One Rabid Fox changes the Succession Wars [A Battletech Isekai]

[Imperator Pax]

One Rabid Fox changes the Succession Wars
A BattleTech Isekai​

Sakhara Academy Dorms, October 3015
[2 years After Arrival]

The life in another world, in a universe of an eighties esque future of giant stompy robots, and plenty of neo feudal drama was complicated... even for an isekai protagonist, especially for an isekai protagonist. The truth was he didn't remember nearly enough of the lore to really do much per se, and he'd already irrevocably changed the timeline. Ironically a change that no one had really recognized or taken notice of as anything special, because it had meant someone not dying... that someone being the First prince of the Federated Suns... so he was the only one who recognized he'd changed things.

He had shown up on Mallory's world two years ago, and killed Yorinaga Kurita before the Phantom MechWarrior could kill the first prince...

That was fine.

It was equally fine really that the Davion News Media had focused on Ian Davion's victory over Takashi Kurita, his equal and equivalent in the Draconis Combine in the subsequent victory won at Halstead station. He assumed that the Combine either didn't really have news media or valued their lives enough to not talk about it. He doubted the other successor states cared.

That wasn't to say there weren't rewards... not counting the illicit salvage that he had engaged in under House Davion's nose while under contract for them. Not that he regretted that. The measly 25 points he accrued a day really wasn't nearly enough to do much by itself... he needed to accumulate more points to get the most out of his Isekai Cheat Power; 'The Essence'.

The thing that allowed him to rapidly boost his skills, as well as purchase equipment using currency or the points ... and in a world like BattleTech it was especially useful... especially considering that his Essence besides its gamer like functionality also had really broken exploitable values brought over seemingly directly from table top rules that emphasized combat by giant stompy robots.

He hit the blocky rectangular key marked play on the message machine. Future Eighties Man, he almost muttered. There were times where he was just prone to outbursts of the first reaction the things that just popped into his head... maybe it was just stress ... they were less frequent now, he had gotten used to being in this other world.

He didn't bother to play the messages... not right now. Truth be told he could sort of guess what they were about, and if he was wrong well then so what. He was trying to avoid planetary travel when he didn't have to less chance of the change in gravity fucking with his bones or something. He wanted his fucking adult height back... and surely part of that was how gangly a teenage body felt. How freaking unbalanced he felt ... outside of a mech anyway.

He consulted, as he habitually did his gameresque stats display. Clanners ... with their gene modded phenotypes could exceed the human normal... he couldn't do that, but even so he planned to eventually work his way up to peak human. The points were a limited resource, and by not leaving the planet he had no large income of points to expect.

... the only way he might be able to boost his points was if the Combine attacked. That was unlikely... not impossible but that would also mean the usual bullshit fighting over salvage rights in response to defending the planet... that was his least favorite thing about contract negotiations. It hadn't come up until after they'd left Halstead Station that the Davions had asked to see his battle roms of fighting the second sword of light, and well his gunnery results tended to leave a lot of mostly intact salvage. Mechs were precious in this era so, he was pretty sure the merc liaison had noted that in his file that they should prioritize that they wanted salvage rights... and the Davions didn't offer that great of pay.

Then again, he doubted he was being underpaid... it was just... salvage was so much more useful to him than the going rate in c bills for bounties...

... but all of that was moot because he didn't expect to be attacked... maybe that was arrogant of him.. they were only two jumps from the Combine Border... but...

The bells rang signaling it was eight in the morning, and he looked down at his feet. He wasn't going to be late, but he did need to finish getting dressed. The Sakhara Academy was just the right sort of strange place he really fit in.... which was saying something since he was somewhere between full time student, and teacher.

He rifled through his close threw a white oxford on, and worked the sleeves until the buttons closed around his wrists, he tossed a look at the sky and put his shoes on, and through the bag over one shoulder heading out.

The Davions weren't ungrateful but he'd been too young to really take seriously. If the Robinson Rangers hadn't been there then Lord Aaron, Duke of Robinson might not have heard, and might not have made the offer to come to the RBA. That would have unintentionally made Ian Davion, and the Federated Suns ruling house look ungrateful... but he hadn't been looking for charity... and he'd have been the one looking ungrateful if he refused a place at Sakhara. So thereby instead of leaving for the periphery he'd accepted the prince's invitation into the local system of feudal landholding.

Sakhara was a mineral rich world of course it wasn't like they had given him a useless piece of land... but there were days he really expected he might have gotten along better on the Lyran side of the fence... or not. Robinson might have been easier too, the academy was smaller less prestigious but there was a battleMech works there... but it was Sakhara that was the place.

So he'd inaugurated a JumpShip shipping firm. After all it was two jumps to Robinson, well it was actually three jumps... and it was even more to get from Sakhara to New Avalon. Seven Jumps.

The immensely silly rules that governed his isekai cheat power meant that Star Lords were cheaper by points than Invader class JumpShips, and so as he settled into life in the Fed Suns he'd added a few more of the big bastards but settled for spawning Merchants on the realization that those were cheaper and less likely to attract more attention. As it was he was still only having them play strictly internal routes of trade within the Federated Suns. It made him money. He liked money. He liked safe money.
--
Sakhara Academy was in a sense the Oxford or Yale of Fed Suns BattleMech schools. Those and not say... Sandhurst or West Point He didn't know how it had gotten to this point, or how it worked elsewhere but this place was the location of the elite and privileged. Graduating from Sakhara was a misnomer the best students got to do two years in a grad school esque posting with the training regiment a slot in a Mech battalion further improving on MechWarrior skills and tactics. That was why there were so few slots in the so called 'graduates'.

Everyone else who had made it through 4 years, well they were head hunted for slots in the AFFS elite units. People like Justin Allard were in that secondary category. It was kind of an open secret he wasn't going to make the cut to go to the training battalion.

The man's black jack was part of the problem.

He looked him up and down, and sighed, "I'm sorry Justin, even if we put you in a Warhammer I really couldn't see you making the difference up..." Because the truth was it wasn't just his mech... but putting his ass in a Warhammer would have helped... Justin had other sorts of problems.... but not enough problems that he couldn't secure a posting with a Guards RCT.

That was part of the reason he wasn't doing more. Justin would be fine. He was a good pilot... and he also didn't want to fuck the timeline if there was a chance of... well whatever Justin's life was supposed to be.

His counseling was interrupted by a disgusted expletive about Justin Allard's half breed status... that was something else he didn't understand. "Half breed?" It was the 31st​ century, and why did the Cappies get it, and not the combine then... "Ok, can it you." For a minute there was stumbling break in the other student's bravado, "No I mean it, unless you want to find yourself on the other end of my Heavy mech you can stow it."

The irony was despite Allard being older than him, Sakhara academy was a college after all, he was already taller and that showed as the fifteen year old straightened stepping in front of the full time senior cadet, and his antagonist. The other guy was vaguely spanish looking the wisp of a goattee that threatened the schools already mild dress code but really the high cheek bones and aquiline nose of a Castilian land holder really Don Juan here was the picture of a hidalgo right down to his presumption. He started to squabble a protest.

"No, I don't want to hear it." He replied, "Gear up, and go run course two again. Your fucking a minute behind par time already so hearing this shit out of your mouth just pisses me off more." There were no further protests and the cadet in his gym shorts and cooling jacket was gone running off to his Enforcer.

Justin did his best moody boy emo, I didn't need you to save me routine, but he got told to stuff it to, to gear up and get ready to run the fifth circuit course down by the river again. "If you ship to Spica," With the 5th​, "they're going to give you the same. Fair or not the Capellans are the enemy... they're a modern day slave state in the Inner sphere, thats what the servitor caste is." He grunted, "And you can expect deep riven suspicion, and doubly so because the Capellans are the weakest of the great houses, and yet still have the fifth seat at the table."
--
... and it was precisely conversations like that how he ended up sitting down with the student council president. Lovely. Since of course he was also sort of a student. The truth was while Justin Allard had no chance of getting into the training cadre slot he was all but assured one, after all he was the Rabid Fox...

... for some reason the Davions had assumed that was his call sign rather than the name of his Mech... and attempts to correct that had failed miserably such that it had ended up as his call sign despite his protests...

... and the truth was he benefitted from attending Sakkara academy the baccalaureate education especially. Alexandria Cunningham the Countess Kestrel and heiress to the ducal landhold of the planet... this also meant she was Allard's nominal dynastic senior and made this even more of a headache.

"So why don't you do something about it?" He regretted asking the question as soon as he said it... because she was right in retorting it was none of his business, but then did deign to elaborate it was because Allard had been a mistake. His father shouldn't have married his mother, who'd been a Liao noblewoman, and the family didn't approve.

It was also true that Lord Allard the elder had powerful friends at court, but at the same time ... he had some of the same problems as his son... just without the whole issue of being nearly a bastard in the eyes of the aristocracy of the federated suns. He couldn't do anything about Justin Allard's life but try and see that it mostly went per cannon... but...

He grunted, and rested his head in his palm... and then had to look up to avoid staring into her chest... "So you suggest I just ignore it?"

"So you're just going to fight Justin's battles for him? He'll need to figure things out on his own." She replied, "Even if you could give him a heavier mech that's only going to win you favors with his father... and Quintus Allard isn't lacking in his share of rivals."

... She probably assumed Quintus had put him up to this but that was a stretch. It was true he'd met Quintus at the wedding of Hanse Davion... if one called a mostly sloshed Ian Davion dragging you around to introduce you to people an introduction... that was actually also how he had met the student council president... not that she'd been said to be that.. it had been hard to miss the dusky beauty all dolled up in white and gold.

Being a teenager again sucks, he mused running a hand through his dark hair, fighting the hormones back down.

He looked over her head and out to the carefully manicured grounds... he distracted himself with thoughts about the messages on his answering machine this morning. The careful staging of those digging machines... that and the memories of Halstead station. H e was going to make money off of the Fed Suns by pretending to build JumpShips until he could actually build JumpShips and pretending to have found Germanium was part of it.

He would build Merchants and sell some to the Fed Suns.

"Eh, whats that look for." She looked down wondering if she'd managed to get her uniform dirty. Reminding him that she was also a young person.

He laughed, "Its nothing like that," And the bell saved him, "I've got to go. I'll see you around Lady Lex." Life in another world of giant stompy robots wasn't so terrible. He didn't waste any time getting up, and moving out the door of the student council school room before anything could happen, and especially before she could stop him, or anyone else could show up. He did actually have class... even if some of the basic course skills for leadership were merely refreshers from a previous life, he was expected to attend them as a student most of the time rather than as a lecturer... but really it was in protocol, and military history of the Federated Suns that he needed to attend it was the area, areas he actually needed to study in.

It was really sort of a headache. He dodged around a couple of other cadets, and continued his daily life as a minor noble, landholder, mechwarrior living in the Federated Suns in a future eighties neo feudal universe of giant stompy robots.

--

Notes: Alright welcome to Chapter 1 of my other Essence of MegaMek Lab fic that has consumed too much of the past week. The previous segments aren't necessary to read. They can be summarized as follows but will be mentioned in subsequent chapters anyway:

MC arrives (as mentioned) on Mallory's World and assists the Davions in repelling the invasion, saving Ian Davion from Yorinaga Kurita (and racking up kills on 1st Btn / 2nd SoL), 2nd SoL as per canon, withdraws to Halstead station. Ian pursues to Halstead, MC between the 4th and 5th of January 3014 with some assistance from the 1st Robinson Rangers kills off the remainder of the 2nd SoL after Takashi gives them permission to go attempt to avenge Yorinaga culminating in the destruction in particular of 2nd Btn / 2nd SoL's formation on the Madison Plains

This allows House Davion to thoroughly loot the University of Madison on Halstead Station of all its goodies while also tweaking Takashi's nose good.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Sakhara 1.2​

He had tossed his blazer on the counter, and the coffee machine was going. He needed the caffeine... frankly he needed to not be in the dorms... he needed more space as it was he could hear his downstairs neighbors making a ruckus with some kind of wall riveting synth pop.

His kind of sort of living room was a mess of low coffee tables, throw pillows, a power strip and the electronics that were the norm of the future eighties... including his landline esque home phone. It was charitably a disaster zone that befitted a college bachelor. It was made even worse by a couple of ugly cardboard boxes, and folders of papers, and at the moment a number of large rocks sitting on his coffee table, but it wasn't as if he was expecting company... and what people didn't see where the invisible to all but him floating digital gamer screens.

Germanium was the stuff in jump cores. It was also used in various other industrial processes but mostly it was the JumpCore that it was famous for. It was expensive stuff reaching due to market conditions two thousand c bills an ounce... which was fucking absurd.

... also why the fuck they used ounce escaped him. He was still utterly appalled at how much Germanium cost on the open market... even if it was to his direct benefit. He dropped the crystalline mass on the table in disgust with the other samples.

This was necessary... dig this stuff out of the ground sell some of it... maybe a couple hundred tons a year if they could find buyers otherwise recycle germanium into the essence and build more with the Essence. That was one of the interesting things. Germanium was one of those things that didn't have BV value, but had a stupidly high price per ounce.

He did some quick mental math and grumbled to himself. The small factory units were pricy, and he'd need fifty of them, and the even bigger brothers of those were even more expensive... and he'd need thirty of those...

But there was a way around that! Even the big ones only cost a bit over 1.25 B C-Bills. That wasn't so bad. The Star Lord Jump ship model of 2841 had a cost of 2.391 B C-Bills + but only had a BV of 615. It was completely absurd. He could get all the SFUs he needed from getting rid of just one star lord, and still have money left over

His Isekai Cheat Power really was broken. As for the crews that was easy he didn't have to spawn crews for a vehicle, and he'd also need trained personnel too for when they could actually start really building JumpShips.

He was glad the landhold was on mineral rich Sakhara though. People would believe that he found Germanium, and believe that he'd invest the proceeds into things and that any settlers who showed up were just here to work on the nobles estate... and all that other neo feudal stuff while he the errant young noble did mechwarrior stuff and left things to his commercially minded retainers.

He certainly wasn't going to advertise he was actually responsible for the JumpShips magical appearance... but still those MFUs were going to be expensive. Even with cheat powers. He'd really have to look to see if he couldn't cheese more... perhaps ... yes he'd find something that was cheap that provided about 1700 BV and pay for it using C-Bills.

After some searching well the F 77 Deathstalker seemed to fit the bill. The eighty ton attack fighter had a BV 1714, but only cost 4.84 M C bills... and of course he could probably have cheesed things even more by spawning individual parts. The Clan Tyre Attack Fighter though was only 2.868 Million C Bills and was a whopping ridiculous absurad 1852 BV damned clanner technology was BV chonky but if it wasn't a mech it seemed... it made him want to vomit... but this would do it... he'd invest in his landhold and be a productive member of the Federated Suns...

The math sort of bore out that he might not have really needed to loot the corpses of the second sword of light on Halstead station, but he wasn't going to bring it up and certainly wasn't going to apologize, it was done.

Still they were talking about ... so much money it made his head hurt... and...

There was a chime on the door of his apartment / dorm. It was already well after dark, Sakhara for all its storied name and what not... that was really all high humanity marketing. The entire name conventions of the planet and its moons were attempts by anglo-american colonists of the the 24th​ century to sound more impressive than the desert world was... the result was that yes there were wide ranging deserts abundant mineral wealth... and the planetary rulers in the early 24th​ century had consciously modelled architecture and after an idealized Egypt of yore...

... the problem was that they were 24th​ century Terrans so it was a massive kitbash of 19th​ century colonial Egypt in parts... right down to the local tourist traps fashion arrangements with a mishmash of what they thought high tech egyptian esque things should look like, mixed with typical normal late 20th​ century art deco sky scrapers which had been popular at that particular time on Terra... but as was typical with founding colonial populations some things had stuck, and some things had been reinforced by the anglo-normative traditions and stylings of the Federated Suns who had come to rule over the planet by the end of the 25th​ century

In short everyone dressed like they all lived in the British empire or an idealized version there of.

He slid the door open to look at Justin Allard holding his busted nose, bleeding down the front of his school uniform. He sighed, "Yes, yes do come in." He replied, "No, this way." He grabbed the slightly older teenage mechwarriors arm and navigated him to the couch, "No stop leaning your head back, lean forward, yeah like that." He instructed, "Hold there."

Towel, ice from the small refrigerator... and the nagging consideration that as kind of sort of an instructor he ought to be keelhauling the senior cadet for fighting... the latter was something of a moot point because half an hour later, after Justin's nose stopped bleeding the student council president showed up looking irritated and out of breath... or out of breath and exasperated at the two of them.

That was before she noticed the hunks of Germanium and diamonds and other previous rocks on the table that had been dug out of his land hold. He looked at the ores, and geological specimens, and dropped on to the couch nearest the kitchenette. "Eh," He grunted. Wasn't Justin Allard getting into a fight with some other noble mechwarrior the bigger problem here?

--
There were 365 days in a year discounting leap years where February got an extra one. The Terran calendar remained the norm as a away to measure and organize things. Every day he had 25 BV added to his supply. So a year equated to a little over nine thousand... 9125 specifically. In other words that just focusing on such an accruement it would have taken a disgusting three years to accrue the BV for just the Small Factory units... he didn't even want to consider the more expensive medium units.

It was absolutely appalling to have to weight that long so he'd cheese that by recycling purchases, and moving money around. It was really more the matter of telling people he'd be doing big things that was was another.

... thus by sacrificing a Star Lord well he'd have the building block to start the ball rolling on providing a new JumpShip Yard to House Davion... but he wasn't stupid enough to send such a notification to the Duke of Robinson, never mind all the way to New Avalon. Trust ComStar, hah never! He'd never do such a thing.

Actually he had a plan that well... probably not full proof, but one that he hoped would work to defer some if not necessarily all the suspicion away from his actions. He needed to increase his noble standing. He would be able to pass off his mineral wealth from his Sakhara land hold as providing the raw resources for the JumpShips to be built, but maybe he needed somewhere else... find somewhere like Lockdale or Fable... but the former was very close to Terra. If he laid claim to it on the basis of sudden industrial wealth... it would surely create a cluster fuck and all kinds of attention because while people might believe he'd really lucked out finding something on a former hegemony provincial capital they'd probably try and attack.

Fable was more comfortably in Davion Space, but it was also in the Capellan March, ugh... and it was one thing to have a small landhold on Sakhara having nominally a whole planet, and with a shitheel traitor like Hasek nearby... he'd need to have more personnel

... he needed to be a more proper feudal noble... less business less venture capitalist. His grimace deepened as he continued to stare out the window. That again just brought him back to his annual BV accumulation... nine thousand BV meant ... well by itself was a lance of mechs... or could be about a lance. It was as if the whole system was designed to be exploitable... he really was an isekai character with a ridiculous cheat power.

He hastily willed the stat sheet closed as the door opened, and a painfully English looking mustachioed AFFS Colonel came in. The vice chancellor was a staid, boring, all around mostly competent fellow... but not much fun. He wasn't surprised at all that Don Juan, his middle name was actually Juan, had suddenly developed the appearance of a raccoon. Both of his eyes were ringed with deep black bruising, that were frankly painful to behold.

It really would have been different, or so Colonel Coleridge claimed, if it wasn't so bloody obvious that the boys had tussled about... never mind that they'd done it brazenly in public. He repeated that it was a disgrace more than once as well... such that don juan looked pretty suitably chastised about the whole affair... which would have been good if Justin's temper wasn't threatening to get the better of him right here in front of the vice chancellor.

There wasn't much he could really see doing here. If he pushed too hard the vice chancellor might decide he was more student than guest lecturer at the moment, and that he wasn't old enough or mature enough to be objective about these sorts of disciplinary issues.... he nededed to find a solution to this.

His fingers twitched, the scrolling through his gamer screen sped up. "Well I," He'd ended up biting the bullet and blathering off at the mouth about special course work and bringing Sakhara's training battalions back up to par...

... which was a nice way of saying he'd invited the cadets to come see his land hold and be amazed at how fabulously wealthy 'the Rabid Fox' was.

He had long since stopped trying to convince them Rabid Fox was the name of his mech, and not his call sign... people refused to listen and insisted on referring to him as the Rabid Fox because of his 'crazy' last stand that turned out not to be a last stand... or that he'd gotten in close and literally pummeled Yorinaga Kurita's warhammer into scrap killing the Kuritan colonel in the process. So he was 'the Rabid Fox'... even the nickname really annoyed him no one especially not anyone in the 7th​ Crucis Lancers, or an annoying Major in the Robinson Rangers in particular would ever let him live it down.

"And this," he waved his arms after having dismounted his 70 ton Rabid Fox B, which most people just assumed was some weird los tech star league marauder variant given the general hull layout. "Is our Mech refurbishment center." He declared as the warehouse style lighting illuminated the cavernous underground interior.

There were a few semi enthusiastic noises of interest and such, but hardly a wowed crowd... but he wasn't expecting that. The array of mech cubicles were not too different from the academy's. Indeed neither were the vehicle cubicles... he had weighed carefully ideas about Sabre production, or introducing the myrmidon medium tank as well... but not yet.

When Ian had enfeefed him he hadn't immediately just magiked a bunch of JumpShips out of thing heir, but rather had had them trickle in allegedly from the periphery. Total nonsense of course, he'd magiked them out of thin air but he had had to carefully weigh how to use the BV from harvesting the dead souls of the second sword of light who had been recycled on Halstead station... but the Federated Suns preferred to consider the realistic explanation of out of the periphery mechwarrior knight errant.

He was going to gamble that they'd rather take that step, and not look too hard at a cluster of Centurions, and Trebuchet BattleMechs... mostly because they were fucking cheap ish. It actually hurt him more to plan for the expenditure of a union... which had involved yet more 'creative accounting' as he thought of it. With a turn away from the cadets and his seventy ton clan mech he wondered what things would have been like if he had ended up in the Lyran commonwealth... but whatever he was just going to keep digging this hole.

"What I want of you is an evaluation of how you perform against a uniform hostile medium BattleMech force." He declared still not facing them. "This is not a typical engagement. Its not supposed to be. Its to evaluate how you react to atypical scenarios." He could feel the eyes burrowing into his back, curiosity, and some annoyance... it wasn't as if he didn't have a reputation for being an eccentric. He'd play into that reputation. He waved at them to look around, "I'm going to go find Vice Chancellor Coleridge, make yourselves comfortable, the sergeant will show you to the simulators." He left them with the bald man, and headed up the stairs.

There was nothing special about the mechs. Nothing at all. They were completely standard BattleMechs really. It was the pilots who were the real feature. Unlike in table top where BV value increased with better pilots vehicles had the option to at no additional cost to him come crewed, and he wanted to see how they handled facing experienced pilots.

It took a couple of minutes to get to the side area where he was promptly ambushed by a woman in late middle age dressed in civilian attire. He shoved his hands in his pockets, but straightened, "Ah," He squawked in response to her sudden question while the cadets got ready, "Well I really don't have any expectations about how they'll do with regards to this test. Thats rather the point, I want them to go into this with no pre conceived notions about the fight."

Coleridge looked at him but didsn't speak up. He was scare of whoever this was. The woman continued to ask questions, "Do you think Lady Alexandria can win this engagement?"

He wasn't stupid, he noticed how Colonel Coleridge the Academy's vice chancellor was squirming and he hadn't missed how the noblewoman hadn't introduced herself... which... she looked familiar but Ian had introduced him to a bunch of people, at Hanse's wedding, to too many people for him to keep track... "I think both units have the ability to win. The purpose," This wasn't some inane half assed kobayashi maru test of ha you were always meant to fail, "Isn't to be an impossible test... if that was the point well... its not," He trailed off before he said something stupid like sending an entire company of Warhammers to fight them or something otherwise dumb. "I don't expect this to be easy, but I expect them to acquit themselves well."

Field Marshal Yvonne Davion settled into watch... what unfortunately proved to be somewhat embarrassing for the cadets as a company of late Star League Defense Pilots proceeded to demolish them in a simulated battle despite their, the cadets, numerical advantage.

"Whoops." He muttered as sergeant Machado, the very large senior non com with an unfortunately bald egg shaped head, finished tallying the last of the scores. The cadets had only had a slight numerical advantage maybe a pure company of fifty tonners had been a mistake... no putting them against ravens of any stripe would have just been more of a headache... he groaned in exasperation. "This is what I get for trying to be inventive." He told Coleridge, who was currently looking at him like he'd grown a second head, or something, but he ignored the vice chancellor's expression and hit the mike to recall the Battle mech company to where they had dismounted from the ride in.

They took the elevator down, in an uncomfortable silence.

There was already an argument brewing down on the deck amongst the cadets over who's fault the loss was. Heavy mechs blamed lighter mechs. The pilots of faster mechs blamed slower mechs for not being able to keep up. Mechwarriors blamed team leadership, leadership blamed cavalier attitudes, and failure to follow command... a bunch of angry teenagers angrily shouted at one another before realizing they were being observed.

He would have preferred making them all write up what they thought had happened... but the vice Chancellor had been put upon too much over the last two days and veritably exploded on them before the cadets could get a word in edge wise. Something Something Sakhara, something about the Robinson OpFor unit that usually did testing of the entire senior year as a whole, at least when they were available. This had only been one class of seniors not the whole senior year, but at lot of them were the students were in the running to the training unit after graduation, and if they weren't well go on to prestigious postings within the AFFS...

... that was sort of a problem.

A problem to compound the list of problems to be sure.
--
Notes: we will address some of the above questions in the 1.3 section Wednesday.

I do wish to go ahead and address two things, I have avoided using the original draft's name 'Henry Clay' at this stage, even though I'm probably going to retain that, and I am considering running a mix of 1st person from the MC's perspectives, and 3rd person for everyone else...

Also I had to cut a lot of the math and numbers stuff out of this section, otherwise it would have been really large, but the essence and its use... involves a lot of big numbers and shenanigans involving not just currency manipulation but also ATOW character sheets so thats probably going to go up at some point

 

[Imperator Pax]

Sakhara 1.3​

Field Marshal the duchess Yvonne Davion had not attended Sakhara, she had attended Albion. That wasn't to say she didn't appreciate Sakhara's history or its history especially of turning out capable graduates, and in a way that had been why she had been here. She had been an officer of the AFFS since graduating Albion at 21 with the class of 84. She had three decades of service, and though not advertised publicly she was the director for MI2 of the Department of Military Intelligence, and had been for half her career.

Hanse had always been the one more likely to listen to her advice, but she was grateful that Ian wasn't the sort to be ... completely reckless... she wasn't quite here with the blessing of the first prince to investigate, but the truth was it not her reaason for coming... and not the only reason for coming. It was true young men occassionally engaged in a sort of noble finishing school, but it was a more common post for a young noblewoman to serve as a lady in waiting. Alexandria Cunningham, the countess Kestrel the heiress apparent would graduate at the end of the following term and in agreement with House Cunningham would take up the post as Yvonne's lady in waiting for the duration of her mandatory service with the AFFS.

Only a fool would have considered such a posting a cushy or easy one regardless of the politics involved. She hadn't however expected that her arrival on Sakhara would have begun the way it had. It had been purely a gamble that she had found the free time to travel... no it hadn't... the truth was there was so much schmoozing going on in New Avalon now was the perfect time to do this...

Two years ago the Kuritans had attempted to conquer Mallory's world and been rebuffed, and rather than heed more cautious voices, and with his younger brother's support Ian had proceeded to push forward with the Raid on Halstead Station. Once again, as on Mallory's world, a young knight errant mechwarrior had distinguished himself enough that once well... once everyone was off world ... things had gotten somewhat raucous in the heady moments of success after the battle.

Yvonne was willing to believe this wasn't some infiltration attempt. No, Occam's Razor suggested this was some young wealthy orphan who had consolidated their portion of a family inheiritance and left for somewhere where they wouldn't have to contend with rivals within the family. Siblings, or perhaps a mal intentioned uncle... but whatever the case the degree of unfamiliarity with the Federated Suns establishment was probably that of somewhere from the far side of human space.

It was that she was technically acting outside of her remit, but it was her prerogative.

The fact that he hadn't recognized her would have made him a very poor spy... even just recognizing that she was a Duchess, and a cadet of the greater davion line should have warranted some degree of recognition... so that end she chalked that up to most likely having not received a proper noble tutelage, or at least not a full one... which made sense the teenager's mech skills were superb... he apparently could balance a book, and run a business... though there were questions of exactly what assets he did have within the year of being installed on Sakhara there had been a trickle in of JumpShips. A JumpShip company that now plied a regular line to to the marcher capital of Robinson, and to the realm capital of New Avalon.

A volume of JumpShips that the Federated Suns rather desperately needed. To that end she wasn't surprised that there was at least some portion of arms to accompany the patrimony. It was another oddity that they hadn't fought on Mallory's world, or Halstead station... but by all indications he'd been travelling if not alone at the time he'd been travelling with very few retainers. MIIO's working theory was that the Combine's scorched earth tactics had temporarily stranded them on the planet and forced them into an engagement with the invaders.

It was all speculation. That and it had been mildly amusing to watch the undue shock at the cadet unit come apart when faced with a professional house hold unit. It was better that they learn now, rather than find themselves out in the field... but this was generally the role of the graduation test's OpFor against the DMM usually.

Coleridge was understandably quite embarrassed as well though not quite for the same reasons regarding the cadets performance. While Coleridge was embarrassed that the cadets had failed to stop a small noble retinue, their guest lecturer was already trying to diagnose how 'they had messed things up that badly'. There were some rapid fire questions between the young man and his staff and the academy's staff, but it was a frenzied activity that would have been all but impossible to fake.

... some people were simply this way. That of course was grounds for as much concern, because if he were 'honest and true' then that made him FedSuns, and that made him a target to their enemies. Combine propaganda of the last year had conceded the defeat at Halstead station by eulogizing the death of the second of light, as honorable warriors who had gone to their deaths in hopes of avenging Yorinaga Kurita. It was a statement of bushido, and the combine notion of honor that this was vendetta pursued between warriors.

... The Combine proganda ministry 'the voice of the dragon' had of course exagerated Davion losses and all but ignored their own militia units presence, making it seem as if it had been a battle strictly between the most elite of units... and all mechwarriors. They'd gone so far as to suggest that 'the Rapid Fox' had been using a semi legendary late Star League warmachine called a Nightstar to fight Yorinaga. An assault mech versus... presumably whatever lostech star league machine that was itself the same mass as Yorinaga's warhammer... but it was a classical attempt to save face by the combine. They portrayed the enemy battlemech as a shadowy unknown never clearly seen properly force of nature more than a real weapon of war.

