advance an agenda. The point though is not to draw parallels or attempt to draw parallels.

    Anyway the goal is to get the Combine and the Lyrans back to fighting one another. Well 'In 3004 two of the Jolly Roger bandit kings, "Black" Jack McGirk and Darleen Dunson, became lovers and joined forces. Between them, they fielded almost a regiment of BattleMechs and support forces, constituting an unusually strong force by Periphery standards which they used to conduct a series of lightning-fast raids. Following their example, other pirates also joined forces to gear up on choice targets.' So earlier I remarked that here ComStar's experience with the Jolly Roger affair went worse for them in Canon. Now think back to tabletop lore the size of the Magistracy Armed Forces that I quoted earlier, this is what canon has to say: ' they fielded almost a regiment of BattleMechs and support forces'. This is just those two, you'll note it also says other pirates did the same. Again in canon in 3025 the MAF had 10 Regiments of Mech strength (10 Regiments, 2 battalions, including mercenaries). So ComStar made it so that these two pirates getting together were fielding almost a tenth the strength of the armed forces of a major periphery power, that's not 'unusually strong' that's what the fuck were you thinking?

    So how did this end in canon for ComStar? 'McGirk's forces achieved a 2.3 to 1 kill ratio against the inexperienced ComStar Guards...' oh and this too 'Although he really had little personal responsibility for the affair, the failure was laid at the feet of Primus Rusenstein rather than on the actual sponsors of the plan, and severely damaged his position and authority. '

    Spoiler alert I already stated that here it went worse. Here ComStar didn't even do that well, because I've talked about this with friends, and the general consensus that we have is that ComStar probably ambushed McGirk. Regardless of the other possible explanation of how it went in canon, (i.e. ComStar brought SLDF Royal equipment for example) here they lost.

    McGirk and those other pirate kingdoms weren't destroyed in or around the year 3005. Here McGirk and his 'renegade pirates' basically murdered 1st ComsGuards in open battle and went off to keep doing pirate shit. He's not the only one and that is why pirates are a long running perceived threat in this story in the periphery or at least a contributing factor. ComStar cracked open their stockpile because some members of the first circuit talked the rest into this would be a good idea and gave out battlemechs, asf, dropships, and hard currency among other support to try and egg on the third succession war, and it didn't accomplish the objective they were looking for and blew up in their face. It doesn't result in a return to the level of Lyran Combine hostility that was the original goal, and I don't see how it was supposed to achieve that. ComStar gave a bunch of pirates in the periphery border between the two a bunch of equipment to agitate between the Lyrans (who wanted to throttle back), and the Combine who wanted to focus on the Fed Suns. If the goal had really been to increase tensions why not inflame the FedSuns and Combine against each other harder... anyway...

    Then of course the Wolfs Dragoons show up.
     
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    • The Wolf Dragoons
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    • The Wolf Dragoons​
    Unlike with the Jolly Roger Affair this lot shouldn't need any introductions, but they are tied to it. 'Formed' in 3004 the Wolf Dragoons arrived in the Inner Sphere at the end of the Jolly Roger Affair, well "The Jolly Roger Affair, together with the unexpected appearance of the five regiments of pristine 'Mechs of Wolf's Dragoons seemingly out of nowhere, led to Primus Rusenstein's forced resignation from office a year later." They would enter into the service of the Federated Suns, and are at the present of the story in the employ of the Free Worlds League. As everyone should know the Dragoons were a clan recon mission to scope out the Inner Sphere staffed largely by free births, and brought with them a number of unique things to the Inner Sphere. People have already mentioned the Marauder II, an Assault Mech inspired by the venerable Marauder, and produced under exclusivity agreements with Blackwell Industries, and we'll get to that along with other things the Wolves would bring in.

    'They were equipped with what the Clans erroneously believed to be an average lineup of outdated BattleMechs, supposed to make them appear wholly inconspicuous: Five regiments of 'Mechs, including designs that were either essentially extinct in the Inner Sphere (such as the Flea, Falcon, and Hoplite) or had never before been seen there (such as the Imp and the Annihilator), complemented with likewise extraordinary support units, DropShips, and JumpShips. The Dragoons also had Hephaestus Station, a (mobile) space station with a BattleMech assembly line for the Dragoons' exclusive ARC-2W subvariant of the Archer.'

    Now this quote is important for a number of reasons. A lot of people like to zero in on Hephaestus for example as just a battlemech assembly line, but Hephaestus also permitted the dragoons to manufacture Endo-Steel which is much less cost prohibitive (for a given value of fasanomics) to manufacture in orbit rather than planet side. However arguably the more important factor is a fact it shows in the Early Clan history. See like the Atlas and King Crab were the result of design requests from Aleksander Kerensky the Imp was a product of his son Nicholas who is responsible for much of the clans idiocy. The Imp is in many respects in line with the role played by the Atlas. However the Imp is originally from 2793 well into the Exodus, while the Annhilator is actually an SLDF design its earliest known model dates from 2779 before Kerensky relieved of command of the SLDF and before the Exodus. Thus it wouldn't be impossible to think that the Inner Sphere might have had the later, but given Nicholas's importance to the clans and the mythology of the Exodus why would they think the Imp would be around?

    This brings us to something that is not necessarily canon per se, though it does have some support, is that the clans during Nicky's reign, or more Nicky himself and his immediate supporters heavily censored recordings of history, and probably outright destroyed competing historical records with much caught in the crossfire. Clan historical records are simply inaccurate, or outright propagandist fabrications? Maybe. Whatever the case the Wolves showed up with a lot of things that wowed the Inner Sphere upon their arrival, and would do a lot of other things early on during their employment with House Davion.

    This is where we will talk about Blackwell Industries, but first a minor side bar. The Merlin (the mech piloted by Septim)debuted in 3010 in the Lyran Commonwealth. 'The Merlin was hailed as a technological marvel at the time it was released, as it was the first completely new design to be developed in over 100 years.' The Marauder II debuted two years later, having only been in development since 3010. The Marauder II the hundred ton Marauder is not the only Blackwell product produced largely exclusively for the Dragoons even though it often overshadows the rest. The Dragoons (including Snords Irregulars here) would go on to furnish Blackwell with plans for a wide range of equipment including OmniVehicle Technology.

    Omni Vehicle technology are largely overshadowed (looked down upon) by the clans but were developed by Clan Hell Horse. The wolves partnered with Blackwell in 3007 and in 3008 the Badger rolled off the production line for the first time. Now the explanation for why this didn't attract more attention is that one it was an infantry carrier, and two it was produced under the same sort of agreement that the Marauder II would be produced under. Omni Technology was not a Star League development. The road towards it did begin with the Mercury BattleMech, and we are told that Clan Wolverine would develop the Mercury II which would be the basis for the Clan Coyote Coyotl the first Omni Mech. Omni Vehicles though would only be developed in the late 2900s (though MUL claims 2884 for the Epona) by the clans meaning the Bandit if the 30th century is correct arrived in the Inner Sphere relatively quickly and in a much cheaper form. Because the other OmniVehicle Blackwell would produce the Bandit is supposedly directly inspired by the Hell Horse Epona. The Bandit also entered production in 3008.

    The Merlin, these two Omni Vehicles, the Marauder II all emerged back to back, and while the Merlin was independent of the Wolf Dragoons or clan influence it does sort of undrecut the popular fanon that Comstar and its Holy Shroud shenigans were particularly effective. It is important to remember that in canon Holy Shroud 1 was occuring simultaneous with the great houses pursuing a similar campaign of assassination and bombing of vital enemy infrastructure. Holy Shroud II was deemed within ComStar itself a failure. It would certainly be very easy to handwave Blackwell Industries as plotshields, but then there is the Merlin, and other equipment including other Vehicles, and new versions of Mechs that begin to emerge in the early 31st Century completely indpendent of the Wolves.

    It is very clear that ComStar was alarmed by the Wolf Dragoons, and attempted to discern their origins, it does not appear however in canon that Blackwell or the Merlin's creators were subject to reprisal by Comstar (until the World of Blake Jihad at least). Comstar simply didn't have the resources or frankly the experience to successfully carry out Holy Shroud II because by that point the Inner Sphere and its great houses had learned to take appropriate measures. Did ComStar still try? Yes but this was more limitted to technologies like JumpDrives, or attacks on efforts by the Lyrans, and then later FedSuns research efforts into the HPG. The Dragoons introduced a technology for Vehicles which should have quickly been noticed that if you can do this for Vehicles why not do it for Mechs...

    and we'll get to that.
     
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    • The Federated Suns
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    • The Federated Suns​

    Often oversimplified or derided as the Good Guys, the Federated Suns are one of the five Successor States, which of course everyone should know. As I've already mentioned in this series of extras they were also the first employers of the mysterious Wolfs Dragoons, and are also the home polity of Blackwell Industries. (As previously stated Blackwell Industries is on New Valencia which is part of the Federated Suns.) Well in any event we will get to that but first we should go ahead and discuss the situation. The Wolf Dragoons, who have as of 'current' in story time passed into the service of House Marik, were originally hired on by Ian Davion the then prince of the Fed Suns...

    Unfortunately he died, leaving his younger brother Hanse to the throne, and Ian's death was part of an increasing trend of belligerence in the third succession war between the Draconis Combine and the Fed Suns, which had begun to show in the late 30th century. This is touched on as ComStar for whatever reason, or rather members of its First Circuit, were concerned by the Lyran lack of aggression on the Combine front and instituted what would become the Jolly Roger Affair which would canonically dovetail into the arrival of the Dragoons.

    Now as I have mentioned previous in 3017 there will be an engagement on Elidere IV. A Combine Raid on a Fed Suns world, specifically part of a string of raids by the Combine conducted by the 19th Galedon as part of a wider Combine cross border. This conflict in canon is not well documented, but it does have a canonical basis, and the offensive thrust seems to have been partially successful, however in the strategic sense in canon this year would also mark the loss of several near Terra (that is close to Earth) worlds that the Combine had held to the Federated Suns. In short the Combine would in 3017 be launching raids while the Fed Suns would begin a string of planetary conquests. Now canon is unclear but it does seem as if the Combine started these raids in 3016, but that is made on the assumption that the battle for Mallory's world that year was related to those raids, which is something I'm skeptical of as Mallory's world is much closer to Terra.

    It is also possible that the Fed Suns conquest of near Terra worlds was in response to that incursion and Combine JumpShips being tied up in cross borders raids, which is based off FASA Numbers for JumpShips. There are other explanations, but we move on. Indeed 3017 presents a unique issue in that there, there is an inclination to try and be involved in too many canonical events in the Fed Suns. For example in July Candance Liao leads a raid on Spica which ends with her canonical future husband injuring her to the point she can't pilot a mech anymore. Now Spica is one Jump from St Ives.

    So lets move on to discuss what contracts are currently outlined in 3017 related to the Fed Suns if we're already aware of the Elidere IV Battle if not the details. Part of this is an IE related contract, 'something something star league depot'. The other though is the Davion conquest of near terra worlds from the Combine,. It is Elidere and the surounding raids of the Galdeon Regulars that I assume take place early in the year and that is how the current draft is progressing.

    Now from 'Bard's' quote, and the ballad I'm sure some have already guessed towards the outcome of the Combine Raid by the Regulars. Now as I've suggested Elidere is not just the Galedon Regulars being lead for a merry chase, and then finding out they've bitten off vastly more than they can chew and then getting run all the way back to the starport, but that is a good summation of it. Is that enough for House Davion to nudge Blackwell? Maybe.

    An expansion on that might also be, 'well since your contract with IE is done, want to hire on and invade some combine worlds closer to Terra since youre going that way anyway, especially since you need to buy and hire more people?' /AFFS Merc Liaison

    This is still a work in progress, but moving into 3017 we move into the waning years of the third succession war, and ever closer to Archon Steiner sending out her peace proposal to the other Great Houses.
     
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    • II Luxen Part 4
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    • 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 1st​ 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.
     
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    • II Luxen Part 5
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    • II Luxen Part 5​

    He collapsed into the couch still sweaty from the workout, and unlocked the terminal to a slew of messages. Some of them were just confirmation, and he half glanced through as they reminded him of the other other problem.

    That other, other issue was Lady Raventhir coming along. House Raventhir was a cadet branch of the ruling House Centrella of Canopus. What made them interesting was the fact the existed more or less as Gene was able to determine to keep the number of Centrella's down. They weren't the only cadet branch but due to the importance of the name they were the cadet branch people thought of... and if he had to guess Lady Raventhir was looking for something to distinguish her from the rest of the pack.

    Martial distinction seemed to be what she was going for... wehther that was because it was what the Raventhir name was associated with doing or just because it was necessary he didn't know, but he didn't want to be involved in noble politics even if all this seemed mostly benign. The scratch company was something thrown together as an emergency response, and for all the glory and focus they'd gotten in local media it wasn't a professional unit. It had been recruited from individuals who were available to fill a need, and even now or during Septim's previous rotation had apparently largely kept to their own devices.

    While not a 'tourist planet' or 'pleasure world' Luxen had plenty of dive bars, and pubs to get drunk at and have a good time. Its entertainment venues might have been tame by some canopian standards but that just meant that there weren't any official Mech Gladiator games like more coreward Canopian provincial capitals.

    The unit more or less spent time working and when they got 'off' from regular hours went to their own hobbies and pastimes. He supposed that could have been a bad thing. A bigger unit of MechWarriors might well have ended up having to fish MechWarriors out of the local drunk tank, or worse... but so far he hadn't had that problem. They weren't a close unit though, and he was cognizant of that. Lady Raventhir had been surprised that he spent so much time on academic or classroom instruction.

    He could have just commented that was because he was working with MechWarriors who really had no previous military experience and barely any training... which was true. Septim's instruction had been more hands on, more focused on gunnery and the kind of BattleMech fighting that was normal for Mercenary work, and the periphery. As a result Gene had been fully prepared to leave hands on tutoring to continue for individuals, and try and organize the command to run administratively. He had had other things to do after all. Should he have been spending more time socializing with the unit? Maybe.

    He tapped the key and dropped down the roster of messages. The big change from coming back from the IE job hadn't been the money it had been coming back with defacto the assets for the company. Officially he had registered the Leviathan-class JumpShip as the Colorado. It was officially his name on the paperwork though the crew were Azami volunteers, and the ship itself had... probably originally been Taurian flagged five hundred years earlier. Regardless the Leviathan class was easy to maintain even if still technically obsolete, and was in the process of a ... renovation in terms of livability.

    So since name was on the paperwork for Colorado, and the Leviathan he got the paperwork for the business side to look over. Thankfully none of the MechWarriors had any interest in this side of it... Septim might have had some idea, and Bahar probably did.. but. He scrolled through the receipts and blew out a breath. Even after all costs the JumpShips, even just the Lebanon made more money they they were. Somebody had told him that an Invader out here could clear upwards of three hundred thousand C Bills if they were doing well. That was a weekly possible take home for a JumpShip not terribly dissimilar to Lebanon's own Liberty class. Invaders had one less collar. There was no real market to buy JumpShips after all... so if the Azami could manage to get even half of the Alexandrian Colony fleet of JumpShips at mothball ... geez they would be rolling in money... and probably attract attention too.

    He clicked the terminal icon acknowledged the receipt, and approved the transition of funds to the bank, and waited for ComStar to send him a receipt... that was one thing about Detroit he'd be glad to get back to. The MRB people on Detroit had been a lot more proactive and helpful than friar tuck was... he was just kind of annoying lackadaisical and didn't want to do anything. Maybe it wasn't the same thing, but ComStar Phi and the MRB on Detroit had been much quicker to talk to one another than their equivalents on Luxen.

    It was annoying, but Tuck did tend to get around to it eventually. The shipboard clock chimed telling him he still needed to get a shower.

    --

    The lift opened and let him in. He wasn't the first person in, but he hadn't expected to be.

    The first class passenger cabins were.. had not been a high priority. The Colorado, and Lebanon had been plying as Merchant JumpShips out of Luxen not exactly running as pleasure cruises, but even so it was an oversight that they hadn't gotten that finished before they needed the JumpShip for something.

    Still the ninety meter grav deck provided an excellent location to hold briefings on the upcoming operation. Abner hadn't been understating the agrarian green beauty of the Pioche that had been, and Abner probably wasn't wrong. Pioche had during the Star League been too unimportant to warrant an HPG to be installed by the then Ministry of Communications, and a hundred plus light years rim ward of the modern Canopian border it certainly hadn't been important enough after Amaris had been put down. Nineteen years after Kerensky had fled into exile a rock had come down and hit the planet and the Inner Sphere forgot all about the world. Only the Canopians, who had provided the original colonists for it, and to whom it had officially belonged had paid attention to it and that was part of the reason Luxen's historic maps of the magistracy before the New Vandenburg Revolts showed it.

    Gene suspected that someone from the Magistracy had most likely thought there was a Rim World Republic base there and once the Succession wars had started had gone nosing around, and tripped some Amaris esque booby trap.

    That would explain how little notice the historical record reported had been available before the rock had hit the planet. Abner wasn't wrong though, the climate shock from the asteroid dust induced ice age would have been something the DOME could have fixed, but nature would eventually thaw the planet without human help, but that didn't stop Abner from going on about it as they waited. There were apparently a number of rimward periphery DOME facilities that had gone dark as a result of the New Vandenburg uprising and had then been lost to history that IE was now ready to investigate thanks to new maps.

    Star charts, whatever.

    The map of the planet was from orbit from Abner's last visit.

    "Pioche is technically warming, but that doesn't mean its warm." The tropical regions, much like earth during its ice age were still warm enough to support cold blooded reptiles, but the meteor had done more short term environmental damage in terms of extinction. They would have transponders in their mechs... but on review of the schematics of the Vindicator he was really hoping no one had to punch out of one. That was going to need be incorporated into the unit safety briefing. For being apparently the workhorse of an Inner Sphere Military it was a little alarming how unreliable, unsafe, the ejection system was. "The Magistracy and IE have identified a site based on," He decided he was just going to come flat out and say it, "Some old maps they have of the planet circa 2750. If it looks good when we get there we're going to put down there and establish a base camp."

    If not well they'd figure out based on what things looked like, but from there the plan was going to be to move on to general reconnoiter. I.E. Wanted to investigate the impact site of the asteroid as well but it wasn't like that was a priority until they had a base camp set up.

    "What if there are people still on the planet?" Gladys 'Bubbles' Chang asked.

    "Hmm," Doctor Abner looked up, "That would be quite an astonishing development indeed. I couldn't begin to fathom how jealous some of my colleagues in human anthropology would be about the process a society would have to undergo to survive such rigors." He seemed positively giddy about it, and Lady Raventhir had to gently coax the old man back on the subject of their mission parameters. "yes, yes of course my dear. We're not even equipped to handle a first contact expedition, but in the future, yes, imagine..." He idled off to his reading again, but if they hadn't been well underway... Gene suspected that most likely there would have been an attempt to add even more IE personnel to the roster. "We're going to set down if our first landing zone is viable, and we might have to clear some trees, but nothing serious."

    Not their problem. "What should we expect in terms of a base camp. In terms of defenses,"

    "I don't believe there were any overt Rim World presence on the surface." Abner replied. "There shouldn't be any defenses to speak of."

    So in theory there shouldn't have been any automated defenses to trip over. In theory. "House Amaris before the Civil War enjoyed a lot of Terran support," Over the objections of the Star League Intelligence Service, and Generals of the SLDF he was half tempted to add, but didn't. "They had technology that they," Fuck it, "Shouldn't have had. That will potentially include turrets as well potentially drones." Maybe.

    "Drones?"

    "Unmanned combat platforms." He answered without turning from the doctor, and then. "Usually tanks." He added.

    "I don't think we'll need to worry about that," Abner responded twiddling his thumb, "We will exercise more caution than last time." He glanced to Bahar and smiled apologetically, "What we want to do this trip is to investigate. To try and line up the old maps with how the planet looks now, do fly overs, and see if we can examine the areas around the impact site."

    "What if there is another booby trap that tries to send another rock into the planet, Doctor?"

    "The asteroid was detected two weeks before it impacted the planet."

    Maybe they should have brought some of those old Taurian nukes. He didn't say that. 'Last time' had been enough to get him side eyed when it had been said...
    --
    Commentary: So again Arc 2 of II Luxen what could have potential been its own standalone chapter, but I didn't pursue that because it ran into the same problem as I ran into with IE, and in some respects the issue I had to a lesser extent with Elidere.

    Elidere has an archaeology / lostech segment but it also has the Galedon Regulars show up to cause trouble because thats what they're doing at that point in time so there was a much more natural transition from we're exploring, to oh battle.
     
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    • 3-3016
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    • RoyalTwinFangs said:
    So on the paperwork Gene own a jumpship? That would make getting jobs easier by being able to get them more reliable then those that don't.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    On paper work Gene owns two JumpShips though they're incorporated separately from the Merc Company proper, imagine like a conglomerate or other large business venture where there is a shipping department that has nominally the same owners, but different officers. The JumpShips crew, like the armor company are all Azami, and the Lebanon is originally an Azami JumpShip.


