The Panic of 3048 – When birds of two different feathers flock together.
The arrival of the Outbound Light in Clan space and the subsequent interrogation of the Explorer Corps JumpShip’s crews caused a near panic in the Clans. When the Interrogation, albeit cherry picked for the worst details was shown to the Grand Council of the Khans, this sense of concern only magnified. Leo Showers had shown the Khans data that he knew would speak to their fears and desires. Opposition to a return to the Inner Sphere, codenamed Operation REVIVAL melted away as the Clans feared that they were going to be discovered by the forces of the Inner Sphere and hit first.
After winning a place in the Invasion Clan Jade Falcon found themselves in a bit of a quandary. Although the Falcons had one of the largest fleets of JumpShips, their WarShip strength was rather limited and they possessed no heavy transports capable of carrying large numbers of troops over the huge distances involved and Falcon Merchants were already drawing upon their JumpShip fleet to set up a Command Circuit of JumpShips from the Homeworlds to where the Clans would strike. There was also the cold hard fact the Falcons didn’t trust the intelligence data provided by the Wolf’s Dragoons. Data that was now twenty years out of date and, came from the Wolves.
The Falcon’s Naval Stars were also quite a mismatch of ships, largely focusing on smaller vessels like the Fredasa class corvette or Congress class frigate as well as having a large number of battleships including a Nightlord class and a Texas class. Seeking to increase the size of their WarShip fleet prior to REVIVAL the Jade Falcons approached the Snow Ravens, not to initiate a Trial of Possession for some of their WarShips, as such a Trial could escalate in size very quickly. But to trade for them.
This started a long, and sometimes fractious series of negotiations between the Ravens and Falcons, both sides sending delegations of Merchants, Scientists and Warriors to the talks. But as weeks turned into Months, the ailing Khan of the Jade Falcons Yvonne Hazen ordered the delegation to make a ‘make or break’ offer. The Falcon Warriors, headed by Star Colonel Edwin Roshak, overrode the advice of the Merchants then offered the Snow Ravens a fixed percentage of resources from their Occupation Zone once REVIVAL was underway and the ownership of the Falcon’s holdings on Hellgate. With this superb offer on the plate the Raven’s immediately accepted, adding a proviso that they could help escort the Falcons forces in REVIVAL and would send their own DropShips and JumpShips into the Inner Sphere under Snow Raven escort to retrieve these resources.
Glad to be done of four months of ‘tedious negotiations’ the Jade Falcons left and now the Snow Ravens then had the task of finding WarShips they would be willing to give up. As the FRAM (Fleet Refit And Modernisation) program of Project NELSON was all but complete they were unwilling to trade any of these freshly refitted ships and instead turned to scouring their Naval Caches for suitable craft.
This would eventually turn up a total of nine Aegis class cruisers and a Black Lion II class ship, all in their base, un-refitted status. These old ships had largely survived the Amaris Civil War because of their relative obsolescence which in turn made them low priority targets for the M5 Drones of the Hegemony’s SDS. Survey’s found the ships to be in fairly good structural condition and once their Jump Cores were refitted and powerplants brought online, the real investigations into their condition could begin.
With Lum’s slipways largely clear the ten ships were brought in and reactivated, old armour was patched, computers updated and their interiors and crew quarters were thoroughly cleaned. As part of their reconditioning, to also give the appearance that the Jade Falcons were not just getting unwanted castoffs, the Snow Raven’s installed pulse laser and AMS mountings to provide anti-fighter and anti-missile defences and the ships electronics were also replaced with far more modern and reliable systems. Several weapon were swapped out to normalise things and the fuel tanks on all ships were enlarged as the additional range would be most useful during the journey to the Inner Sphere. Onboard security was to be provided by three Stars of Elementals, all in all, the upgrades were still more conservative than the Block IA upgrades of Project NELSON. Finally, the ships were all painted a brilliant Jade Green with yellow striping on them prior to delivery with a full load of ammunition aboard and their systems fully operational.
It was seen as a testament to the effectiveness of the Snow Raven’s yards efficiency that the ten WarShips were all delivered within 6 months of the agreement between the two Clans being made.
The Falcons were happy with their new WarShips, but the ilKhan when he was informed of the details that the Ravens would be escorting the Ravens was furious, as were other Khans, who complained that the Ravens were ‘sneaking their way’ into REVIVAL. The meeting between ilKhan Leo Showers and Khan Lynn McKenna was less a cordial discussion and more a heated debate that nearly escalated into a blazing row when Showers accused the Raven’s of trying to join REVIVAL by stealthy means. Khan McKenna’s blood cooled enough that she swore an oath that the Snow Ravens would not land on any unoccupied world and would only land at DropPort’s manned and controlled by Jade Falcon personnel and that the Snow Ravens would not seek to claim any world as their own.
Somewhat mollified by this, ilKhan Showers ‘requested’ that Khan McKenna make this oath before the Grand Council so that the other Khans would understand what had happened, and see it as the ilKhan bending a Khan to his will as a sign of his position and power.
Accepting this clumsy political move for what it was, Khan McKenna made the vow before the Grand Council and most of the angry grumblings from the Khans died away, if not completely.
The Tanite ‘Gold Rush’ of 2998.
