Battletech: The Ghost Who Walks (Battletech Isekai)

Imperator Pax · Jul 26, 2021

I IE Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I thought you were staying here?"

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

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

"There is such a thing?" Ford asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm aiming to get back to some of those in the Misc thread, along with some other updates over there interspaced through August, but we will see. For the rest of the month, I'm actually still behind on a couple of stories. That was computer problems from some time back, and misplacing an sd card that is still missing. (Again, Out of the Dark the Drow CYOA story won't be updating until next month at least.) For HPGENFANFIC, I know its not everyone's cup of tea, and yes its a little slow right now, but probably two updates for that this week to catch up and get through Summer Year 2. I may push the Percy Jackson update I had planned a while ago to August as I've mentioned, but regular standard updates will still be happening. SG1's Curse Arc probably will continue into August, but we will see if I double update that this week or not.

Imperator Pax · Aug 1, 2021

Alamut
-
Interlude

Interstellar Expeditions had proven to be a useful friend through the years. Many chafed under the treachery and capriciousness of the dragon even while trying to honor their oaths. Chasing the dream of the Minnesota tribe had been a long time dream now. Rasalhague, or at least some of their allies, hoped that the Minnesota tribe might if not actually be some splinter from a long lost colony, might have descendants of those liberated from the gulags on Richmond.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You have validated it?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

--
Commentary: This was not originally planned, this is an interlude, and Tuesday, in all likelihood we will start II Luxen. This will regularly update on Sunday for August otherwise.

Imperator Pax · Aug 3, 2021

II Luxen
Part 1

As the MRB was so mournful to inform him by the time they got back... no the Mercenary Court had not returned a judgment just yet, we're sorry could you be a little more patient please. Apparently the Combine lawyers were throwing every conceivable bullshit attempt they could at the wall to get something to stick. That was fine he had other things to do.

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

"I am."

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

"The Azami made contact, and then withdrew."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Did they try and buy the salvage back?"

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

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

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

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

"Is that a problem?"

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

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

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

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

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

"Immediately." He replied standing up.

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

That was without accounting for the other security concerns. The Magistracy were willing to fork over the C-Bills for security. It was going to be completely different than the sort of work he had been doing for IE though.
--
Commentary: Minor revisions might continue through tonight, but just so we're clear 'Severus Alexander' is an assumed name its a nom du guerre, but its also the source of his call sign Severus Septim. I'm going to do another Index Extras post shortly now that the Merc company is on the books.

Imperator Pax · Aug 8, 2021

II Luxen
Part 2

He had had... well less than a weekend from accepting the change over on the contract from Septim's command. There had been certain points that had needed to renegotiated that friar tuck over that MRB hadn't been real happy about doing. Septim's contract and ad hoc group of mechwarriors had been subject to fending off poaching attempts at what was perceived as easy pay by late comer mechwarriors with better ratings with the MRB. Nothing company size, singles and pairs of freelancers who had heard about in th last couple of months. It was opportunism from people who had been in the business long enough to try and capitalize, but who for whatever reason weren't apart of a larger unit.

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

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

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

"You could have scheduled this earlier,"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Imperator Pax · Aug 10, 2021

II Luxen Part 3

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

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

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

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

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

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

He reached to swap channels, "Septim report."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

--

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

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

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

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

Well relatively recent, especially by planetary history standards.

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

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

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

--
Commentary: So this is basically all content that was originally going to be cut, and what this and other segments that will follow will total out to, probably updwards of a dozen parts to the chapter, because originally these was going to be three chapters.

Imperator Pax · Aug 14, 2021

II Luxen Part 4

He keyed his mike, and surveyed the spread of grasslands that was about six kilometers from where he originally dropped onto Luxen so many months ago. "Alright this is an evaluation of mobility. Power up your Mechs, and move to way point Alpha." He ordered, and then silently mused that they still didn't have infantry for this.

The Dalban of his Marauder registered the slow power up, and cataloged the different 'Mechs coming on line. The Micronics tasking them to their respective unit to keep track of at a unit as well as individual basis. He watched Short's Vindicator start moving the one eighty rated General Motors standard Fusion Engine pushing the forty five ton mech to thirty something KPH easily enough. The Vindicator was hardly a sports car of a Mech. It topped out at the same speed as his Marauder, Septim's Merlin, or Bubble's Hunchback, and that wasn't very fast, but nor was it really slow.

He flipped channels, "Beauregard?"

"Yes Commander?" The Free Worlds League native replied, fishbowl appearing on the holocom from close range.

"You have a green light," He replied, and the Dervish powered up. About thirty seconds later he detected Bo's wingman for the operation Schiffer's Cicada join him in moving to screen the recce unit. Bahar would be staying in final reserve element with his own Marauder. They had spent a week going over in depth the Battle of Luxen. He hadn't gone over everything that had gone wrong, but... he also had the advantage of having seen the Azami's own After Action Reports. Including that Schiffer was prone to recklessly pushing forward and engaging, when he really shouldn't have been. Aggression in a MechWarrior was a good thing by most standards, and it was certainly better than being perceived as timid, but there were limits and had contributed to Schiffer getting taken out early by the same trap that Septim had fallen for... i.e. He had eaten a batch of infernos when not expecting it leaving a big hole in the Luxen defenses for very mobile enemies to exploit.

The Cicada was basically a bigger Light Mech. Weighing in at forty tons Schiffer's mech could hit eighty miles an hour. The down side was like the Locust the factory cicada was poorly armored, and Schiffer was lucky he hadn't been killed charging the Azami last year.

He accepted the incoming line from Septim's Merlin, "What is it?"

"I'm getting chatter from the starport about an arriving JumpShip. I think the boss lady just got in."

He acknowledged the statement, but it would still take time for Raventhir if she had arrived, and they had been expecting her JumpShip today or tomorrow. Of course that still gave them the time it would take for her DropShip to make from the nadir jump point to Luxen dirt side. The drill would continue, but he decided to go ahead and check in with the Force Major and find out what she had to say.
--
The exercise field looked more like a sports day field than a military drill site, but that wasn't really what was bothering him.

Being told that no you can't participate in the scheduled drill was annoying. Having the entire drill changed, not once, but twice in as many days was arguably even more so. Lady Raventhir had shown up the day previous and decided to change things up. To be fair that was her prerogative. There had been instructions to change to a simulated pirate attack. Nothing odd there per se, never mind the Azami attack.

You still had pirates in the Inner Sphere it wasn't as if the great houses could garrison every world even important factory worlds were sometimes vulnerable to pirate attack. The difference was in the Inner Sphere proper you had more money to spend on defense, more resources, and in some cases at least for pirates some worlds had military academies where the cadet corp could do things like fight them off. Luxen's main problem was that its relative isolation had allowed it to avoid damage from the succession wars and hadn't really had to deal with pirates in a very long time.

That had changed this morning, which he hadn't appreciated. It had still been designed designed to model a pirate attack but in addition to prohibiting him from participating, she had went ahead and basically reduced 'their force' down to one 'demi company' of six mechs versus... an entire company of light mechs. That was certainly not what they had trained for.

The six vindicators were going up against all three light mechs that the Magistracy could domestically produce. Locust, Wasps, and Stingers. Raventhir brought another small batch of new light mechs to shore up the Luxen Volunteers.

Lieutenant Short was coated in sweat as she got out of her Vindicator her unit mates following along at various degrees of speed. "That went pretty well." Septim pointed out high fiving one of the canopian pilots.

Well not exactly an objective unit of measurement, 'well' was accurate enough. The 1st Luxen Volunteers was on paper a regiment... but it was understrength and heavily slanted to what BattleMechs it did have to Light Mechs. Of the Magistracy's three light mechs in domestic production the Stinger was the only one capable meaningfully getting in close and doing damage. It couldn't sustain that, because that was mostly the SRMs... that hadn't stopped the older pilots from the other company from trying to mass SRM fire into the Vindicators.

They would do an after action report and break down of mistakes after... right now Lady Raventhir looked to be satisfied with six mediums managing to wipe out a company of mostly light mechs in simulated combat. Of course Raventhir was really the only reason this kind of test was possible, and to be entirely honest Mediums on light was hardly an even test despite the lights having the number advantage. It wouldn't have been unfair to say that exercises like this were just to impress the brass.

He didn't like that aspect of it in particular since the 'correct outcome' of the test might not be what actually happened in real combat against non green troops.
--

In contrast to the dog and pony show outdoors the Canopians of Easy company weren't invited upstairs as the reception after began, which should have been a red flag to start with. The fact the mood had completely shifted from the public facade of the outdoor spectacle was another issue. Lady Raventhir didn't waste any time getting to the point, "Are they ready for combat?" Ideal response would have been no, but it wasn't really a question. "The pirate threat is real."

"Yes ma'am." Ur Cruinne? He wondered, but no, "Most pirates aren't ex DCMS professionals with significant armor support," which while true of the attack on Luxen as a whole...

"I've been in discussion with Interstellar Expeditions." Of course she had. "What do you know of the Rim Worlds Republic, and Amaris's secret army?"

Most of what followed was Lady Raventhir's aide de camp a modest looking blonde woman running down that the MAF units on paper ahead of the New Vandenburg Rebellion had been Amaris's secret army funded and equipped by the Rim Worlds Republic... which while not explicitly phrased to totally absolve the Magistracy of participation was certainly skirting the line of 'we didn't do anything wrong'. Thankfully they moved on from that and to their anti rimward neighbor the nearly century old pirate kingdom. "Sebastian O'Reilly was a los tech prospector." He had founded the hegemony after an apparently massive Germanium find rather than the los tech he'd been looking for... but that find had allowed him to found the pirate kingdom and expand. Now of course they had no proof that the Marians weren't doing anything other than what it appeared to be (that was raiding for slaves) but Lady Raventhir and Interstellar Expeditions was convinced that somewhere rimward were ruins from the rimward republic. Anti-Spinward was out going out of the question, or rather going too far 'galactic west' was out for this little adventure, but Lady Raventhir had a copy... partial copy... of what was sure to be an IE star map of space before the end of the Star League.

A map appeared. "We have reason to believe," Lady Raventhir picked up, "that the asteroid that struck Pioche was not a natural event at all. Doctor Abner who visited the world two years ago believes that someone had intentionally accelerated a rock from the system's asteroid belt up to speed to crash into the planet." With a pause she continued, "Potentially as a safety measure to conceal the existence of a Rim Worlds Republic facility on the planet in the event of its discovery."

... yeah that sounded like something Amaris would have done. Grandiose, and probably not very effective at destroying any underground or well hidden industry, but hey it sent a message. DOME had actually designed Castle structures to withstand some degree of orbital impact, up to and including nuclear attacks. It took a lot of effort to break open a castle from orbit, and it was easier to just liberally nuke the surface or bottle it up and force the defenders out by waiting than anything less extreme. Not that that had stopped Amaris from mounting literal human wave attacks against Castles or Taurian nuclear terrorism against the Star League... etc.

Gene leaned back. "This could be filed as an offworld training and security mission, something that a Mech Company could be expected to deploy on... if InterStellar is coming along that doesn't necessarily change that, but I'd like to know what we're reasonably likely to run into. The Marians, regular pirates, are fine, Rim World Automated Defenses fine. I would like all of the information up front from both you and IE, and we're going to need to talk about transport."

"I was understanding you had returned from the Periphery with two JumpShips."

Lebanon, and the Leviathan-class, which seemed to be doing well. The Azami were operating them as merchant tenders when he didn't need them, which meant they were plying back and forth between Luxen earning money... in all honesty they were putting more money in the company coffers than this merc contract, but he wasn't going to mention that. "That's not the problem, we're going to need a DropShip, or two," Or potentially even more, "to move Easy Company," and technically the rest of the company. He didn't even want to touch on well what if we find something in terms of salvage, realistically they'd need more than one, "Two unions, depending on what IE is bringing," Especially if they were supposed to be providing security for dig crews, he thought glancing to Septim. "to transport Easy Company. Its not preferable to transport BattleMechs as cargo. It can be done but best to avoid it if we're going into the unknown. I also need a time table on all of this."

"Of course. We will draw up the specifics, and make sure they're available in print."
--
If he didn't like the general idea of this, he ended up disliking filling out the paper work even more, and that was before they even got to the sub contracting work. Thankfully they weren't completely flat foot by that... but he'd been expecting something like making a run to ur Cruine and dealing with pirates in some canyon shit hole down there. This was a little more in-depth, and it wasn't like friar tuck was the most involved MRB liaison. He wasn't going to call the adept a sorry alchoholic but it was readily apparent the MRB man would have preferred not having to file paper work, but Gene was pretty adamant on retaining at least some ASF pilots, which a headache.

He probably would have had better luck there in terms of looking for them on Detroit, or somewhere, anywhere further coreward because there were slim pickings. He hadn't had much time to work with either, so they loaded up with Doctor Abner and his diggers and other personnel. Lady Raventhir was supplying some of the DropShips, I.E. Was supplying the rest... and apparently since he had two JumpShips it was on him to provide FtL transport, but he'd gotten that impression. The Magistracy was footing the bill for fuel costs and other supplies at least.

"Good morning Mr Shepherd." Professor Abner greeted putting his dig case down. The not quite elderly lyran academic shook his head, "Ah you will see one of the great tragedies of the succession wars. Pioche is a lovely world in the history books, and the damage to it could have easily been fixed by the Department of Mega Engineering if only the Star League were still around. A true shame of our modern era." Abner talked his ear off about the agricultural productiveness of the planet and how it had at one pointed supported a planetary population more than double of Luxen's present population, and it was a while later he absentmindedly lamented that Ford wasn't able to join them as he had some business regarding some 'academic eccentricity' in the Federated Suns.

Gene half suspected that might be true, but just as likely Ford might well be reporting to MIIO or whoever on the civilian side of the Fed Suns. That was his suspicion anyway, but he couldn't prove it nor did he care to. He was also sorely tempted to ask the doctor if this world might have been visited by the Minnesota tribe, but if the professor did think that he probably would have already brought it up.

--

Commentary: Yes, it is Saturday, and I'm not entirely happy with this update, but this begins the 'second arc' of the Second Luxen contract. It will probably undergo a few minor revisions throughout the day, but we will still have a regular update on Sunday like normal.

Imperator Pax · Aug 15, 2021

II Luxen Part 5

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

--

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

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

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

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

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

Star charts, whatever.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Drones?"

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

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

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

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

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

Elidere has an archaeology / lostech segment but it also has the Galedon Regulars show up to cause trouble because thats what they're doing at that point in time so there was a much more natural transition from we're exploring, to oh battle.

Imperator Pax · Aug 22, 2021

II Luxen Part 6

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

Not today though.

They were in space today.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"and in a less theoretical situation?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But its whatever canon is a mess.

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

Imperator Pax · Aug 29, 2021

II Luxen
Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Pirate point insertion, and DropShips burning hard."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They had other problems to deal with.

