Battletech: The Ghost Who Walks (Battletech Isekai)

Davion Part 8 (b)​

Sutton's praise aside. "No that was me being an asshole. Castro has his problems, and he's lashing out at everybody who doesn't seem to be suffering. I shouldn't have rubbed his face in it." He splashed some water onto a towel and rubbed the sweat off his face, "Our priority needs to be preparing, for fighting the Combine in Round two," He ran his other hand through the front of his hair. "Alright we're gonna divide off if there aren't any more distractions, and then we'll take lunch." The Assault and Light Mechs could both run their maneuver course work and that would pair down enough mechs to make the numbers somewhat manageable, and then they could try and apply Terran Hussar doctrine into a vastly disparate motley crew of modern mechs and mostly young knights.

... and that was the distinction there were probably too many commissioned officers or people equivalent there of, or officer cadets here. The median age was 24 25 and he was pretty sure most of the RBA graduates brought back had all done so in the last decade. Lord Sandoval had come into the ducal Coronet in 2994 more than twenty years earlier so everyone present would have graduated during his patronage of the academy. That of course was likely to only apply to BattleMechs in the grand scheme of things, but the duke had not yet brought in armor or infantry to conduct combined arms training.

"Why's the Cicada moving?"

It was technically a medium mech, "Because as the name implies, its really just a large scout mech..." And when Schiffer had bought the farm on Luxen, "We rebuilt it as basically a larger protected Jenner, the -7D, not the A." This being the border with the combine there were a couple of 7Ds in with the light mechs alongside Valkyrie and Wasps. The A distinction was one he probably didnt need to make, because while they had As in Inventory Sutton was probably only familiar with the standard Draconis model. That was what people thought of when they thought Jenner. Medium lasers and SRM.

"Do you really think the Combine will attack?"

He didn't see how they 'politically' had a choice, but before he could find a way to phrase a simplified expression of geopolitics and the strategic clusterfuck he was interrupted, "Apologies, Commander."

"What is it Sadiq?"

"If you have a moment, Lebanon has opened dialogue with," the arabic translated to as a member of the community, so presumably an Azami merchant. "He brings news, and goods that may be of interest." It was clear the Azami lieutenant was if not very deftly dancing around what to say in front of Sutton.

"Good news I hope," Yvonne Davion hadn't entirely slipped her retinue but they'd managed to get to the dismount area here without being seen.

"Yes ma'am." The lieutenant replied perfunctorily. The boiler plate wasn't anything they hadn't already known. Elidere to Robinson was four jumps, and the combine had left the System well within hours of the FedSuns reinforcements jumping into system well before they had made planet fall but after the fighting on the ground had all but been decided. Even beyond that ComStar's class A HPG had transmitted the news at the very least to stations in Davion space in range, never mind the duke of Elidere's very expensive live stream.

"Its gotten out into the public then?" Yvonne shared a look with her lady in waiting, "I suppose ComStar will need to be included on the Christmas card list this year. There was no other way the BattleRoms could have started to circulate from Elidere in that time frame otherwise... but the question was why? ComStar was supposed to be neutral, and showing the 'Davions' utterly thrash a Combine Mech Regiment in trivid was almost sure to stir trouble up in the most blatant fashion.

"Well if the DCMS General Headquarters didn't know they have to know now,"

"And a reprisal is likely." Yvonne agreed, and idly Gene had to wonder how much in fees and services ComStar was making from what were almost assuredly the number of live calls the Davions and Kuritas had to be making, especially since that wasn't a service that they regularly advertised... "I'd very much like to sit down with your merchant captain, and find out whats the latest." That clearly wasn't what the lieutenant had been prepared for, but this was Davion Space and even if they'd been elsewhere you didn't just tell Hanse Davion's aunt, and more specifically the Prince's Champion no. "Well in the mean time lunch."

Gene wasn't really sure about the brightly colored pavilions that were the field dining facility, they were a mix of FedSuns, Draconis March and RBA school colors ... sprawled out in a sunburst pattern on the grounds, but that was how they did it. They did sort of need the space even with the Light and Assault Mechs moving off there was still a battalion worth of MechWarriors that needed to be fed alongside support instructors and observing persons.

He spared a glance to the table up front where he had a seat waiting, "Is that going to be a problem Sadiq?"

"I will speak to Captain Pasha, but it should not be a problem." The man exited the tent, and gene walked over to sit down.

"So how does that work?"

"How does what work?" He replied.

"The missiles? You're machine carries paired SRM 2 launchers?" Yvonne was asking the question but the surrounding table was paying attention.

"Its twenty four standards, and twenty four inferno." Basically a half ton of each in the hoppers dual electric feed system. It was a simple flip of a switch to change... and if the launchers had to cycle more than twelve throws... well that was on him. "Sadiq says their merchant friend pulled a 1vb out out of landslide. The Locust's internal frame was scrap, but they salvaged what they could." He wasn't sure if it had actually been pulled out of a landslide but that was what Sadiq had told him, and that he presumably had been told... but his conversation with Tristan in the Fortress came to mind about the JumpShip now called Cairo.

"And you'll see what else they have for sale as well?"

"It wouldn't hurt," Which just lead to Yvonne volunteering Alexandria to tag along, but then they dug into the chicken, and changed subjects. "Its true the Enforcers carry a Large Laser, which somewhat obviates their ammunition dependency, but loosing the autocannon in a fight is pretty much unavoidable. " Never mind the issue of having to stock its ammo, but that was how it was.

"You think we should commit to a time consuming refit program?"

"If there is time, yes, but if there isn't. And really its the Jager Mech I'd focus on refit them to – Alpha configuration LRMs and more armor than...." Well whatever -D was supposed to be. Consolidating all the Class 2s to Whirlwind 40mm would have been great, but he wasn't going to push the point. "It would consolidate the number of ammunition types we have to carry. As long as you can supply the ammo, well only a fraction of the brigade is carry autocannons." Jokes about Davion proclivities aside the number of mechs in the roster presently carrying autocannons was not so overwhelming that trying to standardize was elevated to a major priority. It would just be a nice logistical boon.

Yvonne smiled and nodded. "Of course we asked for your advice on this, and there is the possibility of this becoming a protracted conflict with the Draconis Combine." She sighed, "If the word is beginning to circulate in public, " another pause, "I need you to make revisions to the training contract, specifically for urban warfare colonel. I also think dueling will probably need to be a priority, a body of picked men at the least." The older woman paused, "Don't misunderstand I'm not saying abandon plans for a conventional engagement, I will make all appropriate arrangements to supply armor and infantry for the operation, but the Combine cannot be allowed to mount a successful counter attack. If an attack is detected you and the Eridani are to both sortie to relieve it."

They had talked about this, or something similar at least, and it was likely any incursion by the DCMS would be in the Draconis March. Most routes to the border were four and five jumps from Robinson, which significantly limited the efficacy of any potential response, "How quickly can you find me pilots, other than that it'll be expediting personnel hiring."

"Hire whoever you need to, as for pilots, realistically that will take me several weeks, and thats being optimistic. The only faster alternative would be to pull AFFS from their existing planes, which may end up being what we need to do, but that would be exigent circumstances." Yvonne glanced sideways to Alexandria, "Work with Alexandria for whatever you need, and you should plan to still travel to New Avalon," Even though that was five jumps.
--
Notes this is the second half of last week's update, sans one scene. Obviously ComStar has its own internal factions, but some of the proliferation of BattleRom footage is being put out specifically to encourage the Successor states to fight it out. To a lesser extent its also to make the Combine look bad, because the Combine and Comstar have had a history in recent memory of beefing with one another

Next chapter will introduce the Merlin Cavalry model, Septim's rebuilt machine, and the emphasis on tanks and hovercraft in combination with medium and heavy mechs if I can get the scene how I want it. We have some other news from Combine space, and the Azami coming into this and we work towards August of 3017.

 

Non Canon
Whoops Part 3​

3018​

There were purely practical reasons why the HPG network had superseded the fax machines. A hundred light years was three jump, and HPG network was faster to get a message across that distance... especially as the SLCOMNET had existed in the days of the Star League. Even for ComStar's slower speed to transmit it had been long enough that they should have been getting some news

There was nothing out of Combine Space hitting the air ways officially. The Comstar run News networks simply hadn't broadcasted anything, and having spent literally a couple of days parsing the code with a highlighter Gene could guess why. "The ending network diagnostic well," He pushed over a piece of carbon paper with circles around it, "It looks like several HPGs on Terra were burning themselves out." They looked like they were trying to boost the signal they were generating , but he had no idea what that meant, they might have been trying to reach the SLCOMNET satellites in deep space... which presumably didn't exist anymore or did exist and were so degraded that the old Hegemony ring couldn't get a clear signal. Another piece of paper showed where Combine HPGs were doing the same, but those were pushing out some kind of signal override through emergency services channels... he wondered if the same thing had happened on Terra and he just hadn't found it.

He sort of suspected that the override was probably realm specific the Hegemony Worlds infrastructure being different than the combine, being different from the Commonwealth...

Whatever the actual case was they were shipping off from New Kyoto today, Pasha was checking the last and then they'd jump out. They were basically going to back track to Dieron... "I'd guess that ComStar might not be able to actually talk to Terra. That might have been because of Terra's HPGs all burning out... or because you needed a minimum of HPG stations to transmit to get a message between Earth and New Kyoto. There was no telling how many stations in the Commonwealth were down... but ComStar was shut down on New Kyoto and not doing business last they'd checked.

Whether that was true else where would be a matter of asking when they got there. They were basically going to Dieron blind without any word from or through the HPG network. If they were lucky they'd be able to get something through the Black Boxes or even better if they got really lucky they'd actually run into an Azami merchant JumpShip along the way... but they would have to see for themselves if any of the other HPG systems worked. "What about any of the ComStar flagged JumpShips?"

New Kyoto to Terra was five jumps.

The younger of the two Azami captains shook his head, "There isn't really a change. None, that I have observed. Its true that ComStar has a merchant fleet but while they use the C bill, they are largely staffed by merchant marines rather than members of the religious order themselves. The captains are generally precentors but not always." So they might not know any more than anyone else did.

"And they would have a a schedule to keep,"

"Not running the HPG ... ComStar is probably hemorrhaging money." Gene replied, and blew a breath out between his teeth before reaching for his coffee, "Thats another problem, if the HPG network is unreliable its going to tank the C-Bill, we're probably going to want to take pounds if we sign on with the Davions." It would have been nice if they had had an existing fund, or reserve of Davion House Bills to draw off of until they figured something out. Even though it predominated in the Mercenary trade for a variety of bureaucratic and organizational reasons, most normal commerce was conducted in the bills and currencies issued by the Great Houses. Perhaps roughly ten percent of all exchanges in the Inner Sphere occurred using the C-Bill as a medium, "What do you think?"

Pasha stroked his beard, and so began the last stage of figuring out what they could feasibly do, and plan for without access to FtL communications with a real time component.
--
The Precentor New Avalon had been summoned to Hanse Davion just as soon as the ... raw breath of what they had witnessed had become clear. The First Prince looked to his advisors. The truth was the Precentor had either been unwilling or unable to tell them anything useful... possibly a mix of the two.

"We have contingencies in the event of being interdicted," Which of course so too must the Combine and ... given the contents of the recording. "We need to put those command circuits in place as soon as possible."

Which of course would be deleterious to the economy unless it ended quickly. They couldn't afford to grind the Federated Suns' economy to a halt, but neither could they compromise the nation's defense either. "Yes, make it so." The First Prince replied, "What resources can we bring up to the Combine border?"

Yvonne frowned, "Truthfully only limited ones, we brought in what assets we could," The Eridani Light Horse refused to settle down and become house troops even if they were still under Davion contract, but they needed to consolidate their gains of the past year.

"IF we had known -"

She cut the general off, before the blust could well and truly get started, "We didn't. Someone else engineered this. Someone who knew enough about the HPG system to broadcast across the entire Inner Sphere even if that meant damaging it." And they didn't know how extensive that damage was. "We don't have the resources in place for a land grab,"

"What, Lady Yvonne, now is exactly the time to strike."

"And that is exactly what the other successor houses will say." Hanse rebutted stepping into the conversation. "We have just been shown incontrovertible proof that the same Coordinator of the Draconis Combine who ushered in the successor wars by attempting to usurp the mantle of Star Lord had also knowingly conspired with Stefan Amaris by providing him the locations, positions and strengths of the SLDF as well as refusing to allow the SLDF passage through the Combine. Even assuming that the Free Worlds League and the Capellan Confederation don't try and move to attack Yorii or Altair it would be highly remiss of them not to try and exploit any perceived distraction." They were exposed. "The only forces we can really muster are those of the Draconis March," which would be across too wide of a front, "or some limited force of the Crucis March."

"Or Mercenaries." Yvonne replied, "It might be worth trying to poach the dragoons from the Mariks, certainly its worth trying to see if they'll bite." It was ridiculous to assume that they'd choose to become AFFS regulars, or even just somewhat more tightly associated mercenaries, but she suspected that the change might be enough to get them to come over and fight on the border... but they would have to see, "After the performance of Blackwell industries we haven't had time to tool up production." which also included the Devastator, and Fury designs other producers in the Federated Suns had been planned to license out... or experiment with, "They simply don't have the production volume, and convincing other producers required the victory on Dieron and promises of contracts." To produce another company's designs under license with royalties on the line.