Yvonne unlike most paid attention to the distinction that Rabid Fox was the name of the mech, not the pilot's call sign. 4 Large Lasers ... probably even Star League extended range models in the hands of an accomplished gunner were something to be afraid of. It also demonstrated that the machine did have heat issues, it was erratic in its ability to control heat, and so far as they had noticed it was only one of its kind... and its pilot had demonstrated that his gunnery, particularly in an academy Rifleman was very accurate befitting a clearly experienced mechwarrior.

It suggested further away from the centers of power, though probably not the deep periphery.
--
With a quick glance at the cheat sheet he'd drawn up he was trying to figure out where things had gone wrong. The Trebuchet and Centurions were all Inner Sphere standard mechs. They didn't have clan equivalent weapons as upgrades... it was all standard technology. The math was there and scratched out.


He reached over and sipped his coffee. The first portion of the engagement was fairly standard battle doctrine without amror or defensive infantry to screen both Mech forces had moved to engage aggressively. Mass LRM fire had answered from the trebuchets and centurions... and these centurions were standard Als using the inefficent by weight and heat LRM 10s.

Still that was equivalent to an entire battle group of LRM carriers massing a strike to open. That had probably contributed to the initial confusion... that was understandable that was over four hundred missiles cycling out over the span of seconds... and the missible boats had then selected targets to mass on.

There had not been any armor breaches, unfortunate ammunition cook offs or other lucky hits in the first thirty seconds of the simulated excercise. The two sides had moved into range brackets where PPCs, and Large lasers could come into play and it was also the range that class ten auto cannons and below should have come into play, but seemed to have been the problem. Justin had started firing with his blackjack but the the 40mm GM Autocannons just lacked the effective damage output to make it count... not when Centurion AL models mounted heavier armor than the usual.

The following stage was rather predictable battlefield dispersion as massed LRM 15 fires from the Trebuchets continued until the missile boats ran dry. That massed fire though had started to acrue such that by the time they had emptied their LRM bins they were able to move up and support with their medium lasers, and then enter melee range in support of the centurions.

... which just reminded him that these Centurion Als were standard configuration with a rear facing medium laser. He had rushed this force table. The Centurions had then congregated letting the 5Ns assume primary facing while they emptied off their own missiles, on targets of opportunity.

Was that where things had gone wrong? Had the cadets, and he didn't have their communications logs to review, had they expected this to be individual mechwarriors? That would be silly wouldn't it, they had a numerical advantage against the enemy, had there not been a clear direction to specify what needed to die first? Or was it not clear given they were fighting six of one mech and six of another but the models were identical?

He drained the stainless steel insulated cup of its precious black coffee.

There had been no attempt to maneuver an element to bring fire onto the enemy flank. That was an obvious mistake especially given their numerical advantage. That was certainly something he was going to put into writing... if he didn't Coleridge or whoever the Vice Chancellor had review the simulated battle rom of the war game would and probably chew out their asses.

"Well?" Colonel Coleridge who looked like he was about to jump out of his skin started to speak at the Field Marshal's question, but couldn't muster a response, and Yvonne Davion turned, "What do you think?"

"I think that this could have actually been worse. These are non optimized," He flinched, "That is to say these centurions haven't completed a planned refurbishment to improve combat efficacy and were thus operating ..." He rested his head in his hands... "We were going to put Zeus LRM 15s and drop a ton of ammo from their bins, get rid of the small laser." Was it perfect no, but as a short endurance attacker it was good enough... and it would have simplified logistics with the trebuchets... actually he'd probably insist the techs get rid of the Phostechs in favor Magna Mk II Medium lasers... but he decided not to say that..."I... no what we need to have them write up what they think they did wrong to have this result... preferably without them blaming one another." More than they probably already were... he didn't voice that either.

Coleridge half turned looked at him, and started to say something but Yvonne cut him off. "I want to hear more of this." Because of course reducing ammo for a more ammo intensive weapon only made sense in a very short term engagement... but of course these weren't standard centurions that were already carrying a lot of ammo anyway and the idea was to have everyone mass shots as a company level unit of battle before engaging in direct fire attacks, and then ultimately in close range. The LRMs were the only thing, in their inner sphere standard versions, with a minimum arm range after all. "So run again it again when this unit is actually at intended fighting form." The Field Marshal ordered... even though Colonel Coleridge protested that decision.

--
Yvonne Davion watched the manic energy rather akin to Banzai Buckaroo fade. The young mechwarrior had put the candidates through whether he'd conciously considered a handicap or not a test that he'd considered that they'd do well in.

The rolling tide of commentary, and notion of how to were innovative, on both sides. It wasn't advertised and it certainly hadn't made the Combine's propanda reels escuses to try and turn around a moralizing message of duty and honor, but there had been a combined arms aspect on Halstead Station, and Mallory's world as well.

The destruction of 2nd​ Sword of Light had in part involved the destruction of their armor and infantry against the Robinson Rangers Armor and Infantry with the latter eventually being further reinforced as mechs rejoined the other arms of battle. The challenge on the fields of Madison had involved tanks and dug infantry firing on Sword of Light Mechs keeping them in a rough V forward of the Rabid Fox allowing the MechWarrior to line up shots offten taking headshots.

The close back into urban fighting had further reiterated accuracy and pin point shooting on targets which, the battle roms, had made the rounds after the battle had ended. She expected that Lord Aaron would likely hear about this excercise sooner rather than later, which likely would mean a contingent from the Robinson Rangers, nominally as the academy OpFor, would show up and in academic espionage gather whatever they could to them disseminate to the Robinson Battle Academy.

Not that her own Alma Mater Albion hadn't asked her to more or less do the same thing... but that was how the academy were. They also wanted to hear about what each other were up to... and Sakhara had a reputation.

If the proposed upgrade was carried out, the time of active missiles would decline, but would be ninety missiles from the six centurions as a massed unit. An increase by 30, which wasn't insignificant.... the use of a common launcher also made sense.
--
Note: Question, because Sarna fails me, who in the early 31st​ century rules Markesan.

I had originally planned to consider putting Yvonne as duchess of Markesan, but some searching around suggests she's duchess of Victoria as she's from that branch of the Davion family.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Chapter 1.4​

Alexandria Cunningham was bordering on infuriated. Anger was a weakness, being publicly angry was something people would use against you. You needed to be cool and collected. Cold even, better to be an icy bitch... than...

Alfonso Juan Diaz had deliberately ignored her instructions and his lance had followed him in pressing an attack in close order. Watching the digital displays of having his heavy mech be kicked while it was down by a trio of fifty tonners had been only mildly cathartic. Not when the other three fifty tonners in the opposing force had begun to turn their large lasers on her now exposed flank.

Not that Justin Xiang Allard had done much better, after his own lance leader had been knocked out of the simulation he had tried to rally his lance mates but not in a way that would have allowed her to salvage the situation. She was embarressed by that, but she was embarressed that they'd been thrown into this situation by Allard and Diaz being caught after getting a fist fight of all things. Their indiscretion of being caught in a public heated altercation was made all the worse by the involvement of third parties.

Third parties who just didnt' get it.

The instructor who was nominally her superior, the noble who should have been roughly her equal, and the student who should have been her junior the twisting lack of a natural hiearchy made a mess of things.

"What are you doing?" She demanded.

He blinked and looked up at her, hearing her question, and idly scratched behind his ear. The holographic images of battlemechs dancing in front of him.

Archer Thunderbolt, Warhammer Pillager... So many other Mechs too for that matter.

He looked up at the sudden question ... musing that he needed to find the time to visit Robinson.... but FtL made even short hops annoying. And it was three jumps... but it was a lot easier to petition the Duke of House Sandoval, who was also the Field Marshal of the Draconis March to talk about things than go to New Avalon and have to fight to get an appointment with Ian Davion who as first prince was very busy. "Ah, well I had a conversation with the techs, and the Field Marshal, and Robinson has a BattleMech facility that seems to do with some overhaul."

Alexandria blinked at him like ... well they were from different planets, but the idea held. He wasn't just going to tell her about hte JumpShip yard, but hadn't New Avalon gotten a centurion line recently if that was the case surely the DMM could do with one of its own sooner rather than later.

"And you can just invest money like that?"

"Well yes." He replied, "Money is best invested rather just sitting idle in a treasury." And of course logistics won wars, and with how slow BT jump drives were, well he had a lot of work to do. He coughed slightly, "That isn't to say i encourage prolifagte spending, and defense spending should be reasonably considered, but," He trailed off. He knew that House Sandoval, he knew how House Sandoval felt about the Combine,and well he decided to avoid the discussion of moral justifications for war against the combine, and their role in at least starting the shooting phase of the succession wars. "Anyway, that isn't why you're here. We need to discuss what went wrong." Her face twitched for a moment, but she sat down across from him, with resignation.

That they'd been given a handicap, had never occured to Alexandria. It only made her more annoyed at everything that had gone wrong over the last few days... and the month wasn't even over yet, never mind the end of the semester. Hazel eyes narrowed and met his blue gray ones.

"We're going to have to organize lessons in more effective and larger based unit activities and roles." He replied, If I could I'd go and integrate combined arms, but I think at this stage we'd better stick to working with integrating lances operating at the company level." He continued, "The Field Marshal wants the class ready for run against the unit next month... before the end of November."
--
He had spent the better part of the afternoon of the 24th​ doing things like that. Conversations with cadets, often those who were in their late teens, or early twenties... Sakhara like most prestigious academies allowed early entry as he himself was a technical example of... though that was in part a direct command / request of the head of state.

By the time he was done, by the time the sun had set on the campus he was ready to get out of the school room he had occupied for the last several hours and go deal with other things. He wasn't expecting another run in with Field Marshal Davion. "I'm told you were planning to visit Robinson, and that you've requested a meeting with Corean Enterprises."

Was that their official name, he briefly wondered if he had accidentally called them Corean Industries earlier... but it was true. The truth was they made both the Trebuchet and Centurion within the Federated Suns and well since they had just built a Centurion line on New Avalon it seemed like a good idea to get on them about partnering to build other new Mech Lines. It made sense to approach an experienced industrial partner ... but he had floated the idea but hadn't yet actually gone forward to speak to Lord Aaron, the duke of Robinson on the matter.

"Yes, perhaps over the New Year." He hedged.

"Lord Aaron, I have been told will be visiting Sakhara." She remarked. He got the feeling that the field Marshal was telling him this not so much because she wanted to but because she was moving to beat someone else to the punch. "Which brings us to the matter of the recent excerises."

He restrained the groan that threatened to escape him. He'd thrown the excercise together as a way to distract Coleridge and now people were acting as if he'd ... well the scuttlebut had started bringing up Halstead, and Mallory again as if he'd put the excercise together expecting Sakhara to deliver the goods and when they hadn't ... well the other teachers in the MechWarrior contingent were under Coleridge's scrutiny, and that was never a good thing. Of course the Vice Chancellor had over the last day and a half been under the field marshal's scrutiny so the colonel was just pushing it down the chain. A pending visit from the Duke of Robinson likely didn't do anything for the pressure on Coleridge to achieve results.

When you got right down to it though, he wanted an established industrial partner to emphasize the BattleMech front. He'd partner with Corean, or Robinson's local businesses if that would get things up and running and provide security and investments so he could focus on bringing a Shipyard online.

The conversation promised to be resumed later, and retired for the evening to look at the massive numbers that would facilitate all of this.

One Star Lord class JumpShip Model of 2841 had a BV 615 or 2.391 Billion C Bills, that was rounded down. There was another half million as well. He almost coughed blood, having nearly bit his tongue, and nearly knocking over his coffee when he noticed the sixty ton 'Morningstar City Command Vehicle' was a mere 458 BV but had a positively insane 5.2 Billion price tag.

He looked at the display, reached for a towel wiped his lip, and then looked out hte window to the desert. This was useful A sixty ton vehicle would be far far less likely to be seen by anyone who would later ask questions about... he'd deploy it from his landhold...

The SFU, small factory unit, were 627 BV and a price tag of call it 33 Million C-Bills. That was to say a very expensive mech. The MFU sat at 1.2 Billion C-Bills for a BV of almost 1700. It would have been very inefficent to use C-Bills to purchase them in comparison.

The F 77 Deathstalker cost 4.8M C Bills a plan, roughly, and had a BV of 1714. Meaning that each Deathstalker he spawned and then sold was roughly equivalent, generated a net surplus to purchasing an MFU. He needed 30 MFUs or a trinary of fighters to use clan lingo.

4.8M C Bills or more correctly 30 F 77s had a price tag of 145227600 C Bills. Pocket change from selling a Star Lord never mind one of these ridiculous Morningstar things. 145 million C Bills would be deducted from the original Star Lord recycle value of 2391551083 C Bills leaving him a comfortable capital reserve of 2.246 Billion C Bills.

From which he'd have to pay for 50 SFU which out of the price tag of the original value of 1648350000 C Bills. It was enough to make his head swim.

Double checking his math again, he prepared to completely change the succession wars again. He had already decided to sacrifice one Star Lord. To recycle a jumpship people in this time viewed as priceless. That money would build fifty 2500 ton small factory units. From the remaining excess He'd gladly spend the c bill expense for thirty fighters turn around recycle them for BV necessary for the medium factory units.

He hand hovered the confirm key on things...did he go ahead and order it or should he wait and talke to the duke of Robinson first. Shouldn't they spend some of that excess C Bills to secure the support of Corean Enterprises to shore up the ground forces of the Draconis March.

He decided to wait on the actual deployment of the factory units... and instead fell back on the couch to sleep to the digital display of C bills measured in billions. It was lucky for ComStar he couldn't cash the C Bills out into some successor states currency and fuck with the Capellan's currency at the same time... this was true economic warfare.
--
"You look like you're in a good mood." Justin groused wiping the sweat from his forehead.

"I am." He paused, and looked at the Black Jack pilot. "Its something else, has nothing to do with your class." Another pause, "Don't take that the wrong way. I just have a lot going on." Justin still sporting a taped nose crossed his arms over his chest.

"We got our asses kicked." Justin opined bluntly putting one foot up on the bleacher in front of him., "The whole class is at loggerheads."

"Well it gets worse, the Duke of Robinson is apparently visiting, and Field Marshal Davion wants the machines refit to their intended configuration with plans to run a second test in a couple of weeks."

"So what we can get our asses kicked harder?" He demanded. "Yeah, thanks for that." Came the sullen continuance as Justin leaned forward onto the bleachers as they continued to wait for the rest of the runners to finish their set. "So what are we doing?"

"Stress test."

There was a pause "... excuse me?"

"Give it a moment, I don't want to have this interrogation twice." Another group of runners finished and one Countess of Kestrel her hair pulled back in a pony tail to keep it out of her way as she ran turned searching the bleachers... probably to make sure they hadn't moved. "Lex, I assume you want an explanation, so this is intended to put the pilots under stress. This isn't an indulgence in masochism its to put you under pressure before an excercise."

... and it wasn't actually his idea. It had been the Star Leagues. Sakhara had been founded by SLDF officers and some of their traditions had survived the fall of the league, and in the face of issues they wanted cadets to be able to excel. He didn't tell them though it hadn't been idea, because frankly he wished he'd kind of thought of it.

The class was after the last set of runners finished were then hustled off to their mechs, and ordered through a series of courses under supervision, within the comfortable embrace of his heavy battlemech's cockpit he watched as the lances gathered themselves up... but this wasn't his excercise to run. The Vice Chancellor had made sure that another mechwarrior instructor, a veteran of the Davion Guards, who was probably old enough to have served under Field Marshal Davion's mother during the later's tenure commanding the brigade was presently extolling the virtues of the autocannon, and of accurate riflery.

It was a wonder the mustaioched senior mechwarrior didn't call it musketry he was so painfully a caricature of the Victorian British officers of the pith helmet. He carried on his exhortations to the cadets for the better part of ten minutes, before he even started to explain what they were supposed to be doing.
--

"Don Juan bank right."

"Why do you keep calling me that, I'm not actually a knight yet."​

 

[Imperator Pax]

Sakhara 1.5​

The weekend had finally dawned, and he had hastily perhaps even in an unseemly manner beaten a retreat to his land hold deep in the red desert and mountains to the northwest of the capital. It had been here that they had conducted testing and evaluation off campus of Justin's class.

Making a decision that might have in itself have been partially ill advised he decided to expanse the small force of Freebirths who had participated in the battle of Halstead Station. On Halstead he had deployed a pair of Zorya light tanks of Clan Hells Horses... today however in similar colors of black of stylized orange flames a Triumph arrived. Its heavy vehicle bays carrying only, admittedly fusion powered, eighty ton IS standard vehicles.

Sckrek and Devastators... the latter some times known as Demolisher Mk III tanks using the same 240 Fusion engine as the triple PPC carrier. The Eight Light Vehicles though were more Zoryas bringing his total to ten.

... but that wasn't all the essence allowed the generation of crew personnel. The ability to give them ATOW esque character builds. While everyone had character skills, and traits, they couldn't be modified after the effect, and all subsequent 'level ups' had to be done manually. He had to spend BV to level up his own skills, which seemed to be the only exception.

Halstead, and of course just recently he'd been in such a rush he hadn't bothered to do anything more than allow auto generation from a list of options and basic backgrounds. The transparent screen prompted him to designate a unit name, and in a fit of pique so was born the Robinson Assault Cluster under one of the few trueborn in the unit utilizing the tanker bloodname Robinson.

The Zorya profile was already known the FedSuns and he doubted the light tanks would attract any further attention... at least as long as he was careful. The 'cluster' was also in its current form very understrength... he could change that later, but for now he just wanted a DropShip full of angry vehicles to give anyone attempting to attack him head on a very bad day.

He was also banking on heavy vehicles, even fusion powered ones so long as they weren't lost tech SLDF designs were unlikely to attract the sort of attention that an equivalent tonnage of mechs would.... it was the reason he had had to pass on spawning similar cost and tonnage Fury Tanks at the moment... a 4.17M C Bills they would have been ideal but they were 'los tech'... but Bristol was 7 Jumps from here.

In order to further obfuscate any other necessities, he also intended to establish a secondary jumpship contingent of nominal Jarnfolk origin, but he probably wouldn't do that until the first of the year. It would provide JumpShips for the Federated Suns in the form of nominally nomadic weirdoes with some ties to himself, but without explicit ownership of such ships... and it would allow him to open up trade away from the front lines with the Draconis Combine. P{erhas a dedicated route from Robinson to New Avalon... or an internal circuit that expanded trade with the interesting worlds of the Federated suns 'interior', rimward... but that would be for later.

While he might expand the Cluster to an actual cluster it would be much much later, though it would probably be a proper assault cluster along Hells Horses lines... the Combine would probably come knocking eventually.

Of that he was sure.

In the mean time though... he needed support personnel. Unlike crew personnel or infantry ... well support personnel only cost 1 BV and were subject to the same character generation as crew personnel. Infantry were way more expensive by comparison, it was quite absurd in his opinion... maybe the essence identified as Clanner, he mused as he scrolled through the cost of infantry equipment.

For that single BV a unique person came into the world. Farmers, blue collar workers, office salaraiman. That was just a handful of inner sphere options. Clan affiliations were broken along caste lines... in the sense of merchant, laborer, technician, and scientist castes.

When you got right down to it, with some finagling he could go find some lost world and build his own hidden world.

--
Yvonne Davion ignorant of machinations within the county to the north east of her present residence. What was really the duke's guest house, and indeed one she suspected signified that her presence alarmed him... most likely his newest noble neighbor, who of course Ian had directly enfeefed to New Avalon was a beacon to invite the Combine to attack.

Which wasn't an unreasonable assumption. Where in trivid blockbusters for the masses there were crass jokes that whole divisions would come crashing down for defiling some nobleman's daughter ... in the Combine's case it wasn't unreasonable to assume that another Sword of Light unit might attempt to avenge the Second's destruction... and it wasn't impossible that some warlord might try to win fame and distinction by acting on his own.

They had no evidence to support such a thing being in the works... and the truth was the DCMS probably were unable to support such an offensive... not after the victories on Mallory's World and Hallstead station the combine's other mech units had taken a beating that would take years to recover from...

... and indeed from their intelligence reports the Combine was proving slower to recoup its losses than expected. Since Halstead Station had been a raid the Combine should have been able to salvage their losses after the battlefield, but it seemed as if the toxic nature of the planet had hampered recovery efforts... not surprising given the loss of the city of Madison as a consequence of the fighting. That bought them time at least... but the Coordinator would need to make a move sooner rather than later it was the nature of the beast.

"Are these the reports?" She asked rhetorically to one of the Davion Guards officers who occupied a position on her staff.

"They are ma'am."

"Anything in particular?"

"Corean Enterprises construction on New Avalon, in particular the cost of the deal to build the battlemech line."

She raised an eyebrow. Most people asking about BattleMech factories wanted ... well other details, things like production volume or in the case of sabotage security procedures... the monetary value of a factory was... was if a corporate interest or noble wanted to know how much something cost... because he wanted it, or a competing option...

... but that was absurd, even the most quintessential lyran social generals didn't pour their entire gdp into new factories for bragging rights... and yet... by all indications they'd seen no evidence that the income earned by the more than a dozen JumpShips now plying routes from New Avalon was doing nothing but sitting idle in the banks.

There had been no activity... despite some of those ships starting their routes in January of 3014.. and those also tended to be the more impressive large Star Lords not the smaller more common Merchants.

Working from the heir theory it wasn't unlikely that the day to day expenses of maintaining a noble household couldn't be maintained through another account, perhaps money inherited alongside the JumpShips themselves, but even so the complete lack of movement in the cash from the carrying trade was unusual.

... but she was already over the line with the DMI's mandate and into MIIO's territory. She'd need to pass it along or there would be a turf war, especially if there was nothing here. If this was completely benign and for the benefit of the Federated Suns... well the succession wars had reiterated the Age of War before it the lesson of don't kill golden geese... and more importantly don't allow rival kingdoms to kill your golden geese.
--
He made the return to campus Sunday evening, and Monday morning had found himself in a conversation the officer who served as the 5th​ Guards liaison... who was himself embroiled in a discussion, by the time he arrived, about the planned new garrison for the RCT on Spica.

Spica.

Now there was something he dreaded. He remembered painfully little of the details of the warrior trilogy, and in truth he liked the actual Justin Allard moody teen mechwarrior more than what he remembered of the protagonist of the trilogy... and while quintessentially BattleTech and emblematic even of the sort of table top rpg games he would play in another world... he wasn't sure he could allow by choice the events of the novel to play out.

There in sort of lay the logistical issue... "Correct me if I am mistaken but Spica is, by its most direct JumpShip route, fifteen jumps?"

"That is correct." The officer from the fifth replied clearly weighing his age versus his reputation... and it looked like his age was winning that. The truth was it couldn't really be helped, and to a degree was probably to be expected. Some people were just not going to get around it.

"And that assumes you want to to jump into capellan space." The Field Marshal remarked.

"Which I wouldn't be," He replied, unless he was invading... and well if he was doing that... well Star Lords were cheap, so much cheaper than outfitting them with the necessary invasion force to bring a planet to heel... but he reminded himself that he could not do that. He wasn't the wolf dragoons spawning five regiments of pristine battlemechs was absolutely out of the question... "that's about twice the distance I'm comfortable with, to be honest." Doing the mental math of 15 jumps that was a hundred and ten days... three and a half months. That was just one way, and even without skirting the border issue at almost 360 ly distance ... too far. "Its too far," He muttered.

His mental mathematics were abrogated as the Chancellor cleared his throat... "I am pleased to announce to you all that our storied institution will be playing host to a special event. His Grace the Duke of Robinson is en route with the finest cadets of the RBA looking to test themselves against our own, in addition we will be playing host with another Opposing Force Candidates as well." The chancellor's words were perfunctory, rehearsed, calm.

Vice Chancellor Coleridge immediately left the stage as soon as the polite applause for the Chancellor ended and made a beeline to the cluster he was standing amidst. Sakhara was fully prepared to host RBA or DMM OpFor... but they absolutely wanted to win. Coleridge wanted to win. Enough that if he could have gotten away with it ... well he'd have resorted to a change in line up... but the Chancellor had refused to allow it. So Colonel Coleridge intended for the next best thing... the cadets needed to be ready.

A readiness he did not believe that they had achieved in part due to the events of the previous week.. not only were there extant disciplinary problems one of the more capable classes of mechwarriors had been trounced by an OpFor unit despite their numerical advantage. To Coleridge this signified that they weren't ready... and that meant pushing them to do better.

--
Notes: Yes theoretically a a union might occur in the 3040s but that would run into pother potential issues that I have planned in that part of the timeline. That being said the Essence says don't worry about where the money goes so I won't.

But 'recycling' well those recycled HPGs are going to end up somewhere and with knock on consequences down the road, after all the successor states would pay money for those... but thats down the road.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Sakhara 1.6​

This conversation had quickly gotten out of hand. Damage control seemed to be having the opposite of intended effects. "You had to scrap a Star Lord." She repeated.

"We had to," He stopped ran his hand through his hair, and gestured to the star map, but mostly as a distraction from the consideration of how what he had just said must have sounded. "JumpDrives were first theorized as possible before fusion engines became practical. They are a mature technology," in so far as their development had plateaued and there had been no breakthrough in standard drives leading to drives capable of reliably making more than 30ly jumps without damage... and frankly he wouldn't have been surprised if the great houses had decided that was for the best... that was to speculate that maybe the inner sphere all of the inner sphere rulers had decided in the Age of War that jump drives capable of more than thirty light years would risk damaging the status quo. Regardless... "So yes, a Star Lord needed to be recycled, , and a yard needs to be established..."

Incredulity followed.

"Sakhara has Germanium reserves." It wasn't a question. It was part of the reason after all the planet was originally settled.

"Yes," He replied, "And that helps certainly..." He shut up... don't bring up asteroid mining, he got the feeling people wouldn't get it, and the hole was probably deep enough.

The star map showed the standard jump route from Sakhara to New Avalon. Seven Jumps.

From Sakhara to Bettendorf, then to Allerton, from there to DeWitt, Kestrel, to Kirklin, Coloma, and New Avalon. One hundred sixty four light years. Just under two months; roughly 51 days. It would have honestly been easier, and shorter loop basing from Robinson but it didn't matter.

There was a pause, and then something approaching understanding, "So what you are proposing are," She paused "subsidies?"

"No."

The incredulity returned "No?"

"No. The shipyard can be completed I think within the year. What I am proposing is Davion first right to ships at public sale."

There was a look, "Public sale?"

"Yes, yes," He trailed off, "At full capacity a shipyard of tonnage and with sufficient Germanium should produce two maybe three a year. There are limits to machinery, and next year I only expect to produce a single Star Lord but that's mostly a breaking in process of the yard... So thus I expect to be able to bring the yard online, replace the ship I had to scrap, and then produce for market, and move from there."

There was a pause, and she went for the simplest question "And in return?"

"In return I need support to procure the experts to handle other industrial projects. I need transit and construction privileges on Bettendorf and Franklin as well. Its also why I needed to talk to Corean Enterprises about BattleMech lines. I'd like an introduction to New Valencia's Blackwell corporation.. and I also want legal rights and properties on Bristol." Bristol was five jumps from New Avalon, "Where among other things I'd like to eventually build a second shipyard."

"A second?" The Field Marshal looked faint.

"My understanding of the Federated Suns most immediate economic problem is the lack of tonnage by merchant shipping. I do not wish to deploy voidships to foreign ports of call, but I accept that is idealistic and impractical. In short I have the resources and organizational ability to expand shipping but I need ground based partners for security." Which was only partially true. "I also accept that part of the feudal contract is the expectation of future military engagement."

--
It was the sort of thing which could never be allowed get out. In fact it took a great deal of restraint not to insist they leave immediately for New Avalon to discuss final terms in writing with the First Prince.

The nail had been hit on the head.

No successor state had the jumpship capacity to meet actual demand. Assuming this wasn't youthful exaggeration it was the sort of delivery that would have yielded whole planets, never mind minor land hold concessions... forget being a minor noble for military aid a shipyard in the modern era would significantly change the balance of power. Given house Davion first bid on ships at market promised to expand the Federated Suns fleet of expressly military ships and would further reduce the need to impress merchant shipping.

... well more than necessary...

It could not be permitted to escape... but it was also far beyond her remit, and boundaries. If she had been anyone else other than a loyal daughter of House Davion any other duchess she'd have been bartering to have her own personal domain enriched by this deal.

... but Yvonne Davion was loyal to the dynasty, and the state. It was important the shipyard remained outside of the scope of conversation with the duke of Robinson until the matter was concluded. It didn't escape her that Bristol probably had some other value to it, but that was something they could ferret out later.

Sakhara to Bristol was seven jumps.

162 light years. 51 Days.

Unlike the route to New Avalon though it passed through Robinson where there was already a jump route from Sakhara running.

Sakhara to Bettendorf. That explained his desire to secure rights to the system from Sakhara it was the first stop and last stop in the chains going and coming respectively. From Bettendorf the next world in the route to Bristol was of course Franklin, and then Robinson. Presumably he expected to be able to work out some arrangement personally with Lord Aaron. From Robinson the second leg of the journey entailed jumping to Blandinsville, Cholame then Batavia.

Bristol to New Avalon was five jumps. Frist to Batavia then to Markesan, from there to Chebanse and then to odell before the final Jump to the capital of the Federated Suns. He had also hinted that he could bring forward other merchant support which almost certainly insured a trade revival, and had the potential to be economically lucrative for both the Draconis and Crucis Marches.

She couldn't afford to send this via HPG. No. Far too frequently ComStar had acted against the interests of the Great Houses despite their protests of neutrality... too frequently also did it seem as if messages sent via ComStar did their contents end up in the hands of the Draconis Combine. More than that, it was paramount that it not reach other nobles of the Federated Suns... she could only imagine what Michael Hasek or a few others might react to the prospect of a New Avalon vassal being able to offer the dukes of New Avalon such directly. He would most certainly throw a tantrum... like the spoiled entitled little manchild he was.

Ian would need to enfeef his latest vassal as a duke within the crucis march proper, and soon, and before any of his other vassals started to consider marriage prospects. This outing of hers was quickly developing an excessive volume of mission creep. While she had expected to investigate a recent addition to the Federated Suns nobility she had not expected this degree of potential strategic shift... but it would be after the new year before she could hope to bring this in person to the First Prince, and that assumed that Ian would even be on New Avalon by the time she returned given the number of jumps, and the time it would take.

