Battletech: The Ghost Who Walks (Battletech Isekai)

Battletech: The Ghost Who Walks
Inspired by Cimbri's 'Isekai' Battletech CYOA
or
Life as a technopathic giant robot piloting mercenary gunslinger and treasure hunter in another world. The Machine Spirits say hi.
​

Rimward Periphery
That the periphery was not a nice place went without saying. Aquagea certainly could have been worse, certainly in good times it was passably civilized... unfortunately it had a bunch of assholes for neighbors and in the era of the succession wars that really meant one thing. A lot of assholes have a tendency to show up and throw their weight around. Assholes like the Free Worlds League, and the Magistracy of Canopus... well they were big names on the block and had better things to do than fuck with a shit hole like Aquagea...

Your average band of scum sucking pirates... yeah Aquagea had them drop in from time to time, and also the local region of space's more 'legitimate' collection of force wielding assholes. Zathras liked to claim to be an empire, but they were really just another group of thugs with giant robots.

This was problem for people on Aquagea because well they were 'independent' which in periphery terms meant that wasn't anyone to even tentatively go complain to. Aquagea was on its own. It was always on its own. It certainly didn't look like there was anyone coming today, which was he admitted fine. Maybe it was better this way.

He thumped backwards against the headrest of the battlemech's cockpit, "Fuck." It was bad enough he'd been deaged as well as dropped into bad eighties future, but it hadn't even dropped him somewhere nice. The mech was nice though. The Marauder was not quite Royal nice, but it was Star League era factory built. Green illumination lights began to fill the display as the fusion engine returned to operational status.

The Marauder was ... what we would have thought of as an off brand Flat Dark Earth with streaks of lighter tan. It wasn't, thankfully, digital camo, and it was sort of the inverse of Gulf 1's desert warfare camo in patterning. The seventy five ton mech was currently hull down crouched into a brush ridden hillside near the river waiting.


... waiting ... because about thirty clicks 'down' there was giant plume of flame that his HiRez was swearing was a Union dropship with Eagles supporting it. If the computer was to be believed it was going to land in the bombed out ruins of the skyscrapers that Marik's had left behind during the second succession war. The Mariks had strafed the city, bombed the hydro electric dam, even though the latter hadn't actually failed until much later, and generally exploited air and artillery. Thankfully no nukes, but that was a small mercy given all the other infrastructure damage caused by the Free World's league invasion during the second succession war... it was no wonder the couple of million people still eking out an existence held a grudge given they were constantly reminded of what had been lost. The bigger problem was the city was a pretty good place to land a drop ship. It was far enough away from any big cities that still had people in them.

He glanced up, but kept the Marauder hull down as the two Eagles banked and then accelerated rushing overhead flat out. It seemed like a waste of fuel there was no sign of any kind of planetary militia response... "Fuck." He repeated again.
--
Gene Shepherd ran a hand through his hair as he surveyed the unloading 'pirates'. Privateer was probably stretching it, but these were either hired thugs from Zarthas, or less likely Zarthas house troops of some stripe given the weight and conditions of their Battlemechs now that he could see them. A Zeus, and a Longbow being present made them look a little odd as a rag tag pirate group. The Ostroc and Orion were not something to sneeze at either.

The Dalban resolved the identity of another mech as a 'Whitworth'. The other mediums he'd been able to largely identify without the computer's help as a Pheonix Hawk, a Centurion, and a Blackjack. Lights as Wasp, Jenner, Locust, and Firestarter.

Then there was the dropship itself and its air support.

He wasn't really concerned about the trucks, or the PBI. They were milling about as the mechs started to move around the husk of skeleton like skyscrapers, and even the ferrocrete roads of the old city were cracked from the Mariks beating, and hundred years of weather beating on them.

Gene reached a hand up to the targeting computer and flipped the switch. It wasn't the most comfortable arrangement to work with, especially given his reduced height in a thirteen year old body, but the system display linked his PPCs. It would have been less of an issue if he'd just been taller, but it would have felt more natural to have the switch for linkage, and master arm all in either the left or right hand instrument panel, or directly front. The Marauder, reflecting the fact that both of its arms carried two weapons and in separately tracking limbs had left and right joysticks, coupled with the neurohelmet to make the mech dance as well as shoot.

The binding of the weapons meant he could settle in, and use one stick to maneuver the gunsite reticle onto the target. In this case that meant settling the reticle onto the block left side of the eighty ton Zeus. He squeezed one set of triggers sending converging dual streaks of ball lighting from the riverside. The SLDF issue weapons system confirmed the hit even as he pulled the seventy five ton mech back down the embankment and moved down across a depressed and sunken road way, before turning and moving forward.

Even without the dropship, and the air lance he wasn't about to stand there and volley into an entire mech company. He probably had their attention. PPCs were flashy but they did a lot of damage which was the point... even if given the lack of secondary explosions he probably hadn't hit anything important.

Despite being basically a direct fire energy weapon there had been no immediate return fire, and certainly no hill destroying wave of munitions. Either the pirates were completely blind to where the shot had come from, or they were looking ... probably for a tank.

He guided the heavy battlemech to a secondary position he had chosen earlier doing as best he could to keep obstructions in between him and the other side of the river bank. Climate wise the region was relatively arid somewhere between the south west and middle east with lots of shrub vegetation but not a lot of big standing trees.

After about five minutes he trundled slowly through the remains of some ruined buildings and into the position he'd marked on his nav system. He didn't have a clear view of the entire company, and there was no sign of the two eagles. Idly he moved the reticle down over the torso of the Zeus again under four power magnification. He thought about what a Marauder would look like refit to carry two LRM 20s... that would have meant getting rid of the PPCs and cutting a lot of armor.

Probably not worth it.

He squeezed his right stick's trigger. Blue lighting lanced across the space, and he left the computer to register as he pushed the machine into reverse and took it behind one of the decrepit buildings. A few seconds later there was a smattering of angry, if ineffectual and ill disciplined return fire from lasers and auto cannons that fell well short of his position. Plumes of water heated into steam, or just splashed into muddy divets as the strikes impacted the wadi forward of his position.

The lights were moving now, and the medium mechs would probably follow suit. Gene glanced down to the forward radar display. He'd been hoping to knock the Zeus out on the assumption it was the most probable lead for the unit, maybe cause an ammo cook off or a lucky headshot even if that was unlikely at this distance, but that was alright. It would be much easier to ambush the lights in this mess. He reached up with slim fingers and adjusted the weapon bindings. The only downside for the Marauder's gauntlet -ed forearms, besides obviously not having hand actuators, was that the armored housing dual mounted the Medium Lasers with their respective PPC. He could point one arm at a target, even spin it around entirely behind him but it couldn't target something independently of the PPC, even though it could fire on its own. That was good since these Magna Hellstars weren't the extended range versions.

There was a plume of heat on his sensors as the computer identified the Wasp activating its jumpjets, to presumably keep up with the Locust. For whatever reason the Firestarter, and Jenner seemed to have been moving parallel to the other two lights.



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Commentary: This is getting its own thread, and will be a regular update through June. See below for a copy of the source CYOA which inspired it, and the notes.

General Points here: not doing the lance thing. I feel the above CYOA needs companions. CYOA needs more points to start with, more negative point options, and the pirate section in particular needs to be overhauled so that all options start by awarding points and increase based on the threat.

This is one of my custom marauders in this case. Its all IS Tech c. Star League mostly ripping out the autocannon and replacing it with more heat sinks jump jets. (Also a small pulse laser for anti-infantry work the only really 'restricted' piece of tech on the mech and only went extinct long after the Star League was defunct).


'Pirate'/Zathras Mech Company
Light Mechs: Jenner, Firestarter, Wasp, Locust
Medium Mechs Centurion, Blackjack, Whitworth, Pheonix Hawk
Heavy: Orion, Ostroc
Assault: Stalker, Zeus

Spoiler: Cimbri's CYOA

BATTLETECH ISEKAI CYOA


You and three of your friends are stuck in the ass-end of nowhere in the Periphery in 3015. Normally this would be a short trip to ignoble poverty and death but you're lucky. So lucky that you are all Isekai protagonists! This means that fate is on your side and gently tips the odds in your favour. By using some metaphorical Fate points to adjust things in your favour! Well its not all in just your favour the more Fate is changed the more opposition to this change appears in the form of luck and abilities of others native to that Universe. So your little intrepid group of friends start with Two Fate Points and may earn more in the progress of choosing your starting position and opposition.

Spoiler: Where do you wake up?

You wake up in what appear to be Star League Cryo pods in an abandoned base. It was in the past a:

[ ] A ruined bunker. There's nothing there aside from the pods and your rides and some food. Enough for a week. Make sure you're able to pilot the mechs by then. Have fun! +0.5 points.

[ ] Listening outpost. 0 Points. It has the bare bones needed to stay hidden and resupplied with a hangar that can fit a shuttle and four mech bays. There is living space for up to a dozen people with enough MREs to last a good while. It also comes with sensors capable of passively watching almost everything that occurs in the system.

[ ] Star League Intelligence Supply depot. 1 point. The main difference is in the size of it with the hangar now being capable of welcoming a Leopard and a small craft or two. It also has twelve mech bays ready for use. The barracks can hold up to a hundred people in relative comfort with four apartments for officers or VIPs also present. The depots warehouse is sadly empty but can hold roughly ten thousand tons of cargo. Aside from that it retains every capability the Listening outpost possessed.

[ ] Outpost Castle. 2 points. It is a facility capable of holding a mech battalion with the facilities to match. Its hidden hangars holds room enough for at least three Aerodyne Dropships and six small craft bays stand ready for use. The well appointed living spaces are enough for not just the hypothetical battalion and its support personnel but also a fair amount of possible VIPs and perhaps dependants. The mech bays also comes with a well appointed workshop capable of machining almost anything under two metres in length (If someone competent is there to do the work at least). Its sensor coverage are comparable to some of the best in the Inner Sphere.

[ ] Castle Brian.No sorry not sorry.

Spoiler: What are your Cheats?

Fate would have liked to give you powers for free but sadly Fate is a bitch (Wait what?). So pick four powers for your little group. Those unpicked will go to someone else who might or might not end up as your enemy.

[ ] The "Phantom Mech Ability" You may use this in any vehicle you pilot to disappear from any and all sensors. It doesn't work on the mark one eyeball sadly. It can be used at will and will remain as long as the user is conscious and wills it so.

[ ] "Luck of Heroes" This ability simply makes its owner very lucky. It could manifest as finding great finds in antique shops and markets or your enemy stumbling just as they're about to finish you off. To explain it in nerd terms you get a plus ten on loot rolls and a reroll if you're about to bite it. Or want to stay hidden etc. Probablitity is on your side and you always win at games of chance. Of course there are times when all the luck in the world can't help you...

[ ] "Precognition" A truly terrifying ability where its wielder can see the future and all his possible actions. Luckily its restrained to one minute into the future and no further. Use it to become a discount Jedi.

[ ] "Empath" You can feel the emotions of those around you in a radius of five kilometres. An excellent way to determine friend from foe. It can even be used to predict the actions of others in a general way if its user trains it enough.

[ ] "Telekinesis" The wielder of this power can move anything below five hundred kilograms in a two hundred metres radius around themselves. Its only weakness is the ability to concentrate and lasers. Mostly lasers.

[ ] "Telepathy" You can send and receive thoughts from those around you within fifty kilometres. You cannot read minds. You need only to concentrate on who you wish to send your thoughts to and a connection is established. This power can either be used to coordinate a group of fighters or if you're evil... Drive someone mad with intrusive thoughts as they remain unaware of your power.

[ ] "Shapeshifting" You're Mystique essentially. You can turn into anyone at anytime for as long as you want. Gender is no barrier as you naturally don't suffer from dysphoria. Its a great ability for a spy since even DNA tests fail to reveal your duplicity.

[ ] "Technopathy" Well now this allows you to control any electronic system or device. As long as you are within five metres of it. Use it to make purchases or vent the atmosphere of a ship I don't care. Just be careful you aren't left on an uninhabited planet because you switched the shower to cold one too many times on your buddies.

Now for the bad part. Please roll a D20 four times to determine who gets the leftover powers. If you roll the same number several times? Then congratulations on creating a menace with up to four powers. Hope it wasn't Liao...

1. Romano Liao
2. Kyoe Akashi
3. Red Jack Ryan
4. Paula Trevaline
5. Kamea Arano
6. Natasha Kerensky
7. Joshua Wolf
8. Justin Allard
9. Ed Corbu
10. Subhash Indrahar
11. Yorinaga Kurita
12. Aldo Lestrade
13. Gray Noton
14. Therese Marik
15. Kristen Marik
16. Thomas Calderon
17. James Sandoval
18. Nondi Steiner
19. Frederick Steiner
20. Jessica Chernovskaya

Spoiler: Now what are you riding?

You have at the very least one mech each. Are they Royals though? Or were they perhaps used as deniable assets by Star League Intelligence. Lets pick how much tonnage you have to play around with and what technology level.


[ ] You have one hundred tons of mechs to tool around with. Its enough for four twenty five tonners if you're keen on being absolutely fair. 0 Points.

[ ] A hundred and fifty tons is enough to almost reach medium mechs for all of you but sadly at least one of your crew will be forced to toddle around in an Urbie or something. 0.5 point.

[ ] At two hundred tons you can all comfortably cruise around in fifty tonners. Perhaps a quartet of Enforcers? 1 point.

[ ] At two hundred and fifty tons all of you squeak into the Heavy category. Please watch where you walk okay?. 1.5 points.

[ ] Three hundred tons of heavy metal gives your crew a lot of tonnage to play around with. Seventy five tons each. At the top of the category. 2 points.

[ ] Three hundred and fifty tons. Would Sir and Madam care for a Battlemaster? Or perhaps a Stalker? 2.5 points.

[ ] Look Four hundred tons is enough to give each of you an Atlas or King Crab each. You can't ask for more than that. Super Heavies are off limits. 3 points.

Now are they Royals or not? It will cost you to have the shiniest mechs but perhaps you think its worth it.

[ ] Regular mechs are fine ma'am. 0 points.

[ ] Royals! Royals! Royaaaaaaaalsssss! 1 point.

Spoiler: On what godforsaken planet do you awaken?

You are in the Periphery and far from any exciting action as you wake up. That is not to say that the neighbourhood is very safe though...

[ ] Astrokaszy. You better be prepared for the fight of your life. Seriously its a pirate infested shithole while still being close enough to the Inner Sphere that any hint of Lostech will result in an invasion. +0.5 points.

[ ] Aquagea is home to a small population in the low millions. It holds a grudge against the Free Worlds League and is currently under threat from not only pirates but also its neighbours in Zathras. 0 points.

[ ] Gillfillan's Gold. A small population in the low millions the planet is a temperate one inhabited by stubborn descendants of the Rim Republic. They are regularly attacked by bandits. This prevents any prosperity from blooming. 0.5 points.

[ ] Detroit. Rock City! It is an excellent starting point for adventure as its both independent yet with a robust industry and large population it desperately needs defenders that might be willing to pay in things other than hard currency to get them... 1 point.

Spoiler: Pirates! Or well Assholes that will shoot at you at least.

Some weeks after your arrival your small group either notices a pirate force approaching the planet. You ride out to defend the locals. Or if you had the bad luck to land on Astrokaszy the pirates sees you and attack. How many are there and how well equipped are they?

[ ] They are terrifying with a full company of mechs. Four light mechs, four mediums, two heavies and two assaults. They are backed up by a pair of Eagle Aerospace fighters that was brought along on their Union. +1 point.

[ ] You are lucky enough that the pirates at least lack Air support but four lights, four mediums, two heavies and two assaults are terrifying enough. +0.5 points.

[ ] They are coming out of a Union with six lights, four mediums and two heavies. Can you take them? 0 points.

[ ] Well Eight light mechs and four mediums sounds doable surely? 0.5 points.

[ ] Look twelve light mechs trundling towards you isn't that threatening. 1 point.

Well there might be some local support. Or perhaps they've been crushed in a preceding raid.

[ ] Nope not a dang single militia man is available. +0.5 points.

[ ] There's a company of infantry armed with rifles. They travel on a pair of flatbed trucks and might be handy in case you're taking any prisoners. 0 points.

[ ] You're backed up by a infantry company and a pair of Scorpions so buckle up! 0.5 points.

[ ] A single infantry company backed up by a lance of Scorpions will make things nearly equal. 1 point.

Spoiler: Is there any loot to find at your home base?

Well did you find any loot looking around at your starting location? Even if the bunker is destroyed it might hold something of value...


[ ] You found negative value as one of your mech got their arm blown of by some rusting mine it managed to trigger somehow... +0.5 points.

[ ] Eh nothing really. A vintage porn magazine was all you found in the end. 0 points.


[ ] A noteputer with some standard armour schematics. Also some bars of germanium worth roughly fifty thousand C-bills. 0.5 points.

[ ] The noteputer you found held not only the information needed to make standard armour but also myomer bundles! Oh and you found Literal gold bars worth a hundred thousand C-bills. Now you just have to get them to a buyer... 1 point.

[ ] A personal computer you found held the knowledge on how to make not only armour and myomer but also the Core Tek 275 fusion engine! The Literal treasure chest filled with jewels kinda pales in comparison despite being worth two hundred thousand C-bills. 1.5 points.

[ ] You found one ST-45 shuttle. It looks fully functioning and it carried a computer with the secrets of armour, myomers, the VOX 280 and the Magna Hellstar PPC! 2 points.

A/N Well I shat this out in a couple of hours as I'm stuck on other things. Don't know how balanced it is but well any feedback is welcome.

The link for it can be found here: https://forum.questionablequesting....-discussions-thread.4740/page-64#post-4403742

I'm not doing the Lance thing. Cimbri says its 3015. That will probably be the date I will be starting in, I have considered going as far back as 3000/01 as well 3013, most likely I'll be sticking with 3015 this has not changed that much from the original version I wrote out last week.

EDIT: Here is the build: https://forum.questionablequesting....-discussions-thread.4740/page-66#post-4420856

 

Dervish
Part 2​

Gene adjusted the overlay on his HiRez through the neurohelmet rather than reaching up to adjust the instrument panel. He had been practicing in the sim pods, in the Star League facility he'd woken up in, trying to avoiding being too dependent on the Star League era technology of the neurohelmet just as a precaution.

The Locust was unsurprisingly the lead light, and had been tearing across the ruined highway like a bat out of hell. By the time it had even thought to start slowing down it was way out in front of the trailing Wasp who was still on the other side of the bridge. The wasp pilot had slowed to actually walk across the bridge rather than trying to jump to the other side, and risk jumping on a bridge of questionable sturdiness. Rather than waiting the Locust just slowed down. A reduction of speed that made lining the shot up even easier.

There was no real leading with a PPC, not at this distance and under normal habitable planetary conditions. Blue lances sliced across four shattered city blocks and ripped through the light mech's long spindly legs sending the front end catapulting a good two hundred yards further from the momentum until it spun into a decayed storefront from when Aquagea had been a much nicer place.

Gene maneuver his seventy five ton mech forward leapfrogging up the city blocks to the intersection, which turned leading back the way the Locust had come. The HiRez had already confirmed that as expected the entire light lance of mechs were armed with standard load outs, which meant that they all had medium lasers as their primary weapons.

The HiRez zeroed in on the heavier, at thirty five tons, Firestarter. It was the odd duck with flamers in addition to its machine guns and medium lasers. The Jenner and Wasp both carried SRM racks. He tracked back to the latter and the Dalban targeting and tracking system was now highlighting the mech's left torso ammunition storage for the weapon.

Three shots from a PPC is enough to burn through nearly two tons of standard armor. A Wasp only has three tons total, and that was spread across the entire chassis. The much more humanoid mech exploded as both PPC beams converged into a single glorious stream which was swiftly followed by an ammunition cook off.

That left the Firestarter, and its Jenner friend. Gene tugged back on the yoke and directed the stick forward the way he'd been oriented before. The Pheonix Hawk would probably be the first be the first medium to catch up, and the computer had said the Whitworth was equipped with jump jets too. So did the Black Jack, but the Centurion didn't, and all three of them had the same speed over all. If he could down the Pheonix Hawk and the Jenner he could then basically dictate the engagement since he doubted the pirates were going to be suddenly all that keen on getting much further from their dropship now.

Jenner first. Firestarter if possible, or Pheonix Hawk if it showed up. The abundance of jump jets made sense for pirates as much as it did for an advanced military force. The problem was the mobility it gave them.

He pitched back down towards the river and turned again to reorient towards where the dropship had landed. A quick check of radar showed no signs of the eagles launching. Whether they were getting ready to was unknown. He moved the marauder through the picked over husks of ancient sand bitten ground cars, carts, tables, and whatever other urban detritus remained after the Marik occupation had forced the abandonment of this part of the urban sprawl, and rechecked his scopes.

The Jenner had jumped the river while the firestarter had slowly forded it and was still making its way up the bank. If the Jenner could clear that distance though the Pheonix Hawk would definitely be able to make it, but it was no where to be seen... maybe staying with the other mediums as they made their way through the ruins of a long dead city. He slowed the heavy mech to a full stop and waited a couple of seconds to see if the Jenner was going to do anything.

The Dalban HiRez immediately flagged the Jenner's ammo storage as the reticle settled over the right side of the light mech's torso. The resulting lightning bolts had much the same effect as against the wasp. The Jenner had after only a slightly improved four tons of armor to cover its frame. The mech toppled back down the embankment and slid down towards the Firestarter who immediately began broadcasting what were presumably distress signals.

Rather than pull back, Gene followed through, pushing the machine forward cutting around the building he'd been behind and then loped over the ferrocrete. The reticle centered, and he fired.

Electric blue lanced out and tagged the mech.

The pilot of the firestarter started to manually reverse, thought better of it and then fired his jump jets choosing to pull back to the other side of the river as the smarter thing than fight a suddenly appearing heavy battlemech. Gene watched him climb to the apex of his arc and rather than try the fancy thing of blowing him out of the sky, settled for where the computer said he would land on the bank. Six seconds of flight later he sent two more PPC bolts through the mechs center, and was reversing and wheeling away even as his sensors confirmed the jumpjets of the pheonix hawk firing from the edge of the urban space on the Firestarter's side of river. He had probably only mission killed the Firestarter given the lack of a major explosion but it was out of the fight.

Flashes of additional heat suggested that the Whitworth and Black Jack must have been following suit bounding to get to their side of the river bank. No it was time to disengage and keep moving. He spared barely no time considering whether or not to jink them and then try and cross back over to try and catch the Centurion. Mostly, because that would have been asking to get into it with the heavy or even assault mechs.

It was definitely time to leave, for now. If the mediums chased he'd have to focus on the Pheonix Hawk because that was the only who'd be able to run him down. The eleven meter mech was already running hot on its sensors as it landed on his side of the river bank, and then immediately jumped again surging on top of a burned out skeleton that collapsed under the forty five tonner's mass. The big plume of smoke, and dust that rose up probably made them think something else had happened because auto cannon fire and LRMs started slashing to either side of the banks from the other two pirate mechs probably thinking they were suppressing him. They were wasting ammo, especially since he had no shot as the Pheonix Hawk dug itself out of the bent steel of the fallen building around it.

Two minutes later a loud voice started coming across all channels, presumably given the rank, was the Mech Company's CO. There was no point in answering the blow hard demanding he stop shooting at them. It might even have been a trap to see if they could find him via radio response, but apparently they were 'Zathras' and Zathras was the 'legitimate government' ... of this 'mudball'. If Gene had to guess this was probably the Zeus pilot. He ignored him, and continued to make his way out the smaller urban island and back into the shrub country.

The broadcast across all frequencies continued for a good five minutes more before they shut off. He doubted the Assault Mechs were across the river, but the three jump jet mediums were probably scouring where he had been. With no air overhead he navigated four clicks further away from the nearest homestead, with actual people, and the river itself before reaching up to the comm system. The action told the Dalban Micronics to activate the 'door opener', triggering a laser tight beam signal into a rock face... or what looked like a rock face.
--
Home sweet SLDF Castle Outpost. It wasn't as good as a castle brian of course, but then what was?

It had been built deep enough underground that it was a cool seventy degrees compared to the surface heat without needing to run the AC. It had been built, so far as he could tell, to house a Mech Battalion to help bring the periphery barbarians in line with the light of Terra's wishes. Unfortunately Kerensky had stripped the place of most of its readily usable goodies when he fucked off for parts unknown.

He had spent more than a week after waking up here just cleaning the hydroponics system out so as to not be so overgrown as the automated system desperately tried to furnish food to a painfully empty facility... he supposed he was lucky that there weren't rats everywhere.

He swept his hand. "Shepherd, Gene." The computer hummed bringing up the confirmation of the system and the general mess on the surface. Zathras was as far as he knew a one world periphery pissant among pissants with delusions of grandeur. The problem was the fact that a mech company was nothing to sneeze at in the boonies. The idea had probably been to come in with what looked like overwhelming mech force to wave the flag in the sector of the planet to establish a foothold to bring in more regular troops down the road.

The JumpShip at the jump point that the union had detached from being a contracted merchant vessel supported that thinking. Idly Gene entertained the fanciful notion of setting himself up as a periphery warlord ruling the planet... but he was stuck in a thirteen year old's body and there was still most of a company of mechs still up there. The sensors in the base were enough to watch everything in the system, never mind watching a bunch of rubes yell at each other for not being able to find 'one bloody battlemech'. They'd only be distracted by that for so long.

Via Caballero was tiny, a few thousand people who lived largely south of the river. It had been an important farming region before the Marik's had invaded, but once the industry and infrastructure had been combed to shit it had largely been reduced to subsistence levels after the second succession war... but it was also the nearest thing to a regional center and the most likely point of resistance in the area ahead of any of the larger surviving settlements further south closer to the planet's coasts.

He grabbed a brief meal, a few hours of sleep, and when he got up hit the shower before pulling on a clean set of clothes. The synthetic material was designed to breath, and be comfortable allowing a full range of motion, but he left the steel gray frock coat since it was a bit much for Aquagea's current weather. The gloves got stuffed in a pocket, while he pulled on the boots. If it wasn't for the age issue and the fact the Terran Hegemony, and Star League had been defunct for almost two and a half centuries he would have been the perfect picture of a Sub altern mechwarrior.

After that it was a quick check of the system, and then back into the mech.

The VLAR 300 rumbled to life and the mech started with a purr and he navigated to a tram way, and mag tube the pushed him away from the heart of the outpost castle and back towards a concealed entrance. It opened among another rocky swell. It was dusky, and the temperature was starting to drop quickly.

The SLDF cockpit had switched to interior red lighting to better preserve a pilot's night vision, and the tint of the cockpit also reduced any further light signature that might escape, unlikely as that was given the situation. Gene adjusted the throttle and eased up to cruise speed coming up to the south end of the ruined urban sprawl... and was a little offended. The Zarthas idiots hadn't posted sentries according to his thermals. The battlemechs were spread out, but were powered down down.

He considered attacking them but it seemed that that they'd split their forces for salvage and recovery operations. That still didn't excuse such a piss poor security profile. Gene flipped the master arm switch, and paired his PPCs. "Hello Stalker." He muttered putting the reticle over the eighty five ton assault mech. He moved over to the Centurion, and then to the Firestarter. It's frozen form was occupying a flatbed mover, but no one was working on it.

There was no sign of the locust. They probably hadn't had time to get it out of the build yet.

The problem was the Orion at the far end of the square. It had more armor than the Stalker, and the Stalker wasn't shy on armor to begin with. Gene eased back without engaging, and disappeared back into the hill country. If he was right about the signatures on his side of the river they were doing recovery. If the Zeus was there, he wondered whether they had been able to fit it with new armor... but he doubted it. That might give him an advantage. Or at least let him potentially compromise it before fading back into the night.

He pulled slightly back guiding the mech slowly around so as to not over tax the stabilizers in the Marauder's arms. He wasn't entirely sure how much jinking and moving around fucked with the stabilizers in the guns and what effect moving while shooting effected the shots.
--
Commentary: This features some minor revisions to the original draft. Slight corrections and clean up.

 

Aquagea Shuffle
​

It was well after midnight now. Six hours had elapsed, and he was considering disengaging for what felt like the umpteenth time. The Eagles weren't ideal for responding to night harassment but that didn't mean they couldn't relay where his PPC blasts were coming from... even if it wasn't an ideal usage of the jets. Shooting lightning at battlemechs was far from discreet.

He double checked to make sure that the Whitworth wasn't getting back up, and turned towards where the Black Jack was. It had expended all of its Autocannon ammo so there was no chance of knocking it out by blowing its ammunition. The Zeus was similarly out of ammo, leaving both mechs with only their energy weapons.

He'd taken the Pheonix Hawk out first, several hours earlier. Mostly because he had gotten a clear shot on the back of the mech while the Zeus had been obscured by buildings being in the way. He had done it to insure that he could disengage without being pursued by something that might actually be able to get in close with him.

The Marauder shifted backwards and reversed around a street corner. It was slower but it insured he couldn't be shot in his backside if the Zeus showed up. Gene doubted that they would pull the rest of the company over the river. Even assuming they could make in time without being spotted it would leave their dropship far too vulnerable. It wasn't worth the risk to hunt down one Mech. At least that would be the sensible position he figured.

Well he'd know for sure if LRM 10s and 15s started coming in.

There was a flare of heat on the scopes as the Black Jack jumped and cleared one of the buildings managing to avoid tumbling through the steel frame as it crushed the façade and landed. Its four medium lasers were firing at what were considered long range for them, but comfortable within that of PPC. In hindsight it made sense what was about to happen. He fired into the enemy medium mech's torso before his scopes registered the Zeus moving. As soon as his PPCs had started to cycle the scopes confirmed that the Zeus was in a flat-out charge.

"Got you now Asshole!" The voice from earlier yelled over the speakers of his mech, and open radio, as if sacrificing a medium mech was nothing at all. Despite being five tons heavier, the Zeus carried the same amount of armor as a stock Marauder. The same amount of armor as most Marauders, including Gene's own. The difference was in the armor between them.

The Zeus should have been equipped with the same Lamellar superior energy weapon abating armor. Like the armor protecting his Marauder. It wasn't. The old workhorse had long since swapped to a mix of different manufacturer's patchy 'standard armor' construction. It was obvious though he was trying to get close enough to where the PPC's couldn't be brought to bear due to limitations in standard particle projector cannon's beam coherency. These were standards not ER models unfortunately.

Gene scowled and rather than jerking back and throwing the machine into reverse and thumbed a switch on his right instrument panel.

The Zeus should have shot first instead of blathering on the radio. He would have had a better chance.

The Zeus's Large Laser, and two Mediums streaked low into a decayed storefront as the Marauder's four jump jets had brought it up into the air and on path to where it would be directly left side of the Zeus point blank for the gauntleted Mediums, and more importantly that that...

The medium lasers cycled but so to did the reticle on the smallest weapon on the seventy five ton war machine. A single chin mounted Terran Hegemony built Small Pulse laser fired directly into the Zeus's cockpit... taking it out of the fight.

He glanced at the heat indicator, and slowly reversed the mech. He was leaving. The two eagles were banking in on the sign of the fighting. With any luck they had seen the jump plumes they would assume it had been the black jack or whitworth, but he doubted it. If he thought he could have knocked one of the birds out he might have tried to disengage far enough to catch one as it passed, but that was out of the question.

He faded back into the stygian black of the night time air and left the fallen mechs where they had dropped. He kept an eye on the HiRez's feeds to check to make sure that the Eagles weren't following. They weren't, it looked like they were doing increasingly wide sweeps trying to figure out where he had went but they weren't having any luck.

--
He returned to the Outpost and slept the rest of the night. Actually he slept a bit longer than that it was well after eleven in the morning when he got up. The pirates... rather the 'Legitimate' Zathras Military Units had apparently decided to try and change tactics. It wasn't entirely outlandish that they simply assumed that he must have been based out of Via Caballero but strafing the town with both eagles and demanding the city's surrender at lunch was a bit much... or entirely normal for periphery scum.