There were other problems though, coordinating with the Draconis March would be one thing... it would be one hurdle to clear. Robinson was five jumps from New Avalon. New Syrtis was eleven jumps one way. The Capellan March would also be a much wider front if anything happened on that front... and Yvonne Davion was fully prepared to use the excuse of a communications lag as grounds to reestablish a Terran March if it came to that... but it wasn't quite the time to go that far yet. They were going to need a world in between the terran corridor that could liase with New Avalon Robinson was simply too far to administer, and most of those worlds besides fell under the auspice of the Crucis march to begin with.

"We'll need to find out what is happening in Combine Space."

"We should send merchants in first, try and determine the situation, if we send mercenaries it will look like we're invading before we're prepared to commit," Yvonne replied to another AFFS flag officer looking to get a word in edgewise, "Its going to take months," Just because there had been plans for the robes cutting the Federated Suns out of interstellar communications wasn't the same thing as being able to instantly transition over to dealing with no longer having access to the HPG network to coordinate interstellar trade between worlds more than a single jump distance between worlds.

--
Notes I had been planning to post the next part of this for a while now, and given plans this weekend I figured i'd either do this or the first snippet for the 'The Last Gunslinger' series. Notably this does not include the follow up to the Lyrans of the last segment, largely because not enough time has passed.

 

Whoops
(Branch Timeline)
Part 4
​

Gene bounced the ball off the wall. They were under spin gravity, but still much lower than he was used to. It was probably easier on Pasha since he was older, but the transition as they extended the sails to recharge the drives was always tedious... boring. New Kyoto back to Dieron would be six jumps. "You look troubled?" The old man remarked, "I meaen to be frank I'm glad its not serious enough you're not cleaning a pistol or something."

"Las pistol maintenance is different process, you don't use hoppes and most of the internal hardware is sealed up." SLDF Laser Pistol, indeed like the ones they had recovered from the sealed tomb of cadets, were fully functional even after several hundred years.

"That is not actually reassuring." Pasha remarked, "Are you having second thoughts about handing over the medical core?"

"What, no, why would I be?"

Pasha shook his head stroked his beard in contemplation, paused to reach for and take a sip of his tea, "I admit I am surprised."

"What are you surprised about?"

"I am shocked they let us actually leave the planet after that." The Azami captain declared. Truthfully to himself at least Pasha recalled conversations with the elders before they had departed Alamut in the deep periphery. The memory core's contents was an impossible to put a price on treasure, "As much as we need to be in the Davion's good graces, I would not advertise it , unless we have to, I understand the reasoning, and the need for... what did you call it, a bolt hole?"

"A fall back position works too, but yes, what about our course?"

"We will remain in the Lyran Commonwealth's territory until we jump to Dieron." Pasha paused... "Do you plan to detach at New Earth?'

"I was considering it, but its not a priority." There would be little reason to make planet fall and then have to turn around just as soon as the drives were charged. "I picked up what we needed." And truthfully he shouldn't have been surprised the bunkers on Bristol had survived. "Its true that some of sheltered complexes are probably also intact," He bounced the ball against the wall again and caught it, "From what I understand short of going to somewhere like Coventry, well Hesperus would be closer, there isn't much we can do with the prototype data. So no we'll stay aboard and charge the drives, and then jump to Dieron."

"And we'll dismount at Fotress Dieron?"

"We'll hold off on that, until we talk with the planetary governor." The fortress was intact, but well even that was a misconception. Dieron's fortress was not a single complex even though the they were linked... it was one of those Hegemony defensive fortifications on planet, and how the surface to orbit weapons had not been turned on against Amaris, or used against subsequent invaders... wasn't something he understood. He'd looked at the logs, and it seemed like Tellman had done ... something, but he wasn't sure quite what. The logs were incomplete... and of course it was possible the answer might have had something to do with the nukes the Rimworld forces had used against the planet. "In theory its supposed to be configured to support an entire brigade, but, there were parts of the facility that were locked down.."

"And we could have problems."

To put it mildly.

--
It had been a month since the core had come into the College's possession... longer still since the HPG network collapsed, even if they were still talking months it felt like longer still. The Duke perhaps of anyone involved still seemed to like the understanding of what Star League era medicine would mean. The technological decline in the inner sphere had started with the financial crisis two hundred fifty years earlier. The damage of the first and second succession wars that had started in 2786 had simply added to the shortage of material as it expanded to affect trade of goods, and movement of people between Star League member states.

The devastation of of unrestricted warfare not even including the use of nuclear weapons, and the cost in lives of skilled professionals pushed into dealing with the realities of a total war economy had thrown them back a thousand years.

It was unfortunate there for that he had to contend with where the state's priorities lay. He was attempting to argue to military officers that the medical core was a national treasure, when even his duke who was the most receptive, was more interested in the military acumen of the person responsible for its recovery. With that in mind he supposed that he should have felt grateful that the army was allowing him to remain given how much they overvalued their profession's experience than that of his.

With the HPG network inoperable they couldn't reach out to anyone. Any message to a distant star system had to be, as it had been before the star league had invented and built the network, carried by courier jumpship. Thus they were on their own, dependent on information that had already been available. The limitations of the K-F drive meant that even with the modern HPG network's own limits the MRB's records were almost never outpaced by jump travel, to that end the battle of Elidere IV dominated the duke's personal holotheater.

"I thought you said he's only been a mercenary for a few years, that he couldn't be more than twenty." Some general muttered harshly in lyran German a couple of seats away. The white Marauder standing against the rise the field before it and its lancemates and their supporting armor strewn with the remains of a Combine BattleMech company.

"These Galedon regulars," A snort, "an entire battalion of Fifth Sword of Light was slaughtered on Dieron," A mustachioed man declared. Not that Dieron's seizure by the FedSuns had really altered the politics between house Davion and House Steiner. New Earth, or Rigil Kentaurus were both a single jump from the Federated Suns world of Caph so technically the two realms had been touching.

"Footage I'm afraid we don't have," The duke's major domo replied, "Only static," Non video, printouts, "Documents." Hardly a thrilling prospect compared to watching hundreds of tons of armored warmachines shoot at each other.

Even under ordinary circumstances it would have unusual for a non contracting party to request those BattleRoms. Not completely unheard of, but the MRB would then take the request, and of course charge, and bill the request before sending it through comstar to another MRB office to get the footage which could take months even... and of course that was in normal instances where the HPG network was working and not broken.

The conversation side barred again into 'letting him get away'.. but of course the 'colonel' had not been introduced on his Davion credentials, but academic connections, on his ties to Lyran nobility. They had agreed to the meeting because they knew Abner, and had letters of introduction from the old doctor... and even that had only just barely been able to get them squeezed in given everything else that had been going on.

"He must be returning to the Davions."

"Indeed," His grace Endo Musashi concurred. The Daimyo of New Kyoto didn't break his expression from watching the battle. The indicated lettering in the corner of the hologram said that this particular clip of the battle came from a Wolverine, from the point of view of an actual AFFS pilotted mech. "I notice the Marauder's emblem carries a torii gate, does that mean anything to anyone."

"Its no mercenary unit I know of."

Which should hardly have been surprising so many failed to live past their first year. What it was not was the company insignia. It was simply found on that unit. "Personal arms perhaps?"

"I would not think so."

The duke took his attention away and nodded, as if he'd been intending to invite someone anyone to actually disagree with him. Yamanaka knew there were times when his patron became irate at the prospect of being surrounded by yes men... especially if he felt that such conditions had lead him to making a mistake. "It must have some history," And he wanted to know it, "what of his compatriots, surely we must know something about them?"

"Most we can say little about. But,"

"But?"

"One of his staff officers is under an assumed name," Not unusual for mercenaries, "He honorably separated from the Guards after his tour, his father is on the steering committee." but of course Tharkad was two months, nine jumps, without the HPG network. Any contact with the father would require the use of previous jumpships.

--
Notes: We're updating this because my schedule is all screwed up, in point of fact I'm just saying here that it won't be until June I get back on a fully pre planned update schedule for the month. The main regular canon whatever timeline probably won't update until the 22^nd. Anyway moving on, so I've mentioned previously during the Magistracy contracts that Septim is operating under an assumed name, a nom du guerre. Septim is a lesser member of the Lyran aristocracy they're not real high up but they have enough money to buy battlemechs... which they're lyrans so battlemechs are manufactured and up for sale more so than elsewhere.

So this is the ball rolling on lyran responses to things, but of course this being battletech the primary focus is the military rather than the oh he gave you lostech knowledge and will not start paying dividends until down the road.

The goal right now tentatively is finish Davion 1 in July. We'll get through Part 9 this month, there is some Azami stuff, and so forth and there is an interlude on Bristol where as hinted at Devestator and Furys will be queued up to come out to play for Dieron.

 

I Davion Part 9​

When they had said 'large dropship' he'd expected something in the ten thousand ton range. A mule would have been his first guess for a merchant vessel. Not a design five times his original threshold for 'large'. The Mammoth lived up to its name and painted a bright fluorescent green that was painful on the eyes. He'd already been warned to expect lavish and garish from Pasha, and with the paint job he was a little leery exactly why both words had to be used with the emphasis the JumpShip commander had employed.

He glanced to the space port, where the San Saba was being worked, "This could be good though." Pasha remarked. "He may goods that will help us." They'd actually been looking at a number of potential purchases, besides potentially the Union they had had known was available. It and a reconditioned Leopard had somewhat fallen by the wayside in the face of the prospect of staffing and deploying the Overlord.

He made a vaguely agreeable acknowledgement, and told Pasha he could just bring the receipts in after he went through the other Azami's inventory. Grounds crews began moving to the docked eyesore as they continued to wait.

They weren't alone in the terminal, and there were things that the merchant might not advertise to Davion personnel without knowing them better. "That is probably for the best," Pasha remarked, "It is true San Saba requires work, but there are overhauls on Hidalgo and Baffins we could do while we are here... more than that," He shrugged, "We could start circulating for recruitment,"

Well it wasn't as if they weren't already on the combine's shit list.. "That sounds good to me. We'll need to vet them though, after Elidere." They already had the occasional Davion question popping up about other personnel, they assumed Tristain had to be a person but they were deflecting.

"I am aware that such only draws further attention. It was unlikely that parties within the Combine would forget Detroit, never mind the humiliation of having lost such a large formation." The supporting units, callous as it might have been largely didn't matter... oh the DropShips lost were a pricy line item, but the truth was the BattleMechs would be what really stuck in their craw.

"What do you expect him to have?

"Besides holding on to well special requests like yours, most likely fusion engines, ammunition, gyros, various mech parts and myomer bundles. If we are lucky he might have a few mechs we can convince him to part with, but given San Saba what I am hoping for are more tanks, Saracaen, Harrasser, perhaps again with favor a Tokugawa or two. Certainly spare parts for them."

Another perfunctory nod. They had been lucky so far and the Azami's fusion powered tanks really were a useful force multiplier. He stretched and stuffed his hands in his pockets. They were still supposed to be pretending that they weren't preparing to launch an invasion of the Combine in retaliation for Elidere... and retaliation really meant escalation... and anything they could get beforehand to increase their odds the better. Part of that was going to be for Yvonne Davion to work on, New Valencia was two jumps from Robinson, but they'd received a cryptic message from, possibly relayed from, Doctor Abner saying the Bristol Site looked 'promising' whatever that meant.

A not quite obese, but still huge man in a dashiki emerged from a luxurious fusion powered Bentley. Boisterous and unthreatening was a good masquerade given the merchant prince probably had a build more accurtaely described as a sumo wrestler rather than anything else. "Friends, and of course my countrymen," He beamed at Pasha, who was probably a good two or three decades his senior, and moved to hug him. "I am so pleased to once again be able to visit such a beautiful planet, yes." He continued to talk, before offhandedly mentioning Cairo's absence at the system's jump point.

Gene would have preferred that that hadn't been made, the comment drew the davion's attention further, and forced Pasha to admit having turned over the patrimony to his son, in favor of ship he now captained... which given the value of JumpShips in the present era was... eye catching to say the least. Still they made introductions, small talk and the big man announced he had the requested replacements, along with 'a host of other goods one in your honorable trade might require or simply desire to possess.'

--
Reactor start up looked good. The nineteen ton VLAR 300 was reading all green. "Any issues with the gyro?"

"Not this time, it looks like putting in two LRM 5s," instead of the one LRM10, had fixed whatever was the hang up. "Fixed it."

The boss sighed, "Thats good," The holographic image shifted as the a conversation probably carried on with one of hte techs, "Its possible that its probably the combination of how heavy the right side was to begin with." A large laser was still a several ton weapon system even though it was still lighter than a PPC. "Nizar is right it would have been nice to add a hand actuator to the left arm."

"What about the jump jets?"

"If you're comfortable with how it handles walking we can test them on the course." The computer was saying that replacement Pitban Lifter 50 series were green to go... but they had no idea how they'd respond up for real until they were actually lit up. Still this was better than the previous time he had been concerned about how long it was taking to put his mech back into service. "Just keep an eye on the Gyro indicator when you bring the mech up to speed." The Pitban 240 had allowed a maximum speed of 65 kph, the VLAR in a sixty tonner should let him accelerate up to 86.

Septim nodded, even though he wasn't sure the Colonel was actually watching the hologram, he held down the mike's talk button, "So what's the plan? I mean you said that well with the Canopians we did the six thing, and you said it was,"

"I borrowed some of that program from the Light Horse independent regiments, but truthfully trying to apply regimental doctrine to a company element does not work."

