BattleTech: Threefold Curse

[DrunkenGrognard]

Spoiler: Author's Notes

So here I am, taking a swing at fiction again for the first time in mumblemumble years. This particular idea I've been kicking around for a while now. I'm using Drakenisis' wonderful BattleTech jumpchain as the starting point, though a bit loosely. It's important to note, my SI's in-character knowledge is based on what I knew before I started writing this, so little details that I learned as I was doing the research to put everything together, well... Poor Caseri. Jump-Chan has to get some fun in someway...

With thanks to SirJalinth for beta'ing this

May You Live In Interesting Times
May You Come To The Attention Of Those In High Places
May You Find That For Which You Search

-Chinese curse

Chapter 1

Consciousness returned slowly.

Now, I'm not 100% coherent right away when I wake up, but I do generally wake up pretty dang fast; able to roll out of bed and start breakfast before I'm capable of speech; a survival skill thanks to a job that gets me up at fuck-you o'clock every day. So struggling to get myself upright was generally a bad sign.

Some of that awake came suddenly when I managed to roll over and fall off the bench seat I was sleeping on, and landed on the floor tits first. This was both uncomfortable and confusing because A) tits are sensitive, and B) I hadn't had any the night before.

Flailing and swearing, I hauled myself upright and looked around to see where the hell I was. Accurate but useless answer: back seat of some kind of car? No, wait, looking at the outside of the thing, I was seeing fan intakes, so this was some kind of hovercraft. A convertible, no less, with a ratty looking rag-top to match the ratty, faded appearance of the rest of it. Beyond the hovercar, I saw a burnt-orange landscape that reminded me vaguely of the badlands around Drumheller, rocky flatlands stretching towards the horizon. The sun was hanging halfway across said horizon, though fucked if I knew if it was dawn or nightfall. Looking the other way, I saw that I was parked next to a butte.

A butte with a hatch in it. And a rolling door about forty feet to the left of that. Hokay. Hidden badlands base.

Before I went exploring that, I quickly went through the rest of the hovercar. There was a convincing stick under the driver's seat (exactly where I kept mine in my car back home) while the trunk held a survival and first aid kit, a set of tools I mostly recognized, a sleeping bag, a duffel full of clothing that looked like it was my new size, and a pistol that looked like it belonged to an extra from Star Wars.

And in the glove box, a letter.

Greetings, Jumper! You've been selected to join an exclusive crew of sentients who are provided with the chance to live out your dreams! Welcome to a place that is strange but familiar to you. You have some advantages to your credit here, but not so many as to remove the challenge.

You were rude, after all. And not who I was aiming for initially. He looked like he'd be such fun too. That said, I am a ROB of my word, and should you survive, I'll make good on things and deposit you back at your home, none the worse for wear, the day after you left.

Good luck. And don't be boring!

Well. I was jumpchaining, and seemed to be on Jump-chan's bad side. That wasn't great. I'd been dropped… well, I wasn't entirely sure yet, though I had some suspicions. Being girlified in the bargain… I'd decide if that was curse or blessing in a few days, when I knew whether or not I was getting visits from the dysphoria fairy. The loss of weight that came with it had it off to a good start at least. For the moment, however, it was time to deal with the damn bunker.

It wasn't locked, at least, and I only needed to wait for my vision to adjust to the dark to know where I was. There weren't all that many places I'd run across a Marauder, after all.

Although on second look, I revised that. This looked like a near-relative to the thing, but more of a frankenstein's monster, with more than a little Catapult or Crab DNA in there as well. It had a decent sized energy weapon perched on the right shoulder, over a torso that was a bit more friend-shaped than a Marauder's, with a Catapult's big canopy and an uneven murderer's grin of gunports across the torso. The legs were chunky and sported jet exhausts. Rather than a Catapult's missile pods, a pair of arms sprouted from the shoulders. They looked a bit less bulky than a Marauder's, ending with a single big gun barrel. A gun that looked suspiciously like the one in the shoulder.

The whole thing stood about nine meters at the shoulder, and fairly dripped with menace even in basic primer grey.

With a grimace, I looked over the rest of the mechbay. There was what looked like a standard shipping container marked EVERGREEN dominating the far wall, a gym locker next to a table, and an obvious changing cubical next to that.

A second letter sat on the table. Welcome to the Lyran Periphery, circa 3018! You have some liquid funds, a custom BattleMech you may well recognize, a shipping container of spare parts, and an opportunity to do something entertaining! You've also got the skills needed to operate the 'Mech properly, and maintain it… so long as the parts last. I am a benevolent ROB, after all.

I turned the sheet over, and saw an honest-to-god TRO Mechsheet, formatted pretty much exactly the way MegaMek did, describing the machine in question.



"Huh," I said, blinking at the unfamiliarity of my voice but pushing that aside for the nonce to move on. Three "Clan ER Light PPCs" more or less justified borrowing the name 'thunder god'. Pretty damn good throw-weight of damage for a medium in this era, with the heat capacity to bracket fight or throw an alpha without completely crippling myself. The scattering of advanced tech was interesting; DHS was a no brainer, and the pulse laser would keep infantry honest, but it was the Light PPCs that were really interesting; mostly because there was no way in hell they should exist yet, and especially not Clan versions. Explaining them would be no fun at all.

And the whole thing was going to draw attention like flies to shit. No matter what I did, there were going to be Questions and people Taking Notice. Lyran space in this era meant that Snord and his merry band of thieves were wandering around picking fights with Marik and hiding lostech from Katrina, and if Wolf wasn't on her payroll yet he would be soon. I could probably assume that WolfNet would learn about my existence approximately thirty seconds after I got spotted, because they were bullshit of the highest order. And on the other hand I'd have to deal with Space AT&T, who'd probably want to dump my corpse in an unmarked grave when they saw what I was driving.

And absolutely would when they realized what I was planning to do. Because there was no way in hell I wouldn't be trying to lay hands on the Helm core and get a copy to NAIS, Tharkad, or both. Exactly how I was going to pull that off was a problem for Future Me to solve. He (she?) could deal with it, they were a smart nerd, and kind of an asshole, and thus deserved it. For now, I'd finish taking stock of things and see just how much 'Mech operation skills Jump-Chan had left me with.

I looked over the rest of the goodies in here before trying to figure anything else out. The shipping container was packed full; two crates full of spare circuit boards and electronic parts; one of lenses; and five hefty crates marked Type VI LPPC © Raven Alliance, which kicked my memory into gear- I'd written up a mech much like this one a couple years ago as a militia-trash-for-our-spheroid-holdings machine. Couldn't remember why the LPPCs instead of just ER Large Lasers, but it was probably me trying to be a Special Snowflake.

Anyway.

The gym locker held a set of boiler room grey techie coveralls (without any high vis striping or tags suggesting flame retardant fabric; safety features, in the future of the 80's? Perish the thought), a banana yellow fanny pack with a wad of C-Bills and a worryingly bright green wallet full of ID cards (announcing me as Caseri Sobral, Lostech Prospector - the first name was a frequent one for me to grab in online games for alt-characters, the last name didn't ring a bell) and a Plug Suit in Rei's colours.

Well, Plug Suit with what looked like coolant piping, so cooling suit. Which was going to be much less of a pain in the ass than a vest-and-skimpies, probably. A bit of awkwardness later and I was clamoring up the scaffolding (this outfit was going to take some getting used to moving in) and finding that top hatch. The cockpit, thank God, wasn't a Clan style efficiency job, but was big enough that I'd be able to stash my stuff and have a touch of room to spare (it helped that the new me was smol; I'd lost about eight inches of height along with the weight). It even had some nice reddy-brown wood paneling around the instrument panels, which was very 80s and I kind of loved it. (The new me was an early-20s, 5'1"ish gal who looked like Gengis Khan's tomboy sister, which suggested I was going to have issues with Inner Sphere authorities; because I was willing to bet cash money a gene test would reveal Amaris DNA, given Jump-Chan's letter)

A bit after that, I was rolling out. Jump-Chan had been as good as her word; I was able to get the thing fired up and moving without any problems. I had my clothes and other small goodies stashed around me, the duffel bucked into the jumpseat. Couldn't do anything about the shipping container of parts just yet, or the hovercar, but I'd marked the bunker in my nav system; I'd be coming back here if at all possible. For now, I was crossing the badlands at a decent lope; trying to make sure my granted mechhandling skills actually worked.

Seemed pretty good so far; running around felt like driving a truck, more or less - I just sort of knew how to control this thing as soon as I got going. I was still taking it easy, because I wasn't an idiot - treating this like my first run in any unfamiliar truck. It seemed to be helping; I hadn't eaten shit yet, even when I gave the jump-jets a brief go. And the guns, for that matter. Hadn't fired a full alpha, but I'd turned several strips of sand into glass with various bursts of cobalt confetti along with slashes of green and crimson light. There did seem to be an option to change those colours, but I wasn't going to sweat that just yet. For now, I was heading east at about fifty klicks, getting a feel for things and scrolling my radio through the FM dials. I was picking up the occasional snatch of something vaguely Country. They were slowly getting more frequent and audible, which I figured was a decent sign that I was getting closer to what passed for civilization on this rock.

I was also getting snatches of something on short-wave bands. Probably something like CB, though I didn't know near enough to see if they were on the old-earth civilian bands. I was probably approaching something closer than a town. Sounded vaguely like oilpatch operations chatter, or a survey crew, from the bits I was catching.

The radio chatter got clearer as I made it to the top of one rise; that gave way to a broad plain. It was still badlands, but I could see what looked like a mountain range to the west; the sun's position making it look black against the tans of the badlands. I turned down the FM radio (I had definitely found country music, and at least in Lyran space, the trend of country songs being more about what brand of truck you drive than actual country stuff was sadly alive and well) and started adjusting the short-wave until I could get a clear channel.

Finally, I got one. "Okay, Mal, we're ready to run the next sample, bring in a shovel full."

"Gotcha Fred. Be right there. Just gotta -rnh- gotta discourage some hares."

"Did you stick a shovel into one of their nests?"

"No comment, Fred."

I shook my head. Hare attacks? I had a mental image of saber-toothed bunnies. Par for the course when it came to BT wildlife, honestly. I pushed the thought aside and keyed the mic. "Check, check, radio check."

"...Reading you lima-charlie, stranger. Who'se this?"

"Cassi Sobral, lostech prospector. I've been poking around the badlands for a while, having a bit of an issue with my nav system. Any chance you can point me towards town?"

There was a long pause, then, "...Might be, stranger. Find anything interesting out there?"

"Might have. Still gotta get my claims filed before I can talk about it."

"Can't blame a man for trying. Landing is about two-fifty kays northwest of here."

"Thanks much, friend. Take care."

I turned north-west and moved on. Two hundred fifty KMs would take me around three hours, so I started loping along. While I ran, I started thumbing through files on the little mini computer I'd found in a glove box in the cockpit. Noteputer? Datapad? Couldn't remember what the specific term for them in BT was. Anyway, I started going through some stuff on filing lostech claims, because I'd have to at least vaguely know what I was doing if I wanted to give my cover story even a slight amount of believability.

Two hours later, and it was clear I was on the right track. The badlands had given way to scrub, and the scrub was starting to give way to farmland. Not terribly dense, thankfully, so I was able to avoid stomping through someone's tilled fields as I continued on. I'd thankfully also found a few more radio stations and currently had some polka creating much more pleasant background noise than the ford-and-wrangler country. I'd just spotted what looked like a farmhouse in the middle distance when my systems threw up an alert: mechs detected. Presumably the surveyors had called town, and the Militia was coming out to see just who the heck was wandering up, which was fair. I slowed to a walking pace and keyed the radio.

"Afternoon, folks. Is this the welcome wagon?"

"Might be. You Sobral? The lostech prospector?"

"That's me. Got dropped off a while ago," I technically didn't lie, "and I've been poking around since. Just coming in for some supplies and such."

"...Right. You got any documentation to back that up?"

"I do, and I can produce it as soon as we meet up. I think I see a proper road ahead, shall I wait for you there?" It wasn't strange for them to be suspicious; hopefully by being cooperative I'd be able to get the benefit of the doubt, here.

"Sounds like a plan, Sobral. See you shortly."

The militia lance came into view as I slowed to a halt at the end of a dirt road, next to a little sign proclaiming it to be the edge of the Callaway Ranch, where Trespassers Would Be Shot. The lance was… honestly pretty good for militia in this era. Whitworth, a pair of Centurions, and a Quickdraw, advancing with good spacing along the road. Zooming in, they looked a little threadbare, with faded paint, but nothing seemed obviously broken. As we crossed into weapons range (me with my weapons and targeting systems turned off, though my heart rate picked up as I recognised theirs were on) they spread out a bit, with the Quickdraw advancing ahead of the others. As he reached medium laser range, the lance halted.

"What the hell are you driving?"

"The family FrankenMech."

A long moment, then, "Come on out, let's see those credentials."

I was already on the ground and starting towards him before I saw his cockpit pop open. The 'Draw's pilot was an older caucasian man, reddish-brown hair over a tanned face. He wore combat boots, board shorts, and a jacket thrown over a cooling vest. I felt more than a little self-conscious of how out-of-place I seemed with my nice shiny cooling suit and pristine, primer'd mech. But I put on my best bland customer-service smile (honed over years of taxi driving and garbage-manning) and politely held out my Jump-chan provided documents.

He took a few minutes to go over it all, alternating between reading and looking between me and my 'Mech, and, to be fair, did his best not to loom over me (given he had a foot of height and probably a hundred pounds on me, that took some effort). Finally, "Well. These look like they're in order. And I can't think of any trouble that's come recently you might have been behind. You'll be making a claim for something, I'm sure."

"And paying the requisite claim fees when I get to the local offices, yes."

"Well. The Duke might have a few questions but… if you're willing to stay out of trouble, I suppose… Welcome to Swartklip."

"Thank you, mister…?" I let the question hang while wondering where in the fuck Swartklip was.

The dark-haired man gave a crooked smile, brown eyes crinkling for a moment. "Hauptman Klaus Doric. Mount up and we'll lead you in, but keep your weapons offline. No offence, but…"

"But you don't know me, and have people to defend. I understand." Hopefully the tablet dealie has some info on this place…

Landing
Swartklip III, Coventry Province, Lyran Commonwealth
March 12, 3018

Two days later, I'd had a polite conversation with the Duke's deputy and her clerks, who had been happy to take my money in exchange for some salvage claims but otherwise had no interest in talking to me; and with the Adept in charge of the local ComStar office. Swartklip was so small-time that this was a "class C" station, not an actual HPG but just a post-office, getting messages and packages every few months from a courier or contracted merchant jumper. He had been significantly more interested in where I'd been and what I'd been up to, and had been polite-but-strained at my bland evasions. It'd be a couple weeks before the next ship was expected to swing through, which would give me time to plan things a bit. Like how to get my shipping container of LosTech secured without it being immediately stolen.

I'd done a little shopping and research, trying to work out something resembling a plan, which was complicated by just how flipping remote this place was. The closest system-name I even recognized was Kwanjong-ni, then Inarcs, but they were both two or three jumps away. Of course, it was a couple decades too early for Defiance to be doing anything on Kwanjong-ni and I couldn't remember how they found the blasted plant there in the first place. Still, problems for later. If I could find a way to build some rep, I might be able to point someone with lots of minions at the problem.

Comparing my cash-on-hand with what I could find on shipping rates, I had enough to do a fair bit of travel as long as I wasn't too impatient. I'd have to do a little more research and figure out who I wanted to link up with and where to do that, but that was also Future Me's problem. For now I had some time to cool my heels while waiting for a jumper to show up and I could find my opportunities then.

Of course, I made the mistake of saying something along those lines to the clerk at the thrift store I'd found to get more than a set of covies for casual wear(yes, I had a Jump-Chan provided duffel of clothes, but the tops were more cutesy than I was comfortable with, and none of the pants had any zogging pockets), and the universe decided to punish me for taunting Murphy; with the civil defense sirens spooling up just after noon that very day. Moments later, the alarm cut out and Hauptman Doric's voice picked up.

"Attention citizens; a pirate JumpShip has been detected at the planetary L1 point. The militia is preparing to deploy to stand in your defense. When we know where they're heading, we'll let you know. For now, get ready to either bunker down or evacuate."

I threw a 20-kroner note on the table of the restaurant I was in and hit the door running. I dialed up Doric on my communicator while I ran for the rental hangar I had Naru-Kami stashed at.

"Ah, Sobral, I'm a little busy right now."

"I heard the alarms. I'm no fan of pirates, and I was wondering if you wanted an extra set of guns against the bastards."

"...Well. I'd be lying if I said I didn't. And you seem a decent enough sort… Get mounted up and head for the south edge of town."

"Not the spaceport?"

"We don't have a dropper, we're going to have to hoof it to wherever they land."

"Right. I'll call you back once I'm mounted up."

And I tried to strangle the little voice telling me this was a stupid idea.

Blackvalley Badlands
Swartklip III, Coventry Province, Lyran Commonwealth
March 12, 3018

By the time I'd formed up with the Militia out of town it was apparently clear that the Pirates weren't heading for Landing. There were all of four other towns on Swartklip worthy of the title; Orsova (a farming town); Unterklipp (a mining town); Tworivers (a barge-based transport hub); and Hohenau (which did a bit of everything). Fortunately, three of the four were the same general direction away from the capital, and it was immediately clear the pirates were heading that general direction too, heading down with a Union and a Mule.

The pirates descended on the town of Tworivers in about Company strength; a mix of 'Mechs and vehicles. What chatter the militia had picked up suggested that most of the civies had made it clear; and the cops with them, which would at least limit the breakage mostly to stuff rather than lives. The pirates were running heavier than the local militia even with me counted in, but hopefully we'd be able to do some divide and conquer rather than try to take them in a fair fight.

The short scout lance - two Stingers and a Locust-M; the Commando that normally rounded out their numbers was having reactor issues and wouldn't start - was ranging out ahead of us, looking to play bait. It was likely to be rough work for them; outnumbered four to one like they were. But the Locust jockey, an older guy named Mackensen, had just given Doric a nod and deployed. They were using all the Stinger's speed; while our main group was following on at a Centurion's more modest top speed.

I was running with Doric and his lance, and trying not to get too nervous about this situation. From the scattered reports, we were outweighed and outnumbered, which was likely to make the coming battle rough if we couldn't separate them a fair bit. But ultimately… pirates were scum, and chipping in against this lot of them was the right thing to do even before thinking about stuff like "building a trustworthy rep" and "not getting my stuff stolen."

Anticipation built like a leaden ball in my stomach as I tracked things on the map. The scouts approaching Tworivers, scattered bits of radio chatter from the scout lance as they engaged, attenuated by distance and the shitty nature of militia comm gear. More snippets as they killed a pirate Technical and started to fall back, angry pirates in pursuit. An exchange between Mackensen and Hauptmann Doric trying to nail down the enemy's force comp - sounded like Cicada, Vulcan, Valkyrie, one or two Hunchbacks, a Firestarter, one or two Trebuchets, a Blackjack, and a Grasshopper that was probably the commander's ride. Also a report of a pair of UrbanMechs that were either unable to keep pace or just staying in Tworivers to keep looting. The pirate vehicles stayed behind, too, which meant we were a lot less outnumbered than we could have been.

The militia pilots tossed a few ideas back and forth, trying to work out how to play this. I mostly just listened, answering a few questions about Naru-Kami's capabilities. I didn't want to talk myself up too hard, I wasn't sure just how much skill I had. Also, I was the odd man out here, in more ways than one. The militia pilots knew each other and knew how to work together; I was the wildcard. Fortunately, that'd go against the pirates, too - they wouldn't know what to expect from me. Though once I started banging away with the LPPCs I'd probably draw all sorts of negative attention. But there was nothing to do about that now, except try and do my best when the fur started to fly.

As the scouts got within a few klicks on the return; the pirates still following strong; Doric made the call - he picked a good-sized butte for us to set up behind and called for the scouts to lead them past it, and we steadied ourselves. It was a good spot, broad and with a few other small rises we could use for maneuver games once we made contact, but for now the militia Lance took up what looked like a practiced formation; with me tacked on at one end of the rough skirmish line, and we settled in for a very long minute of anticipation.

Then the moment was on us. Mackensen's Locust, looking untouched, roared past, kicking up rooster-tails of flying earth. The militia Stingers followed moments later, looking a bit worse for wear but still moving well. Mackensen sent a burst transmission - "They're almost on us, get ready" - and didn't even break stride, looping around towards the back of our formation while the Stingers cut right to go around the other side of us.

The first of the pursuing pirate scouts - the Cicada - rounded the corner next, and we unleashed the rave. Both Centurions and the Whitworth cut loose with their lasers; I gave the poor bastard the PPCs. About half of our assorted lightshows connected, and the entire left side of the 'Mech just came apart; the rest of it slammed to the desert floor and skidded to a stop in its own furrow.

A Vulcan followed the oversized bug around next, trying to cut away from us - clearly he'd seen what we did to his bud, but couldn't stop fast enough to avoid entering line of sight. LPPCs still cycling, this time I cut loose with my medium lasers while the others salvoed LRMs and the Quickdraw threw an alpha. My heat soared; pointedly reminding me that I was in a bracket fighter. The wave of missiles and disco washed over the Vulcan, but it was breaking away in an evasive sort of shimmy that kept it from getting breached in any one location, in exchange for a lot of generalized shredding of armor.

One and a half down; but they still had eight to go. Hauptmann Doric barked an order; and he and we started falling back before the next pirate hove into view. We got moving none too soon, either, as indirect LRMs started to rain down on where we'd been standing. The Vulcan got itself out of line of sight; the two remaining scout mechs started to loop around wide. Our own surviving scouts were doing the same; I saw a flight of LRMs chase the Vulcan out of sight as we fell back.

Me and the Whitworth were covering one side of the butte; the two Centies were covering the other. We got a customer first; a Swayback festooned with assorted missile tubes. My heat was still higher than I liked; I flipped the hat switch to chain fire and started to pump LPPC shots into the fucker as the Whitworth hosed it down with another laser volley. The pirate was moving with a similar shimmy to the one the Vulcan had used, just slower, but it was still enough to keep us from concentrating damage anywhere. He got in fairly close; inside a hundred meters; before replying. The Swayback vanished in a haze of smoke as around twenty SRMs erupted from its shoulder and slammed across the front half of my 'Mech; followed closely by stabbing crimson beams from its medium lasers.

I swore as the 'Mech bucked under me; staying upright, then swore again as the Swayback emerged from its cloud of smoke. I swore some more as I realized I'd scrapperlocked so hard on shooting I'd stopped moving; just standing there like a moron. The Whitworth had been smart enough to back off, but I'd just stood there with a kick me sign around my neck. I flipped the hat switch back over and cut loose with all four lasers as I lurched into reverse. He was trying to get into punching range now rather than dodge, so most of that tore into his center of mass; ripping a couple panels clean away. From the way he staggered, I might have caught a piece of his gyro.

Then an LRM volley pasted itself across the front of the thing, and one of those definitely caught the gyro; dumping the Swayback flat on its face in a drunken sprawl. I kept backing away for a few seconds, trying to get a sense of what else was going on. In the distance, the Vulcan had linked up with the Valkyrie and Firestarter the scouts had reported, the three machines trying to corner what was left of the Militia scouts. My angle wasn't the greatest, but the Valk was slowing down, probably to get a better missile shot on Mackensen's Locust, and it was inside my LPPC range. No fucking around with chain fire this time; I lined up and fired all three at it. As the heat washed over me I saw two bolts catch it in the side; sweeping a leg and dumping the light onto the sand. Then a scattering of LRMs crashed over me and I spun my attention back to the bigger fish.

The two Centurions were duking it out with a second Hunchback, this one still packing its big gun, with the Whitworth laying missiles onto it. Meanwhile, Hauptman Doric's Quickdraw was dueling the pirate boss in his Grasshopper; while a Blackjack and a Trebuchet hung back dropping fire support. The Trenchbucket having just thrown a volley at me, well, it would be downright rude of me to ignore him. My long guns finished cycling before his launchers could, and I slammed out a full volley aiming center mass, then hit my jumpjets to fling myself to the left and lurched into a jog. The heat alarms were blatting anger at me, but that was ok. Between the jump and the LPPC shots landing, the pirate's missiles missed me clean.

I switched back to chain fire and started laying down shots as I circled around. The Blackjack started pumping autocannon fire at me, which started even more alarms blaring as my armor got sandblasted away. The pirate was going for my legs; possibly thinking happy larcenous thoughts; possibly just luck of the draw. Either way, AC/2 fire wasn't something I could ignore but it was less urgent than the damned LRMs. Plus, he was moving more than the Trenchbucket pilot, who'd almost stopped as he tried to keep me under his guns, sensors clearly not liking the LPPC backscatter.

And then my train of thought was interrupted as one of those cobalt bolts snuck past an armor plate and the missile boat tore itself in half from ammo cookoff.

The thought of oh my god I just killed someone threw me off my stride both ways and I stumbled to a near halt. Before I could recover, something caught the left knee, and Naru-Kami went over for a hard crash into the rocks and sand, slamming me against my restraints. Shaking my head to try and clear it, I used my arms to roll to a recovery position on newly-implanted instinct. Slowly picking myself back up, leg locked into position to lurch-and-stump, I took a moment to look things over before something else could go wrong.

The pirate Hunchie was down, along with one of the Centurions. The other one wasn't looking much better; missing the dangerous arm but still making a game try of moving in to help Doric, who was also down an arm and limping. The Firestarter was down, too; with one militia Stinger laid out next to it. I couldn't see the Vulcan, but the only one of the friendly lights I could spot was Mackensen's Locust. Mostly sure I wasn't going to immediately get jumped, I turned my attention back to the Blackjack.

The pirate 'Mech, probably thinking I was done, had turned away to send shots chasing Mackensen. Even worse for him, he'd stopped, trying to lay his guns on the speed machine. I took a few extra seconds to let my freezers flush my heat - they'd been doing a champion job of keeping me fighting fit, but the lingering desert heat plus my lousy fire discipline had pushed me out of the green zone - to settle my aim on him.

Credit to the pirate Mechjock - he realized I was back up in time to avoid giving me a backshot. As he started spinning back towards me I let him have it; three cobalt bolts slamming into his right side. We both lurched back into motion, trading tracers for cobalt confetti. I wasn't moving so well, but the backscatter from my PPC hits was fucking with his sensors enough to make up for it. At the same time, the Blackjack was also slowing, picking its shots with increasing care.

Then, just as my heat was starting to edge into the yellow again - thank you freezers - he ceased fire completely. There was a moment of what felt like heavy consideration, then his targeting sensors cut out and the arms went straight down. Fortunately, the next shot I fired at him missed short, because it took a few seconds for me to realize he was surrendering. I checked fire as he slowed to a halt and cut his engine, taking a moment to get my breathing and scattered thoughts under control.

By some miracle, nobody shot me while I was distracted. The chiming of my comm kicked my brain back into gear. "Sobral; go."

"Kid, can you still fight? That 'Hopper has just about done in the Hauptmann." Mackensen's voice was steady but concerned.