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

"What are you doing?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"We need to get uniforms." He muttered.

"Before or after ASF pilots?" She responded.

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

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

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

Alright theoretically my Drow CYOA story will update monday, probably monday afternoon, and then hopefully I'll have worked out something of an update schedule for September Monday as well.

Imperator Pax · Aug 31, 2021

II Detroit
Part 1

Luxen, Magistracy of Canopus. [-102.54 : -493.873]
September 3016 [1]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Technically its nine days."

He grunted. "Has Raventhir said anything?"

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

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

"From the sound of it."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Commander Shepherd."

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

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

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

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

"I understand, final exercises?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Imperator Pax · Sep 3, 2021

Short [Exercise Interlude]
Part 1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Why's that?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Despite having just been told to go radio silent, her mech registered a laser comm, and her partner made the observation that apparently Lady Raventhir must have changed the simulation again. Short blew out a breath and relied on the instrument panel to figure out where to divert the unit to, but she was probably right about the unmentioned change over to the exercise.
--
Commentary: This should be three parts its about five thousand words total.

Imperator Pax · Sep 5, 2021

Short [Final Exercise]
Part 2

She slammed hard against her restraints as the mech stopped moving. She shook her head, and cursed the landing. The decision to push forward to the objective were the reports, simulated or not, regarding the casualties Regiment were taking. Infantry and armor were dying by the droves against pirate mechs, and conventional wisdom held only a mech could fight a mech.

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

"Platoon sound off?" She asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What's going on?"

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

"What about Bahar?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

.... whatever that was, Short thought. Then there was the rumble of what at first she thought was thunder, but turned out to be the great thrumming noise of the Houston's fusion drives as it slowly descended, as if summoned by name.

Imperator Pax · Sep 12, 2021

Short Part 3

If it was at all possible she felt even more out of place than at the reception after the drill before Lady Raventhir had swept them up to go looking for LosTech on Pioche a few months earlier. It might as well have been a life time ago now. It hadn't really been that long, but the situation felt so totally surreal she had to wonder if she was dehydrated or someone had slipped her something as she skirted around the crowds.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Months?" Shepherd seemed skeptical

"You said optimistic."

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

"Like a Castle Brian."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Imperator Pax · Sep 14, 2021

II Detroit
Part 2

November 3016
Detroit [19.15, -452.55]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Septim,"

"Boss?"

"See if Markham's Marauders are here, or if not why not?" They could have already come and said their bit, but they had been one of the Merc Companies on Detroit at the time, though had left before the Combine had ever shown up.
--
Commentary: Ok we are officially back on Detroit. And I am in the process of a complete overhaul of the rest of Detroit II as a chapter, I'm far enough ahead that Sunday's update shouldn't be a problem, and it will introduce some of the Combine Characters who would have been introduced at the end of Detroit I... and Bob returns (the DCMS local guy).

Imperator Pax · Sep 19, 2021

II Detroit
Part 3

"Mother fucker." He swore, and looked around. Everything else looked like he had left it, plus the well dust he had expected from not having been here. Gene hadn't expected to away this long so the warehouse rental had never been intended to last this long. The plan originally, so far as there had been a plan, to do the job for the Magistracy and take the contract provided ride back to Detroit on the Magistracy's dime.

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

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

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

Not that that made him feel any better.

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

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

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

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

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

"Captain Fields."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Tell 'em about the asshole."

"The asshole?"

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

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

"I have no idea." The captain replied. "All I know is personality problems aside he's a contender."
--
Commentary: So if you remember of the first detroit chapter (the End of Detroit I, the start of Luxen I whichever it was) in the original version at the party rather than Gene getting immediately swooped up by the Magistracy for the Luxen contract the plan had been for our Combine duelist guy referenced here, to get in his face and just generally make a scene in public. (as in you know how Gene is drinking in that scene, yeah, splash breaking glass spilled drink)

Imperator Pax · Sep 26, 2021

Detroit II
Part 4

There was nearly about everything on sale here... well up to the point of say fully functional mechs. Corean Industries was advertising that they had a brand new... well 3012 opening... factory producing new Centurions, and a handful of other corporations with little information kiosks and big signs advertising to passerbys that inquiries could be made about contract orders for spare parts, maintenance, replacement weapons, and presumably if one had the money buy mechs from the corporation... "There is a showroom that has used mechs," Fields was saying, "I mean its kind of interesting to see what all Frankenstein's monsters get put up there."

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

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

'GUNZ'.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Too many what ifs he supposed.
--
Commentary: This is shorter than it was going to be, we will introduce the combine people (or reintroduce in Bob's case.) next segment.

Imperator Pax · Oct 3, 2021

Detroit II
Part 5

This was law fare, there was no pretending it wasn't. It was a concentrated effort to take enough time to run anyone who didn't have the bank account to stick around on Detroit... or presumably the local contracts to earn a sustainable income to live on world while the court proceedings dragged on. Certainly that probably would have been Chang's situation, and it wouldn't have been worth the Vehicles here hunchback had punched... Septim might have but it would have been expensive all the same and really probably not worth it.

"You sure you want to do this boss?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Are we getting paid?"

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

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

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

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

Imperator Pax · Oct 10, 2021

Detroit II
Part 6

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I am precisely where the Dragon requires me."

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

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

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

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

"Is that the completed inventory?"

"It is."

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

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

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

"Holy shit she just agreed to this?"

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

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

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

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

"What happens if we do find something?"

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

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

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

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

"We saw that."

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

"We read the packet."

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

Later that night... a gang war broke out in Ann Arbor.

Imperator Pax · Oct 17, 2021

Detroit II
Part 7

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Just thinking out loud boss."

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

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

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

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

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

"What about the fire?"

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

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

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

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

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

"Geez Major I didn't figure you for a poetry guy." Someone louder, less polished declared.

Imperator Pax · Oct 24, 2021

Detroit II
Part 8

They were in downtown he supposed, in a big ugly Chrysler building meets soviet architecture looking skyscraper that was a nasty taupe color. "So the fire was intentional?" Gene found himself asking, even as he leaned back in the cheap office furniture.

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

"Not a grenade?" Colonel Khan asked softly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

... "Boss?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lastly, and this is not definitive but there is a good chance that I will be cutting back regular updates for the rest of the year, (November and December), to work on other updates. This will probably mean two sundays a month. That being said I would like to get through Elidere, but once we do start the general pirate killing thats going to last a while most likely, and involve very little in the way of Inner Sphere proper politics. IE won't be showing up again, probably after the actual HBS story campaign is taken care of. Right now Elidere is looking to be if not the last time IE shows up for a while then the last contract with them, and while they may get passing mention in story their screen time will be much reduced until the mid thirty twenties.

Imperator Pax · Oct 31, 2021

Detroit Exit

He had had absolutely no qualms putting Detroit in the metaphorical rearview mirror. It hadn't escaped him from reading the first edition copy of the dictates on honor that Kurita Omi the original author would probably have been disgusted by the treacherous backstabbing going on. Or not, authors could be hypocrites too. He had to wonder if the Kuritan political officer or whatever knew the details of what had prompted the Azami who had fled in the first place... he doubted it... not they had probably had made the decision to just double cross the local yakuza for their own reasons... and he hadn't wanted to fstick around Detroit to find that out. Not really.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The recording?"

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

"No. I did not."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh also, as I have been reminded ... a Star League Division is three brigades. Like British Brigades for a triangle division (My thought) no a Brigade then has three regiments in it, with from there... ah star league more money than sense.

Imperator Pax · Nov 7, 2021

Elidere
Part 1

Gene stretched until he felt his shoulders pop, as he yawned. Elidere was a decent enough planet... when you got past the frankly creepy obsession with the SLDF. There were Cameron starbursts everywhere like they were medieval crosses actually. And like medieval crosses every other notable star league symbol were plastered in banners and paint elsewhere. Not that that kept him from getting a good nights sleep though. After months of travel being ground side was a welcome change of pace, and they had settled to the contract. Abner was still en route... space travel was slow aftr all.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"At first?"

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

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

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

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

"Star League era transport apparatus."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"So he's been trying?"

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

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

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

"Its a map, right?"

"That's what we think."

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

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

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

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

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

"We could drop a sonar buoy."

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

Imperator Pax · Nov 21, 2021

Elidere Part 2

"So you found a room full of mummies?"

... they had been sealed up in an environment where bugs couldn't get to them, and had dried out so yeah maybe mummies was the correct term. "Part of a Combine regiment trapped on the planet elected to commit suicide rather than be taken prisoner," He explained as Septim toweled his face off, "Did you find anything?"

He shook his head, "No, I mean yeah you can tell this was a battlefield. My mech's sensors were warning about old munitions being buried," Something to remind the IE diggers to be sure, "But I didn't pick up anything like what you described."

That didn't mean there wasn't a communications bunker tucked away somewhere, but it had been worth a shot anyway, "Alright well what about the town?"

"Radiation levels, but really they're fine. I don't know about the coast, but its probably okay as long we don't spend too much time there. You want me to check it out?"

"Don't grow any extra fingers, but yeah, schedule taking a look and get readings. Take Chang along with you, just in case. I know the locals aren't very happy, but I doubt they'll actually take a shot at you."

"Boss all they have are Franken mechs, whats the most 'bang an AgriMech can even carry?" He didn't know the answer to that, "I'll bring Bubbles, and Beau with me. Sound good?"

"Sounds good," He replied. "My bigger concern is if we have to start making trips back and forth between Ander's Moon." Which was yes technically a habitable moon, but it was in orbit of a gas giant and was basically a baby planet in its own right... smaller than Elidere IV, but still basically planet sized.

"What do you make about that Chalice of Herne thing, they plaster it on everything. They say its from Terra."

"I have no idea Septim," He had seen the images... and it just looked like gaudy big cup to him... it was a gold cup, but he had no idea what if any non local historical significance it might have had. "Anyway we've confirmed the unit markings on the gun which seems to validate that the Regiment survived the periphery campaign."

"Couldn't someone have left the gun with family? Then bought the farm out there?"

Gene shook his head, "Date on the gun says it was manufactured after Terra was liberated." He replied, producing the engraved laser pistol and handing it over. Septim raised an eyebrow at the jade inserts, and asked if it worked, "It appears to be functional. Power cells can be recharged. No reason it shouldn't work, but the techs have other things to do." It would be something for them to play with later. "What about the chalice? What brought that up?"

"Talking to some of the locals."

"Yeah, making friends?"

Septim held for a long moment, "Maybe not friends, just that in addition to being the duke's badge of office its supposedly the sacred chalice entrusted to the planet by the SLDF." He bit down the snide response that they were turning a gaudy goblet into the veritable holy grail. "I was kind of wondering if Doctor Ford had said something about it, I mean if its from the SLDF could it be important."

He shrugged, and reiterated that frankly he had no idea, Gene sighed, "I will ask Ford about the cup, but its on Ander's moon." Or at least it should have been, but even if it wasn't he doubted they could just walk up and ask hey can we look at your holy grail, "I'm hoping we won't have to go traipsing all over the damned continent." Septim returned the laspistol, and seeing the rain starting saluted, turned up his collar and went to find the others in his 'demi lance' even as people started cursing the sudden rain storm for the inconvenience of having to stop what they were doing.

Ford... so best as Gene had understood it was still in school... in the process of still attending post graduate studies and had not at least during the little expedition he'd been involved in, had not been awarded the post nominals of someone with a PHD.... unless of course the last thousand years of human development in future eighties had changed how that was treated. However a number of people had explicitly referred to Ford as Doctor though not professor. It was entirely possible that Ford had successfully defended his dissertation before committee while he'd been shooting pirates.

"Damned weather." Speak of the devil.
--
The spate of on and off rain continued for the rest of the week slowing digging and excavations to a near crawl, and that was without having to contend with defusing old ordinance. Ford though was convinced that they hadn't exhausted the area... citing the clear evidence of battle here as that there had to be something more here. He wasn't convinced, but Ford was signing the paychecks... and the paycheck meant that this wasn't a waste of time. Gene was getting a little concerned that they might have been getting lax, but he wasn't comfortable scheduling excercises while they were still digging unexploded remains of two hundred plus old battlefields... and realistically IE probably would have complained about the risk of damaging the dig site.

That of course left the unit with academic past times to engage in. On the plus side Ford had stated that he'd be able to put them in contact with suppliers for various equipment and material that hadn't been available in the periphery. Simulator pods were at the top of that list.

He pushed the pencil and pad away, rested his chin on his hand and scowled at the attempt to puzzle out the image... or his attempts to recreate the fragment of it. He was pretty sure at least that that was a Cameron starburst, which meant nothing the symbol of the hegemony and the star league were everywhere on this damn rock so this piece of a puzzle having it on there probably meant nothing... and of course he would probably sit there and laugh if this whole thing turned out to be another wild ass goose chase that turned up nothing... but it was one more thing that Ford was convinced that they were on the right path.

... and on that path would lead them hopefully onto the exodus road. It was an obsession he simply didn't understand... "What do you think?" He asked the dark haired teen across the table.

Bahar looked up from her end. "If it is a Star League unit patch it isn't one recorded for the 63rd division."

"How far down did you go?" He asked picking his pencil back up to move it back through his figners. It was as good of an idea as any to be sure... it was sort of kind of the right shape even though it... the image had empty spaces like it was incomplete. "And if its a unit crest why is it incomplete. Ford thinks its some kind of put the pieces in puzzle."

"I went down regimental patches, would SLDF batallions have individual unit patches?"

"They would." He replied. "On the other hand I don't think we have those on file, and even if we did I doubt its that." Pulling the tables for an SLDF division break wouldn't be a bad idea, there might have been some kind of attached battalion at headquarters for a division... engineers or pathfinders, but they were largely spitballing and there was no sense pretending otherwise. Presumably any of the SLDF gear they had recovered from 'the mummies' tomb' had had their unit marks had also been checked, "What do you think it is?"

"The very top might be," She paused, "A torii gate maybe, but if its a Terran unit why would it use that... and I think part of the missing segment, it looks like a wing. Some sort of bird?"

"Its not an eagle if it is, but yeah I sort of see it." He shrugged, and stopped twirling the pencil and craned his head to the doorway.

"Good I had hoped I'd finder you." Ford replied striding in, he had a noteputer with him showing a map of the region, but the note dated it as 2765. "This is the continent as it sat before the division that was stationed here was sent off into the unknown, we're excavating the ancient tramway its slow going what with the weather and much of the civilian infrastructure having been damaged by the fighting a lot of the ferrocrete had sunk and shifted. Well, regardless there has to be a spur that tracks off into the mountains."

"Why do you think that?"

"DOME liked excavating into rock formations, it provided natural ablative armor against orbital attacks, and concealed facilities from easy detection of course. That's what we need the digging machines for, its almost certain that the mountains have had landslides or other obstructions given this planet's climate." That made a certain amount of sense. "In any what this tells me is that there should be the remains of a starport, but we can't find it. I've gone over the Davion records from the time of the Ander's uprising and they don't have it on their maps either. Its like the starport just stops showing up."

