If You Love'er So Much, Why Don't You Mari'er? (Battletech) (Mature)
- Thread starter plotvitalnpc
- Start date
- Mature Sci-Fi Romance
plotvitalnpc
Once more walking the path of the catgirl.
The idea that one could integrate alien fish genes directly into people to make them breathe water but this could suddenly turn them into freaky fish people over the course of mere centuries without constant monitoring is fun, and all, and very 80s-90s mood, but... It's also kind of dumb. Much as this story sometimes treats itself as a joke, I felt like a more grounded explanation for why things could go so wrong for them was needed, and deliberate fuckery seemed like it.
Glad that you like it.
Will we get to see the indirect impact of the MU on its neighbors? Will people in the Rim Commonality and MoC notice that piracy has dropped along the border and that it's centered around one particular area? Has the decrease in piracy and the regular trade missions from the MU had any interesting knock-on effects?
GBscientist
The Empire's Greatest Mouse
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Deliberate fuckery is a reliable explanation for misfortune in BattleTech. Possibly even more so than standard incompetence.
GeshronTyler
Kleiner Giftzwerg
There certainly are enough canon examples in the lore, of instances where the organs of the Star League and/or Terran Hegemony deliberately screwed people over, and that didn't really change after it's fall.
Heh, the leader of the Lothian League proving that the level of technological development of a society does not affect the ability to analyze patterns of behavior of agents ostensibly from independent factions, and drawing conclusions about actual motives and relationships... The fact that the Marian Hegemony has been carrying out a long-term program of subtly setting up circumstances for annexation isn't going to make for great relations, but it's far better than simply being conquered, or otherwise forced to submit.
Wow, that astronomer really has a blindspot in being open to interpreting unusual data without being constrained by preconceived theories or conclusions. Certainly hope other people will be analyzing the data. To totally dismiss the possibility that someone achieved innovations in the field of K-F drive physics or applications so cavalierly...
Well, the Marian Hegemony and its people continue their course, in the messy, imperfect way such things tend to go...
Chapter 36 (January 2967 - November 2969)
plotvitalnpc
Once more walking the path of the catgirl.
---
Zenith Jump Point, Alphard
Marian Union, Antispinward Periphery
January 2967
Lieutenant Cordelia McPherson was proud to wear the badge of the Marian Special Void Service. Proud to be one of the brave few who put their bodies on the line in the face of persistent microgravity to protect the arteries of the Marian Union, proud to skipper the System Patrol Boat Olympian, proud to lead her small crew of voidhands and armored marines in the name of a higher cause.
And today, as she floated through the bay door aboard the Scout class jumpship Martinet - she was told that the name was still visible on the outer hull when it'd been found in an informal boneyard an rehabilitated, now repainted in honor of the crew who'd breathed their last onboard all those centuries ago - she was proud to be one of the few providing security for what may have been the most incredible mission in the short history of the Union.
First contact with an unknown deep periphery civilization.
Oh, there had been first contacts in their past, but they'd always known more or less what they were going to find. Captain Foung, commander of the carrier dropship Rocinante, now docked up to their buddy Scout the Zheng He, had told her plenty of stories about the early years in Lothian space - now, at least for the time being, the Lothian Joint Administrative region, and he'd always made sure to tell her that there were no surprises out there.
Here, there were nothing but surprises. The only thing they could say for sure, based on the signals intelligence available, was that if the 'Sparklers' were real, they were using a jump drive capable of fifteen light year jumps, but a five day charge cycle.
Being honored with protecting the expedition's supplies - fuel along with all other provisions - was enough to make up for the fact that for the next several months, the only proper weight she'd feel would be during sorties and any necessary fuel runs to wet rocks.
Still, as she dragged herself down the corridor by the handrail, she couldn't help but wonder if they couldn't have spared the Vikingr instead. Of the ships without permanent commitments, that old Invader would've been much more useful for exploration, at least by her estimation, than the poorly named scouts - extra capacity, fresh salads, and a little bit of gravity to keep the folks in their right minds would go a long way.
She approached the bridge with a sigh, then checked that what hair she had wasn't at risk of escaping its restraints and turning into a mess of zero-g spaghetti in front of the VIPs.
Satisfied after a second, she floated through the automatic door, saluting preemptively. "Sirs! I'll be-"
"How the hell do you manage this?" hissed a young man in an ornamental toga - that'd be the Senate's appointed junior diplomat, Dan Naddux - as he tried to wrangle his long, flowing hair into a net as it waved around in the vacuum like the drifting tentacles of a jellyfish. "It's everywhere!"
The aged man in the captain's hat chuckled as he glanced over from his seat. "I wouldn't know much about that problem. I went bald in '34. If you'd like, I can give you a tenth of standard acceleration for a bit. We're not due to jump for a while yet. Welcome to the bridge, Lieutenant MacPherson."
"Sir!" Cordelia called back, trying very hard not to stare at the embarrassed dignitary too much. "It's an honor to serve with you, Captain Finor."
"Call me Captain Tim." he shot back, waving his hand casually. "It'd just be odd to stuff up this bridge crew with formality at this point. Hm… Actually, we're still waiting on our cargo hauler, Large Marge, so we can bump that up - a whole two tenths of earth gravity. How's that sound, kid?"
"Please!" the patrician cried. "I can't live like this - I've only ever jumped on ships with grav decks before."
The lieutenant frowned, cupping her chin as she pulled herself out of the doorway to avoid getting in the way. Even if he was only an officer in the Merchant Marine, he still outranked her. This was a dignified man who put up with microgravity conditions every day. She couldn't just be so casual with him.
Buckled into a seat at the back of the room, a dark-skinned woman in a Promethean red jumpsuit snickered into the back of her hand, performatively stroking her short cropped black hair. "Danny boy, I'm sure you got the warning, same as I did, right? That long hair wasn't advised, because the ship doesn't have a centrifuge? You want me to help you chop that mane down really quick? We've only got six hours of high burn budgeted every day - you'll have to keep it bagged up most of the time."
Dan shot a fiery glare in her direction, working to get the hair gathered up for a ponytail as best as he could manage. "Sala, I'll sooner die than trust you to take scissors to my hair. You just want the chance to fuck it up again."
"You can't run from the undercut forever. It's your destiny, I tell you - your destiny!" the philosopher called Sala declared, unbuckling herself from her seat and sending herself drifting sedately toward the man. "It's the only way you look good, my dude, and it'll do a hell of a lot better than trying to tame that carpet you call hair into a ponytail or hair net here."
Naddux dodged down, glancing back to Cordelia after a click of his tongue. "Oy, Lieutenant. Your small craft's going to be making regular patrol burns, right? Take me with you - I want the gravity exposure."
Her brow furrowed. What kind of unprofessional goddamned rube did he take her for? "Absolutely not, mister diplomat. My crew and I need to be ready to, if necessary, give our lives protecting this ship and all of her passengers if need be. We can't do that with a mission critical VIP playing tourist. If you'll forgive my prying into personal matters, you should stop making babies proud of how little they whine and just get the damned haircut."
"Wha?" he sputtered, ducking out of the way of another mock-lunge from his cross-organizational counterpart. "Goddamn it! We're on a first contact mission here, what are we doing taking two of the worst jumpships in the fleet? The Vikingr could keep us in sweet, crisp half-g conditions all day, every day, without even much dizziness, and it's just sitting back home?"
The captain gave his guest an irritated look. "The Vikingr is needed back home as a response craft in case any part of the network calls for emergency relief. I'm sorry my vessel doesn't agree with you, but that's just how it is. It took three damned years to clear sending out just us two ships on this mission, even with how we're 'two of the worst jumpships in the fleet'. Do you even realize that we've only got five damned collars that aren't locked up in one circulator route or another, little mister land war? If you can't live with the hair without gravity, and you can't keep it tamed, chop it the hell off or ask for a last minute transfer off this mission - we're going to be canned up together, in here, for damned near a year at the short end! We've got no use for someone who can't handle the pressure. When we get home, we're all going to take pride in our muscle rehab, but what about you?"
"I…um…" the young man muttered. "Sorry. I'll cut it off."
"Good." Tim huffed, pinching his nose. "Now, Lieutenant, I suppose I should introduce you to our technical expert here, Warrant Officer Sala Bineen - Philosopher of the Promethean Order. If you've got any technical issues you and your crew can't fix up, take it up with her, but her actual job in this mission is to collaborate with Danny Boy here to liaison with whoever we find out there. If they really are jumping faster than our technology permits - granted, a well maintained scout can pull some high speeds with a fuel tanker, but our estimate of their ship size is closer to five hundred kilotons than fifty - I'm told the higher ups are willing to part with data on modern KF drives and a bit more besides if it'll secure us whatever wizardry these folks have crammed into their old-model drives. It's high time we started building our own ships, and the top floor wants to build the very best starting from day one."
"Yo!" the Promethean chirped, waving from where her motion had stopped, helping Dan tie his hair back for the time being. "Glad to be under your protection, champ!"
Honestly, she just wanted to get back to her boat and away from this batshit bridge now, but it wouldn't be appropriate at the moment. "It's my honor to be protecting you, ma'am. Is the representative of the tribunal...around?"
There should have been one present to aid in keeping proper discipline and ensuring that the first contact followed the laws of the union.
The captain shrugged. "Tribune Elicea's retired to his quarters with a headache. You'll meet him at some point."
"Right." Cordelia agreed, rubbing her forehead as she watched the bigwigs screw around in the middle of the room. "These two know each other or something?"
"He's my brother in law."
"She's my ex wife."
She gave the pair a long, long stare. "Well, that sounds like a very confusing situation for the two of you to be in. Captain, if you don't mind, I'm going to return to my ready station now."
Captain Timothy Finor shot her an amused look. "If you must, go ahead. We haven't even left the capital system yet, though."
She left in a heartbeat.
It was interesting and all to learn a little bit about the background of this whole endeavor, and how it tied back to big national concerns like starting up a jump yard, but…
She wasn't willing to fry her brain with a constant spew of VIP bullshit just to get more context. She was an officer and a voidhand, not a babysitter or family counselor. Her job was to make sure they survived to carry out their mission, not worry about what they were supposed to be doing or if they knew how to wipe their asses.
She'd been so excited to start this mission before, and they'd totally ruined that just by being themselves!
She just hoped that, over on the other ship, her counterpart wasn't having to deal with this same kind of bullshit from the senior diplomatic attache. What she wouldn't give, redundancy be damned, to have whoever they were come over here and discipline their junior officials into some standard of respectability.
---
Loyalty City, Loyalty
Duchy of Graham-Marik, Free Worlds League
March 2969
Marcus McDonald tugged at his collar as he stepped into a room full of legendary names in the business world. Technicron Manufacturing, Irian Technologies, and SelaSys Incorporated - they were all waiting for him. It was an overwhelming sensation, that sense of importance. That sense of… judgement.
"This is the one I mentioned to the both of you," declared Aaron Baron, CEO of Technicron, with a wide flourish of his arm. "One Mr. McDonald, from Alphard over near Terra. He believes he's found a solution to the little question we've all been sharing for a few years now."
Melanie Hughes, of Irian Technologies, stroked her lip slowly as she sized him up. "Alphard, you say? What's there, then?"
"Well," Marcus stammered, rubbing the back of his head. "Sheep, mostly, but the spaceport is also pretty developed. The economy used to be a fair bit more robust, before… the wars."
"Where wasn't it?" Paul Deakin-Jones of SelaSys Incorporated asked, sneering down his nose. "What can a bumpkin from a near-Terra backwater possibly tell us about periphery germanium? About the decline of piracy reports in the Rim Commonality? This is about big business, not sheep and history lessons."
"Now, don't be so harsh on the boy." Mr. Baron - who was actually a count - insisted, holding out his hand. "He's a good lad, and I've already had a chance to vet what he's come to say. Marcus, tell our fine associates what you've found."
"Right." the Alphardian acknowledged. "So, first and foremost, the prior state of my homeworld does have some pertinence to this. Has anyone heard of the Alphard Trading Company?"
The room was filled with dead silence as two of the CEOs present turned to the third, who remained stubbornly silent, simply signaling back to Marcus.
"Right, I expected that." he acknowledged, clapping his hands. "During the Star League Era, the company - privately owned - was responsible for 40% of all economic activity on Alphard, as a hybrid industrial-mercantile firm conducting trade between the Free Worlds League, the wider Inner Sphere - Terrans included - and the Periphery. Specifically, the majority of the money was made through a portfolio of fifty partially or fully managed worlds in the Periphery, where various manufacturing or extraction concerns were carried out with cheap labor through the import of supplies and security forces from the Sphere, passing savings onto the customers. The franchise was something that relied heavily upon the Star League to maintain its viability, so it shut its doors quickly when Kerensky left. As the primary heir of the original owners of the central office, my personal effects include copies of the old portfolios and business reports from the various franchises."
Mrs. Hughes leaned forward, her eyes narrowed. "Are you saying that you've been able to track down the source of the phantom germanium in Illyria based on your great grandfather's board of directors briefings?"
"Exactly so." he declared with a firm nod and a tilt of his hand toward Aaron. "Your good associate here happened across me by chance while hunting for an explanation, and he was so kind as to give me a sample of the germanium in question when I explained my hunch. After a chemical analysis of the sample, I can confirm with full confidence that it matches what was mined at one of the more lucrative holdings of the old company to a high degree of confidence."
Major Deakin-Jones leaned forward with a frown, his scarred forehead peeking out from behind his graying hair. "Which holding was that, exactly?"
Marcus' bottom lip curled up. "If I tell you now, what will you do with that information? Hire a band of mercenaries to seize it post-haste and forget all about me? Let me assure you - I am the lawful heir to that branch of the trading company. The world in question is mine, by the law of the Free Worlds League, and I will no sooner hand over information on it than we've reached a mutually satisfactory contract settling that matter with suitable compensation for the stake I'm to give up in the revived Alphard Trading Company."
The CEO of Irian Tech frowned, crossing her arms in front of her chest and looking away. "You seem so sure we're going to support your little scheme. What makes you think we'd take the plunge of restoring your ancestral firm at our own expense, exactly?"
"Wouldn't you do something similar?" Marcus asked. "You're obviously ill at ease with paying the Illyrian premium for the product, and you can't beat a location they don't have out of them. If you cut them out as the middleman, though, why would you then respect whatever pack of barbarians are occupying the mine? Let me assure you, the throughput that's arriving in the Free Worlds League is not the true value of my property - at best, the primitives are scraping the bare surface of its potential. At worst, they're simply laundering the unshipped remnants of the pre-collapse stockpile as fast as they can - our mine supplied fifteen percent of the Free Worlds League's germanium, before it closed - in a time of far greater production and consumption. The operating expenses of your shipyards would fall to an inestimable degree if it were properly restored, and I mean all of your companies."
She turned toward the man who'd introduced Marcus with a frown. "Aaron, you've brought us a snake oiler."
"I've done extensive background checks on the matter, and it's entirely true what he says." Count Baron retorted, standing up from his seat and placing a hand on Marcus' back. "At the very least, Technicron on Tamarind bought most of our germanium from the ATC back in the 2700s - cheapest damned materials on the market, and he's definitely the heir to the owners thereof. It only stands to reason, then, that we've got a shared interest in bringing the old mine back into the network and up to speed, us three, and none of us can afford to let any of the others monopolize it. And if we're founding a shell company to run it anyways, why not buy out the legitimate owner anyways?"
Marcus held up his hands. "Now, I won't claim that I have the money to tie up mining efforts on my world in court long enough to make it hurt for any of you, but I'll sooner destroy the whole lot of the records than hand them over for free. So, cut me a deal?"
"Goddamned leach." Deakin-Jones complemented, cracking a grin. "So, you're working this to turn nothing into something, then? But then, surely you realize we could just…hire mercenaries to survey the whole region and tell us where it is, no?"
He smiled back without reservation, eyes shut in exaggerated bliss. "How long, and how much money, will that take you compared to settling terms with me? If we're talking about taking decades to track it down, how many billions of c-bills do you stand to lose by delaying gratification here? Let alone chartering all the mercenaries…"
Hughes, who had lit a cigarette during the Count's plea, blew a puff of smoke toward Marcus. "Turning that around on you, how many billions of c-bills are you asking from us for your stake in the planet?"