"Right. Shit. Uh, yeah, I should be good to keep going." I turned in place, taking everything in. Most of the 'Mechs on both sides of this mess were down; just me, Mackensen, the Whitworth, and Doric's Quickdraw still up. On the other side of the rap sheet, I could only see two pirates left standing; the Grasshopper battered but standing tall as it brawled with the Quickdraw, and the Vulcan fleeing into the night in the general direction of away.

I took a steadying breath and settled my crosshairs on the 'Hopper. The first bolt slapped it in the arm as it threw everything but its LRMs into the Quickdraw, the laser show causing the lighter heavy to stagger and topple backwards. The second bolt missed wide, streaking just behind the bigger mech as it made a drunken turn towards me. The third caught it in the chest about the same time as Doric lifted one arm and stabbed a laser shot into its leg, causing the big mech to stagger even further.

Heavily battered and overheating like mad, the pirate 'Mech quite possibly didn't even realize the Whitworth and Locust were still there until the two 'Mechs slung LRM volleys into its back. Its thermals spiked even higher as something caught a piece of its engine. Two more LPPC bolts slammed home center mass; the lens of it's centerline Large Laser shattering from secondary effects; then the pirate 'Mech's head cracked open as his ejection seat fired. We'd won.

I celebrated by unbuckling, popping my hatch, and throwing up over the side.


All in all it was a pretty pyrrhic victory, the kind of knock down drag out fight that usually didn't happen in this era. Three of the Militia's pilots were badly injured, two others dead, and all their 'Mechs save Mackensen's Locust were moderately-to-critically damaged. A couple pirates had surrendered, a few more captured; inspiring a spirited debate about frontier justice versus fair trials. I mostly kept out of it, limiting my comments to a few notes about accepting surrenders and fair treatment for the same.

The Militia techs started some frantic repair and salvage operations, to try and get the Quickdraw back into fighting shape and get the Commando at least vaguely working. The pirates ran riot over Tworivers through the night, stealing everything not nailed down and on fire, the Vulcan and now-armless Firestarter, which had deassed the fight at some point while we'd all been distracted with the heavier iron, linking up with their fellows around midnight. Around noon, they boosted back to their jumpship. It had been hot-charging its drives, it seemed, and popped out two days after that. Even if we'd managed to flush the 'Mechs, technicals, and pirate infantry out of Tworivers - which would have been a hell of a trick with a Locust and two battered mediums - we couldn't have done a damn thing to their droppers or jumper.

Mackensen had made a point of sitting me down and getting me talking about the battle once we'd gotten back to the militia base. Gun to my head, I couldn't tell you what all I told him; it all sort of blurs into mush in my memories; shock and guilt and adrenaline crash all coming together. We talked, he not-quite shoved me into a guest room, and I slept for about nine hours.

When I woke up, I tracked down the tough old veteran again, and we talked a bit more, me being grateful for his guiding me through the fight and him being gruff but polite about things. Then I bought breakfast for the both of us, and after that he helped me flag down one of the militia's recovery vehicles to run me out to the mesa to grab my shipping container of parts.

This, I was a tad worried about, because I didn't really have much of a way to stop them from stealing my lostech, beyond whatever gratitude my help in the big fight might have garnered. Fortunately, gratitude counted for enough here. We slapped a padlock on the shipping container, threw it and the hovercar on the back of the flatbed, and rolled back to town. I traded the hovercar for the knee actuator out of the Swayback and use of one of the repair cubicles.

Fortunately, Naru-Kami's knee wasn't some weird non-standard type, nor the mount trashed. Even more fortunately, Jump-Chan had indeed seen fit to toss in some mech tech skill along with the piloting, and with a little help from one of the local techs I was able to adapt the Hunchie actuator to work with a bird-leg in about a week. Another small miracle: I hadn't taken more than superficial damage to the endo leg bones; and the knee was the only actual armor breach I'd taken. Repairing the damaged armor plates was still a work in progress when the next jumpship came in, mostly done by the time they made orbit.

Right. Made orbit. While KF-boom jumpers were the "standard" in this era, lots of 'primitive' jumpers remained, especially out in the Periphery. Their inability to move DropShips around made them militarily useless, but they could make a decent living as commercial carriers. There were even a small handful of them being made each year. Not getting conscripted as military logistics helped their survival immensely.

Whatever its origins, the Vesta was a Burro-class JumpShip; which I was informed was "yet another knockoff of the old Conestogas."

They were happy enough to agree to take my 'Mech and shipping container on as cargo for the next leg of their rounds, and for less than I'd expected to be paying for a berth on a regular jumper. The day after they made orbit, I got my stuff loaded, Naru-Kami palletized for shipping and a nice set of new heavy-duty padlocks securing my shipping container as it went up next to the 'Mech. I had a few more hours before leaving at that point, as Vesta's policy was to load passengers last, to keep us from "helpfully" getting in the way while they moved cargo from DropShuttle to cargo bays, which was probably wise. I took the extra time to take a last shower (I was not looking forward to dealing with variable-gravity showers for the next couple weeks) and as I was signing out from the motel and getting my damage deposit back, Doric met me at the door.

"Hauptman, what brings you here? Not to seem ungrateful, but I have a shuttle to catch."

"I'll be quick; we need a favor. The Blackjack pilot's singing like a canary, and he's told us what system this bunch of pirates is based out of. We can't do anything about that, but Bucklands is only two jumps further on Vesta's route, and the Duke there has a lot more hardware than we do. And the spacelift to take it pirate hunting."

I gave a slow nod. I was still a little conflicted about things, but this seemed pretty straightforward. "Makes sense, but where do I come in?"

"I was hoping you could carry the message. I can't leave, and most of my men are too hurt to travel." A pause. "And you're the one who the Blackjack pilot surrendered to; and the Duke is supposed to be a fan of LosTech prospectors and treasure hunters."

Oh hell. "I'm not sure how much difference that might make; I have literally no connections to the Lyran military other than you guys."

"I was going to send Mechwarrior Michaels along, too;" One of the Centurion jockeys; "And I can cover half your travel fees to head out there."

I took a moment. That was a non-trivial amount of change he was putting up for me to play messenger girl, and with an actual militia guy along I was less likely to just get laughed out of the room. And it would let me establish some bona fides as a good person rather than just a treasure hunter, which would probably come in handy later on.

I sighed. "You have a deal."

 

[DrunkenGrognard]

Link to the Jumpchain: https://i.4pcdn.org/tg/1497717069037.pdf

JumpChain build

-select age(22); select starting year(3018); Select location: Bumfuck nowhere

-Perks: MechWarrior Training; Hotshot Pilot; Nose For Lostech; Trained Technician; Luck of the Irish
-Items: Medium BattleMech; Clan Technology; The Mighty C-Bill
-Companions: (REDACTED)
-Drawbacks: Infamous Heritage

 

[DrunkenGrognard]

Author's note: So I'm going to try and be productive enough to post one chapter a week. We'll see how that goes; I've said that before; and it seldom ended well, but hey. Hope springeth eternal and all that.

Thanks again to SirJalinth for beta-reading, and without further ado...


Chapter 2

JumpShip Vesta
Bucklands system, Coventry Province, Lyran Commonwealth
April 9, 3018

Brett Michaels seemed to find my rubbernecking as Vesta made orbit amusing as all hell; but I could not bring myself to care. I was too busy pressing up against the window in the jumper's passenger lounge as we made orbit over a friggin alien world and watching the little blue dot grow over the last two days. It was a marginal improvement over his reaction to me doing the same thing as the ship had flown from Swartklip orbit to the L1 point (for reasons I was assured made sense if one understood KF physics, a boomless jump-core ship could use a Lagrange point to pop out much more safely than a KF-boom ship. They tended to make those jumps to a regular zenith or nadir point because those were easier to calculate and just use L1s to speed up leaving a system rather than for both the jump in and the jump out. Given that Vesta was the best part of a century old and hadn't pretzelized itself in a misjump, I was willing to nod and smile for that explanation) before jumping to Neerabup, where I'd done the same thing.

If nothing else, being slightly annoyed by him made it easier not to make stupid, no-context jokes about his name. It also helped that after the first week or so, we had other things to talk about as I learned a bit more about life in the Inner Sphere while trying not to give away just how isekai I was. He was, at least, willing to give me some benefit of the doubt; swatting pirates together was a bonding experience. Though he confided that he agreed with Mackensen that I was, in fact, mad as a box of frogs but in a useful sort of way.

Which. Fair.

By the time we jumped out of Neerabup, his ribs had healed (he'd had to eject during the pirate fight, and landed badly) and to help stave off the jump-travel boredom, he had agreed to help me get a little work done. The primer grey was doing me no favors in pretending Naru-Kami was anything other than brand new, so I wanted to get the damn thing painted. Vesta's crew was willing to sell me some paint and masks - though the colours available were a bit limited - and then rent me some drop-sheets and a paint-gun. It was a little awkward to manage in half a G of acceleration-gravity but it wasn't all that bad(safety harnesses are your friend) and we got it done before the ship made turnover in Bucklands. While we worked, we'd speculated about what kind of frankenstein's monster his Centurion was being turned into back home(it had needed an arm either fully rebuilt or replaced, and the militia mechanics had still been concentrating on the supposedly-quicker work of fixing the other Centy, the Stinger, and the Whitworth.)

He was hoping they'd do something with the pirate Hunchback's more-intact arm and its AC-20, which sounded like a lot more work than using that arm and some lasers to turn it into a faux Centy -AL but ultimately it wasn't up to us.

I appreciated that he didn't seem bitter about the situation, though it probably helped that his Centy was a militia mech and not family-owned.

Either way, Naru-Kami now looked a lot less brand-friggin-new; painted up mostly in olive drab, with several panels picked out in either desert yellow or navy blue to break up all the green. In an attempt to sell the "family frankenmech" story, I also picked out the seams of some of the armor patches with some stitching painted in white. Which might have been A Little Much, but dang it, I figured it was worth trying.

Eventually, though, the ship made orbit and it was time to get our stuff together for the DropShuttle flight down. As the thrust cut out and the gravity went away, my stomach did a flip-flop. I tried not to react but Michaels noticed anyway, the smirking jerk.

"Two weeks and you were fine, but you're getting space-sick now?"

I sighed. "Not quite."

"You're looking space-sick. It's overdue, honestly. I was getting a little annoyed at how immune to it you were, Cass." His smirk widened, making his narrow, craggy face look surprisingly punchable. "Nice to know you're human after all."

Well, if he was going to be an ass about it… "It's an entirely different issue, Brett. I'm dealing with a little visit from Auntie Flow."

I'd had enough foresight to buy some pads before leaving Swartklip, thank God. Also, thank God, the symptoms were relatively mild. Cramps and indigestion, but based on what some of my female friends had described, I was getting off damn light. Still, supposedly there were medications to be found on the more major worlds that would let a gal not have to deal with them at all for a while and I fully intended to find out if Bucklands was major enough to stock them.

Watching the expression on his face as he processed my statement - bafflement chaining to confusion chaining to realization and a final horrified rictus made up for it. "Oh! I; uh; um…"

"Surely you've heard of this before? I know you've got a girlfriend back home."

"She doesn't talk to me about…"

I decided to show mercy and gave a dismissive wave. "It's fine, it happens, let's not make a big deal of it, hey?"

"Right. Meet you at the DropShuttle bay?"

"Right."

As I gathered up my bags and ran through my mental checklist I reflected that at this point dysphoria was definitely not a problem, for which I was grateful and also A) probably answered a couple things I'd suspected about myself but hadn't dared look at too closely, and B) resolved to not think about too hard, because dwelling on it would be a good way to get stuck in my own head second-guessing everything and that wouldn't be helpful. I needed to get ready for a flight, and then a dog-and-pony show groundside.

I only needed a few moments to repack the last few things in my duffel, then double check the tiny cabin for anything I'd forgotten and give the variable-g-bathroom a parting flip of the bird, then started hand-over-handing my way along the grab lines towards the DropShuttle bay. We weren't the only passengers heading down for this; going along with a small collection of urchins and their parents, a harried family from Issaba who were immigrating for reasons they'd been quite evasive about. They seemed like a decent little family, so I wished them the best.

The flight down was simple and quick. The spaceport was a hell of a lot bigger than Swartklip's, or even Neerabup's; a trio of good-sized blast-pits suitable for spheroid droppers and a long, broad runway for aerodynes, with a tower, several warehouses and silos, and a few long, low buildings along one side of things. We split up on landing; Michaels and the Lymen family heading for the main terminal to handle immigration paperwork while I got my cargo sorted - the parts container moved to one of the warehouses and Naru-Kami de-palletized.

Because BattleTech was… the way it was, apparently it was entirely legal to just walk your heavily armed war machine into town from the spaceport as long as you asked nicely and signed the right forms. So I went through the faffaround of getting the 'Mech going (and annoyingly, noticed a couple spots that we'd missed while painting due to the tiedowns) and met Michaels at the gate. I took a few minutes to take care of the aforementioned paperwork while he settled himself and his own duffle into the jump-seat and then we were on our way.

It was honestly surreal. The road from the spaceport into town wasn't paved, though it was pretty well-graded gravel. We shared it with a mix of trucks - a few big flatbeds and bodyjobs that reminded me of what I usually operated; some tractor-trailer rigs, and an assortment of smaller vehicles ranging from Kei-trucks to the sort of awkward, oversized pickup that usually served as a penis-extension for insecure oilpatch workers, looking all the stranger because these ones damn near all looked like they actually worked for a living instead of posing macholy in a driveway. And among it all, actual wagons and some individuals riding a variety of horses. There'd been one building at the 'port that was a mix of full-service livery stable and car rental joint. As we approached city limits, an honest to god stagecoach trundled past, complete with a driver with a buggy whip.

The city itself was, if anything, worse. Landing had looked downright normal to me; just another slowly-dying industrial town full of prefab and mobile homes, with a couple brick buildings reaching a lofty three or four stories and the tallest thing an obvious water tower for firefighting. Maabade City was a mighty sprawl, with a proper town core complete with ten-to-fifteen story midrises and the big dish of the HPG marking out ComStar's turf. It also had a lot of to-my-eye modern housing, and mobiles, alongside converted barns, shantys and log cabins with that hard-to-describe feel of being actually old and not just artfully rustic, trailer parks, and a few neighborhoods that looked like they'd been lifted off the set of any number of John Wayne westerns.

It felt astoundingly weird to me, and thankfully Michaels didn't decide to needle me for it, possibly fearing I would talk of (scare chord) Feminine Biology again and further traumatize him. Though as we neared the center of town (and I traded a slightly awkward wave with a Griffon that looked to be part of the local militia) he graduated from basic direction-giving to a bit of a briefing. "Okay, I was able to get in touch with the Duke's staff. He's busy for the next couple hours, but then we'll have our meeting. Should be with him and the local militia commander, a Hauptmann named Walt Hahn. I've got the BattleRoms from the fight back home, and I can make the intro."

"What's the Duke's name?"

"Adrian Thompson, though you should just address him as 'your grace.'"

"Bleh. Nobility."

"Heh. Anyway, since this bunch of pirates have hit a few other Lyran worlds in the region the last couple years, we should be able to get 'em to play ball, but you might have to butter the guy up a bit."

"God forbid he make an effort to do something proactive… I still don't think I'll be much help for this, however much the Duke thinks LosTech prospectors are interesting."

"You might need to bat your eyes at him a bit." I could hear him smirk. "Just pretend you're flirting with me instead."

"Brett. You have a girlfriend. She saw you off at the spaceport and gave me a no-touchy glare."

"So? You'll be buttering up the Duke, not me! Just pretend he's a sexy boy like I am."

"Eh, six out of ten at best."

He made artistic dying noises behind me as I found our immediate destination, a Hotel Excelsior whose on-site parking included a small 'Mech hangar. It was a couple blocks from the Ducal residence. It was also a hell of a lot shabbier-looking in person than it had looked in the flyer, but to be fair that wasn't just a BattleTech thing, lots of hotels did that back home too. Michaels had arranged it from the spaceport; I'd just wanted a place close to the Duke's place with parking.

We checked in and stashed our bags. Credit to Michaels: while he'd only gone for a single room, there were two beds. Man was a bit of a shit-disturber, but he wasn't all that bad. As I left to do some last-minute prep for things, he dug out the militia uniform from his suitcase and got started on it with the complimentary iron that seemed to still be a universal of hotels.

Everyone thought I'd be required for this because the local duke was a big fanboy of lostech prospectors, so I figured I might as well look the part. Michaels had been incredulous that I was off to do more shopping, and thrift-store shopping at that ("I've seen your bankroll; you're loaded!") But I could think of no better place to look; you found the most interesting outfits at thrift stores; and now that I wasn't a 400 pound slug I could actually fit most things you'd find in one.

I was mindful of the time - we only had a couple hours till our meeting, after all, but fortunately it only took me one of them to track down what I wanted. It wasn't exactly a professional looking ensemble, but, well, I was pretty sure it would work better than fatigues (which I'd not earned, one impromptu battle beside the militia did not a solider make) or a fancy monkey-suit. Instead I went for something a little more old fashioned.

See, much like 40k, BattleTech is, at its heart, a miserable pile of pop-culture references. Old school anime, classic movies and tv, various books… As far as I could remember, there was no thinly disguised expy of the character I had in mind, but I was pretty damn sure he'd fight right in, and I set out on a mission. Two stores later, I was back on the street, clad in a pair of cargo pants the colour of good coffee; a button-up shirt in a khaki tan, a slightly-too-big, but damn comfortable brown leather jacket, and a broad-brimmed stetson. A holster and belt of dark leather was slung around my hips, with a ram's head buckle. A more understated nylon belt that came together like a car's seatbelt was running through the belt loops on the cargos; and a K-bar style knife and sheath tucked into the top of some nice chunky combat boots. (The other boot had a folding knife of a more sensible size tucked into it completely; and a lawyer-friendly Swiss Army Knife in one of my pockets) The outfit I'd walked in with was tucked into a canvas messenger bag along with a few other purchases.

I took a moment to admire my reflection in a store window. I looked ready to poke around ruins, rob graves, and punch nazis.

You know. Archaeology.

Michaels, naturally, razzed me about it a bit, and I razzed him back in turn about his militia dress uniform and its small, tasteful fruit salad. With plenty of time to spare, we hoofed it to the ducal residence. ("Why aren't we getting a cab?" "It's five blocks, dude. Suck it up.") We bickered a bit more on the walk, as I glanced through the hardcopy of the briefing materials - I'd gone over them a fair bit on the jumper, but a little more study could only help deal with my nerves. But I got distracted as the duke's place loomed into view.

The Ducal Residence on Swartklip had been a pretty modest place, all things considered. It had been a small office building, mostly, with the top floor given over to the ducal apartments and a nice tasteful terrace on the roof. A working building, more or less, where all the day-to-day minutia of running a planet took place and largely without pretension. The Duke himself had been a bit of a gomer, but he mostly stayed out of the way of the people who did the actual work and hadn't, the one time I actually met him, been all that pretentious.

The Ducal Residence on Bucklands was a fucking palace.

It dominated about four square blocks, a big outer wall housing a well-manicured garden complete with fountains and a giant golden statue of a 10-point buck deer around a castle that wouldn't have been too out of place at Disneyland, all minarets and spires and a dome over the central hub. The floor of the entry hall was honest to god marble; tiled in a green-and-brown checkerboard and the walls hung with paintings and elaborate tapestries. A pristinely-dressed maid directed us to a plush velvet couch probably worth more than the entire contents of my old condo. I didn't dare sit down, for fear of messing something up, and even Michaels, for whom this was unusual but not quite so alien, looked very tentative as he perched on the edge of the thing.

I pretended interest in the artwork, while we waited to get called to our little meeting. I forced myself to put on my best neutral customer-service smile as we waited. The future is a foreign country. They do things differently here.

Ducal Residence
Bucklands IV, Coventry Province, Lyran Commonwealth
April 9, 3018

Duke Thompson's office was of a piece with everything else; elaborate and expensive. Some small bit of sanity was imposed by the Duke's bodyguards, two tall, sensibly besuited guys named Simon and Hans, with close-cropped blond hair and brown hair with a neatly trimmed beard and mustache, respectively. At the far end of the room was an elaborately decorated desk, where a big man sat in a chair that looked comfortable as sin, while a severe man in a fancier version of Michaels' uniform stood alongside.

We were politely required to disarm before we could approach. I'd deliberately come strapped, anticipating something like this as a way to get some cheap cred as a roguish prospector, figuring that my pistol and three knives would be a big enough pile to stand out as someone cautious and ever-so-slightly dangerous. Michaels had defeated me, the jerk, because while his dress uniform only required him to carry his sidearm, he also had a little derringer-style holdout and a pair of knives that he carried by habit.

The Duke himself was a middle aged man, tall and stocky with a bit of a double chin, clad in a ridiculously ostentatious suit with gold brocade on the shoulders and sparkling pearl buttons. A full head of greying hair tried valiantly to give him some gravitas. With a voice that sounded like he chewed raw coffee beans for breakfast, he greeted us. "Ah, it's good to meet you. You're that LosTech prospector we were told to expect, Sobral, wasn't it?"

"I am, your grace. My companion is Private First Class Michaels of the Swartklip Militia. Am I correct in guessing that the gentleman beside you is hauptmann Hahn?"

"He is. I'm told you two are here about some sort of opportunity?"

Michaels stepped forward. "Yes, your grace. On the twelfth of March, a band of pirates calling themselves the Polecats attacked Swartklip. The Militia, with some assistance from Miss Sobral here, engaged them. We took a few of the pirates prisoner, and one of them sang like a canary."

"The Polecats, you say? I seem to recall that name from a few other attacks."

"Yes, your grace. According to the one we interrogated, they were responsible for a dozen attacks over the last year or so, from Issaba up to Engadine and Jerangle and various worlds between. Our pirate tells us they're based out of an abandoned LCAF base on Elba."

The Duke held up a hand and turned to me. "I am not familiar with… Elba. Does it fall into your purview, miss prospector?"

I smiled blandly. "Quite possibly. The colony was founded at some point during the Reunification War and got rolled into the Rim Worlds Republic shortly after. They were in control of the planet until the Amaris Coup. At some point in either that conflict, or shortly after in the Republic-Commonwealth war, a couple of the larger cities were destroyed by strategic weaponry. The Lyran Commonwealth maintained control of the planet until some point in the Second Succession War, at which point it drops out of the history books, presumably abandoned."

"And these Polecats found it again."

"Indeed, sir. A disused military base would be a better foundation for a pirate enclave than most, and it's just out-of-the-way enough to be hard to notice, while close enough to several settled systems for raiding."

"Until they crossed the path of your… rather unique LosTech BattleMech."

Oh hell. "I was in a position to lend some assistance, yes. Though honestly, the deciding factor was the pirates letting themselves get strung out and engaging us piecemeal. Let us whittle them down before the fight really started."

The big man leaned forwards, elbows propped on his desk. "Please, tell me more."

Well. Time for the dog and pony show. I like to think I'm a decent enough storyteller, and I'd had a couple weeks to go over everyone's BattleROMs to get a feel for how the parts of the fight I wasn't directly involved in went. We also had copies of the BattleROM footage, with bookmarks for the most spectacular bits. The Duke was fine with me loading the footage into a vid-player built into his desk (a 24" CRT screen with gilding around the sides highlighting the cooling vents, which I had to grant was a nice touch, even if it was gaudy as hell) I started to spin the tale, with pacing and gesticulation, and the video clips as punctuation; doing my best to emphasize what the Militia boys did as much as my own stuff.

Standouts on their end included Jane Kinsey, one of the Stinger jockeys, who took the Firestarter out of the fight with a thoroughly spectacular DFA; one foot landing squarely on each of the Firestarter's shoulders, tearing the arms off and ending with the 'Mech slamming crotch-first against the faceplate of the Firestarter, which she copped to being a happy accident but I implied she was just that good. Also literally everything Mackensen did, because that man was weapons-grade bullshit. From initially potting one of the Technicals through the end of the battle, the man was getting shot at more or less constantly for most of an hour, and did not get hit once. The others were nothing shabby, mind, but Johannesen the Whitworth driver spent the fight playing keepaway and slapping around the Vulcan, while Michaels and the others mostly just got stuck into slugfests, which were good work-rate but less entertaining.

The Duke seemed quite taken with my narration, and the hauptmann seemed… tolerably amused, dryly telling me it was hardly the least professional AAR he'd ever heard. I fielded a few questions much more professionally, then;

"So," began the Duke, settling back in his chair and looking a little more thoughtful after being indulged, "I take it you've come asking for reinforcements to go root these pirates out of their hole."

"Essentially, yes. Swartklip's Militia doesn't have any spacelift, while you do. My understanding was that they should have at least one lance, possibly more, back in fighting trim by the time we could swing through on the way to Elba. From our intel, the Polecats are down to their vehicles, which are mostly Technicals, two Urbies, a badly damaged Firestarter and Vulcan, and the two 'Mechs they didn't take on the Swartklip raid - an Orion with a blown knee that they didn't have the spares to fix properly, and a Charger that was in the middle of an engine overhaul. They might have that working, but, well. Charger."

The hauptmann gave an amused snort.

The Duke nodded slowly. "And what sorts of goods might we be able to recover through this… operation. Please, do not misunderstand, I loath pirates as much as any other sane man, but even if we can rely on a full five or six BattleMechs from Swartklip, you are asking me to devote a considerable portion of Bucklands' defensive forces to an operation that will take over three months to complete. Time where we would be vulnerable, to say nothing of the expense of such an effort."

"Our captive pirate wasn't entirely sure how much loot they had on hand from their last few raids, but they were sitting on a fairly considerable pile. As well, there's a fair bit of potential BattleMech salvage - especially that one-legged Orion. A few of the Polecats have bounties on their heads, which doesn't amount to a ton on the scale of a planetary militia budget but can't hurt. It will stop them from potentially victimizing Bucklands in the future, or any of your neighbors. Depending on how the chips fall it might be possible to seize some or all of their spacelift. And with at least one Star League era military base there… well, I can apply my expertise to see what might be ferreted out."

Annoyingly, that last really did seem to be the selling point, he perked right up when I said it after maintaining an expression of total boredom over everything else. Hopefully I'd manage to spot something that somehow hadn't already been salvaged over the last couple centuries. If not, the dude would likely be pissed with me.

"Standard rates for your hire, I suppose?"

"Of course- for the attack as well as snooping around after." Fortune and glory; kid. Fortune and glory.


Three days later, we were back in space, heading for the Zenith point to meet up with the Simon's Straight Flush, a Merchant class jumper that did a fair bit of business with Bucklands and was more than happy to haul a Union that belonged to the Militia, and a Mule that had been hired on for a speculative share.

Naru-Kami was tucked into its cradle in the mechbay in the company of seven Militia machines. A pair of Commandos, a Stinger, two Griffons, and a pair of Thunderbolts that were apparently the assigned rides of Duke Thompson's chief bodyguards Hans and Simon - though thankfully the Duke had stayed behind. I'd barely met the other pilots and hadn't really gotten an impression of any of them, save for one of the Commando jockeys, a Judy Dench looking lady named Carol Guthire who was a literal grandmother and had a sense of humor and laugh that brought to mind one Gytha Ogg. She and the other two light 'Mech pilots were much more weekend warrior-y than the rest of the pilots along, AgroMech jockeys who had enough 'real' MechWarrior training to cover scouting.