The only light mech that he expected they be able to readily return to service was probably the fire starter. The black jack and the Whitworth he wasn't entirely sure about, but it would probably be one or the other and the latter was definitely sans an arm. Whoever had taken command, assuming that the Mechwarrior in the Zeus had been in overall command, was going to be a problem.

The Militia, the 'militia', was by all indications just a collection of local loud mouths with tough attitudes but basically nothing more than pick up trucks and hunting rifles. He doubted they had anything that would be able to reliably threaten one never mind both ASF, and even if they did that would probably just confirm to the Zathras that they were barking up the right tree.

If he was going to down them they would have to be on the far side of town, much closer to the dropship than anything of note. There were still the Centurion, Ostroc, Orion and Stalker out there as well. Forcing the Orion, and Centurion to expend their ammunition load outs would significantly reduce their threat in a drawn out engagement, but it also meant they wouldn't cook off either. The Ostroc and Stalker both had large lasers to fall back on in addition to mediums, and that would give them range comparable if still inferior to his Hellstar PPCs.

Trying to cook off the ammo in the Stalker's LRMs sounded like the best idea for it, if possible. If he could get a shot. The Centurion was similarly vulnerable to ammo cooking off. He wasn't sure if he could get through the Orion's armor to make that possible, not with three other mechs in the field. The Centurion would probably need to be taken down first, it was time to go back hunting.

The lift dropped the Marauder outside in another sturdy rocky outcropping as the wind was beginning to pick up. The wind was picking sand up, and quickly. It might even cause white outs in cheaper less precise electronic systems, but he doubted it. Even if it did? Well did it matter, he was Phantom Mech Warrior he didn't show up on their scopes anyway. But the white out from the magnetism would be what they'd probably blame it on, because it would be 'logical'.

The Stalker was in the rear of the formation. It was the heaviest mech, and the slowest. Of course they were guarding recovery vehicles and their crews. They had switched to trying to recover the more valuable heavier mechs than the downed light mechs that they had originally come out for. The problem was the Ostroc was out in front, which shouldn't have been a surprise it was the fastest of the mechs, and on a second review of his Combat Information Center readout from the HiRez could apparently get up to eighty six KpH at flank speed. Not as fast the Pheonix Hawk, and the sixty tonner lacked jump jets but that was a problem.

There was no sign of the Eagles on his radar.

"Ostroc it is then." He muttered moving to settle the reticle center mass at four power magnification. Blue Lightning flared from the PPCs and lanced across the intervening half kilometer from behind the half collapsed in theater being swallowed by the sands. Gene immediately pulled back into reverse and moved. It was true he probably could have cycled and fired again, or even twice more but it was asking for them to starting lobbing LRMs in his direction. Given the distances there was even a chance that they might call in LRMs from the Dropship, even if he doubted that would be effective unless they were already on that plan. Saturating an area with artillery or blind LRM fire seemed to Gene the best way to counter the fact he was invisible to their sensors in any event, and he wasn't going to make it easy for them.

He'd been giving it thought about how he'd beat himself, even if he wasn't using the Phantom Mech ability while using the simulators in the Castle.

The Centurion, and Orion both fired their AC10s at the general direction of where he'd taken the shot even as he navigated berms and buildings coming around from the right side this time and seeing if he could catch a good sight picture.

Their fire shredded brush, and kicked up sand clods, dirt, and even unburied some old ground cars... and made their mechs stand out more on his thermals.


The Ostroc in the mean time had punched out forward ahead of the other mechs as they moved forward at a comparatively slower pace. They were spreading out, probably hoping that they'd get the glory of the kill, or maybe expecting he might want them bunched up as a better target

Gene swept over the formation and fired into the side of the Ostroc blowing through one arm, but doing negligible damage to the better protected torso. The hostile lance realized he had moved and turned wide to try and catch him as he fell back as all four of them exploded the pile of sand he had emerged out from behind. Large lasers and auto cannons.

He kept reversing, and jinked back from the way he come moving back towards the river. Radar, and other systems detected the fusion engines of the Eagles heating up as they prepared to launch, which wasn't a good sign. The Ostroc needed to go before it could get close. Gene slid the throttle forward watching as the nose of the Marauder pushed up over the creaking steel frame of the building or what had at one point been a small one storey garage or shop or something and moved the mech's arms dragging the reticle over the mech. He could probably take the other arm, but with the Ostroc's loadout that wouldn't do much.

'Don't overcomplicate things' He corrected mentally, and squeezed the right stick's primary trigger before pulling back and descending the collapsed in steel roof of the building. The scopes showed the engines on the ASFs still heating up, but they weren't in the air yet. Breaking contact now would probably be better. He kept reversing and moving away from the debris of the urban landscape in favor of the uneven scrubland it had been carved out of. The Eagles had three large lasers apiece and it was debatable how useful those would be as far as hitting them. The pilot's mk 1 eyeballs on the other hand and view from the sky was a problem since it could tell the mechs what direction he was moving in.

Not desirable in the hottest part of the day with the sun bright and shiny out. Maybe if the wind picked up some more and an actual sand storm kicked in or there was serious visibility problems, but he didn't have that going for the moment.

The ostroc wasn't waiting for the others, either its lance mates or the birds and cleared several hundred meters right of his second shooting position, having probably taken the street clear up it rather than navigate any debris. One arm was definitely gone, but he saw the other one was still there. There was no visual on the Centurion or Orion. He centered the reticle on the sixty ton heavy mech and fired both PPCs again.

The mech staggered as actuators or maybe the gyro suffered some kind of failure, but the mech didn't go down. He took the shot available and sent two more lightning bolts into the chest finishing the other heavy mech off, and resumed his turn and started to accelerate. Once the heat sinks had time to cycle he'd move to flank speed and complete the disengagement.

He was definitely finished for right now. His perimeter sensors highlighted some small heat signatures, and he set the mech's course and focused on his neurohelmet. Someone had been watching the fight from the ground vehicles. They looked like a mix of jeeps and pick up trucks but not obvious armament.

Probably locals, but he knew he'd still have to lose them. They had no sensors for him to be invisible to, just binoculars with lens and eyeballs behind those.

A thought struck him as he made a minor course correction. He had just assumed that the Eagles had strafed the town because they assumed he had had to be local... but what if they had assumed that because there had been observers from town and they had assumed that they were somehow spotting for him? Maybe... it was possible he supposed.

He didn't have any help, and that definitely limited his options.
--
Commentary: As to themes I haven't done much consideration... not since I actually started generating story content:

Before I had switched to the deaged idea for material this was being played frequently:

Spoiler: Mercenary Song

Its a good song for a periphery based mercenary, or potentially be good for any battletech mercenary story really I think, but might not fit as well for this one as it might have for one of the other ideas based on the same prompt. I generate a lot of ideas that don't go anywhere, and the deaged protagonist one is currently currently sitting at something like 26K words.

Anyway. I will be updating Jumpchain Tomorrow, (HP), Friday (Stargate), and Sunday (MCU) with Saturday being AoE, and Thursday will be another update for this. This iteration adds some slight revisions and minor details to go with it.

 

Rabbits are easier than pigeons if you ask me.​

It was approaching dusk again. His eyes weren't dry per se but the strain was becoming noticeable as he sat there and looked out over the countryside. The fact his mech was painted in natural tones coupled with being hull down likely made him nearly impossible to spot with the mark 1 eyeball.


He figured that was especially true if an airborne observer was making a fast pass trying to cover as much ground as possible. The problem was that they knew what color his mech was by this point, and they were probably trying to make him out against the surrounding landscape.


They were certainly trying to flush him out. Given the eagle had an all energy weapon loadout they could probably afford to strafe areas of empty desert hoping to get lucky. They were probably hoping he'd buck from his position if they got close. He sort of hoping that them doing donuts in the air like they were would keep them distracted.

Maybe if they decided to do that for a while he'd get a shot at one or both of the birds, but for now he was watching the Orion. The GM chassis formed the basis of both mechs, his as well as the Orion, but the myomer bundles formed very different shapes. Despite being an older design the Orion however carried more armor.

Gene was debating whether or not to try and mission kill the Autocannon by targeting the right shoulder, or focusing on the left side that housed the missiles. The Orion simply carried too much armor for him to just stand out here and slug it out in effective time frame. Not when it would have drawn attention to him.

Of course he probably wasn't going to have a choice, with either the Orion or for that matter when it came time to deal with the Stalker but to slug it out. The Zarthas troops were now definitively stuck where they were having to guard their downed mechs. With his thermals he could the technicians where they were trying to recover them, but the weather wasn't helping the general slow pace of mech recovery any.

Gene was a little surprised that they hadn't tried to get on the radio again. He eased the gunsite over to the fifty tonner that had been his original target this afternoon. The centurion needed to be out of the picture. Its eight an a half tons of armor coverage, and pretty much the same options as the Orion for targets. Shoot left or right. Missiles or Autocannon ammo. If it was at full load it had four tons of ammo stowed... it should explode nicely.

No it wasn't at full load it had fired the auto cannon a couple of times and he was sure that they hadn't pulled it off the line to reload. Left Torso missiles it was. The reticle solidified under four power magnification and he squeezed.

The report of the ball lightning the ppcs generated was much easier to track at this time of the day, and if he was going to do this he was going to need to flank into the direction of his targeted side. He pushed up out of his cover and dashed right. The first rounds of return fire punched out at his initial shooting position before they even realized he had moved up rather than clearly disengaging. The reticle cleared on the left torso, and the HiRez apprised him of positive. Another two bolts of lighting. He moved behind a berm.

It was a pity there had been no ammo explosion, but the Dalban HiRez scored it as a hit.

LRMs, trailing great white plumes of smoke from behind, started streaking towards his second position and cratered the area. Whether the centurion had fired them was answered as the computer counted it as an LRM 15. That meant the Orion had fired them. More LRMs came in from the Stalker to similar wasted effect on target as he circled out, mindful of his heat as he fired at the centurion again.

This time it went down, though without exploding. A cockpit ejected, but he paid it no mind as the pilot was catapulted from the collapsing mech. The Stalker, and Orion dumped their missiles again in his general direction, and added lasers and auto cannons to it as he hauled ass backwards.

He didn't return fire as he navigated around another berm. The computer reminded him him that the Orion also carried four tons of ammo two and two for AC and LRM, in addition to another ton for the SRM that he hadn't seen the orion use yet. He didn't intend to get that close either.

All three standing mechs were starting to run hot, but with twenty heat sinks his Marauder would cool a lot faster for its weapons than the Stalker with its twenty. At least until the Stalker ran out of missiles to throw around. If the Stalker though it might risk cooking off its own ammunition, but he doubted he'd be able to bait the assault mech into doing that.

His Dalban targeting system squawked that the orion was also opting to come fully forward. It was probably counting on its superior armor volume keeping it in the fight while the Stalker advanced at a slower pace. His MMI link to the computer through the neurohelmet set a warning to apprise him if there was any sign of air cover being readied, as well as any sign of the Union firing LRMs even though they were at the extreme range of the missiles.

There was still a chance that the dropship might try it.

The Orion was a lot like his Marauder in terms of performance. The factory Marauder also carried an autocannon, an AC 5 not a 10 admittedly. They were built off the same General Mechanics chassis, were powered by the same VLAR 300 model fusion engine, and were both supposed to be armored with the same pattern of lamellar. The Orion and Marauder also both carried two medium lasers. That same mass, the same engine, the same chassis... the Orion had the same top speed as his marauder, and it was flat out in open ground now.

The HiRez churned out the stats. The Center torso had just over two tons of armor protecting it. The sides had less. The sides which held ammunition. He stood there, and fired. Six PPC bolts in a minute as it churned through the countryside headlong at him. Even with twenty heat sinks working it made the Marauder creep dangerously towards issues with dissipation, but there was no ammo to kick off.

Six center mass lighting bolts punched through the last breath of defenses and into the center torso toppling the mech sometimes called a poor man's Atlas. That left the Stalker. The Assault Mech that was now desperately unloading with everything it had. Large Laser bolts being fired going wide to either side as they ate up the dirt working their way towards him.

He eased the Marauder into a starboard flanking pattern letting his heat sinks cycle the heat rather than return fire. The Stalker was stationary. It was refusing to advance, but it couldn't pull back either. He had been considering that the easiest way to take the stalker would have been to get behind it, and double tap the machine from behind. The problem was that opportunity hadn't readily presented itself. There always tended to be a building in the way.

Considerations about whether he could afford to stand here and rely on panicky unguided by electronic shots were abridged when the fusion detection for the Dalban warned of the eagles coming back online. He dropped back reversing the mech. He'd take the shot against the fast movers with cool PPCs if it was available. The Stalker would still be around in the morning assuming the Zathras thugs didn't decide to just cut their losses and leave.

He doubted it though. There was too much valuable salvage left on the ground. They had to collect their mechs, which if he was sure they were going to leave would have been fine with him. Them strafing Via Cabaellero though had been unnecessary. Their declarations of being the legitimate government and what not were another point against that as well.

Even with computer assistance he failed to hit either of the fast movers on either of their first passes. It was a lot easier to hit something on the ground, especially something you'd been watching for a while. The fact that he was shooting at them though certainly caused the eagles to pause, or rather caused them to jink and bank as they decided to fly away from him. Neither ASF tried to strafe on their initial run probably still trying to figure out why he didn't show up on their Dynatecs weren't showing anything dirt side. One of them must have decided to say 'fuck it' and dropped low and came in banking for an alpha strike, or as much of one as he could manage, as he flew in low over the river.

Rather than stick around, and risk either of the birds getting lucky or the Stalker managing a shot on him he moved to disengage. The Stalker only had a top speed of 54 KpH . It was true that that was faster than his Marauder's cruise speed, but he found it very unlikely the Assault Mech was going to try for a straight rush after the Orion had failed at it.

Gene pulled back on his sticks and continued to reverse course. He would deal with the Assault Mech later. If the opportunity to deal with the Eagles presented itself all the better, but he wasn't going to stand around shooting right now. He'd blend in better in the dark against the earth especially with the pilots only relying on their eyes. Once he was in the rougher outlying countryside they'd have a much harder time tracking him, and would probably 'RTB' pretty quickly.

If they didn't well, he didn't fancy trying to shoot them near the rocky mesa, but the pieces of mantle would keep them from getting too low to the ground. The Mesa though would be well clear of any LRMs from the DropShip, and according to his scopes the Stalker was looking to be staying put. That was good, but he needed the Eagles out of the way before he moved back underground. Gene had no idea what the other side thought about this, but they were probably suspecting there was some kind of base... or at the very least that there had to be something out there capable of hiding his mech and what not.

This had, if he were being honest, taken a lot longer. That they weren't actually just pirates was only part of it.
--
Commentary: So we are almost caught up with the Misc thread's position. We should catch, that is part five will go, up Monday. Now barring Catalyst managing to get my Wave 2 bits from the kickstarter next week the only thing which may interupt updates of this will be the Lyran Commonwealth Space Heir CYOA story (in the misc thread), or as a long shot my High School of the Dead fic. Now the latter will probably update sometime this month, but I am tentatively moving to the following regular updates MCU Jumpchain will join on Sunday for this month.

That fills up the weekend schedule slots, with everything else remaining the same as it has been with Wednesday being HP Genfanfic jump, Friday being Stargate SG 1, and Saturday being my alternate history thread update. Tuesday and Thursday for the last half of the month are still up in the air at this time, but this may occupy those updates, barring say Out of the Dark getting updated sometime this month.

 

Authority, or My Big Iron​

--
For a planet with the population that it did Aquagea apparently did have a planetary militia... and a kind of sort of planetary government. It wasn't a very strong, or centralized, government though being more a confederation of mostly independent sectors on the planet who all for the most part agreed on where the borders were, based on planetary divisions from before the Mariks had attacked.


All that mostly meant that the planetary militia was fucking useless... and even assuming the 'national' level militia did show up Gene wasn't entirely convinced that the Stalker wouldn't just walk all over them... not that he expected them to show up anytime soon. They were 'protecting' vital 'national interests' which were meant they were camping in the rail depot and starport to the south on the sea.

Aquagea probably had a population... and probably a standard of living comparable to the old west United States at least on average... with the exception of more common electricity than in say 1915. It was really hard to say, but the planet gave off a vibe of that sort even if he was probably off the mark.


The only useful thing that was being said over the radio was that they'd told the Zathras commander the alleged 'viceroy' aboard the Union to go take a hike. Neither side had mentioned the nearly annihilated mech company. He wondered if Aquagea's apparently existing government knew what was going on or if they were in the dark. Probably the latter if he were to guess.

Gene had spent the morning consulting a star map. The outpost castle had a copy of 'modern' maps in addition to Star League Maps. The Computer had complained that the modern maps were of poor quality and error prone... that was mostly probably due to the collapse of the Star League. Zathras was a single jump 'north west' from Aquagea. It was just this side of the Marik border. He kind of wondered why these assholes weren't picking a fight with Hastur but maybe they were.

On the other hand Zathras had dropped a mech company in very good condition... and this was the periphery he couldn't fathom that keep all of those mechs in full armor and equipped was cheap. It was baffling to think that they were here like this. The expense was potentially mindboggling given the cost of mechs, and fitting them out, or how it should have been in the inner sphere never mind in the rimward periphery.

There was still the Stalker. The Air Lance, too.

Would the Union leave after that? Gene knew he had nothing suited to taking a dropship out while it was grounded... or even in flight... and destabilizing a spheroid dropship as it was lifting just meant it would come crashing back to the ground... hopefully the dropship would just run away.

He waved a hand dismissing the holotable's projection of the star maps of the rimward periphery, and got up off the barstool seat dumped the last of the baked fish in the recycler and made for the door. His Marauder was waiting, the Outpost Castle was outfitted with if not the final generation of Star League automation before the Amaris Civil War had shattered that Golden Age then the next best thing. Not that there was anything to repair. The Star League Defense Force targeting sensors and not overheating the mech kept his mech in largely pristine condition. He was banking on keeping it that way.

As it was the last mech unscathed, and not especially fast he was sure they had probably reloaded its missiles. Sensors reporting from the Outpost Castle still showed that the recovery teams were working to pull mechs out, but there was no sign that they'd been able to get any of them back up and running.

The winds had continued to pick up from yesterday, and the outpost castle's radar also suggested that they were looking at a potential sand storm blowing in and looked bad on sensors anyway. The fact that he had about an hour was almost enough to go back inside and not even bother. The winds and sand would probably be enough to force 'not pirates' to suspend work but he wasn't going to chance it. So he moved the mech out into a trot and started towards the river, pushing east, and south to come down from the north towards the bridge.

The system trip he'd programmed in via the neurohelmet relayed a warning alert from the castle signifying that the Eagles were coming back from down south. He stopped and turned the laser comm to tune in with the outpost castle, and let the computer search. Apparently the birds had ignored Via Caballero this morning had navigated by following the railway down south to where the alleged 'planetary militia' were holing up, given both birds were on their way back and didn't show any signs of damage they'd probably seen little to no resistance.

... or maybe both sides couldn't hit the broad side of a barn. It just reminded him that he had no idea how to be sure to knock out enemy air power. The Blackjack, or the Orion both would have been potentially useful, but there was no telling what their status was... and the Blackjack had been out of ammo when he'd knocked it out of commission.

It was a silly idea. He didn't have a salvage crew or any other kind of support. Just one guy in a battlemech, just a mirage wading across the dunes. The Marauder crested another pile of sand, and looked over the brush country and the optics started feeding images in across the distance. The Stalker had put its back predictably back up against a building. Today was the day.

The wind picked up and threw sand across the horizon and everything between. The front was moving in, and had turned the entire northern sky into an ominous gray black curtain. Within minutes he couldn't see five feet in front of his mech, but that was fine. The Marauder's armored shutters closed, and he switched entirely to neurohelmet and interior displays to pilot the mech. The opened up mind machine interface with the Dalban HiRez fed him what he needed to know about his surroundings.

Fusion reactors are a lot like turbines in a sense. They're surprisingly quiet. You can feel them up close but you don't really hear a properly running Fusion Reactor from more than five feet away, and his Marauder slowly crep closer relying on thermals to paint the surroundings in cold background with bodies of heat painted in colors to correspond to relative output. That overlap was coupled with radar and other sensors searching for not just heat signatures but also the harmonics of a fusion reactor that most humans couldn't detect without being right on top of it.

--
Gene made the decision to just ignore the work crews... if they'd been pirate infantry or whatever they would have been fair game if he hadn't had bigger targets to hunt. The Stalker's eighty five tons was still backed up to the building, which yes prevented him from coming behind it normally, but that meant less when they were in near zero visibility with the good old mark 1 eyeball.

He was up high on one of the few buildings his computer felt that was sturdy enough still to support the seventy tons of his battlemech. He was really glad that his mech didn't carry any weapons which generated recoil, like a stock Marauder's autocannon. That would have been useful here. Not that he fancied just going hull down and lobbing them in, just in case they somehow managed accurate counter battery fire.

Given conditions he wasn't sure how much the sand would obscure his first shot, but he was planning to fire twice anyway, whether or not this worked he was banking on taking at least one of the assault mech's legs in the attack... and then properly jumping away. Gene had no intention of trying any death from above shenanigans.

Even just taking a leg out, he'd pull back. Mobility kill might not have been the properly correct term for it, but the Stalker was already slow enough that being put into a situation where at best all it could do was limp meant that he could go find something else to do with his time. At the very least reducing it to that would let him leave this sand storm.

Gene eased the arms down, and squeezed. Being in a stationary position meant it was a lot easier to rely on just a single stick to move the arms to aim, and a single trigger bind made this practical for timing. Both armored gauntlets flared as their weapons fired, PPCs and Medium lasers both. The armor on the leg vanished in the flash of expansion and continued through to the exposed myomer bundles and actuators that allowed the mech to its full speed push 54 KpH.

He took a breath, and reached up to take the PPCs off the trigger, and fired the medium lasers by themselves into the damaged limb. The Stalker toppled to one side as the limb's structural integrity failed.

No. He could finish this now.

His exterior optics checked the street, more of a plaza really and plotted the distance for the jump to drop right on top of the maimed eighty five tonner, No DFA. He adjusted and fired the jump jets bringing his Maruder down in front of the stalker. Like its fellow assault mech the chin mounted small pulse laser's flash was the last thing for the Stalker.

He adjusted, and turned his mech towards the road and set off away from the scene of his latest ambush leaving the Stalker where it had fallen, and pushing for the river. Once he was clear of the urban blight he forded the river and circled around. He had been planning to RTB but with the last intact Battlemech threat neutralized he wanted an idea of what the Zathras landing sight was looking like.

The computer, the battlemech wasn't actually urging him on it was just the freeflow of adrenaline of days now of ambushing enemy mechs, and then disengaging. The air lance was still out there but they had to be grounded in this weather. The dropship was undefended. It was out there... he brought the mech to a halt in the shadow of a skyscraper's corpse. It had toppled over centuries earlier and gave him good cover to think about it.

... and do what exactly? He had already gone through their mechs, but no luck with the air lance...

The defense network on the Union class were semi autonomous, which given he was a ghost to sensors made them even less useful than at someone trying to gauge with the mark one eye ball but why would the dropship matter. He certainly couldn't fly the thing, or even capture it. Could he shoot at it enough to make it run away ? Maybe, but what would be the point at this stage... he'd won the fight. Could he possibly take the eagles out while they were landed? Unions had good armor, but he supposed that was possible...

Did he just want to brag, dunk on the periphery's idea of 'elite troops' or whatever these guys were supposed to be? Maybe just a little. He keyed the mike, "Zathras Union-class dropship." The Dalban comms suite modulated his voice as it transmitted. "I have downed all twelve of your Battlemechs. Withdraw your personnel and depart the planet, this is your only warning."

He shut the transmission, and punched the mech up to full speed and ran flat out until he was sure he was outside of the dropship's LRM range, slowed down to normal cruise speed and crossed the river well north of his original route.

Maybe they'd get the fuck out. Maybe they'd even leave all that salvage... not that he had a way to really recover any of it on his own, especially not with the sandstorm was picking up. He turned the mech into the north end entrance of the mesa, which had an access elevator down into the Outpost castle.
--

Commentary: Alright we are officially caught up to the place of the other thread, good. Now, as to where we go from here... we will probably pick up in the outpost castle, but I thinking I might move to introduce some of the other characters at least in brief.

As for salvage, none yet, but soon, and probably next week or the week after we will leave Aquagea for the time being and head on to Rock City. There will be pirate hunting action but the Detroit section will probably be shorter than Aquagea in the current draft. Aquagea can really be divided up into this set, and its conclusion running Zathras off, and then the aftermath.

We will begin to touch on political factors Taurian, Aurgian, Magistracy, Combine, Capellan, Free World, Lyran down the road after Detroit. I keep revising the order I want to do somethings in, and part of that it is I'm not sure if I want to stick with 3015 or move to an earlier calendar date. Obviously the HBS game has been somewhat canonized by the release of the source book, which I own, I may start a new play through of that but this will not be a 'novelization' or play through of the game's plot.

Markham's marauders will show up. Aurgian plots will be relatively important starting in an arc or two, but I'm not sure how involved the MC will be in the main plot of the games. We will eventually get to the Merc Company segment down the road, but a lot of the current planned merc stuff is of the babysit rich merchant and shoot pirates, which will eventually go the route of either protecting say Interstellar or maybe joining cranston snord's irregulars for a spell. There are a lot of other particular conflicts (again assuming 3015 period, late third succession war).

Again in the current tentative outline we'll be mucking around the Rimward Periphery for the next two years, and I'll be trying to treat Battletech Travel times as somewhat realistic so for example staying on Detroit for half a year then, offworld pirate hunting, maybe herotitus or Aurigan coalition space before potentially going to coreward through the Fed Suns after.

 

Sand Storm Shut in​

--
The sheriff hocked and spat into the sink as the last of the water circled the drain. The scoundrels from Zathras trying to throw their weight around hadn't really done much damage even if they'd scared the living daylights out of a bunch of cows. The only way anyone would have been able to miss the commotion of the last week would have been if you'd been in the old mines, and they were mostly shut down. Aquagea didn't have much use for the mines much, except occasionally to dig up enough iron, or coal to make steel, and that mostly happened elsewhere and was shipped in via rail. For a planet as dry as Aquagea tended half of the year you couldn't really rely on river transport... and speaking of dry there was a bad batch of sand blowing in.

He sauntered down to the wooden chair behind the desk in his office and contemplated the past week. It had been impossible to miss the Zathras DropShip come down or trying to act like they were in charge. It was the first time they'd ever shown up with BattleMechs that Yan could remember, and he'd been sheriff thirty years now. He knew there was no way they could have done anything against BattleMechs, even just one piddly little light mech with machine guns would have been too much.

The best they could have done would have been to high tailed it for the hills and take cover. Not a glamorous proposition by any means but he'd been sheriff long enough to recognize that there were some fights you couldn't win. The fighting in the Old City had of course prompted some of the young fellas to ride out to check it out, and he'd have dismissed their account of things if not for it was obvious that something was going on.

Zathras had stirred somebody out there up, and was being made to regret it. Via Caballero was the furthest town north on the map in this sector, and while the sector did end the next one up was just terra incognitum. A stretch of land long since left to the wilderness after the Mariks had been driven off. Yan was sure there were farming communities up north, but nothing amounting to anything he'd have expected a BattleMech to show up on. If there had been any BattleMech's on this rock they were probably in some big hacienda down south dating from kicking the damn puking chickens of the planet.

The radio broadcast though... he blew a breath out between sun cracked lips and wished for a little pick me up. Twelve mechs. It was an almost impossible thing to think of, especially for someone who had only seen a BattleMech in person enough to count on one hand and have fingers left over. To have somebody tell some other fella say that sort of thing was enough to get faint.

The mayor, the only other elected official in these parts didn't bother knocking. He came in dressed up like a dandy the same as any other day but the sweating was already messing up his carefully worked on hair. "Will they leave?"

The sheriff looked at his fellow native, and considered telling the idiot what was coming in less kind terms. "They can't squalls coming big old white out. Can't lift a Dropper out in one," And that really should have been something the younger man should have known, but they barely ever saw any kind of flying machine so how could he have known. "It'll last a day at least." Then they'd see how things pulled out out.

The mayor tugged on the ends of his whiskers with a frantic nervousness. "Some of the boys managed to get some footage of the fighting, and its been making rounds this morning, people are stirred up." They were lucky that the town's power planet, an old oil fired steam turbine array it was closer to the mine than it was town. They were doubly lucky that when it had been originally built the wiring had been run underground. If it had been fusion powered the Mariks would have blown it up if not during the occupation then on their way out of town.

--
The sandstorm lasted over forty hours dumping sheets of sand across the old city. Apparently though this was still normal for aquagea. The planet usually got a big sandstorm or two like this every yea. 'White outs' that made communications difficult and it hard to do anything for a couple of days, but then you just went on about your life once it was done.

That had left him in the outpost castle for basically three days. The automated machines in the mechbay had automatically touched up the sandblasting his mech's paint job had been subjected to without any prompting. The systems chirping along without human oversight.

A castle brian was supposed to house an entire SLDF brigade... including their dependents and support elements. Outpost Castles were smaller, basically scaled down. The Star League didn't do budget cuts, but you couldn't just plop a castle brian down everywhere. OCs were intended to be small brians, where a CB would support the garrison of a full brigade an Outpost was supposed to be for a Battlemech battalion. What distinguished the Outpost Castle wasn't the size difference it was the reasoning, and where the funding originated. The Terran Hegemony had constructed the Outpost Network to keep the periphery inline and that meant being able to deploy units as a firebreak in the event of the yokels getting uppity. Not that Aquagea had been periphery Yokels, they had been a part of a Member State, which was a detail which had surprised him.

Of course that idea still hadn't worked out so well given the mess that the Amaris Civil had turned into, but this facility had been left to its own devices sometime after 2784. Most of the immediately useful military stuff was gone. The depot, specifically, had been cleaned out before the 'Exodus' of all the best goodies, but the facility hadn't been truly stripped. The depot to supply the battalion was painfully bare of most 'warfighting' needs, though there were 2 tons of LB 10-X autocannon Cluster ammunition that he had absolutely no use for. The library by contrast was an example of what hadn't been touched. Why would the SLDF take that after all?

So he had spent two days reading up on the SLDF's Gunslinger program and hitting the mech simulators. Originally called the Advanced Combat and Maneuvering Skills Project when it had been started in 2687 the program had morphed considerably taking on increasingly exotic ideas, then again the phrase 'warfighter' came to mind, he supposed.

Whatever the case the focus on eastern mysticism prompted him to trawl through for an explanation of Phantom Mechwarrior abilities. Ki abilities were hinted at but even the Terran Hegemony's Central Intelligence Directorate had little concrete in the way of explaining it. It was interesting but was mostly about how it in theory shaped what had become the gunslinger program rather than the Phantom Mechwarrior ability itself.

In that respect it was a dead end, but in terms of information on SLDF military practices it was a gold mine... and something he could practice in the sim pods without using his phantom mech ability. It was far from the only military material to read either, or watch for that matter. There were an abundance of briefing videos, lectures and continuing education courses that just reminded him that that SLDF had been a professional military... even if the Gunslinger Program in its final iteration was fairly out there from the SLDF's more basic courses on Mechwarrior doctrine that he'd been going over before the assholes from space had shown up.

The bigger downside to that was that he got to drool over the intelligence briefings. Like the Stalker -3F Kurita which had Artemis IV Fire Control Systems, and Double Heat Sinks. The Kurita version Marauder, he didn't care about as much even though it occupied an entire section in the Gunslinger program files. Being able to replace the heat sinks, upgrade them to double heat sinks would have meant his Marauder could have ten more tons of space.

Of course having the ER PPC of the 2R would have been a great complement to go along with it even if it would have necessitated needing some additional rare heat sinks for optimum cooling. Then again the 'new' at the time the base had been mothballed KGC-010 was only going to carry a standard range Magna Hellstar PPC.