But this whole affair was turning into some sort of depraved Lyran comedy.
--
With only a few days remaining in the month... they had only November as the last full month of classes. As the heiress to the duchy of kestrel she was expected to be a competent mechwarrior, there were expectations that went beyond simply descent from officers of the SLDF who had chosen to side with house Davion against the rampant warmongering and ambitions of House Kurita seeking to usurp the Star League and rule over it.

That was more idealistic than reality. More than anything though she was expected to be a leader, and effective commander rather than the sort of leader who would fight on the front. Planetary rulers needed to be able to delegate those actions to people with the right skill set... but she still needed to be able to make the correct decisions, and more important be obeyed when she issued orders.

Was it her failure? Or the blockheads in the unit? Had they actually been meant to fail? The egotistical posturing of her classmates with one another had been a problem, before, but it had been building into a crescendo as the end of the year approached. To that end...

Alexandria Cunningham looked at the skirmishers from the medium battle company. They didn't look that different. The refits with new weapons made some changes, the old medium lasers had been replaced with matching models to the trebuchets. Magna Mk II Medium Lasers, Magna Mk 3 Large laser, Zeus LRM 15 launcher. A launcher that she knew wasn't intended to remain in a fight, the same idea behind the Trebuchets...

... and hopefully the next time they went up against the unit in the simulator her classmates would know expect the fight turning into a melee slugging match once the missiles were expended.

"I really do not understand why mounting medium lasers in the rear was ever a thing." He muttered to the technician as the wind blew sand in all their faces. She heard something about turrets over the wind, but couldn't make it out, nor any more of the conversation until the wind subsided. She watched as he jammed his hands into his pockets and walked in front of the class. "This is familiarization just in case anyone didn't follow the instructions to read the packet." He remarked looking past her to a few of the other cadets in the following rows. "These are a variation of the CN9AL, but they make some changes from the standard AL," From behind him the older instructor squinted slightly, probably in mild disapproval, "that you fought previously. The Zeus launcher is a fifteen shot model, its the same model as on the Trebuchet. More missiles per shot, since we were pulling one phostech we went ahead and pulled the forward mounted one and replaced them both with forward directed Magna Mark two medium lasers."

Nothing she hadn't already read of course.

The idea was that the other mechs in the unit would cover one another.

Something that should have been obvious to everyone when they'd come out of the simulation.

Missiles, and large lasers at distance to soften and close in. Two groups of six rather than three lances, but there was nothing stopping them from acting in that capacity. If anything that was a noteworthy distinction. It took more effort to direct six mechs than four. The company commander and his second in command were evenly splitting their force, and it meant that three trebuchets could fire from each side.

One of the cadets raised his hands, and there was a side bar about weapons. It boiled down to why not the AH with its assault auto cannon. Survivability. Trying to force a Zeus launcher on the AH would require reducing armor down to 7.5 tons of battle plate. That had been deemed unacceptable.

"For true close range suppression I expect that the company can rely on the Devastators."

Another hand went up "What's a Devastator?" A cadet with a pronounced New Avalon accent asked.

"Otherwise known as the Demolisher Mark III Heavy tank, two 185mm Chem Jet Assault class auto cannons, 240 Fusion engine," He ticked off an arsenal of other weapons... that could largely be summarized as standing in front of the assault vehicle was suicidal. It seemed to have been designed with the intention of kill anything stupid enough to get close. "The same for PPCs, Schrek ppc carriers are available, same engine as the Devastator."

Which given that was also an eighty ton tank suggested that as with the fifty ton mechs the two tank models were paired together to make up for their range brackets. The Schreks focused on targets at range, and anything that did get close would face itself with perhaps two or three Devastors. That meant missile support didn't need to be continuous, the BattleMechs could supply it at the start of the battle allowing the slower tanks to maneuver into position.

She felt stupid raising her hand, but all the others were doing, thankfully he didn't compound it by calling her Lady Lex from the front of the assembly, "Alexandria?"

"Will we be facing combat vehicles in the exercise?"

"These ones as opposing forces no. I have plans to run drills using house hold troops to simulate larger troop exercises but that simulation is still being evaluated. These units will not be involved here."

... oh lovely another exercise for them to make fools of themselves in... just what she wanted to hear... but it did tell her to expect facing armored vehicles in the exercise, which was realistic. BattleMechs were best answered by other Mechs, but the bulk of armies were older less expensive weapons, infantry and vehicles powered by internal combustion engines with ballistic weapons were the norm across the inner sphere and the periphery.
They were moving through the exercise field. This was strictly a maneuver exercise. All weapons were safe and they were relying strictly on moving and commanding, She was dictating who was supposed to go where without actually firing weapons.

The dozen fifty tonners were doing the same separately but she had no diea how well they were doing in comparison.

She knew that if this was an endurance course that they'd be at a disadvantage. She had identified that on realization of just how limited their ammunition load outs were... the problem was that in an exercise... they would have to last long enough for the enemy to run out of missiles without suffering critical damage on their side.

"You're doing fine." The voice from the seventy ton mech remarked. "We're still sitting ahead of par time." She ignored the rest of the pep talk. She didn't need it, and pressed the talk on her radio set before ordering Justin to scout ahead.

Across the sands in the Davion command post Field Marshal Davion leaned over the console, as they watched a Blackjack jump forward "How are they doing?"

"The cadets are," The officer stumbled consulted his map, " are just coming up on waypoint Charlie Ma'am. They're about seventy percent through the course, there have been no major issues."

"Not them, the Rabid Foxes. The house guard?" She continued to make sure she was clear about who she was talking too.

"Oh they should be coming into the final loop in another five ten minutes they should be back with us."

"Not terribly surprising there Field Marshal," Colonel Coleridge remarked trying to remain in polite good graces of the MI2 Director.

"What's not surprising colonel?"

"Just that well obviously," He waffled, but he ultimately did have a point. "A man has to learn to ride somewhere, yes?" That made sense. Teenagers did not just murder their way through elite Combine MechWarriors without having learned the MechWarrior trade somewhere, while perhaps not as effective as their master there was no questioning that they were professional soldiers and well acquainted with the machines they had.

So why did she still view the Corean interests with suspicion... because its all too good to be true her subconscious replied. Everything seemed to have the potential to go so right for the Federated Suns, for House Davion, and that worried her... but if all of this was real... well her golden goose musings remained.
--
Notes: One should look at what all takes a Pitban 240 Fusion engine. Also I will be putting up the more Periphery (Aurigan/Rimward) centric Essence fic tomorrow probably along with probably also my Battletech misc thread as well.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Sakhara
1.7​

--
Another day of wondering if they'd looked like idiots out there. It wasn't self doubt, her self criticism was rooted in whether they looked like idiots, not whether or not they really were idiots. Sakhara had a reputation that was more than the family names of graduates.

She took the evaluation without looking him in the eye, and her mouth set in an even line but really they had done well by any reasonable metric. Colerdige had no grounds to complain , nothing had gone wrong with the exercise. Alexandria should have been happy that there hadn't been any screw ups to make her look bad, but she'd spent the exercise stifling under the impressions of leadership.

Not because she couldn't handle the exercise but because the exercise gave that impression. It didn't help that it was now in the upper nineties as the sun reached its peak and day time temperatures were at their all time high... and she had already been sweating from the pre exercise morning run, so her long dark hair, which had come loose from her ponytail was starting to stick to her face.

It didn't help when she nearly fumbled to catch the water bottle tossed in her direction... and Justin Xiang Allard did snatch his out of the air. "Thanks." He grunted, before even looking at his evaluation. "Huh, what's this?"

"I know we talked about this last week, but I'm serious Justin the Black Jack as a mech is holding you back. A rifleman, even a Centurion would be a much better fit."

Alexandria glanced between the two. The Rifleman was his alternate mech of choice she'd seen him take an Academy Rifleman through a handful of the fire courses their class had been running this semester. Justin stared at him, "You said putting me in a Warhammer wouldn't make a difference."

"No I said putting you in a warhammer wouldn't change your chances of getting a different post graduate tour of duty," That wasn't necessarily true Alexandria silently observed. Given his position he could have easily asked and received Justin's posting as a secondment to a nominal staff position... it would have been typical of noble favor trading, but she didn't say that, "A heavy mech would almost certainly better reflect your fighting style."

"He's right," A large weathered hand clapped Allard on the shoulder, "Something like a Centurion AH would be more your style." The mustachioed officer remarked paused thoughtfully and then added. "Or a Hunchback."

Henry Clay's eyes alit, "That's an idea too, we've got a number of 185s in the spare parts." There was a reply of agreement saying that the ChemJets were good guns that only emphasized the odd social station of this gathering of regular students and their lecturers. "Well we'll see what all Haakon brings me when his caravan gets here." He didn't elaborate what that was supposed to mean, and the instructor just nodded. The older man gave no indication that he knew just that he treated it as normal... presumably it was what it sounded like, Haakon must have been some merchant... probably one of the JumpShip captains in the Rabid Fox's service. "Anyway speaking of a week, you'll need to be ready, I'm sure Coleridge is going to want a rematch sooner."

Justin nodded, "Its cause we didn't -" He paused.

"You didn't botch the course?" Henry suggested politically for once.

"Right, we didn't botch the course." He paused and did the math, "So a bunch of LRM 15 launchers this time." Allard didn't go so far as to actually say they were going to lose, but, "Last time we didn't have any one roll snake eyes, but more missiles coming in their first wave of missiles is going to hit harder, and they'll burn through their ammo quickly, so I expect they'll want to close which means those Large Lasers and then kicks and punches."

She decided not to bring up the previously mentioned detail that the original plan had been presumably to run a repeat of the exercise that had gotten them in this mess presumably closer to the end of November rather than ... presumably the vice chancellor intended to move it up far closer to the beginning... "We're not ready." She interrupted.

Justin nodded, if sullenly, "She's right,"

"I'm glad you appreciate that." He replied,

"Thanks." Allard replied the word dripping with sarcasm, "Oh god, what are you thinking? You said the Duke of Robinson is visiting, so, he's got to be getting her soon if Coleridge wants us to run the exercise sooner rather than later." That was a good point.

"Anyway check your emails, I'll have something out before Thursday, and don't forget I have a planned combined arms familiarization course being prepared."

"Those devastator things?" Justin asked

"Yes." He nodded, "Anyway we've got a staff meeting."

"Yes, we do." The mustachioed instructor agreed, the faintest hint of resignation there for a moment, "as the young man said the Duke of Robinson is visiting."
--
It was Thursday morning.

Captain Haakon was a tall, gangly man with thinning dirty blonde hair. He looked uncomfortable in the full gravity of a planet that dimmed his otherwise gregarious demeanor. Yvonne had evaluated the new arrivals carefully. These Jarnfolk showed no indication of being invaders... of even for that matter having BattleMechs... at least of their own... but Haakon had brought with him a number of JumpShips, and was deferring to the younger man.

It left them largely frozen out of the conversation. This was business. JumpShips were protected assets molesting travelling merchants was a good way to piss off all the other merchants... but it took a lot of effort not to ask what the DropShips were carrying.

It took a lot of effort to stay here and wait in the hopes of some tidbit of information, rather than to badger the Techs manning the areas to give a run down on the various DropShips attached to the JumpShips at Nadir. Like their carriers, the Droppers were all painted in the same style of bright colored animals rendered in slim ribbon like forms interwoven with one another across the hull.

They were immaculate... probably just given a fresh coat of paint before arriving, and reconnecting. There was more going on here. She could feel it... this wasn't just she'd almost say Haakon was here to pay homage.

A part of her, attempting to divorce from preconceived notions, chauvinism of the inner sphere suggested it was possible that it wasn't impossible that there were deep periphery civilizations that still had jumpship manufacturing technology. Worlds that hadn't been subject to Amaris or the succession wars...

... and the idea that the JarnFolk had broken from Rasalhague and escaped the Combine had the ring of truth, it was plausible. They had been separated from each other for centuries and that the JarnFolk was still obviously hostile to the combine did as a body politic prefer isolationism rather than any other option. A realpolitik answer to the Combine being too powerful for a periphery state to face head on.

... but not everyone liked realpolitik so in theory here they were. That would be the story they would tell in secret... but for the most part he would let the JarnFolk go and trade using his landhold's port as home where they needed, and any other ports on any other worlds he could lay claim to... but the fleet would be left to its own devices... because he wanted to bolster the Federated Suns more ... "Field Marshal Davion?"

Yvonne paused, and bought time by taking a sip from her tea cup. As duchess of Victoria it was very difficult not to exercise effort on her domain, and her cadet branch's behalf in situations like these. It hadn't escaped her that her family seat was almost double the distance of the comfort zone, Bristol wasn't much better... she had considered bringing up the star charts which showed a number of dead abandoned worlds but it ran into the same problems. Rushing off to New Avalon would likely be the correct decision for the dynasty and the realm as a whole for all the disruptions it might cause... potentially being able to say the first shipyard to somewhere deeper in the FedSuns as a realm though seemed more practical to its defense... and that could be wagered if Ian just saw sense and awarded the entire planet to go along with it.
--
The JarnFolk detachment of JumpShips was a purely mercantile venture. A mix of Star Lords supported by Merchants and with a mass of cargo dropships of various makes. That was multifold, but its first priority was to give cover for any construction that took place. 'Oh we imported it from trade with the JarnFolk', but it was also to sustain a merchant fleet in operation with a separation from his own. They'd take up trade routes from Sakhara to Robinson and in the area of the Draconis March, and that would potentially free his public JumpShips to focus on permanent routes to and from the interior of Davion Space.

There would inevitably be push back from mercantile interests but the JarnFolk were a feasible cover hopefully until clear capital lines could be set up for domestic production. Once factories were up and making money he could scale back such things... but he needed to be able to justify putting up a JumpShip Yard, and that meant both the machinery had to come from somewhere, and that there needed to be an explanation.

Mules were large but not quite large enough for what he needed so that mandated the presence of Behemoth class DropShips, which was a dice role... but they were thankfully sub nine hundred in BV. The whole trade fleet was still more than a years accumulation but he'd be relying on spending C-Bills to bring anything else online, and hoping he didn't even need to do that.

He calculated via the power of almighty napkin math that he was at the threshold where even with the excuse of needing to bring in partners there was too much attention right now. He needed to bring on actual established partners, and he needed to do it soon while reaffirming his legal and social status benefits.

In short Yvonne Davion's proposed new Avalon trip was almost certainly a step in the right direction... but it would also have to wait until the New Year.. but it was impossible to put it off until this year's graduation... but with Lord Aaron, the duke of Robinson due as early as the end of the first week of November leaving now wasn't an option.

Still if he did miss graduation this year, since he probably wouldn't return until potentially June that was going to mean missing most of the class shipping out to their unit postings. "What do you think Haakon?"

The Jarnfolk thane nodded, "The intention was to build two shipyards, my Jarl," He reminded, "Changing their order might not overly complicate such things. The halls here will always be more vulnerable, and waiting would allow more fighters to be based here."

Henry had always liked the slantback, and preceding swept wing design hadn't been hard with the essence to modify and play with... the basic model was cheap in cash terms even with its LosTech weapons. He waved a hand calling up the interface, "The Factory units are already configured and can produce the 240 engines...there are a lot of things we could manufacture or furnish replacement engines for in that weight range, but I think we should wait."

"So you'll be going..."

"Well I meant wait until Lord Aaron gets here," The whole point after all of the engines had been tanks, and marketing to the DMM. The current Duke of Robinson was a tanker after all. "Whatever we do I still would like the Titans detached."

"Of course that was always the plan." The rake thin man replied.

He might have preferred if regardless of being in runestone esque ribbons clearly showed ravens in flight along the two large dropships hulls. They'd been very expensive, but he was almost inured to the idea of cost when dealing with fighter prices. He hadn't seriously opened discussions yet with the Federated Suns about DropShip and ASF manufacture, but that was a point of consideration...

--

Sand kicked up everywhere as the egg shaped forms descended and then touched down. "The Duke of Robinson will be arriving before their drives are charged."

"I'm aware." He replied. "Hell I don't know if those behomoths will be done unloading by the time he arrives so it doesn't really matter." The mules at least could land on a planet's surface.

"So what did your friend bring you?"

"Mostly parts, I'm hoping to talk Corean into helping construct a line here, to manufacture new build Centurions, it'd be a lot simpler than shipping them from New Avalon." He replied as the Mules were sprayed down with foam. "And truthfully once we have a chassis manufacturing," Forging, casting, whatever, "I expect we will be able start building heavier vehicles. I had considered sending Haakon to negotiate with Mountain Wolf for manufacturing rights for their Merlin."

"What's that?" Justin questioned entering the conversation.

"Its like a Vindicator but it doesn't suck." Don Juan declared from behind them.

"I mean... sort of yes. Its a heavy mech. Mixed armaments."

Alexandria nodded, "Its the first recent new BattleMech design, what about New Valencia?"

"My understanding is they have some kind of exclusivity agreement with the Wolf Dragoons, and they are a small parts manufacturer so I don't know. It'll really depend on what gets said." He shook his head as the vehicles started preparing to clean the foam off and doing whatever safety checks they needed before they could start unloading. "Anyway, for me the bigger concern is what Lord Aaron has to say."

 

[Imperator Pax]

Sakhara 1.8​

Yvonne Davion couldn't quite say honestly she was glad that Lord Aaron of House Sandoval had arrived... it did eliminate the waiting portion of the problem. It was difficult to deal with that her current conundrum was Jackson's age. The idea that Jackson could have given her these sorts of problems was absurd...

"I need you to repeat that again."

"Amaris had surviving children." He repeated, and shrugged. "The whys, how and specifics I don't know only that that's the case." The somewhat amusingly named Colonel Robinson of Clay's Armor Force, named the Assault Cluster, nodded eyes narrowed in a ferocious scowl but didnt' say anything. "Admittedly House Amaris surviving in the former rimworld was one thing, but besides cousins and nephews there were direct descendants and... "


And there were mad men who wanted to restore the Rim World's Empire, or fight the whole Inner Sphere. There was even some horrible little world on the periphery ruled by the von Strang's even.... that would bear looking into. It boggled the mind at times how the Combine could have such ardent supporters that the Amaris dynasty could still command loyalty and attempts at restoration was enough to flabbergast her. "Well," She sighed, "that is a positively ghastly matter to contemplate."

Jackson she reminded herself hadn't even started his time at Albion yet. God, what if the Taurians were supporting some Amaris pretender... that was horrifying for her to contemplate... but she decided not to bring it up. There was enough bad blood with the bulls as it was she didn't want to be the one to start a fresh wave of disgust and revulsion of the periphery tyranny over something that might not be true.

But that wasn't the focus of today... it had just been a topic that had come up... or that she had stumbled into. As if they needed one more hereditary enemy to appear. The Combine, and the Capellans were enough without having to deal with the delusions of taurian grandeur on their border rimward. Amaris? An enemy who might well bring back the worst of the succession wars' atrocities... she hoped not.

The warning, and the fact that Lord Clay considered it a serious enough danger to contemplate Amaris as equal to a threat as the Combine reprisal possibility was concerning. Perhaps it was the facet of his age but the fact he treated that as seriously as he did, in comparison to usual... admittedly that might well have been in the face of how his retainers acted. It was an oddity, but his armor officers were more present rather than the BattleMech company, but Colonel Robinson bordered on feral regarding the potential threat... and that would be hard to fake.

Somewhere out there was a threat that they'd been unaware of even existing... but further conversation had to be put aside as Lord Aaron was here. The Duke of Robinson was a natural ally for Yvonne Davion to have in most cases. You learned a lot about how a man responded to adversity but especially to physical adversity... Aaron had never been his father's heir only happenstance had lead him to the ducal throne. As third son of the ducal house he had run off to join, to enlist in service with the AFFS... he'd been a tanker, rising then to an NCO commanding a tank when he'd lost his legs to the Capellans. His actions on Rio had also cemented the subsequent lifelong friendship between himself and the heir, and current duke of Rio, such that the reigning duke's heir had gone to attend the Robinson Battle Academy.

They should have been on the same side. Their interests aligning.. but he now posed a potential complicating factor as competition in the great games of the nobility, while still remaining an ally in other factors.

"First Robinson Rangers." The duke's personal command, though truthfully the unit was more a facet of the Duke's administrative role. It wasn't a purely ceremonial role as colonel of the regiment, but he also wasn't leading them directly into battle. That was how it had been that Lord Aaron had been told of the actions of the Madison Plains on Halstead Station. Yvonne wasn't looking forward to the necessities of ceremony. As Field Marshal for the Draconis March Lord Aaron had seniority.
--
As heiress apparent to the duchy of Kestrel she had both seen the receptions her father had organized, as well seen receptions to receive House Cunningham and other potentates throughout her life. This was really no different. It might have felt that way, in the sense of her vantage point, because she was a student of Sakhara and not in the assembly as the countess of Kestrel, but she was still nominally representing her father.

... but it was still somewhat of a different experience.

"Oh god those are the Vols, we're gonna get our asses kicked twice this week." One of her classmates muttered... thankfully it wasn't Justin. Vice Chancellor Coleridge was too distracted to have overheard the comment... but if he'd planned to try and have them run the exercise before Lord Aaron's arrival he'd misjudged the timetable.

Now the duke of Robinson, and the RBA instructors were going to get a front row seat to their rematch... and she expected that as it was some of her classmates had yet to read the combined arms packets that had gone out the day before.

Someone who must have read the packet remarked that that would also be something the Duke of Robinson would likely sit in on. Being a former tread head, the fact that the New Avalon native had just called a sitting duke a tread head didn't even warrant a raised eyebrow... but she was more concerned looking around to make sure the instructors hadn't heard.

The sooner they were seated and could eat dinner the less... reduced chance of chattering among the ranks of cadets would get their class in trouble. Unfortunately the Chancellor yielded the podium to the duke of Robinson and there was a gathering of lesser speakers that followed lasting until about eight thirty before they were finally allowed to move to their seats and start dinner.

There was some ruffling of papers, and someone passed around a schedule sheet. The contents of which prompted more grumbling, and talk. Combined Arms exercises, engagement exercises against the Medium Mech Company, and then probably on top of that a trial run against the Robinson Rangers as their OpFor... all while under the scrutiny of the Field Marshal of the Draconis March, and the director for MI2 on top of that. The Vice Chancellor was sure to be breathing down their necks.

"What do you think they're talking about up there?"

"Nothing good for us I imagine." Justin replied to the cadet's question.. and Alexandria had to agree... it might have looked like an amiable discussion but it surely was bad news for them.
--
Her readouts showed the heavy vehicles by the heat of their fusion engines... but she could see them so it wasn't really necessary. By conventional wisdom you needed a battlemech to fight a battlemech... such wisdom had not precisely been constructed around a uniform formation of eighty ton vehicles that even if you managed to close in would likely maul you with assault auto cannon fire.

Her computer labelled the formation as 'Robinson's Assault Cluster' and according to the data from organization they were only part of the armored formation. No surprise it was thirty eighty tonners presumably there were lighter vehicles and possibly other forces being kept in reserve in case of a real emergency.

"Wouldn't want to attack these guys head on, especially not out here." one of her classmates observed emphasizing the point as their medium mech visibly turned its torso back and forth looking out over the wide expanse of red sands.

"Yeah there are easier ways to commit suicide." Someone else chimed in.

A third classmate observed that it made sense that the Schreks were paired up with their auto cannon equipped sibling design. 3 PPCs and the ability to fire them continuously they could focus on long range fire support while the Devastators fired their ChemJet Assault Auto cannons, SRMs and flamers at anything Mech, vehicle, or infantry stupid enough to get within range.

They were friendlies.

Today, her subconscious added. They weren't the opposition today, but rather an allied unit they were supposed to working in conjunction with. There were no sensor returns from the Rangers unit, their officers, and presumably the MechWarriors of the House Guard were all inside a nice air conditioned Operations Center.

Light beacons in the desert turned on illuminating visually the path as navigation radio signals fed data to their maps. "Don't over think things guys," Justin instructed his lance mates, "This is a pretty big formation, so watch your sectors and trust your adjoining units, we've got this."

Inside of a plush well apportioned and more importantly air conditioned command center Don Juan's much more boisterous pep talk to his lance followed. Henry Clay smiled slightly. He'd given Justin the instructions not to over think things. This was a fairly simple field exercise, but one intended to use a lot of moving parts which added its own complexity.

The point wasn't to make anyone fail, but give them some idea of working with a large number of conventional units. "This force would have been useful on Mallory's world fox." Bard Cameron remarked.

"Yes well they weren't with me at the time." He replied to the Robinson Ranger's officer. "It certainly would have helped... and if the Combine wants to try here, well I'd just as soon have my slantbacks splash their DropShips," and he'd almost just said JumpShips, which would have been a faux pas, "On the ride in. If they do make it to the surface, well then I hope they like sand."

The Wolverine BattleMech pilot laughed, "Yeah, I hear ya." The conversation the night before had been quick to touch on their ability to supply 240 rated fusion engines.

They had only touched on what those engines meant for tanks. Tanks that wouldn't have to use ICE engines. There were advantages to that... and of course the Partisan tank mounting a lighter fusion engine meant it could carry more armor... or any number of other modifications that the DMM Armor Force might decide it wanted to implement. He wasn't going to meddle in that he'd just sell them the engines and let them go for it.

Robinson though was also definitely onboard with expanding local BattleMech production. The Centurion might not have been an amazing mech, but it was a good entry mech. It would be, along with the trebuchet a nice standard design... and light enough weight to not cost too much. They could bring in other things. "Slantbacks?" A younger Davion guards officer in BattleMech spurs questioned.

"Oh, the F 90. I think they're official marketing name is actually Stingray. They're a swept wing design based off the F 77. Same engine just a lot lighter air frame."

"And this engine wouldn't happen to be a 240?" Yvonne Davion asked.

"Yep, you got it. Its a really great fusion engine. The only thing I'd think you get more mileage out of is the VLAR 300, which is arguably hands down the best engine ever made..." He paused, "In terms of wide scalable application since you can even use it to power buildings and crack hydrogen for water purification." He trailed off. "Its a really good engine." The cadets were coming up on their first skirmish of the exercise. The Field Marshal gave a shuddering sigh and rubbed the bridge of her nose. He blinked, "Oh that was a rhetorical question wasn't it? My bad."

 

[Imperator Pax]

Sakhara 1.9​

With almost sixty individual combat assets to keep track of the data was distracting. That was part of the lesson. She was a mech company commander, each class was an over strength Mech Company built on ancient square company units of the star league and the armored vehicles were divided into sub groups of ten operating basically as light companies... which she found mildly ironic given that since at eight hundred tons ten tanks out massed even her twelve heaviest mechs taken together, and there were three such light companies.

That allowed them to form different close order formations for attack though, which gave them tactical flexibility and cover multiple sectors of fire... there wasn't much in the way of cover. She found it somewhat unrealistic that they didn't see the enemy approach before they actually went active given the wide expanse of open sands on three sides...

In a real engagement they'd have a better idea of of an attacking enemy... but it created an artificial difficulty as the enemy often started appearing at about six hundred meters, which was fairly close, and that forced them to scramble to react.

As an exercise this was not based on a specific enemy unit. It wasn't even really a generic enemy unit of a hostile sucessor house. There were fake sensor returns to show Vindicators of the Capellan Confederation, or Dragons of the Draconis Combine and there were others more commonly associated with House Marik's Free Worlds League.

The image from inside her cockpit flickered.

It was projected forward in the center of the screen... not exactly the best place but her class mates were similarly put up and spread out over the screen group by the lances they had assembled in. The cadets were supposed to graduate and be commissioned as lieutenants and sent to their duty stations... thus in theory they would be getting paired up with a senior non comm MechWarrior to command a lance.

The Duke of Robinson, Aaron Sandoval sat in his simple unpowered wheel chair with his hands folded in front of him. Sakhara was a world that fell under his responsibility, and its academy had been paired with troops from the march to test their skills before. Of course that wasn't the only reason he was here. The current students had an instructor who had the attention of the First Prince for the very understandable reason of breaking a Sword of Light regiment.

There was some light banter going on. That was to say among the officers, the cadets were still, probably a little nervous, and not yet ready to banter. Aaron Sandoval watched one of his promising officers shoot the shit with the younger mechwarrior. There had been slices of that when he'd been a tanker with the other enlisted... he'd never expected to rule, and frankly wasn't even sure he wanted to commission into the officer corp. He was able to drive a mech but being a TC, being a part of a team had felt natural. He appreciated being apart of that larger unit... even a 'mech company felt too small to him.

Sakhara had a history of preparing its mechwarriors for combined arms operation, it arguably did a better job of it than the Nagelring but that was neither here nor there. One of the things he hadn't been expected for his arrival was the landhold's development.

The masses of eighty tonner tanks were largely a testament to extremes. A PPC, the weapon of the Shrek, had a minimal engagement envelope, while the Demolsiher's 185mm Assault Auto Cannons lost velocity and thus armor penetration against standard battle plate rather quickly. These weren't standard demolishers but the fusion powered version, and that meant they carried additional weapons.

They hadn't been expected, but he supposed there had been a lot going on. Ian... the first Prince had installed him on Sakhara in part as a compromise. Well, it seemed as if New Avalon had over compromised. As to the Centurion, as a Battlemech there were existing 'mechworks on Robinson, though they were just refit and repair yards. Production was a bit beyond them, and for the mech itself Lord Aaron had no strong opinions on it one way or another. It was a BattleMech and he was open to the arguments regarding logistics that investing in the production would be useful, and that they could benefit from New Avalon having recently completed its factory.

He'd have some one else review the math side of the proposals. But the idea, that struck him as sound. A factory on Robinson, say building up the existing mechworks, a factory here on Sakhara, and the existing factory on New Avalon would surely mean that the AFFS could produce more machines and that meant more BattleMech units, and thus they could take the fight against the Combine.

If that was the case, if it was real, then Lord Aaron couldn't find a reason to disagree, but it hadn't been why he had come... but it was something of a nice surprise.
--
It was, it had been unavoidable of course and it made sense to bring the Duke of Robinson in on the motion of the Mech Factory. Having the Field Marshal of the Draconis March on side to pitch the motion to Corean would give it further legitimacy... assuming that she was wrong about the intent to just wave a mountain of liquid capital underneath the company's nose as leverage. The shipyards had thus far remained out of the discussion.