    Lets see if I can make I make the forum do something approximating what I want or if I'm going to have to subject you all to my horrible handwriting... yeah no thats not working

    Current Order of Battle (Canopian Cadre)
    c. March 3016    ​
    Strategic Mobility
    Lebanon Liberty-class JumpShip [Originally an Azami JumpShip]
    Colorado Leviathan-class JumpShip [Originally an Alexandrian JumpShip]

    Ground Forces

    Canopian Experimental Company 'Easy' sans attached Mercenaries
    [Note that this is March of 3016, before the unit receives any Phoenix Hawks, as they will in later life. These are all stock Mechs.]
    Abel Platoon
    6x Vindicators

    Baker Platoon
    6x Vindicators

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


    Delta / Company Headquarters/reserves
    2 Shadow Hawks
    2 Stingers

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

    Armor Company [Azami formation]
    Company HQ
    Tank Section (2 Heavy tanks)
    Support Battery (2 LRM Carriers)
    2x Light Vehicle Lances tasked for recon and harassment

    That leaves Gene, and Bahar in their respective mechs as defacto Light Combined Arms Battalion CO and XO on paper and the Sam Houston as formal Battalion Headquarters and support, but in actual practical battle means that in traditional doctrine the Mercenaries can fill out all base Six unit formations in Easy Company in addition to fielding another full lance of Mechwarriors [So six Mech normal mech Lances total plus a vehicle company, plus a dropship, though no ASF]

    This brings us back to Laxard's question on Septim's position in the company, meaning the Merc Unit as a whole. He's defacto CO over Easy company, and also the other five veterans of the scratch company who signed on with him to run the original cadre after gene left. Effectively a Captain's billet. Bahar technically has command authority over the DropShip, and the armor as well if Gene isn't around and thus is a Major equivalent. She might theoretically out rank Septim, but they're two distinct commands in the unit.
     
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    • Septim Scrap #1
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    • Septim Scrap #1​
    Septim hadn't been able to sleep... at least this time it wasn't the animals again. He had seen ravenous wolves and green birds prowl across the surface of Terra too many times in his nightmares the last few years. Those same greens birds he'd seen tearing at corpses of men who had worn the same Lyran Guards uniform he had worn. The dreams that had haunted him when he'd been a lieutenant on Orkney.

    The Dreams had started almost a decade earlier. Not always the animals though... like this time it had been a black flag waving in the sky. The last six month on Luxen had been some of the best of the lot... it wasn't like being in the Commonwealth's Armed Forces he had finally shaken off the feeling that Azami were just going to come back and completely steamroller them.

    They hadn't, and it wasn't as if he'd had dreams about that. So was he supposed tell someone? Who the fifteen year old who was probably a marksman ten times over? Yeah right. He had left the guards because he had hated the political game that was the LCAF. He had only wanted to pilot his mech, hang out and drink beers with the guys not not get dragged constantly down into the mire of every social plot and counter plot, or watch generals try and determine the price of a mile on some far off planet.

    No this was hands down the best unit he'd ever been with, and risking that on superstitious bad dreams that could have been caused by the curry the night before was insane. If he was ever going back to Tamar it would be as a big famous mercenary looking to come back and retire when he was old and gray. Or that was the dream anyway... that was what he told himself he was working towards... wasn't it what every dog of war said the dream was? Get rich go home and show it off to everybody back there that they had made it big?

    It was a lot easier just being a singular mechwarrior making two thousand c bills a month living on a stead y corporate paycheck than it was being an officer dealing with politics. The contracts thing by itself had about killed him, cause it had been everything wrong with his life today magnified, when he should have been happy for what it signified. He'd talked a bunch decent guys together into sticking around and taking a good paying job.

    Then he'd been stuck dangling there as the man at the top worrying when someone was going to run him off of the job. He had never had it happen before, but he'd heard about it happening. This was the first contract where it might be worth enough to have someone try it.

    By the time Septim had dragged himself down the mess he was awake enough that they were apparently starting to run out of the good coffee. Not that the local luxen coffee was bad, it was caffeine after all, but he was little surprised Abner was up and mobile far more than his frame might have suggested. The old doctor waved at him to come and sit. "Ah Mr Alexander, welcome, welcome do sit down."

    "Thank you professor."

    "Didn't sleep well?"

    He shrugged, "Something like that," Septim deflected.

    "Don't trouble yourself over that drone business now. Its not anything to worry about, though admittedly I very much would like to find Amaris's fabled crystal palace. There are no records of the SLDF ever finding it, but Amaris allegedly constructed a kind, palatial castle brian for his family. I would expect that such an expenditure would have included countless priceless treasures of the rim world republic at its height.

    Truthfully he hadn't even been thinking about the Drone comment from the day before. It had been a weird exchange especially who was probably pushing seventy and someone half Septim's age, but then, "The commander didn't seem thrilled at the prospect of it happening again?" He was fishing now.

    "No I imagine not," Abener looked off in the distance dreamily reliving some archaeological adventurer months, "Star League era sites are so interesting, all sorts of things in them that tell us so much about things were back then. Oh my biggest concern is that due to how much water is on the planet any potential rim world facilities on the planet may have actually been built under the seas you know. The Rim World Republic had a history of doing that, I couldn't even begin to fathom how long it might take to organize never mind conduct a search, never mind the reduced sea level due the ice age." The doctor stopped himself coming a up a little short for breath, "I do terribly apologize MR Alexander I do let the topics sometimes get away from me at times."

    "Hey, you're signing the check right, anything that might help uphold my end of the job." Septim chuckled. "Its just business."

    "Yes, yes quite right. I suppose Mindy is technically signing the checks. She'd be utterly delighted if she could find some treasure trove. A BattleMech production line of Marauders is what I think she most desperately wants to find." Septim commented that the Magistracy already had one, "Yes, it was liberated by the SLDF and then refurbished from Amaris's army. Its been in service ever since, but really its the performance of Mr Shepherd's Marauder. Really I think any battlemech factory at all, never mind a heavy one, would a big enough feather in her cap. Any kind of salvageable industry found on this trip would more than pay for it. I just wish we could restore the planet to how it had been. Find some DOME outpost somewhere and fix this horrible ice thing."

    "How would that work?" He regretted the question just as soon as it left his mouth.

    "Well the best way would be two fold of course, you see the Star League manufactured solar mirrors that were easily transportable by jumpships to reflect more sunlight onto a planet, and the second way would be that they'd build big atmospheric adjusters. Those would be much harder to find of course, but they were used for planets like Lone Star. The Star League was terraforming some planets in this stretch of well what we regrettably must call the Canopian ruins. Even just a few solar mirrors would let us help the planet heat back up to more temperate conditions."
    --
    Commentary: This was not the one I was originally going to write, and even this got side tracked by two other BattleTech pieces of fiction set during the clan invasion, which we will talk about in a minute. So this a scrap, it is kind of nominally canon. The whole Septim has visions of the Clans thing thats 'canonical' for the story itself. Even though its not explicitly spelled out those 'visions' also tie in the Wolfs Dragoons arrival in the sphere. Septim isn't the only person in this story or in canon who have these kinds of prophetic warnings about not just the clans but other threats. Is this a major part of the story, no not really, I know recent BattleTech (relatively speaking maybe,) has tried to play down the supernatural aspects but I don't care we're gonna have Ki abilities, and other stuff and what not crop up from time to time. As for the visions the cult of st cameron is a thing, Comstar has visions of the clan from time to time. The Clans do visions sometimes. Its fine.

    Moving on:

    So we've wrapped back around to the clans for this story we will get to our first encounter in due time, but one of the ideas I was had considered was something brought up in SB. A break up, a great balkanization of the Inner Sphere. Lets get out in front of this. Nicholas Kerensky was a lunatic, and quite frankly even he didn't just come out and insanely declare that whichever clan got to Terra would get to be IlClan that is some crazy that the clans themselves decided to adopt right before the invasion... and you know I've said here, if we ever get to the point where the clan's are invading Gene's whole attitude of 'the star league is dead, or the Star League died with house cameron and its never coming back' would be controversial. to say the least.

    And taking Terra is not going to get the Inner Sphere to accept clan overlord ship because Terra has been under Comstar 'stewardship' since what 2780? Terra doesn't really mean anything to the Great Houses strategically or as political importance, and speaking of ComStar having a clan show up and declare itself IlClan is very likely to result in the Wobbies early or in ComStar as a whole going nuts at their own delusional mythos being proven wrong and nukes. ANd of course there is the fact that most likely any clan who got to Terra first would inevitably get stabbed in the back by other clans who 'dispute' their getting to Terra.

    Anyway and its this idea that leads to me having this clan invasion era prompt of where you don't have the great houses any more (or the great houses exist but in a much more rump state) so much as everything has reduced down a level, to the provinces. The Clans are still around but are exhausted their warship fleet having allowed them to sunder the great houses but there several hundred warships eventually attritted by not only fights with other warships but destroyed by just ASF fighters being desperate. Worlds have been destroyed. Terra is gone.(Maybe ComStar nuked the planet rather than let the 'sldf returnees' have it, maybe Jade Falcon threw a tantrum at not being ilClan) Its just duchies and what not and now you need more mercenaries than ever because even the clans have splintered into their galaxy commanders trying to become khans of little fiefdoms in the Inner Sphere or periphery.


    Like as an opening something like this idea, that I will probably not use.
    All the Khans get to Terra, basically we'll just say Gene but it could be someone else, but the idea was Phantom MechWarrior OP, Gene gets the drop on them with *insert armed infantry power armor turned elementals whatever* troops and has all the Khans at gunpoint. And tell thems bluntly the Star League is gone, and it doesn't matter that they have terra. Then goes "but tell you what I have this perfectly good Dire Wolf A. Since you have come here and caused this much trouble go pick your mech I will kill each of you in single combat for all of your troops to watch."

    And then since Phantom MechWarrior you get some straight Kell or Yorinaga bullshit and they can't hit the side of barn while he's putting Gauss through their cockpits. End of it all the Khans are dead and this has been broadcast to the whole of the inner sphere and being beamed back to the clans.

    Then Gene just fucking leaves for the periphery. and the Clans just completely splinter. Some of them over run the last great house resistance but can't hold ground against local forces. Opening / prologue over, and it picks up a few years later with the new status quo
    Now part of this as an idea hinges on a more complete invasion corridor, you need a minimum of two clans invading for the other two states. (The capellans, and FWL) Or you need an explanation of why the FWL isn't intact as a result, maybe the capellans just finally bought it from residual pressure of the war
     
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    • II Luxen Part 6
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    • II Luxen Part 6​

    Space travel wasn't really that bad, but he would glad to get back ground side. The artificial gravity generated by the grav deck rotating was okay... and helped, but dirt... dirt was nice. It would have been great if they could have been doing this groundside.

    Not today though.

    They were in space today.

    As much of a probably not a good idea as it was... the unit had a split chain of command. It was something they were dancing around, but even as Bahar dug through SLDF training documents to distribute to the Light Mech pilots sitting against the tables during this stint of down time that was hard to miss.

    It could have been worse. He had some legitimate concerns that Bahar's gender would have created drama that they frankly didn't need with regards to running cadre for the canopians. ... yeah really was kind of glad that hadn't reared its head... but then the Canopians had experience with Septim even the ones added to the expanded roster had known he had been around the last year. Strictly in unit Septim had the rest of the scratch company... and if things came to it, Bahar could direct spot, or otherwise exercise a separate company level command over the armor complement. That was sort of why he'd moved her back over to that role rather than trying to put her directly over the rest of the light mech unit as a whole.

    That was what they had to do. Classwork. The Colorado didn't have sim pods unfortunately, and neither did the Sam Houston. It wasn't exactly the sort of the thing you could pick up just anywhere but they weren't super rare either.

    There were a few that the magistracy had on Luxen but they were... if Gene were being honest utterly garbage. They were nothing like the ones in the Castle Outpost. He didn't have the time, or inclination to go down there, and just rip those out, but he certainly missed them, and it wasn't even like he had had access to them for all that long. He was also out of the hydroponic's system's coffee from the Outpost finally... mostly because the Canopians actually grew coffee... and the Azami had had plenty... presumably they would start growing coffee at some point on Eros.

    As for the Vindicators... well their briefing was going to consist primarily of sticking together where in the event if something did go wrong that they could mass their fire with LRMs before dividing into fire teams to concentrate their PPCs at range where possible. The idea of course there was... to keep them at range and having several of them gang up on a single enemy. That was the theory, but Septim had looked tired in the mess this morning.

    He tapped the map, because that split could have advantages. ... it just wasn't something that would be necessarily ideal for the Canopians though, "Modelling is going to be guesswork, even with satellite telemetry we have little idea of how much the topography is going to mess with maneuvers."

    The SLDF documents were well one part just scouting in unknown terrain, common enough refresher, but also warning packets about booby traps, electronic sensors, turrets and so forth. Things that might be normally concealed which would be bad to run into. Sure the Vindicators had jump jets, and maybe the pilots should have been in here to.

    The idea though was to run the recon unit as much like it would be done anywhere else in real field conditions. That, and well, "The others aren't here because we going to minimize jump jet usage where possible. Topography, and vertical clime aside we don't know how stable the ground is going to be." He responded, "Once we get vehicles unloaded we're going to move outward and attempt to get a feel for how much of the planetary maps need correcting."

    Pioche should have been a temperate world with mild weather and small ish continents. Glaciation, snowglobe effect, whatever you wanted to call it seemed to have created some gnarly looking ice sheets, which were going to continue to melt over probably the next two centuries barring something big. All that water being trapped though meant comparatively bigger landmasses and ... no idea what that would mean for moving.

    Septim stuck his head having obviously walked over from the other room where he was carrying on presumably much the same conversation. "So what happens if we get attacked by pirates?"

    That was a good question, especially with Raventhir's whole diatribe against the Marian hegemony to consider... but it was also unlikely, "The planet is in an ice age, there isn't any civilization, and I have a hard time expecting pirates would invest the resources for a base, but if we run into something our biggest vulnerability are the JumpShips. I'll talk to Raventhir about it when she gets up, but for now if make groundside contact make sure to figure out what we're up against first. We'll have civilians to protect so have the Vindicators' understand screening rolls."

    "and in a less theoretical situation?"

    "In all seriousness it would depend on what we're up against. If it comes down to it we'll probably be the ones doing the heavy fighting. If they're mediums or heavy mechs have the Vindicators exploit the terrain and we'll use the rest to pick them apart... but I can't really give you more clear instructions on such a vague hypothetical."
    --

    Apparently Raventhir's wish list for the planet would be an automated factory that produced Marauders. The Taurian Concordant had followed the examples of the Combine, and other Great Houses in adopting the SLDF workhorse mech from the original early 27th​ century Mech. The succession wars had long since meant no one was entirely convinced that the Taurians hadn't simply stolen the designs ala how the great houses had stolen the Mackie, but it had trickled out either way... and while never in comparative numbers to its volume with the SLDF regulars the Marauder had been an integral component in the usurper's Secret Army.

    It wasn't unreasonable that Amaris's Rim World Republic had contributed to spreading the design around, but it had never been the most common design. Majesty Metal's exiting Marauder production traced back to machines and tooling captured and refurbished by the SLDF after all so it wasn't impossible. They were however assuming Abner's rock theory was accurate, and that anything had survived... but again Gene got the feeling that they were probably holding back some evidence or facts about what they knew. 2799 would have been more than a decade into the first succession war... only several months after the Combine had finally been driven from Kentares IV... and there was the possibility that it hadn't been a booby trap at all, but still a man made disaster. Maybe there had been a factory there and someone had tossed a rock into a prosperous agricultural planet... maybe someone had just decided to toss a rock because it was a breadbasket world in the first place... they couldn't say with the facts they had on hand.

    On paper though they were looking into the possibility of a Rim Worlds Republic hidden facility on Pioche with manufacturing capability, and that was what the Magistracy was contracting I.E. To do their mercenary archaeology stint for with security and transport being provided... and so here they were. As for the Rim Worlds Republic presence... well they'd see when they got there. Being in charge of a unit was different than just shooting bandits, this was vastly different than just dancing around Zathras's sloppy attempts to chase him through the bush country last year.


    The transition confirmed that they were where they were supposed to be. A hundred fifteen light years south and west of the border... the modern border. They had been jumping through old canopian systems, from back when the canopians had a south western crescent added to their modern holdings comprising about twenty more worlds like Pioche. This was the right place, and it would take them about ten days to get from the JumpPoint to the planet's surface.

    The view from the JumpPoint matched up about with what they were expecting though. He sighed, with as small of a population as Luxen was it had been weird to buy a parka and winter clothing... especially as it had been season. As long as they stuck to the tropics they probably wouldn't need it but ... they had brought them just in case but it would have been a problem to wear them and pilot a BattleMech in combat.

    That didn't look like it was going to be too much of a problem. He had been a little concerned that they probably didn't have enough ground personnel along, and infantry for on the ground security, but from the look of the planet that wasn't going to be a problem.

    Earth at the start of the Early Modern era had had less than a billion people on it. Within three centuries it was on a trajectory to seven billion. Pioche hadn't been effected by the near two decades fall of the star league. Canopian records had suggested it had been growing in population, but that had been ended up the impact event, and the subsequent global winter. The polar shallows freezing had resulted in a new glacial maximum from all the dust in the air and killed over a hundred million creating a population bottleneck.

    Abner though was ecstatic to find that that hadn't meant the extinction of humanity on the planet. The decline yes... "A tremendous find. While plenty of deep periphery colonies did collapse down to neo Paleolithic levels, this is wonderful, yes a splendid find. I am astounded by what all we could learn." The doctor went on like that, but it wasn't why they were here, and Gene didn't have the patience to listen to recovery and population growth rates that might be in the tenth of a percentage point range.

    There was barely anything in orbit. No maintenance at all after a hundred years had meant largely early space faring satellites had decayed or broken down, but it hadn't been as if Pioche had ever had much in the way of orbital infrastructure. There was no sign of a charging station at the JumpPoint they had arrived at, or the nadir jump point. Not that they'd been expecting one it hadn't been indicated on any of the Star League era maps.

    They were far enough Rimward that there was no sign of a pirate presence, and Abner could be left to lament the situation while they prepared to detach the DropShips and burn for the planet.

    --
    Commentary: Yeah I suspect the out of universe reason that Taurain RAT in the Star League era allows them to field the Marauder is because it was to let people use the Marauder. Similarly we know that from the lore regarding the Gunslinger program, and the first hidden war the Combine were already fielding Marauders by that point. That seems ridiculous given the Marauder only entered production in 2612, though the Marauder was not originally in the lore just for the SLDF Royal units... but the earliest model with stats is the 1R... which als breaks with tradition in nomenclature. Arguably the even bigger oof than that is that the DCMS has King Crabs in 2765 in its RAT table.

    But its whatever canon is a mess.

    Moving on alright I get this whole arc has been rather dry, and I'm hoping Detroit will be an improvement. What I am going to do is try and get through Luxen, and work from there. I"ll be honest there were things I could have done different, and I don't know if it might have been better to do time skip through the Luxen content and save some of the plot points for later on and just moved directly to either Detroit or Ellidere or what. I mostly write this because the content just kind of spews onto the page.
     
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    • II Luxen Conclusion
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    • II Luxen
    Conclusion

    ​

    Had the whole thing been a waste of time? No, probably not and certainly they were getting paid, and the 'kids' had gotten to drive their mechs around on an unknown planet. They hadn't found anything, not that he'd been expecting some giant ominous tower, or a bunch of sharks painted everywhere announcing 'Evil Bad Guy place here' and what not. Realistically he wasn't sure if that was a facet of not having the resources at hand, or just unreasonable expectations to just trip over LosTech. There was no immediate threat present, and bust or no it didn't meant that over time there would be other ventures to be made... but it wasn't their responsibility.

    Abner at least went away from it all happy. His stone age hunter gatherers were something for him to write home about. Was there something there on Pioche... maybe, but given the glaciation north of the tropics, the extent of the glaciers in the mountains? Pft well they were the most likely place to put something like a castle and they were icicles.

    They were hardly gonna stay icicles for a while, and no body had brought out any mole man machines so it had been back to Luxen, and face the reality that they were coming up on the end of the contract. There might be one more renewal after this but realistically even with Lady Raventhir foot the bill he couldn't imagine that her dragging off the experimental company to what had turned out to be a wild goose chase had gone over as well with the planetary government.

    The Merc Court had over a year of hearing and deliberation together over the matter of Detroit's salvage... and they still weren't fucking done yet. The MRB recognized that they were under contract, but that hadn't stopped them from sending an HPG message telling them they should show up to Detroit. It gave them time to accommodate for travel and waht not but it was what it was.

