Battletech: The Ghost Who Walks (Battletech Isekai)

Nominal Canon [Pre revision] [Short]​

The Elders​

In the age of the Star League House Cameron had managed to largely keep peace between the other great houses, perhaps even had been too generous and cautious in brokering peace between the great houses. It had been during this that an unparralled golden age for humanity had existed under Cameronian stewardship. An age which had ended with the betrayal of trust and hospitality.

Admittedly, for those who had lived in that time, probably well especially for a young man, the Star League and the stewards of Terra, and rulers of the Hegemony must have seemed like just any other government and any other rulers. The distinction between living in that age, versus this modern and more fraught era surely seemed different, but... well that could be understood, couldn't it?

Such a young man simply did not grasp how far mankind had fallen from the benevolence of the Star League. It was impossible to adequately reciprocate the generosity of the pricelessness of the secrets of Star League era medicine. Not when it came in the format of instruction and documentation from a star league, a university long lost to the predations of the Dragon's unquenchable appetite.

Volgadon had been lost for the dragon's avarice.

So thus they had come out here to the periphery to begin anew when they could no longer bear the hardship of the Dragon's whims... and starting a new colony had only increased the value of such wisdom.

The news of things from the Inner Sphere was slow going. They could not rely on the HPG network it was not secure. The limitations of the 'fax machines' simply made it impractical there was no way to string such a chain out there... so the arrival of word was as in ancient days couriers. The arrival of new colonists required many months journey but even so they arrived largely unannounced. The news that they carried was even more of a surprise.

The elders responsible for the Alamut colony had expected there to be trouble. The Azami were like all people a gathering of individuals and there were differences of opinion, Alamut was a fine example of this break, but they had not expected such a change to ccur in the inner sphere.

"Your arrival is very fortuitous brother." The elder with a promeniently henna treated beard remarked. "And what you have told us of events gives us even more to discuss than I could have scarcely imagined."

"It is more than you know brother." The newly arrived elder remarked, "there have been many changes but it only effects the details, rather than our own service. We come to insure that a forge may produce swords." He stated more formally trailing into an archaic literari dialect, "That is to say that while it is only the beginning we have brought the machinery to see to it that we are able to establish weapons for warriors. Real weapons."

It was now, in the waning months of 3019 that Alamut began to take its first steps to build up its own domestic military industry. The first item of production to be the engines necessary to power the Dervish BattleMech, and of course any of the mechs that shared it. It would take time of course, but they would work hard.

These 'retro tech' machines would take time, and would help shape the future of the Rimward Periphery. As machines that would have been considered vintage before the Amaris crisis these machines would begin to enter the periphery market with little fanfare. Only the eventual notice of the Gladiator , built using machines smuggled out of the combine that should have been destroyed centuries earlier really attracted attention. However even that was quickly dismissed by observers as irrelevant the 'gladiator' was a mech but it had a reputation, and of course it was just likely that these machines were simply rim world salvage and so they too were taken note of and dismissed as irrelevant.

"You must allow me to show you around brother."

Alamut was a mix of varied architecture. Prefabricated buildings used for military, or in the Star League era, scientific structures sprawled across one side of the river. They included of course the community hospital, and many of the places a man could go and eat, or have coffee.. however it had not taken them long after sowing the first fields to begin to construct large classical buildings for more comfortable living.

"You have built a university?" The new arrival seemed surprised, skeptical even "Pardon my question but while learning is of course the gift of the creator that seems extravagant."

The elder showing him around laughed good naturedly, and stroked his henna streaked beard before replying, "Ah, it is in our good fortune that we were gifted a copy of the medical college of New Volgadon in the Terra Hegemony as it was at the end of the Star League's golden age. That is why we do this thing."

"It is a noble endeavor." He agreed, "To be trusted with such a gift. It has been a long journey." There was a pause. Then a continuance as a pair of me npassed them by, "You must understand, the Federated Suns have struck a powerful blow against the dragon, and his greed. They have lost Dieron and Altair, but even I could scarcely believe the footage that came from Dieron, even knowing with certainty that it was unmodified because it came from Azami machines. I watched much a battalion of the sword of light be cut down before they could even hope to reach a single MechWarrior upon a hill, and many of the others fell as they reached range to fight. Another battalion fell to the beserkers from northwind as their Thugs and Highlanders closed ranks."

"The swords forged by Ancient Terra were formidable there is no question to this." That the Azami painstakingly maintained star league era machines like the mongoose were a testament to this. It was one of the great hidden strengths of the Arkab legions.

"No you do not understand... after you left, it is to say that these were not the first great defeats of the dragon's servants. On Elidere, and entire regiment was destroyed. It died to a man, with many of its DropShips. The 19^th Galedon Regulars were destroyed in total. The same man responsible is the architect of the destruction wrought upon the sword of light at Dieron."

It was fair to say that he was skeptical. Understandably so. The prupose of this tour was to assure the newly arrived elder that things were wlel in hand and that they could handle the expansion of the colony to accomdate the new arrivals and the following ones... it had not been intended to discus the wars and ravages of the conflicts of the great houses. "If the battles you speak of are so significant... this walk is somewhat premature, I fear we should have addressed such losses to the dragon-"

"No, the dragon has been injured, but what you build here is more important. Medicine and healing are priceless... and we must build up our defenses. We must grow in strength, and arm our warriors for the inevitable conflict to come against the Dragon's servants, because we will have to liberate our cousins we will have to fight in the Inner Sphere, but we must have the ability to provide safe harbor, and goods with which to trade that cannot be sabotaged by those avaricious or duplicitious agents of chaos."

"If what you say of Elidere, and Dieron and Altair are true then the Dragon has been more than just injured we must take this to the others, and we must see this footage. It must be shown."

--
Notes: obviously rather obviously we are detailing the founding of the Sword of the Prophet Industries in the periphery here.

This was not originally planned for today, but Luxen II's update is not ready so rather than push that to tomorrow I'm pushing it a week, and posting this short extra now. Tomorrow I will post the 'Smoke Jaguar intro/1' teaser that leads into the mid 3020s 'you want to do what with my genes' series of snippets.

Obviously: The Azami here have a fairly rosy view of the Star League era and House Cameron as both the descendants of a memberstate population and indeed some being descendants of SLDF troops and so on.

and now a joke of sorts

The FIeld Marshal looks at the man who says this is their fault, "What did you do?" She asks.

The Azami man looks sheepish. "It is a funny story. We had thought to tell a man that the Dragon had collaborated with the Satan Amaris, and that this was the reason for which the Dragon's servants pursued us so." He paused, "We did not realize the sword we had unsheathed against the Dragon."

 

[Pseudo Canon] [Short]
Part of "You want to do what with my genes?"​

Damn it Kerensky!! Kerenskys.​

The prospect of the Clan Invasion had largely missed him. It remained a nagging detail largely a ghost of a memory, one that Gene thought about if only infrequently at best.... in the face of so much else going on it was understandable. The scramble of looking to find the source of the 295^th transmission through the SLCOMNET relay at 1245K3 had been feasible if only because Dieron had had star charts of periphery exploration within the Fortress.

He'd prioritized that, even though he was skeptical that the former royal division had anything to do with the Minnesota tribe. That search, that request to Abner to go run that errand while they went rimward had been undertaken. That there was some periphery nation calling itself the Umayyad, and another calling itself Neuva Castille just made him roll his eyes, except Hallis had started digging through the records.

... and the combination of his data and abner's....

The former popsicle getting more and more frantic as he had gotten deep into the documents... which was how they had ended up in the situation they had. "I am sorry Major, would you run this by me one more time." He needed more caffeine, which apparently was most of the stuffed ward room because a minute later the empty caraffe was replaced with a full one, and they started divvying it out.

The Ummayad were apparently a fragment of the Wolverines who'd gotten splintered off... in fact they might very well have been a a branch that had left the craziness before shit had really hit the fans. Maybe they'd started looking sooner, seeing the writing on the wall... maybe. Whatever the case a tiny splinter had invaded Nuevo Castile, and apparently the two sides had been fighting each other ever since. ICE powered mechs that was a strange one.

Still that was only part of the issue. "In any event, that was what Abner was doing before things changed." The Lion-class DropShip had somehow been travelling with a recording of a news broadcast that couldn't possibly have reached this part of the periphery given ComStar or regular Jump traffic. Hallis had an answer for that one to... and Gene didn't like it.

Apparently the Wolf Dragoons.

... which suggested they had access to if not remnants of the SLCOMNET then perhaps parts of the shadow network, but possibly even both... unless Kerensky's people had had some kind of breakthrough on HPGNET technology. With a deepening frown, he nodded, "Alright tell me what happened."

"They launched an attack on von Strang's world."

That required explaining... and didn't help anything.

"What a mess."

It was an understatement. Baron von Strang was a lunatic preaching holy war against the Inner Sphere and hated the Star League , and he wondered if these... apparent 'Smoke Jaguar' warriors who had managed to get out of the cluster fuck of the attack had the ability to send a message back to the Clans.

They sounded like a collection of blood thirsty lunatics as well.

He thought about what he knew about Nicholai Mason through the MRB records, and also what IE had been able to tell him. He thought about the incident in 3015.. and... and it raised questions had Mason been looking for Amaris descendants, or the Minnesota tribe before he had settled down to be a mercenary? That raised questions... what a mess this whole thing was a mess.

It confirmed what he knew. The Keresnky exodus had ended up somewhere beyond the Caliban nebula... and it was clear that the Smoke Jaguars or at least these ones simply hadn't processed just how large space was, how many jumps they were going to have to make to get to anywhere interesting in the periphery. That was true for that it was a year to get to the other side of the Caliban nebula from von Strang's world... which just brought them back to the matter of communications

There had to have been enough of an intact chain of HPG stations... probably as deployable satellites to facilitate a line back to the Clans. Something well beyond the capacities of modern ComStar. He was willing to assume that Keresnky's descendants had strung that line through the void recently... within the last century even if it wasn't entirely new construction... it was worrying that they'd make that kind of expenditure.

So he was again faced with the situation of that pit in his stomach thinking about an invasion that the Inner Sphere was in no way prepared for. The situation in the Inner Sphere was too tenuous. The nascent alliance of the Federated Suns and the Lyran commonwealth had prompted tensions. Not that the concord had stopped violence between its members. It had not been able to magically undo the bad blood between Marik, Liao and Kurita and of course there were the actions in particular of Kuritan and Liao state actors that had to be contended with in particular.

Then of course there was the potential development of the response. That unlike the Kapteyn Accords, which raised other questions in and of itself regarding the HPG Network, the Federated Commonwealth was a very potential outcome even if only as a personnel union. He thought about the raid on Helm used to resupply the Eridani and Blue Stars Light Horse units to strength.

... the contents of Buffalo Meadows's failed colony came to mind as well. It went beyond that. Dieron had represented a turning point, not because the fortress was intact but because its HPG uplink had survived, and still been running all this time... if they had gone to New Dallas first the results ultimately would have likely been to the same end.

The Buffalo Meadows Transmission and processing ... they had passed that to Abner because he couldn't be involved on Dieron so soon after the Federated Suns had taken control of the planet... and admittedly because they didn't want to advertise the Fortress buried inside the mountains... not as intact as it was. Abner and his IE resources were also much less likely to attract serious scrutiny for going into the periphery so that was what they had done.

He supposed that was only part of what had set them on this path. The decision had lead to Abner investigating other leads in the 'northern' periphery so to speak tying his resources there over a couple of years while the ... 'Pirate Wars' played out in the Rimward Periphery.

That was the problem the Dragoons had to have sent word back, never mind that these Smoke Jaguars had actually complained about Wolves and their lack of action about the whole Amaris business in the rimward... which again spoke of their lack of understanding in just how much distance in space and the limits of the KF drive.

All that did was remind him of how long they'd been engaged in this conflict. Technically... in the academic record there were already arguments over whether the Pirate Wars should have counted actions as early 3001 or 3002, or if the date should count only events after BlackJack had arrived in force in the Tortuga dominions a decade later , and of course then there was the rampage of Stefan Amaris through the Rimward periphery that had followed and the questions of how close the two had been involved with one another and if they had simply had been allies of convenience or something more.

He thought about Castille, even as he prepared to split off all the popsicles who'd ditched Kerensky's kool-aid fun land, and send them to Alamut. He knew there would be protests so he was ready, because this was a mess... "Yeah well after son of sam I'm not taking a chance that this lunatic coreward isn't going to do something stupid. As for these 'smoke jaguars'... I don't want them finding you, but I also have concerns about word of them getting back to anyone else who might ask questions."

... like ComStar... or even just the Combine.
--
Notes: This is short, this is SJ1 or more like the introduction of the smoke jaguars, note this is 'pseudo canon' because it mentions a bunch of stuff and is obviously set after the Aurigan civil war though its before the 4^th Succession war erupts. It notably does not touch on the Wolf Dragoons issue, or the changes from OTL with Grieg dying much much earlier. So this more so than any of extras is much more tenuous.

This is post Son of Sam, the Dragoons beamed back a report to the clans, that hey there was a descendant of amaris, he's dead, but there are potentially hidden rim world stockpiles at least if not hidden army facilites left behind but that there is a dead Amaris.

They beam back copies of the dragoon scientist caste people's copy of that report. Some discussion back in clan space happens, some guys from smoke jaguar decide to take this whole thing seriously and head back towards the inner sphere, and find out that there is this place called von Strang's world, and that the baron there Otto is a straight revanchist rim world nut job.

And well they run head long into defenses designed to prevent an attack by the Inner Sphere to invade the planet, and do poorly. So they pull back because they have no choice. And all of that has basically happened.

SJ2 set in the coreward periphery along the Lyran, Combine border and deals with significantly less tenuous details because SJ2 focuses on things that are mostly solid. And one thing to be touched on is Gene s concern over exactly what the dragoon’s may have put in their report to the clans and how that pertains to an invasion as at this point in the main timeline he is under the impression that the wolf net has yet to secure a copy of the hpg recording or of other incriminating evicdence by the isf against the sldf

 

--

Highland Faire 15
(B)​

Gene was glad that Friday had arrived.