As Duchess of Victoria she nearly had to consider whether or not her own domain wouldn't benefit from being enriched by joining the not really a cabal... but she doubted her steward would appreciate signing on to such a large financial expenditure without consultation. She wasn't sure if her holdings could support that at the moment on such short notice.

Military Intelligence had already postulated that Clay was probably an insomniac, or that his work hours were a result of the compulsive 'workaholic' type. That was to say he kept long hours in the evening, and his general work space rarely was limited to singular topics, or projects that were occupying his attention at any given time. Part of that split attention was simply a facet of being a feudal potentate, her own concern for her domain, conflict with her long standing position, the dynasty as a whole, and the realm were nothing new.

Henry Clay made a show of checking his palm pilot, and asking the cadets if they were ready. They were withholding the results of the earlier exercise, which might have been construed as petty but they needed to see what the class could do, and the rematch was going to be in the simulators anyway.

Once the cadets confirmed they were ready and the simulator pods booted up and networked then it was just a matter of preparing for the next part of the exercise. The Duke of Robinson didn't comment on the Medium BattleMech Company's composition, or its armament. Coleridge wasn't comfortable with the scenario, but it mirrored the generic Sakharana terrain of the first simulation as it filled the operation's center's forward screen from a top down perspective.

The cadets had their slight numerical advantage. That probably explained in part their head long front attack with their heaviest units in the center and faster mechs on the flanks. It was a sensible plan, and unfortunately that made it predictable. The majority of pilots tended to be better at driving a mech than they were at shooting. The simple fact was that green pilots needed to worry more about keeping their bipedal war machine up right and moving than they did about firing at the enemy, and even at higher skill levels being able to maneuver a multi ton walker insured you stayed in the fight.

The dozen mechs they were choosing to attack had already moved up onto a high point in the desert. It was instantly telling how this would play out, to Yvonne, if the numbers equal. A dozen mechs fired their LRM 15 launchers and continued to fire them concentrating on the central formation... more than that they were prioritizing pilots with heavier mechs.

The entire point of Trebuchet's missiles was to soften up enemy units before they could enter range and return fire. That thinking was based on individual mechs, not 270 missiles going out and raining down on a handful of targets. One Enforcer simply disappeared during the third volley, and by that point the large lasers had opened up.

The Centurions had by that point already been through nearly half of their missiles so the extra heat meant nothing for their cooling systems. Not when they were stationary. The Medium company subdivided into two units to face Alexandria's weakened four. By the time the company had emptied its missile bins they coupled with the large lasers had attrited the attacking square company of its heaviest units, and both units inside three hundred meters were forced to face what quickly turned into an individual mech match.

Points tallied.

"Congratulations."

"For what?" Henry replied shaking his head. "Attacking head on probably the best idea."

"Could she really have done anything else, but attack head on in this situation?"

The digital battlefield was a fake after all. It wasn't real. The terrain that comprised the map wasn't real. It wasn't even a copy of real terrain, and its boundaries were invisible glass. "In that you think the other cadets might not have listened? Or that she didn't have sufficient missile weight or PPC to hold them in place... because realistically barring Marauders or Warhammers energy boats would have been painted for concentrated fire until they were brought down."

It said something of course that they hadn't broken contact or gave up. Justin made a better attempt at his flanking attack this time, better coordinating with the other mechs and the light mechs had actually scored simulated kills but Large Lasers had no minimum range and massed medium lasers had knocked his Black Jack out of the fight.

The casualties were enough that they'd be pyrrhic. Was it an improvement, probably technically, but he was having a hard time being satisfied with it. "The Cadets need better 'mechs. Realistically against medium, and light weight mechs they've demonstrated they can mostly hold there own, but their equipment is too uneven." There was no point in having someone like Justin in a dedicated AA Mech like a Black Jack when there wasn't an air threat present or... and while not as egregious there were other problems. The jager mech was not a great option either... in his opinion at least not if you wanted to be up front. "And to be blunt simply providing them new build centurions won't cut it, there are limits to what skilled pilots can do with short endurance battle companies against superior numbers. Excuse me."

Yvonne got a feeling he had expected one side or the other to decisively win not for both sides to maul each other. She had a feeling from his response whatever he was going to do to 'fix' the problem would give her a headache.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Sakhara [November 3015]
2.1​

It was funny how quickly his November calendar had exploded with all of his free time evaporating... and he still had classes that he needed to attend. He drummed his fingers on the top of his head. Fuck, and there was other stuff to deal with today too.

It was easy to say that the company of cadets needed better equipment but realistically to the perspectives of the Succession War States that was an aspiration but not a feasible one. There was another problem, not everyone would want the 'downgrade' or 'reduction' that a standard 'mech would entail. Not everyone drove a missile boat, not everyone was a 'musketeer', etc, there were specialties. There was a reason mech design in the Star League era had moved towards specialist mech designs.

His first inclinations had been Thugs.... then Thunderbolts... then Hatamoto-chi which were basically weaboo Thugs... and then it struck him thinking about the Hatamoto-chi. The Charger was a crappy assault mech... but if down engine-d it could take the engine from the Centurion... and from there it was just a matter of loading it with the weapons package from the Centurions.

The immediate obvious problem to such a down grade of the engine was that they would be slow... comparable to an Atlas without the firepower... but it would still be an improvement over the base line Charger... but it was an idea that was ultimate tossed on the back burner.

No, he was over thinking things.

He looked up as Alexandria sat down. "Thanks for coming."

"Did you sleep?"

"Hmm, a few hours." He replied, and waved it off, "Are you aware of were your being posting on graduation," She stiffened and started to evaluate what her answer was going to be, and he shook his head, "SO you do know, good. That's good I wasn't honestly sure. Alright loose summary is while I plan to have Haakon extend feelers to Mountain Wolf I have no idea how long that will take-"

She stopped him, "What are you talking about, we have an exercise against the Robinson Rangers today."

He rubbed around his eyes. "Yes I'm aware and I expect you to do your best, but realistically we're hitting structural problems with the materiel involved. Mechs are being used for roles, and by pilots they're not appropriate for." He stopped... "I'm sorry has Coleridge talked to you yet?"

"The vice chancellor?" Her face creased. "No, why-"

"Coleridge is angling for me to lead the cadets against 1st​ Rangers, if Lord Aaron will agree to that."

"What?"

He was glad they weren't in the cafeteria. She hadn't shouted but her expression had flashed almost to briefly touch on apoplectic. "It was last minute," Really last minute, Coleridge had only sent him the email this morning... a little after five, but in truth he'd been up for about two hours by that point, "And if that's the case I'll probably be in a rifleman anyway."

"You can't," She protested.

"I'm not saying its going to happen, Colonel Coleridge may not get approval, but you needed to know it was being discussed." He scrunched his eyes up and rubbed his face, but resisted the urge to yawn and stretch, "As I was saying Haakon is going to visit Mountain Wolf BattleMechs on my behalf, and the Merlins will most probably benefit ... future classes." Probably not the next round of graduates, after Justin and Alexandria, but it might be possible to allocate graduates the following class with Centurions and Merlins. Maybe they could even start outfitting ASF pilots... but they weren't there yet.

The truth was he'd need time.

"It doesn't matter they're talking about it," She hissed defensively.

"I know." He replied, he fought down the urge to talk with his hands, "Alright, that's not the point I had another idea over the weekend."

Forty minutes later.

The class trudged in, and once we sure that the exhausted cadets had settled down, he pulled the sheet off to begin his plans.... well more correctly he pulled a lever that released the tarp.

Don Juan was pretty on point in terms of asking rather blithely what the hell it was.

"Call it a Cataphract... though you could be excused for calling it a Franken Mech." He shrugged, "I had some spare parts, and a weekend..." He withheld a joke about being left unsupervised... it was a Cataphract, but it was also one made from various bits of technology and models that wouldn't conform to the Capellan model that should show up, in about a decade. "I had an engine that came out of a Night Hawk, so its not exactly the fastest thing," and indeed its use of the GM 210 was in part a mix of his Charger idea, but also Mountain Wolf potentially related, but also he'd gone into the mech lab to make sure specific parts were fluffed to back stop any potential ... well accusations of Capellan construction... it would be funny in a decade. Maybe a little petty. "It carries two Imperator As, from a rifleman, a large laser from a rifleman, and a five cell LRM launcher that we happened to have just lying around." He shrugged as if that was nothing. He had their attention... but also had the gunnery instructors attention. "Yes, well I think we'll allow a demonstration on the gunnery range first, and go from there."

He allowed the Mustachioed officer to apply his neurohelmet and clamber into the mech, after which he booted it up.

Justin idled up, "You look particularly smug, what are you up to?"

"Well it meant reducing the complement of armor and ammunition on this one, but we had the parts to take the engine from a Warhammer and build a second faster one. In all honesty this one has too much Ammunition for the Imperators... but I was told in no uncertain terms that trying to cram a second large laser would make a seventy ton slightly better protected Rifleman... but I think they werent - I think as a mech this goes overboard on the load out with extra heat sinks and four tons of ammunition... It is a very Davion mech though isn't it?"

"Can I pilot it?"

"Which one?"

"either, both."

He slotted into the first machine, while the other instructor 'inspected', for 'safety reasons of course' the other machine and tested their Imperator A auto cannons on the range. Alexandria frowned, "You planned that."

"Don't complain Lady Lex you have an Orion."
--
Truthfully he was a little relieved... and also that there had been enough of a distraction that no one had noticed. "Oh come on Fox they're not going to let you play, this is bullshit." Bard declared. Loudly. The kilted Wolverine pilot was vociferously expressing his displeasure at not being given the chance at what he called a friendly game.

"I'm as surprised as you are that the Chancellor shot down Coleridge's suggestion." He replied in a much more mild tone while David Bowie the MechWarrior continued to complain. "How did you think they did last week?"

"Oh they did good, no question about it. You said that was their second go at them, yeah. Still that was a lot of missiles to throw at them. Six hundred tons even, twelve mediums versus sixteen mixed including that assault, and the little lady with the Orion." At least he hadn't called her his girlfriend, that might have caused problems. "Her cousin, Lord Allard's son, that was impressive shooting ... admittedly with a pop gun, but color me impressed."

"Is this going to be a combined arms test?"

"Hmm... no, not this one. Maybe Fridays I think your vice chancellor is hoping to spice things up, we did bring the bull dogs with us." He had seen as much, and the Partisan anti aircraft tanks. Those had a special place in Aaron Sandoval's heart, because those had been what he had served on in his time... and it was a general gesture that they could be easily converted over the fusion engines.

So to could the bull dog tanks as well, but they hadn't actually planned for that.

The conversation was interrupted by the growing crowd.

"You have a cheeky look on your face you know that right?" The kilted officer questioned him.

"No I don't."

"You do." Bard countered. "What are you up to?"

"I'm not up to anything."

"Historically people who say that are in fact up to something."

He sighed, "You'll have to wait an see what happens," But he was interested to see if the Cataphract would improve Justin's performance. He expected it would. He was admittedly concerned about the lack of medium lasers on the Cataphract design, but the twin AC 5s ... well how Justin performed with medium caliber auto cannons like the imperator A was what he was interested in seeing.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Sakhara 2.2
​

He stuffed his hands in the pockets of his blazer and waited. He hadn't done anything too complicated. The standard Cataphract had protected actuators, and he had for about five minutes been pretty tempted to replace that... but he had held off.

If actually did try to do something with the seventy ton design he might change that quirk, but he'd been running on too little sleep as it was. He wanted to see how Justin did with a slower better armed mech.... frankly just giving him a Grasshopper might not have been a terrible idea, but well here they were.

"Why do you need Corean again?"

"Factory floor expertise. Assembly line manufacturing for large stompy robots." He shrugged off Bard's question, "I need input from the factory line team, engineers service personnel... once the line is set up," Henry Clay trailed off, "Well you have to walk before you can run."

The truth was that wasn't true... but Henry couldn't admit that... he was getting good at the cover story, and repeating it over and over again. They'd torn a Morninstar Command vehicle into its constituent parts and recycled them individually... the ones they weren't going to reuse for other things so he could have easily called up the forces necessary to stand up a much heavier force... but no... he had to restrain himself.

Even though it was really fucking hard at times... because it was only a matter of time before people figured out that he could set up factory lines and build stuff like he claimed, and he needed to be ready for that day to come. People might not believe in magic, but they'd figure out logistics won wars when it showed results.

Coleridge leaned forward to squint at the screen, "You are correct it is a little slow but even the 210 version has potential as simply a training and gunnery mech. As you said Mister Clay it does use standard weapons. Given its ammo it would be possible to run an entire class on a handful of machines through a stationary gunnery course without needing to reload."

That hadn't actually been his intention.... but from the looks that skeptical. Coleridge must have only been talking about firing the Imperators. Each bin of medium auto cannon ammo allowed 20 shots and with tons of the stuff even split between Imperator A auto cannons that was a fair bit of ammo for a day of instruction at the range.

"Well as I had said, the GM 210 powering this design is the same as the standard fusion engine of Mountain Wolf BattleMechs Night Hawk and I have an interest in their products." he replied. He had no idea if there would be teething issues with the mech or not... other than it carried five tons worth of ammunition cooking off risk... but it didn't matter, "The 280 is a more common engine, and we have several vox engines in that rating, but that weight meant some of that ammunition had to be sacrificed." Unfortunately. That kind of ammunition would have made more sense with something... well with auto cannons with a higher rate of consumption... but no none of those not yet.

Coleridge did have a point given the armament of long range weapons. As a training mech the 210 powered 4X was fairly ideal, it wasn't especially fast and could serve as a 'driver's ed' mech while carrying simple enough weapons to learn the basics on.

That hadn't been his intention at all, but it didn't seem anyone believed that happy coincidence.
--
A part of him didn't want to give up his Black Jack. He had gotten used to it and more importantly he'd gotten used to using it to show people not to underestimate him in it.

He watched as the Reactor start up on the 280 began, and then confirmed the armor readout. 12 tons of standard plate equated out to a digital reading of 192 pips. The Computer ameliorated his crappy resolution of the fake desert around him as the simulator program started get on with it. Pixels turned into what was believable 'life like' sand, and he pushed his mech's arm through a fake digital tree brushing the palm fronds out of his mech's camera.

The young madman's face appeared. "Good sorry I needed to ditch and Bard was, never mind." The Rabid Fox remarked, "Basic run down of the machine it is designed to run heat neutral. Its not oversinked, but on the other hand ... well do your best you have limited ammunition, and while I might be able to provide better ammunition these simulators get schizo about more exotic lost technology or non standard equipment."

"Right," Justin muttered, "Cataphract Launching." He pushed the mech's throttle forward and left the stand of palm trees looking around. There were other Sakhara Cadet's mechs appearing and starting their boot up in the digital battle space.

Alexandria's Orion appeared about four hundred meters to his right, and was up and moving quickly as the Star League Defense Era machine completed its pretend boot sequence. Or rather her actual mech dated to when their ancestors, it had passed through the rulers of Kestrel and their heirs since the beginning of the Succession Wars.

"Hmm," The voice continued, "I don't have a bunch of spare orions sitting around Justin."

"What?"

"You've pivoted the Cataphract inline to Lex. Two and two is four. Anyway, it is a classic robust machine there is a lot to appreciate about the design. You could even refit the Orion easily enough to approximate the armament of the Hammerhands." He muttered something about if its not broke don't fix it, and not getting ahead of themselves. "Alright I should get off the line it looks like most of the cadets are now in the pipeline, and the rangers as well. Good luck."

He was right naturally his feeds were signaling his lance mates had shown up in the simulation, and were after a couple more moments started making their way towards his machine.

--
An Imperator A fired in five shot bursts and Justin putting both auto cannons on the center torso of the opposing 'mech was enough to shred almost half a ton of armor. Class 5 auto cannons produced far less heat than most weapons, but autocannons in general were fairly heat neutral anyway, with class tens producing roughly the waste heat of common medium lasers. It was only with assault auto cannons really throwing 16 and up centimeter projectiles in three shot groups that you had to contend with risky excess heat; even that was still waste heat relative to longer range weapons like a PPC or Large Laser.

"The missile packet seems a tad extraneous."

"it provides some indirect long range firepower , though I admit out of the line of sight is more for wide scale unit confrontation." In the Cataphract case one LRM 5 launcher well twenty four fires it was very unlikely that this engagement would last long enough for Justin to get through all 24. He would probably get through the rest of his auto cannon ammunition.

That was the thing though, the cataphract wasn't equipped with anything out of the ordinary. Nothing lostech to be sure, and Justin was doing well. Certainly better than he would have been doing in the Black Jack as they were now in an engagement range where his personal machine's medium lasers would have been in play.

... that was an idea to consider, is to drop the lrm 5 for medium lasers... well later... when the convergence of the main lines of the force weren't hitting it. The actual force disposition of the mechs wasn't that dissimilar. The reality of two Davion forces coming to blows meant that there were Centurions, and Enforcers present. There were other mechs that were common. The Rangers had Black Jacks and a group of light mechs filling out their scout lance for the company which was screening for a fire lance, but the Cadets had a slight advantage in terms of having a handful of heavier mechs and more over all machines.

Unlike the previous two engagements the cadet lances were focusing on cohesive unit engagement. Moving as Lances and engaging targets, which he was happy to see. If they hadn't been the Rangers probably would have looped around been hitting them from possibly three sides, but that possibility was now unlikely as attrition began to take its toll on both sides.

"Major Cameron is moving to engage Cadet Lead."

"I see him." Gene replied, and more importantly he was watching the hillside that was probably blocking Bard's line of sight.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Sakhara 2.3​

Bard had run into the problem of being stuck between two machines. Worse, both of them had out massed his wolverine. Then of course while Justin had been running low on ammunition, he hadn't yet been out of ammo. On Bard's other side Lex's Orion had been coming as well... and of course she still had ammunition for her auto cannon and her short range missiles.

That would have been reckless to begin with even without accounting for his lance already being down a man. To that extent the cadets had acquitted themselves well. It was a win, and regardless of whether the enemy's mistakes played into it it was a win.

Well, Bard getting himself caught in the open like that between two heavier mechs wasn't the cause of the exercise loss.

... there were a lot of factors. No single fatal error but a confluence of many missteps, and luck and if he were honest.

"I would remark," Field Marshal Davion began, "That this exercise better reflects the norms of modern combat. Not necessarily the Combine, but the more typical unit engagements of battle." The Combine were, the combine had a preference for turning battles into one on one mech duels when their enemies would agree to such.

"Mmm," He replied scribbling on the back of a sheet of paper that he'd been taking notes on the exercise. The mention of the 280 to Bard had lead into a conversation about the warhammer... and while it hadn't come up the Warhammer had emerged out of the indigenous Davion heavy mech designs. Henry looked up, "That might be, but I think they could do with some further combined arms practice. Realistically outside of very small engagements mechs should operate in conjunction with support from the other combat arms."

He chose not to mention to it, but his Robinson Assault Cluster when fully kitted out with its complete 'mech arrangement would follow this. That was planned, and the initial 'Mech Binary would be Solahma troops probably with Star League era Heavy and Assault 'Mechs maybe not even properly lost Tech models, but regardless the RAC was a massing of vehicles that when added to his existing battle company provided a large combined arms capability. He really appreciated that Hells Horse actually did proper combined arms with infantry supporting doctrine for vehicles.

It wasn't intended as a boast, but the Vice Chancellor hardly willing to let a potential opportunity get by him immediately attempted to leverage the statement.

"The Cluster, Assault Cluster?"

There was a minor round of exchange over what the proper short hand for the unit of armor was, but ultimately the idea went no where. At least it wasn't going anywhere yet. There would need to be further drills with the cadets, and more importantly there needed to be after action debriefs on what had happened.

For that he needed to see the class of cadets, and the Rangers needed to run their own debrief. He exchanged pleasantries with the gunnery instructor, who should have technically been supervising one of the other classes at this point, but given the Robinson's Rangers presence he suspected that class had either been cancelled or postponed for the day. He wanted to of course borrow the 4X, what it would have been called in canon, for Cadet training on the range but since it was a private mech he needed permission.

It had probably gotten around that the 280 engined machine, which in addition to carrying less ammo on account of the larger engine was likely to be Justin Allard's full time machine. That was the next thing on the list to do was to check and see how things were on the Cataphract... and he wasn't really surprised that Justin's first complain was the LRM 5 and its utility. "I'm aware, and yes in practice that proved rather obvious," He replied shaking his head. "The Grasshopper mounts an LRM 5 in a similar configuration, and yes. It provides some utility, but with the way you pilot Justin it may be extraneous." It might even be a liability. Supposedly Grasshopper pilots wouldn't bother refilling their ammo bin during deployments to minimize the risk of internal ammunition explosions. "If you would like I can have a tech pull it. Fit it with alternate equipment." The truth was there were going to be trade offs Medium Lasers would run the machine warm if the machine wasn't standing still, and well jump jets wouldn't meaningfully effect the heat curve.

If Justin hadn't been so naturally talented towards Auto Cannons it might have been easier, and of course if there were lost tech or 'future' tech auto cannons he could justify it would be different. "What about the next excercise are we fighting the cluster?"

"I doubt it. The Chancellor just shot down Colonel Coleridge's attempt at bringing them into the rotation... and that is a bit much. Even just the Heavy Trinary you've been participating with is a significant amount of metal. Deploying them with you or against you, we're not going to do it yet, I won't say that it won't happen, but I'd expect it to be next semester. In the meant time until you make a decision about the LRM 5 you should continue to practice with it, while its on the machine." He made the circle around the others in the class.

Don Juan had done alright. He had made something akin to the mistake that Bard had ultimately made in that he'd launched a direct attack on an enemy lance leader only to get encircled. That was the problem it was emblematic of mech unit leaders he supposed is that one horseman went after another in a sort of tunnel vision or target fixation state. In the real world that would be dangerous, and potentially fatal.

There were others who he needed to ask, but also he would need to review the roms of the simulated battle from the advantage of an outside observer... and potentially for each individual pilot to dissect what had gone right, and what hadn't.
--
Henry glared at the digital display. The angry red clock numbers telling him it was 1:11... he rolled over. Then a few minutes later rolled back... 1:17. Fuck.

There was a minute of grumbling and he sat up. The essence interface updated at midnight, which didn't really matter the basic 25 BV while not something he was going to waste wasn't going to make all that much of a difference either. He swung off the bed and stood up walking forward mentally manipulating the database.

The conversation about the trinary and what a trinary constituted was bugging him. In the top of his 'screen' was total balances, but it delineated into different accounts holding values of c-bill. The davion account was actually being paid in D-Bills but the interface automatically converted those to their value in C-Bills giving a uniform currency value.

He had felt really clever, gratified working out the math needed to buy F 77 fighters and recycle them to get the resources to build factories but the morningstars were a more effective solution. He didn't want to start operating his own HPG sub network though. That wasn't something he wanted to get caught having because he was sure that if it did get out it wouldn't take long before someone showed up to start throwing nukes... and

... and that would be bad was an understatement.

He sighed and flipped on the coffee pot. Some sweetened condensed milk and hot water later and he was sitting at a table. Leaving Sakhara was inevitable, but he had gotten used to being here... he'd settled in, but the people hwas used to were also going to be moving off soon... and in theory he was working towards graduation as well... even though he had a land hold... and now a military force of his own growing.

The New Avalon Institute of Science was due to open up this year. A big inaugural event... he drank down the coffee and ignoring curfew wandered down to the mech bay. He wasn't really surprised Justin was staring at a terminal in front of the Cataphract.

He helped himself to as second not so fancy cup of coffee and deposited another, "So what are you thinking?" He asked the older MechWarrior now that he'd pulled himself back into his skin.

"I mean... the RCT will be on Spica."

"And realistically a new base means that the Capellans will probably try and attack." He remarked, and for a moment his mind flitted to the thought of Thunderbolt missiles, but, "Thats just a given. Don't ge me wrong I think that the Grasshopper is a good heavy battlemech," Did he think it was perfect no. "And I think it perhaps unduly influenced your cataphract version's load out." Justin's next tour of duty would put him beyond his ability to supply specialist ammo of any sort. "I'm going to be blunt from the sound of it House Hasek are a collection of entitled assholes," he stopped to sip his coffee, "They're inefficient and.... I don't know, never mind. Be careful is what I'm saying. Anyway I may be posting to Kathil in a year."

"Who's posted there?

There was apparently a shipyard at Kathil. "The James McKenna Shipyards of the old star league... or what's left of them." Whatever Field Marshal Davion's opinion of the sleaze bags of house Hasek was she still considered it important enough for the realm that Kathil... anf somewhat more grudgingly new syrtis proper that is was good enough for the FedSuns to consider bringing them up. "So I guess if that happens well... look I'll be going to New Avalon first, I'll talk to Ian and then I guess we'll work out my marching orders."
--
Notes: If you haven't checked out the junkyard, with regards to the cataphract. The cataphract are a sort of cavalry and thus well I think that as a name is appropriate for both Star League era troops or Hells Horse with variations, just as we will see other 70 tonners Longsword is a good name so there is that.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Sakhara 2.4​

Alexandria looked down at the graded paper. They had eked out a win She should have been happy about that. They had defeated the OpFor which was in exercises something few classes managed in exercises... but she was still looking down at a lot of red ink.

"Hey, how's it going?" She didn't immediately respond to the inquiry, and the seat beside her slid out, and Clay sat down. "I was hoping to talk."

"What happened now?" She looked up.

He shook his head, but didn't deny that anything had or hadn't happened. It was no secret that he had been frequently in animated discussions with the Rangers, and the recent suggestion of the Vice Chancellor among other things left her concerned. "how are you on scheduling?"

"What do you mean?"

He shook his head holding up his hands, "I'm going to New Avalon with Field Marshal Davion," The director of MI2 under whom she would be serving out her compulsory service period... and presumably the branch of service she would serve in until she one day ascended to the rank of duchess in her own right.

She started to reply but there a commotion as more people started to filter into the cafeteria... a mass of her class mates were already talking with some of the others of their year about the exercise... and "We should stop them before a fight breaks out." She said suddenly standing up. Not that she was sure that was what was going to happen but given who all she could see in the crowd an argument was already brewing.

... that and she knew she could lean on her position as student council president and the responsibility to dodge the question until she had time to think. There was no surprise Justin was in the throng of noisy students. If anything their approach made the crowd get louder.

"As I've mentioned this is unlikely to effect students slated to graduate in the spring," The Rabid Fox replied with an attempt at a placating grin, "But there will be changes to the incoming cadet orientation program, and some of that will be based on reviving Star League era course programs." That was news to her, but she wasn't surprised it hadn't been mentioned, or that the academy would want to reintroduce anything that the SLDF would have done. "Admittedly for some of the students moving on to the cadre program after graduation you will see some of this on your assignments there, and there will be additions to the OPFOR course work with Robinson."

Historically these would eventually pass into becoming the basis for the eventual 'Sakhara reforms', even though in truth they were instituted at the RBA on Robinson at the same time, and Northwind followed suit the following year so really the program of adoption of training changes at military academies might well have been better referred to as the Draconis March Reforms, but the history books would call them the Sakhara Reforms.

That was still worlds better in Henry's opinions than the 'Rabid Fox's lessons' or something stupid like that.

His class was still pretty rowdy by that after noon as they ran through how they could have done things different or to identify where there had been opportunities and mistakes on both sides. They weren't going to immediately go into another exercise with the Robinson Rangers, but there was going to be a cooperative exercise alongside the rangers later in the month that they needed to prepare for.

There were a couple of rangers hanging around as the slower of the two cataphracts, what was canon's 4X was used for live fire gunnery practice by the cadets.

"You said something about New Avalon?" Alexandria questioned while most of the mass of cadets' attention was elsewhere.

He nodded. "Haakon has already departed for Mountain Wolf, but there are matters for New Avalon that require a personal meeting with Ian to address properly."

The reigning first prince was exceedingly informal among his friends and it wasn't the first time she'd heard the First Prince be called by his first name whether or not he was present or not. Indeed... it had been a little awkward at the time at the wedding of the first prince's brother, and the current heir, Hanse where the reigning monarch had been visibly drunk and dragging his most recent vassal around to introduce him to everyone... including her.

Henry's position at Sakhara stemmed from his ability, his abilities as a brutally capable mechwarrior... from the battles of Mallory's world and Hallstead station who's resolution had culminated in the destruction of the unit which celebrated its role in the Kentares massacre. To that end as a direct vassal of New Avalon there were probably an innumerable number of things that could require the direct involvement of the First Prince.

Henry Clay shuffled his feet, then tilted his head. "Well, I can't tell you unless you're coming,"
--
Justin looked at the mech cubicles and down to his hands. He was jittery from all the coffee... he'd had a lot today... and he'd really switched to tea mostly to rehydrate but all the caffeine was getting to him.

There was a lot that went into having a new mech to pilot. There were a lot of questions to fill out, trying to make sure everything on the mech worked right. That was without even thinking about whether or not he ended up changing anything.

A part of him wanted to come back after he graduated. A part of him was pissed off he wouldn't be able to move on to the cadre after graduation. The Academy training cadre wasn't an RCT, but it was a combined arms unit ... the battalion was really more based on the early SLDF from what he'd read than the more modern formations.

Sakhara to Spica was going to be almost four months stuck on a jumpship assuming they didn't stop anywhere to let them stretch their legs. Then he'd be processed into his first duty station on Spica with the Guards RCT and he certainly didn't want to have his mech break down on the frontier. The most practical answer would be to replace the LRM 5 which really didn't do anything for him with medium lasers... he didn't want to be stuck in a situation where all he had was his torso mounted large laser once he ran out of ammo for his guns.

... and from the sound of it the Haseks were bad about supply issues or something. Scuttlebutt going around as people tried to ferret out where they and their classmates were going was starting to circle around. Not that everyone was going to a front line command or combat posting despite being mech warriors ... the truth was unless Henry volunteered and insisted on being put on the front he'd probably just be brevetted to captain on graduation and put into an instructor's role full time. His cousin Alexandria had been set up to go to the Department of Military Intelligence which he wasn't supposed to know. Juan had made no secret he was going to the 7th​ Crucis Lancers as soon as he'd gotten the confirmation. If Henry had volunteered for anywhere the popular speculation among the student body was it'd be with them since he'd fought with them on Halstead and Mallory's world... but it was because of those battles that his father expected there was little need for further proof.