    Friar Tuck had waved it off because it wasn't actually like a subpeona, but still... "We're gonna go right?" Septim asked.

    "We will," He replied as he paged through his paper work. Friar Tuck had sent him Septim's summons as well leaving it to him to pass along. It had almost gotten buried in the deluge of other mail. Interstellar Expeditions was not a tightly run central organization. It was a collection of professionals, and amateurs that had been bound together from two big preceding organizations that had been cobbled together from early organizations and thus was a patchwork of different scientific interests and studies and qualifications. They did a little bit of everything, chased urban legends, and engaged in the sort of archaeology that would been appropriate to 1910s Earth. The latter was enough to give some of the more 'respectable' institutions the 'vapors', but that Lyran money... it paid out on time.

    There were other financial matters to deal with. Colorado was a JumpShip from an earlier time, and while not exactly ideal for Star League Military applications its retroffiting in the late 26th​ century had fixed up the issue of fragile fuel bunkers. He had an idea for dealing with the issue of the corridors if someone tried to board, but the ship had largely been plying safe trade routes. It had been more money than the Cadre training pay but that was what it was.

    He tapped another key to scroll. They had come to Luxen via New Abeleine and then circuit rode the rest of the way. "We've got a cargo job to the Duchy of Don't for transport," Lebanon would be taking that. It seemed like the Duchy of Don't even further spinward had gotten hit pretty hard by some other pirates so the Canopians were transferring some humanitarian aid that way. "So Lebanon will detach from us at Fronc. He was considering depending on what all was available getting involved in any of the open contracts on Bellerophon's ongoing civil war. The planet had no military to speak of and the ongoing strife had been made worse by the influx of pirates into this region of space so it looked like it would be relatively steady employment if wanted to stick close to Detroit, which was as single jump away. On the other hand there was a strong religious bent to more than one faction in the war, and he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to get involved in that kind of mess. He exhaled, "Other than that," The truth was the Magistracy accepted that Luxen was underequippred... just generally understrength, and they were looking to fix that. That was looking like it would come a couple of ways. The present 'Easy Company' Roster was going to run into problems. The MAF wanted to send some of their candidates to Canopus for Academy OCS or whatever the equivalent was, but that would only really work for members of the unit looking to actually stay in the military beyond their stint in national service. Never that problem there was the bigger issue of equipment, and general lack of funding. He could understand the hope at least for finding some magical solution in the form automated production from the Star League era, after all it had been part of how the MAF on paper strength before New Vandenburg had been possible. They might yet find that, but for now, the best option was to contend with since they didn't have an immediate option to buy mechs from the Inner Sphere then to refurbish salvaged mechs... like most periphery planets.

    --
    They were approaching the end of their contract so the expletive demand wasn't unreasonable. "Are you fucking kidding me?" He heard one of the scratch company veterans shout. It was the other Alexander ... he wondered how common the last name was, but Beauregard 'Bo' Alexander was originally from the Free Worlds League.

    He leaned against the chair and over the console, "What do we have Bahar?"

    "Pirate point insertion, and DropShips burning hard."

    He reached over and tapped the screen, "Whats with this Union, its acting squirrelly." It didn't have any ASF launches either, which was weird, but maybe the pirates just didn't have any ASF's for it. She shook her head, unable to come up with an answer. "Alright go ahead and suit up, we're going out." He needed more support personnel and that was another reason to head for Detroit sooner rather than later.

    He was halfway through the roster of the company making sure they and their canopian 'pupils' were underway when Friar Tuck's channel opened up, and the clearly painfully sober old drunk and the local Gamma precenter appeared over the hologram. "Commander Shepherd," Precentor Gamma greeted, "we would just like to apprise you that the pirates coming in are particularly fearsome examples of their breed. The band of Black Jack McGirk has pillaged his way from the Lyran Commonwealth to the Taurian Concordant." The Precentor remarked his accent thick from somewhere Gene couldn't place. "We believe they may even have acquired a Star League Cache of weapons that has allowed them remain so active over the last twenty years. If you can bring these individuals to justice, or even just stymie them there will be significant bounty paid out on behalf of the MRB."

    Some one whooped over the open channel even as he finished his mech's weapons diagnostic. "I understand, can you tell me anything about them?"

    "We believe that they were apart of the Tortuga dominions for the last few years. This is probably only a small part of Black Jack's band but they may be in heavy BattleMechs," The precentor grimaced, "Far be it from me to tell you how to do your job, but you should be careful." The two ComStar members' heads snapped sideways to somewhere off camera, "Please excuse me commander brother adept Richard will attempt to help you any way he can I must go speak with the Canopian Authorities."

    Friar Tuck couldn't really tell him much though, other than these assholes had been rampaging their way anti-spinward for about the last year. "Anyone who wasn't listening in, there is a good chance that they have heavy Mechs we're not going to be able to get in close. Bahar will scout out what they have." ... and if could put eyes on them he'd direct as many LRMs on the enemy position as possible.

    Luxen's capital city's civil defense sirens going off didn't make anything any easier. The rest of the regiment were trying, and pretty badly failing to get out and into the open. Gene didnt' understand why the idiots had even jumped for the pirate point given how close the normal points were, but maybe McGirk's people were used ot it... and just did what they knew. Whatever the case the pirates, the threat of them had tied the regiment's mech and vehicle companies into a mess of trying to get out of depot.

    Precenter Tau VII Labarbera, having said the whole thing in her introduction, didn't have anything to do with the MRB... ComStar did a lot of everything and as a result she was that person who did stuff with the University of Luxen's history department... and the ComStar's news channel. She had provided a general over view on all the worlds McGirk had hit in the last decade without the rampant speculation that devoured the news boards and other gossip sites. Unfortunately it didn't sound good. McGirk supposedly had a regiment worth of Heavy Battlemechs, which was a pretty scary concept... but it wasn't as if they were all in one place

    It had taken them entirely too long to get everything sorted and moved out and to actually deploy to the field. Not helped of course by the lack of Magistracy air assets to in any way meaningfully force the pirates to land further away. It wasn't all bad news though. Despite ComStar calling in there were Stingers, and OstScouts and plenty of Phoenix Hawks... there were Gulloitines, and Quickdraws and other mechs but it wasn't as if they were up in their eye balls in heavy mechs.

    True there were heavy mechs in the field... and that one that poor Charger he had shot in the back... it had been easier to deal with than the Gullotine which had insisted on hopping around up until he'd shot one of its legs off as it had been jumping... it had ended up in the hydro electric plant's reservoir. Not that ComStar had been exaggerating, those heavy mechs in the field which were proving to be a problem for the Luxen Volunteers.

    "Think they'll renew our contract now, boss?"

    He wished Septim wouldn't make comments like that during operations, and ignored the question as he searched for the next Mech to fight. The pirate band had no indication of combined arms inclination, but they'd smashed up plenty of militia vehicles as they stomped through the salient he had orbitally inserted into last year.

    "Boss two Ostrocs just broke through C's defensive line. Looks like they got close enough to go loud and fatal with their SRMs."

    He acknowledged the startled mechwarrior's radio call, and turned into the wind putting the Marauder into a full on sprint. On paper a MAF Battallion should have been five companies... in practice even if that were true they were combined arms. An MAF battalion was usually two and sometimes three companies of BattleMechs. There were three battalions of Luxen Volunteers to each Regiment of the provincial volunteers, and three regiments... again on paper, but 3rd​ was off world and two even before the Azami attack might as well have not even existed for how few 'mechs they could scrape together.

    He ordered the unit to remain in contact with Force Major Seghal. As defacto head of the planet's defense forces if she went down this was going to be a mess. He kicked himself for considering swinging by Dunianshire and doing a little LosTech prospecting of his own for the unit as they headed back for Detroit. They could have afforded a couple days to poke around with the map... another time. Gene pushed over the next ridge and resolved the first Ostroc about six hundred meters out... not that he had a shot of course.

    Fifteen tons lighter than his Marauder but running off the same fusion engine they had a flat out speed of close to fifty five miles an hour, which in car terms wasn't that fast but in giant armored vehicle terms was pretty nice when you were talking about a sixty ton vehicle dating from the early twenty fourth century.

    The holographic map of the battlefield projected to his right mapped the grid coordinates, which he then relayed to the Vindicators standing by. As harassment it was something, but this drawn out fight had depleted ammunition and even if it hadn't LRM 5s weren't a lot of firepower to begin with. "Bubbles, yeah your sector has two heavy mechs inbound." He relayed to Chang's Hunchback.

    Within two minutes he was seeing the flashes of electric blue white from Vindicator PPCs and and another minute later registering Large laser dispersion as the Ostroc's had slowed from flank to return fire. The Vindicators carried a decent amount of armor for mediums, basically equivalent to what the Ostroc had, and the Hunchback carried ten tons of standard armor.

    "Lady Raventhir, I really do not have time to hold a conversation right now." He ground out as evenly as possible as the Mobile HQ that Major Seghal was commanding from connected him to the Magistracy noble. He was coming down the slope of a rise as his Dalban calced the shot for each PPC as he closed into a half click, and his gunsites magnified to four power.

    Both lightning bolts slammed into the left mech's left rear shoulder armor nearly tipping the sixty tonner over as it took a step forward and then blew into the internals. The right Heavy Mech was trying to close into presumably range to fire his srms or alpha strike with all of his energy weapons but he kept his guns trained on the left one as the right Ostros moved away.

    "I need to know if your DropShip can conduct an air to ground mission, yes or no?"

    "Yes." In terms of equivalent the Sam Houston had enough LRMs to be equivalent to what a Leopard carried. Was that some kind of huge accomplishment? No, but it was missiles. "Target?" He got off the line, and relayed that mission to the DropShip, as the Ostroc he was shooting into crumbled and stumbled down a concrete shored up embankment. He moved to the next one to add what amounted to a coup de grace as the battered mech shuddered.

    They had other problems to deal with.

    The pirates had come in with three DropShips from a single JumpShip. The union though looked like it had undergone some kind of modification. What exactly who knew precisely, but it hadn't thrown out ASF, and there was PBI coming out of the damn thing. "Houston, I'm moving towards the Union." The Azami captain acknowledged, and he swapped channels to Bahar. "Bahar, fall back consolidate the unit."

    "What are you doing?"

    Probably something stupid, but he was banking on the pirates being too busy taking effective air to ground fire or even ground to ground missile fire to realize what he was doing. During the down time more than a year ago he'd gamed out with the simulators the Zathras Union... it didn't work nearly as well as it had. The computer could see him where as in the field under fire the computers couldn't. The semi automatic fire control, largely automated to reduce crew concerns, meant the Union couldn't see his mech couldn't target him... but the simulator had taught him plenty about the Mech itself.
    --
    Gene nodded to himself at the reading and keyed his mike, "Black Jack Dropship," Having nothing better to call the thing, as the pirate dropper's name was somewhat vulgar when translated into English. "this is Major Shepherd. I have confirmation of your reactor shut down." He avoided saying anything like thank you for cooperating or the like. The pirates were already going to have to walk past a bunch of their dead, either scythed down by LRM shrapnel, or the unfortunate charred remains of those who hadn't seen his Marauder closing in until the pulse laser opened.

    He'd taken the chance just because he'd seen the DropShip, and saw the opportunity. That and thoughts of the Zathras DropShip had flittered in the back of his mind nagging him.

    There was a thunder as the Sam Houston executed a verticle landing and its forward roll on roll off bay doors opened carrying clusters of Militia Infantry to secure the DropShip, and the prisoners. "Is it done?"

    "I'm returning to the Company position standby."

    He flipped through the displays of the unit's mechs. Two companies was no trouble for Mech that had endeared it to SLDF Battalion and Regimental commanders. Unfortunately unit armor levels were perilously low. With explicit orders not to engage most of the Light Mechs were as a percentage value in the best shape.

    Repairing the Vindicators after the battle with the Azami had been easy for the defenders, after all Luxen Volunteers had never really driven the things in the field but that had required most of the spare parts that they did have on hand. The fact that they'd never used them in twenty years of having them meant that now that they were gone there weren't any easy spares on hand. One of the Shadow Hawks was down its entire left side from the AC 5 ammunition going off, but the pilot was alive and the mech was walking.

    Sam Houston had picked up three of their Vindicator pilots who had punched out, one hadn't made it due to the faulty ejection system, and the other two needed to be medevaced... but the canopians at least had that covered. With the Union out of the fight though, the battle field was completely different. Lady Raventhir seemed surprised they had captured the Union, presumably having expected them to blow it to high hell. They had it now, and that meant its LRMs. Pirates weren't especially feeling brave and a leopard was currently high tailing it out of the way.

    "Going to have to seriously invest in ASF pilots. I'm tired of watching them fly away." He muttered to Bahar. "How is Bo's mech?"

    "Severely damaged, both legs suffered critical actuator hits." He had gotten tangled up with a Thunderbolt only to get broadsided by a couple light mechs jumping to try and take advantage before the rest of the 'HQ unit' could finish cleaning up. That was going to be expensive, which went without saying. "I would say that it is out of the fight."

    Coming down one of the gangways Septim stuck his head in the ward room, "Shiffer is KIA. Shrapnel internal bleeding, nothing they could do." He had seen the mauled side of the man's customized Cicada.

    As bad as it was, he'd barely spoken to the medium Mech pilot even after he'd signed on. The man had been competent at what he did. Had been useful for demonstrating jump jet, and aggressive maneuvers in the field and overland navigation, and that had been it really. He hadn't been entirely sure that the Lyran pilot had intended to stay on once this contract finished or when they got to Detroit. "Jowett and Andrew?"

    "Both fine, dinged up but okay." Which was better than their mechs. Bubble's hunchback was pretty fine as well and anything dumb enough to get close enough had gotten introduced to the AC 20 that was why she was still out there as the command staff assessed the situation and she had directing authority over Easy company.

    The planetary government was hoping the pirates would just surrender... Gene was fairly certain that the Canopians didn't have the death penalty ... he knew at least that they had prisons for pirates so it wasn't as if they were surrendering to like the Capellans. "Septim your mech is in no condition to go back out there, I need you to take the militia catalog everything, make copies, and start the paper work for the MRB. They said bounties for killing Black Jack Pirates, get on that."

    "Yes mein herren." The Lyran replied with a smart click of his heels.

    Gene ignored that exaggerated display and head back towards the Mech bay with Bahar in tow. The Azami pilot glanced sideways at him. "Next target?"

    "We need to find out what's still out there," He really hoped they were exaggerating 'battalion' worth of pirates, "break whatever resistance remains."

    "I understand." She replied. Bahar was the only other person here wearing Star league era, or more correctly SLDF grade gear. Her khaki jumpsuit was the same size as his and would have designated her as a Star League Defense Force regular army MechWarrior. An SLDF lieutenant green bar marked her jumpsuit. "What?"

    "We need to get uniforms." He muttered.

    "Before or after ASF pilots?" She responded.


    He wondered if she was serious, that was sass or if he was just that tired. Probably before though, surely the Luxen had some tailors who could make standard pattern clothes. "We can put a batch call out to the local industry here once things quiet down." Gene replied.

    --
    Commentary: Alright yeah okay Luxen done, we won't be back here for a while. Like Rodon says up above handfitting DropShips is a thing in setting, and that would work. Kind of what I had in mind as well. So we're going back to Detroit, well technically next chapter opens still on Luxen, but heading back to Detroit.

    Now that will predominantly be Gene centric, most of the unit will be up on North keeping a low profile babysitting engineers like Gene did most of his time on Detroit last time. We'll get some more exposition about McGirk and the Combine will make an appearance. It will be more personal character drama and will hopefully be an improvement.

    Alright theoretically my Drow CYOA story will update monday, probably monday afternoon, and then hopefully I'll have worked out something of an update schedule for September Monday as well.
     
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    • II Detroit Part 1
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    • II Detroit
    Part 1    ​
    Luxen, Magistracy of Canopus. [-102.54 : -493.873]
    September 3016 [1]

    The 'second battle of Luxen' had generated a migraine inducing amount of paper work. Those following few days had been exhausting. There was no getting around it they needed to get up to Detroit, but Septim wasn't wrong they could probably reup this contract if it came to it... and to be fair it wasn't as if one pirate attack a year was that terrible when it came to having to contend with garrison duty.

    The problem was when they were talking about one hell of a pirate attack. He'd looked over the second battle of Luxen's damage reports and cringed. He'd looked over the salvage taken from the battle... and wondered... kept coming up with what the fuck. BattleMechs were supposed to be rare. It was why Luxen's planetary defense was so thin on the ground to start with. Yes, ComStar's reported speculation that ole Blackjack must have found a Star League cache of Mechs made sense but even so... it was a mess.

    One of these a year was plenty. The Magistracy wasn't going to really hold trials per se. There would be hearings for the captured pirates from the Dropship, and the MAF Intelligence wonks were going to do their bit, and after that well it'd be up to the Magistracy panel to recommend sentencing for them. That wasn't his problem. His problem was crewing the new DropShip, which well with no Aerospace bays, and him not having infantry to rack that wasn't as hard. What was probably going to happen was he'd hire on a temporary space crew from available people 'shore side' and have the longshoremen load up the Mechs that were going to be posted aboard the Union.

    They'd worry about more permanent crew and fittings out to it once they were at Detroit. Going even further coreward, though not into the Inner Sphere proper, to Herotitus seemed like a bad idea. The scratch company remains from the original Luxen contract though was a good foundation, and given the rate at which Mercenary outfits failed he supposed the best option would be to pick up companies that were nearly defunct, or had recently failed in terms of recruitment since they were more likely to have a little of everything.

    Technically speaking even 'countries' that didn't have a 'border' with the periphery maintained some degree of presence in the Rimward Periphery. Part of this was because it was a holdover from the Star league era, when the auspice of Inner Sphere trade was about exporting finished goods out to the undeveloped periphery. The Mercenary trade had already existed before the reunification war of course, but the downfall of the Star League changed the the game in innumerable ways. Detroit was an independent world that could feed itself and had something approaching an industrial base and it set relatively nicely in between the Concordant and the Magistracy, and that was nice. It was well positioned to act as a hub world for plenty of business, and that meant the merc trade and its supporting industries had a strong presence in Ann Arbor. Detroit was just all around a better option than heading for Herotitus, which only had a population in the low millions.

    "And the fact we have to go there cause, Court."

    "And that," He agreed, and the truth was he didn't know what to expect for that. No idea how long they were going to be there. "We don't have any infantry, and that's something I'd like to try and address while we're on Detroit." Septim nodded, and at the addition regarding the Union, "No, I don't imagine Lady Raventhir was really expecting us to to take Union to begin with." Their salvage clause was very air tight though, Raventhir when they had signed on to her contract had promised them any material they took in combat, which admittedly had been something of an oversight on her part but she had ... or her lawyers had written it up to divide between any LosTech prospecting finds (a cash payment), versus anything taken fighting pirates. "Anyway we're on the clock for another, what week?" During which the dockhands would be scrubbing that union out, and making sure it was ship shape.

    "Technically its nine days."

    He grunted. "Has Raventhir said anything?"

    "Itenerary is the same, shore up the Luxen Volunteers, run training missions up until we lift off."

    He hadn't expected anything different, but he had wanted to ask, "I've lined up a contract for survey security on North," Detroits eponymous northern continent, "That will keep the company busy while we're there, Its a three month gig with Majesty Metals, any body who doesn't have court can go make money." Idle hands and what not, and more than that it would let them have Detroit overhaul the Union if they needed to make any other changes, which they were hoping not, but there was a good chance he was going to need to get the ship insured. "Raventhir still talking about going to Sian," Or wherever, "To try and buy more Vindicators?"

    "From the sound of it."

    Well that would be after they left. The pirate attack had demonstrated that there still remained vulnerabilities in the Magistracy's defenses, and Luxen had to make more practical investment into their defenses. Not their problem. "I wonder if Major Seghal will bring that up." the general after action report notably omitted his commentary that the Vindicator had been found to painfully light on armor. Not that he really expected her to bring that up. They were finishing this up, and and they were being paid for it. If the employer didn't want to recognize a problem, or deemed it worth it for whatever logistical reason they had that was fine they had done their bit.

    "Alright, I'll clear out." The lyran through a very imprecise salute and sauntered off, and they'd probably needed to do something about discipline, but then again they still didn't have uniforms either.

    Instead of picking at his sleeve he turned back to the paper work as the door closed shut behind Mr Alexander's retreating form. There was a good chance all Septim was here for was the adventure and didn't want any of the responsibility of trying to manage a company, even if he clearly didn't mind the teaching aspect of cadre duty. The ultimate downside to that was Alexander's staff talents had been lacking, Septim could drive a mech, but his field exercises before Gene had gotten back to Luxen had probably originated from some Lyran manual, but without the manual or any of the other material to work from. 'Winging it' as a description came to mind, but really it had become more apparent after the battle. Septim didn't want anything to do with the command responsibility to casualties... not that Gene particularly looked at that part of the job as a plus.