"But do we have enough here?"

"In theory yes, in practice even though we can organize something approaching a core Hussar group we're still contending with an array of non standard lances, and customized BattleMechs."

Septim marveled at the comment.

"We're dealing with very little uniformity." He continued unimpeded. "But we will work with what we have."

The Merlin's master diagnostic finished, "Looking good to go, I'm going to take her out." Septim declared standing the mech up.

Inside of his Marauder Gene nodded, and glanced around. He appreciated that, he recognized the fact that a jack of all trade mechs like the vindicator or the factory merlin was not going to be the ideal solution. There were advantages to, among other things having dedicated missile boats.. but he still would have wished a bit more conformity.

He navigated between two very different Shadow Hawks. Lieutenant O'Ree's Ray was an all energy boat with two chest mounted medium lasers, and two Magna Mk III large lasers that could eject from their arm mounts. Sergeant Kenneth 'Breakthrough' King's also had a MK III in a similar mount on its left arm and two torso mounted MK II Mediums, but alongside the toros mounted lasers were Harpoon 6 launchers. Both mechs were painted up in Draconis March 'Robinson Ranger' colors... which might have been something if the next four mechs in the hangar weren't all painted in different colors. The patchy trend of clusters of different paint jobs carried on through the roughly thirty odd medium and heavy mechs present... and for the remaining reserve where they'd segregated off the jaegar mechs and a few others.

Kneeling beside an ammunition carrier was another non standard Shadowhawk this one painted bright scarlet and had replaced the 80mm with a larger New Avalon AC/10. It was true that these were AFFS personnel but they weren't, by and large, using Mechs owned by or issued by the Federated Suns. If there were any mechs he was disappointed not to find among the units it was the lack of the medium, fifty tonner, Crab. This was not the SLDF of 2660. Most of the mechwarriors called together by teh duke of Robinson had brought their own mechs in answer to that call.

And of course he supposed on that end, their mechs, the company mechs didn't stand out because of it. He maneuvered the 75 ton 'black horse' as someone had called it to distinguish it from his white one, and into the flat top muster area as the smaller Merlin's VLAR 300 spun up and directed power to its limbs and it slowly eased out of its own bay.

They were lucky that they'd been able to repair it, and that Septim hadn't ended up dead. It mad him uncomfortable thus being told to split trianing time to play the Combine's preferred rules for fighting... but that was the job they were being told to do.

A hail pinged his Dalban comms suite. "Field Marshal," He greeted, "Captain Lefler." Then amended as the hologram resolved into one of the Robinson armor officers on the Duke's staff.

"Sorry, Colonel," The balding man replied, "her grace had to step away, are you ready to begin?"

"Everything looks good on my end." He replied, "What happened?"

If Lefler minded he didn't show it, "Oh its nothing, she and that caravan master are looking at that Hammerhands he picked up on a dig on Royal some years back been trying to get all the parts to bring it back to 'spec."

That was a little odd. It was true the Hammerhands had been an indigenous Fed Suns design and popular during the Star League era, but he hadn't seen any since he'd gotten here. It was slower than a war hammer, or for that matter his Marauder, given the design was running off a 225 rating engine. "What's missing from it?"

"I, some sort of auto cannon, he is missing one, or something."

And that conversation was enough to warrant stepping out from the drill she had insisted on, that was suspicious.... but whatever, "Alright, can you connect me to Lord Aaron?"

"Yes, right away."

The image of the wheelchair bound duke appeared. "Colonel Shepherd, the brigade is yours,"

He acknowledged, and opened to address the medium-heavy Mech complement and attached armor assets. "The following exercise will conduct with live ammunition in the prospect of maneuvering across a forty kilometer gap, followed by the engagement inside of a contested urban zone with the goal of reaching the occupied area prior to sunset." Which was in six hours.

--
The three companies of Mechs were deployed roughly in a wedge rendered on the display forming the main thrust of the Gold force as it moved to liberate Blue City. The operation movements relayed from the complex computers with Lady Alexandria's mech. The twenty year old countess was playing her role of being Yvonne's eyes and ears in the operation area.

Besides the Mech Battalion were planetary militia armor ranging from Bulldogs and von Luckners to lighter hovercraft, and heavier tanks like the Partisan from more specialized armor units. A heavy breath beside her, "Oh my," The Azami merchant prince dabbed at his mouth

She paused, "I thought you said you'd seen the BattleRoms."

"Oh I have, but it is one thing to know a thing has happened, wholly another to watch the thing happen even if just in exercise. This is just training, but you can see the care of the organization. It is like when the Galedonians were fought."

The armor coordination wasn't as clean as it they and mechs moved to hit targets taht presented themselves. "You said that ComStar have been showing the footage."

"it makes it very difficult to refute. The best that the voice of the dragon can claim is to blame the Avalon Hussars, and even that falls somewhat flat with the MRB showing other battle roms on the news networks."

"Its unusual behavior."

"Its unusual for a DCMS officer to try and take a precentor hostage," The merchant picked up another bon bon, "Which of course the Dragon has disavowed." He plopped it into his mouth and shrugged, "What can you do?"

Yvonne wondered how much the wealthy Azami knew... he'd mentioned another JumpShip. Cairo. A Star Lord JumpShip as she'd found out later... a JumpShip that had not been seen in more than two years... and had an equally mysterious appearance in the Inner Sphere' s shipping records.

More blips appeared as another simulated exchange started this time on the other side vehicles harassed letting a lance of identical mechs then strafe at one flank.

So that bore the question, how much did he know, and how much did he suspect. And there was another ancillary question. She doubted the monstrous fifty two thousand ton dropship was the only cargo vessel attached to the trade fleet carrying weapons, and it was clear the caravan had its own security detachment. Not surprising. No, the real question was what was Captain Pasha, and the gentleman next to her's relationship with either Azami Liberation Front, or another similar organization. That was the sort of thing she had a responsibility to her nephew the prince to vet for, rather than just allowing Hanse to rush to meet the commander of a unit that had destroyed a combine battlemech regiment in detail.

He chuckled as a simulated exchange in the exercise grounds started, "Asking Combine Mech Warriors to engage in this would be offensive to the dignity of the dragon's loyal samurai. Very few see value in collaborating with one another never mind lesser warriors."

"Yes the 19^th all but sacrificed their attached armor," If admittedly to grab the defending AFFS units attention. "On one of their previous raids."

"Admittedly I doubt that would have helped."

"No probably not."

"Its a pity all of Elidere's defenders are not here. You can tell that the main tank battalion, this St George fellow you hear on the radio must be on something very important to not come with them."

Most likely they were guarding Doctor Abner. The Lyran lord had been highly reluctant to cede any kind of command rights to Elidere's duke, and even though he'd eventually acceded to coming to the aid of the beleaguered planetary capital he had insisted Colonel Shepherd retain operational direction... "Certainly it would have been nice to have them."

They stopped as the radio crackled open. "You don't sound happy?" Alexandria remarked over it, prodding.

"No, we're actually doing pretty well for what we're working with." Shepherd replied his Marauder sending orders through the tactical net to Shadow Hawks to advance to screen for missile boats that included Cadet Sutton's Dervish, what the Azami identified as 6Md. "We're under par time but that's to be expected, I programmed in a Light Horse derived opposition to model for a competent Combine response,"

"We're fighting the Eridani? They're our allies."

The colonel's hologram shifted as he visually stumbled over the statement, "No, we're fighting a Star League Light Horse Independent Regiment, or the rough approximation of one. Its why most of the targets we're engaging are whole lances comprised of, Ost scout or Locust A."

"Ah I had wondered why there was such uniformity in the enemy ranks."

She almost shushed the merchant as the Marauder's pilot continued. "If I had the combine make the same mistakes at Elidere no one would learn anything. Here we're actually contacting resistance that is fighting along an organized defensive front."

--
Notably I cut a few things, we will do the shopping scene later, or possibly just have the dump truck just drop it all at the depot in front of the Overlord or the Triumph, but among other things is that after several weeks Septim has his mech fixed and operational, we get some other things named dropped, Yvonne does responsible her actual job type shit.

I need to dig up some of my old books for getting a hold of Hanse Davion, but that runs into the problem of Hanse would only be about 35 at this point so think I can afford to fudge somewhat if I have to. On that note, I described Yvonne here as Hanse's aunt, that is not canon, and I am using aunt in the generic older female relation. We don't know much about Yvonne's Davion branch, other than she's a duchess, her mother was a duchess, her mother was in command of the davion guards brigade for twenty years... which uh is odd.

Speaking of brigade I am using that as a unit comprised of multiple sub units acting in an independent or quick reaction function... or basically we gathered up the units we had and they're not part of the same parent so they're a brigade. Just in case anyone is confused by that usage.

 

I Davion Part 10​

August 3017​

​

The simulated explosions weren't the most accurate thing... the giant blue colored clouds were designed to be noticeable after all.

"Easy there Lady Lex," He replied as her mech reflexively took a step back.

"You said we were fighting a Light Horse. I'm reading Atlas, and Orions."

"We are, a Star League independent regiment was intended to be augmented by specialist company sized assets, which is what just showed up. Its also why its a mixed mech unit instead of the previous uniformity. Is it accurate to what the Combine would throw at us, no. Realistically I should have included a Dragon, an Orion, maybe Ostol. There should be a greater variation, but this is what Abel Company has to fight, and we want to see how they perform dealing with something unexpected." Blue City was unfortunately not something that could be easily reset, and you couldn't really change it in-between runs easily, so they were mostly going to be changing how the enemy deployed... and he wanted to schedule two more runs like this before they ... before he had to leave for New Avalon.

He leaned back in his harness. The truth was he hadn't planned this though this was all on the duke of Robinson since Yvonne wasn't here to play the card. Hopefully whatever she was doing was useful.

Beau's face appeared ... well his helmeted head appeared, "Hey there, I'm taking easy company in to suppress the enemy attack."

"Understood." He replied, "relaying now." And the Dervish pilot was somewhat breaking chain of command he should have been advising up, and talking to Bard if he was going in, but that was fine. Initiative was useful he wasn't going to criticize executing a counterattack. To that end he'd have almost preferred Bo launch a hasty counterattack to stop or slow an attempted breakthrough while apprising, rather than just asking for permission, but this wasn't the time and place for that conversation.

Across the mock financial district of fake high rises made from plywood and plastic tarps concealing various bits of machinery and electronics a Wolverine stood. "God fucking damnit." This whole exercise had been a slog of pushing a boulder up hill, but having an entire company of heavy and Assault mechs, including a fucking Atlas slam into them took the cake.

Bard had to wonder if this point of the test wasn't actually to make them fight an impossible to win battle... but that seemed ridiculous... by any metric of the battle academy's classes no one, no one should have been able to do what had been done on Elidere. They'd tried in the travel down time, he'd been grilled by the Prince's Champion.

To explain how a hundred and fifteen enemy mechwarrios had been defeated. One Hundred and Fifteen Combine BattleMechs had landed and had never returned to the DCA dropships they had arrived on, because they'd been taken out.


--
Within the separate command and observation port Yvonne Davion watched things continued to change. She tapped her fingers just below the command console's keys, "I was meaning to ask, as a learned man, have you ever heard of an Atlas II? It would have been a late Star League era model Atlas."

The Sheik stroked his chin, He paused, and contemplated the question. "Yes, but only in passing. I have never seen one in person. The Hammerhands I show you, it would have carried the same LBX class ten autocannon as that has."

They'd discussed the autocannon, and its ability to fire specialty ammunition, a kind of buckshot cluster load in addition to traditional slug. "The Colonel's White Horse has a class 5."

"Yes, it was my first time even hearing of such a thing. It makes sense of course, Mostly I only ever come across the Blankenburg class tens, I once had the good fortune to be shown a Luballin Ballistics 10." He regaled her with a long winding story of that particular example and its own a very wealthy friend in the Lyran commonwealth. They, the two autocannons, fired different rounds but approximated the same performance. "The Colonel's class five is clearly General Motor's project entry based on their 120mm Whirlwind." He didn't explicitly mention that the Whirlwind's history of jamming hadn't been entirely fixed given the weapon seemed to have jammed on Ander's moon.

"And you can provide him with this cluster ammunition?"

"Yes, I have an excellent munitions man who makes the ammunition for Hammerhands, and he should be able to work the load up for the 120mm."

The realities of the succession war had always been that some worlds ended up turning out specialty boutique rounds to suit their needs. Special Ammunition types for autocannons were common across davion space where the venerable mech grade slug thrower remained the dominant, or at least preferred choice of weapon. There was a world in the Outback region that regularly paid its taxes in Flak autocannon shells that came with the sworn affidavit that they'd been anointed with sacred unguents... and were usually liberally marked with Cameron starbursts or other Star League symbols.

The conversation paused as simulated artillery fire went out, and ASF strikes were called in to the operations officer officiating the exercise. "Very close."

Danger close.

"Yes, I'm surprised they were willing to use artillery that close to the city."

The effectiveness couldn't be disputed though. The enemy vehicles trying to advance to contact stalled. Autocannon armed vehicles and mechs were filing into the perimeter along the city as more of it's representation on the display shifted colors to Davion Gold. She could see where they were declaring 'digging in' infantry fighting positions to the judges of the exercise. The question was whether they could not hold out, and defend the city for the rest of the exercise.

