I also re-worked this
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 Data that was now twenty years out of date and, came from the Wolves.
One problem that Khan Hazen recognised what that her Naval Stars were very mismatched. There was a small number of very large WarShips, including two battleships and three battlecruisers. But, there was very few cruiser scale ships or heavy escorts like destroyers. Instead the remainder of her Clan’s naval strength was largely built of Peregrine and Fredasa class corvettes which supported a few old Congress class frigates, an ancient Whirlwind class ship and a single Vincent class corvette which was used as a training ship. What was needed was cruisers or destroyers. Building these ships would take years and consume resources currently being fed into factories to build up against any attack from the Inner Sphere as well as to strike at them now that REVIVAL was almost assured. So, this only left two options, either launch a Trial of Possession for WarShip assets from other Clans. Or trade for them.
A Trial of Possession appealed to her as a Warrior, but not as a politician and leader as she knew such Trials could rapidly escalate into bloody conflicts and inflict losses her Clan could not afford, not with a return to the Inner Sphere on the horizon.
Most other Clans had limited naval Caches, and they would not trade for their ships, especially to a potential rival. This left the Snow Ravens as the only viable option to cut any deal with and so Khan Yvonne Hazen contacted Khan Lynn McKenna to open a dialogue between the two Clans.
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 older Block refits. 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. Prior to going into mothballs the ships had been updated with systems like Harjel hull sealant and additional hull plating to allow the system to operate fully. But their general age saw them quietly put into monthballs. 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 weapons 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.
Despite the effectiveness of the Raven’s naval yards, with repair crews working around the clock it still took nearly a year to complete the reactivation of all ten ships and deliver them. Falcon personnel, mostly from their huge JumpShip Fleet or Technician Caste were cross-trained with the Falcons having to resort to using washed out Aerospace pilots as crew for the manpower intensive ships that now needed crews.
Despite this, 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.