He was physically exhausted, mentally too. He needed this week to be over. He planned to just drop on to a couch and sleep... but that would have to wait for the weekend itself, that would have to wait for the work and the last match of the week to be over. Among the matter of work was the further observation of drill using Blackwell's combat vehicles.

The Bandits were in what was referred to as alternate configuration A. A single magna Hellstar, standard range, PPC as was found in most of the standard marauders of the succession wars era. The exercise called for them to provide direct fire support in enfilading fire while LRMs from a unit of Badgers, Aus C, fired from naturally protected cover as infantry dismounted and moved to fighting positions. These were purely light vehicle and infantry operations they didn't have 'mechs allocated for this but that was also a factor of the potential of who would be sitting in.

He had already penned the inevitable question he had expected to get. It was a fairly obvious question to ask. Why the Enforcer and not the Marauder... leaving aside that neither he nor Field Marshal Davion knew what actually went into these OmniMachines the Enforcer was cheaper and more ubiquitous in Federated Suns service. The Marauder was expensive. The Marauder was a heavy BattleMech powered by a nineteen ton VLAR 300 engine. The Marauder, in his approximation, was too expensive to use as a test bed for this program at this time. The 'Omni Enforcer' as a proposal was predominantly built around that Nissan 200 engine.

It was the engine in his opinion a consultation with the techs had resulted in the comment that that VLAR 300 engine weighed roughly as much as that Enforcer when it was stripped down to nothing but the engine and the frame. Whatever went into these pods they were going to have teething problems... it was a wonder that these Bandits, and the badgers didn't have problems... which suggested to gene that they were a mature design that the Wolfs had just handed over and managed to make roll off the factory production line without any problems... maybe that was unfair to Blackwell but he had no reason to think that Blackwell would be able to make the transition from OmniVehicle to OmniMech cleanly.

If they surprised him, then they surprised him, but it made more sense to recommend any OmniMech program would probably do better testing on a cheaper lighter medium mech.

It was not the only question he was expecting. Truthfully he would have appreciated more time to prepare the unit, and to have the techs work on the mechs they had. They had struck out on Robinson as far as hiring had went, not with ... well with the situation as Lord Sandoval had understood from the initial conditions of the 19th's invasion of the planet... but the original idea had been to make the summer faire last year. They hadn't made it and the issue was still manpower not materiel, and on a significant change.

"So when are we going to drop?" The kilted man asked.

"Not for another month. The Hussars and the," Blue Star, "Irregulars, are going to step off first," He assumed that the Federated Suns had something else, some front level theater command masquerade going on, "At least march from what I've been told." He replied to Cameron's question "They didn't tell tell you?" He asked.

"Nope."

Spring was not a clear time frame precisely. Early Spring presumably suggested leaving at the end of march. It was one jump. Pasha had already informed him that the volunteers he was screening would largely be piloting medium battlemechs like Dervish or Centurions, there were some catapults both in A and K configuration. What Pasha had not been told was the size of the Azami exodus fleet or the details of the rasalhague contingent... instead diverting to bring up that when they returned it would perhaps best to consult the computer core that had been recovered from the JumpShip that would go on to become the Cairo... he wasn't looking forward to it.

Gene had know that the CoreTech 275 was probably, if not the, then one of the most common Medium BattleMech power plants. Dervish, Griffin, Kintaro, Shadow Hawk, Wolverine, even ancient relics like Gladiators. The Nissan 200 was not quite as common but it powered Azami Mongoose, more common Hunchbacks in addition to the Centurions.

"Are you afraid they're not ready?"

"Nothing like that." Bard replied. "Its just... this stop hasn't been what I was expecting."

He thought of the Blackwatch situation... "You and everyone else." He replied, because that was the truth... the Black watch situation, the expansion in manpower, and the contingent that they were going out into the periphery... he thought of the intelligence reports all the same about the tracking of Rim World ships moving out in the black ... what was now apparent as part of the construction of the 'secret army'.

Bard seemed skeptical of his response.

Gene paused. No. It was more than just the Blackwatch the truth was he'd seriously misjudged the Combine's status within the successor states. He had assumed initially that Takashi must have been particularly egregious, a return to the bad form of Jinjiro... or maybe not that extreme, but still a bad seed.

Not that Takashi Kurita was by all indications what passed for moderate at least compared to his father Hohiro... and of course that Jinjiro and Minoru hadn't been all that different from one another in terms of war waging in the grand scheme of things. Dante was right... hindsight being twenty twenty the Hegemony should have interceded heavily on the davion side of things in the war of davion succession, but that was a long time ago.

"Yeah," He glanced up at the sky, "Lets just say complicated is an understatement." There was a noise to the side of the area, and he turned.

"Someone sounds unhappy." Bard commented.

He didn't need to base off of the physical description he'd received of the pompous man, the Duke of Errai was a dead ringer for his AFFS picture even though it was ten years out of date.
--

He'd been preparing to more or less glaze over and sit through the last of the four matches, the scrum free for all to eliminate most of the candidates because he fully expected this to be the biggest collection of glory hounds wielding by and large ancestral mechs. Gene also knew that by cracking open the facilities on Northwind that he had very likely enriched the patrimony of the various Northwind clans insure that next year's graduating class would probably have more students with their own mechs as second and third sons were provided with venerable archers and orions, and other mechs that weren't really lostech but of hegemony vintage to show off.

That was how he was understanding the planetary government was dividing up their portion of the spoils. Subdividing their portion to the great clans.

The Terran Hegemony had ruled Northwind from the early 24^th century onward, during the latter half of which Brian Cameron had ruled the Hegemony... and for three hundred years or thereabout the Northwind Highlanders had maintained a private standing planetary army.

It was a once in a life time find by the standards of the succession war, maybe once in a generation, but frankly Gene was appalled that Northwind didn't have a larger domestic military industrial complex to support such a long standing military tradition.

He sucked down the warm tea, and watched the festivities aware that as the elites of the class prepared to take the field. What distinguished today from the previous three bouts was that they were in the Davion box, with the Field Marshal. It had been a sudden change, but one he suspected stemmed from the squabble in the pecking order of the dukes of the Federated Suns.

In that instance, if it had gotten to this point chances were it was more than just GM trying to direct questions through Septim. "I read your report over lunch." Yvonne remarked putting her own tea cup to one side. The box was large, and plush, very well furnished. Pasha was to his right, and the countess of Kestrel to the field marshal's left. "It wasn't quite the report I was expecting, at least no so soon." She had in fact been expecting data on the Marauder II and its variants, feedback, plans, and so on. "These Mercury BattleMechs?"

The Mercury had been intended to replace Wasp and Stingers in SLDF service, and while it commanded an impressive top speed it lacked the striking power of a royal Mongoose... and of course he had a sneaking suspicion that the Mercury had been a project supported by political opposition to Kerensky and thus had never received a royal version for Terran units. It was of course also possible the mercury hadn't won attention from Kerensky for the simple fact that it was a light mech.

"A pity." She replied.

It really was because the combination of the existing omni pod system for vehicles coupled with its presumable direct ancestor would have potentially sped up the possibility of an Omni Mech. It couldn't be helped. The Dragoons likely had had no need for such a machine given their specific unit doctrines. They would have had hovercraft to fulfill scouting in addition to air vehicles, allowing them to bring up heavy and assault mechs to engage the enemy. Maybe some other royal unit had had Mercury in inventory, it certainly wasn't impossible, but that a Dragoon unit somewhere else might have chosen to attach a recon company of such mechs.

The conversation paused as the first batch of competitors, including the academy's outgoing highest scoring candidate, took the field. Unsurprisingly it was the Highlander pilot. "There are a lot of those now." He bit back that he didn't understand how they'd declined in the first place... they said the first succession wars had resulted in a preponderance of attacks and attrition rate of mechs that truly boggled the mind given the design had been centuries old and every regiment in the army had had at least a lance of the assault mechs. Within a few years of the reunification war ending they'd been in wide scale production enough to start sending them into caches like the one at Robinson. "GM tells me at the time it was the largest battle mech with JumpJets."

"No, the original Pillager could manage sixty meters, two years after the Highlander," the 732, "debuted the 3 Zed added another jumpjet allowing it match the Highlander while still being ten tons heavier." which was another machine he didn't understand how it had disappeared... even more so since the original version had run off a standard 300 VLAR engine so it wasn't even a case of needing some kind of lost engine if you just wanted to go back to assault autocannons.

She hummed in response, "Yes, well one hundred ton battlemechs would bring us back around to the issue of the Marauder II." He thought about the facility he had shown the rest of the company. An empty nest left behind as its regiment had died. There were only a handful of mechs remaining in it, but that wasn't the point what had been inside were spare parts, spare gear, replacements and material. The sort of thing that could be packed up and put into crates. Taking his silence in stride, Yvonne resumed speaking, "The production of new battlemechs is a major industrial statement. I'm sure you've heard all about the effort to maintain centurion production, and competition between it and the Enforcer. Whether intentional or not you've made a thorough endorsement of Blackwell, which might together with their history with the Dragoons could be taken out of context."

"And that New Valencia is in the Crucis march, if I'm not mistaken, might also be misunderstood by the Duke of Errai." He replied, shifting in his seat, "I think brusque," as the term Lord Aaron had used, "is an understatement."
--
Notes: this will follow on with (c) with the mech fights next sunday (that is to say the 19^th.) I don't know what I'm going to do for this Sunday's update right at this moment.

 

[Scrap Misc Scenes pre Dieron]​

Teaser: February 3018
[Something of a follow on to Interlude 7-8]​

By modern Lyran film making standards the clip would have been considered a little unpolished. For all but the highest budget productions of the Inner Sphere though the clarity of the holographic footage and sound quality was superlative. The footage lacked the post production effects that would have been found in a propaganda reel. Nor was it the sort of quality one would have associated with a spy's, or a private investigator's, clumsy recording devices. After all why would House Davion not use very excellent devices for their own historic recordings of the day's proceedings.

The Star League Vintage cameras had been given an excellent vantage to do their work, and given the business of the Faire it had been easy for not one, not two not three, but quite a number of intelligence services to splice into the original feeds and insure they received copies to private terminals... and of course for those personnel of intelligence agencies who hadn't wanted to gamble on such obvious bait a few found it much easier to simply borrow a copy of the footage from a film aficionado at the MRB who had found a copy.

It would still take time to disperse the recording of the day's proceedings. The Combine had known something was going to happen, but by the time the word had gotten out there were other complicating factors. The ISF was already busy ... busier than normal ... and the voice of the dragon had done an alarming capable job of convincing the the DCMS that the New Avalon Hussars had been responsible for the losses at Galedon... a unit of whom supported by elite mercenaries and other Davion troops had already begun the invasion of Altair...

Really the recording came too late to warn against the strike on Dieron even if commanders would have been willing to question official combine propaganda. The recording lacked any details that would have telegraphed future Federated Suns strikes, in the following years...

.... the raid at Galtor, which had yet to be planned at the time of the recording

or

...the liberation of Tancredi, which the Federated Suns had already been planning and revising for decades now.

"Everyone gathered in this hall has accepted a unique risk. In many ways this operation is beyond the standards of basic soldiery or practice of arms. Regardless of past or present experience this coming battle is different." The speaker was a younger mercenary colonel standing in front of a marauder painted in white and gray parade colors. The great ibis that dominated the machine's crest prophetically devouring a snake.

The primary body of the speech laid out in no uncertain language what was to be expected. Every soldier, and every mercenary expected to risk life and limb facing the enemy. It wasn't even unusual for commanders or political leadership to speak of liberating foreign worlds.

"To those most recent cadet graduates gathered here, this is a distinct opportunity to participate in something beyond oneself. When we make planet fall in this coming campaign you will be among the striking force. You will not be relegated to a bench warming for attrition or a mech to be freed up or provided due to casualties or a later advance. Each and every one of you gathered today will spend the following day training in a heavy or assault battlemech that will carry you on the field when we begin combat operations."

The final weeks on Northwind ahead of the early spring of 3018 were to be an interesting time. The speech at the end of its just more than fifteen minute run concluded with the expectation and that nothing less than full victory would be accepted. That might have been dismissed by observers coming from other speakers as simply bravado or even an impossible demand. If the recording had circulated around before the invasion it would have been more or less ignored by the other successor states.

Instead it made the rounds among the other great houses coinciding and viewed through the lens of not just Dieron falling to Davion hands, and the monster that prowled the battlefield on their behalf... but that point at least within the Inner Sphere the MRB had up to date roster information for the Dieron battle.

That information was supposed to be for the purposes of considering whether or not a mercenary company was suitable to a specific employers need. The MRB was supposed to be a neutral arbiter of disputes of course.

Twenty four recent graduates of the Northwind Military Academy filled the ranks of would become Battalion C, Claymore, Shepherd's Highlanders would distinguish themselves on the shores of the Kazakh river west of San Martin. A distinction of action with the hundred hour whirlwind of battle that had prompted the MRB office to rate an otherwise freshly raised BattleMech battalion as Veterans, raising their approximation over Regulars, to reflect participation in the destruction of 1^st Battalion / 5^th Sword of Light and the subsequent capture of the planetary capital.

But on that February afternoon all of that was still in the future. Indeed a few days earlier Precentor New Avalon had only just received a report he had requested on paramount importance. After all, what had not yet made the news, had not become public knowledge, was an attack over the Davion border in the periphery and the loss of an HPG station at the hands of a revenge addled warlord with Star League warmachines of his own. Huthrin Vandal had decided it was in the best interests to bypass discussions with the first circuit using options he didn't need their permission for.

That was to say, money, lots of money. It was a very lyran solution to the problem the Precentor New Avalon would have admitted, but the problem of Black Jack McGirk had been ongoing for over a decade by this point and the arguments over how to deal with a pirate king who had destroyed the 1^st division of the ComsGuard Militia. A destruction that had included, to add insult to injury, the pirate absconding with the remains of the 1st division as salvage. It was a problem that had dragged on entirely too long. They simply could not afford the loss of any more HPGs they couldn't replace the ones that had already been destroyed in the periphery as it was.