    Truthfully he'd been winging this as much as the Lyran man had. This whole thing had spiraled into something where he wasn't sure how they'd really gotten to this point. Maybe he was over compartmentalizing to deal with everything, but that was only going to work for so long. The MRB letter came to mind, the merc court was a hassle from one of the great houses throwing its weight around... they needed to go though... but there was this as well.

    He'd been winging it. The MRB had logged his combat performance on Detroit of course, but the command side of that had only really entailed directives to Captain Fields. The MRB had made a note of it, and it had only been brought back up because of what that meant in terms of the Merc Court hearing. Here though, Gene bit down a scoff, against the Azami the first go around there were pages worth of 'reports' from the MRB, and this thing against the pirates who had landed last week was sure to generate as much. Command Performance Review.

    A review.. a write up he found straight up laughable. He thought about things back on Aquagea shooting at would be Zathras conquerors... and the dance in the desert. Now he was the on paper owner of a company with two fucking JumpShips... all the while being stuck in a body that didn't even need to shave yet.



    --
    He had made the decision not to try and straight copy the SLDF doctrine, but there was no denying it influenced the coursework. A knock ended the rustling of papers. "Force Major Seghal."

    "Commander Shepherd."

    Perfunctory greetings out of the way they moved back to the seats and sat down. "You'll be losing experienced people to mustering out, as well as them being shipped to the MAF's Academy on Canopus?" He assumed that graduates from there would come back, but that could be wrong.

    "Most of the Luxen Volunteers in the company are nearing the end of their terms for national service," Seghal pointed out, "the magistracy doesn't require further service from those not willing to make a career of the military." It hadn't been any secret that Seghal had been getting into arguments with Luxen's civilian government over the second battle, no one there wanted to lose defense assets, but the money just wasn't there right now. Letting the contract lapse wasn't popular with all of the increased pirate activity in the Rimward periphery. "We need to discuss Saturday's exercise, and the Militia Battalions would like copies of all training materials past and present."

    "I understand," Most likely there was probably going to be an attempt by Seghal's command to keep the lessons in place, or even build from them as hopefully they received new equipment through Lady Raventhir's largesse. It would still run into the fact that well the batallions, the kids serving national service in the militia just weren't being given indepth training. It went back to most of the pilots having little to no time in a real mech, and barely any simulator experience before being thrown into one for real. "Luxen has been lucky so far, the Hashashin could have just as easily decided to resort to everything is permitted and brought their LRMs to bear before any kind of help could have arrived. This most recent attack was by a more conventional force, but should be considered a sign that times are changing."

    "Unlike in certain other nations the military doesn't control the budget its given to work with," She riposted. If she had noticed he'd made the effort to distinguish the Azami with a prepared cover story she didn't say anything, but that was fine to. In a little under two weeks they would be under way, but he'd need to bid the local partner company good bye and what not.

    "I understand, final exercises?

    "1st​ Luxen will be conducting a regiment wide drill based on our most recent pirate attack." She paused, "the Opposing Force will be on the field and operating already set up south of the capital. While this will be based off... recent events we won't be involving dropships." The news was as good as any to serve as an excuse to head out. Seghal was right the Magistracy wasn't one of the Successor Houses he would have thought that any of them... any sensible government would probably have conscripted the University's College of Engineering students for military service, and as Seghal had stated the Canopians were reluctant to extend military service... and that was probably a decision being made by someone off world if he had to guess.

    The depot though really, really could have used the extra hands. They had only seen part of the action against the pirates. Largely green pilots had proven to be an issue with things like heat management, and ammunition tracking which was all to be expected. Thankfully there had been only a few ammunition explosions reported, but the precious and comparatively expensive and rare Shadowhawks spread across the Luxen Volunteers had expended their ammo in many cases too early in the battle.

    The depot was a smorgasbord of parts laying out in the sun, or under hastily thrown up tents. Damaged BattleMechs stood out in the open, or crouching besides buildings, or laying on cargo mover recovery vehicles... or the like. It looked like a junkyard. The pirates who hadn't escaped had surrendered the ones who hadn't had been destroyed... and so the machines which could be salvaged had been dragged over here. Friend, and Foe.

    Gene stepped into one of the actual legitimate pre fab steel structures that had been apart of the original depot to the noise of shouting and arguing techs, MechWarriors, and MAF desk jockeys alike. "I told you, fucking Cappellan machine not have enough armor." One of the techs snarled. "The whole arm is wrecked." One Tech shouted at someone else over the din of a power tool.

    The arm in this case was the PPC carrying one. The statement besides was probably true. The Vindicator was a medium mech on paper... not that the regiment's light mechs had done better. He decided he wasn't going to get involved in the argument, sidestepped them, and hoped that Seghal was at least aware of the situation with her command. It wasn't hard slipping past them, and the gantry with the strung up Vindicator. There were other Vindicators as well, but they had to be seriously scraping the bottom of the spare parts supplied by the factory at this point. Myomer bundles would be easy, or easier to source he supposed. Mech Gyros were fairly standardized, so they'd probably be alright he thought navigating carts of tools, lube, and other odds and ends.

    In a week though this wasn't going to be his problem... unless they came back. "In here boss."

    "Raventhir still wants to run regiment wide exercises are there enough running mechs for that?" He asked cutting straight to the chase as he ducked into the little more than a cubicle against the wall.

    --
    Commentary: I know, and I knew going in that Luxen's conclusion was going to be, well that there were problems with it. I basically had decided 'fuck it we need to get through this'. I'll see about revisting II Luxen later in the month, October maybe.

    [1] On the date, this is approximate it might actually still be august my notes, the timeline is a fluid thing. Lieutenant Short's interlude is however marked as September 3016 and thats what probably going up next.
     
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    • Short Part 1
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    • Short [Exercise Interlude]
    Part 1    ​

    Luxen, Magistracy of Canopus
    September 3016
    The Vindicator wasn't exactly in the best of condition to begin with, but the shuddering definitely seemed worse than it had been before the pirates had attacked. "SitRep Lieutenant." The Gunslinger's voice was enough to jerk her out of her complaint. The fact that her machine's scopes couldn't find the seventy five ton heavy battlemech was just part of it.

    "I'm at Alpha. Pirate contact, two fire starters like the militia reported." She replied into a throat mike that probably wasn't known for its fidelity of transmission, "Over." Short replied There had been two Firestarters that militia had identified. The pirate mechs though during the attack had been ambushed by the Maguanac Corp Tankers who had unloaded what the Major had referred to as a gridsmash onto the hostile position before the pirates and their infantry had known what was happening.

    They had been explicitly told that while modelled on the recent battle, and script to be similar it would not be identical... and of course part of that was probably that they had taken very real losses fighting the pirates.

    "Your discretion lieutenant. Your platoon may act as it sees fit." The Marauder driver replied.

    Platoon was the now official term for a six mech structure... at least until someone way higher than her commission decided to change it. More established mechwarriors than she had brindled somewhat at it because that was a term already used by tankers and infantry. "Affirmative Major." She rocked back on the stick, and heeled her Vindicator into position before keying her comms onto the Platoon frequency, "They don't seem to know we're here yet, so lets light 'em up." She directed the coterie of enlisted MechWarriors, all of whom were still her age, assigned to the unit.

    There was no actual bang. They logged the simulated firing of their LRMs against the 'Firestarters' that they had detected, and waited for a response. Their fire returned from the examiners as ineffective, and the simulated enemy mechs began moving.

    In the actual battle of course the FireStarters had been destroyed by concentrated missile attacks so she wasn't sure why the attack hadn't worked... perhaps the test advisors had simply deemed that that not enough missiles had 'hit'. Well, they had lost the element of surprise now.

    She pushed the throttle up and rounded through the hills taken them into the open flatland expanse of the eastern river country and checked the telemetry of her TTS. Supposedly good neurohelmets wouldn't have required the screens, but they'd been retained in mech design even during the heyday of the star league, and as electronics manufacture declines it was necessary to rely on them. Her Churchill computer glitched flickering as it confirmed the broadcast test IFF but then fritzed reading the truck that was standing in for the mech opposing her Vindicator.

    "Divide and conquer," She ordered signalling the platoon to divide into two 'demi-lances' and then sent the signal to indicate test cycling her PPC against the enemy. Then groaned in frustration as the firestarter she had picked refused to actually take hits.

    Then her computer informed her that the enemy were charging their position. A real mech, well Real Firestarters would probably have used their jumpjets as well, but for the sake of the exercise it seemed like they were just 'running' at them. That running though was going to put them dangerously close in short order, Short cursed and moved her mech and waited for the the target indicator to to flip green and fired. There was no burst of ball lightning of course, but at least this time she was awarded a hit on target notification on here screen, but not a confirmed kill. Her Ceres Arms Smasher was at least hitting, but the computer was warning her she was about to be in Medium Laser range. At two hundred meters she received a notification that she had been hit on the left shoulder. "Bitch," She muttered, and then hoping her mike hadn't still been keyed on reached for the arm control to add the Medium laser of her vindicator as her unit did the same. After what seemed like an eternity both vehicles stopped and signaled that the 'Firestarters' had been defeated.

    "Damage report?" She asked, and then in reply to what was largely superficial damage decided to press on, "Platoon regroup," Still irritated she reached to key the mike for the command frequency, "HQ hostiles down, we're proceeding back to our original objective, moving to Nav Point Beta."

    Seghal's voice answered, "Lieutenant be advised, enemy heavy mechs are confirmed operating in the AO."

    Great, she thought in response, "Roger that, Force Major." Not that she was surprised, this was based off of the attack after all, "Any other intel?"

    The Gunslinger cut her off, "An Orion, I'm a klick due west of Beta, with it corralled between me and Bubbles and the Curie Resevoir between it and the Nav Point." Major Shepherd declared, "Reinforce that militia infantry."

    Her map flickered showing where she'd have to cut wide to avoid the fighting, and the computer plotted a course based off friendly navigation data. "Was there an orion in the invasion?"

    "Yeah it was one of the pirate officers who got away." Another of her lance mates replied to the question. "Its lance high tailed it back to their dropships from the sound of it."

    Technically her subordinate units should have all been radio silent except for communicating with each other, Local Comms only, but she wouldn't have been surprised if the Vindicators were in fact broadcasting all chatter back to the Mobile HQ that Force Major Seghal was commanding from.

    She grimaced, and started to order them to stow the chatter.

    "Why's that?"

    "Uh because someone ghosted up to a kriffin' DropShip and got it to surrender after slaughtering the entire Infantry company defending it?" The second speaker snorted.

    "That's enough girls. Look alive, spread out and watch for enemy scouts." She ordered killing the chatter. They started to regroup back into cross country formation and then rain started diminishing their vision in a way that thankfully hadn't happened during the actual invasion. Then a couple of minutes later they started receiving casualty reports.

    In the actual invasion second platoon had been mauled after being run head long into mechs heavier than theirs and not being prepared for it... but it wasn't as if they had been the only ones. C Company had suffered a similar ignominy to a pair of sixty tonners. The excuse from C Company's captain had been that they hadn't any ammo left for their auto cannons but she doubted that was the only reason. The whole thing had been a clusterfuck after all.

    Her exterior radio comm fizzed. "Holly .... contact .... break, .... Quickdraws and Pheonix Hawks."

    She pivoted her mech's torso towards the transmission's indicated direction, "No Copy, send again," There was no response, and in the mounting rain she couldn't see shit. There no indicated thermal signatures, and given the Firestarter encounter she wondered if the whole exercise had decided to not involve jumpjets from the OPFOR.

    She waited and requested a repeat, but nothing... asking herself if they should move to the objective or prepare to engage an enemy in near zero visibility

    "I've got a heat signature." Someone announced. "Mass Contact says light mech, not reading an IFF."

    The canopian lieutenant keyed company HQ, "Command possible hostile contact, and loss of contact communications outage with second platoon. Near Zero visibility." A minute later she was glad that they had kept moving as they were informed by the exercise runners that LRMs had started firing onto their former position.

    Major Shepherd's voice cut over the general chatter, "All units maintain radio silence, or communicate by short range laser comm only. Hostile Union DropShip had started targeting by radio signal trace." The line closed and her computer told her that LRMs had been fired at a position about kilometer north of their new position.

    Despite having just been told to go radio silent, her mech registered a laser comm, and her partner made the observation that apparently Lady Raventhir must have changed the simulation again. Short blew out a breath and relied on the instrument panel to figure out where to divert the unit to, but she was probably right about the unmentioned change over to the exercise.
    --
    Commentary: This should be three parts its about five thousand words total.
     
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    • Short [Final Exercise] Part 2
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    • Short [Final Exercise]
    Part 2    ​
    She slammed hard against her restraints as the mech stopped moving. She shook her head, and cursed the landing. The decision to push forward to the objective were the reports, simulated or not, regarding the casualties Regiment were taking. Infantry and armor were dying by the droves against pirate mechs, and conventional wisdom held only a mech could fight a mech.

    That had been what had cemented the decision to use their jumpjets to try and get up the incline faster, which had worked, and then had tried to cross the other side of the hills and that was where things had started to go... downhill. The rain hadn't let up, and if anything had picked up and on top of still having to deal with near zero visibility in the rain and wind the ground was pushing giving out.

    "Platoon sound off?" She asked.

    "I've got a warning light on, Lieutenant."

    Great, she thought biting down a curse, and hoping that was exercise specific and that they hadn't actually done that... but it probably was real, "Can you resolve?"

    "I've never seen this one come on. I'm not a mech tech." was the sharpish reply.

    "Stow it corporal, take rearguard we need to move." Short ordered abruptly as the next round of 'screams' came in over the radio. If the admittedly spotty friendly force tracker was accurate the militia were trying to human wave the enemy mechs, with predictable results. They needed to move.

    She keyed company HQ for a response, and received no response... "Come on, damn it." She tried, only thinking after about the directive radio silence and the threat of inviting an LRM attack.

    "Ja, hold on Holly." Septim answered, the connection to the Lyran's mech was spotty at best, "Ok this should." He didn't finish.

    "Alright, I've bypassed the jamming, but I don't know how compatible my Marauder's systems are with the Vindicator." The Major added. "I'm getting some kind of signal issue, codex issues." He muttered darkly.

    "What's going on?"

    "Its simulated ECM from the DropShip, we swapped over to my Dalban to run communications to bypass it. Most likely you never received the instructions to handshake. Admittedly we had to pair Merlin's Magestrix's gamma the hard way."

    "What about Bahar?"

    "She has SLDF pattern comms my Marauder is 5x5 with her and Flank Force.. What's your situation?"

    "We're moving to relieve the militia, and receiving increased calls for aid. 1-4 Has some kind of warning light on."

    "Yeah, her comms unit looks like its damaged. What happened?" Apparently the mudslide, or a rock in the wall of wet earth, had hit an unshielded antennae on the mechs head. Not enough to really damage anything armor wise, but just bad luck Short supposed. "We're in a monsoon rain, I won't order you to not use your jumpjets but its probably not a good idea in this weather for an exercise. Keep pushing to the objective, Bahar and flank force will probably beat there, you have discretion to engage on any targets of opportunity."

    She looked around the soaked area of the ground... for all of five feet she could see from her crouching mech, and then back to her displays. "Corporal," She tagged the damaged mech, "Your long range communications antennae was damaged in the slide, stick close to my right flank." It must have been nice to have SLDF equipment.

    The classroom's lectures had stated that the Vindicator had been a mech designed during, and put into production after the first succession war. Whether it was because by that point there hadn't been a Star League or it had been something left out of later Mechs it lacked the protocols of the Star League Army for communication. That technology had largely been lost as it had been a part of a mostly automated production system that know one knew how to reproduce.

    It occurred to her that while the OpFor mechs were being played by ground vehicles as stand ins... their own forces were played by their real units for the most part. That meant there were actually infantry out in this mess. Infantry that were supposed to be operating in close conjunction with regimental ground combat vehicles, and OpFor vehicles playing at being battlemechs... she keyed her mike, and voiced her concern about how actually seeing friendly infantry."

    There was an exasperated sigh, "Yeah, we'll work something out. Try not to step on any crunchies. Also in the next two minutes you should get visuals on flare launches it will signify Bahar has started her attack to the Militia but you can use it as a visual indicator. It should also provide some illumination as well."

    Seventy degrees she could manage to see the white and red flares bursting , but while she could see them they didn't really do much for ground visisibility. What they could detect were weapon signatures that were probably supposed to be Large Lasers and LRM 10. Those resolved into Pheonix Hawks, and Quickdraws turning to engage Flank Force's as they strafed them...

    The weapons fire at least generated enough heat for her targetting suit to pick them out in this mess even if she couldn't see the mechs themselves. She felt her fellow vindicators more through her neurohelemet than she could see them, and if they had actually been really firing the LRMs she might have actually heard the launch of thirty missiles at the enemy's exposed rear arcs. As a half thought she keyed the mike, "Regimental HQ, Lieutenant Short, we have reached Waypoint and are engaged with hostile medium heavy mechs."

    There was no response, but she assumed that the test examiners could hear what she had said because they returned confirmation that their LRMs were hitting the target. She moved the reticle onto the 'quickdraw's' 'rear'. They needed to finish this quickly, they couldn't afford a repeat of what had happened with the Firestarters earlier. They also couldn't just rush to close in, they didn't have the armor for that, and she knew that.

    ... but if they needed to move somewhere else, move on another objective, "Advance to half a klick," She ordered, concentrate fire on those heavy 'mechs and bring them down," hoping that even as she gave the order that it was the correct one. Her ammunition counter read eighteen volleys remained stored in her mech's left torso. "Pour your LRMs into those Quickdraws." she added, flagging the mechs to the others in the Churchhill's squad level dialogue management.

    Maybe it was because they weren't real mechwarriors controlling the enemy or maybe the pirates really would have been too focused on chasing down the flanking force to turn to engage, but the Quickdraws never got the chance to to fire their rear medium lasers before they were through the thin rear armor of the sixty tonners. The aggressor Phoenix hawks weren't so slow to respond and turned to face the nearing medium mechs. She bit another curse down as she was helpfully informed she was taking accurate Large Laser fire. The OpFor mediums were now turned around and charging them having probably judged they had a better chance of catching the slower Vindicators.

    The downside to LRM volleys, and then PPC fire of course meant her Heat sinks, and those of her unit just couldn't keep the heat down so they were just as visible on thermals obviously as their enemies were. There was no sense though in stopping they were committed and from the lessons learned they needed to capitalize on the imitative of the attack. Failure to do so would leave them exposed to a more mobile enemy that was focused on them.

    "We've got them trapped." Her wingwoman shouted over the squad channel, which was technically probably accurate given the enemy were caught between six Mediums and the six mechs of the flanking force that was continuing to take pot shots at them from long range with a mix of LRM and Large laser fire.

    Numbers decided it. They just were making more attacks on the enemy and weight of fire resulted in word from the proctors overseeing the exercise that the 'Phoenix Hawks' were destroyed caught between the two mech forces... but that came at a cost.

    ... Most of the ... militia infantry were dead, and from the sound of the report everyone else was walking wounded... and from the sound of it the Militia vehicles hadn't done much better. Emphasis on militia. "They did what?" She asked turning her mech to regard the arriving Tokugawa tanks a few minutes later.

    "We destroyed their DropShips according to the simulator computer." Major Shepherd remarked as his Marauder emerged from the curtain of rain, then to elaborate, "I had Ali," obviously one of the maguanac tankers from the context, "pump the open cargo bay full of interno missiles." He added. "I believe officially casualty for the pirate infantry is actually higher than the number I killed during the invasion."

    ... "Inferno missiles are," Septim stopped talking as his Merlin slid to a halt, "Anyway Ravnethir has called a halt to the exercise. I don't think she was actually expecting the Dropship to be killed, or even for us to find it."

    "This needed to finish up anyway, the storm front is actually intensifying, assuming the forecast is accurate in a couple hours we'll be getting another eight inches of rain." The Major replied. "Houston is going to be landing so we can pack everything up, get everyone dry. Before we start having PBI get trenchfoot."

    .... whatever that was, Short thought. Then there was the rumble of what at first she thought was thunder, but turned out to be the great thrumming noise of the Houston's fusion drives as it slowly descended, as if summoned by name.
     
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    • Short Part 3
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    • Short Part 3​
    If it was at all possible she felt even more out of place than at the reception after the drill before Lady Raventhir had swept them up to go looking for LosTech on Pioche a few months earlier. It might as well have been a life time ago now. It hadn't really been that long, but the situation felt so totally surreal she had to wonder if she was dehydrated or someone had slipped her something as she skirted around the crowds.

    Major Shepherd was dressed in a full body suit that should have been sweltering to wear in a battlemech's cockpit, but neither he nor Bahar, dressed in a similar tan suit, looked uncomfortable. Admittedly part of that was probably the lack of actual weapons being fired, and thus no excess heat build up, but they hadn't looked sweaty after the real fight against the pirates either.