... which was a long winded roundabout way of 'hey come help us look' in your giant stompy robot, because Ford didn't have any better ideas.

... "Anything?"

Nope. "Nothing on scopes." He replied to the question being asked yet again. He wished that he had Star League era copies of the maps programmed into his nav computer, but nothing was showing up... no beacons or electronic signatures, and there wasn't even any indicators of buried ordinance from the chemical sniffers. "This whole sector is clear Ford." There wasn't anything here... which... he paused, "What if the map is fake?"

"What?"

"More correctly how sure someone didn't modify the maps to show a starport where it wasn't, and then obviously when the davions and kuritas started fighting over the world they wouldn't have a starport on their maps?" There was a pause as Ford must have been turning the idea over in his head.

"Oh, yes, I suppose thats a possible misdirection. I didn't consider that." He paused, "But why would they do that?" at the proffered explanation of making people like us wander around like idiots, Ford shook his head over the line, "No, that can't be. I am sure that this is an unmodified map, and besides it matches all of the other 2765 era maps, further and earlier maps. The starport just doesn't show up in first succession war and later period documents." Gene rotated his Marauder's torso and looked around the stand of white pine. All of them were mature and covered what should have been support facilities for the port that had disappeared from history. "Look, just humor me," a pause as the radio seemed to get an intermittent signal, "lets try that sonar buoy idea, broadcast a general interrogative using an SLDF IFF, we haven't tried that yet."

He glanced up at his console's array of switches, and then back to the surrounding landscape... he didn't see any concealed turrets that would pop out and start shooting at him... and more pointedly his Mech hadn't detected any.

Imperator Pax · Dec 5, 2021

Elidere
Part 3

He wasn't sure how to gauge the archaeological find. They weren't really pulling anything more than trinkets out. Oh sure there were a handful of various Star League era small arms that the Sun Zhang cadre seemed to have looted, there was the missing space port, but nothing really substantive one way or another.

The SLDF IFF broadcast hadn't turned up anything, and he was kind of glad for that. Truthfully Gene had been a little concerned that it might result turrets suddenly exploding awake and shooting at him... or worse anything not broadcasting an SLDF friend foe tag. Nothing had happened though, and Ford had been admittedly disappointed but they had moved on. Elidere had had a hard life, well like most worlds, since the fall of the Star League, the combine's turn around after Kentares had largely ended with the borders returning to the previous status quo. While that had without a doubt rankled the combine's military leadership it had had other effects. The 1st Succession war had killed more people than the Amaris Civil War... but not by much... and what was worse was that the succession war had been fault just as the losses of that conflict started to come home to roost.

Without the Star League to continue to distribute technological information, and the massive destruction of infrastructure that would characterize the first and second wars things had started to fall apart. While most of the fighting had originally been concentrated towards Terra it had morphed into general fighting along the old borders. Then peace, then the Minnesota tribe, then the second had started... and history. "I doubt it."

"But we know the tribe crossed through combine space,"

"Sure but why come this far coreward the last planet in the combine they could be confirmed on was Valentina." Gene muttered, which still ran into the problem of how exactly they had just disappeared like they had after presumably jumping over the border into FedSuns space. "It would make more sense that they then passed through the Alliance or made the jump to Niles and proceeded rimward."

"Unless they were looking for SLDF caches."

"That would explain why they came through the combine in the first place, but doesn't explain them disappearing after Valentina." He replied, "But cutting inward from there to come here would mean half dozen jumps, and this was on the border with the FedSuns." This was all target fixation as far as he could tell, cause that immediately brought Ford back around to his missing starport... thankfully it wasn't so bad he wanted to take time to cut down the forest and see if there was anything buried down there... which admittedly there might be.... but short of a better explanation swinging inward to Kesai was one thing, swinging in and then keep going ... seemed like wishful thinking.

He turned the Marauder through another series of hillocks. Mudslides over the last two centuries had buried what had been a town. Not that the town hadn't been shellacked during the FedSuns post Kentares offensive, and the combine hadn't had the resources to rebuild so it had sat abandoned and nature had done the rest.

A few minutes passed as he continued to poke the mech's snout around the debris strewn streets.

"Anything?"

"Couple of Unexploded ordinance warnings." He replied. From the looks of it one side or maybe both had held up in the city and neither had decided to pay much concern to minimizing collateral. "Looks like Arrow Vs, breached a wall, and diverted the reservoir."

Ford made a low hum into the microphone, "Hmm, that would make sense we only saw its remains on the fly over. You should be coming up on the turn the station entrance should be somewhere about kilometer further." His seisomgraphics built into the Star League Era dalban sensor package actually had the rail tunnel highlighted and projected for him to trace, but he decided not to spoil Ford's fun. He had after all walked basically parallel the length of the tube as he had progressed north looking for more entry ways or points of access, which the teams who had walked the length of the tunnel said were often stuck or otherwise sealed up and unable to be opened from inside. I.E. Didn't want to risk flooding the tunnels by pushing their luck by opening a door hastily when the other wise structurally sound tunnel was safe. They didn't want to do anything to compromise that.

... in spite of asking him to take his seventy five ton bipedal war machine and go check it out, which was why he was out here. Admittedly it might been a better idea to take the mongoose out for this but here he was. He eased back on the throttle to thirty five, and then to twenty to make the near right angle turn. Elidere's geography made the continent prone to rain, and was prone to blowing rain and fog without much warning as a result of the mountains shaping cloud formations. The planet itself though, in terms of development, even during the Star League had never been particularly advanced outside of its agricultural output. Elidere had never been particularly industrialized or technologically sophisticated by the standards of the star league though... and that had been before the Ares Conventions went out the window.

And that made sense given he doubted even without access to maps of how the town had looked in late 27-whenever or 28-whenever some had lobbed short range ballistic missiles into critical infrastructure it had been intended as anything other than intentional destruction meant to wreak further havoc. Whether there had been troops in the path of the released torrent of water, it had been intended to cut them off, or if just to damage the down to deny it to the enemy there was no way to know. It had been the first succession war.... and such behaviors had happened on a thousand worlds as the conflict had lasted over thirty years.

There was a marked difference in construction and building materials of the northern town, from the still inhabited towns to the south. The latter were all purely local construction reminding him of rural England, where as though a shattered husk the buildings in the north were the half buried remnants of large steel beams and wholesale prefabricated steel structures who after two wars and two centuries had largely wasted away to ossified structures. The roads were still built wide enough a mech could walk without an issue, but there were no correspondingly obvious entryways to let a mech down into the underground.

He keyed his mike, "Looks like its under a couple meters of mud, but it adjoins what might by the civic center, or other government office." Gene ran the mech's high beams up the gutted structure that was listing painfully to one side.
--
Gene would have felt more comfortable if they had demo-ed the derelict government center. Ford wouldn't hear of it, the structure despite being a safety hazard represented the Combine before Takiro Kurita had been the forced homogenization of the combine in the twenty seventh century. The town's structure and infrastructure had likely been laid out and constructed under the auspices of the Star League.... probably star league funds.

Admittedly the homogenization towards a more uniform reactionary Japanese culture had begun under Urizen, and from Takiro had succeeded Minoru, and then Jinjiro.

"Do we know what happened?"

"Best guess is that the regiment was pushed back here, and then the Davion's assumed they were out of the fight." Ford shrugged, "As you observed all of this was likely wrecked by that point, and had been for decades. The Sun Zhang students fell back into the urban center and the ruins and seemed to have found their way to supplies. House Davion must have realized that they were still a threat then and forced them into a corner, and rather than surrender or mount hit and run or defensive fighting or what have you they elected to commit seppuku."

He glanced around, "This place still has power, what's it running off of? Geothermal?"

"Indeed."

That explained why no one had tried to loot it then. Fusion power plant might have been worth it, but geothermal was local dependent. They still could have looted the power couplings and other apparatus but it probably just hadn't been considered worth it.

Or they thought the place was haunted, and it was always possible that there had been combine booby traps left behind. "What about the vault?" Ford hadn't been able to bypass the security lock on what should have been a civilian shelter, "Bahar you looked at it? What did you think?"

"I think someone had to repair the door, and replace the lock work, the original door is from the twenty seventh century, but looks like it had to be repaired or refit after. Still Star League." It was still a DOME door, big heavy, CRBN rated... big... anything that would breach it would probably do damage to the corridor.... or probably buried them.

He might have questioned why the building was mechscale, but apparently that had become the norm for construction projects by the end of the twenty sixth century. As a result anything 'modern' not built to that scale was deemed a result of the backslide from those glory days... and the great houses couldn't have that...

Gene scratched his head looking at it, glanced to Bahar. "Any signs of other tampering?"

"It doesn't appear to have been tampered with, or rigged with explosives given the door's structure it would be rather pointless and its a complete airlock seal on the other side according to the schematics." CRBN decon etc etc.

"Its unfortunate Pasha is out of the system." The JumpShips were on a gig to Robinson, "Alright how would you do this?"

"I think it could be just a simple software problem." Bahar hedged, "We need to plus into the computers and see why the lock is actually off safe, but a diagnostic could take days to fully run."

"Well we've got nothing better to do," Septim declared as he joined them, "I have the maps you asked for, I paged through the newest one says its from the reign of Jinjiro Kurita, but doesn't give a year."

"Does it say which year of his reign?"

Septim paused, "Chang, that last one, what's it say exactly?"

One long string of combine gobblygook later, "That would be 2828" Bahar didn't elect to point out that Jinjiro had succeeded to the throne after his father had been KIA-ed on Kentares... and subsequently... the eponymous massacre had been carried out on his order.

"Probably put together in the lead up to starting the second succession war," Ford opined. "Supposedly his court astrologer told him it was an auspicious year."

The diagnostic itself ended up not taking long at all. "It tripped a chemical weapons system, when?"

"It can't be right."

"When?" He repeated.

The tech shook his head, "According to this 2784, but like I said that can't be right, the door log clearly states that someone overrode the lock and opened it in -"

"Let me guess at the time of the Davion invasion of the planet?"

"Well yeah."

So the door could be overridden. They just weren't doing something right. They had ended up getting the door open by convincing it to run a diagnostic to check if it detected any poison gas. Then they had overridden the lock when the computer hadn't detected any nerve gas... which of course meant that computer forced them to repeat this process in order to get out.... and get back in. "So there was probably never any nerve gas?" Septim asked.

"Who knows,"

"When they installed the new door it probably created a compatibility issue with the computer. It can't clear the error so it seals the door, and forces you to go through the override procedure." ... Cause that was a good well designed system right there.

Imperator Pax · Dec 19, 2021

Elidere
Part 4

What they had found inside didn't make a whole lot of sense... not that a whole lot of this made sense. Abner had joined them that morning. It had been a week since they had found the north town rail terminus point / station and started exploring it. "No, no none of these fellows," Mummified SLDF troops, "Made it to New Samarkand obviously." The old lyran doctor declared. "I don't understand how they ended up here." Then straightening, "We should do autopsies on the remains determine how these men died..."

Unlike the combine cadets no body looked like they had intentionally checked out. The tomb, because really what else was it... what could it be called was pristine, eerily so. The door didn't make any sense. It was newere construction than the original bunker, but okay sure, but why install a new door.... to say Gene was uncomfortable, "Putting aside the bodies for a minute, this is an emergency response bunker. Coordinate civil defense in response to a nuclear disaster, and the lock on it has a chemical weapons flag," Notably chemical, not nuclear... which might have at least made sense because at least one if not both Davion and Combine forces had used nukes on the planet during the first and or second succession wars nearby. It would have made sense to have a bunker flag for that... but they didnt. And then there was also, "These doors are big enough for a BattleMech to come through, and yet, I don't see anywhere they would go." He'd been all around the gargantuan room, there was an upstairs with computer hardware that certainly looked like it would turn on... but they hadn't gotten that far yet.

"Quite right." Ford agreed. "Its very queer."

The old man nodded, "An astute observation major, I wanted to look around a bit more, before I made an effort to come to a conclusion, if you might give me a few days. I'd rather have a look at those terminals though truthfully."

"We left them alone like as you requested," Even as Abner was leaning over one of the vintage 80s esque IBM super computer looking arrays. While Abner played with his new toy Gene glanced to Ford, and to the physical map, and shrugged. "I don't know what to tell you."

"Starports don't just vanish." The map was dated to before the Amaris coup of course. 2765 had been when the Taurians had launched their stupid uprising on New Vandenburg... but that was probably coincidental. So at least at that point the local government still had a starport there.

Gene was glad Abner was here now. That was good. It meant that they were less likely to have Ford just demolish and entire forest full of mature trees to see if there was anything buried down there... they might still do that... and Ford was probably going to be insufferably smug if they did turn something.

There was a horrible grating noise and the lights flickered as the computers powered up.... but nothing exploded or even started smoking. "Ah Ha. Its works." Abner declared. The old man went to what he was doing, and they went back to waiting... and waiting... and thankfully not getting shot at.

--
They had come to investigate yet another mummified body. He had been tired of being called up to look at them by this point... but it was the job. Bahar had been right it had been a Torii gate.

The old crazy lyran doctor guffawed, ignoring the dead man in the jumpsuit that had proved Bahar's suspicions. "Yes on ancient Terra it designated airborne unit. Men who would jump from planes you know. The Hegemony adopted it for units who were orbital drop specialists."

"What about the bird?" Septim asked.

"Its an Ibis," Or something in the family, Gene supposed. "They eat snakes." If he already hadn't liked this the nerve gas warning had been bad, but he had been able to run the regimental patch through his computer. "Its a Gunslinger unit. It wouldn't have been attached to 15th Army." Even though at one point the army in question had been famous for its participation in both the ACMS Program and counter ronin work in a broader sense.

He thought about all the SLDF murals and images, frescoes even in town. If he had to guess that the Torii gates of the icons in down had probably been destroyed as being mistaken for combine during the looting by marcher troops that had probably happened... or that would have been his explanation for why it hadn't survived to the present culture... but the simpler answer even to that was that it was a regimental patch not something larger and not attached to the regular SLDF command on Elidere IV.

"Are we going to open it?"

Everyone stopped standing around. "I'd want to know what's behind it first..." Though given its placement he suspected he already knew what it was. It was probably a tunnel. He didn't like how the computer database didn't seem to have the schematics for it though. They'd already found out that the air recycling and CRBN systems were complete separate from the rest of the complex. The bunker seemed to be on a separate network, which by itself wouldn't have been unusual if it had been independent but it seemed like... and if this was a tunnel... that it connected to somewhere else. "Give me a minute, I'm getting my mech. Bahar get yours as well. Septim go get the drilling machines and make sure they work." The positive side to Mech sized entry ways was that they could bring hover cars inside and that as long as you were careful and didn't drive into anything it was easy to navigate the labyrinth subway system.

"All set up there?" Ford asked over the radio as he gently prodded forward.