They had dithered to long within the first circuit and Huthrin Vandal had decided enough was enough, and measures had to be taken. Vandal would bullishly declare such to the rest of the first circuit as attacks in the rimward periphery expanded as McGirk saw increasing forces attacking and carrying off of ComStar personnel.
--
The holographic image was of a stern looking blond woman in the uniform of a Terran Admiral. She could have been in her late late twenties if not for the service ribbons which suggested thirty plus years in service with the HAF. Admiral Krennick was long dead of course... she had been killed during Amaris's attack on the capital of the Star League and the Hegemony.

Still the Admiral looked impressive, formidable. The black naval dress uniform fit Talia Krennick well... like a glove. The personnel jacket of the Terran Hegemony listed two divorces. A single son who had in contrast to his mother had joined the HAF Army. Not really a surprise Krennick while apparently still on amicable terms with her divorced partners, given they were still marked on her file's emergency contacts had both been naval officers as well.

The Field Marshal suspected that Terran medicine being what it was Krennick and her ex husband had probably still looked quite young when they had died. This holographic image floating in front of the field marshal was dated a year before the usurpation and massacres on Terra.

She had seen the picture of the son an amber eyed mechwarrior with close cropped dark hair who wore the insignia of a Terran Major, and the gunslinger tab on his uniform jacket... that was a better than ninety percent match of a picture taken two years earlier in the Magistracy... which raised other questions

It suggested a great deal but proved nothing. She turned to the MIIO officers who had entered. "tell me you have them?"

"A couple of SAFE operatives thought they were being clever." The man's partner elbowed him in the ribs, but she waved off the man's lackadaisal response, "Sorry ma'am. We identified potential couriers from other intelligence services. We are still tracking those there is a potential combine agent at large, but from his previous behaviors we suspect he'll turn up in the morning."

"Do tell?"

"He's very predictable ma'am. Standard patterns of behavior for his cover identity. Frequently moves to ingratiate himself with large corporate entities."

"Where all has he been?"

There was a pause, and The prince's champion frowned. "He's been to several of the demonstrations of the Marauder II BattleMech. He's basically ignored the Blackwell industries presence with their combat vehicles, which is why we didn't catch it originally,"

She could understand that. The Marauder II had attracted quite a lot of attention... and she could guess why they were so confident that there was going to be an appearance tomorrow. 'Wonders of the Star League'. The King Crab had been distributed to the Great Houses as a 'gesture of House Cameron's benefice' shortly after its debut. Not in any significant numbers of course, but also as notation to the other house lords surely that the Hegemony's new Commanding General was of astute mind when it came to BattleMechs.

Cosara Industries of the Terran Hegemony had created a vicious close range combatant at General Kerensky's request. The King Crab had been licensed to GM and who had continued to produce it until they had lost the ability to do so as a course of the succession war.

The conversation winded away, and eventually she dismissed them directing the countess to be shown in. The Duke of Errai was unsurprisingly proving a problem. The Thug had been such a ubiquitous mech in Terran service there was no way they'd be able to avoid his learning of additional machines. The Thug predated the start of the reunification war, and the introduction of machines like the modern version of the Wolverine; in its 6R configuration.

Admiral Clancy's files had proven... not especially helpful. Thankfully the admiral had made a searchable database but not a complete one. It hadn't answered many of her questions. She had plugged in the various alpha numeric data entries and only received partial matches. There were tantalizing suggestions to answers.

And, places to look. She opened with a rhetorical question, "You said the DropShip's name was the Argo?" There was a perfunctory nod from her lady in waiting, "I haven't spoken to Galax's people but it did make its way into the periphery ahead of the New Vandenburg uprising. It disappeared, presumed lost and I don't imagine even Admiral Clancy though knew much of it, but we do have confirmation that it and a sister ship had been planned."

Unfortunately that was really as far as her information extended for the time being.
--
Notes: For the first half of this this is much closer to canon excerpt of what will happen after the Hussars step off to go take Altair, and the Highland Battalion gets stood up. The second half is still tentative other than Yvonne baiting traps to catch foreign spies. Alright, this coming week we will be attempting to return to the standard update schedule, Wednesday Luxen II, Thursday I will probably post another teaser/extra/side timeline something, Sunday will be the regular update.

--
To go back to the Azami elders back and forth, or specifically the bit in the post script of Yvonne asking the Azami why they think everything is their fault. She hasn't been told or shown the recording.... but if she were

Azami Elder on why Gene was shown the footage: "I am sure that the intention was to inspire caution."

YD: "Instead you spawned a rampage of revenge that has killed or mission killed entire Combine regiments."

Azami Elder looking a tad sheepish: "Yes, w-"

YD: "Brilliant, I can work with this."

and also there is an alternate draft of the second scene instead set post Dieron with access to ISF documents which would have either implied Combine duplicity / ISF leaks of SLDF positions that results in the destruction of Krennic's ship. (And this would be without Yvonne knowing about the Amaris HPG recording)

 

Teaser​

I Davion 3 (Scraps)
3018 Invasion of Dieron +36 Hours
'On Hire for Swiss or Swede,
be me christian be me heathen
the devil to the sabre i shall put,

With crack flanking
I'm an uhlan alles uber
striking terror into regiment of foot.'​

He watched as the SLDF communications gear broadcast its hailing signature... and then to see if the encrypted signal received a response from anything in what most people just dismissed as one of the continents mountain ranges on a planet with lots of those to begin.

When there was nothing, he moved on to higher ground to observe the fight ahead as the command vehicles fed him data from across the advance... he picked one area and marked where he needed to be and set off pushing his Marauder forward into a sprint


Ahead of rolling tides of iron came the steel rain as three lances of thumpers screamed against the sky, The regiments of foot infantry were planetary militia, who were where they were supposed to be. That wasn't the problem. So much as there were just a lot of them. A lot of infantry

The invasion of Dieron had temporarily swollen the company ranks giving them the added firepower needed to fight at this level That would be in exchange for conducting a second exodus trip out to Alamut when they shipped back to the periphery. He wasn't sure exactly how confident Alexandra Cunnhingham, the young Davion noblewoman who'd been appointed their liason, was with the expanded magunac corp, but so far there had been no issues. There probably wouldn't be if they managed to pull this off.

Maguanac 1-1, the original and still delivered by Sam Houston was now actually understrength compared to 1-2 and 1-3 deployed from the similar Drosts', registered as Crockett and Boone. Both dropships were deploying with their own Mech Lances as a combined arms formation that he was referring to as a tactical group.

The three DroSTIIA had served as the original element of planet fall ahead of Baffins covering San Saba. They were now on the surface and deployed as the far flank of the general davion invasion force centered on the Davion Heavy Guards. It was them, some others, and the Eridani Light Horse forming the invasion force. Hanse Davion's goal to tweak the Combine's nose good.

Against them the day before had stood the planetary militia who were supporting the Fifth Sword of light on one flank, and a Sun Zhang cadre on the other. The plan was to take their advantage and pin in place who they could and fight. If they could destroy their direct opposition and swing into the enemy force, that would presumably mean the Eridani swinging into the Gold Dragons while the Davion Guard aimed to seize the capital against the hopefully reduced forces holding San Martin

So that had been the plan. The plan which did not appear to be surviving contact with the enemy. The problem was apparently that the Combine had decided to redeploy in the night using their infantry regiments as ablative armor. The fusion signatures he was detecting were a company of mechs from the Fifth Sword of Light.

His Marauder's Dalban started cataloging mass and signals throwing up war book identifications that ran from light mechs through to the single Assault eight five tonner that was putting out too much signals for the mech's health. Most of the enemy force though weighted in as mediums or heavy Battlemechs a stark contrast to the expected Sun Zhang light mech cadres they'd been expecting to punch through and engage. It could have meant that this independent company had been thrown in front of them while, he assumed, the Kuritan's attempted to use the fast swarm of fresh meat to launch a suicidal banzai charge against the Guards, or the Light Horse closer to the capital of San Martin.

Or they could have been doing something else entirely.

"One-Two, One-Three break left of my position along the salient." He received a perfunctory acknowledgement of the order and a pair of jenner 7As from the One Two Tactical Group's mech lance zipped past his marauder churning through the dusty red sands. Following after them were a mix of Harasser, and Saracen LRM hovers. Machines that if they could pull this off, he expected he'd be able to replace wholesale with Bandits, but first they had to get through this.

The other machines of the combined armed units followed.

The good news was that their intelligence appeared valid. The entirety of Fifth Sword of Light wasn't present. Intelligence had said One battalion was off world. Of course that meant that if they did win the Regiment would survive, but it meant they would have to fight one less battalion of enemy mechs. Normal Azami doctrine was oriented towards lighter, and where possible less ammunition dependent raiding and strike forces, but that had its limitations... and of course here that role was largely already being filled by the Eridani Light Horse.
--
The radio intercepts had thus far been more or less the expected. Nothing really actionable. "We are Samurai!" The pronouncement brought a banzai cheer from the ranks of combine mechwarriors more than a dozen strong, a company and its command element. If his intercepts of their IFF was right a forty something year old DCMS Major.

Gene grunted, rolling his eyes, before keying the comms to the unit at large, a series of holographic projections manifested, "That one is mine," He ordered into the mike highlighting the offending Combine Mechwarrior's heavy battlemech in the battalion wide tactical network through his Marauder.

He received a series of affirmatives, before a brogue voice cut in, "So how long are you going to need, cause," The Volunteers commanding offficer, Bard Cameron, cut off in a fit of static, before his image reasserted, "Yeah we're taking intermittent LRM contacts."

"Can you identify their position?"

"Nothing, just the general direction of fire." He would have killed, probably literraly, for an effective ground based tracking radar but with all of the countermeasures going out there was too much interference. "We're scouring the hills for light mechs or vehicles that might be spotting for them, but nothing so far."

"Weight of throw?"

"I'd guess ground based hover vehicles. Fives and tens, but" The image shuddered, "Definitely not LRM carriers, but we're getting pecked."

Gene nodded, and prepared to finish orienting troops into position before an overhead observation plane spotted a bigger problem. "Bard, Break contact and pull back." He didn't get an immediate response, he switched channels to the Service Company ordering them to bring trailers up, and then cycled through the roster for the fastest vehicles they had in situation with the intention to send them as couriers to physically bard to drop back from where he was in advanced contact.

The holographic display of the planet's geography as it spread out through the broad shallow river valley that fed down into the great lake that was really a freshwater inland sea given its size presented them something of a tactical and operation bufferzone to one side.

"Commander?" An Azami Tech asked within the Daimyo HQ vehicle, "We're moving the devestator now." The trailer containing the hundred ton assault mech needed to be moved to as close to the hill he had highlighted in the mech display.

He acknowledged but was already running up how quickly artillery could be brought on line... the thought of how limitted their stockpiles of chaparal... the arrow IVs were but the vehicles that had been pulled out of a brian cache intended to fight the combine. H'ed need machines to lase targets for missile bound artillery strikes as well... that meant he needed to remain in the Marauder until the last possible transfer time... switch machines climb up the rest of the hill and hope the topographics were right and then expend as much of the machine's forty gauss rounds as he could before the enemy could rush in.

It was a pity the devastator hadn't been built with command and control in mind. The Atlas was too generalist for his taste. He somewhat regretted at the moment handing over the Ought 10 King Crabs from the Northwind find... but he had had no idea they'd be in this position. He flipped a switch to tag his movement to the illuminated waypoint and turned the Marauder to move while keeping the nose of the machine oriented towards the horizon where the enemy were coming from... if he was right then Bard was being peppered Sun Zhang cadets being fed at him piece meal and that there was probably a battalion of sword of light behind them as well...

... which just raised the question of whether or not the intelligence was wrong. Was the the whole regiment here? Or had the Combine simply consolidated more of their forces?

The Combine Commander may have assumed that if he smashed them and turned and rolled up the flank he'd be able to sweep through the DMM and then face the Eridani or the Davion Guards in an encirclement... which only made combine was going deepthroat on the whole elan vitale concept.... or in its Japanese concept Kokutai.

It was probably that. The Combine expected to start a rout... and that just wasn't going to let that happen. He reached up and flipped the toggle, and punched in a key series, and waited for their ASF detachment to move to standby.

Seven minutes later he was starting the boot sequence on the Devestator, and then moving it up the rise to the crest of the hill moving the master arm switch to on, and transferring power to the Gauss rifle capacitors... while still trying to field questions from the countess of Kestrel on what was about to happen, and why he'd pulled Bard back into the main formation.

The Marauder had been left on standby... if he had time, if he could expend his ammunition and do enough damage he'd swap back to the command mech... but that wasn't a sure thing. The Marauder's targetting data fed 'mr samurai's position as the man's parade paint heavy mech as it crossed nine hundred meters.

He ran the ballistic calculations, and started plotting the spread and displacement of the other mechs in the hostile company including the lead mech's wing man and the other lancemates. He let a breath as they continued to come on. The reticle resolved and went green. The sixty ton mech's head disolved in slow motion in the video feed, but he was already adjusting the left gauss rifle onto a catapult k2 and preparing to let fly.

Without the Marauder's dalban he could no longer manage regiment wide command structures down to individual tank and infantry platoons. The last orders to finalize positions and prepare support ppcs, and inferno loaded srms ahead to break any following action would be the last orders those units had received. The tanks needed to be prepared to fire from protected positions and then move back if anything came through.

With more time, with more warning, he'd have tried to maneuver fury and alacorns to enfilade the oncoming attack before directing the mechs to attack... but this banzai charge had been screened at first as a probing action rather than what was looking like a human wave assault... in hindsight that made sense doctrinally.

This was obvious a prepared counter attack as opposed to a probe. A counter attack after their own meeting of the DCMS infantry earlier this morning.

--
Notes: The lesson obviously is don't be combine infantry, being a pbi is not a good experience anyway, but this is a teaser of the events of spring 3018's main battle.