It was an idle flight of fancy. Still having ER PPCs and DHS would have made him a lot more comfortable for plinking at that damned union. The Dropship was still sitting where it was, where it had been for the better part of a week now. He wondered if he could manage to punch a hole through the flight control deck at the top of the spheroid dropship. A couple of shots thought might be enough to get them to move along though, and that really more than anything was the goal.

Outpost castles were not entirely self sufficient... or rather they weren't supposed to be. The base's hydroponics, and other systems were supposed to complement star league shipments, or locally sourced provisions. There was fresh fish, plenty of green vegetables, some herbs and spices, beans, and coffee all in abundance because the system was feeding one person not an entire battalion plus supporting body.

Gene stretched... what to do about the union still out there sitting? and once it was dealt with, he mused thinking about the map of known space, what was he going to do next? He needed to get off world.

--
Commentary: This is more meant to set things up, so not a lot of action. Aquagea was at the time of the Amaris Coup / End of the Star League a member of the Capellan Confederation's Sian Commonality. A frontier world sure, but it was a world that belonged to a voting member of the Star League proper not a periphery state, and indeed in the successions wars it was invaded by the FWL... and we will get to that later. Aquagea is or would be considered on the periphery because its been abandoned by the retreat of the great houses from the rimward periphery.

Its such a Pity that the Hellstar didn't debut until 3079 in canon. Even if it didn't, Cimbri's CYOA required you to pay for SLDF Royal Mechs and specified its 3015. I mean sure, in terms of in production current Clan Mechs, the Timber Wolf would massively reflect well on this MC but uh... then the Wolf Dragoon's would be looking at him. We will get to some more advanced tech in the near future though.

Spoiler: 4th Sword of Light 2750

Fourth Sword of Light:
STK-3Fk Stalker: The new STK-3F Stalker upgrades its heat sinks to having 18 Doubles. It replaces the SRM-6’s with 4 Streak SRM-2s and adds an Artemis IV FCS to the LRM-10s.
WHM-6Rk Warhammer: This Combine-built Warhammer upgrades the Engine to an XL Fusion Engine and increases its speed to 5/8. Its heat sinks are also upgrades to having 15 double heat sinks. All remaining tonnage is dedicated to extra armor protection.
PHX-1Kk Phoenix Hawk: The PHX-1Kk Phoenix Hawk upgrades it heat sinks to having 11 double heat sinks, upgrades its Large Laser to an ER Large Laser, and upgrades its two Medium Lasers to Medium Pulse Lasers.

 

So what if they're not Pirates
I'd really like those guys off my lawn, and I really want to stop asking so the PPCs come out to play...
​

Some basic reading ... even if the almanac in question was three hundred years old... clarified why the 'white outs' didn't leave much buried. They were about once or twice a year, but more important the kick up of cool air that threw the dust in the first place generally signaled the beginning of the rainy season... and Aquagea got a lot of rain during those months. Of course it would be weeks before the worst of that started and there was any chance of the river coming over its banks and flooding.

Still the gentle rain was doing a lot to keep the dust to a minimum today as his Marauder cruised through the brush country. He was going to ignore the technicians he'd basically decided on that. They were technically fair targets. They were military support personnel working to recover downed enemy weapon platforms, but the Union being driven off was the bigger objective and attacking the techs seemed less likely to accomplish that objective.

The rain wasn't the same degree of reduction in visibility as the sand storm but it was useful in its own way. The way the SLDF had written manuals for mechwarriors had been about relying on the neurohelmets to make calling up sensor data from radar, lidar, thermal, and acoustic instrumentation among others as an extension. That wasn't possible with non SLDF neurohelmets and even if it was he wasn't playing fair anyway. He didn't show up on electronic sensors, he was a ghost, and he intended to put that to use.

A quick check of the map showed he had another half hour until he reached the river crossing he intended to use, and then he'd move from there and see if there was any sign of Battlemechs having been brought back online. There were no fusion signatures at the location where he'd been doing most of the fighting at over the last week. A couple of ICE engines from the work vehicles, but no sign of a working mech. The only other active fusion engines were those of the two damnable aircraft, and they weren't flying right now.

He had no other fusion signatures that could be militia ground vehicles on the scope so who knew what the planetary militia was doing... even assuming that they had fusion engines in their ground vehicles in the first place. He kind of doubted it it was 3015 and it was the periphery... it was an independent periphery planet on top of that.

That just reminded him that he had no idea what he was going to do after this. There weren't any prospects on this rock. He was going to have get off world, being a mercenary was going to be hard given his apparent age, and it would mean things besides paperwork... Gene flipped the telemetry on his left instrumentation panel to double check the 'recovery site'. Still nothing, no sign of fusion reactors powering up or running.

He didn't jump up on any of the buildings. It was wet, he didn't want to find out how good his mech's traction on aging and weathered ferrocrete girders were the hard way. That made trying to squeeze a shot off into the armor over flight control something of a problem. Did he try a radio call again? Would that make it seem like he was bluffing.

He turned to his low altitude ground coverage radar array readout on his instrument panel. There were a couple of buildings on their side, but nothing that gave him the angle to shoot at flight control. Looking at it though he could picture the surroundings as giving him a shot at the ASF bays... that might let him take the birds off the board though.

Neurohelmets were great, and let him navigate and process information vastly more efficiently, but part of that was probably not just the helmet but the fact the Marauder had served in the Star League as a command mech, and his still had the correct Star League pattern electronics. He wasn't eager to have them take any damage, so what he was going to do was risky. He was going to be shooting at a dropship after all.


--
It would have been really nice to have ER PPCs, he mused. Gene hadn't bothered hailing the Dropship. It had been enough trouble finding an angle of attack. The Marauder was currently hull down waiting for a chance that might never come. He willed the ASF bays to open, and they regrettably failed to budge as he sat there in his hide.

Not for the first time he considered shooting through the bulkheads. It was however the first time he noticed the way they were sealed up. The Union wasn't launching its ASF from its bays. He hadn't found any documentation on dropship ASF information, but it also hadn't been a priority. The eagles had come down with the dropship originally and had probably been flying scouting missions while a base camp had been secured.

He flipped the sensors on and started looking as the war machine stood up.

Camo netting had been pulled haphazardly over a set of work area probably more of a pathetic attempt to protect against the weather than military decorum but there were machinery and deck hands working on what could only have been the nose of an Eagle. He didn't need the computer to tell him that.

A smile split across his face. He had made a mistake but that gave him an option to correct it. He swung the Marauder's arms around and brought them to bear on the first while still using his mech's sensor suite to look for the second. The camo tarps cover it was slightly better but more than that was the fact it was positioned with a building obscuring most of the line of sight.

He directed the targeting computer to flag both birds, and set them to trip an alert if their fusion engines came online.

He couldn't effectively cover the target, but he'd probably have enough time to detect its fusion reactor heating up. He swung back to the dropship, and fired both ppc's at the main bay door, so designated by the big '1' painted on it.

It was like he had kicked over an anthill or something. People who had been moving in pretty orderly camp work suddenly were running every which way. Tiny little ants scurrying everywhere. One of the flatbed trucks backfired, and tires squealed as it tried to reverse and then ramped its way up onto what had at one point been sidewalk.

He kept watching for weapons fire alerts. Missile launches in particular. He supposed in theory someone could use a manual gunsight to aim an autocannon presumably non electronic optics were used as back ups in combat vehicles in the 31^st century after all. Of course he didn't think they had any combat vehicles... not given he'd downed the whole mech company. They'd have to revert the weapons on the dropship to manual control, and he wasn't sure how well that would work that was why missiles were his bigger concern. They had a better chance of hitting him if they splashed the whole area with a hundred twenty LRMs.

Gene triggered his particle projector cannons again scouring the armored bulkhead. The computer squawked adjusting and proving a flight solution for his jump jets. Jump onto the top of the Union. It was crazy. It would be too close to use his PPCs.

He jinked the mech to the side and hit the switch triggering the jets, because if he was standing on the top of the dropship they couldn't launch LRMs at him, and he doubted they'd be risk the autocannons even assuming they could track him. The heads up display highlighted the 'nose' weapons of the union even as started to descend back down, and he planted a foot onto the ball. A switch later toggled the binds of his medium lasers to his trigger, and he started blasting.

It didn't take long for the Union's captain or someone reporting to figure out what he was doing.

"-Stop goddamn it, stop already!"

He let the shouting continue for a minute longer, and then keyed his mike. Part of that was just to clamp down on his own urge to say something that might get the wrong result. "Zathras Dropship, I assume I have your attention now. You are to power down the ship's fusion drive and safe the vessel. You are then to disembark from the dropship. All personnel are to withdraw from the Dropship. Do not deviate from these instructions." He almost immediately continued, but stopped himself. If they did anything with the weapons he was just going to keep shooting. He was pretty sure that they couldn't get an angle on him with him perched here, but if he had to move, say jump off... then it'd be a different story.

His thoughts caused the computer to pull the Union's schematics up and showed where the Nose mounted weapons ammo storage was, but he doubted he'd be able to get through them faster than the control deck.

Thankfully after some spluttering and attempts to negotiate the reactor of the DropShip initiated a controlled shut down and about the right amount of people came out of the Union. As it happened being a beat stick was the easy part. He was just one guy in a big stompy robot, and didn't give him a whole lot of options.

--
Commentary: DracoMage just pinging you regarding this thread figured you might be interested.

 

Scrap heap​

In hindsight loading everyone into the beds of trucks and making them drive into town on pain of pulse laser could have gone a lot worse. The villagers of via Caballero could have gotten the pitchforks and the nooses out. That they didn't immediately resort to that was [probably] because they'd never seen a Marauder before. Having to tell them he'd be coming back with the rest of the would be invaders was probably another reason they didn't start lynching anyone.

Don't piss people with giant robots is a lesson that is especially engrained throughout the denizens of many a periphery world... and the Inner Sphere for that matter... and Aquagea was no exception. He was willing to leave things to the townspeople since the planetary militia still hadn't shown up. The recovery work party was a bigger issue...

Gene had ended up telling them to take all of their shit and load it back into their ship. He frankly doubted he was going to get to keep any of it, and maybe if he had wanted to be sneaky he should have left it where it was before having them all load up on the vehicles and drive into town.

It was kind of like a cattle drive, wasn't exactly the best thought to have, but that took care of the problem at least. The decision to go poking around on the inside of the Union now that it was abandoned in hindsight had been a little risky as well.

He had discarded the kooky idea of telling the computer to take off, and then try and have it autonavigate to the outpost castle's nav beacon to land in the underground dropship bays. It was tempting for a fleeting moment, but quickly put aside. It didn't hurt that he was pretty sure the castle's bays were for whatever reason configured specifically for aerodyne hullshapes.

The files on the computer put the kibosh that idea all together. Zathras wasn't just here because they were greedy assholes who wanted to be a minor periphery power. They wanted to be that, it was true, but they thought they had a lead on LosTech, and while the information contained in the computer banks didn't jive with what he knew of the Outpost Castle he called home it didn't necessarily mean someone might not find his home while looking for some other el dorado that might not even exist.

The question was how many of the Zathras personnel knew about the information in the banks... the captain, the 'viceroy', probably the unit mech commander... who had been in the Zeus like he had expected... who else? Who might have gotten told by accident or otherwise? He couldn't say. It explained the BattleMech Company's condition and presence. Thankfully their files were pretty clear that the legendary loot should have been somewhere south of town, well south of town, though not quite half way.

It was definitely something to look into, and he planned to. The question was whether or not to tell the townspeople the next time he was in Via Cabarello. He didn't take anything from the Union. He really didn't have anyway to take anything, which was really only part of it. He needed to get off world and find something to do, or rather find somewhere with an actual job market. As comfortable as the Outpost castle, as much as there was to learn from its library, and practice in the simulators it wasn't the same thing as being out in the world. He'd have been safe, but bored out of his mind, and he knew that. He also knew he wasn't in any way set to start a mercenary company.


Groaning he pushed the Star League era Terran Hegemony educational material off to one side as the signals filtered in. The Outpost had been built and staffed by Terran Hegemony troops of the SLDF, probably intelligence cut outs but even those spooks weren't all knowing. It was entirely possible that the LosTech they were after could have been pre Amaris, or into the first or second succession war. This had at one point been a world belonging to the Cappies, before the Mariks had come along.

He ran a hand through his hair, and reminded himself that he needed to grab a hat to throw in his day bag in case of either bright sun or rain. There was a cargo hauler that needed work in the bay, which was probably why it had been left behind.

Heavy equipment transport cross country had existed since the first world war, eleven hundred years in the distant past on earth, and engines capable of pulling not just the rig's weight but a vehicle or piece of equipment even heavier meant that recovering a mech was about getting a mech on to the flat bed not driving off with it once it was up there.

It might be useful if he went anywhere, assuming that it could be gotten to start again, but he was still working with only a rudimentary grasp of Star League systems and technology, and knew most of the work would be done by automated SLDF gantries, and mechanic systems.

--
Via Caballero had an eighties meets tombstone kind of look to it. The town was dominated as sort of made sense by the Caballero railway running straight down the middle of the town. It would have just been a farming community really before the Marik's came and mucked everything up. There weren't but a couple of thousand full time residents anyway.

"The bastards were trying to jump a lostech claim?" The sheriff's twang was funny given he was five four bald and looked to be southern Chinese in ethnicity, if Gene were to guess. Aquagea... or here this town at least... had a lot of Chinese, Sikhs, Russians and English or Scots-Irish who spoke with an absurd south western US accented English.... with the odd duck loan word thrown in to the mix.

Maybe it was just from being hunched over from age, but he was shorter than the thirteen year old bold of the MechWarrior, which was something else that he, Gene, found funny. "They say anything about that?"

"Nothing of the sort." The Sheriff replied, "You a lostech prospector too? Look a lil young."

Gene shrugged and looked over to the county gaol where the not pirates were being held, "I'm not one to pass up an opportunity, even if I doubt that there is anything there. I'll ride along as security," He offered, "You going to do something about Zathras's equipment?"

"You aiming to collect?"

"Not in salvage, I don't have any place to put it." He replied, having decided "I'm not planning to stay around sheriff probably see about getting off world."

The mayor who was a dandy looking maybe slavic mix of some stripe thought he looked a bit young for the mercenary life, which Gene figured he'd probably get a lot of.

"I'm looking for a quiet job that pays for food and drink, or a loud job running pirates, in that order by preference, but I wasn't planning to stick around here."

"Fair enough." The old timer snorted, "Well if you're right about why they're here, I suppose having a MechWarrior along wouldn't hurt. As fer the salvage, that will be something you'll have to take up with what passes for a planetary gubermint on this world, gunslinger." As if reading his mind regarding the pointed absence of the Planetary Militia even still the Sheriff hocked and spat in the dirt, "Once they're sure all the real work is done I'm well sure they'll come up from down south, but not quickly... could still be a few more weeks."

He resisted the urge to groan but he supposed he really shouldn't have been surprised. "You have any ideal how they'll handle the Zathras personnel?"

"Not a one." The sheriff replied. "Probably ship the live ones home, sure as shit don't want them here. That dropship fly?"

"It should."

"Gubmint gonna wan' keep it then. Even if it didn't they'd want it. Give you a tin star maybe, or a fancy title over some pile a dirt fer it, but probably not much in cash that'll spend any where other than here I bet."

That figured, and it was his turn to shrug. "Guess we'll see."

"You serious about them think'," thinking that "there is something buried south of town?"


"Someone in some place called the Aurigan reach certainly seems to think so, enough to convince them." He replied remembering what had been in the databanks. There was no telling if there was even anything there, or if there would be anything worth anything.

"I can get some excavating equipment from the mayor, take a few days, but I can do it if you can wait that long."

What else was he going to do in the interim exactly? Nothing except drive the Marauder back out to the Outpost castle and make sure he wasn't followed and bushwacked, or attempted to be bushwacked. They were probably just assuming he was camped somewhere near the salvage sight or in the city ruins, which was fine they could keep thinking that as long as no body followed him.

--
Commentary: Not entirely happy with this one, and it was originally going to come with other character perspectives but I've shifted around my scheduling for posting. The story will be coming back to Aquagea at least two distinct times in the future at least in present outlines in the later 3010s, and again in the likely early to mid 3020s so I'd like to have some of via Caballero's townsfolk fleshed out, but not today.

As to the locals perspective, some of the 'young folks' (read teens early twenties) have ground cars and road out to video tape the fighting, which we've seen from Gene's perspective is a lot of scoot and shoot, but from the Zathras perspective its getting shot at by a guy who doesn't show up on any of your electronics, and for the locals its stuff like the jumpjets and point blank shooting down another giant robot.

 

Finding what the bad guys were looking for...
...and getting a piece of the prize.​

Aquagea got progressively more green as you got further south, or at least that was what it looked like from orbit. From the ground it was still mostly brush country supporting thin herds of cattle grazing on scrub grasses from the looks of things. Or maybe the rainy season would mean that more of the planet would get green, and then dry back out later in the year. Gene didn't know, but just kept trucking along in his Marauder with the occasional downward check to his sensors.

He had kind of hoped that the Star League Oshkosh would work, but it needed some parts fabricated for it, and he just hadn't had time to even begin to consider fucking with that. Never mind that the truth was even if he could have it would have involved moving weights that his thirteen year old body just wasn't up to doing. So he had left it as it was. It just wasn't an option. So he was driving the Marauder down there. The Via Caballero denizens were driving a mix of trucks of all shapes and sizes ranging from small to monstrously large and most were bumping along the ground hauling trailers behind them.

The dust trail behind them was pretty epic.

His radio squawked a bit of static as one of the trucks tried to broadcast and flubbed it a bit. "So what are we even supposed to be looking for?" A young ranch hand named Darryl asked.

"Supposedly there was a warehouse in the stretch along the train." Along the railway, "There used to be a town down these parts but the damn chickens came in and bombed it to hell back during the second half of the Second. We didn't even rebuild the rail line until after the bastards were driven off." An old timer declared over the radio.

"All this down here is overgrown."

"Yeah nobody moved back here. The railway got fixed up and no one wanted to stay round."

While the locals talked he listened, but more than that flipped through his HiRez's sensors trying to adjust. Ground penetrating radar was a feature, but that was for mostly checking for things like mines, the exploding kind, not for subterranean or buried structures. He had some limited degree of looking for seismic irregularities but it wasn't an ideal solution. If Mariks had bombed the place chances were any signals or control systems were probably buried as well.

It looked like that rather than follow the original railway path though they'd shifted a couple of miles to one side. There was no telling what had prompted that other than at the time it must have seemed like a good idea. He could see on his scopes stretches of track left, and what looked like an old loading tower for maybe grain or something near a silo.

He banked hard towards the remains of the old track, or more precisely where his computer stated they should have been according to the Star League era maps. "Hey where you going gunslinger?"

"The rail was shifted when it was rebuilt. The old buildings are two or three miles different," He replied as he trigged a ground radar scan.... yeah the basic route north south hadn't changed, but it looked like the Mariks had knocked over several large buildings that had then sunk into the ground over a couple of decades. That was probably the reason for the shift.

Gene queried his computer for a map of the continent from the outpost castle at the time it had been shut down. It wasn't an exact match in terms of buildings but the neurohelmet gave him an idea of what things had looked like back them. Literally actually. Star League military maps came with holographic street views to guide pilots by apparently.

There had been a rail yard annex here used to support an SLDF garrison post anchoring the rimward periphery.

"What you got?"

"There was an SLDF garrison near here." Regular SLDF not connected to his Outpost Castle, or any Intelligence just regular troops apart of the LX Corps under Madson. Who if SLDF dossiers in the castle were to be believed would have likely been briefed on CID presence at least vaguely since at the time the Outpost castle had been tasked to oppose Periphery rebels not member states. Assuming of course that any of that information would have been valid by the time the succession war had kicked off. He had no idea the fate of those units during or even after the Amaris Civil War, never mind as a result of the first Succession war breaking out. There were other possible units stationed in the rimward periphery who could have come this way, Kenersky had managed to only shanghai most of the surviving SLDF divisions not all of them after all. Of course most of those hadn't survived the first succession war's chaos.

Did he really think there was a cache loot like Helm? Hell no. This was the periphery, but if this was from the second succession war then there might indeed be some LosTech. If there wasn't that was fine.

"Star League?"

"At one point," He answered flipping through the scopes again letting the computer reconstruct the surroundings through the overgrown half buried area. Unlike the castle there were no signs of automated defenses, or even sensors. Those had probably not survived either the Amaris war or the first succession war never mind, and there probably hadn't been much here to begin with given this had been a normal frontier post. A notice popped up, "What did Aquagea mine?"

"Germanium, stuff in jump cores." The sheriff added for unnecessary clarification. "Gold, platinum, a bunch of other 'spensive metals back in the day."

"Then I think I've got something. Bear to eleven o'clock about two mikes out dead ahead south of that location, looks like an annex of some kind. Underground structures." Probably hardened, but it looked like there were still power in them.
--
Aquagea had probably never been all that big of a world. It had been a part of the Cappellan Confederation during the Star League, but they had lost it during the second succession war, and then the invading Mariks had been driven off of it. Most likely the FWL simply couldn't have maintained a foothold this far into the periphery, certainly Liao as the weakest of the Great Houses had been in no position to reclaim their lost territory.

"Good god damn I ain't never seen this much Germanium in all my years."

They were standing in a warehouse that was big enough to accommodate Industrial mechs, which was how he assumed most of this had been moved. The lights were not great though, even if the power did work. "How much do you think is here?" Darryl asked the old man.

Gene clicked the noteputer with the manifest information, "Assuming this data is correct. This is 25 Tons." Which was a lot to be sure. He looked around. One problem would be getting it out of here, but who even bought Germanium? How did you move this to market? Not his problem. The young mechwarrior shined his stream light around the cavernous room. "As for the rest of this, its a grab bag of..." Of well everything. The pallets of MREs made sense... they might even still be safe to eat not that he was going to test that. The wine crates were odd, but again that was fine.

"What you make of these papers. They say SLDF on 'em. Say Court Martial." Another of the locals twanged off.

Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to secure a complete and detailed record of SLDF court martial proceedings. Specifically, that of the SLDF vs a Captain K. Marik, regarding conduct on Pollux. Given the age they might very well be the last remaining copy in known space. Not that it was very useful, but someone had thought it was important.

"That ain't nothing lookie here."

"First Edition handwritten," Brushed? "Dictatum Honorarium," Copies of the most frequently talked about piece of literature to emerge from the Draconic Combine.

"Huh?"

"It was written by the daughter of the founder of the Draconis Combine." Again interesting, and probably historically significant, maybe even valuable, but why had it been secured here in this giant sealed ferrocrete box ... whenever it had been locked up.

He shined the light over a Nascar looking flag and glanced inside the container. "Is that Star League?"

"Yeah Terran Hegemony." He replied to the question. "Its not military this," He shined the light up and down at the computers, "Volgadon," He said highlighting the name, "Was the capital of Lone Star," He shined back to the Nascar flag with the star on it. "It was abandonned during the second succession war."

"My grand pappy said we ran the puking chickens," The sheriff paused as his grimaced, "What?"

"Don't call the Mariks puking chickens, that's the 101^st Divisions nickname."

"Thems SLDF?" It was a silly complaint to be making. he recognized since ... barring the Clans or some surviving House or Merc unit they were gone, "Well my bad any way ran them purple chickens all the way off cause some fellas came down to these parts. Those fellows were from somewhere coreward, but it would have been before all of this." Yan waved his hand to the SLDF bunker's contents.


"I don't think so, these dates are all second succession war or later." He wondered if the Germanium hadn't been planned to be gotten offworld to buy or barter for more supplies for the resistance, or if it had been intended as a nest egg to try and get the planet rebuilt.

"I found the motherload they is guns over here!" Someone shouted before they could discuss it further.

Any discussion about the strangers in the 29^th century or what not ended as they moved further into the warehouse. "These is mech parts ain't they?"

They were. There was also a crate full of what looked like Draconis Combine money, that Gene had no idea if it would still spend, but sure looked impressive. "Who this princely looking fellow?"

"Kurita Sanethia, 18^th Coordinator Draconis Combine."

"Can tell somebody actually went to school." Darryl ribbed the friend who'd asked the question. "Forget that, come on and lets see them guns Boyd." Another local good ole boy paused in dragging the shop light across the floor long enough to flick Darryl off. "Holy shit. It is the motherload." He whistled.

Not really, but Gene could understand given that up until a month ago most of the town's residents had never seen a BattleMech in person. All the same he considered checking out the mech parts but the light showed at least one BattleMech back there. This had been somewhere the resistance to the Mariks had been storing whatever they had in the region if he were to guess. There were a couple other vehicles as well he noted as he moved passed one of the smaller artillery pieces. One of the mechs was stripped of its parts, and he couldn't make much out of it, but there were plenty of weapons for it to be fitted out. There was a crate with a mech gyro in it, so maybe it had taken gyro damage and they hadn't gotten around to finishing repairs. "Those are jumpjets, heat sinks. This one looks like it was in the middle of a full strip down," He remarked looking for any computers to check. The other one though, "They must have finished with this one though.

The stripped one looked like it was a fifty tonner, might have been a centurion of some stripe, but he couldn't be sure. The assault mech was easier. The Battlemaster was in near mint condition, the paint job wasn't quite perfect but it looked fully ready to fight.

The medium mech wasn't the only vehicle that had been left here incomplete in need of a refit, apparently there had been a couple more vehicles that needed some work. There were parts for other mechs as well... though since the mechs they were likely intended for weren't here they probably would end up used to restore the Zathras mechs.

"You see anything you want?" The sheriff asked as he checked over a Sperry Browning MG's head space gauges.

"He's got a mech."

"I know he got a mech, I ain't blind." Yan snipped back.

He was honestly still trying to figure out what half of this shit was, even as his eyes fell on another storage crate of armor... "If that transport vehicle runs, well it'll be easier to move some of this." If it didn't then he had no need for it, and that reduced the need for the armor.

"We going to split the money up anyway, if you going to rock city you'll need cash in your pocket."

"Load up and sell that Germanium in Rock City." Somebody added, "We all could go down to Detroit, god know be nice to be able to buy some new mining rigs."

Gene ignored the banter and hauled up to another Texas like flagged mark container. He didn't recognize the battalion name, and it wasn't important so much as what the noteputter manifest read as. Lone Hegemony had been a Terran Hegemony world. That, coupled with the fact that the House Units, or at least elite units like the Davion Guards and swords of light would have had access to Double Heat Sinks.

"What you looking for?"

"My 'mech carries a Pulse laser, I was hoping for spares."

"Darryl! Look for Pulse Lasers!" Boyd shouted.

"Well what do they look like?"

One of the old timers shook his head, and went back to crawling over the chassis of Gene thought might be a stripped down Goblin Medium Tank... or what was called a medium tank anyway. He moved to the crate and tapped the computer prodding it to life. The date was definitely- "Something?"

"I think," Gene paused, "that they moved off Lone Star, probably a general Hegemony Diaspora that was trying to escape the first and second succession wars. None of this looks to have been packed up directly on Lone Star, and some of this had to come from Kurita held planets in the 2830s." He shrugged, and hoped to find a star map or some indication of where these people had been trying to go.

Had the worsening succession wars forced them to risk moving further? Had they known what they were carrying? Why was the library here? There were too many questions.

--
Commentary: I am really trying to get through the first Aquagea arc, and hence this being today's update, even though I had planned to do MCU Jump, and part of that is also that the Asgard half is proving... annoying to put to paper.

So anyway just to reiterate this is based off of , inspired from Cimbri's CYOA and my build for it but it is not necessarily a one to one hewing towards everything. Yes I decided to use Aquagea, because its both in the CYOA and because of were in the Periphery its located. Yes, Detroit is in the CYOA and yes we will be going there next, but I am also using Aquagea for things later on, because its the 3010s and the Clan wars are not for a very long time.

(In regard to my other BT fic, in the original draft/outline/snippets Kane timeskips to the future due to having been put in a stasis pod and is woken up only because of the Clan Invasion, which is not necessarily going to still happen in the current version of that story.)

So yes, the build is kind of wonky from some perspectives. As this chapter sort of hints at in the future there may very well be a landhold out in the boonies. Certainly though I could do a, loath as I am to call it this, a reboot of the idea

That Idea: Start on Detroit during Pirate attack, use the loot boxing results for there to have a base of operations, and go from there. I could do that, but for now I'm going to keep with this because there is a lot content already written. The main thing here is that the build, and the story plot are not tightly bound together. In story context the base is nice, but the MC can't stay here forever, because as Lance observed its a pretty 'dead' world.

 

Prize Catch​

At least the transport ran, and hadn't given him any trouble getting it back here. Currently he was watching as the automated gantries and lift as they worked to refit his Marauder with the parts from the warehouse. The mechanical arms had pulled off the armor, and heat sinks and were overhauling the VLAR 300. He had made the decision not to go too crazy.

No attempts to add LRM 10s to the Marauder this go round. There had been three in the warehouse once they'd finished cataloging them. No the more important find had been the double heat sinks, and sixteen tons of Ferro fibrous armor tucked away from the second succession war era. No Extended Range weapons unfortunately, and no pulse lasers had turned up. The refit would officially put his mech under weight for the frame.

He was going to put the maximum of protection that could be mounted, and replace the engine's heat sinks with double strength models. Putting missiles would have to wait. As for what was left? He was going to leave it here. The remaining tonnage of ferro fibrous would sit in storage in case he came back. He wouldn't be able to replace it if it was damaged, but it and the Valiant Lamellar armor would be safe in the depot of the Outpost castle in case he needed it.

Whenever he came back here.

He had also considered trying to use large lasers, but for now that was also a no. Once it was painted no one would be able to tell he had likely done anything to his Marauder. They were just spare parts, and wouldn't attract any attention. Even if you did know what you were looking at, his Marauder was lacking an Autocannon and thus suggested it was a rebuild custom made with what was available... or that was what he was hoping it would be taken as. Lobbing in was nice, but he'd have preferred a long laser.

Probably more valuable than the heat sinks and ferro fibrous though were the 'strangers' computers what they had brought in their flight from Volgadon, and Lone Star. It was the University's academic library, or at least the bulk of it. That included the school of medicine, Star League era medicine. The base computer was making copies of all of it.

Not that he expected it would do him a lot of good, but it was something. He was going to print out text book format versions of some of the books to leave with Via Cabellero's hospital... or what passed for a hospital out there, but not the computer itself. The chime almost made him think he had lost track of time though. He had been running a schedule where he was trying to get a star league education down in addition to scheduling time for classroom and sim pods for mech training.

He was starting to piece together what he suspected had happened in Aquagea during the second succession war. Someone from the Terran Hegemony had recognized Lone Star was lost, and had run for the periphery, and then they and their dependents had probably been scattered, and some of those people had gotten tied up in the resistance against House Marik during their occupation. The reasons, the hows and whys? He didn't know them, but it was obvious someone had started running, and there had been waves following after.

He looked at the alert. There was a training heading into town. Oh, now that all the heavy work was done it seemed like the Planetary Militia had showed up. He wondered how Darryl's centurion was shaping up. He'd been thrilled at the idea of rebuilding the thing... or installing parts on it in his parent's garage. He wondered how pushy the planetary militia was going to be about the Zathras salvage.

It wasn't like he needed anything from that lot... but the Periphery that was a pile of money even discounting the DropShip. Twelve Mechs, even four light mechs was a hell of a haul to make in terms of salvage. He certainly wasn't going to fight over it. The K-bills were nice, since it seemed like they'd spend, but the armor and heat sinks, never mind the library were well huge in themselves. He wasn't going to fight over the Zathras rights not when he was planning to leave the planet anyway. He was going to need passage on a dropship for both him his marauder, and potentially the ground vehicle and that would be a lot easier if the planetary government wasn't pissed off at him.
--
The Sheriff's shiny new Battlemaster did presumably a good job in convincing the PM Colonel to mind his 'p and qs' or at least that was the current way things were going. Since they hadn't done anything they weren't exactly getting the most welcoming welcome of abundant 'southron hospitality' either, the town had been strafed by the Eagles at least once. Admittedly, the Air Lance had probably flow south to haras the militia, probably. It might have been these guys, or someone else he had no way of knowing.