Here was where he was going to 'get' them. He'd planned this offer very carefully to appeal to their sensibilities. "I won't be greedy about it. The price for 30% is a third of a billion c-bills. If each of you pony up, I'll be retaining a 10% stake and the throne of the planet itself, while the Alphard Trading Company - majority owned between you three industrial giants - or perhaps you three personally, if I've judged your fortunes properly - assumes a tax-exempt monopoly on the mining and refining of germanium on-world. It's a good deal, isn't it?"
Their eyes were all fixed sharply on him now. He hadn't given Aaron this pitch before, and the man looked hungry in a way very few people could comprehend. He'd won.
"I believe we can all afford to scrape together that sort of expenditure." Melanie cast her hands to the side, talking around her cigarette as she shrugged. "And I have no objections to a contract like that - I could have my lawyer prepare it, if you give me a second to make the call. Though… you wouldn't happen to be a bachelor, would you? I've got a daughter…"
"Show some shame." Mr. Deakin-Jones spat, glaring at her briefly. "As the host of this little conference, it's only proper that I have the contract prepared. Now, Mr. McDonald, how would you feel about marrying my sister?"
"It's a fascinating prospect."
Marrying into a big business family might almost be worth more than he was negotiating for. On the other hand… Marcus liked his odds at outplaying them better.
- -
Signing his name was the easiest thing in the world. With just a few seconds of frenzied scribbling, Marcus had bought himself a billion cbills and the financial support of the three biggest names in Free Worlds League industry in 'reclaiming his rightful demense', in exchange for the 'small consideration' of selling off the supermajority of his stake in a defunct mining franchise and restoring its monopolies to the germanium trade in-system.
These suits had known a good deal when he'd dangled it in front of them. Now he'd just need to hope that the mercenaries they hired would be about the same - it was well and good that sellswords weren't known for their scruples or professionalism. Oh, he wouldn't be able to sell to the League, but what of Liao, or Steiner?
He gave a polite, businesslike smile to his 'associates' as they all signed in turn under the watch of a Comstar notary. "Now, I'll turn over all the documentation I've got on the planet Revel, just as soon as this is formally filed."
It's not like these people would actually believe him if he told them the planet with the mine on it was also called Alphard.
When he kicked out whatever pseudo-legit pirate clan was squatting on his land instead of coming in to plunder as tradition dictated, he'd need to find a new name for it, frankly. He liked the idea of 'McDonald's World'. The old name was frankly too regionalistic for his liking - it had been assigned due to outdated notions of local company pride, when that world turned out to be the jewel in the McDonald family's business empire.
He wasn't building a business empire, though. He was out to build his empire.
---
Jumpship Martinet, Unnamed System Nadir Point, Caesar's Bow
Unclaimed Space, Antispinward Periphery
November 2969
Cordelia set down her notebook and closed the drawer it sat in with a sigh as she felt the sensation of weightlessness fill the ship. If the thrusters were turning off, that meant they were preparing for the next jump. That, in turn, meant that she needed to get back to battle stations in case of immediate action at the jump point. Life took on a cycle out here, in a can.
She'd been insane to sign up for it a second time, she was sure of it. Same ship, same people, same job. They'd been out there for goddamned months, chasing the signature of the Sparkler ships, and they hadn't found a lick of them. No ships, no stations, no signs of any advanced planetary civilization - though they'd discovered upwards of fifty regressed planetary civilizations, none of them could tell them anything about their ancestor's visitors, not even in the form of myths about some kind of star lord - nothing.
Whoever they'd been, if they'd been anyone at all, they'd never attempted to settle this region. Their past habitual visitations, by all accounts, were nothing more than a regular patrol of the neighborhood - or perhaps an exhaustive testing process.
The only reason they were out here again was the faint and foolish hope that the chance readings they'd picked up were promising: when they'd gotten as far from Caesar's Crown as Caesar's Crown was from Alphard, they'd picked up the frenzied sparkles of continuous activity just seven more jumps away - beyond their round trip range by a hair, after all the time they'd spent casting a wide net.
Five hundred light years from home, at the end of a wild goose chase where they followed the six-day flickers wherever they appeared in ever scarcer and scarcer numbers - a reduction in the regularity in patrols, or perhaps just bad luck for their sensors - they saw that just another two hundred or so away there had been a rhythmic pattern of five day jump-in, jump-out patterns around the time of the Amaris Civil War. Just as the Inner Sphere started to tear itself apart, these people had changed up their tempo from six days to five days between jumps - the first definite sign that it was a human-made phenomenon and not just a bizarre quality of the stars of the Bow.
So here they were again, heading out toward that flickering light that was hidden from the Inner Sphere by a nebula. Fools on an express route to an unknowable somewhere that their persistence had revealed to them.
As she floated down the hallway, she couldn't help but wonder if whoever they found on the other side would even be willing to talk. They'd clearly done a lot to hide themselves out here, shielding themselves so thoroughly that the radio spectrum evidence of their existence would never reach Terra in a directly detectable form.
Would they consider the rest of humanity friend or foe?
She didn't want to fight them. On their home turf, that'd be a fool's battle if ever there was one. It meant death, certain death, and nothing but death.
If she had to, though…she'd given an oath to protect the diplomatic mission with her life, and she'd meant it. She could only hope she'd still mean it when her conviction was tested.
"All hands at battle stations for jump-out in five minutes."
She drifted in through the airlock of her patrol boat to see her crew already taking positions in the central cabin, nodding to each of them in turn as she settled into her seat. At the moment, the small craft wasn't technically powered on - rather than using its reactor, its lights were kept on by a cable from the bay itself, allowing them the juice needed to quick-start their reactor on a moment's notice. Once they arrived on the other side, it'd only take one quick press of a button to start up, eject the extension cord, and signal the bayside crew to clear the room for depressurization.
In just a few minutes, they'd discover just what it was that they'd spent all this time looking for. They'd learn if they were going to live or die. If they were going to return home as heroes or as laughing stocks. She just hoped that Naddux had learned enough about tact to not get in the senior diplomat's way - if he was running too high on bluster, even a friendly encounter might turn sour.
"Nervous, LT?"
She glanced over to her primary gunner, Jane McLane, and tilted her head back. "You look like the perfect picture of composure yourself. Stop gripping those controls like you're trying to strangle them. Even if we've got five steps to go through to arm the weapons, that's piss poor discipline."
"Right."
The lieutenant cleared her mind with a nod. "Someone go back and check - make sure the marines are actually getting armored up and not giving each-other wedgies like a bunch of sorority bitches. They might be going forth into the breach in half an hour - wouldn't want to do that in the buff."
Her second in command nodded. "I'll set 'em straight."
Cordelia could feel her nails, even short clipped as they were, digging into the palms of her hand. She restrained the pressure for one reason, and only one reason - they couldn't have blood floating around in the cockpit until they got around to putting down thrust. It just wasn't workable.
She killed the part of herself that hoped the Sparklers had died out some time in the last fifteen years - that the readings they were picking up even now were just ghosts. It wasn't her job to decide what would be for the best - it was her job to decide how best to contribute to the vision her superiors passed down to her, and pass on her own small vision to her crew. She was a cog in this machine, turning to make sure that the people who saw furthest had hands that reached what they were trying to grab. A free woman, voluntarily pledged to the service of Prometheus and the Marian Union.
She was the unshaped form that called out to the flame. The truth that hadn't learned itself yet. The shining world that hid within the raw earth. She was the kiln that tested the potter's art for cracks, turning vision into reality. She was the potter's wheel and clay, wise were the hands that shaped her.
She would do what was required of her. No matter how much she hoped that was 'nothing'.
"Initiating jump in ten… nine…"
She smirked. "Hurry up and wait faster, girls. Destiny's almost here for the dance."
"Bitch better not step on my fee-"
For a moment, the world unraveled, space taking on the flavor of blue, before normalcy reasserted itself, with the bonus of a dull headache and cottonmouth on her end.
"Engine hot." she instructed. "Ready craft to launch on command."
The radio on the dashboard crackled into life a moment later. Captain Tinor's radio operator serenaded them with his smooth, velvety voice across the connection. "Be advised, multiple contacts in jump point detected. No launches detected as of yet - no approach burns. Wait-and-see protocol in effect. Zheng He will hail for a response if not hailed in one minute."
"You hear that?" the gunner asked, multitasking as she - like the rest of the small crew - ran through her final checks. "We aren't dying quite yet. Let's just hope whoever they are, Naddux doesn't get on the phone and insult their mothers."
The pilot snorted. "He's probably tied to his bed right now, sweetie. They aren't going to let him ruin this if they don't have to."
The sergeant returned from the back. "What the fuck kind of scenario would they have to let that lump of a man insult their mothers under?"
Cordelia, against her better judgement, joined in on the gossip. "It's always possible he'll turn out to be the only one onboard who speaks their language. It's not like we can say some Alliance era lost colony still speaks English or anything. Could be all we'll learn from this expedition is that we need to come back with a different kind of linguist on board - we've only got, what, fourteen languages covered between our diplomats?"
"Ah yes," her radar operator snarked. "We've discovered the legendary lost space colony of the Basque people, and can do nothing without returning to base to pick up someone fluent in Euskara."
"Your boyfriend isn't even a patrician, Patty. Getting him cleared as a diplomat would take months!"
Technically, this sort of chatter was forbidden. Practically speaking, it was keeping their wits about them long enough to determine if they actually needed to do anything today. Lesser of two evils, compared to them all going insane in the cockpit.
The intercom crackled on again. "All clear, but remain ready to respond to a call to battle stations. Dialogues are in progress."
"Oh boy, what language do you think they spoke?"
"Five talents on Hindi."
That was a bridge too far. "There'll be no gambling under my watch. Watch it be, say, Arabic, though."
- -
What felt like an eternity later, Cordelia tiptoed onto the bridge carefully under a tenth of a g. What she wouldn't give for a pair of magnetic boots or something to simplify this process. "So, what's the story?"
The bridge crew was lounging in various states of relief themselves, slouched to an extent that was obviously unrealistic under such minor acceleration. Dan was the first to speak up. "Well, they thought for a second we might be some well armed pirates who'd been stealing their ships on and off for a while now, but they eventually realized that our ships were completely different from the ones those folks were packing - we would have been in a boatload of trouble if we'd brought a Tramp instead, so for once I'm happy we're flying Scouts. It took some smooth talking, but now we've got an invitation to meet with some big people in the 'Axumite Providence.' to talk about our reason for coming here."
"Wild." she commented, scratching the back of her head. "So, what language did they turn out to speak?"
"You'd think Ethiopian based on the name." the patrician declared, rubbing his forehead, throwing his hands out wide. "But actually, it was a dialect of Somali, with some extra Afar and Arabic loanwords."
Ooh, extra Arabic loanwords. That meant, at least to some extent, she'd won their little guessing game. "And one of you two…actually knew that language?"
Sala waved her hand from the next seat over. "Over here, sweetie. It took a fucking while, though - I'm not any sort of professional interpreter."
"Right." she commented. "So, you think they'll have a spare grav deck you plebs can use for rehab? I know your muscles have got to be shrunk like raisins after the trip out here."
"They'd better." the captain huffed. "Large Marge's skipper is almost as stingy about sharing his thrust gravity as you are."
Cordelia covered her face. "You know for a goddamned fact that it's called rationing fuel in his case. It's not like they're going off on flights without you, right?"
It was amazing how much even a normally respectable man could approach Dan's level of maturity after a half year in the can.
Even more amazing, though, was the fact that nobody had died so far, and nobody seemed likely to die today either.
--------
So much for speeding up the pace, huh?
Scene 1
---Zenith Jump Point, Alphard
Marian Union, Antispinward Periphery
January 2967
Lieutenant Cordelia McPherson was proud to wear the badge of the Marian Special Void Service. Proud to be one of the brave few who put their bodies on the line in the face of persistent microgravity to protect the arteries of the Marian Union, proud to skipper the System Patrol Boat Olympian, proud to lead her small crew of voidhands and armored marines in the name of a higher cause.
And today, as she floated through the bay door aboard the Scout class jumpship Martinet - she was told that the name was still visible on the outer hull when it'd been found in an informal boneyard an rehabilitated, now repainted in honor of the crew who'd breathed their last onboard all those centuries ago - she was proud to be one of the few providing security for what may have been the most incredible mission in the short history of the Union.
First contact with an unknown deep periphery civilization.
Oh, there had been first contacts in their past, but they'd always known more or less what they were going to find. Captain Foung, commander of the carrier dropship Rocinante, now docked up to their buddy Scout the Zheng He, had told her plenty of stories about the early years in Lothian space - now, at least for the time being, the Lothian Joint Administrative region, and he'd always made sure to tell her that there were no surprises out there.
Here, there were nothing but surprises. The only thing they could say for sure, based on the signals intelligence available, was that if the 'Sparklers' were real, they were using a jump drive capable of fifteen light year jumps, but a five day charge cycle.
Being honored with protecting the expedition's supplies - fuel along with all other provisions - was enough to make up for the fact that for the next several months, the only proper weight she'd feel would be during sorties and any necessary fuel runs to wet rocks.
Still, as she dragged herself down the corridor by the handrail, she couldn't help but wonder if they couldn't have spared the Vikingr instead. Of the ships without permanent commitments, that old Invader would've been much more useful for exploration, at least by her estimation, than the poorly named scouts - extra capacity, fresh salads, and a little bit of gravity to keep the folks in their right minds would go a long way.
She approached the bridge with a sigh, then checked that what hair she had wasn't at risk of escaping its restraints and turning into a mess of zero-g spaghetti in front of the VIPs.
Satisfied after a second, she floated through the automatic door, saluting preemptively. "Sirs! I'll be-"
"How the hell do you manage this?" hissed a young man in an ornamental toga - that'd be the Senate's appointed junior diplomat, Dan Naddux - as he tried to wrangle his long, flowing hair into a net as it waved around in the vacuum like the drifting tentacles of a jellyfish. "It's everywhere!"
The aged man in the captain's hat chuckled as he glanced over from his seat. "I wouldn't know much about that problem. I went bald in '34. If you'd like, I can give you a tenth of standard acceleration for a bit. We're not due to jump for a while yet. Welcome to the bridge, Lieutenant MacPherson."
"Sir!" Cordelia called back, trying very hard not to stare at the embarrassed dignitary too much. "It's an honor to serve with you, Captain Finor."
"Call me Captain Tim." he shot back, waving his hand casually. "It'd just be odd to stuff up this bridge crew with formality at this point. Hm… Actually, we're still waiting on our cargo hauler, Large Marge, so we can bump that up - a whole two tenths of earth gravity. How's that sound, kid?"
"Please!" the patrician cried. "I can't live like this - I've only ever jumped on ships with grav decks before."
The lieutenant frowned, cupping her chin as she pulled herself out of the doorway to avoid getting in the way. Even if he was only an officer in the Merchant Marine, he still outranked her. This was a dignified man who put up with microgravity conditions every day. She couldn't just be so casual with him.
Buckled into a seat at the back of the room, a dark-skinned woman in a Promethean red jumpsuit snickered into the back of her hand, performatively stroking her short cropped black hair. "Danny boy, I'm sure you got the warning, same as I did, right? That long hair wasn't advised, because the ship doesn't have a centrifuge? You want me to help you chop that mane down really quick? We've only got six hours of high burn budgeted every day - you'll have to keep it bagged up most of the time."
Dan shot a fiery glare in her direction, working to get the hair gathered up for a ponytail as best as he could manage. "Sala, I'll sooner die than trust you to take scissors to my hair. You just want the chance to fuck it up again."
"You can't run from the undercut forever. It's your destiny, I tell you - your destiny!" the philosopher called Sala declared, unbuckling herself from her seat and sending herself drifting sedately toward the man. "It's the only way you look good, my dude, and it'll do a hell of a lot better than trying to tame that carpet you call hair into a ponytail or hair net here."
Naddux dodged down, glancing back to Cordelia after a click of his tongue. "Oy, Lieutenant. Your small craft's going to be making regular patrol burns, right? Take me with you - I want the gravity exposure."
