The Return Home
... and so his first campaign, as an adult, was concluded as the last DropShip returned to the surface of Rigil Kentaurus. The video image stilled as onlookers came to welcome the last of the arriving troops home. The garrison, one could hardly call it an occupation in sound bites to the lyran public, of the two new Lyran worlds were Lyran Regulars... and there would be consequences. The regulars would have to hold the worlds of Zosma and Aula Australis as well, which was a whole other matter, but even now the Lyran news apparatus were chronically the 'border protectorate's' baathist regime and its 'desperate efforts' to keep the people in fief to the tyrant marik.
They really were laying it on a bit thick. Not that there hadn't been baathist atrocities confirmed to have occured, but frankly the people on the world had just seemed tired.
A military governor would be installed for both worlds, and it would take time before the committee to the estates general would even convene never mind start making suggestions about when either world would be ready for proper civil Lyran government. Of course part of that was making sure the commonwealth could hold the worlds. There would be very real grumbling if either world was lost, but it would largely be confined to the naturally bellicose, gentry or nobility alike, but it would be limited to grumbling. If the estates general admitted the worlds as Lyran and included them in the assembly at Tharkad... and then they were lost that would be significantly worse.
In the immediate short term though, there was little he could do in regards to either world. Once the new military governor was selected, and after she, or him, were settled in they might request a rotation from his troops but that would be next year at the earliest, if they did at all. There were reasons for both, pro and cons. As the youngest titleholder, not simply heir or spare but an actual landed property holder, there were social mores often conflicting norms about what to do. The military governor might well decide it wasn't in the interest to open the world for investment opportunities particularly soon, for reasons beyond just 'security'.
So for the time being it was time to return home. 'Alpha C' to use the painfully dated term of the ancient Terran Alliance had never been especially peopled, and of course the string of misfortunes the planet had befallen from the fall of the hegemony on had done it no favors. It was a lovely world though. Lowe's Landing had had to be chosen for implicitly military and economic reasons for its location, that was simply the way it had to be but with land prices as they were he'd found a piece of prime real estate over looking a massive lake where the erosion, and deposition of so called glacial flour poured into the water painting a fabulous blue. He'd never be able to put anything military into the body of water, but he had the sea for that. Now the lakehouse served a much more genteel function, a place to return to now that the fighting was over.
... and of course the fighting had given them time to construct the house as well...high in the kentauran alps he had an entire mountain to work into after all, and support the facilities necessary for his battlemechs, and ASF. Far closer to the Landing and its spaceports were the garrisons for the Vehicle battalion, as well as an air based for quick reaction sorties by more ASF... admittedly he'd had to strip his own forces to go on this varangian adventure against the League, but they were back now. A victory pennant flying for the public to see, an important symbol for public relations. The people needed to be immersed in the Lyran victory over the league.
There was a fine line, he had been told, between immersion and drowning them. Odin looked at the pennant with annoyance... stripping forces from the planet annoyed him. More so now that he was back, and had been able to contemplate, to decompress for a few days. He conjured the blocky gothic script and its inventory.
Technically speaking he had two estates in the system. That was a legal distinction separate from other property, including holding out right cities or factories both of which could considered fiefdoms or not depending on various minutiae. There were certain expectations though, and he had a driving need to live up those standards and more importantly to make Bauer would be interested when the time came to get a license to produce the Rapier.
He wanted the legal cover of having a license to produce the whole thing... not just spare parts... but he'd settle for getting the latter to start with. He was going to play off his existing wings of Rapiers as inheritance and finds... especially once the Castle Centaur was disclosed... and of course he'd be able to play off some of hte machinery and tooling as coming from the castle as well.
He looked at the block characters totaling both cash reserves in C-Bills, as well as a separate value of banked Battle Value mostly generated by deconstructing part of his inheritance in what had at the time b een something of a poorly thought out rush to do something.
The news feed finally changed away from the down town flying pennant view but decided to compound his headache by replaying, for the at least fourth time he'd had to hear his own voice promising to endeavor to continue to make the system safe for all Lyran citizens. Which of course on its surface meant continuing clean up operations and maximizing the work down by the terraformers as they worked to scrub the planet of any remaining contaminants. He had been assured that the sound bite was a good one... but Rigil had never been a particularly populated world even before the bombs had fallen, and he suspected his commitment to the community was something the PR advisor had suggested in order to appeal to a broader lyran constituency. Maybe they thought he wanted a shot at being elected to the estates general... even though he was a baron he was still eligible for a seat in the people's chamber.