    Their suits set them apart from pretty everyone else here. Force Major Seghal was in the MAF dress uniform, and Lady Raventhir was in formal weapon complete with ermine cape. Scuttlebutt, and the fact that it wasn't a secret, meant she had known for a while now that the money just wasn't there to continue the contract. The Mercenary Review Board had already posted the bounties for confirmed pirate kills during the battle, a payout in C-Bills that made her lieutenant's salary look pale and certainly head and shoulders better than the pay a non commissioned mech warrior received.

    The MRB had been happy. Precentor Labarbera had been on the holovids every night at nine o'clock talking about Blackjack's bandits and how he had reeved his way from the lyran commonwealth, Draconic Combine, Outworld Allaince, Fed Suns, and Taurian concordant to finally reach this region of the rimward peripery. The ComStar provided News Network had all the best Rom Clips of hte battle, citing the MRB as their source for the trivid footage plastering major gatherings in public squares. Across the churned ochre expanse of what had been green grasslands of the city PPCs flashed eternally memorializing battle. The pirates had never made it into the city proper though. Watching the videos wasn't the same as having lived it, the videos could have been anywhere, off on some distant world.

    Casualties were glossed over in the ComStar reports in favor of the spectacle. Casualties that were part of the reason on top of just money that they couldn't continue the program.

    A door opened bringing with it a gust of wind, and the pounding rain drops from outside slathered the inside of the door. The Lyran mechwarrior didn't notice it and strode on inwards homing in for the Mercenary Commander, his fellow captain, Major Seghal, and Lady Raventhir. "Last of them all tucked in boss, and no sooner either, the winds picking and the weather service is expecting to issue flash flood watches through tomorrow morning."

    A look of supreme satisfaction appeared briefly on the major's face, but then it was gone, "Thank you Septim, at least everyone is out of that mess." The gunslinger stated, "Lieutenant Short," He beckoned for her to join them. There were plenty of MAF officers in the lounge like expanse, but few if any from non mechwarrior combat arms... part of that was the complete lack of ASF pilots. It didn't escape her that she was probably the lowest ranking officer here.

    Unlike the enlisted mechwarriors Short had purchased, well her mother had put the money up, her commission into the MAF. The Magistracy's Armed Forces could reasonably expect her to remain in a battlemech combat role so long as she had a mech issued to her by the MAF even after she completed her mandatory term of service. The same would be true for the other officers but the enlisted on national service were free to finish up and muster out. Retaining them would have been a costly expense for the Luxen Planetary Government, and that would be unpopular. That meant out of the twenty MechWarriors who had started most of would have been separating out in about a year, never mind wounded or the three KIA.

    In a way that seemed to be the topic of conversation. "I have a contract on Detroit for the scratch veterans on North. Anybody who doesn't have a part in the Mercenary Court proceedings will be there. The MRB doesn't have any idea how long that will be, but I expect it will be a couple of months." Major Shepherd remarked.

    "I see," Lady Raventhir sipped the wine glass, pursed her lips, and contemplated for a minute. The others waited for the noble to speak. "I would like at some point to go back to Pioche." Doctor Abner on their way back had stated that with air recyclers or deployable solar mirrors... or frankly a long list of Star League era devices that were probably all equally hard to come by... could be used to speed up the planet's thawing process. "Of course it will take time to find the excavation equipment as well, or source them from Majesty Metals."

    She wondered if there really was a Rim World Republic facility on Pioche... the batty old Lyran professor made a compelling argument about the catastrophic death of the colony having very likely not been some malign cosmic joke. They just hadn't been able to prove it hadn't been an accident. Unlike at the height of the Star League there was less need for Pioche the breadbasket world to export food to neighboring star systems, especially since there wasn't the transport capacity available like there had been before the first succession war.

    The major shook his head, "No idea what the future will hold. Once Detroit is settled out, well the news makes it sound like its going to be raining pirates on the whole rimward periphery, and there is your Marion problem." He picked up his drink and downed it.

    "We can discuss it once the Mercenary Court returns its findings, or if your contract with Majesty finishes."

    "What's the most optimistic timeline for your heavy machinery?"

    Another purse of Raventhir's lips. "I admit it could be months. We were hoping to be able to purchase more Vindicators from Ceres, a new order would allow us to purchase additional spare parts at a reduced rate." Lady Raventhir glanced to Short caused her to shift uncomfortably, but the Mercenary spoke up.

    "Months?" Shepherd seemed skeptical

    "You said optimistic."

    "You're right." It sounded as if he hadn't meant optimistic. "Well we can revisit the issue at the first of the year." The major put his empty drink to the side, and clasped his hands behind his back, "If Abner is right though, if that was a Kinetic Impact from someone putting a fusion drive onto a rock I would expect that whatever is down there will have other defenses."

    "Like a Castle Brian."

    "Like a Castle," He agreed, though with a somewhat greater emphasis on 'Like'."and that probably means automated turrets, but if you do decide to go in, I'd do a hard check of the asteroid belt, and for that matter the system Oort cloud looking for rocks."

    "I'll keep that in mind." Lady Raventhir excused herself, and she and Force Major Seghal moved to strike up a conversation with one of the Planetary Counselors.

    Shepherd leaned over to the other Mercenary, "Remind me when we get to Detroit, we really are going to need ASF cover."

    "Could always stick a Dropship up there too. I mean," Septim paused to swipe a stein of beer from a passing server, "Abner said there were weeks of warning, surely we'd have enough time right?" The Major shrugged and rattled off something acceleration and that that would probably be tue, but they were also talking about the polity responsible for slaughtering the Star League, and Hegemony's ruling house.

    Bahar had tensed at the reply Short had noticed, and seemed to relax when the Major changed subject. "Its mostly an abundance of caution. Even if we get lucky and there is something there most of Amaris's army relied on large volumes of suicidal troops to attrit the regular army, or chemical or nuclear weapon attacks. I m not saying there couldn't be a Mech Line there, but Amaris didn't have the DoME, and it'd be more likely that its combat vehicles." He shrugged, and their conversation turned to the Union.

    "Did she not bring that up?" Septim asked.

    "The one in the exercise or the actual DropShip?" She piped up trying to participate.

    "In this case the actual DropShip. The magistracy has enough manufacturers that Majesty can produce the Union hull and then assemble one from parts but the sucession wars being what they were means they're mostly just making spare parts. There are some parts on the DropShip that need to be replaced, but we'll have to wait till Detroit to see if we can get them."

    Force Major Seghal apparently already had copies of the next nine weeks itinerary, in addition to the recommendations for refit and repairing of the Vindicators damaged in battle with the pirates, but that was more or less it. "So you think we should go to large lasers and LRM 10?"

    "To be honest, from a skill perspective, with green pilots yes." The gunslinger responded, "Large laser loses you some range and overall damage, but they run cooler than PPCs. You'll tax the heat sinks less. The LRM 10 is an inefficient weapons system, and with more experienced mechwarriors you'd be better off having two LRM 5 launchers, but an LRM 10 throws more missiles when you're just firing one weapon. I personally prefer PPCs, but its less expensive to put in Large Lasers, and the depot has a bunch of salvage ones in usable condition." He shook his head, and stuck out his hand, "You'll do fine Lieutenant. I'll probably see you sometime next year."
    --
    Commentary: So what is going to happen is that I am going to go spin Luxen II off as its own thread, I will add new content, and it will cover the three arcs it was supposed to cover in great depth, and I can hopefully address the issues that manifested. What I dont' want is for it to balloon into fifty K, but we'll see.

    So yeah it will cover: Cadre and introductions, Raventhir's little treasure hunt side quest, and then hopefully by the time all that is covered I will be happier with the first BlackJack Pirates fight on Luxen as the conclusion.

    That will probably be October, I have some other projects I want to work on, and Detroit II will go up in a couple days. I'm working on revising it some, but I think Part 3 of the chapter will be much better received.

    As to LRM thing, yeah its kind of table top ish, Thus the reason to explain LRM 10 being so common when from a stat perspective is that presumably it is easier for a pilot to fire one weapon. Thats what I'm going with because even in fluff an LRM 10 is more expensive than two lrm 5 launchers. Putting an LRM 10 in costs you an extra ton, costs you on paper 40k c bills more, so the utility of having an LRM 10 has to be employment. I press button shoots ten missiles its a single system to keep track of versus keeping track of two (and thus should be more maintenance in down time, in addition to a pilot tracking the second system). If that makes sense.

    EDIT: Regarding the downgrade from PPC to LL... as it turns out apparently the Magistracy produces or seems to produce plenty of PPCs, enough that their leopard DropShip variant pulls the large lasers out and goes all PPC. Why don't know, but presumably unlike someone I could name the Magistracy does not have a problem producing PPCs, so we'll say that this is a field expedient refit being proposed.
     
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    • II Detroit Part 2
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    • II Detroit
    Part 2    ​
    November 3016
    Detroit [19.15, -452.55]

    130 Light years. That was the distance between Detroit and Luxen, give or take. Unlike his trip from Detroit going to Luxen they were doing it the normal way. He was glad that Baffins, as the Union had been registered, had had its ASF bays ripped out by a previous owner in order to make room for more habitable space. Since they owned the JumpShip they were riding it made the ride a little more manageable anyway, but it could have been a lot worse. Conventional jump meant they stayed docked to the JumpShips, they waited for the sails to charge, and thus there was no jump detach move to another jumpship and then jump out in short order.

    They also weren't going off into an unknown combat situation. They were going to a commercial hub, that hopefully wasn't under a pirate threat. ComStar, the MRB, had given him the documents to review over, maybe intended as a refresher, but it was mostly a copy of his own BattleRoms from the battle, and corroborating footage including from the local infantry unit. Captain Fields had secured the Pheonix Hawks, and Panthers downed on the main highway as he had been .

    That was apparently a big thing, planetary militia had not just footage of his kills, but what could be construed as directions to secure the salvage. The salvage that the combine was claiming was stolen property in the first place, and should be 'returned' the Dragon's legal representatives.

    There were signed statements included in the packet from Colonel Khan. He had apparently already given testimony about the battle, as well as to events leading up to it.

    There had apparently been some fairly cutting remarks about the embarrassment to having so much equipment get walked off from if indeed all of the equipment did or had belonged to the DCMS, which was being called into question. There were questions about the Harrasser missile platforms that Gene had more or less accidentally stomped on as he had entered the spaceport, and their unit as a whole.

    Septim had apparently downed a pair of lights and some vehicles during the fighting, and it wasn't really Gene's business to tell him how to proceed for the hearings. Personally though... well he did want the catapult he had downed, but he was running into a problem where he already had the strange position of more Mechs he had pilots for. Schiffer buying the farm had left him with a wrecked Cicada that he didn't know what to do with, and it was sitting in the union's cargo hold as basically scrap.

    He had a shopping list of things he wanted to get on Detroit that was like a mile long, and well cashing out the other Mechs in the 'docket' as it were seemed pretty fine by him. The Merc Court he had to do with the MRB. He was going to need lawyer time for contracts to be drawn up for among other things future employment... not that he was really expecting any of the short terms jobs with Majesty Metals to involve a lot of salvage. ComStar's news broadcasts of late had really stoked concerns about pirate attacks, and those were probably going to constitute a lot of future contracts... assuming that Raventhir wasn't right and something had to be done about this Marian Hegemony place....

    There was a knock at the open door of the wardroom, and he directed Septim to enter. Small talk followed before they moved on to the matter of unit operations on Detroit, the contracts they had already lined up. The Lyran flipped through the paper in his hand squinting seeming to double check that he hadn't missed whatever it was, "So I noticed we're not doing the six thing."

    "There is less of a point," It wasn't just a facet of training or individual mech warrior skill. Nobody had the same mech, which was another contributing factor in his thinking, though that could have been worked around, but, "I'm not saying the company might never use it, but in our situation right now we're more likely to resort to an augmented Lance with four mechs with attached armor. Or operating three mechs independently," A so called demi lance, "or with attached armor," Seeing as the tanks were in the same speed bracket. "The ability to concentrate the same weapon systems as a single unit isn't viable. We have more variety and that makes traditional lance structure better at least with regards to the time being." There wasn't anything stopping them from using a demi company but it wouldn't be the same thing, and there was less of a reason than with six Vindicators as it had been originally, "And of course you and I will both be in Ann Arbor."

    "Right, court." Septim half groaned at the reminding. "What about the Union?"

    "Well we've been talking about, we need crew, and it needs work. Not that its the only thing, I'd like to hire on an air lance," For the Sam Houston, since Baffins had had its ASF bays ripped out at some point to make room for other stuff, "We've got a couple spare mechs as it is, so hiring dispossessed mechwarriors is an option." He wasn't entirely confident in hiring someone who just wanted to be a MechWarrior but had never even been in a Mech that would require a comparatively greater investment , and probably not the best idea if they weren't going to be on a single planet for more than six months, but they'd see, "We need infantry." and some other personnel on top of all that. "IF ComStar is right and McGirk is moving into this area of space," Displaced from Tortuga or whatever, "Or even just other pirates we're going to be looking at a much different threat profile." McGirk, or his lackeys, had apparently hit Fronc, and some of the other Rimward worlds, but the second Battle of Luxen had probably been more than anything someone feeling adventurous, but whatever the reason they had tried it all the same, and they were pirates after all so they would do things like that.

    --
    Ann Arbor's Space Port controller had lit a beacon to guide them. Baffins needed to be put down in Ann Arbor anyway for the hiring on, and other work, and they'd be working out of it. Sam Houston would be departing for North once everything was ready on Majesty Metal's end of things. If that had the double benefit of avoiding any confrontation between the Azami and the Combine presence well that was nice too.

    Realistically though they were, there was a good chance that they'd end up spending the rest of the year here, which was fine if the Union took that long to get everything it needed done to it. He felt the shift as the Union's thrusters fired and adjusted them into final position on the landing pad that had been cleared for them.

    There was no sign of a battle, but then Ann Arbor had cleaned the debris of battle in short order after it had ended... from the space port at least. He hadn't spent enough time in the city even before the battle to know what in the skyline had changed either as a result. They could have done without parking them basically right next to the Combine Overlord though, that was a little on the nose. At nearly ten thousand tons the Overlord had sleeker cleaner lines than the much more rounded ball like Union that was less than half its mass.

    He tried to think back to the night the Luxen contract had been rushed forward. There was a Combine flagged JumpShip in orbit when they had gotten in. Last year there had been other DropShips with it, presumably they were. Just what all had the Combine brought with them? Well, he was saying the combine, but he didn't really know who or what their side of the story was. Not the Combine or the ISF as a whole, he was pretty sure they had spun some yarn to avoid talking about the stolen HPG recording.

    Or he could be completely wrong and someone could know and just care. Or they could know that they weren't being given the whole story, and not care. There were a lot of possibilities, and precious few of them good. Ideally they'd be able to avoid any lasting grudges or bad blood with the combine, and really duck any outright hostilities, making an enemy of a successor house was a poor life decision if it could be avoided. Well, regardless, "Clamps locked?"

    The longshoreman at the helm nodded. "We're docked captain, we can open the fuel pumps and top her off. Begin offloading when you like."

    Then there was work to be done it seemed. It wasn't as if they had to wait long the planetary government had been expecting them, probably even before they had Jumped in. This whole legal mire had probably been a nightmare for a world with as weak a central government like Detroit, stuck between small periphery powers and now having the Cobmine coming in to make stupid demands. He was more surprised that the Planetary Government was here waiting, but there was no one from the MRB, but he supposed that they wanted to avoid the impression at least of impropriety. Surely they were getting tired of this shit?

    Part of it had been the appropriate rating of the contract. The MRB by laws required, 'required', that the contracting party provide a fair assessment of the difficulty and conditions as was reasonably known to them. 'Reasonably'. If you were sending someone to another planet it was a little easier to shake your head and say how could we have possibly have known, but for emergency contracts where the enemy was already attacking , and you were scrambling for anything you could get? The MRB had wanted C-Bills in term of payment, because of course they did. Detroit's planetary issue currency might as well have been tokens after all. The compromise that had been were the salvage rights to whatever had gotten knocked out by contracting 'mechs.

    'Appropriate Compensation' or whatever legalese, gods he hated this shit. Reading Septim's had been fairly short he'd basically gotten assigned a defense zone and gotten to stay there. Zig zagging across the grid the packet the MRB had sent him on Luxen had detailed from his start point at his warehouse loft, to the starport, through the comms issue with the contracting party, all the way through the Azami leaving. Itemized earnings, and what not tallied up.

    "Septim,"

    "Boss?"

    "See if Markham's Marauders are here, or if not why not?" They could have already come and said their bit, but they had been one of the Merc Companies on Detroit at the time, though had left before the Combine had ever shown up.
    --
    Commentary: Ok we are officially back on Detroit. And I am in the process of a complete overhaul of the rest of Detroit II as a chapter, I'm far enough ahead that Sunday's update shouldn't be a problem, and it will introduce some of the Combine Characters who would have been introduced at the end of Detroit I... and Bob returns (the DCMS local guy).
     
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    • II Detroit Part 3
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    • II Detroit
    Part 3    ​
    "Mother fucker." He swore, and looked around. Everything else looked like he had left it, plus the well dust he had expected from not having been here. Gene hadn't expected to away this long so the warehouse rental had never been intended to last this long. The plan originally, so far as there had been a plan, to do the job for the Magistracy and take the contract provided ride back to Detroit on the Magistracy's dime.


    ... and running from a confrontation with the Combine and the IE money being good had tossed that 'plan' into the rubbish bin. The warehouse had been left to sit, the lease paid out through the funds that had come in with the first Luxen contract.

    Gene kicked the safe in the vehicle, and cursed again. It was fucking blatant. Someone had gone through all the trouble of not making a show of breaking in, hadn't fucked with anything by all indications and the first edition copy of the Dictatum Honorarium was the only thing missing. Moving the ground vehicle had been a secondary concern... he hadn't been on Detroit long enough before the Luxen emergency to really accrue much in the way of material goods, and the Magistracy had seen to moving his Marauder after all.

    The book he had taken from the storage depot on Aqua Gea had been one of his few possessions that he hadn't taken with him... and he had no idea when they would have broken in, and he doubted that the Combine had actually come in looking to steal it specifically. Pilfering had probably been done because they'd been looking for something incriminating, or just more information.

    Not that that made him feel any better.

    His comms chimed. "Haqim." He greeted the Azami tech, "Are you settled in on North?"

    "Indeed Major, we have completed offloading, and officially on the clock." Well at least something was going right. "Sir?"

    He glanced into the tri vid device, "Stay alert Haqim."

    "Understood." The line clicked dead. Everything here, well the ground vehicle was everything, needed to be packed up and moved to the new larger rental space in a similar warehouse on the other side of the spaceport... and he'd have the techs they had with them go over it with a fine tooth comb. He sent that request as basically an email, and all it really said was he wanted the machine picked up for transport, and the lease closed out.

    Detroit though, well Ann Arbor since he really couldn't say much about the planet was back to normal. Not that they had gone the Luxen route, who had been broadcasting wall to wall coverage of the pirate attack even while they'd been preparing to ship off. He had to actually dig around for a newspaper actually covering the merc court's proceedings still. Detroit was as a planet actually industrialized compared to Luxen, it had a population of like two billion, and as a result well there was a lot of business to be done at the hiring hall. If not that then all the shops that catered to a mercs needs. It was true the general that the consensus was Luxen had better entertainment... but Luxen was a Magistracy world and very libertarian and libertine in terms of regulation on vices... or so Gene had been told.

    "Captain Fields."

    The PBI Company commander was already seated, and Fields was already through his second beer and had a half eaten sandwich in front of him.His eating companions side eyed him in confusion. "Oh shit. Major." The other guys straightened at the rank, "I appreciate you giving me the time of day."

    Gene pulled up a chair, and tossed his comm unit on the table. "I assume its important Captain, and besides I need someone who can acquaint me with the shops here." He gestured out the eatery's window to the teeming street below... and he needed someone to walk him through what was going on with the Merc Court.

    He was the youngest man at the table, everyone else had full mustaches that were truly the epitome of the eighties. The infantry officers all looked like they had plenty of time in the gym. "Anyway yeah, CNB had combat footage from Luxen on last month, they've really been showing what a mess Blackjack has been making of the periphery."

    "The government's shitting its pants." One of his buddies added snorting into his own beer as he did so without any concern. The corporate security logo suggested why the man was comfortable saying that. Given the scarcity of BattleMechs, especially in the periphery most companies found it easier to have their own infantry, and other conventional forces. Some might have battlemechs but that was an oddity if it wasn't in the family, but barring a major threat, or something off world, or the need to be deniable ... etc... they went to the MRB to hire mechwarriors. He didn't recognize the company, but that didn't mean anything. "It ain't just Fronc getting hit, Black Jack punched his share of Taurian regulars out on his way."

    That wasn't something he had caught on the news. The coverage had been dominated by the attack on Luxen, and to a lesser extent some others, but the news service had gone back to talking about how Black Jack's band had used to be on the fringe of Lyran and Combine space.