"It is a pity we don't have real time scoring."

"Very much so." The merchant agreed, "But really now they must hold what they have? Can they do that?"

"I think so, I would guess there aren't enough reserves to actually dislodge them from the city, not with the perimeter relaying line of sight to their LRMs." and there was a significant volume of units ensconced protected by infantry nearby. One of the highways allowed them to move quickly from one end of the city to another if they needed to.

He nodded, "It occurs to me, and perhaps I am simply taken by a temporary melancholy, but the shame of defeat might sting the dragon's servants to seek easier prey. They might very well attack the Commonwealth, or attack a far distant world on the border."

She considered the comment, and it was possible she decided. But there were problems with that as well. Especially given ComStar's circulating of the Roms without anyway for the Combine to stop that information from flowing outwards.
--
The exercise came to its conclusion on schedule. Prohibitive but not catastrophic casualties. Infantry units had been dug in with short range missile launchers with teams overlapping inferno and HEDP to deter any serious attempt to force the perimeter, ground vehicles and mechs like the blackjack and jager deployed to fire at extreme rangers and spot for LRM carriers.

It was by the standards of the succession wars what would have been a victorious triumph... or in the first or second very likely the short of victory spoiled by the enemy souring the field with a nuclear weapon.

"I understand you have plans in the morning with regards to Ahmed's people and delivery, but there was something else that came up in conversation." There was a slight tink as the glassware abutted the plate. Yvonne watched for a further response. Sir John had somewhat embellished the Colonel's eye color as molten gold but not by much, they were light an almost orange brown. "Do you believe that they might try that, launch an offensive against the Lyran Commonwealth to assuage the general feeling?"

"IN the short term, its possible. Politically the combine even mounting an attack against a distant frontier world will only temporarily assuage the situation, failing to commit to a retaliatory offensive would likely attract accusations of rank cowardice, rather than being considered prudent. There is only so much face they can save by claiming to have been defeated by a more prestigious, or elite unit, being unable to repudiate the defeat in the field creates an irrevocably dangerous narrative problem."

"Especially at this scale."

"Yes, and historically, any victory the combine wins, or political reapproachment will simply encourage furth hostilities as the combine rallies on jingoistic rhetoric."

He stopped himself, but she waved a hand, "No by all means colonel. There can be no steps backwards at this stage. We're at the stage where I need a time frame on executing an attack next year?"

She hadn't moved the time table up... but she hadn't delayed it either. There was probably no time to delay it regardless of how much he might have preferred having more time to drill, "Realistically an attack ready to step off to coincide with the Combine invasion of Elidere."

The problem was, that when you really got to the basics... the root of all of this predated the star league. The Combine's behavior had been no great secret. He hadn't need to review Tristan's archive of Hegemony files to find reports by analysts warning that the combine was creating tensions that could not continue in the long run. It was not some CID secret either. The University of Volgadon's political science department had had its share of papers and critiques that insisted that Lyran policies of diplomatic reapproachment and deflection amounted to appeasement that only encouraged the Combine's behavior. In short... the war of Davion Sucession should have, but hadn't, provoked the Hegemony to do something more proactive... and of course once the amaris crisis had played out to its full extent the Combine had used it as an excuse to try and seize the whole prize.

He tapped his fingers on the napkin. "To answer the question it would depend on when we could rendezvous with the Eirdani Light Horse and transfer the forces to wherever we're jumping off from, so between March, and May of next year."

"Will you be able to recruit enough people for that next year, the Highland Faire is in January."

"I'm aware." And all too aware that transit times from Robinson to New Avalon, would be 37 days, plus whatever needed to be done on New Avalon, followed then by the roughly three months it would take to jump from New Avalon to Northwind. Any hires from Northwind, or even picking up any Azami volunteers Pasha was sure they could source through 'the community' would have precious little time to fold into the unit... which left them a handful of options. "The dropships can if it comes to it deploy with Davion regulars, we've discussed using our airframes with davion pilots, obviously going in with more troops is preferable than less, but at the end of the day the resources aren't likely to be there to have the San saba fully staffed."

"And?"

"We'll be refitting it to carry some mech bays even though we'll be looking for staff to recruit to operate any of the vehicles from New Valencia, or other vehicles that can be procured in the time frame before leaving for Northwind, or that can be hired on Northwind." He paused, "In short if the Combine attacks we can respond to it, if the decision is made to attack we can deploy at present force strength."

"But more is better."


Pretty much.

That was just where they sat at the moment. "And the next month's training?"

"The largest single advantage? Lord Robinson," The Duke, "Is a former tanker he's prepared to supply armor assets and other personnel. If we're attacking or defending either of those could make the difference to holding a planet in a sustained fight."

"Much along the lines of what I wanted to hear." Yvonne Davion knew she had to depart soon. "I will see you on New Avalon, where you'll be briefed on the planned operation. I can't guarantee I'll be able to provide you with the Blackwell industries hardware at that time, but you will have the promised equipment by the time the unit reaches Northwind, but I cannot promise you two months of gearing up in the new year. If the Combine does not launch its offensive we must be ready to launch ours."

"Realistically that gives me a month before I ship to New Avalon, if not less if you want to review, and have copies of the program course work before you leave."

"How many more times to plan to run the Blue City Urban Exercise Area?"

"Hopefully twice before I leave." Of course it'd be possible that, the jump route plotted from Robinson to Northwind was 257 Lightyears, over ten weeks of travel. "I'm drafting study packets for when I'm gone, but that will probably," Most likely end up, "be company scale drills, and practicing the existing material."

"And the dueling program."

He exhaled, "Saturday, we'll start simulated volunteer duels, and anyone with sufficient maneuvering scores in their weight class can move on to advance combat. Realistically Bahar should be able to take over the basics of that when I ship to New Avalon..." He just needed to tell her that that was the plan if the Field Marshal agreed. "that is the major hang up, realistically even with optimal candidates I'd want thirteen weeks minimum to run a dueling course, just focusing on that."

She nodded. "You're right in assuming we don't have time for that. Very well. Make the preparations you need, I would like copies of all the course work before I depart for New Valencia. If anything further develops between now and my departure I will inform you."
--
Gene thumped into the chair within the officer's longue aboard the Sam Houston, and before he had gotten comfortable Septim was already asking the question, "Any ideas what it means? I mean promising? What does that even mean, especially after you know."

Pasha spared the Lyran a look, and then shrugged. "Weapons I would assume, perhaps a mech depot? Equipment of war surely. Promising does not necessarily imply that but what else could it be... and the Davions certainly believe that whatever it is the Doctor is pursuing must be of great value."

... and of course in the back of his mind there was the fact that Ford had skipped off early, disembarking at Hoff. They had found something in the records, either something that directly told them or corroborated some kind of lost pieces of historical lore that warranted it. "even if they find something, we don't have the manpower right now, and lets be upfront with that. That needs to be corrected."

"I can secure warriors for any just cause." Pasha remarked reaching for his coffee.

"Septim when I leave you can hire at your discretion to fill out the Baffins, if Bahar and Pasha consent any further hirings can fill out the Hidalgo if we aren't expected to berth Davion Mech Warriors, but I ideally would like space for hiring on Northwind, so temporary retainer contracts to handle expansion and bringing them alone. We have the money."

115 Mechs. Several Dropships too, but mostly the princely bounty for the regiment's destruction, the DCA losses were just on top of that that. They did need to be mindful of how many DropShip collars they had, but they had time.

"The battle of Elidere took roughly a month." Pasha remarked, "Might it not be wise to plan for a contingency force?"

Jump in launch the invasion, that perhaps he should have briefed the staff on, and then jump out to bring in a reinforcing, or even occupation force. "I think that would be really more a matter to discuss with the davions, they're bringing the Light horse in, in full, so depending on what other Davion Units are involved I have no idea how large of a force we may even be dealing with." That was one of the matter Yvonne had not been ready to clarify at this stage. A full force break down didn't yet exist... and there was a good chance he wouldn't know until New Avalon, when he'd probably meet whoever was in charge of the Eridani.


"So about the dueling thing?" Septim said moving the conversation along. "What are we going to do about, well lets face it some people are going to get slots for who their parents are."

"If you mean Castro, probably so." Which was not because he wasn't a good pilot, so much as other disciplinary issues, "I'd prefer to keep him separate from Sutton," The freshly admitted cadet from Elidere. What about the rest of the unit?"

"Bubbles is a maybe? I mean she's got the Atlas for this job. Beau already says he's fine with things like they are."

"Find out what Chang plans to do, and I'll see about filling in Beauregard on the doctrine, we may be planning to slot him in permanently to running Easy company as a dedicated LRM asset."
--
Notes: we approaching the last leg of the summer on Robinson, and thus far no additional hiring has been done particularly because whats going to happen is we're going to move into introducing other characters as well as bluntly because it can't be avoided basically have names on rosters outside of key officers

Effectively, Officers get major screen time, while Enlisted MechWarriors will regrettably largely be names during some points of the story.

 

Davion Part 11​

August 3017
Robinson, Draconis March​

His Marauder for all intents and purposes had the computer systems to check and send email, but there wasn't anything there. He wasn't surprised though.

Hiring local was proving painfully limited ... not with the Duke of Robinson having known about the situation on Elidere. As it was turning out pretty merc with a mech or an ASF had been hired probably as soon as the Duke of Elidere had made his first stupidly expensive phone call with plans to ship them out to other Davion planets in the Draconis March that might be in need. They were striking out on that front.

That still left them Pasha's proposed hiring route, but for right now there was also the roster. "Not surprised."

It could be, or maybe wasn't nepotism. Castro's snych rates with his machine were good. He demonstrated good mobility with the machine... the simple fact was attitude problem aside he was a competent, even a good mechwarrior...even if letting him into the duelist portion of the program would probably make that attitude problem worse, not better.

He watched Chang drive the Atlas and ease the big war machine back into the maintenance area. Not that it needed maintenance... and while they had talked about refitting it back to a standard Atlas Configuration, or something like that... so far that had all just been talk. They needed the hundred tonner to run and operate with the handful of AFFS assault mechs.

"There is the chance he could fail out."

"I doubt it," Gene replied ... oh it was true todays first rounds test and evals in tournament form would involve anyone who wanted to volunteer but Castro could probably make his Thunderbolt river dance if he wanted to. So short of him going up against Bard's Wolverine, him not making it was a dubious prospect. "Attitude problems aside he can actually pilot," Which when you got right down to it he supposed that wasn't a surprise either being able to pilot a mech was uncommon, and there was some sort of trait component that let one use a neurohelm and strength expression of the trait appeared to be hereditary. Mech Warrior skill was allegedly in some part hereditary ... and besides all of that 'kingwolf' had certainly been given the best tutors his family had access to.

Which from a historical perspective a bunch of Combine Ronin would have thought him to be an excellent mark to test their skills against... and Castro didn't have the live fire experience to go along with the practice.

He reached up to scroll through the roster his battalion management software was projecting, and flicked through, "I'll admit I'm surprised more of your detachment isn't in this," And by more the fact that all the Assault Drivers weren't on the list. "I really would have expected the Awesome to volunteer, but I can work with the Atlas, and the Victor isn't a bad mech."

"What about the Stalker?" She asked.

"In all honesty I'm going to probably attach that guy to Easy's HQ section It'll give Beauregard some additional weight, especially if anything decides to get close to them." Easy Company Draconis March wasn't intended to fill the same role as the MAF Easy company... similar but not the same... different resources being what they were. Easy something of the oddity in the attempt to organize the AFFS mechs that they were training with its core focus was on concentrating missile boats to rain LRM fire in support of units already engaged. That would make them something of a reserve option, either for breaking through or preventing a break through.

The problem would be keeping them supplied in actual fighting and coordinating them. He had a sneaking suspicion that the Davion's were overestimating his abilities, or were just hoping he'd be able to work miracles... maybe just be a good luck charm. Gene didn't like that. He wanted this to be successful, and it certainly seemed like the Davions were taking this seriously.

"Boss?"

Septim's radio in jarred him, and he shook his head, "Just wondering how effective joint operations will be. If they're serious about bringing a regular davion unit, and Eridani." He said glancing at the hologram that had popped up. His computer had brought 3^rd RCTforce strength as it had existed at the last update of the system in 2782. He blew a breath out, and dismissed the data chart. "We need to get the basics done. I'm getting ahead of myself, go ahead and take the next batch of mechs out there and through the range."

"I'll make sure they know how to ride a horse." Septim replied as he brought his Marauder up to its cruising speed. At least they hadn't had any more gyro issues, and the heavier 300 series didn't seem to be creating any issues.

Two hours later, as the sun started to set, Gene wiped his face and glanced over the grounds from the cockpit of the machine. The realities of neurohelmet technology meant that getting on target inside of a kilometer, assuming that the weapon was effective against modern armor at that range, took less than ten seconds. A mech could acquire faster or slower but that depended on other factors... having the enemy in the open, well neurohelmet and close range meant it was simple... and after that it was basically a roll of the dice to see if you hit and it was a good hit.

He wasn't sure if that was where the decline in fighting technology had hit or not. Maybe it didn't really matter. AutoCannon technology had become mature centuries ago having replaced so called 'Rifles' whose ammunition simply couldn't effectively defeat modern composite armor effectively enough. The reality was that the advent of armor that remained current and still buildable even in the degraded technology of the succession wars Inner Sphere was good at keeping a machine alive and in the fight against potentially dozens of 120mm rounds. Defense had leapt ahead of offense in warmachines, and offense had not effectively caught up.