 

Highlander Faire
15 (c)​

Field Marshal Davion's expression largely remained placid save the vaguest narrowing of the eyes, which suggested she wasn't ignorant of yesterday's ... altercation after the evaluation of the Blackwell vehicles by the cadets. An altercation that seriously undermined... well he suspected the only reason the duke of Errai was even here was because he felt entitled to something... but it wasn't a good look

The what, how and why weren't clear... but the specifics didn't matter but obviously that must have played a role in them getting camped in the Davion box. The pipes swelled at the hipowered search lights focused on the top rated students, but they were only one set of participants...

The last match had been placed in one of the training grounds for the school that hadn't been in use for the faire, and was dominated by a large false concourse of rail line complete with fake derailed train. There were some fake buildings that might or might not have supposed to have been a train station it was kind of hard to tell from here.

Whatever the case the game's commission had endeavored to make things stand out, and of course to give plenty of destructible environments around for the show. Next weeks events were to be more... perhaps not sedate, but laid out to allow one on one Mech matches throughout the course of several days each of which might last five or ten minutes if both opponents began within shooting distance of each other. Today though they had plenty of wide open spaces.

And as soon as everyone was on the field and deployed he wasn't surprised as simunitions of PPCs began to start flying.

Pasha rested a hand on his shoulder and indicated the Griffin, "She is very good." The fifty five ton mech retained the primary PPC armament.

"Its like a smaller version of a battlemaster." Septim agreed as the machine cleared ninety meters to the left. Without the machine guns, but then really what good were those in a battlemech fight in most situations. The comparison was apt though, for even though the griffin had given up its LRM capacity the trade was probably worth it, as long as the pilot knew what they were doing... it was almost assuredly a machine that had seen a lot over the course of the succession wars.

Unlike their original booth the Davion booth had terminals keeping active tracking on the judge's score calls.. and Gene doubted it was to keep the judges honest either. A series of PPC blasts knocked a warhammer out within two minutes of the buzzer.

Some of her fellow new arrivals were proving as lucky, or a s good. A Pheonix Hawk sandwiched into the left corner was down an arm, and was lucky they hadn't called an ammo breach, and likely wouldn't last much longer as a pair of heavies chased the golden mech. Whatever Gene had expected, and there was some showboating going on, but there was really less than he'd expected. He watched the two heavies chase the Pheonix Hawk down and dropping it out of contention rather than face each other both pivoted off to move towards a tartan clad heavy pilotted by one of their fellow cadets showing they were equal opportunity about ganging up on someone else.

Gene watched the feeds more than the field, not because of the scoring but because there was too much going on. If he'd been in his Marauder it would have been different... he'd been on the field with this many machines moving but that number was being trimmed down quickly... and faster than he expected. "The top scoring cadets are all avoiding each other."

"They want to fight each other one on one."

Sure... and it wouldn't have surprised him if the game commission hadn't told them to save it for those later matches given a quick glance at the noteputer provided him with the current odds, favorites and the amount of money being wagered.

In the back row behind them there was a chatter about the solaris game.

They were down from thirty mechs to twenty two... twenty one now as the games commission called another elimination with only four minutes after the starting buzzer. A victor's auto cannon dropping a lighter tartan painted mech eliminating it from the roster before the assault mech started taking PPC fire.

One of the judges' face went slack for a minute then hit his buzzer signaling he was calling a head shot on the Victor. The Machine wasn't out but the display showed the machine's head as in the red. The Victor... since this wasn't real energy weapons was trying to turn and find where his attacker had come from... which was a little hard when your cockpit was covered by simunition paint.


There was no point complaining about the kid's mistakes. He'd taken a closer quarters brawler into the open, and to be fair he probably hadn't assumed anyone would head shot his mech. That was the bigger problem over anything else he'd done wrong.

A minute later, just as the big digital display ticked five and a half, another simunition PPC packet repainted the Victor's face from where the 9 Bravo had tried to wipe the paint off the cockpit. "She's showing off." He remarked. "Waiting for him to make a move in this mess wasn't the right move." Even if it was what Combine honor duels would have required, to allow the other opposing mech the chance to do something, and to focus on him, and in ranged combat. "Are we monitoring their feeds, I assume their radios work?"

"We are, but normally we don't broadcast that." A plump short man in a kilt remarked slowly. "Beginning the colonel's pardon its more of a safety thing, sometimes the lads get a little excitable... and admittedly we've had some of the fellas... skirt the rules a bit."

"Did she challenge the warhammer or the victor to a fight or didn't she?" He wasn't ignorant that she could have called them out before the fight, but if she was going through a list... they were a little beyond showing off, and well into something else.

"I could ask." The man waffled clearly unused to this kind of request... which might have suggested Yvonne didn't ask him to do anything or requests regarding pilots were on a different sort... or just some other factor.

Gene nodded and looked back at the display as the Griffin peeled off towards its next victim. The dispersion was different, how much of that was the map's terrain forcing them to use different starting positions but there was a convergence point where the fake hills forced some of the mechs to get into close quarters. The kind of place where a mech like a Stalker, or a Longbow could just sit over the rise and throw rocks at your head from top attack. The breaks in the terrain were such that a mech with jump jets could hop, and go between cover and protection... or a mech could stand up on the hill for a little extra vantage force someone to shoot up the hill from the base or below it.

The fake railway buildings being little more than ply wood and canvas structures were not doing well either from contacts with simunition still having enough force to break them or just cadets driving mechs through the fake structures. That meant there was an increasing lack of cover from the buildings in the area around that end and with mechs congregating in that area the judges were calling hits left and right.

"That was a bad choice, if they keep this up they'll have the quota."

Two 'mechs went down as they moved into close quarters blocking the road access and boxing in another six mechs representing a substantial number of remaining mechs on the field, right as the Stalker came over the hill within its SRM range, and the pilot behind the yoke of the 85 tonner didn't waste any time running his mech hot with SRMs, his large and medium lasers, taking advantage of the boxed in smaller mechs and before the judges had called it the pilot had knocked all of them out, and seized top spot for individual mech kills in the match.

"This is the kid going to the Crucis Lancers I take it."

"He is." Yvonne replied. "I take it he meets with your approval."

"Certainly you could do a lot worse," He replied. The new subaltern would have six months before he was brevetted to lieutenant time in that rank after which he'd probably be confirmed to the rank within his posting to the 7^th Crucis Lancers.


He watched the names and the scoring go up. By knocking out the mechs, they weren't eliminated, they did take a score penalty, which was probably going to effect who they went up against next in the one v ones that would start next week. He tuned out the narration, and glanced at the clock that read just shy of seven minutes. Not the fastest of the four but faster than he'd been expecting.

The one v ones next week would take longer four sets of advancements, four brackets even if every match was as expected to be in size of a few hundred meters starting where they'd be short and brutal it could still take ninety seconds. Four matches on monday... well they'd see.

"So what is one the schedule now Field Marshal?"

There was a pause. "Realistically the volunteers should be your priority, but for the moment and think an early dinner will suffice, and discussions about how to prepare."

 

I Davion 3 (b)
'Its time to switch to whisky, we've been drinking beer all night.'​

The hoppers lifted the kinetic penetrators in between the first set of charged rails that formed the 'breach' of his gauss rifle. There was a pulse of dust as the mass of metal accelerated down range several times the speed of sound. The K2 skidded down in a lopsided manner its front glass shattered as the machine rolled to a stop on its side.

The radio crackled giving him the bad news that Bard had found that other Combine Mech Battalion, that it was the sword of light was coming down. He reached up to flip the controls as the left the left Gauss roared tearing into the side torso of a humanoid walking war machine. Gene hissed in incandescent fury against his harness, "MacIntyre." He ordered into the throat mike, the other lieutenant colonel's image flickered into his cockpit, "go pull the volunteers out of that mess, and then put your Thugs and Highlanders where they can do the most good."

He ignored comments about cadets earning their spurs. The other gauss rifle snarled and he adjusted the left to delimb another mech sending it crashing into the ground as it attempted to pick up speed. The Combine was couldn't rely on non smart thermals effectively. Too many other heat sources, and while his VLAR was running the capacitors were highly heat effective.

The display greened. Hoppers dropped rounds as they cleared under five hundred meters. The gauss rifles fired. A dragon's fusion signature died as a couple hundred pounds of tungsten allow ripped in and out front to back.

Twenty three rounds left, eventually became twenty three rounds expended and returns on his machine's sensors confirmed contact further north as the battalions other companies continued to throttle up the engines intended to commit to battle. Not realizing that they were already too late as the last of their lead company dissolved at just over three hundred meters to the bloom of man made lightning of his PPCs converging on the machine's head.

He registered Chang's Marauder steadily trundling forward , and not the only relatively slow mech pushing up. A Fury flash cabled a text update by lasercom of the archers starting to pour fire into the advance element that had been harrassing Bard and hold his attention while the Sword of Light came along. Grasshoppers and Quickdraws among them.

The display updated, and he ran the math, and ordered Bardiche to swing into reinforce the position the DMM troops were supposed to be vacating. "Anyone able to tell me what the Eridani are doing?"

"Still contacting infantry, and armor. Dug in support PPCs, and inferno missiles, to the east they haven't been able to break through and reach the capital." A voice answered from the command vehicle.

That suggested but didn't conclusively prove that the Combine had divided between conventional assets and Mech forces after this morning, if they hadn't already had that underway with something like this kind of attack in mind. He swapped channels, "MacIntyre, divide that battalion and drive them towards the lake when I signal."

"Whats the signal colonel?"

He hit the mike, and started cueing their aviation assets with orders to the DroSTs to prepare to dust off and potentially put their small craft in the air. He watched the battalions as they continued to advance on his broader arrangement of forces.

This was going to get very messy very quickly and do so from west to east. Most likely the combine had expected that first company to hold their attention, while the DMM had been held in place or potentially even pushed by the Sun Zhang cadre, that was even now trying to push into close quarters where mech combat was often the most lethal in normal engagements.

... but what he suspected, and what his own Azami officers had reached consensus on, was that this was a combine trial by fire for its green troops as disposable meat shields to soak ammunition ahead of a more elite, or really one of THE elite units of the DCMS to launch a concerted attack.

The devastator registered the boosting fusion signatures of the aerodyne dropships, small craft and ASF as they started preparations. He didn't much longer to watch as his computer informed him that he was less than half of his combat load as the other mechs began to resolve into extended ranges against their counter measures.

Seventeen rounds was going to go fast. If they could pull this off it would cement a Davion victory at Dieron, because the combine in committing to a decisive battle were facing not a large mech force, but also one with better equipment.

"What are we doing?"

Bard's voice was a distraction he didn't need, "Colonel Cameron I am pulling you from the rotation, and redeploying you to screen the pivot we will execute towards San Martin." He ignored the protest that the enemy was right in front of them. That it was true didn't change things, he had wanted to pull the combine units further forward, and spread them out originally... that had been the entire reason to pull the Volunteers back. In terms of average overland speed the DMM troops would be faster to redeploy along the line, after that even accounting for the presence of cache machines in what constituted the battalion was, Bardiche with Claymore being the slowest Mech Battalion in relative terms.

The Gauss rifle tore a leg off of an advanced mech as the conversation played out.

An argument they were still carrying on when the computer warned him he had ten rounds remaining and still a full company pushing forward but he didn't care about that third company so much as the nearer remains of the second. The gauss rifle continued on down the lances and then draining the capacitors to the gauss rifle as his PPCs began to flash.

"Bard I am switching machines, standby." He ordered as a machine died to man made lightning, and he took the assault mech a step backwards, and down the hillside and walked it back to the crouched form of his Marauder. He looked at the Azami techs. "Get it loaded, and bug out, we won't use it again today." He ordered stepping of the ladder to make for the dust and mud caked 75 tonner machine, before starting a full on sprint to the machine.

Start from Standby and bringing the Marauder to full power took ninety seconds to make sure the ER PPCs were live, and that the Thompson gun was good to go. He blinked through the message from testing and evaluation command. The 120mm hopper told him he had ammunition in the chamber. The VLAR 300 pushed the machine into a sprint of its own even as heard the 185mm chemjet thunder from an assault auto cannon. The enemy were now in close quarters with Chang's screening force, as more AC/20s opened up all along the line.

The familiar connection through the MMI to the Dalban's mass of data was reassuring. He could perceive the whole battlefield spiritually process the presence of Chang's Marauder, or Beau Dervish their brawlers, or missile boats respectively. The Kazakh river was just north of them to the east lay the planetary capital. He stared at the holographic display, a blinking indicator in what ordinarily would have been his peripheral vision.

A handshake from a Terran Hegemony Command.

Not now.

When the Snakes were dead. The Machine crested the hill and his ER PPCs opened up even as his sensors processed the PPC visual returns to the west towards the lake where Thugs were wading into battle. If any of the combine had gone to thermals he knew his 75 must have looked like a small sun from the waste heat of the extended range model Hellstars.

--
Notes: This is (b) and together they approximate a rough outline of the main and iconic in universe action on Dieron, with a significant emphasis on how aggressive, to the point of wastefulness combine doctrine is when they aren't engaging in individual duals, and this is based off of the IJA's doctrine, which was itself like the Russian infantry doctrine based off late Napoleonic ideas of infantry doctrine pioneered by french thinkers.

And in Battlech canon we see this with the Combine attempting to grind the dragoons down as well as elsewhere. Dieron as an arc, especially in terms of how much it effects the geopolitics of the Inner Sphere, being right in Terra's back yard, is a comparatively short Arc in terms of outline. Actual combat is as suggested by these two snippets is limited to a relatively short, very brutal engagement in a limited geographic environment. Now I expect the actual Dieron chapter to be ten to twelve segments, with the rest of Dieron being post combat events. In short Dieron was written in a similar fashion to Elidere was just kind of in a different order. Its the deployment on the planet its Bard's perspective, Gene gets in the Devastator, Hanzo, Bahar, Septim, Kiyone, interludes, Glimpses at the combine perspective, and in short order Dieron falls to the Davions.