    "Black Jack McGirk pilots an Orion." The third guy added. "Seventy five tons, apparently a star league mech he pulled out of some big cache."

    He wondered why that detail hadn't hit the Magistracy either. With as much gossip as went into Mech pilots surely someone would have thought to mention a pirate king piloting Kerensky's chariot, but whatever he'd have to trawl the MRB's database for what all they had on the pirates later. Later, was the operative word, and after the infantry officers finished paying for their meals in the local scrip they shuffled out the door and into the confines of the one way street, for roadcars, that eventually rejoined the bazaar like expanse of storefronts and stalls. It was a lot of concrete blocks, and plywood structures illuminated by a mix of harsh arc lighting and garish neon going down a slight incline accommodating probably ten thousand people, and a hundred slow moving angrily honking vehicles.

    Vehicles that could actually be called trucks anyway, never mind all the moped looking things, or the ting ting tinging cable cars going along their fixed routes. It was a flea market... if you could easily buy rocket launchers and automatic weapons, and heavy machinery at the flea market. It wasn't the sort of place he had had reason to visit on his first go round, but as Fields put it, "Yeah, everything you need to resupply, this is the closest to a one stop shop." That might of been stretching it, and at the same time understating just who all were Detroit's clientele. As what passed for an industrial world, especially in the periphery, this was the center of commerce sitting out in the middle of space between the Magistracy, the Cappellans, and the Taurians.

    The corporations were more powerful than the planetary government, which really wasn't all that unusual, but was made all the clearer as Lieutenant Ford flashed hand signs at some local toughs wearing the same corporate patch as they passed eliciting respectful nods as they walked by. This was part of the reason he had wanted a local guide. "What's the deal with the Combine?" The Star Lord at the Jump Point just sitting idle for months seemed utterly absurd, but did seem to be the case... as ridiculous and wasteful as that was. "Are they really just sitting there?"

    "Pretty much, major." Fields shrugged as made there way past a greasy looking chicken joint, and a place called Warders that claimed to be a travel broker. There were a couple of competing pawn shops after that, "They've rented an entire hotel for just their muckity mucks. Its impossible to miss them in the hospitality sector."

    "Tell 'em about the asshole."

    "The asshole?"

    "One of their mechwarriors has taken to go around challenging some of the salvage claims. Wants to settle it by dueling."

    Oh that was great, because of course he totally believed that the Combine wouldn't potentially renege on any such agreements. "And the MRB agreed to that?"

    "I have no idea." The captain replied. "All I know is personality problems aside he's a contender."
    --
    Commentary: So if you remember of the first detroit chapter (the End of Detroit I, the start of Luxen I whichever it was) in the original version at the party rather than Gene getting immediately swooped up by the Magistracy for the Luxen contract the plan had been for our Combine duelist guy referenced here, to get in his face and just generally make a scene in public. (as in you know how Gene is drinking in that scene, yeah, splash breaking glass spilled drink)
     
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    • Detroit II Part 4
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    • Detroit II
    Part 4    ​
    There was nearly about everything on sale here... well up to the point of say fully functional mechs. Corean Industries was advertising that they had a brand new... well 3012 opening... factory producing new Centurions, and a handful of other corporations with little information kiosks and big signs advertising to passerbys that inquiries could be made about contract orders for spare parts, maintenance, replacement weapons, and presumably if one had the money buy mechs from the corporation... "There is a showroom that has used mechs," Fields was saying, "I mean its kind of interesting to see what all Frankenstein's monsters get put up there."

    Which might be worth a look at, at some point at least during his stay here. As it was the mechs he had were plenty of reason to come, he needed spare parts, and looking at this place there was no way he was going to find the ammo, never mind spare parts like gyros and myomer bundles he needed all in one afternoon anyway.

    They came to stop in front of a semi respectable establishment, at least in comparison to the bazaar, most of the giant flea market's ridiculous appearance. The building was a squat rectangle of ferrocrete with a big set of double doors over which sat a large electric blue sign reading

    'GUNZ'.​

    Nothing else, but the distinguishing feature was that was the exterior was clean. There was no grime on the walls, and the storefront had been washed at some point. The building was so plain and featureless he misjudged the size on a guess. A hundred fifty thousand square feet of space on the inside, only really discernable by the rows of standardized container cubes along one wall being numbered off, and the ceiling was high enough to accommodate both of the Industrial Mechs working on the shop floor.

    "No, no, no, no." A man started, growling as he chomped on a cigar, "I don't take corp scrip. I don't barter. You pay in C-Bills here." He said squaring up with the Corporate security officer about to jam a stubby finger into his chest.

    "C-Bills is fine." Gene cut in, "I need Inferno missiles."

    The man blinked, and straightened. The shopkeeper wasn't much taller than gene, was nearly as wide as he was tall, and a carefully braided beard that reached down to a prodigious gut. He looked, bluntly speaking like a stereotypical tolkien dwarf. He squinted, "MRB credentials kid, fork 'em over."

    The paperwork, scanning into the noteputer, and presumably actually going so far as to walk into the back room to ring the local MRB office, took nearly forty five minutes which left Fields and his friends to wander around the store oogling everything from the pistol cases up to a pair of Long Tom Artillery pieces. "Lloyd." The proprietor grunted, still not especially personable. "I can do inferno missiles, enough to resupply your unit with what I have on hand. If you need more than a campaign load, I'll put in an order. What else do you need?"

    That... that was kind of a list.
    --
    The disassembly of the Federated Arms X9 series was refreshingly familiar. Even a thousand years into the future the well formed tilting barrel linkless cam of a browning action remained an excellent choice for a firearm... and indeed the X9 was both nine millimeter and ... well visually resembled a CZ 75. The other firearm... was basically an AKM in a different intermediary cartridge... or well more accurately resembled one of the compact descendants of the Valmet RK62 given the placement of the rear sight, or top mounting rail.

    Truthfully those were for close range personal defense, or rather the infantry hired on would use them for that. Laser Rifles just weren't readily commercially available... and in truth the infantry would predominantly be set piece units to defend, or cover an area with SRMs rather than intended to directly attack other infantry with rifles.

    While that couldn't' be contractually assured it was doctrinally the 'plan', and he had told Fields as much when it came to recruiting infantry for the company. The MRB paperwork for organization incorporation would follow the same as the armor unit under the company table of organization so it wasn't an entirely new experience. The Infantry Company though would be posted aboard the Baffins, but once they got the situation handled they were going to see about expanding to fill out for Houston. All that minutiae aside, there were other MRB issues to handle. That had included trying to find out what he could about McGirk, and his movements, but it was mostly rumor and speculation.

    The MRB had bounties posted, and had paid out for it... but there wasn't a real explanation of why though. McGirk had obviously done something beyond just usual piracy. Whatever it was ComStar wasn't advertising it. It wasn't as if he had any leads to work at. That left him, "I don't understand," They had his battle roms... there seemed to be no point in being physically present. "The Combine," He frowned at the MRB liaison he had first met two years earlier, "Only seems intent to call me up to recount events because I was off world." He had to stop himself from bringing up the 'unauthorized' duels, "There isn't any question about what happened."

    "No, but under the charter for evenditary proceedings they have a right to bring up individual direct testimony."

    ... Cause that didn't sound like a recipe for abuse. It sounded like some tortuous re interpretation had been inflicted on common law thinking... or maybe it had some basis in civil proceeding, but it sounded like it would be the sort of thing to get abused by the unscrupulous. He really disliked this whole mess, and they just offer to buy the salvage rights it would have been a lot more palatable. The salvage was valuable, true, but nothing he had taken on the highway or even overall compared to the near priceless value of the Gunslinger Mongoose, and he certainly wasn't going to advertise having that in the Houston's bay. He did want the Catapult, it would be nice to have a dedicated fire support mech in the backline available... but he did also have LRM carriers now.

    The hassle almost didn't seem worth it, which was probably the whole fucking point of this shit... but even if he felt that way... they had decided to make this shit personal by breaking into his safe and stealing the book. Not that Gene was convinced that that had been an intentional provocation, but it still pissed him off. "And we have no idea when that is going to be?"

    "No, there have been a lot of documents, appeals, and motions submitted.... and well no we really don't know when they'll get around to putting you up to give testimony." Which of course meant since he was here he couldn't really leave the planet.

    That was alright since there were local contract options, and other work that needed to be done... but he had to wonder exactly how all of this would have played out if the local DCMS guy hadn't recognized the pirates, or hadn't been able to get a live broadcast back too wherever he had called... if the MRB had actually distributed the salvage rather than recognizing the petition to the merc court.

    Too many what ifs he supposed.
    --
    Commentary: This is shorter than it was going to be, we will introduce the combine people (or reintroduce in Bob's case.) next segment.
     
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    • Detroit II Part 5
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    • Detroit II
    Part 5    ​
    This was law fare, there was no pretending it wasn't. It was a concentrated effort to take enough time to run anyone who didn't have the bank account to stick around on Detroit... or presumably the local contracts to earn a sustainable income to live on world while the court proceedings dragged on. Certainly that probably would have been Chang's situation, and it wouldn't have been worth the Vehicles here hunchback had punched... Septim might have but it would have been expensive all the same and really probably not worth it.

    "You sure you want to do this boss?"

    The mercenary commander glanced to his seventy five ton war machine, and smiled.

    Yamaguchi, 'Bob' to his mercenary acquaintances, exhaled loudly. Louder than he had meant to, and certainly not in a demonstration of intentional rudeness. That indiscretion, his lack of control, was overshadowed by the murderous looks directed between the two younger men.

    Bob wanted to be anywhere but close by in the moment, and was grateful as they slowly retreated to wait. This was not going to go well. He didn't voice that of course. That would have been silly, but he had seen what the Marauder pilot, 'the ghost', had done to the K2 he had fought during the Azami incursion. The previous matches had all been against light or medium mechs, or at least all the ones he had seen.

    The Combine delegation slowly settled into their seats. The MRB delegation sitting down between them, and everyone else. The mechs began their power up sequence. One of Comstar's priests began the process of authenticating the duel, a lengthy monologue that Bob's ISF liasion clearly detested for reasons besides just being boring, and Yamaguchi himself just signaled for a drink and toasted the two mechwarriors respectfully as the displays of the box came online... and nearly dropped his saucer of expensive sake. "Is that kill count accurate?"

    The young lady from the MRB nodded, "All contracts certified by the MRB involve reviews of all combat ROMs for the last two years."

    Bob gulped down the saucer, and then before it could be refilled signaled for something stronger.

    Blah Blah Blah, Graduate of Sun Zhang, which of course he was half tempted to interrupt and point out graduated the most mechwarriors of any school in the Inner Sphere at least according to ComStar, but Gene let the other MechWarrior rant over the line while he checked over his console, and focused on the mind machine interface of the neuro helmet linking him to the fine controls of his Marauder.

    The buzzer sounded before the asshole finished talking, and he almost considered flooring the BattleMech and accelerating, but decided not to. "You sound like you graduated from Luthien's pageantry school," He grunted, brought the reticles for both PPCs into the Mech's torso, and confirmed master arm was engaged. He considered going for blowing through the center torso to cook off the machine gun ammo in there. The Catapult didn't really have arms, not full ones anyway, even though there were actuators that gave the vestigial limbs some elevation adjustment.

    There was some indignant spluttering and he adjusted to the left and squeezed. The two lightning bolts converged slamming into the Mech's hip as it started to move. The Marauder's torso slowly twisted as he moved the seventy five tonner advancing parallel in the arena.

    He felt rather than really saw the mech crush a burned out ground car in the arena and the catapult was briefly eclipsed by a fake... or maybe at one point real... overgrown burned out building. If he had to guess some land developer had bought this after some pirate raid and then no one had ever tried to reclaim it... and then turned it into discount Solaris...

    The Marauder was a hundred and fifty meters past the derelict structure when the K2's PPC's slammed into the building. It folded like a wet piece of cardboard, and a rewarding column of dust as it tumbled into the loamy green soil. He replied with the rejoinder of both PPCs aimed again at the light mech's legs as it charged forward.

    In the box Septim Alexander snorted into what passed for beer, "Oh he's doing it again." The beer was too watery for his taste, so thin. The mechwarrior smacked his lips as he watched the boss sheer through armor and negate the enemy's mobility. The reality of armor was that it was rare there was anything that could one shot an enemy mech at close range. It was like watching a cat line up for a kill while taking minimum risk to himself... and of course if the enemy tried to make up the distance...

    Lightning bolts slashed into the exposed internal structure of the leg and the mech crumbled at the blow through. The flare of jump jets lifting the seventy five ton marauder and carrying it to one side causing the alpha strike that had been the catapult's last attempt to woof harmlessly passed

    Septim shook his head as the catapult tried a desperation charge the Combine MechWarrior shouting and firing his weapons as he rushed forward. Of course in turning, or attempting to turn the Catapult into a frontline direct fire mech... the Combine had pulled the original design's jumpjets in addition to pulling the LRMs. Though he couldn't hear the people in the crowded box seats watching shared holographic displays projecting close ups he could imagine the noise having been to Solaris.

    ...and the mechs were close enough to have just entered medium laser range. The Marauder padded forward from where it had landed on the soft earth, and at about two hundred fifty meters switched to its medium lasers. Septim put his beer aside. "You want to call it ref?" He called probably louder than he needed.

    Yamaguchi set his whisky to the side. The Lyran's smug call completely reframed the earlier question to his superior. Had the older mechwarrior merely considered this a waste of time? The 'kill count' would have been a known value within a company surely.

    The ComStar priest looked contemplative and reached for his microphone interupting the plebian announcer, "I am calling the duel." He pressed a button, "Safe your weapons return to your hangers." He ordered.

    The Marauder's arms lowered, and the mech backed up, swung around and began to trot to the corner of the ring it had emerged from.

    "Kuso," Yamaguchi groused dropping his glass as the catapult stumbling rose and tried to open fire into its departing foe. Tried but the shots went high and right of the warmachine. The seventy five ton mech's arms flipped behind and its medium lasers and PPCs destroyed the Catapult's other leg sending into the ground once more.

    A voice opened a line into the box, "Precentor?"

    "I have no objections Major." The priest replied regarding the combine delegation with thinly veiled contempt, "Please return to your hangar and power down. I'll send a recovery team." One of the idiots compatriots rose to Bob's right and started to protest but the ComStar Precentor just glared him into silence, and wouldn't hear it.
    --
    "Did you see that?"

    Never mind the exclamation was looping the post match conclusion of the attempted back shoot all over Ann Arbor, probably even the whole planet. Septim shook his head at the antics on display from the other onlookers and opened his calm to check in with the other half of the company on North. He paused, "Where to?"

    "MRB building, we're getting the paperwork done." The major replied stepping through the opening elevator doors.

    "Ok, I mean I got to ask why you even agreed to this, didn't you say this was pointless preening bullshit," Exact words actually, "What changed?"

    Gene frowned, and didn't mention the stolen antique book, "Bahar has a contract for us. I need you to find out if Phillip and Jowett are going to stay on board, or if they want to stick around with Majesty on north," Or whatever else they wanted to do, but he needed an itinerary, "And we need to get Baffins squared away. We have a lot to do. If your up for it?"

    Septim paused and fell in beside the other mechwarrior, "uh, yeah boss wherever." Like it was even a question, "Bahar does?" He couldn't help to ask.

    "its an IE thing, follow up on a dig, but its a lot of travel."

    "I'll ask them how they feel for signing on for that." He replied, "How long do we have?"

    "Till we're finished with the job on North, and I'd like to have a full complement or at least a headcount before I sign on the dotted line. You can expect that we'll be under contract through the next fiscal year. If they want it in writing on sucessful completion I can bring them back to Detroit if they want to separate after that." They piled into transport, and rode back into the city proper and into the 'Mercenary district' with the masonic temple like ComSTar run MRB building buzzing with activity.

    "How'd you get ComStar to agree to this? I mean they had everything ready to go,"

    Gene shook his head, "Judicial dueling is legal, it was the Precentor's idea to do this publicly, and the city government," Planetary government, "Wasn't going to turn down what amounted to basically free money for a live mechwarrior throw down to broadcast. "They handled all the ring side affairs."

    "Are we getting paid?"

    "No." Gene replied, "But that's a small price to clearing this bullshit up." The bigger question he had was whether this got everyone in the clear from this. If not it was going to make the debrief annoying, but they'd go from there. A part of him was a little weirded out by just how readily the precentor had turned from 'yes we can work with this', to turning it into a planet wide broadcast spectacle for the masses... and beyond probably. The holographic displays in the MRB building, and the ones outside of it in the plaza along with the two D flat screen were all broadcasting clips.

    ... then of course on all of that was he still no closer to finding a lead on the book that had been stolen at some point.

    --
    Commentary: The fight, and particularly the shoving match that occurs before it, have gone through a couple of iterations and none of them I was completely happy with, and kind of decided on the shifting unreliable perspectives one just because well Bob is important later. This is half way Detroit II and we're going to Davion space after that. That chapter will start in November, Elidere, and should run through December probably even the first of the year. Its one part actual not looting archaeology and one part oh look the assholes from Galedon are here.

    The following segment will pick up with both MRB side things, paperwork, and the Combine going 'how did this go so wrong', and how to fix it.
     
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    • Detroit II Part 6
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    • Detroit II
    Part 6    ​

    The precentor reminded him of... well a cat who had caught the canary for the moment. He was basically radiating smug contentedness. His near to crooning about hassle and unpleasantness felt near enough to gloating about the Combine having finally screwed up in their power plays, "It would be quite appreciated if you could relocate the salvage within a month, I know the parameters are forty five days of the court resolving arbitration of a dispute, but you understand."

    "I do." Gene assured him. The sooner they could get through all of this the sooner that he could leave.

    That was when she walked in. He had only caught of 'hime-sama' briefly during his last few days on Detroit last go around. Not that he'd gotten close, or even a formal introduction. Her whole dress, and demeanor, besides or perhaps because of it, screamed money, but she couldn't have been much older than he was... the tacky, and that was the best word he had to describe her shiny fabric cliché miko looking outfit had to be expensive. Appearance wise... if he had to make a comparison was maybe to a young Fan Bingbing... admittedly a Chinese actress, but while he wasn't sure if her emphasized big eyes and cheeks were actually plastic surgery or not she had a face... well she looked like a bobble head if he was going to be mean.

    The stupid hair ornament, that was probably totally a knife didn't help.

    Not that she wasn't attractive, but he was now stuck in a room with two too smug SOBs, and at least he got why the ComStar precentor had the expression... or had because he wasn't happy at the intrusion either, "I am afraid you have the wrong room young miss, I am the middle of Blake's blessed work."

    He was laying it on a bit thickly, Gene didn't think the precentor normally went around talking like that maybe he did and he'd just been spared it by not normally dealing with the senior ComStar presence.

    "I am precisely where the Dragon requires me."

    There was a long irritated sigh, and the ComStar XI sat down behind his desk. His hand disappeared under there for a minute... presumably pressing some kind of buzzer or silent alarm, but then he turned back to Gene. "This is an unwarranted, and unacceptable breach of our blessed order's rights and matters I ask you bear with us major." Internally he was groaning, this sounded like it was going to suck. He didn't want to turn his back on the new comer, and he didn't want to do anything that might 'cause a scene' or whatever. The precentor was still talking, "If you're going to try and claim that the duel was somehow invalid, I'll save you the trouble, both parties agreed to a judicial resolution through trial by combat. This has been an accepted method of resolution going back to the Star League. Indeed of the Member States the Combine most frequently relied on them to settle arbitration." In short he didn't want hear any complaining. "If you're going to claim that your pilot was overstepping his boundaries you should have raised those complaints when he was going around challenging other plaintiffs, not only after he lost." Sneer.

    They went on posturing at one another for a good five minutes before they turned to him, and he had to wonder if they had legitimately forgotten he was there. Gene raised an eyebrow. "Fair is fair. I'm looking to finish this up."

    "Indeed." She agreed, and went on to talk about the Five Pillars that made up the combine's society at large. The long story could have just as easily been summarized with how much money would be required to save face.

    Even though it was a terrible idea it was still tempting to throw the missing book in her face. He was pretty sure she had to have seen it... but he could have been wrong. Making a scene was a bad idea, especially with the ComStar guy here. So grudgingly keeping civil, despite all the pretentions to honor and dignity and what not, "I'm willing to hear you out. Provided payment is in C Bills, not the Ryu." She didn't react to that but the Precentor clearly approved of the financial requirement... but she'd probably been expecting it.

    "Is that the completed inventory?"

    "It is."

    "I'll make a fresh copy," The Precentor interjected pulling the finished documents out of arm's reach and pressed the big fax looking machine in the corner of the office to que a reprint. It sounded like it was from the eighties churning along. He licked his fingers and flipped through the pages until he got to the itenerary with the appraisals, and distributed to them both before sitting down an going over a copy for himself. "Market appraisal for the hardware is page twenty three, covers loose salvage, and machine parts from the ground combat vehicles, twenty seven deals with the Mechs salvaged, and all itemized recovered goods."