"Affirmative," He answered adjusting his Dalban, and then pinging the lighter mech, "Bahar are you getting anything?"

"No. If there is any kind of communications or sensor system its off. I'm not reading any guide of guide beacon or handshake."

That was weird. He had really expected there to be something if not from turning those big ugly computers on, to when they opened the giant hidden doors. What was worse was they were underground and he doubted that there was anyway to get a message to the surface team quickly if something went wrong... unless they happened to notice a caven in. The tunnel before them was dark, and unlit.

"I'd say this looks like DOME work." Ford commented. "Still may not be military, but its more like the SLDF than the civilian tunnels." He was shining a portable spot light from his spot in the back of the hover car. So they started walking and he started querying the computer in his own machine about the patch he was holding. There were limitted details available in the computer, but their last posting should have been much closer to Terra... within Hegemony space. They shouldn't have been on Elidere... which would he have probably justified as odd except Aquagea's unit's home garrison was also officially listed as being in Hegemony space.

It still might have been nothing. Bahar opened her channel back up, "This tunnel is several miles long, and appears to diverge up ahead."

"That's great," He checked his orientation data. He switched channels, "Ford, this looks like its goes up into the mountains." He had not meant that in a positive way. They were literally walking down a centuries old tunnel with no idea what was down there. Ford's almost giddy response was interrupted by the establishment of a laser com line establishing down from the start of the tunnel. "I read you Septim."

"Yeah, boss, some of these Star League guys were shooting at each other." That had been identified when they had found a couple of the bodies with obvious laser burns in their jump suits and uniforms. The combine students had stripped all the useful small arms from the bodies, and he was almost willing to bet that if they went back and counted what they had found that they would match the dead in the bunker. The bunker's command staff... their cause of death hadn't been as obvious though. They didn't know... and that was bugging him.

"Septim, put the unit on alert,"

"Boss?"

It was him, Bahar and her mech, and then Abner, Ford, and the teaching assistant driving the car. "This place has power, and is cycling oxygen through it. Could be automated defenses, if we trip something you need to be aware of it." He didn't want to think about what might happen if those automated defenses included sealing that big door... they really didn't have a way to get it open by force after all. "We're going to loose signal, this tunnel looks like it forks in about a mile and a half stand by for that."

Eight hours later it was obvious Septim was now regretting his previous tomb raider crack as they had signed off. The place was on initial glance looking around in the vaulted ceiling of the bay immaculate even after centuries. An almost textbook of the Star League's imperial power, and its view of the universe. It was almost perfectly preserved, undisturbed certainly since it had sealed... an edifice of an empire centuries gone, that could have existed yesterday from the looks of the interior.

Septim backpedalled nearly falling over the blonde TA who was with them. "They're holograms." Gene replied even as the shooting started. He didn't know why the holographic projectors had started playing what he was sure was a security recording of some kind... what exactly had triggered it. They had been out of their mechs for a good fifteen minutes now and they had been careful not touch anything.

There was no sound either. He didn't know what the ghost like figures had been saying and most had looked like they had been just going out about the usual business of bay crew. Holographic mechs left their bays and lights flashed presumably klaxons would have sounded, and he glanced to spots in the wall that minutes earlier they had glided over... but now were obviously patched and repainted after having been shot.

Unlike elsewhere though there no bodies. There had been no bodies so the holographic images of corpses slumped on the floor had been cleaned away at some point. He looked at the holographic Atlas and then to the sleeping hundred tonner that had returned to the bay to wait.

Septim didn't look convinced.

Then just as suddenly as the ghostly recording had started to play it shut off. "Bahar?"

"I didn't see any obvious mechanism, and no one touched anything." She called looking around. "Someone painted over the bullet holes, and there were ceiling mounted defense turrets." Mounted... more like concealed in the ceiling recesses. He was willing to bet the money that Interstellar had put up to get them to come that they still worked. "Doctor, do you want to keep going? Doctor Abner."

The Lyran was looking at the Atlas. "Ah yes..." He had been hoping Abner would want to bring more people in, or rather go back to the dig's base camp to collect more people. "I don't recognize this model. Do you?"

He looked at it again, "Its an Atlas II." He replied, looking at the LBX 10. The name meant nothing to anyone but him. "How do you want to proceed?"

"We need to find the commander center, we should take that lift," That was thankfully labelled, "We need to find out why they started shooting at each other." The Lyran declared striding forward with a purpose that belied his age.

Ford looked breathless, "Do you know what this means," He asked, "We may have found an SLDF command post that can tell us about the last days of the SLDF before they departed for Samarkand. With any luck we can find out where they went. These men obviously knew something was afoot and about what was happening." His head moved furtively side to side, "We may have found a full intact castle brian, look at all of this."

"Its not a brian. Its an outpost." Stocked was another thing he wasn't sure about, but this was too small to be a castle brian... but the correction did nothing to stem the FedSun's native's excitement. "Bahar take stock of the situation... I want to know what we're looking at." He cast a glance back to the tunnel bay doors, and to the elevators ... if something went wrong they weren't going any where and no one was going to be coming to them for at least hours.

"Major. Major." Abner called, "Major Shepherd, will you or miss Bahar come here. This door doesn't want to accept my credentials."

He glanced to her, "I've got this go take stock of down here, and see if you can get a hold of the rest of the company." He made his way back to Abner, pressed his hand on the biometric and swiped the chit around his neck on the other reader. It flashed green and admitted them without any trouble. He suspected that Abner had managed to have an AI make him a DOME or other nominally civilian star league department an ID chit with valid access codes and for most digs that was probably enough to bypass normal star league protocols under 'maintenance' or the like... but he hadn't asked, and he wasn't going to, "They're just holograms, Septim. They're not actually ghosts." He reassured the man as they were subjected to another haunting recording of the last days of the facility... still without sound.

Like down below the walls were unmarked... or rather painted over from where men had gunned each other down, but there was no frame of reference for why the shooting had started. Just men in SLDF uniforms shooting at each other... and the holograms made it hard to figure out which units were shooting at which units... even if it had been broken down on unit lines. Had someone snapped and just started shooting and in the confusion people started shooting wildly and just spread from there? He supposed it was possible as the hallway full holographic bodies cleared as they approached another sealed door.

A proud cameron starburst stood painted on the reinforced blast doors of the commander center.

"Major Shepherd, if you would." Abner requested ambling forward to the door, but stopped just a few meters short of the sleeping defense turrets.

... thanks a lot... he wanted to mutter eying the lasers. He stepped forward to the golden line painted on the floor where Abner had stopped. "Authorized User Detected." A masculine voice of synthetic origin stated evenly from... presumably recessed speakers. The turrets remained offline and pointed downward in their housing.

So far so good. He stepped towards the terminal and to the placed his hand on the flat panel feeling a sharp prick after he inserted the chit which the device actually fully recessed up to its chain, which he had never seen happen before.

"Stand by." The automated voice remarked.

He glanced at the drop of blood on his finger, and rubbed it. There was a flicker of light.

"Authentication, and gene code match. Welcome Major Shepherd." Then the voice shifted slightly. "It has been two hundred and thirty four years since an officer of the Central Intelligence Directorate has visited this facility."

He looked at the blue eye in the wall that was probably some kind of camera, or reader, or scanner something... "You're a hegemony artificial intelligence."

"Affirmative. This unit is designated Tristan St George 1283." Tritstan replied. "I am the central monitoring, directing and advising unit of this facility." A pause, "I must report that I have been out of contact since the mutineers destroyed my HPG uplink. I can only determine from degraded signals intercepts that the Star League has collapsed."

"That is correct."

"I understand. Please do come in."

The door opened to a pristine command center. Tristan started another holographic playback of the security footage... but this one had sound.... and that honestly made it worse than all the previous ones. " One of the Atlas drivers of the Snake Eaters had enacted the base's wildfire protocol when it became clear that they couldn't hold the facility... pumped the whole base full of nerve gas and turned the drones loose on all the remaining SLDF regulars from the Fifteenth, as well as the 209th Division troops caught in between.

"The Star League council had relieved Kerensky of Command. He had no legal authority to direct the SLDF to undertake the actions they did..." And apparently some of the troops from the combine had felt like insisting that Kerensky's orders had still been legally binding to the point of shooting a Hegemony major general... and starting the whole mess.

"So the Ardennes division died here then?"

He could almost hear the AI head tilt, "Yes, as I understand your idiom. I destroyed mutinying dropships and as a result most of the soldiers of the 209th enlisted and junior officers settled on the planet... regrettably most of them were KIA as a result of the nuclear attack on Elidere city." The original planetary capital. He had more questions, and he wasn't the only one. Abner was more than a little reluctant to wait or call back to base camp.

"Boss I really have a bad feeling about this." Septim pointed out to him, out of ear shot of the others. The other man seemed embarrassed about it, but was genuinely shook by the whole affair.
--
Commentary: This is end of the first half of Elidere IV. And also the last update of the story for the year... and the second half will solidly cement why Gene intends to spend most of the next decade of his career anywhere that isn't next to the Combine.

Imperator Pax · Jan 2, 2022

Eidere IV
Part 5

He was thinking of the facility he had awakened in, and how much better provisioned this one was... such a fucking pity it was right on the Combine Fed Suns border. Bahar meanwhile looked at her new SLDF identification chit. It had taken some cajoling from the AI since the Star League, and especially the Hegemony, were long gone. "It should be an improvement over your other." Whatever she'd been using to have SLDF regular army credentials.

The Star League AI had presented them with the training material as well. With only five other people in the whole facility... so far as he was aware the tomb was largely empty.

"Do you know what this is worth?" She asked semi breathless as she held it up.

... he nearly shushed her. Explaining that they were in a mountain fortress where a Hegemony officer had ordered the nerve gassing of the facility rather than prevent it following into the wrong hands and then left the AI to stew for centuries... he was comfortable talking about that. "Not really." He replied, "but you can fill me in later. Captain." He concluded.

She stared at the dog tags. "What about the others?"

Besides Septim... the AI wasn't keen on issuing Ford or the TA credentials. It had logged Abner's credentials for whatever they were and issued him a new one for the facility, but he was a little concerned the doctor was badgering the AI about questions that it really didn't know the answer to. Ford seemed more crestfallen at having the wind taken out of his sails. "I We will see." A thought occurred to him, "Dragon slayer." He asked the AI.

"Yes Commander." It responded immediately.

... right. "Kerensky's desertion. The fifteenth weren't actually aware of the facility until Ardennes told them about it, correct?"

"Affirmative."

... he glanced at the others in the room, "Do you have any records pertaining to the survival of House Cameron in the Terran branch, potentially related to the flight of SLS tirpitz," He paused, and corrected himself, "Tripitz. Or other SLDF vessels to Hegemony safeholds in the deep periphery rimward of Terra?"

"I am sorry Commander." The AI genuinely apologetic, "I have no such records. This facility was likely not intended to be read into such programs. The only HPG record at the time of the coup was a master override broadcast to prevent contingencies of the fire wall system, even that appeared to be designed to take the SDS orbital defense drone platforms offline."

He wasn't surprised by that, Amaris had had to take control of those someway, "Was this facility equipped with M5s?"

"No it was not."

Of course not... oh he good he was getting the weird looks again... he really needed to stop doing this. "I'm sorry doc I thought to ask."

"No, no quite alright," Abner declared tapping lightly with his foot, "Do you think General Kerensky was going to one of these Cameron safeholds in deep space?"

... pft no. He wasn't even entirely sure they existed .... even if it did seem likely that they did, and at the very least would have been entirely in line with House Cameron... and then was the whole Taurian and apparently canopian, and cappies... and for that matter the Alexander worlds the Azami had originally been looking for. He was tempted to ask the AI about those contingencies, but he had already asked enough weird questions.

Bahar bit her lip... glanced at the blond woman. "You have to tell the machine, you need to tell Septim as well."

"Excuse me?"

"The HPG intercept. Doctor Abner already knows, as does Mr Ford." So the only other one who didn't was the car driver... great. She was probably right that they should tell Septim. The Lyran Lieutenant still looked uncomfortable.

"Septim with me." Ford and Abner were too busy playing twenty questions with the AI to notice them step into the Commanding General of the Castle's office near the command center, he shut the door but not before noticing the blonde TA's hadn't been as enraptured. Bahar had noticed as well and the dark haired woman had taken a position front of the door as it closed.

"Boss?" He asked, then straightened staring at the emblem of the Terran Hegemony on the wall, and the flag of the star league. "Sir."

"Tristan, I assume you can hold more than one, answer more than one question at a time?"

The AI burbled a chuckle at the question, "Of course major I would be a poorly thought system if I couldn't provide multiple units direction at a time."

Gene nodded, sat down, "Can you access my Marauder's computer?"

"Affirmative." The AI proceeded to comment that his machine was under tonned still from the refit on Aquagea and noted that would need to be corrected and overhauled, but then dutifully accessed the encrypted computer core... specifically the message that had gotten the Azami hunted down by the combine, "Can you authenticate those credentials."

"They are Authentic." The AI made some grumbling complaints about Blake's credentials, such that it made Gene not even want to mention modern comstar. And then triggered the holographic playback.

He hadn't been meaning to start anyway, but Septim's half pained confused look suggested the Lyran had a question, "Pause."

"Apologies Major."

"What is it Septim?"

"So the intelligence directorate ... is the ... was the Terran version of the Intelligence Corp, basically?"

Gene nodded, that was simple enough explanation, "More or less." He replied, "This HPG recording is not something you should talk about. How much do you know about the first succession war?"

"What I learned about in school, but not much. It was two hundred years ago."

Fair enough. Indeed that likely explained his question about his CID status, to Septim it was probably just Military Intelligence... the Hegemony was long dead. "Yes," He agreed after a somber moment that he half expected the AI to interject in. "To put this into context I assume you recall our conversation on Jinjiro Kurita, this would his father and predescor," The man's death would kick off the Kentares Massacre... "And Stefan Amaris. Play."
He'd seen the recording a couple of times. There were plenty of reasons why the Combine wouldn't want this to get out.
--
"Commander Shepherd you are needed forthwith." The AI declared, all business like.

Gene stared as the automated docking system continued working on his Marauder. He pressed the wall panel... even though it was probably unnecessary. The AI certainly hadn't had any problems answer questions on the command deck, "Affirmative. I'm on my way." Bahar followed after. The whole base was creepily pristine. The AI Core had full in house maintenance systems and had secured all the biological remains in the facility. Apparently if the nerve gas hadn't worked Tristan would have been cleared hot to go nuclear. That was not the sort of thing he really wanted to contemplate.

He was moving almost all the way through the doors before he had noticed that the automated turrets weren't 'sheathed', oriented down, like they 'usually' were. He kept walking, even though Ford looked nervous, and Septim almost looked like he was going to faint. Septim's Merlin was the only mech not getting refit because it wasn't a star league design.

"Commander, welcome. I regret to inform you especially given the delay in detection but we have incoming hostile forces."