That said, AgroMech jockeys or no, they were veterans of a sort: apparently Bucklands had a habit of settling disputes between major farming families by slapping armor plates and weapons on some AgroMechs and having them throw down. Somehow, there was no market for the tapes of these fights, which boggled me, because that sounded much funnier than the average Solaris match.

In addition to the MechWarriors, there were fifty-odd infantry along - mostly SWAT people - to help secure eventual loot and possibly rush the pirate base if we couldn't convince them to surrender. We probably couldn't. Piracy wasn't a guaranteed death penalty in Lyran space, but it was close to that, and these jokers had been at it long enough, hitting enough worlds, that approximately nobody would have any patience for them.

Still, that was a problem for the future. In the short term, we had something like a month and a half of travel to get to Elba and pick this fight. Getting through that much travel was going to be… a thing. I'd picked up some books, both digital and printed - my noteputer's screen was only about the size of a GBA's, which was a bit small to use as an e-reader, but i'd spotted a couple data-chips of interest, three of a set of five that made up an atlas of all worlds of the Star League. I had some maps to go over just in case I could spot something of interest. As for the printed ones, it seemed that Franklin W. Dixon and Carolyn Keene were still writing the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mystery series, which was a dang good run for a couple of industry pseudonyms. I snagged a couple more books that had the look of airport-bookstore-thrillers that ought to be good for a laugh or two. I'd also found a collapsing-neck acoustic guitar and had caged a promise of lessons out of Michaels. I'd wanted to learn how to play for years, but had never managed to keep the motivation to get past the god-I-suck phase and start actually learning. Hopefully, these circumstances would have me bored enough to power through that.

But even that was a bit for the future, because the Militia's Union had a pair of simulator pods, and in an entirely reasonable tradition, us MechJocks would be faffing around in sim duels for a while to establish our informal pecking order. The pods weren't entirely functional, not pumping heat, but they worked and they could also display to a nice big widescreen in the same lounge. It was pretty entertaining so far. Guthrie was running around in a simulated Commando, up against Hans in his Thunderbolt.

It was the sort of duel that on paper would be a pretty one-sided stomping, but it wasn't quite going that way. Hans was a pretty decent 'Mechjock, and he had both a hilarious tonnage advantage and was cheerfully abusing the lack of heat pumps in the pods to keep up a high rate of fire. On the other hand, Guthrie, while only a mediocre shot, was a stupidly good pilot. She reminded me a lot of those bucket-loader operators who could open a beer with the bucket without breaking it.

She was playing keepaway pretty well, and was keeping up just enough of a rain of SRMs to keep the bodyguard pushing things. A few of us had figured out her strategy - including Simon, judging by the incredibly peeved mutterings he was directing at his teammate's pod - and we waited to see if Hans would figure it out before it kicked in.

Two minutes after the shooting started in their simulated match, and we found out the answer was "no." The pods might not pump heat, but they still tracked it, and it finally punished him for his reckless shooting; hitting him with a simulated overheat-and-shutdown. Guthrie pounced, smoothly pivoting from kiting to charging in for a backshot and putting a couple volleys into her stationary target before the pod let Hans restart. Unfortunately for Guthire, she hadn't done nearly enough damage with those volleys to put the Thud down, and the man started paying proper attention to his heat after. She dragged it out a while, but another very intense minute or so saw the Commando get legged, after which point death arrived swiftly. The two of them exchanged a handshake (only slightly grudging on Hans' part) and then there was another throw of the dice to see who was up next.

It came up as me, against Kasumi Schneider, one of the Griffin jockeys. As I adjusted the seat (Guthire was not a large woman but she still had about three inches on me) and keyed up a 'Mech profile, Kasumi yelled from her pod, "Hey, if you're using that LosTech mech of yours, mind if I dig up the profile for a Royal Griffie to make it fair?"

"If you wanna, though I haven't put together a profile for Naru-Kami."

"Why not?"

"The harder you make the training, the easier the real thing will be. Anyways, don't lie, you just want me to whip up a profile so y'all can play with it."

That pulled a few laughs from the peanut gallery as the blonde put on her most dignified tone. "I can neither confirm nor deny." Then, more normally, "What are you going to be using, then?"

"A dash 20 Crab. Similar movement profile, but a bit less range, firepower, and armor." Settings loaded, I pulled the pod's hatch shut and buckled in, settling the pod's neurohelmet (one much bulkier than the one in my own machine) onto my head. The screens lit up in a wash of pixelated glory, then settled into a series of rolling hills that reminded me of Windows XP. There was a few seconds of visible countdown hanging in midair, then I lurched into motion.

Spawn points were randomized to keep it from being too easy to ambush each-other, so I was just gambling when I picked a direction and took off for a hill to use as cover while I got used to the Crab's movement. Schneider appeared to be feeling much bolder, vaulting one of the hills on her jump jets. Neither one of us managed a hit; my laser shots went low while her PPC shot flashed by behind me. Without breaking stride I kept charging along until I broke line of sight and spun around hard rather than keep running the same way. A speculative volley of LRMs flashed over the hill and scattered around the general area I would have been rushing into.

Having finished my turn (which felt weirdly floaty thanks to the nature of the sim) I charged my way back around. Lucky me - Schneider had decided to shed some heat by chasing me down on foot rather than take another jump, so we found each other again at damn near arm's length.

And a Crab was a much better 'Mech for a knife fight in a phone booth than a Griffin.

I threw an alpha at her, center mass, and slashed the four lasers all across the heavier 'Mech's torso. Her reply PPC shot caught a piece of one leg, but I was inside the nominal minimum range so it was nowhere near what it should have been. Then I stepped even further inside her range, dropped one shoulder, and bulled into her.

Well, I tried to. The simulator, I belatedly remembered, was Not Fond of simulating physical attacks, so our two virtual 'Mechs just sort of bounced off each other doing no more damage and about all I did was throw myself off balance. The time it took me to get the 'Mech's feet fully under it again gave Schneider enough time to bound away once more and break line of sight. We danced around each other a bit more, trading some long-range shots and doing a bit of damage, but nothing terribly decisive.

Then we popped around the side of the same hill again. I was fastest off the trigger this time, pumping both long guns into the Griffin's center torso, which left her nearly open but not quite. Then she swung the PPC in line and the pod went dark. After a moment, the screen informed me that she'd just put a direct hit into my cockpit, as the sound of cheering filtered in from outside. "Sumbitch," I muttered, then unbuckled and smiled ruefully. A few moments of adjustment later and I lurched out of the pod; my jacket zipped up fully with my head inside. There was a moment of surprised silence, then another round of laughter, and I popped my head up through the jacket's neck. "Good shooting, Kasumi. Good match, but I'll get you next time."

She smirked, blue eyes sparkling. "You did pretty good yourself. If we weren't in sims, you might have had me from the start with that shoulder-block." A handshake ended with a friendly hug, then we settled in to watch the next victims dance for our collective amusement.

Zenith Point, Canal System
Coventry Province, Lyran Commonwealth
April 28, 3018

To my surprise, it took until we were at roughly the halfway point of our trip, a few days after we'd linked up with the Swartklip crew, for someone to finally ask me the big question. It had become a nightly tradition for the pilot corps to gather up after dinner in the lounge with the sim pods to just hang out and kibitz. Most of our time was unstructured, much less than the SWAT guys, whose commander, knowing she was responsible for the conduct of fifty oversized toddlers, was trying to keep them busy. I'd been joining them for PT in the mornings. Microgravity martial arts were hilarious.

But right now, it was us MechJockeys shooting the shit. The conversation had turned to home planets. While most of the two crews were from the planets they defended, Doric was apparently from Inarcs; while Hans and Simon were Tharkad boys. This conversation, as such conversations always do, rapidly devolved into an exchange of slurs and stereotypes against each person's homeworld. Inevitably, this eventually turned to targeting the local lady of mystery, when Guthire deflected a line of verbal jabs with, "Ah hell, you know how it is. Hell, bet you do too, Cassie girl. How do they handle that where you're from?"

"Honestly? Just as dumb. You know how it gets in the Periphery sometimes."

"Where are you from, anyways?"

"Doubt you've ever heard of it. Little wildcat colony called Van Zandt." I'd checked three ships' nav databases and two almanacs now, and there was no mention of the place anywhere. Which made sense to me, since I'd already been about 95% sure that the BPL had just made it up in the first place, but it had felt prudent to check before dropping the name.

"...You're right. Don't think I ever heard of that one."

"What's it like there?" asked Shawn Hart, the other Griffin driver.

"Bit chaotic. The original settlers were all people who were too contrary to deal with life in the civilized world so it's a real mix. Bit of mining to feed the local industry, lots of little farms dotted around. It's just about enough to keep the place self-sufficient, though we got the occasional wandering trader swinging through." A smirk. "Our primary exports are smoked fish, shit disturbers, and tools."

"Why'd you leave?"

"Itchy feet, mostly. Worked for my passage along with the family FrankenMech, and developed a knack for finding lost things."

Hans broke into the conversation then, "Where did you find those guns? They looked most impressive in the BattleROM footage."

"I found 'em where the previous owners lost 'em." He flashed me a deeply unimpressed look. "Hey, a girl's gotta have a few secrets."

The conversation drifted on from there.


High orbit, Elba
Elba system, Coventry Province, Lyran Commonwealth
May 28, 3018

It had taken long enough that we'd had one case of actual Space Crazy break out - fortunately, the afflicted SWAT guy hadn't had a gun on him at the time - but it was just about showtime. We'd jumped into the Elba system three days earlier, finding ourselves about half a light-second away from another Merchant-class jumper named Poyahoga Punisher, which matched up with a report from one of the Polecat's raids early last year. The droppers had both detached and started accelerating towards it; thinking happy larcenous thoughts, but clearly it had been charging for a while, because it jumped away before we could get close. And before it could squawk a warning towards Elba proper. We'd shifted course and started a burn in towards the lone habitable planet and settled into our final prep.

We'd made one orbit at this point, confirming our intel - there were a pair of droppers grounded next to an obvious military base about a dozen kilometers from the crater that used to be Ayr Prime, the capital city. The Mule was going to stay up in orbit while the Union headed down for a fight.

I was strapped into Naru-Kami's pilots couch, the engine set to tick-over, with coolant sluggishly circulating all through my suit as I went over the plan (such as it was) one more time. I was in the fire-support Lance along with the two Griffons and Johanneson and her Whitworth. Mackensen was joining the scouts alongside the Commandos and Stinger, while Doric and Michaels backed up Hans and Simon. Doric's Quickdraw was still out of commission; waiting on parts to rebuild an arm and leg, but the Swarklip Militia's techs had managed to get the captured Hunchback working again, albeit now sporting a Centurion head to replace the original. Michaels was driving the Blackjack, as the techs were still trying to piece the less-damaged Centurion back together. We'd be landing about ten klicks from the base, which should be enough to let us get ourselves organized before they could get to us. Unless they had a bunch more hardware than we expected, we would be able to do this proper Steiner style, and just give them the bum's rush.

As the ship started to brake for re-entry, the dropper's captain broke into the Company comm channel. "They just spotted us down there; just got a call asking who we are and what we're here for." A few of us keyed up to make funny/lewd suggestions, which won a chuckle from the skipper, then, "As far as I can tell from here, their dropper's drives are cold, so they shouldn't be able to run from us. But they'll know where we land. If these guys have arty, we're not sticking around and you're gonna have to walk home."

Then we were re-entering and in the heart of gravity's grip. This was a proper combat insertion; dropping hard for the first bit before lighting off the engines for a hard burn so we wouldn't quite actually lithobrake. That part was a kick in the ass; getting shoved hard into my seat as the roar of the drive filled up the world, less a sound and more an elemental force.

A short eternity later, we grounded. The noise of the engine started spooling down as the 'Mechbay doors swung open and the restraints holding us in place snapped free. I wasn't the first 'Mech out, but I was close, starting a slow lope across smouldering grass towards the pirate's base as the rest of the company unloaded and caught me up; the scouts ranging ahead. Me and the rest of the fire support Lance swung a bit west of the heavy hitters; with me slightly in the lead while the LRM carriers echelon'd to my right.

A transmission came down from the orbiting Mule. "They're trying to call their JumpShip. We're letting them know that it left them behind."

Then, from the leader of the scout lance, a kid barely out of his teens named Pokey Reddick, "I see them! Six 'Mechs and some trucks. They're moving pretty slow, but they're coming our way."

Doric had the rank, but given the spacelift and tonnage, this was Bucklands' show, so Simon responded to that. "Relay this transmission: Attention Polecats; this is the LCAF. We are here in Company strength, and are prepared to destroy your force. You have one chance to surrender and throw yourselves upon our mercy."

To his credit, the pirate's spokesman made his reply in an eloquent and classic mode. "Nuts."

I could see our scouts now, falling back towards us rather than pushing in. In the distance, I could make out a cloud of dust that was probably the pirates. On the Company channel, Simon continued; "As we discussed; when they come in sight, focus on the Orion first. Try to leg it; I'll call targets once it's down."

We went up one last rise and were in sight of the enemy. They were moving slowly; the Orion was definitely just stumping along on a leg welded solid. Next to him, a Charger kept pace, with an UrbanMech at either end of the line. Behind them, a half-dozen trucks weaved back and forth, maintaining speed without passing the main lance. The Firestarter (now sporting what looked like Stinger arms) and Vulcan were loping along with them. At a guess, the pirate's plan was to let us get stuck in with the heavy iron, then try and flank us.

But if that's the plan, why's the Charger in the line? It's got speed…

I flicked my sensors onto the Assault 'Mech, then hit the zoom function on my HUD and bit out a curse. Stabbing at the audio controls, I barked, "Break! Threat update; that Charger isn't stock. Looks like they've turned it into a Challenger."

"...A what?"

"Challenger. Can't remember who did it first but… right. Yank the engine for a 240, yank the popguns, use the tonnage to slap on another five tons of armor, four Large Lasers, and a shedload of heatsinks. Basically turns it into a regular Assault 'Mech."

"Noted. Still drop the Orion first, but make the Charger our second priority." A beat. "How did you…"

"Drive a FrankenMech enough, you get a sense for these things."

Then the distance between us ticked down to the edge of LRM range, and the shooting started. Sixty-odd missiles rose from our formation towards the Orion, as the pirate 'Mech loosed a much smaller volley in response.

Aimed for me, the charming little asshole.

Before the missiles could cross each other, I drew first blood; chain-firing my LPPCs as I started going evasive and slapping at the Heavy 'Mech's hip with the first connection. Michaels and his Vulcan opened up with light autocannons at about the same time, followed seconds later by the Griffin's PPCs.

Then the range closed to 450 meters and hell was unleashed. The entire lead pirate lance started throwing Autocannon and large laser fire at me, and even half-expecting it and already trying to run evasive, I caught enough that I had to fight to keep the 'Mech on its feet. I succeeded, but swung away from the fight, trying to claw back some distance and get my ass back out of range. Some fucker over there has decided to make this as expensive for us as possible, and lucky me, I look expensive…

Moments later, somebody whoop'd over the Company line, and I glanced over to see the Orion go down; the leg that had been working at the start of the fight going completely limp with half its panels missing. The Challenger surged forward; leaving the Urbies behind as it closed in ahead of them. The mass of trucks and lighter mechs behind them… did not.

Confident that I had my footing back, I started blasting away at the Challenger as I ran away, little bursts from the jump-jets making my movements more erratic as I dodged - there was Rather A Lot of fire coming my way. Cobalt confetti knocked holes in the assault 'Mech along with everything else that was getting flung at it. It crashed headlong through that hellacious volley and sent crimson beams lancing towards me. In the chaos, only one of them connected this time, but it kept coming.

I thought back to my mocking dismissal of the Charger back at the Duke's place and wanted to smack Past Me on the back of the head. I was faster than it; it had given up a lot of speed in the conversion, but getting out of range was taking time; if I just straightened out and ran hard somebody would probably get a backshot on me so I had to just keep ducking, hopping and diving. Three more LPPC bolts stabbed into the Challenger, shattering armor plates, but it came on like Juggernaut; unstoppable.

Then Doric squared up at about 100 meters from the thing and his AC/20 spoke with great power and authority, saying Sit Your Ass Down. The Challenger complied; crashing onto its side as coolant flowed out of its ruptured right torso like blood.

Watching two of their 'Mechs get killed without taking out any of ours seemed to be the breaking point; the technicals fishtailed, flinging gravel and accelerating away, as did the Firestarter and Vulcan. The UrbanMechs, lacking the speed to disengage, hesitated and for a moment I thought they might surrender. Instead, they formed up and spat fury and defiance at us.

They did some damage, but not enough to matter. Later, when the bodies were collected, we ran their prints and saw that both pirates had death sentences pending, and had presumably decided to cut out the middleman.

We formed back up and ran for the base - the runners could be ignored for the immediate, as long as we secured their rides. All coming in from the same direction, we were able to slather one side of the Union in long-range fire, knocking out most of the guns on that facing and killing a bunch of pirates who were trying to rush aboard with shrapnel and blast effect. A few minutes of tense negotiation later and the two pirate droppers were no longer spooling up their engines to try and run off. We chalked this one up in the win column.



There were still the two Pirate 'Mechs unaccounted for, and one truckload of infantry, but we had scouts out watching for them as the loot was catalogued and loaded aboard our two Mules(because of course we were taking the pirate Droppers, even though that would be Somewhat Complex given our jumper situation). The pirate crew had a mix of attitudes - lots of people angry at our timing; they'd been a few days short of sending their reduced strength out for another raid and we'd almost not caught them at all; while others seemed quietly relieved when nobody else was listening. The situation was still a little up in the air, but at this point, Simon exercised his command authority (and his status as the Duke's Voice) to put me on a job much more important than making sure our people were safe as they loaded up (in his opinion) and told me to start snooping around for LosTech.

I had considered telling him to go fuck himself and wait until we had everything secured, but ultimately that would be unwise since I didn't much want to walk home myself, so instead I asked to get a download of all the aerial photos we had of the city's ruins (because the old base had doubtless been picked over thoroughly, but the still moderately radioactive ruins had probably gotten a lot less attention) and the assistance of a 'Mech with hands.

So Guthire and I were poking around the edge of Ayr Prime, dividing our attentions between navigation, photo-interpretation, and keeping an eye on our geiger counters. So far, it didn't look too bad. A couple centuries had passed since this place got its can of sunshine, after all, and unless you went out of your way to make a nuke particularly dirty, well, life would find a way.

Which was an argument that the nuke that hit this place came from the Lyrans during the Republic-Commonwealth war, rather than the SLDF (who had been pretty dang tired and generally out of patience when they got here during the Coup) or the Rimjobs themselves (because House Amaris had some habits when it came to dealing with planets who didn't get with the program or were perceived as Having Failed Their Lords) but hey, details.

I'd taken some time to go over a couple pretty good photos before setting out and… I couldn't put my finger on it, but something had itched at me about one of them. So now we were prowling around the ruins of a nuked city, looking at the patterns in the ivy trying to reclaim it and trying to figure out what the hell had caught my eye.

The sweep continued for another quarter hour with minimal conversation between us. Then, passing through an intersection, I paused. Backtracked and turned. Nothing about that warehouse looked particularly odd… save for the fact that it was more intact than those around it. It looked like a taller building had collapsed along one side, but hadn't actually landed on the thing. Up in one corner of the building's side, I could see a line of intact windows. "Sumbitch," I muttered, then keyed up, "Guthire, you seeing this?"

"That looks like it's in pretty good shape."

I double-checked the geiger counter. "Ambient rads aren't bad around here… I see a man-door; lemme check it and see if we need a can-opener here."

The wind had teeth, biting at me through the cooling suit and jacket (by cheerful coincidence, it had proven just too-big enough to go over the thick layer of the cooling suit) and I tried not to let my imagination run away with me for good or ill as I made my way over to a man-door. The sign next to it declared in faded writing that this was a facility for Helmsley Heavy Haul; Serving The Rim Since 2405, which was probably the date for the company as a whole and not this branch. The door itself had a big old key-lock that would have been normal back on Earth, and a little digging through my pockets produced some lockpicks.

A little fiddling later, and I felt the lock pop. The door still didn't want to open, but by then Guthire was beside me with a crowbar, and between us we pried for a couple minutes before giving it up as a bad job. She clambered back up into her Commando, complaining the whole climb back up about ungrateful youngsters making a sweet old lady work like this, and crouched the little 'Mech next to the door.

Demonstrating the sort of fine control that heavy equipment operators like to use to win bets she very carefully poked a single finger through the door, which gave only token protest, then rotated the finger and tore the door out of its frame without damaging the surrounding brickwork. At this point I was just going to assume that every light 'Mech pilot I encountered over the age of forty was made of 100% weapons-grade bullshit.

Producing a flashlight, I walked through the doorframe as a resumption of spritely old lady complaints heralded Guthire rejoining me. I played the beam around the warehouse, and gave a long, appreciative whistle at what I saw.

 

[DrunkenGrognard]

One of the resident artists on a Discord I'm a member of was looking to exchange arts for car-repair money these last couple weeks, and I decided that this justified some indulgence. And so, courtesy of [KV]; an image of Our Heroine and her faithful ride.



(the 3d model of Naru-Kami was made by me, crudely, in TinkerCAD hacking together pieces of three other 'Mechs whose models I found on Thingiverse years ago. Everything about that mech picture that looks good is KV's doing, because the base model I handed off was, to put it kindly, amatureish.)

(KV is available for hire, folks, if anyone needs character art for an RPG or something. He's got very reasonable rates too)

 

[DrunkenGrognard]

So I was noodling a bit about the theoretical future that our SI came from, and from there to the specific special sauce toys on the 'Mech. Which lead me to cooking up fluff and the like for the CERLPPC, and why not share it?


Clan ER Light PPC

In the early 3090s Clan Snow Raven was faced with the reality of increasing the size of their touman in order to defend the vastly increased holdings represented by their new Raven Alliance. The inclusion of the AMC helped, but the nature of their new neighbors suggested they needed more forces. As they began to solve that problem, the newest additions to their Scientist caste, recruited from the Outworlds, were put to work alongside the engineers. One early project of this effort was an attempt to improve upon the Inner Sphere's novel PPC variants.

The Light ER PPC project was considered lower priority; because the estimated performance of such a weapon was unlikely to become a standout, with much more emphasis placed on an improved version of the Heavy PPC. But that project floundered; as the prototypes had a disappointing tendency to melt down under even modest testing. And as predicted, the initial prototypes of the improved Light PPC were considered a disappointment during early testing with a damage output considered well below Clan standards for their tonnage.

However, they proved surprisingly reliable, and further development lead to a pleasant surprise: the internal power circuitry of the prototypes, while less energy efficient than their clan equivalents, proved to be able to handle noticeably more energy in absolute terms. These 'lesser' power circuits were brought to the Heavy PPC project and proved key to it's eventual success.

The Light ER PPC seemed destined to become a historical footnote, but it was realized that the weapon could be built entirely of parts and materials found within the borders of the Raven Alliance's Inner Sphere holdings; while the Heavy version required a few parts to be built to Homeworld Clan standards and materials in order to be reliable. This caused it to find a niche in a few designs intended to bulk out the Raven Alliance's second-line forces, simplifying the logistics of building and maintaining their garrison clusters.

The Heavy ER PPC, while considered somewhat less efficient than the Clan entirely wanted, had a sheer damage output such that it carved out a small niche in the arsenals of the Alliance's frontline galaxies.

STATS:

Light CERPPC Range: 7/14/23. Heat: 8 Damage: 7 Weight: 3t Criticals: 2 BV: 220

Heavy CERPPC Range 7/14/23 Heat: 25 Damage: 22 Weight: 9t Criticals: 4 BV: 610

PPC Capacitors: the Light CERPPC can be equipped with a PPC Capacitor for the usual additional weight, heat, and critical slots; this increases the BV cost to 300. The Heavy CERPPC is not generally compatible with PPC Capacitor systems; the additional energy in the system gives the weapon system a distressing tendency to suffer catastrophic failures, to the point where they are considered unsuitable even for slohama troops.

(And since that won't stop most of you, and at least one idiot on Solaris has doubtless used it to spectacular if brief effect: the Heavy CERPPC with Capacitor increases its weight, heat and crits as normal for a PPC Capacitor; and increases the weapon's BV to 700. When resolving an attack using the capacitor, if the to-hit roll is doubles; after resolving any hit and damage from the attack; disaster occurs. If the number you rolled doubles of is a 1 or 2, the PPC and Capacitor explode, resolving as a 30 point ammunition explosion. If it is a 3 or 4, the PPC and Capacitor melt down, completely destroying the weapon, causing one crit to the location the weapon and capacitor are mounted and generating five additional heat that turn. On a 5 or 6, the weapons are merely knocked out and may be repaired after the battle at a difficulty of +1)

EDIT: If the BV values given feel a bit high, that's deliberate on my part. I'm not entirely sure what all the factors that go into BV calculation really are, so I'm deliberately padding my estimates a bit in the hopes that if anyone does try to use my homebrew nonsense in a game, it shouldn't be overpowered

 

[DrunkenGrognard]

Sorry this is late; I fully intended to get it posted last night but I lost track of... everything. Work has been A Thing this week, and I am just now getting home from shift 6 of 5 for the week. Hope y'all enjoy, and remember, comments give the author happy brain chemicals.

Chapter 3

Ducal Residence
Bucklands IV, Coventry Province, Lyran Commonwealth
July 16, 3018

The flight back had been both better and worse than the flight out. Better, in that there was no anticipation of a gunfight at the far end but worse in that things were more crowded. Most of the SWAT guys were split between the two captured droppers to keep their crews (most of whom had fallen over each other to assure us they weren't real hardcore pirates but that they were mostly victims of circumstance or kidnapped into service or somesuch) on their best behavior, but that had also involved breaking up various groups and scattering several of them around. Which had a lot of the different rooms around the various droppers converted into temporary holding cells to keep the more reluctant-to-surrender or otherwise unruly pirates out of our hair.

We'd done a bunch of cross-loading to get as much of our various bits of salvage and high-value loot onto the Mule and Union we brought with us as possible(the stuff from the warehouse outright offended the pirates, who were furious they hadn't given the town's ruins a close enough look to find them. This, naturally, was All My Fault). Most of the bulkier, high volume/low value stuff we'd found wound up in the pirate Mule; stuff like ammo and the trucks and the various consumables they'd had, because, well, we had the spacelift to take everything not nailed down and on fire at the base, so by damn we were going to do that.

We'd made radio broadcasts giving the escaped pirates the option of surrendering up until about two hours before we lifted off, partially because marooning people in a place like this was bad form, and mostly because folks were hoping to add two more 'Mechs to the pile of valuables. Most of a truckload of runaway infantry took us up on it (coming back with the bodies of two of their own who hadn't been interested in surrender and also had prices on their heads) but the two 'Mechs did not, and they'd gone bush well enough that our orbiting dropper couldn't spot them. We left behind a fully stripped base, a small care package (a couple weeks worth of MREs, a basic survival kit, and for their religious edification, copies of both the Word of Blake and the Bible - the Gideons were alive and well in the 31st century, and still providing the things to hotels everywhere. The stamp on the inside cover of this one informed us it had been stolen from a Motel Six on Inarcs.) The only other things we left behind were the bodies of the various pirates we'd killed; buried in simple graves on a small hill overlooking a river. One of the militia guys had been a frocked priest in his younger days and had done the honors.