Gene really wondered if they were just brewing the armor up exactly according to the recipe or if they still understood the chemical and material sciences underneath. He was leaning the first.

He hit the comms line, "Go ahead and compile the scores, and get ready for tomorrow."
--
He looked at his watch, then at the first tractor trailer backing into the cargo bay of the San Saba, and then to the Azami. "DO I want to know what you talked about at lunch while we were at drill?" Pasha looked at the trailer, and then reached inside his jacket, and pulled out a fax readout. The translated copy, "I don't mean to judge Pasha, but are you still running SLDF ciphers?" He was making an educated guess, he hadn't actually asked Tristan to run the readouts but he'd been suspicious.

He nodded, "They work." Was the man's response as the lights on the truck dimmed.

He exhaled. "Right. Ok changing the subject," Tristan had had an SLCOMNET Uplink... he had had his own HPG prior to the mess ... which of course made him consider that the facility in the periphery, on Aquagea probably had an intact SLCOMNET connect... though if it had been satellite based it might have been destroyed too by natural occurrence. "The ISF started a purge?"

"Yes, it is very bad."

"Why?"

"We don't know, it may simply be paranoia," The JumpShip captain admitted, "it is also possible that they found a rasalhague cell and were already rolling on it by the time the news broke. There are a lot of possibilities."

That was probably an understatement, but it was also pretty likely that the situation on Elidere was contributing. "You said its bad?"

"The ISF is prone to heavy handed responses to any perceived betrayals, even if they are wholly imagined. They lash out any apparent moral lapse." Which just made Gene suspect that the egg on their face from Elidere was contributing to the Combine lashing out.

"Pasha, we're probably about to step off on a Combine Regiment," He paused and let that hang, "intentionally this time."

"I am aware." The old man replied. "Rasalhague needs experienced mechwarriors, and ties with house davion that might convince them to support their independence."

:"And?"

"The Azami Liberation Front has reached out."

"And, you want me to bring them along?"

The captain shook his head, "No, I would recommend caution with them they are prone to reckless abandon a meeting right now would be potentially unwise. They split from the Free Azami Army during the second succession war, and have created no end of arguments on policy within the community."

He nodded, "What else?"

"The Field Marshal has been searching for the Cairo."

"Is that gonna be a problem?"

"No, it is in the periphery that is no lie." He paused, "To return to the issue of recruitment they are prepared to fight, and we can include them with out impacting other recruitment. I have sent a message to abu bakr," He didn't immediately clarify which one of those people with that name he meant, until he noticed the look, "he built our Drosts and should be able to provide us some personnel."

He'd been about to ask when the back end up opened and the Sheik's senior technician got out of the back. They exchanged greetings and he was allowed to clamber up on the white Marauder. "I have never seen this model before, and I've seen most." He bragged sound giddy, "Do you know how many were made?"

"I couldn't say, at least a dozen." According to Tristan's logs, but that had applied only to his assigned area of operations, and unfortunately they'd been offworld or lost otherwise during the conflict. "The code says its unit 42, but there is not guarantee that's for the-"

"It says its a 3R."

"Yeah, I think the 29^th century nomenclature of the more common 3R was a General Motors decision for simplicity's sake."

"Possibly," There was another hum, "that would make sense."

The Hegemony had originally designed the 1R and intended it for royal usage, and that model hadn't been entirely replaced until not long before the Amaris coup, but by that point both the 1R and even its successor the 2R had been appearing in the armies of member states and regular sldf units. The Hegemony probably would have been appalled that the magistracy and the taurians were both producing down teched marauders in the present... but there was no helping it.

The motor hummed and the breach opened letting the Azami tech stick a gauge inside the auto cannon's breach.

There were a couple other questions but mostly it was a matter of letting the man work he'd already seen the actual factory produced rounds that had been in storage on Elidere. The Sheik assured them he could work up mech scale handloads for the cluster rounds, especially since they knew their normal ammunition worked.

Speaking of LBXs, "I don't understand," Gene pulled himself up and looked at the pair of Krupp, "The Field Marshal said you were short one." He gestured to the two 'Combat rifle cannon' as he thought the German translated, pattern 78, as in 2678.

"Ah yes these they are Krupp 120mm cannons, I am afraid the one I am missing is unfortunately a different caliber and manufacturer." In the mean time the Sheik had something else to show them. "It was a pity that the mech was otherwise ruined." The large man declared resting a hand on the exterior casing of the weapon he had moved towards.

Gene looked around the other side, it was a large laser, but he wasn't sure the model but it looked like there was a plate up at the top of the five ton weapon, "What did you pull this out from?"

"I suppose it would have been a bit before your time." He paused, "Terran Hegemony Militia Mech, Helepolis 3H, a 75 Tonner."

He recognized the name of a mech that was really best employed in Star League doctrine of entire units of a single model mech, "Did you pull the artillery piece from it?"

"I did yes."

He moved up a shop step and glanced at the corner, where a tarnished plate was bolted in. "Lone Star State Militia, 2642."

"Not what you were expecting?"

"No, but it makes as much sense," He shrugged, "I was expecting it came out of a Kuritan 1K, they were built with DHS and one of these for the primary weapon," Well, "Extended Range Large laser anyway."

He snapped his fingers in recognition, "Two medium pulse lasers, one in each arm." Ahmed nodded. "As I recall your uncle Mehmet piloted one my friend."

"Indeed his grandson has it now." Pasha replied. "You said this came out of a militia mech."

"Yes, buried in a landslide," Gene didn't interrupt but that was getting to be Ahmed's excuse for where he found anything, "We dug it out of the ruins. The Hegemony Militia were fighting against the Usurper's troops. 2768 probably, thereabouts. We dug many rim world mechs out of the field as well."

"Where was this," He asked, before speculating, without waiting for an answer, "a landslide catching that many doesn't sound accidental. Pumping artillery into the snow pack would be the best way to get that result."

The last part of the statement prompted a look, "That is a thing?" Pasha questioned with some alarm at the prospect of intentionally dropping an avalanche.

"Yeah,"

"I am glad then I am in the navy." Pasha's reply was probably doubly true since people didn't nuke JumpShips anymore.

"Hmm, it was not something," The large man scratched his chin in thought, "I did not consider it was any more than an accident, of course it was so long ago, we were just following a map that said there should have been a city there. So we dug it up, and look, fortunate us."

Any further conversation was interrupted by a ring into the bay's phone line, and having to get a move on.
--

He'd settled for watching a couple of the matches of the recent graduates from the battle academy, but if he were being honest he'd have preferred watching the work on the San Saba. They had settled on ripping out and refitting enough space to carry twelve mechs for the time being. The only reason they hadn't gone for more was Abner had sent a message in saying they'd need the vehicle space, and that he had something 'Big'.

The old doctor had not elaborated. It was of course also likely his message today had been sent hastily after the previous one because he'd been reminded that they were working on the Triumph class Dropship. According to Pasha there was a lot of Fax machine traffic coming now... well relative to what passed for normal... but Gene also supposed that in the Inner Sphere that there were enough planets close enough together that maybe there were enough ships secretly carrying them that you'd get a message every couple days when something big was going on.

... and from the Draconis side of the border it sounded like there was some butchery going on. But they were also getting rebroadcasts of some of the same messages.... which he figured as only happening because they were in the Inner Sphere.

He'd diagramed out on his Marauder a couple of distinct sources. There were at least two distinct Azami broadcasts, there was another that seemed to be the Rasalhagues, and then someone who wasn't Abner on the Davion's side of the border, somewhere on the interior. That was standing out.

The Azami had said that they'd gotten the Black Box tech from the Rasalhague rebels. He wasn't sure how they were making them other than... it took a lot less germanium to make one than an HPG... but the procedure he wasn't sure about.

Bahar's machine handshaked his marauder. The Mongoose linking to an SLDF comm line. She sounded tired, which was unusual. "Did they really run you ragged?"

"It wasn't that bad." She protested.

"You didn't have to fight a mech that's more than twice the mass of yours," He pointed... even though he had in hindsight regretted not watching her kick the shit out of the seventy tonner in person. "You did good, that was excellent use of terrain." Especially for a mech that didn't have jump jets.

"The head shot score was luck."

"You still landed it." He replied. Septim had at least stuck to mechs in his weight class, and Bubbles hadn't had to face anything as heavy as the Atlas she was in. An Atlas was pretty hard to kill, and if Gene were honest Samsonov had added more cooling than probably strictly necessary, but anything dumb enough to get close deserved the Assault class autocannon.... And when you got right down to it... he was pretty sure the Kuritan general had devised the mech specifically as a dueling platform for long range engagements between him and kicking the shit out of whatever Combine subordinate or rival in his face. ... or that was his best guess. "Bard is in the second string tomorrow I guess we will see how he does."

"And Lieutenant Castro?"

If Castro didn't actually know he had already been approved for the class... well he was doing a good job with the enthusiasm for his match come Monday. "I've talked about it with the field marshal..." Though was talked was an exaggeration. It was, when you got down to it, one of those yes ma'am situations. He glanced at the clock. "We're supposed to let him play through the rungs."

"What is she aiming for?"

Yvonne had called in having been watching the proceedings,, and had told them to whittle it down. That had been while they'd been at the San Sab. "A company sized class." Twelve... ten AFFS mechwarriors really Bard and 'Kingwolf' were already pretty much a given. "Can you handle that?"

"It shouldn't be a problem."

"I'll put together as much of a reference guide as I can by tonight."

"Tonight?"

"The Field Marshal wants copies of everything before she ships off." And the truth was he had gotten distracted with Azami matters, merchant shenanigans, the secrets of FtL shadowy chatter, and the possibility of hiring... and the failure of the latter.
--
Notes: We're dividing this in half, we will deal with a little mech fighting next go round, before starting part 12, and then go to the interlude on Bristol with Doctor Abner. The Krupp LBX come off of a Dragoon.

I don't know what KgK in canon is supposed so I made something up for what eighties pseudo german probably made it meant. Even thats a stretch since in canon its a lower case 'g' meaning its something abbrevieted 'Kg' Kannone and if I find out later I 'll change it. 120 is obviously caliber L66 is barrel length. The assumption made being the 78 designation is 2678 is based on the machine first saw action in 2771 so it can't be 2778 there so most likely Krupp developed them in 2678 (LBX 10s first show up in the Hegemony in 2590).

I do wish there was a more comprehensive list of all the different autocannons, or just manufactuers and models in general, but autocannons in particular for the different calibers. Anyway I've been using lootbox rolling for the Azami shop. Interestingly despite Kerensky trying to expunge the Dragoon from existence it apparently was still a thing by the time he left of the exodus, which suggests a lot were made. It went extinct "The few remaining Dragoons in service elsewhere would become extinct before the 3rd Succession War" which seems contradictory, either there are a few of them in which case why isn't it 'went extinct during the 1^st', but I digress. That's why a Dragoon isn't specifically showing up yet.

Some sharky boys down the road though when we get back to the periphery.... because from the davion book

“ As a citizen of the Outworlds Alliance and a descendant of the Rim Worlders, I had hoped that in the course of our research on this volume I might find some mitigating factor to modify history’s judgment of my most famous countryman. I regret to say that I have found none. As far as Amaris is concerned, the ancient slogan applies: ... “What you see is what you get,”... Amaris may have been worse than even past historians have claimed. ” — Anastasia Marcus, Historical Director, Davion Research Project, ComStar Research Archives, Terra, 3028

That admittedly wouldn't be written yet it being 3017 and all but ... Marian Hegemony shenanigans and Stefan Amaris VII showing up early or another Amaris, I'm not entirely decided other than the dragoons will probably become involved someway or another in that mess. Especially since, well as has been shown by the Azami... Amaris is basically satan...

 

I Davion Part 11
(B)​

August 3017​

They had allowed the mechs to be fitted with what were paint guns for all intents and purposes. The techs were very confident that it was safe... what it wasn't was clean. The landscape had been painted where AC and Paint missiles had been used... and it probably hadn't been the best idea.

Apparently this made more sense with armor... supposedly. They were supposed to be testing indirect fire accuracy... they were really just making a mess of the exercise area.

"Are we going to do that?" Sutton's question the we in it stemmed from his relatively early, unfortunate elimination on Saturday from the brackets.

"No." He replied. "Your company," Gene paused, "and Dog Company are going to assemble tomorrow and start drills for dealing with enemy air assets." Simulated ASF shoots not dropships, but they were on paper planning to work up to that. They wanted to cover all of their bases. He glanced to the 6Md that Sutton owned. "Your mech carries two LRM 15s, its an intermediate step between the mass production post Age of War 'modern' dervish and the Terran Hegemony trial version. The Federated Suns probably would have still updated the Md to improved heat sinks later, but thats an XL engine in there, and your LRMs are protected by cellular armor storage, but your srms aren't." Never mind that Sutton's dervish had no business being in a situation where it needed to use the armed mounted dual tube SRM launchers, "And bluntly two tons of SRM is a lot of missiles especially for something like your mech." especially with its armor.