    The way the MRB had appraised everything had struck him as odd. It was like they had purposely ignored at the stuff being shot to hell, stomped, or exploded. The 'market appraisal' was steep. Lots of C-Bills... and maybe that was part of the reason the combine had tried to weasel around a financial solution by picking fights with the impetuous, or trying to drag this out to other people caved. Either way it was just a reminder that he was stuck in between two big financial fish.

    On the other hand it wasn't like ComStar wasn't saying they were pristine mechs, or brand new mechs, just that it made a lot of assumptions that the salvage could be made to work... and be fixed, which seemed a bit of a stretch.
    --
    More paperwork.

    "Holy shit she just agreed to this?"

    He heard the phrase highway robbery breathed other the comm line from North. It sounded like Chang. "You can spend your portion later, Septim." He replied. The truth was he hadn't wanted to sell the entire haul... he had been planning to quibble over the normal catapult, but truthfully that wasn't necessary now. "Since we're on the subject of money. Next contract."

    "our friend Mr Ford believes he needs security. We'll be tracking an alleged path of Kerensky's exodus fleet."

    "Woh, yeah maybe we shouldn't go to the combine right now, or through the combine," Septim paused at his outburst, looking a little abashed.

    "We're going to the border, not over it. The path is through Davion Space," Apparently IE wasn't all that popular with the Combine authorities, even though they did occasionally allow them the rights to conduct archaeological digs, or to do their retrace the route the exodus had taken, but that wasn't what this was. This was Ford chasing down a lead. "The contract is going to pay well even if its nothing." They were getting paid even if Ford's lead was a wild goose chase.... but he doubted it was. An official IE contract had been sent through the MRB as a priority rating it as a security mission, and one that specified that the local nobles were prone to feuding and that they might very well end up getting caught in the crossfire. Which naturally sounded liked great fun, truly a charming vacation spot, never mind being right on the Combine border.

    "What happens if we do find something?"

    "That's subject to arbitration unfortunately. I'll handle payment on the contracts, and anyone who needs transport back to Detroit will have it covered. Bo?" He asked the Free World native.

    "Sounds good," The baritone voice replied over the line even though the mechwarrior wasn't in the visible frame. No the real question were Jowett and Andrew who had been working rather frequently before the first Detroit contract as a pair of trouble shooters, "What about you two, you coming or are you taking the Majesty job."

    Jowett glanced sideways and Andrew nodded, "We'd like to take the Majesty job, we want to do it under the company auspice but yeah we'd like to take the majesty job." The Tikonov native replied.

    "We'll get the MRB to draw up the paperwork, Majesty will cover transport costs for your ride, and for back here. The contract has a one year re-up, you know that right?"

    "We saw that."

    "You understand that Majesty will probably exercise that option, and you'll be signing on to two years watching engineers dig in the dirt, on a hot," By all indications Arizona like desert, "sandy planet?"

    "We read the packet."

    "We'll hit the MRB tomorrow then." Get everything with Majesty Metals squared and then finish the present majesty contractor... and then hopefully leave without getting into any more stupid shit or anything else getting stolen.

    Later that night... a gang war broke out in Ann Arbor.
     
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    • Detroit II Part 7
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    • Detroit II
    Part 7    ​

    Septim refilled his coffee, "So is this Black Jack's doing?"

    "I don't think so." Gene cocked his head at the question, and the response to it but kept watching the .... exchange of automatic gun fire that gave the opening to Predator 2 a run for its money in terms of gratuitous violence. As an offworlder this was strange to him. "This just happens." Fields continued. "I'm sure the pirates coming through convinced the usual people to keep their heads down."

    Detroit didn't have a strong central government. The corps kept lording over their little fiefdoms and didn't bother with much else. That created zones of ... what was not quite lawlessness but places where influence peddling turned nasty after dark. In this case throwing a bunch of grenades into a restaurant front window after ten. That had been the previous night... and the gangsters even the least armed group in the current fray seriously outnumbered the police.

    ... which was saying something cause the police had APCs and HMGs, Grenade launchers, and who knew what else, but were presently getting their asses chewed on. There was an explosion, "That sounded close." He muttered. A part of him would have preferred to be out there... but this wasn't sectarian fighting... well not religious anyway. This was just criminals, and unlike with pirates the government didn't' want to go out of its way to spend money for something that they mostly regarded as normal enough. "I what kicked all of this off?" Truthfully that didn't' sit well with him. Even if he wasn't getting paid to take sides. That was actually interesting that there had been no attempt... giving credence to Field's comment that this was normal, the native was certainly sedate about all of this.

    "The restaurant at the start of all of this is one of the families big in the gambling, allegedly." One of Field's friends hedged, adding the last word very hastily to the end.

    A half hour later, gene idly surveyed the mess as Colonel Khan signed off the line. He wasn't worried he was behind thirteen tons of ferro fibrous armor after all.... which admittedly were spread across the Marauder's whole chassis but he wasn't that worried. No one had so much as taken a pot shot at him, and probably out of self preservation given he was in a Mech. They didn't even need to know what a small pulse laser would do to infantry to know shooting at a mech was suicide. It had mostly stopped them from even shooting at each other. "Captain?" He asked tentatively pinging Field's line through the neurohelmet connection to his Dalban.

    "Uh yeah we've got the wounded loaded."

    He nodded even though the line was audio only, and flicked his sealed cockpit display to thermals, and vibration detection. "We're going to need to clear for engineers, there are people trapped in the rubble." He remarked. This wasn't really normal mercenary work, and it was actually probably pretty weird, since the news choppers had taken notice of them, and he had to force himself not to plug into their broadcast feed.

    Gene coaxed the Marauder delicately around the collapsed face of the building, and backed off. Somebody had said this had been a gas main explosion, and maybe part of it had been but the chemical sensors of his Dalban were reading traces of HBX which was a relatively potent, if not exactly novel or modern explosive. He supposed it was always possible someone had blown themselves up, but doubted it. The sheer ferocity at which the city had exploded into gangland killing spree was insane... and supposedly as long as it stayed out of the corporate sectors and out of the way of anyone else with more money the authorities would have ordinarily just let it burn itself out... however long that would have taken.

    That explanation didn't sit well with him in the slightest, and trying to tell himself to mind his own business hadn't helped matters. So they were going to coordinate search and rescue, and he keyed his mike to make sure that was loud and clear to anyone street side listening.

    Septim's Merlin twisted torso to face him, unnecessary but probably mental input to be facing the speaker, "Boss, I don't think its likely, but what happens if the Combine tries to jump our asses while we're out here?"

    "Technically we are within range of Baffin's LRMs."

    "That's comforting." Septim didn't sound entirely convinced.

    "If that happens you'll fight a covering action to withdraw. Plan to disengage once our crunchies are out of the line of fire." He appreciated that the Merlin was a kind of do everything Mech, but if the Combine did do something that boneheaded it would probably turn into a brawl, "Like you say, it probably won't happen."

    "Just thinking out loud boss."

    Most of the company was on North. The MRB was still working up advice on hiring ASF, and working on contracts for infantry hires, and well the wheels of bureaucracy turned slowly... and part of this was he really was sitting in their little annex with idle hands he supposed. Gene scanned the horizon. There were no fusion signatures to speak of. Pretty much everything on his scopes were internal combustion engines, and almost all of them civilian spec, and no active or passive targeting systems to speak of.

    They were the only mechs it looked like in fifteen klicks. That one happened to be a Corporate Security outfit's UrbanMech... and it was painted up in the company colors that were downright garish. Certainly it wouldn't be a bad idea to keep an eye out for any suspicious tractor trailors head into a warzone heedless of all the shooting being broadcast on the news constantly for the last twelve odd hours... but short of that, or similar, crossing the intervening urban space would mean walking.

    ... or an orbital insertion... a nasty little voice in the back of his mind whispered. He glanced up to the sky, which kind of pointless in a sealed cockpit. The neurohelmet triggered the Dalban to track incoming radar cross sections in atmosphere, and any heat or radar returns in low orbit.... but there was for the moment nothing out of the ordinary there. He set a mental trip on the Dalban, just as a precaution and swept back to look up the street.

    There were no buildings with glass intact. The explosion probably had done that of course, and there were a couple of burned out ground cars. One had clearly been under power when the right front tire had been shredded by some kind of medium caliber machine gun causing it to go careening into a wall. The whole scene was a mess, even beyond what it had looked like on the television... but then the smoke had been obfuscating some it he supposed.

    An hour later, with no apparent backlash from the gangs coming the phone calls started coming... well technically ComStar had called a bit earlier than that but, then Majesty Metals, and a couple more local firms started 'volunteering' to assist. Publicity. This sure wasn't altruism. Not that he was going to turn down Canopian medical assistance either... or any help really. He needed the manpower for this.
    --
    Septim chugged down another cup of actually pretty decent coffee to fight off the fatigue he thought of the dreams, and shook his head, before realized he had been about to slosh himself with the remnants of his still very hot coffee.

    "What about the fire?"

    Septim swallowed, and looked down at the Styrofoam cup, "They got the gas line cut off before it could reach the cricket field. That's taken care of." There wasn't really much for them to do now... he acting as a generic officer really rather than a MechWarrior... now that there was help. The order to RtB for sleep didn't make him feel any better. He probably wasn't going to get any sleep anyway, either because of the prodigious amounts of high octane coffee or because of the dreams... but it wasn't like he was doing anything sticking around here.

    There was some barking to interrupt, "Yeah the dogs have got something, got a survivor." One of the firemen called.

    Gene glanced to to the older MechWarrior, "I'll handle, in the event something screwy does happen you'll need the sleep," It wasn't as if Colonel Khan had stuck around... which to be fair he'd hung around longer than Gene had really expected, close to four hours on the scene, and when no firefight erupted he left them to it. "I'll see what's going on," And if the survivors were in any condition to talk, maybe they'd get some answers to how this mess had gotten so out of hand so fast... or maybe at least someone had seen something... maybe that was just wishful thinking. Colonel Khan hadn't been much help there. His job was to fight pirates not gangsters, and the police seemed to feel that he was some kind of interloper, and hadn't exactly been thrilled with either of them coming in and setting up roadblocks and directing fire and EMS.
    --
    ...The hospital machine chirped rhythmically with his heart beat. He was alive. The last thing he remembered had been the dead eyed man leaving... and then the gambling den had been on fire...

    His skin itched not just where the IV ran into his arm.. He wasn't in any pain, and his senses lacked the haze of morphine or some other distillate of the poppy. He wasn't restrained, and the slim plastic band listed his name, and blood type.

    He paused, as he heard a voice in archaic Japanese, 'Tomorrow is far away and lonely', a thousand years out of common usage, but still understandable to someone with an education in the old.

    "Geez Major I didn't figure you for a poetry guy." Someone louder, less polished declared.
     
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    • Detroit II Part 8
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    • Detroit II
    Part 8    ​
    They were in downtown he supposed, in a big ugly Chrysler building meets soviet architecture looking skyscraper that was a nasty taupe color. "So the fire was intentional?" Gene found himself asking, even as he leaned back in the cheap office furniture.

    "Sure looks like it," Tigger replied. The arson investigator was a portly man in build, but was at least six four, and had a mustache that would have been right at home on the face of a French politician before the first world war, or thereabouts. "Fire is definitely separated from the bomb, which was definitely a bomb."

    "Not a grenade?" Colonel Khan asked softly.

    "Grenades looked like they were thrown into the front like we saw elsewhere, but they wouldn't have hit the gas, or collapsed that wall. That's HBX doing all that," The big man replied, "And like I said that was all separate from all of that. If I had to guess I think they probably all done by separate groups. The bomb was probably placed first, and I think based on the timing that the fire was started after the grenades came in?"

    "So the arson might have been trying to conceal criminal records."

    Tigger shrugged. "Could be." Of course most of the gambling done on Detroit was more gray than outright black... illegal gambling was mostly of the not paying taxes sort. The same with loan sharking. Private loans weren't illegal just involved a lot less oversight, and were prone to abuse.

    It just all looked suspicious as fuck. Khan's brow scrunched up as he probably ran the numbers that this whole gang war was looking increasingly like someone had intentionally jammed a pole into a nest of hornets just to see what happened.

    He said as much as soon as the fireman was gone.

    Colonel Khan looked at the carbon paper copies of information. "Someone went to a great deal of trouble then, and I can already imagine that looking into it will step on more toes." That was in short the end of it. Detroit's government didn't want to step on toes. It was a dead end they couldn't go any further because there wasn't any political will to do so.

    Short of Fields being wrong, and that this did turn out to be some giant pirate conspiracy by the would be pirate king Black Jack McGirk this was done. It was over. "Alright."

    "Alright?" Khan seemed skeptical that he'd just drop it that easy.

    Much as he didn't want to, he wasn't going to risk company standing with the MRB, and he wasn't going to risk Khan or anyone here as a point of contact by starting something that might turn into a political mire. "I'm not going to be here that much longer, I won't pick at it." The ganger fighting had died down anyway seemingly having realized there would be hell to pay if they went picking a fighting with the reinforcing merc unit. He would have preferred if Bahar had waited another week before coming in from North. Or at least not rolled both of the Tokugawa tanks into the streets quite so blatantly, but it was done now... "Your techs are the ones helping fix the Baffins and I appreciate that. I'll put in my paper work for this with the MRB, and we will leave this at that." It was the business. This was the job, and customer was right, and all of that.

    The MRB took even longer... there was so much paper work, but part of that was hiring contracts and bringing people on. He had a ship to crew after all Or as Septim had commented over beers, 'Getting into the real business now'. He was distracted by the notion to ring the Magistracy representative. Not that he was sure Centrella might have been willing to make time this short notice, but at least to see if she would and then see if Raventhir or Luxen might not have a use for Phillip and Jowett sticking around there, maybe that he almost ran into Mustafa, one of the azami techs, "How is repairing the prize going?" He asked as he recovered

    "We're still stripping it down, but that's not it Shosha," He accent was a little hard on the word but he interpreted it to be 'Major', "You should follow me." Septim was clearly vexed by the situation where he was waiting.

    Gene wasn't sure what was going at first. He recognized one of the guys who'd been pulled out of hte rubble. One of the few survivors from a gambling den that had had probably close to four hundred people last time he had checked in with the emergency services on the matter. The man who was missing two fingers on his left hand was holding a book.

    ... "Boss?"

    ... and he had just told Khan that he recognized that he wasn't supposed to be causing any kind of interstellar incident. "Mister Ishida I was under the impression that the doctor recommended bed rest." He had to steel himself to keep an even tone... to not immediate put the whole company to an elevated alert. There was no way the combine could have repaired the mechs they'd bought off them... but now he was suddenly regretting agreeing to the purchase given he had no idea how many more mechs they might have brought with them.

    It didn't take all that much effort to confirm that it was indeed his copy, made somewhat easier by the simple fact the book had the tiniest bloodstain from a paper cut of handling it on Aquagea two years earlier that remained on the margins. Really more than that he couldn't imagine that there were that many copies of the book on planet, never mind early editions, and certainly not a first edition. He doubted anyone would have bothered with an attempt at forgery either. It left the question of did he want plausible deniability of what all had happened, or did he want to satiate the burning curiosity of just what the fuck had been going on.

    At least Septim seemed at least as confused about the whole mess as he was. That was something of a relief. It lead them to hold something of an emergency conference of the company's officers.... which was an entirely too fancy way of saying himself, Septim, Bahar, and the Azami captains of the JumpShips. Not that with a ship off world date coming up soon there hadn't already been a plan to have a meeting, but this was still somewhat impromptu.

    The company not having to load a bunch of salvage to catalog, relocate, and figure out to do with... and probably overwork the techs in the process... had generally been considered a good thing. That it had also meant a pay day similarly was a generally construed as a mark in the win column of a business. Instead of convening in a few days where the topic would have run the gamut from the simple, how many tons of missiles are aboard, to the more complex renting berthing for jump collars they were convening early.

    The group created something of an overlap, a ven diagram of experiences and factors for those represented. The captain of the JumpShip Lebanon was the oldest in the room and had at one point captained a DropShip. He had never been a MechWarrior. The captain of the Colorado had been strictly a merchant before his elevation to the position of captain of the Leviathan class, and was in his late forties at least.

    In terms of age that left Septim closer to him and Bahar than the Azami ship captains... and a naval captain should have outranked Ground Company commanders. "So what do we do with this guy? Are we taking him with us?"

    "I generally am poorly disposed to thieves, though I suppose this is stealing back that which was stolen in the first place which does moderate the matter some,"


    That was the crux of the issue. Instead of basically laying up in hospital recovering there would be new recruit had went to go for a bit of payback, which was probably an issue in itself. The Combine using the Yakuza as cut outs made sense, them double crossing the local yaks also... made sense. Ishida couldn't really give any details on the matter of motive, just that 'dead fish eye', who was probably one of the visiting snakes who might or might not have been ISF had wanted the warehouse broken into. That had been apparently before they had confirmed ComStar was keeping the salvage in bonded warehouses, but they might have snooped around anyway even knowing that. Fishy boy had insisted on taking the book and apparently been very good at minding his p and qs subsequently about where he'd been keeping it. Ishida had apparently had little trouble getting inside the hotel in the 'hospitality district' knicking the book and making it back here all apparently without being detected.



    "Yusuf has a point there, and also that the thieves will notice sooner rather than later." The older man shrugged, "If we are to take him with us, letting him come and go would probably not be wise."

    "We can't just keep the guy locked up."

    "He is probably a criminal, Captain Alexander." The bearded man replied, "Whether or not he has done a service or not if he freely comes and goes all the more chance it invites the Dragon's agents to see us with him."

    "And we are not suggesting he be imprisoned merely given quarters to which he can remain." Yusuf agreed. "Finding out what he wants to accomplish in the mean time, and returning what was stolen may warrant passage off world at least." He compromised. "It would be wise though to avoid further dealing with the Coordinator's servants though."
    --
    Commentary: Ok, so two things, well four, This will be something of a longer one...

    Firstly I dug back the outline, and originally there was going to be a Detroit Part 9, there have been a couple of revisions since then, and I'm tempted to just open with Elidere Part 1.

    Secondly again relating to my outlines I should have caught this earlier on the written outline, done on loose leaf paper like an idiot, I was missing the entirety of events for 3018. So nominally speaking it should be Elidere then the 3018 then the start of the reach contracts and lots of pirate killing.

    Now for the other two as I mentioned last month, or august, Luxen was originally basically three separate chapters compressed into one reduced chapter. That was kind of hit or miss, the Rim World thing ended up being a we will come back later to deal with, but not a lot of time was spent on the planet. Now I did say I'd probably end up going back and addressing that, and that will most likely as I said end up with its own thread, that you can read or ignore, but among other changes besides extra content it will incorporate the new dating format.

    Lastly, and this is not definitive but there is a good chance that I will be cutting back regular updates for the rest of the year, (November and December), to work on other updates. This will probably mean two sundays a month. That being said I would like to get through Elidere, but once we do start the general pirate killing thats going to last a while most likely, and involve very little in the way of Inner Sphere proper politics. IE won't be showing up again, probably after the actual HBS story campaign is taken care of. Right now Elidere is looking to be if not the last time IE shows up for a while then the last contract with them, and while they may get passing mention in story their screen time will be much reduced until the mid thirty twenties.
     
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    • Detroit Exit
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    • Detroit Exit​
    He had had absolutely no qualms putting Detroit in the metaphorical rearview mirror. It hadn't escaped him from reading the first edition copy of the dictates on honor that Kurita Omi the original author would probably have been disgusted by the treacherous backstabbing going on. Or not, authors could be hypocrites too. He had to wonder if the Kuritan political officer or whatever knew the details of what had prompted the Azami who had fled in the first place... he doubted it... not they had probably had made the decision to just double cross the local yakuza for their own reasons... and he hadn't wanted to fstick around Detroit to find that out. Not really.

    In a way he supposed that made leaving a lot like the first time he had left, dodging out of the way of a large potential confrontation with one of the big Inner Sphere boys. Maybe that was irony. Whatever it was they were on their way coreward, and the JumpShips would be picking up coreward DropShips contracted out strictly through ComStar paper work... they were going through Capellan space and he wanted to be sure that everything was above board.... there was already one Successor State likely peeved at him, he wasn't keen to the idea of a second. That and not carrying passengers would have been wasteful, and suspicious.

    Gene had spent enough time looking over the current star maps to recognize the volume of worlds that had dropped off the map since the last two and a half centuries... and that the successor states, for that matter the territorial states had all retracted presumably leaving worlds to wither and die, or survive on their own merits. That wasn't the case for Elidere though.