He suspected that if Aquagea had any mechs at all they certainly weren't out in the boonies of Via Caballero these days. Maybe back in the second succession war before the big cities in these parts had been bombed, but the planet nowadays only had a few million people total spread across the main continent.

To say that Aquagea had a small population well was kind of an understatement. He wondered if it had ever really been a big planet... it didn't seem like House Marik had ever used nukes, and he doubted that warship bombardment had been a thing but it was clear the planet's lost of infrastructure made it a lot harder to do much productively. It had apparently killed the mining industry, though he supposed that had probably been petering out anyway due to the collapse of the Star League demand anyway. Most likely the destruction done to shipbuilding had made Germanium mining this far out less interesting for the Marik's to hold on to... or that was just a guess...

The Germanium in the warehouse though was going to have to be shipped off world. Detroit was as good of a place to try and sell it as anywhere else in the periphery. Selling it all as one batch might not have been the best idea, but then he was freely going to admit to not knowing shit about what Germanium was worth or what the market was or any of that.

He elected to avoid any of that in favor of hand delivering the stacks of books to the hospital and having avoided the town's center of government all morning. The truth was he'd been ducking it, but it was only a stalling tactic really.

"This?" The PM Major who was a poor bloody infantryman on top of it looked incredulous, "This kid is your mech pilot?"

"Gene's a deadshot, ace twice over." The sheriff said from the window seat sipping at what was probably local brewed whisky. "Certainly did more than anybody from down in Leone has during this whole mess."

"You some kind of mercenary?"

"I'm between jobs, I just thought they were pirates." He replied crossing his arms over his gray field jacket and leaning against the bookshelf. Gene was conscious of the number of people with obvious weapons on.

--
They had discussed this. It would be four jumps to get from Aquagea to Detroit. That was about a month of travel so really not that bad. If they could find a JumpShip and a DropShip with the space to take them. That was the part of the equation that in the periphery might actually take a few months. Thankfully Detroit was a pretty clear destination for trade from the Magistracy. The other option was the JumpShip that had come from Zathras with their Union. There was always the chance of some other Jumper from the Inner Sphere would come along, but the Magistracy was less likely to do politics.

Leone was the nominal capital of Aquagea and was less of bust town looking place. It was still on the small side with probably less than a hundred thousand people. It had a kind of coastal california esque geography to the layout of the town and its neighbors sprawling along the beachfront. There were lots of mission style houses, and buildings in general to go along with the area. That would have been nicer if it was tourist picture-y rather than half lived in worn down and tired looking.

Via Cabellero had largely devolved into people surviving as a ranching and farming community with far more limitted mining. It was the last big town at the end of the rail line because all the other ones were gone. Leone had a spaceport, but it also had fishing wharfs where people went out with nets in boats that belonged to the 20^th century and with nothing more advanced pre spaceflight tech to try and make a living.

It wasn't like there was an abundance of people here who they could all throw together to work the Union the Zathras had touched down either. That was really the nail in the coffin to just taking their DropShip and putting it straight back into service, which was unfortunate, but that was how it was, but that didn't mean the Planetary Government wasn't interested in the DropShip. It definitely wanted to keep the Union as a prize of war even if they didn't have anyone to fly it right now.

It would probably be the sort of thing to cause trouble for them, but then the reason they even had the union in the first place was that their neighbor had decided to throw it at them loaded full of Mechs so... that it wasn't like they were asking for a whole lot of extra trouble.

Undoubtedly something would happen, but that wasn't Gene's problem. Right now he was just looking at getting offworld and to somewhere bigger and with more job prospects. Detroit made sense because it had pirate problems and could probably pay him to do regular mercenary security contracting, and if not the planet itself than maybe some merchant concern and that would at least generate a work history that he could use down the road for getting potentially hired on at mercenary company down the road if he wanted to go that route.

Even this far south though he was something that took him away from his big advantage. The Outpost Castle was safely hidden away but a month by dropship and multiple systems away meant he wouldn't be able to use its goodies... and he was already missing the fact he wasn't getting to use the simulation pods like he normally did.

Someone though had known about the resistance cache from the mid 2800s... someone not local, and who lived in another periphery power... and that raised questions.

--
Commentary: I rolled the loot using Drakensis's lootboxing CYOA. Lot of just spare weapons and stuff, and since I knew a general time frame of when it came out I used the 2750 era random table for Terran Hegemony. The BattleMaster is not royal, it will make a return later, though we will see more of Darryl's Centurion before that.

The Marauder's upgrades are relatively minor. The upgrade to ferro fibrous gives the mech a more crab like appearance, making it more blocky shaped, I envision as looking a Marauder IIC / King Crab sort of affair but without the shoulder cannon. The upgrade to DHS is strictly all in the engine, so those extra single are coming out. These are star league DHS not Clan models.

That being said this is based off a table top legal design but I am strongly considering from here on out for mech customization ignoring things like 'crits', even though that's supposed to be an abstraction of amount of space it takes up.

In any event I'm looking forward to moving onto the next world.

 

Periphery Prospectus​

Much as he wanted to he knew the old man knew he couldn't go with them.

The county Sheriff just couldn't go running offworld to haul a load to market, which was disappointing since Yan really would have liked to get off world... see some big city like Ann Arbor. He just had to content himself with his shiny new BattleMech. The BattleMaster would be the most powerful War Machine on the planet once the gunslinger moved onto his next battlefield. It apparently carried a different model lightning thrower than Gene's Marauder, and of course it would need missiles and ammo for its machine guns, but it was his. Bullets wouldn't be that hard anyway.

Darryl had claimed the fifty ton Centurion that was needing to be fitted out. There would be a lot of arguing with Leon about what all to do with the salvage from Zathras but they'd get some of those for the town since the militia hadn't done squat. The congress would get the DropShip, and the Eagles, and probably most of the mech salvage but that was alright.

"The mercenary recommends we argue for the other Centurion." Garcia, one of the big time ranchers... or what passed for big time out in these parts... remarked.

"We'd have two then," The mayor remarked.

The rancher ignored the comment and looked down at the print out, "The Blackjack is a good training mech, and should offer at least some degree of anti air capability if refit to spec." Garcia continued to read off the paper. "and with four mechs that would be a lance right there." He added.

"Contingent on us being able to fix 'em you mean," The head of the mine grunted, which Yan admitted was true. They'd rewatched the video Darryl and his friends had shot of the battle at night among the sands, and fixing the damage was going to be a big time thing. It was part of the reason no one wanted to try and take all the mechs anyway. If Leon wanted some of them, well theoretically they'd be contributing to the planetary defense.

They needed to play ball with the capital district cause they needed to use the spaceport so they could go offworld and sell the Germanium, and hopefully come back with stuff that would make day to day life a little easier.

Of course even if the big city folk did lay claim to the Dropper the Sheriff still had no idea how exactly they were going to actually move it down south. It wasn't as if they could just the Zathras people to do it, but he suspected they'd end up hiring some hands to do it as they passed through the trade route later in the year.

--

The rainy season had really picked up, and was currently belting the barn slash machine shop hard enough to rattle glass as Darryl and Boyd clambered over the exterior of the machine. In a few weeks the desert would be in full bloom, but right now you couldn't go outside without getting soaked. That was fine since there was no sense going out in this slop. The 50 ton mech was coming together and they had the Zathras Centurion to reference by even if it was a little crispy. They hadn't put the armor on, but they'd gotten the gyro installed this morning.

"What about the manual Gene dug up?"

"I don't need no damn Manual Boyd." Darryl snapped. "I have worked on my share of Nissan engines and I don't need no damn manual to tell me about this big boy." He declared patting the eight and a half ton fusion engine.

"There ain't even anything to do to that engine." Boyd grumbled tossing the hypo spanner onto the tray with a clang. He wasn't wrong. The mech chassis needed to have its armor secured over the exposed myomer bundles, and weapons installed, but the engine, the engine was fine.

The cache of weapons stockpiled to fight the Mariks had come with enough equipment to probably repair both mechs. Though there was probably no way to repair even half of all the mechs Gene had knocked out with what they had had. It didn't matter anyway the town would be shipping most of the Zathras stuff down south anyway to Leon when they headed down to the starport.

The planetary capital hadn't thus far said anything about their belligerent neighbor, or their delusions of granduer other than some talking points and posturing on the radio, and the Union was still parked in the derelict city waiting. They'd been told to leave it well enough alone though.

Which given they had a BattleMech, or two, to work with was easy enough to do. There was a clamoring in town over what was to be done with the rest of the salvaged Mechs. It wasn't just the idea of Zathras coming back either, out here in the periphery any 'mech that was gained was an immediate boost to status, and could set up your family to enter in the nobility... which on Aquagea shouldn't really have mattered because the Pre Marik invasion nobility had largely gone down fighting in the Resistance so there weren't any proper nobles left. That didn't stop people from dreaming though of the future.

"Darryl we should wait for Bibb to get back from town," Boyd muttered adjusting the lift, "This ain't just some agrimech."

--
He glanced at the muted television screen as they waited.

They had ended up going back to sleepy... ish... little Via Caballero. They'd been killing time for about a month now. There just hadn't been a DropShip available, or a JumpShip open at the time they went down to what passed for a planetary capital so they had to wait. The mayor and the planetary government hammered out some stuff in that time frame. After those several weeks and two different JumpShips coming and going they were finally getting ready to move on to loading their cargo onto a dropship. The Mule wasn't necessarily going to be comfortable, and a month was probably pushing it because even a month in a union was sure to be unpleasant, but it had plenty of space to load everything up in the cargo bay.

They were making progress though, and that was something. Knowing he wasn't going to have access to all the technical goodies of the Outpost Castle for a probably very long time had made him come up with a more or less self study curriculum. It had occurred to Gene that break down in education or not it wasn't a terrible idea to try and pursue some kind of more structured education, especially for things more social. That, he supposed, was another reason to go somewhere like Detroit surely there be some kind of education infrastructure there to fill him in what all was happening with the Successor States, and Periphery.

There was also the limited factor of there was only so much he could take with him, and... well there was stuff from either the Outpost's learning material or that had been pulled from the library that would have raised some eyebrows. There was also the fact that while the star league military manuals probably could have been explained away if stumbled upon... the more academic material was stuff that he wasn't ready for. The basic educational package of the Star League was something he was going to have to get through if he was ever going to get into the more advanced material from the library of Volgadon University.


There was something more than that to. Trawling through the CID material one of the things that stood out was the starmap, never mind that he would have brought the hegemony star maps anyway. The Hegemony, and the Star League hadn't trusted the Periphery and hadn't really trusted the great houses either. It wasn't going to be a priority. Lost Tech prospecting was a busting sort of industry, and dangerous, and he knew he didn't have the resources to go trucking around the periphery or anywhere else looking for buried treasure. Maybe one day but not today and not any time soon. So he'd be taking a copy of the map, but mostly in case he needed it but couldn't get back here.

He wouldn't be coming back any time soon after all so he was currently packing up what all he thought he would need. It wasn't just the academic information for studying. Battletech Computers were... sort of weird. It didn't help he was in a thirteen year old body, and the physical limitations that came with that.

Land hold prospects or no, he wasn't coming back here any time soon. He was going to get on that DropShip, burn up to the nadir point and dock with that JumpShip, and spend a month in Space jumping to a planet with something that passed for heavy industry. More important than that would be the jobs, a chance to get a footprint, and earn some money... to go on to bigger better things.


--
Commentary: So a couple of things, the next segment jumps to Detroit. One thing I considered is that (not immediately) is having Gene ship off later after a couple years in Mercenary Life getting a Lyran recommendation to ship off to Nagelring. The principle reason for this was Nagelring is an ex-SLDF academy with a baccalaureate program and its been discarded for a couple reasons.

One is that I don't really want to do however long it would take to graduate from it lets say... Gene is '13' so four years in merc contracts would be 17 so say graduation in 3023. It would be something I would probably want to time skip, and with this having its own thread not something I'd want to skip. 3023 would also mark the Epsinosa coup d'etat in the Aurgian Coalition, which I may or may not focus on. Then of course there is also an SB SI that I vaguely remember had a stint at Nagelring, but I honestly can't remember the details right now. [I might very well be misremembering]

So that's one idea that I've considered but have pretty much definitively scrapped.

As has been something has been reminded to me, the Centurion is not actually a Star League era mech. Its from the first succession war so technically Gene's computer shouldn't have identified it, but thats fine, oops. The Lone Star exodus, and general flight of persons from the Terran Hegemony due to the First succession war is something to talk about later, but didn't occur all at one time.

Yeah, thats going to be important. We will get to that. We are going to be mucking all around the periphery if my current outline holds, but for now, its time to go to Detroit.

... and kill Pirates. We might go on to other things, Alexandrian Covenant for example might make an appearance during the Pirate hunt. There is also the other option of going into the Inner Sphere and getting involved in the Fed Suns land. Lots of branches.

An alternate idea I had was since I'll be using stuff from HBS, and the Aurigan source book, would be starting out at Castle Outpost Nautilus instead of Aquagea. This was an alternate idea to my Detroit start, which at least is a location on the CYOA. Speaking of I need to go reread my copy of the Aurigan codex, but we are officially through what is 'Arc 1'.

 

The Journey Continues​

JumpShips were even more scarce than DropShips. Scarce enough that some people even thought that there might be only several thousand JumpShips in the entire Inner Sphere. Gene had come to understand that this was misleading for a number of reasons. JumpShips were undoubtedly precious resources, as a result due to their expense and rarity most people who owned them didn't want to take risks with them and more importantly even at the height of the Star League JumpShip registration had never been universal. Plenty of JumpShips did nothing more than ply a single route back and forth for their owners. They would trace the same route over and over a gain year in year out for literal centuries and never had a reason to register with some central bureaucracy, or had let that registration lapse. With the downfall of the Star League there was less reason to register with Terra if you weren't going to leave your local sector of space, you might register with your homeport but otherwise why bother with the bureaucracy, and the money involved in registration.

Not that there weren't benefits to ship registry. Insurance for something as important as a JumpShip was the big one, especially for legal reasons, after all a duly registered and insured JumpShip was a lot harder for someone to make off with. JumpShips were supposed to be inviolable, or as near as you could really get to it in the mess that was the succession wars.

The venerable Merchant-class JumpShip in theory should have retailed for about 400 Million C-Bills. Or at least that was about what they should have cost in Star League terms, because back then had been before the first and second succession wars had wrecked all of those shipyards that had never gotten rebuilt. So demand was high, and supply was low, and there were never enough JumpShips on the market, and never enough in circulation either.

Given those factors he didn't even want to thing what something like a Monolith might cost in modern money if it came up for sale. Probably billions of C-Bills, maybe tens of depending on who all was trying to get ahold of such a monstrosity. With all the misinformation, or misunderstanding bout JumpShips he still doubted he would see a Monolith out in the periphery, certainly not with where they were going. Detroit was supposed to be a pretty big center of industry as far as the Periphery went, but he would have been surprised if the Taurians or the Canopians had any Monoliths in service. If he was going to see one it would meant taking a trip to the Inner Sphere, which he might do at some point down the road.

Looking at the star field outside and then to the nearer other DropShips and the JumpShips that they had separated from he knew he wouldn't be doing that anytime soon. He had spent a month just travelling to get here, and they weren't even on the ground yet... and there was no telling how many months he might spend here on Detroit.

The planet was a distant crescent from the view. They were a week out according to his computer still, but the planet looked a lot like earth in terms of general characteristics, except for having two moons. Two billion people lived on the planet, and there was even an HPG station. Those were rarities in the periphery. It was really the industry though that made Detroit stand out. It was an independent world with industry in the periphery.

It even had a recharge station from the star league era that was still intact despite the planet being under regular pirate attacks. The pirate threat was one reason to come here, there would hopefully be a job here that would be simple and pay regular. Truthfully even without access to the planetary datanets or whatever passed for one on even an industrialized periphery world he suspected that just starting out he wouldn't be making that much. He needed something though, and he felt cooped up in this dropship. It would be good to be back on terra firma.

--
The following week plus under thrust gravity had been mind numbing in boredom as the Mule had streaked towards Ann Arbor's spaceport, but they had finally gotten from the jump point down to the space port and been able to disembark. Thankfully Detroit honored k-bills or he really might have been in trouble. He had needed to swing by the ComStar bureau anyway to start the paper work rolling for mercenary registration (for the MRB) anyway and had converted some of his K-Bills to C-Bills just to diversify.

It didn't seem like there would be a problem with K-Bills but he had not idea if that would hold, and the C Bill seemed easier to pay with. He was taking a chance putting some of converted currency into a digital format since he'd have less physical access to it, but that had benefits as well. Lodgings had been a lot easier to do through ComStar's bureau office using nothing but electronic C-Bills in order to rent a warehouse for six months to hold his Marauder, and Hover Truck. The problem after that though had been searching out employment in the mercenary field in or around Ann Arbor. Oh certainly Merchant Houses were hiring but most of what they were looking to hire were armed security, infantry, to patrol and guard their warehouses from more common thieves than anything else.

One Heavy BattleMech wasn't very useful to a group of tradesmen in the city. The MRB didn't really have anything strictly local either, and Gene didn't plan to try and relocate somewhere else this soon. He had tapped into the plaentary data networks to track and see how much the Germanium haul would sell for, but that also was something that might take months. There was no assurances he'd find a job offworld, and for right now he had reasons to stay put. Six month lease of the warehouse was non refundable anyway.

The newsfeeds were a mix of text articles as well as various channels with newscasters. The tv side of things were a mix of local, regional (that was Periphery news), and then the Comstar Bureau talking about news from the Inner Sphere... probably a couple weeks after it had happened depending on how far away they were talking. There wasn't really anything on though. Detroit was a pretty nice planet, and been even during the Star League era. Unfortunately as was especially true for the periphery that made it especially rife for pirates to come for a smash and grab.

The Mercenary Review Board, run by ComStar, had put information about various pirates, and more important details about the bounties. Until however such period that pirates actually showed up to make for a smash and grab he had very little to do but sit here and read. He told himself that that could be any time. Technically Detroit was 'on the fringes' being independent of both the Magistracy as well as the Taurians and surely was a tempting target for pirates... but he'd probably be waiting here a while.

Hurry up and Wait the constants of a soldiers life. The norm for a mercenary.

Gene stood up and walked across the hard metal deck flooring of the loft housing. The warehouse was in access distance of the starport on paper. In practice he'd already noticed that traffic meant two hours wait time. Before leaving Aquagea, but after the refits had been completed and tested for functionality, he had the Outpost Castle repaint the Marauder in darker tones. The grey green mottled shapes of paint along the hull made the Marauder's shut down form look more crab like.

--
The sudden alarm of klaxons through him out of the loft's single bed that he put and onto the hard floor. For a moment he had thought it was his perimeter alarm, but it was too far out, instead it was Ann Arbor's civil defense sirens going off, and it was too damn early on a Saturday morning for this to be some prick's idea of a drill. Gene picked himself up and limped over to the desk and plugged into the data network where Comstar's News Bureau was announcing an emergency warning about a jumpship appearing at the pirate's point... and was surprise surprise pirates.

He was actually surprised that the City's phone network, of sorts, actually could manage to get a signal through, but it wasn't really a cellular network as he had expected it to be. Darryl didn't really know anything more about than what had been on the news. The Aquagea teenager did a lot of bitching about wishing he'd brought his Centurion, but other than that hadn't had all that much to say before getting off the phone.

Not that Darryl's refit Centurion would have done much good. The Aquagea native had no real experience piloting the mech never mind in combat and it would have been an extra expense trying to bring it along with them. Still the country boy must have felt useless in this situation, and that was something Gene could relate too. On Aquagea though he had acted initially out of the concern that they were pirates, and even so the later knowledge that the ner'do'wels were simply ambitious neighbors didn't really change the calculus too much, but he had basically done that pro bono... or out of his own self interest.

Here on Detroit though...

... he logged into the MRB remotely...

Here on Detroit he was a mercenary, and he wasn't going to do anything for free... and as he expected to find one of the Robes was already harried trying to distribute the sudden surge of of contracts looking for any and all possible defenders for the planet. That happened to include anyone and everyone with a functional BattleMech... or one that might be able to be made functional.

Gene zipped his jacket up, and snapped the cobra style buckles on his belt, and switched the feeds from the data network to the cockpit of his marauder as the fusion reactor ran through its start up checks. The three dropships burning hard for the surface of the planet from the pirate point kind of had already hinted they were looking at an Invader-class JumpShip being up there, but he kept his mouth shut as the Comstar Adjutant? ... no adept, that was the right word, from the MRB ran over what they 'knew' about the situation. "MechWarrior, please hold for Colonel Khan."

Khan was an older gray haired with a well trimmed beard and pronounced crow's feet. His uniform if not for being powder blue reminded him of the British officer's dress uniform. The British stylings might well have been intentional. He was wearing a single large gem studded cross of war at his throat and some smaller medals and ribbons on his breast, but hardly the officer's salad that Gene had been expecting. Hopefully that was a good sign. "We have three dropships coming." He said without preamble. "What is worse is that we have potential reports of pirates potentially be already on the ground. Probably just infantry, but the troublemakers are making a mess of traffic and could complicate our defense." That sounded like an understatement.

Colonel Khan's briefing was short, and to the point. He was getting paid to shore up defenses around the Star Port and the government center. The idea was that the Planetary Militia needed time to actually get to their garrison and prepare to fight, and then potentially move elsewhere. Ann Arbor was the planetary capital and the center of its militia... and they were not ready to fight three DropShips worth of pirates.

So with forward warning that the pirates had air lances escorting their dropships down Gene took his Heavy BattleMech outside the warehouse and moved to the navpoint he had entered into his computer.

--
Commentary: So against my better judgement I'm updating this. This opens the ~10k word Detroit I arc.... so yeah next segment.

As for other updates, we're approaching the end of June, I will probably update Stargate Jumpchain once more before the end of the month, the MCU jumpchain, might also get updated, but Wednesday will probably be the standard Jumpchain update (in this case GenHPFanfic). Very few days left in the month, and we'll go from there.

 

Detroit is on fire
...well it is a pirate attack...​

He peered out the front armored cockpit even though his neuro helmet gave him crisp views through the cameras. Using the cockpit 'glass' to look meant no computer trying to correct for the smoke on the horizon.

This was probably just intended to be a smash and grab. Detroit was known for having a fairly sub par defense, and probably had too many tempting targets to defend everything. That was actually part of the problem If the signals he was reading were anything close to accurate, and given it was being supplemented by feeds from the MRB office, whoever had money was snapping up whoever they could afford and hoarding them to defend their own assets. There were little dots all over the city, there were mechs, combat vehicles, and tons of infantry and nothing approaching a coherent defense.

The pirates of course weren't going to try and land at the star port that would have been insane. The view on his scopes suggested, though it would be impossible to prove until they were dirt side at which point he wouldn't have telemetry, that the Pirates were bluffing about their numbers. At least one of the DropShips was probably a cargo hauler not a MechCarrier. That didn't mean what his computer was identifying as a Danais-class DropShip was unarmed, or not dangerous. Being a design the Star League had proliferated it should have been unarmed, but it certainly appeared that this one had been refit with weapons.... given the missiles streaking out from it.

Gene would have liked to punch up Highway One from the starport to the government center, but there was no way to do that without just flat out trampling a bunch of civilian ground cars that were stalled on the road. He had no idea why they were, since there didn't seem to be any serious wrecks, and no signs of weapons fire just that somewhere up ahead there a break in people moving, and that was holding everything else up. That left him picking around carefully moving five and ten miles an hour.

The planet of Detroit had two major landmasses. The oh so creatively named continents of North, and South. Ann Arbor was a coastal town on South, well city, that had started life as a small farming community and had since grown up into the planetary capital and center of commerce.

With advanced navigation guide beacons, multipe control centers, and a wide range of pads, the capital's modern starport was just that modern.

... modern-ish?

It was from the late Star League, but before the Amaris Coup but it had been built to the standards of the Star League before the New Vandenburg revolts.

That was the advantage of having a planet that was an Earth-type world in terms of things like arable land, atmosphere and supporting life. The abundance of natural water helped make the planet easily capable of sustaining a human population, and the agriculture necessary to keep them fed, but it also divided the sprawling metropolitan area.

Gene flipped through the channels. It would have been an advantage in a conventional defense, but all of this chaos was causing traffic jams throughout the city. That was probably the point. No body could get anywhere fast. Further consideration ceased as his air trip went off warning him of the rapidly descending Air Lance moving at high thrust.

Lances, he amended mentally.

The Dalban identified the Fusion signatures as Shinobi, and the manufacturer of the ASF as Wakizashi Enterprises... and eye rolling aside the Shilone and Slayer Lances coming in and were coming hot. With seemingly all traffic in the city in total gridlock the roadways were a perfect target for strafing and any such attack would just add to the confusion.

"... and I still don't have a good answer to fucking enemy air." He grunted pitching his mech's torso up just to see if he could get lucky. He was already regretting going for the most armor instead of trying to get the automated systems of the Outpost Castle to fit LRM's into his Marauder's shoulders. A pseudo mad cat would have been really helpful in this. Fuck having an actual MadCat would have been nice.

He didn't have that option, and there was a bigger problem besides just the Combine built pirate ASF coming in. The Danais should have been unarmed, but the reason for the greater scramble to bid piecemeal for any two bit untested mercenary made sense, and it wasn't the Danais. It was the ninety seven hundred ton Overlord class dropship that was coming in. The last of the three DropShips was an Aerodyne, a Leopard, and it seemed to have the rest of the Pirate Air with it going along Highway 2 to stir up chaos as it search for a place to land somewhere outside the city center.

He suspected that Overlord might need to land somewhere in the city given ground conditions. Ann Arbor had built originally as a... well pre industrial farming community along a river delta that flowed down into the ocean. It reminded him of Charleston in terms of general geography and the Overlord's mass was too much likely for the soggy farmland to support it off loading battlemechs, but the Leopard probably could drop off its mechs in a field somewhere.

Nothing he could do about that though. He could keep an eye on his scopes, but with as many fusion signatures as there were in Ann Arbor currently lit up there was little chance he'd be able to view anything in the outer metro... and there was the Overlord to contend with.

The Dalban HiRez turned its spectrographics on the Overlord. While less common than the Union it was still a design that had proliferated well enough to be considered common in terms of mech carriers. All the same he had to wonder where, or how common it was for Pirates to get their hands on one, though they had probably had it a while given it looked like it had been refit at some point as well. Though those shifts could have just been repairs rather than proper refits.

Unlike on Aquagea though he had no interest in getting close. As much as he wanted to say it had just been adrenaline he had really needed the Zathras dropship gone. There was no such pressing need to warrant jumping on another DropShip. That DropShip was going to be offloading mechs, and at least some of those were going to be his problem.

The ASF strafing runs... well there was nothing he could do about them, and they only made getting from where he was to where he needed to be harder. Not because they were attacking him, most likely the ASF's had preselected targets designated to make any response harder and trying to cut overpasses or other road junctions. Whether they were succeeding in that Gene didn't know.

There was nothing once the air cleared for him to shoot at though, only to slowly navigate the streets. The ASF's flew off probably to wherever their dropships had landed, and then it was a waiting game standing just off the highway looking for a needle in a haystack. A really big haystack... Ann Arbor had started as a farming community and that meant that after several hundred years it had a lot of urban sprawl and multi storey but not more than a few really true skyscrapers across the urban area. By the standards of the periphery even with this threat flying overhead Detroit was a nice place to live.

Electricity wasn't magic here. It was as ubiquitous as it would have been in the American Heyday of post world war 2. It even sort of resembled such with its architecture. People didn't really understand the holographic communications technology any more than they did the much simpler land line phones that were much less expensive they just knew that they worked, so watching the power fail to a portion of the city told him something had happened.

Flipping through the returns on his sensors the Dalban HiRez isolated the probable cause, an explosion that was probably a transformer. The problem was the explosion was internal, not say mech or vehicle based weapons fire. Gene glanced through the haze of the sky and shook his head, with the ole mk 1 he couldn't see it but his cameras, and more specifically thermals, told him there was plume of smoke starting. Deciding to cover his bases he relayed that to the militia post.

"What about near the spaceport?"

"Traffic is ground to a halt here, and I don't see any militia anywhere on highway one." Even though it was muffled he could hear cursing on the other end, but it was the warning of inbound missiles of his mech that told him the problem. That shouldn't have been possible. Even if the Overlord had been a variant to carry a company of vehicles there was no way they should have been unloaded.

He watched as LRMs streaked towards the Militia headquarters at the other end of the strip. The HiRez back traced to internal combustion signatures, and a vehicle that his Star League era warbook didn't identify. The vehicles were 25 ton hovers with LRM 10. He was Internal Combustion Engines, but that didn't necessarily mean anything. They were firing from inside the star port, which no surprise they were pirates so why would they care about safety rules, or gentlemanly agreements regarding conduct.

Then again all of those missiles had been pointed at government infrastructure.

The order to destroy them wasn't one he needed to be told twice. Gene eased the throttle up and moved towards the spaceport proper that no DropShip captain got panicky and tried to take off in this mess. He started looking for something that could carry vehicles but there was no giant neon sign lit up pointing to something so obvious as say a Triumph. The offending vessel turned out to be a Leopard, which indicted itself by adding its LRM 20s to the hovercraft firing. The ship, ComStar quickly informed him on query had a falsified registry and who's JumpShip had left and since returned without the berth being occupied, which suspicious in the periphery. Not unheard of, but definitely odd behavior.

He all but ran over the first 'Harrasser' LRM platform by accident, but didn't stop as he pushed across the tarmac pivoting his mech's torso to come on target for the ones out in the open. Gene glanced around and relatively sure he was the only BattleMech in the area pushed into the middle of the formation to where he was close enough he could at least bring his medium lasers in onto one of the crudely painted crossed scimitar missile carriers.

Gene punched past the last vestiges of smoking vehicles two minutes later and levelled his mech's gauntlets into the interior bay of the leopard, but it was already trying to lift off so he proceeded to start firing into the interior as he backed off. He wasn't convinced he had managed to do anything serious because they did manage to get the bay door closed and seemed to be making a break for it so he banked back around leaving the burning vehicles in his wake.

Colonel Khan wasn't responding to his hails, which wasn't a good thing. He checked his corners, and then his rear flank, but neither visuals nor sensors showed anything left to shoot at, at least nothing in range, never mind close by. Without a link to the militia he reported the findings to the ComStar Adept on the other end, "I have no further hostiles visible in the starport,"

"Understood MechWarrior." The MRB adept paused, presumably to confer with her superiors, "We advise you to move to reconnoiter the following points, and attempt to link up with any militia units."

He liked the near miss of almost saying 'surviving' there, and he didn't have time to ask if they had any more information about who these guys were.
--
Commentary: And we now begin the somewhat longer plot thread that will take a while to resolve, and last well beyond this first trip to Detroit, which again is about ten thousand words. The next segment, not telling where it is, will be the beginning of building a Merc Unit. I say beginning because there some jobs between then and actually putting a company together.

 

31st Century Detroit​

With little better option, and being under contract with the planetary government it made sense to go check on his point of contact... the problem was getting there in this cluster fuck. It took five whole minutes to cross a mile with the speed his had to move to navigate the increasing number of abandoned ground cars or civilians standing around in the road near their vehicles. He adjust his position, and shook his head lightly straining against the cockpit's straps.

It seemed like forever taking the twelve meter tall war machine tip toeing along the highway. The first sign of friendly militia were what looked like enlarged humvees or maybe the offspring of a deuce and a half and a humvee with a bunch of machine guns stuck on it carrying infantry.

Gene didn't originally think they were going to be any use at all, but then they started making people move their cars out of the way, or moving them out of the way themselves. Unfortunately they didn't have any more connection with their officers than anyone else... leaving him to wonder how effective the last LRM volley had been.