Her brow furrowed. What kind of unprofessional goddamned rube did he take her for? "Absolutely not, mister diplomat. My crew and I need to be ready to, if necessary, give our lives protecting this ship and all of her passengers if need be. We can't do that with a mission critical VIP playing tourist. If you'll forgive my prying into personal matters, you should stop making babies proud of how little they whine and just get the damned haircut."
"Wha?" he sputtered, ducking out of the way of another mock-lunge from his cross-organizational counterpart. "Goddamn it! We're on a first contact mission here, what are we doing taking two of the worst jumpships in the fleet? The Vikingr could keep us in sweet, crisp half-g conditions all day, every day, without even much dizziness, and it's just sitting back home?"
The captain gave his guest an irritated look. "The Vikingr is needed back home as a response craft in case any part of the network calls for emergency relief. I'm sorry my vessel doesn't agree with you, but that's just how it is. It took three damned years to clear sending out just us two ships on this mission, even with how we're 'two of the worst jumpships in the fleet'. Do you even realize that we've only got five damned collars that aren't locked up in one circulator route or another, little mister land war? If you can't live with the hair without gravity, and you can't keep it tamed, chop it the hell off or ask for a last minute transfer off this mission - we're going to be canned up together, in here, for damned near a year at the short end! We've got no use for someone who can't handle the pressure. When we get home, we're all going to take pride in our muscle rehab, but what about you?"
"I…um…" the young man muttered. "Sorry. I'll cut it off."
"Good." Tim huffed, pinching his nose. "Now, Lieutenant, I suppose I should introduce you to our technical expert here, Warrant Officer Sala Bineen - Philosopher of the Promethean Order. If you've got any technical issues you and your crew can't fix up, take it up with her, but her actual job in this mission is to collaborate with Danny Boy here to liaison with whoever we find out there. If they really are jumping faster than our technology permits - granted, a well maintained scout can pull some high speeds with a fuel tanker, but our estimate of their ship size is closer to five hundred kilotons than fifty - I'm told the higher ups are willing to part with data on modern KF drives and a bit more besides if it'll secure us whatever wizardry these folks have crammed into their old-model drives. It's high time we started building our own ships, and the top floor wants to build the very best starting from day one."
"Yo!" the Promethean chirped, waving from where her motion had stopped, helping Dan tie his hair back for the time being. "Glad to be under your protection, champ!"
Honestly, she just wanted to get back to her boat and away from this batshit bridge now, but it wouldn't be appropriate at the moment. "It's my honor to be protecting you, ma'am. Is the representative of the tribunal...around?"
There should have been one present to aid in keeping proper discipline and ensuring that the first contact followed the laws of the union.
The captain shrugged. "Tribune Elicea's retired to his quarters with a headache. You'll meet him at some point."
"Right." Cordelia agreed, rubbing her forehead as she watched the bigwigs screw around in the middle of the room. "These two know each other or something?"
"He's my brother in law."
"She's my ex wife."
She gave the pair a long, long stare. "Well, that sounds like a very confusing situation for the two of you to be in. Captain, if you don't mind, I'm going to return to my ready station now."
Captain Timothy Finor shot her an amused look. "If you must, go ahead. We haven't even left the capital system yet, though."
She left in a heartbeat.
It was interesting and all to learn a little bit about the background of this whole endeavor, and how it tied back to big national concerns like starting up a jump yard, but…
She wasn't willing to fry her brain with a constant spew of VIP bullshit just to get more context. She was an officer and a voidhand, not a babysitter or family counselor. Her job was to make sure they survived to carry out their mission, not worry about what they were supposed to be doing or if they knew how to wipe their asses.
She'd been so excited to start this mission before, and they'd totally ruined that just by being themselves!
She just hoped that, over on the other ship, her counterpart wasn't having to deal with this same kind of bullshit from the senior diplomatic attache. What she wouldn't give, redundancy be damned, to have whoever they were come over here and discipline their junior officials into some standard of respectability.
---
Scene 2
---Loyalty City, Loyalty
Duchy of Graham-Marik, Free Worlds League
March 2969
Marcus McDonald tugged at his collar as he stepped into a room full of legendary names in the business world. Technicron Manufacturing, Irian Technologies, and SelaSys Incorporated - they were all waiting for him. It was an overwhelming sensation, that sense of importance. That sense of… judgement.
"This is the one I mentioned to the both of you," declared Aaron Baron, CEO of Technicron, with a wide flourish of his arm. "One Mr. McDonald, from Alphard over near Terra. He believes he's found a solution to the little question we've all been sharing for a few years now."
Melanie Hughes, of Irian Technologies, stroked her lip slowly as she sized him up. "Alphard, you say? What's there, then?"
"Well," Marcus stammered, rubbing the back of his head. "Sheep, mostly, but the spaceport is also pretty developed. The economy used to be a fair bit more robust, before… the wars."
"Where wasn't it?" Paul Deakin-Jones of SelaSys Incorporated asked, sneering down his nose. "What can a bumpkin from a near-Terra backwater possibly tell us about periphery germanium? About the decline of piracy reports in the Rim Commonality? This is about big business, not sheep and history lessons."
"Now, don't be so harsh on the boy." Mr. Baron - who was actually a count - insisted, holding out his hand. "He's a good lad, and I've already had a chance to vet what he's come to say. Marcus, tell our fine associates what you've found."
"Right." the Alphardian acknowledged. "So, first and foremost, the prior state of my homeworld does have some pertinence to this. Has anyone heard of the Alphard Trading Company?"
The room was filled with dead silence as two of the CEOs present turned to the third, who remained stubbornly silent, simply signaling back to Marcus.
"Right, I expected that." he acknowledged, clapping his hands. "During the Star League Era, the company - privately owned - was responsible for 40% of all economic activity on Alphard, as a hybrid industrial-mercantile firm conducting trade between the Free Worlds League, the wider Inner Sphere - Terrans included - and the Periphery. Specifically, the majority of the money was made through a portfolio of fifty partially or fully managed worlds in the Periphery, where various manufacturing or extraction concerns were carried out with cheap labor through the import of supplies and security forces from the Sphere, passing savings onto the customers. The franchise was something that relied heavily upon the Star League to maintain its viability, so it shut its doors quickly when Kerensky left. As the primary heir of the original owners of the central office, my personal effects include copies of the old portfolios and business reports from the various franchises."
Mrs. Hughes leaned forward, her eyes narrowed. "Are you saying that you've been able to track down the source of the phantom germanium in Illyria based on your great grandfather's board of directors briefings?"
"Exactly so." he declared with a firm nod and a tilt of his hand toward Aaron. "Your good associate here happened across me by chance while hunting for an explanation, and he was so kind as to give me a sample of the germanium in question when I explained my hunch. After a chemical analysis of the sample, I can confirm with full confidence that it matches what was mined at one of the more lucrative holdings of the old company to a high degree of confidence."
Major Deakin-Jones leaned forward with a frown, his scarred forehead peeking out from behind his graying hair. "Which holding was that, exactly?"
Marcus' bottom lip curled up. "If I tell you now, what will you do with that information? Hire a band of mercenaries to seize it post-haste and forget all about me? Let me assure you - I am the lawful heir to that branch of the trading company. The world in question is mine, by the law of the Free Worlds League, and I will no sooner hand over information on it than we've reached a mutually satisfactory contract settling that matter with suitable compensation for the stake I'm to give up in the revived Alphard Trading Company."
The CEO of Irian Tech frowned, crossing her arms in front of her chest and looking away. "You seem so sure we're going to support your little scheme. What makes you think we'd take the plunge of restoring your ancestral firm at our own expense, exactly?"
"Wouldn't you do something similar?" Marcus asked. "You're obviously ill at ease with paying the Illyrian premium for the product, and you can't beat a location they don't have out of them. If you cut them out as the middleman, though, why would you then respect whatever pack of barbarians are occupying the mine? Let me assure you, the throughput that's arriving in the Free Worlds League is not the true value of my property - at best, the primitives are scraping the bare surface of its potential. At worst, they're simply laundering the unshipped remnants of the pre-collapse stockpile as fast as they can - our mine supplied fifteen percent of the Free Worlds League's germanium, before it closed - in a time of far greater production and consumption. The operating expenses of your shipyards would fall to an inestimable degree if it were properly restored, and I mean all of your companies."
She turned toward the man who'd introduced Marcus with a frown. "Aaron, you've brought us a snake oiler."
"I've done extensive background checks on the matter, and it's entirely true what he says." Count Baron retorted, standing up from his seat and placing a hand on Marcus' back. "At the very least, Technicron on Tamarind bought most of our germanium from the ATC back in the 2700s - cheapest damned materials on the market, and he's definitely the heir to the owners thereof. It only stands to reason, then, that we've got a shared interest in bringing the old mine back into the network and up to speed, us three, and none of us can afford to let any of the others monopolize it. And if we're founding a shell company to run it anyways, why not buy out the legitimate owner anyways?"
Marcus held up his hands. "Now, I won't claim that I have the money to tie up mining efforts on my world in court long enough to make it hurt for any of you, but I'll sooner destroy the whole lot of the records than hand them over for free. So, cut me a deal?"
"Goddamned leach." Deakin-Jones complemented, cracking a grin. "So, you're working this to turn nothing into something, then? But then, surely you realize we could just…hire mercenaries to survey the whole region and tell us where it is, no?"
He smiled back without reservation, eyes shut in exaggerated bliss. "How long, and how much money, will that take you compared to settling terms with me? If we're talking about taking decades to track it down, how many billions of c-bills do you stand to lose by delaying gratification here? Let alone chartering all the mercenaries…"
Hughes, who had lit a cigarette during the Count's plea, blew a puff of smoke toward Marcus. "Turning that around on you, how many billions of c-bills are you asking from us for your stake in the planet?"
Here was where he was going to 'get' them. He'd planned this offer very carefully to appeal to their sensibilities. "I won't be greedy about it. The price for 30% is a third of a billion c-bills. If each of you pony up, I'll be retaining a 10% stake and the throne of the planet itself, while the Alphard Trading Company - majority owned between you three industrial giants - or perhaps you three personally, if I've judged your fortunes properly - assumes a tax-exempt monopoly on the mining and refining of germanium on-world. It's a good deal, isn't it?"
Their eyes were all fixed sharply on him now. He hadn't given Aaron this pitch before, and the man looked hungry in a way very few people could comprehend. He'd won.
"I believe we can all afford to scrape together that sort of expenditure." Melanie cast her hands to the side, talking around her cigarette as she shrugged. "And I have no objections to a contract like that - I could have my lawyer prepare it, if you give me a second to make the call. Though… you wouldn't happen to be a bachelor, would you? I've got a daughter…"
"Show some shame." Mr. Deakin-Jones spat, glaring at her briefly. "As the host of this little conference, it's only proper that I have the contract prepared. Now, Mr. McDonald, how would you feel about marrying my sister?"
"It's a fascinating prospect."
Marrying into a big business family might almost be worth more than he was negotiating for. On the other hand… Marcus liked his odds at outplaying them better.
- -
Signing his name was the easiest thing in the world. With just a few seconds of frenzied scribbling, Marcus had bought himself a billion cbills and the financial support of the three biggest names in Free Worlds League industry in 'reclaiming his rightful demense', in exchange for the 'small consideration' of selling off the supermajority of his stake in a defunct mining franchise and restoring its monopolies to the germanium trade in-system.
These suits had known a good deal when he'd dangled it in front of them. Now he'd just need to hope that the mercenaries they hired would be about the same - it was well and good that sellswords weren't known for their scruples or professionalism. Oh, he wouldn't be able to sell to the League, but what of Liao, or Steiner?
He gave a polite, businesslike smile to his 'associates' as they all signed in turn under the watch of a Comstar notary. "Now, I'll turn over all the documentation I've got on the planet Revel, just as soon as this is formally filed."
It's not like these people would actually believe him if he told them the planet with the mine on it was also called Alphard.
When he kicked out whatever pseudo-legit pirate clan was squatting on his land instead of coming in to plunder as tradition dictated, he'd need to find a new name for it, frankly. He liked the idea of 'McDonald's World'. The old name was frankly too regionalistic for his liking - it had been assigned due to outdated notions of local company pride, when that world turned out to be the jewel in the McDonald family's business empire.
He wasn't building a business empire, though. He was out to build his empire.
---
Scene 3
---Jumpship Martinet, Unnamed System Nadir Point, Caesar's Bow
Unclaimed Space, Antispinward Periphery
November 2969
Cordelia set down her notebook and closed the drawer it sat in with a sigh as she felt the sensation of weightlessness fill the ship. If the thrusters were turning off, that meant they were preparing for the next jump. That, in turn, meant that she needed to get back to battle stations in case of immediate action at the jump point. Life took on a cycle out here, in a can.
She'd been insane to sign up for it a second time, she was sure of it. Same ship, same people, same job. They'd been out there for goddamned months, chasing the signature of the Sparkler ships, and they hadn't found a lick of them. No ships, no stations, no signs of any advanced planetary civilization - though they'd discovered upwards of fifty regressed planetary civilizations, none of them could tell them anything about their ancestor's visitors, not even in the form of myths about some kind of star lord - nothing.
Whoever they'd been, if they'd been anyone at all, they'd never attempted to settle this region. Their past habitual visitations, by all accounts, were nothing more than a regular patrol of the neighborhood - or perhaps an exhaustive testing process.
The only reason they were out here again was the faint and foolish hope that the chance readings they'd picked up were promising: when they'd gotten as far from Caesar's Crown as Caesar's Crown was from Alphard, they'd picked up the frenzied sparkles of continuous activity just seven more jumps away - beyond their round trip range by a hair, after all the time they'd spent casting a wide net.
Five hundred light years from home, at the end of a wild goose chase where they followed the six-day flickers wherever they appeared in ever scarcer and scarcer numbers - a reduction in the regularity in patrols, or perhaps just bad luck for their sensors - they saw that just another two hundred or so away there had been a rhythmic pattern of five day jump-in, jump-out patterns around the time of the Amaris Civil War. Just as the Inner Sphere started to tear itself apart, these people had changed up their tempo from six days to five days between jumps - the first definite sign that it was a human-made phenomenon and not just a bizarre quality of the stars of the Bow.
So here they were again, heading out toward that flickering light that was hidden from the Inner Sphere by a nebula. Fools on an express route to an unknowable somewhere that their persistence had revealed to them.
As she floated down the hallway, she couldn't help but wonder if whoever they found on the other side would even be willing to talk. They'd clearly done a lot to hide themselves out here, shielding themselves so thoroughly that the radio spectrum evidence of their existence would never reach Terra in a directly detectable form.
Would they consider the rest of humanity friend or foe?
She didn't want to fight them. On their home turf, that'd be a fool's battle if ever there was one. It meant death, certain death, and nothing but death.
If she had to, though…she'd given an oath to protect the diplomatic mission with her life, and she'd meant it. She could only hope she'd still mean it when her conviction was tested.
"All hands at battle stations for jump-out in five minutes."
She drifted in through the airlock of her patrol boat to see her crew already taking positions in the central cabin, nodding to each of them in turn as she settled into her seat. At the moment, the small craft wasn't technically powered on - rather than using its reactor, its lights were kept on by a cable from the bay itself, allowing them the juice needed to quick-start their reactor on a moment's notice. Once they arrived on the other side, it'd only take one quick press of a button to start up, eject the extension cord, and signal the bayside crew to clear the room for depressurization.
In just a few minutes, they'd discover just what it was that they'd spent all this time looking for. They'd learn if they were going to live or die. If they were going to return home as heroes or as laughing stocks. She just hoped that Naddux had learned enough about tact to not get in the senior diplomat's way - if he was running too high on bluster, even a friendly encounter might turn sour.
"Nervous, LT?"
She glanced over to her primary gunner, Jane McLane, and tilted her head back. "You look like the perfect picture of composure yourself. Stop gripping those controls like you're trying to strangle them. Even if we've got five steps to go through to arm the weapons, that's piss poor discipline."
"Right."
The lieutenant cleared her mind with a nod. "Someone go back and check - make sure the marines are actually getting armored up and not giving each-other wedgies like a bunch of sorority bitches. They might be going forth into the breach in half an hour - wouldn't want to do that in the buff."
Her second in command nodded. "I'll set 'em straight."