The sound bite though was also cover to expand the militia he was entitled to, to provide for additional house troops... and also what better way to make the system safe but by building domestic factories to produce tanks for the militia to use. Not that they were there yet. He couldn't simply magic a factory out of thin air.... without raising questions.
SO of course the official explanation would be that the component factories on planet and moon had been constructed and were still being constructed over the time of the deployment. The ammunition works producing long range missiles well those would be easy to explain. Producing lasers would need more time.
Centaur Castle obviated the need to construct DropShip facilities for the frankly ridiculous fleet he had inherited, even diminished by recycling into his bank of BV, and C-Bills.
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The advantage to Castle Centaur was its interior geometry... well that and the fac that all of its systems were still completely intact more broadly speaking. He had little concern about any one creating trouble by sneaking into the underground city sized fortification.
He had originally considered producing the eighty ton thug. The pitban 320 would have been useful for heavy vehicles as well... but then the idea had struck him as they had loaded up the guard's various Black Knights... and in a fervent, feverish burst of energy and enthusiasm he had gotten to work.
The 'Talgeese' were based off of the Black Knight's chassis, and most had been designed off of the general principle.. One thing had lead to another and resulted in down teched Leos. Those at least could be theoretically rolled out as a wholly unique new mech design.
While a tade warm a PPC four medium lasers and two large was nothing likely to attract much attention, or he didn't think it would given that all of those were common off the shelf components.
It would certainly attract less attention to the bulk of the hideous mottle gray hundred tonner and its armor plating that looked strange in comparison. The Bartlet's size looked normal compared to the Atlas next to it. They could probably concealed the fact it ran off an XL fusion engine, and maybe they could popularize the MML's that no one would really notice them later... but Extended range large lasers were also los Tech.
Ultimately though the hundred tonner was all what the Essence crafting considered Inner Sphere tech. The mech was not like the mixed tech cobbling together of the Clans... which were other can of worms.
"What do you think?"
His bodyguard looked at the missile boat. "I think I'd rather take one of the Talgeese out." He nodded. He had considered that already. The real difference, getting past external cosmetics in the body was that if they were pushed to deploy the Talgeese was that they were built largely on Clan Technology... including weapons that he'd been willing to expend BV to craft that weren't available yet.
Hazen's preferred Talgeese carried a truly monstrous hyper assault gauss weapon for its primary weapon. "I understand entirely." He replied looking down the bays, and passed a handful of dark navy blue machines... and machines were the operative word. Despite carrying large vibroblades, and gauss rifles they were advanced battlemech drones intended to engage under the direct supervision of the units.
They were something of a trump card to play in close quarters... and they were expensive each running over two thousand BV for a group of machines intended as guards... he could have probably come up with a more cost effective drone mech if he hadn't gotten distracted.
Odin looked back to the hundred tonner, "I want to introduce the MML sooner rather than later," Just for the flexibility of being able to field mechs that could carry specialty ammunition, and field either LRMs or SRMs. There were limits, flaws with the plan as he'd discussed with Scmitt over discussions of their '6O' Commando namely that MML-9 launchers that the Barlet carried weighed six tons. Or the weight of the 2 SRM 6 launchers on their commando "But for now this," He remarked walking around the gantry and looking the tubes, and large laser mounted in the right arm, "This is just an experiment."
An experiment he had probably gotten entirely too carried away with, but it was almost addicting making them. The Bartlett's light ferro fibrous glinting as he moved around to the back. The jump jets were in the feet of course. The machines heat sinks weren't sufficient to allow it to continuously alpha strike, but that was fine... even if they dropped down to standard range large lasers that would be true the DHS wouldn't quite be able to ablate an alpha strike's heat, and it would build up... but again it was just an experiment.
He blew out another breath and looked around the castle brian's interior. The priority needed to be Medium factory units which cost basically equivalent to his hundred ton idle fancy. Tomorrow would be another day. Another day, another investment into the beginning of a process.
"Schmitt has the troops."
He echoed her comment, and nodded, War changed people, inspired emotions... and maybe he was being paranoid about the prospect of a Marik attack, but he wanted to be ready if any of the neighbors jumped the border. He spared lingering glance at his creation, and nodded.