"These are the documents you asked for on the Merlin." A tech remarked. The stack of papers were a mix of official, Mountain Wolf, literature and industrial periodicals as well as probably in house within Clay's own staff looking over the battlemech. It was a heavy battlemech, but that much he had already known, though lighter than the cataphract at only sixty tons. It ran off a 240 rated Fusion Engine and had weapons for every range bracket.

No autocannons either.... just a dinky machine gun. It was however advertised as rugged and easy to maintain utilizing readily available commercial parts. At a price tag of just under five million c-bills it probably did have potential as a training mech or for filling troop formations. He could see its potential, it was just that he wasn't going to be on Sakhara to see it be used.
--
Note: I do want to point out that while it is possibly a case of space feudalism the idea that your Political head of the agency and its executive is an American thing. The british system, the minister responsible for the intelligence apparatus and the Chief would be two separate individuals. Director Central Intelligence Agency is an appointee and thus requires senatorial consent but he's not a member of the senate.

Also canonically Quintus isn't the minister yet, which had slipped my mind. Since we're on the subjects of Quintus, he seems to have remarried when Justin was probably five or six given his younger brother is born in '97... interestingly Daniel would go on to attend New Avalon... which runs into the problem of him getting posted to the Kell Hounds in 3015 (per sarna) but again possible space feudalism. So I assume Quintus is already high up in the MIIO apparatus and may actually be in the parliament of the fed suns... because space britain... so yeah. [and part of it is probably stackpoole was writing in the late eighties with the novels coming out basically back to back]

 

[Imperator Pax]

Sakhara 2.5​

The Duke of Robinson had looked at the Assault Cluster with evident interest. It was no surprise. Colonel Robinson had laid out the operating doctrine of her command. Firepower at the expense of speed for the most part. Their fusion powered demolisher mark III tank with their dual 185mm assault cannons backed up with other weapons were intended to insure withering close in fire on an enemy when they were defending or besieging.

That was something of the problem. She had expected some push back from the Draconis March government at some point. As DMI2 she had no authority to give the posting orders, but she was counting, treading heavily on that she would be able to convince the first prince of certain positions. That wasn't a sure thing, but Yvonne was sure some of the Field Marshal of the Draconis March's umbrage was his recognition that she might be able to do just that. That she could potentially succeed in convincing Ian to agree to the proposal.

That was why he was insisting to accompany them to New Avalon so he could petition the First Prince directly. That was a headache, especially since there was no practical way to stop him... and even if the combine did attack that would be a momentary distraction and probably in the long run do more to convince the other parties that the Draconis March should take priority.

No ironically the best case scenario was an attack, but one where the Hasek's utterly dropped the ball on defending the frontier and looked incompetent enough where Crucis March troops needed to be brought in... but she wasn't really counting on the sick man of the inner sphere to do her any favors.

That was why she knew better than to directly contest Sandoval's presence. She needed to sway Ian to her position and prioritize Kathil. It was for the realm. If she'd been doing this for personal gain they'd be going to New Avalon for entirely different reasons.

She sighed in annoyance and looked at her Guards officer, "Do you have them?"

He presented the called for paper work.

Captain Haakon's JumpShips had departed with some going inward in the realm... and another carrying the rake thin man to do his master's bidding. To Mountain Wolf Battlemechs with the intention of a partnership with them, for their heavy battlemech, and if rumors were right their extinct light mech? It probably wouldn't be in its star league configuration... but the rumors were Clay had a few of those somewhere and parts besides. Corean would be a fifty ton medium, and there was the sudden explosive chatter about seventy tonners.

Then of course there was the manufacturing of armor and apparently ASF in discussion. Anything that could use a 240 engine ... which suggested Clay had some confidence in his ability to produce the engine in question in numbers necessary. That would mean the heavy vehicles in his cluster... and that was certainly of interest to the duke of Robinson... and the 240 was also the engine in the rifleman.

"What is it?"

"Apparently he's been in rapid communication with Major Cameron of the rangers. The chassis they were discussing in question equates to a seventy ton frame, and involves a 280 engine." The officer replied. "I." The pause was a moment, "The conversation entailed Kurita's warhammer," Yorinaga in this case, the machine that had been literally punched down into the sandy soils of a wind struck expanse of Mallory's world, "and the Warhammer design lineage." The conversation, between the two mechwarriors, had wound its way around to including apparently the indigenous Davion design the Battle Axe. "Should we expect another one? Another machine?"

"I would say so given the animated nature of the conversation."

That was the thing that worried her. Clay's techs probably had a long history of dealing with their lord's proclivities they seemed to be quite good at putting things together at a request, and were used to this enough to chide any of the more ridiculous ideas. Apparently having dissuaded him from a slightly better armored rifleman as redundant and not worth pursuing for example. It would have been nice if she had had that sort of pull. She sighed, "And?"

"Tentatively, well they're calling it the Longsword. Apparently something about armored knights and keeping with theme of previous designs."

... oh it had a name, that probably meant it was close. She had been hoping for at least a couple of quiet days, but it was not to be. "Has Coleridge been informed of what they're up to?" Of that, the guards officer didn't know.
--
Henry had a number of particular interests. He'd been exposed almost constantly to the future eighties aesthetic and the reality of Battlemechs, and of course part of that was that weapons were grouped into types, categories based on performance. There were outliers in different models but for all intents and purposes the performance down range of most weapons after the several hundred years were homogenous across their class... but they could look different, in the case of autocannons they used different calibers and ammunition requirements.

Different parts in a mech could often have different appearances, and well that lead to the moniker frankenmech were people often out of desperation or lack of the correct spare parts added things on and kitbashed a solution to make a functional mech for the battlefields of the succession war.

The Longsword though as it was taking shape, and in this case as techs were installing the last of four Magna Mark II Medium Lasers into the recesses in the chest, was much harder to call a frankenmech.

Part of that was that fairly typical bidepdal mech layout that comprised the BattleAxe and Warhammer designs. Indeed the layout of bundles of myomer fiber were similar to that of the latter design and the layout of internal parts were designed to insure rugged reliability but hte major change were the cooling jackets in the arms. It added additional armor to the warhammer but also dropped potentially risky ammunition dependent weapons in favor of greater mobility and two additional Medium lasers over the warhammer's design.

They'd replaced the Rawling jumpjets found in the BattleAxe with HildCo models used in the Victor. The machine was therefore unlikely to enjoy the stability as a platform of the standard warhammer, but it was a concession for mobility. Someone else might have decided this was all too much trouble and either just decided to make more warhammers, or go a step further and reintroduce the 26th​ century version of the black knight... but Henry figured that after the cataphract maybe a new seventy tonner design would encourage the Federated Suns to make new BattleMech designs.

There was no guarantee that would be what would happen but he didn't understand why more effort more federal funding hadn't been put towards trying to rebuild... well apparently that was what fucking magic was for, he thought humming the first few bars of the 1812 overture as the gantries retracted, and techs moved out of the way.

"Now remember if anyone who asks, this is intended for training purposes."

"Oh yes it would very terribly be irresponsible of us to let a cadet in without first insuring it was safe."

He watched as the kilted david bowie took the machine out of the shop and to a test enclosure that was ... mostly sand with a series of large ferrocrete embankments. Two PPCs represented roughly equivalent firepower to an assault autocannon at a greater range. The 280 rated engine would allow the longsword to maintain pace with the Cataphract model Justin was using, or a standard warhammer and thus in practice the longsword was in many ways a less complicated warhammer.

Fifteen minutes later Bard had returned. "So do you really need Corean?"

"I do. Putting one of these together by hand, is one thing. Mass production, producing them en masse thats another so if you want to see these in service in the Draconis March we have a lot of work that needs to be done." And more that, the truth was as much as he would have liked to introduce this latest new thing... the Centurion was already in wide scale service with the Federated Suns... and if Henry were to express the true scope of what he had in mind... he wanted there to be factories on Robinson and on Sakhara producing hundreds of Centurions a year that way the Federated Suns could begin rebuilding its Medium BattleMech units more akin to a simple logistic force that could be used to free up larger heavier units for assaults and invasions.

The centurion's common usage was what precluded other designs. It wasn't the Militia Mech concept these were going to be military 'grade' battlemechs not industrial mechs but he needed Corean to provide cover for mass production even if Corean wasn't thinking that far ahead.... and the simple reality was that it would be easier to get lots of Centurions operational and for the Federated Suns to use them since they already knew what they were.
--
Notes: this drops a small section, and Eminence in Shadow will be updating Friday. I'm currently trying to figure out what my scheduling for August updates is going to be, but this is most likely to be regularly updated. Aurigan Renaissance less so. I do want to get to the start of the pirate wars in that timeline, but there is other stuff I would like to update, and I will probably padding out some of the first week of august with updates of Essence of Viltrumite content (If you haven't seen Invinicible from Amazon prime, I recomend it).

 

[Imperator Pax]

Sakhara 2.6​

Alexandria looked at the machine, "I want to elaborate here before anyone gets too excited." Henry was saying to the class as most of them crowded in. "This is a prototype. It is a one off machine put together not by an organized factory line, but rather as an individual machine. Take parts put it together, and have the techs go over it to make sure everything works like its supposed to." The cadets at the assembly were a variety of years ... not just her and the others that would be graduating in the summer, and most weren't actually concerned about it being a one off, just that it was big and new. "You're all of you are officer cadets. You all of you have some sort of political responsibility waiting for you back home, that may be small, it may be great. War is not won by one off prototypes, this," He gestured back to the machine, "This machine is a one off, now the lessons we learn from this machine, that's different, but its principle advantage over a warhammer is that its less complicated. Logistics wins wars. Those of you who will be graduating soon the new curriculum will mean less," Unless one was going on to the Training Cadre to serve their first tour of duty after commissioning, "The class of 3018," The current second years, "Will be eased into the program on a partial basis. This is not an advanced track or special operations course. It is a course designed to familiarize its participants operating in unison along the lines of Star League era formations, and that will begin next year. The class of 3019 and 3020 will be under a more integrated curriculum, but covering the same principles aimed at meeting Sakhara's lofty standards for competent well rounded officers capable of meeting and surviving the challenges of the modern battlefield."

Her class was supposed to be dividing up with the other years for exercises, but even then most of the attention was occupied by the heavy battlemech rather than the sheets of paper with their group assignments. She double checked her paper as a matter of form. It looked like from the pilot profiles for the younger cadets. Sakhara's cadets were supposed to be the future leaders of the armed forces... of course part of that was school provincialism and tradition it wasn't quite that clear cut, but in theory every graduate of Sakhara was supposed to be a potential leader.

One could have made the argument that was true of any military academy, but people compared Sakhara to Albion, and the Nagelring in the Lyran Commonwealth not... the swarms of cadets who graduated Sun Zhang in the Combine.

Her group were comprised of generalist mechs. Cadets whose machines were equipped with a mix of weapons like her Orion was. Other cadets, looking around, had been paired with her classmates who had similar weapon loadouts. This wasn't new. She'd seen group sortings like this before, though normally there was a preference for forming a well rounded lance.

Fifty feet away Henry was allocating a collection of students who had mechs he was familiar with. Some of them had Centurions, others Trebuchets, a few more had riflemen and archers. It would have been a formation of mechs found with Regulan Hussars and it was so far as he was concerned a reasonable enough spread of mechs to build a company sized element off of. Admittedly it was also pulling cadets from across all four years but there was no helping that... and that was kind of the point of today.

He could have done without the needling though.

Twenty tons lighter than Alexandria's Orion, the Wolverine Medium BattleMech was a quintessential trooper mech right down to its common enough engine, and a nominal price tag under five million C-Bills. "You frankly brought it on yourself Bard." He remarked, the Ranger major should have known better than to get caught in between two heavy battlemechs. He looked down at the notification, "anyway this is really about trying to make sure the graduating cadets share what they've learned in a positive fashion with the years below them." And in theory it was bout operational rapport... the e spirit de corp. "Anyway are you ready?"

"Sure whenever, but when are you going to tell them how long this is going to last?"

He hmmed in response, "At dinner maybe?" Henry replied contemplatively. "Besides they're not actually going to have to pitch their own tents."

--
Yvonne Davion watched as the saturday excercise continued. The Longsword really did bear more resemblance to the Warhammer than it did Clay's Rabid Fox. The other seventy ton machine, the 'Cataphract' did have some shared resemblance to the Marauder thus the three mechs resembled each other below the waist so to speak. The Rabid Fox, and the classic Marauder were still different enough from the Cataphract, and each other.

She gestured for one of her guards officers, who leaned inward, "What can you tell me about the Merlin?"

"Ma'am. It is by all indications a purely conventional BattleMech." He replied. "As has already been mentioned ma'am it does run off a 240 series Fusion Engine." Which of course they already had established that Clay had lines producing.

Clay himself was currently supervising a group of first and second years piloting Rifleman series sixty tonners and the slower of the two Cataphract machines. That made sense given the Cataphract had been built using the same model autocannon as the Rifleman. She didn't need reminding that the Rifleman as well utilized the Pitban 240 engine.


That was a reminder that she was going to have an argument when they did reach New Avalon. Those fusion engines, the production of, could easily bolster the Draconis March Militia. Fusion Engines were lighter than ICE counterparts for the necessary energy density, and required less upkeep and fuel. A lighter engine meant not only an easier time powering energy weapons, but also ... well as the Demolisher MkIII demonstrated more weapons, or more conventionally more armor.

The cost and shortage of fusion engines beside meant most people wouldn't have bothered. The duke of Robinson though had been a tanker during his intial term of service... worse he'd been an enlisted tanker. Clay also likely due to his retainers also seemed to be preferential to his armor contingents and that made the 240 series Fusion Engines a desirable commodity.

As DMI2, she would have preferred that Captain Haakon had remained on station longer, but he was a merchant, and JumpShips were vital to the economy. A part of her did recognize that they probably wouldn't have been able to gather more information than what they'd already recorded... besides Haakon had left a force behind on planet's surface. At a mass of 12000 tons and two hundred and fifty meters in length the hammer head esque aerodyne dropships were by themselves frightfully better armed than the two thousand ton lighter Vengeance ASF.

That was apparently a trade off, that heavier armament of these 'Titans' meant that DropShips 'only' carried thirty aircraft each. They knew that for sure as the air wing had deployed. A part of her wondered if that more aimed at the idea of some descendant of Stefan Amaris attacking Sakhara rather than being done as a precaution against the Combine. She hadn't asked, but it was a detail she was having to keep fresh in her mind. It was a detail that had appeared, and it better explained the bolstering of Sakhara's defenses... and it potentially explained why those household troops, what the ferrying Jarnsfolk had called huskarl, were only now arriving to the landhold.

Henry had demonstrated he considered these apparent Amaris threat equal to whatever threat the Combine might make... and she didn't particularly like the notion of the Combine learning that detail. Clay had after all shown off most of a Combine regiment, admittedly across two planetary battlefields, of the Sword of Light more or less alone.

Then there was the implication that the force present was part not the sum. Most likely the RAC's battlemech forces were still out there somewhere looking at some unknown periphery conflict. That concerned her. As DMI2 that concerned her a great deal because it was someone who had an idea of the combine's capabilities looking out at a periphery threat, and effectively commenting that they were at least as much of a threat as one of the great houses.

From his wheel chair the Duke of Robinson watched he young people drill. Officially it was the young people who were being tested here. They were being supported by more experienced soldiers, and mechwarriors but this was about lessons older cadets could impart on their juniors. Aaron Sandoval would have liked to have been content with that experience.

Sakhara was not the RBA, the institution his family and he himself had revitalized, its armor corp of cadets was less necessary to the school. The cadets though of the school were being supervised just the same by the mass of heavy armor that formed the RAC. It was these forces he was more interested in watching, but that was in no small part due to his Rangers presently participating in the Mech exercises. It was uncommon for young men to give the humble tanks its due, it was even more rare to see that combined arms in motion.

The lesson here probably wouldn't fully take, but it was always impressive to see it done well. At eighty tons even the lower tech version of the Demolisher was a potentially lethal and certainly unpleasant surprise to a mechwarrior on the battlefield supported at long range by their PPC carrying relations and in turn supporting Medium BattleMech units there was a full spectrum of coverage when added to the air power.

"Is it to your liking?" The other field marshal asked.

"I have no complaints." He replied, which was true, but Aaron Sandoval also didn't appreciate anything that might cut into expanding the forces under his command, and more importantly enriching House Sandoval in the long run. House Sandoval was not an especially wealthy house and there were a number of noble houses within the Draconis March with greater liquid wealth, perhaps best demonstrated by Clay's ability to seriously propose being to finance what he had suggested. It was in House Sandoval's best interest to expand its alliances especially if it promised to add domestic battlemech production to Robinson.
--
Notes: this is shorter than originally planned but it does touch on the Duke of Robinson starting to respond to Yvonne's more FedSuns (federal) first policy versus the canonical regional marcher lords preference for having investment in their own realms, and this is realistic to a feudal system.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Sakhara 2.7​

By the time Monday morning had rolled around she was exhausted. She wasn't the only one it was clear most of the school had been run ragged by the exercises as they had been put through their paces. Star Colonel Robinson was currently looming beside the desk as Henry finished distributing the last of the papers.

They were theoretically back to their normal classes... one wouldn't have known that from how the vice Chancellor had looked at last night's dinner, or even this morning. Coleridge had looked like the proverbial cat who had caught the canary... of course Coleridge hadn't been out in the sweat and the sand.

"So obviously in an ideal situation we'd be," Henry had started talking without signaling to the class he was going to, "Doing more in cross arms drills. Coordination with aviation needs work, but that is a weakness that can be worked around, in six months all of you will have left Sakhara for your first posting so we simply to recognize that's a potential weakness." There was some grumbling about the cadets as part of the flight school. Clay ignored the background chatter, "The purpose of the exercise to see how you fared with people in your age group and not totally divorced from your skill level. The cadets in the classes under you can learn from you, beating an OpFor is an accomplishment, but there is always room to improve. So we're going to take this week to focus on the basics of lance fire and maneuver, and next week we'll be acting at a company level modelled on fighting a typical combine opponent. What we will be doing before hand is you will elucidate on paper your expectations, and strategies, you'll put them in this box, and next week you'll write up your after action reports, and we'll compare and contrast, expectation and reality."

She didn't like the sound of it... and it didn't help she was tired, and that he expected them to sit down and think about it without any reference material... but she could see the reasoning behind testing them on what they could recall while tired. There was grumbling from some of the other cadets, but she refrained.

Henry chugged down the tea from his thermos and looked out over the palm trees and the manicured oasis of a bit of campus greenery. He had called time and let them put the papers up but this wasn't really for a great, he just wanted to compare and contrast what they expected. Some of the students probably expected to be pitted again elite combine troops like the sword of light, others were probably expecting swarms of light mechs... well they had some time.

The real problem wasn't this experiment, it was what was coming after. The duke of Robinson couldn't be expected to just hang around, and the Field Marshal of the Draconis March and its chief minister kipping off to New Avalon was one of the things people complained about his counterpart from the Capellan March had been doing since inheriting the patrimony of House Hasek to go along with existing positions at court under Ian.

That was the problem, because from the sound of it... the duchess of Victoria wanted to curb Hasek influence at court, but there were worlds in the capellan march. It was enlightening to watch the two elder statesmen disagree... and see their motivations, their ambitions for regional for national levels of the realm and how ambitions competed with personal sentiment.

When he'd been introduced to the who was who of the Federated Suns upper crust it had been a hasty matter of Ian dragging him around. It wasn't helped that Ian who wasn't much to stand on ceremony had been drunk at his brother's wedding and so ... well great impressions and a grasp of expectations weren't exactly high. Michael Hasek-Davion, and Henry really didn't understand how that was supposed to work except as an honorific ... and yet that nagged at him more so than any other impression of the man during that fleeting evening on New Avalon... and the bigger problem was Michael Hasek-Davion was now the minister of the Capellan March having succeeded to his family's hereditary position with the passing of the family's previous patriarch.

He didn't notice Alexandria's presence until she cleared her throat to draw attention, and she glanced to the side, "You mentioned," She bit her lip, "inquired whether I could be spared to visit New Avalon when you leave with the duchess of Victoria."

"And, Lord Aaron is coming." He remarked absentmindedly shuffling his own papers as he moved away from the window, as her expression creased, "The original plan was just to discuss battlemech factory lines, but," Henry trailed off, "I can only let you know the full scope of things if you're sure-"

"I'm sure." Alexandria found herself saying. As heiress to Kestrel it hadn't been entirely out of the realm of possibility, but never mind.
--
Alexandria stood somewhat star struck a few hours later watching the holographic display, the map projected into the center of the room. A command circuit, or jumpship circuit was a historical legacy, a time from before the HPG network had been built by the star league and when JumpShips had been more common than in the era after the Star League's fall.

There had been talk but the idea that the circuit established from New Avalon meant she could feasibly board a jumpship at Sakhara and be home in a week. "When did you have time?"

"About a month ago." He remarked as the icon representing a Star Lord jumpship, the last in the chain, winked from Koloma to New Avalon, "It will standardize once the Jarnfolk are in the rotation ," A series of icons glowed which would add to the number JumpShips creating a reserve moving back and forth, "If we were able to get things off the ground I wanted the material for the Mechs as soon as possible. The engineers and their experience is important."

There was a tired sigh from the Duchess of Victoria. "No, Lord Henry, that is not what its important,"

There was a grumbling, he clicked a couple of keys on the tiny palm sized keyboard in one hand, "This is a pressurized shipyard, its rated at 350K," Thousand, "Tons." Henry's focus internally was the sheer inexpensive nature of a large pressurized yard through his essence, and that was part of the benefit as he viewed things. The habitat were about one and a half the cost of the Star Lords he had been defaulting to originally, "The advantage of pressurized yards is that it allows techs to service my Star Lords without the need of cumbersome space suits. That includes," he clicked again, and the image changed, "These are the precursor part fabrication units to manufacture new parts, and indeed the assembly segments of new Star Lords."

A short animation followed as representations of parts in the form of labelled blocks flowed up a pyramidal shaped chart until they reached the end stage of components moved to the yard which then finished out a completed Star Lord.

Alexandria started to say something, but the Duke of Robinson had also decided to speak, "So a single Star Lord a year?"

"For the breaking in process, yeah probably just a replacement for the one we had to scrap," Alexandria felt a bit faint at the comment, "After that once we're sure about tolerances, and handling," He waved his hand, "Two to three with sufficient Germanium for the core. Since unlike WarShips, JumpShips are fairly static the JumpDrive is the main limiting facet of technological production. The hull is assembled from separate segments and joined together that's-"

"You understand that at present the Draconis Combine can only produce a single Star Lord a year?"

He shrugged at the observation from the Field Marshal, "As I said JumpDrive production, the K-F drive's integrity is the limitting factor. A Star Lord has six DropShip collars and thus represents a not insignificant commercial capability in terms of ferrying dry bulk cargo, or also people. Does it instantly correct the deficet in merchant shipping tonnage that stymies the economy, no. There has been a shipping crunch for two hundred years that isn't going to disappear with just one shipyard. Which is of course why I would prefer a shipyard at Bristol, further inside the borders of the Federated Suns and away from the front."

Sakhara was only two jumps from the Combine planet of Misery. Not that Bristol was very deep inside the territory of the Federated Suns given that Tikonov, of the Capellan Confederation, was only four jumps away... but that was still double the number of jumps. He clicked the palm pilot slash mouse thing in his hands, he was playing up the emphasis of his relationship with the JarnFolk under Haakon and the need for Sakhara to have the facilities to produce spare parts and serve as a port of call for the Jarnfolk, but that was only partly an exaggeration. He wanted Sakhara to serve as a hub of JumpShip and DropShip parts from what he understood there was a legitimate shortage of spare parts and maintenance... and well Sakhara and the Draconis March would need more air cover even beyond what he already had here.
--
Notes: Alright I'm going to DnD, but here is today's update, I'll read and make

 

[Imperator Pax]

2.8​

Henry could not believe that the Federated Suns didn't still produce the Shadow Hawk... there were no words. No Words. It boggled the mind, he looked at Galster over his folded fingers fingers, which were pressing into the bridge of his nose, "But they produce the wolverine right?" After receiving and confirming the affirmative, he sighed, "Well at least there is that." He didn't mean for it to come out as nearly petulant as it sounded, but some of it was genuine exasperation.

Yvonne's comment yesterday about the shipping manufacturing capability of the Draconis Combine had in its own way rankled, perhaps unreasonably. It was reminder of way he kept from just dumping tons of new technology on the Fed Suns regardless of how badly at times he just wanted to introduce early clan weapons as an excusable improved iteration of autocannons... and that was without even touching other things in the auto cannon tree.

No... he needed to focus on 185mm production for assault auto cannons and for the others the lighter caliber used in the Imperator class five used by the Rifleman.... but also that just reminded him of his Zoryas sitting in garrison if it came to that.

"Still..." he groaned.

The fact that they didn't currently produce a shadow hawk... while annoying was something that could be worked around. In theory he had considered a Centurion that was effectively just a Trebuchet ... but that wasn't really a great solution. The Shadow Hawk would have been preferable, and potentially avoided any conspiracy theory yarn walls ... maybe, but it was also hard to pretend that wasn't aesthetics and personal preference playing a roll.

"We could sink capital into the line on Northwind."

That was currently, at best only producing spare parts, "We need actual factory first," It wasn't that he didn't like the idea of it, but the Trebuchet's flank speed was something to let it disengage so simply producing more of those wasn't going to address the problem. Not adequately in any event, "That is our priority, we will get the Centurion line," Lines really, "Operational," both here and on Robinson with the intention of padding out the Draconis March.

He wasn't sure where things stood with the Lyran Commonwealth, but he didn't immediately foresee a problem from that direction ... and building up the draconis march not only safeguarded against the Combine, but in theory it expanded the DMM for what was likely to be the inevitable clash with the clans of Kerensky, after all it was hard to miss that the Wolf Dragoons were a thing.

That was not something he was going to forget and he also in the two years that he'd been active in the Federated Suns was cognizant of the various crackpot theories and eccentric rich who among other urban legends talked about the Minnesota tribe as well as the vandenburg white wings the latter having occurred in the neighboring concordat. That merely reminded him of the threat of the clans, and of ComStar existing.

The FS needed industry, and economic build up. He needed to hold off on debuting more impressive systems until they were in a better footing in terms of looking across the border with the Combine. Even industry was likely to risk a response, but spamming LosTech or nuTech would likely draw ComStar and excuses to leverage the vulnerabilities of the HPG network, even if the Federated Suns' merchant marine was substantially expanded there was always the risk of a fifth column... not just blakists but also the Capellan March, which was why he wanted to build up the Draconis March first just in case Michael Hasek got any funny ideas about what appending -Davion to his last name entitled him to.

He supposed that when one got right down to it, he couldn't have lived many places else... in the inner sphere or otherwise... maybe Lyran space... but the Civil War in Marik space and how quick in canon they had been willing to team up with ComStar ... it was just hard to reconcile that. If there was any single threat within the Federated Suns he was wary about it was the whole doppelganger plot... and given that Yorinaga was dead and Ian Davion wasn't he was pretty sure that had been tossed off the rails... but there was always the chance it wasn't.


--
Yvonne Davion studied the itinerary as the young lady sat across from her. She didn't say it but well girls had been girls when she'd been at Avalon and the debutante rumor mill was still what it was. It had hte potential to be ugly, Sakhara was a gathering of the scions of impeccable breeding but that didn't change that they were still largely the heirs to those families.

Not that either of them could have done worse. The ruling family of Kestrel came from an established bloodline that traced its origins back to the SLDF. A long and storied history of mechwarriors not that she expected that was the concern at the moment. She, Yvonne, was well aware that Ian had ... most likely because she was probably one of the few noblewomen close to Henry's age at the wedding of his younger brother Hanse .... introduced the two. Something Ian probably shouldn't have done, since that in itself had been something of a faux pas, never minding her nephew and sovereign's ... state of intoxication at the time.

It had been the talk at the time at least for fifteen minutes before other matters came up... after all Ian had yet to do his duty in spite of pressure, and suggestions to marry and sire a trueborn heir. Hanse was thus heir apparent to the realm. Ian could not readily afford to wait... Mallory's world had been a chancy thing.

No one was likely to forget that... but that wasn't today's problem... but it could be said to be related to it. While not nearly the catch that marrying the First Prince would be, or his brother Hanse Ian had named Henry as Count of Sakhara which was not a small claim even if Henry didn't rule the planet. Even counting just the jumpship fleet, and the apparent productivity of the Germanium reserves of his possession that was valuable and never mind the prospect of the shipyards. The shipyards if built over Sakhara would render the Clay patrimony easily on the standards of dukes assuming it wasn't there already...

That wasn't public knowledge. The jumpships maybe... but not the money that could be sunk into. No the chatter of the girls would center on all the things that made the notion appealing.

Alexandria was older than he was. She was a senior. She'd be graduating soon. On the other hand despite being younger and technically in a lower year Henry was also technically a guest lecturer at Sakhara... and he was a war hero it was hard to trump his combat record even for men who'd been in uniform for their whole careers.

It was all too easy for the girls at their age to turn either one into scandalous villains, because their mothers and aunts would do the same thing for their own peers. It was how the game was played.

"Shall I spare you the trouble, all the suspense?" She asked putting the papers aside. It was really a rhetorical question, and of course the young countess of Kestrel knew that, and said nothing, "Let us be blunt about then, Lord Henry apparently sees fit enough that his disposable income," the nominally county treasure, "is sufficient to do more than fund the establishment of a BattleMech factory within his domain here. He has plans to build a shipyard..." she paused and measure the young woman's reaction, and then let the other shoe drop, "For Star Lord class JumpShips, not DropShips." It hadn't escaped Yvonne that Clay's JumpShip fleet was predominantly Star Lords either. "and he makes claims at least that he can support the creation of a second one."

She had actually listened to Clay outline what all went into a JumpShip Shipyard everything from the finalized assembly of components and hull... down the base level components. .. and yet in spite of that process's number of steps supposedly next year Henry Clay expected to replace the Star Lord that he had apparently needed to scrap.


For Alexandria's part she had the sense to recognize the value of the Star Lords as they were. The number of them necessary to establish a circuit from here to New Avalon that would make reaching the capital of the Federated Suns relatively quick and easy.