I expect to start Dieron as a chapter in March. Highland Faire as a chapter is fairly large, its kind of necessary because of everything it sets the stage for, but the Jump to Dieron should go up in March as a main chapter story

Then after Dieron probably this summer there will be the summer 3018 'side quests' as they're in my notes before the return to the periphery as the escort of the exodus fleet and the shooting phase of the pirate wars.


And speaking of the pirate wars with all the talk about magistracy nobility there was another non canon snippet I was considering putting up, as I've already mentioned in the span of the davion section Yvonne's pretty incredulous by the Magistracy not trying harder to keep Gene on station, now admittedly that was all pre Elidere and certainly elsewhere but we will get to that in the Pirate wars and some of how the Magistracy has noble politics, and pirates that need killing. That snippet is more expressly non canon but does contend with some of the facets of the magistracy that have been on the books for a very long while but that the canopians are probably leery of actually practicing on foreigners because well they like trade with their neighbors and not being pariah states (I'm looking at you roman cosplaying lyrans).

 

Highland Faire 16​

Field Marshal Davion was right they needed to focus on the DMM troops.. but it wasn't that simple, because they were in uncharted waters as to how to handle this from a training and logistical side of thing. "I did say that the Archer was perhaps the most common 'mech in Terran service." Gene replied flipping over the list, "And the Highlanders were iconic to the Hegemony as well," Or to mercenary based from the Hegemony's neck of civilized space... but it was understandable that Northwind's clans had all but scrambled for the totem mech. "We should have the next set of trams offload tonight so I think we should be settled until then."

Septim paused, deciding to change subjects, "So I got mail from home." He paused, and leaned back crossing his arms over his chest, "My family they heard about Elidere."

Gene leaned forward folding his hands, "You're from the Lyran Commonwealth." It wasn't really a question so much as a statement of the fact.

"Right... I know the plan is to go back to the periphery."

Gene paused considering his words, "Septim, if you need time off I can give it to you, I'll need a time frame, but I can see to it you're free as soon as we're done fighting on Dieron. The Azami need our dropship collars, the extra space, extra supplies for going out to the periphery... and lets be honest. It will be easier to do repairs here, than try and effect repairs either enroute or only after we get back there."

Septim appreciated the understanding, but at the same time. "Its really okay?"

"Its more a matter that I need a time table to work around. If I need to I can sit close to Terra and deal with the GM and Blackwell people... and,"

"The Landhold talks?"

Gene wasn't prepared to commit to that. He didn't have the manpower for that, and of course, "The Davions would prefer I settle somewhere that they can vet. The clans would prefer I settle on Northwind... I suspect that the recommendation,"

"Is Kestrel." Dante's voice interrupted, the AI clearly a bit testy at the notion.

It wasn't a suspicion. The AI was in the Davion's data networks. He suspected that the AI agreed with his human natives of Northwind that the planet was preferable. Gene pursed his lips into a narrow line. In fact it was more than the AI was in the data networks he was actively monitoring their employers... and everyone else presumably at the fairy. The Machine was carefully guarding his homeworld more actively than he had been in centuries. As a result there were a variety of details that were being tabulated, and run to generate odds.

It had probably been from the implication of those reports, though it did not appear explicitly stated in documents that that might have been the intention all along. It wasn't definitive, because of initially the Draconis March's dukes... in the system of Elidere as well as on Robinson... and of course New Avalon wasn't an option simply for the optics it would conveyed. It would have looked a little high handed.

"There are talks going on, but nothing is definitive at the moment. I also plan to bring the Highland units back here after we rotate off Dieron in order to let the cadets decompress. That will give us some time. If you need to send a message planning for a where and when, then now is the time."

Beau cleared his throat. "We gonna talk about the Landhol', Or back about mechs, bushwhacking snakes?"

"Something in particular?"

Beau shrugged, "We have a lot of archers, so we should be good. I mean as it was the lrm sections have been pretty squarred away, anyway. Unless you want to complain about ten tube launchers to General Kersten."

He'd only been pointing out that an LRM 10 was inefficient in terms of mass, and that he didn't think the Eridani choice to downgrade from the LRM 15 the Thunderbolt ordinarily ran was a particularly good idea... not the least of which was because it was decrease in throw weight. "Nothing we can do about that how are things we the LRM carriers?" Or specifically the new drivers.

"No problems we're good. They're green, but they understand the game we're playing." Beau detailed that he planned to lay out a combination of missile boat mechs from the volunteers along with their LRM equipped vehicles to screen. "I think we will be okay."

That was good. He glanced at the clock. A look mirrored by the others, "Feel free to go grab beers, we're done." They shuffled out, then Septim paused and stepped back in. "What?"

"This, about Bahar's group."

"I'm going to take the twelve sunday." He replied thinking back to the conversation with the Field Marshal.

"No I knew that, I meant how are the Highlanders ... we have have so many of them." He meant Northwind natives, though they did have a handful of the totem mechs in inventory.

He shrugged, "They haven't said anything yet," It was only a matter of time, "But it was frankly too late to focus on adding more to the group. Has there been any more problems with Rio?"

"He's fine, I think Bard has the kid on a short leash." Septim replied, then glanced to the dark eyed woman.

The Mongoose pilot shook her head. "He still talks too much, but thats not surprising."

Septim bit down a snort. It was no secret that Bahar was no slouch in close quarters. An SRM 6 at close range... inside a football field was really no space at all to get away, and with HEDP or Inferno a machine carrying ammunition of its own would have a bad day. It would have been better if the Mongoose, ferro fibrous or not, had been larger and more armored but it was a very much high skilled machine. "Take them into the upper levels of the Northwind castle there are training pods there, I'll have Dante clear them for programs that should help."

"Like Gunslinger programs?"

"No, the MechWarrior Advanced Gunnery Course." Dante stated from his speaker box as Gene punched up the syllabus in the noteputer. "I'll need to make adjustments for their non standard machines, give me twenty four hours."

There was a pause as they tried to move through the doorway and out into the adjoining office / lobby / living room space without trampling over the ELH officers. They must have heard at least part of the last bit of the conversation. "You should warn them they're up for two weeks of hell." The Eridani major remarked.

"Yeah, why's that?" Septim asked, the lyran glanced back and forth to the Light Horse Officer.

"Exam requires a hundred percent to pass." The major remarked, "You have a master gunner's certification colonel, you tell the captain how it is."

Gene shrugged mimicing the amicable man's tone, "Master Gunner's course is Thirty nine days, six exams. Am I to assume, General Kerston wants the testing program then."

"The Eridani," Funny how it was the Eridani right now instead, 'the star league', but he didn't say that, "Doesn't have a copy in our library so the General did send me over to borrow a copy."

He shrugged moving into the larger space, "Come by Sunday, I'll have a rom for Hegemony Mech models." Which actually meant he was going to pull them from Dante's library of tradoc related materials... but that still would run into the problem that course work had been developed in packets specifically because the SLDF ran whole units at time, and typically lances, of single model battlemechs. It would be one thing to run a Marauder, or an Archer through the course as in weapons terms their load out had not changed over the succession wars. To the best of his knowledge the Grasshopper had never had an Advanced Gunnery Course planned, and without that he doubted a master gunner course likely hadn't either. The 7A probably hadn't either, but since that mech only carried a Large Laser and was explicitly a scout platform it shouldn't have been as difficult... but still he doubted the League had ever gotten to it... never mind the version of that machine that had actually entered production for the successor states.

Dante made a rasping cough, scoff approximation over the speaker. "They'll lack the instructors to run the course." The scottish machine spirit remarked.. and he was right the advanced level courses were more than just semi smart tests to simulate conditions they were supposed to be tests with skills being passed on from the field from instructor to learner. There was an ample classroom time component in addition to the field exercises. The Hegemony had an expectation that classes would all pilot the same mech that was why they were focused on specific models.

There were exceptions in the Gunslinger material but even there, there was an emphasis on PPC gunnery because that weapon class tended to be the preferred weapon of both the program as well as its key opposition; in the Combine Ronin. The problem there was apparently somehow the Succession Wars had had problems with PPC technology, in production, and installation in new machines. The technology wasn't LosTech by any means but production hadn't kept up with demand and it wasn't a simple plug and play system compared to say running an LRM box to a fire control system. He didn't understand it.

They didn't have time to worry either.
--
Sunday arrived a little earlier than he'd have liked, but the sleep had helped. He was decompiling material still, but planning for Dieron was hard without specifics. There were more political questions cropping up. This wasn't just taking a provincial capital either. This wouldn't cut the Combine off from Terra, the one jump from Terra mark... it certainly wouldn't prevent HPG transmission ... but it would force ComStar to restructure apparently... and that was something that apparently was a point of concern within Davion command.

The general suspicion was that though ComStar professed neutrality the order was not above national sympathies. To that end in papal terms, obviously a FedSuns Primus, loyal to New Avalon or at least sympathetically inclined would have been best, but it would be good enough to have a Lyran or even a Free Worlds League Primus than one from the Capellans or the Combine.

Gene was a little surprised that the office of primus wasn't a terran dominated position, but ComStar was not the Ministry of Communications. They were techno cult holding things together with duct tape and prayers... suggesting that with the League's collapse the mother doctrine had probably cut both ways.

He looked at the twelve Davion pilots. "We're moving forward with your training. The next two weeks will focus on a program of advanced gunnery qualifications. You'll be in class a lot." It was best to just be blunt with them, let them know what they were in for, the Thunderbolt pilot was already groaning, and Bard didn't look especially enthused. "This is not going to be an easy or routine course work. You want to pass the exam at the end of it you need to hit every target." The holographic projector triggered. "That means if you are using an autocannon or missiles you will need to make the decision of what is the best weapon for a given target. There will be known and unknown ranges. So in preparation for what I'm sure you will hate tomorrow is we're going out into those muddy flats for mech exercises."

Alexandria shrugged out of the rain jacket she was wearing over her piloting suit, and looked at one of the standard Marauder II assault BattleMechs.

 

Not counting Bardiche, and the expansions on the Maguanac corp (which I will get to), and the naval side of things, the main thing I've really screwed up on is the independently attached armor.

Command Company (Nominal) January 3017 Northwind Arrival

Gene: Marauder
Bahar: Mongoose
Septim: Merlin
Chang: Atlas
Beauregard: Dervish
Ishida: Cicada

Maguanac Group 1 (aboard the Sam Houston)
1 Daimyo Command HQ
Refitting at time of arrival on Northwind [Extra Vehicles being carried aboard the San Saba]
+ Infantry Company (Aboard Baffins)
+ Independent Armor 'Hammer' which is also Nominally on paper a company.

Claymore Battalion (Standing up) late January 3017
Ancients Company: https://forum.questionablequesting....-battletech-isekai.15094/page-28#post-6422537
Cadets (Nominal)

Attached Davion sourced Pilots (Active: 8 Rapiers; 2 + 6 Moving to 12 in two wings in the overlords)

--
This doesn't currently mark out the expanded Infantry and Armor or Bardiche that will stand up shortly

 

Highland Faire 17​

The first bouts were.. weren't scripted per se, but they much more formalized than the free for all format that the melee's clearing houses had been in. For one the participants had been expected to follow civil etiquette and salute one another from their respective starting position. It wasn't specifically a Davion thing but he suspected that it was more part of the spectacle than anything else. The sets were tallied up by points won in the free for all... and that meant most though not all of the competitors who had advanced were pilots who hadn't been knocked out during those first four scrums.

The matches Monday had themselves averaged a surprising between five and seven minutes. The scoring was a bit more game like and there was more play in the bout. It was easier to focus on just the one guy in front of you. While not alphabetical, the first two scrimmages had been organized close enough, first half of the alphabet, second half, the latter two had originally been lower half, and the top scorers. That had turned into something of a scandal because the subsequent knock out of pilots in Friday's match had eliminated pilots who likely would have gone on, by points.

The games were an important ritual though, and they went on, even if there had still been some grumbling about it. Gene put the comms transcript aside, and looked at the surly teenager. Then to the Rasalhague Assault Mech pilot.

Soren piloted ... well what had started life as a Ymir 3 Alfa but the last two hundred years hadn't been good to the machine as it had sort of backed tracked along the way to its 2 Echo roots. Yusuf had said the Hermes 360 in the Machine had a manufacturing date from 2601 and had probably come out of a Hegemony Militia Mech. It had a pair of Fusigon PPCs as its primary armament, and ran hot even with DHS installed.

He wasn't surprised that the Griffin pilot had actually challenged her opponents in order, or that she'd gone into the match with that in mind... with that sort of plan. She seemed confident bordering on unreasonably cocky that she'd make the finals. He suspected that was probably in part based off of having survived starting in the deep end with the top ranked pilots, but it certainly reminded him of Rio's attitude.

That was only part of the problem. Free Rasalhague was the other one. Rasalhague had been one of those by products of the exodus from terra in the 23^rd century, a blip that might have faded into history if what might have just been seen as queer early exodus colonial parochialism that might had turned into a national identity that had never existed historically. That was to say that Combine had through a pattern of cultural repression and driving a literate educated populace underground had insured that the idea of a rasalhague national identity had survived. More than survived thrived as an expatriate community, a literary movement, and militant factionalism.

The combine's attempts to go out of their way to crush competing social identities the more hardy those identities became... self defeating was maybe was the best even description...

That said it was still a little difficult to take seriously claims to represent the Principality in Exile... especially when the claims on what world were natural Rasalhagian was somewhat grandiosely nothing short of the entire Military District.

Of course it was entirely possible that Soren's bosses were banking on talking big would win them points, or that it would cause them to be taken more seriously. There was no telling how real their profession of local support was... but they did have money, and manpower and equipment and they had support from other groups. The azami endorsement of their character was a plus, at least so far as he believed Pasha in that the old JumpShip captain held that it was sincere.

He was also pretty sure that Soren Holmgren was volunteering for this because if they succeeded in taking Dieron it might not only win Davion support for their political ambitions... it would them kudos and recognition more broadly. A rasalhague contingent at Dieron, a victory or even just a presence against the combine would be a statement. A political statement. A potentially very loud political statement.