    They were looking at being paid for what would probably amount to nearly six months of travel time; that was to say cashing double. Yusef was currently tabulated which Droppers they could pick up along the way from the ComStar postings, while half that travel time was being paid for by making the journey to the FedSuns for the Job.


    Gene glanced at the rest, "The main," He paused, pursed his lips slightly, and then continued, "issue that has been underlined, is that Elidere as a system has two duchies, and a host of lesser nobility." It was odd to him, and he wasn't sure if that was normal elsewhere, but here it had the potential to be a problem. "Elidere IV, and Ander's moon have plenty of long standing feuds amongst the nobles and dueling is apparently a popular past time going back to the star league." Not really a surprise since the world had for its part only been apart of Davion space since the very tail end of the first Succession war, and before that had been part of the Combine for since the twenty sixth century. The Vandenberg, and McBrin could trace their descent back to the original Terran houses of note bearing those names.... or rather had during the Hegemony, "The political situation on Ander's moon is complicated further because of the traditional succession rights, we're going to try and avoid becoming involved there as much as possible, but if what has been said about Elidere IV is accurate the duchy there is also ripe for a succession crisis of its own." He leaned back, and looked at the senior staff.

    Yusuf glanced up from his tallying of finances, the Colorado's captain had already said much of his peace before they had gotten to the matter at hand. He was trying to find the best, either financially or PR wise, cargo hauling contracts for the firm, but he had also pointed out that among other support staff hires they needed a lawyer sooner rather than later. "I don't suppose the good doctor has actually done the due diligence of telling us who might end up challenging us to such a duel?"

    That us comment. "No, and I don't even think Doctor Abner is there yet. Ford doesn't seem to have thought to include that kind of information. Just the concern of political instability." Maybe they were lucky that they were even getting that much, "we're looking at a hundred and ten days to get there and Ford was waiting on some drilling equipment to come in from New Bern, so even if we get there, we may still be sitting around in Garrison not doing anything while he waits for those." and they might not even find anything out there... which was of course the next matter to make the rounds.

    "I guess they want to avoid the oof," Septim ended his own outburst, "I mean have all their ducks in a row."

    "Paying us half of the money, on top of travel expenses up front in an escrow account, I would hope that this isn't a wild goose chase," The aging captain of the Lebanon nodded in agreement at Yusuf's remark, "He must have something to go off of to pay that much at least for us to ship all the way in from the rimward periphery."

    Gene glanced sideways to Septim, and wondered if this wasn't something they should have read the Lyran into. He was the only person in the room the only person effectively in high command who didn't have the full picture. As far as he knew the whole Combine double cross of the Yakuza on Detroit was just the Combine being thieving dicks throwing their weight around.... the HPG recording of Kurita giving up SLDF positions to the Usurper during the war ... the Azami colony now growing out in the deep periphery Septim didn't know about those. Either of those would realistically be plenty reason for the Combine to try and kill everyone in the company.

    "So is this like the SLDF Exodus thing? I mean that's who we're talking about right?" Septim said speaking up.

    "Probably. Ford thinks that its one of the worlds sent word to prepare for the desertion of the Inner Sphere," Gene replied sitting up in his chair, "Anyway, Ford says in his transmission that he believes he found evidence that The Ardennes Division survived the periphery fighting and its survivors had communicated to a BattleMech Division belonging to the 15th​ Army to participate in the Exodus. Its a fragmentary record, and he doesn't say anything else." He waved at the hologlobe in the table showing the starmap that was presently a map of the Inner Sphere as it had been in 2765. "Operation Exodus as Kerensky codenamed it departed out of the Combine space, which is where Elidere would have been a part of, "The designated rendezvous point was New Samarkand at which point the fleet in full set out for the periphery. IE probably wants to see if they can find the route a piece of the SLDF took to get to New Samarkand, and then trace what they call the Exodus road."

    The Lyran MechWarrior nodded. "Are we going to go to combine space?"

    "No, the Combine is pretty leery about approving archaeological digs," He replied recalling his conversations with Abner on the way out of the Deep Periphery, "If we find anything on Elidere then they will probably spend a couple seasons digging in the dirt hoping to find all they can in order to give the Combine time to process the paperwork and get permission for even just one more dig sight." The predecessor, or one of them, of Interstellar Expeditions the Millenium foundation had done digs on New Samarkand which had been continued through the successor organizations but without fresh leads no new discoveries seemed forthcoming from that planet. "No, Ford's contract outlines the natives have a dueling culture and have a peculiar veneration of SLDF artifacts."

    "Like are we talking about Kimi, the New Salvationists?" Septim questioned. Kimi was a periphery world within a single jump distance of Detroit. The locals had great shrines to the SLDF, and had what amounted to a theocracy established that believed in well, on that Gene was a little less clear, but that they were waiting for some kind of triumphal return... or something. "Are they expecting the SLDF to come back?"

    "Not that I'm aware. Its not a full on cargo cult according to Ford at least" Gene wondered if what they were basically going to end up doing was going to end up being seen as grave robbing, if the locals, or at least portion of them weren't going to be awful upset over a bunch of offworlders coming to go digging around where they 'didn't belong'. Still Ford's phrasing was a little concerning now that he thought about it... Ford's message had stressed that there wasn't a fully blown cargo cult on the world. "Until we get there there isn't much information on what we really will be doing. I don't expect to start drafting actual deployment tables until then, we will revisit it at staff meeting once we're over the border into Davion Space."

    Of course... uncomfortable as it might have been they were probably not going to disembark anywhere within Capellan space. Part of that was to conserve fuel, and part of it was jsut to avoid any potential issues with capellan border patrol given the strict terms of their visa on travelling as Mercenaries and Merchants and what not.
    --
    No disembarkation and a long travel time didn't give him much to do other than to study. It was an extended period of down time, and he was hoping that once they reached davion space that being in the Inner Sphere would let them source simulator pods for the DropShips to help mitigate the return trip.

    So he was half way through finishing review of the Hegemony Staff Officer's course material when the aged form of Captain Pasha entered. The captain of the Lebanon sat down and they divided what remained of his coffee. "I did not know how to broach the matter before we left, the new world," Was the euphemism he settled on, "But this recent reminder of the treachery of the Coordinator's servants has only reminded me of the matter."

    "The recording?"

    "Minoru Kurita's betrayal of the League to the satan Amaris, was not the Combine's only betrayal of the Star League. Did you see the JumpShip Cairo up close."

    "No. I did not."

    "It is a salvage, it was the victim of a misjump that was recovered not long after the third succession war, and was only fully repaired in time to make our own exodus. It originally belonged to the 131st​ division of the SLDF. Cairo in her original configuration was fully laden with material for the division, but her misjump was not an accident. Nor were any of the multitude of other accidents that effected the division, and while I cannot prove it I suspect there were other SLDF divisions that suffered similar matters. The 185th BattleMech division never suffered such attacks as it was stationed on my home world to keep the peace"

    "The combine was willing to let SLDF units bleed on the border with the lyrans claiming that they didn't have the resources to do anything while expanding their military, but it makes sense that they'd have left units stationed on Arkab alone." Admittedly while the combine had a huge population it also had the weakest industry of the big three successor states as well... from a pure per capita standpoint maybe even behind the FWL... but the combine had a lot of people. "And the Lyrans were willing to make diplomatic gestures that allowed the combine to save face," Which really had just encouraged their behavior. He paused... thinking about it, "The 131st​ was a royal division."

    "Indeed, the Los Angeles Division." Pasha commented, "It was an exemplary find." He wondered if it had been aboard the Cairo that the Mongoose in the rack next to his Marauder had been found aboard of if that had come from elsewhere. "There is an SLDF base on Elidere."

    "The 63rd​ Mechanized Infantry Division was based there," Which he knew because he had pulled the files from the secure cache data from the castle that before they had gotten Sam Houston would have been in his Marauder's safe. Indeed that computer had been occupying a slate next to the copy of the medical database of New Volgadon that he had given the Azami, "I'm certain that base have picked over."

    "If it has, it was never, it was not publicized. Do you know what became of the division after it departed Matsuida prefecture for the periphery?"

    "I do not." He had almost appended Captain to that... but he didn't. The fact that a Naval Captain would have outranked a ground pounder major wasn't even in it.

    "They did not join the Exodus, with Kerensky." Pasha replied, "They were disbanded after the liberation of Terra, and some joined the Lyran Commonwealth, and others joined the Free Worlds League. If Mr Ford or Doctor Abner are unaware of this, it might be worth our time to investigate what also might be found on Elidere."

    Gene figured that this even more so than anything else going was just another sign all of this treasure hunting was going to get them into trouble at some point. A thought occurred to him, "You found the JumpShip would become the Cairo."

    "I did, and for many years it was the JumpShip I was the master of, but that is a task I have passed to my eldest son."

    That explained why he was able to captain the Lebanon. "One last adventure?"

    "I suppose that is one way to look at it. It doesn't matter what if anything we find at Elidere, just that we are always looking for a better future, and to learn from the past."
    --
    Commentary: This is basically Elidere 0, but the 'Double Cashing' or whatever you want to call is actually recommended for Merc Companies that own their own JumpShips. You take a contract with travel reimbursement going to a set place, and then you fill out any spare docking collars with anyone headed to along your route. This is why Merc Companies with JumpShips tend to survive while smaller ones don't, because JumpShips make money, and no one shoots at them (most of the time).

    So Cimbri's comment, yeah I can see that, he's probably right, like a lot of this stuff probably stays locked up in my head cause it doesn't make the translation to written word, and that is definitely a me problem. Thats a me problem I need to work on. Elidere one will hopefully be an improvement there, it will open in spring of 3017, lots of travel time to get across space. It comprised two main segments the vaguely late 19th​ early 20th​ century esque archaeology bit, with the answer of the 'what happened here' bit, followed by the oh no everything is on fire the combine is here second half. I suspect that the final version for that will be roughly twenty thousand words... and requires me to seque into a topic regarding canonicity.

    Some of what will be covered as part of the Elidere chapter is not even my headcanon, it is stuff for this story that has at best limited supporting basis in canon. I will discuss more about that once those scenes play out, but Elidere as a butterfly flaps its wings chapter is going to have far far reaching repercussions for the Inner Sphere without even being intended that way.


    Oh also, as I have been reminded ... a Star League Division is three brigades. Like British Brigades for a triangle division (My thought) no a Brigade then has three regiments in it, with from there... ah star league more money than sense.
     
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    • Elidere Part 1
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    • Elidere
    Part 1    ​
    Gene stretched until he felt his shoulders pop, as he yawned. Elidere was a decent enough planet... when you got past the frankly creepy obsession with the SLDF. There were Cameron starbursts everywhere like they were medieval crosses actually. And like medieval crosses every other notable star league symbol were plastered in banners and paint elsewhere. Not that that kept him from getting a good nights sleep though. After months of travel being ground side was a welcome change of pace, and they had settled to the contract. Abner was still en route... space travel was slow aftr all.

    Ford was here and animatedly talking about how they might find some greater clue about the destination of the Exodus, which well he couldn't exactly point out Kerensky had been blindly searching. It seemed a far fetched of a hope though that they might find some indication of where Kerensky had intended to go from a unit that didn't seem to have ever made it to New Samarkand in the first place. The unit just seemed to have disappeared, and general consensus without Ford's scanty pre first succession war records had been that the unit must have been destroyed or disbanded likely as a result of the Hegemony campaign.

    The locals weren't shooting at them yet, which was definitely a plus. If he had to describe the local environment it reminded of southern England... and not in a good way. It was wet, and gray for the most part. Of course thinking about, and looking out over the view from his window of the drab almost medieval landscape the english comparison might not too far from the truth. Even without the complex drilling machines that were apparently needed... which Gene didn't pretend to understand why, Ford was presently supervising a small army of anthropology undergrads digging in the black soil. That in itself he supposed was a little weird, because it wasn't just the environment, the surroundings, the weather that reminded him of England.

    The Federated Suns struck him as... like the British Empire. It wasn't like the Victorian Era, maybe Edward or George the V not quite ... not shifted marred by the experience of the first world war. There was no strong labour government in parliament or whatever the FedSuns legislature was called. That was how it struck him, It was like a future version of the British Empire, an eighties version of the future of the British Empire of sorts... or he was just that idle. Whatever the case the reception by the locals had largely been standoffish. They had come into this knowing that the local nobility probably wasn't going to be very happy to see them, and that was true... to the extent that they were being ignored. Snubbed.

    ... which might have meant something if Gene had been expecting invites to tea and crumpets. He wasn't, he was here to do a job, even if he half felt he stuck out like a sore thumb. The whole unit did really. His comm chirped, "Did you find something?" He asked.

    Ford didn't immediately reply, "Well, not what we're looking for but I might need you anyway."

    Gene glanced to his weighting seventy five ton war machine, "On my way," Elidere might not have been a wealthy planet per se but it did produce AgriMechs...which were mechs used for Agriculture... because why make tractors, that's silly... though on the plus side it meant navigating around the area was easy. Both Jasos, and Elidere, the city had roads that were mech safe even if they were still narrow and seemed to refuse to stay straight for more than a few hundred feet at times. "So what is it?"

    "Not what we're looking for, late First succession war almost certainly, probably better to show you." Ford replied. The dig site was located beyond the modern farming communities. He wasn't actually sure if there was an actual land owner other than the planetary government given how grown up things were... or probably had been. Elidere had been seized by the Fed Suns at the very end of the second succession war... but not without consequences Elidere had been a border world since the days of the star league. The duties of the 63rd​ Mechanized Infantry Division before the Periphery uprising had been to sit on the world and try and keep peace between the neighboring member states after all. Whatever the case this part of the continent at least has been depopulated enough that long stretches of field land and hills had been abandoned just long enough that a bunch of scraggly looking depressing trees had started to grow up. Reforestation would have been too grand a term for it.

    He didn't have any real luck getting any more information on the 'drive' ... ride? Over. It was simple matter to power down and set the Marauder into a low profile crouch next to the expanded form the Company's Daimyo HQ vehicle, and clamber out. There were civilian lorries, and tractor trailers which looked utterly ridiculous next to the pair of sixty ton Tokugawa tanks. Not that the wide mixture of tents of all shapes, sizes and colors wasn't incongruous to look at either.

    All the digging was being done by hand... well with hand tools, but nothing more complex than trowels and shovels... which did raise the question exactly what kind of excavator Ford and Abner thought they were going to need. "Bahar," He called out, stopping her, "Has Ford told you whatever it is they found?"

    She frowned, "Not directly no." The darkened facial expression remained, "We thought it was a war grave at first."

    "At first?"

    The Azami mechwarrior shook her head, "Its a grave, but..."

    "Whose grave? DCMS, AFFS? He said it was succession wars."

    "It appears to be a part of the Sun Zhang Academy Cadre. Probably during their unit's last stand."

    He frowned, "I'm going to check it out." Now to actually try and find Ford in all of this mess, and Bahar pointed him to an excavated trench that was almost twelve feet down into the ground, but more interesting was the concrete floor at the bottom of it... or the various pieces of rubble pulled out of the ground itself. "Ford, what is all this?" He asked dropping town into a culvert for lack description... or maybe a subway tunnel that hadn't had its rails laid.

    "Star League era transport apparatus."

    "This isn't SLDF this is civilian infrastructure," he replied catching sight of an illuminated plaque on a wall, brass.

    "Quite right, we think the Combine built it with funds from the league during peace team, and Star League engineers. The line probably ran to one of the lost cities that were destroyed during the first or second succession wars." That had been part of the reason the planetary capital was Jasos City not Elidere City. Elidere had had a near miss with a nuke, and subsequent fighting had wrecked the city in the push back by the AFFS after Kentares. The Fed Suns hadn't actually managed to take the planet but the Combine had only held on by the skin of their teeth, "No, no this way." Ford called nearly grabbing him to direct him in the opposite direction, "When the Federated Suns took the planet they secured the space ports, and air dominance, only a handful of Combine Dropships managed to escape off world during House Vandenburg's putsch on Anders. It stranded most of the already battered 11th​ Sun Zhang on surface facing hardened veterans of March Troops fresh from Robinson."

    The tunnel they went down lead to a juncture but they bypassed it in favore an access hatch on the side. He stepped in and swept a light over the desiccated long dead bodies. He was about to voice the scene, but Hanzo spoke up.

    "They committed seppuku rather than allow themselves to be captured." He remarked standing next to a severed head that had rolled away from a slumped form. There had to be ten fifteen corpses in here easy, maybe more than that. At least a company worth of green mechwarriors.

    "Yes, yes, anyway," Ford continued, "The 11th​ Regiment was destroyed, obviously." Obviously, "But really what makes this interesting, what I felt would catch your attention is perhaps why."

    "Why?" Why? The why as far as he could tell was pretty obvious the Cadre regiment had been overwhelmed and driven from the field, faced no chance of rescue, and were likely going to be destroyed. "Humor me."

    Ford gestured around to the bodies, and then regaining his bearings from counting pointed to a door way, or rather to to the last body slumped beside it. "He killed himself yes, but not with his short sword. Care to take a look, and see it for yourself."

    Gene navigated the mummified remains, and severed heads, and looked at the pistol laying on the ground... it bore ornate Combine themed engraving, pearl grips, and was very much most certainly a laser pistol. "This is a garrison gun."

    "Ah, yes I believe thats the term. Specifically from our hitherto missing SLDF unit." He stepped beside him, "But thats not all."

    Gene shrugged, "Now we expect that we will still have to do a lot more digging, but this find tells us we're in the right general area. You see this young man had some other items, but in the next room over there are a collection of SLDF issue small arms. The terminus point for this line leads to as you surmised a city which was depopulated during the first succession war, but when the Federated Suns invaded this group probably found a cache of supplies. Including a data cache."

    "Are we talking about a map? Or a piece of one?"
    --
    They were sitting surface side while the bodies were bagged up and taken out, "This is probably how this is going to go Hanzo," He told the man they had rescued from the rubble of the gambling den on Detroit, and who had signed up after that for a trip off world, "I suspect that we're going to be watching Ford," And Abner whenever the old Lyran got back, and chances were Abner would be even less tactful than Ford had been... but Ford was probably outright salivating at the prospect of finding something, anything, any kind of lead about the exodus to care right now, "Crack open a bunch of old tombs looking for leads, including in one or more of the cities that didn't make it through the first succession war."


    "I understand, it will not be an issue." He inclined slightly.

    Bahar making her way over caused him to straighten up. "Mr Ford wants to borrow the techs to catalog things. He also can't get into the data cache it seems."

    "So he's been trying?"

    "Since he came out of there," She replied, "It seems the standard SLDF decryption attempts at working, and I doubt the DOME ciphers would work."

    Ford was already heading there way, "I guess that means he wants me to take a crack at it." He reached up to unzip his jumpsuit and pull the metal ceramic chit on the chain. On one side was a concentric patter of circles with an eight pointed star, representing Sol, and on the other was his name. It had a data profile, and genomic information on file along with the encrypted user profile that was effectively the authorization... or 'security clearance'. A similar profile was paired into the Marauder's MMI that could be used via the Dalban to talk to any doors or security systems or whatever have like he had done at the DOME built 'fort'. He wondered if the Azami had gone back to strip down that place to its nuts and bolts... there had been gear there after all.

    Ford sat down at the picnic table, "At my wits end I'm afraid," Putting the electronic system down, "It refuses to make sense of it. I mean I've been told that security clearance is invalid, or insufficient or of course other things, I've had the screen just turn off. Might you try it?" He'd been about to plug into the device when he looked at it, or the read out of Ford trying to demand the chip give up its secrets. "What is it?"

    "Its a map, right?"

    "That's what we think."

    "Bahar," He gestured to the image, "What does that look like to you?"

    "Part of an image." She shook her head, "I can't make it out."

    "And you think the Cadre group pulled this from somewhere up north?"

    "Well not necessarily, the line also goes to a city on the coast, both of which would have been relatively important. The town north of station would have been closer, so if we went there first we'd take less time. Of course its also occurred to me that if its the port city the base might very well be under water, I talked with Doctor Abner about the business on Pioche, and ... that would be a problem as that town took a nuclear strike directly." First succession war had involved throwing the ares conventions out the window and popping nukes like firecrackers after all, "We'll check the town up north, I don't there is anything in the water, no CAAN units have been discussed."

    "That's a fair point. It doesn't eliminate the possibility... but, well lets just hope that's not it." He shrugged, "I know Abner wanted to pull the geographical surveys of the planet from the 24th​ century, that would have included mapping of the coastal, the littoral waters, but we're fairly certainly the nuclear strike destroyed all of the League built tidal power stations, and other offshore, uh improvements either directly or causing to fall into disrepair."

    "We could drop a sonar buoy."

    "And ping an SLDF IFF from it, yes we might get some kind of response from that. I'll see what we can rig up on that." That still left the matter of the closer town and investigating there... and for that matter now Gene wanted a map of the League era planetary... or at least continental transportation grid.
    --
    Commentary: When you post only half the section because its got a whole page between them....
     
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