Sutton's SLDF mech was now los tech. It had been built for the SLDF forces and had integrated technology that was now lost to the Inner Sphere. CASE and the XL engine couldn't be replaced. Gene had half a mind to make the advice that Sutton might be better of seeing if the FedSuns wouldn't trade him a heavier missile boat that'd be easier to maintain in order to study the lostech. Gene didn't actually consider the Dervish a poor man's archer, but if the XL engine failed or suffered damage then the whole mech would need to be overhauled and other parts replaced.

Replacing an engine by hand... and had been demonstrated when they had needed weeks to get Merlin's old one out, and to put the new one in, and that was discounting insuring the VLAR 300 would work... and while lighter XL's were more massive.

Sutton looked as if he were going to ask more questions, but trailed off as his baby fat cheeks heated up and turned red. Gene tossed a sideways glance over one shoulder to Cunningham dismounting from her own mech. Charitably speaking Sutton was in what could have passed for swim trunks and a life preserver, and that was about normal. Alexandria's gold and blue suit might as well have been a one piece bathing suit, and it wasn't even particularly risque.

There was no denying that even in conservative dresses and with her hair pinned up the countess of Kestrel was an attractive woman, a skintight bathing suit was a way for her to show off. Hot was the operative word. Any further ogling of the countess's long legs had to be shelved as Bard finished dismounting from his Wolverine and came trotting up in kilt and heat vest looking like David Bowie posing for a highlands set bodice ripper novel cover.

"The lads look like they're having fun." The Robinson Rangers officer remarked congenially, "What do you reckon?"

"ON being able to suppress any enemy formation?" At least infantry would keep their heads down, but realistically the BattleMech's chief advantage was being able to accurately engage close range targets. "Fire and maneuver are the principles of tactical engagement, if they can hold them still then someone else can hit them." Which would be a problem if they ended up in a situation where they were badly outnumbered.

"What do you mean?" Sutton stammered, "I mean aren't they doing well?"

He glanced out at the paint, "What I mean is," He glanced to Bard, "What is the scoring metric right now about, thirty forty percent?"

"About that yeah." The scotsman paused "They're actually managing about one in every three shots."

"That's bad." Sutton admitted, and looked at the RBA instructor.

"I'm about seventy five percent," Bard replied. "I'm pitching about fourth shot right."

The cadet turned to Gene, who shrugged. "Ninety." Then paused, "Part of this is its not entirely accurate, they try and match the ballistics, but there is a drift. Even the lasers aren't perfect." The practice rounds were close but not identical, and he doubted the targeting systems had been coordinated for them anyway. The conversation was somewhat superfluous though as Sutton and Cameron departed , and the countess found a seat at one of the patios near the hangar. "The Field Marshal is leaving shortly."

"Yes." The brusque affirmative coincided with her making something of a show of running her fingers through her hair and shaking it out around her shoulders. Alexandria gave a deep breath, "Would you like to have lunch, before they start the second string?" She asked.

"Sure." He agreed, half expecting her to want to grab a shower and change clothes, but instead just had lunch delivered to one of the 'arena's private viewing boxes. Rice, lamb, flat bread were delivered about twenty minutes after they settled in.

"Don't you get hot in that thing?"

He glanced at the wrist of his suit, and then back to her, noticing that despite being at least two years older than he was they were about the same height. He had had to go a size up in suit at Elidere to accommodate, "this is insulated and thermal regulating. Even with the helmet breathes pretty well." The helmet comment threw her, "I mean for non permissive environments, vacuum, toxic atmosphere. The suit is rated for well below freezing, as well as high temperature." radiation protection was included but only to the extent of short jaunts, designed mainly for insure a downed pilot might survive if picked up quickly... and that had been a design requirement from the age of war when the Taurians had been throwing nukes left and right. He wasn't going to comment it was rated against light small arms either, you never knew, or that it basically doubled as a dive suit for the water if you needed it to... though swimming in boots was always a pain in the ass.

Bard's match started more or less about how he expected it to. His wolverine and the Shadow Hawk it was facing both took opening shots that the judges registered as misses before they started the dancing around the arena with their jump jets. The match was only half watched. "If we succeed it could change the Inner Sphere." She sounded as if she'd been coached on the line by the field Marshal, "The duke of robinson is prepared to offer a full time teaching position for the entire company, but the Crucis March is willing to match, or even exceed that offer."

"I'll keep that in mind, but until we're through here its a distraction."
--
Yvonne Davion looked at the two young adults and flipped through the papers. It occurred to her the only thing missing in format was a Star League letter head, or a Cameron starburst. She'd seen the academic format in historical documents, citation standards, spacing, it even had a cover page. "Is this feasible to improve accuracy?"

"Training is material to accuracy, live fire exercises will be the best way to do that." He replied.

She tapped her fountain pen remembering the news that had come in more than a decade ago now... when Ian had still been first prince. Even then she'd already been comfortably ensconced at the DMI managing analysis. Her nephew, the then present first prince had been concerned that the sudden arrival over Delos was a combine trick, but that had always, especially in hindsight seemed silly.

It was true that the DCMS uniforms had in their own way looked similar to Wolfs, but they were both clearly inspired by the uniforms of the SLDF regular army. The presence Star Lord JumpShips and Overlord DropShips and the use and black and red were another factor, but all of that was happenstance. She'd always thought Colonel Wolf had been young to be in his position... commanding five regiments of BattleMechs. She had a file with all of the original telemetry from over Delos, particularly the presence of Lion-class Dropships.

She had a report from linguistics on wolf. Not just him, the Dragoons original personnel all seemed to habitually avoid using contractions, and occasionally dipped to using vernacular terms that didn't exist in the Inner Sphere lexicon's common english. It didn't mean or even prove anything, but it suggested that their planet, or home planets, had gone through some kind linguistic shift. One that had clearly attempted to purge english of various words, and intentionally revive archaic uses. That wasn't unusual plenty of colonies in the first exodus from various cultures had attempted cultural purification to separate themselves from the Old Earth.

It still raised questions, questions that the Dragoons had always been unwilling to answer. It was a different problem... different questions than the other colonel. Shepherd's jacket, his file, suggested a star league era baccalaureate education, or more, he spoke was some stripe of Hegemony English, in addition to an archaic dialect of Japanese that her linguistics panel suggested only continued to exist in academic circles, principally in the Lyran Commonwealth.

There were other contrasts between the two mercenary commanders, but it was their ages and their ranks which were contradictions. "You have your candidates now?"

"We've narrowed it down to a company of pilots as you requested." He replied confirming what she already knew.

She recalled the thirteen week course comment. That was the sort of number that stood out. It suggested that there was some sort of program, or had been somewhere that used that to train, and that he didn't want to abridge it. "And you're prepared to hand off much of the course work?"

"And when I ship off world I'll pass the duelists off to Bahar."

"Doctor Abner expects to join you on New Avalon I understand."

"So I understand." He replied non committal.

Yvonne considered asking what was on Bristol again, but she doubted she'd receive an explanation. It was possible he legitimately didn't know. The truth was that Interstellar Expeditions seemed to have no end of secrets, and more mysteries that they wanted to track down. Whatever it was was enough to hold it out to the office of the first prince.

The field marshal made the decision to let the matter rest, and flipped through the drill itinerary. "Simulated field operations?"

"Rearm and refit of mechs in the field under simulated combat conditions. Units will practice covering another unit as it resupplies in combat... unfortunately given the number of ICE vehicles that means practicing delivery of fuel to units near the front." There was a note of distinction in the paperwork for repair and resupplying units, and simulating the evacuation of casualties from the line of engagement. "We can't afford to neglect combined arms on the offensive like the Galedon Regulars did, and its probable that the Combine will be predominantly light and heavy mechs and I'd like degredation of the enemy force at range before we commit to any attempted break through."

She nodded, "Can you simulate the Eridani as an allied unit in exercises?"

He raised an eyebrow, "I can simulate them as they were as a SLDF unit, if you can get me their current force strength I can plug that in instead, and have the exercise using SLDF light horse doctrine."

"I can provide that." The tell had been incidental, rather accidental. The admission that he knew what the SLDF Eridani had been could easily be played off as their historical configuration, surely of which there was a record... but if you had that, why wouldn't you also have some idea of their modern configuration. She pushed on, "There is one other thing, "For the last field exercise, I have an OpFor in mind. I want it to model the 2^nd Sword of Light as it existed in the Star League era."

"Understood." He paused glancing sideways to Alexandria, "Should I expect to fight the unit responsible for the death of the previous first prince?"

"Its not apart of our operation's objective. We don't expect them to be anywhere near the target."

"I should still point out that 2^nd SoL was at the time of the Amaris coup a Medium BattleMech Regiment built roughly along the lines of an Army Battle Regiment."

The old woman smiled and nodded, "That will do quite nicely for a course exam."
--
This was something of an extravagance, but Precentor Vandal of New Avalon didn't seem to object... though why would he given the cost entailed by live communications through three other stations in order to reach the Capital of the Federated Suns. "I think you will like him." She remarked.

The reigning first prince was not yet thirty five. Hanse was actually younger than Colonel Jaime Wolf of the much vaunted Dragoons. Hanse hadn't even been thirty when he'd ascended the throne of the Federated Suns to become First Prince after Ian's death in October of 3013.

"I'm looking forward to meeting him. They've been playing those battleroms of elidere to death here,"

Huthrin Vandal smiled the picture of cherubic innocence as he agreed, "Yes they are perhaps the most watched footage across civilized space this year.
--
Notes: It totally slipped my mind last week, the thread is a year old now.

 

I Davion Part 12​

The field marshal had been gone for about a week now. She'd taken with her copies of all the academic material he'd generated for the course by that point as well as all the test results... and she had remained cryptic over things insisting that that would be for New Avalon. Gene had a mounted worry that if what Pasha was telling him was accurate they were looking into doing more than just taking an opportunity. One out of a projected Mech Regiment strength of 66 was gone... and he guessed that she wanted to whittle that down further.

There had been an offhand comment that the Lyrans and Mariks had a rough strength of Mech Regiments in the mid fifties... parity with one another roughly speaking. Neither number included mercenaries.

So here he was doing paperwork... office work in the white Marauder's cockpit. Septim had finished up taking his Merlin for a hard ride to see how well it handled. He had taken a handful, not quite a company, of cadets with him as they put the machine through its paces. The nominal, on paper, reason was to examine cavalry potential.

So far so good. The techs had been somewhat relieved that they hadn't tried to replace the Large Laser installed with the extended range version they had purchased from Ahmed's caravan. The prodigiously proportioned Azami had also moved on, probably carrying messages to other communities along the way.

Which was another problem. Ahmed had a Black Box... fine, he'd known that the Rassalhague resistance had apparently dug some out, and figured out how to make their own copies, and passed that to the Azami. Which was compounded by the print out message he was looking at. They all followed the same format.

... Message Received...

A Time Stamp. Logged.

ETC ETC an automated response kicked back by a machine in the network that didn't make sense.... except that the ciphers the Azami were using were Star League Army Regular codes. He'd checked there was even a matching cipher code book to translate and confirm... and Yusuf had been expecting it had been a joke.

So they had waited, and sent out a test code message using the protocols for that communications test laid out in a dusty manual that no one had read in... more than a century. It had been received and relayed instantly back to them.

So he had spent hours going through his machine's logs for an answer, and he was pretty sure he had had it. They had been exercising during the sulfur flats on the far end of 'Blue land' with the tanks, what back during the Star League era had been an important mineral reserves area and a center of industrial excavation during Robinson's boom years.

He'd pulled maps up from the database, maps that had been downloaded from Tristan's database only because the AI had known that they were going to Robinson next. There were a handful of other davion worlds, but the thing he was interested in was trying to identify the ping call. Handshake would provide an identification to what exactly was trying to communicate with his mech, and that would give him some idea where they were broadcasting.

He flipped the motive start transferring power to the machine's forward drive and easing the machine out of the hangar while the Dalban initiated a clean boot and entered 'patrol' configuration to receive and catalog transmissions. Obvious Blue 2-4 was beyond range, and the Dalban was currently categorizing signal transmissions but with only one mech's signals it was going to be a wild goose chase, and he could be out here all night. He watched first interrogative go out over the comms capable of controlling an entire regiment in processing.

--
He cracked the pale ale open. "The boss doesn't look happy." Septim remarked dropping into the chair... and then a little more conspiratorially, "I've seen him pecking away putting the new drill orders together." The Lyran remarked

"I didn't think we did that bad." Chang started to protest pushing her glasses up and reaching for the test scores from today.

It was at that point the door banged open, which wasn't unusual, it was late in the afternoon, already getting dark despite the late summer daylight, and much as remarked upon Bahar would admit the Gunslinger looked visibly annoyed, but also energized. "Get everyone up," They looked at him, "Get everyone up, now." He punctuated. "I want the entire unit mobilized, and ready to roll out."

"They just went to lights out." Septim started as he swallowed down his first mouthful of beer. "Oh this is one of those snap drills you told," The field marshal, and he coughed slightly as he trailed off, "on it, come on Beau I need to borrow your baritone."

The two men left, and he stopped Bahar, and handed her a computer chit, "Plug this into your Mongoose, and run the search query through your comms log, see if anything turns up."

The dark eyed woman took the device, and looked at him, "Is there something wrong?"

"Wrong? Might be the wrong word, but I'm getting an SLDF return ping on operations, where something keeps trying to handshake my Mech during operations, then hits my Operations clearance and aborts the connection because we're in the middle of exercises so it logs it and stows it away as a non priority. If you get something ping my Marauder on a priority channel, when you get to your mech, you'll receive a communications handling package anyway."