In order to participate though they needed a structure. There were no shortage of mercenaries in the inner sphere, and as in the star league era before it the succession wars had plenty of mercenary outfits that were little more than private military arms of the patron noble house or corporation that sponsored them... actually that was perhaps both more or less common now depending on how one looked at it. The more things changed the more things stayed the same, but again the problem was that Rasalhague wasn't a recognized government. The movement to which Holmgren and friends belong also couldn't just register as mercenaries for a corporation that might being paying them either... not unless they were willing to risk their backers getting the full attention of the ISF or possibly even combine regulars.

That left enrolling as mercenaries under an existing company for the purpose of learning the trade, and in truth learning the trade of arms to ideally serve as the center piece of a future free Rasalhague state. How much they'd been banking on riding out into the periphery with the azami going out there to work in the periphery, a distance out from Combine scrutiny and presumptive retaliation was unclear but a chance at an active strike at the dragon was probably too good to pass up.

This was in what history, what annals, and chronicles of the company... a Highlander brought in tradition would record as establishing Bardiche. In historical record more broadly it would be the day that the Rasalhague government reaffirmed its signature on the Ares Conventions originally signed as a nominally independent power in 2412... though its signatore had been a member of House Kurita... which of course no one had been ass enough to bring up.

"We'll start intake procedures for pilots, your mechwarriors will go through the same familiarization course as the highland cadets. With minor modifications to accommodate for outfitting the Battalion. I'll have you a berth aboard the San Saba prepared."
--
Septim looked like he was going to break the stylus as he attempted to compose the monograph, presumably to his kinsmen back home. The Highlander officers were currently engrossed in a conversation over the contents of the caches here and on Robinson, and on Elidere with Bard as the rain continued to shake the windows.

Considerations for the expansion of the unit were going to be complicated... Gene had to question why the Hegemony had never acted more forcefully to encourage the break up of the Combine. It made little sense. The limits of KF drives and the perpetual belligerence of the Combine had always been topics of discussion. The lack of a clear indictment over who was responsible for the assassination of the second to last Star Lord, and the previous Davion succession crisis had been too late to effectively act on... the Hegemony had lacked strong leadership by the end. By 28^th century the Hegemony had been too unwilling to act, and whether the Hegemony even could have been saved was a pointless what if.

What was left were the Hegemony's weapon stocks and that they could be used against the Combine... maybe Rasalhague could succeed, become independent. Maybe the Azami too. Maybe it'd just weaken the combine more. The odds were too hard to calculate but they were still favorable enough in terms of making the combine's life hell that Dante was willing to throw the dice.

"Even distributing some of the Rasalhague pilots with the Storm hunters, we don't have enough assault mechs to stand up another Dragoon Battalion." It wasn't as if the Rasalhague didn't have some mechs of their own to contribute, but they'd most likely have organize those into Scout Lances, which would overlap them with the lighter mechs that the Azami would likely be adding... that was actually probably a good thing... but Pasha was still in conference with the exodus fleets elders about where they stood with their own forces.

He'd seen estimates for exactly how many civilians were up there... and transporting that many people to the periphery was going to put them on a time table just for the simple facet of keeping them fed, and also with regards to water... but also staying in one place for too long might attract unwanted attention from the combine.

Mercenary units were rarely mono ethnic in the periphery. People came out to the periphery in order to get out of the Inner Sphere... there was a little more homogeneity in the Inner Sphere, but that got back to how many merc units were corporate security or some noble's private bully force Active working mercs were more likely to be a combination of different national origins, but there was that and then there was... well there set up.

Dieron would be the real test.

"There is also the matter of hiring pilots into the company itself."

They had slots open, and she was just talking mechs never mind the whole armor issue. "I know." He replied to Bahar's statement, "What's your opinion?"

"She's reckless. I think she has great potential, but she's very angry, and that could get her killed in a real fight."

He tapped the application for hiring the Griffin pilot, and her surviving retainer. "Is that a yes?"

"Its a yes."

They'd been planning originally to make hiriing offers to the participants after the the games concluded but nothing about this trip was remaining static in terms of planning. "I'm not entirely comfortable at this stage reading her in on events that lead into the first succession war."

"It probably wouldn't matter. The dragon has committed an extreme breach of personal honor in its actions, I doubt she's at a stage where she's consciously processed that misfortune never mind crimes committed by generations past." He nodded in concession to the point even as he thought back to telling Septim about the the things during the lead into the battle for Elidere IV. It was not unreasonable to assume that regardless of present employment or indeed perhaps because of it, the Lyrans military and intelligence services would want statements.

They weren't likely do anything untoward, but Septim would probably be asked questions about the success of Elidere, and the condition of the Combine's forces in real combat. Only Septim would know how he was going to answer those questions. It was a risk, but throwing a look up towards orbit, and the artificial stars in the afternoon sky. "We have a lot of people who are going to need to be moved." That meant supplies, an exodus from the inner sphere, meant a lot of supplies. He was sure that the Azami had made progress towards that, but he also knew that the road to Alamut was long, and that they were hoping to pad that reserve out, so they'd need time, after Dieron.
--
Notes: Dieron as I've said is going to be a fairly short arc, it covers a small chronological period of time, but it has a significant outsized effect on what it sets up for. It is among other things a demonstration that Elidere was not some fluke. It is also a major feather in the FedSuns cap for other reason and it has major knock on effects in the wider Inner Sphere and in particular for going forward.

While its not definitive, the outlines are not concrete yet, the events on Dieron shape how the 4^th Succession war plays, it shapes the clan invasion when that occurs... at least it does in the current versions, and we will get to that.

Spoiler

And regarding the clan invasion what will probably happen is that there will be a breakdown of large polities into smaller ones because Jihad... but more of that will be set up for in, hinted at in Smoke Jaguar 2 in the extras segment because well decade in the future.

But yeah post dieron there are some travel stuff, and then a time skip to allow for Jump Travel distances to the periphery and what not and the pirate wars start. While the Pirate Wars are going on we will probably get some follow on from the Davion side of things from Yvonne and Kersten (we're actually missing a few Kerston segments that just never got finished) as well as ComStar and Wolf Dragoons stuff.

 

IN the event I have forgotten to post this:



This is what played over combine's comms system when 1st Battalion 19th Galedon Regulars were put down ahead of 3rd Battalion Galedon Regulars coming in.

I'm pretty sure I've posted the Black Fox song, so from the still technically non canon New Kyoto karaoke night

Speaking of non canon, the Whoops there goes the HPG network may get an update at the end of the month we will see.

 

Highland Faire 18​

Truthfully he would have liked to have said that the Faire was ... that they'd been able to network with other mercenaries... but the truth was it hadn't. Part of that was their existing contract with the Davions, and the invasion, which was what he was dealing with at the moment.

Gene punched up the Davion's files for Dieron, the Azami data, and the historic data that ... went back to both the second succession war as well as to earlier, including the hegemony files. Fortress Dieron being intact was what worried him. It had been abandoned when Clancy had gone, so he had locked the facility... but theoretically the wolf dragoons, or even for that matter the Eridani probably could have accessed the facility or gotten the AI to open the door for them if they'd known to ask.

... and the Eridani were not the only SLDF unit that had turned mercenary, far from it as he was finding out, and of course there were people out there with less scruples than Abner, who could have Star League credentials. Then of course there... weirdos like the knights of ST Cameron... and he had know idea how they'd respond to a Hegemony AI.

Invading Dieron wasn't going to be easy. Invading a planet never was, never mind one with five billion people. They needed break the combine forces quickly. Try and take the capital... but Dieron was a mountainous planet. There were not a lot of good places to land, there was really only one place to land and that was west of the capital of San Martin where you could actually drop to the planet's surface offload an invasion force of any substantive number, mass and then go overland against the capital.

"Can it be done?"

"Of course it can be done," He replied to Pasha's question. The bigger question was could they hold Dieron... but that like the question of defending forces was a matter of what forces were available... which was part and parcel of why the Davions intended to drop the mech force as it was... the mech force they had planned before the 'Caches, and the volunteers swelled their ranks. The succession wars had worn down the number of BattleMech regiments that were in service... and what they had available. The truth was, "As soon as Elider happened, or resolved I should say," given that the Makios duke had spent the liquid capital in order to pay for live communications, "The Davions probably were putting plans into place."

The Davions had a thin materiel advantage in numbers of regiments and were banking that chauvinism aside that the Combine wouldn't strip the Commonwealth border of units, especially with Rasalhague worlds proving restive. Whether that would be born out remained to be seen, but the bid to take Dieron was something that the Davions had run the math for, and especially with Mercenaries padding their numbers considered practical. That the Davions were trying for some mad dash to completely cut from the Terran corridor, much as they might have wanted to, suggested they had a good idea of what they could and couldn't sustain.

What they could take and hold.

That was also in part why the Davions were hoping to recreate Elidere if possible. Minimal losses to FedSuns aligned forces, maximum losses to Combine Forces. In part that was what Altair was aimed at as well, aiming to destroy combine regulars with more standard Davion forces. Every little bit would help, but investing Dieron provided the opportunity to devastate both a Sword of Light Regiment, and also a training cadre of future mechwarriors before they could come online. Inflicting those losses would mean not only would combine losses entail elite troops, it would also damage their replacement capacity... if they succeeded then the combine would be forces to stretch units, the units they had left even thinner...

"It is unlikely that the Lyran commonwealth would move to take advantage of this."

"That might be why the Davions are willing to give Rasalhague," And their bombastic claims, "The time of day," If the RMD's ethnic rasalhague units elsewhere in Combine space switched sides, or just started getting into shoot outs with the ISF or whomever on the Combine side because there was an idea that there was going to be an independent or a restored Rasalhague that would seriously mess up the combine.

What Pasha couldn't promise was that the Arkab legions would change sides. It was one thing for the Azami community to agree to allow clans, even collections of clans to peacefully leave, it was another to brook open rebellion... and that was understandable given the Combine's historical success of putting down rebellions.

Surely some of that was also that not everyone remained committed to the historical memory of the Star League, and humanity's golden age versus surviving in the reality of the present Inner Sphere, and its political situation. The Azami ... lack a coherent nationalist rhetoric a desire to have their own independent state at least in comparison to the ambitions of Rasalhague.

... and both, or even just one of those would be enough of a headache. If the Combine splintered then there was going to be nightmare... because for all that had changed compared to the Star League the Succession wars, the states competing to succeed the hegemony in the position of preeminence of human states at the heart of human space, none of them had simply sloughed off entire ethno-nationalist successor realms. If that started happening... well it had the potential to get very bad very quickly, even by the standards of the succession wars... but that wasn't Gene's problem... because Dante was right it was hard to be worse than the combine

... well unless the clans invaded.

Or as it turned out someone decided to try and recreate Amaris's empire in the periphery... but who would have predicted that.
--
Gene looked over the crowded mass all occupied by the assembled hundred tonners. The Marauder IIs were unique to the Company outside of the Wolf Dragoons who had 'helped' Blackwell develop them... and it was hard to miss the tartan badging applied to a lance of the standard configuration 'mechs.

Seeing that look Cameron elbowed him in the ribs, "What do you have a different clan tartan. There is a Shepherd's check-" Gene tuned him out, because they'd been through this. The tartan piping on the mechs was a temporary applique, it would be replaced once the final insignia for the Highland Mech Battalion was ... finalized, accepted whatever what one wanted to call it. There were stylistic issues with sword and wolfhound for putting on BattleMechs uniformly, and then putting them on file with the MRB.

He had absolutely put his foot down at talk of trying to use the Rakkasan snake eater ibis motif that his White Horse had in its parade configuration... but even that intransigence might well eventually fail if the unit continued to grow at this rate over the next year. That was the big thing, they survived the significant lethal period of a merc company, and were now in the big leagues with the slate recruitment... it was just that recruiting was unique.

"What are you going to do about the Swedenese?" Cameron asked.

It was a valid question, "We'll see how well they hold up on Dieron, but I'll run their units in the same scope as everyone else... and if nothing else," Gene stated, "As missile boats it will provide us a fires advantage." Running part of the Rasalhague contingent as scouts would be dangerous, there was no point pretending otherwise... invading a planet was dangerous work, "I want to be able to put as many missiles onto Combine squares as possible before we close to engage."

Truthfully he was hoping they could force the enemy to engage them west of the city in and along the Kazakh valley where they would have to drop in order to have enough flat open space to utilize Fury, and Alacorn gauss rifles from dug positions of ambush. Whether they would would or not, they wouldn't know until they were planet side.

The conversation froze as the machines started, and a handful of cadets from the Highlander's academy made their way to the machines for their first test of the assault mechs. Beyond the barricade they had just passed through at the observation deck were the mass of onlookers from various participants of the Faire, both mercenaries and corporate.

"Why the 3D and not one of your versions."

"Simplicity." He replied, "The 3D is an entirely reasonable modification to the Marauder," Accepting the loss of DHS and ferrofibrous, and frankly replacing it with Lamellor armor was understandable change from Royalist machines, "The 4A," The Marauder II, "Addressed the heat curve issue," For unskilled pilots, which frankly as a machine the 75 ton Marauder shouldn't have been issued to anyway, "It doesn't completely eliminate that, but realistically that's a necessity." If you had to fire everything actually were in a situation where that was warranted them that was the case.

Naturally Bard brought up the routing trick, he'd demonstrated on the fire course... the same course that the cadets were about to take on. The range master cleared them, and the lights from their vantage point greened, and a clock started with the first Marauder II took a step forward and then accelerated into the track. "They're not going to beat your time."

"I don't expect them to do that, I expect them to do their best on the course." And then shrugged, as he watched the reports from down range, repeated the gesture, "The 4A or one of my Hunters or a Hammer are all assault mechs. 19 ton engines, and good armor coverage." If he needed to rerun the course in a 4A to demonstrate that you could do it in a factory Marauder in that time, with that demonstration of piloting acumen then fine. "Dieron is going to be the first real combat, and they won't be on the back line they'll be up front in real mechs, facing real opponents with probably years of experience."