Cordelia could feel her nails, even short clipped as they were, digging into the palms of her hand. She restrained the pressure for one reason, and only one reason - they couldn't have blood floating around in the cockpit until they got around to putting down thrust. It just wasn't workable.
She killed the part of herself that hoped the Sparklers had died out some time in the last fifteen years - that the readings they were picking up even now were just ghosts. It wasn't her job to decide what would be for the best - it was her job to decide how best to contribute to the vision her superiors passed down to her, and pass on her own small vision to her crew. She was a cog in this machine, turning to make sure that the people who saw furthest had hands that reached what they were trying to grab. A free woman, voluntarily pledged to the service of Prometheus and the Marian Union.
She was the unshaped form that called out to the flame. The truth that hadn't learned itself yet. The shining world that hid within the raw earth. She was the kiln that tested the potter's art for cracks, turning vision into reality. She was the potter's wheel and clay, wise were the hands that shaped her.
She would do what was required of her. No matter how much she hoped that was 'nothing'.
"Initiating jump in ten… nine…"
She smirked. "Hurry up and wait faster, girls. Destiny's almost here for the dance."
"Bitch better not step on my fee-"
For a moment, the world unraveled, space taking on the flavor of blue, before normalcy reasserted itself, with the bonus of a dull headache and cottonmouth on her end.
"Engine hot." she instructed. "Ready craft to launch on command."
The radio on the dashboard crackled into life a moment later. Captain Tinor's radio operator serenaded them with his smooth, velvety voice across the connection. "Be advised, multiple contacts in jump point detected. No launches detected as of yet - no approach burns. Wait-and-see protocol in effect. Zheng He will hail for a response if not hailed in one minute."
"You hear that?" the gunner asked, multitasking as she - like the rest of the small crew - ran through her final checks. "We aren't dying quite yet. Let's just hope whoever they are, Naddux doesn't get on the phone and insult their mothers."
The pilot snorted. "He's probably tied to his bed right now, sweetie. They aren't going to let him ruin this if they don't have to."
The sergeant returned from the back. "What the fuck kind of scenario would they have to let that lump of a man insult their mothers under?"
Cordelia, against her better judgement, joined in on the gossip. "It's always possible he'll turn out to be the only one onboard who speaks their language. It's not like we can say some Alliance era lost colony still speaks English or anything. Could be all we'll learn from this expedition is that we need to come back with a different kind of linguist on board - we've only got, what, fourteen languages covered between our diplomats?"
"Ah yes," her radar operator snarked. "We've discovered the legendary lost space colony of the Basque people, and can do nothing without returning to base to pick up someone fluent in Euskara."
"Your boyfriend isn't even a patrician, Patty. Getting him cleared as a diplomat would take months!"
Technically, this sort of chatter was forbidden. Practically speaking, it was keeping their wits about them long enough to determine if they actually needed to do anything today. Lesser of two evils, compared to them all going insane in the cockpit.
The intercom crackled on again. "All clear, but remain ready to respond to a call to battle stations. Dialogues are in progress."
"Oh boy, what language do you think they spoke?"
"Five talents on Hindi."
That was a bridge too far. "There'll be no gambling under my watch. Watch it be, say, Arabic, though."
- -
What felt like an eternity later, Cordelia tiptoed onto the bridge carefully under a tenth of a g. What she wouldn't give for a pair of magnetic boots or something to simplify this process. "So, what's the story?"
The bridge crew was lounging in various states of relief themselves, slouched to an extent that was obviously unrealistic under such minor acceleration. Dan was the first to speak up. "Well, they thought for a second we might be some well armed pirates who'd been stealing their ships on and off for a while now, but they eventually realized that our ships were completely different from the ones those folks were packing - we would have been in a boatload of trouble if we'd brought a Tramp instead, so for once I'm happy we're flying Scouts. It took some smooth talking, but now we've got an invitation to meet with some big people in the 'Axumite Providence.' to talk about our reason for coming here."
"Wild." she commented, scratching the back of her head. "So, what language did they turn out to speak?"
"You'd think Ethiopian based on the name." the patrician declared, rubbing his forehead, throwing his hands out wide. "But actually, it was a dialect of Somali, with some extra Afar and Arabic loanwords."
Ooh, extra Arabic loanwords. That meant, at least to some extent, she'd won their little guessing game. "And one of you two…actually knew that language?"
Sala waved her hand from the next seat over. "Over here, sweetie. It took a fucking while, though - I'm not any sort of professional interpreter."
"Right." she commented. "So, you think they'll have a spare grav deck you plebs can use for rehab? I know your muscles have got to be shrunk like raisins after the trip out here."
"They'd better." the captain huffed. "Large Marge's skipper is almost as stingy about sharing his thrust gravity as you are."
Cordelia covered her face. "You know for a goddamned fact that it's called rationing fuel in his case. It's not like they're going off on flights without you, right?"
It was amazing how much even a normally respectable man could approach Dan's level of maturity after a half year in the can.
Even more amazing, though, was the fact that nobody had died so far, and nobody seemed likely to die today either.
--------
So much for speeding up the pace, huh?
Marian Union 2966
plotvitalnpc
Once more walking the path of the catgirl.
This map is slightly off scale in some places, but it reflects the state of the Marian Union in the last chapter.
The colored lines represent the operations areas of the various jumpship fleet subsections of the union - two arrows means that over a given stretch of the network, jumpships operate in both directions, while one arrow means monodirectional flow in that area.
Green: Six merchants, split into two groups of three travelling in opposite directions. This is the most populous region in the union, so it requires a heavy degree of traffic to keep equipment and personnel flowing at the desired rate.
Yellow: Two invaders, circulating advanced equipment and personnel between Niops and Alphard while also serving Pengwern.
Orange: Two invaders, circulating goods and personnel between Alphard and Olympus while serving every world between. A necessary intermediate stage in serving the Lothian region.
Teal: Two tramps, providing circulation within Lothian while also allowing for the exchange of goods and personnel with the wider union through the orange line.
Red: One merchant, transferring material between Lothian and Valerius to facilitate, among other things, the customary trade with Illyria.
Pink: One scout, serving the extremely undeveloped worlds that far rimward.
Not pictured: Two scouts (in use in this latest chapter) and one invader, kept in reserve under normal circumstances to dispatch in response to the freight needs of the nation on a more dynamic basis.
The jumpship fleet of the Union has grown slightly since the last time, primarily through the discovery and refurbishment of some impromptu boneyards left when people parked in a stable orbit while trying in vain to fix reparable faults in their jumpships, then ultimately died onboard, hence the new total number of seventeen ships. Even so, with the territorial expansion of the union there is very little slack in the system, and the entire setup is more or less a compromise between maintaining necessary frequencies of contact (at least once a month for every world) to allow the propagation of news, prioritizing freight to key destinations, and preserving the ability to respond to developing situations.
This is facilitated by a basic network of cargo shuttles and stations established in most systems now, to allow for rapid offloading. However, these stations do not offer charging capabilities- only cargo transfer and refueling.
Can we get an idea of the Unions military at this point? Size wise?
plotvitalnpc
Once more walking the path of the catgirl.
Great question.
I'd say there are probably about half as many regiments of mixed tech-D armor and militiamechs (mostly the armor) as there are worlds by now.
The aerospace forces have expanded primarily through the construction of small crafts, though some ASF construction is probably going on. Between those things, they probably have a good few mixed aerospace regiments right around now - small aerospace is fairly cheap to build, and a low combat tempo cancels out its high irrecoverable attrition rate.
Battlemechs... by now those are in limited production, so I'd say probably getting to the point of having two or three regiments, maybe? With the growth of the force accelerating as the relevant industries expand further.
I'm not going to try 'eyeballing' the number of power armored infantry forces they've got - right now, it's mostly something at the special forces/boarding/antiboarding marine level, though there are some larger all-power armor infantry formations.
I'll need to review my notes and plans to come up with a more precise (and accurate - this is entirely a late evening 'going by feeling' thing right now, I could be completely wrong based on the development timeline) answer than that (probably around the time I get around to writing up profiles for major worlds and such), but in general the Marian military is at the early part of its first proper (rather than rushjob 'good enough' style) military buildup period, now that the underlying industrial economy has grown, developed, and diversified enough to support it.
On an institutional level, these forces are split between the militia of the senate, the industrial security force of the promethean order, the special anti-armor police of the tribunal, and the actual Marian Union Military Service.
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Is that total of about 15 regiments, 31 worlds/2, the National military or does it include the planetary militias?
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plotvitalnpc
Once more walking the path of the catgirl.
I really wouldn't recommend fixating too much on those numbers. They're written on the back of the back of the napkin, metaphorically speaking.
That said, the militia is relatively low priority for the receipt of new equipment - mostly, it's still operating on various tech c support vehicles, while the modern forces are concentrated in the military proper, but some does leak to the various offbranches, like the militia, the promethean order's private security, and the tank police what respond if you drive a tank through the front door of a Wendy's.
Anyone else's brain immediately start thinking of "Marian Tank Police", a locally made animation series like "Dominion Tank Police", but with Roman affectations on their vehicles? Still playing golf with grenades though.
- Location
- Skirmish Hill
Great to see the new map, thanks a bunch. The Union is growing rather well, but as you noted the lack of Jumpships is a real danger with no slack in the system. Do you have an idea of the number of Dropships in the Union? Is transport largely state-controlled, like a merchant marine? Or are there a number of shipping/trading cartels controlling it? I might have missed something obvious, if so I am about due for a reread at this point anyway.
As always, I look forward to seeing more of your story plotvitalnpc.
As always, I look forward to seeing more of your story plotvitalnpc.
GeshronTyler
Kleiner Giftzwerg
Yup, someone else other than the POV astronomer took a look at that interesting data. I liked the way the realities of how light speed works with astronomical observations, to make tracking down those signals and possible jumpship activity a lengthy endeavor, was brought into the narrative. In the end the MH got their links to the Auximite, and the predation of the Explorer Corp has of course not gone unnoticed. Lucky break there, that the MH group didn't have "pirate" ship classes.
Nothing like trade to get an economy going, especially between two more separated polities unlikely to have conflicts over territory, and have diverse commodities/information to trade. It will be interesting to see if we'll end up with a kind of dedicated "freight line" jumpship type.
Then we've got the prospective gang of "Filibusters", in the form of McDonald and co. Just to be clear, "Revel", is actually the MH Capital "Alphard"? Yeah, that plan to just "brush aside the neo-barb pirates" is not going to go the way he's imagining it. What will make things interesting is how "covertly" they try to make their way their. If they want to keep as few other possible "competitors" out of the loop, then they might well just sneak most of the way there, or start "sneaking" once past Illyria... Assuming the Fillibusters are traveling with just one JS, and a few dropships, they're going to be fairly easily wrapped up.
I wonder how soon McDonald is going to go ahead and stab his business "partners" in the back? Will he wait until they reach Alphard, or do it sooner? Not that being so ready to backstab would make his own position very secure in regards to the "muscle". Just as easy to "cut out" the lone "middleman" left...
Those 3 FWL magnates would be missed eventually, should they disappear or "have a tragic accident", so that could draw further notice. If the "official" story the target was "Revel", investigations could be lead astray...
Nothing like trade to get an economy going, especially between two more separated polities unlikely to have conflicts over territory, and have diverse commodities/information to trade. It will be interesting to see if we'll end up with a kind of dedicated "freight line" jumpship type.
Then we've got the prospective gang of "Filibusters", in the form of McDonald and co. Just to be clear, "Revel", is actually the MH Capital "Alphard"? Yeah, that plan to just "brush aside the neo-barb pirates" is not going to go the way he's imagining it. What will make things interesting is how "covertly" they try to make their way their. If they want to keep as few other possible "competitors" out of the loop, then they might well just sneak most of the way there, or start "sneaking" once past Illyria... Assuming the Fillibusters are traveling with just one JS, and a few dropships, they're going to be fairly easily wrapped up.
I wonder how soon McDonald is going to go ahead and stab his business "partners" in the back? Will he wait until they reach Alphard, or do it sooner? Not that being so ready to backstab would make his own position very secure in regards to the "muscle". Just as easy to "cut out" the lone "middleman" left...
Those 3 FWL magnates would be missed eventually, should they disappear or "have a tragic accident", so that could draw further notice. If the "official" story the target was "Revel", investigations could be lead astray...
plotvitalnpc
Once more walking the path of the catgirl.
Revel is the name of a different ex-FWL periphery planet in the area. Marcus basically stuck the name and coordinates of a different planet on a copy of the report on the germanium mine so that, if he can't get the mercenaries to betray his corporate backers in the League's jumpship producing companies, they won't actually be able to find the mine - instead, he'll disappear under another name, hire a different group, and go to Alphard himself.
I believe I mentioned a merchant marine in the latest chapter. At the current time, there are no privately owned jumpships or dropships in the Marian Union.
The number of dropships... well, it's such that they're more limited by jumpships than dropships right now. My notes say that they should have some limited ability to build or replace dropships by now. Jumpships really are the big missing industrial sector at the moment.
GeshronTyler
Kleiner Giftzwerg
If I've understood it, the claim is for the mine and the planet Alphard, the capital of this version of the Marian Hegemony? So yes, one could certainly say that it's been claimed by "Eminent Domain".
Of course, the stickier bit is this McDonald's claim is secured according to FWL law, and for the amount of germanium this claim is supposed to have, the FWL could well be prepared to supply some serious combat power... But if he betrays his business partners as he plans, getting further support to deal with the "Claim Jumpers" (I.e., the Government of the Marian Hegemony) from sources in the FWL could be tricky. Since he'd have to explain what happened to his business partners, the owners/CEOs of the major FWL Jumpship yard owners...
This guy's plans are basically just like "original" O'Reillys- go out there with some Mercs, kick the neobarbs out or down, and build an empire. 'Cept he's a coupla decades too late...
I'm looking forward to seeing what the Union's nuclear capability and doctrine for use are. Since no one seems to know about the Union that suggests they have either killed or captured every pirate, merc, and independent trader that goes into their territory.
GeshronTyler
Kleiner Giftzwerg
The Marian Union certainly has a number of carrots they can offer, before resorting to "sticks". Generous terms for contracts for operating on the MU "internal" routes, especially when it comes to resupply and maintenance. Those two are often the bane of independent operators, whether commercial or military contractors. Fairly low risk, steady work, and access to depot/yard level maintenance, in return for accepting some "watchdogs" or having some dependents act as guarantees for loyalty/"good behavior"- as long as the MU keeps its bargains in good faith, there aren't many that would decline such an offer.
For those that prove reliable, they could be eventually allowed to serve as potential links to "the Outside"
Granted, some quite proud/prideful or independent types might balk at being constrained, but there's probably still a deal to be made. The avaricious, mendacious, malicious type, could be tricky to handle, especially if they've got strong survival instincts, but with the way FTL mechanics work, there's a good chance to deal with them when they first jump in. At least, for the "piratical" kind, confiscating by eminent domain is practically a service to humanity...
Chapter 37 (January 2970)
plotvitalnpc
Once more walking the path of the catgirl.
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Scene 1
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Overlord Dropship 'Pharaoh', In Transit, Alphard Star System
Marian Union, Antispinward Periphery
January 2970
The colonel of Prancer's Lancers, Elmer Bares, picked his teeth as the comms team flipped channel to channel. "Sure is a noisy planet, ain't it, Mr. McDonald?"
Marcus massaged his forehead. "Certainly, I wouldn't expect this much comms chatter from the garden variety neobarbarian squatters. I suppose they've properly been investing their stolen lucre in the planetary economy, if it has this robust a communications network. Not that I'm complaining - less of a mess for us to set straight once we're in charge. I wonder, though…just how many people are on that rock right now?"
"If you're really that broken up over it," the colonel snorted. "I'm sure we can run a census once we've wrapped the place up with a bow for you. You sure it's going to be good cutting out the bigwigs here, though?"
Marcus held up his hands. Ah, it felt so wonderful to be in transit. "Elmer, my friend, you know as well as I do that they've got entirely the wrong set of coordinates. When they come looking for us they'll find a planet full of exotic spices - but by no means a germanium mine. We'll have long extended our commercial lanes beyond their reach by then, and you Lancers and I will be at the top of a growing empire."
"Yeah…" the colonel admitted, shrugging again. "I mean, you're the one paying at this point, so I got no problem with that if you're sure."