... "Explain."

"I have tentatively identified the enemy force as 19th Galedon Regulars." The AI declared. "House Kurita's forces appear to be engaged in a raid in force against both this world as well as of Ander's Moon." A holographic map of the solar system appeared showing the Zenith Jump Point. It was obvious that the DCMS had divided their forces, one set of Dropships were clearly burning towards Elidere proper while another was hurtling towards the gas giant that Ander's Moon orbited...

Septim cursed.

"Are you inside their communication loop?" He felt stupid asking the question, because it was obvious that the AI was.

"Affirmative commander," The AI replied.

"Force analysis?"

"The opposing force appears to be a standard battlemech regiment, two battalions appear to be en route. Regimental leadership is present, I estimate an enemy force strength of 115 mechs."

"Gott in himmel."

"Septim get it together."

"We're going to fight right?" There was a surprising amount of steel in the man's voice for how pale he was.

"Yes, but I want as complete of a picture of what I'm up against." He replied, "Dragon Slayer, "You said they're divided in half," Or at least going to two different planets in system, "are they keeping a battalion in reserve?"

"I suspect that the enemy has sustained combat losses, and is keeping part of the unit in reserve."

"Regimental Leadership?"

"Signals intercepts suggest that the enemy commander is piloting an Atlas." How poor was Combine Comms discipline he had to wonder... or worse had they never changed the Star League era codec for transmitting. "Based on intercepts and positional data I have tentatively identified the regimental headquarters landing zone as Scarborough bluffs outside the town of the same name."

So they were probably here to break and steal stuff then. The projected meteor fall pattern of landings would deploy combine dropships all along the coast. Jasos city with its industrial mech production was about to get a lot of attention it was unlikely to want... or be prepared for. Tristan St George scrolled through the Planetary Government's systems with no issue at all, as the local feudal potentates prepared to ride out to defend their homes and possessions.

"What assets do you have access to? What can be used to organize a defense of the planet?" He could feel the AI's interest turn from logical calculating to bloodthirsty war machine preparing to muster for its duty, for battle, as it projected a map of every star league station, outpost, and which rail lines were intact and how to access them to move. The status of ammunition, and ground combat vehicle drones, and the ability to jam all rival communications...

Gene heard the shout and saw the muzzle of the holdout pistol in the blonde woman's hand. It couldn't be any larger than a twenty two and made more of a pop sound. The superheated air from multiple laser discharges was honestly louder.

He whirled around tracking where the shot had gone high into the ceiling. "Anybody hurt?" He asked just to be sure.

"A little surprised," Ford grunted, "I'm alright. What the devil?"

Bahar helped Abner up from where he had slipped. "Thank you, my dear. Alright the Combine is attacking," the doctor declared. "But I must echo Mr Ford's question, why the gun?" The laser turrets hadn't been playing around the blonde woman was in no condition to answer. The teaching assistant had been dead before she hit the floor having been shot by a half dozen laser bolts each from at least two different turrets. "Major Shepherd," he exclaimed as he started rifling through the dead woman's pockets.

"The commander is cataloging effects that may yield useful intelligence." The AI reproved, "Commander Shepherd if you would place that device in the tray I will examine that device in a clean environment unconnected to the base's systems. It may take some time though, and the Dropships have hit the atmosphere."

Fuck, and they hadn't even raised the rest of the company. He looked at the holographic projection. Stay divided and split up you damned snakes.
--
Commentary: I did not plan to update this today. It was going to be a pathfinder update today.

Imperator Pax · Jan 8, 2022

Elidere Part 6

He frowned, "What do you mean its not ready?" There were other mechs, Bahar had had a look around and in theory he could use one of them.

The AI apologized, "I apologize again Commander but the refits to your Marauder to bring it inline with," He ignored the rattled off a program number, "Will not be complete for several more hours." He thought about the Atlas, but watched as a hologram appeared. It was clearly a Marauder, but different than his own.

"LBX?" He asked.

"Testing and evaluation of the weapons platform as a successor to then standard Hegemony 2R." He nearly pointed out that the 2R had only finished replacing the 1R in Hegemony service barely half a decade before the Amaris Coup... and he wasn't especially keen to take a prototype weapon into battle... CASE or no... but it didn't seem like he had a choice.

He turned back to the holographic display. It seemed laughable to call to him to call a 'Regiment' of Infantry what the Combine were bringing down. Two companies of infantry had been identified and would be touching down at Salisbury, but their signals broadcast indicated they were supposed to be a regiment. It had occurred to him that the rest of the unit might have been allocated to attacking Ander's moon.

The 19th was clearly under strength, only a dozen ASF detected most of which were registering as Shilones... and the 19th was bringing no identified armor assets to the party. The infantry were potentially close enough to the dig site that if they were mechanized they might be a problem... he hoped of course that the company was alert enough to realize that they had just found themselves stuffed into a planetary invasion.

Gene glanced at the sound of a zipper, and a grunt, "Ah its fit, quite nicely." Abner declared patting his stomach. "Just my size you'd think it was tailored for me. Manufactured San Francisco, 2761." The Lyran doctor had found a size extra large SLDF regulation pilot suit. "Come along Mr Ford we must go collect our happy diggers."

Ford at least seemed to recognize the insanity of the situation, but he wasn't having any success in talking the doctor out of it. Septim shook his head, "Doctor Abner is insistent that he joins us for the sortie." Seeming to sense that his commander was going to ask if Abner could even pilot a mech, Septim pressed on, "He says he can do, and that you'll need everyone who can pilot a mech to do so... and that we're out numbered."

"Go get in your mech Septim." He ordered, then nodded to Bahar. Some automated droid looking things had already cleaned up the body, carted to presumably a bio recycler or the base furnace or somewhere for disposal. Gene leaned over the holotank, "Invasion force on Ander's?"

The combine had brought an estimated 115 mechs to play... they had reserves in system. A batallion was en route to Ander's Moon. "refreshing now." Tristan St George replied, "Vandenburg castle, and McBrin castles appear to be their primary targets, secondary objectives may be the central agricultural facility at Ander's Fall." The AI rattled off a couple of other potential options... but the first targets being the local noble's old fortresses made sense.

"any armor?"

"None detected, a company of infantry that I can confirm, but I estimate approximately a battalion of BattleMechs including the battalion commander and his headquarters unit."

Truthfully there was little he thought they could really do about the other planet. "Are they actual castles?"

"In the sense that they are fortified residences, yes."

... that was fair enough. Thinking about it was obvious that the Combine was here likely just to pillage and steal... if they knew about this facility they sure weren't acting like it. Not that there weren't SLDF facilities on Ander's Moon that might be salvageable... but the Duke of New Vandenburg had a planetary militia to call upon and could presumably have put up some kind of resistance.

Maybe.

Ander's Moon was going to be on its own for now. Still even there, the Combine forces were scattering their forces out, casting a wide net much like they were doing here. Still even properly supported a battalion of mechs was not enough to hold a planet... even just one of fifty million regardless of most of them being farmers. He had to wonder how long the combine intended to stay... long enough for their jumpdrives to finish charging... and long enough to load up whatever whasn't nailed down presumably.

"Commander?" The AI paused, "Enemy air attack being conducted against Jasos City."

He nodded, "Show me the eastern seaboard map local, geography only." The tub rippled and changed the map he was looking at, "Show us," Dot added. He gradually filtered in other features... and nodded finally.

There was the infantry to worry about if its units were mechanized. The Condor might have potentially been carrying vehicles for that... possibly partial mechanization. They'd have to wait and see. The ancient Star League systems provided good vantage where they had coverage, but coverage wasn't complete.
--
He flipped through the start up by the book. There was a minor difference in documentation, but nothing that impeded running the start up check for the Royal Marauder. The 'patch notes' claimed that the upgrade to the LBX was designed to correct the older version Whirlwind Autocannon... but he was skeptical of that. The computer's notes had been written by the Weapon's division of the Hegemony R&D department and reminded all gunslingers to insure their reports and battle roms were reported to them.

"All Green, how are we on Comms?" He asked lasing the Merlin.

"Five by Five, commander." Septim's Merlin was already moving down the tube as a tram platform prepped to carry them down the tube. It would be faster than walking. "This gonna work?"

"In the sense that we will get back there, yes." They'd be able to get back to the base camp, and just getting back to the train station should put them back into contact with the unit. It had been a mistake to have Septim and Bahar both along... maybe not so much if the JumpShip captains hadn't been out of the system but it had been a complacency move. "alright you are to rendezvous with our Mechs, grab Chang and Alexander."

"Roger that, boss."

It would have been nice to have Jowett and Andrews along, for whatever help two more mechs really would have done. "Bahar once we emerge coordinate with our infantry to securing non combatants outside the line of engagement," Put their asses in the old bunkers, and, "Then tell the crunchies to load up inferno SRM's and point them at any mech that isn't ours."

That really only was going to be focused on protecting their principles. Their non combatants were the Expedition people... and he hadn't forgotten that one of them had for whatever reason pulled a gun from somewhere.

... or that people would have to be blind to nt notice they were coming back on a tram with a pristine Atlas... and assuming they weren't completely stupid a different Marauder.
--
It looked like was going to rain, Septim cued his mike inside the Merlin's cockpit, the magestrix handshaking with the new Marauder the boss was riding, "Good hunting." He pulled away and stepped on the aging highway and brought the mech to sixty five kph. "Bubbles,"

"Septim? Where have you guys been??" The hunchback driver questioned, before stopping in a low whistle, "Woh what is that?"

"Boss says its an Atlas II," He glanced to his Magestrix Gamma's radar readout, "Look I'll tell you all about it later, but for right now we've got to go smash some pumpkins." He declared thinking about the dreams. The black fox on the river laughing at the clumsily pursuing combine mechs, and then turning around to chase them back. In the real world Bahar was mobilize the company of ground vehicles they had, "Look we have," Fuck, Boss hadn't really specified how to explain their help when it came, "Boss has secured some local support so we're not alone out here."

"That's good to hear," Beau declared expansively in his deep bass, "Cause between us looks like the whole damn DCMS coming down."

This probably would have been the part where the boss pish sha-ed and went no its just a battalion of mechs. "There are a lot of the bastards," He replied instead, "But they're all spread out, and we've got artillery and they don't, so once we get the IE people safe we're going to be able to cut them apart while their forces are divided."

In the cockpit of her Mongoose Bahar listened, but didn't interrupt. The distinction to captain had really been done to place her on the same footing on Luxen with Septim. He was more familiar with their fellow mechwarriors more a friend than a colleague. She wasn't sure how he would take the news of the HPG transmission... but it probably meant less to him. He was Lyran. The elders all tried to act, and some sincerely believed that everyone in the world had to have similar scruples of morality and were appalled not so much when someone failed, but when someone who espoused honorable conduct so thoroughly betrayed it.

... The Lyran Commonwealth soldier didn't ascribe much of a tie to the horrors of the fall of the star league, or the succession war. They were just a part of history now.

She touched the double matte green bars on her collar. Apparently the green had been a decision during the wars on terra because they were subdued colors on earth tone uniforms. Her hand snapped to her ONS comms system.

"Tai-i." Hanzo greeted respectfully. Shiffer's rebuilt Cicada was now effectively just a bigger Jenner. A slightly more protected jenner in any event. It could hit nearly a hundred twenty kilometers an admitted downgrade from its previous hundred and thirty. "My mech has completed rearmament with inferno missiles. I have permission to engage and destroy the enemy infantry, may I depart?"

Bahar checked the Mongoose's computer log, and confirmed the orders. She would have preferred not to, she would have preferred to use the armor company against the Condor... but a single mech with a pilot committed to proving himself would be harder to detect. "Yes, good luck."

"And you as well." The disfigured man's hologram inclined slightly in a bow, and the machine sprinted off with nothing further. It was risky to send just one mech.

Hanzo rejoiced in his good fortune. He was a mech warrior now. The privilege of destroying the enemy lay before him with command of a forty ton warmachine. It was true he might have looked forward to face a Combine warrior mech to mech... but he recognized that he was the most junior mechwarrior in the unit.

He keyed into the battalion navigation network as his Dynatec labelled it and viewed the coordinates... he would have to hurry. If his good luck held he'd be able to get there while they were sitll unloading, and following the advice firing his missiles into the enemy dropship's open cargo bay.
--
He would have liked to have his jumpjets. It felt weird to not have them, like a phantom limb linked to the machine connection. Gene had gotten used to know he could clear terrain obstacles and maneuver, but there weren't any real issues to piloting this marauder. He had the mech flat out hoping to stay ahead of the rain the doplar was tracking as coming in, but also prepared to listen in to intercepts filched by the AI.

As a command battlemech the Marauder, just like his own could relay those as needed to the others, or failing a good connection to the others either the Sam Houston or the Atlas to pass on. He wasn't ignorant that the Combine couldn't have missed the two dropships.

Ford had been willing to put half up in an escrow account. That very well could have drawn attention, and he wondered if that played a role in it. The bigger question was whether the combine invasion was related or if they were dealing with an honorable third party. He hoped not. One set of assholes to fight was enough. "FASCAM loaded?" He questioned the AI.

"Affirmative commander." The Combine had superior numbers, and he did not want to tip his hand about hte drones if he could avoid it. The ability to deploy field artillery scatterable mines insured that ... well the artillery range was basically yes. He just needed to find where they were going to be most effective, and then hopefully the Combine would be obliging enough to follow. "Designate a grid target zone at your leisure, and stand by."

"Understood." He banked the machine wide around a bog and kept pushing towards the hillside. "Any idea on mech deployment?"

"Standby," The AI linked to the Dalban, feeding data in, "I estimate approximately forty mechs deploying at multiple beachheads. Predominantly light mech." The warbook projected Panthers in haggard gray paint jobs. The Combine's iconic mech had served with the SLDF in the periphery after all, and he was familiar with them from previous battlefields. He was reading modern versions of the Jenner as well, no big surprise. "I estimate as much as half the enemy mech force are Light BattleMechs." The AI declared after a moment more, and then the bad news, "Preliminary sensor returns suggest thirty percent of the remaining force are Heavy BattleMechs." He didn't grumble. That made sense, there were nearly no Medium mechs binging on the sensors. He didn't like the news, but he wasn't really surprised either. "I will apprise you if any more sortie, or of further deployments."

There were catapults, dragons, even a handful of Grasshoppers that were returning SLDF iff recognized codecs. The latter suggested that those heavy mechs had been built either sometime before the League had fallen, or been built by factories hewing strictly to the standards of the league design. The enemy were divided though, there were two unions separate from one another far enough that neither would be able to assist the other... though that was probably because the company commanders wanted to race the other to see who could get to the city between them first.

"Commander?"

"What is it Tristan?"

"I am reading an anomalous IFF indication from what I believe is the enemy command mech."

"Can you clarify what you mean?"