Then we flew all four droppers back to the zenith point and jumped to Kwangjong-ni to start our trip back. By happy coincidence, there was a civie jumper just about finished charging that didn't have anywhere to be too urgently at the moment, so Simon had done some long-distance three-way calls with them and the system's HPG station to arrange to hire them to go grab our waiting droppers. Hans had gone along with that ship to do the retrieval and they'd be just a few weeks behind us instead of a few months.

The trip back we went straight to Bucklands without swinging through Swartklip. Doric and the gang would be coming to Bucklands for a layover that would last just long enough to sort out their share of the loot and probably attend whatever celebration the Duke threw for our victory over piracy before taking the last two jumps home, which was An Lot of extra time but, well, that was just sort of how it worked in this day and age.

Once more, we were mostly left to our own devices and expected to not make trouble. Given it was a forty-odd day trip, it was a minor miracle it worked out as well as it did. Once more, the sim pods proved a major part of keeping us pilots busy enough to avoid Space Crazy, though by the end of it any pretense of fair or realistic duels was long abandoned in favor of us test driving every profile we could find in the system for Star League designs like the Cestus or various Royals. I read every book I brought with me twice(three times for one of the Nancy Drew ones, whoever that version of Carolyne Keene was, she spun a better yarn than her sister ghostwriters) and kept up with microgravity kung fu practice, learning the guitar, and repaired the armor damage on my 'Mech. After doing that last the technical side of our crew, realizing I A) knew what end of a wrench was which and B) was not too proud to use said wrench, decided I qualified as Good People and linked me up with the Dropper and Jumper crews' media trading scene, through which I finally found some 31st century country music worth listening to, including a band local to Bucklands that reminded me a lot of Poor Man's Poison, and a neat fusion band from New Kyoto that used a shamisen in place of an acoustic guitar for their stuff.

It was long and boring, but we all survived and made planetfall. Even as everything was getting unloaded, I was called to attend a meeting with the Duke at my earliest convenience, and the Militia crew was told they'd be the guests of honor at a party he was hosting that evening, which prompted much scrambling for ironing boards to fix up dress uniforms. They'd sent a car to pick me up, so I stashed Naru-Kami at the secure hanger at the 'Port and headed down, Simon riding with me in the same car after getting a minion to manage the loot-securement.

Duke Thompson was eager to see me, waving me towards his desk as soon as I got to his office. I'd avoided coming strapped this time, so Simon only twitched a little as I walked up and shook his hand. "Welcome back, Miss Sobral. I understand the mission was a success."

I shot an apologetic look at Simon; he was very much the Duke's man, this should have been his moment, and the expression on his face was eloquent with his annoyance. "It was, your Grace. Our intel on the Polecats' location and equipment was accurate and we were able to force a decisive battle. Their jumper got away, but we seized the rest of their spacelift and essentially all of their materiel, including-"

He cut me off with a gesture. "Yes, yes, quite a bit of mundane equipment and stolen goods. I have a report coming. What LosTech did you find?"

I forced myself not to sigh, then, "Twenty-five Curtis TriFil portable water purifiers and a set of industrial tooling that is supposed to be able to make spare parts and filters for them, plus a few crates of consumer electronics. The portable units are about the size of a groundcar and they'll make about ten-thousand litres of clean drinking water per day." Which didn't sound like much but was damn good for a trailer the size of a Kei-van that could run for a month straight before it needed to even have a filter swapped, while handling everything from mud, silt, heavy metals, trace chemicals, bacteria or viral agents. That seemed vaguely ridiculous to me, but to a Star League that considered geoengineering projects like Helm or Hesperus II to be straightforward, they were probably downright quaint in their day.

The Duke's expression went through a progression as I went through that spiel. At first, utter disappointment, presumably that I hadn't magically conjured up a Royal Black Knight or something. Second, poker-faced blankness. Then grudging consideration as he realized what this could do for his people - Bucklands did better than most worlds as far as water security was concerned, but it still wasn't great. Then back to poker-faced. "I… see. Well, those should be of some use. Once we have them catalogued, I'll see to it you get your finders percentage."

"Thank you, your Grace."

"For now, quarters will be provided for you to freshen up. I'll want you at the gala tonight, we have a great victory to celebrate." He turned his attention back to his desk and its paperwork.

"Thank you, your Grace, but I couldn't impose." He audibly blinked, turning back towards me. "I made a few calls as we were burning in and arranged a hotel. Though I will, of course, be honored to attend the gala."

He gave me a look I couldn't entirely parse, beyond him being not terribly pleased, but he nodded. "Very well. Tonight, then."


Fully decked out for a party, the place was even more of a gaudy eyesore than it was in daylight. Part of that was the gathering of the rich and connected of Bucklands, clad in a wild mix of suits, extravagant pseudo-uniforms, and the kind of perfectly tailored Western suits and pristine white cowboy hats that could not scream I Am Less Of A Cowboy Than Even Kid Rock if they'd been lit up with neon signs. Most of the women in attendance wore a similar mix, though with the addition of Southern Plantation Belle dresses in the mix. I stuck out a lot more than I expected in my prospector duds (though I'd substituted the nicest of the blouses Jump-Chan had stuck me with for the workshirt) but, well, it was the part everyone seemed to expect me to play in this whole mess, and I was hardly going to grab a fancy dress for this.

One of the Duke's flunkies caught up with me just after I entered the palace; but before I got to the ballroom where the celebration was - one of his people had checked over the recovered LosTech, verifying what it was and how much there was of it, and handed me a cheque for my finder's fee, along with a payout for my share of the salvage and bounties on the pirates who had them (as a single owner-operator merc alongside a full company of militia) and the general pay for my travel time as well. I hadn't really run the math on that last bit before; it wasn't that much per day, but it had been almost a hundred days of travel, there and back, with essentially all my expenses paid. All of it had added up to a pretty solid chunk of change, and almost despite myself my opinion of the man ticked up a notch. Always worth remembering a client who pays promptly.

Still, he was an obsessive goober who was so interested in looking to the past that he let it hurt the management of his day-to-day. I tucked the cheque into my billfold for now; I was going to have to drop by the bank tomorrow to get this into my account. Business concluded for the nonce, I plastered on my best customer service smile and headed for the ballroom.

There was an official greeter sort at the door, checking everyone against The List (and damn me if he didn't look like Chris Jericho in a suit) and announcing those who were on The List in bold, stentorian tones. As he rattled off a series of titles and acclimations for the guy ahead of me(a series that really coulda used an arm bar) I firmly forced down the butterflies in my stomach, and stepped forward.

The official looked down his nose at me, clearly contrasting my subdued and rather drab outfit with the finery of the last couple guests, and asked, "Whom might you be, and what is it you think you're doing here? The help is meant to go around back."

Well, if he's gonna feed me a straight line… "I'm selling these fine leather jackets," I said, turning in place to show off the goods. I chalked up a mental win at this being far enough out of left field enough to render him silent. "Caseri Sobral; LosTech prospector. I should be on the list."

That kicked his brain back into gear. One consult later, and I was announced and gestured into the ballroom. I froze for a moment at the threshold; it seemed for a moment that the entirety of the room turned to face me. I forced myself to smile and keep going, tipping my hat to the crowd before walking in. I was quickly greeted by a trio of stuffed shirts, whose names went in one ear and out the other in the time it took to shake their hands and exchange meaningless pleasantries. Then salvation came; as one of the Militia folks by the buffet table waved me over.

I exchanged nods and much more sincere handshakes with Mackensen, Guthrie, and Michaels, followed by a quick friendly hug with Kasumi. "Thanks for the save."

"You looked a little lost," Michaels grinned

"Damn right. I work for a living." That brought up some guffaws. "You're all looking pretty good; I guess you wind up doing these sorts of events a lot?"

Michaels gave his hand an "eh?" waggle as Guthire chuckled. "A few times a year. More if there's some excitement and we do well with it," she said, then smirked. "Often enough to know what's expected of us, seldom enough to be novel. You'll get used to it eventually."

I shuddered, which kicked off a round of laughter. Then Michaels handed me a plate of h'orderves, which earned him temporary forgiveness. "Yeah, yeah, laugh it up." I munched a sausage roll. "Guessing the officers are elsewhere?"

"With the Duke," said Mackensen. "He wants them making him look official when he gives his victory speech."

"What with all the hard work he did on this op."

"Oh, naturally. Always how this sort of thing works."

"Cynics, the pair of you," said Kasumi, then, "Oh, by the way, when they were processing the bounties it came up that you're not MRB registered yet."

"I, ah, haven't exactly had the chance yet."

"Yes, yes, you're all mysterious, prospector girl. But if you keep helping out against pirates and the like, it'll become a problem -"

"And it simplified the payouts and paperwork" interjected Michaels.

"-And it definitely simplified the paperwork," nodded Kasumi like she hadn't just been interrupted, "So we signed you up when we swung through the HPG compound."

"...Signing up a third party with the MRB was less paperwork than just calculating the split?" Okay, they're ribbing me on something here.

"Honestly? Yes. Red tape moves in mysterious ways. Anyway," she produced a slim white card from her back pocket. "You're now an officially licensed mercenary with the MRB!"

I accepted the little card and read it over as I replied, "So I get to add 'Dog of War' to my list of titles along with 'Grave Robber?'" Okay, that's not a bad photo of me, looks like it's from the big pre-drop dinner. Name, age, green rating which… fair. Love that they put an asterisk next to my homeworld. Callsign… wait what? "Hopscotch?"

"From the way you like to bounce around on your jump-jets, rather than doing proper high-ground leaps." All four of them were giving me their best attempts at cherubic grins, as though butter would not melt in their mouths.

I opened my mouth to shoot something back, then paused. Reviewed my two field battles, and my antics in the sim pods. Took a moment to consider the way callsigns usually worked; with the badassery of the name usually directly proportional to the dumbassery of how you earned it.

"Okay, all things considered, you could have gone with something much meaner than that for a callsign. Thanks, gang."

"We thought you might appreciate that."

Further conversation was delayed by a flunky appearing; my Presence Was Required. I pocketed my shiny new MRB card and followed, still carrying my appies, and did my best to keep on the customer service smile. His grace the duke was near the center of the room, accompanied by Simon, Hauptmenn Doric and Hahn, half a dozen fops and fopettes, twice that many aides, and a dude in robes.

The Duke noticed me and opened with effusive gestures. "Ah! Miss Sobral! How are you, this evening? Glad you could join us."

"I'm doing well, your grace. I was just touching base with my fellow pilots." I shook his hand, then those of a few others. The Duke introduced the fops in turn and I wasted not a single braincell on remembering their names. Then came McRobes, an older gentleman with a careworn expression and thin white hair, who he introduced as "Jose Takagi, our local Precentor."

Precentor Takagi's smile seemed genuine as he shook my hand; solid but no knucklecrusher. "Always nice to meet someone interested in history."

"Those who fail to learn from history are damned to repeat it," I replied, then allowed myself a smirk and continued, "Those who do learn from history are damned to watch others repeat it." That got a genuine chuckle from Takagi and Hahn, then moments later chuckles from everyone else as they pretended to recognize the reference.

"In my experience, history seldom repeats, but it does often rhyme."

"Agreed; but that doesn't lend itself to pithy sayings so well."

Some small talk followed, along with some deflecting banter on my part. Recognizing that I was less than comfortable, Doric sidled over and served as a conversational firebreak from the fops, for which I was grateful. Man was good people. I fielded a few questions about where I planned to go a-prospecting next with some polite deflections; though I did throw a small bone that I suspected there was something good on Kwangjong-ni that I didn't have the resources to track down. This immediately prompted inquiries as to what I'd need, which I offered to talk about at a later date. One of the guys supposedly had an in with Olivetti, which put me in the annoying position of having to at least theoretically consider this party a (shudder) networking meeting, as they might actually be able to do something with the plant there. Still, I took his card and said I'd get back to him later(which prompted half a dozen others to hand me business cards too. I pocketed them all and resolved to round-file all but the possibly-Olivetti guy's later).

A small eternity of small-talk with rich idiots later, Jericho had announced enough people's arrivals that the Duke apparently decided that it was time to officially kick things off and moved our little group to one end of the room. Mounting a stage, he launched into a long, meandering speech, and I tuned him out once more.

Shortly after he started, I found that the brownian motion of the crowd had brought me next to Takagi again. "Interesting, isn't it; how the past and its mysteries fascinate people so."

"Half remembered tales and mysterious buried treasure. Humans have always found both fascinating." I shrugged. "There's worse things for people to obsess over."

"That's true." A beat, as we let the speechifying flow for a bit. "You seem satisfied with what you did in this recent action."

"Pirates put out of business and some genuinely useful stuff recovered, yeah."

That teased out a raised eyebrow.

"Mechs and guns have their place, but those water purifiers will be able to help people all the time. And the equipment to build parts, well…" I looked the man right in the eye, my expression only technically a smile. "Those will bring older units back into service, helping even more folks. A most worthy thing to bring to light, wouldn't you agree?"

"Oh, absolutely. If only more people would concentrate on such things, rather than weapons."

He seemed entirely genuine. Either this guy was actually dedicated to ComStar's stated aims and not its actual ones, or his poker face was much better than most. Speculating wouldn't get me anywhere, so I shifted tacks. "At any rate, we're here for a party. Probably best to leave philosophical talk for now."

"Entirely reasonable." His smile widened. "Though before we shift entirely, I must say… you're truly dedicated to the look of your profession."

"You're one to talk."

"It's a dress uniform like any other."

"Fair."

We slipped at that point into what felt annoyingly like a companionable silence as we listened to the speech. I forced the customer-service expression to stay in place; I didn't want to be friendly with ComStar; I knew too much about what they were really after to do that. But this guy was an uncomfortable reminder that even villains had many facets; few people went out of their way to be all bad. Bah. Don't dwell on it. Capone fed people with his soup kitchens, too; but he funded it with racketeering, murder, and crooked sports betting. And don't get close to this guy; he's being nice so far but go far enough up the chain and they get all 'Redde Creditore Tuo, Fucko'.

Mercifully, Duke Thompson's speech finally meandered to a close. I was able to go and hide by the punchbowl for a while as he hobnobbed and networked with the local glitteratti. Guthrie joined me for my people-watching for a while as the crowd did its thing, and I let her ramble about the folks we watched and let it wash past me. Made it much easier to put up with.

Unfortunately, around about when I judged it had been long enough that I might be able to get away with slipping out early, one of the Duke's minions pulled me aside; the man himself wanted a word before "the next phase" of the party got going. He led me to a small meeting room just off the ballroom. His grace was seated at a small table, with Simon looming at his shoulder. "Miss Sobral. I shall be blunt; I am not happy with you."

I bit back the first two replies that came to mind and went with a mild, "Dare I ask why?"

"Me and mine have extended you great courtesy and opportunities and yet tonight, you offered to work with that ingrate Lothan instead."

Blinking, I pulled the one keeper business card out of my pocket. Lothan Jervais, Esquire. Huh. Slipping it back I replied. "In my defense, I was mostly trying to get through that conversation with a minimum of dealing with those folks."

"But you were still talking business with them."

Oh for fuck sakes. "In the unlikely event that anything comes of it, I can make cutting you into the deal a requirement?" Hopefully he just wanted money and/or access.

He let the poker face drop, expression twisting. "You were offering up the kinds of secrets that you've declined to share with me."

"Your Grace-"

He cut me off. "If you are, indeed, willing to talk - which you weren't to my trusted men these last few months - we shall have to come to an exclusive deal."

Okay, this seems to be him feeling like he's not the Specialist of Special Boys as much as anything else so I might be able to work with this. "What did you have in mind?" Please be some pro-forma nothing…

"Work for me. I can offer a considerable salary, funding and personnel for expeditions, and bonuses for any treasures you might bring me." A pause. "We could make Bucklands great again."

I forced myself not to snarl or otherwise react to that slogan. "As I told your men, I left home because I wanted to explore. I'm not sure I'm interested in getting tied down, even to a place as… unique as this."

Another flash of anger from his expression, then, "Please consider it, at least."

"That I can do." I've considered it. The answer's no.

"And on that note, if travel is what you truly wish… Well; Kroner and C-Bills make the Sphere go 'round, as they say. If you're not interested in gainful employ, perhaps there could be another arrangement. If I were to offer up, say, two million C-Bills, might you be persuaded to sell me your BattleMech?"

"Naru-Kami is not for sale," I bit out, taking a firm grip on my temper. "It holds great sentimental value, along with the practical." That's also a pittance compared to what it's worth, and you can't even drive a BattleMech, you just want a damn trophy.

A silence stretched, then, "Pity. Ah well, you can hardly blame a man for trying."

"Something like that, yes."

"Very well," he stood, waved me off. "Have a good evening, Sobral. That said…" he gave a pointed gesture at the pocket I'd stashed the business cards.

Well, not like I hadn't been planning to… Wordlessly, I pulled the handful of cards out, took two steps, and dropped them in a wastebasket by the door. "By your leave, your grace."

---

I retreated to the hotel. Part of me wanted to do something rash; to make the arrogant fuck pay for having the gall to dictate who I could and could not do business with. The more rational part of me pointed out that I hadn't particularly wanted to do business with any of them. And the more paranoid… Well.

Quickly, I threw my stuff back in the duffel. Fortunately, I hadn't had time to unpack much earlier, and I quickly headed for the front desk. I flagged down the evening clerk and slid the room key and some cash onto the counter. "Evening."

He looked from the money to me. "Checking out early? I'm afraid corporate policy means I can't give you a refund for the part of the night you didn't stay."

"That's fine, that's not what I'm after. I'd just like to check out. That said," I pulled out my billfold and slipped another hundred Kroner onto the desk in twenties in a second pile; "I'd appreciate it if you didn't actually sign me out until the morning."

"Uh…"

Another hundred Kroner in twenties. "In fact, if anyone asks, if you could just let them know I went to the hotel bar for a few drinks, then retired for the evening around, oh…" I glanced at the clock, 9:25. "Ten PM, I'd really appreciate it."

He glanced from the bribe, to me, and back to the bribe. Another fifty-odd Kroner in small bills (all the smaller change I had on me) magically appeared on the pile. He swallowed, then asked, "Ma'am, are.. Are you trying to establish an alibi?"

"I solemnly swear that I have no intention of using that alibi to commit a crime. Quite the opposite, in fact."

A long moment of consideration, then the pile of money vanished. "What should I tell them you had to drink?"


Half an hour later and I was settling into Naru-Kami's cockpit, sincerely hoping I was setting myself up for a sleepless night for no reason. A sleeping bag and a few liberated hotel towels made a little nest on the far side from the hatch. With the chair adjusted back as far as it'd go (to a spot it would normally be if you were working on the controls) it gave me a clean line-of-sight to the hatch. The interior lights were off, but the spaceport mechbays had enough lighting that I could more or less read while I waited.

Between that and a couple cans of coffee, I would probably be good to stay awake through the night, and if nothing had happened by that point I could figure out my next move. Was it wise to do that sort of thing while short on sleep? Probably not, but why change the habit of a lifetime?

The night crawled along. I spent the first hour or so going over a pre-1SW map of Helm, one with a damn impressive scaling option and picking out a few things that looked familiar to my memories of the Gray Death Trilogy and sourcebook readings. After that, I switched to a paper book, and about half an hour after that I found out that I was right to be paranoid tonight: there was a little ping! from the lock on the cockpit hatch. Somebody was trying to pop my door with some kind of techno-lockpick.

I drew my laspistol in a two-handed grip and settled back in my little blanket-nest. The next five minutes took approximately three hours to pass, and finally, with a small pop of equalizing air-pressure, the hatch swung open, more light spilled in, and a human figure pulled itself into view, an electropick clutched between his teeth.

He spotted me and my gun at approximately the same time as my eyes adjusted and I recognized Simon.

Because BattleTech is the way it is - Quintus Allard sent his own son undercover to set up Operation Lactic; while Morgan fsking Kell and Jamie Wolf went skulking around ComStar black sites on Terra together at the Royal Wedding, after all - I wasn't actually surprised to see him. Though I was slightly surprised and vaguely insulted that he wasn't even wearing a mask; nothing to conceal his identity; only a black turtleneck, toque and gloves as a nod to stealth.

The tableaux was silent. Me sitting in my blanket nest, Simon hanging outside my 'Mech cockpit, both hands occupied on keeping three points of contact. I let it hang for a long moment, then, "So, come here often?"

There was another moment of silence, then with a pleh Simon spat out the electropick onto the decksole and said, "Not so you'd notice."

"Y'know, I was honestly, genuinely hoping that I misjudged the situation. That I was overreacting to the Duke's words and actions earlier." I sighed. "I was really hoping that this was just gonna wind up being a really long, slow waste of a night."

Simon started to pull himself up. Maybe to try and pop inside, maybe just adjusting his footing to make hanging there easier. I flicked the safety catch off. The low vreeem of the laspistol's capacitor charging didn't have the same impact of a hammer drawing back to my ear, but it seemed plenty arresting to him.

"But no," I continued, "No, the greedy shit had to be like way, way too many greedy shits I've known in my life. Man thinks he deserves anything he damn well wants just because he's the most special boy, and doesn't know how to take 'no' for an answer." There was some heat in my voice here, even though I was keeping my volume down; this touched on some old angers. "I gotta admit, I feel a great swell of pity for any pretty young thing who catches his eye, knowing that."

Simon drew himself up a little. "How dare you; Duke Thompson is an honorable man!"

I gave him a very old fashioned look.

A moment, then Simon deflated, sinking down a few inches. "The Duke has always remained faithful to the memory of his beloved wife."

I gave it a moment, then, "Okay, sure. I'll accept that. But I said it back at the party; my 'Mech and I are not for sale, and we're definitely not for theft. Are you and he going to accept that?"

"If I don't?"

"Look, dude, I don't actually want to shoot you, but I'm not gonna let you steal my shit."

There was a long, long moment where we just stared at each other across my gun. I could see him running the math; his eyes darting around from me to my gun and working out his plans. Trying to work out if I was, in fact, willing to shoot him in cold blood; and if so, if I could do it faster than he could reach me. I was wondering the same thing. All the violence so far had been a little impersonal, at one remove. Shooting at machines and pretending I wasn't shooting at people.

Finally, Simon decided… I wasn't entirely sure what. Possibly that this wasn't worth his time and gave him an out. He visibly relaxed, backing off a bit. "Fine. I'll grant that this is poor form. I would politely suggest that you've worn out your welcome here." He started to descend.

"I'd figured that out, thanks. Grab your spy toy, Simon, and get out of here."

He gave a vaguely friendly, vaguely mocking wave with one hand, then scooped up his electropick and descended the ladder.

For a few long minutes, I sat there, gun pointed at an empty hatchway, trying to get my heart and breathing back under control.

I caught the first dropship offworld that morning.


Forbes City
Adelaide I, Coventry Province, Lyran Commonwealth
August 25, 3018


I hadn't appreciated just how damn long it took to travel in BattleTech until I had to live it. The first dropper off Bucklands had been heading for Anembo, with a recharge-stop in Baggville. I'd shlepped around there for about a week until I could catch a ship for Adelaide and about all I'd been able to accomplish was visiting the bank to deposit my cheque from the Duke. Oh, I'd killed a day stomping around some old ruins, and found a noteputer with a bigger screen and some accoutrements for my cockpit in various shops, but it was still seven boring, utterly wasted days. And I wasn't even on a direct path! Adelaide wasn't on the way to Galatea; it was just the first ship coming along that wasn't going back out towards the periphery.

I had a strictly limited amount of time to get to somewhere I could make a serious difference if I wanted to make that difference soon enough to matter. Sure, I was helping people and probably improving lives where I was, but that was less than I was hoping to do. So many of the things I wanted to do would have greater impact, and of multiple types, to boot. If I could get Helm discovered early; and avoid the issue of the core copies being in a bad format for modern computers reading them; that would kickstart the tech revolution and in turn make it easier for them to resist the Clans in thirty-odd years when they showed up. And at the same time, getting the core early would mean there was no reason for Precentor Rachan to set up the attack that discredited the Gray Death and incidentally (in that asshole's opinion) killed a shedload of people.

If I could set things up so that Steiner and Davion got the core while the other powers didn't, all the better. I had nothing against the people of the Combine or the CapCon or the League, but their leadership was another matter - Kurita was a fascist police state with bad habits of war-crimes and the Black Dragons waiting in the wings to break everything again if anything managed to improve; Liao was run by lunatics and kept going out of their way to destabilize their neighbors to try and drag them down, plus the whole issue of the servitor caste; and Marik was a shitshow.

Mind, honesty compelled me to admit that Steiner and Davion weren't that much better. Katrina was trying to undo a shitload of systemic corruption and reform the nation's laws and military, but the powers-that-be in the nation were fighting her tooth and nail to protect their privileged gravy train, to say nothing of idiots like Lestrade. And Davion had its fair share of atrocities over its history along with horrendous wealth-inequality and a system of laws that wasn't terribly subtle with how differently they were applied to nobles versus commoners. The Periphery powers weren't really viable options, too small to leverage those advantages and, well. Remote enough that Space AT&T might decide to just have Invisible Truth and StarSword roll up to their capitals and burn them to the ground in ways they couldn't get away with over New Avalon or Tharkad.

So I was going to have to settle for the least-bad options. But, like, that was hardly new; I'd spent most of my life dealing with that choice, it was one of the joys of living under Capitalism. And I was honest enough to admit that helping some people was a lot better than helping none, even if I couldn't help all of them. But getting myself into a position to actually lay hands on a datacore was going to be a hell of a trick to pull off, because it would require laying out a lot of groundwork and some skullduggery. If I could somehow lay hands on the map-chip and find my way to the field library, I could probably smuggle a couple copies out in my 'Mech cockpit even if I left everything else behind but that felt horrendously inefficient. Getting the firepower and spacelift to take it all openly would be a hell of a lot more. Doing all that and not getting shot by ComStar in the process or immediate aftermath would be even more than that.

I'd need to do it before the 4th Succession War kicked off if it was going to be any good, because as long as there wasn't a major war on it would be harder to do the mass-murder-and-coverup thing. Not for the first time I wished I could remember more about the place where the Aranos found that Star League bunker in the HBS game, or more than "somewhere on a moon in the Alloway system" for the Argo itself; that would be much less of a fuckaround to do early but finding it would the proverbial search for a needle in a haystack.

(New Dallas was basically a non-starter; given ComStar had a base on world and as best I recalled liked to keep one of their Dantes patrolling the system. Given the place had no legitimate civilian traffic to hide in, going there would be just about the biggest kick-me sign I could possibly slap on my back.)

Dear Christ this was depressing. I'd been here for almost half a year now and I was for all intents and purposes no closer to accomplishing any of my major goals than the day I'd woken up in the backside of nowhere. I was at the mercy of the commercial shipping schedules now, waiting for the next ship heading Terra-wards for the next leg of my journey. Supposedly there was a convoy heading for Great X rolling through in a week or so, which was at least mostly the right direction.

I was so caught in my own head that I lost track of where I was going, until I walked into another person walking along. I bounced off, landing on my butt with a thump. "Gah! Shit, sorry!" Giving my head a shake to clear it, I looked up and saw the person I'd walked into. She was an auburn haired lady, stocky but fit, with laughing brown eyes.