"Where are you going?"

"Get everyone else up."

"Everyone?"

"The duke of Robinson wanted to be included," Even though of course there was no way they'd be taking him off world in his condition, and his tone implied this was more than just an exercise, which was confirmed by the instruction that everyone would be running on live ammo as they moved into the Blue 7 exercise field, which did lead them through terrain that took them into a live fire range and was a traversable series of bad lands. It would be well and truly twilight by the time they could get everyone mobilized and on the way.

His watch chimed set into the wrist of his suit, and Gene glanced at the timer forty minutes later as his Dalban categorized the fusion signatures. He hailed the Azami command crew aboard the Sam Houston and asked for a sitrep on when they would be able to take off. Then repeated the process for the Hidalgo and San Saba. It was the latter two who most likely would be capable of pinging the communications, and help triangulate the signal to find what they were going to look for.

Blue Land, hell the entire, Robinson exercise zone was wired for video and sound, and that included as far as he could tail the field bunks and lodging, and work areas to monitor how cadets responded. Even now in the background his neurohelmet was filtering feeds of sergeants shouting orders rushing men to tanks, and officers directing pilots to their machines. Cadets were still being hustled out of bed and into piloting attire, told to get their neurohelmets and cooling jackets on. Then to be rushed through the halls into bays where they were to then wait before they could be moved to their machines as astechs checked over them.

His command package was already distributing orders to to ASF pilots to standby positions. They wouldn't actually be taking off, but their machines were being directed to stand ready, and a rung down the conventional fighters like Defenders of the planetary militia were on notice.

As machines started to power on the chatter from cadets then became chatter over comm lines between lancemates, and then companies. Gene sat in his Marauder and let the Dalban work its magic in conjunction with his neurohelmet.

A supersonic roar signaled the lift off as the Sam Houston became a shooting star hurtling upwards. The Triumph and Overlord followed within half an hour as the forward clock ticked continuing to keep count.

Bahar's face appeared in high definition holographic color, "I'm uploading now."

"So something attempted to handshake your machine?"

"Yes. I never received a notice for it, but I can transmit the tagged coordinates." She did so, and brought up that if this was an SLDF hardware matter then Sutton's dervish might be useful, but he shook his head.

Sutton's machine was SLDF but his iff broadcasted as AFFS based on his pilot credentials, not based on the hardware itself. "As for the rumors that the Combine is attacking, you can squash those." He added after another minute, "reign in comms discipline and keep the units in their formations, I'll be in touch."

He liaised directly order a handful of other company and battalion commanders into formation as they came on line in their vehicles and updated the map. It took longer for the countess of Kestrel to get to her mech, and for the duke of robinson to make it to a mobile HQ vehicle but by eleven o'clock they were on the move. Later than he wanted.

"This wasn't planned," The duke observed over a private channel.

"No sir it was not." He replied.

The Duke of Robinson nodded, "But you think this is necessary."

"Yes, yes I do." He replied.

That put an end to the conversation as they continued to move through the hills, and into landa that had been reduced to scrub grass and trailheads, and basically left to grow up since the succession wars had begun... he considered the animosity the Draconis March felt towards the Combine... and how that might effect how they viewed the video footage of Amaris getting the coordinator of the day to provide the information of the SLDF's movements and positions... force strength.

True combine loyalists would probably... like the sword of light choose to emphasize that filial piety Minoru Kurita had been exercising by honoring his father's wishes to protect the Kuritan hostages Amaris had been using as bargaining positions. That had after all be the Kuritan byline to explain the Combine's inaction and unwillingness to take action against Amaris... but for most even inside the combine... Amaris was too despised where even that might not be enough to make it palatable.

The Draconis March he doubted needed any help to hate the Combine. Even without knowing what Minoru Kurita had done it was an easy enough thing to blame the Combine for being responsible, to blame Minoru for the end of the Star League... the video just made it worse. As it showed him collaborating with Amaris, and it would be a short jaunt, a few years down the road from that footage to show or just play a clip of Minoru proclaiming his intent to declare himself, or having declared himself Star Lord.

It was impossible to escape from... and if backed into a corner with something that might legitimately unite enough people against them. Gene expected the combine would go back to the first succession war policy of nuke first and ask questions later. Even Tristan agreed on that, and it was for that reason, that calculus that if the Combine were backed into a corner too far too fast he hadn't agreed to any plans to dump the video out there. He wasn't willing to take that gamble.

The problem... was what Yusuf said was going on. The Combine seemed to think or showed signs of thinking a rebellion was in the works. Maybe they were just being paranoid, maybe they weren't. If the Combine lost the Terran Corridor though the question became what then. There wasn't enough information in his possession to even begin to guess who might do what.

... on the other hand, he eased back on the mech as it crested the hill, and checked his logs. The radio compass azimuth feeding in a course correction, which he logged and distributed the adjust navigation package over the battle network.

Another eight miles the Dalban pinged, and he executed the handshake, calling the unit to a halt while the processed authenticated. An SLDF package unfolded, decompressed, and provided him a navpacket to work by. Credentials for sender and receiver validated he adjusted his nav and pushed forward again. He overlaid the map and looked at the nearest town.

He brought the unit to a general halt as he finished the next hill, and looked at a nearby river cutting through a stretch of ugly stunted trees, and tall grass. The battle network started allocating units to move into deployment phases and escorting conventional armor, and mechanized infantry began to diverge and then deploy across the widest part of the hills. AFFS infantry spilled from personnel carriers and began digging in on the hill pointed towards one direction as they were commanded. Anti air partisan tanks moved to screen them against any theoretical exercise simulated attack, throwing up their air scouring radars as they did so. Heavier armor, conventional and fusion powered tanks, dug fighting positions.

To all intents and purposes they were defending a nearby insignificant town.

--
Note: This is not the update I had originally planned for today, and I am through half a bottle of Ahus at this point, but this is the update you're getting. So just FYI, I will edit, that is do a follow on spelling check tomorrow, when I'm sober.

Originally I was going to post the Abner and Ford poking around on Bristol, but for among other reasons am doing this, I was able to borrow the book with the fury lore in it, and I'm not sure I'm going to treat it but I'll deal with that next week, or the week after.

 

Bristol (Interstellar Expeditions)​

September 3017

Abner looked as the new vehicles joined their workplace. He still found himself rather cross with his protégé as abominable as the Combine's behavior had been encouraging such a rash bout of military adventurism was... well it wasn't commendable... he would have preferred not to have to divide up their resources... but here they were on Bristol. Doing what needed to be done, he supposed. The older man cleared his throat, "Well, was your detour sucessful?" he asked.

Ford nodded and handed over a noteputer of Terran vintage.

He looked at the wire frame schematics that appeared, "what's that expression for what aren't you telling me Mister Ford?"

"It wasn't just the depot."

"What, what was that speak up?"

Ford's grin only grew. "I think when we get to New Avalon, the look we'll get will be, very very impressive." Then still in a low voice, "There were in," he enunciated, "tact prototypes, Professor. One complete even. An Assault Mech carrying two M9 Gauss rifles, painted as you'd expect in Royal colors."

Abner nodded, and looked back down to the noteputer of the one hundred tonner. With something that was half to a grumble he nodded again to acknowledge the younger man's enthusiasm. "Where is it now?"

"Stored up, in a big box." Ford replied stymying his own giddiness, "Didn't want to risk you poking around and figuring out what it was before I told you professor, the, it is one of the last SLDF command designs developed."

Ford's comment brought a nod, "Yes, I've been thinking about that." He paused for a relish, in dramatic effect, "Major, Colonel Shepherd said that the Dragoons were using a down tech version of the ANH-1."

"LBX, you mean."

"Yes, indeed the same model as found on my Atlas." The Atlas II was sitting aboard the JumpShip's hangar. Abner had painstakingly secured a copy of the machine's memory core, and its original owner's final sortie... and of course the final orders issued by the Hegemony officer to enact the wildfire protocol to deny the base to mutinying deserters. "Four of them." He added perhaps unnecessarily since the Dragoon's pronounced -1A variant carried four class ten autocannons.

"He thinks they're descendants of Kerensky's deserters."

"I don't think, think is the word the colonel would use." Abner replied thrusting his hands into his jacket as the wind picked up, which caused some resistance from the computer before he managed to get it in. He coughed slightly, "No, I think he's quite sure now. I don't know what that could mean though." He thought back to the question about Tripitz ... and he had made sure to search the name... and that had turned up the mystery of the Vandenburg White Wings.

A picture of a Black Lion in rimward periphery star system near the concordant. Had the Hegemony managed to get a flotilla out of the Inner Sphere after the coup... was there a hidden world, or worlds of Hegemony survivors or colonists some where deep rimward, the P-C Cloud Complex? They might never know. It had been two centuries now... but the prospect of that time reminded him that the Dragoons had only reappeared recently,, a dozen years earlier in 3005.

He cleared his throat. "Well we should get started on the door."

Bristol was a world hit hard by the combine's abominable behavior during the first of the succession wars. Reducing what had once been a gem of industrial hard work and labor to a pale shadow in terms of productivity. Even two centuries later their diggers had had to have excavated almost a million tons of rubble and debris beneath the layer of dirt and scrub grass that had grown up over the sight. No one had thought it worth the time to clean up... they had just left things after the Kuritans had finished their rampage, or been driven off.

It was such a waste. In 2791 the Combine had nuked the site they were excavating, and none had thought to clean up the mess.

"How big is it?"

"Large enough that it was supposed to have dropships land here." He replied thinking of the Triumph-class that Ford had worked to get flyable on Elidere at the lost star port. He wasn't sure that really qualified as salvage... and if making the dropship fly again after its long sleep wasn't than this certainly didn't count. Recovery operation perhaps? Well semantics, Abner mused contemplated the mountains of earth moved, and what passed for a city on this world in this era. As for what was buried below the surface... he considered. "The mechanisms described by Tristan state that the bunker was rated against capital weaponry." Attacks from concentrated warships in orbit, using both techniques pioneered by the DOME and also just mountains of earth as ablative material. "I don't know for sure if that means that the doors will even open after two hundred years."

"Or if the computers will work." Ford added.

Or if they'd recognize the authorization, and requisition order to secure material Tristan had compiled for them using SLDF cryptographic ciphers. They would have to see. Another bitter wind blew across, and he figured there was no point in dallying any further. The Jolassa Armored Vehicle site wasn't going to just open itself after two hundred plus years of sitting there.
--

The doors in fact did still work. The lights too. He expected that the computers and other systems were probably fine. It was the Star League's industry they were talking about.

It was at this Abner marveled at the lofty heights humanity had once stood at. There had only been a single DropShip in the port, a Confederate class, and that had left them plenty of room to bring in their own vehicles. The real wonder though was in the high speed rail system similar to what they'd found on Elidere built in the League era that if he wasn't wrong probably ran a line all the way to a terminal where Jolassa's modern successor had their factory built on top of the old foundation. That would bear exploring later, once they were fully settled.

As they had suspected the kuritan attack had caught the facility entirely off guard. The automated loading and machinery intended to pack up .;.. pretty much anything Kolassa manufactured was entered a safety shut down without worker supervision and remained in stasis for all intents and purposes waiting to be reactivated. A reactivation that was only coming more than two centuries later... and it might have been a slight exaggeration to say that there was pretty much everything Jolassa had built at the time of the fall of the Star League.

Including, as they had expected, completed or near complete Royal Fury tanks. Rows upon rows of the eighty ton vehicles, what he know knew were Fury after having seen one of the alternate versions on Elidere. It had been because of Elidere they had known that this should be here... and indeed here it was. They had been right to take the gamble.

... even if a part of him regretted that the next step would be handing over the armaments that would then be used to continue the senseless struggle of the states vying for supremacy. The Combine needed to be stopped though... that had become increasingly apparent. The Coordinator's, no the mad ambitions of the Coordinators' was what was responsible for all the horrors of the Succession wars in their mad bid to usurp the golden throne of Terra.

It was a realization that broke with the nominally expected neutrality of the organization. It wasn't a break per se. Interstellar Expeditions as an academic collective expected a certain amount of ethical detachment from politics, that they wouldn't take sides in a partisan manner that might imperil science and learning as a result.

They wound their way past another couple of large trucks, and looked at the office. He looked at the door, at how simple and plain this was, standard, cookie cutter as one of his fellow founding members of I.E had quipped back before Interstellar Expeditions had been put together, almost fifty years ago when they as MEN members had started searching for the lost Minnesota tribe.

The prospect of his age meant little... mortality from old age was a ridiculous thing to be worrying about. Maybe if he settled for going home and living on the estate that kind of thing might be possible... but he'd more likely die of boredom. Truthfully they didn't seem any closer to finding the Minnesota tribe, they had answered questions... and those answers seemed to have little do with the mysterious travelers... and they created other questions.

The lyran reached forward and tapped the panel, which obligingly glowed and starting up. Now to see if things worked as they were supposed to, if the computers which had last logged on probably in 2791 recognized SLDF draft orders for material when the league had been dissolved rather effectively by the council a decade earlier.

No one appeared to have told the computer as the door panel turned green reading his security chit's authorized user status and opened the door. The distribution office was plain. Professional, stainless appliances, sink, and other conveniences. A handful of Jolassa Armored branded mugs sat still waiting for their people to come drink. Ford idly inspected an animated tank with a bucktoothed grin and exaggerated bushy eyebrows.