Yvonne recognized that Alexandria had most likely either been in the dark entirely or just not, had failed to put together the pieces... and why wouldn't she what they were dealing with was well beyond the normal scope of possibilities.
--
The question Justin asked was more why are you going than anything, "What's on New Avalon?" It was just the way he phrased it.

"The First Prince." Justin Allard rolled his eyes in the face of the droll response, but quipping aside, "I told you I have a lot going on," And that was part of the reason the JumpCircuit was going to be important because Yvonne's response told him he was going to need to put more effort in making regular trips rotations to New Avalon. He'd already expected that for Robinson, but Robinson was closer.

They stopped talking as the familiar thrum of 300 weight engines from the ASF overhead passed them by. Justin mostly shrugged it off, but the truth was the increase in ASF presence heralded the expansion of orbital infrastructure... and just in case any white wings showed up. It wasn't paranoia if they were actually out there... but ComStar maybe hadn't gotten their loop set yet... he might still have time to do a few more things.

"So you understand of course I don't expect Sakhara graduates to just jump in Centurions..." Henry trailed off, "I like the mathematical simplicity of whole lances and companies of 'mechs, especially if it were possible to support them with organic air and infantry, but as we've demonstrated the Centurion needs support in indirect fire."

"The base model doesn't have enough missiles." Justin reasonably observed, "And they don't have the ammunition to stand off... and even if they did a motivated force like the snakes will just try and push through." Which of course in theory could be addressed by the mass of armor on either side enveloping and destroying an attacker... but that was a circumstance not wholly unique to his forces but wasn't representative either. Justin looked at the paper, "What's this?" He asked.

"Consider it homework, I know it'll have less bearing posted on the Capellan front but the Combine started the succession wars, of the member states they're the largest challenge so I want the class prepared as best as possible to face that."

The Centurion wasn't perfect, but as a mass produced trooper 'mech was good enough, and being able to field enough of them to cover the frontage was probably the most important thing in the short term.
--
Notes: This is really an interim before we move into the next chapter but the principle difference between this and EWSG, which i will update eventually, in the long term is that Odin has the advantage of the FedCom coming together largely inline with canon. There are institutional advantages to having Hanse at the helm so to speak by the time the clans show up where as here Ian is alive and is not going to marry nor can he afford to wait that long to marry the heir to the Commonwealth. On the other hand Ian is alive, whether Mikey boy really thinks he's that hot in terms of trying something well we will see but Ian has a much stronger position than Hanse, especially if Hanse has children of his own... even though Ian really should have been married in canon by the time of his death.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Sakhara 1.9​

Sakhara belonged to the Dahar PDZ along with Bettendorf Hoff and Elidere, the latter also including Ander's Moon. The problem was that the PDZ also stretched all the way to Cimeron, on top of those worlds and he could hardly abscond with the cadets and muck off to Hoff for LosTech prospecting that wasn't acceptable... and he didn't have the time either. Something with Hoff needed to be done probably sooner rather than later, but maybe not this year.

Henry looked at the floating display of numbers... and not for the first time he wondered how he wasn't actively distorting the c-Bill in terms of value... assuming the C-Bills he was using, exchanging through mediums were going into the broader economy... which they might not be... but even so he had to be putting C-Bills into the Davion economy to a lesser extent... and it wouldn't be so much 'lesser' before long.

... and of course from an economic stand point the C-Bill was a means of exchange between the houses and between houses and ... sub contracting entities of sorts. That was businesses as well as Mercenaries, but it wasn't the dominant currency. There was an exchange rate between the house bills and each other and the C-Bill because the majority of trade was local bills.

Corean was a publicly traded company, and while he could throw money at the problem.. he also needed them to orient towards other responsibilities.... and Corean would likely easier to whoo over than GM, but there was always Achenar. There was going to need be a deep dive of everything that could be done, and that meant looking at what licenses existed within the FedSuns, as well as what mercenary units were under contract because the third succession war wasn't over.

He figured they would need spare parts at a reasonable price, and well spare parts would probably attract significantly less attention at market than full on mechs... and of course on the subject of mechs there was the issue that not only did he have no good idea on where to go for light mechs, and here Henry was recognizing his own lack of strong footing in the knowledge base, he also was cognizant that House Davion seemed to have a lot of light mech production never might salvage from its frequent battles with House Kurita.

There were simply put a lot of light mechs, and in general lighter weight mechs in service. Some of that was probably the economics of constructing lighter mechs on the industrial technology of the succession war era economies, but even so Henry really didn't want to get into the light mech game until he was sure where things stood. Which was good because there were more important things going given the numbers in front of him.

A part of him just wanted to sit here and just mass produce possibly literally everything that could run off of a pitban 240 and call it a day... "Not all of your eggs in one basket." He muttered to himself... and he was banking on being able to get to Bristol and opening up the Castle Brian sized Fury warehouse and using that as an excuse to start producing those, and other gauss rifle designs for House Davion... and maybe House Steiner in order to get the ball rolling on mass anti clan designs but he had been hoping to use the excuse of a shipyard as being sufficient reason to have influence on the planet.

He was wondering now if he had overthought that. The truth was he hadn't readily expected or planned for what life on Sakhara was going to be like. He'd been at the time too busy expecting the combine to come charging over the border after the battle of Halstead station. That hadn't happened. ComStar hadn't invented some bullshit excuse to interdict the FedSuns... things had just sort of coasted from there... two years down the road here they were.

Here he was looking at mountains of c-bills, and a fund in house bills of what the transport company had been bringing in. He glanced at a third value display enumerating banked BV... he'd need a staff pool to work with, and that was going to have to be both military and civilians, and some kind of public relations board... and those people were going to entail security. It was handy thus that the Rabid Foxes were a ground force option... even though that nickname was unlikely to be granted within this timeline.
--
A part of Yvonne expected that poor Ian was in no way prepared for what was about to be dropped into his lap... in truth she was hoping that the trip to New Avalon ... well that once they arrived that she would be able to take the monarch aside and attempt to brief him on the situation in such away to prepare him for both the matter as it was, and also what was best for the realm at large. That was likely going to be a tricky proposition, Ian was by no means an idiot, but he was less likely to listen to her advice than his younger brother.

Ian might very well consider it, just by his nature, to take the exuberance at face value from his younger companion of the field of battle, and side with the initial proposal. There was also the risk that the duke of Robinson might well able to leverage Ian, and possibly Hanse's, anti combine sentiments to support a proposal that clearly favored the Draconis March.

The First Prince had strong executive privileges. That didn't mean he could ignore the great houses.

She shuddered to think what might have been the outcome if Clay had simply pushed forward without approaching the government at New Avalon first, with his shipyard plan... given the alleged steps that were left to be completed it was entirely possible that in six to eight months they might have been having this conversation from the supremely awkward position of having a direct vassal to New Avalon casually mention that they had a shiny new shipyard producing Star Lords, and if that weren't enough following on with 'oh would it terribly bother you much if I could build another one of these at Bristol'.

A request that would have been unrefusable... and a part of Yvonne saw no reason to try and refuse it so much as the calculus that if Clay could restore the yards that existed elsewhere in the Suns to capacity then all the better.

Henry was currently talking with Justin Allard, whose father was a career member of the civilian foreign service and had no shortage of rivals at court. If the friendship between the two held, that potentially provided lord Allard a powerful ally at court, and more broadly the ruling house of Kestrel. The Allards were a cadet branch of the Cunninghams and hailed from Kestrel

Certainly as prospective suitors Alexandria could have done worse.

"I must admit I'm surprised you didn't invite Justin." Alexandria observed as he waved to the departing cadet.

"The Cataphract needs more testing, besides I've tried to pull Justin into the logistical side of things, and to be blunt given his posting its better he focuses on mech combat."

That was, Yvonne admitted, a fair observation, with sensible reasoning. It wasn't impossible that Alexandria as part of DMI would see combat, but it was far less likely than in any frontline command posting. What was more likely was given her breeding, and to be honest her good looks and demeanor she would be the public face of any Davion liberation, or outreach to worlds that the Federated Suns were looking to make a favorable impression on.

It was simply the way things were.

"What about the other heavy mech?" The question came from the wheelchair bound form of the duke of Robinson.

"The merlin? That will depend on what Mountain Wolf says, but I have instances of their company's original machines, and I'm given to understand they need capital to rebuild the original factory, so I expect they will be willing to license out production in return for support."

"Such as engines."

"It runs off of a pitban 240, I'm not above throwing money at them to get them to accept." He replied truthfully, "Its a heavy mech, its reasonably fast, and it carries a multi role armament. While I'm sure that armament could be tweaked I think it would complement the centurion well, and that's really my priority it producing enough centurions to fill the gaps for whenever the combine makes a good for the next round."

... and whether it was intended to sway opinion or not, it was precisely that sort of argument which would sway Ian Davion if he was in anyway still mulling the decision. So regardless of the direction Lord Aaron, or the young count of Sakhara were aiming she needed to sway the first prince ahead of time to consider the realm at large rather than just the interests of the Draconis March's most stalwart protectors.

The latter epithet was unfortunately to be something of a bane to Yvonne's efforts in the future as the media within Davion space took it and ran with it.

 

[Imperator Pax]

New Avalon 1.1​

The Longsword was not a complicated design. It didn't need to be, and if anything complexity would have defeated the purpose. He liked the grasshopper, really, he did, but the LRM 5 did seem something of an extra feature thrown in for a seventy ton mech. An extra feature that probably wasn't necessary, and maybe even be a potential vulnerability. It would probably be better to just claim to be able to make the fusion engine that powered the Locust or Whitworth and just put them in 80 ton Heavy LRM carriers for missile support.... but that could wait for the time being.

Henry turned away from the frame, "Alright well you gentlemen have your particular assignments," He remarked. They were going to reach out to federated boeing to see what if anything they had on the Cargo King DropShip, obviously the artemis and ER lasers were going to have to come out but he just wanted to know if the design was available. If it was... well then they could license the production and he could throw up a dropship yard and just produce a Cargo King without the lostech goodies. Then he wouldn't be competing with anyone manufacturing an existing dropship design.

As for hte rest of them, well he had interests besides just the issue of space lift even if that was arguably what he considered the largest priority. The problem, with his assumption of what was the largest priority was it was not universal. DropShips, and JumpShips as necessary to ferry material between distant star systems might carry the trade between worlds, but they hardly stirred mens souls, and for the aristocracy and the gentry it was the prospect of military power which struck the more resonant chord.

That brought them back to the matter of the Longsword... and to a lesser extent its LRM issue. He still thought the best option would probably be LRM carrier vehicles, but maybe the guys would find something.

New Avalon looked the same as it had last time he had been here.. but what Henry didn't see were the undercurrents of political power. At least for Henry's sake Ian Davion had ruled long enough that there were no remnants from the thirty eight year reign of his father Andrew, who Ian had succeeded just before the turn of the century.


Henry did still think it was insane that after sixteen years of rule Ian still didn't have an heir he was thirty five for gods sake, he had never been married. That probably sounded ridiculous given Henry's own apparent age, but even so he'd been arguably exposed to enough of the norm of the 31st​ century to recognize that that wasn't normal.

"There is one other thing," The essence generated MI6 'Rabid Foxes' officer remarked, "It appears Field Marshal Davion has scheduled her lunch with Prince Hanse." Who was in lieu of any children of Ian's heir apparent to the title of First Prince... but Ian was probably busy.

New Avalon traffic control when they had jumped in hadn't exactly been expecting two ducal ranked Field Marshals to be arriving. New Avalon being the capital of the Federated Suns meant the official welcoming party at the private starport deck had fallen all over itself to meet the expectations of the Duke of Robinson, and Duchess of Victoria... and left the two minors more or less on their own.

--
Within her hotel room at the starport, which were temporary accommodations for the evening Alexandria was mulling over her letter to her father. Penning the correspondence wasn't going well she'd been here the better part of an hour with little show for it.

She had always thought of the transit between her home on Kestrel and the capital of New Avalon to be an interminable experience of waiting. It was only three jumps, three weeks passage wasn't that ridiculous but she had in particular associated the the trip to New Avalon with her debutante appearance... and that had been time of jittery nerves.

This trip had had been a statement of wealth. Not necessarily a flaunting of it, or not how she perceived the trip. The JumpShip circuit had been a matter of cold hard logical reasoning to solve a problem rather than a statement of house wealth.

Not that House Cunningham's retainers were likely to believe that since they hadn't been there to observe... and Henry Clay's mannerisms were eccentric at the best of times. Probably better not to mention it at all, in fact she was having a hard time discerning what needed to actually be put in the letter... at what point she just ... relinquish the matter and simply ask for her father to come to New Avalon, and how to phrase that in a way to convey sufficient seriousness regarding the situation.

... and without starting a slew of rumors.

The truth was she had allowed the opportunity to slip by to contact Kestrel as they had passed by... because she hadn't known what to say, and because she had underestimated precisely how short of an interval they really had before the next jump.

She had ...made a mistake in not being prepared, and not taking seriously the claims of travel. It wasn't as if Kestrel was close enough either to simply trust a courier to get there quickly. She did have the benefit of having an appropriate chaperone, but that didn't help with the matter of getting the duke of kestrel's attention and act ...

... she scowled and looked at the half written draft and discarded what she wrote to start over, yet again.

--
"While I do appreciate you coming to call auntie I don't see how I might be of assistance." Hanse Davion was playing coy. He was heir to the realm, and more importantly his wedding to Dana Stephenson had already proved productive.

More importantly than just securing the line of succession, Hanse was one of the few people that Ian could be said to trust implicitly and that included, had included moving his heir apparent from a frontline combat command with the Davion Guards. Not that Hanse minded, from the twinkle in his eye, and the sly grin the not so little fox was happy with his new position.

Eventually it was rather likely that Hanse would supersede her and put posted to command of the entire DMI but for now he was simply a posted advisor to the office of the First Prince. That was a safe enough place for the heir to the realm, and kept him on hand if the worst were to come to pass... and so Yvonne began the process of unfurling the horrendous gordian knot of her headache to Hanse.

"It does seem a pickle, auntie." He agreed after a minute. "You're right of course that if Ian can be convinced of a position first it'll be unlikely he can dissuade from it...but that might take more than just me." He demured, but that was more a deflection to spread out the argument further to a wider clique of influence within the government.

She sighed, "I am aware that what I view as being the best interest of the realm does benefit him. I don't have to like it, but nor am I ignorant."

As Duke of New Syrtis and the recently installed hereditary minister for the Capellan March Michael Hasek Davion had an inflated sense of self importance. She didn't like the man, she hadn't liked his father... and there were historical enmities between the Combine and Capellan marches... it was no secret that as the capellans had the unfortunate nickname of being the 'sick man of the inner sphere' there were plenty of nobles among the Draconis March who were happy to look down their noses at New Syrtis.

That admittedly didn't apply to Lord Aaron, or many of his inner circle, but it didn't change the reputation or the historical animosity either. Lord Aaron respected the capellan threat, so he might accept reason and logic, but it didn't mean he would necessarily like it... and it might cause his backbenchers to protest.

"So about this seventy tonner?"

"I believe he has brought a few of them," She was under the impression that they'd been assembled for Albion to experiment with them, but that wasn't the reason Hanse was asking, "Do you have something?"

"It wouldn't hurt for him to grease the wheels, so to speak with New Avalon's other manufacturer," Based on the continent of Brunswick she wasn't sure if it had just been the fact he already had owned Centurions that had driven him to select Corean, but Archenar had been scarcely mentioned outside of the historical context. "Just this Longsword, though?"

"To the best of my knowledge. He didn't bring one of these cataphract," Why, or what reasoning had gone into the decision she wasn't sure but it didn't really matter. Clay considered the mech question to be more a matter of convincing Corean to license a medium mech design and to construct Centurion lines in the Draconis march. That would if it was successful increase the number of centurions in Davion service, and that would be of interest to Corean. The majority of Achenar's income came from its other industries, but that didn't mean they weren't interested in their military contracts it wouldn't hurt to try and leverage their participation on amiable terms. It was certainly in the interest of House Davion to balance its industrial entities.

Better they reached out first, rather than have Achenar's representatives feel slighted by having to find out on their own, Yvonne figured that might make them less likely to want to participate fully in the future.

 

[Imperator Pax]

New Avalon 1.2​

He hadn't fully appreciated the interest in the seventy tonners. He'd generated the parts that were to be assembled into the Longsword mechs for Albion due to the interest the Robinson contingent had expressed. It made sense that RBA would want to test the design, and it was supposed to be an easy to use design... so it made sense to make it avialble to Albion as well... after all the NAIS didn't exist yet.

It probably would.

He figured since they'd managed to steal even more of the university cache that Ian probably would insure that there was an NAIS he just probably hadn't gotten around to a grand opening yet.

He assumed it was coming... hopefully. "Fuck." Henry rubbed his eyes, "I need coffee," He remarked to the man on the other side of the table. He had the feeling all of a sudden that this was now so much more than he had initially planned.

Henry flipped through the paper work. Not that he had immediately assumed everything would necessarily go smoothly but the truth was he was hoping to be able sweet talk Corean into agreeing to his initial proposal... rather than throwing the c bill value of a mobile HPG worth of their stock... because that was the interesting thing, yard space were only in sub eleven hundred range BV wise, but were twenty five billion c-bills of cost.

A morningstar HPG equipped CCV was just over five billion c-bills.

... a vehicle worth a mere 458 BV...

It was absurd, but it didn't matter if it came to it he'd throw the stock on the table... if it came to that... that was the thing he didn't want to immediately resort to a hostile take over if social niceties from the First Prince and Field Marshal of the Draconis March would get him the preferred answer to in turn answer the logistical problem for a medium trooper mech.

The Longsword was a heavy mech though, and he should have considered that it would have naturally attracted more attention as something new... he might well have just overshadowed his own attempt to put one over the capellans and the cataphract wholly by accident. He had gotten excited, he had let himself focus on what they could do for relatively little C-Bill price tag, but it didn't change the fact, or that at least from his perspective the Centurion was already in the logistics chain they were already in production and thus the better procurement option.
--
There had never been any question where she would attend. That wasn't to say this was her first visit to Albion on New Avalon, but Alexandria had always known she was meant to attend Sakhara. Her expression was carefully schooled all the same as the machines were ooh and ahhed over. The seventy tonners massed the same as Clay's Rabid Fox but were functionally closer to warhammers , that lesson had been driven home.

It had been her first real experience with the command circuit and that had caught her off balance, where instead of waiting a week for a jumpship's drives to charge it had simply been the matter of decoupling from one star lord to the next in sequence.

Technically speaking each JumpShip had been different. Uniform paint schemes aside they had had registration numbers in utilitarian block script and different names, but the Star Lords had all looked the same in broad strokes. They felt new but Alexandria supposed that was more upkeep than anything.

The Longswords though, there was no denying they were new. All twelve machines were painted in the same high vis orange, and had been numberd off in white blocky numbers. She couldn't help but ask if he knew what he was doing.

Clay frowned almost seemingly offended, and then shrugged, "seventy six million three hundred ninety one thousand one hundred ninety six c-bills." He replied, after a moment of apparent mental math to reach such an outlandish sum, "Yes I know what I'm doing, the techs are very sure they put these together from standard enough parts and weapons. Whatever quibbles I might have over one model PPC, versus another, or one medium laser manufacturer over another these are all standard parts, could we have facilitated more testing yes, but Lord Aaron is very sure that he wants a delivery of them assembled for the RBA and donating to New Avalon is not being altruistic its free advertising."

Alexandria didn't believe him. It simply wasn't a credible statement coming from someone younger than she was, but there was no point in arguing over whether he was seriously going to protest that this was all about money or not because as it was the Duchess of Victoria, as well as Lord Aaron had made their appearance with a second alumni of Avalon, adding a third duke to their number. The heir apparent to the realm Hanse Davion, the Fox to the First Prince's Hound. Hanse Davion looked much more relaxed, at ease, than he had at his wedding reception... but how much of that was the nuptials, or even for that matter his older brother's rather public intoxication Alexandria couldn't begin to guess.

"Auntie tells me you unveiled these in sequence, is there anything else in the works?"

"Mm," Henry paused to consider, or restrain himself from answering Hanse Davion's question, "There are a number of various projects, just never enough time."
--
Hanse Davion preferred the BattleMaster. The machine passed down to him as his father's spare suited him better than the Atlas his brother had received as heir. The Atlas was a slower machine, dangerous but ponderous. The longsword was lighter than his battlemaster, and maxed out at the same speed, but it only need a sixteen ton engine to achieve that than the much heavier 340 rating Engine that powered his machine.

The fact that the Longsword carried two Donal PPCs instead of one somewhat changed the dynamic of its otherwise lighter weapons load out.

He was in a bright orange and white mech on the gunnery range showing off for the small cluster of senior cadets invited to watch the proceedings. Albion's cadets might pilot this mchine, but they were not the invitees Hanse was watching. They had staged this carefully after all.

Ian had his hands full at the moment, but it was only a matter of time before he managed to leverage escaping his curated schedule. As a result he knew he needed to have an argument formulated to sway to convince his older brother to support preferably before Ian loudly demanded to be allowed an opportunity at piloting the seventy ton machine. It hadn't been on the official itinerary so he assumed that word had yet to reach the First Prince about the contents, but that wouldn't last long.

Had Clay advertised he was bringing a new indigenous mech design, and a heavy mech at that, there would have been turn out from New Avalon's elite, and pressure to move for a formal hearing, arguably more of a response than just what Clay was actually hear for. To that end it was ironic, Hanse would admit, that there were likely to be more questions about creation of a new 70 tonner than what Clay wanted to actually spend money on.

Unless you happened to be the Achenar delegation.

Hanse guided the machine to the embarkation point he had started the course at, and dismounted from the war machine, but he was satisified it passed muster... and even if it hadn't it was still eye grabbing. He immediately made a bee line back to his party

He wasn't surprised his auntie was talking about the Battlemaster, after all she had piloted one with the Crucis Lancers. Henry shook his head, "The 340 rating is uncommon for a reason. Things like the Rapier, and the Star League era Longbow fell out for a reason, that leaves really just the Victor and BattleMaster." He scratched at his hair, which should have been impractically long and shaggy for a mechwarrior in the confines of a modern production neurohelmet, and cut a contrast between the buzz cuts many of the Avalon cadets were sporting. "If you're principle aim is an assault mech, that's a different matter something in the eighty ton class is a more practical engine."

The boy really couldn't help himself at times, Hanse recognized. He was obviously just too accustomed to what he considered normal, and never stopped, or rarely stopped to think about it... it reminded him of Ian at times... and that was probably why the First Prince got along so well with the 'Rabid Fox'. "You'll have to excuse me Lord Henry, but if you don't like the Fox moniker perhaps not painting your machines akin to fox's belt might be a start," He joked rejoining the group, but cognizant of the security detachment from the DMI that must have been his aunt's idea.

"They're not." Henry started to protest. Then stopped, "You didn't use the JumpJets."

"I'm quite sure they work," Hanse replied, and he spared a look to his aunt, "Are you sure you can't do something about the BattleMaster?"

"No, not anytime soon, I'll be blunt I'd sooner allocate resources to produce something in the hundred ton range. Atlas, King Crab, Marauder 2, those Annihilators or Imp things even that the Dragoons brought."

Hanse started to smirk, but Aaron Sandoval's eyes alit, "The annihilator you say?"

"Mmhmm," was the grunted reply, "it runs off the same engine as the Centurion, but thats the point its a common engine. Once we have Corean on board and the myomer and chassis process on an industrial then we can do things like branch out, but the Battlemaster at this stage would have only limited shared components with what we can manufacture."

 

[Imperator Pax]

New Avalon 1.3​

The Wolf Dragoons name drop hadn't been really thought out... he knew they were famous, but their sheer impression their name rep and fame had by the time he'd been an adult in another world had come off as the authors wanting to hype up their pet faction... but it probably was also true by that point Battletech as a fandom and IP in that other world had had so much other stuff going on, and had been competing with other things.

This, in a real world, he might have thought that was just hype.

... but no The Wolfs were a big fucking deal. They were a brand, and they had started their tenure with the Fed Suns so they were a big fucking deal here. Just the mention that that was an option attracted so much more attention from Sandoval than he had been expecting... and he was glad when Yvonne headed things off, "Lets focus one thing at a time."

"Yeah," He agreed, "Like I said these are a cost effective solution, but the centurion is already in service and you wont have to train techs on a new machine they've never heard of before." He continued quickly. Ugh, there were days he simply despised the marketing presence and cultural phenomenon that the Wolf Dragoons enjoyed... but there was nothing he could do about that. "I will be happy to talk about standard parts with Archenar and Kallon for that matter but the entire reason for the interest in Corean is that it is in service, the Centurion, and that they have recently completed a new factory here."

Was he really that differently wired than they were when it came to these thing?

He didn't want to think so... but he had to admit the prospect of having extra universal knowledge shouldn't have been that much greater logistical insight.

Henry shook his head, took a minute to snag his coffee and drink, which yielded the floor to the other Davion present. Hanse looked like was something back, his posture had shifted a bit when he had mentioned techs, but maybe that had been him commenting about the Dragoons. Ian had been the one who had hired them when they had first appeared in the Inner Sphere after all. "We will have to inform the First Prince of all of this, a new domestic Heavy BattleMech is obviously something that can't be ignored. Its in the national interest."

Henry couldn't help himself, "You know the Marauder II is a thing right, I mean I absolutely would love the rights to produce that," Arguably to the point where he might have ordinarily joked about killing over it... except someone would have probably taken that all too literally, "But leaving that aside, okay its a heavy battlemech I am open to discussions regarding the Longsword, or other projects." He took a breath, "Look Hanse, make me a list, and I will give an itemized response of what is and isn't practical and why for it is or isn't in a given time frame... but mostly that's going to boil down to if not the production of the major components then lack of trained personnel created bottlenecks in manufacturing then it is is the supply situation in the merchant marine." Another breath, " I mean think about how long it normally takes to get from point a, say Robinson, Or Sakhara in this case, to reach New Avalon, versus what that is with a dedicated full time allocation of JumpShips. This is why this is my priority. With Corean, the machine is established. The centurion is a standard enough common service design within the AFFS logistics system, and there is already a set of experienced workers who have set up one new factory recently. But if the Longsword is of the national interest they're here," Being endowed to Avalon, "For the school to take a look at."

--
"You know things would be so much easier if he were just a mech ace."

"He reminds me of Dr. Banzai. Not identical but they both have that sort of manic energy about them," Hanse replied as the scores tallied. Since Hanse hadn't bothered to use the jump jets... it was new BattleMech design, Henry was currently out on the course. The Rabid Fox had given him a great deal to think about whether he knew that or not. What Clay probably was ignorant of was the true value of what his victory on Halstead Station had won the Federated Suns, beyond just humiliating the Combine and destroying one of the most historically vile units of the DCMS.

What had been lost to history and then found... and what they had kept out of the Combine's hands. The regiment of sword of light shattered on Halstead station had given them time to strip the vaults of all their valuables. That they had also certainly severely damaged Takashi Kurita's plans to establish a supply depot on Halstead to support offensives.

With little to do he broached the question, "And there still has been no sign of the 2nd​ Sword of Light being reconstituted?"

Yvonne Davion shook her head, "No, we assume it has to be coming, but to the best of our knowledge the Regiment disappeared from the rolls. If the Combine means to reconstitute it it will require moving units and personnel from other units in the brigade... we really would have expected to see that take place but we've had nothing to substantiate those expectations."

The Combine continued to publish an alternative account of the battle in their public narratives. After all the Coordinator couldn't possibly have made a mistake so much as that samurai had been attempting to honorably avenge their predeceased commander, and if that meant pretending they'd been fighting some lostech assault battlemech from the end of the star league well... that seemed to be the route they had committed to. "Even so," Hanse started to protest.

"From what we understand," The Duchess of Victoria replied as the seventy tonner's ppcs flashed on the screen, "the combine failed to recover much of their equipment, Halstead Station's environment was far from hospitable, but he had expected them to be able to make some gains."

Aaron Sandoval nodded, "The dome and the magma vault did collapse that could have caused geologic instabilities burying any salvage under thousands of tons of earth."

"That is the working theory."

Hanse knew that the vault's breach hadn't critically compromised the area. The fighting hadn't helped, but in his discussions with Ian he had had to make clear to his older brother that even though they had the upper hand they needed to strip the vaults of all their material... and then that they should scuttle the load bearing supports as they withdrew. If they were lucky, if their luck had held then the Combine might well have just written it all off, or wasted the better part of a year digging for some idea of what the AFFS had been after.

... but simply denying that find to the Combine was not the same as as effectively utilizing what they had found, and Hanse knew they would need leverage in order to have Ian move... and he was hoping that the prospect of a new shipyard might convince his older brother that the Federated Suns stood at a unique, and historical opportunity by which to move their nation into the future.

"can he fix the McKenna shipyards?"

"I believe he has those resources," Yvonne replied. Then it was simply a matter of allowing Ian, receiving his brother's consent to post his youngest vassal to the capellan march, "We have a year, and if in a year the shipyard at Sakhara is operational then we will have our answer."

Even if it wasn't quite ready, allowing for teething issues with the machinery that by itself would mean that the Federated Suns had a new Shipyard. A new shipyard, not a refurbished star league era one, but an entirely new line to produce JumpShips.
--
Notes: this would have been up this morning but my computer decided to freeze up and fucked up the update for this, saturday's update of aoe sunday's update for ghost... anyway so I went to bed without posting as a result this is sans Ian's introduction, which I will rewrite for 1.4 New Avalon.

 

[Imperator Pax]

New Avalon 1.4​

As duke of New Avalon and First Prince... and all the associated titles by which he had inherited from being the first born son of Andrew Davion. It had taken him decades to get out from under his father's shadow... and while he was far from the ideal first prince his ministers wished for... or at least that his father's ministers would have wished for he had the crown and the rod so to speak... he did have the ceremonial scepter and crown but those largely remained in storage for the thankfully rare functions where they were required for tradition.

When confronted with the duties of state he had always tried to meet the expectations put on him since childhood. It was easy to talk to people, but being at a party or across a table was one thing... it was the business of states that agreements were arcane agreements drawn up behind closed doors... and that was harder.

It had been one thing to recognize when a title became open to award long standing government ministers to life peerages... but there were accomplishments which were once in a lifetime that had no comparison. That had been where they had stood when they, he himself as First Prince and the AFFS and the Davion state, had stood victorious over the sword of light on Mallory's world... never mind Halstead Station after.