"No harm done," she said, reaching down. Taking her hand, I let her help me back up to my feet. She wasn't terribly tall, but she had an inch or two on me, and a lot of strength. Her hair was done up in a sort of short, organized cut that reminded me of most JumpShip crewers I'd met, something that looked nice without interfering with a vacuum suit's helmet seals. "You really ought to pay more attention to where you're going," she said with a small smile.

"You're not wrong. Was stuck in my own head there." I gave a rueful smile. "Thanks for being kind about it."

"If you want to thank me for it, you could buy me a drink." She gave a wink then started walking along.

I blinked twice, then, "I mean, I could go for that." Was that flirting? Is she flirting with me? I followed along. It wasn't like I had any objection to that - my preferences had long leaned towards women, but with just enough dudes who triggered an 'Oh no he's hot' reaction that I couldn't call myself straight… or I guess lesbian now? "Feels a little forward, mind you. We literally just met and I don't even know who you are?"

Another smile, "Why overcomplicate things? But fine." She turned and extended a hand; I took it. "Dancia Holstein."

"Caseri Sobral." She turned back around with another smile and I kept following, distracted. I wouldn't call it bi panic, per se, but it was something related. I'd never had a gal try to pick me up before, and I was 100% blaming that for why it took over a full minute for my brain to kick over and recognize her god damned name.

"Wait. Dancia Holstein?" I'd frozen in place; two steps further ahead, she half turned and looked at me with an inscrutable expression. "Mother of Clovis Holstein? Captain of the JumpShip Bifrost?"

Her expression was suddenly very guarded as she nodded.

"Oh thank Christ. I've been looking for you!" Relief hit me like a physical force; and I felt my grin grow wide and goofy. "Or like, maybe not you specifically but, y'know, one of the good guys? Someone who can help me get this shit done, and Heim-" belatedly, my brain caught up with what I was saying and I managed to chop off my sentence before I blew that secret, actually slapping a hand across my mouth. I glanced around furtively and felt another bit of relief as I recognized we were alone in an alley and not, thankfully in the middle of the streets as I word-vomited. Then I looked back and saw her expression again, as she pulled something from an inside pocket. "Okay, that came out wron-"

There was a pff of compressed air and a pinch as something caught me in the neck, and the world blacked out.

LIC Safehouse; Forbes City
Adelaide I, Coventry Province, Lyran Commonwealth
August 25, 3018

There was an art, Dancia knew, about using truth serum to interrogate someone. N-Stoff was LIC's preferred cocktail for the process and it was always a little tricky to use. You not only had to adjust your dosage to the subject's bodymass, but you had to take into account things like their pharmacological history and adjust slightly more if they were aneurotypical. Sobral was a tiny thing, and a lightweight alcoholically speaking, so she'd started with a low dose to begin with.

N-Stoff was intended to simply produce a suggestible state; one where the subject had little to no verbal filter and would answer any direct question succinctly. It created a layer of emotional separation from what one was feeling to what one was saying. In a subject who normally suffered from some form of depression, that tended to lead to a more relaxed rambling style of answer. In a subject who was moderately autistic, it tended to cause free-associated oversharing. In both cases, if you knew it was coming you could tweak your dosage to counter it, but they had too little observation or history on Sobral to adjust beforehand.

Sobral appeared to suffer from both, which was leading to a sort of cheery, roiling babble. It wasn't a difficult babble to direct; she was still responding to questions; but would quickly wander off track down a verbal rabbit hole. Which had turned interrogation downright surreal an hour ago and it wasn't getting any more sensible since.

"Hell of a conundrum you've found, Holstein." The agent who ran the local field office was a nondescript, serious man, with no sense of humor about things. The two had been in the interrogation room earlier, but now were simply in the observation room, leaving the subject on her own for the truth serum to wind down.

"I freely admit I panicked, but bringing her in was definitely the right plan." Initially, she'd panicked because she thought that Sobral's knowledge of her meant she'd been sent by Lestrade; and then that she was somehow LOKI. Now, it seemed much, much stranger.

"You believe her, then?"

"Oh, the total package is bizarre but.. The things we've asked that we can verify? She knows far more than she should." Including the identities of several highly placed agents and details of a number of incidents that Dancia would bet her life savings that nobody outside of Heimdall could possibly know even happened. "Besides, I've questioned actual insane people on N-Stoff before. These answers are too coherent and consistent to be the products of insanity."

For a moment, the two agents simply observed Sobral in silence, listening as she transitioned from talking about her recent pirate-hunting into a song about Hunchback pilots.

"Probably just as well, yeah. And that you skipped straight to the interrogation."

Dancia grunted vague agreement. She hadn't planned for a rendezvous to become more than just an initial sounding-out, nor anything more affectionate than a kiss. Listening further, the song about Hunchbacks had finished, and given way to a song about a mercenary infantryman. After a long moment, she turned away from her subject and walked for the door of the interrogation room. "Okay. Let's let her sober up for now and come back with an adjusted dose and some better questions. This calls for an initial report and request for instructions before we go much further." This was potentially very sensitive; she'd have to burn one of her one-time-pads for this. And not think too hard about some of the metaphysical implications of this.

"How the hell do you report this?"

She gave the man a wan smile. "Think back to your academy days, Agent. Remember all those theoretical cases they liked to bring up in the example reports?"

"Like that example of reporting a planet that changed hands over a children's card game?" A pause as the man searched his memory. "Case MILLENIUM PUZZLE?"

"Indeed. But first I need a drink." A sigh as she reached the door. "I am far too sober to try and report to Chancellor Johnson that I have an actual Case NARNIA on my hands."

 

[DrunkenGrognard]

Author's note: Thanks again to SirJalinth for beta'ing this; and it's even on time this time! Enjoy, folks, and I promise that the next update will have some action in it



Bonaparte City
Anembo III, Coventry Province, Lyran Commonwealth
August 3rd, 3018

Agent Liora was bored.

The WolfNet agent waited only semi-patiently as she waited for her Portable Medical Monitor to process the DNA sample she had retrieved from Sobral. It was a little unusual for a PMM to be able to run a DNA sample in the first place; but WolfNet had toys second only to those of The Watch back in the homeworlds; and none of the intel networks of the Inner Sphere, save possibly ComStar's ROM, could match their equipment.

The notion of actually finding any members of the Not-Named Clan in the Inner Sphere was something that the Dragoons as a whole considered laughable. It was never really something taken seriously by the Khans who had sent them, just another bidding tactic as they crafted the Dragoon Compromise. Snipe hunt or not, they were expected to do it, and had been equipped accordingly.

The rumors they had found on arrival to the Sphere of a "Minnesota Tribe" had sparked some unease, but they had never found anything truly compelling there, certainly nothing that anyone could prove. They had kept monitoring for them, of course, among all the other things WolfNet monitored - the vast majority of what they did was siphon data from ComStar's network and let the computers of their WarShips sift it for keywords - but nothing had come of it for years. This had been just about risk-free, but it did at least give the WarShip crews something to do, given the lack of peer opponents. ComStar had kept most of the Star League era base code for the HPG network, so it was child's play for a WarShip to sidle up to a deep space repeater and send it override codes to both pass along every bit of data sent through it while forgetting that it had seen or transmitted to anyone. Efficient, but too safe to be terribly interesting; and outside of the aftermath of Anton's Rebellion while they were trying to track down the agents who had set up Anton's betrayal of them, nothing terribly interesting ever showed up for them. Multiple WarShip crews, reduced to gossiping fishwives.

But when reports of a mysterious warrior in the Periphery, running an unknown BattleMech equipped with LosTech and piloted by a stranger named Sobral came through… Well, that got flagged.

It had not taken WolfNet long to start organizing some more direct investigations. Their mystery warrior was not being terribly subtle about her plans; making her way towards Galatea; allowing for diversions to help destroy any pirates unfortunate enough to cross her path. Planning an intercept had been a bit tricky - while there was more JumpShip traffic in Lyran space than the average for the Inner Sphere, this close to the Periphery it was still a touch sparse and unpredictable - but they had made it a priority to send a few agents into her likely path. They had quietly alerted Snord as well, but he was occupied with a Trial of Grievance against House Marik and thus entirely out of position.

But they had managed to work the timing; with Liora able to get herself groundside and, posing as waitstaff in a shitty spaceport bar, collect a used bottle for sampling along with some observation. It had been a tad educational. The mystery warrior; on-world for the week it would take for another JumpShip to roll through heading the right direction; seemed awkward, earnest, and not a terribly good liar. Her passing off her equally-mysterious BattleMech as "the family frankenmech" was a transparent lie, but not something anyone could actually prove; and also not something immediately actionable. She had apparently sought out the planetary militia and offered her services while she waited, though she gave no sign if anything had come of it. Friendly if slightly uncomfortable body language; combined with dressing in a frumpy t-shirt and sweat pants; suggested she was trying to be more sociable than she was entirely comfortable with. She had been polite to Liora; and to the other staff; and tipped generously.

It painted an odd picture. She was too reserved and ill-at-ease to fit the typical LosTech Prospector; and far too undisciplined to seem like someone from a Clan background (even the most virulent curses against the Not-Named did not deny that they possessed military discipline; only that they foolishly spurned the wisdom of Kerensky). And there was a… genuineness there, especially in the ill-at-ease nature of the woman, that felt at odds with the picture their intel painted.

Finally, however, her patience was rewarded as the PMM ping'ed to indicate it had finished its analysis of the sample she had fed it.

Genetic Analysis: Freeborn; gene-ancestry 31% Sobral Bloodhouse; 11% Nikishina Bloodhouse; 9% Dobrev Bloodhouse; 8% McEvedy Bloodhouse; 23% unremarkable; 30% Amaris gene-ancestry. All +/- 5% margin of error.

Liora felt her eyebrows hit her hairline and keep climbing.

---

Breaking into the civilian-rentable mechbays was not exactly hard with the skills and tools at her disposal, and finding Sobral's the work of minutes- it was the only bay with anything heavier than 40 tons in it at the moment. Actually getting to the machine unseen was a bit harder - the man guarding the mechbays was taking time to linger in front of the mystery mech on each watch loop - but still not a challenge. The look of the thing; painted in a close match of Wolverine's Zeta Galaxy markings, set her teeth on edge. But she forced herself to stay professional.

The mystery 'Mech was easily scaled, and while the hatch was properly sealed and locked down, it still had a maintenance port; and it had only taken Liora's Watch issue crypto-noteputer a few minutes to make it pop a seal. She had had to shuffle herself around the side of the BattleMech's torso for part of that, to get out of line-of-sight of the passing guard, but that had not been hard. Slipping into the thing's cockpit, she pulled the hatch shut behind her and looked for another maintenance port.

She did not want to put it in standby mode; that would almost certainly turn on the running lights at least for a moment, and that would not do at all. But whoever made this 'Mech, the usual override worked, which robbed it of some of its mystery. Shortly, she had her noteputer dumping the 'Mech's internal computer and turned her attention to quickly going through everything else in the cabin. There was a minifridge full of bottled water strapped into a spot just about in reach of the pilot, a first-aid kit strapped on top of that, and a pair of integrated footlockers opposite the hatch at boot-level. One was empty; the other held changes of clothes and a small noteputer that also vomited up its contents at the insistence of her Watch special. A string hammock was suspended from a hook at the cockpit's rear; both ends secured in an obvious stowage position; another hook could be found above the pilot's seat.

No personal items or mementos, other than one or two pieces of tourist kitsch from worlds she'd already passed through. No obvious smell in the cabin save for the artificial pine scent of the little cardboard tree dangling from one of the upper MFDs; covering a faint smell of metal, oil, and coolant. Not the stale sweat one would expect in any long-serving 'Mech; or the vague locker-room tang you'd get from a cockpit being used as long-term quarters. It shot Sobral's claim of the machine being any kind of generational family mech right in the head.

Speaking of heads, the agent quickly checked the neurohelmet sitting on its hanger near the cockpit's roof. Brief inspection recovered a few hairs, which she intended to feed to her PMM because she did not trust the results of the first scan.

Quickly enough, Liora's crypto-noteputer finished its data dump of the 'Mech's computer. A quick check that the guard was not watching, and she made her withdrawal. Avoiding notice on the way back to her rented quarters was trivial.

When she returned, she checked the PMM again. It had finished its self-diagnostic while she was out, claiming to be working properly. She started it running the hair sample and then settled into a surprisingly comfortable old chair while looking at what she had pulled from the mystery 'Mech and its contents.

The little noteputer she'd found had been mostly full of a mix of pointless media files and cartographic data; various maps with a small scattering of annotations; brief bits of data on the planets of Helm, New Dallas, Kwangjong-ni and the moons of the Alloway system. As an attempt to make her "lostech prospector" cover more credible, they were better than nothing, but still consisted of far too little information to amount to much. The lack of any information about the world where she found her obvious lostech 'Mech, and lack of notes about her supposed homeworld, stood out.

The 'Mech's computer had coughed up very little. Basic IFF details and partial manufacturer details - claiming it was an early production NAR-1K Naru-Kami, produced by Mountain Wolf BattleMechs on Alpharatz with the date of production redacted. The computer also claimed the Mech was the property of the Raven Alliance, a name Liora did not recognize but which was quite suggestive, but with no other details. Hopefully, running the data dump through a more powerful decryption tool than her portable unit would be fruitful, because everything she'd gotten so far was obvious nonsense.

There were also battle-ROMs of Sobral's engagements, which would hopefully provide some enlightening details about her training and origins. Failing that, they would perhaps be entertaining. There were only two of them marked as involving combat; and she queued them both up, her own noteputer to hand for note taking.

Sobral had some skill, that much was certain. Even adjusting for the technological advantages of her machine, she would likely have passed her Trial of Position with little trouble. Her poor ability to track what was going on beyond her immediate opponent reminded Liora considerably of, well, any number of the less-experienced members of the Wolf Dragoons in their first exposures to the Inner Sphere way of war. Her poor comm discipline and the fact that she froze up after scoring a hard-kill on one pirate did not fit either category.

The PMM was still running its cycle, so Liora turned to organizing her initial notes. She was attempting to work out what sort of person Sobral was; the various details being turned over and over in her mind as she went through what she had already learned. It took less time to organize the notes than it did for the medical scanner to cycle. And when it did, it returned an identical result to the first check.

Well. That was going to make things complicated. It was time to make this the problem of someone else.

---

Pristine
Sterling, Free Worlds League
September 15th, 3018

Stanford Blake was not a man prone to large outbursts. He hardly had the time. Being Colonel Jamie's dedicated intelligence officer was, as the spheroids liked to put it, a "full time job" in addition to his duties as a MechWarrior. Especially when one was a pilot of a LAM; requiring one to be qualified as both an Aerospace and BattleMech pilot. It did have its uses, however - being a justification to delay dealing with paperwork in order to keep up his qualification hours on occasion.

Many considered piloting a LAM to be at least a minor punishment (true punishment being assigned to a Bugmech, an UrbanMech, or, if Jamie was well and truly annoyed with you, a Wolverine) but while LAM parts were difficult to come by they were also in little demand and thus always available when his LAM was in need.

Still, Stanford did not often have time for outbursts, and today was not an exception. It would, however, feel very good.

Alpha Regiment had just returned to Sterling at the conclusion of another of their "cattle raids" and he had found something most unwelcome when he returned to his desk for the first time in almost two months: a message that had been couriered and was marked 'URGENT.' For it to have been couriered meant it was too large, sensitive, or both to send digitally. Their access to ComStar's systems allowed them to slip some messages into the system, sending data across the Sphere on that network's proverbial dime. But this was not foolproof; messages larger than a dozen or so kilobytes would occasionally be noticed, whereupon the clever Adept who spotted it would generally delete it to clean up his transmission stream, and pay closer attention to that stream for months after.

So far as they could tell, none of their secrets had been lost to such things - they had access to better cryptography programs than ComStar did, and perhaps more importantly, thanks to the wisdom of the Great Founder rotated codes much more frequently than the Spheroids. So sending messages piggyback on ComStar's network was inconsistent more than it was risky. Any message long and urgent enough to justify being physically couriered… Well. Stanford had mentally written off the idea of a peaceful evening before he had even read it.

Now that he had read it, he was making his best speed to Colonel Jamie's office, because this went above his paygrade.

He knocked when he arrived but did not wait to be beckoned in. This gained a raised eyebrow from Jamie and Natasha Kerensky who was presumably in the midst of a debrief of her own. "Stanford. I take it you have news, quiaff?"

"Aff. A report from Darius." Both officers straightened up. "WolfNet intercepted reports that suggested a potential member of the Not-Named Clan had surfaced in Lyran space."

"Stavrag," growled Kerensky. "Are they certain?"

"They were able to have an agent intercept her and the result is… Well. They consider it 'too good to be true.'" He produced a folder of printouts. "In short, a MechWarrior appeared in the Lyran Periphery in early March, piloting a BattleMech equipped with a variety of LosTech as well as a weapon system that is completely unknown to us. The warrior is named Sobral, and claimed to be a LosTech prospector. WolfNet was able to make an intercept and test a gene-sample which indicates that she is descended of multiple Bloodhouses of the Not-Named clan, as well as Amaris."

"What." Jamie's expression was very flat.

"That was, essentially, our agent's reaction. Further, an investigation of the BattleMech's computer suggests it might be a product of Clan Snow Raven."

"That…"

"The suggestion of WolfNet is that this may be some sort of ruse."

"One of the Crusaders dangling bait, and trying to justify an invasion." Kerensky sounded as if she was unsure if she felt disgusted by the underhandedness or impressed at the audacity.

"We will need more information. They are continuing to investigate, quiaff?"

"Aff. They are attempting to back-track her from the point she was discovered, and track her movements going forward. That is complicated, as it appears she was picked up by LIC shortly after our agent was able to investigate."

Jamie sat back in his chair. "That complicates things. But WolfNet should be able to track her down again, quiaff?" Without waiting for a response, he continued, eyes unfocusing as he thought the situation through. "Probably for the best that our agent did not kill this… possible Not-Named out of hand. I am certain they have drawn attention from other quarters. WolfNet should be able to find her again. They will also need to back-trace her to… wherever her home is and hopefully to the rest of them."

"She claims to hail from Van Zandt."

"Van Zandt…" He paused in thought. "Ah. I thought that colony had failed at some point after the Exodus."

Stanford shrugged helplessly. "That was our initial assumption, as it has been removed from contemporary maps, but we never actually verified it. It was considered too remote to be worth diverting part of the fleet."

"I will cut orders to correct that. I recall that they were unfond of visitors; they will have to be cautious. Still, all of thoseare problems for later."

"Jamie…" Kerensky's tone was a warning one.

"We do not have enough information to take meaningful actions, Natasha. Once we know what is going on, we will be able to act. That BattleMech is proof that this is not simply a lone member of the Not-Named. Its unknown weapons mark it as something that requires.. support and logistics. If this is indeed one of the Not Named, there are more of them around and we must find them before we strike and reveal our hand, or they will vanish again. We were already planning to make a supply run once our contract with Marik ends; by then we should have enough information to provide Khan Ward with something meaningful."

She looked unhappy, but backed down. "Truth, I suppose."

"And speaking of the Lyrans… Has Janos told us where he wants us raiding next?"

Stanford settled in more calmly, back in his role. "There are a number of worlds listed; I believe he wishes for an extended series of raids at this point, ending with an assault on Hesperus II."

Kerensky gave a low whistle. "Either he is seeking to give us a mighty challenge, or he hopes to see us die."

"Possibly both."

"Aff. Well, we have some planning to do…"

Zenith Point
Unnamed Star System; Deep Periphery
July 28th, 3019

Khan Kerlin Ward seemed to have aged at least half a decade more than he should have since last Jamie had spoken to him. He empathized, leading the Dragoons was often extremely trying, even without making allowances for his personal losses; Khan Ward was leading an entire Clan; it could only ever be worse.

At least a year of that extra age seemed to come as he had gone over what they had learned of the Sobral. "Jamie. You are playing a joke on your old Khan, quiaff?"

"Neg, my Khan. I am sorry, but that is what we have found."

A deep sigh as the older man sagged, one hand massaging his temple. "Well. I am unsure what I was hoping for; this to turn out to be a ruse or for this to actually be a single member of the Not-Named. You have found no others?"

"Not as of our departing for this rendezvous." They had back-traced Sobral to the planet Swartklip, whereupon the trail dried up. One of the WolfNet agents involved had frustratedly said that from what they could tell, the warrior had simply appeared out of thin air one day. Even stranger; they had found a survey from only a year prior that used the small hangar she had stored her mech in as a landmark… and on that survey, the butte was utterly unremarkable with no trace of any facilities. It had been enough to drive at least one agent to drink.

"Good. That is good. Still…"

"We will continue searching." Which would be harder, because they had confirmed that they could not trust ComStar's 'updated' star-maps. Van Zandt was still going strong; in all its dubious, surreal periphery glory. They were going to have to put at least one ship to work cross-checking everything. He could already hear his Fleet Colonel screaming at him about what that would do to his ship's ability to handle the Dragoons' logistics.

"Do that. Founder willing, this will turn out to be some bizarre coincidence. Continue monitoring this Sobral, continue looking for other signs of the Not-Named. If you do find anything… prepare a brief but do not return with it."

"My Khan?" Jamie knew his tone was slightly alarmed; he certainly felt that way.

"The issue of invasion is not fading. The Crusaders continue to push for it. I had hoped that they would lose interest by now, but they are not." He straightened up, looked at Jamie and Natasha Kerensky in turn. "If an invasion happened now… do you think the Inner Sphere could hold it off?"

"Neg," said Natasha without hesitation. "Their warriors are not nearly our equals, and their technology has backslid. Against Trueborn warriors and Omnitechnology, they cannot hope to stand against us."

Jamie frowned. "That is… We could win any battle, but there will be many, many battles. There are thousands of worlds in the Inner Sphere; the logistics would be difficult to overcome. Not impossible, but… difficult." He frowned. "I do not think that taking Terra would cause their resistance to stop. Unless the Successor Lords were to panic, they would fight to the end."

Khan Ward was silent for a long moment, brow furrowed; expression shifting as though grappling with a decision. Finally, "It is the duty of the Wardens to protect the Inner Sphere. Even from the other Clans." He looked up, met their eyes in turn. "When you return to the Inner Sphere, continue your tours of duty with the Successor Lords. Prepare them. Prepare them to resist an invasion, but do not give up our technology or your secrets." A pause. "This will have to be your final supply run. Purge the Exodus Road from your ship's databases when you return."

Jamie's voice was heavy with emotions that he could not name. "Aff, my Khan. Aff."

"I will set The Watch to seeing who might be behind this ruse, if a ruse it is. You will be upholding the Warden cause there, as I do so here." A pause. "If I should fail, and invasion comes, report anything you have learned of the Not-Named but otherwise stand against them."

He extended a hand to each of them. Each in turn shook it; a warrior's handshake, wrist to wrist.

It had a feeling of terrible finality.

Pristine
Sterling, Free Worlds League
October 25th, 3019

Their landhold on Sterling resembled a kicked anthill more than it did a military base; a flurry of loading and preparations. Jamie picked his way across it quickly and efficiently, making his way to the room that was still his office for the next few weeks.

"What news, Stanford?" Jamie asked of his intelligence officer, who met him at the door.

"We have received offers of employ from every successor lord save Marik."

"He simply wishes to see the back of us, quiaff?"

"Aff. As we have already served with Davion and Liao, I assume we are most interested in Steiner and Kurita?"

"Yes. Steiner first would be the most straightforward, perhaps. What updates do we have on them and their… situation."

"Katrina Steiner has offered us generous terms for a mix of garrison work along the Combine border, possibly some raids across it, and to serve as OpFor in a series of training exercises for her regular troops; that last as a form of 'light duty' to keep our raiding forces from growing restive between offensive operations. She also wishes to hire the services of Hephaestus Station to help restore several damaged or mothballed factories to working order, mostly for civilian infrastructure but also for some military hardware."

Well, that would serve as a way to help them prepare. "And Kurita?"

"A more simple offer; for garrison and raiding work along their border with the Suns."

"…I will need to consider this in more detail but in the interests of efficiency it would be simplest to work for the Lyrans next. What news from Snord, or about the… other situation."

"Snord's Castle Brian has been found by the Lyrans; they have not dismissed him but he is under greater scrutiny. The… other situation remains unchanged since you left on your supply run. Aerospace has also detached two ships to verify the status of various systems that have vanished from modern maps, they state that they have a plan to accomplish this as efficiently as possible. And also wish me to call you several things I like you too much to repeat."

That drew a snort of laughter. "Any other news of great note that might affect the situation?"

"Katrina Steiner has proposed a conference between the Successor Lords to discuss trade and potential peace." A pause. "There is some minor interest in this from the other Lords, though almost entirely due to the impressive bribe she has accompanying her invitations…"

The briefing continued, as they worked.

 

[DrunkenGrognard]

With thanks once more to SirJalinth for beta reading this


Chapter 4

LIC Safehouse; Forbes City
Adelaide I, Coventry Province, Lyran Commonwealth
August 26, 3018

I knew I wasn't dead; my head hurt too much for that. I sat up with a groan that turned into a croak thanks to my throat being too damn dry. The room was small, and far too well lit as far as my headache was concerned, but it also seemed a damn sight nicer than a jail cell. So whatever happened after I got my ass dart-gun'd it went better than expected.

I felt grimy, my clothes slept-in and my eyes all a-gum. A quick look around found a sink and some cups, and I quickly took care of that. After I'd washed my face, there was a knock at the door.

"Come on in," I said, not surprised in the slightest that my waking had been noticed.

Dancia Holstein walked through the door. "Good morning. How's the head?"

"Reminding me pointedly why I don't drink." I took a moment to consider my approach here, but before I could go further, I had some air to clear. "I'm sorry if I gave you a scare; I didn't intend to come across like a lunatic or one of Aldo's band of idiots. I intended no threat to you or your son."

She gave a small smile. "So we gathered. And to be fair, I panicked a bit myself, and overreacted."

I refilled my cup and drained half of it as I weighed the implications on that one. "Guessing this hangover isn't from the dart gun. Truth serum?"

A nod.

"Well. I'm honestly surprised you didn't slap me in a strait-jacket."

"You're far from the craziest person I've questioned. It helps that once we started on things, you knew far too much that you couldn't know without being from… elsewhere and elsewhen."

I nodded back myself. "So. What happens now?"

"Ideally, my fellow LIC agents and I get your permission to ask you further questions; to gain as much actionable data as possible." A beat, then, "Some of that questioning would be under N-Stoff again, not because we don't trust you, but because it can greatly aid a subject's recall."

Ok, she has regular LIC credentials too. Good. That's good. "The fact that it lets you be sure I'm answering… as honestly as is physically possible… no doubt helps."

"It does, yes." She looked faintly amused. "You're taking this well."

"Honestly? The fact that you didn't shoot me with something lethal for almost blowing your cover slash acting like I was working for Lestrade puts me a bit over the worst case scenario. The lack of thumbscrews helps too." I finished the glass. "Also, inasmuch as I had a plan, most of it involved 'gain the trust of someone important to Steiner and throw information at them, so they can throw minions at the problem.' So." I shrugged. "Progress." Not exactly the way I wanted to get it, but hey, lack of progress directly fueled the stress that led to the idiot word-vomit, so.