Although the Tanite worlds were discovered in 2965 by Clan Cloud Cobra and was one of the Clans most tightly guarded secrets, their mismanagement of the worlds and a revolt by the Tanite civilians who refused to adopt to the accepted Clan ways saw the Cloud Cobras deploy half their touman to try and stabilize the situation, with the Clan forces fighting guerrilla forces they were ill trained to fight. Such a massive deployment of forces away from their holdings was impossible to hide and the Cloud Cobra’s were questioned before the Grand Council on just what they were up to.
When the Cobra’s finally admitted that they had claimed three colonised worlds for their own that they had found, the Council meeting broke into an uproar. Many Khans argued that the Cobras were hoarding resources for themselves and they were not up to the task of managing these colonies if they required half their touman to try and control some barely armed civilians.
Calls for a Censure of the Cloud Cobras were made but these were voted down, but the Cloud Cobras were forced to concede that other Clans could bid for the right to have enclaves on these new worlds and systems.
Thus, in March 2998 did the ‘Tanite Gold Rush’ begin as a dozen Clans sought to claim enclaves on these worlds and control their populace.
As the other Clans quickly conquered the Taninte worlds and then started fighting amongst each other as well as trying to subjugate the Tanite people they ran into the same problems the Cloud Cobra’s did and found that the Tanite’s were unwilling to assimilate into Clan society and resisted violently. This did lead to a massacre of several towns populations to ‘dissuade’ any uprisings, but this just drove more resistance. The Jaguar’s and Falcons reacted harshly whereas the Nova Cats and Diamond Sharks both tried a softer approach which they found got results. Still resistance continued and by the late 3040’s the Clan’s had resorted to chemical sterilization for a large majority of the Tanite population save those in Diamond Shark and Nova Cat Enclaves, whilst the other Clans resorted to bringing in their own Worker and Technician Caste personnel to run the factories and work the farms.
This also started a spate of Trials between competing Clans within the Homeworlds and in the Tanite systems until only three Clans were not involved in the fighting. The Blood Spirits, who had already sunk into isolationism who had declared the whole mad scramble a waste of time and resources and instead spent their time fighting a series of Trials with their hated Burrock rivals. The Ghost Bears, because of their natural caution were simply too slow to react and by the time the Bears had agreed to do anything in 3000, the Tanite worlds were already largely divided up although some territory was still being fought over. And finally, the Ravens, who were too busy working on their fleet and used the relative quiet brought on by the Gold Rush to finish refitting the CSR James McKenna.
Still a small taskforce of WarShips and ground forces was dispatched to see if the Ravens could pick over anything left behind. Travelling with the Ghost Bears with whom they had a cordial relationship, the Ravens were diverted to an uncharted system when a JumpShip suffered a engine malfunction which limited her jump range. Both Clan forces jumped into the system known only as RDB/0411 on the star charts not knowing what to expect.
What they found was a treasure trove. RDB/0411 or the 411th Red Dwarf Binary system charted during Operation EXODUS was a young system, estimated at being a billion years old and was awash with accreting matter and dwarf planetoids, some on stable orbits but most were not and all were the victim of repeated asteroid strikes, making them useless as colonies. The two Red Dwarf stars were also flaring aggressively and the inner clouds of asteroids and planetoids were bathed with lethal levels of radiation from the two angry stars. But the outer system was still awash with asteroids as well as a single slowly growing Gas Giant.
Survey’s of the asteroid belts found them rich with a wide range of metals and other resources whilst the inner system was found to have several large geranium deposits. With masses of resources within easy reach the Bears and Ravens both immediately realised the value of the system and claimed it as their own, splitting it down the middle before announcing the discovery to the Grand Council.
Realising the huge haul of resources they had bypassed in their rush to get to the Tanite systems and discounting RDB/0411 as a worthless system the Smoke Jaguars, Diamond Sharks and Steel Viper’s all tried to claim space within the system but were kept out with only the Sharks winning some trade concessions from the Ghost Bears. Unable to fight on the ground the aerospace Warriors of the other Clans were simply outclassed by their Snow Raven opponents when the ‘weak’ Clan was targeted by the Vipers and Jaguars.
By 3005 the Ghost Bears and Snow Ravens had both established Recharge Stations as well as several orbital habitats and processing plants within their halves of the system which was now called Serendipity by the Clans. Extensive asteroid mining was started and with the glut of resources available the two Clans were even able to trade some away instead of having to fight off a near endless stream of Trials of Possession for them.
The Snow Ravens would reactivate and deploy their Galleon class Super-Freighter the CSR Universal Conveyor which would be used as a mobile ore processing plant and habitat for the workers manning the mining craft deployed by the DropShips that now trawled the system looking for ores. The Geranium deposits however were far harder to reach and due to the intense radiation given out by the two stars, any manned craft sent to mine the Geranium would have been ghost ships within a few weeks and the Bears and Ravens were forced to use remotely operated drones but even these suffered a large number of accidents and breakdowns with mining craft lost to radiation damage or flares. But the cost in small ships was well worth it with tons of Geranium being recovered and it was the resources from the Serendipity system that allowed the Raven’s Project NELSON to go ahead at full speed, finally freed of the need to conserve resources and no longer having to build up stockpiles before bringing a ship in to be upgraded.
The cooperation between the Ravens and Bear’s over the ownership and defence of the Serendipity system also helped bring the two Clans to a level of cooperation that would result in the Bear’s and Ravens working together on the LEVIATHAN Project, largely using the resources from the Serendipity system to help build the gargantuan WarShips.