"I believe the Atlas in question has been modified," No surprise there, "But the original machine is transmitting and SLDF pattern IDC of the 15th Army." That could be nothing, "I'm pulling its battle log now." The AI continued... he continued through the countryside while he waited.

The string of spatial coordinates didn't immediately mean anything. Most the actions on them came with combat lobs attached that he didn't have time to watch even assuming that the Atlas driver didn't for whatever reason notice that kind of data connection. Errai stood out though, even more so with Ozawa as the planetary coordinates resolved to SLDF era facilities. Nothing important, and certainly nothing that suggested he would have known anything about a Hegemony Outpost... but... his mind flashed back to an earlier conversation, a proposed opportunity... and more recently the little dots on the map.

He'd been told months ago with conviction that the 63rd Mechanized Infantry Division which as brigade would have included a BattleMech brigade had dissolved and its successors had gone on to join the Lyrans and the Free Worlds League. Captain Pasha had been quite sure no one had come back during the succession wars and found anything left behind in those facilities, "Were any of those facilities used?"

"The deserters attempted to secure material, I expect the majority of what they falsely requisitioned was lost when I destroyed their DropShips."

That made sense, Gene thought, no one had found the depots because they had probably been looted by Kerensky's people to prepare for the exodus only to trip Hegemony protocols and lose all of it once the AI shot their DropShips down... dropships that probably hadn't been expecting hostile anti air... or however. "But nothing since?"

"Some of the facilities were destroyed during subsequent conflicts, and others have sense fallen out of contact due to lack of maintenance. To the best of my knowledge however most of the facilities themselves have been left alone."

Because the natives thought the SLDF might one day return, maybe? Did that mean the Galedon were here to chase the possibility of loot a little more lucrative than whatever they usually went after? Or did they definitely think they knew something was here? "Are any of the Ander's Moon facilities intact?"

.... the second succession war had been harder there... well for a given value since Elidere City had had a close call with a nuke that had just barely managed to go wide. Nearing fusion returns cut the conversation short and Gene reached up to flip the master arm on. The LBX indicator light flashed green indicating the weapon was hot, and a ballistic reticle appeared in his heads up display... at least it hadn't jammed on the first go.

If there was some higher strategic goal in mind the light mechs from the first union showed no sign or indication as they went joy riding through the intersection road between the coast and the fens that lead to town. This had been the same roadway that lead to the junction that Septim had taken to go see if there was anything out along the sea shore.

He queued the mind machine interface and let the Dalban start numbering off and cataloging the enemy mechs.
--
Operation Ashika as it had been called in the briefing opened to an ignominious beginning. The attack on the Davion occupied planet brought with it no opportunity to face the troops of the Draconis March. There was no one here... and for all the better for their real objective. Captain Inanzo knew that really they were behaving as nothing more than bandits raiding a poorly defended border world that had once, and would one day, be apart of the Glorious Coordinator's realm... but they were not actually here to conquer the world.

"Captain," His officer of the watch declared sharply, "Enemy fusion signature detected."

Inanzo blinked and turned to the thin bespectacled sensor tech, "What-" That was impossible there had been no enemy force present. The Davions dogs probably hadn't been to this world in years, "The locals then? Some," He had been about to ask if it was some Industrial Mech, or perhaps one of the local nobles actually had a real mech. Since it had gotten this close maybe a Stinger, or a Wasp that had been able to power up and get close to the DropShip without being noticed... but that chain of thought ended with the sudden warning klaxons of an incoming fusillade of missiles.

They were under attack.

He didn't hear the warning, four Inferno SRM's had streaked into the open bay of the Lapida built Condor class Dropship Manju Yama was on fire within minutes as the offload area became consumed in gelatinous highly volatile chemical mixture began to cook off ammunition and fuel supplies that eventually reached the DropShip's fuel bunkers.

Manju Yama died not from external enemy weapons fire but from several tons of her own ammunition cooking off shattering a wing from the inside going out. Captain Inanzo was already dead by the time a lone forty mech crossed the nose of the dropship harassing the less than platoon of conscripts that had survived the dozen missiles fired into the loading area ninety seconds earlier.

Not exactly a glorious first battle, but Hanzo cabled the confirmation of the objective's completion to the designated channel and turned his mech to rejoin the others on the receipt of the RTB command. There were probably some survivors, but the main threat in this sector had been destroyed. A destruction that would have been harder to accomplish if they had had pickets deployed.
--
Commentary: We get a little bit of some of the other people in this one, and we're officially in what the history books will remember as the Battle of Elidere 3017. Note that it is spring of 3017 and that this battle will take place over a period of roughly three weeks of fighting and maneuver and some of the second half scenes are somewhat larger than is typical... as might be obvious.

As you might have noticed this is a Friday update. It has been an exhausting day, but this will still update on Sunday as well.

Imperator Pax · Jan 9, 2022

Elidere Part 7

19th Galedon Regulars Planetfall: +36 Hours
He'd peeled off into the furoughs of a large farm leaving the main road when he'd confirmed the signal. Then he had waited almost an hour, hull down behind a barn.

Gene watched the Firestarter and slowly edged his ER PPC's reticles over the machine. If it passed him he'd be entirely behind the enemy company, as soon as it happened he pulled the trigger. Twin bolts of ball lightning slammed into the right rear torso of the enemy thirty five tonner and pitched it forward as it stepped, but that inconsequential to the ammo explosion that destroyed the mech.

For a moment he had worried that the ammo hadn't cooked off, but that was one down. The Jenner two mechs up was the first to realize something was wrong and that allowed the other two mechs to completely over shoot it. With any luck the SLDF jamming would see to it that this lance simply disappeared without getting a word out to the higher company level. Two more PPC blasts into the same right torso rear quadrant aimed at the SRM ammo the Jenner carried resulted in a giant explosion of flame and heat that set the mech on fire...

The mech had been carrying inferno not standard high explosive. Gene checked the heat indicator, and eyed the Panther Left Torso this time to check and see if it had standard HE for its SRMs. He'd take the shot, and then have to deal with the waste heat put off by the ER PPCs. He was going to have to shoot the Jenner again, but probably after the Panther and the last mech in the lance was gone.

But they were going to have to come to him at half a kilometer out, that would give him time to let the double heat sinks work. The Spider was going to have to come to him anyway, but given it had been broadcasting an SLDF IDC it was the mech he wanted most intact. It was also the only hostile mech that looked about pristine even if someone had painted a big grinning jack o lantern on the shoulder over a horrible gray paint job.

... if Gene were going to bet it was the Company commander or XO in the seat having been rewarded with the machine ... it seemed to be in too good of condition to have been a hand me down. No he needed information, and if he to guess what mech in the lance might have potentially had information it was the Spider.

Whether he could actually acquire that information was doubtful. The enemy company was moving by lance through the countryside, and this was the last element in the formation, but they had enough fast movers to be able to turn around and return if they realized something was wrong. Much of this ambush hinged on the Star League jamming blanketing the area preventing an enemy distress signal from getting out.
--
It was getting dark... and the boss still wasn't back yet. He really didn't want to quibble with Bahar over who was supposed to be in charge of the unit... but that was in no small part because he wasn't sure which of them was in charge.

That, and he certainly going to start that argument in front of, well earshot of the I.E. People. Abner frowned, on the holoscreen the doctor's face knit up, "Oh dear."

Septim glanced to Bahar's holographic image, as presumably she did the same. "What's up doc?" Chang beat them to asking from inside the cockpit of her Hunchback.

"Well while I wouldn't consider it within the city's metro area its still close enough to the planetary capital to worry the duke." The doctor was fidgeting inside the Atlas, which was making the hundred ton warmachine shuffle around the perimeter they had set which was in no way reassuring. "Anyway," He said after a few minutes having put them on hold, as it continued to creep into night, "Precentor Killos has sent out an HPG broadcast , or rather he sent one when the Combine JumpShips arrived in system, apparently there have been raids on other worlds by this unit. The duke insisted that the precentor send another one once it was clear an attack on the way. Not that a second really would do all that much,"

Septim nodded, and then nodded again at Bahar's comment that their own JumpShips were probably at Robinson recharging their drives, but that was still a month's travel if their drives weren't charged... and even so the whole unit was here. He also wasn't confident that duke's insistence that Robinson do something would bring any kind of relief... they were on their own. An HPG message, ten HPG messages even weren't going to help.
--

The duke... well the Duke of Elidere the planet... was apparently demanding that Doctor Abner cede military control of the contract to the planetary militia... which Gene wasn't exactly sure that was how it worked like that ... and Abner wasn't convinced either. The Lyran doctor had picked in his ear and explained that, 'no no, per the terms with our experienced knights it is tradition that they have full command authority in security matters Its just not in the contract like that.' Except with a lot more german and italian thrown into the conversation... a conversation which had ended with the main company getting its first taste of action against the invading combine troops.

Abner had cited communications issues for why he wasn't able to answer the duke's further calls through the morning. "But every one is okay?"

"Just a lance of light mechs boss," Septim remarked, "Like you said they were bound to notice Baffins even with camo netting strewn over it."

He flicked through the holographic stills that Tristan had fed through. They had dug in their own battalion of infantry, most of whom had been recruited from Detroit's militia. Baffin's company were forming a picket along a southern hillside, hopefully preventing someone from sneaking up behind them while the infantry off of Sam Houston were dug in like ticks inside the abandoned urban center with their SRMs. The latter were there to insure the Combine didn't get into the old city.

Presumably the Combine didn't know the Maguanacs, the armor company aboard Sam Houston, were Azami.... but with Tokugawa tanks and a Daimyo HQ they were going to have questions anyway you sliced the pie. Questions that would probably be asked with PPCs. What they wouldn't learn until they tried to approach from where the Maguanac were dug in laying in wait was that there was a mine field across that open plain just waiting for any mechs that wanted to come that way.

He was hoping it didn't come to that. There were two unions close by. There was the Excalibur, a large spheroid dropship design that had entered service post star league, serving as the enemy regimental HQ between them and the planetary capital. "Any resistance to speak of?"

"I have scattered fusion signatures, but little coherent this side of Jasos City." Tristan replied. "There may be some AFFS regulars in the city, but nothing to contest the incursion."

Gene glanced at his holographic count down. They didn't have a good idea of what was going on on Ander's Moon, but it was probably going better for the Combine than it was here. There were only going to get one shot with anti DropShip munitions anyway, and that was a trump card he wasn't sure he wanted to use unless they had to... but it was looking as if the moment was coming. Whatever the situation was on Ander's moon the dropships presumably carrying the regiment's reserves were now burning towards Elidere IV.

Even if they hadn't had the intercept of it they had telemetry. They had eight days. They needed to achieve a solution to this in that time frame, because even assuming the enemy reserves were battle damaged from previous operations they were still talking about basically another Mech Battalion. "Standby Septim, I've got the heavy lance coming up," He looked at the highway, the direction from which his sensors were detecting the inbound sixty tonners from the VLAR 300 fusion engines.

The catapult was the odd mech out in the lance with its smaller Magna built Fusion engine, but it and the quickdraw, and Ostsol were all modern build mechs. As was of course the Dragon.

"Boss I'd really feel better if you'd let us send you reinforcements."

"Hold your position Septim."

"I assure you Captain Alexander matters are well in hand." The AI declared. Or rather the carefully planned ambush had been in hand up until a fusion signature spoiled the fun. "Anomalous mech signature powering up. Reading SLDF IDC, 209th BattleMech Divison."

"Major?" Bahar asked.

"Some local I'd bet." He replied, "Tristan give me ground local control."

"Affirmative Commander."

"Bahar watch your sectors for the mechs heading your way, I'll keep these off of you." This would have been a hell of a lot worse if the Combine had shown up with proper combined arms support... the complete lack of any 'lowly tanks' was the height of arrogant stupidity...

His command systems flashed showing the drones. It was a pity that Tristan's Ground Combat Vehicles, his drones, weren't equipped with inferno munitions, but it didn't matter. The plan had been to catch the force of mechs before they could get to the base camp and catch them before they could link up.
--
They had discovered the BattleMech one day two summers earlier... or rather they had found the entrance to what had probably been an old barn two summers earlier. The property had been abandoned since the end of the first sucession war... back when the Combine had still ruled the planet.

It hadn't been hard to figure out what it was the Dervish had been built by the Lyrans in the early 26th century and had been mass produced and adopted into the SLDF. Snape, and Donnie Orwell had both shipped off to join the AFFS and Andre Sutton had been looking forward to leaving for Robbinson to attend the RBA having received acceptance the first of the year.

Andre had ignored the orders to take shelter, and instead had rushed through the countryside and to where the old farmstead had stood following the simulator's start up procedure from rote memorization. The Dervish had powered up and read all systems nominal... and then the realization had struck that the combine were here in force.

So he had frozen... and then spent the next several days lurking in the countryside hoping that he'd get the opportunity... that surely the snakes would be right around the corner, and that he'd see them coming... and that he'd have the stones to pull the trigger on the invaders instead of freezing again.

Then on sunday they'd come down the pail. Four enemy mechs, and he'd followed the start up sequence just like he'd practiced in the simulator, exactly right. The SLDF crest and the badge embossed with XX appeared and once again the war machine was ready to fight.

There were four snakes coming down the road. Four enemy mechs... he bit his lip and glanced at the weapons readout. He had twenty four salvos with his LRMs... and then he'd have to get close. Andre adjusted the weird cooling jacket... he had to make them count. "Come on you bastards."
--
Gene maneuvered the drones into position. In SLDF terms drones were cheap. The idea behind Hegemony thinking was that they could hold an attacking enemy in position to let professional terran troops decapitate any hostile leadership and then break through the enemy rear wreaking havoc in the back end. That was what the book said anyway. Of course also suggested a much larger scale of combat than lances...

Tristan would have preferred ambushing the enemy closer to the main, intact, tram stations, but it would also advertise that fact that something was going on. At the very least the enemy might assume that there was a davion armor battalion present or mercenaries... no telling which the Combine might get more pissed off at losing mechs to...

had the DCMS really sortied without armor support? Had they just left them behind... if so why? It was annoying him, he eased the reticle as the mechs pivoted registering the poor man's archer firing on them. The LRMs were in direct attack mode so he was prettty sure that the dervish pilot was by himself. The Ostsol was the first to run forward even as the fusillade of LRMs started sandpapering the Catapult.

The verbal command was unnecessary. He could have sent it by neurohelmet mind machine interfacing directly to the command, but the manual's procedure specified verbal command authorization. "Execute."

The Quickdraw found itself under fire from two lighter vehicles carrying a dizzying number of srm mounts. Lighter was relative of course, it was still basically a SRM Carrier. The hover vehicles had popped up out of the tree line creating a haze of dust and debris from the trees both from their motive systems and the launch.

The squat gray painted Dragon had less than the proscribed half ton of armor cover its its left rear torso. The pain back there had gone over the mauled but someone in a previous deployment had taken a shot at the mech's backside, and it was time to finish what they had started.