"Out of curiosity, who did you have in mind? Another of the LosTech hunters in their employ, like Snord?"

I snorted involuntarily at that. Okay, clearly the first round of questions didn't get all that broad. "Trade you an answer to that one for an answer to one of mine?"

"So long as it's nothing critical."

"Fuck Snord. The man's a double-agent. He's not trying to harm the Lyrans, but he's not playing straight with them, and he's taking advantage of Katrina's trust. I was going to try to link up with the Kell Hounds. Patrick Kell is good people, he has Katrina's ear, and he deserves better than he got in the… original timeline." A beat. "When you tracked me down in the city, I'm guessing the meeting was gonna be a distraction for a gun-free version of what actually happened?"

"I was hoping for an informal chat, to determine how… insistently we would try to bring you in."

"And the flirting…" I stopped, feeling myself flush with embarrassment as it occurred to me how pathetic the question I was trying to ask was going to sound. "Never mind."

Her expression gentled a bit. "It was professional, a distraction. You're cute enough, but I don't mix business and pleasure."

I forcibly grabbed the little heart-flutter I got at being called 'cute' by the neck and shoved it in a mental box for later pondering and nodded. A breath, then, "Well, I'm just going to assume you guys had a minion secure all my stuff when you decided to bring me in, and ask for a shower, a change of clothes, and some breakfast before we start the questioning."

"That can be arranged."

---

They let me know some of what they'd already asked me, and I had to give them credit, it sounded like they were being honest about their fast-penta equivalent sharpening memory, because some of it was stuff in sourcebooks and novels I hadn't cracked open in years. That made an opening to a pretty long chat just to establish what they wanted to ask me about, a list that got revised a few times as different bits of memory got jogged.

They also talked about how 'N-Stoff' worked and how it affected people when I asked. I couldn't follow all of it; it got a little technical and I was fairly sure the MIB who was doing the talking about that stuff wasn't doing it to throw me off, just an expert who wasn't great at realizing when his audience didn't understand what he was talking about. This led to them mentioning the way I just sort of wandered off topic if they let me, which in turn led to a mention of singing. I then made the mistake of asking if I could hear a clip and, well… It seemed that my subconscious had not yet caught up to my vocal changes, and I'd been trying to get my new mid-high Alto voice down to my old Baritone range. It made for a …unique sound. Not a good one.

For someone who grew up in a church choir and singing at summer camp, it was weirdly mortifying, though I was fairly sure if I managed to get my singing voice back into something resembling decent shape I'd be able to look back on this and laugh. Eventually.

After a couple hours of friendly chats, we went into lore-debrief mode, which wound up eating most of that day and the next as answers begat further questions which begat memory-jogs and verbal backtracking in turn. A day of rest as they chewed data, and then they politely asked if I felt ready for some more rounds of N-Stoff questioning. The next couple days were a blur followed by a much worse hangover. They had me going over maps after that (it seemed that N-Stoff recall couldn't translate directly into map notation, but transcripts of the relevant rambles helped me narrow a few things down).

We settled into a cycle of a couple hours of N-Stoff questions, then most of a day of recovery as they did analysis and probably messaged someone and waited for an answer, then more questions. They were politely evasive about who they were talking to, and assured me they were making sure the conversation was secure. Given that the first round of structured questions had been heavy on ComStar, that hopefully meant they were either burning through one-time pads or the station had a fax machine.

I decided it would be safer to not ask and just tried to keep calm and polite through this, because I hated spinning my wheels for extended periods of time. I was itching to get out and do something, but even if they'd let me it'd be a foolish idea right about now. My nerves were playing up, and I did not put good odds on avoiding doing a stupid.

After about a week and a half of this the LIC agents decided that they'd gotten everything they were likely to at the moment. Letting me ramble was leading to more digressions about Shadowrun or 40k or mecha anime than BattleTech stuff, and most of that was turning into repeats, it seemed. One more day of wheel spinning, and then I was told I had an Important Meeting, they thrust a brand new skirt-suit into my hands, and told me to be in the big conference room in half an hour.

I showed up in my prospector duds, because I didn't much care for status games. Whoever I was meeting for this was logically going to be some LIC muckety muck and had probably already seen the videos of me going off on a N-Stoff ramble, because they generally found giving me the ramble-dosage was more useful than dosing me properly. Whoever he or she was, they'd already seen me high out of my mind. There was no point in pretending to have dignity.

The guy in the big conference room was incredibly bland looking; someone who looked like he'd been made to precisely average human statistics. Dark hair, blue eyes, neatly trimmed beard. He took one look at me and smirked. "Good day, Miss Sobral. You can call me… Sarolf Steel." He waved me to a chair.

Okay, no idea who this guy actually is, but even in BattleTech that ain't his real name. Wait. Jerry Akuma exists. So… fifty-fifty on that being a real name. Anyway, given I'm playing a part, I guess he's doing the same. I slumped into the indicated chair. I'll say this much for LIC's safehouses, they did not stint on their furniture budget, this chair was so comfortable it was downright sinful. "Mister Steel. What does LIC want from me today?"

"It's less what we want from you and more what we can do for you today."

I raised an eloquent eyebrow.

His smile twitched a tiny bit higher. "I'll be blunt then. If even a fraction of the information you've provided us pans out, it will dramatically improve the position of the Lyran Commonwealth."

"So long as that improvement extends to the civilian infrastructure and not just military equipment, I'm quite happy to have helped."

"For someone who considers this whole… universe to be a work of fiction, you do seem quite consistent on looking to the civilians. Duke Thompson was quite unimpressed by it."

"Bluntly? From where I'm sitting this place feels very real indeed. I have the knowledge to make a difference in a positive way, it behooves me to try." A beat. "And His gracelessness the Duke was a fucking idiot."

"Quite." Another smile. "That said, whatever you were used to in your… old world, part of the system around here requires that leal service be rewarded."

"I'm with you so far, but I would suggest that we're a little premature for arranging that." That drew a raised eyebrow. "At the moment, we don't know how well all that information is going to pan out." I raised a hand, one finger extended. "First, it's possible that some or all of the details I remember - N-stoff enhanced recall notwithstanding - are going to turn out to be wrong in the harsh light of reality." Another finger. "Second, even if they're all correct, translating that into results isn't a given. The map is not the territory." One more finger. "And finally, I'm quite certain that the gene-test that I have no doubt happened at some point in the last week and change turned up some very nasty branches in my family tree that might make you disinclined to go for some of the potential rewards. I personally have five Kroner on Forlough." If I'd been dropped in the Outworlds or the Concordat, I'd be even more certain.

That got a raised eyebrow, then, "You're quite certain that you're related to someone infamous, in a body conjured up for your arrival?"

"When a Random Omnipotent Bastard tells you they're miffed, assume they're going to find interesting ways to screw with you."

"Well, I am not familiar with the knave you're referring to, but yes, there was a… concerning ancestor suggested by that testing."

Christ people, learn your history. Instead of razzing him, I responded, "Amaris?"

"Indeed."

Fething called it. "Anyway. As a Lyran I'm sure I don't need to explain to you the value of making sure you know what, exactly, you're paying for on both sides of the transaction. So rather than setting a value on all that right now, I'm willing to give a little time to see how things play out. I won't say no to a small advance, nor to… Hrm." I paused, shifted to a 'thinking' pose; mostly an act because I already knew more or less what I wanted to say here, but we were both, after all, playing a role. "I do have five shiny spare extended-range light PPCs in that shipping container of mine. They won't last forever, and I'd rather like to be able to source replacements when I inevitably run out. Do you think the Lyran government would be interested in purchasing one for reverse-engineering purposes?" Because I would bet cash money that U of Tharkad, TharHes or Defiance had a Skunk Werks somewhere that would be willing to give it a go. They wouldn't be the equal of Dr. Banzai's crew on New Avalon, but I didn't have access to them just yet. More to the point, this whole rigmarole would put me in a position where they owed me a favor, one I could cash in to put myself in a spot where I could hopefully make myself useful and stay busy.

"You assume we wouldn't just take them for ourselves?"

"You were just emphasizing the honorable nature of feudal systems and the implicit reward structures within, Mister Steel. A level of honourable conduct is implied there."

Another smile. Probably a good sign. "We do try. I take it, then, that you are not precisely interested in lounging away in luxury somewhere isolated and safe?"

"I'd be chewing on the walls inside a week, Sarolf. Happens any time I take an extended vacation or the like." A shrug. "Also, I know they asked me about Jump-Chan during my debrief, and I went over things. When a Random Omnipotent Bastard tells you not to be boring… well, I suspect I've been pushing it, these last few weeks."

"A pity. We had hoped to keep you secure."

Oh hell.

"But in principle… Well. I'm sure we can come to some sort of arrangement." He settled back into his chair and smiled; one all full of teeth. "As you say, I am Lyran. Let's… Negotiate."

---

JumpShip Dawn Treader
Odessa System, District of Donegal, Lyran Commonwealth
September 13, 3018

Odessa was a relatively well traveled system, deep in Lyran space and, so far as they knew, secure. For the crew of the LIC JumpShip Dawn Treader, preparing to do a small bit of investigation, and desperately hoping this was going to wind up being a very dull few weeks' diversion.

They had been in the right area, posing covertly as just another merchantman while keeping an eye on traffic, messages, and helping discretely move LIC assets around when the orders to divert came through. They had dropped a pair of Mules off at the zenith point five days ago and deployed the sail; deflecting a possible client looking to charter them to travel to Arc-Royal with vague excuses about a contract, and were about to jump out. They had told traffic control they were heading for the Garrison system.

Instead, they made an intrasystem jump.

Odessa IV was a gas giant at the 'edge' of the system; well beyond the massive asteroid belt that made the space between it and the inhabited Odessa III difficult to navigate. All Lyran records indicated that there was no spaceborn infrastructure there; nothing at all to disturb the gas giant, its various moons, and over two-hundred captured asteroid satellites. Every man and woman aboard Dawn Treader hoped those records were accurate.

When the ship completed its intrasystem jump, carefully calculated over the course of the recharge cycle via extensive telescope observations and considerable mathematics, it found itself at Odessa IV's planetary L5 point.

Any of a planet's Lagrange points could be used as jump points; most commonly referred to as 'pirate' points. Of the main Lagrange points, the L1 or L2 points were the most common to use for such - the L1 being between the planet and the system's sun, the L2 being on the far side. These points were the only planetary Lagrange points that would offer any reduction in the time it would take to transit from jump point to planet. The L3 point was the least useful, being the same distance from the system's primary as the planet itself, but at the exact opposite side of its orbit, while the L4 sat along the planet's orbit, but 'ahead' of it in its orbit and roughly as far from the planet as the planet was from the primary. The L5 point was similarly placed, but 'behind' the orbit instead. Not only did they offer no savings in transit time, they were much more dangerous to use than an L1 or L2 point; tending to attract stray asteroids in much greater quantities.

The advantage they had was that they allowed one to gain a very different angle of view to a given world than one would normally get.

The JumpShip secured from jump and trained its array of powerful telescopes on Odessa IV. Specifically, on the planetary L2 point; forever hidden from view from the star's zenith and nadir points, and the inhabited planet itself, by the bulk of the gas giant. From the viewing angle of the L5 point, however, it was quite visible.

And while the distance was considerable, LIC's spy telescopes were very powerful units.

Unfortunately, they did not reveal a boring, uninhabited system of a planet and moons, but instead what appeared to be an orbiting space station and drydock. They could make out active running lights, and the movement of what appeared to be DropShuttles moving from the station and some of the captured asteroids. On its flank, the space station bore an insignia, partially obscured by shadow, but bearing a resemblance to that of ComStar.

It was a very long week as they hot-charged their drives without use of the jumpsail, doing their best to imitate a hole in space, crewmen offering quiet prayers to their deities of choice that they would not be noticed. Some of those crew would normally pray to Blake.

They did not, this time.

---

JumpShip Weyland
York system, Alarion Province, Lyran Commonwealth
September 20, 3018

It was nothing short of astounding how much faster you could move if you had strong knowledge of the shipping schedules and were willing to splash out for swapping droppers between jumpers, or cargo from one dropper to another. We were on our way to link up with the Kell Hounds as they were working their way along the Periphery border of Marik space, swatting pirates as they went.

We were… We. Let me back up and explain.

So, I'd spent a few hours negotiating with Mr. Steel back on Adelaide and we'd come to an agreement. To start, I received a healthy down-payment based on minimal expected returns from the various information I'd sent their way, and a frankly hilarious amount of money for the spare LPPC. It was sitting in a bank account for the moment because it would take An While to set up doing anything useful with it, but unless I was massively forgetting ye olde timeline I'd be able to settle down and take care of that before too much longer, and depending on how things went the pile would get bigger. Possibly a lot bigger if Helm paid off big.

Part of the dickering involved working out what I'd be up to next. Sarolf wanted to stick me in a very pleasant bunker somewhere, where nobody from another star nation could find me and toss my head for secrets the way LIC had, which to be fair I understood. But even if Jump-Chan would have accepted that, I would have gone out of my mind in boredom fairly quickly. He then suggested putting me to work somewhere safe and secure, but I wasn't interested in that either, both because of Jump-Chan's 'don't be boring' clause and because I was not well suited to being an office monkey. He briefly floated putting me to work on something more active like garbage trucking, but while I had a decade of experience with that, well, I had a decade of experience with that and was kind of sick of garbage. In response, I asked if he'd be able to hook me up with a connection to the Kell Hounds.

I did this for a couple reasons. First, even though they're mercs, the Kell Hounds are one of the most consistently good-guy groups in the setting. Second, at this point in history they were under the command of Patrick Kell, who was generally a good guy who deserved a lot better than he got in the canon. I hoped that I'd be able to keep him from suffering the fate he did there - not because I was under the delusion that I could outfight Yorinaga Kurita, but hopefully between my other meddling and being there in person I could make sure the conditions that lead to his OTL fatal duel with the man not happen.

Sarolf hemmed and hawed for a few minutes. After all, Patrick Kell was an independent merc commander and while he might be friends with a few of the higher-ups of LIC he was hardly beholden to them. Further, he was less than keen on me working with mercs who often found themselves in other successor states. But after a bit of discussion, he admitted that Director Johnson was owed a favor from Kell, and could possibly be persuaded to call that in to hook me up… on the condition that I took along a LIC minder for my protection.

(I was reading that protection as including protecting me from getting captured by one of those other successor states, possibly fatally, but I could probably work around that with a little time)

A few priority messages were sent and waited on as we got everything else taken care of, and with the response from Kell indicating that he'd be willing to give me a shot assuming I could pass muster arrived as we got everything loaded onto a dropper and broke for the jump point. The first leg of the trip would be with Bifrost(I actually got to meet young Clovis! Kid was a charmer), and then swapping to another ship, where I'd be meeting my new handler.

BattleTech being BattleTech, she was, of course, a MechWarrior, bringing along a one-Delta Phoenix Hawk. Violetta Mondragon was about my height, but pale where I was swarthy; an open face framed by dark red hair; with bottle-green eyes. We were a bit stilted with each other at first, given the givens of our relationship, but after a week or so we started getting along well enough. I considered it a work in progress.

We were well on our way, now, pony-expressing our way towards Marik space. From the messages we'd gotten, we were planning to meet up with the Hounds in the Campoleone system in another twoish weeks, as they prepared to go kick over a pirate band that had been raiding Marik worlds in the region from Astrokaszy (It sounded like Marik couldn't do it himself because of politics, which suggested that what passed for government on Astrokaszy was giving the pirates some cover. But as the Kell Hounds were nominally independent…)

Still, this was turning out to be a pretty good bit of travel, we were going to be making Campoleone pretty quick by BT standards. 30ish jumps in about a month thanks to the power of scheduling and probably a few connecting jumps arranged by LIC, and then back to work.

---

Quartermaster Corps HQ
Tharkad, Lyran Commonwealth
September 20, 3018

Often overlooked and forgotten, the Quartermaster Corps was in many ways the ignored backbone of the LCAF. Given credit for being important, mind, but often that credit was an afterthought; and if they failed to deliver parts or ammunition, comprehensive damnation would come much faster. It was not a job for everyone; you needed a certain mix of attention to detail, dedication and mild insanity to tackle logistics in the year of our lord 3018.

The group of department heads gathered that afternoon in the Triad were possessed of all of these qualities. The two BattleMech designers, on loan from TharHes and Defiance, hopefully did as well. Director Susan Lehrer looked over her gathered subordinates and gave a small nod of satisfaction. "Ladies and Gentlemen. An opportunity has arisen for us to address the LCAF's perennial shortage of BattleMechs, and we'll be working together to see what we can do with it. It's going to be a slightly unconventional approach, but one that should be relatively straightforward. For some background, a few of the spooks over at LIC have found signs that the Capellans are attempting to utilize factories that can only build parts of BattleMechs but not full units; and find ways to use those parts to build new BattleMechs. This would not be the creation of FrankenMechs as the term is normally used, but rather… an unconventional prototype phase."

She took a moment to activate the projector in the room, bringing up a long list of disused or partially functional production lines and what parts they could make. "It occurs to the Archon's government that if the Capellans can make such a nonstandard process bear fruit, that we, being possessed of the greatest industrial juggernaut in Human space, ought to be able to do far better. And so, today we are going to begin some brainstorming to work out what our options are."

"Welcome to Project REVENANT."

---

Castle Helmfast
Helm, Stewart Province, Free Worlds League
September 29, 3018

Jadis Weiss was not, she liked to point out, a ninja. Ninjas were a relic of the distant past; mythologized by ancient Terra, and in her opinion, not a notion that anyone sane could take seriously. Thus they were venerated within the Draconis Combine.

She was simply an infiltration specialist, which was an entirely different thing, no matter that her duties often overlapped with what the ninja-lovers attributed with the pajama-clad fools. At present, she was making her way over a fortress wall that had seen much better days. Castle Helmfast was a Hegemony-vintage work; and while to be fair it was still standing, it was in rather poor repair. Some of that was inevitable; this was a fallen age and many of the more esoteric or specialized systems built into these old fortresses had secrets lost to time.

Some was simply budget. Marik did not care to spend extensively on keeping Helm secured; instead farming out the garrison contract to a series of small mercenary units, who in turn lacked the funds or expertise to keep the fortress up properly. Jason Cade's Mounted Cavalry was the current unit-in-residence, a short company of light and medium BattleMechs who were more concerned with collecting their pay than actually securing the world.

Jadis was not impressed with their sentries thus far. She had bypassed the outer wall with little effort and no sign of a single guard. They were clearly unconcerned about the possibility of someone attempting to breach their fortress in any kind of subtle way. If she were inclined to be fair to Mariks or mercenaries, she might - might - be willing to admit that any more conventional approach would likely raise the alarm, but Jadis Weiss was not the sort of woman who was inclined to be fair to anyone.

As she picked her way through the fortress grounds; actually having to pay some small attention now as there were a few personnel about; and patches of snow on the ground that would mark her if she were so foolish as to step in one; she considered her current assignment. The notion that the world of Helm might hold some long lost treasure was a common one. Supposedly, there had been a depot here in the age of the Star League, but it was almost certain that the SLDF took it with them when they left. Certainly, when House Kurita arrived during the First Succession War they had been unable to find it, and in a display of House Kurita's well-known, perfectly reasonable and gentle temper, proceeded to nuke virtually every settlement on the planet flat.

Supposedly, LIC had come across some information suggesting that the legendary cache existed, and that they knew how to locate it. Jadis was being sent in pursuit of a piece of that puzzle, a map chip that held a software key. This, she felt, was nonsense and the stuff of childish legends, but hers not to reason why. Perhaps after she found the magic map chip she might find a sword in the stone and pull it out to become First Lord.

She was making her way into the main building of the fortress now, slipping through an upper-floor window. She focused her attentions and concentrated on her surroundings as she slipped into the building. Moving carefully now, she made her way through the halls, slipping in and out of side-rooms and quickly making her way up another flight of stairs. From there, into the room her maps had marked as Cade's main office.

The man himself was there, slumped over his desk and snoring loudly. Quietly, she slipped closer, palming a small bottle from a pouch on her sneaksuit, along with a small square of cotton. Carefully, she closed in and slipped the square under the man's nose. Slowly, the snores faded away as he slipped into a deeper sleep and she gently lifted him up and back to slump bonelessly into his chair, out of her way.

She checked the desktop. On the blotter was a set of physical logbooks; a glance revealed they were the unit's financials. Pulling out her noteputer, she took a quick snapshot on the off chance it might provide useful information later and looked over the rest. One datachip was quickly slipped into her noteputer - logistics and stores data. She copied it and placed it back on the desk where she'd found it.

Then it was into the desk's drawers. A handful of additional chips showed themselves, and were quickly revealed to be a mix of video letters, personnel dossiers, a book collection, and one map chip that was utterly mundane and liberally annotated with notes on Cade's favorite fishing spots. An utter wash, exactly as she'd expected.

Although… looking around the office, she saw one framed picture askew. The rather mundane landscape painting was hinged at one side, and opened out to reveal a safe with digital keypad. A glance back at Cade showed he was still fully asleep. She gave a considering look, then nodded. He was by no stretch of the imagination a particularly clever man. She called up the dossiers and got started.

Half a minute later, and the safe opened with a clik. Cade had predictably used no imagination in his code; using the birthdate of his ex-wife. Inside, there was a small cashbox, an antique leather belt, a laser pistol of considerable vintage and a small gel case that contained another data chip. Frowning, she loaded it into her noteputer which scanned the chip for an extended moment…

And revealed a set of maps, with a further program embedded beneath it. She only noticed it because her noteputer was in full logging mode and noticed that something had queried it while the maps loaded. "Huh," she muttered quietly. She had honestly expected this to be nothing but a wild goose chase. She left the chip in her noteputer, slipping a commercial map chip of Helm into the gel case and slipping it back into the safe, which she carefully closed along with its protective painting.

Jadis carefully exfiltrated, making her way back to the hidden groundcar she'd arrived in and making her way back to her safehouse in the outskirts of Helmdown as the sky began to show the first light of dawn.

---

Ausapolis
Campoleone, Rim Commonality, Free Worlds League
October 2nd, 3018

Ausapolis was an interesting little city; a vast sprawl of shanties and prefabs around a core of old concrete and brick midrises. Like every other burgh I'd visited so far, they were perfectly OK with BattleMechs stomping into town from the spaceport so long as you got your permits. We got a bit of stick from Immigration Control, being Lyran mercs, but a quick call with the Kell Hound's Overlord, the Lugh (loading fresh stores and consumable at one of the paved landing pads at that very port) got a confirmation that we were expected, and would be going to work for them. Being busy with the loading, however, they couldn't see to us, and so we were directed into the sprawl of the city, to a motel where Patrick Kell was riding herd on his mercs as they enjoyed a bit of shore leave before heading out to Astrokaszy.

Violetta and I made our way into town, exchanging friendly waves with several locals and an obvious militia machine. Shortly, we were at the motel, and parked alongside half a dozen other 'Mechs in the Kell Hound's red and black. I picked out Patrick's Thunderbolt, and a Wolverine that might have been Salome Ward's, but I couldn't place pilots to any of the others. We slotted in at the end of the line, next to a Valkyrie and a Trenchbucket. I threw my jacket on over my cooling suit, made sure I had my letter of introduction in a pocket, and schlepped down the ladder. The two of us made our way into the pub attached to the motel.

It was a crowded place, a fair sized bunch of people gathered. Loud, but not disruptive (but it was early in the day, still) I caught snatches of dozens of accents from the gathered mercenaries and locals. Looking around, I spotted Patrick Kell, distinctive with his long face, marked with an oversized nose that looked like it'd been broken a time or three and a scar just above one eyebrow that stretched into his hairline. Next to him was a Joan Jett looking woman who I was fairly sure was Salome Ward.

I walked up, pulling the letter from my pocket. "Lieutenant Colonel Kell? I'm Cassi Sobral, this is Violetta Mondragon, I believe you were expecting us?"

There was a moment's pause as he looked us over, then he smiled and took the letter. "Good to see you." He took the letter, opened it with a fingernail and started reading it over. "We're not really recruiting at the moment, but it's probably not a bad idea to get started again and you come recommended." As he read, Ward looked over his shoulder and did the same, her eyebrows shooting up as she got to something near the end of it. "I do owe Simon a favor or two, but the Kell Hounds have some pretty high standards to maintain…"

"We were told there'd be something of a test. We can throw our 'Mechs into training mode for a skirmish out in the plains or something." A pause and I decided not to resist the urge to grin. "If it's a written test I hope it's open-book; I didn't study."

That got a snort out of Kell and an eyeroll out of Violetta, which I counted as a win. "Sounds like a plan. A little skirmish out in the plains, then a written test when we get back. If you measure up to our standards, you're in." He extended a hand; I shook it. "Come on, daylight's burning." He stood. "O'Cieran, try to keep things down to a dull roar while we're out, hey?" One of the older men, a great barrel-chested bear of a man, nodded. "Ward, McWilliams, these two are Medium 'Mech jockeys, so you two should be a good test for them. Anyone else who wants to watch is free to join us. Oh, and Baker, you too."

A man with blond hair so pale it was almost white gave a dramatic groan. "Come on, boss, let me stay and drink, I promise I'll be good."

"I'm not annoyed enough with O'Cieran to do that to him right now." The barrel-chested man guffawed as half a dozen people stood up and we all decamped. Once outside, everyone split up, Kell and Ward heading for the Thunderbolt and Wolverine respectively, a black bald dude heading for a Marauder, and Baker slouched towards a Jenner. McWilliams (an older gal with shoulder-length red hair and a vaguely Mediterranean complexion) and a younger guy who looked like he'd just walked off a recruitment poster followed us to our end of the parking area.

As Naru-Kami came into clear view, he stopped. "What kind of 'Mech is that?"

"The family FrankenMech."

As I passed him, he kicked back into gear, heading for the Valkyrie, which kicked my brain over as we started climbing up our respective 'Mechs (he favored a cable ladder while I scrambled up the various handholds along the armor) and placed him as probably Dan Allard. McWilliams clambered up into the Trenchbucket and we all fired up. At Kell's direction we made for the spaceport first so the Trebuchet and Wolverine could load up on training ammo instead of the live stuff, whereupon we picked up a gal and her Wasp coming along to watch the show.

I took advantage of the extra time to go into my weapons controls to make sure I had them properly swapped into training mode, which was not something I'd tested yet. We loped out into the plains at a comfortable cruising speed, the Lights fanning out around us. Casual chatter filled up the radio bands as we rolled along, apparently heading for a field of scree left by an old battle east of the city.

The land around the city was mostly grassy plains and rolling hills, all covered in a burnt-orange looking hay that swayed in the breeze and reminded me of western Saskatchewan. Northeast of the city, there were mountains with… something on the lower slopes that was catching sunlight, some sparkles visible even from here, fifty, sixty kilometers away.

Violetta and I exchanged a few tactical ideas; until Kell told us what sort of test this was going to be we could only vaguely plan. Not long after we'd finished that, into a lull in the conversation, Allard called me up. "Oh, Sobral? I know you've said it's a family machine, but can you tell me more about your BattleMech? It looks fascinating."

The lie was becoming practiced by now. "Not much to tell. It's a family project of sorts, one we've picked at over the years. Picked up a piece here, another one there."