"Of course I'm sure. And in any case, you're a regiment of the finest mechwarriors around!" Finest at being pliable and not asking too many questions, at least. Their skill was rated tolerably, but the Lancers were known first and foremost for being relatively discreet… and a bit corrupt, but within workable limits - normally. "Where are they going to dig up the funds and forces needed to enforce their preferred outcome against us, exactly? If trade with the Capellans and Lyrans doesn't work out for us, we could always use our local dominance to force them to trade with us on our own terms, you know?"
"Hah - I like the sound of that."
The number printed on the big screen in front of them incremented up twice - a sign that they'd received another call to power down their engines and surrender from the bandit government - it was now, after a four day burn - nearly at the point of flipping around and reversing thrust - up to 578. Dumbfucks really thought that would work this late in the game? They were carrying a full hundred and eight mechs across their ships - plenty of them Firestarters - and a few fighters besides. Once they got there in force, they'd be writing a new constitution in days - hours, if the other side was smart. The threats of annihilating them with extreme force before they could do anything, those were pure bluster by a side that knew it was losing.
One of the mercs manning the comms desk shot upright after a few more seconds, their face red. "Big Daddy!"
The colonel perked up at hearing his ridiculous nickname. "The hell's got you spooked, Barclay?"
The comm officer turned to face the command chairs with a frown. "News from the jump point - we've got contact with hostiles. Confirmed enemy drive signatures."
Elmer clicked his tongue. "We just had to have popped in in time for their next scheduled visit. Well, the fighters will have to keep them off the Shetland until we pop back around."
"No, sir." the comms officer disagreed, leading Marcus to take a bit more interest in the situation. "Not jump drive - station keeping drive. It seems like they had some stations lobbed up above the usual jump distance running cold - drives off, reactor at minimum, running only the half of their radiators that faced away from the star. They suddenly went hot and started launching something just now. Looks like attack and boarding shuttles, they're saying At least 24 of them."
"Jesus." the colonel groaned. "Alright, we need to flip around and burn to support our ships, lads! You'd best not trip over the next few days, because we're pulling two gees to get there!"
Marcus rose from his seat, holding out his hand. "Colonel, we can't do that! The ships are already half charged, and even at 2g we'll need four days just to brake and then pick up the speed needed to fully reverse our direction."
It was a really quite clever defensive tactic, Marcus had to admit. Against the wider void, a space station running cold wasn't that visible on its own, and the low gravity meant it wouldn't fall that quickly. Of course, it couldn't hang around with drives off forever, but… with how prematurely the jump signature would have been visible, they would have had plenty of time to cut thrust and minimize activity, then cool down to be nearly invisible. It'd only work above the jump-in point, of course - if they tried to hide against the star, being cold would just make them more visible. Attacking once the burn was half done let them ensure that they'd get the ships out of system before the defenders could return to the starting point, as well.
Elmer's face glowed red as he rose to face his employer. "Then what the hell are we supposed to do? That's our main form of transport hanging back there, you know!"
"When we've got their homeworld, their ships will have no choice but to surrender to us. Even if they seize the Shetland and jump it out, we'll eventually get it back when they acknowledge our supremacy over their piggy bank." Marcus hissed. "Besides, there was a very simple way this could have been avoided on your side. How is it that you didn't engage active sensors at any point after we jumped in, let alone for the past four days? The enemy's passive stealth tactics shouldn't have worked if you did due diligence on this insertion."
Elmer threw his arms out in a haze of indignation. "Normal reckoning is, there's no such thing as stealth in space! Some ships don't even have working active sensors anymore, it's that little of a priority. I've never even heard of this kind of stunt!"
Marcus cupped his chin. "I wonder if that's because it's never used, or because people who it's used on don't ever get a chance to report that it's happened. I'd think the latter - it's quite conceptually simple as a tactic. Though without an HPG station to call their own, these barbarians can't stop the next ship from coming in, unless they somehow manage to contact their entire fleet, so it can't be as effective as the Inner Sphere could theoretically have it. That said… do your fleet's active sensors actually work?"
"They do not, sir." the sensor operator sheepishly declared from where he was sitting. "Not on any single one of our ships."
The colonel sagged. "Fine, then, we'll continue with our assault on the planet on the assumption that we can claim suitable transportation afterwards. I'm going to order all ships to prepare for boarders, though."
"Naturally."
"We've picked up twelve drive signatures coming in hot from the jump point - small class, approaching at upwards of two gees." the sensor officer noted as soon as his eyes were back on the panel.
"Fucking hell." Elmer hissed. "Okay, they're trying to intimidate us now that they've got our ships. If they're willing to pull more acceleration than us, they might manage to make a pass at us while we're still in transit, but they'll also be exhausted and in no condition to fight. Maintain current thrust - what they really want is to force us up to at least one and a half gees so we'll be tired when we get there. That way, whatever they send our way then will have an easy hunt."
Marcus blinked. "You seem very sure of that, colonel."
"We've had more than one rodeo here. Surprised Shetland got taken so easily, frankly." the man huffed. "Ey, did we get any last message from the crew back there?"
"They 'couldn't get through the fucking armor on these guys'." declared the comms officer. "We'd better get the vibro axes and armored spacesuits ready - doesn't sound like needles will cut it here."
The colonel nodded. "Obviously. Gotta respond in proportion to the other side - shame the boys back at the jump point didn't get enough of a warning to prepare to repel boarders."
"Damn shame." Marcus agreed. It wouldn't do any good to antagonize the Lancers at this point. A high stress situation would be perfect to convince them, he was suddenly realizing, to kill him - all of his economic management training be damned - and try to run this place themselves now that they knew where it was.
He couldn't help but think, though, about how remarkable the local defensive strategy was for a bunch of periphrat hicks. This certainly wasn't their own first rodeo by any means. Maybe it was even how they got their ships.
"It might be a bit late to ask this," Marcus mused. "But how exactly does a boarding operation work? How do people get into the ship?"
"Trying to keep me calm with conversation, boss?" Elmer commented with a wry grin. "Whatever, let ol' Big Daddy Bares tell you all about it. First thing is, the shuttle's gotta catch up to the target, then it's gotta get close and match velocities pretty much exactly. They launch tethers at that point to drag themself closer in, reeling up to one of the bay doors or, in a pinch, docking collar airlock, and deploy a drill to bore through the hinges. Armor's tough and all, but if you adhere for thirty odd seconds, you can force your way through a minor weak point and force depressurization of part of the enemy ship by ripping the door off - which does a lot of things if they didn't do it ahead of you, most of all killing everyone in that section, suit or no suit. Once you've got an opening into the ship, you send your boys in with armored spacesuits, axes, and needle guns to mop up enemy anti-boarding marines and seize control without damaging the ship any more - and preferably without killing the bridge and engineering staff either. Assuming you win, you fix the door you busted and repressurize the ship then call it yours. Back during the great wars, people built missiles that used the same tricks to deliver nuclear charges to the interior of the ship, my pa used to tell me. It doesn't much matter how tough your armor is if the enemy patiently digs their way into the ship with a limpet drill and blows it up from inside."
"Christ."
"Christ isn't there for you when your ship's getting boarded, boss." the colonel huffed. "Nor when your ship's getting a nuke shoved up its ass. The only thing there for you when it comes down to that is your armor, your needle gun, and your axe. Plus your buddy. Always gotta thank your buddy. Now, come along - we've got a few days to see if we've got a suit that fits you right before we're in any risk of needing to test it out."
"...Right. Thanks."
Marcus felt sweat beading on his forehead. He doubted he'd manage much sleep for the rest of this trip.
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Scene 2
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System Defense Boat 'Tou Thiséa', Geostationary Orbit, Alphard Star System
Marian Union, Antispinward Periphery
January 2970
Sergeant Patricia Valdez de la Mancha gripped the hilt of her vibroblade firmly, taking assurance from the feedback her power armor's gloves gave her.
Since she'd transferred to the near-Alphard posting five years ago, this would be her first spot of action. As a marine stationed at a jump point station, your job was to board and seize any vessel which did not clear verification as a ship of the Marian Union. It was an active job with a notable lethality rate from lunatic pirates scrapping their entire ships just to deny them to the boarders, but it was an absolute necessity to maintain the secrecy of the Marian Union. Well, survival rates had improved a lot since the 'Voidhawk' armor variant had been spun up - even if it'd required a lot of people to resign from the branch when they turned out not to fit the armor, it was hard to compare a suit of specialized power armor to an armored spacesuit without knowing you came out ahead.
Service around Alphard itself, or around any other planet, was not so active as that. It was rare that even so much as a Union tried to make for a planetary surface around here. That didn't mean that it wasn't an important job, though. Rather, being trusted with service in orbit of Alphard was the single highest honor possible - having her team reassigned to the Second Alphard Special Void Service had been the pinnacle of her career. It was an honor because there was no job more important than protecting the engines of industry and education that supported the entire Marian Union's development trajectory.
She looked up. She couldn't see anyone's faces through their helmets, but she knew what they were thinking. This was the day they'd trained for, as they burned hard to match speeds with the enemy dropship convoy. Though they exceeded one gee of thrust, their bodies did not complain. Though they might die, their hearts did not quicken. Though they might fail, their hands did not loosen. Duty transcended self preservation, and training overcame physical limitation. They were Death incarnate now.
"Alright, you miserable cowards." she greeted, gazing out upon her squad of eleven battle hardened marines. "It's a good day to die. An entire regiment of enemy mechs, plus more besides, come to lay siege to Alphard and test her defenses. If they found their way to the ground, they would die. Twice their number, and more besides, are waiting down there to answer their barbaric provocation and show them the fires of Prometheus. Are we going to let them, though?"
"Hell no, sir!" came the rallying cry from around the cabin.
"And why is that?"
"Because the ASVS shoots first and asks question never!"
"Damn straight, ladies." she declared with a nod. "Three Overlords, one Excalibur, and two Mules. A damn dignified invasion force if there ever was one, a real juggernaut on land if they're full. But this ain't their precious land right now, and their mechs, their tanks, their infantry platoons don't mean shit up in the black. This is our goddamned house, and we're going to show them the doors of hell before those fussy little babies on the ground ever get a look at them."
"Oorah!"
She smiled behind her helmet. "Some of our siblings in service are heading for the Mules, out to starve the stragglers out. Others are going to harass the Overlords, tie up the fighters, maybe take some of their precious battlemechs out of the fight. Pale Wing has the most important job, though - we're crossing out the damned Excalibur before it hits air - if everything's full, that thing will contain at least half of their metal, and by far the supermajority of their bodies. The mechs might shine more, but disabling the tanks is the one surefire way to deny them combined arms."
Manning, who'd been with her longest, clattered the tip of her blade on the floor. "How many kills are we looking for, sarge?"
Patty glanced up. An Excalibur loaded to capacity held nearly twelve hundred people. Out of the Pale Wing, six were boarding craft and twelve were strike/dogfighting craft. "If every marine in the wing gets on board, we'll each be responsible for as many as sixteen kills. If it's just us twelve? I want to see a hundred bodies or surrenders out of each and every one of you. If you aren't tough enough shit for that, it'll be on our comrades in the strikers to give us our cremation."
"Hundred squishies ain't nothing."
She held up a hand. "Don't get cocky, Trish. I need you thinking while you're in there. Getting too lost in your own hype is a great way to catch a boarding axe to the neck, superior equipment and training or no. These people know to be ready for a boarding now, unless they're genuinely lower than plankton in terms of intelligence. They'll be armored up to the limits of their available suits. The moment that drill opens our breach, I want every one of you girls operating at 200%, capiche?"
"We gotcha, sarge."
"Good."
- -
The cabin lights of the marine compartment flipped from red to green, and the rumbling stopped. The breach was confirmed, and the cabin was depressurized.
"Remember, girls. Ride the tethers down then crawl on the outside. If you try to go off rockets alone, you might get lost in space if they speed up."
It was a basic warning. Really, absolutely elementary. She was demeaning her marines by giving them such a basic warning at this point in their careers. However, it was better to remind them now than to risk the one in a thousand chance someone had forgotten. That kind of absurd action movie maneuver was an emergency only thing, even if these suits had both jump jets and fine maneuvering thrusters.
The door opened, and one by one they stepped out to the opening and grabbed one of the four thick tether cables anchoring them to the dropship's wrenched-open bay door. Truthfully, they didn't necessarily need to go in at this point. It'd take several days of repairs just to re-seal this bay to the point that the dropship could safely enter the atmosphere, let alone deploy forces from it. However, there was considerable value in denying them the opportunity to try and transfer forces from this ship to another - to overload one of the Overlords and land it all the same - let alone make those repairs, and there was undeniably value in capturing their payload rather than letting it get shot to shit later.
It took half a minute for Patricia, the first breacher, to get to the open port and slip inside, her mag boots and thrusters unnecessary for the moment as the enemy ship and her boat continued to accelerate in parallel.
The abandoned tank bay was dark and empty, as though the crew hadn't prepared any sort of defense for the chamber. She clapped her right hand twice, turning on the shoulder mounted floodlight on the suit to illuminate things. Well, not that she blamed them. Compared to a mechbay, the gantries didn't go up high enough to make for a good layered fire environment, and though there were a large number of subchambers to the room full of strapped down tanks, they wouldn't make for hard clearing. This did mean, though, that they'd crammed the dozens and dozens of people who should have inhabited the space somewhere else in the ship rather than having them keep guard - probably not enough hardsuits to go around.
When the squad had gathered, she gestured to the far door with her sword, nodding to Manning. Her old buddy took the hint quickly as the squad approached the bulkhead, shifting her vibrosword to the right arm to apply her cutting torch directly to the hinges holding the airlock in place from the side, while adhering herself firmly in place with her magboots.
Once enough cutting was done, the door blew away forcefully - apparently, they hadn't depressurized that corridor. All the better that they hadn't been standing in front of the door. "Brescia, take point."
Hillary had good instincts. She wasn't the toughest of them, but she'd notice any clever tricks sooner than the rest of them. As she entered the corridor, the rest followed in two columns that narrowed back to one in rear. All swords were drawn and in their left hands at this point, while the maintenance and ammo checks on the heavy needlers mounted to the right arms had been concluded hours before. They were ready for battle.
If the defenders weren't going to take them on in the storage bays, though…
"You remember the layout, girls?" she broadcasted from the middle of the group. "They're going to try and take us in the mess hall. That's where the other squads will be going too. Let's invite ourselves to this big, fancy dinner party."
It would only be a few more minutes before they painted the halls red.
- -
One of the invaders came at Patty with an axe drawn high, arm waving wildly in a way that made her think they were probably letting out some barbaric roar under that helmet. She swung her sword decisively and removed the head from their weapon, before catching their vulnerable neck on the back swing. A fountain of blood squirted forth unhindered by atmospheric friction to paint the ceiling and floor - when acceleration gravity cut out, it'd become an awful mess to be sure.
Needles plinked off of her armor, trying and failing to find a weak spot in the joints, to slip into the cracks in the segmented armor plating. She lifted her right arm and contorted her fingers into the appropriate configuration to trigger her own needler, loosing hundreds of bigger, faster, more spread out flechettes back at the fellow who'd taken aim at her until they collapsed, a needle piercing through the neck of their suit at an opportune location.
These people had families once. It was a shame they'd let their folks down by turning their blood into the rose petals of her slaughter, rather than doing something smart with their lives.
Now she simply had no choice but to stack the bodies along with her girls. The squad counted just over two hundred kills so far, and with just two more squads onboard, that meant they were only halfway there.
She reached into her storage compartment to grab a towel, taking the chance as this room fell calm to wipe away the blood from around her viewport, making sure she'd be operating in peak condition for the next one.
When they next went off duty, she was going to get fucking hammered, courtesy of the hazard pay. Then who knew what'd happen - maybe she'd get promoted during the hangover?
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Scene 3
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Ruins of the Alphard Trading Company, Alphard
Marian Union, Antispinward Periphery
January 2970
Big Daddy Bares was having a damned shitty week. He'd lost his Star Lord, he'd lost one of his sons, he'd lost his entire damned conventional arm when those tin cans boarded the Excalibur class dropship Hussar in orbit. All told, it was a damned miracle he hadn't lost his marbles, his patience, or his temper so far.