He blinked at the computer as his SLDF comms received a query, "What the," He looked around for a friendly BattleMech, but was distracted as the ComStar's MRB liaison popped up on the holographic projector to his left. "MechWarrior we've reestablished contact with the contracting party," The robe lady went on to basically spew a bunch of gobbleygook about the MRB's position and that given the danger and this and that that they wanted the planetary government to fork over some C-Bills first. To put some money up front in escrow since this was beyond the usual scope of a such a contract's stated value.

Apparently the MRB must have been doing this kind of thing all over town because there was a lot of stuff on fire. It was money he was theoretically going to get paid for but it didn't tell him anything about who he was shooting at. That question was answered by a portly Japanese man in a red jacket... and if that wasn't indication enough he was wearing a giant black dragon emblazoned on it. "These outlaws are enemies of the Coordinator. Bandits and rebels fleeing for their worthless lives, from justice." Yamaguchi carried on like that for a while, a good couple minutes, but the general gist was that yes they were pirates (and traitors to the Combine) and all that. The only other news was he wanted ComStar to send an HPG message to the Combine about these assholes, which was interesting but not helpful in the here and now.

What Yamaguchi didn't have was an idea of what these guys might prioritize as most important to steal.

They definitely had legit military equipment though. They might have looked ugly but this equipment had been built to Inner Sphere military standards, and probably was worth hundreds of millions of C Bills.

The slapdash tan and green paint and crude emblems aside these were at least semi professional troops with real hardware. The Panthers, and Pheonix Hawks weren't unique to the Combine but they were common in the Dragon's stable of Mechs. As far away from Combine space as they were it wasn't something that really mattered... these were definitely pirates regardless of who they had used to been.

"We have hostile BattleMechs in the urban center, MechWarrior."

...As if his Dalban HiRez hadn't already pinged the flaring jumpjets of the Pheonix Hawks, but he didn't respond like that even as his gunsight magnified from four power all the way up to ten, which was only really practical because the optic was stabilized and he was basically looking a mile down a mostly straight highway overpass. "I see them."

Yamaguchi immediately started squawking over ComStar's line, which was a little ridiculous if Gene was being honest and did his best to not be distracted by the Samurai's strident histrionics about dishonorable rogues.

The reticle clarified into a positive return as the Pheonix Hawk in the lead landed having bounded forward in a series of jumps. Twin electric blue streaks of ball lightning converged into the center torso of the mech and when that didn't cause any satisfying explosions he fired a second volley ten seconds later. Didn't get an explosion that time either even though the mech crumpled into the middle of the freeway.

"MechWarrior?"

"Think these guys are out of Machine Gun ammo already." Gene remarked matter of factly as he flipped through the scopes, cycling left, right and then rear before moving on to the next medium in the hostile lance.

If the computer was right the pheonix hawk looked to be the heaviest enemy mech. There were Spiders and Panthers but if there was anything heavier than lights and mediums he wasn't seeing it. It didn't mean they weren't there. There were other mercs, and it was a full on city.

With no other options the light and mediums pushed into a full on charge up the crowded up by abandoned vehicles of the highway. One of the panthers was a bit stupidly firing his PPC, while the other Pheonix Hawk was using its jump jets leaping up presenting a harder target.

Gene breathed, and reduced magnification on his Star League era controls and fired. It was probably a good thing that this one wasn't using its jump jets that would have presented a harder target. The seventy five ton marauder shifted moving up and to the right of the advancing enemy mechs.


They slowed only briefly as they took note of his mech, rather than freezing at the site of the Heavy BattleMech.

He wasn't seeing a lot of indirect fire, and really the bigger trend was that all their mechs actually had hands... which he supposed might have been useful for pirate mechs to grab up loot with.

The second Pheonix Hawk landed within range of its large laser even as Gene tossed his mech into a forward push. The flash of excitement from the Harmon's beam hit a brick facade building a hundred plus meters behind and left of his position. All that did was earn him Gene's attention as the Marauder raised both armored gauntlets locking on to the rapidly overheating medium mech's signature and shattered the mech's pistol armed side with his standard double PPC discharge converging on the limb. The eleven meter mech, slightly shorter than his marauder, wobbled as its Gyro struggled to compensate for both electrical damage and loss of mass at the Hellstar's work. It had eight tons of armor spread over a forty five ton frame, two PPCs was enough to delete more than a ton of standard armor in a single shot, which had meant nothing good for the tender myomer underneath.

He turned to the other light just as it fired its JumpJets throwing it high into the air in a ballistic arc forward as it tried to close the distance. They were all surging to close they knew they didn't have a choice. That included the maimed light mech as well... leaving Gene to wonder if the fucker had ammo for his SRM, well he'd find out in a minute. The computer tracked the whole Panther as it came down, and he lit it up as soon as he had lock. The Pheonix hawk had used it to start firing its medium lasers now that it was within range, which was a mistake since that meant the Marauder could do the same. It did force him to come off target, and change to the medium.

Gene could have really done without having the merc liaison from the MRB, the Kurita rep (who wasn't even paying him for this shit), and like ten different planetary militia people talking on a single open channel as he levelled off. "Catapult, I understand." He replied keying his throat mike finally able to get a word in edgewise as the shot hole punched through the Pheonix Hawk's armor and took aim for the bounding armless Panther.

The computer apprised him he going to start risking problematic levels of heat within the next minute if he didn't finish this. He'd find the heavy mech they were talking about after his heat sinks had time to work their magic. Gene pivoted the mech to the side as it landed on an unfortunate ground car and put the light mech out of its misery.

That left him facing the last light mech both of them running relatively hot, and both still in PPC range of the other. He leaned into his harness and grabbed the left stick to switch to the weapons on that side only to fire into the mech. Already weakened armor gave way dropping it over the overpass and to the crossing road underneath.

The ongoing radio conference had other mercs chattering away now. There were apparently at least two catapults one in the normal configuration and another in the Drac special with PPCs. "Is there a priority on which?"

"The LRM." Colonel Khan declared very quickly before another torrent of side chatter drowned everything out.

He checked to make sure he hadn't been hit, and pushed the mech forward still trying to avoid crushing anything underfoot, but driving carefully was less important now than it had been at the start of the morning. It took him seventy plus seconds to realize he had a trail of those weird humvee deuce and a half militia ground cars following him like ducklings. Gene keyed his mike as the Dalban lased the lead vehicle. "What are you doing Captain Fields?"

"Following you, sir."

"No. Hold here." He ordered... hoping that the Militia Captain was not going to ignore being told to stay put by a thirteen year even if the merc was in a seventy five ton war machine. Sensing that that wasn't going to work as the captain did in fact start to protest, "Secure the downed hostile mechs, I didn't see anyone punch out."

... which might have been because Combine mechs might not actually have ejection seats... or was that just an urban legend.

 

A wonderful day in the neighborhood​

It was well into the afternoon now. His digital clock set for local time slowly ticking towards four.

It was getting hot, and he was presently hunting the second of the two Catapults. This was the one with the PPCs. His warbook identified it as a CPLT K2 introduced in the year 2603. It was proving the easier of the two mechs of the Catapult line to chase as this one didn't have the Anderson Propulsion JumpJets. The first one had insisted on trying to hopscotch over a bunch of buildings, and that had lead him on an annoying chase over the river that divided the old city.

By the time he had gotten back over the river the General in charge of the planetary militia... or a general had finally gotten around to 'assuming command' and trying to bully together an adhoc company of mercenaries from the various private security of various industrial concerns. It wasn't really going well, either. Actually if anything it made having the problem of having multiple people on the same radio running off at the mouth worse. The day had also not seen any change to having the MRB frequency trying to hold the same sort of conversations. Then as if that wasn't bad enough the general throwing his weight around had resulted in various Corporate Security or Corporate Liasions getting into what amounted to a bidding war making everything even more confusing as to which mercs were or should have been where.

Particularly information that might be relevant. There was apparently a firestarter that had gotten loose in the farmer's district on the outskirts of the city... presumably that had been a pirate mech, but you never knew. Gene would have really have liked more information on that as firestarter in area with grain silos sounded bad.

"He is behind a building. I don't have a shot." Gene repeated resisting the urge to wipe his head. His heatsinks were working fine... but he'd been sitting here for literally hours... well he'd been driving the mech for hours now, and the jostling and maneuvering including deploying his jumpjets involved physical exertion... so he was sweaty. He was presently coaxing his Marauder easily around the road hoping to get to where he could come in at an angle, but the confines of the street were making that a problem. He needed to get around to the next street without the mech moving to another avenue.

It had already jinked a couple of times, and its pilot was a lot more willing to firing into civilian structures than he was. Annoyingly the K2 had the same amount of cooling potential as his own mech. There was a thermal bloom at the edge of the city that must have been the other leopard taking off. It was a distraction, because he couldn't' do anything about that.

The catapult was moving and flat out. The sensors clocked him as moving up to his top speed along the highway. Was he running? He had to be.

Gene fired his jumpjets and hopped the intersection and laid in what he hoped was a course that would give him a shot down the road. Unfortunately his Dalban started screaming about incoming LRMs as the Overlord that the Catapult was presumably making a run for with the other pirates just started blasting.

Missiles rained down forcing him to break, and jump back. The salvo was contact break. Pure doctrine to force a disengagement with the enemy. The LRM 20s were all firing into separate grids without actually intended for a specific enemy unit just that there were enemies in the vicinity. The sort of thing that if you were in an open field or a desert, or a forest made plenty of sense.

It was over. Detroit could do little but watch as the heaviest of the pirate dropships flew away. It was the last one and probably had a hull of booty even if the pirates had taken losses. He watched the thrusting skyward column of flame and smoke and wondered if they considered it worth it before he turned and withdrew back.
--
Yamaguchi Reynauld dabbed at his sweat layered forehead with handkerchief. The perspiration mussing his carefully managed pompadour, but it wasn't because of the heat. He was merely a low level functionary in service to the dragon, and he was on the spot after all. That was what he was telling himself over and over again anyway. The posting to the rimward periphery was not a punishment per se, but it was a distant posting far from the comforts of civilizations, and one where he could in theory cause no incidental harm.

It was true that the Rimward Periphery was of some meager interest to the Combine, but his duties were small and not even really day to day in scope. That had changed this morning, and not for the better. The Azami were a collection of worlds within the Dragon's embrace colonized during the twenty fifth century and who had become apart of the combine in the century following. This had come with various privileges, and benefits unusual for servants of the Dragon.

The context of whatever dishonor was beyond his station... only that a unit of the Arkab Legion had rebelled and fired upon both regular soldiers of the dragon and their own Arkab fellows. The ISF report had absolved their fellow unit only because they had suffered significant casualties during the attack by the rebels.

They were however rebels who had fled from the combine with vital military equipment, and something more. Whatever duty they had failed at had been such that they had fled with it. That was why it was so imperative to recover it, regardless of expense. He didn't need to know what it was, as his ISF contact had made abundantly clear, but whatever it was even beyond the sheer dishonor of their thievery warranted to the expense of a live HPG transmission back to civilization.

It had taken him entirely too long to be able to convince the usurious monks to actually do their jobs. Many thousands of C-Bills to deliver the word never mind the cost on the other end to relay back here all the while the barbarians were rampaging in the city outside.

... and really for what? To be told something he already knew. To observe the course of battle, and to take all steps possible to recover the property of the dragon if any could be recovered? The prospect of actually stopping the rogues here was ridiculous. These bandits had escaped combine space, and avoided the Dragon's Navy how could a poor divided periphery world like Detroit possibly hope to stymie their escape beyond mere inches?

The logic of such knowledge did nothing to assuage his nerves though. The battle was over, and now there was the waiting game. His legal attaché and the Combine's ambassador were hard at work with their arguments, but it was the waiting that was wearing on Reynauld. His final response message had been delivered by the monks of Comstar and the word from the order of the five pillars that appropriate help would be dispatched soon.

Soon was probably relative of course. If the Abbess's message meant aid from the combine, even Dieron then it would been many months, but it was not his place to question. Only to be grateful that he had not been asked to serve more directly in hunting down these rascals. That didn't mean he could do nothing, that he could afford to do nothing. He was going to have to look into things he'd need to mingle with the people of status here, and ...

The door banged open admitting his ISF point of contact locally. Kaedehara reminded him of an owl, which wasn't a compliment per se the terran native avian creeped Yamaguchi out truth be told, but it was mostly the man's spectacles that gave him the appearance. "I have compiled recordings of the battle," The spy remarked with a sniff of disdain. In a more proper organization the role of defacto XO would have made Kaedehara his unquestioning subordinate to go and handle such errands, but this was the periphery. "It should be a much more objective view of events." The ISF major continued snidely, highlighting that Yamaguchi had been at the ComStar annex during the battle.

He had personally considered it the height of strategic acumen as it had put him at the most advantageous of position to observe as the MRB had strived to communicate with the teeming multitude of ronin as they were hired to to defend the merchants. Still it wouldn't hurt to sit down and have a drink and watch the battle play out from another angle.

--
Commentary: Update information: I will probably be watching Stargate this weekend, so the Curse Part 1 will probably be revamped and go up Sunday. (This is in reference to my SG 1 Jumpchain story.) I will probably in the following week try and update my HSoD fic. I know I keep saying that, but the problem with my writing style is this, this particular BattleTech Fic? Its sitting at about forty four thousand words not including stuff that is just outline segments. Then on top of that there are scrap ideas that will probably end up in the misc thread of ideas I had BattleTech wise, that just don't fic this fic's outline. Moving on...

On HPGs, canon basically we know HPGs can broadcast live streams and relay those broadcasts across multiple worlds. (Some lag occurs but it allows with a network transmitting from the front to someone at the capital or what have you) Its not a capacity that ComStar likes to advertise, but they will work on it, just for exorbitant amounts of money...

...hence Yamaguchi bitching about them charging stupid money... also spoiler yes Yamaguchi you were sent to the periphery as basically punishment. You can't embarrass anyone important back home by being stuck here in bumfuck.

In any event, two more things to cover, s of the current draft of the Detroit arc, I have removed two Kuritan scenes from the latter half of this arc. I'm loath to call it a chapter, I'm also running into the problem of header-ing each snippet. Detroit will still sit at about ten thousand words, which is not the important thing, but is what the current file sits at.

Secondly the Detroit Arc here is quest flag material for later content, which I will address later, but you will notice in story there are some loot shenanigans going on. We'll get to that next segment. Again I am mainly using Drak's lootboxing roll, but for post battle salvage loot its not the only thing, and one of the latter options, well dice shenanigans. (In this case, House Kurita is coming in going 'No all of it is mine,'). That's just how dice roll some times.

 

Detroit
Part 4
The Aftermath​

There wasn't much to say, or do, after the pirates had lifted off. Never mind after they had burned hard for the jump point, and there had been no one to chase them. There was money in the bank, which was ultimately the important thing. He had gotten paid at least. He was sore. Jittery. The MRB had given him a favorable review and now he had job prospects for however long the fear that the pirates would come back soon would last. It was something at least. He was pretty sure the fighting was done for the time being though, and he wasn't really expecting the pirates to come back.

Now that he thought about it, as he wiped the grease off his hands, he was surprised he hadn't seen a Dragon. He had gotten an idea though of why somewhere like Detroit was as prone to such attacks as it was. He's seen some of the problem on Aquagea, and on an academic level he understood there were plenty of worlds that just weren't as suited for colonization yet had been otherwise. Stealing resources, even just stealing whatever machinery or equipment some place had was a pirate past time, but unlike most places Detroit could manufacture ammo, and complex spare parts. Having seen the state of what passed for education he half wondered if most machining just followed a pattern of rote reproduction in order to keep up with demand.

Detroit was a developed enough world, and fertile enough that it could easily support its two billion people and ship food off world to sell. That was no small feat, and the development, the industrial level of the planet supported an overwhelmingly mechanized agriculture base. By the standards of periphery worlds Detroit was rich which of course meant there were people with disposable incomes expected of an industrialized country. People, common people, spent money on things like jewelry, wine, and other luxuries. Detroit was a pretty nice place to live even though it was also a kind of corporate dystopian mess.

The planetary government had very little in real military power. Merchant concerns, 'Trading Houses' in some insistent cases, had more money to hire security and provide for their protection and everyone else was a distant concern unless you were an employee or a consumer. Detroit's planetary government didn't usually care, and didn't have the ability to force the issue so they only really grumbled about life.

He was glad he had paid the six months rent on the warehouse in full. ComStar's MRB had paid out in cash, but there was some quibbling over salvage rights... not he had the manpower to do anything with the mechs... but he was letting the Merc Rep hold out in hopes of getting a buy out offer. If in six months he was still here he'd need to renew the lease, but if he left well he'd have to take the stuff with him and that would be an expense. The MRB had other things on their plate as well, and Gene would have been lying to say he didn't want more information on the pirates.

He wanted the information, but the he could really do without the Combine throwing their neo bushido diatribes into the fray in along with it.

They had two freaking JumpShips and he honestly didn't know how big of a deal that was, but it seemed like that should have been a big freaking deal. Later on, it would become more apparent, months later, that there had been a third that had probably also been an Azami JumpShip.

The result though was a much more notable security presence. Or the presence of armed people for a greater feeling of security. Mech mounted machine guns tended to make short work of infantry and even ground cars that didn't carry modern armor protection... well modern in the sense of 'Standard Armor'. That was best illustrated by all the funeral pyres still being burned for local dead who had gotten caught out in the open in the first few hours of the pirate attack. That was where the Canopian Corps were doing their usual song and dance to spread goodwill by providing if not free medical care substantially reduced cost care to the desperate.

That they were doing under the watchful guns of their own hired mercs was telling. The whole throbbing neon lights that were possible by restored electricity only really added to the dinginess of the commercial sector. It would be a stark contrast to the masonic lodge looking merc hall managed by the MRB. Of course its outside exterior wouldn't be matched by all the mix and match of peoples loitering on the ground floor waiting.

It was really the defining factor that told him that they were still on the same planet. The streets crowded with a garish, eye bleeding mixture of brightly colored clothes of different styles and colors was no less represented by the time he got through the big brass embossed glass doors of the hall. It was packed. People were waiting in the queues, sitting on benches, being seen to at desks or loitering around the elevators.

He ignored the giant screens, and tri-vid projections. Most of it was just adverts after all. Not all of it was junk though. He wasn't the only Marauder pilot on the planet, and the combat feed from the roms of Militia Observers really highlighted the more crab like armor profile of his BattleMech given its lack of a shoulder autocannon compared to the other guy's more standard mech. They were among the handful all the same of people with actual Heavy BattleMechs though, and it was no surprise really that the other guy had his own Merc Company, regardless of how small the outfit was. They still had their own DropShip... and techs....

His MRB rep was busy stuffing down a chicken swarma by the time he got through the crowd, and into her ... not quite a cubicle but not quite its own entire office either. She was early twenties, brunette normal. It was really the ComStar robes that messed with the MRB look, some people wore actual business attire ... well everyone wore business attire of some sort, but ComStar counted Robes as the same as a suit and tie. "You smell like gun cleaner." She managed in between bites before putting the plate to the side.

"Yeah its called Wild Geese." He took the seat in front of the cheap office desk, "Reminds me of Hoppes." He added.

"What, that's a cologne you're wearing?"

"No the gun cleaner is called Wild Geese," It sounded like booze, but it smelled like hoppes number 9. "So yes I smell like gun cleaner."

After another mouthful of food, she got to the point, "Salvage court is tied up." The planetary militia hadn't had anything suitable to fight of mechs... maybe one mech if Detroit's ... frankly decrepit armor squadron had been able to back it into a canyon and shoot it, but even then he was skeptical. That was why he was getting a couple hundred C-Bill retainer a day to stay around just in case something else went wrong, but it wasn't like he was the only one... and it would probably be till the end of the month. A C-Bill was roughly equivalent in value to the big house currencies, a periphery world like Detroit's currency wasn't anywhere close to that in value. That was another reason Merchants had cash to spend on Mercs and at least the relatively weak planetary government didn't.

The truth was the corps ran the show mostly. The Merchant Houses, the families who controlled the corps, had pull but they were concerned about the bottom line. They didn't own the whole planet just small bits of it, and that left most of the mess to someone else.

He leaned back, but he wasn't really surprised. He paused having stopped before really starting, "Do you have any idea?"

"No. Its not just the planetary government, and with so many separate contracts and individuals working there is going to need be a fact finding mission to properly assign credit. The MRB provisional assignments and payments will remain. Then on top of that," The adept trailed off, "Well besides the planetary government there are the other contracting parties." The various corporations, and whoever else could afford to hire MechWarriors during the attack, "And also the Draconis Combine representative has filed a legal challenge with the Mercenary Review Board's Mercenary Court and that will require a hearing, and a panel."

"So several months?"

"At least." She agreed.

He could guess how this was going to go. Some of the corps were probably angling to get bought out by others or the government. The 'oh we will take x number of C-Bills and drop our case', and some were probably prepared to offer money to get the others. Some were probably hoping that they could offer pennies on the dollar on salvage to down on their luck mercs... "What's the combine's argument?"

She didn't look comfortable at the question. "They're arguing that the property is stolen DCMS hardware and shouldn't be considered salvage." And Yamaguchi wasn't exactly being forthcoming with regards to documents... he might have had more of a chance if the Overlord had surrendered, or a JumpShip, but individual downed Mechs was going to be difficult for the Merc Court to side with the Combine's claims, especially without proof.

All of that was well beyond his pay grade, especially right now. Maybe if he ended up down the road in a Merc Company that kind of lawfare might be relevant, but he was just going to leave it alone.

 

Detroit Part 5
The Aftermath ​

The problem with a big flashy pirate attack like this was it made selling stuff like Germanium a headache. Mainly because the commodity traders were all skittish. That didn't mean Aquagea's people hadn't been trying. They were in discussion with a Taurian company, a Canopian company, and the long shot was a Capellan firm that might be able to pony up some cash. If Gene was going to guess it was probably going to be the Canopians who sealed the deal, but that wasn't his concern.

Mostly because the Canopians were more likely to have the equipment that Via Caballero wanted more than they had money, but that was always why the Turians were in the running. New Vandenburg could get them mining stuff and whatever else potentially. Since the Aquageans also didn't have much use for K-Bills from the Resistance Haul, which was still a stupid fucking name Darryl, they'd cashed their shares out not that C-Bills would be much more useful on their home planet.

... and on his front? Well Gene was still looking for something quiet and local. It was partly to generate work history for when he did inevitably move off world again. Or at least that was what he was going for, and he was pretty confident on a call back for the local Ceres Office even if they probably really didn't need a Heavy Mech on security. That was true for patrolling some of the mining sites up on North as well. He knew that if he got lucky he might snag a three month babysitting gig and that would take care of most of his sitting around.

The problem was the origin of the pirates.

The Azami were one of the first Muslims to migrate off Terra in any significant numbers, or rather they had left the Earth to colonize specifically as a group. They were nominally adherents of a Shia school offshoot from the early twenty first century. Not surprising in and of itself, plenty of new religious sects or old religious sects had gone out amongst the stars to 'find themselves' or a 'find a new start', and the Azami hadn't been unique in that respect. The problem they had run into was that House Kurita or the Draconis Combine had wanted to add their worlds into their burgeoning empire. The result had been a negotiated admission into the Empire, and even though that had been centuries ago there were Azami who didn't like that.

That wasn't unheard of either, the lyrans had the various Skye independence movements, and the combine for that matter also had Rassalhague and there were plenty of others. The difference was that the Combine held enough of a grudge to want to do something about it. There was money, and a lot of posturing involved. It wasn't helped that the Combine rep had tried to snatch up all the salvage on the grounds that the mechs were the property of the dragon... which Comstar had shot down pretty quickly, but he had still felt the need to try.

It seemed pretty brazen given he was trying to rile up the mercenaries to go pirate hunting... except no one had any leads... and it was a little ridiculous to chasing rumors. Chasing rumors cost money, and didn't necessarily produce results. That meant that most mercenary outfits who had survived their first year solvent and in the black didn't want to play. The desperate were another story, but even most of them weren't going to go chomping off such a run while there were still easy paying jobs around unless they were really hard up.

"What you reading?" Darryl had thrown himself into the couch.

Gene put the noteputer away. The truth was the Azami weren't the only pirates in the region, and while they had the attention of... well, "Apparently there is an influx of pirates and brigands in general across space."

"Why?"

"Who knows. There seems to be a lot of traffic coming anti-spinward, Taurian and Davion side of the border." Gene shook his head. Unfortunately due to the limits of HPG technology, and network coverage what information ComStar and the MRB had was scarce, and not enough to prompt any kind of hiring craze. Relative spinward to Detroit polities like the Duchy of Don't, or the Aurigan Coalition were more likely to be targets first. "its not the only direction." The Magistracy didn't exactly have a large military and it seemed that there was a big bandit kingdom west of them raiding for slaves and what not too.

"Do you think they'll come back?"

Maybe. He wondered if Yamaguchi knew there was probably a bunch of pirates bearing down on this end of the periphery. "Don't know." The combine could just be holding a grudge, but if in a couple months all of a sudden there were a bunch of bandits robbing everything not bolted down from ur Cruinne to Herotitus then there were going to be a lot less desperate mercs chasing one specific group. What made the Azami more interesting than any of the other MRB reports was their better equipment, which was relative of course. "If I had to guess, I think they hit a DCMS depot before skipping combine space," Not that he could find anything to corroborate that. Not something House Kurita would have advertised... and really the question was how recently they might have done that... or maybe that wasn't really important after all. "So you're leaning towards Ceres over Majesty Metals?"

Darryl nodded.

He hadn't expected Aquagea to feel any pining old loyalty for the old country any way. Not that Ceres's pay was bad for what he was doing, but it was mostly another corporation to put on the resume more than anything else.

--
It was well into his third month on Detroit now, and he was sitting in the cockpit of the Marauder baby sitting some excavators and survey equipment. The same thing he'd been doing about a week now up here on North... but quite frankly the money and more than that the favorable Merc Report were worth the boredom. Majesty Metals and Ceres were both Canopian industrial concerns, and involved in the same industries... he was pretty sure both of them said they manufactured Marauders actually, which was interesting. Gene hadn't really thought of the Canopians having much in the way of a military so having Marauders in production was ... interesting to say the least. Then again it seemed like GM had apparently ended up licensing out the Mech to every major state that existed. It wasn't exactly a surprise the Taurian Concordant built them after all.

The boring babysitting was good, especially since they were paying for transport costs. He was still looking at options a few months out. He could move planets, or stick around here. The problem was still the salvage court being tied up like it was... not helped by House Kurita lawyers stalling for time. Neither Majesty Metals, nor Ceres were hiring any big mercenary groups right now, but there were a few sites off world where either company would pay for transport to and back on completion. There was always going to Herotitus to see if any of the Merc groups there were hiring fresh MechWarriors as well.

The corporate circuit he was working right now though was quiet, and paid fine... and ... then then his radio unit squawked and the concerned sounding voice of one Corporate officers came over, "Gene we've got what reads as an Overlord class DropShip on our scopes." It had said something that this stint was quiet enough that everyone was on first name terms, "I'm going to get Diana's team and back up."

The Dalban was already up and running. "Orbital pathing says its making for Ann Arbor, Darren." He replied, and he tapped a few keys and scrolled, "Its broadcasting a Draconis Combine transponder symbol." Good or not even an Atlas wouldn't have been able to track the JumpShip it came from, but he suspected this was why the lawyers had been stalling for as long as they had. Or not, he could have been wrong. "They're a long way from the Combine though." Then again almost as soon as the Azami attack had started Yamaguchi had tried forcing his way into the ComStar station to send an HPG message, damn the cost. Even coming from Dieron there was no way these guys could have gotten here this fast, unless they were already outside Combine Space to begin with. Had they already been in the Periphery or just on the edge of the Inner Sphere chasing the goon's trail.

If that was the case? What had those assholes stolen to warrant that kind of diversion?

Darren got off the radio to place a call to South, and the Detroit government, which did, after about an hour of waiting around, turn out that these were Combine DropShips. Civilians... nominally speaking... which just meant that they had money. Apparently they had lawyers in addition to money and guns. Gene adjusted his controls and moved up the ridge back to the mining base camp, the truth was it wasn't just pirates he was worried about. This whole area was rife for mineral exploitation but it was unstable... and not just in the geological sense.
--
Commentary: So rather than spend the down time chronicling babysitting a bunch of engineers as they go around checking mineral veins we're going to go forward. As I noted above, (the post above this one), the Combine is basically throwing a fit, which will be better explained as we go into the following two planets (chapters of sorts.)

I'm going to sleep now, but I may end up putting the last scene of Detroit up today, this afternoon and go ahead and finish it out.

 

Detroit
Conclusion.​

He could feel it in the air. Just as much from the rich people, as the every man on the street.

Ann Arbor was more than a little on edge even though the planetary government had put on a nice song and dance with their Kuritan visitors. It didn't matter if Overlord-class dropships were 'relatively' common in the Combine, that was the Inner Sphere, here in the periphery that was a mighty big stick, and it wasn't alone. He had heard some body try and claim, with a straight face, that they had been conducting a trade mission in the Aurigan Reach.

Leaning on the railing Gene was tallying who were Ronin, Mercs, probably ISF agents in disguise, and who knew what else. Somebody was pissed off, but it wasn't his fight. They had no leads on the pirates, and quite frankly if he had any interest it was in where these guys had come from. A representative from the 'pillar of Jade' was currently talking it up with his corporate point of contact for the job he had just finished, but it was probably just small talk.

With a sigh he signaled the maitre d'hotel of the establishment for another drink, and the only reason he had to go through the old man was because there were a bunch of actual fucking kids around and the regular staff had been told strictly no alcohol for them.

He was about half way through his second local rum cocktail, that sort of reminded him of a Hurricane but more mango and pomegranate, when the robed Gamma marked precentor came over occupied with a plate of cheese puffs. "Are you considering taking the Ur Cruinne posting?"

"I'm considering it." Gene answered without pausing, but that didn't mean he was happy that word was getting around. Majesty was offering a pretty nice pay check, and to cover travel, to go babysit some engineers... and they would be covering any maintenance his mech needed, which was another bonus.

"I am sure you're aware that Hyperpulse Generator stations are few and far between on the periphery, but, well given our recent guests I thought it might be good to share the news. There was a reported pirate attack on Fronc."

He didn't really know where that was, other than rimward of Detroit off hand, "Oh?"

"The blessed order doesn't generally involve itself in matters of law and orders, but our facility on Fronc suffered several casualties due to the raid. I don't believe that House Kurita would prioritize taking steps to hunt down these ruffians,"

"I imagine they will still give chase."

"By the time they get to Fronc the villains will be long gone. Moving on to their next target" The man shook his head, but the delivery of the last bit made it seem like he had an idea on where that might be. "I've been speaking with the Magistracy, and we're in agreement that the next raids will probably be against Magistracy worlds, if they hadn't hit them already." Because if his knowledge of the rimward periphery was accurate, Fronc was only two jumps from Detroit... "Three," The Precentor corrected him absentmindedly, "Jumps is the most direct route. We think they moved spinward, they hit Appian after their attack here, then rimward hitting Independence and then moved anti-spinward hitting Fronc, and we believe they continued moving anti-spinward."

Why though? That was what Gene couldn't figure out, because they couldn't have all that much cargo space... unless they hadn't been able to steal much, or what they had been after on Detroit. Unless they were offloading it to some other jumpship... how big of a ring were they talking about here. "Where do you think they're going?" He asked.

"Luxen."

Oh. Oh, that made sense. A world that had largely escaped the horrors of the succession war. A world that so far as he knew was famous for medicine, doctors, and gemstones. "You said you talked to the Magistracy?" Apparently, given the bee hive haired woman's beckoning over, the Magistracy's government was poaching the ones and twos hiring MechWarriors of Majesty, and other Magistracy companies as a kind of snap fire brigade. They were sure going to look dumb if they were too late, or if they were wrong. All this was a lot of snap legal paperwork, and had the local MRB adepts working overtime. It would have been worse if this had involved larger proper mercenary units rather than mostly just the individual contractors, but this was an ad hoc scratch unit being thrown together on a gamble.