I could hear the dubiousness in his voice even through the radio's compression. "A 'Mech of Theseus, then?" Eventually I'd find someone who just accepted my explanation without being a doubting Thomas, but I supposed it was fair that the son of Davion's spymaster wouldn't be that fellow.

"Something like that, yeah."

"You're a suspicious sort, aren't you?" That was McWilliams, if I was tracking everyone's voices properly.

"Comes with the territory when you're prospecting for LosTech. Claim jumpers, pirates, ComStar… All sorts of unsavory types."

"You have an issue with ComStar?"

Wait, shit. Deflect! "I have little trust in cults. Blake was just a man, not a God or a prophet. Besides, science and mysticism shouldn't mix the way they do."

"Speaking of science, what are those guns? My scanners don't know what to make of them."

Well, time for this part of the cover story. "Found those on an asteroid out the back of beyond; a lab that had a disagreement with a meteor, it looked like. They're prototypes; extended range light PPCs."

"That thing weighs, what, 50 tons? And you have three PPCs on it? Bullshit." That was Ward, and to be fair I couldn't blame her.

"Cut-down PPCs, but spiced up by some Star League boffins. The reach of an ER-PPC, the heat generation and power draw of a Large Laser, but only seven-eights the damage of a Large Laser."

"I repeat, bullshit."

"If you want to set your training-settings to treat them like half-damage PPC shots, that's fair. And when we get to fighting something for real, later, I can prove what they can actually do." I kept my tone even. Again, I could not blame them for being suspicious. Clan tech was utter bullshit.

"That sounds workable for now," Kell interrupted. "We're just about there. I think we should keep this simple. Two against two, set up a kilometer apart and then engage at my order. First pair to their simulated CLG loses. We'll see how well you and Mondragon measure up to our standards."

"Sounds fair," I said; overlapping with three other responses. Then in a private sideband, Violetta and I quickly agreed on which of our general plans we'd go with. We neared the nav point Kell had set up, and our two pairs split up, accelerating ahead of the rest of the group who were sticking to the walking speeds of the two heavies. Cresting a bit of a ridge, we kicked it up to full throttle and swung northeast along the ridge while Ward and McWilliams swung southeast. Picking our way through the grass and scree, we opened up the distance between us. When Kell and the others mounted the ridge behind us, we'd opened it out to about seven-hundred meters, and angled further apart.

We'd gotten a touch over a klick apart, neither group about to slow down, when Kell called over the radio, "Begin!"

Immediately, Violetta and I wheeled and charged towards Ward and McWilliams, who did the same to us. To start, I lined up on the Trebuchet while Violetta angled towards the Wolverine. A split second before McWilliams sent her first volley of LRMs lofting my way, I cut loose with all three PPCs aiming center mass, then hit the jump jets, shooting sideways in a low arc while Violetta lofted herself up in a much higher one. I passed below and just behind her as we both lined up on Ward, who had gotten herself slightly ahead of McWilliams. The training missiles scattered themselves where I'd been, pocking the area in bright green goo.

I'd hoped a bait and switch - they knew I was driving a fire support 'Mech, and Violetta an infighter, so obviously I'd be staying distant and squaring off with the missile boat - would throw them off, but by the time Ward closed to autocannon range the two of them had adjusted. Which, given that the Kell Hounds were some of the most elite troops in the Inner Sphere… Well. I should have expected this. Paint rounds crossed my chain-fired LPPC bolts and despite me doing my best to keep bounding around to be as unpredictable as possible, and us being at the long end of her AC/5's range, she caught me in one arm with a frighteningly tight cluster and I only got one of my next set to connect, which she caught on the left arm.

I shifted tacks from closing to a circling fight; and took the shoulder LPPC out of my firing circuit to slow my heat gain. Our two 'Mechs were about equal in speed and agility, and while Ward was closing up the distance, she was only managing it slowly. That was fine with me. Yes, my short-ranged bracket was heavier than hers, but my long-range bracket was much heavier than hers. And it was sinking in that she was better at this than I was.

Which. Again. Kell Hounds. I had half-expected it, but the reality was more alarming than I'd expected.

We circled each other twice; the range closing to about 350 meters; when another chance presented itself - Violetta had been pursuing the Trebuchet, pushing it to fall back rather than let her Phoenix Hawk get inside it's missile's range. I'd been keeping half an eye on their fight on my tactical display (and Violetta's status on the Lance display as LRMs chipped at her armor) and saw that the Trenchbucket's tactical withdraw had put itself in an unfortunate position. I gave my jumpjets a big burst; spinning a hundred-seventy degrees and lashed out with all three long guns; two of them catching it in the right torso just behind the arm. McWilliams immediately veered away from me, but that meant she wasn't making as efficient a run away from Violetta, who stopped ducking and weaving and roared straight in; the Phoenix Hawk's powerful legs throwing up rooster tails as she unleashed all three of her lasers. Only two connected, but that was enough damage quickly enough that the Trebuchet's computer decided to throw a gyro glitch at her to simulate damage. McWilliams wrongfooted herself on the loose scree and toppled. Confident that Violetta could handle the rest of that, I turned my attention back to Ward.

Ward had been doing the exact same thing as Violetta, and I brought her back in sight just in time to catch a simulated laser blast and a round of paint missiles. One of the SRMs slapped against my cockpit, spattering it with neon pink goo even as the autocannon stitched green up my leg. I was running hot enough that my myomers weren't operating at full efficiency, so I wound up a bit sluggish as I tried to duck and weave out of the way. We made a close pass, and I suspected if we weren't in a training spar she would have cut closer and slugged me. A short burst of my jets let me whirl to face her as fast as she got herself spun on me, and I settled my crosshairs on her center-of-mass and hit the big shiny red candylike Alpha Strike button; giving her everything at about sixty meters just before her missiles and medium laser could cycle.

Heat flooded my cockpit; sweat instantly pouring from me even with the help of the cooling suit as I shuffled back on my now very unhappy myomers, slapping the shutdown override. But the cockpit MFDs were confident that I'd made the high-risk/high-reward move work out; registering most of that alpha having connected with the already-damaged center torso and scoring a gyro hit.

Ward apparently did not care that I'd just about cored her; smoothly lining up and giving me an alpha of her own. I rode that out well enough, continuing to shuffle back as I let my heat sinks do their job even as my computer informed me that the last volley would have penetrated my armor and knocked out my right arm gun, turning it off. A long few seconds, and I gave her the three medium lasers again. She was able to neatly catch it on the left arm, though according to the training system it would have finished off the arm and started tearing into the side torso.

Then she hopped back from me on her jumpjets, landing neatly as though she hadn't taken any gyro damage at all and gave me another burst of paint shells from the autocannon. One of my heat sinks took itself out of the cooling loop and I limited myself to just the arm LPPC, missing narrowly. A bright-blue laser burst came in from Violetta, standing over the Trebuchet, one foot on a boulder next to one of the missile boat's shoulders, and that connected with the right arm, which threw off Ward's next volley at me. My heat was finally back under control, so I gave her both my remaining long guns, catching the center torso again. My computer didn't think I'd gotten her gyro again, but Ward's seemed to, and she started to go over; shifting her feet and her (supposedly broken) left arm to catch herself. That turned it from a fall to a sort of a slump down to one knee, and then Kell's voice came in over the radio.

"Okay, I think that settles that. Good match, all four of you. Mondragon, you need a little work on your gunnery, but your fundamentals are solid enough. Sobral… well done keeping track of the full fight and supporting your lancemate, but you need to be more mindful of your minimum ranges. You shouldn't have alpha-struck Salome in that close pass."

I blinked slowly, then gave what would have been a facepalm if I hadn't been wearing a neurohelmet. "So, we established that my long-guns are bullshit? I don't have an inside range."

"What."

I turned and faced a large boulder sticking up, about fifty meters from me. "Permission to unsafe my guns and demonstrate?"

"...Granted."

I disabled training mode (noting that I'd been knocked down to state 5 on my CLG rating, I'd been just about out of that one) and raised my right arm. One moment to let the LPPC charge up to full and I let fly. The boulder promptly detonated; the energy transfer of the particle cannon flashboiling portions of it and reducing it to flying shrapnel. I let the echoes of that blast fade, then turned back towards Ward, who'd gotten her 'Mech back upright. "When I hit you with that alpha, my tactical computer showed me as having torn open your torso and getting a gyro hit. Did yours not register that?"

"It didn't count your PPCs because you were inside… because the computer and I thought you were inside the minimum range." A beat. "Those guns are bullshit and I want some."

"I am assured that the reverse-engineering work will be started as soon as possible, somewhere quite secure. Hopefully in a few years."

"Don't you have spares?"

"Ask again around your birthday."

"Ladies." Kell sounded tolerably amused. "You can sort that out later. For now… Sobral, Mondragon; welcome to the Kell Hounds."

 

[DrunkenGrognard]

Author's notes: once again, thanks to SirJalinth for beta'ing this. And @DevilfishR606 yep! JumpChan is many things but subtle is not one of them.

Chapter 5

Nagayan Mountains
Helm, Stewart Province, Free Worlds League
October 10, 3018

LIC's mystery source had taken pre and post 1SW maps of Helm and highlit a number of forest ranger stations along the lower slopes of Nagayan. The first one they checked did not have a working computer console in it. Nor did the second, forth, or sixth through tenth. The third and fifth did have working consoles, but they did nothing unusual when the chip was inserted (after carefully checking that the chip reader would not cause a dangerous short or otherwise damage things)

They were not, however, entirely reliant on their mystery source's maps. They acquired a modern forestry map, and had started systematically checking every marked ranger station on it. A few days later, they were checking out ranger station number twenty-three. This station was just downslope of a sheer cliff, and if Jadis was inclined to appreciate natural beauty she might admit that this area was quite lovely.

She was counting time, waiting for the boffins to write off this site like the others. Her cynicism had been badly shaken by finding the map chip in the first place, and part of her was glad they hadn't found the lock that the key went with. It was restoring her lack of faith in fairy tales.

So when there was a deep, low thud noise, so deep it was felt more than heard from up the hill, she felt the cynical bedrock of her world shudder. Turning, she saw the sheer cliff upslope of them develop a seam, which in turn grew wider. As the rest of the group poured out of the ranger station or their hovervan, she felt herself stand, mouth agape. The group walked upslope, whoops of triumph and joy giving way to a reverent silence as they gathered up, crossing the threshold together.

Within, there was an antechamber, with a BattleMech-scaled tunnel leading deeper and what appeared to be an office built into one wall. One of the boffins lurched to a halt, and pointed to the top of the tunnel. "What…" Jadis followed his pointing finger, looking up to the sign there.

Star League Field Library Facility, Helm, DE890-2699

"...Field Library… Wait…" The boffin lurched back into motion; not into the tunnel but into the side office. Once inside, he shouted back to the rest. "Chip! Get that chip! We need it here again!" Another boffin raced after him, brandishing the gel case, and the rest of the party poured into the small office as the mainframe computer within booted up. The group seemed to hold its collective breath as the chip was reverently seated in its reader.

There was a long moment of pregnant silence as they waited for the chip to load. And then the mainframe's display switched from a Cameron star to a title screen; Star League Field Library DE890-2699. After a moment, another line: 'The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty'. James Madison. And the rest of the screen filled in with a list of topics. A very long, very comprehensive list.

"...A Prometheus database," someone breathed. For a long moment they just watched as the boffin at the keyboard started scrolling through the topics.

Then the senior boffin shook himself out of his torpor and started wrangling them. "Right. Fubuki, start making a copy of this. Once we have it backed up, we can start browsing it. Delmar, Varian, Scrubb, get the hovervan and take a look down that tunnel, there's supposed to be a regiment or so of materiel down here. Everyone else, get started securing the site."

Jadis just nodded and started searching around. Resisting the urge to look for a sword sticking out of the stone.

---

High orbit, Astrokaszy
Astrokaszy system, near Periphery
October 19th, 3018

The Lugh, being an Overlord class dropper, had more than enough space to accommodate two extra 'Mechs, even with several bays having been converted in a sort of ad-hoc way to handle the infantry and their APCs. The Aerofighters were split between the Lugh and the Nuada Argetlan, their Union (stolen from the Dracs a few years back, and mostly hauling cargo along with the fighters). It was still crowded, mind; big-for-a-ship still wasn't exactly big by normal standards, and there was a pretty hefty crew complement aboard as well as MechWarriors and troopers.

Even though it was only one jump to Astrokaszy, it was still damn near twenty days worth of trip - it and Campoleone were very, very far from their primaries, and even if Marik hadn't specified no using pirate points (from what Kell said, there was some Politics going on to try and cut the pirates off from whoever was supporting them groundside, so the extra time it took for us to fly in was helpful) it would have been debatable if it was worth it anyway. The extra time had given Violetta and I time to shake down and settle in with our new teammates - I'd been rolled into Kell's Command Lance so he could keep an eye on me, while Violetta had been added to the Scout Lance. Supposedly, Kell was going to look into recruiting some more in the nearish future, which would adjust that, but for now we were rocking Stars. Though I had not commented as much.

We'd been doing a lot of simulator training; Lugh had half a dozen pods so bigger action was possible, and most of it had been actual training and not faffing about. I'd initially just rolled with a simulated Crab again, mostly because of laziness, but between Kell and Ward wanting my training to be more accurate; and my own reaction to getting fucking crushed by some of the Kell Hounds when not using my LosTech because holy shit these people were good; I'd knuckled down and worked out how to add Naru-Kami to the sim database; using a Crab as a base because it honestly was a reasonable aproximation once I programmed in the guns(with much help from some of the techies).

It did amuse me a bit that it took less than three hours for a whole bunch of others to start running their own simulated Naru-Kamis 'just in case' and later went back to add in a regular LPPC to the weapons database, because I was fairly sure whoever was doing the reverse engineering was going to wind up with something with that performance well before they cracked the clan-spec version. "Theoretical" variants sporting both types, along with more LosTech mechs in general, started showing up in the not-proper-training bouts a lot more often, I was told, as people fiddled with them.

We'd had a good long shakedown on the trip over, helping with a bit of general maintenance on the ship going on - I was enough of a mechanic to be at least moderately more skilled than a tool-passer - and getting my and Violetta's 'Mechs painted up in Kell Hound red and black. It helped keep me out of trouble. Now, as we were decelerating into orbit, Kell was calling us together for a final brief.

The main briefing room on Lugh was a good sized one; with plenty of seating for the 'Mech pilots, the squad leaders, most of the infantry, and the aerospace pilots based on the Overlord; with the rest watching via cameras; the other squad leaders visible on a couple wall screens. The chairs were a mismatched lot (there seemed to be three main batches and about a dozen random individual chairs) and there was a small variable-gravity galley nook in one corner stocked with drinks and snacks.

Once we'd gathered and mostly settled down, Kell got started. "Okay people, we just got our update from the man on the ground. Marik's people have been talking with the city-states to try and get them to drop their support for the various raiding groups. Their impression is that nobody's willing to back up words with action, so we're supposed to go in and make an example of one of the raiding bands."

"We going to follow up by hitting the city-states?" asked Seamus Fitzpatrick, the guy who ran the aerofighter company and who almost certainly knew the answer, but was asking so the answer would get out there.

"Not this time. They're hoping that if we demonstrate that even the biggest of the raiding groups isn't safe, some of the Caliphs will reconsider and decide to act like good neighbors rather than take the risk of sheltering raiders any longer. That said, we're probably not going all that far for the next few months, until our contract with Marik runs its course as a little reminder."

He let that statement hang in the air for a few moments, then tapped a button and brought up a map on the main screen. "Now then; here's the situation on the ground according to our intel…"

---

Lugh was dropping hard through the atmosphere, escorted by our Aerofighters. We were aiming to land about thirty klicks from the target area, where the pirates had basically taken over an old oasis/crossroad town and turned it into their headquarters, and walk the rest of the way. We weren't dropping closer for two reasons; a mix of making sure they didn't have any nasty surprises in store for us, and a bit of drama; letting everyone watch us roll on them like a tide of doom.

This particular bunch of pirates was only known to have a single wing-pair of Aerofighters - both Thrushes - but in their own stomping grounds here, we could expect them to be backed up by a handful of conventional fighters. They probably had equal, or possibly even superior, numbers on our Aerospace group; but they were clearly not willing to try and throw hands with a pair of escorted droppers. We'd see how much trouble they'd be when we were on the march, though Seamus hadn't seemed terribly concerned so I was trying not to worry either.

Quickly enough, the Overlord touched down, and we rolled out and formed up; the three Lances loping forward across the scrubby, rolling landscape as we headed for the pirate base. The command element, including me, were in the center; moving in a loose V-formation. Ward's assault lance was to our right, not all that far behind as they ate up the ground; while the scout lance under Allard was out to the left and ahead a bit further from the rest of us. The infantry were riding along in their hover APCs well to the rear, and the Aerofighters were covering scout duties, ranging well ahead.

This band of Pirates were a pretty sizeable bunch; they had a company of 'Mechs and another of vehicles along with plenty of ground-pounders and their fighters… but most of those 'Mechs were under 50 tons, and most of the vehicles were Quickscam specials or technicals. And unless they were much more skilled than the other pirates I'd dealt with, we'd have a good chance in this fight.

"Contact - I'm seeing their vanguard. Seeing a lance of Bugmechs in the lead with a lance of Mediums behind them. Clint, Trebuchet, Vindicator, Hunchback… And it looks like they've got their aero up, so we'll be occupied for a few minutes dealing with them." Fitzpatrick was doing a proper Confident Fighter Jock Drawl. It was kind of comforting.

Kell sounded about as unconcerned as Fitzpatrick. "Keep us updated. Allard, sweep forward and get eyes-on; everyone else, throttle up, let's hit them hard and fast."

I throttled up to sixty, holding formation with Cat and Beth's Marauders. Ward's bunch sped up to the same, and drifted a bit further out; preparing to flank anyone who went hard in on us. The scouts pulled ahead, spacing out a bit wider and pushing up to ninety or so. Another minute or so and the foe came into sight, a great plume of dust rising up where they were running at us. Allard came onto the comms. "Enemy in sight; their scouts are falling back to the main group. I see the ones Seamus called out, and their heavy element; another Hunchback, Enforcer, Ostsol, and Quickdraw." A pause. "Lots of hovers behind, looks like those Technicals."

"Fall back to the rest of us, Dan. All right, everyone, prepare to engage by Lances." A boop as he swapped from the Battalion frequency to the Lance one, then, "We'll take one of the Hunchbacks first, then the other if Ward doesn't beat us to it, then the Ostsol. Engage as soon as you have the range."

I could start picking out individual 'Mechs in the oncoming bunch; settled my crosshairs over one of the Hunchies. About a kilometer out, and my HUD started to update; plopping letters over each contact as Kell marked them; I'd aimed at the one he marked Bravo and shifted to Alpha just before we crossed into range. My LPPCs thundered just after Kell and Anne Finn in the Orion cut loose with their LRMs; the charged particles winning the race, though only one connected, the other two whipping past wide. I corrected my aim, trying to settle my crosshairs center-mass as the pirate started going evasive and missiles began to pepper it, and my second volley reached out just as Cat and Beth opened up with the autocannon and PPCs of their Marauders.

The Hunchie's heat spiked and it began to break away, which was good enough for our purposes for now. I shifted to the other one; which was getting savaged by the missiles and autocannons of the 'Mechs in Ward's Lance. My heat was creeping up a bit as I switched to chain-fire and started ducking and weaving myself - the pirate missile boats were starting to sound us out in return now - and only two shots in got to see the second Hunchback go up like a roman candle as someone's LRMs found its ammo stores.

I shifted to the Ostsol just after it had gotten into range. Lucky me, it was going for Cat's Marauder and not me, which was a very pleasant surprise. I kept bobbing and weaving anyway, because we were at the point where everybody was going to be in range of everybody else and surely someone would decide that I looked shiny enough to shoot. I kept mobile, powering along and raining down chain-fire. Everyone trying to make themselves harder targets let the Ostsol survive a lot more of our attentions than either of the Hunchies did. He went down kicking; having torn up a bunch of Cat's armor before he finally dropped.

Before Kell could call another target, I spotted one of the pirate's scout mechs; a Cicada who was trying to de-ass the scrum that the scouts were embroiled in (Between the superior skill of Dan Allard and having Violetta's Phoenix Hawk our scouts had a delightfully unfair advantage) and appeared to be counting on his speed and relatively low-threat to keep him from drawing fire on the way out.

Unfortunately for him, I loved few things more than shooting at enemies who weren't paying attention; especially the sort of enemies who get annoying if you give them a chance to loop back around. I took a long moment to lay in my aim and then started pumping out chain-fire again. The first shot missed wide, but numbers two and three connected; tearing off the right-hand wingy bit that passed for a Cicada's arm and digging into the side-torso from behind. He started paying attention to me as he started dodging again, causing my next couple shots to miss, but I put another one in his right-torso rear again which caused the back of the 'Mech to spew a shower of sparks and smoke, before a flight of LRMs crashed over the breached armor and apparently made its way into the gyro.

"Thanks, Hopscotch," said Allard, the cheeky killstealer, and he turned back to the other bugmechs.

Kell wasn't calling priority targets anymore; this had devolved into a scrum. I was almost lined up on the Enforcer when a wave of LRMs crested over me, turning my stride into a hop-skip-lurch to avoid falling over. Turning, I saw that the slower portion of the pirate's combat vehicle company had pulled into range. Four of Quickscam's Finest(?); two Scorpions, an LRM Carrier, and a mobile portal to the Elemental Plane of Short Ranged Missiles.

The SRM carrier needed to die, but it wouldn't be in range for another fifteen, twenty seconds, especially as I cut away from them, bounding on my jumpjets to make myself less predictable and spoil the aim of the Scorpions. I settled my crosshairs on the boxy launcher of the LRM carrier, then cut loose with all three long guns at once. All three slapped into the front glacis of the fire support tank, and it immediately caught fire. I forced myself to keep running and not focus, though I did spot a hatch pop open as I turned away. A burst of autocannon fire rang against my arm as one of the Scorpions found my range, but I ignored it for the moment because, again, the SRM carrier needed to die before it got into range.

Another triple tap, two into the bow and one missing high, then showing their oats, the SRM carrier's crew let fly.

Thankfully, they opened up at the far end of SRM range and most of the tidal wave of missiles failed to lock and just sort of scattered across the area. I still took a few dings, and between that and one of the damned Scorpions connecting again, I was starting to look a little thin on one side. I turned back towards the SRM carrier. It slewed to a halt as the crew decided they didn't want to play anymore. Two jet-assisted bounds forward as SRM carrier jockeys bailed out, and I started running down the tanks, who were taking advantage of their range and their turrets as they de-assed the operational area while laying down their own supporting fire.

It helped them that some of the hovers were swirling around flinging missiles indiscriminately at various Kell Hounds. I tracked one of the Scorpions, then slashed open the skirts of one of the hovers with my lasers. It thomped to the ground for a moment, then rose again in a great whoof of air and blowing sand and started running away again, slower and wobblier, but no-longer trying to shoot at anyone. I let my heat drop for a moment as I looked around, seeing how things were going for everyone else.

Most of the pirates were down now; and now that I had attention to spare I listened to the battalion radio chatter. It sounded like Seamus and co had manhandled the enemy aero and were keeping an eye on the various runners. Groundside, our guys were more or less ok; a lot of damage but every 'mech was still on their own two feet. Kell was calling for the support guys to come up and police up the salvage. Once they were in motion, with a fair chunk of the infantry staying back to cover them when they got to the battle site, Kell got the rest of us moving again for the pirate base.

We redressed our lines, the least-damaged of the company into the fore while everyone else dropped back a bit. Again at an easy lope, we made our way to the pirate's base. If not for the pair of dropships sitting at one end of it, the place looked like it had been lifted straight out of a spaghetti western, to the point where Ecstacy of Gold started running through the back of my head.

Kell and someone who called himself the boss pirate had a brief conversation over open channels. Summarized, it went roughly:

"You wanna surrender?"

"Go away."

"How you gonna make us?"

"...what kind of terms are we talking about?"

After that, it was a couple hours of us standing around looking pretty as we waited for a guy from the FWL embassy to roll up and finalize things with the surrender, singling out a few particular prisoners with bounties, and join Kell in an increasingly complex radio call with the various Caliphs.

Ward was handling tactical command while Kell was busy, and made sure to rotate us a bit; some of the 'Mechs with hands headed back out into the scrublands to help the support guys package up the salvage while those of us without mostly held a perimeter. As night fell, we shifted gears again, now getting our portion of the salvage loaded (as the employer, the FWLM had priority, though I was told we got enough dead mech parts to make good repairs on our own damaged metal, while the more-intact machines just went to Marik). In point of fact, we loaded a bunch of our share onto our share - the two droppers on site were a Union and a Condor, and as part of Marik getting the mostly-intact iron, we were getting the Condor. I got out of the 'Mech and started hauling boxes.

Whatever the story of this dropper - named Shaquille Siddique - it had definitely lived a long and interesting life. At some point, it had been converted from a military dropper to a civilian people-carrier and the people doing the conversion work had redecorated everything with old-timey wood trim; and turned the onboard galley into an old-timey pub complete with a hand-painted sign declaring it the Anchor's Tankard; which mostly stuck around when it got turned back into an infantry hauler later on. The result was an interesting looking little mashup; like someone had converted an English narrowboat into a barracks. I had no idea what Kell's plan was for this thing long-term; if he planned to keep it as a dedicated carrier for the Hound's infantry or just sell it on; but it was going to be interesting to have around in the meantime.

We took two days getting everything squared away and got a good start on squaring away all the damage our 'Mechs suffered along the way. Then we loaded everyone back up and started the schlep back out to the Jump Point; we were going to take position in Gatchina for now, while Marik decided what fire we needed to put out next.

All in all, a pretty good first deployment alongside the Kell Hounds!

---

Nagayan Mountains
Helm, Stewart Province, Free Worlds League
October 15, 3018

The problem of the Helm Cache was not its self-destruct system, nor its location, nor the field library, nor any of the locals. The self-destruct system (which appeared to be designed to collapse the entire complex) had been disabled late in the team's first day within the complex, over the course of three very stressful hours as an LCAF demolitions expert painstakingly worked around the various antitamper devices.

The Field Library core took several hours to copy due to its vast size, but getting each copy started took only minutes and it could be left alone while it worked. The format the core was set up in was no longer common; and converting the database into a format that more modern computers could read made it somewhat larger, but they still had blank cores large enough to hold them, and were now up to eight copies in the newer format, with a ninth and final under way (the larger size meant that several of their gathered blanks were not large enough to hold a full copy).

The location was… less than convenient, both in the abstract of this cache being several jumps into Marik space and not conveniently near, for example, Tharkad or Hesperus; and the main entrance in the mountains was not a suitable landing site for cargo droppers; but there was a "back door" that emptied out in the plains near the ruins of Freeport, and that area had room to spare.

The locals, so far as the field team still in Helmdown could tell, were completely ignorant of their presence. Helm was a backwater, and so insignificant in Marik's estimation that there was no recharge station, no orbital traffic control satellites, not even a groundside skywatch station. Helm's planetary L2 point was a hair over a million kilometers from the planet; with some care for the timing their flotilla of transport jumpships had been able to jump into it at a time when none of the planet's settlements had the L2 point in their line of sight. Without their running lights on or jumpsails deployed (and with the L2 point permanently in the planet's shadow, the sails would be of little use anyway) they were effectively invisible. Getting the cargo droppers groundside without being noticed had also been an exercise in timing, which appeared to have worked.