Naturally by that point the combine lance's lieutenant started to complain about them being honorless dogs and refusing to face them as warriors. That would have been fine if the idiot in the Dervish had just kept blasting at them with his LRMs.

"I'll fight you." Dervish declared the mech starting to come down the hill side.

Gene weighed his options he had two more heavier drones still concealed in the hillside, and the SRMs had backed down the hillside and were out of line of sight. The Dragon was damaged but either hadn't been fully loaded with ammo or it just hadn't cooked off when he'd blown through the rear armor on the left side. The Quickdraw was non mobile at least, one leg completely demolished by the shoot and scoot, and the other leg's ankle actuator was smashed. The catapult could fight, but how well with one ppc mangled remained to be seen.

He reached over with his left hand and directed the drones to their next targets. The Ostsol, the Kuritan lieutenant's mech, didn't have any ammunition he could cook off. He wondered if he could blast the catapult's machine gun ammo.

... no he lased the Dervish as it started clear the three hundred meter distance with the Ostsol at full speed.

Not that that was any faster than the Ostsol could make, but it meant he was running out of time.

--
"Here they come." Abner declared unnecessarily. The Atlas waded forward firing its LRM 20 at the assaulting charge of light mechs coming from the south. They were being funneled in from the hills and Abner's mech might as well have been a beacon because the combine were charging right for it. "Once more dear friends."

Septim shook his head, and added his own LRMs to the mix. He wasn't the only one. They had dropships adding into the mech's fire. Haqim's voice came over the coms, "Captain," He declared, "they are ah', about to hit our picket line. Two hundred meters to range."

They couldn't let those Jenner's get close. He was sure some if not all of them had infernos. To best of their knowledge the Combine had landed six dropships total on the planet. One Excalibur. Three confirmed Unions, the uh roasted turkey aerodyne Hanzo had cooked... and then another spheroid. "Forty something god damned mechs."

Never mind the enemy reinforcements due in a week's time.

"Captain?"

"Nothing Haqim," Then somewhat brighter, "Just thinking about the salvage." He heard a response about fixing anything that got broke, and smirked before he brought his PPC into the fight as Abner's 'Atlas II' opened up with the weird autocannon that took the head clean off a light mech.

Imperator Pax · Jan 16, 2022

Elidere IV Part 8

The mech stood out, and he was contemplating what to do about it as it continued to come down the road. It would take it another half hour to get here at its current pace.

The Wyvern was a 45 ton mech, thus a medium. It was another mech that was in unusually good condition for its age... but unlike the Spider probably hadn't been accepted into SLDF service and then put into storage... most likely it had been in storage when dug up on Errai which the 19th had hit at some point. Since being dug up it had clearly been dinged a couple times but was still something to watch out for... even if they didn't have a way to recover it.

"Tristan?"

"The lance appears to be spread out over several miles, two Grasshoppers in the center, a Catapult K2 variant bringing up the rear."

Great. He cast a disappointed side long glance at the remains of the enemy machines, and lased the Dervish, "We're pulling back." He informed it. The extended patrol probably was them attempting to get around the jamming, but he doubted they were having any success.

"What?" The other mechwarrior sounded offended.

Gene scowled, and pivoted his Marauder's torso towards the Dervish, "I cannot baby sit you up against two heavy mechs, we are disengaging before that one's friends get here." It was true that his Marauder out massed the inbound mechs, but they had clearly gotten the other Union's attention and it had sent units through the city. The Grasshopper if kept at range he could probably kill, but it wouldn't be due to an ammunition explosion, he doubted that he'd be able to reliably kill them that way not with it only carrying a ton of ammo for an LRM 5. Most likely they'd expend the ammo before closing, and he intended to be gone before then.

He was admittedly a little surprised that the Wyvern was forward most of the lance, but it didn't matter, he adjusted the reticles of the ERPPCs and fired and watched as the mech crumpled from the headshot mid stride.

"But,"

"We are pulling back to our defensive line." That and while he was pretty certain the enemy light mechs had been dealt with he wanted to be sure, "They can come to us," And once they were dealt with they'd see about moving on to Jasos city.
--

Gene would have preferred to strip off and shower, but as it was he only had had time to switch to a clean suit. SLDF protective equipment or no he'd been in the mech for days, eating and sleeping in it. They were facing a problem, and he had had to take too long ducking into the Outpost to make the computer system authorize a link to a non star league system like this. He leaned against the table in the Daimyo command vehicle, "How are they doing?"

"Not good." Bahar answered honestly from over the line, "I admit I'm surprised that they lasted this long, but the local militia has done well... even if it has forced them to pay a great deal of blood." The number of mechs in combine possession on planet had been revised up to approximately fifty, or close to that not counting combat losses since. Three Unions, that Excalibur... and whatever the other thing on the far side of the landing zone was.

They didn't have good readings from that side... and the enemy had reinforcements coming in. "Where are we on ammo," He already knew that they couldn't restock their inferno ammo," Once they expended it, it was gone, which would be a pity. A holographic image appeared of stockpiles from the facility as well as their own stores. If it came to it they were absolutely going to pull back into the Outpost ... but Tristan wasn't confident that his remaining anti dropship ground to air systems would be able to hit the incoming battalion as they came in from the sky. Not based on their current trajectory that probably wasn't intentional it just appeared that they were choosing to land in the hills outside the planetary capital. The systems there had been destroyed, or so severely degraded by the succession wars that Tristan couldn't access their controls. Even if they could get into an access system in Jasos city there was no guarantee that they'd work one hundred percent.

He lased the relay, "Bahar, sitrep?"

"The enemy lance has challenged us to individual duels." She paused, "I am inclined to accept the captain's offer,"

"He made that before I got back, did he?"

"As they were pulling the survivors from the first attack back."

Gene would have preferred to make the combine troops attack prepared ground, but he also didn't want to show too much in the way of support before moving on Jasos... and they had a contractual obligation to minimize the risk to IE personnel. "How's that supposed to work?" He regretted asking the combine captain of course wanted to sideline infantry and combat vehicles, and rely strictly on one on one combat between mechs. "I guess its a good thing he didn't challenge Doctor Abner," That showed at least a little bit of sense.

"You don't want me to accept?"

"That's to your discretion captain," He glanced at the map of the dale, they had days left until the enemy reinforcements made planet fall. "Doctor the northern force is about an hour out, I want to meet them before they get much closer."

"And then Jasos then?" The doctor declared, "Go see about that relay in the cathedral?" Abner had been carrying on a conversation with the AI, and realistically they were probably both going to be there. Tristan doubted whether Abner's credentials would authorize the employment of the necessary air defense batteries.... assuming any of the Hadleys still worked. He'd be able to get the security bunker open to move the populace in them, but they were basically just giant fallout shelters. "I think mr ford can handle things here."

"Bahar, be careful." When she signed off, "Tristan if the combine attempts anything funny,"

"I will grid smash their position commander," The markings of what was rolling out of the mountain were Arrow IV launcher, they wouldn't be anything approaching discreet. "I have their dropship being zeroed for artillery as we speak." Given how short they were on mechs relative to the opposition he wasn't going to try and pull what had become his usual.. rolling a couple Padilla would have to work.

--
He felt the fat under his chin, but that wasn't why he was scowling. "Sho-sho?" A rank he had worked hard to attain in spite of incompetents stymying his movements and attempting to deny him what should be his. He had had to scrounge and fight tooth and nail for supplies.

"What is it?" He hissed finally before the lieutenant colonel could ask again. The general turned to full height and let his hand drop. Something had obviously gone wrong again. This should have been simple. They had faced resistance before, but his regiment were regulars, professional soldiers, they should not have been having this much trouble.

"Captain Mori reported that he had challenged one of the enemy company commanders to single combat before we lost contact. Lance to Lance."

"Lost contact?" The damnable jamming. They had interrogated several enemy prisoners to no avail... not that the infantry officers might have known, but their insistence of enemy force strength were clearly lies given the resistance they were encountering farther from the capital. "So Captain Mori has been killed?"

"No, we do not believe so. The interference simply makes it impossible to contact his unit."

Or just as likely the captain was using it as an excuse to ignore the orders to return and rejoin the main force. The enemy in that sector had already mauled two Mech Companies costing the regiment valuable mechs. The prudent tactical maneuver in the face of an enemy whose strength they couldn't ascertain was to concentrate their forces. He suspected that they outnumbered the enemy force, but he couldn't prove it, but most likely it was a battalion of Davion regulars not simple March Militia an independent battalion from the Guards but that wouldn't' explain how they had missed them. "Order him to return."

"Sho-sho we cannot raise him on the radio."

"I said order him to return Colonel, Captain Mori must rejoin the regiment." They would deal with the interlopers, and find their identity after they had captured the ducal palace... and presumably took the duke hostage. "I will brook no further insubordination if he does not return he will be betraying his oaths to the coordinator." He spat, "Dereliction of duty will not be tolerated. He is to obey."

They had thirty BattleMechs inbound, but if Mori destroyed his unit for his own personal glory, Grieg promised to destroy the captain. He looked out the view port of his Excalibur's command deck to where his gray painted Atlas waited. Unlike the frontline mechs of the regiment his was still painted with the blue and white stripes of parade colors.
--
Due to simple geography the Star League jamming had let them shut down any unauthorized comms in the dale after he had head shot the Wyvern. The enemy coming down through the valley could have chosen to turn around, but presumably they had orders to launch this attack in an attempt to coordinate with the lighter mech formation they had already driven off once.

The Heavy BattleMechs moving down without a screen could have in theory been ambushed along the road by the drones, if they had had the time to put those in position... which they hadn't. He swapped channels, "Fire group, position check?"

"We're here." Bo replied. He, and the local Dervish standing to in order to provide LAM fire on the incoming three mechs.

They had worked out that the combine was running entire light mech units, possibly having extended that to an entire Light Mech Company of different models, but had put at least two unions with heavy mech lances, and this one had had a medium added in. There was no confirmation of Assault Mechs besides the Regimental leadership.

He was hoping it stayed that way and that no Awesome, or Stalkers showed up. BattleMasters and Victors were a possibility as well.

Gene flipped to the laser designator to direct the drones where he wanted them. He wanted the Grasshoppers in a kill box, which meant he wanted them to come to him. Thus he and Septim, were basically bait standing guard in the middle of the road. Two heavy mechs that you'd have to approach in order to get on, and the plan was to have the Dervishes rain indirect LRM fire on the enemy mechs just as soon as they moved to close, and to have the drones execute an enfilade encirclement.

The forty year old Taigen recognized that they were probably walking into a trap. The loss of the lance's wyvern was unpleasant, but he was a forty year old sergeant and it was unlikely the lieutenant would listen to his cautionary advice. The lieutenant had hoped that the catapult would be able to manage to get through to the DropShip and was blaming the lack of signal on the DropShip or their own equipment, which seemed unlikely. The Catapult was far enough back now that they were losing contact more and more frequently.

It would have been better to consolidate the unit to have a better fighting posture.

Taigen's superior wouldn't hear of it. He had heard that the enemy had heavy battlemechs in the area and wanted to challenge the davion soldiers... so they were probably about to walk into a trap. There was no other way to reach their assigned destination in time. In fact they were already probably too late Mori-Tai-I had probably already committed his company to attacking the suspected enemy position from the other side.

"Ah, look the enemy is ahead of us. One for each of us old man." The lieutenant declared. "I shall engage the Marauder, take care of whatever that other one is!"

Gene eased forward, "come on, you see us, come on."

A light blinked, "I am lieutenant Pavel Simonov of the 19th Galedon Regulars in service to the glorious coordinator." The mechwarrior shouted, going on in declaring that he had graduated from Sun Zhang and of course wasn't calling to surrender.

"I am Major Gene Shepherd, and in case it wasn't obvious you're in a killing field."

"What?"

"He means its a trap sir." The older enlisted mechwarrior declared.

"Impossible there are only two enemies in front of us," Simonov snapped. "Clearly he is bluffing, I will not be fooled by such a ruse. We should-" He didn't get to finish probably because his Grasshopper registered the Dervishes powering up and the fifty LRMs flying... and if not that the fusion signatures from the hover craft that were behind them.

Or the two PPC blasts that slammed into his seventy tonner's chest. Gene would have preferred if they had been closer. They were still at the long range of the Merlin's standard PPC. "Don't suppose you want to surrender?" Septim asked the sergeant, and received a flurry of LRMs in response. "Shit."

The pair of PPC armed drones opened fired into the mech's rear arc as Gene pivoted targets to keep the mech occupied as the smaller SRM equipped drones surged across the rain strewn grass and roadbed. "Bo, focus your fire on the lieutenant's mech I'm still reading his fusion signature." Indeed there was a flare of heat on his sensors as the mech's jump jets fired, and it added its missiles to the fray.

They passed harmlessly wide and left of Gene's Marauder as he pushed it into a forward closing motion with the two mechs. The two dervishes were moving up out of cover to the hillside, even though it was unlikely given the box they'd be able to close in any meaningful time frame.

The Blankenburg's electric feed system whirred as the hundred twenty millimeter LB 5-X prototype loaded slug, and stitched a three round burst into the torso of the lieutenant's grasshopper. That was followed by another PPC blast . It wobbled as its gyro failed, and then collapsed as a storm of SRM ripped through its left leg finishing what their long range cousins had started as the lieutenant fired one last LRM that went high and into the hill this time to his left.

Having taken his own share of LRMs from the massed fire the sergeant's grasshopper had had its armor sandpapered by the blistering missile fire but was focusing on staying mobile and trying to use its greater speed but it was pretty clearly hopeless as faced with a lance of vehicles, and a lance of mechs now free to concentrate solely on it it succumbed dropping into a culvert.

The final mech in the lance that catapult was still a klick and a half, nearly a full mile, distant and only vaguely aware of the weapons fire that had made it the last mech in the lance.
--
"We have to go to Jasos city." The professor declared dabbing at his forehead. Bahar, Chang, Ishida had all won their respective duels with the last one getting called off on account of sudden attack, followed by steel rain falling on the combine in reply. Truthfully from comms data they were pretty sure the combine company commander hadn't called the air support, but Tristan really hadn't cared at that point because the impression he had was that the Combine had tried something shady.

"We'll leave a light lance here, Chang you have command." He informed here, and waved at the map. "The infantry and the Maguanac corp will remain with you. Maintain a defensive posture," He covered a scenario to pull back and withdraw if the combine did somehow manage to put enough forces to overwhelm them... say for example that the incoming enemy battalion somehow managed to attack them in full while they were in Jasos city. "We're going to divide into two forces when we hit the city." Once they got off the train that was, but Bahar and Ishida would reconnoiter the flank of the city with drones. Bahar's credentials would let her authorize orders locally. "I'll rejoin you as soon as we're done, Septim you, Bo, and Andre," He nodded to the local, "You're to back stop Professor Abner. Keep the enemy at distance." He was the god damned principle, "if you can get the civilians into the shelters that is fine." IT would get them out of the line of fire. They were DOME built and designed to shrug off nukes supposedly surely they could outlast a light rain of mechs.