When they had run the DMM participants who had been allocated MAD IIs they had done fine they could do better, but the mistakes were understandable. Either too slow or too fast more often than not. "Do you think the Eridani will start procuring themselves some?"

"I think Kerston is going to try... I don't know what the relationship is like between Blackwell and the Dragoons are... but I get the feeling that Blackwell's CFO," And probably the CEO felt the same way, "Thinks they should at least try and get the Dragoons consent, which GM is already suggesting that they should be able to produce the Marauder II." But that was for the lawyers to fight out, and for royal patronage and what not.

... and speaking of patronage, the Field Marshal, well Field Marshals since the duke of Robinson were both coming over... even with the crowd parting it would take them a couple of minutes, "So why did you paint them?" Bard asked as they waited.

"What, oh due to the interactions of the neurohelmets, pilots actually see positive improvement and reinforcement to the mech's appearance."

"I'm sorry did you just say that a pilot gets better based on how his mech is painted?"

That's was a... a bad description, "Pilots respond to tactile, and perceived features while connected to the machine. The tartan is reassuring, and that comfort helps improve synchronization at least in a statistically significant number of mechwarriors."
--
Notes: Obviously Rasalhague will be a thing, not strictly as it was in canon, but that will happen, and frankly because I am of the opinion that the successor states probably should have broken down or lost pieces to movements sooner, if it was going to happen. The skye, and tamar and what not all felt really shoehorned in with how it was handled.

 

Teaser: Aquagea 3019 The Pirate Wars​

... The centurion was in surprisingly good condition. The only immediate oddity was in the torso where... something had replaced the two medium lasers... they looked like medium lasers but rather than just singular weapons it was... putting off more heat, but that was understandable. It was like someone had mated together two Medium lasers without including any kind of extra internal cooling. Twice the punch twice the heat, in a single ton weapon system.

Ordinarily a centurion's two PhosTec Medium Lasers were split front and back instead the locals had some how cobbled the two weapons together. Two third of a ton of standard grade armor could be blasted through ... it was true it didn't have the range of a PPC but Darryl's cobbling had generated a weapon that didn't produce anywhere near the waste heat of a PPC either.

No one would have thought that this development would become the defining weapon of new brawler mechs used by what would become the Via Caballero rangers.

"They're pretty cool aren't they?" The pimply faced tech asked in the local twang of english, a twang that he couldn't particularly say he missed.

"I don't have this model Medium laser." But he could provide Martel and certainly Magna equivalents, "If you think this could be replicated."

When one got down to it there were differences in individual weapons. Whether this could be replicated or not of if Darryl had somehow found some magical exploit, they'd have to see. Ultimately Myomer, heat sinks and armor were largely interchangeable. What made a mech a mech was the Chassis. That was the skeleton of the mech and the internal components.

The eventual Canopian Centurions, deeply ironic since the Marians would move to produce a truly retrotech totem mech Centurion, would be built under license from the Federated Commonwealth as part of a technology sharing agreement but would be a variant on the AL. Given existing Magistracy weapons production that variant would carry a PPC in place of a large laser and thus run a bit hotter.

Simply put with no reliable locally built trade options it was easier to field two Holly LRM launchers and standardize the parts used. Even by the time trade with the Duchy of Andurien became feasible it was a simpler more capable solution to product demand. As for Darryl's medium laser combo they would prove remarkably effective though wouldn't enter production until well after the current threat of Black Jack McGirk had been put down.

Aquagea simply didn't have the population base. It could support mech refit yards certainly, but battlemech production was simply beyond the local population's ability to provide for... especially given the focus on supplying germanium to market and the growing agriculture sector with new irrigation and drought resistant plants. It would only be much later, towards the end of the following decade that the Aurgians would begin production of Griffins and Dragons and even these would initially be built largely using imported weapons from the Canopians so the eventual supply of AC 10s and LRM 10s never were readily available in enough numbers to convince the Centurions to switch back to the original version of the Centurion.

This stop was about other things though. Whatever interest a specialist weapon was, lucky, today was more about stopping at Aquagea to deal with problems in the region. Aquagea had already been having problems with its neighbor of Zathras, which wasn't that stable. Gene looked over the scrub country. "If Black Jack is going over the border into the Free Worlds League, we can be reasonably sure he's probably jumping over the Capellan border as well." Given previous attacks on the Fed Sun that seemed pretty likely scenario given what they knew... but it wasn't what he was reallyu concerned about, "If ComStar's footage," That they had picked up from their stopover on Detroit was accurate about what happened. "Was accurate BlackJack has been hiring on... I have to question how much control he really has." Or if the rest of the pirates nests in Tortuga and wherever else the vermin lived were going along with it because he had the biggest big stick of any of them in terms of mech forces at his disposal.

As it was no one hit by the pirates was having a good time. This was no longer about raiding and pillaging. Oh that was going on, but the rate of atrocities being committed was increasing with little rhyme or reason.

Not that they'd been a professional military force to start with but increasingly FireStarter and other mechs had been deployed in a clearly organized terror campaign over the border with the League targeting civilians who clearly weren't a threat before they had bugged out.

That kind of behavior just went beyond the pale.

"That's not all is it?"

He blew a breath out, and glanced to the mongoose pilot, "The attack on," Probably managed by jumping to Viribium first, "Claybrooke showed a Rampage. Eighty Five tons, now to be sure the Rim Worlds republic exported these to the Taurians, and for that matter anyone with interest but certainly all the territorial states had them before 2765. It isn't insane to think that one might have survived... but it was in Amaris colors. That strikes me as very unusual." Admittedly it was the only mech he had seen in 'correct' colors, there had been other mechs using shark iconography but nothing recorded in the roms had been put up that suggested anything some asshole pirate decided hey I'm going to paint my mech in how it would have been the Amaris Fusiliers in the 28^th century.

It could be nothing... but it was an outlier that did stand out in the footage. It also broke with Black Jack's known habits... he hadn't repainted of his mechs in that kind of parade job. He didn't seem to have a parade use at all. He seemed to have liked black and red. He liked skeletons and devils, skulls and crossbones but even that wans't uniform.

The mech stood out because atypical compared to everything else in the video.

After a moment of contemplation, Bahar answered, "Somewhere like Pioche perhaps. Many worlds were lost when the Star League fell, and more were abandoned over the long darkness of the succession wars, could he have found another hidden rim world outpost. These could also be the ones who attacked the Aurigans,"

"No, I considered that possibility. The JumpShips are different and the machines, I went back through the Aurigans roms there is no indication of non SLDF mechs. The attack on Cormodir seems to have been core units of McGirks force... these seem different." Whether it was or not, it didn't change the fact that McGirk was rampaging across the rimward frontier.

Whether it was directed or he just let his subordinates run rampant the truth was the pirate wars of the late third succession war era were to effect everyone in the rimward to some degree or another. This was to include the three states of the Inner Sphere, and the major , and minor periphery powers.

McGirk was ultimately a raider, maybe a warlord at best in terms of administration, threatening and extorting whatever world he temporarily occupied, but he wasn't staying anywhere for long periods of time. No one could say where the Orion pilot was, just where he had been, and some times not even then. McGirk attacked with his host and moved on rather. There was no pirate nest to go attack like there had been at Fjladr.

Establishing a landhold on Aquagea put them on a planet where they could deploy forces... and certainly since Aquagea mined Germanium... and the Alamutian Azami needed Germanium, or would need Germanium in the long term it made sense to have a presence here. "We'll see what the thrust into the League yields... if we can catch them on this side of the border, so much the better." As it was the rumor from the League side was the Duchy of Andurien was not happy about the situation and there were concerns that in addition to black jack that the Capellans might try and take advantage of any Marik weakness. "What do we know about what happened on Claybrooke?"

"We know that they didn't destroy the HPG station there." Bahar paused, "That is a break from how McGirk has been acting."

He nodded. That was true. He hadn't considered that, but the survival of the HPG station was a break, previous to this attacks on worlds with an HPG station aimed at hitting COMSTAR so that they couldn't beam word out that delayed knowledge of, or would delay knowledge of pirate activity. Precentor New Avalon had cited the loss of the HPG station on the davion side of the border as reason for his office to issue bounties on the pirates... even though it had been very clear that Huthrin Vandal had wanted to act against McGirk before this.

Financial conservatism within ComStar's higher ups made a certain degree of sense, but had a gnawing suspicion that there was more to it. Where had Black Jack gotten his material in the first place... how had he managed to operate as long as he had?
--
Notes: Again in this timeline Black Jack defeats 1^st Division ComsGuard in his battle with them, so he has a substantive amount of material to use after 3005, on top of being able to recruit people with the promise of plunder.

Now at some point I do need to finish the 1^st Circuit argues before Tiepolo about the situation with Black Jack to provide some context to the divisive nature of the organization, because in this period ComStar is already pretty divided in opinion.

Anyway I'm currently working on going through my notes, I'm posting this just because its more or less ready to go, but Sunday we will go ahead and start moving to finish up the faire and move on to the conquest of Dieron in April just other things have been coming.

 

Highland Faire 19​

When you got right down to it the it was somewhat baffling that someone hadn't tried to well do a lot of things with what was feasible on the Marauder Chassis. Why no one had reinforced it before... particularly given historical Star League era examples was a little shocking... but now that Blackwell had done that... chances were good anyone who could still manufacture Marauders would theoretically be in a position to domestically produce an assault mech version... but that would take time... and money... and money was probably one of the potentially limiting factors at least in terms of capital expenditure to just get started and develop a prototype.

Was that worth it?

That would depend on a manufacturers unique situation.... and Gene wasn't an industrialist. He wasn't sure how you weighed that kind of decision or justified to a bank or whoever was putting up the equity.

Score tally posted. "that's not bad." Bard observed.

"That's a good sign actually." He replied. The Marauder II was a new mech, and he doubted that most of the cadets had either much time on the original or on an Assault Mech that was similar tothe Marauder II's armament. "Twelve minutes for a first run on this course is not bad at all." Elidere as a campaign was a contract, a payout worth a significant amount of money. The salvage value receipts were still being calculated, and god that would probably really need lawyers to really be sure, but the AFFS had picked up the bill... and rather than just pay it out as cash, they were pumping into Blackwell to buy up production of machines to turn over to the company. That was going to take time, they wouldn't, weren't likely to get the next shipment of vehicles they were allocated until after they hopefully came back from Dieron in one piece.

... and if they succeeded in pulling Dieron off... well that was the whole point of a merc's gig anyway, it was to get ... well what was the legalese? ... 'material compensation substantially in excess of that promised or paid to combatants of similar ranks and functions in the armed forces of that Party'...

"You think these will make the difference, then?"

"I think they'll help." They wouldn't be something that the Combine would be expecting... but the Combine likely wouldn't be expecting the greatly expanded Davion Force the plan had been to hit them with a significant force to begin with, they were just ... increasing the margins, "The Field Marshal is serious about this request to do as much damage to the Sword of Light."

"That's a dangerous job."

The best idea would be to wear them out as much when they inevitably counter attacked... if they attacked them... "There is a chance they'll go for the Guards, and we can catch them in a pincer maneuver." If they were already engaged then it'd give them the opportunity to advance the Pillagers into close quarters and at flank angles ... it was an appealing prospect.

"You've got an evil look on your face."

"We're going to have to see what happens, won't we?" He replied, they were interrupted in continuity as the swollen bearded highlander Lieutenant Colonel arrived ahead of them.

"What are the chances you'd let them use one of these in later melee bouts?"

The question caught him off guard, "I'd advise against it," To be frank the machines were too new, leaving aside impressions, "But I would imagine that that would be for the games commission to decide." certainly he would have assumed that you in theory continued with the mech you started with but if that wasn't the case then it raised up a host of other questions. Not that it didn't make sense that with the Faire's typical structure there was a general expectation that you'd have more assault mechs... the upset in the last of the large scrimmages probably left the Commission wanting to spice things up.

"And?"

"Well, Little Lord Rio is proving to be something of a loud mouth." He half considered feigning shock, but it would have been too ridiculous. Cameron shook his head picking at his ear idly. "Truthfully with the way these things go its not unusual to have adult matches, its just a little different this year... I'm actually surprised you haven't... from what I understand Bahar, and Hanzo both have their share of challengers."

They hadn't said anything... but he also wasn't surprised... they had managed to avoid having to fight duels with the locals after ... and well Robinson... "So I take its because of the delay?"

"It doesn't help the situation... but this year is different... the Combine getting a thrashing and the Davion's going on the offensive, aye people are a special sort of anxious."

It made sense though that the Davions would be interested to see how the hundred tonners would perform in the later stages of the squires tournament. For their own reasons, they too wanted to see how the Blackwell Assault Mech performed, preferably in its base configuration, but they weren't going to oppose variants being used.

Gene frowned a bit, "If we're going to go that far... I'd want to go ahead and transfer candidates to our Hegemony Mechs from the cache get them off Academy mechs entirely. The sooner they transition to standard machines the sooner they'll settle in."

Which admittedly was not how, he was given to understand the the tourney was supposed to operate... but they had a planet to liberate...

They discussed the issue. The problem with changing thing, with the Hegemony machines was in standard mechs like the Archer wouldn't go well in the tourney configuration. Gene watched the final rankings go up. The same displays were mirrored on his noteputer which then changed as Dante started running Hegemony program evaluations and modelling different scoring metrics from their performance. Bard cocked his head at the techno wizardry of the screen's dancing pixels.

"Is that better or worse than us?"

By us he meant the DMM portion of the invasion force. That was comparing apples to oranges, and he replied as much, before pausing to watch the countess's dusky expression, "Anyway, its not the same thing. We really won't know until we actually make contact with the enemy. The training we can do now is how we can prepare for working through any complications on the ground."
--
When you got right down to it, the press releases tended to emphasize Elidere IV. It had been the larger share of the fighting of course, but there were other reasons. As a part of the campaign the fighting on Ander's moon had achieved strategic to the campaign goals... but people watching the holos of the combat roms didn't give a shit about how the maneuver had insured that the Combine advance on Ander's ducal capital couldn't be pressed, or that by interrupting that advance is kept the combine from being able to force the duke into a head on engagement.