"The magistracy," The lady with the bee hive hair stated, "Has a circuit in place that should make it possible for you to jump from the border to Luxen in short order."

"That still means a month of travel." He pointed, sparing a glance to the Kuritans. He could guess why they weren't being involved. Distrust on everyone's parts, and chances were good that the Kuritans wouldn't want to leave their JumpShip behind... "I'd be pretty remiss if I didn't say that there is a chance we're going to be too late."

"Which is why we're expediting the paperwork as quickly as possible." The adept from the MRB commented nodding along. "This is considered an exceptional occurrence and various factors like that are covered in the contract."

Bee Hive Hair nodded, "Loading equipment will need to be expedited as well, we want to be underway as soon as possible."

It was the kind of statement someone without military experience tended to throw in in order to make it sound like they understood logistics or rather that was how the delivery of the interjection made it sound. She would have been better off just telling them all to hurry the fuck up, in Gene's opinion. It wasn't like he wasn't already committed. This was risky, yes.

He glanced at the Kuritan delegation... well he supposed they would find out. If they were right though, and they got there in time, there was still going to be a hell of a fight, and more than that the Kuritans were probably going to be awfully snippy about being left out. If it worked out though... if it worked, well this was a really big contract given the need for speed.

--
Commentary: So the reason this is relatively short is as I mentioned in a previous segment I deleted two Combine scenes in particular the 'arrogant samurai shoving match at party' scene that would have taken place during this as well as the resultant fight the following morning in BattleMechs.

Anyway this concludes the first Detroit chapter, we will come back to this world later on.

Just as an aside, just in case I messed up anywhere. Ceres Metals Industries is a Capellan Conglomerate though they are active in the Periphery trade. Majesty Metals is one of the Major Canopian industrial concerns.

 

First Luxen 1​

There wasn't much to do during Space Travel other than to study away the tedium of it. The Magistracy was stressing that they'd have support techs and staff available on Luxen to handle any work that needed to be done over the contract. This was strictly supposed to be MechWarriors, and their Mechs no dependents coming along. It wasn't just that, they were going into this with no ASF, well very little ASF coverage, but he accepted that they were in a hurry.

So basically he was sitting in the DropShip reading. The Magistracy of Canopus was... was a product of the Earth that was. It really was an excellent example, just as much as the Azami worlds were, of people who had fled the the old order to colonize the stars. The Magistracy had been founded by people running from the incompetence of the Free Worlds League, but it had been founded by like many of the post earth states people getting away from the old political status quo. He suspected that the Azami like all the other collection of small and large interstellar polities must have had some great man of history who had organized and lead them into the stars.

It was just how the universe was. For the canopians that Great Woman of History had been Cassandra Centrella... who if she was mentioned at all in the current FWL sanctioned media was a deserter and coward. The Canopian side of things was that her unit had been stranded by the incompetence of the FWLM and left behind... and Gene kind of was willing to believe their version of events over the Mariks, or Andurien or whoever. (Though House Davion's reports threw around words like Pirate, an awful lot in their descriptions as well.) Cassandra though had rebranded herself 'Kossandra' and gathered up a bunch of other people with political views like hers and struck off for the Canopian system.

They had had a good run of it in terms of expansion and growth which had also come at a price. Kossandra had gotten a little loopy in later years engaging in a degree of political repression that would eventually see to the Star League getting involved. SLDF involvement during the 'reunification wars' had meant male suffrage in canopian space... but at the same time had involved a campaign of what the Canopians described as literal rape and plunder by SLDF troops...

History lessons aside he had other material to cover in his readings, and the Canopians actually had mostly functional distance learning systems. It was a stark contrast to the sort 'tinker' education that filled most of the periphery. Not that it was much better in the Inner Sphere compared to how things had used to be. The Inner Sphere with mostly function governments at least had certifications that were largely recognized by all the major interstellar powers... most of the time.

The succession wars had done a big number on organized education, and recognition of education credits between frequently hostile nations. The decline of publicly available education had also meant that most corporations had developed their own ways of doing things, and that didn't necessarily always translate over to other companies either. The inner sphere was its own sort of mess.

Luxen though? It had a legitimate claim to having an actual fucking University... it primarily a medical school, but still it had managed to avoid the succession war's worst... and now was probably about to get wrecked by pirates. Well maybe they could stop that.

The problem was how long it was going to take. The circuit jumpships going back made sense, Luxen was a provincial capital in the Canopian system of government, and given how scarce HPG sites were it made sense to have chains running back forth at least somewhat. Most likely the capacity for that only really applied to important planets like Luxen where there was basically a straight shot to the border.
--
The Union-class DropShip was not a comfortable ride. It was silly if true thought, because it was intended as a mass production military Mech Transport, but true or not it didn't alleviate the cramped conditions. Gene was glad he wasn't claustrophobic, but there was only so much time he could spend studying.

Once they had hit the circuit though, ugh. Several jumps in the course of a few days was rough even for someone without TDS, or another similar disorder. The five minute heads up ahead of the jumps just added to the general anxiety that was slowly becoming all but palpable throughout the DropShip. "Tell me that was the last one?" One of the other mercs, nicknamed 'bubbles' rasped as the last of 'eddy' from the jump subsided.

Gene felt a chill work its way up his spine something wasn't right. "It was supposed to be." and then the klaxons started warning, and they were probably late. The Union had a mix of Jeffery tubes, that was to say ladders and crawl spaces, and elevators to get around from deck to deck. The ladders were slower but safer to use, especially when the ship wasn't parked on the ground... the problem was that they were slow. Getting a bunch of cobbled together MechWarriors who'd been hired on as an emergency measure fitted onto the DropShip's bridge wasn't comfortable.

Luxen's jump point was about three days from the planet, which was very convenient. Unfortunately it was a double edged stellar feature, since it meant pirates didn't need to try risking a pirate point in order to show up. Gene had only gotten looks at the suspected Azami JumpShips well after all the fighting had been over. It wasn't like those pictures helped, the JumpShips weren't painted up anything special, and they were named anything like say AZAMI LIBERATION FRONT Vessel whatever ... nothing incriminating. They just looked like regular JumpShips.... for whatever regular JumpShips counted for.

The Magistracy Merc Rep along for the ride held up a hand to more or less try and get everyone to shut the fuck up while she pressed her head to a truly archaic cobbled together with duct tape sort of comms array, but it was obvious something was already on going on the planet's surface. Gene pulled up the planet's information on his noteputer. Luxen was well would have had a big population for a good sized European country in the the twentieth century... but for a planet was sparsely peopled. Part of that was probably the higher than average canopian standard of living, but it was a small all the same.

There were less than a hundred million people on Luxen, and if these had been typical pirates he would have guessed the mining towns on the southern continent might have been the target if they'd been looking for something easy to sell for cheap. From the way the Merc Rep was acting, that didn't seem likely, especially with the hurrying to get them uncoupled from the JumpShip and get them underway to the planet.

The situation as reported groundside wasn't good, "The majority of the Luxen Volunteers," That was to say the professional full time troops of the unit, "have been destroyed or incapacitated since the pirates began their attack last week. Much like the attack on Detroit we believe they scouted out the defenses first and then sent word back via JumpShip, but right now the planetary defense forces are barely holding."

He let some of the other people in the room ask their questions, "Is this Union configured for hot drops?" Gene inquired, "Can I combat drop my Marauder along the river that forms this natural salient?"

"We have DropPods." The captain of the ship added a little unsurely, and none of the other Mercs seemed particularly thrilled at the notion of an orbital insertion, which was fine. He wasn't going to push anyone who wasn't confident that their mech was ready for that. The truth was he had about sixty hours, not including time spent sleeping, to go over a refresher of SLDF Orbital Drop protocols, but even then the Marauder's navigational computer would be handling much of the fine course corrections anyway. Then again plenty of mercs in this era made combat drops without the benefit of SLDF software, and lack of formal courses on the subject. It wasn't quite a routine thing, but he wanted to be on the ground, and in the fight, and didn't see any other way to get there.

The DropShip would need to land and offload and that would take valuable time. After that they'd need to, after offloading the scratch company, need to actually maneuver to the front and there was no telling how long that would take. No he wanted into the fight, and it didn't hurt that the suggested landing sight behind Canopian lines was probably not nearly as secure as they were making it out to be. The Azami in DCMS were specialized raiding units, assuming that these were deserters who had left with all of their gear a DropShip would surely be a tempting target.
--
Gene kicked his duffle back into the netting. Technically they were under thrust gravity, but not a lot of it. He had a change of clothes in the duffle, a first aid kit, and some necessities. They were in the final preparation stages and he was zipping up the sealed body suit. It was SLDF manufactured and rated for void operations, but unlike the usual Terran Hegemony stone gray color it was mostly black with red trim lines.

"You don't have to fucking do this, kid." Gene picked up the sealed environment helm that vaguely reminded him of a bird's head, "A hired soldier doesn't need to rush straight for the front lines." He ignored the probably decade older mercenary and slung the bag over its shoulder as it came back up.

The light in the bay flashed red. "That's the five minute mark." Three hundred seconds. They were way past calling this off. "I'll see you on the ground, Septim." The other merc's call sign. He pushed off the plating of the floor and to the airlock hatch leading into the bay where his marauder, or more specifically the pod, was undergoing final checks by the Astechs in preparation for the launch.

It looked completely different, the union's mechanical systems, than the SLDF Outpost Castle's gantries. It had a used lived in feel of being cobbled together and patched over the centuries. The seventy five ton heavy BattleMech was a palpable hum as it sat in the folding nest of ceramic and ablative gel dispensers that would carry it through the atmosphere. The egg would fold shut and then be jettisoned from the bay door once final checks were completed.

After he was out of the airlock the egg would make small course adjustments to the planet's surface through the atmosphere, and would ablate and slow the machine down as it head for the surface. The final course corrections after the last of the pod fell away though would be handled by the Mech itself, and its JumpJets.

The reactor readings looked good from the brief glance he threw to the machine's console as he climbed into the cockpit. He stored the bag behind the seat, belted it down, before belting into the chair, and closing the hatch. Running lights illuminated the interior console, and the exterior view through the cockpit darkened as the egg closed and final authorization was granted.

There wasn't really a catapult launch to deploy the drop pods. The union more or less gave a gentle shove, that pushed the marauder out. If this had been an SLDF warship or something like an Excalibur or some other 'last generation' SLDF system intended to deploy the hammer of Terra to the surface of a world there might have been, but the pods were what did most of the work, and in a simple largely unassisted by ship factors. Just a gentle push really.

--
Commentary: Its Wednesday and ordinarily I would be updating Jumpchain today... and I will likely post an update for HPGENFANFIC this week, but other factors cause me to post this today.

As an aside Luxen plus the following arc (which may yet still be fluffed out some more) is sitting (with this part) at forty pages plus. That's single spaced not double, and the following arc is already being written.

 

1 Luxen
The Shooting Star She Saw​

The MAF was small, and smaller now. The Magistracy was a peace loving society and had little appetite for the massive standing militaries desired by the patriarchial inner sphere as her classes had always espoused. The Magistracy Armed Forces thus was divided into various commands with the Canopus IV based headquarters being the center of the Federal Military, and provincial forces being directed by their respective Provincial capitals, or more realistically at local planet level. Luxen was reasonably well equipped as a provincial capital with BattleMechs, but like with most planetary defense forces relied primarily on armored vehicles, and infantry to handle the bulk of the division of labor.

That was how it had always been..

National Service in the Magistracy began at 16, though it was dominated by civilian jobs, and military service was an outlier rather than the norm. The prospect of somewhere like Luxen being attacked was, well as far out of the realm of possibility as was basically possible for someone who still lived in the Periphery. Luxen was generally considered a very safe planet to be on, and then the DropShips had opened up and started disgorging vehicles and BattleMechs, and ASF had started attacking.

The Luxen Volunteers had answered the call, and the gendarmes and other second line civil defense personnel had moved to their positions, and then it was like everything was on fire. They were holding, for now, by what seemed like a string.

"No radar returns ma'am." Fiona Short glanced from the enlisted man operating the radar returns, and then to her unit's commanding officer, and the fact Major Seghal was basically the ranking officer left unharmed and in action. The enlisted man turned back to his terminal in the mobile headquarters "No Ma'am. It looks like a mech reentry pod, but I'm not getting any kind of signal return. It doesn't show any kind of register on any of my scopes."

She looked at the video feed of the shooting star streaking through the sky. The feed slowly changed as petals streaked away as the pod blossomed. "Some kind of atmospheric interference then?"

"No Ma'am I've never seen anything like this, but looking at it, that is definitely a BattleMech."

Her superior's questioning continued as the pod fell away. They still couldn't get a return even as the BattleMech fired its JumpJets. A single BattleMech though? It couldn't have been the pirates why would they bother.

"Major Seghal?"

"Its firing." The radar man blurted as tell tale blue streaks of ball lightning slashed out of the sky.

--
Bumpy would have been a good way to describe the ride down from orbit... well ride was probably an exaggeration, controlled fall might have been more accurate up until the last of the retro thrusters had deployed and then the pod had begun to aerobrake.

It wasn't really flying after that even as he cleared the final descent and then it was all the Mech. He had followed the computer's instructions on adjusting the mech's trim, and when to fire the jump jets and coasted to twenty five hundred feet. "Enemy detected." He acknowledged to the Dalban HiRez's return. He was still half a kilometer high as his jump jets cycled, but he was low enough that he could turn the master arm on and actually expect to hit something with the PPCs.

Gene feathered his mech's foot pedals, and adjusted the BattleMech's posture as his arms tightened against the Gee forces. The reticle showing the convergence for the two Hellstar PPCs tracing through his neurohelmet's psychic 'HUD'.

The converging beams of both PPCs staggered the Pheonix Hawk. The eleven meter tall bright yellow mech's armor was scorched black as he continued to throttle his jumpjets and 'glided' in towards the green grasslands below. The seventy five ton heavy BattleMech bled the last of its speed off an dropped into a crouch and rising within a hundred meters of the teetering Pheonix Hawk. "That's a Kintaro over there," Gene muttered checking the scopes as they flagged the other GM's product. There was no sign of heavy BattleMechs close, never mind Assaults, but he had registered PPCs and LRMs being fired from other positions to support pre drop information about Catapults being sited. The Kintaro wasn't the only medium mech either, never mind the Pheonix Hawk.

Gene swung and fired his medium lasers and dropped the Pheonix Hawk into the slow moving river working down its course. His Marauder's cooling fins bled heat from in a haze around the mech. He glanced down at the blue water, and the scarred yellow mech, but the radio call coming in from the DropShip announcing it was starting its own descent from orbit distracted him from anything further. Nothing came of the brief conversation, other than the news that the Canopian defenders of Luxen's capital knew he was friendly.

Surely they knew what a Marauder looked like, and since his mech was basically streak black from the ride from on high they couldn't confuse him for one of the invaders either. Hopefully... then again they were probably a bunch of militia weekend warriors so who knew? Yeah short of someone at whatever the Canopian equivalent to general showing up with authenticated command authority he was just going to dance around the enemy's lines and shoot them... preferably starting with anything that carried missiles. If he was being honest the azami's hover platforms were probably the most dangerous thing they had, not just because of the LRMs, but because of how many of the damned things they had.

He supposed that must have been because these were military deserters rather than your more typical periphery pirates. They probably had a couple dropships just intended to carry 'light' combat vehicles, and maybe cargo or infantry. Either way Luxen had a stretch of high promontory points that messed with line of sight.

That meant anything given how many LRM carrying ground vehicles seemed to have been around, and with scouting mechs zipping about he didn't understand why the pirates hadn't simply decided to paste everything. He pulled the warbook up. These ones, they were different than the ones he'd shot up, stepped on, and otherwise exploded at Detroit's starport. Those apparently had been designed in the first succession, which he was glad he hadn't woken up. These ones were better armed, if his sensors were right, though they were still powered by internal combustion engines.

To make matters worse his computer was reading mines... he assumed that was the Azami heading off any potential counter attack... not that one was forthcoming, but apparently there was a numall built hover vehicle his computer was calling a beagle out there ... or more likely several... zipping about seeding mines at potential points of attack on Azami positions.

Which suggested that they were planning to be here a while, and that wasn't good. That didn't make any sense though. Even months after the fact a complete list of what all had been taken from Detroit was still considered incomplete, but it had probably been mostly foodstuffs, and ammo. They had made off with other things, but in the periphery it would have been easy to hoc various spare parts, or use them yourself. Of course if the Combine was willing to chase them as far as they had from Kuritan space it made sense not to stick around...

... but there was no way that they could hope to stay on Luxen without expecting some kind of response... unless they expected the Magistracy to surrender and give them what they wanted in exchange for leaving, which wasn't impossible Gene supposed, but that was contingent on them being here for something that wasn't a deal breaker.

The basic conclusion from the Detroit raid was that the Azami had to have a couple of JumpShips of their own at least, and that they were using a merchant component to reconnoiter locations before moving... but even if that was true the merchants were actually trading. They were involved in buying and selling goods, and the Magistracy certainly would have sold them medical supplies. Reaching up to run his hands through short dark hair, he supposed that wasn't his problem, the pirates had made the decision to attack, he was getting paid to fight the pirates off, and protect the city he just needed to worry about that.

--
Commentary: This in particular, and the next segment are relatively brief. Before we move on, the Magistracy operates on a purchase your commission system with the rank equivalent to Lieutenant Colonel (called Force Major) requiring the head of states consent for such an appointment.

 

I Luxen Part 3
The Devil on the River Bank​

The middle aged prematurely gray haired man was dressed in a khaki pilot's suit the same as his men. It still even retained the red back green triple stripes of a Tai-Sa of the DCMS. There was no point in discarding what had honorably been earned.

The Sheik mournfully shook his head, grateful that the merciful creator had endowed him with the foresight to prohibit his eldest son from joining them in this raid. That did not make the pain from loosing so many of his Saracen hover platforms hurt much less. Many brave Azami had in battle against the Devil they had first seen on Detroit those many months previous. Even now the seventy five ton monster stood darkly daring them to challenge it on the rise of the river bank.

How had it been that that particularly marauder had gotten here? A test of faith perhaps? Or simply Allah's will that it should be for some other unknowable reason. The Gunslinger was here. He had seen the MechWarrior carefully navigate among the civilians, and shepherd the disoriented periphery soldiers as he observed from the shadows.

His own BattleMech's SLDF computer had spit out a name to go with the Gunslinger's identification friend foe code. A name that had been confirmed by members of the faithful who had remained behind on Detroit. He had thought that as strange as his cherished ancestral BattleMech's knowledge had been it was just a curiosity in the scope of the infinite world that they lived in.

It was not impossible of course that the MechWarrior could have been here for exactly the same reason they were. That he required provisions for the journey, among them medical supplies. He doubted that. He had watched as his Mech had traced the shooting star as it streaked through the sky. A textbook SLDF orbital insertion, feet first into hell as it was called, the only thing standing out that it was single solitary hunter rather than the tip of Terra's spear.

Now of course the seventy five black devil stood on the river bank. The heavily armored warmachine daring them to cross the river Jordan. Preventing their crossing in where it would be easiest, but they had other places where they could cross. They needed supplies for their journey, and of course Luxen potentially might grant them a piece to the puzzle they sought to unravel.

He had the attention of their enemy though, and if this was trial he would have to overcome it. "Signal a general disengagement, Yusuf." He ordered the captain, "We have their attention." The original plan of convincing the defenders to surrender would not work with their saracens destroyed. He had after all hoped the mere threat of so many LRMs concentrated after breaking the majority of their defenders would allow them to do what they needed.

"It will be done." The middle aged man replied not bucking as a much younger officer might have at the command to disengage despite the numerical advantage.

He lifted his binoculars and watched heat bathed form radiate a mirage around it. Yusuf returned suddenly carrying a message from the elders aboard a distant JumpShip. At least he wasn't being second guessed he supposed looking on the bright side.
--
Gene cracked his neck to the side. Even with SLDF neurohelmets he was glad his hair was cut short, because even so he was sweating.

He'd been inside the cockpit for hours now. There was nothing he could do about either extreme of the defensive frontage. A hundred fifty plus miles of, and that was assuming the Azami didn't somehow get behind their lines, in which case they were pretty well fucked. Luxen had very little in the way of hardened military assets, and while better, and more organized in terms of defense than Detroit's government... that wasn't saying much. The magistracy had powerful corporations, but those same corps were the ones pushing Detroit's government around.

He had degraded as much of the enemy's long range capability as he could get into his sites, but that didn't mean anything. He'd scoped out two dropships that looked like were Drost II models of some stripe.... presumably refit or more likely had been built by someone new during the succession wars period. His warbook was sure the hull shape was a Drost family, but the weapons and equipment were different.

The PDF had stated they had observed at least one Triumph as well, but he hadn't seen it. He'd take their word on it, and most likely it was further back from the front. He should have tried to figure which JumpShips at Nadir might have been Azami, but it wasn't as if they were conveniently broadcasting an announcement or painted with a big emblem. Not that he had spent a lot of time looking at the ships at the Jump Point. Whatever their numbers this was beyond your average band of scum sucking pirates, and they were up to something... acting with a military objective that he had no clues as to what it might be... and that made him nervous.

It didn't help he kept getting anomalous system network contacts over his comms system. That was probably beagle active probes ghosts being detected by his Dalban HiRez, but every time it happened it was fucking annoying. He didn't have the speed to run those down, and the mines made him leery of where he stepped. With a lull in the action though, and no enemies in sight, and no immediate returns on fusion reactors, he started trawling through the SLDF database.

There was nothing about Luxen, at least nothing that had been 'current' at the time of the Amaris Civil War. The SLDF had never had to come this far south, despite the Vandenburg uprising, or if they had it hadn't been important enough to warrant any updates. Luxen had been a prosperous portion of the Magistracy, and a world supported under the duchess of Andurien's tenure as military governor on behalf of the Star League... but there was nothing to suggest this world had any sizable military caches secreted away on it... which didn't mean there weren't, but it had been spared from the New Vandenburg uprising, and the Succession Wars that had followed after.

There was nothing in his databanks that he could call up. There were no beacons that signaled SLDF or such. Luxen was far enough south that it had been spared the fighting that ruined worlds and worlds, about the only thing interesting was the fact that it was according to Star League Maps supposed to be the middle of Luxen province not on the southern border. He adjusted the trim on the BattleMech and crested a smile rise, careful to avoid smashing any trees.

At under thirty miles an hour it wasn't as if he was going very fast, but tearing through the woods would have been a sure sign to anyone watching their sectors that something was happening even if their sensors couldn't see anything... he didn't want to chance that and it was why he was maintaining cruise speed over going full out.

Still he'd been out here long enough, he turned towards the city, and maintained his present speed. He didn't like having to do that. It turned his flank to the enemy's lines even if none were in sight, but he didn't really have an option. Even before his sensors started registering large laser fire several miles forward he had basically come to the conclusion that this was a much larger raiding force than had hit Detroit.

The prescience of the crossed swords and paint scheme matching those on Detroit were the only thing that confirmed to him that these units were the same, or belonged to the same Azami parent formation. The units were somewhat different, but there was enough of the same in terms of BattleMech composition to suggest that the Combine Industry had provided some of the equipment at least.

He had initially assumed that the preference for energy weapons on BattleMechs was a Kuritan matter of design. Not that he disagreed with that thinking, but he wasn't reading the reports of any autocannon signatures just the heat signatures of energy weapons. Really it was more accurate to say Lasers. He had encountered Panthers with PPCs but there were none reading on his current sensor outlook.

His warbook started throwing alerts.

"Jenner, JR7 Alpha. Star League Recon Mech." He muttered as he jumped the seventy five ton war machine down the hillside, even as he watched seemingly armless mech fire its large laser at the canopian defenders. His neurohelmet was feeding SLDF program data directly about the machines he was facing. Single Large Laser, and a top speed of almost seventy four miles an hour meant it would have had no trouble strafing at long range while patrolling far from resupply. It still only carried a paltry amount of armor.

Certainly the light mech could have if it had seen him cresting the rise, could have disengaged and potentially even managed to get out of here. It hadn't, and it was the fastest mech out of its compatriots all of whom were already engaging the defenders. Just to be entirely sure he still put both PPCs on and shot the Jenner in the back though.

As it crumbled he kept the Marauder in cruise, and turned to face yet another Pheonix Hawk. This one flagged as a 1K meaning slightly more armor, and no ammo to explode, but also no JumpJets to worry about. He had mixed feelings about that, but not having to worry about it jumping around was nice.

House Kurita preferred Light Mechs, and energy weapons. The stable of enemy medium mechs here were trending heavily towards the Pheonix Hawk, and a couple of Cicada's he'd picked up distantly but hadn't engaged. Canopian comm chatter was reporting Crabs, but he hadn't registered any of those on his scopes. No Dragons though, which still struck him as odd. The majority of Mechs he was seeing here were fast light Mechs with little in the way of armor, which was a good thing.
--
Commentary: Devil is referring to the Marauder Gene pilots. As for the Jenner the mainstay Jenner entered service [that is the 'D' model] in 2874 but apparently the A model was intended for the Star League, the clan Jenner IIC in its normal configuration carries nothing but SRMs, no energy weapons... which is odd. (Yes there are other configurations.)

Speculatively, I expect that IIC given its weird loadout is a product of early clan developments. We know ostensibly that by the time Operation Klondike occurred the clans already basically had their tech base configured. That is DHS, endo steel, armor production and what not. Most of the weapons were already in development, Omni Mechs are 2840s IIRC so later, but I suspect the IIC Jenner was a product of the same era that produced the Naja (of cloud cobra) or somewhere in that era. But thats speculation

 

First Luxen Part 4​

Outnumbered as significantly as they were Gene had really been hoping to see other Marauders among the defenders, but that wasn't to be. He wasn't even sure if there was a single Heavy weight BattleMech among the Magistracy defense units.

Hell right this second he wasn't even sure if they had any legitimate combat vehicles over sixty tons. He could have been wrong, but from what he was seeing there wasn't much of a defense here that couldn't have been broken with a concerted assault backed up by lots of LRMs.

He shook his head, "No seriously what are those?" The newest mechs in any numbers the canopians had were three lances of basically new in box Vindicators purchased before the third succession war had kicked off for the planetary militia and which... might as well have been in greased factory storage. They were at least Medium Mechs, but he had honestly been hoping for more Shadowhawks or maybe some Hunchbacks or something.

Military spending on Luxen though had never been particularly important. The planetary militia didn't even get the lions share of defense spending, that went to the medcom for training programs for the broader canopian armed forces. The Luxen Volunteers were using mainly using domestic Locusts and Jenners bought from abroad. The Luxen Volunteers did have their share of personal mechs added into the fray, but none of them were outside of the Medium weight range.

It made sense why the Magistracy was scrambling for such an expensive solution to band aid over this threat though. It suggested the regular MAF weren't in any position to redeploy that fast to patch over the vulnerability even if they felt like risking stripping a planet of its defenders on a gamble. Or who knew what the situation was, other than presumably the obvious, bad. He hoped the MAF knew that already, or would have enough sense to to figure that out after going through his Marauder's battle data records

Shaking his head again, he looked back out the window overlooking the ferrocrete covered staging ground. There was no shortage at least of Astechs, and technicians at least... in theory getting those machines up and in the fight shouldn't be a problem. He picked up the noteputer, and flipped through the Capellan mech's specs. He was already thinking of it as a capellan mech, but it didn't look that bad... or wouldn't if they had skilled pilots.

The DropShip, which had carried them to Luxen, had finished offloading at last report, but he was the only one who had gotten to this sector of the defensive line. Their liaison was still in the planetary capital, at the actual center of government. "That is three lances of Mechs."

"Yeah, its that. On paper, and if you send them out as three lances, they'll be nothing more than target practice for the Muj." He muttered reflexively. "I'd keep them either all together, or split them into six mech teams. Mass their LRMs to harass an attacking enemy." Not that he expected trying to have a bunch of greenies play the Azami's own game on them was likely to be perfect, they'd get eaten alive that way. "Its not particularly fast so its not going to be running them down, but if you're already committed having them on an enemy flank should help." Use the LRMs first to avoid any unfortunate ammo cook offs, and... and then basically outlined that they should act like an infantry fire and maneuver element to make up for individual mechwarrior weakness.

It wasn't a great solution, but he was getting paid for this kind of professional advice... 'advising' to 'shore up the defenses'. Not that he could make it happen. He was getting paid for opinions not to actually assume command. They were desperate, not that desperate. In truth it might well be a recipe for disaster if any other other Mercs in the scratch company gave conflicting advice.

There was a riotous explosion some where in the distance, probably several miles, signaling that the enemy were in fact still out there and making themselves known, but the Azami were up to something. Gene just couldn't be sure what. Were they here to steal medical equipment? If so why? But was that why they hadn't just plastered the shit out of everyone with LRMs? Did they think they'd break something they were here to steal, this was a fucking mess. "I need to liaise with the MRB, and update them." They needed a copy of his combat footage... not that he was necessarily going to get any salvage from his kills. The Azami had presumably recovered their dead but he'd slagged plenty of vehicles and a couple mechs so that was money. Even if they hadn't he didn't have a salvage crew, and there was that fuss... no really it was more for the C-Bills.

The MRB liaison wasn't hard to find. He was was paunchy friar Tuck looking man of about middle age in ComStar Robes who would have looked more in place getting drunk at the local bar. He had copies of the entire company's files via the HPG network, took a copy of the combat footage, filed and notarized everything, but couldn't really elucidate on anything else. He had no reason for why the Azami were here, why they might acting the way they did, but admitted they were probably here to try and steal star league era, irreplaceable, medical technology and that that might indeed explain the restraint even though they were here in force.

He didn't have anything about that either, and Gene was regretting not being able to find anything more out about the Kuritan response showing up. The Kuritans had come out of the Aurigan reach, presumably so to had the Azami after a point, but he didn't know that for sure. Details about the new arrivals on Detroit had been fuzy, names like Arisaka had been thrown around, but that didn't mean anything to him. Much of the probably supposed to be impressive verbiage just were things he missed entirely... and of course he'd also been shuffled off to go fight this war in the pocket as soon as he had signed on the dotted line.

"What about the Infantry fight?"

"Pardon?" The adept he had nicknamed Friar Tuck replied.

"I was briefed that there had been several instances of probable Azami getting into gunfights before and during the initial attack here in the city, where were those?"

"oh, that," The adept frowned, picking at a tuft of white hair in one ear, "I'm not entirely sure. It wasn't on the university grounds proper, but it was close enough that I would guess that was what it was about. I can look into it if you think its relevant mechwarrior." He didn't really sound thrilled at the notion though.

"If it gives us an idea of where they might try and break through and go after it might be worth it, just give me the address and a copy of the incident. If its nothing well then it doesn't waste your time." Presumably Friar Tuck went off to drink after that, which was fine by Gene.

This was probably a pretty nice place when it wasn't under a civil defense curfew, and he got a couple of strange looks even accounting for the MAF attache driving him around. "What are we looking for?" She asked as they stopped in front of a tall marble facade building that screamed academia.

"Answers." He replied swinging out of the chair. "I want to know why the Azami are acting like this, Sun Tzu once said it was all important to understand both yourself and your enemy. Lieutenant Short I would like to know why they haven't executed a breakthrough, because they could have concentrated enough forces to do that before I got here." He looked at the placards listing the residences of the building. "What's interstellar expeditions?"

"Some kind of historical research group, anthropologists," She gestured to one of the buildings across the lane, "That's the History faculty building." Lieutenant Short was apparently a native.

"Excuse me can I help you?" The old man had the look of a cliche academic. The way the wrinkles were on his face, and the body language suggested more someone who would have been gesturing to an ossified skull in a class room to astonished freshman sort.