It had put him on the spot. This was not some mercenary captain at the helm of his hereditary fief but at that moment on long fallow sandy soils that a seventy ton machine had met another 'mech in the same weight class before it had turned on the other combine mechs and given them the space to breath.

How Yorinaga had managed what he'd done on that planet, in maneuvering his whole battalion around them like that still baffled the brightest officers and strategists of the AFFS. They couldn't say how he had done it, but it had been gamble that had ultimately turned against the young Kurita, genius or not, he had found that fate had turned against the Combine in that critical moment.

It had been just over two years since that day in 3013 and less than that since the victory at Halstead station. He understood what his ministers meant now about how it was easier to award rank and rewards to older men, and experienced mercenary commands. Why it would have been so much easier to reward a young AFFS officer who had done the same thing. Saving one's first prince could at least be envisioned on that note... murdering the rest of the would be assassin's unit in a subsequent pitched battle on entirely different world... was a bit of a stretch there but it did make for a smashing holovid success.

Even the combine's ... fantastical retelling of the battles were popular. That of course demonstrated the limits of how the Combine could massage the truth. He loved every minute of it. It was every breath of it how he would have liked the role of prince to be, the thrill and hum of battle and the rsi on the front lines rather than the stuffy confines of New Avalon and its court.

There was a lot he would have given to be free of the court and its strictures, but his home was here, and he didn't get many opportunities to exercise his wanderlust. The success of Halstead Station and Mallory's world had won the Federated Suns glory, but it hadn't outweighed the risks he had taken, and the conservatives at court wouldn't allow him to forget it.

It had been enough to keep him confined to New Avalon.

He wasn't friendless by any means... but he longed to run through the fields so to speak. Hanse had been able to justify going off world more than he had. So Ian Davion settled into the chair. The chair was old. His father had sat in it. His father sat in it before him. It was an antique. A centuries old piece of furniture of oak, red velvet and and golden gilding in a room that was largely more of the same.

The fancy box that contained his reports that would open his day, and contained the collection of newspapers from New Avalon's major publishing houses occupied the end table. The box was more of the same dating to before the foundation of the star league.

Pomp and Ceremony.

"Your Highness, these have been deemed the most critical to your time."

"Thank you Martin." He replied to the Minister for New Avalon proper.

He was a little annoyed that Yvonne hadn't given him more notice. He'd been told time and again at fifteen what a command circuit was, what it cost to operate command circuit. It had been part of growing up as the heir to the throne.

Ian meandered somewhat unconcerned with his Director of Military Intelligence 2's reports, and Hanse hadn't written him anything as of yet, but it had to be coming. He would have ordinarily skipped straight to the bottom of the boxes to reach the foreign office's briefings but for once the good stuff was on top, even if it didn't give him a complete picture.

There were notes about BattleMechs being delivered to his alma matter. He wouldn't have ordinarily batted an eye at that despite being the ceremonial colonel of the regiment. He ordinarily wouldn't have had the time to examine nay contributions, usually donated by Alumni either as battlefield trophies or by private purchase though some times less frequently from the estates of alumni after their owner's death. Such donations were generally assembled at the start of the following term to be inspected, usually after being inspected by the school's technical section before hand, in order to receive them into the corp of cadets.


The reasons that such a contribution were being noted were of course that there were twelve of them. Enough for a company, and they were all identical. They were all identical machines of manufacture that didn't exist because they were a new BattleMech design.

He looked at the home minister who was standing awkwardly by the couch. The man was old and gray, and was a compromise of sorts, though not a hold over to any of the governments of his father's reign.. but that was just a testament to how long Andrew Davion had ruled that the old men had been able to do things. Ian asked the most obvious question that came to mind, that was of course where exactly his brother Hanse was, to which the answer was at Avalon examining the machines in question.

Ian felt himself restraining the protest that that really was his job... since of course as First Prince he theoretically had an infinite number of small duties that were ceremonially there but in practice had to be delegated.

Besides, he'd had somewhat intuited that that was going to be the answer. Hanse's absence in the palace was obvious this morning, as was that of their aunt, which while not unusual given their respective state / intelligence services to his government, but given there was particular dancing around whatever it was that had prompted his youngest vassal to come to the capital... it had to be bigger than just twelve new mechs... well barring that if there were twelve maybe there was a factory or something.

--
Notes: this is short, because this was originally apart of 1.3. But Ian Davion, everyone.

 

[Imperator Pax]

New Avalon 1.5​

The tests were done for the day. Avalon, the military academy, continued to host them but there was a break in the action so to speak leaving them to take lunch... and kill time until the reception that evening. Of course how long this interlude would last depended on other factors.

Henry preferred sandwiches. It was something she had noticed seemingly on the basis of that it left him with a free hand by which to continue to work as he sat at a table. Like the one he was presently dominated with an array of charts and... tables. His pen scratched numbers trailing into ten figures for single alpha numeric strings.

Scratch scratch, scratch.

Hanse, and Yvonne watched the two children, relatively speaking there were days where Yvonne did still consider Hanse & Ian both something of still children themselves. The chart was nothing new per se, Clay had gone through that there were machines that made other machines, and machines that made tools that were then used... and so forth and so on.

All of it build up onto itself to get forward to where you put final assembly together and then the lights turned on. And if you had done everything right, then there would be a brand new Star Lord class JumpShip. The JumpShip was the final point in production... but the machinery and tooling, and space that went into building the Ship could be reused for the next one.

It was a monotonous and laborious explanation to the process. Germanium, titanium, and aluminum and other elements by the thousands of tons were needed, and more plentiful elements. She expected that all of the numbers and short hand on the papers were what went into the JumpShips and their shipyards... and most likely Ian would look at it, assume it was accurate and want to change subjects.

And if the numbers were right, then they were looking at something more than just the space lift capacity to move more troops against the Combine. It had been Ian's intention to try and leverage and press their advantage, to rub his successes in the face of the Coordinator for two years now. That had utterly dominated court discussions ... and not helped by the disturbance to court politics of not just the battles but also other deaths in the realm. Owing to the coronation of a new Duke of New Syrtis had removed Michael Hasek from his post ... and for the moment that was still empty ... but only because they were stalling. Appointing the new Duke of New Syrtis to a sinecurial position wouldn't have been unheard but that Yvonne would have been happy to free Ian's government of any of the Capellan March appointees... if only she could get away with it... and she doubted that. There was too much tradition tied to the great families. The Crucis March families and the great houses of the Draconis March were also looking at the open positions within government that Ian had been loath to fill while still planning to attack the ancestral enemy. That meant that while Hasek was minister for the Capellan March... he wasn't pointed in the right direct as far as Ian was concerned... and hadn't been able to attract Ian's attention.

JumpShips would not be enough to get the First Prince's attention that was clear. Hanse was relatively sure that the new Corean factory on New Avalon which had attracted Henry's attention, and had been able to hold Ian's attention could be the focal point for leverage. Once they had sanction they could expand that to the secret collection of resources seized from Halstead Station... and once Hanse's idea was in place then they could undertake.

It hadn't escaped Hanse's notice that comments or the underscoring Yvonne had laid regarding what the fusion engines being produced could power beyond BattleMechs. There was no shortage of machines that could use the engine in question be they simple tanks, or aerospace fighters that the Federated Suns was preciously short on. They still weren't BattleMechs but they were army equipment the AFFS ground forces could use them against the combine directly.

As large space assets, in excess of a couple hundred tons, the fusion engines which powered JumpShips and DropShips were often unique to their designs with little overlap. "We need to bring Galax," Federated Boeing, "In to this." She remarked.

"Our biggest hope is that he's resigned to a Kathil posting and brings it up himself, rather than pushing it ourself. If Ian gets into a discussion with Lord Aaron, and wants to reiterate any sort of DMM chomping at the bit then we will probably lose the opportunity."

Lord Aaron was currently absent, having been leveraged to enter discussions for Corean on Robinson. The idea was simple. The two new 'mech factories would license produce the Centurion BattleMech and in theory if the capital was there they could produce battlemechs locally. Robinson's proposal was to expand their exist BattleMech refit and repair lines working through their existing network.

Henry Clay was to build an entirely new factory complex by which to somewhat emulate what had been done on New Avalon. If Corean hadn't already moved its headquarters to the Federated Suns, to New Avalon... well there had been the quip in passing to Ian that Corean might well have moved to Sakhara because it promised to do what the New Avalon move had been intended.

So far everything looked good. Everything looked fine. Yvonne wasn't worried that Ian would see a problem with it. They were talking about a lot of capital coming into Corean... and that was the sort of thing that Archenar would get nervous by. It didn't matter per se how much of their income came from other sources the Enforcer was a point of pride for the company. Being a prestigious defense contract was part of their national identity and it was looking at things from that direction that Ian, and Yvonne were attempting to head off potential challenges.


"Okay," The two looked up at Clay tiredly put a handful of papers down on their separate table. "Here this," he indicated a table of numbers, which had no obvious meaning other than that they were large. "I'd prefer eighteen months of testing, particularly to see how they hold up over an entire year with the cadets here, but half of that probably could provide the answers necessary." He was talking about the Longsword, "It is equipped with Jump jets and PPCs historically those are or can be as finicky as autocannons in new designs but since they're established models we don't forsee issues... but having other engineers come in won't hurt. I," He trailed off, "I may send Avalon two more machines," He obviously meant the school, "Just to see if they can run the machines hard enough to see if they can break them, but they're BattleMechs. But these are itemized component numbers of the major parts... and their cost approximate c-bill value..." He paused, "In the interest of standardization this is the engine which will power the Cataphract production type as well, and this is a list of the other mechs I can name which take the same engine ..."

Warhammer, Archer, Guillotine, Grasshopper... "What's a shootist?"

"Star league era mech, has an assault autocannon." He shrugged, "Its on there for much the same reason the lighter mechs are being thorough. Even brining engine production up to scale, I'd sooner prioritize archer production, but the Longsword, and Cataphract represent a balanced new production mix, but the Longsword design is intended for rugged simplicity hence lacking the diverse weapon load out of the Warhammer."

Henry drummed his fingers on the paper looking between the two. There was a question of what the market would buy if there was a larger battlemech supply, yes there was a federal military budget, but there was a question of what the noble houses would buy, and the corporate security would buy... but now wasn't the time. The 280 was a fine engine but the truth was he really hadn't expected as much interest as the Longsword was getting.

Yvonne looked at the numbers, and the weapons chart.

He shrugged, "Functionally it was what we had on hand... the Donal is used on the warhammer. The ChisComp well those came out of Achernar mechs, or spare parts for those mechs. Achernar comm suite is commercially available. The objective was off the shelf parts availability." Which to Henry... well there was mountain wolf who seemed to understand the concept so far as he understood the Merlin, but very few other people seemed to have thought about that... even the Marauder II which really appealed to him just... well that was for another day, "Can Achernar produce the Vox 280," Had they even mentioned it, "Because really I would say that would be the bottleneck to production is the limits of fusion engine production." Did Achernar currently produce the engine in house or was it going to need to be sub contracted out for... well he didn't know that, but it wasn't really his problem at least it wasn't right now.

Hanse waited before posing the question of whether they had brought a cataphract, they hadn't but it was a seventy ton machine running off the same engine, so it wasn't as if there weren't certain parts compatibility though the weapons and electronics suite were different.

"We should wait on that," Yvonne remarked, "We've just demonstrated the Longsword, and Achernar is interested, too many pies might spoil dinner as it were."
--
Notes: Should Ian be this much of a meat head? Probably not, but I also want to underscore exactly how much bad blood is between the Combine and the FedSuns.

 

[Imperator Pax]

New Avalon 1.6​

Lord Aaron had basically resigned himself that eventually the Capellan March would take notice. This was for a variety of reasons. The Draconis March was foremost the most serious military threat of the realm being on the border as its named implied with the Draconis March, but arguably even in the Star League while the Combine had been the true threat to the security of the Federated Suns as a whole the Capellan March worlds of note were where a significant portion of heavy industry lay... the succession wars had not been kind of the industries of worlds which fell into his portfolio as Minister of the Draconis March... not that the Haseks had escaped unscathed either.

What Lord Aaron wasn't aware of was the reason Lord Michael hadn't been offered his previous post as minister of trade in Ian's government was pressure within the Crucis Marsh. Michael Hasek had had to take up his father's post, hte hereditary post of the Hasek familyas minister of the Capellan March, and in 3013 Ian had moved to counter the Combine invasion of Mallory's world.

Michael had somewhat expected a pro forma reappointment as a matter of course. Yvonne knew that and he might even have been right that Ian might have gone through with that, since nothing had substantively materialized regarding talkings with House Steiner. As a result, though he had little reason to remain on New Avalon Michael Hasek Davion had continued to frequent the capital lurking around in expectation of regaining his previous federal post and leaving the business of acting as Minister of the Capellan March while he was away from New Syrtis these last two years.

"If you're the fox, and Ian is the hound, does that make him the weasel?" Henry questioned leaning to look out over the grounds from where they were sitting on the second floor. "I heard he was having trouble with the Capellans, is that why the RCT is basing off of Spica? Why you want me to garrison the McKenna yards while they're fixed, cause he's not up to it?"

Yvonne had been starting to interrupt at the weasel comment, even though Hanse had clearly sfound it funny... and Ian would have have actually laughed at the question. It was the sort of joke the reigning first priince would have found great fun. The question about Spica and the yards though well that was something that was still pressingly important.

Clay was young enough, and if she were being honest, frighteningly capable for his age as a mechwarrior that Hasek and his short career with the Fusiliers might feel inadequate. No, would almost certainly feel inadequate... and Hanse couldn't help himself, "And you're sure you aren't able to do something about BattleMaster production, work a little magic."

Henry groaned, "I'll look into it..." He replied.

She didn't miss the look in Hanse's eyes... who certainly recognized what he was doing by discussing BattleMasters as a mech, but she also didn't miss the contemplative expression from the groaning teenager. "What is it?"

"I'm not commenting to anything, I'll need to talk to Haakon, and I certainly don't guaruntee anything quickly. I just don't see how it would be economical right now."

--
Ian ... well hadn't gone ballistic that would have been inappropriate as First Prince.... but he had inwardly fumed at the distractions of his responsibilities ... the truth was he had been hoping to bolster relations with the Lyran Commonwealth... but there were just so many other things to take care of... like fighting the combine.

... and for that matter he was tired of Marie's husband complaining and making excuses for lack of progress on the Capellan front. The duke of New Syrtis should have been present on the front leading from the front or at least being present, not hounding around for the job he had held while Lord George had been the head of the family. There had been a good man, whatever complaints he had about Michael his father had been a good man.

He stirred from the thoughts looking at the mechs, "They're foxes, look, they're orange and white. Foxes." He reiterated with a smile gesturing to the dozen seventy ton Heavy BattleMechs donated to the school's cadre for evaluation.

"Yes sire." The colonel replied mechanically.

Hanse would have thought it was funny, and the sooner his brother got down here the better, and Ian decided to be more serious, "I was told there was another design."

"Cataphract your highness. Also seventy tons, sir."

"That one has auto cannons, yes?"

"According to the reports."

"A pity he didn't bring any, but I see the reasoning behind it." It wasn't as if his youngest vassal had built them especially for him as First Prince, and from the reports the Cataphract was ... well seemed to be a more or would it be less polished design. The notes from auntie were that it had been built utilizing commercially available parts and hardware from a variety of designs. It wasn't really quite a frankenmech from the sound of it but well with the wars having made such a mess of things people should be so glad to have any battlemech. That was the conventional wisdom, "I'm going to ask."

The colonel stoically responded, no doubt having already guessed that Ian had been planning to ask about the other machine. He turned away from the machines as the elevator bay dinged and the passengers disgorged. "No I fully understand the logic. A heavy battlemech is a higher prestige item, historically they made their start with heavier battlemechs. My interest with having Corean agree to license me the, Us, the Centurion production rights and set up a factory stems from that it is a general trooper design already in the AFFS."

Michael Hasek-Davion duke of New Syrtis was clearly on the wings of the party. To his right, immediately to his right, was Yvonne, and then Hanse, and the wheel chair bound duke of Robinson and the to the far right were the speaking form of the count of Sakhara Henry Clay himself, and the slim figure of the heiress apparent of the duchy of Kestrel. Us in this case seemed to refer to Lord Aaron.

"Can you afford to spare the technicians?"

"Of course I can," Henry responded, "I wouldn't have made the offer if I couldn't." He continued, and the conversation turned to the matter of lawyers. Ian waited and let them keep talking before emerging to greet them, before waving away any attempts to stand on ceremony... he'd have none of that at the moment. "I have my techs planning to see what materials are locally available in the same vein and concept as the Longsword, and the Cataphract, but they'll need several days."

Ian couldn't resist interjecting, it was such a perfect opportunity, "Yes, I must admit I was very interested in whether we would get the chance to look at that design as well. Its been so long since a new mech design has appeared."

Henry blinked... and then shut his mouth just as quickly. "Ah.... I will see what I can do."
--
Notes: Like I have to wonder exactly how much of it is like this stuff wasn't written like early on, but then like the merlin is the original rules demonstrator. I forget when Marauder 2 was published but like the Merlin as a mech design is out there by this point, and the Marauder 2 is actually in the FedSuns... i don't get the special bullshit wolf dragoons monopoly on a literal new never mind good assault mech. So the apparent lack of knowledge about the machines just bugs the shit out of me. Anyway short, I have DnD I DM tonight, and we get more Ian ... next week. Next week,

 

[Imperator Pax]

New Avalon 1.7​

Ian... well Ian regarded his brother in law with delighted smugness. This was the high point of perhaps the year maybe. He would have liked to gloat more, but the reality was Michael wasn't useless, his brother in law was terribly annoying at times, but wasn't incompetent ... but today really was a good day. The downside were safety regulations not allowing him to pilot the 'mechs in question there were restrictions for his safety until they were sure they were safe... be embarrassing to get thrown from the horse as it were.

That been doubly true with the projects the technicians had worked round the clock to facilitate. Truthfully he expected that while Yvonne had hope to get something done, it hadn't been at this scale... breadth perhaps By itself this would have warranted patents, state sanctioned monopolies... they hadn't even discussed the shipyard issue as of yet but he could already see that well if that were the case, if this were the case... the Federated Suns had to make other investments to make all of this possible... and to take advantage of it. Hanse had been talking about planning for utilization of what they had taken from the Combine, stolen right out from under the snake's noses and there could be no denying that there needed to be more science and investment into the realm, investment into education, and into industry but the succession wars had proven to b e lean years for the most part.

Blackwell, and Mountain Wolf were going to have to be talked to, especially Blackwell... but apparently .... that was under way. Still that it hadn't made the news was appalling.

"I'm going to need time. Haakon is supposed to talk with Mountain Wolf, and I expect... I really expect he'll need to make several trips to have everything worked out," There was a pause as a massive bull necked man leaned to not really whisper but attempt to remind the count of Sakhara of something. Ian didn't quite catch all of it, "Yes, we'll have to speak with the dragoons about production sign off, but I think an agreement can be managed to garner their consent." He paused again, "yes," He replied to the hulking infantry officer, "we can reach an accord so long as they don't take contracts with House Kurita, or for that matter anyone else who sided with Amaris not that I expect the Dragoons are going to sign on with the Taurians, I will make that clear just in case."

"I'm sorry what?"

"House Kurita fed SLDF positions through the ISF to Rim World forces during the Terran campaign... like its why the Eridani got bushwhacked on Talitha." He glanced up towards the RAC infantry officer, who nodded. "I will make it very clear to Colonel Wolf our terms are contingent on him picking his employers carefully." Henry shook his head, "if it works, and if they agree to it, we have legal cover for future production..." and if not... well the Epona was Clan Hells Horse, but truthfully he wanted the Badger, and Bandit for more cover... and for Mercury mechs as an excuse... "Whatever the case as production increases there is going to be a demand for more techs, that means schooling." He said throwing the bait in the water so to speak. "So yes, the Marauder II..."
--
As an idea, he was inclined to agree in principle with Lord Aaron. He really did dislike the idea of denying one of his more capable martial vassals the opportunity against the hated hereditary enemy... but then his brother and auntie had decided to bring forth the facts and logic... and they made a relatively compelling case.

It was also true that the duchy of Bristol sat vacant... or more correctly had returned to House Davion, sitting an empty title... a world he didn't have time to visit a world that needed a leader who could spend time there... Marie had wanted him to award it to one of their poorer relations, but he had been inclined to make it Hanse's problem... but Hanse was his heir... and he could afford to send Hanse to Bristol regardless of how 'close' it was to the capital. He needed Hanse here, and he needed Hanse here more than he needed Bristol to have a competent and trustworthy ruler... and it now looked as if he had an option for that.

"So then we wait,"

"Yes," Yvonne agreed.

Leaving aside the obvious, that Clay needed to finish his time at Sakhara and a proper education did take time they were waiting to see results. "Once the yard is operational there will be no concealing what it si." He remarked.

Again, his aunt agreed.

Hanse had said nothing this whole time. "And once he has his commission you want me to post him to," He paused looking at the hand written report, the principle problem of the Federated Suns was in Clay's view economics, the carrying trade between worlds, "Kathil." Sakhara to Bristol was seven jumps.

"Bristol to Kathil is only four jumps," Hanse supplied, he paused, "And if anything, rebuilding the James McKenna Shipyards at Kathil would substantively alleviate the purportedly central issue of shipping tonnage. The yard at Sakhara would be thirteen jumps to Kathil. If I understand Clay's argument correctly this is better, at least for us as Kathil, and Sakhara's yards would both be six jumps from New Avalon."

Ian tilted his head to acknowledge the point, and hoped that Galax wasn't brought up as well, but that would have been getting ahead of themselves. That made sense, and he was willing to admit to a consensus on the matter. Lord Aaron would probably protest, but he hoped to be able to ameliorate some of that by avowed federal support to providing for the expansion of efforts of military assets... that was to say that he was willing, because of course he was, to support the battlemech expansion efforts.

They would find some comfortable arrangement to improve the Draconis March Militia's preparedness... perhaps they could also bolster the New Ivaarsen Chasseurs as part of this.

... and speaking of mechs, "I understand we have time," that time had been made for, "in the morning?"

--
Henry shoved his hands in his windbreaker. New Avalon had been colonized in the early 23rd​ century and its largely temperate mild climate had lead to a fairly rapid growth from western and northern european immigrants. It was the capital and had been since there had been a Federated Suns, and as a result of manufacturing that existed on world and the first prince's prescence, and that of his court even for companies that didn't have factories on the planet, parts for their machines for their creations could be found, though they were a little lesss common than say Corean or Achernar.

In this case Kallon came to mind.

All of these were test bed concept models put together from spare parts so in a sense they were kind of sort of frankenmechs in the same way that the Cataphract could be considered a franken-mech. Sort of, but not quite.

The truth was doing things by hand and the sweat of ones brow like the periphery did was time consuming... and the projects in question were more a case of what's in the local market? What is it that the Federated Suns either manufactures parts wise, or can reasonably import from someone else that we can build a design around.

There was one other thing. The MML wasn't his first choice per se, the Zorya that the RAC used were fielding iATM but he was keeping those in the backpocket for the time being. It hadn't been hard to pull a centurion apart and just replace as needed as a nominal 'test bed' because, well the ten shot LRM rack was atrociously inefficient compared to other options. He wanted to demonstrate it but it would only appear on the lone centurion they had assembled while all the other machines would field standard missile launchers.

The idea was that in the future if they needed to introduce MML equipped units, to field mechs that theoretically could in a pinch swap roles then they could just refer back to this and if anyone brought it up... well it would be a case of showing the 'test' on New Avalon. The lawyers were supposed to be diving through what licenses, and how licenses were supposed to work specifically in the Federated Suns so that they could capitalize on that. There were a lot of things to do on that front, Centurion, Marauder II, Merlin, but also licensing out of the Long Sword.

The conversation with regards to New Valencia and the wolf dragoons had only driven part of that of course. That conversation though had lead, in part due to other conversations to some of what was now on display. The two Strand 255 Engines hadn't been that difficult to wrangle though they had gone into two different designs one was a ... what he thought of a 'fixed' Shogun, and the latter into something that might catch Kallon's eye, maybe, but if it didn't it would catch someone else's and they might be able to provide for a better trooper Rifleman.

Shogun. Falchion. If they had to focus on an assault weight the eighty ton Alecto running off of the Pitban 240 would have been more practical than the 255 engine designs. The fifty ton Fusilier would have been a good in house design. There were enough parts to put together another Centurion as a well as a variant of the Enforcer still laying around the mechbay, but he doubted they would go to the trouble of putting them together.

Rounding out were a ShadowHawk variant put together, and then two more lighter mechs, an introtech Sentry and a thirty five tonner using the 210 engine, the Antares. Two Lances of Mechs.
--
Notes: Among other things, later https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Fox_(BattleMech). Though probably not with all of those machine guns. This is somewhat abridged in so far as the first scene doesn't touch on, Omni-Vehicles, or the just oddity that is Blackwell situation

As for the inevitable Dragoons reaction; canonically lore does seem to be increasingly moving towards allowing warriors to go off into the wilderness and in this case, with the RAC that's going to be a case of hey Stefan Amaris has living descendants and the combine collaborated with Amaris in the the 2760s so fuck those guys because this story is somewhat adopting ideas from Ghost, EWSG, and similar ideas in broad swathes will appear in Aurigan as well

 

[Imperator Pax]

New Avalon 1.8​

Ian Davion had quickly come to view this as the high point of his year, and it wasn't even Christmas yet. There were quite a lot of parts in various stages of disassembly or in crates that dominated one side of the interior of the space set aside for Clay's technicians ... techno wizards might have been a better description to work for the past week.

Of all the designs present the ShadowHawk was the one he had spent the least amount of time looking at, perhaps it had been fabricated solely to have an old standby to round out the two lances. That was to say maybe they had just needed an eighth mech for the sake of even-ness. He had almost joked aloud that the shoppe must have run out of ChisComp type 39s since there was a marked transition from that model of Medium Lasers to a competing Martell design of laser for the two eighty five tonner designs. In addition to sharing an engine and medium lasers they also, the two eighty five ton assault mechs, shared the same model of JumpJets, and relied on the same model of Harpoon Six launchers. They used different model PPCs.

"So," He remarked conspiratorially to his younger brother, "What exactly is the impediment to the Battlemaster." Their brother in law stiffened.

"The engines I think." Hanse responded in complete seriousness. "It uses a different engine than these do."

"Mm, that's unfortunate. What can be done about it?"

He was then assured, "Its being looked into."

"Mm, very good." They had yet to tell Michael about the plan for Kathil's shipyards ostensibly because Sakhara's yard wasn't ready yet. He probably wouldn't even bring it up to his brother in law until that first star lord was completed... maybe the second. He made a show of consulting the 'program' so to speak, the Shadow Hawk was unfortunately first. There was a volunteer cadet from New Avalon who had been chosen to pilot the 'Hawk.

The pilot in question had not quite made the cut for a chance at the long swords of which were being vied for for a special testing section by the corp of cadets best scoring pilots. Of course that test had been organized and planned when there were just twelve machines... and Avalon was getting to keep those machines.

There were a handful of 'sketches' as he was thinking of them in terms of what it was going to cost. Spares tools, raw materials, the time to 'tool up' for production that and a significant amount of other, but the techs had been working around the clock, the past week first searching for what was available, and then consumed by the work of making machines.

It had apparently utterly befuddled his youngest vassal that while the Shadow Hawk was common the Federated Suns could not domestically manufacture it. It wasn't fair to the pilot that she was piloting the least interesting of the machines present here... if Ian were honest the Centurion had probably been put together if for other reason than to show off this new missile system. Something about logistics but as a result the Centurion was being piloted by one of Clay's people.

Ian had wracked his brain to consider if he had ever seen a Shogun Assault Mech... in anyone's possession other than the Dragoons, but Jaime Wolf's command was the only instance he could think of on the matter. It did tickle his fancy a bit to be in such an exclusive number.

The impediment again, as with the idea of the BattleMaster seemed to be the fusion engine which powered the Shogun, or also the impediment to the eighty five ton 'Falchion' design which had been developed as well... fusion engine manufacturing was the bottleneck... and he didn't really need to be told that, nor that there were obviously things that the Federal Government could do.

The Federated Suns would need to do something about that, and with a bevy of new mech designs, one might even say a renaissance there were things that could be done.

Smaller still than the Shadow Hawk, and the Centurion were the Antares and the Sentry, thirty five and forty tons respectively. Intended as, they had been described, Strikers easily maintainable. That both designs carried flamers and no ammunition to speak of well, they had obvious anti infantry capabilities while having a reliable enough amount of close range firepower for mechs in their weight class... and the Sentry's PPC would allow it to reach a bit further still.
--
"I would say those tests went well." Which was on its face an understatement. Twenty BattleMechs, nominally speaking nine either wholly new designs, or variants never tested before, designs across the entire weight class range, an entirely new weapon system capable of firing either short range missiles or long range missiles. Went well was an understatement.

"It should keep the duke of New Syrtis distracted particularly," Especially since the command circuit Henry had established would soon be returning him and Lord Aaron to the Draconis March. It was very tempting to simply give Clay what he wanted, and send him on his way to Bristol, but he recognized it was the correct decision to wait. There were going to need to be lengthy discussions with between the existing manufacturers of battlemechs within the Federated Suns... and as he had been unpleasantly informed that would mean potentially facing a riot from General Motors over the Marauder II.

It was amazing he'd never even heard of the domestic assault mech and yet it starts making the rounds and then all of sudden the lawyers come trundling out of the woods like ogres. It was despicable, so that needed to be seen to. Clay needed to return to Sakhara, and they could return to discussions of this at some point next year.

"I'm actually surprised Achernar wasn't able to put forward a proposal of its own." Yvonne remarked, "Corean was all but tripping over itself to send engineers to Sakhara,"

Yes, Ian recognized that they were more interested in seeing Sakhara than Robinson but they had agreed to both... not simply because of the issue of money, but because of recognition of what this might mean for them... not the least of which was the demonstration of the 200 engine fusilier had probably been a surprise, and probably not a pleasant to have rolled out.

Achernar just didn't seem to have the engineers on hand ... not when they were probably all sequestered away with the dangling prospect of a Heavy BattleMech and the leadership eyeing that, and if the Long Sword could be put into production more broadly all the better.

Yesterday had gone well. Ian had even been 'allowed' to sit in a few of the machine and even the opportunity to fire a few rounds from the auto cannon of the Alecto, which was a small compromise.