Most people just wanted to watch the duels between mechwarriors, and that was it. If it was just the fighting there were details that were lost, but the combine's dueling culture ... well ignoring propaganda that tried to claimed two thousand years of history going back to the bushi of Heian era Japan... which Gene found absurdly ridiculous it was true that the samurai, and their martial forbearers had been a part of an urban literate society whose elite had practiced a lot of dueling... but there was a difference between one on one with a sword and giant stompy robots.

Similarly Omi Kurita's seminal work, the original first edition of the Honorium... or for that matter the daughter of the Combine's founder's death predated the first test of the mackie by over sixty years. Certainly having read the book, and that Omi generally opposed wanton bloodshed... and supported a prototypical notion of limited war in the vein of the Ares Conventions ... in so far as her opinion on the use of strategic grade ordinance on population centers... it was hard to suggest to that she somehow could foresee the coming of the BattleMech.

The First Edition was very clear. Taking prisoners, and treating them well was entirely honorable. You shouldn't molest civilians. The treatise was written... penned in ridiculously flowery archaic even by 24^th century standards language but the general expectation was that honor entailed filial piety and respect for others. It was neo Confucian and zen at its core and certainly part of the neo feudal traditions of exodus space colonization , but it was was as he had noticed very different in key passages from the modern editions... in ways that simple grammatical changes and word differences didn't explain.

That wasn't to say that the Combine of the 24^th century had been nice, or not prone to aggressively warring and conquering their neighbors. They were just less bad than the Combine of the modern era... the 24^th Century Inner Sphere... had been a pretty unpleasant lawless place.

So on Ander's moon the Combine had accepted the duel and made sure that things were above board... and in the official media, and recordings for both sides... there were no indications that Gene had prepositioned gauss rifle equipped drone combat vehicles surreptiously near enough that if things went side ways the 2^nd Battalion 19^th Galedon Regulars would get very far. That didn't make it into the public record.

People who watched the full record saw honorable conduct, saw honor duels being largely satisfied up until basically the arrival of overwhelming Davion relief forces Jumping into the System. That was the picture that was painted.

Ford nodded, "Most people can't read it."

"Hmm," Gene glanced up to catch the Lyran businessman who... well very interested in Blackwell's assault mech... the man wore non descript suit in vaguely late 19^th century german continental styling's... it was fancy, big epaulettes, but not ridiculously so in the face of what other people were wearing... there was a guy from Andurien literally in purple lesiure suit with a diamond studded cane.... and there were people from the periphery who were much more outlandishly dressed in attendance at the faire which was characterized by thousands of men in kilts... so if the guy wanted to wear Lyran colored suits .... and that was okay.

"Well that's an exaggeration, its archaic in speech, which you know of course, but some of the characters fell out of use," Actually before Omi had even written the thing, and her use of them was probably very intentional. She'd been going for archaic, and harkening back to ye olde glory days of Japanese culture... and Japanese was a very common language post Exodus from earth, it had been common in the Hegemony, in the Lyran Commonwealth, in minor states that had been absorbed by the Free Worlds League, and others... but that was because Japan had been a member of the western aligned power block, and a member of the alliance, and had enjoyed a significant 21^st century cultural popularity .

Hanzo sat down with a dog eared copy of Inanzo Nitobe's Bushido originally published at the end of the 19^th century, and intended for a western audience. The medium mech, or oversized bug mech, pilot had a list of annotations of his own about the book. It was interesting that Hanzo, and Ford had struck up a friendship over philosophical, historical study of old books.

That there had been a copy of the book published by a Terran publisher in the era of the Star league in the library. It was in English, naturally.

"What Mister Ford is observing is that there are many characters that are no longer taught in common primers."

"A well educated person is considered such if they know about 2100 characters." Ford remarked, "That's the minimum I think you need to get into higher education in the language... and of course we have to recognize that so many so many schools were destroyed in the last two centuries, during the star league literacy was almost universal across the inner sphere."

... and there was a university, a surviving university on Dieron. "Excuse, me," He got up, and was almost to the door without a highland escort when Alexandria stopped him before he could make to access Hegemony archives on the University of San Martin at Dieron. Maybe that was just as well, there was no way to be sure the University of Dieron was still the same... or that archival data would be useful. The countess of Kestrel also had a point there was the social assumption he'd attend the matches even though this Faire was proving to be a bit odd.... but also she was supposed to stick around to deter any other Fed Suns nobles or any nobles in general from trying to poach... or something. That and apparently there was a request from one of the pilots to use one of the original versions of the Pillager that he was supposed to at least hear out.

... Chang had a point it really did convey an unfair advantage.

 

Highland Faire 20​

The paper work might as well have been in some secret hieroglyphics. There were scotts, and swedense names and schedules, and all of it... but he was having a hard time focusing. He'd sent the letter already... now he was waiting to see if he got a response before they shipped off. Septim continued to look at the gunnery tables the boss had laid out, but that really wasn't where his head was, or where the conversation had been drifting away from assault auto cannons. "Would you care to explain what that's supposed to mean?"

"Not particularly." He replied. There was a pause between them.

Chang grimaced and then scratched her head. "Do you have any idea what's going to happen?"

"Not a clue." Septim replied reaching over and taking a pull from his beer, "The boss said I could go once we're done on Dieron..."

"Right," She replied and exhaled in annoyance, repeating the word quietly under her breath. "What's it about?"

"You just asked that Bubbles." The Lyran groaned, "In all honesty... I don't want to talk about it, because its probably just gonna piss me off... its got to deal with Elidere for sure... but, " He'd been wracking his brain... and she put it into words.

"I mean its not everyday the Combine loses a whole mech regiment."

"Right." He agreed... and he'd go find out what papa wanted, but truthfully he was expecting to get his ass chewed out. "What about you, surely you've got family who's heard about?"

"My sister Shenhua's in the Red Lancers, but I haven't heard anything from her... paying ComStar to relay mail is a lot of money, and I don't rightly know if the Confederation would have gotten the news," She shrugged, and laughed "Of if they'd even realize I'd been involved at all. That they knew you were involved means that your family was looking out right?"

Maybe if you were optimistic, which he had a hard time being given everything going on. He had had to leave the Guards for personal reasons, and they'd been his reasons, but it wasn't like he'd have had much option, promotions had passed him by already, and he couldn't stay... so he'd gone out the periphery to make a living...

... which he'd never expected the situation he'd found himself in, prophetic dreams didn't make him all knowing.

They were interrupted by the announcement that the next match of the day was slated to begin shortly.
--
He was a little disappointed by the meeting with the Federated Boeing representative, but it was everything they could do on short notice, and without much in the way of prep. He'd take the pilots, and make sure that they were ready as they could be which he wasn't going to rely that having the Eridani, and the ... Blue Star Irregulars assist with that was a boon he couldn't refuse.

The other concern was maintenance of the two Overlord-class DropShips... apparently the main drives of the big bastards were well on their way to being LosTech... but he hadn't planned for sending either into hot landings... or the Triumphs. The most valuable contribution though was the spare JumpShip collars... this wasn't commercial running, this was an invasion of another major power, and each collar carrying a DropShip was a major asset being brought in.

"I have to ask at this point," The countess began, her voice low, and almost drowned out by the broadcast, "You stated a Terran world would have been reinforced by successive generations of house cameron..."

"Dieron," Which had been a part of Lone Star Province, and with Fortress Dieron, which he wasn't going to mention by name, "almost certainly produced billions of tons of electronics per year, and there should be a boneyard in the Atacama desert, and the Combine probably is inadvertently telling the truth that there were caches built into the mountains... what's left after two centuries I can't say... but if the Field Marshal's intelligence is correct and there are active resistance to combine rule on Dieron then we will have to wait and see."

"But there could be stockpiles on Dieron."

"Yes." He shrugged, "The Hegemony believed in a castle doctrine," The first castle facilities predated Brian Cameron, "And originally began stockpiles for a war against the Combine, are there things left probably... but that's a question of how much time and resources can you put into digging in the desert or in the mountains looking for buried treasure."

"Such cautions might have been the conventional wisdom before now." She rebutted.

Gene shrugged. His thoughts turned to Lone Star's memory core. Lone Star the provincial capital of the Hegemony era was two jumps away... and a dead world now... Dante advised against going there ... not when there were other major Hegemony worlds that in the AI's opinion rated higher... and that they needed a clearer picture of what Admiral Clancy had left behind at Fortress Dieron, and particularly the personnel who had gone with him. There was something nagging him about the whole affair... Dieron's domestic electronics industry could well have stockpiles of medical equipment and other material in storage could be useful... or it could have thousands and thousands of tons of entertainment computers that weren't.

It depended on what had been found, and what hadn't.

He made the comment the match was starting as the machines entered the field.

He hoped that the Davions weren't going to try and prioritize seizing all former Hegemony worlds on the chance that there were caches to rebuild their forces... or that the other houses wouldn't all start looking at the worlds in question and doing the same and that he hadn't inadvertently made the third succession war get worse.

The truth was the match between the two cadets wasn't holding either of their attentions, which was probably impolite but it couldn't be helped. Gene knew the situation had changed markedly from just the ideas drafted after Elidere... that they had changed things. They were beyond one dead combine regiment.

One of the fake buildings, a Potemkin structure of plywood and tarps, shattered as it was plowed through by one of the cadets as they rushed to close into close quarters. It was more of a showy move than a practical one... even if you could do it in real life with real buildings, it was chancy, but it was known to work... and more than anything it stood out, and impressed the crowd... even if not as much as the real thing would have.

"If we want to get down to it, that's the sort of thing I want to avoid when we're on Dieron."

There was screech as a battlefist scraped paint off of standard plate, the crowd went wild as the fisticuffs commenced, and he wasn't surprised when the two cadets didn't stop when the judges called for them to stop. At least not immediately... but that was adrenaline as well the neurological connection to the machine, the interface that allowed man and machine to form that extreme presence on the battlefield could drown out all other sensory inputs under stress. That could be problematic, but it happening also indicated a high level of aptitude with the neurohelmet functionality... case in point Rio may have been a pain in the ass but was a capable pilot for all of his blustering.

... Dieron would be the real test though, and that was what they were going to have to focus on. "If there is anything I don't want to do is get bogged down in urban fighting, if we can ensure the DCMS is out in the open thats for the best."

She started to wrinkle her nose, "That's why you insisted the Sword of Tyr affirm their commitment to the Ares convention." ... and the question was whether the Sword of Light would feel quite as obligated to what was, in truth a legally defunct treaty.

"It doesn't hurt things," He replied... but he understood her point he was asking a rebel group admittedly one with pretensions to government standing to honor a treaty originally signed centuries ago, and one that had been declared void centuries earlier. "I'm fine taking their pilots with me," Whatever the political fallout of that might have been he knew that more mechs and more heavy mechs would be better for fighting the combine.

... the truth was what he expected to happen was that the Highland government would start looking for other caches ... or at looking at the less likely likely to be productive caches once Harlaw was cleaned out... and he expected that the Davions would want their 'cut' so to speak... or that the AFFS high command would want to start looking for its own.

... and before long well the Combine might try to make a move, but so might the neighbors... the Azami fleet could just as easily been an invasion force... and and he knew he wasn't the only one thinking that. Though he wasn't betting on the matches he did give it good odds that it was only a matter of times before the Church of St Cameron became involved... and talk of Cameron survivors who had escaped the coup circulated and once it hit people who didn't know how to keep their mouth shut it would spread... now whether that would mean anything or not in real terms that was another matter.

He hoped to have Dieron done before then. He planned to take a select group to New Dallas's CID facility if they had time, depending on what they uncovered on Dieron. The problem with that idea, was it was within the modern borders of the FWL... they'd have to work out some kind of itinerary, and he wasn't ready to start charting jumps this early.

"Lord William," Doctor Abner, " and Mister Alexander are pushing for a change of venue to the Lyran Commonwealth."

That wasn't exactly accurately reflecting what actually had been said, "Septim is taking leave to visit his parents," Which from what he did understand wasn't what the Davions wanted to hear, "Yes, Doctor Abner would like us to visit New Kyoto. If that happens I may grant parts of the company leave to visit Solaris," For these games things... that wasn't the point though, "The next job after Dieron is this Exodus," And while he'd been about to comment that he had a speech he needed to prepare, and he almost expected that she was about to ask something along the lines of 'you're coming back aren't you?' they were interrupted by the entry of the Precentor New Avalon, who looked a little more peaked than he had on New Avalon.

Who if, and in the interest of peace and fair trade... and a lot of other lofty ideals as well as just stopping the butchery of civilians, he was going out into the black wouldn't mind trimming the ranks of Black Jack's pirates. At the time PNA's singling out of this 'Kelly's Kommando's' band of cut throats didn't raise any alarms. He took Vandal at his word that 'Kelly' had smashed a ComStar facility on the Davion border at his word, before the pirate had jumped off, presumably to rejoin BlackJack McGirk on their continuing escapades of destruction.

'There needs to be action taken!' A comment that was really unnecessary, but the PNA was really speaking of the inaction of the First Circuit.

They would have taken action they would have fought those pirates this would solidify what would become known in the history books, at least in the Aurigan Reach, and the Magistracy of Canopus 'the Pirate Wars.'
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Notes: this is the End of January 3018. I need to go back through my notes, either I originally intended for Chang to have two younger sisters/ more than one sister, or I changed names of the character. Anyway we're moving into the Dieron chapter, that will among other things set up for some of the big changes that happen on 'the map'.

Dieron will be a much shorter chapter, mostly centered around the destruction of the 5th Sword of Light west of San Martin, and the liberation of San Martin before setting up for Fortress Dieron which will be another short chapter, and the interludes between this and the start of the Pirate Wars, which this is obviously calling forward to.