"I won't allow the locals to take command major. They have no right." Abner declared. "We shall do what we can, though to help."

Gene decided that he didn't want to make an issue of that. Abner was the one signing the paycheck after all. The hologram shifted to a view of Jasos city highlighting the Cathedral... or what was today a cathedral. The good news was even though they couldn't take the line right up to the old star league facility they'd be able to ride it close enough that they should be able to get there quickly... assuming that their sudden appearance didn't panic the local militia into shooting at them. "It looks the Combine is massing for an assault in force." The handful of Mechs they had identified in Jasos city.... actual BattleMechs weren't prepared to handle a company level assault that was largely heavy Mechs, "Have we identified those?" He was gesturing to Eighty ton question marks

"Given the engine signatures I suspect Chargers, another tentatively returns as a Banshee." Tristan replied.

As fast assaults the 'fragenzeichen', using Abner's term, mechs had been moving along the flank probably proving more useful as glorified protected runners than actual break through units now that the combine had cleared the hills and occupied Scarborough proper. Not that there was anything there, Scarborough had existed during the star league era of course but its agricultural sector had only really blossomed after the second succession war and was largely a religious community of farmsteads according to contemporary information.

They were assaults, "Battlemaster?"

"No further signature detected."

That was odd. Tristan was sure his returns had detected the eighty five tonner at range, and it had been using a separate encryption protocol but they hadn't logged further contacts since yesterday afternoon. "We'll try and get the relay operational, but if I was the combine given that they don't have to worry about coordinating anything but Mechs," And exactly how conscious they were going to be of civilian damage was unknown, "They may launch a night attack especially,"

"Wouldn't it be smarter to wait for their reinforcements?" Septim asked, not unreasonably either. "Their dropships are getting really close."

"Yes, but my thinking is that they know we know they have reinforcements, and given their own attrition they may suspect an attack against them before we can execute our own, besides they'll still have to offload their mechs."

"The enemy may attempt an orbital insertion." The AI pointed out. Tristan was right but that would be risky.
--
Commentary: Ugh I don't want to do a time skip, but the next arc is proving a pain in hte ass, and involves a lot of deep dives into the old fasa books for covering whats coming. Like i'm trying to avoid the canonical lost tech caches near terra really I am, but they would be on maps that would be potentially available.

Anyway we're in the wind down stages for Elidere IV just as an aside Elidere is three months from terra assuming you're going straight that direction, not that we're actually going to Terra just that thats the frame of reference for BT's JumpDrive.

With any luck the I Davion contract which roughly about the same size as the original II Luxen Outline will work itself out. Speaking of Luxen II, its got its own thread and will be the standard Thursday update as we expand more upon some of the other characters and see some other events during that contract gig in Canopian space.

I will be posting (in the misc thread) a new Battletech story based off of Space Heir and Ramble's essence of Megamek lab some time in February, probably the first. There are some other things which will follow in February, but we will deal with that, and I'll address other updates for the rest of January somewhere else.

Imperator Pax · Jan 23, 2022

Elidere Part 9

Battle of Elidere IV Day 11
It was wet, and cold. Not quite frost on the ground outside, but wet enough for mud. There was a lot of it being churned up by foot traffic and vehicles. The combine invasion had pushed people into the city, and there was a very real question of what to do if this didn't work. Jasos City was the modern capital because Elidere City had had a very near miss with a nuke. The city still existed of course but it had been rebuilt and was now the seat of the heir apparent to the duchy.

Given the occupation of Scarborough he was surprised that the duke was actually still in his palace rather than retreating to Elidere city, especially given the air raids last week. He looked up at the unmarred superstructure that looked absurdly different to the Star League era structure's picture. "That's, this is ridiculous." At some point after 2800 the locals had in a piqué of religious fervor painted the building white and then added frescoes of Star league icons and religious iconography that would have clashed horribly with the strictly secular purpose of the league civic's center. Over the last two centuries they had built up the space around it, and so it was now a cathedral.

Where did people seek shelter during an emergency?

Holy Mother Church of course.

The place was slammed, and created problems for their, he grunted as they pushed through the crowd and managed to get to an aclove that gave them a little bit of space.

This was a stampede waiting to happen, and get a bunch of civilians killed. "Doc?"

"I wouldn't worry Captain," he informed to Septim's inquiry, "I doubt anyone has accessed the facilities we will need since the first succession war. We will get the people inside the public shelters as quickly as possible and that should clear things up."

That was easier said than done, and slowly making their way through the throngs of people took far longer than he would have liked. That was without even running into the issue that cropped up from the local militia, or the bishop and other priests who had little reason to take them seriously. Andre insisted that if given time he'd be able to get someone to listen so they had divided up after about an hour... that they really shouldn't have wasted... waiting leaving the local Dervish pilot to try and find someone to listen to Doctor Abner.

The modifications to the civic center's massive ferrocrete structure were superfluous in terms of real changes to the structure. .. for the most part they were inconsequential. Nothing load bearing was changed according to his mech's seismographs and other sensors. The natives had white washed walls, put up hypostyle pillars and painted great frescos of Star League glory but the building had been an massive edifice to the league at its height. Finding an elevator and plugging his credentials into it to get down to a secure floor had been easy.

"Good Afternoon Colonel Shepherd." The Synthetic voice was much more artificial than Tristan's masculine one, this wasn't an AI, but rather a simple vocalized greeting from a smart system, the kind of computer aid programs much more common in the days of the star league.

"Colonel?"

"Tristan authenticated my time in grade, my date of promotion +10 years under the regulations warrants promotion to Lieutenant Colonel," And presumably as the only Hegemony credential holder Tristan had found that had been enough to offer command of the facility, of at least for the facility, and thus in theory a brevet promotion to probably full bird.

The truth was he was more concerned about how long all of this was taking. He had wanted to move to the front, to join the action. There was no continuous line of contact the Combine's emphasis on Battlemechs meant they could decide when to attack, and the planetary government had pulled their militia back to as clustered of a defensive frontage ... which was unlikely to stop a concerted attack.

He glanced at the yellow indicator dots on the sensor returns. Local communication was working, but at some point two hundred years ago something had broken something somewhere and a bypass or redundancy had failed to switchover and thus the local systems stopped talking to continental defense network, and thus Tristan had limited air coverage, not enough to guide missiles into incoming dropships in any event. Why there wasn't some kind of drone unit that could feed telemetry back he didn't know, maybe the hegemony had never expected that, maybe they had existed and had been lost... too many maybes, and frankly they didn't have time.

"Shouldn't we get the doctor?"

This was technically the access section of the facility that was civilian still. This was part one of can we even get ground to air targeting operational, and get the system up and running... if they could access the Defense Communications bunker and if that still had links to an operation Air Defense battery then they might not have to engage another Battalion of Mechs on the ground.

... but it was looking like a longshot. "We will," He was looking at the returns panel, and frowning at the 'offline' and 'destroyed' indicators in different shades of red. This was not a hegemony facility, the civil defense infrastructure covered everything from weather service monitoring to of course orbital telemetry... and two hundred years in a major city... in the present capital of the planet most of the systems no longer worked. "With any luck Abner will be able to get the machines talking to each other, but if he doesn't have a response from the systems I want you all back in your mechs."

"Yes sir."
--
The professor was with David Bowie. David Bowie in a kilt... but David Bowie circa 86 as Jareth the goblin king. Introductions passed around, "Bard," His call sign, "Cameron," David Bowie declared in a Scottish brogue, "detached service from Robinson's rangers I'm an instructor at the Battle Academy." He paused, "Cadet Sutton says we have you to thank for the Snakes not rolling over us."

Gene decided to cut straight to the point, "Then you know the combine has another battalion of mechs incoming, and will probably attack before they arrive."

"I've been told, and the duke is aware that the enemy have reinforcements in bound." It was almost an indictment, certainly a statement of the gravity of the situation. If the combine assault had been properly combined arms this wouldn't have been a contest... Elidere wasn't an important world not in the schemes of the Successor States. It was just a border world.

"The combine has been here two weeks now," Not counting the time it had need to burn for the jump point, which didn't need saying. "And even assuming that the first HPG message did prompt an immediate dispatch of reinforcements," Which he doubted, but replied to the comment anyway, "They'd still have to burn for the planet to get here. That's ten days, and the combine reserves will be here by tomorrow?" The window was closing. Either they had been wrong, and in the face of their casualties the combine was erring on the side of caution and wasn't going to attack...

"That's why the Duke wants to consolidate our forces. You have units in reserve of your own." Cameron pointed out, but didn't go for the duke's attempt to coopt those forces. "You've divided your forces up... if I were a betting man, you showing up with a big Atlas in town and your forces elsewhere... the Combine hasn't attacked because their ASF know you're here. They can't see your armor battalions... I would guess you came here as bait."

There was the accusation.

"Did I?"

"The combine attacks, you hit them from behind with artillery and armor and cut them from their dropships. Tell me that isn't the plan, major?"

He disagreed with some of the implication, but he could see why and where the logic of the conclusion came from.... and he certainly wasn't about to admit that they were here gambling on the long shot chance that there were Star League era air defense systems that would keep that battalion from ever making planetfall to relieve their colleagues. "Its close enough."

"You could come see the duke. We may not have a lot of forces, but can you really carry the day without us?" The ranger shifted, "The combine's excuse for honor won't let them stay still for long, they'll come looking for a fight... we'd be better off coordinating our troops."

... and there was a good chance that the instructor of Robinson Battle Academy had suborned Sutton just by that position alone. "Professor, its your choice," The combine still had presumably most of a regular company, plus the battalion and Regimental HQs. "They've got to come through the valley, and if not stopped there it'll be the farmsteads," that lay beyond the river, which was the effective geographic boundary of where the County as a feudal domain began. That narrow valley would be the best place to bottle them up, but Abner was the one who was paying the bills, and the professor was on the spot.

"Major Shepherd, the church is packed with people, if the combine were to make it here..."

A firestarter in the streets, yeah he could imagine, or a catapult with machine guns.

He didn't like the way the lyran was staring up at the great cameron starburst painted on the ceiling.
--
The duke was an average looking man, to whom the last month had been supremely unkind to. If the Mikios scion had gotten much sleep since the Combine JumpShips had appeared in system it didn't look like it. Precentor Gregory Killos was enduring his host's obvious discontent with surprising grace given the duke's pacing, and the duke didn't even notice their arrival.

"My liege you must calm yourself."

The priest, because that must have been what he was, was carrying a cameron starburst instead of a crucifix or a cross but had all the robes and connical hat of presumably a bishop equivalent.

"Why haven't they attacked yet?" The duke's jaundiced face and baggy eyes swept to the new speaker from the precentor.

Bard Cameron stepped forward bowed and addressed the Duke of Elidere, "With respect your grace the enemy are waiting for their reinforcements."

"All due respect Sir John," The duke protested turning to the ranger, "They don't need them, they've got twice our weight in Mechs at least. They don't need reinforcements. Our poor militia has done its best but what are men on foot supposed to do against battlemechs." Sutton shifted uncomfortably beside Gene at the Duke's comment about his own militia. The comment was parternalistic sure, but it could have been worse. The duke actually cared or seemed to care about the troops he just didn't think PBI were any use stopping mechs.
--
"Do we join you?"

"No." He replied to Bahar over the line. "Stay where you are," Ishida's holographic image nodded in silent ascent to the order. He wasn't going to bring their two mechs inside the defensive perimeter, and certainly wasn't going to bring the drones where anyone could get a good look at them.

The truth was he didn't like the Duke's handling of the situation. If they stayed clustered up in the city it was going to be a bloodbath just like Doctor Abner feared. "I do not like this commander, our odds are significantly diminished by permitting the enemy to reinforce their position." Tristan clucked in disapproval. "I have begun bringing up what forces are available, but we will not be able to cover all possible landing sites."

Gene had known that already, and a part of him wanted the Combine to spread out, to disperse their forces. The combine's decision to commit at all was throwing away their lives in pursuit of a battle already lost. They had comm intercepts for the Regimental Commander ordering the battalion to the planet, but there were no protests. There were no indications that the Regiment HQ was considering quitting the field... and that had contributed to his surprise that the Combine had not launched an attack sooner.

He could understand the tension, the tinge of Bahar probably growing impatient waiting for the battle. Bahar had been brought up probably from as soon as she could walk to pilot a battlemech at the very least from the way she handled a bow and arrow in her off she had been brought with a classical education that emphasized martial characteristics... sitting here and waiting for the enemy had to be galling.

Gene linked the neurohelmet and fed his thoughts into the mind machine interface that ran the information directly to Tristan. "Understood Commander." The AI answer as the map projected pathing.

"Best case is that the enemy lands their dropships within range of our artillery." Hitting their deployment zones even with inaccurate artillery would delay the enemy deployment. "We will deal with those unions as they come in either way." He really wished they had a larger ASF complement, but that would be a matter for a larger Merc outfit... and chances were good they weren't going to get any real payout from Elidere.

This was a pro bono good deed defending a more or less poor backwater planet from a bunch of assholes with a bunch of mechs. He didn't even know how salvage was going to play out when all of this came down. Maybe FedSuns proper had some kind of bounty to buy the salvage off of them.

His sensors flickered, "Eyes on," He confirmed as the drone filtered feed in through the Dalban. In respect to Abner's wishes to cooperate with the locals, "We've got enemy movement in sector 3...." he paused as the Drone's sensors, "LOCAM," Local Command, "they are firing into the town. I have mechs firing into Scarborough, check. Do you have local forces?" It was a stupid question. He had been assured that the Duke had ordered a fall back of forces to consolidate what forces the planet could muster into a defensive line.

"Negative, we have no one out there."

Gene frowned, but he couldn't be surprised as he watched the feed from his dalban as it registered the weapons fire. So they were shooting civilians then. Combine chatter just made it worse, as they were complaining about the lack of foxes to hunt, lack of real Davion opposition. That was a complaint that they were going to regret.

"Commander?" The Ai asked.

--
Commentary: Firstly this will undergone minor further revisions in all likelihood, but is going up on schedule. In any event if you like this story, you may be interested in another I'm working on based off of Ramble's Essence of Mek Lab and Mage Okhi's space heir II called Essence Wielding Social General that is in the works. If you are the first two scrap segments of it are in the Battletech thread over in NSFW index, and have been threadmarked.

Battletech: The Ghost Who Walks (Battletech Isekai)

Talon Master

Talon Master

Talon Master

Talon Master

Talon Master

Talon Master

Talon Master

Talon Master

Talon Master

Talon Master

Talon Master

Talon Master

Talon Master

Talon Master

Talon Master

Talon Master

Talon Master

Talon Master

Talon Master

Talon Master

Talon Master

Talon Master

Talon Master

Talon Master

Talon Master

Talon Master

Talon Master

Talon Master

Talon Master

Talon Master