It read 'High speed low drag'. The cartoon armor vehicle didn't appear to be a fury... probably another one of Jolassa Armored's other products that had also gone extinct as a result of the company languishing after the Combine's nuclear attack.

"I wouldn't open the refrigerator." Abner cautioned. Ford didn't chance it and the moved to the larger terminal and started it up, looking for the loading system inventory. Ford coughed at the inventory software booted. "Ah the Star League."

Jolassa Armored Vehicles had been a supplier to the SLDF and if this were accurate this facility was comparable in volume of storage to an actual Castle Brian. No doubt given the terran contracts that Jolassa had been fielding for the Royal Divisions as well as the regular SLDF this had been built by the 26^th century DOME.
--
Notes: This is going up early because I am working on the other half still. That should go up as normal on Sunday.

So, the Fury... doesn't have an original SLDF date to the best of my knowledge, but the industrial storage space for Jolassa Armored Vehicles is specified to to "rivaling the size of the Breed Castle Brian", which leaving aside I don't know anything about the Castle Brian on Breed or the Breed Castle Brian if for some reason its somewhere else and named 'Breed' that's pretty big. Notably the Pitban 320 is also the same engine as used in the Thug. Bristol also has 'other Jolassa Weaponry' which suggests they make more than just the fury as well as armor and engines, endo steel and whatever other stuff.

 

I Davion Part 12​

The bunker entryway that had taken them almost two hours to find was large enough to accommodate battlemechs walking in, and out, and the heavy reinforced ferrocrete arches looked like they had been built to take a direct nuclear strike or two. There weren't any of the tracks that he'd expected to see, after having seen Tristan's organization... a plate near the entry way had listed a number sequence and a date putting this as roughly after the unification wars, but the quartermaster's annex that they had followed the path to suggested this had been overhauled some time after that.

His official liaison with house davion was... not pouting but he might have mistaken the set of her jaw, either way it was clear she wasn't sure how to deal with the situation. "can you tell me what we're doing here?"

That was the question wasn't it.

"Clear." A ranger yelled from further down the hall his service rifle moving to a high ready pointed at the ceiling slightly forward as he stepped back to let some of the techs through. The DOME had designed for accessibility, but not necessarily wheel chair accessibility per se. The place was big though, so there was room for the Duke even if they were having to work with it.

"What is this place?"

That was probably a better question.

"Its a Brian Cache." He replied, "And that goes towards what we're doing here."

"A brian... cache... like a castle brian?"

"They're named for the same Cameron." He replied. Brian Cameron had been in the Quartermasters Corp of the SLDF during his requisite term... and among his many many ideas as then, as well as Star Lord was, well what if we need a stockpile of material in an emergency. "Castles serve a different purpose. Brian Cameron believed was was an inevitability and that because it took time for factories to spin up to war footing it made sense to stockpile large volumes of reserve material, hence creating caches of arms," He neglected to mentioned that it was also a great excuse for the government to spend lots of money because while that was true it was possible the benign explanation was to maintain a skill set for workers besides just busy work and kickbacks to a political district or what have you, Gene reflexively shook his head.

There was whirring from the terminal, and he groaned. An inch thick stack of paper finished printing.

"What's that?"

"The computer wants me to fill out the requisition, and paper work to actually take material out of the cache. Tell them not to touch anything. The cache has automated Laser Defense turrets." He looped his foot around a chair, and pulled it slightly to sit, before reaching for a pen in his breast pocket to fill out the sheet. He was aware that there was a silence behind him.

"There are what?"

He pointed to the ceiling. "Laser cannons." They looked like they were the standards not like some of Tristans because... well some of those had been more modern pulse lasers. Those had been in access points for the more secure annexes... to prevent people from accessing things like the radiological bunker, the fusion reactor, or the thankfully sort of empty chemical weapons locker of Tristan's outpost on Elidere.

"Boss maybe you should start from the beginning."

He shrugged and kept scratching away, before pulling out his noteputer to fill in the annoying little details that computer would just scan run against his chit's identity clearance, and would then authorize even if he'd still been 'ranked' major.

Apparently even that would have been enough to authorize bringing the computer controlled gantries online, and the inventory and stockpiling who the fuck knew volume of inventory.

"Bosss?"

"This is a brian cache," He repeated, and blinked, trying to pull the details from the memory, "Brian Cameron believed that conflict with the Kuritans was inevitable and so the Hegemony developed the Castle Brian, and Brian Caches. Castles were intended as defensive outposts to house a minimum of two brigades," To avoid keeping all ones eggs in one basket he supposed, or to justify 'well we have to' build more than one castle, "Castles were intended as support structures and garrisons. Caches were intended for being able to rapidly rearm and reequip Hegemony, and later SLDF regulars in campaigns either at the start of one, or in the face of one, where fresh resupply wasn't readily available."

"So its a star league cache?"

"Yes." He replied, and glanced to the chiming bank of monitors that occupied much of the wall recess, "It looks like this was restocked in the early 2720s with extra material in the event there needed to be a follow on to Operation SMOTHER." Gene hit the print key, and the rollers dutifully began to cycle paper. From the requisition files in the banks it looked like someone either Jocasta Cameron or one of her allies had authorized the material... but regardless someone in the Hegemony chain of command had authorized this material transferred and installed. "It looks like someone expected the need to take further actions against the combine... and," He pushed the filled sheets into a scanner tray, slid the computer chit back in to the reader, and pressed his hand against a third scanner, and waited for them all to turn green. "I guess three hundred years later," Or close enough, "they'll finally be used against the combine."

There was no AI in the facility. Caches were built, put in a roster... and all too frequently forgotten about. A ache like this had probably only been barely remembered by Terra and updating its contents suggested that someone in the Hegemony didn't want to authorize a new cache and sidestepped that by putting more material in here.

He swung the chair around and got up and glanced up gesturing for them to follow, and then back to the inventory he had printed out. The six of them, him, the duke and the duke's bodyguard, Septim, and the countess of Kestrel , plus an infantry officer to communicate with the rest of the Ranger's infantry detachment moved further into the subterranean bunker warehouses.

He doubted they'd stick around to inventory all of it. He had little reason to assume that the materiel list was inaccurate. Still it was something a walk to the elevator that took them four storeys beneath the surface, and probably in part underneath the nearby sleepy insignificant village that had lost most if not all of its industrial affiliations over the course of the succession wars. Caches were just warehouses. There was not accommodation for port facilities... in fact if anything this was intended to blend in with its surroundings. Dig whole hide lots of equipment filling in after you were done just leaving a couple hidden access points to access the cache if you remembered it existed by the time shit had hit the fan.

Someone had clearly forgotten about this... and probably of plenty of others.

"So could this be what the Dragoons found?"

His head snapped to the side to look at Alexandria, "No, Brian Caches were strictly Army units," The Navy had Anchorages, but those were rare mothball yards. "and the Annihilators were cutting edge at the time the League fell... there is no any way those, or those Imp things," Which he'd checked Tristan's datafiles and it conformed to no listed SLDF projects, "would have ended up in a Brian Cache. Even one inside the Hegemony's borders." he reached out to smack the button on the door and it opened to neat rows of tanks. "This is the right place, there should be a divisions allotment worth Valis and Chaparals stored here." He said moving around the sleeping form of Chevaliers.

"So what isn't here that you were looking for?"

"Pollux air defense tanks." He replied to septim's question. "I suppose that they would have been too new for shadow ministry to sweep them here without someone noticing bleeding edge ADX," The pollux would have probably still been Experimental maybe, he wasn't sure, "were shipping into a black hole." There were no Marksman CVs, but there were the older Thor's which carried Thumper artillery pieces in place of 'Sniper' pieces. That was probably just as well too many of the Marksmen had had bad track tensioning systems and were prone to throwing them.

... and of course he shouldn't have been surprised but well the armor assets were all well and good but even though he was a tanker even the Duke of Robinson was more interested in provisioning his duchy, and the Draconis March Militia's Battlemech forces.
--
They had fallen back to the Triumph-class DropShip San Saba after having spent only an hour or two inside the monstrous labyrinth of mile long storage space with countless containers, and hundreds of year old war machines. It had enough space even attempt to take a stockpile of what was going to happen from here out. She doubted she was the only one but Alexandria Cunningham thought she was going to have a stroke at first. The manuals pulled from secured lockers were how to rearm and reactivate machines in storage. Complex diagrams of maintenance included, along with time tables of when the last maintenance and hours and mileage accompanied the other documents. Some of those others listed in a small corner the authorization and authentication, listing Shepherd as a Brevet Colonel, and his 'peace time rank' as Lieutenant Colonel

It was a tiny section in a voluminous series of paper work that would have been easy to miss. It was paired with some alpha numerical arcane designation whose acronyms she had no idea the meaning of. It was only part of the growing migraine

... and of course this had happened on her watch after the Prince's Champion had departed. The field marshal had left to see to other responsibilities and now Alexandria had found she was going to be the one having to explain that while their suspicions did appear to be born out, there was the greater matter that the Star League had apparently thought it was a good idea to bury who knew how many thousands of tons of war materiel just waiting to be dug up.

Those manuals? Robinson BA publishing were now in the process of painstaking copying SLDF TMs in preparation for reprinting them in who knew how many thousand copies for the current DMM leadership courses. Of course part of her responsibilities had been evaluation of any training material generated by the course and its implementation by the RBA to see if the AFFS could implement training that would provide the sort of performance in combat demonstrated at Elidere.

Taking notes about training methods, tactics and doctrine in the expectation that the AFFS's own academies could have aspiring mechwarriors put it in practice. As it was sitting now the ability to shape future curriculum and dispensation was going to be complicated by the RBA horse trading access to newly discovered Star League Manuals to other institutions.

That would be a problem. They were new, and the Field Marshal had wanted to shape future courses which would be harder with a new batch of reprints.

She froze and stopped at a break in the page, and the duke rolled over the entryway to the ward room's office space. The Duke hadn't asked how he'd known about the cache, and they had had to search around for the entrance... but that might have just meant they were looking for an intact entrance.

The object of her frustration and annoyance tossed into a chair, across from the wheel chair, "The lack of Crabs is a pain." He shook his head, "Not that I'm surprised the Crabs were just entering service by the tail end of the second hidden war. I'm not surprised there are Reunification war era Hoplites in that cache they've probably been in there since it was first built."

"There aren't any Marauders on this inventory." The loud lyran declared in surprise pushing through after them. "And its going to take forever to actually go through that place.

"No, there wouldn't have been. Some were allocated to castles, but Caches weren't intended to receive cutting edge hardware. No Marauders, no Crabs," He shrugged.

"I need a list." She state interjecting into their conversation, sounding more tired and more in need than she had wanted to. She took a breath and straightened, "You said that caches wouldn't carry certain mechs, and doubt the Wolfs Dragoons could have found one of these for their equipment." It wasn't something the Prince's Champion had requested she get, but the specific comment on the Annihilator, the Imp seemed to bear out... but the Dragoons had mechs like the Hoplite.

At the mention of the Dragoons, Lord Sandoval remarked with his own good point, "I met Colonel Wolf when Prince Ian was alive, when the Dragoons were under contract with the Federated Suns. He struck me as a very capable man, but I think we may be zeroing in on the use of correct terminology. If I understand Brian Cache is a proper term. Brian Castle is a proper term... but what if in the vernacular cache is being used to refer to a castle."

"Still wouldn't explain the JumpShips, or their DropShip fleet, also a Castle might have Marauders, but their Annihilators are almost surely recent manufacture, or they had their LBX's pulled for logistic reasons, but again, not the sort of thing I'd expect to end up in a castle... unless the Dragoon's ancestors buried them ... and the only source for that would be the troops who left with Kerensky."

--
Notes: I am not entirely happy with this, it is two segments, when it was originally going to be three. So canon is contradictory, in the use of lieutenant colonel, so I am ignoring the the Star League SLDF rank chart that says the SLDF doesn't have Lieutenant Colonel as a rank, as that's stupid and I'm going to ignore it. Jumping from Major to Colonel makes no damned sense to me.

That being said it might explain why Majors in the SLDF have stupid large maounts of authority., which brings us to the matter of Caches, and their naval counterparts. Because BT is about big stompy robots we don't see much mention of the naval equivalent, there is a couple mentions of them related to the SLDF and the Hegemony and for example we know the Helm Cache's equivalent naval storage got blown up by the Kuritans (never mind that Kurita was on the wrong side of Terra during this time period) whie Keeler was hiding the rest of his forces and of course the memory core, but there is also a couple of mentions related to ComStar about what they used for their hidden fleet and there have been a few other mentions, including references to facilities by the Rim World republic in their far flung outposts (So not uniquely a Terran, SLDF thing).


This of course goes into even just Star League mechs in the late 2500s had some advanced tech, I looked at more than a couple of canonical mechs that 'entered production in that period with fucking LBX 10 or Gauss rifles and yet the Amaris coup supposedly was enough that these weapons which by 2790 had been around for TWO HUNDRED years just disappear. and that gets into, why would the Dragoons assume that LBX at least wouldn't still be a thing. I can understand ER PPCs in current canon they were new Hegemony tech supposedly in 2751 (which is one of those date snafus someone made ignoring that there are a number of mechs which definitely came out before the supposed weapon was introduced. Which is what I originally assumed was the case with a bunch of the Gauss rifle mechs.)

I will probably follow this up with a shorter post sunday, we will see.