"I'm Gene Shepherd," He extended his hand to shake, "I'm investigating the Azami attack a few days ago, and how it might relate to their actions outside." He probably should have lead with that he was a mercenary or anything else but he wanted an answer to the question.

"Oh I'm doctor Abner." He was from the Lyran Commonwealth, and apparently didn't like 'armchair anthropology', which actually turned out to be a problem since even stripped of markings he recognized Gene's gray uniform as being a 'wonderfully accurate recreation' of the Terran Hegemony Armed Forces from the end of the Star League. Still after explaining, and a lot of talking about what it was Interstellar Expeditions was engaged in Abner finally directed them to a star map, "I believe we have a calling to investigate all the lost places, lost since the fall of the Star League, and these brutish succession wars."

Gene was already keenly aware that Luxen had once been the center of the province that bore its name, and that there were plenty of rimward planets and systems that the Magistracy had been forced to leave to wither on the vine as resources became increasingly scarce. Nothing however that Interstellar Expeditions had turned up, or at least nothing Abner was lecturing about as having been turned up struck him as being worth all of this hassle.. but all the same an idea struck him. "What if they're trying to steal supplies to make a viable colony in the deep periphery."

"We have found worlds capable of sustaining human life, but most of the populations we've encountered have largely back slid since being abandoned by the greater human sphere." Abner replied, "Certainly it might be possible, but," He stopped, "Mister Ford, Mister Ford," He waved hastily to a strip of a man as he walked past the door, "Yes yes, this is one of my graduate students he'll be a fine archaeologist one day." Abner beamed, "He had a discussion with one of our visitors at length before this unpleasantness."

After a round of hand shakes, and other small talk Ford recounted that one of the Azami had let it slip that they had heard from a traveler of a world in the deep periphery that while relatively primitive was ruled by the faithful. That had apparently been more than he had been supposed to reveal, but they believed that they could find Alexandria and escape the Dragon's betrayal, which was an interesting description.

Even beyond the cloud cukoo lander archaeologist calling the fighting outside 'unpleasantness'.

--
Commentary: other stuff schedule... in theory? 'Not A Hero' hopefully will get updated before Friday... currently I'm not holding my breath. White Wolf Rebellion, much like this fic, has the advantage of having forty plus pages of story content going forward so updating that regularly is no problem. I really need to get around to the HPGENFIC jumpchain update that should have gone up Wednesday or I will be very quickly two updates behind. I'm behind a stargate jump update, but admittedly that's an SG1 Interlude scene. There a number of other stories I'd like to update, and just haven't found the time to sit down and get to, or they're on other computers.

 

I Luxen Part 5​

They hadn't been able to spend much more time at the university. The truth was he knew he needed sleep, and to settle in... and the reality was that the Azami could change their mind and make a push that they were in no position to stop if it came in hard. The university had no obvious leads. He didn't have time for a fishing expedition.

The next two days saw small probing attacks, and if he was right, "They're buying time... I'd guess either to have spies locate whatever it is they're looking for, but also to make sure that once they have it they can get to their JumpShips and jump out of the system immediately." He remarked.

"Their JumpShips should be fully recharged by this point." One of the mercs pointed out his bald head's crown of thorn tats prominently on display .

"Regrettably no."

"Regretably?" 'Septim' asked over the holographic channel from within the cockpit of his 'Merlin' BattleMech, "What's that mean?" He asked the image flickered as he stroked his scragly beard that he hadn't had time to shave

"The Azami JumpShips jumped after the ground forces initiated their attack, or more correctly they detached their final dropships which moved to a safe distance and then Jumped. They returned later, and should be recharging now."

This was getting increasingly weird, and he really wasn't about to start haying off about looking for some mythical periphery planet being the Azami goal. It was entirely possible that was what they were looking for, but it wasn't relevant. He had no reason to think they were going to come back to the university and even if they were it was just as likely to be to steal medical equipment, or information.

That just made him consider the Star League era Medical College of Volgadon University... and the copies of its database that he had. The ones that had been presumably left in storage to be come back to by Terran expatriates who had fled to the Periphery, but never recovered on Aquagea. Whatever, beyond that, defending the hospitals were an obvious move. The Magistracy had a couple of UrbanMechs, which weren't going to be any use out at the front, but inside the city, yeah in theory keeping them in ambush to defend should be a workable, viable plan. Of course if enemy vehicles, or Mechs got that far something had really gone wrong.

"Do we have any idea where they could have jumped to?"

"Assuming a standard jump, Dunianshire." Another Magistracy world, "We believe that's where they jumped here from." One of mercantilists on the the planetary council stated. "We've received no reports of any attacks on Dunianshire though." There were Canopian industrial concerns operating on the planet, but that wasn't the only thing that came to mind.

Gene thought back to his copy of the Star League map, and of the SLDF garrison base that had still existed in 2780. Of course that assumed it hadn't been found and stripped in the intervening two hundred plus years. "They'll probably jump there, after they leave here." Gene agreed, "We have no practical way to stop them if they get off the planet." Luxen had negligible military infrastructure, and heaven forbid having surface to orbit missiles, or orbital defense infrastructure on a world that barely saw any pirate attacks never mind concerted military action.

"We will as they say, cross that bridge when we get there," Lady Raventhir remarked uncrossing her legs as she stood up. "For now our defense is focused on protecting Luxen City, and keeping the pirates at bay. If they withdraw, as you said we couldn't stop them."

The question he wanted to ask was where would they go after. The modern starmaps weren't great. The Magistracy maps were different than those published by ComStar commercially. Itzenzhoe was a jump from Dunianshire, and he'd talked with professor Abner about Interstellar Expeditions work at Skyfog, another world which didn't really show up on the commercial maps, but was charted on his SLDF map. Skyfog had only been rediscovered by IE in 3003.

His musings were cut off by Septim's squawking electronic warnings, "Heads up, I've got contacts on scope." The mercenary's hologram flickered as enemy ECM most likely started degrading his transmission signal.

It was time to go back to the fight.

--
The Vindicator was a medium mech, but the capellan design topped out speed wise the same as his Marauder... and since they had jumpjets had similar movement profiles to his across all terrain. Not that he thought it was a good idea if Lieutenant Short or any of the others actually tried using their JumpJets.

As his seventy five tonner lead the dozen mediums split into two flying columns of six mechs each, he was 'reading up' on Septim's Merlin which had gone dark after reporting contact with the enemy. Having debuted at the end of the last decade, that was in 3010, it was the first new battlemech to make to commercial market in a century. The stats on it looked eminently reasonable in terms of a multi role battlemech to do a little bit of everything, but with a little more protection than the medium weight Vindicator. It was a product of a company in the Lyran Commonwealth called Mountain Wolf BattleMechs which had built a last generation (last generation as in final years of the star league) battlemech for the SLDF. They had been responsible for the thirty five ton Nighthawk. Unfortunately the lines for that 'mech had been destroyed in 2945, some seventy years earlier. Septim's Merlin was factory fresh... he wondered if BattleMechs came with warranties as he crested the rise.

"Ah Major Shepherd I suspected you might be coming." A crisp, educated voice announced over the radio on a general hail as the light mech shifted away from the savaged heavy.

His Mech's warbook executed a handshake, "SLDF Gunslinger Mongoose," He intoned through the MMI with the warbook. He keyed the secure las com broadcoast, "Short, Laine, spread your teams out do not close distance with that thing." Not that it was the only fucking concern. There were at least two lances of Mechs in various stages of battle damage, and there were probably vehicles nearby. They had been baited into a trap coming to rescue Septim's contingent of defenders. He las commed the SLDF Mech, "You suckered him into close range and hit his mech with Inferno missiles." He commented... trying to avoid sounding impressed.

"Suckered is perhaps a little unfair." The Azami commander replied amused.

He couldn't let that mech get close, but the Mongoose had double his top speed, faster than that actually. There was no telling how many SRM 6s he'd expended either. He didn't say anything, and was interrupted by Septim getting on the radio from his mauled mech and warning him about how the mech could turn invisible.

His warbook had already warned him about the stealth system, but that went a ways to explaining the other Mech's unblemished ferro fibrous armor. The fact that no one had started shooting though set his teeth on edge... the Azami commander was over there stalling for time as much as he was. He had been a little leery that he'd been lined up for a sucker punch of his own, but there was something else going on. "Why are you here?"

"I could ask you the same question, Major. You were on Detroit as well."

The laser comm... the SLDF handshake pinging his mech... he had written that off as ComStar just using SLDF comms gear to cut through electronic chaff, to get through the static, and all the noise given the chaos. He had almost forgotten about it. The Overlord. He had confirmed with the Canopians that it was on planet. "I like hunting pirates." He replied, and hopefully before the sheik could take offense continued on, "But you could have easily punched through the MAF's defenses and burned the city, but you haven't. So what are you doing here?"

They were on a secure laser com now. His mech and the Mongoose were communicating on secured SLDF personal comms. It would have been impossible to listen in. "I would say I am looking for Providence. I know that the Dragon has sent out hunters to chase after us, but even they have been mislead, and deceived as to why we are outlaws. I take no pleasure in shedding the blood of the innocent. I will do what I must if it comes to it, even if it means my death. I have no misgivings about my chances against and SLDF Gunslinger Graduate even one two hundred years out of time."

Never mind all of that, so what was the plan then? Drop two hundred plus LRMs in the area and hoped that worked. He kept saying Major. Was that what his SLDF IFF was broadcasting? He hadn't even considered that there might be other SLDF mechs that were configured to receive or authenticate and SLDF ID exchange.

The sheik resumed speaking even though now both sides were squared up. "That is of course why I am buying time." He was on an open channel again, "You have me outnumbered, and I admit my warriors have depleted some of our ammo." But now their mechs were cool, "I suspect you will receive a message from the city even now about my troops in the city making their move, but you have only green pilots, much as Mr Alexander here did. I came here knowing my enemy."

As he predicted the City's defense command beamed them a message about the attack underway by hostile infantry. He wanted to ask again what they were after, but apparently at least one attack was trying to steal medical equipment, and supplies.

"As long as no one in the city resists, no one will be harmed." The Merlin started to move, "But we are warriors, and must do our duty." Septim's less than a decade old mech shuddered trying to get into the action.

The mongoose disappeared in a hazy shimmer. "Fall back and open fire," He roared, "Any damaged units pull back now." Not that he really suspected any of Septim's units were in a position to do that, and the Merlin was charging forward its flamer spraying forward probably hoping he got lucky and tagged his invisible foe.

Gene breathed spinning his torso to find the head of an enemy Jenner and sent a PPC bolt through the large laser equipped scout mech, while his right arm fired a blast into the torso of its lance mate that staggered it. Win the fight, and move on. The vindicators still split into two groups of six each under a butter bar, or presumably the MAF equivalent of, started burning through their LRM ammo as he had recommended during his 'briefing'... i.e. The five minutes of advice imparted during Mech start up checks.

He backpedalled the mech and started looking at seismographic and watching the grasslands underfoot. Twenty five tons of battlemech bent grass, but that wouldn't have been something that Septim would have had the foreknowledge to know or the focus for. Gene throttled his jumpjets on and up salvo-ing his medium lasers even as his computer flagged the SRM launch. The short range missiles shot under his jump jets as he catapulted forward Those missiles meant he couldn't close to melee range, not until he was sure they'd been expended. That and given he could turn invisible... or near enough he needed the range to figure out where he was and turning this into a mech scale kung fu battle seemed like a bad idea.
--
Commentary: So I would never likely run this, I haven't run a quest in ages, but in discussion with someone else we were talking about a BattleTech quest. I'm a fan of a game (PC game) called Ultimate General Civil War in part because its basically a real time grand battle spiritual successor to Civil War Generals, and besides the inventory and army unit system that is really nice more to the part of being in regard to BattleTech is the way you upgrade your General and to a lesser extent your officers, by investing points in thinks like logistics or reconnaissance.

So you earned career points that could be invested in politics, economy, medicine, training, army organization, like I said above logistics, and reconnaissance they give you bonuses. I just happened to be discussing the idea of running a merc company in a quest like format and it struck that that system that kind of feel for it with the way ultimate general would work pretty well for that.

Some time in the future:

If I were to say to you, ‘I’m a stranger travelling from the east, searching for that which is lost’
I would reply ‘I am a stranger travelling from the west, it is I that you seek’

 

I Luxen
Part 6​

The sheik coughed blood splattering into the silk kerchief he was holding, the image flickered "I concede," He managed even though he wasn't the only one injured. He'd covered the disengagement of the last of his men who'd still been mobile, while the others who's mech had been disabled had punched out.

The cost though? For about probably three or four Azami or arkab legion veterans or whatever they were being called dead they had taken out almost twenty mechs, and a score of vehicles besides. If Septim's merlin hadn't been carrying ten plus tons of armor he wouldn't be walking at all. Never mind that all of this had been a delaying action as the Azami had bypassed them and what all was going on in the city.

Concede? He had probably won. They didn't have time to properly ascertain injuries... or how intact their mechs were. The fucking truth was that outside of what looked like mostly cosmetic damage the two SLDF gunslinger BattleMechs had survived the fight unhurt. The light Mech had sustained cockpit damage, and and leg damage from it falling over but it was mostly intact. It was more intact than any of the Vindicators if he were being honest. That was a piloting factor more than anything else, and fighting on the enemy's chosen ground.

"Short we're dividing up into convoys any mech that can move under its own power needs to go now towards friendly lines." This was the messy part. Figuring out if anyone was dead or dying, and if anything could be done. Septim's merlin was too damaged to keep up, a couple of vindicators were in the same boat, but at least some of those mechs could be taken into a fight because they were going to have to do that.

The sheik coughed again as the orders finished. Gene considered whether or not the older man was broadcasting over the radio what they were doing, but his MMI suggested no. The Mongoose's radio hadn't transmitted since he had broadcast his surrender, and withdrawal order to his band of Azami warriors.

He thought about the JumpShip behavior, not just here, but at Detroit, and from other reports. "You have dependents." It wasn't a question. With everything that had been said, and everything else that ... the pieces just kind of fell into place.

"Indeed. Our JumpShips are many," Another wet cough, sounded like he had punctured lung, but he smiled, "Thousands, as many people as travelled with Samantha Calderon to settle the Taurian homeworld as I discussed with a friend in that realm. Civilian dependents who would have been the target of the ISF if they had been left behind. I spoke before of the Dragon's betrayal, you should know of it as well Major." He wasn't particularly surprised that the ISF might use the Arkab legion troops as deniable deep raid specialists to cover for Special Forces type missions. "What we found was a grievous shame of course. The satan amaris murdered the Combine ambassador and his family," Another cough, "They were part of the Kurita Dynasty, and yet what we recovered was," A fit of wet shudders, "HPG transmissions recorded by Jerome Blake of Minoru Kurita betraying the SLDF to the Satan Amaris." More harder wracking coughs shook the older man. "Deployment data of SLDF positions, and the refusal to permit SLDF forces to move through Combine Space."

Minoru Kurita had been the Coordinator who had attempted to lay claim to the first lordship after Amaris had been toppled. His assassination had prompted his son Jinjiro to order the massacre on Kentares IV. He could easily be considered to have been the man to epitomize the problems that had ushered the succession wars if such a thing could be said to be.

The Azami goal was simplistic too. To flee into the deep periphery searching for a world that they had been told existed that had been colonized by muslims during the golden age of Terran colonization of the stars. They had apparently gone even further into the deep periphery to settle than had been the original plan... and thus had never known the Star League. They had survived as simple people but with a much uniform tech base. The man the sheik had spoken to who supposedly had come from this paradise had grown up on a world that was basically the late twentieth century in terms of technology, but with common fusion powered electricity providing clean energy and some early Terran Alliance space technology.

If such a place existed he doubted it was on his Terran Hegemony star map. The Star League had never found that lost colony or if they had it's information was recorded differently... it wasn't as if he had exhaustively searched the periphery worlds for anything quite so specific. It might have been out there, and or maybe not.
--

The Azami feint had run rings around the defenders. There was another description for it that was less charitable that some people were using. They hadn't managed to do it entirely without losses, but the Magistracy's defenders had performed poorly in the face of such elite troops... but at the same time the Azami had avoided just rampantly throwing firepower down range, which certainly would have been an option.

He had caught some of their rearguard, and as pointless as fighting them had seemed he had done what he was getting paid to do and shattered the handful of Panthers and Phoenix Hawks bringing up the rear. The magistracy would have no ground to stand on in terms of complaining about his performance... but he'd be glad when this contract was over.

He was really hoping the Draconis Combine didn't show up anytime soon. He wanted to be off world before they got here, especially as he had a nagging suspicion that they'd show and try and throw their weight around. It was just the sort of vibe he had gotten from the DC contingent at the party the night he had left Detroit.

He'd passed the relevant combat data recordings to the MRB and the MAF liaison and was waiting on a response. He probably needn't have done so. The Merlin's footage, or the Roms from the Vindicators would have sufficed, but it was done. The security lockdown was still in place. He couldn't exactly go grab some down time at the university or explore the city with the civil defense precautions 'looking for bombs,' or unexploded munitions or potential enemy remnants.

Severus 'Septim' Alexander shook his head and sipped the neon green glass of melon liquor straight, "I admit you are the best MechWarrior on the planet." This was the same Mercenary who had tried talking him out of an orbital drop at the start of this more than a week earlier. "Shit its not even a close one, there is you, and that old guy was second, and no one else is even close. I'm pretty sure most of the Azami pilots qualified at minimum as good." He added sourly.

They had been contracted to do a job. To shore up the defenses of a planet utterly unprepared to fight, and whose defenders were all greenhorns at fighting. They had known that, academically at least going into this. The on the ground reality of what that meant though... that had been the bigger shock to the system. Luxen could have absolutely been much, much worse.

Anything further ruminating on the subject was cut off as Gene was forced to put his Mai tai to the side as Doctor Abner came in having managed to talk his way through the MAF security cordon, probably with the help of the MRB personnel. Technically the scratch company was still employed, under contract, with the Magistracy for another week at minimum, but the job offer from Interstellar expeditions was something he leapt on. Even if it hadn't just been a ride along job to Skyfog it would get him off world, but there were other things to do, that needed to be done in the interim. Abner's offer was too good to pass up, with the amount of money he was offering. Interstellar Expeditions had no shortage of transport capacity surprisingly, but that didn't mean he didn't have other things to take care of.

Friar tuck had his half moon spectacles all the way down his nose looking at the tables and figures in front of him. "Well selling most of this does make sense." He remarked and reached over to pick up his own ... probably alcoholic... drink and took a long pull. "You have an existing MRB escrow account, technically you are still under contract but I can send a message to Detroit, and have the MRB extend your warehouse lease for another year or longer, and the contract will cover any salvage you intend to keep in storage." Which was nice and all, but he was selling most of the stuff he had smashed. There were exceptions, but even they were largely obvious ones. "That being said I will handle selling unwanted hardware, but Lady Raventhir has asked for a meeting."

Yeah he hadn't pulled any punches on the general unreadiness of the volunteer planetary militia or its throwing conscripts into mechs for the first time in their lives against battle hardened elite pirates... they were lucky anyone was still walking.

She was already here, and apparently in between him stopping by Friar Tuck's desk had struck up a conversation, argument with Doctor Abner about mercenary poaching. "The Luxen volunteers performed poorly in your estimation."

"Short had eighteen hours of Mech simulator time prior to climbing into a Vindicator for the first time, "And she had had the most... she had had as much time as the lower third of other MechWarriors in his detachment of Vindicators combined. "So yes." He understood... probably better now, than when he'd left Detroit just how under equipped the MAF was, but it was still ridiculous.

The madonna looking woman nodded. Raventhir's contract offering to stick around and train mercs was good pay too, not as lucrative. Good pay for being stuck here though... and he was leery of the Kuritans showing up... and the trouble that might bring. It should have been an easy choice. This was cake money though. Garrison duty and training the locals was an easy contract that he should have jumped on... and that was why he was glad that Abner was right there, and that the Lyran academic had asked before Raventhir.

He could finish out the contract he had at present with the Magistracy and then move on, because he could fall back on the verbal agreement with Abner. If the job was still open later whenever he got done working for IE then yeah, maybe that would be a thing. Maybe. "There is a lot of salvage, you're short on combat vehicles, and mechs, fix them up, and if nothing else they're something to train people on."

--
Commentary: I'm putting this up now, because either I've misplaced it or its gotten oopsed somewhere but I can't find my update for not a hero. Oh well I'll rewrite it, and just leave the smut out. No big loss. Tomorrow I will be updating HPGENFANFIC.

So anyway this basically concludes First Luxen, barring potentially some minor expansion and revisions. There are some other things I want to do going forward... though when I say going forward I'm talking about the second stop at Detroit and forward since the return trip to Luxen has been written though it could do with some expansion.

 

I Interstellar Expeditions​

The bank account had been looking pretty flush with just the cash payout. Never mind putting the salvage to auction, but that would have to wait until he got back. The IE paycheck was nice, especially for a minimum of six months of work and full support. Doctor, or Professor, Abner had regaled him with lots of stories about IE's work. The Minnesota tribe was one of those stories, and as a result when the professor started blabbering on 'Chingis Khan' and Alexandria he had only been half listening, "And thus as the fact the mongols were able to conquer all twenty three cities founded by Alexander the great should be a good example... that I believe the Azami may be misunderstanding the work Interstellar Expeditions is engaged in."

"I'm sorry?" What.

"What the professor is saying," Ford remarked in Fed Suns accented English, "Is that just because they're looking for Alexandria doesn't mean its the same Alexandria that we know exists in the Canopian Ruins."

"Ah." He replied a little weakly as he nodded.

The 'Canopian Ruins' were ... in a way the old southern frontier of known human space before the downfall of the Star League. He had read about them, and while the name wasn't perfectly accurate it conveyed the loss to human expansion caused as a result of the Star League. Officially, that was before the New Vandenburg Uprising, the Magistracy of Canopus had numbered some sixty worlds, but was under the auspices of a government that at that point only recently, relatively speaking, regained its full sovereignty.

Skyfog was approximately fifty light years from Dunianshire, which was the last planet important enough to warrant public chart placement by ComStar's mapping service, at least for their general astrographics. Itzehoe defacto still apart of the Magistracy but when you got down to it, with a small population base, negligble industry it really just wasn't worth notice. They hadn't stopped at Dunianshire long enough to do anything... there had been no sign of the Azami, and no attack ongoing so they'd waited for the JumpShip to charge up, and jump them to Itzehoe, and then onward to Skyfog.

"So you've found a planet called Alexandria out there?" He asked hoping to move this long winded conversation along.

"Yes, well," The doctor harrumphed a bit, "not a planet, but rather a group which dubs itself the Alexandrian Covenant. They have lost JumpShips at some point, but we've found ruins of settlements and some records, that suggest some time in the 2700s after about century being separated we think from the large human populace a cataclysm occurred. We can't say for sure when , but we think its what caused their decline in JumpShips and set the stag for it to begin folding."

"Its not this Prester John Kingdom." Ford added in.

"Quite right, to the best of our knowledge the Covenant seems to have been established by Canopians and Taurians fleeing the Reuinfication war, and were then cut off as the Star League reached its height, and then fell."

He was left alone to consider that, while the IE academics went about there work. He really doubted that Skyfog would be attacked. The habitable moon wasn't exactly safe, and there certainly wasn't anything to steal so he was comparing his Star League Map with the 270 ly Rimward section of space of this covenant place.

The maps weren't one to one. The Central Intelligence Directorate routinely tagged along with Star League deep space exploration missions, especially after the Reunification war, but that didn't mean they were all knowing. There was no epiphany or incriminating evidence. The Alexandrian Covenant wasn't listed on his maps by that name, and their stars weren't listed as having been charted by the Star League. Hopefully this would stay a quiet cushy gig, and give him time to study... he supposed he should have known better...
--
"Salaam Alakaum."

The accent was funny, but then you know a couple centuries of linguistic drift would change the emphasis on the ends of words, even traditional hellos. God knew the the Fed Sun guys, even Ford, of Interstellar Expeditions sounded utterly ridiculous when they started talking. His English was probably weird to their ears as well. Still he made the best attempt at the response, which got a raised eyebrow as the man sat down across from in the booth. "What brings you out this way?"

"My people have been displaced from our home, and our elders recognize even if a paradise in this world does exist we are unaware of its location. It would preferable to lead them to somewhere where we can at least survive, even if it is not ruled over by the faithful long displaced from Terra. We cannot settle in the Inner Sphere, because we would be viewed with distrust and forever hunted by the Dragon's agents."

Yeah, that was probably true... especially the combine trying to hunt them down and murder them all. At the same time though it seemed like they had someone inside Interstellar Expeditions, which was probably how they had ended up at Luxen in the first place. He hated this spy shit, because the more he thought about it there were probably a bunch of people reporting back to entirely too many people.

"Ah Mr. Hassan I see you've met our resident security expert." Professor Abner shuffled over from the elevator deck making his way to the bank of ten foot tall observation windows of the building. He vigorously shook the man's hand. If he had any idea that Hassan was Azami he didn't give any indication as he talked about the man's 'credentials', and 'letters of introduction'. Ford who came in about half an hour later seemed less comfortable with Hassan's arrival... and he wondered how many shadowy backers were involved in all this back room politicking.

The alleged HPG recording came to mind. He could understand why the Combine wouldn't want it to come to light even all this time later. It would be a pretty big slap in the face, but it was juicy propaganda and he couldn't see it making any real difference in anything. Maybe, he could be wrong.

"Mr Hassan has just come from Far Home, he's part of the work to trace the route of the Minnesota tribe I was telling you about the other day." Abner continued. "The Minnesota tribe we think are descendants of one of the Royal Division who departed the Inner Sphere with General Kerensky at the end of the Star League." Operation Exodus... and oh god Abner was doing the exposition lecture thing again. "In summary, much as I hope its not a wild goose chase, the idea put forward by some of our backers is that there might be Star League deep periphery outposts and even caches far out here."

"So we're leaving Skyfog?"

"The additional Surveyor JumpShips will take time to get here." Hassan remarked. "Appropriate supplies and equipment need to be stockpiled in order to insure we are prepared."

Uh huh. Sure. It made sense. It would neatly explain away a bunch of JumpShips in the Deep Periphery suddenly showing up, but it was a paper thin excuse that he doubted would hold up if anyone started looking... but they probably wouldn't they were going to be a hundred plus light years from the Magistracy of Canopus border in a couple weeks, and further still looking for a Star League cache he wasn't even sure was real. This was probably all just an excuse to go prospecting for worlds that could be colonized away from the inner sphere hoping no one would be the wiser.

"Are you really following the Minnesota tribe?"

"My uncle was not the only one with an SLDF BattleMech, major. Come I will show you, it will make more sense when you see." For a 'peaceful' exploratory mission, and maybe it was just because the Lyrans just accepted Mercs were a part of doing business, IE had a lot of security. "The Azami fought the invaders in service to the Dragon, but there mechs were not heritage hand downs from the star league of a century earlier. They were new production Mechs, and new production equipment. As to the idea of the cache, years afterwards some of the brotherhood retraced their path through the combine worlds. There was a previously unknown SLDF cache on Richmond that had been thoroughly cleaned out, but its electronic registry suggested that it had contained substantive stocks of material. The database also contained a map, which suggested other SLDF caches on other worlds."

Some of those of course House Kurita had already taken advantage of and used up in the first and second succession wars. Presumably any caches in the Fed Suns might have been claimed as well by the hosting member state, but apparently not all. "And you happen to have this map?"

"It only covers the Draconis Combine as it existed before the fall of the Star League, but I do indeed possess a copy of it."

If the combine had any idea about any of this... then they didn't even need to hint at the existence of the HPG transmission but just claim the Azami had cracked open an SLDF cache or two and made off with the Los Tech. It would even go a long way to explaining them wanting all the salvage back on Detroit. He wondered if that was still tied up in court... and speaking of that. "Right, what about the Combine forces pursuing you?"

That the Combine, or the Cappellans for that matter, were unpopular with groups like IE wasn't any real surprise. He did understand the need to protect their merchants by not drawing attention to them, but he also recognized when he was being given an evasive answer.
--
Commentary: If you're wondering why loot Detroit?

Well Detroit was founded as a farming community, and still has a major agriculture sector. The Azami were making off with seed stocks, among other things. And yeah they're barking up the wrong tree direction wise, the Auximite Providence is Anti-Spinward, not Rimward of the Inner Sphere, but again we will get to that.

 

I IE
Part 2​

Even if there had been HPGs he wouldn't have used them, and really who would he have called from Skyfog. That being said he was really hoping to get through this without getting stabbed in the back, or less catastrophically face enemy air power. The latter was deemed unlikely because there weren't expected to be any pirates out this way.... discounting the Azami who he admitted had been forced into it, but even so that went back to the first point.

Or the Kuritans could show up. ... Yeah that would be fun to deal with. Interstellar was up to something... and ... and there wasn't anything he could do about it. It wasn't technically double dealing. He wasn't employed by the Canopians right now, IE was paying the bills... and and it still left him uncomfortable. Whatever was the deal was apparently good enough on the table to overlook some piracy, since he assumed that that hadn't been some kind of false flag or ... whatever. He wasn't getting paid for that, and Abner seemed to busy digging to care.

They were six jumps out now.... deep deep into the Rimward Periphery chasing treasure. They'd touched down on the planet's surface after some cursory surveys showed some overgrown and damaged structures that didn't match the stone age locals. They had apparently been abandonned for two hundred plus years and been wracked by flood damage as time had gone on, and some of them were buried into the mud from landslides years earlier.

He glanced up at the orange stained sky through his cockpit. Today was slow going. The dig site people giddily were insisting they had found something, but they had been saying that all fucking week... which he supposed from an archaeological standpoint they probably had found stuff. The planet definitely met criteria for having been explored and abandoned sometime probably twenty sixth through twenty eighth century. There were signs of inhabitation, and 'neo Paleolithic' societies in an equatorial band of grassland herding cattle but little to no sign of significant technology.

Bahar's voice came over the comm line, "Major Shepherd our credentials are being recognized," The female mechwarrior a few years his senior remarked matter of factly, smug even, but that diminished a few minutes later, "It seems the facility has deemed them insufficient. Doctor Abner wishes to try something."

'Try something' sounded dangerous, and he sat up a little straighter and tensioned against his harness. "Could you clarify?" He'd been about to continue, when:

"Bahar, I am reading fusion signatures powering." Hassan's voice cut off over her open channel, but it didn't matter his Star League Dalban was already flagging friendly SLDF Drone Units coming to life and the computer was broadcasting his IFF as friendly.

He had dismissed the archaeologists 'we found stuff' because no one had said what it was they had found, and they'd been digging in the damn dirt. This was just great. He pushed the mech up to cruise speed and watched as something streaked skyward. Fuck. That wasn't a missile. He keyed the JumpShip in orbit, "You have at least one ASF inbound." One might be enough. He got a response, and then a screech of static as the line went dead... but he hadn't registered weapons fire. There was no explosion ... and there was no way that an ASF could have broken orbit in a handful of minutes and then fired on a JumpShip regardless of how close the system's jump point was.

He sent a terse interrogative to Bahar on her status, but got no response. He wasn't reading weapons fire, just SLDF drones powering up. It did sort of imply that the Minnesota tribe had never gotten here. He pivoted the mech hard around the dried up river bank and right into the path of some kind of opening into the earth.

Reflexively Gene triggered his seisomographics only to get overloaded with information as his computer unpacked a navigation package beacon from the SLDF cache. "Ow, fuck." He brought his mech to a slow crawl getting out of the way of the opening.

"... ah major, yes... Major Shepherd the facility's automatic turrets and computer system... is not very happy with us breaking protocol. I swear this doesn't normally happen. I have very good experience with this particular bypass maneuver most of the time." Abner chuckled weakly, "It believes you are the ranking officer present... "Miss Bahar is apparently risking Court Martial for inappropriate access of SLDF secure facilities... yes."

"I've got a nav beacon. I will be there in a minute, is anyone hurt?"