This was a damned shitty job, and McDonald was an even shittier boss, but there was still a chance of pulling it all back together. For all that those armored exos were murder on a ship, there was no way they could best his shining steed, Bucephallus the Black Knight, in a real man's open field battle. It was a more elegant weapon of a more civilized age, compared to their cowardly murder of unprepared warriors, and never in his life had he seen a more perfect battlemech. However many battlemechs these pirates had, soon they'd have none.
Around him his lance stood resolute, ready to face down whatever forces the barbarians and secure a path back to the Inner Sphere by fire and sword - as did his company, his battalion, his regiment around them. Whether they'd do it like Marcus wanted, make this place their own kingdom, or report on his betrayal of their official employers and hand the planet over for consideration, that'd remain to be seen by how he was feeling afterwards.
Truthfully, the germanium warehouse wasn't much of a defensive location, but it was a relatively unprotected landing point that they already had serviceable maps on. That the germanium had evidently been moved at some point in the last two centuries actually made it easier, since the building was tall enough to walk a mech around the interior of.
A light on the command panel of his cockpit lit up, drawing his hand to the button that would open his dedicated line to the First Recon Company. In an instant, several screens lit up with a summary of data relayed from the other machines - useless unless he was going to spend a few minutes digesting the text. "What 'ya see, Pulling? Talk to me."
"Big Daddy, we got a problem down here." the pilot of the firestarter spat in her habitual twang. "Our courteous hosts hereabouts are packin' scout hunters, currently evading twelve Chameleons. Sending you a rendezvous point - reinforce if able."
"Right on, little miss." he declared with a nod for his own benefit as one of the garbled readouts was replaced with an annotated tacmap, something he could actually do something with. It wouldn't work to actually abandon the warehouse, but they needed something to keep that company of goddamned training 'mechs off their scouts - the things might have been thin skinned and prone to running hot, but in a fight with Firestarters they held speed parity and a range advantage, excepting the small number of the anti-insurgent mechs refitted with high powered lasers for anti-mech engagements, of which the scout companies each only had three, serving as command 'mechs.
He flipped on the switches for two of his heavier gunned strike companies. "Walton, White, relaying you a tacmap. Get your asses to Point B14 and pull Pulling's ass out of the fire. These pirates've scraped together a mock-bug hunting force of Chammys. Keep me posted on your progress."
The Lancers were blessed with an abundance of cavalry 'mechs, light or otherwise, for responding to just such an occasion. They'd sweep these local yokels aside, set the scouts free, and then RTB.
"Understood, Big Daddy!" the two subcommanders declared.
"Help is coming, Pulling. You're good." he declared, flipping the switches off to clear his interface before noticing something that made him do a double take. In an instant, he flipped the Third Recon's switch to on. "Markov, what's happening?"
"We're getting chased down, Colonel." the old salt spat back. No regimental spirit in that one, but he was good at his work. "Company of Chameleons in hot pursuit. Sending coordinates over now."
"Fucking-" Elmer hissed, before covering his face. "You too? Pulling's got the same problem. Gimme a sec."
He flipped on the switch for the heavy striker company - mostly pixies - with a sigh. In a perfect world, he wouldn't have to micromanage with this, but there was only one proper command 'mech to go around, so battalion commanders generally hadn't worked for them in the past. "Harley, proceed to Point C4 and bail Markov out."
He flipped the switches off again. With the full recon battalion out on sortie and the striker battalion moving to bail them out, it was just the command-fire battalion left holding down the fort now.
The light for the Second Recon lit up. In an instant he cried out. "GodDAMNIT." and flicked the switch on. "Bliefeld, I don't got shit to send you right now to deal with those Chameleons."
The brat's cocky voice filled the line with static as he laughed. "Well, all the better that we beat the amateur hour punks into the ground, then. They weren't really much in the way of warriors - I swear, most of them have never fought beyond a training ground or simulation. We're taking the 'mechs with us, though. The hardware's even more wasted on these mountains than it was on the so-called 'Marians'."
Elmer covered his face in irritation. The second recon were crazies, so of course they'd have tried to tackle the hunters head on. "Naturally. Any losses? If you're fine, then proceed to point C4 to help Bliefeld pull Markov free."
"The Stingers didn't make it, but we haven't really had our combat effectiveness slashed at all." the young man chuckled. "Roger, though - bailing out Little Grandpa."
Bares didn't like having to dispatch his forces this way - it left a hole in their detection net - but taking more losses in their quick forces was unacceptable at this point. He'd need to get everyone bailed out of their respective fires and gathered back up at base, at this rate.
Where the hell had a bunch of squatting pirates managed to pick up thirty six of the same goddamned model of 'mech, though? Let alone thirty six of the same model of medium 'mech? Normally bug hunters were still light mechs at the end of the day - a Spider, a Firestarter, a comically overgunned little 'mech, if a medium 'mech must be involved at all it'd be a pixie. And that was for regular militaries! Pirate bands usually didn't even have a medium 'mech to their name - their business was in attacking unguarded points where fear alone would keep them from needing to fight. If they had a medium at all, it certainly wouldn't go to some green recruit.
He fiddled with his dashboard for a moment, before flipping on the 'all' switch. "All companies, once free of combat form up on my location and prepare to hold the warehouse. Something is very wrong here."
He was still safe here. Wherever he went, the command/fire battalion in tow, automatically became safe by virtue of his presence. The Hunchbacks, the Phoenix Hawks, the Riflemen, the Catapults, the Flashmen, his Black Knight - they were something you couldn't overcome through petty gimmicks alone.
So he waited…
- -
The commander of the second fire company pinged him, and he opened the line in a hurry. "What, you bored Millingham?"
The rest were still dealing with their little situations, so the armored core of the regiment was staying firmly fixed in place.
"Enemy contacts in the hills!" the panicked second in command declared. "Not Chameleons, either - Ostrocs, Orions…fucking Black Knights, looks like about two battalions. The battle computer is pinging some big damned metal incoming, Big Daddy!"
Elmer's blood burned red. These pirates thought they were damned Knights, then? Don't make him laugh. A moment later, his head cooled him down enough to ask the necessary question. That was a hell of a lot of forces. "Only those three models?"
The middle aged man's voice cracked, which would have been hilarious if not for the fact that it meant they were fucking screwed. "I…uh…I don't know how to read this last one - it's getting read as 100 tons. What's PLG stand for?"
"You think I know? Plague, maybe?"
Elmer's blood froze solid, all the same. Across three battalions of their forces, the locals had only been using five models of 'mech? At least two of them were extinct from current Spheroid production - probably three - and all of the known models dated back to the 2500s at the latest, in the Terran Hegemony.
He flipped on the company channel, then the open channel. Much as he might have fancied himself a Knight, there was no way he was winning a twelve on one joust against other Black Knights, let alone whatever else these locals were packing.
They weren't pirates - there were no pirates in the sphere that could boast this kind of regiment. This was more like the goddamned SLDF, returned to restore order to the Periphery, and then the Inner Sphere, and they were building their own 'mechs! Granted, it was all a bit more…mundane than he'd imagined it to be.
"All Lancers, this is Big Daddy Bares speaking. Surrender immediately to the local hostiles. I didn't bring you here to die on Kerensky's spear."
The incoming indicator lit up for the open channel. "It's all well and good if you want to surrender without further hostilities, Colonel Bares, but I'm going to have to stop you there - I'm Colonel Theodora Samaya of the First Marian Guards, and we are not the inheritors of that pack of deserters' legacy. Now, if you wouldn't mind dismounting and getting ready to tell us just how you learned about this planet?"
Oh wonderful, it was the Camerons in exile, then? That was another fantasy of his come true entirely the wrong way.
---
Scene 4
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Kallipolis-Chaldea District Detainment Center, Alphard
Marian Union, Antispinward Periphery
January 2970
Marcus gripped his forehead and rocked back and forth on the bed he'd been provided. He still didn't understand how this could happen.
The locals of Alphard should have been pre-electrical in their native industrial capacity. At least during the time of the Star League, they'd relied on the ATC to import anything more advanced than basic steam engines, and in return they'd worked the germanium mines and refineries and provided other manufacturing labor.
Even if pirates had shown up, he didn't see how they could have built this place up to be so advanced in so little time. There was no evidence of the thieves having imported this massive army of theirs, no evidence of any grand mercenary force coming to join them, nothing. Maybe the locals could have advanced to internal combustion and diesel if someone had left behind a personal library of historical technical literature, but even in the Star League era random mercantile functionaries didn't keep comprehensive libraries on the engineering of battlemechs and aerospace fighters as coffee table books.
They should have been fighting a few pre-missile guidance tank columns, not Reunification era battlemechs. Even with a billion or so people - he'd roughly estimated that number on final approach to try and calm himself down - to build factories for the titans of war one needed genuinely advanced scientific and engineering knowledge that was all but lost in this era to rampant international terrorism, unlimited warfare, and lost generations.
Moreover, actually building those specific mechs should have required that they already have the original clean sheet designs for all of them.
That didn't make sense unless this place were either a reestablishment of the Star League - which, sorry, no, but he didn't buy that for a second, the Star League in exile or the mythical kingdom of Ian Cameron should have managed way more than this in two centuries - or these knuckle draggers had dug up a genuine backup data core from the old days and retrofitted it into their society. Either way, their technological sophistication was millions of times more valuable than something like 'merely' one planet four standard deviations north of the typical germanium concentration.
That made him want this place all the more - but unfortunately, he was stuck in a goddamned jail cell! On his own goddamned planet! He didn't care if they were the Star League returned - they owed him compensation for the seizure of his land.
"Fuck!"
He heard heavy footsteps from outside the cell's door, and scratched his chin. They didn't have very many questions for him anymore, so he mostly got no-contact visits where they delivered his food now. Generally right around the time he was starting to feel hungry, so he'd guess every five or so hours during the day. Aside from that, he generally didn't hear footsteps at all - he guessed this wing was probably pretty low traffic. This…didn't seem like one of those times, though.
Well, he didn't actually know what time it was, but he wasn't hungry yet, so he doubted it'd been too many hours since the last meal. Either that or the stress was just destroying his appetite.
The door opened slowly, and a gray haired giant with a sprinkling of wrinkles on his face walked calmly through the massive door - Marcus'd been wondering why the things were built so goddamned tall.
"Afternoon, chap." Marcus spat, leaning back against the wall. "I'd offer you something to eat but I'm afraid I'm fresh out. I could interest you in some tap water, perhaps, but the cup's used. Is there any possibility of me actually standing a trial sometime soon, or maybe being let off with an apology for the inconvenience and a settlement payment? From my perspective, you're on my planet right now."
The old man sighed , flexing the arms that Marcus now realized - to his disgust - were entirely artificial as he gazed down upon the inmate. "No, you won't get a trial, and no, you won't get a payment for us taking the planet. Our legal concept of squatter's rights doesn't require any payment to an entity that's abandoned the claim for two centuries, and our legal concept of piracy is that if you attack us outside of the service of a state, you're automatically guilty. Now, if you were a prisoner of Prancer's Lancers, that'd be different, but every single one of them points back to you as their employer."
Marcus felt a vein pop up on his forehead. "Efficient. You get a lot of pirates around here?"
The giant shrugged. "We get enough of them, across thirty some worlds. Besides, there needs to be a legal distinction between the people who wander in on accident and get detained for secrecy reasons, and the people who come with the specific intention of conquest or plunder, among other things. We can't let the former leave, but they haven't actually done anything wrong, so they get an immediate path to naturalization as Marian citizens."
"While belligerents get the noose." Marcus huffed. Thirty worlds? That was a bit more than he was expecting. "You know, I'm technically here under the employ of some major industrial concerns in the Free Worlds League - shouldn't I get some leniency?"
"You pitched the invasion to them, then betrayed them." the intruder declared, rubbing his face. "I don't see how you think that's any better than being a pirate. No, though, we don't usually employ the death penalty these days. Outside of truly notorious offenses, there's a four stage model - solitary observation, social confinement, societal reintegration, and full citizenship as a plebian. We start you off in a highly controlled, regimented environment, then gradually relax the austerity and restrictions as we see signs of proper reform into a member of society. At the end, you're free to pursue higher education and become a philosopher, or join the militia and become a patrician, or do whatever else is open to our citizens. For you, what you're looking at is another month or so before we move you into a better appointed cell in a wing with social opportunities, limited network access, and other opportunities. After a few years like that, engaging in reform opportunities, you'll be released on a monitored parole to live in society, and then a few more years later…you can petition for full civil rights."
Marcus rolled his eyes. "Fuckin' cushy. You're telling me in ten years I can go from a prisoner to just some average joe? I don't know who your bosses think they're fooling, sending in a tough like you to sell me a line about how the streets are paved with gold and the air smells of flowers."
"Bosses?" the man declared with a chuckle. "Oh, no, I'm retired. You can call me John O'Reilly or Jack Cameron, I don't pretend the latter one's actually my name anymore these days, but it's one of the things people know me by. A long, long ass time ago, I was one of the suits who wrote the constitution of the Marian Union, a major government official, and the husband of one of the Triarchs. Essentially, I'm a bit of a big deal. I came to talk to you because I was interested."
Marcus wrinkled his nose. "Interested how?"
"Interested to see if you were seriously planning on using the germanium on Alphard to build your own bandit kingdom in the near periphery." John declared. "I knew a guy who claimed as much once - he was a bit of a shithead, but he turned out to be a surprisingly decent man in the long run, totally different from how he thought of himself. He was another one of the founding Triarchs, actually, and a good friend besides. But, well… you're certainly no Johann O'Reilly. That old shit's dead and buried, and I shouldn't have been looking for a way to recapture the feeling of knowing him this many years after the fact. Besides, the Union's well beyond the point of needing to embrace random invading vagrants as high officials at this point. Constitutional government doesn't do well with that kind of upset."
"You telling me your friend had virtually the exact same name as you?" Marcus huffed. "No wonder you used a pseudonym. What would have happened if you didn't go on a nostalgia trip, though? Would I just get left in the dark until they transferred me to my new cell ina bit?"
John waved his hand around in the air. "You'd normally get the explanation next week, actually. We usually draw the initial observance period out longer. Anyways, I'm off. Wish you the best."
"Motherfu-"
Marcus reached out the barest fraction of the distance between the two of them as John strode out the door of the room and shut it, before clicking his tongue at himself. How fucking lonely was he right now, that he didn't want that middle aged cyborg asshole to leave?
--------
Special feature this time: four whole scenes!
Also, I had the time to revisit my notes and time tables for industry, and I've derived the following military numbers from them: approximately five regiments of battlemechs have been built, five each of ASFs and small craft, and twenty five of tech-d combat vehicles, assuming all production facilities have been operating at full speed (three shifts on working days) since the facilities gained partial functionality all the way through to now (which they probably would be for awhile at least, since there's a considerable lack of metal needing resolution, prematurely aging the industrial equipment and accelerating replacement timetables be damned), when all lines should have their full rated capacity, pending future expansion programs.
The various class-specific militias, security forces, and gendarmies hold a variety of salvaged mechs and vees that don't fit the overall logistical setup, along with militiamechs and the militarized support vehicles that used to make up the core of the Marian defense force.
The real consequences of this raid remain to be fully manifested.
Scene 1
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Overlord Dropship 'Pharaoh', In Transit, Alphard Star System
Marian Union, Antispinward Periphery
January 2970
The colonel of Prancer's Lancers, Elmer Bares, picked his teeth as the comms team flipped channel to channel. "Sure is a noisy planet, ain't it, Mr. McDonald?"
Marcus massaged his forehead. "Certainly, I wouldn't expect this much comms chatter from the garden variety neobarbarian squatters. I suppose they've properly been investing their stolen lucre in the planetary economy, if it has this robust a communications network. Not that I'm complaining - less of a mess for us to set straight once we're in charge. I wonder, though…just how many people are on that rock right now?"
"If you're really that broken up over it," the colonel snorted. "I'm sure we can run a census once we've wrapped the place up with a bow for you. You sure it's going to be good cutting out the bigwigs here, though?"
Marcus held up his hands. Ah, it felt so wonderful to be in transit. "Elmer, my friend, you know as well as I do that they've got entirely the wrong set of coordinates. When they come looking for us they'll find a planet full of exotic spices - but by no means a germanium mine. We'll have long extended our commercial lanes beyond their reach by then, and you Lancers and I will be at the top of a growing empire."