No, the problem of the Helm Cache was its sheer size.

Their source had been unspecific as to how large the cache was, apparently claiming to genuinely not know. Their estimate of "one to two regiments of hardware plus support and parts" was intended to be conservative. LIC had known this when they organized the expedition; but had been optimistic while assembling the spacelift. Granted, they'd had to do it within the limits of what they had available, and able to move into position quickly (as the Powers That Be suspected that once it was realized that LIC had a line on things, access to sites like this would become much more difficult). All that being said, they were able to put together a considerable amount of hauling power - Two Invader-class JumpShips and four Merchants; carrying between them one Mammoth, eleven Mules and a pair of Union-CVs to provide Aerospace cover. This had been considered more than enough hauling capacity for anything they were likely to find.

This vast array of spacelift was thoroughly inadequate for what they'd actually found.

Four hundred and sixty two BattleMechs; one hundred twenty seven of them Royals or LosTech heavy. Six hundred and twenty tanks; a hundred and sixty two of them Royals. One hundred and sixty five AeroSpace Fighters; fifty five of them Royals. Several hundred assorted support vehicles. Infantry kit to outfit roughly ten thousand troops. One hundred and ninety-five thousand tons of assorted spares. Roughly fifty thousand tons of ammunition. And as a particularly unpleasant cherry on top, several thousand thermonuclear weapons.

The triage had begun before the dropships had grounded and it was still going on as the loading began. Obviously, every SLDF Royal unit, Mech, Tank, or Aero, was coming with them. Additionally, every non-Royal Assault-weight unit, and any non-Royal that made use of considerable amounts of LosTech. Some of the more remarkable support units - such as the quartet of SLDF Mobile Headquarters units. Spares and components that were themselves LosTech. Even some of the ammunition was LosTech. They could not come near to bringing it all.

The question of course was what to leave behind. Leaving any of the 'Mechs was hard, but for all their vintage most were designs still in service or production. Some of the Heavies were brought along with the Assaults, but at that point they were cutting into their ability to bring spares and munitions for the Royal units. The memory core meant that, eventually, they would be able to build more of these components, but there was no way to know how long that would take, and no desire to risk it.

They were not tempted, at least, to take the nukes. Steiner maintained an arsenal of such weapons adequate to its needs, and could build more if, for whatever reason, it became desirable. Those would be left for a follow-up convoy at some point in the future to deny them to Marik more than because they'd be at all useful.

They'd been loading frantically for five days; and would probably be another three getting everything loaded up and launched. They'd be buttoning up the cache behind them and hopefully it would still be waiting for them when the follow-up team arrived. Failing that, the plan was to re-arm the self-destruct just in case; though a few members of the group were less than sanguine about that. They were not entirely sure just how much damage the self-destruct would do to the surrounding area; and while they weren't particularly close to any of the remaining settlements, a few were less than thrilled with the concept of what it might do.

Still, the cache had avoided being found for centuries; surely it would last a few more weeks.

Nagayan Mountains
Helm, Stewart Province, Free Worlds League
October 16, 3018

Michelle "Mike" Lioria was no stranger to the Nagayan Mountains. She'd grown up on Helm; making a modest living on the family farmstead; hiking around these mountains for fun for years. She'd been enjoying one last hike of the season for the last few days; just herself, her dog, and a survival kit enjoying the brisk mountain air. She was about at the halfway point of the trip; planning to settle into her favorite camping spot near the top of the mountain; one with an astounding view past Freeport and out to sea; in a few more hours of hiking time. But then she'd come over a lower crest and spotted something below. A scramble to find a good viewpoint, and she had a clear view down to the foothills.

Where a dozen dropships sat looking like nothing so much as steel mushrooms.

Mike was a farmer; she did not know enough to identify these dropships by sight. But she had an old pair of electrobinoculars, a well-loved family heirloom that she mostly used for birdwatching. Right now? She was going to make use of the built-in camera function of those electrobinocs. She settled into a crouch at the edge of the rise; gave her dog a scritch to apologize that the hike had to pause for a moment; and started to take in the sight of these stranger's dropships.

She tried to get pictures of all of them; they weren't great - it was a considerable distance and her electrobinocs were meant for viewing nature, not military use - but they would hopefully be enough for someone who knew about this stuff to make use of. Then she turned around and started backtracking her hiking trail. It would probably take a day or so to get to a part of the mountains where her communicator would have enough of a signal to call and alert someone.

 

[DrunkenGrognard]

Thanks again to SirJalinth for beta reading this

Chapter 6

Hilton Head
South Carolina, Terra, Sol System
October 22, 3018

Julian Tiepolo felt a migraine coming on, digging its way through the simple painkillers he'd taken earlier that morning. He had been woken a bare two hours after going to sleep the night before by an emergency alert, and read the initial report three times since. He'd sent a set of alert messages of his own right after the first read-through, several hours ago, and now it was time to address the issue.

The fact that he was reacting to his own ruined sleep by ruining the sleep of at least one other member of the First Circuit was not in any way a bonus, though there was a small, petty part of him that appreciated that his misery would have company.

On the one hand, doing this in the main First Circuit chamber felt vaguely absurd in the moment - the only other member of the First Circuit even on Terra at the moment was Precentor ROM, Tojo Jaralth - but there were very much times when it behooved a man to cling to the trappings of a post, and this very much felt like one of them. This was, despite the hour, a moment of great import, and it deserved, perhaps even required, as much weight and gravitas as he could lend it. The full dress robes would also help conceal just how exhausted he looked as well.

He and Precentor ROM exchanged nods as they took up their usual positions. A glance at the technician in the corner, who gave a nod; everything was ready; Tiepolo looked away from the man, ignoring him as he turned his attentions to the more important matters at hand. As the seconds ticked down to the hour, there was a faint hmmmm as five holoprojectors built into the floors powered on. Shortly, he found himself joined virtually by Pedrigor Aliz, Villius Tej, Huthrin Vandel, Ulthan Everson, and Charles Osterraker. Precentors Atreus, Sian, New Avalon, Tharkad, and Dieron.

Vandel looked as tired as he felt - it was roughly one in the morning on New Avalon - but he was the first to speak. "Primus. I know it's nearly as early for you as it is for me, so I can only assume this is urgent. What's happened?"

"The SLDF Cache on Helm has been found." He paused for a few seconds as the slightly transmission lagged reactions came through. "I may have called this meeting, but Precentor Atreus has the details. Pedrigor, if you please?"

Pedrigor Aliz' expression was tight. Clearly, he understood how unfortunate this turn of events was. "Thank you Primus. Two days ago, the Landholder on the planet Helm received an alert of a quiet objective raid taking place. He scrambled his force to intercept; making a sub-orbital hop towards the plains near Freeport. They were intercepted in turn, by aerofighters deployed from orbit. He was forced to avoid a direct engagement, but made orbit and observed. I've included the relevant imagery he gathered, it should be attachment number two on the report to each of you. To summarize, the cache was located and looted. A dozen cargo dropships were in this convoy; hauled by six jumpships. They also brought two Union CVs for their aerospace cover. My analysts tell me that the cargo ships were all lifting at 90% or more of their maximum loads."

Osterraker broke in. "How did they get that much hauling power into position long enough to load that many ships in the first place?"

"Helm has no skywatch satellites, and the raiders jumped into the L2 Pirate Point. For Helm, that's more than a million kilometers from the planet. After that, it was a simple exercise in timing."

"Do we know what they found in the cache? Or precisely where it was?"

"After observing the raiders jumping out, Cade landed his ships in the area they had been loading in. While the cache had been re-sealed, there were enough tracks and other signs left behind to find the door. An alert was sent to Atreus, and the landholder and his unit forced the door. The reports we have intercepted indicate a considerable quantity of military hardware remained in the cache - approximately three hundred BattleMechs, four hundred tanks, one-hundred Aerospace fighters, and considerable quantities of spare parts."

"That would be enough forces to alter the balance of power in the short term." Villius Tej looked very concerned.

"Yes, though the most distressing thing they found…" He took a moment for a bracing breath; then, "When they found the command center of the facility it was identified not as a depot, but as a Star League Field Library."

There was a near hiss of silence as that statement, and its implications, settled across the listeners.

"The good news," interjected Tiepolo, "Is that by all reports, Cade and his people did not find the actual field library - there was a computer that likely used to hold it, but no actual memory core."

"So the raiders took it."

"Yes. And so it behoves us to learn who those raiders are as quickly as possible."

"It was almost certainly the Lyrans," said Everson. "Two months ago, LIC captured a person-of-interest; a LosTech prospector who crossed ROM's desk. And immediately thereafter, someone discovers the lost cache of Helm? It cannot be a coincidence."

Tojo Jarlath nodded. "Agreed. I have my analysts attempting to determine what was taken and where it is going."

Tiepolo took charge of the conversation again. "For now, I want you all to monitor the situation. Our analysts are attempting to confirm the identities of the raiders; should it indeed be the Lyrans we may need to encourage someone to act precipitously."

"There are a number of internal factions within the Lyran Commonwealth who could be encouraged to more… vigorous opposition to Archon Stiener's regime. Should I prepare to arrange some… fortuitous discoveries for them?" Everson sounded frustrated but not overwhelmed by it.

"Prepare, yes, and gather information. It would be premature to take action just yet, but… It should cost us nothing to be prepared. Please coordinate your efforts with Precentor ROM." In his place, he saw Jarlath nod. "As soon as further information becomes available, we shall update you; and the rest of you should do the same for us. This has the potential to be very challenging, but we should be able to limit any damages this does."

He tuned out the Precentors as they signed off. He had far, far too many things to deal with on any given day and this was simply adding more to the pile. The Explorer Corps would have to be tasked to help track down wherever this cache wound up, and the fleet might need to be tasked with… cleansing it.

For the sake of peace, he would do what needed to be done.

A LosTech prospector, selling out to Stiener… a grave robber in all but name; unearthing things best left buried for their own enrichment. He hoped to Blake that the short-sighted, greedy little bastard was suffering right now. Surely, they would when the might of ComStar caught up to them.

---

Voltos Crossroads Village
Astrokaszy, near Periphery
October 22nd, 3018

The Kell Hounds were getting ready to lift off - we'd be heading for space in a couple hours - but there was some important business to take care of first. See, the Shaquille Siddique's onboard pub had a pretty solid stock of alcohol in it, and due to FWL import laws, if we brought it with us, all of that booze would count as imports and thus would be subject to tax.

Now, it was a ten day flight from Astrokaszy to the jump point, and given that most of the Hound's infantry was going to be flying back on the Condor rather than their usual berths on the Overlord, this was something in the way of a self-solving problem. We could simply leave them to it, and the ground pounders would see to it that the Anchor's Tankard would be completely dry by the time we jumped back into FWL space. They were all too eager to put their livers on the line in the name of duty for the cause.

The rest of the Kell Hounds considered this to be decidedly unfair - far too great a burden to place upon the dogfaces, who already suffered disproportionately on the battlefields of the 31st century, and thus damn near everyone not on duty were taking turns to pass through the little pub before we lifted to get as sloshed as possible to help them.

Patrick Kell, the jackass, had decided this was absolutely fine so long as enough of the ship crews were sober enough to make the liftoff happen on schedule. He'd made a brief appearance earlier at the pub yesterday, polishing off a single drink before excusing himself for a chat with the newly-hired captain of the ship; a local woman named Heidi Kulkarni who'd appeared along with a few others brandishing shiphandling certifications and looking for work about half an hour after Marik agreed to sign the ship over to us. So this planet's grapevine seemed to be working just fine.

Kell figured that anyone who decided to party too hard before liftoff would be a self-punishing problem; everyone could drink and the hangovers would sort it out. He'd not been entirely without mercy, asking some of the lighter drinkers among the lot of us to try and keep things from getting too out of hand, and as one of the resident teetotalers I got elected to try and keep things down to a dull roar.

If I didn't agree this was something that needed to be done, I'd be a tad pissed at him. As it was, I was less than amused.

At least the bartender here knew how to make a Shirley Temple, so I had something other than water to drink between moments of wrangling drunken idiots. I'd asked for a Roy Rodgers first, but the local cola was… weird. It tasted like a mix of bad grocery store brand cola, root beer, and Dr. Pepper and somehow managed to simultaneously be too bitter and too sweet for my tastes, and the grenadine didn't help it any. The guys who wanted a little coke in their rum seemed to find it fine, though, and power to 'em.

And I reminded myself that keeping these idiots from getting into too much trouble was important, especially in this case; as I was trying to pull a techie who was very drunk and still had her tools on her person, out of one of the access panels. I didn't know what was back there and what her tinkering was likely to knock out of whack, but frankly I didn't care; I was going to stop this tiny redhead from fucking up the bar and/or dropper's systems.

She was protesting as I pried her out of her hole, literally, by one leg. The other was kicking at me ineffectually but vigorously, and her rambling rant at me spoiling her fun had started in understandable-but-very-Scottish and had moved on at this point to being utterly impossible to understand. Worse, the accent seemed to be contagious - there were a couple of other Hounds in this bunch from the Isle of Skye, and as they laughed at me dealing with their friend, their own accents started shifting from James Doohan to Robin Williams Doing A Bit.

Finally, the drunken tech stopped trying to kick me, and I gave a sigh of relief as I let go of her foot and reached for her multitool, to at least slow her down if she decided to try again. This was a mistake, as she suddenly grabbed at me, wrapping me in an octopus hug, much to the amusement of the other Skyes, who laughed as I tried to pry her off. "Look, you're cute, but you're way too drunk for this, lady, you wanna back off, hey?" I turned away. "Barkeep, can we get some water or ginger ale or something for the lady? I think she's had enough booze today."

Greig Al Farrah had a tall glass of water handy when I managed to plant the giggly drunk redhead on a barstool. I managed to get her working on the water mostly due to her finding a curly straw funny, and retrieved my Shirley Temple without going too far. In the time it took me to finish my drink, she got through most of the water, and then started tilting in place. It had been An While since I was a cab driver, but I still knew how to recognize a drunk who was turning into a pumpkin for the night, so I caught her before she could fall off the barstool.

I slung one of her arms over my shoulder and started walking her out of the bar and to the nearest infantry bay. She attempted to octopus-hug me again, but she was pumpkinizing fast enough that I could avoid letting her latch on and got most of the way to a bunk before I started seeing other bad-drunk signs and detoured to the head. Fortunately, I was able to get her to the bog before she started vomiting, and I was able to keep her from getting either of us.

As I held her hair back, I muttered, "Damn it, Kell… I'll get you for this."

Being a responsible adult was frequently suffering.

---

Alba City
Antares, Tamar Domains
October 23rd, 3018

Antares was a cool, dry world by and large. Wide expanses of windswept tundra; a mix of surface and subterranean industry and settlements; and a band of surprisingly verdant land along the equator; soil made rich by a high degree of volcanism. The local growing season was short, but by all accounts it was productive. A professorly sort, who worked for the local agricultural school, had likened it to the growing season enjoyed by a place called "Egypt," a desert whose farms were made rich due to silts deposited by annual floods of their great river.

Dancia Holstein had nodded and smiled; and kept making polite conversation as the man retrieved the records she'd asked for; and from there she'd been off to Alba. According to their questioning of Sobral, there was an SLDF depot under the sleepy little town; size unspecified but supposedly "vast." At least, unlike Helm, this was very firmly in Lyran territory and once they did manage to find the depot (assuming it existed; though the LIC and Heimdall grapevines had suggested that several points of her intel had already been confirmed, which was an argument in favor) they should be able to retrieve whatever was found at relative leisure.

Other LIC assets were investigating the other depots that Sobral had spoken of. Dancia wasn't aware of just how many she'd revealed; she had only conducted some of those interrogations and even with N-Stoff in play a subject's memories would need prompting so questions about secret caches were among those revisited multiple times. She suspected someone else, with the relevant, specialist equipment, was investigating Kwangjong-Ni for its hidden factory; for instance - it would certainly take more specialized gear than she normally carried on Bifrost.

She wasn't sure how long it would take to search out the secrets of Antares; but she could think of much worse places to be working for an extended period. This was likely to be a good opportunity for them. Time enough for her superiors to work out what to do with her, long term - she'd sent two HPG messages encoded by one-time-pads in the space of a week; and while a one-time-pad encoded message was effectively impossible to decode, it was also fairly obvious that it was an encoded message; by sending two of them quickly she had rather outed herself as a spy.

Not a concern, when they did not suspect ComStar and its internal security service of ROM as being anything other than neutrals; rather more of one now that they strongly suspected they were another full-fledged player in the Succession Wars. Her superiors would be finding a new role for her to play, going forward, and in the short term, well, she was hunting for treasure. At least this was a nice enough place to spend time. Clovis would likely enjoy the change of scenery.

---

Nadir Point
Gniezno System, Free Worlds League
October 28th, 3018

Jadis was brooding. It was the downside of being involved in what was likely the largest heist since the land-grabs of the early Star League; now that they'd pulled it off, came the very long, very dull wait for the next phase. She couldn't even rage about the fiasco of their retreat offworld and jump-out; she'd already done this and had burned out the core of her anger at that.

The field team in Helmdown had given them a few hours warning - Cade and his people had abruptly boiled out of Helmfast, racing for the spaceport and their dropship, and in the cache, the loading efforts, already going near flat-out, rushed even more as they tried to get the last of their first load onto the dropships.They had, at least, been mostly done at that point, but the scramble to get the last few things loaded and the ships lifted had been… fraught.

Shipping containers had not been adequately secured; crates undogged; one of the Mules had started to lift before securing its doors; resulting in damage, and several injuries. They had, thankfully, gotten away with it; and escaped to the pirate point thanks to two Union-CVs worth of fighters convincing Cade to back off.

But as they flew to the pirate point, there was supposed to be a Nagayan Mountain-shattering kaboom. For all they had hoped to come back for a second load; once it was clear that they'd been spotted; that Cade and through him Marik would know where the cache was, the order was given to re-enable the cache's self-destruct and collapse it behind them to deny Marik access to the remaining hardware.

There had not been a Nagayan Mountain-shattering kaboom.

There had been three engineers in the team who had been part of disarming the self-destruct in the first place. All three had been involved in other tasks in the loading and evacuation when the decision was made to not simply re-seal the cache but to destroy it behind them. None of them had re-armed the self destruct. One, in the middle of removing the original core from its housing in the facility's primary mainframe, had assumed that one of the other two were being put on that task. A second, making emergency repairs on one of the Mules whose engine had failed a preflight check, also assumed the order was meant for the others.

The third engineer, an explosives expert seconded from the LCAF, had simply been running a Prime Mover. He knew there were others who could have covered that role. He knew that the order to re-arm the self destruct was most likely meant for him. But he had not been named specifically, and in the days since he had disarmed it in the first place, he had done a lot of thinking; about what the self-destruct did, and how much collateral damage it might do. Oh, certainly, he'd been assured that, according to their mysterious source, the destruction would be largely self-contained; merely collapsing the complex and flooding the plains around Freeport without causing much collateral in the areas of Helm that were actually populated. But he was… dubious that so much destruction; essentially destroying a major geological feature of the world; could be done without triggering major collateral damage.

Specifically, he'd looked at a tectonic plate map of Helm; and saw that the bowels of the complex were quite near a major fault line. He feared that collapsing the mountain would trigger a major earthquake or series of earthquakes; and that this would likely cause widespread damage to the various settlements on Helm.

Marik citizens or no, they were only civilians, and thus he felt that re-arming the self-destruct and potentially killing those civilians would constitute a war crime. One that he felt the LCAF would not wish to be responsible for, and one that he would not be part of.

In a few months, a military tribunal would decide if he was right about that or not.

For now, their little convoy was recharging, two dead systems into their retreat from Helm. Gneizno had been a victim of the First and Second Succession Wars; long since abandoned and no-longer featured on modern maps. But it had been Lyran soil once, and so their military star charts still had it. The convoy would be jumping onward in a few days, to the Pardeau system. It was another dead system, depopulated thanks to the after-effects of Second Succession War-era attacks and the logistical failures of the early Third Succession War.

Certainly, from Gneizno, they could have simply jumped into the Solaris system; returning in great triumph to Lyran space more quickly; but doing so would have made it massively, blatantly obvious what they'd done. While surely some would guess that their convoy was Lyran in origin - despite the fact that they had repainted all the markings on their ships to match various other independents who mostly did business in Marik space - swanning back into Lyran territory en mass would remove any aspect of deniability to the situation. Though they'd taken the time to restore their ship's proper markings; not a fun chore in vacuum suits.

Thus, they would go to Pardeau; and from there the convoy would split up as they jumped back into Lyran territory, staggering those jumps over another week. Hyde, Fianna, New Kyoto, and Rahne would all play temporary host to their convoy (the JumpShip Jadis' dropper was attached to was going via Fianna) who would then begin the next leg of their journeys. They would be taking different routes, but would ultimately converge upon Tharkad; roughly two month's journey further along.

Two months to ponder what House Marik might be able to do with what they left behind. She could at least take some comfort in knowing that none of what went wrong at the end was in any way her fault; but it was cold comfort indeed.

---

Madras City
Loric; Bolan Province, Lyran Commonwealth
16 December, 3018

The Fighting Seventh had a long and proud history; they'd spent decades defending the Lyran Commonwealth from the depredations of the perfidious Mariks. More than once, the unit had been decimated. But each time, they returned. Strong, powerful, and defiant to their foes.

That those foes often seemed to include other portions of the LCAF, specifically the bean-counters who refused to supply them adequately, was a particularly bitter pill.

Colonel Frederick Steiner had long considered it an insult to be assigned here. Another slight from his cousin, who enjoyed the position that he rightly should have. He should have been Archon; he should have succeeded Allesandro; he should be at the center of power, not planted at the border holding off Marik with an ever dwindling supply of men and materiel.

But still, he had his duty, and he would do it well. He took comfort in his friends, few though they were. Soon enough he'd be getting his annual christmas letter from Aldo Lestrade. He looked forward to it every year; and hopefully soon enough he'd have a chance to meet up with his friend in person. But for now, again, he had his duty.

He was going through the day's reports; training, discipline, maintenance, the lot. It was tedious work, certainly, but necessary to keep the Machine of Army running. There were no bad surprises in today's reports; mostly just neutral items, though it looked like MechWarriors DuVolder and Mannheim had finally buried the hatchet between them and were working together once more. That was good; they were two of his best scout pilots and good as they were individually they were far better working together. The maintenance reports… well; they were as expected, which was all he could say. Finally, he got to a reminder; that they had a supply DropShip coming in to land at some point today.

He reached over to the comm unit built into his desk. "Hauptmann Gottbrand; do we have an update on our supply ship?"

The response was near immediate. "Last report had them on-schedule to be coming in for landing in about an hour and a half."

"Thank you, Hauptman, please keep me posted." The supply ship was their regularly scheduled one; he'd had no reports of it bringing along anything special, but hopefully their spare parts and replacements requests had actually made their way to Quartermaster Command and the requested items actually sent their way.

He gave a small snort. And while I'm wishing; may Katrina fall in the bath and die of it.

He busied himself then, getting ahead of the endless stream of paperwork. He wanted to check on that supply ship before calling it a night. True, it would make little difference to the message's travel time if he waited until tomorrow to send an acerbic response to Tharkad reiterating that he needed them to actually send the supplies he requested if they wanted him to continue holding the border properly.

A light dinner; accompanied by a single small beer; more paperwork; a short stint in the gymnasium… finally, his personal comm chimed. "Colonel Steiner; the supply ship is on its final descent. They'll be ready to unload in half an hour."

"Excellent. I'll be at the motor pool shortly to go meet them."

He and two of the night-shift Techs rode to the spaceport, making small talk about 'Mech maintenance - while some Lyran nobles considered working to maintain their own BattleMechs was somehow beneath their dignity, Frederick was not one of them - and they arrived at the military spaceport in short order. Plumes of steam arose from the Mule-class DropShip as it was hosed down with water; cooling off the hardpan enough to allow the unloading to happen easily.

Right on schedule, their jeep lurched into motion again as the cargo doors began to swing open. An officer in Naval dunn met him at the base of the ramp; exchanged salutes, then he extended a hand. They shook and exchanged pleasantries; then the man handed him a noteputer. "Good evening, Colonel. I hope you've got a lot of haulers handy, we've got a hefty load for you today."

Frederick blinked. "Oh?"

"A company of fresh 'Mechs and a couple thousand tons of spare parts; plus sundries and a fair chunk of mail-call. Which reminds me," he reached into a back pocket and handed the taller man a letter. "Was told to get that to your hand directly. If you'll excuse me, Colonel, I need to get my people moving."

"...Of course, thank you." Military courtesy carried him into another salute on autopilot, then he looked back at the letter. Yes, that was, in fact, Katrina's handwriting on the envelope. Lacking the mental or emotional energy to deal with that letter just yet, he slipped it into his own back pocket and marched up the ramp. New 'Mechs? A company of them? Is he serious…

It took a bit of searching through the crowded cargo bay, full of crated parts and cargomen handling it, but he found that the man had, indeed, been serious. Clad in pristine, factory-new drab green were a dozen 'Mechs. Four Commandos; four Griffins; and four Thunderbolts.

"I'll be damned," murmured the senior Tech who'd accompanied him. "Merry Christmas to us."

Frederick could only nod.

It was well into the next morning before he could bring himself to open the letter. Handwritten, not typed, and very definitely in his cousin's hand.

To: Colonel Fredrick Steiner
From: Archon Katrina Steiner
Sub: Supplies

I have to open this letter with an apology, cousin. I had thought my efforts to root out corruption from the logistics and quartermaster divisions of the LCAF had done its job but it seems I missed a few greedy little leeches; taking kickbacks to divert shipments meant for the Seventh and other Regular regiments to the better heeled and connected Guards regiments. This is in the process of being corrected - I won't trust that I have found them all just yet.

I know some have suggested I was letting the Seventh in particular wither on the vine due to our mutual antipathy. That could not be further from the truth. You, and your soldiers, are soldiers of the Lyran Commonwealth, and it would be utterly criminal of me to deliberately deny you the tools needed to do your jobs. It shames me that I missed this for so long. Included in this message is a direct comm-code that will give any message from you the highest priority and bypass the bureaucracy to reach me directly; if your unit has further supply issues I ask you to bring it to my attention immediately.

Further shipments will be arranged as soon as possible to make up for the shortfalls the Regular regiments have suffered; limited as always by logistics and production; but hopefully further spares and replacements should make their way to you no later than May. For now; I ask you to preserve your fighting strength until it can be replenished and stand on the defensive; responding to raids but not counter-raiding without clearing it with headquarters.

You're doing good work, cousin; keeping Marik honest and protecting our people. Hopefully the coming year will be one of good news. I hope this note finds you in good health, and Melissa and Nondi have both asked me to send their love. Take care, cousin.

-Katrina Steiner

He had to read it three times before he fully comprehended it. He still wasn't sure he believed it.

Perhaps Aldo could shed some light on the situation; he'd have to send his friend an HPG message as soon as possible.