"What is it?" He asked after a minute.

"It was Clay's comment regarding the loss of the 19th​ Striker Regiment, and the Dragoons. The Eridani Light Horse has been in the employ of the Federated Suns for some time now, I believe it would be a mistake if we didn't, personally inform Brevet General Kerston of the matter."

"I don't see why not." Ian replied, "But I assume there is something else?"

She paused, "Lord Henry's retinue is at least three distinct factions I suppose. Two of whom, the Battle Company particularly has clear SLDF lineage, and the Robinson Assault Cluster is almost certainly accordingly to my analysts descended from 19th​ Army of the SLDF potentially even units which were thought to have departed with General Kerensky's Exodus."

"Henry?"

"No, from what we have pieced together the RAC seems to have joined Clay's retinue in response to ... from what we understand some conflict with a descendant of Stefan Amaris, and specifically that Clay considers an Amaris, revanchist Rim World threat at least as concerning as the Combine, at least that is my reading of his behavior."
--

The Duke of New Syrtis was not happy. Michael Hasek-Davion had been looking to consolidate his position for the last two years, nearly three since he had become duke-elect of New Syrtis when his father had died in the spring of 3013. The ascension of which had removed him from New Avalon and the Federal Government on the expectation of taking up the hereditary position of Minister of the Capellan March... and Ian had been consumed with martialing to relieved Mallory's World...

... and that was when the problem had started .

Ian had won one victory after another. Inaugurating a new house, naming a young mech warrior as Count of Sakhara for the matter of slaughtering one of the regiments of the Sword of Light... since of course the Victory at Mallory's world had then been followed up on by the Victory at Halstead Station where the First Prince of the Federated Suns had secured a victory against his opposite number.

Something that New Avalon had allowed anyone present on the capital to possibly forget. There was no end of it in sight, even before the Rabid Fox had returned to New Avalon. The dozen Heavy BattleMechs he had brought him had yet to reach the the papers, never mind the rest of it.

... and what was he supposed to do? Suck it up. Suck it up as the Draconis March consumed ever more resources and were lauded for their success while he was blamed for 'failures' in the capellan march. Hanse, his brother in law, was married to one of the Stephenson daughters had moved forward the notion that this could be the opportunity to rebuild those units... as if they otherwise deserved some special consideration over troops fighting on the capellan front.

... and of course it was no secret that the reason for the RCT posting to Spica and that base was a brazen questioning of his ability as Field Marshal of the March, and the soldiers of the Capellan March to protect the border.

It was infuriating.
--
Notes: Updating this, nominally nominally the plan for the rest of the month is the lit rpg, aurigan renaissance, the drow fic in theory. So thus in theory that should be the updates for Thursday the 26th​, Friday, Tuesday (the 31st​) with a normal tuesday update finishing out New Avalon 1 on the 24th if that makes sense....​.

 

[Imperator Pax]

New Avalon 1.9​

Alexandria looked at the twenty mechs.

She hadn't been privy of course to discussions regarding the shipyard matter. All talk of that had, must have occurred behind closed doors but the public spectacle had been the Battlemech demonstration. It hadn't escaped her that hey would be leaving soon, and then it would be a rapid series of jumps through the circuit back to Sakhara.

The dozen heavy battlemechs stood out, Henry ignored them though, "The Fusilier might be worth it for what we plan on doing, they seem to have some interest, no," He said to the other man beside him, "I like the trebuchet fine, and I understand the faster speed is to disengage but using a standard engine with the Centurion provides certain advantages." The talk continued missiles, and engines and such, and something about mass production.

Then something about how the lawyers would be busy, and how Blackwell would be needing to make an appearance on New Avalon. The exact situation eluded her, but then that had proven par the course at the sudden confusing situation. They would be here, and then they would be back at Sakhara, and she would still be no where close to explaining to her family exactly how she had become involved in this, or what this was.

"We must do this again sometime." The First Prince declared, he was vibrant and exuberant, and in a way reminded her surprisingly of her cousin Justin. He was more energetic than Henry was who really was more like the other Fox in the room. There was the same kind of energy to their demeanor... just that there was the age gap.

The first prince remained animated, highlight the ability of the command circuit to make such visits feasible.

"The Cataphract next time." The First Prince insisted, to which Henry replied that they were still working on the design. "And speaking of next time, with the circuit being established, you really must come for the holiday bash." The invitation hadn't been something Alexandria had expected , apparently neither had Yvonne either though she reasserted herself much more quickly.

Alexandria wondered how familiar Clay actually was with the notion of the New Years Prince's Honors which would open and be published the gazette for New Avalon and be read across the Federated Suns over the first couple months of the year by high society. Probably not very, it didn't seem at all the sort of thing that the still only recently created Count of Sakhara would pay heed to, especially when so much of his time seemed consumed by other matters.

The Duke of Robinson intervened before she could speak up, insuring the First Prince did get the answer he wanted in all of this, and that they would all receive invitations even if invitations was more of a formality, not receiving an invitation would have been a serious indication of the 1st​ Prince's displeasure to a member of the aristocracy and Alexandria hd never heard of a case where the current First Prince had pointedly not sent a head of house an invitation...

... but that wasn't what the First Prince had said; they would all receive invitations even though Lord Aaron, and Henry likely would have received them anyway.
--
There hadn't been much time on New Avalon to do much. They had arrived done some wining and dining but largely they had spent the time at Avalon's military academy, and he had received assurances that there would be federal support for his projects, and that Hanse would make it happen...

... which probably wasn't fare to Hanse being volunteered like that by his brother.

It did also convey the seriousness with which the Prince was taking this. Hanse well, there was a discretionary military budget and House Stephenson was supposed to be visiting Robinson soon and presumably Lord Aaron would talk to them, with or without Ian and something would go on. The Centurion would help pad out the Chasseurs rank and improve their combat effectiveness, and so forth and so on.

Henry didn't really care what unit in the DMM or even the AFFS received the first production orders just so long as they were being used to improve the defensive readiness of the realm against the Combine... and thus potentially better shore up the Federated Suns against the Clans if they came a knocking.

He put aside the paperwork, "I didn't realize the Two Delta," Shadow Hawk, "Was so abundant," especially given that the Federated suns didn't produce the mech, and given its limitations. The best option would be to market the Two F system as an overhaul. They didn't plan to go further than that at this stage, but not without being able to insure there was going to be adoption. The other alternative was to try and persuade units to trade in 2D Shadow Hawks for new production Centurions for the sake of uniformity... but he doubted that would go over especially well right now either ... they needed to build up their reputation first.

That included the Cataphract, which they hadn't brought here. Then of course there were other designs. Never mind the matter of non BattleMech production, nor of spare parts.

The report on the 5th​ Davion Guards RCT was in front of him courtesy of Yvonne. He suspected somehow or another that this step was to specifically bypass going through the Capellan March's own logistics bureaucracy.

He still personally thought the red white and blue striped parade paint was a bit much, but that wasn't particularly relevant, "They have integrated tanks, and are historically a medium weight unit,"

"They are." Yvonne tapped her pen, "I'm sure you'll have no shortage of opportunity to talk with the Chasseurs," New Ivaarsen, "You had stated to the Duke of Robinson that tanks were vastly less complicated than BattleMech production."

He had, and the truth was he was over exaggerating that after a fact, especially with regards to the involvement of Corean to justify putting the mech factory together, and also on other worlds. The supposed ... well the real benefits of relying on engineers being there from the very start of the factory was something he was exaggerating but it seemed the safer play than simply magiking up the mech lines without any help at all.

It was one thing to gather up mountains of parts and have the techs assemble things, factory production done properly should be producing more machines.

"Henry?"

"Hmm, oh yes in some cases an order of magnitude more economical than some battlemech options even fusion powered tanks are simpler, but if you are asking for something in large numbers it will have to be something running one of perhaps two standard engines."

"The 240."

"Then you are in luck," He replied, "There isn't really an impediment to rolling out tanks using the pitbans and I had already been talking about fusion engine refit packages being prepared for the Rangers," Robinson Rangers, particularly for the Partisans, but there were plenty he was looking at that he wasn't going to mention, "I intend to establish, to make so ubiquitous the parts in question that this extinction of certain systems is a thing that is gone." And a part of him was glad that Ian hadn't actually gone forward with giving him Bristol to 'fix' yet...

If she was skeptical that Robinson had the discretionary funding she didn't bring it up. The Federal Government of the Suns could afford the upfront costs of buying such tanks. That was what he was really banking on, because once there was money coming in he'd feel a lot better. Tanks first once production of BattleMechs were up and running that would be one thing.

She had other things to consider, "The 240 is the same engine for your proposed ASF production."

"The Stingray and F 77 designs required some degree of reworking for our need," The original swept wing 77 wasn't in production anywhere so far as he was aware, but the stingray was, he intended to get around that at market by using the 240 engine coupled with weaponry produced commonly in Davion Space, and other materials... but also by having the design feature via the essence the easy to pilot quirk.

He didn't expect it to be a problem, especially once they started arriving in numbers to market... and as for other models with better weapons for home use it would be easy to miss.

"Fusion engine production won't be an issue?"

"For the 240 no." He replied, it had been the first factory space for engines they had set up for, and those factory spaces didn't require personnel, though he wasn't going to advertise that. They were black box, all they needed was to feed resources in, and the engines would come out and be trucked to an assembly or distribution point for whatever they were going into. "We have the space, and tooling allocated to take the engines being built and put them into the housings needed for tanks, aircraft, or mechs." and he was banking on production volumes in the new year obfuscating his expanding air coverage for Sakhara and tanks while they waited for a response from Mountain Wolf, and whoever else talks needed to be conducted with regards to mechs.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Sakhara 3.1​

Justin blanched as another DropShip touched down, he had known that his father had been high up in the diplomatic service, but the fact that his family had been able to send mail along with the dropship was the telling factor. He looked at the student council president, his cousin, "Di-"

"Of course I didn't read them." She growled, "I left a letter for my father and I hope to have a response, but I have no idea how long that will take. You are invited to the Prince's New Years Honors by the way, with your cataphract, I should add. The First Prince is very interested in the new designs."

Oh, oh, that was a surprising. She, also, might as well have told him not to fuck up, but he knew that. He'd been about to comment on the Rifleman designs being overhauled, but she saw them as they came into view. "That must be why they were able to just scrounge around for parts then, and assemble from common parts." She muttered, seeing other examples of the several machines in the high visible text colors.

"I like the Rifleman," Henry declared adjusting his scarf as the wind picked up, "We'll introduce them and a few other designs over the next few weeks, but realistically your class needs to be preparing for graduation," before either could protect, though he doubted they would, he decided to head off any claims of that being months away, "and for your duty stations. There will be large scale combined arms actions where I expect your class to interact and operate effectively alongside tanks and airpower." He paused, "Oh look there is Colonel Coleridge, I'd better go see what he wants."

Justin watched him cross the field, "Why do I have a bad feeling about that?"

"I would expect either he means to pit us against the Longswords or he had yet something else in the works." She paused, "What exactly did I miss?"

"We practiced lance on lance... that didn't go well," He replied, "The RAC's mechwarrior component is supposedly cycling back from the periphery soon, from wherever they were, that's about the only rumor to speak of." Justin stretched and racked his hands behind his head walking backwards, "So the longswords?"

She shook her head, "No, that's important I'm sure but the invitation to the prince's honors far outstrips that. The cataphract has the first prince's attention, so you need to make a good impression." She remarked.

Her advice was not grounded in anything other than stating the obvious. The main attraction would be the machine itself, but if he could pilot it well then that would win Justin some acclaim, he certainly could use some positive fame to trade on.

Justin predictably began to protest, "You know, well look," He declared a bit more firmly, "the RAC is starting to deploy Cataphracts like mine, and there isn't any shortage of the smaller engines in the warehouse," He declared deflecting by arguing that his mech was unique... which wasn't the point. Clay had sent a dozen Long swords to New Avalon as bequest., so of course there would have been other examples of the machine, and it was entirely natural that those machines would begin fielding his household guard as such.
--
Clay looked at the class, "So as you are aware my recent absence to New Avalon dealt with the ongoing efforts in BattleMech logistics. We will leave aside the assault class mechs, they are not relevant to today's lecture." There was some grumbling. He tapped the holographic display causing it to unpack into a fusion engine schematic. "This is a Nissan 200 Fusion Engine. It is is one of the more common fusion engines, and can be used to power Assault BattleMechs but is more commonly found powering venerable Medium designs like the Hunchback, the Enforcer, or the Centurion. Never mind when the engine is used to power tanks for the moment, it is the medium mech which is the matter." The engine hologram reduced in size and a battlemech wireframe appeared. "This is a Dorwinion Standard Chassis, the single largest issue with auto cannons is that they require ammunition, and if logistics ships you the wrong ammunition say for another model of auto cannon it does you no good." The Fifty ton Battlemech's representation took an animated step forward. This is arguably my most serious complaint about the Enforcer, and Centurion debate. The Fusilier doesn't carry an auto cannon, it instead mounts two Zeus LRM 15 launchers. It thereby uses the same engine as the Centurion and Enforcer indeed uses other common parts, and highly in my opinion, doesn't add a third auto cannon or weigh in on the auto cannon debate at all, it is an effective fire support platform capable of close range self defense or support." Provided by Four readily available ChisComp model Medium Lasers. "So what is the unique logistical challenge of this mech?"

It was an easy softball question.

The answer was feeding the missile launchers.

While the Star League had never been able to standardize launchers, long range missiles, and their short range counterparts had been standardized. There were many different sorts of launchers but they fired a standard chassis missile.

"The boxes in front of you are notebooks, and range tables, and calculations for how much in the way of supplies units in different conditions on average consume. This a look at operational warfare, not tactical war gaming. This is not a look at tactical engagements but rather the maneuver of company and battalion elements and what it takes to keep them operation over a period of weeks and months."

It was a look at how many trucks you needed, how many trailers carrying how many tons of things other than ammunition. The table detailed estimates on how much food a unit needed, and that varied depending on the environment. How many tankers of water did you need reflected local conditions... and if the atmosphere of a planet was uncooperative things like filters for atmospheric cleaners .

These students, Justin, Alexandria, Don Juan too were all graduating in the spring. They'd be lieutenants soon, and thus needed to have some idea that war really was more than just finding the other guy and shooting him before he shot you. So to acclimate them to operational concerns for their final semester at Sakhara, they were going to be war gaming much longer campaigns.... and what would make this interesting would be in next semester's continuation of this would be that their packets that they'd receive after the return from break would have realistic unit tables.

Their units would reflect the mixed lances, companies, and battalions that were the norm in the succession wars. They would have to account for that, keeping track of individual machines that had individual specific weapons. Position and maneuver were also going to be counted on a map that only showed certain features to the two student 'players', which referees made rulings that might not come into play that session.

--
He was repeating it silently in his head.

Logistics were what won wars. That's the mantra, that's the doctrine, that is the orthodox truth of the 19th​ and 20th​ centuries, it was the truth of pre modern and early modern war. Armies marched on their stomachs then, and the tides of iron needed fuel and ammunition in the 1900s and so needed carrying capacity fr in excess of what their grandfathers had needed. Logistics predated industrial warfare.

To that end, the Enforcer was not something Clay intended to try and replace. It had its niche it was in production and it was set up, so it used different guns, it used enough other common parts that it was fine... the logistical reality of things meant he was trying to rush back to star league era technology.

The Count of Sakhara leaned on the console behind the transparent ferro aluminium window of the observation deck. The consequences of his drive towards logistics were something he hadn't realized... so far as he could observe the scrapping of parts for either their C-bill, or BV cost was irrelevant... what he wouldn't realize until years later was that there was a cost, creating those HPGs and selling them deposited ground mobile hpgs into the inner sphere, or in the periphery, and that that would have consequences.

Consequences he wouldn't start to see for years even.

So the billions of c-bills went towards purchasing the infrastructure to produce engine factories, like for the Nissan 200. He had already told the lawyers they could license out designs to Kallon, to Achernar, to Corean, he'd extend that to GM if it came to it. The 240 engines being assembled in front of him were for aircraft for export, the same for tanks, and the same for battlemech spares. The truth was... the truth was Ian had issued summons to Colchester for General Kerston to visit him on New Avalon.

... Colchester was two jumps from Sakhara. Henry watched the holographic lights unfurl into a stylized 19 on an angry horse. The officer behind him straightened. "I'll allocate you personnel and resources by the 1st​ of the year colonel."

The fight was lost, the story told with truth and lies. Maybe some men had slipped away from the Rim World's total victory, but perhaps only a handful too few to be anything more than walking ghosts of a dying era. They were however still professional soldiers not knights as too many battlemech pilots were. "We'll be ready sir."

"I'll need the company ready for exercises for the weekend." He answered in response, and was met with a positive, confident affirmative.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Sakhara 3.2​

The Tuesday lectures had been more of the same, up until they'd been told today's exercises were supposed to help prepare them for exercises at the end of the month, which was fast approaching "AH, fuck," Justin hissed as his restraints arrested his momentum. The Battle Company fought like an avalanche, they had boxed his lance in and pummeled them to the point his simulated gyro overloaded and pitched him sideways. The simulator was a pain in the ass, and tried to force the computer to let him stand up his mech, but another wave of blistering LRM fire flashed. The incoming fire warning went silent as his screen went black.

The simulator pod reset and he leaned back, grumbling to himself as he worked the harness loose, before rotating his sore arm.

He couldn't console himself that they'd at least heavily damaged the company again. Oh sure that was true, but he hadn't been expecting six Trenchbuckets to floor it once they'd wiped out the only mechs that could hope to physically catch them.

That was part of where his mistake had been was losing any outrider to warn them of an enemy maneuver before they were right on top of them... even if some of that was just the limitations of the simulators and their fake battle space.

"Fuck," One of his lancemates grunted all but falling out of his own pod, "And that was without any of the new mechs too." ...that detail hadn't escaped Justin either, having to contend with a jumping seventy tonner in the canyon map would have been a mess.

"Stop talking," Clay growled coming around the corner, "Go to the debrief room, and start writing what you think happened, and where you went wrong. Go." He gestured towards the door. Justin wasn't surprised that they weren't the first ones in here, he'd seen the sensor returns in the simulator disappear as the conflict had gone on... but the number of people strongly suggested the class had lost.

He'd expected that, but he didn't have to like it... what was worse was that his lance mate was right how would they have done against other machines ... probably not better.

Henry checked the display, but they were still waiting on final scores... which really meant they were waiting for a final review from the other instructors. This wasn't the first time the cadets had run this map of course, but the decision to do so had been at the insistence of other instructors ...

--
A few hours later Henry punched up the diagrams. Sakhara had been an SLDF paradigm school, that was to say it had been founded to produce cadets fit to serve in the SLDF and it still retained a corpus of material that dated to the Star League which weren't really applicable to the armies of the modern inner sphere. They were slightly more applicable to his own house troops, but that wasn't the lesson he was trying to drive home per se.

"The Terran Hegemony made the decision fairly early on to simplify logistical foot prints in army units by consolidating on a number of front line designs, and by establishing standardized formations around battlemech weight classes." That was to say generally at company level all machines were the same model.

The Battle Company that he frequently used against the cadets had League pilots at their core, but the formation while built around a common logistics basis and weight and with a degree of uniformity wasn't an original SLDF formation.

A series of diagrams unfolded. "No one expects your class to fight a significantly larger formation than your own on your own. What that actually means is that while simulated lance mates are never as particularly intelligent or as effective in responding to a changing battlefield, on graduation you will be commissioned as second lieutenants in the AFFS. So what we will be doing is immersing you into the expanded combat simulation. Where each of you is commanding a lance, now this will not strictly speaking be particularly realistic at least in some ways."

Justin must have done the mental math, and realized they were going to be fighting a massed combined arms formation, because he groaned looking at the charts.

Don Juan had other interests in the chart, "That says experimental, so we're fighting the new BattleMechs this time am I right?"

"You are indeed." Henry replied. The class's square company expanded turning from the roster of cadets into pips with space for three mechs underneath their listed 'mech. That put them as an over strength Battalion by default. "Ordinarily this would be run against the Rangers, and you will play against them at a later date. This weekend however we will be focusing on putting you against a combined arms task force. This is intended to give you somewhat more hands on experience with the tactical aspect of wider operations, the war gaming you will do with pen and paper over the next few months is to ground in the costs and realities of maintaining forces in the field... this is to look at what happens when there are a hundred plus combatant units are active in an engagement. This is organized chaos, as you will know doubt experience first hand."

The table for the opposing force was left up. He had decided ahead of time not to use the Shogun in his line up, which Coleridge hadn't objected to when he had put a response forward to the Vice Chanellor's 'suggestion'. He had also made the decision not to include the Zoryas in the line for other reasons. Leaving the Falchion off had been an easy enough decision

The Cataphract, and Longswords would have been the main focus of the force, what the cadets were not likely going to enjoy was that while they had a larger margin than in the normal games all of his 'mech lances would be outfitted, paired with a pair of ASF, which no one seemed to have commented on at this stage. They would all be slantbacks for simplicity sake he wasn't going to field death stalkers, the F 77, against the cadets.

A single binary worth of tanks was being borrowed from the RAC with probably predictable contingent of demolishers and shreks. The cadets might well have been taking that too in stride, it did remind him though that he needed to handle familiarization with some of hte other tank designs being worked on in conjunction with the lighter machines, BattleMechs.

Two Fusiliers, Two Rifleman -P, two more slantbacks. Two Cataphract, Two Longswords, two more F 90. 1 Centurion, 1 Alecto, 1 Sentry, 1 Antares two more birds for the nest. Two companies of 'Mechs total. Twelve ASF

Alexandria raised her pen, "Is this the prototype Centurion?"

"Its not," He replied, "The 9AP variant Mitchell will be running is distinct but isn't carrying the MML 3 Launchers you saw on New Avalon." The comment attracted looks.

Still no one commented on the twenty eighty ton tanks. He supposed some of that might well have been a result of this morning's simulation and having the terrain turned against them. The last lance was more of a demonstration of the Sentry and Antares, but also to facilitate using the mixed lance as a blocking force and ... depending on how things went as a tactical close air support controller element.

The other matter was that the cadets would be facing all human opponents, not digital simulations of hostiles... not occasionally bone headed AI. This would in all likelihood turn into a centerline mech slug fest... but...

"Do we know where we're going to be fighting?" Another cadet asked.

"Do you know where we're going to be fighting?" Some one else asked.

He shook his head, "Colonel Coleridge hasn't announced a battle map at this time." There were only so many he could pick from in the simulator, but thus far Henry hadn't been told so he didnt' even know if the vice chancellor had selected one. "It gives you time to prepare. You should have packets of your lance composition in your emails by the end of the day."

Which was another thing he'd yet to be told either, but that was okay.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Sakhara 3.3​

He was less worried about potential security vulnerabilities with this lot. There were just enough in the class to be annoying, but he was confident that letting them see the growing 'mech works wouldn't provide a real danger to the works proper...

... in the sense of having them watched while they were here. They were still going to be minded, but he was more worried about what they might inevitably say to people who didn't attend Sakhara but there was no helping that.

He had made a point of showing them the Shadow Hawk 2F package, which was being loaded up as self contained storage systems designed to be shipped out one unit per mech. Thereby One package going to an existing Shadow Hawk and allowing local techs and engineers to pull the old weapons suite and supplement it with the new additions that comprised the 2F load out. There were in addition to those the extra jump jets ...

It really vexed Henry there wasn't an active production line, but he had had to reiterate to himself that at this stage formal production, rather than producing spare parts would be a distraction. It was a useful commentary on making spare parts, and improvements on what was already in use for the class of cadets.

In the mean time the mechanical arm was tensioning via a rotating bit, the Myomer across the otherwise naked frame of a battlemech that was slowly coming together. "Long range missiles, like what will be eventually fired from this Fusilier allow for indirect fire, and in this case of the two Zeus launchers this machine will eventually carry the opportunity to be significant fires down range." It was effectively a smaller archer, and more importantly as a missile boat cheaper coming off the factory floor than its potential competitors, "The issue is filling the ammunition requirements in the field. The Fusilier is intended to operate in a given tactical niche as part of a battlemech, and broader force," But not intended to attempt to do the job of larger mechs, or for that matter battlemechs with equally specialized roles, "As a design it was built with parts commonality in mind and the same dorwinnion chassis that this was built on, as well as the Nissan 200 engine are used as the basis for the lighter," 40 Ton, "Sentry a design which while carrying a similar suite of Medium Lasers is not ammunition dependent."

The class were sent down to look around from the various vantage points, there were large barriers and safety chains but he didn't expect anyone to try and cross. Most of the tensioning work on the myomer bundles was done with the area clear of people anyway. It allowed for 360 view of the machine.

Because the Sentry was lighter that same fusion engine designed centuries ago by Nissan was capable of pushing the lighter mech faster allowing the Sentry to respond to a changing battlefield, even though he didn't' really envision it as a scout per se. Whether it ended up used as that, well that would be to the end user... unfortunately what the intended end use was versus what soldiers ended up using things for were not one to one.

The decision to fit the Sentry with a Parti-Kill, gods there was some marketing right there, had been in part due to the other thing using the 200 rating Fusion engine forty ton vehicle... in this case the Myrmidons being constructed, and its larger 240 powered Manticore, as well as the Rifleman 4P and the Ranger design.

What he wasn't going to tell the cadets was that the reality of the market meant that sometimes ... well there were irrational forces at work in the market. People had attachments to designs, had preferences for weapons and so on. As it was they were probably going to be fielding three separate models of PPCs on designs but all had Davion suppliers already it wasn't as if they were introducing an entirely new model of PPC to market.

What he was potentially less enthused about was fielding or more correctly having to weigh into the auto cannon debate over which models to field, never mind in the discussion that would eventually come forward for producing 'LosTech' or future tech autocannon systems. In a sense though he had already stuck his toe in that pool, even discounting ASF, and tanks, especially his Demolishers the Alecto carried an Assault Auto Cannon. For all intents and purposes he had endorsed, with the Cataphract, the Imperator-A platform as well and the AC 10 carried by the heavier engined version. He resigned himself that he had to before they left for Christmas break to really commit himself to the Cataphract design's load out in terms of the class ten.


Not at the moment though, today they could deal with the nice and mostly uncontentious topic of medium mechs being outfitted with energy weapons. The Fusilier wasn't intended, nor was the trebuchet to be the center of an engagement line. When the Trebuchets were out of ammo, they were supposed to move around or disengage using their larger engines there were limits to that and it was why the battle company's centurion model dropped the ammunition dependent auto cannon; and that was without discussing historical problems with the feed system.

Justin coughed slightly, looking over a packet for the Sentry "Uh, Henry this says intended market is for militia troops? You mean Draconis March Militia right?"

--

The simulation booted up as a lance of Sentry were supported by the Myrmidons it was a brief animation for the cadets. The simulated challenge of fast moving Combine favored Light BattleMechs were aiming to get close with Jenners rushing forward, and their Thunderstroke launchers being answered by six missile replies from the tanks.

What interrupted the simulated fighting was the freeze frame projection of the machines as they appeared. Nominal cost per unit, not counting sustainment, projected the Jenner at just shy of 3.2M C-Bills. Part of that was the heavier fusion engine driving the 35 ton machine. Thus the Sentry was therefore slower because it used a smaller engine and was five tons heavier.

The difference was the Myrmidons were acting as fire support, part of a PPC battle line yes, but also out there as a nasty surprise once short range missile range was reached. It didn't help that the Combine Mechs often outpaced any infantry support they might have had along with them, and thus the BattleMech force was acting unsupported as was fairly typical of the Company centric battlemech centric doctrine favored by Takashi Kurita's regime.

It still didn't address the question of air power of course. He'd been drafting the notion of exports of 240 engined ASF which could be produced en masse... the historical limitation of mechanized warfare tanks or fighter aircraft across the 20th​ century had been engine manufacturing even as air frames became more complex, and avionics continued to develop.

So far as he was aware the cadets had yet to be given their 'lance weight'. They could probably reasonably intuit what they were going to get though if they were on either end of the extreme though...

There were three simple categories that Coleridge or the Colonel's staff could dump them in for the war game. Heavy Medium Light. That was something of a misnomer. If anyone had an assault mech they were going to be commanding a heavy lance, with up to three actual 'Heavy BattleMechs', and up to two Medium Mechs. For Light or Medium Weight 'Mech pilots they had the chance of either being in command of a light Lance or a medium lance... what Coleridge was unlikely to do was position a Medium 'Mech pilot in charge of a Heavy Lance. The Vice Chancellor might decide to do that... but Henry doubted he would.

Sixteen cadets would be handed a designation... and then they'd go from there. The Vice Chancellor wasn't being particularly up front with how he intended to set them up.

The simulation ended, "The Sentry is a less expensive mech option. It is a medium battlemech a balance of capabilities to forces on the home front. The Myrmidon complements it nicely." He couldn't quote a price at them, or rather he felt he shouldn't because he was the one introducing it to market... and they were just cadets. "Its forty tons and is a simple, fusion powered tank. That makes it five tons heavier and firing two more SRMs than the Combine's Panther BattleMech." A slower light 'mech that had been outpaced by rushing Jenners. In fact the Myrmidon Medium Tank was faster than the Panther, not in the grand scheme of things by much, but it was faster. "As your recent drill demonstrated, being aware of changes in the terrain is critical. A battlemech doesn't make you invincible, a PPC hit is a PPC hit."

A planetary militia couldn't reasonably expect to have a budget to afford whole companies. Realistically there would probably have to be federal or march subsidies for purchases to supplement local nobles riding out from their steadings, but that was the more or less norm across human space.

The costs though were in what it could cost a raiding force. It was true though, that the Panther was a cheaper battlemech than the Jenner... but how the Combine used its BattleMechs was in his opinion reckless both on an individual level, and operationally especially with the emphasis on the company rather than the Battalion.
--
Notes: I am aiming to update Eminence this week, Aurigan renaissance hopefully next week with Kamea and Victoria being somewhat front and center, I'm still working on the dogs of war chapter for EWSG even though I have kicked around ideas of going back and moving it back to where it was in the original outline since it is basically a large wake up call. I'm probably going to bite the bullet on that and do that. Anyway Wednesday just to make my life less complicated will probably be an AH update, I have a lot of those and I'm currently rewriting and overhauling 4714 for Pathfinder... and I have DND tonight and tomorrow.