"Yeah…" the colonel admitted, shrugging again. "I mean, you're the one paying at this point, so I got no problem with that if you're sure."
"Of course I'm sure. And in any case, you're a regiment of the finest mechwarriors around!" Finest at being pliable and not asking too many questions, at least. Their skill was rated tolerably, but the Lancers were known first and foremost for being relatively discreet… and a bit corrupt, but within workable limits - normally. "Where are they going to dig up the funds and forces needed to enforce their preferred outcome against us, exactly? If trade with the Capellans and Lyrans doesn't work out for us, we could always use our local dominance to force them to trade with us on our own terms, you know?"
"Hah - I like the sound of that."
The number printed on the big screen in front of them incremented up twice - a sign that they'd received another call to power down their engines and surrender from the bandit government - it was now, after a four day burn - nearly at the point of flipping around and reversing thrust - up to 578. Dumbfucks really thought that would work this late in the game? They were carrying a full hundred and eight mechs across their ships - plenty of them Firestarters - and a few fighters besides. Once they got there in force, they'd be writing a new constitution in days - hours, if the other side was smart. The threats of annihilating them with extreme force before they could do anything, those were pure bluster by a side that knew it was losing.
One of the mercs manning the comms desk shot upright after a few more seconds, their face red. "Big Daddy!"
The colonel perked up at hearing his ridiculous nickname. "The hell's got you spooked, Barclay?"
The comm officer turned to face the command chairs with a frown. "News from the jump point - we've got contact with hostiles. Confirmed enemy drive signatures."
Elmer clicked his tongue. "We just had to have popped in in time for their next scheduled visit. Well, the fighters will have to keep them off the Shetland until we pop back around."
"No, sir." the comms officer disagreed, leading Marcus to take a bit more interest in the situation. "Not jump drive - station keeping drive. It seems like they had some stations lobbed up above the usual jump distance running cold - drives off, reactor at minimum, running only the half of their radiators that faced away from the star. They suddenly went hot and started launching something just now. Looks like attack and boarding shuttles, they're saying At least 24 of them."
"Jesus." the colonel groaned. "Alright, we need to flip around and burn to support our ships, lads! You'd best not trip over the next few days, because we're pulling two gees to get there!"
Marcus rose from his seat, holding out his hand. "Colonel, we can't do that! The ships are already half charged, and even at 2g we'll need four days just to brake and then pick up the speed needed to fully reverse our direction."
It was a really quite clever defensive tactic, Marcus had to admit. Against the wider void, a space station running cold wasn't that visible on its own, and the low gravity meant it wouldn't fall that quickly. Of course, it couldn't hang around with drives off forever, but… with how prematurely the jump signature would have been visible, they would have had plenty of time to cut thrust and minimize activity, then cool down to be nearly invisible. It'd only work above the jump-in point, of course - if they tried to hide against the star, being cold would just make them more visible. Attacking once the burn was half done let them ensure that they'd get the ships out of system before the defenders could return to the starting point, as well.
Elmer's face glowed red as he rose to face his employer. "Then what the hell are we supposed to do? That's our main form of transport hanging back there, you know!"
"When we've got their homeworld, their ships will have no choice but to surrender to us. Even if they seize the Shetland and jump it out, we'll eventually get it back when they acknowledge our supremacy over their piggy bank." Marcus hissed. "Besides, there was a very simple way this could have been avoided on your side. How is it that you didn't engage active sensors at any point after we jumped in, let alone for the past four days? The enemy's passive stealth tactics shouldn't have worked if you did due diligence on this insertion."
Elmer threw his arms out in a haze of indignation. "Normal reckoning is, there's no such thing as stealth in space! Some ships don't even have working active sensors anymore, it's that little of a priority. I've never even heard of this kind of stunt!"
Marcus cupped his chin. "I wonder if that's because it's never used, or because people who it's used on don't ever get a chance to report that it's happened. I'd think the latter - it's quite conceptually simple as a tactic. Though without an HPG station to call their own, these barbarians can't stop the next ship from coming in, unless they somehow manage to contact their entire fleet, so it can't be as effective as the Inner Sphere could theoretically have it. That said… do your fleet's active sensors actually work?"
"They do not, sir." the sensor operator sheepishly declared from where he was sitting. "Not on any single one of our ships."
The colonel sagged. "Fine, then, we'll continue with our assault on the planet on the assumption that we can claim suitable transportation afterwards. I'm going to order all ships to prepare for boarders, though."
"Naturally."
"We've picked up twelve drive signatures coming in hot from the jump point - small class, approaching at upwards of two gees." the sensor officer noted as soon as his eyes were back on the panel.
"Fucking hell." Elmer hissed. "Okay, they're trying to intimidate us now that they've got our ships. If they're willing to pull more acceleration than us, they might manage to make a pass at us while we're still in transit, but they'll also be exhausted and in no condition to fight. Maintain current thrust - what they really want is to force us up to at least one and a half gees so we'll be tired when we get there. That way, whatever they send our way then will have an easy hunt."
Marcus blinked. "You seem very sure of that, colonel."
"We've had more than one rodeo here. Surprised Shetland got taken so easily, frankly." the man huffed. "Ey, did we get any last message from the crew back there?"
"They 'couldn't get through the fucking armor on these guys'." declared the comms officer. "We'd better get the vibro axes and armored spacesuits ready - doesn't sound like needles will cut it here."
The colonel nodded. "Obviously. Gotta respond in proportion to the other side - shame the boys back at the jump point didn't get enough of a warning to prepare to repel boarders."
"Damn shame." Marcus agreed. It wouldn't do any good to antagonize the Lancers at this point. A high stress situation would be perfect to convince them, he was suddenly realizing, to kill him - all of his economic management training be damned - and try to run this place themselves now that they knew where it was.
He couldn't help but think, though, about how remarkable the local defensive strategy was for a bunch of periphrat hicks. This certainly wasn't their own first rodeo by any means. Maybe it was even how they got their ships.
"It might be a bit late to ask this," Marcus mused. "But how exactly does a boarding operation work? How do people get into the ship?"
"Trying to keep me calm with conversation, boss?" Elmer commented with a wry grin. "Whatever, let ol' Big Daddy Bares tell you all about it. First thing is, the shuttle's gotta catch up to the target, then it's gotta get close and match velocities pretty much exactly. They launch tethers at that point to drag themself closer in, reeling up to one of the bay doors or, in a pinch, docking collar airlock, and deploy a drill to bore through the hinges. Armor's tough and all, but if you adhere for thirty odd seconds, you can force your way through a minor weak point and force depressurization of part of the enemy ship by ripping the door off - which does a lot of things if they didn't do it ahead of you, most of all killing everyone in that section, suit or no suit. Once you've got an opening into the ship, you send your boys in with armored spacesuits, axes, and needle guns to mop up enemy anti-boarding marines and seize control without damaging the ship any more - and preferably without killing the bridge and engineering staff either. Assuming you win, you fix the door you busted and repressurize the ship then call it yours. Back during the great wars, people built missiles that used the same tricks to deliver nuclear charges to the interior of the ship, my pa used to tell me. It doesn't much matter how tough your armor is if the enemy patiently digs their way into the ship with a limpet drill and blows it up from inside."
"Christ."
"Christ isn't there for you when your ship's getting boarded, boss." the colonel huffed. "Nor when your ship's getting a nuke shoved up its ass. The only thing there for you when it comes down to that is your armor, your needle gun, and your axe. Plus your buddy. Always gotta thank your buddy. Now, come along - we've got a few days to see if we've got a suit that fits you right before we're in any risk of needing to test it out."
"...Right. Thanks."
Marcus felt sweat beading on his forehead. He doubted he'd manage much sleep for the rest of this trip.
---
Scene 2
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System Defense Boat 'Tou Thiséa', Geostationary Orbit, Alphard Star System
Marian Union, Antispinward Periphery
January 2970
Sergeant Patricia Valdez de la Mancha gripped the hilt of her vibroblade firmly, taking assurance from the feedback her power armor's gloves gave her.
Since she'd transferred to the near-Alphard posting five years ago, this would be her first spot of action. As a marine stationed at a jump point station, your job was to board and seize any vessel which did not clear verification as a ship of the Marian Union. It was an active job with a notable lethality rate from lunatic pirates scrapping their entire ships just to deny them to the boarders, but it was an absolute necessity to maintain the secrecy of the Marian Union. Well, survival rates had improved a lot since the 'Voidhawk' armor variant had been spun up - even if it'd required a lot of people to resign from the branch when they turned out not to fit the armor, it was hard to compare a suit of specialized power armor to an armored spacesuit without knowing you came out ahead.
Service around Alphard itself, or around any other planet, was not so active as that. It was rare that even so much as a Union tried to make for a planetary surface around here. That didn't mean that it wasn't an important job, though. Rather, being trusted with service in orbit of Alphard was the single highest honor possible - having her team reassigned to the Second Alphard Special Void Service had been the pinnacle of her career. It was an honor because there was no job more important than protecting the engines of industry and education that supported the entire Marian Union's development trajectory.
She looked up. She couldn't see anyone's faces through their helmets, but she knew what they were thinking. This was the day they'd trained for, as they burned hard to match speeds with the enemy dropship convoy. Though they exceeded one gee of thrust, their bodies did not complain. Though they might die, their hearts did not quicken. Though they might fail, their hands did not loosen. Duty transcended self preservation, and training overcame physical limitation. They were Death incarnate now.
"Alright, you miserable cowards." she greeted, gazing out upon her squad of eleven battle hardened marines. "It's a good day to die. An entire regiment of enemy mechs, plus more besides, come to lay siege to Alphard and test her defenses. If they found their way to the ground, they would die. Twice their number, and more besides, are waiting down there to answer their barbaric provocation and show them the fires of Prometheus. Are we going to let them, though?"
"Hell no, sir!" came the rallying cry from around the cabin.
"And why is that?"
"Because the ASVS shoots first and asks question never!"
"Damn straight, ladies." she declared with a nod. "Three Overlords, one Excalibur, and two Mules. A damn dignified invasion force if there ever was one, a real juggernaut on land if they're full. But this ain't their precious land right now, and their mechs, their tanks, their infantry platoons don't mean shit up in the black. This is our goddamned house, and we're going to show them the doors of hell before those fussy little babies on the ground ever get a look at them."
"Oorah!"
She smiled behind her helmet. "Some of our siblings in service are heading for the Mules, out to starve the stragglers out. Others are going to harass the Overlords, tie up the fighters, maybe take some of their precious battlemechs out of the fight. Pale Wing has the most important job, though - we're crossing out the damned Excalibur before it hits air - if everything's full, that thing will contain at least half of their metal, and by far the supermajority of their bodies. The mechs might shine more, but disabling the tanks is the one surefire way to deny them combined arms."
Manning, who'd been with her longest, clattered the tip of her blade on the floor. "How many kills are we looking for, sarge?"
Patty glanced up. An Excalibur loaded to capacity held nearly twelve hundred people. Out of the Pale Wing, six were boarding craft and twelve were strike/dogfighting craft. "If every marine in the wing gets on board, we'll each be responsible for as many as sixteen kills. If it's just us twelve? I want to see a hundred bodies or surrenders out of each and every one of you. If you aren't tough enough shit for that, it'll be on our comrades in the strikers to give us our cremation."
"Hundred squishies ain't nothing."
She held up a hand. "Don't get cocky, Trish. I need you thinking while you're in there. Getting too lost in your own hype is a great way to catch a boarding axe to the neck, superior equipment and training or no. These people know to be ready for a boarding now, unless they're genuinely lower than plankton in terms of intelligence. They'll be armored up to the limits of their available suits. The moment that drill opens our breach, I want every one of you girls operating at 200%, capiche?"
"We gotcha, sarge."
"Good."
- -
The cabin lights of the marine compartment flipped from red to green, and the rumbling stopped. The breach was confirmed, and the cabin was depressurized.
"Remember, girls. Ride the tethers down then crawl on the outside. If you try to go off rockets alone, you might get lost in space if they speed up."
It was a basic warning. Really, absolutely elementary. She was demeaning her marines by giving them such a basic warning at this point in their careers. However, it was better to remind them now than to risk the one in a thousand chance someone had forgotten. That kind of absurd action movie maneuver was an emergency only thing, even if these suits had both jump jets and fine maneuvering thrusters.
The door opened, and one by one they stepped out to the opening and grabbed one of the four thick tether cables anchoring them to the dropship's wrenched-open bay door. Truthfully, they didn't necessarily need to go in at this point. It'd take several days of repairs just to re-seal this bay to the point that the dropship could safely enter the atmosphere, let alone deploy forces from it. However, there was considerable value in denying them the opportunity to try and transfer forces from this ship to another - to overload one of the Overlords and land it all the same - let alone make those repairs, and there was undeniably value in capturing their payload rather than letting it get shot to shit later.
It took half a minute for Patricia, the first breacher, to get to the open port and slip inside, her mag boots and thrusters unnecessary for the moment as the enemy ship and her boat continued to accelerate in parallel.
The abandoned tank bay was dark and empty, as though the crew hadn't prepared any sort of defense for the chamber. She clapped her right hand twice, turning on the shoulder mounted floodlight on the suit to illuminate things. Well, not that she blamed them. Compared to a mechbay, the gantries didn't go up high enough to make for a good layered fire environment, and though there were a large number of subchambers to the room full of strapped down tanks, they wouldn't make for hard clearing. This did mean, though, that they'd crammed the dozens and dozens of people who should have inhabited the space somewhere else in the ship rather than having them keep guard - probably not enough hardsuits to go around.
When the squad had gathered, she gestured to the far door with her sword, nodding to Manning. Her old buddy took the hint quickly as the squad approached the bulkhead, shifting her vibrosword to the right arm to apply her cutting torch directly to the hinges holding the airlock in place from the side, while adhering herself firmly in place with her magboots.
Once enough cutting was done, the door blew away forcefully - apparently, they hadn't depressurized that corridor. All the better that they hadn't been standing in front of the door. "Brescia, take point."
Hillary had good instincts. She wasn't the toughest of them, but she'd notice any clever tricks sooner than the rest of them. As she entered the corridor, the rest followed in two columns that narrowed back to one in rear. All swords were drawn and in their left hands at this point, while the maintenance and ammo checks on the heavy needlers mounted to the right arms had been concluded hours before. They were ready for battle.
If the defenders weren't going to take them on in the storage bays, though…
"You remember the layout, girls?" she broadcasted from the middle of the group. "They're going to try and take us in the mess hall. That's where the other squads will be going too. Let's invite ourselves to this big, fancy dinner party."
It would only be a few more minutes before they painted the halls red.
- -
One of the invaders came at Patty with an axe drawn high, arm waving wildly in a way that made her think they were probably letting out some barbaric roar under that helmet. She swung her sword decisively and removed the head from their weapon, before catching their vulnerable neck on the back swing. A fountain of blood squirted forth unhindered by atmospheric friction to paint the ceiling and floor - when acceleration gravity cut out, it'd become an awful mess to be sure.
Needles plinked off of her armor, trying and failing to find a weak spot in the joints, to slip into the cracks in the segmented armor plating. She lifted her right arm and contorted her fingers into the appropriate configuration to trigger her own needler, loosing hundreds of bigger, faster, more spread out flechettes back at the fellow who'd taken aim at her until they collapsed, a needle piercing through the neck of their suit at an opportune location.
These people had families once. It was a shame they'd let their folks down by turning their blood into the rose petals of her slaughter, rather than doing something smart with their lives.
Now she simply had no choice but to stack the bodies along with her girls. The squad counted just over two hundred kills so far, and with just two more squads onboard, that meant they were only halfway there.
She reached into her storage compartment to grab a towel, taking the chance as this room fell calm to wipe away the blood from around her viewport, making sure she'd be operating in peak condition for the next one.
When they next went off duty, she was going to get fucking hammered, courtesy of the hazard pay. Then who knew what'd happen - maybe she'd get promoted during the hangover?