"No, no we're fine." Abner replied absentmindedly presumably the danger, or immediate threat there of must have passed enough he'd switched back to academic mode.

He hoped the JumpShip was fine... otherwise they were even in more trouble. With no one hurt though he reached over to the sealed thermos and took a swig of the iced tea as he tried to parse the map his Mind Machine Interface had unpacked directly into his brain.

Even though he wasn't going to say it by the time he got to the dig site, and the uncovered access tunnel he'd digested enough of the map to recognize the similarities. This was a Castle Outpost not completely identical to his but similar enough that he was pretty sure he could find his way around. Aquagea though made sense to have one. The Periphery states on the southern border had been subject to the reunification war, and what not. This was different. They were out in the middle of nowhere, and there had been no satellite returns that they'd observed when they'd jumped in system... unless they had missed them.

He supposed it was possible even as he guided his mech to the bay door that was sized for them. The drones were ignoring his BattleMech, which ordinarily he would have ascribed to being invisible to hostile sensors... but here it was because of his Mech's broadcast frequency.
--
The good news was that the ASF drone thing that had launched had only flown up and broadcast SLDF shutdown codes at their JumpShip. It wasn't damaged, and there was no hurry to get back.

"This is similar but not identical to the facility on Richmond." Hassan remarked as they looked around, "It certainly looks like a refitting and resupply station," But Richmond had been a Rasalhague world if Gene remembered right, and even if it hadn't it had been apart of the Combine all the same.

"Did Richmond have drones like this?" He asked. Aquagea's had had similar ones but the layout was different... this was more spartan in a sense, but had more stuff just sitting in storage.

"Some, yes. Not many," Hassan replied. "The Minnesota tribe we think stripped all that they could fit... one our engineers thinks that the self destruct system on the facility failed to activate, and that was why there was anything left at all."

Given the Outpost Castle on Aquagea's self destruct system was triggering a multi megaton nuclear detonation... yeah... there wouldn't have been much left usable if it had gone off, which reminded him. He tapped some keys. "Well there are some LB-Xs in the stores. Ammo."

"In addition to the BattleMechs we had seen in the bay."

"Yeah, but thats nothing special none of those are Royals." He replied scrolling, "They are SLDF mechs but the latest ones in there were built in the late twenty seventh century according to the files. I expect this wasn't a high priority post." He kept scrolling, "I'd guess that this is one of the units whose parent formations disappeared at the start of the sucession wars. They look like they were assigned to,"

Abner scrunched him aside, and his voice went an octave closer to squeaky apoplectic "No this doesn't look right at all. We're too far rimward for a unit assigned to the 18^th Army of the SLDF."

He was right, "This is dated before the New Vandenburg uprising though," And this was entirely too far out to have been hit by the rebels even assuming Amaris had known about this facility, which he doubted. Again that ran into the problem of there was no indication of orbital infrastructure in the system. No recharge stations, never mind anything bigger or more complex.

"Well I admit this is a little disappointing." Abner complained, as if it wasn't an intact SLDF outpost. "I mean certainly it is a discovery, but the Star League built many caches like this I'm sure."

"This planet is habitable."
Hassan nodded, "It is," But it wasn't necessarily suitable for resettling the Azami on, and there were other worlds rimward according to the charts. The charts were probably the biggest find really... and probably what Abner and Hassan had really been hoping to find.

Gene leaned against one of the terminals, and waited. The star map was about what he had expected. The Star League's Department of Mega-Engineering had built a network of facilities for the SLDF as the Star League's version of the Explorer Corps had traipsed through the periphery up until around 2765.

Ford got back with some of the techs even as Abner continued to play with the Star Map. "According to access it looks like most everyone here last were called up to move to answer the New Vandenburg revolt breaking out," He paused, and looked at the map.

"I believe, if I'm reading this correctly. That the Star League, or at least a portion of it was looking into the prospect that someone was shipping material into the far rim. It doesn't look like they ever found any proof, but it seems the 18^th army had received a report via a Bug Eye surveillance asset of what looked like a colonization fleet heading rimward."

Those ships were apparently from the Rim World Republic, and apparently further investigation had been quashed from on high and then forgotten about with the outbreak of New Vandenburg... and the Amaris Coup and everything else going to hell. No one had come to this lonely outpost after its detachment had been pulled to the front to replace combat losses and while they probably had intended to return they hadn't. No one had come back apparently until they had arrived, which was why there were supplies here, but there were no great answers. Besides a handful of SLDF regular mechs the motor pool looked as if it had spares of the equipment that would have been attached to HQ and Service for the unit. There were engineering vehicles, a mobile HQ, a gaggle of transport trucks plus others, in addition about a dozen APCs of different models waiting on the racks for mechanics that had never gotten around to it.

Just more questions, and maybe the princess was in another castle. None of this was what they were looking for. Abner was going to stick a pin in the star map and leave everything here after he took pictures, and made copies of any documents.

--
Commentary: First thing is first I'll answer questions in a following post most likely.

Update schedule for the weekend: Saturday AoE, easy to do, Sunday probably this. Monday will probably be HPGENFANFIC so I'll be caught up to where I'm supposed to be. Ish.

 

I IE Part 3​

There would need to be follow up expeditions later, but they had moved on from the Outpost well they had objectives. The Minnesota tribe had apparently never reached the outpost, assuming of course they had even known it had existed. It was entirely possible that given the labyrinthine bureaucracy of the Star League and the fiefdoms within the SLDF that plenty of little outposts had been lost in the dust bunnies and margins. "SO what happens if we stumble on some displaced Rim World Republic planet?"

Hassan scowled over his tea, "The Satan Amaris is long dead." He growled, "I suppose it would depend on the specifics, unless they were somehow still loyal to Amaris after all of this time they would just be other people. I admit it was not something I had considered."

"You still haven't said how you found a map to that installation?"

The Azami intelligence officer? Shook his head. "We have been carefully maintaining our supplies and battlemechs for centuries now. What I mean is that, to the Combine we look as if we are constantly scrounging through scrap, but we painstakingly categorize all of it. Our merchants go through everything in hopes of finding the remains of what we need, and our technicians work to insure that we can restore functionality to machines when most people cannot even recognize what is Star League and what isn't. This 'garbage diving'," He chuckled because that was apparently what some people regarded it as, "turns up pieces of from time to time which lead our seekers to find other troves. There was a destroyed JumpShip that had crashed onto a planet. It could not be made flight worthy again, but we were able to get the databanks running, and inside its navigation partition was a star map that contained among other worlds the one we visited. It included Richmond on the list, and it also had a SLDF quartermaster's inventory of equipment going to the facilities. Nothing, which would have been unusual in the era of the Star League, but it was still a lead."

"And since Richmond was on there, you figured maybe the 'Tribe' might have known about it as well, and they were going Rimward."

"Yes, that is the conclusion we had reached."

Abner didn't seem put out by it. He probably wouldn't have been too put out if they hadn't found anything about the stone age people on the planet, even just the planet was a find. One more world lost to wide man since the fall of the star league and whatever. "Seekers?"

"Explorers. Our Council of Elders since our flight from the Combine is increasingly worried about our prospects, and there is a movement to find a suitable world soon." They wanted to be far enough away that the Kuritans couldn't just follow the path, but at the same time... it seemed like there were some idealistic sort who hoped that they'd be able to convince more people to make the journey into the rimward periphery, which was was risky because there was a greater chance the Combine would notice.

Never mind it wasn't just the Combine. "Pirates would be a potential problem."

"Yes, I have raised such concerns with the elders as well." Hassan complained, "we are hoping being many jumps removed from the main paths we could insulate ourselves. I admit I wish I knew more of this Alexandrian Covenant, doctor Abner has spoken of, the name alone had prompted interest in it... which is no real guarantee but we have copies of a canopian map that seems to agree with the general location in space that they fled.

The Covenant worlds though had apparently failed, in both respects. To both entice other people to flee the Reunification Wars, and also to make another Magistracy beyond the reach of the Star League... or whatever it was had been their goal in running. "Do you have a copy of IE's Maps?"

"Yes we were furnished a copy," Hassan replied. "The truth, as I'm sure you have suspected is that we are far from the only disaffected group within the combine. It is through one our allies that we were put into contact with Interstellar Expeditions in the first place." Rassalhague he assumed from some of the other conversations going around. "Richmond was a gulag." He continued on, "So are interested to know what we can learn of what became of those rescued by the Minnesota tribe."

"I don't mean to be a buzz kill, but you're unlikely to find a Star League in Exile." and if they were it probably wasn't going to be a nice collection of people. "The Star League is dead, and gone."

"Then should we not make one?" He hadn't expected that kind of idealism from the MechWarrior but Hassan sounded earnest.

"One step at time. We'll find a planet your people can settle on, and investigate those star charts, and we'll go from there."

--
He supposed when you got right down to it he was doing two jobs. The first was the obvious one he was getting paid for. The first was babysitting Professor Abner and his team as they dug around on periphery worlds far from civilization, and showing pirates didn't show up. The second was well this whole Azami thing. He supposed if the Azami settled far away from wherever they'd stopped being pirates, they'd have to focus on setting up a new country? Whatever long enough to get food and what not set up, but they had enough DropShips where presumably they'd be able to down the road trade normally with the Periphery.

They were going rimward using the outpost map, but Abner was already talking about some crazy idea to back track the other way and try and find a path to take them Alpheratz in the Outworld Alliance. That would have been beyond the scope of his contract. Beyond that comparatively minor detail, they wouldn't have the Azami JumpShips for that. There was also the expense and time in general that would have required getting Interstellar Expeditions to sign off on it. It was just not to be, not this year, and probably not next. It would take time to organize JumpShips and supplies in order to carry it out.

"So what will you do after this?"

He thought about the ur Cruine contract he had had to pass up in order to ride to Luxen's defense... not that Majesty didn't understand... it had been their government that had basically said hey we're doing this its an emergency, but we're doing it. Aquagea came to mind too. For that matter Septim's Merlin was a new design, new production mech that was interesting. He certainly would have been interested to go see the Lyran Commonwealth. "I have to go back to Detroit and hope that the Mercenary Court had arbitrated some kind of solution about the salvage."

Ford nodded. "Yes you can tell ComStar isn't happy about the Snakes acting like they own , it was all over the news." ComStar ran its own galactic news service because they had a monopoly on the HPG network everyone else had to send messages through them and the neutrality of the form ministry of communications was generally could about being perceived as fair and impartial. "The rimward periphery is another pirate surge as well."

"I had heard that." He replied. "What about you?"

Ford was going to be returning to the Fed Suns apparently. There was a rumble as the DropShip finally touched down. "I guess its time to get back to work." The map had earmarked this as a star league research facility, and that ended up being what it turned out to be. Unlike Skyfog which had been studying habitable moons the Star League had basically taken a habitable earth like planet and ... more or less just released a bunch of plants and animals on it to see what would stick. The first date for the experiment was shortly after the reunification war. By 2740 this particular planet had made enough notice that ... well if Gene were being honest they were basically Amish, or Mennonites, or Mormons... or maybe some weird combination fusion melting pot over the following centuries.

They weren't stone age level society, but they had long since given up fusion power or even powered flight in favor of having turned to wide scale ranching, and dairy farms. It was entirely simple uncomplicated existence and one that had removed itself from the wider human community by choice.

Another world for Interstellar Expeditions to come in and investigate, but it had no immediate signs of the elusive Minnesota Tribe. "You'll get used to it." Ford remarked lowering his electronic optic as he scanned the canopy of teak trees growing in the humid tropics of the Star League, "Oh look whales!" ... apparently the Star League had taken pork barrel spending pretty far. Ford was right though there was an entire pod breaching the surface of water. They were going to spend a couple of weeks here, particularly to restock on fresh water, but also so the rest of the Azami could catch up. Gene was suspecting they had an HPG or something to communicate, but he couldn't prove it, whatever the case was it would concentrate everyone together.

--

 

I Interstellar Expeditions
Part 4​

He couldn't be sure when the final decision to make for the Alexandrian Covenant. Whenever it had been had had probably been made before the planet with the whales and mormons on it. The announcement had been made after that as the flotilla of JumpShips had converged on schedule at the following rally point.

They were now two hundred and seventy light years beyond the canopian border... though admittedly at the end of the Star League it would have been more like two hundred light years, maybe less. In the late 26^th century well the borders had looked even pretty different.

The good thing with meeting up with the Azami had been the ability to restore his salvaged mechs... never mind the awkwardness of them being salvaged from the Azami in battle... back to Star League era functionality.

They'd arrived at the JumpPoint for Sophos and surveyed it from a distance, and it had been a good thing they had. Gene touched the computer. He had no idea why there was no one on this planet, but primitive not the surface to orbit missile battery here would have been hazardous to a DropShip coming in unaware. They probably would have needed several dozen to cover the entire planet, and that wasn't in evidence, but there were enough to cover the major population centers.

Or what was left of them. "I've got something." One of Hassan's infantry commanders called.

"What is it Rashid? Where are you?"

"About thirty klicks from the capital missile battery, the magnemeter we use for prospecting had found a buried DropShip we think. Or rather the remains of it. I suspect it was blown out of the sky Colonel."

Gene raised an eyebrow. It was the first time he had heard Hassan be given a rank. The Azami had been fastidious about that sort of thing. Hassan shook his head at the oversight, "What do you make of it Rashid?"

"Pirates I would think, at least on any other world, we are trying to dig it up now. Give us a few hours."

A few hours later they were poking through what they were pretty sure was a Rim Worlds Republic DropShip, and it was like walking through a tomb. "This is the only one we've found."

"We are lucky that we managed to find this one." Rashid remarked sweeping his compact assault rifle out in front as if expecting to be attacked by Zombie Amaris supporters at every junction. "They're trying to get the computer on line now, but one of the dates within the missile facility suggests this was lost some time after 2750." Before the New Vandenburg Uprising. "As to where everyone went... I don't know... something is very wrong."

But not so wrong as that there had been some kind of planet wide war. There were no radiological signatures. The Capital Missiles were pure fusion drive KKVs. Point accelerate slam into target in orbit bang sort of affairs by all appearances. They weren't even particularly smart missiles with their seekers being downright primitive and probably requiring ground control telemetry to hit a DropShip not standing still relatively speaking.

The problem was that while the network wasn't large enough to cover the entire planet it was numerous enough that the planet's major indicators of infrastructure definitely suggested the locals had been able to build them. As if they'd been expecting an invasion... it would have been easy to just assume that perceived threat could have been from the Rim Worlds Republic, but he had his doubts.

"I'm surprised its this intact," He muttered swinging a light over the fancy shark embossed emblem, "I don't recognize this model of DropShip, but this armor is ferro-aluminum." Which was probably why it had survived the heat of reentry with such a big chunk of it gone from amidships. "Did they manage to crashland?"

"I can't be sure." Rashid replied opening a bulkhead. "I want to say no, but I think they were riding the nav beacon from the city in before they were shot down."

It still went no where to explain where Sophos's population went. A single Rim World's republic dropship being chanced upon didn't come close to explaining that. Abner and Ford were equally perturbed by the lack of signs of what had happened. "I suspect that they packed up and left," Ford announced.

"There are no signs of JumpShips, but we have found platinum mines, Germanium mining and industrial systems. All the sort of things needed to make primitive or even early modern JumpShip designs... but it looks like it was dissambled, and taken off. There are huge chunks of machine missing."

"Which could be scavengers." Rashid pointed out.

Hassan glanced at the surroundings. "I admit Rashid might have a point, but I don't think any of this was done in a hurry."

"No this would have been months at least. We have remains buried in graveyards that we're sure are from the 2700s, but no exposed remains, and nothing after 2800s. We're not sure where the cut off is, there is detritus, human artifacts, but there aren't any signs of war."

Everyone had basically independently verified that, over and over again. They'd found weapons over the following couple of weeks, but all of them were Rifles. Either the infantry small arms sort or the predecessors to modern Mech scale auto cannons. The natives living on Sophos had industry to build combat vehicles.

"What if they chose to move off world because they were running out of fossil fuels?" Ford suggested next, "The DropShip could be a red herring. Their vehicles, the ones left behind are all ICE powered, and that might explain their armament too. If they thought they were going use up all of the petroleum they might have left."

"I doubt it, there is corn growing rampant on the continent. That would have been able to be refined into gasoline even with just 20^th century chemistry." Gene put in, "Its not impossible but I don't think it fits."

"Combination of factors?" Another IE grad student put in looking up from his noteputer, "They still had technology to build vehicles, and reach orbit at least with weapons. And if ICE wasn't an option, they could build fusion drives even primitive fusion engines should have been possible if those are primitive DropShip yards. If they were capable of building early JumpShips the same."

Sophos was one more world with more questions to it than it answered. Naturally of course as they wandered through the deserted city Abner took as a challenge rather than something to be discouraged by. The general conclusions though were not internal or external strife. It took significant effort to unearth the library cache, and star maps from the building they assumed was the planetary capital. Part of the structure had simply given way due to an earthquake probably forty fifty years ago. The computer itself though was even older. "This is Taurian Concordant."

"So its really weird then that we haven't found signs of nukes." Ford muttered, and Gene laughed, "Can we pull dates from it?"

"The reader says that this was," The tech adjusted, "2581 is when it was encoded. Its a library core from New Vandenburg. As for how long its been here, it seems like was installed in 2642. It has all the earmarks of the Alexandrian Covenant government, and has a Magisters seal on it,"

Ford explained that one "the male half of the government, as we understand it," The other issue was Sophos being depopulated wasn't the only 'lost' covenant world, apparently Cyrene had suffered an extinction level event as well... at least in Cyrene's case though it made sense where there wasn't anyone living there any more... not the mass disappearance of Sophos. It had brought up two more theories. The first was the easier one to investigate... go to the largest of the surviving, known, Alexandrian Covenant systems. Pharos. It was possible of course they had gone to another system, but that was where the second theory came in, with one of the IE researchers suggesting that they had fled to a system inside the Perseus Cepherus Cloud Complex.

Since they had the coordinates for 'Pharos' the system it made more sense to make the jump there... if that turned out to be a bust the Azami elders were content to try and colonize Sophos and make a living there. They were however going to have to start the long trek back towards civilization soon. The expedition could in theory back track the way it came and not explore any new worlds in return for spending more time in Pharos, but they needed to settle on a course home and there were very few direct routes back even with the maps they had. Either way that trip would potentially take them the rest of the year to get back.

At the end of that discussion things turned back to the Azami situation. There were a lot of questions including whether or not the Combine knew about the dependents. The general thinking was know. The Combine hadn't molested the Azami merchant travel thus far, but there was no telling whether that would hold... of course the main issue was officially they were only hunting a small renegade unit of the Arkab legions who had turned traitor. The official byline would really start running into a problem if the Combine started attacking merchants, and JumpShips outside the Combine borders.

Of course if ComStar substantiated that JumpShips with merchant credentials were 'casing' ahead of the pirate raids the Azami had committed there was probably going to be hell to pay. Of course if the azami were serious about settling down that was less of a concern about coming back.

 

I Interstellar Expeditions Part 5​

The system they were calling Pharos as it was easier than the alternative. Calling it the 'Alexandrian Covenant' (home) system, was entirely too long a name for non academic usage. The system had two inhabitable planets. Eros was the third planet in the system, and 'Phaeton', the fourth. The issue was confirmation of more of those capital missile launchers on the planet, except these surface to orbit missile platforms were manned and operational. "Definite signs of technological decline though." Ford observed. "The missile batteries are the most advanced tech I'm seeing."

And they were on both planets, which was interesting considering Eros was abandoned or near enough. Not entirely unexpected but it made sense. "The JumpShip fleet looks like its been mothballed."

"Sophos?" Someone asked in the crowded bay's throng of people.

"Maybe." One of the techs replied, "We're cataloging them now, but they're all designs that would have been in service in 2500s. Some of these I don't even recognize." A couple were clearly liberties, but well time had moved on.

"That looks like a Leviathan, but they've done something to its arms, as well as the fuel bunker." Someone else put out as the astro geeks tried to make heads or tails of flotilla of ships that had been towed into a safe stable space near the jump point. Sophos though had shown signs, and the Taurian data core had the information necessary, of mining for germanium and construction of Jump Cores...

Eros looked like it had had a bad meteor impact a few centuries previously, but nothing extinction level. Phaeton was a different story. If the natives had noticed their arrival at the Jump Point it hadn't been enough for them to take a break from their usual affairs. They seemed pretty preoccupied by a small case of civil war. The ongoing conflict was going to keep them off the planet's surface for this trip, much to Professor Abner's disappointment.

There were discussions about habitability, ending with the question of whether or not Eros would work.

"It will have to." Hassan replied to the question.

Professor Abner nodded, "We will land our first expedition on the southern continent. Its the oldest site of ruins we've identified. I would like to examine those before any other landings." Estimations from IE analysts put them as early as sometime in the twenty fourth century, much earlier than mainline 'Taurian' settlement ruins on the planet that had been abandoned sometime in the 27^th century.

Personally Gene would have preferred investigating the Taurian settlements first, but he wasn't getting paid for that sort of thing... so watching over Abner's dig site on the southern continent would be what he would end up doing. "We will be bringing our DropShips down hopefully where it will not disturb the remains." Hassan replied, which was the elephant in the room. Even assuming 'Phaeton IV' or 'Pharos' as the natives referred to it now apparently, hadn't noticed the JumpShips arrival... there was a good chance that they would notice dozens of DropShips burning for their system neighbor. That was the sort of thing you might well be able to notice with the naked eye never mind with even primitive telescopes.

That kind of 'astrological event' might throw the civil war into a higher gear, which was something Ford brought up, but it would have to be. The good thing though about a southern landing on Eros's southern continent was that it wouldn't have been covered by any missile platforms that they could see... and the Eros missile platforms were noticeably inactive compared to the ones on 'Pharos's surface. Given the warmer nature of Eros they might have long since corroded during the hot summers without maintenance, but who knew. It seemed unlikely that they were automated, or had tripwires, but he would have preferred taking a little more caution on the first trip ground side for this planet.

It wasn't up to him though, so he packed it into the DropShip, and waited for them to make final checks.

--
Gene glanced up into the night sky from his cockpit. A curtain of shooting stars descending en masse covered the horizon. Except they were meteors but the first wave of Azami DropShips and small craft establishing their base camp to the north. He hoped Hassan had been making a bad joke about naming the first city on the new world Alamut. Even though Interstellar Expeditions had first discovered 'Pharos' in 3007, the trip to Eros III 's surface had been the confirmation that the primitive firebases for capital missiles had powerful enough radar arrays to actually track objects in space beyond orbit... of course light speed lag delays being a thing it would have been impossible for ground direction to effectively guide course corrections for a missile as primitive as wait the Covenant was using... still a little concerning though.

There wasn't anything for him to do really but watch the night's sky though. The Covenant hadn't tried to take a shot at the DropShips, but the active tracking returns definitely suggested that the neighbors were watching. He didn't necessarily consider that to be a good thing. They'd need to be careful when they returned to the JumpShip on their way out, just in case. He keyed his mike, "How often does Interstellar Expeditions come out this way?"

"Professor Abner was with the original team in 3007, there has only been one another expedition that I know of, and it was only a cursory follow up." Ford answered, "after we leave I expect the commission will take the new charts we have and focus on exploring those worlds. We probably won't chart another expedition to the Covenant worlds until 3020 or 3025. I mean something in the interim could happen to change that, but the new maps will devour any spare jumpships we have available in the rimward periphery."

... and really this expedition had really been made possible because of the Azami 'merchant' / colonization fleet coming along, and that was shady backdoor dealing he was trying to avoid... the irony since he had signed onto Abner's exploration thinking he was just going to be able to sidestep running into the Combine. In hindsight signing on to hang out on Luxen probably would have been the better choice even though by contract this was going to pay a lot better.

"So what are you going to do? When we get back?"

"Assuming the Canopians need a security contingent, training cadre, I'm going to start looking at hiring pilots. Start a Mech Company and try that." Detroit had had people looking for jobs when he'd arrived, and he wondering who all from the Luxen contract would still be on Luxen when they got back to the Magistracy.

At about 270 light years from the border though ... really the travel back to civilization would be getting back to Skyfog, and then it would be Itenzoe. "I see. I can write you a letter of recommendation if your looking for work with the Federated Suns."

... uh, "Thanks." It almost came out as a question mark on the end.

"It might mean potentially sitting in the Draconis March, but it would pay better, and be more regular than hunting pirates."

"I'll take that under advisement."

"Its only a matter of time before the AFFS launches an offensive against the combine, or that the snakes attack of their own."

He could have entirely taken that as Ford viewed the succession wars with a degree of cynicism that the war was inevitably going to result in yet another round of pointless bloodshed... but that wasn't what the comment felt like in the slightest. He had no doubt Ford was a patriot, but there was a good chance that Ford was something more than just a patriot. IE supposedly vetted their membership thoroughly, but he suspected that meant academic credentials and not... extracurricular ties or maybe it just meant making sure they weren't thieves looking to do some grave robbing. "So what about this place, its not Taurian."

"We're still digging, and its twenty fifth century layer but we think they might be originally Capellan. Once we finish the excavation of the sight we will have a better picture," Ford remarked accepting the change in subject. "Initial examination suggested they fled out here in the early years of the Confederation, and as we already knew from orbital mapping and studies predate the covenant settlement by more than a century.

That was interesting. Weird but interesting, "Is there any sign of a database, like we found on Sophos?"

"No. Lots of what looks like might be military equipment, stockpiles, caches of arms that sort of thing," The Fed Suns native carried on, "it has preserved fairly well, and small technology in terms of gunpowder hasn't changed terribly much in twelve hundred years really."

"What are you hoping to find?"

"Its the oldest sight of habitation that we've identified on the planet, but i'll be honest, the professor will be terribly disappointed that its probably a dead end. It might have been better starting with the Taurian settlements."

The data core that they had pulled off the abandoned world had dated to the age of war, and had been presumed Taurian in origin. He hadn't gotten a chance to go through it but it was supposedly the sort of thing some one from 2570 or so might have thought necessary to build a colony on if you were from the Concordant. There was a degree of sarcasm to that statement so he wasn't sure exactly what all it had entailed... or even if they'd really had time to go through the whole thing.
--
Commentary: I've got some replies in the works, but I consider the conclusion of the following 'chapter' to be stronger than most of this one, as this serves a necessary building role and time mover for later events. That and FtL in BT isn't that great by sci fi standards.

 

I IE Part 6​

There were some details that weren't adding up. It wasn't necessarily indicative, and certainly no smoking gun, of malicious events in the past, but something wasn't right. The southern most settlement was definitely anachronistic possibly predating the age of war, and truth be told it wasn't as if the definitively Taurian settlements on the northern continent of Eros III were in much better condition. "What I don't get is that this planet was hit with a pretty substantive meteor shower," And it wasn't the only planet either that had eaten a couple of rocks.... "I thought having a large moon," Well a normal sized Earth type moon, "Was supposed to reduce the risk of catastrophic impact."

"It does, but sometimes these things happen."

"We will take appropriate precautions my friend." Hassan replied, "Give us a few months and we should be able to restore the capital missiles and potentially be able to upgrade them to be able to intercept any more errant rocks." The Azami had landed on a massive plateau of ancient and stable geography, which was good because they had landed dozens of dropships. "While that is something indeed, it is not why I called you. We found a Taurian cache."

"Another datacore?" Ford inquired notably perking.

"Yes, much the same as the one we found on Sophos, but that was not all." Hassan lead them into a hardened structure, and waved a hand.

"Those are nuke magazines." Gene muttered looking at the warning labels in the imperfect light of the bunker surrounding them.

"Yes, megaton scale even." Ford stuck his hand out expectantly, even as Hassan fished out his wallet and handed over some money, "I am afraid though that the Taurians probably carried with them other caches with weapons like this." which meant the neighbors probably had nukes tucked away somewhere... the general consensus was that no one on Pharos had actually thrown nukes despite the civil war, which was a good thing, but it wasn't proof that they didn't have them. It seemed as if civil war or no the surface to orbit platforms were safe and neutral to both sides.

"Are you going to try and move?"

"No, we are relatively secure here, but it felt like something to mention." Hassan replied, "We have much to do here, and that will mean farming and clean water are our highest priorities," Housing as well no one really wanted to live out of a grounded DropShip unless they had no other choice, and the Azami had their dependents to think about as well. "I am sorry that we were unable to locate the Minnesota tribe, or indications to their trail."

"We will just keep looking." Ford responded.

"The answer is out there somewhere. Once my people are settled here, I will rejoin you in the quest." Hassan remarked, "If we are able to get those old JumpShips working," The Azami colonel nodded to the sky. "God willing perhaps we might explore the cloud complex as well."

"There is no telling what is out there," Ford declared, "Who knows who might have settled there, and we might still find your Alexandria."

"I would like that." After the surprise we found nukes, and talk about all the stuff that might still be left to find in the rimward periphery... including the slightly turn of what if we turn up Amaris supporting Rimworld Republic colonies that missed the war they went off to lunch. There were still DropShips and Small Craft coming and going bringing people and supplies down, but here two hundred and seventy light years rimward of the modern / official Canopian border the ground work for an Azami settlement free from Luthien's grasping ambitions looked to be starting up. There were only about two thousand families so they wouldn't be doing anything but surviving, but maybe Hassan was right and others would follow them. Once they were sustaining their own population in food and water they'd probably work on fuel, not that fusion engines were hard to feed, and that would let them make the journey back to the Inner Sphere.

Gene climbed back into the cockpit of his Marauder, and bypassed the seat. The SLDF operations manual stated that in a non permissive, meaning NBC weapons getting thrown around, you shouldn't need to leave the cockpit's safety for anything less than a week. Was it comfortable for that period of time? Hell no, but there was enough room to unfurl a mat and sleep if the situation called for it, and it had enough room for storage and auxiliary equipment. Aquagea's Castle Outpost had easily been able to make a copy of the Volgadon University core. He hadn't brought a 'field library' with him in whole, but he had brought a copy of the Star League era Medical Library of the university... of course he hadn't expected to go to the Magistracy, and Luxen which housed their largest medical university so...

He picked up the hard bodied polymer safety casing, and deployed the handle. After months of mucking around the deep periphery no one paid him any mind at all despite standing out. Most everyone else were in overalls and work clothes, but there were enough people in jumpsuits or lab coats that his day clothes didn't stand out that much.

He'd been considering this for a while... since they'd been out here for months now. The truth was the biggest hang up to the datacore... never mind he had not idea what was even in it, but Sophos had been missing tooling, and what pieces had remained had often had parts missing. The most simple answer to the latter was that they'd been scavenged for spare parts for other machines, but there had been no indication of why. The Azami weren't precisely bringing in large volumes of machinery or tooling themselves.

The raid on Detroit's capital had been partly a bluff. The smaller armed Danais, Trojan blockade runner whatever, had hit the seed banks at Ann Arbor for seed stocks for a future colony. Everything else had been a bonus to that objective, and had been designed to obscure it but taking more impressive things. This planet was far enough out for the Azami's needs, just as it had been for the Canopians and Taurians fleeing the end of the Reunification war, and maybe before them the Tikonov Galactic Rangers.

The Alexandrians though had for at least a century had been capable of building their own DropShips and even JumpShips until what Interstellar Expeditions labelled the first Upheaval, and probably still had some limited capacity to do so at least as late as the 'Second' one. The Covenant didn't have the specifics any more and Sophos hadn't exactly had that information where it could be easily found... and there were obviously questions missing.

Something had happened. The rocks falling by themselves could have been natural after all. For a colony world, bolt hole, whatever one wanted to call it, the Taurian original raison d'etre of building a military infrastructure to resist the star league seemed to have fallen flat on its face.
--
Commentary: This is more interlude, and was originally going to be paired with the conclusion of the Expedition chapter. Its mostly going up as is. The Alexandrian Covenant and the wider Canopian Ruins will be something we explore later particularly as the colony grows larger, but really this is what sets up for the company's origins.

That being said... I had meant to include the Azami talking more about the HPG conversation that got them in this shit in the first place, but thats been rescheduled.