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Scene 3
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Ruins of the Alphard Trading Company, Alphard
Marian Union, Antispinward Periphery
January 2970
Big Daddy Bares was having a damned shitty week. He'd lost his Star Lord, he'd lost one of his sons, he'd lost his entire damned conventional arm when those tin cans boarded the Excalibur class dropship Hussar in orbit. All told, it was a damned miracle he hadn't lost his marbles, his patience, or his temper so far.
This was a damned shitty job, and McDonald was an even shittier boss, but there was still a chance of pulling it all back together. For all that those armored exos were murder on a ship, there was no way they could best his shining steed, Bucephallus the Black Knight, in a real man's open field battle. It was a more elegant weapon of a more civilized age, compared to their cowardly murder of unprepared warriors, and never in his life had he seen a more perfect battlemech. However many battlemechs these pirates had, soon they'd have none.
Around him his lance stood resolute, ready to face down whatever forces the barbarians and secure a path back to the Inner Sphere by fire and sword - as did his company, his battalion, his regiment around them. Whether they'd do it like Marcus wanted, make this place their own kingdom, or report on his betrayal of their official employers and hand the planet over for consideration, that'd remain to be seen by how he was feeling afterwards.
Truthfully, the germanium warehouse wasn't much of a defensive location, but it was a relatively unprotected landing point that they already had serviceable maps on. That the germanium had evidently been moved at some point in the last two centuries actually made it easier, since the building was tall enough to walk a mech around the interior of.
A light on the command panel of his cockpit lit up, drawing his hand to the button that would open his dedicated line to the First Recon Company. In an instant, several screens lit up with a summary of data relayed from the other machines - useless unless he was going to spend a few minutes digesting the text. "What 'ya see, Pulling? Talk to me."
"Big Daddy, we got a problem down here." the pilot of the firestarter spat in her habitual twang. "Our courteous hosts hereabouts are packin' scout hunters, currently evading twelve Chameleons. Sending you a rendezvous point - reinforce if able."
"Right on, little miss." he declared with a nod for his own benefit as one of the garbled readouts was replaced with an annotated tacmap, something he could actually do something with. It wouldn't work to actually abandon the warehouse, but they needed something to keep that company of goddamned training 'mechs off their scouts - the things might have been thin skinned and prone to running hot, but in a fight with Firestarters they held speed parity and a range advantage, excepting the small number of the anti-insurgent mechs refitted with high powered lasers for anti-mech engagements, of which the scout companies each only had three, serving as command 'mechs.
He flipped on the switches for two of his heavier gunned strike companies. "Walton, White, relaying you a tacmap. Get your asses to Point B14 and pull Pulling's ass out of the fire. These pirates've scraped together a mock-bug hunting force of Chammys. Keep me posted on your progress."
The Lancers were blessed with an abundance of cavalry 'mechs, light or otherwise, for responding to just such an occasion. They'd sweep these local yokels aside, set the scouts free, and then RTB.
"Understood, Big Daddy!" the two subcommanders declared.
"Help is coming, Pulling. You're good." he declared, flipping the switches off to clear his interface before noticing something that made him do a double take. In an instant, he flipped the Third Recon's switch to on. "Markov, what's happening?"
"We're getting chased down, Colonel." the old salt spat back. No regimental spirit in that one, but he was good at his work. "Company of Chameleons in hot pursuit. Sending coordinates over now."
"Fucking-" Elmer hissed, before covering his face. "You too? Pulling's got the same problem. Gimme a sec."
He flipped on the switch for the heavy striker company - mostly pixies - with a sigh. In a perfect world, he wouldn't have to micromanage with this, but there was only one proper command 'mech to go around, so battalion commanders generally hadn't worked for them in the past. "Harley, proceed to Point C4 and bail Markov out."
He flipped the switches off again. With the full recon battalion out on sortie and the striker battalion moving to bail them out, it was just the command-fire battalion left holding down the fort now.
The light for the Second Recon lit up. In an instant he cried out. "GodDAMNIT." and flicked the switch on. "Bliefeld, I don't got shit to send you right now to deal with those Chameleons."
The brat's cocky voice filled the line with static as he laughed. "Well, all the better that we beat the amateur hour punks into the ground, then. They weren't really much in the way of warriors - I swear, most of them have never fought beyond a training ground or simulation. We're taking the 'mechs with us, though. The hardware's even more wasted on these mountains than it was on the so-called 'Marians'."
Elmer covered his face in irritation. The second recon were crazies, so of course they'd have tried to tackle the hunters head on. "Naturally. Any losses? If you're fine, then proceed to point C4 to help Bliefeld pull Markov free."
"The Stingers didn't make it, but we haven't really had our combat effectiveness slashed at all." the young man chuckled. "Roger, though - bailing out Little Grandpa."
Bares didn't like having to dispatch his forces this way - it left a hole in their detection net - but taking more losses in their quick forces was unacceptable at this point. He'd need to get everyone bailed out of their respective fires and gathered back up at base, at this rate.
Where the hell had a bunch of squatting pirates managed to pick up thirty six of the same goddamned model of 'mech, though? Let alone thirty six of the same model of medium 'mech? Normally bug hunters were still light mechs at the end of the day - a Spider, a Firestarter, a comically overgunned little 'mech, if a medium 'mech must be involved at all it'd be a pixie. And that was for regular militaries! Pirate bands usually didn't even have a medium 'mech to their name - their business was in attacking unguarded points where fear alone would keep them from needing to fight. If they had a medium at all, it certainly wouldn't go to some green recruit.
He fiddled with his dashboard for a moment, before flipping on the 'all' switch. "All companies, once free of combat form up on my location and prepare to hold the warehouse. Something is very wrong here."
He was still safe here. Wherever he went, the command/fire battalion in tow, automatically became safe by virtue of his presence. The Hunchbacks, the Phoenix Hawks, the Riflemen, the Catapults, the Flashmen, his Black Knight - they were something you couldn't overcome through petty gimmicks alone.
So he waited…
- -
The commander of the second fire company pinged him, and he opened the line in a hurry. "What, you bored Millingham?"
The rest were still dealing with their little situations, so the armored core of the regiment was staying firmly fixed in place.
"Enemy contacts in the hills!" the panicked second in command declared. "Not Chameleons, either - Ostrocs, Orions…fucking Black Knights, looks like about two battalions. The battle computer is pinging some big damned metal incoming, Big Daddy!"
Elmer's blood burned red. These pirates thought they were damned Knights, then? Don't make him laugh. A moment later, his head cooled him down enough to ask the necessary question. That was a hell of a lot of forces. "Only those three models?"
The middle aged man's voice cracked, which would have been hilarious if not for the fact that it meant they were fucking screwed. "I…uh…I don't know how to read this last one - it's getting read as 100 tons. What's PLG stand for?"
"You think I know? Plague, maybe?"
Elmer's blood froze solid, all the same. Across three battalions of their forces, the locals had only been using five models of 'mech? At least two of them were extinct from current Spheroid production - probably three - and all of the known models dated back to the 2500s at the latest, in the Terran Hegemony.
He flipped on the company channel, then the open channel. Much as he might have fancied himself a Knight, there was no way he was winning a twelve on one joust against other Black Knights, let alone whatever else these locals were packing.
They weren't pirates - there were no pirates in the sphere that could boast this kind of regiment. This was more like the goddamned SLDF, returned to restore order to the Periphery, and then the Inner Sphere, and they were building their own 'mechs! Granted, it was all a bit more…mundane than he'd imagined it to be.
"All Lancers, this is Big Daddy Bares speaking. Surrender immediately to the local hostiles. I didn't bring you here to die on Kerensky's spear."
The incoming indicator lit up for the open channel. "It's all well and good if you want to surrender without further hostilities, Colonel Bares, but I'm going to have to stop you there - I'm Colonel Theodora Samaya of the First Marian Guards, and we are not the inheritors of that pack of deserters' legacy. Now, if you wouldn't mind dismounting and getting ready to tell us just how you learned about this planet?"
Oh wonderful, it was the Camerons in exile, then? That was another fantasy of his come true entirely the wrong way.
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Scene 4
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Kallipolis-Chaldea District Detainment Center, Alphard
Marian Union, Antispinward Periphery
January 2970
Marcus gripped his forehead and rocked back and forth on the bed he'd been provided. He still didn't understand how this could happen.
The locals of Alphard should have been pre-electrical in their native industrial capacity. At least during the time of the Star League, they'd relied on the ATC to import anything more advanced than basic steam engines, and in return they'd worked the germanium mines and refineries and provided other manufacturing labor.
Even if pirates had shown up, he didn't see how they could have built this place up to be so advanced in so little time. There was no evidence of the thieves having imported this massive army of theirs, no evidence of any grand mercenary force coming to join them, nothing. Maybe the locals could have advanced to internal combustion and diesel if someone had left behind a personal library of historical technical literature, but even in the Star League era random mercantile functionaries didn't keep comprehensive libraries on the engineering of battlemechs and aerospace fighters as coffee table books.
They should have been fighting a few pre-missile guidance tank columns, not Reunification era battlemechs. Even with a billion or so people - he'd roughly estimated that number on final approach to try and calm himself down - to build factories for the titans of war one needed genuinely advanced scientific and engineering knowledge that was all but lost in this era to rampant international terrorism, unlimited warfare, and lost generations.
Moreover, actually building those specific mechs should have required that they already have the original clean sheet designs for all of them.
That didn't make sense unless this place were either a reestablishment of the Star League - which, sorry, no, but he didn't buy that for a second, the Star League in exile or the mythical kingdom of Ian Cameron should have managed way more than this in two centuries - or these knuckle draggers had dug up a genuine backup data core from the old days and retrofitted it into their society. Either way, their technological sophistication was millions of times more valuable than something like 'merely' one planet four standard deviations north of the typical germanium concentration.
That made him want this place all the more - but unfortunately, he was stuck in a goddamned jail cell! On his own goddamned planet! He didn't care if they were the Star League returned - they owed him compensation for the seizure of his land.
"Fuck!"
He heard heavy footsteps from outside the cell's door, and scratched his chin. They didn't have very many questions for him anymore, so he mostly got no-contact visits where they delivered his food now. Generally right around the time he was starting to feel hungry, so he'd guess every five or so hours during the day. Aside from that, he generally didn't hear footsteps at all - he guessed this wing was probably pretty low traffic. This…didn't seem like one of those times, though.
Well, he didn't actually know what time it was, but he wasn't hungry yet, so he doubted it'd been too many hours since the last meal. Either that or the stress was just destroying his appetite.
The door opened slowly, and a gray haired giant with a sprinkling of wrinkles on his face walked calmly through the massive door - Marcus'd been wondering why the things were built so goddamned tall.
"Afternoon, chap." Marcus spat, leaning back against the wall. "I'd offer you something to eat but I'm afraid I'm fresh out. I could interest you in some tap water, perhaps, but the cup's used. Is there any possibility of me actually standing a trial sometime soon, or maybe being let off with an apology for the inconvenience and a settlement payment? From my perspective, you're on my planet right now."
The old man sighed , flexing the arms that Marcus now realized - to his disgust - were entirely artificial as he gazed down upon the inmate. "No, you won't get a trial, and no, you won't get a payment for us taking the planet. Our legal concept of squatter's rights doesn't require any payment to an entity that's abandoned the claim for two centuries, and our legal concept of piracy is that if you attack us outside of the service of a state, you're automatically guilty. Now, if you were a prisoner of Prancer's Lancers, that'd be different, but every single one of them points back to you as their employer."
Marcus felt a vein pop up on his forehead. "Efficient. You get a lot of pirates around here?"
The giant shrugged. "We get enough of them, across thirty some worlds. Besides, there needs to be a legal distinction between the people who wander in on accident and get detained for secrecy reasons, and the people who come with the specific intention of conquest or plunder, among other things. We can't let the former leave, but they haven't actually done anything wrong, so they get an immediate path to naturalization as Marian citizens."
"While belligerents get the noose." Marcus huffed. Thirty worlds? That was a bit more than he was expecting. "You know, I'm technically here under the employ of some major industrial concerns in the Free Worlds League - shouldn't I get some leniency?"
"You pitched the invasion to them, then betrayed them." the intruder declared, rubbing his face. "I don't see how you think that's any better than being a pirate. No, though, we don't usually employ the death penalty these days. Outside of truly notorious offenses, there's a four stage model - solitary observation, social confinement, societal reintegration, and full citizenship as a plebian. We start you off in a highly controlled, regimented environment, then gradually relax the austerity and restrictions as we see signs of proper reform into a member of society. At the end, you're free to pursue higher education and become a philosopher, or join the militia and become a patrician, or do whatever else is open to our citizens. For you, what you're looking at is another month or so before we move you into a better appointed cell in a wing with social opportunities, limited network access, and other opportunities. After a few years like that, engaging in reform opportunities, you'll be released on a monitored parole to live in society, and then a few more years later…you can petition for full civil rights."
Marcus rolled his eyes. "Fuckin' cushy. You're telling me in ten years I can go from a prisoner to just some average joe? I don't know who your bosses think they're fooling, sending in a tough like you to sell me a line about how the streets are paved with gold and the air smells of flowers."
"Bosses?" the man declared with a chuckle. "Oh, no, I'm retired. You can call me John O'Reilly or Jack Cameron, I don't pretend the latter one's actually my name anymore these days, but it's one of the things people know me by. A long, long ass time ago, I was one of the suits who wrote the constitution of the Marian Union, a major government official, and the husband of one of the Triarchs. Essentially, I'm a bit of a big deal. I came to talk to you because I was interested."
Marcus wrinkled his nose. "Interested how?"
"Interested to see if you were seriously planning on using the germanium on Alphard to build your own bandit kingdom in the near periphery." John declared. "I knew a guy who claimed as much once - he was a bit of a shithead, but he turned out to be a surprisingly decent man in the long run, totally different from how he thought of himself. He was another one of the founding Triarchs, actually, and a good friend besides. But, well… you're certainly no Johann O'Reilly. That old shit's dead and buried, and I shouldn't have been looking for a way to recapture the feeling of knowing him this many years after the fact. Besides, the Union's well beyond the point of needing to embrace random invading vagrants as high officials at this point. Constitutional government doesn't do well with that kind of upset."
"You telling me your friend had virtually the exact same name as you?" Marcus huffed. "No wonder you used a pseudonym. What would have happened if you didn't go on a nostalgia trip, though? Would I just get left in the dark until they transferred me to my new cell ina bit?"
John waved his hand around in the air. "You'd normally get the explanation next week, actually. We usually draw the initial observance period out longer. Anyways, I'm off. Wish you the best."
"Motherfu-"
Marcus reached out the barest fraction of the distance between the two of them as John strode out the door of the room and shut it, before clicking his tongue at himself. How fucking lonely was he right now, that he didn't want that middle aged cyborg asshole to leave?
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Special feature this time: four whole scenes!
Also, I had the time to revisit my notes and time tables for industry, and I've derived the following military numbers from them: approximately five regiments of battlemechs have been built, five each of ASFs and small craft, and twenty five of tech-d combat vehicles, assuming all production facilities have been operating at full speed (three shifts on working days) since the facilities gained partial functionality all the way through to now (which they probably would be for awhile at least, since there's a considerable lack of metal needing resolution, prematurely aging the industrial equipment and accelerating replacement timetables be damned), when all lines should have their full rated capacity, pending future expansion programs.
The various class-specific militias, security forces, and gendarmies hold a variety of salvaged mechs and vees that don't fit the overall logistical setup, along with militiamechs and the militarized support vehicles that used to make up the core of the Marian defense force.
The real consequences of this raid remain to be fully manifested.
yacov
Lurking and sometimes blurting
- Location
- Clogging a drain
30 worlds, huh. Not enough that a raid this size could do much, especially with surprise. With FWL being, well the FWL; there probably won't be a large enough invasion to topple the Union, but there will probably be plenty of "provincial" raids due to the lack of centralization.
The disappearance of two regiments at one time will really alarm the FWL federal government. They and the border worlds will worry about what can make that many soldiers disappear without a trace. @plotvitalnpc Can we get an informational on the spread of industry in the Union as well as if the Union has had any planets decide they don't want to do what the Federal says?
plotvitalnpc
Once more walking the path of the catgirl.
A planet dossier is something I've been planning for awhile but the effort to make it just keeps escaping me.
You could always do an abbreviated list that only includes the major planets.